Edward Feser's Blog, page 71

How to go to hell

How is it that anyone ever goes to hell?  How could a loving and merciful God send anyone there?  How could any sin be grave enough to merit eternal damnation?  How could it be that not merely a handful of people, but a great many people, end up in hell, as most Christian theologians have held historically?
A complete treatment of the subject would be complex, because there are a number of relevant subsidiary issues, some of them complex in themselves.  These issues include: the difference between the supernatural end of the beatific vision and our merely natural end, and hell as the loss of the former; the difference between the sufferings of hell and the state of a soul either in limbo or in purgatory; the precise nature of the sufferings of hell, and the different kinds and degrees of suffering corresponding to different vices; what it is that makes a particular action – including actions modern people tend to regard as merely minor sins or not sins at all – mortally sinful or apt to result in damnation; what can be known by way of purely philosophical analysis and what is known only via special divine revelation; the proper interpretation of various scriptural passages and the authority of the statements of various councils, popes, and saints; what is wrong with various popular misconceptions which cloud the issues (crude images of devils with pitchforks and the like); and so forth.

I’m not going to address all of that here.  What I will address is what I take to be the core issue, in light of which the others must be understood, which is the manner in which hell is something chosen by the one who is damned, where this choice is in the nature of the case irreversible.  In particular, I will approach this issue the way it is approached by Aquinas and other Thomists.  
 
