Lawrence Krauss admits that when he said that science "proves" that the universe came from "nothing," he really didn't meant it.

Apparently, Krauss is walking-back the nonsense bit of "shock advertising" that he used to sell his book. On the other hand, after being shown repeatedly to be an intellectual buffoon on the subject, he doesn't get any credit for admitting the obvious.

Science Writer John Horgan writes about Lawrence Krauss's claim that everything came from nothing - and then interacts with Krauss in the comment section:

I’m nonetheless going out on a limb and guessing that science will never, ever answer what I call “The Question”: Why is there something rather than nothing? You might think this prediction is safe to the point of triviality, but certain prominent scientists are claiming not merely that they can answer The Question but that they have already done so. Physicist Lawrence Krauss peddles this message in his new book A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (Free Press, 2012).

Krauss’s answer is nothing new. Decades ago, physicists such as the legendary John Wheeler proposed that, according to the probabilistic dictates of quantum field theory, even an apparently perfect vacuum seethes with particles and antiparticles popping into and out of existence. In 1990, the Russian physicist Andrei Linde assured me that our entire cosmos—as well as an infinite number of other universes—might have sprung from a primordial “quantum fluctuation.”

I took this notion—and I think Linde presented it—as a bit of mind-titillating whimsy. But Krauss asks us to take the quantum theory of creation seriously, and so does evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. “Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages,” Dawkins writes in an afterword to Krauss’s book. “If On the Origin of Species was biology’s deadliest blow to supernaturalism, we may come to see A Universe From Nothing as the equivalent from cosmology.”

Whaaaa…??!! Dawkins is comparing the most enduringly profound scientific treatise in history to a pop-science book that recycles a bunch of stale ideas from physics and cosmology. This absurd hyperbole says less about the merits of Krauss’s derivative book than it does about the judgment-impairing intensity of Dawkins’s hatred of religion.

Philosopher David Albert, a specialist in quantum theory, offers a more balanced assessment of Krauss’s book in The New York Times Book Review. And by balanced assessment, I mean merciless smack down. Albert asks, “Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from?” Modern quantum field theories, Albert points out, “have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.”

Krauss and Horgan "get it into it" in the comments:

2. lawkrauss 9:38 am 04/23/2012

Thank you Caleb.. I must say that this kind of silly piece from an author who also “went out on a limb” 20 years ago to say physics was over is rather telling… it is just about as cogent.. and demonstrates more an unwillingness to seriously consider the ideas I and others have raised than a desire to create some interest in his blog..
Link to this

3. jhorgan 10:43 am 04/23/2012

Caleb and Lawrence, thanks for your comments. Larry, I’ll always be grateful to you for helping bring me up to speed on modern cosmology a dozen years ago when I was researching an article for Scientific American. And what’s disappointing is that, apart from the discovery of the acceleration of the cosmic expansion, which was certainly a big surprise, nothing has really changed since then. You and/or your popularizing colleagues–Hawking, Greene, Kaku, Susskind–are still marketing various unsubstantiated versions of inflation, multiverse theories, string theory, vacuum energy, anthropic principle, etc. What’s ironic is that, although you don’t have any more evidence for these speculations, your marketing of them has become more aggressive, a trend that I predicted in The End of Science. Even Caleb implicitly acknowledges that your book’s title oversells its actual content, and yet you accuse ME of hype. Come on Larry, face it, physics, at least in its grandest mode, is in big trouble.(emphasis added.)

Which prompts a walk-back from Krauss:

6. lawkrauss 11:09 am 04/23/2012

John.. first, I didn’t make any definitive claims.. and I get offended when people claim I make such.. second I tried to indicate how much has changed in the last 22 years.. that is the purpose of the book.. things are dramatically different than they were then, and I went through a very careful analysis to describe these changes….. the analysis of fluctuations in the CMB, the discovery that the universe is flat.. these are REAL empirical discoveries that both impact upon and add credence to many of our ideas..
Link to this

7. jhorgan 5:37 pm 04/23/2012

Larry, so you’re saying that you’re not claiming to have answered the question posed by your book’s title? You’re just tossing some ideas around, and you don’t expect anyone to take them too seriously? OK, that’s a useful clarification. It also means that things have not progressed in the last 22 years, in spite of what you just asserted. I think you better tell Dawkins, before he embarrasses himself further.(emphasis added.)

