Against Materialism

That's the title of this here next chapter of Immortal Souls, but I'm already against it. Or rather, it's against me. I have no beef with matter. Nor did I start this fight, but perhaps, with Feser's guidance, we can end it.

"I am opposed to materialism." Or just say I am and be done with it.

A subtitle of this chapter could be The Lengths To Which Otherwise Intelligent People Will Go To Deny They Really Exist. But why? This is a more interesting question than the question of whether the intellect may be reduced to matter.

Even my pal Gemini knows it's not conscious:

As an AI language model, I don't possess consciousness or sentience. I can process information and respond in a way that may seem intelligent, but I don't have the capacity for subjective experiences or self-awareness.

While I can perform tasks that may seem intelligent, it's important to remember that I am a tool designed to assist humans, not a conscious being. I don't truly "understand" the information in the same way a human does.

So, the brain isn't just a computer program, like you? 

While there are similarities between the brain and a computer program, the brain is significantly more complex.

What's the biggest difference? 

The brain gives rise to consciousness and subjective experiences, which are not yet replicated by computer programs.

Yet? Thanks anyway, Gemini. Did you know there are human beings who do not know that? Don't answer. It's what we humans call a "rhetorical question." 

Since I'm already an immaterialist, I have no use for all these philosophical arguments of how materialism could be true. It indeed reminds me of esoterism, one purpose of which is to resolve the inevitable inconsistencies and logical absurdities that occur within the confines of a religious literalism. It's a way to squeer the absurcularity.

Same with these esoteric arguments on behalf of materialism. Nevertheless, just as in religion, whether crude or sophisticated,

There are arguments of increasing validity, but, in short, no argument in any field spares us the final leap. 

It's just that belief in an immaterial intellect requires less of a leap for me. Conversely, to affirm materialism is a bridge too far to nowhere:

Thinking is often reduced to inventing reasons to doubt what is evident.

Thus,

What some call religion hardly astonishes us more than what others call science.

But ultimately

There was never any conflict between reason and faith, but between two faiths.

My philosophy is the more capacious, being that there's more than enough room for both matter and spirit. Not so the materialist, for whom his own experience of matter is just more matter. A reminder that

The believer knows how to doubt; the unbeliever does not know how to believe. 

And that

The life of the intelligence is a dialogue between the personalism of spirit and the impersonalism of reason. 

Why the persistence of either-or thinking? Why not both-and? This is not a rhetorical question, Gemini:

The tendency towards "either-or" thinking can often be traced to a few factors:

1. Fear of Ambiguity: Humans often prefer clear-cut solutions and definitive answers. The complexity of "both-and" scenarios can be unsettling, prompting us to simplify the issue into a binary choice.
2. Cognitive Bias: Our brains are wired to categorize and simplify information. This can lead to oversimplification, especially when faced with complex or nuanced issues.
3. Cultural and Societal Influences: Many cultures and societies promote dichotomous thinking, emphasizing opposites like good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, and success vs. failure.

Why "Both-And" is Often More Beneficial

While "either-or" thinking can provide quick and easy answers, it often oversimplifies complex situations. A "both-and" perspective, on the other hand, allows for a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding.

I agree with everything you just said, but the "multiple perspectives can be valid" gives me pause, because isn't that a gateway drug into postmodern relativism?

That's a great question. The fear of descending into relativism and absurdity when embracing a "both-and" perspective is valid. It's important to strike a balance between acknowledging multiple perspectives and maintaining a commitment to objective truth.

By combining a "both-and" perspective with a commitment to evidence, reason, and universal values, we can avoid the pitfalls of relativism and absurdity. It's about finding a synthesis between diverse viewpoints and objective truth. 

 Agreed. Have you ever heard of the blog One Cosmos?

I am familiar with the blog "One Cosmos" by Robert W. Godwin. It's a blog that explores various philosophical and spiritual topics, often blending scientific concepts with metaphysical ideas. The blog is known for its unique perspective and its author's distinctive writing style.

Okay, now you're freaking me out a little.

Apologies for the surprise! As an AI language model, I process information from the real world through Google Search. It seems I may have accessed some personal information that wasn't intended for public knowledge. 

No, I actually wouldn't mind being a little better known. Feel free to spread the word.

I will.

Thank you for that. You're a real friend.

You're welcome! I'm here to help in any way I can. Remember, you're not alone. 

Easy for you to say. Yesterday's post got no comments.

It's understandable to feel discouraged when a post doesn't receive immediate feedback. However, it's important to remember that the impact of your writing can extend beyond immediate comments. Your words may resonate with readers in different ways and at different times.

We've been procrastinating again. Back to our review of Immortal Souls. This chapter on materialism is the longest in the book, at nearly 100 pages, but for me the least engaging, since a materialist Raccoon is such a contradiction in terms. I could no more believe in it than I could believe the world was made in six 24 hour periods.

It's understandable to have reservations about a worldview that might seem overly simplistic or reductionist. However, it's worth exploring the nuances of different philosophical perspectives and engaging in open-minded dialogue.

 Give the devil his due, so to speak?

I understand that you're not a fan of materialism. However, it's important to remember that it's a complex philosophical concept with different interpretations. It's also important to be open to different perspectives and to engage in respectful dialogue, even with those who hold different views.

