Philosophy Now Forum

A matter of personal taste is passed off as Reason. I.e., the false appearance of Reason brings forward an assumed wisdom of a raw bigot of Scientism.

I believe Sam Harris is mistaken in his claim that the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation of the Sacramental bread and wine into the blood and body of Christ is "psychotic". His argument is that it is "literal" and therefore a kind of madness, which, he says, would be obvious in the case that it was a claim made by an individual rather than a group.

Harris never asks what the "literalness" refers to. Catholics don't say they hallucinate, or literally see a visual change in the wafer or bread of the Holy Mass. They speak of a change of "substance". A so-called substantial change. Why should a Love Feast be psychotic? It must be that Harris simply thinks anyone who doesn't follow his views is psychotic, and he finds Catholic ceremonies horrifyingly repulsive. But, that is his own irrational nature at work.

There is as much justice in regarding someone who thinks that the marriage ceremony makes a person one's spouse, changes their substance, is psychotic. If there were no such customary practice, as that one has long called marriage, and some isolated few began to insist they had a wife or a husband, this would be psychotic for the generality, who would place it outside their norms, and in the region of mental illness.

One might go further. Is the belief in substance, full stop, psychotic? That there are literally substantial natures of individual things? In that case, to say an apple is an apple, and not a homogeneous clump of mass, is psychotic.

Is the belief in substance, full stop, psychotic?

No; nor does anyone claim that it is.

In that case, to say an apple is an apple, and not a homogeneous clump of mass, is psychotic.

Up until it's chewed and swallowed, it's an apple. After that, it's a clump of mass, then chyme, etc. It's quite sane to know that.
But it does not turn into meat when some guy in a robe passed his hand over it and pronounced an incantation. To claim that is dishonest; to pretend that is childish. To believe it literally is psychotic.
And they object to Harry Potter!!

Scientisim is based on vulgar ignorant chatter and confusion bellow the level of intelligent discussion. You don't understand what the technical term substance means in the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

It makes as little sense to denounce physicists by saying they claim things are mass-energy, whereas they are obviously apples and humans, thus physicists are "psychotic".

Bon appetit!

Transubstantiation is a change in ‘ousia’, that is, a change in the being or substance or essence (literally, the “what it is”) of bread and wine. What they become is no longer bread and wine but the actual body and blood of Christ. How it happens is a mystery, but that it happens is taken to be true without question.

A distinction is sometimes made between substance and accident. The appearance of wafer and wine are held to be accidents, and so, one does not see or taste a difference between an ordinary wafer and wine and the Eucharist, but it is still believed to have been transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ. What it means for the essence of Christ’s blood and body in distinction from its accidents seems problematic.

Is this a rational belief? Wittgenstein remarks that there are rational people who believe it. But of course, it is possible for a rational person to believe something irrational.

If this was not a Christian belief and Christians learns of a similar Islamic ritual no doubt many would regard it, to say the least, differently.

Helpful post, F!

It seems to me that the substantiation idea was a way of expressing that, whatever one consumes, it always becomes the same thing - your flesh and blood - the body and blood of humanity. In this case "Christ" acts as as a synecdoche for life itself, an expression of fundamental unity.

Mistake with posting. Please remove.

Harris is mistaken because by "literal" he can only refer to the judgment. I look, and I say, there is the wafer. He doesn't move in the interpretation of beings that includes ousia. The Catholic judges himself to see a wafer, a wafer that has for its substance the body of Christ. It would be something else if they looked, and said, I see, with the senses, the body of Christ. They see, with the senses, the wafer. The right to determine the meaning of human life is in question. The region of the sciences, in the modern interpretation of what science means, isn’t named by the word “literal”.

A point of clarification is that the issue of the literal character is said in contradistinction to metaphorical for the reason that Jesus often spoke in parables. There's a second question here about the light of the mind and the light of the sun.

If one spells it in larger terms, the substance does not speak of the natural thing, of the literal in Harris' sense. The implication is that Harris calls psychotic all questioning of the meaning of the essence of beings and being. Thereby he condemns anything that stands outside the Galilean sciences, the views that have unfolded for the last several hundred years in Europe, and now come to power almost everywhere on the planet. Whoever does not hear this muezzin, calling the chosen from the zenith of vantage which is his minaret, is outside the community and thereby judged mad, in need of adjustment to the proper and true course, and thereby the rightful object of those who are now their benign warders or physicians. I think in this respect Wittgenstein brings in the notion of "epistemic peers". Who is the child? Who is legitimately of another rationality? For instance, in the recent past, and still in some parts, the case when homosexuals are viewed as psychotic or feeble minded and subjected to laws that treat them as psychotic cases on the basis of the knowledge of what behaviors are in the interest of man as man.

