Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

Holes and Their Mode of Being

Written 1 August 2012; edited and reviewed 19 March 2021. 

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Consider a particular hole H in a piece of Swiss cheese.  H is not nothing.  It has properties.  It has, for example, a shape: it is circular.  The circular hole has a definite radius, diameter, and circumference.  It has a definite area equal to pi times the radius squared: A=πr²  If the piece of cheese is 1/16th of an inch thick, then the hole is a disk having a definite volume.  H has a definite location relative to the edges of the piece of cheese and relative to the other holes.  H has causal properties: it affects the texture and flexibility of the cheese and its resistance to the tooth.  H is perceivable by the senses: you can see it and touch it. You touch a hole by putting a finger or other appendage into it and experiencing no resistance.

Now if anything has properties, then it exists.  H has properties; so H exists. 

The foregoing was set-up for the question. H exists and the piece of cheese exists.  Do they exist in the same way?  Not by my lights.  The hole depends for its existence on the piece of cheese; the latter does not depend for its existence on the former.  H is a particular, well-defined, indeed wholly determinate absence of cheese.  It is a particular, existing absence.  As an absence of cheese it depends for its existence on the cheese in which it is one of the holes.

So I say the hole exists in a different way than the piece of cheese.  It has a dependent mode of existence whereas the piece of cheese has a relatively independent mode of existence.

On the basis of this and other examples I maintain that there are modes of being or existence. (I am using 'being' and 'existence' interchangeably.)  To be precise, I maintain that it is intelligible that there be modes of being.  This puts me at odds with those, like Peter van Inwagen, who consider the idea unintelligible and rooted in an elementary mistake:

. . . the thick conception of being is founded on the mistake of transferring what properly belongs to the nature of a chair -- or of a human being or of a universal or of God -- to the being of the chair. (Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge 2001, p. 4)

Did I make a mistake above, the mistake van Inwagen imputes to thick theorists?  Did I mistakenly transfer what properly belongs to the nature of the hole -- its dependence on the piece of cheese -- to the being (existence) of the hole?

I plead innocent.  Perhaps it is true that it is the nature of holes in general that they depend for their existence on the things in which they are holes.  But H is a particular, spatiotemporally localizable, hole in a particular piece of cheese.  Since H is a particular existing hole, it cannot be part of H's multiply exemplifiable nature that it depend for its existence on the particular piece of cheese it is a hole in.  The dependence of H on its host is due to H's mode of existence, not to its nature.

Suppose there are ten quidditatively indiscernible holes in the piece of cheese: H1, H2, . . . H10.  Each exists.  Each has its own existence.  But each has the very same nature.  How then can this common nature be the factor responsible for making H1 or H2 or H3, etc., dependent on the particular piece of cheese?  The dependence of each hole on its host is assignable not to the nature common to all ten holes but to each hole's existence as a mode of its existence.

Now of course this will not convince any thin theorist.  But then that is not my goal.  My goal is to show that the thick theory is rationally defensible and not sired by any obvious 'mistake.'  If any 'mistakes' are assignable then I 'd say they are assignable with greater justice to the partisans of the thin theory.

Metaphilosophical Coda

Talk of 'mistakes,' though, is out of place in serious philosophy.  For apart from clear-cut logical blunders such as affirming the consequent, quantifier shift fallacies, etc. any alleged 'mistakes' will rest on debatable substantive commitments.

About Whataboutism

(Written 21 November 2018. Edits added.)

What's with all the contemporary noise about 'whataboutism'?

Example 1. A lefty complains, "Trump is a liar!"  A conservative responds, "What about Hillary and Bill and Obama? Are they not liars too?"

Example 2. A pro-lifer argues that killing the prenatal is immoral and meets with the response, "What about all of the  'pro-lifers' who bomb abortion clinics, terrorize clinic staff, and block women’s legal access into such clinics?”

On one way of looking at it, 'whataboutism' is just the ad hominem tu quoque fallacy.  It's old wine in a new but very ugly bottle.  If the question is whether Trump is a liar, then it is irrelevant to bring in Hillary and Bill and Obama, despite their being egregious and proven liars.  Similarly in the abortion case. The violence of a few pro-lifers is simply irrelevant to the question of the moral permissibility of abortion. Or suppose my doctor, who has cancer, diagnoses cancer in me. It would be absurd for me to protest the diagnosis on the ground that the sawbones has it too. What about you, doc? 

So can anything good be said about 'whataboutism'?

Let's think a bit deeper about example 1. If a lefty points out Trump's undeniable flaws in an effort to show that he is unfit for office, then it is relevant to bring up Hillary's also undeniable flaws.  For if her considerable  flaws do not count against her fitness for high office, why should Trump's against his?

Understood in this way, 'whataboutism' is not the fallacy of ad hominem tu quoque, but a legitimate charge of double standard.  Trump is being held to a higher standard than Hillary.  

If the question is simply about Trump's character, then Hillary's is irrelevant. But if the two are competing for the same office, and Trump's defects are cited as disqualifying, then it is relevant to bring up Hillary's. Not to do so would be to employ a double standard.

One conclusion, I think, is that 'whataboutism' is a waste basket term that ought to be dumped. We  already have 'tu quoque fallacy' and 'double standard.'

Besides, it is a barbarism. 

A Relativist Cannot Rationally Object to the Imposition of One's Values on Others

(Written 11 September 2016)

The following argument is sometimes heard. "Because values are relative, it is wrong to impose one's values on others."

But if values are relative, and among my values is the value of instructing others in the right way to live, then surely I am justified in imposing my values on others. What better justification could I have? If values are relative, then there is simply no objective basis for a critique or rejection of the values I happen to hold.  For it to be wrong for me to impose my values, value-imposition would have to be a non-relative dis-value. But this is precisely what is ruled out by the premise 'values are relative.'

Either values are relative or they are not.  If they are relative, then no one can be faulted for living in accordance with his values even if among his values is the value of  imposing one's values on others.  If, on the other hand, values are not relative, then one will be in a position to condemn some forms of value-imposition.  The second alternative, however, is not available to one who affirms the relativity of all values.

Persons who give the above argument are trying to have it both ways at once, and in so doing fall into self-contradiction.  They want the supposed benefits of believing that values are relative -- such supposed benefits as toleration -- while at the same time committing themselves to the contradictory proposition that some values are not relative by their condemnation of value-imposition.

One sees from this how difficult it is for relativists to be logically consistent. A consistent relativist cannot make any such pronouncement as that it is wrong to impose one's values on others; all he can say is that from within his value scheme it is wrong to impose one's values on others. But then he allows the possibility that there are others for whom value-imposition is the right thing to do.

Relativism, whether alethic (about truth) or axiological (about values), is curiously self-vitiating.  To be consistent, the relativist must acquiesce in the relativization of his own position.  For example, the value relativist must admit that is only from within his own value scheme that it is wrong to impose one's value on others.  To which my response will be:  That's nice; but what does that have to do with me?  The relativist can get my attention only if he appeals to non-relative values, value binding on all of us; but if does so, then he contradicts himself.

Being as the Apotheosis of the Copula: Frege's Dialogue with Pünjer on Existence

Written 11 July 2011.

Some time before 1884, Gottlob Frege had a discussion about existence with the Protestant theologian Bernard Pünjer (1850-1885). A record of the dialogue was found in Frege's Nachlass, and an English translation is available in Gottlob Frege: Posthumous Writings, eds. Hans Hermes et al., University of Chicago Press, 1979. Herewith, some critical commentary on part of the dialogue.

1. We have often discussed  'thin' or deflationary approaches to Being or existence. On a thin approach, existence is not a metaphysical or ontological topic, but a merely logical one. Consider the general   existential, 'Cats exist.' For Frege, the content of such a general existential does not lie in 'exist' but "in the form of the particular judgment." (63) Frege uses the good old 19th century term 'judgment' (Urteil) but the point could also be put, with minor adjustments, in terms of  indicative sentences, statements, and propositions. Particular judgments are the I- and O-judgments of the Square of Opposition: those of the form Some S is P and Some S is not P.

Frege's contention, then, is that the content of affirmative general existentials lies in the logical form: Some S is P. But how do we put 'Cats exist' into this form? We need a concept superordinate to the   concept cat, say, the concept mammal. We can then write, 'Some mammals are cats.' If we acquiesce in the natural anti-Meinongian presupposition that there are no nonexistent items, then 'Cats exist' is true if and only if  'Some mammals are cats' is true.

This translation illustrates what Frege means when he says that the content of affirmative general existentials does not lie in 'exist'  but in the [logical] form of the particular judgment. The logical form is Some S is P, which is just a bit of syntax, whence we are to conclude that 'exists' is bare of semantic content, whether sense or reference, and merely functions as a stylistic variant of 'Some ___ is    ---.'

Those who take a deflationary tack, therefore, are the thin theorists. We who resist deflation can then be called thick theorists.

By showing that 'exist(s)' and cognates are eliminable, Frege thinks he has eliminated those hoary metaphysical subjects Being or existence which fascinate Thomists, Heideggerians, and such other 'thicks' as your humble correspondent.

2. But does Frege's schedule of elimination really work? We saw how 'Cats exist' can be rendered as 'Some mammals are cats.' But what about 'Mammals exist'? This in turn needs elimination. Assuming that the domain of quantification is a domain of existents, this can be translated salva veritate as 'Some animals are mammals.' And so on up the tree of Porphyry, or, if you deem that to be barking up the  wrong tree, then supply some other scheme of classification. 'Animals exist' becomes 'Some living things are animals.' 'Living things exist'  becomes 'Some bodies are living things.' 'Bodies exist' gets translated as 'Some substances are bodies.'

Clearly, we either now or very soon must call a halt to the ascent by resting in "a concept superordinate to all concepts." (p. 63) Superordinate to all concepts except itself, of course. And what concept might that be? Such a concept must have maximal extension and so will have minimal intension. It will be devoid of all content,  abstracting as it does from all differences. Frege suggests 'something identical with itself' as the maximally superordinate concept. 'There are men' and 'Men exist' thus get rendered as 'Something identical  with itself is a man.' (63)

3. In ordinary language, the role of maximally superordinate concept, a "concept without content," (63) is played by an hypostatization of the copula. In 'The sea is blue' the content of the predicate lies in   'blue': 'is' is contentless. But from the copulative 'is'  we form a quasi-concept -- 'being' -- without content since its  extension is unlimited. This makes it possible to say: men = men  that have being; 'There are men' is the same as 'Some men are' or 'Something that has being is a man.' Thus here the real content of  what is predicated does not lie in 'has being' but in the form of  the particular judgment. Faced with an impasse, language has simply created the word 'being' in order to enable the form of the particular judgment to be employed. When philosophers speak of  'absolute being,' that is really an apotheosis of the copula. (64) 

This is an excellent statement of the thin or deflationary or eliminativist line: there is in reality no such 'thing' or 'property' as Being or existence. Being (as a metaphysical topic) is a result of an illicit reification or hypostatization of the copula, an apotheosis (deification) of the copula.

4. Now why can't I accept this? We saw that to eliminate existence in all cases and make it disappear into the logical form Some S is P we must ascend a classificatory tree at the apex of which is a concept or "quasi-concept" unlimited in extension and empty in intension. This is the concept a being, an existent, something self-identical. Using this concept we can translate salva veritate every sentence of the form Fs exist into a sentence of the form Some being is an F. The availability of such translations seems to strip 'exist(s)' and cognates of all semantic content.

The problem with this was appreciated by Aristotle long ago when he argued that Being is not a summum genus, a highest genus, or a genus generallisimum, a most general genus. (See Metaphysics 998b22 and   Posterior Analytics 92b14). Being, as that which makes beings be, does not abstract from the differences among beings. But a concept  superordinate to every quidditative concept, which is what the concept a being and the concept something self-identical are, does abstract from the differences among beings. To put it another way, Being, as that which constitutes beings as beings, is not superordinate to every  quidditative concept since it belongs to a different order entirely, the non-quidditative order of existence. The Being of a being is its thatness, not its whatness.

The mistake that Frege makes is to think that Being is a highest quidditative determination, a highest what-determination. The concept a being, ens, is such a concept, but this concept is not Being, esse.

In sum: Frege's elimination of existential judgments by translation into copulative judgments works only if Being (esse, das Sein) is a maximally abstract quidditative concept, the concept a being (ens, das  Seiende). But this is precisely what Being is not. Ergo, etc.

Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons

(Written 20 July 2015)

I suspect that Vlastimil V's (neo-scholastic) understanding of potentiality is similar to the one provided by Matthew Lu in Potentiality Rightly Understood:

The substance view of persons holds that every human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or does actually manifest them. For the adherent of the substance view of persons, "potential" does not essentially refer to some possible future state of affairs. Rather, in this conception of what I will call developmental potential, to say that an organism has the potential to manifest some property means that that property belongs essentially to the kind of thing that it is (i.e., is among the essential properties it has by nature). Whether or not a specific individual actualizes the potentialities of its nature is contingent; but those potentialities necessarily belong to its nature in virtue of its membership in a specific natural kind.

I don't understand this.  Let the property be rationality.  Let organism o belong to the natural kind human being.  We assume that man is by nature a rational animal. A human fetus is of course a human being.  Suppose the fetus is anencephalic.  It too is a human being -- it is not lupine or bovine or a member of any other animal species.  But it is a defective human being, one whose defect is so serious that it, that very individual, will never manifest rationality.  So how can every human being have "the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood"?  That is my question.  Now consider the following answers/views.

A1: The anencephalic human fetus does not have the potentiality to manifest rationality.  This is because it lacks "the largest part of the brain consisting mainly of the cerebral hemispheres, including the neocortex, which is responsible for cognition." (Wikipedia)

A2:  The anencephalic human fetus does have the potentiality to manifest rationality because it is a member of a species or natural kind the normal (non-defective) members of which do have the potentiality in question.

A3:  The anencephalic human fetus does have the potentiality to manifest rationality because the natural kind itself has the potentiality to manifest rationality.

I think (A2) is the most charitable reading of the above quoted paragraph considered in the context of Lu's entire paper. Accordingly, a particular anencephalic fetus has the potentiality to manifest rationality because other genetically human members of the same species do have the potentiality in question.  This makes no sense to me.  But perhaps I am being obtuse, in which case a charitable soul may wish to help me understand.  To be perfectly honest, I really would like it to be the case that EVERY  "human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or does actually manifest them."  I would like that to be the case because then I would not  have to supplement my Potentiality Argument against abortion with other principles as I have done in other entries.

What's my problem?  Let's start with an analogy. It is narrowly logically possible and broadly logically possible that I run a four-minute mile.  It is also nomologically possible that I run a four-minute mile. For all the latter means is that the laws of nature pertaining to human anatomy and physiology do not rule out a human being's running a four-minute mile.  Since they do not rule out a human being's running that fast, they don't rule out my running that fast.

But note that the laws of human physiology abstract entirely from the particularities and peculiarities of me qua individual animal.  They abstract from my particular O₂ uptake, the ratio of 'fast twitch' to 'slow twitch' muscle fibers in my legs, and so on.  And to be totally clear: it is the concrete flesh-and-blood individual that runs, 'Boston Billy' Rodgers, for example, that very guy, not his form, not his matter, not his nature, not any accident or property or universal or subjective concept or objective concept that pertains to him. 

Now consider the question: do I, BV, have the potential to run a four-minute mile? No.  Why not?  Because of a number of deficiencies, insufficiencies, limitations and whatnot pertaining to the particular critter that I am.  The fact that other runners have  the potential in question is totally irrelevant.  What do their individual potentialities have to do with me?  The question, again, is whether I, BV, have/has the potentiality in question.  It is also totally irrelevant that the laws of human physiology do not rule out my running a four-minute mile.  Again, this is because said laws abstract from the particularities and peculiarities of the concrete individual.  Surely it would be a very  serious blunder to suppose that the nomological possibility of my running a four-minute mile  entails the potentiality of my doing any such thing. That would be a two-fold blunder: (i) potentiality is not possibility, and (ii) potentiality is always the potentiality of some concrete individual or other.

