The Philosophy of Sports Debates

I was listening to local sports talk radio the other day on my way home from work, as is my wont. One of the hosts introduced a quodlibet: "Who is the greatest basketball player of all time?" The other host stepped into the fray, and promulgated his judgment, not only of the question, but on the means by which it should be answered. And I think he was dead wrong. On both counts.

Our esteemed sportscaster said, "Everyone will say that Michael Jordan was the best player ever. Well, let me tell you. That's a belief. I have facts. And the facts say, when you add up all the accolades, all the championships, all the records, that Kareem-Abdul Jabbar is the greatest basketball player ever, hands down, no question, end of discussion." Or words to that effect. (Not to go all Richard Rich on you.)

Now, to decide any question, we first have to determine upon what grounds the question will be decided--that is, what is a fitting measurement or adequate method of evaluation. This is easier in some cases than in others. If the question is something simple and numeric, like "Who has the most home runs in baseball history?" then all we need do is count the totals of each player. (PED-related asterisks aside, for the moment.) The question at hand, though, is that of "greatness." How do we evaluate the greatness of a basketball player, or compare the greatness of one to another? This is where the sportscaster's distinction comes in, and in it we can see a deep philosophical bias--and, I would say, error.

There is a certain habit of thinking that attempts to make all of reality quantifiable--that is, this way of thinking assumes that there is a way to assign a number value to anything so that it can be measured. This is clearly the case with measurements of dimension and mass: length, width, height, weight, molar mass, and so on. We can divide these aspects of reality into discrete units and count them. My height can be divided into inches and added up. Simple enough. But some would apply this far beyond what we might usually expect.

A whole industry of "advanced metrics" has crept into sports in recent years and taken front offices by the cold calculating coup of number-crunching. These new measurements claim to be able to evaluate qualities that where heretofore considered "intangible." Whereas before we might debate amongst our friends how much better Player X is than other players at his position, now we have WAR (Wins Above Replacement) that makes this comparison numerical. Whereas before we might simply wax at how "smooth" or "effortless" a player makes the game look, now we have PER (Player Efficiency Rating) measuring the ease with which a player plays. Though the purists prefer combination of the classical statistics and their own "eye test," increasing numbers of fans, scouts, coaches, and executives are coming around to the idea that the intangibles were thought to be such merely because we hadn't yet devised the way to tangere (touch) them.

This belief has its roots in the philosophies of a host of Enlightenment thinkers, both empiricists and rationalists, who thought that reality, if nothing else, was measurable. And many of these, and their intellectual progeny, reversed the polarity of their thought and concluded that only what is measurable was real--that if I could not measure it, it did not exist. Only "facts" are real, and only measurable things are "facts." One sees this basic attitude in the writings of many a combox atheist today.

But, back to our sportscaster: do you see the connection? His primary assumption, the major premise of his argument, is that the greatness of a player can be calculated by a combination of countable things: championships, individual awards, performance records. So, if Kareem-Abdul Jabbar won six MVPs and six NBA titles, and Michael Jordan won only 5 MVPs and six NBA titles (just to truncate things a bit), then Kareem must be the greater player.

This, of course, is absurd. If we rely solely on adding these countable accomplishments, then clearly Robert Horry, who won seven NBA titles but no MVPs, is a greater player than Charles Barkley, who won no NBA titles and one MVP. In fact, such a measurement would populate the top of the "Greatest Players" list with the rosters of the Boston Celtics teams that won 11 championships in the 1950s and 60s. Would anyone say that?

No doubt, if confronted with this argument, our sportscaster would say, "Well, I mean, that's not all you'd take into account, obviously." Yes, agreed. And at that point we have exited the land of quantity and entered the realm of quality, where we can ask interesting questions like, "What does it mean to be 'great' at any endeavor or in any enterprise? What all must we consider?" Here such characteristics as competitiveness, determination, skills of various kinds, and the ability to inspire and connect with fans might come into play--all less susceptible to measurement. (While someone's shooting ability could be measured by a percentage, their ball-handling skills or defensive capabilities could not be.)

This is not a retreat to "belief," which the sportscaster apparently used to mean "sentimentality" or "unsupported feeling." No, now we're actually thinking about the myriad aspects of the matter, and not simply feeding the question into the supercomputer and awaiting an answer.

Let's ask the deeper questions and consider the larger picture. Because no one thinks Big Shot Bob is greater than Sir Charles.

Philosophical Units of Measurement

As the physical sciences have their various units of weight and measurement with which they carry out their inquiries, so philosophy and theology ought to have such units by which we might measure the depth of thought in a given work. My thanks to Rodrigo Berrios, Alexander Ferrant, Michael Onofre, and the other person who was standing there whose face now escapes me, for contributing to this system.

Hegelgraph: A unit for measuring the density of writing. The writing of the 19th-century philosopher G.W.F. Hegel is known for its impenetrability; one could easily pour over a page of Hegel for a day (or a lifetime) and still be confused. The conversion rate of normal, everyday writing to the writing of Hegel is approximately ten pages of regular writing for every paragraph of Hegel's writing, or one Hegelgraph. Example: "How long is your reading assignment for class?" "About 20 pages, but that's only like 2 Hegelgraphs."

Hume-idity: This unit is named for the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, who once wrote: 

“When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.” So, Hume-idity refers to the level to which a piece of writing is confident in itself in inverse proportion to the degree to which that piece of writing reflects something to true--in other words, when someone is really sure but really wrong, that person is exhibiting Hume-idity. Example: "Check out this post by the atheist who thinks he's disproved God with the old 'If everything needs a creator, who created God?' line. Man, the Hume-idity is through the roof!"

Thomogram: A unit for measuring the weight or gravity of writing. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote beautifully and concisely on the highest of matters: the existence of God, the nature of virtue, and so forth. One article in the Summa contains more intellectual weight than most authors can put into several books, or dozens of blog posts, or thousands of blog post comments. Thus, it would take about 3,000 comments to equal one Thomogram. Example: "This guy's been running his blog for ten years, and I think he's got about half a Thomogram to show for it."

Folks: help me think of more!

A Brief History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

Before attempting to describe Greek philosophy, we must begin by answering a preliminary objection: is it even proper to speak of such a thing as “Greek philosophy,” or is this merely a conventional category created by academics to make their own work easier? These Greek philosophers lived hundreds of years and thousands of miles apart. They wrote on seemingly disparate topics ranging from cosmology to ethics. Eleatics and Ionians, Platonists and Pythagoreans, Stoics and Cynics faced off, haranguing one another; would we lump these groups under one designation? It would seem that the only thing tying them together is their common use of the Greek language.

Such a view would be mistaken. (Let us hope that it is a straw man and that no one actually holds to this position.) Though they lived in different times, their ideas endured. Though they lived in various places around the Mediterranean, travel was frequent. Though many focused on particular topics, all were concerned with answering the most fundamental questions of existence. Though they aligned themselves into opposing groups, they all engaged in the Great Conversation.

This term perhaps best describes what is at the heart of the philosophical enterprise that took place in the ancient Greek-speaking world. All of these men, in some form or facet, took up the question: “What is reality like, and how can I bring myself in line with it so as to have a happy life?” This question contains three key suppositions common to Greek thinkers of the period. All assumed that there was an order to the cosmos; reality was a coherent, unified whole. All assumed that this reality was intelligible, to some degree, by human reason (few outliers such as Gorgias notwithstanding). And all assumed that being in sync with reality was necessary for living a good life. While philosophers had different answers to this question, they were all fundamentally engaging it, and thus were engaged in the same conversation.

This belief in the power of reason to apprehend the nature of things is of particular importance. It creates a space separate from mythology in which to contend with the questions of existence. The philosopher is one who seeks an account of reality distinct from that which the storyteller or oracle can provide. The philosopher uses rational investigation to attempt to answer the great question.

(Note: "Mythology" and "philosophy" are not exhaustive categories; it's not the case that whatever is not philosophy is "mythology." Apart from mythology (storytelling) and philosophy (analytical reasoning), there are other categories, like "science," (empirical reasoning) or "divine revelation" (given knowledge), which, along with philosophy, are ways of gaining true knowledge about reality. But as these are not categories of thought for the Greeks--what we would call "science" they would call "natural philosophy"--I do not discuss them here.

Philosophers in different times and places were interested in different aspects of the question. For the Ionians and Eleatics, the first concern was the nature of reality as concerns its composition: what is everything made of? Behind this question was the assumption that, since we perceive the world to be a unified whole, it must thus be composed, at its base, of a single substance. Various substances were proposed: Thales said water; Anaximenes said air (in various states of condensation); Heraclitus said fire, in its constant flux; Anaximander suggested “the unlimited.” But all maintained that there must be substantial unity, even if this prime substance changes into different things.

