In a country as divided as our own has become, even to describe the position as 'the right's position' is to immediately set much of the world against it before they've heard it, so they will spend their time looking for things to object to about it rather than first understanding it. But it is also being described as 'the left's position' -- the concern about mRNA being raised at D29's place is that it aims to perfect nature rather than accepting the consequences of living in a fallen world, and that this is a sort of Gnosticism. Both sides end up primed to reject a really important idea without thinking it through.
The idea is at least as old as Aristotle and Plato, was argued for by St. Thomas Aquinas, and in the Enlightenment by Immanuel Kant. It could still be wrong, but the best minds of human history have found it persuasive. In its basic form I can see nothing wrong with it. You may object to some of the outlying conclusions without rejecting the foundational idea; it is more likely, I think, that someone went wrong along the way to one of those outlying conclusions than that the heart of the idea is wrong.
So, the idea is that human beings have a nature; that nature includes access to reason, as well as parts that are not rational; and that the correct approach is to apply the rational part to trying to understand the irrational parts and correct them where they aren't quite right.
You can state this idea in ancient terms, Medieval terms, Enlightenment terms, and contemporary terms. There are important differences in how you frame it: for example, Aristotle would say that the parts of our nature each aim at some good, for example eyes aim at sight and the goods that come of seeing. A contemporary would want to say that nature doesn't properly "aim" at anything; yet even here, there is some good that explains why the random mutation that supposedly gives rise to sighted beings is a quality that persists and becomes a normal part of that kind of beings' nature via natural selection. The contemporary position is differently stated, but it is mostly so in terms of applying a technical layer of clarification to eliminate anthropomorphism.
It's not really harmful to understanding the point to say it just like Aristotle did, so long as you have the mental capacity to apply the various filters as necessary. Indeed, the best thing of all is to be able to phrase it in all four of these ways, appreciate why they are preserving the same idea, and entertain that each of them makes sense of the facts in ways that are compatible even though they differ on metaphysical conceptions of reality. It's just as likely as not that the contemporary way will be rephrased in the future, but I think this core idea will survive.
Crucial to this core idea is that the rational part of our nature can identify and correct the irrational parts. Our eyes are not, themselves, rational. It is reason that helps us grasp what the good is at which they 'aim' (or at which they were accidentally aimed by mutation and yet which has survived because the good they ended up 'aiming' at was a real good). Once we do that, we can use reason, and therefore technology, to improve the acquisition of the good.
Eyes as we all know see well or badly, some of them better than others; and typically they worsen as we get older. We are able to correct for many of these things with technology, restoring or improving the sight of our eyes to a high degree. This is a positive good. You can say that the Medieval way: because it is a natural good, recognized by natural reason and brought into alignment with the purpose of nature. You can say it the contemporary way: because sight is useful and why should anyone suffer who could be made to see better?
This gives us then a standard by which to judge the whole process of applying technology to people. This is where people come apart currently, especially on sexuality: the older view holds that you can recognize the good of the natural process by reason, and with sex there are multiple goods (Aquinas names three). Some people think that reproduction is the obvious choice, and object to technological meddling that interferes with or outright destroys the natural capacity to reproduce -- especially in the young, who may not be fully in possession of their reason yet and might not therefore be clear on what their own good really entails.
Other people think that reproduction is not, at least not currently, a good: the climate scare especially has many people thinking that virtue lies in not reproducing, but pursuing the pleasures that are another good of sex as if those were the primary good, and then passing peacefully into extinction with their whole family line. Even if it is not climate that motivates, a young person might decide they prefer pleasure to the long labors of parenthood; and not just in matters of sex. 'I want my life to be about me, not someone else,' means taking the pleasures and personal accomplishments of life as the primary good, and applying your reason to the question of how to obtain those.
In the long term the right will end up winning that debate because they will disproportionately survive into future generations. This process has been underway in Israel, for example, for generations now. It was founded by secular Jews, many of them socialists or Communists; it has trended ever rightward as they died off and were not replaced at the same rates as the Orthodox. Ironically this process proves which good is the 'real' good aimed at by nature on natural selection grounds especially; it is those who prefer the contemporary account who ought to be most inclined to recognize that the matter is settled on their own terms.
