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The Fore-Imaginable Future of Gnosis and Noesis

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

I. Although the future cannot really be foreseen, I can fore-imagine the following as the future of Gnosis and Noesis over, say, the coming two or three months.

First, I will be responding, slowly, to the several responses my efforts at understanding the first three of Thomas Aquinas’s “Five Ways” of demonstrating the existence of God have elicited. They include:

Edward Feser, “Edwards on infinite causal series,” Edward Feser, August 23, 2010.

James Chastek, “For the self-evidence of the impossibility of infinite causal regress,” Just Thomism, August 26, 2010.

Brandon Watson, “Modality and the Third Way, Siris, August 26, 2010; “Modality and the Third Way II, Siris, August 25, 2010.

The “slowly” in the above “I will be responding, slowly” is due to two circumstances. For one thing, I need to think through my responses to those responses; I want to get things right. For another, the fall semester will be underway very shortly and I am already and necessarily devoting myself first and foremost to the courses I am teaching, one an introductory course in Islam and the other a course in Islamic theology. Rest assured, however, that it is my firm intention to keep the “I will be responding” in the above “I will be responding, slowly” operative. I have begun work on my response to the Feser piece.

II. The second thing to be said about the fore-imagined future of Gnosis and Noesis over the coming months is that it will be sometimes competing and sometimes cooperating with another blog I have begun, With Respect to Islam, for my blogging time, energy, and thought.

With Respect to Islam is intended primarily, but by no means exclusively, for this semester’s students. I say, “but by no means exclusively” for two reasons. The one is that I believe that the great majority of the world’s citizens, Muslim as well as non-Muslim, can benefit from having a greater knowledge and understanding of Islam. This is what With Respect to Islam aims to provide. The other is that I believe that the students in my courses can benefit from reading and reflecting on knowledge and opinion other than those that are given expression by their professor or fellow classmates. So, if you are at all interested in the topics of Islam or Islamic theology, please feel free to drop by, read, and even contribute to With Respect to Islam by posting your comments.

A number of the topics that will come up within the two courses will be topics that fall within the purview of Gnosis and Noesis, sometimes in the case of the topics that show up in the introductory course, but often in the case of those that show up in the course in Islamic theology. When this happens, I will let readers of Gnosis and Noesis know, either by a joint posting or by posting a notice that there is a relevant post in With Respect to Islam.

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Posted in Gnosticism | 1 Comment »

Is Islam a Religion?

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

In a July 26th report on its blog, “Political Broadsheet,” CBS informs us that:

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, a Republican competing in the GOP gubernatorial primary, said on July 14th that he is unsure if Islam is really a religion, suggesting that it could be a “cult.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011712-503544.html

I was struck by this report because I have recently come to ask myself if the view of Islam that Ramsey’s comment represents might be emerging into some prominence among conservatives opposed to Islam. It was, for example, quite explicitly raised in Bill Vallicella’s blog, The Maverick Philosopher, in a July 20th post, “A Mosque Grows Near Brooklyn.”

Our maverick philosopher offers us therein “something to think about”:

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion. But to apply the Amendment, one must raise and answer the logically prior question, What is a religion? I rather doubt that the Founders had Islam in mind when they ensured the right to the free exercise of religion. So we need to ask the question whether Islam counts as a religion in a sufficiently robust sense of the term to justify affording it full First Amendment protection. To the extent that Muslims work to infiltrate and overturn our institutions and way of life, to the extent that they violate church-state separation, to the extent that they demand special privileges and refuse to assimilate, to that extent they remove themselves from any right to First Amendment protection.
(http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/)

Now in his “Addendum and Corrigendum” of July 22nd, he quickly acknowledged that his “doubt that the Founders had Islam in mind when they ensured the right to the free exercise of religion” was not well-founded.

I made a mistake in the last paragraph that I will now correct. Although the sentence “I rather doubt that the Founders had Islam in mind when they ensured the right to the free exercise of religion” was true when I wrote it, expressing as it did a fact about my mental state, I now see that it is simply false that the Founders did not have Islam in mind. See “The Founding Fathers and Islam.” I thank Mark Whitten for the correction.
(REH note: see http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html)

He continued:

But I do not retract my main point, which is that we ought to give careful thought to the question whether, as I put it above, “Islam counts as a religion in a sufficiently robust sense of the term to justify affording it full First Amendment protection. “ I am raising this as a question. So-called liberals, however, being politically correct and therefore opposed to truly open discussion, will no doubt haul out their list of abusive epithets: racist, xenophobe, Islamophobe . . . .

His question of “whether … Islam counts as a religion in a sufficiently robust sense of the term to justify affording it full First Amendment protection,” is of course an exceedingly important one. It is also one that is very difficult to answer, as is quickly revealed by a perusal of, say:

“In Search of a Legal Definition of Religion: Lessons from
U.S. Federal Jurisprudence”
(http://americanaejournal.hu/vol5no1/blutman)

“The Complexity of Religion and the Definition of “Religion” in International Law,”
(http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss16/gunn.shtml)

It strikes me, on the one hand, that the legal definition of “religion” evident in the following passage would have to include Islam, unless it could be shown that the profession of belief in God by Muslims is not sincere.

To determine whether an action of the federal or state government infringes upon a person’s right to freedom of religion, the court must decide what qualifies as religion or religious activities for purposes of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has interpreted religion to mean a sincere and meaningful belief that occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to the place held by God in the lives of other persons. The religion or religious concept need not include belief in the existence of God or a supreme being to be within the scope of the First Amendment.
(http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Religion)

I feel bound to ask Bill how, if given this understanding, Islam could fail to legally qualify as a religion. Or, if he does not accept this understanding, I have to ask what alternative understanding he would offer in its place that would include Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, “affording” them “full First Amendment protection,” and not similarly include Islam.

