Author: Bill Vallicella

Are Miracles Logically Possible? Part II

The problem raised in the first post in this series is whether we can make logical room for miracles, specifically, divine interventions in, or interferences with, the natural course of events. Now nature is orderly and regular: it displays local and global ('cosmic') uniformities. If that were not the case, it would not be possible to have science of it. (But we do have science, knowledge, of nature, ergo, etc.) For example, it is a global uniformity of nature that any two electrons anywhere in the universe will repel each other, that no signal, anywhere, can travel faster than the speed of light, etc. Here is the form of a global uniformity, an exceptionless regularity:

1. Wherever and whenever F-ness is instantiated, G-ness is instantiated.

Now for various reasons which we may consider later, a law of nature cannot be identified with an exceptionless regularity. (For one thing, law statements support counterfactuals while statements of global uniformity do not support counterfactuals.) But laws manifest themselves in global uniformities. (This talk of 'manifestation,' which I find felicitous, I borrow from D. M. Armstrong.)

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Are Miracles Logically Possible?

John Earman, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford 2000), p. 8:

. . . if a miracle is a violation of a law of nature, then whether or not the violation is due to the intervention of the Deity, a miracle is logically impossible since, whatever else a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity.

According to a standard way of thinking, miracles are violations of laws of nature. This approach has an impressive pedigree. Thus Thomas Aquinas writes, in the Summa Theologica (Q. 110, art. 4, respondeo), "A miracle properly so called takes place when something is done outside the order of nature." Thomas makes it clear that by 'nature' he means the whole of created nature, and not just physical nature. He concludes that God alone can work miracles.

Thomas also alludes (in Reply Obj. 2) to a distinction between miracles ontically and epistemically construed. This is not his terminology. He speaks of miracles "absolutely" considered and miracles "in reference to ourselves." Something that occurs by a power unknown to us may appear miraculous to us and yet not be miraculous absolutely.  We could call that an epistemic miracle: an event  which does not contravene a law of nature, but appears to do so due to our ignorance.  Genuine miracles, events that in fact do contravene laws of nature, we could call ontic miracles.  But don't be misled by the terminology: the suggestion is not that there are two kinds of miracles, epistemic and ontic, but two senses of 'miracle.'  'Epistemic' in 'epistemic miracle' is an alienans adjective.

Now consider:

1. A miracle is an exception to a law of nature.
2. Every law of nature is an exceptionless regularity (though not conversely).
Therefore
3. A miracle is an exception to an exceptionless regularity.
Therefore
4. Miracles are logically impossible.

This argument seems to show that if miracles are to be logically possible they cannot be understood as violations of laws of nature. How then are they to be understood?  Please note that (2) merely states that whatever a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity.  Thus (2) does not commit one to a regularity theory of laws according to which laws are identified with exceptionless regularities.  The idea is that any theory of  (deterministic) laws would include the idea that a law is an exceptionless regularity.

Travesty in New York

Will there be no end to the idiocies perpetrated by the Obama Administration?  The latest is the absurd decision to give Islamic terrorist  Khalid Sheik Mohammed a civilian trial in New York City.  As usual, Charles Krauthammer cuts to the nerve of the matter:

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) "do not get convicted," asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. "Failure is not an option," replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn't the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

See also Mona Charen's Holder's True Motive for some incisive analysis.

A Note on Into the Wild, the Movie

Into the Wild, the movie, impressed me and held my attention for its two and a half hours. But I'm understating: it moved me and ought to  be added to my list of most memorable movies, there to rub shoulders with the likes of Zorba the Greek and La Strada. Not that I would rate it as high as those two classics. Here is a reviewer who didn't get it:

Krakauer and Penn see themselves as kindred spirits to McCandless, rugged individualists seeking the fullness of life in nature. And that probably explains why they both attribute McCandless' reckless adventures to a philosophical quest rather than to what appears to be an obvious act of youthful rebellion.

