Digressions&Impressions

Newton and Passivity of Matter

In an unpublished manuscript sheet, which was part of Newton’s preparations for the second edition of the Principia, Newton recorded that the most wise order of things could not have arisen “from matter alone and motion or from the nature of things [a materia sola et motu aut a rerum Natura].”102 Newton argued that God regulates the natural world by means of certain “active Principles,” which cause—inter alia—gravitation, fermentation, and cohesion.103 Correspondingly, in an unpublished draft version of what was to become Query 31, he wrote,

Whence it seems to have been an ancient opinion that matter depends upon a Deity for its ↓laws of↓ motion as well as for its existence. The Cartesians make God the author of all motion & its as reasonable to make him the author of the laws of motion. Matter is a passive principle & cannot move it self. It continues in its state of moving or resting unless disturbed. It receives motion proportional to the force impressing it. And resists as much as it is resisted. These are passive laws & to affirm that there are no other is to speak against experience. For we find in or selves a power of moving our bodies by or thought ↓Life & thinking ↓will↓ are active Principles by wch we move our bodies, & thence arise other laws of motion unknown to us↓==Newton [CUL Add. Ms. 3970, 619r [drafts prepared for Opticks (1717)].]

The above remarks square nicely with Newton’s denial that motion results from qualities that are inherent to matter itself and with his belief that for their motions bodies require divinely governed secondary causes, which serve as the immaterial sources of activity and motion. Steffen Ducheyne, "Newton on Action at a Distance." Journal of the History of Philosophy 52.4 (2014): 691-692

As I noted yesterday, inspired by, and partially correcting, Howard Stein, according to my interpretation of Newton, as Newton developed the ideas of the Principia in the 1680s, Newton came to the following position: a body has (at least) two dispositions: (i) a “passive” disposition to respond to impressed forces which is codified in the second law of motion; (ii) whereas an “active” disposition to produce gravitational force is treated as a distinct interaction codified in the third law of motion. And the “cause” of the action is “the conspiring nature of both” bodies. For the “conspiring” to occur, the bodies must share a “nature.” (For the full defense of these ideas see here and here.) And I argue that for Newton the disposition to gravitate is a universal, albeit contingent, relational quality of matter.  Despite grounding my views in a textial analysis Treatise of the System of the World (a work that appeared shortly after Newton died), my view has not generated consensus.

Among my critics, Ducheyne is most inclined to draw on archival material. And the passage quoted above is especially important to his (2014) attempt to refute my position. He refers back to it twice more (on pp. 692-693). The reason why it is important to Ducheyne's argument is that it seems to give him the smoking gun he needs. It's one of the few places where Newton explicitly says that matter is passive.

Now, I had already (in 2011) responded to this passage, in a (2009) criticism of Hylarie Kochiras (who had criticized an early version of my argument). (Looking back, I am quite amazed by how polemical we all were!) I wrote (now quoting myself): "Yet, the published version of the Opticks, is agnostic on this matter. In Query 31 he contrasts the “passive principle by which the bodies persist in their motion or rest, receive motion in proportion to the force impressing it, and resist as much as they are resisted” with “active principles, such as are the cause of gravity, by which planets and comets keep their motions in their orbits, and bodies acquire great motion in falling; and the cause of fermentation,” and so on. Shortly thereafter, he lists “gravity, and that which causes fermentation, and the cohesion of bodies” among the “active principles” (Newton, 1952, pp. 400–401)." 

My response to Kochiras clearly did not convince Ducheyne (who cites Kochiras' exchange with me, so he is aware of it). So, normally I would now throw up my hands and leave it to others to figure out who gets the better of the burden shifting. But two distinct new, additional arguments occur to me. The first argument would be to concede Ducheyne's (and Kochiras's!) reading of this passage, and fall back on the acknowledgment that Newton changed his mind and that after 1700 he was more inclined to accept the passivity of matter as the draft suggests. This response would be open to me because officially I am primarily committed to attributing to Newton the view sketched above to the mid 1680s (as he was drafting the Principia). In the Principia itself he is explicitly agnostic, after all--and this is agreed by everybody.

This (first) concessive response fits would also allow me to take on board some of Ducheyne's arguments about the theological significance of embracing the passivity of matter; or at least recognizing that Newton actively distanced himself from being taken to embrace active matter after the initial reception of the Principia. These theological issues and the question of the nature of mature are related to the challenge to Newton being taken as a kind of neo-Epicurean (and Kant and Adam Smith hint) or a(adherent of "blind fate") crypto-Spinozist (as Leibniz suggested at the start of his correspondence with Clarke). I have explored this connection in various places; see here & and forthcoming.

But as Ducheyne correctly notes in his paper, I have been greedy; I have also used other passages from different periods in Newton's life as converging evidence for my  interpretation of his view in the mid 1680s. And so I have kind of suggested that except for when Newton toys with ether theories, my reconstruction of his dispositional account of gravity is Newton's fall-back position. And so now I would have give up on that material.

However, another position, is not to be concessive at all. So, second, I can also simply deny that in the unpublished draft version of what was to become Query 31, Newton is presenting his own view about the passivity of matter at all. For it seems to me that one can read the italicized passage (the italics are Ducheyne's [here is an image of the manuscript; [here is a transcription] as Newton simply reporting or summarizing the Cartesian position on matter. Before I explain that let me quote a wider version of the passage (with a lot of editorial markings removed--Newton obsessively corrected his own texts): 

Qu. 23. By what means do bodies act on one another at a distance. The ancient Philosophers who held Atoms & Vacuum attributed gravity to Atoms without telling us the means unless perhaps in figures: as by calling God Harmony & representing him & matter by the God Pan & his Pipe, or by calling the Sun the prison of Jupiter because he keeps the Planets in their orbs. Whence it seems to have been an ancient opinion that matter depends upon a Deity for its laws of motion as well as for its existence. The Cartesians make God the author of all motion & its as reasonable to make him the author of the laws of motion. Matter is a passive principle & cannot move it self. It continues in its state of moving or resting unless disturbed. It receives motion proportional to the force impressing it. And resists as much as it is resisted. These are passive laws & to affirm that there are no other is to speak against experience. For we find in our selves a power of moving our bodies by our thought Life & will are active Principles by which we move our bodies, & thence arise other laws of motion unknown to us.

So, Newton here is taking on the question of action at a distance. And he first describes the innate gravity position of the ancient atomists. He also calls attention to the possibility that they used esoteric and figurative speech to explain the mechanism behind their position. (This sentence inspired one of the most famous papers by McGuire and Rattansi in contemporary Newton scholarship.) He sums up his treatment of the ancients by suggesting they thought God was needed to account for the laws of motion and the existence of matter.

As an aside, something of this view of the Ancients survives in the General Scholium added to the second (1713) edition of the Principia. Against the evidence of the Ancients, who freely speculated about to what degree God/Gods are dispensable to the Epicurean natural philosophy (and who claimed that the Gods were introduced to modify larger population), Newton reads them here as natural philosophical theists of a certain sort.  My own view is that he is doing this in order to try out saying that the a-typical epicureanism people are attributing to him need not be "Atheists" in character. (And he may have even sincerely thought that this was a solid reading of the Epicureans.) That fits a lot of other material in this manuscript (which offers a robust assertion, inter alia, for the reality of final causes in experience).

He then moves on to describing the cartesian position. Now on the reading advanced by Ducheyene (and Kochiras) the description of the cartesian position is a sentence: "The Cartesians make God the author of all motion." This would attribute to the Cartesians, in effect, Malebranche's interpretation of Descartes (or at least his own preferred position) being a kind of occasionalists such that God is the author of all motion. But there is an equally respectable Cartesian interpretation in which occasionalism is not the proper Cartesian position, but rather that  God is responsible (or the author of) the laws of motion, that's the next half of the sentence ("its as reasonable to make him the author of the laws of motion.")

