Edward Feser's Blog, page 4

On the tariff crisis

Like many othersacross the political spectrum, I’ve been alarmed at the extreme tariff policyPresident Trump announced last week, which was met by a massive drop in thestock market.  As with almost everythingelse he does, the policy was nevertheless instantly embraced with enthusiasmby his most devoted followers, whohave glibly dismissed all concerns and assured us that we are on the cusp of agolden age.  If this does not sound likethe conclusion of careful and dispassionate reasoning, that is because it isn’t.  Whatever the outcome of Trump’s policy, theflippant boosterism with which it has been put forward and defended is contraryto reason.  

Postliberalism and tariffs

It isimportant to emphasize first that the problem has nothing essentially to dowith any dogmatic opposition to tariffs as such, much less with any generalcommitment to libertarian economics.  Iam happy to acknowledge that tariffs can sometimes be a good idea, and my ownapproach to these issues is postliberal rather than libertarian or classicalliberal (or “neoliberal,” “market fundamentalist,” or any of the other epithetsbeing flung about in recent days). 

But neitherpostliberalism nor the fact that tariffs can sometimes be a good idea entailsthat they are always a good idea, orthat the particular draconian tariff regime announced last week is a goodidea.  This is not a matter that can besettled a priori by appeal toabstract principle.  It requires ajudgement of prudence that takes account of myriad concrete and contingentcircumstances.  Several thinkersrepresentative of postliberalism or allied traditions of thought have affirmedthat tariffs are of limited value and sometimes best avoided.  For example, the twentieth-century theologianJohannes Messner, a prominent exponent of Catholic Social Teaching, wrote:

[The] bilateral system [features] differential tariffagreements on the basis of reciprocity. Its various forms are based on methods of protectionism, of safeguardingthe individual national economy by measures to restrict imports.  The means employed to restrict imports[include] prohibitive tariffs… As was shown in the period between the wars…this entails a minimum of international economic cooperation, and nations have paiddearly for it by severe economic losses and chronic mass unemployment.  (SocialEthics, p. 952)

The Catholicdistributist Hilaire Belloc, while defending protectionist tariff policy,nevertheless judges that “the argument in favour of Protection applies toparticular cases only, and turns entirely upon whether an undeveloped part ofthe energies of the community can be turned into new channels or not” (Economics for Helen, p. 126).

Similarly,the contemporary postliberal political scientist Patrick Deneen, commenting inhis 2023 book Regime Change onTrump’s predilection for tariffs, wrote:

Tariffs, however, are generally crude instruments, often usedas much or more for domestic political advantage than true enhancements tonational competitiveness.  Wherenecessary, tariffs can prevent dumping and counteract advantages that foreignmanufacturers receive from public funding. However, they should generally be a policy of last resort, focusedespecially on protecting national manufacture of essential goods such aspharmaceuticals and basic materials. (p. 179)

In responseto Trump’s suggestion that tariffs might some day replace the income tax,postliberal journalist Sohrab Ahmari haswritten:

Replacing tax revenue with tariffs today isn’t workable,given the hugely expanded size and scope of the government.  And jacking up tariffs high enough to coverthe cost would discourage most nations from trading with the US in the firstplace, thus creating a drastic revenue shortfall.

In aNewsweek article thatappeared during the 2024 presidential campaign, postliberal economist PhilipPilkington, while agreeing with Trump that trade imbalances are a serious issue,doubted “whether increased tariffs and protectionism are the best way to dealwith these imbalances.”  There are, hewrote, two problems with this approach:

The first is that it overestimates what protectionism canaccomplish… Tariffs may well help protect domestic industries, but some inAmerican policy circles seem convinced that imposing tariffs will also lead toa spontaneous regrowth of industries lost to globalization.  Many such industries are highly complex andrequire skills, know-how, transport infrastructure, and other inputs that takeyears – maybe even decades – to nurture and develop.  If the American government imposes tariffs onkey sectors and American businesses have a hard time substituting the goodstargeted by the tariffs, the result will simply be a sharp uptick in the priceof the goods.

This leads us to the second problem.  The Trump campaign has signaled a desire toaggressively cut taxes, especially income taxes.  Such cuts would drastically boost the spendingpower of the average American consumer.  Yetif, at the same time, the government is restricting access to cheap foreigngoods with higher tariffs, too much money will be chasing too few goods.  This is a recipe for inflation – perhaps veryhigh inflation.

It is worthnoting that the contemporary writers just mentioned are known for sympathizingwith much of Trump’s agenda.  Naturally,none of this entails that a postliberal could not favor Trump’s tariffproposal, and some postliberals appear to do so.  The point is that there is nothing inpostliberalism in itself that entailseither accepting or rejecting it. 

