Maverick Philosopher

Introverts and 'Social Distancing'

We introverts need our solitude, and in a world lousy teeming with extroverts, we can easily see the bright side of the 'social distancing' that prudence demands in the face of the Wuhan Flu. It offers us a good excuse to avoid idle talk and social dissipation.

"I really would love to attend the block party and partake of the pot luck, but given my age-related susceptibility and the enormity of the WuFlu threat . . . ."

Related:

Extrovert Versus Introvert: The Introvert Speaks

Too Shallow a Pond

The world's too shallow a pond to justify one's wanting to make a splash in it.

Grumpy Old Men

Charles Hurt:

Here you have two men with 155 years of combined accumulated wisdom here on planet Earth. Together, they have served in Washington a combined 76 years. And they are squabbling like a couple of schoolchildren about irrelevant nonsense on the playground.

The Democrat Party has come to this? Vote for either of these clowns and you beclown yourself.  Sleepy Joe, on the nod, appears to be poised to get the nod. But be prepared for surprises.

The Wages of Frugality

Some of us from modest origins will end up with more money than we will ever need or be able to spend. The wages of our frugality will not be spent by us but passed on to benefit others. We credit our success to the old-time virtues.  We understand that poverty is more a lack of virtue than a lack of money.

But to suggest that blacks could profit from these old-school virtues will get us branded as 'racists.' Apparently, to the mind of  a leftist, a black who can defer gratification is like a black conservative, a 'traitor' to his race, as if race is a political construct. 

Such is the real racism of low expectations fueled by 'progressive' reality denial according to which race is a socio-political construct.

Will Leftists Now Re-Evaluate their Espousal of a "Borderless World"?

We of the Coalition of the Sane understand that one of the many reasons for enforced national borders is to impede the spread of deadly diseases. So I am hoping that such globalist nitwits as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton will learn something from COVID-19.  They will perhaps learn the importance of border control. If they do, something good will have come of the Wuhan virus.  One can hope.  Here's a report on something the illustrious Mr. Kerry said a few years back:

Taking a jab at Donald Trump for promising that Mexico would pay for a wall on the Rio Grande, the secretary [Kerry] enthused over his vision of a borderless world, and hectored those reluctant to join his flight to Utopia. Once offstage, Mr. Kerry ducked into an armored vehicle surrounded by heavily armed guards who shepherded him from one secure place to the next, and then home, where he could relax behind sturdy walls.

In other words, borders and guns for us, but not for you "bitter clingers" (Obama) and "deplorables" (Hillary). 

Just remember, folks, political correctness can get you killed. "Killed dead," as a deplorable might say.

Intellectual Integrity and the Appeal to Mystery

Bradley Schneider writes,

. . . while we're on the subject of divine simplicity, I would be interested in your thoughts on the following dilemma.  Suppose you are strongly persuaded by philosophical arguments that, if God exists, God must be simple, i.e., some version of DDS must be true.  Otherwise, if God were composite, He would not be absolute and therefore would not be God.  At the same time, you appreciate the problem of modal collapse.  That is, you appreciate that DDS appears to imply modal collapse.  Suppose further that you are convinced that modal fatalism cannot be true, i.e,. the world that we inhabit is both ontologically and modally contingent.  Question: Can you, with intellectual integrity, believe in or have faith in God's existence in this scenario?  It seems to me that you can if you accept the following:  (a) DDS is true; (b) DDS does not imply modal collapse; and (c) the reason DDS does not imply modal collapse is a mystery beyond human comprehension.  

 

Is that a reasonable position or an intellectual evasion?  Put another way:  There are obviously some philosophical assertions that are so demonstrably incoherent or contradictory that one cannot hold them with intellectual integrity, e.g., "There is no truth," "I have no beliefs," etc.  Is the belief that [DDS does not imply modal collapse and the reason is a mystery] analogous to such beliefs?  When is it reasonable to believe in something that you don't understand? 

 

Well, Bradley, you are asking the right questions.  The central question, I take it, is whether one can reasonably affirm mysterianism, or whether one who affirms mysterianism has succumbed to irrationality and has surrendered his intellectual integrity.

 

To affirm mysterianism is to affirm that there are mysteries.  But what is a mystery?

Mystery-1:  A proposition which, if true, is knowable, presently unknown, and interesting to know, but the interest of which evaporates upon being known.  For example, the proposition Jimmy Hoffa's body was fed through a wood chipper is, if true, knowable, unknown, interesting to know but such that, if it came to be known, then the question of the final disposition of Hoffa's body would be settled and would no longer be interesting or a mystery.  The aim of scientific research is to banish mysteries in this first sense of 'mystery.'   Perhaps we could say that this is the Enlightenment Project in a nutshell: to de-mystify the world.  The presupposition that guides the project is that nothing is intrinsically mysterious or impervious in principle to being understood; there are no mysteries in reality.  Accordingly, all mystery is parasitic upon our ignorance which, in principle, can be overcome.

Mystery-2:  A proposition which, if true, cannot by us in this life be known to be true, and cannot even be known by us in this life to be logically-possibly true, i.e., free of logical contradiction, and is of the highest interest to us, but whose interest would in no way be diminished should we come to know it.

An example of mystery-2 is the doctrine of the Trinity as understood by Roman Catholics (but not just by them).  The Trinity is an exclusively revealed truth; hence it cannot be known by us by natural means.  What's more, it cannot even be known by us to be free of logical contradiction and thus logically possible.  Our finite intellects cannot see into its logical possibility let alone into its actual truth.  We cannot understand how it is possible.  But what is actual is possible whether or not we have the power to understand how it is possible. 

(Compare: motion is possible because actual, whether or not the Zenonian arguments to the contrary can be adequately answered.  Someone who is convinced by the Zenonian arguments, but who refuses to deny the reality of motion, is a mysterian about the reality of motion.  He is saying: Motion must appear to us as logically impossible; yet motion is actual and therefore possible  despite our inability to explain how it is possible. This mysterian could easily grant that the irrefutability ofthe Zenonian arguments is excellent evidence of the unreality of motion but still insist that motion is real.  He might say: the considerations of our paltry intellects must give way before the massive evidence of the senses: you can see that I am wagging my finger at you now. The evidence of the senses trumps all arguments no matter how compelling they seem. Similarly, the believer in the triune God could say that God's revelation trumps all merely human animadversions.)

So from the fact that the Trinity appears to us in our present state as contradictory, and thus as logically impossible, it does not follow that it is not true.  For it could be like this:  given our unalterable ('hard-wired') cognitive architecture, certain revealed truths must appear to us as contradictory when the propositions which must so appear are not only in themselves not contradictory, but are also actually true!