And on the reading advanced by Ducheyne and Kochiras, Newton then moves on to state his own view. But it is equally plausible, and in fact, I think more plausible (yes, really), that here Newton gives a summary of the Cartesian metaphysics of nature: "Matter is a passive principle & cannot move it self. It continues in its state of moving or resting unless disturbed." So, pace Ducheyne and Kochiras, I think the natural reading here is that what they take to be Newton's position is really just Newton giving a quick and dirty summary of the Cartesian natural philosophy he rejects! 

To be sure, I do not mean to deny that in this manuscript Newton does shift to explaining features of his own position--he regularly invokes the authority of experiments. And where exactly he does that is a matter of judgment. But at the same time he also keeps shifting toward describing alternative views he rejects. 

So, if we read the manuscript in the way proposed by Kochiras and Ducheyne then Newton draws a sharp contrast between entities with minds, who can be active, and passive entities that lack such power. In fact, Kochiras and Ducheyne end up treating Newton by implication as a property dualist (with living things being the only kind of entities that can be substances). 

But Newton himself is much more cautious than that in the manuscript quoted. He makes it clear that all living things are active. And it is, for Newton in this very document, an open question whether (as the Stoics thought) all of nature is alive in that relevant sense: "We find in our selves a power of moving our bodies by our thoughts ] & see the same power in other living creatures but how this is done & by what laws we do not know. We cannot say that all Nature is not alive. not know her laws or powers any further then we gather them from Phænomena." (Emphasis added.) Nobody has doubted that this is Newton's own position. And this suggests to me that Newton is  much more agnostic about the nature of matter in this document than Kochiras and Ducheyne have allowed. Because Newton allows (as Spinoza did) that there may be as of yet undiscovered principles and laws that can explain the materiality of living things. On my reading, these would also be laws and principles of matter.

What Newton does explicitly deny is that vis inertia can explain the generation of (new) motion: "vis inertiæ they continue in their state of moving or resting & receive motion proportional to the force impressing it & resiste as much as they are resisted, but they cannot move themselves; & without some other principle hen the vis inertiæ there could be no motion in the world." For reasons I do not fully understand Ducheyne thinks this shows that for Newton matter is passive. But that's not right. For even I assert -- and this also follows naturally from the second law of motion -- that vis inertiæ is a passive principle, but does not constitute the whole of Newton's matter theory in the Principia. 

 

 

 

 

Newton, Comets, Life

For just as the seas are absolutely necessary for the constitution of this earth, so that vapors may be abundantly enough aroused from them by the heat of the sun, which vapors either—being gathered into clouds—fall in rains and irrigate and nourish the whole earth for the propagation of vegetables, or—being condensed in the cold peaks of mountains (as some philosophize with good reason)—run down into springs and rivers; so for the conservation of the seas and fluids on the planets, comets seem to be required, so that from the condensation of their exhalations and vapors, there can be a continual supply and renewal of whatever liquid is consumed by vegetation and putrefaction and converted into dry earth. For all vegetables grow entirely from fluids and afterward, in great part, change into dry earth by putrefaction, and slime is continually deposited from putrefied liquids. Hence the bulk of dry earth is increased from day to day, and fluids—if they did not have an outside source of increase—would have to decrease continually and finally to fail. Further, I suspect that that spirit which is the smallest but most subtle and most excellent part of our air, and which is required for the life of all things, comes chiefly from comets.--Newton, Principia, Book III, proposition 41, translated by Cohen & Whitman  (1999) p. 926.

The quoted passage is among my most favorite bits of the Principia. It is pretty nearly the close of the first edition of the Principia. And as I note elsewhere, it contributed to the reception of Newton as a kind of modern (mathematically inclined) Epicurean--something the General Scholium attached to the second edition helps correct. To be clear Newton here does not embrace the Epicurean notion of seeds as the source of human life.

 

In this account comets play a vital role in the economy of the universe. They bring a life-giving spirit from the outer reaches of the universe to our solar system. During the seventeenth century, 'spirit' is a term for a kind of refined fluid (the term is still to be noticed when we use 'spirits' to refer to liquor.) What Newton has in mind is made explicit in the final sentence of the Book III (which I think was itself only added to the second edition): "And the vapors that arise from the sun and the fixed stars and the tails of comets can fall by their gravity into the atmospheres of the planets and there be condensed and converted into water and humid spirits, and then—by a slow heat—be transformed gradually into salts, sulphurs, tinctures, slime, mud, clay, sand, stones, corals, and other earthy substances." (Newton, Principia: 938)

 

I have to admit that if people didn't keep telling me that Newton was a rather heterodox Christian, and we didn't have abundant manuscript evidence of his interest in true Christianity, I would read him here as offering an entirely naturalistic account of the cosmic origin and sustenance of life of a sort that, say, Ibn Tufayl hints at in his account of the rationalizing intellectuals' reconstruction of the site and mechanisms of creation. In any case, we shouldn't be surprised that Leibniz  mischievously, perhaps, reads Newton as a kind of crypto-Spinozist.

 

My reason for returning to Newton's account of comets was prompted by a remark by Chris Smeenk after my recent post, where, while interpreting Whewell, I treated Herschel's (1802) discovery that binary star systems obey Keplerian motion as analogous to the claim that satellites of Jupiter and Saturn obey Keplerian motion and, thereby, showing that Newtonian's gravitation is indeed a universal quality of bodies. For, despite the existence of Newton's third rule of reasoning, which encourages the researcher to take the law of gravitation as a universal (but not essential) quality of systems of matter, Newton only has evidence about bodies in a small region of the visible universe (our solar system). And, in fact, I called attention to a Query in which Newton allows that there may be regions of space where matter is differently constituted and so obeys different force laws. (So much for quick summary.)

 

In response, Smeenk noted that Newton shows that comets also obey Keplerian motion (that is the point of Proposition 40 of Book III of the Principia). It is worth spelling out  the implications of this a bit because they point to an interesting ambiguity in Newton's theory of comets that connects up to the question of the evidence for the scope of law of gravitation. 

 

First, Newton is pretty clear that comets we can see in the sky have Keplerian motion around our Sun: "Those who banish the comets almost to the region of the fixed stars are, therefore, entirely wrong; certainly in such a situation, they would not be illuminated by our sun any more than the planets in our solar system are illuminated by the fixed stars....likely that the comets descend far below the sphere of Saturn," (1999: 892) So comets are part of the solar system and their Keplerian motion is due, in part, to the attraction of our Sun. Of course, some of the orbits of regularly returning comets go to the furthest reaches of the Sun's gravitational field. 

 

But Newton also recognizes that some "comets are not restricted to the zodiac as planets are, but depart from there and are carried with various motions into all regions of the heavens," (937; from proposition 41; emphasis added). And, in fact, this is what he assumes when comets bring spirits and vapors from the outer cosmos to our little planet. 

 

So, lurking in Newton's argument is an open research question: when comets enter the solar system, before they are captured by the Sun's gravitational field (or the gravitational field of the outer planets, etc.) are they obeying Keplerian motion? For, prior to the kind of work that Hershel (and Bradley) could do with their more powerful telescopes, it is difficult to establish what kind of force laws matter obeys far away in different regions of space. It should be noted that Book I of the Principia, presents us with a whole class of possible force laws and motions in accord with such alternative possibilities; so Newton has already developed the tools to answer that question.

