Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. I'd wanted to do something nice on this blog for the occasion, particularly since I missed it last year to go to a wedding; but the last weekend in January seems always to be a bad time for me. I'll be gone tomorrow (for another wedding). In any case, a few links.

Corpus Thomisticum

Thomas Aquinas in English: A Bibliography

St. Thomas Aquinas by G. K. Chesterton (essay)

St. Thomas Aquinas by G. K. Chesterton (book)

Thomism Links

Jacques Maritain Center

Essays in Existential Thomism

Lublin Thomism (a.k.a. Personalist Thomism)

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any convenient topic-specific website for Analytic Thomism (Haldane, Stump), Transcendental Thomism (Marechal, Lonergan), or Process Thomism (Clarke).

The Offended Consciousness

I jotted this down some time ago; it's a sketch of one particular way in which people claim to be rational without showing it.

The offended consciousness obsesses about the reading of others, considering it dishonest because it cannot conceive of another way to read: it must regard their reading as bad reading because they contradict its own invested opinion. It apes and caricatures, and the principles it uses to denigrate the truth are stolen from the truth; and this theft is the honesty on which it prides itself.

Wounded by the truth it makes up a tale, a just-so story, by which the scandalous truth can be tamed; it explains away by arbitrary fiat: this is due to fear, that is due to craving; this is due to vanity, that is due to hatred. As the wounded animal strikes out without reason, so the offended consciousness strikes out, contradicting not with argument but with clumsy reversal, like an angry child on the playground: "Your love is hate, your benevolence malice, your good bad."

To learn from what offends it is not its way; to be made stronger in honing itself against what scandalizes it is beyond it. The offended consciousness does one thing only: it flees, scorching the earth and poisoning the wells behind it, excusing itself by saying, "If I faced it, it would magically gain power."

And so it flees, calling out encouragements to other fleeing, desperate, offended consciousnesses: "Do not worry, strong ones! We will slay the foe by insinuations!"

Embittered by paradoxes that only its own offense makes paradoxical, it puffs itself up and runs to hide, saying: "You cannot analyze like I can analyze! That is why I will not face you: my weapons are too subtle for you! They are so subtle they would pass through you without any effect!"

A frightened little boy weeping on the edge of the playground dreams up the same fantasies, consoling his wounded pride with repeated self-exaltation and repeated denigration of those who have more power to do and to be than he has. Unable to undo the wound of offense, the offended consciousness whimpers and snarls and occasionally casts a dart from afar.

Unenlightened

[Note: It occurs to me that I should give a caveat for this. You should read the quiz in Tiemann's commentary first; reading it straight may make some people a bit nauseous. I included it primarily to make the point I make at the end: anyone can claim to be rational; the thing is to show it. And, although Shaftesbury was certainly wrong in saying that ridicule is the test of truth, he was certainly right that, when it makes a clear and defensible point, it is sometimes the most rational defense.]

A very funny Transhumanism quiz (HT: Brian Tiemann at Peeve Farm, who says all that needs to be said in the way of commentary on it). Or rather, it would be funny if it weren't clear that someone takes it seriously; as it is it's rather disturbing. My score:

MEMETIC SHOCK LEVEL 01 (0-4): average. More than a few candles short of Enlightenment. The sheepish, conformist, intellectually lazy masses reign supreme here. Hell's overcrowded livingroom.

And that was interpreting the statements as charitably as I could. Somehow I just couldn't say yes to the claim thatphilosophy is useless for anything but scientific popularization; and, as a useless philosopher who studies the real Enlightenment, I just couldn't affirm the contradictions that libertarianism should be imposed by centralized authority and that rational people believe that there really isn't any such thing as reason; nor, of course, could I accept any of the Nazism or attack on human rights.

This is why I always insist that people can't just claim to be rational; they have to show it discursively by reasoning and civil discourse.

A Juxtaposition

John Chuckman:

Religion does not belong in public life, and Stephen Harper's efforts to drag it in, says a great deal about him to those choosing to listen.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law....

The remarkable thing is that Chuckman takes only three paragraphs before he starts comparing any politician who says "God Bless Canada" to Hitler.

Common-Sense Religion

A very odd article by Daniel Dennett at CHR. I found this passage particularly puzzling:

In Marjoe, the 1972 documentary about the bogus evangelist Marjoe Gortner, we see poor people emptying their wallets and purses into the collection plate, their eyes glistening with tears of joy, thrilled to be getting "salvation" from the charismatic phony. The question that has been troubling me ever since I first saw the film is: Who is committing the more reprehensible act — Gortner, who lies to people to get their money, or the filmmakers who expose the lies (with Gortner's enthusiastic complicity), thereby robbing the good folk of the meaning they thought they had found for their lives?

