(Partially) Enchanted Amphibians: or, What Kant, McDowell and Aristotle Have to Teach Us About Our Second Nature

Modern philosophy can be characterized by two things: a deep hostility to any idea of ‘enchantment’ and a deep forgetfulness of the idea of ‘second nature’. Properly qualified, the former is acceptable (there need be no overarching enchanted metaphysical scheme underlying nature), but the latter is the source of some of the key problems of modernity, the most prominent of which might very well be the problem of the naturalness and mindedness of man. This is the axis on which German Idealism turned, and the answers the idealists struggled for continue to fund contemporary discussions; it isn’t an exaggeration to say that the question of naturalness and mindedness encompasses nearly every aspect of philosophy. The problem itself will be discussed first, then the idea of ‘second nature’.

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Grounds with no Foundation: or, a Brief Look at Whether or Not Fichte and Kant Were Foundationalists and What Relevance that Might Have for Us Today

Foundationalism has had a really rough time in the last few centuries. Starting with Thomas Reid‘s attacks on ‘the way of ideas’, finding perhaps their most sophisticated articulations in Sellars and his attack on the ‘myth of the given’ (both Reid and Sellars are concerned with the foundations of empirical knowledge here) and continuing with Rorty and his attack on the ‘mirror of nature’, powerful arguments have been leveled at what has been, according to the received wisdom, the reigning theory of knowledge for most of history. Alvin Plantinga has rather famously given classical foundationalism a final kick. Now, a perusal of these links will show that foundationalism is indeed a many splendored thing: there are epistemic and metaphysical articulations to be found, ranging from Descartes to the British empiricists to Russell, but the overall moral is this: the idea that knowledge requires foundations (of any of the kinds listed above) in order to be rational is at the very least open to serious doubt. Now, the fact that foundationalism is in doubt doesn’t negate the idea that knowledge may have foundations more generally. Plantinga is a good case study here, since while he objects to classical foundationalism he is still a sort-of, or a modest, foundationalist. It may be more helpful to put it this way: while the requirement for foundations for knowledge to be rational may be called into question, the question of grounds for knowledge is still alive and well.

Notes on Kant and Aquinas Against Anselm

“Thus when I think a thing, through whichever and however many predicates I like (even in its thoroughgoing determination), not the least bit gets added to the thing when I posit in addition that this thing is. For otherwise what would exist would not be the same as what I had thought in my concept, but more than that, and I could not say that the very object of my concept exists” (Critique of Pure Reason, A600/B628).   

It is important to note the context of Kants rejection of existence as a predicate, which is his criticism of the ontological argument. Kant, as he says above, took Anselm to be arguing that predicating the concept ‘being’ of anything added something to the concept of a thing. This is not entirely correct, however, when we look at Anselm, who says that something which exists only in the understanding is not as great as something which exists in reality. Thus, a god which actually exists is greater than one which exists merely in the understanding.

So having noted that Kant is not a terrific reader of Anselm, is he in fact wrong? Lots of folks have argued that being is not a predicate or a property of individuals. Russell is probably the most well known – he argued that existence or being is a second-order concept. So, to say that X doesn’t exist is just to say that the property of being X is not instantiated. This makes more sense if you look at his debate with Meinong, which really turns out to be a debate over whether existence is equivocal or univocal. Meinong held to the former, Russell the latter (Frege as well). Russell took it to be the case that everything exists, while Meinong too it to be the case that not everything that exists exists. If existence is a predicate, then the problem of negative existentials really looms large, which is probably the main reason Russell held to his view. That is, if existence is a predicate, it becomes quite easy to argue from, say the existence of donkeys to the existence of, say, Eeyore (there’s actually issues here, but bracket those for the moment).

The fundamental disagreement between Aquinas and Anselm, IMO, occurs in the SCG, where Aquinas says that

‘No difficulty, consequently, befalls anyone who posits that God does not exist. For that something greater can be thought than anything given in reality or in the intellect is a difficulty only to him who admits that there is something than which a greater cannot be thought in reality.’

Obviously, this is in direct conflict with Anselm’s invocation of the Fool, but to me it also shows that the Ontological Argument is more logical than metaphysical. Anselm is basically interpreting negative existentials as being both about something ‘in the understanding’ that does not exist in reality: Anselm is trying to derive a logical contradiction or absurdity here. In other words, Anselm is trying to show that ‘There is no God’ or ‘God doesn’t exist’ is a contradiction. But this is easily avoided if we employ something like Russell theory of definite descriptions: we can say that ‘God’ = ‘something than which nothing greater can be conceived’. The fool can be taken to be saying that ‘there is nothing which fits the description ‘‘something than which nothing greater can be conceived’. To avoid the contradiction, all we have to do is translate that to ‘For any given thing, in the understanding or in reality, a greater than it can be conceived’, and, since Anselm’s argument doesn’t require the Fool to know that his statement is true but only to state it without contradiction, we have avoided Anselm’s contradiction. Aquinas’s quote above is basically the same as what I just laid out.