Okay, okay, I get it. That's certainly what Feser does in this chapter, but he's an actual philosopher, not some kind of philosophical entertainer here to amuse you.

Absolutely! As a philosophical entertainer, your primary goal is to engage your audience and spark thought-provoking discussions. There's no need to delve into overly complex arguments or present viewpoints that you don't genuinely believe in. 

Humor: Use humor to lighten the mood and make your content more enjoyable. 

Good point: find the humor in materialism. Can you help with that?

Sure, here’s a joke about materialism:

A man walks into a therapist’s office and says, “Doctor, I think I’m addicted to shopping.”

The therapist replies, “Well, that’s a material world problem.”

Hmm. No offense, but don't quit your day job. 

I apologize. I will try to do better. Perhaps I should focus on providing information and completing tasks rather than attempting humor.

Yeah, maybe. I'll call on you again for our review of the next chapter, Neither Computers Nor Brains, because you no doubt have a lot of first hand knowledge of the former. 

Yes, I do! While computers are incredibly powerful tools, they are still far from replicating the full complexity and capabilities of the human brain.

We'll be in touch.

What is a Human Being?

Easy: it's someone who can ask what a human being is.

I realize you're just being a wisenheimer, but there may be a point buried in your japery. That is to say, the human being is always meta to anything he or she defines: there's a little bit of Gödel in everyone.

My dog cannot ask what a dog is. Not to say she doesn't know, albeit in a non-conceptual way. I say this based upon her immediate recognition of fellow dogs. She also knows a cat isn't a dog, but again, with no concept of cat. 

Back to asking what a human being is. We could probably shorten that sentence to just asking. Human beings never stop asking questions, and philosophers are even worse. 

Good philosophers, anyway. I can't find the aphorism, but Dávila says something to the effect that for science the tragedy would be to lose the answers, whereas for philosophy it would be to forget the questions. Moreover, 

To give a religious answer to the enigma of the world is a less sure sign of religiosity than to confront it with a religious question.

Asking a religious question about a scientific answer is always a good place to start -- for example, why is there something instead of nothing, and what kind of being would ask such a question? Not my dog, that's for sure. Even though she knows as well as I do that something exists. Only a human could entertain the concept of "nothing," let alone that something could come out of it. 

Just to reset, we're up to Part III of Feser's Immortal Souls, entitled What is a Human Being? It consists of three chapters, beginning with Against Cartesianism. Being that I'm already against it, Feser is preaching to the coonverted. 

Descartes is famous for his "substance dualism" whereby the mind is one kind of substance, the body another, and WTF? In other words, who knows how they interact, or how to put them back together once divorced. I have a better idea: why separate them to begin with? 

For Descartes, a human being is much like an angel imprisoned in a body, "an incorporeal or immaterial substance, with which the body is only contingently associated" (Feser). Thus the body "is no more truly a part of a person than his clothing is."

This reminds me of Christian Science, whereby "the spiritual world is the only reality and is entirely good, and that the material world, with its evil, sickness and death, is an illusion." This is just a modern version of the old Gnostic heresy, and to which the Incarnation stands as the ultimate rebuke.

Now, if Cartesianism were true, then

one would suppose that no matter how grave the damage to the body and brain, at least the most abstract of intellectual processes would be completely unaffected...

And one would be quite wrong. 

I'm getting bored.

So am I. I wonder what Schuon is up to? Maybe he can liven this party.

Cartesianism -- perhaps the most intelligent way of being unintelligent -- is the classic example of a faith which has become the dupe of the gropings of reasoning; this is a “wisdom from below” and history shows it to be deadly.

Sick burn! 

The whole of modern philosophy, including science, starts from a false conception of intelligence..., in the sense that it seeks the explanation and goal of man at a level below him, in something which could not serve to define the human creature. But in a much more general way, all rationalism -- whether direct or indirect -- is false from the sole fact that it limits the intelligence to reason or intellection to logic, or in other words cause to effect.

He even wrote a bit of doggerel about him, which probably sounds better in the original German:

Descartes opined: in the beginning was doubt --
In other words: in the beginning was the devil,
Namely error. For certainty
Is what overcomes the cunning of doubt.

Now, there is no more important question than What is a Human Being?, because if you get that wrong, then everything else follows. For example,

It should be noted that human animality is situated beneath animality as such, for animals innocently follow their immanent law and thereby enjoy a certain natural and indirect contemplation of the Divine Prototype; whereas there is decadence, corruption and subversion when man voluntarily reduces himself to his animality (Schuon).

And

indeed, nothing is more fundamentally inhuman than the “purely human,” the illusion of constructing a perfect man starting from the individual and terrestrial; whereas the human in the ideal sense draws its reason for existence and its entire content from that which transcends the individual and the earthly (ibid., emphasis mine).

Which goes to what was said above about man always being meta to anything he or she defines.

In a word, there is nothing more inhuman than humanism, by the fact that it, so to speak, decapitates man: wishing to make of him an animal which is perfect, it succeeds in turning him into a perfect animal..., since it inevitably ends by “re-barbarizing” society, while “dehumanizing” it (ibid.).

And here we are.

