I originally saw Donnie Darko off Matt Allison's recommendation, and since then have introduced numerous people to the joys therein. However, neither I nor any of those I've seen Donnie Darko with have been able to explain the movie in a way that MAKES SENSE! I sat through several post-viewing bull sessions last year, but no one seemed to be able to come up with a logical explanation fo the plot. I wanted to post the following to perhaps encourage others who know or believe they know how to adequately explain the plot to do so.
Recently, a friend of mine sent me the supposed contents of the fateful "The Philosophy of Time Travel" book that came into Donnie's possession (I think these may have also been in the extras on the DVD version of DD, but here's the source website). I wanted to respond to the contents here. The Philosophy of Time Travel (POTT) is hugely succesful in both explaining the movie, and supporting my own interpretation of the movie in a self-satisfying way.
Prior to reading the POTT copy my friend sent me, I would have said the biggest loose ends in the movie (those ends that prevented the plot from making logical sense), were these:
1. We sort of realize that Donnie has to fix the loose ends in the tangent universe in which he's trapped, so we guess that he realizes that the jet engine that nearly killed him when the whole thing started comes from the plane on which his mom and sister are riding in. The loose end for us is: How does Donnie cause the plane to fly near enough to the black hole to for the engine to break off and go back in time? The book provides an explanation for this is noting that the Living Receiver often has super powers. Remember Donnie sticking the axe into the bronze statue's head? Remember what he says when Gretchen tells him that his name sounds like a super hero or something? POTT clears this up.
2. What POTT doesn't clear up is WHY THE FRICK THE JET ENGINE COMES THROUGH THE ROOF AGAIN AT THE END OF THE MOVIE?!!!?! It's like the director wanted to present this difficult yet coherent plotline about time travel, then, after making everything work out just right, for absolutely no reason, tosses in a totally random and logically destructive plot device that kills the protagonist! POTT is, as far as I can tell, no help at all on this point.
My theory is that Donnie Darko can make coherent sense--but only apart from the redundant jet engine. The redundant jet engine is the paradox-maker. I propose that an account of the movie that can incorporate and explain the redundant engine will make the whole film make sense. In fact, the Redundant Engine Paradox (henceforth REP) is the key to whole film. If you can explain the REP, then you can explain everything. I believe have identified the necessary conditions for the coherence of Donnie Darko, without supplying the answer myself.
Just kidding--here is my initial attempt at solving REP:
Donnie realizes how tangent universes work towards the end of the one he's in, and too late to accomplish what must be done to fix things. However, because he's a bright kid, and because of his knowledge about how tangent universes work, he figures out how to spawn another tangent universe (T2) before the one he's in (T1) implodes. So when he uses his superpowers to break the jet engine off his mom/sister's plane and send it into the black hole back in time, he's not fixing T1. Instead, he's initiating T2 to buy him time to fix the problem.
Of course, you will now ask why the FRICK does he allow the jet engine to kill him in the newly spawned T2? This is the sheer genius of this account: Donnie knows that the memories of T1 will vanish upon the termination of T1, so even if he can succesfully jump everybody into T2 before T1 implodes, it won't matter because he won't remember what he's learned in T1 (Donnie can't be sure that Frank will be there to help him out this time) and therefore, he won't be able to save them in T2!
Unless he dies in T2!!!!!
Donnie knows that the only way he can be sure to find out the truth about their status in time-limited T2, once they leave T1, is if he dies. Remember from POTT: those who die in tangent universes have unique power. Upon his death, Donnie will learn the truth, and so he counts on his own ability to figure things out anew in T2.
He knows it will be harder to directly accomplish things in T2, since he'll be dead, and likely grossly so. But he knows that he doesn't have to. If he can't find a way to effectually influence someone in T2 to fix things, all he has to do is to get someone to spawn T3. If Donnie plays his cards right, he can keep everyone jumping from tangent universe to tangent universe until he gets his ducks in a row and closes the tangent universe off for good.
(A good way for Donnie to acheive final success would be--somewhere down the T-line--to figure out how to make sure that he himself dies late in a tangent universe. If he could ensure that that would happen, then Donnie-dead would be able to guide Donnie-live in the earlier part of the tangent universe to do the things he must do to close off the causal loops and fix things, and then kill himself towards the end--to make sure Donnie-dead would be able to go back to guide him earlier in that tangent universe.)
OK-that's all I have for now. But it's the first explanation that I've seen that adequately makes sense of the Redundant Engine Paradox.
Ever heard of John Zizioulas and Colin Gunton? Zizioulas is a professor of theology at--I believe--the University of Thessalonika, or something like that, and Gunton was professor of doctrine at King's College London until his death last year. They are the originators of an idea called "relational ontology", which is a system of metaphysics they built largely from studies of the Trinity.
In the night class I'm taking, Dr. Kapic (who studied under Gunton at King's), assigned some reading from Gunton where he introduces the idea of relational ontology. Since I'm a philosopher at heart, and since ontology is my main interest, I decided to explore this new and strange idea of relational ontology for my term paper.