As, however, the Maverick’s brother in philosophy (albeit, I fear, in his eyes also a “scumbag of a liberal,” to use the epithet he used in his July 21st post, “Will Liberals Ever Retire the Race Card?”), I am also interested in the philosophical question that he raised earlier, “What is a religion?”

I have to admit that I’m at a bit of a loss to answer the question in such a way as to include all and only religions. I’m fairly sure that an adequate definition would have to point to a set of ultimate beliefs, a set of values more or less in correlation with those beliefs, and a set of guidelines, enjoining some and forbidding other activities, more or less in correlation with those values and those beliefs. Vague enough, huh?

So I also want to ask Bill what he might offer as a philosophical definition of religion, one that would include, say, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And then I will want to ask whether that definition does not similarly include Islam.

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Posted in Definitions, Gnosticism, Islam, Religion | 3 Comments »

Something of an Aside: On Some Universal Propositions about Muslims

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

The Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella, has to my mind one of the best philosophical blogs to be found; in the past week, for just a couple of instances, he has posted a couple of very interesting pieces on set theory, “Sets, Pluralities, and the Axiom of Pair” and “The Existence of Infinite Sets.” The man understands and appreciates rigorous thinking. It is for this reason that I was taken a bit aback when I read his July 20th post, “A Mosque Grows Near Brooklyn.”

Many things are said in the post, but for now I’ll focus on just one paragraph. The paragraph reads:

Muslims aren’t very ‘liberal,’ are they? They are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior. Now the touchstone of classical liberalism is toleration. Toleration is good, but it has limits. (See the posts in the category Toleration.) So why should we tolerate them when they work to undermine our way of life? The U. S. Constitution is not a suicide pact. We are under no obligation to tolerate the intolerant.

With a full understanding that to point to the utterly obvious is to risk being seen as simply obnoxious, Let me observe that he has made three universal statements about Muslims in the course of that paragraph. First, then, surely the rhetorical question, “Muslims aren’t very ‘liberal,’ are they?” is actually an expression of the proposition:

No Muslims are very liberal.

or even, perhaps, in view of the sentence which immediately follows:

No Muslims are liberal.

There is second, then, that immediately following sentence, “They are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior.” I am hard-pressed to take it as meaning anything other than:

All Muslims are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior.

Third, there is the complex question, “So why should we tolerate them when they work to undermine our way of life?” It is a complex question in that it assumes that they, i.e., Muslims, are working to “undermine our way of life,” i.e., that:

All Muslims are working to undermine our way of life.

Now I personally know a number of Muslims. I can assure you that at least one of them is very liberal, at least one of them is tolerant in attitudes and behavior, and at least one of them is not working to “undermine our way of life.” The three universal statements that I see staring out at us from the quoted paragraph are all then false, as even the most rudimentary acquaintance with old Aristotle’s logic and its “square of opposition” would have you see.

On the other hand, of course, I willingly admit, again on the basis of personal experience, that at least one Muslim is not very liberal, at least one is intolerant in attitudes and behavior, and at least is working to “undermine our way of life,” albeit in, yes, legal ways.

Of course, we can’t leave things like that, simply saying that, while at least one Muslim is liberal, tolerant, or supportive of “our way of life,” at least one Muslim is not, for these are serious matters. But serious matters require serious treatment. The matters of the liberality, the toleration, and the support for “our way of life” of Muslims therefore require serious treatment, and first and foremost some serious social science, inquiring into how many Muslims are or are not liberal, tolerant, and supportive of “our way of life,” in what ways, and to what degree.

I agree with what I take to be the sentiment expressed by the last sentence of the paragraph, “We are under no obligation to tolerate the intolerant,” albeit with the proviso that more specification is sorely needed. I’ll put it more strongly: we are under an obligation not to tolerate the intolerant. Now surely one of the first things that someone who likes to think of himself as a philosopher should do in accordance with that obligation is challenge any intolerant position that he encounters, especially if it one held by a philosopher. Thinking, then, that our maverick philosopher has, on the points at hand, at least if I have understood him correctly, become one among the intolerant, I am challenging him to present the evidence that would back up his assertions, implicit or otherwise.

The Maverick Philosopher can be read at: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/.

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Posted in Gnosticism, Islam, Religion | No Comments »

Gnosis and Noesis Returns: the First Way of Aquinas

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

(1) It may well have been to the relief of some and not noticed by far more that some months ago postings to this blog ceased to appear. One primary reason for this was I had come to the realization that the theory of gnosis of Seyyed Hossein Nasr that had de facto been the blog’s primary focus has an absolutely unacceptable thesis as its basis. That thesis, which I dubbed theomonism, is the conjoint thesis that (a) there is ultimately but one reality and (b) that one reality is God.

True it is that that thesis has the virtue of making the oneness with God, that Nasr’s version of mysticism understands us, if we are well-advised, to be seeking, be an immediate and evident truth: if both there exists but God and we exist, then we are but God.

But it also has the vice of being false, for it is absolutely evident that there are many real and really distinct things, beings, or existents; you are real and I am real, but I am not you. And, equally obvious, neither are you one with or identical to God nor am I. Being then quite simply false, the theomonist thesis can in no way serve as the foundation for any rationally acceptable gnosticism.

(2) Still I am, with this post and the immediately previous one, resuming my quest for an answer to the question that gave rise to this blog, that of determining whether or not it is possible for a human being to attain, in this life, the immediate knowledge of the divine that “gnosis,” as I with Nasr use the term, refers to. Now, however, I am going to begin much closer to the beginning, with, that is, a question which is logically prior to that of whether gnosis is humanly possible, the question of whether or not God exists.

