End of Semester, etc.

Currently reading: The Philosophical Vision of John Duns Scotus
by Mary Beth Ingham and Mechthild Dreyer

End of Semester

The end of the semester is nigh. And good thing, too; it's probably been one of the worst semesters I've had. But, in two weeks the 17 hour load will be gone, I will be done with coursework, I can actually start reading the books I'm interested in (ok, continue reading, but without guilt), and soon after I can quit Starbucks and maybe get a job as a tutor, or something else with some positive level of job satisfaction. I was going to hold on until the end of the summer, but I got turned down for the Logic adjunct professorship at Trinity and so I really have no reason to delay the decision.

The New, Improved Medieval Me

Summer reading list: medieval philosophy and theology. I had gotten a bit disenamored of the medievals last fall, but they still had an odd fascination for me. I finally realized why: I was trying to treat them as analytic philosophers. Now, while the level of rigour and analysis is similar, modern philosophy doesn't much like systems. Analytic philosophy in particular tends to be concerned with discrete problems. While analytic philosophers themselves may out the problems together into a larger whole, they don't do this so much in their writings. So I can read Plantinga on modal logic and on epistemology without having to connect the two.

When I had tried this on Scotus, however, I only got bogged down in what seemed to be endless details. It was Aquinas that brought me back, however, through contemporary Thomists Gilson and Clarke; I was able to see the whole which made the parts meaningful. So I thought, I wonder if Scotus' thought was this developed? As Scotus did not leave behind a Summa, it is more difficult to see this in his thought, but the book I'm reading through right now (see top of this post) is helping me to see the bigger picture and getting me re-interested. That, and realizing that Scotus is his own philosopher/theologian and not just an Aquinas alternative.

Thesis

So, with all the reading I want to do, as well with preparation for a doctorate program in the area, I have to wonder if it may be appropriate to change my thesis topic yet again. Sure, I've been telling everyone for a semester that it was going to be Kierkegaard and Shinran, and that's interesting enough, but I have done anything official yet. On the other hand, I need to do something quickly; my one reader is on sabbatical in the Fall, so I have to have at least an idea of the flow of the paper by the end of the summer.

Our New Pet Tiger

Joy and I decided that we wanted a pet, but a dog or a housecat would just cause too many problems. A dog need more attention than we can give right now, and a cat would leap up and destroy all of Joy's knick-knacks. So, enter the Tiger: a lovable lop with tan coloring and black stripes. Intelligent critter; can get out of almost any setup of cardboard boxes we make to pen him in. So most likely we'll need to get a real pen so that he can exercise without constant supervision.

Gotta Have Soul

Currently reading: The Chosen by Chaim Potok

Reuven, when my Daniel was four years old, I saw him reading a story from a book. And I was frightened. . . . It was a story in a Yiddish book about a poor Jew and his struggles to get to Eretz Yisroel before he died. Ah, how that man suffered! And my Daniel enjoyed the story, he enjoyed the last terrible page, because when he finished it he realized for the first time what a memory he had. . . . I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, 'What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!'
- The Chosen, by Chaim Potok

How often am I like Daniel! It's so easy as an intellectual to go through systems of philosophy, to preach the benefits of one set of ethics over another, to go through abstruse metaphysical points as merely a mind. It really is only recently that I seem to be able to feel the suffering in a text at all rather than note it as one piece of information that helps me to understand the story.

(btw, credit for recommending the book, which has been a rewarding read, goes primarily to my uncle, Dr. Corduan, for bringing it up in Western Religions years ago, and secondly to Dr. VanGemeren who mentioned something by Potok in a recent Intro to OT course which reminded me that I should read it)

In other news, I think I got my boss to change my hours at Starbuck's to a more humane time. 4:45 in the morning (at night?) is just not right, and 5:45 isn't much better.