For the truly bored, I am going to try to post the paper in extended entry. I don't how the footnotes thing is going to pan out on my blog, but we'll take a leap and see where we land. The first bit of the paper is mostly historical background on the theory. Towards the end I bring out my understanding of what relational ontology is at its philosophical core. I think that part is more interesting. On the whole, I think I'd give myself a "B+" for this effort.
What Is Relational Ontology?
Theologians John Zizioulas and the late Colin Gunton have, in the last two decades, proposed and advocated a theory they call “relational ontology.” Gunton and Zizioulas have maintained that relational ontology grew out of historical debates concerning the ontology of the Trinity, and that, among its other virtues, the theory provides a resolution to the long-standing logical difficulty of how God can be both three and one. Gunton has also extended the application of relational ontology to social issues and even to the ontology of persons. However, relational ontology has not received much attention as ontology qua ontology. Perhaps because of its origins in theology, few attempts have been made to give a philosophically rigorous account of the theory, even though ontology is fundamentally a philosophical endeavor. For this reason, up to this time the best answer to the question “what is relational ontology?” has required that the theory be explained in terms of the complicated and theologically subtle debates over the ontology of God and his persons. The Trinitarian context of relational ontology is crucial for understanding the scope and implications of the theory, and I will not neglect its foundations in this paper. However, my intention in this paper is to provide a more precise answer to the question “what is relational ontology?” by explaining relational ontology’s essential philosophical foundations. My plan to achieve this can be outlined as follows: [1] I will begin with a brief overview of the historical origins of relational ontology, as seen in the anti-heretical writings of the Cappadocian fathers concerning the ontology of the Trinity. [2] From there I will attempt to give a description of the contemporary philosophical conception of ontology, at least in as much as will be necessary for understanding the relevant aspects of relational ontology. [3] In the light of contemporary ontology, I will then outline the basic view of Trinitarian relational ontology as presented by Gunton and Zizioulas. Lastly [4], I will present the three features of relational ontology that I believe do most of the work in making it a philosophical system adequate to support the claims of Gunton and Zizioulas. These features can be stated thus:
[a] Identity is relative,
[b] Ontology must be anti-realist, and
[c] Standard logic requires revision to accommodate the relativity of identity.
These points will be presented not as arguments for accepting relational ontology but as a basic systematic ontology that provides philosophical coherence to the theses of relational ontology as presented by Gunton, and to a lesser degree, Zizioulas.
1. The Historical Context
As the doctrine of the Holy Spirit grew in the early church to the point of their conscious identification of his personhood along with that of the Father and Son, it became increasingly difficult to explain precisely how God could be three distinct persons and remain divinely one. Various attempts at rationalizing this conundrum were made, such as versions of adoptionism, which entailed that Christ was an ordinary man who was adopted into the Godhead, modalism, the claim that God is one expressing himself in three modes, and the Neo-Arians, who claimed that Christ differed in substance from the Father. But the church (or at least parts of the church) in each case objected to doctrinal claims that weakened either the distinctness of the three persons or the unity of God’s being. It was in this repeated defense of orthodoxy that two important truths emerged that would later be influential in the formation of relational ontology: first, that Christ is one in being, or homoousion, with the Father, and second—made logically possible by the first—that God could be one in being and three in persons.
That Christ is of one being with the Father was affirmed due to the appearance of subversive doctrines claiming that Christ was in some way essentially inferior or subordinate to the Father. What was unique about the claim that Christ was one being with the Father was that it implied the possibility of entities sharing in being. This assertion differed drastically from the ontological view handed down from the Socratics (as I will describe in a moment), and would make the next theological breakthrough possibly.
Although the church rejected as heresy what it viewed as theologically unsound accounts of the Trinity, it did so based only on the heresy’s contradictions with various members of a set of doctrinal truths, for the church lacked a metaphysical explanation of how these truths cohered together in a systematic way. Finally, in the writings of three theologians who became known as the Cappadocian fathers—Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory or Nazianzus—an innovative ontological explanation was given that was consistent with the orthodox doctrine. Perhaps most clearly represented in the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus, the new ontology was that God was three hypostases and one ousia, or, as has been traditionally translated, God was three persons and one being (sometimes substance). God is both three and one. As Gregory of Nazianzus put it, “The three are a single whole in their Godhead, and the single whole is three in personalities.” This formulation is partially visible in the Athanasian Creed, where it is stated, “We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the Persons, nor dividing the substance” (italics mine).
It was the church’s affirmation of Christ being homoousious with the Father—the possibility of a sharing in being—that gave the Cappadocians the ontological capital to differentiate hypostasis from ousia. And the hypostasis/ousia distinction enabled a formulation of the ontology of the Trinity in the early church that was both coherent and orthodox, and would serve as the starting point for Zizioulas and Gunton 1,500 years later.
2. The Ontological Context
Zizioulas writes that in philosophy since the ancient Greeks there has been a tendency in the study of ontology to associate being, or existence, with individuality. This drive for “the one” has manifested itself from Plato’s universal forms, to Leibniz’s Monadology, to Trenton Merricks’ recent ontological eliminativism in which only subatomic particles and persons exist. I believe this tendency is motivated by a view I call “intrinsic essentialism.” Intrinsic essentialism is the view that an entity’s essential properties—that which makes it what it is—can (or should) be defined completely in relation to itself. A classic way of determining an entity’s intrinsic properties is to imagine that it is the only thing in the universe, and then determining what properties it has in that case. The properties it has by itself are its intrinsic properties. This creates problems for certain types of objects, such as money and works of art, that cease to exist as we know them when defined by their intrinsic properties. Money is just pieces of paper, and a painting just color on a canvas, in regards to their intrinsic properties alone.
