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More on Loyola’s “white is black” passage

It seems I touched a nerve, judging by the word count so far (here, and here). First, let me make clear that I have no interest in mocking Catholic doctrine. I’m a non-catholic (and so non-Catholic) Christian, and am in sympathy with the Catholic tradition in many ways. I’m going to avoid some well-worn Catholic-Protestant battle areas here, and try to stick to what I think is so interesting and yet so wrong-headed about Loyola’s implicit mysterianism. Ed is concerned to rebut claims by “skeptics” that Loyola here issues a “jarring call to irrationalist dogmatism”, but to me that is a red herring.

Ed thinks I’m misreading the controversial passage. I don’t think he’s made his case, and I also think he’s also missing the epistemic point I was making.

  • By “tradition” I meant whatever beliefs the Hierarchical Church asserts to be mandatory for Catholics. I’m well aware that Catholics don’t consider all widespread Christian, even Catholic traditions mandatory.
  • Loyola’s discussion is not merely about the infallibility of the Church’s judgement or pronouncements. It does assume that, but the notorious passage occurs as a rule for the proper formation of beliefs. So Loyola is on the topic of individual epistemology – he’s giving a rule which in his view will lead us only to correct beliefs. So in my view Ed is mistaken when he asserts that “What is at issue [in the black is white passage] is the epistemological status of the Church’s pronouncements themselves.”
  • Is Loyola’s claim hyperbole? It’s a short and pithy – excellent writing. And it is hypothetical, as the Church has not said (yet πŸ™‚ ) said that black is white. I take it that Loyola picked a case involving sense perception, because he had in mind to defend a controversial claim that seems to be contradicted by sense perception. Ed takes it to be obvious hyperbole because Loyola would be assuming, in Ed’s words, that the “Church does not claim special expertise or authority in purely secular matters”, I take it, like color perception. I’m not sure what Ed is confident that color perception is and must be a “purely secular matter”, or why he think Loyola assumes the believer to be in a position to specify where the Church’s authority to pronounce ends. While Ed would like the quote to be mere hyperbole, I’m not sure that it is. But I don’t think it matters, if Loyola’s point really is that authoritative church teaching trumps the (apparent) sense perception that the thing the priest is putting in your mouth is just a wheat product, and not a human body.
  • I’m not sure that Loyola has in mind disputes about transubstantiation. That is plausible, but in any case, I disagree with his implicit claim that Church testimony should trump any other evidence. I see no hint of exceptions, and no hint that this can be confined to “spiritual” matters – however that might be spelled out.
  • Now about one’s senses deceiving one: I agree with Ed that this is not a very helpful metaphor for understanding what is supposed to be going on, according to Catholics, with consecrated-wafer perceptions. We have to distinguish epistemic seemings from mere visual (etc.) sensations. These two, I think, have only recently been clearly separated by philosophers – see the paper “What are Seemings?” here by my colleague Andy Cullison. Here’s one way to see the distinction. Suppose there was an alien race, populated in part by little creatures called “Oogs” that look just like the white disk above. Now, imagine that an inhabitant of this planet (not an Oog, but some other inhabitant of that planet) with eyes like ours comes to earth and attends a mass. He’ll have the same visual sensations of the wafer that we will, yet it will not epistemically seem to him that there’s a wafer before him. Instead, it seems to him that the priest has captured one of the inhabitants of his home planet – he’ll think, “They eat Oogs here!” and take pity on the (imagined) little victims. The point of this example is (only) that sensory seemings and epistemic seemings can come apart, and are different. This is not easy to recognize, as normally they go together. But see Andy’s paper for more or this distinction.
  • Now imagine two friends attending a mass, and observing wafer consumption – call them Believing Bob and Doubting Dan. Perceptually, their sensations are the same. But they, both being humans, are not like the alien above – it seems to each, and it seems equally strongly to each, that the things being put in mouths by the priest are (merely) little flat breads. They possess equal evidence for this claim. And yet, Bob sincerely says, “What each communicant eats is in fact the body of our Lord”, while Dan says, “As best I can tell, Jesus has not been eaten here.” How can this be? I think it is helpful to imagine how each would evaluate the following inconsistent tetrad:
  1. Whatever the Catholic Church requires its members to believe is true.
