The problem of Idealism

When I was a student in philosophy, I was reminded that Thomists were considered "naïve and dogmatic" because of their acceptance of philosophical realism. The charge was uttered because it was said direct realism could not be demonstrated. That is, one could not prove that extra mental reality existed, it could not be proven that the world we inhabit was nothing other than a dream world invented by our minds.

Of course, Descartes was the first modern to question the validity of what the senses told us, and he imagined a "malignus spiritus" constantly deceiving us to believe extra mental reality existed. He placed the burden of proof on the realists, but got trapped in solipsism and did not succeed in getting out. His mind/body dualism simply charted the course of European philosophy. In France, minds lost their bodies. In England, bodies lost their minds.


If one is familiar with the 1999 film The Matrix you will get the computer ages' version of Cartesian philosophy. Instead of a malignus spiritus, we have a malignus supercomputer that deceives our senses into believing external reality is mind independent.


Before giving my own simplistic or rather "dogmatic" critique of this type of idealism, let me describe for students of philosophy the major forms of what is called epistemology (from the Greek etymology meaning "theories of knowledge.") There is a spectrum that runs from idealism to extreme realism

Idealism means that all external reality is mind dependent, or projections of the mind. Major philosophers that embraced this form of epistemology were Malebranche, Berkeley, and Kant (though with some nuance for Kant.)


The next form of epistemology would be indirect realism. Here, the knowers are only in contact with images of real things in external reality. So, similar to when you imagine something, instead of the actual "direct perception" of the thing, you are in contact with second order intentions, or the image of the real thing. John Locke was a proponent of this form of indirect realism.


Then there is what Aristotelians and Thomists ascribe to, and this is called direct realism. Here, the form of the thing is directly perceived and in the knower without the matter. So, when you perceive the chair in front of you, you are directly in contact with it. For Aristotle, there is hierarchy of how we come to know things. First there are the proper sensibles, which are what the senses come directly in contact with. For sight, it is color or differentiated light, for hearing it is sound, and so on. Then there is what is called the "common sensibles." Aquinas relates that this is how we distinguish the white from the sweet. On my understanding, this is also where the immediate sensible "form" resides. Then you have the imagination where images can be produced, and finally the intellect, which is the abode of the universal understanding.

There is also extreme realism, taught by Plato, that holds that the things of our sense experience are merely imperfect participations in their ideal or perfect Forms. These Forms reside in the realm of understanding and are the changeless universals to which all things adhere.


This brief survey is obviously not exhaustive, but is stated here to get a general lay of the land.


So, the modernists call direct realism naïve and dogmatic; naïve because it accepts reality at face value; dogmatic because it does not demonstrate, but just claims things are the way they are. While I can certainly say I am dogmatic about direct realism, it is less about demonstrating mind independent reality for me, and more about the complications idealism brings forth.


The biggest issue I see with it, is that idealism requires there to be actualities presented to my senses that my mind only holds in potency, but these actualities would have to be already actual for me if my mind were projecting. For example, if you asked me to explain the engineering and physics that go into building a stable bridge, or making a plane fly, I would not be able to explain it from a mathematical-scientific perspective. In short, I personally could not build you a bridge or an airplane. Idealism, from this perspective, at least at the naturalist level, is VERY problematic. My mind simply does not have the actualities to project the mathematical foundation for bridges. That is, I need to be taught physics; in an idealistic epistemology, I would be being taught physics that my mind already knew, i.e. learning would be actualizing an already actual, but then why have to work to learn? Why isn't all knowledge angelic in that having the principle, I would already know the conclusions? Idealism basically says that I have knowledge that I do not have, which is a contradiction.


Now, of course, we could argue like Descartes or the writers of the Matrix and imagine a malignant super intellect deceiving at every moment. Is this imagining or creating, however, not a skeptical hypothetical that is fanciful? If direct realists are naïve and dogmatic, then idealists are fanciful and dogmatic. Imagining this demon, however, will run us into the existence of God, for there can be no spirits composed of essence and existence unless there is One Spirit Whose essence is existence. And God is demonstrably good (we'll save this for another post as I know I'm starting to sound like Descartes). So the only way there is a deceiving malignant higher than us super intellect, is if God wills/allows it.


So, ultimately, naturalistic idealism fails on account of placing potency before act and is rounded out in contradiction. We will revisit the malignant spirit or supercomputer in a later post to review if there are problems with a good God allowing deception at every moment.

