David Siegel

Jenkins Comments on Pull Requests

2012-03-01 15:52:00 -0800

In Easy Feedback for Distributed Software Design, I mentioned an Express app I'd written to allow Jenkins, a continuous-integration server, to comment on open pull requests with build information:

I wanted to briefly mention it separately, and point everyone to this gist, where you can find instructions for setting this up on Heroku. I will try to submit this feature to Janky eventually, but for now you can invite your CI server to participate on pull requests--it's way better than flooding your email inbox, and more contextual than Janky's chat comments.

Easy Feedback for Distributed Software Design

2012-02-28 16:00:00 -0800

For a time, my job involved improving the user experience of a Windows desktop application that had been in development without qualified design input for two years. Given that a beta release was imminent, I decided to give the application the papercut treatment, cleaning up visual assets, hiring visual designers to freshen the identity, reverting disgustingly-skinned controls to their default appearance, correcting typos, removing technical jargon, etc.

Initially, each refinement took an inordinate about of time; it took a good week from the time I specified the simplest change to when the change was running on my laptop for review. I evaluated our development workflow and found that we scored a low 3 on the Joel Test. Rather than recount all of the depressing details, I'll present a few choice morsels of schadenfreude:

There was no preexisting peer review process, meaning that basic tools and cultural norms required for agile design were missing.
Source was kept in a 3GB perforce repo containing years of deprecated projects, build artifacts, and the skeleton of a programmer everyone thought had left for grad school in 2006.
The build process required two versions of Visual Studio, and it wasn't until months after I had joined that I could reliably build the product on my laptop.
'Automated' builds were run by a 2,000 line script that nobody understood, and took 45 minutes to run on a beefy server. This same script also served as a dumping ground for random maintenance code, half of which was commented out. It was like one of those medical oddity museums but with really bad Perl instead of pickled heads.

Fast, easy feedback from anyone.

I wanted to iterate much faster than one cycle per week. My personal goal was to provide design feedback within ten minutes of code change (bear in mind that we're a distributed team). My broader objective was for non-technical collaborators to be able to test the product as it was being developed. This may be the norm for web products, but desktop software is not often seen as amenable to real-time feedback, especially from remote, non-technical team members such as visual designers.

Decentralize

First of all, we migrated from Perforce to Git, abandoning our 3GB-per-branch code graveyard for a shiny, new 100MB repo with cheap branches. This meant that developers could commit, share, and collaborate on features without merging unfinished work into the product.

Next, I made product development visible to all members of the company by hosting our code on GitHub and signing up for HipChat. GitHub integrates with HipChat, so new branches, merge requests, comments, issues, etc. are announced, with links, right under our noses. Previously, few members of our organization knew how to install the Perforce client, tunnel into our VPN, and review changes to the product; now, anyone logged into our company chat can monitor development as it happens. For example, every morning, I open HipChat and see everything my overseas colleague worked on while I was asleep:

Automate

Once we had a branch-based workflow with high visibility of work-in-progress, it was time to focus on automating builds for review.

I used Rake and the excellent albacore library for building .NET projects, superseding the 2,000-line ancient Perl script with a 67-line Rakefile written in a declarative DSL. At this point, as long as you had two versions of Visual Studio, Git, and Ruby installed; and you had Bash knowledge and you'd configured your public key properly on GitHub, you could test work in progress like this:

$ git fetch && git checkout some-feature && rake build run

Setting up this build environment was still a manual, error-prone process, and using it required too much technical knowledge. To make it simpler, I created a preconfigured virtual machine with everything required to obtain and build the product. Using VirtualBox, anyone in the company could build the product in a few steps:

Install VirtualBox.
Download and run the virtual build machine.
Double-click the 'Build' script on the desktop.

After this, building the product required only a few clicks, and it could be done by non-technical collaborators on any platform. One of the designers we work with uses OS X, and now he can easily review his work in vivo. There are still a few drawbacks, however:

Downloading a 10GB virtual machine isn't fun, not even once.
The product should build no more than once per commit, not once per commit per reviewer.
The review process was still pull-based, in that the reviewer had to manually pull and build new changes before a review.

Automate More

I setup a Jenkins server to build every branch on every push, and I wrote an Express app that comments on open pull requests with links after every build:

Now, every open pull request has a link to a build of its latest commit. Builds happen incrementally, meaning that pull requests are updated within a couple minutes of a push. This is finally starting to feel slick!

The final piece I automated was obtaining builds for review. Although links on pull requests worked fairly well, I wanted to be able to open new builds immediately after being notified of changes in chat, without navigating a pull request or downloading anything manually. I configured Jenkins to copy successful builds into our company's shared Dropbox folder, so everyone has the latest successful build on each branch automatically synced to their desktop.

Iterate

Now if I see a pull request, or even just a new commit announced in chat, I can simply double-click the build and take a look; anyone in the company who reports an issue can verify its fix; and even non-technical remote collaborators who don't use Windows can run the product and participate in tight feedback loops.

If you're building a product on a distributed team, with or without non-technical collaborators, I strongly recommend adopting some of these automations!

Let's Chat About Our Issues

2012-02-24 16:00:00 -0800

Hubot is a handy and amusing chat robot originally written by GitHub, powered by a quickly evolving collection of scripts that let you chat with web services like Basecamp and mustachify.me.

Hubot is written in CoffeeScript on Node.js, so once you've invited him into your company or project's chat room, it's easy to teach him to fetch useful (and useless) information in response to chat messages. For example, I can ask Hubot (who I've nicknamed 'Fred') if my website is up, or to show me a picture of a pug:

We recently started using GitHub's issue tracker for projects at X1, so I added Assaf Arkin's GitHub issues script to Hubot and voilá! Anyone can easily list open issues for any project without leaving the conversation:

Listing all open issues for a project quickly overwhelms the conversation, flooding the screen with mostly irrelevant information. I sent a pull request that enhances the show me issues command with some additional options and parameters:

me is optional: show issues for twitter/bootstrap
In addition to a default user, you can set a default repo: show issues
You can specify an assignee: show david's issues or show my issues
You can specify a label like show ui issues to see only issues labeled 'ui'.
You can perform a simple query with show issues about icon. This will only show issues whose titles or bodies mention 'icon'.
You can specify a limit: show 10 issues or show 3 of my issues
Combine parameters: show me 5 of stu's ui issues about icons

These features were merged into hubot-scripts v2.0.5, so simply update your hubot to pull them in; you can also grab the script directly. See the comment at the beginning of the script for configuration details.

I created another script for Zendesk tickets that uses a similar grammar if you'd like to try it; it isn't yet merged into hubot-scripts.

