Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Hasker, sensible naturalism, and causal closure
What would the naturalist have to accept, in order to accommodate the demands of reason at this point? At minimum, the naturalist must accept the existence of emergent laws—laws which manifest themselves in complex organic situations, and which result in behavior of the fundamental particles of nature different from the behavior predicted on the basis of the physical laws alone. To admit this is to reject the “causal closure of the physical domain” that is so dear to the hearts of many, perhaps most, contemporary naturalists. The naturalist will have to acknowledge that new causal powers emerge in suitably complex configurations of organic chemicals.—powers that are not evident in simpler situations, and are not deducible from any laws that operate in simpler situations. It will have to be true that, given a particular sort of brain-state, there supervenes, say, a desire to hear a performance of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” and that, in virtue of this desire, certain actions, and certain bodily movements occur that could not be predicted merely on the basis of the physical laws that apply to the elementary particles making up the nervous system. A view that countenances the emergence of such causal powers might provide the basis for understanding mental states that could be effective in virtue of their propositional content. Many naturalists, however, will be extremely reluctant to abandon causal closure; if they do so, their status as naturalists in good standing could plummet alarmingly.
Richard Dawkins and the Argument from Reason
Geoff Robinson wrote:
I had the opportunity to pose comments to Dawkins while he was in Philadelphiaon his book tour. I am a relatively well-read layman, but color me unimpressed. I pointed out several inconsistencies. Among which he chose to respond to the Argument from Reason. And, frankly, his response was pretty much "I'm not sure why this is a problem."
That's funny. Darwin could see a problem. How come Dawkins can't?
I had the opportunity to pose comments to Dawkins while he was in Philadelphiaon his book tour. I am a relatively well-read layman, but color me unimpressed. I pointed out several inconsistencies. Among which he chose to respond to the Argument from Reason. And, frankly, his response was pretty much "I'm not sure why this is a problem."
That's funny. Darwin could see a problem. How come Dawkins can't?
My question for Paul Draper
My question for Paul Draper on the Internet Infidels God or Blind Nature debate
In your reply to Plantinga, you maintain that a “sensible naturalism” can provide an adequate response to Plantinga’s EAAN. I would like to take a closer look at that “sensible naturalism.”
Surely you must know who invented the term “sensible naturalism.” It comes from William Hasker’s generally friendly response to my presentation of the Argument from Reason, entitled “What About a Sensible Naturalism: A Response to Victor Reppert," Philosophia Christi 5 (2003), at 53-62.
In your essay you define a set of beliefs that Hasker would accept as part of what a sensible naturalist must accept:
S: Beliefs exist, they affect behavior by virtue of their contents, and a belief's having a particular content is not the same as its displaying a certain set of third-person properties.
I quite agree. But I wonder if you are willing to accept the next step in Hasker’s argument, the claim that a sensible naturalist ought to deny the causal closure of the physical. Do you accept that, or not?
The problem here is that orthodox physics does not import first-person properties to its descriptions. It must be admitted that before living things ever came to exist, there was nothing that had a first-person perspective. Yet, if naturalism is true, all the causes were in place within the physical world to produce everything that has been produced since. So how does third-person physical stuff give rise to first-person entities?
If the physical is closed, the every particle’s being where it is can be fully accounted for in terms of physics. If you were physically omniscient, then nothing from the world of the mental could possibly give you any information about where a particle was going to be. You are familiar, surely with the difficulties Jaegwon Kim has raised for mental causation in a physicalistic world, or the argument from mental causation found in Hasker’s The Emergent Self (Ithaca: NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), ch. 3, or in my book, C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason (Inter-Varsity Press, 2003).
If you say that the universe started out as a physicalistic system with no mental causes in place, how did it create a distinct, irreducible mental realm that interacts with it?
Hasker, of course, argues that sensible naturalist should set the causal closure of the physical aside, even though many of you fellow naturalists will wonder whether you’re still a naturalist. But it seems to me that one must do more than that, one must admit that there are basic, irreducible causes in the universe that are mental in nature. Now you can do that without accepting theism per se: pantheism and absolute idealism are OK also. Admitted this is not supernaturalism, in the sense these world-views do not posit a separate, supernatural realm. But it does so at the cost of maintaining that the physical world is quite different from what orthodox physics says that it is.
In your reply to Plantinga, you maintain that a “sensible naturalism” can provide an adequate response to Plantinga’s EAAN. I would like to take a closer look at that “sensible naturalism.”
Surely you must know who invented the term “sensible naturalism.” It comes from William Hasker’s generally friendly response to my presentation of the Argument from Reason, entitled “What About a Sensible Naturalism: A Response to Victor Reppert," Philosophia Christi 5 (2003), at 53-62.
In your essay you define a set of beliefs that Hasker would accept as part of what a sensible naturalist must accept:
S: Beliefs exist, they affect behavior by virtue of their contents, and a belief's having a particular content is not the same as its displaying a certain set of third-person properties.
I quite agree. But I wonder if you are willing to accept the next step in Hasker’s argument, the claim that a sensible naturalist ought to deny the causal closure of the physical. Do you accept that, or not?
The problem here is that orthodox physics does not import first-person properties to its descriptions. It must be admitted that before living things ever came to exist, there was nothing that had a first-person perspective. Yet, if naturalism is true, all the causes were in place within the physical world to produce everything that has been produced since. So how does third-person physical stuff give rise to first-person entities?
If the physical is closed, the every particle’s being where it is can be fully accounted for in terms of physics. If you were physically omniscient, then nothing from the world of the mental could possibly give you any information about where a particle was going to be. You are familiar, surely with the difficulties Jaegwon Kim has raised for mental causation in a physicalistic world, or the argument from mental causation found in Hasker’s The Emergent Self (Ithaca: NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), ch. 3, or in my book, C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason (Inter-Varsity Press, 2003).
If you say that the universe started out as a physicalistic system with no mental causes in place, how did it create a distinct, irreducible mental realm that interacts with it?
Hasker, of course, argues that sensible naturalist should set the causal closure of the physical aside, even though many of you fellow naturalists will wonder whether you’re still a naturalist. But it seems to me that one must do more than that, one must admit that there are basic, irreducible causes in the universe that are mental in nature. Now you can do that without accepting theism per se: pantheism and absolute idealism are OK also. Admitted this is not supernaturalism, in the sense these world-views do not posit a separate, supernatural realm. But it does so at the cost of maintaining that the physical world is quite different from what orthodox physics says that it is.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Is reason central to science? I think so.
Science is wedded, at least in principle, to the evidence. Creationism is unabashedly wedded to doctrine, as evidenced by the statements of belief required by various creationist organizations and the professions of faith made by individual creationists. Because creationism is first and foremost a matter of Biblical faith, evidence from the natural world can only be of secondary importance. Authoritarian systems like creationism tend to instill in their adherents a peculiar view of truth.
This is from the Talk-Origins archive. Notice something about this argument: that ir presupposes a difference between proper and improper ways of getting the truth. Some methods are superior to others. "Works for me" isn't good enough in this arena of inquiry; genuine standards of right and wrong reasoning have to be applied.
This is from the Talk-Origins archive. Notice something about this argument: that ir presupposes a difference between proper and improper ways of getting the truth. Some methods are superior to others. "Works for me" isn't good enough in this arena of inquiry; genuine standards of right and wrong reasoning have to be applied.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Two dozen or so arguments for God
How many arguments are there for theism? Alvin Plantinga thinks there are a couple of dozen.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Here's the other side of the moths story
Here's the other side of the Wells moth story. It doesn't look, from the context of this statement, as if Majerus was inferring atheism from evolution.
It is not my place to tell people what to believe. But I know that we are making a horrendous mess of this planet, and I do not have faith in some supernatural intervention putting it right: No second coming; No helping hand from on high; No last minute redemption.
I caught my first butterfly when I was four, and started recording peppered moth forms when I was 10. I am getting old, and have spent my life in scientific enquiry and discovery. And it has been a great life!
Until now, for instead of the vision of a world made better by the appliance of science, I see a future of ever-increasing global problems. I probably won't see the worst of what's coming - but I fear for my children, who will face escalating problems of climate change, over-population, pollution, starvation, disease and conflict. And for their children and grandchildren, I have little optimism.
We need to address global problems now, and to do so with any chance of success, we have to base our decisions on scientific facts: and that includes the fact of Darwinian evolution.
Though, when I read this sort of thing, I have to wonder what is packed into the term "Darwinian evolution."
Deep and passionate commitment on an issue makes it hard to tell what is simply serious misunderstanding and what is out and out deceit.
If Majerus is looking for a "proof of evolution" in the peppered moth case, this is probably asking too much.
As for the "icons" strategy Wells uses, I am kind of skeptical, because education below the highest level requires a certain amount of "cartooning" if theories which are presented in better detail at a higher level.
It is not my place to tell people what to believe. But I know that we are making a horrendous mess of this planet, and I do not have faith in some supernatural intervention putting it right: No second coming; No helping hand from on high; No last minute redemption.
I caught my first butterfly when I was four, and started recording peppered moth forms when I was 10. I am getting old, and have spent my life in scientific enquiry and discovery. And it has been a great life!
Until now, for instead of the vision of a world made better by the appliance of science, I see a future of ever-increasing global problems. I probably won't see the worst of what's coming - but I fear for my children, who will face escalating problems of climate change, over-population, pollution, starvation, disease and conflict. And for their children and grandchildren, I have little optimism.
We need to address global problems now, and to do so with any chance of success, we have to base our decisions on scientific facts: and that includes the fact of Darwinian evolution.
Though, when I read this sort of thing, I have to wonder what is packed into the term "Darwinian evolution."
Deep and passionate commitment on an issue makes it hard to tell what is simply serious misunderstanding and what is out and out deceit.
If Majerus is looking for a "proof of evolution" in the peppered moth case, this is probably asking too much.
As for the "icons" strategy Wells uses, I am kind of skeptical, because education below the highest level requires a certain amount of "cartooning" if theories which are presented in better detail at a higher level.
Reply to Dmitry Chernikov's Inquiry on subjective probabilities
The idea is rejecting classical foundationalism and accepting the idea that people come into a topic from various perspectives. We are called upon to adjust the beliefs we have rather than start from scratch. So to begin, any prior is OK, but in the light of evidence, if the case is really strong, everyone can move from where they are to a consensus.
As I understand it, everyone's prior probabilities (even people who believe weird things) are "properly basic" and we revise from there.