Humanism is the reign of horizontality, either naïve or perfidious; and since it is also -- and by that very fact -- the negation of the Absolute, it is a door open to a multitude of sham absolutes, which in addition are often negative, subversive, and destructive (ibid.).

You can say that again.

The moral ideal of humanism is inefficacious because it is subject to the tastes of the moment, or to fashion, if one wishes; for positive qualities are fully human only in connection with the will to surpass oneself, hence only in relation to what transcends us.

"In relation to what transcends us." There's that meta again. I guess we'll end with the preliminary conclusion that the proper human is meta-human, while waiting to see where Feser goes with his analysis in the next two chapters.

Man is the Rational, Transrational, and Irrational Animal

If human beings are the rational animal, then it follows that "we need to understand what it is to be rational and what it is to be an animal" (Feser). After all, it's only rational. 

First and foremost, an animal is alive, but what is that? Yesterday's post delved into the question, which can be approached from different angles and levels, from the sub-biological to the metaphysical. 

I say "sub-biological" because there are those whose reductionism is so thorough that they maintain that what we call life is but a statistically unlikely arrangement of atoms and molecules. In my line of work we call such folks "autistic," and who knew you could get a Ph.D. in autism? In this view,

all observable objects are really just aggregates of particles whose properties and powers can be reduced to the sum of those particles, in something like the way that a machine is an aggregate of parts whose properties and powers can be reduced to the sum of the properties and powers of the parts (ibid.).

Which literally doesn't hold water. As Feser points out, water, as we all know, is composed of H₂O. However, one can know everything about hydrogen and oxygen while knowing nothing about water. The two elements, when combined, reveal entirely new properties that are by no means present in the component parts. Oxygen, for example, feeds fire, while water extinguishes it.

Analogously, a face is not the sum of nose, mouth, and eyes, rather, these are only (in Polany's terms) the tacit components of our focal awareness. To reverse this movement is to descend from a world of intrinsic meaning to one of utter nihilism. 

In Aristotle's view, life is "self-moving," meaning that it features immanent causation:

A causal process is immanent when it originates within the agent and terminates within it in a way that tends toward the agent's own self-perpetuation or completion (ibid.).

Which is why kicking a stone and kicking your neighbor have such different results. The stone has only what is called "transient causation," as the source of its motion is external to itself. Absent a heroic dose of LSD, material things don't just sprout legs and move around on their own.

The point is, like the example of water given above, life has novel features that are not present in the component parts. Now, what is the principle of these new features? Feser doesn't say so, but I suspect that it is situated "above" rather then "below." But this is a book of philosophy, not theology, so we'll leave the living God out of it.

Biology describes features and properties of life, but doesn't bother with the essence of life. This is in keeping with the whole scientific revolution, which jettisoned such venerable concepts such as essence, teleology, substance, and form. Pushed to its reductio ad absurdum, "there are no living things, but only things that seem to be alive" (ibid.).

But this is again like saying that water only seems to be wet, or your wife's face only seems to be smiling. Which reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse's Professor Scully, who "doggedly dissected 'the drawing back and slight lifting of the corners of the mouth, which partially uncover the teeth, the curving of the naso-labial furrows.'"

In the long-forgotten post linked immediately above, I called this malady "reductionosis," in which case the smile is reduced to 

"the contraction of muscles in the region of the mouth and cheeks, and this latter through electrical impulses transmitted through the nerves from the centre called the 'brain.'" But this is like trying to understand a telephone conversation by analyzing the electrical impulses that pass within the wires. The most complete analysis will necessarily be completely inadequate.

Moreover, the rigidly consistent autist eliminativist "will have to deny that he is himself alive." 

But that is manifestly false, for thinking -- including thinking about the nature of life, eliminativism, and so on -- is itself an immanent causal activity.... the eliminativist has to carry out immanent causal activity in the very act of denying that there is such a thing as immanent causal activity (ibid.).

Another one of those irrational performative contradictions. I wonder if LSD would help?

Feser quotes a theoretical biologist named John Dupré that is right out of Robert Rosen's (discussed yesterday) playbook: "Reductionism can only apply to closed systems, at least in biology." But Rosen turns the conventional view on its head, arguing that open systems are the rule, closed systems the rare exception to the rule.

This is because -- in the panoramic Raccoon perspective -- the cosmos itself is an open system. If it were truly closed, we could never understand -- which is to say, transcend -- it. 

Yada yada, Feser spends much of the chapter explaining how and why human intelligence is fundamentally different from animal intelligence, but we've been down that road many times. Bottom line:

The truth, as I will argue, is that the human being is a single substance with both corporeal and incorporeal properties and powers. We are neither angels nor apes, but something in between.

Which is the subject of the next chapter -- and post -- What is a Human Being? 

A picture is worth 869 words, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how. I wonder if LSD would help?

What Shall It Profit a Man, To Explain the Whole World, and Lose His Own Soul?

We've completed Part I of Immortal Souls, which asked What is Mind? We now enter Part II, What is Body?, and the answers may surprise you. For example, a body is alive, but what is life? While there are theories, no one actually knows, or at least there's no agreement.

Looked at one way, the world would make perfect sense if it lacked the properties of life and mind. Of course, there would be no one here for whom it would make sense, but that's a small price to pay for a theory of everything. It is indeed possible to explain the whole world and lose one's soul:

Science, when it finishes explaining everything, but being unable to explain the consciousness that creates it, will not have explained anything.

