On the Problem of Contingent Objects and Free Will

A really helpful guide in understanding the subtle doctor is Richard Cross’ work Duns Scotus. In there, he gives his expert opinion as an analytic philosopher and as a historian. He can be critical, and he raises some good objections for those who wish to pursue the Schotistic route of understanding God.

One problem for the Scotist is in reconciling the following three propositions,

1. God knows the future by determining it
2. Human beings are self-determining free agents
3. A free creaturely action has two causes which are jointy necessary and sufficient: God and the creature [1]

Cross rightly observes that God knows about contingent objects (c-objects) by freely willing them [2]. This is how they have their existence in the intellect. However, if this is the case, and the doctrine of divine simplicity states that whatever is in God is identical to God, then how is this possible that a contingent object is necessary to an necessary being?

The response to such an objection would be to point out that God’s act of knowing/willing is different from the content which God knows/wills. Consider the cogito, ‘I think therefore I am’, this is an intuitive kind knowledge that I know infallibly, but because I am contingent, I know contingently. Likewise, since God knows the operation of his will infallibly, but because what it wills is contingent, he knows it contingently.

Cross anticipates such a response, saying “C-objects should be identical with the divine essence as God’s knowledge of them is” [3], that is, the content of God’s knowledge should be as identical to the divine essence as his knowledge is. However, If we wish to keep the analogy between God’s knowledge and the cogito going, there is the self, there is the apprehension of the self, and there is the self apprehended. That is to say (1) first there is the Essense of God and what it can do, — a self-existing being who has the powers to freely cause certain c-objects - (2) second there is the apprehending of the self, that is the will of God seeking to know the self and what it is causing, and (3) third there is the self as apprehended by the intellect, For God this is the divine intellect knowing the essence through the operations of the divine will - including what objects are freely willed (c-objects).

C-objects are identical to the powers of the divine essence in the first mode of being, however this doesn’t make them necessary as they are understood relatively to the powers of the divine essence — in much the same way that I can understand the power of the self to self-understand, by knowing the self. It is only when the will operates freely through the divine essence that these active capacities takes on some contingent facticity known by the intellect.

C-objects are than identical to the activity of the will in the second mode of being, and the contingent knowledge in the third mode.

The next problem is free will. As Cross points out, the problem of God freely willing what is going to be brought about, despite the fact his is not sufficient for the free action to be brought about, brings about a contradiction [4]. The answer here is to make a distinction between epistemic and ontic sufficiency. That is, while God’s will is only ontologically necessary for something to take place, it is epistemically sufficient to know what will take place. All he requires is his will to know what is going to take place. For example, the Virgin Mary was the co-cause of the incarnation, yet her role gave her sufficient knowledge to know it would take place when she said ‘yes’, even though it had not taken place.

End Notes

[1] Cross, Duns Scotus, 53

[2] Ibid, 52

[3] Ibid, 53

[4] Ibid, 54

Scotus and Cross was originally published in The Liturgical Legion on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Duns Scotus on Freedom of the Will and Divine Foreknowledge

Consider this a new take on an old post. A few years back I a piece on Scotus and divine foreknowledge. However, since reading further on Scotus, I was proven to be incorrect regarding Scotus’ view of free will. Sotus was not a compatibalist, rather he would have defended a libertarian conception of free will for both created man, and for God himself (see here for Duns Sctous’ conception of free will).

Moving on, here is the argument against the compatibility of free will

(1t)God timelessly knows T.

(2t)If E is in the timeless realm, then it is now-necessary that T.

(3t)It is now-necessary that T. [1, 2]

(4)If it is now-necessary that T, then you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [Definition of “necessary”]

(5)Therefore, you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [4, 5]

(6)If you cannot do otherwise when you do an act, you do not act freely. [Principle of Alternate Possibilities]

(7)Therefore, when you answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am, you will not do it freely. [5, 6] [1]

For Scotus, it would not follow that if E — E being the event of God timelessly knowing T — is in the timeless realm, it is now-necessary that T. For Scotus, the will proceeds the intellect, that is, God knows x because he wills x. I will answer the phone tomorrow because from eternal present of God, and the moment I choose to answer, he and I freely willed I would answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am, and that I could have done otherwise. Following this act of will he knows what will come to pass.

For Scotus, the premise is supported because timeless eternity and the present are both contingent since their relationship is individually unable to bring about a free action, but must work together. The relationship God has with creation is that of an essential, rather than accidental, series of causality. The difference between the two can be seen as the difference between the mother giving life to her son, and a hockey player using a stick to handle a puck. The son is still alive given that he can survive without his mother, but the motion of the player, and the stick, are both in use when transferring motion to the puck at a constant rate, this rate will be terminated when the player and stick terminate. The essential series is more analogous to the player, and the accidental series to the mother.

God is the more emanate source, like the player, but, unlike the player, is not moving his object (man) to act in a certain way. Rather, God and our free will are more like how the formal and material causes (ex. the shape of the tree, and the matter the tree is made of) of our action, working with no priority to one another, but always actualizing the same thing. Likewise, God and human beings are co-causes. Scotus rejects the Thomistic view that nothing is moved without the movement of another and cites the free will of man as the exception. While God is responsible for bringing the free will of man into existence, he allows it to move on its own.

This brings on the question, if man willed otherwise, would that have caused God to will otherwise, if yes, then that would entail we can change the will of God. If no, that would entail we don’t will freely. The way of combating the objection — I would say; Scotus doesn’t really formulate the following distinction — would be in distinguishing God’s permissive will, and his active will. God’s permissive will allows the human will to act in either way, but his active will acts to bring it about. The ontological priority works as such,

1. God wills to conserve a human will into existence at all times with his active will.
2. The human will moves to bring about an outcome and God’s will permits the outcome, by providing it the being to bring about what it chooses.
3. The outcome is brought about.

Human free will resides in the second step, along with God’s permissive will sustaining its existence and permitting the action to take place. God knows what human beings choose because he knows his essence, which is identical with what he wills (both permissively and actively). Since what God wills is contingent, so is his knowledge of it. This is not to say God’s willing is contingent, after all, what one wills differs from the fact that one wills.

The Subtle Doctor and Free Will, Part 2 was originally published in The Liturgical Legion on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Duns Scotus on Freedom of the Will

It can be rather interesting to see how great theologians address various issues concerning Libertarian Free Will. This will hopefully be the first in a series of posts on the issue from the perspective of the Medieval Theologian Bl. John Duns Scotus. In this post, I will detail Scotus’ philosophy of action, and how human beings choose among a set of options.

This post -like most others, unless otherwise stated — will not be an original presentation of Scotus’ point of view, but one developed by reading the work of Allan B. Wolter O.F.M. Scotus considers the human will to be a rational potency. A rational potency is one that can bring about contrary possibilities, the will can either will to stand or sit. However, heat is a non-rational potency because it can only heat things [1].

