Autor: Feser, Edward

Buch: Scholastic Metaphysics

Titel: Scholastic Metaphysics

Stichwort: Szientismus 1; Dilemma: S. entweder widerspruchsvoll o. trivial; S.: phil. Annahmen (externe Welt, Regelmäßigkeiten in d. Natur, Intellekt); S.: Unmöglichkeit d. Rechtfertigung seiner Voraussetzungen -- oder Umschlag in Philosophie

Kurzinhalt: First, scientism ... can avoid being self-defeating only at the cost of becoming trivial ... Since scientific method presupposes these things, it cannot attempt to justify them without arguing in a circle. To break out of this circle requires “getting ou

Textausschnitt: 0.2 Against scientism

9b Of course, not every contemporary analytic philosopher welcomes the revival of old-fashioned metaphysics. There are those who decry it in the name of the scientistic or naturalist position that science alone plausibly gives us objective knowledge, and that any metaphysics worthy of consideration can only be that which is implicit in science (Ladyman, Ross, Spurrett and Collier 2007; Rosenberg 2011). Yet, the glib self-confidence of its advocates notwithstanding, there are in fact no good arguments whatsoever for scientism, and decisive arguments against it. (Fs)

10a We will in the course of the chapters to follow have reason to consider various specific scientism-based objections to traditional metaphysical theses and to see why the objections fail. For the moment, though, it is worthwhile noting four general problems with scientism. First, scientism is self-defeating, and can avoid being self-defeating only at the cost of becoming trivial and uninteresting. Second, the scientific method cannot even in principle provide us with a complete description of reality. Third, the “laws of nature” in terms of which science explains phenomena cannot in principle provide us with a complete explanation of reality. Fourth, what is probably the main argument in favor of scientism — the argument from the predictive and technological successes of modern physics and the other sciences — has no force. Let us examine each of these points in order. (Fs)

0.2.1 A dilemma for scientism

10b First, as I have said, scientism faces a dilemma: It is either self-refuting or trivial. Take the first horn of this dilemma. The claim that “the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything” (Rosenberg 2011, p. 6) is not itself a scientific claim, not something that can be established using scientific methods. Indeed, that science is even a rational form of inquiry (let alone the only rational form of inquiry) is not something that can be established scientifically. For scientific inquiry rests on a number of philosophical assumptions: the assumption that there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists; the assumption that this world is governed by regularities of the sort that might be captured in scientific laws; the assumption that the human intellect and perceptual apparatus can uncover and accurately describe these regularities; and so forth. Since scientific method presupposes these things, it cannot attempt to justify them without arguing in a circle. To break out of this circle requires “getting outside” of science altogether and discovering from that extra-scientific vantage point that science conveys an accurate picture of reality - and, if scientism is to be justified, that only science does so. But then the very existence of that extra-scientific vantage point would falsify the claim that science alone gives us a rational means of investigating objective reality. (Fs) (notabene)

11a The rational investigation of the philosophical presuppositions of science has, naturally, traditionally been regarded as the province of philosophy. Nor is it these presuppositions alone that philosophy examines. There is also the question of how to interpret what science tells us about the world. For example, is the world fundamentally comprised of substances or events? What is it to be a “cause”? What is the nature of the universals referred to in scientific laws - concepts like quark, electron, atom, and so on? Do they exist over and above the particular things that instantiate them? Do scientific theories really give us a description of objective reality in the first place or are they just useful tools for predicting the course of experience? Scientific findings can shed light on such metaphysical questions, but can never fully answer them. Yet if science depends upon philosophy both to justify its presuppositions and to interpret its results, the falsity of scientism is doubly assured. As John Kekes concludes: “Hence philosophy, and not science, is a stronger candidate for being the very paradigm of rationality” (1980, p. 158). (Fs)

11b Here we come to the second horn of the dilemma facing scientism. Its advocate may now insist: If philosophy has this status, it must really be a part of science, since (he continues to maintain, digging in his heels) all rational inquiry is scientific inquiry. The trouble now is that scientism becomes completely trivial, arbitrarily redefining “science” so that it includes anything that could be put forward as evidence against scientism. Worse, this move makes scientism consistent with views that are supposed to be incompatible with it. (Fs) (notabene)

11c For example, Aristotle argued that the very possibility of a world of changing things requires the existence of a divine Unmoved Mover which continuously keeps the world going. Aquinas argued that the very possibility of a world of causes and effects requires the existence of a divine Uncaused Cause which continuously imparts to things their causal power. But then, if they are correct, the existence of God follows from the very assumptions that also underlie science. (Fs)

12a Indeed, Aristotle and Aquinas took the view that since we can know a fair amount about the existence and nature of God through reason alone, philosophical theology itself constitutes a kind of science. For they would not agree with the narrow conception of “science” on which a discipline is only “scientific” to the extent that it approximates the mathematical modeling techniques and predictive methods of physics. For Aristotle and Aquinas, the truths of philosophical theology may not be expressible in mathematical language and are not based on specific predictions or experiments, but that does not make them less certain than the claims of physics. On the contrary, they are more certain, because they rest on strict demonstrations which begin from premises that any possible physical science must take for granted. (Fs) (notabene)

12b Obviously that is all highly controversial, but the point does not ride on the truth or falsity of Aristotelian-Thomistic natural theology. The point is rather that if the advocate of scientism defines “science” so broadly that anything for which we might give a rational philosophical argument counts as “scientific,” then he has no non-arbitrary reason for denying that a philosophically grounded theology or indeed any other aspect of traditional metaphysics could in principle count as a science. Yet the whole point of scientism — or so it would seem given the rhetoric of its adherents — was supposed to be to provide a weapon by which fields of inquiry like traditional metaphysics might be dismissed as unscientific. Hence if the advocate of scientism can avoid making his doctrine self-defeating only by defining “science” this broadly, then the view becomes completely vacuous. Certainly it is no longer available as a magic bullet by which to take down the rational credentials of traditional metaphysics. (Fs)

Autor: Feser, Edward

Buch: Scholastic Metaphysics

Titel: Scholastic Metaphysics

Stichwort: Szientismus 2a; S.: Unmöglichkeit einer umfassenden Beschreibung d. Wirklichkeit; Problem: Quantität - Qualität (Schrödinger); Demokrit: Dialog zw. Verstand u. Sinne; Selbst-Widerspruch: Eliminativismus;

Kurzinhalt: ... science cannot in principle provide a complete description of reality... If matter ... is essentially devoid of qualitative features and mind is essentially defined by its possession of qualitative features, then the mind cannot be material.

