Edward Feser's Blog, page 44

Harvard talk

This Friday, October 4, I will be giving a talk at Harvard University, sponsored by the Abigail Adams Institute.  The topic will be “The Immateriality of the Mind.”  The event will be in Sever Hall, Room 103, at 7:30 pm.  You can RSVP here.

Aristotle’s Revenge and naïve color realism

The American Catholic Philosophical Association meeting in Minneapolis this November 21-24 will be devoted to the theme of the philosophy of nature.  On the Saturday of the conference there will be an Author Meets Critics session on my book Aristotle’s Revenge .  It will be chaired by Patrick Toner and the speakers will be Robert Koons, Stephen Barr, and myself.
While we’re on the subject, I’d like to call your attention to a couple of very interesting responses to Aristotle’s Revenge, the first from Nigel Cundy at The Quantum Thomist and the second from Bonald at Throne and Altar.  Both writers know the relevant science and both are open-minded and knowledgeable about the relevant philosophical ideas too.  Both seem largely sympathetic to the book but also raise serious criticisms.  They cover a lot of ground (since the book itself does) so there’s no way I can respond to everything they say in one post.  So this will be the first in a series of occasional posts responding to their criticisms. The general project
Let me start with some general remarks about the project of the book.  Its main thesis is that the fundamental notions of Aristotelian philosophy of nature – the reality of change, the theory of actuality and potentiality, hylemorphism, efficient causality, teleology, the intelligibility of nature – cannot be entirely eliminated from a coherent picture of physical reality.  They are like J. L. Austin’s frog at the bottom of the beer mug, or the whack-a-mole that pops up somewhere else just when you thought you’d knocked it down.  Even if you could banish them forever from this or that particular part of nature, you can never extirpate them from nature as a whole.  Certainly modern science has not done so, and cannot do so.  So I argue.
At the very least, I argue, they cannot be banished from any coherent conception of scientists themselves qua embodied subjects theorizing about the world and testing their theories via observation and experiment.  You cannot make sense of how all that works – of what it is to be a conscious subject with a stream of thoughts and experiences, representing the world theoretically and manipulating scientific equipment, etc. – without implicitly supposing that change is real, that it involves the actualization of potential, that efficient and final causality are real, and so on.  The scientist himself is, in effect, an impregnable fortress from which the Aristotelian cannot be pushed out.  That is the fundamental way, though by no means the only way, that science presupposes Aristotelianism.  And the reason it is not more widely noticed is the same reason why, as Orwell said, one does not notice what is right in front of one’s nose.  The scientist looks out toward the world described by physics, and Aristotle is nowhere to be seen – but only because he is sitting right there next to him.
Furthermore, physics in any case captures abstract structure rather than concrete content, so that the absence of the key Aristotelian notions from its description of basic physical reality by itselftells us precisely nothing about whether the notions really correspond to anything in basic physical reality.  Their absence reflects merely the methodologyof physics, not anything about the inner nature of the reality studied by means of that methodology.  This epistemic structural realist account of physics is a second general theme of the book. 
A third general theme is the poorly thought through nature of the purported mechanistic alternative to Aristotelianism.  The mechanical world picture has always been more a rhetorical posture than a worked out alternative philosophy of nature.  Where it claims to offer alternative explanations to those of the Aristotelian, in fact it merely pushes back questions to which an Aristotelian answer will ultimately still have to be given, or simply offers no explanation at all.
So, this is the “big picture” vision of the book.  First, physics – and by extension the other sciences that take its account of the physical world for granted – couldn’t of their nature tell you one way or the other whether an Aristotelian philosophy of nature or a rival mechanistic position is true.  Second, the mechanistic alternative isn’t coherently worked out anyway.  And third, in any event there is no way in principle entirely to chuck out the basic Aristotelian notions.  They will stubbornly remain forever ensconced within the fortress of the scientist himself qua embodied, thinking, conscious subject.  These points, I argue, are unaffected by whatever we end up saying about the nature of time, space, and motion, whatever we say about reductionism in chemistry and biology, whatever we say about evolution, etc.
But the Aristotelian can in fact say much more about these details too, and that is the secondary thesis of the book.  If “the big picture” is about defending the fortress, “the details” concern questions about how much territory can be reconquered by the Aristotelian in the various regions of the philosophy of time and space, the philosophy of matter, the philosophy of biology, and so on.  And so I then go about developing lines of argument to show howterritory in these different areas might indeed be reconquered.  For example, I defend an A-theory of time in general and presentism in particular, I argue against reductionism in chemistry and biology, propose an Aristotelian interpretation of evolution, and so forth.
Now, the main thesis or “big picture” of the book does not stand or fall with particular arguments having to do with the secondary theses concerning “the details” – with, say, what I argue concerning the presentist view of time, or my take on the metaphysics of evolution.  One could reject what I say about one of these secondary issues while agreeing with what I say about other secondary issues, or one could even reject everything I say about these secondary issues while agreeing with my “big picture” thesis.
I emphasize all this because some readers are bound fallaciously to suppose that if they can refute what I say about one of these secondary matters, they will thereby have undermined the general Aristotelian philosophy of nature.  Nope.  It’s not that easy.  If the Aristotelian has to fight on many fronts, so too does the anti-Aristotelian.  And if my “big picture” thesis is correct, the anti-Aristotelian could win almost every battle and still lose the war.
Now, back to Cundy and Bonald.  As far as I can tell, at least for the most part they don’t have a problem with what I am calling the “big picture” thesis, and even sympathize with it.  Their objections have to do with what I am calling “the details,” and even then only some of those details.  That is important context for what I will have to say in response.
Naïve color realism
In the remainder of this post I’ll focus on Bonald’s remarks about the physics and philosophy of color.  I’ll turn in later posts to what Cundy and Bonald have to say about other issues, such as presentism.  A standard reading of the revolution made by modern physics holds that it refuted our commonsense understanding of color (alongside other so-called “secondary qualities”).  The idea is that what commonsense regards as redness, for example, exists only as a quale of conscious experience and that there is nothing in mind-independent reality that is really like that.  What there is in mind-independent reality is instead merely a surface reflectance property that is causally correlated with the quale in question.  We can redefine “redness” so that it refers to this property, but the commonsense notion of redness applies only to something subjective, something existing only in consciousness.  And the same can be said for all other colors.  Common sense is committed to the “naïve color realist” view that something like color as we experience it exists in mind-independent reality, even apart from our experience of it.  But physics, it is claimed, has refuted this.
Endorsing arguments developed by contemporary philosophers like Hilary Putnam, Barry Stroud, and Keith Allen, I propose in Aristotle’s Revenge that something like naïve color realism can in fact still be defended.  (See especially pp. 340-51.)  And part of the background of the defense of this claim is the more general theme of the book that physics does not in any case give us an exhaustive description of matter, but captures only those aspects susceptible of mathematical description.  Hence we should not be surprised if its description of matter fails to capture color as common sense understands it.
Now, in response to this, Bonald makes the following remarks:
[T]he claim that physics necessarily leaves out information about the physical world is a radical one.
It does nothing against Feser’s claim to point to the astounding reliability of physics, because physics could be perfectly reliable in its own order while completely ignoring features outside this order. However, if claims of the limitations of physics are to be more than gestures of epistemic humility, we must have some independent source of information.  Feser sometimes thinks he can get this from our manifest image “common sense” experience/conceptualization of the world, but I find this questionable.
For example, in a section on secondary qualities, Feser rightly objects to claims that color is a mere subjective experience. Physics has clearly established that color is the wavelength of visible electromagnetic waves. But Feser dismisses this account of color as not being “color as common sense understands it”, so that the world of physics is still in some esoteric way colorless. I do not understand this at all. Common sense is not an understanding of light rival to that of optics; it’s not an understanding at all, but a bare experience of it. The qualia of colors (the only thing physics clearly does not provide) have no independent structure, which allows us to identify them simply as the experience of light at different wavelengths. The color of physics, meanwhile, explains all our experiences of color: the blueness of the sky, the order of colors in the rainbow, the red glow of a hot stove… What else is there?
End quote.  Now, if I correctly understand Bonald’s criticism here, what he is saying is that it is a kind of category mistake to suppose that the qualia that physics leaves out of its story about color have anything to do with color as an objective feature of physical objects.  Suppose we distinguish between RED (in caps) and red (in italics) as follows:
RED: the qualitative character or qualia of the color sensations had by a normal observer when he looks at fire engines, “Stop” signs, Superman’s cape, etc. (which is different from the qualitative character of the sensations had by e.g. a color blind observer)
red: whatever objective physical property it is in fire engines, “Stop” signs, Superman’s cape, etc. that causes normal observers to have RED sensations
What Bonald seems to be saying is that while physics tells us nothing about RED itself, it does tell us everything there is to know about red, including what it is about redobjects that makes them generate RED sensations in us.  To be sure, physics tells us nothing about what it is about the brain that accounts for our sensations being RED, but that’s a different question – one for psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.  In any event, it is (Bonald seems to think) a mistake to think that RED has anything to do with red.  RED has to do with the mode in which the human mind perceivescolor, but red has to do with color itself as an objective feature of things.  What we know about RED tells us no more about red than what we know about the structure of the eye or the optic nerve does.  Like the eye or the optic nerve, RED is something in the perceiver, not something in the world the perceiver perceives.  And something similar could be said about other colors.
A comment Bonald makes in response to a reader seems to me to confirm this interpretation of his position.  And what he seems committed to is essentially Locke’s version of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.  To be sure, Bonald evidently rejects some versions of that distinction.  But Locke’s way of putting it is to acknowledge that both primary and secondary qualities are really in physical objects themselves, but then to hold that whereas primary qualities produce in us sensations that resemble something in the objects, secondary qualities produce in us sensations that do not resemble anything in the objects.  Hence, Locke would agree with common sense that physical objects really are red.  But he would identify red with redand say that common sense is mistaken to hold that there is anything in physical objects that resembles RED.  And that seems to be pretty much Bonald’s view (again, if I understand him correctly).
Now, if that is indeed what Bonald is saying, then what I would say in response is this.  First, we need to distinguish two issues:
(1) Is there good reason to believe that physics does not in fact capture everything there is to red, and that common sense is (contra Locke) after all correct to suppose that there is in red something that resembles RED?
(2) Exactly what is the ontological relationship between this something-that-resembles-RED that is in red, and what physics tells us about red (e.g. surface reflectance properties)?
Now, in Aristotle’s Revenge, what I focus on is question (1).  In particular, with Putnam, Stroud, Allen, et al., I set out some considerations that support an affirmative answer to that question.  But I do not really have much to say there about question (2).  Now, Bonald, as far as I can tell, does not really address what I have to say in support of an affirmative answer to (1).  Rather, I think he is essentially expressing doubt that the naïve color realist could provide a good answer to (2), and is skeptical of naïve color realism for that reason.  He doesn’t try directly to show that the arguments for the affirmative answer to (1) are wrong, but rather merely suggests that it is hard to see howthe affirmative answer could be true.
If this diagnosis is correct, then Bonald has not really answered the heart of my case for naïve color realism.  But it is only fair to acknowledge that he nevertheless raises a very important question, and a difficult one.  And question (2) is difficult precisely because our experience of color is indeed to a considerable degree contingent upon the nature and condition of the nervous system and the sense organs, and on the circumstances of observation.  If the arguments I defend in the book are correct, that does not suffice to refute naïve color realism.  But it does make it difficult to disentangle the aspect of RED that is objectively there in red itself and the aspect that is contributed by the mind.
But that brings me to the second point I want to make in response, which is that it is a mistake to suppose in the first place that we need to disentangle such aspects in order for RED to correspond to something in red.  What I have in mind might be made clear by considering some parallel cases.  I present these tentatively, and regard the analogies only as suggestive and not perfect.
First, consider the problem of universals.  According to the Aristotelian realist approach to the problem, humanness exists as a universal only insofar as it is abstracted by the intellect from particular individual human beings.  Outside the intellect, there is the humanness of Socrates, the humanness of Alcibiades, the humanness of Xanthippe, and so on, but not humanness as a universal divorced from these particulars.  There is a sense, then, in which humannessqua universal depends on the mind, but not because it is the free creation of the mind.  It is not.  What the intellect abstracts is something that already really exists in the particular things themselves, but it exists there in an individualized way.  It is only qua universal and thus qua abstracted from the individuals that it depends on the mind.  So, a universal like humanness is both dependent on the intellect and grounded in mind-independent reality, and it is a mistake to think that it has to be the one to the exclusion of the other.
Now, in an analogous way, I would suggest, the something-that-resembles-RED that is in red can both be grounded in mind-independent reality and at the same time depend in part on the mind for its existence.  It might really be there in red objects and be irreducible to what physics has to say about red, even if it is only actualized when a perceiver perceives it.  (That is not to say that this something-that-resembles-RED that is in red is to be thought of as a universal.  I’m not saying that naïve color realism is the same as the Aristotelian realist approach to universals, but merely drawing an analogy between the two.)
Here’s a second analogy.  Thomists take transcendentals like being, truth, and goodness to be convertible with each other, the same thing looked at from different points of view.  Hence truth is being qua intelligible, and goodness is being qua object of appetite.  But that truth and goodness are to be characterized by reference to the intellect and appetite doesn’t make them the creations of intellect or appetite or imply that they don’t exist in a mind-independent way.  Similarly, though the something-that-resembles-RED that is in redis to be characterized by reference to the mind that perceives it, it can still exist in a mind-independent way.  (That is not to say that this something-that-resembles-RED that is in red is to be thought of as a transcendental.  Again, I am simply drawing an analogy.)
Putnam sometimes liked to say that “the mind and the world together make up the mind and the world.”  I certainly would not endorse everything Putnam associated with that slogan.  But it is a colorful (as it were!) way of summing up the point that it is a mistake to think that every aspect of reality must be characterizable either in an entirely mind-dependent way or an entirely mind-independent way.  Characterizing some aspects of reality might require reference both to the mind and to the mind-independent world, without the relevant components being separable into discrete mind-dependent and mind-independent chunks.  Color would seem to be an example.
Here’s a final and different sort of consideration that might help clarify the relationship between what I am calling the something-that-resembles-RED that is in red, on the one hand, and what physics tells us about red on the other.  The version of essentialism associated with contemporary analytic philosophers like Putnam and Saul Kripke tends to identify the essence of a thing with the hidden microstructure uncovered by science.  But Aristotelian-Thomistic essentialists regard this as a mistake.  The essence of a thing is not reducible to its microstructure, even if specifying the essence requires reference to the microstructure.  (See e.g. David Oderberg’s discussion at pp. 12-18 of Real Essentialism .) 
In light of this, we might say that what physics tells us about red is its microstructure, but that red isn’t reducible to that microstructure.  There is in red, in addition to its microstructure, something-that-resembles-RED.

