Edward Feser's Blog, page 35

Scholastics contra racism

Condemning racism (or “racialist prejudice,” as he referred to it), Pope St. Paul VI affirmed that:

The members of mankind share the same basic rights and duties, as well as the same supernatural destiny.  Within a country which belongs to each one, all should be equal before the law, find equal admittance to economic, cultural, civic and social life and benefit from a fair sharing of the nation's riches.  (Octogesima Adveniens 16). 

This suggests a useful definition of racism, which is best understood as the denial of what the pope here affirms.  In other words, racism is the thesis that not all races have the same basic rights and duties and/or supernatural destiny, so that not all races should be equal before the law, find equal admittance to economic, cultural, civic and social life, or benefit from a fair sharing of the nation's riches.

There could be no clearer manifestations of racism in this sense than the institutions of slavery and segregation that once existed in the United States.  The falsity and evil of racism, and thus of those institutions, clearly follows from standard Scholastic thinking about human nature and natural law.  Perhaps the best-known examples of Scholastic thinkers who made this case are Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1486-1546) and Bartoloméo de Las Casas (1474-1566). 

Vitoria’s argument

These thinkers were writing at a time when the Spanish were colonizing the Americas, and were troubled by the harshness with which the American Indian populations were being treated.  Let’s start with Vitoria, who was an important contributor to the development of a Scholastic doctrine of natural rights as grounded in Thomistic natural law, and he hammered it out in the context of arguing for better treatment of the Indians.

The idea of a right in the modern sense is that of a kind of moral power to act in certain ways.  For example, if I have a right to my car, that entails that I am morally at liberty to drive it or not drive it, paint it or keep it the color it is, sell or lend it, and so on.  Others do nothave a right to it insofar as they are not at liberty to do these things.  The moral law permits me this range of actions, but it does not permit them to others.

Rights theorists refer to rights in this sense as subjective rights, because they inhere in the individual subject or moral agent, in a manner analogous to the way his height or weight inheres in him.  This is contrasted with the idea of objective right, which essentially has to do with the object or aim of justice being realized.  For example, a society in which people do not murder or steal from one another is one in which objective right, at least to that extent, is achieved.

While the idea of objective right is to be found in a medieval philosopher like Aquinas, the notion of subjective rights is not, at least not explicitly.  As scholars like Brian Tierney have argued (see Tierney’s The Idea of Natural Rights), the notion began to evolve in medieval canon law, and later Scholastic writers like Vitoria essentially grafted it onto the Thomistic understanding of natural law.

The basic idea is this.  What sets human beings apart from non-human animals and the rest of the natural world is our rationality, and the free will that follows from it.  This affords human beings a mastery over their own actions that other creatures do not have, and it is, of course, why we are subject to a moral law that tells us how we ought to use our freedom.  So far this is just standard Thomistic teaching.  But the Scholastic argument for natural rights (in the sense of subjective rights) is that if I am obligated to act in a certain way under natural law, then I must have a rightin the sense of a power or liberty to do so.  I must be able to make a moral claim against others that they not interfere with my actions in that particular respect.

Some Scholastic thinkers developed a theory of the natural right to private property on this basis.  The idea is that property is necessary in order to bring our powers to bear on the world in a manner that will allow us to do things like provide for ourselves and our families, which we are obligated to do under natural law.  Hence if natural law directs us to do things that presuppose private property, we must have a natural right to acquire it.  In the same way, we must have natural rights not to be killed and not to have our liberty taken from us (at least if we have not forfeited these rights by committing a crime), since these rights are prerequisites of our acting in any way at all.  (Naturally, there are all sorts of details concerning the institution of private property and the scope and limits of other rights that this doesn’t address.  I’m just trying to convey the basic idea here.  I say more about these issues in articles like “Freedom in the Scholastic Tradition” and “Classical Natural Law Theory, Property Rights, and Taxation.”)

Let’s come back, then, to Vitoria’s critique of the harsh treatment inflicted on the American Indians, which was an argument appealing to the natural rights that the Indians shared with all other human beings.  (See Chapter XI of Tierney for a useful survey of Vitoria’s position.)  Vitoria considers four reasons why some in his day did claim or might claim that the Indians lacked such rights: it might be claimed that they lacked such rights because they were sinners; or that they lacked them because they were infidels; or that they lacked them because they lacked rationality; or that they lacked them because they lacked sufficient intelligence.  Vitoria disposes of each of these arguments.

First, he points out that natural rights are grounded in human nature, and that sinners and infidels have the same human nature as everyone else.  Hence they have the same basic rights as everyone else (such as the right not to be murdered, the right not to be stolen from, and so forth).  Hence, whether the American Indians were sinners or non-believers is irrelevant to their having natural rights, and thus could not justify treating them as if they did not have them.

As to the claim that the American Indians lacked rationality, Vitoria pointed out that this is obviously false given that they had customs and institutions that only creatures with reason have (laws, the institution of marriage, cities, etc.).  He also argues that it will not do to suggest that they somehow have rationality only in potentialityrather than actuality, since (as the old Aristotelian maxim has it) nature does nothing in vain.

His point seems to be that it makes no sense to suppose that a large and ongoing population of human beings would have rationality only potentially rather than actually, because in that case their possession of it would be pointless, which violates the Aristotelian maxim.  If a population has the power of rationality, then over time and across the population that power is inevitably going to be actualized.

In response to the claim that the Indians lacked sufficient intelligence, Vitoria says that though children and mentally ill people lack the intelligence others have, they do not lack natural rights, because they have the same human nature as everyone else.  Hence, he concludes, claims to the effect that the Indians lacked the same mental acuity as the Spaniards could not justify denying that they had the same natural rights.

Vitoria also argues that Aristotle’s notorious argument to the effect that some people are naturally fit only to serve others could not justify chattel slavery.  His view was that this conclusion is ruled out by the circumstance that even such servile persons have the same rational nature as every other human being, so that they have the same natural rights as other human beings.  Hence, even someone better suited to serve others could not justly be treated as property or otherwise less than human.

Las Casas’s argument

Las Casas was even more thoroughgoing and passionate in his defense of the rights and equal dignity of the American Indians.  He argued strongly against any suggestion that the Indians were morally or intellectually inferior to Spaniards, and put special emphasis on the right to personal liberty and government by consent.  Fellow rational creatures, he insisted, have to be appealed to via rational persuasion rather than force.  He also emphasized the brotherhood of man both on Christian and natural law grounds, writing:

All the peoples of the world are humans and there is only one definition of all humans and of each one, that is that they are rational… Thus all the races of humankind are one.  (Quoted by Tierney, at p. 273)

Las Casas developed an especially important argument against any suggestion that Aristotle’s view that some people are naturally servile could be used to justify racial slavery.  First, he noted some problems with claims, common in his day, to the effect that some peoples were “barbarian” races.  What does that mean, exactly?  In the original sense of the term, “barbarian” peoples were those whose language was strange, but in this trivial sense all people are “barbarian” relative to those who speak a different language.  In another sense, a “barbarian” people is one that is especially cruel, but in this sense, Las Casas points out, the Spanishcould be said to be barbarians given their treatment of the Indians.  In yet another sense, “barbarians” referred to non-Christian peoples.  But the pagan Greeks and Romans were non-Christians, and yet they were not considered by Christian writers to have been barbarians.

