Sunday, March 21, 2010
God, the Good and the Evil
Terrific, deep exchange on the subject of God and evil over at Just Thomism.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Exceptionalism and Darwinian thinking
John Derbyshire has an article over at NRO on human exceptionalism.
It includes the usual Darwinian thinking to which I am instinctively repelled:
My problem with Darwinism is that it puts the theory before the data. The question should be: What attributes does human being have, and are evolutionary explanations capable of accounting for them? The way it does work is: Whatever human attributes cannot fit into an evolutionary explanation, are therefore dismissed as unreal. So of course evolution can account for human nature; for whatever evolution cannot account for is excluded from human nature.
I am not talking about human attributes we know about only through divine revelation. I am talking about human attributes directly deducible from common sense and common experience. There is a man over there and a man over here; and I, a man, know them all and myself as such. We therefore share something in common, the form of "man", which allows us all to be known as "men." This form must itself be immaterial and the faculty that knows it - the intellect - must be immaterial. Therefore man has an immaterial component to his nature. It is this intellectual faculty that separates us from other animals - we are the "rational animal" - and is the basis of human exceptionalism. A rational animal is not just another animal.
This is a simplified presentation of the Aristotelian argument for the immaterial intellect, which St. Thomas later extended to prove the immortality of the soul. There is nothing here that depends on supernatural revelation, and the conclusion is "supernatural" only if we make an a priori restriction on nature to include only the material. Or if we make an a priori restriction that human nature can only include those attributes accountable by evolution.
If we don't prejudice our thought in these ways, then it is clear that human beings are exceptional insofar as we possess an immaterial intellect. The true question to then be asked is: Can evolution account for the immaterial human intellect? Evolution may be able to account for other aspects of human nature, but it is this aspect, the intellect, that is crucial. This is what Pope John Paul II was getting at when he said that evolution, while it is more than just an hypothesis, is incompatible with the truth about man if it is used to deny his spirit.
It includes the usual Darwinian thinking to which I am instinctively repelled:
My meaning there was only to point up the hostility of religious creationists to ordinary biology and the lessons it teaches us — mainly, the lesson that Homo sap. is just one more branch on the tree of life, not gifted with any supernatural attributes.
My problem with Darwinism is that it puts the theory before the data. The question should be: What attributes does human being have, and are evolutionary explanations capable of accounting for them? The way it does work is: Whatever human attributes cannot fit into an evolutionary explanation, are therefore dismissed as unreal. So of course evolution can account for human nature; for whatever evolution cannot account for is excluded from human nature.
I am not talking about human attributes we know about only through divine revelation. I am talking about human attributes directly deducible from common sense and common experience. There is a man over there and a man over here; and I, a man, know them all and myself as such. We therefore share something in common, the form of "man", which allows us all to be known as "men." This form must itself be immaterial and the faculty that knows it - the intellect - must be immaterial. Therefore man has an immaterial component to his nature. It is this intellectual faculty that separates us from other animals - we are the "rational animal" - and is the basis of human exceptionalism. A rational animal is not just another animal.
This is a simplified presentation of the Aristotelian argument for the immaterial intellect, which St. Thomas later extended to prove the immortality of the soul. There is nothing here that depends on supernatural revelation, and the conclusion is "supernatural" only if we make an a priori restriction on nature to include only the material. Or if we make an a priori restriction that human nature can only include those attributes accountable by evolution.
If we don't prejudice our thought in these ways, then it is clear that human beings are exceptional insofar as we possess an immaterial intellect. The true question to then be asked is: Can evolution account for the immaterial human intellect? Evolution may be able to account for other aspects of human nature, but it is this aspect, the intellect, that is crucial. This is what Pope John Paul II was getting at when he said that evolution, while it is more than just an hypothesis, is incompatible with the truth about man if it is used to deny his spirit.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
The Devil, Religious and Secular
Here is a post at the Secular Right blog concerning the recent comments by Father Gabriele Amorth concerning exorcisms, the Devil, and the Vatican.