Thoughts on Gadget Rules

2011-08-23 17:00:00 -0700

Check out Gadget Rules--I promise they're less blurry and windy.

Introducing Futureproof

2011-02-27 16:00:00 -0800

Six months ago, I was working as a user experience designer in London. After a particularly frustrating day, in an attempt to put my mind as far away from designing software as possible, I picked a book of poems by Pablo Neruda from my shelf and decided that I would memorize them while soaking in the tub. As I started to read the first poem, I immediately sensed that the part of my mind that memorizes poetry was not as I had left it. It seemed severely impaired. What has happened to my mind? Why didn't I notice this earlier? What else is different? Is anything missing? Who am I now?, I questioned.

To justify these concerns, I have to step back a few years. When I was fourteen years old, my high school switched to block scheduling, meaning that my spanish, english, and art classes fell in a different semester from my math and science classes. In accordance with this, I formed a conceptual model of my own mind resembling two fields separated by a fence. I imagined that I was moving back and forth between two "fields of knowledge" every few months, with the incessant feeling that the grass was always greener on the other side.

When I went to university, I was admitted to a college of arts and sciences to study Philosophy, and to an engineering school to study Computer Science and Computer Engineering. The fields of knowledge became a binary star system, with a literate mind and a calculating mind entangled in tight orbit. Thinking of my mind as dichotomized always made me feel odd, but I suspected that it made me stronger by preventing me from developing a comfort zone in which I would nurture my strengths but ignore my weaknesses.

That night in London, I discovered that my binary star was changing in a way that I didn't like, and would likely continue to change for the worse unless I identified the source of the changes and corrected my behavior.

This discovery red-flagged my quiet suspicion that heavy use of technology was affecting my literate mind. Over the previous year I had begun to notice increased difficulty reading at length and articulating my thoughts in speech. I was now confronted with the stark realization that although, as a user experience designer, I could make technology beautiful and easy to use, the fruits of my labor were potentially harmful to people in ways that I did not understand. Put simply, I suspected that my industry was dangerously ignorant of how its products effect people when they are not using them. Until I understood how to design technology that would cause people to flourish rather than wither, I had to stop what I was doing. I quit my job, left London, and have been busy researching and reflecting on this matter ever since.

I now clearly see that with respect to technology–specifically Internet-connected devices–we are still in a state of nature. Our relationship to technology is totally unsophisticated. We lack balance and harmony. We are natural over-consumers on a path to technological obesity. I unequivocally think that technology is a good thing, but I am equally convinced that if we do not develop a sophisticated relationship to technology, we will suffer consequences small and large, physical and mental, personal and interpersonal.

One sometimes encounters hints of an inchoate "technology practice" when bloggers spontaneously write about simplifying the technology they own, abstaining from social networking, switching to standing desks, etc. My aim is to make this notion of technology practice explicit and coherent, and to create products that reinforce it.

Towards this end, I am creating a company called Futureproof. My cofounder is yogi/video game designer Michael Highland. Our goal is to reconcile the need to use technology with the desire to be mentally and physically resilient. If this interests you, please take a look and stay tuned!

My First Visit to NPH Honduras

2011-01-30 16:00:00 -0800

I recently returned from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where my flatmate Ross and I spent two weeks working at Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH). This work was the culmination of a few months of brainstorming, planning and fundraising as part of the Honduras Lab Project, my effort to provide the children at NPH with reliable Internet access and updated computers, and to develop infrastructure to allow a nearby surgery center to share an Internet connection with the orphanage.

My original goals were to improve the existing satellite Internet connection; to erect long-range WiFi antennas to send an Internet signal from the satellite connection to the school and surgery center situated 1 km away; and to set up a demo lab at the school showcasing new educational software so teachers could update the school's technology curriculum. I also had hoped to begin implementing a computerized inventory system in the surgery center, but this was a somewhat lesser goal before the trip.

On our first day, we climbed the roof of the surgery center looking for a building in the heart of the NPH campus where we could place one of our antennas. Our plan was to place one antenna on the surgery center roof, and another antenna on a building where Internet access was already available, thereby bringing Internet access to the surgery center.

The long-range antennas we brought are capable of sending a signal 5 miles, but we were ultimately foiled by dense tree cover. We did stumble upon what might turn out to be an even better approach for bringing Internet to the school and surgery center, using existing power lines to send a signal instead of WiFi.

I was made aware of previous efforts to improve technology on the ranch, and after interviewing ranch administrators I realized that although new technologies had been introduced, ranch staff lacked the skills to maintain the improvements so the previous efforts had been reverted. I spent the remainder of the first week teaching Roger and his assistant Juan Carlos, who maintain the computers on the ranch, new skills that I felt would prepare them for whatever technology improvements the ranch might see in the following few years.

Half-way through our stay, there was a soccer match. These guys are good.

We spent a lot of time playing with the kids. Most games consisted of jumping over sticks.

Sugar, the educational software that I demoed for the teachers was a huge hit. Sugar is a collection of learning activities that allow young children to create music, paintings, animations, stories, and more. The lab computers were too slow to get Sugar running acceptably, but the demos I gave have set a course for a vastly improved technology curriculum, and I will continue to work with other volunteers to bring Sugar to NPH.

Perhaps our greatest success was that we setup a digital inventory system for the surgery center. We brought a Nexus One (I wish my smartphone a happy and active retirement) and 700 pre-printed barcode stickers, which we stuck to shelf after shelf of supplies. It is now possible for medical volunteers to see which supplies are dwindling so they can pack the right equipment before traveling down. The medical staff were beyond thrilled!

We spent our last few days enjoying the beautiful weather, and swimming in a nearby dam.

We are very grateful to Stefan Feuerstein for welcoming us to NPH. Hopefully, I will return later this year to pickup where we left off!

Beating myself up for a good cause

2010-09-13 17:00:00 -0700

On September 25th I will participate in an international fundraising event called "Fight Gone Bad." The event consists of a 17 minute physical challenge designed to simulate a mixed martial arts fight that has "gone bad," or become too difficult and lasted too long. I will sweat, yell, cry, and possibly vomit and/or faint. I'm putting myself through this hell to raise money for three good causes:

Lance Armstrong Foundation identifies and acts on the issues faced by cancer survivors in order to comprehensively improve quality of life for members of the global cancer community.

Wounded Warrior Project believes the greatest casualty is being forgotten. WWP provides unique, direct programs and services to meet the needs of severely injured service members.

CrossFit Foundation provides support and assistance to the CrossFit community, the men and women of the military, law enforcement and first responder communities and their families in times of need.

To donate or find out more, check out the official Fight Gone Bad website, or support me by donating now!

