June 2010 – Maverick Philosopher

More on the God of the Philosophers

Spencer Case, 'on the ground' in Afghanistan, e-mails:

Your recent post discussing the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham and Isaac caught my interest. Having grown up in a religious home, I have always been of the opinion that arguments for theism argue for something different than what believers take themselves to believe in. After all, how many religious people take themselves to be praying to an unmoved mover or a-being-greater-than-which-cannot-be-conceived? For this reason, I have not felt that my atheism could be threatened by any of the arguments for theism, even if they turn out to be successful because they argue not for God but for God*.

No doubt it could be true that you could make an identification between the God of the philosophers and the God of the believers if you have established the existence of both. My point is none of the arguments for the existence of God even try to argue for the God of the believers.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Well, Spencer, it looks as if my earlier post, despite its pellucidity and penetration, made no impression on you.

Let's use 'God-P' to mean 'God of the philosophers' and 'God-R' to mean 'God of the religionists.' Now my claim is that the two phrases, though the differ in sense, have the same referent, if they have a referent. Thus I do not assume that they in fact have a common referent; my claim is that, if they have a referent, then they have a common referent. You are undoubtedly familiar with Frege's distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung. To use his old example, 'morning star' and 'evening star' have the same referent despite their difference in sense and in mode of presentation (Darstellungsweise). One and the same celestial body — the planet Venus — is presented in two different ways. Now in this case we know that the terms 'morning star' and 'evening star' have a common referent whereas in the God case we do not know this. So my claim is merely that 'God-P' and 'God-R' refer to one and the same entity if they refer to anything.

It may help to distinguish between REFERENCE and REFERENT. 'Meinong's favorite impossible object' and 'the round square' both lack a referent; but they have the same REFERENCE despite their manifest difference in sense.

Therefore, I reject your assertion that one needs to establish the existence of a common referent of 'God-P' and 'God-R' as a condition of establishing that they refer to the same thing if they refer at all.

Your main argument seems to be as follows:

1. The philosophical arguments for God are arguments for the existence of God-P, not of God-R.

2. Religious people qua religious people do not believe in or affirm the existence of God-P, but of God-R. (E.g. religious people who think about God or address God in prayer are not relating to an unmoved mover.)

3. Atheism is the denial of the existence of God-R. Therefore:

4. The philosophical God arguments, even if sound, have no tendency to show that atheism is false.

A very interesting argument! I reject the argument by rejecting the assumption on which it is based, namely, that God-P is not identical to God-R. To the contrary, I claim that they are the same God, albeit approached in different ways. The philosopher qua philosopher approaches God via discursive reason unassisted by scriptural or other revelation, whereas the religionist approaches God via faith and revelation. Now it may be (it is epistemically possible that) there is no God; but that does not alter the fact that the REFERENCE of the God-talk of philosophers and that of religionists is the same.

Think about it: when Aquinas was working out his Five Ways, was he trying to establish the existence of a mere concept or abstract idea? How could a mere concept create heaven and earth? Was he trying to prove the existence of something numerically different from the God of the Bible? Of course not. Aquinas was a philosopher, a religionist, and a mystic. It was the same God he was aiming at (and from his point of view, contacting) in his philosophical reasoning, his prayerful devotions, and his mystical experiences.

People get confused by the phrases 'God of the philosophers' and 'God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' They think that because the phrases are different, and their senses also, that the phrases cannot have the same reference. But the reference is the same even if there in is no God. For the concept of God we are operating with is the concept of a being that satisfies both narrowly philosophical and narrowly religious exigencies. And this is so whether or not the concept is instantiated. The philosopher qua philosopher wants an explanation of the existence and intelligibility of contingent beings and finds his explanation in God, who is the real-ground of existence and intelligibility. The religionist qua religionist has a soteriological interest: he seeks a solution to our awful predicament in this life, and finds his solution is a relationship with a personal Being. Now what needs to be understood is that that real-ground and this personal Being are the same.

Or do you think that God can't walk down the street and chew gum at the same time?

Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers

"God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — not of the philosophers and scholars." Thus exclaimed Blaise Pascal in the famous memorial in which he recorded the overwhelming religious/mystical experience of the night of 23 November 1654. Martin Buber comments (Eclipse of God, Humanity Books, 1952, p. 49):

These words represent Pascal's change of heart. He turned, not from a state of being where there is no God to one where there is a God, but from the God of the philosophers to the God of Abraham. Overwhelmed by faith, he no longer knew what to do with the God of the philosophers; that is, with the God who occupies a definite position in a definite system of thought. The God of Abraham . . . is not suspectible of introduction into a system of thought precisely because He is God. He is beyond each and every one of those systems, absolutely and by virtue of his nature. What the philosophers describe by the name of God cannot be more than an idea. (emphasis added)

Buber here expresses a sentiment often heard. We encountered it yesterday when we found Timothy Ware accusing late Scholastic theology of turning God into an abstract idea. But the sentiment is no less wrongheaded for being widespread. As I see it, it simply makes no sense to oppose the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the God of religion — to the God of philosophy. In fact, I am always astonished when otherwise distinguished thinkers retail this bogus distinction. Let's try to sort this out.