The Eleatics heard this speculation and focused on the question of how such changes could occur. For Parmenides and his disciple Zeno, the answer was simple: they don’t. Though things appear to change, in principle they could not, for where would the new thing come from? How could what is come from what is not? They concluded that change was illusory. Though opposed to one another, the two schools at least agreed on one point: things were not precisely as they seemed.

It should be remembered that these thinkers, apart from their cosmological speculations, were concerned with ethical questions as well; it is not as though Thales was consigned to the natural philosophy department, away from the ethicists, forbidden to tackle their topics. But they did tend to be preoccupied with cosmological questions, just as many later thinkers, particularly in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, primarily addressed ethical questions. Some, like Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates, and Aristotle, did a little of everything, yet always in conversation with those who had gone before them.

Socrates occupies the place that he does in the history of philosophy because his thought has been the catalyst for so much of the conversation that has followed. Indeed, in Plato’s Socratic dialogues, we see precisely that: a conversation! The Socratic dialogue is a microcosm, a snapshot, of the whole of Greek philosophy: a conversation in which the thought of various people is engaged, questioned, expounded, examined, and cross-examined. This is best seen in those dialogues which feature other great philosophers, such as Gorgias, Parmenides, and Protagoras; here, we most literally see the Great Conversation happening before our eyes.

In these dialogues, Plato and Socrates wrestle with many of the most profound sub-questions which are part of that main question, “What is reality and how can I conform myself to it so as to have a happy life?” They addressed questions such as: what is knowledge? What is virtue? What is the relationship between the two? What is the nature of the cosmos? Of love? How is the polis best ordered so as to lead people to the good life? In Plato’s dialogues we see the interconnectedness of the varied facets of the conversation. Knowledge leads to virtue; knowledge requires education and formation of the soul; education requires a well-ordered society; yet a well-ordered society will not come about without virtuous inhabitants. Plato and Socrates show the unity of the philosophical enterprise, the unity of wisdom.

Aristotle took up this view and expanded it. Any subject, be it poetics, rhetoric, biology, physics, metaphysics, or ethics, was susceptible to philosophical inquiry, for all were part of the same cosmic order. Anything, from plays to porcupines, from substances to souls, from happiness to the heavens, could be analyzed according to four causes: what is it? What is it made of? What brought it to be? What is its end or purpose? And always, before presenting his conclusion, Aristotle would give due consideration to the theories of predecessors and contemporaries; he did not dismiss them with a wave of the hand, but took the time to attempt refuting them. He was engaged in the conversation.

Over time, the conversation shifted according to the predilections of those involved in it. Plato the geometer approached things one way, Aristotle the biologist another. Thales the engineer had one viewpoint, Pythagoras the near-mystic another. Likewise, circumstances in society had an effect. A citizen of an independent city-state will have different concerns from a subject of a king or emperor. After the Macedonian conquest of Greece, and later during the Roman period, a shift takes place: the philosopher becomes less concerned with the form of society than the ethical status of the individual. Yet even so, the conversation continued. The Epicureans and Stoics still looked back to Socrates as an inspiration of sorts, and engaged his ideas on the nature of the good.

One thought leads to another. One idea sparks a response, and that response prompts a counter-response. This is the nature of conversation, and it is the nature of Greek philosophy as it developed over hundreds of years, through all parts of the Greek-speaking world. That conversation continued on, through the Late Antique period, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, even today; as Alfred North Whitehead said, "All philosophy is but a footnote to Plato"--or rather, the whole Western philosophical tradition is the child of these Greeks.

What Do They Teach In Schools These Days?

Through the miracles of the Internet age, you can find eight-grade graduation exams from over 100 years ago. Could you pass this exam? I'm not sure I could. But how could this be? We have so many more people today who are not only eighth-grade educated or high school educated but college educated than were in yesteryear. Shouldn't we be able to surpass their abilities? Shouldn't we be 100 years smarter than these guys?

It would seem we are not. And while there are many culprits, I'd like to point the bony finger of blame at one man in particular: John Dewey.

Yes, the philosopher and psychologist and purported-all-around-smarty-pants, that John Dewey. Dewey's theories on education revolutionized our school system. What were those theories?

Dewey advocated for an educational approach that emphasized critical thinking over rote memorization. Rather than being able to repeat facts and figures and dates and names, young students, Dewey thought, should be able to engage big ideas and work collectively to learn new material. And many schools followed his suggestions and altered their curricula, downplaying content-building.

Now, there's some merit to his focus. Knowing the bare facts is not sufficient for being a thinking person; one must be able to move beyond them, analyze them, assess them, evaluate them, in order to reach considered conclusions about them. This is necessary for an informed a thoughtful society.

But here's the rub, Johnny: in focusing on critical thinking, you've skipped a step. Critical thinking is step two in the thinking process. Before you can think, you need something to think about. Before you can reflect on knowledge, you must have knowledge.

This was the whole point of memorization to begin with! By memorizing the facts in a particular discipline, you then having the building blocks to construct a historical narrative, or a political argument, or a scientific theory. The facts that are imprinted on your brain through rote are the very material upon which your critical thinking skills operate.

Look at how this worked out in the Church. At two least generations of Catholics have been so poorly catechized that most, according to surveys, can't correctly identify the Church's teaching on the Eucharist, or salvation, or the Trinity. People of my grandparents' age can still rattle off the sentences from the Baltimore Catechism that they learned as children, and would have no trouble with such questions. Some would say that the contents of the Baltimore Catechism were too rudimentary, not "critical" enough, but I say: better something than nothing.

Does Science Disprove God? Nope.

I was listening to an episode of Catholic Answers Live that was fielding calls from agnostics and atheists, and I was amazed at how often the same sorts of objections were raised by the callers. So many of them boiled down to this: "Science can't find any proof for God's existence. Therefore we have no reason to believe God exists."

The atheist or agnostic claims that one ought not to believe in God if there is no scientific way to verify His existence. If we were to set this out in a simple syllogism, it would say:

We ought not to affirm the existence of anything for which there is no physical evidence.
God is a thing for which there is no physical evidence.
Therefore, we ought not to posit the existence of God.

What's wrong with this argument? Well, an argument can be faulty either in its structure (form) or its content (matter). The form of the argument is sound: the premises lead to the conclusion, provided the premises are true. But are the premises true? Nope.

The biggest problem is with the premise "We ought not to posit the existence of anything for which there is no physical evidence." This premise assumes that only physical things, things able to be detected by observation and verified by the scientific method, exist. It claims that our only sure basis of knowledge is empirical science, that we cannot say that we know anything beyond what observation tells us. But this is not true. There are all kinds of things we know to be true that cannot be established by the scientific method.

For one, there are truths of our own interior experience. It is true that right now, I feel fine. It is true that I love my fiancee. It is true that you feel hungry. It is true that you hate the Lakers. All of these things are true, but there is no scientific experiment one can run to verify the truth of these things. They are not subject to empirical observation.

For another, there are moral truths. It is wrong to injure innocent parties. It is wrong to steal. We know these to be true, but we don't know that by observing human behavior and drawing the conclusion that these things are wrong. We don't derive our morals from behavior; we apply our morals to behavior. We don't determine their truth with test tubes and telescopes.

Nor are the very truths used by science to do its work. Science draws conclusions based on observation; but the rules of reason that science uses to draw those conclusions are not themselves based on observation. The Law of Identity (A equals A, A does not equal B) or the Law of Non-Contradiction (a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect) are two obvious, intuitive truths that structure our thinking and that we use to examine and evaluate our observations. Mathematical truths are not demonstrated by science, either. What experiment do you run to prove that two plus two equals four? It is pre-observational truth, what we call a priori. Truths based on empirical observation, like scientific laws, are called a posteriori. To use the argument above, you must deny all a priori truth; but if you try to do that, you cut your own legs out from under you. Certain a priori truths provide the condition for the possibility of science. The existence of these truths alone prove that not everything that is is demonstrable by science.

Indeed, the claim "It is true that only that which can be discovered by empirical observation (a posteriori) is true or real" is itself not an a posteriori claim, but rather an a priori one. The claim refutes itself!

This is all to say that the this materialist empiricist atheist must concede the fact that there are truths beyond those with which science deals. With that, the atheist must admit the possibility of things existing outside of the sensor range of empirical science. Then maybe, just maybe, there's a God after all.

"You are a Soul"? Nope.

There is a quote often attributed to C.S. Lewis that goes something akin to:

"You are not a body. You are a soul. You merely have a body."

Lewis never said it, but that's beside the point. I have heard and read far too many Christians repeating this phrase approvingly, tweeting it and posting it on Facebook and otherwise passing it along as some pearl of profound wisdom. But if you're a Christian, this is bad theology. Let me explain.

When you say something like "I am a soul, I only have a body," you've split the body and soul into two different things, with the soul being the really real thing, and the body to be a mere appendage or tool, a vehicle for getting around, a spacesuit to allow the soul to temporarily survive in this alien environment. You're a ghost in a machine, as Rene Descartes would say. But is that the case? Is that what things are like?