Most immediately, I am going to begin with a presentation and an analysis of the proof, or attempted proof, of the existence of God offered by Thomas Aquinas and known as the “First Way;” this is, as I’m sure you know, the first of the five ways in which, Thomas tells us in his Summa Theologiae, God can be shown to exist. There is a handy English translation of Thomas’s exposition of his First Way available to you online at (you may have to paste the following URL into your browser):

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP002.html#FPQ2A3THEP1.

In today’s post I want to make fully explicit the logic of the Summa’s version of the argument. In the next post I will make fully explicit a major problem in the argument, not only as it is presented by Thomas but also as it is presented by Edward Feser, one of today’s foremost and most publically visible followers of Aquinas, in his The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008).

Thomas begins his exposition of the argument by telling us that “[t]he first and more manifest way [in which the existence of God can be proven] is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion.”

Noting, with Feser (p. 91), that “‘motion’ is the traditional Aristotelian term for what nowadays we’d just call ‘change’,” let us, then, set down the following as a premise of Thomas’s argument:

Some things are in motion.

That absolutely unassailable premise in place, Thomas continues, telling us that “whatever is in motion is put in motion by another.” Let’s set that down as another premise of the argument:

Whatever is in motion is put in motion by another.

This premise is not quite so immune to being assailed as the previous one and Thomas spends the next ten or so sentences attempting to justify it. For our present purposes, however, we can leave consideration of that piece of argumentation to a later post and pick up the main argument where Thomas himself picks it up, when he says, “Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again.”

We can observe that, in raising the possibility that “that by which it [the thing in motion] is put in motion [is] itself put in motion” as but the antecedent in a conditional statement, Thomas may well have had in mind the opposite possibility, that “that by which it [the thing in motion] is put in motion [is] not itself put in motion.” In so doing he may well also have had in mind the following disjunction:

Either that by which the thing in motion is put in motion is itself put in motion by another
or that by which the thing in motion is put in motion is not itself put in motion by another.

Either the former or the latter has to be the case, though not both. Now if the latter is the case, then it is also the case that there is an unmoved mover which, Thomas will eventually and no doubt too optimistically go on to say, “everyone understands to be God.” It seems plausible, that is, that Thomas had the inference from the latter possibility to the existence of an unmoved mover very much in mind and thought it to have been sufficiently obvious to not require an explicit exposition.

At any rate, Thomas went on to deal with the former, and remaining, possibility, that, again, “that by which it [the thing in motion] is put in motion [is] itself put in motion.” He states:

If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again.

This statement presents us with a mover/moved series that goes back, or regresses, from one mover that is moved by a previous one to that previous one and then to that previous one’s mover, etc. This obviously raises the question of whether or not this series goes back or regresses infinitely. Thomas tells us that it cannot, offering the following rather condensed sequence of arguments:

But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

Let’s start by noting that the argumentation falls into two, let us call them, movements. The first movement, concluding that the mover/moved series does not go back to infinity, is given expression in the first sentence, from “But this…” to “…by the first mover” and illustrated by the moving staff and hand. The second movement, concluding that there is an unmoved mover, is given expression in the second sentence, from “Therefore …” to “…to be God.”

Rendered more fully explicit, the first movement begins with the hypothetical syllogism:

If the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then there is no first mover.

If there is no first mover, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

Therefore, if the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

He does not make explicit the next few arguments that are needed to reach the conclusion he has to reach. But what they have to be, or have at least to be equivalent to, to reach the conclusion he is after seems to me to be incontrovertible.

One of the needed arguments takes the form of another hypothetical syllogism:

If the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

If there are no other, subsequent, movers, then no things are in motion.

Therefore, if the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then no things are in motion.

The consequent of that conclusion, that “no things are in motion,” contradicts the first premise, introduced above, that “some things are in motion.” We have therein the sole premise of the second argument needed, an instance of the argument form known as “double negation”:

Some things are in motion.
Therefore, it is not the case that no things are in motion.

The third argument needed, a modus ponendo ponens argument, has the two conclusions most immediately arrived at as its premises:

If the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then no things are in motion.
It is not the case that no things are in motion.
Therefore, it is not the case that the mover/moved series goes back to infinity.

Now, to the second movement: we introduced above and made use of the following premise:

If the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then there is no first mover.

The converse is also true:

If there is no first mover, then the mover/moved series goes back to infinity.

The fourth argument needed, also a modus ponendo ponens argument, has as it first premise the latter statement and as its second the last of the conclusions arrived at.

If there is no first mover, then the mover/moved series goes back to infinity.
It is not the case that the mover/moved series goes back to infinity.
Therefore, it is not the case that there is no first mover.

The fifth argument is, quite obviously, another case of double negation:

It is not the case that there is no first mover.
Therefore, there is a first mover.

Note that the series of arguments thus far set forth have concluded only that there is a first mover, i.e., there is at least one. They have not ruled out there being many. In what follows, I will use the expression “the first mover under consideration” to refer to the one alone the existence of which the arguments have, if sound, demonstrated, with no assumption, at least not yet, that there is also at most one first mover.

That said, we’re not quite done yet, though the remaining steps are obvious. One is:

If the first mover under consideration is a moved mover, then it is posterior to a prior mover.
If the first mover under consideration is posterior to a prior mover, it is not a first mover.
Therefore, if the first mover under consideration is a moved mover, then it is not a first mover.

There is no need to prove that:

The first mover under consideration is a first mover.

The pertinent double negation argument is obvious:

The first mover under consideration is a first mover.
Therefore, it is not the case that the first mover under consideration is not a first mover.