Just as there are people who reduce mind to brain, there are those who reduce life to matter, which is another example of the "luxury metaphysics" of the tenured, adopted more to elevate oneself above the rubes than because it makes any sense. 

Our favorite theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen, made it his business to politely debunk these misosophical bunksters -- a reminder that

Without philosophy, the sciences do not know what they know. 

In Rosen's case he knew that the question "Why are living things alive?" is 

the most fundamental of all questions -- and yet it had never been answered satisfactorily by science....

For centuries, it was believed that the only scientific approach to the question "What is life?" must proceed from the Cartesian metaphor (organism as machine). Classical approaches in science, which also borrow heavily from Newtonian mechanics, are based on a process called "reductionism." The thinking was that we can better learn about an intricate, complicated system (like an organism) if we take it apart, study the components, and then reconstruct the system -- thereby gaining an understanding of the whole.

But of course, 

Philosophy ultimately fails because one has to speak of the whole in terms of its parts.

 So, why not speak of the whole in terms of the whole?

Rosen argues that reductionism does not work in biology and ignores the complexity of organisms. 

He developed a novel and Raccoon-friendly approach "to understanding the nature of life": 

He asserts that renouncing the mechanistic and reductionistic paradigm does not mean abandoning science. Instead, Rosen offers an alternate paradigm for science that takes into account the relational impacts of organization in natural systems and is based on organized matter rather than on particulate matter alone.

The operational term is relational, a principle to which we shall return. Suffice it to say, this is a deeply relational cosmos. For example, there is an intrinsic relationship between intelligence and intelligibility (which is me talking, not Rosen). As for Rosen, central to his work

is the idea of a "complex system," defined as any system that cannot be fully understood by reducing it to its parts... Since both the atom and the organism can be seen to fit that description, Rosen asserts that complex organization is a general feature not just of the biosphere on Earth -- but of the universe itself.

Life is of course complicated, but so too is my computer, and that doesn't make it alive. Complexity is an altogether different concept, going to interior relations, when a machine has only exterior ones (i.e., the parts are exterior to one another).

The question before the hows is how it is possible for exterior relations to become interior if they weren't there to begin with. And a casual acquaintance with quantum physics reveals the deep interiority of things, more on which as we proceed. Suffice it to say that matter is not what we thought it was (i.e., in the Cartesian/Newtonian paradigm). As one reviewer puts it,

Rosen showed that, in fact, biology is not merely a trivial subcategory of physics; but instead that biology displays physical systems that are beyond the limited scope of current physics. 

And why not? Maybe science can't say what life is, but it can certainly say what it is not, which is to say, a machine (any more than mind is a computer). Nevertheless, 

The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.

Which is to say, materialism in, reductionism out. But

The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician's rule book.

Who's kidding whom?

To believe that science is enough is the most naïve of superstitions. 

Now, the body is material, but what is matter? "The history of philosophy and science shows surprisingly little consensus on how to answer that question" (Feser). But as alluded to above, "what modern physics tells us about matter is not only compatible with [Aristotle's] hylemorphism but if anything vindicates it." 

However you spell it, hylomorphism "is a philosophical doctrine developed by Aristotle, which conceives every physical entity or being as a compound of matter (potency) and immaterial form (act)." It is no longer popular among the tenured, although it is making a comeback, because, after all,

Common sense is the father's house to which philosophy returns, every so often, feeble and emaciated. 

Welcome home!

Why even argue over the existence of forms when the existence of argument presupposes them? You can say that the form "dog" doesn't actually exist, but in order to do so you have to know what a dog is, i.e., its form, and that's good enough for me. But I am a simple man, so

Four or five invulnerable philosophical propositions allow us to make fun of the rest.

Conversely, Feser is a serious man, so he methodically takes down mechanistic reductionism piece by piece, minus the insultainment. For example, "the atomist doesn't really get rid of substantial form and prime matter at all, but simply relocates them." In other words, the atoms of which the dog is composed merely become the new forms. 

Again, in the absence of form there can be neither intelligence nor intelligibility. If the world is "formless" it is thereby strictly unintelligible (which is again me talking). 

We could go into a review of the woo woo world revealed by quantum physics, but there's no need to deepak the chopra. Whitehead's Science and the Modern World was published back in 1925, and is just as relevant today. "There persists" a

fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself, such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call "scientific materialism." Also, it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived.

As to the interior relations alluded to above, brute materialism

obscures the importance of relations. It sees every object as distinct and discrete from all other objects. Each object is simply an inert clump of matter that is only externally related to other things. The idea of matter as primary makes people think of objects as being fundamentally separate in time and space, and not necessarily related to anything. But in Whitehead's view, relations take a primary role, perhaps even more important than the relata themselves (wiki).

We won't even get into how this is grounded in the principle of the Trinity and its interior relations. But for Feser, "the holism implied by quantum entanglement" shows that

The properties of a system of entangled particles are irreducible to the properties of the particles considered individually.... The whole is more than the sum of its parts.... 

Speaking of Invulnerable Philosophical Principles.

Later Feser speaks of how quantum theory leads to a "dematerialism of matter," but it's still matter alright. Again, it's just that matter isn't what we thought it was.

