Anselm of Canterbury, the Red Wedding, and the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople

A bit of St. Anselm of Canterbury spotted at Siris:

Let us now understand doing (causing) in terms of a classification. Since a doing (causing) is always either in relation to being or in relation to not-being, (as has been said), we will be obliged to add “to be” or “not to be” to the distinct modes of doing (causing) in order for them to be clearly distinguished.

The Latin for 'doing/causing,' Brandon notes, is facere, which means 'making something so.' It can be substituted for any verb, even one that means making something not to be so. Anselm then delves into six ways to make something be/not be:

1. when a cause causes to be that which it is said to cause
2. when a cause does not cause to be that which it is said to cause
3. when a cause causes something else to be
4. when a cause does not cause something else to be
5. when a cause causes something else not to be
6. when a cause does not cause something else not to be

 Anselm gives examples of each, which Brandon illustrates with John and Bob. How many ways can we mean that John makes Bob to be dead?


1. John makes Bob dead (directly)

When someone who kills a man with a sword is said to cause him to be dead, [it is said] in the first mode. For he directly (per se) causes the very thing which he is said to cause.

2. John does not make Bob not to be dead (directly)

If I say, "John makes it so that Bob is dead", I could also mean that Bob is dead, and John is able to make him not-dead, but is not doing so. For example, if in Game of Thrones Thoros of Myr could make Beric Dondarrion not to be dead by his magical powers but does not do so, we can say that Thoros made it so that Beric was dead.

3. John makes Bob dead (by making something else make him dead)

If I say, "John makes it so that Bob is dead", I could also mean that John arranged it so that something else would make Bob die -- for instance, by hiring an assassin.

4. John makes Bob dead (by not making something else make him not dead)

John can make Bob dead by not giving Bob a weapon to defend himself when the assassin comes, or by otherwise not stopping the assassin.

5. John makes Bob dead (by making something else not make him not dead)

John can make Bob dead by taking away a weapon that Bob already has so he cannot defend himself when the assassin comes.

6. John does not make Bob not to be dead (by not making something else not make him dead)

John can make Bob to be dead by not taking action to make him not dead. For example, if John does not disarm the assassin or did not hide Bob when the Gestapo came for him. That is, he does not cause something else not to be.

These six modes can apply universally, since doing or making [like facere] can substitute for any verb. We can vow or make a vow; we can steal or make something to be stolen. This can have great utility in plotting stories. Think of all the ways people made Robb Stark dead at the Red Wedding: by skewering him with arrows or stabbing him [Roose Bolton], by hiring those who did [Tywin Lannister], by disarming him beforehand [Walder Frey], by not warning him, by sending away sympathizers who might have warned him, by killing the direwolf and the Stark bannermen who might have defended him, and so on. Each bore some share of responsibility for the death, even if they did not strike the actual fatal blow.

"[W]hen a problem about the faith comes up it is not only the heretical person who is condemned but also the person who is in a position to correct the heresy of others and fails to do so."

-- Sentences against the Three Chapters, II Constantinople 

A stories in which all actions are first mode -- X does Y -- tend to be thin. Even when enjoyable, they are not psychologically filling. Considering all six modes can make the text richer and the characters thicker.

The Demise of Free Guessing

It must be something in the water. Two more psychology "scientists" have been deceived into thinking that they have run an experiment on free will. But by the terms of their own analysis, they are mistaken. If we observe ourselves (unconsciously) perform some action, like picking out a box of cereal in the grocery store, and only afterwards come to infer that we did this intentionally, then Bear and Bloom must have observed themselves (unconsciously) perform an action like running an  experiment in the psych "lab,"and only afterwards came to infer that they did this intentionally. IOW, if we first pick up the box of Wheaties, then decide to choose it -- hmm. I perceive a box of Wheaties in my hand, so I believe I must have chosen it -- then how does this not apply to the decisions the experimenters think they made?

In Psearch of Psyche: Let's Get Moving!

Psyche, in psearch of you

It seems like last year since we last added to this series. Wait! That's because it was last year! Time flies when the holidays come upon one all unexpected like on little cat's feet. Yes, that's right. It's the next inpstallment of that pscintillating pseries, In Psearch of Psyche!  "Let's Get Moving!" in two senses of the word: viz., time to get this series going again and... You guessed it! ...consider the motion of the animal psyche.

