Early Documents Pertaining to the Founding of the Institute of Lutheran Theology: "Why a Lutheran House of Studies?"

The following article of mine was published in The WordAlone News on the Day of Epiphany, 2006.  I was then Chair of the WordAlone Theological House of Studies Task Force.  In this article from over 15 years ago, one can discern early rationale for the new institution that later became the Institute of Lutheran Theology.  Maybe someone will find this interesting.  

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Why a Lutheran House of Studies? 

by Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt (Chair, WordAlone Lutheran Theological House of Studies Task Force)

January 6, 2006

 

A wise person once said that wisdom is the gift of understanding the obvious. I have talked with many Lutherans who are concerned about the future of theological education in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Congregations sense that newly ordained pastors often think quite differently than those joining the clergy rosters 40 years ago. But granting this is so, why is it so? What understanding of this problem is available to us?

 

I recall three recent conversations that exemplify the problem.

 

In the first, a woman was talking to me about the sexuality issue confronting the ELCA, "How can my pastor be for allowing someone engaged in homosexual behavior to be a pastor? Doesn't it say in the Bible that we aren't supposed to do that, and hasn't Christianity always taught that?" I remember trying to explain to her how it had come about that Bible and tradition were no longer thought clearly to decide the issue. She was not impressed with my reply.

 

In another conversation a man said to me, "Why is everyone coming out of the seminary these days so politically correct? It seems like they care more about fixing society than they do about preaching the faith." When I told him about the justice perspective of the prophetic Biblical faith, he responded, "I am not against talking some politics in church, I just want to make sure we also talk about church in church, because we don't talk about that anywhere else."

 

Finally, I recall the words of an older gentleman who remarked, "When I was young, the pastor definitely had authority in our congregation. It was not just his word against ours. But when pastors get all agitated about stuff they don't know about—our last pastor was convinced that large, multi-national agribusiness was the work of the devil—then it makes us think they maybe don't know as much about what we are paying them to know about." I didn't know what to say to that because I remembered my own synod's passing a resolution directed against Cargill even though members of the economics faculty at our state university claimed those voting hadn't a clue as to what they were voting about.

 

The three conversations clearly display the problem. As a church what is our authority? If it is no longer Scripture and tradition, then what is it? As a church what is the focus of our message? If it is not the crucified Christ, then what is it? As a church what is our competence? If it is not the proclamation of the revealed Word into the concrete situation, then what is it?

 

It is obvious that things have changed in Lutheran theological education in America. Precisely what have changed, I think, are the teachable assumptions about authority, message and competence. Underlying these is an even more fundamental presupposition that confessional theological statements cannot be true—at least not in the way we had previously believed.

 

WordAlone, along with many other Lutheran reform movements, perceives that the classical loci of the Lutheran tradition have been de-emphasized within ELCA seminaries over the past 40 years. The following are my speculations as to why it is that we find ourselves in the current situation. Hopefully, there will be some gift of wisdom in my attempt to understand what, to many, is obvious.

 

One cause of the problem is economic. We must recognize that ELCA funding for its seminaries is much lower than the funding of the previous Lutheran bodies towards their seminaries. This change in economic policy has had tremendous repercussions. In order to survive and prosper, the seminaries have had to become more autonomous in their self-understanding than previously had been so, and they have thus had to offer curricula that can appeal to a broad range of students seeking theological education. As the de facto mission of the seminaries changed from the "in house" task of preparing Lutheran students for Lutheran ministry to the more general task of providing academic theological education to a broader constituency, the explicitly confessional nature of theological education was accordingly de-emphasized. (I am not claiming that anyone set out intending to do this.) The result has been that the ethos of Lutheran identity and confession no longer prevails in the student body of the seminaries. Many students today neither know the Lutheran tradition nor wish to adopt and advocate for it. This state of affairs is simply an unarguable fact about our current context and the economic realities that underlie it.

 

Secondly, the decline in teaching classical Lutheran theology is attributable in part to a change in the theological direction of ELCA leadership and significant numbers of the ELCA rank-and-file.

 

We live in a time in which the "truth-conditions" for theological language are routinely considered to be problematic. In an age of cultural relativism that often breeds ethical relativism, there is a profound awareness of the multiplicity of religious options and a sincere desire on the part of many not to be ethnocentric with respect to their own fundamental beliefs and world views. This awareness has tended to conflict with the prima facie particularity of Christian confession. While in previous times one could say "confessional proposition x is true because the state of affairs denoted by x obtains external to human awareness, perception, conception and language," this option seems to many today to be provincial, parochial, naïve and misguided. How can one's own confessions be true in this way without saying at the same time that everyone else's are wrong?

 

The result of this has been a general movement away from understanding confessional assertions realistically, and instead understanding them as mere expressions of one's own cultural values. Thus, a "theological irrealism" has taken up residency within the ELCA. Of course, to claim that such an irrealism is the only alternative to the robust realism of earlier generations is itself to commit the fallacy of false dichotomy. The denial of one simply does not entail the truth of the other, even though it may often seem that way to people in the pews. (The problem bequeathed by the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant was to try to give theological language truth-conditions without having to understand them realistically. The next 150 years of theological development tried to grant objectivity to theological propositions without making them about metaphysical objects. The problem today is that there has been a general loss of confidence in this entire project. Objectivity itself has become subjectivized, and normativity is customarily regarded as an expression of the self embedded in its immediate cultural context.)

 

Thirdly, with the loss of particular truth-conditions to theological language, there has resurfaced in our time the problem of authority.

 

While Lutherans once believed that Scripture itself could adjudicate conflicting claims, contemporary Biblical scholarship assumes that the sensus of Scripture is not easily located. Given the conflicting claims in Biblical scholarship about the real meaning of particular texts, a retreat to the letter and authority of the confessional documents has also seemed wrongheaded. Moreover, the real meanings of these documents are themselves open for scholarly debate. Given this present vacuum of authority, it is small wonder that voices have emerged urging a ratcheting up of the authority of the Church. When Scripture and Confession can no longer function to grant authority to the particularity of Lutheran theological affirmations, then something else is requisite, and that hoped for "something else" is identified by many as "the Church."

 

The paradox of the present ELCA participation in the ecumenical movement is this: Lutheranism began in the particularity of its theological affirmations over and against Catholic, Reformed and Anabaptist theology. Now, the ELCA is putatively, or supposedly, to "get over" these particularist affirmations in order to find unity with others within the Church catholic. Those holding to the particularity of these former affirmations are understood by many as undermining the unity of the Church. In a time when form prevails over substance, unity smells sweeter than truth.