Many misunderstandings arise because people often begin their reflections on this topic at the wrong point.  For example, they begin with the idea that the damned end up in hell because of something God does, or with the idea that there is something in some particular sin (a particular act of theft or of adultery, say) that sends them there.  Now, I would by no means deny that the damned are damned in part because of something God does, and that particular sins can send one to hell.  The point, again, is just that there is something more fundamental going on in light of which these factors have to be understood.
Obstinate angelic wills
It is useful to begin with the way in which, on Aquinas’s analysis, an angel is damned.  (See especially Summa Theologiae I.64.2; De Veritate, Question 24, Article 10; and On Evil, Question XVI, Article 5.)  Here, as with the images of devils with pitchforks, the unsympathetic reader is asked to put out of his mind common crude images, e.g. of creatures with white robes, long golden hair, and harps.  That is not what an angel is.  An angel is instead an incorporeal mind, a creature of pure intellect and will.  It is also worth emphasizing for the skeptical reader that whether or not one believes in angels is not really essential to the subject addressed in this post.  Think, if you must, of what is said in this section as a useful thought experiment. 
On Aquinas’s analysis, angels, like us, necessarily choose what they choose under the guise of the good, i.e. because they take itto be good in some way.  (See my article “Being, the Good, and the Guise of the Good,” reprinted in Neo-Scholastic Essays , for exposition and defense of the Thomistic account of the nature of human action.)  And as with us, an angel’s ultimate good is in fact God.  But, again like us, they can come to be mistaken about what that ultimate good is.  That is to say, like us, an angel can erroneously take something other than God to be its ultimate good.
However, the nature of this error in the case of an angel is somewhat different from the nature of the error we might commit.  In us, a sudden and fleeting passion might distract us from what is truly good for us and lead us to pursue something else instead.  But passions are essentially corporeal, i.e. they exist only in creatures which, like us, have bodies.  Angels do not have bodies, so passions play no role in leading them into error.
A second way we can be led into error is through the influence of a bad habit, which pulls us away from what is truly good for us in a more serious way than a fleeting passion might.  For Aquinas, there is indeed habituation in angels, as there is in us.  However, there is a difference.  In our case, we have several appetites pulling us in different directions because of our corporeal nature.  Because we are rational animals, our will is directed at what the intellect conceives as the good, but because we are rational animals, we also have appetites which move us toward the pursuit of other, sub-intellectual things, such as food, sexual intercourse, and so forth.  These appetites compete for dominance, as it were, which is why in a human being, even a deeply ingrained habit can be overcome if a competing appetite is strong enough to counter it. 
Angels are not like this, because they are incorporeal.  They have only a single appetite – the will as directed toward what the intellect takes to be good.  There is no competing appetite that can pull the angel away from this end once the will is directed toward it.  Once the will is so directed, habituation follows immediatelyand unchangeably, because of the lack of any other appetite that might pull an angel is some different direction. 
A third way we can be led into error is intellectually, by virtue of simply being factually mistaken about what is in fact good for us.  Here too, angels can make the same sort of error.  But here too, the nature of the error is different in the case of an angel.  The way we come to know things is discursively.  We gather evidence, weigh it, reason from premises to conclusion, and so on.  All of this follows upon our corporeality – in particular, the way we rely upon sensory experience of particular things in order to begin the process of working up to general conclusions, the way we make use of mental imagery as an aid to thought, and so forth.  Error creeps in because passion or habituation interferes with the proper functioning of these cognitive processes, or because we get the facts wrong somewhere in the premises we reason from, or the like.  Further inquiry can correct the error.
There is nothing like this in angels.  For Aquinas, an angel knows what it knows, not discursively, but immediately.  It doesn’t reason from first principles to conclusions, for example, but knows the first principles and what follows from them all at once, in a single act.  Now, because there is no cognitive process by which an angel knows (as there is in us), there is no correctionof a cognitive process that has gone wrong, either by gathering new information, resisting passions, or overcoming bad habits.  If an angel goes wrong at all, it is not (as we are) merely moving in an erroneous direction but where this trajectory might be reversed.  It simply is wrong and stays wrong. 
For Aquinas, then, an angel’s basic orientation is set immediately after its creation.  It either rightly takes God for its ultimate end, or wrongly takes something less than God for its ultimate end.  If the former, then it is forever “locked on” to beatitude, and if the latter, it is forever “locked on” to unhappiness.  There is no contrary appetite that can move it away from what it is habituated to, and no cognitive process that can be redirected.  The angel that chooses wrongly is thus fallen or damned, and not even God can change that any more than he can make a round square, for such change is simply metaphysically impossible insofar as it is contrary to the very nature of an angelic intellect.
Obstinate human wills
Again, human beings are different, because they are corporeal.  Or, to be more precise, they are different while they are corporeal.  For a human being has both corporeal and incorporeal faculties.  When the body goes, the corporeal faculties go.  But the incorporeal faculties – intellect and will, the same faculties that an angel has – carry on, and the human being persists as an incomplete substance.  (See my article “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought,” also reprinted in Neo-Scholastic Essays , for defense of the incorporeality of the intellect.  See chapter 4 of Aquinas for exposition and defense of the Thomistic argument for the immortality of the soul.)
This brings us to Aquinas’s treatment of the changeability or lack thereof of the human will.  (See especially Summa Contra Gentiles Book 4, Chapter 95.)  Prior to death, it is always possible for the human will to correct course, for the reasons described above.  A passion inclining one to evil can be overcome; a bad habit can be counteracted by a contrary appetite; new knowledge might be acquired by which an erroneous judgment can be revised.  Hence, at any time before death, there is at least some hope that damnation can be avoided.
But after death, Aquinas argues, things are different.  At death the soul is separated from the body, a separation which involves the intellect and will – which were never corporeal faculties in the first place – carrying on without the corporeal faculties that influenced their operation during life.  In effect, the soul now operates, in all relevant respects, the way an angelic intellect does.  Just as an angel, immediately after its creation, either takes God as its ultimate end or something less than God as its ultimate end, so too does the disembodied human soul make the same choice immediately upon death.  And just as the angel’s choice is irreversible given that the corporeal preconditions of a change are absent, so too is the newly disembodied soul’s choice irreversible, and for the same reason.  The corporeal preconditions of a change of orientation toward an ultimate good, which were present in life, are now gone.  Hence the soul which opts for God as its ultimate end is “locked on” to that end forever, and the soul which opts instead for something less than God is “locked on” to that forever.  The former soul therefore enjoys eternal beatitude, the latter eternal separation from God or damnation.
The only way a change could be made is if the soul could come to judge something else instead as a higher end or good than what it has opted for.  But it cannot do so.  Being disembodied, it lacks any passions that could sway it away from this choice.  It also, like an angel, now lacks any competing appetite which might pull its will away from the end it has chosen.  Thus it is immediately habituated to aiming toward whatever, following death, it opted for as its highest end or good – whether God or something less than God.  Nor is there any new knowledge which might change its course, since, now lacking sensation and imagination and everything that goes with them, it does not know discursively but rather in an all-at-once way, as an angel does.  There is no longer any cognitive process whose direction might be corrected. 