Cause and Effect

I've been ruminating a bit on the nature of causation, and I've been coming to a couple conclusions that I figured I would jot down. I think that the way we think of causation in our scientific age is backward, and it is creating unnecessary problems in the areas of mind-body relations* and freedom of the will**. This won't be an argument for either a soul which is distinct from the body, or for any form of libertarian free will (to perhaps excessively oversimplify, that in order to be free in doing an action, it must have been possible for me to have done the opposite); it is merely an argument that a conceptual shift makes these concepts more plausible.

First, the mind-body problem. It is commonly remarked that we have no idea how an immaterial mind could interact with a material body, so the concept of a mind causing physical motion ends up being incoherent. However, I would suggest that the opposite is the case. Mind-body interaction is precisely where the concept of causation comes in; it is clearer that I cause the billiard ball to move by intentionally picking it up then it is that the billiard ball moves because a pool stick hit it. The willing agent is the primary locus of concepts of causation, with concepts of physical causation being analogous to the primary sense.

Second, the notion of libertarian free will. If I am libertarianly free, then by most accounts there must be at least some actions for which it is possible that I could have done otherwise then I did (though this need not apply to every action, and even this simple phrase is nuanced differently in contracausal- and agent-causal- libertarianism; regardless, the basic idea remains). It has been argued that this is nonsense; I perform actions for causes, and to talk about the indetermination of my actions is simply to say that I act randomly, which surely doesn't get us anywhere. However, I again would suggest that this critique is possible because we put physical, efficient causation as primary (where efficient causation is more or less the typical view of causation in science; A causes B means in some way that A makes B happen). There seems to be a different type of causation, though, which has been ignored as it cannot be reduced to efficient causation. I can write down some words here, and I did it for a reason; I can point to that reason as a sort of "cause". However, what is so incoherent about suggesting that I could have written different words in the same circumstance, while having reasons for those words? Neither act was random, yet neither was determined. In addition, it might be time to recover Aristotle's telic cause; the "cause" of my actions could be said to be their goal, which allows some maneuverability in my acting. Telic causes may not apply to nature (at least, efficient causes seem to be more fashionable), but it may be that efficient causes similarly do not apply to acts of volition in the same way they do to nature.

To go out on even more of a limb (would that be going out on a twig then?), it seems that to some extent, in the case of efficient causation, the effect is not separate from the cause. I'm getting slightly less than analytical here, but I think this is why we shy away from deterministic views of human volition: if my acts are all determined, I don't really exist. I am a lump of causes coming together without remainder.*** If volitional causation is primary then, I think we start approaching a Berkelian view where minds of some sort are the reality of things. The physical world would not exist separately from these minds. This step I think is more of a leap than the previous two, but I think there is something to it.

At any rate, given some of the above discussion contingency would be regarded as acts of volition rather than merely that which is neither necessary nor impossible (and as such, almost random; at very least stuff put together in a sort of piecemeal fashion).****

----
* By "mind", I am referring to not just reason, but also the will, and perhaps primarily the will. I also would contend that reason and will entail emotion. For the curious out there, my own views on the issue fluctuate between Thomism and (a properly conceived) Cartesianism.
** Again, for the curious, my own views here are that of a(n agent-causal-)libertarian, heavily influenced by Duns Scotus.
*** Which seems to allow that while human beings cannot be determined and free, as they would ultimately be determined by something outside of themselves and so not existent, God can be determined (and so incapable of sinning) as God would not be determined by anything outside of Godself and so the same problem would not apply.
**** This idea, which was part of what started my ruminations on these issues, comes directly from Scotus.

Quote of the day:
"If it looks like an Evangelical duck and it quacks like an Evangelical duck, it may not be an Evangelical duck. The quacks may have different semantic content." - Dr. Vanhoozer, in a discussion of Van Til's take on Barth

New Semester

Currently reading: The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright

So, the new semester begins. I'm actually having to go back to tests and textbooks; I think that my independent studies and seminars have made me soft. Although it may be nice to actually have fellow students to talk to - it gets a little lonely being the only person working on certain research interests.

