Are the Dogmas of Catholicism Divine Revelations?

W. K. writes, and I reply:

I agree with most of that [Mature Religion is Open-Ended Too], except what I take to be your idea of dogma. You say that the 'dogmatic contents' of religion is 'where it is weakest' and 'dogmatics displaces inquiry'. In both cases, for Catholicism, this is not only a misconception but the opposite of what dogma is.

In the first case, the dogmatic contents of Catholicism are revealed by God, who cannot possibly err, so given sufficient rational grounds for believing that there is a God, and that he has indeed revealed himself to man, and that this revelation is to be found where it is claimed to be found, its dogmatic contents are where it is strongest. [. . .]

I can grant all your premises but one.  As I see it, the dogmatic contents, i.e., the dogmatic propositions,  of Catholicism are not revealed by God.  They are at best human formulations of what is revealed by God, formulations that bear the mark of their human origin.  As such, they are debatable, disputable, and starting points for inquiry.  They are not indisputable certainties that must be accepted on pain of damnation.  To discuss this concretely we need to examine some examples of dogmatic contents.  Here are some:

  • God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty, by the natural
    light of reason from created things.
  • The divine attributes are really identical among themselves and with
    the Divine Essence.
  • God is absolutely simple.

If these dogmas are revealed by God, where can we find them in the Bible?  As far as I know, the Bible is silent on the question of  divine simplicity, which is what the second two propositions articulate. The doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS), as set forth by Thomas Aquinas, has a noble philosophical pedigree, but no Biblical pedigree.  I am not saying that God is not ontologically simple.  In fact, I am inclined to say that God must be simple: otherwise he would not be absolute, and hence would not be God.  (See my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on this topic.)  Nor am I saying that that DDS is inconsistent with what is in the Bible. Perhaps it is possible to render consistent the simple God of the philosophers with the living, acting, non-impassible God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who acts in history, takes sides in tribal warfare, hears and responds to prayers, etc.    I am saying precisely this: the DDS is a human attempt to articulate in discursive terms the divine transcendence and aseity.  As such, DDS is open to scrutiny and debate.

This ought to be obvious from the fact that prominent philosophers of religion such as Alvin Plantinga, who are also classical theists, though not Catholics, question the DDS, and with good reason.  Questioning it, they do not take themselves to be questioning divine revelation, nor are they questioning divine revelation.  They are questioning a philosophical doctrine that has much to be said for it, but also much to be said against it. They are questioning something that is eminently questionable.

At this point one might try the following response.  "Admittedly, DDS is not in the Bible; but it is taught by the Catholic Church, the one, true, holy, and universal church, the church founded by Christ himself who is God, a church presided over and guided by by the Holy Ghost  (I don't use 'Holy Spirit' which is a  Vatican II innovation) in all it conciliar deliberations with respect to faith and morals, a church, therefore, whose pronouncements on matters of faith and morals are infallible.  Since the Roman church was founded by God himself, its epistemic credentials are absolutely impeccable, and everything it teaches, including DDS, is not only true, but known with absolute objective certainty to be true because it comes from an absolutely reliable Source, God himself."

Is the Roman church all that it claims to be?  That is the question.  If it is then everything it teaches, including the dogmas about its own divine origin and utter reliability (see here, scroll down to VI #s 1-20), are true.  But is it all that it claims to be? You are free to believe it of course.  But how do you know?  If you say you know it because the Roman church teaches it, then you move in a circle of rather short diameter.  You are saying in effect: The Roman church is God's very church because it claims to be, and its claims are true and certain because they made by God's very church, the church that God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, who is absolutely inerrant and trustworthy, established.

To avoid the circle, one must simply accept that the Roman church is all that it claims to be.  But ought one not be unsettled by the fact that sincere, intelligent adherents of other Christian denominations (let alone adherents of other faiths such as Judaism and Islam) reject the Roman claims? 

"No, why should I find that unsettling?  Those other denominations are just wrong.  The Eastern Church, for example, went astray at the time of the Great Schism."  That's possible, but how likely is it? Isn't it much more likely that the extreme claims that the Roman church makes on its behalf are simply the expression of an exceedingly deep need for doxastic security, i.e., an inability to tolerate the least bit of uncertainty in one's beliefs?  Here is one of the extreme claims:

  • Membership of the Catholic Church is necessary for all men for salvation.

Extra ecclesiam, nulla salus.  No salvation outside the church.  Which church?  The Eastern church?  Well, no.  Our church.  It would be absurd to say that the true church is true because it is ours.  It would be better to say that it is ours because it is the true church: we joined it because it is true.  But how justify that claim in a non-circular way?