 

But, and perhaps this is what Smeenk had in mind, the mere fact that cosmic wanderers do, once they enter or interact with the solar's gravitational field, obey Keplerian motion suggests that they would do so elsewhere, too. And that's because on Newton's (more speculative view articulated in the Queries (quoted on Monday) the laws of motion are themselves ground in the nature of matter--so if you obey Keplerian motion here, you do would do so there, too. (That's compatible with the thought that elsewhere in the universe there is also fundamentally different kinds of matter that might obey additional laws.) So, that the existence of intergalactic wanderers is some evidence for a possible fundamental univocity of matter. In the first edition of the Principia Newton had embraced this explicitly (as a hypothesis) -"Every body can be transformed into a body of any other kind and successively take on all the intermediate degrees of qualities," (198)- , but he had officially dropped it in later editions perhaps because he became more enchanted with a dappled universe (or because he recognized that the univocity he needed -- inertial mass -- was a thinner and more abstract quantity than the transformation thesis requires).*

 

The fact that light also passes among different regions of the universe, also provides evidence for the thought that the universe is unified (as opposed to dappled). I mention this because in the General Scholium, Newton had used the immense distances of solar systems, and their inability to interact with each other (and so fall upon each other catastrophically) as a kind of evidence of God's benevolent design. So, that a dappled universe may well be thought in accord with His wishes.

 

 

Whewell, Newton, Kant, and Hershel's Double Stars

We may observe, however, that the law of gravitation according to the inverse square of the distance, which thus regulates the motions of the solar system, is not confined to that province of the universe, as has been shown by recent researches. It appears by the observations and calculations of Sir John Herschel, that several of the stars, called double stars, consist of a pair of luminous bodies which revolve about each other in ellipses, in such a manner as to show that the force, by which they are attracted to each other, varies according to the law of the inverse square. We thus learn a remarkable fact concerning bodies which seemed so far removed from us that no effort of our science could reach them; and we find that the same law of mutual attraction which we have before traced to the farthest bounds of the solar system, prevails also in spaces at a distance compared with which the orbit of Saturn shrinks into a point. The establishment of such a truth certainly suggests, as highly probably, the prevalence of this law among all the bodies of the universe. And we may therefore suppose, that the same ordinance which gave to the parts of our system that rule by which they fulfil the purposes of their creation, impressed the same rule on the other portions of matter which are scattered in the most remote parts of the universe; and thus gave to their movements the same grounds of simplicity and harmony which we find reason to admire, as far as we can acquire any knowledge of our own more immediate neighbourhood.--William Whewell Astronomy and General Physics, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, 1864, (Bridgewater Treatise, "New Edition, with New Preface"),pp 229-230 [HT David Haig]

I quote from the edition of Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise in which he adds a new preface in order to respond to Darwin's Origin (which he quotes, but doesn't name). In the preface, Whewell makes a point of associating Darwin with the system of Epicurean chance, which at the cosmogenic level is to be associated with the nebular hypothesis as developed by Kant and Laplace. In the Bridgewater Treatise Kant is not mentioned only Laplace. (I suspect that Whewell, who was one of the greatest historians of science of his age, was not unfamiliar with the Kantian provenance because he alludes to it in his treatment of copernican turn of the critical philosophy elsewhere.*) So, arguments against one (the nebular hypothesis) reinforce the arguments against the other (Darwinism), and vice versa. 

One may wonder why, after after the empirical success of the Principia, and its Rule 3, anybody would have doubted the universality of the law of gravity. But, as a matter of fact, Newton himself had opened to the door to this possibility, in the 1706 Latin edition of the Opticks which ultimately ended up in Query 31 of the later English edition.+ It reads:

Since Space is Divisible in infinitum, and Matter is not necessarily in all places, it may also be allowed that God is able to create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several Proportions to Space, and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sorts in several Parts of the Universe. 

Newton sometimes uses ‘world’ in a metaphysically neutral sense, to mean a solar system or, more generally, a closed (or virtually closed) system of interacting celestial bodies. In the above passage, however, ‘world’ is a metaphysically richer notion. A world in this sense is constituted by the kinds of particles and forces it contains, particles and forces that are ontologically prior to the world they constitute. Moreover, the above passage suggests that within ‘worlds’ of this kind particles and forces are prior, in some sense, to the laws of nature.

For Newton laws are clearly contingent. They are not grounded in God’s immutability (as Descartes’s were), but depend on God’s will. Their contingency stands in stark contrast to the necessity of Newtonian space and time. For Newton, space and time could not have been otherwise and are a consequence of God’s necessary existence. As he writes in the General Scholium to the Principia, “by existing always and every where, [God] constitutes Duration and Space . . . ’Tis allowed by all that the supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always and every where.” Physical laws do not possess such necessity. (Although Newton’s laws are contingent, they are necessary in relation to God’s will. Given God’s edicts, they could not be otherwise. ) As Roger Cotes wrote in the editor’s preface to the second edition: “From this source [God], then, have all the laws that are called laws of nature come, in which many traces of the highest wisdom and counsel certainly appear, but no traces of necessity” (Newton 1999: 397; the denial of necessity distances Newton from the charge of Spinozism and its attack on design arguments.)

In the above passage, the contingency of Newton’s laws is also coupled to the claim that they may not be universal. They may hold of some worlds (in the metaphysical sense), but not all. Their variability has at least two consequences. First, a universe with metaphysically distinct worlds entails causal disconnectedness among (some of) its parts. This disconnectedness appealed to Newton, because it could prevent different solar systems from collapsing in on each other. It thus supports the argument from design of the General Scholium. 

So, while in the eighteenth century the Huygensian claim that the law of gravity only held for celestial bodies in our solar system was defeated by the stronger claim that it held throughout the solar system, including terrestrially, it was not obvious it would hold in other solar systems throughout the galaxy. Huygens (recall here; here) and Newton seemed to posit a universe with tenuously connected solar systems (light could pass among them), even though Newton encouraged us to take or hold true the laws universally in context of inquiry. 

In 1802, Herschel wrote (in the Transaction of the Royal Society):

If, on the contrary, two stars should really be situated very near each other, and at the same time so far insulated as not to be materially affected by the attractions of neighbouring stars, they will then compose a separate system, and remain united by the bond of their own mutual gravitation towards each other. This should be called a real double star; and any two stars that are thus mutually connected, form the binary sidereal system which we are now to consider. (Vol. 92, 481)

Herschel's language here is conditional. But on p. 486 he goes on to claim there is overwhelming empirical evidence for the reality of binary systems. Interestingly, on. p. 485 Herschel claims that Binary systems are themselves causes by law of gravity because their production and the phenomena they give rise to cannot be the effect of "casual situations" that is, chance.

So, from the point of view of physical astronomy, Herschel's discovery of binary systems was analogous to the seventeenth century discovery that the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn obeyed Keplerian motion. But from a cosmological perspective, Herschell provided empirical evidence for the hitherto unavailable "simplicity and harmony;" whatever else might be discovered, Hershel showed "a remarkable fact" that the motions of bodies obeyed at least one law or set of laws. This claim which was taken for granted by Descartes on metaphysical grounds, and left open empirically by Huygens and Newton, could now be taken as established, or at least "as highly probable." 

Let me close with three observations. First, Whewell clearly thinks that (strong evidence for) the actual university of the law of gravity points to a single, unified cause of the universe. In itself that does not settle the debate with the systems of necessity and chance, in favor of theism. But it does burden shift in one non-trivial way against the system of chance (but not the system of necessity). 

For, Whewell thinks, not entirely unfairly, that the system of chance must assume that the present laws of nature are themselves the effect of historical evolution. That's the "supposition that the universe has gradually approximated to that state of harmony among the operations of its different parts," (p. 30).** For, the system of chance has, if it accepts the principle of sufficient reason (which it may not, of course) no right to positing, without further explanation, the existence of natural law that governs motions of bodies.++ (The system of necessity gets this posit for free.) 

Second, and this is the burden shifting against the necessitarian, if one accepts the principle of sufficient reason, the now universal law of gravity appears without foundation at all: "no [sufficient] reason, at all satisfactory, can be given why such a law must, of necessity, be what it is." (216) In particular, while gravity is a universal quality of matter there is no reason to think (here Whewell explicitly disagrees with Newton's editor, Cotes) it is a necessary quality (p. 222).