Similarly, the anencephalic individual does not have the potentiality to manifest rationality.  The fact that normal human fetuses do have this potentiality is totally irrelevant.  What do their individual potentialities have to do with the potentialities or lacks thereof of the anencephalic individual?  It is also totally irrelevant that man is by nature a rational animal, that the capacity to reason is 'inscribed' (as a Continental philosopher might say) in his very essence.  For the question is precisely whether or not this very anencephalic individual has the potentiality to manifest rationality.  My answer, as you may have surmised, is No. 

I think I can diagnose the neo-Scholastic error, if error it is.  (I hope it is not an error, for then the Potentiality Argument is strengthened and simplified.)  Take a look at (A3):

A3. The anencephalic human fetus does have the potentiality to manifest rationality because the natural kind itself has the potentiality to manifest rationality.

This, I submit, is a complete non-starter.  Whatever a natural kind is, it itself does not have the potential to be rational.  It can no more be rational than humanity in general can run.  (I once entered a 10 K event called 'The Human Race.' I did not compete against humanity in general, but against certain particular human critters.)

So it can't be the universal nature humanity that has the potential to be rational.  What about the individual or individualized nature, the human nature of Socrates, of Plato, et al.?  Could a particular individualized nature be that which has the potential to manifest rationality?  No again.  For it is but an ontological constituent of  a concrete man such as Socrates.  It is baby Socrates that has the potential to manifest rationality and excel in dialetic, not one of his ontological constituents.  Socrates is more than his individual human nature; there is also the dude's matter (materia signata) to take into consideration.  Our man is a hylomorphic compound, and it is this compound in which the potentiality to display rationality is grounded.

My diagnosis of neo-Scholastic error, then, is that neo-Scholastics, being Aristotelians, tend to conflate a primary substance such as Socrates with his individual(ized) nature. Since human nature in general includes the potential to be rational, it is natural to think that every individual(ized) human nature, whether normal or defective, has the potential to be rational.  But surely it is not the individual(ized) human nature that has the potential to be rational, but the ontological whole of which the individual(ized) human nature is a proper part.  In the case of the anencephalic fetus, this ontological whole includes defective matter that cannot support the development of rationality.  Only if one confuses the individual(ized) human nature of the anencephalic individual with the concrete anencephalic individual could one suppose that it too has the potential to manifest rationality.

The fact that Lu's paragraph above is ambiguous as between (A2) and (A3) further supports my contention that there is a confusion here.

My view, then, is (A1).  Abortion is a grave moral evil.  The Potentiality Argument, however, does not suffice as an argument against every instance of it.  This is not to say that the aborting of the anencephalic is morally acceptable.  It rather suggests that the PA requires some form of supplementation.

Why Did Thomas Aquinas Leave his Summa Theologiae Unfinished?

(Written Christmas Eve, 2017)

Our frenetic and hyperkinetic way of life these days makes it difficult to take seriously religion and what is essential to it, namely, the belief in what William James calls an Unseen Order. Our communications technology in particular is binding us ever tighter within the human horizon so that the sense of Transcendence is becoming weaker and weaker. So it comes as no surprise that someone would point to 'burnout' as the explanation of Aquinas' failure to finish his sum of theology when the traditional explanation was that he was vouchsafed mystical insight into the Unseen Order:

Aquinas’s ultimate act of apparent humility occurred on December 6, 1273, St. Nicholas’s Day, when he was forty-eight or forty-nine years old. Aquinas was celebrating Mass in the chapel of St. Nicholas, and he again had a vision. What exactly he saw is unknown. But afterward, he did not resume his dictation as he usually would. Reginald prodded him to get back to work, but Aquinas responded, “I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw.” He stopped writing altogether, leaving his Summa Theologiae—the summary of theology, and his masterwork—incomplete.

Jonathan Malesic, from whose Commonweal article the above quotation is taken, finds the traditional explanation "suspiciously pious." (My inclination is to say that his rejection of the traditional explanation is suspiciously post-modern.) What Malesic sees in the final days of the doctor angelicus is "burnout." Malesic builds on a suggestion of Joseph Weishepl:

The most down-to-earth account of Aquinas’s final winter that I have come across is by someone you might expect to play up Aquinas’s sanctity: Joseph Weisheipl, a Dominican writing to commemorate the seven-hundredth anniversary of his confrere’s death. But Weisheipl is interested less in hagiography than in empathy. Sensitive to the rigors of Aquinas’s schedule as a professor and member of a religious order, he argues not for a theological or mystical explanation for Aquinas’s silence, but a physiological one. In his view, “the physical basis for the experience of December 6 was a breakdown of his constitution after so many years of driving himself ceaselessly in the work he loved.” 

Burnout or visio mystica? An 'immanent' explanation in terms of physiology, or a 'transcendent' explanation in terms of supernatural insight?

Or is this a false alternative? It could be that the physiological breakdown triggered the noetic event. It could be that  the breakdown, while disabling Thomas from such exertions as writing, also occasioned an insight into the inadequacy of the discursive intellect for the knowledge of such a lofty Object as was his ultimate concern. 

Of course Aquinas knew all along about the inadequacy of the discursive intellect in respect of God, but I conjecture that it took a mystical experience for him to appreciate the fact  so fully that he saw no point in grinding out more sentences. When the meal is served, the menu is set aside.  

It seems to me that Malesic is opting for the 'burnout' explanation as opposed to the mystical one. If so, then I disagree, and I suggest that he is right in step with the post-modern enclosure with the human horizon mentioned at the outset.  Caught as far too many are these days in a web of 24-7 connectivity, it is hard for them to credit the possibility of any realm of the real beyond the human horizon.  So any explanation of religious phenomena just has to be an 'immanent' one.

So while Malesic finds that traditional explanation "suspiciously pious," I am inclined to suggest that he may be too much a product of his age and that we ought to be suspicious of his suspicion.  As I quipped above, his approach seems suspiciously post-modern.

Our age, influenced by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, to name the Big Three among the hermeneuticians of suspicion, is indeed one of deep suspicion, indications of which are the currently pejorative connotations of such words as 'pious,' 'reverence,' and 'hagiography.'  

Religion too is under suspicion along with its supposed saints and prophets and mystics. Some of this suspicion is good: it is just Athens keeping Jerusalem in line and chastening her excesses.  But it goes too far when religion's essence is denied. And what might that be? Here is my answer in seven theses. I think Aquinas would agree with all seven. I am negotiable on (4) and (6) if one cares to insist that Buddhism is a religion as opposed to a sort of philosophical therapeutics.

The Essence of Religion

1. The belief that there is what William James calls an "unseen order." (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 53)  This is a realm of absolute reality that lies beyond the perception of the five outer senses and their instrumental extensions.  It is also inaccessible to inner sense or introspection.  It is also not a realm of mere abstracta or thought-contents.  So in its full reality it lies beyond the discursive intellect.  It is accessible from our side via mystical and religious experience.  An initiative from its side is not to be ruled out.  Should that occur it is called revelation.

2. The  belief that there is a supreme good for humans and that "our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves" to the "unseen order." (Varieties, p. 53)

3. The conviction that we are morally deficient, and that this deficiency impedes our adjustment to the unseen order.  Man is in some some sense fallen from the moral height at which he would have ready access to the unseen order.  His moral corruption, however it came about, has noetic consequences. 

4. The conviction  that our moral deficiency cannot be made sufficiently good by our own efforts to afford us ready access to the unseen order.

5.  The conviction that adjustment to the unseen order requires moral purification/transformation.

6. The conviction that help from the side of the unseen order is available to bring about this purification and adjustment.

7. The conviction that the sensible order is not plenary in point of reality or value, that it is ontologically and axiologically derivative.  It is a manifestation or emanation or creation of the unseen order. 

(Written Christmas Eve, 2017)

Our frenetic and hyperkinetic way of life these days makes it difficult to take seriously religion and what is essential to it, namely, the belief in what William James calls an Unseen Order. Our communications technology in particular is binding us ever tighter within the human horizon so that the sense of Transcendence is becoming weaker and weaker. So it comes as no surprise that someone would point to 'burnout' as the explanation of Aquinas' failure to finish his sum of theology when the traditional explanation was that he was vouchsafed mystical insight into the Unseen Order:

Aquinas’s ultimate act of apparent humility occurred on December 6, 1273, St. Nicholas’s Day, when he was forty-eight or forty-nine years old. Aquinas was celebrating Mass in the chapel of St. Nicholas, and he again had a vision. What exactly he saw is unknown. But afterward, he did not resume his dictation as he usually would. Reginald prodded him to get back to work, but Aquinas responded, “I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw.” He stopped writing altogether, leaving his Summa Theologiae—the summary of theology, and his masterwork—incomplete.

Jonathan Malesic, from whose Commonweal article the above quotation is taken, finds the traditional explanation "suspiciously pious." (My inclination is to say that his rejection of the traditional explanation is suspiciously post-modern.) What Malesic sees in the final days of the doctor angelicus is "burnout." Malesic builds on a suggestion of Joseph Weishepl:

The most down-to-earth account of Aquinas’s final winter that I have come across is by someone you might expect to play up Aquinas’s sanctity: Joseph Weisheipl, a Dominican writing to commemorate the seven-hundredth anniversary of his confrere’s death. But Weisheipl is interested less in hagiography than in empathy. Sensitive to the rigors of Aquinas’s schedule as a professor and member of a religious order, he argues not for a theological or mystical explanation for Aquinas’s silence, but a physiological one. In his view, “the physical basis for the experience of December 6 was a breakdown of his constitution after so many years of driving himself ceaselessly in the work he loved.” 

Burnout or visio mystica? An 'immanent' explanation in terms of physiology, or a 'transcendent' explanation in terms of supernatural insight?

Or is this a false alternative? It could be that the physiological breakdown triggered the noetic event. It could be that  the breakdown, while disabling Thomas from such exertions as writing, also occasioned an insight into the inadequacy of the discursive intellect for the knowledge of such a lofty Object as was his ultimate concern. 

Of course Aquinas knew all along about the inadequacy of the discursive intellect in respect of God, but I conjecture that it took a mystical experience for him to appreciate the fact  so fully that he saw no point in grinding out more sentences. When the meal is served, the menu is set aside.  

It seems to me that Malesic is opting for the 'burnout' explanation as opposed to the mystical one. If so, then I disagree, and I suggest that he is right in step with the post-modern enclosure with the human horizon mentioned at the outset.  Caught as far too many are these days in a web of 24-7 connectivity, it is hard for them to credit the possibility of any realm of the real beyond the human horizon.  So any explanation of religious phenomena just has to be an 'immanent' one.

So while Malesic finds that traditional explanation "suspiciously pious," I am inclined to suggest that he may be too much a product of his age and that we ought to be suspicious of his suspicion.  As I quipped above, his approach seems suspiciously post-modern.

Our age, influenced by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, to name the Big Three among the hermeneuticians of suspicion, is indeed one of deep suspicion, indications of which are the currently pejorative connotations of such words as 'pious,' 'reverence,' and 'hagiography.'  

Religion too is under suspicion along with its supposed saints and prophets and mystics. Some of this suspicion is good: it is just Athens keeping Jerusalem in line and chastening her excesses.  But it goes too far when religion's essence is denied. And what might that be? Here is my answer in seven theses. I think Aquinas would agree with all seven. I am negotiable on (4) and (6) if one cares to insist that Buddhism is a religion as opposed to a sort of philosophical therapeutics.

The Essence of Religion

1. The belief that there is what William James calls an "unseen order." (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 53)  This is a realm of absolute reality that lies beyond the perception of the five outer senses and their instrumental extensions.  It is also inaccessible to inner sense or introspection.  It is also not a realm of mere abstracta or thought-contents.  So in its full reality it lies beyond the discursive intellect.  It is accessible from our side via mystical and religious experience.  An initiative from its side is not to be ruled out.  Should that occur it is called revelation.

2. The  belief that there is a supreme good for humans and that "our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves" to the "unseen order." (Varieties, p. 53)

3. The conviction that we are morally deficient, and that this deficiency impedes our adjustment to the unseen order.  Man is in some some sense fallen from the moral height at which he would have ready access to the unseen order.  His moral corruption, however it came about, has noetic consequences. 

4. The conviction  that our moral deficiency cannot be made sufficiently good by our own efforts to afford us ready access to the unseen order.

5.  The conviction that adjustment to the unseen order requires moral purification/transformation.

6. The conviction that help from the side of the unseen order is available to bring about this purification and adjustment.

7. The conviction that the sensible order is not plenary in point of reality or value, that it is ontologically and axiologically derivative.  It is a manifestation or emanation or creation of the unseen order. 

The Dictionary Fallacy

What I will call the Dictionary Fallacy is the fallacy of thinking that certain philosophical questions can be answered by consulting dictionaries.  The philosophical questions I have in mind are those of the form What is X? or What is the nature of X?  High on the list:  What is justice?  Knowledge? Existence?  Goodness?  But also:  What is hypocrisy? Lying? Self-deception? Envy? Jealousy? Schadenfreude? Socialism?  Taxation?  Motherhood? For example, if a woman is pregnant, and if the pregnancy is well-advanced, in the eight month, say, is the woman the mother of the fetus growing within her, or is she a mother only when she gives birth? Can this question be resolved by consultation of a dictionary? The dictionaries I am referring to are ordinary dictionaries, not philosophical dictionaries. 

1. Suppose I want to know what tolerance in the social or political sense is.  I pull a dictionary from the shelf and read, "a sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own." (Webster's New Collegiate, 1977, pp. 1227-1228)  This is not a bad definition but it seems to go wrong in one respect.  Arguably, toleration entails dislike of or dissent from that which is tolerated.  If I tolerate your socialist views, then I dissent from them.  Otherwise I wouldn't be tolerating them.  This entailment seems built into the very concept of toleration.  That with which I sympathize or agree I do not tolerate, strictly speaking.  Now it is easy to imagine people disagreeing with the notion that tolerance entails dislike or disapproval or dissent.  "Why can't I be said to tolerate what I approve of?  I approve of my wife's frugality, and therefore I tolerate it."

At this point one must ask what the debate is about.  Is it about the way 'tolerance' and cognates are actually used by  English speakers?  Then it may well be that the lexical definition cited is correct. This is an empirical question for lexicographers.  But if the question is about the nature of tolerance, then the appeal to actual usage is not conclusive, though it is undeniably a good starting point. For actual use may be misuse.  Everyone knows that change is not the same as improvement. Every improvement is a change, but not every change is an improvement.  Some changes are for the worse.  But  suppose the Obama Crowd brings it about that the word 'change' comes to be used interchangeably with the word 'improvement.'  The dictionary meaning of 'change' would then give us a very poor understanding of the nature of change.  The nature of change does not depend on how people use or misuse the word 'change.'  It is therefore a fallacy to think that one can answer the philosophical question as to the nature of X by recourse to the dictionary definition of the word 'X.'

2.  The dictionary I just cited gives 'envious' as a synonym of 'jealous.' (p. 620)  Now they are as a matter of fact often used synonymously in English. But surely the nature of envy is different from the nature of jealousy.  To feel envy is to feel diminished in one’s sense of self-worth by another’s success or well-being. Thus if A feels bad because B won an award, then A envies B his winning of the award. It is a misuse of language to say that A is jealous of B in a situation like this. Jealousy requires three people, whereas envy requires only two. Suppose A and B are married, and C shows an amatory interest in B. A may well come to feel jealous of C. To use ‘envy’ and ‘jealousy’ interchangeably is to ride roughshod over a simple distinction, and that is something that clear-headed people will want to avoid.  Someone who claims that there is no difference between envy and jealousy on the strength of the fact that one or more reputable dictionaries give 'envious' as a synonym of 'jealous' has committed what I am calling the Dictionary Fallacy.  They are falsely assuming that the way a word 'X' is used is a sure guide to the nature of X.

3. I am of course assuming that there are certain distinctions 'out there in the world' and that responsible language-users must use words in such a way as to do justice to them.  For example, there is a difference between inference and implication even if everyone comes to use 'infer' and 'imply' interchangeably.  And there is a difference between raising a question and begging a question even if the corresponding phrases come to be used interchangeably.

