Edward Feser's Blog, page 49

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

ORDER NOW: Aristotle’s Revenge

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” core 2.2 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 falsificationism 3.2 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 Space 4.1.1 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 reductionism 6.1.1 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

Byrne on gender identity

What is it to have a “gender identity”?  At Arc Digital, Alex Byrne examines some proposed definitions of the concept and common assumptions about it, and finds them problematic.  In earlier posts, we looked at Byrne’s views about whether sex is binary and whether sex is socially constructed.  As his earlier articles did, Byrne’s latest piece brings the cold shower of sober philosophical analysis to a discussion that is usually overheated and muddleheaded. Byrne begins by considering various proposed characterizations of “gender identity.”  As he notes, they are often circular, or too broad, or define the notion in terms of other notions which are no better defined than the notion of gender identity is, or make reference to an unexplained and dubious “intrinsic sense” or “internal sense” of what one’s gender is.  The clearest conception, in Byrne’s view, is the notion of “core gender identity” as one’s belief or supposed knowledge that one is male or female or of indeterminate sex.
However one defines gender identity, Byrne notes that what has become the “standard picture” among people who comment on this issue comprises the following three theses:
(a) Everyone has a gender identity, and for “cisgender” people it matches their sex,
(b) “Transgender” people have gender identities that don’t match their sex, and
(c) This mismatch causes gender dysphoria.
But each of these claims, notes Byrne, is problematic.  The first problem, Byrne says, is that (b) is false, at least if we think of gender identity as the belief that one is male, female, or of indeterminate sex.  For there are cases in which (b) is not true.  For example, at least some “trans women” would affirm that they are males (though not men), and indeed would affirm that one cannot be a transwoman without being a male.  And in that case, Byrne says, it is not true of all transgender people that their gender identities don’t match their sex.
In order to salvage (b), Byrne argues, one would need a fairly loose criterion of gender identity that amounts to one or more of the following: feeling a kinship with a certain sex, exhibiting behavior stereotypically associated with that sex, feeling satisfaction at being treated as a person of that sex, etc.  On this interpretation, “trans women” would be males who have a female gender identity in the sense of feeling kinship with women, exhibiting stereotypically feminine behavior, feeling satisfaction at being treated as a woman, and so forth.
The trouble with this, though, says Byrne, is that if that is all that “gender identity” amounts to, then (a) will not be true.  For there are “cisgender” women who don’t feel an affinity with other women, don’t exhibit stereotypically feminine behavior, don’t feel satisfaction at being treated as women, etc.
So, in Byrne’s view there does not seem to be a notion of “gender identity” on which both (a) and (b) are true.  Jargon like the terms “transgender” and “cisgender” is thus not well-defined, since it presupposes that (a) and (b) are both true.
Then there is (c).  One problem with it, says Byrne, is that at least some boys who suffer from gender dysphoria say, not that they are girls, but that they want to be girls.  In that case, there is no mismatch between their gender identity and their sex, if gender identity amounts to a belief about what one’s sex is.  Another problem is that in at least some cases it seems that gender dysphoria is the cause of a mismatch between gender identity and sex rather than the effectof such a mismatch.  Then there are cases of resolved dysphoria that don’t seem plausibly interpreted in terms of a mismatch, as opposed to some other kind of confusion.  Again, the notions in question are simply not well-defined.
Another indication of how ill-defined these notions are – one that Byrne does not discuss in this current article – is the parallel between the notion of being “transgender” and the notion of being “transracial.” Transgender activists tend to resent this comparison, but they have a difficult time explaining what is wrong with it.  Rebecca Tuvel and others have defended the notion of being transracial, precisely on the grounds that it is no moresuspect than the notion of being transgender.  But of course, one could just as well argue in the opposite direction, to the effect that, since the notion of being transracial is suspect, so too is the notion of being transgender.  