In any case, one should not walk away from the idea of reasoning from nature, in order to improve our lives through rational activity and thus technology. It is reasonable to be skeptical of new technology; it is reasonable to take time with it, to see how its long term effects play out before making a final decision about whether it is really rational to incorporate it into your life. It is not merely Gnosticism to do so, however; and it is not irrational to prefer the version of this account on which reproduction and future life are primary goods to guard.
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"Aristotle would say that the parts of our nature each aim at some good, for example eyes aim at sight and the goods that come of seeing. A contemporary would want to say that nature doesn't properly 'aim' at anything ..."
I always thought that these were two quite different uses of the word 'nature.' I thought Aristotle's nature was a kind of inherent characteristic, whereas the contemporary nature is the impersonal universe and its laws, e.g., evolution by natural selection.
As is often true with Aristotle, yes in a way; and no in another way. It is true for Aristotle that different things have different natures. However, these things interact in a unified field; and the difference in their natures explains why they move in different ways in that field. So, in effect, the different natures end up explaining the differences in the universal field of motions: and as such, the laws of our natures end up explaining what later people would have called 'the laws of nature.'
It is also true that contemporaries drift back and forth. The other day I quoted a piece by a person talking about 'human nature.' Now human nature is a very Aristotelian concept: it's the nature that pertains to a kind of thing. But it exists within 'Nature' writ large, and is not really separable from that; for the contemporary, human nature arises from nature in ways that are explainable in terms of the laws of nature.
Actually, if we are speaking of truly contemporary rather than merely Modern, all talk of nature should probably be dropped -- but only so we can fragment our knowledge into various fields that no longer fully interact, so that the theoretical physicist no longer speaks of 'nature and nature's laws' but of field equations; the biologist speaks not of nature but of the chemical processes of life; and the psychologist or gender studies major speaks of identity, realizing somehow that it emerges from biology ('the mind is the brain!') but then somehow detached from all these more basic ideas. The flourishing of so many fields of knowledge has both fragmented and isolated the fields, such that it would perhaps sound arcane to speak of 'Nature and Nature's Laws' as was done once upon a time.
The union of the fields is still at least theoretically possible; you should be able to follow a process, somehow, from its emergence in particle physics to its empowerment in chemical processes, to its brain chemistry interactions, to its psychology, to its gender identity. And thus somehow nature is still giving rise to human nature, even now. And they are still, for us as for Aristotle, still necessarily bound in spite of being conceptually distinguishable.
Of course, no one chases causality the other way -- perhaps the process really emerges at a higher level of organization than we ourselves, and we are observing its expression in our identity or psychology from below rather than from on high. The theoretical physicists who do string theory almost suggest something like that, but its still from more-fundamental rather than higher levels -- just ones in 'higher' dimensions, whose interactions give rise to the fundamental particles in reality as we experience it.
Maybe we've got the whole thing wrong, but so far I think the basic model we've had from Aristotle through all of these other great thinkers is still the most likely bet.
Interesting. What would Aristotle have called his unified field?
In Physics II.7 he talks about 'the primary reality,' i.e., that which is unchangeable but which causes movements. This is distinct from the unmoved movers, which are unchangeable and cause movements because they lack potential in themselves. These are not discussed here, but are capable of causing movement because of an interaction between themselves and souls that exist apart from them that can observe and desire to emulate them. The primary reality looks like the space in which such interactions are possible.
It would be appropriate for a mention like that to occur here because in II.5-II.6 (i.e. immediately before) he gives an account of cause by chance and spontaneity; and on his account these are things caused by multiple sets of 'cause by nature' or 'thought' (i.e. formal causes) that interact with each other, producing unexpected results. He explains that chance is the realm of things that can have intentions, but he means spontaneity to be where lower animals or purely physical processes seem to do things that are not caused by their own natures.