Fastiggi on the revision to the Catechism

In the comments section under my recent Catholic World Report article “Three questions for Catholic opponents of capital punishment,” theologian Prof. Robert Fastiggi raises a number of objections.  What follows is a reply.  Fastiggi’s objections are in bold, and I respond to them one by one. Fastiggi begins:
There are multiple problems with Prof. Feser’s article.
1. He sets up a false dichotomy with his insistence that either Pope Francis’s revision of CCC 2267 represents a doctrinal change or merely a prudential judgment. This either/or does not do justice to the new formulation in the Catechism, which represents a deepening and a development of the moral principles of John Paul II that apply to the prudential order (but is not merely prudential in nature).
The revision to the Catechism asserts flatly that the death penalty should never be used.  My claim is that there are only two ways to read this.  Either the revision is saying that capital punishment should never be used even in principle, which would constitute a doctrinal change; or it is making a merely prudential judgment to the effect that it should never be used in practice.  This is what Fastiggi characterizes as a false dichotomy.
Now, if I really were guilty of setting up a false dichotomy, then there should be some third alternative way of reading the revision that I have overlooked.  So what is this third alternative?  Tellingly, Fastiggi never tells us!  He merely asserts that the revision “represents a deepening and a development of the moral principles of John Paul II” etc.   But this is mere hand-waving unless we are told exactly what this deepened moral principle is that is neither (a) a reversal of past doctrine nor (b) a mere prudential judgment.
The reason he does not tell us what this third alternative is is that there could be no third alternative.  Think about it.  Any such alternative would have to say flatly that the death penalty is never permissible for reasons that are both stronger than merely prudential reasons (otherwise the purported third alternative would collapse back into alternative (b)), but not as strong as reasons of principle (or it would collapse back into alternative (a)).  But that simply makes no sense.  If the reasons why it is flatly impermissible are more than merely prudential, then there is nothing left for them to be than reasons of principle.  And such reasons would inevitably entail a doctrinal change, since the Church has in the past consistently taught that capital punishment canin principle be used.
2. Feser falls into the fallacy of begging the question when he insists that a total rejection of the death penalty contradicts “the irreformable teaching of Scripture and Tradition.” This is his position, but I don’t believe he’s proven it to be true. There’s no irreformable teaching of Scripture and Tradition that prevents the Church from judging now that the death penalty is inadmissible in light of a deeper understanding of the Gospel.
This is an even less plausible charge than the claim that I had set up a false dichotomy.  I would be guilty of begging the question if I simply asserted, without argument, that capital punishment is the irreformable teaching of scripture and tradition.  But of course, I have in fact provided a great deal of argumentation in support of that claim, in writings such as my Catholic World Report article “Capital punishment and the infallibility of the ordinary Magisterium,” and in my book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed (co-authored with Joe Bessette).  And of course, Fastiggi knows this, both because he has commented before on these earlier works, and because I refer to them in the very article to which he is responding here!
Fastiggi has the right to disagree with the arguments I present in those writings, but he has no right to speak as if they don’t exist.  Yet one would have to pretend that they don’t exist in order to accuse me of begging the question.  Indeed, if I wanted to play Fastiggi’s game, I would say that he is begging the question, given that his comments here simply assume, without argument, that my other writings fail to make the case for irreformability.
Anyway, the interested reader is directed to the article and book just referred to, where he will find ample evidence that the Church has indeed taught irreformably that capital punishment is not per se contrary to either natural law or the Gospel.
But even if Feser were persuaded that his position is true, he should abide by what the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) teaches in its 1990 document, Donum Veritatis, no. 27: “ the theologian will not present his own opinions or divergent hypotheses as though they were non-arguable conclusions.”
Fastiggi is attacking a straw man.  I have never said and never would say that my own opinions are non-arguable conclusions.  What I have said is that the consistent teaching of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and two millennia of popes are non-arguable conclusions.  The Church says the same thing (as I show in the writings referred to above), and the Church says that the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment is among these consistent teachings of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and two millennia of popes (as I also show in the writings referred to above).
3. Feser assumes that Pope Francis’s opposition to life sentences is not defensible. In fact, Pope Francis’s position is in line with the top human rights court in Europe, which in 2013 ruled that sentences of life in prison without parole represent inhuman and degrading treatment and violate the European Convention of Human Rights: https://thinkprogress.org/top-european-human-rights-court-deems-life-in-prison-without-parole-inhuman-and-degrading-d615fc306396/ 
First, whatever one thinks of this “top human rights court in Europe” and its assertions about life imprisonment, they have zero doctrinal relevance.  They are relevant at most only to the prudentialquestion about whether life imprisonment is a good idea in practice, not to the doctrinal question about whether it is legitimate in principle.  So, Fastiggi’s remark here hardly undermines my main point that the pope’s remarks about life imprisonment are best interpreted as the expression of a prudential judgment rather than as a doctrinal revision.
Second, it is worth noting that Fastiggi completely ignores the points I made about the problematic consequences of abolishing life imprisonment (such as that it would entail paroling serial killers and Nazi war criminals).  Surely any attempt to show that the abolition of life imprisonment is “defensible” should address this rather glaring difficulty?
Feser’s [sic] suggests that Pope Francis’s opposition to life sentences represents “a secular rather than a Catholic understanding of hope.” This is a complete non sequitur. To hope for criminals to undergo reform and eventually be released from prison in no way denies hope in eternal life. Feser’s suggestion is gratuitous and insulting to Pope Francis.
Fastiggi’s remarks here are a gratuitous and insulting misrepresentation of what I actually wrote.  I never said that either the pope, or his view about life imprisonment, “denies hope in eternal life.”  What I said is that when he appeals to hope when criticizing life imprisonment, he is making use of a secular conception of hope rather than the Catholic theological conception of hope.  It’s not that he denies the latter, but just that he does not make use of it. 
And that is manifestly the case.  For one thing, as I pointed out in my article, life imprisonment is obviously not incompatible with hope in the theological sense, because no misfortune we can suffer in this life is incompatible with hope in that sense.  For another thing, it is clear from Pope Francis’s own words that he has a secular conception of hope in mind.  In my article, I cited remarks in which he ties hope to the possibility for the offender to “plan a future in freedom.”  And in a speech from just a few days ago wherein he revisited the theme of life imprisonment, the pope tied hope to the offender’s “reintegration” into society and “the right to start over.”
I fail to see why it is “insulting” to Pope Francis simply to call attention to what he actually said.
4. Feser speaks of Pope Francis “attributing” a certain position to the Russian author Doystoyevsky. [sic] Feser, though, seems ignorant of the source of the Holy Father’s citation. The passage Pope Francis cites is from the novel, The Idiot, and it needs to be read in context to appreciate the profound insight of the Christ-like character, Prince Mishkyn, concerning the death penalty: https://flaglerlive.com/25951/dostoevsky-idiot-death-penalty/
Pope Francis’s reference to Doystoyevsky is not really central to his arguments against the death penalty. Nevertheless, Feser should not comment on the quote from Doystoyevsky unless he understands the context in which it appears. It should also be noted that Doystoyevsky was once brought before the firing squad to be executed (only to receive a last-minute reprieve to serve five years in Siberia). Doystoyevsky saw a side to the death penalty that few of the living know.
Naturally, I was aware that the quotation came from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.  When I said that the pope “attributes” the quotation to Dostoyevsky, I was not implying that the attribution was mistaken.  Rather, I used that word precisely to forestall quibbles about matters of Dostoyevsky exegesis.  I knew that some readers might complain that the words are actually those of a character in a novel rather than something Dostoyevsky said in a non-fiction context, that to pull them from context risks oversimplifying their meaning, etc.  So I simply spoke of “the view [the pope] attributes to Dostoyevsky” in the hope of avoiding getting into all that.  As Fastiggi’s quibbles here indicate, my hopes were in vain.
Anyway, the average person who reads the pope’s remarks is hardly likely to know all the context that Fastiggi says needs to be taken into account.  The average reader will just see that the pope approvingly quotes a remark to the effect that executing a murderer is worse than what the murderer did – a claim that many are likely to find shocking and incompatible with traditional Catholic teaching.  If Fastiggi wants to insist that people shouldn’t cite this Dostoyevsky passage without making the context clear, then it seems he should direct his complaints to Pope Francis rather than to me.
5. Prof. Feser continues to appeal to a leaked 2004 memo of Cardinal Ratzinger regarding worthiness to receive communion. This memo was not focused on the death penalty, and it was written within the context of the 1997 Catechism on the death penalty. Since the new formulation of CCC 2267 has replaced the version in force in 2004, the brief comment of Cardinal Ratzinger articulated in his 2004 memo no longer applies. Moreover, it’s simply bad theology to cite a document of lesser importance to override a later document of greater importance and authority.
First, it is extremely misleading to say that the memo in question “was not focused on the death penalty.”  It was not focused only on the death penalty, but it was most certainly intended to clarify the Church’s teaching on matters of life and death, including the death penalty (alongside war, abortion, and euthanasia). 
Second, the memo is in fact extremely important to the current discussion, precisely because it clarifies the status of the Church’s teaching on those matters, including its current teaching. 