  2. The Catholic Church requires its members to believe that a properly consecrated wafer is the whole body of Jesus.
  3. That wafer in the priest’s hand has been properly consecrated.
  4. That wafer in the priest’s hand is just a wafer.
  • Bob and Dan are equally aware that these four can’t all be true. From any three of them, it follows that the remaining one is false. (Go ahead – try it out – I’ll wait…)
  • Moreover, Dan and Bob agree on this – that 2, 3, and 4 each seem to be true. Further, they both agree that they each seem strongly, and about equally strongly to be true. The difference is that because 1 seems true to Bob, Bob dismisses the seeming that 4 is true. He’s aware of it, but ignores it, as in his mind it has been trumped. Herein lies the rub.
  • Suppose we rate strength of seemings from one to four, with four being the strongest – the way, e.g. 1+1=2 seems true to us. Now, let’s use a crude bar graph, made with X’s. Bob and Dan agree, then, in how 2-4 strike them. Let’s leave 1 open for the moment.
  1. ?
  2. XX
  3. XX
  4. XX
  • We could go three X’s all the way down, but the point is that 2-4 are roughly on a footing, as far as strength of seemings goes. The strength isn’t maximal, but it is significant.
  • As concerns 1, to Dan, it simply doesn’t seem true. So he believes 2-4, and denies 1.
  • But Bob does believe 1 – it strikes him as true. How much so? Surely not with the strength of 1+1=2. At most, 1 will seem true at the next highest level.
  1. XXX
  2. XX
  3. XX
  4. XX
  • But if this is how things seem to Bob, he is going against reason in his belief in transubstantiation. If the above is how things seem to him, he’ll have to suspend judgement about which of 2-4 are true. He ought to think, of course, that at least one of them is false. But he can’t tell which.
  • What Bob needs, to reasonably believe in this instance of the Eucharistic Mystery, is for 2 & 3 to seem more strongly than 4 does, like this:
  1. XXX
  2. XXX
  3. XXX
  4. XX
  • Here is a reasonable belief in the Catholic doctrine in question. If any one of 1-3 changes, so that it seems less strongly to Bob than does 4, Bob “falls out of” this epistemic situation – he’s then believing in spite of how things on reflection seem to him.
  • Now back to my rotten wafer example. Here, I think that my friend Ed misses the point (see the end of his post). Yes, if the Bible clearly asserted that all Volkswagens were really poached eggs (sporting the non-essential features of a German car) then given our perceptions, or rather, our total evidence, understood as seemings, we would be unable to reasonably believe the Bible to be inerrant.
  • The point is this. These kinds of seemings – ones resulting from multiple, close up, steady, firm sensations, are not easily trumped. Given habit and I suppose other factors, this is easier to see with hypothetical examples, hence my use of them. In any case, when this is recognized, Bob’s epistemic situation may switch to this:
  1. XXX
  2. XXX
  3. XXX
  4. XXX
  • or to this
  1. XX
  2. XXX
  3. XXX
  4. XXX
  • Now if I understand him, Ed would say: But I’m not like Bob. You see, to me, it doesn’t seem that we’re in the presence of a mere bread product. I’m careful about what I infer from sensory sensations, and it only seems to me that I’m in the presence of the ‘accidents’ of bread – whiteness, brittleness, disc-shape, etc.”
  • Ed has a point. If 4 turns out not to seem true at all, or to seem more weakly the each of 1-3, then indeed, his belief in the Eucharistic miracle is reasonable. Moreover, I assume that he’s accurately reporting his belief.
  • But we can rule out the first scenario just given – I think that Ed should agree that it does seem to him that the wafer is just a wafer – he does feel the push to believe that, although in the case described he does not believe it. Suppose the priest turned to him and said “When you weren’t looking, someone handed me this wafer, which they just brought in – it hasn’t been consecrated at all.” In this situation, Ed would immediately form the belief that the thing in the priest’s hand was mere bread. Why? Because that’s how it has seemed to Ed all along, only before this surprising turn of events, this seeming was trumped by the seemings of 1-3 above. Take away 3, and now 4 is no longer ignorable, no longer trumped.
  • So I think Ed ought to concede to 4 having at least two X’s – that is, that it seems true in the situations we’re assuming, and fairly strongly, and not minimally so. Now go back to the original, more normal scenario (where the priest doesn’t make the surprising statement). If this is right, does 1 really seem to be true more strongly than 4 does?
  • Frankly, for a host of reasons 1 doesn’t seem to me to be true.
  • But if 1 did seem true to me, I’d be worried that upon careful reflection, itΒ  seems true more strongly than does 4.
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13 thoughts on “More on Loyola’s “white is black” passage”

