Metaphysical Pathos

Arthur Lovejoy calls one factor that subtly shapes the history of ideas a “metaphysical pathos.” A metaphysical pathos greatly influences and determines “philosophical fashions and speculative tendencies,” and is

exemplified in any description of the nature of things, any characterization of the world to which one belongs, in terms which, like the words of a poem, awaken through their associations, and through a sort of empathy which they engender, a congenial mood or tone of feeling on the part of the philosopher or his readers.

Lovejoy gives several examples, one being “the pathos of sheer obscurity, the loveliness of the incomprehensible,” which he describes as follows:

The reader doesn’t know exactly what they mean, but they have all the more on that account an air of sublimity; an agreeable feeling at once of awe and of exaltation comes over him as he contemplates thoughts of so immeasurable a profundity—their profundity being convincingly evidenced to him by the fact that he can see no bottom to them.

Lovejoy rightly indicts several continental philosophers for indulging in this pathos, which they sometimes do intentionally.  For other examples, see William Vallicella on Badiou, Tillich, and Levinas. But this pathos is not just characteristic of our continental brethren. It often finds voice among the hoi polloi, who so often confuse opaque sayings with profound truths (or philosophy itself). Dan Dennett calls such sayings “deepities.”

A metaphysical pathos among analytic philosophers is to mathematicize everything, needlessly using complicated mathy examples, definitions, and language in place of what could be more clearly said in English prose. The mood or feeling this pathos engenders is one of ultra-precision and correctness, an attempt to win respectability or perceived brilliance by mimicking the prose of technical science or mathematics. This tendency has aptly been called “mathurbation.” So we could call it the pathos of mathurbation. Related is the pathos of symbol-mongering. See here for an example of unrestrained mathurbation and symbol-mongering.

Juicy Quote IV

“It is true that the God of Aristotle had almost nothing in common with the God of the Sermon on the Mount—though, by one of the strangest and most momentous paradoxes of Western history, the philosophical theology of Christendom identified them, and defined the chief end of man as the imitation of both.”

—Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Harvard, 1936), p. 5.

Review of Zagzebski’s Omnisubjectivity

Here is a review, by yours truly, of Linda Zagzebski’s 2013 Aquinas lecture, Omnisubjectivity: A Defense of a Divine Attribute. It was a fun read! But it felt more like reviewing an article than a book. Brevity is not always correlated with density!

This is the first book in which my name is printed. I was grateful to have interacted with Zagzebski on earlier drafts of the lecture. The attribute of omnisubjectivity is largely responsible for capturing my interest in philosophical theology, and it is a great example of how much of a philosophical watershed philosophy of religion can be.

Do We Owe God a Perfect Life?

Consider what Michael Rea identifies as “common to the most well-known versions of the satisfaction theory” of the atonement:

The satisfaction theory start with something like the following characterization of the human predicament: Our sin has put us in the position of owing God something that we cannot possible repay on our own. From birth, we have owed God a perfect life. By sinning we have failed to give him his due, and we have also rendered it impossible for him to receive his due from us (since we can’t take back our sin and thus give him the perfect life we initially owed him). Moreover, we have affronted God by failing to give him what we owe; so we now owe something further to make up for the affront But we cannot compensate God for the affront for precisely the same reason that we cannot make restitution for our sins: anything we tried to offer up as restitution or compensation would only be what we already owed in the first place. [“Introduction,” in Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology (Oxford, 2009), pp. 14-15.]

The starting premise—shared by other theories of the atonement as well—is that “we owe God a perfect life.” In saying we owe God a perfect life, presumably what is meant is that we have an obligation or duty before God to live a morally perfect life, one free of sin. And we incur debt—i.e., blameworthiness—by failing to give God his due, failing to fulfill our duty or obligation before God.

But why think this starting premise is true? How is it that just by being born we are under obligation to live and offer God a perfect life and are blameworthy for failing to do so? There is the vague thought that the premise might be conceptually entailed by facts about our relation to God. But it’s hard to see what those facts might be. God is our morally perfect creator and sustainer, but how does it follow from this that we owe him a morally perfect life? It’s much easier to see difficulties with the premise. Here are two:

1. It is often taken as axiomatic in ethics that “ought” implies “can.” But if we mere humans cannot live a morally perfect life and cannot repay God what we owe him, then it’s not true that we ought to live a morally perfect life or repay God what we owe him. But rejecting the axiomatic ought-implies-can principle doesn’t seem like a promising route.

