Edward Feser's Blog, page 20

Can Pope Honorius be defended?

My recent article on the error and condemnation of Pope Honorius has gotten a lot of feedback both here and at Twitter (much of the latter surprisingly civil and constructive for that venue).  Because of the historical and theological complexities of the topic, several issues have arisen, but the main one I want to address here is the question of whether Honorius can plausibly be defended from the charge of heresy that the Sixth Ecumenical Council leveled against him.  Keep in mind that what is at issue here is not whether Honorius taught heresy while issuing a purported ex cathedra definition.  He was certainly not doing that, which is why the case of Honorius is irrelevant to whether popes are infallible when they do teach ex cathedra (which is all that the First Vatican Council taught in its decree on papal infallibility).  What is at issue is whether Honorius taught heresy when not speaking ex cathedra– and, more generally, whether any pope could in principle do so.

Let’s note also at the outset that the issue here is notwhether Catholics are ordinarily obligated to assent to papal teaching even when it is not put forward infallibly.  The answer is that they are ordinarily obligated.  More precisely, they owe even non-definitive papal teaching what is called “religious assent,” which is not the unqualified assent owed to teaching put forward infallibly, but is nevertheless firm.  To be even more precise, there is a very strong presumptionin favor of such assent, though the Church, in documents like Donum Veritatis, has acknowledged that there can be rare cases in which this presumption is overridden and a faithful Catholic at liberty respectfully to raise questions about some magisterial statement.  The clearest sort of case would be one where a magisterial statement appears to conflict with past definitive teaching.  I’ve discussed this issue in detail elsewhere.

Now, one point that some readers have made is that the word “heresy” was used in a more expansive way earlier in Church history than it is today.  That is correct and important, and it is something I have elsewhere emphasized myself.  In modern canon law, heresy is “the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith.”  Pope Honorius was definitely not a heretic in that sense, both because there is no evidence of obstinacy on his part, and because a charitable reading of his problematic statements supports the judgment that he did not intend to undermine traditional teaching (even if his words inadvertently had that effect).  There are also the related points that one could be a heretic in the material sense of affirming something doctrinally erroneous, while not being a formal heretic in the sense of persisting in the error even after being warned by ecclesiastical authority; and that whether some doctrine has actually been defined by the Church is relevant to whether it is “to be believed by divine and Catholic faith.”

For these reasons, I prefer to use the more general and less potentially misleading term “error” when discussing the case of Honorius, as I did in the title of my previous post.  All the same, the Sixth Ecumenical Council does apply the term “heretic” to Honorius, and “heresy” in those days implied at the very least positive doctrinal error (as opposed, say, to mere negligence or a failure to counter doctrinal error).  In other words, by labeling Honorius a heretic, the council was accusing him of teaching false doctrine.  The question on the table is whether he can be defended against this charge.

The conciliar condemnations

Needless to say, what Honorius actually said in his letters to Sergius is relevant to this question.  But it is not the only thing that is relevant.  The chief obstacle to acquitting Honorius of the charge of positively teaching doctrinal error (however inadvertently) is that, as I showed in my previous article, two papally-approved councils of the Church explicitly said that he did.  In particular, the Sixth Ecumenical Council explicitly labeled him a “heretic.”  And the Seventh Ecumenical Council explicitly condemns “the doctrine of one will held by Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, and Pyrrhus.”

Defenders of Honorius often argue that Pope St. Leo II, in his statements confirming the council, merely accuses Honorius of negligence in failing to uphold orthodoxy, and of thereby polluting the purity of the Roman See.  They think this shows that the council’s own description of Honorius as a heretic has no force.  But there are three problems with this argument.

First, what matters is that Leo confirmed the council, thereby making its decrees authoritative.  He didn’t say “I confirm it, except for this part.”  It’s true that in his own accompanying condemnation, he limits his accusation against Honorius to negligence in suppressing heresy and thereby polluting the purity of the Roman See, and does not apply the label “heretic” to him.  But Leo doesn’t deny the truth of the council’s statement that Honorius was a heretic.  He just doesn’t mention it (just as he doesn’t mention other things the council said).

Second, as noted by John Chapman (whose book on Honorius I discussed in my previous post), the Church has long held that “an error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is suppressed” (in the words of Honorius’s predecessor Pope Felix III).  It is possible to be guilty of teaching doctrinal error by implication, when the context demands that a certain truth needs to be explicitly affirmed and instead one not only fails to do so but speaks in an ambiguous way that gives the appearance of approving the error.  And that is exactly what Honorius did.  The Monothelite error was being put forward, and he not only did not clearly condemn it but seemed to be saying that it could be accepted.  The suggestion that his words can be given a more charitable reading (as I agree they can) is relevant to his personal culpability, but it is not relevant to the question of the doctrinal soundness of the words themselves, and as Chapman emphasizes, in a context like this it is the words that matter.

Third, whatever one says about Leo and the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the papally-approved Seventh Ecumenical Council, which occurred a century later (and thus long after Leo was gone), explicitly characterized Honorius as having taught doctrinal error.  Hence even if it were conceded that Leo rejected the Sixth Council’s description of Honorius as a heretic, the point would be moot.  The Seventh Council would remain as an obstacle to the defense of Honorius.

At this point, defenders of Honorius might argue (as they sometimes do) that while papally-approved councils cannot err on matters of doctrine, they can err on matters of history.  And whether Honorius really was guilty of heresy is, the argument continues, a historical question rather than a doctrinal one.  But there are two problems with this argument. 

First, the reason a council condemns someone as a heretic is because of his teaching.  Hence it is, first and foremost, Honorius’s teaching that was condemned.  That means that the teaching was judged heretical.  But whether a teaching is heretical is a doctrinal matter, and not a mere historical matter.  Now, given that a papally-approved council cannot err on doctrinal matters, it follows that the councils in question infallibly judged that Honorius’s teaching was heretical (whatever his intentions).  But since anyone who teaches heresy is a heretic, it follows (at least given that Honorius really did write the letters that got him into trouble, as most of his defenders concede) that these councils did after all infallibly judge that Honorius was a heretic.

Second, the reason most of Honorius’s defenders try to defend him is to avoid having to acknowledge that a pope can teach heresy when not speaking ex cathedra.  Now, suppose that the councils did indeed get it wrong when judging that Honorius, specifically, was a heretic.  Since that is a historical rather than doctrinal matter, such an error is possible.  Still, by making this judgment, the councils also taught by implication that it is possible for a pope to teach heresy (when not speaking ex cathedra).  And that is a doctrinal matter.  That is enough to refute the larger claim that Honorius’s defenders are trying to uphold by defending him.

This is why Chapman drew the bold conclusion that “unquestionably no Catholic has the right to deny that Honorius was a heretic… a heretic in words if not in intention” (p. 116).  Quibbles over how to interpret his letters are largely a red herring.  What matters more is the authority of papally-approved councils of the Church.