 

There is a final point worth mentioning. There has been a widespread attenuation, or lessening, of emphasis on the scandal of the Cross in favor of a preoccupation with social justice issues.

 

The reason for this is not difficult to ascertain. Citizens of America generally embrace the traditional American values of individual rights and dignities. Advocating for social justice and individual dignity, while part of the Biblical prophetic tradition, is thus clearly consonant with the prevailing ethos of American culture. To speak for peace and justice is to state the deepest and noblest values of our civilization. But proclaiming the foolishness of the Cross is irreducibly counter-cultural. Advocating an ultimate eschatological, or end times, empowerment before God that does not entail immediate temporal empowerment is a position that has been, and will continue to be, criticized by enlightened, cultured despisers of religion. But Lutheranism must always find its center in the second article of the creeds, the scandal of the Cross.

 

The WordAlone Network's House of Studies project wishes to establish a structure for theological education that assumes the following:

 

·      The authority of Scripture and Confessions

·      The centrality of the scandal of the Cross

·      The truth and particularity of traditional Lutheran affirmations

·      The notion that the Church is primarily the hidden gathering of the faithful and not a visible means of divine grace

·      The value of theological competence and student mastery of Scripture and other primary texts of the Lutheran theological tradition

 

We are at a crossroads. The WordAlone Network wishes to establish and implement structures that can perpetuate Lutheran confessional teaching in the face of contemporary social, cultural and theological resistance. The structural shape of the Lutheran House of Studies has not been determined. We remain at the preliminary stage of seeking input and interest in such a project. While we do not now know the "hardware" particulars of the House of Studies, we do, however, have an idea of the "software" we wish to create. In creating the "software," we wish to begin with its critical component: good faculty willing to teach in the House of Studies and an attainable vision. Because we believe that good software can run in different hardware environments, we shall begin our efforts by identifying faculty and planning curriculum.

 

Theology and the Philosophy of Science: The Received View

Discussions within the philosophy of science oftentimes refer to the Received View and the criticisms this view has generated. It was called the "Received View" because there was a great deal of consensus on it prior to the 1960s.  What is this view? 

Simply put, the Received View refers to the attempt by philosophers of science to construe scientific theories as axiomatic calculi which are then given a partial observational interpretation by correspondence rules linking theoretical terms to sets of observations.  This view dominated the philosophy of science from the 1920s all the way through the 1950s, after which a number of criticisms developed that effectively brought the theory to its knees. What is the background of such a view?

The Received View grew out of the school of Logical Positivism, but survived the demise the latter.  In order to understand the Received View, it is therefore quite helpful to know something about Logical Positivism.  

The origins of Logical Positivism can be traced to Hans Reichenbach's "Berlin School" and to the philosophy of the Vienna School.  As a movement, Logical Positivism rejected traditional metaphysics, concerning itself instead with foundational issues in science. It had its origins within the German universities and rested oftentimes upon the power and authority of individual professors.    

Ludwig Büchner's mechanistic naturalism from roughly the 1850s to the 1880s can be seen as an important source for Logical Positivism. Rejecting any a priori elements in science, Büchner held that we have an immediate empirical knowledge of the laws of the natural world that govern the movement of matter.  

During the 1880s and 1890s, Helmholtz, Cohen and the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism generally claimed that webs of a priori logical relations are exemplified in the external world and that it is the aim of science to discover the general structure of sensations.  

At about the same time, Ernst Mach was also arguing that there is no a priori which organizes the facts of science, but rather that science is a conceptual reflection upon the givenness of facts.  He famously rejected that neither space nor time is absolute and claimed that ultimately all empirical statements comprising scientific theory must be reducible to statements about sensations.  

Thus it is that by 1900 the following schools of thought held sway, all contributing to Logical Positivism, and all of which were challenged by the theory of relativity and quantum theory generally:

• Mechanistic Materialism with its roots in Büchner's thought; 
• Neo-Kantianism and its claim of the a priori nature of logical relations; 
• Machian Positivism rejecting the a priori. 

The Vienna Circle and Reichenbach's Berlin School both sought a philosophy of science that was compatible with the new physics. Both believe that Mach's verifiability criterion of meaningfulness was essentially correct: Putative scientific claims that could neither empirically confirmed nor disconfirmed were meaningless.  Simply put, scientific statements required truth conditions as the sine qua non of meaningfulness. Both schools also believed that mathematics was very important in science, accepting along the way Poincare's thesis that one ought understand scientific law in terms of conventions about how one might talk about phenomena. Accordingly, both supposed that the subject matter of theories are phenomenal regularities and that these regularities can be characterized by theoretical terms. Both claimed that while theoretical terms are mere conventions used to refer to phenomena, the same assertions made employing these theoretical terms could in principle be made within phenomenal language generally, i.e.,  explicit definitions of theoretical terms were possible in this way.  

The original Received View was heavily influenced by the mathematical logic of Frege and Cantor, as well as the work of Russell and Whitehead. In the early days, the logical axiomization of theories was particularly important with correspondence rules granting an observational interpretation of theoretical propositions. 

Logical axiomization proceeds by using logical and mathematical terms both to formulate scientific laws and specify the relationship among theoretical terms which themselves are construed as abbreviations of phenomenal descriptions. Observational terms, on the other hand, are given an explicit phenomenal interpretation.  Correspondence rules are employed to give explicit definitions to theoretical terms and consisted in biconditionals.  Thus, for all x, x has theoretical property T if and only if x has observational properties O. The idea here is that all theoretical terms could be correlated with congeries of observational terms.  

The aim of the approach was always to eschew metaphysics. Since for all x, x has T just in case x has O, one does not need to grant some non-empirical ontological status to theoretical entities.  The existence of these biconditional "bridge rules" giving an observational meaning to theoretical terms meant that no supersensible or nonsensible entities need exist, a happy event for anyone wanting to limit the metaphysical within science.  The verificationist criterion claiming that the meaning of a term is its method of verification also effectively precluded any appeal to the metaphysical. There was a general concern to construct a logically perfect language that would make no reference to metaphysical entities. 

Since all assertions of scientific theory are in principle reducible to assertions about phenomena in the observational language, all assertions of scientific fact are reducible to assertions in a basic phenomenal language.  Theorists called this language a protocol language directly referring to the givenness of observational experience.  Within this protocol language, one could distinguish particular assertions from generalizations.  

But storm clouds were gathering on the horizon. Granted that we have a protocol language, what precisely is this language about?  One group claimed that the language referred to incorrigible sense data.  The problem with this, is that such sense data appears to be subjective.  The incorrigibility of immediate experience carries with it subjectivity.  Another group claimed that we must eschew subjectivity and that we can only do that by allowing the protocol language to refer to physical things and their properties.  Now the problem of subjectivity has been fixed, but our experience is no longer incorrigible.  Thus it is that there was both a phenomenalist and a physicalist interpretation of the protocol language, the first emphasizing incorrigibility but losing objectivity, and the second emphasizing objectivity but losing incorrigibility.  In what then could the givenness of experience consist?   

