Edward Feser's Blog, page 92

An exchange with Keith Parsons, Part IV

Here I respond to Keith Parsons’ fourth post.  Jeff Lowder’s index of existing and forthcoming installments in my exchange with Prof. Parsons can be found here.
Keith, as we near the end of our first exchange, I want to thank you again for taking the time to respond to the questions I raised, and as graciously as you have.  You maintain in your most recent post that explanations legitimately can and indeed must ultimately trace to an unexplained “brute fact,” and that philosophers who think otherwise have failed to give a convincing account of what it would be for the deepest level of reality to be self-explanatory and thus other than such a “brute fact.”  Unsurprisingly, I disagree on both counts.  I would say that appeals to “brute facts” are incoherent, and that the nature of an ultimate self-explanatory principle can be made intelligible by reference to notions that are well understood and independently motivated.Now, a number of philosophical issues come up in your post that are bound to arise in a discussion of this topic -- laws of nature, the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), the principle of causality (PC), Humean and other objections to PSR and PC, and so forth.   Obviously we cannot address all this in any depth in a series of blog posts, especially given the word count Jeff has asked us to abide by.  I have addressed all of these issues in detail in my new book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction .  For the moment let me summarize a few key points.

First, I would say that appeals to laws of nature are far more problematic than most naturalists seem to realize.  For what is a law of nature, and why does it operate?  Like some contemporary philosophers of science and metaphysicians who have no theological or Scholastic axe to grind (e.g. Nancy Cartwright, Brian Ellis, Stephen Mumford) I would say that what we are describing when we talk of “laws of nature” are really just the ways a thing will tend to operate given its nature or essence.  In that case, though, the existence of a law of nature presupposes, and thus cannot explain, the existence of the concrete physical things, with their distinctive natures, whose operations the law describes -- in which case laws of nature are not available to the naturalist as a terminus of explanation (“brute fact” or otherwise).
Suppose this neo-Aristotelian account of laws is rejected.  What alternative views are there?  None that help the naturalist who thinks laws provide an ultimate explanation.  For example, early modern philosophers and scientists like Descartes and Newton regarded laws simply as divine decrees.  (I do not accept this view myself, by the way; indeed, it was intended by the early moderns as an anti-Scholastic approach to understanding nature.)  On this view, laws of nature cannot be ultimate explanations because they are merely the expression of something else, viz. God’s commands.  That -- and, of course, the theological presuppositions of this view -- make it unavailable to the naturalist looking to make laws ultimate.
How about a Platonic view of laws?  On this view laws are abstract objects that concrete physical phenomena “participate” in.  But what is it that brings it about that the phenomena participate in the laws?  And why is it these laws rather than some others that the phenomena participate in?  On this view it is not the laws themselves, but rather whatever it is that answers these questions (a Platonic demiurge?), that will be the ultimate explanation of things.  On this view too, then, laws are not available to the naturalist as an ultimate explanation (again, “brute” or otherwise).
How about a regularity view of laws?  On this Humean view, to say that it is a law that A’s are followed by B’s is just to assert a regular correlation between A’s and B’s, perhaps together with something else (such as a counterfactual conditional to the effect that had an A been present a B would have been present as well).  The trouble here is that laws so understood, whether “ultimate” or otherwise, don’t explain anything at all.  If it is the case that A’s are always in fact followed by B’s and that a B would have been present had an A been present, then to call this a “law” merely re-describesthis fact, rather than making it intelligible. 
Nor does it help to say that the “law” in question is a special case of some other law, because that just relocates the problem rather than solving it.  If to say “It is a law that A’s are followed by B’s” doesn’t by itself explain anything, then it doesn’t help to say that this is a special case of a law relating C’s and D’s, if the statement “It is a law that C’s are followed by D’s” alsoby itself doesn’t explain anything.  And this is true no matter how far down you go, as long as what you stop with is itself just some further “brute” regularity.   The “bruteness” is not confined to the bottom level but exists all the way up and down the series.  To suppose otherwise is like supposing that a set of IOU’s counts as real money as long as you stack them high enough.  The IOU’s at the top of the stack are no more real money than the ones at the bottom are, and the higher level laws on a regularity theory are no more explanatory than the bottom “brute” level laws are.
Hence while the regularity theory might be claimed to provide an account of explanation alternative to those implied by the Aristotelian, Platonic, and theological accounts of laws, in fact it is not an account of explanation at all but, implicitly if not explicitly, the giving up of the possibility of explanation (ultimate or otherwise).  And it is hard to see what motivation there could possibly be for a theorist of laws of nature to accept it, other than as an ad hoc way of avoiding commitment to an Aristotelian, Platonic, or theological view of laws.  (Ockham’s razor is certainly not a good motivation, for Ockham’s razor is a principle of explanation, and the regularity view makes laws non-explanatory.)
So, Keith, it seems to me that your position has the following serious problem.  You want to endorse a form of naturalism according to which real explanations are possible at levels of physical reality higher than the level of the fundamental laws of nature, yet where these explanations rest on a bottom level of physical laws that have no explanation at all but are “brute facts.”  But this view is, I maintain, incoherent.  For if you endorse a regularity view of laws, then you will have no genuine explanations at all anywhere in the system.  All of reality, and not just the level of fundamental physical laws, will amount to a “brute fact.”  Whereas if you endorse instead an Aristotelian, Platonic, or theological view of laws, then you would be acknowledging that all laws of nature, including even the fundamental laws, are dependent on something else and thus cannot provide ultimate explanations -- and you would also in each case be taking on other commitments incompatible with your naturalism.
Now that’s just one problem for your position.  There are others.  For example, I would also argue (and argue at length in the book) that Humean and other objections against PSR and PC all fail.  For instance, when Humeans argue for the conceivability of something existing without a cause or explanation, and then take that to entail the real possibility of something existing without a cause or explanation, they are committing a very crude fallacy.  The most that Humean arguments show is that we can conceive of a thing without conceiving of its cause or explanation, but to conceive of A without conceiving of B simply doesn’t entail that A can really exist without B.  We can conceive of something’s being a triangle without conceiving of its being a trilateral, but any triangle must also be a trilateral; we can conceive of a man without conceiving of his height, but any actual man must have some height or other; and so forth.  (Humean arguments are problematic in other ways too, as I show in the book.)
I would also argue that PSR, rightly understood -- that is, in its Scholastic version rather than in the Leibnizian rationalist versions usually considered in contemporary discussions of the subject -- cannot coherently be denied.  Consider that whenever we accept a claim as rationally justified, we suppose not only that we have a reason for accepting it (in the sense of a rational justification), but also that our having this reason is the reason why we accept it (in the sense of being the cause or explanation of our accepting it).  We suppose that our cognitive faculties track truth and standards of rational argumentation, and that it is because they do that we believe the things we do.  But if PSR is false, then we can have no justification for supposing that any of this is really the case.  We may in fact believe what we do for no reason whatsoever, and yet it might also falsely seem, again for no reason whatsoever, that we believe things for reasons.  And our cognitive faculties may have the deliverances they do for no reason whatsoever -- rather than because they track objective truth and standards of logic -- and yet it might also falsely seem, for no reason whatsoever, that they do track the latter.
In short, either everything has an explanation or we can have no justification for thinking that anything does.  No purported middle ground position, on which some things have genuine explanations while others are “brute facts,” can coherently be made out.  If there really could be unintelligible “brute facts,” then even the things we think are not brute facts may in fact be brute facts, and the fact that it falsely seems otherwise to us may itself be yet another brute fact.  We could have no reason to believe anything.  Rejecting PSR entails the most radical skepticism -- including skepticism about any reasoning that could make this skepticism itself intelligible.  Again, the view simply cannot coherently be made out.
Finally, as to your claim, Keith, that the accounts Scholastics and others give of something’s being self-explanatory make use of “obscure” notions, I would deny that there is any good reason for this charge.  Take the Aristotelian theory of actuality and potentiality, on which is based the Scholastic thesis that God is pure actuality.  When you say that such claims “sound… like verbal formulas devised to obviate a problem rather than solve it,” that gives the impression that they are spun out of whole cloth in an ad hoc way in order to give the theist something to say in response to his critic -- as if the theist were saying:  “How can something be self-explanatory?  Hmm, er, well now, let me think… Oh, wait! How about this: A self-explanatory terminus of explanation would be one that is pure actuality!  Yeah, that’s the ticket…”
But of course that’s not at all what is going on.  The theory of actuality and potentiality was originally developed for reasons that have nothing to do with natural theology, but rather as a way of responding to Parmenidean arguments against the possibility of genuine change.  It is also a theory that is recapitulated in other contexts having nothing to do with natural theology.  For example, the revival of interest in the notions of active and passive causal powers in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science is largely a recapitulation of the ancient theory of actuality and potentiality (in ways I discuss in my Scholastic Metaphysics book).  If the jargon seems “obscure,” it is obscure only in the way the jargon of any philosophical or scientific theory is “obscure” -- obscure when considered in isolation and outside the context of the theory, but not at all obscure once one has studied the ideas and arguments and seen how the terminology works in its theoretical context.
Now, the same thing is true of other notions made use of to account for what would make something self-explanatory -- the essence/existence distinction, the notion of being simple or non-composite, etc.  They are not at all obscure or ad hoc but have a worked-out theoretical justification independent of their application to natural theology, though when unpacked they turn out to have theological implications.  (Scholastics would not agree, by the way, that all necessity boils down to logical necessity.  Rather, logical necessity itself presupposes metaphysical necessity.)
Anyway, I thank you again, Keith, for a very useful and civil exchange.  As per the agreed format, the last word in this first round is yours.  I will brace myself!