Textausschnitt: 0.2.2 The descriptive limits of science

12c The second main problem facing scientism, I have said, is that science cannot in principle provide a complete description of reality. Indeed, it cannot in principle provide a complete description even of physical reality. The reason, paradoxical as it sounds, has to do precisely with the method that has made the predictive and technological achievements of modern physics possible. Physics insists upon a purely quantitative description of the world, regarding mathematics as the language in which the “Book of Nature” is written (as Galileo famously put it). Hence it is hardly surprising that physics, more than other disciplines, has discovered those aspects of reality susceptible of the prediction and control characteristic of quantifiable phenomena. Those are the only aspects to which the physicist will allow himself to pay any attention in the first place. Everything else necessarily falls through his methodological net. (Fs) (notabene)

13a Now our ordinary experience of nature is of course qualitative through and through. We perceive colors, sounds, flavors, odors, warmth and coolness, pains and itches, thoughts and choices, purposes and meanings. Physics abstracts from these rich concrete details, ignoring whatever cannot be expressed in terms of equations and the like and thereby radically simplifying the natural order. There is nothing wrong with such an abstractive procedure as long as we keep in mind what we are doing and why we are doing it. Indeed, what the physicist does is just an extension of the sort of thing we do every day when solving practical problems. For example, when figuring out how many people of average weight can be carried on an airplane, engineers deal with abstractions. For one thing, they ignore every aspect of actual, concrete human beings except their weight; for another, they ignore even their actual weight, since it could in principle turn out that there is no specific human being who has exactly whatever the average weight turns out to be. This is extremely useful for the specific purposes at hand. But of course it would be ludicrous for those responsible for planning the flight entertainment or meals to rely solely on the considerations the engineers are concerned with. It would be even more ludicrous for them to insist that unless evidence of meal and movie preferences can be gleaned from the engineers’ data, there just is no fact of the matter about what meals and movies actual human beings would prefer. Such evidence is missing precisely because the engineers’ abstractive method guarantees that it will be missing. (Fs)

13b The description of the world physics gives us is no less abstract than the one the engineers make use of. Physics simply does not give us material systems in all their concrete reality, any more than the aircraft engineers’ description gives us human beings in all their concrete reality. It focuses, as I have said, only on those aspects of a system that are susceptible of prediction and control, and thus on those aspects which can be modeled mathematically. Hence it would be no less ludicrous to suggest that if the description physics gives us of the world does not make reference to some feature familiar to us in ordinary experience, then it follows that the feature in question doesn’t exist. The success of the aircraft engineers’ methods doesn’t for a moment show that human beings have no features other than weight. And the success of physics doesn’t for a moment show that the natural world has no features other than those described in a physics textbook. The reason qualitative features don’t show up is not that the method has allowed us to discover that they aren’t there but rather that the method has essentially stipulated that they be left out of the description whether they are there or not. (Fs)

14a The standard story about how the qualitative features fit into the world is some variation on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Colors, sounds, and the like as common sense understands them exist, it is said, only in our perceptual awareness of matter rather than in matter itself, as the qualia of conscious experience. What exists in the external material world is only color as redefined by physics (in terms of surface reflectance properties), sound as redefined by physics (in terms of compression waves), and so forth. But this only makes the qualitative features more rather than less problematic. As Thomas Nagel writes:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand — how this physical world appears to human perception — were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (2012, pp. 35-36)

15a The problem is that this method entails that the mind itself cannot be treated as part of the material world, given how mind and matter are characterized by the method. If matter, including the matter of the brain, is essentially devoid of qualitative features and mind is essentially defined by its possession of qualitative features, then the mind cannot be material. Dualism of a Cartesian sort, with all of its problems (the interaction problem, the problem of other minds, zombies, epiphenomenalism, etc.) follows — not as a kind of rearguard resistance to the new scientific conception of the world, but precisely as a direct consequence of it. (Fs)

15b Erwin Schrödinger saw things far more clearly than his scientistic admirers do when he wrote:
We are thus facing the following strange situation. While all building stones for the [modern scientific] world-picture are furnished by the senses qua organs of the mind, while the world picture itself is and remains for everyone a construct of his mind and apart from it has no demonstrable existence, the mind itself remains a stranger in this picture, it has no place in it, it can nowhere be found in it. (1956, p. 216)

15c Also more perceptive than contemporary proponents of scientism was another of their heroes, the ancient atomist Democritus, who saw 2400 years ago that excluding qualitative features from the world is fraught with paradox. An imagined dialogue between the atomist’s intellect and his senses written by Democritus and quoted by Schrödinger (1956, p. 211) goes as follows:

Intellect: Colour is by convention, sweet by convention, bitter by convention; in truth there are but atoms and the void. (Fs)

Senses: Wretched mind, from us you are taking the evidence by which you would overthrow us? Your victory is your own fall. (Fs)

15d Democritus’ point, and Schrödinger’s, is that it will not do to take an eliminativist line and deny that the problematic qualitative features really exist at all. For it is only through observation and experiment — and thus through conscious experiences defined by these very qualitative features — that we have evidence for the truth of the scientific theories in the name of which we would be eliminating the qualitative. Such eliminativism is incoherent. (Fs)

Autor: Feser, Edward

Buch: Scholastic Metaphysics

Titel: Scholastic Metaphysics

Stichwort: Szientismus 2b; Bewusstsein: Unmöglichkeit der Reduktion von Qualität auf Quantität (Russel); Probleme d. S. sind philosophischer Natur

Kurzinhalt: ... physics gives us the abstract structure of the material world but does not tell us the intrinsic nature of that which has that structure ... then, physics implies that there is more to reality than that structure itself ...