The philosophical mysterian is a person who holds that there are mysteries in the second sense.  Is Colin McGinn a mysterian in this sense? 

McGinn 'takes it on faith' as a teaching of the scientific magisterium that all mental activity is brain activity. He no more questions this than a believing Catholic questions the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real Presence, etc.   It just seems obvious to him and therefore a thesis that cannot be reasonably questioned.  Of course mental activity is brain activity!  What the hell else could it be?  You think and feel with your brain not with some 'spook in the skull' (my coinage) or "ghost in the machine." (Ryle) There is one world, this physical world, and we are physical parts of it. And so consciousness, self-consciousness, qualia, intentionality, conscience must all be reducible without remainder to physical processes and states.

But there are powerful arguments which I have rehearsed many times why qualia and object-directed mental states cannot be physical states.  Confronted with these arguments, McGinn goes mysterian.  He grants their force and then says something like this:

It is incomprehensible to us how consciousness could be a brain process.  But it is a brain process.  It is just that our unalterable cognitive architecture makes it impossible for us to see into this truth.  It is true and therefore possibly true even though we cannot understand how it is true or even how it could be true due to our cognitive limitations.

As I read McGinn, these limitations are in our human case unalterable.  And so I read McGinn as a mysterian in much the same sense that a theological mysterian is a mysterian.  What is common to the doctor angelicus and the decidedly less than angelic McGinn is a commitment to the thesis that there are true, non-contradictory propositions that we humans by our very nature are not equipped to understand as either true or non-contradictory.  Access denied!  We have no access to certain truths because of our cognitive make-up. 

This leaves open the possibility for McGinn that there be extraterrestrials who are equipped to grasp mind-brain identity.  And it leaves open for Aquinas the possibility that there be angelic intellects who are equipped to grasp and wholly understand Trinity,  God-Man identity (the Incarnation) and how Jesus Christ could ascend into  heaven soul and body!

But let's return to  the doctrine of the Trinity. We are assuming that it is apparently contradictory, and that attempts to relieve the apparent contradictoriness fail.  See The Logic of the Trinity Revisited in which I spell out the doctrine, show the (apparent) contradiction, and rebut a couple of quick responses to it. Now consider the following position:

 

The Trinity doctrine appears contradictory to us (ectypal) intellects, and must so appear in our present state due to cognitive limitations endemic in our sublunary, and presumably fallen, condition. (Sin has noetic consequences.) In reality, however, the doctrine is internally consistent and each of its component propositions is true.  It is just that we cannot understand, in our present state, how the doctrine could be true. So, in our present postlapsarian and pre-salvific state, the Trinity must remain a mystery.  The claim is not that the Trinity doctrine is a true contradiction; there are no true contradictions, pace Graham Priest and his tiny band of dialetheists.  The claim is that the Trinity doctrine is true and non-contradictory, but not such as to be understandable as true and non-contradictory by us in this life. On the contrary, it must appear to us as contradictory and false in this life.

 

Following Dale Tuggy, we may call the position I have just sketched positive mysterianism.  In critique of it, Tuggy says this:

 

Positive mysterianism must leap this hurdle: if this Dogma [Trinity] resolutely appears contradictory, doesn’t that give us a strong reason to think it false? How then, [can] this admission be part of a defense of the rationality of believing in this Dogma?

The admission is that the doctrine appears contradictory to us.  But this admission is not part of the defense of the rationality of believing the doctrine. Presumably, only a latter-day Tertullian would defend the rationality of belief in a doctrine on the ground of the doctrine's appearing absurd, i.e., logically contradictory, or actually being absurd.  No one will say, "It is rational for me to believe that p precisely because, after careful and protracted consideration, it appears to me that p is or entails a logical contradiction."

 

The positive mysterian (PM) is not defending the doctrine on the ground that it appears contradictory. The PM is defending the doctrine on the ground that what appears contradictory might not be contradictory. The PM, in other words, is appealing to the possibility that there are certain non-contradictory truths that must appear to us in our present state as contradictory.

 

Is that possibility one that can be dismissed at the outset?  Can one be objectively certain that there cannot be truths that are reasonable to affirm but must appear to us as contradictory?

 

The PM can grant to Tuggy that, in general, a doctrine's appearing to be contradictory is a strong reason for thinking it false while insisting that the appearance of contradictoriness does not entail the reality of contradictoriness.  A strong reason needn't be a rationally compelling reason. Can Tuggy & Co. be objectively certain that the Trinity doctrine is contradictory and necessarily false simply on the basis of its appearing to be such to us in our present state?  No, they can't be certain. So there is the possibility that the doctrine is really true despite being apparently contradictory.

 

'But then couldn't any old crazy doctrine be defended  in this way?" 

 

There are philosophers who take the eliminativist line that consciousness is an illusion. This is a crazy view that refutes itself straightaway: nothing is an illusion except to consciousness; hence, the crazy view presupposes the very thing it proposes to eliminate. Well, could one give a mysterian defense of the crazy view? I don't see how. We have direct Cartesian evidence that consciousness exists and cannot be an illusion.

 

Philosophy is long, but blog is short. So I need to wrap this up. The question is whether one can reasonably affirm mysterianism, or whether one who affirms mysterianism has succumbed to irrationality and has surrendered his intellectual integrity.  My tentative answer is that one may reasonably affirm positive mysterianism.  

Biden's (Lack Of) Cognitive Fitness: Dems Pull a 180.

An outstanding article by Glenn Greenwald.

But, as the Democratic establishment has united with creepy speed and obedience behind Biden in order to stop the Sanders candidacy, those who now raise these concerns instantly come under a withering assault of insults and attacks from Democratic Party operatives along with their crucial media allies: thinly disguised pro-Biden reporters who continue to insist on wearing the unconvincing and fraudulent costume of neutrality. They are invoking the classic Orwellian formulation from the novel 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fever, Flu, Sickness, Old Age, and Death

Chill out toilet paper hoarders. Pour yourself a sizable shot of tequila and chase it with a Corona. You gotta die some time, WuFlu or no WuFlu.  No day without political incorrectness.  And no day without cultural appropriation, including the transpecies variety:

Peggy Lee, Fever

The Band, Chest Fever

Johnny Rivers, Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu

Bobby Blue Bland, St. James Infirmary

Bobby Blue Bland, Goin' Down Slow. This ought to be Joe Biden's theme song.