An example he gives: it is not in a rock's nature to fall and kill a man on purpose; and it is not in a man's nature to intentionally walk under a rock that is about to fall in order to be killed by it. So if the rock falls, of its own nature, and kills the man, who also did not intend to be killed and was not driven by nature to be killed, that is spontaneity at work. Yet we, you and I, can see that this can only happen because they are interacting by existing inside a reality that contains both, in which their causal chains can interact and affect each other. The rock may fall by nature, the man may be walking either by nature or for some intended purpose, but the interaction -- the accident that kills the man -- comes to be only by the interaction of these independent causal chains.
Thus, both in the case of the man and the rock (which is discussed here) and in the case of the unmoved movers moving souls to imitation, there is already a more basic and primary reality extant. Their internal causal chains are important because "for the most part" (i.e. because of a form in them, either their own form or an idea in the mind that is a form) things come to be by nature. It is possible that they don't always, though, and one account of that is independent natural causes interfering or coinciding with each other.
In II.8, he gives an account of mutation, so that things can come to be something different from what their natural form intends: "Now mistakes come to pass even in the operations of art: the grammarian makes a mistake in writing and the doctor pours out the wrong dose. Hence clearly mistakes are possible in the operations of nature also. If then in art there are cases in which what is rightly produced serves a purpose, and if where mistakes occur there was a purpose in what was attempted, only it was not attained, so must it be also in natural products, and monstrosities will be failures in the purposive effort." That ends up fitting into the contemporary discussion in a different way, because these 'mistakes' end up being crucial for 'natural selection.' For Aristotle they are likeliest to be failures, and indeed we know that most mutations do not survive. But sometimes these things that occur by 'mistake' end up producing a kind of being with a different nature. That sort of substantial change Aristotle ponders elsewhere.
But you might prefer to stick with 'Being qua Being,' which is the subject of the science of his Metaphysics instead. This is the science of what it means to be having abstracted out all of the species differences, including 'different natures.' It is here where we encounter the unmoved movers, in Metaphysics XI.
Here also he gives another account of 'the accidental,' which he takes to be the subject of no existing science and really discussed only by sophists. But it must be the case that accidental motion exists, because we observe that things happen that are contrary to nature. This can include substantial change (because a substance has no contrary, a movement within the category of substance must be accidental -- movement 'by nature' cannot account for an ox becoming a different kind of being that is not an ox, but it turns out that accidents like mutations can).
It also includes illness: by nature a body will preserve and restore itself according to its form. Falling ill must be an accidental interference by outside. (As indeed it usually is! Or it is a mistake, e.g. a replication error like a cancer; or it is, we know now, the body losing the capacity to maintain its nature though age, which is itself a kind of natural process that seems to aim at death. That is a problem for Aristotle's account).
Leaving aside the parenthetical additions, even things like illness end up being a function of this basic capacity for interaction between different natures. It is no accident that the discussion turns up right where he's discussing the most fundamental questions of reality.
That's fascinating stuff. Thanks very much for the explanations!
A second thought I have about the topic is on Gnosticism. I haven't studied them very much, but by chance have recently listened to a podcast that talks a lot about the Gnostics in relation to the early Church. I haven't finished all of the relevant episodes, so maybe I'm missing something, but it seems that a persistent belief of all branches of Gnosticism is that the material world is evil. It's creation was either a mistake or something done by a lesser being and the goal of Gnosticism is to escape the material world.
This is why they deny the incarnation of Christ. For them, Christ only appeared to take bodily form, but in fact was pure spirit. God could not come in the flesh because the flesh itself is evil.
So, the very idea of perfecting nature seems anti-Gnostic; nature for them is essentially evil, so the idea of perfecting nature would seem to make no sense in their worldview.
Again, this isn't my specialty, so am I missing something here?
Here's the Catholic Answers page on it, just for reference.
So, I don't think the claim was meant to be that mRNA shot developers are strictly Gnostic. I'm not going to try to construct such an argument; you can read the analogical argument at D29's place.
That makes sense. I'll check it out over there.
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