A book idea...

I want to use this post to initiate a research project. The label will be Aquinas On Metapolitics. I want to use posts in this category to compile my findings on what St.Thomas Aquinas, and other leading Scholastic philosophers, taught about 1) race and ethnicity, 2) gender and identity, and 3) teratology and problematic biology.

I don't believe St. Thomas proposed his arguments under such rubrics, not the least since they are (post)modern concepts, but I do believe that the perennial wisdom of his teaching, and of the Church's Scholastic patrimony in general, does "speak to" those contemporary categories and debates, precisely by being perennial teachings.

Avarice is directly a sin against neighbor…

"External goods [i.e. commodities] have the character of means useful for an end. Hence man's good in them must consist in a certain measure of them; that is, a man must seek to have external riches only in a certain measure, insofar as they are necessary for him in his state of life. In any excess of the measure there will be sin; it is evil if he should wish to get or keep them beyond a right measure. This would be avarice, which is defined as 'the immoderate love of having.' ...

Avarice can be immoderate in external goods in two ways. First, directly in the getting or keeping of these goods, by getting of keeping them more than he should. This is directly a sin against our neighbor, because external goods cannot be simultaneously possessed by many, and therefore, if one man has more than he ought, others have less than they ought.

Secondly, avarice can imply an immoderateness in the internal affection we have for riches, namely, by immoderately loving, desiring, or delighting in them.... Consequently, it is a sin against God."

-- St. Thomas Aquinas ST IIa IIae, q. 88, Art. 4, resp. 1.

Down with physicalism...

‎"Intention is ascribed by language users; it is not inherent in physical systems. Language users are physical systems in which intention (i.e. linguistic reference and representation) is inherent."

Down with physicalism, up with analogy.

Tell me everything you know…

Tell me everything you know about unicorns, and you still won't tell me whether, for all that, they exist. Tell me everything you have in mind for your latest invention––yes, the flying bed––and you still won't tell me, for all that, whether it exists. In both cases, the total propositional set of facts about the objects (x|x:F, G, H,…N) does not include the fact of their existence. Once the objects exist, of course, that fact enters their propositional constitution.

This is an old, almost boilerplate issue in metaphysics––the "real distinction" between essence and existence (RDEE)––but there is one facet of the issue I'd like to bring up here based on my reading David Oderberg's Real Essentialism, at least for my own benefit, if not for the greater good of metaphysicians everywhere.

Briefly, RDEE entails that no entity includes its own existence in its essence (with the exception of God, though that is an issue I'll bracket here)*. In other words, to paraphrase Aristotle (Post. An. II, 7, 10), we can know what a thing is without knowing that it is (with the exception of indexicals and conscious experience, discussion of which I shall also bracket for now)**. In addition, we can know that some-thing exists without really knowing what it is (e.g. Bigfoot, UFOs, an approaching figure, the Wii game system, etc). So there is a bidirectional independence between essence and existence, form and substance. As Aristotle says:

"He who knows what human-- or any other-- nature is, must know also that man exists; for no one knows the nature of what does not exist-- one can know the meaning of the phrase or name 'goat-stag' but not what the essential nature of a goat-stag is. But further, if definition can prove what is the essential nature of a thing, can it also prove that it exists? ... [W]hat human nature is and the fact that man exists are not the same thing.... [It] is by demonstration that the being of everything must be proved--unless indeed to be were its essence; and, since being is not a genus, it is not the essence of anything. Hence the being of anything as fact is matter for demonstration…." 

Hence, while Aristotle grants the role of pure, second-order reflection (imagination and notional extrapolation), he sharply divides a thing's supposed nature from its demonstrated existence.

Now, Oderberg addresses the objection that to assert RDEE "is to treat existence as some sort of characteristic of contingent things––a kind of metaphysical 'add-on' to essence" (p. 124). He rebuts, however, that this confusion is due to the paucity of vocabulary in contemporary metaphysics. He grants that "[e]xistence is indeed something that is true of existing things" and that "[a]ll existence ... requires that something be actualized", but denies that this makes existence a property, "since properties flow from the essence of a thing and, given what I have already said, existence does not flow from the essence of anything" (p. 124). Neither is existence an accident, Oderberg continues, "since accidents inhere in and modify already existing substances. Hence, to that extent, we can agree with the broadly Kantian argument against the Ontological Argument, to the effect that 'existence is not a real predicate'" (p. 124).