And then there are other parallels that could be drawn.  Since they endorse the notion of being transgender and see that the notion of being transracial is on a par with it, Tuvel and others bite the bullet and endorse the latter too.  But would they also endorse the notion of being “transspecies”and affirm that if a person self-identifies as a reptile, we ought to go along with that?  What if a person tells us that he self-identifies as a stone, or as a pencil, or as the number 3?  Should we go along with that too?
Presumably even the most progressive of progressives would admit that a guy who tells us that he is a snake or a pencil or the number 3 is just deluded (though I admit that these days you really cannot be sure).  There is a point at which they will acknowledge the absurdum to which a thesis about one’s “self-identity” has been reduced, rather than embrace it.  There really is no difference between a person claiming to be a snake or a pencil and a person who is merely pretending to be a snake or a pencil or who is merely deluded into thinkingthat he is a snake or a pencil.
To clarify the notion of transgender identity, then, we need an explanation of exactly what the difference is between, say, a male who claims to be a woman and a male who is merely pretending to be a woman or who is merely deluded into thinking he is a woman.  And the trouble, as Byrne shows, is that the key notions needed in order to do this are themselves not well-defined.
Byrne notes that an analogy is often drawn between the notion of gender identity and the notion of sexual orientation, though he does not say much about the latter.  In an earlier post, I suggested that the notions are indeed parallel in such a way that if the former is problematic, then the latter will be similarly problematic.  And it does seem that difficulties of the kind Byrne raises in his latest article when considering the notion of gender identity might also be raised when considering the notion of sexual orientation, at least if sexual orientation too is regarded as a kind of “identity.”
To a first approximation, “sexual orientation” has to do with the stable object of one’s sexual desires.  Someone who is only ever sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex is said to have a heterosexual orientation, and someone who is only ever sexually attracted to people of the same sex is said to have a homosexual orientation.  So far so good.  But sexual orientation is commonly thought also to involve a kind of identity.  For example, it is held that having same-sex desires is in some sense constitutive of what one is, of one’s nature.  The idea seems to be that to be gay is to be a man who is naturally attracted to other men and to be lesbianis to be a woman who is naturally attracted to other women.  People don’t just happen to desire to eat and drink.  Having such desires is part of their nature as human beings.  And in a similar way, according to the common view, someone who is gay or lesbian doesn’t just happen to be sexually attracted to people of the same sex.  That attraction is, the view says, part of their very nature.
Now, from a purely biological point of view, a “trans woman” is male.  That is why gender is usually distinguished from biological sex.  Similarly, from a purely biological point of view, sexual organs and appetites have a heterosexual function.  Specifically, sexual organs have the biological function of enabling copulation with someone of the opposite sex, and sexual arousal has the biological function of prodding people actually to copulate with someone of the opposite sex.  
(Naturalists typically analyze a trait’s biological function in terms of the reason why it was favored by natural selection, and evolutionary psychologists have speculated about whether homosexual desire might be explained in terms of natural selection.  But even if these theories were more than speculations, they wouldn’t cast doubt on the claim that sexual desire has the biological function of getting people to copulate with someone of the opposite sex.  For the theories hold, not that natural selection favored same-sex attraction per se, but rather that it favored some other trait causally correlated with same-sex attraction.  That sexual attraction of any kind came to exist in the first place would still have to be explained in terms of natural selection favoring creatures who had a disposition to copulate with people of the opposite sex.  Same-sex attraction would be an alteration of an appetite that serves a heterosexual biological function, just as pica is an alteration of an appetite that serves a nutritive biological function.)
Note also that, just as gender dysphoria is said to be caused by a mismatch between gender identity and sex, so too it is said that distress and confusion about one’s sexuality can result from a mismatch between sexual orientation on the one hand, and the sexual desires that as a matter of biological fact are usually correlated with being either male or female on the other.  And just as it is said that the solution to dysphoria is to embrace one’s gender identity and have others embrace it too, so too it is said that the solution to distress and confusion about one’s sexuality is to embrace one’s sexual orientation as a kind of identity and have others embrace it too. 