But might not the resurrection of the body restore the possibility of a course correction?  Aquinas answers in the negative.  The nature of the resurrection body is necessarily tailored to the nature of the soul to which it is conjoined, and that soul is now locked on to whatever end it opted for upon death.  The soul prior to death was capable of change in its basic orientation only because it came into existence with its body and thus never had a chance to “set,” as it were.  One it does “set,” nothing can alter its orientation again. 
An analogy might help.  Consider wet clay which is being molded into a pot.  As long as it remains wet, it can alter its basic shape.  Once it is dried in the furnace, though, it is locked into the shape it had while in the furnace.  Putting it in water once again wouldn’t somehow make it malleable again.  Indeed, the water would be forced to conform itself to the shape of the pot rather than vice versa.
The soul is like that.  While together with the body during life, it is like the wet clay.  Death locks it into one basic orientation or another, just as the furnace locks the clay into a certain definite shape.  The restoration of the body cannot change its basic orientation again any more than wetting down a pot or filling it with water can make it malleable again.
The influence of the passions and appetites
Now, what choice is a soul likely to make immediately upon death?  Obviously, the passions and appetites that dominated it in life are bound to push it very strongly in one direction or another.  For example, a person who at the end of his life is strongly habituated to loving God above all things is very unlikely, in his first choice upon death, to regard something other than God as his ultimate end or good.  A person who at the end of his life is strongly habituated to hatingGod is very unlikely, in his first choice upon death, to regard God as his ultimate end or good.  A person who, at the end of his life, is strongly habituated to regarding some specific thing other than God as his ultimate good – money, sex, political power, etc. -- is very likely, in his first choice upon death, to regard precisely that thing as his ultimate good or end.  It is very likely, then, that these various souls will be “locked on” forever to whatever it was they were habituated to valuing above all things during life on earth.
Of course, what counts as regarding God as one’s ultimate end requires careful analysis.  Someone might have a deficient conception of God and yet still essentially regard God as his ultimate good or end.  One way to understand how this might go is, in my view, to think of the situation in terms of the doctrine of the transcendentals.  God is Being Itself.  But according to the doctrine of the transcendentals, being – which is one of the transcendentals – is convertible with all the others, such as goodness and truth.  They are really all the same thing looked at from different points of view.  Being Itself is thus Goodness Itself and Truth Itself.  It seems conceivable, then, that someone might take goodness or truth (say) as his ultimate end, and thereby – depending, naturally, on exactly how he conceives of goodness and truth – be taking God as his ultimate end or good, even if he has some erroneous ideas about God and does not realize that what he is devoted to is essentially what classical theists like Aquinas call “God.”  And of course, an uneducated person might wrongly think of God as an old man with a white beard, etc. but still know that God is cause of all things, that he is all good, that he offers salvation to those who sincerely repent, etc.  By contrast, it seems quite ridiculous to suppose that someone obsessed with money or sex or political power (for example) is really somehow taking God as his ultimate end without realizing it. 
In any event, the strength of the passions and appetites is one reason why the sins attached to them are so dangerous, even when they are not as such the worst of sins.  To become deeply habituated to a certain sin associated with a particular appetite or passion is to run grave risk of making of that sin one’s ultimate end, and thus damning oneself.  This is why the seven deadly sins are deadly.   For example, if one is at the time of one’s death deeply habituated to envy or to sins of the flesh, it is naturally going to be difficult for one’s first choice upon death not to be influenced by such habits.
There is this “upside” to a sin like envy, though – it offers the sinner no pleasure but only misery.  That can be a prod, during life, to overcoming it.  Sins of the flesh, however, typically involve very intense pleasure, and for that reason it can be extremely difficult to overcome them, or even to want to overcome them.  In addition, they have as their “daughters” such effects as the darkening of the intellect, self-centeredness, hostility toward spiritual things, and the like.  (I discussed Aquinas’s account of the “daughters of lust” in an earlier post.) 
It is said that at Fatima the Blessed Virgin declared that more souls go to hell for sins of the flesh than for any other reason.  Whatever a skeptic might think of Fatima, this basic thesis is, if one accepts the general natural law account of sexual morality together with Aquinas’s account of the obstinacy of the soul after death, quite plausible.  That is not because sins of the flesh are the worst sins.  They are not the worst sins.  It is rather because they are very common sins, easy to fall into and often difficult to get out of.  Nor does it help that in recent decades they are, more than any other sins, those that a vast number of people absolutely refuse even to recognize as sins.
A world awash in sexual vice of all kinds and “in denial” about it is a world in which a large number of people are going to be habituated to seeking sexual pleasure above all things, and to become forever “locked on” to this end as their perceived ultimate good.  (It is very foolish, then, for churchmen and other Christians to think it kind or merciful not to talk much about such sins.  That is like refusing to warn joggers of the quicksand they are about to fall into.  And positively downplaying the significance of such sins and even emphasizing instead the positive aspects of relationships (e.g. adulterous relationships) in which the sins are habitually committed is like encouraging the joggers to speed up.  One thinks of Ezekiel 33:8.)
Whatever might be said about sins of the flesh per se, however (and I have said a lot about that subject in other places) the main point is to emphasize how deeply the passions and appetites “prepare” a soul for the decisive choice it is going to make, especially when there is pleasure attached to the indulgence of the passions or appetites.  What is true of illicit sexual indulgence is true also, if often in a less intense way, of the indulgence of other passions and appetites.  There is, for example, the pleasurable frisson of self-righteousness that can accompany the judgment of others or the indulgence of excessive or misdirected anger.  There is the pleasure a sadist might get from dominating or humiliating others.  And so forth.
There can also be a deficiency in the passions and appetites.  For example, one can show insufficient anger at injustice and evil and thus lack any resolve to do something about it.  Or one might be deficient in the amount of sexual desire one has for one’s spouse or in the amount of affection one is inclined to show one’s children.  Deficiencies in passions and appetites can thus keep us from pursuing what is good, just as excesses in passions and appetites can lead us to pursue what is not good.
The passions and appetites are like heat applied to wet clay.  The longer the soul is pushed (or not pushed) by a passion or appetite in a certain direction, the more difficult it is to reorient the soul, just as it is more difficult to alter the shape of wet clay the longer heat is applied and the drier the clay gets. 
Those interested in further reading on this subject are advised to read, in addition to the texts from Aquinas cited above, Abbot Vonier’s The Human Soul , especially chapters 29-33; Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s Life Everlasting and the Immensity of the Soul , especially chapters VII-IX; and Cardinal Avery Dulles’s First Things article “The Population of Hell.”  (Most readers will be familiar with Garrigou-Lagrange and Dulles.  If you are not familiar with Vonier, I highly recommend tracking down everything written by him that you can get your hands on.)

