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Lamha man Face, rac. whee Pan tes thatthe pnt hi See eed frum mss ast incmphsssRegining wth The Man Faces of efi Inte ar se for exanpe 0.77 PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS Wo 20 nL BME LOPE The Search for Logically Alien Thought: Descartes, Kant, Frege, and the Tractatus! James Conant University of Pittsburgh U}n order to draw a limit to thought we should have to beable to think both sides ofthis limit (ve should there {ore have 1 be able to think what cannot be thought) The limit ea, therefore. only be dram in language ‘and what lies on the other side of the limit willbe sin ply nonsense. Ludvig Wingenstene™ The only proper way to break an egg is from the inside. —Parva Gallina Rubra ‘This essay is about three things: Wittgenstein’ eas concerning the question ‘ofthe possibility of illogical thought, the sources of those ideas (especially in Kant and Frege), and Puinam’s recent interest in both of these matters, ‘Along the way, this paper briefly sketches the broad outlines of two almost parallel traditions oF thought about the laws of logic: one rather long and complicated tradition called the History of Moder Philosophy, and ‘one rather short and complicated one called Hilary Putnam. Here isa thumb- nail version of how these to traditions align: Descartes thought the laws of logic were only contingenily necessary; not so recent Putnam agreed. St. ‘Thomas Aquinas believed that they were necessarily necessary: relatively recent Putnam agreed (ths is only confusing if you think Aquinas should not 15be a step alead of Descartes). Kant thought they were simply necessary Frege wanted (o agree—but his manner of doing so raised the worry that there was no way in which to express his agreement that made sense Wittgenstein agreed with the worry. He concluded that sense had not (yet) been made of the question to which our two traditions sought an answer: very recent Putnam agreed, HISTORICAL PREAMBLE: A DIFFERENT KIND OF CARTESIANISM What is the status of the laws of logic, the most basic laws of thought? Wherrin does their necessity lie? In what sense does the negation of a basic Jaw of logic represent an impossibility? ‘The Scholastics were forced to think hard about these questions since they believed in the existence of an omnipotent God for whom all things are possible. If God is omnipotent does that mean that He has the power to abrogate the laws of logic? The Scholastics, on the whole, were quite relue: {ant to draw this conclusion. But does that then mean that Godl is not all- powerful, that there is a limit to his power, that there is something he can ‘not do? That is a conclusion that the Scholastics were, on the whole, at least ‘equally as reluctant to draw. Posed here ina theological guise isa version of ‘a question that has continued to haunt philosophy up until the present: do the laws of logic impose a limit which we run up against in our thinking? If so, what kind ofa limit is this? Do their negations represent something that we ‘cannot do ot that cannot be’ If so, what sort of “cannot” is this? Here is Aquinas's attempt to reconcile the omnipotence of the Divine Being with the inexorability of the basie principles of Reason: All confess that God is omnipotent: but it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists. For there ‘may be adoubt as to the precise meaning of the word “all” when ‘we say that God can do all things. If, however, we consider the ‘matter aight, since power is said in reference o possible things. this phrase. God ean do all shings is rightly understood to mean that God can do all things that re possible: and for this reason eis said to be omnipotent. Now .. 2 thing is said to be pos- sible in two ways. First, in relation to some power I, ho= ever, we were fo say that God is omnipotent because He ean do ll things that are possible to His power, there would bea vicious Circle in explaining the nature of His power. For this would be saying nothing else but thet God is omnipotent because He can «do all that He is abe to do, Ieremains, therefore, that Go is called omnipotent becasse He can do all things that are possible absolutely: which is the 116 sevond way of saying thing is possible. Fora thing i said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according 10 the relation in ‘which the very terms stand to one anther: possible, if the pred icate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sis And absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with he subject, as, for instance, that a man isan ‘Therefore, everything that does not imply a contradic tion in terms is numsered among those possibles in respect of ‘which God is called ermnipatent; whereas whatever implies con tradietion does not come within the scope of divine emnipo- rence, hecause it canvot have the aspect of possibility. Hence it is more appropriate 1 say tha such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them. Nor is this contrary tothe word ofthe angel. saying: No word shall he impossible with God (Luke 1.37), For whatever implies 4 contradiction cannot he a word, because no intellect can possibly conceive such a thing.* Aquinas is caught here between the Charybdis of asserting a mere tau- tology (God ean do everything within His power) and the Scylla of implic- itly aseribing a substantive limit to God's power (by declaring God can do all those sorts of things which fall under a certain general description X. and hence apparently implicitly declaring: He cannot do those things which do not fall under X). One way out—a way out which, as we shall see, is prad- ually refined in the course ef these (wo traditions of thought about logic: ‘would be for this description (of those things which God cannot do) to turn fut not to be a genuine description at all. Aquinas, indeed, tries to argue that those things whieh fall under the (apparent) description things which God cannot do ate not, properly speaking, things which car be done at all. These 128 which “cannot have the aspect of possibility.” OF these, Aquinas says, “itis more appropriate to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them.” But the worry arises: hasn’t Aquinas just offered us aa redescription of what kind of a thing a logically impossible sort ofa thing is? It would seem that we stil have here to deal with a certain (albeit remark= able) kind ofa thing, Ifso, the question remains: what sort of a thing is this and is it something not even God can do? Even if we