Even so, Oderberg argues, this should not lead us to the regnant Fregean view that existence is a second-order property of concepts, since "[e]xistence is something true of things that exist, not of our concepts of them" (p. 124). Even construed as properties of the world at large, the existence of things themselves is a fact about those things themselves, "and this is logically prior to its being a fact about the world."

It was at this point that my insight tried to strike me. I wondered where we should draw the line between the fact of x's existence and the fact of the world's actualization of x as a substance. As discussed above, we can't suppose any essence we can define could for that very reason be true in our world. Maybe there are far fewer essences--really possible forms--than we typically believe. Perhaps numerous essences are really impossible, though they are conceivable. Saul Kripke argues as much about unicorns (cf. Naming and Necessity [Harvard, 1980], pp. 23-24, 156-157), to wit, that given what we know about biological taxonomy, genetics, and natural causal history, unicorns are not really imaginable (recall Aristotle's reference to a stag-goat). All we can manage in terms of knowing the essence of unicorns are vague notions of horned horses. Beyond that, there is no coherent, compelling sense in which unicorns could be anything more than mutated horses. In any event, the upshot is that there is a two-way connection between facts about x and facts about the world in which x exists. What is the connection?

Let's go back to your invention above, the flying bed. You may be able to wax about its features, may have dozens of sketches and schematic blueprints, and may even have functional scale models, but, until it's made, you can't include in the blueprints the property "and it exists." Moreover, it may just be the case that, when the dream bed (which we'll call Bedd) is produced (which we'll call Bedder), unforeseen facts about the world impinge on the formal purity of your design (Bedd). This is a common problem in engineering, especially commercial engineering, where customer satisfaction can be as weighty as gravity. The tension here is between form and matter, design and development, shadow and act, Bedd and Bedder.

So let's imagine that features d, k, and s of Bedd have to be modified, or even removed, in order for it qua Bedder to function in the real world. At that point, facts about the world directly impede the fact of Bedd's existence, in which case, by modus tollens, the fact of the non-existence of Bedd is derived from a fact (or facts) about the world. This seems to refute Oderberg's point about existent-facts being logically prior to world-facts. Seems to. Oderberg's point is that the world "elk-izes" because elks exist in the first place. Kripke's point is that unicorns don't exist because the world doesn't unicornize. The juncture of these claims leads to believe that when we think we know a form (or an essence qua the abstracted state of a substantial form), we can only know it as far as it conforms to other substantial realities.

This may seem trivial, but my point is that what we know of a thing's form can actually be illuminated by its actualization in the world. If we find that features d, k, and s don't jibe with Bedder, then we realize what we thought we knew about Bedd (namely, its b-k-s characteristics) is actually no part of Bedd itself, even in its formal purity. What we thought we knew of Bedd as a really possible being in our world, is revealed in actualization not to have been produced by knowledge of the world. We know less about Bedd than we thought, because we know more about the world and Bedder than our grasp of Bedd could ever fathom. As James Ross puts it, "Material things overflow our conceptions", and this because "the de re necessities [for anything] spread out into the inaccessible" (Thought and World [University of Notre Dame Press, 2008], pp. 14-15).

Once we see why Bedder cannot b-k-s, we will just see why that it is so: Bedd's substantial, as opposed to purely abstract, form requires non-b-k-s. The "design constraints" put on Bedd arise from matter, but its actual coming-to-be depends on the potentiality--the ontic hospitality, as it were--of materiality qua the womb of the world. It may be true of the world that the world Beddizes only in virtue of the fact that Bedder exists (i.e. the existent-fact has logical priority over a state of affairs), but knowing what Beddizing really looks like requires that we know how the world actualizes Bedd. Strangely enough, then, while the existence of Bedder is not a part of its essence (viz. Bedd), the existence parameters of Bedder were facts about Bedd all along. Certain impossible facts about Bedd (i.e. its b-k-s features) betray our misconception of facts about the world from which we assumed we had derived it.

* [In a nutshell the distinction hinges on the fact that God's very Godness just is the essential inclusion of existence.]

** [In a nutshell these latter things are either derivative modifications of a prior substance or beings of reason (second intentions) which exist by reflection on prior objects.]

Thinking about thinking about physics, part 2...

In my introductory post of this series, I noted how Roger G. Newton is what I call a "chaste realist" (C.R.) and that, as such, his instinctive realism is at odds with his crypto-Kantian idealism. As I noted in the introductory post, Newton's thinking about physics is largely deflationary, in the sense that, at the end of the day, even the strangest scientific discoveries and theories can and should be reconciled as closely as possible with common sense (i.e. realism about the world and our knowledge of it). The following are informal characterizations, but I think they will make my basic point.

