Abdulkader Tayob wrote an analytical piece today concerning recent controversies surrounding Pope Benedict XVI’s recent lecture at the University of Regensburg. Mr. Tayob's analysis included the following observation:

"The central argument of the lecture was devoted to the urgency of reinserting the positive role of religion in modern culture. But the pope proposed to do this by turning attention to a medieval synthesis of reason and religion that has been lost in modern society through what he called the de-Hellenisation of Christianity. The Hellenic roots were lost through the Reformation, liberal theologies and, last but not least, de-Europeanisation. Boiled down, Benedict’s argument is that most of the modern legacy of Christianity has to be jettisoned."

This "medieval synthesis of reason and religion" is not, in fact, medieval at all. The synthesis of reason and faith is one of the keystone elements of Christianity, dating not only to Augustine, but to the scriptures themselves, as is evidenced in John 1:1 (consider the greek translation for "word").

Siger of Brabant and Boetius of Dacia promoted a philosophical movement beginning in the thirteenth century generally referred to as "Latin Averroism". The Averroists promoted, among other things, belief in the existence of twin truths--one reached through reason and the other through faith. The fonts of these two truths--God and the Laws of Nature--were coeternal. This view, which opposed scholastic principles, was carefully refuted by Thomas Aquinas, and the teachings of Siger were condemned by the church in 1270 A.D. Further dismantling of the Averroistic legacy was completed by the scholars of the Florentine academy, most notably Nicholas of Cusa in his "De Docta Ignorantia", which further cultivates the teachings of the Eleatic philosopher Parmenides, which come to us through Plato. Cusa's articulation of the maximum-minimum principle provided a solid foundation for the works of Leibniz, and especially the works of many 19th century mathematicians, most notably Karl Gauss and his intellectual lineage. Johannes Kepler treats the unity of his faith and reason explicitly in the opening chapters of his "Astronomia Nova".

The Averroistic impulse, on the other hand, can be seen in the works of Locke, Newton, Berkeley and their empiricist, materialist, and positivist derivations. Newton's assertion that space was the "sensorium" of Deity, an organ through which Deity perceived creation, is one famous example of an Averroistic assertion, because it attempts implicitly to establish a boundary to the capabilities of Deity. For this reason it was roundly condemned by Leibniz (see the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondences for more information).

In essence, the thesis that the enlightenment was brought about by virtue of an innovative distinction between reason and faith or religion is patently false. It was rather by virtue of the consistent refuations of the averroistic impulse to isolate reason from faith, or (more commonly) to conflate logic with reason, made by the Florentine academics, and later by Leibniz and his intellectual descendants, among countless others that the enlightenment and renaissance flourished in Europe and were transplanted to the New World.

Pope Benedict XVI’s determination to dispel this illusionary distinction from contemporary western culture is, therefore, perfectly concordant with over two millenia of theological and philosophical tradition. Guarding against the impulse to "de-Hellenization of Christianity" is perhaps the greatest challenge that western culture has ever faced. That reason (logos) and faith are ultimately one, joined by right action in a triad which reflects the unity of the Christian trinity is an idea as ancient as it is scarce in today's philosophical discourse.

Courses of action which implicitly destroy the ability and opportunity for reason (read: violence), are therefore, in his thesis, contrary to and incompatible with the nature of faith itself.

Posted by Alexander Saint Croix on 26 September 2006 at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For my final submission as an undergrad in the writing program here at the U of MN in 2002, I wrote a compilation of poems against a war that we had not yet entered, and which I knew with absolute certainty we would enter. I remember the feeling of powerless as my representatives responded to my letters with the platitudes popular at the time, that "Saddam can give up his weapons of mass destruction and avoid this war", and "we're not necessarily going to war."

Years later, my initial outrage over the war has been tempered, distilled and refined into an altogether different outlook. As events have changed on the ground for our forces, in the region of southwest Asia, and in the United States, so has my anger and determination changed course.