This form of potency is an active rather than passive potency. A passive potency is an ability that resides in the matter or constitution of a thing, to change in some way. An active potency resides in the ability to bring about a changes as a cause. While the sun can dry (in the case of adobe bricks) or melt (in the case of ice), the difference in effect is due to the matter of that which is affected. [2] However, if I can cause water to become gas or ice, it’s because I, as an efficient cause, chose to effect it in one way or another, not because of the constitution of the water [3].

Another possible objection is that it’s possible to construct software capable of randomly generating certain effects. The flaw with such an objection is that these generators are either pseudo-random generators that work by some deterministic processes, or they are true random generators. In that case, the programs use arbitrary physical phenomenon like atmospheric noise to generate effects. In these cases, it is the passive potency of whatever physical means they use (if it is the physical phenomenon which is affected), or the passive potency of the software (if the software is what is affected).

Since the will — unlike a computer — cannot be reduced to anything physical, and can bring about multiple effects on the same substance in the same environment, on Scotus’ view, its power to bring about contraries must be an active potency. One objection that we’ve dealt with before, ‘The Disappearing Agent Argument’, should also be addressed here. The question that arises is ‘why does some agent will A over B’. The question is similar to the question ‘why does heat heat things’, willing between options is just the kind of thing that a will does, just like heating something is just the kind of thing that heat does [4].

The will is, for Scotus, the essential ingredient of our libertarian free will. It proceeds the intellect in making choices. The intellect — contrary to Thomistic thought- cannot be the the source of our freedom because it is a non-rational potency. The intellect, in its most basic and immediate operation, comes to a belief automatically. When I walk into a room and see a table, I immediately believe a table is in front of me. It is ultimately the act of the will that must than be the source of my freedom [5]. That is, the ultimate source other than the power and knowledge of God, whose role in free will I will discuss next week.

End Notes

[1] Allan B. Wolter. The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus, ‘Duns Scotus on the Will as Rational Potency’. 166

[2] Ibid. 167–168

[3] Ibid. 170–171

[4] Ibid. 174–175

[5] Ibid. 178–179

The Subtle Doctor and Free Will, Part 1 was originally published in The Liturgical Legion on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Do you Know You’re Going to Heaven?

In the past, I have addressed CARM (“Christian” Apologetics Research Ministry) before on the Legion (see: here, and here). This month of November, I wish to respond to Matt Slick over at CARM. I will attack the sophistry he throws at the Holy Roman Catholic Church over on his website. He has a whole section over at his website dedicated to spreading his heretical vomit. While I believe Matt is contorting his intellect for error in all of these articles, there is none better that illustrates this as much as the piece I’ll address in this post.

Matt writes a letter asking us Catholics “do you know for sure if you are going to heaven?” in order to demonstrate the falsity of our beliefs. The reason I say that Matt is contorting his intellect, is because he’s debasing his capacity to think by teaching obvious error. Matt’s error is not only in misunderstanding scripture, its also in failing to properly apply it to his own false doctrine of Calvinism.

Matt makes the following argument,

If you’re a Catholic, do you know for sure if you are going to heaven when you die? As a Protestant, I can say that I know I am going to heaven. This isn’t arrogance. It is confidence in the work of Christ and not my own work. It is confidence in the ability of Jesus to save me completely, to have fulfilled all of the Law perfectly, and to have cleansed me from my sin totally. Therefore, because all my hope and trust are in him and not what I can do, I know I am going to heaven. If my salvation depended on my goodness and abilities in any way, then I can’t have any confidence that I will make it to heaven because I am an imperfect sinner. But God is perfect and requires holiness (1 Pet. 1:16). This is why God provided Jesus who fulfilled the Law (Matt. 5:17), including loving God (Deut. 6:5) and loving your neighbor (Lev. 19:18). In other words, Jesus did everything that is necessary for us to do. This is why we should trust Jesus alone and not Jesus and our goodness or Jesus and our church or Jesus and our ability to love God and our neighbor.

Matt’s argument can be formulated in the following way,

P1 — If Jesus did all the work for my salvation, then I can be confident in my salvation.

P2 — Jesus did all the work for my salvation

C — I can be confident in my salvation.

The fault seems to be in the first premise, which, if not carefully understood, could equivocate salvation in the following two senses,

1. A state of affairs where if a person dies now, they will not be damned.
2. A state of affairs where if a person dies in the future, they will not be damned then.

If it is the first sense whereby we understand and have the confidence in our salvation, then yes, Catholics can have confidence in their salvation. If it is the second sense, than no, we cannot, but neither can the Calvinist. Given that Matt, as a Calvinist, would want to commit himself to the second understanding of the first premise, I will refute this later on, but, for now, I will argue that the Catholic can have confidence in their salvation.

Matt quotes some parts of the Catechism to make his case, but fails because he lacks the knowledge to contextualize them properly.

But, what about you? Do you have that confidence? If not, perhaps it is because of the requirements that the Roman Catholic Church has stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

- “The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation,” (CCC 1257).

- “Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation,” (CCC 846).

- “This sacrament of Penance is necessary for salvation for those who have fallen after Baptism, just as Baptism is necessary for salvation for those who have not yet been reborn,” (CCC 980).

- “The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation, (CCC 1129).

- “Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation,” (CCC 1816).

- “The authority of the Magisterium extends also to the specific precepts of the natural law [i.e., 10 Commandments, CCC 2070], because their observance, demanded by the Creator, is necessary for salvation,” (CCC 2036).

Are you as a Catholic able to keep all the requirements that the Roman Catholic Church says are necessary for salvation? We both know you can’t.

The proper way to contextualize these passages is through the dichotomy of mortal and venial sins. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, these are the following properties of mortal sins,

Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him. Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us — that is, charity — necessitates a new initiative of God’s mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met:

“Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.” Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: “Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother.”

The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger. Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. (CCC 1855–1859)

Mortal sin requires one to

• Commit a sin by placing an inferior ‘good’ over God
• with full knowledge and deliberate consent
• concerning a grave matter like what is spelled out in the ten commandments

Given that mortal sin requires full knowledge, if we were in such a state and honest with ourselves, we can be confident concerning whether or not we would avoid damnation if we were to die right now. If we have committed mortal sin, we have an easy correction available to us in confession.

Venial sins, according to the Catechism, “allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it” (CCC 1855). When one commits venial sin we do so by not observing “the standard prescribed by the moral law, or when he disobeys the moral law in a grave matter, but without full knowledge or without complete consent (CCC 1862).”

The effects of venial sins are that they weaken “charity; it manifests a disordered affection for created goods; it impedes the soul’s progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment. Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin. However venial sin does not break the covenant with God. With God’s grace it is humanly reparable. “Venial sin does not deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace, friendship with God, charity, and consequently eternal happiness (CCC 1863).”

Given the first sense of the proposition, I can honestly tell Matt that I can be confident of my salvation. Matt might want to try to commit us to the second sense of the proposition, and it is at this point where I want to refute such an attempt. If it were the case that Matt has confidence in his salvation, then he is being rationally inconsistent with his Calvinist doctrine.

