Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Intellectual Integrity and the Appeal to Mystery

Bradley Schneider writes,

. . . while we're on the subject of divine simplicity, I would be interested in your thoughts on the following dilemma.  Suppose you are strongly persuaded by philosophical arguments that, if God exists, God must be simple, i.e., some version of DDS must be true.  Otherwise, if God were composite, He would not be absolute and therefore would not be God.  At the same time, you appreciate the problem of modal collapse.  That is, you appreciate that DDS appears to imply modal collapse.  Suppose further that you are convinced that modal fatalism cannot be true, i.e,. the world that we inhabit is both ontologically and modally contingent.  Question: Can you, with intellectual integrity, believe in or have faith in God's existence in this scenario?  It seems to me that you can if you accept the following:  (a) DDS is true; (b) DDS does not imply modal collapse; and (c) the reason DDS does not imply modal collapse is a mystery beyond human comprehension.  

 
Is that a reasonable position or an intellectual evasion?  Put another way:  There are obviously some philosophical assertions that are so demonstrably incoherent or contradictory that one cannot hold them with intellectual integrity, e.g., "There is no truth," "I have no beliefs," etc.  Is the belief that [DDS does not imply modal collapse and the reason is a mystery] analogous to such beliefs?  When is it reasonable to believe in something that you don't understand? 
 
Well, Bradley, you are asking the right questions.  The central question, I take it, is whether one can reasonably affirm mysterianism, or whether one who affirms mysterianism has succumbed to irrationality and has surrendered his intellectual integrity.
 
To affirm mysterianism is to affirm that there are mysteries.  But what is a mystery?

Mystery-1:  A proposition which, if true, is knowable, presently unknown, and interesting to know, but the interest of which evaporates upon being known.  For example, the proposition Jimmy Hoffa's body was fed through a wood chipper is, if true, knowable, unknown, interesting to know but such that, if it came to be known, then the question of the final disposition of Hoffa's body would be settled and would no longer be interesting or a mystery.  The aim of scientific research is to banish mysteries in this first sense of 'mystery.'   Perhaps we could say that this is the Enlightenment Project in a nutshell: to de-mystify the world.  The presupposition that guides the project is that nothing is intrinsically mysterious or impervious in principle to being understood; there are no mysteries in reality.  Accordingly, all mystery is parasitic upon our ignorance which, in principle, can be overcome.

Mystery-2:  A proposition which, if true, cannot by us in this life be known to be true, and cannot even be known by us in this life to be logically-possibly true, i.e., free of logical contradiction, and is of the highest interest to us, but whose interest would in no way be diminished should we come to know it.

An example of mystery-2 is the doctrine of the Trinity as understood by Roman Catholics (but not just by them).  The Trinity is an exclusively revealed truth; hence it cannot be known by us by natural means.  What's more, it cannot even be known by us to be free of logical contradiction and thus logically possible.  Our finite intellects cannot see into its logical possibility let alone into its actual truth.  We cannot understand how it is possible.  But what is actual is possible whether or not we have the power to understand how it is possible. 

(Compare: motion is possible because actual, whether or not the Zenonian arguments to the contrary can be adequately answered.  Someone who is convinced by the Zenonian arguments, but who refuses to deny the reality of motion, is a mysterian about the reality of motion.  He is saying: Motion must appear to us as logically impossible; yet motion is actual and therefore possible  despite our inability to explain how it is possible. This mysterian could easily grant that the irrefutability ofthe Zenonian arguments is excellent evidence of the unreality of motion but still insist that motion is real.  He might say: the considerations of our paltry intellects must give way before the massive evidence of the senses: you can see that I am wagging my finger at you now. The evidence of the senses trumps all arguments no matter how compelling they seem. Similarly, the believer in the triune God could say that God's revelation trumps all merely human animadversions.)

So from the fact that the Trinity appears to us in our present state as contradictory, and thus as logically impossible, it does not follow that it is not true.  For it could be like this:  given our unalterable ('hard-wired') cognitive architecture, certain revealed truths must appear to us as contradictory when the propositions which must so appear are not only in themselves not contradictory, but are also actually true!

The philosophical mysterian is a person who holds that there are mysteries in the second sense.  Is Colin McGinn a mysterian in this sense? 

McGinn 'takes it on faith' as a teaching of the scientific magisterium that all mental activity is brain activity. He no more questions this than a believing Catholic questions the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real Presence, etc.   It just seems obvious to him and therefore a thesis that cannot be reasonably questioned.  Of course mental activity is brain activity!  What the hell else could it be?  You think and feel with your brain not with some 'spook in the skull' (my coinage) or "ghost in the machine." (Ryle) There is one world, this physical world, and we are physical parts of it. And so consciousness, self-consciousness, qualia, intentionality, conscience must all be reducible without remainder to physical processes and states.