There were other problems as well.  As is well-known, all inductive arguments are invalid, i.e., it is always possible for the premises of such arguments to be true, while their conclusions are false. The problem is that no matter how many times there is a correlation among our empirical experiences, it is always logically possible that the next experience will be one in which that correlation does not hold.  This "problem of induction" is often called Hume's problem, after the 18th century Scottish philosopher, David Hume.  

Within the philosophy of science, the problem of induction seems to collide with the axiomatic and deductive nature of scientific theory.  While there were attempts to formulate an inductive logic with clear algorithms, on empirical grounds one cannot observe a generalization, and, moreover, it is always logically possible that one's next experience will disconfirm the generalization under consideration.  

Overwhelmingly important in the Received View is the notion of a correspondence rule.  Sometimes called "rules of interpretation," "epistemic correlations," "coordinating definitions," "dictionaries," or "observational definitions," the correspondence rules had a threefold function: 1) They defined the theoretical terms, 2) they guaranteed the cognitive significance of these terms, and 3) they specified the experimental procedures by which the theory might apply to the phenomena.  

Unfortunately, there are some manifest inadequacies of the correspondence rule approach.  Take, for instance, a dispositional term like 'fragility'. How is this disposition definable in first order predicate logic? An object that is fragile and the one that is not fragile have no observational differences if neither one breaks.  Fragility is a property about what would happen if the object in question were subjected to certain conditions that do not in fact occur. But talk of counterfactual or subjunctive conditionals takes us away from first order predicate logic into the land of intension -- non-extensional meaning -- something most philosophers of science wanted to avoid. 

But there is a bigger issue.  The correspondence rule approach presupposes that a theoretical term is identified with one experimental procedure.  Unfortunately, this is generally not the case.  There is no one-to-one coordinating definition for theoretical terms.  An observational correlate to such terms is not found in one complete observation, but rather the theoretical term connects to many incomplete, partial observations.  Thus, the effort began to give an alternative non-semantic account of how theoretical terms might have only a partial observational interpretation. 

But now even more questions arise.  When theoretical terms are provided only a partial observational interpretation, then what is their status?  Since they no longer can the be linked by semantics to observational correlates, what is it to which they link? 

Some espousing realism asserted that the terms of the theory actually refer to real entities that presumably exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.  Others counseling instrumentalism claimed that the terms are really short-hand ways of calculating and predicting observational results.  While most adherents of the Received View were realists committed to Quine's notion that "to be is to be the value of a bound variable," the fact that a theoretical term is not exhausted by its observational interpretation neither entails realism nor anti-realism (instrumentalism).  

A new modified Received View thus arose espousing indirect verification, a view summarized by A.J. Ayer this way: 

A statement is indirectly verifiable if and only if in conjunction with certain other premises it entails one or more directly verifiable statements which are not deducible from the other premises alone. 

Both the modified and original Received View were nonetheless committed to the legitimacy of the distinction between observational and theoretical terms.  Examples of the former include 'black', 'cold', 'right of', 'shorter than', 'soft', 'volume', 'floats', 'weighs', 'wood', etc.  Examples of the latter are 'mass', 'energy', 'electric charge', 'electron', 'hadron', 'temperature', 'virus', 'gene' or even 'ego'.  

While this distinction might prima facie seem clear, it is not.  It turns out that there is a theoretical component to any observational term. While 'ego' is a theoretical term in psychological theory, 'floats' has a theoretical component as well in the everyday "theory" of our involvement in the world. Moreover, we might speak about "observing" electrons, but what are the identity conditions of 'observe' when applied to electrons? Consider, "I see a leaf." Do all cultures have some non-theoretical identify conditions for 'leaf', or is that also a theoretical term. Simply put, it may be useful for us to talk about leaves as separate entities from the branches upon which they grow, but is there a fact of the matter here? Do putative observational terms come as self-identifying objects?  

We will continue our discussion of the Received View in the next post which will contrast the syntactic view of scientific theory from the semantic view.  Read on!

Theology and the Philosophy of Science: A First Look at Scientific and Theological Method

Theologians will recognize that the general title of this series of posts is that of the 1976 translated English title of a book by Wolfart Pannenberg published in 1973 entitled, Wissenschafts Theorie und Theology.  My reflections in this blog, however, are entirely my own.  

I have often thought that theologians ought to study the philosophy of science. Why? There are two compelling reasons to do so. Theologians should have a grasp of scientific methodology and theory formation because such knowledge will help them understand the nature of truth claims and justification in the natural and social sciences and help them avoid such statements as, "Well it's not confirmed yet; it's only a theory."  

The second reason to study the philosophy of science is the more important. We should study how it is that truth comes to be declared in the natural and social sciences so that we have a better appreciation of how it is declared in theology. In what ways are truth claims similar in science and theology and in what ways do they differ? The study of the philosophy of science is helpful for both partners in the science and theology discussion to understand each other. 

Some people are surprised perhaps to learn that there is such a discipline as the philosophy of science.  They ask what purpose philosophical reflection accomplishes to the results and trajectories of science.  Do not scientists already know what they are doing?  What could philosophers possibly add to this?  Clearly, they don't generally have PhDs in the fields of study that scientists are investigating.   

I am of the opinion that philosophy is useful in all kinds of areas about which people do not generally know. In addition to the philosophy of science, there is a philosophy of mathematics, a philosophy of mind, a philosophy of law, and a philosophy of history, to name a few.  While philosophers don't generally add to the content of a field of research, their questions can help those within and outside these disciplines to appreciate the particularity of their own intellectual endeavors and the institutional practices they presuppose.  Philosophers can help all of us gain clarity on the assumptions within an area of research, assumptions that sometimes have empirical support, or assumptions that rest upon human convention.  

I want to provide theologians not knowing much about the philosophy of science some orientation to this important branch of philosophy. I hope that this brief introduction will help theologians think a bit more clearly about the nature of science. Perhaps it will help them think a bit differently about the nature of theology as well.  

All of us probably learned in grade school about the scientific method.  We learned that scientists do observations which allow them to spot regularities.  After finding these regularities, they seek an account as to why.  What is it that grounds the regular nature of these regularities.  What explains them?  The search for explanations lead scientists to offer hypotheses which can explain the occurrence of the regularities.  Such hypotheses are explanatory accounts of why the regularity holds.  The rectitude of the hypothesis is accomplished via experiment.  The story I learned was that hypotheses are experimentally confirmed or disconfirmed.  

