Edward Feser's Blog, page 48

Vallicella on existence-entailing relations and presentism

Bill Vallicella continues his critical response to my defense of presentism in Aristotle’s Revenge .  In the first part of his critique (to which I responded in an earlier post), Bill raised the influential “truthmaker objection” against presentism.  In his latest post, he rehearses another popular objection, which appeals to the nature of relations.  I don’t think this objection is any more formidable than the truthmaker objection, but here too Bill disagrees. The objection goes like this.  For at least some relations, it seems that both relata have to exist in order for the relation to hold.  For example, if I am standing next to you, the relation a is next to b holds of us precisely because you and I both exist.  Now a causes b seems to be that sort of relation as well.  Something non-existent can hardly cause anything, and if something has been caused, it too must exist. 
Now, presentism claims that within the temporal domain, only present objects and events exist.  (I say “within the temporal domain” because, as I noted in my earlier post, a presentist could hold that in addition to presently existing objects and events there are also things that exist in an eternal or aeviternal way.)  But then (so it is claimed) it seems we have a problem.  For suppose we say that Caesar’s assassination is among the things that have caused me to refer to it just now.  Caesar and his assassination, being past, do not exist.  So how can they be causally related to me?  Hence (it is concluded) presentism cannot account for such relations.
Many contemporary philosophers seem to regard this as a real chin-puller, but once again (and with nothing but respect for my good pal Bill) I find it difficult to stifle a yawn.  The reason is this.  From the commonsense point of view, and the Aristotelian point of view that systematizes it, causal and other relations don’t require that both relata exist now.  They just require that they exist at some time.  Hence, for Caesar’s assassination to be among the things that cause me to refer to it, it suffices that Caesar and his assassination didexist in the past, not that they nowexist.  
In his latest post, Bill objects:
But this is not the operative assumption. The operative assumption is simply that for an n-adic relation to hold between or among n relata, all the relata have to exist, period. They have to exist simpliciter; they don't have to exist now. 
End quote.  I do think Bill is missing the point.  For the claim that the relata “have to exist, period” or “have to exist simpliciter” is simply not one that the presentist would accept in the first place.  For where temporal phenomena are concerned, there just is no existence period or existence simpliciter in the “timeless” sense Bill seems to have in mind.  There is only what exists now, what used to exist but no longer does, and what will exist.  To insist that relations within the temporal realm must involve things that exist simpliciter (as opposed to existing now or being the sort of thing that used to exist) is simply to beg the question against presentism.
This should be even more obviously true of the example Bill himself actually uses, which is the relation a is earlier than b.  Does the truth of a proposition like Caesar’s assassination was earlier than Feser’s writing this blog post require that both events exist simpliciter?  Why on earth would a presentist agree with that assumption?  On the contrary, the presentist should say that a relation like a is earlier than b is precisely an Exhibit A case in which the items related do not exist at the same time.  In particular, it is a relation such that a had ceased to exist by the time b had come into existence. If the critic of presentism doesn’t like this way of talking, and insists that a and b must exist simpliciter, that is his problem, not the presentist’s.  The burden is on the critic to provide an argument for taking this insistence seriously.  It will not do for him to pretend that he has raised some devastating objection when the objection in fact rests on a question-begging assumption.
To be sure, Bill writes:
It is important to bear in mind that the presentist too must make use of the notion of existence simpliciter.  The thesis of presentism is not the logical truth that whatever exists (present-tense) exists now.  It is the thesis that whatever exists simpliciter exists now.  Equivalently: only present items exist simpliciter.  From this it follows that wholly past items such as the event of my having eaten lunch do not exist simpliciter. But then the objection is up and running.
End quote.  But the objection is not up and running, and again it seems to me that Bill is missing the point.  Yes, Caesar’s assassination does not now exist simpliciter (if one insists on talking that way).  But it did exist simpliciter at one time, and that is enough for it to bear a causal relation to me.
Bill says:
To fully savor the problem we cast it in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:
1. All genuine relations are either existence-entailing or existence-symmetric.
2. Earlier than is a genuine relation.
3. Presentism: only temporally present items exist.
4. Some events are earlier than others.
Each limb of the tetrad is exceedingly plausible.  But they cannot all be true:  any three, taken together, entail the negation of the remaining limb.  For example, the first three entail the negation of the fourth.  To solve the problem, we must reject one of the limbs.  
End quote.  Now, the trouble with this is that proposition 1 is ambiguous.  Both sides would agree that there is a sensein which the relations in question entail existence.  For example, both sides would agree that unicorns cannot cause anything, because they don’t exist and never did.  But the presentist would say that some relations (such as a is earlier than b, and a causes b) require only that the relata did exist at some time, whereas the critic of presentism insists that the relations require something else.  
Require what, exactly?  That the relata both exist now?  The critic of presentism will deny that that is what he is saying.  But what, then?  That one of the relata exists at one point in time and that the other exists at another point in time, where both points in time are equally real?  But if that is what the critic means, then he is begging the question against presentism, since the presentist denies that past and future points in time are real.  
What is going on with the objection from existence-entailing relations, I would argue, is that an essentially non-presentist conception of temporal existence is inadvertently smuggled in as if it were neutral ground on which both sides could formulate and debate the objection.  And it is a conception that is very far from a commonsense or Aristotelian way of understanding time.
Now, it is important to note that in Aristotle’s Revenge, I defend the commonsense/Aristotelian conception of time at some length before I ever get to recherché contemporary objections to presentism like the truthmaker objection and the objection from existence-entailing relations.  The reason is that I think these objections sound remotely plausible only if one has already gotten far away from common sense – for example, if one has started to think of time as if it were like space, so that past and future events are like distant spatial locations.  For only then does it start to seem intelligible that a past or future event might be said to exist even though it is not present.  
When a philosopher says, of something that exists in time (as opposed to eternally or aeviternally), “Sure, it doesn’t exist now, but does it exist simpliciter?”, I am inclined to channel Wittgenstein and say that language has gone on holiday.  We are no longer using “exists” in a way that reflects time as we ordinarily understand it.  Rather, we are using it in some highly theoretical sense that reflects a tendentious reconstruction of the notion of time.  (In fact, I would say, it reflects an abandonment of the notion of time and its replacement with some quasi-spatialized ersatz.)
That doesn’t by itself entail that that theoretical sense is wrong – though I certainly think it is – but it does mean that, since it is tendentious, it ought not to be put forward as if it were neutral ground on which to construct an aporia.  
Something similar is going on with the truthmaker objection.  From a commonsense presentist point of view, the “truthmaker” for the proposition that Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March is the fact that Caesar really was assassinated on the Ides of March, and nothing more need be said.  There are facts about what was the case just as there are facts about what is the case.  Facts about what was the case will seem problematic only if one supposes that all facts must be of the same type, and describable in some timeless way – that is to say, only if one begs the question against presentism.
Part of what is going here, I would suggest, is that the critic of presentism is thinking, no doubt without realizing it, in a kind of Parmenidean way.  “There is just what is, full stop, and what is not, full stop!”  And Lesson 1 of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy is that that is a deep mistake, and the source of countless other mistakes.  Carving the territory up into “what is” and “what is not” (or what exists simpliciter and what does not) is too crude.  We need, for example, to recognize that between actuality and nothingness, there is potentiality, which is real even though it is not actual.  We need to see that in addition to what is, we can speak of what was and what will be.  We need to realize that notions like being, real, and existence are analogical, applied in related but still distinct senses to distinct kinds of thing.  And so forth.  Reality is simply more nuanced than the Parmenidean supposes.
Another factor, I think, is the prevalence of the time travel motif in contemporary pop culture.  Now, I love time travel stories and always have.  But metaphysically speaking, they are sheer incoherent nonsense (for reasons I set out at length in Aristotle’s Revenge).  They seem to work only if one doesn’t think too carefully about them.  The trouble is that a steady diet of this kind of stuff has given people muddleheaded views about time.  They start to think of past and future objects and events as if they are, or at least could be, “out there” somewhere, but just hard or impossible to reach.  In short, they start to think in an essentially “eternalist” way about time, without realizing it.  Then they hear an objection like the truthmaker objection or the objection from existence-entailing relations and think “Hmm, good point,” because they suppose it makes sense in the first place (as the presentist does not, or should not) to think that past and future events might exist to serve as relata or truthmakers.  
In fact, I would say, such objections can be seen to be non-starters when one approaches them from the point of view of the correct conception of the nature of time, which (I would argue) is the commonsense Aristotelian conception.  Hence, as I say, I defend that conception at considerable length in Aristotle’s Revenge before I discuss the contemporary objections in question.  
Longtime readers know that it is a recurring theme of my work that the standard moves made by contemporary philosophers where issues in natural theology, ethics, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and other areas of philosophy are concerned typically rest on presuppositions that Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophers would reject, and ignore ideas that Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophers would defend.  The same thing is true in the philosophy of time.  Here as elsewhere, getting things right requires getting outside the box in which the debate is usually conducted.

