All Perfections are Possibly Instantiated

My logic teacher and I were reflecting on the ontological argument and we came up with this. Forgive the cheap operators. A perfection is a property which it is better to have than to lack. Let A be any perfection (say, being perfect) and let B be any non-perfection (like being imperfect) and let 'PA' mean 'A is a perfection' and 'PB' mean 'B is a perfection'. Then let PP be the principle that perfections only imply perfections:

(PP) For any property J and any property K, [PJ & [](x)(Jx --> Kx)] --> PK

Since A is a perfection and B is a non perfection:

[Prem] PA & ~PB

Now, assume for reductio that ~<>(Ex)(Ax). This is equivalent to []~(Ex)(Ax) which is equivalent to [](x)~(Ax). Since necessarily A is not exemplified by anything, then trivially [](x)(Ax --> Bx). So by our premise, [PA & [](x)(Ax --> Bx)] But by (PP) [PA & [](x)(Ax --> Bx)] --> PB. It follows that PB. But by our premise, ~PB. This is a contradiction. So we must reject our assumption. So ~~<>(Ex)(Ax). So <>(Ex)(Ax).

The Critique of 'The Critique of Pure Reason' II: Preface to the Second Edition

In this post I'll note some areas of concern I have from an Aristotelian-Thomistic (henceforth just 'Aristotelian') point of view with Kant's B-edition preface. Again, as I said in my first post, this isn't really meant to be a summary of Kant's views, but more along the lines of a set of notes.

One thing which already indicates Kant has a different conception of reality than an Aristotelian realist view is his description of logic toward the beginning. Kant says that logic is "the science that exhaustively presents and strictly proves nothing but the formal rules of all thinking." But a realist will want to ask why logic is defined in terms of its applicability to our thoughts rather than to mind-independent propositions or even objects. After all, since Kant's time, many different logics have been developed, and we can think in terms of any of these if we want to. But this says nothing about which one more correctly describes reality. Of course, what Kant will want to argue is that what I am calling "reality" is actually a product of human cognitive capacities. So the difference to note here between the two views is not so much of whether logic is to be applied to reality, but rather, what reality refers to.

A second point of interest is Kant's discussion of mathematical knowledge at Bxii, where he takes as his example that of a Euclidean triangle. Kant uses this point to illustrate how he thinks it is that we acquire mathematical knowledge. What I would focus on though is his view that, more generally, Euclidean geometry is necessary. For Kant, a judgment is necessary if and only if it is a priori. The problem is that we now know that Euclidean geometry is not, in fact, necessary, since it doesn't even accurately describe the physical universe. So either euclidean geometry is not a priori or Kant was wrong to include necessity as part of something's being a priori. But it seems rather clear euclidean geometry was formulated a priori if anything was. So it must follow that not all a priori cognitions are necessary. But this is okay for the Aristotelian. The Aristotelian method of doing metaphysics or science has never been equivalent to discovering necessary truths which are wholly a priori; rather, it is empirical. We can delineate what is metaphysically possible and impossible through a priori reasoning and we see whether our theories correspond to empirical reality.

Kant's view of the a priori goes with his view of metaphysics. He defines metaphysics as "a wholly isolated speculative cognition of reason that elevates itself entirely above all instruction from experience." Not according to an Aristotelian view however. As Aquinas states in 'De Veritate', "Whatever is in the intellect was first in the senses." Of course, the reason Kant wants to make metaphysics a wholly a priori discipline is because he wants the certainty which he thinks the method of previous thinkers cannot provide. In his own words Kant thinks that "up to now [i.e. up until Kant] the procedure of metaphysics has been a mere groping, and what is the worst, a groping among mere concepts." But the Aristotelian wants to ask why it has only been a "mere groping among concepts"? For one, the metaphysician does not need to limit the scope of his inquiry to concepts, at least if we don't hold to the view that metaphysics must be a priori. As regards "mere groping," admittedly, we cannot be absolutely certain our metaphysical theories are true; but this is a far too strict condition upon knowledge which, were it not for Descartes, we would not think was necessary.

