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The University of Chicago Analogical Models of God THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ANALOGICAL MODELS OF GOD: AN ACCOUNT OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY BY DAWN ESCHENAUER CHOW CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2017 © Dawn Eschenauer Chow 2017 For my mother Table of Contents Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………... vii Introduction ……………………………………………………………………...……… 1 Chapter 1: Analogy and Analogical Speech ................................................................. 11 1. What is analogy? ……………………………………………………………………... 12 1.1 Ontological analogy ………………………………………………………… 12 1.2 Similarity, properties, and S-properties ……………………………………... 13 1.3 The relationship between proportional similarities and simple similarities … 28 1.4 Analogical thought ………………………………………………………….. 32 2. What is it to speak analogically? ……………………………………………………... 34 2.1 Type 1 analogical speech: Assertions of analogy …………………………… 35 2.2 Type 2 analogical speech: Propositions asserted analogically ……………… 36 2.3 Irreducibility ………………………………………………………………… 44 3. The shortcomings of the “different but related senses” definition of analogy ……….. 48 3.1 Analogy as polysemy ……………………………………….……….………. 48 3.2 Analogy as polysemy plus an ontological criterion ………………………… 51 3.3 Sameness of sense as indeterminate ………………………………………… 53 3.4 The impossibility of irreducible non-univocity ……………………………... 61 3.5 A continued role for the concept of non-univocity ………………………….. 72 4. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………. 75 Chapter 2: Why Analogy? …………………………………………………………….. 77 1. A global argument for analogy: The classical conception of God …………………… 79 1.1 The focal claim: God does not fall under our ontological categories ………. 85 1.2 If God is not a concrete being, what is he? …………………………………. 92 1.3 Argument #1: The problem of competition …………………………………. 97 1.31 Individualist option #1: Simple hierarchy …………………………………. 97 1.32 Individualist option #2: Unity in virtue of obedience ……………………… 99 1.33 Individualist option #3: Unity in virtue of imitation ……………………….. 100 1.34 The classical option ………………………………………………………… 102 1.35 Individualist option #4: Unity through resemblance of creatures to God ….. 105 1.4 Argument #2: Necessary existence and worship ……………………………. 108 1.5 Argument #3: God as the invincible tyrant ………………………………….. 119 1.6 Why taking God not to be a concrete being requires a doctrine of analogy … 122 2. Local reasons for appealing to analogy ………………………………………………. 124 3. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………. 131 Chapter 3: The Problem with Analogy ……………………………………………….. 132 1. Unspecified similarity claims …………………………………………………………. 132 iv 2. Harris, Palmer, and Alston on the failure of irreducible analogy …………………….. 137 3. Swinburne’s more determinate conception of analogy ……………………………….. 144 3.1 Not just similar but more similar …………………………………………….. 144 3.2 A loosening of syntactic rules ……………………………………………….. 150 3.3 The trouble with Swinburne’s account ……………………………………… 157 4. Proportionality as a solution to the problem …………………………………………. 168 5. Partial univocity as a solution to the problem ………………………………………... 175 Chapter 4: Aquinas’s Doctrine of Analogy …………………………………………... 188 1. Overview of Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy ………………………………………….. 188 2. Similarity in the doctrine of analogy …………………………………………………. 192 3. Possible solutions …………………………………………………………………….. 201 3.1 The res/modus distinction ………………………………………………….... 201 3.2 The like-causes-like (LCL) principle ………………………………………... 206 4. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………. 219 Chapter 5: Analogical Models of God ………………………………………………… 224 1. Ramsey and Barbour on analogical models of God …………………………………... 225 2. Basic features of analogical models …………………………………………………... 238 2.1 An analogical model is not a description or theory ………………………….. 238 2.2 An analogical model bears relevant similarities, including at least some relevant structural similarities, to its target ……………………………………... 247 2.3 An analogical model must be substantially dissimilar to its target ………….. 255 2.4 We can use multiple models for the same thing …………………………….. 256 2.5 A model is a model only insofar as it is taken as a model …………………... 257 2.6 An analogical model represents its target by virtue of its similarities to it …. 257 2.7 To take something as an analogical model is to employ it in surrogative thought about the target …………………………………………………………. 263 2.8 Accepting a model as a practical stance …………………………………….. 273 2.9 How models relate to analogical speech …………………………………….. 274 3. The IRAM account of religious language …………………………………………….. 276 3.1 Models of God ………………………………………………………………. 276 3.2 How appealing to models doesn’t help ……………………………………… 279 3.3 Taking something as a model of God ……………………………………….. 