I've going to focus on one aspect of Nate Shannon's recent article "The epistemology of divine conceptualism," Int J Philos Relig (2015) 78:123–130.
As no doubt the reader will have noticed, I harbor an openness to the possibility that the laws of logic as we know them do not exist necessarily, in the strong sense in which this is usually taken, but only given a few things (whichever things get us from God’s being uncompelled to create all the way to the actual world). Put more precisely, I think there is rather too much confidence (exaggerated epistemic license, we might say) in the claim that the laws of logic as we know them do in fact exist necessarily, even for God, in the very mind of God.
To suppose that the laws of logic as we know them obtain as we know them in the mind of God is to exaggerate by the force of contingent, fallible intuition the continuity between the creator and the creature to such an extent that no discontinuity is recognized.
i) On one interpretation, Shannon is open to universal possibilism (i.e. there are no necessary truths or necessary falsehoods). If so, there are fundamental problems with that position:
a) It's self-refuting.
b) Orthodox theology requires logical necessity. If logic is relative, then there's no tenable distinction between orthodoxy and heresy.
Given universal possibilism, anything could be the case. Once you denial logical necessity, nothing else can be denied. Everything follows from anything.
ii) On a less radical interpretation, Shannon is distinguishing between human systems of logic and the archetypal logic of divine reason. If so:
a) Welty/Anderson's theistic conceptual realism is referring to logic in general, rather than a specific system. They don't equate a particular human system of logic with the structure of God's mind.
b) At the very least, orthodox theology requires informal logic. Shannon can't avoid that. He can't be noncommittal about logic and retain a commitment to orthodox theology.
Shannon typically tries to take refuge in a buffer zone. But he himself must periodically emerge from the buffer zone to draw lines. To affirm theological truths.
iii) There's a sense in which human systems of logic necessarily inhere in God's mind. Given God's natural knowledge, it is necessary that God know all human systems of logic.
Nate definitely is a student of Oliphant. His main point is aseity of God. How is this concept best applied?
ReplyDeleteThanks. In general the point of my article is to tap the epistemic brakes. I do that by recalling the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility: God has revealed himself, and true knowledge of God consists in doxological interpretation of God’s prior self-interpretation—otherwise and beyond what is revealed, God is incomprehensible. He is apprehensible, we might say, by virtue of revelation, but never comprehensible in the very necessity of his being. That is, theology is ectypal, derived from God’s own archypal self-knowledge, where the possibility of that derivation is nothing but free and voluntary self-revelation. The very ‘bottom’ of our knowledge of the essence of God is that he is triune—and this is mystery—not that he is logical. (Nor am I saying that he is ‘illogical’ or whatever.)
ReplyDeleteThe existence of the triune God is a principium of theology. So, as far as that goes, this is an in-house question. The reason for that is that in my view there are theological issues that need to be sorted out so that we can evaluate the merits of the use of logic (‘as we know it’) to do natural theology independent of Scripture or to argue for the existence of God (without begging the question). I believe both of those are faulty undertakings; but the point is that what I’m trying to do is to work out the epistemic implications for considering the modal status of necessarily true propositions (the ‘laws’ of logic) of sound theological principia.
So in response to your comment about universal possibilism, I think it is rather plainly false that this is an issue for what I am proposing in this piece, since I assume that the triune God exists—that is exists, and that he has a nature. I will gladly say that God determines, in a manner necessarily consistent with his nature, all things and that his determination is mysterious to the creature; but that is another claim entirely from universal possibilism or the idea that the most ultimate thing is indeterminacy (which is a confusing claim in itself, isn’t it?).
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ReplyDeleteYou say Anderson and Welty don’t say anything about the structure of God’s mind. That seems to me obviously false. They claim that the laws of logic are God’s thoughts about his thoughts. They claim that the laws of logic are necessary even for God, that there is no shred of contingency for the truth or the existence (ontology) of the laws of logic. Therefore, in a sense the only thing to do with them is to put them in the mind of God (or give up God), and you have to go even further, which they have done: you must make the laws of logic the very structure of God’s thinking. In my view, that is what their article was getting at. I am trying in this article to suggest gently that this is to make logic god.
You say, “Shannon typically tries to take refuge in a buffer zone. But he himself must periodically emerge from the buffer zone to draw lines. To affirm theological truths.”
I am not sure exactly what you are referring to, or if you would say that it is better to remain in the shadows and make no theological claims. But your comment appears to miss the point of principia (and the very possibility of theology), which is that God is, and that he has revealed himself. Accordingly, true statements about God are actively obedient to Scripture. I don’t have to periodically emerge from skepticism because, thanks to voluntary self-revelation and regeneration, I am not in the dark.
Then you say, “There's a sense in which human systems of logic necessarily inhere in God's mind. Given God's natural knowledge, it is necessary that God know all human systems of logic.”
If by ‘inhere in God’s mind’ all you mean is that ‘God knows about it’, this statement is perfectly acceptable, but also merely a re-statement of divine omniscience. But the question is not whether God knows about anything. The question is whether something we know about, in the way in which we are acquainted with it, by its very nature (the nature we grasp by intuition, without a real account for it) must not only exist in the mind of God, but exist in God’s mind necessarily, even in case he does not create.
Thanks,
Nate