Here’s why.  The memo was written by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who was at the time the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope St. John Paul II.  In other words, he was the Church’s chief doctrinal officer, responsible for clarifying for the faithful the meaning of the Church’s teachings, including those of John Paul II himself.  And Ratzinger made it clear in that memo (and elsewhere, as Joe Bessette and I discuss in our book) that John Paul II’s teaching on capital punishment was a prudential matter rather than a development of doctrine.  That’s why, as the memo explicitly says, even a faithful Catholic can be “at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment” and why “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about… applying the death penalty.”
Now, Pope Francis appeals to Pope John Paul II’s teaching in order to justify his own revision to the Catechism.  He says that he is merely extending what John Paul said.  But John Paul II’s teaching was prudential rather than a matter of doctrinal revision, as John Paul II’s own chief doctrinal officer confirmed.  So, Pope Francis’s extension (as he sees it) of John Paul’s teaching can itself be merely prudential.  Whereas John Paul II made the prudential judgment that the cases in which the death penalty is called for are “very rare, if not non-existent,” Francis makes the prudential judgement that they are flatly non-existent.  But in both cases, we have merely a prudential judgment.
So, Fastiggi is mischaracterizing my use of the memo.  I am not guilty of citing a document of lesser magisterial authority in order to override a document of greater magisterial authority.  What is in fact going on is this.  There are two documents here of equal magisterial weight: (a) the text of the Catechism as John Paul II left it, and (b) Pope Francis’s revision to the text of the Catechism.  What I am doing is citing a clarification made by the Church’s official doctrinal spokesman – the man whose job it was to make such clarifications and who spoke for John Paul II – about the proper understanding of (a).  And I am then saying that we have to interpret (b) in light of this proper understanding of (a), especially because Pope Francis himself has indicated that he is merely extending what is already there in (a).
Now, what we are debating here is the proper interpretation of the Church’s magisterial documents.  And Fastiggi, who has over the years consistently tried to downplay significance of the 2004 memo, is guilty of ignoring the Church’s own clarification of the meaning of those documents.  Now that, I submit, is bad theology.
6. Feser seems to believe he is justified in not accepting what Pope Francis and the Catholic Church now teach about the death penalty because he finds the arguments unpersuasive. Here Prof. Feser directly contradicts the teaching of the CDF in no. 28 of Donum Vertitatis [sic] which explictly says that disagreement with a magisterial teaching “could not be justified if it were based solely on the fact that the validity of the given teaching is not evident or upon the opinion that the opposite position would be the more probable.”
This is a gross misrepresentation of my position.  Fastiggi makes it sound as if I have identified some teaching unambiguously put forward by Pope Francis as binding on the faithful, and then gone on to reject that teaching.  As anyone who has read my article knows, that is precisely what I have not done.  What I have actually done is to note that Pope Francis’s words are ambiguous between two possible teachings: (a) a reversal of the Church’s traditional teaching that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate, and (b) a mere prudential judgment to the effect that even if it is in principle legitimate, it is better in practice to abolish capital punishment.
Now, as Fastiggi well knows, it is a general principle of Catholic theology that magisterial statements ought if possible to be interpreted in a way consistent with traditional teaching.  That alone makes reading (b) preferable to reading (a).  Furthermore, as is clear from the passages from Donum Veritatis that I cited in my article (and which Fastiggi conveniently ignores, since they undermine his case), the Church permits respectful criticism of magisterial statements that are problematic in various ways, including with respect to their content.  And there can be nothing moreproblematic with a magisterial statement than an apparent conflict with scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and two millennia of consistent papal teaching.  Therefore, even if the pope intended reading (a) (which he has not said he intends, and indeed which he has implicitly rejected since he says that he is in no way contradicting past teaching) a Catholic would be within his rights to withhold assent to (a).
So, the better reading is reading (b).  But if reading (b) is what is intended, then the Church herself does not require assent to it in the first place, because prudential judgments require only respectful consideration rather than assent.  As I argue in my article, if (b) is the correct interpretation, then what then-Cardinal Ratzinger said in the 2004 memo still applies.
So, though Fastiggi accuses me of dissenting from some binding teaching, the whole point of my article was to show that that is not what is going on with those who have been critical of the revision to the Catechism.  He is simply begging the questionagainst the argument presented in the article.
7. Feser’s rejection of the new teaching of the Church on the death penalty is in direct violation of what Lumen Gentium, 25 teaches about the need to adhere to teachings of the ordinary papal Magisterium “with religious submission of mind and will.” His rejection also violates canon 752 of the 1983 CIC and no. 892 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Again, this simply begs the question in the way I just described.  It also ignores inconvenient texts like the passages I quoted from Donum Veritatisand from St. Thomas, as well as the qualifications that the Church herself puts on the requirement of assent, which I set out at length in an earlier post to which I linked in my article.
Feser and his followers do not seem to understand the “argument from authority” that applies to teachings of the ordinary papal magisterium and judgments of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Catholics who support the new formulation of CCC 2267 are being faithful Catholics. Prof. Feser’s attempt to put such faithful Catholics and the Pope on the defensive suggests that he believes he has more authority than the Roman Pontiff. If he has difficulty accepting the Church’s new teaching on the death penalty he should, in a spirit of humility, make every effort to understand the teaching “with an evangelical spirit and with a profound desire to resolve his difficulties” (CDF, Donum, Vertiatis, 30). [sic] I have no difficulty with the new teaching. I hope and pray that Prof. Feser and his followers will overcome their difficulties.
Here we see Fastiggi once again deploying two of his favorite rhetorical tricks.  The first is to suggest that I am appealing to my own “authority.”  Of course, I am doing no such thing.  Again, I am only ever appealing to what the Church herself says.  In particular, I am appealing to the consistent teaching of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and two millennia of popes.  I am appealing to what the Church says about the proper interpretation of scripture and scripture’s freedom from moral error.  I am appealing to what the Church says about the conditions under which the ordinary magisterium teaches infallibly.  I am appealing to what the Church says about the authority of the Fathers and the Doctors.  I am appealing to what the Church says about the conditions under which respectful criticisms of deficient magisterial statements might be raised.  And so on.  Again, see By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed for the mountain of evidence and argumentation along these lines, or, if you lack the time or patience for that, at least my article on capital punishment and the ordinary magisterium.
What Fastiggi does is to try to chip away a little at this mountain by raising weak objections to some of the arguments I have presented, and then to try to undermine the rest of it by writing it off as an appeal to my own “authority.”  This is a rhetorical distraction, nothing more.  Either the arguments I present are cogent or they are not.  If they are cogent, then labeling them mere appeals to my own “authority” does not magically make them less cogent.  And if they are not cogent, then the problem is that they are not cogent, not that they are appeals to my “authority.”  Either way, the focus should be on the arguments themselves.  To go on about my “authority” or lack thereof is just to kick up dust.
The second rhetorical trick Fastiggi likes to play is to make reference to my “followers,” as if I were the leader of some movement.  I don’t have “followers.”  I have readers.  And some of them sometimes find some argument that I have given to be convincing, while finding Fastiggi’s counterarguments to be unconvincing.  That’s all.  Characterizing these people as “followers,” while fancying himself a noble defender of the magisterium against them, doesn’t magically make my arguments any worse or his any better.  It is simply another rhetorical distraction. 
Moreover, Fastiggi doesn’t see that these same rhetorical tricks could be turned against him.  Someone inclined toward Fastiggi-style rhetoric could say that he is pitting his own “authority” against the weight of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and two millennia of popes.  One could suggest that Fastiggi and his “followers” are bent on encouraging Pope Francis to teach something contrary to traditional teaching – rather than respectfully encouraging him, in line with Donum Veritatis and the teaching of St. Thomas, to reaffirm traditional teaching.  Again, one could do these things if one were inclined toward Fastiggi-style rhetoric.  I’m not.
One last comment.  Fastiggi’s expression “the Church’s new teaching” should give every faithful Catholic the dry heaves.  The Church has no “new teachings.”  The Church only ever teaches what has been believed “always, everywhere, and by all,” as St. Vincent of Lerins put it.  The Church only ever teaches “the same doctrine, [in] the same sense, and the same understanding,” as the First Vatican Council solemnly affirmed.  While the Church may clarify the sense of her traditional teachings and draw out the implicationsof those teachings, she may never reverse those teachings or introduce “some new doctrine,” as the same council taught.  The Church cries out, with Pope St. Pius X: “Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty!” 
The most faithful Catholics, and the most loyal sons of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, are those who interpret his teaching in continuity with tradition, and who respectfully implore him – in obedience to the teaching of Donum Veritatis and of St. Thomas – explicitly to reaffirm that tradition.
Further reading:
Prof. Fastiggi’s pretzel logic
Yes, traditional Church teaching on capital punishment is definitive
Catholic theologians must set an example of intellectual honesty: A reply to Prof. Robert Fastiggi
On capital punishment, even the pope’s defenders are confused

