On Knowledge
An Off-the-Cuff Essay From 2019
Does critical realism make sense? Can God will otherwise? Thoughts on negative theology and Maritain’s epistemology.
On the first point, I am inclined to say yes—but only to a degree. The Cartesian error of beginning with the assumption that we are somehow disconnected from our bodies is manifestly weak. We know ourselves through interaction with the world and, in virtue of this, as physical agents. However, does that leave no room for retorsion or other critical enterprises? It seems that there is still room for such procedures. Maritain argues that, once we reflect upon our knowledge, we realize that we grasp being as being, that the Principle of Identity has the “is” of predication built into it, and so forth. If this is true, then all first principles follow from it.
This means that reality is fundamentally intelligible to us, and that any errors arise not from our substance but from accidental circumstances and states of affairs. Since our knowledge of being begins in the senses and gives rise to a necessarily true judgment, it follows that our senses are per se reliable. If they were not, we could not have metaphysical certitude. But since we do have metaphysical certitude—at least in the Principle of Identity—it follows that our senses are reliable. The assumption that we know ourselves as agents interacting with the world is itself a variety of the Principle of Identity. Furthermore, it is not ad hoc. This is the most fundamental experience we have, and it does not rely upon Descartes’ faulty assumptions.
Therefore, rather than undertaking something like methodical doubt, we should instead investigate the explanation for falsity in our judgments.
Furthermore, the Principle of Non-Contradiction seems to follow from this positive judgment that being is being, which is built into the Principle of Identity. If being is being, then the inverse is that being is not non-being. Hence, there emerges a judgment capable of guiding one’s whole ontology: the Principle of Non-Contradiction. Secondly, just as we have universal knowledge of being, so too we have knowledge of the constituent aspects of beings. We know universals as instantiated property-instances when we encounter the concrete objects of everyday life. Hence, we know universals and possess a faculty capable of immaterial thought. Since being follows action, and a thing’s action is determined by its essence, it follows that the essence of man is immaterial and subsistent. As Aristotle argued, a thing like a rock is farthest removed from immateriality. We should not expect the brain, by virtue of its identity as a bodily organ, to exhibit any greater immateriality than this; rather, we should believe that in this respect it is essentially much like the rock, perhaps even identical to it. There are, of course, many experiences that are particular and therefore perhaps material; but at the very least, an immaterial active principle must exist in man.
Moreover, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true. Because the mind knows reality as it is, and because being is cognizable, it follows that being is intelligible. This means that all causation must be toward an end, which attracts the efficient cause, and must be between beings; for were it otherwise, causation would be unintelligible. But all existent things are intelligible. Therefore, either causation does not exist or causation is intelligible. But causation does exist, since causation is serving here as the middle term of this argument and is thus the cause of the argument as argument. Therefore, causation must be intelligible.
Now, external sufficient reasons are a variety of efficient causation. The world, therefore, as existent, must be intelligible. The world can receive this sufficient reason either from itself or from another. It cannot receive it from itself, since it is modally indifferent toward existence, composite, finite, limited, mutable, and so forth; nor can it receive it from anything else like itself, and so on to infinity. An infinite regress of essentially ordered explanations is absurd, and that is precisely what would be required here, since contingency arguments are relevant to the continued persistence of the world. Therefore, there must be a First Sufficient Explanation that is not explained by any other.
Now perhaps one will argue that this is too ad hoc. But there are several answers to that. The first is that we have argued negatively, not positively. What we have arrived at is a being essentially unlike all other beings. This is not something inherently positive, but intrinsically negative. We have arrived at a being who cannot fail to be intelligible. But this tells us nothing positive about the being’s essence.
However, there are ways to think about this more positively, even if only through analogy. Since this being stands entirely alone as the First Explanation, He cannot receive His intelligibility from elsewhere. Intelligibility is a species of truth, and truth seems to involve a kind of directedness proper only to intellect. But the First Explanation is entirely self-explained. Therefore, the First Explanation is self-intelligible and hence essentially intellectual. However, this Being cannot have intellect in the same way that we do. For one thing, being non-composite, He must possess intellect both eminently and without limit, since, by virtue of being non-composite, there are in Him neither external nor internal principles of limitation. These, however, are analogical terms. God has these attributes by way of eminence, with all creaturely conditions removed. Still, the First Being remains unknown in His essence.
The problems surrounding Divine Simplicity can be addressed in this way. God possesses all the things that we predicate of Him—Goodness, Power, Infinity, Volition, and so forth. However, He possesses them in a manner that is uncomposed and unlimited in His essence, which is not something we can know positively in the way we know the composite beings of our experience. We cannot say positively how God’s Power differs from a created property, except that it does so by way of supereminence. Even God’s creative act, though truly immanent, cannot be known positively. We can know it only insofar as it is wholly uncoerced. Hence, the world must have a sufficient reason; but because we have moved from effects to causes, and since God’s creative act is immanent, this reason can be known only negatively or analogically, just like all God’s properties.
We can, however, move toward some positive claims by considering God’s Goodness. Since the Good is self-diffusive, as Platonists argue, it would follow that God does not require some further goodness outside Himself in order to communicate goodness by creating a world. However, we cannot expect in this life to comprehend God’s Goodness fully or in any univocal way.
Hence, we can know that God’s final cause cannot be anything other than God Himself. Since God’s Goodness is a mode of goodness with all principles of limitation removed, His Goodness can be diffused in an infinity of ways. Furthermore, since there is no discursive reasoning in God, this communication would have to be immediate. Therefore, God’s Goodness can serve as the final cause for an infinity of things.
How this Good is diffused would again be sufficiently explained by God’s Goodness, whatever the action may be; and the sufficient reason for a particular world is embedded negatively in God’s essence. Therefore, although no such reason can be given to us—since we do not know God in His essence—God’s own beatitude serves as the explanation for Him. We should be no more surprised that we cannot locate the reason for this world’s creation than that we cannot comprehend God’s power.
This brings us to the accidental-property objection. If God is simple, then how can God have willed otherwise, since that would seem to imply a potency in God’s knowledge as cause of things? If one applies a universal negative theology, even this problem appears to dissolve.
God’s knowledge is of such a sort that it is wholly unified, or rather, without division. Thus God’s knowledge of creation would be through Himself; and since God’s power sustains creation, God would have to know creation through His power, which again is identical with Himself. But just as God’s Power in its essence is unknown to us except by way of negation, so too God’s knowledge in its essence is incomprehensible except by negating the accidents that characterize the objects of our experience.
To conclude: since we have shown that there is no necessity in God, and have also shown that God is perfectly without parts, including accidents, it follows that we can know that God, by virtue of being undivided in His being, knows Himself. However, it is unknowable to us how God would know another world, except that such knowledge would not be accidental to Him.
Within Christian theology, we have even more reason to affirm the creative freedom of God’s act. Since God exists as Trinity, God’s self-diffusiveness is truly contingent rather than flowing from any need. God experiences absolutely no coercion to create, possessing infinite blessedness and good will within the most adorable Godhead. Therefore, Christians can affirm without hesitation that God created the world graciously. We should praise the only true God, the bestower of all compassion, always. Only a God of Triunity could be most excellent, and so He is.
Just some thoughts. I do not actually like this more extreme negative theology, but I think it resolves the accidental-property objection. Moreover, I do not love critical realism, but it does seem to function as a useful fallback position.