Now, with all of this in mind, it seems that the conventional wisdom about sexual orientation can be summed up in claims that parallel claims (a), (b), and (c), which Byrne identifies as part of the conventional wisdom concerning gender identity.  The claims would be:
(d) Everyone has a sexual orientation, and for heterosexuals it matches the biological function of their sexual faculties,
(e) Homosexuals have a sexual orientation that doesn’t match the biological function of their sexual faculties, and
(f) This mismatch causes distress and confusion about one’s sexuality.
Interestingly, these three claims seem to be problematic in a way that parallels the difficulties Byrne sees in claims (a), (b), and (c).  Start with (e), and recall that Byrne pointed out that the problem with the parallel claim (b) is that some transgender people would deny that they have a gender identity that doesn’t match their sex (e.g. some “trans women” would assert that they are males, even if they do not regard themselves as men).  Similarly, if sexual orientation is supposed to involve a kind of identity (such as a gay identity or a lesbian identity), then it isn’t true that all homosexuals have a sexual orientation that doesn’t match the biological function of their sexual faculties.  For some people with same-sex desires reject the very idea of a gay or lesbian identity.  They don’t see same-sex attraction as somehow constitutive of what they are or of their nature.  Rather, they see it as just something they are afflicted by, which conflicts with the inherently heterosexual function they take their sexual faculties to have.  (Of course, gay rights advocates would object to this attitude, but what matters for present purposes is simply that some homosexual people do in fact have the attitude, whether or not one thinks they should.)
So, in order to make (e) come out true, one will need a looser notion of “sexual orientation,” one that doesn’t involve a kind of identity.  Presumably that looser notion would simply involve stably having sexual desires of a certain kind.  A heterosexual orientation would involve stably having sexual desire for or attraction to people of the opposite sex, and a homosexual orientation would involve stably having sexual desire for or attraction to people of the same sex.  (The desires have to be stable because a heterosexual person can have fleeting same-sex desires – say, as a result of drunken experimentation, viewing some titillating pornographic image, or what have you.)  
The trouble now is that, just as (a) came out false given the looser interpretation of “gender identity” needed to salvage (b), so too (d) will come out false given the looser interpretation of “sexual orientation” needed to salvage (e).  For there are heterosexual people who simply don’t have much in the way of sexual desire at all.  They may rarely if ever think about sex and shrug with indifference at the prospect of never engaging in sexual activity.  And yet, if they were put into a situation in which sex was in the offing, they would be willing to engage in sexual activity with the opposite sex but be put off by same-sex activity.  So, they are heterosexual, but they lack a “sexual orientation” in the looser sense of stably having sexual desires of a certain kind.  
Then there is (f), which faces difficulties in some ways analogous to those that Byrne says face (c).  For in at least some cases, it seems that it is not that having a homosexual orientation causes distress and confusion about one’s sexuality, but rather that feeling distress and confusion about one’s sexuality causes a person to judge that he has a homosexual orientation.  And sometimes this judgement is reversed later on.  As with the notion of transgender identity, so too with the notion of gay or lesbian identity, the question of what exactly the causal relation is between the identity on the one hand and feelings of distress and confusion on the other is not as clear-cut as is often supposed.
So, as Byrne argues, while notions such as exhibiting behavior stereotypically considered feminine (or masculine), feeling satisfaction at being treated as a woman (or a man), etc. are clear enough, the notion of “gender identity” is not well-defined.  And in a similar way, while the notion of feeling sexual attraction for people of the same sex is clear enough, the notion of “sexual orientation” as a kind of identity is, arguably, also not well-defined.
Related posts:
The sexual revolution devours its children
Byrne on why sex is not a social construct
Byrne on why sex is binary
Love and sex roundup