Third, while Whewell's language is still voluntarist ("ordinance"), Whewell changes the character of God's voluntarism. For Newton, theological voluntarism is compatible with God choosing different laws of motion for different parts of the universe. Newton allows the genuine possible that God settled for a dappled universe. Whewell's nature, by contrast, obeys a single ordinance/decree by God, who could choose differently in different parts of the universe, but did not.

 

 

 

 

Chiang on metahumans (and the great chain of being)

The question is, are these worthwhile undertakings for scientists? Some call them a waste of time, likening them to a Native American research effort into bronze smelting when steel tools of European manufacture are readily available. This comparison might be more apt if humans were in competition with metahumans, but in today's economy of abundance there is no evidence of such competition. In fact, it is important to recognize that — unlike most previous low-technology cultures confronted with a high-technology one — humans are in no danger of assimilation or extinction.

There is still no way to augment a human brain into a metahuman one; the Sugimoto gene therapy must be performed before the embryo begins neurogenesis in order for a brain to be compatible with DNT. This lack of an assimilation mechanism means that human parents of a metahuman child face a difficult choice: to allow their child DNT interaction with metahuman culture, and watch him or her grow incomprehensible to them; or else restrict access to DNT during the child's formative years, which to a metahuman is deprivation like that suffered by Kaspar Hauser. It is not surprising that the percentage of human parents choosing the Sugimoto gene therapy for their children has dropped almost to zero in recent years.

As a result, human culture is likely to survive well into the future, and the scientific tradition is a vital part of that culture. Hermeneutics is a legitimate method of scientific inquiry and increases the body of human knowledge just as original research did. Moreover, human researchers may discern applications overlooked by metahumans, whose advantages tend to make them unaware of our concerns.

For example, imagine if research offered hope of a different intelligence-enhancing therapy, one that would allow individuals to gradually ‘upgrade’ their minds to a level equivalent to that of a metahuman. Such a therapy would offer a bridge across what has become the greatest cultural divide in our species' history, yet it might not even occur to metahumans to explore it; that possibility alone justifies the continuation of human research.

We need not be intimidated by the accomplishments of metahuman science. We should always remember that the technologies that made metahumans possible were originally invented by humans, and they were no smarter than we. Ted Chiang (2000) "Catching crumbs from the table," in Nature.*

The existence of metahumans (or enhanced, human cyborgs) reminds us that developments in technologies generate violations of Descartes' causal principle: what is more perfect can arise from what is less perfect. Technologies change how we conceive of what is humanly possible.+ In addition, technology helps generate violations of the great chain of being; there are  in-commensurable gaps between humans and metahumans.

Whether any technology can remove scarcity may well be doubted unless the metahumans can practice moral checks on themselves and nudge the humans into breeding at a replacement rate. Of course, if the metahumans did so, it's possible the humans would not know about it ([recall] in the way the machines/artificial intelligence nudge humans in Iain Banks' The Culture series).

The narration assumes that scarcity is the main motive for genocide. It also implies that being capable of developing science and technology, including presumably meta weapons of meta mass destruction, would generate an ethics of their proper use. Since metahumans were initially invented by humans no smarter than us, this is to be doubted. Perhaps the thought is that the ability to dominate nature (abundance, etc.) removes the desire to dominate (destroy/exploit, etc.) lesser beings. But let's leave that aside.

When I was reflecting on the story, I was initially unsure parents would indeed choose to be able to communicate with their children, and so continue their traditions even form of life, rather than choosing for their kids to be among the cognitive elite (the metahumans). Often today, it seems, designer babies represent not just the desire for healthy kids, but parents' status and economic aspirations for their children. Such parents appear to act for their childrens' good. 

But, upon second thought, Chiang's moral psychology seems persuasive. Because despite the emphasis on 'choice' in selling human enhancement technologies, our contemporary parents of designer babies are not really showing much respect for the (let's call it) autonomy of their children. Rather what they de facto do is lengthen the odds that the structure of their (parental/social) values/traditions are passed on and reproduced. 

Part of the joke of the story -- which first appeared in Nature -- is that academic journals have stopped being the vehicle for publishing original research. They are now mostly in the business of hermeneutics trying and trailing to understand metahuman science. For us the joke may be less funny because with the opacity of machine learning this possibility may well be shading into reality. Even so, it would indeed be funny if the success of an all-knowing data science would regenerate the felt need for a kind of science of interpretation that could help decode the revelations of a hidden intelligence. When computer science departments start hiring big-data-hermeneuticists, the heirs of Gadamer or Davidson can laugh at our analytic philosophers.++ Of course, with machine algorithms, there may simply be no there, there. And so this hermeneutics may well have to rely on an intentional stance.

Not unlike AL-Farabi's God (at least this is Al-Ghazali's charge), the metahumans may be t uninterested in the physical going-ons of mere mortals. One's position reflects one's choices of research topic. Chiang suggests that faced with the existence of scientifically superior metahumans, scientific humans would embrace if not standpoint epistemology, then the argument from epistemic diversity, from self-interest. If these human scientists are right, then the great chain of being would be restored.

 

Darwin on Savages (II); the Posidonian Argument, revisited

If an architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice, without the use of cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice, wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill and regard him as the paramount power. Now, the fragments of stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to the edifice built by him the same relation which the fluctuating variations of organic beings bear to the varied and admirable structures ultimately acquired by their modified descendants.

    Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. If it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone … it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had been made clear to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each fragment could not be told. But this is a nearly parallel case with the objection that selection explains nothing, because we know not the cause of each individual difference in the structure of each being." Charles Darwin (1868) The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication, [page 426] [HT David Haig.]

Earlier in the week (recall), I noted that in Origin of Species (right at the start, in fact) one of Darwin's argumentative strategies, relying on was indebted to Hume and Adam Smith, is to rely on the ignorance of savages for heuristic purposes. This strategy entails that i) one is not allowed to attribute knowledge of (to use eighteenth century terminology) remote consequences to the intentions of ancient savages and that (ii) even in domestication and artificial selection there are unintended consequences. But this is not the only methodological use of the ignorant savage. (Again, I ignore the racial issues lurking in the corner here.) He famously closes the Origin, with a related use: "when we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!" So, the lack of knowledge of savages frames Origin.

The origin and function of this savage-ship trope in ideas on the division of labor and the slow development of technology (illustrated by ships) in Mandeville and Hume has been articulated by Stephen Alter in a very nice essay (HT Catherine Kemp an her important essay). However in Mandeville and Hume the ignorant savage is absent in this particular ship trope!

As Alter notes,  a very similar trope (about savages) ends Descent of Man (1871) "He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation." The target is the theory of separate creation. Such an idea (of special creation) is made possible or conditioned -- historically one may say -- by the inability to see nature as connected (and presumably) law-governed. Here Darwin also echoes Hume (The Natural History of Religion) and Smith (The History of Astronomy and the History of Ancient Physics), where science is first made possible, in the context of the political escape of the state state of nature, by the achievement of treating nature as connected and regular (see my book for details).

So, much for set-up.  

At the top of this post, I quoted the closing lines of Variation. The underlying conceit is that natural selection can explain the machinery behind the origin and variety of domestic and non-domesticated species. As Darwin acknowledges it can't explain everything, and the point of the savage being explained the role of an architect and his tools in a a building, is that it is not an objection to Darwin's theory that it can't do so (in particular explain the reason why in nature small differences -- the raw materials for selection -- spontaneously seem occur). Let's grant Darwin his claims. Darwin's use of an architect example is not innocent, of course, because God is often likened to a divine architect (the house/divine architect analogy is a prominent target in Hume's Dialogues).