There’s a political issue here. Which, I believe, is more the domain of the Pinkerite heresy within Scientism as a comprehensive ideology, than of Harris’s part of it. Harris shows more philosophic concern with understanding, thus his addiction to 18th century free thinking is all the more unfortunate. Why would one attack a love feast for the reason that it involved improper reasoning? Who does it hurt? If one starts from harm-principle liberalism, this stands as authoritarianism. Something is forbidden, even though it is not harmful to others, for the reason that it is supposed to be either wrong or false. Why should one not be free to hold false beliefs? Scientism (not the sciences which do not claim to, and can not provide principles of action) implies that it is best perched to determine what is true. Is this anything but a consoling delusion? If one knew what the wrong opinions were, one might then claim that all wrong opinions were against the interest of the holder. And then, by coercion or violence, force all to abandon the wrong opinions.

Wittgenstein remarks that there are rational people who believe it. But of course, it is possible for a rational person to believe something irrational.

Do you have a text from him on hand, a sentence or so? Here, we would need to clarify what rationality means to proceed. If the concept of rationality is freed up, then it becomes a question of different concepts of rationality, rather than the rational and the irritational. So far as the human essence is determined as ratio, as what stands in contradistinction from appetite and passion, irrationality is likely to name a feral man, i.e., a kind of wild beast. The old conception of mental illness was not of a sick human, but of a human become a wild beast. The Greeks didn’t call the square root of 2 irrational as is often said, but, rather, if I recall rightly, they called it anomos, which is close to our word anomaly. It is what can’t be named, or what follows no law. The cosmos, of course, need not be assumed to follow laws. It may not. The conection is not arbitrary, since these interpretation of man's essence are very close. Man is also said to be the speaking animal. Without speech there is no way to rationality, and perhaps no rationality simpliciter. However, here, there is more room, since speech, logos, need not be logic, what it becomes in the Christian world in which this doctrine of transubstantiation arises under the name of scientia.

Troll:

Harris is mistaken because by "literal" he can only refer to the judgment. I look, and I say, there is the wafer. He doesn't move in the interpretation of beings that includes ousia.

Harris quotes the Council of Trent:

I likewise profess that in the Mass a true, proper and propitiatory sacrifice is offered to God on behalf of the living and the dead, and that the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, and that there is a change of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into blood; and this change the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation. I also profess that the whole and entire Christ and a true sacrament is received under each separate species. (https://samharris.org/the-sacrifice-of-reason/)

Troll:

If one spells it in larger terms, the substance does not speak of the nature of the thing, of the literal in Harris' sense.

The term substance as it is used in the Catholic tradition, following Aristotle (referred to as “the philosopher”) is the being or essence (from esse ‘to be’), that is, the nature of the thing.

The implication is that Harris calls psychotic all questioning of the meaning of the essence of beings and being.

If Harris calls belief in transubstantiation psychotic how does it follow that the implication is that he calls all questioning of the meaning of the essence of beings and being psychotic? Questioning the belief in change of substance is not questioning the meaning of being or essence.

Troll:

Do you have a text from him on hand, a sentence or so?

On Certainty:

166. The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing.

205. If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, not yet false.

239: … Catholics believe as well that in certain circumstances a wafer completely changes its nature, and at the same time that all evidence proves
the contrary. And so if Moore said "I know that this is wine and not blood", Catholics would contradict him.

253. At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded.

336. But what men consider reasonable or unreasonable alters. At certain periods men find reasonable what at other periods they found unreasonable. And vice-versa.

Malcolm said that Wittgenstein once told him, referring to Smythies and Anscombe who had both become Roman Catholics:

"I could not possibly bring myself to believe all the things that they believe.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, a Memoir, 72).

error, please delete

"If Harris calls belief in transubstantiation psychotic how does it follow that the implication is that he calls all questioning of the meaning of the essence of beings and being psychotic? Questioning the belief in change of substance is not questioning the meaning of being or essence."

Excuse me, for revivifying parts of my view, in this progress of the argument against the forces of your reaction.

It requires specific reflections to reach the conception of substance. Holding back, thinking, coming to, through long investigations and deliberations, to see reason in holding that the intellect can pierce the world in a way the senses can not. The issue requires a long preparatory teaching, a training, and a trained acumen that can freely judge of the arguments, all that is not available to Harris. When we speak in daily life, we speak without reflecting. I see a wafer. The change of substance doesn't change what one sees. If we move in the terms of fact, in the way established by the Royal Society in their polemic with Hobbes, which is now almost the only use of the word, things seen, and repeatable, we make no reflection. We don't enter into the region where the issue is contemplated. If one makes the scientific reflection, and assumes a theory of positivism, one may say, there is something that does not depend on me (and which I only can reach by the senses, and think over that which is brought in by the senses), the object, and go on to purpose to say what it is like. This kind of reflection is not quite the same as common sense, which becomes folk sense in proximity to the modern sciences. It doesn't make sense to exclude everyone who has a different conception than oneself. It would only be justified if one could say that one had the truth, and that the others were mucking in imaginings and in that way missing the real goods of life. Even then, to exclude them, by applying such tags as psychotic, i.e., not normal, deranged, heretical, is beyond the pale of Liberalism, since it is not a harm to others that someone should not share one's conceptions.