At which point, Krauss apparently takes a powder and doesn't respond.

Complaining about unfairness when he's taken at his word seems to be part of Krauss's ouvre.

"The strong scent of intellectual dishonesty."

Bill Vallicella asks "Why do some physicists talk nonsense about nothing?"

The cause of the inquiry is Lawrence Krauss's claim to have refuted the metaphysical principle that "out of nothing nothing comes" (ex nihilo nihil fit) by claiming that a specific kind of "vacuum" - i.e., quantum vacuum - is a roiling, frothy nexus of energies out of which things "pop" into existence.

Vallicella writes:

There is no point in quoting any more of this stuff since it is obviously gibberish. What is not obvious, and indeed what is most puzzling, is why anyone who is supposedly intelligent would spout such patent nonsense. Or is he joking? Pulling our leg? Trying to sound 'far out' to sell books? It surely sounds like a weird joke to hear that nothing boils and bubbles and 'morphs' and is unstable with particles popping in and out of existence. If a virtual particle popped out of existence would it be even more nothing than the nothing that it was a part of?

If I tell you that I met nobody on my hike this morning, it would be a bad joke were you to inquire, "And how is Nobody doing these days?" 'Nobody' is not the name of a person or the name of anything else. If you are confused by 'I met nobody on my hike,' then I will translate it for you: 'It is not the case that I met somebody on my hike.' The same goes for 'nothing.' It is not a name for something.

The point, of course, is that nothing is precisely nothing and not a weird something or even a non-weird something. Krauss is not stupid, and he is presumably not joking. So he is using 'nothing' in some special way. He and his colleagues are free to do that. He and they are free to stipulate a new meaning for an old word. But then he is not using it in the sense in which it figures in the old principle, ex nihilo nihil fit, 'out of nothing nothing comes.' Whether true or false, the meaning of the principle is clear: if there were nothing at all, nothing could have come into being. This obviously cannot be refuted by shifting the sense of 'nothing' so that it refers to a bubbling, boiling soup of virtual particles.

The strong scent of intellectual dishonesty is wafting up to my nostrils from this bubbling, boiling cauldron of Unsinn.

If I make a tasty hamburger out of a lump of raw meat, have I made something out of nothing? Sure, in a sense: I have made something tasty out of nothing tasty. In a sense, I have made something out of nothing! But one would have to have hamburger for brains if one that ought that that refuted ex nihilo nihil fit.

"Not only can something arise from nothing, but most often the laws of physics require that to occur." This is just nonsense. Whatever the laws of physics are, they are not nothing. So if the laws of physics require that something arise from nothing, then the laws of physics require that something arise without there being laws of physics.

Not only is the quoted sentence nonsense, it contradicts the rest of what Krauss says in quotation #2 above. For he says that there is a sense of 'nothing' which implies the absence of physical laws. So we are supposed to accept that physical laws require the emergence of something out of nothing even if there are no physical laws?

So you've got this situation in which nothing at all exists, and then something comes into existence because the physical laws (which don't exist) "require" it. Bullshit! Sophistry for the purpose of exploiting rubes to make a quick pop science buck.

More on Epiphanies.

Prior exchanges are here and in the comments.

AJ writes:

Yes, the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove in Luke. My use of “incarnated” simply denotes “in the flesh”. I’m saying that the Holy Spirit never took the form of man.


St. Ambrose states:

“4. As John says that he saw, so, too, wrote Mark; Luke, however, added that the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form as a dove; you must not think that this was an incarnation, but an appearance. He, then, brought the appearance before him, that by means of the appearance he might believe who did not see the Spirit, and that by the appearance He might manifest that He had a share of the one honour in authority, the one operation in the mystery, the one gift in the bath, together with the Father and the Son; unless perchance we consider Him in Whom the Lord was baptized too weak for the servant to be baptized in Him.” (On the Holy Spirit Book III, Ch.1)

St. Ambrose states that the Holy Spirit was never incarnated. Yes, the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove, but He was never incarnated. This parallels with Christ who took on different forms in the Old Testament (particularly, the Angel of the Lord) and was then incarnated in the New Testament.