However, whatever problems intrinsic essentialism may bring for the status of certain kinds of objects, many philosophers affirm that the problems entailed by abandoning it are far worse. Consider the famous example of a statue—say, Michelangelo’s David. There seem to be two entities: [1] the collection of atoms, and [2] David the statue. The reasoning goes that this statue-shaped lump of marble is David only in a certain context, such as when people view it as an object of art, but not in others, such as in a society that doesn’t have or understand art. The point is, David is always (necessarily) a collection of atoms, but is not always (contingently) a statue. Positing contingent entities becomes a problem when we ask questions like the following: is the statue-shaped collection of atoms still a statue—still David—if we remove an atom from it? If we say that it is still David after losing an atom then we are committed to the existence both of complete David (D1) and David minus one atom (D2), because D1 and D2 differ in number of atoms and are therefore not identical. And since those atoms that compose D2 are fully present in D1, we must say that both exist at the same time in D1 and therefore we are committed to co-located objects. In fact, we would have to add another object D3 for the David we would identify after removing a second atom, and so on through Dn for as long as we would agree that the statue is still David following successive removals of atoms. This would leave us with many millions of Davids co-located in one collection of atoms, and this clearly will not do.
The statue and lump problem (as it is sometimes called) is an example of the type of ontological difficulty easily generated when one attempts to objectify apart from intrinsic essentialism. As long as we do not include David’s non-intrinsic properties—those due to its status as representational art or a cultural icon—in defining what it is, then the above problem of co-location goes away.
This shows more clearly the rationale for contemporary ontology’s hesitation to depart from intrinsic essentialism. After all, in regards to its extrinsic properties, David just happens to be an esteemed object of art in this world. In another world, it just as well could have been regarded as an anchor weight. Therefore, since properties involving human conceptualization or interpretation of objects are contingent upon human whim, and since people tend to disagree in their conceptualization of objects, the goal has become to identify objects by those properties they have independent of human conceptualization or interpretation. David Lewis calls these the “sparse” properties, and he describes them like this: “Sharing of them makes for qualitative similarity, they carve at the joints, they are intrinsic, they are highly specific…there are only just enough of them to characterise things completely and without redundancy.” If objects can be described in terms of their intrinsic, or sparse, properties, a measure of objectivity can be introduced into ontology, and the problems stemming from disagreements over which conceptualization to adopt largely go away.
Before I move on, I think it will be helpful to point out that a driving motivation behind intrinsic essentialism is ontological realism. As succinctly as I can put it, ontological realism is the position that what exists does not depend on minds (often phrased as “mind-external”). Contrast this with the opposite extreme of idealism, which holds that all that exists does so only because of the activity in one’s mind, and anti-realism, which is an intermediate position that entails that what exists depends to some degree on the activity of one’s mind. If all that exists is external to minds, then it just makes sense to define objects in terms of their mind-external properties, which is precisely what intrinsic essentialism does.
3. Zizioulas, Gunton, and the Current Formulation of Relational Ontology
For Zizioulas, the pivotal starting place for relational ontology involves the Cappadocians’ distinction between hypostasis and ousia, and specifically their identification of “hypostasis” with “person”. As Zizioulas puts it,
"The deeper significance of the identification of “hypostasis with “person”—a significance the revolutionary nature of which in the development of Greek thought seems to have escaped the attention of the history of philosophy—consists in a twofold thesis: (a) The person is no longer an adjunct to a being, a category which we add to a concrete entity once we have first verified its ontological hypostasis. It is it self the hypostasis of the being. (b) Entities no longer trace their being to being itself—that is, being is not an absolute category in itself—but to the person, to precisely that which constitutes being, that is, enables entities to be entities. In other words from an adjunct to a being (a kind of mask) the person becomes the being itself and is simultaneously—a most significant point—the constituitive element (the “principle” or “cause”) of beings."
Zizioulas goes on to make a third significant point, that the Cappadocians’ ability to make the preceding observations was made possible by their identification of God’s being as a person—specifically, as one being in three persons. The novelty of Zizioulas’ second point here, that personhood is the basic ontological category, is highlighted in contrast to the long-standing philosophical drive for “the one.” This is because the combined weight of intrinsic essentialism and ontological realism have tended to hold up substance as the basic ontological category, since the properties had by an object considered only in regard to itself tend to be those exclusively of its substance. However, for Trinitarian considerations, a substance based ontology has the drawback of necessarily implying that whatever is the substance of God is truly fundamental, and that God’s persons are, in a sense, secondary entities. This makes it difficult logically to affirm that God is three persons in a way that is ontologically equivalent to his being one God. Making personhood the basis of ontology was a necessary conceptual move.
