Order

Explaining Causality

entirelyuseless Metaphysics, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A reader asks about a previous post:

a) Per Hume and his defenders, we can’t really observe causation. All we can see is event A in spacetime, then event B in spacetime. We have no reason to posit that event A and event B are, say, chairs or dogs; we can stick with a sea of observed events, and claim that the world is “nothing more” but a huge set of random 4D events. While I can see that giving such an account restores formal causation, it doesn’t salvage efficient causation, and doesn’t even help final causation. How could you move there from our “normal” view?

b) You mention that the opinion “laws are observed patterns” is not a dominant view; though, even though I’d like to sit with the majority, I can’t go further than a). I can’t build an argument for this, and fail to see how Aristotle put his four causes correctly. I always end up gnawing on an objection, like “causation is only in the mind” or similar. Help?

It is not my view that the world is a huge set of random 4D events. This is perhaps the view of Atheism and the City, but it is a mistaken one. The blogger is not mistaken in thinking that there are problems with presentism, but they cannot be solved by adopting an eternalist view. Rather, these two positions constitute a Kantian dichotomy, and as usual, both positions are false. For now, however, I will leave this to the consideration of the reader. It is not necessary to establish this to respond to the questions above.

Consider the idea that “we can’t really observe causation.” As I noted here, it does not make sense to say that we cannot observe causation unless we already understand what causation is. If the word were meaningless to us, we would have no argument that we don’t observe it; it is only because we do understand the idea of causation that we can even suggest that it might be difficult to observe. And if we do have the idea, we got the idea from somewhere, and that could only have been… from observation, of course, since we don’t have anything else to get ideas from.

Let us untie the knot. I explained causality in general in this way:

“Cause” and “effect” simply signify that the cause is the origin of the effect, and that the effect is from the cause, together with the idea that when we understand the cause, we understand the explanation for the effect. Thus “cause” adds to “origin” a certain relationship with the understanding; this is why Aristotle says that we do not think we understand a thing until we know its cause, or “why” it is. We do not understand a thing until we know its explanation.

Note that there is something “in the mind” about causality. Saying to oneself, “Aha! So that’s why that happened!” is a mental event. And we can also see how it is possible to observe causality: we can observe that one thing is from another, i.e. that a ball breaks a window, and we can also observe that knowing this provides us a somewhat satisfactory answer to the question, “Why is the window broken?”, namely, “Because it was hit by a ball.”

Someone (e.g. Atheism and the City) might object that we also cannot observe one thing coming from another. We just observe the two things, and they are, as Hume says, “loose and separate.” Once again, however, we would have no idea of “from” unless we got it from observing things. In the same early post quoted above, I explained the idea of origin, i.e. that one thing is from another:

Something first is said to be the beginning, principle, or origin of the second, and the second is said to be from the first. This simply signifies the relationship already described in the last post, together with an emphasis on the fact that the first comes before the second by “consequence of being”, in the way described.

“The relationship already described in the last post” is that of before and after. In other words, wherever we have any kind of order at all, we have one thing from another. And we observe order, even when we simply see one thing after another, and thus we also observe things coming from other things.

What about efficient causality? If we adopt the explanation above, asserting the existence of efficient causality is nothing more or less than asserting that things sometimes make other things happen, like balls breaking windows, and that knowing about this is a way for us to understand the effects (e.g. broken windows.)

Similarly, denying the existence of efficient causality means either denying that anything ever makes anything else happen, or denying that knowing about this makes us understand anything, even in a minor way. Atheism and the City seems to want to deny that anything ever makes anything else happen:

Most importantly, my view technically is not that causality doesn’t exist, it’s that causality doesn’t exist in the way we typically think it does. That is, my view of causality is completely different from the general every day notion of causality most people have. The naive assumption one often gets when hearing my view is that I’m saying cause and effect relationships don’t exist at all, such that if you threw a brick at glass window it wouldn’t shatter, or if you jumped in front of a speeding train you wouldn’t get smashed to death by it. That’s not what my view says at all.

On my view of causality, if you threw a brick at a glass window it would shatter, if you jumped in front of a speeding train you’d be smashed to death by it. The difference between my view of causality vs the typical view is that on my view causes do not bring their effects into existence in the sense of true ontological becoming.

I am going to leave aside the discussion of “true ontological becoming,” because it is a distraction from the real issue. Does Atheism and the City deny that things ever make other things happen? It appears so, but consider that “things sometimes make other things happen” is just a more general description of the very same situations as descriptions like, “Balls sometimes break windows.” So if you want to deny that things make other things happen, you should also deny that balls break windows. Now our blogger perhaps wants to say, “I don’t deny that balls break windows in the everyday sense, but they don’t break them in a true ontological sense.” Again, I will simply point in the right direction here. Asserting the existence of efficient causes does not describe a supposedly “truly true” ontology; it is simply a more general description of a situation where balls sometimes break windows.

