More on Ockham against Henry's Solution to the Creation Problem

The interesting thing about Ockham’s argumentation here is that it highlights the precise point of comparison that Henry draws between the divine essence and matter. For Henry, the divine essence is like matter because it is not produced in the Son. But that’s the only reason that Henry really has to say that the divine essence is like matter at all.

Ockham points out that it is at least logically possible that the form is unproduced. God could take an already existing form, and create new matter under it.

I don’t know, let’s construct an example. Suppose an ancient king has his servants build a giant gold statue of himself. God doesn’t like the king’s arrogance, so he destroys the gold, and replaces it with rusty iron, but he keeps the statue’s shape throughout the whole process.

Then the king becomes the laughing stock of his people. They’re all standing around, pointing, pushing each other over in the bushes and laughing.

Maybe something like that.

There we would have a case where the matter is produced but the form is not! So as Ockham sees it, it’s at least logically possible that the form is the constituent that is unproduced, not the matter.

Consequently, thinks Ockham, Henry has no reason to say that the divine essence is like a lump of matter. It could just as well be like a form.

So Ockham rejects Henry’s view just like Scotus. But Ockham takes a different approach. He rejects the whole idea of drawing an analogy between the divine essence and matter. That’s just too slippery a slope for Ockham.

But again, what’s amazing here is that Ockham doesn’t label Henry as a heretic, neither does Scotus. I mean, in their day, Scotus and Ockham are the minority. They’re the dissentors. Henry’s view was fairly popular, and Scotus and Ockham were the ones sitting there telling their classmates, “you guys got it all wrong.”

Ockham against Henry on the Creation Problem

Now, let’s turn to Ockham. Ockham essentially agrees with Scotus’s conclusions. He agrees that the divine essence is not material, and he agrees that it is a pre-existing ingredient in the Son, and therefore the Son is not created from nothing.

But Ockham attacks Henry’s view in a different way than Scotus. Ockham points out, “Okay Henry, so you say the divine essence is a lump of matter. Either you mean that literally, or figuratively.”

Well, obviously the divine essence is not literally a lump of matter. Everybody agrees that the divine essence cannot possibly be material in any literal way. So Henry must mean that the divine essence is like a lump of matter.

But, says Ockham, if you want to say that two things are alike, they must have something in common, and that commonality is what you base your comparison on.

So, for instance, let’s suppose that Socrates had the embarassing social habit of chewing his cud. Well, then we could say that Socrates is like Beulah the cow, because both chew cuds.

So also in the divine case. If Henry wants to say that the divine essence is like a lump of matter, then Henry is going to have to identify some feature that the divine essence has in common with matter.

However, says Ockham, sometimes two things share their commonalities with other things too. For instance, it’s not just Socrates and Beulah that chew their cuds. Camels, llamas, giraffes, and other such things chew their cuds too.

So if the only basis of comparison that we have for Socrates and Beulah is that they chew their cuds, well then we could just as easily say Socrates is like Elsie the Giraffe, or Hank the Llama.

Likewise in the divine case, says Ockham. Everything imitates God in some way, so we could say that the divine essence is like all sorts of things. We could say the divine essence is like a stane, or a warrior, or a guardian angel, or whatever.

If we want to say that the divine essence is like a lump of matter rather than something else, we’ve got to identify something that the divine essence has in common only with a lump of matter.

So Ockham says: “Fine. Let’s suppose that we can identify something that the divine essence has in common only with a lump of matter.”

But then, what if the divine essence has something in common only with something else too? For instance, the divine essence has certain things in common only with forms. Forms make things certain kinds of things. A human form makes something human, a bovine form makes something a cow, and so on. Similarly, the divine essence makes the divine persons divine, so it’s like a form in that very sense. And that’s something the divine essence has in common only with forms.

So even if we can say identify something that the divine essence has in common with matter, we can also identify something that the divine essence has in common with forms. So why should we say that the divine essence is like a lump of matter? We have just as much reason to say it is like a form!

As Ockham sees it, Henry is really on a slippery slope. Ockham’s a very literal kind of guy. He doesn’t like this analogy stuff. It doesn’t really do much philosophical work. So Ockham not only rejects the idea that the divine essence is literally a lump of matter, he also rejects the analogy.

Ockham against Robert Cowton on the substratum view

One of the more obvious problems with Henry's theory is that it seems to entail that the divine essence is imperfect. By all standard medieval accounts, matter is less perfect than form because it has less actuality than form, and here 'actuality' refers to causal oomph (among other things). If Henry wants to say the divine essence is matter, it would seem to follow that the divine essence has less causal oomph, less actuality, or less perfection than it would if it were a form.

This is certainly not a consquence that Henry wants to draw. Robert Cowton, one of Henry's followers, attempted to address this problem by arguing that Henry's model of material production accurately applies to the Son's production, but only if we remove any imperfection from the model. For Robert, divine production is like material production, free from imperfection.

In material production, there is a producer and a product, so let's call these x and y, respectively. Both the producer and the product are composed of matter and form, so let's call the matter M and the form F, and let's use subscripts for x and y to specify the matter or form of x or y: the matter Mx and the form Fx of the producer, and the matter My and the form Fy of the product.