The opinions of the theologians

In response to my previous article, S. D. Wright calls attention to an article of his own from last year at the website The WM Review, defending Pope Honorius.  Wright makes much of what various theological authorities have said about the controversy, and suggests that if we are just going by the numbers, those who would defend Honorius outnumber those who would not.

Even if this is true, it is hardly a decisive argument, given that (as Aquinas famously pointed out) the argument from authority, while not without value, is still the weakest of arguments when the authorities in question are merely human rather than divine.  And they are merely human, given that this is at best a matter about which the Church has not decided, and leaves open to the free debate of theologians.  Indeed, as I have argued, it is actually worse than that for Honorius’s defenders, given that two papally-approved councils (which teach infallibly and thus do have divine authority behind them) taught that Honorius was guilty of teaching error.

Wright is also selective in the way he cites the relevant authorities.  For example, while he acknowledges that Chapman is on the side of those who judge Honorius to be guilty of teaching error, he makes Chapman’s position sound more tentative than it really is.  Wright claims, for example: “Chapman is the most hostile critic, and yet all that he can bring himself to say is that certain passages are ‘difficult to account for.’”  As we’ve just seen, though, that is far from the truth.  Again, in his book Chapman goes so far as to say that “unquestionably no Catholic has the right to deny that Honorius was a heretic”; and in his Catholic Encyclopedia article on Honorius, he says that “it is clear that no Catholic has the right to defend Pope Honorius.  He was a heretic, not in intention, but in fact.”  Oddly, Wright does not quote these (rather important) remarks when reporting on Chapman’s views.

Wright also gives the impression that the Doctors of the Church who have addressed the matter all line up on the side of defending Honorius from the charge of heresy.  That is not the case.  Wright neglects to mention the opinion of St. Francis de Sales, who, when addressing papal authority in The Catholic Controversy, says that “we do not say that the Pope cannot err in his private opinions, as did John XXII, or be altogether a heretic, as perhaps Honorius was” (p. 225).

Wright appeals to the opinion of St. Alphonsus Liguori, who addressed the case of Honorius in The History of Heresies, and Their Refutation.  That is not unreasonable, given St. Alphonsus’s stature, just as it is not unreasonable to consider the similar opinion of St. Robert Bellarmine (which I discussed in my previous article).  But it is important to note that St. Alphonsus and St. Robert do not entirely agree on this matter.  Bellarmine takes seriously the theory that the documents of the Sixth Ecumenical Council have been corrupted, whereas St. Alphonsus rejects this idea, noting that “this conjecture is not borne out by the learned men of our age… [who] clearly prove the authenticity of the Acts” (p. 186).  St. Alphonsus also rejects Bellarmine’s suggestion that the Fathers of the council were mistaken in their judgment about Honorius, and endorses the view of another author that:

[I]t is very hard to believe that all the Fathers, not alone of this Council, but also of the Seventh and Eighth General Councils, who also condemned Honorius, were in error, in condemning his doctrine. (p. 186)

St. Alphonsus is harder on Honorius than Bellarmine is, writing:

We do not, by any means, deny that Honorius was in error, when he imposed silence on those who discussed the question of one or two wills in Christ, because when the matter in dispute is erroneous, it is only favoring error to impose silence…

[H]e was very properly condemned, for the favourers of heresy and the authors of it are both equally culpable. (pp. 181 and 182)

St. Alphonsus concludes that the only plausible defense of Honorius is to argue that he was not himself a Monothelite heretic, while nevertheless conceding that he was justly condemned “as a favourer of heretics, and for his negligence in repressing error” and for “using ambiguous words to please and keep on terms with heretics” (p. 187).  That is very close to Chapman’s view that Honorius can justly be accused of heresy given Felix III’s dictum that “an error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is suppressed” – even if St. Alphonsus himself stops short of that conclusion.

(As a side note, and while we’re on the subject of arguments from authority, let me cite one further authority mentioned by Chapman, St. Maximus the Confessor.  Now, Maximus, to be sure, defended Honorius.  However, as Chapman reports, when Monothelite heretics asked Maximus what he would do if Rome were to affirm their position, his answer was: “The Holy Ghost anathematizes even angels, should they command aught beside the faith” (pp. 62-63).  Maximus does not answer that Rome could not possibly do that, or that if Rome did so, then Monothelitism would have to be accepted.  That implies that St. Maximus allowed that it is possible for the pope to err, at least when not speaking in a definitive way.)

Now, the opinion of the Doctors of the Church is indeed very weighty when they are all in agreement.  But here, as we have seen, they are not in agreement.  Hence Wright’s argument is not strong.  Meanwhile, the argument from the authority of papally-approved councils is very strong.  I conclude that a case in defense of Honorius remains, at best, difficult to make.

The error and condemnation of Pope Honorius

A pope is said to speak ex cathedra or “from the chair” when he solemnly puts forward some teaching in a manner intended to be definitive and absolutely binding.  This is also known as an exercise of the pope’s extraordinary magisterium, and its point is to settle once and for all disputed matters concerning faith or morals.  The First Vatican Council taught that such ex cathedra doctrinal definitions are infallible and thus irreformable.  The ordinary magisterium of the Church too (whether in the person of the pope or some other bishop or body of bishops) can sometimes teach infallibly, when it simply reiterates some doctrine that has always and everywhere been taught. 

The Church does not hold, however, that popes alwaysteach infallibly when not speaking ex cathedra.  The First Vatican Council deliberately stopped short of making that claim.  One reason for this is that there have been a few popes (though only a few) who erred when not exercising their extraordinary magisterium.  The most spectacular case is that of Pope Honorius I (pope from 625-638 A.D.), who taught a Christological error that facilitated the spread of the Monothelite heresy, and was formally condemned for it by several Church councils and later popes. 

The case is briefly discussed in many Church histories and reference works, but an especially detailed account is to be found in Fr. John Chapman’s short book The Condemnation of Pope Honorius, which was published in 1907 by the Catholic Truth Society.  You can read it online via the Internet Archive.  Chapman is also the author of the article about Pope Honorius in the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia, which presents a shorter but still substantive account.  His results are briefly but approvingly discussed by Fr. Cuthbert Butler in his 1930 book The Vatican Council 1869-1870, the main scholarly work in English about the council and the debate between the council Fathers over papal infallibility.

Many contemporary readers with only a superficial knowledge of the history and theology of the papacy are bound to find shocking the details of the case of Honorius as recounted by writers like Chapman and Butler.  They might expect to hear such things only from either theological liberals keen to subvert the authority of the papacy, or radical traditionalists looking for precedents for accusing recent popes of heresy.  But Chapman and Butler were perfectly mainstream orthodox Catholic academics of the day, whose work was in no way considered scandalous.  They were writing long before the debates over liberalism and traditionalism that arose after Vatican II, so that they cannot be accused of having any ax to grind in those debates. 

