A Supersensible Nature

• Sutanto 2016. Two theological accounts of logic
• Wike & Showler 2010. Kant's concept of the highest good and the archetype-ectype distinction
• Flage 2001. Berkeley's archetypes.

Euroopa mõtteloo seminaritöö (FLFI.05.016) ("Kevad 2021")

Sutanto, Nathaniel Gray 2016. Two theological accounts of logic: theistic conceptual realism and a reformed archetype-ectype model. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 79(3): 239-260. DOI: 10.1007/s11153-015-9543-0

I then develop the archetype-ectype model of the laws of logic (hereafter AEM), following sixteenth century theologian Franciscus Junius and a number of contemporary Reformed theologians who seek to apply Junius' paradigm, while paying attention to where the two models converge or contrast. (Sutanto 2016: 240)

Another interesting fellow, a representative of "Reformed scholasticism".

Theistic conceptual realism "holds that AOs [abstract objects] are necessarily existing, uncreated divine ideas that are distinct from God and dependent on God." (Welty 2014, p. 81) The view holds that propositions and possible worlds exist independent of finite human minds and are modally necessary. Propositions are thus also non-physical entities. Further, propositions have the capacity to bear the property of truth, that is, propositions are either true or false as they make claims to reality. This truth-bearing capacity means that propositions possess intentionality; propositions are about other things. (Sutanto 2016: 240)

Peirce's "unuttered words". From a book about scholasticism I found, the relevant triad here is (1) verbal terms, (2) propositions, and (3) syllogism.

This understanding of the laws of logic is consistent with the Creator-creature distinction, in their view, because "God's thoughts are original and necessary while our thoughts are derivative and contingent... rather than violating the Creator-creature distinction, the argument really presupposes and accentuates it." That is, while humans [|] may think of those propositions, the propositions continue to exist even if there were no human beings, just because they are identical with thoughts in the mind of God. (Sutanto 2016: 241-242)

That endless debate on the nature of god.

The AEM itself has a long pedigree within historic Reformed prolegomena. As the ground for the Reformed distinctions between the ontological-economical Trinity or God as Creator and Redeemer "lies a more fundamental paradigm" of "theologia archetypa and theologia ectypa." (Van Asselt 2002, p. 320) All human knowledge of God finds its root in divine self-knowledge. (Sutanto 2016: 242)

Van Asselt, W. J. 2002. The fundamental meaning of theology: Archetypal and ectypal theology in seventeenth-century reformed thought. Westminster Theological Journal 64: 289-306. [Currently inaccessible]

This archetypal-ectypal paradigm curbs at every point any rationalistic desire to know God from the bottom-up, for God is unknowable apart from his revelatory [|] will, while eschewing the mystical tendency to preclude the possibility of articulating a firm knowledge of God. (Sutanto 2016: 244-245)

Atheistic nations are so because god deemed them so.

The paradigm remains standard among many contemporary theologians today. Michael Horton (2011), for example, argues this way:

Neither being nor knowledge is ever shared univocally (i.e., identically) between God and creatures. As God's being is qualitatively and not just quantitatively distinct from ours, so too is God's knowledge. God's knowledge is archetypal (the original), while ours is ectypal (a copy), revealed by God and therefore accommodated to our finite capacities. (p. 54)

Likewise, Vern Poythress (2013):

There are two levels of being, two levels of existence: the self-sufficient, original existence of God the Creator, and the dependent, derivative existence of creatures. By contrast, non-Christian philosophy pretends that there is only one universal level of being... The ontological distinction between Creator and creature has implications for epistemology. God's knowledge must be differentiated from the knowledge that creatures have. (p. 670)

(Sutanto 2016: 245)

If the ectype is a copy of the archetype, then the copy is in turn a copy of the ectype?

Perhaps here a Reformed doctrine of God is in view. The doctrine places an emphasis on divine transcendence, independence and authority. Reformed orthodoxy argues that God alone is absolutely necessary, while all else that is not he must remain ontologically distinct and dependent on him. The aseity of God means that God needs nothing outside of himself in order to define who he is, not even the laws of logic. (Sutanto 2016: 249)

Define:aseity - "the quality or state of being self-derived or self-originated specifically: the absolute self-sufficiency, independence, and autonomy of God."