The same goes for divine production. There is a producer and a product, and let's call these x and y, and the producer and the product are each constituted from the divine essence and a personal property, so let's call these E and P, and let's use subscripts for x and y to specify the essence and the personal property of x and y: the essence Ex and the personal property Px for the producer, and essence Ey and the personal property Py for the product.

According to Robert, in material production, there are three imperfections that need to be removed in divine production. First, there is one lump of matter in the producer, and another lump of matter in the product, so the matter of the producer and the matter of the product are not numerically identical. Thus, in material production, we have:

(M1) Mx and My are not numerically identical.

But this is an imperfection, so Robert says we should remove this for the divine case. In divine production, the 'matter' is the divine essence, and it will not be numerically distinct in the producer and the product, so we have:

(D1) Ex and Ey are numerically identical.

In the production of the Son, the divine essence in the Father is numerically identical to the divine essence in the Son. Between the Father and the Son, there is just one divine essence that they share.

Second, the lump of matter that a product is made from is in potential to the form of the product. When a sculptor makes a statue out of a lump of clay, the clay is in a state of potentiality to the form of the statue, thus:

(M2) My is in a state of potentiality to Fy.

But this is also an imperfection, so Robert claims we should remove this from divine production. Thus, in divine production:

(D2) Ey is not in a state of potentiality to Py.

When the Father produces the Son in the divine essence, the divine essence is not in a state of potentiality to being a Son. Presumably, this means that 'before' the divine essence is a Son, it is not in a state of potentiality, It is always in a state of pure actuality.

Third, in material production, when a producer produces a product, this occurs by changing a lump of matter into a product. This means that the matter was first potentially the product, and after the production, it is actually the product. For example, when a sculptor turns a lump of clay into a statue, the clay changes from being potentially a statue to actually being a statue. Thus:

(M3) Before x produces y, My is potential. After x produces y, My is actual.

But this is an imperfection, so Robert says we should remove this imperfection in the divine case:

(D3) Ex and Ey are actual.

In divine production, then, the divine essence does not change from being potentially the Son to being actually the Son. Rather, the divine essence is always actual. D3 follows straightforwardly from D2.

In addition to the three imperfections just discussed, Robert thinks there are three perfections in material production that apply to divine production. First, in material production, the lump of matter in the producer is the same kind of thing as the lump of matter in the producer. Thus:

(M4) Mx is the same kind of thing as My.

This is a perfection, so this also applies to divine production:
(D4) Ex is the same kind of thing as Ey.

Of course, D4 follows directly from D1. If Ex and Ey are numerically the same thing, then there can only be one thing, E, so Ex and Ey will be whatever kind of thing E is.

Second, in material production, matter helps, along with a form, to constitute the product. When a sculptor produces a statue out of a lump of clay, the clay is part of what constitutes the statue. Thus:

(M5) My partially constitutes y.

This is a perfection, so this also applies to divine production:

(D5) Ey partially constitutes y.

Third, Robert claims that in material production, a product is not produced ex nihilo. Rather, a product is produced from some matter. Thus:

(M6) y is not produced ex nihilo.

Again, this is a perfection, so it applies to divine production too:

(D6) y is not produced ex nihilo.

When the Father produces the Son, he does not produce the Son from nothing. Rather, the divine essence already exists, and the divine essence is one of the ingredients in the Son.

(I must admit that I don't see why M6 would be a perfection. Surely Robert would think that an act of creating some y from nothing would be more perfect than producing y from some already existing matter. After all, to produce y from nothing would take more effort, as it were, than producing y from something already existing. Perhaps Robert is stretching for one more reason why material production could apply to the divine case, but whatever his reason, Robert takes this as a perfection of material production.)

As I have already explained, Ockham doesn't think we have any reason to say a model based on matter is any better than a model based on form. But Robert thinks there are reasons why this model of matter maps onto the divine case better than a model of form would. Much of Robert's argumentation for this relies on the fact that most of M1-M6 (and thus D1-D6) seems to require that the 'matter' is prior to the form.

For example, if D1 is true, that is, if Ex is identical to Ey, then when x produces y, E exists in x prior to its existence in y. Likewise, if D5 is true, that is, if Ey partially constitutes y, then Ey will be prior to y. Robert thus infers that whatever role E is going to play in the model, it will be prior to the product because it exists in the producer prior to the production, and because it partially constitutes the product. In material production, matter is prior to the product in just these ways, so matter is a good canditate for this role.

Ockham agrees that the divine essence is prior to the product, but this does not mean that the divine essence is more like matter than form. Presumably, Ockham is thinking of the example where God creates some matter under an already existing form. In such a case, the form is more prior than matter to the product, so mere priority is not enough to say the divine essence is more like matter than form.

Besides, in the divine case, the personal properties are really identical to the divine essence, and for Ockham, this should prevent any attempt to compare the divine essence and the personal properties to matter and form. Matter and form are really distinct entities, so it is simply not appropriate to talk about the divine essence and the personal propreties in hylomorphic terms.