It is first of all obvious that God, if he exists, transcends every system of human thought, and cannot be reduced to any element internal to such a system whether it be a concept, a proposition, an argument, a set of arguments, etc. But by the same token, the chair I am sitting on cannot be reduced to my concept of it or the judgments I make about it. It too is transcendent of my conceptualizations and judgments. The transcendence of God, however, is a more radical form of transcendence, that of a person as opposed to that of a material object. And among persons, God is at the outer limit of transcendence.

Now if Buber were merely saying something along these lines then I would have no quarrel with him. But he is saying something more, namely, that when a philosopher in his capacity as philosopher conceptualizes God, he reduces him to a concept or idea, to something abstract, to something merely immanent to his thought, and therefore to something that is not God. In saying this, Buber commits a grotesque non sequitur. He moves from the unproblematically true

1. God by his very nature is transcendent of every system of thought or scheme of representation

to the breathtakingly false

2. Any thought about God or representation of God (such as we find, say in Aquinas's Summa Theologica) is not a thought or representation of God, but of a thought or representation, which, of course, by its very nature is not God.

As I said, I am astonished that anyone could fall into this error. When I think about something I don't in thinking about it turn it into a mere thought. When I think about my wife's body, for example, I don't turn it into a mere thought: it remains transcendent of my thought as a material thing. A fortiori, I am unable by thinking about my wife as a person, an other mind, to transmogrify her personhood into a mere concept in my mind. She remains in her interiority delightfully transcendent.

It is therefore bogus to oppose the God of the philosophers to the God of Abraham, et al. There is and can be only one God. But there are different approaches to this one God. By my count, there are four ways of approaching God: by reason, by faith, by mystical experience, and by our moral sense. To employ a hackneyed metaphor, if there are four routes to the summit of a mountain, it does not follow that there are four summits, with only one of them being genuine, the others being merely immanent to their respective routes.

I should think that direct acquaintance with God via mystical/religious experience is superior to contact via faith or reason or morality. It is better to taste food than to read about it on a menu. But that's not to say that the menu is about itself: it is about the very same stuff that one encounters by eating. The fact that it is better to eat food than read about it does not imply that when one is reading one is not reading about it.

Imagine how silly it would be be for me to exclaim, while seated before a delicacy: "Food of Wolfgang Puck, Food of Julia Childs, Food of Emeril Lagasse, not of the nutritionists and menu-writers!"

Varieties of Cyber-Linkage

The symmetrical linker links to every site that links to him. The asymmetrical linker links to no site that links to him. The nonsymmetrical linker may or may not link to a site that links to him.

The totally reflexive linker links to all and only those sites that are identical to his site. The totally reflexive linker is also known as a windowless monad. All his links are internal or on-site. The partially reflexive linker links to himself, but only on condition that some other site links to him. The irreflexive linker links to no site that is identical to his site. All of his links are external or off-site. The transitive linker links to every site that is the target of a link of every site to which he links, and to every site that is the target of the target of every site to which he links, and so on. That way lies madness.

The moderate cyber-onanist is a person with two or more sites all of which are weakly interlinked, where two or more sites are weakly interlinked if and only if each site is symmetrically linked to one of the others. The extreme cyber-onanist is a person with two or more sites, all of which are strongly interlinked, where two or more sites are strongly interlinked if and only if each site is symmetrically linked to each of the others. The solipsistic cyber-onanist is a cyber-onanist (whether extreme or moderate) all of whose links are internal. The incorrigible cyber-onanist is an extreme solipsistic cyber-onanist.

Are Illegal Aliens Acting Immorally?

Victor Reppert raises the question:

People like [Arizona's] Governor Brewer often say that we are a nation of laws, and that is why we must make a strong stand enforcing our immigration laws. Are people who insist on a strong stand against illegal immigration gratuitously assuming that persons who enter the country illegally are acting immorally? If the only way to support your family was to enter another country illegally, wouldn't you have a moral obligation to break the law, since you have a moral obligation to support your family which trumps your obligation to obey the law?

As a conservative, I find it self-evident that the rule of law is a precious thing, that it must be upheld, and that part of upholding it is enforcing the nation's laws against illegal immigration. Someone who takes this position, and insists on a strong stand against illegal immigration, needn't thereby assume that every illegal border-crosser is acting immorally. I concede to Victor that there are circumstances in which the moral obligation to support and protect one's family trumps the moral obligation to respect the laws of another country.

But if it is morally permissible for some to enter illegally, it does not follow that the law making it illegal is without moral justification. Indeed, the Federal and State authorities have a moral obligation to protect their citizens against the threats posed by border violators. Juan may be morally justified in attempting to cross the Rio Grande, but border control agents are morally justified in preventing him from doing so and deporting him if he does. The law cannot cater to each individual case. In the eyes of the law one is an illegal alien whether one is a common criminal, a member of a criminal gang, a drug trafficker, a human trafficker, a terrorist, a carrier of a contagious disease, or, like Juan, just a poor man down on his luck trying to provide for his family.

The rule of law must be upheld despite the unfairness to some. One of the reasons we are not not like Mexico, and why everybody and his monkey's uncle's brother wants to come here, is precisely because we have hitherto maintained the rule of law. Analogy: it is reasonable and just that felons not be allowed to vote or purchase firearms. The fact that this is unfair to some felons is not a good reason to question the rightness of the law. As I said, the law cannot cater to individual cases. Examples like this can be generated ad libitum. Consider laws regulating drinking age and driving age. Fourteen year olds are not allowed to drive despite the fact that some drive better than forty year olds.