4.  I am also assuming that the philosophical enterprise is constructive and theoretical: the aim is to construct theories that illuminate our experience.  To understand the moral life, for example, one must understand such phenomena as hypocrisy, idealism, cynicism, jealousy, envy, resentment, irony, Schadenfreude, lying, dissembling, self-deception, bad faith, and others besides.  Presumably, the analyses of these individual phenomena must fit together to from a coherent whole.  An adequate theory cannot consist of a disconnected assortment of piecemeal analyses.  This implies that the definitions of key terms such as 'hypocrite' cannot be purely lexical.  As already pointed out, it is not the word but the thing we wish to understand, and the word as actually used is no sure guide, and in some cases no sort of guide, to the nature of the thing.  As theorists of the moral life we must therefore craft precisifying definitions.  These involve a substantial stipulative component, though they cannot of course be merely stipulative.  One cannot, for example, stipulate that a hypocrite is a person who perceives a gap within himself between what he is and what he ought to be.  That deviates too far from the lexical meaning of the term.  But one may have to adjust the meaning of 'hypocrite' away from its lexical definition somewhat to make it cohere properly with other terms in the vicinity, terms that figure in our theory of moral phenomena.

What I will call the Dictionary Fallacy is the fallacy of thinking that certain philosophical questions can be answered by consulting dictionaries.  The philosophical questions I have in mind are those of the form What is X? or What is the nature of X?  High on the list:  What is justice?  Knowledge? Existence?  Goodness?  But also:  What is hypocrisy? Lying? Self-deception? Envy? Jealousy? Schadenfreude? Socialism?  Taxation?  Motherhood? For example, if a woman is pregnant, and if the pregnancy is well-advanced, in the eight month, say, is the woman the mother of the fetus growing within her, or is she a mother only when she gives birth? Can this question be resolved by consultation of a dictionary? The dictionaries I am referring to are ordinary dictionaries, not philosophical dictionaries. 

1. Suppose I want to know what tolerance in the social or political sense is.  I pull a dictionary from the shelf and read, "a sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own." (Webster's New Collegiate, 1977, pp. 1227-1228)  This is not a bad definition but it seems to go wrong in one respect.  Arguably, toleration entails dislike of or dissent from that which is tolerated.  If I tolerate your socialist views, then I dissent from them.  Otherwise I wouldn't be tolerating them.  This entailment seems built into the very concept of toleration.  That with which I sympathize or agree I do not tolerate, strictly speaking.  Now it is easy to imagine people disagreeing with the notion that tolerance entails dislike or disapproval or dissent.  "Why can't I be said to tolerate what I approve of?  I approve of my wife's frugality, and therefore I tolerate it."

At this point one must ask what the debate is about.  Is it about the way 'tolerance' and cognates are actually used by  English speakers?  Then it may well be that the lexical definition cited is correct. This is an empirical question for lexicographers.  But if the question is about the nature of tolerance, then the appeal to actual usage is not conclusive, though it is undeniably a good starting point. For actual use may be misuse.  Everyone knows that change is not the same as improvement. Every improvement is a change, but not every change is an improvement.  Some changes are for the worse.  But  suppose the Obama Crowd brings it about that the word 'change' comes to be used interchangeably with the word 'improvement.'  The dictionary meaning of 'change' would then give us a very poor understanding of the nature of change.  The nature of change does not depend on how people use or misuse the word 'change.'  It is therefore a fallacy to think that one can answer the philosophical question as to the nature of X by recourse to the dictionary definition of the word 'X.'

2.  The dictionary I just cited gives 'envious' as a synonym of 'jealous.' (p. 620)  Now they are as a matter of fact often used synonymously in English. But surely the nature of envy is different from the nature of jealousy.  To feel envy is to feel diminished in one’s sense of self-worth by another’s success or well-being. Thus if A feels bad because B won an award, then A envies B his winning of the award. It is a misuse of language to say that A is jealous of B in a situation like this. Jealousy requires three people, whereas envy requires only two. Suppose A and B are married, and C shows an amatory interest in B. A may well come to feel jealous of C. To use ‘envy’ and ‘jealousy’ interchangeably is to ride roughshod over a simple distinction, and that is something that clear-headed people will want to avoid.  Someone who claims that there is no difference between envy and jealousy on the strength of the fact that one or more reputable dictionaries give 'envious' as a synonym of 'jealous' has committed what I am calling the Dictionary Fallacy.  They are falsely assuming that the way a word 'X' is used is a sure guide to the nature of X.

3. I am of course assuming that there are certain distinctions 'out there in the world' and that responsible language-users must use words in such a way as to do justice to them.  For example, there is a difference between inference and implication even if everyone comes to use 'infer' and 'imply' interchangeably.  And there is a difference between raising a question and begging a question even if the corresponding phrases come to be used interchangeably.

4.  I am also assuming that the philosophical enterprise is constructive and theoretical: the aim is to construct theories that illuminate our experience.  To understand the moral life, for example, one must understand such phenomena as hypocrisy, idealism, cynicism, jealousy, envy, resentment, irony, Schadenfreude, lying, dissembling, self-deception, bad faith, and others besides.  Presumably, the analyses of these individual phenomena must fit together to from a coherent whole.  An adequate theory cannot consist of a disconnected assortment of piecemeal analyses.  This implies that the definitions of key terms such as 'hypocrite' cannot be purely lexical.  As already pointed out, it is not the word but the thing we wish to understand, and the word as actually used is no sure guide, and in some cases no sort of guide, to the nature of the thing.  As theorists of the moral life we must therefore craft precisifying definitions.  These involve a substantial stipulative component, though they cannot of course be merely stipulative.  One cannot, for example, stipulate that a hypocrite is a person who perceives a gap within himself between what he is and what he ought to be.  That deviates too far from the lexical meaning of the term.  But one may have to adjust the meaning of 'hypocrite' away from its lexical definition somewhat to make it cohere properly with other terms in the vicinity, terms that figure in our theory of moral phenomena.

Immortality and Meaning

Some think that if  bodily death spells the extinction of the person, then bodily death consigns human life to meaninglessness.  For a life to have a final meaning that transcends the petty and particular meanings of the quotidian round, it cannot end in death. Or so many of us feel. Mortalism entail meaninglessness. But there are certain arguments from the naturalist camp that need to be addressed. One is that mortalism is a necessary condition of meaning.

One can imagine a naturalist conceding arguendo that our lives do not end with bodily death, but then proceeding to question the bearing this could have on the meaning of life. For how could an extension of life beyond the grave give meaning to life this side of the grave? Wouldn't the same problems about existential meaning that arise on this side also arise on the far side? If this is so, then the postulation of an afterlife would accomplish nothing towards giving life a meaning.

Suppose one dies and goes to heaven. Might not a heavenly being wonder about the point of its existence in the same way an earthly being* does? It might even be urged by the naturalist that heavenly existence would exacerbate the problems of existential meaning. Earthly delights are brief, unreliable, and often hard to obtain, but this prevents them from being boring. Endless heavenly delights, however, without any admixture of pain or difficulty in their acquisition might prove unbearably boring. You might imagine that endless disporting with 72 black-eyed virgins would be the ultimate in bliss — until you had your fill of it.

A Twilight Zone episode from 1960, A Nice Place to Visit, illustrates the theme. A two-bit thug, shot to death by the police, wakes up on the far side. Given his life of crime, he is puzzled to find himself in what he takes to be heaven: a penthouse of Pascalian divertissement has been provided for him in which he can sate his every sensuous appetite. The supply of booze and broads is endless, and he can't lose at the gaming tables. But soon enough our man tires of the 'good life' and heads for the door — which is locked. Turning to his host, played wonderfully by Sebastian Cabot, the thug complains that he'd rather be in the other place. "This is the other place!" the host demonically laughs.

Indeed, it might be urged by the naturalist that it is precisely the brevity of life that lends it meaning and value: just as gold is precious because rare, life is precious because short. Life interminable would be life without meaning.

The naturalist argument for decoupling meaning and immortality might be summed up as follows. There is no connection between the meaning of a life and its temporal duration. So even if life did extend beyond the grave, this would not ensure its meaningfulness. And if there were a connection between the meaning of life and its temporal duration, it would be brevity, not longevity, of life that would ensure meaningfulness.

What are we to say to this? Note first of all that the naturalist presumes to know what the afterlife will be like. (Of course, he does not believe in it himself, but he presumes to know what the immortalist must mean by it.) It will be more of the same, but with the negatives removed. The naturalist's  conception is likely to be crassly materialistic, as materialistic as the popular Islamic conception. But no sophisticated immortalist thinks of the afterlife as more of the same, but with the negatives removed. He does not think of it as a mere continuation of the present life, as a temporal extension of this life. He thinks of it as a qualitative change, a transformation and purification of the selfish self of this life into a godlike self: ". . . it is deiformity, not mere endless continuance, which is held out to man as the prize of his calling." (A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a Moralist, vol. I, 256) The life to come on a sophisticated conception is a sharing in the divine life which completes and perfects the individual soul while at the same time harmonizing it with other souls. Immortality is a divine gift rather than something that naturally occurs. And although it is a gift, it is something that must be earned. For the soul can be lost as well as gained. This life takes on meaning as a "vale of soul-making" in Keats' phrase.

This is a very rough sketch of a sophisticated conception of immortality such as one finds in A. E. Taylor's The Christian Hope of Immortality (Macmillan, 1947). Armed with such a conception, the immortalist will have no trouble turning aside the naturalists' objections as follows:

1. The postulation of an afterlife is unavailing because the same problems about existential meaning that arise in this life will also arise in our post-mortem existence. Response: This is not the case. Immortality is not a mere survival of the present self, but a transformation of the self whereby the self participates in the divine life. Since that just is the meaning of existence, no further questions can arise about it.

2. The afterlife would be one of unbearable ennui. Response: This objection presupposes that the afterlife would be just more of the sort of thing that transpires here below. It is not, so that puts paid to the objection.

3. Far from immortality ensuring life's meaningfulness, it precludes it: life is meaningful and valuable precisely because our days are numbered. Response: This objection again presupposes that the afterlife is just an extension of this life, albeit with the negative removed. If this is what it is like, then a finite life would be preferable. But on a sophisticated conception, the afterlife is not more of the same, but a scarcely imaginable participation in the divine life.

______________________________

*The sophisticated reader will appreciate that 'earthly being' in this context cannot mean being who lives on the planet Earth any more than 'heavenly being' in this context means being who lives in space beyond the planet Earth.   Human astronauts far from Earth remain 'earthly' in the religious sense.

Some think that if  bodily death spells the extinction of the person, then bodily death consigns human life to meaninglessness.  For a life to have a final meaning that transcends the petty and particular meanings of the quotidian round, it cannot end in death. Or so many of us feel. Mortalism entail meaninglessness. But there are certain arguments from the naturalist camp that need to be addressed. One is that mortalism is a necessary condition of meaning.

One can imagine a naturalist conceding arguendo that our lives do not end with bodily death, but then proceeding to question the bearing this could have on the meaning of life. For how could an extension of life beyond the grave give meaning to life this side of the grave? Wouldn't the same problems about existential meaning that arise on this side also arise on the far side? If this is so, then the postulation of an afterlife would accomplish nothing towards giving life a meaning.

Suppose one dies and goes to heaven. Might not a heavenly being wonder about the point of its existence in the same way an earthly being* does? It might even be urged by the naturalist that heavenly existence would exacerbate the problems of existential meaning. Earthly delights are brief, unreliable, and often hard to obtain, but this prevents them from being boring. Endless heavenly delights, however, without any admixture of pain or difficulty in their acquisition might prove unbearably boring. You might imagine that endless disporting with 72 black-eyed virgins would be the ultimate in bliss — until you had your fill of it.

A Twilight Zone episode from 1960, A Nice Place to Visit, illustrates the theme. A two-bit thug, shot to death by the police, wakes up on the far side. Given his life of crime, he is puzzled to find himself in what he takes to be heaven: a penthouse of Pascalian divertissement has been provided for him in which he can sate his every sensuous appetite. The supply of booze and broads is endless, and he can't lose at the gaming tables. But soon enough our man tires of the 'good life' and heads for the door — which is locked. Turning to his host, played wonderfully by Sebastian Cabot, the thug complains that he'd rather be in the other place. "This is the other place!" the host demonically laughs.

Indeed, it might be urged by the naturalist that it is precisely the brevity of life that lends it meaning and value: just as gold is precious because rare, life is precious because short. Life interminable would be life without meaning.

The naturalist argument for decoupling meaning and immortality might be summed up as follows. There is no connection between the meaning of a life and its temporal duration. So even if life did extend beyond the grave, this would not ensure its meaningfulness. And if there were a connection between the meaning of life and its temporal duration, it would be brevity, not longevity, of life that would ensure meaningfulness.

What are we to say to this? Note first of all that the naturalist presumes to know what the afterlife will be like. (Of course, he does not believe in it himself, but he presumes to know what the immortalist must mean by it.) It will be more of the same, but with the negatives removed. The naturalist's  conception is likely to be crassly materialistic, as materialistic as the popular Islamic conception. But no sophisticated immortalist thinks of the afterlife as more of the same, but with the negatives removed. He does not think of it as a mere continuation of the present life, as a temporal extension of this life. He thinks of it as a qualitative change, a transformation and purification of the selfish self of this life into a godlike self: ". . . it is deiformity, not mere endless continuance, which is held out to man as the prize of his calling." (A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a Moralist, vol. I, 256) The life to come on a sophisticated conception is a sharing in the divine life which completes and perfects the individual soul while at the same time harmonizing it with other souls. Immortality is a divine gift rather than something that naturally occurs. And although it is a gift, it is something that must be earned. For the soul can be lost as well as gained. This life takes on meaning as a "vale of soul-making" in Keats' phrase.

This is a very rough sketch of a sophisticated conception of immortality such as one finds in A. E. Taylor's The Christian Hope of Immortality (Macmillan, 1947). Armed with such a conception, the immortalist will have no trouble turning aside the naturalists' objections as follows:

1. The postulation of an afterlife is unavailing because the same problems about existential meaning that arise in this life will also arise in our post-mortem existence. Response: This is not the case. Immortality is not a mere survival of the present self, but a transformation of the self whereby the self participates in the divine life. Since that just is the meaning of existence, no further questions can arise about it.

2. The afterlife would be one of unbearable ennui. Response: This objection presupposes that the afterlife would be just more of the sort of thing that transpires here below. It is not, so that puts paid to the objection.

3. Far from immortality ensuring life's meaningfulness, it precludes it: life is meaningful and valuable precisely because our days are numbered. Response: This objection again presupposes that the afterlife is just an extension of this life, albeit with the negative removed. If this is what it is like, then a finite life would be preferable. But on a sophisticated conception, the afterlife is not more of the same, but a scarcely imaginable participation in the divine life.

______________________________

*The sophisticated reader will appreciate that 'earthly being' in this context cannot mean being who lives on the planet Earth any more than 'heavenly being' in this context means being who lives in space beyond the planet Earth.   Human astronauts far from Earth remain 'earthly' in the religious sense.

John N. Deck's Contrast Argument against the Philosophy of Being

John N. Deck is a highly interesting, if obscure, figure in the neo-Scholasticism of the 20th century. I first took note of him in 1989, ten years after his death, when his article "Metaphysics or Logic?" appeared in New Scholasticism (vol. LXIII, no. 2, Spring 1989, pp. 229-240.) Thanks to the labors of Tony Flood we now have a better picture of the man and his work. The case of Deck may well prove to be a partial confirmation of Nietzsche's "Some men are born posthumously."

What interests me about Deck is that he attacks the neo-Scholastic philosophy of Being from within. Holding a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto (1960), he cannot be suspected of any lack of acquaintance with the tradition against which he lodges his objections. Yet he arrives at conclusions similar to those of the pragmatist Sidney Hook (see his The Quest for Being) and the empiricist Donald C. Williams (see his "Dispensing with Existence," The Journal of Philosophy, vol. LIX, no. 2, 1962, pp. 748-763.)