Las Casas argues that a “barbarian,” in the only interesting sense of the term, would be someone who essentially lived the life of a savage, bereft of reason and barely above the level of non-human animals, like a proverbial forest-dwelling “wild man.”  He would for that reason essentially be a damaged human being, his defects of rationality comparable to blindness or lameness.  But now Las Casas makes two key points.  First, he says, even such a person would still be a human being (even if his use of reason was greatly stunted) and would therefore retain the basic human rights. 

Second, he argues, such people would also in the nature of the case be extremely rare and isolated.  There could not, in principle, be a race of barbarians in this sense.  For it simply makes no sense for there to be a race of people who have the basic powers of rationality that other human beings have, with all the duties under natural law that that entails, and yet, generation after generation, are always fundamentally stunted or crippled in their capacity to use those powers.  That would be like a race of people all of whom, generation after generation, are always born blind or crippled.  There would be a kind of perversity in such a scenario that would violate the Aristotelian principle that nature does nothing in vain.  (Here, Las Casas essentially extends the line of argument we saw Vitoria propose.)

What Las Casas gives us, then, is an argument which, on grounds of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and anthropology, rules out the very possibility of a race that is naturally inferior to others.  And thus it rules out any justification for racism in the sense later condemned by Pope St. Paul VI.

But what about…

Some will ask: “But didn’t the Catholic Church once defend slavery of the kind that once existed in the U.S. precisely on natural law grounds?”  The answer is No, she did not.  To be sure, there were individual Catholic writers who defended slavery of that kind (e.g. with reference to Spanish treatment of the American Indians), but their view died out and the views of writers like Vitoria and Las Casas prevailed.  But it is not true that the Churchas an institution defended slavery of that kind.

The word “slavery” is ambiguous.  What we usually think of when we hear the term today is chattelslavery of the kind practiced in the United States before the Civil War, which involved complete ownership of another person, the way one might own an animal or an inanimate object.  This is intrinsically evil, and the Church has never defended it.

There are, however, other practices that were sometimes loosely labeled “slavery” but which are very different from chattel slavery.  For example, there is indentured servitude, which is a contract to give the right to one’s labor to another person for a prolonged period of time – for example, in payment of a debt.  And there is penal servitude, which involves forcing someone to labor as part of a punishment for a crime.  Indentured servitude is essentially an extreme version of an ordinary labor contract, and penal servitude is an extension of the loss of liberty a justly punished prisoner is already subject to.  Now, Catholic theologians have long regarded such practices as so morally hazardous, and in particular as posing a serious enough danger of degenerating into chattel slavery, that in practice they ought not to be employed.  But it is practices of these kinds (rather than chattel slavery), that the Church did not condemn as intrinsically immoral.  Regarding the modern slave trade and the practice of chattel slavery, the Church and the popes have in fact consistently condemned them beginning at least as far back as the 15thcentury. 

Open thread (and a comment on trolling)

We’re long overdue for another open thread.  Now is the time for you to post that otherwise off-topic comment I’ve had to delete.  From Being Itself to mental health, from Mickey Spillane to John Coltrane, from Dada to Prada, in this post everything is on-topic.  Naturally, the normal rules of decency and civility still apply.

I see from some drama in the comments section that I once again have to comment on the tiresome topic of trolling.  As longtime readers know, I try as far as I can to let the comments section police itself.  There are two reasons for this.  First, in the interests of free discussion and in order to make all readers feel welcome whatever their level of knowledge of the subject matter of a post, I think it is better to err on the side of letting some lower-quality comments stand and leaving it to readers to decide what is worth responding to.  Second, I am extremely busy and simply don’t have time to read through, let alone micromanage, most combox discussions.

To be sure, I’m not some Democrat mayor; I don’t let lunatics run riot.  There are a few especially psychotic trolls who I consider banned forever and whose comments I always delete because they have proven themselves to be utterly obnoxious and irrational – routinely posting little more than insults, unhinged rants, personal obsessions, obscenity or blasphemy, etc.

But there are others I have banned for lesser offenses and whose return I have tolerated because they have shown themselves willing to curb their more unpleasant tendencies.  That does not mean that I think their comments are of high quality.  But it does mean that I have judged that, if other readers would simply follow the rule of not responding to people they regard as trolls, these people will not pose a serious problem.

Think of it on the model of a party.  Some of your fellow guests will be so interesting that you could talk to them for hours; some will be good for maybe ten or fifteen minutes of conversation before you run out of things to say to one another; some will be total bores; and a handful will be completely obnoxious – getting drunk, starting fights, acting lecherously, etc.  Now, a good host should throw out people in that last category, but should let all the others stay and leave it to the guests to figure out who is who.  And of course, a person who is boring to one guest may not be to another.  There’s no need to go on and on about how boring some fellow guest is.  If you don’t want to talk to him, don’t.  If others do, that’s their problem.

Finally, please remember not to post off-topic comments.  Other than the nastier troll comments, there’s nothing more annoying than a comment that begins “This is off-topic, but…”  If it’s off-topic, don’t post it.  I will delete it and all responses to it.

Separating scientism and state

Scientism transforms science into an intolerant and all-encompassing ideology.  Bad as it is when it issues in crackpot philosophy, it can be even worse when used to rationalize destructive public policy – as with the increasingly idiotic and oppressive lockdowns that have been imposed across much of the world.  Now perhaps more than ever we need the corrective provided by the late, great philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994), who argued trenchantly for a separation of scientism and state.  I offer a primer in a new article at The American Mind.

The particle collection that fancied itself a physicist

I haven’t done a “Physicists say the darndest things” post in a while.  People usually ask me to write one up every time a Lawrence Krauss, Sean Carroll, or Stephen Hawking (well, lately not Hawking) publishes a new “gee whiz” pop philosophy book masquerading as a pop science book.  I find the genre extremely boring.  It’s always the same dreary, sophomoric PBS-level stuff: We’re all just heaps of particles, but golly this really increases rather than decreases the wonder of it all, and here’s some half-baked amateur metaphysics and life lessons that even hardcore materialist philosophers would regard as fallacious and banal.  The only variable is whether the crap philosophy in these $30 time wasters is coupled with clueless arrogance (cough, Krauss) or at least presented with some humility. 

In Brian Greene’s case we have someone who seems a pleasant enough fellow.  But his new book Until the End of Time nevertheless exhibits the usual foibles of the genre.  I’ll focus here on what he says about the place of the human mind in the physical universe (the topic of chapter 5).  The basic metaphysical assumption is a crude reductionism: All that really exists, we are assured, are basic particles governed by mathematical laws.  Hence consciousness, free will, etc. must somehow either be reduced without remainder to these, or eliminated from our picture of reality.  The problem Greene wants to solve in the chapter is to explain how this program can most plausibly be carried out.

Physics ain’t all that

There are three main difficulties with Greene’s solution to the problem.  First, the solution is a non-starter, because second, he doesn’t understand the problem in the first place.  But third, it doesn’t matter, because the reductionistic assumption that creates the problem isn’t true anyway.