Hank Williams, Lovesick Blues

Dr. Feelgood, Down at the Doctors

Dire Straits, Industrial Disease

Son House, Death Letter Blues

Blind Willie McTell, You Was Born to Die

Bob Dylan, In My Time of Dying

Bob Dylan, Fixin' to Die

Bob Dylan, See that My Grave is Kept Clean. "Did you ever hear that coughin'/coffin sound? Means another poor boy is under ground."

Bob Dylan with Eric Clapton, Not Dark Yet

Bob Dylan, Knockin' on Heaven's Door

"But it's exponential!"

Peggy Noonan advertises her ignorance in this opening sentence:

This coronavirus is new to our species—it is “novel.” It spreads more easily than the flu—“exponentially,” as we now say—and is estimated to be at least 10 times as lethal.

Why is it "novel"? It is a form of flu, and it is not unique in spreading exponentially.

Noonan seems to think that 'exponentially' is some newfangled buzzword.  Not so. It has a precise mathematical meaning, and the Wuhan Flu -- to use my preferred politically incorrect moniker -- is not unique in spreading geometrically (exponentially) as opposed to arithmetically.

If you have forgotten, or have never learned, the difference between arithmetic and geometric progressions, Dr. Math has a simple and clear explanation for you.

Panicked over the Wuhan Flu (Wu-Flu)?

For perspective, consider that in recent years 30,000 to 40,000 Americans each year have been killed in car crashes, and that thousands and thousands die each year of various strains of influenza the names of which are not bandied-about by the 24/7/366 media.  The Maverick advises: resist group-think and mass hysteria. While taking reasonable precautions, live your life and consider what really matters. This is not to say that the COVID-19 virus is not a serious threat. It is, and it is being dealt with by a serious president who gets called a 'racist' and a 'xenophobe' for his eminently sensible travel bans. People such as Joe Biden who hurl these epithets are moral scum and need to be denounced as such.

There are things about which people should be panicked [or at least seriously concerned].

For example, the contempt for America and capitalism taught to a generation of young Americans from elementary school through college is worthy of panic. The extreme levels of economy-collapsing debt we are irresponsibly piling onto the backs of future generations to maintain “entitlements” is worthy of panic.

So is the premature sexualization of children—encouraging them to choose their own gender and taking 5-year-olds to public libraries for “Drag Queen Story Hour.”

But such things hardly register with most Americans.

I feel awful for kids today. They are relentlessly told that global warming poses an “existential threat” to life on earth. They are relentlessly told that President Donald Trump poses an “existential threat to America”—the words used, for example, a few weeks ago by Frank Rich in New York magazine, and used by the “moderate” Michael Bloomberg repeatedly in his speeches.

And now they are told their families had better stock up on toilet paper because only God knows when they will be unable to leave their homes.

It was a Democratic president who told Americans, during World War II no less, that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” He is a liberal idol, in part for saying that.

That is more or less exactly what Trump has been saying. Yet he’s an “existential threat” to our country.

Now chill out and have a beer. May I recommend a

The dude had a couple of Buds, but he was none the wiser.

The Pretender

I have only recently come to appreciate what a great song this Jackson Browne number from 1976 is. After the 'sixties faded, I gave myself an education in classical and jazz and lost touch with the rock scene. The video presents the thoughtful lyrics.   The Gary U. S. Bonds cover from 1981 is also unbelievably good.

Some Comments End Up in the Spam Corral . . .

. . . so I have to remember to look there to see if any good comments have been sent there to languish unread. My apologies to Kevin Kim, et al. whose comments have now been published.  

Howler of the Day and a Warren Post-Mortem

"Warren gets particularly exorcised in the more recent book when talking about President Donald Trump." 

One could only hope for the exorcism of the hysterical intersectional demons in the fake Indian.

It is a good post-mortem, though, of a very capable woman whose lust for power drove her to suicide by political correctness. 

One gets the sense that Bernie Sanders doesn’t know any better. He’s not thoughtful enough to understand how much he overstates government’s ability, disciplined enough to lay out the costs of his grand proposals, or self-reflective enough to catch the irony of his own capitalistic practices. But based on her first book, it is patently clear that ElizabethWarren does understand. And that’s probably more troubling. Ignorance with self-righteousness is one thing. Knowing better and then arguing otherwise is a different sort of evil.

So what happened to Warren? My best guess—and, I think, the most gracious interpretation of her hypocritical flips—is that “the fight” became everything. And so principles, wisdom, and insight became the casualties. The ends slowly began to justify the means. Maybe losing the “bankruptcy war” to Hillary and the lobbyists embittered her. Or maybe “subsidizing the wrong people”—through the Troubled Asset Relief Program and banks that were “too big to fail”—sent her over the edge. In any case, the cause made it acceptable to strive for power.

The Opium of the Redistributionists

A re-post from April 2016 that targets the hypocrisy of Sanders the Socialist.

.....................................

If religion is the opium of the masses, then OPM is the opium of the redistributionist.

Bernie Sanders, the superannuated socialist, "and his wife, Jane, paid an effective tax rate of 13.5 percent, or $27,653 in federal taxes on an adjusted gross income of $205,271." This is for 2014.  That is less than Mitt Romney paid, percentage-wise, in 2011.  But Romney paid more dollars and thus did more good than Bernie, if you assume that Federal taxes do good for 'the people' and not just for state apparatchiki. 

For Sanders, a legitimate function of government is wealth redistribution so that the government can do good with other people's money (OPM).  So why did Bernie take so many (legal) deductions?  Why didn't he pay his 'fair share,' say, 28% of his AGI? Why didn't he fork over 50%?  Surely an old man and his wife can live on 100K a year!  Why doesn't Bernie practice what he preaches?

Because he smokes the opium of OPM: it is the other guy's money that is to be confiscated, not his.  By any reasonable standard, Sanders is a 'fat cat.'  But he doesn't see himself as one.  And no doubt he thinks he earned his high senatorial salary when he produced nothing, but merely spouted a lot of socialist nonsense while acting the pied piper to foolish and impressionable youth.

Four Senses of 'Absurd'

Clarity will be served if we distinguish at least the following senses of 'absurd.'  The word is from the Latin surdus, meaning deaf, silent, or stupid.  But etymology can take one only so far and is no substitute for close analysis. And beware the Dictionary Fallacy.

1) Logico-mathematical. The absurd is the logically contradictory or self-contradictory or that which entails a logical contradiction.  Absurdity in this sense attaches to propositions or sets of propositions.  A reductio ad absurdum proof, for example, is a reduction to a contradiction. It is a way of indirectly proving a proposition. One assumes its negation and then derives a logical contradiction thereby proving the proposition.

