A note from Bart Ehrman

This is a note Ed Babinski passed along from Bart Ehrman. Thanks, Ed.

"Bart Ehrman" on Friday, May 19, 2006 at 7:26 AM
-0500 wrote:
Thanks for your note. Yes, I did know what Craig's positions were,
quite well, before our debate. And I came away from it thinking that he
had not done a very good job in defending his views -- especially as he
was completely unable to answer the objections I had raised (he evidently
is not used to someone dealing directly with his arguments and raising
hard questions). Most people I talked with thought that I had far the
upper hand in the debate (of course, people already convinced by his views
ahead of time probably thought that he won!). But I also felt that by
publicizing the debate, it would give him the kind of credibility that he
so desparately is seeking (he claims to have written an enormous number of
books: a lot of them are simply his edited transcripts: as if that's the
same thing as writing a book!).

What I'm most surprised about is that he approached my publisher about
publishing the debate, without even once asking me if I thought it was a
good idea or desirable, or asking what I wanted -- as if his own desires
were the only thing that mattered. And now he talks about my reaction,
again without saying word one to me. Why wouldn't he speak to me if he
wanted *our* debate published? Why would he talk about me behind my back?
This doesn't seem like very Christian behavior to me.
Thanks again for your note. Best wishes.

Bart D. Ehrman
James A. Gray Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

On defining matter, and materialism

shulamite said...
Why doesn't anyone bother to define matter in this debate? There is a continual confusion between "matter" which is a certain potency out of which something can be made, and "a material thing" which is something made out of matter and another principle.

VR: These are Aristotelian concepts based on a type of hylomorphism which contemporary materialists are inclined to reject. The material is typically identified with the physical, so materialism is sometimes called physicalism. In fact, I don't see a way to distinguish the two. Naturalism, unlike physicalism, says that everthing is "natural," but is there any scientific scenario according to which something can be part of nature but not be accounted for by the discipline of physics? The physical is supposed to be whatever is quantified over by physical theory. Only there is a problem, because clearly present physics is incomplete. So, for example, if someone were trying to define materialism in the 1960s and it turns out that string theory is true, then that would disprove materialism , since it would not have been true that whatever exists can be defined in terms of the physics of that time. On the other hand, If we say that the physical or the material is whatever some future physics will quantify over, then it could turn out that possibly, ultimate physics will quantify over God, souls, angels, and all that stuff that your average materialist says does not exist. Of course, you can turn around and say that of course these entities will be ruled out of the ultimate science by methodological naturalism, but since we are trying to figure out what "natural" means so that we can define naturalism, this isn't going to get us anywhere.

At this point I would like to point out something weird. We often get attempts to define "natural" in terms of the absence of the supernatural. Consider the following quote from the front page of the Secular Web:

In the words of Paul Draper, naturalism is "the hypothesis that the physical universe is a 'closed system' in the sense that nothing that is neither a part nor a product of it can affect it. So naturalism entails the nonexistence of all supernatural beings, including the theistic God."

I see lots of problems with this. Draper's trying to define naturalism, right? So he first defines it in terms of the physical universe, as if we knew what physical meant. And then he simply asserts that God would have to be supernatural, and therefore ruled out. But if we don't know what natural means we sure as heck don't know what supernatural means.

What J. J. C. Smart suggested once was that physicalism means that what exists are entities which are similar to those entities postulated by current science. Ok, but similar in what way? Is a string similar to an atom? Is the soul dissimilar to an atom? How do we use this criteria.

Following William Hasker, I have defined materialism in the following terms:
1. The physical level is to be understood mechanistically, such that purposive explanations must be further explained in terms of a non-purposive substratum. This will be called the mechanism thesis.

2. The physical order is causally closed. No nonphysical causes operate on the physical level. The physical is a comprehensive system of events that is not affect by anything that is not itself physical. (I really should have said physical in the final analysis.)

3. Other states, such as mental states, supervene on physical states. Give the state of the physical, there is onely one way the mental, for example, can be. Somethings this is called the supervenience and determination thesis. The idea is thatthe state of the supervening state is guaranteed by the state of the supervenience base. Thus it might be argued that biological states supervene on physicals tates. Imaginae a scenario in which a mountain lion kills and eats a deer. Even though "mountain lion" and "deer" are not physical terms, nevertheless, given the physical state of the world, it cannot be false that a mountain lion is eating a deer.

This is the best I can do on the matter. The link here links back to an old post of mine on the matter.

What Jesus Wouldn't Do

This is an excerpt from Jim Wallis's book "God's Politics: Why the Right gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get it.

Mary Midgely on the concept of matter

Here is an interesting quote which was included in a note from Ed Babinski last October, quoting Mary Midgley. Ed wrote:

Vic,
See the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Supplement 56, Mary Midgley's article, "Souls, Minds, Bodies, and Planets":

"When physicists abandoned the notion of solid particles the word 'materialsm' lost its original meaning. Though this word is still used as a war-cry it is by no means clear what significance it ought to have today. That change in the ontology of physics is one scientific reason why it is now clear that the notion of matter as essentially dead stuff--hopelessly alien to conscious life--is mistaken. But an even more obvious reason is, of course, the Darwinian view of evolution.

"We now know that matter, the physical stuff that originally formed our planet, did in fact develop into the system of living things that now inhabit its surface, including us and many other conscious creatures. So, if we are still using a notion of physical matter that makes it seem incapable of giving rise to consciousness, we need to change it. That notion has proved unworkable. We have to see that the potentiality for the full richness of life must have been present right from the start--from the first outpouring of hydrogen atoms at the big bang. This was not simple stuff doomed for ever to unchanging inertness. it was able to combine in myriad suble ways that shaped fully active living things. And if it could perform that startling feat, why should it be surprising if some of those living things then went on to the further activity of becoming conscious?"

VR: But this whole discussion plays into the notion that I have been discussion earlier. If we are content to simply say that matter is just whatever occupies space and time, then one could postulate that there exists something that does everything dualists say a soul does, including leave the body at death, and say that it exists in the space between our ears. We could, for example, allow explanations in terms of purpose and intentionality to be basic explanations. We could say that it is the nature of this "matter" that it is aware of realities that are not in space and time at all, such as number, Platonic Forms and God. All of this is compatible with something having a spatiotemporal location. If we do that, however, we ought to hear screaming and yelling from people like Blue Devil Knight saying that materialism is no longer meaningful. If on the other hand materialism is to be serious, then materialism has to have something like the three characteristic outlined in tbe book ; that the basic level of analysis is nonpurposive, that the material realm is causally closed, and that whatever else is real supervenes on what exists on the physical level.

One way to change our concept of matter would be to accept something like Aristotle's hylomorphism, according to which there are no purely material objects and everything, for rocks to humans, is a combination of matter and form. This, however, would be to fo against what for many are the great gains achieved by the Scientific Revolution.

A note from Markus on Swinburne and Searle, and the Maverick

Hi Professor Reppert,

It's interesting that Swinburne draws metaphysical conclusions from the argument that you make in your post "The Trouble with Materialism" and John Searle, who makes essentially the same argument, claims that the argument has no "deep consequences".

Swinburne argues:

"The history of science is punctuated with many 'reductions' of one whole branch of science to another apparently totally different, or 'integration' of apparently very disparate sciences into a super-science. Thermodynamics dealing with heat was reduced to statistical mechanics dealing with velocities of large groups of particles of matter and collisions between them; the temperature of a gas proved to be the mean kinetic energy of its molecules. The separate science of electricity and magnetism came together to form a super-science of electromagnetism. And then optics was reduced to electromagnetism; light proved to be an electromagnetic wave. How is it that such great integrations can be achieved if my argument is correct that there could not be a simple and so probably true super-science that predicts the connections we find between mental events and brain events? There is a crucial difference between these cases. Every earlier integration into a super-science, of sciences with entities and properties apparently qualitatively very distinct, was achieved by saying that some of these entities and properties were not as they appeared to be. A distinction was made between the underlying (not immediately observable) physical entities and physical properties, on the one hand, and the sensory properties to which they gave rise. Thermodynamics was initially concerned with the laws of temperature exchange; and temperature was supposed to be a property inherent in an object that you felt when you touched the object. The felt hotness of a hot body is indeed qualitatively distinct from particle velocities and collisions. The reduction to statistical mechanics was achieved by distinguishing between the underlying cause of the hotness (the motion of molecules) and the sensation that the motion of molecules causes in observers,and saying that really the former was what temperature was, the latter was just the effect of temperature on observers. That done, temperature falls naturally within the scope of statistical mechanics---for molecules are particles; the entities and properties are not now of distinct kinds. Since the two sciences now dealt with entities and properties of the same (measurable) kind, reduction of one to the other became a practical prospect. But the reduction was achieved at the price of separating off the felt hotness from its causes, and only explaining the latter. All other 'reductions' of one science to another and 'integrations' of separate sciences dealing with apparently very disparate properties have been achieved by this device of denying that the apparent properties (such as the 'secondary qualities' of colour, heat, sound, taste) with which one science dealt belong to the physical world at all. It siphoned them off to the world of the mental. But then, when you come to face the problem of the mental events themselves, you cannot do this. If you are to explain the mental events themselves, you cannot distinguish between them and their underlying causes and only explain the latter. The enormous success of science in producing an integrated physico-chemistry has been achieved at the expense of separating off from the physical world colours, smells, and tastes, and regarding them as purely private sensory phenomena. What the evidence of the history of science shows is that the way to achieve integration of sciences is to ignore the mental. The very success of science in achieving its vast integrations in physics and chemistry is the very thing that has apparently ruled out any final success in integrating the world of the mind and the world of physics. (Existence of God 2nd edition pp. 205-206)

Searle makes what amounts to the same argument yet he claims that the irreducibility of consciousness is "a trivial consequence of our definitional practices" and that it "does not reveal a deep metaphysical asymmetry ". See his argument in the Rediscovery of the Mind pp. 116-124 and his comments in Mind:A Brief Introduction pp. 121-122

William Vallicella has a great post at the Maverick philosopher that argues that Searle's naturalism doesn't sit well with his views on the irreducibility of consciousness. http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/posts/1117652033.shtml

C. S. Lewis and apologetical sophistication

I found the following passage from one of Austin Cline's anti-C. S. Lewis posts.