But I’d addthis caveat.  The “order” part of apostliberal order is no less essential than the “postliberal” part.  And the trouble is that, whatever one thinksin the abstract of a policy like Trump’s, its actual execution tends to chaosrather than order.

The trouble with the Trump tariffs

There arethree basic sets of problems with Trump’s tariff plan, which concern its timing,conception, and execution.  Let’sconsider each in turn.

1. Timing

The countryhas been battered by inflation for four years now.  Polls show that high prices were the primaryconcern both of Trump’s base and of the swing voters without whom he could nothave won the recent election.  Trump madethis a key campaign issue, pledging:“Starting on Day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again.”  Yet it is widely acknowledged, even amongdefenders of Trump’s tariffs, that they are likely to drive prices up even higher.  They have also driven the stock market downdramatically, with retirees dependent on 401(k) accounts being the hardesthit.  The result is that consumers willhave to pay even more than the high prices they are already facing, with lessmoney available to do so.

Even if thetariffs were otherwise defensible, it is clear that this would not be the timeto impose them.  Politically, it islikely to be a disaster for Republicans, who will surely lose control ofCongress next year if prices remain high. But more importantly, it is simply unjustto impose greater economic hardship on a public that has already had enough ofit, and to whom relief was promised – especially for the sake of a radicalpolicy that is far from sure to achieve its goal, and even lacks a well-definedgoal in the first place.

2. Conception

That bringsus to the second problem.  As manycritics have noted, despite the economic risks any bold tariff policy is boundto have, the new tariff regime is both draconian and poorly thought out.  Over 100 countries are targeted by thetariffs, some of which are very steep. 

But thereseems to be no serious rationale for many of the specific amounts decidedupon.  It appears that the administration’sbasic formula not only does not make much economic sense, but hasnot even been applied correctly by the administration itself.  The policy focuses on trade imbalances, but atrade imbalance is not by itself necessarily harmful.  For example, a very poor country is bound tobuy less from the wealthy United States than the U.S. buys from it.  But this no more entails that the U.S. isgetting “screwed” by the poor country than the fact that a rich man buys morefrom a poor shopkeeper than the latter buys from the former entails that the shopkeeperis “screwing” the rich man.  Yet tinyLesotho is being hit with a 50% tariff that will inflict vastly more economicdamage on its people than any “harm” Lesotho could ever be imagined to haveinflicted on the U.S.

Furthermore,Israel agreed prior to the announcement of the plan to drop all tariffs on U.S.goods, but was hit with a new tariff anyway. The Taliban in Afghanistan got hit with a new tariff too, but a smallerone.  Russia faces no new tariffs, butUkraine does.  Among others who face themare several small islands, including one we do not trade with and two that areuninhabited.  In some cases, the newtariffs conflict with existing trade agreements.

According tosome explanations of the tariffs, they are meant as a short-term negotiatingtactic.  According to others, they areintended to be permanent.  Naturally, theuncertainty this entails makes rational economic decision-making difficult,which is one reason the stock market has taken such a big hit.  It is also said that tariffs will yield greatrevenue for the U.S. government, allowing it to cut taxes and thereby relieveconsumers hit with price increases.  Butthe more draconian a tariff regime is, the less trade there will be, whichentails that the revenue the U.S. might intheory enjoy from tariffs will not be what it in fact collects.  Obviously,if you charge people 10% or 25% or 50% more for what you are selling, itdoesn’t follow that you will actually make that much more money, because manypotential buyers will simply decide not to buy.

It is saidthat the tariffs will bring back lost manufacturing jobs.  But a tariff cannot by itself do that.  If an industry already exists, protectionistpolicies like tariffs can shield it from foreign competition.  But if the industry no longer exists, atariff won’t necessarily bring it back to life, any more than putting abulletproof vest on a corpse will resuscitate it.  To be sure, the tariff may be among theconditions that make it easier for the industry to revive.  But other conditions (such as the relevantinfrastructure and skilled labor) need to be put in place as well, and evenwhen this is possible it can take many years. There is also the fact that a tariff that on the surface appears to helpAmerican manufacturers can in fact hurt them. If the product a U.S. manufacturer makes requires components that haveto be imported from outside the U.S., then a tariff on those foreign componentswill drive costs up.  And there may be nodomestic supplier that can replace the foreign one.

Lurking inthe background of any draconian tariff proposal is, of course, memory of thenotorious Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which is widely held to have deepened theGreat Depression.  (It is an example ofwhat Messner had in mind in the quote above, when he notes the grave economicdamage that protectionist policies can inflict.)  While even a policy as extreme as Trump’sneed not have such a dire outcome, many economists are worried that it will atleast lead to a recession.