Announcing the User Experience Advocates Project

2010-06-09 17:00:00 -0700

After working on papercuts for a year, I realized how disorganized many open source projects affecting Ubuntu are when it comes to improving user experience. I would often go to upstream projects with a list of paper cuts to discuss and have a very difficult time finding someone to discuss them with. Either the maintainer was too busy, or nobody was interested in small user experience issues, or "the mailing list made that [design decision]," or there was no record justifying the existing user experience so project stakeholders assumed they were deliberate decisions made by the original authors, etc.

We simply cannot go on like this! We need to be able to address user experience issues at least as effectively as we address technical issues, and this starts with being able to communicate about these issues at least as effectively. If I discover a user experience issue in F-Spot, there should be exactly one person I can discuss it with, who will take responsibility for keeping an eye on it, and who will discuss and prioritize it with F-Spot's development team. This person would be F-Spot's User Experience Advocate, and everyone working on F-Spot would have this person on speed dial.

The User Experience Advocate is responsible for representing the interests of users within an open source project, and has the following specific duties:

Review usability and user research documents.
Communicate user experience research to the project team.
Review use cases if they are available or produce them if they don't exist.
Review software against user experience guidelines, usability heuristics and brand.
Work closely with the maintainer and advise on solutions that are most aligned with users needs and findings.
Conduct usability testing or other research to support the project team's decision making.
Write and follow usability bug reports throughout the lifecycle of the project.
Work closely with UX Advocates on related projects.
Participate in the greater user experience community.

Where do we find people with these skills, you ask? We already have them! To be a UX Advocate, you don't need to be able to create pixel-perfect mockups in Inkscape or have an HCI degree. All you need is love--you have to love an open source project and the people who use it, and you need to be patient, persistent, and persuasive. Of course, if you have some background in user experience, that would be tremendously helpful, but it's unnecessary; it's far better for an open source project to have a novice UX Advocate than none at all.

Many open source projects already have people serving in this capacity; sometimes it's the project maintainer, or sometimes there's a de facto usability expert. My goal is to ensure that all major software projects shipping in Ubuntu can name their UX Advocate by this coming October. I would be delighted if the same happens for Kubuntu, or for any arbitrary open source software project for that matter. In my opinion, if an open source project has a Maintainer, it should also have a UX Advocate.

In his keynote address at O'Reilly Open Source Convention on July 22nd, 2008, Mark Shuttleworth challenged the open source community to not only to catch up to Apple in terms of user experience, but to surpass the user experience of Mac OS X within two years. That two year period will expire in 45 days, so how are we doing?

(Before people start complaining about this comparison, let me make it clear that I understand that many Ubuntu users are not interested in Apple or any of their products, and that many members of the open source community do not share the goal of making Ubuntu's user experience surpass that of Mac OS X. That's fine, I understand. I am writing this because it is my duty to make the experience of using Ubuntu better than the experience of using any similar product, and because Ubuntu and Mac OS X, as desktop operating systems, are similar products, it is my duty to make the experience of using Ubuntu better than the experience of using Mac OS X. I cannot accomplish this effectively without comparing the two, but I digress.)

It is an incredibly daunting task to compare the total user experience of Ubuntu to the total user experience of Mac OS X, so instead I will attempt a cursory comparison the rate of change of user experience over the course of the last two years. Any objective critic will readily admit that the Ubuntu of two years ago, Ubuntu 8.04, did not offer the same or better user experience as the Mac OS X of two years ago, Mac OS X 10.5. To trump the user experience of Mac OS X, Ubuntu's user experience will necessarily have had to improve more in two years than Mac OS X did.

Here's how the user experience of Ubuntu has improved in two years:

The Ubuntu Software Center made it a snap to discover and install software.
The Humanity icon theme gave us much improved, scalable icons.
The Radiance and Ambiance themes made Ubuntu more beautiful.
The Me Menu lets you Tweet, Dent, and change status from anywhere.
The Messaging Menu consolidated new message notifcations.
The Session Menu made fast user switching and other session states more accessible.
PiTiVi Video Editor enabled video editing out of the box.
Brasero made burning CDs much simpler.
Empathy enabled video and audio chat on supported hardware.
Gwibber Social Client brought Facebook, Twitter, and other social services to the desktop.
Monochromatic panel icons reduced visual noise and made the panel feel cleaner.
Improved window animations and effects made Ubuntu feel snappier and smoother.
Simple Scan made scanning a no-brainer.
The Ubuntu One Music Store puts a huge library of DRM-free music at your fingertips.
Rhythmbox added fantastic iPod and iPhone support.
We fixed 178 Paper Cuts.
When you start or shut down, there is less flickering.
Ubuntu boots very very quickly.
Encrypted Home Folders keep your files extremely secure.
Ubuntu One keeps your files synchronized across multiple computers and the web.
Bluetooth Setup greatly simplifies working with Bluetooth devices.
The Installer slideshow gives a slick overview of the Ubuntu experience.
USB Startup Disk Creator saves time, hassle, and CDs!
Notify OSD presents uniform, unobstrusive notifications.
Sudoku!
Firefox 3 brought private browsing, improved UI, better security, more speed, improved audio, video, and web fonts.
Transmission BitTorrent Client makes downloading large files very pleasant.
Easier configuration of multiple displays.
Much refined installer, including a nicer time zone selector.
Ability to enable auto-login.
Tomboy Notes sync puts your notes on all of your computers and the web.
OpenOffice.org v3 brought many new features and improvements.
PulseAudio gives us better sound control for multiple devices.
Improved out-of-the-box experience for users of Nvidia drivers.
Mobile Broadband support lets you easily connect to the Internet via your mobile phone.
BBC and YouTube support in Movie Player.
Guest Account makes it easier to share your computer.
Fast User Switching.
Improved user account management.
Evolution with Exchange MAPI support (not just OWA).
Plug-and-Play printing enabled by automatic printer driver installation.
Notification of USB device removal (i.e. "you can unplug now").
PDF comment support.
F-Spot duplicate photo detection.
Improved WINE integration.
Autorun for media containing software.
Tabs in Nautilus.
Desktop background slideshows.
And of course, improved hardware support so more things Just Work.

Now I'd like you take a look at the improvements Apple made to Mac OS X in a two year period. Please visit that link and read at least the bold text, if not the entire page.

At the very least, can we not say that these improvements are comparable? I think they are. Of course there have been some regressions, but if someone would have shown me the list of improvements made to Ubuntu two years ago, and told me that all of these changes would be made in time for Ubuntu 10.04, I would have been very skeptical.

What will Ubuntu be like two years from now if every project assigns a UX Advocate to take ultimate responsibility for the user experience of that project? It will be amazing!

