Malebranche on Knowledge of the Soul

Of all our knowledge, the first is of the existence of our soul; all our thoughts are incontestable demonstrations of this, since there is nothing more obvious than that what actually things, is actually something. But if it is easy to know the exisence of our soul, it is not so easy to know its essence and nature.

Malebranche, The Search after Truth, Book VI, Part II, Chapter 6 (LO 480)

And Am I Born to Die?

My favorite Sacred Harp song, hands down, is 47, "Idumea":

And am I born to die?
To lay this body down!
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?

A land of deepest shade,
Unpierced by human thought;
The dreary regions of the dead,
Where all things are forgot!

Soon as from earth I go,
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my portion be!

Waked by the trumpet sound,
I from my grave shall rise;
And see the Judge with glory crowned,
And see the flaming skies!

The lyrics are by Charles Wesley, the tune is by Ananias Davisson. The tune is "Idumea" in the proper sense; Sacred Harp singing is tune-singing, and the words are just there to go with it. Thus, instead of singing "Amazing Grace" you are singing "New Britain," its tune; even if you, in fact, sing the words of "Amazing Grace" to that tune. Any other words would do, although those are the standard ones. "Idumea" really needs to be heard in proper fasola style. Fortunately, since it is one of the most popular Sacred Harp songs, there are a lot of recordings online. Start here for a taste of it and many others.

Of course, since we are talking about fasola, it also really needs to be sung -- belted out fearlessly. Sacred Harp singing is less about the prettiness of the sound than the experience of the singing -- singers' music, as they say. I want some day to sing Idumea in a real Sacred Harp singing. Until then, it's humming and singing it on my own.

Body and Bride IIIb

(B) Bates suggests that I have not addressed the following point:

[E]ven if an individual were not the right type of entity to enter into the eschatological relation with Christ constituting salvation--only the Church could do that--still individuals could take the Church/Christ relation as normative here below for relations like marriage between persons. The fact the Church is many is no bar to one individual modelling behavior here below on the Church in the hereafter.

But the reason I have not addressed it is that it is irrelevant to the argument, even on its own terms. The argument was supposed to present a set of premises grounded in Scripture qua canonical narrative; it is thus irrelevant whether individuals can modeling behavior in this way. What the argument needs is for this to be actually grounded in Scripture qua canonical narrative in such a way that it supports the premises of the argument without generating an equivocation; and Bates continues to evade the point that a conservative Anglican can simply point out that it does not appear to be so, and that assuming that one can directly move from the Christ-Body to the Christ-member relation without equivocation is the fallacy of division.

Bates notes that there can be properties of wholes that are shared by its parts; I never suggested otherwise. It still doesn't get him out of the charge, which might be made by a conservative Anglican, that he appears to be committing a fallacy of division, since a fallacy of division occurs when the attempt is made to move from property of the whole to property of the part without a bridge principle, i.e., a warrant for doing so. This is so even when the inference is accidentally correct. For instance, the following inference, taken strictly, commits the fallacy of division:

A wall of bricks is material; therefore each of the bricks is material.

Now, the inference is accidentally correct in this case; but it's the same fallacious type of inference as:

A fleet of ships is spread out over the whole bay; therefore each of the ships is spread out over the whole bay.

In ordinary discourse, we would take the first to be an enthymematic representation of an argument of different form, one which does not commit the fallacy of division because it has additional premises about the nature of material composition. What Bates needs are such additional premises; only these can show that the apparent fallacy was merely apparent -- that the appearance of committing the fallacy of division was due not to the argument itself but to how it was stated. What is more, if the argument is to do what Bates has already said it is supposed to do, it must give premises that are "grounded in the Bible qua canonical narrative". It is unclear what these premises are supposed to be. Bates claims in the response that he has given them, but I don't see them anywhere. What I do see is a passage that's difficult to make any sense of. He starts out with this:

In response, I suggest that Christ will never marry a city. Jerusalem is figurative for the Church, as I think Siris would agree. Revelation 21 is referring with Jerusalem to what Ephesians 5 calls the Body, meaning there the Church. Revelation is speaking, therefore, of an eschatological union between the Church and Christ, something begun here below rather imprefectly and consummated hereafter. But note Revelation pictures the consummated relation a marriage relation. Again, marriage is referred to figuratively, as I take it Jesus in the Gospel narrative was serious in saying that there is no marriage in heaven. The point though is at least in part that here below we can understand something of the meaning of the consummated relation between the Church and Christ in terms of something we are familiar with, namely marriage here below: the consummated relation will be like that. Thus, the Revelation 21 text is rather favorable to my cause, which requires seeing the eschatological relation between the Church and Christ as a model for marriage here below. In fact, Revelation 21 almost settles the issue. For as I have already mentioned, I see no reason why a relation between individuals cannot be modelled on a relation between a group and an individual.