"Even one of Lewis’ most sympathetic biographers, A.N. Wilson, writes that Lewis “has become in the quarter-century since he died something very like a saint in the minds of conservative-minded believers.” At the same time, though, you won’t find professional theologians and sophisticated apologists citing C.S. Lewis or relying on his arguments in their own efforts."

VR: Oh dear. based on this, one could generate the argument:

1. Professional theologians and sophisticated apologists do not cite C. S. Lewis or rely on his arguments in their own efforts.
2. Victor Reppert relies on C. S. Lewis and his arguments for his own efforts.
Therefore, Victor Reppert is neither a professional theologian nor a sophisticated apologist.

Though, I would hope the argument would go like this:

1. Victor Reppert is a sophisticated apologist.
2. Victor Reppert relies on C. S. Lewis and his arguments for his own efforts.
Therefore, 1 in the above argument is false.


AC: Theology builds upon the insights and accomplishments of those who have come before, but Lewis doesn’t even appear to function as a minor plank in anyone’s platform. This combination of general popularity and professional dismissal is very curious — either the average believer knows something which the professionals have missed, or Lewis isn’t the apologist he is popularly believed to be.

VR: Or maybe the professionals are starting to come around. I mean, when Alvin Plantinga acknowledges a similarity between one of his own arguments and an argument found in Lewis, you would think maybe Cline would think twice before making statements like that. Unless you want to say that Plantinga is not sophisticated. As Flew would say, no true Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge.

On impressionable Lewis disciples

In his book, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, John Beversluis complains about the reverential attitude of Lewis admirers in writing about him:

“Sections devoted to biography read like hagiography. We seldom encounter a mere fact about Lewis; accounts of his behavior, attitudes, and personal relationships are instead reported in the wide-eyed manner of the impressionable disciple. To describe him as a wonderful friend is a lamentable understatement; we must be assured that no one ever was a better friend. To praise him as brilliant in debate is entirely too lukewarm a compliment; we are told that C. S. Lewis could have matched wits with any man who ever lived. To endorse him as a Christian apologist of the first rank is altogether inadequate; his apocalyptic Vision of Christianity must be likened to that of St. John on the Isle of Patmos. After a while, one longs for patches of sunlight to dispel the reverential haze. One tires of enduring these excesses and of having to plow through equally ecstatic testimonials in book after book.”

I think that although this passage strikes me as hyperbolic, it makes a legitimate point. Those who admire Lewis have sometimes overstated their case, and what this ends up doing is setting up stumbling blocks for people hwo come to Lewis with a more critical eye.

I think Lewis possessed a first-rate mind, but he was far from infallible. What is more, too many people writing about Lewis just quote him and leave it at that. At least in the area of philosophy, one hs to bring a whole host of further considerations to the table when considering the claims he makes. The claim I make on behalf of Lewis's apologetics is this: that after a doctoral-level education in philosophy at a secular institution, I believe that Christianity is credible for approximately the reasons that Lewis said that it was. And I do mean approximately. The arguments in Lewis need further development, almost invariably. If you want to make them credible in the present day, Lewis can do nothing more than point you in the right direction. After that, you're on your own, buddy.

Also from Gretchen Passantino

There is an insidious rumour circulating that I have "abandoned apologetics," am no longer in ministry, have retired, left Christian work, or something like that. I don't know where this false rumour started, what skewing of reality it is based on, or how widespread it has become, but it is very important that this vicious attack of the enemy is stopped in its tracks! The millions of people who reject the gospel & have had their consciences pricked by more than 30 years of Passantino/Answers In Action apologetics would like nothing better than to silence the truth & keep it from those who are genuinely seeking help. I am not a paranoid conspiracist or demon chaser, but the Bible says that the principalities & powers thrive on lies, gossip, character assasination, deceit, misdirection, & illusion. I do not care for myself, but for those who are prevented from receiving ministry through Answers In Action because the Enemy has obscured its light behind a cloud of falsehood.

Those who read our monthly newsletter, regularly benefit from our continually expanding website, enjoy my classes & lectures, receive help by e-mail or phone, alert to our upcoming events through our website calendar, attend Mars Hill Club, & who see God working daily through Answers In Action know that this rumour is a lie.

What especially saddens & surprises me is that my supporters, friends, & colleagues have a much better than average appreciation for evidence & sound argumentation, & yet some have apparently fallen for this unsubstantiated gossip & haven't even thought to check it out.

Let me say clearly, unequivocally, & adamantly: I am completely committed to working for God's kingdom in the field he prepared for me more than 30 years ago &, God willing, I will never take my hand from the plow or look back until I have breathed my last breath. Answers In Action is alive, vibrant, moving forward vigorously in fulfillment of its vision statement & will continue to do so.

If you have heard this rumour, track it back to its source & squash it! You know me well enough to know that if time & energy constraints force me to choose between defending myself & defending the gospel, I will ignore personal attacks & throw myself into the gospel, so I am counting on you to help turn this vicious lie away while I keep focused on doing what God called me to do. With your continued support & prayers, the plans of the Enemy to trivialize truth will fail. Rebuke anyone you know who repeats this rumour or speculates on my commitment or fitness and challenge them to contact me directly for the truth.

Now that I've responded & appealed for your help, there's work to be done for the Lord.

Blessings in Christ,
Gretchen Passantino

PS -- My husband Pat's hard work, encouragement, love, care, protection, wisdom, & partnership is the God-given source of my confidence & enthusiasm for the future of this ministry.

Gretchen Passantino will be on Good Morning America tomorrow

From Gretchen Passantino:

I will be featured on an ABC news story airing on Good Morning America tomorrow, Tuesday, May 16 at 7:30 AM (EDT). The segment investigates Bob Larson, a self-described exorcist who has made himself prominent in Christian media for nearly 30 years via radio and/or television with variations of his "demons under every bush" message. His teaching is both unbiblical & makes Christianity vulnerable to mockery & ridicule from non-believers. Most spiritually dangerous, however, is that he persuades hurting people that if they will trust him for their spiritual deliverance, his sensationalistic stage exorcisms will solve their problems; & that by investing financially in his program, they will receive continuing spiritual protection.

I spent most of Mother's Day with a film crew & interviewer at our home. As is common in television, it was a case of "hurry up & wait" -- the roughly 5 hours of set up, interview, & break down may translate into a total of a couple of minutes spliced throughout the report. My prayer is that what is aired will be respectful of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, & that it will credibly distance the truth of God's Word from Larson's perfromances, which strike me as manipulative, exploitive, & self-serving.

Having no knowledge of or ability to affect what is chosen from my comments to be aired or in what context, I focused on what I could do -- yield myself to God's will & seek to represent his will "on earth as it is in heaven." May God's truth shine, & viewers be protected from my inadequacies.

It is because of your continuing prayers & support that I could be available & prepared for this opportunity. Thank you & God bless you.

Blessings in Christ,
Gretchen

Assessment of the Carrier-Wanchick debate

This is the link to my, and others' assessment of the Carrier-Wanchick debate. Wanchick has expressed disappointment that the judges did not more closely follow what he thought was agreed to, that we have to go by the points actually made in the debate, and if a point was made that is fallacious but not effectively rebutted, it should go to the person who made it anyway.

I had a short space in which to write my report and a relatively short time to write it, but I didn't think I was simply supposed to create a mechanical point total. I looked at the debate in terms of how well the arguments were understood and presented, but also to what extent the debate aided our understanding of the relevant issues.

What's appropriate in college debate, such as putting out a lot of arguments in hopes that some points will be dropped and you can win a few that way, is just, to me, inappropriate when we are trying to, hopefully, not just win debater's points, but actually give people in doubt a rational reason for accepting one's own position. In this area Wanchick was a worse offender than Carrier, altough I think even Carrier could have done with fewer arguments. I thought the parties were stronger on defense than on offense, though I thought Carrier's repsonses to the cosmological arguments were not adequate. However, Carrier effectively showed the danger of debating based on scientific authorities.

On the whole, I was not a happy camper in being a judge for the debate. But I am reasonably convinced that both sides made worthwhile points, but that neither side won.

The Concept of Matter

One important key to understanding materialism, and the debates surrounding materialism, is to get a clear idea of what matter is. I think one of the big problems with the idea of a materialist account of mind is the idea that matter has to be defined in contrast to mind, as lacking in mental characteristics. If it were sufficient for something to be material for it to have a space-time location, then I'm not even sure that I would be disqualified as a materialist. Descartes was the first dualist to define dualism in the face of the contemporary materialist understanding of matter. However, for most materialists, matter must be devoid of intrinsci purpose, meaning, or consciousness, otherwise it just isn't matter.