We can make a useful comparison here between understanding causality, and understanding desire and the good. The knowledge of desire begins with a fairly direct experience, that of feeling the desire, often even as physical sensation. In the same way, we have a direct experience of “understanding something,” namely the feeling of going, “Ah, got it! That’s why this is, this is how it is.” And just as we explain the fact of our desire by saying that the good is responsible for it, we explain the fact of our understanding by saying that the apprehension of causes is responsible. And just as being and good are convertible, so that goodness is not some extra “ontological” thing, so also cause and origin are convertible. But something has to have a certain relationship with us to be good for us; eating food is good for us while eating rocks is not. In a similar way, origins need to have a specific relationship with us in order to provide an understanding of causality, as I said in the post where these questions came up.

Does this mean that “causation is only in the mind”? Not really, any more than the analogous account implies that goodness is only in the mind. An aspect of goodness is in the mind, namely insofar as we distinguish it from being in general, but the thing itself is real, namely the very being of things. And likewise an aspect of causality is in the mind, namely the fact that it explains something to us, but the thing itself is real, namely the relationships of origin in things.

Real Distinction II

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I noted recently that one reason why people might be uncomfortable with distinguishing between the way things seem, as such, namely as a way of seeming, and the way things are, as such, namely as a way of being, is that it seems to introduce an explanatory gap. In the last post, why did Mary have a “bluish” experience? “Because the banana was blue,” is true, but insufficient, since animals with different sense organs might well have a different experience when they see blue things. And this gap seems very hard to overcome, possibly even insurmountable.

However, the discussion in the last post suggests that the difficulty in overcoming this gap is mainly the result of the fact that no one actually knows the full explanation, and that the full explanation would be extremely complicated. It might even be so complicated that no human being could understand it, not necessarily because it is a kind of explanation that people cannot understand, but in a sense similar to the one in which no human being can memorize the first trillion prime numbers.

Even if this is the case, however, there would be a residual “gap” in the sense that a sensitive experience will never be the same experience as an intellectual one, even when the intellect is trying to explain the sensitive experience itself.

We can apply these ideas to think a bit more carefully about the idea of real distinction. I pointed out in the linked post that in a certain sense no distinction is real, because “not being something” is not a thing, but a way we understand something.

But notice that there now seems to be an explanatory gap, much like the one about blue. If “not being something” is not a thing, then why is it a reasonable way to understand anything? Or as Parmenides might put it, how could one thing possibly not be another, if there is no not?

Now color is complicated in part because it is related to animal brains, which are themselves complicated. But “being in general” should not be complicated, because the whole idea is that we are talking about everything in general, not with the kind of detail that is needed to make things complicated. So there is a lot more hope of overcoming the “gap” in the case of being and distinction, than in the case of color and the appearance of color.

A potential explanation might be found in what I called the “existential theory of relativity.” As I said in that post, the existence of many things necessarily implies the existence of relationships. But this implication is a “before in understanding“. That is, we understand that one thing is not another before we consider the relationship of the two. If we consider what is before in causality, we will get a different result. On one hand, we might want to deny that there can be causality either way, because the two are simultaneous by nature: if there are many things, they are related, and if things are related, they are many. On the other hand, if we consider “not being something” as a way things are understood, and ask the cause of them being understood in this way, relation will turn out to be the cause. In other words, we have a direct response to the question posed above: why is it reasonable to think that one thing is not another, if not being is not a thing? The answer is that relation is a thing, and the existence of relation makes it reasonable to think of things as distinct from one another.

Someone will insist that this account is absurd, since things need to be distinct in order to be related. But this objection confuses the mode of being and the mode of understanding. Just as there will be a residual “gap” in the case of color, because a sense experience is not an intellectual experience, there is a residual gap here. Explaining color will not suddenly result in actually seeing color if you are blind. Likewise, explaining why we need the idea of distinction will not suddenly result in being able to understand the world without the idea of distinction. But the existence of the sense experience does not thereby falsify one’s explanation of color, and likewise here, the fact that we first need to understand things as distinct in order to understand them as related, does not prevent their relationship from being the specific reality that makes it reasonable to understand them as distinct.

Modernism Responds to Pius X

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Earlier I quoted Pope Pius X against the Modernists:

4. But since the Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) employ a very clever artifice, namely, to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in reality firm and steadfast, it will be of advantage, Venerable Brethren, to bring their teachings together here into one group, and to point out the connexion between them, and thus to pass to an examination of the sources of the errors, and to prescribe remedies for averting the evil.