Haskell Gem – Unwrapping Indented Text

2009-11-03 16:00:00 -0800

While processing some email, I needed a script to unwrap indented lines in email headers. I wrote a Haskell program that turned out to be a short and sweet demonstration of simple but interesting Haskell features (pattern matching, guards, type inference, function composition, and the humble cons) so I thought I'd share it.

If you're new to Haskell,

[] is the empty list
[a] is a list with a single element a
x : y creates a new list by placing element x at the front of list y
++ is concatenate
interact is a function taking a single argument, a function that takes a string and returns a string, and returns a bit of IO that runs the string transformation function on the contents of STDIN and prints the result
. (period) is a binary operator that composes functions
foldr is right-fold, and behaves like this: foldr f d [a, b, c] == f a (f b (f c d))
Lines of the form | a = b are guards, which evaluate to b if a evaluates to True

Example usage:

[/tmp]% cat > header
This is a normal line.
This is a slightly longer line that
__wraps with two spaces.
A short line.
Another example of a long line that
____wraps with tabs (not just once,
____but twice.
Final line.
[/tmp]% cat header | runhaskell Unwrap.hs
This is a normal line.
This is a slightly longer line that wraps with two spaces.
A short line.
Another example of a long line that wraps with tabs (not just once, but twice.
Final line.

pa·per cut (pā'pər kŭt)

2009-06-02 17:00:00 -0700

For Ubuntu 9.10, the Ayatana Project together with the Canonical Design Team will focus on fixing some of the "paper cuts" affecting user experience within Ubuntu. Here I offer an example of a paper cut and a preliminary definition of the term.

Let me introduce you to Lauchpad bug #302231, the perfect example of a paper cut. In the screenshot below, you can see GNOME Do's preferences window, opened to the Plugin configuration tab with the plugin search field highlighted in green. When a user opens Do's preferences window, most of the time that user is going to enable, disable, or configure a plugin. For this reason we worked very hard to make the Plugin configuration tab easy to understand, and not only simple to use but fun to use as well. We also select the Plugin tab by default whenever you open the preferences window.

Here's where the paper cut fits in--the search field lost default focus at some point during development, and two releases were made in which users had to click on the search field to focus it nearly every time they configured plugins. This is a very small detail, and it was extremely simple to remedy, but it slipped through the cracks for two successive releases before I sat down to fix it. Part of the reason I put off fixing it is because it seemed inconsequential, as the amount of programming required to fix it was so small compared to other bugs in the application. Also, as with many other paper cuts, users (myself included) became habituated to this annoyance, learning to ignore and work around it.

Even though this was a small bug with a trivial fix, fixing it improved the usability of the application dramatically. Once fixed, the experience of configuring the application became significantly less painful, and this bolstered an aura of usability surrounding the entire application.

From this experience, I would say that a paper cut is a bug that will improve user experience if fixed, is small enough for users to become habituated to it, and is trivial to fix.

Santayana's Response to the Metaphysical Excesses in Schopenhaur's Account of Aesthetic Experience

2007-12-18 16:00:00 -0800

In The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer offers an encyclopedic vision of a dichotomized world; half of the world is mere appearance or representation, while the other half consists of things-in-themselves, inner natures, Will. Schopenhauer borrows the language and concepts from his general system of metaphysical duality, most notably the concept of the Platonic Idea, and applies them in an account of aesthetic experience. In The Sense of Beauty, George Santayana takes a decidedly non-metaphysical approach to explaining aesthetic experience, as Santayana thinks that philosophers of art before him "have generally been audacious metaphysicians...[who] have represented general and obscure principles, suggested by other parts of their philosophy, as the conditions of artistic excellence and the essence of beauty" (6). Santayana argues that these obscure metaphysical principles are "vague [expressions] of [our] highly complex emotions" (8), which nonetheless excite our aesthetic susceptibility, but fail to tell us what is beautiful and why. I will frame Santayana's critical response to Schopenhauer's metaphysical excesses by first discussing Santayana's general criticism of the metaphysical or "Platonist" approach to aesthetics. After that, I will summarize Schopenhauer's general theory and the role Platonic Ideas play in his account of aesthetic experience. Then, I will consider Santayana's psychological explanations of the origin of Platonic Ideas and their aesthetic function as a response to Schopenhauer's use of the same. Finally, drawing on these discrepancies, I will argue that Santayana's concept of Expression provides a better explanation of the immediate and intrinsic quality of aesthetic value, which Schopenhauer only expresses metaphorically in terms of "pure contemplation, absorption in perception, being lost in the object, forgetting all individuality," etc. (197).

I. Santayana's General Criticism

Santayana prefaces his aesthetic doctrine with an explanation of why he believes that previous attempts to explain aesthetic experience have been "abortive and incoherent" (4). He attributes the shortcomings of other aesthetic theories to a general distrust of phenomena grounded in human nature, such as imagination and emotion. This distrust results in a hesitancy to incorporate these phenomena into accounts of aesthetic experience, producing theories that are artificially abstracted from human interest. Other theories of aesthetic experience make the mistake of equivocating explanation of beauty with expression of beauty; language that is beautiful or abstract may express aesthetic qualities, but it does not often provide adequate explanation of those qualities.

Santayana argues that previous philosophers have wrongly attempted to lead explanations of aesthetic experience away from the domain of human interest. They do this in an attempt to insulate their theories from matters which they think are too transient, too particular, or too dependent to offer an adequate explanation of objects and laws thought to be independent of human nature:

A circumstance that has also contributed to the absence or to the failure of aesthetic speculation is the subjectivity of the phenomenon with which it deals. Man has a prejudice against himself: anything which is a product of his mind seems to him to be unreal or comparatively insignificant. We are satisfied only when we fancy ourselves surrounded by objects and laws independent of our nature. (4)

In their hasty pursuit of objective laws governing aesthetic experience, other philosophers, Santayana argues, have "neglected the exclusively subjective and human department of imagination and emotion" (4). In practice, we find that it is precisely these subjective faculties which decide the value of experience, and which also have a formative influence on our experience. "Things are interesting because we care about them, and important because we need them" (4), writes Santayana, emphasizing the central role of the subject in deciding the value of experience. The opinion that "unless moral and aesthetic judgments are expressions of objective truth, and not merely expressions of human nature, they stand condemned to hopeless triviality" (4) leads to explanations of aesthetic experience so abstracted from human nature that they lose the propriety their authors sought to preserve.

