It’s been quite a while since I did my last post of a read along for Feser’s book. As promised, here is the next post on his next chapter “Scholastic Aptitude.” In this chapter, Feser introduces the scholastic views of the soul and natural, and he uses these concepts to talk about the fetus, same-sex marriage, and the purpose of sex. Lastly, he briefly discusses faith, reason, and evil.
When it comes to the soul, Aquinas took Aristotle’s view that everything in our experience is made up of form and matter. The soul just so happens to be the form of “or essence of a living thing” (121). But from that it follows that every living thing has a type of soul. Moreover, there is a type of hierarchy with these souls. At the bottom of that list is the vegetative soul or “nutritive soul” that has the powers of “taking in nutrients, growing, and reproducing itself” (121). Next, the animal soul has the powers of sense experience and locomotion (movement). Lastly, there’s the rational soul, which has the powers to “grasp abstract concepts [...] and to reason on the basis of them” and the ability to have free will. Now, the hierarchy works in the following way: the highest type of soul is the rational soul and it contains its own powers in addition to the powers of the animal and vegetative soul. So, for example, when we look at humans who have the rational soul, we see that humans can reason (rational soul), can move around and interact with other objects via the senses (animal soul), and humans can take in nutrients by eating food and it can reproduce through *gasp* sex.
Feser reminds readers not to forget how final and efficient causality works. Feser writes,
As we have seen, a thing’s having a certain form goes hand in hand with its having a certain final cause or natural end, or a hierarchically ordered set of final causes or natural ends. A plant is ordered toward taking in nutrients, growing, and reproducing itself; those are the ends nature has given it. An animal has these ends too, along with the ends entailed by its distinctive powers of sensation and locomotion. (122)
Feser goes into much more detail about the soul and responds to some of the ridiculous objections brought by Dennett and Dawkins about how neuroscience is making free-will and the soul a thing of the past. Essentially, Feser briefly demonstrates that neuroscience doesn’t harm Aquinas and Aristotle’s view of the soul at all. Rather, neuroscience is going to be consistent with it! Eventually a discussion on the soul will lead us to ask when a human being gets his rational soul. So, when does he or she get one?!
At conception. For a soul just is the form–the essence, nature, structure, organizational pattern–of a living thing, an organism. And the human organism, as we know form modern biology, begins at conception. [...] Once you add Aquinas’s metaphysics to modern biology, there can be no doubt that the soul is present from conception, and thus that a human being exists from conception. (128)
On the section of natural law, Feser does a wonderful job of breaking down the view of final causality and essence, while applying it to same-sex marriage and sexual ethics. I’m going to forgo discussing this section simply because I’m planning a future post on sexual ethics and contraception from a natural law perspective that will use a lot of material from this section of Feser’s book. So, I’d rather not have to repeat myself again. So, if you’re just itching to read this chapter, sorry! Either buy the book, or wait for my future post 
Now, about faith, Feser describes it as this:
faith is from the point of view of traditional Christian theology: belief in what God has revealed because if God has revealed it it cannot be in error; but where the claim where He had revealed it is itself something that is known on the basis of reason. Faith doesn’t conflict with reason, then; it is founded on reason and completes reason.” (157)
Another interesting point that Feser brings up is how not every Christian is going to sit and study all the arguments for God’s existence and the Bible’s reliability. Not every Christian is going to have their beliefs “intellectually” grounded, so to speak. Unless you’re an academic or intellectual, you aren’t going to plow through a metaphysics textbook and try to understand the nature of reality. So, are people’s reasons for believing in faith entirely blind? Not necessarily. Feser asks readers to think about Einstein’s E=MC^2 equation. The lay person on the street probably has no clue how this equation works, what it stands for, and all the calculations involved at reaching it. Yet, we hold that they’re justified in believing in its truth because the believe it “on the authority of those from whom they’ve learned it” (158). So, why, then, can’t this work for religion? In other words, “if this is legitimate in other aspects of life, there is nothing per se wrong with it in religion” (158).
After slapping the new atheists a bit, Feser talks just briefly on the problem of evil. If you thought the chapter “Getting Medieval” was good, wait until you read through this chapter. It’s rare that I find books that are real page turners and are funny and intellectually rigorous. Good thing Feser has a knack for being both.
7 Responses to Read Along: The Last Superstition Part 4
Robert April 1, 2012
His concept of a hierarchy of souls needs some work. There are many species which seem to defy this organizational structure. The Brahminy blind snake reproduces asexually, despite being an animal. Some plants reproduce sexually, or even require bees, which presumably have animal souls, in order to reproduce (pollen is essentially plant sperm). There are also some plants which would seem to have the power of sense experience – venus flytraps react by closing when touched, and some plants exhibit phototropism (direction of growth is determined by light stimulus). And don’t even get me started on corals, jellyfish, and related “lower level” sea life – sometimes they can reproduce either sexually or asexually or both, sometimes they move, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they only move for part of their life cycle, sometimes they eat, sometimes they don’t. What kind of souls do they have?
