The Calvinist Doctrine of Glossolalia

Quote of the Day

Eyes closed, hunched and rocking over his hands, he waited, straining to hear footsteps retreat from his door. The knocking came again. "Emilio!" It was the Father General's voice and there was a smile in it. "We have an unexpected visitor. Someone has come to meet you."

"Oh, Christ," Sandoz whispered, getting to his feet and tucking his hands under his armpits. He went down the creaking stairs to the side door below and stopped to gather himself, pulling in a ragged breath and letting it out slowly. With a short, sharp movement of his elbow, he flipped the hook out of its eye on the door frame. Waited, doubled over and silent. "All right," he said finally. "It's open."

There was a tall priest standing in the driveway with Giuliani. East African, Sandoz thought, barely glancing at him, his flat-eyed stare resting instead on the Father General's face. "It's not a good time, Vince."

"No," Giuliani said quietly, "evidently not." Emilio was leaning against the wall, holding himself badly, but what could one do? If Lopore had called ahead. ... "I'm sorry, Emilio. A few minutes of your time. Allow me to --"

"You speak Swahili?" Sandoz asked the visitor abruptly, in a Sudanese-accented Arabic that came back to him out of nowhere. The question seemed to surprise the African, but he nodded. "What else?" Sandoz demanded. "Latin? English?"

"Both of those. A few others," the man said.

"Fine. Good enough. He'll do," Sandoz said to Giuliani. "You'll have to work by yourself for a while," he told the African. "Start with the Mendes AI program for Ruanja. Leave the K'San files alone for now. I didn't get very far with the formal analysis. Next time, call before you come." He glanced at Giuliani, who was clearly dismayed by the rudeness. "Explain about my hands, Vince," he muttered apologetically, as he started back up to his room. "It's both of them. I can't think." And it's your own damned fault for dropping in uninvited, he thought. But he was too close to tears to be defiant, and almost too tired to register what he heard next.

"I have been praying for you for fifty years," said Kalingemala Lopore in a voice full of wonder. "God has used you hard, but you have not changed so much that I cannot see who you were."

Sandoz stopped in his climb to the apartment and turned back. He remained hunched, arms crossed against his chest, but now looked closely at the priest standing next to the Father General. Sixtyish -- maybe twenty years younger than Giuliani, and just as tall. Ebony and lean, with the strong bones and deep wide eyes that gave East African women beauty into old age and which made this man's face arresting. Fifty years, he thought. This guy would have been what? Ten, eleven?

Emilio glanced at Giuliani to see if he understood what was going on, but the Father General now seemed as much at a loss as Sandoz, and as startled by the visitor's words. "Did I know you?" Emilio asked.

The African seemed lit from within, the extraordinary eyes glowing. "There is no reason for you to remember me and I never knew your name. But you were known to God when you were still in your mother's womb -- like Jeremiah, whom God also used cruelly." And he held out both hands.

Emilio hesitated before descending the stairs once more. In a gesture that felt, achingly, both familiar and alien, he placed his own fingers, scarred and impossibly long, into the pale, warm palms of the stranger.

All these years, Lopore was thinking, his own shock so great that he forgot the artificiality of the plurals he had forced himself to master. "I remember the magic tricks," he said, smiling, but then he looked down. "Such beauty and cleverness, destroyed," he said sadly and, bringing the hands to his lips, kissed one and then the other unselfconsciously. It was, Sandoz thought later, an alteration in blood pressure perhaps, some quirk of neuromuscular interaction that ended the bout of hallucinatory neuralgia at last, but the African looked up at that moment, and met Emilio's bewildered eyes. "The hands were the easy part, I think."

Sandoz nodded, mute, and frowning, searched the other man's face for some clue.

"Emilio," Vincenzo Giuliani said, breaking the eerie silence, "perhaps you will invite the Holy Father to come upstairs?"

For a hushed instant, Sandoz stared in blank astonishment and then blurted, "Jesus!" To which the Bishop of Rome replied, with unexpected humor, "No, only the Pope," at which the Father General laughed aloud, explaining dryly, "Father Sandoz has been a little out of touch the past few decades."

Dazed, Emilio nodded again and led the way up the staircase.

Mary Doria Russell
Children of God

Memories

I camped at Spirit Lake boy scout camp on Mount Saint Helens before it erupted in 1980. I may still have the t-shirt -- I'd have to search for it in my sister's house, but I think I still had it when I stored some stuff over there. If I find it, I'm giving it to my son to wear, although it would be a little big for him. When the mountain erupted, Portland was covered in ash which fell like snow. I had to wear a surgical face mask and shovel our driveway with a snow shovel.

Anyway, I just heard this song again for the first time since right after the eruption about Harry R. Truman, the old man who refused to leave his home on Mt. St. Helens before it erupted. It's not a particularly good song, but it brings back memories.

C.S. Lewis's Argument against Naturalism, part 2

Early Versions of the Argument 

In this post, I will summarize some of C.S. Lewis’s essays where he addresses the argument from reason, prior to the publication of Miracles in 1947.

Bulverism
One of Lewis’s first essays devoted to the argument from reason and the issues it raises is “Bulverism,” which was published twice: a short form appearing in 1941, and a longer one in 1944. In it, Lewis takes aim at Freudianism and Marxism, which he perceives to be inherently reductive. Freudians hold (according to Lewis) that all reasoning is the result of psychological conditioning, while Marxists hold that it is the result of social conditioning. As such, all reasoning is “tainted,” either psychologically or ideologically, and this applies to any criticism of Freudianism or Marxism. The implications being that such criticisms are neither rational nor justified, and so can be safely ignored.