Three problems for Catholic opponents of capital punishment

What is left to say about Pope Francis and capital punishment?  Plenty, as I show in a new Catholic World Report article titled “Three questions for Catholic opponents of capital punishment.”  Those who appeal to the pope’s statements on the subject in order to justify the claim that Catholics are now obligated to oppose capital punishment face three grave problems. First, when you disambiguate the pope’s various imprecise statements, they either contradict irreformable traditional teaching, in which case Catholics should not agree with them; or they amount to a mere prudential judgment, in which case Catholics need not agree with them.  Either way, Catholics need not agree with them.  The supposition that the pope’s statements make opposition to capital punishment obligatory rests on a fallacy of equivocation.
Second, Pope Francis has repeatedly called for the abolition of life imprisonment, and even for the abolition of long prison sentences in general.  And he has claimed that such sentences are morally on a par with capital punishment, so that to oppose the latter requires opposing the former as well.  So, Catholics who appeal to the pope’s statements against capital punishment must, to be consistent, oppose life imprisonment too – yet few seem to do so, and there are serious theological and practical problems with doing so.
Third, Pope Francis has expressed the view that executing a murderer is worse than what the murderer himself did, and made other rhetorically over the top statements about capital punishment which even many Catholic opponents of the death penalty could not accept.  But if they minimize the significance of these extreme statements, they cannot consistently insist that all Catholics are obligated to share the pope’s view that capital punishment should be abolished.
I develop these points at length in the new article.  Catholic admirers of the pope’s views on capital punishment have failed to see the dilemma that the imprecision and excesses of his remarks puts them in.