Sabatino gets some clarification

Sabatino has told me that Ehrman has told him that the problem Ehrman percieves is with Craig's attempt to provide a mathematical proof of the Resurrection. This, actually, renders Ehrman's position more understandable. While philosophers use mathematical models based on Bayes' theorem to evaluate miracle claims, this may have been understood as claiming that the evidence provides some kind of absolute mathematical certainty about the Resurrection, which, of course, isn't really possible. Interestingly enough, it was the atheist Keith Parsons who introduced Bayes' theorem into his debate with Craig in 1998. It's a familar stock in trade of philosophers of religion on both sides of the aisle, but it may have seemed strange to Ehrman, and evidence that Craig was off the deep end.

William Lane Craig: Not even false?

I was under the impression at first that there had been some kind of prior agreement to publish the debate, perhaps there was not, only talk about the possibility. That would make Ehrman's position more understandable, but only somewhat. I am not saying that someone in Ehrman's position couldn't come up with a reason to not have a book published. The reasons might be several. He might have discovered, after the debate, that he simply is not cut out for a debate format. Theodore Drange, for example, debated William Lane Craig at my doctoral institution of the University of Illinois. I think most observers, including Jeff Lowder, concluded that that format was not for him. I'm not sure I would be all that great of a debater. I didn't debate in college (though I did play chess). Or one could say that the debate format was counterproductive to the pursuit of truth. One can make that argument up to a point at least. Or one could say that Craig used debate tactics that are unethical, or that he was rude, or used ad hominem arguments. from what I've seen of Craig, that would be false, but if any of these things could be truly said, that would be a perfectly legitimate reason for not wanting a book published.

Instead, Ehrman plays what I call the Not Even False card. Wolfgang Pauli, the physicist, once described a scientific theory he disliked as "not even false." The idea is that the view you are opposing is so absurd that to even engage it would be to give it more credit than it deserves. I hate the NEF card. I've heard it used on C. S. Lewis more times than I can count. It is used against dualist philosophies of mind all the time. It is popularly used against Intelligent Design. But I could use it against eliminative materialism or Mormonism if I wanted. But that would not be good either. Most of the time when it is used, it is a mask for intellectual laziness. One has no desire to engage views that one thinks are way on the other side and so one uses the prestige of one's position in certain academic circles to avoid engagement. But to use it after one has had a debate with someone strikes me as disingenuous. I'm sorry. If there is anyone whose beliefs are easy to find out about it's William Lane Craig. It's not as if he found out "Gosh, this Craig guy, he's really over the wall. He actually believes that Jesus walked out of his tomb on his own two feet!" Craig is a leading representative of the view Ehrman opposes, a view that is held by millions of orthodox Christians. If Craig is really irrational, and Ehrman demonstrated this in the debate, he should be jumping up and down for a chance for this achievement to be broadcast as widely as possible. If not, there are various reasons he might want to offer for not wanting a debate book published. the Not Even False card is not one of them.

Bart Ehrman responds

I got this message via John Sabatino

I didn’t back out of doing a book with him. There never was any agreement that we would do a book together. We agreed to stage a public debate, and afterwards I thought some of his arguments were so far removed from anything rational, that I decided giving him a platform to air them was conceding way to much.



Best wishes,



-- Bart Ehrman

Sabatino replies:

Dr. Reppert – here’s an email from Ehrman. I find it hard to believe that, if he felt his arguments were on more rational grounds in a *debate* with Craig, he would not want this to be given a “platform” – especially when he seems to have a fondness of the limelight himself. I suspect that he was simply frustrated with Craig’s arguments, given that he himself concedes many of the premises his own publications (e.g. the empty tomb, Paul’s notion of resurrection as bodily, etc.) in.



John

Property Dualism vx. Substance Dualism

Is property dualism more plausible that substance dualism?

If these remarks from on old essay of Jaegwon Kim are correct, apparently not.

First, the general argument: philosophers have observed, in connention with the mind-body problem, that a thoroughgoing physicalism can no more readily tolerate the existence of irreducible psychological features or properties than irreducible psychological object (e. g. Cartesian souls, visual images). The thought behind this is some thing like thisIf F is an irredcucible psychical feature, then its existence implies some thing that is F,,,This means that there would be a physically irreducible event or stateof this thing being F, or a physically irreducible fact, namely, the fact that this thing is F. So the world remains bifurcated: the physical domain and a distinct, irereducible psychical domain; and physical theoyr fails as a complete and comprehensive theory of the world. Moreover, we m ight want to inquire as to the cause of something's b eing F. This gives rise to three possibilities, none of them palatable to the physicalist: first, the cause of the psychical event is a mystery not accessibleto scientific inquiry, second, an automonous psychical science emerges, third, physical theory providesw a causal explanation of the psychical phenomena. The last possbility may be the worst, from the physicalist point of view, this would mean that physical theory would lose its closed charcter, countenancing within its domain irreducible nonphysical events and properties.


Jaegwon Kim, 'Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation" Midwest Studies in Philosophy 9 (1984) 267.

William Lane Craig vs. Bart Ehrman

Has anyone heard anything about a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrmann? I had heard that the parties had agreed to publish a book about it, but that Ehrman was pulling out of the agreement on the grounds that he did not want to give a venue for Craig's views. Doesn't make sense to me, Craig's views are about as well-known as anyone's could be, and Ehrman agreed to a debate. Am I misinformed about this?

I have included a link to the website where the debate will be posted in June. Thanks, Jason.

Christianity Today on the Gospel of Judas and the DVC

Lewis's voice on the BBC

I put this up some time ago. It's the very last chapter of Mere Christianity entitled The New Men.

Radio Interview on the Apologetic Influence of C. S. Lewis

Another portion of my interview with Ken Samples is up on reasons.org.

Ben Witherington responds to the Da Vinci Code

Vallicella's anti-materialist argument from truth

N. T Wright on various things

Including the Da Vinci code. You know, I wonder if there isn't some embarrassment on the skeptical side of this issue with respect to this movie. It offers an alternative to the Resurrection scenario, but one that is simply lacks plausibility upon close examination. It opens the door for apologists to argue for the Resurrection against the Da Vinci Code. But I think the skeptic can do better than the Da Vinci code, so maybe the Internet Infidels, not the Catholic Church, should be protesting against it.

A paper on humannness and the natural sciences

By Del Ratzsch. HT: Tom Gilson.

Against the San Diego mafia

Does a map of the streets of San Diego have propositional contents? I am frankly not sure. If you think they do, then you'll think that Churchland's theory is just an implementation of propositional attitudes. If they do not, then you'd be an eliminativist. Note this isn't the same as saying that we can make statements (in language) about the map that are true or false. We can do the same with our phenomenal experience, which you have admitted has nonpropositional contents. The key, then is, is the maps representational format propositional or nonpropositional?

Churchland thinks they are nonpropositional, and that neural spaces have the same type of content as maps. To the extent that we can judge a map's accuracy, it is based on the relative locations of points on the map, not the properties of individual points.

I think you are missing the real question. That is, does a map (or whatever else you want to put in there) satisfy the three requirements for a successful successor to propositional attitudes laid down by Baker. Unless you think those requirements are somehow unacceptable. I think the end-of-the-world consequences that are typically attributed to EM actually do follow unless the replacements have these characteristics.

To do the job required by Baker these states have to pick out propositions. If we want to accuse Bush of lying about WMDs, we have to posit a relationship between President Bush and the proposition "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction." If no relationship obtains, then we can't call him a liar. Or a truth-teller.

If there is no relation between persons and propositions, then we cannot be said to lie or tell the truth, we cannot be said to make assertions, and we cannot perform rational inferences, including those rational inferences that establish. We in fact to not know what the sentences we are now asserting mean.

Do maps lie? How do we explain the difference between a lying map and some other kind of inaccurate map? You can look at the map all day and not find out. In order to answer that question you have to look at the states of the person who made the map. And I don't see any alternative other than to ask whether the mapmaker believes that the map is accurate, or not.

I'm still arguing that either the "successor" states to the work of propositional attitudes as per Baker's criteria, in which case they are propositonal attitudes, or they don't do that work, in which case epistemic Armageddon ensues.

Isn't this obviously true?

Either God exists, or God does not exist. If God exists, than the people who believe that God exists are right, and the belief that God does not exist are wrong. On the other hand, if God does not exist, then the people who believe that God does not exist are right, and the people who believe that God does exist are wrong.

The Self-Refutation Argument Against Eliminativism

Having gotten into some exchanges on eliminative materialism, it seems time now to take a look at how the argument that eliminative materialism is self-refuting should go, but perhaps also how it should not go.

To review, eliminative materialism is best understood in terms of a typology, developed by the Churchlands themselves, of scientific reductions. A conservative reduction keeps the reduced item intact, but simply gives it an scientifically accurate description. By describing heat in a gas as its mean kinetic energy we are not eliminating the idea of heat, we are just giving it an accurate scientific description. A reforming reduction asks us to accept an altered idea of what the reduced object is, but it does not make sense to say that the relevant object does not exist.

However, eliminativists promise that successor concepts will emerge from a matured neuroscience that will replace the concept of belief, so that an argument against eliminativism that ignores the promise of successor concepts can fairly be accused of begging the question.

Consider for example this argument.

1. The eliminativist sincerely utters, "There are no beliefs."
2. So, the eliminativist believes that there are no beliefs.
3. So eliminativism about beliefs involves realism about beliefs.
4. So eliminativism is incoherent.

This argument ignores the eliminativist claim that belief-successors will emerge. Eliminativists are never clear about whether "sincere utterance" will be retained in the brave new eliminativist world, or whether it will itself be eliminated and replaced with a successor.