Some will tell me that the Roman church has softened on the dogma just quoted.  But if dogmas are divinely revealed as my correspondent W. K. claims, how could there be any need for softening or modification?  And why would any more dogmas need to be added, as they were added in the 19th century?

Consider another dogma:

    The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and from the Son as from a single
    principle through a single spiration.

This proposition contains the famous filoque, "and from the Son," which was the main doctrinal bone of contention that led to the Great Schism. (See East Versus West on the Trinity: The Filioque Controversy.)  Is this Catholic dogma in the Bible? Where?  Does the Bible anywhere take a stand on this theological arcanum?  I don't think so.

And then there are the Marian dogmas.  I count three: Immaculate Conception, Virgin Birth, and Assumption. According to the first, Mary was conceived without original sin.  And so the dogma of Original Sin is presupposed.  That man is a fallen being in some sense or other I don't doubt.  But the Fall as a sort of 'fact' and the Fall as an explicitly formulated doctrine are two and not one.  Here is what I mean by the 'fact':

 . . . man is wretched and only man is wretched. Man's wretchedness is 'structural': man qua man is wretched. Wretched are not merely the sick, the unloved, and the destitute; all of us are wretched, even those of us who count as well off. Some of us are aware of this, our condition, the rest hide it from themselves by losing themselves in what Pascal calls divertissement, diversion. We are as if fallen from a higher state, our true and rightful state, into a lower one, and the sense of wretchedness is an indicator of our having fallen. We are in a dire state from which we need salvation but we are incapable of saving ourselves by our own efforts, whether individual or collective.

Now compare the 'fact' with the dogmatic propositions that make up the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin:

  • Our first parents, before the fall, were endowed with sanctifying
    grace.
  • In addition to sanctifying grace, our first parents were endowed with
    the preternatural gift of bodily immortality.
  • Our first parents in Paradise sinned grievously through transgression
    of the Divine probationary commandment.
  • Through sin our first parents lost sanctifying grace and provoked the
    anger and the indignation of God.
  • Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the
    devil.
  • Adam's sin is transmitted to his posterity, not by imitation but by
    descent.
  • Original sin is transmitted by natural generation.
  • In the state of original sin man is deprived of sanctifying grace and
    all that this implies, as well as of the preternatural gifts of integrity.
  • Souls who depart this life in the state of original sin are excluded
    from the Beatific Vision of God.

I'll make a couple of quick points. There were no first parents, and there is no transmission in the manner described.(Further details and explanations in Original Sin category.)

In sum, I oppose both the critics of religion who, failing to appreciate its open-ended, quest-like character,  want to pin it down, reducing it to dogmatic contents, so as to attack it where it is weakest.  I also oppose the (immature) religionists who also want religion pinned down and dogmatically spelled out for purposes of self-definition, doxastic security, other-exclusion, worldly promotion, and political leverage.

In a slogan: Religion is more quest than conclusions.

Religion Always Buries its Undertakers

Christopher Hitchens has been dead for over a year now.  He will  be joined by Dennett and Dawkins, Grayling and Harris, and the rest of the militant atheists. 

Religion, like philosophy, always buries its undertakers.

It was Etienne Gilson who famously remarked that "Philosophy always buries its undertakers."  That is the first of his "laws of philosophical experience." (The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Scribners, 1937, p. 306) As a metaphilosophical pronunciamento it is hard to beat.  It is equally true that philosophy always resurrects its dead.  Let that be my first law.  The history of natural science is littered with corpses, none of which is an actual or potential Lazarus.  Not so in philosophy.

I continue the thought in Philosophy Always Resurrects its Dead.

The Hypocrisy of the HollyWeird Gun Grabbers

Here is the 'viral' video in case you haven't seen it.  Violent content.

As I argued earlier, the problem is not gun culture, but liberal culture.  I listed  four characteristics of liberal culture that contribute to violence of all kinds, including gun violence:

  • Liberals have a casual attitude toward criminal behavior.
  • Liberals tend to undermine morality with their opposition to religion. 
  • Liberals tend to  glorify the worthless, and they fail to present exemplary human types in realistic and appealing ways.
  • Liberals tend to deny or downplay free will, individual responsibility, and the reality of evil.

But I left one out:

  • Liberals tend to undermine marriage, the family, and the authority of parents.

We have enough gun control.  What we need now is liberal control.

Memo to self: write a post exploring the bizarre liberal combination of First Amendment absolutism with Second Amendment rejectionism.