Santayana's second general criticism addresses the language used by previous philosophers of art, most notably the language of the Platonists. According to Santayana, Platonic theories of beauty, which describe beauty as a "manifestation of God to the senses," or as a revealing of Platonic Ideas to the mind, offer "no objective account of the nature and origin of beauty, but [only] the vague expression of...highly complex emotions" (8). Through beautiful metaphors, these theories stimulate the aesthetic function in us, winning our awe and admiration, but Santayana accuses them of failing to elucidate "the conditions and the varieties of...how it comes about that we perceive beauty at all, or have any inkling of [the divinity or perfection expressed by the beautiful]" (8). In other words, these theories meet our demand for aesthetic nourishment and inspiration, but fail to meet our demand for comprehension:

[We] ought not to...accept as an explanation of aesthetic feeling what is in truth only an expression of it... For the expressions of this experience we should go...best of all to the immortal parables of Plato. But...we shall not find any instruction there upon the questions which most press upon us; namely, how an ideal is formed in the mind, how a given object is compared with it, what is the common element in all beautiful things, and what the substance of the absolute ideal in which all ideals tend to be lost; and, finally, how we come to be sensitive to beauty at all, or to value it... So far, then, are we from ignoring the insight of the Platonists, that we hope to explain it, and in a sense to justify it, by showing that it is the natural and sometimes supreme expression of the common principles of our nature. (9)

This passage distills Santayana's attitude towards Platonic theories of aesthetic experience, and enumerates the consummately expressed but dismally explained components of aesthetic experience that Santayana hopes to bring to light. Santayana hopes to provide natural justifications for the insights of the Platonists. Towards this end, Santayana is concerned with the origin and nature of Platonic Ideas ("ideals") as mental phenomena, and how these ideals relate to our perceptions of aesthetic value (Arnett 27).

II. Schopenhauer's General Theory and Use of Platonic Ideas

Schopenhauer begins his theory of the world as will and representation with the recognition that "the world is my representation" (3), providing the example that we know neither the sun nor the earth, but only the vision of the sun and the feeling of the earth. We are similarly aware of our own bodies as representations, but we are also aware of a self, or inner nature, which Schopenhauer refers to as will. When we consider other objects of experience and see that, like ourselves, they posses this outer nature of representation, by analogy with the dual-nature of the self as inner and outer nature, as will and representation, we consider the objects of our experience apart from their representations, and we find that "what still remains over must be, according to its inner nature, the same as what in ourselves we call will" (105). Will is the thing-in-itself; all representations, all objects of experience are phenomena of the will. Schopenhauer also refers to the representation or object as "the objectivity of the will," or the will made object.

Representations have been conditioned for intelligibility, or lent a knowable form, by the principle of sufficient reason, which is Schopenhauer's term for the categories of time, space, and causality. The subject's experience and knowledge must assume the form imposed by the principle of sufficient reason, and because of this, the will, lying outside the province of the principle of sufficient reason (113), cannot be experienced or known directly. In this way, the principle of sufficient reason establishes a rigid barrier between subject and object in which the object remains representation for the subject--its will is inaccessible. Nevertheless, Schopenhauer argues that in order for these objects to be more than "empty phantoms" of space and time, they must have some vicarious meaning; "they must point to something, must be the expression of something, which is not, like themselves, object, representation, something existing merely relatively, namely for a subject... not a representation, but a thing-in-itself" (119). Schopenhauer explains that if we could take the phenomenon, and remove the parts conditioned or explained by the principle of sufficient reason, what is left is the representation closest to the will, the most adequate objectivity of the will. In what is left, we "recognize the inscrutable forces that manifest themselves in all the bodies of nature as identical in kind to what in me is the will, and as differing from it only in degree" (126).

Schopenhauer calls the differing degrees of will "grades of objectivity of the will." Different genera of objects possess greater and lesser grades of objectified will, and Schopenhauer identifies these different grades as the Platonic Ideas:

There is a higher degree of this objectification in the plant than in the stone, a higher degree in the animal than in the plant; indeed, the will's passage into visibility, its objectification, has gradations... these grades of the objectification of the will are nothing but Plato's Ideas. (128)

Just as thought by Plato, these grades are related to individual objects as their eternal forms, or as their prototypes (Schopenhauer 130). When we are confronted with a Platonic Idea, the principle of sufficient reason explodes the Idea into a multiplicity of phenomena, individualized in space, time, and matter (Schopenhauer 134). Schopenhauer also notes that the Platonic Ideas form a hierarchy, with the forces of nature at the bottom and man at the top. Every phenomenon is an expression of the Platonic Idea at a certain level in the hierarchy, and also of Ideas below the phenomenon's highest Idea: a plant is an expression of The Plant, and of The Vegetable Life, and of the Ideas all the way down to those of inorganic natural forces. A plant is a more beautiful instance of The Plant the greater the proportion its expression of its highest Idea stands in relation to its expression of lower Ideas:

According as the organism succeeds more or less in subduing those natural forces that express the lower grades of the will's objectivity (the lower Ideas), it becomes the more or less perfect expression of its Idea, in other words, it stands nearer to or farther from the Ideal to which beauty in its species belongs. (Schopenhauer 146)

Quoting Plato, Schopenhauer states that objects of experience are always fleeting, forever coming into existence and quickly perishing. Therefore they have no true being, but rather a being only relative to "the real archetypes of those shadowy outlines, the eternal Ideas, the original forms, of all things, [and only these Ideas] can be described as truly existing" (171). Through the principle of sufficient reason, the one Idea behind each species of phenomenon manifests itself to the subject as a plurality of individuated copies. These copies are created solely for cognition by the subject, and therefore have reality only for that subject (182). However, in exceptional circumstances, Schopenhauer believes we can have immediate, intuitive access to the Idea (173). To achieve this requires a transformation on behalf of the subject, for the subject only knows what is conditioned by the principle of sufficient reason, and the Idea lies outside the purview of this principle (176):

The transition is possible, but to be regarded as only an exception, from the common knowledge of particular things to the knowledge of the Idea [takes place suddenly] by the subject's ceasing to be merely individual, and being now a pure will-less subject of knowledge. Such a subject of knowledge no longer follows relations in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason... We lose ourselves entirely in this object...we forget our individuality, our will, and continue to exist only as a clear mirror of the object. (178)

Schopenhauer continues ad nauseum with similar descriptions of the subject who no longer knows through the principle of sufficient reason, but has entered a state of pure contemplation of Ideas:

The object also is here nothing but the representation of the subject, so the subject, by passing entirely into the perceived object, has also become the object itself... When the Idea appears, subject and object can no longer be distinguished in it, because the Idea, the adequate objectivity of the will, the real world as representation, arises only when subject and object reciprocally fill and penetrate each other completely. (180)

Schopenhauer calls this mode of pure contemplation of Ideas art or the aesthetic method of consideration; conversely, contemplation that operates by the principle of sufficient reason alone he calls science (184). The artistic genius has a "preeminent ability for such contemplation" (185), and the genius communicates the eternal Ideas apprehended in pure contemplation through the media of sculpture, painting, poetry, or music (184).