Lynne Rudder Baker was, it think, the first philosopher to develop the argument against eliminativism in a way that takes into consideration the promise of successor concepts. How are these successor supposed to work. She offers three criteria for what they must accomplish:

i) Without appeal to the content of mental states, the alternative account of assertion must distinguish assertion from other audible emissions.
ii) The alternative account of assertion, against without appeal to the content of mental states, must distinguish sounds that count as assertiojn that p rather than assertion that q.
iii) The alternative account of assertion must at lest have conceptual room for a distinction between sincere assertion and lying.

BDK, our resident EM defender, answered the last of these questions as follows:

To lie is to know X is false, but to assert X anyway. The EM advocate would just say that knowledge is a property of internal nonpropositional representational states that can be true or false, or if you prefer, can provide a better or worse fit to the world. This, of course, is the positive story Churchland has been developing with his state space semantics, or recently he's been calling it 'domain portrayal' semantics.



or again

Chapter 2 of Paul's new book covers, in detail, his theory of conceptual content and concept acquisition in neural nets.

He also spends about five pages explicitly discussing the realism question. He lays out in more detail how he thinks we can get more or less accurate internal maps of the world which we use to navigate (and we do know that brains use internal maps to steer about in the world: and the maps aren't just of space but more abstract features of the world). He also admits that there is no way to stand outside our own conceptual framework to compare it to the things themselves and see how good the fit is between the two. He discusses what this means for the pragmatic realist like himself.

I'm not sure when it will be out, but the working title is 'Outer Spaces and Inner Spaces: The New Epistemology.'

It is pretty clear that his theory does not employ propositional contents. Even Fodor agrees with this. If you wanted, therefore, to say that truth and falsity are properties of Paul's conceptual spaces, then you would have to say that truth and falsity can be a property of nonpropositional contents. Otherwise, some other normative target is required for the conceptual spaces, and I think Paul has found a natural, and reasonable, one.


But here I start to have trouble. The trouble I have is that these states pick out propositions. They can be true or false in virtue of their relationship to their propositional contents. The fact that they don't satisfy Jerry Fodor's idea of what a proposititonal attitude is supposed to look like does not strike me as especially critical.

Either these states pick out propositions or they do not pick out propositions. If they pick out propositions, then they have a property (picking out p) which is going to be inconvenient to the project of reducing everything to physics and unifying science. Whether they look like sentences in the brain or not makes no never mind to me, if the state of a persons picks out a proposition well enough so that we can distinguish between assertion and nonassertion, then we have a belief. If on the other hand, no states of the person pick out propositions, then there is no way that there can possibly be successors that do the work that Baker, quite rightly, has pointed out that they must do.

http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~lrb/work/publications.html

Plantinga's famous paper on two dozen theistic arguments

John Sabatino's Argument from Reason Resource Page

Interview with reasons.org here

They played part of my interview at reasons.org with Ken Samples here.

Philosopher bobblehead dolls?

HT: Keith Burgess-Jackson

On the lighter side, literally

A light bulb joke. HT: Jarrod Cochran

How Many Christians Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?

Charismatic: Only 1 - Hands are already in the air.

Pentecostal: 10 - One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterians: None - Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Roman Catholic: None - Candles only. (Of guaranteed origin of course.)

Baptists: At least 15 - One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change.

Episcopalians: 3 - One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks, and one to talk about how much better the old one was.

Methodists: Undetermined - Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service and a covered dish to pass.

Nazarene: 6 - One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.

Lutherans: None - Lutherans don't believe in change.

Amish: What’s a light bulb?


American Fundamentalist Evangelicals: We will rally and organize to have our government overthrow activist judges who would liberally interpret laws to allow such evil lightbulbs to go unchanged. We will attempt to create a theocracy to keep anyone with another opinion about the lightbulb out of the public arena. Preemptive war will be declared on this dim bulb and all those who are against our efforts. Mid-way through this war of the lightbulb change our God-fearing president will land on an aircraft carrier and declare that the mission to change the bulb is accomplished! And there will be much rejoicing and reelecting.

The entry on dualism at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Jason Pratt responds to Steven Carr

Since there isn't much connection between Steven's various complaints,
I'll be taking them somewhat out of order.


Presumably , Jason is now going to rewrite what Paul says by adding
words not found in the Greek. He is now going to say that Paul wrote 'it is sown a natural body. It
is raised a spiritual body'. But there is no 'it' in the Greek."

The sentence Steven refers to is 1 Cor 15:44a, and reads in the Greek
(with no significant textual variation in the critical apparatus):
"spleiretai so_ma psuchikon egeiretai so_ma pneumatikon."
(I've put an underscore to differentiate the omega from the omicron.)

I am supposing that Steven is aware that in koine Gree, the subjects of
verbs (especially as pronouns) frequently don't exist in sentences, and
are implied by the suffix of the verb. If he wasn't aware of that when he
made his complaint, then his attempt at a point is utterly negated (since
that would be the first answer.)

Having said that, I suppose the sentence could be translated "A soulish
body is sown, a spiritual body is raised." I would have no objection,
though the grammar still may not parse out as well as "It is sown...it
is raised." (I'm slightly iffy about whether the form of 'soma' can match
grammatically with 'spleiretai' as subject to verb.)

In any case, if Steven would render the sentence "A soulish body is
sown, a spiritual body is raised" (with the noun as the subject of the verb
instead of serving as a predicate nominative object); then how does he intend
to translate the previous phrases which this sentence serves as a parallel
summary to? It is simply impossible to cogently render "spleiretai en
phthera egeiretai en aphtharsia" with the 'sown' and 'raised' verbs
meaning anything other than "It is sown; it is raised": the nouns, here and
afterward, clearly belong to the preposition "en" (English 'in').

More shortly: even if the meaning of v.44a can be read with 'body' as
the subject, it provides no positive support for Steven's contention; and
doing so would conflict with a series of immediately preceding phrases where
the exact same verb forms have to be meaning an equivalent to English 'it
is verbed'--and where complaints about "adding words to Paul" become
totally spurious.

Steven certainly seems to be admitting that if 44a is to be read (in
parallel with the meaning as the previous phrases have to be read) 'it
is sown...it is raised', then the case for Paul not meaning the same body
is in ruins. But I find it to be more interesting, that Steven is hanging
so totally on Paul not meaning the body itself was raised--why not simply
accuse Paul of lying about the body? That would synch a whole lot
better with the clearest meaning of what is written; and it isn't like Steven
has any reluctance to make such accusations in other cases.


"What Paul does say is 'You do not plant the body that will be'."


I could be facetious and point out that there is no "you", "do", "that"
or "will" as words in the phrase Steven has quoted, with the conclusion
that Steven is simply adding in whatever words he wants to get the meaning
he wants--but I suspect that no opponent (Steven included) would consider
that to be a respectable objection for even a single moment. At least,
they'd be entirely correct to dismiss such an objection is being spurious,
possibly even as being merely contentious.

Besides, I'm isn't like I'm desperate to save my position. {g}

As it happens, I don't even consider the quote to be a threat to the
position traditionally understood here. Paul makes it as clear as he
possibly can, later in the chapter, that what is sown will be _changed_
into the new body: indeed, that sooner or later this is going to happen
even to bodies which _haven't_ been sown. And, he makes _exactly_ the
same point where Steven just quoted (1 Cor 36b-37): "What you are sowing is
not being brought to life if it should not be dying. And what you are
sowing, you are not sowing the body that shall be coming to be, but an
unclothed kernel, such as of wheat or something like that."

Put into a bit straighter English: 'What is being sowed is what will be
brought to life, but first it has to die. And when it is sowed, it
isn't yet what it will become, but is only an unclothed seed.'

Now, we can make fun of Paul's 1st-century Palestinian notion of
herbology, if we like--namely, that the seed will be clothed in the plant that
will be coming. But that's the analogy he's working from, and that's how he
ends out as well: "For this corruptible must be _putting on_ incorruption,
and this mortal be _putting on_ immortality. And whenever this [happens,
repeating the phrases], then shall come to pass the word which is
written [etc.]" (1 Cor 15:53-54)

The same body that is dying, then, and being buried, is being brought
to life again in the resurrection, clothed in an immortality which will
swallow up the death. In order for the "flesh and blood" to enjoy the
allotment, it has to be _clothed_, as "this corruptible must be putting
on incorruption".

The body is being changed into something it wasn't before. The plant
doesn't leave the seed behind (whether or not exactly as it was when it
was planted) and go off to do its own thing: the seed _becomes_ the plant.


"Paul would have known, that a seed is discarded. The whole point
of separating the wheat from the chaff is to keep one and discard the
other."

Paul would have known that the chaff-and-wheat is an entirely different
metaphor, which has nothing in the least to do with a seed being buried
in the ground and creating a new plant.

Come to think of it, Paul would also have known that the whole point to
separating the seed from the chaff (in its own proper metaphorical use)
is not to discard the seed. (It's hard to believe Steven was paying
attention here: what was supposed to be the point of keeping the chaff, again, in
relation to 1 Cor 15???) In fact, he would have known that the seed is
not discarded in the metaphor he _was_ using, either. The seed _becomes_
the plant.


Beyond all this (which could be detailed rather further): as I
mentioned in a previous letter (on which there may be some reply by now), the
advocates of the notion that Paul was not talking about a dead body being
transformed into something new and raised, still have to account in their theory
for two rather difficult things (even aside from a close contextual reading
of the passage). If Paul is so comfortable with this notion, and is trying
to teach it--then what exactly is it he is so sharply admonishing the
Corinthians about? (The standard attempts to defend this hypothesis
leave Paul in the peculiar position of defending _and_ attacking basically
the same thing in the same chapter! Something other than the standard
defense is required, at least.) And second, if this notion was such an easy
option for Jewish Christians (much moreso Gentile ones) to take, then why
_didn't_ they in fact take it?--for the missing body is a key feature of all four of
the earliest story-accounts which mention a Resurrection at all.