There is a profound and obvious difference between the experience of stubbing your toe and the experience of crashing your car. Your car is a vehicle, accidental to and outside of yourself; when you crash while inside of it, you feel its impact, but when the fender crumples, you don't crumple, and you don't experience a sensation of pain along with it. And when you stub your toe, your first thought isn't, "Dang, I hope the insurance covers the damage to my toe. Is the toe repair shop open on Sundays? Should I call a toe truck?" (I couldn't resist!) No, your thought is something akin to, "OWW!!! MY TOE!!!" One is related to you; one is you.

I would guess that people are drawn to this "You are a soul" phrase because it sounds spiritual and holy and ethereal and mysterious. But such thinking actually does harm to the idea of a human being. It divides us against ourselves. It alienates us from our own bodies. It destroys our integrity.

The classic Catholic definition of the human person, as laid out by St. Thomas using the philosophy of Aristotle, maintains the distinctiveness of the soul and body while insisting on their absolute unity and dependence on each other. A person is not two substances glued together, like an arts & crafts project; a person is the combination of two principles making a natural whole, sort of like a lyric and a melody making a song. The soul is what makes this collections of organs and tissues into a living human body; a body gives the spirit a corporeal existence and makes it a human soul, as opposed to some angel-like thing. A person is an ensouled body, or an embodied soul. When a person dies, and the soul separates from the body, each is incomplete. A body without its soul is a corpse, and a soul without its body is a spirit eagerly awaiting the Resurrection.

There's an important point: denigrating the body denigrates the doctrine of the Resurrection. It's amazing how often we forget it! We think of our eternal destiny as living with God forever in heaven (ideally), but for some reason there is a tendency to think of it as a purely spiritual existence. What about the "resurrection from the dead, and the life of the world to come"? Our destiny is precisely an embodied destiny, because as human beings we are by nature embodied creatures; that will not fundamentally change at the end of time. God likes what's he done with His design of us.

There is a great moral danger hidden in the erroneous view of "You are a soul": the potential of thinking,"Well, if I really am only my soul, and my body is just a temporary husk, then what does it matter to my eternal destiny what I do with my body? Why shouldn't I eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow I'll simply die and be rid of this hunk of flesh? Party time! Bring on the booze and the dames!" Certain groups of Gnostics in the early Church took to this way of thinking, and promoted (or at least didn't discourage) hedonism. Don't go down that dark road, my friends.

What you do with your body affects you, because it is you who does it. You make the decision, you do the act, you suffer the consequences. You are your body, AND you are your soul, because both are required to make you. When you die, the two are separated, and pine for each other. And on the Last Day, your soul will be rejoined to your body and you will meet your eternal destiny as you, whole, once again.

"Oh, I Know Why You Think That": The Genetic Fallacy

There's a sneaky little pseudo-argument that's become all the rage in the age of combox and Facebook debates, though it's really quite old. It's called the genetic fallacy.

The genetic fallacy is the logically erroneous move of trying to dismiss your opponent's arguments by asserting that they are false not because of their own internal logic or because they're factually inaccurate but because their source is in some way untrustworthy, or because some outside force compels them to think in that way. There are plenty of examples we could give.

"Don't vote for that bill, it was written by the [insert opposing political party here]!"
The proposed legislation is being judged not on its own merits but its author. The bill might well cure cancer, make every citizen a billionaire, and ensure that the Yankees never make the playoffs again, but the speaker of this quotation won't consider it, because it's come from "the wrong people."

"Can anything good come from Nazareth?" (John 1:46)
Nathanael, soon to be an apostle of Christ, at first doubted even the possibility of Jesus being a prophet, not because of anything he had heard him say or do, but merely because of the town he came from. "He's from the sticks, what good could he be?" Nathanael was soon to find out how wrong he was.

"You only believe in God because you have daddy issues/you're genetically predisposed/you have a guilt complex. If you didn't have that, you would see God doesn't exist."
Here one individual's belief in God is denigrated by another and reduced to a product of biology or psychology. But notice the leap the speaker makes: because he deems the source of belief in God to be flawed or inadequate, he concludes that God's existence is likewise doubtful. But one does not logically follow from the other. Why one believes in God and whether God exists are two separate questions. I could present the completely nonsensical arguments for proving that Jerry Brown is indeed the governor of California ("Jerry Brown is governor of California because I had pizza for dinner last night"), but my non sequitur reasoning doesn't mean it is not the case that Jerry Brown is governor of California. Likewise, the reduction of religious faith to a neuron or a neurosis has no bearing on the existence of non-existence of God.

Keep an eye out for this faulty argument. It's all too common, and all too easy to fall for.

The Root of Error in the World Today

The intellectual culture of the West today--meaning not the culture of people who deem themselves intellectuals, but rather the set of assumptions that are shared among many people in the Western world--has at its heart a feeble and rotting philosophy which has somehow survived for nearly a thousand years, despite its sterility and vacuity. This is the philosophy of nominalism. Once I've explained to you what this philosophy is, I think you'll see just how widespread it is, and how much it's contributed to the inanity of public discourse.

Let's begin with the common-sense view. Consider a dog. We all can recognize that a dog is a dog. No matter the differences between different kinds of dogs, whether it's black or white, heavy or svelte, fluffy or sleek, long-tailed or short-tailed, we can still tell that they're all dogs, because these features are only accidental (being mere "attachments") to the critters; there is still something about each dog that makes it "doggy," that it has in common with all other dogs. Aristotle and the medieval philosophers who followed in his general line of thinking, like St. Thomas Aquinas, would call this "something that makes a thing what it is" that thing's "substantial form" or "nature" or "essence." We do still see this philosophy preserved in our everyday language, e.g. "Yeah, it may be missing a leg and been spray-painted bright green, but it's still essentially a dog." What makes a dog a dog, or a cat a cat, or a man a man, is its substantial form, its essence. When speaking of this in terms of how we know things, we would say that there is a universal concept of "dog" that can be equally said of all particular dogs; that is, all particular dogs have a participation in the universal concept of "dog."

But some later medieval theologians were dissatisfied with this notion of substantial form or essence, and they had problems with the notion of universal concepts. There were some who said that though we may use universal concepts as a way to talk about things more easily, this universal concept didn't point to anything real--that though we may talk about the concept of "dog," really, truly, in reality, there are only these particular things that share enough common features that we choose to call them all "dogs." There is no such thing as "dogginess," they would say, only things we choose to call "dogs" for the sake of convenience. Individual things are only collections of characteristics (the "accidents" mentioned above), but there's nothing that ties together all these different strands or "stands under" them (substance --> Latin substantia, sub+stantia = "to stand under"); we simply call things with similar characteristics by the same name. This is the philosophy of nominalism (Latin nomen, nominis, "name").

There is nothing that makes two things each "dogs" unless we choose to call them such. Do you see the consequences of holding this philosophical assumption? It would apply equally to everything that exists, including people: if nominalism is true, then there is nothing that makes two things each "human beings" unless we choose to call them such. There is nothing at the core of us all that makes us the same. "Humanity" becomes a useful fiction which can be discarded when it is no longer useful, an arbitrary category that can be filled with different members as it suits us. So an American plantation owner can declare by his fiat that Africans do not fit in the category of human, and he can enslave them. Nazis can pronounce Jews to be less-than, and exterminate them. Abortionists can term unborn children to be mere "products of conception" and kill them. Suddenly, your gender or sex is not a given, but an option, an "identity" you choose; in the nominalist mindset, there is nothing that makes a man a man or a woman a woman.

Or think of the effect of nominalism in this way. Moral laws can only be set in universal terms, e.g. "It is good for humans to do X, and not good for humans to do Y." "Humans" is a universal term; they are all those things which share "humanity," that is, the essence of what it is to be human. But if we deny that this essence, this nature, exists, we deny that there is anything intrinsically common to humans. If humans have no nature in common, if "humans" is a mere label attached to really distinct particular entities, then we cannot say that anything is universally good or bad for them on account of their "humanity;" we would only be able to say what is good or bad for each of the individuals that we label "human." And who else could determine that other than the individuals for themselves? The door is open for each person to make their own morality. 

Of course, we could not have a society in which everyone makes their own definitions of everything, especially of right and wrong. So who makes these determinations in a nominalist society? Whoever has power: physical might, or political sway, or financial backing. The one with power defines our terms, and shapes our reality. The one with power, for all intents and purposes, becomes God.

What a terrifying thought. Most terrifying of all that this is the world we find ourselves in today.

Silly Questions

You may occasionally come across the self-assured atheist or agnostic who believes he can prove to you that belief in God is an illogical and untenable position based on one or both of these two questions:

If God is all-powerful, can God make a rock so big even He can't lift it?

If everything needs a creator, who created God?

Briefly, I will show that these are damn silly questions that rely on basic logical errors for their rhetorical potency.