An exchange with Keith Parsons, Part III

Here I respond to Keith Parsons’ third post.  Jeff Lowder’s index of existing and forthcoming installments in my exchange with Prof. Parsons can be found here.
I’d like to respond now, Keith, to your comments about Bertrand Russell’s objection to First Cause arguments.  Let me first make some general remarks about the objection and then I’ll get to your comments.  Russell wrote, in Why I Am Not a Christian:
If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause.  If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.  (pp. 6-7)The context makes it clear that Russell is presenting this as a knock-down refutation of the First Cause argument.  For example, he immediately goes on to say that that argument “is exactly of the same nature as” and “really no better than” the view that the world rests on an elephant which rests on a tortoise, where the question what the tortoise rests on is left unanswered. 

Now, this might be a knock-down refutation of a First Cause argument if such an argument either rested on the premise that absolutely everything without exception has a cause, or made a sudden, unexplained exception to this general rule in the case of God.  For in the first case the argument would be guilty of contradicting itself, while in the second case it would be guilty of special pleading.
The trouble is that none of the major proponents of First Cause arguments (Avicenna, Maimonides, Aquinas, Scotus, Leibniz, Clarke, et al.) actually ever gave an argument like the one Russell appears to be attacking.  For none of them maintain in the first place that absolutely everything has a cause; what they say instead is that the actualization of a potential requires a cause, or that what comes into existence requires a cause, or that contingent things require a cause, or the like.  Nor do they fail to offer principled reasons for saying that God does not require a cause even though other things do.  For they say, for example, that the reason other things require a cause is that they have potentials that need actualization, whereas God, being pure actuality, has no potentials that could be actualized; or that the reason other things require a cause is that they are composite and thus require some principle to account for why their parts are conjoined, whereas God, being absolutely simple or non-composite, has no metaphysical parts that need conjoining; or that while a contingent thing requires a cause insofar as it has an essence distinct from its act of existence (and thus has to acquire its existence from something other than its own nature), a necessary being, which just is existence or being itself, need not acquire its existence from anything else; and so forth.
So, in the actual arguments of proponents of the idea of God as First Cause, there just is no self-contradiction or special pleading of the sort Russell’s objection requires.  The arguments may or may not be open to other objections, but Russell’s objection seems either aimed at a straw man or simply to miss the point.
Now you suggest reading Russell’s objection as directed at the sort of argument in which “cause” means something like “explanation” (where the notion of an explanation is broader than the notion of an efficient cause, which is what is usually meant by “cause” these days).  Thus read, Russell’s objection becomes:
If everything must have [an explanation], then God must have [an explanation].  If there can be anything without [an explanation], it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. 
But the trouble with this is that it does not save Russell from the charge that he was either attacking a straw man or missing the point.  At best it just makes him guilty of attacking a different straw man or of missing a different point.  For this reconstructed objection would be a good one only if proponents of First Cause arguments either insisted that everything has an explanation but then suddenly made an exception in the case of God, or if they denied that everything has an explanation but nevertheless arbitrarily insisted that the universe must have one while God need not.  For in the first case they would be contradicting themselves while in the second case they would be engaged in special pleading.
But in fact defenders of First Cause arguments like the thinkers I named are doing no such thing.  In fact they would agree that everything has an explanation, and they would not make any exception in the case of God.  In their view, neither God’s existence nor the world’s existence is a “brute fact.”  But the explanation of God’s existence, they would say, lies in his own nature, whereas the explanation of the existence of other things lies in their having an efficient cause.  Nor is there any arbitrariness in their saying that God’s existence is explained by his own nature whereas the existence of other things requires an explanation in terms of some efficient cause distinct from them.  For they would say, for example, that the reason other things require such a cause is that they are mixtures of actuality and potentiality, and thus need something to actualize their potentials, whereas God, being pure actuality, has no potentials needing actualization, and exists precisely because he just is actuality itself; or they would say that since other things have an essence distinct from their acts of existence, they need something outside their essence to impart existence to them, whereas God, whose essence just isexistence, need not derive existence from anything else but exists precisely because being itself is what he is; and so forth. 
Now, other objections might be raised against these sorts of arguments and the metaphysics that underlies them.  But they are simply not guilty either of contradicting themselves, or of making an arbitrary exception in God’s case to a general demand that things must have explanations, or of failing to give a reason for saying that God has a kind of explanation that other things do not.  So, they are simply not at all subject to Russell’s objection even as you suggest we read it.
So, I continue to maintain that Russell is attacking a straw man, at least if his remarks are intended as a response to an argument some philosopher has actually given, as opposed to some popular version of the argument.  (And they surely are so intended, for what would be the point of a philosopher like Russell attacking only some unsophisticated version of the First Cause argument while ignoring the versions philosophers have actually given?)  And perhaps you would agree with that much, since you don’t cite any examples of theistic philosophers who have given arguments like the one Russell attacks.

An exchange with Keith Parsons, Part II

Here I respond to Keith Parsons’ second post.  Jeff Lowder is keeping track of the existing and forthcoming installments in my exchange with Prof. Parsons here.
Keith, thanks for these remarks.  The question we are now considering is: Why would the material universe or anything in it (an electron or a quark, say) require a cause to conserve it in existence?  Your view is that the supposition that it requires one is “gratuitous.”  You write: “Is there anything missing from an electron that would have to be filled in or supplied from outside?  There is nothing in our physical theories that indicates such a lack.”Now, this assumes that physical theory gives us an exhaustive description of electrons, quarks, and material reality in general, or at least something near enough to an exhaustive description for present purposes.  For only if we make that assumption would the absence from physical theory of a reference to the need for a conserving cause give us any reason to think a material thing doesn’t require one.  (Compare: The absence of legs from the Mona Lisa would give us reason to believe that the woman it pictures was legless only if we supposed that the portrait captures everything about her that there was to capture -- which, of course, is not the case.)

Now I would say that there is no reason whatsoever to make the assumption in question vis-à-vis physical theory, and in fact decisive reason to reject it.  Nor does one have to be a Scholastic or a theist to agree with me.  Bertrand Russell, for one, agreed at least about that much.  As he wrote:
It is not always realised how exceedingly abstract is the information that theoretical physics has to give.  It lays down certain fundamental equations which enable it to deal with the logical structure of events, while leaving it completely unknown what is the intrinsic character of the events that have the structure… All that physics gives us is certain equations giving abstract properties of their changes.  But as to what it is that changes, and what it changes from and to—as to this, physics is silent. (My Philosophical Development, p. 13)
Now if physics gives us only the mathematical structure of material reality, then not only does it not tell us everything there is to know about material reality, but it implies that there must be more to material reality than what it tells us.  For there can be no such thing as structure by itself; there must be something which has the structure. 
Nor, even if we could make sense of the idea of structure existing by itself, would physics give us any reason to believe that that is all there is.  To be sure, if there are features of physical reality susceptible of the mathematical description to which physics limits itself (which, as the success of physics shows, there surely are) then physics has a good shot at capturing them.  But if there are features of reality that cannot be captured by those methods, physics is guaranteed not to capture them.  So, that physical theory doesn’t tell us such-and-such really doesn’t mean much where metaphysics is concerned, because its very methods guarantee that it will not capture certain aspects of reality even if they are there.
Nor, contrary to a common fallacy, does the predictive success of physics’ methods give us any reason whatsoever to believe that there are unlikely to be features of reality that cannot be captured by its methods.  As I have said elsewhere, to assume this is like assuming that the success of metal detectors shows that there are unlikely to be features of reality that cannot be captured using metal detectors; or it is like the drunk’s argument that his lost car keys are unlikely to be anywhere else but under the lamppost, since, after all, that is where the light is and where he has already found his lost wallet and sunglasses. 
So, physics is of its very nature incomplete.  It requires interpretation within a larger metaphysical framework, and absolutely every appeal to “what physics tells us” presupposes such a metaphysical framework, implicitly if not explicitly.  This is as true of the appeals made by naturalists and atheists as it is true of the views of Scholastics.  So, physical theory is simply not going to settle issues like the one in question.  The issue is metaphysical and can in principle only be settled via metaphysical argumentation.
Now, the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition, for metaphysical reasons that have nothing essentially to do with natural theology, maintains that any possible material reality will have to have an actuality/potentiality structure.  The reasons have to do with the very preconditions of affirming, contra Parmenidean arguments, the reality of change and of multiplicity.  Neither change nor multiplicity, the Scholastic argues, can coherently be denied; and neither can be made sense of unless between actuality and nothingness there is a middle ground of potency or potentiality.  Now, when the actuality/potentiality distinction is worked out, it implies that every finite substance is a compound of essenceand existence (with essence being a kind of potentiality and existence a kind of actuality) and that every material substance in particular is a compound of substantial form and prime matter (with substantial form corresponding to actuality and prime matter to potentiality). 
Obviously not every reader will agree with or even be familiar with these ideas.  But there are serious arguments for them, arguments which I have defended at length and against all the standard objections in my book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction .  And when their implications are worked out, it turns out that nothing composite in these ways can exist on its own even for an instant.  For instance, prime matter is pure potentiality for the taking on of form, and qua pure potentiality has no actuality of its own.  In mind-independent reality, then, it can exist only as informed by a substantial form.  The substantial form of a purely material thing, though, is, apart from matter, a mere abstraction.  In mind-independent reality, then, it can exist only as instantiated in prime matter.  But this leaves us with a vicious metaphysical circle unless there is something outside the composite that accounts for the parts being combined.  And the regress this threatens to generate can in principle be terminated only by that which is in no way a composite of actuality and potentiality -- something which is pure actuality devoid of potentiality.
This is compressed, obviously, and much more could be said both in the way of working out the background metaphysics (as I have done in the book just referred to) and in the way of spelling out the arguments for the necessity of a sustaining cause and defending them against objections (as I have done in my American Catholic Philosophical Quarterlyarticle “Existential Inertia and the Five Ways”).  But this much suffices to show that there is nothing gratuitous about the idea of the need for a conserving cause.  It has a serious metaphysical motivation, and a motivation that is independent of natural theology, even if it ultimately has implications for natural theology.

