One Use of the Linguistic Analogy

Out of curiosity I looked up one of the uses Augustine makes of the linguistic analogy for the Incarnation in De Trinitate; I know there's another one somewhere, but I couldn't find it offhand. I am using Hill's translation:

Thus the word which makes a sound outside is the sign of the word which lights up inside, and it is this latter that primarily deserves the name of 'word.' For the one that is uttered by the mouth of flesh is really the sound of a 'word,' and it is called 'word' too because of the one which assumes it in order to be manifested outwardly. Thus in a certain fashion our word becomes a bodily soudn by assuming that in which it is manifested to the senses of men, just as the Word of God became flesh by assuming that in which it too could be manifested to the senses of men. And just as our word becomes sound without being changed into sound, so the Word of God became flesh, but it is unthinkable that it should have been changed into flesh. It is by assuming it, not by being consumed into it, that both our word becomes sound and that Word became flesh.

Therefore if you wish to arrive at some kind of likeness of the Word of God, however unlike it may be in many ways, do not look at that word of ours which sounds in the ears, neither when it is uttered vocally nor when it is thought of silently. The words of all spoken languages are thought of silently, and people run over songs in their minds while their mouths remail silent; and it is not only the number of syllables either, but the notes of the melodies as well, all of them bodily realities pertaining to the bodily sense called hearing, that the thoughts of those who are thinking them over, and silently pondering them all, find ready to hand in their own kind of non-bodily images. But we must go beyond all these and come to that word of man through whose likeness of a sort the Word of God may somehow or other be seen in an enigma.

(Augustine, The Trinity. Edmund Hill, O.P., tr. New City Press (Hyde Park, NY: 1991) 409-410. The section is XV.20. A different translation can be found online.)

I find this very interesting, since 1) he notes (albeit briefly) that there are disanalogies even in the case of the interior word; 2) his primary interest in the linguistic analogy - here, at least - is to insist that the interior word is a better analogy to the divine Word than the word of speech; 3) the two features he isolates out as analogous to the incarnation are (a) words are signs manifesting the interior word as the incarnate form of the Word is a sign manifesting the divine Word; (b) the interior word is not 'consumed' by being embodied as the divine Word is not 'consumed' by being embodied, i.e., neither are 'changed into' the thing into which they are embodied (in the sense that they simply transmute into them). What is particularly interesting in this bunch of interesting things is the use of the linguistic analogy to the Incarnation to insist that we should do better than the linguistic analogy for the Trinity; it's a surprising twist, although it makes sense - if the word of speech is more analogous to the Incarnation, it's better to use the interior word embodied in the word of speech as an analogy for the divine Word itself.

More about Occasionalism

Bill Vallicella at Maverick Philosopher has a great post discussing Hume and Occasionalism. I think he's quite right that Hume's theory is occasionalism without God; although Hume never puts it this way - and, indeed, I think, explicitly avoids doing so. What he does instead is to argue that we can have no direct knowledge of divine causation - all we can do is infer it from impressions. It is crucial to occasionalism that we have some sort of way to recognize God's unique causal ability - either faith, or reason, or both; since Malebranche regards Reason itself as God (in particular, the Divine Word), he thinks we have direct rational access to God's divine causality, and he thinks we can find occasionalism in Scripture. So, in essence, Malebranche's view is that we know God alone is true cause, and everything else is an occasional cause, because God has told us so (by rational illumination and by Scriptural revelation). If you set faith aside, and deny that we have direct rational access to the fact that God is true cause, but hold that Malebranche's arguments that creatures are not true causes are sound, then you get Hume. Hume, in fact, always puts the difference between himself and Malebranche in terms of "innate ideas" - or, as we would put it, as a difference between rationalism and empiricism. Since Malebranche's rationalism is a strong rationalism - Reason is God, quite literally - removing Reason from the mix the way Hume does is exactly the same thing as removing God from it. This is very clear in Section VII of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, on causation, which is the most clearly Malebranchean thing Hume ever wrote. In effect, Hume is using Malebranche's arguments to argue for his own position. I briefly noted some of the ways in which this was so for my class this summer; you can find the post at the old Houyhnhnm Land, here.

Vallicella ends:

Brandon's view appears to be that all genuine causation is agent- as opposed to event-causation, but that (contra Malebranche) there are non-divine agents including perhaps material bodies. How then does Brandon fit together divine causation with natural causation? Is he a concurrentist like Freddoso? I myself argue that occasionalism is defensible in contemporary terms. A sketch of my position is presented in my article, "Concurrentism or Occasionalism?" (Amer. Cath. Phil. Quart., Summer 1996, pp. 339-359.) Not yet available on-line.