Let’s start with that last point.  Greene insists that the “evidence” supports his basic reductionist assumption.  In fact, the “evidence” does no such thing, and the assumption is false.  Greene himself inadvertently hints at the reason why.  For one thing, he writes:

The art of science, of which Newton was the master, lies in making judicious simplifications that render problems tractable while retaining enough of their essence to ensure that the conclusions drawn are relevant.  The challenge is that simplifications effective for one class of problems can be less so for others.  Model the planets as solid balls and you can work out their trajectories with ease and precision.  Model your head as a solid ball and the insights into the nature of mind will be less enlightening.  But to jettison unproductive approximations and lay bare the inner workings of a system containing as many particles as the brain – a laudable goal – would require mastering a level of complexity fantastically beyond the reach of today's most sophisticated mathematical and computational methods. (p. 117)

Very true.  The problem, though, is that Greene seems to think that if we didhave a complete mathematical description of the particles that make up a brain, then we would have captured all there is to the brain.  What he fails to see is that such a description would itself be just as much a simplifying abstraction as modeling your head as a solid ball would be.  True, it would be a model that captures much more of the mathematical structure of the brain, but the point is that it would still be capturing only mathematical structure and nothing else. 

But is there anything more to matter than its mathematical structure?  Of course there is, because there is no such thing as mathematical structure without some concrete reality that has the structure.  Mathematical structure by itself is a mere abstraction from concrete reality.  A description of the brain in terms of nothing more than particles governed by mathematical laws, no matter how complex this description, can no more give you a complete description of the brain than spherical geometry can give you a complete description of a planet or a basketball.  And Greene himself inadvertently admits this too.  He writes:

I don’t know what mass is.  I don't know what electric charge is.  What I do know is that mass produces and responds to a gravitational force, and electric charge produces and responds to an electromagnetic force.  So while I can’t tell you what these features of particles are, I can tell you what these features do… For gravitational and electromagnetic influences, any concern that substituting action and response for an intrinsic definition amounts to an intellectual sleight of hand is, for most researchers, alleviated by the spectacularly accurate predictions we can extract from our mathematical theories of these two forces. (p. 133)

What Greene is acknowledging here is that the methods of physics don’t capture the intrinsic nature of phenomena, but only those relations between phenomena susceptible of mathematically precise description.  Hence physics simply doesn’t tell us everything there is to know even about the material world (let alone anything beyond the material world).  As I have noted many times, this is a point that used to be often commented upon by scientists and philosophers (Poincaré, Duhem, Russell, Eddington, et al.) and has in recent years been getting renewed attention in academic philosophy. 

What Greene doesn’t see is that the point completely undermines his basic reductionist assumption.  Why should we assume that what is real must be reducible to physics’ mathematical description of basic particles, if we already know that that description doesn’t capture every aspect of reality in the first place?

Greene also acknowledges that we need what he calls “nested stories” about different “layers of reality” – not just the story about what is going on at the level of fundamental particles governed by mathematical laws, but also “higher-level accounts” couched in language about learning, creativity, thinking, deliberating, and other concepts that have no applicability at the level of laws and particles (pp. 154-55).  Readers of Daniel Dennett will recognize in this a warmed over variation on his theory of the different “stances” we might take toward phenomena (namely the physical stance, the design stance, and the intentional stance).

All the same, Greene insists on giving the lower-level story about particles and laws a privileged status, and treating any part of a higher-level story that cannot be reformulated in lower-level terms as merely a useful fiction.  But why should we agree with that?  For one thing, the thesis that the higher-level stories are just convenient fictions faces the same problem that all versions of anti-realism do, namely that it is hard to see how these “stories” could work so well, and indeed be as practically indispensable as they are, if they weren’t true.  (This is known as a “no miracles” argument in the philosophy of science literature.)

For another thing, why should we not turn the tables and hold instead that it is the higher-level story that tells us the truth about the world, whereas the lower-level story is merely a simplifying abstraction that is useful for certain purposes (such as technological ones) but that leaves out much of concrete reality and thus is not strictly true?  This is essentially the view taken by anti-reductionist philosophers of science like Nancy Cartwright.

Greene claims that the “evidence” provided by the successful predictions made using the laws of physics supports his reductionist position, but it does nothing of the kind.  After all, as Greene himself happily acknowledges, there are no laws that allow us rigorously to predict the behavior of systems conceived of asdogs, cats, basketballs, dollar bills, human beings, etc.  We have to abstract out all that is distinctive of these things qua biological, cultural, economic, etc. phenomena and describe them instead in the simplifying terms of physics, and then we will get rigorous predictions (though only of those aspects of their behavior that are reflected in the simplifying description). 

So, all that Greene is entitled to say is that mathematically precise laws accurately describe the behavior of systems modeled at a high enough level of abstraction to be characterizable in terms of mathematically precise laws.  Which, though not entirely unimpressive (since it could have turned out that the laws failed no matter how abstractly we modeled the phenomena) is still not nearly as impressive as Greene needs it to be.  In particular, it hardly shows that there is no more to physical reality than is captured by the laws and abstract models.

Greene’s fallacy is like that of someone who says that, since a map is enormously useful for getting around a certain bit of terrain, predicting what you’ll see when you reach this or that part of it, etc., it follows that there is nothing more to the terrain that what is captured by the map.  As Alfred Korzybski once said, “the map is not the territory.”  If only more physicists were capable of seeing what a crackpot linguist could!

Anyway, whether you agree with me or with Greene, here’s the thing: The dispute is not a scientific one but a philosophical one.  As I have argued at length in Aristotle’s Revenge and elsewhere, the compelling arguments are all on the anti-reductionist side.  But even if we anti-reductionists were wrong about that, Greene has said nothing to show that we are.  Greene thinks he has solidly established a metaphysical result by drawing it out of physics, but all he has actually done is to read a dubious and unsupported metaphysical claim intophysics. 

Physics cannot solve the problem, because it creates the problem

Let’s move on to the second difficulty, which is that Greene does not understand the problem he is trying to solve.  To be fair, he does at least see that there isa problem facing anyone who wants to insist on the kind of reductionism he favors while also affirming the reality of conscious experience.  He appeals to arguments like Thomas Nagel’s “bat argument” and Frank Jackson’s “knowledge argument” to illustrate the problem, and he realizes that they can’t be waved away after the fashion of the village Reddit materialist. 

All the same, he fails to see the depth of the problem, and in particular fails to see that the methods of physics are precisely what generate the problem in the first place, so that it is clueless to think (as Greene does) that the problem can be resolved by further application of those methods.  Moreover, some of the writers Greene cites make this point themselves.

Here’s the basic idea.  The founders of modern physics put at the center of the scientific conception of the world the idea that matter should be characterized in terms of quantifiable primary qualities alone – size, shape, motion, position, etc.  Irreducibly qualitative features like color, sound, heat, cold, and the like were to be treated as secondary qualities, reflecting the way we experience the world, but not how the world really is in itself.  To be more precise, for purposes of physics, colors were to be redefinedin terms of surface reflectance properties, sounds in terms of compression waves, temperature in terms of molecular motion, etc.  Hence, if by “red” we mean such-and-such a reflectance property, then we can say that a certain apple is red; but if instead we mean by “red” the way red looks to everyday experience, then that exists only in the conscious observer, and not in the apple itself.  If by “heat” we mean such-and-such a pattern of molecular motion, then we can say that the water in a certain bathtub is hot; but if instead we mean by “heat” the way heat feels in everyday experience, then that too exists only in the consciousness of the observer.  And so on for other secondary qualities (as Greene himself recounts at p. 139).

