Maverick Philosopher

1. Either doxastic suspension is voluntary or it is not.

2. If suspension is voluntary, a matter of decision rather than evidence, then all the laborious investigation of arguments and counterarguments in support of the insight that neither thesis nor counterthesis can be established is pointless. One just decides to suspend belief.

3. But if suspension is involuntary and caused by the evident fact that no thesis or its negation can be established, then one has dogmatically accepted something, namely, that neither thesis nor antithesis can be established.

Therefore

4. The examination of the arguments pro et contra is either unnecessary or, if necessary, issues in dogmatism.

In perhaps simpler terms: Either my suspension of judgment as regards the Big Questions is a matter of decision in which case argument examination is irrelevant, or my suspension is not a matter of decision but one of evidence. But if it becomes evident to me that no thesis can be established, then, in acquiescing in this compulsive evidence I dogmatically accept a proposition, and indeed one that transcendes the mundane, thereby abandoning skepticism.

Is the dilemma bogus?

Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos was published in 1928 by A. Francke AG Verlag, Bern. A translation by Hans Meyerhoff appeared under the title, "Man's Place in Nature." (Beacon Press, 1961) The book is not an "inspiring ethical meditation" but a contribution to philosophical anthropology, as Scheler makes clear in the third paragraph of the preface: "This essay represents a brief and highly condensed summary of my views on some of the main topics of the 'Philosophical Anthropology' on which I have been at work for a number of years . . . ." (p. 3)

My guess is that Kimball is confusing Man's Place in Nature with Scheler's main ethical work, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik which first appeared in the years 1913-1916. A translation by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk of the the fifth edition (1966) of the German text appeared under the title, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1973).

A minor point? Yes, but worth making if it motivates a few of you to read Scheler's rich but neglected work.

This strikes me as just so much whistling in the dark. How can one be so cocksure that physical death is the annihilation of the self? Shakespeare's Hamlet, in the soliloquy lately quoted, saw the difficulty:

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause . . . .

And is evil "readily endurable"? See for yourself whether that proposition stands up to a close reading of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago or any other catalog of human horrors.

The Hellenistic systems, the systems of late antiquity (Stoicism, Skepticism, and Epicureanism), despite their riches and insights offer us no real solution to the human predicament, a fact of which Augustine was well aware.

Whether or not there is a cure, man cannot be his own doctor.

The advantage of the epistemic approach is that it rescues us from the rank absurdity, pointed out by Hume, of having to say that there are laws of nature that admit of exceptions. Since our understanding is imperfect, our formulations of the laws of nature will some of them if not all of them admit of exceptions. But it is hard to credit the idea that the laws themselves could admit of exceptions.

The epistemic approach, however, has a drawback. It seems to undercut the evidentiary value of miracles, a point made by Antony Flew. But I won't repeat what I said in an earlier post and in replies to an astute objection by commenter Spur.

In Kant's philosophy or religion, however, miracles have no role to play except perhaps in the rise and spread of a religion:

If a moral religion (which must consist not in dogmas and rites but in the heart's disposition to fulfill all human duties as divine commands) is to be established, all miracles which history connects with its inauguration must themselves in the end render superfluous the belief in miracles in general; for it bespeaks a culpable degree of moral unbelief not to acknowledge as completely authoritative the commands of duty -- commands primordially engraved upon the heart of man through reason -- unless they are in addition accredited through miracles: "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." (John 4, 48) (Ibid., p. 79)

Kant is saying in effect that miracles have no role to play in the validation of a religion since the needs of a true and moral religion can be supplied by reason alone. Miracles play a role only in the rise and spread of a religion; once it has taken hold, they are superfluous. And not only are they superfluous, any reliance on them for evidentiary purposes is morally censurable.

. . . the universal laws of nature are decrees of God following from the necessity and perfection of the Divine nature. Hence, any event happening in nature which contravened nature's universal laws, would necessarily also contravene the Divine decree, nature, and understanding; or if anyone asserted that God acted in contravention to the laws of nature, he, ipso facto, would be compelled to assert that God acted against His own nature -- an evident absurdity. (tr. Elwes, Dover, p. 83)

It follows from this that miracles are to be construed epistemically:

Further, as nothing happens in nature which does not follow from her laws, and as her laws embrace everything conceived by the Divine intellect, and lastly, as nature preserves a fixed and immutable order; it most clearly follows that miracles are only intelligible as in relation to human opinions, and merely mean events of which the natural cause cannot be explained by a reference to any ordinary occurrence, either by us, or at any rate, by the writer and narrator of the miracle. (p. 84, emphasis added)

In sum, since the course of nature, being ordained by God, cannot be contravened, miracles ontically construed are impossible. Talk of miracles, therefore, is simply talk of events we cannot explain. Miracles are thus parasitic upon our ignorance. They are natural events that simply surpass our limited human comprehension. To a perfect understanding nothing would appear miraculous. That is the first main point that Spinoza makes in his chapter "Of Miracles."