First: If God is all-powerful, can God make a rock so big even He can't lift it?

The argument goes like this: "You say you believe in a God who's omnipotent, who can do anything, who creates the moon and the stars and everything there is. Well, can God make a rock so big even He can't lift it? No? Then He can't do everything. Your 'all-powerful God' doesn't exist!"

Oh, gee, what a good point, you really got me there--NOT!

Here's the problem: the question contradicts itself. It is nonsense. Literally nonsense. It doesn't mean anything.

This seemingly clever question violates the most basic rule of logic, the principle of non-contradiction: "a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect." I cannot both be in the room and not be in the room at the same time and in the way same way. He cannot both be eating a cheeseburger and not eating a cheeseburger at the same time and in the same sense. Everybody and their great aunt Sylvia knows this; it's the foundation of our ability to think.

This question violates that principle in at least two ways. First, it assumes God's omnipotence ("If God is all-powerful") but then denies it by denying that he can do something. Second, the "something" it denies He can do is itself meaningless: there is no such thing as a rock so big that an all-powerful being couldn't lift it. To be all-powerful is to have every power, every ability, which would include the ability to lift anything, right? But it does not include the ability to make something that a being with the ability to lift anything is unable to lift. That's nonsense. There can be no such thing as "the ability to lift an un-lift-able rock." It's a self-contradictory definition. You might as well ask if God can make "a square circle," "a living dead thing," or "a dog that is a cat."

It's not a "gotcha" moment, or an unanswerable argument--well, perhaps it's unanswerable only in the sense that you can't answer a question with no meaning. I'm reminded of a Laurel and Hardy bit where someone asks the boys, "Lovely weather we are having tomorrow, wasn't it?" Ollie tries to answer, but realizes the question is ridiculous: it mixes past, present, and future tenses, and can't refer to any one time. The atheist's/agnostic's question here makes just as much sense.

On to the second question: If everything needs a creator, who created God?

The believer will argue something like, "Look, the world didn't just spring out of nothingness. Everything we see depends on something else outside of itself for its existence: babies come from parents, helium is formed by hydrogen fusing in stars, swords are made by swordsmiths. None of these things can account for its own existence. Everything depends on something else for its existence; everything in the world is contingent on something else. So there must be something that can account for everything existence, something that created it all, which itself is not contingent. And that must be God."

And the atheist/agnostic will smirk and reply, "Oh yeah? If everything needs a creator, then doesn't God, too? So who created God? And who created who created God? Huh?"

And the informed believer will reply: "Ah, I see, either you misunderstood, or I left something out. I said that everything we see in the world is contingent, it doesn't spring out of nowhere or cause itself. I mean by that: it doesn't have within itself the explanation for its existence; it depends on something else; it's contingent. So where did they come from? If we try to explain the existence of one contingent thing by the existence of another--babies come from parents, who come from parents, who come from parents, etc.--we get an infinite regress. We never come to the point where things began. And all things have a beginning, as we see with everything we encounter in the world. The only way to not have that infinite chain backward, the only way to have a starting point from which everything begins, is to have a First Cause, something that exists that doesn't depend on anything else for its existence--not a self-caused being so much as a non-contingent being, a necessary being, a being which has and does and will always exist, because its very nature is to exist. This First Cause or necessary being we call God. Only contingent beings need a creator. A necessary being does not. So God does not need a creator."

The mistake here is to think of God as one just one other existing thing among other existing things, even if He's the biggest and most powerful and way awesome-est thing there is. That's a mistake that will get you in a whole heap of philosophical trouble (as the late medieval nominalists and their modern progeny discovered, but that's for another time). God is not the biggest being among other beings. God is the very foundation of being. If the universe were a drawing on a chalkboard, God wouldn't be the biggest drawing of all, or the sum total of all the drawings: God would be the hand drawing on the board (possibly also the chalk, too, depending on how we take the analogy, but anyway....)

OK, I think I've packed too much into that last bit, but the point is: if ever someone faces you with these questions, give a gentle and charitable chuckle and explain to them the errors in their thinking. Don't let them fool you into thinking your faith is unreasonable or nonsensical. Introduce them to these arguments, and they'll soon discover the depth of logic to be found in the faith. After all, a belief must be logical when it is founded upon the Logos Himself.

Don't Let the Lights Go Out

Our society is continuously engaged in pseudo-debates about a range of issues, from abortion to gun control to redefining marriage to the proper response to poverty and immigration concerns. I call them "pseudo-debates" because they quite often seem to be missing a constitutive component of a debate: thought. There's an awful lot of emoting, but not a whole lot of thinking. People deem it sufficient to decide a matter merely by the expression of their feelings about it. Rather than defining our terms, stating our principles, making our arguments, and considering objections (in the serenely reasonable style of the medieval Scholastic philosophers), we instead shout and scream and stamp and snivel and point fingers and tear our hair out and rend our garments and call each other hateful and fear-mongers and heartless and brainless and just about every other pejorative we can conjure up (in the typically passionate style of the modern philosophers, who began by defending reason and usually ended by denying its applicability or trustworthiness).

This is not only immoral in its lack of charity, it's unproductive. We don't get anywhere in our discussions with each other, and when one side does get enough momentum going on its side to win the tug-of-war, we meet a host of unintended consequences that may well have been foreseen had we thought our way through things, and in the end everybody falls down. It reminds me of a parable from G.K. Chesterton's book Heretics (1905):

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, “Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good–” At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.

Though the medieval method may be too arid for the tastes of some, there is no denying its precision and efficiency. If the goal of debate is to air the various perspectives and thoughts of all and come to a reasoned conclusion on the subject, then we must stop our public debates from turning into shouting matches and lynch mobs and witch-hunts, and return to the cathedral school and the university of the pre-modern period, with its disputatio and quodlibet debates. Let's hurry, before the lights go out!

Fall 2013 Courses

The beginning of the fall semester is upon us. Classes start next week, and since I'm sure my upcoming blog posts will be influenced by my coursework, you might like to have a heads-up on what I'll be taking.

Modern Philosophy: This is the third in a sequence of four survey courses on the history of philosophy: Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary. This terminology could seem a little confusing, since we tend to use "modern" to mean "present, recent, up-to-date, latest," but in historians tend to use it differently, more precisely. The modern period is typified by the rejection of the medieval systems and the creation of new systems of thought by such men as Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant. I've studied these guys before in undergraduate classes, so it should sound familiar; I'm hoping that they might make a little more sense this time around. The class will be taught by Fr. Anselm Ramelow, OP, a Dominican priest from Germany who, like many of the faculty here, specializes in just about everything.

Christian Iconography: Do you ever wonder why pictures or statues of St. Paul almost always feature him holding a sword? Why St. John the Baptist is often depicted by the Eastern Churches as having wings? What the significance is of images of the Resurrection of Jesus including Adam and Eve rising with him? When it comes to imagery in Christianity, there is a science to the art. This course will teach us how to recognize meaningful elements in Christian art and interpret their significance. The class is being taught by Fr. Michael Morris, OP, who also teaches courses on film and the arts at the DSPT.

Theology of the Sacraments: A sacrament is a visible sign of invisible grace. There is an awful lot packed into that statement, and we'll unpack it in this course. We'll study the notion of sacraments in general and each of the seven sacraments in particular, including the history of the development of their ritual celebration and our understanding of them. I've always had an attraction to sacramental theology, and I think I may be able to glean a thesis topic from this course, so I'm doubly excited for it! The course will be taught by Fr. Bryan Kromholtz, OP, who specializes in eschatology (study of the end times).

It's going to be a busy semester, but, I hope, a fruitful one!

The Origins of the Creed

In the first few centuries after the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the hot topics of conversation within the Church often centered on these questions: who is Jesus? What is Jesus? How do we make sense of all of the things he said and did? He healed the sick, fed multitudes from a few loaves and fish, even raised the dead, even rose from the dead himself. He was clearly a prophet, perhaps the greatest of prophets, the Messiah who was to come and restore Israel. But he also said certain things, like “I and my Father are one,” and “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Was… was he claiming to be equal to God somehow, or to be God Himself? How could Jesus be God if there is only one God? Could God become a human being and still be God? And even if Jesus were God, how would we reconcile that with him saying things like, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone,” or with the Gospels saying that Jesus grew in wisdom (does God need to learn anything)? Is Jesus a man? Is he God? Both? Neither? Something else? How do we express his identity?

Many people tried many solutions to the problem, but most of them tended to fall on one side or the other of the “God or man” equation. Docetists said that Jesus was really God, but only appeared to be human (“Docetist” from the Greek dokein meaning “to appear, to seem”); he didn’t really suffer or die, but sort of went through the motions, his human form being a mere suit of clothes or mirage. Adoptionists said that Jesus was really a human being, but was granted special favor by God and elevated or “adopted” at the moment of his baptism in the River Jordan (“This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”). Different Gnostic groups took some things they read in Neo-Platonic writers and constructed a whole mythos in which human souls were trapped in bodies by an evil creator god (the Demiurge), and Jesus was a spirit who had come to free them by giving them the knowledge that they were imprisoned (“Gnostic” from Greek gnosis meaning “knowledge”).