Lewis dispatches with such views fairly easily by applying this argument to the Freudians and Marxists themselves: if all reasoning is tainted, then they do not arrive at their doctrines by valid reasoning either, and if this condition allows their critics to be discounted, it allows Freudianism and Marxism to be discounted by the same token. More specifically, Lewis asks two questions: “The first is, Are all thoughts thus tainted at the source, or only some? The second is, Does the taint invalidate the tainted thought -- in the sense of making it untrue -- or not?”{1} Lewis understands the Freudians and Marxists to be answering both of these questions affirmatively. However, since this invalidates their own position -- amounting to an argument that no argument is valid -- he suggests they have to choose another option: either not all thoughts are tainted, or the taint does not invalidate the thought (or both). But if any of these positions is true, it becomes possible for the criticisms of Marxism and Freudianism to be untainted or not invalidated, and so they have to be dealt with.{2}

Lewis’s point is that “you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong.”{3} Take, for example, a man who believes he is rich. We cannot use the fact that he wants to be rich as evidence that his belief is the result of wishful thinking. The psychological motivation to believe that he is wealthy simply does not matter; what matters is whether the man has correctly assessed his accounts. “If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant -- but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought.”{4}

Lewis proposes calling this error “Bulverism” after a fictional character he invents.{5} “Ezekiel Bulver” realized as a young child that “refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet.”{6} All sides can engage in such sophistry, since no position excludes its advocates from treating their opponents like unreasonable buffoons. But of course, this does not prove that their opponents are wrong; indeed, it does not even address whether they are wrong. “Bulverism” is essentially the circumstantial ad hominem fallacy, and also shares some similarity with the genetic fallacy. In this scenario, one attempts to refute a position by arguing that its proponents arrived at it by nonrational means.

As Freudianism and Marxism are examples of Bulverism, Lewis sees fit to apply the same conundrum to Bulverism that he did to them. “The forces discrediting reason, themselves depend on reasoning. You must reason even to Bulverize. You are trying to prove that all proofs are invalid. If you fail, you fail. If you succeed, then you fail even more -- for the proof that all proofs are invalid must be invalid itself.” This leaves us with very few choices: “either sheer self-contradicting idiocy or else some tenacious belief in our power of reasoning.”{7}

From this point on, the essay closely mirrors the structure of Miracles. Here, we will just treat the most pressing issue, namely what exactly reasoning consists of. He argues that most of our beliefs are inferences derived from sensory experiences. Therefore, any prospective worldview must make it possible for our inferences to be valid, since that worldview itself would be reached by inference. This forces us to take a step further back: of what does a valid inference consist? Here Lewis makes a distinction between the normal causes present in nature and “a special kind of cause called ‘a reason.’”{8} The former are mechanical and mindless; the latter are inherently rational in nature. In order for our inferences, and hence our reasoning abilities, to be valid, they must be the result of reasons rather than normal causes; and since nature only knows normal causes, our reasoning abilities must transcend nature. The extent to which our beliefs are brought about by normal causes is the extent to which they are not brought about by reasons; and thus the extent to which these beliefs are invalid.

Apparently forgotten is his second question to the Freudians and Marxists: “Does the taint invalidate the tainted thought -- in the sense of making it untrue -- or not?”{9} Does having a nonrational cause for a belief invalidate that belief? Also apparently forgotten is Lewis’s insistence that beliefs be weighed on purely rational grounds, and not on the basis of how an individual came to hold them. These points would come back to haunt him when Elizabeth Anscombe put forward her critique of his argument.

De Futilitate
This essay “is an address given at Magdalen College, Oxford, during the Second World War.”{10} While the majority of it is a sophisticated presentation of the argument from reason, in it Lewis is actually addressing a larger issue: how the picture of the world that modern science paints seems to depict a universe that is utterly futile. This presents a problem of how we should respond to this picture, and Lewis argues that there are really only three ways to do so.

The first is heroic nihilism, such as that proffered by Bertrand Russell in his essay “A Free Man’s Worship.”{11} The problem with this position is that the standard by which we judge the universe to be futile is, according to this view, just another product of the universe. Choosing to build one’s life on “the firm foundation of unyielding despair” as Russell puts it,{12} is itself one more meaningless and arbitrary act. There is nothing heroic or noble about it -- for the simple reason that, according to this view, heroism and nobility are illusions. “Heroic anti-theism thus has a contradiction in its centre. You must trust the universe in one respect even in order to condemn it in every other.”{13} A foreshadow of this point appears in Lewis’s private journal, written before he was a Christian, where he states that Russell provides “a very clear and noble statement of what I myself believed a few years ago. But he does not face the real difficulty -- that our ideals are after all a natural product, facts with a relation to all other facts, and cannot survive the condemnation of the fact as a whole. The Promethean attitude would be tenable only if we were really members of some other whole outside the real whole.”{14}

The second way to respond to futility is to deny that the picture modern science paints is accurate. One can do this by denying that the physical world is real (which Lewis equates with idealism and Eastern religions), or by positing a larger world of which this world is a part, and in light of which, changes the picture from one of futility (which he equates with monotheistic religions). Lewis does not go into any more detail about this, but leaves it open.