I recognize unequivocally that the U.S. can not count immediate retreat or withdrawal or "redeployment" of its forces from Iraq among its options. The options are simply not possible, they must be dismissed, and the culture of sixties activism reinactment must step aside now and let the march of time leave its customary mark of change on U.S. politics. It were the cruelest and most inhumane of actions if we abandoned our allies in Babylon, leaving them to twist in the wind.

For all the bandying about of the word "progressive" by Democratic candidates, I can't name a single political candidate in any race who I'd consider a future-focused leader. What I see in "progressive" politics is a crop of wilting sixties throwbacks trying to hold on to "progress" made between the end of the second world war and the Reagan administration as validation of their worth in contemporary debates. Get over yourselves. The actions, beliefs and answers from that era can do nothing for us in the post-9/11 third millenium. That's not progress, that's regress. And not a small amount of regret, I might add.

A vision of thirty thousand square miles of swamp land and scrub pine forest in northern Minnesota, winding little dirt roads and the slow recession of dry-rotten farmsteads crumbling to paper in an unpopulated rural wasteland is anything but "progressive". Farmers sitting at the end of the driveway, making diesel fuel from jugs of leftover cooking oil they bought off the local diner is not a "progressive" future. Thousands of acres of quaking aspens hushing the slow squeak of a copse of windmills is not a progressive or future-focused vision for Minnesota. It's a romantic fantasy of an eighteenth century Pennsylvania Dutch colony. Get over it.

The age of cheap petroleum and carbon fuel sources is coming to an end. Get over it. We have options, real progressive options coming out of our ears. And establishing a new economic infrastructure for post solar power-generation and transmission is something that the United States is more than capable of doing for itself. Kennedy challenged the U.S. to walk on the moon, and we did it. I'm challenging the U.S. to walk into an era where the sun is no longer the sole source of all energy here on Earth.

I mean, think about it. Oil. where does that energy come from? Chemical bonds stored up by plants and eaten by animals in organic molecules, then left to rot for a long time, right? Okay, but the energy in the plants came originally from the sun. Wind energy comes from the sun, as it heats up certain parts faster than others, the air swirls around. Simple enough, right? Hydroelectric power comes from the water cycle, which is solar driven. Solar power comes from the sun. Coal comes from fossilized plants, which get their energy from the sun. Wood power comes from the sun. Up until this point, with the exception of the handful of fissile power plants which have ever existed, all of the economic energy in human history has been derived from the sun.

Well, we only get so much of it per year. That, by and large, never changes. Now we're releasing those chemical bonds stored up for millions of years, and on the horizon we see a future where we can't get easy solar energy anymore. What do self-styled "progressives" propose?

More of the same. "Biofuels" made from corn, which amount to the equivalent of burning wood again. Throw in some windmills and a couple of solar panels, and everything will be happy and green, right? Not quite. Show me a solar-powered bessemer forge. Show me a solar-powered airplane. On-demand solar just doesn't scale to the needs of modern civilization. But wait! What about hydrogen fuel cells? Sorry, no dice. Those are just fancy batteries. They don't actually produce any energy. They just store it up for a bit.

No, the options on the table are anything but "progressive". No vision for the future of our country can responsibly gloss over this matter, and no solution to our problems in the middle east can do so either. I see them both as having a common solution. And that solution rests in the development of post-solar power production technologies, which we must export to the entire world.

This truly progressive vision is concordant with the conservation movement, but not dependent on it in any way. Promising advances in boron-hydrogen fusion technologies are within our grasp, dangling just before our eyes. Sonofusion advancements in Big 10 Universities in the last three years and innovations made by Bell Labs in harnessing the Casimir force hold similar promise. Dense and renewable power, no radioactive waste.

Now, a promise isn't the same thing as a guarantee, but the people who strike gold in this world are the ones who show up and dig. Fifty years from now we could live in a world in which every small town from Brainerd to Baghdad both ways hosts its own fusion reactor, and intercontinental flights are propelled by streams of ionized boron.