E. J. Lowe on the Distinction Between Constituent and Relational Ontology

1. Uncontroversially, ordinary material particulars such as cats and cups have parts, material parts.  Equally uncontroversial is that they  have properties and stand in relations.  That things have properties and stand in relations is a plain Moorean fact beyond the reach of reasonable controversy.  After all, my cat is black and he is sleeping next to my blue coffee cup.  So far we are at the pre-philosophical level, the level of data.  We start philosophizing when we ask what properties are and what it is for a thing to have a property.   So the philosophical question is not whether there are properties — of course there are! — but what they are.  Neither is it a philosophical question whether things have properties — of course they do!   The question concerns how this having is to be understood. 

What we want to understand are the nature of properties and the nature of property-possession.  Qua ontologist, I don't care what properties there are; I care what properties are.  And qua ontologist, I don't care what properties are instantiated; I care what instantiation is.   

2. For example, is the blueness of my cup a repeatable entity, a universal,  or an unrepeatable entity, a particular (e.g.,a trope)?  That is  one of several questions one can ask about properties.  A second is whether the cup has the property by standing in an external relation to it — the relation of exemplification — or by  containing it as an ontological or metaphysical part  or constituent.  Can property-possession be understood quasi-mereologically, as analogous to a part-whole relation?  Or is it more like the relation of a thing to a predicate that is true of it?  The predicate 'blue' is true of my cup.  But no one would get it into his head to think of the word 'blue' as a part of the cup — in any sense of 'part.'  'Blue' is a word and no concrete material extralinguistic thing has as a word as a part.  The relation between 'blue' and the cup to which it applies is external: each term of the relation can exist without the other.  Indeed my cup could be blue even if there were no English language and no such word as 'blue.'  But if x is an ordinary part or an ontological constituent of y, then y cannot exist without x.  So one might analogize properties to predicates and maintain that  properties are external to the things that have them and are related to them by exemplification.

3. At a first approximation, the issue that divides constituent ontologists (C-ontologists) and those that N. Wolterstorff rather infelicitously calls 'relational ontologists' (R-ontologists) is whether or not ordinary particulars  have ontological or metaphysical parts.  C-ontologists maintain that ordinary
particulars have such parts in addition to their commonsense parts, and that among these ontological parts are (some of) the properties of the ordinary particular.  R-ontologists deny that ordinary particulars have ontological parts, and consequently deny that ordinary particulars have any of their properties by having them as parts.

4. Let us now examine E. J. Lowe's explanation of the distinction.  After reminding us that C-ontologists ascribe to ordinary particulars ontological structure in addition to ordinary mereological structure, he writes:  ". . . what is crucial for an ontology to qualify as 'constituent' is that it should maintain that objects have an ontological structure involving 'constituents' which belong to ontological categories other than the category of object itself."  ("Essence and Ontology" in Novak et al. eds., Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic, Ontos Verlag 2012, pp. 102-103.) Lowe's characterization of the distinction goes beyond mine in that Lowe requires that the constituents of an object belong to categories other than that of object.  An object for Lowe is an Aristotlelian primary (individual) substance.  For me it suffices for an ontology to be 'constituent' that it allow that some entities have ontological constituents.

Lowe cites hylomorphism as an example of a constituent ontology.  On both Lowe's and my understanding of 'constituent ontology,' hylomorphism is a clear example of a C-ontology.  On hylomorphism individual substances are combinations of form and matter where neither the form nor the matter are substances  in their own right.  But is it true to say or imply, as Lowe does, that forms and matters are members of categories?  This strikes me as a strange thing to say or imply.  Consider just the forms of individual substances.  I would not say that they are members of a category of entity alongside the other categories, but that, on hylomorphism, they are 'principles' (as the Thomists say) invoked in the analysis of individual substances.  Form and matter are ontological constituents of an Aristotelian primary substance.  But that is not to say that these constituents belong to categories other than that of primary (individual) substance.  It is true that the form of a substance is not itself a substance.  It does not follow, however, that the form of a substance belongs to an ontological category other than that of substance.

So that is my first quibble with Lowe's explanation.  Here is my second.  It seems that Lowe's explanation rules out one-category constituent ontologies.  Keith Campbell advertises his ontology as 'one-category.'  (Abstract Particulars, Basil Blackwell, 1990)) The one category is that of tropes.  Everything is either a trope or a construction from tropes.  Campbell's is therefore a one-category constituent ontology. Lowe's explanation, however, implies that there must be at least two categories of entity, the category object (individual substance) and one or more categories of entity whose members serve as constituents of objects.