Jackson on Popper on materialism

While we’re on the subject of mind-body interaction, let’s take a look at Frank Jackson’s article on Karl Popper’s philosophy of mind in the new Cambridge Companion to Popper , edited by Jeremy Shearmur and Geoffrey Stokes.  Popper was a dualist of sorts, and Jackson’s focus is on the role Popper’s “World 3” concept and the issue of causal interaction played in his critique of materialism.First, a brief summary of the World 3 idea (which I discussed in a post some years back).  Popper distinguished between three “worlds” or compartments of reality.  World 1 is the realm of physical objects and processes, such as tables and chairs, rocks and trees, molecules and atoms, stars and galaxies.  World 2 is the realm of thoughts, experiences, and mental phenomena in general.  World 3 is the realm of concepts, theories, arguments, stories, institutions, and other abstractions that have a kind of reality over and above both the physical entities that represent them and the thoughts we have about them.  For example, the Pythagorean theorem and the theory of relativity don’t go out of existence when we stop thinking about them and would not go out of existence even if all the books and articles discussing them were destroyed.

Popper’s World 3 is in some respects reminiscent of Plato’s realm of the Forms, but differs in that Popper takes World 3 to be something man-made.  As I noted in the earlier post just linked to, this makes his positon at least somewhat comparable the Aristotelian realist (as opposed to Platonic realist) view that universals are abstracted by the mind from the concrete objects that instantiate them rather than pre-existing such abstraction.
Naturally, all of this raises questions about the ontological status of the three Worlds, and Popper’s view is that they are irreducibly different, which is one reason he is not a materialist.  One reason this irreducibility would support a rejection of materialism is that if World 3 objects are abstract entities rather than material objects or processes, then it is false to say, as the materialist does, that the material world is all that exists.
Now, as Jackson notes, a materialist could respond to this by modifying his materialism.  He could allow that there are immaterial or abstract objects and thus admit that the material world is not all that exists, but still insist that the mind is entirely material.  That is to say, he could argue that World 2 is reducible to World 1 even if World 3 is not.  But as Jackson also notes, Popper thinks that there is a problem with this strategy posed by the existence of causal interaction between the mental and the physical.
Materialists, of course, often claim that their position can better account for such interaction than Cartesian dualism can.  Consider the case of a sensation of pain which is caused by damage to the body and in turn causes wincing and moaning.  If this sensation occurs in a Cartesian res cogitans, the materialist says, then we have to face the mystery of how an immaterial substance gets into causal contact with a material substance like the body.  But if we suppose that the sensation is just a kind of brain process, then (the argument continues) its causal interaction with the rest of the body is no more mysterious than is the causal interaction between any other two physical things. 
Popper’s response is that at least some World 2 entities, and indeed the most interesting ones, involve (as a sensation of pain does not) causal relations to World 3 entities no less than to World 1 entities.  For example, when you entertain a thought about the Pythagorean theorem and then write the theorem down on a piece of paper, we have a causal relationship between a World 1 entity (the paper) and a World 2 entity (your thought) but also a World 3 entity (the theorem).  And since the World 3 entity is immaterial, the materialist is hardly going to have a better time accounting for its relationship to World 1 than the dualist has accounting for the relationship between World 2 and World 1.  And of course, there are a great many mental states that involve relations to World 3 entities (theories, concepts, arguments, etc.).  Hence the materialist claim to be better able to account for mind-body interaction is greatly oversold.
A related problem for materialism posed by World 3 is that the materialist typically holds that World 1 is causally closed.  Hence, since we interact causally with other World 1 objects, we must (the materialist concludes) be part of World 1.  Yet since World 3 entities influence World 1, World 1 cannot be causally closed after all.  Thus does a central argument for materialism collapse.  There is no reason to insist on causal grounds that World 2must be material if we know that World 3 is immaterial and yet causally interacts with World 1. 
Obviously a materialist could try to respond by simply denying the reality of World 3, but something like World 3 must be accepted on pain of taking on all the problems afflicting nominalism, conceptualism, etc.  Jackson suggests another response, but it is (with all due respect to Jackson) a very bad one.  He writes:
[I]t is not at all obvious that there is a special problem for materialism here.  Is it easier to understand how a state in ectoplasm’s standing in a relation to an abstract entity can have causal effects in World 1 than it is to understand how a state of a material brain standing in such a relation can have causal effects in World 1?  How could the switch from material to ectoplasmic instantiation help?  (p. 279)
This seems to have become a stock move among contemporary materialists.  For any dualist argument to the effect that qualia, or the intentional content of a thought, or whatever cannot be accounted for in material terms, the materialist responds that the same arguments would, if correct, show also that these mental phenomena cannot be accounted for in terms of the “ectoplasm” allegedly posited by the dualist. 
The trouble with this, of course, is that no prominent dualist philosopher (nor any non-prominent one, as far as I can tell) is in fact committed to the existence of “ectoplasm,” whatever that is supposed to be.  This is a straw man.