Textausschnitt: 16a Nor will it do to suggest that further application of the method in question is bound eventually to explain conscious experience in the way it has explained everything else. This is like saying that since we have been able to get rid of the dirt everywhere else in the house by sweeping it under a certain rug, we can surely get rid of the dirt under the rug by applying the same method. That is, of course, the one method that cannot in principle work. And by the same token, stripping away the qualitative features of a phenomenon and redefining it in purely quantitative terms is the one method that cannot in principle work when seeking to explain conscious experience. For conscious experience, the method itself tells us, just is the “rug” under which all qualitative features have been swept. Applying the same method to the explanation of qualitative features of conscious experience is thus simply incoherent, and in practice either changes the subject or amounts to a disguised eliminativism. Nagel pointed this problem out long ago (l979), and Schrödinger saw it too:

Scientific theories serve to facilitate the survey of our observations and experimental findings. Every scientist knows how difficult it is to remember a moderately extended group of facts, before at least some primitive theoretical picture about them has been shaped. It is therefore small wonder, and by no means to be blamed on the authors of original papers or of textbooks, that after a reasonably coherent theory has been formed, they do not describe the bare facts they have found or wish to convey to the reader, but clothe them in the terminology of that theory or theories. This procedure, while very useful for our remembering the facts in a well-ordered pattern, tends to obliterate the distinction between the actual observations and the theory arisen from them. And since the former always are of some sensual quality, theories are easily thought to account for sensual qualities; which, of course, they never do. (1992, pp. 163-64)

17a The reason that “of course, they never do” is that the scientist’s working notion of matter is one that has, by definition, extruded the qualitative from it. Hence when the scientist identifies some physical property or process he finds correlated with the qualitative features of conscious experience — this or that property of external objects, or this or that process in the brain — and supposes that in doing so he has explained the qualitative, he is in thrall to an illusion. He is mistaking the theoretical, quantitative re-description of matter he has replaced the qualitative with for the qualitative itself. He may accuse his critic of dualist obscurantism when the critic points out that all the scientist has identified are physical features that are correlated with the qualitative, rather than the qualitative itself. But such accusations merely blame the messenger, for it is the scientist’s own method that has guaranteed that dualist correlation is all that he will ever discover. (Fs) (notabene)

17b So, the qualitative features of the world cannot in principle be explained scientifically nor coherently eliminated, and a Cartesian account of their relation to matter is, the Scholastic agrees (Feser 2008, Chapter 5), unacceptable. But a purely quantitative conception of matter is problematic even apart from these considerations. Bertrand Russell (yet another hero of contemporary naturalists who saw things more clearly than they do) indicates how:

It is not always realised how exceedingly abstract is the information that theoretical physics has to give. It lays down certain fundamental equations which enable it to deal with the logical structure of events, while leaving it completely unknown what is the intrinsic character of the events that have the structure ... All that physics gives us is certain equations giving abstract properties of their changes. But as to what it is that changes, and what it changes from and to - as to this, physics is silent. (1985, p. 13)

17c Now if, as Russell emphasized, physics gives us the abstract structure of the material world but does not tell us the intrinsic nature of that which has that structure, then not only does physics not tell us everything about physical reality, but it tells us that there must be something more to physical reality than what it has to say. For there is no such thing as a structure all by itself; there must be something that has the structure. By the very fact that physics tells us that an abstract structure of such-and-such a mathematically describable character exists, then, physics implies that there is more to reality than that structure itself, and thus more to reality than what physics can reveal. (Fs)

18a Russell’s own position tried to kill two birds with one stone, solving both the problem of fitting qualitative features into nature and the problem of finding the intrinsic properties of matter by identifying the qualitative features themselves as the intrinsic properties of matter. There are serious problems with this sort of view (Feser 1998, 2006b), and as we will see, the Scholastic’s own approach to understanding the nature of material substances is in any event simply incommensurable with the entire post-Cartesian framework within which Russell, Schrödinger, and most other modern commentators on these matters are working. The point to emphasize for present purposes is that, however one solves them, the problems described are philosophical rather than scientific, and they show that science is nowhere close to giving us an exhaustive description of reality. On the contrary, the very nature of scientific method shows that there exist aspects of reality it will not capture. (Fs)

Autor: Feser, Edward

Buch: Scholastic Metaphysics

Titel: Scholastic Metaphysics

Stichwort: Szientismus 3; schwache Argumente für d. S. (Rosenberg, ) Beispiel: Metalldetektor; Verteidiger d. S.: oft Fehlschluss: non sequitur

Kurzinhalt: Now if scientism faces such grave difficulties, why are so many intelligent people drawn to it? ... if a certain method affords us a high degree of predictive and technological power, what that shows is that the method is useful for dealing with those ...

Textausschnitt: 0.2.3 The explanatory limits of science

18b If there are limits to what science can describe, there are also limits to what science can explain. This brings us to the third problem I have claimed faces scientism — the fact that the “laws of nature” in terms of which science explains phenomena cannot in principle provide an ultimate explanation of reality. (Fs)

18c To see the problem, consider physicist Lawrence Krauss’s recent book A Universe from Nothing (2012). Krauss initially gives his readers the impression that he is going to give a complete explanation, in purely scientific terms, of why anything exists at all rather than nothing. The bulk of the book is devoted to exploring how the energy present in otherwise empty space, together with the laws of physics, might have given rise to the universe as it exists today. This is at first treated as if it were highly relevant to the question of how the universe might have come from nothing, until Krauss acknowledges toward the end of the book that energy, space, and the laws of physics don’t really count as “nothing” after all. Then it is proposed that the laws of physics alone might do the trick, though these too, as Krauss implicitly allows, don’t really count as “nothing” either. Krauss’s final proposal is that “there may be no fundamental theory at all” but just layer upon layer of laws of physics, which we can probe until we get bored (p. 177). (Fs)

