tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post891625214185846366..comments2024-02-24T17:03:49.577-06:00Comments on Disputationes: Musings on Causality, Divinity and ResurrectionDennis Bielfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13948642851506603307noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-2275578864037333442017-03-19T14:22:52.579-05:002017-03-19T14:22:52.579-05:00I was reading an article recently in Philosophia C...I was reading an article recently in Philosophia Christi arguing against the possibility of a materialist commitment to human autonomy. His argument appears bound to arguing for a necessary relationship between materialism and atomism. We can immediately see the problem of atomism and some kind of natural types, even of persons. Atoms have no intrinsic allegiance with persons (or individual dogs or pine trees). We can see the same kind of problem when it comes to cosmic teleology: atoms have no natural or intrinsic commitment to living beings, or consciousness. I would suggest however, despite the historical trace of modern science, that it is possible to imagine a physicalism that is not atomistic. Such a physicalism (or materialism) can encompass a larger class of natural types, perhaps even human (or dogs). This notion is close to the ancient notion of substance. This non-atomistic notion of a physicalism is perhaps difficult for us to imagine today. I just wonder, out loud, what such a physicalism would mean for the causal nexus between God and His creation. It seems to me that under an older understanding of a "physical" universe we didn't have this problem, and I'm wondering how much it is consequent of the assumed atomism. Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11974057250074273162noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-80099438753458662342017-03-13T20:21:52.729-05:002017-03-13T20:21:52.729-05:00What I am trying to get at is the way that practic...What I am trying to get at is the way that practice encapsulates and incarnates a world. Any such practice entails a certain set of prerequisite conditions. It is difficult to imagine, for example, a milieu of personal autonomy under feudalism. The physical structure of homes, communities, and cuisine all influence possible practices. What is the relationship of practices and philosophy, even theology? We speak of Christian practice. Why not autonomous practice? These practices instantiate and establish our world. In a world where we today regret the lack of God's presence, even in our own lives, it is worth considering how our practice engenders the very thing we regret, and then perhaps to discover what might realize our desire. The "logic" of practice is not the same as that of philosophy. It is constrained by what can be done. It is ringed in by the possible that is within reach. It is not tested by logical coherence or completeness. I need to think more about this, but they seem very different "disciplines." And yet I think we dwell more in this realm of practice than that of philosophy. Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11974057250074273162noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-22269585914151010302017-03-13T18:41:18.727-05:002017-03-13T18:41:18.727-05:00Jon: you say that that modernity (or postmodernity...Jon: you say that that modernity (or postmodernity) is "the revolt against this causality [God's creation of the universe] and the co-opting of this divine causation by autonomous human reason for the purpose of mastering and dominating nature for our own purposes." This touches on what I was trying to say in my second post. The question is how moderns are able to accomplish this feat? I suggested that it is by attention, i.e., by confining the scope of interest and what matters. If we only attend to what we can change and influence, our sense of "empowerment" and autonomy is heightened. What we are (compatibalistically) free to do is attended to. What we are not so disposed, gets, for the most part, missed. This is accomplished by confining the scope of our concerns. With this disposition, how might authority be regarded? It constrains our autonomy and delimits our activity. But it also focuses our activity. Where there is no perceived good, freedom is otiose. The question for modern man is that of meaningfulness. Can the meaningful be created ex nihilo? If we attend only to that which is changeable, and to nothing that is fixed in our mind and world, can there be any meaning? Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11974057250074273162noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-85790270320614613352017-03-13T17:55:39.340-05:002017-03-13T17:55:39.340-05:00We can define what we mean by physical (probably),...We can define what we mean by physical (probably), but is that the right thing to do? It seems to me that when we attempt to do so, we are trying to do more than defining what making a goal in hockey is. We are trying to say something about a world we know and don't yet know. Is the physical that which whose process of observables can be mapped into a mathematics? And this is to imagine some kind go algorithm that associates earlier states to later states. This algorithm must be deductive, we could say decidable. So is this what distinguishes agency from non-agency: decidablility? We might suggest that something like a free agent's behavior is not decidable by any previously specified algorithm. All of this is confusing to me because it is immediately obvious to me that an orderly Creator wouldn't act in a decidable way. While this might not be true in all cases, it seems plausible to me that He might in instances relevant to natural science that God and His behavior be not unlike the character of a "fundamental particle." After all, the nature of a fundamental particle is utterly obtuse and inexplicable. They may as well be gods (or likened unto black holes that some are saying can do all sorts of marvelous things). <br /><br />You say that the fundamental question is whether teleology is possible in a physicalistic universe? It seems that Nagel thinks so. I guess I'm confused. We regard acorns as physical and can we not say that they (as an embryo) have a teleology? The problem is not the teleologic process, but how to account for that imprinting in a "physical" universe. But is this any different from wondering why the world has the character that it has? Nagel suggests that our universe was wound up to produce life and even conscious beings (contra Gould). Fine. Still we are faced with how and why this particular predisposition. <br /><br />You provide a connection between God and His character (essential properties). Should I regard this as a definition and thus the description of a class, or an attempt to describe an extant entity? This is the same kind of problem that "science" faces. The objects of science have changed over time because its projection of the world was inadequate (too small). Christ likely did the same for God. The relationship between our notions of the world and the world is open ended, at least it ought to be. Surely we do this with regard to God, and have always done so. Naturalistic science (of late?) aims for transparency and completeness, something I believe is necessarily impossible. All of this leaves me, as I began, very confused about the "physical" vs nonphysical. It seems to me that you can choose the "physical" to delineate the scope of a discipline. But if by it you intend reality, I am much less persuaded. Nonetheless, we need some way (I hope) of distinguishing God from what is not God, the creation from the uncreated. Surely we can do this. But to say that the difference is that between the physical and nonphysical is less persuasive to me. We already know that the Uncreated created the creation. I don't think this has to entail that the nonphysical made the physical. Science, as far as I know, never deals with the world as created vs uncreated. It treats both the same and has no way to distinguish between the two. As far as it is concerned, the created are eternal. But then we have that awful Big Bang. What now, I wonder? Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11974057250074273162noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-90241524231804804862017-03-13T09:39:56.812-05:002017-03-13T09:39:56.812-05:00"God's work, our hands" does perfect..."God's work, our hands" does perfectly sum up the betrayal. What they really mean is our work, with a little God-talk pasted on it. The illness is covered up by layers of prevarication, so that is festers and rots and soon we are left with nothing. I'm not sure, however, that we can formulate truth-conditions that could make "Christ is risen from the dead" falsifiable. Of course, if Jesus' body was still there, that would disprove his resurrection. But the fact that his body wasn't there doesn't prove the resurrection either; the disciples may have stolen it. The empty tomb tradition doesn't enter into the kerygma; rather, there is an appeal to the witnesses to saw the risen Jesus. Of course, the resurrection is a real event that actually brought in ("caused," we might wish to say) the Messianic Age. But we live in the Messianic Age now by means of the Word of the resurrection, the gospel, and faith in that Word. "Christ is risen from the dead" is a statement about what actually is the case regarding the future. In other worlds, it is a promise. What are the truth conditions for a promise? That the one promising can fulfill the promise. Hence, the promise brings its own truth condition, faith that the one who promises is able to fulfill--indeed, has fulfilled--the promise. This is justifiying faith that ascribes truthfulness to God, the highest honor we can give him. <br />To say that God causes the universe seems to annihilate any freedom in the creature. Isn't modernity the revolt against this causality and the co-opting of this divine causation by autonomous human reason for the purpose of mastering and dominating nature for our own purposes? Of course, God's causing of the universe can be finessed in various ways in order to make room for creaturely freedom. But granting us freedom is not something that theology (or philosophy) can do. God has to do it and he does so by speaking the promise. What if, instead of saying, "God causes the universe," we say, "God is the Author of the universe?" <br /><br /><br />Dr. Jonathan D. Sorum<br />Dean of Academic Affairs<br />Institute of Lutheran Theology<br />(320) 304-4985Jonathan Sorumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10971915319584629859noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-70050925678113020822017-03-13T09:39:38.383-05:002017-03-13T09:39:38.383-05:00"God's work, our hands" does perfect..."God's work, our hands" does perfectly sum up the betrayal. What they really mean is our work, with a little God-talk pasted on it. The illness is covered up by layers of prevarication, so that is festers and rots and soon we are left with nothing. I'm not sure, however, that we can formulate truth-conditions that could make "Christ is risen from the dead" falsifiable. Of course, if Jesus' body was still there, that would disprove his resurrection. But the fact that his body wasn't there doesn't prove the resurrection either; the disciples may have stolen it. The empty tomb tradition doesn't enter into the kerygma; rather, there is an appeal to the witnesses to saw the risen Jesus. Of course, the resurrection is a real event that actually brought in ("caused," we might wish to say) the Messianic Age. But we live in the Messianic Age now by means of the Word of the resurrection, the gospel, and faith in that Word. "Christ is risen from the dead" is a statement about what actually is the case regarding the future. In other worlds, it is a promise. What are the truth conditions for a promise? That the one promising can fulfill the promise. Hence, the promise brings its own truth condition, faith that the one who promises is able to fulfill--indeed, has fulfilled--the promise. This is justifiying faith that ascribes truthfulness to God, the highest honor we can give him. <br />To say that God causes the universe seems to annihilate any freedom in the creature. Isn't modernity the revolt against this causality and the co-opting of this divine causation by autonomous human reason for the purpose of mastering and dominating nature for our own purposes? Of course, God's causing of the universe can be finessed in various ways in order to make room for creaturely freedom. But granting us freedom is not something that theology (or philosophy) can do. God has to do it and he does so by speaking the promise. What if, instead of saying, "God causes the universe," we say, "God is the Author of the universe?" <br /><br /><br />Jonathan SorumJonathan Sorumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10971915319584629859noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-68261004464166227122017-03-12T20:11:16.352-05:002017-03-12T20:11:16.352-05:00What was missing in my reply, and manifest in my f...What was missing in my reply, and manifest in my floundering about, was any clear understanding of what is at stake. Philosophy matters only when it derives from the living. What it seems to me is at issue is the immanence of God, His evident activity in the world. The felt presence of God has grown dull. Allow me to suggest that the principal cause is the world we outline by what we attend to. Today we are, if not individually then collectively, manipulators of the world, a world known by what we do to it. Less do we see our world as a given, a gift, which were it not given we would have nothing, but more as that which we can bend to our wish and whim. It is this malleable and soft aspect of the world to which we attend, and not the hard unmoving reality that lies below. As such, it is our freedom, power, and creativity that matters most to us; and the world we see is just that aspect which most fits that attention. In so doing, we find the malleable thing, but not God. For these God is found, consequent to what they attend to, what resists their wish and will, a dark unmoving force, something that sanctions no bargains. Such is found in their individual deaths (even in climate warming), and not a God to warm up to. Believing that only that which can be changed and bent to our will can be meaningful, this God, this Death threatens to clog all life with meaninglessness, and crowd us out. Here I am suggesting that it is not so much some firm grand metaphysical commitment that bars God from the world, but rather our attention to what we can master and manipulate. What cannot be so regarded has little value for us. We no longer find our dependence and lives rely upon His gifts, but rather on what we are gods over. What He gifts is merely raw grist for our mills to make better. Were our attention otherwise, I am certain we would find a way for God to daily walk among us bestowing gifts. But the sense of what we are about will not allow it, numb to what we steal from Him to make us strong. It is the weak and troubled who find the God who is always there, but missed by misdirected attention.Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11974057250074273162noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-60351840936549999422017-03-12T17:23:00.051-05:002017-03-12T17:23:00.051-05:00I wish to say something about the physical and its...I wish to say something about the physical and its relationship to the non-physical. (I do this with some trepidation, since your a physicist and surely you know more about the physical than I.) <br /><br />First, I deny that either "being mechanical" or "being deterministic" are essential to physicality as such. Surely indeterministic (or non-mechanical) physical systems are conceivable. (Aristotle apparently believed that substantial change could be caused by chance.) <br /><br />I have always liked this definition of the physical: "A system is physical if and only iff the entities to which it appeals are members of that class of entities over which our fundamental particle theories quantify." This definition does not presuppose an absolute ontological divide between the physical and non-physical, but ties the definition of the physical to actual scientific practice. <br /><br />Notice on this definition the question of the relationship between the non-physical God and a physical universe really becomes the question of the propriety of the appeal to an entity to which appeal in scientific theory is standardly precluded. While the Higgs particle is a theoretical entity, an entity whose establishment (discovery? construction?) is tied to a particular explanatory task within an established scientific practice and theory (paradigm), appeal to God, on the other hand, presupposes the existence of a metaphysical entity already on the shelf, an entity the most important features of which are not an ability to explain within an established scientific theory and practice, but rather an entity whose deepest features are salvific. God is that towards which the human heart yearns, that highest being which is true, good and beautiful, that being who grants meaning because He offers an answer to the anxieties of fate, death, guilt, condemnation, emptiness and meaningless. It is this being who might, of course, also explain why there is something and not merely nothing, whose rational agency might yet be at work in the apparent purposelessness of physical processes. [The fundamental question we are dealing with here is simply this: How is teleology possible in a physicalistic universe?] <br /><br />Thus, whereas appeal to theoretical non-empirically amendable entities is a physical appeal because the object postulated has some potential or actual mass, energy, extension, etc., as possessing explanatory value within an overarching scientific theory, explanatory appeal to a non-empirically amendable God is a non-physical appeal because God does not have some potential or actual mass, energy, extension, etc. <br /><br />Dennis Bielfeldthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13948642851506603307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-3308424055880053262017-03-12T14:35:06.034-05:002017-03-12T14:35:06.034-05:00There are so many issues that arise from your comm...There are so many issues that arise from your comment, that it is probably best if I take them in some order in a series of responses. My concern in this comment concerns agent causality and its relationship to event/event causality. <br /><br />We standardly distinguish the "transeunt causation" of one event causing another from "immanent causation" wherein either earlier temporal stages of an entity cause properties at later temporal stages of agent causation in which an agent can be said to cause its actions. Immanent causation thus deals with issues of persistence or action. [A recent article by Nathanael Stein in the JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 51:1 (January 2014), 33-60, nicely discusses this.] The question, of course, is whether immanent causation can be accounted for by transeunt causation -- this seems plausible to many today -- or perhaps whether immanent causation explains transeunt causation (Leibniz). Stein returns to Aristotle in trying to show the causa sui status of immanent causation, arguing that it has explanatory priority due to its connection to the notion of formal causality. As such agent nature is merely accidental to immanent causation. <br /><br />You assume that my agency is a necessary cause of my house: "I was necessary but not sufficient to raise my house from the ground," and move from there to the general question of divine agency, pointing out that the physical/non-physical distinction is not nearly so clear as I might assume. One of my professors at Iowa, Evan Fales, recently wrote a book you may have read entitled DIVINE INTERVENTION: METAPHYSICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL PUZZLES (New York: Rutledge 2010). In this book he raises many of the general issues of divine intervention connected with agency, particularly issues of how a non-physical agent can have physically realized actions. Fales thinks that transeunt event-event causation must involve a mapping of particular spatio-temporal events to others -- he holds that causation itself is between types of events and that the tokening