A third problem with Lowe's explanation is that it seems to rule our Bergmann-type C-ontologies that  posit bare or thin particulars.  Lowe's explanation seems to suggest that the constituents of a particular cannot include any particulars.  If a bare particular is a particular, then an ordinary particular has a particular as a constituent in violation of Lowe's explanation.  (It is a very interesting question whether a bare particular is a particular. I am tempted to argue that 'bare' functions as an alienans adjective so that a bare particular is not a particular but rather the ontological factor of particularity in an ordinary particular. But this is a separate topic that I will get to in a separate post.)

5.  I now want to discuss whether Lowe's four-category ontology succeeds in being neither a C-ontology nor an R-ontology, as he claims. 

First of all the question whether it is a C-ontology.  Lowe's categorial scheme is approximately as depicted in this diagram:


Ontological square

Lowe speaks of Kinds (substantial universals) being instantiated by Objects (substantial particulars), and of Attributes (non-substantial universals) being instantiated by Modes (non-substantial particulars).  Not shown in the above Ontological Square  is a diagonal relation of Exemplification running from Attributes (non-substantial universals) to Objects (substantial particulars).  Consider, for example, the horse Dobbin.  It is an individual substance that instantiates the natural kind horse.  Dobbin also has various accidental properties, or Attributes, whiteness, for example.  Dobbin exemplifies the universal whiteness.  The whiteness of Dobbin, however, is unique to him.  It is not a universal, but a particular, albeit a non-substantial particular.  It is a Mode (trope) that instantiates the Attribute whiteness.  Dobbin is characterized by this Mode, just as the Kind horse is characterized by the Attribute whiteness.  On Lowe's scheme there are three distinct relations: Characterization, Instantiatiation, and Exemplification.  They relate the members of four distinct fundamental ontological categories: Kinds, Objects, Attributes, and Modes.

Are modes constituents of the objects they characterize?  Is Dobbin's whiteness a constituent of Dobbin? If it is, then Lowe's ontology counts as a C-ontology.  Lowe plausibly argues that modes are not constituents of objects.  I take the argument to be as follows.  Modes are identity-dependent on the objects they characterize.  Thus Dobbin's whiteness would not be what it is apart from Dobbin and could not exist apart from Dobbin.  It follows that the mode in question cannot be an ontological 'building block' out of which Dobbin, together with other items, is constructed.  An object is ontologically prior to its modes, which fact entails that modes cannot be constituents of objects.

So far, so good.  But what about modes themselves? Do they have constituents? Or are they simple? If modes have constituents, then Lowe's is a C-ontology after all.  Dobbin's whiteness could be taken to be Dobbins-exemplifying-the universal whiteness, or it could be taken to be a simple item lacking internal structure, a simple instance of whiteness.  If it is a simple item, just an instance of whiteness, then it cannot have any necessary connection to Dobbin or to any object.  Why then would it be necessarily identity- and existence-dependent on Dobbin?  Why would it be so dependent on any object?  There would be nothing about it to ground such a necessary connection.  And if it were a simple, then it could very well be a constituent of an object.  Lowe's argument against the constituency of the whiteness mode requires that the mode have a necessary connection to Dobbin, that it be the whiteness of Dobbin and of him alone.  The mode cannot have that necessary connection unless it is a complex.

If, on the other hand, Dobbin's whiteness is a complex item, then it has as constituents, Dobbin, exemplification, and the universal whiteness, in which case Lowe's ontolology is a C-ontology.  For if an ontology has even one category of entity the members of which have ontological constituents, then that ontology is a C-ontology.

My argument can also be put as follows.  On Lowe's scheme, modes make up a fundamental category.  As fundamental, modes are not derivative from other categories.  So it cannot be that a mode is a complex formed by an object's exemplifying an attribute, e.g., Dobbin's exemplifying the non-substantial universal, whiteness.  But if modes are simple, why should modes be identity-dependent on objects? It is clear that the whiteness of Dobbin cannot be an ontological part of Dobbin if the whiteness is necessarily tied to Dobbin to be what it is.  For then it presupposes the logically antecedent existence of Dobbin.  But the only way the whiteness can be necessarily tied to Dobbin is if it is a complex — which is inconsistent with modes' being a fundamental and irreducible category.

And the Award for Gun Salesman of the Year Goes to . . .

Obama Gun SalesVDH comments

There is a new-year stampede developing that we have not seen for a long time.

Gun stores are swamped with panicking customers. They are looking for handguns, semi-automatic rifles and as much ammunition as they can afford. But buyers are not just camouflaged hunters, conspiracy theorists and gun hoarders. Instead, many of those purchasing firearms and ammo are so-called ordinary people, convinced that this administration will soon begin to centrally register — and then ban — far more than assault rifles.