2. Suppose a mere human can live a morally perfect life, and someone in fact does. Is she not praiseworthy for living such a life? I think so. But one is not praiseworthy for doing one’s duty or fulfilling one’s obligations. Doing what is required is not praiseworthy. And living a perfect life cannot ex hypothesi be supererogatory.

So the premise clashes with two potent moral intuitions—that ought implies can and that one would be praiseworthy for living a morally perfect life. Is the premise essential to theories of the atonement? What reasons are there for thinking the premise is true? And, most interesting: is an alternative, perhaps more modest premise available?

An Eye Roller

Professional philosophy is not always professional or philosophical. Anyone who has made it to or through graduate school in philosophy knows it has a dark and sad side, morally, politically, and intellectually. Much of it is on display in this thread (indeed, the whole website).

From the initial post itself, the puerile comments comparing theism to astrology, to the scoffing at allowing “religion” a seat at the table of enlightened philosophical discussion, there is a betrayal of philosophy. A true philosopher—say, the likes of Thomas Nagel—I should think, would not even deny astrology a seat. Both the assumption that astrology is the paradigm of something that can be blindly dismissed and its comparison with theism should be rejected. Whatever happened to C. S. Lewis’s old adage “good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered”?

A few years ago I had a friend who was in danger of being hoodwinked by phenomena that occult and astrology often lay claim to. Rather than dismiss him with some overly cocksure and equally contentless nod to the omnipotence of Science, I showed him the respect any friend and fellow truth-seeker would: I researched what scholarly philosophical and scientific literature there was on the subject in order to have an informed discussion. There is actually very little. It basically came down to one book edited by Patrick Grim, Philosophy of Science and the Occult (SUNY, 1982). The essays in that book, my friend and I agreed, showed that many of the things he was taken in by were demonstrably naturalistic. True, this is probably precisely why there is little scholarly discussion of astrology and the occult. If theism is so comparable, one wonders why someone hasn’t yet done the history of Western philosophy the favor of pointing it out so it can die a similar death.

No one was able to answer Tim Maudlin’s simple request for examples. And, of course, not one example was given to substantiate the fear of “apologetics” material supposedly infecting reputable philosophy of religion journals.

The dogmatic ideologies that underlie some of the attitudes in that thread (proven by the amount of backpedaling, qualifying into oblivion, and deflated rhetoric that eventually ensued) are anti-philosophical and—like much the rest of Leiter’s blog—shed as much light on the current state of the profession as What is it like to be a Woman in Philosophy.

Does God make Non-Moral Evaluative Judgments?

People make non-moral evaluative judgments all the time. That car is ugly. What she did was ridiculous. This painting is beautiful. That was a really foolish thing to say. That was a funny joke. That cat is behaving cutely.

Does God make non-moral evaluative judgments?

A first reaction might be to say no, because God’s judgments must be objectively true, and it seems wrong to say non-moral evaluative judgments can be objectively true. I’m not sold on either assumption of this thought. If God has his own knowledge de se (not to speak of creaturely knowledge de se)—and surely he must—plausibly, not all God’s judgments are truth-apt. Second, nothing seems wrong in saying that some non-moral evaluative judgments are truth-apt. For example, I think—along with a good deal of other philosophers—that aesthetic judgments can be objectively true.

So I don’t see why God couldn’t make non-moral evaluative judgements, at least if these are the only reasons to think not. In fact, maybe the truth of certain non-moral evaluative judgements are grounded in God’s evaluations.

There is a certain ambiguity in the term “judgment” here. What does it mean, in non-moral evaluative contexts, to judge that p?

Group Agency and the Trinity

A nuanced application of group agency theories to Social Trinitarianism begs to be made. According to realist group agency theories (e.g., Pettit & List, Group Agency), corporations, agencies, interest groups, communities, etc. can not only literally be agents, but persons. Pettit and List’s defense hinges on the distinction between two conceptions of personhood. Here is a very rough vision of how the application could be made, and what benefits could come of it.

