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CAUSAL SKEPTICISM and the DESTRUCTION of ANTIQUITY By CAUSAL SKEPTICISM AND THE DESTRUCTION OF ANTIQUITY by JASON M. JORDAN A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Philosophy and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2011 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Jason M. Jordan Title: Causal Skepticism and the Destruction of Antiquity This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Philosophy by: Dr. Naomi Zack Chairperson Dr. Cheney Ryan Member Dr. Colin Koopman Member Dr. Malcolm Wilson Outside Member and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research & Innovation/Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded December 2011 ii © 2011 Jason M. Jordan iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Jason M. Jordan Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy December 2011 Title: Causal Skepticism and the Destruction of Antiquity This dissertation examines the development of skeptical views concerning causation from the medieval to the early modern period. While causal skepticism is often overlooked by intellectual historians, I argue that, in spite of its typical motivation as a religious response to shibboleths of ancient philosophy that stood askance from the dogmas of Abrahamic theology, causal skepticism was the greatest intellectual development of post-antiquity and ultimately culminated into modern Science. The first chapter examines Hume's famous analysis of causation and serves as a foil for the prior history of causal skepticism addressed in the subsequent chapters. The second chapter addresses the dispute over causation in medieval Islamic philosophy. I argue that virtually the entirety of Hume’s analysis was anticipated, and in some cases superseded, by al-Ghazali in the eleventh century. The third chapter examines Averroes’ critique of al-Ghazali, as well as the development of Aristotelian causal metaphysics in the Christian West. The fourth chapter concerns the development of the nominalist tradition skeptical attitude towards efficient causal explanation in the aftermath of the anti-Aristotelian condemnations of 1277. The fifth chapter addresses the Cartesian occasionalist tradition and its skeptical stance on secondary causation and the relation between this causal skepticism and central doctrines of Cartesian physics and metaphysics. The sixth and final chapter of my dissertation concerns the collapse of occasionalism and its many offspring. My ultimate thesis is that the hallmarks of both modern philosophy and modern science trace their origin to the failure of occasionalism to resolve its own internal contradictions. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Jason M. Jordan GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Oregon State University, Corvallis DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, 2011, University of Oregon Bachelors of Arts, 2005, Oregon State University v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks are in order to many. First and foremost, to my advisor for the past six years, Naomi Zack, who recognized—when I did not—the importance of this research project early on when it was little more than a term paper, and encouraged me—in spite of my initial reluctance—to pursue it further. I would also like to thank my other committee members: Cheney Ryan, Colin Koopman, Malcolm Wilson, and Kenneth Clatterbaugh. Thanks are also in order to several of my peers, whom I have undoubtedly burned with many self-involved conversations concerning this project: José Mendoza, Aurora Hudson, Edgar Temam, Spencer Gwartney, Amelia Wirts, and Rhea Muchalla, thank you all for your patience and your indulgence of my obscure interests. The terminal stages of this dissertation were supported by an Oregon Humanities Center Fellowship, which was both helpful and much appreciated. vi To my mother and father, my efficient cause. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 1. Pagan Philosophy and the Metaphysics of Causation ....................................... 2 2. Yet It Was Not Consumed ................................................................................ 15 3. The Marionette World ....................................................................................... 21 4. Thesis of the Dissertation .................................................................................. 28 II. HUME AND THE DENOUEMENT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY ................... 32 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 32 2. Hume’s Critique of Causation ........................................................................... 36 3. Hume’s Critique of Occasionalism ................................................................... 70 III. HELLENIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE GOD OF ABRAHAM .......................... 83 1. Reconciling Plato with Moses ........................................................................... 83 2. Islamic Rationalism and the Falsafa ................................................................. 95 3. Al-Ghazali and the Ash’arite School ................................................................ 106 IV. THE REVIVAL OF ARISTOTELIAN CAUSAL METAPHYSICS ................... 130 1. The Recovery of Western Europe ..................................................................... 130 2. Averroes and Classical Aristotelianism ............................................................ 134 3. Aquinas on the Powers of God and Nature ....................................................... 149 V. NOMINALISM AND THE BARREN WORLD ................................................... 178 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 178 2. Peter Damian on Divine Omnipotence and Natural Necessity ......................... 180 3. The Condemnations of 1277 and the Development of Nominalism ................. 192 viii Chapter Page 4. Nicholas of Autrecourt ...................................................................................... 200 VI. CARTESIAN MECHANISM AND OCCASIONALISM ................................... 225 1. The Cartesian Inclination Towards Occasionalism ........................................... 225 2. Descartes’ Position on Occasionalism .............................................................. 239 3. The History of Cartesian Occasionalism Prior to Malebranche ........................ 250 4. Malebranche and the Summa Occasionis .......................................................... 278 REFERENCES CITED ............................................................................................... 301 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION [E]ven if [God] wished to make a rock into a man all of a sudden, it would be impossible. And this is the point at which my teaching and that of Plato and the other Greeks who have treated correctly of natural principles differs from that of Moses. For him it suffices for God to have willed material to be arranged and straightway it was arranged, because Moses believed everything to be possible to God, even if he should wish to make a horse or beef out of ashes. We, however, do not feel this to be true, saying rather that some things are naturally impossible and that God does not attempt these at all but chooses from among the possible what is best to be done. —Galen, De usu partium Ab actu ad potentiam consequentia valet. —Bayle, Dictionnaire “The inference from what is actual to its possibility is always valid.”1 What manner of claim is this? Like many bromides, it appears sweeping and profound, but really amounts to: ‘If something is real or has happened, then it must be possible for it to be real or to have happened.’ Even a child knows as much! No matter how exhaustively a parent explains that monsters do not and cannot live under a bed, the child has heard them, maybe even seen them, and thus knows they can.2 Such a puerile bit of reasoning might 1 Bayle, Dictionaire, art. Manichees, rem .D. This maxim, inverting the customary formulation, reasons a esse ad posse. It was employed by Bayle against optimists such as Spinoza and Leibniz who—either through the principle of plentitude (i.e. a posse ad esse) or through innovative distinctions between existence and actuality—denied both the reality and possibility of evil in the world. Thanks are due to Thomas Lennon for helping me track down this quote. 2 While not a small child, Stephen LaBerge, one of the first psychologists to scientifically study the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, provides a useful example of the maxim: “In the late 1970’s, when I began my Ph.D. study on lucid dreams at Stanford, I found myself challenged by a seemingly…hopeless task: proving that lucid dreaming is real. The experts at the time were convinced that dreaming with consciousness that you were dreaming was a contradiction in terms and therefore impossible. Such 1 seem strange coming from the pen of any philosopher, much less one with the stature of Pierre Bayle—“the greatest master of the art of reasoning that ever wrote,” according to Voltaire.3 Yet, this little bromide formed the touchstone of one of the greatest intellectual transformations in human history: the change between the philosophy of the ancients and the philosophy of the moderns. 1. Pagan Philosophy
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