  1. Let’s say that Sammy is a very smart fellow. He’s so smart that, generally speaking, he has a 90% chance of being right every time he reaches a conclusion — even on really difficult matters.

    But if smart Sammy constructs a case on a really difficult issue that requires, say, 7 steps (or seven intermediate conclusions), the odds of Sammy being right in his final position become rather small. They diminish by 10% at each move. Even for smart Sammy, the odds are increasingly against him.

    For the rest of us, it’s probably even worse, which means we ought to be careful about believing some of the things we say seem true and plausible. (One more note about smart Sammy: while on some issues –like who won the World Series last year — Sammy is better than 90%; on others, like papal infallibility, apostolic succession, or which church — if any — ought to be followed, he will be worse.)

    In other words, I’m talking about the noetic effects of sin, about the fallen intellect that each of us owns, and about how easily we are deluded — me included, this post included.

  2. Hi, Dale,

    L isn’t glossed in terms of how it seems to me, but in terms of ‘very likely’, which presumably has something to do with evidential assessment, and thus something to which seeming-to-me would have to conform in order to be rational; but other than that, it’s what I had in mind — in a sense, [1] simply identifies howthe inconsistent tetrad is inconsistent. Given the difference, to say that [1] is false is to say that, when we are qualifying everything with a ‘it is very likely that’ operator, the tetrad is consistent. This is surely wrong. If, however, we understand the operator to be ‘it strongly seems to me that’, then the tetrad really is consistent — it’s logically possible for each of 1 through 4 to seem to me strongly — and if -> means implication then [1] is strictly speaking false (the only way it can be true is if we hold that strong seeming is in fact logically consistent, which would be a rather strong claim about psychology). It could still, perhaps, be a useful idealization, but it wouldn’t be rigorously true. However, if we say this, it shows equally that seemings, however strong, simply can’t rationally trump actual principles: even strong seemings can be irrational, in the sense that believing according to them would be irrational. And, indeed, we find this elsewhere; there are people who have vivid hallucinations who recognize that they are, in fact, hallucinations. Thus how things seem to you is simply not relevant, on its own, to how reasonable one’s beliefs are, no matter how strong the seeming is; seemings only become relevant by way of rational assessment of how reasonable it is to believe according to how things seem to be.

  3. On a(nother) historical note, certain (but certainly not all!) 14th c. scholastics supposed that we ought to believe that God is a Trinity of persons only because of what the Catholic church teaches — “sola fide” was Ockham’s slogan. Rational explanations fail; so, we believe it because … we believe (the church teaches) it.

  4. Brandon, I must plead guilty to that confusion. Thank you for setting me straight on that.

    Let me see if I can repeat back to you what you’re arguing.

    Suppose I’m a faithful Catholic. If so, your [1] will be something I reasonably believe. It is a plausible principle on the assumption that my (1) really is true, and that I’m a rational agent in a non-hostile epistemic environment.