Matt believes in the doctrine of the Perseverance of the saints, which is the belief that “we [Christians] are so secure in Christ, that we cannot fall away.” [1] There are countless people who left Protestant ‘Christianity’, Slick would call them apostate (take former Presbyterian ministers like William E. Orchard). The question to ask, of these countless people who no longer identify with the “true” faith, how does Matt know he is not currently among them?

Consider the following argument, there are currently two groups;

Group 1: True Christians.

Group 2: Self-identified Christians who will claim to reject their faith later on.

Unless Matt claims to possess the power to see the future, he cannot be confident he is in group 1 or 2. For any claim he makes about his mentality, someone in group 2 could make the same claim. How could Matt demonstrate he is not in group 2? If he cannot, then it cannot be demonstrated with confidence that Matt will be saved.

End Notes

[1] Matt Slick, What is TULIP in Calvinism, Link

Dear Matt… was originally published in The Liturgical Legion on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Response to an all too Popular Meme.

Chances are, if you have had any exposure to popular memes in the religious debate community, you have encountered this one,

The claim is that The Satanic Bible is more moral because unlike the Quran or the Holy Bible, it does not advocate rape. However, a cursory reading of the satanic work proves otherwise.

Usually the anti-rape verse quoted is this one,

If you attempt to impose your sexual desires upon others who do not welcome your advances, you are infringing upon their sexual freedom. Therefore,Satanism does not advocate rape, child molesting, sexual defilement of animals, or any other form of sexual activity which entails the participation of those who are unwilling or whose innocence or naïveté would allow them to be intimidated or misguided into doing something against their wishes. [1]

However, if you keep reading, that’s not the end of the story. The Satanic Bible also reads,

A sex ritual is what is commonly known as a love charm or spell. The purpose in performing such a ritual is to create desire on the part of the person whom you desire…Enchantment for self-aggrandizement, when accompanied by ceremonial magic, falls into the category of either the compassion or the destruction ritual, or possibly both. If you want or need something so badly you are sad or feel much anguish without it, without causing hurt on another’s part, then this would incorporate a compassion ritual to increase your power. If you wish to enchant or entrap a deserving victim for your own purposes, you would employ a destruction ritual. These formulas are to be adhered to, as applying the wrong type of ritual towards a desired result can lead to trouble of a complicated nature. A good example of this is the girl who finds herself plagued by a relentless suitor. If she has done little to encourage him, then she should recognize him for the psychic vampire he is, and let him play his masochistic role. If, however, she has enchanted him frivolously, giving him every encouragement and then finds herself a steady object of sexual desire, much to her dismay, she has no one to blame but herself. Such exercises are only ego boosts, borne of an indoctrination of ego denial which makes these little bewitchments necessary. [2]

According the LaVey, compelling someone else to desire you is either an act of compassion to increase your powers, or a good way of getting revenge. I mean, you’re either giving a girl the gift of being the unwilling recipient of a psychic flunitrazepam (roofie) or, you’re getting back at a woman who was really just asking for it. All this is justifiable because our egos need to fight sexual indoctrination.

Now, I’m not saying that this excuses any evil mentioned within any other supposed Holy Book. But what I hope it does illustrate is that people need to read a religious work before taking one passage out of context.

End Notes

[1] Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible, Page 38

[2] Ibid, Page 64

Sorry, but ‘The Satanic Bible’ does Encourage Rape. was originally published in The Liturgical Legion on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Why Atheism is More than a Lack of Belief Concerning the Existence of God

A popular move when debating the existence of God is simply to reject atheism as a denial of God’s existence. Rather, the definition becomes ‘lacking a belief in God’ (i.e. lacktheism). It is therefore not a claim to knowledge of any kind. Here I will spell out what I think how the positions should be formulated regarding the debate about God’s existence, and why lacktheism does not suffice as a definition of atheism.

When it comes to any proposition, we can understand it as true, false, or unkown. When we make a claim that a proposition is true or false, it comes with a specific justification. When it comes to the proposition being unknown, it can be unknown in principle (that means we could never know one way or another), or that we are ignorant of the debate going on. The way we attribute propositions correspond to the three possible categories one can align with in the debate regarding God’s existence.

• True = Theism
• False = Atheism
• Unknown = Agnostic

The proposition in question is “there exists at least one being such that it has attributes resembling what we consider a god”. The proposition does not outline any necessary and sufficient conditions for what is and is not a god because the term can be ambiguous since the gods portrayed between the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism, Greek Paganism, and other varieties of theism, are all rather different. In this sense, the term ‘god’ can be analogous to the term ‘game’; chess, American football, solitaire, boxing and D&D are all games, but they greatly differ. What our conceptions of games and gods share are a resemblance with one another, and this I believe is good enough to capture what we mean when someone is either playing a game, or believes in a god.

With this out of the way, let’s go into the problem with lacktheism. Lacktheism equivocates between an atheist and a non-theist. An atheist is someone who denies the proposition is true, while a non-theist is just someone who isn’t a theist. A non-theist would then encapsulate both atheists and agnostics. The problem with doing this is that it could be done in reverse.

Let’s say that a theist is “someone who lacks belief in the non-existence of a God”. That way people who are agnostics (people who just don’t believe, but won’t deny the proposition, some god exists) and those who believe in some god, are theists. The problem would become apparent in this context that all the theist is doing is equivocating between being a theist, and between being a non-atheist. If it is unacceptable in this case, we should agree that it is just as unacceptable when the lacktheist does the same thing.

Contra-Lacktheism was originally published in The Liturgical Legion on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A response to Nathan Oseroff

I’m a fan of Edward Feser, and suffice it to say, I’m not a big fan of David Hume. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading a good defense of his work — after all, the sign of an influential philosopher is the inspired defenses of his work. I had recently read one such defense provided by Nathan Oseroff, whose impressive credentials can be found here. So, here I’ll do my best to respond to his article, while accepting the possibility I’m a bit over my head.

Edward Feser first begins attacking the problem of induction by attacking Hume’s fork. To quickly summerize Hume’s fork, as Edward Feser understands it (Oseroff argues that such a reading is false, and it would be better to go with that of Georges Dicker’s). In a prior article from Feser, responding to Massiomo Pigliucci, Feser sums up the self-refutation objection as follows,

David Hume’s famous doctrine that any proposition that concerns neither “relations of ideas” nor “matters of fact” can contain only “sophistry and illusion” and might as well be “commit[ed] to the flames.” Naturally, the suspect propositions included, in Hume’s view, those of traditional metaphysics, and Pigliucci tells us that on first encountering it he found Hume’s position “a neat and no nonsense kind of view.” The trouble, though, is that Hume’s Fork is an anticipation of the positivists’ verification principle, and has similar problems. In particular, it appears to be no less self-refuting, for Hume’s Fork is not itself either true by virtue of the relations of the ideas that enter into its formulation, or true by virtue of empirically discernible matters of fact. Hence it is no less “metaphysical” than the propositions it was used to criticize. And as with the verification principle, while one can attempt to reformulate Hume’s Fork in such a way as to keep it from being self-undermining, doing so also strips it of its anti-metaphysical bite.