There are simply too many problems, at too many levels, for me to
accept this as being a live option of interpretation.


I suspect that the reason these problems are elided past, by
con-apologists, is because they've been told so often that Paul's
testimony on the subject constitutes definitive proof of the Res (or at least of
a missing body), that any stick looks good enough to beat that idea with.
(I have an even stronger suspicion that much the same is true about how
pro-apologists frequently use the reference to the 500 witnesses; I
cringe every time I hear or read the typical use of it. That's a lot of
cringing... {g}) If it is any consolation, that is _NOT_ what I am
trying to argue here. I think the most reasonable conclusion to be drawn,
without overreaching the position, is:

Paul was teaching the Resurrection and transformation of dead and
buried bodies, specifically Christ's and anyone who dies in Christ; a teaching
he claims to have received as being authoritative and of first importance,
and which he claims to have already taught the Corinthians (who at the time
accepted what he was passing along, though now he's hearing they're
believing something different, which he's opposing)--a teaching he says
the previous apostles and leaders in the church are teaching.

The first (and possibly only) extension to this claim, from 1 Cor, that
I myself would make, is a connection to the situation (and person) Paul
is writing against in the whole first six chapters of the same letter.


"None of the early Christian creeds found in Paul have a
resurrected Jesus walking the earth or having a flesh and bones body."

Perhaps not; but neither do any of the creeds found in Paul have a
resurrected Jesus either walking the earth or appearing spiritually
having left his flesh and bones body behind--do they?

"If they had believed in a resurrected Jesus walking the earth, or
having a flesh and bones body, they would have said so."

Ditto. If it counts against me, it counts against Steven, too.

"The creeds summarised what they believed."

'was buried, was raised.' Can hardly be more summary than that. Paul
can unpack and expand on it; without requiring the kind of convolution of
thought involved in going from the basic meaning of that, to 'was raised
but what was raised was not what was buried; that stayed etouffed {g}
in the ground unchanged'.



Moving on:

"We have not one word from Jews saying this unbelievable story that
the Roman guard agreed to say that they were sleeping on duty (so
consigning them to the death sentence)."

Not that I expected Steven to pay attention to subtleties (and given
how briefly I mentioned it, he has some excuse for that this time); but I
didn't reference the part where the guard _agreed to say_ this.

I _do_, in fact, have a pretty good understanding of religious (and
anti-religious) polemic--a better understanding than Steven does of the
use of chaff and metaphor {g}--which is exactly why I conclude that the
core of the GosMatt polemic makes no plausible sense unless two antithetical
traditions were agreeing a body was missing. (The recent Pilate example
on the SecWeb, though colorful, is not really a good parallel; but I would
have to go into a lot of detail before that could become apparent, so I
don't blame Stephen for drawing it.)

Since it would take a while to go through the various options with an
eye toward assessing their historical plausibility, I'll save that for a
subsequent letter. (It isn't something to be briefly waved off, any
more than it can be briefly presented--a close analysis of options and
implications took me something like four chapters to go through.)


And, of course, Paul is clear in Galatians 6 that observance of the
law (not resurrection) is what was at dispute between Christians and Jews.


Um. I have no idea what this was supposed to do with anything in Part 1
of my letter. Did Paul write ("with what size letters, with my own hand")
that the disputes between Christian and Jew had nothing to do with the Res?
Not in any text of Galatians, or textual variant, _I_ know about. (Talk
about adding words to Paul...)

I suspect this was supposed to be a comment to Part 2 of my letter, and
Steven simply missed his aim. In which case, is he trying to say that
if Jews and Christians (assuming Paul is talking about a dispute with
non-Christian Jews) are disputing about observance of the law, then
they can't be, or couldn't have previously been, or couldn't subsequently be
disputing, about whether someone stole the body? (If so, I think I'll
simply reply that it's good thing I don't have to rely on logic like
that for _my_ side of such debates... But he's welcome to clarify himself if
he wishes.)


It _is_ rather interesting that no (extant canonical) text preserves
something like the GosMatt polemic. (I can bring that up myself
directly--better than vague references to Galations 6, yes?) It's a
fact which does have to be taken into the account, sooner or later; and I
think it's a pretty important fact. But it still leaves the oddity of the
polemic exactly where it is.


OK, I give up, why didn't they just fake showing a body?

It's quite an intriguing question, once one arrives at it. And I didn't
bring it up just for kicks. I think it has an important place in the
overall picture. But it isn't something that should be used simply in
abstraction from the overall picture. (Though I'm sure it'll be used
that way by the uncautious. I have an idea of where it fits in, but I'd
rather think about it for a while.)


I may start running abridged or summarized drafts of book chapters by
Victor for possible posting. That may be the best way to cover the
initial issues of what can be learned from the existence of the GosMatt polemic.
(There are subsequent issues related to it, too; but I think those
should wait until other pieces are considered in the interim.)

Jason

Steve Lovell's discussion of the Argument from Reason

Steve Lovell's treatment of the argument from reason is excellent, though he is less than fully confident of the argument itself. Steve's dissertation was on the philosophical assessment of Lewis's apologetic arguments, done at the University of Sheffield

John Depoe's treatment of the argument from reason

What's wrong with the Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter

My problem with the Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter is that its title seems to trivialize the issue of evolution. It sounds a lot like "How to Demolish Materialism is Six Easy Lessons from the Comfort of Your Own Home." or "Blow Away Resurrection Skeptics In Your Spare Time."

This paper, by Doug Groothuis, makes the point very clearly.

The Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter

Here it is online. The Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter. At least he didn't call it Evil-ution. With Christians like these.....

A quote from John Dupre

Why does eliminativism upset get people upset? A quote from John Dupre's book The Disorder of things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) p. 158:

"Folk psychology provides us with the entire resources of language for making subtle distinctions between an indefinite array of mental states. this is one of the main things that language is for, and on eof the things that language users, especially the most talented users, are most skilled at applying it to. One should be astounded and even appalled at the scientistic arrogance that supposes that the dry and highly specialized technical terminology of an esoteric subfield of science should supplant the instrument developed over centuries by the efforts of Shakespeare, Dante, and Dostoevsky--to speak only of the West--and millions of others to describe the subtelties of the human mind."

The Chinese Room

Josh wrote:
Dr. Reppert,

I was wondering if in the course of debating the AFR, you use Searles disproof of strong AI as a defeater to the mind/computer objection. I see that Carrier brought up this objection on the Secular Web, but I don't remember seeing it. Do you think that it is not an applicable undercutting defeater?

--

Josh

Of course Searle himself would not endorse the conclusion of the Argument from Reason. But it is true that if Searle's argument works, it makes life easier for the defender of the AFR. And I do think Searle has it right. But it is a demanding chore to convince a naturalist like, say, Blue Devil Knight that Searle isn't nuts. On the other hand, Searle says "If you are tempted to functionalism, I believe you do not need refutation, you need help." One can only imagine what he thinks of eliminativists!

More clarifications on eliminativism

I think we have actually made some progress in making sense of eliminativism, in the sense that we have a clear definition of eliminativism as the view that propositional attitudes are embedded in folk psychology, a false theory whose posits will be eliminated in a matured neuroscience.

We have also agreed that eliminativism faces some problems in construing its philsoophy as genuinely realist. Traditionally, a scientific realist is committed to the truth, as opposed to merely the empirical adequacy, of scientific theories. But if having a true theory means having true beliefs, we have a problem. The Churchlands, like Steven Stich and William Lycan, in the late 80s and early 90s, were moving toward a pragmatism that dethrones truth. Of course, Churchland proclaimed that new theories would provide us some thing better than truth, but what would that be, something more true that truth? Dennett had argued on pragmatic grounds for folk psychology while denying that it was ultimately true. But if truth is replaced by something pragmatic, then these justifications for FP are as good as there can be. As I wrote in 1991:

"The dethronement of truth opens up the possibility of a much looser form of pragmatism: a non-propositional cognitive science may be the best way to go, propsotional attitude attributions are prefectly justified in other contexts, and there just isn't any question of limning the true and ultimate structure of reality. This may not be acceptable to eliminativists like Churchland, but one would like ot know why not."

Belief in the unity of science, for example, which is one of Churchland's fundamental commitments, is undermined by going pragmatist.

However, it is now suggested that perhaps a non-propostional concept of accuracy can save eliminativism. I'm not sure it makes sense; i think the concepts used are parasitic upon the older "folk' concepts. But that is what is at issue.

Some loose ends on eliminativism

Hiero5ant: On most of these, I have been putting links to the previous discussion, but there may have been a few I missed. I should set up the links to track back so that people can read the whole discussion backward if necessary.

Tim: A finite rational mind that needs to explain rationality may be limited in its resources and even in its motivations. Even on theism and dualism, we have human minds and not divine ones. We have the ability to see logical relationships, to string those perceptions together into an inference opens us up for error.

Kip: Are you saying that we cannot be aware of something unless we are aware of it through sense experience? Do we have good reason to believe that everything we are immediately aware of, whatever is directly evident, is given to us through a sensory modality?