So, here's the schedule for the semester:

• Intro to Old Testament
• Intro to New Testament
• Systematic Theology II: Christ, Sin, and Salvation
• Karl Barth
• Religious Epistemology

I'm looking forward to the last two classes the most; systematic theology had looked interesting, and the subject material certainly is, but I'm currently a bit disappointed while reading the first book for the course. I've gotten used to rigorous argument and analysis, which some theologians don't really seem to use that well. I suppose that they are much better than I am in putting theory into practice and making doctrine relevant; I'm just tired of:

• The awful presentations of medieval views (whether Aquinas by Evangelicals, or Scotus by Radical Orthodoxy, or Augustine by various people)
• Being told how we should all live based on a couple poor inferences (even if the Biblical picture of the person is as a mind-body unity, this doesn't jusify the statement that we need to play sports or we are not "full-orbed" Christians)
• Lack of interaction with various sources (I don't care if one regards the Catholic view of justification and merit to be blatantly wrong; at least take more than a sentence to dismiss it. Aquinas does regard Scripture to be foundational and has read it and written a few commentaries; I think he is most likely fully aware of Ephesians)
• The type of argument that goes something like "The Bible says A; we use similar or the same words to describe B and C, so therefore to reject B and C is to be unbiblical" (*cough* discussions of sovereignty *cough*). This often is attended by a "attempts to dismiss B and C come from being philosophical rather than Biblical," despite the often quite philosophical framework which is being used for the "Biblical" view.

This is not to say that all theologians are of this sort (I like reading many theologians, even at times those who aren't as rigorous; Moltmann comes to mind), but I hear the basic lines often enough that it is getting rather tiring.

Now that I've ripped apart one book, here's one to commend: Intimacy or Integrity by Thomas Kasulis. It's a fascinating study of comparative philsophy and trying to understand different ways of thinking. In particular, he is focusing on inter-cultural conflicts in which the two parties agree on all of the facts, and simply think that the other side is irrational in acting as it does. Kasulis traces this back to a difference in understanding how things relate and the different focuses that the given cultures have; he then takes this insight on an extended thought experiment to show how these different views of relations have implications for epistemology, rational argument, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, and politics. I'm mostly interested in the difference between Analytic philosophy and East Asian thought (Kasulis himself developed many of his thoughts on the matter in thinking about Japanese philosophy), but the main points are applicable to many other areas (he brings up a few times the traditional thought patterns ascribed to men and women in Western culture; in addition, I think it would be relevant to differences between Western and Eastern Christianity).

Thesis Topic: Maybe?

I may actually have a working idea for a thesis topic; it wouldn't be the first, or even fifteenth, but it seems the most promising so far. As I have yet to formulate a satisfactory version of the question on its own, the historical genesis of the question may prove more useful (to anyone who hasn't been scared away already). Different traditions refer to a transcendent, ineffable something (or lack of something, or both something and lack of something, or neither something nor lack of something; maybe even all of the above). However, these ineffable transcendents don't seem to be the same (pace Hick); Pseudo-Dionysius, for example, is talking about God while Nagarjuna is talking about the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. Even though surface language appears the same, what allows for this differentiation? Are these thinkers inconsistent, or is there some way to allow for different ineffable transcendents?

To take this a step further, I am looking at Kierkegaard and the Japanese Buddhist Shinran. Both have some degree of apophaticism in their thoughts, and as a consequence stress the inner life of the believer and the way life is lived instead of trying to understand the non-understandable. So the thesis would be looking at a comparative study of these two thinkers, analyzing their solution to the problem of interacting with a transcendent reality, and asking the question of what makes for a Christian life as opposed to a Buddhist life in such frameworks (if there really could be any differentiation; it could turn out to be a reductio for existentialism).

Other than that, I guess there is my life outside of schoolwork too. Joy and I have been taking fencing classes; it's been lots of fun, but it ended last Tuesday :-(. So now we're going to have to look into an intermediate class and/or the fencing club in our area so that we can poke more people with swords.