Nothing in this line of reasoning shows that "Revelation 21 almost settles the issue". All Bates has pointed out here is that Revelation uses symbols, and that one of these symbols is marriage; and that Christian marriage is modeled on the relation between Christ and the Body. This, I take it, is agreed on by all parties. He then goes on to say:

Here is what I take to be the clinching point. In both cases, the salvific relation involves unity with Christ: that is, the achievement of a unitive purpose. That unity is pictured between Christ and the corporate Church when marriage is referred to in Revelation 21; indeed, it seems to me that the use of marriage as figuative in Revelation 21 is licensed at least in part by common knowledge of the normative achievement of a unitive purpose in marriage here below. Just so, the unity between the individual member and Christ achieved by Christ in the giving of salvation would license the use of marriage as descriptive, figurative language. It follows that the eschatological salvific unity between the member and Christ could serve meaningfully to model marriage here below in one's relation to a spouse.

Perhaps; but I can't say because I don't know what clinching point Bates is intending here. The reasoning seems to be [this is reconstruction, not quotation]:

The salvific relation between Christ and Church involves unity with Christ.
The salvific relation between Christ and individual involves unity with Christ.
They therefore exhibit a unitive purpose.
Marriage exhibits a unitive purpose.
Thus, to that extent, both salvific relations can be described figuratively as marriage.

Which is wholly true. It doesn't move the argument forward, though. I pointed out in my original response that there is a long tradition of using marriage in this figurative way. It does not follow that the conservative Anglican has to accept the original argument, because it still looks like the argument is engaging in a fairly straightforward equivocation. The argument, you will recall, is as follows:

1. Christ was resurrected in the flesh, and will exist in the world to come.
2. In the world to come, members of the Church will be resurrected, male and female, in the flesh.
3. In the world to come, the members of the Church will bear a new real, reciprocal relation to Christ; call it R.
4. Here below, marriage should be modeled on R.
5. R obtains between males: for instance, Christ and each blessed male.
6. As R obtains between males (from 5), and marriage is to be modeled on R (from 4), marriage may obtain between males.

This is supposed to be grounded in the Bible qua canonical narrative. But Bates has provided nothing to show that in these terms the conservative Anglican has to accept premise 4 for both relations. It is one thing to say, "This is grounded in the Bible as a canonical narrative: that marriage should be modeled on the relation between Christ and His individuals members." This Bates nowhere proves, although it is what the argument requires. It is another thing to say, "Because they both involve unitive purpose of some sort or other, we can use marriage as a metaphor for the relation between Christ and His individual members." Which is true, but doesn't support anything in the argument. Basically what's being pointed to here is that we can reasonably call the Christ-Church relation marriage and the Christ-individual relation marriage. It is true. It doesn't follow that any other properties transfer. I can call the sea foamy and your latte foamy; that doesn't mean I can sail in your coffee cup.

The problem is even worse when you consider that the language is metaphorical, and explicitly recognized to be so. A metaphor is simply not enough. Bates has been clear enough about the reasoning behind the metaphor; but this reasoning doesn't meet up with the requirements of the argument at any point. In particular, it doesn't give, or even suggest a Biblical grounding for the claim that the same relation on which marriage is modeled is a relation obtaining between Christ and males. (It should be noted that I seem to have accidentally mislead Bates about what the 'same relation' here means, since he takes it in his response as numerical identity; whereas I was taking it as sameness in kind.) It is this Bates has not shown, and it is this that he needs to show if the argument is to be saved from the charge of equivocation. And, indeed, Bates's strongest argument so far has suggested otherwise: for it has suggested nothing more than that we can draw metaphors for two different kinds of relation from the same domain. But this is hardly surprising. This commonality of having a common source domain for metaphorical purposes, however, is not enough to remove suspicion of equivocation, which requires that the terms be of the same kind, in this case that the R obtaining between males is the R on which marriage should be modeled. That's one R; if there are really two different meanings given to R, the argument is simply equivocal and fails. The conservative Anglican will point out that the R on which marriage should be modeled is a relation between Christ and the Church; and that the R obtaining between males is a relation between Christ and the individual. Thus the argument equivocates and should be rejected. Bates needs to show that the relation between Christ and the Church, then, is the same as the relation between Christ and the individual, not merely in the sense that we can use the same metaphor to speak of them, but in the sense that they really are the same.