2) Semantic. The absurd as the linguistically meaningless. Meaningful words can be strung together in meaningless ways, or meaningless words can be strung together. Example of the first: "Quadruplicity drinks procrastination." (Russell)  Example of the second: "The slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe." (Lewis Carroll). There is nothing syntactically or logically wrong with these sentences.

3) Existential.  The absurd as the existentially meaningless, the groundless, the brute-factual, the intrinsically unintelligible.  The absurdity of existence in this sense of 'absurd' is what elicited Sartre's and Roquentin's  nausea.  The sheer, meaningless, disgusting, facticity of the chestnut tree referenced in the eponymous novel, for example, described by Sartre as de trop and as an unintelligible excrescence.

4) Ordinary. The absurd as the manifestly false. To be precise, 'absurd' as it is mostly used in standard English by non-philosophers refers to that which is both factually false and manifestly false. "Pelosi's assertion that there is no border crisis is absurd!" In other words, Pelosi's assertion is factually false, and plainly so.  What is manifestly false as a matter of fact needn't be logically or semantically objectionable.

Item for further rumination: In Christianity construed along Kierkegardian lines, the apparent absurdity of human existence is redeemed by the Higher Absurdity of the God-Man on the cross. 

Cultural note: the hipster depicted below is a parody of the beatniks of the late 'fifties and early 'sixties. It is what Joe Average imagined an 'existentialist' must look like: a goateed cat with a beret, dressed in black, smoking a cigarette, preferably a Gitane or an unfiltered Gaulois.

Autobiographical addendum: Things didn't work out with an early girlfriend. She complained that I was an 'existentialist' who was "down all the time." I did read a lot of Camus and Sartre in those days, but my favorite existentialists were the Dane, Kierkegaard, and the Russian, Nicholas Berdyaev. Lev Shestov came later. Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger are only loosely classifiable as existentialists.

Popular 'Phlegm Theories' of Consciousness

Michael Graziano demolishes several of them and then proposes his own which consists of hand-waving and promissory notes and is no better than the ones he dismisses.  See if you don't agree.

Up with Free Speech! Down with the History-Erasing and Deplatforming Left

Reader Considers Converting to Islam. Would Christian Unitarianism Satisfy his Scruples?

Here is the beginning of the letter he sent me:

I've been considering converting to Islam.

You've had a big part in this, though I know it won't please you to hear it. Your arguments against the coherency of the Incarnation are hard to get past.

My arguments against the Chalcedonian, 'two-natures-one-person' theology of the Incarnation may or may not have merit. In any case, this is not the place to rehearse or defend them. What I want to say to my young reader is that it would be a mistake to reject Christianity because of the problems of the Trinitarian-Incarnational version thereof.   Someone who rejects Trinity and Incarnation as classically conceived might remain a Christian by becoming a Unitarian. My friend Dale Tuggy represents a version of Unitarianism. You will have no trouble finding his writings on the Web.

There are any number of better choices than Islam if one wants a religion and cannot accept orthodox -- miniscule 'o' -- Christianity. There is, in addition to Unitarian Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, all vastly superior to "the saddest and poorest form of theism" (Schopenhauer) . . . . 

I will conclude this entry by posting some quotations from William Ellery Channing, the 19th century American Unitarian. These are from Unitarian Christianity (1819). (HT: Dave Bagwill) Bolding added.

In the first place, we believe in the doctrine of God's UNITY, or that there is one God, and one only. To this truth we give infinite importance, and we feel ourselves bound to take heed, lest any man spoil us of it by vain philosophy. The proposition, that there is one God, seems to us exceedingly plain. We understand by it, that there is one being, one mind, one person, one intelligent agent, and one only, to whom underived and infinite perfection and dominion belong. We conceive, that these words could have conveyed no other meaning to the simple and uncultivated people who were set apart to be the depositaries of this great truth, and who were utterly incapable of understanding those hair- breadth distinctions between being and person [substance and supposit?], which the sagacity of later ages has discovered. We find no intimation, that this language was to be taken in an unusual sense, or that God's unity was a quite different thing from the oneness of other intelligent beings.

We note here a similarity to Islam: "There is no god but God."  

We also note that unity is defined in terms of 'one' taken in an ordinary numerical way.  Reading the above and the sequel I am struck at how similar this is to the way Tuggy thinks. God is a being among beings, and his unity is no different than the unity of Socrates. There are of course many men, and Socrates is but one of them. But if Socrates were the only man, then he would be the one man in the way God is the one god. Unity in classical Christianity has a deeper meaning: God is not just numerically one; he is also one in a way nothing else is one. God is not the sole instance of deity; God is his deity; God does not have (instantiate) his attributes; he is his attributes.  God is not only unique, like  everything else; he is uniquely unique unlike anything else.  God is not just the sole instance of his kind; he is unique in the further sense that there is no real distinction in God between instance and kind.

We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that, whilst acknowledging in words, it subverts in effect, the unity of God. According to this doctrine, there are three infinite and equal persons, possessing supreme divinity, called the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Each of these persons, as described by theologians, has his own particular consciousness, will, and perceptions. They love each other, converse with each other, and delight in each other's society. They perform different parts in man's redemption, each having his appropriate office, and neither doing the work of the other. The Son is mediator and not the Father. The Father sends the Son, and is not himself sent; nor is he conscious, like the Son, of taking flesh. Here, then, we have three intelligent agents, possessed of different consciousness[es], different wills, and different perceptions, performing different acts, and sustaining different relations; and if these things do not imply and constitute three minds or beings, we are utterly at a loss to know how three minds or beings are to be formed. It is difference of properties, and acts, and consciousness, which leads us to the belief of different intelligent beings, and, if this mark fails us, our whole knowledge fall; we have no proof, that all the agents and persons in the universe are not one and the same mind. When we attempt to conceive of three Gods, we can do nothing more than represent to ourselves three agents, distinguished from each other by similar marks and peculiarities to those which separate the persons of the Trinity; and when common Christians hear these persons spoken of as conversing with each other, loving each other, and performing different acts, how can they help regarding them as different beings, different minds?

For Channing, Trinitarianism is indistinguishable from tri-theism. His too suggests a comparison with Islam. From the point of view of a radical monotheist, Trinitarianism smacks of polytheism. 

Having thus given our views of the unity of God, I proceed in the second place to observe, that we believe in the unity of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus is one mind, one soul, one being, as truly one as we are, and equally distinct from the one God. We complain of the doctrine of the Trinity, that, not satisfied with making God three beings, it makes; Jesus Christ two beings, and thus introduces infinite confusion into our conceptions of his character. This corruption of Christianity, alike repugnant to common sense and to the general strain of Scripture, is a remarkable proof of the power of a false philosophy in disfiguring the simple truth of Jesus.