In the next post I will focus on the second half of the preface, examining Kant's solution to the problem of metaphysical knowledge as he sees it.

The Critique of 'The Critique of Pure Reason' I: Preface to the First Edition

As I study Kant's Critique of Pure Reason I am taking notes and trying to identify the points where someone sympathetic to a generally Aristotelian (particularly Thomist) view of metaphysics and knowledge would have reservations. So I will be essentially transferring my notes and other thoughts here as an ongoing commentary on Kant's great work. I will not be going line for line and explaining all his ideas. Rather, I will be picking out parts that I think are particularly pertinent to distinguishing him from, and criticizing him from the perspective of, a view which an Aristotelian is likely to take. I should note that, though I am coming from a decidedly realist picture and hence not particularly sympathetic with all aspects of Kant's thought, I certainly consider it a huge step up from Hume and a work of ingenious creativity. Kant definitely has my respect as one of the greatest thinkers to have lived, and I think he needs to be taken much more seriously than he is today.

With that said, let's look at the preface to the first edition of Kant's treatise. Though it does contain important information, since it is relatively short I will say more about the preface to the second edition. As a general remark, Kant seems to be primarily concerned here with the problem of metaphysical knowledge, whereas in the second edition preface he focuses in more on his own "Copernican revolution". Kant wants to know how it is possible for metaphysics to be justified. After all, in the very first paragraph Kant admits that metaphysics certainly deals in perennial problems which reason is always tempted to come back to.

One might wonder why we need any justification for thinking that we can have metaphysical beliefs. But Kant lays out a story as to what has happened to metaphysics up to the time of his writing:

"In the beginning, under the administration of the dogmatists, her rule was despotic. Yet because her legislation still retained traces of ancient barbarism, this rule gradually degenerated through internal wars into complete anarchy..."

Here the dogmatists represent the continental rationalists, especially people like Descartes, Leibniz, and Wolff. The anarchy was brought about by skeptical empiricists, Hume in particular. Kant considers the skeptical criticisms of rationalist philosophy to have been something of a deathblow, at least given rationalist assumptions about knowledge (such as a correspondence theory of truth or the doctrine of innate ideas). This is the background within which Kant hopes to provide a new, certain and complete theory which will solve the empiricist objections and provide a basis for metaphysics. Of course, right off the bat it is clear that no room between the rationalists and empiricists has been made for something like a more Aristotelian view of the matter, so it appears that Kant's argument will be a non-starter at least in terms of disproving the Aristotelian type of metaphysics and knowledge. This is a theme which will come up often, viz. that Kant, working within a certain philosophical movement, will fail to consider the Aristoteliean view which could solve the same problems he wants to without the seismic shift in our analyses of knowledge, objectivitiy, necessity, truth, etc.

In part II I'll examine the preface to the second edition of Kant's Critique and bring up some more specific points and objections.

Classical Theism vs. Neo-Theism I: Divine Simplicity

In contemporary debates about the existence of God it is common to hear reference to 'the traditional divine attributes.' These include properties like omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, immateriality, eternality, and personality. It is supposed that if God exists he 'exemplifies all of these great-making properties'. This is the 'orthodox' conception of God in contemporary philosophy of religion and philosophical theology as heard from Craig, Plantinga, Swinburne, and most others.

Unfortunately, right from the get-go, there is a perfectly good sense in which this conception of God is unorthodox. According to the Fourth Lateran and First Vatican Councils of the Catholic Church, the doctrine that God is a perfectly simple being--one without any composition--is defined as infallible, binding dogma, denial of which amounts to heresy. Hence, the doctrine has some degree of pedigree in that it has been held by billions of Christians to be a very important doctrine. But even aside from this I would argue that the contemporary view--what I will call 'neo-theism'--is directly contrary to the truly 'classical theistic' view of God's nature. Classical theism has been the majority opinion for thousands of years. It is the view of the great pagan philosophers like Aristotle and Plotinus, the Christian Saints Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Bl. Duns Scotus, as well as other monotheistic thinkers like Maimonides, Averroes, and Avicenna. Such classical theists would deny that God is 'personal' or 'perfectly good' or 'eternal' in the sense that neo-theists take God to be. Distinctively classical theistic doctrines which are unpopular among the neo-theists of today include divine immutability, timelessness, and simplicity. I will focus on this last doctrine as an example of a fundamental difference between the two views, and argue that the classical theist view maintains God's perfection in a way which the neo-theist view does not.