Moreover, I hold that the Holy Spirit could not be the Angel of the Lord because a spirit is without bodily form, nor man-like (Luke 24:39). It is apparent in the OT that the Angel of the Lord did have a bodily form. As I stated earlier, Manoah first believed the Angel of the Lord to be a man in Judges 13.

The incarnation of Christ is imperative to the Christian faith. I hold that OT christophanies were not incarnations, but rather revelations of the pre-incarnate Christ.

8:17 PM

AJ said...

You are correct when you state that no man has seen God in the divine nature (in His glory). But it is a stretch to say that man has not seen God in any form. To say that seeing the form of God but not seeing Him in His glory is the same as not seeing God at all is not warranted by scripture or a major part of historical bible scholarship within Christianity.

Irenaeus puts this well.

“5. These things did the prophets set forth in a prophetical manner; but they did not, as some allege, [proclaim] that He who was seen by the prophets was a different [God], the Father of all being invisible. Yet this is what those [heretics] declare, who are altogether ignorant of the nature of prophecy. For prophecy is a prediction of things future, that is, a setting forth beforehand of those things which shall be afterwards. The prophets, then, indicated beforehand that God should be seen by men; as the Lord also says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8 But in respect to His greatness, and His wonderful glory, no man shall see God and live, Exodus 33:20 for the Father is incomprehensible; but in regard to His love, and kindness, and as to His infinite power, even this He grants to those who love Him, that is, to see God, which thing the prophets did also predict. For those things that are impossible with men, are possible with God. Luke 18:27 For man does not see God by his own powers; but when He pleases He is seen by men, by whom He wills, and when He wills, and as He wills. For God is powerful in all things, having been seen at that time indeed, prophetically through the Spirit, and seen, too, adoptively through the Son; and He shall also be seen paternally in the kingdom of heaven, the Spirit truly preparing man in the Son of God, and the Son leading him to the Father, while the Father, too, confers [upon him] incorruption for eternal life, which comes to every one from the fact of his seeing God. For as those who see the light are within the light, and partake of its brilliancy; even so, those who see God are in God, and receive of His splendour. But [His] splendour vivifies them; those, therefore, who see God, do receive life. And for this reason, He, [although] beyond comprehension, and boundless and invisible, rendered Himself visible, and comprehensible, and within the capacity of those who believe, that He might vivify those who receive and behold Him through faith. For as His greatness is past finding out, so also His goodness is beyond expression; by which having been seen, He bestows life upon those who see Him. It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship with God; but fellowship with God is to know God, and to enjoy His goodness.”

Against Heresies (Book IV, Chapter 20)

Just to clarify, I am not a Mormon. I believe in one God. I hold that the form in which Christ appeared is irrelevant to the fact that the Son was seen in the OT.

Justin Martyr also holds this same conclusion. Even if Justin was a pre-nicene church father or held certain positions that were later further defined, it does not take away from the his positions that were correct and aligned with later developed doctrine. I can agree with Justin on some things and disagree with others, I do the same with Augustine.

"I shall give you another testimony, my friends," said I, "from the Scriptures, that God begat before all creatures a Beginning,[who was] a certain rational power[proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos; and on another occasion He calls Himself Captain, when He appeared in human form to Joshua the son of Nave(Nun). For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the Father's will, and since He was begotten of the Father by an act of will…” DIALOGUE WITH TRYPHO CH.61

I will reply further to your post, as I haven’t addressed all your points yet.

8:17 PM

AJ said...

If you hold that the Son “is not totally present for His followers to see”, how then do you interpret the transfiguration or even Mark 16:14?

Yes, “Proskynesis” is the Greek word for worship used in many of the verses involving the Angel of the Lord and worship in the LXX. However it is important to focus attention on the original Hebrew “Shachah” and its original meaning in the Masoretic text.

It isn’t a question of persons worshipping the apparent ‘angel(s)”, but rather a question of why the Angel of the Lord accepted worship.