I haven't seen the movie, so I might be missing something; but obviously lying to people to get their money is a more reprehensible act than exposing lies! What sort of moral priorities would one have to have in order to think otherwise? What sort of absurd candidate for a dilemma is this? Nor does it seem at all parallel to the other dilemmas Dennett notes. And this was funny:

Or are all evangelical preachers just as false as Gortner? Certainly Muslims think so, even though they are generally too discreet to say it. And Roman Catholics think that Jews are just as deluded, and Protestants think that Catholics are wasting their time and energy on a largely false religion, and so forth. All Muslims? All Catholics? All Protestants? All Jews?

But which Muslims? Which Catholics? Which Protestants? In fact, anyone who actually takes the trouble to know anything about Muslims knows that Muslims don't generally think evangelical preachers are as false as deliberate liars; they believe them to be mistaken and confused on certain key things, and right about a lot of other things, namely all the doctrinal views they share in common with Muslims. Ditto with Catholics and Jews; ditto with Protestants and Catholics. This is why it's possible to talk across the boundary between them. Dennett goes on to say we don't know how many there are in each group, those who take extreme views and those who actually take the trouble to recognize similarities and distinctions; but it's only because he places such an emphasis on sincerity that this is even relevant to the argument.

And it isn't actually clear why sincerity is playing such a role in the argument. Sincerity only plays a role in assessment of someone's personal character; it tells us nothing about how we should regard a particular position. Pick any position you choose; whether people sincerely accept that position should have an effect on how you deal with them in particular, and none whatsoever on how you deal with the position. The sincerity of a Nazi just makes him more culpable, and alleviates the Nazism not in the least; the insincerity of someone who speaks the truth does not tarnish truth in the least. Dennett's argument is weird because it's a set of equivocations implying to most of us that our faith that truth is better than falsehood is naive; but the equivocations, the failure to make reasonable distinctions, do nothing toward this end. And this annoys me:

In the adult world of religion, people are dying and killing, with the moderates cowed into silence by the intransigence of the radicals in their own faiths, and many adherents afraid to acknowledge what they actually believe for fear of breaking Granny's heart, or offending their neighbors to the point of getting run out of town, or worse.

Again, the question is, Which moderates? If Dennett knew anything about Muslims, for instance, he would know that Muslim moderates have not been silent about extremists, even in very conservative Muslim countries. And the same could be said for many other cases. Further, Dennett just got through claiming that we can't know how many people are sincere or insincere in their faith; so whence comes the 'many' in "many adherents [are] afraid to acknowledge what they actually believe"?

Another puzzle. Dennett says, "In order to adopt such a moderate position, however, you have to loosen your grip on the absolutes that are apparently one of the main attractions of many religious creeds," but at no point in his argument does he give any reasons to think that this is so. He seems to imply that they are (at least more likely to be) insincere -- being a religious moderate generally requires that you be a hypocrite and have a "systematically masked creed". This is perhaps why Dennett puts such emphasis on sincerity: he sympathizes with moderates but regards them as utter hypocrites, and so agonizes over how he should regard them morally. I suppose it's not an uncommon sort of trouble; I have seen it many times with a certain type of very simple-minded Christian who, thinking that all atheists must be hypocrites to be moral, puzzles over whether he should laud them for being moral or condemn them for being hypocrites.

Another odd passage:

Thanks to technology, what almost anybody can do has been multiplied a thousandfold, but our moral understanding about what we ought to do hasn't kept pace. You can have a test-tube baby or take a morning-after pill to keep from having a baby; you can satisfy your sexual urges in the privacy of your room by downloading Internet pornography, or you can copy your favorite music free instead of buying it; you can keep your money in secret offshore bank accounts or purchase stock in cigarette companies that are exploiting impoverished third-world countries; and you can lay minefields, smuggle nuclear weapons in suitcases, make nerve gas, and drop "smart bombs" with pinpoint accuracy. Also, you can arrange to have $100 a month automatically sent from your bank account to provide education for 10 girls in an Islamic country who otherwise would not learn to read and write, or to benefit 100 malnourished people, or provide medical care for AIDS sufferers in Africa. You can use the Internet to organize citizen monitoring of environmental hazards or to check the honesty and performance of government officials — or to spy on your neighbors. Now, what ought we to do?

These are what Dennett later calls imponderable questions -- whether we ought to fund exploitation of the poor, lay minefields, smuggle nuclear weapons in suitcases, make nerve gases, and drop bombs! And again, the question is: Whose moral understanding hasn't kept pace with technology? And according to what criterion do we determine that moral understanding is or is not keeping pace?

Another odd statement:

That's why those who have an unquestioning faith in the correctness of the moral teachings of their religion are a problem: If they haven't conscientiously considered, on their own, whether their pastors or priests or rabbis or imams are worthy of such delegated authority over their lives, then they are taking a personally immoral stand.

But clearly this involves an implausible diagnosis. People with an unquestioning faith in the correctness of the moral teachings (but which moral teachings?) of their religion aren't necessarily giving pastors/rabbis/imams/priests "delegated authority over their lives"; they are giving the teaching itself moral authority and simply using pastors/priests/rabbis/imams to help them pin down what it is. People often don't delegate much moral authority to pastors and the like; they usually assume that they already know what's moral and what's not, and make use of pastors etc. for things that puzzle them. And they do, in fact, consider on their own whether their pastors etc. are worthy of any authority; because it's a very common phenomenon for people to search out pastors, etc., who already agree with them on the points they consider important, and ignore or condemn those who don't.

