An interesting post on divine infinity at "RazorsKiss". By coincidence, I've recently been thinking of this issue. As I've noted before, Malebranche makes a big deal about infinity; it plays an immensely important role in a number of key arguments. (I recently got a search engine hit from someone looking for Malebranche's argument for the existence of God; Malebranche's argument is based on infinity.) Necessity, immutability, eternity, and universality all show up, of course; but they are treated as subordinate and derivative properties.
But the arguments generally assume that only God is infinite. Now, I think it is quite right that only God is absolutely infinite -- infinite in His very being, we might say. But I'm not at all convinced that creatures are incapable of being infinite; my inclinations are toward the view expressed by Aquinas, that creatures can be relatively infinite. Indeed, on Aquinas's view it seems to follow that every creature actually is relatively infinite. Material things are materially infinite, and forms not completely contracted by matter are formally infinite. Material infinity is not particularly impressive; it is a potential infinitude rather than an actual infinitude (I use 'infinitude' rather than 'infinity' because 'infinity' suggests a real collection of some sort, which is not quite what Aquinas is getting at). The interesting creaturely infinitude is formal infinitude, because if Aquinas is right, Malebranche is wrong in thinking that we must be ontologists, i.e., we must hold that ideas are actually in God; or, at least, Malebranche's major argument to this effect is wrong. A scholastic can answer Malebranche's challenge by denying the assumption that most clearly allows one to get around the problem he notes. (I suggested this possibility before, but only speculatively; I hadn't thought to look at Aquinas in this connection.)
On the other hand, if either Aquinas or Malebranche are correct about this matter, no purely naturalistic account of the mind is possible; the naturalist must argue against Aquinas's view that the soul is formally infinite, but because of that must find another answer to Malebranche's challenge to provide a non-question-begging account of our ability to recognize that things are infinite. (For my more analytically-minded readers, Malebranche's arguments are somewhat similar to Thomas Nagel's arguments about the infinite in The Last Word, with somewhat different emphases; the two sets of arguments actually complement and strengthen each other quite well.) Malebranche, I think, completely demolishes the typical, and rather unimpressive, empiricist responses to which people usually flee. Empiricists can't get a genuine infinite. Berkeley recognized this in his notebooks, which is why he is forced to conclude there that the Pythagorean theorem is a useful calculating device that, strictly speaking, is false (because it can only be true at infinite precision).
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Friday, June 10, 2005
Hume against Slavery
I had said previously that when Hume talks of slavery he often isn't thinking of slavery but oppression under tyranny. On further reflection, though, I was forgetting the passage in the essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations. It's worth quoting in full. It's an aside, it's only one passage, it still considers the matter only under the rubric of tyranny, and it doesn't address at all the larger issues of race and how "the unhappy part of the species" should be treated instead. And it is full of a common Humean type of ambiguity, where it isn't always clear whether a sentence is a conclusion, an aside, a restatement, or a qualification (which is one of the big reasons why Hume, who seems to write so clearly, is so very difficult to interpret). But, while I don't want to soft-pedal Hume's absurdities on this topic (they are too often soft-pedalled, since it is a real and important question as to just how these absurdities cohere with Hume's general principles), I also don't want people going away with an unbalanced view of his position.