It does not mean, however, that the advocate of AEM cannot utilize (somtehing like) the argument from logic. Instead of conceiving of the laws of logic as propositions one identifies with divine thoughts, one would have to maintain that God creates these laws and intends them to be normative in human life. Thus, the laws remain about other propositions, and norming (ectypally) human thought because the Trinitarian God intends it to be so and because it reflects his thought and purposes. God knows propositions and ordains them to be the mode of created communication. In that sense, then, one may still argue in a transcendental fashion that the laws of logic presupposes the existence of God: without God's existence man will lack an ultimate standard of rationality, and with God's existence man can rest assured that when he encounters mysteries or paradoxes he is not encountering an ultimately unintelligible reality. He knows that the laws of thought that govern all creaturely rationality are ectypal reflections of a greater reality, after all, and knows that God, the absolute Trinitarian rationality, transcends these laws. (Sutanto 2016: 255)

"Norming" in this sense is new for me. This paper is quite difficult to grasp for someone who thinks that man created god, not vice versa.

Wike, V. S.; Showler, R. L. 2010. Kant's concept of the highest good and the archetype-ectype distinction. Journal of Value Inquiry 44(4): 521-533. DOI: 10.1007/s10790-010-9252-y

The highest good, according to Kant, is the whole object of a pure practical reason and for finite rational beings, it includes both virtue and happiness. Virtue and happiness are heterogeneous components even though together they constitute the highest good. Virtue is the unconditioned good and is defined as the worthiness to be [|] happy. Happiness is a conditioned good, dependent on our moral worth. Hence, the highest good of a possible world is "happiness distributed in exact proportion to morality (as the worth of a person and his worthiness to be happy)." The highest good is a world in which happiness is realized in proportion to virtue. (Wike & Showler 2010: 521-522)

Felicity (happiness) is the use of virtue in prosperity. It looks like Kant merely removed prosperity from this formula.

Thomas Auxter agrees with Silber that Kant's conception of the highest good is subject to two different accounts and he introduces the language of archetypes and ectypes to characterize these two accounts. He says that the highest good for the purpose of moral judgment is an ectypal world, an immanent world that we can work to bring about. The highest good as an otherworldly candition is an archetypal world and it does not distinguish between actions appropriate to human beings and actions appropriate to God and so, it is not relevant to practical judgment or conduct. Auxter rejects any moral role for teh transcendent, archetypal conception of the highest good. In fact, he states that we need the ectypal world, as counterpart to the archetypal world, if we are to even "have an idea of what the archetypal world would be like." (Wike & Showler 2010: 523)

Isn't replacing transcendental/immanent with archetype/ectype mere juggling with representations? Auxter, Thomas 1979. The Unimportance of Kant's Highest Good. Journal of the History of Philosophy 17(2): 121-134. DOI: 10.1353/hph.2008.0406 [Available in the hub.]

Matthew Caswell re-examined the secondary literature on Kant's conception of the highest good and provides a scheme that categorizes the various way sof explaining Kant's treatment of the highest good. He identifies four kinds of interpreters: critics, revisionists, secularists, and maximalists. Critics are critical of the concept of the highest good, and while some of them are sympathetic to Kant, others are unsympathetic. Revisionists see the highest good as the answer to the problem of formalism and motivation. Secularists aim to keep only the secular account of the highest good and throw out any non-secular or theological account and maximalists find a place for or rationale for even the non-secular account of the highest good. (Wike & Showler 2010: 524)

This kind of meta-theoretical clarity is what I should be striving for in the realm of phatics.

In the Critique of Practical Reason, the archetype-ectype distinction is introduced as follows. Kant says that the moral law is: "the fundamental law of a supersensible nature and of a pure world of the understanding, the counterpart of which is to exist in the sensible world but without infringing upon its laws. The former could be called the archetypal world [die urbildliche] (natura archetypa) which we cognize only in reason, whereas the latter could be called the ectypal world [nachgebildete] (natura ectypa) because it contains the possible effect of the idea fot he former as the determining ground of the will. For, the moral law in fact transfers us, in idea, into a nature in which pure reason, if it were accompanied with suitable physical power, would produce the highest good, and it determines our will to confer on the sensible world the form of a whole of rational beings." Kant also refers to archetypes in a footnote: "If I understand by an idea a perfection to which nothing adequate can be given in experience, the moral ideal are not, on that account, something transcendent, that is something of which we cannot even determine the concept sufficiently or of which it is uncertain whether there is any object corresponding to it at all, as is the case with the ideas of speculative reason; instead the moral ideas, as archetypes [Urbilder] of practical perfection, serve as the indispensable rule of moral conduct and also as the standard of comparison." Thus, we can think of an archetypal world governed by a supersensible law and of the counterpart of that idea, the ectypal world, thought as the result of the archetypal idea applied to the sensible world. (Wike & Showler 2010: 525)

The archetype does correspond to thirdness, the realm of ideas.

