Is The Doctrine of the Trinity Logically Coherent? (Peter Lupu)

In this installment, Peter Lupu, atheist, defends the logical coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity.  My critical comments follow in blue.

It may be somewhat of an astonishment to those who know me well that I should venture to defend the doctrine of the Trinity. I am not a Christian; I am not religious; I am an atheist; and I have at least on one occasion privately expressed to Bill my reservations about the coherence of the Trinity doctrine. Nevertheless, there is a question here that deserves exploring. What is the question?

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Gratry on Trinity and Mystery

Gratry Alphonse Gratry (1805-1872), Logic, tr. H and M. Singer (Open Court, 1944), p. 336:

What does Catholic theology have to say about unity in the Trinity, and of the Trinity in unity? It teaches that the unity and the Trinity are not expressed in the same respect but in two different respects: absolute unity of nature; absolute trinity of persons. The nature of God, which is one, is not triple; that would be a contradiction in terms . . . ; the nature is purely, simply, and absolutely one. The persons, in their turn, which are three, are not one at all; they are purely, simply, and absolutely three. Doubtless the mystery still remains, but reason . . . is completely maintained here, veiled, it is true, but unimpaired: indeed, instead of unimpaired, I might say that it is divinely sustained.

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I’m a Racist Because I Disagree with You?

Then you are a racist for disagreeing with me. For I have a race too.  I'm a sexist because I dissent from your opinion?  Then you are a sexist for disagreeing with me.  For I have a sex too.  I'm an ageist because I don't buy your point of view?  Then you are an ageist for disagreeing with me.  For I have an age too.

And one more thing.  It is your liberal-left adherence to the double standard that make it impossible for you to 'get it.'

Could It Be LIke This?

Every finite thing is vain, empty, fleeting, devoid of self-nature or own-being, ontologically and axiologically ambiguous, an admixture of being and nonbeing, of value and disvalue, anatta.  And the system of these finitudes, the whole lot of them?  The same.  And beyond the system?  Nothing.

On Owning Land

Blaise Pascal, Pensées #113 (Krailsheimer tr., p. 59):

It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it. 

Pascal is right:  what good will owning acres and acres of land do me? In the end a man needs only — six feet.  And before the end I should be seeking truth, not lusting after land.  So I remind myself when the urge to buy land grips me.

Henri Frederic Amiel on the French Mind

Amiel_henri From The Private Journal of Henri Frederic Amiel, tr. Brooks and Brooks (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1935), pp. 428-429:

22 December 1874. Written in the South of France. – Gioberti says that the French mind assumes only the form of truth and, by isolating this, exaggerates it, in such a way that it dissolves the realities with which it is concerned. I express the same thing by the word speciousness. It takes the shadow for the object, the word for the thing, the appearance for the reality and the abstract formula for the truth. It does not go beyond intellectual assignats. Its gold is pinch-beck, its diamond paste; the artificial and the conventional suffice for it. When one talks with a Frenchman about art, language, religion, the State, duty, the family, one feels from his way of talking that his thought remains outside the object, that it does not enter its substance, its marrow. He does not seek to understand it in its inwardness, but only to say something specious about it. This spirit is superficial and yet not comprehensive; it pricks the surface of things shrewdly enough, and yet it does not penetrate. It wishes to enjoy itself in relation to things; but it has not the respect, the disinterestedness, the patience and the self-forgetfulness that are necessary for contemplating things as they really are. Far from being the philosophic spirit, it is an abortive counterfeit of it, for it does not help to resolve any problem and it remains powerless to grasp that which is living, complex and concrete. Abstraction is it original vice, presumption its incurable eccentricity and speciousness its fatal limit.

Conceivability and Epistemic Possibility

Sydney-shoemaker My disembodied existence is conceivable (thinkable without apparent logical contradiction by me and beings like me). But does it follow that my disembodied existence is possible? Sydney Shoemaker floats the suggestion that this inference is invalid, resting as he thinks on a confusion of epistemic with metaphysical possibility. (Identity, Cause, and Mind, p. 155, n. 13.)  Shoemaker writes, "In the sense in which I can conceive of myself existing in disembodied form, this comes to the fact that it is compatible with what I know about my essential nature . . . that I should exist in disembodied form.  From this it does not follow that my essential nature is in fact such as to permit me to exist indisembodied form."

We need to think about the relation between conceivability and epistemic possibility if we are to get clear about the inferential link, if any, between conceivability and metaphysical possibility.   Pace Shoemaker, I will suggest that the inference from conceivability to metaphysical possibility need not rest on a confusion of epistemic with metaphysical possibility.  But it all depends on how we define these terms. 

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The Aporetics of Reference to Past Individuals

'Ocham' responds: 

You say "Although Caesar no longer exists, he did exist, and so it is reasonable to take 'Caesar' as having a referent. " It would be correct to say that the proper name 'Caesar' *had* a referent. But does it *have* a referent? If it has (present tense) a referent, then there is a relation:

refers('Caesar', Caesar)

between the word and *something*. And if we accept that a *something* has to be an existing thing, we have the paradox that Caesar does not exist, but that 'Caesar' refers to *something*, and so he does exist after all.