19a Now the problem here is not only that this is a bait and switch -- though it is that, since an endless regress of laws is hardly “nothing,” and vaguely speculating on the basis of no evidence whatsoever that there may be such a regress hardly counts as a serious explanation. The deeper problem is that Krauss not only does not deliver on his promise but that he could not have done so. For any appeal to laws of nature (or a series of “layers” of such laws) simply raises questions about what a law of nature is in the first place, how it has any efficacy, and where it (or the series of “layers”) comes from. And these are questions which the scientific mode of explanation, which presupposes such laws, cannot in principle answer. (Fs) (notabene)

19b The status of laws of nature is a topic we will have reason to consider at some length later on in this book, but for the moment we can merely note that none of the standard approaches gives any aid or comfort to scientism. We might hold, for example, that to speak of the “laws of nature” that govern some material thing or system is simply a shorthand way of describing the manner in which that thing or system will operate given its nature or essence. This, as we will see, is the Scholastic approach to understanding physical laws. But on this view the “laws of nature” presuppose the existence and operations of the physical things that follow the laws. And in that case the laws cannot possibly explain the existence or operations of the material things themselves. In particular, and contrary to writers like Krauss, since the ultimate laws of nature presuppose the existence of the physical universe, they cannot intelligibly be appealed to as a way of explaining the existence of the universe. (Fs)

19c A second view of what “laws of nature” are and how they operate is the one endorsed by early modern thinkers like Descartes and Newton, who sought to overthrow the Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy that dominated the Middle Ages. On their view, the notion of a “law of nature” is irreducibly theological, a shorthand for the idea that God has set the world up so as to behave in the regular way described by the laws. On this view it is really God's action that strictly does the explaining and neither material things nor the laws they follow really explain anything. But for obvious reasons, this too is not a view that gives any help to scientism, which is as hostile to theological explanations as it is to traditional metaphysics in general. (Fs) (notabene)

20a A third possibility is to hold that “laws of nature” are really nothing more than a description or summary of the regular patterns we happen to find in the natural world. They don’t tell us anything about the natures of material things, and they don’t reflect the will of God. To say that it is a law of nature that A is followed by B is on this view simply to say that A’s tend to be followed by B’s in a regular way, and that’s that. But on this view, laws tell us only that such-and-such a regularity exists, and not why it exists. That is to say, on this view a law of nature (or at least the ultimate laws of nature) don’t explain a regularity, but merely re-describe it in a different jargon. Needless to say, then, this sort of view hardly supports the claim that science can provide an ultimate explanation of the world. (Fs) (notabene)

20b A further possibility would be to interpret “laws of nature” as abstract objects, something comparable to Plato’s Forms, existing in a realm beyond the material world, and where physical things somehow “participate in” the laws in something like the way Plato thought that every tree participates in the Form of Tree or every triangle participates in the Form of Triangle. Here too an appeal to laws of nature doesn’t really provide an ultimate explanation of anything. For given this view we would still need to know how it comes to be that there is a physical world that “participates in” the laws in the first place, why it participates in these laws rather than others, and so on. And that requires an appeal to something other than the laws. (Fs)

20c Again, we will have reason to consider this issue in greater depth later on, but the point to emphasize for the moment is that once again we have questions which of their nature cannot be answered by science but only by philosophy, because they deal precisely with what any possible scientific explanation must take for granted. Nor will it do to suggest that ultimate explanation is not to be had anyway, so that science cannot be faulted for failing to provide it. For one thing, this is itself a philosophical claim rather than a scientific one. For another, the claim is false, as we will see later in this book when discussing the principle of sufficient reason. (Fs)

Autor: Feser, Edward

Buch: Scholastic Metaphysics

Titel: Scholastic Metaphysics

Stichwort: Szientismus 3a; falsche Alternative: Naturwissenschaft - Begriffsanalyse (= Varante von Hume's Fork); Neurowissenschaft; Naturalism: Selbstwiderspruch; Logik, Mathematik: keine Erklärung in "bloßer" Begriffsanalyse (deren Objektivität) oder Naturalismus

Kurzinhalt: Now Hume’s Fork is notoriously self-refuting, since it is not itself either a conceptual truth (a matter of the “relations of ideas”) or empirically testable (a “matter of fact”)... either matters of “conceptual analysis” or matters of natural science ...

Textausschnitt: 0.3 Against “conceptual analysis”

25a The advocate of scientism will insist that unless metaphysics is “naturalized” by making of it nothing more than science’s bookkeeping department, then the only thing left for it to be is a kind of “conceptual analysis.” And the trouble with this, we are told, is that we have no guarantee that the “intuitions” or “folk notions” the conceptual analyst appeals to really track reality, and indeed good reason to think they do not insofar as science often presents us with descriptions of reality radically different from what common sense supposes it to be like. (Cf. Ladyman, Ross, Spurrett, and Collier 2007, Chapter 1) (Fs)

25b Now, one problem with this sort of argument is that it fallaciously takes science’s methodological exclusion of certain commonsense features from its picture of the natural world as a discovery that those features don’t really exist there. To take just one example, given its purely quantitative methods, physics excludes any reference to teleological features. But to conclude from this that the natural world has no inherent teleological features is, again, like concluding from the predictive and technological success of the aircraft engineers’ methods that passengers’ entertainment and meal preferences don’t exist, since the methods make no reference to them. Claims about what science has “shown” vis-à-vis this or that metaphysical question invariably merely presuppose, rather than demonstrate, a certain metaphysical interpretation of science. The absence of a certain feature from the scientist’s description of reality gives us reason to doubt that feature’s existence only given a further argument which must be metaphysical rather than scientific in nature. And as we will see in the course of this book, in general such arguments are no good. Indeed, there are severe limits on what might coherently be eliminated from our commonsense picture of the world in the name of science. As I have argued elsewhere (2008, Chapter 6; 2013a) there is, eliminative materialists’ glib dismissal of the incoherence problem notwithstanding, no way in principle coherently to deny the existence of intentional thought processes. We will see in the course of this book that it is also impossible coherently to deny, in the name of science, the existence of change, causation, teleology, substance, essence, and other basic metaphysical realities. (Fs)

