Four questions for Keith Parsons [UPDATED 2/21]

Keith Parsons’ feelings are, it seems, still hurt over some frank things I said about him a few years ago (hereand here).  It seems to me that when a guy dismisses as a “fraud” an entire academic field to which many thinkers of universally acknowledged genius have contributed, and maintains that its key arguments do not even rise to the level of a “respectable philosophical position” worthy of “serious academic attention,” then when its defenders hit back, he really ought to have a thicker skin and more of a sense of humor about himself.  But that’s just me.

 
Anyway, Parsons lamentsthe bad “manners” I showed in having the temerity to give him a taste of his own medicine.  He says he wishes we could have had an “interesting discussion instead.”  So, in the interests of furthering that end I’ll refrain from returning his latest insults.  Instead I’d like to ask him four very straightforward questions to which I think both my readers and his would like to hear his answers.  A response should only take him a few moments.  I set out some context for each question, but I’ve put the questions themselves in bold so as to facilitate a speedy reply from Prof. Parsons.  Here they are:

1. Prof. Parsons, in your response to a reader’s comment, you say:

Unlike Prof. Feser, I would like to address the strongest claims of my opponents, and not those that seem weakest to me.

Evidently, then, you think I have failed to address the strongest criticisms either of my own arguments or of the arguments of philosophers to whose work I appeal (e.g. Aquinas).  So, who exactly are these critics I have ignored, or which of their criticisms, specifically, have I failed to address?  I’m sure you have something in particular in mind, so if you could take just a second or two to let us know what it is, I‘d appreciate it.

2. In the same response, you write vis-à-vis the doctrine of divine conservation:

Why, for instance, does a proton have to be maintained in existence? Why can't it just exist on its own? The very idea that existence is some sort of act that must be continually performed sounds to me, frankly, fatuous.

I assume, then, that you’ve studied and refuted the Scholastic arguments for divine conservation – which, of course, offer an answer to the question you raise -- and have just neglected to tell us where this refutation can be found.  So, could you tell us where we can find this refutation?  Is it in one of your books or journal articles?  Or could you point to some other author you think has adequately done the job?  (FYI, I have defended the Scholastic position at length in my American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Existential Inertia and the Five Ways,” wherein I respond to the arguments on this topic presented by J. L. Mackie, Bede Rundle, John Beaudoin, and others.   I will be happy to email you a PDF of the article if you haven’t seen it, since I’d be very interested to hear which criticisms you think I’ve overlooked.) 

While I’ve got you, I also have a couple of questions about some remarks you made a few years ago when your dismissive remarks about natural theology were widely publicized: 

3. In response to a reader’s comment, you wrote:

I think Bertrand Russell's beautifully succinct critique of all causal arguments holds good: "If everything requires a cause, then God requires a cause. However, if anything can exist without a cause, it might as well be the universe as God."  Exactly.

Now, your Secular Outpost co-blogger and fellow atheist Jeffery Jay Lowder agrees with me that this is not in fact a good objection to arguments for a First Cause, because it attacks a straw man.  Specifically, Lowder has said:

[N]o respectable theologian or theistic philosopher has ever made the claim, "everything has a cause." Yet various new atheists have proceeded to attack that straw man of their own making. I remember, when reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, where he attacked that straw man and cringing. There are many different cosmological arguments for God's existence and none of them rely upon the stupid claim, "everything has a cause."

You won't find that mistake made by Quentin Smith, Graham Oppy, Paul Draper, or (if we add a theistic critic to the list) Wes Morriston.

End quote.  Now it would seem that what Lowder calls a “mistake” is one that you, Keith Parsons, have made.  But is Lowder wrong?  If he is, please tell us exactly which theistic philosophers who defend First Cause arguments – Avicenna? Maimonides? Aquinas? Scotus?  Leibniz? Clarke? Garrigou-Lagrange? Craig? -- actually ever gave the argument Russell was attacking.

4.  In response to another reader’s question, about Craig’s version of the First Cause argument, you wrote: “Both theists and atheists begin with an uncaused brute fact.  For Craig it is God, and for me it is the universe.”  Now, as you know, the expression “brute fact” is typically used in philosophy to convey the idea of something which is unintelligible or without explanation.  And your statement gives the impression that all theists, or at least most of them, regard God as a “brute fact” in this sense. 