Schopenhauer writes that the value of aesthetic experience consists in the annihilation of the subject's will. This is because Schopenhauer believes that "all willing springs from a lack, from deficiency, and thus from suffering" (196). It follows that in aesthetic experience, where the subject leaves all individuality, all self, all will behind, the subject enters an ascetic state of negative pleasure. This denial of self is characterized by Knox as the subject coming to "abhor the very reality of which his own phenomenal existence is an expression, that is to say, the will to live, the innermost kernel of the world. He must disown his own nature by extinguishing at the source all sensual desire and gratification...by the mortification of the body which is the visible objectivity of the will" (Knox 130). Schopenhauer compares this state to a momentary Nirvana. For Santayana, this state of purely intellectual existence, of the subject as the emotionless, desire less, will-less mirror of the object, is far removed from actual human experience.

III. Santayana's Psychological Account of the Platonic Idea

Following some general remarks about Santayana's theory, I will add to Santayana's general criticism of Platonist theories what Santayana writes specifically about Ideas as conceived by Plato and Schopenhauer. These words motivate Santayana's psychological account of Ideas. Then, I will discuss Santayana's psychological explanation of the origin of Platonic Ideas and their aesthetic function as a response to Schopenhauer's use of the same.

According to Santayana, beauty is experienced either as the affinity of an object with its ideal form, or by the excitement of the senses caused by stimuli of color, sound, or exquisite detail (101). When we experience beauty in the perception of an object, Santayana claims that our perception of beauty is immediate and intrinsic to our experience (16). We therefore easily make the mistake of regarding beauty as a quality belonging to the object (31). For this reason, Santayana borrows language from Schopenhauer and refers to our experience of beauty as one of "objectified pleasure" (33). Furthermore, Santayana argues that this pleasure is positive, for in an ideal existence, devoid of danger, pain, and pity, we can suppose that "the variety of nature and the infinity of art...would fill the leisure of that ideal existence... [as] the elements of our positive happiness" (20).

Santayana argues that explanations of aesthetic experience given in terms of Platonic Ideas are often unscientific because they fail to explain aesthetic phenomena, offering instead "the highest expressions of that activity which they fail to make comprehensible" (7). Schopenhauer's psychology, Santayana points out, was far too vague to offer an explanation of the significance of those highest expressions (25), and even if the pure contemplation of Platonic Ideas were possible, Ideas alone do not explain why this contemplation would be pleasing (7). Santayana concedes that the question of whether or not there are Ideas, or eternal types, is not settled, but he argues that even if Ideas do exist, either in nature or in the mind of God, our notions of them could bear no resemblance to Ideas as they are (73). For example, Santayana supposes that the Platonic Idea of a tree exists--in fact, he says there is no way to deny this possibility. Even if this were the case, we could have no way of relating our ideas of particular instances of trees to the Idea of a tree. For even if the Platonic myth were true, and we possessed a latent memory of The Tree from before our birth, our ideas of particular trees belong to multiple definite and discrete types, and the Idea of a tree is necessarily infinite and unified (74). Santayana calls this incompatibility "hopeless" (74).

"Very simple, on the other hand, is the explanation of the existence of [the Idea] as a residuum of experience" (74), offers Santayana. Santayana argues that just as our idea of any one particular object is a composite of our various experiences of that object, our idea of a type is the composite of our ideas of the objects of that type. We have a natural tendency to group similar ideas of objects into a representative idea of a type because the mind is incapable of keeping all of these very similar ideas separated; "[the mind] cannot hold clearly so great a multitude of distinctions and relations as would be involved in naming and conceiving separately each grain of sand, or drop of water, each fly or horse or man that we have ever seen" (74). When we first perceive an object, we intuit in its crude form a suggestion of what type of object it is. Through a subconscious process of "apperception," we attempt to identify the object at hand with a type in order to synthesize our impression with our memory. The ease with which we make this synthesis "determines the value of the object as an example of its class" (72). This notion of apperception provides a psychological foundation for Schopenhauer's claim that the beauty of an object is proportional to the expression of its highest Idea. What Schopenhauer means by "a plant is more beautiful the more it is an expression of The Plant," according to Santayana, is that value is added to our experience when the plant at hand is easily identified with the representative idea of its type (71); on the other hand, value is subtracted when there is cognitive dissonance between our impression of the plant and the contribution made by memory. These values are aesthetic because they arise immediately from perception, appearing as qualities belonging to the object (12).

Santayana admits that the formation of types is a "matter of subjective bias" and that we "cannot expect that a type should be the exact average of the examples from which it is drawn" (75). If some subjective interest causes us to pay relatively more attention to a specific part of our percept of an object, this bias will be represented in our idea of that particular object, and therefore in its type. Santayana calls this "the average modified in the direction of pleasure" (76). For example, ask a farmer to describe his idea of a horse, and he will talk about a stockier-than-average beast, with broad shoulders for bearing heavy loads, and wide hooves for working in soft soil. The farmer notices these features most when he sees a horse because they are most relevant to the good of the farmer--successful farming. On the other hand, ask a bandit to describe his idea of a horse, and he will talk about a horse that is taller and leaner than average, so to be fast enough to outrun the Sheriff's horse. Just as with the farmer, the bandit's idea of a horse is colored by subjective interest--the good of the bandit is successful banditry, for which the ability to evade capture is a necessary condition. Santayana explains,

The type is still a natural resultant of particular impressions; but the formation of it has been guided by a deep subjective bias in favour of what has delighted the eye... To praise any object for approaching the ideal of its kind is therefore only a roundabout way of specifying its intrinsic merit and expressing its direct effect on our sensibility. If in referring to the ideal we were not thus analyzing the real, the ideal would be an irrelevant and unmeaning thing. We know what the ideal is because we observe what pleases us in the reality... [Ideals] stand for specific satisfactions, or else they stand for nothing at all. (77) Santayana argues that ideals express natural instincts and aspirations, and therefore find their ultimate justification in human nature (Arnett 28). Although the features of horses described by the farmer and bandit may not strike non-farmers or non-bandits as intrinsically valuable or beautiful, Santayana's concept of Expression will show how these features can become intrinsic and beautiful.