There is a logical relationship between the two kinds of ideas such that one kind cannot exist without the other. The archetypal idea is the original idea and is generated for the purpose of finding an unconditioned and grounding a pure practical philosophy. As such, the archetypal idea is disconnected from the conditions unique to the sensible world, including the elements of anthropology that make human beings unique rational beings. (Wike & Showler 2010: 526)

"Archetype" does imply that it is the base type, the original (Ur-) type.

Throughout his practical philosophy, Kant uses various forms of the term Urbild and Nachbild to indicate the distinction between two kinds of ideas as described above. Literally translated, the terms mean an original image and an after-image respectively. These terms are frequently translated as archetype and ectype, but there appears to be little consistency in the way translators have rendered them. In the Cambridge Edition of Kant's writings there are several different translations of the terms. Urbild is translated as model in the Critique of Practical Reason. The same term is translated as model in the Critique of Pure Reason. Urbild is also translated as prototype in the Critique of the Power of Judgment and Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Nachbild is translated as afterimage in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. In multiple passages in the Critique of Pure Reason the same term is translated as copy. Kant equates the terms Urbild and Nachbild with the Latin terms from which we derive our terms archetype and ectype in the archetypal-ectypal worlds passage above and also in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. (Wike & Showler 2010: 526)

The Babel in Kant's translation is perfectly normal. What I take issue with is the equation of ectype and copy, these being distinct in Locke.

When a copy of some original object is made, such as a photocopy of a document, there are both additions and subtractions that are detectable in the copy. The copy will end up containing some blemishes that were not on the original document. It will also lack some of the clarity of details that the original possessed. In the same way, there are detectable additions and subtractions in the ectyping or copying of the archetypal idea in a way that takes into account the uniquely human situation. These additions and subtractions are more clearly seen in two specific examples of the archetype-ectype distinctions in Kant's practical philosophy. (Wike & Showler 2010: 527)

To force an analogy, the photocopy would be the copy, the original paper document would be the ectype, but the digital PDF file on computer harddrive would be the archetype.

The reason Kant employs the language of archetypes and ectypes is that a pure practical philosophy enacted by human beings takes place both in the supersensible and the sensible worlds. Because we are rational beings, our moral lives include archetypes, and because we are human beings, our moral lives require ectypes. The two conceptions of the highest good exist side-by-side, because the moral efforts of human beings to bring into existence in the sensible world the counterpart of the perfect moral world are guided by the idea of the perfect moral world. Archetypes provide direcation for ectypes and in turn are only realized in the sensible world by means of ectypes. (Wike & Showler 2010: 532)

The common theme being that ectype pertains to the real (as opposed to the possible and the necessary).

Flage, Daniel E. 2001. Berkeley's archetypes. Hermathena 171: 7-31. [JSTOR]

The word thing as comprising or standing for Idea & volition usefull. as standing for Idea and Archetype without the Mind Mischievous & useless. Philosophical Commentaries, §689

What are Berkeleian archetypes? What function do they play in Berkeley's philosophical theory? Since Berkeley often uses the term 'archetype' in the then-common philosophical sense of an entity external to a mind to which an idea refers or which an idea represents, which texts are germane to Berkeley's technical sense of 'archetype'? Can one have a positive idea or notion of an archetype? (Flage 2001: 7)

That's one of the problems I'm faced with: how are ideas and archetypes related? How are they different?

In this paper I attempt to answer those questions. Beginning with the passage in the Third Dialogue, where the archetype/ectype distinction explicitly is introduced, I examine the roles archetypes are said to play in considerations of transtemporal and intersubjective identity, on the one hand, and the account of creation, on the other. I argue that an archetype is an ontological posit that fulfills certain philosophical and theological ends. (Flage 2001: 7)

Must be Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Berkeley 1713).