Now if you'd like to dismiss what Father Amorth says as nonsense, that's fine. What's interesting about Andrew Stuttaford's mention of it in the context of the Enlightenment ("How's that whole enlightenment thing going") is that, if you substitute "genes" or "memes" for "the Devil" in Father Amorth's comments, you've got a position that many Enlightenment followers would consider reasonable, and perhaps even scientifically established. The Enlightenment presents itself as hard-headed philosophical skepticism, but it always ends up in philosophical doctrines even harder to believe than the medieval notions it allegedly exploded.
There is a hint of this in Twain's comment where he mentions as an afterthought "On the other hand, very few neuroscientists believe in free will now either. Free will is just a useful fiction." Now I find it much easier to believe in the Devil, and even possessed men vomiting glass shards or pieces of iron, than I do that free will is "just a useful fiction." Free will is an obvious and undeniable reality that I experience directly every day; denying it as a "useful fiction" strikes me as incoherent. (If my belief in free will is merely a useful fiction, then isn't my belief that free will is a useful fiction, itself also a useful fiction? Then free will might actually not be a useful fiction. We haven't gotten anywhere, except possibly to increase our confusion.) The existence of the Devil or possessed men are, at least, straightforward propositions that make sense in their own terms. At least I know what it means to affirm or deny them.
The Enlightenment project was never, as advertised, a breakout from darkness into the sunny light of common sense reality. It merely substituted a lot of hard-to-believe propositions with other, even harder to believe propositions.
Now if you'd like to dismiss what Father Amorth says as nonsense, that's fine. What's interesting about Andrew Stuttaford's mention of it in the context of the Enlightenment ("How's that whole enlightenment thing going") is that, if you substitute "genes" or "memes" for "the Devil" in Father Amorth's comments, you've got a position that many Enlightenment followers would consider reasonable, and perhaps even scientifically established. The Enlightenment presents itself as hard-headed philosophical skepticism, but it always ends up in philosophical doctrines even harder to believe than the medieval notions it allegedly exploded.
There is a hint of this in Twain's comment where he mentions as an afterthought "On the other hand, very few neuroscientists believe in free will now either. Free will is just a useful fiction." Now I find it much easier to believe in the Devil, and even possessed men vomiting glass shards or pieces of iron, than I do that free will is "just a useful fiction." Free will is an obvious and undeniable reality that I experience directly every day; denying it as a "useful fiction" strikes me as incoherent. (If my belief in free will is merely a useful fiction, then isn't my belief that free will is a useful fiction, itself also a useful fiction? Then free will might actually not be a useful fiction. We haven't gotten anywhere, except possibly to increase our confusion.) The existence of the Devil or possessed men are, at least, straightforward propositions that make sense in their own terms. At least I know what it means to affirm or deny them.
The Enlightenment project was never, as advertised, a breakout from darkness into the sunny light of common sense reality. It merely substituted a lot of hard-to-believe propositions with other, even harder to believe propositions.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Maritain on Rationalism
"The essence of rationalism consists in making the human reason and its ideological content the measure of what is: truly it is the extreme of madness, for the human reason has no content but what it has received from external objects."
- J Maritain, 3 Reformers, Luther, Descartes, Rousseau
- J Maritain, 3 Reformers, Luther, Descartes, Rousseau
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Embracing Religion
The man who never embraces a religion because he can't have a priori assurance that it is the true one, is like the man who never marries because he can't have a priori assurance that this woman is his one true love he was meant to be with forever. Or, he is like a man who keeps his money under his mattress because he can't be sure which investment is the right one. Or, he is like a jury that takes thirty years to decide a verdict, all the while the defendant sits in jail. Or, like the man who stays fat because he can't be certain which diet is the right one.
There may be reasons for not marrying, or for keeping your money under your mattress, or for delaying a verdict, or for not dieting... or for not embracing religion. Not doing so because you can't have objective certainty prior to the decision is a simple misunderstanding of what is at stake.