The third way is the one Lewis wishes to investigate, because he finds it to be the most appealing to our common sense. This is the view that our sense of futility is a category mistake. It is a result of our ability to construct tools, which creates in us the habit of thinking in terms of “means and ends.” We then apply this pattern to the physical universe (which we obviously did not construct), and find that it fails to fit neatly within it. Thus, the universe appears futile.

Lewis has a very high opinion of this view, and argues that it should be accepted. However, it raises the question of how far we can take it. Can we discount all thought in similar fashion, as “merely human”? If we do, the very asking of this question, being a merely human mode of thought, should also be discounted:

There is therefore no question of a total scepticism about human thought. We are always prevented from accepting total scepticism because it can be formulated only by making a tacit exception in favour of the thought we are thinking at the moment. … Whatever happens, then, the most we can ever do is to decide that certain types of human thought are ‘merely human’ or subjective, and others not. However small the class, some class of thoughts must be regarded not as mere facts about the way human brains work, but as true insights, as the reflection of reality in human consciousness.{15}

Of course, this is not to say that people do not make mistakes when they reason, but that the correction of such errors must come from a source beyond the individual mind.{16}

A common candidate offered for this role of true insight is scientific thought. Lewis argues to the contrary, though, that this does not work for the simple reason that science is dependent upon inference, which is a category of logic. Any movement from observation to hypothesis involves some inference. Even observations can be understood this way: we infer an external world as the cause of our sensory perceptions. Of course, Lewis is not challenging whether these inferences are correct and rational; of course they are. His point is that scientific thought presupposes inference, and therefore, logic.

This, in effect, provides us with a better candidate for the role of true insight: logical thought. If logical thought is “merely human,” then all of science is as well, since science is built upon the foundation of logic. Moreover, the thought that logical thought is merely human would be merely human itself, and therefore, not valid. “I conclude then that logic is a real insight into the way in which real things have to exist. In other words, the laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time.”{17}

This leads to two “very momentous consequences,” the first being that materialism is necessarily false. This is because thoughts are about something. Yet if the mind and its thoughts were just physical matter, no such relation would hold: it is nonsensical to say that one piece of matter is “about” another piece of matter. A tree is not about a rock, for example. Moreover, a piece of matter cannot be true or false; it simply is. But again, thoughts can be true or false. Since thoughts have these properties but matter does not, thoughts cannot be explained entirely in terms of the physical matter and energy that make up our brains.

We are compelled to admit between the thoughts of a terrestrial astronomer and the behaviour of matter several light-years away that particular relation which we call truth. But this relation has no meaning at all if we try to make it exist between the matter of the star and the astronomer’s brain, considered as a lump of matter. The brain may be in all sorts of relations to the star no doubt: it is in a spatial relation, and a time relation, and a quantitative relation. But to talk of one bit of matter as being true about another bit of matter seems to me to be nonsense.{18}

The second momentous consequence is this: if it is true that “The laws whereby logic obliges us to think turn out to be the laws according to which every event in space and time must happen,”{19} it means that logic permeates the universe. There is a correspondence between our minds and the universe, a correspondence that stands in need of an explanation.

Some might try to explain it by arguing that the mind is a product of the universe, an effect of nature. As such, it seems plausible that our patterns of thinking would correspond to it. However, Lewis argues, this is too simplistic.

To be the result of a series of mindless events is one thing: to be a kind of plan or true account of the laws according to which those mindless events happened is quite another. Thus the Gulf Stream produces all sorts of results: for instance, the temperature of the Irish Sea. What it does not produce is maps of the Gulf Stream. But if logic, as we find it operative in our own minds, is really a result of mindless nature, then it is a result as improbable as that. It is … as if, when I knocked out my pipe, the ashes arranged themselves into letters which read: ‘We are the ashes of a knocked-out pipe.’{20}

We are thus forced to conclude that “where thought is strictly rational it must be, in some odd sense, not ours, but cosmic or super-cosmic.”{21} This is inconsistent with any worldview that assigns primacy to matter; but is consistent with any view that denies this. In fact, Lewis gives several possible positions one could develop from this argument. However, this is not as diverse as one might think: all of them fall under the category of the second way by which one could respond to futility.

Towards the end of “De Futilitate,” Lewis applies this argument to ethics in addition to reason.{22} He does this elsewhere,{23} and to aesthetics as well,{24} as Balfour had before him; but this goes beyond our present interests.

Meditation in a Toolshed
In this essay, Lewis uses the image of a beam of light to illustrate the difference between “looking along” and “looking at.” In a dark room, a beam of light from the outside can be very prominent, but it makes a world of difference whether we step into it and see the outside world via the beam -- i.e. by looking “along” it -- or whether we step back from it and just look “at” the beam itself. Similarly, we can make a distinction between the experience of thought and the observations of neurological processes. “The mathematician sits thinking, and to him it seems that he is contemplating timeless and spaceless truths about quantity. But the cerebral physiologist, if he could look inside the mathematician’s head, would find nothing timeless and spaceless there -- only tiny movements in the grey matter.”{25}

He goes on to point out that the contemporary world has decided that looking at a phenomenon gives the truer or more correct account of that phenomenon. We assume that we learn more about something by studying it from the outside than by experiencing it from within. “Looking at” has annulled “looking along.” However, Lewis raises objections which make it impossible to disregard all inside experiences, and the argument from reason is one such objection.