Moving Towards the Future Ideal: or, the Place of Truth, Purpose and Realism in Peirce’s Pragmaticism

Pragmatism in America has, by and large, been thought of as a theory of truth. This is in no small part due to William James’s formulation of pragmatism as, in fact, a theory of truth, where the truth of a theory consists in its ‘cash value’, and it’s fair to say that this brand of pragmatism can be construed as a primarily ‘psychological’ kind of pragmatism. It was just this kind of psychologism that Peirce was keen to avoid in his own thinking, and in so avoiding, Peirce articulated a philosophy in which truth, purpose and realism played roles that they never could have played in the psychologistic theories of pragmatism.

A Dogmatic Framework: or, how a Debate Over the Semantics of Truth Rehabilitated Ontology

During the balmy days when it was socially acceptable to entertain logical positivism as a coherent philosophical position, it was commonly thought that questions of metaphysics were senseless, nonsense, or not even wrong. There are, of course, no shortage of problems with positivism and it’s safe to say that positivism is one of the very few philosophical theses that attained the distinction of being rejected because it was, in fact, actually wrong. However, granting all of that, it is no less the case that contemporary ontology has been shaped largely by a debate which took place on positivist grounds: the debate between Carnap and Quine on metaontology. The simple version of their respective positions might be boiled down to two ideas: for Carnap, metaphysical or ontological questions don’t really have an answer, while for Quine they do, and for Carnap, there are two kinds of truth, while for Quine ‘truth is truth’ and comes in only one variety. The outcome of this debate would have far-reaching consequences for metaphysics and ontology.

A Problem Emerges: or, why Nonreductive Materialism and Emergentism Face the Same Set of Insourmountable Problems

Jaegwon Kim, in his superb essay The nonreductivists troubles with mental causation (from the volume Supervenience and Mind), argues that nonreductive materialism (NRM) and emergentism (E) have the same cash value. He identifies four key theses that NRM is committed to: (1) all concrete particulars are physical (2) mental properties are not reducible to physical properties (3) all mental properties are physically realized and (4) mental properties are real properties of objects and events. Kim finds that E is committed to the same four theses: E accepts a materialist ontology (1), accepts that emergent properties are not reducible to their ‘basal conditions’ (2), accepts that higher-level or emergent properties need a physical base; this physical base is itself sufficient for the emergence of these properties (3) and finally, E accepts realism about the mental (4). These agreements are sufficient to show that NRM and E are, more or less, the same thing. Thus, any problems had by one are had by the other. Should NRM face an insurmountable difficulty, E will as well, and should E face its own insurmountable difficulty, then NRM also will.

Heidegger and Searle Make for Strange Bedfellows: or, What Analytic and Continental Philosophy Combined Might Tell Us About A.I.

Mark Okrent notes an interesting phenomenon: though Heidegger effectively never explicitly interacted with anything close to what we today would recognize as the philosophy of mind or the cognitive sciences or artificial intelligence, it is nearly obligatory to reference Heidegger when one writes on the topic of artificial intelligence. This is largely due to Hubert Dreyfus’s reading of Heidegger. John Searle, by contrast, has interacted extensively with the cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind. Heidegger and Searle together, however, are an unlikely pair, but I think that implicit in Heidegger is what is explicit in Searle, especially in his (in)famous Chinese Room Argument.

Book Review: ‘An Introduction to Metametaphysics’, by Tuomas E. Tahko

‘An Introduction to Metametaphysics‘, by Tuomas E. Tahko

Cambridge University Press, 266 pp. $29.99

At first glance, the term ‘metametaphysics’ can be a little off-putting. For most folks, I imagine, the term ‘metaphysics’ is off-putting, and to add an extra ‘meta’ may seem to border on self-parody. For those of a more ‘scientific’ mind or those who view metaphysics with some suspicion (for which there are both good and bad reasons), ‘metametaphysics’ might as well say ‘armarmchair’ speculation. Slightly awkward terminology aside, metametaphysics is actually what those suspicious of metaphysics should be thinking about, and Tahko’s book is a brilliant guide to a broad and often complex topic that anyone, suspicious of metaphysics or not, should read.

