In a recent post, I reviewed chapter 9 of Anthony Flood's book, Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God's Thoughts after Him (link). The following post will cover chapter 10 - "What Are We Doing When We're Reading? Questions about Gordon Clark's Occasionalism" - and conclude my review. As a precursor to this post, I wrote another one in which I argued that late in his life, it appears Clark did, in fact, espouse occasionalism (link). I want to say at the outset that I always appreciate reading other people's thoughts on Gordon Clark. In a way, it helps me understand how I myself have been impacted by Clark's influence and how I can hope to impact the thoughts of others in a helpful way.
In this chapter, Mr. Flood takes aim at late Clark's occasionalism. With Mr. Flood, I would agree that accepting occasionalism is problematic (link and link). His most insistent criticism of late Clark's occasionalism seems to concern the philosophy of language. For instance, consider the following statements:
One wonders how Clark's epistemology accounts for how one learns a language...Now, how did Gordon Clark access the propositions of Scripture? He was adamant that ink marks on a Bible's white paper pages (or pixels on a computer monitor) convey nothing to the mind. The Holy Spirit, however, uses those marks to 'stimulate' or occasion the divinely intended proposition in the believer's mind...It was Clark's distinctive position that only the propositions of the Bible conveyed by the Holy Spirit to a human mind counts as knowledge; all other beliefs, however justified and true they may be, are not more than opinions. Clark did not register an opinion as to whether English letters of Chinese characters played any role in that conveyance...
Clark's occasionalism implicitly denies that our sensory organs receive data into which verifiable and falsifiable insights are possible, insights that accumulate into viewpoints. But did not such insights occur whenever Clark read a sentence in a language in which he enjoyed competency? The road to competency, however, was paved with his progressive attainment of rudimentary, intermediate, and advanced insights into that language...
Mr. Flood overstates the case when he intimates that Clark might have counted some beliefs as both "justified" and, at the same time, "not more than opinions." For instance, there is no suggestion in any of Clark's works that he would have accepted Gettier cases as involving justified beliefs.
Otherwise, we can agree that late Clark's occasionalism begs the question as to how Clark would be able to know that he had learned a language. Should Clark have attempted to disconnect his philosophy of language from his philosophy of knowledge - e.g. by suggesting that physical words or ink marks (i.e. the objects of language) are not immaterial propositions (i.e. the objects of knowledge) and, therefore, that one does not need to learn a language in order to know - one might question why Clark phrased his own axiom in the following way (written within one year of his death):
The first principle cannot be demonstrated because there is nothing prior from which to deduce it. Call it presuppositionalism, call it fideism, names do not matter. But I know no better presupposition than “The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the word of God written, and therefore inerrant in the autographs.” (link)
To speak of writings and autographs is to allude to inscripturation, the idea that God's revealed, propositional word is, as Steve Hays once put it, encoded in physical media (link). To suggest, as Clark here did (whether he realized it or not), that his axiomatic propositions are encoded in physical media implies such propositions should be decodable. To be be clear, when I talk about propositions that are "decoded" by or from physical media, I don't mean to suggest that an internalist, empirical epistemology is in view. Rather, our knowledge of propositions is mediately caused. The is a point of metaphysics, and in this sense, we even learn (but not justify) our epistemic axioms. For example, nobody is conceived with knowledge of the gospel.
For emphasis, when I talk about "learning" in this post, I am referring to a metaphysical process, not the process of epistemic justification. I am not suggesting we can somehow use our sense experience as a kind of premise by which we can infer or consciously attempt to justify (in an internalist sense) our propositional knowledge claims. What I am suggesting is that sense experience can function as a secondary, proximate cause of our propositional knowledge claims.
As I said, Clark's statement about inscripturation suggests that God's word is encoded. In turn, this suggests that we can learn, can decode, or can be caused to know the propositions God intends to reveal to us by or from the physical media in which God's word is encoded. We may not even be aware that this metaphysical process has happened.
If Clark could not learn or decode his own axioms from the physical media in which he asserts they were encoded, this would either mean that 1) his own epistemology is self-defeating - if the metaphysical process of learning about his epistemic axioms depends on the ability to decode them from physical media - or 2) that the process of inscripturation to which his axiom alludes was superfluous for our knowledge of God's word - if the metaphysical process of learning about his epistemic axioms does not and cannot have any relevance to the encoding of propositions in physical media.
Clark seemed to opt for the latter option - cf. his rejection of the correspondence theory of knowledge (discussed here and here) - which is why I have elsewhere rhetorically asked what was the purpose of inscripturation if occasionalism is true. There seems to be none, nor does there seem to be a relevant reason why Clark should have mentioned that God's word was "written" and "inerrant in the autographs" in his own epistemic axiom.