Does Harris have beliefs? What is belief? If we move in the region of reflection, of conceptions, there is no proof. Yet, even common sense, which the sciences, in the way they are now thought, just as theology, which also understands itself as science, is not held to be a sound ground. In the Thomistic sense Harris has a faith. He has inherited, quite without knowing it, the old aims of moral mission, to free man of delusions at all costs even if they are not harmful. It is faith to think such a way that is not deluded exists. So, I would recommend dropping such terms as psychotic, with political and therefor violent implication, that of suppressing the other by law, and extending greater reach of courtesy in polemic.

However, I apologize for not answering perfectly, but I act on the basis of making a general statement which may already dispel the particulars not herein addressed.

Troll:

The issue requires a long preparatory teaching, a training, and a trained acumen that can freely judge of the arguments, all that is not available to Harris.

How is it that you know what is not available to him? The concept of substance as it is used with regard to the Eucharist is not arcane, what is mysterious is the change of substance.

The change of substance doesn't change what one sees.

This is highly problematic. How is it that something can change what it is (being, esse, ousia) yet not change any of its properties? What stands as the essence of bread, wine, body and blood of Christ, and what are the accidents, such that the accidents can remain the same and the essence change? As I understand it, the Church simply accepts transubstantiation as a mystery, but you introduce the notion of "a long preparatory teaching, a training, and a trained acumen that can freely judge of the arguments"; so, what is revealed through teaching and training that can adequately address the arguments?

Skip wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 11:57 pm

Is the belief in substance, full stop, psychotic?

No; nor does anyone claim that it is.

In that case, to say an apple is an apple, and not a homogeneous clump of mass, is psychotic.

Up until it's chewed and swallowed, it's an apple. After that, it's a clump of mass, then chyme, etc. It's quite sane to know that.
But it does not turn into meat when some guy in a robe passed his hand over it and pronounced an incantation. To claim that is dishonest; to pretend that is childish. To believe it literally is psychotic.
And they object to Harry Potter!!

Nice.

How is it that you know what is not available to him? The concept of substance as it is used with regard to the Eucharist is not arcane, what is mysterious is the change of substance.

Is this a courtroom game, like: “Is it impossible that he knows?” With the ploy that either way one must make a concession. It’s possible, therefore I “went too far” in my claim. Or, it is impossible, therefore I’m an idiot who is sure about everything beyond all warrant.
Substance is a philosophic/theological conception. It’s not a claim about reality in the sense of the current science, what one is used to calling science. So why would one call someone psychotic for having a philosophic view? It’s silly.

Now, what is the issue? Is it the question of what is by nature and what by convention? I notice a strain of this way of making a claim to a normal understanding touches on the gender politics issue. The pronoun issue in Canada for example. Howsofar is this desire to control the thinking of the Catholics like the claim that one can not regard one’s gender as a social role? I.e., one still admits biological sex exists, but posits a second constructed category of gender. True, they don’t speak of substance, but they do mean it “literally”. Just as when we say a man owns a house we really mean it, he has the substance of a homeowner. Homeowner is a substantive, a person.

Alright, I’ll make a concession, I don’t really understand Harris’ bent. So I might have something to learn. I think he is sincere so far as it goes, and therefore it follows that one might see something.

As I understand it, the Church simply accepts transubstantiation as a mystery, but you introduce the notion of "a long preparatory teaching, a training, and a trained acumen that can freely judge of the arguments"; so, what is revealed through teaching and training that can adequately address the arguments?

It doesn't work like that. There’s no “simply accepts”. The people who are most competent to judge perpetually consider the issue. Ultimately the Pope and his personal theologian. The Pope was elected to office on the basis of such considerations as his great erudition, his good heart, his intellectual competence, his piety and grave seriousness. This is why there are Conciliums, Councils. It resembles more the legal practice than the University culture. You know, in America, for example, the jurists who are most experienced, and most gifted, who their colleagues think are the most sound judges, are appointed to the higher court which determines the correct reading or construal of the text of the Constitution. And the process never stops.

The problem with Harris is he is a lone gunman. He’s elected by largely incompetent fanboys. And has not a thousands of years old tradition to inform him through its experience. However, personally I don’t speak as apologist for the Church but for the liberty of thought against the phantom despots of rigidity and censure. Why censure things that are not even harmful simply to uphold one’s darling notions, recall the words of the logician: each judgment has its certain grounds in the psychology of the judger. Which is to say, one believes what one judges true, but one is still often wrong. The judgement is only as good as the psychology of the judger.

"Nice."

So, you advocate strict thought control?