Next, another modus ponendo ponens:

If the first mover under consideration is a moved mover, then it is not a first mover.
It is not the case that the first mover under consideration is not a first mover.
Therefore, the first mover under consideration is not a moved mover.

Finally:

If the first mover under consideration is not a moved mover, then it is an unmoved mover.
The first mover under consideration is not a moved mover.
Therefore, the first mover under consideration is an unmoved mover.

It is quite evident that all of the foregoing arguments are perfectly valid. That is, if their premises are true, then their conclusions must also be true. It is not, however, quite as evident that all of the foregoing arguments are perfectly sound. That is, it is not fully evident that all of the premises invoked are true and it is therefore not fully evident that all of the conclusions arrived at are true.

The next post will be devoted to the way in which the following critical premise is not evidently true.

If there is no first mover, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

Please note, that in having said that the premise “is not evidently true,” I have not said that it “is evidently not true.”

In an earlier post, the Logic and the Argument from Evil: Logic of September 12th, 2009, I spelled out for those not familiar with the terminology of logic the basics needed to understand the foregoing. In the succeeding post, Logic and the Argument from Evil: The Argument, I used an obviously valid, but not so obviously sound, argument against the existence of God to illustrate the way I think logic should be put to work.

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Posted in Existence of God, Gnosticism, The First Way, Theology | 9 Comments »

A Few Steps Ahead of Myself: A Note on Infinite Causal Regress

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

I intend, in a forthcoming post or two, to say a few words about the lack of postings over lo! these past many risings and settings of the sun. For now, however, eager to get restarted, I want to post in this blog a criticism of an argument against infinite causal regress posted, without comment, in “Turretin on Infinite Regress,” in an interesting blog, Siris, at:

http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2010/05/turretin-on-infinite-regress.html.

Some preliminaries:

First, I am commenting on the Turretin post within my own blog because Siris has a 500 character limit on comments.

Second, the Turretin in question is, according to Wikipedia, one François Turretini (1623–1687), a Swiss-Italian Calvinist theologian.

Third, the argument against the thesis of infinite causal regress is perforce one in favor of the thesis that there is a first cause, i.e., a being which is the cause of everything else while not itself being caused by anything else, i.e., God. You are most likely familiar with the most famous version of the argument, that of Thomas Aquinas.

Preliminaries thus dispensed with:

“Turretin on Infinite Regress” takes the form of a single paragraph. I quote, reformulate, and critique here that only which is found in the first half of the paragraph.

The first half of the paragraph reads:

Neither can an infinite series of producing causes be allowed because in causes there must necessarily be some order as to prior and posterior. But an infinite series of producing causes rejects all order, for then no cause would be first; rather all would be middle, having some preceding cause.

My reformulation, the purpose of which is to more clearly exhibit the formal structure of its argumentation, reads:

1. Only series having a first member are series ordered as to prior and posterior.
Therefore, all series ordered as to prior and posterior are series having a first member.

2. So, all series ordered as to prior and posterior are series having a first member.
But all series of producing causes are series ordered as to prior and posterior.
Therefore, all series of producing causes are series having a first member.

3. But no series having a first member are infinite series.
And all series of producing causes are series having a first member.
Therefore, no series of producing causes are infinite series.

My critique: that the three arguments are perfectly valid is perfectly evident, for there is no way in which their several premises can be true and their conclusions false. That they are not just valid but also sound, however, is not, for the premise of the first argument is, it seems to me, false and all premises of a sound argument must be true. For a series to be ordered as to prior and posterior it is not necessary that it have a first member; it is necessary only that all the members be, well, ordered as to prior and posterior.

We are not, I conclude, forced by Turretin’s argument to accept as true the conclusion that “no series of producing causes are infinite series” or the further conclusion that all series of producing causes are finite, i.e., terminate in a first uncaused cause.

A postliminary: the text of Thomas Aquinas’s best known arguments for the existence of God, the so-called “five ways,” are to be found in the third article of the second question of the first part (prima pars) of his Summa Theologiae. A link to an excellent online translation is:

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP002.html#FPQ2A3THEP1.

I will be using Aquinas’s and related arguments, both pro the existence of God and con, as the springboard for an exploration of the question of whether or not there is a God. There being a God, after all, is a necessary condition of there being a positive answer to the question of whether or not it is humanly possible to have a direct knowledge of the divine in this life, the question which motivated the bringing of this blog into existence.

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Nasr’s Doctrine of Humankind’s “Fall”

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

In my last planned and on-topic post, the “The Mutual ‘Inness’ of the Human and the Divine” of September 30th, I said that in the next planned and on-topic post I would have something to say about the “fall” and our having “become forgetful beings” that we had seen Nasr speaking about. As has been the case before, my promise was some 200% or more of what it should have been. In this post, then, I will deal only with the “fall,” and then not completely, letting the asserted fact of our having “become forgetful beings” wait until a later post.

Nasr brought up the “fall” and our resultant “forgetfulness” in the following passage (The Garden of Truth, pp. 5-6):

The answer to the question “who are we?” is related in a principial manner to our ultimate reality in God, a reality that we have now forgotten as a result of the fall from our original and primordial state and the subsequent decay in the human condition caused by the downward flow of time. We have become forgetful beings, no longer knowing who we are and therefore what our purpose is in this life. But our reality in God, who resides at the depths of our being, is still there. We need to awaken to this reality and to realize our true identity, that is, to know who we really are.

Taking up the cause, the “fall,” and for the time being leaving aside the effect, the “forgetfulness,” as a first observation, we need to note that Nasr’s “fall” is not to be identified with the “fall” of orthodox Christian doctrine. The latter, for one thing, is thought of as the result of the disobedience of the first humans, Adam and Eve. As Nasr notes later in The Garden of Truth (p. 54), however:

Islam does not believe in original sin, but it does emphasize our fall from our primordial state, that primordial nature we still bear deep within ourselves.