Pius X proceeds to begin to lay out the doctrines of the modernists as “firm and steadfast,” and as a systematic whole:

5. To proceed in an orderly manner in this recondite subject, it must first of all be noted that every Modernist sustains and comprises within himself many personalities; he is a philosopher, a believer, a theologian, an historian, a critic, an apologist, a reformer. These roles must be clearly distinguished from one another by all who would accurately know their system and thoroughly comprehend the principles and the consequences of their doctrines.

Agnosticism its Philosophical Foundation

6. We begin, then, with the philosopher. Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is usually called Agnosticism. According to this teaching human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, that is to say, to things that are perceptible to the senses, and in the manner in which they are perceptible; it has no right and no power to transgress these limits. Hence it is incapable of lifting itself up to God, and of recognising His existence, even by means of visible things. From this it is inferred that God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards history, He must not be considered as an historical subject. Given these premises, all will readily perceive what becomes of Natural Theology, of the motives of credibility, of external revelation. The Modernists simply make away with them altogether; they include them in Intellectualism, which they call a ridiculous and long ago defunct system. Nor does the fact that the Church has formally condemned these portentous errors exercise the slightest restraint upon them. Yet the Vatican Council has defined, “If anyone says that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason by means of the things that are made, let him be anathema” (De Revel., can. I); and also: “If anyone says that it is not possible or not expedient that man be taught, through the medium of divine revelation, about God and the worship to be paid Him, let him be anathema” (Ibid., can. 2); and finally, “If anyone says that divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs, and that therefore men should be drawn to the faith only by their personal internal experience or by private inspiration, let him be anathema” (De Fide, can. 3). But how the Modernists make the transition from Agnosticism, which is a state of pure nescience, to scientific and historic Atheism, which is a doctrine of positive denial; and consequently, by what legitimate process of reasoning, starting from ignorance as to whether God has in fact intervened in the history of the human race or not, they proceed, in their explanation of this history, to ignore God altogether, as if He really had not intervened, let him answer who can. Yet it is a fixed and established principle among them that both science and history must be atheistic: and within their boundaries there is room for nothing but phenomena; God and all that is divine are utterly excluded. We shall soon see clearly what, according to this most absurd teaching, must be held touching the most sacred Person of Christ, what concerning the mysteries of His life and death, and of His Resurrection and Ascension into heaven.

As I remarked in the earlier post, Pope Pius X’s condemnation is sweeping and general, and surely many of the people who possessed many of the attitudes that the Pope considered modernist did not in fact embrace a systematic view such as the above. In a Modernist response, anonymous just as those accused by the encyclical are anonymous, one or some of the modernists responded to the encyclical (taken from the opening of this book):

A document so weighty, both in substance and form, as the Encyclical which we have reproduced at the end of this book; an attempt so deliberate to present “Modernist”* views to the public under a false and unfavorable light; a condemnation so authoritative of us Modernists as dangerous foes of Christian piety and unconscious promoters of atheism, make it a duty, which we owe to our own conscience, to the collective conscience, of the faithful, and to an anxious and expectant public, to lay bare our whole mind without reserve or concealment. We cannot possibly remain silent under the violent accusation which the chief authority of the Church, albeit recognizing us as her faithful subjects and as resolved to cling to her till our last breath, heaps upon our head. Hence there is nothing arrogant in our reply, since it is an elementary principle of justice for those who are accused to defend themselves; nor can we believe that this right has been taken from us at a moment so critical for the fortunes of Catholic Christianity.

They remark in the note on the name “Modernist”:

Let us say, once and for all, that we use this term only that we may be understood by those who have learnt it from the Encyclical, and that we do not need a new name to describe an attitude which we consider to be simply that of Christians and Catholics who live in harmony with the spirit of their day.

The following chapter begins to comment on the “systematic arrangement” laid out by Pius X:

First of all we must lay bare an equivocation by which inexpert readers of the Encyclical might easily be misled. That document starts with the assumption that there lies at the root of Modernism a certain philosophical system from which we deduce our critical methods, whether biblical or historical; in other words, that our zeal to reconcile the doctrines of Catholic tradition with the conclusions of positive science springs really from some theoretical apriorism which we defend through our ignorance of scholasticism and the rebellious pride of our reason. Now the assertion is false, and since it is the basis on which the Encyclical arranges its various arguments we cannot in our reply follow the order of that fallacious arrangement; but we must first of all show the utter emptiness of this allegation, and then discuss the theories which the Encyclical imputes to us.

In truth, the historical development, the methods and programme of so-called Modernism are very different from what they are said to be by the compilers of Pascendi Gregis.

So far from our philosophy dictating our critical method, it is the critical method that has, of its own accord, forced us to a very tentative and uncertain formulation of various philosophical conclusions, or better still, to a clearer exposition of certain ways of thinking to which Catholic apologetic has never been wholly a stranger. This independence of our criticism in respect to our purely tentative philosophy is evident in many ways.