As a first step in understanding science, this account is quite helpful.  It does allow young students to grasp some about the tentative nature of science.  Young students should realize that science is a human procedure whereby human conjectures are checked up upon within human experience.  Perceptive children might even think about the common adjective of 'procedure', 'conjecture' and 'experience', concluding that science is a very human activity.  The really bright and informed among the perceptive might even ask this, "Given that human beings get so much wrong much of the time, how do we know they get so much right in science?" 

Given that science is clearly a human activity, and given that people clearly are ignorant and close-minded much of the time -- notice what passes for political conversation in these days -- how could we know that they are not simply being ignorant and close-minded in the doing of science?  Millions of people believed in a species of Marxism during the twentieth-century that both failed to explain and predict pheomenena.  How do we know with confidence that we are not all equally duped in the compelling theories of today, e.g., Darwinian theory, cosmological theory, psychological and sociological theory? 

Despite these global skeptical questions, the scientific method has wide consensus as the way to acquire scientific knowledge.  Understanding it more deeply than we did as children is important in evaluating conflicting truth claims that we sometimes encounter in the sciences, it is important for understanding the basic thrust and orientation of science in general, and it is deeply important in the very human activity of day-to-day living where we have to link scientific truth claims with the other types of truth claims in which we are daily involved, particularly the truth-claims of religion.  

In reflecting upon science we must make an important distinction between data and theory.  The first is what is given in experience, while the second offers a story or an account which both explains how it is that we are given the data we are given, and predicts what our future data might be.  For instance, granted that there is a change in sea level at a particular location, what theory best accounts for this rise in sea-level.  A theory (or better a bundle of theories) appealing to global warming could best explain the increase in sea level. Moreover, the theory might predict that if the causal mechanism it specifies actually holds, we should this reflected in future data.  A theory consists of an account that can both explain the data as it is currently given, and predict on its basis of the account what the future data will be.  

Now we might get a bit more technical in our nomenclature and call the scientific method we learned about as children the hypothetical-deductive method.  It consists of observation, hypothesis, deduction, experimental confirmation/disconfirmation, and adjustment.  People outside science don't often recognize the provisional nature of science.  It is always open for adjustment.  Theory-tweeking is how science progresses.  

Both natural and social science begins with data that is gained through observation.  However, the nature of observation itself turns out to be difficult.  In any observational situation, there must be some consensus about the nature of what it is one is seeking to observe.  Such consensus is necessary to know where to look, as it were.  For thousands of years human beings observed the sun rising in the morning and many thought on the basis of this observation that the sun must go around the earth. But this heliocentric hypothesis has been long disproved. The sun does not go around the earth, but the earth goes around the sun.  Thus, it is that one cannot observe the sun rising?  So what exactly is it that we observe?  It is an appearance of the sun rising? But how do we describe such an appearing?  

The question of what is given in data turns out to be connected deeply to the question of what theories we are assuming.  In the heyday of Logical Positivism in the 20th century, philosophers assumed that they could specify a "given" that was public, objective, and prior to all theory and interpretation.  But such a given has proved very difficult to support. Text implies context. The given is always a given within a context of background scientific theory and practice.  Most philosophers now believe that there is no objective "unvarnished good news" (Quine) of the given upon which we can base scientific theory.  

But scientists have another immediate problem after collecting singular data.  They must look for generalizations of that data, and such looking happens over the course of time.  I can observe data x a time y and then again at time z, and then at time u, but how do I know that the data I am finding in these three times are the data that I would be able to find at every time, were I able to check it?  In other words, how do I know that I am observing a true regularity of nature and not just an accidental generalization I have drawn because of my limited experience?  The problem of generalizing from specific instances is called the problem of induction or sometimes Hume's Problem after the great Scottish philosopher, David Hume. No matter how many times we observe a critical correlation in nature, we do not know if it will happen next time.  We might have a theory predicting it will and find in our next observation that the thing predicted does not happen, and thus perhaps our entire predictive theory is flawed.  Gustav Bergmann said, "Induction is the long arm of science," and he is clearly correct.  If we start from the contingency of empirical experience itself, as we must do in science, we must always recognize that we could get things wrong right out of the chute. We might find ourselves building a theory to account for a regularity in nature that is not a real regularity. 

Given that we have found data and some generalizations to explain, the next thing we must do is hypothesize a theory from which we can deduce ramifications that we can compare to our experience. A good scientific theory has several characteristics.  It must be applicable and adequate to the experimental data, internally consistent and coherent in its formulation, simple in that it posits as few theoretical entities or laws as it can to explain the data, and fecund in that it can ground a continuing research agenda.  All of these characteristics of the "best" theories are put to the task of explaining and predicting the empirical data.  

How does this way of doing things compare with theology?  I would argue that "theological theory" has  data too, but that this data is not that which is "given" to the five senses. So what could be the data of theology?  One might argue that its data is revelation, but then one must further specify the identity conditions of the term 'revelation'.  Perhaps we say that there is a "revelation" of God's activity through Scripture and tradition.  But is the first primary over the second, and is there stratification within the former?  Are some parts of Scripture more revelatory than others, and if so, how are these differences normed? Moreover, cannot preaching confront the listener in a revelatory way, perhaps more so than simply reading Scripture. Furthermore, theologians often distinguish specific and general revelation, meaning by the latter some intimations within experience of that source which ultimately transcends experience. Perhaps "limit notions" or senses of ultimacy are part of human experience in ways that are useful data for theological theory.  

Assuming that there is data, there is often generalization of that data.  The experience of ultimacy or that of the sacred is a generalization from experiencing this ultimacy or this experience of the sacred.  A little reflection should convince the reader that the same general problems of extending the particular to the general apply in theology as well as in science generally. 

If there can be some agreement on what theological data might be, we then could go to work theory construction.  Just as scientific theory should be applicable to empirical experience as well as being adequate to it, that is, it must not only apply to the empirical, but it must apply apply deeply to all of the empirical, so too must theological theory apply to our experience, to revelation, to our experience as human beings haunted by the question of God.  Moreover, the theory must be deep enough to cover all of that experience.  It must give an account of both the experience of the presence of God (immanence) and of God's absence (transcendence).  

The theory must be consistent, coherent, fecund, and simple. Just as with science generally, theology cannot have theoretical statements that contradict each other.  Why is this the case?  It is clear that from a contradiction any proposition whatsoever can be derived. Assume both P and ~P.  If P, then P or any arbitrary statement Q.  But by disjunctive syllogism, since ~P holds, the given P v Q, Q must hold.  