For that matter, how is an autograph "inerrant" if not by metonymy? As early as 1944 and as late as 1982, Clark insisted that "only propositions are true," "only propositions can be true" (cf. Clark's marginal notes on his Examination in Theology, 1944, July 7; Art and the Gospel, 1982, March - April). How, then, can ink marks be inerrant unless we admit that propositions are encoded in the physical writ?
I've made plenty of other criticisms in the aforementioned links, so I suppose there is no need to belabor the point - mainly, I wanted to point out that the face value of Clark's own axiom contains an allusion to the idea that physical media can encode propositions. Despite what critics have objected, however, the remedy to late Clark's faulty metaphysics does not entail a problem for Clark's epistemology. Actually, I agree with the spirit of Clark's first principle; it could be stated more precisely, but I don't think his reference to "written... autographs" is inherently problematic for his epistemology.
To summarize: there is a difference between the way in which we became or were caused to be aware of that which we take to be our epistemic axioms (a point of metaphysics) as compared to the function of the epistemic axioms themselves (the ground our knowledge, including our knowledge of the metaphysics process by which we learned our epistemic axioms). There is a difference between the order of being and the order of knowing. I've written more about how I think a Scripturalist can synthesize his epistemology with a metaphysic which in turn allows for a subordinate, extra-biblical knowledge of the external world under the subsection on textual criticism here (and its included links).
Thus, the common objection to Scripturalism - "Don't you have to read your Bible?" - is either irrelevant (if it is a question about metaphysics; a Scripturalist can agree that one can be caused to think about propositions by reading) or begs the question (if it is a question about epistemology, in which case first principles need to be discussed). To use chess terminology Clark himself might find amusing, it seems to me that late Clark's occasionalism was an unnecessary, prophylactic overprotection. He answered an objection he considered to fraught with epistemological intent by changing his view of metaphysics... a misguided enterprise.
Mr. Flood has a point, then, that late Clark's occasionalism is wrong. But whether Mr. Flood's own views are right also requires evaluation. Take the following quote as a point of departure:
Sometimes it's incontrovertible that efficient causality is not inferred (fallaciously or validly), but felt, directly and infallibly intuited. Not the cause, mind you, but causality itself... Causation can therefore be given in experience, but acknowledging this datum doesn't make one an empiricist. When David affirmed that knowledge of divine causality is given with the creature's experience of creation (Psalm 119:1), he wasn't promoting a fallacious inference.
I think Mr. Flood meant to cite Psalm 19. Incidentally, this passage further supports my contention that [propositional] truth[s] are embedded in physical creation.
However, what does it mean to say that something "felt" is "infallibly intuited"? Like inerrancy, infallibility pertains to truth. But feelings are not beliefs. It does not appear that Mr. Flood is suggesting that the object of the feeling is a proposition, so is he indirectly suggesting that something other than propositions can be literally true? At first sight, none of these alternatives appear attractive. There needed to be more said on this point. The same can be said for Mr. Flood's following remark:
"Clark's occasionalism implicitly denies that our sensory organs receive data into which verifiable and falsifiable insights are possible, insights that accumulate into viewpoints."
Passing over late Clark's occasionalism, which I already have talked about, it is not clear whether Mr. Flood is an epistemic internalist or externalist. To my knowledge, this matter is not touched on in the book. By default, I tend to assume that people who support an empirical theory of knowledge are internalists. Perhaps my intuition is, in this case, incorrect. If so, this demonstrates all the more that Mr. Flood could have elaborated on his epistemology. If my intuition is correct, however, it would have been helpful if Mr. Flood addressed Clark's criticisms of [internalist] empirical epistemology, for as it stands, I am left without reason to think he is able to do so.
Mr. Flood seems to affirm Aristotle's claim that "forms are grasped by mind in images." Aside from the fact that no defense is given as to why one ought to accept this, to repeat a thought from the first part of the review of this book:
I wonder whether Mr. Flood believes that humans can learn anything in the intermediate state between death and the parousia. The above would indicate that this is impossible. This would make Abraham's conversation with the rich man in Luke 16 either unintelligible or parabolic, for example.
I might also ask whether Mr. Flood thinks angels need to grasp forms in images. If Aristotle is meant to be set as a foil against Clark's occasionalism, the presentation was relatively weak.
Unfortunately, in terms of Mr. Flood's own, original thought, I didn't find much else of note in this chapter. He mentions two philosophers I had not heard much of before reading this chapter: Alfred Whitehead and Bernard Lonergan. Mr. Flood cites the latter as writing:
If the real is the “out there” and knowing it is taking a look, then the ideal of interpretation has to be as close an approximation as possible to a reconstruction of the cinema of what was done, of the sound-track of what was said . . . . [T]he ideal of the cinema and the sound-track is the ideal not of historical science but of historical fiction. There is no verifiable cinema of the past nor any verifiable sound-track of its speech. The available evidence lies in spatially ordered marks in documents and on monuments, and the interpreter’s business is not to create nonexistent evidence but to understand that evidence that exists . . . .