    [1] says that IF it strongly seems to me (roughly) that (1) the church is infallible, then it strongly seems to me that: IF it strongly seems to me both that (2) I’m required by it to believe that any properly blessed wafer is Jesus’ body, AND that (3) the wafer over there has been so blessed THEN it strongly seems to me that (4) that wafer over there isn’t a mere wheat product.

    Now that I understand what you’re saying, it makes sense to me. Yes, I grant that it is reasonable to assume [1]. I think it is part of assuming one’s own epistemic competence, when assuming (1). (For the record, [1] doesn’t seem true to me.)

    Here’s how your belief in [1] could come to be no longer rational. 2 and 3 still strongly seem true. But now so does 4. Imagine that you’re serving as altar boy, and through some mishap, a blessed wafer ends up falling into your shoe. When you get home, you discover it. First you’re horrified at the thought that you’ve been stomping Jesus all the way home, but as you turn the thing over in your hand, smell it, tap it, break a piece off it, outside the context of the mass, it strikes you that this is no human body, but a mere wafer after all. Now 2,3, and 4 all seem true. L~4 is false, and yet L2 & L3, and so the conditional (L2 & L3) -> L~4 is false. You “see” this, so then L((L2 & L3) -> L~4) is false. This brings us to a case where L1 is true but L((L2 & L3) -> L~4) is false – that is to say, the whole [1] is false. It is false when you’re in this state of tension described above.

    I agree that if you’re functioning properly (and you’re not in some weird epistemic environment), this typically won’t last long – something will give in to the pressure, as it were.

    But keep in mind that this needn’t involve inconsistent beliefs! You may come to agree with me that [1] is false, all the while believing 1-3 and not believing 4. [1] would be shown false just by occasional episodes like that described above.

  5. After several attempts at trying to figure out your meaning the only thing I can guess might be happening is that you are confusing

    [1] L1 -> L((L2 & L3) -> L~4)

    with

    [2] L1 -> (L2&L3) -> L~4.

    If so, we are both in agreement that the second claim is wrong in this context; I’ve agreed to this more than once, in fact, because it is implied by my description of the relevance of [1] that [2] is false.

  6. This : L1 -> L((L2 & L3) -> L~4) is false. If 1 is strong seems true to me, nothing follows about how either 2 or 3 seem to me.

    I’m not sure what you mean here. L1 -> L((L2 & L3) -> L~4) clearly doesn’t say that anything follows from 1 about how 2 or 3 seem; L2 and L3 are explicitly in an antecdent to a conditional.

  7. Hi Brandon,

    This : L1 -> L((L2 & L3) -> L~4) is false. If 1 strongly seems true to me, nothing follows about how either 2 or 3 seem to me. If 1 is true, it might also strongly seem to me that 2 is false (I’ve been misinformed) and that 3 is false (I’ve been told on good authority that that priest is an imposter).

    I don’t follow what you’re asserting about the irrationality of changing charts, i.e. of one’s seemings changing from this:

    1. XXX
    2. XX
    3. XX
    4. XX

    to this

    1. XX
    2. XXX
    3. XXX
    4. XXX

    Here’s a guess – you’re reading the charts as if they were of belief-strength – i.e. 1.XXX means you very strongly believe 1, whereas 2.XX means that you only somewhat strongly mean 2. But these charts are only meant as snapshots of how things seem at a time. Seemings can shift involuntarily (also, I think, indirectly voluntarily) but if one’s seemings have shifted as above, that doesn’t mean one has made any inference. Or maybe you’re thinking of “evidence” as something mind-independent – I’m not sure.

    You say “it is not possible, in a rational case, to diminish the seeming-true of 1 by increasinging the seeming-true of 4” But who needs that claim? Not me. 1’s seeming could change *because* 4’s does, or they may just happen to change at the same time.