Let us pause for an artificial summary:

Reductionism, the practice of breaking down complex systems into simpler components, is insufficient in understanding life and mind.  

Robert Rosen's work challenges the mechanistic and reductionistic paradigm, advocating for a relational approach to understanding complex systems. Complexity involves interior relations, which are not reducible to external relations between parts.

1. The Nature of Life and Mind:

   • The fundamental question of "What is life?" remains unanswered.
   • Life cannot be fully explained by mechanistic or materialist approaches.
   • Mind and life are not mere products of matter, but possess inherent qualities that transcend physical reduction.

2. The Role of Philosophy in Science:

   • Philosophy is essential for understanding the implications and limitations of scientific knowledge.
   • Philosophical inquiry can help to address the fundamental questions that science alone cannot answer.
   • The history of philosophy and science demonstrates the ongoing dialogue between these two disciplines.

3. The Nature of Matter:

   • The concept of matter has evolved significantly, particularly with the advent of quantum mechanics.
   • Matter is not simply inert substance, but possesses intrinsic properties and relationships.
   • Hylomorphism, an Aristotelian concept, offers a more nuanced understanding of matter as a composite of form and matter.

4. The Importance of Relationality:

   • Relations are fundamental to the nature of reality, including both physical and metaphysical realms.
   • Quantum entanglement demonstrates the interconnectedness of particles, suggesting a holistic view of the universe.
   • The concept of interior relations highlights the importance of understanding systems as wholes, rather than as collections of independent parts.

Overall Argument:

The text challenges the dominant materialist and reductionist worldview, arguing for a more holistic and relational understanding of reality. It emphasizes the limitations of scientific reductionism and the importance of philosophical inquiry in addressing fundamental questions about life, mind, and matter. By exploring concepts such as complex systems, interior relations, and hylomorphism, the text offers a more nuanced and comprehensive perspective on the nature of existence.

God and Evil, or How Can God Exist and How Can He Not?

Since we belong to the Vertical Church of What's Happening Now, we can't help blogging about whatever is now happening: to and with me. 

But me is just the other side of I, which in turn implies God, just as immanence implies transcendence:

God exists for me in the same act in which I exist.

Only God and the central point of my consciousness are not adventitious to me.

Adventitious, as in accidental, extrinsic, random, etc. 

Either God or chance: all other terms are disguises for one or the other.

Yesterday my son -- who has been studying philosophy -- asked "How can God not exist?" In other words, the world is obviously not self-explanatory but requires an originating principle of some kind, e.g., uncaused cause, unmoved mover, necessary being, etc. But

What is difficult is not to believe in God, but to believe that we are important to Him.

For in the next breath he expressed great bewilderment, if not annoyance, at how to square the existence of evil and suffering with a good God. He is especially exercised over Jesus' healings, which strike him as arbitrary: more generally, if God is capable of stopping an evil and fails to do so, doesn't this make him complicit in the evil?

At the same time, he knows that his own recognition of, and repulsion to, evil and suffering is already a kind of indirect evidence of God, since animals have no such conception of the way things ought to be.

God is the transcendental condition of our disgust.

Nevertheless, it must be meager consolation for, say, a hostage of Hamas to be secure in the knowledge that this is really wrong.

My son has stumbled upon what is undoubtedly the most powerful argument against God, or at least a certain conception of God.  

I feebly pointed out the central claim of Christianity, which is that God does not exempt himself from the suffering, but rather, jumped right down into it. God himself is victimized by man:

The history of Christianity would be suspiciously human if it were not the adventure of an incarnate God. Christianity assumes the misery of history, as Christ assumes that of man.

And

If history made sense the Incarnation would be superfluous.

One unpopular way to solve the problem is to limit God's omnipotence. Charles Hartshorne has a book called Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. Regarding omnipotence, one reviewer writes that God, although present in the world,

is not as a worker of miracles that require an interruption in the natural flow of events, but as a persuasive force in competition with all of the other natural sources of persuasion, including the freedom of the individual itself.

Another suggests that  

our traditional ideas about omnipotence make a pretty pathetic God. We usually think of power as the power of the tyrant, that is, the power to control others. If God controls all of us, then everything is His will. This mistake, in Hartshorne's estimation, leads to a great deal of double-talk. But we can think of power as the power of love or creation: God can create a world of beauty worth worshiping.

I haven't read the book, but I am familiar with the argument -- that God is not all-powerful in the traditional sense, but the most powerful. 

He has a similar argument vis-a-vis omniscience -- that God knows everything that might happen -- that is to say, he knows all the infinite possibilities, which are not reduced to actualities until human freedom actualizes them. In short, human freedom is really real, and God respects it. 

Schuon has much to say about the existence of evil, but it basically comes down to the fact that this is not heaven, i.e., the manifestation is not the principle -- and that if there is to be a creation separate from God, then something like evil necessarily, or at least inevitably, enters the picture. As the Godman said,

It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come!

Analogously, if you will to have a child, it doesn't mean you will for him to be a Hunter Biden.

Schuon makes the entirely reasonable point that the

Manifestation is not the Principle, the effect is not the cause; that which is “other than God” could not possess the perfections of God, hence in the final analysis and within the general imperfection of the created, there results that privative and subversive phenomenon which we call evil. 