Gunton has worked to show the fecundity of relational ontology by applying its basic concept to such long-standing philosophical problems as the problem of the one and the many, and the proper relationship of the individual to the state. As a result of the extensive work he has devoted to fleshing out the concept, relational ontology has taken its most robust form in Gunton’s writings. Most fully set forth in his The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, Gunton’s relational ontology is illustrated by the metaphor of perichoresis, which is the concept of dynamic inter-penetration, a continual giving and receiving, a sharing in being. For Gunton, four concepts lie at the core of relational ontology: person, relation, otherness, and freedom. Gunton has a particularly pithy passage where he gives brief explanations for each of his four concepts to which I cannot do justice without citing:
"The concept of person is chief, as well as the most difficult, of the four. I believe that it is impossible to find a definition of it in other words, because it is both ontologically and logically primitive: the personal is both that from which other realities take their meaning and that which is irreducible to other (less than personal) entities. But we can, only by a combination of ostensive and reflective definition, say something of what is meant by the term. Central will be the point that a person is different from an individual, in the sense that the latter is defined in terms of separation from other individuals, the person in terms of relations with other persons.
"To think of persons is to think of relations: Father, Son, and Spirit are the particular persons they are by virtue of their relations with each other. That, too, enables us to understand what is meant by relation. A relation is first of all to be conceived as the way by which persons are mutually constituted, made what they are. (That does not mean, as will be argued in chapter eight, that this concept is limited to the relations we call personal. On the contrary, it is also fruitful for an understanding of the character of the whole of reality.) But we cannot understand relation satisfactorily unless we also realise that to be a person is to be related as an other. One person is not the tool or extension of another, or if he is his personhood is violated. Personal relations are those which constitute the other person as other, as truly particular. And, finally, persons are those whose relations with others are—or should be, for it is the nature of fallenness to distort our being—free relations. By ‘free’ is not meant what is understood by the reigning conception of the term, a freedom from others. It has to do with a free and mutually constituitive relationship with other persons, as well as with a way of being in the world."
To pull these varying concepts together for a generalized picture of relational ontology according to Zizioulas and Gunton, I submit the following: personhood is the fundamental ontological concept. Persons are constituted by their relations with others, and yet their otherness is preserved in its uniqueness because persons posses the freedom to choose to maintain theirs’ and others’ distinctness. The three persons of God are distinct in their relationships—only the Father is unbegotten, only the Son is begotten, and only the Spirit proceeds—but the persons are undivided in action, and are one in will and nature. In this way, there is plurality without division, unity without absorption of distinctiveness, and God is truly three in one.
4. What is Relational Ontology?
a. The Logical Context
To give a philosophical account of relational ontology, I would like to begin with a defense of the peculiar logic necessary for the theory. Once I’ve done this, the successive steps should follow in a more orderly fashion.
In 1968 philosopher Peter Geach published a paper advocating a theory of logic containing the idea of something he called “relative identity.” In his paper, Geach renounces the classical notion of identity, which—roughly stated—is that for any two objects x and y, x is identical with y if and only if for every property P had by x, y also has P, and vice versa. Geach’s concern stems from the fact that classical identity is associated with a concept called “The Indiscernibility of Identicals” (also known as “Leibnz’s Law”), which is the idea that indiscernibility is the necessary condition for identity. The rationale is that if two objects were truly identical, one would not be able to tell them apart. The trouble with indiscernibility as the standard for identity, as Geach sees it, is that there could be a theory T that lacks the predicates to distinguish between two objects E1 and E2, and would therefore consider them identical even though they actually aren’t. So instead saying “x is identical with y,” Geach proposes that the classical notion of identity be dropped in favor of the expression “x is the same A as y” where A is a count noun.
I believe that what Geach recognizes is the inability of human interpretation to serve as the basis for identity. In one theory (or language) two objects may be indiscernible, but they may be distinguishable in another. At any rate, the “Indiscernibility of Identicals” doesn’t appear to get at anything like metaphysical identity, which is doubtless the ideal and goal of identity expressions.
Approximately 20 years after Geach’s paper in question, Peter van Inwagen uses a variation of Geach’s relative identity (henceforth RI) thesis in an attempt to solve the logical problem of the Trinity. Van Inwagen doesn’t renounce classical identity; his intention is simply to “state the doctrine of the Trinity…in such a way that it is demonstrable that no formal contradiction can be derived from the thesis that God is three persons and, at the same time, one being.” Since an RI-type logic suits his goal, that is what he uses. Van Inwagen arguably succeeds, for he is able to use RI logic to craft statements similar to the following:
(1) God is the same being as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit
∃x ∃y((Gx & Fy & Bxy) & (Gx & Sx & Bxy) & (Gx & HSx & Bxy))
(2) God is the same person as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit
∃x ∃y((Gx & Fy & Pxy) & (Gx & Sx & Pxy) & (Gx & HSx & Pxy))
and,
(3) None of the persons is the same person as any of the others
~∃x ∃y((Fx & Sy & Pxy) v (Fx & HSx & Pxy) v (Sx & HSx & Pxy))
So it appears that through use of a Geach-inspired logic, van Inwagen shows that the traditional numerical paradox of the doctrine of the Trinity is not necessarily an illogical notion. This works in RI because, without indiscernibility as a necessary requirement for identity, van Inwagen can say that the Father is the same God as the Son without being forced by Leibniz’s Law to affirm that the Father and Son share all their properties.