The second main point is that neither God's nature, nor his existence, nor his providence can be known from miracles, but can be known only from the fixed and immutable order of nature.

Spinoza's argument, expressed in my own way, is something like the following. If we take miracles ontically, as actual interruptions or contraventions of the order of nature, and thus of the will of God, then not only are they impossible, but they can provide no basis for knowledge of God. If, on the other hand, we take miracles epistemically, as events the causes of which we do not understand, then in this case as well we have no basis for knowldge of God. For we cannot base knowledge of God on ignorance, and events are miraculous only due to our ignorance of their natural causes.

Spinoza concludes his defense of his second main point with the surprising claim that belief in miracles leads to atheism:

If, therefore, anything should come to pass in nature which does not follow from her laws, it would also be in contravention to the order which which God has established in nature for ever through universal natural laws; it would, therefore, be in contravention to God's nature and laws, and, consequently, belief in it would throw doubt upon everything, and lead to Atheism. (p. 87)

Bradley on Bibliolatry

In the last conversation I had with him . . . He spoke bitterly of the Christian Church in our country, chiefly on the charge of an alleged 'idolatry' of the text of the Bible, a fault not, I think, really common among Anglicans at the present. He commended the Roman Church for its discouragement of promiscuous Bible-reading, but held that it did not go far enough. He would have the Church, he said, cease to appeal to any literature from the past and insist directly upon its own inherent authority as the living voice of the divine Spirit.

Bradley on Purgatory

Possibly some of my readers who know Bradley only from his books may be surprised at a remark called from him by a passing reference in the same conversation to Purgatory. "But what do you mean by Purgatory? Does it mean that when I die I shall go somewhere where I shall be made better by discipline? If so, that is what I very much hope." In another mood, no doubt, he might have dwelt on the intellectual difficulties in the way of such a hope, but it was characteristic, or at least I thought so, that he evidently clung to it.

Bradley a Mystic

Bradley's own personal religion was of a strongly marked mystical type, in fact of the specific type common to the Christian mystics. Religion meant to him, as to Plotinus or to Newman, direct personal contact with the Supreme and Ineffable, unmediated through any forms of ceremonial prayer, or ritual, and like all mystics in whom this passion for direct access to God is not moderated by the the habit of organised communal worship, he was inclined to set little store on the historical and institutional element in the great religions.

Bradley on the Incarnation

Thus while the conception of the meeting of the divine and the human in one 'by unity of person' lay at the very heart of his philosophy, he was wholly indifferent to the question whether the ideal of the God-Man has or has not been actually realised in flesh and blood in a definite historical person. Like Hegel, he thought it the significant thing about Christianity that it had believed in the incarnation of God in a definite person, but also, like Hegel, he seemed to think it a matter of small importance that the person in which the 'hypostatic union' was believed to have been accomplished should be Jesus the Nazarene rather than any other, and again whether or not the belief was strictly true to fact. The important thing, to his mind, was that the belief stimulates to the attempt to the achievement of 'deiformity' in our own personality.

D1. X necessitates-1 Y =df X transmits to, or confers upon, Y the property of being absolutely necessary.

D2. X necessitates-2 Y =df X is logically sufficient for Y.

Earlier, I explained how that which is necessitated-2 can be contingent and so not (absolutely) necessary. Now if we interpret 'inclines without necessitating' in terms of (D1), then 'reasons incline without necessitating' comes out true within the determinist's scheme. We can take 'incline' to mean necessitate-2 and 'necessitating' to mean necessitating-1. But then the result borders on triviality. Of course reasons necessitate-2 without rendering that which they necessitate-2 absolutely necessary!

Consider an example. If determinism is true, then my blogging now is necessitated-2 by a set of conditions including the reasons (motives) I have for blogging. But no determinist who, like Leibniz, accepts that there are logically contingent objects and states of affairs will say that these conditions render my blogging absolutely (as opposed to hypothetically) necessary -- to acquiesce for the moment in Leibniz's terminology. My blogging now is a crystal-clear example of a logically contingent state of affairs. Or will you say that there is a contradiction or some other form of incoherence involved in my not blogging now?

For 'Reasons incline without necessitating' to have a substantial, non-trivial, meaning, therefore, it must mean that reasons incline without necessitating-2. But then the slogan is inconsistent with determinism.

So take your pick. On the first of the apparently only two possible readings, the slogan is consistent with determinism but says something barely worth saying. For again, sophisticated logical fatalists, theological fatalists, and determinists do not maintain that the state of afairs or event necessitated in one of these three ways is absolutely (as opposed to hypothetically) necessary. But on the second reading, the slogan turns out to be inconsistent with determinism.