None of thisentails that there is no serious case for tariffs of any kind.  That’s not the point.  The point is that a tariff policy asambitious and risky as Trump’s should be thought out extremely carefully, andthis one is instead haphazard and reckless. Many Trump defenders will dismiss such concerns on ad hominem grounds, as the sort of thing dogmatic free marketerswould want us to believe.  This is assilly as dismissing an argument in favor of a certain tariff simply on thegrounds that it was given by a socialist. Though as it happens, socialists no less than free marketers sometimesargue against particular tariffs, as, again, some postliberalsdo.  As I’ve said, the advisability ofany particular tariff proposal does not stand or fall with one’s generalphilosophical or economic point of view. In any event, what matters is whether an argument or an objection iscorrect or not, not who raised it.  Thisshould be obvious, but in our hyper-partisan era, reminders of basic points oflogic are constantly necessary.

Defenders ofthe tariff policy also routinely appeal to what has happened to the Rust Belt,and the benefits of restoring U.S. manufacturing jobs and capacities that havebeen lost.  But this fallaciouslysupposes that because the end or goalof a tariff policy is good, it follows that the policy itself must be a goodmeans to achieve it.  This is as silly asarguing that communism must be good and achievable, because those who favor ithave the good motive of helping poor and working people.  It also fails to consider other possiblemeans to the ends the tariff policy is said to be motivated by.  For example, Deneen suggests in Regime Change that the U.S.manufacturing base can be bolstered without heavy reliance on tariffs, by governmentspending to support infrastructure, research and development, and relevant education.  And in the article linked to above,Pilkington proposes, in place of tariffs, new rules governing internationaltrade.

3. Execution

As to theexecution of the tariff policy, there are two basic problems.  The first is the intellectually and morallyunserious manner in which it has been done. Concerns like the ones I’ve set out are waved away rather thananswered.  Trump dismissesthose worried about the policy as “weak and stupid.”  The stock market dive and prospect of higherprices are dismissed as irrelevant by the same people who once pointed to thehealth of the stock market as evidence of the soundness of Trump’s policies, andto high prices as evidence of Biden’s incompetence.  Trump defenders who, twenty minutes ago, wereproclaiming that he would liberate us from hard economic times are now callingon Americans to embrace austerity.

This is agrave failure of statesmanship.  Ordinarypeople, including many working class and elderly people who voted for Trump,are watching their retirement accounts shrink and already high prices lookingto get higher, and are understandably frightened.  It is cruel to dismiss their concerns andsmugly urge them to toughen up and tighten their belts, especially after havingpromised them immediate economic relief. On top of that, this attitude only adds to the fear of looming disaster,because it reinforces the impression that the architects and advocates of thepolicy are driven by cold ideological fanaticism rather than good sense andconcern for the common good.

And again, arational economy needs predictability, and the stability that predictabilitypresupposes.  But the manner in whichTrump’s policy is being executed, no less than its actual content, undermineseconomic stability.

The secondproblem with the execution of Trump’s tariff policy concerns its dubiouslegality.  It is Congress, rather thanthe president, that has primary authority over tariff policy, and it isimplausible to suppose that it has delegated to him authority to impose atariff policy as draconian as the one announced.  It is also risible to pretend that we facesome “emergency” that licenses such action, given that the purported emergencyis merely the continuation of an economic order that has persisted for decadesand through periods of high prosperity, including the period during his firstterm that Trump takes credit for.  Whatwe seem to have here is a textbook case of the demagogic manufacture of an“emergency” to rationalize the acquisition of extraconstitutionalpower. 

It is alsopart of an alarming trend on Trump’s part toward ever more grandiose and indeedunhinged actions and statements.  Thisbegan at least as early as his absurd insistence in 2021 that Vice President MikePence had the constitutional authority to set aside the electoral votes ofstates Trump claims were stolen from him in the 2020 election.  It includes his recent bizarre obsession withannexing Canada; his insistence that Greenland too must be taken over by theU.S., possibly even by military force; his mad scheme to take ownership of theintractable Israel-Palestine conflict and forcibly relocate millions of Gazans;and his flirtation with seeking a third term, despite this being manifestly contraryto the constitution.  These are not thesorts of moves one would expect of a wise statesman motivated by concern for thecommon good.  But they are perfectlyconsistent with what one would expect of a pridefuland vainglorious man whose cult of personalityhas blinded him to normal standards of decency and reasonableness.  Any reader of Plato and Aristotle will alsorecognize in them the marks of the sort of demagogue who tends to arise in thelate stages of a democracy. 

It ispossible that Trump’s arrogance will lead him to persist with his tariff policyno matter how destructive it may end up being, under the delusion that itsimply must work in the long run, nomatter how long or deeply the country has to suffer.  It is also perfectly possible that his senseof what is needed for self-preservation will lead him to change course.  If it does, we can expect him and his mostardent followers to declare vindication, as they always do no matter what theoutcome.  But if the market recovers anda recession is avoided, that will not magically remove the grave defects withthe plan and its execution that I’ve been describing here.  If I accidentally fire a gun in yourdirection but miss, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t put your life at risk, muchless that I did something you should thank me for.

