Edward Feser's Blog, page 93

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. 

The metaphysics and aesthetics of plastic

There’s a passage at the beginning of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novel Foundation’s Edge which I’ve always found delightfully preposterous.  Referring to Seldon Hall on the planet Terminus, Golan Trevize says:
Is there any structural component visible that is metal?  Not one.  It wouldn’t do to have any, since in Salvor Hardin’s day there was no native metal to speak of and hardly any imported metal.  We even installed old plastic, pink with age, when we built this huge pile, so that visitors from other worlds can stop and say, ‘Galaxy!  What lovely old plastic!’
The very notion of “lovely old plastic” seems absurd on its face, and I imagine Asimov wrote the passage with tongue in cheek.  Aged wood, stone, or metal structures or furniture can be aesthetically appealing, but aged plastic only ever seems shabby at best and positively ugly at worst.  Now, why is that?Of course, many regard aesthetic judgments as entirely subjective, and if that were the case then the question would be of limited interest.  But for the classical philosophical tradition and Scholasticism in particular, aesthetic judgments are not entirely subjective.  To be sure, Aquinas holds that “beautiful things are those which please when seen” (Summa theologiae I.5.4), and this characterization makes reference to a reaction in the beholder.  However, it is “the cognitive faculty” which responds to what is perceived as beautiful, and what it is responding to is something objective in the thing, namely its form (in the Aristotelian sense of “form”).  More specifically, Aquinas says, “beauty consists in due proportion; for the senses delight in things duly proportioned, as in what is after their own kind.”  That is to say, the “due” proportions of a thing are those that reflect the kind of thing it is, where what is definitive of a kind is, in the case of natural objects, something objective.  Hence a beautiful face becomes ugly when disfigured.