I. Two Conceptions of Personhood

According to an intrinsicist view of personhood, a thing is a person in virtue of what it is—i.e., what properties are intrinsic to it. Personhood is intrinsic to a thing. The view that a person is an individual substance with a rational nature—e.g., a Cartesian res cogitans—is an intrinsicist view. Such a view dominates Western philosophy, tracing its origins to Aristotle and enjoys prominence in the thinking of Boethius, Augustine, and Descartes.

According to a performative view, a thing is a person in not virtue of what it is, but what it does—i.e., what functions it can perform or roles it can assume. Personhood is extrinsic in that what makes a thing a person is how a thing relates to things other than itself. Performative views find their origin in legal thought, where group or corporate entities were recognized as legal persons (e.g., they had rights, obligations, could be held responsible in the eyes of the law, etc.). Hobbes and Locke applied this functional approach to personhood generally. Roughly, a person is anything that can effectively perform in the sphere of social norms and obligations.

II. Application to Social Trinitarianism

It is hard—but arguably not impossible—to see how there could be group agents or persons on intrinsicist views. By contrast, it is very easy to see how there could be group agents or persons on performative views (indeed, the performative view grew out of such considerations). Groups, agencies, corporations, etc. are literally persons. Accordingly, two obvious ways one could apply the above views to the doctrine of the Trinity are as follows.

1. A Mixed View
Suppose we reject the univocity of personhood and accept both the intrinsicist view and the performative view. One could see the individual members of the Trinity as being persons on the intrinsicist view, but the Trinity as a whole is a person on the performative view.

2. A Performative View
Suppose we reject the intrinsicist view of personhood and adopt a standard performative view instead. Each member of the Trinity can be considered persons individually in virtue of their functional capabilities; but so, too can the Trinity as a whole.

III. Objection: Four Persons?

It might be objected that according to these views, technically there will be four persons, not three. The mixed view might be able to soften the unseemliness of this implication by emphasizing that the individual persons and the Trinity as a person are persons in two very distinct senses, so the objection equivocates on “person.” There are not four persons, but three persons and one person*. The performative view, while treating “person” univocally, could emphasize salient differences between individual persons and group persons in a way that would block unacceptable equalities between the two categories (e.g., just because x is true of individual persons, it doesn’t follow that x is true of group persons and vice versa).

IV. Benefits

Aside from the theoretical illumination group agency theories could supply social models of the Trinity, they could also help in defending it against important objections. If there is a defensible way of applying the insights of group agency theories to the doctrine of the Trinity in a way that entails the Trinity is literally a person, this will effectively counter the charge that “God is not a person” commonly leveled against Social Trinitarianism. This will in turn effectively counter Tuggy’s divine deception argument.

What Guns and Fetuses have in Common

The following two propositions are prima facie inconsistent:

(1) A woman’s right to decide what shall happen to her person trumps the potential risk of someone being murdered
(2) The potential risk of someone being murdered trumps anyone’s right to decide that bearing arms is necessary for the protection of one’s person

One defense of their consistency might run as follows: a woman’s right to decide what shall happen to her person is a natural right. And natural rights should always trump mere legal rights when in conflict. And because “the potential risk of someone being murdered” in (2) expresses the natural right to life against potential risk, it has trump power over the right to bear arms, which is a mere legal right, an artifact of law. Thus, there is no inconsistency.

This defense will not work. If the right to life against potential risk is the natural right that gives trump power to “the potential risk of someone being murdered,” then it is a natural right a fetus enjoys, too.

“But!” it will be objected, “It’s not clear that the fetus enjoys that right precisely because it’s not clear that a fetus is a human person, and only human persons have natural rights.”

But this won’t do either, for four reasons. First, the point does not rest on whether the fetus is clearly a person or not; rather, it rests on the modest observation that it might be a person. The very possibility of the fetus’s being a person is what generates the potential risk. Again the point is parallel: it’s not clear whether someone will be murdered by virtue of the rightful possession of firearms among citizenry; it’s the potential risk of that happening that generates the trump. Second, it is clear that the fetus is at least a human, if not a human person. Third, it is false that only human persons, or even only humans, have natural rights. Non-human animals have natural rights, too. And there’s no morally relevant distinction that could be made between a human fetus and some non-human animal that would entail the latter has natural rights but the former doesn’t. Finally, it’s not clear that the right to bear arms is not an expression of a natural right (indeed, the very same one). It’s easy to imagine cases where one’s right to bear arms just amounts to, or is an exercise or defense of, the right to life against potential risk (or, more perspicuously, one’s right to decide what shall happen to one’s person). Suppose I live on the worst street of Detroit, and the chances of me getting raped, robbed, or murdered are high. Should I find myself confronted by any one of these dangers, having firearm protection just is a way of defending my right to life, or my right to decide what happens to my person.