A further reply to Glenn Ellmers

At Law and Liberty, Glenn Ellmers has repliedto my response to his review of my book Aristotle’s Revenge .  He makes two points, neither of them good.
First, Ellmers reiterates his complaint that I am insufficiently attentive to the actual words of Aristotle himself.  He writes: “This where Feser and I part.  He thinks that it is adequate to have some familiarity with ‘the broad Aristotelian tradition’ – a term of seemingly vast elasticity.  I do not.”  Put aside the false assumption that my own “familiarity” is only with the broad Aristotelian tradition rather than with Aristotle himself.  It is certainly true that my book focuses on the former rather than the latter.  So, is this adequate? Well, adequate for what purpose?  If I had been writing a book about Aristotle himself, then I would agree with Ellmers that citing the broad Aristotelian tradition is not sufficient and that I should have emphasized Aristotle’s own texts.  But as I said in my initial response to him, and as any reader of the book knows, that is not what the book is about. 
As Aquinas says in his commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens, ultimately the study of philosophy is not about knowing what people thought, but rather about knowing what is true.  The latter has always been the primary concern of my own work.  Obviously I have a very high regard for thinkers like Aristotle and Aquinas, but I have always been less interested in doing Aristotle and Aquinas exegesis than in expounding and defending what I think they happened to have gotten right.
Hence, what I am concerned with in Aristotle’s Revenge are certain ideas, such as the theory of actuality and potentiality, hylemorphism, and the notion of teleology.  These ideas are historically associated most closely with Aristotle, but lots of later thinkers also had important things to say about them.  But the book is not about those thinkers either.  It is not a book about the history of ideas any more than it is a book about the person Aristotle.  Again, it is a book about the ideas themselves.  In particular, it is a book about whether the ideas are sound, and if so, how they relate to what modern science tells us about the nature of space and time, the nature of matter, the nature of life, and so on. 
Now, in a book that is about the ideas themselvesrather than about specific thinkers or about the history of ideas, it would be tedious and irrelevant to cite a litany of names and works and explain exactly who said what, where and when.  Indeed, it would be counterproductive, because it would only reinforce the widespread false impression that the ideas can only be of interest to students of the history of thought, and have no contemporary relevance.  Noting that they represent “the Aristotelian tradition” thus suffices for the specific purposes of my book.
Really, what’s the big deal?  It isn’t a hard point to grasp.  Once again, Ellmers shows that he is the sort of book reviewer who insists on evaluating a book as if it were about a topic that he is personally interested in and competent to speak about.  And what he is personally interested in and (I guess) competent to speak about is Aristotle exegesis.  Hence he keeps trying to bring the discussion around to that, like the guest you get stuck sitting next to at a dinner party who won’t shut up about some pet topic he is obsessed with.
Ellmers’ other point concerns teleology.  In response to my objection that he has failed to understand the specific notion of teleology that is at issue when discussing basic inorganic causal relations, he says:
Again, who’s view are we talking about?  How is one to respond when there is nothing to grab on to?  As long as Feser himself defines the meaning of this “broadly Aristotelian view,” he will always be correct.  This does not take us very far.
End quote.  Seriously, what is it with Ellmers’ obsession with identifying texts and authors?  I imagine that if you said to him: “Glenn, since all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, it follows that Socrates is mortal.  Isn’t that a sound argument?” he would respond: “Well, I don’t know about that.  Exactly who gave the argument?  We don’t really know if it was Socrates, because he didn’t write anything.  Unless you tell me who said that and where, I don’t have anything to grab on to.”
In reality, of course, the argument is sound, and who gave it when and where is completely irrelevant.  Similarly, the notion of teleology that I was discussing either corresponds to something in reality or it does not, and the arguments for it are either sound or unsound, regardless of who gave them and where and when they gave them.  Ellmers should be focusing on those issues, rather than wasting time looking for scholarly footnotes.
The one thing that Ellmers has to say by way of a substantive response is anti-climatic.  He writes:
The teleology Feser attributes to unformed matter and chemical compounds – a view that finds no support in Aristotle’s writings – “involves nothing more than a cause’s being ‘directed’ or ‘aimed’ toward the generation of a certain kind of effect or range of effects.”  This just means that a cause has an effect.  It is a tautology.  
End quote.  Put aside the irrelevant question of whether Aristotle himself thought of teleology this way.  Put aside also the claim that I attribute this teleology to unformed matter (something I didn’t say).  The “tautology” charge shows just how out of his depth Ellmers is. 
Take any claim of the form “A is the efficient cause of B.”  Some Aristotelians, such as Thomists, hold that the only way to account for why A generates B, specifically (rather than C or D or no effect at all) is to hold that A is inherently directed toward the generation of B.  This entails a kind of necessary connection between A and B.  In this way, efficient causation is, according to the view in question, unintelligible without final causation.  Some recent analytic philosophers have argued for a similar position.  By contrast, philosophers influenced by David Hume deny this.  They hold that there is no directedness in nature, and that the connection between causes and effects is “loose and separate” rather than necessary.
Indeed, other early modern philosophers also rejected the notion of teleology in question, on the grounds that directednesscan (they claimed) only be a feature of minds and not of unconscious inorganic phenomena.  And in fact, even earlier than that, followers of Ockham were questioning the reality of necessary causal connections in nature.  The two sides in this dispute differ over what is entailed by the claim that “a cause has an effect” (to use Ellmers’ phrase).  For one side, this entails teleology and necessary connection, and for the other side it does not.
The point is this.  The dispute over teleology of the kind at issue is substantive.  That’s why there’s a dispute.  The early modern and contemporary philosophers who reject the notion of teleology in question don’t say “Sure, the directedness you’re talking about is real, but that’s just an uninteresting tautological point.”  Rather, they say that it is not real.
Another mark of how substantive the dispute is is the ripple effect it has had on other philosophical issues.  For example, it is the reason why the intentionality of the mental became such a big problem for modern materialism.  If there is no directedness anywhere in the natural world, then how can the mind’s intentionality (its directedness toward an object) be identified with or explained in terms of natural processes?  Again, the reason there is a problem is precisely because materialists don’t say “Sure, there’s directedness in all material processes, but that’s just an uninteresting tautology.”  Rather, they say that there is no directedness in the material world (or that what seemsto be directedness can be analyzed away or reduced to something that involves no directedness).
Here’s another thing.  All of this is discussed in my book.  Which indicates, once again, that Ellmers didn’t read it very carefully, or perhaps simply didn’t understand it.  If he had, he would have realized that the “tautology” charge at best begs the question and at worst simply misses the point.
Ellmers also remarks that “a thoughtful debate about this question would have involved the metaphysical basis of natural right.”  But yet again, this just shows Ellmers’ fixation on trying to tie my book to the issues he personally cares about, even if they are not what the book itself is about.  Is teleology relevant to the question of the metaphysical basis of natural right?  You bet it is.  Is the topic of the metaphysical basis of natural right interesting and important?  You bet it is.
But it is also true that you can say a lot about teleology without getting into that particular application of the concept, and a lot of what you can say about it is interesting and important in its own right.  And it is these other issues that are the subject matter of Aristotle’s Revenge.
Not every book has to be about Glenn Ellmers’ favorite topics.  The fact that Ellmers can’t seem to blow his nose without addressing its relevance to the metaphysical basis of natural right doesn’t entail that the rest of us have to follow suit.

Review of Smith’s The AI Delusion

My review of economist Gary Smith’s excellent recent book The AI Delusion appears today at City Journal.

Ellmers on Aristotle’s Revenge

Last week at Law and Liberty, Glenn Ellmers reviewed my new book Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science .  It’s one of the weirdest book reviews I’ve ever gotten.  Today my response appears at Law and Liberty.