Surfing the web

At First Things, R. R. Reno concludes that Francis’s papacy is failing .  Cardinal Gerhard Müller issues a “manifesto of faith” to address the current theological crisis.  Meanwhile, Robert Fastiggi buries his head deeper into the sand.  (And wastes his time.  I already refuted Fastiggi’s position months ago.)
Jeremy Butterfield reviewsSabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math and Hossenfelder responds.  A review by Donald Devine at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Magician and actor Ricky Jay has died.  Reminiscences at The Federalist , Vulture , and NPR .  A personal remembrance by Jay’s friend David Mamet.

In the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Ryan Proctor argues that Catholic judges are not obligated to recuse themselves in capital cases .
Stanley Corngold discusses his new book Walter Kaufmann: Philosopher, Humanist, Heretic at the Princeton University Press blog.

Campus follies: Catholic Herald on the attempt to get John Finnis sacked.  The Weekly Standard on the grievance studies hoax.  The Guardian and the British Educational Research Association on the transgender activist threat to academic freedom.

At Quillette, Spencer Case on how certain academics have inflated the meaning of terms like “violence.”

Theologian Matthew Levering is interviewed on Cars, Coffee, Theology.
Alec Nevala-Lee’s Astounding , a history of science fiction’s golden age, is reviewed by Gary K. Wolfe at the Chicago Tribune and by Scott Bradfield at the Los Angeles Times.  Big Think recommends ten golden age science fiction novels.

Jacob Hamburger, at The Point, asks: What was the New Atheism?  The Guardian notes its passing.  But Jerry Coyne and some other New Atheists beg to differ.

At Medium, Ellie Murray offers a review in cartoon form of Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum’s book Causation .  

They don’t make Democrats like they used to.  City Journal on Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan and on Pat Caddell.

Geoff Dench on the decline of men, also at Quillette.

The Atlantic on the increase in cases of alleged demonic possession. 

At Politics/Letters, Peter Ludlow notes that fascism doesn’t actually work the way Jason Stanley says it does.

Toto’s classic song “Africa” will play forever via an art exhibition in the Namibian desert, reports CNN.

Einstein, Hume, and relativity, at the Telegraph.

James Matthew Wilson on James Chappel’s book Catholic Modern, at The Catholic Thing.

At the Institute of Art and Ideas, physicist George Ellis and philosophers Nancy Cartwright and Hilary Lawson discuss the relationship between mathematics and physical reality.  Wiredon mathematics and causality.

Anthony McCarthy on protecting sex from liberalism, at Public Discourse.

Was it Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, or both?  John Morrow’s new book on the debate over who created the Marvel Universe.

At The Wanderer, philosopher Jude Dougherty looks back at F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Alan Wolfe looks back at Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History, at The New Republic.

Dennis Bonnette on free will and the principle of sufficient reason, at Strange Notions.

Walter Ott and Lydia Patton’s edited volume Laws of Nature is reviewed by Heather Demarest at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

At Law and Liberty, Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl remember the Aristotelian radical Henry Veatch.

At 3:AM Magazine, Alex Rosenberg suggests that neuroscience might be a bigger threat than artificial intelligence.

Amazon’s Man in the High Castle will get a fourth – and final – season.  Netflix has cancelled the last of its Marvel shows, Jessica Jones and The Punisher – though any or all of them could return in some form on Disney’s forthcoming streaming service, which will feature other new Marvel shows.

Thomas Pink on John Finnis, religious liberty, and the Council of Trent.

Anthony Kenny’s Brief Encounters: Notes From A Philosopher’s Diary is reviewed at The Church of England Newspaper.

At Scientific American, philosopher of physics Tim Maudlin on progress in philosophy.