We can look at thought, or the beam of light, from the side, as it were; but then that looking itself is another phenomenon which, presumably, must be looked at from the side as well; and this third act of looking must also be looked at from the side, ad infinitum. “In other words, you can step outside one experience only by stepping inside another. Therefore, if all inside experiences are misleading, we are always misled.”{26}

The solution to this is not to disregard all outside observations as less valuable or true than inside experiences. A woman in love may know more about it than another who has only read romance novels; but she may also be blinded to some realities by her love. Rather, the solution is that we must use both types of looking, and determine on a case-by-case basis whether one type is more correct, or whether both are equally correct in different ways. Lewis’s solution is that we cannot presuppose that one type of looking is inherently superior to the other. This essay foreshadows similar sentiments expressed by Thomas Nagel fifty years later.{27}

Religion without Dogma?
This essay is a critique Lewis wrote of a paper presented to the Socratic Club by H.H. Price defending agnosticism. While Lewis makes many points, one of them is a presentation of the argument from reason.{28} Unlike the other essays we have looked at, here Lewis makes no pretense of objectivity, couching his description in loaded terms and phrases, occasionally bordering on the contemptuous. He emphasizes how the physical laws of causality “never intended” to produce the universe, much less life, the human being, or the human brain; and so our mental activity is the result of “the law of averages” and “random variations.” Organization is matter’s “disquieting disease” and consciousness was “blundered into.”{29}

Lewis takes this biased description and applies it to a very particular target: Price’s composition and delivery of his paper. These events were, on Price’s own view, “the last link of a causal chain in which all the previous links were irrational.” As such, they amount to “a phenomenon of the same sort as his other secretions … no more capable of rightness or wrongness than a hiccup or a sneeze.”{30} But of course, no one, least of all Lewis, took his paper that way. He makes some of the same points he made in earlier essays, such as that any thought “explained, without remainder, as the result of irrational causes” is thereby rendered completely invalid. He also alludes to the difficulty, if naturalism is correct, in ascribing “that wholly immaterial relation which we call truth or falsehood” to the brute physical events that we call our thoughts: “naturalism seems to me committed to regarding ideas simply as events.”{31} Thus, naturalism presents itself as a true system of thought that invalidates all thought and makes the concept of truth nonsensical.

There are two final points to make about this essay. First, while Lewis read it to the Socratic Club in 1946, it did not appear in The Socratic Digest until two years later, in the same volume containing G.E.M. Anscombe’s criticism. In fact, Anscombe’s was the premier essay in that edition, and as such, completely deflated this presentation of the argument.

Second, in his response, Price conceded this point to Lewis.{32}

Shorter versions
Apart from the detailed account of the argument from reason that Lewis gives in Miracles, the essays presented above represent his most extensive treatments of it. It did not form a part of his two most popular theological works, Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain, although in the former, he does give a related argument for the validity of ethics{33} and one of the shorter books Mere Christianity was based on, The Case for Christianity, does have a statement of the argument,{34} but it was removed from the larger work. However, he presented shorter versions of it many other times in his writings and lectures;{35} it even found its way into his fiction.{36}

Notes

{1} C.S. Lewis, “‘Bulverism’: or, The Foundation of 20th Century Thought,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (1970; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 272.
{2} Lewis criticizes Freudianism on other grounds as well (“Psycho-analysis and Literary Criticism,” in They Asked for a Paper: Papers and Addresses [London: Bles, 1962], 120-38), although he also states he has “no objection to the inclusion of Freudian explanations provided they are not allowed to exclude all others” (“Behind the Scenes,” in God in the Dock, 247).
{3} Lewis, “Bulverism,” 273.
{4} Ibid., 272-73.
{5} It may also be the case that “Bulverism” is inspired from the French term bouleverser. This means to disrupt or cause distress, but it also means to turn upside down. This could indicate that the person who engages in Bulverism is turning the reasoning process on its head. However, this is pure speculation.
{6} Lewis, “Bulverism,” 273.
{7} Ibid., 274.
{8} Ibid., 275.
{9} Ibid., 272.
{10} Walter Hooper, Preface, in C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (1967; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), xiii.
{11} Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” in Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1917), 46-57. Lewis refers to this essay by an alternate title, “The Worship of a Free Man.”
{12} Russell, “Free Man’s Worship,” 48.
{13} C.S. Lewis, “De Futilitate,” in Christian Reflections, 67.
{14} C.S. Lewis, All My Road before Me: The Diary of C.S. Lewis 1922-1927, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), 281 (the entry for Saturday 5 January, 1924).
{15} Lewis, “De Futilitate,” 61.
{16} Ibid., 68.
{17} Ibid., 63.
{18} Ibid., 63-64.
{19} Ibid., 65.
{20} Ibid., 64-65.
{21} Ibid.
{22} Ibid., 67-70.
{23} Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943; New York: Macmillan, 1947), 39-91; idem, Mere Christianity (1952; London: Collins, Fontana Paperbacks, 1955), 41-42; idem, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, 1st ed. (London: Bles, 1947), 43-48, 2nd ed. (London: Collins, Fontana Paperbacks, 1960), 38-42.
{24} Lewis, Abolition of Man, 13-35.
{25} C.S. Lewis, “Meditation in a Toolshed,” in God in the Dock, 212-13.
{26} Ibid., 215.
{27} Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 13-35.
{28} C.S. Lewis, “Religion Without Dogma?” in God in the Dock, 135-38.
{29} Ibid., 136.
{30} Ibid., 136-37.
{31} Ibid.
{32} H.H. Price, “Reply,” Socratic Digest 4 (1948): 98-99. J.R. Lucas (Freedom of the Will [Oxford: Clarendon, 1970], 116 n. 2, 174) refers to Price’s essay as “The Self-Refutation of Naturalism.” This is actually the subtitle for the fourth part of Price’s reply.
{33} Lewis, Mere Christianity, 41-42.
{34} C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity (1942; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 32. Thanks to Victor Reppert for drawing this to my attention.
{35} Lewis, Abolition of Man, 91; idem, “Evil and God,” in God in the Dock, 21; idem, “Miracles,” in God in the Dock, 27; idem, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” in God in the Dock, 52-53; idem, “The Poison of Subjectivism,” in Christian Reflections, 72; idem, “The Funeral of a Great Myth,” in Christian Reflections, 89; idem, “Transposition,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (1949; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 103-104; idem, “Is Theology Poetry?” in Weight of Glory, 135-36, 138-40; idem, “On Living in an Atomic Age,” in Present Concerns, ed. Walter Hooper. (1986; San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1987), 73-80.
{36} C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981), 49-50, 62-63; idem, That Hideous Strength (1946; New York: Macmillan Paperback, 1965), 357-58.