However, Michael Rea, recognizing that even a formally consistent logic must relate to some metaphysical reality to be relevant, challenges the suitability of RI—van Inwagen’s RI in particular—for solving the logical problem of the Trinity. Rea says that because van Inwagen doesn’t renounce classical identity in his formulation of a Trinitarian-consistent RI logic, van Inwagen “leaves open the possibility that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are absolutely distinct; and if they are absolutely distinct, it is hard to see what it could possibly mean to say that they are the same being.”
One might think that while Rea places a formidable roadblock in the way of a van Inwagen-style RI strategy, RI in general may still be effective in resolving the apparent logical conflict in the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus far, it appears that all that is needed for RI to work is to reject classical identity. However, Rea’s concerns extend beyond van Inwagen’s particular brand of RI logic. Rea states that the consequences of using the “pure RI strategy” are “catastrophic,” because “relative identity seems to presuppose an anti-realist metaphysic.” Going back to Geach, he reminds us of the following:
"Geach thinks that semantic paradoxes…prevent us from reading [Leibniz’s Law] as saying that x = y if and only if whatever is true of x is true of y. Thus, he says, we must read it instead as saying (roughly) that x = y if and only if x and y are indiscernible to all of the predicates that form the descriptive resources of our theory. But if this is right, then identity is best construed as theory-relative."
Rea expands on this notion of identity being theory-relative by giving an example similar in some respects to the treatment of David above. He uses the idea of a lump of clay, and notes that a lump of clay can be construed as only a lump of clay, or as a statue, or as a bowl, and so on, based simply upon the theory in which it is interpreted. His point is that for RI, since it lacks a notion of absolute identity, there is no fact of the matter about whether the lump is a statue, a bowl, or just a lump—identity is theory-relative. As Rea puts it, “…If we do say this [that identity is theory-relative]…then we commit ourselves to the view that the very existence of things…depends upon the theories that recognize them. This is anti-realism.” Exactly how this relates to his concern about RI logic and the Trinity he makes plain here:
"...accepting [anti-realism] as a part of a solution to the problem of the Trinity is disastrous. For clearly orthodoxy will not permit us to say that the very existence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a theory-dependent matter…And yet it is hard to see how it could be otherwise if Geach’s theory of relative identity is true. For what else could it possibly mean to say that there is simply no fact about whether Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same thing as one another, the same thing as God, or, indeed, the same thing as Baal?"
Rea is adamant: RI logic is fatally flawed because it leads to anti-realism, and anti-realism is false because the existence of God cannot, and does not, depend on the relativity of theory.
b. Relational Ontology Defined
Rea rejects RI and anti-realism because of his strong intuition that however God is, it is not due to someone’s theory choice. I say “intuition” instead of “orthodoxy” because I believe there is another way to look at the preceding debate—particularly the idea of “theory-relative”—that supports (perhaps requires) the use of RI and necessitates anti-realism but is still steadfastly orthodox in its conception of the Trinity. This “other way” is relational ontology.
Recall that for both Zizioulas and Gunton, personhood is the primary and basic ontological category. If this is true, this means that God, most fundamentally, is personal. What makes God who and what he is are his three persons, not some uniquely divine spiritual substance that constitutes him. Defining precisely what a person is is notoriously difficult, and if Gunton is correct, impossible, for to him persons are basic and unanalyzable. However, what can be said is that for Gunton an important part of being a person (perhaps an essential part) is that of having freedom—that is, the ability to deliberate and choose one thought or action over another.
One important extension of personal volitional freedom is that of theory-choice, the ability to choose one way of interpretation over that of another. Borrowing an example from Wittgenstein, look at the figure below.
On one interpretation, you may see the drawing as the head of a rabbit, facing to the left with its ears pointing to your right. On another interpretation, you may see it as the head of a duck, with its beak pointing to your right. By concentrating, you may even be able to rapidly switch back and forth between the two interpretive schemes. In this case, there is no fact of the matter—interpretation depends on theory choice.
Of course, interpretation and theory-choice are not completely contingent upon personal freedom, because there is an objective element to the created order. We believe that God created the universe in such a way that it could be perceived by persons. As such, it could be said that for each entity God created, he had some degree of particular intention for how the entity was to be perceived, and I believe it makes sense to identify substance significantly with his intention. Substance provides most objects with a degree of unique particularity—otherness—that cannot be interpreted away. An object’s intrinsic properties prevent absolute absorption of its identity into a mere conceptual scheme.
Nevertheless, identity is not totally subsumed into purely intrinsic properties; the interpretation and theory-choice of persons plays a constituitive role. As in the case of David: while just a bizarrely shaped piece of marble in regards to its intrinsic properties—those which make it uniquely other—the marble becomes Michelangelo’s David when its extrinsic properties are included in its identity. Persons constitute David within a shared context of representational art. What appears to be the case is that the theory-choice, the interpretive action, of persons is an essential component of the identity of objects. This notion of interrelated existence—with identity contingent on persons—is best described as relationship. More precisely, relationship could be defined as the act of ontological interpretation wherein a person participates in choosing the non-intrinsic yet often essential attributes of an other.