Moreover, just as in science, theological theory must be coherent.  This means that the fundamental terms of the theory must mutually presuppose each other and there are not ad hoc assertions holding this or that in order to account for the data.  In other words, the first theory much be simple, or at least as simple as a theory can be which asserts both the Trinity and the Incarnation.  Finally, the theory must be fecund.  One might argue, that the Chalcedon Definition has been extremely fruitful in the history of theology generally. Clearly, the notion of the Trinity has generated centuries of ongoing theological reflection.  

Given these similarities, there are overwhelming dissimilarities between the two disciplines (Wissenschaften) as well, and I do not want to minimize that.  I have given the above sketch of similarities simply to get the conversation going.  I will in the next posts return to the field of the philosophy of science and discuss the Received View, the critique of the Received View, and the new vistas produced by historicism within the philosophy of science. 

The Logic of Transcendental Logic

Immanuel Kant employs transcendental logic to show that the synthesis involved in judging that the conceptual "presentation" (Vorstellung) P applying to the conceptual "presentation" (Vorstellung) S also applies to intuitional presentations (Vorstellungen). In other words, the syntheses involved in the act of judgment in general ultimately make possible the world of our experience, a world in which we know objects. 

According to Kant, while general logic abstracts from the particular content of concepts related, concentrating instead on the formal features involved in relating the concepts, transcendental logic deals with the most general features of our experience of objects in space and time.  Unlike general logic, transcendental logic is not about the capacity for thinking as such, but concerns itself with our thinking in relation to our experience of objects as such.  Accordingly, transcendental logic deals with rules of synthesis in so far as this synthesis applies to intuitions as well as to concepts.  It is left to Kant's transcendental deduction to show that the necessary condition for the possibility of experience as such is that there exists a transcendental unity of apperception, an "I think" that is presupposed in all activity of knowing objects.  

Kant famously offers a transcendental deduction in the first edition of the Critique -- the "A deduction" -- which he completely rewrites in the second edition six years later -- the "B deduction." There is a pronounced difference in emphasis between the two deductions with the first being predominantly a "subjective deduction" while the second attempts an "objective deduction."  

The precise contour of the transcendental arguments are a matter of considerable debate, but one might broadly paint the  "B deduction" as follows: 

• Our experience is one of a succession of awarenesses, that is, a succession of contents of consciousness.

• The condition for a succession of awarenesses, however, is an awareness of the succession itself, that is, the successive contents of consciousness must be combined and held together in a unity of consciousness. Such a unity is a necessary condition for an experience of succession. 

• For this synthesis to be presented (represented), I must think it. 

• But this analytic unity of the self thinking its objects presupposes a synthetic unity of the manifold.  In other words, presupposed is a transcendental unity of apperception, a unity of the "I think" that is neither the empirical "self" of psychology, nor a metaphysical thinking substance a la Descartes. (The "I" could never know itself if it were not possible to unify the manifold through synthesis.)

• The transcendental unity of apperception is an objective, not a subjective, unity.  The conditions for this unity are the conditions by which we have consciousness of objects in general. 

• An object is that under the concept of which the manifold is united.  The necessary conditions for uniting the manifold is a unity of consciousness, a unity that bestows objective affinity to transcendental apperception.  

• Since there is an objective unity in the transcendental unity of apperception, the synthesis must proceed according to the categories and the rules required for experience as such.  

My aim in this brief blog post is not, however, to discuss the differences between the deductions, nor to talk about the differing views on the structure of the deductions within the voluminous secondary literature seeking to understand them. Rather I want to highlight the general modal features of transcendental arguments. I am not the first to do this, of course, but sometimes people reading Kant miss the forest for the trees. Sometimes people simply forget to mention that Kant is engaged in a modal argument of a particular kind.  Let us look at the logical structure of Kant's transcendental argument. 

Kant is interested in the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience as such.  Clearly, the argument is difficult to state if we do not include its modal features.  So what is the argument structure, when these are included? 

• Premise I:  There is the possibility of experience as such.  Using Polish notation of L for the necessity operation and M for the possibility operator, we might say 'Me', experience is possible.  

• Premise II:  It is necessary that, if experience is possible, then there exist conditions C for that experience.   We might express this as 'L, if Me, then o'.  (I am using 'o' for 'conditions'.) 

• Conclusion: Lo. 

Kant is claiming that from the mere possibility of experience we can conclude to some necessary features making possible that experience.  He is not arguing that as a matter of contingent fact some conditions (or other) obtain -- that is, empirical conditions -- that would account for that experience.  He is saying that in each and every possible world, the same conditions C must obtain, if there is a possible world where experience E is had.   

Those familiar with modal logic will understand that Kant is presupposing Lewis' S5 in order to conclude to the necessity of C.  Let us review basic modal systems briefly. 

• We might have a system that might allow us to move from necessity to possibility.  Using Polish notation, we have the distinguishing axiom 'CLpMp', if p is necessary, then p is possible.  (Read the 'C' as the conditional 'if, then', e.g., 'if Lp, then Mp'.) That is, if p obtains in all possible worlds, p obtains in some possible world.  (It is hard to conceive how something appearing in all possible world is not possible, for it is in every world that is, by definition, possible.)

• We could add to this first system another axiom this one from actuality to possibility: 'CpMp', if p obtains then p is possible.  That is to say, if p obtains in the actual world, then p obtains in a possible world.  (This seems plausible since the actual world is a possible world.)

• We can add to this second system another plausible theorem: 'CMMpMp'. We have now arrived at Lewis' system S4 holding that if something is possibly possible, then it is possible.  In other words, if p is possible in a possible world, then p is itself in a possible world.  (This seems plausible since all there are are possible worlds, and it would be strange were something possible in a possible world to somehow not simply be possible.) 

• Finally, we get to S5, sometimes assumed to be the "standard" system of model logic.  This system is generated from 'CLpMp', 'CpMp', CMMpMp' and the distinguishing assumptions of S5, 'CMLpLp', that is, if it is possible that something is necessary, then it is necessary.  Simply put, if there is possible world where some necessity holds, then, since for something to be necessary it obtains in all possible worlds, that which is necessary in that possible world is now ingredient in every possible world. (It is hard to see what being necessary in a possible world might be, if that necessity does not extend over all possible worlds.)  

Those familiar with ontological arguments for the existence of God should immediately recognize the importance of S5. Assume it is possible that God exists. Now reflect on the nature of God. Is God the kind of being that could exist contingently like a rat or an apple, or is God the king of being who, were God to exist, would exist necessarily?  If one's intuitions are of the latter, then God either exists in all possible worlds or in no possible worlds. But how do we know?  We know by checking whether or not God's existence involves a self-contradiction.  If God's existence is self-contradictory, then God does not exist in a single possible world. However, if God's existence is not self-contradictory and God's existence is not contingent, then the very possibility of God existing entails that God exists in all possible worlds including the actual world!  