There’s also the question of why he sets this hierarchy up with only plants, animals, and rational beings. What about archaea, bacteria, and fungi? And what about animals that show some traits of a rational soul, such as chimps and dolphins? It looks to me like he needs something far more complicated than a simple hierarchy; he needs a web of souls. And if his response to corals and such is that sometimes they gain or lose an animal soul…why can’t humans gain a rational soul sometime after conception?
Robert April 1, 2012
Forgot to add: I agree with his points on faith and belief being grounded based on the testimony of experts. I also wanted to ask, what does he say about the problem of evil, and does he talk about divine hiddenness or the “evil god” argument at all?
David April 1, 2012
I do agree it needs some work, but if you see contemporary aristotelians’ work, you’ll see that work has either been done, or it’s being worked on. For instance, see Ric Machuga’s “In Defense of the Soul,” where he outlines a defense of an aristotelian conception of the soul. In one footnote, he writes, “The philosophical uses of the term ‘plant,’ ‘animal,’ and ‘human’ is related to their biological use, but it is not equivalent [...] our use [of these terms] are less inclusive. First, there are biological forms of life that don’t neatly fit into any of these categories. “Insects,” for example, are probably closer to animals than plants, yet they probably aren’t sentient, and hence do not satisfy the defining characteristic of animals” (169).
Feser was just giving a rough sketch of the aristotelian view. Furthermore, I don’t think those venus fly traps have that “power” of “sense experience.” I’m not sure how the explanation of the way some of these plants and sea life reproduce is relevant insofar that it shows that the aristotelian view needs work, at least in that area of reproduction.
I believe animals can think insofar that they take past experiences, learn from them, and act according to beliefs. My dog, for example (and for the record I don’t have a dog lol), might know when I’m near the door or has its biological clock, so to speak, set to a certain time of the day that it knows when I’m going to take it for a walk. But the dog doesn’t have a conception of, “David will take me to walk at around 4:30 p.m. today and tomorrow.” A dog wouldn’t even have a conception of what tomorrow *is*. Alasdair MacIntyre talks about animals who exhibit similar “traits” in his book “Dependent Rational Animals.” So, while they can have beliefs, they don’t have conceptions the way we do. So, they’re similar to a certain extent, and I grant that. He discusses dolphins in his book, for example, and chimpanzees, albeit he discusses the latter briefly.
Humans can’t gain a rational soul sometime after conception because it’s an essential part of our nature. If it ceases to exist, so do we.
If you want a full treatment on the problem of evil, I advise you to look elsewhere. Feser does talk about it but very briefly (about 2 1/2 pages). Basically, since we have immortal souls, the time of pain and suffering here is going to be, to use Feser’s wording, a “trivial blink of the eye compared to the eternity we are to enter” (161). He argues that God would bring out an infinity of greater goods that would overshadow the finite evils, even the horrendous ones, we endure on earth. Feser discusses the beatific vision and eternal life.
I personally very much agree with Feser. I think the logical problem of evil has been shot down, but it’s because it carries so much emotional weight that it continues to come up.
No, he doesn’t talk about divine hiddenness or the “evil god” challenge. Furthermore, I personally believe the evil god challenge doesn’t pose a threat to a Thomist at all. But that will have to wait for a future post
Robert April 1, 2012
I’m hitting up the library tomorrow, hopefully I’ll be able to find the books you mentioned. I’ll refrain from further comment on this subject for now.
As for evil…I guess I’ll wait for a future post, haha.
James Drake April 1, 2012
Robert,
Re theodicy, I highly recommend the recently published God Forsaken by Dinesh D’Souza, which takes on the problem of evil in all aspects that I’ve heard of, based on his series of debates with New Atheists like the late Christopher Hitchens.
Robert April 2, 2012
As I write this, I’m watching D’Souza’s debate with Bart Ehrman “Theodicy, God and Suffering”. I’m skipping Ehrman’s parts in the interest of time, and so I can offer my own analysis without being influenced by what Ehrman says.
D’Souza starts off with an analogy of a mother who leaves her child in the car. He says that we aren’t justified in condemning her because we don’t have all the facts. This seems to be a form of skeptical theism. I disagree with this analogy, though – if I was there, I’d take action on the assumption that she was doing something wrong. While she may have a good reason (D’Souza mentions that perhaps her husband just had a heart attack), it’s up to her to inform onlookers of that eventually. Now, of course she’s innocent until proven guilty, and I’m not going to put her on trail right away, but neither am I going to stand idly by and watch something that appears to be wrong just because there might be some justifying reason.