Dicker’s Objection

What does Dicker bring to the table that gets around such an objection? Oseroff writes the self refutation objection argument fails because,

Dicker disagrees…since Hume’s definition of ‘matters of fact’ is strictly weaker than syntheticity

The contention is that matters of fact to not strictly refer to non-abstract principles. Consider for example the following two propositions,

1. Cigarettes act as a laxative

2. Of two events, A and B, we say that A causes B when the two always occur together, that is, are constantly conjoined [1]

While 1 refers to a concrete referent (namely cigarettes), one you can interact with, while 2 refers to an abstract referent (causality). While causality would not in the domain of synthetic objects, it does make it on Hume’s account. The problem of induction also still holds up because induction, if treated as causality, would remain question begging, despite its abstract nature. Thus, Hume’s Fork can still hold up as a matter of fact.

The problem is that accepting Hume’s Fork as a true matter of fact, relies on induction to justify it. If that is the case, then the Fork would first need to first assume the truth of induction. The person who accepts this line of reasoning would then be engaging in a performative contradiction. It would be the equivalent of saying out loud “I am not speaking”. While the proposition ‘I am not speaking’ can be true, it becomes false when speaking it out loud.

Likewise, while Hume’s Fork could be true, if it were, we’d only know it through induction, and if the principle of induction were unknown (qua Hume’s objection), we would not know the truth of Hume’s Fork. Thus, Hume would be in no better place than the inductivist. In fact, the inductivist is still on better grounds because there is more inductive evidence for induction, then there is Hume’s fork (given we’ve seen the power of induction in all branches of empirical inquiry, whereas Hume’s Fork is only a specific theory about propositions). This would be empirical grounds for rejecting the fork, and accepting another theory about the nature of propositions. Hume falls from the self-refutation frying pan, and into the performative-contradictory fire.

Breaking the Trilemma

Feser claims,

‘Nor can the Humean plausibly salvage the argument by softening Hume’s fork so as to avoid the self-refutation problem. For the softening can take one of three forms. The Humean could liberalize the principle by admitting that there is after all a third category in addition to “relations of ideas” and “matters of fact”; or he could maintain this dichotomy while liberalizing the “relations of ideas” in such a way that Hume’s Fork itself will come out true by virtue of the relations of ideas; or he could maintain the dichotomy while liberalizing the notion of “matters of fact” in such a way that Hume’s Fork will come out true by virtue of matters of fact’.

In response, Oseroff writes,

Feser neglects a fourth option, and this neglect can be shown in a (slightly) roundabout way by addressing the following question: does Feser’s argument prove too much? It may apply equally to any demarcation criteria that do not fall squarely into any domain circumscribed by the criteria, viz. the same argument may be run against distinctions between more modernised post-Kantian taxonomy: the necessary and contingent, a priori and a posteriori and analytic and synthetic.

So, what if it does? I doubt Feser would mind (as a Thomist, Feser isn’t exactly married to post-Kantian philosophy). I fail to see why is this such a bullet to bite. But let’s grant that it is, I don’t think they are necessarily self-refuting. Couldn’t those facts be necessary a priori synthetic facts? These are facts we just know given an intuitive grasp on the world, similar to Descartes’ “light of pure reason”. For a better detailed defense of such an approach, see Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses (Elements of Philosophy) by Laurence Bonjour.

Defending Logical Empiricism

In treating us to a defense of logical empiricism, Oseroff seems, unknowingly, to provide a justification for this move. I’ll explain how after giving a detailed explanation of his position. Orseoff provides two different justifications of his positions. The first defense is an inductive appeal to authority,

One reason to defend Carnap’s criterion from the charge of self-refutation (and, by extension, defend Hume’s Fork from the same charge), is as follows: this form of reasoning is simply too easy to be get at. Any potential bugbear is killed off from a distance — it is trivial to refute Carnap without having to read anything in Carnap’s writings other than his criterion. It is so easy a child could refute Carnap.

Any argument that appears so easy as to dismiss Carnap without having read Carnap must, I believe, have been anticipated in some form by Carnap, and would not have escaped the attention of Carnap’s critics. However, this self-refuting argument is not thought within philosophical orthodoxy to have been the knockdown argument for Carnap’s criterion. Therefore we have prima facie grounds to believe this form of argument just isn’t strong enough on its own to do away with Carnap’s criterion (and, by extension, do away with Hume’s Fork).

While this is a fair enough criticism, I would say that if Orseoff is giving us a proper reading and defense of Carnap, then refuting such a defense is sufficient to rule out Carnap given that we’re assuming Orseoff is giving an accurate representation for those of us who might have a child-like understanding to Carnap.

The next objection is a little more substantial. It begins by making a distinction between internal questions and external questions. According to Orseoff,

First, we must make the distinction between internal questions and external questions for L, for questions about linguistic frameworks have both internal and external questions. Internal questions must be raised within and answered within a linguistic framework; external questions are addressed from outside the framework.

The internal/external distinction can be understood as analogous to a toy example: consider a microbiologist examining different cells on a slide under a microscope. The microbiologist notes that different cells fall into distinct two types, with readily identifiable attributes and behaviours: red blood cells and white blood cells. Questions about the behaviour of the red and white blood cells refer to what occurs on the slide, not what occurs outside the slide; questions about the microbiologist (such as, for example, their criteria for when a blood cell is red or white) refers to what occurs outside the slide, not occurs within the slide.

Questions external to a linguistic framework can be about the consequences of adopting the framework, but to Carnap it would not make sense to speak of whether answers outside the framework are true or false, or can be judged from within the framework. It would be, as Carnap called it in the Aufbau (1929), ‘mixing of spheres’ (‘Sphärenvermengung’), not unlike asking whether the microbiologist’s criterion for red and white blood cells is a red blood cell or a white blood cell.

Similarly, these sorts of questions that inquire as to whether criteria that demarcate between different linguistic frameworks are true or false (or, in our case, itself subject to its own criteria) ‘mix the spheres’, or engage in, as Gilbert Ryle calls it, a category-mistake.

The problem with such a move is that such a distinction is itself self-refuting, as we can ask whether the distinction between internal questions and external question is itself true by way of being external or internal to Carnap’s linguistic framework. If it is external, then what it it based on? If it is internal, than isn’t this question begging for those who don’t accept the linguistic frame work?

Fortunately this objection is anticipated, but rejected along the same lines as done with Hume’s Fork.

Consider the following question: is the sentence, ‘All meaningful sentences are either analytic (true in virtue of a sentence’s linguistic meaning) or synthetic (true in virtue of some correspondence between the linguistic meaning of the sentence and some external fact)’ itself analytic or synthetic?

The sentence isn’t analytic, but is it synthetic? This is a bizarre question to ask, since it seems that we must first assume some sort of analytic/synthetic distinction in order to categorise sentences, for any instance of a purported correspondence relation would presuppose the analytic/synthetic distinction. That is, naturally, question-begging. Therefore, it is not synthetic. If it is neither analytic nor synthetic, is the sentence, ‘All meaningful sentences are analytic or synthetic’, self-refuting on the grounds that by its own lights it is meaningless (but also obviously meaningful)?