So how do we apply S5 here?  Let us look at the argument again, and see if we can arrive at the conclusion. 

• Premise I: Me

• Premise II: LCMeo   (This says that necessarily, if possibly e then o.)

• S5 Assumption: CMLpLp

• But (2) is logically equivalent in all modal systems to 'CLMeLo'

•  From(3), 'C~Lp~MLp'. 

• (5) is equivalent to 'CM~pLM~p'. 

• Substituting 'e' for '~p' uniformly, we get, 'CMeLMe'. 

• Thus from (1), we derive 'LMe'. 

• Now by (4) through modus ponens we get 'Lo', and thus 'o' constituted necessary conditions for the possibility of 'e'.  QED. 

It is not immediately apparent what is wrong with this proof. Kant is engaged in critical or immanent metaphysics in the Critique. He is not talking about his believing or knowing primarily, but those states of affairs making true his believing and necessary for his knowing. The transcendental unity of apperception constitutes a necessary condition for any possible experience, that is to say, if there is a world in which there is experience 'e', then there can be no worlds in which transcendental unity fails to obtain.  The very possibility of 'e' entails the necessity of 'o'.  

Now the question of the claim: Is Kant really trying to say that 'o' obtains in all worlds, or simply that there is no world having 'e' that does not have 'o'? Are we saying that worlds in which 'e' does not obtain have 'o'?  In other words, are we asserting a necessity of consequence or a necessity of the thing consequent.  

In the medieval tradition God's foreknowledge was figured as a necessity of consequence, not a necessity of the thing consequent.  If God foreknows that S rejects God, does God's foreknowledge itself logically entail S cannot reject God? The solution was to discriminate the scope of the modal operator.  In worlds in which God foreknows S rejects God, S cannot not reject God.  However, in worlds where God does not have this foreknowledge, then S is presumably not logically determined to reject or not reject.  Are we saying that the transcendental argument is more like a necessity of consequence: In worlds were 'e' occurs, it cannot be that 'o' fails to obtain.  But how about those worlds in which 'e' does not transpire?  Must 'o' be ingredient in them as well?  And if 'o' is not ingredient, then how must we adjust the transcendental argument?  Clearly, these questions motivate a deeper investigation.    

Reflecting on Reflective Judgments and Kant's Attempt to Reconcile His First and Second Critiques

Immanuel Kant famously argued that the categories of cause and substance could only apply to the world of empirical experience.  The pure concepts of the understanding unite the manifold of intuition in ways that deliver to us objects and events in space and time causally connectable to other objects and events.  

To attempt to think metaphysical reality using the categories of cause and substance is, for Kant, to misapply these  concepts beyond the bounds of their proper application.  When these concepts no longer apply to intuitions -- that is to the spatio-temporal particulars resulting in the application of "pure forms of sensibility" of space and time to the realm of things in themselves -- then their use eventuates in a "transcendental subreption" or "transcendental illusion" of thinking metaphysical reality must be structured in the ways in which our thinking conceives this reality. 

By the conclusion of the First Critique, Kant's readers realize that he has indeed provided the necessary philosophical framework to underpin Newtonian mechanics. Instead of holding that substances and causes are in the world apart from human cognition -- and thus being susceptible to the skeptical arguments of David Hume -- Kant places them solidly within the human epistemological domain. While whatever exists apart from us, exists apart from our awareness, perception, conception and language, the empirical order clearly does not. Apart from human beings, there would be no spatio-temporal particulars and no substances which our concepts synthesize from the manifold of sensibility.  The phenomenal world, the only world we can know empirically, is nicely ordered causally because we ourselves apply the category of causality and accordingly order the world causally before we empirically investigate it.  

Kant believes that the only way to save empiricism -- and thus to be an empirical realist -- is to be a transcendental idealist.  If space, time, substantiality and causality were not denizens of our epistemic equipment, the skeptical arguments would finally win the day, and the universality and necessity trumpeted by Newton in his mechanism could never be ultimately justified. In order to have a nature like Newton's, one needed to adopt a transcendental position like Kant's. 

So the story at the end of Kant's First Critique is that nature is closed under the operation of physical causality.  Physical entities, and the events in which they are ingredient, are causally related among themselves. There are no uncaused physical events, and no physical events causing non-physical events. There is no "free play" in the universe. In order to save Newtonian mechanics, Kant gives us an underlying determinism of a mechanical kind. The world of nature must conform to a deterministic mechanism, because our epistemological equipment process the world in this way.  All this is clear. 

But Kant did not want to stop writing books after the Critique of Pure Reason.  In his Critique of Practical Reason, he argues that the things in themselves, which are only mediatedly accessible through knowing the phenomenal world in the First Critique, are immediately and nominally accessible through an encounter with duty and the moral law in the Second Critique. Now the realm of freedom, responsibility and dignity are opened to human beings; we already are living noumenal reality in our moral experience.  While Kant banishes freedom in the First Critique, he gives it back in the Second Critique. The practical postulates of God, immortality and freedom of the Second Critique have no echo in the First Critique.  While the latter is the precondition for encounter with the moral law itself, both God and immortality are postulates needed for a complete moral theory, a theory in which the summum bonum is obtainable, i.e., the "highest good" wherein those doing their virtue and thus "worthy of happiness," can be, in fact, recipients of that happiness. 

Prima facie, the results of the first two Critiques seem to be in tension with each other.  How can a human being with a body possibly have free moral experience when the bodies in and through which that moral experience is had are denizens of the phenomenal realm and its mechanistic determinism? Nobody can do the right thing, it seems, without an act that is somehow physically expressed.  One cannot help a little old lady across the street without a body.  One cannot bring about the good if one cannot bring about anything at all. If nature is the realm of the bodily, and human beings have bodies and presumably act in and through them, then how can one ever do that which is better than some other act. If the phenomenal realm is the realm of "one cannot do other than one did do," and empirical reality is coextensive with the phenomenal, and if human freedom is "one can do other than what one did," then how can freedom be exercised for coporeal human beings?  If one do other than what one does do, then deterministic mechanism is false, and if physical entities cannot do other than what they do, then human freedom is impossible. 