For those coming late to the party, or for whom the New Year's revelry and/or Groundhog's Day has blotted out the previous chapters, a brief recap is in order: 

1. "To Deepen into Art..."
   The series began with a brief reflection on a comment made by Thomas Disch shortly before his tragic suicide that to "deepen his fiction into art," he would have to return to Catholicism, which he was unwilling to do.
   
2. In Psearch of Psyche: Some Groundwork
   We discussed the notion of potency and act, and their respective principles of matter and form. Psyche, or "soul" is a form, and we began with the simplest case: that of the form of inanimate beings, like sodium atoms. While souls are much more complex than these inanimate forms, some groundwork can be laid by considering the latter as ur-souls. We saw that inertia, understood as a tendency to preserve a body's current state, could be viewed as something analogous to life.
3. In Psearch of Psyche: Man the Vegetable.
   The simplest psyche is the nutritive soul, whose cognition is purely digestive: it knows by consuming. (Or by reproduction: that's why Adam "knew" Eve.) This kind of psyche is the seat of the most primitive aspects of life: eating and reproducing, and it is likely no coincidence that we are afflicted with an "epidemic of obesity" at the same time we are afflicted with pelvic fixations. Although for some reason, no one talks of an "epidemic of loose sex" or gets the CDC involved in stemming its spread.
4. In Psearch of Psyche: Day of the Triffids! 
   This was a short diversion to consider the borderland between the nutritive ("vegetable") soul and the sensitive ("animal") soul. The categories do not break clean, and it is possible for some "higher plants" to exhibit some of the properties of "lower animals."
5. In Psearch of Psyche: Man the Animal
   The sensitive soul adds to the cognition of digestion the cognition of sensation. An animal knows not only by eating (and sexing) but also by perceiving. In this episode we explored the sensational aspects of stimulus-response -- the outer senses and the inner senses -- and we saw how the inner senses of perception, memory, and imagination endow animals with skills that at the higher end can mimic those of humans. Now it is time for the response part of the loop.

A key reminder: The soul is not some sort of free-floating substance that somehow occupies the same space as a body and somehow interacts with it. The "mind-body problem" is no more a problem than the "sphere-basketball problem." Because it is the substantial form of a potentially living body, the soul is the principle (starting point) of all the acts of the complete substance (the "synolon"). A suitable analogy can be seen in the inanimate form of an atom. What makes the element what-it-is and gives it its powers is the number and arrangement of its material parts. Sodium and chlorine differ in the number of their protons, electron, and neutrons, and it is this arrangement rather than the protons, electrons, and neutrons in themselves that make one a metal and the other a gas. IOW, reductionism is a mug's game. How the parts act as an ensemble is very different from how they act solo.

Souls on Parade

Let's look at this schematically. The following are based on models devised by William Wallace in his book The Modeling of Nature. These were once available on the web, but the site is gone, so TOF has reproduced them here in his own hand.

In Psearch of Psyche: Man the Animal

Man, the Animal

Man, the Animal: Making Sense 

It seems like only a couple days ago that we were speaking of that strange borderline between plants and animals; viz., the possibility of sentient plants. Wait a minute, it was only a couple days ago! How time flies when you're having fun. Or reading this blog, which is not always the same thing.

Today, we take up the animal soul and see what that means for human life.

In Psearch of Psyche: Day of the Triffids!

Chapter One: A Sensational Show

Psyche, in psearch of you

Is TOF's Faithful Reader ready? Yes, that's right. It's the next inpstallment of that pscintillating pseries, In Psearch of Psyche!  For those coming late to the party, the previous chapters were:

1. "To Deepen into Art..."
2. In Psearch of Psyche: Some Groundwork 
3. In Psearch of Psyche: Man the Vegetable

For those disinclined to wade once more through those swamps, some key points are these:

• Psyche, or soul, is the substantial form of a living body, no more mysterious in its way than the sphere that somehow informs a basketball.
• There's more to it than that, of course: the form is "in motion" and not simply shape and arrangement. That's what makes the Argument from Motion (q.v.) so interesting.
• Soul is whatever a living body possesses that a dead body does not. It cannot be the matter of the body itself, since materialistically-speaking, the corpse consists of all the same matter as the organism that immediately preceded it. And in fact, your matter is continually changing at the atomic level. You are not today the stuff you were ten years ago. Since you are in fact the same person, you cannot be only your stuff.¹
• Inanimate forms possess (generically) four powers: gravity, electromagnetism, strong (nuclear), and weak (radiative). Without these powers, atoms would have no substantial form: The negative charges of the electrons would cause them to plummet into the positively charged nucleus. The positive charges of the protons would cause them to fly apart from one another, rather than huddle together in a nucleus.
• Living things are those whose actions are immanent: that is, their acts originate within the thing itself and are done for the sake of the thing. A basketball does not bounce for its own sake; but a petunia blooms for its.² 
• The simplest of living things are the vegetative things, which include plants, fungi, and the like. (This is psyche-ology, so we won't worry overmuch about distinctions of bodily classifications made by creative taxonomists.
• The vegetative psyche, a/k/a the reproductive soul, possesses (generically) four powers in addition to the powers of the inanimate form: nutrition/metabolism, development/growth, and reproduction, plus homeostasis to maintain these in balance.
• A plant does not have two souls. Its inanimate powers are recruited into the service of the organism, so that (e.g.) the chemical processes of electromagnetism provide for the digestion and incorporation of food into the stuff of the organism.
• Man³ likewise incorporates both the powers of his inanimate stuff and his vegetative powers, which is why the Late Modern obsession with eating and reproductive acts reduces Man to little more than a vegetative state.

Clarifications:
1. not your stuff. This so upsets the Usual Suspects that they deny the minor premise. You are not the same person you were ten years ago. You only think you are. How "you" can think without being "you" is carefully ducked.
2. Note to the excessively literal-minded: This does not imply conscious intention.
3. Man. Do we really need to reiterate that this is the base meaning of "man" as "a rational animal," the same root as "men-tal"? When we mean Man, the Male, we'll say so. Males, alas, lack an exclusive word for themselves as rational beings, to which lack their wives will nod wisely in agreement. The original word for males in Anglo-Saxon was weremann (in contrast to wifmann), abbreviated wera ond wifa as it reads in Beowulf.

In Psearch of Psyche: Man the Vegetable

Psyche in search of you.

Quick Recap

This series began with a brief reflection on a comment made by Thomas Disch shortly before his tragic suicide. Disch had said that to "deepen his fiction into art," he would have to return to Catholicism, which he was unwilling to do. Wondering what Disch might have meant by this, and rereading (for the first time since college) Robert Brennan's text Thomstic Psychology, TOF speculated that he might have meant a "thicker," more insightful depiction of characters, for the modern view of human nature is astonishingly thin. You have no will, no mind, not even a self.

Jody Bottum, to whom the remark was made, informed TOF that the remark was more broadly meant:

In Psearch of Psyche: Some Groundwork

A Psience in Psearch of a Psubject

Psyche retrieving a bit of Persephone's
beauty from the underworld.
Paul Alfred de Curzon, (c.1840-1859)

Psychology means "λόγος of the ψυχή," which is to say 'science of the soul.' Since many Late Moderns are too way kool and sophisticated to believe in soul, they aver that psychology is a science without a subject matter and have turned in their diplomas.

Ho ho. TOF jests. No self-respecting scientificalistic labcoater will ever admit that he spends his time studying something that does not exist.  Well, except for string theorists and exobiologists. But this raises an important puzzle.  If psychologists are not studying psyches, then what in blue blazes are they studying?

It depends on whom you ask. One school "restricts itself to consciousness and its immediate data."  Another focuses on human behavior and rules out any mention of consciousness. And so, "having lost its soul, its mind, and its consciousness, in that order, psychology is now in danger of losing its scientific standing." (Brennan, Thomistic Psychology).

You won't find such debates among "schools" of physicists or chemists. Physicists and chemists may have their own problems, like quantum gravity versus string theory, but not believing in chemicals or physical bodies is not one of them.  Biologists do sometimes deny that life exists, but usually they're okay with it.¹ Even sociologists, who otherwise practice a debased form of voodoo, do not deny that society exists. So psychologists are very nearly unique among scientists. O brave new world, that has such people in it!