    “Unlike the other propositions, 1 is a meta-level principle that establishes as certain an entire field of evidence; if 2 and 3 are held constant, then no considerations that might usually be brought for 4 are relevant β€” by 1 they are misleading and illusory.” Sorry, but this is just wrong. 1 will still be trumpable. There’s no way to make it untouchable – it might be defeated / trumped even if it seems as strongly as anything does. I don’t see how you can, as it were, remove 1 from the game.

    As for testimonial evidence, I think your position is untenable. I take a Reidian view of it as a basic source of evidence; it’s just part of our design plan that when someone strongly asserts something, it to some degree seems true to us. This can be and often is easily trumped, but it is important that we are like this. We don’t have to wait until we’ve conducted some sort of study of the causal history of the testimony, or the reliability of the speaker on that sort of subject, etc.

    I think I should withdraw my comment in comment #5 above: “unless the agent is malfunctioning”. When I said this I was confusing seemings with beliefs. The agent may be functioning perfectly, be if she’s in an unfortunate epistemic situation, she may find herself having these seemings, without suffering any malfunction or irrationality:

    1. XXX
    2. XXX
    3. XXX
    4. XXX

    e.g. suppose that she’s a ten year old, and new to all of this, and that she deeply trusts her parents, who strike her as equally credible. One is a Catholic (and tells her 1 & 2) and the other is a atheist (who tells her 3 & 4). She may or may not believe all of 1-4; even if she withholds on all four, she’ll still be in the state above.

  8. I didn’t say 1 and 2 were logically related, so I’m not sure at all where you’re getting that. Likewise, I can’t find anything in my previous comment that suggests 1 insulates itself from defeat. Its defeasibility is relative to a different kind of defeater.

    The switch from the first X-graph to either of the last two X-graphs is possible only for someone who is irrational. This follows directly from the logical structure of the inconsistent tetrad, i.e., from the fact that 1,2, and 3 combined imply that 4 is false. The switch from the first X-graph to the one with 3 X’s in each row shows someone to whom both conjuncts of a contradictory conjunction seem very likely. So that’s an obvious case of irrationality, unless seeming is non-adjunctive, in which case it’s difficult to see how your X-graphs tell us anything at all.

    The second one is more subtle, because it is possible for a rational person to be in the state depicted in the X-graph, but it is not possible for a rational person to make the switch from your first X-graph to your last X-graph in the way you suggest. Unlike the other propositions, 1 is a meta-level principle that establishes as certain an entire field of evidence; if 2 and 3 are held constant, then no considerations that might usually be brought for 4 are relevant — by 1 they are misleading and illusory. Thus it is not possible, in a rational case, to diminish the seeming-true of 1 by increasinging the seeming-true of 4; if 2 and 3 are held constant 4 will necessarily seem false to any rational person unless 1 begins to seem less likely — and this follows from the logical structure of the problem because in this context 1 is an inference rule that tells you that 2 and 3, which are held to be highly likely, guarantee the falsehood of 4 regardless of other considerations.

    We can put it this way. Let L be a modal operator that can be glossed as meaning something like ‘very likely’ — XXX’s or above. Then the logical structure of the seemings at the beginning is

    L1 -> L((L2 & L3) -> L~4)

    L~4 is implied by L2 & L3 under the scope of an L that follows from L1. It is the only one that cannot logically be changed independently of the others — whether or not L~4 depends on L1, L2, and L3, not vice versa. L1 is in an antecedent. L2 and L3 can change because they are in the antecedent of the hypothetical, and are each only one conjunct of the antecedent. But if L2 and L3 are given, L~4 can only be false if L((L2 & L3) -> L~4) is false, as a logical precondition. But L((L2 & L3) -> L~4) follows from L1. So it can’t be false unless L1 is false, as a logical precondition.

    (As far as I can see, 2 doesn’t constitute any sort of testimonial evidence for the wafer being Jesus’ body unless there is reason to think that the testimony is reliable; wholly unreliable testimony is of no evidential value whatsoever, perfectly reliable testimony is of immense evidential value, and other kinds of testimony fall between the two. I would deny very vehemently the claim that just hearing someone soberly assert a claim gives me any sort of evidence for what is asserted. What gives me evidence for what is asserted is the causal history of the testimony; this is a different thing entirely. There are other claims besides 1 that would make 2 evidence against 4; but it does take another claim to make it (or 3) even relevant as evidence. But I think this is a tangential point.)