All of this suggests that for Ockham, explaining the production of the Son in terms of material production is, at best, just an analogy. The divine essence is not literally matter, so Henry and his followers can only say this in an extended sense. Of course, one could ask: this is just an analogy, so why can't we use this analogy, or even many analogies, to explain divine production? It seems to me that Ockham finds material production to be a particularly bad analogy. At the end of the day, we have to remove so many features from the model of material production that we are hardly left with much of a model. If we go with material production, then we end up with a fairly thin model, a model with very few features that can't do much explanatory work. What Ockham wants, I think, is a thick model, a model with many features that can do some explanatory work.

Ockham against Henry on the substratum view

Like Scotus, Ockham thinks Henry's model of material production is problematic, and like Scotus, Ockham thinks the main problem lies in the claim that the divine essence is the matter or quasi matter of the divine persons. Ockham's argument is, roughly, that we can take the claim that the divine essence is matter either literally or in an extended sense, and since nobody thinks the divine essence is literally matter, it must be matter in an extendend sense. But if that's the case, we could just as easily say that in an extended sense the divine essence is something else – form, for example.

Let's say that a statement that is literally true is TL, and let's say that a statement that is true in an extended sense is TE. Thus:

(P1) The statement 'x is y' is either TL, or TE.
(P2) Not TL.
(P3) Not TE.
(P4) Therefore, x is not y.

As for P2, it seems obvious that the divine essence cannot literally be matter, but Ockham does not shy away from giving a few reasons for this, if only just to show how absurd it would be to take Henry's claim literally. Two are worth consideration.

First, Ockham says that the term 'matter' is applied precisely to that which is in potency to some really distinct form. According to Ockham:

(T1) Matter is (i) really distinct from form, and (ii) in potency to form.

If, then, this is what 'matter' means, then to say the divine essence is matter is to say:

(T2) The divine essence is (i) really distinct from some form or forms, and (ii) in potency to those forms.

In the divine case, the 'forms' would be the personal properties, so it would follow that the divine essence would be really distinct from the personal properties and in potency to the personal properties.

Of course, Henry thinks the divine essence is in potency to the personal properties, so it might seem that Henry would be quite happy to agree that the divine essence is 'matter' in just this sense. However, Henry also thinks that matter and form are really distinct, even though he thinks the divine essence is really identical to the personal properties. So although Henry may want to say the divine essence is in potency to the personal properties, Ockham's claim is that simply being in potency to a form is not enough to merit the proper label 'matter' (A strolling Socrates is in potency to the act of sitting, but does that make him the 'matter' of an act of sitting?). To be called 'matter' literally, the divine essence and the personal properties would also have to be really distinct.

Second, Ockham thinks that if we divide and sub-divide the world up various categories, some of which are incompatible with each other, we cannot apply something from one category to something of another, incompatible category. But this is exactly the kind of thing that is happening when Henry says the divine essence is matter. If we divide 'being' into the categories of created being and uncreated being such that anything contained in the category of created being cannot be applied to anything contained in the category of uncreated being, and if we then classify 'matter' in the category of created being, it follows that 'matter' cannot apply to anything in the category of uncreated being. Like most Christian scholastics, Henry does think that matter belongs in the category of created being, since the doctrine of creation entails this, and of course he thinks God is the only uncreated being. Consequently, Henry cannot attribute matter to the divine essence literally, for matter belongs to a category that is fundamentally inapplicable to God.

One might object that this argument would apply to every predicate from the created order which we apply to God (e.g., 'wisdom', 'goodness', 'love'). Indeed, by standard medieval accounts, human concepts are acquired by emprical observation of created entities, and so by Ockham's reasoning, it should follow that every concept we wish to apply to God in fact cannot be applied to God, for such concepts belong to the category of created being. It would seem from this that if Ockham is to be consistent, then he cannot apply any creaturely-acquired concepts to God.

However, Ockham does not think that every concept humans acquire belongs to the category of created being. At the very least, Ockham thinks the concept of 'being' applies to both created and uncreated being, and perhaps one could argue that there are other concepts that apply universally (or even transcendentally) to created and uncreated beings. Ockham's problem with Henry's account is not that he is using a concept acquired from creatures to describe God. The problem is that 'matter' belongs exlusively to the category of created being. And it is important to keep in mind that Ockham is talking about literal predication here. The point, then, is that if matter is classed in the category of uncreated being, then it can be applied literally to created beings only, not to uncreated being.

In any case, if it's not P2, then it must be P3. The claim that the divine essence is matter cannot to be taken literally, so it must be taken in an extended sense. However, Ockham thinks that speaking of something in an extendend sense requires some common condition C on which the extension is based.

(T3) If the statement 'x is y' is TE, then (i) x is C, and (ii) y is C.

For example, the claim 'Paul is lightning fast' is based on the condition C of being able to travel at high speeds. Paul is C, and lightning is C, so we can say 'Paul is lightning fast' based on C. (Compare with 'Paul is turtle fast', which still is intelligible based on the condition of speed, and 'Paul is lamp fast', which is not intelligible because there is no condition to draw a likeness.) Thus, if Henry wants to say that the divine essence is matter in an extended sense, then there must be some condition which is common to the divine essence and matter.