You want peace in the middle east? How about building real economic infrastructure so all those desperate and frustrated young men in Palestine and Syria can get married, buy farms, raise families and build schools without fear of depopulation and the wars that follow? How about greening over the desert with fusion-powered desalination plants? You can't wreck a civilization's economic means of existence and then just leave. You have to build them up better than ever before in history, give them hope and promise. Our forces should leave Iraq in better condition than the hometowns they left behind. When our soldiers can turn home to a nation that exports power to the world, they can do so with honor and pride. Don't we owe them that?

There are worse fates, after all, for a soldier and war veteran than to become an industrial or civil engineer. The end of oil is our opportunity for peace and prosperity, but not if we embrace a romantic fantasy of the "way things used-to should-be". "Progressive" politics must disengage with the backward-looking impulse that defines it. Greens, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, everyone under the sun (and especially those who can see past it) have an equal stake and opportunity under "progressive" banner.

Posted by Alexander Saint Croix on 25 September 2006 at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

During a discussion in a Philosophy course this week on campus, several students saw fit to rail against the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, whom it is doubtful they have carefully read. The passage thrown carelessly before them and out of context, to defend itself alone, was that we reside in what Leibniz called "the best of all possible worlds". Immediately, the question came under fire by the students. How, one asked, does his assertion mesh with a situation like Hurricane Katrina? How could this be the "best of all possible worlds"? The consensus at the end of lecture was that "this world sucks on a regular basis, and God must be to blame, and either this ISN'T the best of all possible worlds, or else God can't create a perfect world."

Before I begin, I'd like to assert that criticism of analysis is no substitute for reading and critiquing primary source texts. If my analysis is flawed, I welcome constructive criticism of it. If you've a desire to criticize the ideas, take up the argument with the primary source text, not with me. For your time, you'll have a much larger impact by sticking to the principal texts of Leibniz and Cusanus.

There are several things which must be taken into account before one can truly appreciate Leibniz' argument. First, the argument is both an ontological and theological one. Leibniz believed in God. It's no secret. He didn't merely believe in God, but understood the existence of God to be a matter of metaphysical and ontological necessity, and his writings were almost certainly informed by the German Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus' "De Docta Ignorantia", which has been translated and published online by the University of Minnesota's Doctor Jasper Hopkins. Early in his career, Leibniz was a Cartesian (by his admission in his New Mechanics). However, he later would recant his Cartesian beliefs and publish a series of refutations on the metaphysical paradoxes inherent in Descartes' "Meditations". Among other things, Leibniz sought to dispel Descartes' Scholastic prejudice toward soul-body dualism.

Second, Leibniz' understanding of Deity differed from his British Empiricist counterparts in that he attributed three infinite qualities to Deity. In addition to the quality of "omnipotence" which the Empiricists agreed upon (and even wholly relied upon for the metaphysical underpinnings of their mechanics, as is shown in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondences), Leibniz asserted the qualities of All-Wisdom and All-Goodness. This follows directly from the writings of the Florentine Cardinal Cusanus.

Leibniz' argument for all-wisdom proceeded something like this: if the laws which govern reality at any point contradict themselves, the entire system would be a paradox, and would not function. This creation were unbefitting a perfect Creator. Therefore, the laws which govern reality do not contradict themselves by implication or relation to each other. They are all seamlessly interjoined (example: sine and cosine). The creation of such a system require not only All-Power, but All-Wisdom as well.

For All-Goodness, Leibniz makes use of the metaphysical and ontological argument raised by Cardinal Cusanus, that Goodness must necessarily exist prior to the existence of Evil. An analogue of this argument can be shown as follows:

1. There are three types of logical statements:
2. Ones which include only true conditional statements.
3. Ones which include a mixture of true and false conditional statements.
4. Ones which include only false conditional statements.

If a logical sentence-part only contains true conditional statements, it resolves to true. For example, "IF a AND b AND NOT c" contains three sentence parts. "a", "b", and "NOT c" If all three of these resolve to TRUE, the statement as a whole resolves to true. If all or any of the conditional statements resolve to FALSE, the statement as a whole resolves to false.