concede to Aquinas that perhaps, strictly speaking, we should not speak of it as if it were-a doable kind of a thing, nevertheless, there certainly still appears to be an “it” here that our words ate straining after and which has formed the subject of our ‘thought throughout the preceding paragraph. Aquinas appears to be on his strongest ground when he tries to make out that the “it” which falls uncer these descriptions—"that which is logically impossible,” “that which even God cannot do”—is not a kind of a thing at all, What we have here instead is an attempt to conceive of a kind of a thing which “no intellect [i¢., not just a human intellect] can possibly conceive: 17itisam attempt to speak a word “which eannot be a word.” In order to set up, this way of dissolving the appearance of an “it” (sshich not even God can do), Aquinas invokes Aristotle's distinction between those things which are impossible in relation to some power and those things which are impossible absolutely. Itis not clear, however, that this distinction really helps. It threat- ens fo recreate the appearance that we have to do here with two different kinds of things, belonging to two distinet orders of impossibility: the merely impossible and the absolutely impossible. Just as itis natural to picture that which is possible for a finite being (such as man) as contained within the space of that which is possible for God, i can seen natural to take Aristo Aistinetion as marking an analogous boundary, only a higher level. One pictures the distinction in terms of two degrees of impossibility: things belonging to the second degree (the absolutely impossible) ate situated on the far side ofthe outer iit which encompasses things belonging tothe frst degree (the metely impossible). So now it seems that although God never chafes against anything which lies within the citeumnference of this exterior circle, nonetheless, Great as He is, that is as far as He can go—even He must remain within this circle. This picture ofa circle (circumscribing the limits ‘of that which is absolutely possible) Iying within a wider space (the space of the absolutely impossible) inevitably leaves us with the feeling that we have after all, sueceeded in describing a genuine limit to His powcr. The existence of this outer space of absolute impossibility seems o settle the question in precisely the contrary direction from the one in which Aquinas had hoped to Jead us. The apparently innocent step of picturing the space of absolute pos sibility as bounded by a limit seems to have led us to the opposite conclu ion about God's omnipotence. ‘What sort ofa thing ies beyond the limit of God's power? Answer: the sort which is absolutely impossible. And now it becomes iresistible to add even for Him Descartes concluded that Aquinas, along with most of the rest of ‘medieval theology, had wandered into blasphemy.*"If men really understood the sense oftheir words,” they would never speak as they do. For their made ‘of speech clearly implies a limit to God's power. The only way o avoid such blasphemy is to refrain from ascribing any limits to what the Divinity is able to bring about tum to the difficulty of conceiving how God would have ‘been acing ely and indifferent if he had made it fase. in general that conzadictories could not be te together, is ey {0 dispel his dtficlty by considering that the power of Ge can rot have any limits and that our mind is nite and so created as to be able to conceive as possible the things which Gov has ‘wished to bein fet possiie. but not be able to conceive as pesible things which God could have made possible, but which ug hie has nevertheless wished 19 make impossible. The Fist ‘eomsidration shows us that God cannot have been determined to make it true that comraictories cannot be tue together, and therefore that he could have done the oppenite. The second con siuation assures us that even if this be true, we should not try te comprehend i, since our nature is incapable of doing s0.* Descartes positively asserts here that God could have made contradi tories true together.” He further asserts that this means that God ean bring bout things which our minds are incapable of comprehending. If only that which is comprehensible to minds such as ours were possible for God—it undamental truths (such as that contradictories cannot be true together) were extemal and prior to God's will—then He would not be omnipotent. For His will would not be free with respect to such truths, but rather subject to their determination, But this would be (o deny the infinitude and incom prchensibility of God's power." The only way to avoid such an unworthy blasphemy is to acknowledge that such truths do depend upon the will of God and that it lies within His power to bring about the negations of such truths." The sense in which they are nonetheless necessary or eternal lies in the fact that God has decreed them to be true: hence they are necessary for 1s, But, from a Divine point of view, they are only contingently necessary. For we nust allow that there is some sense in which God could have done otherwise: [Even if God has willed that some truths should be neces. sary. this does not meen that He has willed them necessarily: for itis one thing to will that they be necessary. and quite another to will this necessarily, cr tobe necessitated to will i If God had not been free 10 choose such laws as he did, if He were by necessity constrained to wil the truth of the laws of logic, then there would bbe a necessity that binds even Him, God would be inexorably subject to those laws, ust as we are subject to His decrees, There would be a farum that bindls even the Divinity, making a mockery of his alleged omnipotence. So we ‘ust say that God freely willed the laws of logic to be true, Descartes is very careful, however, to insist that, although these laws do not bind God, this does not make them any less binding for us, The hubris lies in our thinking that because we cannot comprehend how the negations of such laws could be true—for example, how it could be true that "He could have made con: tradictories true together"—we are therefore in a position to conclude that it ‘cannot be done, even by Him It is hubris to think that the limits of our pow. crs of comprehension enable us to specify something He cannot do: In general we can asert that God can do everything that is within our grasp but rot that He eannot do what is beyond our grasp. It would be rash to think that cur imagination reaches as far as his power." 9