Gage on Five Proofs

I’ve been getting some strange book reviews lately.  First up is Logan Paul Gage’s review of my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God in the latest issue of Philosophia Christi.  Gage says some very complimentary things about the book, for which I thank him.  He also raises a couple of important points of criticism, for which I also thank him.  But he says some odd and false things too. Let’s take these in order.  Gage writes that Five Proofs is “an incredibly useful book,” that “Feser is to be commended for interacting with a wide swath of historical and contemporary literature,” and that my main arguments are “thorough enough for philosophers while remaining accessible to a general audience – a true accomplishment.”   He judges that:
[T]he major arguments are incredibly well-executed and likely sound.  The first five chapters will be profitable for undergraduates for years to come.  They are suitable for use in the classroom, especially for elucidating difficult primary texts.  They will introduce students not only to the arguments (and their attendant metaphysics) but also let them see how traditional natural theology entails a number of important divine attributes – something sadly missing from much contemporary apologetics.
End quote.  Again, I thank Gage for his very kind words. 
Some useful points of criticism
Let’s turn to Gage’s useful points of criticism.  For one thing, Gage wonders whether my arguments might be too dependent on specifically Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) metaphysical premises.  He doesn’t claim that these premises are false or implausible, but merely worries that they might make my arguments less attractive to some readers, and that they require a deeper defense than I provide in the book.
In response I would say the following.  First, the extent to which my arguments depend on A-T premises varies from argument to argument.  For example, the Aristotelian proof is obviously more dependent on them than the rationalist proof is.  Moreover, sometimes it is not the argument itself that presupposes A-T metaphysical premises, but rather some particular reply to a criticism of the argument that does so.  This might seem a pedantic and irrelevant distinction, but it is not.
Hence, suppose that some reader is initially convinced by an argument from contingency that appeals to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) but makes no reference to any specifically A-T premises.  Suppose the reader is then presented with various objections to the argument, such as the suggestion that it is the world itself rather than God that is the necessary being, or such as a challenge to PSR.  An A-T philosopher might reply to such objections in a way other philosophers would not.  For example, he might say that the world cannot be a necessary being because it is a compound of actuality and potentiality rather than pure actuality.  Or he might defend PSR by reference to the Scholastic idea that truth is convertible with being, so that whatever has being must be intelligible.  Now, if the reader in question rejects A-T philosophy and thus rejects these particular responses to the criticisms in question, it doesn’t follow that he will have to reject the argument from contingency.  For he might still find some other responses to the criticisms to be adequate.
All the same, it has long been my own view that at least some specifically A-T metaphysical premises are, ultimately, crucial to getting things right in natural theology.  For example, I think that the theory of actuality and potentiality is crucial.  But then, I think the theory of actuality and potentiality is, ultimately, crucial to getting things right in philosophy in general, not just in natural theology.  So, I would acknowledge that, at the end of the day, my view is that the natural theologian should defend such specifically A-T premises.  But I don’t see that as a problem.  If something is both true and highly consequential, as I think the theory of actuality and potentiality is, then there’s no point in fretting that it will be a tough sell with many people.  It needs to be defended, so defend it. 
Indeed, as I have complained before, a general problem with too much apologetics is that it is excessively concerned with what will “sell” rather than with what is true.  My view is that, just as a matter of principle, a serious apologist should focus on the latter rather than the former.  And it turns out that if you do that, and do it well, the former will take care of itself.
Gage is also right to say that more could be said in defense of the A-T premises I appeal to than I say in Five Proofs.  That was inevitable given that the book is about natural theology rather than general metaphysics, and given that, in philosophy, no matter what and how muchyou say, there is always going to be someone somewhere who retorts “Well, sure, but what about…”  Of making books there is no end.  But as it happens (and as Gage acknowledges) I have in fact defended the relevant general A-T premises in greater depth elsewhere, such as in my book Scholastic Metaphysics .
A second important point of criticism raised by Gage is that it isn’t clear, in his view, that all of my arguments are really independent of one another.  In particular, he worries that the four proofs that reason from the world to God as cause of the world – the Aristotelian proof, the Neo-Platonic proof, the Thomistic proof, and the rationalist proof – are really just variations on an argument from contingency rather than separate standalone arguments.  For example, he wonders whether the Aristotelian proof is really at the end of the day an argument from change, since the way I spell that argument out, it shifts from the question of why things change to why they exist at any given moment.
In response, I would say the following.  First, though the “many paths up the mountain” analogy is often abused in theological contexts (when deployed in defense of a facile universalism), it is useful in understanding the relationship between causal proofs of God’s existence.  When you get to the top of a mountain, it looks pretty much the same, whatever direction you are approaching it from.  But the north side of the bottomof the mountain might nevertheless look very different from the south side, so that the mountain will seem very different to climbers beginning from the north side and climbers beginning from the south.
In the same way, the notions of what is purely actual, what is absolutely simple, what is subsistent existence itself, and what is absolutely necessary are all at the end of the day (I would argue) different ways of conceptualizing what is and must be the same one reality.  Hence the closer you get to the conclusion of a causal argument for God’s existence, the more the argument is going to seem similar to other causal arguments.  Nevertheless, the starting points – the fact that things in our experience change, the fact that they are composite, the fact that they are caused, the fact that they are contingent – are going to be very different. 
Now, this is important in a way that is also elucidated by the mountain analogy.  Some climbers who may be unable or unwilling to begin their ascent from one side of the mountain (because it is too rocky for them, say) may be able to begin it from some other side.  Similarly, some readers may initially find the notions of contingency or of PSR problematic and thus be put off by the rationalist proof, but find intuitively plausible the notion of change as the actualization of potential, and thus find the Aristotelian proof attractive.  At the end of the day, I think readers should find all of these things plausible when they are rightly understood, but given the place some particular reader is coming from philosophically, he might have a different “break in” point from other readers.  So even if the proofs converge, it is intellectually helpful to see that there are different conceptual avenues by which the idea of a divine first cause might be arrived at.
Having said that, I also think that the extent to which the proofs converge can be overstated.  As my remarks above indicate, I think that one can go a long way in an argument from PSR before one has to get into any distinctively Aristotelian notions like the actualization of potential.  And I think one can go a long way in an Aristotelian proof before one has to say anything that sounds distinctively “rationalist.”  In these two cases, it is arguably only when one has to get into the question of how various objections might be replied to that defenders of the arguments might end up saying some of the same things.
In the case of the Aristotelian proof, it is true that I make a transition from the question of why things change to the question of why they exist at any given moment, and that it is the latter question that I am ultimately more interested in.   This makes my presentation of this sort of argument different from Aristotle’s or Aquinas’s presentation.  (That’s one reason I call it an “Aristotelian proof” rather than “Aristotle’s proof.”)  But there is a reason why I begin with change, which is that the notions of actuality and potentiality are much easier to grasp initially when one applies them to an analysis of change overtime than when one applies them to an analysis of existence at a time.  The latter notion is for many readers too abstract to jump to immediately.  So, starting with change provides a useful “ladder” that may be kicked away once one understands the general concepts and sees that they have a more general application than just to the analysis of change.
Anyway, I agree with Gage that other interpretations of the arguments I defend are possible, and that it would be regrettable if those other interpretations were neglected.  And again, I thank him for these remarks, to which I have responded at some length precisely because the issues he raises are important.
Seeing things that aren’t there
Let’s turn now to (what I judge to be) the odd and unhelpful things Gage has to say.  Gage accuses the book of “some exasperating flaws.”  Like what?  First of all, he claims that the book includes “some of Feser’s favorite hobbyhorses.”  Like what?  Gage writes:
Conspicuously absent from the first five chapters are Feser’s constant refrains: how impressive traditional theistic arguments are for being deductive metaphysical demonstrations rather than probabilistic or scientific arguments (in which he fails to recognize the power of inductive and abductive arguments), tangents about how foolish William Paley and intelligent design are (with uncharitable misreadings of these potential allies), and his blog-style ranting and braggadocio – often against weak targets like the worst of the New Atheists.  But they all return by the book’s end (271-273, 287-289, 249-260), leaving a bitter aftertaste to a largely excellent book.  The whole thing concludes with an unhelpful and supercilious “Quod erat demonstrandum” (307).
End quote.  Now, I fail to see what the big deal is about ending the book with “Quod erat demonstrandum” – especially given that Gage himself says he regards my main arguments as “incredibly well-executed and likely sound” – but let that pass.  The rest of this is just silly and false. 
First of all, it simply isn’t true that the book describes Paley or Intelligent Design as “foolish.”  I mention Paley in exactly two places in the book, at pp. 287-88 and at p. 303.  In the first place, I merely note that the arguments I am defending are in several ways different from Paley’s design argument.  In the second place, I merely cite Paley in a long list of philosophers who have defending theistic arguments.  I also mention Intelligent Design theory in exactly two places in the book, at p. 254 and at pp. 287-88.  In the first place, I merely note that atheists who raise a certain sort of objection against first cause arguments would complain if a parallel objection were raised against evolution by ID theorists.  In the second place, I merely note that the arguments I am defending differ in several ways from the arguments of ID theorists.  I mention inductive or probabilistic arguments for God’s existence at exactly two places, at pp. 287-88 and at p. 306.  In both cases I merely note that the arguments I am defending are not of the inductive or probabilistic kind, but rather are attempts at demonstration.
Nowhere in the book do I say that Paley, or ID theory, or probabilistic arguments are “foolish.”  Indeed, I do not even say in the book that they are wrong.  Again, I merely note that they are different from the sorts of arguments I defend in the book.  That’s it.