BDK: I would like to work through the eliminativism issue a bit more systematically, working through Hasker's, to my mind, outstanding critique, with some supplementation from Angus Menuge's Agents Under Fire. In the process I'd like to try to explain why some of the responses to EM have been as vehement as they have been, hopefully giving you a chance to see if the critics are guilty of misunderstandings.

I am working my way back through your old posts to see if you have provided some explanation of why a opposing Fodorian representationalism is treated as sufficient for a critique of propositional attitude psychology. But I have to pick up my copy of Neurocomputational Perspective from the college's Inter-Library Loan.

I don't believe I'm still keeping this up

Blue Devil Knight said...
You are right that truth and the like hasn't been a focus for the EMers from the get-go. They have spent a lot of time on more basic questions about the dynamics of neural nets and the like, without thinking as much about normative issues. This would have been a great criticism about ten years ago.

But as I've said a couple of times now, they do think brains construct models of the world, and these models can be closer or further from reality.

For example, I think the contents of my visual experience are a model of the world (a nonpropositional model of what is happening in the "specious present" to evoke activity in my retinae). This model can be inaccurate (illusions) or accurate (we are very good at determining if two lines are parallel). What does this concept of a model's fit to the world leave out that you want with truth?

I do not experience propositional contents directly, or if I do, I don't know they are propositional. I engage in verbal imagery, imagining myself or others saying things. I often have a feeling of understanding when I engage this sensory imagery. I sometimes have no such feeling of understanding, as when I listen to someone speaking in Portugese.

That feeling of understanding may indicate that there are propositional contents which I have (unconsciously?) "grasped". I prefer to stay neutral: I have an understanding of the statements, and frankly don't make confident psychological claims about the basis of my understanding. I am an agnostic. EMers are atheists. Propositional devotees are theists.

If a person can be in a state of understanding a proposition, isn't that a propositional attitude?

The problem with talking about models is that models aren't really models unless they are recognized as models, and once they are recognized as models, you have a relationship between some state of the person and a state of affairs, and if the person is a language user, the person is capable of stating, at least if asked, what they see. I construct sentences in my mind before writing typing them in, just like this one.

Have these neurophilosophers explained what verisimilitude is? And doesn't accurate just mean truthful? The problem here is that I know what an accurate model is because I understand what truth is. The whole thing feeds of the very folk psychology which presumably has been condemned. A model is accurate just in case if gives me lots of true beliefs. It's inaccurate if it doesn't.

All we seem to be getting here is an analogy to physical vision. The analogy has some strengths, but some things aren't a whole lot like physical vision. Shoot, I have other senses as well, and those are somewhat different from physical vision. And I can say that I "see" a logical connection between three sentences when I solve a syllogism, but that makes sense just in case I have propositional attitudes.

We keep being told that what we are being given is 1) not propositional but 2) does all the work of propositional attitudes. If it's does all the work of propositional attitudes, then why isn't it a propositional attitude. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, why call it a goose?

Ask an eliminativist or eliminativist sympathizer a question, and you will be given all sorts of scientific detail about the latest discoveries, but as if these answered the fundamental philosophical question, when they really do no such thing. Back where I come from, this is called a smokescreen.

It seems pretty clear to me that I am as directly and immediately aware of what I believe as I am directly and immediately aware of the computer screen in front of me. I know what my sentences mean. If I didn't, there would be not much point in debating this stuff.

Being told that there are no beliefs strikes me as something like being told that we are brains in a vat. Even though there is a self-refutation argument to the effect that we are not brains in vats, (Putnam's) most epistemologists would argue that we are entitle to dismiss the skeptic about the external world without being able to prove the skeptic wrong. It seems to me that, even in the absence of a good self-refutation argument against EM (the structure of which I will be presenting in future posts) we have good reason to reject EM for much the same reason. If it's true, then most of what I believe is false and it's the end of the world.

Ament's Essays: Book Review - The Problem of Pain

Ament's Essays: Book Review - The Problem of Pain

Jason Pratt on Pianka

Victor,

this may be worth posting more generally than in a comment thread. (But
if
you think I should post it there instead, let me know.)

.......

Bringing data up to date while prepping for a more general post on the
topic later (to be emailed to Victor).

Jim, I agree: _so far_ I see no specific evidence that Pianka is an
advocate of intentionally doing this. As I told Steven, I'm actually
quite glad about that.

Yes, the Seguin transcript (of the 2nd speech on March 31st) and Mims'
report (of the 1st speech in early March) are off on some points (as I
noted, though not in detail). This could be explained in a number of
different ways, many of them more-or-less in Pianka's favor.

(I will note that until recently I haven't read any other articles by
the Seguin Gazette on the controversy, only the transcript link provided by
Steven, for which again I thank him. As those articles are about
reporting opinions pro and con on the lectures, I consider them less important;
I'drather work on the primary data, insofar as it can be had.)

I agree, having an actual recording (and transcript) of Pianka's speech
early in March would be helpful. Since we don't have it, though, we're
kind of vaporing in trying to discuss it; which is one reason why I
suggested doing a principle-comparison between Pianka (using the late-March
transcript) and Carlson instead.

The transcript available on Pearcey's website is, as Nick Matzke
himself points out, "partial". In point of fact, it matches up fairly well to
the final five minutes or so of the fuller transcript from March
31st--which, in the content of its speech, seems to incorporate some bits from the
Q&A session earlier in the month. If the structure of the two speeches are
parallel (and I have no reason yet to doubt they wouldn't be); then the
parts that people are mainly complaining about (or hailing as radical),
in misunderstanding or otherwise, would have occurred _before_ this
section--as the transcribed lead-in itself indicates.

It is also interesting, that the tape recording (per the transcript)
kicks in precisely _after_ the portions that Mims was (mostly) complaining
about (using the 2nd transcript as a basis comparison.) I'm curious as to how
NP got hold of the transcript and/or the audio tape from which the
transcript comes. Possibly someone knows this already, but I haven't found it yet.
Info would be welcome. Mims says, in his letter to the TAoS, early April,
that he has access to the tape.

BDK says he has read transcript from the _videos_ of both talks; and
claims video was in fact taken of the first talk (which he's very glad
of)--though the link he sent doesn't contain this or even mention it (neither does the Pearcey article Matzke links to). Perhaps this information is in the
comments below Matzke's blog entry, and I missed it? (Entirely
possible, but some clarification would be appreciated if so.)

Something else I would expect to be useful, would be Mims' response to
reading the St. Edwards transcript. (Anyone have info on this?)

The link Jim posted to Panda's Thumb (for the statement by the TAoS)
still doesn't work, btw, as of today (April 18th, about 11 CST). Not sure
that's important, but a new link would be appreciated. (Possibly Panda's Thumb
removed it because it violated copyright law.)

Also, the Seguine Gazette's transcript of the second lecture now
appears to be completely gone (as of April 18th): a search on their site turned up
three articles on the dispute, but _not_ the transcript itself, nor any
explanation for its disappearance. (I suspect legal issues; but it
while it would be nice to have that confirmed, there would be equally legal reasons
why the paper couldn't say so officially, since that would be
considered an admission of infringement in court.)

Fortunately, Google has kept a snapshot of it; I would post the link,
but the address is terribly long. I've now saved it, though, in case it
disappears, too. (Again, possibly for legal reasons, since transcripts
nominally would be at least co-property of the various universities.)

If another site is now hosting the second transcript, such as St.
Edwards, a link would be appreciated so that others can still have access to it.
Otherwise, I'll try copy-pasting the Google archive link to an html
artifact here (though I'm not very good at that, and the size of the
address is kind of daunting me {s}); or I'll send Victor a text of the
transcript for him to post up (at least until lawyers warn him of
copyright infringement. {g})

Finally, the link found and posted by Jim to a statement from Pianka on
the topic is much appreciated. (I suppose it's dated after all this
started?--no way to tell on the page itself, or its root page,
however.)


At least three topics for serious discussion occur to me; at least two
of which I will try to cover in a longer forthcoming letter.

a.) what, in the primary data we have at hand (such as it is), can we
find that may shed light (being as charitable as possible to Mims as well as
to Pianka) on why Mims went as ballistic as he has about this (followed by
Carlson of all people)?

b.) what are the points of similarity and disjunction between Pianka
(especially with an eye to the lecture series, though not forgetting
the qualifying entry on Pianka's website which Jim provided for us) and
Carlson (the hardline atheistic evolutionist who is criticising Pianka,
specifically on evolutionary and anti-theistic grounds)?

c.) the controversy leads into the question of what it means to be better
than a bacterium, and in what ways. For example, it appears to me that
one point of similarity shared by Pianka (in both transcripts, as well as
his qualifying post) and Carlson; is that _both_ of them make appeals to
humans which presuppose some kind of transcendent superiority (not merely
effectual) for humans, while also strenuously denying any such thing
can be true about humans compared to any other naturally produced species. (Which of course would include, as Pianka did put it, bacteria.) A discussion of this, though it may be done somewhat separate from the Pianka
situation, would seem to be worth having.

Jason

Eliminative Materialism and Neuroscientific Successors

BDK wrote:
To lie is to know X is false, but to assert X anyway. The EM advocate would just say that knowledge is a property of internal nonpropositional representational states that can be true or false, or if you prefer, can provide a better or worse fit to the world. This, of course, is the positive story Churchland has been developing with his state space semantics, or recently he's been calling it 'domain portrayal' semantics.

VR: OK so you can have a nonpropositional representational case that a proposition is false? I'm sorry, but that sounds like burning water, military intelligence, jumbo shrimp and compassionate conservatism. If I am in a state that can be true or false, that state is to all intents and purposes a propositional attitude.