The chief difference between the domestic economy of the ancients and that of the moderns consists in the practice of slavery, which prevailed among the former, and which has been abolished for some centuries throughout the greater part of EUROPE. Some passionate admirers of the ancients, and zealous partizans of civil liberty, (for these sentiments, as they are, both of them, in the main, extremely just, are found to be almost inseparable) cannot forbear regretting the loss of this institution; and whilst they brand all submission to the government of a single person with the harsh denomination of slavery, they would gladly reduce the greater part of mankind to real slavery and subjection. But to one who considers coolly on the subject it will appear, that human nature, in general, really enjoys more liberty at present, in the most arbitrary government of EUROPE, than it ever did during the most flourishing period of ancient times. As much as submission to a petty prince, whose dominions extend not beyond a single city, is more grievous than obedience to a great monarch; so much is domestic slavery more cruel and oppressive than any civil subjection whatsoever. The more the master is removed from us in place and rank, the greater liberty we enjoy; the less are our actions inspected and controled; and the fainter that cruel comparison becomes between our own subjection, and the freedom, and even dominion of another. The remains which are found of domestic slavery, in the AMERICAN colonies, and among some EUROPEAN nations, would never surely create a desire of rendering it more universal. The little humanity, commonly observed in persons, accustomed, from their infancy, to exercise so great authority over their fellow-creatures, and to trample upon human nature, were sufficient alone to disgust us with that unbounded dominion. Nor can a more probable reason be assigned for the severe, I might say, barbarous manners of ancient times, than the practice of domestic slavery; by which every man of rank was rendered a petty tyrant, and educated amidst the flattery, submission, and low debasement of his slaves.
According to ancient practice, all checks were on the inferior, to restrain him to the duty of submission; none on the superior, to engage him to the reciprocal duties of gentleness and humanity. In modern times, a bad servant finds not easily a good master, nor a bad master a good servant; and the checks are mutual, suitably to the inviolable and eternal laws of reason and equity.
The custom of exposing old, useless, or sick slaves in an island of the TYBER, there to starve, seems to have been pretty common in ROME; and whoever recovered, after having been so exposed, had his liberty given him, by an edict of the emperor CLAUDIUS; in which it was likewise forbidden to kill any slave merely for old age or sickness. But supposing that this edict was strictly obeyed, would it better the domestic treatment of slaves, or render their lives much more comfortable? We may imagine what others would practise, when it was the professed maxim of the elder CATO, to sell his superannuated slaves for any price, rather than maintain what he esteemed a useless burden.
The ergastula, or dungeons, where slaves in chains were forced to work, were very common all over ITALY. COLUMELLA advises, that they be always built under ground; and recommends it as the duty of a careful overseer, to call over every day the names of these slaves, like the mustering of a regiment or ship's company, in order to know presently when any of them had deserted. A proof of the frequency of these ergastula, and of the great number of slaves usually confined in them.
A chained slave for a porter, was usual in ROME, as appears from OVID, and other authors. Had not these people shaken off all sense of compassion towards that unhappy part of their species, would they have presented their friends, at the first entrance, with such an image of the severity of the master, and misery of the slave?
(He gives several more examples of ancient slavery, but they don't clearly add anything to the argument. In a footnote, however, he does suggest a causal chain in which contempt for slaves causes a taste for gladiatorial combat, which in term is "a great cause of the general inhumanity of their princes and rulers.")
The chief difference between the domestic economy of the ancients and that of the moderns consists in the practice of slavery, which prevailed among the former, and which has been abolished for some centuries throughout the greater part of EUROPE. Some passionate admirers of the ancients, and zealous partizans of civil liberty, (for these sentiments, as they are, both of them, in the main, extremely just, are found to be almost inseparable) cannot forbear regretting the loss of this institution; and whilst they brand all submission to the government of a single person with the harsh denomination of slavery, they would gladly reduce the greater part of mankind to real slavery and subjection. But to one who considers coolly on the subject it will appear, that human nature, in general, really enjoys more liberty at present, in the most arbitrary government of EUROPE, than it ever did during the most flourishing period of ancient times. As much as submission to a petty prince, whose dominions extend not beyond a single city, is more grievous than obedience to a great monarch; so much is domestic slavery more cruel and oppressive than any civil subjection whatsoever. The more the master is removed from us in place and rank, the greater liberty we enjoy; the less are our actions inspected and controled; and the fainter that cruel comparison becomes between our own subjection, and the freedom, and even dominion of another. The remains which are found of domestic slavery, in the AMERICAN colonies, and among some EUROPEAN nations, would never surely create a desire of rendering it more universal. The little humanity, commonly observed in persons, accustomed, from their infancy, to exercise so great authority over their fellow-creatures, and to trample upon human nature, were sufficient alone to disgust us with that unbounded dominion. Nor can a more probable reason be assigned for the severe, I might say, barbarous manners of ancient times, than the practice of domestic slavery; by which every man of rank was rendered a petty tyrant, and educated amidst the flattery, submission, and low debasement of his slaves.