Vallicella on the truthmaker objection against presentism

Among the many ideas defended in Aristotle’s Revenge is the A-theory of time, and presentism in particular.  Relativity, time travel, the experience of time, and other issues in the philosophy of time are treated along the way, and what I say about those topics is crucial to my defense of presentism.  (See pp. 233-303.)  My buddy Bill Vallicella objects to my response in the book to the “truthmaker objection” against presentism.  Let’s consider Bill’s misgivings.
Presentism is the thesis that only the present exists, and that past and future events and objects do not.  To be more precise, it is the thesis that in the temporal realm, only present objects and events exist.  (For one could also hold – as I do, though other presentists might not – that in addition to what exists in time, there is what exists in an eternalor timeless way and what exists in an aeviternalway.)  Among the rivals of presentism is the “eternalist” view that past and future objects and events are as real as present ones.  There is also the “growing block” view, according to which past objects and events are as real as present ones, though future objects and events are not.
The truthmaker objection essentially goes like this.  If a statement is true, then there must be something that makes it true. For example, if it is true that the cat is on the mat, that must be because there really exists some cat on some particular mat.  Now, consider the statement that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March.  This is true, so there must be some truthmaker that makes it true.  But it makes reference to a past event, and presentism holds that past events no longer exist.  So how can there be a truthmaker for this statement?
There has been a lot of heavy going about this objection in the literature, but I don’t think it is at all impressive.  That is not because I would deny the “truthmaker principle.”  On the contrary, I think it is not only true, but trivially so – so trivial that I don’t know that we really need a momentous label like “truthmaker principle,” which makes it sound more substantive and interesting than it really is.
Yes, a statement is true only if there is something that makes it true.  But that doesn’t tell us very much, because there are so many kinds of thing that might make a statement true.  The statement that the cat is on the mat is true because of facts about the existence of and relationship between two spatiotemporal objects.  But different sorts of statements will have very different sorts of “truthmakers.”  For example, the statement that Iron Man is really Tony Stark is true.  But that is not because of facts similar to those that make it true that the cat is on the mat, because unlike cats and mats, Tony Stark is a fictional character.  So, what makes that sort of statement true has to do with the way certain people happened to write certain works of fiction.
Or take the statement that you can apologize to someone by sincerely uttering the words “I apologize.”  What makes that statement true is not any sort of spatial relationship between physical objects and not any sorts of facts about how certain fictional stories were written, but rather facts about certain human social conventions.  That’s a very different sort of “truthmaker.”
Or take the statement that 2 + 2 = 4.  What makes that sort of statement true has to do, not with spatiotemporal relations between physical objects, or with how a certain work of fiction was written, or with human conventions, but rather with the necessary connections between certain concepts.  (And what does that involve exactly?  Good question, but however we answer it, it will not be like the other examples, and the “truthmaker principle” by itself will be pretty useless for helping us to answer it.)
There are other possible examples, such as statements about God, statements about angels, statements about possible but non-actual states of affairs, and statements about impossible objects (e.g. “There are no round squares”).  Each will have a “truthmaker,” but not the same kind of truthmaker as in the other examples. 
So, the “truthmaker principle” doesn’t really tell us much.  In particular, it doesn’t tell us what sorts of things would have to make statements about the past true.  It certainly doesn’t tell us that the truthmakers for statements about the past have to be like the truthmakers for statements about the present, any more than it tells us that the truthmakers for statements about Tony Stark, or about the conditions for an apology, or about arithmetic, or about the impossibility of round squares, have to be like the truthmakers for statements about cats and mats.
Hence, for all the truthmaker principle tells us, it may be that what makes it true that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March is simply the fact that Caesar really was assassinated on the Ides of March.  It doesn’t tell us that the truthmaker has to be a fact about something that exists, as opposed to being a fact about something that used to exist.  The presentist can say that as long as it is the case that Caesar etc. are things that used to exist even though they don’t exist anymore, then we have a “truthmaker” for the statement.
Of course, the critic of presentism might object to this on various grounds.  For example, he might insist that past events do in fact exist no less than present ones do, and that the existence of these past events is a more plausible candidate for being a truthmaker for the statement that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March than the presentist’s proposed candidate is.  But if that is how he develops the “truthmaker” objection, then he is simply begging the question against the presentist.  For of course, the presentist would deny that past events exist.
Alternatively, the critic of presentism might avoid begging the question, and try to develop some other sort of response.  He will no doubt say that there is something fishy about the idea of a fact that something used to exist.  How can there now be a fact about something that is no longer real?  If he is going to do that, though, then he might as well also say that there is something fishy about the idea of facts about fictional stories, or human conventions, or abstract entities, or possibilities, or round squares, or what have you.
But in that case, it is clear that it isn’t really the “truthmaker principle” per se that is doing the work in the so-called “truthmaker objection” to presentism.  Rather, it is some other sort of ontological concern, such as a concern about the nature of facts.  “Truthmaking” by itself is simply too vague a notion to do any serious metaphysical work.
So, as I say, I don’t think the “truthmaker objection” is very impressive or interesting.  Bill disagrees.  He asks us to consider the following propositions:
(1) There are contingent past-tensed truths.
(2) Past-tensed truths are true at present.
(3) Truth-Maker Principle: contingent truths need truth-makers.
(4) Presentism: Only (temporally) present items exist.
The problem, Bill says, is that “the limbs of this aporetic tetrad, although individually plausible, appear to be collectively inconsistent.”
But I would deny that there is any inconsistency.  There is a presently existing fact that serves as the truthmaker for past-tensed truths such as the truth that Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March – namely, the fact that Caesar really was assassinated on the Ides of March.  To be sure, Caesar no longer exists and his assassination is no longer taking place.  But the fact that he was assassinated on the Ides of March still exists.  
To get an inconsistency, Bill would have to add to the list some further claim like:
(5) Only facts about what does exist (as opposed to facts about what used toexist) can serve as truthmakers.
But that would simply beg the question against the presentist.  And of course the presentist would say: “There will be no inconsistency if you get rid of (5).  ‘Problem’ solved!”
Bill also objects:
Feser seems to be proposing the following. In the case of the present-tensed 'BV exists,' the truth-maker is BV. But when BV is no more and it is true that BV existed, the truth-maker of the past-tensed truth will be the fact that BV existed and will not involve BV himself.
As it seems to me, this proposal betrays a failure to appreciate the difference between a fact construed as a true proposition, and a truth-maker, which cannot be a (Fregean or abstract) proposition. A truth-bearer cannot serve as a truth-maker. On one common use of 'fact,' a fact is just a true (abstract) proposition. We may refer to such facts as facts that. A fact that cannot serve as a truth-maker. Facts that need truth-makers.
End quote.  In response, I would say that it is a mistake to identify facts with propositions.  There is the fact that I am sitting in front of my computer, and there is the proposition that I am sitting in front of my computer.  The first makes the second true, but it is not identical with the second.  So there is no question here of the truth-bearer (namely the proposition) serving as a truth-maker (it is the fact, not the proposition, that is serving as a truth-maker).  
Similarly, it is the fact that Caesar used to exist and was assassinated on the Ides of March that makes true the proposition that Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March.  The fact is not the truth-bearer; the proposition is.  The fact is precisely the truth-maker.  
Bill also criticizes a remark in my book to the effect that “the past and future don't have the same kind of reality that the present does” (p. 301).  He objects that:
[O]n standard presentism, there is no distinction between kinds of reality. The claim is not that the wholly past and the wholly future have a different kind of reality or existence than the present, but that the past and future are not real or existent at all. On presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all. It passes out existence entirely; it does not retain a lesser kind of existence or exist in a looser sense of 'exist.'  
End quote.  This is true, and I will concede that my remark was phrased in a way that is potentially misleading if read out of context.  But strictly speaking, what I wrote is correct.  The past and future indeed don’t have the same kind of reality that the present does, precisely because they don’t have reality at all.  (I think Bill is here making too much of an awkwardly worded phrase.  As Bill himself acknowledges, I do make it clear elsewhere in my discussion that presentism denies that past and future objects and events exist at all.)
The point I was trying to make, in any event, is that past objects and events were real (unlike fictional objects and events, which never were).  That fact is what serves as the truthmaker for statements about past objects and events.  Statements about present objects and events have as their truthmakers a different sort of fact, viz. facts about objects and events that arereal.  
Bill also writes:
I conclude that Feser hasn't appreciated the depth of the grounding problem. 'Caesar was assassinated' needs an existing truth-maker. But on presentism, neither Caesar nor his being assassinated exists. It is not just that these two items don't exist now; on presentism, they don't exist at all. What then makes the past-tensed sentence true?  This is the question that Feser hasn't satisfactorily answered.
End quote.  In fact I have answered it.  Yes, “Caesar was assassinated” needs an existing truthmaker.  And that truthmaker is not Caesar or his assassination (neither of which exist anymore) but the fact that he was assassinated (which does still exist – after all, it is as much a fact now as it was yesterday, and will remain a fact tomorrow).  To this Bill objects that “obviously this won't do [because] the past-tensed truth cannot serve as [its] own truth-maker.”  But again, this conflates facts with propositions, and these should not be conflated. 
The critic might respond: “But facts don’t ‘exist’ in the same way that tables, chairs, etc. do!”  To which I would reply that that is perfectly true, but that there are also lots of other things that don’t exist in the same way that tables, chairs, etc. do – numbers, propositions, possibilities, God, and so on.  So what?  “Exists” is not a univocal term but an analogical one.  If the critic thinks that every truthmaker must exist in exactly the same way, then, once again, his objection does not really rest on the “truthmaker principle” per se but on some other ontological concern.
One further point.  Even if the defender of the “truthmaker objection” could get around the criticisms I have been raising, the objection nevertheless will succeed only if some alternative to presentism is correct.  And as I argue in Aristotle’s Revenge, none of the alternatives is correct.  So it will not suffice for the critic merely to try to raise problems for the presentist’s understanding of truth-making.  He will also have to defend some non-presentist understanding of truth-making, which will require responding to the objections I’ve raised against the rivals to presentism.
In particular, the critic presupposes that we have a clear idea of what it would be for past objects and events and future objects and events to be no less real than the present is, and thus a clear idea of what it would be for such things to be truthmakers.  But I claim that that is an illusion.  The eternalist view is in fact not well-defined.  It is a tissue of confusions that presupposes errors such as a tendency to characterize time in terms that intelligibly apply only to space, and to mistake mathematical abstractions for concrete realities.  Indeed, on the Aristotelian view of time that I defend in the book, the approaches to the subject commonly taken by various contemporary writers are in several respects wrongheaded.  Again, what I say about the truthmaker objection must be read in light of the larger discussion of time in Aristotle’s Revenge.