In reply, Philonous seems willing to grant the existence of archetypes, but he relocates them as ideas in the mind of God. He says:

And (not to mention your having discarded those [material] archetypes) so may you suppose an external archetype on my principles: external, I mean, to your own mind; though indeed it must be supposed to exist in that mind which comprehends all things; but then this serves all the ends of identity, as well as if it existed out of a mind. And I am sure you yourself will not say, it is less intelligible. (3D 2:248)

Assuming that you and I see the same table, there must be a ground for the identity claim. If there is such a ground, that ground must be in either a material entity or an immaterial entity. But it cannot be in a material entity, since the notion of materiality is inconsistent. Hence, the ground for identity claims must be in an immaterial entity. (Flage 2001: 9)

These ideas in the mind of God (mente Divinâ) are also assumed by Peirce, though more on the side of laws of logic, rather than ideas of tables, I presume.

Fourth, how God individuates orderings of external complex ideas as one thing is incomprehensible. In this respect, archetypes are purely theoretical entities: they literally do nothing but provide an ontological ground for identity claims however they might do that. (Flage 2001: 12)

Philosophical fictions.

There are three problems with the portion of the Johnsonian interpretation quoted above. First, there is a philosophical problem. If we are to take our etypical ideas as copies of archetypal ideas, then Berkeley reintroduces the representationalism he was at pains to criticize in both the Principles and the Three Dialogues. Second, there is a textual problem. In neither the Principles nor the Dialogues does Berkeley represent divine ideas as distinct from ideas of sensation; he only goes so far as to claim that God does not perceive ideas by sensation, since that would require that God be acted upon. (Flage 2001: 14)

"It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding." (SEoP) - People weirdly believe that the things they perceive continue to exist when they no longer perceive them. What is object permanence?

So what have we seen? (1) Every idea of sensation is, as such, a real thing. (2) Archetypes, as divine ideas composed solely of ordering ideas of sensation, are ontologically real insofar as they are composed solely of idas of sensation. (3) An ontological ectype of a given archetype is composed solely of those ideas of sensation a finite mind actually perceives in sensibly apprehending an object. Notice that this has no epistemic trappings. That the table I now perceive is composed of sensible ideas constituting the partial composition of the archetypal table I saw an hour ago - that it is the same (complex) table I saw an hour ago - is a fact about the table that is not part of my sensible perceiving. (4) The epistemic ectype, that is, what one takes to be the 'real thing,' is a construct composed of ideas of sensation, ideas of the memory, and ideas of the imagination together with judgments regarding the relations among those constitutive ideas. (Flage 2001: 17)

For some reason these various types of ideas sound very strange. I'm clearly not yet "operating within the idea-theoretic tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries" (SEoP).

By blurring the distinction between ideas and things, Berkeley can allow that whatn we commonsensically deem ordinary objects exist when not perceived by finite minds: they exist as archetypes in a divine mind. (Flage 2001: 25)

This seems to be a persistent problem within the idea-theoretic tradition.

Apart from his discussion of the medicinal virtues of tar-water, Berkeley seems to want to show that the positions of the ancients - particularly the allusions to fire understood as a spiritual phenomenon - and modern accounts of power are consistent with his idealism and that even the ancients recognized a trinitarian concept of God (cf. Siris §§361ff). (Flage 2001: 27)

Just treated in the introduction to philosophy course how for the Stoics water, earth, and air were the passive hyle and fire the active logos.

Those who would find clues to the mystery of archetypes in Siris tend to read the work as setting forth a Platonic or Neo-Platonic position. If this is the case, then archetypes as divine ideas obtain the status of Platonic Forms residing in the mind of God. But, since Berkeley never uses the [|] word 'archetype' or any of its forms in the Siris, these commentators must show that Berkeley's alleged Platonism is germane to the theory of archetypes. This, I argue, they do not show. (Flage 2001: 27-28)

Exactly the problem, and why I'm preparing to jump head-first into platonism.

But I draw a distinction that Johnson does not acknowledge, viz., a distinction between ontological and epistemic ectype. Ontological ectypes consist of those collections of ideas of sensation that finite minds actually perceive. The ideas of sensation I now have of the computer in front of me are parts - together with all other ideas I actually have had and will have of the computer - of an ontological ectype of the computer. (Flage 2001: 30)

Unable to shake off the feeling that this is a superfluous multiplication of purely theoretical entities that can be avoided with Peirce's type/token/qualia.

Epistemic ectypes are those notions of objects we construct on the basis of experience. Properly, they consist of ideas of sensation, memory, and imagination that are taken to stand in certain lawful relations. Epistemic ectypes correspond, or fail to correspond, to an archetype to a certain degree. (Flage 2001: 30)

For an atheist, I take it, there are only epistemic ectypes, "ontological ectypes" being theological suppositions.