What should now be clear is that within a relational ontology, ontology is in some sense theory-dependent. There is a sense in which persons choose a particular interpretation, or way of perceiving, other objects, and the identity of the object partially depends on the chosen theory. In other words, relational ontology entails anti-realism. Since relational ontology involves a degree of mind-dependence for identity, ontological realism cannot be maintained simultaneously with relational ontology.
While I have shown the necessary relationship between anti-realism and theory-choice and a certain conception of relational ontology, I must now explain how this view of relational ontology is modeled by the Trinity, paying special attention to Rea’s concerns about the consequences of saying that God’s identity is theory-dependent.
Rea’s criticism is that “orthodoxy will not permit us to say that the very existence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a theory-dependent matter…What else could it possibly mean to say that there is simply no fact about whether Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same thing as one another, the same thing as God?” Rea’s concern is that if the metaphysical nature of God—how God is—is dependent on theory, then God could be anything or anyone—simply depending on the theory in which he is interpreted. Rea’s point is a valid one, but only under the following presupposition: that God’s identity depends on theory choice other than his own. The key insight of relational ontology is that God’s identity is dependent on choice—his choice and no one else’s—to be who he chooses to be. The reason for God’s unique identity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not because of certain facts about essential intrinsic properties of his substance, as though he were a created object, bound by a constituitive substance. Rather, the reason for God’s unique identity is that God eternally chooses to exist as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As has already been mentioned in reference to the insights of the Cappadocians, what makes the Father the Father, the Son the Son, and the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit is their relationship to each other. Recalling the above definition of relationship, these divine relations could be imperfectly stated as eternal and continuous acts of ontological interpretation wherein God in his persons participates in choosing the essential attributes of the others. This appears to very closely mirror Gunton’s metaphor of perichoresis and interpenetration. God doesn’t have his essential attributes of aseity, omnipotence, omniscience, freedom, perfect goodness, etc. because of how he is composed. At the very ground of his being, relational ontology maintains that God simply is what he is, and that the best way we can describe what he is is as three persons in relationship.
As just described, relational ontology maintains the initially counterintuitive claim that God’s identity is theory-dependent. However, the theory choice is made by God—in plainer English: God freely chooses to be as he wills. Therefore, human theory choice doesn’t affect God’s identity.
To bring this section to a close, it is helpful to remember that Geach arguably rejected classical identity because human determination of indiscernibility as a guide to identity provides no assurance that metaphysical identity will be correctly noted. By taking on RI predicates in the place of classical identity predicates, Geach created a logic that either still tacitly affirms the metaphysical notion of classical identity while remaining agnostic about its logical appropriateness, or that lets go of the metaphysical notion of classical identity along with its logical application in favor of the much weaker relative identity. I think that proponents of relational ontology can use this second reading of RI to support the idea that while God has given persons interpretive freedom, persons cannot objectify reality without regard for God’s intentions, for as in the case of his own persons, God has the ultimate authority to choose what exists and what does not. Our interpretive actions must seek to uphold God’s purposes, for true identity is dependent upon God’s intentions. For this reason, RI meshes with the relational ontology account, because on the second interpretation above, RI logic allows persons to determine identity based upon God’s revealed intentions for creation.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion, I will attempt to summarize the philosophical explanation of what relational ontology is. Beginning with the Cappadocians separation of the concepts hypostasis from ousia, the persons of God were distinguished from his being. Zizioulas observed the philosophical implications of this move, and, as opposed to substance, posited personhood as the ground of being—specifically, God’s persons. Gunton expanded on Zizioulas’ work by further developing the metaphysics of the Trinity. Relational ontology took its most complete form to date as Gunton described the theory in terms of four key terms: person, relation, otherness, and freedom. His idea is that the persons of the Trinity exist in relation to each other in mutuality and freedom, and that this provides a model for ontology in general: being is not statically limited to things in themselves, but involves a sharing in being between persons in relationship.
In this paper, I sought to reveal more plainly the philosophical underpinnings of relational ontology by highlighting the issue of relative identity in logic, and showing how that debate informs the question of relational ontology. Van Inwagen shows how Geach’s RI logic allows for a non-contradictory formulation of the Trinity, and Rea follows by showing the connection between RI and anti-realism by way of the idea of theory-dependence. Although Rea pointed out theory-dependence as a reason to reject RI, I believe that by way of non-intrinsic essential properties and the idea of relationship within the Trinity, I have shown that theory-dependence is an important explanatory truth within relational ontology. This shows that relational ontology entails the truth of anti-realism and relative identity, and legitimates RI logic. And this provides a clearer view of the philosophical basis of relational ontology than has been seen before, and hopefully, a clearer idea of what relational ontology is.
5,452 words
Bibliography
Baker, Lynne Rudder. The Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 94, No. 12 (Dec., 1997), 599- 621.
