Monday, October 28, 2013

Two legs, four legs and the Incarnation

In this picture from 30 Rock's "Brooklyn Without Limits" episode, Kenneth has only two legs and yet Kenneth has four legs. This sounds like a contradiction, but of course it is not--we can see that it's not.

How shall we resolve the contradiction? Perhaps: Kenneth has two human legs and four table legs. But that suggests that Kenneth has six legs, and that doesn't seem right to say. Maybe we can say that his human legs are also table legs, so he has only four legs: two of them doing double-duty for table legs and human legs, and two of them doing double-duty for table legs and human arms. Maybe. But even the statement "Kenneth has four legs" seems wrong or at least misleading without qualification.

Much better to qualify with a qua: Kenneth qua human has only two legs. Kenneth qua table has four legs.

This should remind us of one of the standard solutions to apparently contradictory talk of Christ incarnate. Christ is eternal. Christ is conceived in time. Christ has boundless knowledge. Christ's knowledge is bounded. And so on. The solution is to say things like: Christ qua God is eternal and has boundless knowledge. Christ qua human is conceived in time and has bounded knowledge--and has two legs.

The naturalness of qua talk in the case of Kenneth should make us less suspicious of the incarnational case.

13 comments:

Drew said...

Socrates was Greek
Greek is the language of ancient Greece
Socrates is the language of ancient Greece

Same equivocation fallacy goes for the word "leg." A leg of a table is a different meaning than a leg of a human.

Alexander R Pruss said...

I don't know. Every human leg is a leg. Every table leg is a leg. Of course, "human leg" and "table leg" mean different things. But both human legs and table legs are legs. (Of course, analogy may be involved. But analogy is not equivocation.)

Heath White said...

I was thinking along the same lines as Drew: we are equivocating on 'leg'. But suppose not, as you suggest. Then it is strictly speaking true that K has four table legs and two human legs. We can say just that, without using any 'qua's. So there should be a way to rephrase qua-statements into non-qua statements which have more adjectives or adverbs. Is there, in the case of the Incarnation? (And if there is, shouldn't we prefer those statements for philosophical purposes?)

Alexander R Pruss said...

I do think one can do such rephrasing in the Incarnation case. :-)

Alexander R Pruss said...

Also, the idea that Kenneth has two human legs and four table legs leads to the idea that he either simpliciter has six legs or that he simpliciter has four legs.

Dagmara Lizlovs said...

I don't quite see the connection with this four legs, two legs, and Christ incarnate.

However, I do see a far simpler analogy: "Four legs good, two legs bad. Four legs good, two legs bad . . ." :-)

Heath White said...

If 'leg' in 'table leg' and 'human leg' is univocal, then K does have four legs simpliciter. If it is analogical, then he doesn't have any particular number of legs *simpliciter* and we can say why.

(I can see why we might want to avoid misleading phraseology for pastoral purposes but I would rather be as precise and explicit as possible for philosophical purposes. Part of my allergy to 'qua' statements is that I don't know what the logic of them is supposed to be: if S is F qua X, and all Fs are Gs, what follows? Etc. Give me something I know how to use to test the theory.)

Alexander R Pruss said...

There is also the issue of "has". To have as a body part and to have as artifactual part are different.

I think that if "qua" is in view, then "all Fs are Gs" probably comes to: "for all aspects H, anything that is an F qua H is a G qua H." So then "x is F qua H" implies "x is G qua H".

Dagmara Lizlovs said...

"Christ qua God is eternal and has boundless knowledge. Christ qua human is conceived in time and has bounded knowledge--and has two legs."

Let's make this more easier for the rest of us to understand. Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity and as the Word who created the whole universe has boundless knowledge. If we go to Heaven, He can tell us things right now that scientists won't know for another thousand years (that is if we haven't nuked ourselves out of existence in the meantime). Now if we get into a time machine and go back to 20 AD when Jesus was working as a carpenter in Joseph's shop and ask Him to explain quantum physics or the difference between a 747 and the Concorde, He wouldn't be able to do it, because He is incarnate as a human bounded in time and has bounded knowledge.

" Perhaps: Kenneth has two human legs and four table legs. But that suggests that Kenneth has six legs, and that doesn't seem right to say." Let's see here. If four legs are good and two legs are bad, what would six legs be? Better? Overkill? (Is this where the Orkin man comes in?) Diminishing returns? (Cockroaches and termites might take an issue with that.) :-)

Edgar Foster said...

I know this discussion happened some time ago (according to cyberspace-time standards), but a word that I did not see appear in this discussion was metaphor. To speak of table "legs" is to use an indirect speech-act (i.e. to engage in metaphoring). It's like speaking about mountains having feet or galaxies possessing arms.

Alexander R Pruss said...

Maybe, but why think the legs of animals are the primary case? There may already be kids who think that certain rodents are called "mice" by their resemblance to pieces of computer hardware.

Edgar Foster said...

There are two possible ways (at least) to answer your question. The usual answer in metaphor theory is conventions that are determined by phatic communities. Secondly, it has just worked out that way diachronically. In Greek, "dog" was applied to non-rational animals prior to becoming a pejorative term for humans.

Edgar Foster said...

The statement about Greek was meant to be an example of how language first has a primary sense, and then a derived sense.