of these events must have relevant spatio-temporal mapping -- and that agent causation cannot specify the requisite determinate non-physical event/states from which to draw causal relations to the physical. While some of his arguments can be countered -- see Gregory Ganssle's article in SOPHIA 54 (2015), 25-34 -- the general issue remains: Is my agency as the necessary condition for building my house causa sui or not? <br /><br />Explanations in terms of beliefs and desires are standard in the philosophy of mind. I can explain why I built the house by appealing to my desire to build it and my belief that acting in such and such ways bring about what I desire (Davidson). All of this is clear. The question, however, has to do with the physical realization of my beliefs and desires and whether or not some special contra-causal agency or "spiritual power" is introduced in my believings and desirings, a causal power that is somehow causally efficacious in the bringing about of my house. Davidson, as is well known, can talk about the anomaly of the mental and say that mental explanations have "no echo in physical theory" while at the same time holding that the tokening of physical types realizing the mental are doing the real causal work. In other words, causal explanation is quite a different matter than causality. The first is intension; the second extensional. The causal map of the universe is found at the extensional level, not our intensional ways of describing or referring to the extensional. So my first question is whether my agency being a necessary condition for the making of my house somehow is a denizen of the extensional. The causal relevance of my agency does not its causal efficaciousness make. <br /><br />Dennis Bielfeldthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13948642851506603307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-31418404165775340352017-03-11T20:32:43.990-06:002017-03-11T20:32:43.990-06:00Can I be said to be the cause of a house? Would th...Can I be said to be the cause of a house? Would the house have come to be without me? No. Am I a sufficient cause for the house? No. but I am a necessary. We might say that the means are likewise necessary but not sufficient. I was necessary, but not sufficient, to raise the house from the ground. If Christ's being alive corresponds to a certain physical state P1 and His death to physical state P2, one might say that God raising Christ from the dead requires that God bring P2 to P1. We know, however, this to be false. If Christ were to be brought to P1, He would die again, as we. Something, then, must occur to Christ in a state of P2 that is beyond our understanding of all physical states. If all interactions in our world are between physical entities, if the causal nexus is closed, then a theistic God cannot interact with the world, even as He impossibly was able to bring it into existence. Fortunately, I have no idea what the physical is and what the nonphysical. If the physical is paradigmatically that which has no agency, no will, no choice, no freedom, no consciousness, if the world is wholly "mechanical," what do we make of our caring what it means for Christ to be Resurrected? Are we bound to this thinking and can think no other? Perhaps God is "mechanical"? What exactly is our problem? If brains can think and be conscious, what exactly is our problem? Perhaps the "physical" is capable of more than we imagine. Can God not Resurrect Jesus unless we can trace a causal chain of physical states from beginning to end? Can we really speak of a "beginning"? Can a causal chain, construed as we do the "physical," begin? So is this what distinguishes the "physical" from the "nonphysical": the physical has no beginning, no initiation, while the nonphysical has a beginning? If the Resurrection is something New, it must, then, be nonphysical, for the physical can bring about nothing New. It has never seemed plain to me why this "nonphysical" is prohibited from interacting with the "physical." Is this a matter of definition or meant to entail something ontological? As I build a house, something that is not a house, so mightn't the "nonphysical" initiate and begin something amongst the "physical"? If the universe had a Will according to some pantheism, could we detect it? Only what surprises us calls out for explaining. Surely the Resurrection cries out for explanation. Since our "physical" understanding of the world lacks the resources to account for it, we must look for another understanding. Our "physical" world is wholly inadequate. The problems, then, posed by our inability to see how God could Resurrect Jesus only demonstrate that our understanding of God and the world are lacking. One ought not deny the Phenomena for the sake of theory, but rather seek to adjust and temper theory by the phenomena. So science has always gone from the visible to the invisible and back again. But who will have faith when the Son of Man comes again, when it is transparency and only man's measure that matters? Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11974057250074273162noreply@blogger.com