One may well wonder why our distance from the savage's understanding of the hidden machinery of nature is such a recurring trope in Darwin. While I don't deny the autobiographical significance of his encounter with 'non-civilized' peoples in his travels, and the more general sense of cultural superiority of Victorian England, I think there is also an explanation rooted in the history of ideas and what I have  been calling the Posidonian argument. Recall Cicero's argument:

But if all the parts of the universe have been so ordered that they could not have been better adapted for use, or more beautiful as regards appearance, let us see whether they are the work of chance, or whether their arrangement is one in which they could not possibly have been combined except by the guidance of consciousness and the divine providence. If, then, the things achieved by nature are more excellent than those achieved by art, and if art produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence. If at the sight of a statue or painted picture you know that art has been employed, and from the distant view of the course of a ship feel sure that it is made to move by art and intelligence, and if you understand on looking at a horologe, whether one marked out with lines, or working by means of water, that the hours are indicated by art and not by chance, with what possible consistency can you suppose that the universe which contains these same products of art, and their constructors, and all things, is destitute of forethought and intelligence? Why, if any one were to carry into Scythia or Britain the globe which our friend Posidonius has lately constructed, each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the sun and moon and five wandering stars as is brought about each day and night in the heavens, no one in those barbarous countries would doubt that that globe was the work of intelligence.--Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods.

In Cicero's argument, when confronted by an intricate, successful representation of the movements of nature, a savage/barbarian will immediate grant that the representation is the product of artificial design. If one then grants the premise that artifice "produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence" in virtue of the fact that nature is superior (in some sense) to artifice, some cleaned up version of the argument goes through (see this reconstruction by Hunter). That nature is superior to artifice, I dub nature's superiority premise. As regular readers know, I have been interested in a particular version(s) of this so-called Posidonian argument, revived and articulated in the early modern period (see here on Dennett and Descartes, here on Boyle's plagiarism, here on Locke/Newton, here on Voltaire, and Voltaire and Spinoza, etc.). My particular interest in the argument is made clear by the following (rational) reconstruction:

(I) A necessary condition of the possibility of (an (intended)) successful scientific representation or concrete model of (a region of) nature is that (a region of) nature is orderly;

(II) (A region of) Nature’s hidden order could not be the product of chance [as suggested by Epicureanism] or necessity [as suggested by Spinozism], but only by an Ordering God/Very powerful/infinite mind;

(III) [It’s possible that] Science produces successful representations and successful concrete models of (a region of) nature.

(IV) ∴ There is a God (of order).

In my reconstruction, Cicero''s nature's superiority premise is suppressed, but it lurks behinds (I) and (III). The savage's assent that surely the machine is (intelligently) man-made is suppressed in (III). [I leave it as an exercise to the reader to reinstate them into a longer rational reconstruction.] Even so, the savage/barbarian gazing at the machine shows up throughout the sources.

Let me, in closing, return to Darwin. I think the framing of his arguments by way of a savage is explained by the known pull of the Posidonian argument on his readers (and perhaps himself). It should come as no surprise, then, that Darwin explicitly endorses  a version of nature's superiority premise in Origin:  "But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art."--(Chapter 3.) The echoes to Cicero's Posidonian argument are unmistakably. (As noted, Cicero's argument known in various guises throughout the eighteenth century. (In my view Paley does not present the strongest version of it, but that's for another time.) Darwin's innovation is that rather than speaking of nature as such, he speaks of natural selection. And the effect of that substitution is to make transparent that premise (II) misses at least alternative. So, it needs needs to be rewritten.

(II*) (A region of) Nature’s hidden order could not be the product of mere chance [as suggested by Epicureanism]* or mere necessity [as suggested by Spinozism],+ but only by an Ordering God/Very powerful/infinite mind or Natural Selection.

The relationship between (a) natural selection and an ordering god  and between (b) natural selection as an alternative to Epicureanism and/or Spinozism is not transparent. The significance of this point is not, primarily, that the conclusion of the Posidonian argument is now undermined (after all a Deist will be untroubled by the existence of natural selection), but rather that the functionality of the Posidonian argument as such is destabilized. It's fruitfulness as a thinking device comes to an end with Darwin.

 

Dennett's Genealogy of Modernity: On Spinoza, Hume, Darwin, Turing

In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin’s meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the achievements of creative skill. (Beverley 1868); quoted by Dennett.

Dennett quotes Beverley approvingly (although disagreeing with Beverley's own intentions) in his recent From Bacteria to Bach and Back (pp. 53-4). Dennett loves the phrase, 'strange inversion of reasoning' and uses it throughout his book. In fact, one can read his book as a genealogy of modernity because he identifies such a strange inversion of reasoning at the core of Darwin's, Turing's and (historically prior) Hume's thought.

Because Dennett does not offer a definition/explanation of a strange inversion of reasoning, we need some examples to discern what he is up to. First, Here's Dennett's updated version of Darwin's strange inversion of reasoning:

a process with no Intelligent Designer can create intelligent designers who can then design things that permit us to understand how a process with no Intelligent Designer can create intelligent designers who can then design things. (77-78)

Second, here's Dennett's version of Turing's Strange Inversion (in language that pays homage to Beverley):

IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW WHAT ARITHMETIC IS. (p. 55)

While not denying their many differences,* Dennett treats Turing and Darwin as contributing to a shared insight (third):

all the brilliance and comprehension in the world arises ultimately out of uncomprehending competences compounded over time into ever more competent— and hence comprehending—systems. This is indeed a strange inversion, overthrowing the pre-Darwinian mind-first vision of Creation with a mind-last vision of the eventual evolution of us, intelligent designers at long last." (57-8; emphases in original; Dennett repeats the claim on p. 75.)

The idea of an uncomprehending competence is crucial to Dennett's larger argument, and while i have commented on it before (recall; and here) some other time I'll return to it. But I think now we can give a brief analysis of what Dennett means by a strange inversion of reasoning. It goes something like this.

1. You may think that some basic property X is required for the explanation of observed properties Y.
2. Where X exhibits some intelligence/mindedness/intentionality and Ys typically do not.
3. But in reality properties Y are needed to explain X.

(I leave it to the reader to clean up the argument with due attention to tokens and types!) As I noted the other day, the ur-version of this argument (in modern times), is Spinoza's critique of final causes: "I will add a few remarks, in order to overthrow this doctrine of a final cause utterly. That which is really a cause it considers as an effect, and vice versa: it makes that which is by nature first to be last, and that which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect." (Ethics, Appendix 1 [not the world's best translation; but good enough today.])

In fact, without having the theory of natural selection, Spinoza does go on to anticipate Darwin's strange inversion of reasoning: "when they survey the frame of the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the causes of so great a work of art, conclude that it has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put together that one part shall not hurt another." (To the best of my knowledge George Eliot, the great novelist and translator of the Ethics, was probably the first to notice the connection which she handles brilliantly in Middlemarch.) With Spinoza safely included we can really call this, indeed, a genealogy of modernity.

So, far so good. Now, here's Dennett's version of Hume's great inversion of reasoning (fourth):

Seeing A, we are wired to expect B, and then when B happens—this is Hume’s master stroke—we misattribute our perceptual reaction to some external cause that we are somehow directly experiencing...In fact, we are succumbing to a benign user-illusion, misinterpreting our fulfilled expectation of an ensuing B as somehow coming from the outer world. This is, as Hume says, a special case of the mind’s “great propensity to spread itself on external objects” (1739, I:xiv) The “customary transition” in our minds is the source of our sense of causation, a quality of “perceptions, not of objects,” and, as he notes, “the contrary notion is so riveted in the mind” that it is hard to dislodge. It survives to this day in the typically unexamined assumption that all perceptual representations must be flowing inbound from outside. (355)

Dennett does not pause to reflect on the fact that it was Hume's defense of the priority of impressions over the ideas corresponding to them which seems the source of the unexamined assumption (that all perceptual representations must be flowing inbound from outside.)+ But I leave that aside here as well as the trickiness of establishing to what degree anything can be 'outside''' in Hume's system.