A C.R. is someone that, so to speak, wants realism to be true, but who is also aware of how far from reality scientific theories can be and are. Secretly, a C.R. knows science is on the right path and that normal science tells us important, lasting things about the real, mind-independent world. A C.R. cannot bring himself to subscribe to scientism, since he admits the ontological limitations of scientific claims are tied up with their origin in human cognition. C.R.s recognize that idealization, pragmatic selectivity, aesthetic bias, and so on, effect scientific paradigms, but they insist the general thrust of scientific inquiry tracks reality better than most, if not all other, methods of reasoning. On the other hand, a C.R. rejects constructivism and most of the non-progressive, anti-realist theory of science (as espoused by Duhem, Carnap. Hempel, Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Van Fraassen, Giere, et al.). Scientific standards and conceptions may be relative to human "users" of science, but that does not entail the former are relativistic and fictional. In effect, C.R.s say to the regnant anti-realist regime in the philosophy of science, "If we promise not to claim too much for science as a 'truth engine', can we be allowed to accept scientific findings as 'true enough'?"

So, I'm calling Newton a chaste realist. I'll begin by noting his realism. First of all, Newton has i) ambitious aims for scientific explanation (Se). Se must not be mere description. For instance, Newton argues, even if we discovered that physical constants changed, as Paul Dirac and others have suggested based on the expansion of the universe, "we would still have to search for an underlying time-independent law that would account for the specific way in which these constants vary with time. Physics never regards history itself as a sufficient explanation of any fundamental change" (Thinking About Physics [TP], p. 10).

Likewise, ii) Se is about more than the pragmatic success of science. "What justifies our confidence in the basis soundness of the entire [scientific] structure," Newton writes, "is its coherence, an intellectual coherence that includes consistency with all the experiences and expectations founded on it, the fulfillment of precise, far-reaching predictions implied by it, and the functioning of all the technology built on its basis" (p. 19, my italics). Newton's claim contains a number of overly realist quantificational implications, which ultimately are at odds with the chastity of his realism, about which more later.

In any case, Newton continues with a point which strikes, wittingly or unwittingly, against a main pillar of the crude scientism prevalent in much of Western society, namely, the 'argument' that "Science Works, Bitch!" As Newton says, however, "[t]o point out that science works, in the sense that we readily watch television..., is, of course, the most banal of the answers we can give to those who question the truth of science... [though] it is an important component of the coherence of physics" (p. 19). These claims indicate how, for Newton, scientific truth is not merely a matter of technical success or "better living through science," but rather derives from the ambition of making sense of the world by way of science itself. Coherence, as Newton describes it in "the broad sense above... is the basis for claiming truth as the goal of physics-- not as an attainment, but as an aim" (p. 20). Lawrence Sklar, in Theory and Truth, makes almost exactly the same claim, so I hope to discuss both authors in tandem at some point.

Lest the above seem too theoretical, I should note that "the philosophy of science" is not Newton's focus. Rather, his focus is largely on how to reconcile the oddity of quantum theory (QT) with the mainstream of historical scientific claims. For instance, he denies that QT undermines good ole fashioned Newtonian determinism in the popular "spooky" way many people think, since "[q]uantum mechanics is as deterministic as classical mechanics" and that the truly weird things about QT--namely, entanglement--"originates in the wave-particle duality" (pp. 22-23). Indeed, "while part of what is meant by entanglement would obtain for any probabilistic theory... other parts [of QT] go further and are caused by phase correlations" (p. 23). Such entanglement, free of the wave-particle duality, does not strike us as odd for wave dynamics proper, so, as I mentioned in the introductory post, it is Newton's implicit aim to demystify the weirdness of QT by situating it in the larger context of physical statistics as such. A crucial premise in Newton's deflationary QT, is that "reality at the everyday level has to be distinguished from reality at the submicroscopic level" (p. 26).

This is a striking claim, and one with profound philosophical implications. Since, as always, my time is running short before I must head to class, I will close this post without getting any deeper into Newton's own claims in TP. In the next post I will connect Newton's premise about the macro-/microscopic cleft in reality (or the MMC) with its larger philosophical implications from an Aristotelian perspective (mainly by citing Wolfgang Smith's The Quantum Enigma and David Oderberg's Real Essentialism).

Stay tuned.