Indeed, Chapman was writing during the pontificate of Pope St. Pius X, the great foe of modernism and upholder of the authority of the papacy.  In fact, part of the point of Chapman’s book itself was precisely to uphold that authority, and in particular to defend the Council’s teaching on papal infallibility.  And yet for all that, Chapman does not shrink from the judgment that the historical facts show that “no Catholic has the right to deny that Honorius was a heretic” (p. 116).  The reason he could say this is that the error Honorius was guilty of did not occur in the context of an ex cathedra definition.  And thus Chapman’s judgement is perfectly within the bounds of what everyone acknowledged to be the orthodox understanding of the papacy even in Pius X’s day.

Honorius’s error

The Monothelite heresy arose as a sequel to the Monophysite heresy.  Orthodox Christology holds that Christ is one Person with two natures, divine and human.  Monophysitism holds that Christ has only one nature, the divine one.  Monothelitism can be understood as an attempt to find a middle ground position between Monophysitism and orthodoxy.  It holds that while there are two natures in Christ, there is only one will.  From the point of view of orthodoxy, this is unacceptable, for one’s will is an integral part of one’s nature.  Hence to deny the reality of two wills in Christ is implicitly to deny that he has two natures.  (I’m aware that the dispute over these heresies is more complicated than this quick summary lets on.  But the nuances are irrelevant to the particular purposes of this article.)

The trouble for Pope Honorius began when Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, wrote to him on the topic of Christ’s will and proposed a compromise that might appeal to disaffected Monophysites.  In his reply, Honorius affirmed that it is better to avoid speaking of either “one or two operations” in Christ, and even affirmed a sense in which there is “one will” in Christ.  The problem is that the first claim seems to leave wiggle room for Monothelitism, and the second seems positively to affirm it.

To be sure, as defenders of Honorius have argued and as Chapman allows, Honorius’s intent was not heretical.  But Honorius’s statements gave ammunition to the Monothelites, who treated his words as a doctrinal definition and appealed to them in support of their position.  And as Chapman notes, whatever Honorius’s intentions, “in a definition it is the words that matter” rather than the intention behind them, and considered as a definition Honorius’s words “are obviously and beyond doubt heretical” (p. 16). 

Now, Honorius was not in fact proposing an ex cathedra definitive formulation, which is why his error is not incompatible with the teaching of Vatican I about the conditions on papal infallibility.  But it is not true to say (as some have in Honorius’s defense) that he was merely speaking as a private theologian.  He was doing no such thing.  Sergius wrote to him seeking the authoritative advice of the bishop of Rome, and Honorius responded in that capacity.  And the error was extremely grave, for as Chapman notes, the Monothelite heresy really only gained momentum after Honorius’s response to Sergius, and partly as a result of it.

The popes following Honorius began to correct the situation by affirming orthodox teaching, and initially tried either to give Honorius’s words an orthodox sense or simply to ignore them.  But as the controversy grew (and involved a complex series of events and cast of characters including St. Sophronius, the Emperor Heraclius, Patriarch Pyrrhus of Constantinople, St. Maximus, and popes John IV, Theodore I, and St. Martin I, among others) it became harder to defend Honorius, whose words had done so much to instigate it.  Pope St. Martin and St. Maximus were among those who suffered severe persecution from the Monothelites, underlining the gravity of the consequences of Honorius’s error.

Honorius’s condemnation

The Third Council of Constantinople (680-681 A.D., also known as the Sixth Ecumenical Council recognized as authoritative by the Catholic Church) was called to deal with the crisis.  It condemned the exchange between Sergius and Honorius very harshly, stating:

The holy council said: After we had reconsidered… the doctrinal letters of Sergius… to Honorius some time Pope of Old Rome, as well as the letter of the latter to the same Sergius, we find that these documents are quite foreign to the apostolic dogmas, to the declarations of the holy Councils, and to all the accepted Fathers, and that they follow the false teachings of the heretics; therefore we entirely reject them, and execrate them as hurtful to the soul.

But Honorius himself, and not merely his words, was also condemned, in terms no less harsh:

We define that there shall be expelled from the holy Church of God and anathematized Honorius who was some time Pope of Old Rome, because of what we found written by him to Sergius, that in all respects he followed his view and confirmed his impious doctrines.

The late pope is included by the council in a long list of anathematized heretics:

To Theodore of Pharan, the heretic, anathema!

To Sergius, the heretic, anathema!

To Cyrus, the heretic, anathema!

To Honorius, the heretic, anathema!

To Pyrrhus, the heretic, anathema!

Etc.

And again:

We cast out of the Church and rightly subject to anathema all superfluous novelties as well as their inventors: to wit, Theodore of Pharan, Sergius and Paul, Pyrrhus, and Peter (who were archbishops of Constantinople), moreover Cyrus, who bore the priesthood of Alexandria, and with them Honorius, who was the ruler of Rome, as he followed them in these things.

By no means did this reflect any animus against Rome, nor a rejection of papal authority.  On the contrary, as Chapman emphasizes, the decrees of the council were signed by the representatives of the then current pope, Pope St. Agatho.  The council also warmly praises “our most blessed and exalted pope, Agatho,” and affirms that St. Peter “spoke through” him.  Agatho’s successor, Pope St. Leo II, confirmed the council, and added his own personal condemnation of his predecessor, stating:

We anathematize the inventors of the new error, that is, Theodore, Sergius… and also Honorius, who did not attempt to sanctify this Apostolic Church with the teaching of Apostolic tradition, but by profane treachery permitted its purity to be polluted.

Even that was not the end of it.  The Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787 A.D. (also known as the Second Council of Nicaea) reiterated the previous council’s condemnation:

We affirm that in Christ there be two wills and two operations according to the reality of each nature, as also the Sixth Synod, held at Constantinople, taught, casting out Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Macarius, and those who agree with them.

And again:

We have also anathematized… the doctrine of one will held by Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, and Pyrrhus, or rather, we have anathematised their own evil will.

The Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869-870 A.D. (also known as the Fourth Council of Constantinople) reiterated the condemnation yet again:

We anathematize Theodore who was bishop of Pharan, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, the unholy prelates of the church of Constantinople, and with these, Honorius of Rome.

As Chapman notes, in addition to these repeated anathemas:

It is still more important that the formula for the oath taken by every new Pope from the 8th century till the 11th adds these words to the list of Monothelites condemned: “Together with Honorius, who added fuel to their wicked assertions.” (pp. 115-16)

On top of that, Chapman adds: “Honorius was mentioned as a heretic in the lessons of the Roman Breviary for June 28th, the feast of St. Leo II, until the 18thcentury” (p. 116).

Over forty years passed between Honorius’s death and his condemnation by the first of the councils referred to.  But once he was condemned, the condemnation was repeatedly reaffirmed at the highest levels of the Church for centuries.

Can Honorius be defended?