26a But putting that aside, there is a no less fundamental problem with the objection under consideration, which is that it rests on a false alternative. While there are metaphysicians whose method is that of “conceptual analysis” (e.g. Jackson 1998), Scholastics are not among them. The supposition that if you are not doing natural science then the only other thing you could be doing is “conceptual analysis” is essentially a variation on Hume’s Fork, the thesis that “all the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact” (Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV, Part I). Now Hume’s Fork is notoriously self-refuting, since it is not itself either a conceptual truth (a matter of the “relations of ideas”) or empirically testable (a “matter of fact”). The Scholastic is happy in this case to follow Hume’s advice and commit it to the flames. But the supposition made by the contemporary naturalist is no better. The claim that “all the objects of human reason or enquiry” are or ought to be either matters of “conceptual analysis” or matters of natural science is itself neither a conceptual truth nor a proposition for which you will find, or could find, the slightest evidence in natural science. It is a proposition as metaphysical as any a Scholastic would assert, differing from the latter only in being self-refuting. (The naturalist might claim that neuroscience or cognitive science supports his case, but if so he is deluding himself. For neuroscience and cognitive science, when they touch on matters of metaphysical import, are rife with tendentious and unexamined metaphysical assumptions (Bennett and Hacker 2003). And insofar as such assumptions are naturalist assumptions, the naturalist merely begs the question in appealing to them.) (Fs)

26b Now that fact alone suffices to show that it is possible to take a cognitive stance toward the world that is neither that of natural science, nor merely a matter of tracing out conceptual relations in a network of ideas that might float entirely free of mind-independent reality (as “conceptual analysts” are accused of doing). The naturalist takes this third stance in the very act of denying that it can be taken. But more can be said. It is hardly news that there are truths -- namely those of logic and mathematics -- that do not plausibly fit into either of the two categories Hume and his naturalist descendents would, in Procrustean fashion, try to fit all knowledge into. Truths of logic and mathematics have a necessity that propositions of natural science lack and an objectivity that mere “conceptual analysis,” at least as that is typically understood these days, would seem unable to guarantee. Some naturalists would try to find ways of showing that logical and mathematical truths are not really necessary or objective after all, but there are notorious difficulties with such proposals. Moreover, it would obviously beg the question to propose denying either the necessity or objectivity of logic and mathematics merely because they don’t sit well with naturalism. Nor will it do for naturalists simply to shrug their shoulders and write off the necessity and objectivity of logic and mathematics as a mere unresolved problem that eventually will — someday, somehow, by someone — be solved by whatever “our best science” turns out to be a century or three hence. We may, with poetic justice, quote their hero David Hume against them: “But here we may observe, that nothing can be more absurd, than this custom of calling a difficulty what pretends to be a demonstration, and endeavoring by that means to elude its force and evidence” (Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part II, Section II). (Fs)

Autor: Feser, Edward

Buch: Scholastic Metaphysics

Titel: Scholastic Metaphysics

Stichwort: Szientismus 3b; Metaphysik: vorrangig zu Epistemologie; Naturalismus, epistemologische Engführung (Kant -> Wissen "geformt" durch Evolution, Geschiche);

Kurzinhalt: ... that metaphysics is prior to epistemology. One way in which this is the case is that absolutely every epistemological theory rests on metaphysical assumptions... But the Scholastic simply rejects the entire rationalist/empiricist/Kantian dialectic ...

Textausschnitt: 27a Now as we will see, the Scholastic maintains that there are truths of a metaphysical nature which (like the truths of logic and mathematics) are necessary and objective but which also (like the truths of logic and mathematics) are not plausibly regarded as propositions either of natural science or of mere “conceptual analysis.” Like logic and mathematics, and like the naturalist’s own basic epistemological assumption, they simply fall between the tines of Hume’s Fork. The naturalist might not understand how such knowledge is possible, but that is his problem, not the Scholastic’s. The naturalist already has oceans of knowledge for which he cannot account — again, the truths of logic and mathematics, and his own metaphysical variation on Hume’s Fork — and thus has no business questioning the epistemological credentials of Scholastic metaphysics. He is like a thief caught red handed with the loot, who demands that the police who have apprehended him produce the pink slip for their cruiser. (Fs)

27b This situation illustrates what is for the Scholastic a basic philosophical truth, which is that metaphysics is prior to epistemology. One way in which this is the case is that absolutely every epistemological theory rests on metaphysical assumptions — including Hume’s when he begins with the supposition that there are impressions and ideas, and including the naturalist’s when he supposes that our cognitive faculties are at least reliable enough to make natural science an objective enterprise. Naturally, these metaphysical assumptions cannot be justified by reference to the epistemological claims they support without begging the question. When the critic of metaphysics insists that the metaphysician establish his epistemological credentials before making any metaphysical assertions, he is making a demand that is incoherent and to which he does not submit himself. (Fs)

28a Another way in which metaphysics is prior to epistemology is that our knowledge of various metaphysical truths is something with which a sound epistemology must be consistent, so that if an epistemological theory is not consistent with our having knowledge of these truths then it must be rejected. In the limiting case, an epistemological theory that was inconsistent with its own metaphysical assumptions would obviously be for that reason something we must reject. Now elsewhere I have (following James Ross) argued that our capacity to grasp abstract concepts and to reason in accordance with formally valid patterns of inference is something incompatible with naturalism, and that the naturalist cannot evade the problem by attempting to deny that we really possess such concepts or reason in such ways (Ross 1992 and 2008, Chapter 6; Feser 2013a). That alone is reason to reject any naturalist epistemology. But we will see in the course of this book that there are other metaphysical truths which cannot coherently be denied, so that if scientism or naturalism is incompatible with our knowing such truths, what follows is not that we don’t know such truths but rather that scientism or naturalism is false. (Fs)

