Hugon’s Cosmology

Editiones scholasticaeis publishing an English translation of Cosmology, an important manual written by the Thomist philosopher and theologian Édouard Hugon (1867-1929).  The translation was made by Dr. Francisco Romero Carrasquillo (who also runs the blog Ite ad Thomam, a useful resource for those interested in Thomism).  The publisher’s description of the book can be found here.

Read More

Avicenna’s argument from contingency, Part I

The medieval Islamic philosopher Ibn Sina or Avicenna (c. 980 - 1037) is one among that myriad of thinkers of genius unjustly neglected by contemporary philosophers.  Useful recent studies of his thought include the updated edition of Lenn Goodman’s Avicennaand Jon McGinnis’s Avicenna.  More recent still is McGinnis’s essay “The Ultimate Why Question: Avicenna on Why God is Absolutely Necessary” in John F. Wippel, ed., The Ultimate Why Question: Why Is There Anything at All Rather than Nothing Whatsoever?  Among the topics of this essay is Avicenna’s version of the argument from contingency for the existence of a divine Necessary Existent.  Let’s take a look.

The argument McGinnis discusses can be found in the Najāt, with the relevant excerpt available in the anthology Classical Arabic Philosophy, edited by McGinnis and David Reisman (at pp. 214-15).  The background to the argument is Avicenna’s view that existence, necessity, and possibility are better known to us than anything we could say in order to elucidate them.  In particular, the claim that something or other exists is more obviously correct than any argument we could give for the claim would be.  And the notions of necessity and possibility are more basic than any other notions we could appeal to in trying to define them.  (Note that he is not saying that the existence of something necessary is more obvious than any argument we could give for it; on the contrary, his aim is precisely to give an argument for it.  That something or other exists he takes to be evident; and what it would be for a thing to be necessary he takes to be evident.  But whether something necessary actually exists he does not say is evident, but requires argument.)

Nevertheless, Avicenna does think that we can say something to describe the notions of necessity and possibility, even if we cannot strictly define them.  He says that something that is “necessary in itself” is something that is entirely determinate in itself and thus requires no cause, so that if it exists it could not fail to exist under any conditions.  By contrast, something that is “possible in itself” is something that is inherently indeterminate as to its existence or non-existence, and thus requires a cause.  Again, though, these are not definitions in terms of better known or more basic concepts, but rather just criteria for identifying what would count as a possible thing or a necessary thing.  (Avicenna also identifies a third category of what is possible in itself but necessary through another.  That would be something that of itself need not exist but is nevertheless necessarily caused by some cause.) 

So, is there something that exists in a necessary way?  That brings us to Avicenna’s argument, of which McGinnis gives an exposition over several pages.  What follows is my own outline of McGinnis’s statement of the argument.  (McGinnis does not put things in this step-by-step way, so the reader should not assume that he would necessarily agree with every detail of my reconstruction.) 

Here, then is the argument:

1. Something exists.

2. Whatever exists is either possible or necessary.

3. If that something which exists is necessary, then there is a necessary existent.

4. Whatever is possible has a cause.

5. So if that something which exists is possible, then it has a cause.

Let’s pause briefly.  You might expect that after step (5), Avicenna’s strategy would be to argue that we must rule out an infinite regress of causes.  But that is not his approach.  Instead he turns his attention to the metaphysical status of the totality of possible things (where the question of whether this totality is infinitely large or not is not in view here).  Returning to the argument:

6. The totality of possible things is either necessary in itself or possible in itself.

7. The totality cannot be necessary in itself since it exists only through the existence of its members.

8. So the totality of possible things is possible in itself.

9. So the totality of possible things has a cause.

10. This cause is either internal to the totality or external to it.

11. If it is internal to the totality, then it is either necessary or possible.

12. But it cannot in that case be necessary, because the totality is comprised of possible things.

13. And it also cannot in that case be possible, since as the cause of all possible things it would in that case be its own cause, which would make it necessary and not possible after all, which is a contradiction.