This is why Chapman draws the conclusion: “Unquestionably no Catholic has the right to deny that Honorius was a heretic… a heretic in words if not in intention” (p. 116), and why Butler cites this conclusion sympathetically.  Some have tried to show how Honorius’s words can be read in an orthodox way, but as Chapman and Butler emphasize, this misses the point that the question of whether Honorius was a heretic cannot be settled by reference to his letters alone.  The fact that councils and laterpopes themselves have denounced him as a heretic is also crucial, for to deny that he was a heretic is thereby to challenge the judgment of these councils and popes.  To show that Honorius did not err, but at the cost of showing that these later popes and (papally approved) councils did err, would be a Pyrrhic victory.

Some have emphasized that Pope St. Leo II, in his own statement, seems to accuse Honorius only of aiding and abetting heresy rather than condemning him for being a heretic himself, as the Third Council of Constantinople had.  They seem to think this absolves Honorius of the charge of heresy.  But there are several problems with this move.  First, as Chapman notes, in one respect Leo’s statement is harsher than the council’s, not less harsh.  For Leo goes so far as to accuse his predecessor of polluting the purity of the Roman See itself, which the council had not done.  Second, Leo did confirm the council, and thereby lent authority to its decrees.  And those decrees explicitly condemn Honorius as a heretic.  Third, the later councils, as well as the later papal oath, reaffirmed Honorius’s anathematization. 

To be sure, there have over the centuries nevertheless been those who have tried to defend Honorius, the most eminent being St. Robert Bellarmine (in Book 4, Chapter XI of On the Sovereign Pontiff).  But his arguments are weak, and were rejected by later orthodox Catholic theologians.  For example, Bellarmine proposes that “perhaps” Honorius’s letter to Sergius was faked by the heretics, though he also argues that if this theory is rejected, the letter can be given an orthodox reading.  But these strategies obviously conflict with one another.  If the problematic parts of the letter were faked by heretics precisely for the purpose of spreading their heresy, then how can they plausibly be given an orthodox reading?  Or if these parts of the letter are in fact orthodox, how can it plausibly be maintained that they were faked?  Wouldn’t heretics forging a letter have put into it statements that clearly supported their position?

Then there is the fact that the Third Council of Constantinople condemned Honorius.  Here too Bellarmine suggests that one strategy to defend Honorius would be to propose that the relevant passages from the council proceedings were faked, and inserted by enemies of Rome.  But the council proceedings elsewhere praise Rome and other popes, so what sense would this have made?  Alternatively, Bellarmine suggests, perhaps the council really did condemn Honorius, but did so under the mistaken assumption that he was a heretic.  This is not a problem, Bellarmine says, because a council can be mistaken about a historical (as opposed to doctrinal) matter.  But even if the council had been mistaken about Honorius, in condemning him it was teaching that popes can (when not speaking ex cathedra) be guilty of heresy, and that is a doctrinal matter.  The larger lesson of the case of Honorius (namely that popes can err when not teaching ex cathedra) would remain, whatever one thinks of Honorius himself.

Bellarmine even suggests that maybe Leo’s letter, too, was faked!  The positing of so much fakery illustrates just how desperate the arguments of even as fine a mind as Bellarmine’s have to be in order to try to get Honorius off the hook.   And that is why such arguments were largely abandoned.  As another Catholic historian of the era of Chapman and Butler, Fr. H. K. Mann, stated in his book The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Second edition, Volume I, Part I:

Contrary to the opinion of some Catholic writers, [Honorius’s] letters are here allowed to be genuine and incorrupt; as are also the Acts of the Sixth General Council.  This is in accordance with nearly all the best Catholic modern authors. (p. 337)

To be sure, Mann defends the orthodoxy of the actual content of Honorius’s letter to Sergius.  But he acknowledges that the council and later popes did indeed condemn Honorius.  In response to the suggestion made by some that the council criticized Honorius only in some weaker manner than it did the Monothelite heretics, Mann says that “it seems, however, more likely that they did” condemn him in the same manner, and that “it cannot… be denied that it is more natural to assume that all those condemned by the council were all condemned in the same sense” (p. 343).  Mann also notes, as Chapman does, that “after the sixth general council the Popes in their profession of faith were wont to condemn Sergius, etc., ‘and Honorius, who gave encouragement to their heresy’” (p. 344).

The lesson of Honorius

As Chapman emphasizes, the Third Council of Constantinople was operating with a very strong conception of papal authority, not a weak one.  The council warmly accepted a letter from Pope St. Agatho defining the correct, orthodox teaching on the controversy.  Moreover:

It deposes those who refused to accept [the letter].  It asks [the pope] to confirm its decisions.  The Bishops and the Emperor declare that they have seen the letter to contain the doctrine of the Fathers; Agatho speaks with the voice of Peter himself; from Rome the law had gone forth as out of Sion; Peter had kept the faith unaltered.  (pp. 108-9)

And yet the very same council anathematized Honorius.  Chapman continues:

How was it possible to assert this, and yet in the same breath to condemn Pope Honorius as a heretic?  The answer is surely plain enough.  Honorius was fallible, was wrong, was a heretic, precisely because he did not, as he should have done, declare authoritatively the Petrine tradition of the Roman Church.  To that tradition he made no appeal, but had merely approved and enlarged upon the half-hearted compromise of Sergius. (p. 109)

Honorius, unlike Agatho, was capable of erring in his own letter because he was not there speaking ex cathedra.  And he actually did fall into error in this case because he was not teaching in continuity with tradition.  After all, as the First Vatican Council emphasized when proclaiming papal infallibility, the whole point of infallibility is not to license the pope to teach novelties, but on the contrary, to guarantee that he preserves traditional teaching:

For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.

The lessons of the case of Honorius are clear.  When a pope is not speaking ex cathedra, it is possible for him to fall into error.  And if, in that context, he teaches something contrary to the traditional teaching of the Church, he will fall into error – and may thereby lead others into error as well, with catastrophic consequences for the Church.  But the Church will in such a situation nevertheless right herself before long, and will come to judge harshly any pope who fomented such a crisis.

Related posts:

The Church permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances

Aquinas on St. Paul’s correction of St. Peter

Papal fallibility

The strange case of Pope Vigilius

Two popes and idolatry

Pope Victor redux?

Aquinas on the sin of rash judgment

Christ famously taught: “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matthew 7:1).  As Aquinas points out, Christ by no means intended to rule out all judgments about another person’s actions or character.  Rather, he was condemning judgments that were defective in certain ways, for example:

In these words our Lord forbids rash judgment which is about the inward intention, or other uncertain things, as Augustine states… Or again according to Chrysostom, He forbids the judgment which proceeds not from benevolence but from bitterness of heart. (Summa Theologiae II-II.60.2)

Similarly, in the same article, Aquinas says that when a judgment “lacks certainty, as when a man, without any solid motive, forms a judgment on some doubtful or hidden matter… then it is called judgment by ‘suspicion’ or ‘rash’ judgment.”  He goes on in the two articles that immediately follow to say a fair bit about the nature of the suspicious frame of mind that leads to rash judgment.