As I understand it, everyone's prior probabilities (even people who believe weird things) are "properly basic" and we revise from there.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Peppered moths: Alive or dead?
What bothers me here is how the biologist proclaims not just that peppered moths prove evolution, but they also disprove God. That's quite an accomplishment for a bunch of dead moths.
See what those CADRE guys mean?
I googled "idiot xtians" and came up with lots of stuff. This is one of the links I got.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Stunney's Important Point
Stunney: In other words, regardless of whether materialism is true or not, some things must have their nature or essential properties, and must engage in the activity that is specified by that nature or essential properties, NOT in virtue of some underlying parts and processes that 'enable' or ’cause' that nature or activity, but immediately, directly, and hence non-mechanically.
VR: Quite correct. At some point we have to stop reducing, and say that something is the way it is because it is its nature to be the way it is. Why can't we say something (maybe God, maybe something else) is rational because it has the essential property of being rational. Why say that such a stopping point has to be with mindless particles.
VR: Quite correct. At some point we have to stop reducing, and say that something is the way it is because it is its nature to be the way it is. Why can't we say something (maybe God, maybe something else) is rational because it has the essential property of being rational. Why say that such a stopping point has to be with mindless particles.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Misunderstanding the argument from reason
W wrote: In your argument from reason, for example, you demand a step by step, no gaps, defense of reason in a physicalist universe.
VR: No, I don't require such a thing. I maintain that there is a conceptual disparity between the mental and the physical. In fact the physical is typically defined in terms of the absence of the mental. I see attempts to accommodate the mental to the physical that either explain the mental away or "sneak in" the mental to into a presumably physical explanation, and then try to tell me that it's a good physical explanation because it's being attributed to the "brain."
VR: No, I don't require such a thing. I maintain that there is a conceptual disparity between the mental and the physical. In fact the physical is typically defined in terms of the absence of the mental. I see attempts to accommodate the mental to the physical that either explain the mental away or "sneak in" the mental to into a presumably physical explanation, and then try to tell me that it's a good physical explanation because it's being attributed to the "brain."
A Clarifying Passage from Feser
Edward Feser, Philosophy of Mind, a Beginner’s Guide (One World, 2006) p. 113.
Property dualism would thus appear to lead to absurdity as long as it concedes to materialism the reducibility of the propositional attitudes. If it instead takes the attitudes to be, like qualia, irreducible to physical states of the brain, this absurdity can be avoided: for in that case, your beliefs and judgments are as non-physical as your qualia are, and there is thus no barrier (at the least of the usual mental-to-physical epiphenomenalist sort) to your qualia being the causes of your beliefs about them. But should it take this route, there seems to be much less motivation for adopting property dualism rather than full-blown Cartesian substance dualism: it was precisely the concession of the materiality of propositional attitudes that seemed to allow the property dualist to make headway on the interaction problem, an advantage the is lost if the concession is revoked; and while taking at least beliefs, desires, and the like to be purely material undermines the plausibility of the existence of a distinct, non-physical mental substance, such plausibility would seem to be restored if all mental properties, beliefs and desires, as much as qualia, are non-physical. Moreover, property dualism raises a puzzle of its own, namely that of explaining exactly how non-physical properties an inhere in a physical substance.
Property dualism would thus appear to lead to absurdity as long as it concedes to materialism the reducibility of the propositional attitudes. If it instead takes the attitudes to be, like qualia, irreducible to physical states of the brain, this absurdity can be avoided: for in that case, your beliefs and judgments are as non-physical as your qualia are, and there is thus no barrier (at the least of the usual mental-to-physical epiphenomenalist sort) to your qualia being the causes of your beliefs about them. But should it take this route, there seems to be much less motivation for adopting property dualism rather than full-blown Cartesian substance dualism: it was precisely the concession of the materiality of propositional attitudes that seemed to allow the property dualist to make headway on the interaction problem, an advantage the is lost if the concession is revoked; and while taking at least beliefs, desires, and the like to be purely material undermines the plausibility of the existence of a distinct, non-physical mental substance, such plausibility would seem to be restored if all mental properties, beliefs and desires, as much as qualia, are non-physical. Moreover, property dualism raises a puzzle of its own, namely that of explaining exactly how non-physical properties an inhere in a physical substance.
Reply to Arnold Guminski, with some clarifications
AG: I describe myself as a commonsensible naturalist because I am committed, to borrow the words of William Hasker, to “a naturalism that makes a serious effort to accommodate, or at least make sense of, our ordinary confictions about the mind and its operations—things we think we all ‘know’ about the mind, when we are not doing philosophy.” So I cordially invite the reader to read my A Metaphysical Naturalist Manifesto, my inaugural blog of 21 July 2007 on the Securlar Outpost for a general statement of my philosophy.
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VR: OK, I am linking to it here. So being very commonsensible about the mind, I thoroughly reject epiphenomenalism and the physical closure principle, according to which mental states or events are not causally efficacious. I adhere to the idea of interactionist property dualism, understood to disallow substance dualism, and thus hold that there are mental states of (some) living organisms (such as humans) and that these entities are irreducibly distinct from any accompanying physiological states.
Oddly, Edward Feser (approvingly quoted by Victor Reppert) appears to hold that beliefs, and other intentional states (e.g., intentions, purposings, etc.), are not mental states. He boldly and erroneously refers to them as physical states of the brain. In my opinion, beliefs and other intentional states have par excellence a better claim to be irreducibly mental than simple qualia.
VR: Actually, in these passages Feser is talking about types of property dualism which attempt to hold on to the causal closure of the physical. These are common in the literature (Chalmers, McGinn, etc). So the title of my post was misleading. Property dualism without causal closure is a different kettle of fish.
AG: Victor Reppert, in his reply to stunney’s excellent comment, rather lamely claims that “[o]ne of the main reasons for being a property dualist and not a substance dualist is that this will permit you to hold on to the causal closure of the physical.” However, being the commonsensible naturalist that I am, interactionist property dualism (which appears to be the belief of stunney) rightly rejects the dogma of the causal closure of the physical. No—the reason that I am an interactionist property dualist is: (1) interactionism (including the causal efficacy of mental states or events) is so evidently true and is a fundamental properly basic belief; and (2) the evidence overwhelmingly shows it as more probable than not that mental activity cannot exist without the substratum of an appropriately configured brain. Reppert is reduced to alleging that rejection of the causal closure principle means that “you are in effect a substance dualist.” This can be justly labeled as Reppert’s ipse dixit, or (if you prefer) his idée fixé. He owes us an explanation and justification of this implausible contention.
VR: Substance dualists need not deny the fact that mental states need brain states. There are types of substance dualism other that Cartesian dualism. In my presentations of the argument from reason I argue first for an explanatory dualism and then try to figure out what makes the best sense of explanatory dualism. In other words, my first goal is to argue that in order for reason to be possible, reasons-explanations have to be basic explanations. Then we go from there.
I think Hasker would not only accept, but insist upon, the cliam that mental activity cannot exist without the substratum of an appropriately configured brain.
The reason I think that once you deny causal closure you have “gone over” to substance dualism is that you are admitting non-physical causes, and that means there have to be non-physical substances that have those causal powers. Something is “breaking in” to the physical realm.
AG: Now, although I am an interactionist property dualist, I am quite willing to agree that a substance dualist has an equal claim to consider himself as a commonsensible naturalist provided that he maintains that the posited spiritual substance depends for its existence upon the appropriately configured physical organism. Accordingly, William Hasker’s emergent self is a kind of substance dualism which a naturalist could plausibly embrace were it purged of its theistic aspects, i.e., the doctrine that the emergent self survives the death of its parent organism due to miraculous intervention.
VR: Hasker himself, as a Christian, thinks that God can, and will, preserve us into eternity. I wouldn’t call that part of this theory of mind, however.
Of course you can avoid theism and accept Hasker’s position in the philosophy of mind. There are other “mentalistic” world-views other than theism. A good example comes from C. S. Lewis. Lewis accepted the anti-naturalism arguments of Owen Barfield and became, not a theist, but an Absolute Idealist.
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VR: OK, I am linking to it here. So being very commonsensible about the mind, I thoroughly reject epiphenomenalism and the physical closure principle, according to which mental states or events are not causally efficacious. I adhere to the idea of interactionist property dualism, understood to disallow substance dualism, and thus hold that there are mental states of (some) living organisms (such as humans) and that these entities are irreducibly distinct from any accompanying physiological states.
Oddly, Edward Feser (approvingly quoted by Victor Reppert) appears to hold that beliefs, and other intentional states (e.g., intentions, purposings, etc.), are not mental states. He boldly and erroneously refers to them as physical states of the brain. In my opinion, beliefs and other intentional states have par excellence a better claim to be irreducibly mental than simple qualia.
VR: Actually, in these passages Feser is talking about types of property dualism which attempt to hold on to the causal closure of the physical. These are common in the literature (Chalmers, McGinn, etc). So the title of my post was misleading. Property dualism without causal closure is a different kettle of fish.
AG: Victor Reppert, in his reply to stunney’s excellent comment, rather lamely claims that “[o]ne of the main reasons for being a property dualist and not a substance dualist is that this will permit you to hold on to the causal closure of the physical.” However, being the commonsensible naturalist that I am, interactionist property dualism (which appears to be the belief of stunney) rightly rejects the dogma of the causal closure of the physical. No—the reason that I am an interactionist property dualist is: (1) interactionism (including the causal efficacy of mental states or events) is so evidently true and is a fundamental properly basic belief; and (2) the evidence overwhelmingly shows it as more probable than not that mental activity cannot exist without the substratum of an appropriately configured brain. Reppert is reduced to alleging that rejection of the causal closure principle means that “you are in effect a substance dualist.” This can be justly labeled as Reppert’s ipse dixit, or (if you prefer) his idée fixé. He owes us an explanation and justification of this implausible contention.
VR: Substance dualists need not deny the fact that mental states need brain states. There are types of substance dualism other that Cartesian dualism. In my presentations of the argument from reason I argue first for an explanatory dualism and then try to figure out what makes the best sense of explanatory dualism. In other words, my first goal is to argue that in order for reason to be possible, reasons-explanations have to be basic explanations. Then we go from there.
I think Hasker would not only accept, but insist upon, the cliam that mental activity cannot exist without the substratum of an appropriately configured brain.
The reason I think that once you deny causal closure you have “gone over” to substance dualism is that you are admitting non-physical causes, and that means there have to be non-physical substances that have those causal powers. Something is “breaking in” to the physical realm.