But in fact that is the reverse of the truth.  Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. would deny that God is a “brute fact.”  They would say that the explanation for God’s existence lies in the divine nature -- for Aristotelians, in God’s pure actuality; for Neoplatonists, in his absolute simplicity; for Thomists, in the fact that his essence and existence are identical; for Leibnizians in his being his own sufficient reason; and so forth.  (Naturally the atheist will not think the arguments of these thinkers are convincing.  But to say that they are not convincing is not the same thing as showing that the theist is either explicitly or implicitly committed to the notion that God is a “brute fact.”)

But perhaps you think the standard interpretation of the views of Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. is mistaken.  Perhaps you think that these thinkers are in fact all explicitly or at least implicitly committed to the thesis that God is a “brute fact.”  So, could you please tell us where you have spelled out an argument justifying the claim that all or at least most philosophical theists regard God as a “brute fact” or are at least implicitly committed to the claim that he is?  Is there a book or journal article written by you or by someone else in which we can find this justification? 

Thanks.   I look forward to your answers and to an interesting discussion.

UPDATE 2/19: Over in his combox, Keith Parsons at first expressed interest in responding to my questions, but then in a follow-up comment wrote:

On second thought, after looking at your "straightforward questions" my answer is: Nah. I was expecting an invitation to a civil academic discussion, but I find that you are still in personal attack mode. My only response will be to assure you that you have not hurt my feelings at all. I think you are a horse's ass, and the disdain of your ilk is of no concern to me at all. Indeed, I consider it a badge of honor. Please do write more nasty things about me for the amusement of your ignorant and boorish followers. It makes my day when I piss off people like you guys.

I’ll let readers be the judge of which of us is “pissed off,” “nasty,” “in personal attack mode,” etc.; of whether I was right to characterize Parsons as too thin-skinned; and of why he decided not to respond to some polite and straightforward questions that should take him only a few moments to answer.  (Judging from his combox, Parson’s own readers aren’t too happy with his reply.) 

I’ve just posted a polite response in his combox.  Let’s see whether I’ve made his day again.

UPDATE 2/20: For those who aren’t following the proceedings in Parsons’ combox, in response to my polite restatement of my questions to him, Parsons wrote: 

Prof. Feser, 

You have written now, what is it, three lengthy columns attacking me? I think about you approximately zero percent of the time. Apparently, however, I am living rent free in your head. The kind of help you need is not the kind that I am professionally qualified to give.

By this point I found I couldn’t help but let slip the dogs of sarcasm, responding:

Prof. Parsons, 

Thanks for that. Just ran your comment through Google Translate. Here's what came out: "Prof. Feser, you've embarrassed me by asking four polite and simple questions I cannot answer, despite my having loudly shot my mouth off about the subjects in question for several years. So, I will try once again to deflect attention from this fact by accusing you of launching a personal attack, in the desperate hope that there might still be a few readers left who haven't bothered actually to read your blog post and see that my accusation is false. Also, I never give you any thought, except for all those times over the last few days and years that I've run to my computer to post comments to the effect that I never give you any thought." 

Can you confirm the accuracy of this translation?

 

To which Parsons replied: 

Prof. Feser, 

Thanks for the hysterical (in both senses of the term) calumny. You prove my point more eloquently than I ever could. Really, sir, you are in the grip of an irrational obsession. Get some help.  

Parsons’ readers have, almost to a man, expressed disappointment at his behavior, and now his co-blogger Jeff Lowder has called on Parsons to knock it off and just answer the questions I put to him.  But I doubt anything else he might say could be more illuminating than what he's said already.

UPDATE 2/21: If you’ve been following the continuing exchange in the combox over at Keith Parsons’ blog, you know that he has now agreed to an exchange with me, to be moderated by Jeffery Jay Lowder.  I’ll report the specific details after they are finalized.

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Lowder then bombs

Atheist blogger and Internet Infidels co-founder Jeffery Jay Lowder seems like a reasonable enough fellow.  But then, I admit it’s hard not to like a guy who writes:

I’ve just about finished reading Feser’s book, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.  I think Feser makes some hard-hitting, probably fatal, objections to the arguments used by the “new atheists.”