Though the details of the story have changed over the centuries, what has persisted to the present day is a tendency to treat so-called secondary qualities as merely the qualia of our conscious experience of the material world, rather than anything to be found in the material world itself.  They are simply not the kind of thing that can be captured by the purely quantitative, mathematical language to which physics confines its description of matter.  And the problem is that this conception of matter entails a kind of dualism.  For if these qualities do not exist in the material world, then they must not exist in the brain, which is part of the material world.  Yet if they do exist in the mind, then the mind must not be identical with the brain or with any other part of the material world.

Like so many other superficial materialists, Greene thinks the problem merely has to do with its being intuitively difficult to see how conscious experiences could be material.  No, the problem is much deeper than that – it is that modern physics essentially defines the physical world in a way that entails that consciousness is non-physical.   The problem has less to do with consciousness than with matter as physics conceives of it.

Descartes and his followers saw this implication, and that (rather than intuition, religious prejudice, or some other anticlimactic rationale) is why they judged consciousness to be immaterial.  Indeed, the basic problem was recognized by the ancient atomist Democritus, who is, ironically, quoted by Greene himself.  In particular, Greene cites the Intellect’s side in an exchange Democritus imagined the Intellect having with the Senses:

Intellect: Color is by convention, sweet by convention, bitter by convention; in truth there are but atoms and the void.

What Greene does not quote is the retort that Democritus put into the mouth of the Senses:

Senses: Wretched mind, from us you are taking the evidence by which you would overthrow us?  Your victory is your own fall.

Democritus’s point is that if the atomist says boththat atoms are all that exist andthat color, sweetness, etc. and the other qualities of conscious experience are not to be found in the atoms, then we have a paradox.  For conscious experience is what provides the empirical evidence on which the atomist account is itself based!  The atomist thus seems unable to fit the very evidence his theory relies on into the picture of the world the theory describes.  Democritus was intellectually honest enough to take note of this problem, though we don’t know how he tried to resolve it, if he did.

Erwin Schrödinger noted that the same problem afflicts modern physics, which takes for granted a conception of matter that is in the relevant respect like that of the ancient atomists (though of course in other respects it is very different).  And Nagel’s argument in “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” makes the same point.  The way Nagel puts it is that since physics works with a conception of matter as essentially objective (in the sense of being independent of any particular observer’s point of view), it cannot incorporate into its picture of reality the subjectivityof conscious experience (which is precisely tied to the point of view of the observer).

For this reason, Nagel and other contemporary philosophers of mind like David Chalmers have argued that consciousness cannot be explained in physical terms unless physics revises its conception of matter.  Greene considers Chalmers’ version of this idea, but replies that there is no “convincing evidence” for such a thesis (p. 135).  But the reason he doesn’t see the evidence is, as Orwell would say, because it’s right in front of his nose.  It is there in physics’ own conception of matter, which excludes consciousness from the material world precisely by allowing into that world only what can be described in the language of mathematics.

Nobody in here but us particles

Greene is keen on saying that we are all just “collections of particles,” and goes on at length about how he is himself just a collection of particles (pp. 156-57).  That we seem to be more than that is, he suggests, just an illusion.  Here again he borrows from Dennett, by way of neuroscientist Michael Graziano.  Just as, according to the primary/secondary quality story, we project onto external reality properties that aren’t really there (such as the red of a Ferrari, in Greene’s example), so too do we project onto the internal world of the brain a stream of conscious thoughts and experiences that aren’t really there.  Greene writes:

You continuously create a schematic mental representation of your own state of mind.  If you are looking at the red Ferrari, not only do you create a schematic representation of the car, you also create a schematic representation of your Ferrari-focused attention.  All the features you bind together to represent the Ferrari are augmented by an additional quality summarizing your own mental focus…

[This] is the heart of why conscious experience seems to float unmoored in the mind.  When the brain's penchant for simplifiedschematic representations is applied to itself, to its own attention, the resulting description ignores the very physical processes responsible for that attention.  That is why thoughts and sensations seem ethereal, as if they come from nowhere, as if they hover in our heads. (pp. 140-1)

Now, I certainly understand the attractions of this “higher-order representation” sort of view.  I once defended a version of it myself, in my doctoral dissertation during my naturalist days.  But it’s hopeless.  Here are some of the problems with it.

First, it just keeps kicking the problem back a stage, ad infinitum.  Again, the view starts with the primary/secondary quality thesis that redness, heat, etc. as common sense understands such qualities don’t exist in the external material world but only in our representations of it, as the qualia of conscious experience.  This opens up the problem that if these qualities don’t exist in external material things like the Ferrari, then they can’t exist in the brain either, since it too is material.  Greene’s answer to this problem is to say: “OK, then not only do they not exist in the Ferrari, but they don’t exist in the brain’s representationof the Ferrari; instead they exist in the brain’s higher-order representation of the brain’s representation of the Ferrari!”  And of course, that just moves the pea under another shell, because higher-order representations in the brain are just as material as first-order representations in the brain.  And if Greene deals with this problem by appealing to some third-order representation, then the problem will just pop up again there, like the proverbial whack-a-mole (if I can introduce yet another analogy).

Second, it’s actually worse than that, because the notion of “representation” is itself a mental notion which, like consciousness, cannot be assimilated to the conception of matter physics has inherited from the early moderns.  On that conception, matter is just colorless, odorless, soundless, tasteless, and meaningless particles in motion.  Matter on its own does not stand for, point to, refer to, or represent anything; it lacks intentionality or “directedness toward” any object beyond itself (to put the point using the standard technical philosophical jargon).  The early moderns’ conception of matter took intentionality no less than qualia to exist only in the mind’s awareness of the physical world and not in the physical world itself – which, again, is why they took the modern conception of matter to entail the immateriality of the mind.

So, if Greene is beholden to this conception of matter, he owes us an explanation of how intentionality or representational content can arise in a material world thus understood.  But his “explanation” essentially amounts to saying: “Representation arises in a world that doesn’t already include it once the brain starts representing itself as the sort of thing that has representations in it.”  That’s like Feynman’s example of the painter who claimed he could make yellow paint by mixing only red and white paint, as long as he also added some yellow paint to the mix somewhere along the way.  The painter can make yellow paint where it doesn’t yet exist – but only if there’s already some yellow paint lying around.  And the brain on Greene’s account can make mental representations where they don’t already exist – but only if there are some mental representations lying around.  If you don’t see the fallacy here, then you might be qualified to write a pop science bestseller.

Third, Greene’s position entails a self-defeating skepticism.  Not only do we have no genuine access to the external world – but only to our inner representations of it – it turns out we don’t really have access even to those inner representations of the external world either, but only to representations of them.  And in fact (if we follow this out consistently), we don’t have access even to those, but only to yet higher-order representations ad infinitum.  So how do we know that anything is real, including Greene’s own account of what is really going on? 

Even professional philosophers like Dennett who peddle these sorts of views are unable to solve the problems facing them.  Poor Greene isn’t even aware that the problems exist.  And yet, though less obnoxious than a blowhard like Krauss, he is no less confident in his absurd conclusions. 