According to this doctrine, Jesus Christ, instead of being one mind, one conscious intelligent principle, whom we can understand, consists of two souls, two minds; the one divine, the other human; the one weak, the other almighty; the one ignorant, the other omniscient. Now we maintain, that this is to make Christ two beings. To denominate him one person, one being, and yet to suppose him made up of two minds, infinitely different from each other, is to abuse and confound language, and to throw darkness over all our conceptions of intelligent natures. According to the common doctrine, each of these two minds in Christ has its own consciousness, its own will, its own perceptions. They have, in fact, no common properties. The divine mind feels none of the wants and sorrows of the human, and the human is infinitely removed from the perfection and happiness of the divine. Can you conceive of two beings in the universe more distinct? We have always thought that one person was constituted and distinguished by one consciousness. The doctrine, that one and the same person should have two consciousness, two wills, two souls, infinitely different from each other, this we think an enormous tax on human credulity.

There are closely related difficult questions about how one person or supposit can have two distinct individualized natures, one human and one divine.

And so I say to my young friend, "Don't do anything rash!" First consider whether there is a less deadly form of religion you can adopt that will satisfy your intellectual scruples.

The Stock Market is Tanking. Do Nothing.

Good advice. I learned the lesson back in '87. New to the game, I freaked out on Black Monday. Of course you remember the 508 point drop in the Dow. I got out, locking in losses, but then took too long getting back in. Now I am older, wiser, and if truth be told, a tad wider. 

Here is an old post of mine from 2008 that stands up well: Some Principles of a Financial Conservative. Agree or disagree, but if you disagree you won't budge me from views only reinforced by my experiences since aught-eight.  The main, thing, however, is to think hard, critically, and for yourself.

And another thing.

Don't say that money is the root of all evil. That's just silly. Say something that is true:

The inordinate love of money is the root of some evils.

Point proven in Radix Omnium Malorum. 

Benjamin Jowett on Grace

A stunning formulation for your delectation from the translator of Plato and the don of Balliol College:

Grace is an energy; not a mere sentiment; not a mere thought of the Almighty; not even a word of the Almighty. It is as real an energy as the energy of electricity. It is a divine energy; it is the energy of the divine affection rolling in plenteousness toward the shores of human need.

An observation magisterial on all counts, combining as it does truth, economy of expression, and literary beauty: "the energy of the divine affection rolling in plenteousness toward the shores of human need."  Could it do with a bit of paring? How about this:

. . . the energy of God's plenary affection rolling shoreward toward human need.

Companion posts:

Grace

Post-Session Fruits of a Formal Session

Memo to Trump Haters

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them.

St. John Cassian on Anger

The Philokalia, vol. I (Faber and Faber, 1979, p. 83):

If, therefore, you desire to attain perfection and rightly to pursue the spiritual way, you should make yourself a stranger to all sinful anger and wrath. Listen to what St. Paul enjoins: 'Rid yourselves of all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking and all malice' (Eph. 4:31) In saying 'all' he leaves no excuse for regarding any anger as necessary or reasonable. 

[. . .]

Our incensive power can be used in a way that is according to nature only when turned against our own impassioned or self-indulgent thoughts.

We are at first told that no anger is "necessary or reasonable" and then told in effect that some anger is, namely anger at our own impassioned or self-indulgent thoughts.  

In a charitable spirit, we may take the second bit of text as correcting, rather than contradicting, the first.

There is righteous anger the object of which is oneself. I take it a step further: there is righteous anger the objects of which are others. 

But is contempt for others ever justified? I go back and forth on this question.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Robbie Robertson and the Band

True 'sixties veterans will enjoy the Band documentary Once Were Brothers.  And if you don't, then you are not a true 'sixties veteran.  (This is known in the trade as the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy.  I prefer to call it the No True Muslim Fallacy.)

New Yorker article about the movie.

The Weight. Robertson sat down one day to write a song and peering into his Martin guitar read, "Martin Guitars, Nazareth, Pennslylvania." This inspired the line, "I pulled into Nazareth, feelin' about half-past dead."

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Nothing hippy-trippy or psychedelic about these '60s musicians. Pure Americana. Rooted, autochthonic.

I Shall Be Released. The synergy benefited both the Bard and the Band. They helped him move farther from the mind and closer to the earth.

Up on Cripple Creek

Chest Fever

Don't Do It

When I Paint My Masterpiece

The Shape I'm In

Forever Young

Lost Distance Operator

Orange Juice Blues

Bonus Cut: Rick Danko and Paul Butterfield, Java Blues

Our Pyrrhonian Predicament

It is widely admitted that there is something deeply unsatisfactory about the human condition.  One aspect of our wretched state is recognized and addressed by the Pyrrhonists: we want certain knowledge but it eludes us. And so we must content ourselves with belief. But beliefs are in conflict and this conflict causes suffering which ranges from mental turmoil to physical violence.  

Ours is a two-fold misery. We lack what we want and need, knowledge. We must make do with a substitute that engenders bitter controversy, belief.

Skeptic solution? Live belieflessly, adoxastos! But that is no solution at all, or so say I.

For details, see the following meatier entries:

Is Pyrrhonism a Doctrine? Can One Live without Beliefs?

The Pious Pyrrhonian: Is Beliefless Piety Possible?

Does Divine Immutability Entail Modal Collapse?

That divine simplicity entails modal collapse is a controversial thesis, but one for which there are strong arguments. Does the same hold for divine immutability? I don't think so. That immutability should entail modal collapse strikes me as based on a simple confusion of the temporal with the modal.

Modal Collapse

In the state of modal collapse, there are no contingent propositions, where a contingent proposition is one that is possibly false if true, and possibly true if false, and where there are no contingent beings, where a contingent being  is one that is possibly nonexistent if existent and possibly existent if nonexistent.  So in the dreaded state of modal collapse, every proposition is either necessarily true or necessarily false, and every being is either necessary or impossible.  

Although one philosopher's datum is often another's (false) theory, I take it to be a datum, a Moorean fact, that, for example, I exist contingently and that many of the propositions about me are contingently either true or false. For example, it is contingently true that I am now blogging, and contingently false that I am now riding my bike, where 'now' picks out the same time. 

I take it, then, that we should want to uphold the modal distinctions and that it is an argument against a theory if it should fail to do so.