But there are powerful arguments which I have rehearsed many times why qualia and object-directed mental states cannot be physical states.  Confronted with these arguments, McGinn goes mysterian.  He grants their force and then says something like this:

It is incomprehensible to us how consciousness could be a brain process.  But it is a brain process.  It is just that our unalterable cognitive architecture makes it impossible for us to see into this truth.  It is true and therefore possibly true even though we cannot understand how it is true or even how it could be true due to our cognitive limitations.

As I read McGinn, these limitations are in our human case unalterable.  And so I read McGinn as a mysterian in much the same sense that a theological mysterian is a mysterian.  What is common to the doctor angelicus and the decidedly less than angelic McGinn is a commitment to the thesis that there are true, non-contradictory propositions that we humans by our very nature are not equipped to understand as either true or non-contradictory.  Access denied!  We have no access to certain truths because of our cognitive make-up. 

This leaves open the possibility for McGinn that there be extraterrestrials who are equipped to grasp mind-brain identity.  And it leaves open for Aquinas the possibility that there be angelic intellects who are equipped to grasp and wholly understand Trinity,  God-Man identity (the Incarnation) and how Jesus Christ could ascend into  heaven soul and body!

But let's return to  the doctrine of the Trinity. We are assuming that it is apparently contradictory, and that attempts to relieve the apparent contradictoriness fail.  See The Logic of the Trinity Revisited in which I spell out the doctrine, show the (apparent) contradiction, and rebut a couple of quick responses to it. Now consider the following position:
 
The Trinity doctrine appears contradictory to us (ectypal) intellects, and must so appear in our present state due to cognitive limitations endemic in our sublunary, and presumably fallen, condition. (Sin has noetic consequences.) In reality, however, the doctrine is internally consistent and each of its component propositions is true.  It is just that we cannot understand, in our present state, how the doctrine could be true. So, in our present postlapsarian and pre-salvific state, the Trinity must remain a mystery.  The claim is not that the Trinity doctrine is a true contradiction; there are no true contradictions, pace Graham Priest and his tiny band of dialetheists.  The claim is that the Trinity doctrine is true and non-contradictory, but not such as to be understandable as true and non-contradictory by us in this life. On the contrary, it must appear to us as contradictory and false in this life.
 
Following Dale Tuggy, we may call the position I have just sketched positive mysterianism.  In critique of it, Tuggy says this:
 
Positive mysterianism must leap this hurdle: if this Dogma [Trinity] resolutely appears contradictory, doesn’t that give us a strong reason to think it false? How then, [can] this admission be part of a defense of the rationality of believing in this Dogma?
The admission is that the doctrine appears contradictory to us.  But this admission is not part of the defense of the rationality of believing the doctrine. Presumably, only a latter-day Tertullian would defend the rationality of belief in a doctrine on the ground of the doctrine's appearing absurd, i.e., logically contradictory, or actually being absurd.  No one will say, "It is rational for me to believe that p precisely because, after careful and protracted consideration, it appears to me that p is or entails a logical contradiction."
 
The positive mysterian (PM) is not defending the doctrine on the ground that it appears contradictory. The PM is defending the doctrine on the ground that what appears contradictory might not be contradictory. The PM, in other words, is appealing to the possibility that there are certain non-contradictory truths that must appear to us in our present state as contradictory.
 
Is that possibility one that can be dismissed at the outset?  Can one be objectively certain that there cannot be truths that are reasonable to affirm but must appear to us as contradictory?
 
The PM can grant to Tuggy that, in general, a doctrine's appearing to be contradictory is a strong reason for thinking it false while insisting that the appearance of contradictoriness does not entail the reality of contradictoriness.  A strong reason needn't be a rationally compelling reason. Can Tuggy & Co. be objectively certain that the Trinity doctrine is contradictory and necessarily false simply on the basis of its appearing to be such to us in our present state?  No, they can't be certain. So there is the possibility that the doctrine is really true despite being apparently contradictory.
 
'But then couldn't any old crazy doctrine be defended  in this way?" 
 
There are philosophers who take the eliminativist line that consciousness is an illusion. This is a crazy view that refutes itself straightaway: nothing is an illusion except to consciousness; hence, the crazy view presupposes the very thing it proposes to eliminate. Well, could one give a mysterian defense of the crazy view? I don't see how. We have direct Cartesian evidence that consciousness exists and cannot be an illusion.
 
Philosophy is long, but blog is short. So I need to wrap this up. The question is whether one can reasonably affirm mysterianism, or whether one who affirms mysterianism has succumbed to irrationality and has surrendered his intellectual integrity.  My tentative answer is that one may reasonably affirm positive mysterianism.  