It can be charming when a child pretends that he is a cloud, or a boulder, or a lion, or even – I suppose – a collection of particles.  It’s considerably less charming when a grown man does it, and when he is a grown man with a Ph.D. and a tenured position at Columbia, it’s downright embarrassing.  But you need only turn on the news to see that otherwise intelligent people believing ever more ridiculous things on the basis of ever more convoluted sophistries is the story of our age.  There is a crucial but widely overlooked lesson here.  When your basic assumptions are unsound, greater intelligence by no means guarantees that you will come to see this.  On the contrary, sometimes you will end up only morehardened in error than a less intelligent person would be, because you will be able to come up with subtler fallacies and cleverer self-deceptions.

Related posts:

Greene on Nozick on nothing

Why are (some) physicists so bad at philosophy?

Not understanding nothing

A gigantic book royalty check from nothing

Scientists should tell Lawrence Krauss to shut up already

Carroll on laws and causation

Mad scientists

Let’s play Jeopardy

ANSWER:

They all claim that 2 and 2 can sometimes equal 5.

QUESTION:

Who are Fr. Antonio Spadaro, Critical Social Justice ideologues, and the Party (Ingsoc) in George Orwell’s 1984?

Russell’s No Man’s Land

In his History of Western Philosophy , Bertrand Russell famously characterized philosophy as follows:

Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science.  Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation.  All definite knowledge – so I should contend – belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology.  But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides; and this No Man’s Land is philosophy.  Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. (p. xiii)

I would certainly take issue with various things Russell says here, and this doesn’t really work as a strict definition of philosophy (and perhaps isn’t meant to be that).  However, at least with the “No Man’s Land” business, Russell is on to something. 

As Russell himself emphasized many times, the reason science – and in particular, physics – yields results that are as certain as they are is precisely that it is has limited itself to describing only those aspects of physical reality of which such certainty is attainable – in particular, those susceptible of strict mathematical description.  Everything else it ignores.  Accordingly, physics is somewhat like a student who makes sure only to take classes that he knows he will get an A in, and then brags about his superior GPA relative to people who take the other classes.  Russell held that what physics really reveals are only very abstract structural features of the natural world, but not the intrinsic natures of the entities that have these features.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that, and Russell’s position needs to be qualified in various ways.  I refer the interested reader to my discussion of Russell’s epistemic structural realism in chapter 3 of Aristotle’s Revenge.  The point for present purposes is that scientists are often tempted to transform what is really only a useful but limited methodinto a complete metaphysics, and to judge that whatever cannot be captured by the method must not be real, or at least must not be worth talking about.  It is really this attitude of scientism– rather than science itself – that attacks the “No Man’s Land” of philosophy from one direction.  Scientism regards philosophy either as altogether illegitimate, or as legitimate only to the extent that it is continuous with science.  Certainly it rules out any ambitious claims to extra-scientific metaphysical knowledge of the kind made by Platonists, Aristotelians, Scholastics, rationalists, et al.

The attack from the other direction comes, not really from theology per se, but rather from an attitude that is a kind of ideologization of theology, just as scientism is an ideologization of science.  I speak of fideism.  Now, there is the crude, stereotypical kind of fideism of the uneducated bumpkin who thumps his Bible and distrusts learning; and the emotionalistic sort of fideism of the believer who insists that religion is a matter of the heart and not the head.  But those are not the sorts of things I’m talking about.  What I am talking about are theological systems which as a matter of theoretical principle (rather than out of mere ignorance or a sentimental temperament) distrust the methods and claims of philosophy, or at least of any philosophy conducted independently of theology.

For example, there is Luther’s hostility to the Aristotelian-Scholastic system of natural theology and ethics, understood as providing substantive knowledge of God and morality through purely philosophical means apart from revelation (where this system was the main target of Luther’s remarks about reason being “the devil’s whore,” etc.).  There is Barth’s hostility to the idea that purely philosophical arguments for God’s existence provide a “point of contact” by which divine revelation is mediated.  There is, in the Catholic context, the nouvelle theologie’s hostility to the idea of natura pura or “pure nature,” which includes the notion that a certain, if limited, knowledge of God is available through purely philosophical arguments independent of revelation.

Just as scientism knows nothing of grace and reduces the world to a desiccated conception of nature, fideistic theological systems like these threaten entirely to obliterate nature and absorb the world into a rarefied conception of grace.  Scientism brings us down to the level of the other animals, whereas fideism pretends we are angels.  Both thereby make God unknowable, since in fact we are neither mere animals (who cannot know God at all) nor angels (who, unlike us, need not rely on inference to know God).  Both refuse to recognize that philosophy provides a ladder to God – scientism not letting us put the ladder up in the first place, fideism insisting that it can kick the ladder away and remain aloft (when in reality it comes crashing down).

Needless to say, all of this goes beyond anything Russell himself was talking about.  But I think it captures what is true in his famous characterization.  He was wrong to insinuate that either science or theology per se are prone to hostility toward philosophy.  Rightly understood, science, theology, and philosophy are perfectly compatible and complementary both in their methods and their results.  But the distortion of science that is scientism and the distortion of theology that is fideism are certainly hostile to philosophy, and it is they which treat it as a No Man’s Land.

I’m inclined to adopt the remark famously misattributed to General Patton when asked what he would do if he found himself trapped between the Nazis and the Soviets.  What should the Scholastic philosopher do when surrounded by scientism on one side and fideism on the other?  Attack in both directions!

The links you’ve been longing for

At Medium, David Oderberg on the prophets Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury.

3:16 interviews Thomist philosopher Gaven Kerr.

At Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Kerr reviews Timothy Pawl’s book In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology.

Honest criticism or cancel culture?  At Persuasion, Jonathan Rauch on six signs that you’re dealing with the latter.  At The New York Times, Ross Douthat offers ten theses about cancel culture.

If aliens really exist, where the hell are they?  Michael Flynn surveys 34 possible answers.

Coleman Hughes on nonconformist economist Thomas Sowell, at City Journal.

At The Josias, James Berquist on the New Natural Law Theory as the source of Bostock’s error.

Sam Dresser on that time Carnap and Heidegger took a stroll together in Davos, at Aeon.

Stephen Barr reviews Kenneth Kemp’s The War That Never Was: Evolution and Christian Theology, at First Things.

Grant Geissman’s mammoth The History of EC Comics is coming soon from Taschen. 

At The Atlantic, John McWhorter on the dehumanizing condescension of White Fragility.  Matt Taibbi says it “may be the dumbest book ever written.”  Christopher Caldwell on “prophet of anti-racism” Ibram X. Kendi, at National Review.  At City Journal, Coleman Hughes says “anti-intellectualism” is more like it.

Short videos on topics in philosophy from Thinking Illustrated.

Apple TV offers a first look at its upcoming adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation.  The debut of Marvel’s Disney+ lineup has been delayed because of the pandemic.

The French translation of The Last Superstition is now available in a Kindle edition.

At New Discourses, James Lindsay on how to help people leave the woke cult.  Andrew Sullivan on the roots of wokeness.  At UnHerd, John Gray on its millenarian religious character.  Matt Taibbi says the left has now become what it sees in the right.  Sam Harris decries its “public hysteria and moral panic.”