Ockham points out that if C is common to not just x and y, but also some other z, then we could just as easily say 'x is z'. That is, if this condition is common not just to the divine essence and matter, but also to other things, then we end up with no reason to say that the divine essence is matter, for we could just as easily say the divine essence is one of the other things which share the same condition.

For example, if there is some condition that applies to the divine essence, to matter, and to a goat, and if this condition is the basis by which one can say the divine essence is matter in an extendend sense, then one could just as easily say the divine essence is a goat. The point is that if we want to maintain in any non arbitrary way that the divine essence is matter in an extended sense, then the condition for that extended sense cannot be common to the divine essence, to matter, and to other things. It must be common only to the divine essence and matter.

But even if there is some condition that is common to the divine essence and matter, Ockham argues that if there another condition, D, that the divine essence shares only with something else, w, then we could also say 'x is w', and then we have no reason to choose y over w. For example, one could argue that there is some condition common only to the divine essence and to form, and that would be sufficient to allow us to say 'the divine essence is form' in an extended sense. And if we can say that in an extended sense, just as we can say 'the divine essence is matter' in an extended sense, why should we choose one over the other?

Ockham applies this argument in various ways to Henry's position. For example, Ockham rightly recognizes that one of the reasons Henry turns to material production is because the divine essence is included in the Son but is not produced in the Son, so Henry wants a model where some part of the product is not produced. In the realm of material beings, matter is just that: a part of the product that is not produced. But, Ockham argues, matter is the most obvious candidate here only because we are considering natural causes, and natural causes always presuppose matter.

But if we consider another cause such as God, then there is no reason to think that matter is the best candidate for the unproduced part of a product. After all, couldn't God create some matter under an already existing substantial form? In that case, the form would be the unproduced part of the product, so why don't we say the divine essence is form? Ockham does not see why Henry should say the divine essence is matter solely on the grounds that he is looking for a model that includes an unproduced part of the product.

Ockham also argues that we could say the divine essence is a hylomorphic composite just as easily as we can say the divine essence is matter. After all, a composite has per se unity, and neither the matter nor the form it is composed from has per se unity. Further, a composite is more perfect than either the matter or the form it is composed from. God is both per se and perfect, so why we not just say the divine essence is a hylomorphic composite instead of matter?

The divine attributes

The topic of the divine attributes focuses on the nature of God's properties. A divine attribute is a property of God. So what is the list of properties that belong to 'the divine attributes'?

Traditionally, such properties must be compatible with being God. The properties being good or being wise or being awesome are compatible with being God, but most of wouldn't say the property being addicted to child pornography is. So when it comes to the list of divine attributes, we're just including God-compatible properties on the list, attributes like 'good', 'wise', 'perfect', and so forth. (Which properties, I would suggest, are not PC-compatible, but only Mac-compatible).

In any case, this question has its locus classicus in Aquinas's discussion of the divine attributes. Aquinas's position runs as follows.

When we observe and ponder the world, we notice two types of entities: objects, and the properties of those objects. Consider a red car. The car is the object, but its red color is a property of the car. The car has other properties too, like being fast, weighing such and such, and so forth.

Now, would we say that an object is identical with any of its properties? Is a car identical -- the very same thing as -- its property of being red? Aquinas, at least, would say no. The car can still be the car without being red, so being a car and being red don't seem to entirely be the same thing. Likewise, the property being red can apply to things other than cars (like lamp shades and sunsets), so being red and being a car don't seem to be entirely the same thing.

Aquinas concludes from this that objects are different from their properties. Objects have properties, but objects are not identical to their properties.

Now apply this to properties that we include in our list of divine attributes. Take 'wise' for example. If I say 'Dan is wise', I seem to be talking about an object (Dan), and a property (being wise). On Aquinas's analysis, Dan is not identical to his property of being wise. After all, Dan can exist without being wise, and being wise can apply to objects other than Dan. Thus, Dan has wisdom, but Dan is not identical to his wisdom.

But what about when we say 'God is wise'? As Aquinas sees it, the situation is different. God does not have wisdom, God is wisdom. God is completely identical to his properties (i.e., the divine attributes). In other words, in the created realm, objects and properties are different, but in the divine case, the object in question (God) is identical to his properties (the divine attributes).

(Notice that this entails that God's properties will always be true of God, but this is not the case for creatures. Dan can exist without wisdom, but God cannot exist without wisdom. Dan can acquire or lose (if, perhaps, he had a lobotomy) wisdom, but God cannot acquire or lose wisdom.)

Aquinas, famously, argues that our minds work in accordance with the created order, so when I say something like 'John is wise', my mind understands John as having the property of being wise. So statements like 'John is wise' are understood as 'John has the property of being wise'. Aquinas thinks that our minds think this way because the world is that way, and God made our minds to understand the created order.

But God is not like the created world. God does not have the property of being wise. He is wisdom. As Aquinas sees it, we cannot understand it, because any statement like 'God is wise' gets translated in our brains as 'God has wisdom'. Thus, we always don't really understand the true meaning of our statements about God. We cannot then, understand what it is to be wisdom. We can only understand what it is to have wisdom.

(The same goes for existence. We can't understand what it is for God to be existence, we can only understand what it means to have existence. But existence is slightly more complicated than the other divine attributes like 'wisdom', because it is not clear that existence should be construed as a property. In any case, I won't discuss existence more here.)