None of these seemed right. The general sense, gathered from Sacred Scripture, the apostolic tradition of the Church, and the teaching of the bishops around the world, was that Jesus had to be somehow both God and man. But how could that be? Many more made attempts. Some said that God was really one, but appeared in different forms at different times: sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, sometimes as Spirit. Various ideas had this basic concept, and became known as monarchianism ( Greek mono + arche = “one beginning/origin/power”), or modalism (as in, “God appears in different modes: Father mode, Son mode, Spirit mode”), or patripassianism (Latin “pater” + “passio” = “The Father suffering,” meaning that though it appeared a different person, the Son, was suffering, the Son is just a mode of the Father, so it was really the Father who suffered on the cross). There were others, all falling to the same problem of not respecting both the unity of God and the distinction between the Father and the Son.

Many of these teachers began trying to make use of philosophical terms to help explain themselves, terms like substance, nature, and person. Several challenges stood in the way of this, though. One, the eastern part of the empire was largely Greek-speaking, while the west was Latin-speaking; add to this that the Greek theologians were using more terms than their Latin counterparts, and problems abound. The Latins heard ousia and physis and hypostasis and prosopon and tried to cram them into persona, natura, and substantia. It also didn’t help that the Greeks couldn’t decide what their terms meant—they had a bad habit of using these words without defining them. One person uses physis to mean “nature/essence/what-it-is,” while another uses it to mean “center of subjectivity/who-it-is.” Confusion abounded.

Then, a priest from Rome named Arius began teaching in the Egyptian city of Alexandria that the Son was distinct from the Father, but that he was a creature, the greatest of all creatures and nearly a god himself, but that “there was a time when the Son was not”: he was not eternal; he was not God. But, being that he died for our sins and was glorified by God, he was still worthy of our veneration.

This idea became very popular, especially among certain influential Roman nobles, and the Germanic barbarians living on the borders of the empire. Much of the Church in the Eastern part of the empire took to this new teaching; as St. Jerome wrote, “The world awoke and groaned to find itself Arian.” The western part of the empire still largely held to the traditional view laid out by Tertullian a century before: that Jesus was one person, but a person with two natures, one human and one divine.

Things got bad. Factions sprang up. People were persecuted. Bishops were forced into exile away from their cities.

In 325 AD, the emperor Constantine summoned all the bishops of the world to the resort town of Nicaea and asked them to settle the issue. More than 300 bishops from all over the empire attended, including two legates representing the Pope. This was the first ecumenical (“world-wide”) council in the Church’s history. The bishops discussed, and debated, even fought: St. Nicholas (yes, THAT St. Nicholas) was so furious with Arius that he punched him in the face! The bishops overwhelmingly agreed that Arius was dead wrong. They came up with a summary definition of the Church’s faith in Christ, adding to it at another council held 50 years later in Constantinople. Today we know this definition as the Nicene(-Constantinopolitan) Creed. You say it in Mass every Sunday.

(Tangential epilogue: People sometimes wonder, if the Creed is supposed to be the most basic and fundamental expression of the Christian faith, why is there no mention of the Eucharist, expressing the Church’s belief that it is truly the Body and Blood of Christ? The answer is simple: nobody disputed this point at the time. Creeds and council declarations address the points being controverted at the present time. The Eucharist as the Real Presence of Christ? That was obvious. The nature of Christ himself? That’s the hard stuff.)

Aristotle's Three Pair

In poker, if you're holding three pair, there's a pretty good chance you're cheating. When it comes to Aristotle's philosophy, if you can get a hold of these three pairs, you'll go a long way toward understanding his system. And since Thomistic theology uses Aristotle's philosophy as a baseline, and since a lot of Catholic theology today still relies on the Angelic Doctor, it might be of use to be familiar with these terms.

From the time that the first inhabitant of Greece or its Mediterranean colonies began thinking about something other than his sheep herd and olive groves, philosophers have been racking their brains trying to philosophically account for the phenomenon of change. How is it that something that didn't exist before could exist now? And how can things undergo some alteration but remain the same thing? How is it that I'm still me even when I get my hair cut or my appendix removed? And how is it that when a fire burns a log, the log ceases to be log-ish and becomes ash? Why is it that in some cases of change, things continue to be, while in others, one thing goes out of existence and another arrives? What the heck is going on here!?

Philosophers tried different answers. Some took the view that what we see is an illusion. Parmenides said that all that is, is, and all that is not, is not, and anything that seems to be to the contrary is a mistaken perception on our part; for Parmenides, there is no change, only existing things. Heraclitus, on the other hand, took the exact opposite approach: there are no existing things, only change. The universe is in a constant state of flux, such that nothing can be said to endure; you can't step in the same river twice. (His student Cratylus corrected him: you can't even step in the same river once. Cratylus followed this to its logical conclusion, that all things, including all words, are meaningless, and he never spoke again, only moving his little finger to communicate with his friends.) Others tried to say that things kind of change, but not really, because everything is really made of the same stuff, just more or less condensed; for Thales, it was water; for Anaximenes, it was air, and so on. None of these answers proved satisfactory.

Then along came Aristotle, who made a very reasonable argument: we all can see as clear as day that it is the case both that things really exist and that they really change. There's no point in trying to talk your way around those facts; you're better served to explain them. He went on: if a thing changes, it must have within it the capacity to be that new thing. Aristotle called this potency. And if a thing really exists, it must have something within it that makes it to be what it is. Aristotle called this actuality, or act. Here's our first pair. Everything that exists has both the potential to be something else, and the particular determination that makes it what it is.

Closely related to this is the second pair. Every existing thing is basically a relation between the possibility-of-being, called matter, and the determining actuality, or form. Yes, these two pair are very similar conceptually, for good reason. Form is a type of act, and matter is a type of potency. Now, let's get a few things straight here:

1) When we hear "matter," we think "atoms, molecules, protons, neutrons, electrons, etc.," i.e. stuff. When Aristotle uses the term matter, he's not talking about stuff in this sense. When Aristotle uses the term matter, he's not talking about stuff in this sense. When Aristotle uses the term matter, he's not talking about stuff in this sense. When Aristotle uses the term matter, he's not talking about stuff in this sense. Yes, I just intentionally repeated myself, for the purpose of driving the point home. For Aristotle, matter is simply possibility-of-being, potential, potency. It's not stuff.

2) Form and matter never exist independently of each other. You while never find matter in the Aristotelian sense just floating around, waiting to be informed; nor will you find forms drifting like ghosts, seeking some matter to inhabit. The two never exist without the other. They only ever exist in some already existing substance.

And that introduces our third pair. Form and matter combine to make an existing thing, called a substance. The substance is that which "stands under" (substantia) all appearances as the real entity. This existing thing also has many qualities which are not essentially connected to the thing, but are only attached (accidens) to it by happenstance, and are thus called accidents.

Consider a piece of wood. It's substantially a piece of wood; that's what it is. It's accidentally green, or rough, or pine-fresh. If it were to sit out in the sun and turn white, it would still be wood; if it were smoothed off by an obsessive-compulsive beaver, it would still be wood; if it were sprayed by an ill-tempered skunk, it would still be wood. All of those would be accidental changes. The substance would lose the accidental form (that is, that by which the thing has that attribute) of greenness or roughness or freshness and take on the form of whiteness or smoothness or stinkiness.

Consider the same piece of wood, currently having the substantial form of "wood" and also having within it the potency to become ash; now it's burned by the fire; the fire thus educes from the matter (that is, the possibility of being something else) the form of ashes. The wood has undergone a substantial change. It is no longer the thing it once was. The wood's potency to become ash has now been put into act; a new form has arisen from the matter; the substance, along with its many accidents, has changed.

Aristotle accounts for all of the earlier questions we had about change while not violating our common perceptions.

OK, let's tie this all together by using another example we're all familiar with: bread and wine sit on the altar at Mass. By the ministry of the priest, through whom Christ works, the potency of the bread and wine to be something else is brought into actuality; the possibility-of-being (matter) receives a new form; the bread and wine lose the substantial form of "bread" and "wine" and gain this new substantial form of "Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ." The accidents remain the same--it is still soft and white and small and round--but remember we established above that the substance is separate from the accidents; one can change without the other being changed. Now, usually, in our experience, we see accidents changing and substances not changing, but philosophically, there's no reason a substance couldn't change without the accidents changing. This explanation for what happens at Mass by no means exhausts the mystery of the Eucharist, but the Church has said that it is a fitting way to describe the reality that what was bread and wine is bread and wine no longer, but rather it is Jesus Christ.

See, I told you philosophy comes in handy.