283 Chapter 6: Some Loose Ends: Fixing the Referent and Having Grounds to Believe . 294 1. How to fix the referent of “God” on a global IRAM account ………………………... 294 1.1 The trouble with fixing the referent via irreducibly analogical description … 296 1.2 An attempt to fix the referent via negative descriptions ……………………. 299 1.3 An attempt to fix the referent via extrinsic descriptions ……………………. 304 1.4 Why we can’t fix the referent by appealing to religious experience ……….. 312 1.5 Summation of the problem …………………………………………………. 315 1.6 Part one of the solution: the irreducibility condition ……………………….. 318 1.7 Part two of the solution: the irreplaceability condition ……………………... 325 v 1.8 Similarity claims with an embedded counterfactual ………………………… 330 1.9 Conclusion to Section 1 ……………………………………………………... 333 2. How could anyone have reason to believe an IRAM theology? ……………………… 336 2.1 Testimony (i.e. revelation) as grounds for an IRAM theology ……………… 340 2.2 The circularity objection …………………………………………………….. 345 2.3 Barbour and Wisdom and the inadequacy of appeals to natural revelation … 349 2.4 Conclusion to Section 2 ……………………………………………………... 357 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………… 359 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………. 362 vi Acknowledgements I am deeply indebted to my committee members Josef Stern, Michael Kremer, and Jim Conant for their guidance in writing this dissertation. They have been patient, generous with their time, and perceptive in their criticisms. Josef was an exemplary chair, offering careful and detailed feedback on repeated drafts, and I have learned an enormous amount from my conversations with him. What I have written would not be nearly as clear as it is (for whatever that’s worth) if it were not for him. Michael was the person who initially convinced me that Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy was worth taking seriously, without which I probably would never have turned my attention to analogy at all, and that enlightening conversation has turned out to be a fairly representative sample. And my conversations with Jim sparked many of the ideas which eventually turned into this dissertation, and his enthusiasm regarding my work has been a consistent source of encouragement. I would also like to thank the attendees of the Metaphor Workshop and the Wittgenstein Workshop, who have been invaluable sources of thoughtful feedback and thought-provoking discussions. I have benefitted particularly from insightful conversations with Dhananjay Jagannathan and Hannah McKeown. This project would not have been possible without the support of my family, and I am especially grateful to my mother for her lifelong support of my intellectual interests, no matter how peculiar, and to my husband, for everything. vii Introduction Thought about God in the Christian tradition, and in the Western monotheistic traditions more generally, is drawn in two conflicting directions. On the one hand, God is described in various specific ways: God is wise, God created the universe, God is good, God loves us, and so on. On the other hand, if God is the ultimate source and foundation of everything that exists, as theists believe, he1 must be radically unlike any of the things we are familiar with, existing as he does at an entirely different ontological level from us. And in light of this, many or perhaps even all of the traditional claims about God seem overly anthropomorphic or otherwise inappropriate if understood as straightforward, literal, and unproblematically true descriptions of God. To overemphasize the first pole of monotheistic thought is to worship a God that is little more than a glorified and perfected human being—a “gaseous vertebrate,” as Ernst Haeckel puts it.2 But to emphasize the second pole exclusively, declining to think of God in any personal terms or any other terms drawn from mere creatures, would destroy religious faith altogether by emptying it of content. It is no easy matter to resolve the tension in a way that doesn’t fall into one or the other of these errors. The traditional solution to this problem, at least within the Christian tradition, has gone by the name of analogy. To interpret claims about God analogically is to take a sort of middle 1 I have chosen to use masculine pronouns for God, which will strike some readers as unhelpful. However, tradition has made this the language I find it natural to use, and I consider it unwise to use one sort of language to speak about God in my daily religious life and a different sort of language to speak about God in my philosophical work; the temptation for a philosopher of religion to forget who she is speaking of is great enough without that. So I must simply beg the indulgence of those readers who find
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