Divine Immutability 

In a strong form, the immutability doctrine states that God does not undergo any sort of intrinsic change.  We distinguish intrinsic from relational changes. If Hillary becomes furious at Bill's infidelity, that is an intrinsic change in her.  But there needn't be any corresponding intrinsic change in Bill.  He will change, but relationally by becoming the object of Hillary's wrath.  (And perhaps only relationally if Bill is unaware of Hillary's discovery of his infidelity and the onset of her wrath.) If, however, her rage should vent itself in her conking him on the head with a rolling pin, then intrinsic changes will occur in both parties to this famous marriage.

Similarly, if I start and stop thinking about God, I undergo an intrinsic change, but this intrinsic change in me is a merely relational ('merely Cambridge') change in God, and is insofar forth compatible with God's strong immutability.

Strong immutability, then, is the claim that God is not subject to intrinsic change.

Confusing the Temporal with the Modal

If God is strongly immutable, then any intrinsic property that he has at a given time he has at every time.  But if a thing has a property at every time at which it exists, it does not follow that it has that property necessarily. I'm a native Californian. I always was and I always will be. But that is a contingent fact about me: I might have been born in some other state. So the property of being born in California is one I have contingently despite my having it at every moment of my existence.  The same goes for intrinsic properties. Suppose the universe always existed and always will exist.  That is consistent with the universe's being contingent.  What is always the case needn't necessarily be the case.

Now suppose God always wills the existence of our universe. It does not follow that God necessarily wills the existence of our universe. Nor does it follow that what he wills-- our universe -- necessarily exists. This consideration puts paid to the threat of modal collapse.   Tim Pawl in his IEP article puts it like this:

Divine immutability rules out that God go from being one way to being another way. But it does not rule out God knowing, desiring, or acting differently than he does. It is possible that God not create anything. If God hadn’t created anything, he wouldn’t talk to Abraham at a certain time (since no Abraham would exist). But such a scenario doesn’t require that God change, since it doesn’t require that there be a time when God is one way, and a later time when he is different. Rather, it just requires the counterfactual difference that if God had not created, he would not talk to Abraham. Such a truth is neutral to whether or not God changes. In short, difference across possible worlds does not entail difference across times. Since all that strong immutability rules out is difference across times, divine immutability is not inconsistent with counterfactual difference, and hence does not entail a modal collapse. Things could have been otherwise than they are, and, had they been different, God would immutably know things other than he does, all without change . . . .

Three Theses

First, the divine simplicity doctrine entails modal collapse.  This was argued earlier.

Second, divine simplicity is not to be confused with divine immutability. The first entails the second, but the second does not entail the first.

Third,  divine immutability does not entail modal collapse.

The Case of Bo Winegard

I've Been Fired. A cautionary tale for young academics. Winegard's Twitter presence appears to have been part of his undoing. 

Related: Why Would You Want an Academic Job?

Stand Up for Innumeracy and Vote Democratic!

If Michael Bloomberg had given the 500 million dollars he threw away on a quixotic bid for the Dem nod to the American people, then each of us 327 million would have received one million, and 173 million would be left over to be given as reparations to the 'victims' of "Stop and Frisk." Right?

Math is hard for liberals.  That must be because math is 'racist.'

Which is Worse? Crime or 'Racism'?

'Racism' obviously. Take a stand against 'racism' and vote Democratic!  

This short video demonstrates that crime is no big deal.

It Is What It Is

Maybe not. It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.  (If you are old enough to get the joke, you are old.)

Seriously, though, the above-captioned saying is seeing quite a lot of use lately, or it was ten years ago.   It is a sort of present-tensed Que sera, sera.  Things are the way they are.  Don't kick against the pricks.  Acceptance and resignation are the appropriate attitudes.

From a philosophy-of-language point of view, what is interesting is the use of a tautological form of words to express a non-tautological proposition.  What the words mean is not what the speaker means in uttering the words.  Sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart.  The speaker does not literally mean that things are what they are -- for what the hell else could they be?  Not what they are?  What the speaker means is that (certain) things can't be changed and so must be accepted with resignation.  Your dead-end job for example.  'It is what it is.'

There are many examples of the use of tautological sentences to express non-tautological propositions.  'What will be, will be' is an example, as is 'Beer is beer.'  When Ayn Rand proclaimed that Existence exists! she did not mean to assert the tautological proposition that each existing thing exists; she was ineptly employing a tautological sentence to express a non-tautological and not uncontroversial thesis of metaphysical realism according to which what exists exists independently of any mind, finite or infinite.

'What will be will be' is tautologically true and thus necessarily true.  What the sentence is typically used to express, however, is the non-tautological, and arguably false, fatalistic proposition that what will be, will necessarily be, that it cannot be otherwise.  So not only do sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart in this case; a modal fallacy is lurking in the background as well, the ancient fallacy of confusing the necessitas consequentiae with the necessitas consequentis.

Related: 

Necessitas Consequentiae versus Necessitas Consequentis

More on Tautologies that Ain't: 'He's his Father's Son'

Joe Biden

The man is stupid, senile, and utterly bereft of principles, except for the 'principle' of self-promotion. (Good Catholic that he is, he reversed himself on the Hyde Amendment!)  Kevin Williamson adds 'scoundrel' to the list of descriptors:

One of the worst features of our political life is the ugly and dishonest fights we have over Supreme Court nominations — a habit that can be laid squarely at the feet of Joe Biden, who along with Ted Kennedy, that pillar of human decency, organized one of the worst smear campaigns in modern American political history against Robert Bork, whose great crime against humanity was taking the “extremist” position that the Constitution actually says what it says rather than what anybody with power wishes it would say at any given moment, and that the way to amend the Constitution is to amend the Constitution rather than having nine wizards in black robes pull previously undiscovered constitutional mandates out of the penumbras upon which they sit all day. Don’t like the way Merrick Garland was treated? Mitch McConnell didn’t start that game — he is just better at it than his contemporary Democratic colleagues are. For lying partisan viciousness in the modern mode, Joe Biden is your man.

He is a liar, a corruptor of institutions, and a grifter of the first order.

But he’s not a socialist. I’ll give him that.

And surely no Catholic better deserved the Laetare Medal than Biden!  All praise to the Notre Dame admins!

 

Related:  Joe Biden: Creep, Clown, Opportunist, and Ignoramus

 

And you're still a Democrat?

'A Fetus That Was Born'

More linguistic chicanery from the Left. Obviously, a fetus that was born is no longer a fetus.  To refer to a fetus that was born as a fetus aids and abets the next murderous move: the sanctioning of infanticide as just another form of abortion, post-natal abortion. The 'reasoning' might go like this: The killing of human fetuses is morally acceptable;  a human neonate is a human fetus; ergo, the killing of human neonates is morally acceptable.