On pride and vainglory

Pride, asAquinas defines it in De Malo, is“the inordinate desire for pre-eminence” (Question 8, Article 2). WithAugustine and the Christian tradition in general, he teaches that it is “thegreatest sin” and indeed “the root and queen of all sins.” Its immediate effectis “vainglory,” which is the vice of habitually seeking to call attention toone’s own imagined excellence. And the daughters of vainglory, Aquinas tells us(Question 9, Article 3), are disobedience, boasting, hypocrisy (by whichAquinas means a tendency to magnify one’s glory by reference to “imaginarydeeds”), contention, obstinacy, discord, and what he calls the “audacity fornovelties” or predilection for bold actions that will call attention to oneselfby bringing “astonishment” to others.

Hence themarks of a prideful and vainglorious man are an unwillingness to submit himselfto any higher authority (which would include prevailing laws and norms);habitual braggadocio and bombastic speech; exaggeration and lying about hisachievements; being obnoxiously quarrelsome; stubborn attachment to his ownopinions in the face of all evidence and superior counterarguments; and a tastefor doing things that are shocking and unexpected.

It stands toreason that a prideful and vainglorious man is bound to be polarizing. On theone hand, his fundamental motivations are to attain pre-eminence, and to do soby drawing attention to his imagined excellence. If he is good at this, thennaturally, he is going to gain a following of some kind. On the other hand,pride and vainglory are objectively ugly character traits, as the daughters ofvainglory make evident and as one would expect from the fact that pride is theworst of sins. Hence, people who see through a proud and vainglorious man’scharade are naturally going to be repulsed by him, especially if they havedecent instincts. 

TheChristian tradition has, after all, held that pride is the characteristic sinof the devil and of antichrist.  It isalso the characteristic sin of the tyrant, who on Plato’s analysis is aconsummate narcissist, and who in the political philosophy of Aristotle andAquinas is defined as the ruler who governs a polity for the sake of his owngood rather than for the common good. There are no villains more repulsive thanthe devil, the antichrist, and tyrants. And yet in all three cases we havefigures who draw many to them. “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light”(2 Corinthians 11:14). It is no wonder that lesser malign figures – pridefuland vainglorious politicians, business leaders, sports stars, entertainers,public intellectuals, and so on – attract many people even as they repulseothers.

Aquinas alsoteaches in De Malo that “prideextinguishes all the virtues and weakens all the powers of the soul.” It is nothard to see how this would be so. If a prideful man is by nature insubordinate,he is not likely to subordinate himself to moral restraints. He may exhibit counterfeits of certain virtues, if thatwould aid in leading others to perceive him as having excellence.  He also may have a certain cleverness or cunningin achieving his ends.  But it will notbe true wisdom, because that requires seeing things as they really are, and hisnarcissism prevents that. He will have allies and sycophants, but is unlikelyto have true friends, because he will ultimately sacrifice the good of others forthe sake of his own good. He may have a certain boldness, but he will not havetrue courage, because his boldness does not serve the true and the good, butonly himself.  And so on.

Scripturefamously teaches that “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spiritbefore a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). But even apart from scripture, everyone knowsthis from experience. Or almost everyone, because the prideful man himself doesnot see it. Nor do those in thrall to him, since they labor under the samedelusion about his supposed excellence as he does. It goes without saying thatthe greater the following a prideful man has, or the larger the community overwhich he has authority, the greater will be his fall, and theirs.

Scholastic regress arguments

Many arefamiliar with arguments to the effect that an infinite regress of causes isimpossible, as Aquinas holds in several of his Five Ways of proving God’sexistence.  Fewer correctly understandhow the reasoning of such arguments is actually supposed to work in Scholasticwriters like Aquinas.  Fewer still areaware that the basic structure of this sort of reasoning has parallels in otherScholastic regress arguments concerning the nature of mind, of knowledge, andof action.  Comparing these sorts ofarguments can be illuminating.

Causality

In Aquinas’sFirst Way, he famously argues that it is impossible for there to be an infiniteseries of movers or changers, so that a regress of changers must terminate in afirst unchanging changer.  As I’vediscussed in many places (such as at pp. 69-73 of my book Aquinas), Aquinas is not claiminghere that no causal series of anykind can regress infinitely.  Rather, hehas in mind a specific sort of causal series, which commentators sometimes call“essentially ordered series” and sometimes “hierarchical series.”

Heillustrates the idea with a stone which is moved by a stick which is in turnmoved by a hand.  The stick moves thestone, but not by its own power.  Byitself the stick would simply lay on the ground inertly.  It can move the stone only because the handimparts to it the power to move it.  Thehand too, of course, would be unable to move the stick (so that the stick inturn would be unable to move the stone) unless the person whose hand it is deliberatelyuses the hand to move it. 