I don’t see why accepting the dichotomy of analytic-synthetic isn’t possible by grounding it as an a priori, necessary synthetic fact. The problem seems to come in by neglecting possible combinations of analytic, synthetic, contingent, necessity, a priori, a postitiori propositions.

Does Feser Burden Shift?

I think this is a fairer criticism of Feser, but I don’t think this holds up either given the context. Oseroff maintains that,

Feser may object to the premises in Hume’s argument for inductive scepticism. That is uncontested. This is true, naturally, of many arguments: premises are contested. If the premises are contested, all this gets is that there exists philosophical disagreement. An appropriate conclusion to be drawn would be to refrain from belief either way, either for the denial or affirmation of an inductive principle until the dispute has been resolved. But this is tantamount to inductive scepticism. I hasten to note that inductive scepticism is not the denial of the possibility of an inductive principle; rather, it is the strictly weaker claim that no inductive principle has yet been provided that surmounts well-known objections, such as Hume’s Fork.

This disagreement does not get us to the desired conclusion that a principle of inductive inference is on par with necessary truths, pace Feser’s claim, ‘Perhaps if we had a complete grasp of the nature of bread and the nature of the human body, we would see that it is not in fact possible for bread to fail to be nourishing to us’. Perhaps, but the consequences are not dire for the inductive sceptic, as Dicker notes (1998, 77–80).

The fact that we may be mistaken about analytic sentences, such as ‘the sum of the angles a Euclidean triangle add up to 180 degrees’, does not make it obvious that we are similarly mistaken about having failed to identify some presently unknown essential nature of bread, such as the sentence, ‘bread is essentially nourishing to us’. Is the sentence similar to an analytic sentence? It isn’t obviously so, especially given the troubles Goodman-like predicates present.

To throw Feser’s claim of ‘Perhaps…’ back at him, perhaps if we had a complete grasp of the essential nature of bread and the essential nature of the human body, we would see that bread behaves differently after a certain date, or in a different spatio-temporal region. It is, as far as we know, not impossible.

I think the fault with this response is that it betrays the standard of evidence Feser is being held to earlier with Carnap. While there are definitely positions where such a practice is a clear case of burden shifting, I don’t think such is the case for certain forms of skepticism. A skeptic is usually challenging beliefs we hold as foundational to have any beliefs (even those which ground skepticism) in the first place.

If we should give Carnap the benefit of the doubt because of the apparent ease of dismissing the argument not anticipated by a professional philosopher, then a foritiori, we should give an even greater benefit to induction itself, an integral aspect to human reason, so easy that a non-philosopher (Hume was a historian at his time) could come up with.

A Pragmatic Solution

To use William James’ term, we can easily talk about the cash-value of these categories, and their cash-value is shown by the fact that they help explain the apparent general dissimilarity between types of sentences; Carnap, similarly, would note that these conceptual categories provide an explication of our intuitive concepts.

But, why would Hume or Carnap want to do such a thing? Appealing to intuition would remove them from the bounds of empiricism, as it is not a sensory based form of justification (which is a requisite for non-trivial forms of knowledge). However, it could be that such an appeal is purely pragmatic, that we need these categories to function in our daily lives. The problem is that we can only determine “cash-value” because that itself determined by induction, and if those categories entail the problem of induction, then it’s no solution at all.

Conclusion

While I thank Oseroff for the his defense, and I fully appreciate this read, I hope I have conveyed either my unbeknownced ignorance, or why I don’t accept the arguments presented.

End Notes

[1] C. M. Lorkowski, ‘David Hume: Causation’, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Link

Saving Hume? was originally published in The Liturgical Legion on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This post is republished from a former blog of mine back in 2015. I decided to publish it here out of laziness.

William Lane Craig brings out new argument for the existence of God, and Bob Seidensticker of the blog Cross Examined: “Clear Thinking” about Christianity comes out with a rebuttal here and here. I should begin by stating that the argument is not all that new, contrary to Seidensticker’s claim, Craig published it back in 2013 (which you can read here), first applying it in a debate with Alex Rosenberg; but this claim is nit-picky.

The first claim made is “This Argument from Math is just a variant of the Transcendental Argument”, which is not the case. The Transcendental Argument tries to prove the existence of God through the ontology of abstract concepts (mainly the laws of logic) by divine conceptualism (the view absract entities are thoughts in the mind of God) as the only conceivable option. The Argument from Mathematics is related to epistemology and not ontology. Namely, theism answers how the human mind can comprehend the universe through math better than naturalism. In that sense, it is closer to the design argument for God’s existence in explaining a feature of the world.

The next claim he makes is this argument only appears to succeed because it is confusing. The problem is that confusion is person relative. I could be very confused about equations that mathematicians make, but does not mean they are wrong. It might be that I’m accidentally overcomplicating the problem.

Lastly, it is called a deist argument. I, agree that design and design-like arguments are notoriously bad at getting us to the properties of God. However, it can still be used as a proof against naturalism, which isn’t a bad, since it places minds as more foundation to the material world. The next objections however prove to be more formidable,

Reality is what it is, and the math adapts as necessary. If one formulation of a law does a poor or incomplete job of explaining the physics (say, when Newton’s law of gravity didn’t work perfectly in environments with extreme gravity), the math can be changed(in this example, by adding corrections to account for General Relativity).

However, we should ask why any mathematical formula works at all. Why reality should fit itself to how humans think. I suppose Seidensticker could claim that we evolved these capabilities by environmental conditioning, but we could just respond with the same line of reasoning,

Reality is what it is, and our physiology adapts as necessary for those conditions. If a mathematical adaptation does a poor or incomplete job of breeding environmental benefits (say, when we can’t produce environmentally comprehending math), the dominate adaptations can be changed (in this example, by adapting traits that are better for bartering cultures, requiring little math).

Evolution cannot account for our use and understanding of high level math that can explain the universe because it does not need entail we ought to have these capabilities. Rather, even on evolutionary grounds, it is still a happy coincidence.

Wigner said that Newton’s law of gravity “has proved accurate beyond all reasonable expectations.” But what are these reasonable expectations? That the universe is mathematically describable is surprising only if we expect it to be otherwise (I’ve discussed a related topic here). Should we expect the same laws of nature but different fundamental constants? Different constants in different parts of the universe? Different laws? Or maybe a structure so chaotic that no equation would be accurate for more than an instant? Why are any of these possibilities more expected than what we actually have? What’s unreasonable about how math works in our world? Once we study hundreds of other universes, we’ll get a sense of what they look like to compare with our own, but without this data, we have nothing to go on, and we have no grounds on which to formulate “reasonable expectations.”

How about human beings with a very different evolutionary history, like stated above? Or, we could expect a universe with no life giving constants exists to form animals with mathematical thought. Why ought we expect the fictions we write to be as pragmatically helpful? We have other fictions that pale in telling us anything about the universe.