I myself am neither a Thomist nor a neo-Thomist. My route to the philosophy of Being was via the transcendental philosophy of Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger. My dissatisfaction with the phenomenological approach to ontology as well as with the logical approach one finds in Frege and Russell led me to re-think in my own way and in my own terms the old Thomist idea of ipsum esse subsistens. I gave my thoughts a rough and provisional form in my 2002 book A Paradigm Theory of Existence to which I attached the perhaps excessively triumphalist subtitle, Onto-Theology Vindicated. The gist of the subtitle can be put in the slogan: Being is neither a phenomenological nor a logical notion, but an onto-theological one.

Not having discussed Deck in my book, I will make good that omission here in one or more posts.

It is a matter of experience that our world is a plural world, one consisting of a manifold of beings or existents. The manifoldness is undoubtedly real, but it is not a pure manyness but a plurality of things that are, that have Being or existence in common, that form a community of being. There are many beings, but each is. It is undeniable that Being is in some sense common to beings. As common, it must be distinct from each of them taken distributively and from all of them taken collectively.

The question in dispute, however, is whether both Being and beings are real in the "extra-cognitional order" to use a phrase of Deck's, or only beings are. I maintain that both Being and beings are extra-cognitionally real whereas Deck maintains that only beings are. Thus Deck's view is that beings exist outside the mind, but that their unity and commonality is merely that of a concept, and so is imposed by the mind to satisfy its own logical exigencies. Deck's view could be put as follows. When we say of a thing that it exists, what we say is true; but there is no real unity in things that grounds our application of the predicate 'exists' to them. There is no Being in the things that are that makes it true to say of them that they are: Being is a concept we impose. The diversity of beings is real (extramental, extra-cognitional), but their unity is merely conceptual.

One could say that Deck takes a deflationary line: there is no such 'thing' as Being outside the mind. Clearly, this must be opposed by anyone who, like me, sees merit in the notion of ipsum esse subsistens, self-subsistent existence. For to say that existence is self-subsistent is to say that it itself exists.  But in philosophy it all comes down to the arguments one can adduce for or against. In support of his deflationism, Deck says the following:

There is no alternative to being. Everything is. Thus there is no ultimate intelligibility in the contention that all things that are agree in this, that they are all opposed to, or even equally opposed to, non-being — they would be at one, as it were, in the non-non-being feature. (232)

This passage suggests a Contrast Argument:

1. If a term T denotes something real, then there must be items to which T does not apply.
2. There are no items to which 'being' or 'existent' does not apply.
Ergo
3. 'Being' or 'existent' does not denote anything real.

In point of validity, this argument is unobjectionable: it is an instance of Modus Tollens. But it is unsound. The following consideration suffices to refute the first premise. Since everything is self-identical, it is true to say of any particular thing that it is self-identical. 'Self-identical' is not rendered either senseless or reference-less by the plain fact that nothing is self-diverse. I don't think we need to waste any more words on the first premise. It is obviously false.

But even if you insist that (1) is true, there is still a problem with the argument. Although (2) is true, it does not have the implication Deck thinks it has. He seems to think that if everything exists, then it is unintelligible to suppose that there is a difference between existence and nonexistence. But this is a non sequitur. For although it is true that there is nothing that does not exist, a contingent being that does exist is possibly such that it does not exist. So there is a contrast after all. It is the contrast between (actual) existence and possible nonexistence.

It is quite clear that the difference between existence and nonexistence cannot be explained by giving examples of existents and examples of nonexistents. Pace Meinong and the Meinongians, there are no examples of nonexistents. But how it is supposed to follow from this that there is no real unity in things that grounds the application of 'exists' to them?

It seems to me that Deck is making a rather obvious mistake. He is assuming that existence or Being is a highest what-determination. He is thinking of 'being' as a maximally general term which, due to its all-inclusive extension, is virtually nil in intension. Here is what he has to say:

The distinction between 'being' and, for example, 'dog,' is then a distinction between the more general and the less general. This is a logical or cognitional distinction, which does not necessarily reflect anything in the nature of things. Nor does it necessarily point to any real composition within things. It is analogous to the distinction made between 'animal' and 'dog' when it is said that Rover is a dog and Rover is an animal, which distinction does not point to two distinct principles within Rover — dog and animal. Rover is a dog who is an animal, an animal who is a dog. His being a dog and his being an animal are the same in him, even though there are other animals. Similarly, Rover is both a being and a dog — there are other beings, but this does not change the fact that for him, to be a dog is to be a being, to be a being is to be a dog. (232-233)

This passage shows that Deck is thinking of being as a highest genus. Rover is a dog, an animal, a living thing, a physical thing . . . a being. On this way of thinking, being is the most general what-determination. But if anything is clear, it should be that Being or existence is not a summum genus as Aristotle pointed out at 998b22 of the Metaphysics. And as Kant pointed out in his famous discussion, Being or existence is not a reales Praedikat: Being or existence is no part of what a thing is.

I'll have more to say about this later. For now, the main point is that Deck's Contrast Argument above is unsound. Not only does it share the defect of every contrast argument, it also confuses Being or existence with a highest what-determination.

John N. Deck is a highly interesting, if obscure, figure in the neo-Scholasticism of the 20th century. I first took note of him in 1989, ten years after his death, when his article "Metaphysics or Logic?" appeared in New Scholasticism (vol. LXIII, no. 2, Spring 1989, pp. 229-240.) Thanks to the labors of Tony Flood we now have a better picture of the man and his work. The case of Deck may well prove to be a partial confirmation of Nietzsche's "Some men are born posthumously."

What interests me about Deck is that he attacks the neo-Scholastic philosophy of Being from within. Holding a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto (1960), he cannot be suspected of any lack of acquaintance with the tradition against which he lodges his objections. Yet he arrives at conclusions similar to those of the pragmatist Sidney Hook (see his The Quest for Being) and the empiricist Donald C. Williams (see his "Dispensing with Existence," The Journal of Philosophy, vol. LIX, no. 2, 1962, pp. 748-763.)

I myself am neither a Thomist nor a neo-Thomist. My route to the philosophy of Being was via the transcendental philosophy of Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger. My dissatisfaction with the phenomenological approach to ontology as well as with the logical approach one finds in Frege and Russell led me to re-think in my own way and in my own terms the old Thomist idea of ipsum esse subsistens. I gave my thoughts a rough and provisional form in my 2002 book A Paradigm Theory of Existence to which I attached the perhaps excessively triumphalist subtitle, Onto-Theology Vindicated. The gist of the subtitle can be put in the slogan: Being is neither a phenomenological nor a logical notion, but an onto-theological one.

Not having discussed Deck in my book, I will make good that omission here in one or more posts.

It is a matter of experience that our world is a plural world, one consisting of a manifold of beings or existents. The manifoldness is undoubtedly real, but it is not a pure manyness but a plurality of things that are, that have Being or existence in common, that form a community of being. There are many beings, but each is. It is undeniable that Being is in some sense common to beings. As common, it must be distinct from each of them taken distributively and from all of them taken collectively.

The question in dispute, however, is whether both Being and beings are real in the "extra-cognitional order" to use a phrase of Deck's, or only beings are. I maintain that both Being and beings are extra-cognitionally real whereas Deck maintains that only beings are. Thus Deck's view is that beings exist outside the mind, but that their unity and commonality is merely that of a concept, and so is imposed by the mind to satisfy its own logical exigencies. Deck's view could be put as follows. When we say of a thing that it exists, what we say is true; but there is no real unity in things that grounds our application of the predicate 'exists' to them. There is no Being in the things that are that makes it true to say of them that they are: Being is a concept we impose. The diversity of beings is real (extramental, extra-cognitional), but their unity is merely conceptual.

One could say that Deck takes a deflationary line: there is no such 'thing' as Being outside the mind. Clearly, this must be opposed by anyone who, like me, sees merit in the notion of ipsum esse subsistens, self-subsistent existence. For to say that existence is self-subsistent is to say that it itself exists.  But in philosophy it all comes down to the arguments one can adduce for or against. In support of his deflationism, Deck says the following:

There is no alternative to being. Everything is. Thus there is no ultimate intelligibility in the contention that all things that are agree in this, that they are all opposed to, or even equally opposed to, non-being — they would be at one, as it were, in the non-non-being feature. (232)

This passage suggests a Contrast Argument:

1. If a term T denotes something real, then there must be items to which T does not apply.
2. There are no items to which 'being' or 'existent' does not apply.
Ergo
3. 'Being' or 'existent' does not denote anything real.

In point of validity, this argument is unobjectionable: it is an instance of Modus Tollens. But it is unsound. The following consideration suffices to refute the first premise. Since everything is self-identical, it is true to say of any particular thing that it is self-identical. 'Self-identical' is not rendered either senseless or reference-less by the plain fact that nothing is self-diverse. I don't think we need to waste any more words on the first premise. It is obviously false.

But even if you insist that (1) is true, there is still a problem with the argument. Although (2) is true, it does not have the implication Deck thinks it has. He seems to think that if everything exists, then it is unintelligible to suppose that there is a difference between existence and nonexistence. But this is a non sequitur. For although it is true that there is nothing that does not exist, a contingent being that does exist is possibly such that it does not exist. So there is a contrast after all. It is the contrast between (actual) existence and possible nonexistence.

It is quite clear that the difference between existence and nonexistence cannot be explained by giving examples of existents and examples of nonexistents. Pace Meinong and the Meinongians, there are no examples of nonexistents. But how it is supposed to follow from this that there is no real unity in things that grounds the application of 'exists' to them?

It seems to me that Deck is making a rather obvious mistake. He is assuming that existence or Being is a highest what-determination. He is thinking of 'being' as a maximally general term which, due to its all-inclusive extension, is virtually nil in intension. Here is what he has to say:

The distinction between 'being' and, for example, 'dog,' is then a distinction between the more general and the less general. This is a logical or cognitional distinction, which does not necessarily reflect anything in the nature of things. Nor does it necessarily point to any real composition within things. It is analogous to the distinction made between 'animal' and 'dog' when it is said that Rover is a dog and Rover is an animal, which distinction does not point to two distinct principles within Rover — dog and animal. Rover is a dog who is an animal, an animal who is a dog. His being a dog and his being an animal are the same in him, even though there are other animals. Similarly, Rover is both a being and a dog — there are other beings, but this does not change the fact that for him, to be a dog is to be a being, to be a being is to be a dog. (232-233)

This passage shows that Deck is thinking of being as a highest genus. Rover is a dog, an animal, a living thing, a physical thing . . . a being. On this way of thinking, being is the most general what-determination. But if anything is clear, it should be that Being or existence is not a summum genus as Aristotle pointed out at 998b22 of the Metaphysics. And as Kant pointed out in his famous discussion, Being or existence is not a reales Praedikat: Being or existence is no part of what a thing is.

I'll have more to say about this later. For now, the main point is that Deck's Contrast Argument above is unsound. Not only does it share the defect of every contrast argument, it also confuses Being or existence with a highest what-determination.

Money, Power, and Equality: An Egalitarian Paradox

 J. R. Lucas, "Against Equality," in Justice and Equality, ed.  Hugo Bedau (Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 148-149:

Since men value power and prestige as much as the possession of wealth---indeed, these three `goods' cannot be completely separated---it is foolish to seek to establish an equality of wealth on egalitarian grounds. It is foolish first because it will not result in what egalitarians really want. It is foolish also because if we do not let men compete for money, they will compete all the more for power; and whereas the possession of wealth by another man does not hurt me, unless I am made vulnerable by envy, the possession of power by another is inherently dangerous; and furthermore if we are to maintain a strict equality of wealth we need a much greater apparatus of state to secure it and therefore a much greater inequality of power. Better have bloated plutocrats than omnipotent bureaucrats.

This is a penetrating passage from a penetrating essay. Lucas is in effect pointing out a paradox at the heart of the egalitarian  position. If the egalitarian wants to equalize wealth, perhaps via a scheme of income redistribution, then he will need to make use of state power to do it: the wealthy will not voluntarily disembarrass themselves of their wealth. But state power is of necessity concentrated in the hands of a few, those who run the government,  whose power is vastly greater than, and hence unequal to, the power of  the governed.

The paradox, then, is that the enforcing of equality of wealth requires inequality of power. But, as Lucas points out, the powerful are much more dangerous to us than the wealthy. Your being wealthy takes away nothing from me, and indeed stimulates the economy from which I profit, whereas your being powerful poses a threat  to my liberty.

But I hear an objection coming: "Wealth is convertible into power since the wealthy can buy their way to political influence, whether legally or illegally." True, but the seriousness of this problem is a function of how intrusive and overreaching the government is. A government stripped down to essential functions offers fewer opportunities for the power-hungry. Note also that the wealthy may  feel it necessary to buy influence just to protect themselves from  regulatory zeal. 

Is There a Right to Health Care?

(Written November 2013)

Food, shelter, and clothing are more important than health care in that one can get along for substantial periods of time without health care services, but one cannot survive for long without food, shelter, and clothing. Given this plain fact, why don’t the proponents of ‘free’ universal health care demand ‘free’ food, shelter, and clothing? In other words, if a citizen, just in virtue of being a citizen, has a right to health care, why doesn’t the same citizen have the right to what is more fundamental, namely, food, shelter, and clothing?

I mean this as a reductio ad absurdum.  I fear that liberals, being liberals, may just bite the bullet and embrace rights to food, shelter, and clothing.  But then the next move down the slippery slope would be for these liberals to insist that these rights are unconditional and not dependent on anything the recipient does or does not do, such as work.

Why isn't health care a commodity in the way that automotive care is? If I want my car to run well, I must service it periodically. I can either do this myself or hire someone to do it for me. But surely I have no right to the free services of an auto mechanic. Of course, once I contract with a mechanic to do a specified job for a specified sum of money, then I have a right to his services and to his services being performed correctly. But that right is contingent upon our contract. Call it a contractually acquired right. But I have no right to free automotive services just in virtue of the fact that I own a car. So why is it any different with my body? Do I have a right to a colonoscopy just in virtue of my possession of a gastrointestinal tract?

Negative and Positive Rights

Of course, I have a right to life, and I cannot live without health care most of which, by the way, I provide for myself via proper diet, exercise, and all the rest.  But the negative right to life does not entail the positive right to be given the services of doctors and dentists.

If you insist that people do have a right to medical and dental services, then you owe us an explanation of why they do not also have a right to food, shelter, and clothing, as well as to a vast array of other things that they 'need' such as cars and cell phones.

I've heard Hillary Clinton say that health care is not a privilege but a right.  First of all, who ever said it was a privilege?  Second, it needs arguing that it is a right.  And good luck with that.  Besides, it is the fallacy of false alternative to say or imply that health care is either a right or a privilege.  It might be some third thing.

My view is that health care is a commodity. You either provide it for yourself or you hire someone to provide it for you. In the latter case, you must pay for it. It is no different in principle from housing. Just as there is a 'housing market' there is a 'health care market.' If there were a right to health care, then there would also be a right to housing. But there is no right to housing. Therefore, there is no right to health care.  Do Obama and his supporters have a reasoned response to this argument? 

Talk of this and that as a right is mostly empty blather.  One ought to reflect on what it could mean to call something a right. 

The Correlativity of Rights and Duties

Rights and duties are correlative. My right to X generates in others the duty to either provide me with X or not interfere with my possession or exercise of X. Thus my right to life induces in others the duty or obligation to refrain from injuring or killing me. So if I have a right to health care, then others have the duty to provide me with it. Think about that.  But who are those others? The government? The government has no money of its own; its revenue comes from taxing the productive members of society. But why are these productive citizens under any obligation to provide 'free' services to anyone?  Taxation is by its very nature coercive.  How does one justify morally the taking by force of money from one person to give it to another? Why should productive citizens who take care of themselves pay for those who abuse their bodies?  There is also the practical question of whether the productive will allow themselves to be fleeced.  Not to mention the fact that the government infantilizes the population by doing for them what they ought to be doing for themselves, and by removing their incentives to taking care of themselves.

Socialized Medicine is Anti-Liberty and Weakens the Citizenry

Government should do no harm. Primum non nocere.  But a government that weakens and unmans its citizens, turning them into dependents on the state, does harm.  This is entirely consistent with people caring about one another and taking care of one another within the free associations of civil society that lie between the  individual and  Leviathan.  It is also consistent with a modicum of regulation, oversight, and mandating from the side of the state to prevent the truly needy from ending up on the skids.