The way that God's attributes are defined in contemporary philosophy of religion as above implicitly contradicts divine simplicity from the start. According to the contemporary view, when we predicate perfect moral goodness of God as in the sentence 'God is good', the referent of the term 'God's goodness' is the property of goodness. Likewise, if we say 'God is omniscient', the referent of the term 'God's omniscience' is the property of omniscience, and similarly for omnipotence, immateriality, and so on. However divine simplicity says that the referents of all intrinsic predications about God are identical, for to say otherwise would be to introduce metaphysical complexity into God. Hence, it is common to hear classical theists saying that God's goodness IS his omniscience, which IS his omnipotence, and so on. But it would seem to follow that omnipotence and goodness are the same property, which is clearly false; indeed, it would follow that God is himself a property!

Obviously the classical theist doesn't want to commit himself to such seemingly absurd claims, and it would be stupid to suppose 2,000 years of great thinkers were simply willing to accept a manifest falsehood. The more reasonable inference is that contemporary and classical thinkers are working with very different metaphysical presuppositions, and this is correct.

One neo-theist assumption is the Platonist, relational ontology within which Plantinga phrases the objection presented above. For Plantinga and other contemporary detractors reality consists of concrete individuals, platonic properties, and relations of exemplification. The platonic properties are abstract objects, which means they lack efficient causal power, while the causally efficacious concrete individuals exemplify these properties. Clearly God is an individual, since as creator of the universe he possesses causal power, in which case it follows he could not be an abstract object; hence he could not be identical to any of his properties, and thus divine simplicity is false. But certainly none of the classical presenters of simplicity accepted this ontological framework. Rather, following Aristotle, they would take a thing's features to be ontological constituents of a subject. This is the picture found in Aristotle's Categories for instance, where accidents such as color or size are said to be 'present in' a subject. Among contemporary philosophers D.M. Armstrong's theory of universals seems to be an example of a constituent ontology as well. Within such a framework it's not obviously incoherent to suppose that God is identical with his constituents so long as we can admit the idea of an improper constituent (analogous to an improper part or improper subset), since it doesn't follow from the very meaning of the term 'ontological constituent' that the constituent in question is a property; 'ontological constituent' is a category-neutral term, and doesn't necessarily imply Plantinga's relational ontology.

More generally though we can make sense of divine simplicity in terms of truthmakers. The neo-theist assumes that the referents of abstract singular terms like 'Alfredo's audacity', or in our case 'God's goodness', are platonic properties. This is what makes it impossible for God's to be identical with his goodness, for this to be identical to his omniscience, and so on. However, those who embrace divine simplicity can deny this account of predication. Rather, a classical theist will accept a truthmaker account, which says that if an intrinsic predication of the form 'a is F' is true, then a’s F-ness exists, where this entity is to be understood as the truthmaker for 'a is F.' So divine simplicity says God is identical with the truthmakers for each of his intrinsic predications. This makes sense because a truthmaker is an entity in the world in virtue of which a proposition is true. Clearly by this understanding truthmakers need not be properties (they can sometimes be). They can also be substances, as is the case with God--to deny this would at least have to be argued for and such a denial is on the face of it implausible. Hence, it is perfectly coherent to say God is his omniscience, which is his omnipotence, and so on. All this is saying is that God is identical to that in virtue of which he is omnipotent, that he is identical to that in virtue of which he is omniscient, and so on; and moreover, by the transitivity of identity, these things are each identical to each other. This picture shows that divine simplicity is not obviously contradictory and deserves much more than the charges of 'unintelligibility' and 'incoherence' ignorantly thrown at it today.

