Coletti On Cheungian Occasionalism

(Aquascum, aquascumSPAMMENOT at gmail dot com)

R.Anthony Coletti has posted a reply to my “On Cheungian Occasionalism” (cf. <http://www.reformed.plus.com/aquascum/occasionalism.htm>). It can be found at <http://www.puritanboard.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=17024&page=2#pid237899>.

Here are my thoughts, which were emailed to Coletti.

> "Divine illumination" is not fallible in the same sense

> because it is not a justifying "process".

I'm not sure why you import the notion of a *justifying* process into my discussion. If you want to do this, you're going to have to make clear whether we're talking about internalist justification, externalist justification, or some combination of the two (such as that delineated by Alston in "An Internalist Externalism").

Here I would simply encourage you to read section 4 of my "A Response to Vincent Cheung," where I lay out Cheung's own position on divine illumination and occasionalism, using citations from his own works. In the citation which begins section 4.1 ("What does Cheung mean by 'occasionalism'?"), Cheung explicitly contrasts empirical investigations with the divine illumination of the logos, which occurs on the occasion of our empirical observations. So if you think (as you say below) that comparing empiricism with occasionalism is "comparing apples to oranges," then it appears your problem is with Cheung, not with me. On pp. 16-17 of "Ultimate Questions," Cheung sketches out two contrasting ways of obtaining knowledge -- empirical investigations and occasionalism -- and says that it is only by the latter that we can gain any knowledge.

> The comparison should be made to the Scripturalist justifying

> process for knowledge by deduction from Scripture. Certainly

> deduction from Scripture is much more reliable then induction

> from sense-experiences. But both are fallible in that both call

> for normal reasoning functions that suffer from the noetic

> effects of sin.

Err, what? Here you say that "deduction from Scripture" is "fallible," even as "induction from sense-experiences" is "fallible". Once again, your problem appears to be with Cheung, not with me. Why, exactly, is the fallibility of sense-experience a problem then, if deduction from Scripture is likewise fallible?

> The "divine illumination" process is a different

> matter altogether. It is an infallibly metaphysical means

> that God makes us believe truths and falsehoods - not the

> "justifying" process of epistemology. And it never fails to

> do what it purports to do - no matter what epistemological

> process one employs to justify a proposition (empiricism or

> Scripturalism or rationalism) as knowledge.

The problem here is a simple equivocation on the notion of "infallible". No doubt if an omnipotent God seeks to cause in us belief X, then he cannot fail of his purpose. Such a belief *will* be produced. In that sense, the process is infallible (though the better terminology here is to say that the process is deterministic rather than probabilistic). But, of course, the fact that God cannot fail to attain his goal of producing in us a particular belief on any occasion he chooses, does not give us any reason at all to think that the belief will be either true or false. On many, many occasions, God produces false beliefs in human beings, rather than true beliefs. Thus, the process of occasionalist divine illumination is fallible *from the epistemic point of view*.

In this latter sense, then, the parallel with sense-experience is exact, and relevant. When epistemologists comment upon the fallibility of sense-experience, they wouldn't be moved by the suggestion that, if all the physical causes of a belief are in place on a particular occasion, then the belief *will* be produced, and thus the process of sense-experience is 'infallible'. For this leaves entirely out of the analysis what is important from an epistemic point of view: whether or not the process produces only true beliefs. Clearly it doesn't, and so the process is fallible. Ditto for occasionalist divine illumination.

My comparison between sense-experience and occasionalist divine illumination, as to their fallibility, was intended to be from the epistemic point of view, and no other. Presumably, this is also the comparison intended by Cheung in the passages I cite. Here are two examples.

First, Cheung does not take occasionalist divine illumination to be a merely 'metaphysical' process, such that it carries no epistemological weight. On the contrary, in section 4.2 of my Response I cite Cheung's claim that occasionalist divine illumination is an *epistemological* thesis:

<<< 

"Christian epistemology affirms that all knowledge must be immediately – that is, without mediation – granted and conveyed to the human mind by God. Thus on the occasion that you look at the words of the Bible, God directly communicates what is written to your mind, *without* going through the senses themselves. That is, your sensations provide the occasions upon which God directly conveys information to your mind *apart from* the sensations themselves. Therefore, although we do read the Bible, knowledge never comes from sensation" ("Ultimate Questions," p. 38).