(Also, as a side note with regard to Bates's last paragraph, as I pointed out before, the conservative Anglican is not committed to denying that the Church is nothing over and above its members. The same questions of division, equivocation, and Biblical grounding arise whether he does or not. The real issue is that Bates continues to attribute properties of the Christ-Church relation to the Christ-individual relation in a way, it would seem, no conservative Anglican need grant, even according to the standards Bates himself intends his argument to meet.)

Body and Bride IIIa

Bates has a response to my response to his response to my response to his original argument.

The two basic issues that have fallen out are (A) the (relatively minor) question of whether the Christ-Church relation Scripture tells us is a model for marriage is eschatological; and (B) the question of whether a conservative Anglican can reject the argument on form alone. After considering Bates's latest response, I think my points still stand whole and entire, although Bates is on stronger ground with regard to (A) than to (B). Here are my responses to the newer parts of the argument. To keep the size down, in this post I'll consider only (A).

(A) Bates thinks I am forgetting the wife-husband direction of the marriage analogue in the threefold analogy. The reason I have not focused on it is rather different. For one thing, Paul elaborates rather more in the husband-wife direction. But taking it explicitly into account does not yield the conclusion Bates thinks it does.

If the original argument is to work, and if Ephesians 5 is to justify premise 4, the relation R must be the actual relation Paul mentions in Ephesians 5. Certainly it must be so if it is to be taken on its own original terms as "grounded in the Bible qua canonical narrative." But there is no hint in this passage of an eschatological relation. The pattern of the passage, I take it, is roughly as follows:

be filled with the Holy Spirit
(among other things) being mutually subject to each other,
wives to their husbands as to the Lord,
for the husband is the head of the wife
as Christ is the Head of the Church (=the Body)
as Savior of the Body;
as the Church is subject to Christ
so wives should be subject to their husbands

and then on to the question of the role of husbands. Now, since Christ is Head qua Savior (that this is the intent is made very clear when he goes on to talk about husbands), then the subjection or subordination that is the reciprocal complement to the Headship of Christ -- the only relation that can be in view here -- can only be eschatological in this passage if Christ's Headship and salvation are eschatological. However, Paul throughout Ephesians talks of our salvation and our incorporation as things that have already been done in Christ; and his exhortations (including the exhortation to be filled with the Spirit that starts him off on this topic) are exhortations for individuals to live worthily of their call to grow into Christ as parts of his body. The relation that Paul considers in the wife passage is the Body's subordination to its Head (understood as the source of its life); this exists now. What does not exist now is perfect incorporation of the parts of the Body, i.e., us. If it were merely a matter of saying that in the eschatological case, in which the Church is presented to Christ in splendor, were useful because it is the pure case, one in which a number of distracting issues are eliminated, there would be nothing to disagree with here. But Bates seems to want to make a stronger claim that the relation itself is eschatological; and there is nothing in this passage that suggests this. Bates wants to argue that in particular "the Church here below in its relation to Christ does not present an edifying or morally suitable model that might serve as an ideal for marriage"; but this seems explicitly contradicted by the passage in question.

It seems to me that here as elsewhere Bates keeps sliding between the Body and its parts indiscriminately; for the Body's subjection to Christ is the reciprocal complement to Christ's Headship, and there is no reason to think that this relation as it currently exists is not an edifying or morally suitable model. What certainly does not present an edifying or morally suitable model is the relation of individual parts to the Head of the Body; for in this case Paul has clearly implied that we individually can fail to live in a manner worthy of the call we have received to grow into Christ, who is the source of life for the whole Body. Paul, however, clearly ties the subjection of the Body to Christ's Headship over it; there is not only nothing to indicate that the two cannot be pried apart, the argument of the passage seems to preclude this entirely. For as the argument presents the matter, the wife's submission is analogous to the Church's submission in that, or because, the husband's headship is analogous to Christ's Headship as Savior. So again, Paul still focuses on Christ's Headship in discussing the Church's relation to Christ (which is the relation to Christ as Head).