With these charges of absurdity put to one side we can see that divine simplicity is at least prima facie coherent. Certainly we will need to be given better arguments than Plantinga's cavalier dismissal of 2000 years of philosophy based on the presupposition of his own anachronistic ontology. But to argue something is logically coherent isn't to argue that it's true. In another post I will provide an argument to the effect that only a  simple God can truly be said to exist of himself and thus be perfect.

Naturalness in the World

I'm currently taking a course on a newly concocted discipline in analytic philosophy called metametaphysics. For Aristotle or Aquinas the topics grouped under this heading would probably just fall under the science of metaphysics. We are primarily reading from the recent Chalmers volume and Ted Sider's new book Writing the Book of the World. In the latter book quite a bit turns on a distinction which Sider calls variously 'naturalness', 'fundamentality', 'structure', and 'carving at the joints'. My professors claim to not understand what Sider is talking about. Admittedly, Sider could be quite a bit more clear. However, I think that an Aristotelian would want to agree at least in some respects with his general point insofar as we'd admit some boundaries in reality to be privileged over others.

Consider an example Sider gives which is represented in the figure above (I'll paraphrase these examples a little bit). Suppose there is a world filled with red and blue liquid. There are many true ways that we can divide this world up when we describe it. We can divide it into those parts satisfying the normal understanding of our predicates 'red' and 'blue' as in the first figure. We could also divide it into those parts satisfying different predicates, call them 'bled' and 'rue', which correspond respectively to the portions left and right of the diagonal in the second figure. Both of these ways of describing the world are true. There are indeed bled and rue portions of the world just as much as there are red and blue ones; or, to put it another way, there are divisions of the world along the lines of both the first and the second figure. Yet the first way of speaking seems in some way to be natural while the second seems bizarre. Sider wants to assert that the first way of dividing up the world, i.e. dividing it up along the lines of our 'red' and 'blue' predicates, is better because it describes those features of reality which are in some way privileged; to put it in his terms, it describes those features which are natural/ fundamental/carve at the joints/are part of the structure of reality.

It seems like Sider gets a lot of his account from David Lewis's work. It is at least similar to the natural vs. non-natural distinction Lewis makes in his paper "New Work for a Theory of Universals." Consider two properties: being green and being grue, where grue is defined here as the property of being green and observed before 3000 A.D. or blue and not examined before 3000 A.D. This property which we have called grue appears "gerrymandered" in a way the property green is not. In Lewis's term grue is a "less natural" property than green is. Sider agrees on this point with Lewis. It should be noted that what makes grue a less natural property is not the syntactic complexity of its definition--after all, we can just give it a simple name like grue--but rather that it is in some way privileged over these other properties as being a more fundamental feature of reality. (Lewis may actually disagree here but I think his view is highly implausible and Sider does not seem to endorse it.)

Take a final example. Consider two classes of things: the electrons, and the electron-or-cows (EoC's), the latter class consisting of everything which has the property of being an electron or a cow. The things in the first group seem to go together quite well in a way which the objects in the latter group do not. The electrons do not go together better simply because they share many properties. For one, the EoC's share many properties. In fact, the EoC's share infinitely many properties: they each have the property of being an EoC or four feet long, the property of being an EoC or five feet long, the property of being an EoC or six feet long...and so on.  So it's not simply the number of properties shared which distinguishes the two. It's the fact that a grouping of things into electrons and cows gets the way reality fundamentally is, whereas a grouping of things into electron-or-cows does not.

So these are just a few examples where we can contrast fundamental/natural features of reality in opposition to gerrymandered or non-natural ones. It is necessary to use such illustrations since fundamentality is taken to be a primitive distinction which is likely not definable in more basic terms. There are a lot of questions that can be asked here: is fundamentality/naturalness/carving at the joints/structure of reality/etc. itself fundamental? Is fundamentality supposed to be a property? Is fundamentality a feature of our thoughts and concepts, of entities, or both? What is fundamental? How can we know? Is the same notion at work in each case? These are all good questions, some of which are discussed in the book.