Rather, the “fall” of which Nasr speaks corresponds, in at least one central respect, to the creation of mainstream orthodox Christian and mainstream orthodox Muslim theology. That is, just as, in the latter understanding, it is with creation that we begin our incarnate or embodied existence, so, in Nasr’s, it is with the “fall” that we begin our incarnate or embodied existence. One point of difference, of course, is that, in the perspective of the mainstream orthodox theologies, we begin our existence tout court when we begin our incarnate or embodied existence. For Nasr’s Sufism, on the other hand, our existence tout court does not begin when we begin our incarnate or embodied existence; our existence tout court is without beginning.

Cutting a bit more deeply, according to the one view, we are created, ultimately, ex nihilo or out of nothing. But according to the other, we need to keep in mind, there is ultimately only one being, God (as was underlined in the June 28th post, “Nasr’s Gnosis and ‘Theomonism’”). Our fall, then, from our “primordial state,” in which state we were in fact identical with God and so existing, must therefore be a fall from a state of existing to one of not existing, ad nihilo.

Cutting a bit more deeply still, for the two mainstream orthodox theologies, creation and its result are good. But this is not so for Nasr’s gnosticism. In the continuation of the passage from The Garden of Truth (p. 54) quoted above, we find Nasr saying:

We are separated from this [primordial] nature by layers of forgetfulness and imperfection, by veils that can only be removed by God’s Help. And it is precisely these veils, or ontological separation from our Source, that result in what theologically is called evil. It is to these veils with which we usually associate ourselves that the Sufi saint of Basra, Rābi‘ah, was referring when she said, “Alas, my son, thine existence is a sin wherewith no other sin can be compared.”
Metaphysically one can explain the reality of evil as separation from the absolute Good.

Now, we can see that in Nasr’s ontology the thesis that there is but one existent entails the thesis that nothing other than the one is existent; in other words, not being identical with the one existent, God, is simply not being. We might well expect that, in his axiology, i.e., in his theory of value or of the good and bad, the parallel thesis that there is but one good would entail with the thesis that nothing other than the one good is good; in other words, not being identical with the one good, God, is simply not being good. Nasr actually goes further: his thesis is that everything other than the one good is, not merely not good, but evil.

As I have said at least once or twice before in the course of examining Nasr’s version of Sufism, questions abound, even if we grant him his extraordinary theomonist ontology. One that I think should be asked is that of by whose decision and agency we are changed from the primordial state to the fallen state, ours or God’s. It seems to me to be inexplicable in either case.

Another question that I think should be asked is that of to what good purpose or end we have become fallen. As the very term “fall” suggests, we are in are in a worse situation as fallen than we were beforehand. In this respect his “fall” contrasts rather unfavorably with the perspective of the mainstream orthodox theologies, for in being created we have at least gained existence.

We need to remember, of course, that the “fall” does not represent the end of the “journey” of which, in the June 30th post, “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 1,” we saw Nasr speak (The Garden of Truth, p. 6):

According to Sufi metaphysics, and in fact other metaphysical traditions in general, all that exists comes from that Reality which is at once Beyond-Being and Being, and ultimately all things return to that Source. In the language of Islamic thought, including both philosophy and Sufism, the first part of this journey of all beings from the Source is called the “arc of descent” and the second part back to the Source the “arc of ascent.” Within this vast cosmic wayfaring we find ourselves here and now on earth as human beings. Moreover, our life here in this world is a journey within that greater cosmic journey of all existents back to the Source of all existence.

This does not help. We are told that “ultimately all things return to that Source.” From this it follows that ultimately all humans return to that Source. After pausing to note that it really follows that all humans return to that Source, we surely have to ask what has been gained from this “journey” “through the “arc of descent,” “our life here in this world,” and the “arc of ascent”? We have simply returned to the starting point.

There must be more.

In future posts we will have occasion to delve more thoroughly into Nasr’s axiology of the good and the bad. A more fundamental inquiry will also need to be made into his monistic or theomonistic ontology. Most readers will have already taken note of the kinship that it has with that of the Parmenides and his rejection of the reality of change and multiplicity. I am beginning to gather my thoughts on the achievements, and the opposite, of that great philosophical pioneer.

***

If you wish, you can easily purchase The Garden of Truth through Amazon.com by clicking on:

The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition

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In the Beginning Were We: The Matter of Our Pre-Eternal Existence

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

In my previous planned and on-topic post, the “The Mutual “Inness” of the Human and the Divine” of September 30, I said that in this post I would “have something to say about the ‘fall’ and [about] our having ‘become forgetful beings’” that I quoted Nasr speaking about. I think now, however, that before I do that, it will be better if in this post I take up Nasr’s thesis that we have a “pre-eternal existence,” a thesis that he brought up before he brought up the “fall” and our “forgetfulness.” Our temporal existence, after all, would be the existence we have after the fall in question.

Nasr brings up our “pre-eternal existence” in the following paragraph (The Garden of Truth, p. 5), already quoted in the previous post.

Not only were we created by God, but we have the root of our existence here and now in Him. When we bore witness to His Lordship as mentioned in the Quranic verse, “Am I not your Lord?” the world and all that is in it were not as yet created. Even now we have our pre-eternal existence in the Divine Presence, and we have made an eternal covenant with God, which remains valid beyond the contingencies of our earthly life and beyond the realm of space and time in which we now find ourselves.

He has not, at least up to this point in The Garden of Truth, offered us a full spelling out of just what “pre-eternal” means in his vocabulary. But it is clear, from the claim that “[w]hen we bore witness to [God…] the world and all that is in it were not as yet created,” that we existed, that we were, when creation took place. Let me hypothesize, that is, that he holds that, enjoying a “pre-eternal existence,” we existed “in the beginning.” Or, let me put it the other way around: “in the beginning were we.”