An exchange with Keith Parsons, Part I

Prof. Keith Parsons and I will be having an exchange to be moderated by Jeffery Jay Lowder of The Secular Outpost.  Prof. Parsons has initiated the exchange with a response to the first of four questions I put to him last week.  What follows is a brief reply.
Keith, thank you for your very gracious response.  Like Jeff Lowder, you raise the issue of the relative amounts of attention I and other theistic philosophers pay to “New Atheist” writers like Dawkins, Harris, et al. as opposed to the much more serious arguments of atheist philosophers like Graham Oppy, Jordan Howard Sobel, and many others.  Let me begin by reiterating what I said last week in response to Jeff, namely that I have nothing but respect for philosophers like the ones you cite and would never lump them in with Dawkins and Co.  And as I showed in my response to Jeff, I have in fact publicly praised many of these writers many times over the years for the intellectual seriousness of their work.I have given the “New Atheists” the attention I have only because they have themselves gotten so much attention and needed a vigorous response.  Even so, my book The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, is, the title notwithstanding, really less about the New Atheism per se than it is about defending the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, which is my preferred approach to philosophical questions in general and the philosophy of religion in particular.  And my (non-polemical and more academic) book Aquinas has almost nothing to say about the New Atheists, beyond some brief references to Dawkins.  
 
This interest in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition is key to understanding my attitude toward authors like the ones you cite.  I would distinguish what might be called classical and modernapproaches to the key themes of natural theology.  The classical approach is represented by schools of thought like Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Thomism and other forms of Scholasticism.  The key writers here would be thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Anselm, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Aquinas, Scotus, Suarez, and later writers influenced by them down to the present day (such as twentieth-century Neo-Scholastics and contemporary analytical Thomists). 
The modern approach is represented by Leibniz-Clarke style cosmological arguments, Paley-style design arguments and “Intelligent Design” theory, Plantinga-style ontological arguments, “Reformed epistemology,” Swinburne-style inductive arguments, etc.  Contemporary philosophy of religion is dominated by these modern sorts of arguments, though there are some thinkers (John Haldane, Brian Davies, Eleonore Stump, et al.) whose sympathies are classical.  These modern arguments typically operate with very different conceptions of causation, modality, substance, essence, and other key metaphysical notions than the ones classical thinkers would accept.
Now, my approach, being Aristotelian-Thomistic, is decidedly classical.  Like many other Thomists, I not only do not defend the sorts of arguments most other contemporary philosophers of religion do, but I am critical both of the metaphysical/epistemological assumptions underlying the arguments and of the conception of God the arguments arrive at.  For instance, I reject the possible worlds theories in terms of which modality is typically understood in the contemporary arguments; I think the “argument to the best explanation” approach gets reasoning from the world to God just fundamentally wrong; I think the rationality of theism does depend not only on there being evidence for it, but metaphysical demonstrations of an aggressively old-fashioned sort; and so forth.  I also reject the “theistic personalist” or “neo-theist” conception of God that underlies so much contemporary philosophy of religion, and regard classical theism and its key themes -- divine simplicity, immutability, eternity, etc. -- as non-negotiable elements of any theism worth defending.
Unsurprisingly, a great deal of contemporary atheist argumentation is devoted to criticizing these very ideas and arguments that I do not agree with myself.  Equally unsurprisingly, then, I have not engaged much with those atheist arguments.  I simply don’t have a dog in those fights, as it were.  I have tended instead to focus my attention on those objections that have been raised against classical arguments specifically, and especially against Aristotelian-Thomistic arguments.
Hence in my book Aquinas, for example, I have a lot to say in response to writers like Anthony Kenny and J. L. Mackie who have criticized Aquinas at some length. Naturally, I also have a lot to say there in response to Humean and Kantian objections to cosmological arguments in general.  Now, much of what contemporary atheists have to say in response to Aquinas is a reiteration of Humean objections, or of points made by writers like Kenny.  (For example, David Ramsay Steele in his book Atheism Explained, and to some extent even Mackie in The Miracle of Theism, suppose they can largely dispatch Aquinas by referring the reader to Kenny’s book on the Five Ways.)  Hence to respond to objections of the sort raised by Hume and Kenny is ipso factoto respond to much of what have become standard atheist moves vis-à-vis Aquinas. 
Other objections, as I have showed at length in Aquinasand The Last Superstition, are based on misunderstandings of the metaphysical underpinnings of Aquinas’s arguments, and often on a tendency to read modern assumptions that Aquinas would have rejected back into his arguments.  For example, it is very common for critics of Aquinas to be unaware of the distinction between what Scholastics call a per se or essentially ordered causal series and a per accidens or accidentally ordered causal series, and they fail to realize that when Aquinas rules out a regress of causes it is the first rather than the second sort he has in mind.  Critics also often wrongly assume that in the Third Way Aquinas is appealing to something like a modern understanding of modality.  And so forth.  Once these misunderstandings of the background metaphysics are cleared up, it can be seen that many standard moves against Aquinas simply miss the point.  This is true e.g. of Oppy’s treatment of Aquinas in Arguing About Gods.  I have nothing but respect for Oppy; he is smart and well-read and a formidable philosopher.  Still, in my view he just misreads Aquinas and his objections thus misfire. 
For this reason I haven’t commented explicitly on every single contemporary atheist philosopher who has criticized Aquinas.  For in the main they are offering variations on standard objections which I answer in my books and other writings, so that anyone who has read both my stuff and (say) Oppy’s book, or Sobel’s, would know how I would respond to their objections.
I don’t want to offend too much against the word limitation Jeff has proposed to us, so I will resist my tendency toward long-windedness and close with the following thought.  You may or may not know that I was an atheist myself for about ten years, and that my journey back to theism involved a discovery of what classical thinkers like Aquinas had actually said.  I recounted this intellectual journey in a blog post some time back, and as I note in that post, many of the objections I had as an atheist to the work of modern philosophers of religion are objections I still would raise as a classical theist.  So, perhaps we have at least a little more in common that it might seem at first glance!

Descartes’ “preservation” argument

In previous posts I’ve critically examined, from a Scholastic point of view, some of Descartes’ best-known arguments.  Specifically, I’ve commented on Descartes’ “clear and distinct perception” argument for dualism, and his “trademark” argument for God’s existence.  We’ve seen how these arguments illustrate how Descartes, though the father of modern philosophy, in some respects continues to be influenced by the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition, even as in other respects he abandons it.  It’s the novelties, I have suggested, that get him into trouble.  This is evidenced once again in what is sometimes called his “preservation” argument for God’s existence.The argument is presented in Meditation III (specifically, in paragraphs 28-36 of the version linked to), in the context in which he presents the “trademark” argument.  It is not clearly set off from that argument, and has perhaps gotten even less attention from commentators.  But then, as André Gombay notes in his book Descartes , “in the history of God’s proofs, Meditation Three is not a significant event” (p. 54).  While the “trademark” argument makes use of Scholastic notions and the “preservation” argument is not completely dissimilar to earlier arguments for a divine First Cause, both arguments are nevertheless idiosyncratic, reflecting the epistemological situation Descartes has put himself in in the first two Meditations.  It is no surprise, then, that they did not catch on with later modern philosophers who did not completely share Descartes’ approach to epistemology.  Nor, given the significant philosophical differences between Descartes and the Scholastics, is it surprising that his proofs were not appealing to thinkers who remained within the Scholastic tradition.  The arguments were perhaps destined to be orphans.

