Developing mental and emotional skills

Aristotle next says that we develop mental skills through instruction. The point, I take it, is that in order to become skilled at processing information, we need to be taught how to do so. Anybody can learn the basic theorems of arithmetic, but that doesn't mean they can work through an arithmetic problem very quickly. It takes someone like me a very long time to work through even basic addition and subtraction, so I am not skilled at arithmetic. But someone could probably teach me how to do that better. That would involve lots of practice of course, but it would still require some sort of instruction. And obviously, developing such mental skills takes experience and time, just like learning any other skill.

As for emotional skills, Aristotle says we develop them by developing habits. A habit is a tendency to act in a certain way rather than another way. For instance, I have developed the habit of never putting my wallet down. It goes in my pocket, or it stays in my hand, and nothing else. At first, this required conscious thought. But after doing this for a period of time, it became a habit, and now I just do it without even thinking about it. That's a habit. Emotional skills are like this, thinks Aristotle. We start our training early, in childhood, but we develop habits to feel certain things (anger, etc.) and hence to act accordingly in certain situations.

Two kinds of life skills

Aristotle opens Book 2 by claiming that the skills which help us live successfully come in two flavors: there are

(a) skills for thinking the right thing, and
(b) skills for doing the right thing.

(Note: older translations use the label 'intellectual' virtues for (a), and 'moral' or 'ethical' virtues for (b), but I think the way I have put it here captures the idea a little more clearly.)

Now, in order to have the skill to think the right thing, and we might call this a mental skill, we obviously need to know the correct facts about the world and our situation. So Aristotle lists (i) having good intuitions, and (ii) scientific knowledge among the mental skills we need for living successfully.

But thinking the right thing also involves being able to make the right judgments at the right time. Now, we make judgments about theories, and we make judgments about what to do, and these are two separate skills. Aristotle says that the ability to make the right judgment about theories is called 'theoretical wisdom', and the ability to make the right judgment about what to do is called 'practical wisdom'. As Aristotle sees it, these two kinds of wisdom are the most important mental skills, because they ultimately guide our thoughts and actions.

Skills for doing the right thing involve just that: having the skill or ability to do the right thing at the right time. However, Aristotle thinks this also involves emotional training. It does not simply amount to doing the right thing, it amounts to feeling the right thing as well. Hence, what we feel and what we do should not be out of whack.

For instance, suppose that you tred on the toe of my sheep, and that gets me super pissed. Still, I recognize that I shouldn't punch you in the forehead, so I decide to forgive you instead. In this case, I feel one thing (anger: I want to punch you in the forehead so badly), but I know that acting on that would be the wrong thing to do, so I end up doing the right thing.

Aristotle thinks that I wouldn't be very skillful at doing the right thing in this case, for having the skill to do the right thing involves not just doing the right thing, but also having the appropriate emotional response. And if punching you in the forehead is not the right thing to do, then feeling that I want to punch you in the forehead is not the right thing to feel either. I need to train my emotions so that I end up feeling an emotion that corresponds exactly to the action that I should do.

In other words, I need to train my emotions to feel the right things at the right times, and then act accordingly. That is what Aristotle thinks is involved with skills for doing the right thing. And since there is emotional training involved here, we might as well call these skills 'emotional skills' (though I mean to imply that we should also act on our (right) emotions, and not simply have the right emotions).

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2

In the next few posts, I'm going to put down some thoughts on book 2 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. This will be a sort of commentary, though I am no specialist, and so there are bound to be all sorts of things here that specialists could take up. But this is really just an attempt to put some thoughts of my own down and try to understand the text.

Before I dig in to book 2, I should say a little about what Aristotle says in Book 1. There, Aristotle argues that we can develop certain skills that help us live successfully --- i.e., live the best kind of life. (I sometimes call these skills 'life skills', though I'm still looking for a better term.)

Now, older translations use the word 'virtues' for these life skills, and they use the word 'happiness' for living successfully. I do not particularly like these labels. On the one hand, the word 'virtue' (in my mind anyway) seems to bring along with it some sense of morality. But that is not quite right. Aristotle is suggesting something much closer to 'skill' than 'morality'. These skills involve doing things well, in the way that a master calligrapher can make a very precise pen stroke. It is not simply following rules of right and wrong.

On the other hand, the term 'happiness' suggests a state of mind, something like 'contentment' or 'bliss'. One could be 'happy' in that sense and not do anything, e.g., by sitting on a mountain top meditating. But that is not what Aristotle has in mind either. Aristotle is thinking of doing things well. This is about activity, not sitting there contentedly. 

So the point Aristotle is making is this: living successfully involves certain skills. More precisely, by developing and using these skills, we can live a successful life. Or, to put it the other way around, the most successful life is one that is lived by exercising the skills in question.

But what exactly is the nature of these skills? That is the topic of Book 2 in the Nicomachean Ethics.

Christology and Heresy

I did a short and simple series of posts on the Incarnation over at trinities.org. Here are the links:

Christology and Heresy - 1 
Christology and Heresy - 2
Christology and Heresy - 3
Christology and Heresy - 4
Christology and Heresy - 5

Henry of Ghent on real relationships

According to Henry, all real relationships are ultimately based on the absolute features, parts, or constituents of the things that are related. For instance, the fact that Peter is taller than Paul is based on the fact that Peter and Paul have certain heights, and the fact that the chairs in my kitchen are similar in color is based on the fact that they are all white. The same goes for any relationship: there is always some absolute basis for it.

Nevertheless, Henry does not believe that a real relationship consists simply in some x and y having the right sorts of absolute features, parts, or constituents, for if that were the case, then the only connection between x and y would be something we draw in our minds. But as Henry sees it, real relationships are real, so there must be some sort of genuine ‘relatedness’ that exists outside the mind.

However, Henry does not think this relatedness can be a distinct thing in its own right. After all, if it were a distinct thing, then it would have to be related to its basis by some further relatedness, and if that relatedness were also a distinct thing, it too would have to be related by yet another relatedness, and so on ad infinitum. But that is absurd, so Henry concludes that the relatedness we are seeking cannot be a distinct thing in its own right.

Instead, says Henry, it is just a special ‘way of being’ for the absolute basis in question. In particular, it is a way of being which ‘looks outwards at’ (respicit), and so points towards, something else. And this outward-looking characteristic (respectus) transforms, as it were, the absolute basis into a ‘pointing thing’. Hence, on Henry’s view, some x is really related to some y because it really has something in it that points towards y.

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.