The god of the Loins

A recent Tweet from Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez reads as follows: "Abortion bans aren't just about controlling women's bodies. They're about controlling women's sexuality. Owning women. From limiting birth control to banning comprehensive sex ed, US religious fundamentalists are working hard to outlaw sex that falls outside their theology. Ultimately, this is about women's power. When women are in control of their sexuality, it threatens a core element underpinning right-wing ideology: patriarchy. It's a brutal form of oppression to seize control of the 1 essential thing a person should command: their own body." Oddly enough, as I read this, I was reminded of Plato's Republic. In Book 9 of that work, Plato reminds us of the tyrannical soul and how it becomes so. Earlier, in Book 4, Plato had divided the human soul into three parts, the desiring, the spirited, and the rational. The desiring element is that element that, without the rule of reason, would seek to satisfy any and all pleasures, including the grotesque (Plato uses the example of the desiring element, in dreams while reason slumbers, wanting relations with one's own mother.) Plato lays out how the tyrant is someone who, from youth, always has all pleasures satisfied so that no pleasures end up out of bounds. The tyrannical soul will not stop at any crime to satisfy its desires because it cannot control itself. The lack of control gets to a point where it is out of control; he uses the example of the tyrannical soul killing their own parents to satisfy the desire for the latest call girl. In responses to Ms. Cortez's Tweet, I noticed the typical rhetorical responses that are mere labels, but nothing rationally substantive. One of the most commonly used terms was "tyranny." The basic premise was that banning abortion meant imposing tyranny. The question I posed to myself upon reading the responses was, "What is tyranny?" Plato gives us the answer. It is the soul that cannot control itself to the point of making all crimes possible to satisfy the desiring element in us. At the state level, it is when the masses cannot control their lusts, so they choose to be ruled by someone who panders to their lusts, as well as satisfying his or her own lusts. The bottom line is, self-government at the level of republic requires self-government at the level of the individual. If we parse AOC's comment above, we can unmask where the real tyranny lies. First, she appeals to "power," in the sense of identity politics. Pitch it as the world against women, and you've got the Marxist identity political division of bourgeoisie and proletariat (have's and have nots). Incidentally, in identity politics there is no room for true justice because Marxists will ignore history as the relativistic creation of those who had power in the former epoch. Thus, for the identity Marxist, any contemporary injustice is rendered just because it is in response to historical injustices of the randomly selected power classes of yesteryear. (Just look how the definition of the kulaks in Soviet Russia shifted with the "thieving" needs of the tyrants in charge.) So, there is no crime the underprivileged (however they are relativistically selected) can commit that is unjust. In short, there is no truth but power, and power is to be had by the biggest gun. So AOC says abortion bans are about controlling women's bodies and sexuality, indeed, she calls it "owning women." Can you see Plato's tyrant? Dangle the red meat of lust and power out in front of those who cannot self rule. The first avenue to control for the tyrant. She then says that when women are in control of their sexuality, that it threatens the so called "patriarchy." Abortion does the opposite of putting women in control of their sexuality, it takes control away. Pregnancy is a natural control on uninhibited desires. It forces one to practice temperance and to control the tyrant within. Indeed, it's not an easy battle, but virtue is not easily won. Her appeal is to the lower desires, just as Plato said the tyrant always does. When she talks about "patriarchy," I assume what she means is systemic juridical structures that favor men over women in all spheres of life? If that is what she means, then she is an advocate of that very patriarchy by protecting the oppressors of women through abortion. The majority of women say they had an abortion because of pressure from their boyfriend/spouse; abortion is documented as being used for rape cover up; it puts cultural pressure on women to do the unwomanly and kill her offspring; it affords predatory men the license to use women, and ends up emotionally traumatizing many women who go through abortion. If the patriarchy exists as she believes, she is advocating for it! Finally, it need not be exhausted here, but the idea that a baby inside a woman is "the woman's body" is scientifically inaccurate. When Stalin was asked how to conquer America, he responded that one must destroy her morality. AOC's latest Tweet, as Plato shows us, is dangling the meat of lust out there, so the state can step in and take control of your life. Anyone selling "free sex," is seeking to control you through your lower desires. Tyranny lies within before it lies without. Tyranny is in the god of the loins...