By the beginning of Meditation III, Descartes knows I think, therefore I am, but he has yet to establish that anything else exists.  That God created him with the faculties he has and is not a deceiver is going to be his key to regaining knowledge of the external world, but how is he going to prove that God exists?  He cannot do so via arguments like Aquinas’s Five Ways, since they begin with premises that appeal to observation, and Descartes does not yet know as of Meditation III whether his senses are reliable.  If he is going to establish God’s existence, then, he is going to have to do so on the basis of what he does know, viz. that he exists and that he has various ideas.  The “trademark” argument begins with the second of these bits of knowledge, specifically with the fact that he finds within himself the idea of God.  The “preservation” argument starts with the first, the fact that he exists.
Granted that (as the Cogito shows) I exist, Descartes asks, what caused me to exist?  Of course, the natural answer would be to say that his parents did, but as of Meditation III Descartes still does not know whether his parents or anything else about his previous life is real.  But what Descartes is concerned with in any event, as he goes on to make clear, is what conserves him in existence here and now and at any moment.  What causes him to keepexisting, instead of being annihilated?  His parents cannot be the answer to that question, and it is a question that arises however long he’s existed and whether or not the material side of his nature, or indeed the material world as a whole, turns out to be real.  Sounding not unlike Aquinas, Descartes writes:
In truth, it is perfectly clear and evident to all who will attentively consider the nature of duration, that the conservation of a substance, in each moment of its duration, requires the same power and act that would be necessary to create it, supposing it were not yet in existence; so that it is manifestly a dictate of the natural light that conservation and creation differ merely in respect of our mode of thinking [and not in reality].
Now “creation,” as that is understood in traditional theology, is causing the existence of a thing in its entiretyrather than merely modifying pre-existing materials.  It is creation out of nothing, and it is for the Scholastic what God does in the act of conserving the world in being, not merely something he did at some beginning point in time.  Descartes is thinking of creation in similar terms, his point being that causing a thing’s sheer existence out of nothing at any particular point in its lifespan -- that is, conserving it in being -- is for purposes of the question at hand in no relevant respect different from having created it out of nothing at the time of its origination. 
So, what is the cause of his being preserved in existence at any moment?  Is he is own preserving cause?  Is something other than him but still non-divine the cause?  Or is it God?  Descartes argues that the first two answers cannot be right, leaving the third as the only remaining possibility.  One way to summarize the reasoning is as follows:
1. I am preserved in existence or continuously created out of nothing at every instant.
2. Causing the sheer existence of a thing out of nothing requires greater power than causing any other perfection does.
3. So if I were preserving or creating myself out of nothing, I could also cause myself to have any perfection, including the perfections characteristic of the divine nature.
4. But if I could give myself the divine perfections, I would have done so, and yet I have not.
5. And since I am a thinking thing, I would be aware of creating myself out of nothing if I were doing so, and I am not aware of doing so.
6. So I am not preserving or continuously creating myself out of nothing.
7. Anything that is preserving or continuously creating me must, like me, be a thinking thing, since there cannot be less reality in the cause than in the effect.
8. Since any possible non-divine preserving cause of my continued existence also lacks the divine perfections, it could not be the preserving cause of its own existence either.
9. The only thing that could terminate this regress of preserving causes is something which does have all the divine perfections, which would be God himself.
10. So God exists.
What should we think of this argument?  Let me begin by noting three objections which are, in my view, no good.  First, it might be suggested that the continued existence either of the Cartesian subject or of anything else requires no cause at all.  One basis for this claim might be a rejection of the principle of causality, which says (in what I take to be the most fundamental formulation) that a potential that is actualized must be actualized by something already actual.  But there are no good objections to the principle of causality and decisive arguments in its favor, as I have argued in several places and argue at greatest length in chapter 2 of Scholastic Metaphysics .  Another basis for the claim might be the suggestion that though the generation of a thing requires a cause, its continued existence at any moment does not.  This would be an appeal to what has sometimes been called “existential inertia,” the notion that in general a thing will just continue to exist unless something positively acts to destroy it, without its requiring any positive causal action to conserve it.  But there are no good reasons to believe in existential inertia, and decisive reasons for rejecting it, as I argue in my ACPQ article “Existential Inertia and the Five Ways.” 
A second objection might be that there is no reason to think a regress of preserving causes would have to terminate in a first cause, divine or otherwise.  But such a series would be what Scholastic metaphysicians call an essentiallyordered (as opposed to an accidentallyordered) series of causes, and the former sort of series (unlike the latter) must have a first member.  More precisely, for such a series to exist there must be a cause which is “first,” not in the sense of standing at the head of a queue, but rather in the sense of having underived or intrinsic causal power, since everything else in the series has only derivative or “secondary” causal power.  I have expounded and defended this idea in several places, once more at greatest length in Scholastic Metaphysics. 
A third objection would be to reject the principle (appealed to in step 7 of the argument above) that what is in the effect must in some way be in the cause.  Commentators on Descartes call this the Causal Adequacy Principle and Scholastic metaphysicians call it the Principle of Proportionate Causality.  I have defended this principle too in several places, and (yet again) at greatest length in Scholastic Metaphysics.
In short, these objections are directed at aspects of Descartes’ argument that it has in common with Scholastic arguments for God’s existence, and those aspects are in my view all sound.  So if these were the only objections that could be raised against Descartes, the argument would in my view succeed.  However, those are not the only possible objections, and the argument is seriously problematic in other ways -- in particular, it is problematic precisely in those respects in which it departs from Scholasticism.
Implicit in Descartes’ argument is the idea that a thing might be the cause of its own existence, and indeed that God is the cause of his own existence.  Now this notion of a causa sui is one that Scholastics like Aquinas explicitly reject, and for good reason since it is incoherent.  (It is sometimes suggested that science, or at least science fiction, shows otherwise, but as I have argued elsewhere, such suggestions are confused about what is being ruled out when one rules out the notion of a causa sui.)  But when Descartes considers the proposal that he might be his own cause, he doesn’t say: “No, because self-causation is impossible” --as, in the Scholastic view, he should have said.  Rather, he says: “No, because if something could cause itself to exist, it could also cause itself to be God, and I haven’t done that.”
Now the conditional appealed to here -- that ifsomething could cause its own existence thenit could also give itself the divine attributes -- is one for which Descartes gives an interesting argument.  The argument is that causing something to exist out of nothing requires greater power than causing any other attribute.  That is certainly plausible, because to cause a thing to have some attribute is merely to modify some pre-existing substance, whereas to cause a thing to exist ex nihilo is to cause the substance itself together with its attributes, and not merely to add something to the already existing substance.  And substances are, metaphysically speaking, more fundamental than attributes.  So, if you could cause the sheer existence of a substance ex nihilo, then surely you could, Descartes with at least some plausibility holds, also cause it to be omniscient, or omnipotent, or omnipresent, or indeed to have all the divine attributes together.  And thus, if you could cause yourself to exist ex nihilo then you could cause yourself to be God.
The trouble is that the antecedent of this conditional is false.  Nothing can cause itself in the first place, so the whole idea of something causing itself to be God is just a non-starter.  But Descartes not only does not reject the antecedent, he makes it essential to his whole argument.  For the way he gets to his conclusion is by way of the idea that there is and must be something that causes itself, only it cannot be you, me, or any other non-divine thing but has to be God, since a self-causing being would be one that causes itself not only to exist but also to be omnipotent, omniscient, etc. 
From a Scholastic point of view, this is, metaphysically speaking, just a complete mess.  To be sure, there is for the Scholastic a sense in which God is self-explanatory, insofar as that which is pure actuality, being itself, and absolutely simple must also be absolutely necessary.  God’s existence is in that way explained or made intelligible by his nature.  He is by no means an unintelligible “brute fact.”  But that is very different from being self-caused, in the sense of being the efficient cause of one’s own being.  That, again, is for the Scholastic simply incoherent.  (Notice that to be the efficient cause of a thing is not the same thing as to be the explanation of a thing.  An appeal to an efficient cause is merely one type of explanation among others.)  And it certainly makes no sense whatsoever to think of God somehow imparting to himself omnipotence, omniscience, or any other attribute -- as if he could in principle have existed without these attributes, but decided not to. 
Why would Descartes proceed in this bizarre fashion?  After all, existing Scholastic arguments would have gotten him to a divine conserving cause without appealing to the notion of self-causation, and that he starts with his own existence as a Cartesian subject rather than with the preservation in existence of ordinary material objects would make no difference.  A Cartesian subject may not be material, but it is still a compound of essence and existence and thus a compound of potency and act.  And that is all one needs to get an argument for a conserving cause going.  Descartes even makes use of the language of potency and act earlier in this very Meditation.  So why not just go the whole hog and adopt an Aquinas-style argument for the purposes of Meditation III?
The answer, perhaps, is just that while Descartes does not entirely abandon the Scholastic metaphysical apparatus, he wants to make as little use of it as possible, especially where it is closely tied to the Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy of nature that he is very keen to overthrow.  And the traditional Scholastic arguments for divine conservation of the world are definitely tied to that philosophy of nature.  (As I argued in my lecture at Franciscan University of Steubenville some time back, I think you are not going to get from the natural world to God unless you make use of the theory of act and potency.)  So, though for the purposes of arguing for God’s existence he could have narrowed his application of the key metaphysical concepts to the Cartesian subject and kept them out of his philosophy of nature, perhaps he thought it better just to make a clean break and try a new approach.  But this is speculation on my part.
Here’s another interesting fact about Descartes’ argument.  Like the better-known versions of the First Cause argument, Descartes’ version does not amount to the stupid straw man: “Everything has a cause, so the universe has a cause.”  However, Descartes is arguably committed to the claim that “everything has a cause” -- not as a premise of the argument (he doesn’t explicitly say in Meditation III that everything has a cause) so much as an implication of it.  For he’s argued that the continued existence of any thinking thing has to be traced to the causal activity of a thinking thing which gives itself the divine attributes.  He also regarded non-thinking or extended things as having a divine sustaining cause as well.  So, everything other than God has a cause on Descartes’ view.  But he also characterizes God as a causa sui.  So God has a cause too, namely himself.  So, Descartes’ argument seems to imply, everything has a cause.
This does not make Descartes subject to the standard atheist retort to the straw man First Cause argument, though.  That retort is summed up in a remark made by Bertrand Russell in Why I Am Not a Christian:
If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause.  If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.  (pp. 6-7)
Now in response to this a Scholastic would say: “We never said ‘everything has a cause’ in the first place; in fact we deny that.  You’re attacking a straw man.  Furthermore, there is nothing whatsoever arbitrary in saying that things other than God require a cause while he does not.  For what makes something in need of a cause is that it has potentials which need to be actualized, or is metaphysically composite and is in need of a principle to account for how its parts are conjoined, or has an essence distinct from its act of existence and thus has to acquire its existence from something other than its own nature.  This is true of the material universe and every part of it.  However, what is pure actuality devoid of potentiality, or absolutely simple and without any parts, or has existence itself as its very essence, not only need not have a cause but could not have had one.  There might be other objections one could raise against First Cause arguments, but Russell’s objection just completely misses the point.” 
Descartes, however, might reply instead as follows: “But God does have a cause.  I’m not making any exception for him.  It’s just that he is his own cause, whereas other things are caused to exist by things distinct from themselves.  Nor is there anything arbitrary in my saying that God causes himself while other things do not.  For the reason I say that they do not cause themselves is that anything that causes itself to exist would also cause itself to have the divine attributes and thus would cause itself to be God, and neither the universe nor any part of it has done that.  Only God himself, naturally, has done that.  There might be other objections one could raise against this argument, but Russell’s objection just completely misses the point.”
Descartes’ “preservation” argument is also interesting, then, for what it tells us about vulgar criticisms of First Cause arguments, like Russell’s.  For Russell’s objection is so very feeble that it fails even as a response to Descartes’ crazy version of the argument!  That’s some kind of achievement.