This Semester

Currently reading: Overcoming Onto-Theology
by Merold Westphal
and
Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke

What I'm doing this semester:

• TAing for Intro to Philosophy
  1. An interesting class - it's an intro based mainly on Kant, interpreting philosophy through motifs common in his work. I'm getting to know the professor through the job; he's a stereotypical philosophy prof in a lot of ways (eternally befuddled and unorganized, for example), though he's a cool guy. Considers everything philosophical to come back to Kant (hence the focus of the course).
• Reading course on Duns Scotus
  1. Understudied medieval philosopher, when he's on I think he's even more brilliant than Aquinas. However, he doesn't have a systematic work which makes him more difficult to read, he's more willing to stop with an appeal to authority, and he tends to be more Catholic than Aquinas on the issues which divide Catholics and Protestants.
• Reading course on Japanese Religion
  1. Shinto, Zen, and Pure Land, mainly; currently I'm researching Shinran, founder of the True Pure Land school of Buddhism. A note on certain Zen writers (such as Abe or Nishitani): Zen is hard to understand. German idealism is hard to understand. The combination somehow succeeds in breaking through most of the boundaries that helped one understand either of the parts at all.
• Courses on Theism and Ethical Theories (haven't had a class for these yet, I'll have more to report later.)

One issue I've been struggling with philosophically as of late is how we can speak of God. One the one hand, it seems good to emphasize his otherness, his transcendence, his, well, God-ness, and certain approaches to theology do this well (negative theology, see Pseudo-Dionysius and Eastern Orthodoxy). However, at the same time, if what we say of God has any meaning at all (or, at least, any meaning of which we can be aware; I guess not quite the same thing, but it might as well be), and also if we take seriously the fact that God has revealed himself to us at least in part through language, there must be something positive that we can say about God, some concept (however basic) which we can apply to both God and creatures. Scotus is a proponent of the latter view, and is currently being trounced by certain groups (i.e. Radical Orthodoxy) because of it. While I still have no clue about where to stay in the balancing act, I will present 2 of his arguments for being able to postively predicate things of God univocally (that is, in the same way we do of creatures):

1. If we can only apply negative statments to God, then every such statement equally can be predicated of nothing. In the end, there is no way to separate God from nothing, and we seem to be crypto-atheists (similar to the problem with John Hick in his theory of religious pluralism).
2. There can be no theory of analogical language unless at some point there can be a common term applying to both God and creatures. If there is no such term, then any term used of God must be used entirely differently then it is used of creatures; analogy breaks down into either a form of univocation or equivocation (this is a summary of the argument; if there is more interest, I can present the full thing later).

Scotus' New and Improved Onto-Cosmological Argument

Edit: This argument is being left up mainly for historical purposes. Even the pared down version which I present below leaves out an important step, and even without this flaw doesn't have the force of the argument which I initially thought I had.

*Danger: Modal Logic Warning*

I've been reading through Scotus' argument for the existence of God, and given the strong modal tendencies of it, I figured I would try to find a version amenable to modern modal logic (not that medieval and modern modal logic are the same, though possible world semantics may be able to be traced back to Scotus' thought). His argument goes essentially like this (greatly simplified - Scotus was always one for details):

1. The are orders of causes in which A causes B to cause anything (essentially ordered causes, as opposed to accidentally ordered causes in which A may cause B in some way but then B can act on its own).
2. It is possible that there is a primary essential cause (there is no contradiction in asserting this).
3. Such a cause would be uncaused.
4. Anything that is uncaused and possible must exist.
5. This primary essential cause must exist.

That at least is the short version. Based on the above, and inspired by Plantinga's version of the ontological argument, I have developed the following

1. It is logically possible that if p is contingent, the contingency of p could imply that necessarily p could (materially) imply G. That is, it is logically possible that given a contingent thing, it would not exist when God does not.
2. If p exists actually and is contingent, then G exists actually.

It seems to have ever so slightly more force than Plantinga's argument. At very least, the main premise here is more confusing and thus provides more stalling time in searching for another argument. However, it still suffers from the defect of not saying much about God. I'll most likely work on a stronger version of the argument to supplement this.