As one author puts it, for Aquinas, we know that our words refer to God, but we don't understand the true sense of those words, since we can't understand what it is for God to be wisdom. We know our God-talk has reference, but it doesn't have sense. Aquinas is, in this respect, firmly in the negative theology tradition.

Dialogue on analogy

[ME] I hear Rome gets busy this time of year.
[YOU] Busy? What do you mean?
[ME] You know, all the hustle and bustle with the tourism season. People going here, people going there, all that stuff. Just like all the crazy hustle and bustle in Chicago over Thanksgiving weekend. People shopping, the sidewalks filled with exponentially more than normal.
[YOU] Ah, I see. What my crazy grandfather likes to call 'Hustley-Bustley'. That's trademarked, by the way.
[ME] You and your crazy grandfather. Always giving things weird labels.
[YOU] That's true. Sometimes he calls his wife 'Big Al'.
[ME] Let's go back to Hustley-Bustley.
[YOU] So you're saying that you think Rome is Hustley-Bustley, and you're thinking of Chicago's Hustley-Bustley when you say that.
[ME] Uh, yeah.
[YOU] But you've never been to Rome yourself, you've never seen it.
[ME] Well, yeah, but I've heard from friends who have visited.
[YOU] So?
[ME] So, I would imagine that Rome's Hustley-Bustley must be like Chicago's Hustley-Bustley.
[YOU] It might be, but it might not be.
[ME] Well, that's true, but I have faith that it is.
[YOU] There's no more reason to believe that it is than to believe that it's not.
[ME] But surely Rome is similar to Chicago in at least some way.
[YOU] Ah, but you've assumed there is something similar between Rome and Chicago. My point would be that you can't compare Chicago to Rome without some similarity between them. And in this case, you don't actually know what Rome is like, so you can't really tell me that you know they're similar.


[ME] Hmm. Can I retract my statement that there's something similar and still compare Chicago and Rome?
[YOU] I don't see any way to do that myself.
[ME] What do you mean?
[YOU] Are you sure you don't want to say there's something similar between Rome and Chicago?
[ME] Yes.
[YOU] Since we both obviously have in our heads similarities between Rome and Chicago and the whole point is to try to work this out without any similarity, let's use a more extreme example. Imagine that I told you they've found a city on one of Saturn's moons, and that we've named the city IHWDANT (short for 'I Hope We Discover Alien Ninjas There'). Everything there is totally different from our cities on earth. The inhabitants, if you can call them that, are different. The buildings, if you can call them that, are different. The whole system, if you can call it that, is different. In fact, it's nothing at all like the cities we know.
[ME] I hope we discover alien Ninjas there.
[YOU] Me too. Anyways, given the difference between Chicago and IHWDANT, would you ever dream of comparing Chicago's Hustley-Bustley and IHWDANT's Hustley-Bustley?
[ME] Why not?
[YOU] Well, on what basis would you make any comparisons?
[ME] I don't know. Let me think. Does it get busy there?
[YOU] What do you mean by 'busy'?
[ME] You know, just regular 'busy'. Lots happening out and about.
[YOU] Well, there's not really any 'out and about', at least not in any sense that we conceive of 'out and about', and there's not really any 'lots happening', or at least not in any sense that we conceive of it. The place is totally different that way.
[ME] Uh, okay, so let's try something else. Are there lots and lots of inhabitants? Maybe I could say that if there are lots and lots of inhabitants, then we could suppose that if they all did something at the same time, that would be like 'busy'.
[YOU] Again, there's not really any 'inhabitants' there, at least not in any sense that we conceive of 'inhabitants'. And further, there's not any number there, at least not in a way that we understand it, so we couldn't say 'lots and lots' in any conceivable way either.
[ME] Okay, I see where you're going with this. To anything which I suggest as a possible similarity between Chicago and IHWDANT, you'll just say that there's nothing in IHWDANT that is like that in any conceivable sense for us.
[YOU] Exactly.
[ME] So what's the point?
[YOU] The point is that Chicago and IHWDANT are so different that if you don't have any similarity to start with, then you have no conceivable way of comparing them.
[ME] How so?
[YOU] Since IHWDANT is so utterly different from Chicago, you don't really know what it means to say there is Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT. All you really understand is the Chicago case. The meaning of Hustley-Bustley for IHWDANT is entirely mysterious. If IHWDANT is truly nothing at all like Chicago, then Hustley-Bustley means utterly different things for Chicago and IHWDANT.
[ME] So when I say Hustley-Bustley for IHWDANT, I have no idea what it means. I only understand what Hustley-Bustley means for Chicago.
[YOU] Right.
[ME] I guess I need a way to explain how I am to understand the meaning of Hustley-Bustley for IHWDANT.
[YOU] Of course, you could just say that Chicago and IHWDANT are not that different, or at least that there is some similarity between them on which you could base your comparisons. But it seems that you want to stick to the idea that Chicago and IHWDANT are totally different.


