On knowledge of God

A nice post here by Maverick about whether the way to God is through the self, or by ‘scholastic’ analysis of propositions or thoughts or doctrines. He quotes Augustine (De Vera Religione, c. 39): Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi. In interiore homine habitat veritas, which he translates as "Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. The truth resides in man's interiority". I think ‘inner man’ is better and more literal – interiore homine is one of Augustine’s favourite expressions, which he himself probably borrows from the words of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, 3.16 - ut det vobis secundum divitias gloriae suae virtute corroborari per Spiritum eius in interiore homine - “That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened by his Spirit with might unto the inward man”

Giles Fraser would frequently bang on about the two Gods of Genesis: the creator God, known by description, all-powerful and all-knowing, the God that the Scholastics mostly wrote about in their extensive theology. And the God who would walk through the garden of Eden, who looks like a man, and who cannot be approached by logical analysis.

Filed under 'propositionalism'. Propositionalism is the view that all reports of intentional states can be analysed as propositional attitude reports. See my discussion here. I assume it is obvious how this is connected with the idea of ‘the inner man’.

On believing the same thing

I asked: If Tom believes that snow is white, and Carol believes that snow is white, are they believing the same thing or not?  And Anthony asked rhetorically, if I am eating a hamburger, and you are eating a hamburger, are we both eating the same thing or not? If I am nervous, and you are nervous, are we both experiencing the same emotion? If I have 5 apples, and you have 5 apples, do we both have the same number of apples? I'm reading a copy of "The Great Gatsby". You're reading a different copy of "The Great Gatsby". Are we both reading the same thing?

If we are both eating a hamburger, then in one sense we are eating the same thing, namely hamburger.  Perhaps we could say the sameness in question is a 'formal' identity.  In another sense we are not, given that there are probably two hamburgers in question, hence there is no sameness in the sense of 'numerical' identity.  Clearly there is no numerical identity between what Tom and Carol believe, even though they both believe that snow is white.  But if the identity is formal, where is the matter which has the form?  The form of  hamburger is embedded an organic carbon compound (meat).  The form of "The Great Gatsby" is embedded in another compound (tree pulp, paper).  What is the material that embeds the form of the proposition 'snow is white'?

Does everyone believe something?

Anthony asks whether ‘that it will rain next week’ is something. The quotes are scare quotes, but I could rephrase his question using real quotes. Does the noun phrase “that it will rain next week” name anything? And if so, what kind of thing is it? Is it located in space? Indeed, is it located in time? If I say that grass is green today, and you say the same thing tomorrow, is what you say tomorrow numerically identical with what I say today? Is the object of saying, stating, thinking, believing etc. a timeless eternal object, located nowhere in space itself? Is that Platonic idea consistent with nominalism?

I'm not sure a logician needs to worry about questions like these. A logician is worried about whether an arguments like

Everything said by Tom is true
That snow is white is said by Tom
That snow is white is true

or
Tom believes that snow is white
Tom believes something

are valid.  And surely they are.  If Tom believes that snow is white, then the simplest answer to the question of what 'that snow is white' refers to is simply that it is what Tom believes. Why bring space and time into it?

Propositionalism

Tim Crane has a great paper here explaining ‘propositionalism’. This the view (some call it “sententialism”) that all reports of intentional states can be analysed as propositional attitude reports. I alluded to this in my last post . If we can analyse ‘Tom is thinking about a unicorn’ as ‘Tom has a thought about a unicorn’ then we can set aside the problem of Tom’s relation to an exotic ‘intentional object’ and talk instead about his thoughts, and their purported relation to such objects.

How does that help? Modern logic already explains how the relational form of a proposition can be explained without invoking exotic objects. Consider

Jake believes there is a gold mine in Surrey
Jake wishes there were a gold mine in Surrey

We are not tempted to invoke such objects because the first sentence, for example, can be analysed as ‘Jake believes that for some x, x is a gold mine and x is in Surrey’. This does not entail the existence of any x. The fact that Jake believes p does not entail that p is true. Now imagine a language where the italicised words above are represented by a single word. For example, suppose that ‘to Ø’ is a verb meaning means ‘to believe there is’. Thus

Elizabeth Ø’s a man in the moon
John Ø’s a golden mountain
The Greeks Ø’d a winged horse

This verb takes a subject (a person) and an accusative or object – a thing whose existence is believed in. Grammatically it appears superficially to relate two objects. For example, the first sentence apparently relates Elizabeth to the man in the moon, a nonexistent object. But its semantics implies no such thing. “Elizabeth Ø’s a man in the moon” simply means that Elizabeth believes there is a man in the moon. Since her belief (as far as we know) is false, it follows that there is no man in the moon. Not even a non-existent man in the moon. We don’t need to invoke queer Intentional Objects to explain why each of the three sentences above is true, even though no man is in the moon, no mountain is golden, and no horse has wings.

Nor do we have to expend much thought to explain why the first inference below, but not the second, is invalid.

Jake Ø’s a gold mine in Surrey, therefore some gold mine is Surrey
Jake owns a gold mine in Surrey, therefore some gold mine is Surrey

The realist wants to explain the difference by invoking different sorts of relation. He may suppose that ‘owns’ is a genuine relation which requires the existence of its relata, whereas ‘Ø’s’ is a queer, intentional relation which, while still a relation, does not require the existence of all of its relata. Nominalists know better. For the inference

Jake believes there is a gold mine in Surrey, therefore some gold mine is Surrey

is clearly invalid. We cannot infer the existence of something from mere belief in its existence. This is the evidence, then, of a deep logical structure for verbs like ‘think’, ‘desire’, ‘know’. They are syntactically simple. But they are (probably) logically complex. This is merely a hypothesis. Possibly there may be some other explanation. But the alternatives (nonexistent objects) are both implausible and illogical.

There are difficulties with propositionalism, as Crane notes in the paper. I will discuss these later.