I have in earlier posts discussed the way a straw man of this sort has been attacked by Daniel Stoljar and by Paul Churchland.  (In Churchland’s case, ironically, his remarks were aimed at the “knowledge argument” famously defended by Jackson when he was still a dualist.)  The basic idea of the straw man is that dualists (so the story goes) posit the existence of a kind of “stuff” that is not a material kind of stuff insofar as it is intangible, invisible, tasteless, odorless, etc., but which is nevertheless in other respects somewhat like a material thing in that it is made up of components (albeit non-physical ones) which are causally related in various ways, instantiates mental properties in something like the way the materialist thinks the brain instantiates them (only without being material), and so on.  This purported “ectoplasmic” “stuff” is, in other words, thought of as a kind of non-material substrate in which mental attributes inhere or a non-material container in which they are placed.  The materialist then asks why positing a non-material stuff, substrate, or container is any more helpful than positing a material stuff, substrate, or container.  For wouldn’t the arguments that the dualist says show that mental attributes can come apart from the latter also show that mental attributes can come apart from the former?
As I have noted before, the problem is that this is precisely not what any prominent dualist philosopher thinks the mind is, and no one who has carefully read what thinkers of the past like Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz et al. and the contemporary writers influenced by them have actually written could suppose that it is. 
Descartes, for example, does not think that the res cogitans is a kind of “stuff” or container or substrate in which mental properties inhere and which could intelligibly exist apart from them.  He doesn’t think that the mind has thought.  He thinks that the mind is thought.  That is its very essence, that without which it could not be.  He is concerned precisely to deny that there is any metaphysical daylight whatsoever between the res cogitans on the one hand, and thought on the other, by which the one could intelligibly be said to exist apart from the other.  He thinks that the mind is in this sense a simple rather than a composite substance, i.e. rather than something made of parts that could come apart.  Accordingly, it simply misses his point entirely to suggest that the res cogitansis “made of” anything (“ectoplasm” or otherwise), that it might exist without “instantiating” its mental attributes, etc.
Of course, one might raise various questions and objections to all this.  But the point is that until one understands what Descartes is actually saying, one has not even engaged with him much less refuted him.  And the same thing is true of dualists influenced by Descartes, from Leibniz to Popper to contemporary Cartesians. 
Aquinas and other Scholastic thinkers who regard the intellect as incorporeal also hold to the simplicity of the soul (though of course the way they would spell this out would differ given the difference between Scholastic and rationalist conceptions of substance, essence, etc.).  In yet other ways too the position defended by Thomists and other Scholastic writers is simply nothing remotely like the straw man attacked under the “ectoplasm” label. 
For example (and as I discussed in an earlier post) for Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, the divide between the material and the immaterial is not all-or-nothing and it does not essentially have to do with what kind of “stuff” a thing is made out of.  Matter, in Aristotelian-Thomistic thinking, is essentially that which ties form (which is otherwise universal) down to a particular thing, time, and place; it is that which accounts for a thing’s changeability and imperfection; and so on.  Matter qua matter thus corresponds to potentiality, particularity, multiplicity, changeability, and imperfection.  Since these characteristics are susceptible of degrees, there is a sense in which materiality and immateriality can come in degrees.  The more something exhibits potentiality, particularity, multiplicity, changeability, and/or imperfection, the more matter-like it is. The more something exhibits actuality, universality, unity, permanence, and/or perfection, the more immaterial it is. 
In this connection, it is interesting that Jackson and materialists in general tend, despite their materialism, to take realism about universals and other abstract objects more seriously than they do dualism.  For example, no one seems to think it a good response to such realism to characterize abstract objects as made of “ectoplasm” or the like.  It seems clear enough to all sides that this would be a silly objection aimed at a caricature.  In classical (Platonic, Aristotelian, and Scholastic) philosophy, however, the ontological status of universals and the immateriality of the intellect are very closely connected topics.  For Aristotle and Aquinas, for example, to have an intellect essentially just is to be capable of taking on a form without the particularizing features associated with specific individual things that have the form.  It isn’t a question of the form coming to be instantiated in some mysterious ectoplasmic kind of stuff, because it isn’t a question of its being instantiatedat all, in any kind of stuff. 
Of course, the contemporary philosopher will find it hard to understand what is going on in such accounts if it isn’t a question of what sort of “stuff” the mind is “made of,” but that’s precisely the point.  The conceptual universe inhabited by older writers is very different from that taken for granted by contemporary academic philosophers, and the latter have a regrettable tendency to read their own basic assumptions back into older writers rather than taking the trouble to try to understanding the latter in their own terms.
Anyway, in fairness, this does take us far beyond anything Popper was committed to.  And there is in any case other and more interesting stuff in Jackson’s essay, to which I refer the interested reader.  One thing that is surprisingly missing, however, is any discussion of what I take to be Popper’s most interesting argument against materialism, to the effect that there can in principle be no causal account of the intentionality of language and thought.  I discuss this argument in my paper “Hayek, Popper, and the Causal Theory of the Mind,” which is reprinted in Neo-Scholastic Essays .
Related posts:
Popper contra computationalism
Popper’s World 3
Bühler? Bühler? [Popper on the four functions of language]
Some brief arguments for dualism, Part V [On one of Popper’s anti-materialist arguments]
When Frank jilted Mary [On Jackson’s “knowledge argument”]