Four questions for Keith Parsons [UPDATED 2/21]

Keith Parsons’ feelings are, it seems, still hurt over some frank things I said about him a few years ago (hereand here).  It seems to me that when a guy dismisses as a “fraud” an entire academic field to which many thinkers of universally acknowledged genius have contributed, and maintains that its key arguments do not even rise to the level of a “respectable philosophical position” worthy of “serious academic attention,” then when its defenders hit back, he really ought to have a thicker skin and more of a sense of humor about himself.  But that’s just me.Anyway, Parsons lamentsthe bad “manners” I showed in having the temerity to give him a taste of his own medicine.  He says he wishes we could have had an “interesting discussion instead.”  So, in the interests of furthering that end I’ll refrain from returning his latest insults.  Instead I’d like to ask him four very straightforward questions to which I think both my readers and his would like to hear his answers.  A response should only take him a few moments.  I set out some context for each question, but I’ve put the questions themselves in bold so as to facilitate a speedy reply from Prof. Parsons.  Here they are:

1. Prof. Parsons, in your response to a reader’s comment, you say:
Unlike Prof. Feser, I would like to address the strongest claims of my opponents, and not those that seem weakest to me.
Evidently, then, you think I have failed to address the strongest criticisms either of my own arguments or of the arguments of philosophers to whose work I appeal (e.g. Aquinas).  So, who exactly are these critics I have ignored, or which of their criticisms, specifically, have I failed to address?  I’m sure you have something in particular in mind, so if you could take just a second or two to let us know what it is, I‘d appreciate it.
2. In the same response, you write vis-à-vis the doctrine of divine conservation:
Why, for instance, does a proton have to be maintained in existence? Why can't it just exist on its own? The very idea that existence is some sort of act that must be continually performed sounds to me, frankly, fatuous.
I assume, then, that you’ve studied and refuted the Scholastic arguments for divine conservation – which, of course, offer an answer to the question you raise -- and have just neglected to tell us where this refutation can be found.  So, could you tell us where we can find this refutation?  Is it in one of your books or journal articles?  Or could you point to some other author you think has adequately done the job?  (FYI, I have defended the Scholastic position at length in my American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Existential Inertia and the Five Ways,” wherein I respond to the arguments on this topic presented by J. L. Mackie, Bede Rundle, John Beaudoin, and others.   I will be happy to email you a PDF of the article if you haven’t seen it, since I’d be very interested to hear which criticisms you think I’ve overlooked.) 
While I’ve got you, I also have a couple of questions about some remarks you made a few years ago when your dismissive remarks about natural theology were widely publicized: 
3. In response to a reader’s comment, you wrote:
I think Bertrand Russell's beautifully succinct critique of all causal arguments holds good: "If everything requires a cause, then God requires a cause. However, if anything can exist without a cause, it might as well be the universe as God."  Exactly.
Now, your Secular Outpost co-blogger and fellow atheist Jeffery Jay Lowder agrees with me that this is not in fact a good objection to arguments for a First Cause, because it attacks a straw man.  Specifically, Lowder has said:
[N]o respectable theologian or theistic philosopher has ever made the claim, "everything has a cause." Yet various new atheists have proceeded to attack that straw man of their own making. I remember, when reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, where he attacked that straw man and cringing. There are many different cosmological arguments for God's existence and none of them rely upon the stupid claim, "everything has a cause."
You won't find that mistake made by Quentin Smith, Graham Oppy, Paul Draper, or (if we add a theistic critic to the list) Wes Morriston.
End quote.  Now it would seem that what Lowder calls a “mistake” is one that you, Keith Parsons, have made.  But is Lowder wrong?  If he is, please tell us exactly which theistic philosophers who defend First Cause arguments – Avicenna? Maimonides? Aquinas? Scotus?  Leibniz? Clarke? Garrigou-Lagrange? Craig? -- actually ever gave the argument Russell was attacking.
4.  In response to another reader’s question, about Craig’s version of the First Cause argument, you wrote: “Both theists and atheists begin with an uncaused brute fact.  For Craig it is God, and for me it is the universe.”  Now, as you know, the expression “brute fact” is typically used in philosophy to convey the idea of something which is unintelligible or without explanation.  And your statement gives the impression that all theists, or at least most of them, regard God as a “brute fact” in this sense. 
But in fact that is the reverse of the truth.  Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. would deny that God is a “brute fact.”  They would say that the explanation for God’s existence lies in the divine nature -- for Aristotelians, in God’s pure actuality; for Neoplatonists, in his absolute simplicity; for Thomists, in the fact that his essence and existence are identical; for Leibnizians in his being his own sufficient reason; and so forth.  (Naturally the atheist will not think the arguments of these thinkers are convincing.  But to say that they are not convincing is not the same thing as showing that the theist is either explicitly or implicitly committed to the notion that God is a “brute fact.”)
But perhaps you think the standard interpretation of the views of Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. is mistaken.  Perhaps you think that these thinkers are in fact all explicitly or at least implicitly committed to the thesis that God is a “brute fact.”  So, could you please tell us where you have spelled out an argument justifying the claim that all or at least most philosophical theists regard God as a “brute fact” or are at least implicitly committed to the claim that he is?  Is there a book or journal article written by you or by someone else in which we can find this justification? 
Thanks.   I look forward to your answers and to an interesting discussion.

UPDATE 2/19: Over in his combox, Keith Parsons at first expressed interest in responding to my questions, but then in a follow-up comment wrote:

On second thought, after looking at your "straightforward questions" my answer is: Nah. I was expecting an invitation to a civil academic discussion, but I find that you are still in personal attack mode. My only response will be to assure you that you have not hurt my feelings at all. I think you are a horse's ass, and the disdain of your ilk is of no concern to me at all. Indeed, I consider it a badge of honor. Please do write more nasty things about me for the amusement of your ignorant and boorish followers. It makes my day when I piss off people like you guys.

I’ll let readers be the judge of which of us is “pissed off,” “nasty,” “in personal attack mode,” etc.; of whether I was right to characterize Parsons as too thin-skinned; and of why he decided not to respond to some polite and straightforward questions that should take him only a few moments to answer.  (Judging from his combox, Parson’s own readers aren’t too happy with his reply.) 

I’ve just posted a polite response in his combox.  Let’s see whether I’ve made his day again.

UPDATE 2/20: For those who aren’t following the proceedings in Parsons’ combox, in response to my polite restatement of my questions to him, Parsons wrote: 

Prof. Feser, 

You have written now, what is it, three lengthy columns attacking me? I think about you approximately zero percent of the time. Apparently, however, I am living rent free in your head. The kind of help you need is not the kind that I am professionally qualified to give.