The Week in Review: Evagriating

Patristic Spirituality: The subject of this week's class was Evagrios Pontikos, an ascetical writer from the late 4th century AD. Each week a student or two gives a presentation on the readings assigned, and I chose this week. The presentation could have gone better, but wasn't awful. I've learned I'm not a great extemporaneous speaker, and do much better when I have a prepared text before me. I tried to speak from an outline during this presentation, and I think it showed. Nevermind that, though. Evagrios wrote several works on the spiritual life and the path of progression to greater union with the Holy Trinity through focusing the intellect, calming the passions, and battling demonic temptations. Lots of your typical "deny the body to free the mind for contemplation" stuff--BUT the only reason it seems "typical" to us today is because Evagrios had HUGE influence on the history of Christian thought via his student John Cassian, who went into the Western Roman Empire and started founding monasteries; he, in turn, was a big influence on some guy named St. Benedict (you may have heard of him), whose rule for monastic life became an early standard for others to follow. We'll talk more about Evagrios this week in class.

Medieval Philosophy: There was no class on Monday due to the holiday. (Presidents' Day is a slap in the face, by the way; it used to be we had two separate federal holidays for the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, and now we only get one with the ambiguous name "Presidents' Day." Is that supposed to include all the presidents? Really, are we taking time to commemorate the likes of William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, and Chester A. Arthur?) Anyway... on Thursday we had a "discussion day" in which we compared various aspects of St. Augustine's De Magistro (On the Teacher) and Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. There was a divide in the class as to who we thought had the more tightly constructed argument; it seems an unfair comparison, though, since Augustine was making one long argument, while Boethius made several short ones. Still, there was something about Boethius' I liked better. It had the clarity of the scholastic method about it. *Note: I will soon make a post describing the scholastic method in greater detail, so you'll know what the heck I'm talking about. (Actually, I wrote in my book "proto-Scholastic" as I read it, only to have our professor use that very phrase the next day in class!) This week we'll be discussing St. Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard... or Peter Lombard... one of those Peters... it sometimes seems like the Middle Ages only had, like, eight names. Everyone's named Hugh or Peter or Thomas or John or something.

Philosophical Anthropology: Aristotle had a very helpful concept for relating the functions of the various powers of the soul. Sense knowledge gathers data from the outside world. The "common sense" (not meant as "practical know-how") relates the senses together and distinguishes them. The imagination acts as a storehouse for sense data. The cogitative or estimative sense allows us to intuit whether those things we sense are beneficial or harmful to us. And the memory allows us to store perceptions or conclusions of the estimative sense and retrieve particular ones. See how they all work together?

Metaphysics: "Quiddity" is one of my new favorite words. Especially because it's defined as "the thing-ness of a thing." Come on, that's just plain fun. Who said you can't have fun doing philosophy? Next week's post on this class will be more detailed, as I'll explain the principle of non-contradiction. Unless I forget to.

The Week in Review: Keepin' it Classy

Nothing of much note to share with you from this week, apart from class-related items, so we'll get to it:

Medieval Philosophy: This week we read some excerpts from works by one Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known to history simply as Boethius. He lived in the late 5th-early 6th centuries AD, and is sometimes called "the last of the antique men"; that is, he was what one might call the last true Roman. He grew up in an aristocratic family, and was appointed to high offices by Theoderic, the Visigothic general who had de facto control over Italy. He did something to fall out of favor, though, and was imprisoned for treason. He spent a year in jail before being executed, but during that time wrote what was to be a lasting work in the history of Western thought: The Consolation of Philosophy. This is a dialogue in which Boethius and "Lady Philosophy" investigate a number of philosophical questions. His method, in which he considers objections to a position, lays out his own answer, then responds to the objections, became the standard for the "school men" or scholastics of the Middle Ages. He's quoted quite often as an authority by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica. And Boethius' translations of Greek philosophical terms into Latin became definitive. And he writes beautifully. Always nice when your assignments are a pleasure to read.

Philosophical Anthropology: We tend to think of human beings as the only things possessing souls, but Aristotle (and St. Thomas) took a different position. They used the term more broadly for the that principle which gives life to any material living thing; and different kinds of things have different kinds of souls, depending on the powers that sort of thing has. For example, a vegetative soul allows a thing to take nourishment, grow, and reproduce; so a tree has a vegetative soul. A sensitive soul would add movement and sensation to the powers of the vegetative soul; thus, a dog has a sensitive soul. A rational soul would add intellect to the powers of the sensitive soul; thus, humans have rational souls. Thomas was also clear that only humans have immortal souls, since eternal life would not perfect the powers of the vegetative or sensitive souls--one needs not the opportunity to contemplate God eternally if one has not the power of contemplation.

Metaphysics: When the subject matter of your class is defined as "everything that really exists," you start to wonder "How on earth are we going to cover this in 4 months?"

Patristic Spirituality: More Origen this week. We read excerpts from his De Principiis (On First Principles) dealing with his kooky cosmology and his theories on Scriptural interpretation. The latter was much more sensible than the former; and anyone who ever talks about the "spiritual sense" of Scripture owes a big debt to Origen. But his speculations about the nature of the universe got him into trouble later. Trying to fit Christian theology into his Platonist philosophy, he theorized that in the beginning God created all the intelligent beings that would ever exist, and they existed in a state of contemplation of God; but they got bored or lazy and turned away from God. The ones that fell the least became angels, the ones that fell the most became demons, and the ones in the middle were given material form and became human beings. This ain't kosher with Catholic theology, and it got his ideas condemned at an ecumenical council. But he had the whole Scripture thing going for him... which is nice.

The Week in Review: Farewell Papa Benny

Before turning to a look at the week that was, let me first offer my prayers for our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, who this morning announced his abdication of the Chair of Peter, effective February 28. This was a huge surprise and a highly unusual move (the first time in nearly 600 years a pope has resigned), but it seems the pope feels he no longer has the strength to lead the Church. This saddens me greatly. I admire and respect this man as much as any person on this earth. His pontificate was a great gift to the Church, and he showed himself to be an outstanding teacher and pastor of souls, a man of humility, gentleness, and quiet strength and resolve. May God bless him in his remaining years.

Let us pray, too, for the papal election which will happen in a few weeks. May God grant us the right man for the job!

(One side note: you may have seen various news reports disagreeing on when was the last time a pope resigned his office. The earlier date cited, in the 1200s, was that of Pope Celestine V, who stepped down due to his advanced age, and perhaps his lack of desire to be pope in the first place. The later date, in the 1400s, was that of Pope Gregory XII, who resigned in the midst of the Great Western Schism, when three men were claiming to be pope simultaneously; all three men resigned, and a new pope was elected that all factions agreed to recognize. I'm not sure why some news agencies aren't citing the latter example--perhaps they look at that turbulent time in Church history and aren't sure what to make of it. Anyway, the later date is the correct one, so far as I know.)

Now, to much more mundane affairs....

My prediction of a schola brevis for the first meeting of Philosophical Anthropology was proved accurate. I used the additional time, as well as most of the rest of the day, to do some reading for classes later in the week.

Yeah, Monday and Tuesday pretty much consisted of some combination of class-read-eat-read-sleep-class-read-eat-read-sleep-repeat. Busy, but just the sort of busy I want to be!

Wednesday added a little curve ball of a few hours of work instead of class, but the rest of the day was much the same as the previous two.

Thursdays will be LONG this semester: I start class at 8:10am, and don't finish for the day until 9:00pm. Oh, there are some breaks in there, but they're going to be marathons. This last Thursday proved no exception, with some interesting highlights:

-- In the first meeting of our Metaphysics class, we were introduced to Dr. Marga Vega, a diminutive philosopher from Spain with a kind demeanor and a three-month old baby. (Said baby was not present in class, adorable as that would have been.) This is going to be a heady course, but a good one, I think.

-- A classmate and I took part of the afternoon to grab a coffee and talk about his journey toward the Catholic faith. After discussing his sensitivities toward his non-Catholic family, he said to me: "All right, so: Mary. Just tell me your thoughts about Mary, without trying to answer any objections or anything like that." I said that Mary is the first and greatest disciple of Jesus Christ, whose last words in Scripture are "Do whatever he tells you"; that the relationship between a mother and child is the closest and most significant of all human relationships, so that the relationship between God Incarnate and His mother can't be something merely peripheral; and that Mary always leads us to Christ. This echoed things he had read elsewhere, and I think he found it helpful to have them reinforced by a real live person. I hope to have more conversations of this sort in future.

-- The evening saw the first meeting of our Patristic Spirituality class, led by Dr. Thomas Cattoi, a seemingly omniscient Italian who plucks quotes by everyone from Hans Urs von Balthasar to Theo the Studite out of thin air. He even knew of this very webpage! After I gave my little spiel at the beginning of class, answering my name, my school, etc., Dr. Cattoi added, "...and he has a blog." Apparently I turned a highly luminescent shade of red, and the fellow next to me said, "I believe that's known as a bust." Nice (and a bit intimidating) to know we may have a Ph.D. perusing these pages on occasion.