There may be reasons for not marrying, or for keeping your money under your mattress, or for delaying a verdict, or for not dieting... or for not embracing religion. Not doing so because you can't have objective certainty prior to the decision is a simple misunderstanding of what is at stake.
Kierkegaard, Fideism and Subjective Reasoning
The Maverick Philosopher has a post here, in which he asserts, in passing, that Kierkegaard was a fideist.
The MP's definition of fideism is this:
Kierkegaard (SK) was not a fideist by this definition. In fact, his career was dedicated to overthrowing the list of alternatives the MP gives in his post:
The MP, as might be expected, advocates option D. But SK would say that option D isn't really the neutral compromise between faith and reason it appears to be. It actually embodies a deep confusion about human existence that prejudices the argument. Notice that option D includes an existential conclusion: One is advised to hold beliefs "tentatively." But while it includes an existential conclusion, it does not include any existential premisses. It's one premiss is an assertion about reason in the abstract:
What is significant about the premiss is not its content but its form. It is an assertion about reason in the abstract, and therefore, according to SK, only abstract conclusions can be drawn from it. But the decision about whether I should embrace faith is anything but abstract; it is as concrete and subjective as it could be, it is, in other words, existential. The attempt to draw an existential conclusion from purely abstract premisses cannot be done; this is why the MP's conclusion must be that beliefs are held "tentatively", or, in other words, without any existential decisiveness. This is really just a restatement of the fact that abstract reason cannot issue in existentially decisive conclusions.
But the question of faith is a question that is existentially decisive in its nature. SK's point was that modern thought begged the question of faith in its very constitution, since it accepted that "reason" is synonymous with "objective thought", or in other words, thought abstracted from the exigencies of human existence. Objective thought is "thought without a thinker", or, in other words, thought without any existential premisses.
SK contrasted "objective thought" with what he called the "subjective thinker." Notice "thought" is an abstract something, but that a thinker is a subjective someone, existing in some time and place. What SK tried to do was repair the breach in existence that was created by modern thought. Classical thought suffered no such breach, which is why SK reaches back to Socrates so often in his writing. Socrates was the prototypical subjective thinker or, rather, a thinker who never suffered the dislocation between subjective and objective thought.
Socrates would never say something like "Reason is too weak and confused to discover the truth...". For one thing, it is self-defeating, since if reason is too weak and confused to discover the truth about the world, then one of the truths it is too weak and confused to discover is itself, since the very proposition is a truth about the world. What Socrates would and did say was "I know that I do not know," which is an excellent example of an existential premiss that can get subjective reasoning rolling. If I do not know, then one of the things I don't know is whether or not anyone else knows, or whether or not there is a truth about the world that can be known. So I am presented with the choice of remaining static in my ignorance, or actively seeking out those who might know and might be able to teach me. Ironically, one of the things I do know is that I do not wish to remain ignorant, so I will seek out those presumed to be wise. This is a chain of subjective reasoning, starting from an existential premiss, and issuing in an existential conclusion. This is a simple example of subjective reasoning; Kierkegaard's analysis of the subjective reasoning involved in the faith decision is profound and well worth the reading of his Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
SK was far from advocating "blind faith" or the "enslavement" of reason to revealed truth. What he passionately wished to communicate was a recovery of subjective reasoning; and the truth that faith, if it is to be fairly considered or even understood for what it is, must be considered in a mode of subjective rather than objective thought. SK's corpus may be thought of as therapy for those suffering the modern rupture between the objective and the subjective, so that they may recover the authentic mode of subjective thinking (which is really human thought in its true form), and so truly face the question of faith. The question of faith, presented in its objective form, is never really presented at all.
The MP's definition of fideism is this:
B. Fideism: Put your trust in blind faith. Submit, obey, enslave your reason to what purports to be revealed truth while ignoring the fact that what counts as revealed truth varies from religion to religion, and within a religion from sect to sect.