14. So the cause of the totality of possible things is not internal to that totality, but external to it.

15. But if it is outside the totality of possible things, then it is necessary.

16. So there is a necessary existent.

Note that in step (13) the idea of self-causation is raised.  Avicenna does not actually think that such a thing is possible, but is merely allowing it for the sake of argument.  His point is that if a possible thing were its own cause then it would be entirely determinate in itself and rely on nothing outside it, in which case it would not really be possible but necessary.   Since this is a contradiction, what led us to it -- the assumption that the cause of the totality of possible things is internal to the totality and thus itself possible -- must be rejected.  Of course, if we simply reject the possibility of self-causation out of hand, the same result follows more quickly.

As McGinnis notes, among the distinctive features of this argument are that it not only does not require a premise to the effect that an actual infinite is impossible (as cosmological arguments often do), but also does not rely on a premise to the effect that the world of possible things is orderly (as a teleological argument does), or that it is in motion (as an Aristotelian argument from motion does), or is multiple as opposed to unified (as a Neoplatonic argument might).  Its aim is to show that if anything so much as exists at all then there must be a necessary being. 

What should we think of this argument?  And what can we know about the nature of this necessary existent?  We’ll return to these questions in another post.

Read More

Neither nature alone nor grace alone

Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity… Hence sacred doctrine makes use also of the authority of philosophers in those questions in which they were able to know the truth by natural reason…

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1.8

Here’s one way to think about the relationship between nature and grace, reason and faith, philosophy and revelation.  Natural theology and natural law are like a skeleton, and the moral and theological deliverances of divine revelation are like the flesh that hangs on the skeleton.  Just as neither skeleton alone nor flesh alone give you a complete human being, neither do nature alone nor grace alone give you the complete story about the human condition.

By natural theology and natural law I have in mind, of course, the philosophical knowledge of God and of morality embodied in what is sometimes called the “perennial philosophy” -- the tradition represented by the classical (Platonic and Aristotelian) philosophers and brought to a higher degree of perfection by the great Scholastics.  By themselves natural theology and natural law as developed within this tradition are like a skeleton: striking, solid, and enduring, but also dry, cold, and dead.  That is to say, on the one hand the central arguments of natural theology and natural law are (when rightly understood, as they often are not) impressive and rationally compelling, but can also seem remote from everyday life insofar as they are sometimes hard to understand and deliver a conception of God and of morality that can seem forbiddingly abstract.  To be sure, I think the “coldness” and “abstractness” of natural theology and natural law are often greatly overstated, but I don’t deny that there is some truth to the standard caricature.

By the deliverances of divine revelation I have in mind, of course, what we know of God and of morality from scripture, from the creeds, councils, and tradition more generally, and from the Magisterium of the Church.  By themselves these deliverances are like flesh without a skeleton: warm and human, but also weirdly distorted and unable to stand on its own or to offer resistance.  That is to say, on the one hand the theological and moral deliverances of revelation are more profound than anything natural theology and natural law can give us, and speak to us in a more personal and accessible way.  But they can also seem (when wrongly understood, as they often are) to lack any objective rational foundation, and to reflect a culturally and historically parochial view of human life that cannot apply to all times and places.  To be sure, these purported defects of Christian theology are also, to say the least, greatly overstated, but there is some truth to this caricature too to the extent that Christian theology is not informed by natural theology, natural law, and the methods of philosophy more generally. 

There have of course been times when the significance of nature, reason, and philosophy have been overemphasized -- when the claims of grace, faith, and revelation have been deemphasized and religion reduced to a rationalist skeleton.   But the pressing danger today comes from the opposite direction.  Talk of “faith” has been bastardized, so that many believers and skeptics alike wrongly take it to refer essentially to a kind of subjective feeling or irrational will to believe.  Too much popular preaching and piety has been reduced to trashy self-help sentimentality.  Too many philosophers of religion have for too long been playing defense -- maintaining, not that theism is in a position rationally and evidentially superior to atheism, but instead conceding the evidential issue and pleading merely that religious belief not be regarded as less rational for that.  Too many theologians have turned their attention away from questions of objective, metaphysical truth to matters of aesthetics, or moral sentiment, or psychology, culture, or history.