[ME] What if I just said that there is Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT. I could grant that I don't really understand what it is for there to be Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT, but I do understand what it is for there to be Hustley-Bustley in Chicago, and so I could say there is Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT, and know that I'm definitely referring to something in IHWDANT, but I don't really understand at all what it is. If I can use a little terminology from Frege, I could say that there is reference, but not sense.
[YOU] Sure, you could say that.
[ME] But?
[YOU] But it would seem to me a strange thing to do.
[ME] Why?
[YOU] Well, in the first place, how would you know that Hustley-Bustley has reference for IHWDANT if you don't understand what it means for there to be Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT?
[ME] I'm not sure I see why it's a problem.
[YOU] Well, it seems obvious that reference depends on the sense. Let me give you an example. I know that you own a baseball with Don Mattingly's signature on it, and I know that you're putting it up for sale. I also know that you are selling tickets to a fantastic New Year's Eve ball sponsored by the volunteer organization you work for. Given that, suppose I said to you, 'I'm interested in the ball'. What is the reference of 'the ball'?
[ME] That would depend on what you mean. If you mean the baseball, then 'the ball' would refer to my Don Mattingly baseball, but if you mean the New Year's Eve ball, then 'the ball' would refer to that.
[YOU] So the reference depends on the meaning, and meaning is just another word for the sense of the term.
[ME] Okay, I see the point. Reference depends on sense.


[YOU] So the question is: if you don't have the sense of Hustley-Bustley for IHWDANT, how would you know it has reference?
[ME] Suppose that IHWDANT sent us a tour guide.
[YOU] What do you mean?
[ME] Well, I presume that we don't understand the language of IHWDANT, since in IHWDANT, there's nothing like there is in Chicago which we understand.
[YOU] Correct.
[ME] But suppose they understand our language.
[YOU] How do you mean?
[ME] Although we don't understand anything about their world, suppose they understand ours. They would then understand everything, their world and ours, and we would just understand ours.
[YOU] Okay, sure.
[ME] So with their comprehensive knowledge, they put together a brilliant marketing team to prepare a tour guide and send it to us. They write the guide in our language, for us, and they use words like Hustley-Bustley, knowing that although we don't have any idea what Hustley-Bustley is in IHWDANT, we do know what Hustley-Bustley is in Chicago, so the word would have some identifiable meaning for us when we used it and thus it would be useful. Further, even though we don't know what Hustley-Bustley is in IHWDANT, they do, so the word Hustley-Bustley does actually refer to Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT.
[YOU] Okay.
[ME] Wouldn't that give me reference without sense?
[YOU] Perhaps.
[ME] Wouldn't that establish my case?


[YOU] It depends on the truth of the story about the tour guide. Hustley-Bustley would only refer (without sense) to Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT if IHWDANT actually prepares a tour guide and sends it to us as you have described. If somebody from Chicago just made up the tour guide and convinced us all that it came from IHWDANT, then Hustley-Bustley would certainly not refer (with or without sense) to Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT.
[ME] Okay, but suppose the story is true.
[YOU] Well, you'd still have to believe it. Let's suppose that IHWDANT do in fact prepare and send the tour guide to us as you have described. Even still, I'd have to use the word Hustley-Bustley with reference to IHWDANT. After all, I could simply reject your story of the tour guide as pure fantasy about IHWDANT. In that case, I would conclude that Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT doesn't exist at all. But that doesn't mean I would stop using Hustley-Bustley with reference to Chicago. And every time I, or anyone else for that matter, used Hustley-Bustley with reference to Chicago, Hustley-Bustley would have both sense and reference for the Chicago case.
[ME] But nobody is questioning whether Hustley-Bustley has reference (or sense) with respect to Chicago.
[YOU] We are asking about the reference of Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT. And that requires that somebody actually uses the term Hustley-Bustley with reference to IHWDANT. There can be no reference (even without sense) to IHWDANT if the term Hustley-Bustley is never used with respect to IHWDANT. And using Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT requires that I at least believe that I can use the word with respect to IHWDANT. Otherwise, it'd never occur to me to use the word of IHWDANT. So you still have to believe the story before you can even use Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT.