(see also part 1, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7)

(cross-posted at Quodlibeta)

Oh joy!

Via Maverick Philosopher, I have just discovered the website of philosopher Andrew M. Bailey. Bailey is collecting all of the articles and book reviews of certain philosophers to make them available to everyone. One of his collections is nearly every publication of Alvin Plantinga. Another is the same of Peter van Inwagen. Another is David Lewis, which is exciting since I've always felt the need to have a more intimate knowledge of his philosophy. I might even put these links on the sidebar. So, much thanks to Bailey.

Celli

If you like cello, here's a couple of videos you can put on and play all day in the background. The first is the two-hour long complete collection of Bach's cello suites (which I've mentioned before here):



The second is the four-hour long complete collection of Vivaldi's cello concertos:

Martyrs

Here's a disturbing article about the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries. It's based on the book Crucified Again by Raymond Ibrahim.

Profound philosophical argumentation

A great SF author you've never heard of

Grant Callin wrote a handful of short stories -- four in total -- and wrote a novel that functioned as a sequel to one of them. He then expanded the short story into a novel. That's the entirety of his output. All I've read are his two novels. Saturnalia, the expansion of the short story "Saturn Alia", and the sequel A Lion on Tharthee, which I don't like as much, but it is still extremely good. Saturnalia is basically a treasure hunt in the Saturn system. It's glorious. It is, to my mind, very reminiscent of Heinlein's style of writing in how readable and flowing the narrative is. Yet despite its readability, it is definitely hard science-fiction: Callin knows his stuff, and what he doesn't know, he fakes very well. Take this passage from the beginning of Saturnalia:

"Listen Whitey," he came back. "I'm a SpaceHome maintenance specialist -- been one for twenty-five years. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's to expect the unexpected. We been livin' up here for over fifty years now, and we're still learnin' about the environment -- cosmic burst anomalies, vacuum-induced bearing creep, lubricant outgassing, trapped corona discharge, and on and on. Every time we think we've got a problem licked and begin to start congratulating ourselves, it shows up again in a different form, and -- bingo! -- we got a new long-term environmental phenomenon to worry about."

That sounds absolutely real to me, real conditions of living in space. Callin's focus on technology (and piloting spacecraft) may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoy it, and engineers (and pilots) should absolutely love it. The only weakness to both books is that they have too much bonhomme camaraderie. You know what I mean: the main characters are diamonds in the rough in some sense, and people are always able to see through the exterior and recognize how truly deep and noble they are. Heinlein does this too, but Callin's is so over the top that it gets distracting. Another minor weakness is that Lion on Tharthee begins with a clear statement of the myth of conflict between science and religion, but that's so common to science-fiction that you can't hold it against anyone (although more recent science-fiction writings seem to be correcting this misunderstanding). Regardless whatever weaknesses the books may have are very minor and are heavily outweighed by the positives. I strongly recommend these books to everyone who likes science-fiction.

Breaking News from the Outer Planets

1. Neptune has a new moon. Well, new to you. It was discovered by going over old photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. The moon is 12 miles, or 19 kilometers, wide. So think about that for a moment: a telescope in orbit around the earth was able to spot a 12 mile-wide object in orbit around Neptune.

2. Tomorrow, on July 19, the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn will turn its cameras inward and will take a picture of the earth. From Saturn. It will take the picture between approximately 2:27 and 2:42 Pacific time -- add three hours for the east coast, five more for Great Britain, and one more for continental Europe. So make sure to look up and smile. They've done this before. Here's one,

which is reminiscent of the "pale blue dot" picture that Carl Sagan talked NASA into taking from Voyager 1. Of course, Sagan used this to argue that the earth and humanity are insignificant and that this contradicts the traditional view of humanity as the pinnacle of creation supposedly taught in the Bible -- and I can't help but think he already had the book half written when he asked NASA to take the picture. Unfortunately for Sagan, we've known since at least Aristotle that in comparison to the size of the universe the earth is, for all practical purposes, infinitely small, a mathematical point with zero volume. For more on this, read "Copernicus and the Tale of the Pale Blue Dot" by Dennis Danielson.