Now, imagine that you have a logical statement with hundreds of millions of conditions. If even a single one of them resolves to FALSE, the entire statement is false. It only takes one. What does this mean?

It means that ultimately TRUE statements may only be composed of other true statements. On the other hand, ultimately FALSE statements may contain bits of truth and falsehood. The proportion of truth and falsehood, however, matters not at all. If even a single part of a statement, no matter how large, is false, the statement as a whole is ultimately false.

Truth, then, neither relies upon, nor admits of falsehood. In fact, truth demonstrably knows nothing of falsehood, for no true statement contains false parts. It is possible then, that truth existed prior to falsehood. Falsehood, on the other hand, is well acquainted with truth, and often admits of true parts (which themselves do not admit of false parts). It is not possible that falsehood could have existed prior to truth, since falsehood admits portions of truth in itself.

Since no other possibilities can possibly exist (there are no other combinations of truth an falsehood than those three above), we conclude that the only possibly true option is, in fact, a necessary truth. So many false statements can be shown to contain elements of truth, that we must acknowledge the metaphysical prioricity of truth to falsehood. This isn't a causal or temporal relationship, but one of metaphysical prioricity. Truth does not cause falsehood any more than unity causes number. And time, well time isn't a prerequisite to either truth OR falsehood, and we needn't trouble with it here. A similar argument is that one cannot admit of organic molecules existing prior to the existence of the carbon atom. One may not admit of atoms existing prior to the existence of electrons. Electrons are not made of atoms. Carbon atoms are not composed of organic molecules.

This argument is analogous to the one made for Good and Evil. Leibniz treats the question at great length in his "Theodicy", and Cusanus treats the question as well in his "De Docta Ignorantia". Their two accounts of this principle are harmonic. I will leave its exploration to the industry of the reader.

The end result is that Good exists, necessarily, prior to the existence of evil. And All-Goodness is a quality which is only possessed by God, for no other possibilities can claim axiomatic, ontological, metaphysical or any other form of prioricity. That which forms the basis for existence is All-Good then, in addition to being All-Wise and All-Powerful. This forms a trinity of principles which necessarily imply each other.

In Leibniz' view, then, a view he consistently promoted against the Empiricists, the laws which govern the universe do not contradict each other, since for them to do so would contradict the principles of All-Wisdom and All-Goodness, and relegate God to the image of the doddering old man on the mountain, Zeus, rather than the Triune described by Cusanus. Not only were an imperfect creation unbefitting an all-powerful Deity, but it would require that Deity constantly perform "miracles" to resolve the innate problems of the system. Think of Microsoft rolling out weekly patches to its operating system, and then raise the complexity to an infinite degree, and you'll have an idea of the tremendous amount of labor required. The empiricist Clarke promoted this view as proof of Deity's Omnipotence. Leibniz, however, promoted his alternative as proof of All-Goodness and All-Wisdom.

That alternative was that we live in the best of all possible worlds. He attributes the existence of evil not to Deity, but to "sin", or the necessarily innate imperfection of all finite beings. Deity is neither finite, nor a being, but being itself, or what Cusanus called both the "Absolute Maximum" and "Absolute Minimum", something beyond comparative relation. Leibniz argues that sin and evil are neither caused by God nor necessary in Creation, but merely permitted. Why are they permitted?

The answer is Free Will. It better befits the Glory of Deity that we human beings, who are permitted to choose good or evil for ourselves, can choose good. In fact, it were not possible for us to love in the absence of Free Will. We would be driven, as contemporary positivists and materialists, behavioral scientists and other unsound minds still hold we are, by mechanical necessity. Since the possibility exists that even a single person amongst us would choose to love what is good, and since that which is perfectly good is Deity, for Deity, Unity, Absolute Maximum, Absolute Minimum alone admits of no imperfection, the alternative--a mechanically certain universe, Leibniz argues, is not possible.

And if a world were possible which were better than this, the All-Wisdom and All-Goodness of Deity would again be in question. Such a world could certainly not be driven by mechanical necessity, for it were better that Free Will govern human action.