By this point I found I couldn’t help but let slip the dogs of sarcasm, responding:

Prof. Parsons, 

Thanks for that. Just ran your comment through Google Translate. Here's what came out: "Prof. Feser, you've embarrassed me by asking four polite and simple questions I cannot answer, despite my having loudly shot my mouth off about the subjects in question for several years. So, I will try once again to deflect attention from this fact by accusing you of launching a personal attack, in the desperate hope that there might still be a few readers left who haven't bothered actually to read your blog post and see that my accusation is false. Also, I never give you any thought, except for all those times over the last few days and years that I've run to my computer to post comments to the effect that I never give you any thought." 

Can you confirm the accuracy of this translation? To which Parsons replied: 

Prof. Feser, 

Thanks for the hysterical (in both senses of the term) calumny. You prove my point more eloquently than I ever could. Really, sir, you are in the grip of an irrational obsession. Get some help.  

Parsons’ readers have, almost to a man, expressed disappointment at his behavior, and now his co-blogger Jeff Lowder has called on Parsons to knock it off and just answer the questions I put to him.  But I doubt anything else he might say could be more illuminating than what he's said already.
UPDATE 2/21: If you’ve been following the continuing exchange in the combox over at Keith Parsons’ blog, you know that he has now agreed to an exchange with me, to be moderated by Jeffery Jay Lowder.  I’ll report the specific details after they are finalized.

Four questions for Keith Parsons [UPDATED 2/20]

Keith Parsons’ feelings are, it seems, still hurt over some frank things I said about him a few years ago (hereand here).  It seems to me that when a guy dismisses as a “fraud” an entire academic field to which many thinkers of universally acknowledged genius have contributed, and maintains that its key arguments do not even rise to the level of a “respectable philosophical position” worthy of “serious academic attention,” then when its defenders hit back, he really ought to have a thicker skin and more of a sense of humor about himself.  But that’s just me.Anyway, Parsons lamentsthe bad “manners” I showed in having the temerity to give him a taste of his own medicine.  He says he wishes we could have had an “interesting discussion instead.”  So, in the interests of furthering that end I’ll refrain from returning his latest insults.  Instead I’d like to ask him four very straightforward questions to which I think both my readers and his would like to hear his answers.  A response should only take him a few moments.  I set out some context for each question, but I’ve put the questions themselves in bold so as to facilitate a speedy reply from Prof. Parsons.  Here they are:

1. Prof. Parsons, in your response to a reader’s comment, you say:
Unlike Prof. Feser, I would like to address the strongest claims of my opponents, and not those that seem weakest to me.
Evidently, then, you think I have failed to address the strongest criticisms either of my own arguments or of the arguments of philosophers to whose work I appeal (e.g. Aquinas).  So, who exactly are these critics I have ignored, or which of their criticisms, specifically, have I failed to address?  I’m sure you have something in particular in mind, so if you could take just a second or two to let us know what it is, I‘d appreciate it.
2. In the same response, you write vis-à-vis the doctrine of divine conservation:
Why, for instance, does a proton have to be maintained in existence? Why can't it just exist on its own? The very idea that existence is some sort of act that must be continually performed sounds to me, frankly, fatuous.
I assume, then, that you’ve studied and refuted the Scholastic arguments for divine conservation – which, of course, offer an answer to the question you raise -- and have just neglected to tell us where this refutation can be found.  So, could you tell us where we can find this refutation?  Is it in one of your books or journal articles?  Or could you point to some other author you think has adequately done the job?  (FYI, I have defended the Scholastic position at length in my American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Existential Inertia and the Five Ways,” wherein I respond to the arguments on this topic presented by J. L. Mackie, Bede Rundle, John Beaudoin, and others.   I will be happy to email you a PDF of the article if you haven’t seen it, since I’d be very interested to hear which criticisms you think I’ve overlooked.) 
While I’ve got you, I also have a couple of questions about some remarks you made a few years ago when your dismissive remarks about natural theology were widely publicized: 
3. In response to a reader’s comment, you wrote:
I think Bertrand Russell's beautifully succinct critique of all causal arguments holds good: "If everything requires a cause, then God requires a cause. However, if anything can exist without a cause, it might as well be the universe as God."  Exactly.
Now, your Secular Outpost co-blogger and fellow atheist Jeffery Jay Lowder agrees with me that this is not in fact a good objection to arguments for a First Cause, because it attacks a straw man.  Specifically, Lowder has said:
[N]o respectable theologian or theistic philosopher has ever made the claim, "everything has a cause." Yet various new atheists have proceeded to attack that straw man of their own making. I remember, when reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, where he attacked that straw man and cringing. There are many different cosmological arguments for God's existence and none of them rely upon the stupid claim, "everything has a cause."
You won't find that mistake made by Quentin Smith, Graham Oppy, Paul Draper, or (if we add a theistic critic to the list) Wes Morriston.
End quote.  Now it would seem that what Lowder calls a “mistake” is one that you, Keith Parsons, have made.  But is Lowder wrong?  If he is, please tell us exactly which theistic philosophers who defend First Cause arguments – Avicenna? Maimonides? Aquinas? Scotus?  Leibniz? Clarke? Garrigou-Lagrange? Craig? -- actually ever gave the argument Russell was attacking.
4.  In response to another reader’s question, about Craig’s version of the First Cause argument, you wrote: “Both theists and atheists begin with an uncaused brute fact.  For Craig it is God, and for me it is the universe.”  Now, as you know, the expression “brute fact” is typically used in philosophy to convey the idea of something which is unintelligible or without explanation.  And your statement gives the impression that all theists, or at least most of them, regard God as a “brute fact” in this sense. 
But in fact that is the reverse of the truth.  Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. would deny that God is a “brute fact.”  They would say that the explanation for God’s existence lies in the divine nature -- for Aristotelians, in God’s pure actuality; for Neoplatonists, in his absolute simplicity; for Thomists, in the fact that his essence and existence are identical; for Leibnizians in his being his own sufficient reason; and so forth.  (Naturally the atheist will not think the arguments of these thinkers are convincing.  But to say that they are not convincing is not the same thing as showing that the theist is either explicitly or implicitly committed to the notion that God is a “brute fact.”)
But perhaps you think the standard interpretation of the views of Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. is mistaken.  Perhaps you think that these thinkers are in fact all explicitly or at least implicitly committed to the thesis that God is a “brute fact.”  So, could you please tell us where you have spelled out an argument justifying the claim that all or at least most philosophical theists regard God as a “brute fact” or are at least implicitly committed to the claim that he is?  Is there a book or journal article written by you or by someone else in which we can find this justification? 
Thanks.   I look forward to your answers and to an interesting discussion.

UPDATE 2/19: Over in his combox, Keith Parsons at first expressed interest in responding to my questions, but then in a follow-up comment wrote:

On second thought, after looking at your "straightforward questions" my answer is: Nah. I was expecting an invitation to a civil academic discussion, but I find that you are still in personal attack mode. My only response will be to assure you that you have not hurt my feelings at all. I think you are a horse's ass, and the disdain of your ilk is of no concern to me at all. Indeed, I consider it a badge of honor. Please do write more nasty things about me for the amusement of your ignorant and boorish followers. It makes my day when I piss off people like you guys.

I’ll let readers be the judge of which of us is “pissed off,” “nasty,” “in personal attack mode,” etc.; of whether I was right to characterize Parsons as too thin-skinned; and of why he decided not to respond to some polite and straightforward questions that should take him only a few moments to answer.  (Judging from his combox, Parson’s own readers aren’t too happy with his reply.) 

I’ve just posted a polite response in his combox.  Let’s see whether I’ve made his day again.

UPDATE 2/20: For those who aren’t following the proceedings in Parsons’ combox, in response to my polite restatement of my questions to him, Parsons wrote: 

Prof. Feser, 

You have written now, what is it, three lengthy columns attacking me? I think about you approximately zero percent of the time. Apparently, however, I am living rent free in your head. The kind of help you need is not the kind that I am professionally qualified to give.

By this point I found I couldn’t help but let slip the dogs of sarcasm, responding:

Prof. Parsons, 

Thanks for that. Just ran your comment through Google Translate. Here's what came out: "Prof. Feser, you've embarrassed me by asking four polite and simple questions I cannot answer, despite my having loudly shot my mouth off about the subjects in question for several years. So, I will try once again to deflect attention from this fact by accusing you of launching a personal attack, in the desperate hope that there might still be a few readers left who haven't bothered actually to read your blog post and see that my accusation is false. Also, I never give you any thought, except for all those times over the last few days and years that I've run to my computer to post comments to the effect that I never give you any thought." 

Can you confirm the accuracy of this translation? To which Parsons replied:  Prof. Feser,  Thanks for the hysterical (in both senses of the term) calumny. You prove my point more eloquently than I ever could. Really, sir, you are in the grip of an irrational obsession. Get some help.  Parsons’ readers have, almost to a man, expressed disappointment at his behavior, and now his co-blogger Jeff Lowder has called on Parsons to knock it off and just answer the questions I put to him.  But I doubt anything else he might say could be more illuminating than what he's said already.