I am, of course, hypothesizing that there is a parallel between Nasr’s understanding of human beings, even in our plurality (thus the “we”), and the understanding of the “Word,” i.e., Jesus, expressed in the Gospel of John, 1:1 and 1:2.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

(I have used the “New International Version” translation, at: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/search=John+1&version=NIV)

I don’t know to what degree the parallel is intentional or to what degree it can be extended. I have no reason, at least as of now, to think that Nasr thought that we human beings, even in our plurality, have a role in creation that the Gospel of John 1:3 assigns to the “Word” or Jesus:

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Yet, it seems clear, in the beginning were we. And there is more. As the Nasr paragraph quoted above quite unambiguously says, we clearly were and are with God, “in the Divine Presence.” There is moreover, the thesis of Nasr, which I have dubbed theomonism, according to which there is, “ultimately,” but one and only one real being and that being is God. Someone adhering to that thesis is saying (on the further assumption that we in fact exist) that we are God. (I discuss Nasr’s theomonism in the “The Mutual “Inness” of the Human and the Divine” of September 30th and earlier in the “Nasr’s Gnosis and “Theomonism” of June 28th, 2009.)

Nasr, in other words and in summary, could have said:

In the beginning were we, and we were with God, and we were God. We were with God in the beginning.

There is yet more. In a previously discussed (in the “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 6″ of August 23) paragraph (The Garden of Truth, p. 7), Nasr himself draws explicit attention to the parallel:

Now, no matter how we seek to go back to the origin of our consciousness, we cannot reach its beginning in time, and the question again arises what our consciousness, its origin, and its end are. The spiritual practices of every authentic path, including Sufism, enable those who follow and practice them earnestly and under the appropriate conditions to gain new levels of consciousness and ultimately to become aware that consciousness has no beginning in time (but only in God) because “in the beginning was consciousness,” and it has no temporal end because “in the end is consciousness.”

Questions abound. What is the relationship of the consciousness of which he speaks and the conscious being(s) having that consciousness? What is the relationship of that consciousness to the Word of Christian theology? What is the relationship of that consciousness to Muhammad? What is the relationship of the Word of Christian theology to Muhammad? Etc. I am not yet prepared to answer them (though I have my hypotheses). But you may rest assured that I aim to do so in the future.

In my next planned and on-topic post, I will have something to say about Nasr’s theses of our “fall,” I assume we may put it, “out of” God and our having “become forgetful beings” as a consequence that I raised in the September 30th post.

***

If you wish, you can easily purchase The Garden of Truth through Amazon.com by clicking on:

The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition

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The Mutual “Inness” of the Human and the Divine

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

In my previous planned and on-topic post, the “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 6” of August 23, I distinguished between two distinct, as I was then thinking, understandings, of the nature of God, the human, and the relation of the human to God, as two distinct potential metaphysical foundations for gnosticism.

One of the two understandings, I said, is contained in the thesis that I have identified (in the June 28th, 2009, post, “Nasr’s Gnosis and ‘Theomonism’”) as theomonism, the thesis that the divine being is the one and only real being. In “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 6” I offered the following argument against that thesis, an argument the validity of which is quite evident and the soundness of which is, if not quite as quite evident, immediately adjacent to being so.

1. If there is anything that is in any way other than the one and only divine being (if such latter there indeed is), then the one and only divine being is not the only being.

2. There is something that is in some way other than the one and only divine being (I offer my own being as evidence; you can offer yours).

3. Therefore, the one and only divine being is not the only being.

It follows that, since it is false, the thesis of theomonism cannot serve as a basis for the doctrine of gnosticism.

I closed “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 6” by saying that in the post that ended up being the present one I would “take a look at the other of the two distinct understandings … as a second potential metaphysical foundation for gnosticism, different [from theomonism] but also figuring prominently in The Garden of Truth.” This understanding, encapsulated in the title of today’s post, “The Mutual ‘Inness’ of the Human and the Divine,” can be put a bit more explicitly as: God is in us and we are in God.

Nasr’s statement of the thesis of the mutual “inness” of the human and the divine is contained in a sequence of three densely packed paragraphs (The Garden of Truth, pp. 5-6). In the first of these three paragraphs, we read:

[Sufism] provides, within the spiritual universe of the Islamic tradition, the light necessary to illuminate the dark corners of our soul and the keys to open the doors to the hidden recesses of our being so that we can journey within and know ourselves, this knowledge leading ultimately to the knowledge of God, who resides in our heart/center.

By journeying within ourselves, we journey to God, who resides in, and therefore is in, our “heart/center.”

The next paragraph distinguishes between the being in God which we both have eternally had and even now have and the created being which we also have now. It reads:

Not only were we created by God, but we have the root of our existence here and now in Him. When we bore witness to His Lordship as mentioned in the Quranic verse, “Am I not your Lord?” the world and all that is in it were not as yet created. Even now we have our pre-eternal existence in the Divine Presence, and we have made an eternal covenant with God, which remains valid beyond the contingencies of our earthly life and beyond the realm of space and time in which we now find ourselves.

That is, we have been and are in God.

Besides introducing two other key themes, that of a “fall” and that of our having “become forgetful beings,” the next paragraph confirms both of the beings in, ours in God (“our reality in God”) and God’s in us (“God, who resides at the depths of our being”).

The answer to the question “who are we?”is related in a principial manner to our ultimate reality in God, a reality that we have now forgotten as a result of the fall from our original and primordial state and the subsequent decay in the human condition caused by the downward flow of time. We have become forgetful beings, no longer knowing who we are and therefore what our purpose is in this life. But our reality in God, who resides at the depths of our being, is still there. We need to awaken to this reality and to realize our true identity, that is, to know who we really are.