It’s not mysterious what is going on here, though.  For I have, in other writings, been very critical of Paley and of Intelligent Design theory.  I have also, in other writings, made it clear that I much prefer demonstrations to probabilistic arguments where natural theology is concerned (though I have also explicitly said that I do not claim that probabilistic arguments for God’s existence are per seobjectionable). 
Now, Gage is a big defender of Paley, ID, and probabilistic arguments for God, and he and I have tangled over these very issues in the past.  Evidently, this past experience has colored Gage’s perceptions of what he has read in Five Proofs.  He is apparently so sensitive about criticisms of Paley, ID, and probabilistic theistic arguments that he cannot bear even my distinguishing A-T arguments from those sorts of arguments.  All he needs is to see that the words “Paley” or “Intelligent Design” or “probabilistic” appear in something I have written, and he is triggered.  He instantly takes my remarks in Five Proofs to be criticisms of these things, even though when read dispassionately it is clear that they are not.  So, while there is definitely some “hobbyhorse” riding going on, it is all on Gage’s part, not mine. 
Something similar can be said about Gage’s claim that Five Proofs contains “blog-style ranting and braggadocio.”  The astute reader will have noted that Gage offers no examples of this purported ranting and braggadocio – and he couldn’t have, because in fact there isn’t any such thing to be found in Five Proofs.  That is deliberate, because I judged that a polemical style was not appropriate given the aims of this particular book.
What is true is that in other writings, I have sometimes (though in fact only relatively rarely) written in a highly polemical style.  For example, of the twelve books I have written, co-written, or edited, there is exactly one – The Last Superstition – that is written in that style.  And occasionally I will write an article, book review, or blog post in that style – typically when responding to some other writer who was himself highly polemical. 
I have in other placesdefended the appropriateness of this approach under certain circumstances.  The point for present purposes is this.  I have found over the years that certain souls seem to be so gentle and sensitive that they just can’t bear this sort of thing even when it is appropriate.  My occasionally polemical style makes such a deep impression on them that they simply can’t help but perceive everything I write as “blog-style ranting and braggadocio.”  This is especially true when my past targets have included some of their own sacred cows. 
It seems that something like this is going on with Gage.  My past polemical writings, perhaps especially those in which I have criticized ID, have colored his perceptions.  Hence though the arguments and objections I present in Five Proofs are measured in tone, he reads into them a “blog-style ranting and braggadocio” that isn’t there.
Some odd and unhelpful criticisms
The really strange remarks Gage makes, though, are about the last two chapters of my book – chapter 6, which treats the divine attributes and God’s relationship to the world, and chapter 7, which is a general treatment of objections to natural theology. 
What annoys him about chapter 6 is that there is some repetition of material from earlier chapters, since after presenting each of my five theistic arguments in the earlier chapters, I say something about how the divine attributes can be derived.  Gage thinks that I should either have said nothing about the divine attributes in chapters 1-5 and saved the entire discussion for chapter 6, or that I should have moved all the material from chapter 6 into the earlier chapters.
It never seems to have occurred to Gage that I had a reason for organizing things the way I did – several reasons, in fact.  Here are some of the relevant considerations.  First, one of the objections routinely raised against arguments for God’s existence is that even if they get you to a first cause, no one has ever shown that they get you to a cause that is unique, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.  There is, it is claimed, always a big jump from the idea of a first cause to the divine attributes.  Now, as I show in Five Proofs and elsewhere, that is simply not at all the case.  Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, and other defenders of proofs for God’s existence in fact routinely provide a wealth of argumentation for the divine attributes.  But, as with the tiresome and clueless “What caused God?” objection, people keep reflexively raising this objection no matter how many times you refute it.
Consider also that many readers will only bother reading a chapter or two from a book like mine before drawing general conclusions about it.  Hence if they read the chapter on the Aristotelian proof but do not see in it any treatment of the divine attributes, they will judge that I have overlooked the obvious objection that to prove the existence of a purely actual actualizer is not to prove that such an actualizer is unique, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.  And they will conclude that it isn’t worth their time to read any further.  This is silly, of course, and not the way an academic philosopher like Gage or me would proceed.  But it is the way a lot of people read and judge books.
Consider too that there are certain divine attributes the derivation of which is more clear and natural when one begins with a particular theistic proof than it is when one begins with some other such proof.  For example, when you deploy the Aristotelian proof to establish the existence of a purely actual actualizer, it is quite natural to move on immediately to argue for the immutability, omnipotence, and perfection of the purely actual actualizer.  The reason is that the theory of actuality and potentiality provides analyses of change, causal power, and perfection that can be quite naturally “plugged in” to the argument to yield a derivation of these particular divine attributes.  The derivation of the attributes isn’t some arbitrary “add on” to the proof of the unactualized actualizer, but follows quite naturally and directly from it.  But the same attributes are less directly or obviously derivable from, say, the notion of the necessary being that is arrived at via the rationalist proof.
So, given considerations like these, I judged that the best way to proceed would be to say something in each of the first five chapters about how the derivation of a purely actual actualizer, an absolutely simple cause, an infinite intellect, a cause which is subsistent existence itself, and an absolutely necessary being, could naturally be extended to a derivation of some of the key divine attributes.  The aim was to show that getting to the divine attributes is an organic partof the style of reasoning that each of the arguments deploys, and not something either neglected or arbitrarily tacked on.
At the same time, I couldn’t say everything that needed to be said about the divine attributes in each of the first five chapters, or even in any one of them, because the chapters would in that case have become ridiculously long.  For example, if I had placed the material on the divine attributes from chapter 6 into chapter 1, which is devoted to the Aristotelian proof, then chapter 1 would have been about 120 pages long.  It would also have ended up dealing with matters that are not unique to the Aristotelian proof, but are relevant to all the proofs.
Hence I judged that the better way to proceed was to give a cursory treatment of the divine attributes in chapters 1-5, and then return to a much more in-depth treatment in chapter 6.  This entailed a bit of repetition, but as every good teacher knows, a bit of repetition is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when giving an exposition of material that is difficult and unfamiliar.  And the arguments for the divine attributes are – as Gage himself acknowledges – very unfamiliar to many people interested in the topic of arguments for God’s existence.
So, though of course a reasonable person might disagree with my judgment, there were reasons for it that Gage does not consider.  The way the book handles the divine attributes was deliberate, and not, contrary to what he suggests, a failure on the part of some editor.  Gage seems to be the sort of reviewer who complains that a book is not carefully tailored to his personal needs and interests, specifically – not keeping in mind that any book has to consider the needs, interests, attention spans, prejudices, etc. of many kinds of readers all at once.  And of course, no book can do so perfectly, so that an author must make a judgment call.  Anyway, as far as I can recall, Gage is the only commenter on the book who has complained about there being a bit of repetition on the topic of the divine attributes.  Evidently, most readers were not troubled by it.
Gage also complains that chapter 6 includes a “digression on analogy,” a “misconstrual of the standard account of knowledge,” a “facile discussion of God’s knowledge and free will,” and a “defense of using male pronouns for God.”  He says that this material only “serves to try the reader’s patience.”
But once again, Gage seems to be confusing hispersonal needs and interests with those of readers in general.  He doesn’t tell us exactly what is wrong with what I say about knowledge or free will, so I don’t have anything to say in response to his remarks about those topics.  As far as my treatment of analogy is concerned, it is by no means a “digression,” but integral to the chapter.  I made it clear in the book why (for Thomists, anyway) the notion of analogy is crucial to a proper understanding of the divine attributes. 
Regarding the use of male pronouns for God, I have no idea why Gage would find it objectionable that I should address that issue.  As I imagine everyone knows who has ever taught a course on religion or philosophy of religion, it is a question that comes up all the time among students, and general readers are no less interested in it.  Furthermore, such language is crucial in certain theological contexts (e.g. when the first two Persons of the Trinity are referred to as the “Father” and the “Son”).  If Gage wants to disagree with the specific claims I made on this topic, that’s fine.  But to object to the very fact that I addressed the issue at all is silly, indeed bizarre.
Finally, Gage is similarly unhappy with my last chapter, wherein I deal with a wide variety of general objections to arguments for God’s existence.  He complains, for example, that I respond to “weak targets like the worst of the New Atheists.”  But why is this a problem?  For one thing, I also respond, in the last chapter and throughout the book, to the more serious critics.  It’s not as if I reply only to the New Atheists.  For another, what was I supposed to do – ignore the objections raised by the New Atheists?  Gage and I realize that their objections are no good, but lots of other readers don’t realize this, and many of those other readers will be unfamiliar with what I have said in reply to the New Atheists in other books of mine, such as The Last Superstition.  Moreover, their objections, however feeble, are very influential.  So, I had no choice but to address their objections, alongside the more serious objections.  Yet again, Gage seems guilty of judging the book in terms of his personal needs and interests, rather than those of the bulk of the book’s readership.
But as I have said, Gage also makes some important and helpful points of criticism, and has some very kind things to say about my book.  And even where I think his remarks are unreasonable, I appreciate his attempt to grapple seriously with what I have written.  So, again, I thank him.