BDK: Victor, you keep giving indirect arguments. What about the contents of your visual experience: are they propositional?

VR: I can see something without having any propositional thoughts. But my visual experience invariably gives rise to propositional thoughts.

BDK: 2) They are nonpropositional. In this case, what is to be feared if all contents are nonpropositional in a similar way? Our visual experience is extremely rich, much more thick and nuanced than can be described in a few words. Perhaps most of our brain uses a similar high-capacity, parallel, nonpropositional representational format, and linguistic tokens are anemic reflections of such rich internal contents.

VR: At the end of the day, I am trying to account for my own experience. And I am aware of all sorts of propositional thoughts. I am aware of the meaning of the sentence I just wrote. I am aware of what I mean when I am presented with a definition of eliminative materialism. Not every part of my mental life is propositional but by golly a lot of it is, especially my entire career as a blogger.

What the Churchlands do is say that they are replacing propositional attitudes with something that they describe in non-propositional terms that fits more nicely with what a brain scientists sees (or the ultimate brain scientist will see) when you look at the brain. Then when you ask them how what is going on has anything to do with knowledge as you know and understand it, and they then tell you that, well, of course this neuroscientific description is what knowledge really is, and that you shouldn't worry about what is going to happen to knowledge, or the distincition between telling the truth and lying, or what have you. It all seems like double-talk to me.

Lynne Baker writes: Throughout, he conflates views on the nature of knowledge and views on the mechanisms that encode it.
Connectionism, if true, may falsify sentences-in-the-brain models of internal mechanisms, but all that would follow is that propositions and propositional attitudes should not be understood in terms ofsentences-in-the-brain. Throughout, the (plausible) claim that if connectionism is true, then sentences-in-the-brain models are false is elided with the distinct (and implausible) claim that if connectionism is true, then knowledge is nonpropositional. [This footnote is taken from my review of Churchland's A Neurocomputational Perspective. The review appeared in The Philosophical Review 101 (1992):906-908.]

Lynne Baker on brain states

Lynne Rudder Baker is a critic of physicalism but a materialist in some sense. She has also developed some of the more sophisticated versions of the self-refutation argument against eliminative materialIism/ have her papers page here, which has a link to a pdf paper entitled "Are Beliefs Brain States,"

Raffaele Ventura on Aquinas' Third Way

A simple question for eliminative materialism

A good deal of political dialogue today depends on whether one affirms:

1) Senior Bush administration officials made false statements about weapons of mass distruction in Iraq.

or

2) Senior Bush administration officials lied about weapons of mass destruntion in Iraq.

Folk psychology would explain this difference by saying that in 2, but not 1, affirms that senior Bush officials believed these statements were false when they made them. How would an eliminative materialist explain the difference?

This is the Wikipedia entry for eliminativism

Interview of me on Reasons.org

I was interviewed on tape for the Reasons to Believe program by Ken Samples. The broadcasts should be available here. They will be running segments of our interview and then having some discussion afterward. I've been told it will be a couple of weeks before this is up. Will keep you posted.

Is refuting eliminative materialism like rolling a drunk?

Bill Vallicella wrote, in one of his eliminativism posts: EM is so patently absurd that I must ask myself: Is it a good use of my time to beat up a cripple or roll a drunk?

It's probably not that easy, because it's pretty difficult to get your mind around what the eliminativists are up to if you are unsympathetic to naturalism or materialism. I think, at the end of the day, self-refutation-style arguments do work.

I still consider William Hasker's critique of eliminativism in the first chapter of The Emergent Self to be the best critique of eliminativism that I have read.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801487609/104-4163617-0857504?v=glance&n=283155

The definition of eliminative materialism

This is from the founding essay on eliminative materialism "Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes, by Paul Churchland, from Journal of Philosophy 78 no. 2 (1981)

"Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than merely reduced, by completed neuroscience."

Here the idea that folk psychology is a theory is built right into the definition of eliminative materialism. Has anything been written since to suggest that this claim that folk psychology is a theory should be written into the definition of EM?

On what Pianka really thinks

This came up in the comment line of a previoius entry, in response to a link provided by Jim Lippard on what Pianka really is up to. I put this on the comments line but it really deserves its own entry.

The main point is this: the profound concern about Pianka's statements depend upon taking literally some statements he makes to the effect that human life per se does not have greater value than the life of bacteria and lizards. If you believe that, and if you think, ss he does, that human beings in their current numbers threaten the health of the ecosystem, then you have constructed a case for eliminating human beings in large numbers, whether you wanted to be doing that or not. But what is his value theory? Was he really saying that human life is not more valuable than the life of bacteria???

If he wasn't then he simply needs to be more clear. If hwe was, then, then this is too scary for words.

In my original comment I wrote:

All of these claims may be what he thinks. But what is upsetting to me is the claims his denial, or apparent denial of the intrinsic value of human life. I mean, if you make all these Malthusian predictions and then you say that human life is not valuable but biodiversity is, then you provide the underpinnings for an argument in favor of "rooting for viruses," if not turning them loose, even if you do not draw the conclusions yourself.

I conclude, therefore, that the responses of Mims and Carlson are understandable and based on something. Pianka does say things like "What good are you?" and "We're no better than bacteria." I can imagine things he might mean by it that would not lead to the sorts of dreadful results that come out of all of this, but perhaps all he is guilty of is a regrettable lack of clarity.

Douglas Groothius on evidence for Easter

Happy Easter

This, of course, is what it's all about.

Joe Markus on Michael Martin, again

Hello Professor Reppert,

Happy Easter! I hope you are having a pleasant Easter weekend.

If you don't mind indulging me, I'd like to make one more argument regarding Michael Martin's fall-back position in his book Atheism.

As you know, Martin argues, based on a reformulated verificationist criterion of meaning, that theism is likely factually meaningless--that is, neither true nor false. But in an effort to cover all his bases, he argues later in the book that IF it should turn out that theism is factually meaningful then it is likely that God does not exist. He attemps to support the latter claim by presenting several atheistic teleological arguments, several arguments that the concept of God is incoherent, and some arguments based upon evil.

In his own words:

"My position is something like this. Yes, "God exists" is probably meaningless. But I am not completely sure. If I am wrong, there is still no reason to believe in God (negative atheism) and good reason not to (positive atheism). So my argumentative strategy reflects to some extent my actual belief. I would believe that God does not exist if "God exists" is not meaningless (which it may not be)."

My new argument against the fall-back position is really fairly short and simple. If theism is PROBABLY neither true nor false then it is probably not false (and probably not true). If it is probably not false then any argument which suggests that it is false must be unsound or in some way less than cogent. Now Martin's position may not be strictly inconsistent. But I do submit that there is a tension here. I believe that his arguments for the factual meaninglessness of theism tend to counter his arguments that it is false. Insofar as he believes his argument for the factual meaninglessness of theism is cogent, he must believe his arguments for the falsity of theism are less than cogent.

Consider an example. Suppose I offer an argument that the activity of photons are probably neither moral nor immoral. Then later I offer an argument that their activity is immoral. I could say that my position is not inconsistent because I have only claimed that it is PROBABLE that moral concepts don't apply to photons. To allow myself a fall-back position, I might offer an argument that IF moral concepts do happen to apply to photons then their activity is immoral---offering an argument for the latter claim. Doesn't my argument that moral concepts do not apply to electrons tend to cast doubt on the cogency of my argument that electrons are immoral?

It looks like the core of my argument involves something like this:

"It is probable that X is neither A nor B" ENTAILS "It is probable that X is not B."

That principle seems true. For example, if it's probable that (A) "Joe is neither short nor bald" then it is probable that (B) "Joe is not bald".

If someone argues that A is probably true, how can they later argue that B is probably false without giving up their argument for A?

It seems to work with this sort of example but I'm not sure it would work in the case of Martin's argument. Would it work with claims about the application of the concepts of truth and falsity? Maybe.

Anyway, that's the gist of my argument.

I'd appreciate any comments. Thanks for your time.

Regards,
Joe

A dialogue on the free will problem

On Johnny-Dee's blog.

A further response to the Gospel of Judas tripe

Some research on the Shroud of Turin

More dialogue with BDK on Churchland

Blue Devil Knight wrote:

Under those assumptions, EM would make knowledge impossible (not just scientific knoweldge!). So, if EM is true, either knowledge is not possible, or the above philosophical account of knowledge gets it wrong. Which seems more likely? Perhaps it would just point out that philosophy needs an epistemology that is actually sensitive to neuropsychological details, not just detritus from the days of philosophical conceptual analysis.

But I believe I do know what knowledge is. Justified true belief may not be sufficient, but it is a darn good start. Amplification of my understanding of knowledge based on neuroscience is one thing. Being given a scientific story that essentially changes the subject and calling that an account of knowledge is a completely different thing. I like the way Fodor put it:

If it isn’t literally true that my wanting is causally responsible for my reaching, and my itching is causally responsible for my scratching, and my believing is causally responsible for my saying ..., if none of that is literally true, then practically everything I believe about anything is false and it’s the end of the world.

A Theory of Content and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford Books/MIT Press, (1990) p. 156.

Luckily for progress, most scientists make free use of math, language, words such as "truth", and the like, without worrying about their ultimate ontology or truth-conditions. Does using X imply an implicit endorsement of certain philosophical ideas about X? Clearly not.

Clearly yes, it seems to me, unless a face-saving alternative analysis is on the horizon. And not a subject-changing one. If I am going to argue with you, I am presupposing that there are arguments, and that it is logically possible for you to be persuaded by them. Otherwise, I'll try brainwashing.