There were probably lots of reasons why Adam Lanza shot 26 innocent children and adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. But so far the government and media are not focusing much on his prior obsessions with violent video games, on society's seeming inability to hospitalize the unstable, or on the crude violence peddled in Hollywood and through popular music that portrays shooting people as a sort of cheap fantasy without consequences.Instead, the administration is zeroing in on the ability of Lanza's mother to legally buy semi-automatic weapons that her son then stole to murder her and the schoolchildren and employees. The result is a pandemic of fear that the Second Amendment will be reinterpreted and redefined as never before.

…………..

You dumbass liberals have really shot yourself in the foot with this one.  NRA membership is way up and gun and ammo sales are through the roof.  Good work!  The society is more polarized than ever.  The arms manufacturers will make more money and have more money for lobbying.  More guns will be in circulation to be stolen and mishandled.  There will be more accidental shootings.  Good job!

Mature Religion is Open-Ended Too: More Quest Than Conclusions

The following is from an interview with A. C. Grayling who is speaking of the open mind and open inquiry:

It’s a mindset, he reveals, that “loves the open-endedness and the continuing character of the conversation that humankind has with itself about all these things that really matter.”

It’s also a way of thinking that marks a line in the sand between religion and science. The temptation to fall for the former—hook, line, and sinker—is plain to see: “People like narratives, they like to have an explanation, they like to know where they are going.” Weaving another string of thought into his tapestry of human psychology, Grayling laments that his fellow human beings “don’t want to have to think these things out for themselves. They like the nice, pre-packaged answer that’s just handed to them by somebody authoritative with a big beard.”

A. C. Grayling, like many if not most militant atheists, sees the difference between religion and science in the difference between pre-packaged dogmas thoughtlessly and uncritically accepted from some authority and open-ended free inquiry.

That is not the way I see it.  For me, mature religion is more quest than conclusions.  It too is open-ended and ongoing, subject to revision and correction. It benefits from abrasion with such competing sectors of culture as philosophy and science.  By abrasion the pearl is formed.

All genuine religion involves a quest since God must remain largely unknown, and this by his very nature. He must remain latens Deitas in Aquinas' phrase:

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit, Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore, Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more, See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

(tr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, here.)
 

But as religion becomes established in the world in the form of churches, sects, and denominations with worldly interests, it becomes less  of a quest and more of a worldly hustle. Dogmatics displaces inquiry, and fund-raising faith. The once alive becomes ossified.  All human institutions are corruptible, and are eventually corrupted.

Mature religion must be more quest than conclusions. It is vastly more a seeking than a finding. More a cleansing of windows and a polishing  of mirrors than a glimpsing. And certainly more a glimpsing than a comfortable resting upon dogmas. When philosophy and religion and mysticism and science are viewed as quests they complement one another. And this despite the tensions among Athens, Jerusalem, Benares, and Alexandria.

The critic of religion wants to pin it down, reducing it to dogmatic contents, so as to attack it where it is weakest. Paradoxically, the atheist 'knows' more about God than the sophisticated theist — he knows so much that he knows no such thing could exist. He 'knows' the divine nature and knows that it is incompatible with the existence of evil — to mention one line of attack.  What he 'knows,' of course, is only the concept he himself has fabricated and projected.  Aquinas, by contrast, held that the existence of God is far better known than God's nature — which remains shrouded in a cloud of unknowing.

The (immature) religionist also wants religion pinned down and dogmatically spelled out for purposes of self-definition, doxastic security, other-exclusion, worldly promotion, and political leverage. This is a reason why reformers like Jesus are met with a cold shoulder — or worse.

How is it that someone as intelligent as Grayling could have such a cartoonish understanding of religion?  The answer is that he and his brethren  utterly lack the religious sensibility.  They lack it in the same way many scientists lack the philosophical sensibility, many prosaic folk the poetic sensibility, and so on.

This is why debates with militant atheists are a waste of time.  To get a taste of the febrile militancy of Grayling's atheism, see here. 

Divine Creation, Possibility, and Actuality

This from a reader:

Your latest blog posts on the problem of existence prompted me to question you about one philosophical problem which keeps "nagging" me:

– When we make plans for the future (e.g. when choosing out next move in chess), we analyze different possibilities. Until the moment we decide our move, each possibility is only that: a possibility, and not an actual move. By moving a piece, we irretrievably select one possibility. The irretrieveability is caused by the existence of  a world, outside our minds, which is affected by our decision and prevents it from being "taken back".

– God  (were He to play chess), would be able to analyze all possible moves to an infinite depth, since He is an infinite mind. What would make one of this possibilities actual? I assume that, like in the case of a finite mind,  it would be His decision on what piece to move and when.