No doubt McCandless was reckless, and his recklessness got him killed. But only someone who is spiritually dead could dismiss McCandless' quest as a mere act of youthful rebellion. The jaded, the security-obsessed, and those devoid of all idealism will find it easy to mock as hyperromantic and melodramatic the posturings of "Alexander Supertramp." But unlike them, the living dead, he was searching for something more, for the Real, for the truth of his existence. Life without a quest for the Real beyond the sham taken-for-real of one's society is just not worth living. Either you see that or you are spiritually blind.

Only someone who, like Krakauer, sees a bit of himself in McCandless will be able to appreciate what was genuine and worthwhile in him. That is one reason why Krakauer's book is so good. I was pleased to see that the movie stays very close to the book.

Most Memorable Movies

Here are my selections. But before I begin, I'll relate a retort of Michael Medved's. Hearing that Roger Ebert had awarded "two thumbs up" to some piece of trash, Medved quipped, "Two thumbs up what?"

1. Casablanca
2. The Seventh Seal
3. La Strada
4. Zorba the Greek
5. Lawrence of Arabia
6. Dr. Zhivago
7. Persona
8. Closely Watched Trains
9. Triumph des Willens
10. Crimes and Misdemeanors
11. Aguirre the Wrath of God
12. The Man Who Wasn't There
13. Blue Velvet
14. Barton Fink
15. Mulholland Drive

How many can you identify by dates, actors, directors?

Faith and Prayer: The Case of Ron Franz

One of the minor characters of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild  is the old man to whom Krakauer gave the name 'Ron Franz.' He was 80 years old when his and Christopher McCandless's paths crossed. McCandless made indelible impressions on the people he met, but he affected Franz more than anyone else, so much so that the old man with no surviving next of kin wanted to adopt the 24 year old as his grandson. The story of their encounter is recounted in the chapter entitled 'Anza-Borrego' and is also well told in the movie version of Krakauer's book. Franz came to pin his hopes on the remarkable young man and longed for his return from Alaska. When he heard from a hitchhiker that McCandless had died, he and his faith were shattered:

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The Strange Case of Gene Rosellini

Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild  is not just about Chris McCandless and the people he met during the two years he was incarnating 'Alexander Supertramp.' It also about other oddballs such as Gene Rosellini. The term 'oddball' is not necessarily one of disapprobation in my mouth: most of the people I remain in contact with I would classify as oddballs. And of course it takes one to know (and appreciate) one. Here is a passage about Rosellini lifted from the essay Anarchism Versus Primitivism:

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Czeslaw Milosz on Simone Weil and Albert Camus

Czeslaw Milosz, "The Importance of Simone Weil" in Emperor of the Earth: Modes of Eccentric Vision (University of California Press, 1977), p. 91:

Violent in her judgments and uncompromising, Simone Weil was, at least by temperament, an Albigensian, a Cathar; this is the key to her thought. She drew extreme conclusions from the Platonic current in Christianity. Here we touch upon hidden ties between her and Albert Camus. The first work by Camus was his university dissertation on St. Augustine. Camus, in my opinion, was also a Cathar, a pure one, ['Cathar' from Gr. katharos, pure] and if he rejected God it was out of love for God because he was not able to justify Him. The last novel written by Camus, The Fall, is nothing else but a treatise on Grace — absent grace — though it is also a satire: the talkative hero, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who reverses the words of Jesus and instead of "Judge not and ye shall not be judged: gives the advice "Judge, and ye shall not be judged," could be, I have reason to suspect, Jean-Paul Sartre.

Simone Weil and the Illusoriness of Worldly Goods

A correspondent, responding to Weil's Wager, has this to say:

[. . .] What worries me when I turn to Weil’s argument is that she seems to be trying to replace Pascal’s serviceable scale of goods with a dichotomy of illusory and absolute goods. I have no idea what it means to say ”health and fitness are illusory goods” or “only God is absolutely good.” The former seems to me just some metaphysically tricked-out term of abuse. I have no idea at all how to unpack “God is the absolute good” (despite your remarks in Part IV ). Pascal at least talks about salvation and an eternal afterlife. Is that what is supposed to be absolutely good for me? And so God as the provider is somehow also valuable or “absolutely good” for me? All of this dark and murky to me in Weil’s argument, while I think I understand what Pascal is proposing.