Thetechnical way of putting the point is that the stick is a secondary cause in that it has causal efficacy only insofar as itderives or borrows it from something else. By contrast, the person who uses the stick is a primary cause insofar as his causal efficacy is built-in ratherthan being derivative or borrowed.  Thestick is a moved mover insofar as it moves other things only because it isitself being moved in the process.  Theperson is an unmoved mover insofar as he can move the stick (and, through it,the stone) without something else having to move him in the process.

Aquinasgives other arguments against an infinite regress in such cases, but this isthe one I want to focus on here.  Thebasic idea is that there cannot be secondary causes without a primary cause,because you cannot have borrowed or derivative causal power without somethingto borrow it from.  This would be true nomatter how long the regress is, and it is important to note that infinity assuch is not really what is doing the work here. Even if we allowed for the sake of argument that the stone in our examplewas pushed by an infinitely long stick, there would still need to be somethingoutside the stick to impart causal power to it. For a stick is just not the sort of thing that could, all by itself,move anything else, no matter how long it is. 

Nor, forthat matter, would it help if the causal series in this case went around in acircle rather than regressing to infinity – the stone moved by the stick whichwas moved by another stick which was moved by the stone, say.  For sticks and stones just aren’t the sortsof things that could move anything by themselves, even around in a circle.  There would have to be something outside thiscircle of movers that introduced motion into it.

Meaning

Now considera second and at first glance very different sort of argument, which isassociated with John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot) and was defended in thetwentieth century by Francis Parker and Henry Veatch in their book Logicas a Human Instrument.  Itappeals to a distinction between instrumentalsigns and formal signs.  An instrumental sign is a sign that is alsosomething other than a sign.  Consider,for example, a string of words written in pen on a piece of paper.  It is a sign of the concept or propositionbeing expressed, but it is also something else, namely a collection of inksplotches.  Now, there is nothing intrinsic to it qua collection of inksplotches that makes it a sign.  Byitself, a string of splotches that looks like “The cat is on the mat” is nomore meaningful than a string of marks such as “FhjQns jkek$9(quyea&b.” 

Suppose wesay that the string of splotches that looks like “The cat is on the mat” hasthe meaning it has because of its relations to other strings of splotches, suchas the ones we see in a dictionary when we look up the words “cat,” “mat,” etc.  That can hardly give us a completeexplanation of how the first set of ink splotches get their meaning, becausethese new sets of splotches are, considered just by themselves, as meaningless as the first set.  They too have no intrinsic meaning, but haveto derive it from something else.

Notice thatwe have a kind of regress here.  And whatthe argument says is that this regress must terminate in signs that do not gettheir meaning from their relations to other signs, but have itintrinsically.  This is what formal signsare.  And unlike instrumental signs, theymust be signs that are not alsosomething else – that is to say, they must be signs that are nothing but signs.  With a sign that is also something other thana sign (a set of ink splotches, or sounds, or pictures, or whatever), themeaning and this additional feature can come apart, which opens the door to thequestion of how the meaning and the additional feature get together.  But a sign that is nothing more than a sign just is its meaning.  Because it just is its meaning, it needn’tderive or borrow its meaning from something else.

The argumentgoes on to say that these formal signs are to be identified with our conceptsand thoughts, which are the source of the meanings that words and sentenceshave.  This in turn provides the basisfor an argument for the mind’s immateriality, as I discuss in Immortal Souls.  The point I want to emphasize for the moment,though, is that we have here an argument that holds that a regress of itemshaving a certain feature in only a derivative way can exist only if there issomething having that feature in a built-in or non-derivative way – which is,at a very general level, analogous to the reasoning Aquinas deploys in theFirst Way.

(As a sidenote, I’ll point out that John Haldane, in Atheism andTheism, develops a line of reasoning which might be seen as anamalgam of these two arguments.  Aperson’s potential for concept formation, he says, presupposes fellow membersof a linguistic community who actualize this potential by virtue of already possessingconcepts themselves.  But their potentialto form these concepts requires the preexistence of yet other members of thelinguistic community.  This regress canend only in a first member of the series, whose possession of concepts need notdepend on actualization by previous members. This “Prime Thinker” he identifies with God.)

Knowledge

A third lineof argument, once again very different at first glance but ultimately similarin structure, concerns epistemic justification. Consider the “problem of the criterion,” of which Michel de Montaignegave a famous statement.  In orderrationally to justify some knowledge claim, we will need to appeal to somecriterion.  But that criterion will inturn have to be justified by reference to some further criterion, and thatfurther criterion by reference to yet some other criterion, and so on ad infinitum.  It seems, then, that no judgment can ever bejustified.