First, Aquinas identifies three causes of this frame of mind.  One of them is “long experience” of the kind that older people have, and Aquinas indicates that in this case the resulting judgments can have less of the character of mere suspiciousness insofar as experience yields greater certainty.  However, the other two causes involve “perversity of the affections.”  These sources of the suspicion that leads to rash judgment are:

First, from a man being evil in himself, and from this very fact, as though conscious of his own wickedness, he is prone to think evil of others… Secondly, this is due to a man being ill-disposed towards another: for when a man hates or despises another, or is angry with or envious of him, he is led by slight indications to think evil of him, because everyone easily believes what he desires.  (Summa Theologiae II-II.60.3)

In such cases, “suspicion denotes a certain amount of vice, and the further it goes, the more vicious it is.”  The sin involved can be venial if a person merely too rashly doubts the goodness of another.  However, “when a man, from slight indications, esteems another man's wickedness as certain [then] this is a mortal sin, if it be about a grave matter, since it cannot be without contempt of one's neighbor.”

Even if left unexpressed, this judgment is sinful.  “From the very fact that a man thinks evil of another without sufficient cause,” Aquinas says, “he despises him unduly, and therefore does him an injury.”  But public expression is, naturally, worse still: “Since justice and injustice are about external operations… the judgment of suspicion pertains directly to injustice when it is betrayed by external action, and then it is a mortal sin.”

Second, Aquinas teaches that a morally healthy frame of mind requires that we afford others a presumption of innocence, as it were:

From the very fact that a man thinks ill of another without sufficient cause, he injures and despises him.  Now no man ought to despise or in any way injure another man without urgent cause: and, consequently, unless we have evident indications of a person's wickedness, we ought to deem him good, by interpreting for the best whatever is doubtful about him. (Summa Theologiae II-II.60.4)

And again, “we ought, in this kind of judgment, to aim at judging a man good, unless there is evident proof of the contrary.”  To be sure, we might frequently be misled as a result.  However, argues Aquinas, this is preferable to the outcome that would follow if we did not give others a presumption of innocence:

He who interprets doubtful matters for the best, may happen to be deceived more often than not; yet it is better to err frequently through thinking well of a wicked man, than to err less frequently through having an evil opinion of a good man, because in the latter case an injury is inflicted, but not in the former.

Needless to say, the presumption of innocence is not only good morals, it is good law.  And it is, to boot, good logic.  As students of critical thinking are taught, when evaluating an opponent’s argument, we ought to interpret it according to the “principle of charity.”  This says that if the argument can be given a more reasonable or less reasonable interpretation, we should presume that the more reasonable one is what the speaker intended, unless we have solid grounds for judging otherwise.  This is in part a matter of basic fairness to the other person.  But it is also sound methodology.  The point of logic is not to win a debate, but to discover what is true.  If we dismiss an argument too quickly on the basis of an uncharitable interpretation, we might miss some important truth we could have learned from it had we considered it more carefully.

Obviously, one can go too far.  A virtue is a mean between extremes, and just as one can be too quick to attribute evil to others, so too can one be too slow to do so.  Aquinas does not say that we should never judge another to have a bad motive.  He says that we should not do so if we lack sufficient evidence to make a certain judgment about the matter, if our judgment tends to be clouded by dislike of the person, and so on.  But with some people, it is possible dispassionately and objectively to judge from their patterns of behavior over time that they are indeed acting from bad motives.  There is no sin in making such a judgment under such circumstances.  On the contrary, a habitual refusal to do so can be a vice.  As I have discussed elsewhere, Aquinas argues that just as one can sin by being excessively angry or insufficiently affable or friendly, so too can one sin by being insufficiently angry and excessively affable in the face of grave evil.  Dogmatic non-judgmentalism would be a similar moral failing.  It is not Christ’s teaching, but a distortion of that teaching.

All the same, in the context of contemporary mass media, the more common sin by far is that of rash judgment.  Indeed, social media exchanges and political discourse sometimes seem to consist in little more than rash judgment as Aquinas characterizes it – that is, judgment about “the inward intention, or other uncertain things” about another person, which “proceeds not from benevolence but from bitterness of heart.”  Opponents are routinely demonized, condemned as wicked rather than merely wrong.  Their claims and arguments are not evaluated by way of a dispassionate consideration of evidence and logical strength, but dismissed a priori as stemming from bad motives.  Policy differences are attributed, not to sincere but mistaken opinions about what is best for the country, but to cynical political calculation.  The very idea that there is a common good transcending partisan disagreements, and shared standards of rationality by which those disagreements might be discussed in good faith, seems to be held suspect as entailing a sell-out to the enemy. 

Naturally, this is not to deny that some people really are wicked.  The point is that partisanship has become so rancorous, and electronic media so central to modern social and political interaction, that many people are unable to see and judge others as concrete individuals.  They form a cartoonish general conception of the beliefs and motivations of those they disagree with, and project this conception onto the particular people with whom they engage.  Because they do not deal with these opponents in a personal way, but only with electronic representations (television sound bites, tweets, blog comments, and the like), the cartoon is difficult to dislodge.  Whatever the other person says, it is assumed that what he “really” thinks is what the cartoon represents people like him as thinking.  And because he is likely to react to this sinister caricature with anger and insults of his own, his behavior will even seem to confirm it.

The failing here is in both the intellect and the will.  It is in the intellect insofar as this way of dealing with others typically involves the committing of several logical fallacies.  For example, there is the circumstantial ad hominem fallacy of pretending to refute what someone says by claiming to identify some suspect motive on his part.  There is the fallacy of poisoning the well, which involves casting aspersions on another’s character rather than addressing his claims or arguments.  There is guilt by association, in which one attributes view X to a person who believes Y simply because other people who believe Y have been associated with X.  There is the abusive ad hominem, which involves simply flinging a pejorative label at a person (“racist,” “fascist,” “communist,” etc.) as if this sufficed to rebut his claim or argument.  And there is what seems to compete with the circumstantial ad hominem for the status of most popular fallacy on social media – the tu quoque, which involves accusing someone of hypocrisy and supposing that one has thereby refuted his claim or argument.

There is a failing here in the will insofar as it is not directed at the good of the other person.  Even if the other person is wrong, charity requires considering the possibility that he is nevertheless acting in good faith, and trying one’s best to interact with him in a way that might get him to reconsider his error rather than harden him in it.  Furthermore, there may be at least some truth in what he is saying, and it is unjust to reject that possibility out of hand out of hostility to him.  Human beings are rational animals, and naturally regard it as unjust when what they (rightly or wrongly) take to be strong rational considerations in favor of their opinions are not addressed.  We sin against charity when we ignore what they actually say and instead impute bad motives or opinions to them that they may not actually have.