Abortion and culpability

Yesterday at The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru responded to a reader who criticizes opponents of abortion who express special outrage at late-term abortions.  If all direct abortion amounts to murder, the reader says, then it is only a cynical political tactic to speak of late-term abortions as if they were especially odious.  I more or less agree with Ponnuru’s reply to this (give it a read, it’s brief), but I would add a clarification and a qualification. Here’s the clarification.  Ponnuru says that late-term abortions are worse, not because an embryo doesn’t have the same right to life that an eight-month-old fetus does, but rather because “people have less excuse for misunderstanding the moral status of an eight-month-old human fetus than they do for misunderstanding the moral status of a human embryo” so that it “shows a deeper corruption of conscience” to approve of aborting the eight-month-old fetus.
I know what Ponnuru means and I think this is true as far as it goes (with a serious qualification I’ll come to in a moment), but I think that he should put the point instead by saying that while the act of aborting an embryo and the act of aborting an eight-month-old fetus are, objectivelyspeaking, equally bad, nevertheless a person’s subjective culpability can, in theory, plausibly be greater in the latter case than in the former.  And that is correct, for while it is obvious just from appearances that an eight-month-old fetus is a human being, it isn’t obvious just from appearances that an early-stage embryo is.  After all, even Aquinas, given his mistaken assumptions about the biology of embryonic development, thought that at the earliest stage of pregnancy a true human being did not yet exist, so that abortion at that stage wouldn’t count as homicide.  (He still disapproved of such abortions because they amounted to a kind of contraception.)  
Here’s the qualification.  We’ve come a very long way from Aquinas in terms of our knowledge of embryonic development, and that knowledge is now widespread enough that while in theory someone could be less culpable for approving of aborting an early-stage fetus than for approving of a late-term abortion, the number of people who are in fact less culpable is in my view smaller than Ponnuru might suppose (though for all I know, Ponnuru might not think the number is actually any higher than I think it is).   
Of course, it’s impossible to come up with a specific figure, but here’s the reason why I think the number of people who are not subjectively culpable is not likely to be large.  Suppose we classify pro-choicers into the following three groups:
(a) those who see that early-term and late-term abortions are morally on a par, and approve of late-term abortions for that reason,
(b) those who aren’t sure whether or not early-term abortions are as morally objectionable as late-term abortions, but who approve of keeping the former legal anyway despite not approving of the latter, and
(c) those who feel certain that early-term abortions are morally permissible even though they believe that late-term abortions are not.
Now, those in group (a) exhibit a “deep corruption of conscience” (to borrow Ponnuru’s phrase).  For it is manifest that infanticide is gravely evil, and it is manifest that late-term abortion differs in no morally significant way from infanticide.  Hence it takes a great deal of self-deception and moral depravity to approve of late-term abortion.  A person of basic decency and intellectual honesty would never approve of such a thing.  But the people in group (a) also realize that early-term abortion is on a par with late-term abortion.  Hence the depravity and self-deception they exhibit in approving of the latter seeps over into their approval of the former.  They have no excuse for favoring even early-term abortion.  Their correct judgment that it is on a par with late-term abortion should obviously have led them to reject early-term abortion rather than to accept late-term abortion.
I think Ponnuru would agree with me about that much.  (I’m aware that some readers will not agree, and that they would need argumentation in order to be convinced of what I say in the previous paragraph.  But this post is not about why we should object to late-term abortion, infanticide, etc.  It’s about what those who already do object to it, as Ponnuru and I do, should think about the subjective culpability of those who approve of early-term abortions but not late-term abortions.)
How many pro-choicers are in group (a)?  It’s hard to say.  Given recent events in Virginia and New York, it seems that a significant number of pro-choicers have moved into this group, but I have no idea what percentage of them that would be.
What matters for present purposes is group (b).  For I would suggest that that is very probably the group that the majority of pro-choicers fall into.  And I would also suggest that this group too is guilty of a “deep corruption of conscience,” of moral depravity and culpable self-deception.  