Review of a new volume on Neo-Scholasticism

My review of Rajesh Heynickx and Stéphane Symons’ anthology So What's New About Scholasticism? How Neo-Thomism Helped Shape the Twentieth Century appears at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Links to other book reviews can be found at my main website.

Can you doubt that 2 + 3 = 5?

In his first Meditation, Descartes famously tries to push doubt as far as he can, in the hope of finding something that cannotbe doubted and will thus provide a suitable foundation for the reconstruction of human knowledge.  Given the possibility that he is dreaming or that an evil spirit might be causing him to hallucinate, he judges that whatever the senses tell him might in principle be false.  In particular, the entire material world, including even his own body and brain, might be illusory.  Hence claims about the material world, and empirical claims in general, cannot in Descartes’ view be among the foundations of knowledge. Surprisingly for a rationalist, Descartes also suggests that even claims about basic arithmetic cannot be among the foundations.  For he proposes that it is possible that God might make him go wrong when considering even something as elementary as the claim that 2 + 3 = 5 or the claim that a square has four sides.  By the end of the first Meditation, he alters the scenario so that it is the evil spirit or Cartesian demon rather than God who is doing the deceiving, and later in the Meditations he argues that given God’s perfect goodness, he cannot be leading us astray in any way.  The key point for present purposes, though, is that Descartes does suggest, at least initially, that it is as coherent to doubt basic arithmetical and geometrical claims as it is to doubt that one is awake or that matter exists.  Is this true?
I think not.  The way Descartes’ skeptical scenarios work is by proposing coherent alternatives – or purportedly coherent ones, anyway – to the way things appear to common sense.  For example, given the experiences you are having right now, your common sense assumption would be that you are looking at a computer screen reading a blog post.  However, there are, Descartes says, clearly possible alternative scenarios in which you are not really looking at a computer screen and reading a blog post at all.  You could instead be in bed asleep and having a vivid dream about reading a blog post on a computer.  Or you could be a disembodied spirit who is being caused by a Cartesian demon to hallucinate that you have a body that is sitting in front of a computer reading a blog post.
Put to one side for present purposes the question whether these particular scenarios really are, at the end of the day, coherent.  (Some philosophers have argued that they are not.)   They are at least prima facie plausible insofar as we are familiar enough with dreams and hallucinations.  It is possible to have a dream in which one is convinced one is awake and looking at a computer screen.  It is possible to hallucinate.  Hence it certainly seems like we have cases where things appear to be some way X but are really some other way Y.  To be sure, one can (and should) question whether it is coherent to suppose that one is always dreaming or hallucinating, or whether a sensory experience of precisely the kind I am having right now could really be a dream or hallucination.  But dreams and hallucinations are familiar enough that these particular skeptical arguments at least get off the ground, even if we can ultimately shoot them back down.
By contrast, it is not clear how skepticism about basic arithmetic can even get off the ground.  For what we need is a coherent scenario in which it seems that (say) 2 + 3 = 5 but in reality the arithmetical facts are very different.  For example, we need a coherent scenario in which 2 + 3 = 14 but God or the demon is making it seem otherwise.  And the problem is that there is no such coherent scenario.  We simply cannot coherently describe a case in which 2 and 3 really add up to 14, the way we can (arguably) coherently describe a case in which you are not really reading a blog post on a computer right now.  For 2 and 3 adding up to 14 is a logical impossibility, whereas your not really reading a blog post on a computer right now is not a logical impossibility.  The proposition that 2 + 3 = 14 entails contradictions, whereas the proposition that I am not really reading a blog post on a computer right now does not.
You might respond: “But maybe God or the demon is only making it seem to you to be a logical impossibility.”  But that won’t work, for the same reason the original scenario won’t work.  For now we need to be able to describe a scenario in which the proposition that it is logically possible that 2 + 3 = 14is itself logically possible (and either God or the demon is only making it seem otherwise).  And the problem is that that proposition is no more logically possible than the first one is. 
There is, then, a crucial disanalogy between the examples involving arithmetic and the examples involving physical objects.  We can, independently of what we know about dreams and hallucinations, make sense of a scenario in which a certain physical object is not present.  (There are, after all, a great many places devoid of computer screens and blog posts – my back yard, the surface of the moon, the bottom of the Mariana Trench, etc.)  Hence we can go on to contrast a dream or hallucination in which the object does at least seem to be present with the fact that it is not.  But we cannot independently make sense of a scenario in which (say) 2 + 3 = 14.  Hence we have nothing to contrast with a scenario in which God or the demon makes it seem as if 2 and 3 add up to something other than 14.  We can’t really get the skeptical scenario going, the way we can with skeptical arguments involving dreams and hallucinations about the physical world.
So, it seems that, even if Descartes were correct to regard skepticism about the senses and the material world as coherent, he should not have regarded skepticism about basic arithmetic and the like as coherent.  That is significant for the rest of his project in the Meditations.  It has often been pointed out that, given the latter sort of skepticism, Descartes arguably shoots himself in the foot, making it impossible for him to get beyond the Cogito and maybe even impossible to get as far as the Cogito.  For if I could be wrong even about something as seemingly self-evident as 2 + 3 = 5, why couldn’t I be wrong about something like Cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”)?  Or, even if I can’t be wrong about that, I still need to carry out some fairly complex reasoning to get from knowledge of my own existence to knowledge of God’s existence (as Descartes does later in the Meditations, before going on to appeal to God’s goodness as guarantor of the reliability of his rational faculties).  And how can I be sure that I haven’t gone wrong somewhere in that reasoning, if I can be wrong about something as basic as 2 + 3 = 5?
It is a good thing for Descartes’ overall project, then, that the doubts raised in the first Meditation vis-à-vis basic arithmetic and the like are misplaced.  (That’s not to say the project isn’t wrongheaded in other ways – it is – but at least this bit of it can be patched up.)
Further reading:
Descartes’ “trademark” argument
Descartes’ “preservation” argument
Descartes’ “clear and distinct perception” argument
Descartes’ “indivisibility” argument