So, Dennett's version of Hume's version of the strange inversion goes something like this:

• You may think that causal necessity as a basic property of external reality is required for the explanation of observed (tightly conjoined) regularities.
• And so we infer causal necessity from the empirical evidence (via abduction or [in wishful] enumerative induction)
• But in reality it's the mind's properties that explain the sense of necessity we feel when we observe (tightly conjoined) regularities.

While there are family resemblances between this strange inversion and the others above, it really is different in character. These are two good tricks, but not the same trick.

Let me close. I think that this kind of inversion also has a Spinozistic provenance  (even though one of Hume's targets here is  Spinozism). For in the very same appendix to Ethics 1, Spinoza develops an error theory in which "all the explanations commonly given of nature are mere modes of imagining, and do not indicate the true nature of anything, but only the constitution of the imagination." (Notice the wide scope of the claim.)

For quite some time, Bryce Huebner has been insisting that there are great resonances between Dennett's and Spinoza's (and Nietzsche's) philosophy. For glimpses see this important piece. While I often tend to see the differences more than the agreements between Dennett and Spinoza, this post suggests Bryce has been right all along.

On the Significance of Dennett's Free-Floating Rationales for Social Science (I)

One of Dennett’s most important claims is that most of what we and our fellow organisms do to stay alive, cope with the world and one another, and reproduce is not understood by us or them. It is competence without comprehension. This is obviously true of organisms like bacteria and trees that have no comprehension at all, but it is equally true of creatures like us who comprehend a good deal. Most of what we do, and what our bodies do—digest a meal, move certain muscles to grasp a doorknob, or convert the impact of sound waves on our eardrums into meaningful sentences—is done for reasons that are not our reasons. Rather, they are what Dennett calls free-floating reasons, grounded in the pressures of natural selection that caused these behaviors and processes to become part of our repertoire. There are reasons why these patterns have emerged and survived, but we don’t know those reasons, and we don’t have to know them to display the competencies to allow us to function.

Nor do we have to understand the mechanisms that underlie those competencies. In an illuminating metaphor, Dennett asserts that the manifest image that depicts the world in which we live our everyday lives is composed of a set of user-illusions,

like the ingenious user-illusion of click-and-drag icons, little tan folders into which files may be dropped, and the rest of the ever more familiar items on your computer’s desktop. What is actually going on behind the desktop is mind-numbingly complicated, but users don’t need to know about it, so intelligent interface designers have simplified the affordances, making them particularly salient for human eyes, and adding sound effects to help direct attention. Nothing compact and salient inside the computer corresponds to that little tan file-folder on the desktop screen.

He says that the manifest image of each species is “a user-illusion brilliantly designed by evolution to fit the needs of its users.” In spite of the word “illusion” he doesn’t wish simply to deny the reality of the things that compose the manifest image; the things we see and hear and interact with are “not mere fictions but different versions of what actually exists: real patterns.” The underlying reality, however, what exists in itself and not just for us or for other creatures, is accurately represented only by the scientific image—ultimately in the language of physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and neurophysiology. Thomas Nagel "Is Consciousness an Illusion?" reviewing Daniel C. Dennet From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, in the The New York Review of Books, March 9, 2017 Issue

Nagel's generous review introduces two key conceptual innovations in Dennett's thought early in the review, first that there is "competence without comprehension" and, second, that there are "free-floating reasons, grounded in the pressures of natural selection that" can cause "behaviors and processes to become part of our repertoire." But while Nagel nicely draws out the significance of this for Dennett's familiar view on consciousness (although he misses that for Dennett the the scientific image is also of real patterns (see 222)), Nagel misses the wider implications of these two innovations: that they pave the way for a version of functional explanation in social science.

Before I get to that, first a terminological point: in his review, Nagel attributes to Dennett commitment to free-floating reasons (see above). But in Dennett's terminology these are free-floating rationales. Nagel is not subsantively wrong, however, free-floating rationales are a species of reasons, which are "tracked" by "evolution" (50). In context Dennett is describing "the accumulation of function by a process that blindly tracks reasons, creating things that have purposes but don’t need to know them." (49) So, free-floating rationales are reasons that do not require being represented for their existence: in particular, they are functions that are a consequence of natural selection. (One way to understand a free-floating rationale is that it is the answer to the why question of reverse engineering. (92))

Okay, with that in place, we can turn to the significance of Dennett's move, once we recognize (or recall) that for Dennett free-floating rationales are not merely a biological phenomenon; he also treats cultural evolution as the cause of particular types of free-floating rationales: "memes, informational viruses that govern infectious habits," (173, emphasis in origina.)  Now, in so doing Dennett is especially interested in explaining consciousness and the origins and the nature of language,* but he also wants to show that "Free-floating rationales have been as ubiquitous in cultural evolution as in genetic evolution," (231). This has obvious implications for social science.

In particular, Dennett's free-floating rationales are also a means to revive respectability of discussion of functions in social science (211-212). Social functions simply are flee-floating rationales that are caused by cultural evolution. (Obviously, they may also be represented by agents in society.) That is to say, on Dennett's approach to cultural or memetic evolution provides the mechanism that secures the existence of free-floating rationales. Of course, showing that an attributed social function is the consequence of such cultural selection is not always easy, but that's for another time.

Philosophical Truth over Piety: or should we teach outside the 'tradition'

It might seem broadminded to call for philosophy professors to teach ancient Asian scholars such as Confucius and Candrakīrti in addition to dead white men such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant. However, this approach undermines what is distinct about philosophy as an intellectual tradition, and pays other traditions the dubious compliment of saying that they are just like ours. Furthermore, this demand fuels the political campaign to defund academic philosophy departments.

Philosophy originates in Plato’s Republic. It is a restless pursuit for truth through contentious dialogue. It takes place among ordinary human beings in cities, not sages and disciples on mountaintops, and it requires the fearless use of reason even in the face of established traditions or religious commitments. Plato’s book is the first text of philosophy and a reference point for texts as diverse as Aristotle’s Politics, Augustine’s City of God, al-Fārābī’s The Political Regime, and the French philosopher Alain Badiou’s book Plato’s Republic (2013)...Even philosophers who do not mention Plato directly still use his words – including ‘ideas’ – and his general orientation that prioritises truth over piety. Philosophy is the love of wisdom rather than the love of blood or country. It is in principle open to everybody, and people all around the world heed Plato’s call to live an examined life.

I am wary of the argument, however, that all serious reflection upon fundamental questions ought to be called philosophy. Philosophy is one among many ways to think about questions such as the origin of the Universe, the nature of justice, or the limits of knowledge. Philosophy, at its best, aims to be a dialogue between people of different viewpoints, but, again, it is a love of wisdom, rather than the possession of wisdom. This restless character has often made it the enemy of religion and tradition.

Consider the outlook of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), a towering figure in Islamic thought. In Deliverance from Error, al-Ghazali recounts his time reading Plato, Aristotle and their ostensibly Muslim readers. He asserts: ‘We must reckon as unbelievers both these philosophers themselves and their followers among the Islamic philosophers, such as Ibn Sina, al-Farabi and others.’ Al-Ghazali recommends that Muslims ‘shut the gate so as to keep the general public from reading the books of the misguided as far as possible’. Even though he himself makes philosophical arguments, he does not want to enter the tradition of falsafa and is widely credited with trying to end this tradition with books such as The Incoherence of the Philosophers. If one wants to study Islamic political thought in the centuries after al-Ghazali, scholars should primarily study theology (kalam) and jurisprudence (fiqh), not falsafa.--Nicholas Tampio "Not all things wise and good are philosophy"@Aeon.