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Bill Vallicella

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6 responses to “Intellectual Integrity and the Appeal to Mystery”

  1. Cyrus Avatar
    Cyrus

    Bill,
    ‘But then couldn’t any old crazy doctrine be defended in this way?”
    There are philosophers who take the eliminativist line that consciousness is an illusion. This is a crazy view that refutes itself straightaway: nothing is an illusion except to consciousness; hence, the crazy view presupposes the very thing it proposes to eliminate. Well, could one give a mysterian defense of the crazy view? I don’t see how. We have direct Cartesian evidence that consciousness exists and cannot be an illusion.
    Granted. How about:
    “But then couldn’t any philosophically substantive thesis (cf. here and here) be defended in this way?”
    Or perhaps:
    “But then couldn’t any thesis compatible with the corpus of Moorean truths be defended in this way?”
    If yes to either, a follow up: “It’s epistemically possible that the doctrines might be true, but how much weight should we really give that? It may be that we nonetheless have overwhelmingly better reasons against a thesis someone is mysterian about than for it. Is it still reasonable for that person to be a mysterian in a case like that? Or is your yes tied up with the success of something like the strong metaphilosophical skeptic thesis expressed at the bottom of the second post I linked above?”

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  2. David Gudeman Avatar
    David Gudeman

    Of your three examples of a mysterian position, two of them are justified by other, very strong sources of belief: one by the sensory evidence of motion and one by revelation. However, you didn’t say what McGinn’s reason for accepting his form of mysterianism is. What is his very strong source of belief sufficient to overcome the very strong appearance of contradiction in his position?

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    Well, Dave, I gestured toward it:
    >>McGinn ‘takes it on faith’ as a teaching of the scientific magisterium that all mental activity is brain activity. He no more questions this than a believing Catholic questions the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real Presence, etc. It just seems obvious to him and therefore a thesis that cannot be reasonably questioned. Of course mental activity is brain activity! What the hell else could it be? You think and feel with your brain not with some ‘spook in the skull’ (my coinage) or “ghost in the machine.” (Ryle) There is one world, this physical world, and we are physical parts of it. And so consciousness, self-consciousness, qualia, intentionality, conscience must all be reducible without remainder to physical processes and states.<< Most philosophers today would dismiss talk of souls and such as relics of religious superstition.

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  4. BV Avatar
    BV

    Cyrus,
    Good questions. But you need to give an example. I will give one. Consider the presentist who maintains that
    1. Only temporally present items (times, events, etc.) exist.
    This implies that wholly past events do not exist. But surely
    2. Some wholly past events do exist.
    (Of course, these past events do not exist at present, but they do exist in the sense of ‘exist’ featured in (1) that insures that (1) is a substantive claim and not a miserable tautology.)
    So we have an apparently inconsistent dyad: (1) and (2) after careful and protracted consideration appear to be such that they cannot both be true.
    And yet powerful arguments can be given for both limbs of the dyad. So we have good reason to think that both are true, and that therefore they are collectively consistent. But we cannot understand how they could be consistent. So what exactly is wrong with saying that it is and will remain a mystery how they can both be true?

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  5. Cyrus Avatar
    Cyrus

    Bill,
    And yet powerful arguments can be given for both limbs of the dyad. So we have good reason to think that both are true, and that therefore they are collectively consistent. But we cannot understand how they could be consistent. So what exactly is wrong with saying that it is and will remain a mystery how they can both be true?
    Nothing. Here is another example:
    3. All minds are material.
    McGinn might take it on faith from the scientific magisterium, but I don’t see why scientists’ thoughts should be given much weight in this. Scientists say all sorts of ridiculous things when they philosophize, and there are a lot of powerful arguments against 3 and no particularly good arguments for it (and, anyway, not all scientists are materialists).
    I’m not inclined to give revelation much weight without prior evidence for its truth either (Which revelation? Why it and not another? Why not none at all?), but I’ll leave it alone.

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  6. David Gudeman Avatar
    David Gudeman

    Bill, you write: “He no more questions this than a believing Catholic questions the Trinity…”
    I thought I might detect a bit of satire in your tone, but I hope you don’t mind if I pursue the topic seriously–an effort at a charitable interpretation, maybe.
    I got the “statement of faith” aspect, but clearly that is just a restatement of the fact that he believes something very strongly, not a description of his source of belief (by “source of belief” I mean something like experience, intuition, revelation, etc.). The only source of belief that I could extract from your comment is perhaps “the opinion of all the best men”, which is not a contemptible source of belief by any means, but it is hardly strong enough to stand up to the strong appearance of paradox.
    I’m not familiar with McGinn’s writing, but if he is like many other moderns, I would like to propose a more charitable interpretation of his source of belief:
    (1) The success of the entire enterprise of science is so extraordinary that it would be outrageous to think there is anything that science could not explain.
    (2) Science could not explain mind if it were not material.
    (3) Therefore it would be outrageous to think that mind is not material.
    Given (1) I can see some level of rationality in thinking that mind is material, despite the apparent paradoxes; however (1) strikes me as a very poorly supported belief (I’ve written a book-length manuscript on this very topic, and my research for that project has made me even more skeptical of science than I was at the beginning).

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