28b Naturalists do not see the force of these difficulties because they presuppose too narrow a range of epistemological options. In particular, they tend at least implicitly to operate within a framework of assumptions inherited from the early moderns. The rationalists held that certain metaphysical concepts and truths are innate. The empiricist tradition, denying that there are any innate concepts or knowledge, ended up denying also that we really have the metaphysical concepts in question, or at least that we can know that the concepts correspond to anything in mind-independent reality. Splitting the difference between rationalism and empiricism, Kant held that the concepts in question are innate, but reflect only the way the mind must carve up reality and correspond to nothing in reality itself. His successors claimed that even this is too ambitious — that the concepts in question do not reflect even any necessary features of cognition as such, but only the contingent way in which cognition has been molded by evolution, or even merely by historical and cultural circumstances. Naturally, metaphysics as “conceptual analysis” or as “descriptive” (Strawson 1959) comes to seem about as relevant to discovering objective truth as lexicography is. The latter tells us only how we talk about reality, and not about language-independent reality itself. The former tells us only about how we conceive of reality, and not about mind-independent reality itself. (Fs)

29a But the Scholastic simply rejects the entire rationalist/empiricist/Kantian dialectic and insists on maintaining an epistemological position that predated these views, and against which they reacted. The Scholastic agrees with the rationalist that there are necessary metaphysical truths that we can know with certainty, but does not take them to be innate. The Scholastic agrees with the empiricist that all of our concepts must be derived from experience and that our knowledge must be grounded in experience, but he does not accept either the early modern empiricist’s desiccated notion of “experience” or his tendency to collapse intellect into sensation, as e.g. Hume does when characterizing “ideas” as faint copies of impressions. (This is an issue I will have reason to address later on in the book.) Thus the Scholastic does not accept the basic assumptions that made Kantianism and its contemporary “naturalized” or “descriptive” successors seem the only alternatives to a rationalist or empiricist position. (Fs)

29b Thus, when some recent advocates of “naturalized metaphysics” dismiss contemporary “conceptual analysis” based metaphysics as “neo-scholastic” (Ladyman, Ross, Spurrett, and Collier 2007), they demonstrate only their ignorance of what Scholastics actually thought. The Scholastic maintains that though “there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses” (to cite a famous Scholastic maxim), the intellect can nevertheless come to know, via the abstraction from particulars of universal essences and via demonstrative rather than merely probabilistic arguments, aspects of reality beyond what can be experienced. I will have reason to address this topic briefly in the last chapter of this book, but spelling out in detail how this all works would require a long excursus in Scholastic philosophical psychology and epistemology. (Cf. Bittle 1936; Coffey 1958a and 1958b; Van Steenberghen 1949; Wilhelmsen 1956; O’Callaghan 2003; McInerny 2007; Ross 2008, Chapter 5; Groarke 2009) But such an excursus is, for the reasons given, in no way necessary here as a prolegomenon to metaphysics. For epistemology and philosophical psychology themselves presuppose metaphysics. Vis-à-vis epistemology and psychology (“naturalized” or otherwise) — and vis-à-vis natural science too, where (though only where) it touches on the most fundamental issues about substance, causation, essence, and the like - - metaphysics wears the trousers.

Autor: Feser, Edward

Buch: Scholastic Metaphysics

Titel: Scholastic Metaphysics

Stichwort: Akt und Potenz 1; Ursprung bei Aristoteles' Kritik: Eleaten (Parmenides, Zeno) - Heraklit; Lösung d. Problems von Beständigkeit u. Veränderung: Sein im Akt - Sein in Potenz; performativer Selbstwiderspruch (Methode d. Retorsion)

Kurzinhalt: Parmenides’ position is essentially that (1) change would require being to arise out of non-being or nothingness, but (2) from non-being or nothingness, nothing can arise, so that (3) change is impossible... Being-in-potency is thus a middle ground ...

Textausschnitt: 1. Act and potency
1.1 The general theory
1.1.1 Origins of the distinction

31a The first of the famous twenty-four Thomistic theses reads:

Potency and act are a complete division of being. Hence, whatever is must be either pure act or a unit composed of potency and act as its primary and intrinsic principles. (Wuellner 1956, p. 120)

31b The distinction between potency and act is fundamental not only to Thomism but to Scholastic philosophy in general (though as we will see, Scotists and Suarezians disagree with Thomists about how to interpret the distinction). It is absolutely crucial to the Scholastic approach to questions about the metaphysics of substance, essence, and causation (and for that matter to Scholastic philosophy of nature, philosophical psychology, natural theology, and even ethics). We would do well to begin, then, with an outline of the theory of act and potency. Subsequent sections of this chapter and the next will develop and defend key aspects of the theory as they apply to causation. In later chapters we will see how the theory applies to other metaphysical issues. (Fs)

31c The theory has its origins in Aristotle’s account of where the Eleatics on the one hand, and Heraclitus on the other, went wrong in their respective positions vis-à-vis change versus permanence — an account that was extended by Scholastic writers to a critique of the Eleatic and Heraclitean positions vis-à-vis multiplicity versus unity. (Fs)

Kommentar (08.10.2015), zu oben, Analyse der Änderung in DeEnteBobik, 61a.

31d Parmenides and Zeno denied the reality of change. Parmenides’ position is essentially that (1) change would require being to arise out of non-being or nothingness, but (2) from non-being or nothingness, nothing can arise, so that (3) change is impossible. Zeno aimed to reduce the notion of local motion to absurdity via paradoxes some of which presuppose that traversing a finite distance would require traversing an infinite number of shorter distances. For example, in the dichotomy paradox, Zeno suggests that a runner can get from point A to point B only if he first reaches the midpoint between A and B; but he can reach that midpoint only if he first reaches the point midway between A and the midpoint, and so on ad infinitum. Hence he can never reach B, and indeed can never even move beyond A. (Fs) (notabene)

32a A natural first response to such arguments would be to apply the method of retorsion and argue that those who deny the reality of change are led thereby into a performative self-contradiction. The Eleatic philosopher has to move his lips or pen in order to put his argument forward; if he bites the bullet and denies that even his lips and pen are really moving or that he is really trying to change the minds of his listeners or readers, he still has to go through the steps of his reasoning in his own mind, and that involves change. The reality of change is not self-evident, insofar as it is not a necessary truth that any change ever actually occurs. But it is still evident insofar as we have to acknowledge it in order to argue for anything at all. (Cf. Smith and Kendzierski 1961, p. 16)