In short, religious believers have been fleeing into a non-cognitive ghetto almost faster than skeptics can push them into it.  They are too often like the hypochondriac in Ray Bradbury’s short story “Skeleton,”who is pathologically fearful of his own bones and ends up losing them -- reduced in the horrific climax to a helpless, amorphous blob.  What Christian theology needs now more than ever is its traditional, Scholastic backbone.

Read More

Nagel and his critics, Part IX

Returning to my series on the critics of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, let’s look at the recent Commonweal magazine symposium on the book.  The contributors are philosopher Gary Gutting, biologist Kenneth Miller, and physicist Stephen Barr.  I’ll remark on each contribution in turn.

I found Gutting’s review interesting but somewhat frustrating.  On the one hand, unlike some other reviewers Gutting realizes that the heart of Nagel’s position is metaphysical rather than empirical, and that Nagel’s point vis-à-vis consciousness is that the materialist conception of the natural world not only doesn’t account for consciousness but, implicitly, positively excludes consciousness.  On the other hand, like some other reviewers, he still seems to think that Nagel’s critique of Darwinian accounts of consciousness has something essentially to do with probabilities.  As I have argued in previous posts in this series, that is not the case.  And thus it simply misses the point to criticize Nagel (as Gutting, like other reviewers does) for offering insufficient empirical grounds for challenging the consensus among biologists, or failing to justify his probability judgments.  His point about the evolution of consciousness isn’t an empirical or probabilistic matter in the first place, but a metaphysical one.  He is saying that given a materialist account of matter, the origin of consciousness via evolution is not merely improbable but impossible.  Probabilities enter the picture only once evolution is interpreted in light of some different metaphysics of matter -- neutral monist, panpsychist, or whatever.

In the latter part of the chapter on consciousness in Mind and Cosmos, Nagel does indeed address the question of how “likely,” given a “reductive” theory, the rise of consciousness is in “geological time” (pp. 60-61).  The trouble is that too many of Nagel’s commentators (including, it seems to me, Gutting) fail to read these passages in context. 

On p. 54 Nagel distinguishes a “reductive” view from a “reductionist” view.  Materialism would be a “reductionist” view, but a “reductive” view could be one that reduces consciousness to lower-level elements that are understood in a non-materialist way.  He also distinguishes a “constitutive” account of consciousness, which deals ahistorically with how consciousness is related to the physical aspects of an organism, from a “historical” account, which deals with the question of how consciousness arose in the course of time.  He says, though, that “the historical account will depend partly on the correct constitutive account.”  And he goes on in pp. 54-58 to consider, as possible non-materialist constitutive theories, views like strong emergentism, neutral monism, and panpsychism.  Then on p. 58 Nagel writes:

[L]et me now turn to the historical question, again on the assumption that psychophysical reductionism is false.  The prevailing naturalistic answer to the historical question is the materialist version of evolutionary theory, supplemented by a speculative chemical account of the origin of life.  The question is: what alternatives to this picture open up if psychophysical reductionism is rejected? (emphasis added)

So, when Nagel gets to the remarks about what is “likely” in “geological time” etc. he is talking about what is likely given a non-materialist metaphysics.  He is not there criticizing materialist Darwinian accounts of consciousness on the grounds that they don’t make the rise of consciousness in the course of natural history sufficiently probable.  That question is not for Nagel a matter of mere probability in the first place. 

I emphasized, in my own review of Nagel for First Things, the various respects in which Mind and Cosmos evinces a neo-Aristotelian position.  Gutting rightly notes, however, that there are strands in the book which might be taken instead in an idealist or Whiteheadian process philosophy direction.  Naturally I think Aristotelianism is the way to go, but the other approaches would also be improvements on the lazy and philosophically shallow materialism that permeates so much of contemporary intellectual life.

Kenneth Miller’s remarks on Nagel provide an instance of the latter.  Miller seems to think that consciousness is something that might be explained with some further work in neuroscience.  But that is, of course, entirely to miss the point of Nagel’s arguments, which imply that it is impossible in principle for a purely materialist theory, including a purely materialist neuroscientific theory, to account for consciousness.  Nor, contrary to what Miller suggests, do Nagel’s reasons have essentially to do with Cartesian dualism or with what is “conceivable,” and they certainly have nothing to do with Nagel’s “personal preferences.”