For those who want to see the inner workings (where P indicates possibility, N indicates necessity, and -> indicates material implication):

By reductio:
1) P( (Pp & P-p) -> N(p -> G) ),0 (that is, at world 0) (by hypothesis; though I'm working on an argument for it. I thought I had something, but I had mixed up a P with an N. I wonder how God feels about falling prey to a typo?)
2) p, 0 (by hypothesis)
3) P-p, 0 (by hypothesis)
4) (Pp & P-p) -> N(p -> G), 1 (by possiblity of 1)
5) -G, 0 (reductio hypothesis)
Now, either (N-p v Np), or N(p -> G). If N(p -> G) = N(-p v G), then:
6a) N(-p v G), 1
7a) -p v G, 0
both of which lead to contradictions (by 2 and 5). Next, let us look at (N-p v Np). First, N-p:
6b) N-p, 1
7b) -p, 0
which leads to a contradiction by 2. Finally, Np:
6c) Np, 1
7c) -p, 2 (by 3)
8c) p, 2
Another contradiction. Therefore, if there is anything which exists and is contingent, and it is logically possible that there could be something which always exists when something contingent exists, then that thing actually exists. Put more strongly, if it is logically possible that God would exist whenever something contingent exists, then God exists.

Musings on Philosophy

Currently reading:
Bonaventure: The Soul's Journey into God
The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus edited by Thomas Williams
The Drama of Docrine by Kevin Vanhoozer

My reading list is constantly growing; I've just put a couple books up there now which I am currently going through, with a bunch more currently sitting on a table in the lounge outside my room. Drama of Doctrine in particular I'm finding to be interesting; it's addressing some of my concerns in the last post, so maybe I'll be able to find another way out. (I never said I liked the conclusions I reached, merely that they were the ones I reached).

In the meantime, I've been thinking about the purpose of philosophy. I currently have two musings. I do not claim that these are my full thoughts on the matter; throw in appropriate nuances and such as you see fit:

1. The purpose of philosophy is explication. I should not be trying to come up with some new idea, some fundamentally new, counter-intuitive way of looking at the world; I should be looking for a way to present what we already know, in a way that gives us greater understanding and insight. This can require creativity and looking at the world in a "new" way, but only if it in the end is another explication of what we already know.

2. The relationship between reason and emotion: in this life, reason should be primary, but not because it is intrinsically better. In fact, it would be better to be able to rely on our affections and direct vision, and these will shoulder out reason in the life to come. However, in the meantime, we are cripples due to the pervasiveness of sin, with both our reason and affections weakened. A cripple who runs will fall flat on her face; rather, the cripple should walk slowly and methodically. This does not remove the chance of falling, but lessens it and provides opportunity for catching ones balance. Similarly, the methodicalness of reason better suits it for dealing with our errors (though see my post on Reason and Creativity below; I'm only presenting one side here), though as we grow strong through God's grace in love and holiness, we can start taking larger steps. Reason is therefore necessary and should guide us the most in the early stages, but like Virgil in Dante's Divine Comedy it can only lead us so far until Beatrice, representing love, has to take over.

At the same time, I would like to affirm some words by Bonaventure:
First, therefore, I inivite the reader to the groans of prayer through Christ crucified, through whose blood we are cleansed from the filth of vice - so that he not believe
that reading is sufficient without unction,
speculation without devotion,
investigation without wonder,
observation without joy,
work without piety,
knowledge without love,
understanding without humility,
endeaveor without divine grace,
reflection as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom.