A Rather Simple Concern

This is a post about the doctrine of divine simplicity – or, more precisely, a meta-post on the doctrine of divine simplicity. I’m not going to defend or critique any given model of simplicity (there are plenty of models, critiques and defences) but I’m going to try and unearth that which the doctrine of divine simplicity is concerned with from a theological standpoint. The point here is to identify why one would want to hold to simplicity – in order to move forward in a constructive (or de-constructive) way.

A Conversation on Theology Learning From Philosophy

Fellow blogger Kevin Davis and I recently had a stimulating conversation on the Facebook on the very broad issue of theology learning from philosophy – here’s the edited version, with my words in bold:

There’s some tentative steps being taken towards integrating some aspects of Philosophy of mind with theology, with regard to the Incarnation – how, for example would we fit in Jesus and classical two-natures christology into a contemporary understanding of mind – but right now its baby steps. Part of the problem is that PoM is a very, very technical field (and I’m definitely no expert), and the sub-fields can be even more obscure and dense. Especially once to get into the continental stuff, which is just (at times) ridiculous. Even still, granting some work towards getting theology and PoM to talk to each other, its usually not very integrative. It ends up being X theory of mind poured over Y theory of Incarnation – like chocolate syrup poured over vanilla ice cream, instead of integrating the two together or even coming up with an entirely new theory or framework.  I guess, in short, what theologians need to do is actually be able to converse with it in a way that isn’t just theological supremacism, and try to develop, in fluent conversation with PoM, a theological understanding of mind that could be set within the context of Christian doctrine.

The specialization of which you speak is really the culprit for why the two disciplines ignore each other. I had an email exchange with a philosophy of religion guy who was bashing systematic theology guys for ignoring what’s happening in philosophy. That’s a worthwhile criticism, of course, but I basically told him that until philosophy can move beyond its dozen or so impasses and give us a cohesive vision (Hegel and Kant being the last examples of this) then theologians have no compelling reason to move beyond their own confines. Even the recent resurgence of scholasticism is only a historical retrieval, by and large, and not a seriously constructive endeavor in our time.

I think part of the issue there turns on just whether or not theology, or to what extent, theology can be or should be informed by other disciplines. A philosopher of religion may want a theologian to pay attention to developments in philosophy of religion , but most theologians, almost by definition, are going to argue against that kind of interaction. Lots of contemporary Protestant theology is like that. There are exceptions, though. James KA Smith has done some work along these lines, but even he tends to just put out a ‘Christian pragmatism’, which, like I mentioned earlier, isn’t really a method to write home about. 

Are you arguing that philosophy ought to be a more Systematic endeavor than it currently is? I generally tend towards the opposite nowadays. I’m not sure if philosophy is the kind of thing that’s meant to be systematic.

Yes, I think philosophy should be more systematic and wide in scope. As such, it would be far more interesting. Yes, theologians for the last two centuries have worked hard to secure the independence of theology as a science in its own right and with its own objective ground and with its own criteria for making truth claims. So, as for whether theology should be “informed by other disciplines” I would want to know what the object and criteria are for the discipline in question. If it is linguistics, for example, it can be very useful for theology, even while theology maintains perfect fidelity to its object. I would say the same for much of science and perhaps for much of philosophy of mind.

Hm. I guess it would depend on how we mean ‘systematic’ here. If we mean a body of work that is largely consistent in theme, content, method, etc, then I agree. I’m not much for the idea of systematic philosophy in the style of systematic theology, though. I think the two have different subject matter (however this may cash out). Theology has a much more determinate set of answers, whereas in philosophy and metaphysics its a question as to whether or not determinate answers can even be had.

That’s a good point about “determinate set of answers” and, of course, the means by which those answers are given or acquired. It’s true that when it comes to metaphysics, which would surely be a fundamental feature of any systematic philosophy, the theologian has plenty of reasons to worry — especially if that theologian has any gravity toward Barth. Nonetheless, it is surely an impoverishment today that we do not have a Plato, that is, someone who can speak of the “transcendentals” of our being, even if the theologian must come along and revise the material.

To give you another example, Iris Murdoch was very influential for me in my philosophy courses at UNC-Charlotte, especially her book ‘The Sovereignty of Good’, though she is best-known for her novels. Murdoch was an atheist, but she strenuously sought for a credible account of reality. And even under Barth’s majestic spell, I am free to use Dame Iris in my theology, and Barth would approve.