Update (26 July): Here's the new picture of earth taken from Saturn:

and here's one taken at about the same time from the Messenger spacecraft in orbit around Mercury:

C.S. Lewis's Argument against Naturalism, part 1

The following series of posts are an adaptation of a thesis I wrote for one of my Master's degrees.
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Introduction and Background

So many books have been written about C.S. Lewis, that there are actually books to simply catalogue them.{1} His influence, however, has been more on the popular level than in academia. This is largely Lewis’s doing: he wanted to write for the common man, the layperson, rather than the scholar. Unfortunately, the result of this has been that professional philosophers and theologians often do not treat him with the seriousness he deserves. Lewis, however, taught philosophy at Oxford in the beginning of his academic career,{2} surrounded himself with philosophers all his life,{3} and had “outstanding philosophical instincts.”{4} Thus, the first chapter of a recent philosophical book defending him is entitled, “Taking C.S. Lewis Seriously.”{5} One of the minor premises in this series of posts is to point to several examples where Lewis anticipates issues that have since come to the fore in analytic epistemology.

Initial statement of argument
One of Lewis’s arguments is that our reasoning capacities cannot be accounted for on naturalistic premises, and so we are forced by the fact that we reason to posit a supernaturalist worldview. His most extensive treatment of this argument is in his book Miracles, but he expressed it many times in his writings. For example:

We are certain that, in this life at any rate, thought is intimately connected with the brain. The theory that thought therefore is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense, for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction, but of which it would be meaningless to use the words “true” or “false.”{6}

Another example:

Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula or the remotest part obeys the thought laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory -- in other words, unless Reason is an absolute -- all [science] is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.{7}

These two quotes succinctly express the three aspects of Lewis’s argument. First: if matter is all that exists, our beliefs are entirely caused by purely material processes, since there would be no other processes available to cause them. In which case, they are not the result of following the logic of an argument to a valid conclusion. As such, our beliefs are not logical or rational, and are therefore suspect -- including the belief that our beliefs are entirely caused by purely material processes. Materialism is therefore a self-refuting hypothesis: if it were true, we could have no reason for thinking it to be true.

Second: physical events are brute facts, and so it is nonsensical to call them true or false. A physical object is not “about” another physical object. Thoughts, on the other hand, are about things, and can be true or false. Therefore, our reasoning processes are more than physical events.

Third: the pattern our reasoning takes must also be the pattern by which physical reality acts. Lewis sees such a correspondence as enormously implausible on materialistic grounds. For random physical events to produce such a correspondence would be like an explosion producing order; not merely order, but information; not merely information, but information about itself.

Lewis’s argument is thus more modest than similar arguments from consciousness or “noölogical arguments.”{8} In fact, Lewis explicitly states that he is “not maintaining that consciousness as a whole must necessarily be put in the same position [as reason]. Pleasures, pains, fears, hopes, affections and mental images need not. No absurdity would follow from regarding them as parts of Nature.”{9}

Following John Beversluis and Victor Reppert -- a critic and an advocate respectively -- I will refer to this as the argument from reason.{10} This argument can be divided into two parts: the first half argues that nature by itself cannot account for human reason, and the second half argues that something other than nature must therefore be posited. While Lewis took the argument in a specifically theistic direction, he also suggested, “There are all sorts of different ways in which you can develop this position, either into an idealist metaphysic or a theology, into a theistic or a pantheistic or dualist theology.”{11} Because of this ambiguity, here I will only examine the first half of the argument, the refutation of ontological naturalism.

Christian philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe criticized Lewis’s argument at a meeting of the Socratic Club at Oxford in 1948,{12} and Lewis was forced to reformulate it in response to her objections. In this series of posts, I will look at Lewis’s original version of the argument, analyze Anscombe’s objections with the help of several philosophers who have commented on the exchange, and see whether Lewis’s reformulation holds up to scrutiny.

A note on terminology: Lewis originally presented the argument from reason by contrasting valid and invalid inferences, and then moved from this to refer to valid and invalid reasoning in general. Anscombe challenged his use of the terms “valid” and “invalid,” and Lewis, in his response at the Socratic Club,{13} conceded the point, and suggested the terms “veridical,” “verific,” or “veriferous” in its stead (the latter two being neologisms). I think the most appropriate terms for what Lewis is trying to say are “veracious” and “veracity.” Nevertheless, to avoid going back and forth between different terms at different stages of the argument (he also occasionally uses the term “sound”), I will simply employ “valid” and its derivatives throughout, unless a direct quote employs a different term.

Background and sources
Of course, this argument was not original to Lewis. Perhaps the earliest argument that there is something self-defeating about any kind of mechanism or determinism, whether materialistic or otherwise, was expressed by Epicurus when he wrote, “The man who says that all things come to pass by necessity cannot criticize one who denies that all things come to pass by necessity: for he admits that this too happens of necessity.”{14} Consequently, such arguments are sometimes called “Epicurean” arguments.{15}

Similarly, arguments that mind cannot be reduced to matter were made in the ancient world by many authors, such as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine.{16} Following the latter, the medievals developed the doctrine of divine illumination, which held that the acquisition of knowledge requires the action of God.{17} In the modern era the irreducibility of mind found expression in the writings of Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Kant, and others.{18} Lewis’s argument about the correspondence between our minds and the universe also has a long history behind it. Thomas Oden cites Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Peirce, Bergson, and others as defenders of it.{19}

While there is thus a tradition behind Lewis’s argument, there are three particular sources that informed him. The first is one Lewis cites in his autobiography:{20} his friend Owen Barfield. Barfield was a theosophist, and while he failed to convert Lewis that far,{21} he did manage to convince him that there is an inconsistency between accepting that mindless matter is the bedrock of reality, and also “that abstract thought (if obedient to logical rules) gave indisputable truth.” This, however, seemed inconsistent: “If thought were a purely subjective event, these claims for it would have to be abandoned.”{22} Mind, Lewis concluded, must in some sense be independent of the natural world.