32b This tells us at most that something has gone wrong in the Eleatic arguments, but not what, exactly, has gone wrong. The problem with Parmenides’ reasoning, in Aristotle’s view, is neither in the inference from (1) and (2) to (3), nor with premise (2), with which Aristotle agrees. It is rather with premise (l), the thesis that change would involve being arising from non-being. For there is, according to Aristotle, an alternative analysis of change, on which it involves, not being arising from non-being, but rather one kind of being arising from another kind. In particular, there is being-in-act — the ways a thing actually is; and there is being-in-potency — the ways a thing could potentially be. For instance, a given rubber ball might “in act” or actually be spherical, solid, smooth to the touch, red in color, and sitting motionless in a drawer. But “in potency” or potentially it is flat and squishy (if melted), rough to the touch (if worn out through use), light pink (if left out in the sun too long), and rolling across the ground (if dropped). (Fs)

33a These potentialities or potencies are real features of the ball itself even if they are not actualities. The ball’s potential flatness, squishiness, roughness, etc. are not nothing, even if they do not have the kind of being that the ball’s roundness, solidity, smoothness, etc. currently have. That is why the ball can become flat, squishy, and rough in a way it cannot become sentient, or eloquent, or capable of doing arithmetic. Being-in-potency is thus a middle ground between being-in-act on the one hand, and sheer nothingness or non-being on the other. And change is not a matter of being arising from non-being, but rather of being-in-act arising from being-in-potency. It is the actualization of a potential — of something previously non-actual but still real. (Fs)

33b Zeno too overlooks the distinction between being-in-act and being-in-potency. The infinite number of smaller distances in the interval between two points A and B are indeed there, but only potentially rather than actually. Hence there is no actually infinitely large number of distances the runner must traverse, and Zeno’s purported reductio fails. (Fs) (notabene)

33c Heraclitus had (on a traditional interpretation, anyway) gone to the opposite extreme from that of the Eleatics, holding that there is no being but only endless becoming. Change and change alone is real — the implication being that there is no stability or persistence of even a temporary sort, nothing that corresponds to Aristotle’s notion of being-in-act. Here too the method of retorsion might be deployed. If there is no stability of any sort, how could the Heraclitean philosopher so much as reason through the steps of his own argument so as to be convinced by it? For there will on the Heraclitean view be no persisting subject, so that the person who reaches the conclusion will not be the same as the person who entertained the premises. (Cf. Geisler 1997, pp. 65-66) Nor will there be any such thing as “the” argument for his conclusion -- some single, stable pattern of reasoning which the Heraclitean might rehearse in his attempts to convince his critics, or even repeat to himself on future occasions. (Fs) (notabene)

33d Nor is there, in the Aristotelian view, any sense to be made of change in the first place except as change toward some outcome, even if only a temporary outcome. The ball melts, but this is not merely a move away from roundness and solidity; it is a move in the direction of squishiness and flatness, and thus in the direction of new actualities. Moreover, such changes occur in repeatable patterns. This or that particular instance of roundness or flatness comes and goes, but new instances of the same features can and do arise. Hence the changes that occur in the world in fact reflect a degree of stability that belies Heraclitus’ doctrine of flux, even though it does not approach the absolute stasis of the Eleatics. (Fs)

Autor: Feser, Edward

Buch: Scholastic Metaphysics

Titel: Scholastic Metaphysics

Stichwort: Akt und Potenz 2; Aristoteles vs. Parmenides, Zeno (Paradox d. Teile) u. Heraklit (dynamischer Monismus); Vielheit - Einheit; Grundargument Potenz u. Akt

Kurzinhalt: Parmenides denies that there can possibly be more than one being. For if a being A and a purportedly distinct being B really were distinct, there would have to be something to differentiate ... basic argument for the distinction between potency and act:

Textausschnitt: 34a The Eleatic and Heraclitean extremes vis-à-vis change and permanence are paralleled by similar extremes on the question of multiplicity versus unity. Parmenides denies that there can possibly be more than one being. For if a being A and a purportedly distinct being B really were distinct, there would have to be something to differentiate them. But since A and B both are, by hypothesis, beings, the only thing that could do so would be non-being; and non-being, since it is just nothingness, does not exist and thus cannot differentiate them. (Fs) (notabene)

34b Zeno reaches a similar conclusion via his paradox of parts. If there is more than one being, then either these multiple beings have size or they do not. If they do not, then since things of no size can, even when combined, never yield anything with size, it would follow that there is nothing of any size at all, which is absurd. But if these multiple beings do have size, then they are infinitely divisible and thus have an infinite number of parts. And if they have an infinite number of parts, then they must all be of infinite size, which is also absurd. So there cannot be more than one being. (Fs) (notabene)

34c The Heraclitean position, by contrast, when pushed to the extreme would entail that there is only multiplicity and no unity in the world, nothing to tie together the diverse objects of our experience. There is this particular thing we call “round,” that one, and a third one, but no one thing, roundness, that they all instantiate; there is this perceptual experience of what we call a “ball,” that one, and a third one, but no one thing, that ball itself, that these experiences are all experiences of, and no one subject, the perceiving self, which has the various perceptual experiences. (To be sure, Heraclitus himself adopted a kind of monism on which there is one thing, the world itself, which is the subject of endless change — a dynamic monism rather than the static monism of the Eleatics. Still, none of what J. L. Austin called the “middle-sized dry goods” of everyday experience could count as unified subjects on this view.) (Fs)

35a Once again the method of retorsion might be deployed against such views. If, as the Eleatics claim, there is in no sense more than one being, then how can the Eleatic so much as distinguish between himself and his interlocutor, or his premises and his conclusion? How can he distinguish between the reality that his philosophy is supposed to reveal to us and the false appearance of things that it is intended to dispel? If, as the Heraclitean claims, there is no unity to the things of ordinary experience but only multiplicity, then there can be no one self who abides through the stages of a chain of reasoning — in which case how can the Heraclitean ever validly draw a conclusion from his premises, as he needs to do in order to make his case? And how could he even state his thesis unless there were stable, recurring patterns — roundness, flatness, melting, etc. — in terms of which to characterize change or becoming? (Fs)