First of all, of their own nature, textual criticism, as well as the so-called Higher Criticism (that is, the internal analysis of biblical documents with a view to establishing their origin and value), prescind entirely from philosophical assumptions. A single luminous example will suffice–that furnished by the question of the Comma Johanneum–now settled for ever. In past days when theologians wanted to prove the doctrine of the Trinity they never omitted to quote from the Vulgate (1 John v. 7): “There are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost.” Now the italicized words are lacking in all the Greek MSS. of to-day, cursive or uncial, and in all the Greek epistolaries and lectionaries, and in all the ancient translations, except the Vulgate, in the works of the Greek Fathers and of other Greek writers prior to the the twelfth century, in those of all the ancient Syrian and Armenian writers, and in those of a great number of the Latin Fathers. This silence of East and West is all the more remarkable as the passage would have been of priceless value in the Arian controversy. That it was not then appealed to, proves that it did not exist at the beginning of the fourth century. Moreove, a collation of MSS. and their comparison with the works of the heretic Priscillian, discovered a few years ago, makes it clear that the verse in question comes from Spain, and was fabricated by that heretic (A.D. 384) in favour of his trinitarian views, of which Peregrinus made himself the propagandist. Now it is plain that in order to arrive at such a conclusion and to study such a literary problem critically, no sort of philosophical doctrine or presupposition is required. The same can be said of a whole host of biblical and historical problems whose impartial solutions, leading to results so different from those of traditional Catholic criticism, are the true cause of that revolution in religious apologetic which we find forced upon us by sheer necessity. Does one really need any special philosophical preparation to trace a diversity of sources in the Pentateuch, or to convince oneself, by the most superficial comparison of texts, that the Fourth Gospel is a substantially different kind of work from the synoptics, or that the Nicene Creed is essentially a development of the Apostles’ Creed?

The modernists have the better of the argument here. One might say that this kind of argument regarding the Comma involves philosophical presuppositions only by making arguments like, “This presupposes that our memory is valid,” “This presupposes that these manuscripts really come from those times,” “This presupposes that the others who have studied this question were being basically honest,” and so on. But these things are really just common sense, not some special philosophy. Nor are they even premises, in general, in the sense that my memory of drinking coffee this morning is not a premise in an argument that I drank coffee this morning; I simply assert that I did, and my memory is an efficient cause of my statement, not an argument for it.

The modernists bring up this example not as an irrelevant detail, but because it was precisely the kind of thing they were criticized for. Thus we have this from the Acta Sanctae Sedis in 1897 [this document, page 637]:

« Utrum tuto negari, aut saltem in dubium revocari possit
« esse authenticum textum S. Ioannis, in epistola prima, capo V,
« vers. 7, quod sic se habet: Quoniam tres sunt, qui testimonium
« dant in coelo: Pater, Verbum et Spiritus Sanctus: et hi tres
« unum sunt? »
Omnibus diligentissimo examine perpensis, praehabito que
DD. Consultorum voto, iidem Emi Cardinales respondendum
mandarunt: « Negative ».

The decree asserts that the authenticity of the text cannot be safely denied or even called into doubt. Now I have previously discussed such decrees. These should never be understood as attempting to settle the truth of the matter definitively. Rather they are making a rule: you are not allowed to deny this or even to call it into question.

Pope Pius X complains in Pascendi:

Finally, and this almost destroys all hope of cure, their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.

For Pope Pius X, calling into question the authenticity of the Comma would be “the result of pride and obstinacy,” because one questioning it would be in disobedience to the above decree. But given the kinds of arguments that are involved, it is easy enough to see why the people questioning it would ascribe this rather to a love of truth.

All of this might call to mind earlier debates. Here is Philip Gosse, quoted at length in the linked post:

I am not assuming here that the Inspired Word has been rightly read; I merely say that the plain straightforward meaning, the meaning that lies manifestly on the face of the passages in question, is in opposition with the conclusions which geologists have formed, as to the antiquity and the genesis of the globe on which we live.

Perhaps the simple, superficial sense of the Word is not the correct one; but it is at least that which its readers, learned and unlearned, had been generally content with before; and which would, I suppose, scarcely have been questioned, but for what appeared the exigencies of geological facts.

Now while there are, unhappily, not a few infidels, professed or concealed, who eagerly seize on any apparent discrepancy between the works and the Word of God, in order that they may invalidate the truth of the latter, there are, especially in this country, many names of the highest rank in physical (and, among other branches, in geological) science, to whom the veracity of God is as dear as life. They cannot bear to see it impugned; they know that it cannot be overthrown; they are assured that He who gave the Word, and He who made the worlds, is One Jehovah, who cannot be inconsistent with Himself. But they cannot shut their eyes to the startling fact, that the records which seem legibly written on His created works do flatly contradict the statements which seem to be plainly expressed in His word.