Artificial intelligence and magical thinking

Arthur C. Clarke famously said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  Is this true?  That depends on what you mean by “indistinguishable from.”  The phrase could be given either an epistemological reading or a metaphysical one.  On the former reading, what the thesis is saying is that if a technology is sufficiently advanced, you would not be able to know from examining it that it is not magic, even though in fact it is not.  This is no doubt what Clarke himself meant, and it is plausible enough, if only because the word “sufficiently” makes it hard to falsify.  If there was some technology that almost seemed like magic but could be shown not to be on close inspection, we could always say “Ah, but that’s only because it wasn’t sufficientlyadvanced.”  So the thesis really just amounts to the claim that people can be fooled into thinking that something is magic if we’re clever enough.  Well, OK.  I don’t know how interesting that is, but it seems true enough. A more interesting claim results if we give the thesis a metaphysical interpretation.  On this reading, Clarke is saying that a technology that is so advanced that it seems like magic really would be magic.  I doubt this is what Clarke meant, and though it is a more interesting claim, it is also clearly false.  No matter how convincing the sleight of hand of a Ricky Jay or a Michael Carbonaro is, we know it is not really magic, and we know that precisely because we know it was accomplished using technology.  That an effect results from a “sufficiently advanced technology” entails that it is not magic, not that it is magic.  If it weremagic, it wouldn’t be the technologythat is producing the effect.  The metaphysical reading seems plausible only if we make the verificationist assumption that if there is no way empirically to tell the difference between magic and technology, then there just would be no difference.  But verificationism is false.  (Cf. Aristotle’s Revenge , section 3.1)  Probably nobody really believes the stronger, metaphysical interpretation of Clarke’s thesis.  It might seem that people like Erich von Dänikenbelieve it, insofar as they claim that the gods of ancient cultures were really extraterrestrials working marvels by way of advanced technology.  (Think of the way that the Norse gods are portrayed in Marvel movies as an alien race.)  But this idea doesn’t really amount to the claim that magic is real and that it can be explained as a kind of advanced technology.  Rather, it amounts to the claim that magic is not real, and that it only seemed to be real because ancient people were mistaking advanced technology for magic.
There are, however, many people who believe a claim that is analogous to, and as silly as, the metaphysical thesis that sufficiently advanced technology really is magic – namely the claim that a machine running a sufficiently advanced computer program really is intelligent.  It is not intelligent, and we know that it is not intelligent (or should know, if we are thinking clearly) precisely because we know that it is merely running a computer program.
Building a computer is precisely analogous to putting together a bit of magical sleight of hand.  It is a clever exercise in simulation, nothing more.  And the convincingness of the simulation is as completely irrelevant in the one case as it is in the other.  Saying “Gee, AI programs can do such amazing things.  Maybe it really is intelligence!” is like saying “Gee, Penn and Teller do such amazing things.  Maybe it really ismagic!”  
The way computers work is by exploiting a parallelism between logical relationships on the one hand and causal connections on the other.  The fundamental examples of this are logic gates.  A logic gate is an input-output device constructed in such a way that its inputs and outputs reliably mirror the inputs and outputs of a logical function.  Take, for instance, the function and, which is such that when p is true and q is true, the conjunctive statement p and q will also be true (as logic students know from their study of truth tables).  An and-gate is a physical device constructed in such a way that when a state that can be interpreted as corresponding to p and a state that can be interpreted as corresponding to qare its inputs, it will cause as output a state that can be interpreted as corresponding to p and q.  Other logic gates can be constructed to parallel other logical functions, such as orand not.  
In an electronic computer, the inputs and outputs of a logic gate will take the form of electric currents, but in other sorts of machine they can take other forms, such as the positions of valves in a hydraulic computer, or the positions of sticks in a computer constructed out of Tinkertoy pieces.  There is nothing essentiallyelectronic about a computer in the modern sense.  It’s just that an electronic computer is going to be vastly speedier and more efficient than a computer constructed out of materials of these other kinds.  In any case, all the complex activity that takes place in a computer of any sort will be an aggregate of the activities of basic elements such as logic gates.
The flow of current or lack thereof (or, alternatively, the position of a valve, or of a stick, or of whatever the basic parts are out of which some computer is constructed) is conventionally interpreted as a bit (either a 1 or a 0) rather than as a propositional variable or a truth value, and the sequences of 1’s and 0’s correlated with the aggregate of the basic elements (again, such as logic gates) are interpreted as a fundamental level of “information” into which other sorts of information can be coded.  
The thing to emphasize is that the computer is not in and of itself carrying out logical operations, processing information, or doing anything else that might be thought a mark of genuine intelligence – any more than a piece of scratch paper on which you’ve written some logical symbols is carrying out logical operations, processing information, or the like.  Considered by themselves and apart from the conventions and intentions of language users, logical symbols on a piece of paper are just a bunch of meaningless ink marks.  Considered by themselves and apart from the intentions of the designers, a Tinkertoy computer is just a bunch of sticks moving around, as stupidly as if they had been tossed down the stairs.  And in exactlythe same way, considered by themselvesand apart from the intentions of the designers, the electrical currents in an electronic computer are just as devoid of intelligence or meaning as the current flowing through the wires of your toaster or hair dryer.  There is no intelligence there at all.  The intelligence is all in the designers and users of the computer, just as it is all in the person who wrote the logical symbols on the piece of paper rather than in the paper itself.
Indeed, that’s the whole point of a computer in the modern sense.  It’s a way of using utterly unintelligent physical objects and processes to mimic various intelligent activities – just as various utterly non-magical objects and techniques provide an entertainer with a way to mimic magic.  A computer’s mimicry crucially depends on our interpreting what it’s doing in certain ways.  Such-and-such ink marks count as words with meanings only insofar as we have a convention of interpreting them that way; and in exactly the same way, such-and-such electrical circuits count as logic gates, information processers, etc. only insofar as we have a convention of interpreting them that way.  Their status as simulations of various intelligent operations is entirely conventional or observer-relative.  You might say that it is a kind of make-believe, just as the “magic” that an entertainer performs is a kind of make-believe.
Siri and Alexa are not really intelligent, and wouldn’t be no matter how convincing you made them, just as Call of Duty is not really warfare, and wouldn’t be real warfare no matter how realistic you made the CGI.  Computer simulations of intelligent behavior are like computer simulations of war, the weather, the stock market, etc. – simulations, and nothing more.  And we know that for the same reason we know that magic is a mere simulation – namely that we ourselves made the simulation.  
Let’s now consider the various objections that are no doubt brewing in the reader’s mind:
1. “Are you saying that intelligence is a kind of magic?”
No, of course not.  That’s not the point of the analogy.  The point of the analogy is that a simulation of X is not the same as X, and that we should be especially aware of this when we are ourselves the makers of the simulation.  Magic is a particularly good example precisely because no serious person believes in it.  We know there is no such thing as magic and thus are not tempted to mistake the simulation for the real McCoy.  Intelligence, by contrast, is real but also philosophically puzzling, and so in our search for understanding of it we are more prone to commit the fallacy of mistaking simulation for reality where it is concerned.