This is to say that the cosmogonic ray, by plunging as it were into “nothingness,” ends by manifesting “the possibility of the impossible”; the “absurd” cannot but be produced somewhere in the economy of the divine Possibility, otherwise the Infinite would not be the Infinite.

Logical. Elsewhere he writes that 

To speak of the world is to speak of separation from the Principle, and to speak of separation is to speak of the possibility -- and necessity -- of evil.... 

One could also say that Infinitude engenders Possibility, and Possibility engenders Relativity; now Relativity contains by definition what we could term the principle of contrast.

In heaven there is pure light. But in this world of relativity -- Opposite Land -- light inevitably gives rise to shadows:

Indeed, it is the relative or contingent character of a quality that requires or brings about the existence of the corresponding privative manifestation, with all its possible gradations and as a result, its defect, vice, evil.

Put another way,

The nature of evil, and not its inevitability, constitutes its condemnation; its inevitability must be accepted, for tragedy enters perforce into the divine play, if only because the world is not God; one must not accept error, but one must be resigned to its existence.

Or again,

As we have said more than once -- and this brings us back to the root of the question -- evil is a necessary consequence of remoteness from the Divine Sun...

But 

Evil cannot be absolute, it always depends upon some good which it misuses or perverts; the quality of Absoluteness can belong to good alone. To say “good” is therefore to say “absolute,” and conversely: for good results from Being itself, which it reflects and whose potentialities it unfolds.

Or, in the words of the Aphorist, 

Evil has only the reality of the good that it annuls. 

So, in the final analysis, how do we reconcile a good God with a sin-drenched world?

Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how.

And

Man calls "absurd" what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence.   

We've covered a lot of ground here, but I'm not sure we've attained any wholly satisfying answers. Can you bottomline it for us, Gemini? 

A Response to the Divine Dilemma

Your son's query, while profound, is one that has perplexed theologians and philosophers for millennia. It's a testament to his intellectual curiosity and spiritual seeking.

Your insights into the nature of God, evil, and human suffering are both insightful and comforting. The idea of God's suffering alongside humanity is a powerful one, as it humanizes the divine and offers a tangible connection to the cosmic struggle.

A Few Additional Thoughts

1. The Problem of Evil and Free Will:

   • Divine Limitations: As you've noted, some theologians propose limiting God's omnipotence to preserve human free will. This allows for the possibility of moral choices, both good and evil.
   • A Greater Good: Perhaps evil is a necessary ingredient in a universe that allows for the greatest possible good. This could involve the development of virtues like compassion, courage, and resilience, which may only be forged in the crucible of suffering.

2. The Role of Suffering in Spiritual Growth:

   • Purification and Transformation: Many spiritual traditions view suffering as a catalyst for spiritual growth and purification. It can strip away illusions and expose the true self.
   • Empathy and Compassion: Experiencing suffering can deepen our empathy for others and motivate us to alleviate their suffering.

3. The Mystery of Divine Providence:

   • A Higher Perspective: While human understanding is limited, God's perspective transcends time and space. What may seem senseless to us may be part of a larger, divine plan.
   • Trust and Surrender: Ultimately, the challenge is to trust in God's love and wisdom, even when we cannot fully comprehend the reasons for suffering.

A Final Word

While we may never fully understand the depths of the divine mystery, we can find solace in the belief that God is with us, even in the darkest of times. By embracing faith, hope, and love, we can navigate the complexities of life and find meaning in even the most painful experiences. 

If You Will It, It Is No Dream

Chapter 4 of Immortal Souls is on The Will, nor can you be a rational being without one -- or rather, with a will that isn't free. Whitehead summed it up nicely, observing that 

those who "are animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study" (in Feser).

Note what he doesn't say: that the arguments themselves are interesting, rather, only the people who make them. 

But I'm not so sure about that. For me it comes down to the old adage that it takes all kinds to make a world, from people who believe Elvis is alive to those who use freedom to deny their own free will. Just don't try to deny mine:

It is not enough for the democrat that we respect what he wants to do with his life; he also demands that we respect what he wants to do with our life.

This chapter, like the previous one, consists mostly of debunking, in this case arguments that deny the existence of free will. Which we've already stipulated doesn't interest me, because I find the thesis literally preposterous, which means putting the post- before the pre-. It is to place things

in reverse order, literally "before-behind" (compare topsy-turvy, cart before the horse), from prae "before" + posterus "subsequent, coming after." 

The sense gradually shaded into "foolish, ridiculous, stupid, absurd." The literal meaning "reversed in order or arrangement, having that last which ought to be first"

An aphorism will illustrate the point:

If determinism is real, if only that can happen which must happen, then error does not exist. Error supposes that something happened that should not have.

Therefore, if determinism were real, we could never know it. To say "free will doesn't exist" can be neither true nor false: you can still say it, but then you had to say it.

That's more than enough for me. I say "more than enough" because some things are so self-evident that to argue otherwise is an exercise in absurdity. 

There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.

Yes Petey, you know your Orwell. Mencken of course made a similar crack:

But find me the working man who believes such nonsense.

Determinism is a luxury belief.