Consider, after all, the kind of rhetoric that has been standard among pro-choice politicians for decades now.  Bill Clinton famously said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.”  Barack Obama said that answering the question about when a fetus has the right to life is “above [his] pay grade.”  Mario Cuomo acknowledged that his conscience and Catholic faith required him to be “personally opposed” to abortion even though he was pro-choice.  
Now, why would Clinton say that abortion should be “rare”?  The reason, surely, is that even many who favor keeping abortion legal worry that it might amount to murder, even if they aren’t sure whether it does.  Even though they are pro-choice, they aren’t comfortable with simply dismissing all moral concerns about the practice.  Hence, in order to appeal to such voters, Clinton evidently thought that he had at least to pay lip service to the idea that abortion is morally problematic enough that we ought to minimize its frequency.  Obama too essentially conceded that abortion might amount to murder.  After all, he didn’t say that fetuses don’t have a right to life, but that he didn’t know whether they did.  Cuomo essentially conceded that abortion does amount to murder – that is, after all, what his Catholic faith tells him – but held that he still wanted to keep it legal anyway.
Now, to borrow an example sometimes used in old moral theology manuals, imagine that a hunter suspects that there might be someone standing behind a certain bush, though he isn’t sure.  Is it morally permissible for him to fire into the bush, since he isn’t certain that someone is behind it?  The moral theologians and common sense agree on the answer: Of course not.  If the hunter even suspects that there might be a person there, he must not fire into the bush, even if he is not certain and indeed even if he thinks it more probable that there is no one there.
Now, Clinton and Obama are like a person who says: “I think there might well be a person behind that bush, but I’m not really sure.  Go ahead and fire into it if you like.”  Cuomo is even worse.  He is like someone who says: “I am personally convinced that there is someone standing behind that bush.  But go ahead and fire into it anyway if you like.”  Now, either of these positions is morally depraved.  But the position of these politicians on abortion is parallel, and thus no less depraved.  Clinton and Obama are saying, in effect: “Abortion might in fact amount to murder, but if you want to, go ahead and have one anyway.”  And Cuomo was saying, in effect: “Abortion is murder.  But go ahead and have one anyway if that’s what you want to do.” 
I submit that it takes what Ponnuru calls “deep corruption of conscience” and culpable self-deception to talk oneself into this kind of position.  It’s just too obviously incoherent to chalk up to an honest mistake.  But it isn’t just Clinton, Obama, and Cuomo who are guilty of this.  After all, they said the sorts of things they did because they wanted to appeal to voters.  And it isn’t pro-life voters they were trying to appeal to, because the average pro-life voter would say exactly what I just said.  They were trying to appeal to pro-choice voters.  And they evidently judged that most pro-choice voters fall into group (b).  For if they thought that most such voters fell into group (c), they wouldn’t have implied that abortion at least might amount to murder.  They would have just confidently asserted that it does not.
Now, skillful politicians know their voters, and these three men were very skillful politicians.  So it seems plausible that most pro-choice voters are in group (b).  But as I have said, the position of people in that group is so obviously incoherent that only a morally corrupt person could adopt it.  Again, saying that “Abortion might be murder, but if you want to do it, go ahead” is like saying “I think there might be someone behind that bush, but go ahead and fire into it if you want to.”  So, it follows that most pro-choice voters, and not just those who favor late-term abortion, are guilty of a “deep corruption of conscience.”
I would argue that only a pro-choicer in group (c) could plausibly be characterized as lacking in subjective moral culpability.  Mind you, I’m not saying that all or even many people in group (c) really arelacking in subjective culpability.  In my opinion, the arguments in defense of abortion are so flimsy that it is hard to see how an intellectually honest person could feel certain that early-term abortions are morally permissible.  The point is just that being in group (c) would be a necessary condition for a pro-choicer’s lacking subjective culpability, even if it is by no means a sufficient condition.  Anyway, as I say, I think most pro-choicers are actually in either group (b) or group (a), and thus are culpable.
So, while I agree with Ponnuru that in theory a pro-choicer who approves of late-term abortion may thereby exhibit greater moral corruption than a pro-choicer who does not, I don’t think that in actual fact there is really much of a moral difference between the two groups of pro-choicers.  In actual fact, the subjective culpability of both groups is probably pretty close.  And again, Ponnuru himself may well agree with that, for all I know.