Here is a dilemma. A most painful one to the reverent mind! And many reverent minds have laboured hard and long to escape from it. It is unfair and dishonest to class our men of science with the infidel and atheist. They did not rejoice in the dilemma; they saw it at first dimly, and hoped to avoid it. At first they believed that the mighty processes which are recorded on the “everlasting mountains” might not only be harmonized with, but might afford beautiful and convincing demonstrations of Holy Scripture. They thought that the deluge of Noah would explain the stratification, and the antediluvian era account for the organic fossils.

A parallel passage could easily be written on the opposition between Pope Pius X and the modernists. While I don’t have a source at hand at the moment, it seems that Alfred Loisy did state after his excommunication that he had secretly been an atheist for many years. There is no way of knowing, however, whether this is true in a literal sense or was simply his own retrospective analysis of his past state of mind. In any case, it is quite sure that many of the modernists were not secret atheists, but simply men like the geologists in Gosse’s passage. Conflict came to light between the actual facts of geology and the current understanding based on the text of Genesis, and something had to be said about that conflict. In a similar way, in the modernist controversy, conflict came to light between the actual facts of history and the current understanding based on the Church’s traditions, and something had to be said about that conflict.

Gosse complains that the geologists are classed with “the infidel and the atheist,” in effect for their recognition of geological facts; Pius X accuses the modernists of secret agnosticism or atheism, in effect for their recognition of historical facts.

In both cases, the accusation is that an atheistic metaphysics, and likely an atheistic epistemology, comes first, and is responsible for the conclusions that are drawn. And in both cases the accusation is false. Epistemology cannot come first in principle, and it does not come first in practice in these cases. You might be able to argue that these people have ended up with a mistaken epistemology, and you might be able to argue that it does not follow from the facts from which they have drawn it. But they have drawn it from facts, mistakenly or not, and not the facts from the epistemology.

This is ultimately why, despite the lack of firm definition of the term “Modernism,” the controversy has remained until this day. This is why accusations of modernism continue to be thrown around, as a few years ago when Bishop Fellay accused Pope Francis of modernism:

What Gospel does he have? Which Bible does he have to say such things. It’s horrible. What has this to do with the Gospel? With the Catholic Faith? That’s pure Modernism, my dear brethren. We have in front of us a genuine Modernist…

If one wishes to criticize the views which are characterized as “modernist,” whether in the early 20th century or now in the 21st, one will make no progress without the acknowledgement that it was first the consideration of certain facts that led to those views, rightly or wrongly. Attributing them to some general system is simplistic and wrong.

Questions on Culture

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The conclusion of the last post raises at least three questions, and perhaps others.

First, something still seems wrong or at least incomplete with the picture presented. It is one thing to suppose that things can tend to improve. It is another to suppose that they can get constantly worse. You can count to higher and higher numbers; but you cannot count down forever, because you reach a lower limit. In the same way, insofar as culture seems a necessary part of human life, there seems to be a limit on on how degraded a culture could become. So if there is a constant tendency towards the decline of culture, we should have already reached the lower limit.

Second, if one looks at history over longer time scales, it seems obvious that there are also large cultural improvements, as in the history of art and so on. It is not clear how this can happen if there is a constant tendency towards decline.

Third, we argued earlier that the world overall tends to be successful in the sense defined here. The conclusion of the last past seems to call this into question, at least in the sense that we cannot be sure: if things are improving in some ways, and getting worse in others, then it remains unclear whether things are overall getting better or worse. Or perhaps things are just staying the same overall.

It may be some time before I respond to these questions, so for now I will simply point out that their answers will evidently be related to one another.

 

Technology and Culture

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The last two posts have effectively answered the question raised about Scott Alexander’s account of cultural decline. What could be meant by calling some aspects of culture “less compatible with modern society?” Society tends to change over time, and some of those changes are humanly irreversible. It is entirely possible, and in fact common, for some of those irreversible changes to stand in tension with various elements of culture. This will necessarily tend to cause cultural decay at least with respect to those elements, and often with respect to other elements of culture as well, since the various aspects of culture are related.

This happens in a particular way with changes in technology, although technology is not the only driver of such irreversible change.

It would be extremely difficult for individuals to opt out of the use of of various technologies. For example, it would be quite difficult for Americans to give up the use of plumbing and heating, and a serious attempt to do so might lead to illness or death in many cases. And it would be still more difficult to give up the use of clothes, money, and language. Attempting to do so, assuming that one managed to preserve one’s physical life, would likely lead to imprisonment or other forms of institutionalization (which would make it that much more difficult to abandon the use of clothes.)