AG: Now, although I am an interactionist property dualist, I am quite willing to agree that a substance dualist has an equal claim to consider himself as a commonsensible naturalist provided that he maintains that the posited spiritual substance depends for its existence upon the appropriately configured physical organism. Accordingly, William Hasker’s emergent self is a kind of substance dualism which a naturalist could plausibly embrace were it purged of its theistic aspects, i.e., the doctrine that the emergent self survives the death of its parent organism due to miraculous intervention.
VR: Hasker himself, as a Christian, thinks that God can, and will, preserve us into eternity. I wouldn’t call that part of this theory of mind, however.
Of course you can avoid theism and accept Hasker’s position in the philosophy of mind. There are other “mentalistic” world-views other than theism. A good example comes from C. S. Lewis. Lewis accepted the anti-naturalism arguments of Owen Barfield and became, not a theist, but an Absolute Idealist.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
A note from Jason Pratt on Antony Flew
JP: Victor, This morning I heard from one of our Cadre who knows Gary Habermas. Most recent up-to-date word then, is: Antony Flew remains a dedicated deist-theist, and is planning to release a book this autumn entitled _There is a God_. Amazon already has it up for pre-order, published by HarperOne, hardcover,co-authored with Roy Varghese, due Nov 1, 256 pages. Book description reads: "In one of the biggest religion news stories of the new millennium, the Associated Press announced that Professor Antony Flew, the world's leading atheist, now believes in God. "Flew is a pioneer for modern atheism. His famous paper, Theology and Falsification, was first presented at a meeting of the Oxford Socratic Club chaired by C. S. Lewis and went on to become the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last five decades. Flew earned his fame by arguing that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. He now believes that such evidence exists, and _There is a God_chronicles his journey from staunch atheist to believer. "For the first time, this book will present a detailed and fascinating account of Flew's riveting decision to revoke his previous beliefs and argue for the existence of God. Ever since Flew's announcement, there has been a great debate among atheists and believers alike about what exactly this 'conversion' means. _There is a God_ will finally put this debate to rest. "This is a story of a brilliant mind and reasoned thinker, and where his lifelong intellectual pursuit eventually led him: belief in God as designer."
One could be excused from this description for not quite getting that Flew is a minimal deist who barely even acknowledges the existence of God (much less any action at all taken by Him in regard to our Nature); and his previous 'belief' hasn't really changed because it was more of a _lack_ of belief. (i.e. negative atheism as a default position, kind of like a hardcore agnosticism.) Still, it's interesting and will likely be fuel for more debate! {g} Jason
VR: See, Flew was never really an atheist in the first place. Just goes to show, there are no atheists. (Just kidding).
One could be excused from this description for not quite getting that Flew is a minimal deist who barely even acknowledges the existence of God (much less any action at all taken by Him in regard to our Nature); and his previous 'belief' hasn't really changed because it was more of a _lack_ of belief. (i.e. negative atheism as a default position, kind of like a hardcore agnosticism.) Still, it's interesting and will likely be fuel for more debate! {g} Jason
VR: See, Flew was never really an atheist in the first place. Just goes to show, there are no atheists. (Just kidding).
Monday, August 20, 2007
Reply to Larry Arnhart
Larry Arnhart: The Bible endorses slavery. As Mark Noll and Eugene Genovese have indicated in their recent books on the subject, the proslavery folks were able to cite the Bible as supporting their position. But we know this can't be right, because we know that slavery is wrong, and therefore we know that we need to correct the Bible. Doesn't this illustrate how we have to appeal to a natural morality to correct the Bible and other sources of revelation? Similarly, we know that when Abraham was commanded by God to kill Isaac, this was wrong. Otherwise, we would have to agree with Kiekegaard that Revelation teaches "the suspension of the ethical."
VR: I had overlooked this comment from Larry Arnhart. I appreciate someone of his influence commenting here. However, he seems to assume that the only way that Scripture can influence morality is by specific statements or proof texts. The case against slavery, for me at least, doesn't stem from "natural morality" but rather from the extension and development of biblical concepts. If we believe that every human being was created by God for eternal fellowship with God yet while on earth they are the property of others in virtue of the color of their skin, is this coherent? Without endorsing Newman's use of it as an apologetic for Catholic doctrines like the Immaculate conception, I do think the idea of doctrinal development is a useful and valuable idea for understanding theological (and other) concepts. You might want to complain that this is a poor way for God to reveal things--why not save the world a lot of trouble by adding a slavery ban to the Ten Commandments? But, as a Christian I believe that God has, for whatever reason, chosen to do it this way. There are other ethical systems that might provide a basis for the rights and dignity of human beings, (Aristotelian natural purpose, Plato's forms) but these seem to be just as unacceptable from the point of view of philosophical naturalism.
Of course, if it could be proven that traditional theism provides an inadequate support for traditional ethics doesn't mean that that support has to come from some other source. Maybe that support just doesn't exist.
VR: I had overlooked this comment from Larry Arnhart. I appreciate someone of his influence commenting here. However, he seems to assume that the only way that Scripture can influence morality is by specific statements or proof texts. The case against slavery, for me at least, doesn't stem from "natural morality" but rather from the extension and development of biblical concepts. If we believe that every human being was created by God for eternal fellowship with God yet while on earth they are the property of others in virtue of the color of their skin, is this coherent? Without endorsing Newman's use of it as an apologetic for Catholic doctrines like the Immaculate conception, I do think the idea of doctrinal development is a useful and valuable idea for understanding theological (and other) concepts. You might want to complain that this is a poor way for God to reveal things--why not save the world a lot of trouble by adding a slavery ban to the Ten Commandments? But, as a Christian I believe that God has, for whatever reason, chosen to do it this way. There are other ethical systems that might provide a basis for the rights and dignity of human beings, (Aristotelian natural purpose, Plato's forms) but these seem to be just as unacceptable from the point of view of philosophical naturalism.
Of course, if it could be proven that traditional theism provides an inadequate support for traditional ethics doesn't mean that that support has to come from some other source. Maybe that support just doesn't exist.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
God and the Burden of Proof
This is Johnny-Dee's post on the burden of proof. I think I disagree with Johnny on this, but I will comment later.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Wiker on Evolutionary ethics
Does Darwinian naturalism undermine (broadly speaking) traditional morality? Benjamin Wiker, pace Larry Arnhart, thinks that indeed it does. HT: Jim Pourchot
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Michael Shermer gets something right
Another post redate.
This is the sort of thing I was getting at when I mentioned the preposterous social claims made by people like Dawkins. Here Michael Shermer, that dedicated Christian apologist, makes just the same point I was making. Anyone care to argue that Shermer is wrong to wince at Dawkins?
From his review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (HT: Peter Williams).
'As I read the book, I found myself wincing at Dawkins's references to religious people as "faith-heads," as being less intelligent, poor at reasoning, or even deluded, and to religious moderates as enablers of terrorism. I shudder because I have religious friends and colleagues who do not fit these descriptors, and I empathize at the pain such pejorative appellations cause them. In addition, I am not convinced by Dawkins's argument that without religion there would be "no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers,' no Northern Ireland 'troubles'…." In my opinion, many of these events—and others often attributed solely to religion by atheists—were less religiously motivated than politically driven, or at the very least involved religion in the service of political hegemony.'
And when Christians bring up the crimes of communists in Russia, this is the answer we get from atheists. It's the marriage of religion or atheism to political power, and the temptation to use the power of Caesar to advance the cause of one's belief of unbelief that is the root of this kind of evil. Whether it comes from religion are irreligion is a neutral factor.
This is the sort of thing I was getting at when I mentioned the preposterous social claims made by people like Dawkins. Here Michael Shermer, that dedicated Christian apologist, makes just the same point I was making. Anyone care to argue that Shermer is wrong to wince at Dawkins?
From his review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (HT: Peter Williams).
'As I read the book, I found myself wincing at Dawkins's references to religious people as "faith-heads," as being less intelligent, poor at reasoning, or even deluded, and to religious moderates as enablers of terrorism. I shudder because I have religious friends and colleagues who do not fit these descriptors, and I empathize at the pain such pejorative appellations cause them. In addition, I am not convinced by Dawkins's argument that without religion there would be "no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers,' no Northern Ireland 'troubles'…." In my opinion, many of these events—and others often attributed solely to religion by atheists—were less religiously motivated than politically driven, or at the very least involved religion in the service of political hegemony.'
And when Christians bring up the crimes of communists in Russia, this is the answer we get from atheists. It's the marriage of religion or atheism to political power, and the temptation to use the power of Caesar to advance the cause of one's belief of unbelief that is the root of this kind of evil. Whether it comes from religion are irreligion is a neutral factor.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Naturalism
This is the apollos.ws site on naturalism, including the Troy Nunley dissertation on the evolutionary argument against naturalism. This is in response to a request by exapologist.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
More on abusing theists
After having criticized "the new atheism" I must indicate further that I am dismayed by the statements by philosophers quoted in the Triablogue post--specifically the comments of Sinnott-Armstrong and David Lewis. Comparing atheists to Nazis? Philosophers should know better, or should they?
Is there some dialogue within the atheist community on this sort of thing?
Is there some dialogue within the atheist community on this sort of thing?
Monday, August 06, 2007
Alan Rhoda on the distinction between eliminativism and reductionism
This is a link to an entry by Alan Rhoda on eliminiativism and reductionism. Here's a passage from it:
The debate between eliminativists and reductionists would seem to turn on prevailing or established usage. For example, with respect to the meaning of "God", the reductionist substitutes have little or no claim to capture the force of that word as it has actually been used in the Western theological tradition. This is just atheism in denial, not a redefinition of "theism" that is still worthy of the name. In contrast, the theoretical reduction of "heat" from traditional understandings of it as a manifestation of an element (fire) or a type of fluid (caloric fluid) to "average kinetic energy" marked a useful theoretical advance. The justification for continuing to use the word "heat" while changing its meaning lies in the broad commonality of the observational data that the respective theories were invoked to explain.
The debate between eliminativists and reductionists would seem to turn on prevailing or established usage. For example, with respect to the meaning of "God", the reductionist substitutes have little or no claim to capture the force of that word as it has actually been used in the Western theological tradition. This is just atheism in denial, not a redefinition of "theism" that is still worthy of the name. In contrast, the theoretical reduction of "heat" from traditional understandings of it as a manifestation of an element (fire) or a type of fluid (caloric fluid) to "average kinetic energy" marked a useful theoretical advance. The justification for continuing to use the word "heat" while changing its meaning lies in the broad commonality of the observational data that the respective theories were invoked to explain.