Then there’s that other bit of public hysteria.  At The Times, Bernard-Henri Lévy says that the coronavirus has plunged the world into “psychotic delirium.”  Angelo Codevilla on the COVID coup, at The American Mind.  Michael Fumento notes ten things public health officials got wrong.  Alex Berenson on whether lockdowns work.

At 3:16, Richard Marshall interviews John Cottingham on Descartes and religion.

Eric Kaufmann on Britain’s Generation Z and conservatism, at UnHerd.

Agnes Callard on “publish or perish” in academic philosophy, at The Point.

Via YouTube, Jazziz magazine interviews jazz vocalist Carolyn Leonhart about her career, including her work with Steely Dan.  Ultimate Classic Rock on how Michael McDonald came to work with the Dan.  Paul Zollo on Walter Becker, at American Songwriter.

The latest controversy in academic philosophy: CounterPunchon “GenderGate.”  Alex Byrne comments.

Standardized Apologetics lists the top five must-read intermediate apologetics books.  Guess what’s at the number two spot.

New books for Thomists: Herbert McCabe: Recollecting a Fragmented Legacy by Franco Manni; Thomism and the Problem of Animal Suffering by B. Kyle Keltz; The Light That Binds: A Study in Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics of Natural Lawby Stephen Brock.

At RealClearDefense, Francis Sempa argues that China’s rise proves that MacArthur was right.

At The Josias, John Brungardt surveys the online debate over Catholic integralism.  Editiones Scholasticae recently published Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy by Thomas Crean and Alan Fimister.

Duke Today reports that studies of brain activity aren’t as useful as scientists thought.  Raymond Tallis on Patricia Smith Churchland’s Conscience, at Times Literary Supplement.

At Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Mary Katrina Krizan reviews Devin Henry’s book Aristotle on Matter, Form, and Moving Causes: The Hylomorphic Theory of Substantial Generation.

James Piereson on the conservatism of George Will, at The New Criterion.

Capturing Christianity recently hosted a debate between William Lane Craig and Graham Oppy on whether mathematics points to God.

What is It Like to Be a Philosopher? interviews Spencer Case about his time in the military, religion, conservatism, living under quarantine in Wuhan, and much else.

Popes, creeds, councils, and catechisms contra universalism

One more post on the topic of universalism before we give it a rest for a while.  Whatever other Christians might think, for the Catholic Church the matter is settled.  That it is possible that some will be damned forever is the de fide teaching of the Church, so that the thesis that it is necessary that all will eventually be saved is heretical.  This is why even Hans Urs von Balthasar and Catholics of like mind argue only that we may hope that all will be saved, not that we can know that they will be, much less that it is necessary that they will be.

It is worthwhile gathering the key magisterial texts on the matter.  In an earlier post I cited many passages from scripture and many statements from the Fathers of the first two centuries of the Church, before Origen introduced the universalist novelty.  Many more statements from the Fathers of later centuries could be cited, as well as many statements from the Doctors of the Church.  In Catholic theology, that the Fathers and Doctors are nearly unanimous on some point of doctrine by itself gives it enormous weight, even apart from formal magisterial pronouncements.  But here I will just concentrate on magisterial statements and related texts.

Some critics of the previous post objected to its “Denzinger theology” style of piling up quotations, and will no doubt object to my piling up some more in this post.  But like most critics of this style, they miss the point.  Yes, a deep understanding of Catholic doctrine cannot be had merely by accumulating and reiterating formulas from the past.  But before you can probe Catholic doctrine at depth, you first have to know what it is.  And noting that a doctrine has for millennia been reiterated consistently, especially in scripture, the teaching of the Fathers and Doctors, creeds, conciliar pronouncements, papal statements, catechisms, etc. is an excellent way of determining that.  “Denzinger theology” is not the last word, but it must always be the first word.  It determines the boundaries within which orthodox theological discussion must take place.

I have not tried to be comprehensive.  In particular, I have not quoted every magisterial statement on the reality and nature of hell, but only the statements clearly asserting or implying the falsity of the universalist claim that none can be damned forever: 

Pope St. Anastasius I (399-401):

The reverend and honourable Theophilus our brother and fellow-bishop, ceases not to watch over the things that make for salvation, that God's people in the different churches may not by reading Origen run into awful blasphemies.

Being informed, then, by a letter of the aforesaid bishop, we inform your holiness… to the end that no man may contrary to the commandment read these books which we have mentioned, have condemned the same… [W]e have intimated that everything written in days gone by by Origen that is contrary to our faith is also rejected and condemned by us.

I send this letter to your holiness by the hand of the presbyter Eusebius, a man filled with a glowing faith and love for the Lord.  He has shewn to me some blasphemous chapters which made me shudder as I passed judgement on them.  If Origen has put forth any other writings, you are to know that they and their author are alike condemned by me.  (Letter to Simplicianus)

The credal formula Fides Damasi (or “Faith of Damasus”) (5th century):

It is our hope that we shall receive from him eternal life, the reward of good merit, or else (we shall) receive the penalty of eternal punishment for sins.

The Athanasian Creed (5th century):

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith.  Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly…

He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty, from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.  At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.  This is the Catholic Faith, which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.

Pope Vigilius (537-55):

If anyone says or holds that the punishment of the demons and of impious men is temporary, and that it will have an end at some time, that is to say, there will be a complete restoration of the demons or of impious men, let him be anathema.  (Canons against Origen)

Pope Innocent III (1198-1216):

The punishment of original sin is the deprivation of the vision of God, but the punishment of actual sin is the torment of eternal hell.  (Maiores Ecclesiae Causas)

Fourth Lateran Council (1215):

He will come at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, to render to every person according to his works, both to the reprobate and to the elect.  All of them will rise with their own bodies, which they now wear, so as to receive according to their deserts, whether these be good or bad; for the latter perpetual punishment with the devil, for the former eternal glory with Christ.

Pope Innocent IV (1243-54):

But if anyone dies unrepentant in the state of mortal sin, he will undoubtedly be tormented forever in the fires of an everlasting hell.  (Letter to the Bishop of Tusculum)

The Council of Trent (1545-63):

The council texts concerning justification make reference in several places to “eternal punishment” (Session VI, Chapter 14 and Canons 25 and 30), and those concerning penance refer to “the loss of eternal happiness, and the incurring of eternal damnation” (Session XIV, Canon 5).

In addition, the falsity of universalist claims to the effect that we cannot forever resist God’s grace and that we can be assured that we will ultimately be saved is implied by the following passages:

In adults the beginning of justification must be attributed to God’s prevenient grace through Jesus Christ… In this way, God touches the heart of man with the illumination of the Holy Spirit, but man himself is not entirely inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he can reject it. (Session VI, Chapter 5)

If anyone says that the free will of man, moved and awakened by God, in no way cooperates by an assent to God’s awakening call… and that man cannot refuse his assent if he wishes, but that like a lifeless object he does nothing at all and is merely passive, let him be anathema. (Session VI, Canon 4)

If anyone says that he has absolute and infallible certitude that he will surely have the great gift of perseverance to the end, unless he has learned this by a special revelation, let him be anathema. (Session VI, Canon 16)

The Roman Catechism, promulgated by Pope St. Pius V (1566):

Turning next to those who shall stand on His left, He will pour out His justice upon them in these words: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

The first words, depart from me, express the heaviest punishment with which the wicked shall be visited, their eternal banishment from the sight of God, unrelieved by one consolatory hope of ever recovering so great a good.  This punishment is called by theologians the pain of loss, because in hell the wicked shall be deprived forever of the light of the vision of God.