Nothing has changed

Recently I announced my intention not to renew my membership in the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP) in light of SCP President Michael Rea’s statement distancing the SCP from a talk on traditional sexual morality given by Prof. Richard Swinburne at an SCP conference.  (I’ve discussed the controversy generated by this statement hereand here.)  More recently I called attention to Prof. Swinburne’s public statement on the matter.  I have been asked if I have changed my mind in light of Swinburne’s statement.  The answer is No, I have not.  I posted Prof. Swinburne's statement not to endorse it but rather because I think it only fair to him that his own views on this matter get publicity.

In my view, however, nothing has changed.  Prof. Swinburne is free graciously and humbly to refrain from demanding an apology for any offense caused to him personally.  But the issue is really not primarily about him.  It's about the “message” Rea's statement sent about those who defend traditional Christian sexual morality in general. They were all effectively thrown under the bus by that statement, not just Swinburne alone.
As I keep saying, to cancel the implicature or “message sent” by Rea's original statement would take an equally clear, forceful, and public statement by Rea himself in his capacity as SCP President.  We still don't have that, and from what I can see we are not going to get it.

Swinburne speaks

An update on the SCP controversy, about which I have blogged recently (here, here, and here).  I have been in communication with Prof. Richard Swinburne, who has kindly offered “thanks for the support which you have given to me personally and to everyone concerned that the SCP should welcome lectures and papers from those defending traditional Christian morality.”  Prof. Swinburne informs me that he has prepared a public statement on the controversy.  Since readers of this blog will naturally find such a statement of interest, I offered to post it here.  Here it is:
It is sad that my recent keynote lecture on "Christian moral teaching on sex, family, and life" at the Midwest conference of the Society of Christian philosophers has led to so much ill-feeling between Christians, and between Christians and non-Christians. I do feel strongly that traditional Christian views on these matters  should be subjected to critical philosophical assessment in the friendly atmosphere typical of philosophical seminars; and that proponents of opposite views should be free to express and defend their views in public (including in any SCP conference or journal) - so long as they express them with sensitivity to the feelings of others (and perhaps also with that qualification appropriate to almost all philosophical views - 'It is just possible that I am  mistaken'!) Michael Rea, the current President of the SCP has assured me that that is the SCP policy. So I believe that the SCP provides a very good forum for such discussions; and it has my strong support in its work.

Latest from Oderberg

David Oderberg’s new paper “Further clarity on cooperation and morality” appears in the Journal of Medical Ethics.  See also his guest post at the Journal of Medical Ethics blog.
A talk by Oderberg on the theme “The Great Unifier: Form and the Unity of the Organism” can be viewed at YouTube.
Oderberg was recently named as one of the top 50 most influential living philosophers.Oderberg recently spoke at the University of Buckingham on the theme “Freedom of Dissociation?” and will be a speaker at the 2017 Dominican Colloquium in Berkeley.

The MSM in four lines

To win an electionThey ignore unwanted semen
Yet demonize an erection
While erecting a demon

Goodbye SCP (Updated)

It has been two weeks or so since the controversy over Richard Swinburne and the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP) erupted.  I’ve got nothing to add to what I and many others have already said, except this: I will not be renewing my membership in the SCP.  I quit.  Goodbye.  Other SCP members will have to make up their own minds about how best to react to the situation, but I would encourage them to leave as well.  In my judgment, the SCP no longer deserves the financial and moral support of Christian philosophers.It seems clear to me both from the public debate on the controversy and from what I know from “behind the scenes” that neither the President of the SCP, Michael Rea, nor the Executive Director, Christina Van Dyke, has any intention of making any public statement either apologizing to Swinburne or in any other meaningful way addressing the concerns of Swinburne’s defenders.

Rea created this controversy when he issued his statement officially distancing the SCP from Swinburne’s talk defending traditional Christian sexual morality (a talk the organization had invited Swinburne to give and the content of which the conference organizers cannot have been surprised by).  As I argued in my original post on the controversy:
Given current cultural circumstances, Rea’s statement amounts to what philosophers call a Gricean implicature – it “sends a message,” as it were -- to the effect that the SCP agrees that views like Swinburne’s really are disreputable and deserving of special censure, something to be quarantined and set apart from the ideas and arguments that respectable philosophers, including Christian philosophers, should normally be discussing. 
The only thing that can cancel this implicature is an equally forceful and unambiguous statement from Rea apologizing for any disrespect shown to Swinburne and affirming that the SCP welcomes the contributions of philosophers who defend traditional Christian sexual morality no less than the contributions of those who are critical of it.
Yet not only have Rea and Van Dyke failed to cancel the implicature, they have reinforced the implicature.
First, as Lydia McGrew has pointed out, Van Dyke reinforced it in the very act of denying that any such implicature was intended.  In a Facebook remark on the controversy, Van Dyke claimed that “no one is trying to take free speech or the open expression of ideas away from anyone” but then immediately went on to assert that views like Swinburne’s “have caused incalculable harm to vast numbers of already disadvantaged people” and that “having someone in a position of power [like Swinburne] advocate that position furthers that harm.” 
Now, no one ever claimed in the first place that the SCP intends explicitly to forbid views like Swinburne’s from being expressed at its meetings.  That is a red herring.  What Swinburne’s defenders are concerned about is rather that the SCP leadership’s remarks provide aid and comfort to those who would like to shut down reasoned debate about traditional sexual morality via intimidation, by demonizing all those who uphold it as “bigots,” promoters of “hate,” etc.  (See my original post on the controversy for discussion of the nature and manifestations of this political tactic and its utter incompatibility with a genuinely philosophical approach to these matters.) 
When Van Dyke asserts matter-of-factly that the very expression of views like Swinburne’s “cause[s] incalculable harm to vast numbers of already disadvantaged people” etc., this quite obviously reinforces, rather than cancels, the message that views like Swinburne’s are especially disreputable, etc., and it thus discourages philosophers (especially young and untenured scholars) from even considering defending such views, lest they be lumped in with the “haters” and “bigots” and damage their careers.
Second, as I reported over a week ago, Van Dyke made a public show of support for Prof. Jason Stanley when he faced criticism for the juvenile, hateful, obscene and offensive remarks he made about Swinburne and his defenders.  Stanley, the reader will recall, had responded to Swinburne and his defenders with the words “F**k those a***oles,” labeled them “proponents of evil,” and compared them to Nazis and other mass murderers.  Clearly, for an SCP official to express support for such remarks once again reinforcesthe implicature to the effect that views like Swinburne’s are especially disreputable, not the sort of thing a respectable philosopher would defend, etc.
Third, Lydia McGrew has reported that Rea made a public show of support for Prof. Rebecca Kukla when she faced criticism for the juvenile, hateful, offensive, and even more obscene remarks she made about Swinburne and his defenders.  Kukla, the reader will recall, had said of Swinburne and his defenders: “Those douche tankards can suck my giant queer c**k.”
But for Swinburne… not a peep from Rea and Van Dyke.  The petition to these SCP leaders from their fellow Christian philosophers, respectfully asking for an apology to Swinburne?  No public response at all.
Even Jason Stanley has now publicly apologized to Swinburne for his remarks.  But from Michael Rea, silence.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that either the leaders of the SCP sympathize with those who would like to marginalize philosophers who defend traditional Christian sexual morality, or they do not sympathize with them, but nevertheless lack the courage to face the backlash they would get from these marginalizers if they publicly apologized to Swinburne. 
Either way, the message this sends to Christian philosophers who would defend traditional Christian sexual morality is this:  “We don’t have your back.  We prefer to acquiesce in the demonization you increasingly face from the wider culture.”
So, goodbye SCP.  You did much good at one time, but now it seems you are the latest confirmation of Neuhaus’s Law.