If we meet in the desert and you are out of water and food, I will give you some of mine, ceteris paribus. But I am under no moral obligation to help you; you have no right to my supplies. My helping you will be supererogatory and reflective of my compassion and Christian upbringing.  Similarly, you have no right to insurance or medicine or a pap smear or a sigmoidoscopy, and I have no obligation to contribute via taxation so that you may get these things.

Nor do you have any right to contraceptives or abortifacients or outright abortions to be supplied at taxpayer expense.  Besides, forcing people to pay for what violates their moral sensibility is a moral outrage.  Abortion is a very great evil even if liberals are too morally obtuse and willfully stupid  to understand that fact.

Positive rights, rights to be given this or that,  need arguing, but I hear precious little by way of  argument from liberals.

A government big enough and powerful enough to provide one with ‘free’ health care will be in an excellent position to demand ‘appropriate’ behavior from its citizens – and to enforce its demand. Suppose you enjoy risky sports such as motorcycling, hang gliding, mountain climbing and the like. Or perhaps you just like to drink or smoke or eat red meat. A government that pays for the treatment of your injuries and ailments can easily decide, on economic grounds alone, to forbid such activities under the bogus justification, ‘for your own good.’

But even if the government does not outlaw motorcycling, say, they can put a severe dent in your liberty to enjoy such a sport, say, by demanding that a 30% sales tax be slapped on all motorcycle purchases, or by outlawing bikes whose engines exceed a certain displacement, say 180 cc.  In the same way that governments levy arbitrary taxes on tobacco products, they can do the same for anything they deem risky or unhealthy.

The situation is analogous to living with one’s parents. It is entirely appropriate for parents to say to a child: ‘As long as you live under our roof, eat at our table, and we pay the bills, then you must abide by our rules. When you are on your own, you may do as you please.’ The difference, of course, is that it is relatively easy to move out on one’s own, but difficult to forsake one’s homeland.  

The nub of the issue is liberty. Do you value it or not?  And how much?  Which trumps which: liberty or equality of outcome?  

Then there are the practical considerations. Nationalized health care in the UK and Canada doesn't seem to work very well. Apparently some Brits pull their own teeth with such advanced dental appliances as pliers and vodka. That was the way dentistry was done in the days of Doc Holliday who was, as you know, a dentist besides being a damned good shot.

Kenny, Geach, and the Perils of Reading Frege into Aquinas

(Written 23 December 2013)

I have been studying Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford 2002).  I cannot report that I find it particularly illuminating.  I am troubled by the reading back of Fregean doctrines into Aquinas, in particular in the appendix, "Frege and Aquinas on Existence and Number." (pp. 195-204)  Since Kenny borrows heavily from Peter Geach, I will explain one of my misgivings in connection with a passage from Geach's important article, "Form and Existence" in God and the Soul.  Geach writes,

Frege, like Aquinas, held that there was a fundamental distinction in rebus answering to the logical distinction between subject and predicate -- the distinction between Gegenstand (object) and Begriff (concept). [. . .] And for Frege the Begriff, and it alone, admits of repetition and manyness; an object cannot be repeated -- kommt nie wiederholt vor. (45-46)

So far, so good.  Geach continues:

Understood in this way, the distinction between individual and form is absolutely sharp and rigid; what can be sensibly said of one becomes nonsense if we try to say it of the other. [. . .] Just because of this sharp distinction, we must reject the Platonic doctrine that what a predicate stands for is is some single entity over against its many instances, hen epi pollon. On the contrary:  the common nature that the predicate 'man' (say) stands for can be indifferently one or many, and neither oneness nor manyness is a mark or note of human nature itself.  This point is made very clearly by Aquinas in De Ente et Essentia.  Again we find Frege echoing Aquinas; Frege counts oneness or manyness (as the case may be) among the properties (Eigenschaften) of a concept, which means that it cannot at the same time be one of the marks or notes (Merkmalen) of that concept. (46)

I smell deep confusion here.  But precisely because the confusion runs deep I will have a hard time explaining clearly wherein the confusion consists.  I will begin by making a list of what Geach gets right.

1. Objects and individuals are unrepeatable. 
2. Concepts and forms are repeatable.
3. Setting aside the special question of subsistent forms, no individual is a form, and no object is a concept.
4. Frege distinguishes between the marks of a concept and the properties of a concept. The concept man, for example, has the concept animal as one of its marks.  But animal is not a property of man, and this for the simple reason that no concept is an animal.  Man has the property of being instantiated.  This property, however, is not a mark of man since it is not included within the latter's conceptual content:  one cannot by sheer analysis of the concept man determine whether or not there are any men.  So there is a sense in which "neither oneness nor manyness is a mark or note of human nature itself."  This is true if taken in the following sense: neither being instantiated singly nor being instantiated multiply is a mark of the concept man.

But how do these points, taken singly or together, support Geach's rejection of "the Platonic doctrine that what the predicate stands for is some single entity over against its many instances"?  They don't!

It seems obvious to me that Geach is confusing oneness/manyness as the relational property of single/multiple instantiation with oneness/manyness as the monadic property of being one or many.  It is one thing to ask whether a concept is singly or multiply instantiated.  It is quite another to ask whether the concept itself  is one or many.  It is also important to realize that a Fregean first-level concept, when instantiated, does not enter into the structure of the individuals that instantiate it. 

Aquinas is a constituent ontologist, but Frege is not.  This difference is deep and causes a world of trouble for those who attempt to understand Aquinas in Fregean terms.  For Frege, concepts are functions, and no function enters into the structure of its argument.  The propositional function x is a man is not a constituent of Socrates.  What's more, the value of the function for Socrates as argument is not a state of affairs with Socrates and the function as constituents. The value of the function for Socrates as argument is True; for Stromboli as argument, False.  And now you know why philosophers speak of truth-values.  It's mathematical jargon via Frege the mathematician.

The Fregean concept man is one, not many.  It is one concept, not many concepts.  Nor is it neither one nor many.  It can have one instance, or many instances, or no instance.   The Thomistic form man, however, is, considered in itself, neither one nor many.  It is one in the intellect but (possibly) many in things.  In itself, however, it is neither.  And so it is true to say that the form is not "some single entity over against its many instances."  It is not a single entity because, considered in itself, it is neither single nor multiple.

But this doesn't follow from point (3) above.  And therein lies Geach's mistake.  One cannot validly move from the "sharp distinction" between individuals/objects and forms/concepts  to the conclusion that what a predicate stands for is not a single entity.  Geach makes this mistake because of the confusion  exposed two paragraphs supra.  The mutual exclusion of objects and concepts does not entail that concepts cannot be single entities.

There is another huge problem with reading Frege back into Aquinas, and that concerns modes of existence (esse).  A form in the intellect exists in a different way than it does in things.  But if Frege is right about existence, there cannot be modes of existence.  For if existence is instantiation, then there cannot be modes of existence for the simple reason that there cannot be any modes of instantiation.

I'll say more about this blunder in another post.  It rests in turn on a failure to appreciate  the radically different styles of ontology practiced by Aquinas and Frege.  In my jargon, Aquinas is a constituent ontologist while Frege is a nonconstituent ontologist.  In the jargon of Gustav Bergmann, Aquinas is a compex ontologist while Frege is a function ontologist.

The Primacy of the Intentional Over the Linguistic Revisited

A long-time reader writes,

I was going through some of your posts from earlier this month (Belief, Designation, and Substitution, January 10, 2017) and was interested in seeing your comment that "[l]inguistic reference is built upon, and nothing without, thinking reference, or intentionality."

 

. . . I have to say that your above sentence was the first time I've heard anyone articulate what you have articulated in such a direct manner.  It's something that certainly makes the most sense to me in terms of thinking about some of the broad discussion points in the field, but I'm surprised, actually, that no one I've come across has articulated this, and I'm curious whether that lacuna has to do with the analytic tradition's anti-metaphysical tendencies (of a more robust type of metaphysics, in any event): if one moves the object of analysis from questions about how language refers to how the mind refers, perhaps it gets one into hoary metaphysical waters that people back in the day would rather have left alone.  Is this actually the case or am I missing something or is the whole thing simply too obvious for most people to bother mentioning?

 

It is actually an old debate within analytic philosophy. I would refer you to the 1957 Roderick Chisholm-Wilfrid Sellars correspondence although the debate antedates their discussion.  Your note warrants the re-posting of an old entry from eight years ago. This is a redacted and expanded version.

 

Note to the Astute Opponent: Can you come up with a powerful counterargument to the primacy of the intentional?  I'd like to test whether there is perhaps an aporia here.  

 

The Primacy of the Intentional Over the Linguistic

Following Chisholm, et al. and as against Sellars, et al. I subscribe to the broadly logical primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.

But before we can discuss the primacy of the intentional, we must have some idea of (i) what intentionality is and (ii) what the problem of intentionality is.  Very simply, (mental) intentionality  is object-directedness, a feature of some (if not all) of our mental states.  (The qualifier 'mental' leaves open the epistemic possibility of what George Molnar calls physical intentionality which transpires, if it does transpire, below the level of mind. I take no position on it at the moment. Dispositionality would count as physical intentionality.) 

Suppose a neighbor asks me about Maxwell Schwarz, a stray cat of our mutual acquaintance, who we haven't seen in a few weeks.    The asking occasions in me a thought of Max, with or without accompanying imagery.  The problem of intentionality is to provide an adequate account of what it is for my thought of Max to be a thought of Max, and of nothing else.  Simply put, what makes my thought of Max a thought of Max?  How is object-directedness (intentionality, the objective reference of episodes of thinking) possible? How does it work? How does the mental act of thinking 'grab onto' a thing whose existence does not depend on my or anyone's thinking?

Why should there be a problem about this?  Well, an episode of thinking is a datable event in my mental life.  But a cat is not.  First of all, no cat is an event. Second, no cat is a content of consciousness. 'Content' suggests containment. The content of a bottle is what's inside it. A cat an object of consciousness but not a content of consciousness.  Cats ain't in the head or in the mind.  Obviously, no cat is spatially inside my skull, or spatially inside my non-spatial mind, and it is only a little less obvious that no cat depends for its existence on my mind:  it's nothing to Max, ontologically speaking,  if me and my mind cease to exist.  He needs for his existence my thinking of him as little as my thinking needs to be about him.  We are external to each other. Cats are physical things out in the physical world.  And yet my thinking  of Max  'reaches'  beyond my mind and targets -- not some cat or other, but a particular cat.  How is this possible?  What must our ontology include for it to be possible?

To get the full flavor of the problem, please observe that my thinking of Max would be unaffected if Max were, unbeknownst to me, to pass out of existence while I was thinking of him.  (He's out on the prowl and a hungry coyote kills him while I am thinking of him.) It would be the very same thought with the very same content and the very same directedness.  But if Max were to cease to exist while a flea was biting him, then the relation of biting would cease to obtain.  So if the obtaining of a relation requires the existence of all its relata, it follows that intentionality is not a relation between a thinker (or his thought) and an external object.  But if intentionality is not a relation, then how are we to account for the fact that intentional states refer beyond themselves to objects that are (typically) transcendent of the mind?

How is it that the act of thinking and its content 'in the mind' hooks onto the thing 'in the world' and in such a way that true judgments can be made about the thing, judgments that articulate the nature and existence of the thing as it is in itself apart from any (finite) thinking directed upon it?

Now it seems to me that any viable solution must respect the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.  This thesis consists of the following subtheses:

A. Words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and the like, considered in their physical being as marks on paper or sounds in the air or carvings in stone (etc.) are entirely lacking in any intrinsic referential, representative, semantic,  or intentional character.  There is nothing in the nature of the mark 'red' that makes it mean red.  After all, it doesn't mean red to a speaker of German.  It doesn't mean anything to  a speaker of German qua speaker of German.  In German 'rot' means red while in English the same sign is in use but has a different meaning.  Clearly, then, marks on paper, pixels on screen, etc. have  no intrinsic sense or reference grounded in their very nature.  It is a matter of convention that they mean what they mean.  And that brings minds into the picture, the minds of those who subscribe to and uphold the linguistic conventions.

B.  So any sense or reference linguistic signs have must be derivative and relational as opposed to intrinsic:  whatever intentionality they have they get from minds that are intrinsically intentional.  Mind is the source of all intelligibility.  Linguistic signs in and of themselves as mere marks and sounds (etc.) are unintelligible. Thinking reference underpins linguistic reference.

C. There can be mind without language, but no language without mind.  Laird Addis puts it like this:

Conscious states can and do occur in beings with no language, and in us with no apparent connection to the fact that we are beings with language.  Thus we may say that "mind explains language" in a logical or philosophical sense: that while it is perfectly intelligible to suppose the existence of beings who have no language but have much the same kinds of conscious states that we have, including introspections of other conscious states, it is unintelligible to suppose the existence of beings who are using language in all of its representative functions and who are also lacking in conscious states.  The very notion of language as a representational system presupposes the notion of mind, but not vice versa. (Natural Signs: A Theory of Intentionality, Temple University Press, 1989, pp. 64-65)

These considerations strike me as decisive. Or are there counter-considerations that 'cancel them out'?

Following Chisholm, et al. and as against Sellars, et al. I subscribe to the broadly logical primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.

But before we can discuss the primacy of the intentional, we must have some idea of (i) what intentionality is and (ii) what the problem of intentionality is.  Very simply, (mental) intentionality  is object-directedness, a feature of some (if not all) of our mental states.  (The qualifier 'mental' leaves open the epistemic possibility of what George Molnar calls physical intentionality which transpires, if it does transpire, below the level of mind. I take no position on it at the moment. Dispositionality would count as physical intentionality.) 

Suppose a neighbor asks me about Maxwell Schwarz, a stray cat of our mutual acquaintance, who we haven't seen in a few weeks.    The asking occasions in me a thought of Max, with or without accompanying imagery.  The problem of intentionality is to provide an adequate account of what it is for my thought of Max to be a thought of Max, and of nothing else.  Simply put, what makes my thought of Max a thought of Max?  How is object-directedness (intentionality, the objective reference of episodes of thinking) possible? How does it work? How does the mental act of thinking 'grab onto' a thing whose existence does not depend on my or anyone's thinking?

Why should there be a problem about this?  Well, an episode of thinking is a datable event in my mental life.  But a cat is not.  First of all, no cat is an event. Second, no cat is a content of consciousness. 'Content' suggests containment. The content of a bottle is what's inside it. A cat an object of consciousness but not a content of consciousness.  Cats ain't in the head or in the mind.  Obviously, no cat is spatially inside my skull, or spatially inside my non-spatial mind, and it is only a little less obvious that no cat depends for its existence on my mind:  it's nothing to Max, ontologically speaking,  if me and my mind cease to exist.  He needs for his existence my thinking of him as little as my thinking needs to be about him.  We are external to each other. Cats are physical things out in the physical world.  And yet my thinking  of Max  'reaches'  beyond my mind and targets -- not some cat or other, but a particular cat.  How is this possible?  What must our ontology include for it to be possible?

To get the full flavor of the problem, please observe that my thinking of Max would be unaffected if Max were, unbeknownst to me, to pass out of existence while I was thinking of him.  (He's out on the prowl and a hungry coyote kills him while I am thinking of him.) It would be the very same thought with the very same content and the very same directedness.  But if Max were to cease to exist while a flea was biting him, then the relation of biting would cease to obtain.  So if the obtaining of a relation requires the existence of all its relata, it follows that intentionality is not a relation between a thinker (or his thought) and an external object.  But if intentionality is not a relation, then how are we to account for the fact that intentional states refer beyond themselves to objects that are (typically) transcendent of the mind?

How is it that the act of thinking and its content 'in the mind' hooks onto the thing 'in the world' and in such a way that true judgments can be made about the thing, judgments that articulate the nature and existence of the thing as it is in itself apart from any (finite) thinking directed upon it?