Kierkegaard (SK) was not a fideist by this definition. In fact, his career was dedicated to overthrowing the list of alternatives the MP gives in his post:
A. Rationalism: Put your trust in reason to deliver truths about ultimates and ignore the considerations of Sextus Empiricus, Nagarjuna, Bayle, Kant, and a host of others that point to the infirmity of reason.
[we've seen B above].
C. Skepticism: Suspend belief on all issues that transcend the mundane if not on all beliefs, period. Don't trouble your head over whether God is or is not tripersonal. Stick to what appears. And don't say, 'The tea is sweet'; say, 'The tea appears sweet.' (If you say that the tea is sweet, you invite contradiction by an irascible table-mate.)
D. Reasoned Faith: Avoiding each of the foregoing options, one formulates one's beliefs carefully and holds them tentatively. One does not abandon them lightly, but neither does one fail to revisit and revise them. Doxastic examination is ongoing at least for the length of one's tenure here below. One exploits the fruitful tension of Athens and Jerusalem, philosophy and religion, reason and faith, playing them off against each other and using each to chasten the other.
The MP, as might be expected, advocates option D. But SK would say that option D isn't really the neutral compromise between faith and reason it appears to be. It actually embodies a deep confusion about human existence that prejudices the argument. Notice that option D includes an existential conclusion: One is advised to hold beliefs "tentatively." But while it includes an existential conclusion, it does not include any existential premisses. It's one premiss is an assertion about reason in the abstract:
Reason is too weak and confused to discover the truth about the world and how we should live in it.
What is significant about the premiss is not its content but its form. It is an assertion about reason in the abstract, and therefore, according to SK, only abstract conclusions can be drawn from it. But the decision about whether I should embrace faith is anything but abstract; it is as concrete and subjective as it could be, it is, in other words, existential. The attempt to draw an existential conclusion from purely abstract premisses cannot be done; this is why the MP's conclusion must be that beliefs are held "tentatively", or, in other words, without any existential decisiveness. This is really just a restatement of the fact that abstract reason cannot issue in existentially decisive conclusions.
But the question of faith is a question that is existentially decisive in its nature. SK's point was that modern thought begged the question of faith in its very constitution, since it accepted that "reason" is synonymous with "objective thought", or in other words, thought abstracted from the exigencies of human existence. Objective thought is "thought without a thinker", or, in other words, thought without any existential premisses.
SK contrasted "objective thought" with what he called the "subjective thinker." Notice "thought" is an abstract something, but that a thinker is a subjective someone, existing in some time and place. What SK tried to do was repair the breach in existence that was created by modern thought. Classical thought suffered no such breach, which is why SK reaches back to Socrates so often in his writing. Socrates was the prototypical subjective thinker or, rather, a thinker who never suffered the dislocation between subjective and objective thought.
Socrates would never say something like "Reason is too weak and confused to discover the truth...". For one thing, it is self-defeating, since if reason is too weak and confused to discover the truth about the world, then one of the truths it is too weak and confused to discover is itself, since the very proposition is a truth about the world. What Socrates would and did say was "I know that I do not know," which is an excellent example of an existential premiss that can get subjective reasoning rolling. If I do not know, then one of the things I don't know is whether or not anyone else knows, or whether or not there is a truth about the world that can be known. So I am presented with the choice of remaining static in my ignorance, or actively seeking out those who might know and might be able to teach me. Ironically, one of the things I do know is that I do not wish to remain ignorant, so I will seek out those presumed to be wise. This is a chain of subjective reasoning, starting from an existential premiss, and issuing in an existential conclusion. This is a simple example of subjective reasoning; Kierkegaard's analysis of the subjective reasoning involved in the faith decision is profound and well worth the reading of his Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
SK was far from advocating "blind faith" or the "enslavement" of reason to revealed truth. What he passionately wished to communicate was a recovery of subjective reasoning; and the truth that faith, if it is to be fairly considered or even understood for what it is, must be considered in a mode of subjective rather than objective thought. SK's corpus may be thought of as therapy for those suffering the modern rupture between the objective and the subjective, so that they may recover the authentic mode of subjective thinking (which is really human thought in its true form), and so truly face the question of faith. The question of faith, presented in its objective form, is never really presented at all.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Brain Pathology and the Philosophy of the Mind
The sciences of brain pathology have had a profound effect on the philosophy of mind. Clinical cases, like those detailed in Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, reinforce the dependency of the mind on the brain. It's not merely that the cases show that the mind is dependent on the brain in some general way, but that the pathologies reveal deep and specific cognitive dependencies. There is one woman in Sacks's book, for instance, who has lost the concept of "left"; she can see and process the right side of things, but the left side of things disappears for her completely. This isn't merely a visual problem. The concept of left itself has no meaning for her. An intelligent woman, she has come up with ingenious ways of overcoming her handicap, like spinning clockwise 360 degrees to reach the left side of something.