35b The distinction between act and potency can be applied to a critique of the Eleatics’ denial of multiplicity, as much as to a critique of their denial of change. Contra Parmenides, non-being or nothingness is not the only candidate for a principle by which two beings A and B could be differentiated. For despite their both being actual, they can yet be differentiated by reference to their potencies. Two balls A and B might both be actually round and red, but differ insofar as A is actually rolling while B is rolling only potentially, B is actually in the drawer while A is in the drawer only potentially, and so forth. Zeno, meanwhile, supposes that the infinite number of parts a thing with size has are all in it actually, when in fact they are in it only insofar as a thing and its parts could each potentially be divided and divided again. (Fs)

35c We have, then, the following basic argument for the distinction between potency and act: That change and permanence, multiplicity and unity, are all real features of the world cannot coherently be denied; but they can be real features of the world only if there is a distinction in things between what they are in act and what they are in potency; therefore there is a distinction to be made in things between what they are in act and what they are in potency. (Fs) (notabene)

36a To this basic argument, Scholastic philosophy of nature would add a consideration from the success of modern science. Science would be impossible if either the Eleatic position or its Heraclitean opposite were true. If Parmenides and Zeno were correct, there would be no world of distinct, changing things and events for the physicist, chemist, or biologist to study; and perceptual experience, which forms the evidential basis for modern science but which consists precisely in a series of distinct and changing perceptual episodes, would be entirely illusory. If the opposite, Heraclitean position were correct, there would be no stable, repeatable patterns for the scientist to uncover — no laws of physics, no periodic table of elements, no biological species — and thus no way to infer from the observed to the unobserved. On either of these views, the ontological and epistemological presuppositions of science would be undermined. Yet there is no way to avoid the Eleatic and Heraclitean extremes without affirming the distinction between act and potency. So we must affirm it given the success of science. (Fs)

Autor: Feser, Edward

Buch: Scholastic Metaphysics

Titel: Scholastic Metaphysics

Stichwort: Akt und Potenz 3; Verhältnis zw. A. u. P.;

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: 1.1.2 The relationship between act and potency

36b If act and potency are distinct features of a thing, we must still address the question of what kind of distinction we are talking about. For Scholastic writers commonly differentiate between real distinctions and logical distinctions, where the former reflect differences in extra-mental reality itself and the latter differences in our ways of thinking about extra-mental reality. Scotists add to this classification the notion of a formal distinction as something intermediate between a real and a logical distinction. Thomists regard the distinction between act and potency as a real distinction, while Scotists and Suarezians regard it as a formal distinction. We will return to this issue below. (Fs)

36c Thomists also differ with Scotists and Suarezians about whether anything other than potency limits act. Take the roundness of a certain rubber ball, which is actual, but in a limited way insofar as roundness as such is perfect roundness yet the ball’s roundness is not perfect (since there is always at least a slight imperfection in even the most carefully made ball), and insofar as roundness, which is of itself a universal, comes to be instantiated in this particular object and in that sense limited to a particular time and place. The Thomist position is that it is only potency which can ultimately account for these limitations on a thing’s actuality. Indeed, this is the second of the twenty-four Thomistic theses:

Because act is perfection, it is limited only by potency which is a capacity for perfection. Hence, a pure act in any order of being exists only as unlimited and unique; but wherever it (act) is finite and multiplied, there it unites in true composition with potency. (Wuellner 1956, p. 120)

37a In particular, it is the potency of rubber qua material substance to take on different forms that limits the roundness currently in it to being only an approximation of perfect roundness; matter as such lacks the fixity or determinacy to realize more than such an approximation. It is also matter which limits the roundness to this rather than that particular time and place; and this too reflects matter’s potency, insofar as a given parcel of matter is always potentially at some other point in time and space even if actually at this one. (Fs)

37b Scotists and Suarezians, by contrast, hold that the limitations of a thing’s actuality can be accounted for by reference to the thing’s cause. The ball’s roundness is imperfect because the ball’s cause put, as it were, only so much roundness into it; the roundness is limited to this particular time and place because that is when and where the ball’s cause put it into the ball. For the Thomist, however, such an extrinsic principle of limitation is possible only if there is an intrinsic principle — something in the limited thing itself by virtue of which its cause is able to limit its actuality — and this can only be potency. Hence the cause of the ball can put a limited degree of roundness into it precisely because the ball has the potency to be something other than perfectly round; and it can cause the roundness to be instantiated here and now rather than some other time and place precisely because the rubber which takes on that form has the potency to be at various times and places. (Cf. Clarke 1994; Phillips 1950, pp. 187-91; Renard 1946, pp. 30-39)

38a This dispute is closely related to the dispute over whether the distinction between act and potency is a real distinction, to which, again, we will return below; and to the dispute over whether the distinction between a thing’s essence and its existence is a real distinction, which will be addressed in chapter 4. (Fs)

38b Even those who regard the distinction between act and potency as real emphasize that act is prior to or more fundamental than potency in several crucial respects. For one thing, any potency is always defined in relation to act. For instance, a rubber ball’s potency for melting, becoming flat, etc. just is a potency for being actual in those ways — for being melted in act, flat in act, and so on. (Fs)

38c Second, a thing’s potencies are grounded in its actualities. It is because the ball is actually made of rubber rather than either granite or butter that it has a potency for melting at just the temperature it does rather than at some higher or lower temperature. (Fs)

38d Third, a potency can be actualized only by what is already actual. For instance, the ball’s potential flatness and squishiness cannot actualize themselves, precisely because they are merely potential rather than actual; and neither, for the same reason, can anything else that is merely potential be what actualizes them. If they are to be actualized, it can only be something already actual, like the heat of an oven, which actualizes them. This is one version of the Scholastic principle of causality, which will be examined in chapter 2. (Fs)

38e Finally, act is prior to potency insofar as while there can be nothing that is pure potency — since, if a thing were purely potential and in no way actual, it would not exist — there can be something which is pure act. The notion of that which is absolutely pure actuality or actus purus is the core of Scholastic philosophy’s conception of God, and its existence is the upshot of the key Scholastic arguments for God’s existence. (Cf. Feser 2009, chapter 3; Feser 2011)