It is also irrelevant, by the way, whether intelligence is material or immaterial.  The debate between dualism and materialism can be put to one side for present purposes.  Even if human intelligence is entirely explicable in materialist terms – I don’t think it is, but let that pass – the point is that the way it is so explicable cannot be in terms of the idea that the brain is a kind of computer running a program.
2. “But neurons do what logic gates do.  So we know that computers can be intelligent, because they are essentially doing what our brains are doing.”
No, they aren’t.  True, there are causal relations between neurons that are vaguely analogous to the causal relations holding between logic gates and other elements of an electronic computer.  But that is where the similarity ends, and it is a similarity that is far less significant than the differences between the cases.  Logic gates are designed by electrical engineers in a way that will make them suitable for interpretation as implementing logical functions.  No one is doing anything like that with neurons.  In particular, no one is assigning an interpretation as implementing a logical function, or any other interpretation for that matter, to neurons.  (The point is simple and obvious, but commonly overlooked precisely because it is so obvious, like the tip of your nose that you never notice precisely because it is right in front of you.)
That brings us to a second difference, which is that a computer and the logic gates and other elements out of which it is constructed are artifacts, whereas a brain (or, more precisely, the organism of which the brain is an organ) is a substance, in the Aristotelian sense.  A substance has irreducible properties and causal powers, i.e. causal powers that are more than just the sum of the properties and powers of its parts.  Artifacts are not like that.  In an artifact, the properties and causal powers of the whole are reducible to the aggregate of the properties and causal powers of the parts together with the intentions of the designer and users of the artifact.  (Cf. Scholastic Metaphysics , section 3.1.2)
Judging the brain to be a computer on the basis of the analogy between neurons and logic gates is like saying that the “face on Mars” must really be a sculpture even if it came about through natural processes, on the grounds that it looks (sort of) like a sculpture would look.  In fact, anything that came about through natural processes cannot be a sculpture, whatever it looks like, because a sculpture is a kind of artifact, and an artifact is precisely the opposite of something that comes about through natural processes.  And in exactly the same way, precisely because brains and the neurons of which they are made come about by natural processes, they are not artifacts, and thus are not computers, logic gates, and the like (since those things are artifacts).
I can already hear some readers thinking: “But maybe God assigns to neurons the interpretation of implementing a logical function, so that the brain is a kind of computer that God is using, and our thoughts are the result.”  This is completely muddleheaded.  For one thing, this would entail that we are not really thinking at all – any more than a piece of paper or an abacus is thinking when you use it to work out calculations – but that only God is thinking, and somehow using our brains as an aid in doing that, just as we use paper, abacuses, etc. as aids to thinking.  (Why would God need such an aid to thinking?)  For another thing, it supposes that the brain is a kind of artifact, and it simply isn’t that, whether or not God creates it.  (As I have complained many, many times, it is a serious theological and metaphysical error to model divine creation on the making of artifacts.  Cf., for example, my essay “Between Aristotle and William Paley: Aquinas's Fifth Way,” in Neo-Scholastic Essays .)
It is easier to see the fallacy here if you think of a Tinkertoy computer or a hydraulic computer instead of an electronic computer.  It is obvious that the movements of sticks count as the implementation of logical functions, information processing, etc. only insofar as the designer has assigned such interpretations to the movements, and that apart from this interpretation they would be nothing morethan meaningless movements.  No one is doing anything like that with the brain.  No one is saying “Let’s count this kind of neural process as an and-gate, that one as an or-gate, etc.” the way they are with the Tinkertoy sticks.  The reason people fall for the fallacy in the case of electronic computers is that they see an analogy between the computer’s electrical activity and the brain’s electrochemical activity and think it lends plausibility to the idea that the brain is a computer.  In reality the similarity is no more relevant than the fact that you can make a computer that weighs about as much as the brain, or one that is the same color as a brain.
3. “But evolution can design computers.  That’s what the brain is – a computer designed by natural selection.”
This is like saying that evolution can make sculptures or that natural selection can write English prose.  Sculptures and English prose are artifacts, which are the products of intelligent creatures.  Natural selection is not intelligent – that’s the whole point of the idea of natural selection – and thus it cannot make artifacts.  Even if it somehow produced something that kinda-sorta looked like a sculpture or an English word, it wouldn’t actually be one, any more than the “face on Mars” is really a sculpture.  And by the same token, it cannot make a computer, since a computer is a kind of artifact.  Tarting up nonsense with the magic word “evolution” doesn’t somehow make it scientific or anything other than nonsense.
Moreover, even if the suggestion that “evolution designs computers” weren’t nonsense, it would, in the current context, be question-begging.  It would assume that it makes sense to describe the product of a natural process as a computer, and thus presupposes that what I’m saying is wrong without showing that it is.
4. “But you’re relying on intuition, and intuitions are a weak basis for metaphysical claims.”
No, I’m not relying on intuition at all.  (In fact, I hate arguments that appeal to intuitions.)  When I point out that ink scribblings have no intrinsic status as words but get that status as a result of human conventions, or that the “face on Mars” cannot be an artifact if it came about through natural processes, I am not appealing to intuition.  I am not saying “Gee, it just seems intuitively like a bunch of ink scribblings have no intrinsic meaning etc.”  Rather, I’m merely calling attention to how words actually come into existence, how artifacts actually come about, etc.  Similarly, when I say that sticks and and-gates and the like have by themselves no status as the implementation of logical functions, etc., I’m not appealing to intuitions but merely calling attention to how Tinkertoy sticks, and-gates, etc. actually get that status – namely, from the conventions and intentions of the designers and users of computers.
5. “Oh, this is just John Searle’s Chinese Room argument.  But that doesn’t work because [insert fallacious response to Searle here].”
No, this is not Searle’s Chinese Room argument.  To be sure, that argument is an excellent argument, and in my view none of the usual responses to it is any good.  But again, I am not giving a variation of the Chinese Room argument.
However, I am saying something that is related to another argument Searle gave about a decade after he first published the Chinese Room argument – an argument presented in his article “Is the Brain a Digital Computer?” and in his book The Rediscovery of the Mind .  That is an argument to the effect that computation is an observer-relative feature of physical processes rather than a feature intrinsic to them, so that the brain cannot be said to be in any interesting sense a digital computer.  It is a computer only in the trivial sense that anything can be said to be computer, insofar as we could, if we wanted to, assign to anything some interpretationof it as carrying out a computation.
Still, my position differs from Searle’s in some important ways.  I have analyzed Searle’s argument at length in my article “From Aristotle to John Searle and Back Again: Formal Causes, Teleology, and Computation in Nature.”  As I note in the article, Searle has in common with his materialist critics an essentially “mechanistic” or post-Aristotelian and non-teleological conception of the nature of matter.  And given that conception of matter, none of the responses to Searle has any hope of succeeding.  However, if we return to an Aristotelian teleological conception of matter, then we can coherently say that there is something analogous to computation in nature (though that doesn’t entail that the right way to think of it would be on the model of Turing machines, binary code, and all the other apparatus of modern computational theory). 