But I must also lodge a protest against certain conservative extremists who think 'fetus' a dirty word. They think that the use of this perfectly good word somehow denigrates pre-natal humans or strips them of their right to life.  It does no such thing.

Language matters!  It is the foolish conservative who allows the leftist to hijack the terms of the debate.

Very Good Books on the Folly of Socialism

Educate yourself.

World + God = God? The Aporetics of the God-World 'Relation' (2020 Version)

This from a reader:

I just started reading Philosophy for Understanding Theology by Diogenes Allen. The first chapter is devoted to the doctrine of creation.  These two sentences jumped out at me: "The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone." Do you agree? How would you unpack them?

These are hard sayings indeed.  Herewith, some rough notes on the aporetics of the situation.

I once cataloged twelve different meanings of 'world.' By 'world' here is meant the totality of creatures, the totality of beings brought into existence by God from nothing.  (Don't confuse this sense of 'world' with the sense of 'world' as the term is used in the 'possible worlds' semantics of modal discourse.) Now if  God is a being among beings, it would make no sense at all to say that "The world plus God is not more than God alone."  For if we could add the uncreated being (God) to the created beings, then we would have more beings.  We would have a totality T that is larger than T minus God.  If God is a being among beings, then there is a totality of beings that all exist in the same way and in the same sense, and this totality includes both God and creatures such that subtracting God or subtracting creatures would affect the 'cardinality' of this totality. (Not wanting to fall afoul of Georg Cantor, I assume that the number of (concrete) creatures is finite.)

But if God is not a being among beings, but Being itself in its absolute fullness, as per the metaphysics of Exodus 3:14 (Ego sum qui sum, "I am who am") then there is no totality of beings all existing  in the same way having both God and creatures as members.  When we speak of God and creatures,

. . . we are dealing with two orders of being not to be added together or subtracted; they are, in all rigour, incommensurable, and that is also why they are compossible.  God added nothing to Himself by the creation of the world, nor would anything be taken away from Him by its annihilation -- events which would be of capital importance for the created things concerned, but null for Being Who would be in no wise concerned qua being. (Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, Scribners, 1936, p. 96.  Gilson's Gifford lectures, 1931-1932.)

Here, I am afraid, I will end up supplying some 'ammo' to my Protestant friends Dale Tuggy, Alan Rhoda, and James Anderson. For the Gilson passage teeters on the brink of incoherence.  We are told that there are two orders of being but that they are incommensurable. This can't be right, at least not without qualification.   If there are two orders of being, then they are commensurable in respect of being.  There has to be some sense in which God and Socrates both are.  Otherwise, God and creatures are totally disconnected, with the consequence that creatures fall away into nothingness.  For if God is Being itself, and there is no common measure, no commensurability whatsoever, between God and creatures, then creatures are nothing.  God is all in all. God alone is. 

Gilson is well aware of the dialectical pressure in this monistic direction: "As soon as we identify God with Being it becomes clear that there is a sense in which God alone is." (65)  If we emphasize the plenitude and transcendence of God, then this sensible world of matter and change is "banished at one stroke into the penumbra of mere appearance, relegated to the inferior status of a quasi-unreality." (64)  That's exactly right. (I will add in passing that this metaphysical conclusion underwrites the contemptus mundi of the old-time monk and his world flight.) But of course Christian metaphysics is not a strict monism; so a way must be found to assign the proper degree of reality to the plural world.

Here is the problem in a nutshell.  God cannot be a being among beings.  "But if God is Being, how can there be anything other than Himself?" (84)  We need to find a way to avoid both radical ontological pluralism and radical ontological monism.

It's a variation on the old problem of the One and the Many.  (It is important in these discussions to observe the distinction between Being and beings, between esse and ens, between das Sein und das Seiende.  Hence my use of the majuscule when I refer to the former and the miniscule when I refer to the latter.)

A. If Being itself alone is, then beings are not.  But then  the One lacks the many.  Not good: the manifold is evident to the senses and to the intellect.  The plural world cannot be gainsaid.  In theological terms: If God alone is, then creatures are not, even in those possible worlds in which God creates. But then what is the difference between possible worlds in which God creates and those in which he does not?

B. If beings alone are, then Being is not.  But then the many lacks the One.  Not good: the many is the many of the One.  A sheer manifold with no real unity would not a cosmos make.  The world is one, really one. It is One in itself, not merely by our conceptualization.

C. If Being and beings both are in the same way and and the same sense, then either Being is itself just another being among beings and we are back with radical pluralism, or Being alone is and we are back with radical monism.

Gilson's Thomist solution invokes the notions of participation and analogy.  God is Being itself in its purity and plenitude and infinity.  Creatures exist by participation in the divine Being: they are limited participators in unlimited Being. So both God and creatures exist, but in different ways.  God exists simply and 'unparticipatedly.'  Creatures exist by participation.  These are radically different modes of existence. God and creatures do not form a totality in which each member exists in the same way.  We can thus avoid each of (A), (B), and (C).

But the notion of participation is a difficult one as Gilson realizes.  It appears "repugnant to logical thought" (96):  ". . . every participation supposes that the participator  both is, and is not, that in which it participates." (96)  How so?

I exist, but contingently.  That is: I exist, but at every moment of my existence it is possible that I not exist. There is no necessity that I exist at any moment of my existence. I am not the source or ground of my own existence.  No existential boot-strapping! Assuming that I cannot exist as a matter of brute fact, my Being (existence) is not my own, but received from another, from God, who is Being itself.  So my Being, as wholly received from another, is God's Being.  But I am not God or anything else.  I have my own Being that distinguishes me numerically from everything else.  So I am and I am not that in which I participate.

To formulate the contradiction in a somewhat clearer form: My existence is MY existence, and as such 'incommunicable' to any other existing item AND my existence is NOT MY existence in that it is wholly derivative from Gods existence.

In terms of the One and the Many: Each member of the Many is itself and no other thing; its unity is its own and 'incommunicable' to any other thing, AND each member of the Many derives its ownmost unity and ipseity from the One without which it would be nothing at all, lacking as it would unity.

In terms of creation:  Socrates is not a character in a divine fiction; he does not exist as a merely intentional object of the divine mind; his mode of Being is esse reale, not esse intentionale, AND Socrates receives from his creator absolutely everything: his existence, essence, and properties as well as his free and inviolable ipseity and haecceity that make him an other mind, a Thou to the divine I, and a possible rebel against divine authority. So Socrates both is and is not a merely intentional object of the divine mind.

Gilson does not show a convincing way around these sorts of contradiction.