Baker, Lynne Rudder. Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Coakley, Sarah. “’Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: Gregory of Nyssa and Current Analytic Discussion,” online on Boston Theological Institute’s website at http://www.bostontheological.org/colloquium/bts/btscoak.htm
Feldman, Fred. “Geach and Relative Identity,” The Review of Metaphysics. Vol. XXI, No. 3 (Mar., 1969), 547-555
Feldman, Fred. “A Rejoinder,” The Review of Metaphysics. Vol. XXI, No. 3 (Mar., 1969), 560-561
Geach, Peter. “Identity,” The Review of Metaphysics. Vol. XXI, No. 1 (Sept., 1967), 3-12
Geach, Peter. “A Reply,” The Review of Metaphysics. Vol. XXI, No. 3 (Mar., 1969), 556-559
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s University Press, 2002.
Gunton, Colin. The One, the Three, and the Many. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Gunton, Colin. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997.
LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. 1st ed. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991.
Lewis, David K. On the Plurality of Worlds. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1986.
Merricks, Trenton. Objects and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Nelson, Jack. “Relative Identity,” Noűs. Vol. 4, No. 3 (Sep., 1970), 241-260
Perry, John. “The Same F,” The Philosophical Review. Vol. 79, No. 2 (Apr., 1970), 181-200
Plantinga, Alvin. The Nature of Necessity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Plantinga, Cornelius, Jr. “Social Trinity and Tritheism,”
Rea, Michael, and Jeffrey E. Brower. “Material Constitution and the Trinity,” forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy
Rea, Michael. “The Problem of Material Constitution,” The Philosophical Review. Vol. 104, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), 525-552.
Rea, Michael. “Relative Identity and the Doctrine of the Trinity,” forthcoming in Philosophia Christi
Rusch, William G. The Trinitarian Controversy. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.
Stevenson, Leslie. “Relative Identity and Leibniz’s Law,” The Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 22, No. 87 (Apr., 1972), 155-158
van Inwagen, Peter. God, Knowledge, & Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Wainwright, Arthur. The Trinity in the New Testament. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1962.
Zizioulas, John D. Being as Communion. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s University Press, 1985
When my family lived in Virginia (my dad was at law school), there was this lady named Jill Stenny who lived in our neighborhood. Of course, since I was a kid, and was raised in the south, I called her "Ms. Stenny." Anyways, Ms. Stenny was a nice lady and all that, but the weird/cool thing about her was that she had a pet fox. I've met lots of people who have pet wolves, or part wolf/part dogs, for pets, but Ms. Stenny is the only person I've ever known who had a fox. However, the reason for the rarity of pet foxes was perhaps abundantly clear from this case, if Ms. Stenny's fox was in any way normative. For Ms. Stenny's fox was not very nice. In fact, he bordered on being an unholy terror. He slept all day on Ms. Stenny's screen porch, but at night he would go out cavorting in the neighborhoor, toppling trash cans, fighting with (and often injuring) cats, and sending the dogs into a barking frenzy. Sometimes he even slipped into people's houses and "marked" his territory in a very unpleasant way. Little kids and some of the women were afraid to go outside at night, because even though a fox isn't very big, I think at some level people recognize foxes are wild animals, and that makes it a bit unsettling to know that it could watching your every move from under your car.
Eventually, a group of people from our block complained to the city about Ms. Stenny's fox, but it turned out that she actually had a license to keep it. So the situation remained that this fox was running roughshod over our neighborhood, and there was nothing we could do about it (if this had been farther south, I'm pretty sure someone would have taken matters--or at least a shotgun--into their own hands and solved the problem). So people--especially the men--on our block found themselves in a uncomfortable and helpless position. They would encounter Ms. Stenny's fox on their way home from work and all they could do was stare impotently and say, "bastard fox." The fox could turn around, spray piss at them, and their hands would be tied. We were under that little canine's thumb.
But I think Ms. Stenny empathized with us in some way--not enough to ditch the fox-- but enough to try to do what she could to maintain good relations. In fact, she went about this in a fairly straightforward way. She hooked up some loudspeakers to her car, and each morning as she would drive out of the neighborhood to go to work, she would sing to her neighbors in an attempt to ease the oppresion we all felt from her pet. I can still remember the song she would sing, as I lay in my bed in the dawn, listening. She sang:
"Don't be ruled by the fox that I've got,
I'm Jill, I'm Jill Stenny from the block."
This is hilarious. Here are some of the more entertaining excerpts from the book that appear in Slate's article.
Page 9: The first sign of the Bush administration's desire to attack Iraq comes days before Bush's 2001 inauguration. Dick Cheney asks outgoing Defense Secretary Bill Cohen to brief the president "about Iraq and different options." During the briefing, Cheney falls asleep.
Page 11: Bush as glutton: At a Pentagon briefing, staffers lay out peppermint candy for each attendee. Bush scarfs down his peppermint, and then begins to eye Bill Cohen's treat, which the former secretary gladly relinquishes. Gen. Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, "noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over."
Page 118: General Tommy Franks to the Joint Chiefs: "You Title X motherfuckers!"
Page 182-83: Powell reveals that he detests Rumsfeld's circuitous manner of speaking—"One would think …"; "Some would say …"—which he dubs "third-person passive once removed."
Page 184: The TelePrompTer text of Bush's climactic speech to the United Nations somehow omits his call for resolutions against the Iraqi regime. Bush remembers and ad-libs the line.