[ME] But we've granted that the story is true. Hustley-Bustley would then refer to IHWDANT even if nobody believes it.
[YOU] Not really. There might be something in IHWDANT to which the term Hustley-Bustley can refer. But that something is different from its name. I (or the authors of our tour guide) can give it the name Hustley-Bustley, but we could give it any name. We could call it 'widget' just as easily. The point is that even if there is this something, we still can't refer to it unless we use a name to refer to it. Unless someone uses a name, for example Hustley-Bustley, to refer to this something, we can't refer to it at all. So yes, supposing that the story is true, there is a something to which Hustley-Bustley can refer, but that doesn't mean that the particular term 'Hustley-Bustley' refers to it. Somebody has to use the term 'Hustley-Bustley' to refer to it, and that requires that someone believes they can use the term 'Hustley-Bustley' to refer to it.
[ME] I'm not sure I totally understand.
[YOU] It's true that there are cats in our world, right?
[ME] Right.
[YOU] Our word 'cat' refers to particular cats, right?
[ME] Right.
[YOU] Does the word 'plinklet' refer to cats?
[ME] Of course not.
[YOU] Would you grant that God knows all the possible words we could use to refer to cats?
[ME] Sure.
[YOU] So God knows that the word 'plinklet' could refer to cats.
[ME] Okay.
[YOU] But does that mean that 'plinklet' does refer to cats?
[ME] I guess not.
[YOU] Why not?
[ME] Because nobody uses it to refer to cats. It's a word that we could use to refer to cats, but we don't use it to refer to cats. We use the word 'cats' to refer to cats. In order for 'plinklet' to refer to cats, someone would have to actually use it to refer to cats.
[YOU] Right. So reference depends on actual use, not possible use.
[ME] We're distinguishing between possible reference and actual reference.
[YOU] Suppose my cat Felix hasn't given birth to Felix Jr. Would you say Felix Jr. exists?
[ME] Of course not. Felix Jr. could exist, but Felix Jr. doesn't exist now.
[YOU] Reference is the same way. There could be reference for Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT, but that's pretty much irrelevant. What matters is real, actual reference. What matters is the actual use of words.
[ME] Okay, I'll buy that.
[YOU] Coming back to the story then, do you agree that although there may be something in IHWDANT that Hustley-Bustley could refer to, the actual term 'Hustley-Bustley' doesn't refer to it until someone actually uses Hustley-Bustley to refer to that something?
[ME] Yes.
[YOU] And do you also agree that in order for someone to actually use Hustley-Bustley to refer to IHWDANT, they would have to actually believe the story about the tour guide?
[ME] Yes. If they didn't believe the story about the tour guide, it would never occur to them to use the term 'Hustley-Bustley' to refer to IHWDANT, and then 'Hustley-Bustley' wouldn't refer to Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT.
[YOU] Right. So explaining the reference (without sense) of Hustley-Bustley to IHWDANT by appealing to your story about the tour guide requires first that the story is true, and second that someone believes it so as to put 'Hustley-Bustley' to use with respect to IHWDANT.
[ME] Agreed.


[YOU] Good. Now you've got your story of the tour guide which gives you the word 'Hustley-Bustley' to refer to the Hustley-Bustley in IHWDANT, but the reference depends on the fact that the story is true and that you believe it.
[ME] Fine. The story is true, and I believe it. Wouldn't I then have reference without sense?
[YOU] You sound like a Christian.
[ME] Is there any other reason why I shouldn't continue holding to my story about the tour guide?
[YOU] There is.
[ME] And what's that?
[YOU] You may believe that the story is true, but how do you know that it's true?
[ME] I don't have to know that it's true. I just have to believe that it's true. I thought we'd agreed on that much.
[YOU] Not exactly. You have reference (without sense) only if the story is true. Merely believing in something isn't enough to make it true. I can believe that Felix Jr. exists and walk around calling out 'Felix Jr.', but that doesn't mean the name 'Felix Jr.' refers to Felix Jr. On the contrary, the name 'Felix Jr.' doesn't refer to Felix Jr. because Felix Jr. doesn't exist.
[ME] Of course.
[YOU] We have reference only if the story is true, and there's nothing in your story to guarantee that it is in fact true. You just have to work on the belief that it is true.
[ME] Fair enough.
[YOU] So you're a fideist about this.
[ME] Sure.
[YOU] Okay, I should just point out that belief may be enough for you, but it may not be enough for others.
[ME] I'll accept that.


[YOU] And I will too. We're both in the fideist camp then. Even so, I'm still uncomfortable with reference and no sense.
[ME] How so?
[YOU] If you go around bandering Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT, you have no idea what you're talking about. Let's even suppose that we only use Hustley-Bustley with respect to IHWDANT in circles of people who believe the tour guide story. They all believe it, so they all believe that Hustley-Bustley has reference with respect to IHWDANT, but nobody here knows what you're talking about. We just know the word 'Hustley-Bustley', but we don't have any notion of what that's supposed to mean. Essentially, we end up talking about IHWDANT in a way that leaves us with no understand of IHWDANT at all.
[ME] I think I see your concern.
[YOU] Imagine that I build a new room in my house and fill it with various objects. Before you've seen it, I come to you and say, 'You should see my new room. It's incredible'. You say, 'Tell me about it. What sort of things did you put in it?' I tell you that my new room contains a gartnick, a qwinky, and poppeltop (I made these names up, you see, instead of using the objects' common names). You would naturally ask, 'what the hell is a gartnick, a qwinky, and whatever the last one you said was?'
[ME] Naturally.
[YOU] I would just tell you not to worry, because those words have reference to real objects in my new room.
[ME] Please never actually describe objects to me in this way.
[YOU] Now, it seems clear enough that you have a way of talking about the objects in my new room, because you have some names which have reference. Unfortunately, these names don't have any sense. You have no idea what it means for there to be a 'gartnick' in my new room.
[ME] Indeed, I have no idea.
[YOU] So what would you do with this information? Would you run off and tell your friends about the objects in my new room?
[ME] Only if I was a psycho.
[YOU] You can see that it just seems pointless to talk about something if our language has reference but not sense.
[ME] I do see that.
[YOU] On a practical level, what's the point of having reference but no sense if I want to talk about IHWDANT?
[ME] That doesn't seem to be a very productive way of talking about things. At the very least, I certainly wouldn't acquire much understanding of IHWDANT if my words for IHWDANT had reference but no sense.