He gives another analogy – this time of an ant being unable to solve an algebra problem despite using all its reasoning abilities. I posit that the ant would actually be justified in declaring the algebra problem unsolvable – precisely because it’s using all of its ability to look for an answer, and finding none. While the problem might actually be solvable, the ant is at no epistemic fault for declaring otherwise. Maybe the ant could ask it’s “god” (us), but this is predicated on the assumption that we exist (God exists). But that’s precisely what the question is – assuming God exists to answer the problem of evil is circular.
He then compares God to a father who refuses to help his son, and says that the problem of evil is a problem of character and not of existence. But this is faulty because a father who doesn’t help his son isn’t said to have the property of perfect kindness/goodness/lovingness necessarily – if the father was said to have this property, then we certainly would conclude that the father did not exist.
Whoa, hold on a second here. He implies here that psychopaths don’t have free will and don’t have the ability to choose right from wrong. This is false – while such people don’t place any importance on the feelings of others or the consequences of their actions, they’re still choosing to do actions A, B, C over X, Y, Z. Their decisions are just motivated by something other than moral concerns.
In discussing natural evil, he attempts to justify it by saying that things like tectonic plates, which are the cause of earthquakes, are also necessary for life. He then goes into a broader point about fine tuning. He says that God could have made other laws, but then there would be something different from humans at the end of it. Ok – but if God wants humans and not something else, what exactly is limiting him to this “universe recipe”? It can’t be the natural laws themselves; God created them. Couldn’t he create them such that a different set of laws also led to humans, while not also leading to natural disasters? An interesting observation is that he says that if tectonic plates didn’t exist, then the planet would be entirely covered with water. Ok…so what? The only thing that falls out of this observation is that humanlike creatures would live in water instead of on land. I don’t see how something like a sentient race of mermaids would be so morally different from humans. All the same types of moral evil would still be there.
He then goes on to say that when suffering is caused by something like malaria, there’s fault with humanity for not distributing our medicines/cures. But this ignores cases of malaria that happened before we had these things. While he’s right that we have the potential to use our reason to develop solutions to natural evil, and then use our sense of morality to use those solutions, what happens before we can reasonably do this?
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First Rebuttal:
Hmm, it appears that Ehrman also wondered why there couldn’t be a different world with better laws. D’Souza says that there *is* such a world – heaven. He brings up the point of the length of physical existence vs. the length of heavenly existence, and asks whether God has done wrong because someone suffered for a tiny blip of time compared to their total existence. Well – yes. Whether something is right or wrong doesn’t depend on how long it lasts. Rape and violence are rape and violence whether they last ten milliseconds or ten years. Pointing to the duration of a wrongdoing doesn’t completely exonerate it.
He says that Adam and Eve rejected the perfect world of Eden, and speculates that we would reject it as well. I agree with this, but the reason we reject it is *not* because it lacked suffering. It’s because it lacked accomplishment. In a way, it wasn’t perfect at all, because there were no goals to work toward. Achieving a goal does require some amount of work, and perhaps even some amount of pain, but it does not require suffering – suffering is something that, by definition, is unwanted. I would reject Eden, but I would not reject a pseudo-Eden that allowed me to work toward goals while also eliminating suffering.
He concludes this section by saying that God can’t intervene in every case of moral evil, because that would affect free will. But why couldn’t God have made the world such that our genetics and environment always predisposed us to choose freely to do the right thing? I, and presumably everyone reading this, usually behave like this, at least to an extent. The philosopher Richard Swinburne argues that God is morally perfect because of the fact that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly free – thus, he will always know the best action to take, will always have the power to take that action, and will never be influenced by any irrational influences outside of himself. I’m not saying that God should have created other omnipotent and omniscient beings (I’m not sure if that would even be possible), but I see no reason why he could not have created us to be perfectly free, such that irrationality never influenced our decisions. If this were the case, we still wouldn’t always do good, but we would always try our best to do so.
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This is getting pretty long, so I’m going to skip the Q&A. But D’Souza’s response to evil seems pretty weak compared to the responses offered by philosophers such as Richard Swinburne, Stephen Wykstra, and Michael Bergmann. Maybe he addresses all these things in his book, but from what I’ve seen in this debate, he seems to be a bit of an amateur. He seems to be doing what Lee Strobel did with “The Case For Christ” – drawing on the basic ideas of professionals without really understanding what they’re saying as far as specifics are concerned.