The situation in Genesis 19:1 is interesting. It is an example of “shachah” used in reference to making obeisance to persons other than God. It is important to remember that Lot mistook these angels for men (similar to Manoah in Judges 13). So in relation to Lot bowing himself to two perceived men, nothing is out of the ordinary as it was custom to bow in civil respect to men in biblical times. The difference between Genesis 19:1 and Revelation 19:10 & 22:8-9 is that, in Revelation, John knows very well that he is communicating with and angel an intends to worship him and not merely show respect while Lot did not know he was conversing with angels (he believed them to be men). And in Judges 13 we see an example of the Angel of the Lord accepting the burnt offering after which Manoah falls to the ground. There is a defining line between the use of “shachah” as referring to obeisance and worship. As you or I might show respect for a great man or judge, we would never worship him as we would God.

While “wonderful” and “abundant” are not exact literal names of God, they are attributes of Him. (Exodus 34:6 and Isaiah 9:6)

Manoah is not inerrant but we must still answer the question of why he first says “Angel of the Lord”, then “God”.

I merely point out that the presence of fire is significant in denoting the presence of God in the OT. No, fire does not always denote His presence. However, it is a major clue that can’t be overlooked. Coupled with the apparent “angelic messenger(s)” speaking with the voice of the Lord, holy ground, the tabernacle, etc., it is indeed a huge clue.

I respond:

AJ


First, let me be clear that I am not per se ruling out that the putative epiphanies in the Old Testament were epiphanies or Christophanies. Those are within the licit range of opinions, I believe. However, I don’t think that we are compelled to conclude that they were and I think that the better opinion is that they were not.

1. I am pleased that we are in agreement with Ambrose and Augustine that at the Baptism in Jordan the Holy Spirit took the bodily form of a dove in the New Testament.

I am also pleased that we are in agreement with Ambrose and Augustine that the Holy Spirit was never “incarnated.”

I didn’t know the Ambrose references and I appreciate your having supplied them. However, it does not surprise me that Ambrose agreed with Augustine because the uniqueness of the Incarnation was most definitely a key point of Christian doctrine.

It seems to me, though, that you may be missing some important points about the meaning of the true and undisputed epiphany of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove at the Baptism in the Jordan. Those points are:

A. The meaning of “incarnation” vis a vis “epiphany.” It is not clear to me that you understand what “incarnation” means. It does not mean “taking a human form.” Incarnation means taking the bodily form into the reality of the person so that the person becomes embodied, while remaining spiritual, such that it is the body that is taken up and becomes part of the hypostatic union with divinity. None of the prior epiphanies involved a “hypostatic union,” which is why Ambrose refers to them as “appearances.

B. Thus, based on the example of His appearance at the Baptism at the Jordan, the Holy Spirit could have appeared in any prior epiphany, particularly since the epiphanies often did not involve taking the form of a human being, and

C. You write that the “Holy Spirit could not be the Angel of the Lord because a spirit is without bodily form, nor man-like (Luke 24:39).” This seems to miss the point. Each person of the Trinity is a spirit and not “man-like” in their divine nature. Moreover, the point of Jesus disclaiming what you synopsize God being man-like isn’t to assert that God might manifest as a dog or a dove, but to hyperbolically drive the point home that God is Spirit. Hence, the problem with your analysis is that the Holy Spirit manifested bodily – as you now concede – in the form of a dove. But since being embodied as a dove is being in a bodily form, then clearly nothing clearly prevents earlier manifestations as fire or as angels from having been the Holy Spirit. (N.B. Angels are no more “men” than they are “doves.”)

D. Again, this leads in the direction of Mormonism, which as you may know posits that God and the Son have bodies of “flesh and bone,” while the Spirit has a spiritual body, which is really, really fine-grained matter. Now, again, there is nothing wrong with that, except that orthodox Christianity has always affirmed the immateriality and spirituality of God and the Trinity.

2. You write “The incarnation of Christ is imperative to the Christian faith. I hold that OT christophanies were not incarnations, but rather revelations of the pre-incarnate Christ.”