  9. Hi Brandon,

    When it comes to optical illusions, yes the seeming that e.g. these lines are really the same length is stronger than the seeming that one is longer. “Not easily trumped” means that they are fairly strong, and so less “trumpable” than seemings based on vague hunches, dim memories, and far-off sights, etc.

    Brandon, I, or my atheist colleague have about as much reason to believe 2 as the most faithful Catholic. I don’t see why you think 1 and 2 are logically related…

    Neither do 1 and 2 imply anything about 4. You need to include 3. Yes, assuming 3, then as 1 & 2 increase, 4 must decrease (in how strongly it seems) – unless the agent is malfunctioning.

    I think 2 constitutes testimonial evidence that the wafer is Jesus’ body, even for the unbeliever. I’d expect you to agree on that… Just hearing someone soberly assert a claim to someone else gives you evidence for what was asserted. Of course, if you find out that speaker is always right, that does change things.

    I agree that 2 & 3 differ, in that they can seem strongly to anyone who merely looks into the matter.

    But I don’t understand why you think 1 sort of insulates itself from defeat. I take it you’ll grant that it doesn’t seem true at the maximal level. If so, it is subject to defeat – for anyone whose epistemic situation is like either of my last two X graphs in the post (or other combos I didn’t take the time to spell out).

  10. These kinds of seemings – ones resulting from multiple, close up, steady, firm sensations, are not easily trumped.

    I find this a very puzzling claim; this is what happens with optical and auditory illusions all the time — it takes very little to convince someone that something is an optical or auditory illusion, since it just requires some positive reason to think that it is one. It doesn’t matter how “multiple, close up, steady, firm” your sensations of a magic trick are, how much they are without exception; if you have a positive reason to think that it is, in fact, a trick, that’s all you need to believe your senses. And as Hume argues in various places, and as cognitive science experiments often seem to show, much of our view of the world involves tendencies of imagination trumping sensible appearances because what sensible appearances seem to suggest is not something that can be read off of them — it depends much more on how we are disposed to read them. If you are arguing for an empiricism even stronger than Hume’s, it’s going to have to be defended; and if you are not, it’s hard to see why one would think this true.

    I am even more puzzled about your X’s argument, though; the ‘strength of seeming’ of the four beliefs in question, assuming that they are actually commensurable, aren’t independent: if 1 is strongly believed, this would, if Bob is rational, increase the strength of 2; and the combination of 1 & 2, if Bob is rational, would necessarily reduce the strength of seeming of 4. You can’t hold 4 constant through a change of strength in the conjoint seeming of 1 and 2; that would be irrational. Any change in the strength of seeming of the conjunction (1&2) would change our assessment of inferences relevant to holding 4.

    Both 2 and 3 — whether the Catholic Church does, in fact, require its members to believe something and that the priest did, in fact, follow the procedures he was supposed to — admit of independent and intersubjectively recognizable tests. If Bob really has a question on them he can look them up, and get even Dan to agree on them without much trouble. Their strength of seeming, if each is considered simply on its own, is irrelevant to the question. But 1. affects how Bob sorts evidence, and turns 2. into relevant evidence, when it was not even relevant before; and 1 and 2 combined makes 3 evidence against 4, when it had not previously been so.

    In other words: If we were to suppose 1 and 2 true together reasons for accepting 3 are reasons for rejecting 4. 2 and 3 can be raised to a high degree of certainty simply by investigation. 1 is not on a level with the rest of the claims because 1 is a meta-level claim: it’s a claim about how claims can be evidentially connected given other claims. If 1 seems more obviously true it changes everything simply on its own, by changing the evidential links among 2-4.

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