Now it seems to me that any viable solution must respect the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.  This thesis consists of the following subtheses:

A. Words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and the like, considered in their physical being as marks on paper or sounds in the air or carvings in stone (etc.) are entirely lacking in any intrinsic referential, representative, semantic,  or intentional character.  There is nothing in the nature of the mark 'red' that makes it mean red.  After all, it doesn't mean red to a speaker of German.  It doesn't mean anything to  a speaker of German qua speaker of German.  In German 'rot' means red while in English the same sign is in use but has a different meaning.  Clearly, then, marks on paper, pixels on screen, etc. have  no intrinsic sense or reference grounded in their very nature.  It is a matter of convention that they mean what they mean.  And that brings minds into the picture, the minds of those who subscribe to and uphold the linguistic conventions.

B.  So any sense or reference linguistic signs have must be derivative and relational as opposed to intrinsic:  whatever intentionality they have they get from minds that are intrinsically intentional.  Mind is the source of all intelligibility.  Linguistic signs in and of themselves as mere marks and sounds (etc.) are unintelligible. Thinking reference underpins linguistic reference.

C. There can be mind without language, but no language without mind.  Laird Addis puts it like this:

Conscious states can and do occur in beings with no language, and in us with no apparent connection to the fact that we are beings with language.  Thus we may say that "mind explains language" in a logical or philosophical sense: that while it is perfectly intelligible to suppose the existence of beings who have no language but have much the same kinds of conscious states that we have, including introspections of other conscious states, it is unintelligible to suppose the existence of beings who are using language in all of its representative functions and who are also lacking in conscious states.  The very notion of language as a representational system presupposes the notion of mind, but not vice versa. (Natural Signs: A Theory of Intentionality, Temple University Press, 1989, pp. 64-65)

These considerations strike me as decisive. Or are there counter-considerations that 'cancel them out'?

Rosenberg's Definition of 'Scientism' and the Problem of Defining 'Scientism'

(Written 15 August 2013)

A good deal of nonsense about scientism has been written lately by philosophers and scientists who, apparently unwilling to own up to their embrace of scientism, want to co-opt the term and use it in an idiosyncratic and self-serving way.  Fodor is a recent example among the philosophers and Pinker among the scientists.  (See articles below.) So it is refreshing to encounter Alexander Rosenberg's accurate definition and his forthright acceptance of the view.  (It is the forthrightness that wins my approbation, not the acceptance.)  I quote from James Anderson's review of An Atheist's Guide to Reality:

Science provides all the significant truths about reality, and knowing such truths is what real understanding is all about. … Being scientistic just means treating science as our exclusive guide to reality, to nature—both our own nature and everything else’s. (pp. 7-8)

This comports well with the 'quickie' definition I have stated many times in these pages:

1. Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge.

But note that both Rosenberg's definition and mine need qualification given that 'science' is just the Latin-based word (L. scientia) for the English 'knowledge.'  Surely the following is perfectly vacuous:  "Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is knowledge knowledge, epistemic knowledge."  So I say, nontrivially,

2. Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge.

Among the natural sciences we have, in first place, physics.  And so a really hard-assed scientisticist (to coin a word as barbarous as what it names) might that hold that

3. Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is physics and whatever can be reduced to physics.

But it would be more plausible  for the scientisticist to wax latitudinarian and include among the natural sciences physics, chemistry, biology, etc. and their specializations and offshoots such as quantum mechanics, electrochemistry, neurobiology, and what all else.  He ought also, for the sake of plausibility, to drop the idea that all natural sciences reduce to physics.  (It might be difficult to write a textbook on plant physiology that employed only concepts from physics.)  So definition (2) is to be preferred to (3).  But (2) is still a rather strong claim, so it is advisable to distinguish between strong and weak scientism:

4. Strong scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge.

5. Weak scientism is the view that, while the 'hard' sciences are the epistemic gold standard, other fields of inquiry are not without some value, though they are vastly inferior to the hard sciences and not worthy of full credence.

(For the strong v. weak distinction, cf. J. P. Moreland, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism, SCM 2009, p. 6.  My review of Moreland here.)

Rosenberg, judging by the above quotation, plumps for strong scientism.  It is this strain that I have under my logical microscope.

To illustrate the strong v. weak distinction, consider political 'science.'  Does it give us knowledge?  On strong scientism no; on weak scientism yes.

At this point we should ask what exactly makes the so-called 'hard' sciences of physics, etc. hard.  'Hard' does not mean (or does not primarily mean) that they are difficult to master and even more difficult to make a contribution to; it means  that the criteria they must satisfy to count as science are extremely stringent. 

This useful article lists the following five characteristics of science in the strict and eminent sense:

1. Clearly defined terminology.
2. Quantifiability.
3. Highly controlled conditions. "A scientifically rigorous study maintains direct control over as many of the factors that influence the outcome as possible. The experiment is then performed with such precision that any other person in the world, using identical materials and methods, should achieve the exact same result."
4. Reproducibility. "A rigorous science is able to reproduce the same result over and over again. Multiple researchers on different continents, cities, or even planets should find the exact same results if they precisely duplicated the experimental conditions."
5. Predictability and Testability. "A rigorous science is able to make testable predictions."

These characteristics set the bar for strict science very high.  For example, is climate science science according to these criteria?  Or is it more of a mishmash of science and leftist ideology? I'll leave you to ponder that question. Hint: take a close look at #s 3 and 4. There are branches of physics that cannot satisfy all five criteria.  But most of physics and chemistry meets the standard.  How about evolutionary biology?  Does it satisfy #s 3 and 4?

Is political science science according to these criteria?  Obviously not. Political Scientists are Lousy Forecasters. 

Am I suggesting that the only real knowledge is rigorously scientific knowledge?  Of course not.  Consider the knowledge we find in the useful article to which I linked.  There is no doubt in my mind that each of the five criteria the author mentions is a criterion of science in the strictest sense.  (I leave open the question whether there are other criteria).  Now how do we know that?  By performing repeatable experiments in highly controlled conditions?  No.  By making testable predictions? No.  The knowledge embodied in (1)-(5) is clearly not natural-scientific knowledge.  It does not satisfy the above criteria. 

We know that (1)-(5) are criteria of genuine science by reflecting on  scientific practice and isolating its characteristics.  When we do that we engage in the philosophy of science.  Since some of the philosophy of science gives us genuine knowledge about natural science, knowledge that it not itself natural-scientific knowledge, it cannot be the case that all genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge.

One might respond by insisting that the knowledge embodied in (1)-(5) is natural-scientific despite its failure to satisfy the above five criteria.  But then one would be arbitrarily broadening the scope of natural-scientific knowledge which in turn would render (4) less definite and less interesting.  Broaden it enough and you approach vacuity. You approach the tautology, "The only genuine knowledge is knowledge."

Mathematics poses another problem for (4).  Mathematics  is not a natural science.  Empirical observation is no part of it.  Nor is experiment.  Mathematicians qua mathematicians do not make testable predictions about future events in the physical world.  If a mathematician were to predict that a certain theorem will be proven within ten year's time, he would not be making a prediction in mathematics about a mathematical object, but a prediction about psychological and physical events: he would be predicting that some mathematician would undergo a series of mental states that he would then commit to paper by physical acts of writing. And yet mathematical knowledge is genuine knowledge.

So what can a strong scientisticist do?  He can water down his definition:

5. Strong scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge plus mathematics.

But why stop there?    Mathematicians construct proofs.  Proofs are valid arguments.  Not all arguments are valid.  The distinction between validity and invalidity falls within the purview of logic.  Now logic is a body of knowledge, but it is not natural-scientific knowledge.  So logic is another counterexample to (4).  Will our scientisticist advance to

6. Strong scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge plus mathematics plus logic.

At this point someone might object that mathematics and logic are not knowledge but merely systems of notation that we use to help us make sense of physical phenomena.  And so, while natural science studies natural reality, there is no reality that mathematicians and logicians study.  Well, do those who make such claims claim to know that they are true? If yes, then they lay claim to knowledge which is neither natural-scientific nor mathematical nor logical.  They lay claim to philosophical knowledge, specifically, metaphysical knowledge.  They lay claim to knowledge as to what counts as real.  Will they then move to the following definition?

7. Strong scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge plus the philosophical knowledge that there is no logical or mathematical reality.

If they do advance to (7) then they are hoist by their own petard, or, to change the metaphor , they have completely eviscerated their own thesis.  (What's worse, to be hanged or disemboweled?)  After all, the whole point of scientism is to place a restriction on what counts as genuine knowledge.  'Genuine' is strictly redundant; I use it for emphasis.  Pleonasm is at most a peccadillo.)

Introspective knowedge is yet another counterexample to strong scientism as codified in definition (4).  The certain knowledge of my own mental states that introspection affords me is knowledge if anything is.  Which is better known: that I feel head-ache pain or that I have a brain?  The first, obviously.  But introspective knowledge is not natural-scientific knowledge.  The latter type of knowledge is knowledge via the outer senses, suitably extended by such instruments as microscopes and telescopes.  But introspective knowledge is not knowledge via the outer senses taken singly or in combination.  Suppose I see myself in a mirror wearing a sad expression and  thereby come to the knowledge that I am sad. That is is not introspective knowledge.  Introspective knowledge is first-person knowledge of one's own mental states via inner sense.

Since introspective knowledge is genuine knowledge, strong scientism is plainly false.

Memory is another source of genuine knowledge that refutes strong scientism.  How do I know that I had lunch at 12:30 and then read Gustav Bergmann's "Some Remarks on the Ontology of Ockham" while smoking a fine cigar?  Because I remember those events.  Memorial knowledge is not natural-scientific knowledge.  If you think it is, describe the repeatable experiments you had to perform to come to the knowledge that you had lunch.  And yet memory is a source of genuine knowledge.  It is of course not infallible, but then neither is sense-perception on which natural science is ultimately based.

And what of history?  Do we not have a vast amount of knowledge of the past?  We do, but it is not natural-scientific knowledge.   

There is also the obvious point that strong scientism is self-vitiating.  Is the proposition All  knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge scientifically knowable?  No, it isn't.  Therefore, strong scientism, by its own criterion, is not knowable.  Is it true, but not knowable?  If you say that it is, then you must countenance other propositions that are true but not knowable.  If strong scientism is put forth as a linguistic recommendation as to how we ought to use 'knowledge,' then I decline the suggestion on the ground of its arbitrarity.

Finally, there is our knowledge of value and of right and wrong.  If strong scientism is true, then we cannot claim to know that natural-scientific knowledge is a value, or that knowledge is better than ignorance, or that kindness is to be preferred over cruelty, or that vivisection is morally wrong, or that the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany were unjust.

But aren't these things better known than that strong scientism is true? 

Scientism is not science.  It is a philosophical claim about science that finds no support in any science.  What's more, it is plainly false, as I have just shown. 

"And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us" (John 1:14)

Let us meditate this Christmas morning on the sheer audacity of the idea that God would not only enter this world of time and misery, but come into it in the most humble manner possible, inter faeces et urinam nascimur, born between feces and urine, entering between the legs of a poor girl in a stable.  Just like one of us, a slob like one of us. The notion is so mind-boggling that one is tempted to credit it for this very reason, for its affront to Reason, and to the natural man, accepting it because it is absurd,  or else dismissing  it as the height of absurdity. A third possibility is to accept it despite its being absurd, and a fourth is to argue that rational sense can be made of it. The conflict of these approaches, and of the positions within each, only serves to underscore the mind-boggling quality of the notion, a notion that to the eye and mind of faith is FACT.

The Most High freely lowers himself, accepting the indigence and misery of material existence, including a short temporal career that ends with the ultimate worldly failure: execution by the political authorities.  And not a civilized Athenian execution by hemlock as was the fate of that other great teacher of humanity, but execution by the worst method the brutal Romans could devise, crucifixion.

In the Incarnation the Word nailed itself to the flesh in anticipation of later being nailed to the wood of the cross to suffer the ultimate fate of everything material and composite: dissolution. Christ dies like each of us will die, utterly, alone, abandoned.  But then the mystery: He rises again.  Is this the central conundrum of Christianity?  He rises, but not as a pure spirit.  He rises body and soul.

God is the Word ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word WAS God"); the Word becomes flesh; the flesh nailed to wood becomes dead matter and nothing Wordly or Verbal or Logical or Spiritual or Sense Bearing, and so next-to-nothing; but then the next-to-nothing rises and ascends body and soul to the Father by the power of the Father.  Christ rises bodily and ascends bodily.  A strange idea: bodily ascension out of the entire spatio-temporal-bodily matrix!  He ascends to the Father who is pure spirit.  So, in ascending, Christ brings matter, albeit a transformed or transfigured matter, into the spiritual realm which must therefore be amenable to such materialization. It must permit it, be patient of it.  The divine spiritual milieu cannot be essentially impervious to material penetration.

Before the creation and before the Incarnation of the Creator into the created order divine spirit had the power to manifest itself materially, and in the Incarnation the power not only to manifest itself materially but to become material.  The divine Word becomes flesh; the Word does not merely manifest itself in a fleshly vehicle.  It becomes that vehicle and comes to suffer the fate of all such vehicles, dissolution.  The divine spirit was always already apt for materialization: it bore this possibility within it from the beginning.  It was always already in some way disposed toward materialization.  On the other hand, matter was always already apt for spiritualization. 

We humans know from experience that we can in some measure spiritualize ourselves and indeed freely and by our own power.  We know ourselves to be spiritual beings while also knowing ourselves to be animals, animated matter, necessarily dependent on inanimate matter including air, water, dead plants and dead meat. (When an animal eats another animal alive, the first is after the matter of the second, not after its being animated.) 

Whether or not we exercise our severely limited power of self-spiritualization, we are spiritual animals whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not:  we think.  Each one of us is a hunk of thinking meat.  We are meaning meat.  How is this possible? The matter of physics cannot think.  But we are thinking matter.  This is the mystery of the entanglement of spirit and matter in us.  We live it and we experience it.

We could call it the 'The Little Incarnation.'  Mind is incarnated, enfleshed, in us.  The Little Word, the Little Logos, has always already been incarnated is us, separating us as by an abyss from the rest of the animals. Here, in us, we have an ANALOGY to the Incarnation proper.  In the latter, the Second Person of the Trinity does not take on a human body merely, but an individual human nature body and soul.  So I speak of an analogy.  Incarnation in the case of Christ is not a mere enfleshment or embodiment.  The Little Incarnation in us is the apparently necessary  enfleshment of our spiritual acts in animal flesh.

The mystery of the entanglement of spirit and matter in us reflects the mystery of the entanglement of spirit and matter in God.  Divine spirit is pregnant with matter, and accepting of the risen matter of Christ, but matter is also pregnant with divine spirit.  Mary is the mother of God.  A material being gives birth to God.  This is how the Word, who is God, is made flesh to dwell among us for our salvation from meaninglessness and abandonment to a material world that is merely material.

Matter in Mary is mater Dei.  Matter in Mary is mother and matrix of the birth of God.

For a different take on the meaning of Christmas, see my Incarnation: A Mystical Approach?

Conservatives, Liberals, and Happiness

It turns out that conservatives are happier than liberals.  But why?

Conservative explanation.  Marriage and religious faith are conducive to happiness.  More conservatives are married than liberals, and more practice a religion. Ergo, conservatives as a group are happier than liberals as a group.

Liberal explanation.  Conservatives are happier because they turn a blind eye to the injustices of the world.  They are oblivious to inequality.  And when they do see it,they rationalize it. Ignorance is bliss.  Conservatives naively believe that people can better themselves by the practice of the old virtues of frugality, perseverance, hard work, self-control, deferral of gratification, and the like, when the truth is that people are products of their environment and need government help to do well.

As a conservative, I of course consider the liberal explanation to be bogus.

Do we conservatives, ostrich-like, ignore injustice?  The answer depends on what one takes justice to be.  The liberal tendency is to see justice as fairness, and to understand fairness in terms of material equality, equality of wealth and equality of power.  A just society for a liberal, then, is one in which material inequality is either eliminated or severely mitigated.  Along these lines the prominent political philosopher John Rawls puts forth his famous Difference Principle the gist of which is that social and economic inequalities in a society are justified only if they benefit the worst off, i.e., only if the worst off are better of than they would have been without the inequality.