The Masonic God, no God at all

My understanding of the Masonic god is that it widely falls into the deistic interpretation of God. That is, God is the mechanistic god that set the wheels in motion for creation, and then walked away unconcerned about the goings on on this little earth. There are a myriad of issues with the mechanistic picture of reality, but today I would like to focus on the problem with deism and a "god" that is unconcerned with His or "its" creation. In Aristotelian Thomism, the foundational constituent principles of reality are act and potency. Indeed, if one is to study Aristotle or Aquinas at all, one must understand these two principles. The basic way to understand act is as the "full perfection of a thing" and potency as potentialities or "what a thing can become given its nature absent limiting factors." The classic example given is that of the acorn and the oak tree. An acorn is in potency to becoming an oak tree if it will realize the full perfection of its nature, or if it will become actual. In classic metaphysics, ultimately potency cannot precede act in the coming to be of things. So, for a human being to come into existence, there must be adult human beings that have reached perfection, or humans in act to realize the potency of sperm and egg. Now Aquinas defines God as Pure Act. He is the actuality that ultimately actuated the potency of creation. As an infinite power, He did this ex nihilo, or out of nothing. This is something only an infinite power can do. As Pure Act, there is no perfection that can be lacking to God. Thus, he cannot lack any knowledge, or any power, or any goodness or beauty or truth. So how do we know that God is the Pure Act, or Actus Purus? First off, any perfection there is in reality must come from a cause that has the actuality to cause the effect. That is, an effect cannot have something in it that is not first in its cause either actually, virtually, or eminently. So, God cannot lack any perfection, at least of what we are aware of. Secondly, if God is lacking a perfection, then He is not God. We can arrive at this by considering the idea of dualistic theology. Dualism, in theology, suggests that there are two equally powerful deities, one good, and one evil. Now, it is not possible for there to be two all powerful gods, as the power of the evil god would be lacking to the good god and vice versa. Thus each god would have a potency, or lack the perfection, of the power of the other god. Therefore, neither would be all powerful gods. There would have to be a third, all powerful cause of the powers of the two gods that were lacking these perfections. Thus, there is only one all powerful God. So, there must be only one Pure Act that has all perfections. If we return to the idea of adult humans having the act, and semen and egg having the potencies, we quickly realize that there must be an actuality prior to all potencies. As noted before, an effect must have in it what was first in the cause. Thus, anything in existence must have come to be by something already in act. You do not have a pile of dirt, that after sitting as dirt for 2000 years, become a tree, unless something in act draws out the potencies. It is similar in the creation of the human intellect. Evolution seeks to demonstrate that, through time, potencies are actualized. The theory generally works as long as there are myriad of actualities that bring out potencies latent in material reality. Two big question marks are a) the beginning of evolutionary biology, i.e. what set it in motion, and b) how does one arrive at the actuality of intellectual activity from material potencies? There seems to be an infinite gap there, which is why I posit a God, or intellectual actuality. So what does all of this have to do with the Masonic god? A Pure Act can lack no perfection, meaning that the attributes of a Pure Act would be omniscience, omnipotent, all good, all truth, all beautiful, etc. If this is true, however, it means that the deistic god cannot be Pure Act. For what being that is all knowing and all good, these are necessary consequences of the concept of Pure Act, could even begin to be unconcerned about its creation? If creation is good, and this is demonstrably the case, then how could what is all good be unconcerned about goodness? Furthermore, what being, if it had all knowledge, could not always be aware of the goings on of its creation? Catholicism holds that God created man in His image, which is exemplified by the intellectual powers (intellect and will). If, indeed, intellect and will are a good God's image, then it further intensifies this Pure Act's concern for His creatures. As we see from before, the actuality of intellectual activity cannot be explained by material potencies as intellectual activity is immaterial. (Aristotle notes that all material powers of the soul have a limited range, but the intellect is infinite in range, thus showing its immateriality. Further evidence of the image of God being stamped in humanity). In short, this all shows that a Pure Act, based on the attributes that must follow on Its being, would be concerned with creation. Thus, the Masonic deistic god is no god at all, for to be unconcerned about reality would mean either it had not the knowledge, or was not good, but then it would not be God. As we know, at it's highest ranks, Freemasonry is Luciferian. And yes, Lucifer certainly is NOT concerned about creation, other than to destroy the image of God that is in it. The Freemasonic god is no god.