Naturally Lowder thinks there are better atheist arguments than those presented by the “New Atheists,” but it’s no small thing for him to have made such an admission -- an admission too few of his fellow atheist bloggers are willing to make, at least in public.  So, major points to Lowder for intellectual honesty.

 
Unfortunately, having made such a promising beginning, Lowder then bombs.  In particular, he goes on pretty badly to misrepresent what I’ve said about atheists in general (as opposed to “New Atheists” like Dawkins, Dennett, Myers, et al. in particular).  Not that I’m too mad at him about it.  He’s responding to afour-year-old article of mine on the New Atheists that he apparently just came across, and he’s a little sore (wrongly, but I understand) about a sarcastic remark I made therein about the readership of the website he co-founded.  Still, I think when he cools down a bit he’ll see that what he wrote is not fair.  (If I wanted to push my cutesy Smiths theme a little further, I’d say he’s in a panic.  But that would be cheesy, so I won’t.) 

Here’s what Lowder says:

While Feser usually maintains a distinction between the new atheists and atheists who specialize in the philosophy of religion, his rhetoric sometimes gets the better of him.  It’s as if he moves from “the New Atheists make mistakes A, B, and C” to “all atheists makes mistakes A, B, and C,” which is, of course, fallacious.

Parodying some remarks of mine from the article he cites, Lowder also says, vis-à-vis my critique therein of P. Z. Myers’ “Courtier’s Reply” dodge:

[T]hat is not what atheists who specialize in the philosophy of religion say.  In fact, not one of the best and most capable atheist philosophers of religion in the history of philosophy ever gave this Courtier’s Reply — not Mackie, not Rowe, not Schellenberg, not Q. Smith, not Draper, not Martin, not Oppy, not Phillipse, not Sobel, not Salmon, not Grunbaum, not Fales, not Post, not Tooley, not Gale, not Le Poidevin, not Maitzen, not McCormick, not Drange….

End quote.  So, Lowder is claiming that in general I have a tendency to attribute to all atheists the faults of the “New Atheists,” and that in particular I attribute the “Courtier’s Reply” move to atheists in general.  He offers no evidence whatsoever for these assertions, and he could not have done so, for there is no such evidence.  Indeed, it is rather shocking that he would insinuate that I have said that atheists in general, including the philosophers he refers to, are guilty of making the Myers-style “Courtier’s Reply” move, since I have nowhere done so.  Surely Lowder realizes that some reader (like, you know, me) might call bullshit on him.  Which I hereby do: Please tell us, Mr. Lowder, exactly where I have said any such thing.  Since you won’t be able to, I’ll accept a retraction instead.

In fact, what there is is ample evidence, in the public record, that I have done precisely the opposite of what Lowder accuses me of.  Start with The Last Superstitionitself, where I describe Quentin Smith as “a far more serious and formidable defender of atheism than any of the so-called ‘New Atheists’” (p. 8), and where I write:

I want to emphasize that I do not deny for a moment that there are secularists, atheists, and naturalists of good will, who are (apart from their rejection of religion) reasonable and morally admirable.  (p. 26)

In the account I gave here at the blog a couple of years ago of my philosophical journey from atheism to theism, I wrote:

On issues of concern to a contemporary analytic philosopher, J. L. Mackie was the man, and I regarded his book The Miracle of Theism as a solid piece of philosophical work.  I still do.  I later came to realize that he doesn’t get Aquinas or some other things right.  (I discuss what he says about Aquinas in Aquinas.)  But the book is intellectually serious, which is more than can be said for anything written by a “New Atheist.” 

In an article for TCS Daily some ten years ago I said of atheist J. J. C. Smart and theist John Haldane, co-authors of the excellent Atheism and Theism:

Both of these writers exemplify in their book what academic life should be like, but too seldom is: a serious and fair-minded examination of all sides of an issue…

In a blog post on Paul Edwards’ critique of the cosmological argument, I wrote that:

Edwards… responds to the Thomist philosophers G. H. Joyce and R. P. Phillips – something for which Edwards deserves credit, given that most atheist writers not only do not address the arguments of Thomists, but seem unaware even of their existence.