East Versus West on the Trinity: The Filioque Controversy

Our meeting with the affable and stimulating Dale Tuggy on June 20th at St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox monastery a little south of Florence, Arizona, got me thinking about the Trinity again. So I pulled Timothy Ware's The Orthodox Church off the shelf wherein I found a discussion of the differences between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman approaches to the doctrine. Let's take a look. Earlier this year, in January and February, we had a stimulating and deep-going discussion of Trinitarian topics which the interested reader can find here. But there was no discussion of the Orthodox line. It is high time to fill that lacuna. (Image credit.)

East and West agree that there is exactly one God in three divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They also agree that the Father is neither born of anything nor proceeds from anything, that the Son is born of the Father but does not proceed from the Father, and that the Holy Spirit proceeds but is not born. Bear in mind that 'born' and 'proceeds' in this context refer to relations that are internal to the triune Godhead, and are therefore eternal relations. I hope it is also clear that neither of these relations is one of creation. Each of the persons is eternal and uncreated.

The main difference between East and West concerns that from which the Holy Spirit proceeds. The West says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque), whereas the East says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. One can of course question whether this dispute has any clear sense, but let's assume that it does for the space of this post. I don't reckon there are any Stovian or other positivists hanging around this site. (If there are, I pronounce my anathema upon them.)

The question is whether there is any reason to prefer the one view over the other. Ware naturally thinks the Orthodox view superior (pp. 219-222). He thinks it is superior because it is able to account for the unity of the three persons without making of this unity something impersonal. His reasoning is as follows. The tripersonal God is one God, not three Gods. So the question arises as to the unity of the Godhead. What is the ground of God's unity? There is one God because there is one Father, the Father being the 'cause' or 'source' of Godhead, the principle (arche) of unity among the three. The Orthodox speak of the "monarchy of the Father." The other two persons originate from the Father. Because the principle of unity is the Father, and the Father is one of the divine persons, the principle of unity is personal in nature. So although there are three persons in one God, the unity of these three persons is itself a person, namely, the Father.

The Western view, however, issues in the result that the principle of unity is impersonal. The reasoning is along the following lines. If the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, then "the Father ceases to be the unique source of Godhead, since the Son is also a source." (219) Consequently, "…Rome finds its principle of unity in the substance or essence which all three persons share." (219) This implies that, on the Roman Catholic view, the principle of unity is impersonal. (I am merely reporting Ware's reasoning here, not endorsing it.)

And that, Ware maintains, is not good. "Late Scholastic theology, emphasizing as it does the essence at the expense of the persons, comes near to turning God into an abstract idea." (222) The concrete and personal God with whom one can have a direct and living encounter gets transmogrified into a God of the philosophers (as opposed to the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), an impersonal being whose existence needs to be proved by metaphysical arguments.

And so the Orthodox "regard the filioque as dangerous and heretical. Filioquism confuses the persons, and destroys the proper balance between unity and diversity in the Godhead." (222) God is stripped of concrete personality and made into an abstract essence. And that's not all. The Roman view gives the Holy Spirit short shrift with the result that his role in the church and in the lives of believers is downplayed. What's more, this subordination of the Holy Spirit, together with an overemphasis on the divine unity, has deleterious consequences for ecclesiology. As a result of filioquism, the church in the West has become too worldly an institution, and the excessive emphasis on divine unity has led to too much centralization and too great an emphasis on papal authority. It is worth noting in this connection that the Orthodox reject papal infallibility while accepting the infallibility of the church.

You can see, then, that for the Orthodox the filioque is quite a big deal: it is not a mere theological Spitzfindigkeit.

Ware's exposition — which I assume is a faithful representation of the Orthodox position — saddles filioquism with a nasty dilemma: either ditheism or semi-Sabellianism. For if the Son as well as the Father is an arche, a principle of unity in the Godhead, then the upshot is ditheism, two-God-ism. But if it is said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son tamquam ex/ab uno principio, 'as from one principle,' then, as the Orthodox see it, the Father and the Son are confused and semi-Sabellianism is the upshot. (221)

Sabellianism or modalism is the view that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are modes or aspects of the deity. The East sees semi-Sabellianism in the West insofar as the Western view, in avoiding ditheism, merges Father and Son into one principle so that they become mere modes or aspect of that one principle.

That's the lay of the land as seen from the East. I have been concerned in this post with exposition only. Adjudication can wait for later. (He said magisterially.)

John Hick on Religious and Naturalistic Definitions of Religion

Defining 'religion' is not easy. John Hick sees a major division running through the welter of competing definitions:

The major division, as we have already noted, is between religious and naturalistic definitions. According to the former, religion (or a particular religious tradition) centres upon an awareness of and response to a reality that transcends ourselves and our world, whether the 'direction' of transcendence be beyond or within or both. Such definitions presuppose the reality of the intentional object of religious thought and experience; and they are broader or narrower according as this object is characterised more generally, for example as a cosmic power, or more specifically, for example as a personal God. Naturalistic definitions on the other hand describe religion as a purely human activity of state of mind. Such definitions have been phenomenological, psychological and sociological. (An Interpretation of Religion, Yale 1989, p. 3, footnotes omitted, bolding added.)