But why should my having more than you be considered unjust unless it benefits you?  Of course, my having more than you will typically benefit you. "A rising tide lifts all boats."  

My roof was leaking  in two places. Now I could have done an amateur patch job myself: roofing ain't rocket science.  But I decided to have the entire house professionally re-roofed with all that that entails in terms of new flashing, etc.  My ability to afford such an expensive job gave support to a local company and all its jobbers, not to mention the crew of workers who had employment for a week.  And having extra dough, I laid $60 in tips on the workers.  I could give a hundred examples of how my having more than certain others benefited those others. 

When's the last time a poor man made a loan to a friend, or a contribution to a charity?  How many poor people give people jobs?  And of course people like me who are modestly well-off due to hard work and the practice of the old virtues have been benefited in innumerable ways by people who are wealthy.  Think of those who have endowed art museums and university chairs. 

But suppose, contrary to fact, that my having more did not benefit others. Why should that affect the justice of my having more?  If I work harder, longer, and smarter than you, and practice the old-fashioned virtues that liberals mock even when they themselves owe their success to them, then it is a good bet that I will end up with more than you.  Unless I engage in force or fraud I am entitled to what I earn or what I inherit or what falls out of the sky into my lap.  Take my intelligence and my good genes.  Do I deserve them?  No, but I have a right to them. I have a right to them and right to what I acquire by their use. 

I grant that a certain amount of luck is ingredient in every success.  But I have a right to my good luck even though I don't deserve it.  Of course, liberals often 'see' luck where there is no luck at all but  hard work and the exercise of conservative virtues.  Hence the conservative saying, "The harder I work the luckier I become."   The point is that what the liberal misconstrues as luck is really not luck at all but effort.  Should we help life's unlucky?  I should think so.  But not if the helping is really a harming, a making of the recipients of charity weaker and more dependent.  

Liberals consider it legitimate for the state to use its coercive powers to promote material equality by taking from the highly productive and giving to the unproductive and less productive.  This cannot work in the long run.  The well-off will resist being ripped off by government functionaries who line their own pockets and feather their nests with perquisites purchased at taxpayer expense.  Many will expatriate.  Government, it is clear, is too often a hustle like any hustle rigged by those who benefit from it for their own benefit.  Government needn't be a hustle, but too often it is, which is why vigilance on the part of the citizenry is necessary to keep it in check.

The value of liberty trumps that of material equality.  This is a key difference between conservative and libertarian on the one side and leftist on the other.  Naturally I believe in formal equality, equality of treatment, treating like cases in a like manner, not discriminating on the basis of irrelevant criteria such as race, sex, or creed.

Of course, it depends on the creed. If you are a radical Muslim out to impose sharia and subvert our way of life, and act upon your beliefs, then you ought to be deported, or jailed, or executed, depending on the nature of your actions.  You should never have been let in in the first place.  After all, toleration, though a good thing, has limits, and if you do not see that it has limits then you are hopelessly foolish.  In a word, you are a liberal.

For more on toleration and its limits see my aptly titled Toleration category.

The Divine Job Description

What jobs would a being have to perform to qualify as God?

I count four sorts of job, ontological, epistemological, axiological, and soteriological, the first two more 'Athenian,' the second two more 'Hierosolymic.' The fruitful tension between Athens and Jersualem is a background presupposition. (The tension is fruitful in that it helps explain the vitality of the West; its lack in the Islamic world being part of the explanation of the latter's inanition.) This macro-tension between philosophy and Biblical revelation is mirrored microcosmically in human beings in the tension, fruitful or not, between reason and faith, autonomy and authority. (Man is a microcosm as Nicholas Cusanus maintained.)

1. Ontological Jobs. Why does anything exist at all? To be precise: why does anything contingent exist at all? A God worth his salt must play a role, indeed the main role, in any explanation. In brief: the reason why contingent beings exist is because God, a necessary being, (i) created them out of nothing and (ii) maintains them in existence. God is thus the unsourced source of all finite and contingent existents. Maybe nothing does this job. It might be that the existence of contingent beings is a factum brutum. But nothing could count as God that did not do this explanatory job. Or at least so I claim.

But I hear an objection. "Why couldn't there be a god who was a contingent being among contingent beings or even a contingent god among a plurality of contingent gods?" I needn't deny that there are such minor deities, not that I believe in any. I needn't even deny that they could play an explanatory role or a soteriological role. (I discuss soteriology in #4 below.) My argument would be that they cannot play an ultimate explanatory role or an ultimate soteriological role. Suppose a trio of contingent gods, working together, created the universe. I would press the question: where did they come from? If each of these gods is possibly such as not to exist, then it is legitimate to ask why each does exist. And if each is contingent and in need of explanation, then the same goes for the trio. (Keep your shirts on, muchachos, that is not the fallacy of composition.)

If you say that they always existed as a matter of brute fact, then no ultimate explanation has been given. Suppose time is infinite in both directions and x exists at every time. It doesn't follow that x necessarily exists. To think otherwise would be to confuse the temporal with the modal. An ultimate explanation must terminate in a being whose existence is self-explanatory, where a self-explanatory being is one that exists as a matter of metaphysical necessity and thus has no need of explanation in terms of anything distinct from it.

"Perhaps an ultimate explanation in your sense is not to be had." Well then, the ontological job -- the job of explaining why anything contingent exists at all -- won't get done, and there is no God. Here I may be approaching a stand-off with my interlocutor. I say: nothing counts as God unless it does all four types of job, including the ontological job. My opponent, however, balks at my criterion. He does not see why the God-role can be played only by an absolutely unique being who exists a se and thus by metaphysical necessity.

If you believe in a contingent god or a plurality of contingent gods, and stop there, then I can conceive of something greater, a God who exists of metaphysical necessity and who not only is one without a second, but one without the possibility of a second. But this just brings us back to the Anselmian conception of God as 'that than which no greater can be conceived,' God as the greatest conceivable being, or the maximally perfect being, or the ens reallisimum/perfectissimum, etc. This conception of deity is very Greek and very unanthropomorphic residing as it does in the conceptual vicinity of the Platonic Good and the Plotinian One. But that is what I like about it and my interlocutor doesn't. It's inhuman, 'faceless,' impersonal, he complains. I prefer to say that God is transpersonal and transhuman -- not below but beyond the personal and the human.

As I have said before, religion is about transcendence and transformation, not about a duplicate world behind the scenes, a hinterworld if you will. Whatever God is, he can't be a Big Guy in the Sky. And whatever survival of bodily death might be, it is not the perpetuation of these petty selves of ours. An immortality worth wanting is one in which we are transformed and transfigured. The proper desire for immortality is not an egotistical desire but a desire to be purged of one's egotism. This is an extremely important point typically missed by atheists and mortalists.

2. Epistemological Jobs. What accounts for the intelligibility of the world and what is its source? A God worth his salt (salary) must play a role, indeed the main role, in any explanation of why the world can be understood by us. The explanation, in outline, is that the world is intelligible because it it is the creation of an intelligent being. As an embodiment and expression of the divine intelligence of the intellectus archetypus it is intelligible to an intellectus ectypus. Maybe the world has no need of a ground or source of its intelligibility. Some will say, incoherently, that we are the source of all intelligibility and project it outward onto what is in itself devoid of intelligibility. But if the world is intelligible, and if this intelligibility is not a projection by us, and if the world has a ground of its intelligibility, then God must play a role, the main role, in the explanation of this intelligibility. Nothing could be called God that did not play this role.

Now if God is the ultimate source of intelligibility and the ultimate ground of ontic truth and, as such, the ultimate condition of the possibility of propositional truth as adequatio intellectus ad rem, then he cannot be just one more intelligible among intelligibles any more than he can be just one more being among beings. A God worthy of the name must be Being itself (self-existent Existence) and Intelligibility itself (self-intelligent Intelligibility), and ontological truth. And so God could not be a contingent being, or a material being, or a collection of contingent material beings. He couldn't be what Mormons apparently believe God to be.

3. Axiological Jobs. By a similar pattern of reasoning, I would argue that nothing could count as God that did not function as the unsourced source of all goodness and the ultimate repository of all value. God is not just another thing that has value, but the paradigm case of value. God is not a good being, but Goodness itself in its prime instance.

4. Soteriological Jobs. Every religion, to count as a religion, must include a doctrine of salvation, a soteriology. Religions exist to cater to the felt need for salvation. It is not essential to a religion that it be theistic, as witness the austere forms of Buddhism, but it is essential to every religion as I define the term that it have a soteriology. A religion must show a way out of our unsatisfactory predicament, and one is not religious unless one perceives our life in this world as indeed a predicament, one that is profoundly unsatisfactory, but also one from which escape is possible.  Sarvam dukkham! as the First Noble Truth has it. I would go a step further and add that out unsatisfactory predicament is one that we cannot escape from by our own power. Self-power alone won't cut it; other-power is also needed. 'Works' are not sufficient, though I suspect they are necessary.

When it comes to salvation we can ask four questions: of what? from what? to what? by what? Here is one possible answer. Salvation is of the soul, not the body, or at least not the gross body; from our unsatisfactory present predicament of sin, ignorance, and meaninglessness; to a state of moral perfection, intellectual insight, peace, happiness, and meaning; by an agent possessing the power to bring about the transformation of the individual soul. God is the agent of salvation. To be worth his salt he must possess the power to save us. Since the only salvation worth wanting involves a complete overhaul and cleansing of our present wretched selves, this God will have to have impressive powers. He cannot be a supplier of material or quasi-material goodies in some hinterworld in which we carry on in much the same way as we do here, though with the negatives removed. The crudest imaginable paradise is the carnal paradise of the Muslims with its 72 black-eyed virgins who never tire out the lucky effer; but if I am not badly mistaken, Mormon conceptions are also crudely materialistic and superstitiously anthropomorphic to boot.

What I'm driving towards is the thesis that a God who can play the ultimate soteriological role cannot be some minor deity among minor deities who just happens to exist. He must be a morally perfect being with the power to confer moral perfection. This moral and soteriological perfection would seem to require as their ground ontological and epistemological perfection. Not that I have quite shown this . . . .

Is It Sometimes Rational to Believe on Insufficient Evidence?

I should think so.

The notion that we should always and everywhere apportion belief to evidence in such a way that we affirm only that for which we have sufficient evidence ignores the fact that belief for beings like us subserves action. If one acted only on those beliefs for which one had sufficient evidence one  would not act as one must to live well.

 

When a young person believes that he or she can do such-and-such, it is almost always on the basis of insufficient evidence.  And yet such belief beyond the evidence is a sine qua non of success.  There are two necessary conditions of success in life: one must believe that what one proposes to do is worth doing, and one must believe that one is capable of doing it.  In both cases one believes and acts on evidence that could hardly be called sufficient. 

As a young man observing my professors, I said to myself, "I can do this and I can do it better!"  (It can be advantageous to have mediocre teachers!) My belief in myself was not without evidence but surely was not grounded in sufficient evidence. (Suppose we agree that sufficient evidence for proposition p renders p more likely than not.)  My believing in myself was a believing well beyond the evidence. But my belief in self, even unto cockiness, was sine qua non for my success.  Effort follows belief.  In cases like these, belief is a matter of the will: one chooses to believe that a certain good is attainable despite the insufficiency of the evidence the intellect can gather at the time.

This strikes me as a good maxim:  Don't let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing than not believing. 

Let's consider another example.

The New Neighbors

What evidence do I have that my new neighbors are morally decent people? Since they have just moved in, my evidence base is exiguous indeed and far from sufficient to establish that they are decent people. (Assume that some precisifying definition of 'decent' is on the table.) Should I suspend judgment and behave in a cold, skeptical, stand-offish way toward them? ("Prove that you are not a scumbag, and then I'll talk to you.") Should I demand of them 'credentials' and letters of recommendation before having anything to do with them? Either of these approaches would be irrational.

A rational being wants good relations with those with whom he must live in close proximity and whose help he may need. Wanting good relations, he must choose means that are conducive to that end. Knowing something about human nature, he knows that 'giving the benefit of the doubt' is the wise course when it comes to establishing relations with other people. If you begin by impugning the integrity of the other guy, he won't like you.  One must assume the best about others at the outset and adjust downwards only later and on the basis of evidence to the contrary. But note that my initial belief that my neighbors are decent people -- a belief that I must have if I am to act neighborly toward them -- is not warranted by anything that could be called sufficient evidence. Holding that belief, I believe way beyond the evidence. And yet that is the rational course.

So again we see that in some cases, to refuse to believe beyond the evidence is positively irrational. A theory of rationality adequate for the kind of beings we are cannot require that belief be always and everywhere apportioned to evidence.

Anthony Flood on Philosophy as Misosophy

(Written 23 June 2013)

I wrote an entry on the main sorts of motive that might lead one who takes religion seriously to take up the  study of philosophy.  I distinguished five main motives: the apologetic, the critical, the debunking, the transcensive, and the substitutional.  But there is also the move away from philosophy to religion and its motives. One motive is the suspicion that philosophy is a snare and a delusion, a blind alley; there is the sense that it cannot be what its noble name suggests, namely, the love of wisdom, and that he who seeks wisdom must forsake Athens for Jerusalem.  There is the sense that philosophy is, in truth, misosophy, the hatred of wisdom.  This is an ancient theme, that of the irreconcilable antagonism between religion and philosophy, one traceable back to Tertullian at least. (See Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, Charles Scribners, 1938, Chapter One.)

Anthony Flood has been an off-and-on correspondent of mine since the early days of the blogosphere: I believe we first made contact in 2004.  I admire him because he "studies everything" as per my masthead motto, "Study everything, join nothing."  As far as I can judge from my eremitic outpost, Tony is a genuine truth-seeker, a restless quester who has canvassed many, many  positions with an open mind and a willingness to admit errors and change his positions. (The man was at one time a research assistant for Herbert Aptheker!)  Better a perpetual seeker than a premature finder.  Here below we are ever on the way: in statu viae. 

Tony's views have changed over the years I have known him and it is his present (2013) attitude toward philosophy that  I wish to examine here.  In particular, I will evaluate his claim that philosophy is misosophy.  Is this right?  Or is it rather the case that religion when opposed to philosophy is misology, the hatred of reason?  Is philosophy misosophy or is religion misology?  That is  a stark, if somewhat inaccurate, was of defining the problematic. I will quote liberally from Tony's position statement and then comment.

The position I've come to has been percolating in my mind for years.  It intruded upon my thinking intermittently, but until recently I was unable to remove certain obstacles to my assent. [. . .] The critique of philosophy worked out by   Gregory L. Bahnsen . . .  however, has at last won my allegiance . . . 

[. . .]

The gist of Bahnsen’s critique is that philosophy as it has been practiced is virtually at enmity with Christ, who is the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24).  To the degree that it is op-posed to Christ, to that degree it is misosophy, the hatred rather than the love of wisdom.  For the Christian, wisdom is not an abstract virtue, but a divine person.  To pretend indifference to Christ is pretend indifference to the only Wisdom worth having; to hate Christ is to hate wisdom, that is, to hate him in whom all the treasures of wisdom are hid (Col 2:3); and to hate wisdom is to love death (Prov 8:36). Christians may continue to use “philosophy” and its cognates, but they reserve the right to qualify that usage.  Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis.

Tony hasn't given us the "gist" of Bahnsen's critique but the conclusion at which he arrives; the gist of the critique would have to contain a summary of the reasons for the conclusion.  Setting that quibble aside, I move to a substantive point.  While it is true that for a Christian Christ is the source of all wisdom and therefore, in a sense, wisdom itself, saying this is consistent with maintaining that philosophy is the love of wisdom.  The philosopher qua philosopher seeks wisdom using his unaided reason, unaided, that is, by the data of revelation.  It is not that the philosopher qua philosopher rejects the data of revelation or the very idea that there could be such a thing as divine revelation; it is rather that he makes no use of it qua philosopher.  (To save keystrokes I won't keep repeating the qualification 'qua philosopher' but it remains in force.)  To borrow a term from Edmund Husserl, the philosopher 'brackets' revelation.  I see nothing in the nature of philosophy to prevent a philosopher from arriving at the conclusion that wisdom is ultimately a person.  So my first question to Tony would be: Why must philosophy be opposed to wisdom when wisdom is taken to be a divine person?