Someone might well respond here, “Wait, why are you bringing up clothes, money, and language as examples of technology?” Clothes and money seem more like cultural institutions than technology in the first place; and language seems to be natural to humans.

I have already spoken of language as a kind of technology. And with regard to clothes and money, it is even more evident that in the concrete forms in which they exist in our world today they are tightly intertwined with various technologies. The cash used in the United States depends on mints and printing presses, actual mechanical technologies. And if one wishes to buy something without cash, this usually depends on still more complex technology. Similar things are true of the clothes that we wear.

I concede, of course, that the use of these things is different from the use of the machines that make them, or as in the case of credit cards, support their use, although there is less distinction in the latter case. But I deliberately brought up things which look like purely cultural institutions in order to note their relationship with technology, because we are discussing the manner in which technological change can result in cultural change. Technology and culture are tightly intertwined, and can never be wholly separated.

Sarah Perry discusses this (the whole post is worth reading):

Almost every technological advance is a de-condensation: it abstracts a particular function away from an object, a person, or an institution, and allows it to grow separately from all the things it used to be connected to. Writing de-condenses communication: communication can now take place abstracted from face-to-face speech. Automobiles abstract transportation from exercise, and allow further de-condensation of useful locations (sometimes called sprawl). Markets de-condense production and consumption.

Why is technology so often at odds with the sacred? In other words, why does everyone get so mad about technological change? We humans are irrational and fearful creatures, but I don’t think it’s just that. Technological advances, by their nature, tear the world apart. They carve a piece away from the existing order – de-condensing, abstracting, unbundling – and all the previous dependencies collapse. The world must then heal itself around this rupture, to form a new order and wholeness. To fear disruption is completely reasonable.

The more powerful the technology, the more unpredictable its effects will be. A technological advance in the sense of a de-condensation is by its nature something that does not fit in the existing order. The world will need to reshape itself to fit. Technology is a bad carver, not in the sense that it is bad, but in the sense of Socrates:

First, the taking in of scattered particulars under one Idea, so that everyone understands what is being talked about … Second, the separation of the Idea into parts, by dividing it at the joints, as nature directs, not breaking any limb in half as a bad carver might.”

Plato, Phaedrus, 265D, quoted in Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Christopher Alexander.

The most powerful technological advances break limbs in half. They cut up the world in an entirely new way, inconceivable in the previous order.

Now someone, arguing much in Chesterton’s vein, might say that this does not have to happen. If a technology is damaging in this way, then just don’t use it. The problem is that often one does not have a realistic choice not to use it, as in my examples above. And much more can one fail to have a choice not to interact with people who use the new technology, and interacting with those people will itself change the way that life works. And as Robin Hanson noted, there is not some human global power that decides whether or not a technology gets to be introduced into human society or not. This happens rather by the uncoordinated and unplanned decisions of individuals.

And this is sufficient to explain the tendency towards cultural decline. The constant progress of technology results, and results of necessity, in constant cultural decline. And thus we fools understand why the former days were better than these.

Patience

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St. Thomas describes the virtue of patience:

I answer that, As stated above (II-II:123:1), the moral virtues are directed to the good, inasmuch as they safeguard the good of reason against the impulse of the passions. Now among the passions sorrow is strong to hinder the good of reason, according to 2 Corinthians 7:10, “The sorrow of the world worketh death,” and Sirach 30:25, “Sadness hath killed many, and there is no profit in it.” Hence the necessity for a virtue to safeguard the good of reason against sorrow, lest reason give way to sorrow: and this patience does. Wherefore Augustine says (De Patientia ii): “A man’s patience it is whereby he bears evil with an equal mind,” i.e. without being disturbed by sorrow, “lest he abandon with an unequal mind the goods whereby he may advance to better things.” It is therefore evident that patience is a virtue.

This brings to mind things like a martyr being afflicted by others for the truth that he holds and enduring this steadfastly, but in fact it applies well even to the ordinary idea of patience, according to which, for example, we might say that Ray Kurzweil’s impatience for technological progress leads him to false opinions about current historical trends.

We can illustrate this with a little story. Peter, impatient to get home from work, exceeds the speed limit and weaves in and out of traffic. Minutes before getting home, he hits a slippery patch on the road. His car goes off the road, ramming a tree and killing him.

Despite being nothing but a story, it is one that has without a doubt been played out in real life with minor or major variations again and again. We can apply the saying of St. Augustine quoted by St. Thomas. Peter’s patience would consist in “bearing evil with an equal mind,” that is, enduring the fact that he is not home yet without disturbance, “lest he abandon with an unequal mind the goods whereby he may advance to better things,” that is, since his disturbed and unequal mind leads him to abandon the goods, that is, the ordered manner of driving, whereby he may advance to better things, that is, actually to get home.