The One of the many is not one of the many: as the source of the many, the One cannot be just one more member of the many.  Nor can the One of the many be the same as the many: it cannot divide without remainder into the many.  The One is transcendent of the many.  But while transcendent, it cannot be wholly other than the many. For, as Plotinus says, "It is by the One that all beings are beings."  The One, as the principle by which each member of the many exists, cannot be something indifferent to the many or external to the many, or other than the many, or merely related to the many. The One is immanent to the many.  The One is immanent to the many without being the same as the many.  The One is neither the same as the many nor other than the many.  The One is both transcendent of the many and immanent in the many. Theologically, God is said to be both transcendent and omnipresent.  He is both transcendent and immanent.

What should we conclude from these affronts to the discursive intellect?  That there is just nothing to talk about here, or that there is but it is beyond the grasp of our paltry intellects?  If what I have written above is logical nonsense, yet it seems to be important, well-motivated, rigorously articulated nonsense.

Bloomberg Blames the Victim!

Here:

As the financial crisis first began to strangle American homeowners, Michael Bloomberg, then the mayor of New York, identified a scapegoat. Bloomberg didn’t blame the banks for handing out subprime mortgages; he blamed the consumers who’d applied for them.

On an August 2007 broadcast of “The John Gambling Show” on WABC, Bloomberg first aired a pronouncement that he would later repeat during the recession and after it. “What happened here is a bunch of people who didn’t really have the wherewithal to get mortgages, got mortgages,” Bloomberg told Gambling. “Now, if they didn’t have access to those mortgages, the elected officials would scream, you’re discriminating against them. Some of them lied about their incomes, some by a lot. Now they say, ‘Oh, well, the salesman convinced them to do it.’ But we live in a world where when you put your signature down, you’re supposed to know what you’re signing, and you have to take responsibility. Because every time there’s a victim, we’ve got to find somebody that’s responsible for it.”

Is it not obvious that some of the blame here must be borne by the consumers? It is obvious to me.

I go into some detail on this question of blaming the victim in the appropriately appellated On Blaming the Victim.

I do not support Bloomberg's candidacy. He is a fraud and a phony driven by personal ambition. That he reversed himself on "Stop and Frisk," a successful and justified law enforcement tactic that protected blacks as well as whites, not to mention other 'persons of color,'  shows that he is not rooted in principle. Did he come to see the 'racism' of the tactic? Of course not. He believes now what he believed when mayor, namely, that the tactic is a good one.  The reversal is fake, a sop thrown to the Left in an ill-starred attempt to curry favor with them. The old man has not only thrown away a half billion dollars of his own money (at the time of this writing); he has also thrown away his dignity.  All for nothing.

Summa Theologica, Q. 19, Art. 3: Whether Whatever God Wills He Wills Necessarily

This is the question we have been discussing. Let us now see if the answer Thomas gives is satisfactory.  The question is not whether, necessarily, whatever God wills, he wills.  The answer to that is obvious and in the affirmative. The question is whether whatever God wills, he wills necessarily. If so, then God's willing creatures into existence is a necessary willing despite the creatures being contingent. If not, then God's willing contingent creatures into existence is itself contingent.  

Objection 4. Further, being that is not necessary, and being that is possible not to be, are one and the same thing. If, therefore, God does not necessarily will a thing that He wills, it is possible for Him not to will it, and therefore possible for Him to will what He does not will. And so the divine will is contingent upon one or the other of two things, and imperfect, since everything contingent is imperfect and mutable.

This 'objection' strikes me more as an argument for the thesis that whatever God wills he wills necessarily than as an objection to it. The gist of the argument is as follows. If it is not the case that whatever God wills he necessarily wills, then the divine will is in some cases contingent. But the divine perfection rules this out. Ergo, etc.

Reply to Objection 4. Sometimes a necessary cause has a non-necessary relation to an effect; owing to a deficiency in the effect, and not in the cause. Even so, the sun's power has a non-necessary relation to some contingent events on this earth, owing to a defect not in the solar power, but in the effect that proceeds not necessarily from the cause. In the same way, that God does not necessarily will some of the things that He wills, does not result from defect in the divine will, but from a defect belonging to the nature of the thing willed, namely, that the perfect goodness of God can be without it; and such defect accompanies all created good.

This reply takes us to the heart of the matter.  The solar analogy is arguably lame, so let's just ignore it. 

The way I have been thinking is along the following lines. No contingent effect can have a necessary cause. The effect that presently interests us is the contingent existence of (concrete) creatures.  The cause is not God, but God's willing these creatures into existence ex nihilo.  So I'm thinking that the divine willing whereby the concrete universe of creatures was brought into existence out of nothing had to be a contingent willing - - with disastrous consequences for the divine simplicity.  

For if God is a necessary being, and, as simple, identical to his willing creatures into existence, then his willing is necessary. But then one might be forgiven for thinking that creatures are also necessary.  Bear in mind that the divine will is omnipotent and necessarily efficacious. Or else we run the argument in reverse from the contingency of creatures to the contingency of divine willing. Either way there is trouble for classical theism. 

The Thomist way out is to ascribe the contingency of creatures, not to the contingency of the divine will whereby they are brought into existence,  but to their own ontological deficiency and imperfection.  God, willing his own good, wills creatures as manifestations of his own good. As neither self-subsistent nor purely actual, creatures are mutable and imperfect. Moreover, God has no need of them to be all that he is.  The reality of the ens reallissimum and the perfection of the ens perfectissimum are in no way enhanced by the addition of creatures: God + creatures = God. (More on this 'equation' in a later post.)

Are creatures then nothing at all? Has the simple God like Parmenides' Being swallowed the whole of reality? (More on this later.) 

I would like to accept the Thomist solution, but I am afraid I cannot. If God exists in every possible world, and God is identical to his willing creatures in every possible world, then creatures exist in every possible world -- which  contradicts our assumption that creatures are contingent, i.e., existent in some but not all possible worlds.  To say that the contingency of creatures resides in their ontological imperfection seems to involve a fudging of two distinct senses of contingency:

X is modally contingent (to give it a name) iff x is possible to be and possible not to be. (This is equivalent to: existent in some but not all possible worlds.)

X is ontologically contingent (to give it a name) iff x is radically imperfect in its mode of being and not ontologically necessary (not self-subsistent, simple, purely actual, eternal etc.)

Now if creatures exist at all -- which may be doubted if God + creatures = God -- then they must be contingent in both senses, But then our problem is up and running and the Thomist solution avails nothing. Contingency of creatures in the second sense cannot be read back into God, but modal contingency of creatures can be.

Welcome to the aporetics of the Absolute.