Now to the point of the present post and the reason why I have had second thoughts about holding that the thesis of the mutual “inness” is distinct from that of theomonism: if by “in” is meant “entirely in” and if the sense in which the one is in the other is the same as the sense in which the other is in the one, then if there is an existent a and an existent b such that a is in b and b is in a, then a and b must be at least co-extensive. And the thesis that the human, in its true identity, is at least co-extensive with the divine is consistent with, indeed implied by, the theomonist thesis.

It seems to me that both the theomonist thesis that only the divine is real and thus that, if we are real, we are identical with the divine and the thesis of mutual “inness,” such that we and God are at least co-extensive, provide all too simple answers to the question of how humans can enjoy an immediate and direct knowledge of the divine, the “beatific vision,” in this life. If identity or co-extensiveness were sufficient conditions of knowledge, then the coffee cup to which I have turned so frequently this morning would know itself.

In the next planned and on-topic post, I will have something to say about the “fall” and our having “become forgetful beings” that Nasr speaks about.

***

If you wish, you can easily purchase The Garden of Truth through Amazon.com by clicking on:

The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition

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Logic and the Argument from Evil: The Argument

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

In my previous post I set forth those rudiments of logic that are needed if one is to see that the validity of the argument from evil against the existence of an absolutely perfect god, but not its soundness, is perfectly evident. In this post I will put those rudiments of logic to use.

David Hume, in Part X of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, after giving due credit for it to Epicurus, presents the argument from evil in the form of a series of questions:

Is he [i.e., God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

If we put things in a more strictly argumentative form and so revised as to bring in divine knowledge, we have:

If the perfect (and therefore perfect in knowledge, perfect in love, and perfect in power) God exists, then evil cannot exist. But evil does exist. Therefore, the perfect God does not exist.

It is only, however, when we spell it out as follows, expressing both a previously unexpressed but necessary premise and the inferences made to reach the conclusion, that we reach the degree of explicitness that makes its validity patently evident.

1. If the perfect God exists, then evil cannot exist. (Premise)
2. Evil does exist. (Premise)
3. If evil does exist, then evil can exist. (Premise)
4. Therefore, evil can exist. (From propositions 3 and2, by Modus Ponens)
5. Therefore, it is not the case that evil cannot exist. (From proposition 4, by Double Negation)
6. Therefore, it is not the case that the perfect God exists. (From propositions 1 and5,
by Modus Tollens)

That the argument is a valid argument is utterly evident. It is not, however, equally evident that it is sound, because it is not evident that all of the premises are true. One might, it is true, want to say that the third premise, according to which, “if evil does exist, then evil can exist,” is quite evident, for whatever is actual has to be possible. But one might also want to say that it is not evident, for it involves the metaphysics of modality, i.e., of actuality, possibility, necessity, and impossibility, and, one might want to say, the adoption of that metaphysics requires its own justification.

Surely, however, the second premise, that “evil does exist,” cannot simply be taken as evident. A philosophical materialist, holding that only that which can be known through the physical sciences is to be considered real, would deny that evil or even, more simply, the bad has an objective existence; no review, no matter how assiduous, of the index of a physics textbook would turn up either the term “evil” or the term “bad. Some significant argumentation, perhaps a great deal of argumentation would be needed, it seems, to render it evident that evil or the bad, or for that matter the good, exists objectively.

The truth of the first premise is also not fully evident, though neither is its falsehood. At this stage in my thinking on the matter, I will have to content myself with saying that there have been, over the centuries, a great many efforts having as their goal the demonstrating either that the premise is true or that it is false and that, to my knowledge, there has been complete success in neither direction.

I plan, at various points in a fairly indefinite future, to engage in a thorough study of axiomatics, the theory or science of “value,” or the good and the bad. Only then, in my judgment, will I be able to say anything of real worth about the truth or falsity of the first two premises of the argument from evil.

Post Scriptum: If we use “K” to abbreviate “the divine is perfect in knowledge,” “L” to abbreviate “the divine is perfect in love,” “P” to abbreviate “the divine is perfect in power,” and “E” to abbreviate “evil exists,” the following truth table, representing all pertinent possibilities, obtains:

KLPE
TTTT
TTTF
TTFT
TTFF
TFTT
TFTF
TFFT
TFFF
FTTT
FTTF
FTFT
FTFF
FFTT
FFTF
FFFT
FFFF

(I apologize for not yet knowing how to set forth truth-table in a more readable form within the blog.)

The first row, that of TTTT, represents the classical theistic view, whether that of Christianity or that of Islam. The second row represents the view that attempts to solve the problem of evil by denying that evil exists, while retaining the thesis of a god perfect in knowledge, love, and power. The remaining rows represent attempts at solving the problem by denying one, two or all three of the ways at hand in which the divine might be perfect. Thus the third row represents the view, which would be one of a liberal theology, which holds that there is a perfect god, one perfect in knowledge and love, though not in power. And the fifth row represents the view, which would be one of a conservative theology, which holds that there is a perfect god, one perfect in knowledge and power, though not in love.

The fifteenth and sixteenth rows represent two versions or atheism, one of which does and one of which doesn’t admit the objective reality of evil. The fourteenth row represents a truly terrifying version of theism, with a god that is nothing but unguided power.