Furthermore, considering there are other adaptations that exist and are effective, without them requiring either a pre-existing fiction coincidentally working, or abstract and non-causal facts interacting with us, how does math arise as a discourse? On a Naturalist world-view, why ought I expect such questions to be answered?

Math gives neat, simple answers where it does, and it doesn’t where it doesn’t. Our awe at math’s effectiveness may be due to confirmation bias, in which we count the hits and ignore the misses. We marvel at the places where math provides a neat solution and ignore those where it doesn’t. And consider whether God or reality calls the shots. Take just one primitive truth in our reality, 2 + 2 = 4. Could God have made it anything different? If so, I await the evidence. If not, what role is left for God if reality defines the fundamentals from which the rest of math follows?

God is not the truth maker of 2+2=4, rather the question asks why are math formulas effective in granting us knowledge of the world. 2+2=4 (if a fiction that is) is as right as saying “Spider-man lives in New York” While both are true in the discussion of the fiction, only one will ever have practical significance in creating scientific theories in the first place.Does math fail, sure when we do not have an applicable theory whose explanatory power breaks, but there are more models with more power.

He doesn’t care that the consequences of his explanation are either untestable (such as the existence of heaven) or have been tested and failed (such as answered prayer). He doesn’t care that his claim isn’t even falsifiable.

Neither are the laws of logic, they are true because of the impossibility to the contrary. There is more than one way to come to a knowledge based conclusion other than science.

He doesn’t care that “God did it” raises more questions than it answers — questions about who or what God is, his motivations, how and why he created the universe, and so on.

Well, it’s not like we can formulate a discipline of philosophy of religion to either show such a being as incoherent, or explicable…oh wait, we have that.

He doesn’t care that whenever science has found an explanation, it’s always natural.

Science has accepted zero supernatural explanations.

What about the move from Aristotelian causality to occasionalism in the 17th century? To quote Menno Hulswit,

The history of the development of this outlook is extraordinarily complex, and was influenced by a web of both theological and scientific beliefs. However, the idea that causation involves determinism does not have a scientific origin, but a theological one. In spite of differences in detail, the arguments for determinism in the writings of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza and Leibniz, are very similar. In no case did the conclusion that all things are determined receive its justification from a concern with empirical fact. The idea was that all things are causally determined because, and only because determinism is entailed in the idea of God’s omnipotence and omniscience. If God knows everything and can do everything, whatever is must be. For the same reason, it is misleading to say that any finite agent is a genuine cause, that is to say, an active initiator of a change. Only God can be the cause of anything [1]

Here, physics depended on God in their early causal models. It was short lasting, but still an example.

He doesn’t care that, when you look around at God’s project with its natural disasters, parasites, childhood illnesses, and so on, it looks more like an experiment of the kid who burned ants with a magnifying glass, unaccountably given omnipotence, than the design of an all-loving deity.

Clearly, no theist has ever put up a defense against the problem of evil.

He doesn’t provide evidence that his god even exists.

This is the evidence.

No, Craig says, his answer has great explanatory power, “unless you’re closed to theism.”

Did you see that clever role reversal coming? If there’s a problem with embracing Craig’s position, it must be that the atheist is simply closed-minded! Or, possibly you have rational reasons to provide to being closed to theism, such as the problems of evil that Craig admits require an answer.

We see cracks begin to form, however, when he admits that his isn’t an empirical explanation but rather a metaphysical one. But then what good is it? I mean, besides advancing Craig’s pet theory?

Explaining the preconditions for empirical observation I would say.

I will end by pointing out that Seidensticker’s right. He’s clearly a terrible critic of the argument, but he is right. Mathematical knowledge is defensible from the atheist position. If I was an atheist, I would say that math is effective because the universe is coherent (obeys the law of non-contradiction) and so are the scientific models that we epistemologically attach ourselves to. They match up, but are still in a process of either falsification or augmentation to better fit the data and the feats we preform.

So, why bother writing such a long response to an underwhelming argument? The reason is that Saint Augustine was unfairly quoted and showing Seidensticker to be inept at refuting Craig was a cathartic way of pointing this out.

Unfortunately, the only “popular” quote we read from Augustine on mathematics is significantly skewed. Morris Kline (1908–1992), mathematics historian attempted to smear Augustine and the Christian faith he represented. Here is what Kline said

Augustine said (in living color): The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.”

Looking up the source (De Genesi ad Litteram, II, xvii. 37) reveals that whoever translated the Latin into English simply did not have an adequate command of Latin. In the paragraph before this misquote, Augustine says (reliably translated from Latin into English),

“What therefore is more vain, than that the mathematicus should guess from those constellations, from the very same horoscope, from the very same moon, to say that one of [those twins] is loved by the mother, and the other not loved?”

Note carefully the connection to astrology and Augustine’s condemnation of this epistemological foundation. Here are Augustine’s words in the next paragraph

(translated accurately in context): “For this reason, the good Christian should beware not only numerologists, but all those who make impious divinations, above all when they tell truth. Otherwise, they may deceive the soul, and ensnare her in a pact of friendship with demons.

Clearly, Augustine was speaking of woo merchants, not mathematicians. A group I am sure many atheists also do not like.

[1] — http://see.library.utoronto.ca/SEED/Vol4-3/Hulswit.htm

Craig, Seidensticker, and the Argument for God`s Existence From Mathematics was originally published in The Liturgical Legion on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Defense of Divine Command Theory

In my prior post, I outlined John E. Hare’s prescriptive realism. Here, I will give it a defense. There are four arguments against the divine command theorist which might be thought insurmountable, they are;

1. The open question argument
2. The is-ought gap
3. The Euthyphro dilemma
4. The argument from human autonomy.

Here, I’ll go into detail about each argument and then provide some response to them.

The first argument, the open question argument, comes from G.E. Moore. Moore writes,

When we think that A is good, we are thinking that A is one of the things which we desire to desire, our proposition may seem quite plausible. But, if we carry the investigation further, and ask ourselves Is it good to desire to desire A? it is apparent, on a little reflection, that this question is itself as intelligible, as the original question, Is A good? — that we are, in fact, now asking for exactly the same information about the desire to desire A, for which we formerly asked with regard to A itself. But it is also apparent that the meaning of this second question cannot be correctly analysed into Is the desire to desire A one of the things which we desire to desire?: we have not before our minds anything so complicated as the question Do we desire to desire to desire to desire A? Moreover any one can easily convince himself by inspection that the predicate of this proposition — good — is positively different from notion of desiring to desire which enters into its subject: That we should desire to desire A is good is not merely equivalent to That A should be good is good. It may indeed be true that what we desire to desire is always good; perhaps, even the converse may be true: but it is very doubtful whether this is the case, and the mere fact that we understand very well what is meant by doubting it, shews clearly that we have to different notions before our mind [1]

To speak of “desire” (or some other natural property) as being identical to the good would, as Moore argues, cease to make the question of “what is good” doubtful. Contrast this to the tautological statement “Is a married man married?” where the answer is embedded into the question and is true by definition. Since the question “what is good” cannot be trivial (it’s an open question after all), it follows that it could not be identical to some natural property, so we need to remain in doubt. While it might turn out whatever we desire is good, and what is good is whatever we desire, they are not identical, since that would entail they analytically mean the same thing, making it a closed questions.