In a notice at the time of his death I described J. Howard Sobel as a “serious philosophical atheist.”  In another postI described atheist philosopher Bradley Monton as “an honorable and courageous man.”  (Of course, some atheists will say: “Oh, that’s just because Monton has said nice thinks about ‘Intelligent Design’ theory.”   Except that I am myself a pretty harsh critic of ID.)  In yet another post I described David Ramsay Steele’s book Atheism Explained as “a better book on atheism than anything written by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, or Hitchens.”  I have (despite one testy moment between us) repeatedly praised the atheist physicist Robert Oerter for his serious responses to my work, writing that “Oerter is a good, honest, decent guy” and also that he “engages [my] book seriously and in good faith.” 

In various works I have responded non-polemically to the arguments of serious philosophical critics of theism.  For example, in my ACPQ article "Existential Inertia and the Five Ways" I respond to Bede Rundle and others who maintain that the world can continue in existence without a divine sustaining cause.  In my book Aquinas, I respond to Mackie, to atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen’s critique of Aquinas’s ethical theory, and to agnostic philosopher Anthony Kenny’s critique of the Five Ways and of Aquinas’s doctrine of being.  (Kenny would later have some very kind, if not entirely uncritical, words about my book The Last Superstition.) 

I could go on, but this is getting a bit silly and the point has, I trust, been made.  And the point is that Lowder’s insinuation that I paint all atheists with a broad brush is simply and demonstrably at odds with the facts.  (I have put forward a classification of kinds of atheism here.) 

As to the infidels.org readership that he complains I’ve insulted, if Lowder is saying that most of them would agree that Dawkins’ The God Delusion is a contemptibly shoddy and unserious piece of work and that Myers’ “Courtier’s Reply” dodge is completely frivolous, then I am relieved to hear it.  But if most of them would not agree to these propositions, then they deserve my little throwaway jibe.  Worse, in fact.   Anyway, if Lowder has any links to articles that appeared at infidels.org prior to March 2010 (when the article of mine he’s complaining about appeared), in which Dawkins’ The God Delusion or Myers’ “Courtier’s Reply” are criticized, I’d love to see them.

But as I say, I understand why Lowder might be a little peeved and I won’t hold it against him.  And I look forward to whatever substantive criticisms of The Last Superstition he’d like to put forward. 

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The metaphysics and aesthetics of plastic

There’s a passage at the beginning of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novel Foundation’s Edge which I’ve always found delightfully preposterous.  Referring to Seldon Hall on the planet Terminus, Golan Trevize says:

Is there any structural component visible that is metal?  Not one.  It wouldn’t do to have any, since in Salvor Hardin’s day there was no native metal to speak of and hardly any imported metal.  We even installed old plastic, pink with age, when we built this huge pile, so that visitors from other worlds can stop and say, ‘Galaxy!  What lovely old plastic!’

The very notion of “lovely old plastic” seems absurd on its face, and I imagine Asimov wrote the passage with tongue in cheek.  Aged wood, stone, or metal structures or furniture can be aesthetically appealing, but aged plastic only ever seems shabby at best and positively ugly at worst.  Now, why is that?

Of course, many regard aesthetic judgments as entirely subjective, and if that were the case then the question would be of limited interest.  But for the classical philosophical tradition and Scholasticism in particular, aesthetic judgments are not entirely subjective.  To be sure, Aquinas holds that “beautiful things are those which please when seen” (Summa theologiae I.5.4), and this characterization makes reference to a reaction in the beholder.  However, it is “the cognitive faculty” which responds to what is perceived as beautiful, and what it is responding to is something objective in the thing, namely its form (in the Aristotelian sense of “form”).  More specifically, Aquinas says, “beauty consists in due proportion; for the senses delight in things duly proportioned, as in what is after their own kind.”  That is to say, the “due” proportions of a thing are those that reflect the kind of thing it is, where what is definitive of a kind is, in the case of natural objects, something objective.  Hence a beautiful face becomes ugly when disfigured.