Again, the point is not to deny that people sometimes really do have bad motives and opinions.  Nor is it to deny that it is in some cases justifiable to be harsh with such a person, when his opinions are dangerous and he puts them forward in an obnoxious or irrational way.  The point is that this should be a last resort, not the first, and in modern mass media people tend instead to be too “quick on the trigger.”  As Aquinas says, “when a man hates or despises another, or is angry with or envious of him, he is led by slight indications to think evil of him, because everyone easily believes what he desires.”   We like to think that the reason we dislike a person is that he has bad motives or irrational views.  But sometimes we attribute bad motives or irrational views to him precisely because we dislike him.  If we kept our dislike from coloring our opinion of him, we might find that he is not in fact as bad or unreasonable as we have supposed.

A good rule of thumb is that when someone whose opinions you disagree with tries to engage with you in a civil and reasonable manner – or, if he doesn’t, at least will do so after you try to turn the temperature down by engaging civilly and reasonably with him – then it would be contrary to reason and charity not to give him the benefit of the doubt.  There are definitely lots of people online who are not like this – who remain obnoxious and irrational no matter how patient and civil you are with them.  But there are also lots of people who would behave more reasonably if only others behaved more reasonably toward them. 

Another good rule of thumb is to consider, before posting some comment on Twitter, Facebook, a blog, or wherever, how it will look at the Last Judgment, when, Christ warns, “men will render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:36-37, RSV).

Related posts:

Wrath and its daughters

The ad hominem fallacy is a sin

Social media’s fifth circle

Chomsky on consciousness

On the podcast Mind Chat, philosophers Philip Goff and Keith Frankish discuss the philosophical problem of consciousness with Noam Chomsky.  Goff is a proponent of panpsychism and Frankish of illusionism, where Goff characterizes these, respectively, as the view that consciousness is everywhere and the view that consciousness is nowhere.  (This might be a bit of an overstatement in the case of Frankish’s position, given what he says during the podcast.)  Chomsky’s own position is not easy to capture in a simple label, but I think that it can, to a first approximation, be described as a kind of modest naturalism.  The discussion is very interesting, and what follows is a summary with some comments of my own.

Many readers will recall that I had a recent exchange with Goff myself (here, here, and here).  The issues and arguments that arose there are highly relevant to the discussion with Chomsky and my comments on it below.

Pseudo-questions

Where the study of consciousness is concerned, recent philosophy of mind has followed David Chalmers in distinguishing between “easy problems” and the “hard problem.”  Identifying the neural correlates of various kinds of conscious awareness would be examples of an easy problem.  By characterizing such a problem as “easy,” Chalmers doesn’t mean that it is trivial, or even easy in every respect.  He just means that it is the sort of problem the solution to which seems clearly attainable using existing methods and standard scientific and philosophical assumptions.  The “hard problem” is explaining why any of the neural processes in question are associated with conscious awareness, given that it seems at least prima facie possible that they could do what neuroscience describes them as doing in the complete absence of consciousness.  (This is alleged to be shown by arguments like Chalmers’ “zombie argument,” along with other influential arguments like Frank Jackson’s “knowledge argument” and Thomas Nagel’s argument in his famous article “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”)

Chomsky is well-known for arguing that there are some things we may never be able to explain because evolution has molded our minds in such a way that they fall outside the range of our cognitive powers.  This view has come to be known as “mysterianism,” and some philosophers, such as Colin McGinn, have applied it to the hard problem of consciousness, arguing that solving it is probably beyond our cognitive capacities.

Interestingly, Chomsky himself does not take that view.  Indeed, in his exchange with Goff and Frankish, he suggests that the so-called hard problem is really a pseudo-problem.  He points out that the fact that we can form an interrogative sentence does not by itself entail that it expresses a genuine question.  With some interrogatives, there may be no possible way to answer them, and in that case, he says, we’re not dealing with a genuine question.

To illustrate this general point, he offers as an example the interrogative sentence “Why do things happen?”  There is, he says, no possible answer to this, and so it is not a genuine question.  Now, I don’t think this is actually a good example, because it seems to me that there is a plausible interpretation of this interrogative sentence on which it amounts to a real question susceptible of an answer.  For example, it might be interpreted as asking why the world is such that change occurs in it, rather than being static in the way Parmenides and Zeno took it to be.  And an answer would be Aristotle’s view that substances have potentialities as well as actualities, and that change occurs because these potentials are sometimes actualized.

Perhaps Chomsky would take all of this too to be suspect, but it would be better to have a less tendentious example to illustrate his general point.  And that’s not hard to find.  We could, altering another example famously given by Chomsky, consider the interrogative sentence “Why do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?”  That clearly is something to which there is no possible answer, and it suffices to support Chomsky’s point that not every interrogative corresponds to a genuine question.

Now, Chomsky proposes that though a sentence like “What was it like to see the sunset last night?” asks a genuine question, the sentence “What is it like to see a sunset?” does not.  Similarly, he says, “What is it like to see this red spot?” is a real question, but “What is it like to see red?” is not.  There are, he says, ways we might go about explaining what seeing last night’s sunset was like or what seeing this red spot is like.  By contrast, he claims, there is no way to go about answering questions about what it is like to see a sunset full stop, or what it is like to see red full stop.  Hence these are pseudo-questions.

Yet these pseudo-questions seem, to Chomsky, to be the kinds that the discussion of the so-called hard problem focuses on.  He doesn’t mention Nagel, but he seems clearly to have in mind questions like “What is it like to be a bat?” and the idea that neuroscientific research and the like cannot answer it.  The reason there is such difficulty answering it, Chomsky thinks, is that interrogative sentences like these don’t convey genuine questions.  What are labeled “easy questions” and “hard questions” concerning consciousness pretty much correspond, in Chomsky’s view, to genuine questions and pseudo-questions.

Now, I sympathize with Chomsky’s view that the so-called hard problem of consciousness is a pseudo-problem.  As I said in my exchange with Goff, I would say that the problem arises only if we follow Galileo and his early modern successors in holding that color, odor, sound, heat, cold, and other “secondary qualities” do not really exist in matter in the way common sense supposes them to, but instead exist only in the mind (as the qualia of conscious experience) and are projected by us onto external reality.  If you take this position, you are stuck with a conception of matter that makes it impossible to regard consciousness as material.  The solution, I would say, is simply not to go along with this assumption in the first place, but to return to the Aristotelian-Scholastic view the early moderns reacted against, and which is compatible with the commonsense view of matter.  The so-called hard problem of consciousness then dissolves.  As Chomsky’s remarks later in the discussion make clear, he would be sympathetic with part of this story (though not, I’m sure, with the neo-Aristotelian bit). 

It doesn’t seem to me, though, that Chomsky’s specific way of making the point about pseudo-questions is likely to convince someone who doesn’t already agree that the so-called “hard problem” is a pseudo-problem.  The reason is that questions like “What is it like to see a sunset?,” and “What is it like to see red?” seem to me interpretable in ways that aresusceptible of an answer.  For example, if you had never seen the color red, you might naturally ask precisely a question like the second one.  And if someone then showed you a red object, you would surely think that your question had been answered.  Or, if someone said “Well, it’s sort of like seeing dark orange, though not quite.  But very different from seeing pale blue,” then you might judge this answer to be at least somewhat illuminating.