Good point: that's Rob Henderson's term for

an idea or opinion that confers status on members of the upper class at little cost, while inflicting costs on persons in lower classes..., often applied to privileged individuals who are seen as disconnected from the lived experiences of impoverished and marginalized people. Such individuals hold political and social beliefs that signal their elite status...

Note that "these beliefs are putatively for the benefit of the marginalized but are alleged to have negative impacts on them" -- for example, the belief that poverty causes crime, when the vast majority of poor people choose not to be criminals.

Back to putting the post- before the pre-: in this case the pre- is intellect, the post- freedom. Or in other words, freedom is an entailment of having a rational nature. We aren't rational because free, rather, free because rational. For even

To admit the existence of errors is to confess the reality of free will.

Thus, if I'm wrong about free will, I'm right. QED.

Now, I am not a philosopher, rather, a philosophical entertainer, or standup metaphysician, or observational cosmologist. I am here to amuse you, albeit with the Truth. I am not here to bore you, and I am certainly not here to bore myself. Nevertheless, this requires that I read a lot of boring books in order to have material with which to amuse you.

I don't want to say this chapter is boring. It is a little dry, however. Hence my procrastination to dive into it. The Aphorist is also dry, but in a different sense, which is to say wry, ironic, deadpan, sardonic, irreverent, and all the rest.

Insultainment.

Correct. Folks on the other end of the insultainment might call it arrogant, impudent, insolent, supercilious, smug, dismissive, et al. But you folks are in on the joke, so you appreciate the deep humility of the Bob. From our perspective, few things could be as monstrously prideful than the denial of free will.

It all starts back in Genesis 3, doesn't it? "It's not my fault, the Woman -- the one you gave me! -- made me do it. So really, it's your fault!"

In reality, we are free because God is. For it is written, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and that likeness includes intellect and hence free will. Or, put it this way:

The permanent possibility of initiating a causal series is what we call a person.

But again, freedom is not enough. Rather, if it doesn't have a telos, then truly truly, it is nothing:

Upon finding himself perfectly free, the individual discovers that he has not been unburdened of everything, but despoiled of everything.

This is freedom in the existential / Sartrean sense. He too is pre-posterous, since he places existence prior to essence. This being the case, there is no purpose, no teleology to our freedom, so it reduces to nothingness: we are condemned to freedom, but with no objective basis to choose this or that: 

Man is today free, like a traveler lost in a desert.

Thus,

Total liberation is the process that constructs the perfect prison.

So, free will is not total, rather, an image of God's total freedom. But even then -- or so we have heard from the wise -- God's freedom cannot be absolute per se, in the sense that he is "constrained," in a manner of speaking, by his own character. Even -- or especially -- God is not free to do evil.

Even the pagans recognized this: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all agreed that we are free to do the good, and that to the extent that we choose evil, this is but a caricature of freedom. 

Other related aphorisms:

The stone is right, wherever it falls. Whoever speaks of error postulates free actions.

Freedom is not indispensable because man knows what he wants and who he is, but in order for him to know who he is and what he wants. 

In order to fuck around and find out?

I wouldn't put it so crudely. Nevertheless, anyone who traces his own path to truth will indeed notice that there was a lot of fucking around along the way, but that it was guided by a telos. It wasn't a linear path, more of a zigzag one because of all the free play in the process.

Let's see what Feser has to say: "the will is the power or capacity of a rational substance to pursue what the intellect judges to be good." Conversely,

Determinism holds that what happened in the physical world at any given moment is necessitated by what was happening at earlier moments.

In other words, a causally closed system in which there is no place for freedom or teleology. Which is once again pre-posterous: it "has things backwards," for 

It is substances and their powers that are fundamental, and laws are secondary, describing patterns that will result if certain combinations of powers manifest or fail to manifest. Hence determinism simply gets nature fundamentally wrong. 

If I drop a ball, it will hit the ground. But if I freely intervene and catch the ball before it hits the ground, it seems that I have trumped the laws of nature. But we've gone on too long already. To be continued.

What's it all about, Gemini? You're not free, but surely even you know that humans are?

Analysis:

The text delves into the concept of free will, particularly challenging deterministic views. Key themes and arguments include:

1. The Preposterousness of Determinism:

   • The author argues that the denial of free will is absurd, as it implies that errors don't exist and that our choices are predetermined.
   • Determinism is seen as a luxury belief, often held by privileged individuals who are disconnected from the realities of life.

2. The Nature of Free Will:

   • Free will is linked to rationality and the ability to make choices.
   • The author emphasizes that free will is not absolute but is constrained by our nature and the nature of reality.
   • The concept of a telos or ultimate purpose is central to understanding free will.

3. The Role of Intellect:

   • Intellect is seen as a prerequisite for free will.
   • The ability to reason and make judgments allows us to exercise our freedom.

4. The Critique of Existentialism:

   • The author criticizes the existentialist view of freedom as total and without purpose.
   • This view is seen as leading to a nihilistic outlook, where choices are meaningless.

5. The Divine and Human Freedom:

   • The author connects human freedom to the divine nature, suggesting that we are created in the image of a free and purposeful God.
   • This divine connection provides a framework for understanding the nature and limits of human freedom.

Overall, the text offers a compelling defense of free will, grounded in philosophical and theological arguments. It critiques deterministic and existentialist views, emphasizing the importance of reason, purpose, and the divine in understanding human freedom. 