However my primary concern is this: Is Sider really getting at some objective distinction or not? What I mean by 'objective' is whether his distinction between the fundamental/non-fundamental really corresponds to something in the external world. Personally I think he is onto something and makes an interesting case regardless as to the connections with Aristotelianism. However, I think an Aristotelian would want to admit the distinction even if he might disagree about what the fundamental things are. I will try to explain why in later posts.

If anyone is reading, I'd especially like to hear your thoughts on (1) whether you think Sider's distinction makes any sense and (2) whether the examples illustrate the point.

Aristotelian-Thomism vs. Quineanism on Ontological Commitment

I recently got the Chalmers volume dealing with the foundations of ontology. I've been interested in this question for the last few months, and here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

Most philosophers these days accept the Quinean view that one is committed to whatever one quantifies over. If I say there are colors, i.e. (Ex)(x is a color),  and I think my saying is true, then I am committed to the existence of colors, end of story. Most contemporary debates as in the Chalmers volume are between those who hold to this Quinean view and a few people who want to revive some of the distinctions of Carnap.

From an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective, the dominant Quinean view is incorrect for a few reasons. First of all it is wrong to say that metaphysics is just about finding what there is or listing an ontology. As this volume shows, many if not most philosophers these days accept this definition. Rather, ontology is just one part of metaphysics, the ultimate purpose of metaphysics being, in the spirit of Aristotle, the study of being qua being, i.e. the study of the fundamental nature of reality. This involves not only ontology, but also finding the essences of things and finding the various relations of ontological dependence these things stand in to each other.

Also, I think there is some confusion in the modern Quinean conception of existence, where being quantified over is taken to be being simpliciter (in Thomistic terms). On the contrary, there is being simpliciter, then the various diminished senses of being (being secundum quid, in Thomistic terms), as for example the being privations have or being in potentiality. Many of the things we quantify over might have being in one of these imperfect and diminished senses, but just because we quantify over them doesn't mean we have to conclude they have being simpliciter. This makes ontological questions quite trivial. For instance, of course there are numbers and numbers have being; one need only observe the fact that 2 is a number. The real question is finding out whether they have being simpliciter or being secundum quid, what categories of being they fall under, and in what relations of ontological dependence do they stand? Interestingly, in this volume, Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer seem to come to similar conclusions, though I don't think Fine is rigorous enough to be convincing to other philosophers already steeped in Quineanism. I'd like to write a paper on this at some point so as to make the Aristotelian position a bit more clear than Fine does.

Liberalism, Neutrality, and Christianity

Until now the Analytic Scholastic has had little to say which is politically incorrect. Here's my post originally posted at The Rational Gang. Please direct any comments there:

Modern left-liberalism is not neutral toward competing visions of the good life or to competing religions. It takes a decided stance against the notion that Christ is King (Rev. 1:5).  First, consider if Christianity is actually true. In that case, many claims about what are due to God in terms of worship are true; many claims about the future of the world are true; many claims about the roles of husband and wife, claims about the nature of marriage, claims about what is essentially good for humanity are all true. All these claims are embodied in a revelation and religious tradition. This is a comprehensive world view. Liberalism holds that such religious claims cannot serve as the basis for any law which would use the state for enforcement.

What of this understanding that no religious claim can be the basis for law? To put the question in perspective, consider the following scenario. Suppose, per impossibile, that a time-traveler comes to us from an alternate universe 1,000 years from now where, rather than taking action to preserve the wolf population in Yellowstone National Park,  we instead allow it to be decimated. The bison population, no longer controlled by hungry wolves, expands at incredible rates. The bison quickly turn rabid unleashing heretofore unknown powers against the human population in retaliation for past injustices. Suppose, moreover, that we have some reason to believe our temporal voyager’s claims–e.g. as proof he has a laser gun which is impossible to replicate with current technology–and we can rule out ulterior motives. Most of the citizens see this taking place before their very eyes. Clearly the state ought to heed his warnings and preserve the wolves despite the unhappy consequences for those who like hunting and for the way of life of certain agrarians. Yet this is a very odd situation. It is not, however, ruled out in principle. So evidence coming from very odd situations doesn’t rule it out as evidence for a course of legislation.