A second source of Lewis’s argument is the philosopher and British Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Balfour wrote several philosophical tomes defending the idea that “familiar beliefs” -- beliefs about the validity of ethics, aesthetics, and especially reason -- cannot be justified on materialistic terms,{23} receiving criticism from the likes of Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore.{24} Lewis never cites Balfour in his statements of the argument, but he does refer to Theism and Humanism as “a book too little read,”{25} and lists it as one of ten books that exerted the most influence on his thought.{26} Balfour’s impact on Lewis’s version of the argument has only recently been recognized,{27} but it has been sufficient for Theism and Humanism to be republished with the subtitle The Book that Influenced C.S. Lewis.

A third source is G.K. Chesterton. In Orthodoxy (in a chapter entitled “The Suicide of Thought”), Chesterton argues that “If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, ‘Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape.’”{28} Similarly, in an essay entitled “The Wind and the Trees,” Chesterton compares the view that the mind is able to move the body, and therefore transcends the body, to the idea that the wind moves the trees. Just as we see the trees move and posit an unseen force moving them (the wind), so we see the body move and posit an unseen force moving it (the mind). This is the “great human dogma.” On the other hand, “The great human heresy is that the trees move the wind.”{29} This is the view that the body moves the mind, and that everything appearing in the mind is actually a product of the body. In this case, we try to explain the unseen in light of the seen rather than vice-versa. This might be reasonable except for the fact that it leads to the very absurdity that the argument from reason postulates: “The man who represents all thought as an accident of environment is simply smashing and discrediting all his own thoughts -- including that one.” All thinking must therefore “treat the human mind as having an ultimate authority,”{30} and this cannot be done if it is “an accident of environment.”

Lewis revered Chesterton as having “more sense than all the other moderns put together,”{31} and seems to obliquely refer to Chesterton’s essay in the same place where he praises Balfour:{32} “If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.”{33}

Of course, Lewis was extraordinarily well read, so these three were not the only influences on his development of the argument from reason. When he needed a succinct statement of it, he turned to J.B.S. Haldane: “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true … and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”{34} The physicist Arthur Eddington, whom Lewis quotes for different points,{35} also presented a version in his lecture Science and the Unseen World.{36} One wonders whether Lewis had Eddington in mind when he wrote how science had compelled some “modern physicists” to “think about realities [they] can’t touch and see.”{37}

Further influences beyond this, however, are conjectural. Prior to, and concurrent with, Lewis’s original argument (as published in the 1940s), similar arguments were made by H.W.B. Joseph, A.E. Taylor, Wilbur Marshall Urban, and others.{38}