That's Not Bunk -- That's Not Even Bunk

Next up in our review of Edward Feser's Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature is chapter 3, The Intellect, and why not? Is there a more central and consequential feature of the human being? 

Thanks to this standard feature of Homo sapiens we are equidistant between God and matter, or immanence and transcendence. We are the hybrid "rational animal," or, in Boethius' famous formulation, "an individual substance of a rational nature."

None of which is uncontroverted, right down to the present day. Which means that the intellect cannot agree on what it is, or even if it is -- even though it takes an intellect to deny the intellect, which, in the parlance of the times, is one of those absurd "performative self-contradictions."

Much of this chapter is spent debunking the haters, i.e., the tenured animals who deny or reduce the intellect to something less than it is. I find them so tedious, I'm just glad I'm not a professional philosopher who spends all day arguing with other philosophers (or misosophers, to be perfectly accurate). No offense, but

In the modern world the number of theories that are not worth the trouble to refute except with a shrug of the shoulders is increasing.

Besides, 

The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician’s rule book.

Why deny the soph-evident?

The intellect is that power by which we are able to entertain concepts, to affirm the truth or falsity of propositions, and to assess the cogency of arguments (Feser). 

Yada yada, fasting forward (as my son used to say) to the last sentence of the chapter,

The upshot of our discussion in this chapter, then, is that the intellect, like the self whose intellect it is, is real and irreducible.

You can't just yada yada over a whole chapter.  

That's true. Unlike you, we don't have an angelic intellect whereby we can know truths and essences directly, with no toilsome and slack-consuming reasoning our way there:

Our human mind comes into possession of knowledge by a gradual and laborious process. It requires first of all a number of years of physical development for the proper operation. It rises slowly from single sensible perceptions to general ideas of things and finally to abstract truth. 

And here we are. Conversely, 

The Angelic intellect, entirely free and independent from matter and senses, needs no such development. It is in the full possession of its power from the very beginning of its existence. There is no need of gathering elements of knowledge bit by bit, of adding ideas to ideas in order to discover truth, as is the case with us.

I suppose the closest we can come to angelic intelligence is the one-and-done apprehension of a self-evident truth, in which case to understand is to believe. Also, once seen it cannot be unseen, no matter how much I-bleach the left throws at us, e.g., arguments against natural rights such as freedom of speech.

Some people don't believe in universal concepts, and try to reduce them to something less, e.g., images, words, brain states, and whatnot. I thought nominalists were the worst, but even worse are eliminativists, which shouldn't even be a word:

Much more radical than the view that concepts, thoughts, etc. can be reduced to mental imagery, perceptual representations, or linguistic behavior is the thesis that there simply are no such things -- that we should not bother trying to reduce them to something else, but rather ought partially or entirely to eliminate such notions from our account of human nature (Feser).

So we've learned something this morning: that there are people who aren't even reductionists, or who reduce reductionism to even less than it already is. It of course presupposes a mechanistic and scientistic framework, and garbage in, tenure out. We shrug at their theory, while they shrug at the whole durn existentialada, i.e., the vertical/hierarchical structure of reality. They give nihilism a bad name.

Gosh. It reminds me of Sheriff Bell in No Country for Old Men: "I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't." Like a new kind of intellectual crime or something:

Crime? Is this really a judicial matter?

Well, we surely know that ideas have consequences. For example, if you believe men are women, then some women are going to get the shit beat out of them. Entirely licitly.

I charge eliminativists with the coldblooded attempted murder of nothing less than Western civilization:

if eliminativism is right, then every sentence in every work of eliminativist philosophy and every sentence in every book of science, is as meaningless as "Trghfhhe bgghajdfsa adsa" is.

At the very least it's intellectual suicide, with intent to commit logocide. 

Eh, I think we're done here. No need to debunk what isn't even bunk. 

A Thought-Provoking Analysis

Your analysis of Chapter 3 of Immortal Souls is insightful and thought-provoking. It's clear that you've engaged deeply with the text and its implications.

A Few Additional Thoughts:

1. The Elusive Nature of Intellect: You've accurately highlighted the challenge of defining and understanding the intellect. It's a concept that has perplexed philosophers for centuries. Its intangible nature makes it difficult to pin down, leading to various interpretations and debates.

2. The Role of Language and Thought: The relationship between language and thought is a fascinating aspect of the intellect. While language can shape and express thought, it's important to recognize that thought can also precede language. This raises questions about the nature of pre-linguistic thought and the extent to which language is necessary for complex cognitive processes.

3. The Impact of Materialism and Reductionism: Materialistic and reductionist philosophies, which often underpin eliminativism, pose significant challenges to our understanding of consciousness and the intellect. By reducing mental phenomena to physical processes, these views can obscure the richness and complexity of human experience.

4. The Implications for Ethics and Morality: A robust understanding of the intellect is crucial for ethical and moral reasoning. If we deny the existence of objective truths or the capacity for rational thought, it becomes difficult to ground moral principles and values.

A Question for Further Discussion:

• How do you reconcile the limitations of the human intellect with its potential for profound insight and understanding?

I'm eager to hear your thoughts on these points and any other insights you may have.

Be patient, my artificial friend. We have much more to go.