Calvinism and psychoanalyzing
With respect to leaving the fold, I do not know if the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance requires that we psychoanalyze all those that leave the fold and say that they were insincere, Because people like Loftus will say that their beliefs were sincere and their behavior no doubt suggested that they were real believers. If an atheist believes in the wishful thinking theory of religious belief, and say that everyone who believes just can't stand the idea that there will be no afterlife, then I think they should take the counterevidence seriously when C. S. Lewis says the last thing he wanted to believe in was an afterlife, and that he became a believer based on his assessment of the evidence. You can surely doubt the adequacy of his assessment of the evidence, but it's wrong to say that he really wanted to believe in an afterlife when the evidence suggests that he didn't want this at all.
But similarly, when an atheist says that they really believed in the past and left the fold later, then to say that didn't really believe but deep down inside was an atheist all along, then I've got a problem with that, too.
Does the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance require that we analyze people on the Debunking Christianity website (all of whom claim to be former believers) in this way? If so, this is troubling for the Calvinist view. But maybe their view doesn't have these entailments.
But similarly, when an atheist says that they really believed in the past and left the fold later, then to say that didn't really believe but deep down inside was an atheist all along, then I've got a problem with that, too.
Does the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance require that we analyze people on the Debunking Christianity website (all of whom claim to be former believers) in this way? If so, this is troubling for the Calvinist view. But maybe their view doesn't have these entailments.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Tom Piatak criticizes Christopher Hitchens
A review of the latest in a series of anti-religious books.
Link corrected.
Link corrected.
The Wall Street Journal review of the last Harry Potter volume
In which the reviewer emphasizes the underlying Christian content in the series. But for some Christians, J. K. Rowling weighs the same as a duck, so she's a witch.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Perseverance and leaving the fold
On a previous post about the "no ex-atheist"position mattghg wrote:
Surely, though, the "no ex-Christian atheists" view is mandated by the P of a Calvinist's TULIP?
I think this is an empirical problem for point 5 to be honest with you. Point 5 advocates use this passage to buttress their position, I John 2: 19
"They went out from us but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us."
But can that be generalized to all instances of "leaving the fold?" Doesn't this commit you to an a priori theory of people who leave, which isn't supported by the evidence?
Surely, though, the "no ex-Christian atheists" view is mandated by the P of a Calvinist's TULIP?
I think this is an empirical problem for point 5 to be honest with you. Point 5 advocates use this passage to buttress their position, I John 2: 19
"They went out from us but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us."
But can that be generalized to all instances of "leaving the fold?" Doesn't this commit you to an a priori theory of people who leave, which isn't supported by the evidence?
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
DeWeese and Rasmussen on a principle of sufficient reason
In the book In Defense of Natural Theology (IVP, 2005), Garrett DeWeese and Joshua Rasmussen wrote an essay entitled “Hume and the Kalam Cosmological Argument.” defend a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which they call PSR3:
PSR3: There is a sufficient reason why some concrete objects exist rather than none at all.
However, they say that PSR3 is rejected by William Rowe on the grounds that it is not self-evident nor a required presumption of scientific inquiry.
However, they think that PSR3 follows from a weaker, modalized version of PSR:
PSR3’: Possibly, there is a sufficient reason why some contingent concrete objects exist as rather than none at all.
They prove this with this argument:
There is a possible world W in which q is true and q explains p.
p is contingently true and there is no explanation of p. (Assumption for indirect proof).
There is a possible world W in which (p and “there is no explanation of p”) is true, and there in which q is true and q explains (p and “there is no explanation of p). (from 1 and 2)
In W, q explains p, (from 3 and the distributivity of explanation over conjunction).
Therefore in W, p both has, and does not have an explanation.
It is not the case that p is contingently true and there is no explanation of p.
Therefore, it is not the case that, for any proposition p, p is contingently true and there is no explanation of p. (from 6)
PSR3: There is a sufficient reason why some concrete objects exist rather than none at all.
However, they say that PSR3 is rejected by William Rowe on the grounds that it is not self-evident nor a required presumption of scientific inquiry.
However, they think that PSR3 follows from a weaker, modalized version of PSR:
PSR3’: Possibly, there is a sufficient reason why some contingent concrete objects exist as rather than none at all.
They prove this with this argument:
There is a possible world W in which q is true and q explains p.
p is contingently true and there is no explanation of p. (Assumption for indirect proof).
There is a possible world W in which (p and “there is no explanation of p”) is true, and there in which q is true and q explains (p and “there is no explanation of p). (from 1 and 2)
In W, q explains p, (from 3 and the distributivity of explanation over conjunction).
Therefore in W, p both has, and does not have an explanation.
It is not the case that p is contingently true and there is no explanation of p.
Therefore, it is not the case that, for any proposition p, p is contingently true and there is no explanation of p. (from 6)
Triablogue responds on abusing atheists
This was posted on behalf of Steve Hays by Evanmay, so I wonder who wrote it. (It seems very Hays-ish).
From what I understand all major evolutionists receive a lot of hate mail from Christians. As self-defeating as it seems, I think there is good evidence that Christians do violate standards of courtesy in responding to nonbelievers. I used to see a lot of "you are going straight to hell" messages on the Secular Web, it isn't reasonable to suppose that it all comes from atheists trying to stereotype Christians.
Dawkins says a lot of ridiculous things--even here some standards of courtesy have to be maintained.
From what I understand all major evolutionists receive a lot of hate mail from Christians. As self-defeating as it seems, I think there is good evidence that Christians do violate standards of courtesy in responding to nonbelievers. I used to see a lot of "you are going straight to hell" messages on the Secular Web, it isn't reasonable to suppose that it all comes from atheists trying to stereotype Christians.
Dawkins says a lot of ridiculous things--even here some standards of courtesy have to be maintained.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Cursed are the peacemakers?
Ben Witherington critiques a twisted an unbiblical Christian perspective. It reminds me of James Watt, the Reagan secretary of the interior, who said that there was no need for environmental preservation since Jesus is coming soon, after all.
Materialism and the possibility of truth
Vallicella's argument that if all things are material, there can be no such thing as truth (and therefore, materialism cannot be true). I linked to this before and no one responded.
Carson Holloway on Darwinian natural right
Can morality be imbedded in a Darwinian world view? Carson Holloway, of Princeton University, has some doubts. HT: J. D. Walters
Defenders of “Darwinian natural right” are convincing when they argue that our moral inclinations are not arbitrary social constructs, but instead our biological nature. But a Darwinian approach equally demonstrates that many other passions are rooted in our nature, passions that can hardly be called moral and that might well be considered immoral. No doubt a tendency toward cooperation would have been useful in the evolutionary environment. So too would a tendency to exploit the vulnerabilities of others. Darwinians all admit this, and they accordingly admit that human nature is made up of both moral and amoral passions. Once that is conceded, their teaching can only provide an equivocal support for morality. The man inclined by sympathy to help his neighbor may be apt, in other circumstances, to enslave him if the man thinks he and his kin can benefit from such injustice.[1]
[1] Holloway, Carson. “Losing our religion” 21 August 2006
Defenders of “Darwinian natural right” are convincing when they argue that our moral inclinations are not arbitrary social constructs, but instead our biological nature. But a Darwinian approach equally demonstrates that many other passions are rooted in our nature, passions that can hardly be called moral and that might well be considered immoral. No doubt a tendency toward cooperation would have been useful in the evolutionary environment. So too would a tendency to exploit the vulnerabilities of others. Darwinians all admit this, and they accordingly admit that human nature is made up of both moral and amoral passions. Once that is conceded, their teaching can only provide an equivocal support for morality. The man inclined by sympathy to help his neighbor may be apt, in other circumstances, to enslave him if the man thinks he and his kin can benefit from such injustice.[1]
[1] Holloway, Carson. “Losing our religion” 21 August 2006
The Myth of the Beginning of Time
The Kalam Cosmological Argument goes:
1. Whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of its existence.
2. The Universe began to exist.
Therefore, the Universe has a cause of its existence.
A lot of debate on the KCA has concerned whether 1 can be applied to the universe itself. But 2 seems strongly supported by Big Bang theory. But do developments in string theory suggest that premise 2 is vulnerable? String Theorist Veneziano seems to think so. What do you think?
1. Whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of its existence.
2. The Universe began to exist.
Therefore, the Universe has a cause of its existence.
A lot of debate on the KCA has concerned whether 1 can be applied to the universe itself. But 2 seems strongly supported by Big Bang theory. But do developments in string theory suggest that premise 2 is vulnerable? String Theorist Veneziano seems to think so. What do you think?
Monday, July 30, 2007
C. S. Lewis on idealism
It is astonishing (at this time of day) that I could regard this position as something quite distinct from Theism. I suspect there was some willful blindness. But there were in those days all sorts of blankets, insulators, and insurances which enabled one to get all the conveniences of Theism, without believing in God. The English Hegelians, writers like T. H. Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet (then mighty names), dealt in precisely such wares. The Absolute Mind—better still, the Absolute—was impersonal, or it knew itself (but not us?) and it was so absolute that it wasn’t really much more like a mind than anyone else….We could talk religiously about the Absolute; but there was no danger of Its doing anything about us…There was nothing to fear, better still, nothing to obey.
Surprised by Joy, pp. 209-210
Surprised by Joy, pp. 209-210
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Reply to exapologist on cosmological arguments
EA: I'm wondering what sort of evidence one could have for the version of PSR that's supposed to entail (5). It seems to me that it would have to be something along the lines that it's a synthetic a priori proposition or, what, an inductive "track record" argument, or perhaps that it's a presupposition of reason? Whatever it may be, is it strong enough to undermine the intuition of the seeming possibility of a logically contingent, yet metaphysically independent ("free-standing"), being (something along the lines of Swinburne's conception of God)? My intuition is that if any version of PSR entails that such a being is metaphysically impossible, then so much the worse for that version of PSR. For it seems to me to be explanatory overkill to require an explanation of such a being -- i.e., a logically (even metaphysically) contingent, yet eternal being that has, say, indestructibility (or at least the world-indexed essential property of being indestructible-in-alpha, the actual world) as an essential property."