But things are much more complicated than that, especially in the case of human artifacts.  Is an automobile engine ugly?  The answer, of course, is that it depends.  Stored on the dining room table, on the front lawn, or next to an altar in a church it would be an eyesore or worse.  But in a smoothly running new car or even on a garage bench it is a thing of beauty.  In general it takes, I think, careful analysis to explain exactly what it is about artifacts and their natural and cultural contexts that accounts for our judgments about their beauty or ugliness.  And the right answers are not necessarily the ones that might at first glance seem obvious.
So, consider some paradigm cases of ugly old plastic: a piece of cracked and sun-bleached patio furniture; a child’s broken toy lying around the house or the yard; the depressing piles of garbage that collect on beaches.  (Put aside for the moment the environmental problems posed by such garbage; what matters for present purposes is that it would be ugly even apart from those problems.)  There are several possible accounts of their ugliness that might seem obvious but which I think are wrong or at least incomplete:  It might be thought, for example, that it is the damaged or non-functional character of such objects that makes them ugly; or that as man-made objects they seem out of place in a natural environment; or that qua “artificial” substance, plastic is ugly in a way natural substances are not; or that it is the chaotic, jumbled character of the debris tossed up on a beach or scattered about in the yard that makes it ugly; or some combination of these factors.
But on reflection none of this seems quite right, or at least not the whole story.  Ancient ruins can be beautiful despite being severely damaged man-made structures whose pieces are strewn about chaotically.  It might be thought that this is because the stone or wood elements from which the structures are made have a “natural” feel that makes them suitable to their surroundings.  But modern ruins involving the products of high technology can also be beautiful -- for example, the sunken ships, tanks, and other World War II era materiel of Truk Lagoon.  Is this because undersea forms of life have made a habitat of these ruins?  Surely not.  A rusted out but barren tank is no more or less beautiful than a rusted out tank covered with barnacles; it might even be a little more beautiful.  Furthermore, an old abandoned plastic sand bucket or Styrofoam food container which some form of sea life has made its home seems no less ugly than any other piece of plastic debris.  (It’s worth noting -- to underline how complex aesthetic matters can be -- that an abandon former weapon of war can have a haunting beauty that something as innocent as a child’s toy or a container for take-out cannot!) 
Is it the mass produced character of plastic items that makes a random pile of them ugly?  That doesn’t seem convincing either.  Imagine a sea floor or even a beach covered with 19th century glass bottles and tin containers.  Somehow that doesn’t seem as ugly as a beach full of plastic junk clearly is, or even necessarily ugly at all. 
That appeal to the “artificial” character of plastic is not a satisfying answer is also evidenced by the fact that there is a sense in which plastic is not artificial.  As I’ve noted several times (e.g. here), the traditional Aristotelian distinction between “nature” and “art” does not correspond exactly to the distinction between what occurs in the wild and what is man-made.  For the Aristotelian distinction is ultimately concerned with the difference between what has a substantial form or inherent principle of its activity, and that which has only an accidental form.  And there are man-made objects that have substantial forms (e.g. new breeds of dog or of corn, water synthesized in a lab), and naturally occurring objects that have only accidental forms (e.g. a random pile of stones that has formed at the bottom of a hill).  Now as Eleonore Stump has pointed out, irreducible properties and causal powers are the mark of a substantial form.  Water has a substantial form insofar as its properties and causal powers are irreducible to those of hydrogen and oxygen, whereas the properties and causal powers of an axe (Stump’s example) are reducible to those of its parts.  But to take another of Stump’s examples, Styrofoam, though “artificial” in the sense of being man-made, also seems to have a substantial form insofar as it has irreducible properties and causal powers.  It is thus as “natural” in Aristotle’s technical sense as new breeds of dog or corn are.  And plastic in general seems no less “natural” in this sense.  (The metaphysics of substantial form is discussed in detail in my forthcoming book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction .) 
Moreover, plastic, though in another and obvious sense “artificial,” is not ugly when new and functional.  Indeed, the plastic components of computers, automobiles, toys, and many other artifacts can all be aesthetically highly pleasing.  (And 3D printing may be the coolest thing ever invented.)
But old, broken plastic seems pretty much always ugly in a way old, broken stone, metal, wood, or glass need not be.  Why?  My answer is, I don’t know.  Plastic is a little mysterious, and philosophically interesting.  Who knew?  That guy in The Graduate was onto something…

A world of pure imagination

Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appear'd in that narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produc'd.
David Hume
Come with me and you'll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you'll see
Into your imagination
Willy Wonka
David Hume is a curiosity.  Philosophical adolescents of all ages thrill to his famously subversive doctrines concerning religion, causation, practical reason, value, the self, and metaphysics in general.  And yet these doctrines rest on philosophical assumptions that are at best extremely controversial (such as the thesis that what is conceivable is possible) and at worst known to have been decisively refuted (such as the thesis that a concept is a kind of image) and even self-undermining (such as Hume’s Fork).  Having been drawn and found agreeable, Hume’s conclusions persist, like zombies, beyond the death of the arguments that led to them.
It is especially ironic that people who think of themselves as staunchly objective, guided by rational argument grounded in the hard earth of observable reality, should regard Hume as a hero.  For Hume’s philosophy destroys reason and experience alike, effectively reducing both to the entirely subjective arena of imagination.  Hume’s is a realm of unreality -- he is Willy Wonka without the chocolate, but only impressions and ideas of chocolate. 