The deep and thorough cognitive dependencies the pathologies reveal has led many to draw the philosophical conclusion that the complete dependency of the mind on the brain has been conclusively demonstrated. Although much about the mind remains mysterious, the thinking goes, one thing we know for sure right now is that there are no properties of the mind that are not ultimately traceable to the brain.
I think this conclusion is premature and, more importantly, unphilosophical. A philosophical view is necessarily a comprehensive view; in fact what distinguishes the philosophical view from others is that it is the most comprehensive view possible. As Josef Pieper has written, what the philosopher most fears is not that his conclusions lack rigor, but that his conclusions leave something out of account. So what we must hold out for in a philosophy of mind is a philosophy that leaves nothing about the mind out of account.
And this is the danger in drawing philosophical conclusions from brain pathologies. Brain pathologies reveal what the mind can't do if the brain has been injured. What we most want from a philosophy of mind, however, is an account of what the mind can do in its most profound manifestations. So it isn't the diseased mind that should concern us most in philosophy, but the healthy mind in its most profound manifestations.
Suppose, for example, that not knowing anything about cars, we wish to develop a "philosophy of the automobile." We visit a mechanic and take a tour through his garage - a tour of "car pathology." He shows us all the way cars can fail; there are cars with bald tires, broken water pumps, no batteries, worn out brakes, etc. He tells us that without the brakes a car won't be able to stop, without the battery it won't be able to start, and so on. We even get a demonstration of a car with bad steering that can only turn to the right. All it does is drive in a circle.
The tour is informative and valuable, but of limited use in developing our philosophy of the car. What we really need to know is what a car in good working order can do. How far can it go? Can it go across the county or across the country? What sort of terrain can it navigate? Are there things it just can't cross? How robust is the car to bumps in the road? What, finally, are all the things people can do with a car?
There are analogous questions that should be at the heart of the philosophy of the mind. Just what can the healthy mind do? Can it "cross the country" and know being as the classical philosophers say? Or can it get no further than the county line, i.e. at most put a construction on sense impressions, as is the typical inclination of modern philosophers? Can the mind construct and perform an empirical science that gives it true knowledge of reality? Just what does it imply about the mind that it can perform science? It is these questions that are decisive for the philosophy of mind.
In the end, we don't really need to know all the ways an automobile can fail to develop a philosophy of the automobile. Neither are the most important facts about the mind the facts of mind pathology. The important facts are at the other end, and concern what the mind can do in its most healthy and profound modes. The theory of the immaterial mind, the prime target of the modern philosophy of mind and the philosophy it is believed is decisively refuted by the clinical pathology of the mind, was always based on what the mind can most profoundly do. The Thomistic theory of the immaterial intellect, for example, is based on the argument that the intellect cannot know being unless it is substantially immaterial (Note that I used the word intellect. The Thomistic theory does not demand that all that we call "the mind" must be immaterial, but that being can only be truly known through an immaterial substance, so the mind, since it knows being, must have an immaterial component - the intellect.) Now either the mind can know being or it can't. If it can't, then the Thomistic theory of the mind is superfluous, since it offers an account of a power that doesn't exist. If it can, then the Thomistic theory of the mind is one way to account for that fact, and the question is whether it is superior to rivals. It is a non sequitur to suppose that, since an unhealthy brain causes cognitive problems, that therefore the mind in its deepest acts can be explained by the physical brain. The question is whether a healthy brain (i.e. a material organ) is capable of knowing being on its own.