According to ancient practice, all checks were on the inferior, to restrain him to the duty of submission; none on the superior, to engage him to the reciprocal duties of gentleness and humanity. In modern times, a bad servant finds not easily a good master, nor a bad master a good servant; and the checks are mutual, suitably to the inviolable and eternal laws of reason and equity.
The custom of exposing old, useless, or sick slaves in an island of the TYBER, there to starve, seems to have been pretty common in ROME; and whoever recovered, after having been so exposed, had his liberty given him, by an edict of the emperor CLAUDIUS; in which it was likewise forbidden to kill any slave merely for old age or sickness. But supposing that this edict was strictly obeyed, would it better the domestic treatment of slaves, or render their lives much more comfortable? We may imagine what others would practise, when it was the professed maxim of the elder CATO, to sell his superannuated slaves for any price, rather than maintain what he esteemed a useless burden.
The ergastula, or dungeons, where slaves in chains were forced to work, were very common all over ITALY. COLUMELLA advises, that they be always built under ground; and recommends it as the duty of a careful overseer, to call over every day the names of these slaves, like the mustering of a regiment or ship's company, in order to know presently when any of them had deserted. A proof of the frequency of these ergastula, and of the great number of slaves usually confined in them.
A chained slave for a porter, was usual in ROME, as appears from OVID, and other authors. Had not these people shaken off all sense of compassion towards that unhappy part of their species, would they have presented their friends, at the first entrance, with such an image of the severity of the master, and misery of the slave?
(He gives several more examples of ancient slavery, but they don't clearly add anything to the argument. In a footnote, however, he does suggest a causal chain in which contempt for slaves causes a taste for gladiatorial combat, which in term is "a great cause of the general inhumanity of their princes and rulers.")
Thursday, June 09, 2005
A Poem Draft
By the River of Gozan
Of Epher and Ishi our people sing,
of Eliel and Azriel in Jahdiel's day,
of the mighty hand of Jeremiah,
of the sword of Hodaviah,
in a bygone day, in our days of number,
before our souls were sold in Hermon's shadow,
before we whored ourselves to a foreign god
in Bashan and below Senir.
Where were the mighty when the Lord stirred up,
when the Lord raised up the Assyrians?
Where were the heroes when the Lord called forth
Pul and Tilgath-Pilneser?
They faded like water, and burned like grass,
and disappeared in the raging of war;
and we were brought here, a disconsolate people,
weeping in Hara, Halah, and Habor.
Of Epher and Ishi our people sing,
of Eliel and Azriel in Jahdiel's day,
of the mighty hand of Jeremiah,
of the sword of Hodaviah,
in a bygone day, in our days of number,
before our souls were sold in Hermon's shadow,
before we whored ourselves to a foreign god
in Bashan and below Senir.
Where were the mighty when the Lord stirred up,
when the Lord raised up the Assyrians?
Where were the heroes when the Lord called forth
Pul and Tilgath-Pilneser?
They faded like water, and burned like grass,
and disappeared in the raging of war;
and we were brought here, a disconsolate people,
weeping in Hara, Halah, and Habor.
Additional Links of Note
* Race and Racism in the Works of David Hume by Eric Morton. This is an interesting paper on Hume's racism, particularly the notorious footnote I previously mentioned. The paper is not as readable as one could hope; it rushes a bit from one point to another in a sort of tumbling way, and some of the points could use a bit more development and support. But it's a good starting point for inquiry into this problem, as well as for reflection (which genuinely needs to be done) on how this should affect one's approach to Hume's 'science of man'.