The words ye cursed, which follow, increase unutterably their wretched and calamitous condition.  If when banished from the divine presence they were deemed worthy to receive some benediction, this would be to them a great source of consolation.  But since they can expect nothing of this kind as an alleviation of their misery, the divine justice deservedly pursues them with every species of malediction, once they have been banished.

The next words, into everlasting fire, express another sort of punishment, which is called by theologians the pain of sense, because, like lashes, stripes or other more severe chastisements, among which fire, no doubt, produces the most intense pain, it is felt through the organs of sense.  When, moreover, we reflect that this torment is to be eternal, we can see at once that the punishment of the damned includes every kind of suffering.

The concluding words, which was prepared for the devil and his angels, make this still more clear.  For since nature has so provided that we feel miseries less when we have companions and sharers in them who can, at least in some measure, assist us by their advice and kindness, what must be the horrible state of the damned who in such calamities can never separate themselves from the companionship of most wicked demons? (McHugh and Callan translation, pp. 85-86)

For sin deprives us of the friendship of God, to whom we are indebted for so many invaluable blessings, and from whom we might have expected and received gifts of still higher value; and along with this it consigns us to eternal death and to torments unending and most severe. (p. 281)

Catechism of Pope St. Pius X (1908):

The Angels banished for ever from Paradise and condemned to hell are called demons, and their chief is called Lucifer or Satan…

The Last Article of the Creed teaches us that, after the present life there is another life, eternally happy for the elect in heaven, or eternally miserable for the damned in hell…

The misery of the damned consists in being for ever deprived of the vision of God and punished with eternal torments in hell.

After the resurrection of the flesh, man in the fullness of his nature, that is, in body and in soul, will be for ever happy or for ever tormented…

The bliss of heaven in the case of the blessed, and the miseries of hell in the case of the damned, will be the same in substance and in eternal duration; but in measure, or degree, they will be greater or less according to the extent of each one's merits or demerits.

Pope Pius XII (1939-58):

The revelation and the magisterium of the Church firmly establish that after the end of this earthly life, those who are guilty of grave sin will receive from the Supreme Lord a judgment and an execution of punishment, from which there is no liberation or pardon… The fact of the immutability and eternity of the judgment of damnation and its execution is beyond any discussion… The Supreme Legislator… has decreed that the validity of his judgment and its execution will never cease.  Therefore, its duration remains fixed without any limitations.  (Address to the Union of Italian Catholic Jurists of February 5, 1955, quoted in Francis Sola and Joseph Sagües, Sacrae Theologiae Summa IVB, translated by Kenneth Baker, S.J, at pp. 376-377)

Pope St. John Paul II (1978-2005):

In point of fact, the ancient councils rejected the theory of the “final apocatastasis,” according to which the world would be regenerated after destruction, and every creature would be saved; a theory which indirectly abolished hell.  But the problem remains.  Can God, who has loved man so much, permit the man who rejects him to be condemned to eternal torment?  And yet, the words of Christ are unequivocal.  In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment. (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 185)

(While Crossing the Threshold of Hope is not a magisterial document, it is worth citing as evidence of the pope’s thinking on this topic.)

Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated by Pope St. John Paul II (1992):

The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity.  Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”  The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs. (sec. 1035)

Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI (2005):

Satan and the other demons, about which Sacred Scripture and the Tradition of the Church speak, were angels, created good by God.  They were, however, transformed into evil because with a free and irrevocable choice they rejected God and his Kingdom, thus giving rise to the existence of hell. (sec. 74)

Hell consists in the eternal damnation of those who die in mortal sin through their own free choice.  The principal suffering of hell is eternal separation from God in whom alone we can have the life and happiness for which we were created and for which we long. Christ proclaimed this reality with the words, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire” (Matthew 25:41). (sec. 212)

The final or universal judgment consists in a sentence of happiness or eternal condemnation, which the Lord Jesus will issue in regard to the “just and the unjust” (Acts 24:15) when he returns as the Judge of the living and the dead.  (sec. 214)

Related posts:

How to go to hell

Does God damn you?

Why not annihilation?

A Hartless God?

No hell, no heaven

Hart, hell, and heresy

No urgency without hell

Scripture and the Fathers contra universalism

A statement from David Bentley Hart

NOTE: David Bentley Hart and I have had some very heated exchanges over the years, but I have always found him to be at bottom a decent fellow.  That remains true.  During our recent dispute over his book on universalism, the one thing I took great exception to was the accusation of dishonesty on my part, and I let David know this privately.  He sent me the following statement to post here, for which I thank him.  I would also like to reaffirm my longstanding admiration for much of his work, such as his books Atheist Delusions and The Experience of God.

Dear Ed,

Having prayed about this matter, I find I want to apologize.  I hereby fully repent of and retract any imputation to you of willful dishonesty in regard to your original review of my book, as well as in regard to all subsequent exchanges and arguments on the matter.  I admit, I concluded with a certainty that was uncharitable—and so unwarrantable—that you had only pretended to read my book; and, even if your accounts of its arguments seem wildly wrong to me, I should not have let myself assume I knew the cause of the failure of communication, or let my assumption color my view of your subsequent writings on the issue as well.  It may simply be the case that you and I are fated never to understand one another and never to agree on much at all, due to differences in our intellectual idioms, presuppositions, and commitments so basic that they cannot be overcome.  So I am sorry.  Mea maxima culpa.

My one (friendly) rebuke then is this: If you want to argue from scripture and the fathers, you should not rely on snippets of quotations rendered into standard English translations; you should consult the scholarship and the original texts in their own languages.  You should also make sure that you are firmly aware of what universalist scholars have claimed with regard to scriptural and patristic evidences before you set out to refute positions that you assume they have taken.  The issues are nowhere near as simple as they may seem.

That’s it.  I’ll continue to recommend your Philosophy of Mind and Five Arguments books to those who can profit from them.  Otherwise, I wish we could simply sign a non-aggression treaty and move on.  Oil and water need not mix to be at peace with one another.  Sometimes they can even flow into the same channels without disturbance and arrive at the same place.

No urgency without hell

A common argument in defense of the eternity of hell is that without it, there would be no urgency to repent or to convince others to repent.  Call this the “argument from urgency.”  One objection to the argument is that it makes true virtue impossible, since it transforms morality into a matter of outward obedience out of fear, rather than inward transformation out of sincere love of God.  Another is that it adds a cynical scare tactic to the moral teaching of Christ, the beauty of which is sufficient to lead us to repentance when it is properly presented.

Scare tactics?

But these objections rest on misunderstandings, or at least fail to take the argument on in its strongest form.  To see what is wrong with the first objection, consider an analogy.  Suppose someone is driving a car at 100 mph toward a cliff.  Whether from the passenger seat or (hopefully, for your sake) by cell phone, you urge him to slow down and change course, warning that he is headed for certain death.  Suppose a third party interjects: “Oh come on, resorting to scare tactics is a cynical, manipulative way to get someone to change his ways!  Sure, you might terrorize him into slowing down, but only out of fear rather than a sincere appreciation for safe driving practices.  Why not instead exhort him in a way that is likelier to transform his inward attitudes?  For example, why not laud the beauty and reasonableness of safe driving?  And why not reassure him that in any event we may have good hope that he won’t go off the cliff?”