That still wouldn’t salvage the claim that computers in the modern sense can be intelligent, however, because they are still mere artifacts, and the points made above would still apply.  (It also wouldn’t salvage the claim that human intelligence amounts to computation in the brain, since – as, again, I would argue – human intelligence cannot be reduced to purely material activity even given an Aristotelian conception of matter.  But as I have said, that is not essential to the present point.)
6. “How is positing ectoplasm any better than explaining intelligence as a kind of computation?”
Who said anything about ectoplasm?  Not me, since I don’t believe in such a thing.  Pointing out that words and sculptures are artifacts and thus cannot be the products of natural processes doesn’t commit someone to the existence of ectoplasm (whatever that is).  It doesn’t entail that one must think that words get their meaning, or sculptures get their status as representations, from the infusion of some weird kind of substance.  Indeed, it doesn’t commit one to any sort of metaphysical view at all, weird or otherwise.  Similarly, pointing out that computers are a kind of artifact – so that they don’t in and of themselves count as carrying out computations or as doing information processing, and so that the brain is not a kind of computer – does not commit one to any positive account, weird or otherwise, about how the brain works or how intelligence works.  Again, you don’t need to be a dualist to see the point.  
7. “But maybe computers, even the Tinkertoy computer, really are thinking even if it seems that they are not.”
Right, and maybe there are invisible, intangible, silent, odorless elves dancing in front of you right now even if it seems there are not.  Maybe Penn and Teller, Ricky Jay, and Michael Carbonaro really are doing magic, just like Dr. Strange, and only pretending that it is just sleight of hand.
But don’t bet on it, and also don’t bet on the idea that computers are really thinking.  And even if they were, it would not be because of the way they are engineered, the programs they are running, etc. – just as, if Penn and Teller were doing real magic, it would notbe because of their skill at sleight of hand.  For sleight of hand is precisely mere simulation rather than real magic, and to be constructed out of logic gates and the like is precisely merely to simulate intelligence rather than really to have it.  If computers really are thinking, that would be because they’ve somehow got brains hidden somewhere (if you’re a materialist) or immaterial souls hidden somewhere (if you’re a dualist), and not because of anything having to do with their being computers.
8. “You just feel threatened by the idea that computers are intelligent!  You just want to believe that the human mind is somehow special!”
And you’re really grasping at straws at this point.  Even if this accusation were true, it would be entirely irrelevant to the points I’ve been making.  To suppose that what motivates a person to make a claim or give an argument is relevant to the truth of the claim or the cogency of the argument is to commit an ad hominem fallacy of poisoning the well.  You might as well say that those who believe the “face on Mars” is not a real sculpture just feel threatened by the idea that it is, or that those who point out that ink scribbles have only conventional rather than intrinsic meaning just feel threatened by the idea that they have intrinsic meaning.  
In any case, the accusation isn’t true.  As I keep pointing out, even someone who rejects dualism and thinks the mind is just one natural feature of the universe among others could accept the points I’ve been making here.  (Searle would be an example.)
9. “Then why do so many people, including even many scientists and philosophers, say that computers can be intelligent?”
Because they are human beings, and a human being is as susceptible of fallacious thinking as the next guy.  And there are several fallacies one can easily fall into in this context. 
One of them I’ve already indicated.  The electrical activity in a modern computer is analogous to the electrochemical activity in the brain.  Hence people can lapse into committing a fallacy of false analogy, concluding that the brain and a computer must be analogous in other respects too.  This is abetted by a fallacy of equivocation.  We often use intentional idioms when speaking about computers – we say that the computer knowssuch-and-such, or is figuring out the solution to a problem, or has such-and-such in its memory, or what have you.  These are all mere façons de parler, originating from the fact that computers were constructed precisely to mimic such intelligent features.  It is exactly analogous to the way that we casually speak of a statue as having eyes, a nose, a mouth, etc., because the statue was sculpted precisely to have features that look like eyes, a nose, a mouth, etc.  But a statue doesn’t literally have eyes, a nose, or a mouth, and a computer doesn’t literally know, figure out, or remember anything.  When we use the same terms to describe what we do and what the computer does, we can, if we are not careful, fallaciously conclude that it is doing what we do.
There is also a kind of confirmation bias at work here.  People who claim that computers can think are typically materialists, and it can be very tempting to see the undeniably impressive advances made in computer hardware and software as vindication of the claims of materialism.  There is also sometimes a kind of circular reasoning at work.   Materialism is taken to support the computational model of intelligence, and the computational model of intelligence is taken to support materialism.
Then there is the fact that journalists and pop culture have spread the idea of artificial intelligence and made it so familiar that its legitimacy has come widely to be taken for granted.  The average man on the street doesn’t really know much about how the brain works or how computers work, but is impressed by the latter and notes that science fiction and even many scientists suppose both that a thinking computer might one day be constructed, and that the brain is itself a kind of computer.  “Look at Siri and Alexa!  Look at all those pop science books about artificial intelligence on the shelves at Barnes and Noble!  Look at all those thinking machines on TV and in the movies – HAL 9000, Data from Star Trek, the kid from the Spielberg movie AI, Ultron and the Vision from the Avengersmovies, etc.  There must be something to it!”
Nor can it be denied that the idea of artificial intelligence is cool and fun.  People want it to be true for that reason too, as well as because of their materialist biases.  (Notice that I am not saying that these motivations show that the idea is false.  That would be to commit a fallacy of poisoning the well.  The idea is false for other reasons, namely the ones given above.  The point is merely that these motivations help explain why people accept an idea that can be fairly easily refuted when one thinks carefully about it.)
None of this is to deny that much of what goes under the name of “artificial intelligence” is technologically very impressive, and promises to become only more impressive.  Nor is it to take a stand one way or another on the current controversy about the potential dangers of AI as it gets more sophisticated.  AI might end up being dangerous for the same sorts of reasons that other technologies can be dangerous.  For example, we might become too dependent on it, or it might become too complex to control, or there might be glitches that lead to horrible accidents, and so forth.
However, it will not become dangerous by virtue of becoming literally more intelligent than us, because it is not literally intelligent at all.  Nor are any of the other odd things sometimes claimed by those who’ve gotten carried away with the idea of thinking machines – such as that we might achieve immortality by virtue of our minds being downloaded onto a computer, or that the universe might really be a computer simulation – any more plausible.  All of this is sheer nonsense.  
You might as well say that our universe is really just a pattern of movements in a vast assemblage of Tinkertoy sticks, or that your mind might persist after your death as a set of movements in a bunch of Tinkertoy sticks.  Movements in Tinkertoy sticks, however complex, are in and of themselves nothing more than that – movements.  That’s all.  They “process information” or carry out “computations” only in the sense that we can decide to interpret certain of the patterns that way, just as we can decide to count certain ink marks as words.  And the idea is no more plausible when we substitute electronic computers for Tinkertoy computers.
Further reading:
Gödel and the mechanization of thought
Accept no imitations [on the Turing test]
Kripke contra computationalism
Do machines compute functions?
Can machines beg the question?
From Aristotle to John Searle and Back Again: Formal Causes, Teleology, and Computation in Nature [a 2016 article from the journal Nova et Vetera]
Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought [a 2013 American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article, reprinted in Neo-Scholastic Essays]
Kurzweil’s phantasms [a 2013 book review from First Things]