If objectivity is a matter of elementary extroversion, then the objective interpreter has to have more to look at than spatially ordered marks on paper; not only the marks but also the meanings have to be “out there,” while the merely subjective interpreter “reads” his own ideas “into” statements that obviously possess quite a different meaning. But the plain fact is that there is nothing “out there” except spatially ordered marks; to appeal to dictionaries and to grammars, to linguistic and stylistic studies, is to appeal to more marks . . . . If the criterion of objectivity is the “obviously out there,” then there is no objective interpretation whatever; there is only gaping at ordered marks, and the only order is spatial. But if the criterion of objectivity lies in intelligent inquiry, critical reflection, and grasp of the virtually unconditioned, then the humbug about the “out there” and the simulated indignation about “reading into” are rather convincing evidence that one has very little notion of what objectivity is. (Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd, and New York: Philosophical Library, 582-83.)
I may well be misunderstanding Mr. Flood's intention in citing Lonergan, but I think he is attempting to establish a comparison between Lonergan and Clark in that the epistemologies of both men are empirically pessimistic. If "the ideal of interpretation has to be as close an approximation as possible to a reconstruction of the cinema of what was done, of the sound-track of what was said" yet "[T]he ideal of the cinema and the sound-track is the ideal not of historical science but of historical fiction," it sounds as though Lonergan has no qualms arguing that to attempt to gain knowledge by empirical means [of the internalist variety] is to chase alethic ghosts. If I am interpreting Mr. Flood's intentions correctly, I am again left wondering why he does not attempt to show how and why he thinks Lonergan's views are false.
As for Alfred Whitehead, I tried to read some summaries of his thought (link). Honestly, I found the going tough. One thing that stuck out was his acceptance of some sort of theory of internal relations, so I tried to look into that a little more. I found a helpful article (link), and I would be interested in Mr. Flood's thoughts on it. In particular:
Whitehead puts forth the notion of internal relations, which he introduces when discussing Einstein's relativity. Space-time relationships have been generally understood as external relationships. Whitehead denies that. He resembles Leibniz when he states that the relations that an event has are all internal relations: “This internal relatedness is the reason why an event can be found only just where it is and how it is, that is to say, in just one definite set of relationships. For each relationship enters into the essence of the event; so that, apart from that relationship, the event would not be itself. This is what is meant by the very notion of internal relations. It has been usual, indeed, universal, to hold that spatio-temporal relationships are external. This doctrine is what is here denied” (Whitehead, 1925, pp. 122–123). Put plainly, an internal relation is a relation between entities such that it is not possible for them to exist without each other. Thus, from the stance of the doctrine of internal-relations, inter-actions are “add-ons” to substances; a glue between “things” which, in turn, do not need the glue for their being.
The above caught my eye, for it initially looked to me as though Whitehead ought to have accepted necessitarianism (link). Yet when I followed up on this intuition, it seems Whitehead opposed necessitarianism (link). Is this because Whitehead thinks that the theory of internal relations only applies to creation?
Continuing, the article further outlines what internal relations are and then critiques Whitehead's metaphysic:
Internal relations determine the identity of the related entities. For the purpose of gaining some intuition about this notion, let us provide some examples within a somewhat heterogeneous list of cases. A mother and her baby (specially a fetus) can be said to be internally related because their mode of relation implies that one could not properly speak about the latter if one would leave the former out. In other words, they owe to each other what they are...Going back to the notion of internal relations, once more the question is not settled by emphasizing the processual nature of whirlpools (or, to that matter, the processual nature of the toilet in which whirlpools form when we flush it). In any dynamical system there is always a final level of internal relationship below which basal elements (entities or variables) are defined independently of their relations. Such mathematical theories of dynamical behavior, operating under the implicit assumption that basal elements have a fixed essence, presuppose the externality of the relations of the basal elements. Even if one claims that interactions are more important than their constituents, this claim holds only for the behavior of the system, not for the constituents themselves. “It is arguably this inseparable connection between processuality and internal relationship that also creates the biggest difficulty in Whitehead ontology: The process which gives rise to relations of experience exists prior to them neither logically nor temporally. The processual subject only comes into being through its relations with other subjects.” (Koutroufinis, 2014a, p. 16). In a word, no internal relations, no process.
In other words, I think the problem for Whitehead is how, given his processual metaphysic, individuation is possible in the first place. For example, how would Whitehead individuate the mother and baby such that he could relate them? Obviously, one could reframe the question for whatever Whitehead takes as ontologically basic and argues are internally related.
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