Now what is the difficulty that the waffle phrase is supposed to paper over? The difficulty is to reconcile free will and determinism. It sounds reassuring to hear that reasons incline without necessitating. If I am merely being inclined by my reasons, then it seems as if I really am free in the end. It sounds comforting to hear that when I act for a reason I am acting freely despite the fact that I could not have done otherwise. The equivocation exposed above makes it seem to Leibniz that he is saying something substantial when he is really saying something quite trivial.

My point is that the 'inclines but does not necessitate' slogan has no univocal meaning and so should not be employed by Leibniz or a latter-day Leibnizian. Such a person should forthrightly affirm that determinism is true and that therefore reasons and other causes necessitate-2. On a determinist scheme such as Leibniz's, there cannot be any reasons that incline without necessitating. Perhaps a version of compatibilism can still be made to work. But no good purpose is served by the waffle slogan, 'Reasons incline but do not necessitate.'

I believe that Leibniz would agree with what I have just said, though he couches the point in a terminology which is not the best possible. He speaks of absolute and hypothetical necessity. Thus he would say that the object's being red, though a logically contingent STOA, is hypothetically necessary as opposed to absolutely necessary. I don't like this way of talking for the simple reason that the hypothetically necessary is precisely not necessary, but contingent. (This makes 'hypothetical' in 'hypothetical necessity' an alienans adjective.) I prefer to speak of the necessitated rather than of the hypothetically necessary. But let's not quibble over terminology. Zu den Sachen selbst!

Suppose determinism is true and an action of mine is determined by previous and present casual conditions including reasons (motives). If follows that the action is necessitated by these conditions together with the laws of nature. But as I just got finished saying, the necessitated need not be necessary: my action, though determined and thus necessitated, is contingent. It is as clear as day that my action's being necessitated does not confer upon it (absolute) necessity. Or in Leibniz's jargon: an action's being hypothetically necessary does not confer upon it absolute necessity.

Now suppose my action is 'morally significant.' Crooking my right index finger is not a morally significant action; but it it would be if the crooking were the pulling of the trigger of a gun aimed at a bipedal varmint. The question is: Am I morally culpable if I shoot a man down in cold blood if determinism is true? Or does the truth of determinism relieve me of moral culpability? I say it does, Leibniz says it doesn't.

My thesis is that Leibniz's reason for saying that the truth of determinism does not relieve one of moral responsibility is a bad reason. His reason is that an action's being determined does not make it absolutely necessary. This is a bad reason since it amounts to an ignoratio elenchi. The issue is not whether the action is contingent or necessary: all will agree that it is contingent. The issue is whether an action that is determined and indeed predetermined by a set of conditions some of which antedate the birth of the agent can be said to be free in a sense that supports attribution to the agent of moral responsibility. This is a very tough question, and not one that can be resolved by pointing out what is obvious, namely, that an action's being necessitated does not make it (absolutely) necessary.

If you carefully study the following excerpt from an abstract of L's Theodicy, you will see, I hope, that I am right in my criticism. I have added bolding. The entire document is available here.

III. Objection. If it is always impossible not to sin, it is always unjust to punish. Now, it is always impossible not to sin; or, in other words, every sin is necessary. Therefore, it is always unjust to punish. The minor of this is proved thus:

1. Prosyllogism. All that is predetermined is necessary. Every event is predetermined. Therefore, every event (and consequently sin also) is necessary.

Again this second minor is proved thus:

2. Prosyllogism. That which is future, that which is foreseen, that which is involved in the causes, is predetermined. Every event is such. Therefore, every event is predetermined.