Fortunately, Kant wrote another book, one that is not read as often by philosophers these days, but nonetheless must appear within the top 100 of philosophical classics. This book is entitled Der Kritik der Urteilskraft, translated as The Critique of Judgment, though a better translation would have been The Critique of the Power of Judgment.  In the Introduction to this book, Kant claims that he wishes to reconcile the two earlier Critiques, and introduces the notion of a reflective judgment.  Unlike a determining judgment which operates determinately to think a given particular under a given universal, the reflective judgment is one wherein their is freedom to think a universal on the basis of the particular.  It provides, as it were, some "free play" in understanding the particular.  After introducing this, Kant launches into a wide-ranging and very famous discussion of the notion of beauty and related concepts, followed by a discussion of teleology and purpose in their relationship to the aesthetic.  Many readers become frustrated in the The Critique of Judgment because it does not seem that Kant ever gets around to providing a sustained argument for what is promised: a reconciling of the results of the first two Critiques.  

It is possible, however, to provide an overview of his intended "solution." The relevant sections of the Critique are these: #8 and #9 in the Introduction, and #70 - #85 in the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment and the Methodology of Teleological Judgment.   

In #70 Kant distinguishes reflective and constitutive antinomies.   

• Thesis of reflective judgment: "All production of material things and their forms must be judged to be possible in terms of merely mechanical laws."
• Antithesis of reflective judgement: "Some products of material nature cannot be judged to be possible in terms of merely mechanical laws." 
• Thesis of constitutive judgment: "All production of material things is possible in terms of merely mechanical laws." 
• Antithesis of constitutive judgment: "Some production of material things in not possible in terms of merely mechanical laws." (Pluher, 267, KU 367).
  

 Kant points out the the thesis and antithesis of a constitutive judgment are antinomies or contradictories, i.e., the truth of one entails the falsity of the other.  In other words, they cannot both be true at the same time.  But Kant does not believe that the first two statements are contradictory: 

But if we consider instead the two maxims of a power of judgment that reflects [i.e., the first thesis and antithesis above], the first of these two maxims does in fact not contradict [the second] at all. For if I say that I must judge all events in material nature, and hence also all the forms that are its products, in terms of merely mechanical laws as to [how] they are possible, then I am not saying that there are possible in terms of mechanical laws alone (i.e., even if no other kind of causality comes in).  Rather, I am only pointing out that I ought always to reflect on these events and forms in terms of the principle of the mere mechanism of nature, and hence ought to investigate this principle as far as I can, because unless we presuppose it in our investigation [of nature] we can have no cognition of nature at all in the proper sense of the term" (267-68, 387-88).

What is going on here?  

Clearly, Kant is understanding a reflective judgment to be quite different than a determining or constituting judgment.  In the First Critique, Kant had laid out the transcendental conditions for the possibility of experience as such -- an experiencing of empirical nature in Newtonian ways -- as the determining judgments under which intuitions fall.  The result is a mechanistic determinism.  But does Kant's move to a reflective judgment allow him to escape the charge that just as there is a contradiction between the thesis and antithesis of a constitutive (determining) judgment, so there is a contradiction between the thesis and antithesis of a reflective judgment? Is this not a case of what is good for the goose is good for the gander? 

The key to holding that there is no antinomy in the reflective judgment rests upon the ability of the thinker to recognize that the reflective principles in question are heuristic, that far from "carving the beast of reality at its joints" (Plato), they simply are principle by which we might think nature. We attempt to see nature as entirely deterministic, but it is possible that that we adopt a different principle for regions of our empirical investigations.  (Think of how difficult it would be actually to give a mechanistic/deterministic account of beavers building a dam.  One could not use the category of final causality or employ any implicit purposeful functionalistic explanations, e.g, the beavers are acting this way "in order to" bring about some state of affairs.)  It might allow us to understand more about nature to employ the reflective judgment that "some products of material nature cannot be judged to be possible in terms of merely mechanical laws." Something more is needed. 

Kant reconciles the two reflective judgments because there is supersensible ground allowing both judgments to be used heuristically, if not descriptively.  Kant writes: 

If we are to have a principle that makes it possible to reconcile the mechanical and the teleological principles by which we judge nature, then we must posit this further principle in something that lies beyond both (and hence also beyond any possible empirical presentation of nature), but that nonetheless contains the basis of nature, namely, we must posit it in the supersensible, to which we must refer both kinds of explanation" (297, 412). 

But what is accomplished here?  It seems that the thesis and antithesis of the antinomy of reflective judgment still form a contradiction.  Yet Kant is suggesting that this clear and present contradiction is "taken up" by the reality of the supersensible of which the thesis and the antithesis are partial grasps.  So the supersensible substrate supports a coincedentia oppositorum in a way not unlike how God could only be thought in the mystical traditions through dialectical formulations.  'All P is J' and 'Some P is not J' are contradictories and cannot be other.  However, these contradictions are somehow sustained in the ground of the supersensible.  We are permitted to use either because the nature of the supersensible cannot be articulated by either.  When one says them both, one learns something about that which cannot be known.  

The fundamental problem of philosophy since the time of Decartes has been this: "How is human freedom possible in a determinstic physicalist universe?" Kant is taking on this big question and saying that the problem is one of thinking how it is possible, not it being possible.  It is possible after all, because it is actual.  The supersensible substrate is worked up mediately in the First Critique, more immediately in the Second, and these varying accounts put together in the Third.  We can't do metaphysics, so cannot carve this "beast of reality."  We will always end in antinomies when we do.  But nonetheless the supersensible grounds the possibility of corporeal entities acting freely.  Purposefulness in nature attests to an opening by which freedom can be instantiated in a physical system.  

Kant says that the antinomies of reflective judgment are not antonomies because the truth of one does not entail the falsity of the other.  He might have better started to index judgments to standpoints. Clearly, the antinomies are contradictories for us and how we must think the universe. They are contradictory coram hominibus.  But they are not contradictory from the standpoint of the supersensible. That is, they are not contradictory coram deo -- if we might  apply that term here.  Kant knew that ultimately the tools of human understanding and thinking simply were inadequate to think reality as such.

Covid 19 and the Church

In my last post I discussed the phenomenon of hyperreality as it pertains to the Coronavirus. Clearly, there are elements of the real in what is happening today. There is a virus that can make some people quite sick; it can even on occasion lead to death. This is reality.

But history will likely not judge what happened in 2020 in terms of the pathology of the virus. What happened in 2020 was a coordination by the governments of the world to enact draconian measures in response to the threat of the virus, measures incommensurate with that threat. Businesses around the world have been shut down, schools closed, routine medical treatment ended, beaches and parks blocked off, mask wearing prescribed, personal freedoms compromised, and the hospitality industry completely decimated. The pain of all of this blends so seamlessly into the underlying Covid threat that it appears to people as one thing. Nobody is responsible. Covid-19 causes all of this.