Tampio understands philosophy as a tradition that starts with Plato's Republic. It is not clear why, if it starts with Plato, it does not start with Plato's Apology, or, better yet, with Plato's (now lost) lecture On the Good. It is said to be characteristic of this tradition that (i) it privileges reason over piety; (ii) it pursues truth through dialogue; (iii) it is urbane--ruling out the activity described in the Phaedrus;* (iv) it is pursuit of wisdom; (v) it is often an enemy of religion and tradition. In addition, (vi) critics of this tradition (like Al-Ghazali--I return to him at the end) are not properly part of philosophy. Since a playful Platonist must offer 7 items (cf Symposium), I remark that notably absent -- given the rhetoric my professional friends often espouse -- is the idea (vii) that philosophy is essentially argumentative; let's be grateful for small mercies.

It is notable that (iv) is on the list because Tampio is explicitly interested in what ought to take place in philosophy departments; these days professional philosophers insist we lack interest in wisdom in the manner of our ethicists insisting that to study ethics has no bearing on character or ethical behavior. If there is any pursuit of wisdom in contemporary philosophy this is a contingent affair (if one prefers an argument from authority, see Quine Theories and Things (1981: 193)].

We can recognize in (i) and (v) an Enlightenment construction of the tradition. It was already contestable in the eighteenth century (Hume is rather deflationary of reason, Berkeley rather fond of religion), and it is quite remarkable that the many ways in which the tradition and religion mutually supported each other, say starting with Philo or, if you wish (since it is mentioned by Tampio), Augustine, gets re-interpreted as non-intrinsic to the tradition. It does not take Nietzsche to point out that philosophical reason and religion have been partners in crime (sometimes literally crime). Yes, 'often' is not 'always'; but it is equally true to say that philosophy and religion have been each others friends. Or to put the point more in soft-Hegelian terms, it's often the case that because of the needs of religious philosophers, philosophy made progress (by the development of new distinctions, argumentative moves, etc.)

More subtly, the whole point of the Enlightenment, and arguably Plato, is to show that piety and reason are not natural antagonists, but, in the right institutional context, mutually supportive: to quote Spinoza (who mostly ridiculed Plato), on the nature of the argument of his Political Theological Treatise: freedom can be granted without endangering piety and the peace of the commonwealth, but also the peace of the commonwealth and piety depend on this freedom. Whether the Enlightenment is right about this is an open question, but it is odd to present the tradition as undermining piety in the name of that tradition when from the start the tradition itself tries to show (perhaps mistakenly) that its path is the path of true piety. For, if philosophy truly undermines piety then the good citizens of Athens were right to condemn Socrates--again that's an open case, but it is one that the tradition tries to meet (cf. Socratic Problem). Tampio's position provides much better fuel "to the political campaign to defund academic philosophy departments" than the teaching of any culturally distant, complex text from 11th century Islamic Spain!

On (vi): it ought by now to be a familiar trope that philosophy's critics, the self-described anti-philosophers (e.g., Al-Ghazali, Montaigne, Margaret Cavendish, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Isaiah Berlin, Derrida), are as much part of the tradition as the official philosophers. (I have been influenced on this point by reflecting on Rachel Barney's piece on Gorgias's Encomium of Helen.) Again, to be soft-Hegelian about it, by their engagement they help articulate and extend the tradition.

Let me close with an observation or two (or more) on Al-Ghazali. First, it is true that Al-Ghazali presents himself as a critic of the philosophers. By this Al-Ghazali means (this is somewhat ironic given Tampio's claims about (v)) theistic philosophers (Al-Ghazali thinks that non-theistic philosophy is seriously discredited.] Tampio presents himself as an expert on Islamic political thought, but I think he fails to note the point of the passage he quotes. Al-Ghazali is not rejecting philosophy and its tradition (primarily Al-Farabi and Ibn-Sinna) as such. When he writes that we ought to ‘shut the gate so as to keep the general public from reading the books of the misguided as far as possible,’ in context, he is merely recommending that philosophy should be kept from unprepared souls. In so doing  he follows in the footsteps of Plato, who, after all recommended a rather stringent curriculum before one could enter into philosophy, and Al-Ghazali anticipates the position of his fiercest critic (Ibn Rushd) as well as Bacon (and even, if I may offer an interpretation without evidence of the Dialogues Concerning  Natural Religion, Hume). That is to say, Al-Ghazali is an elitist about who can enter into the philosophical conversation, but it does not follow he is against that conversation as such. I am not the first to notice this; Ibn Tufayl makes the point explicitly in his Hayyi Ibn Yaqzan, where he argues that according to Ghazali philosophy should be done only with a select few. (He even treats  Ghazali as somebody who teaches such matters esoterically by way of hints! [recall])

In particular, as I have noted before, Al-Ghazali is explicit that the political philosophy of the Islamic philosophers is not to be rejected. (This is why I teach him in my own course on classical Islamic political theory, despite several experts telling me that his work is about epistemology.) And, while certainly, Al-Farabi does not have the mainstream authority that Al-Ghazali has in contemporary Islamic thought, it is also remarkable, as I learned from my students, that all over the Arab world, Al-Farabi is not just mentioned but also taught in elite high schools as part of the philosophy of the 'Golden Age.' (Obviously there are complicated sociological issues about the nature of such teaching, but these are no less existing in the way philosophy is taught at, say, at a Gymnasium, those self-styled bearers of bildung into the classical tradition, in Europe.)

This is not the place to situate Al-Gazali's Deliverance in a long tradition from Galen to Descartes (recall, and my references to Menn). Rather, I want to close with an observation. Al-Ghazali explicitly poses his own sufi wisdom as distinct from the philosophical tradition.  But he does so in ways that are distinctly familiar from philosophical mystics. I am not the first to notice this; again I learned the point from Ibn Tufayl, who explicitly treats Ghazali as being no different from Ibn Sinna and Ibn Baji on this point. Those of us who live later could also include Spinoza and Leibniz to the list,and if we are ecumenical in spirit, Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Anne Conway. This tradition can be traced back to Plato (Cf. Timaeus, Symposium, Phaedrus). One reason why I teach Al-Ghazali (with gratitude) is that he found a way to artfully combine the philosophical tradition with the straight path.

Isaac Newton and Clarke on Metaphysical Modality

We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion. For we adore him as his servants; and a God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature....All that diversity of natural things which we find, suited to different times and places, could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing.--Isaac Newton "General Scholium (2nd edition of Principia) [Motte Translation].

Newton clearly embraces God's providence and general final causes. I write 'general' final causes because in the body of the Principia, particular or local final causes are absent in his argument. (In that limited respect, Newton accept Descartes's strictures on physics.) In the final sentence of the quoted passage, Newton offers a kind of design argument (from design to design). The underlying argument of this design argument is inductive: the (apparent) functionality of natural things must be ascribed to the mind and volition of a designer. Let’s ignore, for the sake of argument, the epistemic status of such arguments from apparent design to designer. It is worth noting that Newton does not explain why this designing-Being must be “necessarily existing.” Even if one were to grant the argument that goes from apparent functionality of natural things at all times and places to the existence of a designer, the modal status of such a designer – that s/he is necessarily existing – is not evident. Whatever else we can say, there are suppressed premises about the nature of modality here.

Newton, too, must have felt some weakness in his position because he added a sentence to the third edition of the General Scholium. The paragraph now reads:

We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion. For we adore him as his servants; and a God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find, suited to different times and places, could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. [Emphasis added]

Before, I have argued that the missing sentence relies on something like the following homogeneity argument:

A1: (Metaphysical) Necessity implies homogeneity and homogeneity implies (metaphysical) Necessity

A2: Homogeneity and variety are disjunctive alternatives (suppressed) 

P1: We observe a particular kind of variety

C: Therefore, no metaphysical necessity.