As is well known to regular readers of this blog, Scholastics and other Aristotelians distinguish the faculties of sensation, imagination, and intellect.  Sensation is what you deploy when you have a perceptual experience of (say) a certain man.  Now though you are aware of the man by means of a percept of the man, it is for the Aristotelian the man himself, and not the percept, that is the object of sensory experience.  Hallucinations and the like do not cast doubt on this, any more than the fact that this or that dog might be missing a leg casts doubt on the proposition that dogs have four legs.  A three-legged dog is a damaged or abnormal dog and thus precisely notwhat you should look to if you’re interested in determining the nature of dogs.  Similarly, a hallucination is an abnormal perceptual experience, and one typically resulting from some sort of damage or dysfunction.  It is thus precisely the sort of thing you should not look to in order to discover the nature of normal sensory experience.  A philosopher who takes hallucinations, illusions, and the like to “show” that the objects of sensation are not really external objects is like a biologist who takes the existence of three-legged dogs to “show” that dogs don’t naturally have four legs.
Imagination is what you deploy when you form mental images or phantasms of what you’ve seen, heard, touched, smelled, and tasted.  Hence as you sit back relaxing one evening you might call to mind what a certain man you saw that day looked like, what his voice sounded like, what his handshake felt like, and so forth.  Though the man and his qualities all exist outside your mind, they are not immediately present to you as you sit there imagining them.  And of course you might form images of men you have not actually perceived and who do not exist.  For instance, you might imagine a man that is like the one you saw but five feet taller, or with red hair rather than black, or who wears a colorful costume and fights crime, or who has wings.  In general, in imagination we can separate out various aspects of the things we’ve perceived -- this or that color, shape, sound, texture, flavor, odor, or what have you -- and recombine them in all sorts of novel ways.  As these facts indicate, imagination has a subjective character that distinguishes it from sensory experience.
Intellect is what you deploy when you grasp the concept of a man, when you put this concept together with others to form a judgment (such as the judgment that all men are mortal), and when you reason from one judgment to another in a logical way (as when you think all men are mortal, so the man I met today is mortal).  Concepts, and the acts of judgment and reasoning that presuppose them, are irreducible to what sensation and imagination are capable of, for reasons I’ve set out many times (e.g. briefly here, and at systematic length here).  Concepts have a universal reference that no percept or image can have; they can be determinate, precise, or unambiguous in their content in a way no percept or image can be; and we can form concepts of things which can in no way be perceived or imagined.  Like sensation, intellect is objective, but in a different way.  Sensation reveals to us only particular things that exist independently of our minds.  The intellect grasps natures that are universal, existing not only in the particular things we perceive but in things we have not perceived and never could perceive. 
Now, Hume essentially collapses both intellect and sensation into imagination.  Start with intellect.  Hume, like Berkeley, reduces concepts to mental images together with general names.  Ever since Wittgenstein’s critique of classical empiricism, it seems generally to have been acknowledged among analytic philosophers that this account of concepts is hopeless, but any Scholastic could have told them the same.  And this mistake of Hume’s underlies his accounts of causation, substance, and other basic metaphysical notions.  The suggestion that we have no clear concept of causal connection, substance, etc. only seems plausible if we think of having a concept of these things as a matter of being able to form some kind of mental image of them.  Once that assumption is abandoned, the force of the arguments dissipates.  And the knowledge of arithmetic and geometry available even to a child suffices to show just how stupid the assumption is.  To have the concept of a triangle is not a matter of having any sort of mental image, since what we can imagine is only ever this or that particular sort of triangle rather than triangularity in the abstract.  Nor is it to have an image of the word “triangle,” since that word is only contingently connected with what it refers to.  (To have the concept triangle is to have the very same thing Euclid had, even though he did not know the English word “triangle.”)  Similarly, knowing that 2 + 2 = 4 is not a matter of forming images of the shapes “2,” “+,” etc., since those symbols too are only contingently related to the strictly unimaginable realities they name. 