Saturday evening I joined a view friends for a viewing of the sci-fi classic Alien, which turned out to be much better than I remembered. Good thrills, good pacing, good dialogue, good twists here and there. Our one friend who had never seen the film before responded to the iconic "alien birth" scene by bursting out laughing--not the reaction I expected. Just remember: if you ever are on an alien planetoid and come across some leathery-looking eggs, DON'T NOT put your face in close proximity to them unless you want a squidy thing attaching itself to your mug.

Highlights from classes:

Medieval Philosophy: We've begun the course by discussing St. Augustine of Hippo, particularly his influence on philosophy. He lived in a time (350-420 AD) when there was no clear distinction between philosophy and theology; thus, no one would call it "irrational" when he asserted that human beings gain knowledge by being taught by the "inner teacher," that is, God. Augustine's thought on everything from the grace to the relationship between church and state would go on to be hugely influential on medieval philosophers and theologians. Our professor told us today (paraphrase): "Ancient philosophy effectively ends with Augustine." So, yeah. Kind of a big deal.

Philosophical Anthropology: In our first meeting, the professor set the agenda for the course by presenting us with a series of questions: What is the human being? What is the relation between soul and body? Do human beings have free will? He concluded with a wry smile, saying, "We'll answer these next time."

Metaphysics: Not much to report here yet, as the one class meeting was pretty much introductions and "housekeeping" items.

Patristic Spirituality: We discussed the 3rd century author Origen, who had some pretty unorthodox ideas on some things (e.g. pre-existence of souls, matter as a form of corruption, etc.), but whose work as a biblical commentator and exegete was hugely influential. He asserted that Christ was present in the Old Testament as well as the New, but in types and "shadows," pre-figurations. You'd be hard-pressed to find a Scripture commentary that didn't employ this sort of language. So, yeah. Also a big deal.

Spring Semester Classes

After a lengthy layoff, the spring semester begins on Monday. Here are the classes I'll be taking:

History of Philosophy: Medieval -- The riveting sequel to "History of Philosophy: Ancient," which I took last semester. This one's taught by Fr. Augustine Thompson, OP, who taught me in Aristotelian Logic. This course will cover the movement in the Western philosophical tradition from the classical and late antique world to Christendom and the "scholastic" system of philosophy which dominated in the 12th through 14th centuries. We'll also talk about parallel movements in Jewish and Muslim philosophy, especially those which impacted scholasticism. (After all, Western Europe recovered the texts of Plato and Aristotle largely thanks to the Muslim scholars who had preserved, studied, and commented on them. Just as St. Thomas shows his respect by referring to Aristotle simply as "The Philosopher" and St. Paul as "The Apostle," the Muslim philosopher Averroes is referred to by Aquinas as "The Commentator.") I've always appreciated medieval philosophy for its sound methodology, particularly its insistence on considering all sides of a question when answering it. I look forward to sharing more about this class with y'all.

Philosophical Anthropology -- The exciting follow-up to "Philosophy of Nature," also taught by Fr. Michael Dodds, OP. Where Philosophy of Nature gave us the Aristotelian-Thomistic account of change in the natural world, this course will give us the Aristotelian-Thomistic account of the human person. What's a person made of? What makes a human being a human being? We'll be using a lot of the same categories of form and matter, substance and accident, act and potency, that we did in the last class, I'm sure.

Metaphysics -- The very name of this class often sends chills down the spine. It can seem so intimidating: "the philosophy of being." What is the nature of being? What is the relationship between essence and existence? Not a few people would respond to these questions with a blank stare and a "Huh?" not even sure what the questions asks, let alone what the answer is. I'm hopeful that Dr. Marga Vega will help sort some of these things out.

Patristic Spirituality -- This class is being taught over at the Jesuit School of Theology, another school within the GTU. As much as we might like to poke fun at "The J" (as I'm sure they do us), I've heard nothing but good things about this professor, Dr. Thomas Cattoi. (You may perhaps remember his name: he was one of the presenters for the panel the school held last December on Pope Benedict's new book.) This class will focus on the spiritual theology of some of the Eastern church fathers (that is, important and influential clerics and theologians who lived in the first several centuries of the Church). In particular, we'll investigate the concept of "apotheosis," Greek for (very, VERY roughly) "becoming God-like." The goal, or end, or telos, or final cause of the Christian life is for the Christian to grow in relationship with God so that the Christian participates more and more fully in God's own life. The old patristic saying goes: "God became man so that man might become God"--not in a pantheistic, "raindrop absorbed in the ocean" kind of way, but in a participatory way. I sure hope I'll be able to explain it better as the semester goes on.

I am, as the kids say, totally stoked for these classes! Can't wait!

The Politician's Fallacy

When tragic events capture the nation's attention, the people, horrified at what has occurred, rightly ask what can be done to prevent such things from ever happening again. In turn, our elected representatives in Washington are often stirred to do one of the following (based on your level of cynicism toward politicians):

1) Act swiftly and smartly to address the situation
2) Immediately release a public statement before having found out what actually happened
3) Cancel their afternoon tee time and return to Capitol Hill so they can nap through emergency committee hearings

And in the midst of all this swift acting, public speaking, and committee napping, the politician, in trying to decide what course of action to take, usually goes through the following erroneous thought process, explained well in the British TV series Yes, Prime Minister:

Something must be done.
This is something.
Therefore, this must be done.

We shouldn't attribute this logical fallacy solely to politicians, even though I have done so in the title of this post. After all, it's usually the clamoring of the people to "Do something!" that provides the major premise (i.e. the first line) to this syllogism. Still, it is the politician who is able to act on it, so the buck stops there.

It's understandable. Something happens that shakes us and scares us, like a terrorist attack, or a mass public shooting, or a nuclear meltdown caused by a combined earthquake and tsunami. We don't want it to happen again. We don't feel we can wait one second longer to address the issue. Look at the death/destruction/horror/sadness that this caused. We can't let it happen again! We've got to do something NOW!

While this emotional reaction is to be expected, we ought not necessarily concede to its demands. Our heads need to temper our hearts if the desires of our hearts are to be truly satisfied; for the heart knows what it wants, but the head usually knows better how to get it.

Let's look at an example to illustrate the differences between emotionally charged perceptions and fact-based realities. A mass shooting happens, or a string of publicized mass shootings happen. People feel like there is an epidemic. But actually mass shootings are at their lowest levels in decades. People may point to the assault weapons ban passed in the 1990s and say, "Look, shootings went down after the weapons ban was passed! It must have worked!" But look at the broader picture: during that time, all violent crimes went down, including homicides as a percentage of violent crime. Did the ban on assault weapons also lower incidences of poisoning, strangulation, drowning, stabbing, and other acts of violence? Unlikely. It would seem multiple societal factors were at work. This seems to be further supported by the fact that overall homicide rates have tracked closely with firearm homicide rates over the last 40 years.

(Hat tip to William Briggs for the statistics.)

If we don't take all of these facts into account, we risk committing the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, or "After this, therefore because of this." One might think that because overall crime went down after the ban of assault weapons, it was the ban that caused the decrease in crime. This is not necessarily the case; you would need more information to demonstrate this, and the information provided above suggests it's unlikely.

You might say, "But surely if we ban assault weapons, it will be much harder to commit crimes with assault weapons?" Yes, but if your goal is not strictly to reduce assault weapon crime, but violent crime, an assault weapon ban won't do the trick. Cities like Washington, D.C. and Chicago, which have some of the nation's strictest handgun laws, also have the highest rates of murder and handgun violence. Violent crime is a larger problem than the weapons available with which to perpetrate it. We can't lull ourselves into a false sense of security by doing something and saying, "All right, we've done something. Crisis averted." We might feel like things are worse than ever, but that doesn't mean they are. We might feel like banning certain types of weapons will prevent violent crimes, but that isn't necessarily the case.

You might say, "But why does your average citizen need automatic weapons and clips with dozens of rounds?" A good question, one involving the proper intent and interpretation of the Second Amendment and the rights of citizens to defend themselves. But it's a separate question from whether banning automatic weapons will reduce violent crime. Let's not confuse our terms. Let's stay focused on the task at hand.

Don't get me wrong. Don't interpret me to be saying something I'm not. Don't make me out to be saying more than I am. There may be good reasons to ban or limit the sale of certain types of weapons. Whether people should have access to certain types of weapons is a different issue from whether the availability of those weapons leads to more crime. But that's not the point at issue, and it doesn't help to meld two distinct questions together.