[YOU] There's more.
[ME] Oh?
[YOU] Not only would you not understand what gartnick, qwinky, and poppeltop mean, you also wouldn't understand how to talk about those things in relation to each other. Could you meaningfully say that in the design of my new room, the gartnick helps to balance the feel of the qwinky?
[ME] Of course not. I don't know what the qwinky is like, so I wouldn't know how it needs to be balanced, and I don't know what a gartnick is, so I wouldn't know how it would balance the qwinky.
[YOU] Right. You wouldn't be able to talk about the garntick in relation to the qwinky or the poppeltop in any meaningful way. Likewise, you couldn't form any syllogisms from the terms gartnick or qwinky.
[ME] Why would I want to form a syllogism from things in your room?
[YOU] You wouldn't, but you might if this was just a big analogy for some other topic.
[ME] Okay, this is getting weird again. The irony is not lost on me, by the way.
[YOU] In any case, my point is, you couldn't meaningfully reason from gartnicks to qwinkys or talk about how they interrelate in any meaningful way if you had reference but no sense.
[ME] Of course, but I still don't see why I would want to.
[YOU] Never mind that. We agree that it seems counter intuitive to try and talk about something with reference but no sense. If I try to describe IHWDANT with terms like Hustley-Bustley which have reference but no sense, I end up with a pretty empty description. I might as well just talk about IHWDANT with words like 'gartnick' and 'qwinky'.

Analogy and explanation

Analogies intended to help us understand something often break down. When that happens, the question becomes: just how much does the analogy actually explain? By 'explain', I mean that the analogy in some way helps me understand the inner machinery of the matter. But of course analogies breaks down, in which case an analogy only helps me understand part of the inner machinery of the matter.

But how exactly does this 'explaining' happen? How does an analogy A explain some B? In the simplest case, it would seem that analogical explanation occurs when some parts of an analogy A map onto some parts of the inner machinery of B (taking 'parts' in the broadest sense). For example, suppose A and B have parts in the following ways:

A = parts a, b, c, and d
B = parts a, b, j, and k

In this case, if we understand A, we will understand a and b in B but not j and k, since a and b match up for A and B but not the other parts.

So what's the point of using an analogy? If our analogy only explains a and b, why not just explain a and b, and forget the analogy altogether? Well, sometimes we cannot understand parts without the whole. More specifically, sometimes we cannot understand the relations between parts without the whole. It might be the case that I cannot understand how a is related to b individually, but I can understand a and b along with c and d as a whole, while I cannot understand a and b along with j and k as a whole. That is, explaining how a and b are related in A might be much easier than explaining how a and b are related in B. In this case, the analogy serves the purpose of explaining at least some of the parts of the inner machinery of B, or, more specifically, the analogy explains certain relations between parts of the inner machinery of B.

I mentioned that this seems to me the simplest case. It is the simplest case because I have been taking 'parts' to be atomic in the sense that they themselves don't include parts. Of course things can get more complicated if the parts themselves include their own parts. But this makes no difference. A only explains B in so far as parts map onto parts, no matter how far down the tree of parts we go.

For example, suppose A and B have parts like this:

A = parts a (= parts x and y), b, c, and d
B = parts a (= parts x and z), b, j, and k

Here, A's part a has parts x and y, while B's part a has parts x and z. In this case, the first a only maps onto the second a in virtue of its part x. We can subdivide parts into more parts over and over again, but our analogy will only explain the matter insofar as certain of its parts (and the relations between them) map onto the matter in question.

The same applies to the relations between the parts. As I said, I am taking 'parts' in the broadest sense, so any of these parts might be relations. For example, suppose that x and y are certain relations of a to b in A, while x and z are certain relations of a to b in B. In this case, our analogy A explains B in that A helps me to understand that in B, a is related to b by a relation x, but the analogy breaks down when it comes to the relations y and z.

I am assuming that the parts which 'map' are atomic. That is, one part either maps onto another part or it doesn't. A's part x is either the same as B's part x or it's not. If it's not the same, it doesn't map. If it is the same, it does map. My account turns on this claim. In order to compare two things, there must be something which is the same between them.

Thus far I have started from wholes and moved down to their parts to explain how similar the wholes are. But we can explain this picture the other way around. Begin with two atomic things. Either they are the same or they are not. If they are not the same, they are not comparable at all. If they are comparable, then good. Now, add more atomic things to the picture to form some wholes, and the same rules apply. The first whole is comparable to the second whole only in virtue of those parts which are comparable. One whole cannot be compared to another whole by parts which are not the same.

I must confess that I don't see any other way analogies could be explanatory. For simple things, either one thing is the same as the other thing, or it's not. For complexes, either some of the parts are the same or they are not. There must be something the same in order to compare one thing to another. At this point, I can't seem to see another way that analogy could 'explain' something. If none of the parts of an analogy map onto none of the parts of the analogue, then I wouldn't call it an analogy. I would just call it an alternative model.

This is, of course, just Scotus's theory of analogy in a slightly different form. The basic point is that there must be something in the analogy which maps onto the analogue for the analogy to hold. Without some mapping, the analogy is not at all 'like' the analogue.