I wouldn't quite put my view this way myself, since I think the term 'agent causation' as it is used today actually only covers a small part of what was covered by the pre-occasionalist view of causation: it was an attempt, explicit in both Berkeley and Reid, to preserve that view for minds or spirits alone. And I think its current usage bears the clear marks of the restriction, which I do not accept; it is a carry-over from idealism. However, if this is all kept in mind, I could indeed put my view of causation that way, i.e., all genuine causation is agent-causation, where there are non-divine agents including material bodies. The result of this (when added to other things) is that I am, indeed, a concurrentist. Freddoso is a concurrentist along the specific lines of Suarez and Molina; my concurrentism doesn't have quite that specificity, so I'm just a generic concurrentist, one might say. I'll have to look up Vallicella's article; this whole area is of interest to me. (Freddoso's papers on the subject are quite good; I used his paper on secondary causation last year twice, once for Berkeley and once for Malebranche.)

In August I translated a passage from Malebranche on the issue of providence and causation, in which he lays out the field as he sees it, and why he rejects concurrentism. (The translation is somewhat literal, which is why there are commas everywhere - Malebranche likes balancing and counterbalancing clauses, so tends to mark every turn of the sentence with commas.)

Readworthy

1. Augustine on the Incarnation at "Maverick Philosopher," on Augustine's use of the linguistic analogy for the Incarnation in On Christian Teaching. Augustine uses it several times in On the Trinity, as well. Vallicella notes several of the disanalogies in the analogy. I'm inclined to think that Augustine wasn't putting the analogy forward as an argument for the coherence of the Incarnation, or a proof of its possibility; but this leaves us with the question of what he is doing. I think it could be argued that in part he is usually looking at just one element or aspect of the doctrine of the Incarnation. This is certainly the case whenever he gives an analogy for the Trinity, where he is always very careful to insist on the disanalogies, and is simply heading off certain types of objections or impediments to belief - e.g., someone who would disbelieve the doctrine of Trinity simply because things cannot be both three and one is overlooking that some things are both three and one. Augustine insists that this does not mean that these other things that are both three and one are exactly like the Trinity; rather, they just show that "things cannot be both three and one" is a bad objection to the Trinity. I'd have to go back and look at how Augustine uses the linguistic analogy; but I know that Greeks like Damascene occasionally use it to head off objections that Incarnation somehow involves a diminution or reduction of God. I suspect one reason he uses it is that he is already using the interior word analogy for the doctrine of the Trinity; and, whatever its imperfections, it does involve some sort of embodiment of the interior word.

Beyond this, I'm not sure Augustine's analogies are intended to be anything more than a rough first-attempt to help people get started on knowing what is not yet known. For instance, if someone were to come across the sentence, "The Word was made flesh" and were to ask, "What in the world could that even mean?", an analogy like the linguistic analogy might help clarify at least some aspects of the meaning of the sentence, without committing anyone to the claim that the Incarnation is a special case of the phenomenon of speech. (Indeed, going into the disanalogies as well as the analogies would clarify the meaning even more.)

An interesting and thought-provoking post.

2. A post on Theism at "AnalPhilosopher"; I don't agree with it all (in part because I do know people who have come to believe God exists because of cosmological arguments, and people who have come to be atheists because of the problem of evil; I also don't think it's necessary for a belief's being rationally grounded that it originally come about because of the arguments - but this actually makes me agree with Burgess-Jackson's conclusion even more), but it's interesting to get an atheist's perspective on the matter.

3. An Odd Ode by Thomas Gray at "Flos Carmeli"

4. A post on the last convicted witch in England at "Early Modern Notes"

5. Pictures from Burnet's Telluris Theoria Sacra at "Giornale Nuovo".

6. A description of Baghdad's current state by Hala Fattah at "Cliopatria"

Psychotic Architecture

One of the symbols that occasionally haunts horror and dark Gothic literature is that of the evil shape. It's been a while since I've read any Lovecraft, but I think he uses it occasionally. Here's the closest thing I've ever found to something that really has an evil shape. It's perhaps not quite up to 'evil'; but I think most people think of it as a bit creepy.

This building would make a great metaphor for a Kafka-esque story, with its wickedly slanted walls, it's tall brooding emptiness, it's visibility to an entire city, the refusal of the citizens of the city even to acknowledge its presence.

Hmmm. My literary wheels are starting to turn.

(Extended Hat-tip: From The Shape of Days, via Marginal Revolution, via Under the Sun.)

Two Augustinian Poem Drafts

Two poetic offerings today; the second is more recent, and was written after reading all the way through Augustine's On the Trinity (in Hill's excellent translation) in preparation for my PHL 310 course on Malebranche (the idea of the course being to examine Descartes, Augustine, and Malebranche, and see how Malebranche transmutes Descartes using Augustine). I don't recall the occasion for the first, but I came across it during my yearly Massive and Much Needed Sorting of Papers, which began today (and will continue, it seems, for some time). I liked it, and so decided to pass it on. The last line is an allusion to the old Christian proverb, to sing once is to pray twice (I don't remember the origin of the proverb, but it is usually attributed to Augustine as well).

God has Blessed my Cup of Tea

God has blessed my cup of tea;
It is a thing of wonder.
In the cup amidst the leaves
I hear His holy thunder.

My bed's beneath God's Holy Throne;
His Light is on my walls;
And as I pray my very room
Becomes a new St. Paul's.

The wind bites deep into my bones,
The fires fade and dim,
But every singe flick of frost
Bears up the weight of Him.