As theNeo-Scholastic philosopher Peter Coffey points out in his Epistemology or The Theory of Knowledge,the fallacy in this sort of argument lies in assuming that the justificationfor a judgment must in every case lie in something extrinsic to the judgment itself.  The skeptical argument fails if there arejudgments whose criterion of justification is intrinsic to them. 

Now, supposeit can be established that we cannot fail to have at least some genuine knowledge.  Onemight argue, for example, that even the skeptic himself cannot coherently raiseskeptical doubts without making certain presuppositions (such as thereliability of the rules of inference he deploys in arguing forskepticism).  Then we would have a basisfor an argument like the following: We do at least have some knowledge; wecould have no knowledge unless there were at least some judgments whosecriterion of justification is intrinsic to them; therefore, there must be atleast some judgments whose criterion of justification is intrinsic to them.

The point isnot to expound or defend this sort of argument here.  The point is rather that such an argument wouldbe a further instance of the general pattern we’ve seen in the otherarguments.  In particular, it would beanother case in which it is argued that there can be a regress of things havingsome feature in only a derivative way (in this case, epistemic justification)only if there is something having it in an intrinsic way.

Action

One lastexample, which concerns action. Aristotle, and Scholastic writers like Aquinas following him, hold that everyaction is carried out for a certain good, and that good is often pursued onlyfor the sake of some further good to which it is a means, which is itselfpursued for the sake of yet some other good. The regress this generates can terminate only in some end that ispursued for its own sake, as good in itself. Naturally, there is a lot more than that to the analysis of action andthe good, but the point is to emphasize that once more we see an instance of anargument fitting the same general pattern we’ve seen in other cases.  A regress of items having a certain featureonly derivatively (in this case, goodness or desirability as an end) canterminate only in something that has that feature intrinsically.

Here aresome features common to such arguments. First, and to repeat, the basic general pattern is to argue that theexistence of items having a certain feature in a borrowed or derivative waypresupposes something having that feature in an intrinsic way.  In one case the feature in question is causalpower, in another it is meaning, in another it is epistemic justification, andin yet another it is goodness or desirability. But despite this significant difference in subject matter, the basicstructure of the inference is the same.

Second,although the arguments are set up by way of a description of a regress of somekind, the length of the regress is not actually what is doing the key work inthe arguments.  In particular, thearguments, on close inspection, are not primarily concerned to rule outinfinities.  Rather, they are concernedto make the point that what is derivative ultimately presupposes what isintrinsic or non-derivative.  This wouldremain the case even if some sort of infinite sequence was allowed for the sakeof argument.  For example, even aninfinite series of causes having only derivative causal power would presupposesomething outside the series which had intrinsic causal power; even an infinitesequence of instrumental signs would presuppose something outside the sequencethat was a formal rather than merely instrumental sign; and so on.

Third, thearguments all essentially purport to identify something that must be true ofmetaphysical necessity.  They are notmerely probabilistic in character, or arguments to the best explanation.  The claim is that there could not even in principle be secondary causes withoutprimary causes, instrumental signs without formal signs, and so forth.  The arguments intend to identity thenecessary preconditions of there being such a thing as causality, meaning,knowledge, or action. 

Hence, whetherone accepts such an argument or not, the claims of empirical science are notgoing to settle the matter, because the arguments are conducted at a leveldeeper than empirical science.  The verypractice of empirical science presupposes causality, meaning, knowledge, andaction.  The arguments in question, sincethey are about the necessary preconditions of those things, are also about thenecessary preconditions of science.  Theyare paradigmatically philosophical in nature.

Immortal Souls on the Classical Theism Podcast

Recently Iwas interviewed at some length by John DeRosa for the Classical Theism Podcast, about my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on HumanNature . You can listen to the interview here.

Catholicism and immigration

My article “A Catholic Defense ofEnforcing Immigration Laws” appears at PublicDiscourse.

Liberalism’s catastrophic spider

In mylatest essay at Postliberal Order,I argue that, whatever Kant’s own intentions, the Kantian rhetoric of autonomyand respect for persons has allowed modern liberalism to cloak a radicalsubversion of natural law and Christian moral theology behind the veil of“human dignity.”

Life, Reproduction, and the Paradox of Evolution

My article “Life,Reproduction, and the Paradox of Evolution” appears in a special issue of thejournal BioCosmos devoted to exploringthe nature of life. (And fear not, dear reader, the articles are open access rather than behind a paywall.)

Mackie on Pascal’s Wager

I’ve neverbeen a fan of Pascal’s Wager.  But there’sa bit more that one might say for it than is often supposed.  For example, the objections J. L. Mackieraises against it in his classic defense of atheism TheMiracle of Theism , though important, are not fatal.  Let’s take a look at the argument, at Mackie’sobjections, and at how a defender of Pascal might reply to them.