In response to Moore, Hare cites David Brink’s new-wave realist strategy of denying “that failure of property identity does not follow from the failure of meaning identity”. That is, two things can still be the same property, while still baring separate meanings [2]. Hare uses the example of H20, but recognizes its limits. Following Putnam, Hare asks us to imagine a twin earth with a substance identical to water, except it has the structure of XYZ, as opposed to H20. While both Earthlings and Twin Earthlings dub their respective substances ‘water’, they are not the same as the term must designate the same thing in all possible worlds.

It is the causal contact which gives the referents the same term, despite being different natural kinds[3]. Likewise, God’s call can be the non-value property, while the good is what we call it, and what supervenes on it. A naturalist might claim to do the same thing, but as I wrote in my last post,

while they [natural properties, and value properties] could in theory be inextricably linked, we do not need to concede that they are. What would happen if we were to discover a hypothetical twin earth, that is an earth with a substance that held the same phenomenal qualities of water, but had a chemical structure of XYZ? John Searle argues — against the likes of Putnam — that when we make the discovery concerning water, we either provide a redefinition the term (making it once more analytic), or continue to allow the term to be used to identify the surface properties (thus we would have two types of water)

This is a problem faced by identifying the good with a natural property, however, this is not the case with identifying the good with a [necessarily existent] supernatural property. As Hare explains,

“we would say that the inhabitants of Moral Twin Earth are using “good” in the same way as us, namely to commend, but with different beliefs and theories about what is good. An essential function of “good” is to commend. Within a value judgment, the function is to endorse such a commendation. Genuine dispute between us and the Moral Twin Earthers about the good is therefore possible [that is, would remain open], whereas dispute about water with the Twin Earthers would be silly, since we would be talking past each other”

Since it would be silly to say that “this act is good, but I detest it and refuse to ever do it”, we would have to conclude commending is an essential trait of saying something is good. The difference between earth (supposing everyone on it is a divine command theorists) and moral twin earth is that underlying structure remains the same, and while we are both being morally drawn, one recognizes what it is we are being drawn to, while the other does not.

The naturalist on the other hand is always open to Searle’s analytic reduction, since natural kinds are not necessary. This solves the open question argument, without leaving it open to the naturalist. The next argument is the is-ought gap. This is the problem was brought forth by David Hume,

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprized to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence.

For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.

Thus the course of the argument leads us to conclude, that since vice and virtue are not discoverable merely by reason, or the comparison of ideas, it must be by means of some impression or sentiment they occasion [4]

The question comes down to, from a description (an ‘is’), how do we get an ‘ought’? Suppose that someone says “We should pay women equally to men, since it is fair”. However, we can retort “why ought we be fair?”, and for any other justification, it would seem you can go back one step. Hare holds that since God’s call is just something we all, knowingly or not, value, it is the good which attracts us all. We ought to follow God’s call because for anything else we might seem to value, we have greater reason to value God’s call because it is the source for all other values. Hare likens God’s call and our values to a

magnetic force…to an iron ring through other iron rings that are attracted to the original magnet. This is Plato’s image (Ion 536a): “Well, do you not see that the spectator is the last of the rings I spoke of, which receive their force from one another by virtue of the magnet? … But it is the deity who, through all the series, draws the spirit of men wherever he desires, transmitting the attractive force from one into another.” [5]

While there is no contradiction in rejecting the source of value while accepting contingent values, just like there is no contradiction between rejecting H2O as the source of water, it would be irrational to disentangle the two.

The third objection is the Euthyphro Dilemma. Is (1) X good because God commands it, or (2) does God command X because X is good. If you go with (1), the problem is that God can in fact do anything by divine fiat. It makes God’s commands arbitrary. If you go with (2), God isn’t necessary for something to be good. Furthermore, it would mean that the good is beyond God, which attacks the notion of aseity. Hare writes,

Our duties to our neighbor are right both because God chooses that route and because it is a route to the final good. God has an essential tendency to self-affirmation, and when God creates us (which is not necessary) God must desire that our strivings should be directed in accordance with our highest good [6]

The response here is that God, as a matter of necessity, recognizes himself as his highest good, and wills other contingent goods as a fitting means to achieve those ends.

However, we can revise the dilemma and ask “(1)* Does God recognize himself as the highest good because he has certain properties, or (2)* Does God declare himself to be the highest good. If (1)*, than those properties are good, and not God himself, and if (2)* the highest good is arbitrary. The response here is to accept a platonic notion of predication, rather than one of necessary and sufficient conditions. That is, X is not good because it has the properties of XYZ, but because we participate in X for our goodness. Thus, we have another false dilemma.

Think of a pre-scientific conception of heat as if it were a basic entity not reducible to any other. Heat is not hot, but hot things are heated. The Neo-Platonist Plotinus likened heated things as shadows of the true form of heat [7].While we might have a greater knowledge of heat by studying each ascending intensity of hot environments, we will only approximate but never capture the essence of heat.

Likewise, God is also a basic entity (more specifically the simplest entity so he can exist through himself), and the highest in all existence with all lesser entities forging a descending hierarchy [8]. If God is “something than which nothing greater can be” then he is the standard of greatness we participate in. To predicate goodness, intelligence, personality, etc, onto God is not to say they fully describe God, but better approximate God since those things as we know them through finite agents, have limits and break down at some point in greatness. Just like instances of hot environments are not heat itself, but help us to better approximate the form.

Heat can have different effects on objects when heating them, and when we notice it we can say the heat is scorching, burning, etc. These are effects we can see in the world, without knowing about heat itself. There is only one way in which heat exists, but because we do not know it directly, we approximate by conceiving of more heat enriched models. For instance, if I wanted to gauge how hot infinite heat would be, I would be closer by using the center of the earth’s core, as opposed to the polar ice caps. Even if we have moved away from the classical conception of heat, speaking of heat in this way is still comprehensible. Likewise, we feel the pull of God to do the moral thing, and sense that not only does ‘good’ better approximate him, but , with further argumentation, so do his other qualities of being ‘loving’, ‘personal’, omniscient’, ‘omnipotent’, etc.

The last argument is that having God as the administrator of the good takes away human autonomy, given it takes away the notion that we should be good for its own sake, and makes us moral because God commands it. Hare spends the last chapter on giving an exegesis of Kant, while he provides content to rid ourselves of this objection. Hare argues,

there is nothing heteronomous [acting in accordance with one’s desires rather than reason]about willing to obey a superior’s prescription because the superior has prescribed it, in a discretionary way, as long as the final end is shared between us, and we have trust also about the route.

Both us and God love our final end as the good in-itself, this is why we ought to obey his commands. Those commands are a route to loving the good in-itself, not the sole reason why we ought to. Divine commands do not rob human autonomy of reason, they assist us in performing our duties, and because they come from a trustworthy authority, it would be negligent and irresponsible to reject it.