Reasons ≠ causes ∴ rational will is free

Reasons are not causes. Inhalation of propane beyond inhalation of oxygen was the cause of John's death. The reason for John's death was his desire to commit suicide. The "desire (reason) to commit suicide" results in innumerably diverse states of affairs, but an innumerable diversity of results is not a sign of a true cause-effect relationship. Nor does it follow from "wanting to kill oneself" that one will 1) walk over, 2) touch the oven, 3) turn on the gas, etc. But inhalation of propane beyond intake of oxygen is a cause of human death. Reasons are not causes, therefore the will is free.

Willing the conditions of the beloved's existence…

Summa Theologica I, 22, 2 ad 2:

"…a particular provider excludes all defects from what is subject to his care as far as he can; whereas, one [like God] who provides universally allows some little defect to remain, lest the good of the whole should be hindered. Hence, corruption and defects in natural things are said to be contrary to some particular nature; yet they are in keeping with the plan of universal nature; inasmuch as the defect in one thing yields to the good of another, or even to the universal good: for the corruption of one is the generation of another, and through this it is that a species is kept in existence. Since God, then, provides universally for all being, it belongs to His providence to permit certain defects in particular effects, that the perfect good of the universe may not be hindered, for if all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe."

«Quia provisor particularis excludit defectum ab eo quod eius curae subditur, quantum potest, sed provisor universalis permittit aliquem defectum in aliquo particulari accidere, ne impediatur bonum totius. Unde corruptiones et defectus in rebus naturalibus, dicuntur esse contra naturam particularem; sed tamen sunt de intentione naturae universalis, inquantum defectus unius cedit in bonum alterius, vel etiam totius universi; nam corruptio unius est generatio alterius, per quam species conservatur. Cum igitur Deus sit universalis provisor totius entis, ad ipsius providentiam pertinet ut permittat quosdam defectus esse in aliquibus particularibus rebus, ne impediatur bonum universi perfectum.»

Read Michael Liccione's essays on "The Problems of Evil" and "Mystery and Explanation in Aquinas' Account of Creation".

Walking in a forest one day…

…and you stumble upon a watch. Surely something so complex requires a maker. No watch could build itself. Complexity could not arise out of chaos without intelligent guidance, without an Intelligent Designer.

This train of thought, popularized by William Paley, and now at the heart of the Intelligent Design movement, is opposed not only by skeptics but also, notoriously, by Thomists and other Christians, largely on theological grounds. I am beginning to see how the debate ties into the much older dispute about conservation and concurrentism. Alfred Freddoso's lengthy introduction to Suárez's Metaphysical Disputations XX–XXII discusses the issue at length, and it is on my mind from reading Walter Ott's Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy. I will not go into much detail in this post, since I only want to note a passage in the Summa theologica (I, CIII, iii) which caught me off-guard when I read it in Ott's book (p. 52; my emphasis):

Certain ancient philosophers denied the government of the world, saying that all things happened by chance. But such an opinion can be refuted … by observation of things themselves: for we observe that in nature things happen always or nearly always for the best; which would not be the case unless some sort of providence directed nature towards good as an end; which is to govern. Wherefore the unfailing order we observe in things is a sign of their being governed; for instance, if we enter a well-ordered house we gather therefrom the intention of him that put it in order, as Tullius says (De Nat. Deorum ii), quoting Aristotle [Cleanthes].
[Benzinger translation]

Some ancient philosophers denied governance to the world, claiming that everything occurs by chance (fortuito agi). But … this position is impossible: First, from what is apparent in the things themselves. For we see among natural things that what is better occurs either always or for the most part (semper aut in pluribus). But this would not happen if natural things were not directed by some sort of providence toward the good as an end (ad finem boni)—which is what it is to govern. Hence, the fixed order of things itself clearly demonstrates the governance of the world. As Tully, quoting Aristotle, says in De Natura Deorum, if someone entered a well-ordered house, he would, because of the very order within the house, arrive at the idea of someone responsible for the order (ordinatoris rationem perpenderet).
[Freddoso translation]

…quidam antiqui philosophi gubernationem mundo subtraxerunt, dicentes omnia fortuito agi. Sed haec positio ostenditur esse impossibilis … ex eo quod apparet in ipsis rebus. Videmus enim in rebus naturalibus provenire quod melius est, aut semper aut in pluribus, quod non contingeret, nisi per aliquam providentiam res naturales dirigerentur ad finem boni, quod est gubernare. Unde ipse ordo certus rerum manifeste demonstrat gubernationem mundi, sicut si quis intraret domum bene ordinatam, ex ipsa domus ordinatione ordinatoris rationem perpenderet; ut, ab Aristotele dictum, Tullius introducit in libro de natura deorum.