The wager

Pascalbegins with the assumption that unaided reason cannot establish one way or theother whether God exists.  I think he isquite wrong about that, since Ihold that several of the traditional arguments for God’s existence arecompelling.  But suppose, for the sake ofargument, that Pascal is correct.  We still,he holds, must “wager” over whether God exists, either betting that he does orbetting that he does not.  Yet how canreason decide what bet to make, if it cannot show whether it is theism oratheism that is more likely to be true?

In itssimplest form, Pascal’s argument is this. God either exists or he does not, and you can either bet that he does orbet that he does not.  Suppose you betthat he exists, and it turns out that he really does.  Then you will enjoy an infinite benefit,eternal life in heaven.  But suppose youbet that he exists and it turns out that he does not.  You will have been mistaken, but will havesuffered no loss.  Of course, whilesomeone who regards a devout and moral life to be of value in itself will agreewith that, a more worldly person would not. He would say that by mistakenly betting that God exists, he woulddeprive himself of worldly pleasures he could have enjoyed.  But even if one concedes this, Pascal holds,what one will have lost is still of relatively small value, and certainly offinite value.

Now supposethat one bets that God does not exist, and that in fact he does not.  Then, Pascal says, one will enjoy no gainfrom this.  Or, even if a worldly personsuggests that he will have gained worldly pleasures from it, this would stillbe a relatively small gain, and certainly a finite gain.  But suppose that one bets that God does notexist and it turns out he is wrong – that God does in fact exist.  Then,says Pascal, he will suffer an infinite loss. He will have lost out on the infinite reward of eternal life in heaven.

When weconsider this cost-benefit analysis, concludes Pascal, we can see that the onlyrational wager to make is to bet that God exists.  Now, Pascal is aware that one cannot simply andsuddenly make oneself believe in God,the way one might make the lights go on by flipping a switch.  But since it is reason that tells us to bet on God’s existence, the problem, heconcludes, must be with our passions.  These are what prevent belief.  And they can be changed by throwing oneselfinto the religious life.  Doing so willgradually alter one’s passions, and in this way belief in God can be generated indirectlyeven though it cannot be produced directly by a simple act of will.

Mackie’s critique

Against allthis, Mackie raises two main objections. First, Pascal emphasizes that there is no affront to reason in hisargument, and indeed that wagering that God exists is what reasondictates.  But this, says Mackie, is notthe case, for Pascal’s advice to work up belief by way of molding one’spassions amounts to recommending self-deception.  Mackie notes that Pascal might respond bysaying that what one is trying to work oneself into is really what amounts to adeeper wisdom or understanding.  Butgiven Pascal’s own assumptions, argues Mackie, such a response would beg thequestion.  For whether belief in God doesin fact reflect wisdom or understanding about how the world really is isprecisely what Pascal acknowledges to be impossible to establish directly by rationalarguments.

Second, saysMackie, Pascal’s argument can work only if the options we have to choose fromare two, belief that God exists or the absence of such belief.  But in fact there are many more options thanthat.  We have to choose between Catholicismversus Protestantism, Christianity versus Islam or Hinduism, theism versuspolytheism, and so on.  And once we realizethat, we see that Pascal’s argument falls apart.  No cost-benefit analysis of the issue isgoing to give us anything like the crisp and clear advice he thinks it does.

Mackie’ssecond criticism overstates the case somewhat. For not every religious view entails that one risks suffering aninfinite loss by rejecting it.  Onlyreligions that posit eternal damnation entail that.  And for purposes of Pascal’s reasoning, oneneed consider only religions of that kind, which narrows things down.  Still, Mackie’s basic point remains thatthere are more than just the two options considered by Pascal (since there ismore than one religion that posits eternal damnation).

Are Mackie’sobjections fatal?  It seems to me that thatmay depend on the epistemic situation of the person approaching Pascal’s wagerscenario.  Suppose that, as far as youknow, there really are no good rational grounds at all for preferring any onereligion over another.  Given theevidence and argumentation available to you, none of them seems like a liveoption, any more than believing in elves or witches does.  In this case, Pascal’s Wager seems to have novalue, for the reasons Mackie gives.  Itcannot by itself give you a reason to opt for one among the variety of availablereligious options, and the exercise in artificially working up belief in one ofthem would seem to entail irrationally “suppressing one’s critical faculties,”as Mackie puts it (The Miracle of Theism,p. 202).  In short, as a strategy forrationally persuading the most unsympathetic sort of agnostic or atheist,Pascal’s Wager appears to fail.

Can it be salvaged?