There is certainly a difference between a religious approach to religion and a naturalistic approach. And Hick is right that it is a major difference. But I suggest that the bolded passage needs correction. It is not that religious definitions of religion presuppose the reality of the intentional object of religious thought and experience, it is rather that they do not foreclose on the possibility of the reality of the intentional object.

When I study religion 'religiously,' what I do is take seriously religion's claim to be about something transcendent of our ordinary experience. Thus when I study Christianity religiously, I take seriously its claim to be a divine revelation both in and through its Scripture and in and through the person of Jesus of Nazareth. I hold myself open to the possibility of divine revelation. But this is not to say that I presuppose the reality of the triune God. I simply do not rule out the possibility of the existence and self-revelation of this God in the manner of the naturalist who, from the outset, assumes that religion is and can be nothing but a natural phenomenon, and therefore cannot be revelatory of anything beyond nature.

To put it another way, when I study religion 'religiously' as opposed to 'naturalistically,' I take seriously its claim to be in some measure true. I don't view it merely as just another natural or cultural phenomenon, which of course it also is. To study religion religiously is to study it in a manner analogous to the way we study science. I can of course concern myself with the sociology of scientific knowledge, with the psychology of scientists, and even with the phenomenology of scientific experience. But few think of natural science as merely a cultural artifact or a psychological product. For most of us, much of (current) science is either true, or a very good approximation to truth. We take physics, for example, to be revelatory of something beyond man and his physics, namely, the natural world which is what it is and has the properties it has whether or not we exist and whether or not we theorize about it. Few would get it into their heads to try to debunk science by explaining it genetically in terms of human fears and interests, the need for some to develop an arcane language-game whereby they can exclude and dominate others, etc. Few would claim that it is nothing but a human product. It is a human product, of course, but it is more: it is knowledge of the natural world.

To study religion religiously is then like studying science scientifically: it is to take the respective truth-claims seriously. But there is an important difference. In the case of science it does seem to be the case that when we study it scientifically (as opposed to viewing it as just another symbolic form or cultural product) we do presuppose the reality of nature. For one thing, nature is massively given to the senses — hyperskeptical worries aside. How could we not presuppose it? But "a reality that transcends ourselves and our world," in Hick's phrase, is not given or at least it is not unambiguously given. (Mystical givenness is an ambiguous givenness.) This is why I say that when we study religion religiously we do not presuppose the reality of the intentional object of religious thought and experience; rather, we do not foreclose on the possibility of the reality of the intentional object.

Modern Media and the Deterioration of Spiritual Life

During my first visit to St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox monastery (Florence, Arizona) in February 2004, I purchased Harry Boosalis, Orthodox Spiritual Life According to Saint Siloan the Athonite. What follows is a passage to give users of the new media pause. It was published in 2000 before blogging really took off, and before texting, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter:

Writing nearly sixty years ago about the harm of newspapers and base books, one wonders what St. Silouan would say if he lived today. Our world differs markedly from the one in which St. Silouan lived. In today's 'Age of Information' — and certainly even more in the world of tomorrow — the constant influx from the multiple forms of media can only hinder one's pursuit of true prayer. These modern forms of 'entertainment' and news media, as well as the much more complex web of world-wide communication systems, including the ever-increasing role of computers and the expanding use (or abuse) of the Internet, have contributed to a fundamental deterioration of spiritual life, as well as an overall 'de-personalization' fo contemporary man and society. Even well-intentioned believers are now infected with this insatiable desire for more and more frivolous information, futile knowledge, and superficial 'entertainment.' Ultimately, much of this remains not only useless for one's personal well-being, but according to St. Silouan it also has a direct and negative impact on one's spiritual life. (pp. 67-68)

Monks naturally gravitate towards deserts. But even in a desert one is not safe from media dreck. So one must seek out the desert in one's desert.

The Monterey Pop Festival, June 1967

It transpired 43 summers ago, this June, the grandaddy of rock festivals, two years before Woodstock, in what is known as the Summer of Love. Your humble correspondent was on the scene. Some high school friends and I drove up from Los Angeles along Pacific Coast Highway. I can still call up olfactory memories of patchouli, sandalwood incense, not to mention the aroma of what was variously known as cannabis sativa, marijuana, reefer, tea, Miss Green, maryjane, pot, weed, grass, pacalolo (Hawaiian term), loco weed, and just plain dope. But my friends and I, students at an all-boys Catholic high school that enforced a strict dress code, were fairly straight: we partook of no orgies, smoked no dope, and slept in a motel. The wild stuff came later in our lives, when we were better able to handle it.

I have in my hand the programme book of the Festival, in mint condition. Do I hear $1,000? On the first page there is a quotation from Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice:

How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank! Here we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night, become the touches of sweet harmony.

Ah yes, I remember it well, the "sweet harmony" of the whining feedback of Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster plugged into his towering Marshall amps and the "soft stillness" of the The Who smashing their instruments to pieces! Not to be outdone, Jimi lit his Strat on fire with lighter fluid. The image is burned into my memory. It shocked my working-class frugality. I used to baby my Fender Mustang and I once got mad at a girl for placing a coke can on my Fender Deluxe Reverb amp. On the last page of the programme book, a more fitting quotation: the lyrics of Dylan's The Times They Are a Changin', perhaps the numero uno '60s anthem to youth and social ferment. Were the utopian fantasies of the '60s just a load of rubbish? Mostly, but not entirely. "Lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it's been."

Here is a sample of the proceedings.