Patience is rightly thought to be related to the virtue of humility. One who judges rightly about his place in the order of things will understand that it is natural in this order that what is best tends to come last. The good wine is served last. Thus such a person should endure without disturbance the lack that comes earlier, in order not to abandon the good by which he might achieve the good that comes later.

No Respecter of Beings

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In the post here, I raised Jesus’s proposal that one should imitate God by treating all alike, since God treats all alike, as for example by sending the rain and the sun upon all. At the time, I promised to explain how such treatment could be seen as the effect of love. While the reader may already be able to gather that from the last few posts, it might be useful to bring a few threads together here.

The idea that the good man treats all alike is not unprecedented. Thus for example in Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that the just man cannot harm anyone:

But ought the just to injure any one at all?
Undoubtedly he ought to injure those who are both wicked and his enemies.

When horses are injured, are they improved or deteriorated?
The latter.
Deteriorated, that is to say, in the good qualities of horses, not of dogs?

Yes, of horses.
And dogs are deteriorated in the good qualities of dogs, and not of horses?

Of course.
And will not men who are injured be deteriorated in that which is the proper virtue of man?

Certainly.
And that human virtue is justice?
To be sure.
Then men who are injured are of necessity made unjust?
That is the result.
But can the musician by his art make men unmusical?
Certainly not.
Or the horseman by his art make them bad horsemen?
Impossible.
And can the just by justice make men unjust, or speaking general can the good by virtue make them bad?

Assuredly not.
Any more than heat can produce cold?
It cannot.
Or drought moisture?
Clearly not.
Nor can the good harm any one?
Impossible.
And the just is the good?
Certainly.
Then to injure a friend or any one else is not the act of a just man, but of the opposite, who is the unjust?

The basic argument is that good should only be a cause of goodness. Dionysius, in chapter 4 of The Divine Names, makes a similar point about God as the Supreme Good:

For as our sun, through no choice or deliberation, but by the very fact of its existence, gives light to all those things which have any inherent power of sharing its illumination, even so the Good (which is above the sun, as the transcendent archetype by the very mode of its existence is above its faded image) sends forth upon all things according to their receptive powers, the rays of Its undivided Goodness.

He mentions that the sun does this without “choice or deliberation,” in order to indicate that God communicates his goodness to all things, without refusing it to anything.

We might say, like St. Peter in the Book of Acts, that God shows no partiality. But it is not simply that he shows no partiality among human beings; rather, he shows no partiality among beings as such. Every being receives goodness to whatever degree it is able; in this way St. Thomas asserts that form is received by every disposed matter.

From this it is not difficult to see why the rain or the sun falls upon all, or even why the tower fell. It belongs to the nature of these things to exist and to act in this way, and it belongs to the nature of God to give them their proper existence and action, which is good for them and for the order of things.

Someone will object: then God does harm, as when some are killed by the tower, or even by the rain and the sun in various cases.

But the answer to this is evident from what has already been said.

Good Out of Evil

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Besides the objection mentioned in the last post, St. Thomas brings up another objection to the existence of God:

Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word “God” means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

He replies to the objection,

As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): “Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.” This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.

Does good in fact come from evil, and if so, how does this happen?

Some people are born without the ability to feel physical pain. While someone first hearing about this might think it sounds like a good thing, it is in fact a very bad thing, as noted in the linked post. Children suffering from this condition often bite off parts of their tongue, or fail to notice sprains or broken bones, thus causing greater injury to themselves, and so on.

And after a moment’s thought, this is not so strange. Pain, taken as knowledge of an injury, is not a bad thing, but a good thing; it is the injury which is bad, as well as secondary effects such as distraction from other tasks and so on.

And here we see the primary path, although not the only path, by which good comes from evil, at least in human things. Evil is an indirect cause of the knowledge of evil, and the knowledge of evil is good, and a cause of goodness. In this way a person can benefit even from his own faults and vices, insofar as he learns from them and goes on to do better.

This can happen even with very great evils. Thus for example in the post here, Cameron Harwick discusses how the use of nuclear weapons by the United States, a very great evil, might bear significant responsibility for the peace (such as it was) that followed. Or in other words, without that specific use of nuclear weapons, there might have been a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, which would have been much worse.

None of this is accidental, but in fact tends to happen in a very systematic way, basically for reasons which we discussed some days ago. All things and all people strive for the good, and the knowledge of evil is just one of the things that contributes to their efforts.

Now someone might suppose that the explanation here is too human. Does it not take away the glory from God? Should we not say instead that God brings good out of evil in mysterious ways that are beyond our comprehension?

Now there are surely many things which are beyond our comprehension. But the attitude in this objection is simply the zeal for God which is not according to knowledge. God does not make things in such a way that he merely happens to bring good out of evil, but rather he gives the things themselves such an order and such a nature that it is natural to them to bring good out of evil. And such a creation, which possesses this ability in an intrinsic way, is better and more ordered than a theoretical creation that lacked that ability.