The medievals were more conscious of this paradox because they were before Einstein. After Einstein, we have this sense that things that existed in the past are in some sense still existing, because time is a dimension of space, and because everything in space exists. So we don't see the problem of the referent of 'Caesar' in the way we see a problem with the referent of 'Zeus'.

I tend to side with the medievals. Einstein gives us no philosophical justification for the view that things do not *change* over time, which includes a change from existing to not existing. And if the referent of a proper name may cease to exist through being corrupted, how is it that a semantic relation can still exist between the name (which admittedly still exists) and the referent (which doesn't)?

This is an excellent objection and it shows that what I said is far from self-evident. The problem may be set forth as an aporetic triad:

1.  Reference is a relation that presupposes the existence of its relata.

2.  There is reference to past individuals.

3.  Presentism: The present alone exists; past and future items do not exist.

The limbs of this triad cannot all be true.  The conjunction of (1) and (2) entails the negation of (3).  The conjunction of (1) and (3) entails the negation of (2).  And the conjunction of  (2) and (3) entails the negation of (1). 

The triad is interesting because each of its limbs has a strong claim on our acceptance.  And yet they cannot all be true.  To solve the problem one must reject one of the limbs.  But which one?  It seems to me that (2) is the least rejectable of the three.  Surely we do refer to past individuals using proper names.  Boston's Scollay Square no longer exists.  But I nonetheless refer to it when I say 'My father visited Scollay Square while on shore leave during WWII.'  I should think that 'Scollay Square' is just as referential as 'Harvard Square.'  Since (2) is the most datanic of the three limbs, it is the least rejectable.  This leaves (1) and (2). 

One could reject (1) by maintaining that reference is a relation that presupposes the existence or the having existed of its relata.  Or one could reject (3) by adopting a B-theoryof time according to which past, present, and future items all enjoy tenseless existence.  Neither of these solutions is without difficulty.

Balık baştan kokar

Balık baştan kokar is Turkish for "The fish stinks from the head."  Quite apropos of the Obama administration the corruption, incompetence, and stupidity of which boggles the mind. He's done everything wrong.  But there is hope: Obama's fiscal irresponsibility and liberty-destroying socialist malfeasance has suffered a massive rebuke in, of all places, the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. Here are the precinct-by-precinct statistics of Brown's win over Coakley in the Bay State.  (Perhaps it should be called the Pay State.)  The results for Cambridge precinct show a whopping 84% for Coakley (DEM) and a paltry 15% for Brown (GOP).  No surprise there, of course.  You know what Cambridge is home to.

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Still More on Alienans Constructions

Our old friend 'Ocham' writes:

I read your discussion of 'alienans' with interest. It is another of those interesting words (like 'inexistence') that look as though it comes from scholastic philosophy, but apparently doesn't. I use my Latin site searcher  in cases of doubt – this analyses texts of specific writers and periods. None of the great scholastic writers, not even so late a one as Suarez, use the term in this sense – indeed they hardly use it at all. They did use the term 'deminuens' in a very similar context. From the Scotus I am currently busy with:

Et sic potest concedi quod Caesar non est homo vivus, sed mortuus; et quod mortuum illo modo non deminuit ab homine, nec infert non-hominem. (And so it can be conceded that Caesar is not a living man, but dead; and that being ‘dead’ in this way does not take away from ‘man’, nor imply [that Caesar is] a non-man).

The context is the question whether 'Caesar is a man' is true or false. Scotus thinks it is true. Simon of Faversham says it is false. Roger Bacon, rather like Gareth Evans and the modern direct referentialists, think it has no truth value at all. (" ‘Caesar is Caesar’ signifies nothing… nor is it a proposition nor does it signify either what is true or false, because the whole ‘statement’ does not signify because of one or two parts that do not signify"). Note the appeal to the Fregean idea of compositionality here – the meaning of the whole is determined by the meaning of its parts. If one or more parts are meaningless, so is the whole.

Bacon's view was rightly derided by his contemporaries in Oxford and Paris.

I learned about alienans adjectives from Barry Miller who I believe borrowed the terminology from Peter Geach.  From which writers Geach got the term I don't know.  An interesting question is whether 'dead' in 'Caesar is a dead man' is an alienans adjective as I have explained this term in the post linked to above.  Clearly, artificial leather is not leather.  So 'artificial' in this context is alienans.  And if so-and-so is the alleged assailant, it does not follow that he is the assailant.  So 'alleged' in this context is alienans.  Is a dead man a man?  Although it is not so clear, I am inclined to say that a dead man is a man in agreement with Scotus.

I am also inclined to agree with Scotus that 'Caesar is a man' is true.  Although Caesar no longer exists, he did exist, and so it is reasonable to take 'Caesar' as having a referent.  (Once referential, always referential.) It is not like 'Pegasus.'  There was an individual, Caesar, but there is no individual, Pegasus.  'Pegasus' has sense but no referent.  Furthermore, Caesar's having died did not remove him from the class of men.  A dead man is a man. (I grant that this is not obvious.) Simon of Faversham, I take it, thinks the sentence false because he thinks a dead man is not a man.  Ths is not obviously wrong. 