But things are much more complicated than that, especially in the case of human artifacts.  Is an automobile engine ugly?  The answer, of course, is that it depends.  Stored on the dining room table, on the front lawn, or next to an altar in a church it would be an eyesore or worse.  But in a smoothly running new car or even on a garage bench it is a thing of beauty.  In general it takes, I think, careful analysis to explain exactly what it is about artifacts and their natural and cultural contexts that accounts for our judgments about their beauty or ugliness.  And the right answers are not necessarily the ones that might at first glance seem obvious.

So, consider some paradigm cases of ugly old plastic: a piece of cracked and sun-bleached patio furniture; a child’s broken toy lying around the house or the yard; the depressing piles of garbage that collect on beaches.  (Put aside for the moment the environmental problems posed by such garbage; what matters for present purposes is that it would be ugly even apart from those problems.)  There are several possible accounts of their ugliness that might seem obvious but which I think are wrong or at least incomplete:  It might be thought, for example, that it is the damaged or non-functional character of such objects that makes them ugly; or that as man-made objects they seem out of place in a natural environment; or that qua “artificial” substance, plastic is ugly in a way natural substances are not; or that it is the chaotic, jumbled character of the debris tossed up on a beach or scattered about in the yard that makes it ugly; or some combination of these factors.

But on reflection none of this seems quite right, or at least not the whole story.  Ancient ruins can be beautiful despite being severely damaged man-made structures whose pieces are strewn about chaotically.  It might be thought that this is because the stone or wood elements from which the structures are made have a “natural” feel that makes them suitable to their surroundings.  But modern ruins involving the products of high technology can also be beautiful -- for example, the sunken ships, tanks, and other World War II era materiel of Truk Lagoon.  Is this because undersea forms of life have made a habitat of these ruins?  Surely not.  A rusted out but barren tank is no more or less beautiful than a rusted out tank covered with barnacles; it might even be a little more beautiful.  Furthermore, an old abandoned plastic sand bucket or Styrofoam food container which some form of sea life has made its home seems no less ugly than any other piece of plastic debris.  (It’s worth noting -- to underline how complex aesthetic matters can be -- that an abandon former weapon of war can have a haunting beauty that something as innocent as a child’s toy or a container for take-out cannot!) 

Is it the mass produced character of plastic items that makes a random pile of them ugly?  That doesn’t seem convincing either.  Imagine a sea floor or even a beach covered with 19^th century glass bottles and tin containers.  Somehow that doesn’t seem as ugly as a beach full of plastic junk clearly is, or even necessarily ugly at all. 

That appeal to the “artificial” character of plastic is not a satisfying answer is also evidenced by the fact that there is a sense in which plastic is not artificial.  As I’ve noted several times (e.g. here), the traditional Aristotelian distinction between “nature” and “art” does not correspond exactly to the distinction between what occurs in the wild and what is man-made.  For the Aristotelian distinction is ultimately concerned with the difference between what has a substantial form or inherent principle of its activity, and that which has only an accidental form.  And there are man-made objects that have substantial forms (e.g. new breeds of dog or of corn, water synthesized in a lab), and naturally occurring objects that have only accidental forms (e.g. a random pile of stones that has formed at the bottom of a hill).  Now as Eleonore Stump has pointed out, irreducible properties and causal powers are the mark of a substantial form.  Water has a substantial form insofar as its properties and causal powers are irreducible to those of hydrogen and oxygen, whereas the properties and causal powers of an axe (Stump’s example) are reducible to those of its parts.  But to take another of Stump’s examples, Styrofoam, though “artificial” in the sense of being man-made, also seems to have a substantial form insofar as it has irreducible properties and causal powers.  It is thus as “natural” in Aristotle’s technical sense as new breeds of dog or corn are.  And plastic in general seems no less “natural” in this sense.  (The metaphysics of substantial form is discussed in detail in my forthcoming book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction.) 

Moreover, plastic, though in another and obvious sense “artificial,” is not ugly when new and functional.  Indeed, the plastic components of computers, automobiles, toys, and many other artifacts can all be aesthetically highly pleasing.  (And 3D printing may be the coolest thing ever invented.)

But old, broken plastic seems pretty much always ugly in a way old, broken stone, metal, wood, or glass need not be.  Why?  My answer is, I don’t know.  Plastic is a little mysterious, and philosophically interesting.  Who knew?  That guy in The Graduate was onto something…

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