C is associated with Spinozism. Here, too, we find a puzzling relationship between necessity and observed reality. We can understood what's going on in these arguments by looking at Clarke's writings. For, in his correspondence with (a then very youthful) Joseph Butler, Clarke explains a key assumption A1 in the homogeneity argument (recall). He writes: “Necessity absolute and antecedent in the order of nature to the existence of any subject has nothing to limit it; but if it operates at all (as must needs do), it must operate (if I may so speak) everywhere and at all times alike….” (Clarke’s “Answer to Butler’s Third Letter,” Dec 10, 1713)

So, what we have here is a view about metaphysical modality. To put Clarke’s point informally: absolute necessity has the same impact everywhere and all times and should have the same consequence everywhere and all the time. So, more precisely, I call metaphysical modality the idea that if such ‘necessity’ operates in some respect, Y, then we ought to expect Y to be homogeneously universal in relevant ways. And if the most fundamental form of necessity operates in all (possible) respects, then we ought to expect general homogeneity (as in A1 in the homogeneity argument).

We can explain the intuition behind Clarke's idea as follows: if some property or entity Z is present everywhere and at all times then this cries out for an explanation. An appeal to miracles is not allowed. (Clarke really likes the PSR.) So whatever the ultimate principle or cause of Z is, it must be of the right sort to have the same effect everywhere and at all times. Now, to be sure, the list of things that are universal in this way is going to be quite short; it contains, space, time, the truths of arithmetic and, perhaps (post Newton), gravity. (The list may also include God if s/he is immanent in nature--as it is for Newton.) Once laws are conceived as being universal in reach, they, too require some such underlying principle. According to Clarke necessity is the only kind of cause/principle that can produce qualities or entities that have some such universal reach.

To see how far reaching this view of necessity is according to Clarke, note that he asserts that necessity is the “formal cause” of God (Clarke’s “answer to sixth Letter to another Gentleman” [published first in 1738]). That is to say, Clarke does not just allow the question, ‘what causes God?’ to be intelligible, but it even has a proper response: one can say that for Clarke God is in a certain sense, the consequence of a species of necessity. (Clarke also uses this view of necessity to rule out multiple Gods.) Clarke, thus, flirts with aspects of Spinozism as Leibniz accurately discerned. With that in mind we can turn back to Newton.

There is, in fact, an unmistakable (but generally overlooked) other echo of this doctrine of metaphysical modality in the relationship between necessity and God in the General Scholium: “’Tis allowed by all that the supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always and every where” (emphasis added). In the quote, Newton insists (i) that God’s necessary existence is common ground among all philosophers. Newton, then, (ii) ascribes to necessity explanatory ‘power’ to help account for (at least some of) God’s properties. It’s this type of explanatory power of metaphysical modality that is captured by Clarke’s claim that necessity is a formal cause.

In the quoted design to design argument of the General Scholium of the second edition of the Principia, Newton’s seems to rely on the idea that if some effect Y is universal temporally and spatially, then we can infer or posit as the ultimate cause something that itself is necessary in a way that accounts for Y. So, given that we find (let's grant for the sake of argument) evidence of functionality (or design) everywhere and at all times, we need for Newton to posit a necessary being with designer qualities. [He rules out chance on other grounds.] Newton has other arguments for this claim (including features of the homogeneity argument I have not articulated in this post--P1 figures into such arguments). Whether the ultimate necessary cause so posited acts by way of intermediary (or secondary) causes we can leave un-examined here. Conversely, and more boldly, if some purported feature is not present everywhere and at all times in nature [for example, a dense plenum without diversity], we can also say make claims about the character of necessity (as in C): the kind of thick necessity postulated in A1 (and the one -- mistakenly -- attributed to Spinozism) does not obtain in the universe because we observe very specific forms of variety. For Clarke and Newton, that's compatible with two further facts: one (as is well known) with a God who could have arranged some things otherwise; second, with metaphysical modality being a valid principle that explains all that  is universal in the universe.

 

Adam Smith (and Buffon) on Abstraction and the measure of metaphysical-ness (or complexity)

The man who first distinguished a particular object by the epithet of green, must have observed other objects that were not green, from which he meant to separate it by this appellation. The institution of this name, therefore, supposes comparison. It likewise supposes some degree of abstraction. The person who first invented this appellation must have distinguished the quality from the object to which it belonged, and must have conceived the object as capable of subsisting without the quality. The invention, therefore, even of the simplest nouns adjective, must have required more metaphysics than we are apt to be aware of. The different mental operations, of arrangement or classing, of comparison, and of abstraction, must all have been employed, before even the names of the different colours, the least metaphysical of all nouns adjective, could be instituted.--Adam Smith (1767) Dissertation on the Origin of Languages

The Dissertation on the Origin of Languages (hereafter Languages) was added to the third edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). In Languages Smith develops an account in which language and mind co-develop. The argument unfolds slowly in Smith’s hands, and the passage quoted above is excerpted from a much longer argument.

The very possibility of applying what Smith calls a “noun adjective,” presupposes having the capacity for contrastive reasoning and a mental capacity for classification and conceptualization of, as well as abstraction from, these experiences. On Smith’s view objects must be conceived to be bearers of properties before adjectives can be applied to features of these objects. Moreover, in the quote Smith clearly conceives of nouns adjective with different degrees of ‘metaphysical--ness’--presumably here meant in terms of abstraction from the appearances. Abstraction turns out to be the key variable when Smith turns to prepositions: “The invention of such a word, therefore, must have required a considerable degree of abstraction… Whatever were the difficulties, therefore, which embarrassed the first invention of nouns adjective, the same, and many more, must have embarrassed that of prepositions,” (Languages).

Abstraction is a mental power. For example, traditionally, geometric properties were understood as abstracted from sensible qualities. This conception of abstraction involves a kind of subtraction or stripping away from sensory input (where one focuses on only some elements and throws away the rest). So, for example, when the French natural historian, Buffon, describes the application of geometry to nature, he writes, “it is necessary that the phenomena we are concerned with explaining be susceptible to being considered in an abstract manner and that their nature be stripped of almost all physical qualities. For mathematics is inapplicable to the extent that subjects are not simple abstractions.” (“Initial Discourse” Histoire naturelle [recall];* Smith refers to Buffon in his Letter to Edinburgh Review). Sometimes also Smith uses “abstraction” in this sense (recall here for more discussion).

But that's not Smith’s way of understanding abstraction in Languages. There, for Smith, a thought is more abstract than another thought when it requires more discrete mental “operations,” or steps, to introduce during the history of human development. So, in addition to being a mental power, abstraction is itself a kind of measure for metaphysical-ness. A thought is very abstract if starting with sensations, as a kind of baseline, it requires many further mental operations to be thought. That can include the traditional kind of abstraction, of course (if the stripping of qualities is done in careful order), but also many other kinds. So, Smith’s general picture of mind is that it is akin to a kind of machine capable of different, countable and sequential operations. Smith borrows the idea of mental operations from Hume (see, especially, Treatise 1.3.8.15, where Hume also notes “’tis very difficult to talk of the operations of the mind with perfect propriety and exactness,”) but not the treatment of metaphysical-ness.” It's a neat idea and anticipates the development of measures of complexity.

Unfortunately, Smith does not explain some of the tacit commitments he relies on here. So, for example, he seems to assume a kind of natural minimal, unit for each mental operation. He also seems to presuppose a kind of mental-least-action-principle such that in the course of human development we naturally find -- or we can rationally reconstruct post-facto -- the least required mental operations in each step of abstraction. Finally, as Steven Horst pointed out to me, it is also unclear if for Smith the degree of abstraction is ultimately dependent on empirical facts about human cognitive architecture or the logical (ahh) complexity of the represented content.