At Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, philosopher Paul Symington kindly reviews my book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. From the review:
Edward Feser demonstrates a facility with both Scholastic and contemporary analytical concepts, and does much to span the divide…
The final chapter [is]… a nice example of the service that Feser renders to the task of enhancing points of commonality between scholastic and analytic thinkers. In this chapter, Feser defends a realist form of essentialism as well as argues for a real distinction between essence and existence. As is characteristic of the book as a whole, Feser brings in contemporary views in way that makes good use of, and is charitable to, contemporary developments in metaphysics…
In all, Feser's new book is a welcome addition for those interested in bringing the concepts, terminology and presuppositions between scholastic and contemporary analytic philosophers to commensuration. In fact, I would contend that Feser's book will constitute an important piece in its own right for guiding the research program for contemporary Thomistic metaphysicians into the future.
Prof. Symington also raises a couple points of criticism. Among the topics dealt with in chapter 3 of my book is a defense of the hylemorphist view that micro-level parts like quarks, elements of compounds like the oxygen and hydrogen in water, etc. are in the wholes of which they are parts virtually rather than actually. (Readers unfamiliar with this thesis should read the chapter -- there’s no way I can summarize the arguments for it here.) Now, as I indicate in the book (at pp. 183-84), hylemorphism as such does not strictly requiresuch a view. A hylemorphist couldinprinciple hold that it is only at some micro-level that we have irreducible composites of substantial form and prime matter, and that what exists above those levels are merely composites of accidental forms and secondary matter. Thus the hylemorphist could in theory allow that (say) everything is reducible to atoms in something like the sense affirmed by Democritus, but hold that the atoms themselves are compounds of substantial form and prime matter; or that oxygen and hydrogen do after all exist actually rather than virtually in water, with water being just an accidental form of the aggregate of oxygen and hydrogen (each considered as having a substantial form even while united in the water); and so forth. However, hylemorphic analysis considered together with the actual empirical facts tells against such concessions to reductionism. In fact (so some of us hylemorphists claim, anyway) regarding the parts in question as in the wholes only virtually rather than actually best makes sense of what we know from modern science when interpreted in hylemorphic terms.
Prof. Symington is not so sure. He suggests:
Say someone accepted that basic material particles each in themselves have an intrinsic directedness to realize a certain range of ends -- like the attraction between an electron and a proton -- even if a given end is not actually being realized. Then, it would be these particles that would be substances in Feser's understanding of the term and would be actual and not virtual. I don't see why someone couldn't merely hold that there is no existing composite entity, only individual elemental particles that are complexes of actualized and unactualized potencies in themselves. That is, there are no unique actualities and potencies (causally or otherwise) that the composed entities have over and above the actualities and potencies of its parts. That water can extinguish a flame instead of combusting will not have to do with properties that the water has, but rather on the actualities and potentialities that the elements of the water each themselves have instead. To put it another way, instead of claiming that the unified subject of actualities and potentialities are the composite entities, it is the elements that are said to be the unified subjects of actualities and potentialities.
End quote. In other words, Symington seems essentially to be saying that the kind of position I allow for as an abstract possibility -- namely, that hylemorphic analysis holds true at the level of basic particles, say, but not at the level of composites of these particles (which composites would be reducible to or eliminable in favor of basic particles, hylemorphically construed) -- is one that the hylemorphist has not given us a good reason to reject. On this view, while the hylemorphist has shown that we need the distinctions between actuality and potentiality, and substantial form and prime matter, at the level of basic particles, he has not shown that we need them at higher levels, and thus has not shown that we need the doctrine that micro-parts are in the wholes only virtually rather than actually.
But it seems to me that this objection misses the force of some key points developed in the book, which I can only briefly summarize here. First (and as David Oderberg has emphasized) since the properties (in the technical Scholastic sense of “properties”) of a kind of thing flow from and point to the presence of its essence, the complete absence of the properties indicates the absence of the essence, and thus the absence of the kind of thing in question. For example, since we should be able to burn hydrogen if it were actually present in water, but this property of hydrogen is absent, it would follow by this reasoning that the essence of hydrogen is also absent, and thus that, strictly speaking, hydrogen itself is absent. Thus, though there is of course a sensein which hydrogen is present in water, it can (hylemorphists like Oderberg and I argue) be present only virtually rather than actually given the absence of some of its properties.
Symington alludes to this argument, but it doesn’t seem to me that he answers it. Perhaps he would say that the essence of hydrogen, and thus hydrogen itself, is actually present but that the “flow” of the properties is being blocked by the presence of oxygen, just as a human being’s properties of risibility and linguistic ability might be blocked by brain damage. But this cannot be right. The properties that naturally flow from an essence can be blocked, but such blockage is not the normal course of things. Occasionally there are human beings completely incapable of laughter or language use, but of course this is not the case for the vast majority of human beings. That indicates that the “flow” of the properties is merely being blocked in the aberrant cases, rather than that the essence is absent. But it is not merely occasionally the case that the hydrogen that is purportedly actually present in water cannot be burned. That indicates that the essence is not there at all, rather than that it is there and the properties are merely being blocked.