* Human Responsibility at "Rebecca Writes"
* I Lost My Poverty -- But I Found It Again at "21st Century Reformation"
* A Secularist Debate on Abortion (HT: Dangerous Idea)
* I found this post at "Butterflies and Wheels" interesting, because it's a clear expression of a view that's (1) plausible; (2) generally accepted uncritically; and (3) definitely but interestingly wrong. Often the first question on a topic brought up for rational consideration is what priority should I give this issue in my reasoning? And part of this question clearly does require asking about the benefits and detriments, because they are relevant to determining whether we need to apportion a greater or lesser portion of our time, resources, and effort to consideration of the question. It's only when the issue of priority is not important -- when there is no cost-of-reasoning reasoning required -- that we should start with the question is this true or false? Likewise, Benson, like most people who just accept the cliches and don't consider this issue critically, misses the point that the benefits and detriments play a role after the inquiry when issues of priority come again, e.g., what priority should I give to persuading people of the conclusion I've reached? If, for instance, a false belief is good for social cohesion, the only reasonable thing to do is to give it a lower priority than false beliefs that are bad for social cohesion, all other things being equal. Priority reasoning is an important aspect of critical thinking. (HT: The 10th Skeptics' Circle)
* Reply to a 14 year old creationist at "Respectful Insolence" (HT: SC10 again). It's good to see good taste in action; and good taste, as I think I've pointed out before somewhere, is the old (as in 18th-century) name for critical thought. (UPDATE: Chris links it with a passage from Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, which is also well worth reading.)
* Human Responsibility at "Rebecca Writes"
* I Lost My Poverty -- But I Found It Again at "21st Century Reformation"
* A Secularist Debate on Abortion (HT: Dangerous Idea)
* I found this post at "Butterflies and Wheels" interesting, because it's a clear expression of a view that's (1) plausible; (2) generally accepted uncritically; and (3) definitely but interestingly wrong. Often the first question on a topic brought up for rational consideration is what priority should I give this issue in my reasoning? And part of this question clearly does require asking about the benefits and detriments, because they are relevant to determining whether we need to apportion a greater or lesser portion of our time, resources, and effort to consideration of the question. It's only when the issue of priority is not important -- when there is no cost-of-reasoning reasoning required -- that we should start with the question is this true or false? Likewise, Benson, like most people who just accept the cliches and don't consider this issue critically, misses the point that the benefits and detriments play a role after the inquiry when issues of priority come again, e.g., what priority should I give to persuading people of the conclusion I've reached? If, for instance, a false belief is good for social cohesion, the only reasonable thing to do is to give it a lower priority than false beliefs that are bad for social cohesion, all other things being equal. Priority reasoning is an important aspect of critical thinking. (HT: The 10th Skeptics' Circle)
* Reply to a 14 year old creationist at "Respectful Insolence" (HT: SC10 again). It's good to see good taste in action; and good taste, as I think I've pointed out before somewhere, is the old (as in 18th-century) name for critical thought. (UPDATE: Chris links it with a passage from Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, which is also well worth reading.)
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Malebranche on Whether God Could Make Better
God could without doubt make a world more perfect than that we inhabit. He could, for example, make it so that the rain, which is for rendering the earth fertile, fell more regularly on the ploughed fields than in the sea, where it is not so necessary. But in order to make this world more perfect, he would have had to have changed the simplicity of His ways, and he would have had to multipled the laws of communication of motions, by which our world subsists; and so there would not longer be that proportion between God's action and His work, which is necessary in order to determine an infinitely wise being to act, or at least there would not have been the same proportion between God's action and that so-perfect world that there is between the laws of nature and the world that we inhabit. For our world, however imperfect one imagines it, is founded on laws of motions so simple and so natural, that it is perfectly worthy of the infinite wisdom of its Author.
(Malebranche, Treatise on Nature and Grace, Discourse I, article xiv. My rough translation.)