Indeed, throughout Dennett makes vague generalizations which he never takes the trouble to clarify or defend; the essay is one long tissue of prejudices and stereotypes from beginning to end. This could have been a tolerable philosophical essay if Dennett had stuck with the theme in his Fred passage, and developed it. It wouldn't have been relevant to much beyond a very simplistic position; but it would have been a respectable argument. But instead of discussing a position, he discusses, in a vague, insinuating way, motives and psychology, without any indication that he needs to show that he is doing more than appealing to stereotypes and prejudices. As it is, Dennett's essay turns out neither to be relevant to much nor to be a respectable argument. Dennett says that deeply religious people who are rationally oriented will have no difficulty at all with his conclusions; but I think -- and hope -- this is not true, because I think and hope that they would have higher standards of reasoning than Dennett shows in this essay.

(See also Macht's discussion of it at prosthesis.)

Bearing Arms

Timothy Sandefur at "Postive Liberty" looks at Akhil Amar's America's Constitution. I've always liked what I've read of Amar's work, so I'll have to get around to reading it at some point. I found particularly interesting Sandefur's summary of Amar's argument about the Second Amendment. The claim that the phrasing of the amendment doesn't suggest individual possession of firearms for self-defense is not right, I think; Blackstone, for instance, explicitly mentions as one of the absolute rights of individuals "the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense." There is no obvious way in which Blackstone's "having and using" would be significantly different from the Second Amendment's "keeping and bearing"; or, at least, I'd have to see the argument for it, since, for instance, there's no hint of an especially martial quality to 'bearing arms' in (say) Johnson's Dictionary, whic largely just treats it as a synonym of 'carry'. (But, as Sandefur notes, the Fourteenth Amendment adds another layer anyway.) It is true, though, that self-defense is not the justification given. In this, as in a number of other aspects, the Bill of Rights echoes the Virginia Declaration of Rights -- specifically, the beginning of section xiii:

That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state....

This suggests the probable intended meaning of the Second Amendment: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed because a free state needs a well-regulated militia, which needs people "trained to arms", i.e., who already know how to shoot. Other declarations of rights (e.g., the 1776 Constitution of North Carolina) sometimes give people the right to bear arms for the defense of the State; but Pennsylvania's 1776 Constitution and Vermont's 1777 and 1786 Constitutions explicitly give the people " right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state".

Meinongian Objects

Bill Vallicella at the Maverick Philosopher has a nice post on negative existentials, which is exactly right, I think. I find it interesting, because I've been doing some thinking, off and on, about Meinong and possibilist realism. I don't think Meinongianism is ultimately tenable, but I think it has an undeserved reputation from people who haven't bothered to think it through. For the Meinongian solution to negative existentials -- i.e., that there are nonexistent objects independent of thought -- is a very elegant one. It's usually accused of 'ontological extravagance', but I don't think most people have much of an idea what they mean by phrases like that. There is a straightforward sense in which the Meinongian solution is one of the simplest and most elegant solutions to the problem: it allows you to treat everything you can think about in much the same way. It also allows you to take statements such as "Frictionless planes do not exist" at face value by taking them to be statements about the objects frictionless planes; etc. Likewise, it's often said that there is something weird about saying "There are nonexistent objects," since 'there are' (or existential quantification) implies actual existence; but this is actually not plausible, since existential quantification can apply to fictional entities, instrumental posits, idealizations, etc. -- in short, many things that don't actually exist -- and it is almost impossible to avoid applying it in this way. The Meinongian is not actually proposing something strange in suggesting that nonexistent objects subsist even though they do not exist; or, at least, there is nothing strange about the bare fact that he proposes it, whatever difficulties there may be in being clear about what subsistence is. The ability to talk about modal truths without appeal to the very roundabout and complicated appartus of possible worlds is a potential advantage as well. In other words, the common tendency (among philosophers like myself who haven't studied the matter closely) to dismiss Meinongianism as an obvious absurdity is itself problematic; it seems usually to be based more on a sense of disquiet than on any serious reasons. (Vallicella has pointed out elsewhere that one serious reason to doubt Meinongianism is that it seems to mess up the Cartesian cogito: if Meinong is right, it is possible that I think but do not exist. He also presents an interesting Roycean argument that love and self-love give us another serious reason to reject Meinong's claim, which is well worth reading.)

For my part, I incline toward Buridan's position (see Gyula Klima's excellent paper, Quine, Wyman, and Buridan: Three Approaches to Ontological Commitment (PDF)).

UPDATE: Vallicella notices a point on which I didn't get Meinong quite right (the existence/subsistence distinction) -- always a danger for someone who has only done some light reading in a given philosopher. Conventional wisdom always wriggles into the interpretation; and in interpreting philosophical works it's astounding how often conventional wisdom is wrong.