A Difficulty With Haecceity Properties

By popular demand, here is revised version of a post that first appeared on the old blog in July of 2005.

Introduction. I find haecceity properties hard to accept, although I grant they they would do various useful jobs if they existed. ('Haecceity' from the Latin haecceitas, thisness.) In this post I explain one or two of my reasons for nonacceptance. If you know your Plantinga, you will know that he is my primary target in these notes. This post is not about Duns Scotus or any medieval.

Definition. Suppose we take on board for the space of this post the assumptions that (i) properties are abstract objects, that (ii) they can exist unexemplified, and that (iii) they are necessary beings. We may then define the subclass of haecceity properties as follows.

A haecceity is a property H of x such that: (i) H is essential to x; (ii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in the actual world; (iii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in any metaphysically possible world.

So if there is a property of Socrates that is his haecceity, then there is a property that individuates him, and indeed individuates him across all times and worlds at which he exists: it is a property that he must have, that nothing distinct from him has, and that nothing distinct from him could have. Call this property Socrateity. Being abstract and necessary, Socrateity is obviously distinct from Socrates, who is concrete and contingent. Socrateity exists in every world, but is exemplified (instantiated) in only some worlds. What's more, Socrateity exists at every time in every world that is temporally qualified, whereas Socrates exist in only some worlds and only at some times in the worlds in which he exists. Haecceity properties have various uses. I'll mention just one.

Use. Suppose I need to analyze 'Socrates might not have existed.' I start with the rewrite, 'Possibly, Socrates does not exist' which features a modal operator operating upon an unmodalized proposition. But 'Socrates does not exist,' being a negative existential proposition, gives rise to an ancient puzzle dating back to Plato. How is reference to the nonexistent possible? The sentence 'Socrates does not exist' is apparently about Socrates, but how so given that he does not exist? If the meaning of 'Socrates' is the name's referent, and nothing can be a referent of a term unless it exists, then Socrates must exist if he is to have nonexistence predicated of him. But the whole point of the sentence is to say that our man does not exist. How can one say of a thing that it does not exist without presupposing that it exists? Haecceities provide a solution. We can understand 'Socrates does not exist' to be about Socrateity rather than about Socrates, and to predicate of Socrateity the property of being exemplified. Recall that Socrateity, unlike Socrates, exists at every time and in every world. So this property, unlike Socrates, is always and necessarily available. Accordingly, we analyze 'Possibly, Socrates does not exist' as 'Possibly, Socrateity is not exemplified.' Socrates' possible nonexistence boils down to Socrateity's possible nonexemplification. It is a nice, elegant solution to the puzzle –assuming that there are haecceity properties.

Problem. One of the stumbling blocks for me, however, is the notion that the thisness of an individual could exist even if the individual whose thisness it is does not exist. Consider the time before Socrates existed. During that time, Socrateity existed. But what content could that property have during that time (or in those possible worlds) in which Socrates does not exist? Socrateity is identity-with-Socrates. Presumably, then, the property has two constituents: identity, a property had by everything, and Socrates. Now if Socrates is a constituent of identity-with-Socrates, then it seems quite obvious that Socrateity can exist only at those times and in those worlds at which Socrates exists. Socrateity would then be like Socrates' singleton, the set consisting of Socrates and Socrates alone: {Socrates}. Clearly, this set cannot exist unless Socrates exists. It is ontologically dependent on him. The same would be true of identity-with-Socrates if Socrates were a constituent of this property.

Problem Exacerbated. If, on the other hand, Socrates is not a constituent of Socrateity, then what gives identity-with-Socrates the individuating content that distinguishes it from identity-with-Plato and identity-with-Pegasus? Consider a possible world W in which Socrates, Plato, and Pegasus do not exist. In W, their haecceities exist since haecceities ex hypothesi exist in every world. What distinguishes these haecceities in W? Nothing that I can see. The only things that could distinguish them would be Socrates, Plato, and Pegasus; but these individuals do not exist in W. It might be said that haecceity properties are simple: identity-with-Socrates is not compounded of identity and Socrates, or of anything else. Different haecceities just differ and they have the content they do in an unanalyzable way. But on this suggestion haecceities seem wholly ungraspable or inconceivable or ineffable, and this militates against thinking of them as properties. I have no problem with the notion of a property that only one thing has, nor do I have a problem with a property that only one thing can have; but a property that I cannot grasp or understand or conceive or bring before my mind — such an item does not count as a property in my book. It would be more like a bare particular and inherit mutatis mutandis the unintelligibility of bare particulars.

Haecceities must be nonqualitative. Consider a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all the mutiply exemplifiable properties a thing has in the actual world. Such a property would individuate its possessor in the actual world: it would be a property that its possessor and only its possessor would have in the actual world. Such a property is graspable in that I can grasp its components (say, being barefooted, being snubnosed, being married, etc.) and I can grasp its construction inasmuch as I understand property conjunction. But the only way I can grasp Socrateity is by grasping is as a compound of identity and Socrates — which it cannot be for reasons given above.