My prior arguments was to the effect that this conclusion is not compelled by the text. My further argument is the appeal to “fittingness.” To wit, why do you feel that this conclusion is more fitting – more consonant with what we know of the Gospel - than its competitor?

My argument against your position is also based on “fittingness.” I think that the Incarnation is so important and so unique that while angelic visitations prefigure the Incarnation, if we believe that Christ was actually making those appearances, that view threatens to undermine the uniqueness of the Incarnation. It’s as if Christ were making some off-Broadway appearance before hitting the big time.

Likewise, these prior epiphanies are all too easy to confuse with the Incarnation – which I think you’ve done twice, but even if it was just a problem with grammar, my point is made.

3. Irenaeus and the vision of God.

The point that I was making was that we do not and cannot see the divine nature of God with just our physical eyes.  When people saw Jesus, they certainly saw God, but they saw God in his human nature.

You do provide an interesting quote from Irenaeus, but it seems to miss the point of this discussion.

Irenaeus is talking about “seeing” God in various non-physical ways, e.g., “For God is powerful in all things, having been seen at that time indeed, prophetically through the Spirit, and seen, too, adoptively through the Son; and He shall also be seen paternally in the kingdom of heaven….”

It is clear that in the after-life the saved will see the divine nature of God directly by vision. Apparently, thought, the damned won’t according to, I believe, Augustine. So, if you show up at the Last Judgment and Jesus looks like just a guy, you know you are in some trouble.

Now that’s funny but the serious point is that without God’s assistance – his Grace - to see His Divine nature, we can’t do it with our natural senses. Similarly, Irenaeus talks about how we can see God in various ways that are analogous to seeing with our vision but are not, in fact, seeing by our eyes.

Epiphanies are quite to the contrary. Anyone can see them. That’s the point. That’s why Augustine talks about epiphanies being creatures that are observable by natural senses.

4. You write “Just to clarify, I am not a Mormon. I believe in one God. I hold that the form in which Christ appeared is irrelevant to the fact that the Son was seen in the OT.”

I don’t know what you mean by “I hold that the form in which Christ appeared is irrelevant to the fact that the Son was seen in the OT.” It seems that there are two buried assumptions here –

A. Christ was seen in Old Testament epiphanies. This is the question at issue. Assuming it is simply begging the question.

B. The appearance – Form? Shape? Incarnate? – is irrelevant to the fact that it was Christ who appeared.

Concerning this last, I submit that it does matter. If you are assuming an Incarnation, then you are outside the “rules” of the Christian game. If the form was human, then this may foreshadow the Incarnation, but if the appearance was Christ it seems to detract from the dignity of the Incarnation by, as I noted, making it look like Christ was trying on the costume before the big show.

If the form was not human, then what happened to your reading of Luke 24:39?

5. Justin Martyr.

I agree that Justin appears to be arguing for the epiphanies being Christophanies, just as Augustine argues against that position.

The issue is why should we prefer one over the other.

A reason for preferring Justin is that it might be the case that since Justin is substantially earlier than Augustine, he would have access to an earlier tradition. But in this case, that tradition goes back to Genesis, so it is hard to see how that is sufficiently early to give him an edge in that department.

On the other hand, coming earlier, Justin wasn’t exposed to the Christological and Trinitarian debates that unfolded later from working out the implications of Christianity. I’ve already pointed out that Justin had the unfortunate habit of referring to “two gods” in his writings, which suggests that he wasn’t entirely clear on the issue of the consubstantiality of God’s nature. As such, it would have been logical for him to think that Christ was subordinate to the Father and, so, there was nothing “unfitting” about Christ trying on his role before the big show.

Augustine – writing after Nicea – doesn’t have the luxury of that kind of understanding. His understanding – our understanding – is that the Father and the Son are consubstantial. As such, we have to re-think Justin’s understanding to make sure it accords with – or is the best explanation of – the data in light of our new understanding.

Hence, Augustine is to be preferred.

I would very much be interested in your explaining to me why we should prefer Justin to Augustine on this issue.

6. “If you hold that the Son “is not totally present for His followers to see”, how then do you interpret the transfiguration or even Mark 16:14?”

That’s a good question, and a bit complicated.