Contrary to what Bates suggests later, my point in all this is not to ask "what that eschatological relation has to do with marriage"; this is to confuse (A) and (B). I can perfectly well see what the eschatological relation has to do with marriage, since on the principles of my criticism it has exactly the same relevance to marriage in the eschaton that it has now. My point is that moving to the eschaton contributes nothing whatsoever to the strength or weakness of the argument. The Pauline passages suggest that the relation is not exclusive to the eschaton, so emphasis on the eschatological can be nothing more than a matter of convenience -- a pure case, as I say above. So the whole issue of eschatology is simply beside the point unless Bates can show that it is necessary to interpret Paul as confining the relevant relation to the eschaton. It does exhibit, however, the continual confusion between Body and parts of the Body that pervades the argument.

Wherein I (Sort of) Defend Hume's Argument Against Miracles

I am reading with great interest Alan Hajek's paper on Hume's argument on miracles (PDF; ht: OPP). It's a good paper, and rightly criticizes a number of faulty views; but I think it is faulty for different reasons. So here are a few thoughts.

(1) I'm a little puzzled at Hajek's puzzlement over Hume's apparent qualification of his argument:

I beg the limitations here made may be remarked, when I say, that a miracle can never be proved, so as to be the foundation of a system of religion. For I own, that otherwise, there may possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony....(SBN 99 (p. 127)

Hume seems to explain himself pretty well, I think, since the claim is summarizing the argument in the previous paragraph, which in turn is summarizing the argument as a whole. There he gives a quick overview of his balancing view of contrary probabilities, notes that on his arguments "all popular religions" are balanced against such probabilities that there is a total "annihilation" even at best assessment. Thus, he concludes, "no human testimony can have such a force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion." Or in other words: because of psychological issues that arise in the case of popular religions, there is no testimony that can give such grounding to a miracle that we can base a religion on it.

After making the above qualification, he gives examples to clarify his point, by considering three hypothetical scenarios.

(1) The Eight Days of Total Darkness. In this case, the testimony is assumed to be unanimous, or nearly so, and the event is supposed to be analogous to things that happen in nature. Thus it almost comes within reach of human testimony on its own; with solid testimony one might well believe it.

(2) An Apparent Resurrection of Queen Elizabeth. In this case, the testimony is universal among historians, who record a curious confluence of circumstances suggesting that Elizabeth died and then was later alive. Such a strong evidence for such an event would be very surprising, says Hume, but even very surprising things are more plausible than such a radical violation of nature.

(3) This miracle ascribed to a system of religion. The introduction of religion introduces such a mix of knavery and gullibility that we can reject it out of hand.(I'm sure you catch the hint here, of an apparent resurrection ascribed to a system of religion.)

What this all means is fairly simple. Hume's balancing account does not of itself rule out accepting the occurrence of a miraculous event; it merely sets the bar for accepting one very, very high. And in particular, the psychological conditions have to be just right, so that we can accept that the people giving the testimony were not foolish, and were not liars, and are testifying to something that is not utterly incredible. Hume rejects religion-founding miracles because the psychological conditions in such cases are not just right and on his account cannot be. There is nothing mystifying about Hume's concession to the hypothetical eight days of darkness. Hajek makes a distinction between extraordinary events and miracles that is superficially similar to the distinction Hume makes between them; but only superficially so. What distinguishes the two for Hume is that we can't say that events violate the laws of nature if we are ignorant of the circumstances in which the events occur; an extraordinary event differs from an ordinary event by occurring under very different circumstances, whereas a miracle differs from an ordinary event by being very different under the same circumstances. Campbell and some others argue that this is actually giving away the whole store; but whether it is so or not, it is clear that the eight days of darkness occur under normal circumstances. Indeed, they occur under circumstances as normal and ordinary as one could wish, the astronomical facts of the earth's revolution and rotation and the meteorological facts of the world's standard weather patterns. To file the eight days under the label 'extraordinary event' Hajek would have to show that they did not occur under the ordinary circumstances. Since it's a purely hypothetical example, and Hume himself doesn't suggest otherwise, this is impossible.