Admittedly, philosophy cannot bring us to Wisdom in its fullness, especially if wisdom is a divine person, but it hardly follows that it cannot serve as a propaedeutic to a participation in this Wisdom.  Here is a crude analogy.  The menu is not the meal.  But the menu is not opposed to the meal.  The menu provides access to the meal via verbal description, the very same meal that one goes on to eat.  It is not as if there are two meals, the meal of the menu writer and the meal of the eater.  There is exactly one meal accessed in two ways, the first obviously inferior to the second. (If you don't get the analogy, forget it.)

There is an important point of terminology that we need to discuss.  Tony claims that Christians have the right to use 'philosophy' in their way as meaning the love of Christ.  (After all, if wisdom is Christ, then the love of wisdom is the love of Christ.)  I deny this right.  'Philosophy' means what it means and that is to be discerned from the practice of the great philosophers beginning with the ancient Greeks.  To know what philosophy is one reads Plato, for starters, and not just for starters.  Philosophy is what is done in those dialogues and what has arisen by way of commentary on and critique of what was done in those famous discussions.  "Philosophy is Plato and Plato philosophy." (Emerson)  I characterize philosophy here.  My characterization begins with this sentence: "Philosophy is not fundamentally a set of views but an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need to know the truth, applies discursive reason to the data of life in an attempt to arrive at the ultimate truth about them." 

The Christian, therefore, is not free to use 'philosophy' and cognates in an idiosyncratic way.  Or rather he is free to do so but if he does he causes confusion and makes communication difficult if not impossible.  'Philosophy' does not and cannot mean 'love of Christ.' This is not to say that one cannot move beyond philosophy to Christian faith.  One can, and perhaps one should.  But nothing is to be gained by tampering with the established sense of 'philosophy.' 

Tony writes, "Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis."  I object to this sentence because of the misuse of the word 'philosopher.'  Tony has decided that the philosopher, in his sense, is a lover of Christ, and that a philosopher (in the proper sense) is a misosopher and thus a hater of Christ.  But he has no right to hijack the terminology, nor, as regards the substantive question, has he shown that philosophy is opposed to Christian wisdom.

Autonomy versus Heteronomy/Theonomy

We now come to the crux of the matter: the tension between the autonomy of finite reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith.  This is, in essence, the tension between Athens and Jerusalem.  Whether this tension is an opposition or contradiction, as Tertullian thought, and as Tony seems to think, remains to be seen, and cannot be assumed at the outset. (I set aside the tension between Athens and Benares, the discussion of which does not belong here, even though that too is a tension between philosophy and a kind of religion.)  Finite reason, reason as we find it within ourselves, presumes to judge heaven and earth and everything in between; it would play "the spectator of all time and existence," to borrow a beautiful line from Plato's Republic.  But it must be admitted that the results have been meager.  Has even one substantive philosophical question been resolved to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners in two and one half millennia?  No.  What we have instead are endless controversies and the strife of systems.  Magnificent in aspiration, philosophy is miserable in execution.   Philosophy has proven impotent to provide us with the knowledge we seek, the knowledge of ultimates, and in particular salvific knowledge, knowledge that caters not merely to our theoretical needs but to our deepest existential ones as well, knowledge that does not merely inform us, but transforms us.

To make up for the infirmity of finite reason we must look elsewhere to a source of succor lying beyond the human horizon.  And so reason, while remaining within the sphere of immanence and autonomy, raises the question of the possibility of revelation, the possibility of an irruption into the sphere of immanence from beyond the human-all-too-human.  The possibility is entertained that the true nomos is theonomos, and that what at first appears as heteronomy is in reality theonomy.  The possibility is entertained that the prideful intellect must fall silent and humbly submit to God's Word.

But at this juncture we encounter what Josiah Royce calls the religious paradox or

The Paradox of Revelation. Suppose someone claims to have received a divine communication regarding the divine will, the divine plan, the need for salvation, the way to salvation, or any related matter. This person can be asked, "By what marks do you personally distinguish a divine revelation from any other sort of report?" (Josiah Royce, The Sources of Religious Insight, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912, pp. 22-23)

How is a putative revelation authenticated? By what marks or criteria do we recognize it as genuine? The identifying marks must be in the believer's mind prior to his acceptance of the revelation as valid. For it is by testing the putative revelation against these marks that the believer determines that it is genuine. One needs "a prior acquaintance with the nature and marks and, so to speak, signature of the divine will." (p. 25)

But how can a creature who needs saving lay claim to this prior acquaintance with the marks of genuine revelation? The paradox in a nutshell is that it seems that only revelation could provide one with what one needs to be able to authenticate a report as revelation.  Royce:

Faith, and the passive and mysterious intuitions of the devout, seem to depend on first admitting that we are naturally blind and helpless and ignorant, and worthless to know, of ourselves, any saving truth; and upon nevertheless insisting that we are quite capable of one very lofty type of knowledge -- that we are capable, namely, of knowing God's voice when we hear it, of distinguishing a divine revelation from all other reports, of being sure, despite all our worthless ignorance, that the divine higher life which  seems to speak to us in our moments of intuition is what it  declares itself to be. If, then, there is a pride of intellect, does there not seem to be an equal pride of faith, an equal pretentiousness involved in undertaking to judge that certain of our least articulate intuitions are infallible? Surely here is a genuine problem, and it is a problem for the reason. (103)

Is it a genuine problem or not? Can the church's teaching authority be invoked to solve the problem? Suppose a point of doctrine regarding salvation and the means thereto is being articulated at a church council. The fathers in attendance debate among themselves, arrive at a result, and claim that it is inspired and certified by the Holy Spirit. But by what marks do they authenticate a putative deliverance of the Holy Spirit as a genuine deliverance? How do they know that the Holy Spirit is inspiring them and not something else such as their own subconscious desire for a certain result?  This is exactly Royce's problem.

The problem, then, is this.  Reason is weak and philosophy, whose engine is unaided reason,  cannot deliver the goods.  The salvific wisdom we seek it cannot supply.  It remains an interminable and inconclusive seeking, but never a finding; it remains forever the (erothetic) love of wisdom, not its possession.  So we look beyond philosophy to the data of revelation.  But how do we authenticate such data?  How do we distinguish pseudo-revelation from the genuine article?  By what marks is it known?  We are thrown back upon our infirm reasoning powers to sort this out.

So, while confessing in all humility the infirmity of reason, we have no option but to rely on it as we do when, by its means, we come to admit the infirmity of reason.  Though weak, reason is strong enough to acquire a genuine insight into its own weakness and limitations  and the need for supplementation ab extra.  But this supplementation by revelation cannot go untested.  Tony may be right that we need to "repent" and submit our wills to God's, but what that will is has to be discerned, and there is no way around the fact that it is up to us to do the discerning using the God-given equipment we possess, as infirm as it may be. 

But let's hear what Flood has to say:

From 1969, when I first began to read philosophy (as it is commonly called), I had very rarely questioned the presumption of autonomy exhibited by my models in that field, whereby the human mind posits itself as the final judge of what is real, true, and good.  I did not question that presumptive stance even when the provisional conclusions I arrived at were professedly Christian-theistic and therefore incompatible with it.  The way I approached “God” did not ethically comport with wanting God.  I played it safe, hedged my bets, looking for nothing more than a piece of metaphysical furniture to complete the interior design of my latest philosophical mansion. The irony of this discrepancy was lost on me, at least until recently.

What Tony seems to be saying here is that when we approach God via philosophy, i.e., via finite discursive reason, relying only on those evidences that can be validated from within the sphere of immanence, eschewing any such exogenic input as the data of revelation, what we arrive at is not the true God, but 'God,' a mere furnishing in the mansion of immanence, a mansion that is perhaps better compared to a doghouse.  Tony thus seems to be sounding a very old theme, that of the opposition of the God of the philosophers to the the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  I myself do not accept this opposition for reasons I supply in Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers. 

To revert to the crude analogy presented above, there are not two meals, the meal of the menu-writer and the meal of the eater.  One and the same meal is 'accessed' in two different ways, via description and via 'ingestion.' What the menu-writer describes, assuming the accuracy of the description,  is not something that exists only in his mind, a bit of mental furniture, but something that exists in reality.  Similarly, when the philosopher speaks of God , he is not speaking of something that exists only in his mind, but of something that exists in reality.  But let's hear some more from Tony:

As I now see it, that loss was not innocent and my present insight is wholly of grace. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10), however, not something tacked on at the end of one’s system.  (Part V of Whitehead’s Process and Reality comes to mind.  So does Chapter XIX of Lonergan’s Insight.)

Human beings, Christian and non-Christian alike, do know things.  They do reason.  They do calculate, induct, deduce, plan, accuse, exonerate, interpret.  They do write histories, novels, and plays. They do compose symphonies and conduct experiments.  They do creatively improvise on canvas, in the sculpture studio, and on the band stand.  But their attempts to account for these facts apart from their dependence upon God have been marvelous failures, for they cannot secure the experience-transcending universal claims on which they rely when they engage in any of those activities.  They ought to acknowledge the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, moral absolutes as gifts of God.  Unless God grants them the spirit of repentance, however, this they will not do, for it is offensive to their posture of autonomy.  But they pay a price for this posture in the coin of rank foolishness.

Ironically, such a critique of philosophy is what one would predict professing Christian philosophers to produce, informed as they are by their awareness of the covenantal relationship they bear to God. Historically, however, what comes under the label “Christian philosophy” is compromised.  Christian philosophers have generally given their blessing to pretenses of neutrality and autonomy, content to conjecture how far the human mind can go under its own steam before grabbing the supernatural rope to take them the rest of the way.  

They can give that blessing, however, only by suppressing awareness (that they otherwise happily acknowledge) that the human being is a created, covenant-bound bearer of the image of God.  That is, Christian philosophers join their enemies in “testing” the hypothesis that Christian theism is at least as “reasonable” as anything else on offer in the marketplace of ideas.  As though any inference at all could be reasonable if Christian theism were not antecedently true.  As though an impersonal matrix of possibility were Lord of all.  I understand why Christianity’s opponents “load” the argument against Christian theism.  But why do Christians follow them? 

In this last paragraph, Tony raises a couple of fascinating questions.  One is whether (to put it in my own way) the necessary truth of the laws of logic presupposes the existence of God.  There are those who have argued such a thing, but, if Tony is right, why bother?  If Jerusalem supplies all the needs of man, who needs Athens?  If reason cannot be relied upon to bring us to any truth at all, then it cannot be relied upon to show that logic presupposes God.  The other question concerns the relation between the modal framework, standardly articulated in terms of 'possible worlds,' and God.  Analytic theists standardly maintain that God exists in all possible worlds.  Does such talk subject God to the modal framework, thereby compromising the divine sovereignty?  Is God lord of all, including the modal framework, or is God subject to the modal framework?  Or neither?

These questions cannot be pursued here, but one comment is in order, and an obvious one it is:  Tony seems merely to beg the question against his opponents.  For example, he just assumes that Athens and Jerusalem are irreconcilably antagonistic  and that the whole truth resides in Jerusalem.  He is free to make these assumptions of course.  No one is compelled to remain within philosophy's smoky rooms.  The door is unlocked and one is free to pass through it.  But then one should not attempt to explain or justify one's exit.  For any such attempt will entangle on in the very thing one is trying to get away from.

Addendum (13 November 2018) 

Re-reading and re-evaluating five years later I find that I still object to Flood's linguistic recommendation that 'philosophy' be used to refer to the love of Christ. Granted, philosophy is the love of wisdom and the pursuit of wisdom. But it is the pursuit of wisdom by means of  reason unaided by divine revelation.  The italicized phrase is an essential ingredient in any adequate definition of 'philosophy.' It may well be the case that Wisdom is incarnate in the person of Christ; but that this is so cannot be known by the philosopher qua philosopher.  It is a revealed truth if it is a truth.

Furthermore, a philosopher does not hate wisdom if he finds that he cannot, qua philosopher, accept the Christian revelation.  Such a philosopher simply does not acknowledge Christ as the ultimate wisdom.  It is therefore wrong to call him a misosopher and philosophy, properly and traditionally understood, misosophy.

But what I have just written leaves untouched the fundamental problem of how to reconcile the autonomy of reason with the heteronomy of obedient faith. Some will say that they cannot be reconciled, that one must opt for one or the other, for the Athenian life of autonomous reason with its demands for evidence and justification, or for the Hierosolymic life of heteronomous faith and obedient love.

Flood above opts for the latter.  But what could motivate this free opting?  Don't the claims of revealed religion need to be examined and assessed?  Given a plurality of putative revelations, how decide which is the true revelation?  Must not reason play a role here?  On the other hand, reason is weak and unavailing. The conclusions of the philosophers are inconclusive. Great minds have tried to put philosophy on the path of strict science, but without success.  

I don't know what the solution is.  But a mere opting for one 'city' or the other strikes me as no solution at all.  So I still think I was right when I wrote:

Tony seems merely to beg the question against his opponents.  For example, he just assumes that Athens and Jerusalem are irreconcilably antagonistic  and that the whole truth resides in Jerusalem.  

Evidence and Actuality: A Modal Punch at W. K. Clifford

W. K. Clifford is often quoted for his asseveration that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."  Now one of my firmest beliefs is that I am an actual individual, not a merely possible individual. A second is my belief that while there is an infinity of possible worlds, there is exactly one actual world and that this world of me and my world mates is the world that happens to be actual.  (Think of the actual world as the total way things are, and of a merely possible world as a total way things could have been.  For a quick and dirty primer, see Some Theses on Possible Worlds.)

But not only do I have insufficient evidence for these two beliefs, it looks as if I have no evidence at all.  And yet I feel wholly entitled to my acceptance of them and in breach of no plausible ethics of belief, assuming there is such a subject as the ethics of belief.

Consider the following argument that I adapt from D. M. Armstrong, who borrowed it from Donald C. Williams:

1. Exactly one of the infinity of possible worlds is actual.

2. This world of me and my mates is a possible world.

Therefore, very probably,

3. This world of me and my mates is merely possible.

This is an inductive argument, but a very strong one.  While it does not necessitate its conclusion, it renders the conclusion exceedingly likely.  For if there is an infinity of worlds, how likely is it that mine is the lucky one?

And yet the conclusion is absurd, or to be precise: manifestly false.  Is it not perfectly obvious that this world of ours and everything in it is actual?  I am convinced that I am actual, and that all this stuff I am interacting with is actual.  I am sitting in an actual chair in an actual room which is lit by an actual sun, etc. 

But how do I know this?  What is my evidence?  There are no facts known to me that are better known than the fact that I am actual (that I actually exist).  So my evidence cannot consist of other facts.  Is it self-evident that I am actual?  You could say this, but how do I know, given the above argument, that my actuality is objectively self-evident as opposed to merely subjectively self-evident?  Subjective self-evidence is epistemically worthless, while objective self-evidence is not to be had in the teeth of the above argument.  No doubt I seem to myself to be actual.  But that subjective seeming does not get the length of objective self-evidence.  I now argue as follows:

4. If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe anything on no evidence.

5. I have no evidence that me and my world are actual.

6. It is not wrong to believe what is obviously true.

7. It is obviously true that I am actual.

Therefore, contra Clifford,

8.  There are some things it is not wrong to believe on insufficient evidence.

This is not a compelling argument, but it is a very powerful one.  Not compelling because the Cliffordian extremist could bite the bullet by denying (7).  He might say that the ethics of belief enjoins us to suspend belief on the question whether one is actual.  

Now this is psychologically impossible, for me anyway.  But apart from this impossibility, it is surely better known that I am actual than that Clifford's extreme thesis is true.

There are other obvious problems with the thesis.  Any tyro in philosophy should see right away that it is self-vitiating.  If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe Clifford's thesis on insufficient evidence.  But what conceivable evidence could one have for it?  None that I can see.  It is not only a normative claim, but one stuffed with universal quantifiers.  Good luck!  If you say that the thesis needn't be taken as applying to itself, then other problems will arise that you can work out for yourself.  Why do I have to do all the thinking?