Scotus on divine simplicity and creation

In my exchange with Ryan Mullins on the doctrine of divine simplicity, I noted that one of the problems with his critique of the doctrine is that he pays insufficient attention to the history of the debate about it.  Hence he overlooks what should be obvious possible responses to his criticisms, such as Aquinas’s appeal to the distinction between real relations and logical relations.  He also makes sweeping attributions of certain views to all defenders of divine simplicity, overlooking crucial differences between proponents of the doctrine.  Other critics of divine simplicity also often make these mistakes.  A consideration of the views of John Duns Scotus further illustrates the range of issues with which any serious general critique of divine simplicity must deal. Scotus, like other classical theists, affirms divine simplicity.  But he famously differs with Aquinas and other fellow classical theists over some important matters of background metaphysics.  Let’s consider some views of Scotus that are relevant to the debate over divine simplicity.  Some of these involve disagreement with other proponents of the doctrine, though some of them are merely important contributions of Scotus’s own with which other proponents could agree.
Scotus does not agree with the Thomist position that theological language is analogical.  He takes such language to be univocal.  Hence when we speak of God’s goodness or wisdom, say, we are using “goodness” and “wisdom” in the same sense as when we speak of human goodness or wisdom.  Now, as applied to human beings, “goodness” and “wisdom” are to be defined differently, and so they are also to be defined differently when applied to God.  But that entails, for Scotus, that there is a formal distinction between God’s goodness and God’s wisdom.
A Scotistic formal distinction is not the same as a real distinction, but neither is it the same as a merely conceptual distinction.  It’s supposed to be a kind of middle ground between them.  There is, for Scotus, no real distinction between God’s goodness and wisdom insofar as they are not separable.  The one could not exist without the other.  However, the distinction between them is not merely a distinction in thought.  There is something in extra-mental reality that makes wisdom and goodness different.  The Scotist way of putting this is that there is a difference in formalities between wisdom and goodness – and thus, again, a formal distinction between them.  So, for the Scotist, while there is no real distinction between the divine attributes, it is not correct to say that they are identical full stop.  Not only is the concept of wisdom different from the concept of goodness, but wisdom and goodness themselves are not formally identical.
Where the analysis of action is concerned, Scotus distinguishes between an act of will, the object of the act, and the effectof the act.  In created agents, there can be a plurality of each of these.  I exhibit multiple acts of will over time, each with its distinct object and each with its distinct effects.  For example, the other day I willed to have a steak for dinner, the outcome of the act being a feeling of fullness in the stomach.  Today I willed to type this blog post, the outcome of which was the appearance of certain words on my computer screen.  And so forth.  In God, who is outside time, there can in Scotus’s view be only one act of will, but there can still be a multiplicity of objects and effects of that one act.
The will’s being free, in Scotus’s view, entails several key features.  First, the will is of itself neutral or indifferent toward the outcomes it might produce.  Second, even when the will chooses some action A, it retains at the moment of choice the ability to choose non-A (even if it can’t actually choose both at the same time).  Third, there is no further explanation to be sought for the will’s choice of A other than that the will chose it.  The point of these features is to emphasize the will’s radical indeterminacy with respect to its objects.
Now, Scotus holds that natural reason can demonstrate that contingent things must have a First Cause and that this First Cause is simple or non-composite and exists of necessity.  But he also argues that the creative act of this necessarily existing First Cause cannot itself have been necessary, or its effects would have been necessary too rather than contingent.  Hence creation must have been the result of a free act.  The demonstration of a First Cause, in other words, gets us precisely to something that is both necessary (in its existence) and free (in its activity).
But why does the First Cause will as it does, given that it could have willed otherwise?  Given Scotus’s analysis of the will’s freedom, this is a bad question, like asking of a certain stone why it is a stone.  Given that a thing is in fact a stone, there’s nothing more to be said about why it is.  That’s just its nature, and it couldn’t be any other way and still be a stone.  Similarly, for Scotus, given that a certain choice was free, there’s nothing more to be said about why it occurred.  It occurred because it was free, and it couldn’t have been any other way and still be free.  Again, for Scotus, looking for some explanation of the will’s free choice that is deeper than its being free is a category mistake.  Once you’ve identified it as free, you’ve given it all the explanation you could have or could need.
All the same, it is possible in Scotus’s view for a thing to be necessarily willed and freely willed at the same time.  In particular, he holds that though God does not necessarily will to create the world, God does necessarily will himself.  But even here he wills freely.  In a famous illustration, Scotus asks us to consider a man who has voluntarily flung himself off a precipice, and who, as he falls to his doom, continues to will his fall.  He both falls of necessity insofar as gravity ensures that he will not stop until he hits bottom, and also freely wills his falling.  In a similar way, God both cannot not will himself, but also freely wills himself.
So, how might a Scotist respond to Mullins and other critics of divine simplicity who take the doctrine to be incompatible with divine freedom?  As we’ve seen, Mullins is critical of the Thomistic account of the analogical use of theological terms, and insists that key terms must be understood univocally.  But Scotists don’t accept the doctrine of analogy either, yet they nevertheless insist on divine simplicity.  So they could happily accept Mullins’ criticisms of analogy while taking them to be irrelevant to the larger issue.
Scotists would also no doubt object that certain steps in Mullins’ main argument are expressed in too sloppy a manner.  For example, in steps (8) – (11) of his argument, Mullins speaks of God’s actions being “identical” to one another and to God’s existence.  But the Scotist will ask whether what is meant here is real identity or formal identity.  Mullins’ argument also assumes that necessity and free choice are incompatible, but Scotus’s example of the man flinging himself off the precipice indicates that that assumption needs to be made more precise.
Perhaps the heart of Mullins’ argument could be salvaged by tightening it up to get around these particular objections, but others will be harder to deal with.  For example, step (10) of Mullins’ argument states that “God’s act to give grace is identical to God’s one divine act.”  But the Scotist could object that this conflates the object and/or effect of the divine act with the act itself.  “God’s act to give grace” is identical to God’s one divine act qua act, but not identical to it qua act to give grace, specifically.  Other steps of the argument, such as step (4), also seem to conflate divine acts with their objects and effects.  Naturally, without these steps, Mullins’ critique collapses.
Again, Scotus claims to have demonstrated that a First Cause must be at the same time simple, necessary, and free, and that given the radical indeterminacy of the will, it is metaphysically impossible for the First Cause’s effects – such as creation and the giving of grace – to have been necessary.  Hence any argument that supposes that divine simplicity and divine necessity entail that God’s choices are themselves necessary begs the question against Scotus.  The Scotist could insist that we have independent reason to judge that such a claim must be wrong, so that any interpretation of simplicity, necessity, and will that would entail that God could not have refrained from creating the world, giving grace, etc. must be mistaken.
Into the bargain, Scotus also agrees with Aquinas’s point that the world’s relation to God is a real relation, but God’s relation to the world is merely a logical relation (where this distinction corresponds to what in my initial reply to Mullins I referred to as the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties).
As this last remark indicates, there are aspects of Scotus’s position that Thomists and other classical theists could happily agree with, though there are other aspects that the Thomist would reject.  For example, Thomists would reject Scotus’s view that theological language is univocal, his notion of a formal distinction, and his voluntarist account of the will.  But Mullins and other critics of the doctrine of divine simplicity claim to have refuted the doctrine full stop, not merely the Thomist’s way of spelling out the doctrine.  So in order to make their case, they would not only have to reply to what Thomists have said – which, as I have already noted, they often fail to do – but also to what Scotus and other non-Thomists have said.
Related posts:
A further reply to Mullins on divine simplicity
Aquinas on creation and necessity
Davies on divine simplicity and freedom
William Lane Craig on divine simplicity
Cross on Scotus on causal series

Aquinas on creation and necessity

While we’re on the subject of divine simplicity and creation, let’s consider a closely related issue.  In the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas argues that God wills himself, that he does so necessarily, that what he wills he wills in a single act, and that he wills other things besides himself.  Doesn’t it follow that he also wills these other things necessarily?  Doesn’t it follow that they too must exist necessarily, just as God does?  No, neither of these things follows. Let’s take the two questions in order.  First, as Aquinas also argues, God wills things other than himself only for his own sake.  They are willed as manifestations of his own goodness.  But they are not willed because they somehow enhancehis goodness, because that goodness is already perfect.  Hence he doesn’t need to will any other thing as a means to realizing the highest good, which is himself. 
Doesn’t this make his willing of these other things arbitrary or inexplicable?  No, that doesn’t follow either.  He wills them for a reason – again, as a manifestation of his own goodness.  Suppose you’ve already got a large family, including some adopted children, but you decide to adopt yet another child.  You don’t need to do this in order to do your moral duty or to achieve supererogatory virtue.  You’ve already not only done your duty but gone above and beyond it.  But it’s not an arbitrary act either.  It’s a good thing to do, even if it’s not a good thing that must be done.  Creation is like that, neither necessary nor arbitrary.  As Aquinas puts it, God wills other things as “befitting.”
But doesn’t the fact that God wills himself and other things in a single act entail that he wills the latter as necessarily as he does the former?  No.  You might say that it is in a single act that the sun both shines and causes the moon to shine.  But even if the sun shined of absolute necessity, it wouldn’t follow that the moon shined, since of course the moon could have failed to exist even if the sun hadn’t.
But this is to appeal to something outside the sun which limits what sort of effects it will have.  So doesn’t the analogy fail, since, given God’s omnipotence, there is nothing outside him that can limit what sort of effect he will have?
No, the analogy does not fail, and this brings us to Aquinas’s reasons for saying that the fact that God is necessary does not entail that his effects are necessary.  In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas writes:
Sometimes a necessary cause has a non-necessary relation to an effect; owing to a deficiency in the effect, and not in the cause.  Even so, the sun's power has a non-necessary relation to some contingent events on this earth, owing to a defect not in the solar power, but in the effect that proceeds not necessarily from the cause.  In the same way, that God does not necessarily will some of the things that He wills, does not result from defect in the divine will, but from a defect belonging to the nature of the thing willed, namely, that the perfect goodness of God can be without it; and such defect accompanies all created good.
Similarly, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, he writes:
From the side of its object, a certain power is found open to opposites when the perfect operation of the power depends on neither alternative, though both can be.  An example is an art which can use diverse instruments to perform the same work equally well.  This openness does not pertain to the imperfection of a power, but rather to its eminence, in so far as it dominates both alternatives, and thereby is determined to neither, being open to both.  This is how the divine will is disposed in relation to things other than itself.  For its end depends on none of the other things, though it itself is most perfectly united to its end. 
The relevance of these passages to our question is this.  What makes some effect E of God’s action contingent rather than necessary is not anything in God, but it is also not some third thing in addition to God and his effect E.  It’s not a matter of God needing this third thing to be either present or absent in order for E to follow.  Rather, the source of the contingency is just E itself.  As Aquinas puts it in the passage from the Summa Theologiae, it is simply that limitation that “accompanies all created good” as such that makes God’s effects contingent.  E itself, just by virtue of not being God – and thus not being pure actuality or subsistent being itself or absolute simplicity – is of its very nature going to be contingent.  God doesn’t have to do anything extra to it to make it contingent, and neither does some third thing in addition to God and to E have to do anything to make it contingent.
Similarly, as the Summa Contra Gentiles passage says, precisely because of the “eminence” of divine power, none of its effects can be necessary, because it simply doesn’t requireany particular effect in order to realize the end of manifesting divine goodness.  For any particular effect E, some non-E would do just as well, since divine goodness is already perfect just as it is.
Critics of classical theist arguments for God’s existence sometimes claim that if pushed through consistently, those arguments would entail that the world is as necessary as God is.  That is the reverse of the truth.  In fact, an absolutely necessary cause producing an absolutely necessary effect is a metaphysical impossibility.  For if something is an effect, then ipso facto it is not and cannot be absolutelynecessary.
Since we’re talking about unnecessary but fitting acts, it is fitting at this point to plug Gaven Kerr’s new book, Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation , which, as it happens, just arrived today in the mail.  Since I haven’t read it yet I can’t give you a review, but the author of the excellent Aquinas’s Way to God is sure to have produced a worthy volume.