VR: I’m wondering if this is enough to block an argument in defense of something like theism against naturalism. The very idea of “indestructible-in-alpha” strikes me as incoherent. “Indestructible” is a claim with modal force, therefore it can’t be a world-indexed property. Do you just mean “not actually destroyed in alpha?” So how contingent is this being, really?
Of course even at best cosmological argument doesn’t prove the existence of a being omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good, or a personal God, etc. However, if successful it does refute the naturalistic view that the physical world is all that exists.
Cosmological arguments have to deal with the termination problem. What characteristics are needed to terminate the chain of explanations? The Unmoved Mover argument holds that explanations cannot terminate in that which is in motion, but must rather terminate in an ummoved mover. The argument from contingency holds that the physical world is contingent, and therefore depends on something that is not contingent—that is, necessary. Perhaps we can develop the “argument from destructibility.” Whatever is destructible must depend for its existence on what is not destructible.
Of course, naturalistic cosmological argument critics maintain that there if we extend causal reasoning beyond the space-time manifold, there are no “termination-making characteristics” that can be applied to God but not to the physical universe. That’s the claim to be found in Parsons’ atheist manifesto. There are two ways of casting this issue. One is to suppose that a naturalistic world is beginningless. Does that beginningless world possess all the termination-making characteristics?
The matter gets more complicated when we accept the Standard Big Bang theory. With this picture the universe had a temporal beginning. Now that beginning is the beginning of time itself, so unlike the case of a Bengal tiger popping into existence, there is no time before the universe exists, when time exists and the universe does not. I have a strong intuition that nevertheless this does not dissipate the sense that there must be a cause of the physical universe. Does it make sense to say that the universe had a beginning moment but cannot possibly have a final moment?
VR: I’m wondering if this is enough to block an argument in defense of something like theism against naturalism. The very idea of “indestructible-in-alpha” strikes me as incoherent. “Indestructible” is a claim with modal force, therefore it can’t be a world-indexed property. Do you just mean “not actually destroyed in alpha?” So how contingent is this being, really?
Of course even at best cosmological argument doesn’t prove the existence of a being omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good, or a personal God, etc. However, if successful it does refute the naturalistic view that the physical world is all that exists.
Cosmological arguments have to deal with the termination problem. What characteristics are needed to terminate the chain of explanations? The Unmoved Mover argument holds that explanations cannot terminate in that which is in motion, but must rather terminate in an ummoved mover. The argument from contingency holds that the physical world is contingent, and therefore depends on something that is not contingent—that is, necessary. Perhaps we can develop the “argument from destructibility.” Whatever is destructible must depend for its existence on what is not destructible.
Of course, naturalistic cosmological argument critics maintain that there if we extend causal reasoning beyond the space-time manifold, there are no “termination-making characteristics” that can be applied to God but not to the physical universe. That’s the claim to be found in Parsons’ atheist manifesto. There are two ways of casting this issue. One is to suppose that a naturalistic world is beginningless. Does that beginningless world possess all the termination-making characteristics?
The matter gets more complicated when we accept the Standard Big Bang theory. With this picture the universe had a temporal beginning. Now that beginning is the beginning of time itself, so unlike the case of a Bengal tiger popping into existence, there is no time before the universe exists, when time exists and the universe does not. I have a strong intuition that nevertheless this does not dissipate the sense that there must be a cause of the physical universe. Does it make sense to say that the universe had a beginning moment but cannot possibly have a final moment?
Saturday, July 28, 2007
A metamodel for philosophical arguments
I would like some responses to this metamodel for philosophical arguments. This is part of a paper I am writing for the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology on, you guessed it, the argument from reason.
Before launching into the discussion of the argument from reason, some preamble about what philosophical arguments can be expected to do is in order. To do this we must consider the scope and limits of arguments. What at maximum one can hope for, in presenting an argument, is that the argument will be a decisive argument in favor of one’s conclusion. A decisive argument is an argument so strong that, with respect to all inquirers, the argument is such that they ought to embrace the conclusion. Even when a decisive argument is present, some may remain unpersuaded, but in these are cases of irrationality.
The difficulty here is that by this standard very few philosophical arguments can possibly succeed. This is largely because in assessing the question of, say, whether God exists, numerous considerations are relevant. Since we can concentrate on only one argument at a time, it is easy to get “tunnel vision” and consider only the piece of evidence that is advanced by the argument. But a person weighing the truth of theism must consider the total evidence. So I propose to advance a different concept of what an argument can do. I will assume for the sake of argument, that people will differ as to their initial probabilities concerning the probability that God exists. The question I will then pose is whether the phenomenon picked out by the argument makes theism more likely, or makes atheism more likely. If it makes theism more likely to be true than it would otherwise be before we started thinking about the phenomenon in question, then the argument carries some weight in support of theism. If it makes atheism more likely, then it provides inductive support for atheism.
The model I am proposing is a Bayesian model with a subjectivist theory of prior probabilities. We begin by asking ourselves how likely we thought theism was before we started thinking about the argument in question. We then ask how likely the phenomenon is to exist given the hypothesis of theism. We then ask how likely the phenomenon is to exist whether or not theism is true. If the phenomenon is more likely to exist given theism than it is to exist whether or not theism is true, then the argument carries some inductive weight in favor of theism.
It should be added that one can be an atheist and admit that there are some facts in the world that confirm theism. You can also be a theist and maintain that some atheistic arguments enhance the epistemic status of atheism. Some theists have made just this sort of claim on behalf of the argument from evil. That is, they are prepared to concede that the argument from evil does provide some epistemic support for atheism, but not enough epistemic support to make atheists out of them.
Before launching into the discussion of the argument from reason, some preamble about what philosophical arguments can be expected to do is in order. To do this we must consider the scope and limits of arguments. What at maximum one can hope for, in presenting an argument, is that the argument will be a decisive argument in favor of one’s conclusion. A decisive argument is an argument so strong that, with respect to all inquirers, the argument is such that they ought to embrace the conclusion. Even when a decisive argument is present, some may remain unpersuaded, but in these are cases of irrationality.
The difficulty here is that by this standard very few philosophical arguments can possibly succeed. This is largely because in assessing the question of, say, whether God exists, numerous considerations are relevant. Since we can concentrate on only one argument at a time, it is easy to get “tunnel vision” and consider only the piece of evidence that is advanced by the argument. But a person weighing the truth of theism must consider the total evidence. So I propose to advance a different concept of what an argument can do. I will assume for the sake of argument, that people will differ as to their initial probabilities concerning the probability that God exists. The question I will then pose is whether the phenomenon picked out by the argument makes theism more likely, or makes atheism more likely. If it makes theism more likely to be true than it would otherwise be before we started thinking about the phenomenon in question, then the argument carries some weight in support of theism. If it makes atheism more likely, then it provides inductive support for atheism.
The model I am proposing is a Bayesian model with a subjectivist theory of prior probabilities. We begin by asking ourselves how likely we thought theism was before we started thinking about the argument in question. We then ask how likely the phenomenon is to exist given the hypothesis of theism. We then ask how likely the phenomenon is to exist whether or not theism is true. If the phenomenon is more likely to exist given theism than it is to exist whether or not theism is true, then the argument carries some inductive weight in favor of theism.
It should be added that one can be an atheist and admit that there are some facts in the world that confirm theism. You can also be a theist and maintain that some atheistic arguments enhance the epistemic status of atheism. Some theists have made just this sort of claim on behalf of the argument from evil. That is, they are prepared to concede that the argument from evil does provide some epistemic support for atheism, but not enough epistemic support to make atheists out of them.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Keith Parsons responds to me on cosmological arguments
Well, we're debating again. Parsons responds to me on Secular Outpost. I don't have time to reply right now, so you guys get the first crack.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
C. S. Lewis and idealism
When you study the philosophical content of C. S. Lewis's work, as opposed to work in contemporary philosophy, one imporant thing to keep in mind is that Lewis came out of a philosophical climate in which Absolute Idealism was a major player, whereas in philosophy today it is relegated to the olde curiosity shoppe. This is a study of Lewis's philosophical journey, especially as it relates to absolute idealism.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Contingency and the principle of sufficient reason
This is a redated post, once again. The dialogue between exapologist and Steve in the comments may help to support, or not, my responses to Parsons on Secular Outpost two posts back.
In reading Steve Lovell's comments on the gap between the claim that the physical universe is contingent on the one hand, and the claim that it is dependent on the other, I think some version of the principle of sufficient reason is supposed to do th is kind of work. So I am redating this post on Wainwright's treatment of the Thomistic argument.
In trying to make sense of the Thomistic cosmological argument, I have found William Wainwright's introductory book on the philosophy of religion helpful.
Cosmological arguments seem to have two critical elements. One notes the contingency of the physical world. Every part of it is such that we can conceive of it not existing. Most people believe that if God were to exist, God would have the power to annihilate the universe completely. So there is some sense to be made of the idea that the universe is something that exists contingently, not necessarily.
But why, if the universe is contingent in this sense, couldn't the universe be contingent on nothing. That is the question Steven Carr is asking. We need explanatory principles, or what in philosophy are called principles of sufficient reason, in order to justify the claim that the universe needs something other than itself to explain it.
PSR1: For every contingent fact F some other fact F' obtains such that, given F', F must obtain.
This principle is incompatible with classical theism, for reasons which are similar to the ones Steven mentioned. It is a contingent fact that God freely chose to create a universe, according to classical theism. Or, if God had chosen to exist alone, that would be contingent.
So PSR needs to be revised. Wainwright offers some alternatives:
PSR2: There is a sufficient reason for the existence of every contingent being.
This doesn't entail tha there has to be an explanation of every property of that being, just the existence of the being. So, for example, that being freely choosing to do something can be fully nd completely contingent.
PSR3: Every contingent fact that requires a sufficient reason has one.
A contingent fact "requires" a sufficient erason if and only if 1) it is logically possible for it to have a sufficient reason and 2) it is unintelligible if it doesn't have one.
PSR4: There is at least some reason for every contingent fact.
I have seen this referred to as the principle of necessary reason, for every contingent fact there are necessary conditions for it.
Wainwright goes on:
"The weaker principles are strong enough to generate the conclusion that contingent being is caused by a self-exisent being."
The upshot of Wainwright's subsequent discussion is that at least PSR4 is supported by the success of human inquiry, and that therefore the weaker forms of PSR are more plausible than their denials. Hence, he does find some legitimacy in forms of the cosmological argument that use some of the weaker versions of PSR4, and he thinks they do lend significant support to the claim that the physical universe depends on something other than itself, which is self-existent.