In other words, the evils we see in this world are attributable to ourselves alone. We alone choose our fates. We alone bring evil to ourselves. Deity offers the option of goodness, but we alone are free to choose it.

So, to return to the question of Hurricane Katrina. It is a manifestly evil thing that a population of human beings living in flood plain beneath sea level should direct such a large percentage of its daily attention and energy to the pursuit of entertainment and pleasure, when the scientific and industrial demands of the geographic location in which they reside are so great. In doing so, they fail to learn from millenia of history. Entire societies are regularly washed out to sea as a result of their own poor choices. It were better that they wash out to sea. It were BETTER STILL that they choose to know nature, to use their faculties and employ their labors toward the protection of their neighbors, their children, and their posterity. That sickness follows a poor diet is instructive and therefore good, and none may show that it, however unpleasant, is evil.

If Deity alone could have stopped the tragedy in New Orleans from taking place, then why are so many people upset with President George W. Bush? It is manifestly true that human foresight and right action could have prevented the flood from taking place. The Army Core of Engineers are certainly capable of building a system of Levees which are capable of withstanding hurricanes and floods of mythic proportions. The fault lies not in the laws of nature, nor in the power, wisdom or goodness of Deity, but in the Will of human beings.

We are more than capable of defending ourselves against the wind and the wave. That we failed to do so is our fault. The responsibility to protect ourselves and the neighbors upon whom we rely belongs to every person.

That pain and misery exist, that wars are fought, that sickness claims the lives of our loved ones, that we remain here on Earth when a universe awaits our footprints, all these things are the necessary results of our choices. And all of the evil that human beings can concoct and implement are overshadowed by the possibility that even a single one of us might love our Creator.

Posted by Alexander Saint Croix on 20 September 2006 at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is the Empirical basis for the use of Hypothesis in modern science and positivistic philosophy? Is there one? What technique have we to determine the origin of hypothesis which does not make use of hypothesis and therefore rest upon it? What logical mechanism do we possess to create or fabricate the act of hypothesizing within a meaningful context? Does a logical system exist which can create meaningful hypotheses? That is, hypotheses which relate in a meaningful way to their subject matters?

Can a logical program ever answer the question why it itself works? Why its own methods can possibly be or must necessarily be true? No. Gödel proved this conclusively. Every logical system ultimately rests upon one final axiom, the principal axiom of all logic, which is the relationship between "if" and "then". Ultimately, all logic boils down to a relationship, but relationships cannot have an Empirical basis. They are infinite in nature. What is the relationship between an atom and the atom next to it? What field equations interject, what fluid forces compel them to dance when close and draws them together when they are separated? Through what medium do they relate, and if it indeed exists, is it truly a medium or merely another substance whose relationship must in turn be analyzed?

There is no true vacuum, no such thing as nothing. And so, relationships have themselves no physical basis but only a basis in concept or reason. Number is one expression of such a relationship. Differential another. Hypothesis a third, consequence, origin, all of these combine into a patterned whirlwind of relation. What empirical basis is there for any of it?

None. No logic or mechanism may capture it, as it exists prior to both. The faculty of apperception, which permits an infinite circle to share an identity with an infinite line or infinite triangle, the faculty of metaphor, which permits one thing to share in unity with another in spite of their differences, these are the domain of reason. Hypothesis binds them together, points out the possibility of their union as a determined imagination suggests the possible flow of a darkened path so that sense perception can flail thanklessly forward, dragging the body's feet through the sand of discovery, in fear of roots and deviation, and assuring itself of its dominance and safety when by luck no such roots happen to challenge its forward progress.

No, the imagination is a vital part of the process of discovery in that it suspends disbelief long enough to interject possibilities which might lie outside the scope of the senses. It can reveal paths of action which lie outside the domain of our current species of action. And even so-called "positivistic" or "empirical" science is caught in its thrall, for as logic binds these sciences together, mere hypotheses and axioms bind logic. Without hypothesis, science built on logic would stand as tall as towers built with bricks and stone but without mortar.

Posted by Alexander Saint Croix on 8 September 2006 at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)