Aquinas explains the Transfiguration as a moment when Christ assumed bodily the supernatural gift of clarity, which all resurrected bodies will have, along with subtlety, agility and impassibility.

Certain Orthodox theologians have viewed the Transfiguration in a different way that gets very mystical and may traipse off into heresy.

In any event, the light of the transfiguration was a visible light, not a metaphor or a spiritual experience.

7. “Worshipping” Angels.

Your exegesis of how Lot was just showing respect to some strangers ignores Augustine. Augustine described Lot as “worshipping” and specifically says that obviously Lot knew they were angels because he wouldn’t have “worshipped” them otherwise.

Even if we understand Lot’s actions as proskynesis short of the worship given to God – something I am perfectly comfortable with – Augustine’s point is that such exaggerated respect is something given to angels.

Similarly, when we see the same thing in Judges and Revelations, why should we assume that it isn’t the same kind of exaggerated respect that people gave to angels as a matter of routine? That’s the clear implication of Augustine’s observations.

Two additional points.

A. I think we go with Augustine on this one because he understood the customs of a non-democratic culture than you or I.

B. I’ve seen a bit of self-serving blindness on this one. People who would accuse a Catholic of “worshipping” a statue of Mary by praying before it seem to have no problem with claiming that Lot, Manue and John were not “worshipping” angels by dropping face-first before them. The problem is that we don’t understand the gradations of “worship” – which means showing reverence or respect – and we don’t have categories between “worship of God” and “respect for superiors.”

8. Manoah.

First, “abundant” may be a name of God, but I’m not comfortable with that conclusion.

The “pro” argument is from the following:

"On the contrary, Ambrose says (De Fide ii) that "Splendor" is among those things which are said of God metaphorically."

And

"On the contrary, It is written (Exodus 15:3): "The Lord is a man of war, Almighty is His name."

“Abundance” is not so dissimilar to “almighty” and “splendor.”

And, yet, when God speaks of Himself, he says “I am who am.”

Further, “almighty” and “splendor” are names of God that are ascribed by humans as metaphors for God. It’s hard to see God doing that. Did Ted Williams ever introduce himself by saying that he was the “Splendid Splinter.” I don’t see that happening.

Concerning the reference to God, I’ll note that Manue said it, but Manue also said “we will die because we have seen God.” Manue did not die. Why is it not the case that the reason he didn’t die is because he hadn’t seen God? It seems the better argument from the text is that this was not an epiphany.

Concerning fire and speaking as God, that’s where we started this discussion. Augustine offers an explanation for the latter.

So kicking it to you, I’m curious.

1. You have never interacted with Augustine’s explanation – as I have done with Irenaeus and Justin. What do you think is the problem is, if anything, with Augustine's explanation?

2. How is it that you think the proposition that the epiphanies were Christophanies is more consonant with the entirety of Christian doctrine than Augustine’s position?

Murray Gell-Mann on Truth and Beauty.

More on Teleology, including the Final Cause of Beauty.

A lawyer - but not me - writes:

Jim and Peter,


Jim introduced the words vs. meaning discussion in response to my proposition that,

“First, the fact that we choose (some would say, are evolutionarily driven) to assign meaning to something, doesn’t prove that there’s any meaning there beyond our arbitrary assignment of meaning.”

My point was really pretty simple-minded, and I hope that it’s not necessary to get into the linguistic tall grass on this issue, because I haven’t given the linguistic aspects a great deal of thought, much less study.

When I refer to “objective” or “arbitrary/subjective” meaning, I am referring to the question of whether the meaning that was assigned represents a truth that should apply to everyone similarly situated, or just to the person who assigned the meaning. (N.B., I typically use “arbitrary” and “subjective” interchangeably, but am open to being persuaded that one should distinguish between them.)

In these terms, objective meaning exists when a proposition has falsifiability (a la Popper). Jim mentioned the proposition that “It is raining.” While it may or may not, in fact, be raining, the proposition that it is raining is a testable one, so regardless of whatever words are used to express that proposition, it is one that has an objective meaning.

I do not know whether he miswrote or I misread, but I interpret Peter’s second paragraph in his email below to define all meaning in terms that I would describe above as objective. Perhaps Peter does not include statements of values, opinions, etc. as being “propositions”.