However,suppose one is in a very different epistemic situation.  Suppose, for example, that one is not entirelycertain that the arguments for God’s existence, Jesus’s resurrection, and otherelements of Christian doctrine are correct, but still judges them to be strongand thinks that Christianity is at least very plausible.  Suppose that one considers further that amongthese doctrines is the teaching on original sin, according to which ourrational and moral faculties have been damaged in such a way that it is muchless easy for us to see the truth, or to even want to see it, than it wouldhave been had we not suffered original sin’s effects.  Then one might judge that it may be thatwhile he regards the evidences for Christianity to be strong, the reason he neverthelessremains uncertain is due to the damage his intellect and will have suffered asa result of original sin. 

Hissituation would be comparable to someone who judges that he is suffering fromchronic delusions and hallucinations, like John Nash as portrayed by RussellCrowe in the movie version of A BeautifulMind.  Nash has good reasons forholding that some of things he is inclined to believe and thinks that he seesare illusory.  Yet he finds he neverthelesscannot help but continue to see these things and be drawn to these paranoid beliefs.  Since, overall, the most plausible interpretationof the situation is that these nagging beliefs and experiences are delusional,he decides to refuse to take them seriously and to keep ignoring them untilthey go away, or at least until they have less attraction for him.  This is not contrary to reason, but ratherprecisely a way to restore reason to its proper functioning.

Similarly,the potential religious believer in my scenario judges that he has good reasonto think that Christianity really is true, even though he is also nevertheless uncertainabout it.  And he also judges that he hasgood reason to suspect that his lingering doubts may be due to the weaknessesof his intellect and will that are among the effects of original sin.  Suppose, then, that he appeals to somethinglike Pascal’s Wager as a way of resolving the doubts.  He judges that Christianity is plausibleenough that he would suffer little or no loss if he believed in it but turnedout to be mistaken, and little or no benefit if he disbelieved in it and turnedout to be correct.  And he also judges itplausible that the potential reward for believing would be infinite, and thepotential loss for disbelief also infinite. So, he wagers that Christianity is true.

Like Nash inA Beautiful Mind, he resolves toignore any nagging doubts to the contrary, throwing himself into the religiouslife and thereby molding his passions and cognitive inclinations until thedoubts go away or at least become less troublesome.  And like Nash, he judges that this is in noway contrary to reason, but rather precisely a way of restoring reason to itsproper functioning (given that the doubts are, he suspects, due to thelingering effects of original sin). 

In this sortof scenario, then, it’s not that the Wager by itself takes someone from initiallyfinding God’s existence in no way likely, all the way to having a rational beliefin God’s existence.  That, as I’ve agreedwith Mackie, is not plausible.  Rather,in my imagined scenario, reason has already taken the person up to thethreshold of a solid conviction that God exists, and the Wager simply pusheshim over it. 

No doubt,even this attributes to reason a greater efficacy in deciding about theologicalmatters than Pascal himself would have been willing to acknowledge.  But, tentatively, I judge it the mostplausible way for the Pascalian to try to defend something like the Wagerargument, at least against Mackie’s objections. (And I don’t claim more for it than that.  Naturally, there is a larger literature onthe argument that I do not pretend to have addressed here.)

What proceeds from Hart (Updated)

Every time atruce between David Bentley Hart and me has been broken, it has been broken byhim.  And more than once, friendly andfence-mending exchanges in private have been followed by a public shivving onhis part.  The man has no honor.  In a new documentary, hecasually remarks that “Feser… really is a person for whom Christianity ismostly about, you know, killing people or, or you know, it’s about beating them.”  The surrounding remarks are no lessnasty.  (Readers who don’t want to watchthe entire thing can fast forward to about 57 minutes into it.)

The truth isthat I have merely defended the teaching of scripture and two millennia ofChristian tradition that capital punishment and corporal punishment can, undersome circumstances, be justifiable.  Thetruth is that this is a small part of my work, the vast bulk of which (asanyone who follows it or peruses my list of publications can easily verify) isdevoted to other and unrelated matters.  Thetruth is that I have consistently and vigorously condemned the excessive use ofviolence, from Dresden and Hiroshima to Gaza.  And the truth is also that I have, as Hartwell knows, done my part to try to help him when he was in need.

None of thisdeters him from issuing the grave calumny that for me, Christianity is mostlyabout killing and beating people.

The man hasno honor.

UPDATE: Severalreaders call attention to this apology, apparently from Hart, in the commentssection at YouTube: “Well, I apologize to Ed Feser. When this was recorded Iwas obviously angry at him over the public whipping thing… But I have gottenover it.  And we will never agree on whatChristianity is… But I acknowledge that he is a good person at heart, with badideas.”

Fairnessrequires acknowledging this apology. Fairness also requires noting that it islikely that far fewer people will see it than will hear the calumny for which Hartis apologizing.

Immigration and academia on The Tom Woods Show

This week I appear on The Tom Woods Show to discuss theimmigration debate, the state of academic philosophy, and other matters.