UPDATE: I have been an SCP member for years, and have assumed that I am currently a member since I am still receiving the society’s journal Faith and Philosophy.  (I had the latest issue here on my desk as I wrote the post.)  But Mike Rea informs me via email that according to his records I am in arrears with my dues.  So he does not consider me to be a member any longer anyway.  I have told Mike to feel free to correct things at his end and cancel my subscription.  It’s a good journal, but naturally I don’t expect them to keep sending it to me if I am no longer a dues-paying member.

Goodbye SCP

It has been two weeks or so since the controversy over Richard Swinburne and the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP) erupted.  I’ve got nothing to add to what I and many others have already said, except this: I will not be renewing my membership in the SCP.  I quit.  Goodbye.  Other SCP members will have to make up their own minds about how best to react to the situation, but I would encourage them to leave as well.  In my judgment, the SCP no longer deserves the financial and moral support of Christian philosophers.It seems clear to me both from the public debate on the controversy and from what I know from “behind the scenes” that neither the President of the SCP, Michael Rea, nor the Executive Director, Christina Van Dyke, has any intention of making any public statement either apologizing to Swinburne or in any other meaningful way addressing the concerns of Swinburne’s defenders.

Rea created this controversy when he issued his statement officially distancing the SCP from Swinburne’s talk defending traditional Christian sexual morality (a talk the organization had invited Swinburne to give and the content of which the conference organizers cannot have been surprised by).  As I argued in my original post on the controversy:
Given current cultural circumstances, Rea’s statement amounts to what philosophers call a Gricean implicature – it “sends a message,” as it were -- to the effect that the SCP agrees that views like Swinburne’s really are disreputable and deserving of special censure, something to be quarantined and set apart from the ideas and arguments that respectable philosophers, including Christian philosophers, should normally be discussing. 
The only thing that can cancel this implicature is an equally forceful and unambiguous statement from Rea apologizing for any disrespect shown to Swinburne and affirming that the SCP welcomes the contributions of philosophers who defend traditional Christian sexual morality no less than the contributions of those who are critical of it.
Yet not only have Rea and Van Dyke failed to cancel the implicature, they have reinforced the implicature.
First, as Lydia McGrew has pointed out, Van Dyke reinforced it in the very act of denying that any such implicature was intended.  In a Facebook remark on the controversy, Van Dyke claimed that “no one is trying to take free speech or the open expression of ideas away from anyone” but then immediately went on to assert that views like Swinburne’s “have caused incalculable harm to vast numbers of already disadvantaged people” and that “having someone in a position of power [like Swinburne] advocate that position furthers that harm.” 
Now, no one ever claimed in the first place that the SCP intends explicitly to forbid views like Swinburne’s from being expressed at its meetings.  That is a red herring.  What Swinburne’s defenders are concerned about is rather that the SCP leadership’s remarks provide aid and comfort to those who would like to shut down reasoned debate about traditional sexual morality via intimidation, by demonizing all those who uphold it as “bigots,” promoters of “hate,” etc.  (See my original post on the controversy for discussion of the nature and manifestations of this political tactic and its utter incompatibility with a genuinely philosophical approach to these matters.) 
When Van Dyke asserts matter-of-factly that the very expression of views like Swinburne’s “cause[s] incalculable harm to vast numbers of already disadvantaged people” etc., this quite obviously reinforces, rather than cancels, the message that views like Swinburne’s are especially disreputable, etc., and it thus discourages philosophers (especially young and untenured scholars) from even considering defending such views, lest they be lumped in with the “haters” and “bigots” and damage their careers.
Second, as I reported over a week ago, Van Dyke made a public show of support for Prof. Jason Stanley when he faced criticism for the juvenile, hateful, obscene and offensive remarks he made about Swinburne and his defenders.  Stanley, the reader will recall, had responded to Swinburne and his defenders with the words “F**k those a***oles,” labeled them “proponents of evil,” and compared them to Nazis and other mass murderers.  Clearly, for an SCP official to express support for such remarks once again reinforcesthe implicature to the effect that views like Swinburne’s are especially disreputable, not the sort of thing a respectable philosopher would defend, etc.
Third, Lydia McGrew has reported that Rea made a public show of support for Prof. Rebecca Kukla when she faced criticism for the juvenile, hateful, offensive, and even more obscene remarks she made about Swinburne and his defenders.  Kukla, the reader will recall, had said of Swinburne and his defenders: “Those douche tankards can suck my giant queer c**k.”
But for Swinburne… not a peep from Rea and Van Dyke.  The petition to these SCP leaders from their fellow Christian philosophers, respectfully asking for an apology to Swinburne?  No public response at all.
Even Jason Stanley has now publicly apologized to Swinburne for his remarks.  But from Michael Rea, silence.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that either the leaders of the SCP sympathize with those who would like to marginalize philosophers who defend traditional Christian sexual morality, or they do not sympathize with them, but nevertheless lack the courage to face the backlash they would get from these marginalizers if they publicly apologized to Swinburne. 
Either way, the message this sends to Christian philosophers who would defend traditional Christian sexual morality is this:  “We don’t have your back.  We prefer to acquiesce in the demonization you increasingly face from the wider culture.”
So, goodbye SCP.  You did much good at one time, but now it seems you are the latest confirmation of Neuhaus’s Law.