However, we all know that there are statements that reflect meanings that are subjective. Just try answering a woman’s question, “Do these pants make my butt look fat?” Or, a more current example: “Millionaires and billionaires should pay their fair share of taxes!”

Statements or propositions of opinion, judgments, values are inherently subjective: reasonable, informed people can disagree. The exception would be where there is some external authority (logic, revelation) that converts them into universal truths.

Craig has raised an interesting point in this area, when he talks about elevating beauty to a status above truth (or, perhaps, knowledge). In my terms, in order to do that he must believe that there is an objective standard of beauty. I do not share such a belief in objective beauty – it really is in the eye of the beholder, and judgments on beauty differ among cultures, individuals within cultures, and over time. Nonetheless, I love the image that Craig poses of, “Dame Beauty stands there with a ferule smacking the knuckles of Truth.” My world is so much more prosaic! Alas.

In sum, I think that all of us in this discussion probably agree that materialists act as though there are propositions that are very important in their lives (such as moral judgments that others should live by), which they treat as objective, but which science cannot reach one way or the other. I also suspect (but cannot prove) that science never will be able to do so, because the nature of those propositions is not falsifiable in a Popperian sense.

Where Jim and I tend to disagree is the extent to which logic can suffice, or revelation is required, to deal with that sort of proposition, and that’s a different discussion entirely.

An English professor responds:

Let me say rather that Beauty raps our idea of Truth on the knuckles to push us in the direction of greater Truth. In describing reality, physicists are right to distrust ugly equations.

On the fat buttocks issue, it is much more politic to go with the idea that beauty and truth are subjective, but line up a panel of experts and they'll be at least as close in their assessments as olympics diving judges.

I don't think that beauty is merely subjective. Has anyone read Umberto Eco's The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas? That looks like a good place to start thinking.

My response:

Russ, all -

Subjective, objective and arbitrary -

The point I was making is that all propositions/meanings are discovered outside the person for who experiences the meaning or states the proposition. Things are meanings or propositions because they are about something, and that something is not arbitrary or pure subjectivity. Even the proposition contained in the statement like "I like ice cream" is about something - ice cream and my preference for it - and however much it may be about my subjective preference, it is not "arbitrary."

A point here is that propositions that are apparently "subjective" are still "objective" in the sense that propositions are truer or falser to the extent that they are a product of the mind and the mind seeks the truth, which means the conformance of the mind to reality. The reality in the statement "I like ice cream" is that I really do prefer this thing called ice cream.

Beauty -

Classical philosophy recognized that truth, beauty, goodness and being are fundamentally the same thing. Something cannot be good without actually existing. Something cannot be beautiful without existing. Something cannot be true without existing. Something cannot be beautiful without also being good. Something cannot be beautiful without also being true.

And something cannot be true without being beautiful.

As Gilson, and others. point out, an odd meta-principle used by scientists in deciding the truth of a theory is whether it is beautiful. In this sense "beauty" means simplicity, elegance, fruitfulness and the ability to explain facts without ugly epicycles.

This is one indication that beauty is not "arbitrary" and that it is an objective fact of reality.

Another indication is illustrated by the question of whether a beautiful sunset would be any less beautiful if no one was there to appreciate it?

A third indication is that there are things that are universally understood to transcend time and culture in their beauty.

I suspect that before the Modern era the assertion that beauty is purely a matter of taste would be incomprehensible. In the Modern era, it seems apparent that art has seen a departure away from the classical ideas of beauty that has sent it in search of idiosyncratic meanings.

There can be beauty in such art because there can be art and goodness in such art, but it may be more debatable because such art is not trying to ascend the ladder of existence to the highest place where beauty, truth, goodness and existence are unified.

Modernity denies the unity of truth, goodness, beauty and existence or that there can be an ordering of beauty or truth or goodness or existence. A casualty of this attitude is that Modernity denies people the virtues by which they can decide whether something is more beautiful than another thing.