For Santayana, the activity of imagination is much more important philosophically in the formation of ideals than the process which arrives at an ideal by averaging in the direction of pleasure (Arnett 53). "Imagination, in a word, generates as well as abstracts; it observes, combines, and cancels, but it also dreams... [sometimes resulting in] a vision of an unexampled beauty" (112). Santayana calls this idealization wrought by imagination "aesthetic inspiration" (112). The ideal created in this way reaches the zenith of aesthetic value, expressing human interests in a greater degree than any object of experience, or any merely abstracted type (Arnett 54). These ideals are the most beautiful things that we can imagine, and Santayana suggests that there is no fault is considering them to be the most beautiful, for their appeal to man "cannot be increased by any other sort of veracity or being" (Arnett 54). Furthermore, Santayana insists that the independent existence of these ideals is "beyond the possibility of a shadow of evidence" (117).

Schopenhauer objects to ideals formed merely from experience and human interest, insisting that these factors cannot be wholly constitutive of our knowledge of beauty:

Has nature ever produced a human being perfectly beautiful in all of his parts? It has been supposed that the artist must gather the beautiful parts separately distributed among many human beings, and construct a beautiful whole from them; an absurd and meaningless opinion. Once again, it is asked, how is he to know that just these forms and not others are beautiful?... No knowledge of the beautiful is at all possible purely a posteriori and from mere experience. (222)

Santayana's response to this objection is the key to understanding his psychological explanation of the origin of Platonic Ideas, and to understanding the essential difference between Schopenhauer's and Santayana's aesthetic theories. According to Santayana, Schopenhauer has committed an error in speaking of the Idea as what ought to please, rather than as what actually pleases (79). Shortly after claiming that there can be no knowledge of the beautiful based on experience alone, Schopenhauer adds, "[the artist,] by recognizing in the individual thing its Idea he, so to speak, understands nature's half-spoken words. He expresses clearly what she merely stammers. He impresses on the hard marble the beauty of the form which nature failed to achieve in a thousand attempts" (222). Schopenhauer anthropomorphizes nature, assigning our subjective interests to nature as if to lift them to a more objective and authoritative ground. The notion that nature has interests is naive; the notion that nature fails or succeeds in fulfilling those interests is misguided; but the idea that man succeeds where nature has failed is hubris1. Nature has no forethought, it has no interests, it has no plans. We, on the other hand, do have forethought, and interests, and plans. "Beauty and rightness are relative to our judgment and emotion; they in no sense exist in nature or preside over her... The ideas that nature could be governed by an aspiration towards beauty is...to be rejected as a confusion" (Santayana 98). Santayana makes this distinction, but it is lost in Schopenhauer's aversion to will.

IV. Santayana's Concept of Expression

Drawing on the differences in content and approach of Schopenhauer's and Santayana's aesthetics, I will argue that Santayana's concept of Expression provides a better explanation of the immediate and intrinsic quality of aesthetic value. This is because Santayana provides an explanation of the expressiveness of objects in terms of emotion and memory, whereas Schopenhauer only explains this metaphorically as "pure contemplation, absorption in perception, being lost in the object, forgetting all individuality," etc. (197).

Santayana notes that the human consciousness behaves in a nondeterministic manner. Without distinct images or clear-cut boundaries, our ideas "half emerge for a moment from the dim continuum of vital feeling and diffused sense" (119). In addition to forming ideas and synthesizing them with our experience through apperception, our mind is constantly making associations between the images at the forefront of our consciousness and the traces of ideas which ebb and flow from the greater depths of our psyche. The common emotional tinge is what enables ideas to suggest one another, and what makes them able to be associated (54). These associations "colour the image upon which our attention is fixed" (119), and Santayana calls this effect "expression." In coloring our experience with half-conscious suggestions of other ideas, expression can heighten the pleasure found in our experience, thus adding to the beauty of the present object. However, if the relation between the object at hand and the idea expressed is "patent and acknowledged" (120), our awareness of the extrinsic value of the association precludes synthesis with our immediate experience. "The value is confined to the images of the memory; they are too clear to let any of that value escape and diffuse itself over the rest of our consciousness, and beautify the objects which we actually behold" (120). On the other hand, if our memory fades and we become less aware of these associations, the expressiveness of the object at hand returns, and the value of the ideas expressed becomes intrinsic to our perception and therefore aesthetic. For example, Santayana explains that ideas of utility are frequently expressed, adding a vague sense of advantage and desirability to objects when we are not actively aware of their practical advantage (129). In this way, the farmer and bandit really do see a beautiful horse, even though others may see a merely practical horse.

Schopenhauer also uses the term "expression," stating that particular objects are beautiful insofar as they express their highest Idea. By insisting that the subject become aware of this expression by means independent of the principle of sufficient reason, Schopenhauer gives the principle of sufficient reason the same role in aesthetic experience as Santayana gives to memory, stating that our awareness of the Idea cannot depend on an external relation:

By calling an object beautiful, we thereby assert that it is an object of our aesthetic contemplation, and this implies two different things. On the one hand, the sight of the thing makes us objective, that is to say, in contemplating it we are no longer conscious of ourselves as individuals, but as pure, will-less subjects of knowing. On the other hand, we recognize in the object not the individual thing, but an Idea; and this can happen only in so far as our contemplation of the object is not given up to the principle of sufficient reason, does not follow the relation of the object to something outside it. (Schopenhauer 209)

For Schopenhauer, the Idea is "released from time and space" as the object's "expression, its pure significance, its innermost being, disclosing itself and appealing to me" (210). Santayana provides an explanation for the feelings Schopenhauer here only describes: Santayana states that because expression adds a value of indeterminate origin to our experience of the object, we can only describe the value of expression as an "ineffable attraction" (120). The value of expression is felt immediately and intrinsically, exactly like the aesthetic values of material and form, but the source of this value--the association of the object with its Idea--is hidden from us by clouded memory (123). Schopenhauer's descriptions of the detachment of the Idea from time and space, and of the Idea disclosing itself, are expressions of confusion about the locality of this value. Again, Santayana accuses a confused Schopenhauer of committing the fallacy of taking what actually pleases, separating it from its roots in human nature, and portraying it as what ought to please (123). By explaining this confusion as a necessary component of the phenomenon of expression, Santayana provides a more complete explanation of the immediate and intrinsic quality of aesthetic value.