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Logic and the Argument from Evil: Logic

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

In my previous post I said that in this one I would present the argument from evil, against the existence of an absolutely perfect god, as an illustration of how an argument can be such that its validity, but not its soundness, is perfectly evident. My plans have changed, but only slightly. That is, in this post I will spell out those rudiments of logic which are necessary to the ready seeing that the validity, but not the soundness, of the argument from evil is perfectly evident. In the next post, next but already posted, I will put that logic to use. If, therefore, you are familiar with the logician’s distinction between validity and soundness and with such types of argument as Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens, and Double Negation, you may want to pass over this post and proceed directly to the next one.

First, then, an argument is a set of propositions one of which, the conclusion, is said to be the case because the other or others, the premise or premises, is or are the case. For example:

If I am in North Andover, then I am in Massachusetts.
I am in North Andover.
Therefore, I am in Massachusetts.

I hasten to add that here the name “North Andover” refers to the North Andover that is a town on the Merrimack River, and that the name “Massachusetts” refers to the state in which at least the lower portion of the Merrimack is located. I do so in order to avoid the possible confusion with another North Andover and another Massachusetts, should such there be.

Next, a valid argument is an argument the conclusion of which follows necessarily from the premise or premises. More fully, a valid argument is an argument either (a) of which the conclusion must be true if the premise is or the premises are true or (b) of which the conclusion, though false, would have been be true if the premise or the premises had been true. The argument given above is an example of a valid argument, as is any argument which, like the following, has the same structure:

If you are in Cairo, then you are in Egypt.
You are in Cairo.
Therefore, you are in Egypt.

Arguments of this kind are known traditionally as Modus Ponendo Ponens (Modus Ponens, for short), the Way of Affirming by Affirming.

Another kind of valid argument is the one known traditionally as Modus Tollendo Tollens (Modus Tollens, for short), the Way of Negating by Negating, or Denying by Denying. Examples of Modus Tollens are:

If I am in North Andover, then I am in Massachusetts.
I am not in Massachusetts.
Therefore, I am not in North Andover.

If he is in Cairo, then he is in Egypt.
He is not in Egypt.
Therefore, he is not in Cairo.

On the other hand, an invalid argument, or a fallacious argument or, again, a fallacy, is an argument the conclusion of which can be false even if (a) the premise is or the premises are true or (b) could have been false even with (b) the premise or premises being true. For example:

If I am in North Andover, then I am in Massachusetts.
I am in Massachusetts.
Therefore, I am in North Andover.

Were I sitting in Winchester, Massachusetts, the two premises of this argument would still both be true while the conclusion would be false. The truth of the premises of an argument of this structure does not necessitate the truth of the conclusion.

Another example, with the same premises, but with a negative conclusion:

If I am in North Andover, then I am in Massachusetts.
I am in Massachusetts.
Therefore, I am not in North Andover.

As I am sitting, as I write, in North Andover, Massachusetts, the two premises here are both true while the conclusion is false. The truth of the premises of an argument of this structure does not necessitate the truth of the conclusion.

The latter two arguments are examples of the argument type known as the Fallacy of Affirmation of the Consequent; the “consequent” is the “then” clause of an “if…then…” proposition, in the last sample argument, the “I am in Massachusetts” of the first premise.)

Another type of fallacious argument is the argument type known as the Fallacy of Denial of the Antecedent; the “antecedent” is the “if” clause of an “if…then…” proposition, in the next sample argument, the “I am in North Andover” of the first premise:

If I am in North Andover, then I am in Massachusetts.
I am not in North Andover.
Therefore, I am not in Massachusetts.

Were I not in North Andover, the two premises of this argument would still both be true while the conclusion could be false. The truth of the premises of an argument of this structure does not necessitate the truth of the conclusion.

Another example of this fallacy, having an affirmation as its conclusion, is:

If I am in North Andover, then I am in Massachusetts.
I am not in North Andover.
Therefore, I am in Massachusetts.

Were I not in Massachusetts, the two premises of this argument would both be true while the conclusion would be false. The truth of the premises of an argument of this structure does not necessitate the truth of the conclusion.

A sound argument is a valid argument the premise of which is true or the premises of which are true; it follows that the conclusion will also be true. Given that, as I write, I am sitting in North Andover, the argument

If I am in North Andover, then I am in Massachusetts.
I am in North Andover.
Therefore, I am in Massachusetts.

is sound. The premises implying the conclusion are both true, as is, therefore, the conclusion.

An unsound argument is either a valid argument of which at least one premise is false or an invalid argument. Because I am at present writing in Massachusetts, an example of a valid argument of which at least one of the premises is false, and which is therefore unsound, is:

If I am in Cairo, then I am in Egypt.
I am in Cairo.
Therefore, I am in Egypt.

Another example, this one of an argument that is unsound because it is invalid, is:

If I am in Cairo, then I am in Egypt.
I am in North Andover.
Therefore, I am in Egypt.

An argument can be invalid and thus unsound even if the premises and the conclusion all happen to be true.

If I am in Cairo, then I am in Egypt.
I am in North Andover.
Therefore, I am in Massachusetts.

Though I am in Massachusetts, it is not because of the two conjoined facts that if I am in Cairo I am in Egypt and that I am in North Andover.

There are infinitely other types of valid argument. To illustrate, one is known as Contraposition:

If I am in Andover, then I am in Massachusetts.
Therefore, if I am not in Massachusetts, then I am not in Andover.

The Hypothetical Syllogism is an argument form that shows up often in ordinary reasoning:

If I am in Andover, then I am in Massachusetts.
If I am in Massachusetts, then I am in the U.S.A.
Therefore, I am in Andover, then I am in the U.S.A.

We’ll look at just two more, both versions of “Double Negation,” one of which will be used in the next post’s statement of the Argument from Evil.

Double Negation

I am in North Andover.
Therefore, it is not the case that I am not in North Andover.

and

It is not the case that I am not in North Andover.
Therefore, I am in North Andover.

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