In reading Steve Lovell's comments on the gap between the claim that the physical universe is contingent on the one hand, and the claim that it is dependent on the other, I think some version of the principle of sufficient reason is supposed to do th is kind of work. So I am redating this post on Wainwright's treatment of the Thomistic argument.
In trying to make sense of the Thomistic cosmological argument, I have found William Wainwright's introductory book on the philosophy of religion helpful.
Cosmological arguments seem to have two critical elements. One notes the contingency of the physical world. Every part of it is such that we can conceive of it not existing. Most people believe that if God were to exist, God would have the power to annihilate the universe completely. So there is some sense to be made of the idea that the universe is something that exists contingently, not necessarily.
But why, if the universe is contingent in this sense, couldn't the universe be contingent on nothing. That is the question Steven Carr is asking. We need explanatory principles, or what in philosophy are called principles of sufficient reason, in order to justify the claim that the universe needs something other than itself to explain it.
PSR1: For every contingent fact F some other fact F' obtains such that, given F', F must obtain.
This principle is incompatible with classical theism, for reasons which are similar to the ones Steven mentioned. It is a contingent fact that God freely chose to create a universe, according to classical theism. Or, if God had chosen to exist alone, that would be contingent.
So PSR needs to be revised. Wainwright offers some alternatives:
PSR2: There is a sufficient reason for the existence of every contingent being.
This doesn't entail tha there has to be an explanation of every property of that being, just the existence of the being. So, for example, that being freely choosing to do something can be fully nd completely contingent.
PSR3: Every contingent fact that requires a sufficient reason has one.
A contingent fact "requires" a sufficient erason if and only if 1) it is logically possible for it to have a sufficient reason and 2) it is unintelligible if it doesn't have one.
PSR4: There is at least some reason for every contingent fact.
I have seen this referred to as the principle of necessary reason, for every contingent fact there are necessary conditions for it.
Wainwright goes on:
"The weaker principles are strong enough to generate the conclusion that contingent being is caused by a self-exisent being."
The upshot of Wainwright's subsequent discussion is that at least PSR4 is supported by the success of human inquiry, and that therefore the weaker forms of PSR are more plausible than their denials. Hence, he does find some legitimacy in forms of the cosmological argument that use some of the weaker versions of PSR4, and he thinks they do lend significant support to the claim that the physical universe depends on something other than itself, which is self-existent.
Gaylord Perry, Barry Bonds, and the Hall of Fame
Gaylord Perry is in the Hall of Fame, in spite of having admitted doctoring baseballs. In other words, Perry has admitted to using performance enhancing substances, even though he put them on the baseball and not in his own body. Now maybe his admission, in 1991, was a mistake. But if it wasn't a mistake, what happens to the popular argument that Barry Bonds should be excluded from the Hall of Fame because we have evidence that he as used steroids. Can anyone argue that Perry should be in the Hall of Fame but Bonds should be excluded?
Keith Parsons on the cosmological argument
The Secular Outpost: Atheist Manifesto
When asked for reasons for thinking that God exists, most people reply with amateur versions of the first cause or design arguments. For most people, even philosophers like William Lane Craig, the idea that the universe "came into existence out of nothing" is just absurd. After all, in our ordinary experience things don't just pop into existence or spontaneously disappear (except socks in the washer and car keys). As Craig puts it somewhere nobody would expect a full-grown Bengal tiger to just materialize out of thin air. In short, from nothing comes nothing. However, this reasoning is fatally flawed. Our common-sense expectations about things coming into or going out of existence are based entirely upon our experience within the space/time universe with all its conservation laws in force. We have no experience at all of the beginning of space/time itself, and there is no reason whatsoever to think that our everyday intuitions would apply to such a situation. If the physics of the last century has taught us anything, it is that our common-sense intuitions simply might not apply to the realities studied by fundamental physics. You and I cannot be in two places at once; an electron can. I have no intuitions at all about the beginning of space/time, and if I did I would not trust them.
While not necessarily giving a full and complete endorsement to the Kalam Cosmological Argument, surely everyone accepts some version of the causal principle. We think there need to be causes for things. We want to know why. This search for an answer to why questions doesn’t stop when the ordinary methods of naturalistic science offer no more answers. To then turn our curiosity off and say we shouldn’t look for any more answers because certain methods are not available to us seems question-begging.
While some versions of the causal principle are too strong, others seem presupposed by the success of human inquiry. See the following
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2007/07/some-discussion-of-kca.html
Further, if we restrict the use of common-sense principle to what goes on within the physical universe, what other principles do we have to similarly restrict. How about Ockham’s razor. Why should superior success of simpler theories to more complex ones within the physical universe make someone think that this sort of principle can be extended beyond the physical world. If the causal principle has to be restricted, then this one does too. If the atheist wants us to accept an Ockham’s Razor argument for atheism (which Parsons does appeal to in his reply to Moreland), but also insists that we restrict the causal principle to a naturalistic framework, then he or she needs to explain why she can make both moves. I think there’s an inconsistency here.
When asked for reasons for thinking that God exists, most people reply with amateur versions of the first cause or design arguments. For most people, even philosophers like William Lane Craig, the idea that the universe "came into existence out of nothing" is just absurd. After all, in our ordinary experience things don't just pop into existence or spontaneously disappear (except socks in the washer and car keys). As Craig puts it somewhere nobody would expect a full-grown Bengal tiger to just materialize out of thin air. In short, from nothing comes nothing. However, this reasoning is fatally flawed. Our common-sense expectations about things coming into or going out of existence are based entirely upon our experience within the space/time universe with all its conservation laws in force. We have no experience at all of the beginning of space/time itself, and there is no reason whatsoever to think that our everyday intuitions would apply to such a situation. If the physics of the last century has taught us anything, it is that our common-sense intuitions simply might not apply to the realities studied by fundamental physics. You and I cannot be in two places at once; an electron can. I have no intuitions at all about the beginning of space/time, and if I did I would not trust them.
While not necessarily giving a full and complete endorsement to the Kalam Cosmological Argument, surely everyone accepts some version of the causal principle. We think there need to be causes for things. We want to know why. This search for an answer to why questions doesn’t stop when the ordinary methods of naturalistic science offer no more answers. To then turn our curiosity off and say we shouldn’t look for any more answers because certain methods are not available to us seems question-begging.
While some versions of the causal principle are too strong, others seem presupposed by the success of human inquiry. See the following
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2007/07/some-discussion-of-kca.html
Further, if we restrict the use of common-sense principle to what goes on within the physical universe, what other principles do we have to similarly restrict. How about Ockham’s razor. Why should superior success of simpler theories to more complex ones within the physical universe make someone think that this sort of principle can be extended beyond the physical world. If the causal principle has to be restricted, then this one does too. If the atheist wants us to accept an Ockham’s Razor argument for atheism (which Parsons does appeal to in his reply to Moreland), but also insists that we restrict the causal principle to a naturalistic framework, then he or she needs to explain why she can make both moves. I think there’s an inconsistency here.
The Secular Outpost: Keith Parsons' Atheist Manifesto
Keith Parsons, my ex-housemate and atheist philosopher, has joined the Secular Outpost team. I welcome his to the blogosphere, and may be giving him more of a detailed comment once I turn my grades in for my summer classes.
The Secular Outpost: Atheist Manifesto
The Secular Outpost: Atheist Manifesto
Friday, July 20, 2007
Is Harry Potter Toast?
Now for the profound philosophical question of the day. Is Harry Potter toast. Thsi book on Potter and Philosophy was co-edited by my good friend Dave Baggett.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Babinski on the problem of evil
Ed: You seem to forget that it is atheists like Loftus who attempting to prove something here. So if, as you say, the discussion proves nothing and solves nothing, the theist wins.
Theists typically are not satisfied with a fideistic response to the problem of evil, that all the suffering is just God's will and that we should accept the "because I said so" theodicy. It is absurd to suggest, as you do, that this is a test for Christian orthodoxy.
It's something like evolutionary biologists. An evolutionary biologist does not necessarily think that evolution is disproved if there is a gap in the fossil record they can't explain. But if they couldn't explain anything, they's be in trouble. Christian reflection on suffering can perhaps explain a good deal of human suffering. Most theists at the same time realize that their best explanation efforts fall short of explaining all evil, but nevertheless they think that the force of what atheists think is an overwhelming argument for atheism is far from what the atheist supposes it to be.
The atheist maintains that if I were to look the facts of evil in the eye honestly, that I would not be a theist. He not only thinks that evil is a reason why he is not a theist, he thinks that it is also a good reason why I should not be a theist. That's the dialectical fact that everyone keeps overlooking. Attempts by people like Weisberger to put the theist on the defensive on this issue are unsuccessful, as agnostic philosopher Graham Oppy shows with considerable effectiveness.
Theists typically are not satisfied with a fideistic response to the problem of evil, that all the suffering is just God's will and that we should accept the "because I said so" theodicy. It is absurd to suggest, as you do, that this is a test for Christian orthodoxy.
It's something like evolutionary biologists. An evolutionary biologist does not necessarily think that evolution is disproved if there is a gap in the fossil record they can't explain. But if they couldn't explain anything, they's be in trouble. Christian reflection on suffering can perhaps explain a good deal of human suffering. Most theists at the same time realize that their best explanation efforts fall short of explaining all evil, but nevertheless they think that the force of what atheists think is an overwhelming argument for atheism is far from what the atheist supposes it to be.
The atheist maintains that if I were to look the facts of evil in the eye honestly, that I would not be a theist. He not only thinks that evil is a reason why he is not a theist, he thinks that it is also a good reason why I should not be a theist. That's the dialectical fact that everyone keeps overlooking. Attempts by people like Weisberger to put the theist on the defensive on this issue are unsuccessful, as agnostic philosopher Graham Oppy shows with considerable effectiveness.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
A response to comments on the problem of evil
I was somewhat kidding when I called this the end of the argument from evil. But only somwhat. I think it does show, however, that it's going to be very difficult to press an argument from evil through that is going to be successful regardless of what value theory the theist happens to hold. This of course is a hardly an insane value theory, and it seems to leave the theist with a successful defense against the problem of evil. But I must admit that I myself have a qualm or two about the sweeping consequentialism of the value theory underlying my argument.