How different is this from Paley's argument? The narrative format is even similar: Walking along one day, you come upon a … and have every reason to infer, etc. As Prof. Feser has written at great length, however, the difference between Paley's and Aquinas' argument about intelligent "governance" has to do with the role of finality in each thinker's worldview. For Paley, and for IDers in general, given that the world is a mechanical system, the only way for blind matter in motion to produce complex functional entities would be by the intervention of an Intelligent Designer.

Aquinas' argument seems to say the same thing, but it actually goes much deeper, metaphysically, than Paley's. For, even if we can discover how any and all complex entities arose by "purely natural" means, we could not deny the fundamental lawfulness of the universe which supports those natural means themselves. Since, in Thomism, and Aristotelianism generally, finite beings have their own immanent finality––their own dynamism towards existing and flourishing––, we should not be surprised to find a process of natural development among nature's harmonious parts. Since God works in the world through the natures of His creatures, rather than upon them as inert voids, we have reason to expect they will develop "on their own", as it were. So, even though evolutionary theory may be able to explain how a watch, as it were, came to be in the forest without the intervention of a watchmaker, it cannot explain how the processes described by the theory themselves hold "either always or for the most part." That level of persistent order is what grounds any subsequent natural developments that become the intelligible content of scientific theory. As Suárez writes (XXII.x.10; my emphasis):

…there are many changes or actions of physical objects which cannot be adequately explained in terms of internal characteristics or tendencies of individual things [i.e. discrete material objects]. E.g. water rises up in order to fill a vacuum; and this cannot be explained from the specific nature of water and its own energy, but only from the purpose which is to be found in the perfection of the whole universe, and which must be intended by some other, superior agent [ex fine qui in perfectione totius universi sit positus, quem oportet ab alio superiori agente intendi]. It is the same with the water of the sea, which restrains the force of its breakers on the shore so that it never overwhelms the earth. This is certainly for the preservation … of living beings, which is a purpose intended by the supreme Governor of nature. From this we can see that when these natural objects change or act in accordance with their own specific tendencies, if by these they serve the convenience and preservation of the whole universe, its species or even individuals [cum per illas etiam deserviant commodis et conservationi totius universi et suarum specierum, vel etiam individuorum] (especially humans), they also manifest goal-directedness through subordination to a superior agent.

The general concourse of the world––indeed, the very fact that all created entities form a unified world, a cosmos––is the deep sign of creative intelligence, not simply this or that "irreducibly complex" object or operation.

Interestingly, far from being in conflict, the Scholastic doctrine of immanent cosmic order could very well be read as the (premature) converse of the theory of natural selection (TNS). TNS says that organisms which are better adapted to their niche in the world tend to produce more offspring, and thus such adaptations tend to proliferate. The Scholastic doctrine has it that no organisms really exist that don't contribute to the orderliness of the world as a whole. In both cases, it is only because the relations between world and organisms are well ordered that the former shows the variety it does and that the latter flourishes like they do. There is, in both cases, a tight empirical link between how well-fitted, or how discordant, a being's actual operations are with the general "layout" of the world. The world as we know it does not, according to TNS, contain any organisms or processes which do not "mesh with" or contribute to the actual operations of the world, which have not succeeded thus far. Everything fits. If something doesn't fit, if something tends toward compromising the orderly governance of the world, it thereby ceases to be an integral part of the natural order.

Why, according to TNS, do we see the "survival of the fittest" instead of the survival of anything in random fashion? To cite Aquinas again, it is because "we see among natural things that what is better occurs either always or for the most part … [which] would not happen if natural things were not directed by some sort of providence toward the good as an end." Thus, even the evolutionary "weeding out" process preserves natural order; indeed, it is only because the world has a natural tendency to operate "always or for most part" in the same ways that there is any weeding out at all. A plant cell remains turgid and functional by maintaining a fluid-nutrient balance: its vital turgidity tends to "weed out" what compromises the plant as a whole. Likewise, the many niches of the world maintain an ecological turgidity by admitting and expelling new inhabitants in the larger homeostasis of the world. If the world did not operate in such an orderly fashion, there would be no firm structure, no selective lattice, which could filter out incompatible subparts. This is not to say Thomism just is Darwinism. It is however to argue that a metaphysic which posits both that material entities are intrinsically subject to change and corruption due to the correlation of their diverse parts, and that the world is ordered by its intelligent source, has the means to account for the kind of changes described by evolutionary theory, yet without succumbing to materialism.