I imagine that Chomsky would respond that this misses his point, and that what he is criticizing is rather an interpretation of the interrogative sentences in question that would not be open to answering in ways like those I’ve described.  That’s fair enough, but then it seems to me that the examples don’t really do the work he needs them to do.  He would need to develop a more metaphysically substantive point about the problematic nature of the notion of qualia.  But then this metaphysical pointwould be doing the work, and the simple linguisticway of making it that he resorts to at the beginning of the discussion would drop out as otiose.

Conscious and unconscious

The point about pseudo-questions, Chomsky says, is one of the sources of his reservations about the recent literature on the so-called hard problem of consciousness.  It is one reason why, though he does think there are genuine mysteries that we are unable to solve, he isn’t convinced that the nature of consciousness is one of them.

Another problem he has with the recent literature, he says, is that he thinks that conscious and unconscious mental phenomena are so deeply intermingled that he doubts that we can extract the former out and still be left with a coherent picture.  He gives the example of uttering a certain sentence in the course of a conversation.  Obviously a person who does this is conscious, but the decision to utter the sentence is not itself conscious in the same way that, say, a runner might consciously decide to start running when he hears the starting pistol.  (The example is mine, not Chomsky’s.)  The runner might have the explicit thought “Time to go!” but the speaker doesn’t think “Time to utter this sentence.”  He just does it.

This is indeed a very important point, and Chomsky notes that it fits in with his well-known work in linguistics, which posits unconscious mechanisms and rules that underlie linguistic competence.  But in my view it is a point that has been developed in a more penetrating way by thinkers in the phenomenological tradition (such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) than by the broadly functionalist or computationalist approach in analytic philosophy of mind that Chomsky’s work is closer to. 

Indeed, as Hubert Dreyfus has argued (under the influence of this phenomenological tradition) it is a mistake to think of the unconscious on the model of rules (such as Chomskian rules of universal grammar).  For rules always have an explicit content that must be understood before one can apply them.  And to appeal to further rules in order to determine the interpretation of the first set just raises the problem again at a higher level, which threatens a vicious regress.  (See e.g. the discussion of rule-following beginning at p. 174 of Dreyfus’s book What Computers Still Can’t Do.)

Moreover, Dreyfus points out, this computationalist model is an inheritance from the post-Cartesian approach to scientific explanation, according to which explaining a physical event involves identifying the laws by which it follows of necessity from antecedent events, in a manner that might be modeled by a machine.  But this mechanistic model only works when we abstract out of it anything that smacks of the psychological – consciousness, intentionality, and so on.  (This is precisely why Descartes had to relocate consciousness out of the material world and in a separate res cogitans, as Chomsky himself emphasizes later in the discussion with Goff and Frankish.)  Hence an approach that appeals to computational rules, given its essentially mechanistic character, precisely leaves out what is distinctive of the mental, and thus cannot coherently claim to account for the mental.

Ghosts and machines

This brings us to some further important points raised by Chomsky concerning the origins of the modern mind-body problem.  Gilbert Ryle famously characterized Descartes’ dualism as the theory of the “ghost in the machine.”  It is often supposed that modern philosophy and science after Descartes preserved his mechanical model of matter while getting rid of the “ghost” of the Cartesian mind.  But as Goff points out, Chomsky’s view is that the truth is closer to the opposite of this, and in particular that with Newton, modern thought essentially “exorcised the machine while leaving the ghost intact.” 

What does Chomsky mean by this?  He notes that the mechanical conception of nature that was put at the center of modern science and philosophy by Galileo and his successors conceived of matter on the model of machines.  The idea was that the various phenomena studied by the sciences (solar systems, organisms, or whatever) could be understood as operating according to the same principles as mechanical artifacts (watches and the like being a favorite paradigm).  This approach to explanation was adopted by all the major early modern thinkers.

But Descartes held, correctly in Chomsky’s view, that certain aspects of the human mind could not be accounted for on this mechanical model.  For this reason he posited a separate principle to account for them, the res cogitans or thinking substance, and Chomsky takes this to be a perfectly ordinary sort of move to make in scientific investigation.  (Not that Chomsky agrees with Descartes.  He is merely objecting to those who represent Descartes’ positing of the res cogitans as if it were suspect from a scientific point of view or otherwise intellectually disreputable.)

Now, with Newton, Chomsky notes, modern physics abandoned a strictly mechanical model.  What he means is that the early mechanists thought that the simple push-pull kind of causation that one sees in watches and the like could provide a model for how the physical world in general works, but Newton posited forces that did not operate in this way, and indeed the operation of which he did not explain or claim to explain at all.  Gravitation seemed as “occult” as anything the medieval Aristotelians talked about.  Newton’s work was nevertheless accepted because of the tremendous predictive success afforded by its mathematical representation of nature.  Newtonian physics did not truly explain the phenomena with which it dealt, but carried the day because it describedthem so well.

In the history of physics after Newton, Chomsky says, the prevailing attitude came to be that anything was acceptable if it could be given a precise mathematical expression.  The predictive success of such mathematical theories is what mattered, and the metaphysical question about explaining why things worked in the way the mathematics described receded into the background.  For practical purposes, “matter” came to be treated as just whatever accepted physical theories happen to say about it.  But, Chomsky notes, as early twentieth-century thinkers like Bertrand Russell and Arthur Eddington pointed out, physical theory actually tells us very little about what matter is actually like.  It gives us only mathematical structure and is silent about what fleshes out that structure.

In this way, the early moderns’ clear and concrete conception of the natural world as susceptible of an exhaustive description on the model of a machine or mechanical artifact has been abandoned.  In its place we have a highly abstract mathematical description of nature that tells us very little about its intrinsic nature.  But at the same time, the Cartesian idea of the mind as the repository of qualities that cannot be given a mechanical or mathematical analysis remains.  Hence, Chomsky concludes, what contemporary philosophy and science are left with is the “ghost” but without the “machine” – the reverse of the standard assumption, after Ryle, that modern science leaves us with the machine and has exorcised the ghost.

This is a longstanding theme in Chomsky’s work, which I’ve discussed before.  As my longtime readers know, I am entirely sympathetic to it, and regard it as the key to understanding the intractability of the mind-body problem.  The mechanical-cum-mathematical model of nature presupposed by modern materialism itself generates the hard problem of consciousness.  Materialism thus cannot in principle solve that problem.  Thinkers like Nagel have been making this point for decades, and are often wrongly thought to be carrying water for some variation on Cartesian dualism.  But as Chomsky’s example shows, by no means does one have to be any kind of dualist to see the point.

Panpsychism and illusionism

Now, Russell argued that what we know best is consciousness itself, and that everything else we know, including physics, is derivative from this.  He also held, again, that physics tells us about the abstract mathematical structure of matter, but not about its intrinsic nature.  But if we suppose that consciousness is identical to properties of the brain, then it would follow that introspection gives us knowledge about the intrinsic nature of at least one material object, namely the brain itself.  And this might give us a basis for extrapolating about the intrinsic nature of the material world in general.