Page 186: Bush aide Nick Calio declares his intention to vitiate a congressional filibuster. Bush says, "Nicky, what the fuck are you talking about, vitiate?"
Page 336: A CIA report suggests that Saddam, whose army can barely muster working tanks or planes, has red-and-white submarines patrolling the Tigris River. The agency immediately discards the report.
Donnie Darko is to be re-released--details here. Hopefully this time they'll put out a soundtrack.
This is a great film--probably in my top ten personal favorites. The only movie I've seen more times than Donnie Darko is Bambi (approx. 30), but most of those times were only partial viewings.
I've made a short list of books that seem to pop up in a lot of discussions and be held in fairly high esteem (philosophically speaking), so I intend to try to work through most of them this summer to try to help build on what I learned as an undergrad.
As a naive and impressionable not-yet-grad student, I'm hoping some older wiser students will happen across this entry and post their reading advice--"Look, if you don't read this, you'll be clueless"-type stuff. Especially if they are interested in analytic metaphysics and ontology. Here's my list so far (in no particular order and very subject to revision), composed of a general list and a analytic metaphysics list:
In General
1. The View From Nowhere; Thomas Nagel
2. Reasons and Persons; Derek Parfit
3. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy; Bernard Williams
4. Naming and Necessity; Saul Kripke (I've skimmed this pretty heavily)
5. Anarchy, State, and Utopia; Robert Nozick
6. An Essay on Free Will; Peter van Inwagen
Analytic Metaphysics
1. The Nature of Necessity; Alvin Plantinga
2. Lewis' collected papers on metaphysics and logic
3. Material Constitution: A Reader; ed. Michael Rea
4. 4-Dimensionalism; Ted Sider
Well, in a nail-biting episode that went down to the wire, I chose the University of Florida for gradiate study in philosophy. Mostly because the University of Virginia turned me down in the end. But I'm not bitter...do I seem bitter? Cause I'm not.
I had told my wife repeatedly that I liked UVa and UF about the same, and that I would be equally happy to go either place (we had decided against UGa and UMass early on--mostly due to funding issues). However, I felt oddly deflated when I was finally rejected by Virginia. Although I wonder if I would have felt similarly about UF had they rejected me at the end--this could be just a bad case of 'Thegrassisalwaysgreenerism.'
The programs are very different, with UVa strong in political philosophy and ethics and strong in metaphysics purely on the strength of Trenton Merricks, and UF stronger in metaphysics and logic, having several faculty members in this area. My actual philosophical interests are much closer to UF's strengths (they also have a guy in phi. sci., too), but I think I was attracted by the better overall reputation of the University of Virginia.
So now I can start gearing up for grad school. I really don't have a clue what to expect, having gone to very small college for undergrad. Hopefully I will use my fear to motivate my preparation. My tentative plans are to really bone up on my logic this summer, and work through a basic reading list. If, for no good reason, some other potential/fully legit grad students are reading this, I would appreciate your reading recommendations for grad school preparation. Wait--I think I'll make this a new entry unto itself. Gimme a second...
That is the headline of a news story on CNN's website today. Is it some kind of weakly veiled gay lingo? I don't know. All I know is that I'm generally against using the words "probe" and "booty" in the same sentence.
April 15 isn't significant only for tax filing purposes. That is also the deadline for graduate students to make their decision about where to go to school.
I have been accepted to several schools, one of which has offered a good amount of money. But the school I really want to attend still has me on the waiting list. The way this typically works is that for an entering class of 8 or so students, a grad school will extend offers to 15-20 applicants, knowing that most will choose to go to another school that accepted them (this reasoning makes sense when you consider that most grad students apply to quite a few programs. I applied to seven, and I've communicated with some others who have applied to as many as 14!). What I'm waiting for is for the students who have received acceptances to go ahead and make a decision. That way the places they've been offered from other schools will open up to allow folks from the waiting lists to move into the strike zone.
Unfortunately, it appears that everyone--including me--is waiting to decide until all their options are in hand. I haven't made a decision because I'm still waiting for results from the waiting list I'm on, and my guess is that most applicants are doing the same. We're all moving inexorably toward the D-day of April 15 without flinching, betting that the other applicants will break first and make a decision, thereby freeing up places in waiting lists all across America and initiating a torrent of status changes, bringing everyone to their final resting place--willy-nilly--without control (because time has run out on us) like a toppling house of cards. Statements by the grad coordinators at U of Virginia and U of Massachusetts confirm this, though not exactly in these words.
So please, fellow applicants--I know your options are better than mine--bite the bullet and let Virginia know that you won't be accepting their offer. Go ahead and narrow your short list to the handful of schools you would actually consider attending. Make a brighter day for those applicants condemned to waiting list purgatory by pairing down the dead weight on your acceptance list.
So I won't have to.
This year's topic will be "Divine and Human Freedom," with Dean Zimmerman as the keynote speaker. Also presenting will be Peter van Inwagen, Timothy O'Connor, Derk Pereboom, and Keith Yandell, among others. See the conference website here.
Zimmerman is a big-time metaphysician, and the biggest conference speaker Wheaton has had since van Inwagen in 2001. I don't know where I'll be living at the end of October, but I'm going to make every effort to be at the conference.