I understand that so far, this is not a philosophical problem,  but merely an intuition that choosing an actuality amongst infinite possibilities implies acting on something outside oneself (the chessboard in this instance). My problem arises when thinking about the act of creation:

– In a way similar to a chess game, when God created the universe he would have been able to see in full detail all possible universes. He chose one of these, making it be. How does creation (i.e. actual
existence) differ from potential existence in this instance? In everyday life, like in a chess game, actual existence depends on acting one way or the other on something that exists apart from the
mind. How can we think about it in that moment when nothing exists apart from the infinite mind of the Creator? In other words, from the point of view of an infinite mind, what is the difference between a piece of fiction and a piece of non-fiction before the world is created?

I am not sure I have been able to piece my thoughts together in a coherent way. . . At least, everybody with whom I try to discuss this seems to think I am splitting hairs over a non-issue. . .

All the best to you,

Pedro

Pedro J. Silva
Associate Professor
Universidade Fernando Pessoa
Porto – Portugal
http://homepage.ufp.pt/pedros/science/science.htm
http://biochemicalmatters.blogspot.com

RESPONSE

Well, Pedro, you are certainly not splitting hairs over a non-issue.  The problem is genuine, and if anything, you are not splitting enough hairs.  But first we need to state the problem more clearly.   I suggest that the problem can be formulated as the problem of giving an account that allows all the following propositions to be true:

1. God creates ex nihilo: creation is not an acting upon something whose existence is independent of God's existence. 

2. Creation is actualization:  God creates by actualizing a merely possible world.  Of course, 'once' (logically speaking) it is actual, it is not merely possible.

3. There is a plurality of broadly logically possible worlds.

4. God is libertarianly free: God could have done otherwise with respect to any world he actualizes.  There is no necessity that God create any world at all, and any world he  creates is such that he might not have created it.  If 'A' is a name (Kripkean rigid designator) of our world, the world that is actual, then 'A is actual' is contingently true, and 'God creates A' is contingently true.

Suppose we give the following account.  The divine intellect 'prior' (logically speaking) to creation has before it an infinite array of broadly logically possible worlds.  These possible worlds have the status of complex divine thought-accusatives.  They exist only as intentional objects of the divine intellect.  It follows that they do not exist apart from God.  On the contrary, their existence depends on God's existence.  The actualization of one of these worlds depends on the divine will: God wills one of the possible worlds to be actual.  As it happens, A is the chosen world.  This is equivalent to causing our universe, with Socrates and Plato, me and you, etc. to exist extramentally, 'outside' the divine mind, but still in continuous dependence on the divine mind.

On this account, is creation a creation out of nothing?  Yes, insofar as it not an acting upon something whose existence is independent of God's existence.  God creates out of mere possibilities, which are divine thought-accusatives, not Platonica.  So there is a sense in which creation is ex Deo

Does this commit me to pantheism?  See Creatio ex Deo and Pantheism and Creation: Ex Nihilo or Ex Deo?  Am I a Panentheist?

Why the Second Amendment?

Walter E. Williams gives us a little history lesson.  The piece ends thusly:

Here's the gun grabbers' slippery-slope agenda, laid out by Nelson T. Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc.: "We're going to have to take this one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest. … Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. … The final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal" (The New Yorker, July 1976).

There have been people who've ridiculed the protections afforded by the Second Amendment, asking what chance would citizens have against the military might of the U.S. government. Military might isn't always the deciding factor. Our 1776 War of Independence was against the mightiest nation on the face of the earth — Great Britain. In Syria, the rebels are making life uncomfortable for the much-better-equipped Syrian regime. Today's Americans are vastly better-armed than our founders, Warsaw Ghetto Jews and Syrian rebels.

There are about 300 million privately held firearms owned by Americans. That's nothing to sneeze at. And notice that the people who support gun control are the very people who want to control and dictate our lives.

It's not about hunting.  It's about self-defense.  Against whom?  First of all, against the criminal element, the same criminal element that liberals coddle.  It apparently doesn't occur to liberals that if there were less crime, fewer people would feel a need to arm themsleves.  Second, against any political entity, foreign or domestic, substate or state, at any level, that 'goes rogue.'  A terrorist organization would be an example of a substate political entity.

Gun Control: When is Enough Enough?

Suppose a federal ban on the manufacture, sale, transfer, etc. of semi-automatic rifles is enacted in the coming year.  And then suppose another mass shooting occurs.  Will liberals call for further gun restrictions?  Of course.  You can be sure that they will exploit the next mass shooting just as they exploited Sandy Hook. Suppose they call for, and get, an outlawing of all semi-autos, including pistols.  Will they be satisfied with that?  Of course not.  For when the next mass shooting occurs, they will again blame the weapon, not the wielder, and take the next step, perhaps the banning of all rifles, shotguns, and handguns.  And so on.