Is this wise and morally refined advice?  Of course not.  It is foolish and sentimental advice, sure to result in the driver’s death.  There are two problems with it.  First, it treats the driver’s bad behavior and the prospect of his going off the cliff as if they were only contingently related – as if the bad behavior had no inherent tendency to lead one off the cliff, so that you may or may not bring it up when trying to reform the behavior.  In reality, of course, going off of the cliff is the inevitable result of the bad behavior, and to leave it out is not only to fail to tell the whole story about the nature of the bad behavior, but to leave out the most important part of the story.

Now, in the same way, being in thrall to sins of greed, lust, envy, wrath, pride, and so on of its very nature tends to harden one’s soul into an orientation away from God and toward something less than God.  And that means that the more hardened one is in such an orientation, the more likely that that is what one’s soul will be “locked” onto at death.  One will, as it were, then go “off the cliff” toward which one had been speeding prior to death.  But to be forever locked onto an end other than God is just what it is to be damned.  So, to warn sinners of hell is not some unnecessary exercise in scare tactics, any more than warning the driver of his certain doom is.  Rather, as with the warning to the driver, it is simply to give a complete description of where someone’s behavior will of its nature inevitably lead him if he does not change course.

That is the traditional Christian understanding of the effects of sin, and the Thomist tradition gives one possible way of understanding the underlying metaphysics.  Whether or not you agree with that understanding or the proposed underlying metaphysics, the point is that it is a mistake to interpret the threat of hell as a mere scare tactic that has nothing to do with motivating inward moral transformation.  On the contrary, it is precisely a warning of what a failure to achieve a genuine inward moral transformation will inevitably lead to.

But that is by no means to concede that scare tactics are always out of place.  That is the second point illustrated by the driving example.  If a guy is speeding toward a cliff, what charity demands is not reassuring him that everything will be OK, but precisely scaring the hell out of him so that he’ll change course.  Similarly, sometimes warning someone of the prospect of hell can be the best way, maybe even the only way, to get him to reconsider the sort of evil life he is living. 

Yes, fear of punishment is not the whole of the story of the moral life, or even the most important part of the story.  No Catholic defender of the doctrine of hell denies that; on the contrary, such defenders emphasize that perfect contrition, sorrow out of love of God, is the only way a person can be saved outside of sacramental confession.  But it simply does not follow that fear of punishment is never even part of the story.  It can be precisely the first step in the process of inward moral transformation, even if it is far from the last step.  Everyone knows that this is true in everyday life – that the prospect of prison, or financial ruin, or death, or loss of reputation or friends or family, can lead a criminal, a drug addict, an adulterer, or a greedy person, to reconsider the path he is on.  There is no reason at all why fear of hell might not do the same.

Christ’s urgency

It would also be quite silly to pretend that the argument from urgency is something defenders of the doctrine of hell have added to Christ’s teaching.  No, the argument is rather that the reality of eternal damnation is the only way to make sense of the urgency that is already there in Christ’s own teaching.  Consider some passages just from Matthew’s Gospel:

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20, RSV)

If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:29-30)

Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:13-14)

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  (Matthew 10:28)

But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.  (Matthew 11:24)

Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.  And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.  (Matthew 12:31-32)

 I tell you, on the day of judgment 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)

Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age.  The Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.  (Matthew 13:40-42)

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad.  So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth. (Matthew 13: 47-50)

You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? (Matthew 23:33)

Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’  But he replied, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ (Matthew 25:11-12)

For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.  And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth. (Matthew 25:29-30)

Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’  And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:45-46)

Now, I submit that anyone reading these for the first time and with no knowledge of the dispute over universalism would naturally take Christ to be saying that there will be a day of judgment where the wicked will be condemned forever, that there are sins that will never be forgiven, that this sorry fate cannot be escaped, that few will avoid it, that it is so dire that it is better to lose an eye, a hand, or even one’s whole body than to fall into it, and that there is a finality to this judgement that entails an urgency to repent now in order to avoid it. 

Of course, annihilationists would say that the damned don’t sufferforever but are simply destroyedforever.  I have argued against this view elsewhere, but what matters for the moment is that even the annihilationist agrees that Christ’s words entail an irrevocable condemnation of the wicked for their failure to repent of the sins of this life.  What you cannot get out of passages like these is the universalist view that all will in fact be saved, that every sin will be forgiven, that no one will be condemned forever, etc.

Universalist non-urgency

There is a kind of Orwellian perversity to the universalist’s way of dealing with texts like these.  Out of one side of his mouth, he admits – he has to, because it is undeniable – that such passages seem incompatible with universalism.  It’s just that he modesty proposes that there are other ways of reading them that can be reconciled with his position.  Even David Bentley Hart, in That All Shall Be Saved, acknowledges the “highly pictorial and dramatic imagery of exclusion used by Jesus to describe the fate of the derelict when the Kingdom comes” (p. 117).  And he concedes that “the idea of an eternal punishment for the reprobate – in the sense not merely of a final penalty, but also of endlessly perduring torment – seems to have had a substantial precedent in the literature of the intertestamental period, such as 1 Enoch, and perhaps in some early schools of rabbinic thought” (Ibid.).  But though he allows for the “possibility” of reading Christ’s words that way, he insists that there is “nothing in the gospels that obliges one to believe this” and says that we simply cannot make “any dogmatic pronouncements on the matter” (Ibid.).  As I noted in a previous post, Hart also resorts to such agnosticism when dealing with passages in Revelation that don’t sit well with universalism.

Now, when you consider any one passage in isolation, you may or may not think the universalist can cobble together some sort of case.  But the arguments are always strained, lawyerly in the worst sense of trying desperately to open up some loophole by which the obvious implication of the text might be escaped.  (Again, see my previous post for discussion of some of the problems.)  And when all the relevant scriptural passages are considered en masse, the idea that you can reconcile scripture with universalism just falls apart.  The idea that none of the relevant passages should be taken at face value, and that the vast majority of readers have for two millennia been getting all of them that badly wrong, is just too silly for words.  And that is, of course, why, as Hart admits, “just about the whole Christian tradition” (p. 81) has always rejected universalism.

But now the universalist speaks out of the other side of his mouth.  Having cobbled together a tentative strained universalist reading of this passage, a tentative strained universalist reading of that passage, a tentative strained universalist reading of a third passage, and so on, he suddenly dumps the whole lot of these sophistries on you and pretends that they together amount to a demonstration that there is nothing in scripture that is incompatible with universalism.  He pretends that the burden of proof is now on the critics of universalism to show otherwise.  By such sleight of hand, what has always been considered heterodox is now presented as having the presumption in its favor, and what has always been considered orthodox is put on the defensive. 

Thus do we have John Milbank matter-of-factly asserting: “Of course it is Edward Feser who is heterodox and not DB Hart.”

Yes, of course.  And of course, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

Related posts:

How to go to hell

Does God damn you?

Why not annihilation?

A Hartless God?

No hell, no heaven

Hart, hell, and heresy