The deep and thorough cognitive dependencies the pathologies reveal has led many to draw the philosophical conclusion that the complete dependency of the mind on the brain has been conclusively demonstrated. Although much about the mind remains mysterious, the thinking goes, one thing we know for sure right now is that there are no properties of the mind that are not ultimately traceable to the brain.
I think this conclusion is premature and, more importantly, unphilosophical. A philosophical view is necessarily a comprehensive view; in fact what distinguishes the philosophical view from others is that it is the most comprehensive view possible. As Josef Pieper has written, what the philosopher most fears is not that his conclusions lack rigor, but that his conclusions leave something out of account. So what we must hold out for in a philosophy of mind is a philosophy that leaves nothing about the mind out of account.
And this is the danger in drawing philosophical conclusions from brain pathologies. Brain pathologies reveal what the mind can't do if the brain has been injured. What we most want from a philosophy of mind, however, is an account of what the mind can do in its most profound manifestations. So it isn't the diseased mind that should concern us most in philosophy, but the healthy mind in its most profound manifestations.
Suppose, for example, that not knowing anything about cars, we wish to develop a "philosophy of the automobile." We visit a mechanic and take a tour through his garage - a tour of "car pathology." He shows us all the way cars can fail; there are cars with bald tires, broken water pumps, no batteries, worn out brakes, etc. He tells us that without the brakes a car won't be able to stop, without the battery it won't be able to start, and so on. We even get a demonstration of a car with bad steering that can only turn to the right. All it does is drive in a circle.
The tour is informative and valuable, but of limited use in developing our philosophy of the car. What we really need to know is what a car in good working order can do. How far can it go? Can it go across the county or across the country? What sort of terrain can it navigate? Are there things it just can't cross? How robust is the car to bumps in the road? What, finally, are all the things people can do with a car?
There are analogous questions that should be at the heart of the philosophy of the mind. Just what can the healthy mind do? Can it "cross the country" and know being as the classical philosophers say? Or can it get no further than the county line, i.e. at most put a construction on sense impressions, as is the typical inclination of modern philosophers? Can the mind construct and perform an empirical science that gives it true knowledge of reality? Just what does it imply about the mind that it can perform science? It is these questions that are decisive for the philosophy of mind.
In the end, we don't really need to know all the ways an automobile can fail to develop a philosophy of the automobile. Neither are the most important facts about the mind the facts of mind pathology. The important facts are at the other end, and concern what the mind can do in its most healthy and profound modes. The theory of the immaterial mind, the prime target of the modern philosophy of mind and the philosophy it is believed is decisively refuted by the clinical pathology of the mind, was always based on what the mind can most profoundly do. The Thomistic theory of the immaterial intellect, for example, is based on the argument that the intellect cannot know being unless it is substantially immaterial (Note that I used the word intellect. The Thomistic theory does not demand that all that we call "the mind" must be immaterial, but that being can only be truly known through an immaterial substance, so the mind, since it knows being, must have an immaterial component - the intellect.) Now either the mind can know being or it can't. If it can't, then the Thomistic theory of the mind is superfluous, since it offers an account of a power that doesn't exist. If it can, then the Thomistic theory of the mind is one way to account for that fact, and the question is whether it is superior to rivals. It is a non sequitur to suppose that, since an unhealthy brain causes cognitive problems, that therefore the mind in its deepest acts can be explained by the physical brain. The question is whether a healthy brain (i.e. a material organ) is capable of knowing being on its own.
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