But what happens if it is God who reveals the same thing in a similarly obvious way? The fact that it is God telling us to conserve the wolves shouldn’t rule out the legality of our doing so. If anything we should be even more prepared to take God’s advice! So that means evidence coming from religious situations doesn’t rule it out as evidence for a course of legislation either.

So what about when God decides to reveal to the world through his divine son that unless we repent of our sins and accept his grace we shall all surely perish? What happens when this is supported by miracles and rational arguments? In short, what happens when Christianity is by all indications true? Clearly we should give at least some kind of acknowledgment as a people, and some sort of preference, to this world view. The liberal seems to want to be able to rule this out a priori. But why should he be able to? If he accepts that we can base legislation on the first example, and accepts that we can base legislation on the second example, then the inherently religious nature of the consequences in this case doesn’t make our evidence any less a basis for legislation.

The liberal, in true egalitarian spirit, might object that we should treat all religions as equal. But why should we? If two propositions have differing degrees of evidence then the one with more evidence should be given preference. The liberal makes an ad hoc restriction when saying the same doesn’t apply to propositions with religious content–unless, of course, he assumes that the strength of evidence for all religions is in fact equal. At this point, however, the liberal has given up neutrality and has begun to make a comprehensive statement about religious claims, viz. that we have no rational basis for preferring one religion over another.
Another objection might be that in my first example we have good evidence which is publicly available to all citizens, whereas in the latter we do not. This is meant to justify the exclusion of religious propositions for legislation and government recognition by saying that we do not have good evidence for them. But read that one more time: “We do not have good evidence for them!” Good evidence is sound evidence. So if we do not have good evidence for religious claims, then we have no sound evidence for religious claims, or at least likely no sound evidence. Notice, however, that the liberal has brought himself to the point of assessing the claims themselves. At this point we’ve left the high seat of neutrality and entered the arena of truth.

The liberal might retort that I am straw-manning his position. By “good evidence” he means something more like “evidence convincing to all citizens.” But this is ambiguous. It could mean either evidence which should convince all citizens or evidence which actually does convince all citizens. If the former then, once again, he must mean evidence which is rational and defensible, at which point he’s come back to assessing the rationality and defensibility of religious claims. If the latter, then he has picked a poor platform for pushing his liberal policies. Such policies as the managerial welfare state, affirmative action, higher taxes, strict separation of church and state, euthanasia, and all the rest are in no wise actually convincing to all citizens. In fact, the liberal system as a whole is not actually convincing to all citizens. Precious little gets done in the liberal state which takes as its maxim that only those policies whose justification actually convince all citizens should be enacted.

Finally, the liberal may argue that the state should not use religious beliefs as bases for legislation because we could be wrong about them. However, the mere fact that we could be wrong about something is not a good reason to think we are wrong about it. We could be wrong about liberalism. I think liberals are in fact wrong about liberalism. But unless good evidence is given to show that something is wrong then it’s not ruled out in principle.

I think the liberal is fundamentally right about a few things. He’s right that if all religions have equal evidence then no single one should be given preference. He’s right to think that if a claim doesn’t have good evidence in favor of it then it ought not serve as a basis for legislation.  When applying these principles he says that religions have equal evidence–likely not very much evidence at all! Or he might say that the evidence is not convincing for any of them. These both require either a certain understanding of the very nature of religious propositions or an assessment of the evidence itself. It’s not for no reason that they are typically accompanied by agnosticism, atheism, or more relativistic flavored views; it’s because these are tied to such fundamentally comprehensive philosophical and religious claims.

What’s the upshot of this? Well, it’s not that either liberalism or Christianity is in fact true. Neither is it the claim that we should base all or even most legislation on religion. It’s simply that liberalism can only claim that such legislation can be ruled out if it makes certain philosophical and religious assumptions which are just as contentious as the religious beliefs themselves. If Christianity is true, and it has evidence in its favor, then there is no in-principle reason why its adherents can't appeal to such evidence for some legislation. The liberal must justify his comprehensive theses and go toe-to-toe with the religious adherent via the same process of rational discernment, rather than presuppose it on the basis of an illusory neutrality.