(2) Hajek thinks that Hume's concession of arguments for contrary propositions, each of which leaves no room for doubt or argumentation, is a slip. I think this is fatal to his interpretation. As Fogelin has pointed, there is nothing inconceivable about having two arguments of completely different kinds, neither of whose general forms you can reject, concluding to propositions that can't both be true from starting points that can't be rejected. It's a tragic situation, but it's possible. And even if this weren't true, it is very, very clear from what Hume says elsewhere that on his account this not only is possible but happens all the time. It's his repeated point in Part IV of Book I of the Treatise. What is more, it is clear that Hume is not committed to the claim that all arguments leaving no room for doubt and opposition are equal; because he is not committed to the claim that they are all equally vivid or forceful. (Indeed, many things he says require us to say he is committed to the claim that they are not all equally vivid or forceful, even if they are all genuinely indubitable.)

(3) From what I've said so far you can probably guess that I think Hajek's premise 6 is rejected by Hume; he doesn't merely say that uniform experience is a direct and full proof against a miracle; he says it can't be destroyed (so as to render the miracle credible) except by a superior opposing proof. And the reason for this is not hard to find. In Hume the force of a proof is not something intrinsic to it; the force of the proof is the psychological force with which it strikes on the mind. What he envisions in Part I of the essay on miracles is a scenario in which two proofs, each of which is forceful enough that we can't reject it, oppose each other. They each make the other incredible (in a straightforward psychological sense), while at the same time making a psychological demand on us, one that cannot be rejected, that we believe its conclusion. But it doesn't follow that they each make the other equally incredible, or that they each serve to make their own conclusion equally credible. Since on Hume's balancing account in every case of opposing evidences we subtract the force of the weaker from the force of the stronger to get the resultant force of belief in the stronger, so we, unable to reject either argument on its merits, can nonetheless be compelled by sheer psychological force to believe one over the other, if one strikes the mind more strongly than the other. Our own belief will be recognized by us as absurd, given an argument that we cannot reject; but the fact will remain: we believe it (although under the recognized qualification that we have to, for other reasons, regard it as an absurd belief, probably the result of our psychological makeup more than any absolute rational foundations). Hume is, in fact, very clear about this point; in a note to Blair on Campbell's criticism of him at this point, he says that the kind of argument against a miracle is a full proof; but that there are weaker and stronger instances of this kind of proof.

Thus Hume's argument in the essay has the following general form:

Part I: Even given that the testimony for a miracle amounts to a full proof, it is counterbalanced by another full proof, the full proof we all undoubtedly have of the uniformity of nature; as a matter of inevitable psychology, if the two proofs are opposed to each other, we could only believe the proof for the miracle if it overbalanced the proof for the uniformity of nature in terms of psychological force.

Part II: Due to psychological issues associated with religions, no testimony for a miracle in religious cases can amount to a full proof. (But Hume explicitly denies that he is committed to saying that no testimony for a miracle can amount to a full proof in other cases, if the psychological issues don't arise in those cases.)

There are many things that may be said against both parts; but it must be admitted that it's a clean and straightforward argument. It does yield exactly the conclusion Hume claims it does. There is no slip in Hume's concession; it is a deliberate and strategic move in one of Hume's best-designed arguments.

So Hajek's basic claim in refuting Hume's argument is wrong. Hume does not require the probability for a miracle to be vanishingly small; he does not assume this; in fact, he explicitly denies that it has to be.

Nonetheless much of what Hajek says in the paper is still of interest in considering the argument. He does somewhat misleadingly make it sound as if Butler were giving an argument against Hume -- which would, it must be pointed out, be attributing a miracle to Butler, namely, prophecy. Butler, of course, is not considering anything like Hume's balancing principle. The criticism of 'Butler-style counterexamples' doesn't work against Campbell's 'Butler-style counterexample' because Campbell's isn't supposed to be a counterexample to balancing but to something it presupposes, namely, that we can reduce all classes of evidence to the same class. Hajek's defense of Hume's balancing principle simply assumes this reduction.

Carnival of Citizens IV

The newest Carnival of Citizens is up at "Positive Liberty";it's on the theme, Church and State (although there are other things). There's an excellent selection of posts. An especially interesting post at "Movement of Existence" looks at Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the plot to assassinate Hitler.

Herbert

Yesterday was the Feast of George Herbert in the Anglican calendar; I think that deserves something to mark it. So I post one of my favorite Herbert poems:

The Agonie

Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.

Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love in that liquour sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.