Just as, for a liberal, one cannot be too liberal, for a liberal, there cannot be too much gun control.   They will exploit any mass shooting to further erode gun rights.  This is why there must not be any further concessions. We have enough gun control laws.  But for a liberal enough is never enough.

The following from Victor Davis Hanson:

A journalist, Donald Kaul, in the Des Moines Register offers us a three-step, presto! plan to stop school shootings:

Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. … Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. …Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.

Note the new ease with which the liberal mind calls for trashing the Constitution, outlawing those whom they don’t like (reminiscent of “punish our enemies”?), and killing those politicians with whom they don’t agree (we are back to Bush Derangement Syndrome, when novels, movies, and op-eds dreamed of the president’s assassination.)

What would be the Register’s reaction should a conservative opponent of abortion dare write, “Repeal the First Amendment; ban Planned Parenthood as a terrorist organization; and drag Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi from a truck”? If an idiot were to write that trash, I doubt the Washington Times or Wall Street Journal would print such sick calls for overturning the Constitution and committing violence against public officials.

Not all liberals are as extreme as Kaul.  But the liberal tendency is ever Leftward.  Which is another reason why we need guns.  It is not about hunting.  Nor is it about plinking at targets for fun.  It is  about self-defense against the criminal element and any other group that threatens us with violence.

Here is my message to liberal gun-grabbers.

“Environmentalists are by Definition Extremists” More on the Misuse of ‘By Definition’

Regular readers of this blog know that I respect and admire Dennis Prager: he is a font of wisdom and a source of insight.  And he is a real Mensch to boot. (If I were a Jew and he a rabbi, he'd be my choice.) But I just heard him say, "Environmentalists are by definition extremists."  That is another clear example of the illicit use of 'by definition' that I pointed out in an earlier entry.  Here are some examples of correct uses of 'by definition':

  • Bachelors are by definition male
  • Triangles are by definition three-sided
  • In logic, sound arguments are by definition valid. (A sound argument is defined as one whose form is valid and all of whose premises are true.)
  • In physics, work is defined as the product of force and distance moved: W= Fx.
  • In set theory, a power set is defined to be the set of all subsets of a given set.
  • By definition, no rifle is a shotgun.
  • Semi-automatic firearms are by definition capable of firing exactly one round per trigger pull until the magazine (and the chamber!) is empty. 
  • In metaphysics, an accident by definition is logically incapable of existing without a substance of which it is the accident.
  • In astrophysics, a light-year is by definition a measure of distance, not of time: it is the distance light travels in one year. 
  • By definition, the luminiferous either is a medium for the propagation of electromagnetic signals.

Incorrect uses of 'by definition':

  • Joe Nocera: "anyone who goes into a school with a semiautomatic and kills 20 children and six
    adults is, by definition, mentally ill." 
  • Donald Berwick: "Excellent health care is by definition redistributional."
  • Illegal aliens are by definition Hispanic.
  • Bill Maher, et al.: "Taxation is by definition redistributive."
  • Dennis Prager: "Environmentalists are by definition extremists."
  • Capitalists are by definition greedy.
  • Socialists are by definition envious.
  • Alpha Centauri is by definition 4.3 light-years from earth.
  • The luminiferous ether exists by definition.
  • By definition, the luminiferous ether cannot exist.

I hope it is clear why the incorrect uses are incorrect.  As for the Prager example, it is certainly true that some environmentalists are extremists.  But others are not.  So Prager's assertion is not even true.  Even if every environmentalist were an extremist, however, it would still not be true by definition that that is so.  By definition, what is true by definition is true; but what is true need not be true by definition.

So what game is Prager playing?  Is he using 'by definition' as an intensifier?   Is he purporting to make a factual claim to the effect that all environmentalists are extremists and then underlining (as it were) the claim by the use of 'by definition'?  Or is he assigning by stipulation his own idiosyncratic meaning to 'environmentalist'?  Is he serving notice that 'extremist' is part of the very meaning of 'environmentalist' in his idiolect?

Language matters! 

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

What better topic of meditation for New Year's Morn than the 'passage' of time. May the Reaper grant us all another year!  "I still live, I still think:  I still have to live, for I still have to think." (Nietzsche)

…………..

If presentism is to be a defensible thesis, a 'presentable' one if you will, then it must avoid both the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of absurdity.  Having survived these hazards, it must not perish of unclarity or inexpressibility.