(Nor are these realities to be thought of on the model of any of the ghostly objects of empiricist and materialist caricature -- ectoplasm, magic fairy dust, or whatever  -- all of which are things which can be imagined in the sense that we can form mental images of them.  Skeptics who attack such sophomoric caricatures are missing the whole point, insofar as they assume that to make sense of something we have to be able to regard it as the sort of thing that could at least in principle be seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled.  But whether that is the case is, of course, precisely what is at issue.  Nor would mathematics and science be possible if it were the case.)
Hume also effectively reduces sensation to imagination insofar as he strips the former of its objectivity.  For Hume there are in the mind only impressions and ideas, where the former are what we are aware of in sensation and the latter the faint copies of impressions that are formed in imagination.  But impressions have no essential connection to anything mind-independent.  When you perceive a man it is really only the impressions associated with the man -- these colors, those shapes, etc. -- that you perceive, and you cannot know one way or the other whether there is anything external to the mind which corresponds to them.  They are thus as subjective as mental images.  Indeed, while Hume characterizes an “idea” or image as a less vivid version of an impression, you could just as well characterize an impression as a more vivid version of an idea or image. 
Impressions are also image-like in that they are more or less conceived of in a manner similar to the “pulled apart” elements that imagination recombines as it likes.  Again, it isn’t strictly a man of which one has a Humean impression.  It is rather a set of color patches, shapes, sounds, etc., which the mind combines and labels “man.”  This too is a model contemporary analytic philosophers know to be hopelessly crude, and have known it ever since Wilfrid Sellars’ attack on the “myth of the given.”  Hume takes a perceptual experience to be reducible to an aggregate of impressions, but the notion of a Humean impression is itself an abstraction from an actual experience.  When you read a book it is a book that you are perceiving, not a whitish rectangular expanse, a feeling of smoothness, a sound as of paper crinkling, etc.  These “impressions” are not more basic than the experience as a whole, any more than a foot or a kidney is more basic than the organism of which they are parts.  On the contrary, organisms are more basic than their organs, and the latter have to be understood in light of the former rather than the other way around.  “Impressions” and the like are related to ordinary perceptual experiences in the same way.  Hence analyzing perceptual experiences in terms of Humean impressions gets things the wrong way around.
It is no surprise, then, that for Hume neither intellect nor sensation can ever “advance a step beyond” that “narrow compass” of “the universe of the imagination” -- that is, beyond “ourselves.”  There is only the play of subjective appearances available to you here and now.  Some of them you take to comprise a particular material object really existing external to your mind, some of them to amount to concepts and truths that apply far beyond not only what is outside your mind here and now but even beyond anything you have experienced or will experience.  But all of that is illusion, or at least the supposition that you have any reason whatsoever to believe any of that is in Hume’s view an illusion.  Nor is it any surprise that, once again to quote Willy Wonka channeling Hume, in a “world of pure imagination… what we'll see will defy explanation.”  For explanation requires the intellect to grasp what sensation and imagination cannot -- objective causal connections, the essences of things, and so forth -- all of which go by the board in Hume’s philosophy.
What is surprising is that anyone would still take seriously Hume’s doctrines given the fallaciousness of the arguments on which they rest.  Or rather, it is not surprising at all.   Like the imagined religious believers at whom he so often directs his contempt, the Humean skeptic knows in advance the conclusions he wants to reach, and isn’t too particular about how he gets there.  He wants a world in which causation will not get him to an Uncaused Cause, in which good and bad are not objective features of reality but mere sentiments, nor rationality anything more than the slave of the passions.  For as Willy Wonka tells us, in a Humean world, a world of pure imagination:
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world, there's nothing to it.

Studia Neoaristotelica

Readers not already familiar with it should be aware of Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism .  Recent issues include articles by Nicholas Rescher, Richard Swinburne, Theodore Scaltsas, William Vallicella, James Franklin, Helen Hattab, and other authors known to readers of this blog.  Subscription information for individuals and institutions can be found here.

2014 Thomistic Seminar

The 9thAnnual Thomistic Seminar for graduate students in philosophy and related disciplines, sponsored by The Witherspoon Institute, will be held from August 3 - 9, 2014 in Princeton, NJ.  The theme is “Aquinas, Christianity, and Metaphysics” and the faculty are John Haldane, Edward Feser, John O’Callaghan, Candace Vogler, and Linda Zagzebski.  The application deadline is March 15.  More information here.
I noted some other upcoming speaking engagements for this summer hereand here.