So, (1) and (2) are at least prima facie inconsistent. Of course, that’s just a more modest way of saying they’re probably ultima facie inconsistent, too. But what guns and fetuses don’t have in common is media coverage.

Reality Checks

I recently had a close friend pass away unexpectedly (“pass away”—what does that even mean?). The phrase “reality check” is overused, but when used properly, is quite apt. When I think of my friend, sometimes I get a reality check.

For those of us who spend the majority of the day reading, looking at glowing monitors of some kind, or are otherwise dis-tracted by humdrummery, it’s easy to forget how real life is. Not “real life” as opposed to fiction (that, too), but the quality of realness that life has—what Longfellow must have had in mind.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!

When the realness of life is experienced—however briefly—sensations seem to have more authenticity. A cold breeze hits you directly, not just your skin. The notes struck by piano keys sound more crisp, as if they were written into—and to be played out of—the fabric of reality. Color seems highly saturated. You notice things that you normally don’t, like the fact that you’re breathing or blinking.

Everything feels sharper, as if a protective layer is temporarily peeled back. And, ironically, in the reality check, “things are not what they seem;” things seem stranger, presenting themselves in a way that is profoundly mysterious—as “I know not whats”. I feel the metal of a cold metal surface, for instance; or the pebble rather than the pebble’s smootheness. I’m no bookstore clerk who’s a wannabe existentialist (is there anything more pathetic?—I’ll avoid looking in the mirror), but I deeply admire Nausea for the skill with which Sartre describes the raw texture of experience. Here’s a gem:

A little while ago, just as I was coming into my room, I stopped short because I felt in my hand a cold object which held my attention through a sort of personality. I opened my hand, looked: I was simply holding the door-knob.

I know what he’s talking about. But reality checks are transient. So if you can, grab a good cigar before you get checked back into unreality. We have phone calls to make, emails to write, trains, planes and automobiles to catch, and a hellevah lot of small talk to endure. We really do live with scales on our eyes.

But it’s all just wet, pinkish-gray matter, right?

Well-Foundedness only if Transitivity?

If one denies the transitivity of ground, then it seems much of the motivation for the well-foundedness of ground is lost. Roughly, well-foundedness is supposed to prohibit chicken-and-egg (grounding loops) and turtles-all-the-way-down (infinite grounding chains) scenarios. But without transitivity, the former are perfectly permissible and the main intuition against the latter is weakened.

Chickens-and-Eggs
Suppose we have the following grounding loop, where the arrow represents ‘grounds’ (the letters can be alternating chickens and eggs):

A ⟶ B
↖ C ↙

This loop violates the asymmetry and irreflexivity of ground only if grounding is transitive. Sans transitivity, nothing is wrong with grounding loops of this sort.

Grandfather Turtle
Suppose we have the following grounding chain, where F is a fundamental being (Grandfather Turtle) and ds are derivative entities (turtle babies):

d_n
⫶
↑
d₃
↑
d₂
↑
d₁
↑
F

A main intuition backing well-foundedness is that concrete reality is structured roughly like the above. For example, Jonathan Schaffer says proponents of well-foundedness maintain that there must be a fundamental ground of being, for “if one thing exists only in virtue of another, then there must be something from which the reality of the derivative entities ultimately derives” (“Monism: The Priority of the Whole,” p. 37). But if the reality of d_n is ultimately derived from F, we need transitivity to get us from the reality of F through the reality of d₁-d₃ to d_n.

This is a problem for grounding theorists like Schaffer, who accept well-foundedness but reject transitivity. Of course, I don’t mean to imply that this is an irremediable problem. But it suffices to show that, at the very least, some extra machinery is required.