Again, this should be compared with Aquinas's and Leibniz's discussions of the same issue.
(Malebranche, Treatise on Nature and Grace, Discourse I, article xiv. My rough translation.)
Again, this should be compared with Aquinas's and Leibniz's discussions of the same issue.
Boswell on History
SATURDAY 29 JANUARY....I have now one great satisfaction, which is reading Hume's History. It entertains and instructs me. It elevates my mind and excites noble feelings of every kind.
...
SUNDAY 20 FEBRUARY....I employed the day in reading Hume's History, which enlarged my views, filled me with great ideas, and rendered me happy. It is surprising how I have formerly neglected the study of history, which of all studies is surely the most amusing and the most instructive. As I am now begun to it in earnest, I hope to make good progress. I write my father regularly my observations on each volume, which is of great service to me and gives much satisfaction to him.
[Boswell's London Journal 1762-1763. Frederick A. Pottle, ed. Yale UP (New York: 1950) 173, 197.]
Hume would have been pleased; on Hume's view of history (the discipline), this is what the whole point of history is: to entertain and instruct, elevate one's mind and enlarge one's view. Claudia Schmidt has some excellent discussion of this (if I'm remembering correctly) in David Hume: Reason in History.
...
SUNDAY 20 FEBRUARY....I employed the day in reading Hume's History, which enlarged my views, filled me with great ideas, and rendered me happy. It is surprising how I have formerly neglected the study of history, which of all studies is surely the most amusing and the most instructive. As I am now begun to it in earnest, I hope to make good progress. I write my father regularly my observations on each volume, which is of great service to me and gives much satisfaction to him.
[Boswell's London Journal 1762-1763. Frederick A. Pottle, ed. Yale UP (New York: 1950) 173, 197.]
Hume would have been pleased; on Hume's view of history (the discipline), this is what the whole point of history is: to entertain and instruct, elevate one's mind and enlarge one's view. Claudia Schmidt has some excellent discussion of this (if I'm remembering correctly) in David Hume: Reason in History.
Links of Note
* Journals, and the stories of Djamila, Beth, and Julia Ann at "Hugo Schwyzer" -- a rather awesome post about feminism and sexuality, as exemplified by three very different students.
* Matter and Infinite Regress at "Vomit the Lukewarm"
* The Phenomenology of Efficacy by Susanna Siegel -- a draft of a paper arguing that we do, in fact, have direct experiences of causal efficacy. I need to read the paper more closely, but it looks like a modified endeavor or nisus theory (to borrow some terms from Hume, whose criticism of this type of theory I've questioned). Quite interesting. (HT: OPP.)
* Annotations on C. S. Lewis's Abolition of Man
* Ancient Stench and Corpse Removal at "Ralph the Sacred River"
* "robot guy" traces the recent Book Tag meme in geometric explosion (HT: NWW).
* UPDATE: Just came across this on Clark's sidebar: At "slacktivist" the post Private Property? looks briefly at the question of private property in Christian theology. The point is a very good one. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might find Aquinas's discussion of private property interesting.
* Matter and Infinite Regress at "Vomit the Lukewarm"
* The Phenomenology of Efficacy by Susanna Siegel -- a draft of a paper arguing that we do, in fact, have direct experiences of causal efficacy. I need to read the paper more closely, but it looks like a modified endeavor or nisus theory (to borrow some terms from Hume, whose criticism of this type of theory I've questioned). Quite interesting. (HT: OPP.)
* Annotations on C. S. Lewis's Abolition of Man
* Ancient Stench and Corpse Removal at "Ralph the Sacred River"
* "robot guy" traces the recent Book Tag meme in geometric explosion (HT: NWW).
* UPDATE: Just came across this on Clark's sidebar: At "slacktivist" the post Private Property? looks briefly at the question of private property in Christian theology. The point is a very good one. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might find Aquinas's discussion of private property interesting.
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