End Notes

[1] G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Chapter I, § 13, Link

[2] John E. Hare. God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands, and Human Autonomy (Kindle Location 347). Kindle Edition.

[3] Ibid, Kindle Location 347

[4] Hume, A Treaties on Human Nature, Link

[5] John E. Hare. God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands, and Human Autonomy (Kindle Locations 500–502). Kindle Edition.

[6] Ibid, Kindle Locations 1001–1003

[7] J.M. Rist, Plotinus: Road to Reality,68–69

[8] Anselm, Basic Works . 41

[9]John E. Hare. God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands, and Human Autonomy (Kindle Locations 1153–1154). Kindle Edition.

Prescriptive Realism — Part Two was originally published in The Liturgical Legion on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve spent the last couple of days reading a great book on divine command theory, the view that what is good is that which is willed by God. The defense was given by John E. Hare, son of the British philosopher R.M. Hare. I’ve spoken about him before (here), and suffice to say, he’s most likely my favorite Calvinist philosopher. His book begins with an analysis of various meta-ethical positions (realist and anti-realist), and finds himself with an interesting theory he dubs ‘Prescriptive realism’.

On Hare’s view, the good is not identical to the call of God to an action, but supervenes on the call of God. What does this mean? When we say something is good, we are looking at a descriptive non-value property like being empathetic, and then using the word good to commend those properties because they meet the traits we wish to universalize into a general rule. Hare, borrowing from his father, gives the following example,

a strawberry is good because it is sweet. But the value property [of being ‘good’] is not the same as the non-value property [being sweet], and ascribing the second does not entail ascribing the first. If I judge, however, that a strawberry is good because it is sweet and firm and juicy, I am committed to the same evaluation of any other strawberry with just those non-evaluative properties [1]

Hare, like his father, denies that from non-value property, you can deduce that it is good, nor, can you deduce something is good because it is has that non-value property [2]. This lack of identity shows us two things,

(1) that the moral disagreements among us were reasonable to expect since what we are disputing is the evaluative criteria which supervenes from our psychology onto the non-moral properties [3].

(2) that these disagreements can be open, rather than trivial.

However, Hare, unlike his father, does still believe there can be true, and objectively based, moral propositions. A moral act like “committing idolatry” can hold the property of wrongness because God calls us against doing it. The relation between the non-value and value property is causal, since God calls us to not commit idolatry, this causes us to evaluate it as wrong [4]. The dispute that takes place regards which properties are causing us to view some X as wrong. Here, we are not projecting our psychology, but responding to a causal element that is already there.

The question of “what is good” is akin to the question of “what is water”. ‘Water’ has its phenomenal meaning — a colorless transparent liquid — but it also has a meaning which tells us that it is of a natural kind (that it has the chemical structure of H2O). When we use the term water, we use it as a control function to pick out what it is as a natural kind. However, we can also note that a natural kind is the cause of the phenomenon [5]. This analogy illustrates how a property such as X, can be inextricably Y, without being semantically identical to Y.

This is where the analogy ends. Natural kinds, while they could in theory be inextricably linked, we do not need to concede that they are. What would happen if we were to discover a hypothetical twin earth, that is an earth with a substance that held the same phenomenal qualities of water, but had a chemical structure of XYZ? John Searle argues — against the likes of Putnam — that when we make the discovery concerning water, we either provide a redefinition the term (making it once more analytic), or continue to allow the term to be used to identify the surface properties (thus we would have two types of water) [6].

This is a problem faced by identifying the good with a natural property, however, this is not the case with identifying the good with a supernatural property. As Hare explains,

we would say that the inhabitants of Moral Twin Earth are using “good” in the same way as us, namely to commend, but with different beliefs and theories about what is good. An essential function of “good” is to commend. Within a value judgment, the function is to endorse such a commendation. Genuine dispute between us and the Moral Twin Earthers about the good is therefore possible [that is, would remain open], whereas dispute about water with the Twin Earthers would be silly, since we would be talking past each other [7].

Since it would be silly to say that “this act is good, but I detest it and refuse to ever do it”, we would have to conclude commending is an essential trait of saying something is good. The difference between earth (supposing everyone on it is a divine command theorists) and moral twin earth is that underlying structure remains the same, and while we are both being morally drawn, one recognizes what it is we are being drawn to, while the other does not [8].

There are three levels to how prescriptive realism works. The first level is in a construal of a situation (lending itself to a moral judgement of what to do), followed by an endorsement of our judgment wherein we prescribe it. This action is described as an “unselfing”, since it pushes us to go beyond our own interest, and we deem it was good. Further, this moral act is taken as objective because we are taking this judgment as a reaction to something in the world, rather than a projection. Goodness exists as relational property between our evaluation, and the underlying non-value property. It is objective in a relational way human birth is, while it would not exist if we humans didn’t, it would be rather silly to suggest it was subjective [9].

The second level is in identifying what it is that one is responding to, this is where Hare says we are making causal explanation to what it is which draws our evaluation. Someone like Betty could say it is God’s call which makes X good, while Archie could say it is fairness [10]. It’s here where we get to the third level. This is when Betty and Archie not only approving the X, but also the system whereby the underlying descriptive properties cause them attribute the evaluative criteria [11].

Prescriptive realism tells us about our relationship to the good, and how it supervenes onto non-value properties. However, divine command theory tells us that the foundational non-value property is is God’s call, and it instructs us as to why we are obliged to follow it. Following Bl. John Duns Scotus, the final end of all human beings is that we become co-lovers with God, entering within the love in the Trinity [11]. This is the final cause of all human beings, and while our duties to each other are contingently commanded by God (although, fitting), our duties to God (such as loving him) are necessary [12].

It might be asked why we ought to be co-lovers with God, and the response is not what I take to be stated very clearly. Hare argues that it’s because God recognizes himself as his own good, and thus shares with us the same and most glorious end he himself partakes of through the Trinity, that is of glorifying God [13]. To put it in a more Anselmian manner, since God recognizes himself as ‘that which nothing greater can be thought’, he offers us himself for adoration because there is nothing better to give. He has a self-giving nature.

In my next post, I’ll put Hare’s ethical theory up against various traditional objections to moral realism and divine command theory.

End Notes

[1] John E. Hare. God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands, and Human Autonomy (Kindle Locations 131–133). Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid, Kindle Locations 667

[3] Ibid, Kindle Locations 134–137

[4]Ibid, Kindle Locations 663–671

[5] Ibid, Kindle Locations 373

[6] John Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, 203–206

[7] John E. Hare. God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands, and Human Autonomy (Kindle Locations 373–377). Kindle Edition.

[8] Ibid, Kindle Locations 381

[9] Ibid, Kindle Locations 486–490

[10] Ibid, Kindle Locations 494

[11] Ibid, Kindle Locations 686

[12]Ibid, Kindle Locations 693

[13] Ibid, Kindle Locations 1192

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