Theology Quiz Revisited

Since the theological quiz went around here, I took it again to see where I stand now that I know something about the issues. The results, as compared to last year's, were:

Then

Now

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan - 79% Roman Catholic - 75% Neo orthodox - 71% Reformed Evangelical - 61% Classical Liberal - 57% Emergent/Postmodern - 54% Fundamentalist - 39% Charismatic/Pentecostal - 21% Modern Liberal - 18%

You scored as Neo orthodox. You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God's most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth. Neo orthodox - 93% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan - 86% Emergent/Postmodern - 79% Roman Catholic - 75% Reformed Evangelical - 68% Fundamentalist - 32% Classical Liberal - 32% Modern Liberal - 18% Charismatic/Pentecostal - 18%

Am I the only Taylorite that is not an Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan any more? Though at the same time, I actually seem to have become more convinced of the view and of the importance of holy living through God's power (figures that out of a school of almost entirely Calvinistic professors, the most influential one on me would be the lone Wesleyan; I guess the truth makes itself known, eh, Scott?), though even more convinced of the centrality of Christ and the importance of the Trinity.

Omniscience and Cantor

I found an interesting debate between Plantinga and Grim, a mathematician on the possibility of omniscience (or anything else that would entail a quantification over all propositions): http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/faculty/pgrim/exchange.html. I'm working on a couple of ways around Grim's argument. One is Plantinga's approach, which I think merely leads to the idea that the set of valid properties is, at best, recursively enumerable (that it, there is no decision procedure for determining falsehood); an altogether unremarkable claim. Another is what is called the Skolem paradox, which some think show that levels of infinity are really relative, and as such a universal set I think could be exempt from a Cantorian argument; in fact, such a set could even be defined as one which cannot be put into correspondence with itself. However, I need to do some research as it could be possible that this interpretation of the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem has already been laid to rest. A third way is through an anti-Wittgensteinian maneuver: the world is made up of things, not facts. Fourthly, while Grim shows that there's a set of properties which cannot be put into one-to-one correpspondence with propositions, thereby entailing a new proposition, I think an argument can be made that there are at the same time at least as many propositions as properties, and even as many as their power set, their power set's power set, and so on, so there must be more propositions than powers. This doesn't solve the problem, but shows that there must be one somewhere within the argument. Finally, I guess one could resort to a form of nominalism, though I am hestitant to be a nominalist about abstract objects (physical objects I am ok with). I might buy TCR (theistic creative realism), which states that reality for God is nominalistic (though as opposed to theistic activism, he doesn't create logical laws - I need to see how this fits), which leads to a realism from our perspective.

Retraction, Sickness, and Philosophy

Currently reading:

Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends
by S. Mark Heim
Till We Have Faces
by C. S. Lewis

Probably should put retractions first, so I will say that I was a bit unfair to Cragg in my previous post. I still don't agree with his approach, I think that it does lead to a confusion of the gospel message, but I have discovered that I misread him; most of what he says is not incompatible with Niceno-Constantinopoletan orthodoxy, but sidesteps that issue in order to not alientate Muslims, while at the same time Cragg is trying to get them to ask themselves the pertinent questions. So I may have to read the book again, but in the meantime I was wrong with my criticisms.

I've been recovering for a the past couple weeks from illness. About half a week to a week into the 2-week class on Christian Encounters with World Religions, I caught a nasty flu. I was better for a day (it was a Tuesday), then I got throat problems. First, I was just feeling tired, demotivated, and had an itchy, scratchy throat. I went to the doctor Friday, who thought I had strep (which I had been beginning to suspect). Friday night it really hit hard, and I was out of comission the entire weekend and most of the following week. For it wasn't strep that I had; that would have been bad enough. I had full-blown tonsilitis, and the type that takes its time to go away. Finally, after being down and out for a week and a half, I was better, though I'm still constantly tired and finding it hard to sit down and concentrate on a book.

In the meantime, I've decided that I'm not sure that I really want to go into comparative religions. The subject material does interest me somewhat, but I'm finding that the discussions I really enjoy are in more analytic stuff, and religious studies programs are tending more and more towards continental philosophy. I want to be conversant with the continentals, but I don't think that I could be doing my main work in it. Thus, my current prognosis of what I want to do is philosophy of religion, maybe working with modal logic and philosophical theology. I think that it would be cool to work under Thomas Flint at Notre Dame, though I don't know that I could actually get in there.