It makes matters worse for you if you are a moral subjectivist and are trying to rebut this (a favorite point of mine). Because now can't say that my theodicy is in conflict with the true theory of value. What you now have to do is argue that some theory of value that supports the argument from evil is ENTAILED by Christian theism. Good luck doing that.
Making an argument that some value theory is just plain wrong is going to be difficult, as well.
You may be committed to the kind of rights-based value theory would impose upon God the obligation of not permitting suffering of type X or amount Y.
Even if you show that I hold a value theory that supports the argument from evil, all that does is show that I have to abandon theism or change my value theory.
Consider LaCroix's premise that John quoted:
L: If God is the greatest possible good then if God had not created there would be nothing but the greatest possible good.
Why should I accept that? It seems to define good the absence of evil or suffering. I thought it was the other way around--evil is the privation of good.
It makes matters worse for you if you are a moral subjectivist and are trying to rebut this (a favorite point of mine). Because now can't say that my theodicy is in conflict with the true theory of value. What you now have to do is argue that some theory of value that supports the argument from evil is ENTAILED by Christian theism. Good luck doing that.
Making an argument that some value theory is just plain wrong is going to be difficult, as well.
You may be committed to the kind of rights-based value theory would impose upon God the obligation of not permitting suffering of type X or amount Y.
Even if you show that I hold a value theory that supports the argument from evil, all that does is show that I have to abandon theism or change my value theory.
Consider LaCroix's premise that John quoted:
L: If God is the greatest possible good then if God had not created there would be nothing but the greatest possible good.
Why should I accept that? It seems to define good the absence of evil or suffering. I thought it was the other way around--evil is the privation of good.
The problem of evil: the final solution?
Here's a response to the argument from evil that you don't hear very often. I thought of it in grad school.
Let's assume that God is pursuing the greatest total balance of good over bad.
In the beginning God creates the best of all possible universes. The good-to-bad balance of that universe is + 1 million.
Should God stop? He can, after all, now create the second best of all possible worlds, and nearly double the total balance of good over evil. So what God has to do to get the best balance of good over evil is create all the worlds that have a positive balance, so that the total can be as high as possible.
Does the good in this world outweigh the bad all told? If it does, then God ought to actualize it, no matter how much suffering it contains. Can we honestly say that all the good in this world is greater than all the bad? That's a much tougher case to make than arguing that this is not the best of all possible worlds. All God needs to do to improve the total balance of good over evil is to create all the worlds with a positive balance.
Is this the end of the argument from evil?
Let's assume that God is pursuing the greatest total balance of good over bad.
In the beginning God creates the best of all possible universes. The good-to-bad balance of that universe is + 1 million.
Should God stop? He can, after all, now create the second best of all possible worlds, and nearly double the total balance of good over evil. So what God has to do to get the best balance of good over evil is create all the worlds that have a positive balance, so that the total can be as high as possible.
Does the good in this world outweigh the bad all told? If it does, then God ought to actualize it, no matter how much suffering it contains. Can we honestly say that all the good in this world is greater than all the bad? That's a much tougher case to make than arguing that this is not the best of all possible worlds. All God needs to do to improve the total balance of good over evil is to create all the worlds with a positive balance.
Is this the end of the argument from evil?
Bertrand Russell's "critique" of the cosmological argument
This is why Russell's "Why I am not a Christian" is sometimes considered the best piece of Christian apologetics ever written. If the atheists can't do better than this, they're in trouble.
Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.) That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.
Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.) That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.
Arthur Balfour online
Arthur Balfour, the former British Prime Minister and one of the founding fathers of the AFR, has a couple of books that can be read online. Actually The Foundations of Belief can be read online as well, as I linked to it on DI2.
The argument from evil debate Loftus v. Wood
Now if I can get these two guys to get along. Of course, I refuted the argument from evil a few posts back :). Maybe I should redate that post.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Responses to the discussion on the Argument from Contingency
I'd like to respond to at least some of the comments on the Argument from Contingency. I probably won't get to them all on this post, so be patient.
Remember, although I am a believer in the existence of God I have not, at this point, endorsed this version of the cosmological argument.
Steve Esser thinks that the argument refutes physicalism, because it shows that there must be something that make an individual objects parts be a unified individual. But could that which unifies a thing's parts be something other than God? But the argument, of course is designed to show that God is the necessary being on which the contingent objects in the universe depend. That is certainly Godlike though, of course, we are still a long way from John 3: 16.
David correctly points out that the argument I presented was not Aquinas's Third Way. That's true, but Aquinas's Third Way, as stated, seems to have some serious problems with it. Aquinas suggests that if there is an infinite series of contingent existents, then it is possible for each of them to cease to exist, and if it is possible, then in the course of an infinite period of time every possibility would have to be actualized, and if so that would mean that the possibility that everything goes out of existence would have to have been actual. That being true, if the universe is in existence now, it would have had to come into existence out of nothing, but nothing comes from nothing, so therefore there has to be a necessary being. But an infinite time would not guarantee the actualization of all possibilities. The infinite series of multiples of 3, for instance, does not include 22. So I think the version of the argument I presented actually avoids some difficulties that the original argument had.
Though I understand that the best source for Thomist thought on these arguments is the Summa Contra Gentiles rather than the Summa Theologica.
Steve responded by saying that he saw something problematic about the idea of a changeless entity causing the universe, and David responded that while this might be difficult to understand there is no proof that the idea is incoherent.
Clayton argued that an infinite series of contingent objects is not a patent absurdity, appealing to Hume's (and Paul Edwards') argument that if you can account for each individual in the series, it makes no sense to say that you can't account for the whole series.
He also makes an important point when he says that Aquinas objects to some infinite regresses but does not maintain that an actual infinite is impossible. If he took that view, he would then have an argument in favor of the claim that the universe had to have a beginning (the now familiar Kalam argument made famous by William Craig) but Aquinas explicitly says that this is an article of faith.
I think Aquinas holds that every object has to have a contemporanously existing cause, and that an infinite serious of those objects would generate an absurdity, while he would not say that about in infinite series of past causes.
Remember, although I am a believer in the existence of God I have not, at this point, endorsed this version of the cosmological argument.
Steve Esser thinks that the argument refutes physicalism, because it shows that there must be something that make an individual objects parts be a unified individual. But could that which unifies a thing's parts be something other than God? But the argument, of course is designed to show that God is the necessary being on which the contingent objects in the universe depend. That is certainly Godlike though, of course, we are still a long way from John 3: 16.
David correctly points out that the argument I presented was not Aquinas's Third Way. That's true, but Aquinas's Third Way, as stated, seems to have some serious problems with it. Aquinas suggests that if there is an infinite series of contingent existents, then it is possible for each of them to cease to exist, and if it is possible, then in the course of an infinite period of time every possibility would have to be actualized, and if so that would mean that the possibility that everything goes out of existence would have to have been actual. That being true, if the universe is in existence now, it would have had to come into existence out of nothing, but nothing comes from nothing, so therefore there has to be a necessary being. But an infinite time would not guarantee the actualization of all possibilities. The infinite series of multiples of 3, for instance, does not include 22. So I think the version of the argument I presented actually avoids some difficulties that the original argument had.
Though I understand that the best source for Thomist thought on these arguments is the Summa Contra Gentiles rather than the Summa Theologica.
Steve responded by saying that he saw something problematic about the idea of a changeless entity causing the universe, and David responded that while this might be difficult to understand there is no proof that the idea is incoherent.
Clayton argued that an infinite series of contingent objects is not a patent absurdity, appealing to Hume's (and Paul Edwards') argument that if you can account for each individual in the series, it makes no sense to say that you can't account for the whole series.
He also makes an important point when he says that Aquinas objects to some infinite regresses but does not maintain that an actual infinite is impossible. If he took that view, he would then have an argument in favor of the claim that the universe had to have a beginning (the now familiar Kalam argument made famous by William Craig) but Aquinas explicitly says that this is an article of faith.
I think Aquinas holds that every object has to have a contemporanously existing cause, and that an infinite serious of those objects would generate an absurdity, while he would not say that about in infinite series of past causes.
Menuge on Why He is Not a Selfplex
From Agents Under Fire
Who we are and how we think is not simply a consequence of the
combination of our genes. . . . Likewise, the combination of memes
does not suffice to explain the coherent patterns of human thought.
A coalition of atomistic, memorable units provides no basis for
practical or theoretical reasoning. Humans can see certain
thoughts and desires as reasons for further action or thought.
However, memes are discrete units and are blind to their own
and each other’s existence. Memes are not self-interpreting,
nor are they able to interpret other memes. Consequently, a
meme cannot see itself or another meme as a reason for some
other action or thought. What is clearly required is an external
interpreter of these memes. On pain of regress, this cannot simply
be another meme or memeplex. The interpretive self cannot be
reduced to a selfplex.
Who we are and how we think is not simply a consequence of the
combination of our genes. . . . Likewise, the combination of memes
does not suffice to explain the coherent patterns of human thought.
A coalition of atomistic, memorable units provides no basis for
practical or theoretical reasoning. Humans can see certain
thoughts and desires as reasons for further action or thought.
However, memes are discrete units and are blind to their own
and each other’s existence. Memes are not self-interpreting,
nor are they able to interpret other memes. Consequently, a
meme cannot see itself or another meme as a reason for some
other action or thought. What is clearly required is an external
interpreter of these memes. On pain of regress, this cannot simply
be another meme or memeplex. The interpretive self cannot be
reduced to a selfplex.
The Unmoved Mover
Another old post revived; my Philosophy 101 class is going over Aristotle and Aquinas:
In St. Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways, we find the most evident way is the argument from motion, establishing the existence of an unmoved mover. Let me present a version of the argument as follows:
1. At least one thing, call it X, is in motion.
2. If X is in motion, then its motion must be caused.
3. If X's motion is caused, then the cause of that motion must be either a) a series of movers which are themselves moving or b) a series of movers that contains at least one unmoved mover.
4. A series of moved movers, even if it is an infinite series, cannot explain the motion of X.
5. Therefore, the motion of X must be explained in terms of the existence of an unmoved mover.
6. That which does not move but causes the motion of all other things deserves to be called God.
7. Therefore, God exists.
If we look at this argument, premise 1 seems undoubtable. Let us grant that the motion of X must be caused. The options in 3 look exhaustive. I'm going to grant 6 for the sake of argument. Mind you, we're a long way from John 3:16. But it does lead us in the direction of a belief in something non-physical on which the universe depends. But how about 4. Why does 4 seem unsatisfactory?