I see part of the issue as being just exactly what we mean by ‘use’ or ‘revise’. Pelikan gives a good account of this kind of revising in ‘Christianity and Classical Culture’, where he examines the Capposicians use, modification and rejection of the philosophy of their day (not entirely dissimilar from what Barth did). I tend to feel that it ends up cashing out to a mostly conceptual use, which is vulnerable to charges of just being linguistic, in which case, I wonder, can we really say we are ‘using’ said ideas?

That’s an interesting question, but I don’t think it reduces to concepts or language. There is “material” in Plato or Murdoch’s concept of the Good that is retained (or, better yet, grounded) in the Christian concept. As I see it, this is what Balthasar was doing with all three divisions of his “trilogy.”

True enough. My objection is overstated. Another significant aspect is that not only does theology have necessarily determinate answers, its answers are also normative and binding in a way that metaphysics and philosophy isn’t (or perhaps even can’t be). The theological judgments of Niceae and Chalcedon are normative and determinative – a theory of the mind or a theory of substance isn’t, at least not in the same way. If it is, then we’ve simply replaced theology with philosophy.

This is the really difficult part of this whole discussion, and I don’t have a ready answer. It relates to my master’s thesis at Aberdeen, where I tried to discern Newman’s claim that dogmatic “certainty” is unique in regard to its object but similar in regard to broader epistemic certainty (e.g., “Great Britain is an island” — Newman’s example) in how the mind is settled or satisfied. Or else, how would we know it is certainty? Or how would we know what “certainty” or “knowledge” (vs. “opinion”) even means? This is still a quagmire for theologians.

A quagmire indeed. One wonders of there isn’t a bit of Cartesian-ism floating about here in the sense if being preoccupied with method (as Francesca Murphy noted in ‘God is Not a Story’).

Both Francesca and Webster — my two professors at Aberdeen — would tell me that. But I still can’t shake it. We do not need to be interested in method as a Cartesian (the self is the basis of truth) in order to be interested in method (knowledge needs subject-critical criteria). How can the object provide the method for this criteria? That’s where theologians are stumbling. Catholics have the advantage of having the church (a magisterial institution) as part of the object; Protestants do not. This is why Gnosticism or something like “radical” “actualism” is always a danger for Protestantism.

As far as contemporary theologians go, this is something that irks me – a failure to actually engage in these distinct fields (I’m not directing this at you or Murphy or Webster). There’s lots of talk about ‘radical metaphysics’, ‘evangelized metaphysics’ and the like. But no one wants to do metaphysics, or epistemology in the way that such radical-ness would require. Because most radical things end up looking suspiciously like ideas that already are common coin, they just come with a side of ‘accept it or your not in line with (my interpretation, usually Hegelian/apocalyptic, of the) Gospel. And that’s not revisionary, its just lazy.

Somebody asked a similar question recently on whether ‘evangelizing metaphysics’ is a legitimate task. I had roughly the same answer:

(1) No, because ‘evangelizing metaphysics’ = accept how I interpret the Bible or you’re an idolator, as evidenced here. Jenson is just as bad. (2) For all the talk about evangelizing metaphysics, no one actually wants to evangelize metaphysics. They want to talk about vague ‘natures’ or why ‘substance’ is the devil. If theology is to evangelize metaphysics, it needs to start by engaging with metaphysics, actual metaphysics, not what theologians think metaphysics is. This means that an evangelized metaphysics would need to be able to answer specific metaphysical questions and problems – for example, what would an ‘evangelized metaphysics’ say about Quines rejection of the a priori? Or identity theory? Or whether metaphysics is a discipline that has determinate answers? Or the ontology of abstract objects? Or problems in modal logic? Answers to these questions have to be more than standard answers with ‘God’ tacked onto them to be deserving of being called ‘evangelized metaphysics’. (3) I’ve yet to see an actual argument for why we need ‘evangelized metaphysics’ that doesn’t turn on prior assumptions that typically aren’t questioned.

I would, however, want to lay some blame on the philosophers, as I did above. You rightly say: if theologians want to “evangelize” metaphysics, they need “to start by engaging with metaphysics, actual metaphysics” — but this is where the theologian is left questioning. Whose metaphysics? (to quip on MacIntyre) Is there such a thing today? Is it coherent and worthwhile or just a flash in the pan? Does it command a following and a school of serious disciples? If philosophy is not a wasteland of reductive strategies to “unmask” power, then what is it in the academy today? There are contrary voices, of course, but the theologian finds it exceedingly difficult to hear amidst the cacophony.

That’s a good corrective. And, of course, there is no shortage of debate as to whether or not metaphysics is worthwhile. And, given dramatic changes in just what metaphysics means over the last hundred years, this makes it even more difficult. There really isn’t an easy answer.