This attitude leads us to our confusion about subjectivity and objectivity of beauty. Let's say there is a questionable bit of Modern Art. I say it is ugly; an art critic says it is beautiful. Who is right? The answer is not that we are both right. The answer is that there is beauty in the art - and there has to be because the art exists and therefore has being and therefore has goodness insofar, at least, as it exists - but neither one of us may be properly ordered with respect to our appreciation of beauty.

Let's consider the clear case of disorder and the good and the beautiful. In movies and books about serial killers, it is a cliche to have the killer describe their deeds as being works of art. This seems like nuts - and it is - but insofar as executing a plan efficiently and cleverly can be called beautiful, then the precise, meticulous murders of serial killers of fiction are beautiful.

The problem is that serial killings are not ordered toward the human good or to love. Because they aren't ordered to the human good and love, whatever "beauty" there is in such things is warped, distorted and disordered. Things that are warped, distorted and disordered are things that essentially lack existence or the good that is proper to them, and things that lack their proper good also lack their proper beauty. They are, in a word, ugly.

Similarly, because Modern Art denies the traditional ordering of beauty toward love or humanity it creates things that are distorted, warped and disordered. It seems obvious to any objective person that Modernity has been singularly responsible tor generating the most mediocre and ugly art ever created in the history of man.

In other words, the denial of telos leads to the belief that all things are subjective which leads to the loss of meaning and leads to ugliness.

An English Professor's additur:

Taking Yosemite Valley as a less fraught example than the human form, isn't the fact that so many people are astounded by it, and that they have to go to Yosemite Valley itself to be fully astounded, no matter how many memories they have, indicate that the beauty and sublimity of the place reside there, with at least a measure of independence from the minds that apprehend it? What Peter says makes sense to me. Beauty reveals an underlying order, which is itself intellectually beautiful, and also true. Keats got the right message from the Grecian Urn.

 

Atheist Physicist says that what is missing from scientific explanation is the answer to "why"...

...or, more technically, the "final cause."

At Bloggingheads:



The physicist - David Deutsch - also asserts that information perpetuates itself, which sounds an awful lot like the "substantial form" of Aristotle and Aquinas.

Is "Meaning" the Ghost in the Machine?

Is it the case that while words can be arbitrary, meanings - or propositions - can never be arbitrary?


"Meanings", it seems to me, are developed, constructed or drawn from "truth" in the sense that "truth" is the "conformity of the mind" to what really is "the case." (Which is an Aquinas meets Wittgenstein mashup.)

So, meanings are "discovered" outside of the "meaning being," which means that they are not invented by the "meaning being" and so cannot be arbitrary.

But meanings - or propositions - are not material entities. They can't be measured, weighed, scanned, seen or tested by the methods of science in themselves. As Etienne Gilson notes in "From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution."

"Since he himself is a material being, the knowledge of the scientist is assuredly tied to matter, but it is not matter.We have seen the face of Einstein, but have we seen his knowledge (savoir), his thought ceaselessly moving between two or more possible physical universes? We have heard his voice, which was sensible, but how is it that we have perceived the sense of the words he pronounced? If there is that which is knowable, and that which is known, then there is that which is immaterial, and since it is tied to our body, which is sensible, the knowable then exists in the sensible. There is a fact which constitutes one of the oldest constants of philosophy. The inevitability of Platonism, in its own right or mediated through Aristotle, comes visibly to the surface here. Since only knowledge could have conceived these things, matter then has the immaterial in it. Centuries, millennia of philosophical speculation have puzzled over the source from whence this immaterial could come. Aristotle replied before them, "From without." Translated: scientifically speaking, we do not know." (Gilson, 149)"

Without meanings or propositions, we couldn't do science. But, it seems, that (a) the most important aspect of science as a human enterprise is immaterial and (b) that most important aspect is an immaterial, metaphysical - perhaps even, supernatural - element planted right in the heart of our material universe.

Which should be a weird thought for anyone who believes that they are pure materialists.

First Principles

From Just Thomism:

-I read a rational account of why an (obvious) evil is evil, and thought "when you get to the point of having to having to reason about this, you’re doomed." You can know who has power by seeing [who is] allowed to get angry in public, and who doesn’t have to establish the first principles he’s arguing from.