This is just one of the most recent examples to come up, but it's a common theme in our political discourse. To take an example dear to the other side of the aisle: our nation was attacked by terrorists in 2001, and since then our defense spending has grown increasingly, largely due to the extended prosecution of two wars. For some, the level of our defense spending has become a totem for how seriously we take our national security: if you want to cut defense spending, you're acquiescing somehow; if you want to increase defense spending, you're addressing the threats to our country. You might ask whether we could do more with less money, whether more advanced fighter jets are what's needed to combat terrorists, or whether we need to build more aircraft carriers when we have 10, while no one else has more than two, including China and Russia with one each. But to some, they are less interested in how effective our spending is than how much it is.

The point is: if we want to address a particular societal problem, let's take the time to examine the relevant facts (and sift out the irrelevant facts) and not let our emotional reaction, justified as the feelings themselves might be, overwhelm our thinking resulting in our doing something simply for the sake of doing something.

The Week in Review: Links and Logic

Apart from classes, this week featured two events of note.

On Wednesday we had a special Mass of the Holy Spirit for the opening of the school year. There’s a tradition to celebrate yearly Masses invoking the blessing of the Spirit for certain professions, from beginning-of-the-year Masses for schools, to “Red Masses” for lawyers and judges, to “Blue Masses” for police and firefighters. We converted one of the classroom areas into a chapel by bringing in the altar and ambo from our too-small-for-this-event chapel, and had about 50-60 people overall attend (not bad, given that the total student population is about 110). Beautiful music was provided by a schola of the Dominican student brothers. (“Schola” is short for “schola cantorum,” or “school of songs,” a traditional name for a church choir.) The Mass was celebrated by the school’s president, Fr. Michael Sweeney, OP, and the homily was given by the Rev. Br. Dominic David Maichrowicz, OP. You can find a video of his homily here; it’s worth a view.

(Side note: the title “Rev. Br.” is short for “Reverend Brother.” Br. Dominic David is a deacon. The normal form of address for a deacon is “Rev. Mr.,” but since he’s a Dominican brother, he’s styled “Rev. Br.” Once he’s a priest, it’ll simply be “Rev.” I’m considering doing a post on deacons, since a lot of people don’t seem to know much about them. Any interest, dear readers?)

I volunteered beforehand to lector for the first reading. Might as well put some of those seminary skills to use when the opportunity arises.

On Saturday, I participated in a student retreat given at DSPT. It was titled, "Turning Study into Prayer: How can the intellectual life transform and augment our spiritual life?" and was led by Fr. John Marie Bingham, OP. Only about 10 of us attended, but the small numbers simply aided in giving the event an intimate atmosphere. Fr. John Marie gave two presentations from which I derived several good points:

--always keep in mind, “How can what I’m learning bring me closer to God?”

--Knowledge is a good thing in itself, but, since bonum diffusivum est se (“the good spreads itself”), even better than us having knowledge is us sharing that knowledge with others; so always keep an eye toward sharing that knowledge, and in such a way that people without Ph.D.s can understand it. (Readers of this blog know that is one of my objectives in life, and a main reason that I keep this blog.)

--By our knowledge of things, we participate in them in some way. So, when we learn about God by studying theology and philosophy, in some way we come to participate in God. Study is a foretaste of heaven. (…which is easy to remember during a retreat, and hard to remember when you’ve got three papers due and are a month behind in your reading, but still good to keep in mind.)

The retreat also featured adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, daytime prayer and recitation of the rosary, and was capped off by the celebration of Mass. A good day of rest and relaxation, and a good way to get into the proper mindset as the school year begins.

Later that evening my roommate and I caught most of the ND/Michigan State and USC/Stanford games at the apartment of his old roommate and the old roommate’s girlfriend. (I hesitate to use names, because previous experience has shown me that some people don’t like their names popping up in random people’s blog posts, and I would find it too odd of a question to ask them, “Hey, mind if I mention this in my blog?”) If they happen to run across this, please know I enjoyed your hospitality and good company. Oh, and as to the results of the two games mentioned above, I respond with the following: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Bring it, Denard Robinson! We’ve finally got a front seven that will contain you! And for once, the Stanford game might be tougher than the USC game. We’ll see.

Interesting things we talked about in each class this week:

--History of Ancient Philosophy: The ancient Greek philosopher Anaximenes proposed that everything that exists is actually made of air, but that the air takes different forms depending on how condensed it is. This may sound silly, but…

--Philosophy of Nature: …think of the claim of modern physics that matter is simply a condensed form of energy. Perhaps Anaximenes was on to something. And he didn’t even have a Large Hadron Collider at his disposal.

--Introduction to the New Testament: There’s a prominent theme in Scripture that portrays salvation as a re-creation of the world. Consider: in the account of creation in Genesis chapter 1, the waters are separated from each other--the ancients thought there was water above the sky as well as on the earth, and for them water often represented chaos and destruction; when God saves Israel from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 14), He does so by separating the waters of the Red Sea; and in Mark 4, Luke 8, and Matthew 8, Jesus calms the sea during a storm, showing that he has power over the waters. Neat, huh?

--Aristotelian Logic: Did you know that “is” does not always mean the same thing? If you think about it, you know it, but Aristotle separated out five different kinds of “is,” or five predicables. The genus tells us what group out of a larger set of groups that differ in type a thing belongs to, e.g. Man is an animal--apes and elk and elephants are also animals, but they aren’t men. The species tells us what group a thing belongs to, so that all of things in a species differ only in number, not in kind, e.g. Paul is a man, and Nick is a man, and David is a man. A specific difference tells us what sets a thing apart from other things, e.g. Man is rational—no other thing has that quality; it’s what sets man apart from everything else. A property tells us a characteristic that belongs to that thing due to its specific difference, so that only that thing has that characteristic, e.g. Man is able to make jokes (because he is rational). An accident is a characteristic that a thing can have that can be had by other things, i.e. Man is hairy, but so are apes and elk and elephants (a little bit, anyway). It can get a little confusing to apply these, because some of these are used in biology, but they don’t mean quite the same thing as they do in logic. Logic is about relations, how one thing relates to another, not as much about the things themselves. If I haven’t scared you off now, we’ll get into this more another time.

Four Ways of Speaking

Philosophy and theology deal with thick, heavy, dense subjects. It’s hard enough half the time to understand the question being asked, let alone the answer you get: “What is being? What is nature? What is the nature of being? What is essence of nature? What is the essence of God’s nature? Is existence itself God’s nature?” I’m guessing some of you went cross-eyed and passed out briefly mid-way through that series of questions. Hope you didn’t hit your head on anything. Point is: this stuff is hard.

Some people have a talent for engaging these topics in an easy and sensible way… and some do not. In reading different thinkers over the years, I’ve developed a theory:

There are four ways of communicating:

1. Speaking simply on simple matters. This is what most of our speech is like most of the time. Simple declarative statements: “She pushed me,” “God is good,” “That’s my coat,” or “Daniel Tosh isn’t funny.” No brain-busting concepts or unintelligible jargon.

2. Speaking complexly on simple matters. Here, though, we move to a level where we’re still not dealing with brain-busting concepts, but people for some reason feel the need to gussy it up; it’s the linguistic equivalent of wearing a tuxedo to a tailgate party. You’d find this exemplified by college sophomores:

Student: “Professor, can you elucidate for those of us currently present what precisely was the major precipitating factor for the conflict in question?”
Professor: “Do you mean, ‘How did the war start?’”

A more amusing example is found in this video, where Stephen Fry plays a bombastic barber.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J691coIfFvs

3. Speaking complexly on complex matters. Now we reach the level I was initially talking about. We’re dealing with brain-busting concepts, and for many it takes a boatload of special terms, words borrowed from other languages, and circumlocutions (i.e. “my father’s parents’ other son” instead of “my uncle”) to try to get the point across. For example:

“For the very early ancient Israelites, their Weltanschauung entailed a monolatric cosmology in which other deities were recognized while only one was honored with cultic worship.”

Now, there are simpler ways to say this (“The Israelites at first believed in a world where many gods existed, but they worshipped only one”), but they wouldn’t quite capture the content in the same way. It’s no crime to write or speak this way; most of us don’t have the ability to go beyond it. But some do….

4. Speaking simply on complex matters. This level is reserved for those true geniuses who are able to speak about difficult topics in a way that’s easy to understand without leaving out anything essential. Here are some of my favorite examples:
“Our hearts were made for you, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in thee.” St. Augustine captures the essence of human desire and God as the fulfillment of that desire in one simple and beautiful sentence.

“We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” C.S. Lewis here deftly points to a truth our politicians would do well to consider.

(I can’t leave out this example from Lewis, since it’s apropos to our subject: “Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”)

"When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." There are about 10 billion G.K. Chesterton quotes I could have chosen… so, yeah, I think we need a few more:

“To say that everybody is responsible means that nobody is responsible.”

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”

"Why be something to everybody when you can be everything to somebody?" (on motherhood)

Anyway, you get the point, I hope. Be thankful when you come across those gifted people who are able to be so clear. They sure can make life easier.