Consider

1. Only what exists exists.

If 'exists' is used in the same way in both occurrences, then (1) is a miserable tautology and not possibly a bone of contention as between presentists and anti-presentists.  Note that (1) is a tautology whether 'exists' is present-tensed in both occurrences or temporally unqualified (untensed) in both.  To have a substantive thesis, the presentist must distinguish the present-tensed use of 'exist' from some other use and say something along the lines of

P. Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter.

This implies that what no longer exists does not exist simpliciter, and that what will exist does not exist simpliciter.  It is trivial to say that what no longer exists does not presently exist, but this is not what the presentist is saying: he is is saying that what no longer exists does not exist period (full stop, simpliciter, at all, sans phrase, absolutely, pure and simple, etc.)

But the presentist must also, in his formulation of his thesis, avoid giving aid and comfort to the absurdity that could be called 'solipsism of the present moment.'  (I borrow the phrase from Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, Simon and Schuster 1948, p. 181.) To wit,

SPM.  Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter; nothing existed and nothing will exist.

The idea behind (SPM) is decidedly counterintuitive but cannot be ruled out by logic alone.  To illustrate, consider James Dean who died on September 30th, 1955.  Presentist and anti-presentist agree that Dean existed and no longer exists.  (Alter the example to Dean's car if you hold to the immortality of the soul.)  That is, both presentist and anti-presentist maintain that there actually was this actor, that he was not a mere possibility or a fictional being.  The presentist, however, thinks that Dean does not exist at all (does not exist simpliciter) while the anti-presentist maintains that Dean does exist simpliciter, but in the past.  In contrast to both,the present-moment solipsist holds that Dean never existed and for this reason does not exist at all.  Thus there are three positions on past individuals.  The presentist says that they do not exist at all or simpliciter.  The anti-presentist says that they do exist simpliciter.  The PM-solispist says that they never existed.

Clearly, the presentist must navigate between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of present-moment solipsism.   So what is the presentist saying?  He seems to be operating with a metaphysical picture according to which there is a Dynamic Now which is the source and locus of a ceaseless annihilation and creation: some things are ever passing out of being and other things are ever coming into being.  He is not saying that all that is in being is all there ever was in being or all there ever will be in being.  That is the lunatic thesis of the present-moment solipsist.

The presentist can be characterized as an annihilationist-creationist in the following sense.  He is annihilationist about the past, creationist about the future.  He maintains that an item that becomes past does not lose merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but loses both presentness and existence.  And an item that becomes present does not gain merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but gains both presentness and existence.  Becoming past is a passing away, an annihilation, and becoming present is  a coming into  being, a creation out of nothing.

To many, the presentist picture seem intuitively correct, though I would not go so far as Alan Rhoda who, quoting John Bigelow, maintains that presentism is "arguably the commonsense position."  I would suggest that common sense, assuming we can agree on some non-tendentious characterization of same, takes no position on arcane metaphysical disputes such as this one.  (This is a fascinating metaphilosophical topic that cannot be addressed now.  How does the man on the street think about time?  Answer: he doesn't think about it, although he is quite adept at telling time, getting to work on time and using correctly the tenses of his mother tongue.)

So far, so good.  But there is still, to me at least, something deeply puzzling about the presentist thesis.  Consider the following two tensed sentences about the actor James Dean.  'Dean does not exist.'  'Dean did exist.'  Both tensed sentences are unproblematically true, assuming that death is annihilation.  (We can avoid this assumption by changing the example to Dean's silver Porsche.)  Because both sentences are plainly true, recording as they do Moorean facts, they are plainly logically consistent.

The presentist, however, maintains that what did exist, but  no longer exists, does not exist at all.  That is the annihilationist half of his characteristic thesis.  It is not obviously true in the way the data sentences are obviously true.  Indeed, it is not clear, to me at least, what exactly the presentist thesis MEANS.  (Evaluation of a proposition as either true or false presupposes a grasp of its sense or meaning.) When the presentist says, in the present using a present-tensed sentence,  that

1. Dean does not presently exist at all

he does not intend this to hold only at the present moment, else (1) would collapse into the trivially true present-tensed 'Dean does not exist.'  He intends something more, namely:

2. Dean does not presently exist at any time, past, present, or future.

Now what bothers me is the apparent present reference in (2) to past and future times.  How can a present-tensed sentence be used to refer to the past?  That's one problem.  A second is that (2) implies

3.  It is presently the case that there are past times at which Dean does not exist.

But (3) is inconsistent with the presentist thesis according to which (abstract objects aside) only the present time and items at the present time exist.

My underlying question is whether presentism has the resources to express its own thesis. Does it make it between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of PM-solipsism only to founder on the reef of inexpressibility?

I have long held that time is the hardest of all philosophical nuts to crack.  I fear it is above my pay grade, and yours too.

Happy New Year!