As for Churchland's view, Paul is a realist with a pragmatic attitude (his first book, Scientific Realism and Plasticity of mind, lays this out, as he also does in his edited volume Images of Science, where he and a bunch of people gang up on van Frasen).

How he handles truth, or its mental homologue, is that it is a mapping between brain models and the world. Such models can match up better or worse. We make such judgments all the time in science (how well does our model fit the data). The internal brain models are not propositional, but high-dimensional internal neuronal maps (exactly analogous to street maps: it isn't the intrinsic features of the street map that are important, but the metric relations among features of the street map).

From reading the van Fraassen essay it looked as if "realism" was simply a refusal to accept a van Fraassen-style non-realism in which we treat scientific claims about observables as true and claims about unobservables as only empirically adequate. Churchland rejects that distinction, so that makes him a realist??? Truth, as we know it and understand it traditionally, seems to be explicitly set aside. Yes, there can be better or worse mappings from a pragmatic standpoint, but it is the utility of those maps, and not the correspondence between the propositional contents and reality, that make it real knowledge as opposed to not knowledge.

As an aside, if you are that much of a pragmatist, how do you resist Pascal's Wager?

One more thing. Churchland thinks that, because our future psychology, which will dovetail with neuroscience, will be much more pragmatically useful than belief-desire psychology. Its explanatory resources will be much richer, and people will willingly abandon the explanitorily anemic resources of propositional-attitude psychology mainly because it is more useful for understanding their own minds and behavior.

No thank you. I think I'll pass on the Brooklyn Bridge.

More on eliminative materialism

Blue Devil Knight wrote: The most important part of all their work (Sellars, Rorty, Feyerabend, the Churchlands) is that our psychological theories do not self-verify, as some people would claim (e.g., those who like to say that their propositional attitudes are just "given": this is the whole point of Sellars' great work Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind). This fact, that we don't know how our minds work by inspection, has interesting consequences.

But doesn't the very operation of science presuppose that humans have perceive the truth of certain propositions; mathematical, observational, and inferential? If we are just wrong about our mental processes, so much so that we think we have propositional attitudes but really don't doesn't that undermine at least the traditional conception of science as the pursuit of truth.

But, as I remember when I wrote my reply to Bill Ramsey on the self-refutation argument, that Paul Churchland (In A Neurocomputational Perspective) was redefining science in pragmatist terms and was ready to get rid of the notion of truth. But pragmatism, it seems to me, puts folk psychology in the driver's seat for sure. Even if you think folk psychology isn't true, you at least have to admit it's pragmatically useful.

I remember spending a number of mornings in Carrow's Restaurant near my house poring over NCP, and thinking that his radical philosophy of mind and radical philosophy of science probably don't go together very well.

Here's the reference for my reply to Ramsey.

Reppert, V. 1991. Ramsey on eliminativism and self-refutation. Inquiry
34:499-508.

Mims defended

This is an article defending Mims against the charge of misrepresentation. But it doesn't look as if Pianka advocated setting the ebola virus loose. His claim is, I think, that we have to control the population before viruses do it for us. So he supports something like the forced abortion one-child policy they have in China.

However, if you believe that there is no intrinsic value to human life as opposed to other life, and you think that what does have intrinsic value is biodiversity, you think that human population needs to drop a few billion people in order to insure the best chance for biodiversity, you have the power to launch the ebola virus in order to achieve this biodiversity goal, do you then have any reason not to do so? Suppose you were in a room with Pianka*, someone who has adopted Pianka's ideas and pushed them to this logical conclusion. It reminds me a little of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, a movie in which a philosophy professor is shocked to discover that two of his students have used his nihilistic philosophical ideas as a pretext for murder.

I'm more concerned about the underlying ethical convictions behind what Pianka said than I am with the question of whether he said "Yes, we ought to go do this." Ideas have consequences, and these ideas have scary consequences, whether Pianka has drawn those consequences or not.

Carrier vs. Wanchick-here's you're chance to lobby the judge

I am a judge on this debate for the Secular Web. Although I'm a theist, and Carrier is my most prolific (or perhaps prolix) critics, I am going to be careful to give both sides fair consideration. Wanchick is a Christian blogger at The Good Fight.

Vallicella on whether folk psychology is a theory

An essential dimension on eliminative materialism, and, I believe, the element that determines whether eliminative materialism is open to a self-refutation charge, is the claim that folk psychology is a theory. According to EM, propositional attitudes are theoretical entities in a theory to explain observable behavior. If this is conceded, then the advocate of EM will argue that we have to be open to the possibility that these theoretical posits could be replaced by posits that are more scientifically adequate. Those who think eliminative materialism is self-refuting also typically challenge the claim that folk psychology is a theory.

But, to me, it seems very clear that at least some propositional attitudes, like my desiring a steak dinner, are not theoretical posits, but are rather states of affairs of which I can be, and am, directly aware.

This is too scary for words

Some Comments on Comments

I've given some thought to my rather open comments policy, but I really do believe in keeping an open intellectual atmosphere. Further, I am convinced that people making up their minds what to believe are influenced as much by the kind of person a belief makes you as they are the with the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments presented, which may be not be easy to assess. So if you are committed to an ideology that is deeply at variance with my own, and you want to be a jerk about presenting your position, my reaction is "Go ahead. Make my day. Take all the rope you like and hang yourself." The fact that I might not delete a comment does not mean that I approve of it or the tone in which it was presented. I do not feel that I am obliged to comment on everyone's comments, so if I don't respond please don't be so egotistical as to suppose that your comment is so brilliant that I am "ducking" you. If you start saying things like that I may indeed show you the door. I may fail to respond because I don't have time, or because I feel I need to think for awhile, or sometimes because I really don't think it deserves an answer.

I think people have an obligation to their own beliefs to defend them in a ladylike of gentlemanly fashion. This, of course, does not exclude passionate advocacy of what you believe.

Barbara Montero on Conservation

Here is a paper by Barbara Montero arguing against the argument from conservation for physicalism. HT: Joe Markus.

Mere Christianity Book IV ch 2

Book II Chapter 2
The Three-Personal God
These chapters are an attempt to provide an understanding of the Trinity
The Trinity is regarded as a mystery, not something that is transparent to human understanding.
When Eldridge Cleaver was in prison he received catechism classes from the nuns. They asked students to give an account of the Trinity, with the idea of showing that the Trinity could not be understood. But Cleaver thought he did understand the Trinity. “It’s just like Three In One Oil.”
Some people say “I believe in God, but not a personal God.” Christians actually believe that the God of Christianity is more than a mere person
Other religions see God as less than personal, only Christianity sees God as more than personal.
Some religions say that human souls are absorbed into God; what that means is that the person ceases to exist.
It is only Christians who claim that we can be taken into the life of God without ceasing to be ourselves.
Our attempt to imagine a three-personal God is like someone who lives in a two-dimensional world trying to understand three-dimensional figures.
People had an idea of God, then encountered Jesus, who claimed to be God.
The theology is built around experiential knowledge.
But it is a theoretical framework to make sense of what we experience
“It is the simple religions that are the made up ones.”
Our understanding is based on the “lens” we have working for us, we can only see God if our mirror is clean.
The Christian community is the “laboratory tools” for coming to know God.

More Mere Christianity Notes

Chapter 12 Faith
Dealing with faith in the second, higher, sense.
The question of faith in this sense arises when someone has tried his level best to practice the Christian virtues, and discovers that he has not been successful, and discovers that his own efforts only give back to God what comes from God already.
Reiterates that what God wants is not actions of a certain sort, but people having a certain sort of character.
It’s not a matter of bargaining, of claims and counterclaims between God and humans. So long as we are thinking in those terms we cannot be in a right relationship to God
We have to discover all of this by experience; any child can say we have nothing to offer God except His own, but the life of a Christian is a discovery of this truth.
As a result we must “leave it to God,” that depend on Christ to share with us the perfect obedience his lived out at his crucifixion
Is faith more important than works?
Which blade of the scissors is more important? Real faith arises in the context of wanting and trying to do the right thing and realizing that, apart from God’s grace, failure is complete.
Christianity begins from the moral code but is ultimately about a relationship with God that goes beyond mere morality.

Book III Chapter 1
Making and Begetting
Lewis attempts to provide an account of the doctrine of the Trinity.
“Everyone has warned me not to tell you what I am going to tell you in this last book. They all say ‘The ordinary man does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion.” I have rejected their advice. Theology means “the science of God” and I think any man who wants to think about God at all wants the most accurate ideas about Him that are available. You are not children, why should you be treated as children?”

Some people say that since they have experienced God, they have no need of theology.
Sure, the experience of the Atlantic Ocean is more vivid at the beach than it is looking at a map, but a map will get you to New York, while experiencing the beach will not.

Theology is practical because a lot of common ideas about what Christianity is about are false.

Popular Idea: Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that if only we took his advice we might be able to establish a better social order and avoid another war. That’s quite true, but it is less than the whole truth about Christianity and of no practical value at all.
We have always had lots of good advice and have not followed the advice of the greatest moral teachers. Why should we be able to follow Christ when we can’t even follow Confucius?

Christians claim that:
1) Christ is the son of God
2) This who give Him their confidence become sons of God
3) His death saves us from our sins

These statements are, of course difficult. So is modern physics.
Christianity says that when we attach ourselves to Christ we become sons of God. People find that confusing. Aren’t we sons of God already?

Christ, the son of God, is begotten, not made. Humans receive a certain kind of life as created beings (bios), and another kind of life (zoe).