Zeal for God, But Not According to Knowledge

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St. Thomas raises this objection to the existence of God:

Objection 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God’s existence.

He responds to the objection:

Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body of the Article.

The explanation here is that things do have their own proper causes, but these proper causes do not have the properties necessary to be a first cause. Likewise, the very distinction of these proper causes from one another shows that they must be reduced to a one single principle.

This response is correct, but it is difficult for people to understand. People tend to assume that the objection is fundamentally valid, given its premises. Thus many atheists believe that they have a very good argument for their atheism, and many theists assume that there must be falsehood in the premises. And the ordinary way to assume this is to say that we do see things in the world that cannot be accounted for by other principles.

This leads to an undue zeal on behalf of God, of the sort mentioned in the previous post. There is the desire to say that something was done by God, and only by God; not by anything else. In this way the premise that “everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles” would turn out to be false. The Intelligent Design movement provides an example of this desire. The linked Wikipedia article approaches this with a very polemical point of view, but I am not concerned here with the scientific issues. It is very evident, in any case, that there is the idea here that it would be good to prove that something was done by God alone, and not by any secondary causes. In this way people are jealous on behalf of God: if it turns out that it was done by secondary causes, that takes something from God, and in particular it makes it less likely that God exists.

The truth is mostly the opposite of this. Although nothing can be taken from God, the purposes of creation are better obtained if created things contribute whatever they can to the production of other things. Thus the world is more ordered, and so more perfect simply speaking.

As an example, consider the case of the origin of life. Unlike the process which gave rise to the origin of species, abiogenesis is not an established fact. What would be best, were it the case? I do not speak of the truth of the matter, nor what we might wish to believe about it, but which thing would be better in itself: is it better if life arises from non-living things, or is it better if life is directly created by God? For someone jealous for God in this way, it seems better if life were directly created, in order better to prove that God exists. In reality, however, it is better if life comes to be in a certain order, with a contribution from non-living things, to whatever degree that this is possible.

This is not just a matter of wishful thinking, in one direction or the other, although that can be involved. Rather, in cases of this kind, the fact that one thing is better is an argument, although not a conclusive one, for its reality.

There are many other ways in which this kind of undue zeal influences human opinions, and recognition of the truth of this matter has many consequences. But for the moment we are on another path.

Origen and Adam Smith

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Speaking of prayer, Origen says,

Suppose that a righteously minded physician is at the side of a sick man praying for health, with knowledge of the right mode of treatment for the disease about which the man is offering prayer. It is manifest that he will be moved to heal the suppliant, surmising, it may well be not idly, that God has had this very action in mind in answer to the prayer of the suppliant for release from the disease. Or suppose that a man of considerable means, who is generous, hears the prayer of a poor man offering intercession to God for his wants. It is plain that he, too, will fulfill the objects of the poor man’s prayer, becoming a minister of the fatherly counsel of Him who at the season of the prayer had brought together him who was to pray and him who was able to supply and by virtue of the rightness of his principles, incapable of overlooking one who has made that particular request.

The fact that the person’s prayers appear to have been answered by chance, Origen maintains, is merely an appearance. Since God is the cause of all things, he is also the cause, directly or indirectly, of all that results from those things, and consequently of these supposedly chance answers to prayer.

Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, argues thus:

It is to no purpose, that the proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest that grows upon them. The homely and vulgar proverb, that the eye is larger than the belly, never was more fully verified than with regard to him. The capacity of his stomach bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires, and will receive no more than that of the meanest peasant. The rest he is obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of, among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets, which are employed in the oeconomy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his luxury and caprice, that share of the necessaries of life, which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice. The produce of the soil maintains at all times nearly that number of inhabitants which it is capable of maintaining. The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

The inequality of wealth among men, Smith is arguing, is much less than it first appears. There may be a man who theoretically has a million times your personal wealth. But he cannot eat a million times as much as you, but only a little more, if at all. And likewise, in a somewhat analagous manner, in respect to wealth in all the ways in which it touches an individual. And consequently the benefit that comes from that wealth can be, and will be, distributed among other men, not in a perfectly equal manner, but in a manner far closer to equality than one would first suppose.

Smith asserts here that it is the “invisible hand” of Providence that has intentionally designed a world that must have these results. The terminology of the “invisible hand” is used by some modern economists in a more general way, simply speaking of the way in which good results can come about without the explicit intention of the persons concerned, without necessarily intending to say that the good results were intended in any sense, by Providence or anything else.

In reality, however, both Adam Smith and Origen are correct. All things come from the first cause. Nothing is lost on account of the fact that things proceed through secondary causes as well; on the contrary, this only makes everything better.