The Covid-19 panic of 2020 has hit the Church very hard. Traditionally, to be a Christian has meant to be connected corporeally with a community. While the Church continued to gather during the Black Plague, somehow Covid-19 has given it an excuse to no longer bring its people together corporeally. Once can, of course, watch church on YouTube.

To be clear, many churches have tried to meet during the Panic of 2020. But their meeting has sparked moral outrage. How can these people get together and spread the virus? The hyperreal world in which we now live believes that going to church and risking the spread of the virus puts others at risk, and thus it is morally wrong. How could one do this to one's neighbors?

At the beginning, watching church on TV is not so bad, I suppose. One does not have to get the kids ready; one can stay in one's PJs and watch the liturgy. But, of course, Joan is providing special music and we don't like how she sings so we fast forward through that. And congregational singing really does not work watching church, so we fast forward through that. Those long pauses between liturgical events we can skip, and singing the liturgy in one's PJs does not really work . . . So we listen to the readings and catch the sermon. It is 30 minutes or less! The three hours of getting ready for church, driving there, experiencing it, talking to people afterwards, and driving home has now become 30 minutes.

But one can read the lessons on one's own and maybe even find a couple of nice sermons on-line on the text. One really does not need to listen to one's own pastor. In fact, there are thousands of pastors across the world one might find on-line, and one could listen to them. Maybe one does that at 11:00 Sunday night. In fact, one might get up on Sunday morning, forget one's mask, go fishing and take one's Bible and read the texts -- or not.

If anybody believes that the Church has not been deeply hurt by lock downs, they are not thinking clearly. Estimates are that up to 33% of people will not go back to church once they are out of the habit of going. Indeed, if pastors so easily gave up on corporeal gatherings, maybe corporeal gatherings are really not that important after all. Every time church leadership suggest that actually getting together at church is not ultimately necessary, they sign to all that the whole institution of church-going might simply be one thing among other things. If one can be a responsible Christian by staying home and watching church on YouTube for 30 minutes, then why go back again?

So the hyperreality of the Covid Panic of 2020 has accomplished something that has not happened before. While the Church always met through the reality of wars and much deadlier plagues, today's Covid-19 hyperreality has given it permission to simply stay on the sidelines and honor the mandates of health officials.

But a church on the sidelines witnesses to all that the threat of physical sickness is, after all, much more important than spiritual sickness; it tells everyone that the life and death matters of the spirit are secondary to physical health and well-being. It declares that what is going on at Church is "really not that important."

The hospitality industry has been decimated by the hyperreality of the Covid Panic of 2020. They might recover someday. The Church, however, has been even more deeply affected, and I am not sure it will recover -- at least in the North Atlantic countries. I don't see how many small congregations who have shut their doors in the name of the public good will have the requisite capital and tenaciousness to open their doors again. After all, if our ultimate concerns are able to be halted by a this virus, then maybe they are really not that important. Maybe Feuerbach and Marx were on to something when claiming that religion is finally ideological and expressive of our fundamental alienation.

It is, after all, a matter of causality. It makes all kinds of sense to quit gathering together in Church if viruses have causality and God does not.

Hyperreality and the Covid Panic of 2020

I want to address the postmodern notion of hyperreality in relation to the current Covid-19 panic. Hyperreality occurs when consciousness is no longer able to distinguish a simulation from reality. What is real, and what is fictional blend together seamlessly so one cannot ascertain where reality ends and fiction begins, and vice versa. Since physical reality and virtual reality -- and perhaps human intelligence and artificial intelligence -- become mixed up, people often find themselves actually preferring the virtual and artificial to the real.

The Covid-19 panic plague of 2020 is real, of course, to some degree. Sometimes people do die from the illness, and some people with the illness get very sick. One can do the numbers and see some effect on world health during this outbreak. Moreover, there is some evidence to suggest that if everybody were to wear a mask, the incidence of transmission might fall by some not clearly defined percent. (It would be great to have real numbers!) So there are elements of the real in the Covid Panic of 2020. People die, people get sick, some are sick enough to go to the hospital, and universal mask-wearing might lower the incidence of transmission. This is reality.

Now let us move to the virtual, the artificial and the fictional. While decisions in previous outbreaks were made in the context of the other affairs of humanity, e.g., people marrying, people dying, people going to school, people running businesses, people running for public office, the situation this time is very different. Very early on draconian measures were adopted by governments throughout the world to combat this "threat," measures that often limited the freedom of individuals to deal with the "threat" in their own way. Routine medical care was shut down for millions of people as clinics and hospitals waited for the hordes of infected patients to come. But, in general, the apocalyptic run on hospitals never materialized. The education and play of children was curtailed even though they were at very low risk. Businesses were locked down by governments arbitrarily in the name of the public good. A new morality developed. "Do you wear a mask?" If yes, you care about people. If no, you don't.

Never before in human history has an outbreak been hyped like this. People began to fear, and they even begin to hate those who don't fear. The actual threat of the illness is not at all commensurate with the response, it seems. But this cognitive dissonance does not affect most people, because most simply live the hyperreality of the Covid plague, a reality where one must do whatever is possible to save human life.

The French social philosopher Jean Baudrillard introduced the phenomenon of hyperreality. Consider Walt Disney productions -- at least in its heyday. Clearly, Disney movies are simulations of the real. But Disney's emphasis on dreams and childhood became, says Baudrillard, the American dream itself. The "outside world" of which the Disney world simulates is now merely a simulacrum. The symbolism and signification of the Disney world does not track reality, but becomes the preferred world in which people live. Once this happens, the outside world is made the simulacrum; it itself becomes a mere simulation of the world of dreams and childhood.

This is what has happened. The Covid 19 panic driven by the media and cable news has circled the globe and the hyperreality of a "Covid Pague" has replaced for many what is really happening "out there." The narrative of the virus and its devastating effects is preferred by many to the much more mundane world of a new virus which can be deadly at times. Lock downs, moral shaming and pride, and protecting the public replace the much more mundane story of what is happening on the ground. In our hyperreal land, the President has the power evidently to cause the virus or stop it.

You can live the hyperreal if you want to, folks. It is supported by the media and clearly presupposed by many of our politicians. It is, after all, rather exciting to have a hyperreal war rather than a real one. Not many die in the former, and yet one still can "live the war." It is also more exciting to live a hyperreal plague than the mundane real one. After all, in reality the Covid 19 virus is likely to finish at less than 1/150 times as deadly as the 1918-19 flu worldwide. Over and against the commonplace, it is stimulating to "live the plague," to think and act in all ways as if it were extremely deadly. Living the plague makes it much easier to change the world profoundly in the face of "humanity's greatest menace."

Baudrillard simply has this nailed. I hope you see it. Please don't nail the messenger.