Answer. I admit in a certain sense the conclusion of the second prosyllogism, which is the minor of the first; but I shall deny the major of the first prosyllogism, namely, that every thing predetermined is necessary; understanding by the necessity of sinning, for example, or by the impossibility of not sinning, or of not performing any action, the necessity with which we are here concerned, that is, that which is essential and absolute, and which destroys the morality of an action and the justice of punishments. For if anyone understood another necessity or impossibility, namely, a necessity which should be only moral, or which was only hypothetical (as will be explained shortly); it is clear that I should deny the major of the objection itself. I might content myself with this answer and demand the proof of the proposition denied; but I have again desired to explain my procedure in this work, in order to better elucidate the matter and to throw more light on the whole subject, by explaining the necessity which ought to be rejected and the determination which must take place. That necessity which is contrary to morality and which ought to be rejected, and which would render punishment unjust, is an insurmountable necessity which would make all opposition useless, even if we should wish with all our heart to avoid the necessary action, and should make all possible efforts to that end. Now, it is manifest that this is not applicable to voluntary actions, because we would not perform them if we did not choose to. Also their prevision and predetermination are not absolute, but presuppose the will: if it is certain that we shall perform them, it is not less certain that we shall choose to perform them. These voluntary actions and their consequences will not take place no matter what we do or whether we wish them or not; but, through that which we shall do and through that which we shall wish to do, which leads to them. And this is involved in prevision and in predetermination, and even constitutes their ground. And the necessity of such an event is called conditional or hypothetical, or the necessity of consequence, because it supposes the will, and the other requisites; whereas the necessity which destroys morality and renders punishment unjust and reward useless, exists in things which will be whatever we may do or whatever we may wish to do, and, in a word, is in that which is essential; and this is what is called an absolute necessity. Thus it is to no purpose, as regards what is absolutely necessary, to make prohibitions or commands, to propose penalties or prizes, to praise or to blame; it will be none the less. On the other hand, in voluntary actions and in that which depends upon them, precepts armed with power to punish and to recompense are very often of use and are included in the order of causes which make an action exist. And it is for this reason that not only cares and labors but also prayers are useful; God having had these prayers in view before he regulated things and having had that consideration for them which was proper. This is why the precept which says ora et labora (pray and work), holds altogether good; and not only those who (under the vain pretext of the necessity of events) pretend that the care which business demands may be neglected, but also those who reason against prayer, fall into what the ancients even then called the lazy sophism. Thus the predetermination of events by causes is just what contributes to morality instead of destroying it, and causes incline the will, without compelling it. This is why the determination in question is not a necessitation - it is certain (to him who knows all) that the effect will follow this inclination; but this effect does not follow by a necessary consequence, that is, one the contrary of which implies contradiction. It is also by an internal inclination such as this that the will is determined, without there being any necessity. Suppose that one has the greatest passion in the world (a great thirst, for example), you will admit to me that the soul can find some reason for resisting it, if it were only that of showing its power. Thus, although one may never be in a perfect indifference of equilibrium and there may be always a preponderance of inclination for the side taken, it, nevertheless, never renders the resolution taken absolutely necessary.

Clearly, the proposition P expressed by 'BV writes on 25 September 2006' is logically contingent. There is no logical necessity that I write tomorrow or on any day. Both my writing tomorrow and my not writing tomorrow are logically possible. But given that God foreknows that P, P must be true. That is,

1. Necessarily (if God foreknows that P, then P is true).

We note that the necessity in (1) attaches to the conditional, not to its consequent. This is a case, then, of necessitas consequentiae, not of necessitas consequentiis. In L's jargon, (1) is a case of hypothetical necessity. The consequence is necessary, not the consequent. From (1) one cannot infer

2. If God foreknows that P, then necessarily P is true.

So far, so good. If a proposition is known, by God or by anyone, then it must be true; but that is consistent with saying that the proposition known is contingently true. Given that I know that I am blogging, then I must be blogging; but that is not to say that I am necessarily blogging: I might not have been blogging now.

What I don't understand, though, is the last sentence in the passage quoted. The last sentence strikes me as false. L. seems not to appreciate that if a contingent state of affairs is necessitated by something other than the agent, then there is a prima facie difficulty about reconciling it with freedom of choice. The source of necessitation might be divine foreknowledge (theological fatalism), or the laws of logic (logical fatalism), or the past and the laws of nature (determinism). No matter what the source of necessitation, one cannot dissolve the problem of reconciling free will and the necessitation of the act willed simply by pointing out the difference between hypothetical and absolute necessity.

In other words, L. appears to be taxing the fatalist and the determinist with a sophomoric error, namely, that of confusing (1) and (2) above. But no sophisticated fatalist or determinist need make that error.

For what is the essence of occasionalism if not the view that no natural or 'secondary' cause is a true cause, and that there is only one true cause, namely, God the 'primary' cause? Although occasionalism is often discussed as an ad hoc solution to the problem of mind-body interaction 'occasioned' by Cartesian dualism, occasionalism is a general theory of causation, and there was occasionalism long before Descartes. The doctrine can be traced back at least to al-Ghazali. Here is a good little article by William Hasker that fills in some of the details.

It is easy to see why occasionalism would be found attractive by Muslim thinkers. For the occasionalist, God is omnipotent not only in the sense that he can do anything (subject to certain logical and non-logical restrictions that I have discussed elsewhere); he is also omnipotent in the far stronger sense that anything that gets done gets done by God. He has not only the power to do all; he has and exercises all the power.

Of course, Hume does not bring God into his theory of causation. But for Hume, as for the occasionalist, no natural cause is a true cause since no such cause produces, or brings into existence, its effect. The relata of the causal relation are events, and the latter are Humean "distinct existences." To say that e1 causes e2 is just to say that (i) e1 temporally precedes e2; (ii) e1 and e2 are spatiotemporally contiguous, and that (iii) whenever an event of e1's type occurs, an event of e2's type occurs. That's all she wrote. There is no producing, no bringing about. Good empiricist that he is, Hume denies what he does not see. More precisely: he doubts the existence of that for which there is no corroboration in sensory