Four questions for Keith Parsons [UPDATED]

Keith Parsons’ feelings are, it seems, still hurt over some frank things I said about him a few years ago (hereand here).  It seems to me that when a guy dismisses as a “fraud” an entire academic field to which many thinkers of universally acknowledged genius have contributed, and maintains that its key arguments do not even rise to the level of a “respectable philosophical position” worthy of “serious academic attention,” then when its defenders hit back, he really ought to have a thicker skin and more of a sense of humor about himself.  But that’s just me.Anyway, Parsons lamentsthe bad “manners” I showed in having the temerity to give him a taste of his own medicine.  He says he wishes we could have had an “interesting discussion instead.”  So, in the interests of furthering that end I’ll refrain from returning his latest insults.  Instead I’d like to ask him four very straightforward questions to which I think both my readers and his would like to hear his answers.  A response should only take him a few moments.  I set out some context for each question, but I’ve put the questions themselves in bold so as to facilitate a speedy reply from Prof. Parsons.  Here they are:

1. Prof. Parsons, in your response to a reader’s comment, you say:
Unlike Prof. Feser, I would like to address the strongest claims of my opponents, and not those that seem weakest to me.
Evidently, then, you think I have failed to address the strongest criticisms either of my own arguments or of the arguments of philosophers to whose work I appeal (e.g. Aquinas).  So, who exactly are these critics I have ignored, or which of their criticisms, specifically, have I failed to address?  I’m sure you have something in particular in mind, so if you could take just a second or two to let us know what it is, I‘d appreciate it.
2. In the same response, you write vis-à-vis the doctrine of divine conservation:
Why, for instance, does a proton have to be maintained in existence? Why can't it just exist on its own? The very idea that existence is some sort of act that must be continually performed sounds to me, frankly, fatuous.
I assume, then, that you’ve studied and refuted the Scholastic arguments for divine conservation – which, of course, offer an answer to the question you raise -- and have just neglected to tell us where this refutation can be found.  So, could you tell us where we can find this refutation?  Is it in one of your books or journal articles?  Or could you point to some other author you think has adequately done the job?  (FYI, I have defended the Scholastic position at length in my American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Existential Inertia and the Five Ways,” wherein I respond to the arguments on this topic presented by J. L. Mackie, Bede Rundle, John Beaudoin, and others.   I will be happy to email you a PDF of the article if you haven’t seen it, since I’d be very interested to hear which criticisms you think I’ve overlooked.) 
While I’ve got you, I also have a couple of questions about some remarks you made a few years ago when your dismissive remarks about natural theology were widely publicized: 
3. In response to a reader’s comment, you wrote:
I think Bertrand Russell's beautifully succinct critique of all causal arguments holds good: "If everything requires a cause, then God requires a cause. However, if anything can exist without a cause, it might as well be the universe as God."  Exactly.
Now, your Secular Outpost co-blogger and fellow atheist Jeffery Jay Lowder agrees with me that this is not in fact a good objection to arguments for a First Cause, because it attacks a straw man.  Specifically, Lowder has said:
[N]o respectable theologian or theistic philosopher has ever made the claim, "everything has a cause." Yet various new atheists have proceeded to attack that straw man of their own making. I remember, when reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, where he attacked that straw man and cringing. There are many different cosmological arguments for God's existence and none of them rely upon the stupid claim, "everything has a cause."
You won't find that mistake made by Quentin Smith, Graham Oppy, Paul Draper, or (if we add a theistic critic to the list) Wes Morriston.
End quote.  Now it would seem that what Lowder calls a “mistake” is one that you, Keith Parsons, have made.  But is Lowder wrong?  If he is, please tell us exactly which theistic philosophers who defend First Cause arguments – Avicenna? Maimonides? Aquinas? Scotus?  Leibniz? Clarke? Garrigou-Lagrange? Craig? -- actually ever gave the argument Russell was attacking.
4.  In response to another reader’s question, about Craig’s version of the First Cause argument, you wrote: “Both theists and atheists begin with an uncaused brute fact.  For Craig it is God, and for me it is the universe.”  Now, as you know, the expression “brute fact” is typically used in philosophy to convey the idea of something which is unintelligible or without explanation.  And your statement gives the impression that all theists, or at least most of them, regard God as a “brute fact” in this sense. 
But in fact that is the reverse of the truth.  Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. would deny that God is a “brute fact.”  They would say that the explanation for God’s existence lies in the divine nature -- for Aristotelians, in God’s pure actuality; for Neoplatonists, in his absolute simplicity; for Thomists, in the fact that his essence and existence are identical; for Leibnizians in his being his own sufficient reason; and so forth.  (Naturally the atheist will not think the arguments of these thinkers are convincing.  But to say that they are not convincing is not the same thing as showing that the theist is either explicitly or implicitly committed to the notion that God is a “brute fact.”)
But perhaps you think the standard interpretation of the views of Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. is mistaken.  Perhaps you think that these thinkers are in fact all explicitly or at least implicitly committed to the thesis that God is a “brute fact.”  So, could you please tell us where you have spelled out an argument justifying the claim that all or at least most philosophical theists regard God as a “brute fact” or are at least implicitly committed to the claim that he is?  Is there a book or journal article written by you or by someone else in which we can find this justification? 
Thanks.   I look forward to your answers and to an interesting discussion.

UPDATE 2/19: Over in his combox, Keith Parsons at first expressed interest in responding to my questions, but then in a follow-up comment wrote:

On second thought, after looking at your "straightforward questions" my answer is: Nah. I was expecting an invitation to a civil academic discussion, but I find that you are still in personal attack mode. My only response will be to assure you that you have not hurt my feelings at all. I think you are a horse's ass, and the disdain of your ilk is of no concern to me at all. Indeed, I consider it a badge of honor. Please do write more nasty things about me for the amusement of your ignorant and boorish followers. It makes my day when I piss off people like you guys.

I’ll let readers be the judge of which of us is “pissed off,” “nasty,” “in personal attack mode,” etc.; of whether I was right to characterize Parsons as too thin-skinned; and of why he decided not to respond to some polite and straightforward questions that should take him only a few moments to answer.  (Judging from his combox, Parson’s own readers aren’t too happy with his reply.) 

I’ve just posted a polite response in his combox.  Let’s see whether I’ve made his day again.

Four questions for Keith Parsons

Keith Parsons’ feelings are, it seems, still hurt over some frank things I said about him a few years ago (hereand here).  It seems to me that when a guy dismisses as a “fraud” an entire academic field to which many thinkers of universally acknowledged genius have contributed, and maintains that its key arguments do not even rise to the level of a “respectable philosophical position” worthy of “serious academic attention,” then when its defenders hit back, he really ought to have a thicker skin and more of a sense of humor about himself.  But that’s just me.Anyway, Parsons lamentsthe bad “manners” I showed in having the temerity to give him a taste of his own medicine.  He says he wishes we could have had an “interesting discussion instead.”  So, in the interests of furthering that end I’ll refrain from returning his latest insults.  Instead I’d like to ask him four very straightforward questions to which I think both my readers and his would like to hear his answers.  A response should only take him a few moments.  I set out some context for each question, but I’ve put the questions themselves in bold so as to facilitate a speedy reply from Prof. Parsons.  Here they are:

1. Prof. Parsons, in your response to a reader’s comment, you say:
Unlike Prof. Feser, I would like to address the strongest claims of my opponents, and not those that seem weakest to me.
Evidently, then, you think I have failed to address the strongest criticisms either of my own arguments or of the arguments of philosophers to whose work I appeal (e.g. Aquinas).  So, who exactly are these critics I have ignored, or which of their criticisms, specifically, have I failed to address?  I’m sure you have something in particular in mind, so if you could take just a second or two to let us know what it is, I‘d appreciate it.
2. In the same response, you write vis-à-vis the doctrine of divine conservation:
Why, for instance, does a proton have to be maintained in existence? Why can't it just exist on its own? The very idea that existence is some sort of act that must be continually performed sounds to me, frankly, fatuous.
I assume, then, that you’ve studied and refuted the Scholastic arguments for divine conservation – which, of course, offer an answer to the question you raise -- and have just neglected to tell us where this refutation can be found.  So, could you tell us where we can find this refutation?  Is it in one of your books or journal articles?  Or could you point to some other author you think has adequately done the job?  (FYI, I have defended the Scholastic position at length in my American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Existential Inertia and the Five Ways,” wherein I respond to the arguments on this topic presented by J. L. Mackie, Bede Rundle, John Beaudoin, and others.   I will be happy to email you a PDF of the article if you haven’t seen it, since I’d be very interested to hear which criticisms you think I’ve overlooked.) 
While I’ve got you, I also have a couple of questions about some remarks you made a few years ago when your dismissive remarks about natural theology were widely publicized: 
3. In response to a reader’s comment, you wrote:
I think Bertrand Russell's beautifully succinct critique of all causal arguments holds good: "If everything requires a cause, then God requires a cause. However, if anything can exist without a cause, it might as well be the universe as God."  Exactly.
Now, your Secular Outpost co-blogger and fellow atheist Jeffery Jay Lowder agrees with me that this is not in fact a good objection to arguments for a First Cause, because it attacks a straw man.  Specifically, Lowder has said:
[N]o respectable theologian or theistic philosopher has ever made the claim, "everything has a cause." Yet various new atheists have proceeded to attack that straw man of their own making. I remember, when reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, where he attacked that straw man and cringing. There are many different cosmological arguments for God's existence and none of them rely upon the stupid claim, "everything has a cause."
You won't find that mistake made by Quentin Smith, Graham Oppy, Paul Draper, or (if we add a theistic critic to the list) Wes Morriston.
End quote.  Now it would seem that what Lowder calls a “mistake” is one that you, Keith Parsons, have made.  But is Lowder wrong?  If he is, please tell us exactly which theistic philosophers who defend First Cause arguments – Avicenna? Maimonides? Aquinas? Scotus?  Leibniz? Clarke? Garrigou-Lagrange? Craig? -- actually ever gave the argument Russell was attacking.
4.  In response to another reader’s question, about Craig’s version of the First Cause argument, you wrote: “Both theists and atheists begin with an uncaused brute fact.  For Craig it is God, and for me it is the universe.”  Now, as you know, the expression “brute fact” is typically used in philosophy to convey the idea of something which is unintelligible or without explanation.  And your statement gives the impression that all theists, or at least most of them, regard God as a “brute fact” in this sense. 
But in fact that is the reverse of the truth.  Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. would deny that God is a “brute fact.”  They would say that the explanation for God’s existence lies in the divine nature -- for Aristotelians, in God’s pure actuality; for Neoplatonists, in his absolute simplicity; for Thomists, in the fact that his essence and existence are identical; for Leibnizians in his being his own sufficient reason; and so forth.  (Naturally the atheist will not think the arguments of these thinkers are convincing.  But to say that they are not convincing is not the same thing as showing that the theist is either explicitly or implicitly committed to the notion that God is a “brute fact.”)
But perhaps you think the standard interpretation of the views of Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, Thomists, Leibnizian rationalists, et al. is mistaken.  Perhaps you think that these thinkers are in fact all explicitly or at least implicitly committed to the thesis that God is a “brute fact.”  So, could you please tell us where you have spelled out an argument justifying the claim that all or at least most philosophical theists regard God as a “brute fact” or are at least implicitly committed to the claim that he is?  Is there a book or journal article written by you or by someone else in which we can find this justification? 
Thanks.   I look forward to your answers and to an interesting discussion.

Lowder then bombs

Atheist blogger and Internet Infidels co-founder Jeffery Jay Lowder seems like a reasonable enough fellow.  But then, I admit it’s hard not to like a guy who writes:
I’ve just about finished reading Feser’s book, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.  I think Feser makes some hard-hitting, probably fatal, objections to the arguments used by the “new atheists.”
Naturally Lowder thinks there are better atheist arguments than those presented by the “New Atheists,” but it’s no small thing for him to have made such an admission -- an admission too few of his fellow atheist bloggers are willing to make, at least in public.  So, major points to Lowder for intellectual honesty.Unfortunately, having made such a promising beginning, Lowder then bombs.  In particular, he goes on pretty badly to misrepresent what I’ve said about atheists in general (as opposed to “New Atheists” like Dawkins, Dennett, Myers, et al. in particular).  Not that I’m too mad at him about it.  He’s responding to afour-year-old article of mine on the New Atheists that he apparently just came across, and he’s a little sore (wrongly, but I understand) about a sarcastic remark I made therein about the readership of the website he co-founded.  Still, I think when he cools down a bit he’ll see that what he wrote is not fair.  (If I wanted to push my cutesy Smiths theme a little further, I’d say he’s in a panic.  But that would be cheesy, so I won’t.) 

Here’s what Lowder says:
While Feser usually maintains a distinction between the new atheists and atheists who specialize in the philosophy of religion, his rhetoric sometimes gets the better of him.  It’s as if he moves from “the New Atheists make mistakes A, B, and C” to “all atheists makes mistakes A, B, and C,” which is, of course, fallacious.
Parodying some remarks of mine from the article he cites, Lowder also says, vis-à-vis my critique therein of P. Z. Myers’ “Courtier’s Reply” dodge:
[T]hat is not what atheists who specialize in the philosophy of religion say.  In fact, not one of the best and most capable atheist philosophers of religion in the history of philosophy ever gave this Courtier’s Reply — not Mackie, not Rowe, not Schellenberg, not Q. Smith, not Draper, not Martin, not Oppy, not Phillipse, not Sobel, not Salmon, not Grunbaum, not Fales, not Post, not Tooley, not Gale, not Le Poidevin, not Maitzen, not McCormick, not Drange….
End quote.  So, Lowder is claiming that in general I have a tendency to attribute to all atheists the faults of the “New Atheists,” and that in particular I attribute the “Courtier’s Reply” move to atheists in general.  He offers no evidence whatsoever for these assertions, and he could not have done so, for there is no such evidence.  Indeed, it is rather shocking that he would insinuate that I have said that atheists in general, including the philosophers he refers to, are guilty of making the Myers-style “Courtier’s Reply” move, since I have nowhere done so.  Surely Lowder realizes that some reader (like, you know, me) might call bullshit on him.  Which I hereby do: Please tell us, Mr. Lowder, exactly where I have said any such thing.  Since you won’t be able to, I’ll accept a retraction instead.
In fact, what there is is ample evidence, in the public record, that I have done precisely the opposite of what Lowder accuses me of.  Start with The Last Superstitionitself, where I describe Quentin Smith as “a far more serious and formidable defender of atheism than any of the so-called ‘New Atheists’” (p. 8), and where I write:
I want to emphasize that I do not deny for a moment that there are secularists, atheists, and naturalists of good will, who are (apart from their rejection of religion) reasonable and morally admirable.  (p. 26)
In the account I gave here at the blog a couple of years ago of my philosophical journey from atheism to theism, I wrote:
On issues of concern to a contemporary analytic philosopher, J. L. Mackie was the man, and I regarded his book The Miracle of Theism as a solid piece of philosophical work.  I still do.   I later came to realize that he doesn’t get Aquinas or some other things right.  (I discuss what he says about Aquinas in Aquinas.)  But the book is intellectually serious, which is more than can be said for anything written by a “New Atheist.” 
In an article for TCS Daily some ten years ago I said of atheist J. J. C. Smart and theist John Haldane, co-authors of the excellent Atheism and Theism:
Both of these writers exemplify in their book what academic life should be like, but too seldom is: a serious and fair-minded examination of all sides of an issue…
In a blog post on Paul Edwards’ critique of the cosmological argument, I wrote that:
Edwards… responds to the Thomist philosophers G. H. Joyce and R. P. Phillips – something for which Edwards deserves credit, given that most atheist writers not only do not address the arguments of Thomists, but seem unaware even of their existence.
In a notice at the time of his death I described J. Howard Sobel as a “serious philosophical atheist.”  In another postI described atheist philosopher Bradley Monton as “an honorable and courageous man.”  (Of course, some atheists will say: “Oh, that’s just because Monton has said nice thinks about ‘Intelligent Design’ theory.”   Except that I am myself a pretty harsh critic of ID.)  In yet another post I described David Ramsay Steele’s book Atheism Explained as “a better book on atheism than anything written by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, or Hitchens.”  I have (despite one testy moment between us) repeatedly praised the atheist physicist Robert Oerter for his serious responses to my work, writing that “Oerter is a good, honest, decent guy” and also that he “engages [my] book seriously and in good faith.” 
In various works I have responded non-polemically to the arguments of serious philosophical critics of theism.  For example, in my ACPQ article "Existential Inertia and the Five Ways" I respond to Bede Rundle and others who maintain that the world can continue in existence without a divine sustaining cause.  In my book Aquinas, I respond to Mackie, to atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen’s critique of Aquinas’s ethical theory, and to agnostic philosopher Anthony Kenny’s critique of the Five Ways and of Aquinas’s doctrine of being.  (Kenny would later have some very kind, if not entirely uncritical, words about my book The Last Superstition.) 
I could go on, but this is getting a bit silly and the point has, I trust, been made.  And the point is that Lowder’s insinuation that I paint all atheists with a broad brush is simply and demonstrably at odds with the facts.  (I have put forward a classification of kinds of atheism here.) 
As to the infidels.org readership that he complains I’ve insulted, if Lowder is saying that most of them would agree that Dawkins’ The God Delusion is a contemptibly shoddy and unserious piece of work and that Myers’ “Courtier’s Reply” dodge is completely frivolous, then I am relieved to hear it.  But if most of them would not agree to these propositions, then they deserve my little throwaway jibe.  Worse, in fact.   Anyway, if Lowder has any links to articles that appeared at infidels.org prior to March 2010 (when the article of mine he’s complaining about appeared), in which Dawkins’ The God Delusion or Myers’ “Courtier’s Reply” are criticized, I’d love to see them.
But as I say, I understand why Lowder might be a little peeved and I won’t hold it against him.  And I look forward to whatever substantive criticisms of The Last Superstition he’d like to put forward.