Like Schopenhauer, Santayana uses phrases like "absorption in perception" and "being lost in the object," but Santayana describes these phrases as expressing the feelings of a subject overwhelmed by emotion and imagination. Once again, Santayana offers an explanation of aesthetic experience based in human nature, not based on obscure metaphysical claims made impressive by bottomless profundity. This is consistent with Santayana's more careful and self-conscious approach to aesthetics, which Santayana summarizes excellently:

When I judge a thing to be beautiful, my judgment means that the thing is beautiful in itself, or...that it should seem so to everybody. The claim to universality is, according to this doctrine, the essence of the aesthetic; what makes the perception of beauty a judgment rather than a sensation. All aesthetic percepts would be impossible, and all criticism arbitrary and subjective, unless we admit a paradoxical universality in our judgment, the philosophical implications of which we may then go on to develope. But we are fortunately not required to enter the labyrinth into which this method leads; there is a much simpler and clearer way of studying such questions, which is to challenge and analyze the assertion before us and seek its basis in human nature. Before this is done, we should run the risk of expanding a natural misconception or inaccuracy of thought into an inveterate and pernicious prejudice by making it the center of an elaborate construction. (26)

Schopenhauer "enters the labyrinth" by attempting to universalize subjective interests in the form of Platonic Ideas. This leads to an "elaborate construction" in which Schopenhauer explains that we can have access to these universal Ideas only through a great transformation in the subject. To avoid this labyrinth, Santayana seeks the basis of this "paradoxical universality" in human nature, showing that our ideals arise from experience and creative imagination, and that objectivity and universality can be explained in terms of emotion and associative consciousness. Santayana has truly demonstrated that "when the superstructures crumble, the common foundation of human sentience and imagination is exposed beneath" (65).

1 Santayana equates Schopenhauer's error with "idolatry in religion" (79).

Works Cited

Arnett, Willard E. Santayana and the Sense of Beauty. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957.
Knox, Israel. The Aesthetic Theories of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. New York: Columbia UP, 1936.
Santayana, George. The Sense of Beauty; Being the outline of Aesthetic Theory. New York: Dover Pub. Inc., 1955.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. Volume I. New York: Dover Pub. Inc., 1969

Anselm's Ontological Argument

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Can we conceive of a being so great that to disbelieve its existence only leads to absurdity? St. Anselm thinks that we understand “something greater than which nothing can be thought,” and he argues that our understanding of this being is such that we contradict ourselves upon thinking that such a being does not exist. Anselm arrives at his conclusion only by befuddling object language and metalanguage, blurring the distinction between “a being that exists” (meta) and a being that exists (object). Regardless, we see that if we take care in our interpretation of his argument, Anselm delivers sound reasoning for the possibility of such a being and a reaffirming argument for those who already believe in such a being.

Anselm's first premise is that (A) we understand what is meant by “something than which nothing greater can be thought”1 when we hear it. (B) That which is understood exists in the understanding, and by the elimination of the universal quantifier in B and modus ponens with antecedent A, we infer that (C) God exists in our understanding. Now Anselm gives a reductio on the assumption that (D) God exists only in our understanding. Under this assumption, since (E) that which exists in reality is greater than that which exists merely in our understanding, (F) we can think of a being even greater than something than which nothing greater can be thought. This is absurd, and modus tollens propagates the absurdity to the assumption. Therefore, Anselm concludes (~D) it is not the case that God exists only in the understanding; God exists in reality.

Anselm first begins to blur the distinction between object language and metalanguage when he claims that (B) that which is understood exists in the understanding. This is the moment at which the often criticized leap from concept to being occurs. What exactly would it mean if I told you that upon hearing “eight-legged platypus” that an eight-legged platypus came into existence in your understanding? This seemingly small shuffling of words has nontrivial ontological implications, giving a conjuring of our understanding a hint of independent existence.

In the reductio, Anselm compares the God existing in our understanding (“God”) ̶what was previously just a concept ̶to an existing God. The comparison favors the existing God, and this is where we find the absurdity of the reductio. But this is not the greatest absurdity in the argument. Instead of comparing one concept to another, Anselm makes an absurd comparison between a concept of a being and the being itself. This comparison is invalid because it imports a predicate from the metalanguage to the object language in order to compare “God” to God. Clearly objects of our understanding do not exist in the same way that things do.

Notwithstanding the objection, Anselm has shown that to understand what is meant by “God” yet to think that such a being would not exist is absurd; clearly, when we conceive of God we conceive of God that exists. But how much is this worth? Does this only work for “something than which nothing greater can be thought,” or does it work for “eight-legged platypus” as well? When you conceive of the latter, does your concept include “that it exists?” If not, it sure is funny looking for something that does not exist! These questions are meant to suggest who and what Anselm's argument is for: the argument is meant to convince people who already believe that God exists that they are correct. The fact that this argument is still in contention after a millennium suggests that Anselm was successful in this respect, and unsuccessful in giving a definitive proof for the existence of God.

Henceforth referred to as “God” for abbreviation.

Aquinas' Argument for Necessary Existence

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Thomas Aquinas delivers a proof for the existence of God in which he first shows that there is something that necessarily exists, and then goes on to show that among the things that necessarily exist there must be something that derives its own necessity, and this “all men speak of as God.” The main objection to Aquinas' argument is that it contains a Parmenidean fallacy of substantial change. To counter this objection, we must salvage Aquinas' conclusion by reconciling parts of his argument with a natural philosophy of qualitative change.

Aquinas' argument is quite succinct. We find things in nature whose non-existence is possible, for all around us we see things generated and corrupted. A thing's non-existence is possible only if at some point it does not exist, so if every thing's non-existence were possible there would be a point at which nothing existed. If there ever were such a point of universal non-existence, nothing would exist now, for that which exists comes only from that which existed previously. It is absurd to think that we are living in an era of universal non-existence, so there has never been such a point in time, and therefore it is not the case that every thing's non-existence is possible. In other words, some thing's non-existence is impossible; something necessarily exists. Among the things that necessarily exist there must be something whose existence does not rely upon another necessarily existing thing in order to avoid an infinite regress. Therefore, something necessarily exists and derives its own necessity, and this “all men speak of as God.”

Parmenides helps us discover the sly error in this argument. If we comply with Parmenides' legacy by denying substantial change and instead resorting to a natural philosophy of qualitative change, we see that Aquinas' first premise, that we find things in nature whose non-existence is possible, is false. We have no experience of things possibly existing, for when we witness the generation and corruption of things, we understand this to be qualitative, not substantial change. To assert that all change is qualitative invalidates Aquinas' claims by showing that upon generation and corruption, things do not go in or out of existence. If no thing can possibly not exist, then every thing has a trivially necessary existence, and Aquinas' argument is unappealing to all but pantheists.

We respond to this objection by revisiting the argument's final premises and finding them consistent with a natural philosophy of qualitative change. The final premises hold that in order to avoid an infinite regress there must be some necessarily existing thing whose existence does not rely upon any other necessarily existing thing, and therefore derives its own necessity. These claims do not rely on notions of possible existence so they avoid the charge of the objection, and they are sufficient to establish Aquinas' conclusion under the condition that some things exist necessarily, a claim following from a natural philosophy of qualitative change. The remainder of the argument needs some retooling to be made sound, but at least we've shown that the argument's conclusion can be made consistent with its greatest objection.