>>> 

Cheung says that the above view is "consistent with Christian metaphysics," but clearly he takes it to be an affirmation of "Christian epistemology". It is Christian *epistemology* which "affirms that all knowledge must be immediately – that is, without mediation – granted and conveyed to the human mind by God." It is Christian *epistemology* which affirms that "on the occasion that you look at the words of the Bible, God directly communicates what is written to your mind, *without* going through the senses themselves. That is, your sensations provide the occasions upon which God directly conveys information to your mind *apart from* the sensations themselves."

Second, take Cheung's treatment of the matter in <http://www.vincentcheung.com/2005/04/29/occasionalism-and-empiricism/>, which I cite in section 4.3 of my Response. There he says:

<<< 

And if I know that 'Vincent is a man,' I certainly do not know this on an empirical basis (what precisely do I sense to know that 'Vincent is a man'?) or by common sense, but by illumination from the Logos, in accordance with my explanation on occasionalism.

>>> 

Clearly, Cheung is contrasting two *epistemological* processes. There are two candidates for how Cheung *knows* that "Vincent is a man": he either "knows this on an empirical basis," or he knows it "by illumination from the Logos, in accordance with my explanation on occasionalism."

In addition, in the citation above you misapply the distinction between "metaphysical means" and "epistemological process". No doubt there is a distinction here, but it does you no good in this context. Both sense-experience and occasionalist divine illumination can be characterized as "metaphysical means". Advocates of sense-experience say that there is a genuinely metaphysical process, a *causal* process, that obtains in virtue of sensory stimuli causing effects in us, namely, beliefs. That is why discussions of causation loom large in treatises on metaphysics; it is in general a metaphysical matter as to what causes what. Similarly, as you rightly bring out, occasionalist divine illumination is a metaphysical means. Divine illumination is a *causal* process that obtains in virtue of God directly causing beliefs in us on the occasion of empirical observation.

By the same token, both sense-experience and occasionalist divine illumination can be characterized as an "epistemological process". Once you bring in the question of the *truth* of the beliefs produced, and bring in the question of the reliability of the process in bringing about true beliefs, you are comparing the processes from the epistemic point of view, where increasing our stock of true beliefs is the chief (although not only) epistemological desideratum. Notice that we can do this because in each case one of the causal relata is *beliefs*, which are things that can be either true or false. (By way of contrast, it's difficult to analyze the causal process of photosynthesis from an epistemic point of view, because there's nothing produced by the process that can conceivably be characterized as true or false.)

So no, the divine illumination process *isn't* "a different matter altogether." No matter how you slice it, the comparison is apt. You are either comparing metaphysical to metaphysical, or epistemological to epistemological, in noting aspects of these two processes. I took the intended comparison as epistemological because that's how *Cheung* takes it, in the material cited in section 4 of my Response.

> Aquascum has compared apples to oranges in his argument -

> an epistemological process (empiricism) for justifying

> knowledge, to a metaphysical process (divine illumination)

> for believing any proposition is true or false.

Hopefully you are now in a position to see why this charge won't fly. They are both 'metaphysical' processes, being causal processes, and they can both be evaluated from an epistemic point of view, being causal processes which issue in beliefs. And when done so, it is easily seen that they are both fallible. Thus, it seems clear to me that my original critique stands.

> Empiricism is an unreliable process for justifying

> knowledge. Scripturalism is not infallible, but far

> more reliable as a process.

Do you really think this will satisfy Cheung's standards for knowledge?! Scripturalism is "more reliable" than sense-experience, rather than being infallible? Surely Cheung will reject this abandonment of the infallibilist constraint on knowledge, as evidenced by my citations of him in section 3.1 of my Response.

> "Divine illumination" is infallible because it does

> exactly what it says - and is justified as a proposition

> from the Scripturalism epistemology.

One might as well say that "sense experience" is infallible because it does exactly what *it* says. After all, any time sensory stimuli are in a position to cause our beliefs, they do so, or so says the advocate of sense-experience. Cheung of course demurs, and says that this causal process doesn't obtain. But in its place he puts in another causal process: empirical "observation stimulates the mind to intuit what the logos immediately conveys to it on the occasion of the observation, often about what the person is observing" ("Ultimate Questions," p. 17).

But once we examine either causal process from an epistemic point of view -- as to whether it produces *true* beliefs -- it is easily seen that they are equally fallible.

You can publish this reply in any public forum you'd like, as long as you do so in its entirety.

-- Aquascum