New volume on philosophers and Catholicism

Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism , an anthology edited by Brian Besong and Jonathan Fuqua, will be out next month.  You can pre-order at Amazon.  My essay “The God of a Philosopher” appears in the volume, and recounts how I came to reject atheism for Catholicism, specifically (rather than some other religion or a purely philosophical theism).  Other contributors to the volume include Peter Kreeft, J. Budziszewski, Candace Vogler, Robert Koons, Francis Beckwith, and several other philosophers.

Five Proofs on radio

Recently, John DeRosa interviewed me for the Classical Theism Podcast.  You can listen to the interview here.  We discuss my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God and Simon Blackburn’s criticisms of it, my conversion to Catholicism, my new book Aristotle’s Revenge , and other matters.  If you listen all the way to the end of the interview, John explains how you can enter to win a free copy of Aristotle's Revenge. I was also recently interviewed about Five Proofsby Steve and Becky Greene on The Catholic Conversation radio show, by Gary Michuta on Hands on Apologetics , and by Pat Flynn for WCAT Radio .  Follow the links to hear the interviews.
This July, Graham Oppy and I will discuss Five Proofson Cameron Bertuzzi’s Capturing Christianity podcast.  More information to come.

Wrath darkens the mind

A straw man fallacy is committed when you attack a caricature of what your opponent has said rather than addressing his actual views.  Hypocrisy involves blithely doing something that you admit is wrong and criticize in others.  But what do you call it when you bitterly criticize someone else for doing something you approveof and praise in yourself and others?  I don’t know if there’s a label for that.  “Being an unhinged weirdo” is about the best I can come up with, and I’ve got a couple of examples. Take our old buddy Jerry Coyne.  I can perfectly well understand why he doesn’t like me.  Over the years, he has made a fool of himself overand overand overand overand overand overagain, and I cruelly keep calling attention to the fact.  Now, longtime readers will recall that some years back I had an exchange with David Bentley Hart about whether there will be non-human animals in the afterlife.  Hart had argued that there will be, and I argued that there will not be, on the grounds that non-human animals (unlike, I would argue, human beings) are entirely corporeal, so that there is nothing in their nature that can survive death.  Coyne found this dispute especially worthy of mockery.  Or rather, he pretended that he did.  As I noted at the time, it was obvious that in fact Coyne was merely irked that I had recently exposed one of his idiocies du jour, and pounced on my exchange with Hart as a way to try to change the subject.  Standard Coyne shtick.
What’s odd is that this has turned out to be more than just a one-off ad hoc attempt at distraction.  The question of whether there will be animals in the afterlife is not one that I am terribly interested in.  Had Hart not raised the issue, I probably wouldn’t have addressed it, and I haven’t revisited it since.  Coyne, by contrast, seems obsessed by it.  It’s been over three years, and he keeps bringing it up, every time I say something that inspires one of his periodic anti-Feser rants.  The latest example is from a few days ago.  He there characterizes my view that “dogs don’t go to Heaven” as “deranged.”
Now, that’s the reallybizarre thing.  Why is it “deranged” for me to say that there is no afterlife for dogs and other non-human animals?  Does Coyne think dogs do go to heaven?  Does he agree with Hart?  Of course not.  Coyne is an atheist, and a very militant one at that.  He too thinks that dogs don’t go to heaven, and that there is no aspect of their nature that survives death.  In other words, Coyne calls me “deranged” for agreeing with him.  And while agreeing with Jerry Coyne no doubt often is a sign of derangement, it is strange for Coyne himself to think so!
Could it be that what Coyne really finds objectionable is rather that I think that there is an afterlife for human beings?  Is it that I hold that there is in human beings, unlike non-human animals, something incorporeal?  The trouble with that supposition – apart from the fact that, as usual, Coyne has absolutely nothing of substance to say in response to my arguments – is that that isn’t what Coyne actually says.  He doesn’t say that Feser is deranged because he thinks there is an afterlife for human beings, but rather that Feser is deranged because he thinks there is no afterlife for non-human animals. 
Go figure.  Near as I can tell, what is going on is simply that Coyne dislikes me so intensely that he cannot help but sputter whatever pops into his head, however ill-thought-out.  It’s not that Coyne is stupid.  On the contrary, he’s obviously very intelligent, and even sometimes interesting when he comments on a subject other than religion.  It’s that his obsessive hatred for religion and religious people has so distorted his judgment that he cannot even see when he is being incoherent and (yet again, alas) making a fool of himself. 
Needless to say, religious people can be guilty of the same thing, which brings me to my other example.  As my longtime readers know, Mark Shea is what you get when you marry the letter of Catholicism to the spirit and style of New Atheist polemic.  Take your average rant from one of Coyne’s or P. Z. Myers’ teenage combox dwellers and replace the shrill and superficial secularist content with some shrill and superficial theology, and you essentially have your typical Shea blog post or Facebook entry.  Very different targets, but the same venom.  Though at one time he devoted his efforts to writing helpful works of popular apologetics, Shea has in recent years become utterly obsessed with left-wing politics, and with demonizing any of his fellow Catholics who do not share his politics.  And unlike Coyne, he is no longer even occasionally interesting.  He has a little bag of talking points, epithets, and caricatures he’s mostly borrowed from others (“Right Wing Noise Machine,” “Christianist,” etc., Always All In Caps) and robotically pulls one or two out of the bag and flings them at whichever person is the object of his hatred on any particular day.  Snore.
However, one of Shea’s stock epithets is very curious, and the occasion for my commentary here.  Shea frequently accuses the conservative and traditionalist Catholics he so intensely dislikes of regarding themselves as the “Greatest Catholics of All Time.”  This is a very strange accusation.  I cannot think of a single conservative or traditionalist Catholic who can plausibly be said to take such an attitude toward himself or his fellows.  On the contrary, conservative and traditionalist Catholics tend if anything to have a rather low opinion of contemporary Catholics, including themselves.  They tend to think that even the most orthodox and devout Catholics of today simply don’t come close to measuring up to the heroic figures of Church history.  When they complain about the low state of the Church and the heterodoxy and cowardice of so many churchmen, they often suggest that contemporary Catholics – including, again, conservative and traditionalist Catholics themselves – are simply getting the bishops they deserve, and suffering divine punishment for their sins.
By contrast, Shea and other left-wing Catholics tend to take the view that the contemporary Church has much deeper moral understanding than the Church of the past did.  In particular, they hold that the views expressed by Pope Francis and other contemporary churchmen on topics like capital punishment, torture, religious liberty, interreligious dialogue, divorce and remarriage, feminism, homosexuality, social justice, etc. reflect a deeper understanding of the demands of the Gospel, and of the dignity of the human person, than was possessed by churchmen of the past.  When modern popes and other churchmen apologize for the sins of the historical Church, or suggest (as Pope Francis has) that churchmen of the past had “a mentality more legalistic than Christian” and a “concern for preserving power and material wealth” that “prevented a deeper understanding of the Gospel,” these progressive Catholics applaud, and regard such actions as evidence that today’s Church has matured morally, spiritually, and doctrinally. 
In short, if anyone is plausibly accused of thinking that contemporary Catholics are the “Greatest Catholics of All Time,” it is Shea and Catholics of like mind.  Like Coyne, Shea is criticizing people he dislikes for an attitude that in other contexts he takes himself, and approves of in others.
What explains such incoherence?  The answer is that hatred blinds the intellect.  More precisely, and as I discussed in a blog post on wrath and its daughters, anger that is excessive or otherwise disordered has as one of its byproducts what Aquinas calls “clamor” or “disorderly and confused speech.”  Anger has the function of prodding us to make things right when in some way they are not – when there is some injustice to be redressed, some error to be corrected, or what have you.  When guided by reason, anger can result in coherent speech and action, but in a wrathful person anger comes to dominate reason, and he lashes out incoherently.  If he’s frenzied enough, he may even lash out with a condemnation he would in other contexts regard as a commendation.