Secret crisis of infinite links

New Scientist magazine opines that metaphysics has much to contribute to the study of nature.  Part of a special issue on the theme.
On the other hand, at Nautilus, empiricist philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen tells scientists to steer clear of metaphysics.
As usual, Aristotle had the answer long before you thought of the question.  His little known treatise on internet trolling.
Slurpee cups.  Marvel Treasury Editions.  Gerber’s Howard the Duck.  Hostess fruit pie ads.  Claremont and Byrne’s X-Men.  Secret Wars.  Crisis on Infinite Earths…  If you’re of a certain age, you know what I’m talkin’ about.  At Forces of Geek, George Khoury discusses his new book Comic Book Fever: A Celebration of Comics 1976 to 1986 .At the Philosophy of Religion blog, atheist philosopher Keith Parsons offers his take on the question: What does philosophy of religion offer the modern university?

Conversations with Roger Scruton is reviewed by Richard Cocks at The University Bookman.
The Philosophy of Jazz.  It’s a thing.  But that’s old news at this blog.
At Crisis, philosopher Patrick Toner on Catholics, Chesterton, and concealed carry.
Raised to prominence by the Swinburne controversy, the new conservative philosophers’ group blog: Rightly Considered.
Hmm, he has posted a lot of crap at his blog over the years.  Daily Nous has the straight poop on this week’s controversy in academic philosophy.
Some scholars and writers plump for Trump, while contributors to the Claremont Review of Books debate the election.
Fred Barnes at The Weekly Standard on Reagan and Eisenhower.
St. Pius V pray for us.  At Crisis, Fr. George Rutler on the Battle of Lepanto.
At Public Discourse, Dylan Pahman on David Bentley Hart on Christianity and wealth.
New books reviewed at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: Howard Robinson’s From the Knowledge Argument to Mental Substance: Resurrecting the Mind , William Jaworski’s Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind: How Hylomorphism Solves the Mind-Body Problem , and Stephen R.L. Clark’s Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practice.
Catholic scholars defend Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae against the latest call to change unchangeable Church doctrine.  Interview about the controversy with theologian Janet Smith.
At the Claremont Review of Books, Mark Bauerlein on the current academic obsession with same-sex matters.
Paul Gottfried on the use and abuse of the term “fascism.”  His new book reviewed by David Gordon and Jerry Salyer.
Philosophers Dale Tuggy and Michael Rota discuss Christian apologetics.
At last it can be revealed.  The astounding mystery of the other forty-something college professor named Edward Feser.  (He’s my cousin.  Hi Ed!)
We’ve all wondered about it:  Why do Marvel movies have such lame music?  Polygon explains .  (On the other hand, Danny Elfman’s music for the first Spider-Man flicks was terrific.)
At The University Bookman, Daniel Mahoney reviews Ryszard Legutko’s The Demon in Democracy .
What’s the deal with Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia?  Commentary from Robert Royal, Edward Peters, E. Christian Brugger, Josef Seifert, Ross Douthat, John Lamont, Elliot Milco, Mary Jo Anderson, Maggie Gallagher, Jessica Murdoch, and Fr. Raymond de Souza.

Aquinas on consciousness

My article “Aquinas and the problem of consciousness” appears in the anthology Consciousness and the Great Philosophers , edited by Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia and just published by Routledge.  Lots of interesting stuff in this volume.  The table of contents and other information are available here.