Note that Socrateity is not equivalent to the big conjunctive property just mentioned. Take the conjunction of all of Socrates' properties in the actual world and call it K. In the actual world, Socrates has K. But there are possible worlds in which he exists but does not exemplify K. And there are possible worlds in which K is exemplified by someone distinct from him. So Socrateity and K are logically nonequivalent. What we need, then, if we are to construct a qualitative thisness or haecceity of Socrates is a monstrous disjunctive property D[soc] the disjuncts of which are all the K's Socrates has in all the possible worlds in which he exists. This monstrous disjunction of conjunctions is graspable, not in person so to speak, but via our grasp of the operations of conjunction and disjunction and in virtue of the fact that each component property is graspable. But D[soc] is not identical to Socrateity. The former is a qualitative thisness whereas the latter is a nonqualitative thisness. Unless the Identity of Indiscernibles is true, these two thisnesses are nonequivalent. And there are good reasons to think that the Identity of Indiscernibles is not true. (Max Black's iron spheres, etc.) So D[Soc] is not identical to Socrateity.

Conclusion. To compress my main point into one sentence: identity-with-Socrates is graspable only as a compound of identity and Socrates; but then this property cannot exist unexemplified. Hence haecceity properties as defined above do not exist.

Richard Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition

The current issue of Dialectica (vol. 64, no. 2, June 2010) includes a symposium on Richard Gaskin, The Unity of the Proposition (Oxford 2008). Gaskin's precis of his work is followed by critical evaluations by William F. Vallicella ("Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition"), Manuel Garcia-Carpintero ("Gaskin's Ideal Unity"), and Benjamin Schnieder ("Propositions United: Gaskin on Bradley's Regress and the Unity of the Proposition"). The symposium concludes with Gaskin's replies ("The Unity of the Proposition: Replies to Vallicella, Schnieder, and Garcia-Carpintero").

Stefan Zweig on Caissa’s Allure

An old Hindu proverb has it that chess is an ocean in which a gnat may drink and an elephant bathe. Similarly pelagic is the literature of the game. Some of it is of high literary merit. An example follows for your delectation.

Stefan Zweig, "The Royal Game" in The Royal Game and Other Stories, tr. Jill Sutcliffe (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1983), p. 8:

I knew well enough from my own experience the mysterious attraction of 'the royal game,' that game among games devised by man, which rises majestically above every tyranny of chance, which grants its victor's laurels only to a great intellect, or rather, to a particular form of mental ability. But are we not already guilty of an insulting limitation in calling chess a game? Isn't it also a science, an art, hovering between these two categories as Muhammad's coffin hovered between heaven and earth? Isn't it a unique bond between every pair of opponents, ancient and yet eternally new; mechanical in its framework and yet only functioning through use of the imagination, confined in geometrically fixed space and at the same released from confinement by its permutations; continuously evolving yet sterile; thought that leads nowhere, mathematics that add up to nothing, art without an end product, architecture without substance, and nevertheless demonstrably more durable in its true nature and existence than any books or creative works? Isn't it the only game that belongs to all people and all times? And who knows whether God put it on earth to kill boredom, to sharpen the wits or to lift the spirits? Where is its beginning and where its end? Every child can learn its basic rules, every bungler can try it; and yet it requires, within those unchanging small squares, the production of a special series of master, not comparable to any other kind, men who have a singular gift for chess, geniuses of a particular kind, in whom vision, patience and technique function in just as precise divisions as they do in mathematicians, poets and musicians, only on different levels and in different conjunctions.

No Chamber Pot in General, Danish Philosopher Maintains

Hans Brøchner on Kierkegaard:

. . .I once spoke quite zealously about how no positive religion could be tolerant, precisely because, with its claim to be revealed religion, it must insist that it is the only true religion, and it would have to consign the others to untruth. From the point of view of positive religion, a general religiousness, 'a religion in general,' must therefore be a nonentity. As I eagerly developed this idea, I happened to repeat the expression 'a religion in general,' and adopted as my principle that a religion (i.e., a positive religion) in general is a nonentity. 'Yes, and so is a chamber pot in general,' said K., thus putting a damper on my zeal.

From Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, ed. Kirmmse, Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 243-244.

Pet Love as Idolatry? Problems of Attachment and Grief

I buried my little female cat Caissa at sunrise this morning in a beautiful spot in the Superstition Mountains in the same place where I buried my male cat Zeno in October of 2002. When I buried Zeno, just before leaving the burial site, I prayed, "May we love the perishable as perishable and not idolatrously, as if it were imperishable." I recalled and repeated the thought this morning. I think it is important to reflect on the moral and spiritual dubiousness of any excessive love of the finite and transient, especially if the object of one's love cannot reciprocate it except in a highly attenuated and analogous manner.

Related to the idolatry question is the question of attachment. Attachment breeds suffering. This is not an argument against any and all attachment, but it is an argument against excessive attachment. One must keep within bounds one's attachment to what must perish. A whole-hearted love of what barely exists is surely a mistake. There is such a thing as inordinate attachment. Compare Simone Weil: "The objects of our love barely exist." She's a Platonist, of course, and so if you do not share the Platonic sense of the relative unreality of the transient you are not likely to accept her or my line of thought.

How can attachment to something be inordinate? It is in ordinate when it is out of proportion to the reality/value of the object of attachment. My cat, for example. I would not be grieving now if I were not attached to my cat, and the question arises whether my attachment is within proper bounds. If the attachment is within proper bounds, then the grief will be as well.