2019 Aquinas Lecture

In January I gave the 2019 Aquinas Lecture at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, on the theme “Classical Theism and the Nature of God.”  Before the lecture I was kindly awarded the Order of St. Thomas Medal by the Center for Thomistic Studies.  You can watch the video of the lecture at the CTS website.  (Click on the “Aquinas Lecture Series Videos” link.)  That’s the medal you’ll see me wearing.  The waiter joke at the beginning makes reference to something said in Steve Jensen’s opening remarks, which are not in the video. See my main website for video of other lectures, television appearances, and the like.

ORDER NOW: Aristotle’s Revenge (Updated)

UPDATE 3/5: Looks like Amazon's pre-order stock sold out right away.  If you don't want to wait for Amazon to re-stock, it looks like you can also pre-order via the U.S. distributor.

Amazon has the U.S. release of my new book Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science scheduled for March 22.  You can pre-order now.  The book has already been available for a few weeks at Amazon.co.uk and other European outlets.   
Some pre-publication reactions to the book:“With characteristic clarity and panache, Feser argues that the principles of Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, especially metaphysics and the philosophy of nature, are not challenged by developments in modern and contemporary science.  Indeed, Feser thinks that a proper understanding of the natural sciences discloses the enduring value of these very principles.  The book offers an excellent analysis of many of the key philosophical questions that lie at the heart of discourse about the implications of the physical and biological sciences. It is a very important resource for philosophers and scientists.”  Dr. William E. Carroll, Aquinas Institute, Blackfriars, University of Oxford

“Scientists seek explanations for why nature is the way it is.  In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Ed Feser provides explanations both for why contemporary science is the way that it is and for why modern scientists think in the way that we do. It would be a pity if scientists did not read this book. It would help them realize that their often unacknowledged philosophical assumptions and idiosyncrasies actually reveal that they are closet Aristotelians at heart.” Rev. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., Ph.D., S.T.D., Professor of Biology and of Theology, Providence College, and Director, ThomisticEvolution.org

“A welcome sequel to Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics, this book argues convincingly that modern science has not overcome Aristotle's philosophy but rather presupposes it.  Feser shows that, far from being vanquished, Aristotle provides ‘the true metaphysical foundations for the very possibility of that science.’” Fr. Michael Dodds, O.P., Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, California

Here are the cover copy and table of contents:

Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature.  Aristotle’s Revenge argues that these concepts are not only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by modern science.  Among the many topics covered are the metaphysical presuppositions of scientific method; the status of scientific realism; the metaphysics of space and time; the metaphysics of quantum mechanics; reductionism in chemistry and biology; the metaphysics of evolution; and neuroscientific reductionism.  The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science, so as to bring contemporary philosophy and science into dialogue with the Aristotelian tradition.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0. Preface
1. Two philosophies of nature
1.1 What is the philosophy of nature?1.2 Aristotelian philosophy of nature in outline
1.2.1 Actuality and potentiality
1.2.2 Hylemorphism
1.2.3 Limitation and change
1.2.4 Efficient and final causality
1.2.5 Living substances
1.3 The mechanical world picture
1.3.1 Key elements of the mechanical philosophy
1.3.2 Main arguments for the mechanical philosophy

2. The scientist and scientific method
2.1 The arch of knowledge and its “empiriometric” core2.2 The intelligibility of nature
2.3 Subjects of experience
2.4 Being in the world
2.4.1 Embodied cognition
2.4.2 Embodied perception
2.4.3 The scientist as social animal
2.5 Intentionality
2.6 Connections to the world
2.7 Aristotelianism begins at home

3. Science and reality
3.1 Verificationism and falsificationism3.2 Epistemic structural realism
3.2.1 Scientific realism
3.2.2 Structure
3.2.3 Epistemic not ontic
3.3 How the laws of nature lie (or at least engage in mental reservation)
3.4 The hollow universe 

4. Space, time, and motion
4.1 Space4.1.1 Does physics capture all there is to space?
4.1.2 Abstract not absolute
4.1.3 The continuum
4.2 Motion
4.2.1 How many kinds of motion are there?
4.2.2 Absolute and relative motion
4.2.3 Inertia
4.2.3.1 Aristotle versus Newton?
4.2.3.2 Why the conflict is illusory
4.2.3.3 Is inertia real?
4.2.3.4 Change and inertia
4.3 Time
4.3.1 What is time?
4.3.2 The ineliminability of tense
4.3.2.1 Time and language
4.3.2.2 Time and experience
4.3.3 Aristotle versus Einstein?
4.3.3.1 Making a metaphysics of method
4.3.3.2 Relativity and the A-theory
4.3.4 Against the spatialization of time
4.3.5 The metaphysical impossibility of time travel
4.3.6 In defense of presentism
4.3.7 Physics and the funhouse mirror of nature

5. The philosophy of matter
5.1 Does physics capture all there is to matter?5.2 Aristotle and quantum mechanics
5.2.1 Quantum hylemorphism
5.2.2 Quantum mechanics and causality
5.3 Chemistry and reductionism
5.4 Primary and secondary qualities
5.5 Is computation intrinsic to physics?
5.5.1 The computational paradigm
5.5.2 Searle’s critique
5.5.3 Aristotle and computationalism

6. Animate nature
6.1 Against biological reductionism6.1.1 What is life?
6.1.2 Genetic reductionism
6.1.3 Function and teleology
6.1.4 The hierarchy of life forms
6.2 Aristotle and evolution
6.2.1 Species essentialism
6.2.2 Natural selection is teleological
6.2.3 Transformism
6.2.4 Problems with some versions of “Intelligent Design” theory
6.3 Against neurobabble