I stand beneath the winter tree
And love God's snow and ice,
And lift a hymn to pray for me;
each psalm is prayer twice.


Augustine's Hymn

O pure and holy God of Love,
The angels sing before your Throne,
By sharing all, each will each own;
The Voice, the Lamb, the burning Dove
Are each in all and one alone.

Anthems in my head will ring,
The sky is never blue but gold,
And as the earth, so new, is old,
So is the song the mornings sing
On days of light in breezes cold.

The wooing of my soul is here,
Astride this point as we ascend
With those who count the God a friend,
Enflamed with love and holy fear
By First and Last and Without End.

The Three are One, the One are Three,
Where each is all and all are each,
And when God gives as we beseech
He gives this truth, an endless sea
Beyond the mind's most brilliant reach.

You drown us with Your holy grace,
As dust must drown within the sun,
You drown us ere we have begun
By casting light from off Your Face:
The Three It is, where Three are One.

Time and Omniscience Again

Johnny-Dee wrote an excellent reply in the comments to my post on Wierenga/Craig:

Good post! I too am interested in the God and time issue, although I'm much closer to Craig's view.

I think your characterization of (1a) is not accurate to Craig's (and other's) arguments. The point in bringing up tensed facts is not to say "God knows temporal things; therefore God must know them temporally." Rather, it would be something like this:

(1a*) Tensed facts (if they exist) can only be known by a being in time.

The point is that if certain facts are tensed, and if God knows them (i.e., if God is omniscient), then God would have to be in time to know them.

As I see it, the debate turns on these questions: (1) Are there such things as "tensed facts"? (2) Is it possible to translate all facts into "timeless" propositions? I am convinced that certain facts have a tensed aspect that cannot be eliminated. Moreover, since I am convinced that God knows all facts, I believe he exists temporally.

I agree with the (1) and (2) as characterizations of the way the debate actually tends to go; I stand firm by my position that they are irrelevant to the question of consistency, though. I see the same sorts of problems arising with (1a*) that arise with (1a): we have no reason to believe it to be true. We cannot know it simply by induction from cases we know; so there would have to be some sort of necessary connection between tensed facts and knowers in time. But we would need to know exactly what it is about tensed facts that makes them such that whoever knows them must be in time; and there is, as far as I can see, no plausible account of this. This issue is not whether we can translate all facts into timeless propositions; the only reason we would think this relevant to the question is if we already assumed that a nontemporal being could not know tensed facts precisely as tensed, which would be what is at issue. Craig tends to assume that (1a*) is a necessary truth; but, if so, it is not an obvious necessary truth: the denial of it has been the dominant position of philosophical theologians through the centuries. So there needs to be some sort of analysis that would require us to say that knowing facts that are tensed necessarily entails that the one who knows them be temporal. (And this, note, is very much a family relation of (1a).) Further, we need such an analysis because similar patterns of arguments do not appear to work for other sorts of facts; so we need to know anyway why tense is so unique (see here for discussion of a related issue).

The reason I formulated (1a) the way I did is that there are several different variations of the same type of inference proposed by, e.g., open theists or process theists; all of which face similar problems. (1a) was the most general formulation I could come up with at 3 a.m. to describe the entire group; it's possible that there's a better formulation somewhere. So, while I'm less cranky at the moment, I hold fast to my basic positions: the participants in the debate are treading dangerously close to claiming that they know what God's experiences are like; the issue of whether there are tensed facts is largely irrelevant to the question of divine timelessness, because we have no reason to believe the claims that the existence of tensed facts would require that an omniscient being be temporal; while it's an interesting question, nothing actually turns on whether we can translate all tense facts completely into tenseless propositions; and so forth. At least, there's a lot more work to make the inference work than most people admit.

Chatting about Infinity in the Afternoon

I was approached by the What Would Plato Do club here at the University of Toronto and asked to give a paper for their first philosophical function of the year, which I did today. It was great fun. The title I chose was "Naturalism, Infinity, and the Cartesian Argument from Reason" - basically it was just a roughed-out adaptation of some of my work on Malebranche for an audience of mixed undergraduates. It turned out, however, to be a good topic for such a group; I focused on Malebranche's arguments, which are fairly lucid, but I also touched briefly on its historical root in Descartes's Third Meditation and the more recent work, along parallel lines, of Thomas Nagel in The Last Word. People who are very early in their program would still be able to recognize the issues in Descartes, and people who have a deeper interest in more recent analytic stuff than in the early modern period were able to relate to Nagel's adaptation of Wittgenstein. Also, everyone is always fascinated by infinites, so that worked to good advantage, too. There are several different things called 'the argument from reason'; what I called the Cartesian Argument from Reason is the view that:

1. Reason involves in some way infinity and related properties;
2. Because of these properties, reason cannot be entirely explained in terms of finite experience of finite objects + finite psychological operations.

The sort of explanation rejected in (2) is one thing that could be called 'naturalism' (always a slippery term), and was for the purpose of the talk the only sense of naturalism I was considering.

It was great fun; chatting with undergrads about philosophical topics always is.