To hazard a definition of grief: Grief is a mental state of intense sadness brought about by the death or absence of something, typically animate, to which one has become strongly attached. In typical cases, grief arises from a physical separation, often abrupt, from an object to which one is mentally attached. But if the beloved withdraws her love, while remaining physically near, can the lover be said to experience grief? Or is it a necessary condition of grief that the beloved dies? Can one experience grief at a state of affairs that does not involve the death or destruction of a particular sentient being such as a pet or a child or a spouse? "I am grieved at the transitoriness of things," Nietzsche complained in a letter to Franz Overbeck. Can a fundamental metaphysical structure of the phenomenal world be an object of grief? Yes, insofar as the transitoriness of things entails the death of sentient beings including those sentient beings to which one becomes attached. But something less grand than a fundamental metaphysical structure of the phenomenal world could be the object of grief, e.g., a state of war at a given time and place. So perhaps we should say this:

Grief is a mental state of intense sadness brought about by (i) the death or absence of some particular thing, typically animate, to which one has become strongly attached; or (ii) the unrequiting or withdrawal of the love of the beloved; or (iii) some general circumstance that entails the death or destruction or emotional withdrawal of beings, typically sentient, to which one has become strongly attached.

I began by speaking of attachment to pets and how it ought to be kept within bounds. But attachment to persons must also be kept within bounds. There is an old song by the 'British invasion' artist, Cilla Black, You're My World. "You're my world, you're every move I make; you're my world, you're every breath I take." This is romantic nonsense whether or not God exists. The nonexistence of an infinite good could not possibly justify loving a finite good infinitely. If another human being is your very world, then I say you are succumbing to idolatry even if there is nothing genuinely worthy of worship.

For characterizations of idolatry, see the Idolatry category.

It is true that that to live is is to be attached: there is no (normatively) human life without attachment. There are forms of asceticism which seek to sever the root of all attachment, but such a radical withdrawal from life amounts to a refusal to learn its lessons, lessons it can teach only to those who participate in it. So just as there can be inordinate attachment, there can be inordinate nonattachment. Nevertheless, no one can live wisely who gives free rein to his attachment, investing the loved object with properties it cannot possess.

We try to be satisfied with finite objects, but we cannot be, at least not completely or in the long run. (I should argue that we could not be satisfied even by an unending series of finite goods.) Can we adjust our desire so that it will be satisfied by the finite? Can we learn to accept the finite and not hanker after something more? Can we scale back or moderate desire? Not if it is the nature of desire to desire the infinite. If this is the nature of desire, then it must always and everywhere fall into idolatry in the absence of an infinite object. The only complete solution to the problem of the insatiability of desire by the finite, given the nonexistence or inaccessibility of an infinite object, would then be the extinction of desire. See Buddhism category.

But one could also take the insatiability of desire by the finite as a premise in an Argument from Desire for the existence of God or the Absolute Good. Schematically: (i) The nature of desire as we humans experience it in ourselves is such that, ultimately, nothing finite can satisfy it completely; (ii) even though the fact of a particular desire by X for Y is no guarantee of the availability of Y to X (Stranded Sam's need/desire for water is no guarantee that he will receive the water he needs/desires), the general fact that there are desires of a specified sort is good evidence of the existence and availability of objects what will satisfy the desires. Therefore, (iii) there exists and is available an Object that will satisfy the desire that is insatiable by any finite object.

That desire is ultimately desire for something beyond the finite is indicated by the fact that when a beloved animal or person dies, the void one experiences seems infinite or indefinite: it is not the mere absence of that particular animal or person. It is more than a specific absence one experiences in grief, but an absence that is 'wider' than the absence of a particular cat or woman, a sort of general emptiness. It is the nullity of all things that one experiences in intense grief over the absence of one particular thing. When a parent loses a child, it is not merely the son or daughter that he loses, but the significance and value of everything.

This suggests that love of a finite object is at bottom love a of an Infinite Good, but a love that is not aware of itself as a love of such a good, but misconstrues itself as a love wholly directed to a finite object and satisfiable by such an object. Otherwise, why would the void that is experienced when a finite object is taken away be experienced as a general void as opposed to the specific absence of a particular person, say? One invests a finite object with more reality and importance than it can carry, which fact is made evident when the object is removed: the 'hole in one's soul' that it leaves is much bigger than it.

These ruminations are of course Augustinian in tenor. See his Confessions, Book IV: "For whence had that former grief [the one concerning his friend who had died] so easily reached my inmost soul, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die, as if he would never die?"

The inordinate love of the finite leads to inordinate attachment which then issues in inordinate grief when the object of attachment is removed, as every finite object (including one's own body) must eventually be removed. We fill our inner emptiness by becoming inordinately attached to objects that must pass away. When such an objectof inordinate love is taken away, our inner emptiness is brought out of its concealment. Augustine again: ". . . unjustly is anything loved which is from Him, if He be forsaken for it." (Pusey tr. 57-58)

We ought to love the finite as finite, without investing it with more reality and importance than it can bear. We ought to love the finite in God, but not as God. Trouble is, the the finite is all too available for our love and soon elicits an illicit and inordinate love, whereas God or the Good is largely absent and all too easy to doubt or deny.

That's our predicament.

Church, State, and Arizona SB 1070

E. J. Montini of the Arizona Republic reports that ". . . one of the lawsuits challenging SB 1070 is based on the notion that the law inhibits First Amendment freedom to worship." As Montini correctly states, "Among other things, SB 1070 makes it a crime to knowingly transport, harbor, conceal or shield an illegal immigrant if you do so while committing a separate criminal offense."