Notes

{1} Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide (London: HarperCollins, 1996), 801.
{2} C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (1955; London: Collins, Fontana Paperbacks, 1959), 177-78.
{3} John Beversluis, “Surprised by Freud: A Critical Appraisal of A. N. Wilson’s Biography of C. S. Lewis,” Christianity and Literature 41 (1991-92): 191.
{4} Victor Reppert, C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 12.
{5} Ibid., 11-28.
{6} C.S. Lewis, “Transposition,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (1949; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 103.
{7} C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in Weight of Glory, 135.
{8} Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 160-75; Robert M. Adams, “Flavors, Colors, and God,” in The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), 243-62; J.P. Moreland, “Searle’s Biological Naturalism and the Argument from Consciousness,” Faith and Philosophy 15 (1998): 68-91; idem, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1987), 77-103.
{9} C.S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, 1st ed. (London: Bles, 1947), 32, 2nd ed. (London: Collins, Fontana Paperbacks, 1960), 29.
{10} John Beversluis, C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 58; Victor Reppert, “The Argument from Reason,” Philo 2 (1999): 33-45.
{11} C.S. Lewis, “De Futilitate,” in Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (1967; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), 65.
{12} G.E.M. Anscombe, “A Reply to Mr C.S. Lewis’s Argument that ‘Naturalism’ is Self-Refuting,” in The Collected Philosophical Papers of G.E.M. Anscombe, vol. 2: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), 224-32.
{13} Ibid., 231-32; C.S. Lewis, “Religion Without Dogma?” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (1970; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 144-46.
{14} Epicurus: The Extant Remains, ed. and trans. Cyril Bailey (1926; New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1970), 112-13, fragment XL.
{15} Ted Honderich, A Theory of Determinism, vol. 1: Mind and Brain; vol. 2: The Consequences of Determinism (1988; Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 1:360-73, 2:42-52, 2:101-4, 2:153-7; Christopher Hookway, “The Epicurean Argument: Determinism and Scepticism,” Inquiry 32 (1989): 79-94.
{16} Plato, Phaedo §97ff; Aristotle, De Anima III; Plotinus, Enneads IV, vii, §6; Augustine, On Free Choice I-II.
{17} Rudolph Allers, “St. Augustine’s Doctrine on Illumination,” Franciscan Studies 12 (1952): 27-46; Robert Pasnau, “Henry of Ghent and the Twilight of Divine Illumination,” Review of Metaphysics 49 (1995-96): 49-75.
{18} Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2, 6; Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, iii, §28-9; x, §5-6; 9-11; Leibniz, Monadology, §17; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B419-20; idem, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 64-65; Henry E. Allison, “Kant’s Refutation of Materialism,” The Monist 72 (1989): 190-208; Ben Lazare Mijuskovic, The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments: The Simplicity, Unity, and Identity of Thought and Soul from the Cambridge Platonists to Kant: A Study in the History of an Argument, Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, vol. 13 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974).
{19} Thomas C. Oden, The Living God, Systematic Theology: vol. 1 (1987; Peabody, MA: Prince, 2001), 147-50.
{20} Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 167-68. Incidentally, this was published several years after Anscombe’s criticisms.
{21} Ibid.; Lewis, Miracles, 1st ed., 101; 2nd ed., 87.
{22} Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 167.
{23} Arthur James Balfour, A Defence of Philosophic Doubt: Being an Essay on the Foundations of Belief (London: Macmillan, 1879); idem, The Foundations of Belief: Being Notes Introductory to the Study of Theology, 6th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1896); idem, Theism and Humanism: Being the Gifford Lectures (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915); idem, Theism and Thought: A Study in Familiar Beliefs: Being the Second Course of Gifford Lectures (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1923).
{24} Bertrand Russell, “Mr. Balfour’s Natural Theology,” in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 8: The Philosophy of Logical Atomism and Other Essays, ed. John G. Slater (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1986), 99-104; G.E. Moore, “The Value of Religion,” in G.E. Moore: The Early Essays, ed. Tom Regan (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1986), 101-20.
{25} Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” 121.
{26} Lewis, “Ex Libris,” The Christian Century 79 (June 6, 1962): 719.
{27} Reppert, C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea, 100 n. 17.
{28} G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Doubleday, 1959), 33.
{29} G.K. Chesterton, “The Wind and the Trees,” in Stories, Essays and Poems (London: Dent, 1935), 183.
{30} Ibid.
{31} Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 171, 178.
{32} In addition to their influence on Lewis, there is an interesting connection between Balfour and Chesterton: they were both founding members of a metaphysical society that met between 1898 and 1908 (Kenneth Young, Arthur James Balfour: The Happy Life of the Politician, Prime Minister, Statesman and Philosopher 1848-1930 [London: G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., 1963], 161).
{33} Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” 139.
{34} J.B.S. Haldane, “When I Am Dead,” in Possible Worlds and Other Essays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929), 209; cf. idem, “Some Consequences of Materialism,” in The Inequality of Man and Other Essays (1932; Hammondsworth: Pelican, 1937). Lewis quotes Haldane in Miracles, 1st ed., 28-29, 2nd ed., 19. Ironically, Haldane later changed his mind, retracting precisely this quote (“I Repent an Error,” The Literary Guide 96 [1954]: 7, 29).
{35} Lewis, Miracles, 1st ed., 126, 181, 2nd ed., 108, 155.
{36} Arthur Stanley Eddington, Science and the Unseen World (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 27-38; 50-67.
{37} C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942; Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour & Co., Inc., 1990), 14.
{38} H.W.B. Joseph, “Mechanism, Intelligence and Life,” Hibbert Journal 12 (1914): 612-32; idem, An Introduction to Logic, 2nd rev. ed. (1916; Oxford: Clarendon, 1950), 410-13; idem, Some Problems in Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1931), 8-15; A.E. Taylor, “Freedom and Personality,” Philosophy 14 (1939): 259-80; idem, “Freedom and Personality Again,” Philosophy 17 (1942): 26-37; idem, Does God Exist? (London: Macmillan, 1945), 44n, 112n; Wilbur Marshall Urban, Fundamentals of Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1930), 418-19; idem, Beyond Realism and Idealism (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1949), 235-38.

(see also part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7)

(cross-posted at Quodlibeta)

Self-edit

I have temporarily removed the content of three posts because they have some similarities with an article I wrote that is being published in an academic journal. Both the article and the blogpost share the same origin, a paper I wrote in my graduate studies. Even though a blogpost probably doesn't count as having previously published the material, I'm taking them off the blog in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety. I'll put them back online in a year or so.

Quote of the Day

...eternal living is a sense of place, of environment, where God is. In that place, one has no legitimate grounds for worry. Jesus is famous for saying just that. You can abandon yourself to God, who is present. "Let go and let God" is an old and wise saying -- unfortunately more widely said than practiced. Daniel's three friends, facing death in a "fiery furnace," were commanded to bow to the image set up by King Nebuchadnezzar. Their response to the king was that they did not even need to think about it (Dan. 3:16-18). Their God would or would not deliver them, but in either case all was well. They would not bow.

Dallas Willard
Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge

Philosophers in the Chronicle

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article on William Lane Craig, who remains an incredibly prolific spokesman for evangelical Christianity. He's published over 120 articles in academic journals, mostly of philosophy and theology. Here's his website. On the other hand, there's another article in the Chronicle on Colin McGinn who recently resigned over allegations of sexual harassment. That article, unfortunately, is only available to subscribers. Maverick Philosopher provides some links to McGinn's side of the story.

After Aristotle

I just added After Aristotle to the sidebar, under the "Site Seeing" rubric. It's a blog written by a philosopher, and going over what he's posted so far impressed me mightily. Check it out.

Update: I just added Edward Feser's blog as well, something I should have done a long time ago. Thanks to Pedro Erik in the comments for pointing it out. You might want to check out Feser's summary of his posts on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. It's really outstanding.