Russell himself did not take this in a panpsychist direction, but later thinkers, such as Galen Strawson and Goff, have done so.  Goff argues for panpsychism by way of an appeal to simplicity or parsimony.  I have explained, in my exchange with Goff linked to above, why I think this argument fails.

Chomsky’s own criticism of Goff is that he thinks that panpsychism does not in fact sit well with the whole range of empirical evidence.  In particular, he says that when we take account of the neural phenomena associated with conscious experience, we have reason to conclude that while human beings are conscious, tables, say (which have nothing like the complexity of our nervous systems), are not.  There are also intermediate cases, such as fish, where it is not entirely clear what we should say.  But what we don’t have is any basis for concluding that consciousness exists all across nature, from human beings to ordinary inanimate objects to fundamental particles.  (Goff, as I noted in my exchange with him, is massively overgeneralizing from a handful of cases.)

Goff replies by saying that this objection of Chomsky’s presupposes that we know more about matter than one would otherwise expect Chomsky to think we do, given his endorsement of Russell’s and Eddington’s point about how little physics tells us.  But Chomsky responds by noting that Goff overstates things when he suggests that science tells us nothing about the nature of matter.  It doesn’t tell us nothing, just much less than many people suppose.  And we can have evidence for thinking that some theories tell us more about it than others do.  In particular, Chomsky repeats, neuroscience gives us grounds for concluding that while we are conscious, tables and the like are not.

Here too, I am completely sympathetic with Chomsky.  What I would add can be found, in part, in my exchange with Goff linked to above.  I would also direct the interested reader to my detailed discussion of Russell’s and Eddington’s structural realism in chapter 3 of Aristotle’s Revenge, especially at pp. 158-94.  The view is susceptible of a variety of interpretations, and it is too simple to say flatly that physics tells us nothing about the nature of matter.

Chomsky also engages with Frankish’s illusionism.  Frankish is skeptical of the idea that, in addition to one’s awareness of (say) the taste of the coffee he is drinking, he is aware via introspection of some inner and radically private quale of the taste of the coffee.  The reality is that, in consciousness, we are aware of features of the world and of our reactions to them.  We are not, over and above that, aware of some inner Cartesian realm of qualia.

Chomsky’s response is that he is partially sympathetic to this, but that he would be opposed to throwing out of the picture the psychological reactions we have to the world that people have in mind when they talk about consciousness.  He thinks that the fact that these are genuine phenomena is evidenced by our ability to theorize about them.  (He says that Nelson Goodman’s book The Structure of Appearance is a good example of how one can develop a substantive analysis of the way things seem to us in conscious awareness, whether or not Goodman’s account is ultimately successful.)  Chomsky is also sympathetic to Russell’s view that consciousness is in fact what we know best.

Frankish replies by suggesting that the neural processes underlying introspection can distort things just as much as those underlying perception do.  But as Chomsky goes on to point out, while what consciousness tells us about this or that object or event is certainly fallible, it doesn’t follow that the reality of consciousness itself is an illusion.  (Here’s an analogy – mine, not Chomsky’s.  Suppose I find that a certain person, Fred, is a chronic liar.  This gives me good reason to doubt the things Fred tells me.  But it hardly by itself gives me any reason to think that Fred himself doesn’t exist.)

It might seem that, as with Goff, Chomsky thinks that Frankish takes too far an insight that they have in common.  But Frankish suggests that in fact he and Chomsky are basically in agreement apart from some terminological issues.  In any case, here too I am sympathetic with Chomsky’s remarks, though I imagine that I have a more conservative view than he and Frankish do about how far science might revise our commonsense perceptual representation of the world.  (The interested reader is directed to what I have to say about the primary versus secondary quality distinction at pp. 340-51 of Aristotle’s Revenge; about representationalist theories of perception at pp. 106-13; and about neuroscientific evidence vis-à-vis introspection and perception at pp. 442-56.)

Politics and economics

Goff’s and Frankish’s conversation with Chomsky ends with a brief discussion of matters of politics and economics.  Chomsky says that the excesses of 1920s capitalism were corrected to some extent beginning in the 30s, leading eventually to a somewhat more humane form of capitalism by the 50s and 60s.  Then, he thinks, Reagan and Thatcher turned the world back in the direction of something like the 1920s kind of capitalism.  But, he suggests, something like the reforms that partially corrected that kind of capitalism might occur again.

Chomsky’s description is highly tendentious, which is not to say that I disagree with everything about it.  But his discussion is too brief, and the issues too complicated, for it to be worthwhile commenting further here.  I’ll simply direct the interested reader, first, to this post on my own views about the pluses and minuses of capitalism; and second, to this relatively recent post about Chomsky’s politics.

Related posts:

Chomsky on the mind-body problem

Chomsky’s “propaganda model” of mass media

Problems for Goff’s panpsychism

Goff’s gaffes

The hollow universe of modern physics

Reading Rosenberg, Part VIII [on neuroscience and the reliability of introspection]

Aristotle’s Revenge and naïve color realism

Perfect world disorder (sans paywall)

You can now read my recent Postliberal Order essay “Perfect World Disorder” without a subscription.

Talking about All One in Christ

Some recent interviews about my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory :  A print interview conducted by Carl Olson appears today at Catholic World Report.  A few days ago I did a radio interview about the book for The Drew Mariani Show.  And the book was one of the topics covered in my recent interview for Thomas Mirus’s Catholic Culture podcast.

 

Perfect world disorder

My essay “Perfect World Disorder” appears today at The Postliberal Order.  You can read it here (though a subscription is required in order to read the whole thing).  Good time to subscribe!

Libertarianism, jazz, and Critical Race Theory

I was recently interviewed by Thomas Mirus for the Catholic Culture podcast.  The discussion was pretty wide ranging, covering topics as diverse as libertarianism, the aesthetics of the music of Thelonious Monk, and Critical Race Theory.  You can watch the interview at YouTube or at the Catholic Culture website.

Individualism and socialism versus the family

Here’s another unpublished lecture the text of which I’ve posted at my main website.  The title is “Socialism versus the Family,” and I presented it at the Heritage Foundation back in February of 2019.  The talk begins by explaining the economics and ethos of socialism, and how socialism is related to liberalism.  It then explains the nature of the family, emphasizing the features recognized by natural law theorists and evolutionary psychology alike.  Finally it shows how egalitarian socialism is inherently incompatible with the family, but also how the liberal individualism embraced by too many modern conservatives is precisely what paved the way for the egalitarian assault on the family.  You can watch the video of the lecture here.

What is classical theism?

My essay “What is Classical Theism?” is among those that appear in the volume Classical Theism: New Essays on the Metaphysics of God , edited by Jonathan Fuqua and Robert C. Koons and forthcoming from Routledge. Follow the link to check out its excellent roster of contributors and range of topics.