A second point is that the mainhigher-level divisions in nature traditionally posited by the hylemorphist are no closer now to a successful reductionist analysis than they ever were. These are, first, the division between rational and sub-rational but sentient forms of life; second, that between sentient forms of life and non-sentient forms; and third, that between non-sentient forms and inorganic phenomena. It is often casually asserted that modern science has “shown” that these divisions mark, contra the Aristotelian, mere differences in degree rather than kind, but (as I have argued many times and in many places) this is a complete illusion, and one that is in no way grounded in empirical science but is rather the expression of a dogmatic metaphysical naturalism. The intractability within contemporary philosophy of the problem of providing a naturalistic account of the propositional attitudes shows how illusory is the suggestion that the division between rational and sub-rational but sentient forms of life has been dissolved; the intractability of the “qualia problem” shows how illusory is the suggestion that the division between sentient forms of life and non-sentient forms of life has been dissolved; and the intractability of the “origin of life” problem shows how illusory is the suggestion that the division between rudimentary forms of life and inorganic phenomena has been dissolved.
A third point is that reductionist and eliminativist analyses even of inorganic phenomena face grave difficulties, such as Peter Unger’s “problem of the many,” and Crawford Elder’s objection that a reductive or eliminativist analysis of a stone (say) cannot provide a principled way of explaining why it is exactly this collection of particles (or whatever) -- no more and no fewer -- to which we are supposed to reduce the stone, or in favor of which we are to eliminate the stone. (These issues are all discussed in the book, to which the interested reader is directed.)
Prof. Symington also raises a second potential criticism, this time of my claim that the predictive power and technological success of modern science give us no reason to accept scientism. He agrees that certain defenses of scientism along these lines are too facile, but wonders whether a more sophisticated argument for scientism might be based on the technological and predictive successes of science. In particular, and if I understand him correctly, he wonders whether a proponent of scientism might argue as follows:
1. The predictive power and technological applications of science are unparalleled by those of any other purported source of knowledge.
2. So science is a reliable source of knowledge.
3. Science has undermined beliefs derived from other purported sources of knowledge, such as common sense.
4. So science has shown that these other purported sources of knowledge are unreliable.
5. The range of subjects science investigates is vast.
6. So the number of purported sources of knowledge that science has shown to be unreliable is vast.
7. So what science reveals to us is probably all that is real.
Now, Prof. Symington does not endorse this argument; he’s just suggesting that it is an argument that a sophisticated proponent of scientism might endorse. But it does not seem to me to be a good argument. For one thing, the examples Prof. Symington cites of beliefs which have been undermined by science do not seem to me very convincing. He writes:
For example, although common sense tells us that a biological organism acts in an autonomous way and is not reducible to its parts, the law of conservation of energy via science suggests that the exchange and direction of energy is fully accounted for at the basic level of material elements. In other words, what determines how the energy is exchanged is determined ultimately at the elemental level. There are other beliefs that we hold that also seem undermined by the claims of science, such as the dissonance between what we think is motivating us to do x and the "true" motivations for action x obtained from psychological, evolutionary or economic analyses.
The trouble with the first example is that it isn’t clear that common sense takes organisms to be autonomous and irreducible in the specific way that Symington says is undermined by the law of conservation of energy. The trouble with the second example is that it is, to say the very least, by no means uncontroversial that science really has shown that the true motivations for our actions are (in general) other than what we think they are. (In fact this sort of view tends, I would argue, toward incoherence, for “argument from reason”-style reasons.) Hence, of Symington’s two examples, one is a claim undermined by science that wasn’t a commonsense belief in the first place, and the other is a commonsense belief that isn’t really undermined by science.
But even given better examples, the proposed argument still doesn’t work. For premise (3) simply doesn’t give us good reason to believe step (4). To see why not, suppose we replace “science” with “visual experience” in these two steps of the argument. Visual experience has of course very often undermined beliefs derived from other sources of knowledge. For example, it often tells us that the person we thought we heard come in the room was really someone else, or that when we thought we were feeling a pillow next to us it was really a cat. Does that mean that visual experience has shown that auditory experience and tactile experience are unreliable sources of knowledge? Of course not. To do that, it would have to have shown that auditory experience and tactical experience are not just often wrong but wrong on a massive scale and with respect to a very wide variety of subjects. And it has done no such thing. But neither has science shown any such thing with respect to common sense. Hence (3) is not a good reason to conclude to (4).
(4) and (5) also don’t give us good reason to believe (6). Suppose we label the range of subjects science covers with letters, from A, B, C, D, and so on all the way to Z. Even if science really did show that other purported sources of knowledge were unreliable with respect to domains A and B (say), it obviously wouldn’t follow that there were no reliable sources of knowledge other than science with respect to domains C through Z.
In short, the argument Symington proposes that a defender of scientism might put forward seems to rest on a massive overgeneralization from a small number of examples, and examples that are dubious in any case.
In any event, a theme that is developed at length throughout my book is that there are absolute limits in principle to the range of beliefs that science could undermine, and these are precisely the sorts of beliefs with which metaphysics is concerned. The book aims in part to set out (some of) the notions that any possible empirical science must presuppose, and thus cannot coherently call into question.
Anyway, I thank Prof. Symington for his kind review and for his politely and usefully critical comments.