This provision of the law will of course cause trouble for those pastors and other church members who transport illegals to and from church functions. Suppose Pastor X is pulled over for a traffic violation while shuttling a group of illegals. Said pastor is liable to prosecution under the 1070 law. That is as it should be since the pastor is aiding and abetting the flouting of U. S. law.

But by what stretch of logic does one conclude that violators of U. S. immigration law are having their First Amendment rights violated? They have no such rights! Those are rights of U. S. citizens, not rights of anyone, citizen or not. But even if you think that illegal aliens do have First Amendment rights, or some analogous universal human right, there is nothing in 1070 that prohibits the free exercise of religion on any reasonable construal of 'prohibit.' The right to the free exercise of religion does not give one the right to do anything in the free exercise thereof.

Take a simple example. Catholic priests cannot be prohibited by the state from saying mass. To do so they need wine. But there are laws against theft, so they need to come by their wine by some legal means. Now suppose some benighted liberal argues that the laws against theft inhibit the First Amendment freedom to practice one's religion by prohibiting the stealing of wine and other supplies needed at mass. Anyone can see that to argue in such a way would be a joke. To take a more drastic case, suppose there is a Satanic ritual that requires the killing of cats. No sane person could argue that the laws against cruelty to animals interfere with the First Amendment rights of satanists.

Similarly with 1070. No rational person could argue that it inhibits First Amendment rights. The right to practice one's religion does not give one the right to break laws in its practice.

Churchmen need to reflect carefully on their relation to the State. If they flout its laws, and in so doing undermine the rule of law, then who will protect them when they need it? Will the good pastors who aid and abet illegal aliens forego calling up the police when they need protection? Will they try to have it both ways, deriving the benefits from the rule of law while undermining it?

Modality and Existence

Steven Nemes, who may prove to be my nemesis, e-mails:

I'm enjoying your book so far. I'm starting the constructive half of it now, and am going to reread the chapter "The Ground of the Contingent Existent" after a quick skim over it recently. I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but upon hearing some of the theories of existence you cover in the book, the thought in my head is "Man, this obviously can't be right. How could anyone think this?" But the philosophers in question are much smarter than me, so maybe my surprise at their theories is improper.

I have a question now regarding possible worlds, what is true-in-W, etc.

You make the point in your book that it is the fact that my existence is contingent that makes it true in some worlds that I exist and false in others. And it is the necessary existence of the Paradigm that would make it true in every possible world that he exists, rather than vice versa. This all seems very correct to me, but I am wondering about its consequences.

As I recall, my thought was along the following lines. The biconditionals

N. x is a necessary being iff x exists in all metaphysically possible worlds

C. x is a contingent being iff x exists in some but not all possible worlds

are neutral with respect to reductions of the RHS to the LHS or vice versa. So we can legitimately ask: Is a necessary being necessary because it exists in all worlds, or does it exist in all worlds because it is necessary? And: Is a contingent being contingent because it exists in only some worlds, or does it exist in only some worlds because it is contingent? My answer was that existence in all/some worlds is grounded in, and explained by, the different ways of existing of the Paradigm and what depends on it.

It seems the principle, then, is that what is possible depends upon what is actual, depends upon the potentialities that exist in what is actual, etc. Would you agree to this?

That's the next step, but my principle was merely that possible worlds talk is a very useful façon de parler, a graphic manner of speaking that allows us to picture modal relations in extensional terms using the machinery of quantification, but that necessity and contingency of existence cannot consist in, or be constituted by, existence in all/some worlds.

But I do take the next step, though I didn't work it out in the book. The Paradigm is the numero uno necessary existent and as such the ground of all actualities other than itself, but also the ground of all possibilities. Mere possibilities, after all, are not nothing, and so have some ontological status shy of actuality. So I had the not entirely original thought that mere possibilities could be identified with powers of the Paradigm.

Are there bad consequences of this, however? It seems like there is nothing actual sufficient to ground the truth of a typical counterfactual of creaturely freedom about nonexistent agents, like "If Bill the Bald Bostonian were offered the chance, he'd freely agree to murder the Yankees star pitcher". Does that mean it isn't true in any possible world? Can there be any truths about nonexistent agents and their free actions at all, assuming the only kind of free action is libertarian-free action? Can their be any truths in other possible worlds about what existent agents would freely do?

Underlying your question is whether there could be nonexistent but possible individuals. The conclusion I came to in the book was that all mere possibilities are general in nature, hence not involving specific individuals. Before Socrates came into existence there was no merely possible Socrates, though there was the possibility of there existing a snub-nosed sage, married to a shrewish wife, who was given to moments of abstraction when he communed with his daimon, etc. To get a feel for the issue here, imagine someone prophesying the coming of Socrates, master dialectician, fearless questioner of powerful men, who ran afoul of them, got sentenced to death, etc. Imagine the prophet being asked, after Socrates is on the scene, whether the Socrates in existence is the one he prophesied, or a numerically different one. My claim is that this question makes no sense. Before Socrates came into existence, there was no individual Socrates.

I was pushed into this view by my arguments against haecceity properties and also by my vew that existence is not a property added to a pre-formed fully individuated essence, but the unity of an individual's constitutents. Accordingly, existence individuates so that there is no individuation apart from existence, hence no merely possible individuals.