I agree that the whether-or-not version of (7) is incompatible with (1), but otherwise I remain lost at sea in her attempt to argue that I must pursue the only thing that is “absolutely good” whether or not it really exists. [. . .]

Central to Weil's thought is the notion that the goods of this life are unreal: "Things of the senses are real if they are considered as perceptible things, but unreal if considered as goods." (Gravity and Grace, p. 45) To understand this one must see it in the light of Plato, Weil's beloved master. It has been said with some justice that every philosopher is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian, and there is no doubt that Weil is a Platonist and was hostile to Aristotle. My correspondent, however, is an Aristotelian (to force him into our little schema) and so it comes as no surprise to me that he is at a loss to understand what it could mean to say that such things as health and fitness, food and drink, property and progeny, are illusory goods.

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Weil’s Wager

I

In her New York Notebook from 1942, Simone Weil presents an argument which she claims “…is greatly preferable to Pascal’s wager.”[i] One of her commentators agrees, finding her argument “obviously both morally and intellectually” superior to Pascal’s.[ii] I will call this argument “Weil’s Wager.” As far as I know, it has yet to be subjected to a close examination. The argument runs as follows:

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Simone Weil on False Gods

Simone weil Despite her infuriating extremism, Simone Weil may well be the purest incarnation of religious sensibility in the twentieth century. "It's not up to us to believe in God, but only not to grant our love to false gods." As Weil understands, essential to genuine religion, though not exhaustive of it, is the realization that nothing here below can satisfy us, and that the things we zealously pursue as if they could satisfy us are false gods. The following statement of Weil's is exactly right:

First, not to believe that the future is a place capable of fulfilling us. The future is made of the same stuff as the present. We well know that what we have that is good, wealth, power, esteem, knowledge, love of those we love, prosperity of those we love, and so on, does not suffice to satisfy us. But we believe that the day when we will have a little more, we will be satisfied. We believe it because we are lying to ourselves. For if we really think about it for a while we know it's false. Or again if we are suffering affliction, we believe that the day when this suffering will cease, we will be satisfied. There again we know it's untrue; as soon as we have gotten used to the cessation of suffering we want something else.

More here.

Simone Weil and Generic Wretchedness

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Emma Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 70:

The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it.

This suggests one of several tests you might apply to yourself to see if you have a religious 'bent' or sensibility, or orientation toward life, or however you wish to phrase it. If, upon reading the Weilian line, a 'yes!' wells up in you, then the chances are excellent that you are religiously inclined. If your response is in the negative, however, or if you are just puzzled, then that indicates that you lack the religious attitude.

I offer the following, from an earlier post, as a partial unpacking of the Weil quotation:

A Pascalian Indication of Our Fallenness

Edward T. Oakes in a fine article quotes Pascal:

The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is called nature we call wretchedness in man; by which we recognize that, his nature now being like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his. For who is unhappy at not being a king except a deposed king? Who is unhappy at having only one mouth? And who is not unhappy at having only one eye? Probably no one ever ventured to mourn at not having three eyes; but anyone would be inconsolable at having none.

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A Philosopher’s Notes on Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3

This post continues my commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes, the first installment of which is here. But a brief review is in order. The central theme of the book, you will recall, is the vanity and futility of all human endeavor including such pursuit of wisdom and understanding as the Preacher himself undertakes in the book in question. Surprisingly, this seems to extend even to God's rewarding of the righteous and punishing of the sinner. "This too is vanity and striving after wind." (2:26) Here are some questions that the book suggests:

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A Philosopher’s Notes on Ecclesiastes, Chapters 1-2

Herewith, a first installment of some chapter-by-chapter observations on the magnificent Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, with an attempt to lay bare some of the philosophical issues lurking below the surface of the text.

1. Chapter 1 sounds the central theme of the Book: Omnia vanitas, "All is vanity." What is the scope of 'all'? Presumably it does not include God, but it does include every human pursuit whether for pleasure, power, possessions, progeny, or any other finite good that mortals strive after. All is vanity and "striving after wind." (1:14) Even the striving for wisdom is a vain pursuit. (1:17-18)

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