As I have emphasized in previous posts in this series, Nagel’s main point vis-à-vis consciousness, first put forward in “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” and restated in other works (including Mind and Cosmos), is that it is precisely the materialist’s own conception of matter that poses the key problem for a materialist account of consciousness.  For from the time of Galileo and Descartes onwards, matter has been defined in such a way that heat, cold, color, sound, odor, taste, and the like as common sense understands them, are extruded from matter -- including the matter that makes up the brain -- and counted as existing only in the mind’s perceptual representation of matter.  What exists in matter is only heat, cold, color, sound, etc. as redefinedfor purposes of physics (sound as compression waves, heat and cold as molecular motion etc.).  This is the origin of the “qualia problem” for materialism.  For if color, odor, sound, heat, cold, etc. as common sense understands them exist only as the “qualia” of our experience of matter and not in matter itself, then they are either immaterial or (if one wants to take an eliminativist line) not real at all.  Either way they will not be explained in materialistic terms, no matter how much neuroscientific data we pile up.  (Among my earlier Nagel posts, see this post, this post, this one, and this one for more detailed discussion of this issue.)

Miller does give Nagel some praise for being an outsider with the brass to challenge the conventional wisdom in biology, but he does not realize how beholden to it he is himself.  Ironically, Miller cites Erwin Schrödinger as someone who raised useful questions from outside biology in his book What is Life?  What Miller does not seem to realize is that Schrödinger also took a view very similar to Nagel’s vis-à-vis consciousness -- perhaps because, as a physicist, he was more sensitive to problems about the nature of matter as such than biologists tend to be, and it is the nature of matter as such, and not merely the current state of neuroscience, that lies at the heart of the problem of consciousness.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that physicist Stephen Barr, unlike Miller, does see the problem for materialism to which Nagel is calling our attention, and sees that it is precisely the methods of modern science that generate it.  Barr writes:

As a physicist, [Nagel’s antimaterialist] conclusion seems to me obvious and to follow directly from the very nature of physical science and the way it explains things. According to physics, every physical system is completely characterized—indeed, defined—by a set of “variables,” which mathematically describe what its elementary constituents are doing and whose evolution though time is governed by a set of mathematical rules and equations…

Even if one knew all the variables of a physical system, their values at one time or at all times, and the equations governing them, there would be no way to derive from that information anything about whether the system in question was conscious, was feeling anything, or was having subjective experiences of any sort.

Of course, we sometimes infer from its physically observable behavior that a being has feelings. When my dog begs for a strip of bacon, I know it’s because he enjoys the taste. But that conclusion is based on an analogy between the dog’s reactions and mine, not on a mathematical or logical derivation from physical facts. Nor could it be based on such a derivation, for such things as enjoyment or taste are not quantities, and physics deals only with quantities—quantities that appear in equations and quantities that are measured.

End quote.  If anything, Barr argues, Nagel is too quick to reject dualism in favor of some non-materialist form of naturalism.  Nagel’s reason for rejecting it, as Barr notes, is that he thinks it entails abandoning hope for an “integrated explanation” of mind and body (Mind and Cosmos, p. 49).  To Barr’s response, I would add that if Nagel pushed his neo-Aristotelianism further he might find that a kind of dualism -- namely what David Oderberg calls “hylemorphic dualism” -- is compatible with an integrated account of mind and body. 

On an Aristotelian hylemorphic conception of human nature, sensation and imagination, which we share with non-human animals, are corporeal, but not because they are reducible to matter as the materialist understands it; intellect, which we don’t share with the animals, is incorporeal, which entails a dualism of sorts; but a human being is nevertheless one substance rather than two, contrary to Cartesian dualism; yet this is not because the incorporeal aspects inhere in a material substance, contrary to property dualism, and it is not because neutral monism, idealism, or panpsychism get things right either (they don’t).  In short, for the Aristotelian, the way the modern, post-Cartesian philosopher of mind typically carves up the basic conceptual lay of the land is totally wrong, and precisely because of the desiccated conception of matter introduced by Galileo, Descartes, and their successors.  (For more on this large topic, see chapter 4 of Aquinas, and earlier posts like this one and this one.) 

Read More