As for Bacon's view, it sounds crazy, a piece of wildly revisionary philosophy of language.  Of course, 'Caesar is a man' has a truth-value!  And this, even if we say that 'Caesar' lacks a referent.  For whether or not it has a referent it has a sense.  What exactly did those Medieval dudes mean by 'signify'?  Were they riding roughshod over Frege's Sinn/Bedeutung distinction — to put it anachronistically?

So I agree with 'Ocham' that Bacon's view was rightly derided.

 

Another Example of a Vicious Infinite Regress: Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 239

I am collecting examples of infinite regress arguments in philosophy. See the category Infinite Regress Arguments.  Here is one that is suggested by section 239 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. When I hear the word 'red,' how do I know which color is being referred to?  The following answer might be given:  'Red' refers to the color of the mental image that hearing the word elicits.  But then the question arises once again:  How do I know that the color of the mental image is the color to which 'red' refers?  Do I need a criterion for that as well?  If I do, then I am embarked upon an infinite regress, one that is vicious.

Why is it vicious?  Most of us know which color 'red' refers to.  But how do we know it?  To ask how we know this is to request an epistemological (and therefore a philosophical) explanation.  But if the explanation is that 'red' refers to the color of the mental image that hearing the word elicits, then, although we have answered the initial question, we have  answered it in a way that allows the posing of a second question of the same form as the first.  And so on.

Conceivability, Possibility, Self, and Body

A reader sent me the following argument which he considers a good one:

1. It is conceivable that I exist without my present body (or any part of it).
2. Therefore, it is possible that I exist without my present body (or any part of it).
3. Therefore, I have a property P that my body does not, namely, being such that possibly, I exist when my body (or any part of it) doesn't.
4. Therefore, I am not my body (or any part of it).

The argument as it stands is enthymematic.  The inferential move from (3) to (4) requires an auxiliary premise, one which is easily supplied.  It is the contrapositive of the Identity of Indiscernibles, and so we can call it the Discernibility of the Diverse, to wit: If two things differ in respect of a property, then they are numerically diverse (not numerically identical).  That is a rough formulation, but it is good enough for present purposes.  With the assistance of DD, the move from (3) to (4) is unproblematic.

I should think the move from (2) to (3) is also unproblematic.  The inference from (1) to (2), however, puzzles me and troubles me.  I accept the conclusion: I cannot for the life of me see how I could be strictly and numerically identical to my body or any part of it.  So I would like the above argument, or a reasonable facsimile, to be valid. But I stumble over the move from (1) to (2).  To validate this inference we need some such principle as

CEP. For any proposition p, conceivably p entails possibly p.

CEP is what I want to discuss.  The possibility in question is not epistemic but real, and is that species of real possibility called broadly logical or metaphysical.  Now here is a reason why I have doubts about CEP.  I accept that there is an Absolute.  Now any decent Absolute (the One of Plotinus is a good candidate as is the God of Aquinas) will be a necessary being, one whose possibility entails its actuality.  An Absolute, then, cannot not exist if it exists: it either exists in every possible world or in no world.  To prove that an Absolute exists all I need is the premise, Possibly an Absolute exists.  I may think to infer this proposition from Conceivably an Absolute exists, by way of CEP.  Unfortunately, it seems I can just as easily conceive of the nonexistence of a an Absolute.  To paraphrase Hume, whatever I can conceive as existent I can just as easily conceive as nonexistent.  We can call that Hume's Existence Principle:

HEP.  Everything (concrete) is such that its nonexistence is conceivable.

If HEP is true, then every being is contingent.  But if CEP is true, then at least one being is noncontingent.  This shows that either CEP is false or HEP is false.  Since I am strongly inclined to accept HEP, I have doubts about CEP.

Clearly, much depends on what we mean by 'conceivable.'  Trading Latin for Anglo-Saxon, to be conceivable is to be thinkable.  But since there is a sense in which logical contradictions are thinkable, we must add: thinkable without broadly logical contradiction.  By whom?  The average schmuck?  Or the ideally penetrative intellect?  If an ideally penetrative intellect examines a proposition and detects no broadly logical contradiction, then there will be no gap between conceivability in this sense and possibility.  But our intellects are not ideally penetrative.  Suppose a person reads and understands Zorn's Lemma, reads and understands the Axiom of Choice, and then is asked whether it is possible that the first  be true and the second false.  He examines the conjunction of Zorn's Lemma with the negation of the Axiom of Choice and discerns no contradiction.  So he concludes that it is possible that the Lemma be true and the Axiom false.  He would be wrong since the two are provably equivalent.  This shows, I think, that for intellects like ours one cannot in general validly infer possibility from conceivability.

Returning to our opening argument, I would say that it is plausible and renders dualism rationally acceptable.  But it doesn't  establish dualism.  For the move from (1) to (2) is questionable.

What is to stop a materialist from running the argument in reverse?  He denies the conclusion and then denies (2).    If you insist that your non-identity with your body is conceivable and therefore possible, he tells you that it only seems so to you, and that seeming is not being. Or else he rejects CEP