Well, put something somewhere, say, a five-dollar bill on top of your dresser. Now come back the next day, and see if it is still there. If you see it still there, you don't need an explanation. It is where you expected to find it. If it is gone, we need an explanation. Somebody removed the bill. So, we are inclined, at least initially, to suppose that rest needs no explanation, but motion does. Hence an infinite series of moved movers doesn't do the explanatory job needed, and you need an unmoved mover.
Or do you? Perhaps we think this way because we are accustomed to living in a gravitational field, called planet earth. But if we didn't live in a gravitational field, but lived on the space station, we would expect things to be moving, and we would have to explain why things get stopped.
So the idea that motion stands in special need of explanation, while the absence of motion does not, is an idea that modern science seems to reject. Without this assumption, the argument to the Unmoved Mover fails.
Or does it? Are there any good Thomists (followers of St. Thomas Aquinas) out there who can explain to me what I might be missing?
In St. Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways, we find the most evident way is the argument from motion, establishing the existence of an unmoved mover. Let me present a version of the argument as follows:
1. At least one thing, call it X, is in motion.
2. If X is in motion, then its motion must be caused.
3. If X's motion is caused, then the cause of that motion must be either a) a series of movers which are themselves moving or b) a series of movers that contains at least one unmoved mover.
4. A series of moved movers, even if it is an infinite series, cannot explain the motion of X.
5. Therefore, the motion of X must be explained in terms of the existence of an unmoved mover.
6. That which does not move but causes the motion of all other things deserves to be called God.
7. Therefore, God exists.
If we look at this argument, premise 1 seems undoubtable. Let us grant that the motion of X must be caused. The options in 3 look exhaustive. I'm going to grant 6 for the sake of argument. Mind you, we're a long way from John 3:16. But it does lead us in the direction of a belief in something non-physical on which the universe depends. But how about 4. Why does 4 seem unsatisfactory?
Well, put something somewhere, say, a five-dollar bill on top of your dresser. Now come back the next day, and see if it is still there. If you see it still there, you don't need an explanation. It is where you expected to find it. If it is gone, we need an explanation. Somebody removed the bill. So, we are inclined, at least initially, to suppose that rest needs no explanation, but motion does. Hence an infinite series of moved movers doesn't do the explanatory job needed, and you need an unmoved mover.
Or do you? Perhaps we think this way because we are accustomed to living in a gravitational field, called planet earth. But if we didn't live in a gravitational field, but lived on the space station, we would expect things to be moving, and we would have to explain why things get stopped.
So the idea that motion stands in special need of explanation, while the absence of motion does not, is an idea that modern science seems to reject. Without this assumption, the argument to the Unmoved Mover fails.
Or does it? Are there any good Thomists (followers of St. Thomas Aquinas) out there who can explain to me what I might be missing?
David Theroux's essay on the poverty of naturalism
With some references to the argument from reason.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Actually, it looks like you can read this online
The argument from reason begins on p. 19. I have the text of his argument over on DI2.
An early defense of dualism that present a version of the argument from reason
I found out about this book from a mention is William Hasker's essay "The Transcendental Refutation of Determinism."
The book is a defense of dualism
The book is a defense of dualism
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Response to Lowder on abusing atheists, or what part of gentleness and respect don't you understand?
There's lots of abuse to go around on all sides. But no, it's not acceptable. I'm surprised the theist didn't throw in a threat about the fires of hell.
I dislike Richard Dawkins, but I don't envy him his hate mail.
I hate to say it, but I think the level of courtesy in online religious discourse has gone down over the past 12 or so years that I have followed it. I'll never forget Jeff's willingness to include two papers of mine on Infidels in 1998--in fact they were made available at his request.
I have no idea as to why Christians send these things to atheists. Does anyone really think that this serves the Kingdom of God? A certain amount of "in your face" goes with the territory. The Bible teaches that we should give an answer for the hope that is in us with gentleness and respect. What part of that don't some theists understand? I suppose there is nothing in the writings of Bertrand Russell saying that atheists should given an answer for the atheism that is in them with gentleness and respect. But I think they can absorb that Scripture without signing on to anything like inerrancy.
I dislike Richard Dawkins, but I don't envy him his hate mail.
I hate to say it, but I think the level of courtesy in online religious discourse has gone down over the past 12 or so years that I have followed it. I'll never forget Jeff's willingness to include two papers of mine on Infidels in 1998--in fact they were made available at his request.
I have no idea as to why Christians send these things to atheists. Does anyone really think that this serves the Kingdom of God? A certain amount of "in your face" goes with the territory. The Bible teaches that we should give an answer for the hope that is in us with gentleness and respect. What part of that don't some theists understand? I suppose there is nothing in the writings of Bertrand Russell saying that atheists should given an answer for the atheism that is in them with gentleness and respect. But I think they can absorb that Scripture without signing on to anything like inerrancy.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Some discussion of the KCA
In a previous discussion of the Kalam cosmological argument an anonymous interlocutor wrote that physicists really don't use the idea of cause and effect, and then presented this explanation.
(To avoid confusion I should clarify again that "cause and effect" is a term used in physics as a synonym for "determinism". Classical physics is deterministic, quantum physics is not. So "cause and effect" is routinely mentioned (as a metaphor) in the context of classical physics, but has dropped out of quantum physics. "Causes" and "effects", however, play no role in the equations of classical or quantum physics. And for good reason: it is notoriously difficult to define "causes" and "effects" in any given situation.)
OK, that may be. But I would think that even in physics physicists would be committed to some version of the causal principle; that is, at least believe in some weakened version of the principle of sufficient reason. Let me quote myself from an old post on PSRs.:
We need explanatory principles, or what in philosophy are called principles of sufficient reason, in order to justify the claim that the universe needs something other than itself to explain it.PSR1: For every contingent fact F some other fact F' obtains such that, given F', F must obtain.This principle is incompatible with classical theism, for reasons which are similar to the ones Steven mentioned. It is a contingent fact that God freely chose to create a universe, according to classical theism. Or, if God had chosen to exist alone, that would be contingent.So PSR needs to be revised. Wainwright offers some alternatives:PSR2: There is a sufficient reason for the existence of every contingent being.This doesn't entail tha there has to be an explanation of every property of that being, just the existence of the being. So, for example, that being freely choosing to do something can be fully nd completely contingent.PSR3: Every contingent fact that requires a sufficient reason has one.A contingent fact "requires" a sufficient reason if and only if 1) it is logically possible for it to have a sufficient reason and 2) it is unintelligible if it doesn't have one.PSR4: There is at least some reason for every contingent fact.I have seen this referred to as the principle of necessary reason, for every contingent fact there are necessary conditions for it.Wainwright goes on:"The weaker principles are strong enough to generate the conclusion that contingent being is caused by a self-exisent being."The upshot of Wainwright's subsequent discussion is that at least PSR4 is supported by the success of human inquiry, and that therefore the weaker forms of PSR are more plausible than their denials. Hence, he does find some legitimacy in forms of the cosmological argument that use some of the weaker versions of PSR4, and he thinks they do lend significant support to the claim that the physical universe depends on something other than itself, which is self-existent.
Now it looks like any of these principles will do the work necessary to support the causal principle of the KCA. Therefore a denial of the very strong sense of "cause and effect" that physicists might have in mind doesn't mean that they don't believe in, say, Wainwright's PSR4. And PSR4 is all William Lane Craig needs.
(To avoid confusion I should clarify again that "cause and effect" is a term used in physics as a synonym for "determinism". Classical physics is deterministic, quantum physics is not. So "cause and effect" is routinely mentioned (as a metaphor) in the context of classical physics, but has dropped out of quantum physics. "Causes" and "effects", however, play no role in the equations of classical or quantum physics. And for good reason: it is notoriously difficult to define "causes" and "effects" in any given situation.)
OK, that may be. But I would think that even in physics physicists would be committed to some version of the causal principle; that is, at least believe in some weakened version of the principle of sufficient reason. Let me quote myself from an old post on PSRs.:
We need explanatory principles, or what in philosophy are called principles of sufficient reason, in order to justify the claim that the universe needs something other than itself to explain it.PSR1: For every contingent fact F some other fact F' obtains such that, given F', F must obtain.This principle is incompatible with classical theism, for reasons which are similar to the ones Steven mentioned. It is a contingent fact that God freely chose to create a universe, according to classical theism. Or, if God had chosen to exist alone, that would be contingent.So PSR needs to be revised. Wainwright offers some alternatives:PSR2: There is a sufficient reason for the existence of every contingent being.This doesn't entail tha there has to be an explanation of every property of that being, just the existence of the being. So, for example, that being freely choosing to do something can be fully nd completely contingent.PSR3: Every contingent fact that requires a sufficient reason has one.A contingent fact "requires" a sufficient reason if and only if 1) it is logically possible for it to have a sufficient reason and 2) it is unintelligible if it doesn't have one.PSR4: There is at least some reason for every contingent fact.I have seen this referred to as the principle of necessary reason, for every contingent fact there are necessary conditions for it.Wainwright goes on:"The weaker principles are strong enough to generate the conclusion that contingent being is caused by a self-exisent being."The upshot of Wainwright's subsequent discussion is that at least PSR4 is supported by the success of human inquiry, and that therefore the weaker forms of PSR are more plausible than their denials. Hence, he does find some legitimacy in forms of the cosmological argument that use some of the weaker versions of PSR4, and he thinks they do lend significant support to the claim that the physical universe depends on something other than itself, which is self-existent.
Now it looks like any of these principles will do the work necessary to support the causal principle of the KCA. Therefore a denial of the very strong sense of "cause and effect" that physicists might have in mind doesn't mean that they don't believe in, say, Wainwright's PSR4. And PSR4 is all William Lane Craig needs.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Robin Collins on fine-tuning
This is a link to work by Robin Collins, probably the leading defender of the fine-tuning argument today.
http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/ft.htm
http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/ft.htm
Some discussion of the fine-tuning argument for theism
This is a discussion of the fine-tuning argument for theism, which is William Lane Craig's second argument in his debate with Douglas Jesseph
Some arguments for the finitude of the past
The first of William Lane Craig's arguments for the existence of God is the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It goes:
1. Whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
The first premise of the argument seems intuitive, at least at first. Suppose you and I are eating lunch. You turn your head away from the table, only to discover that a bunny rabbit is munching on your salad. You ask "how did that rabbit get there?" and I say "Funny thing. It just popped into existence. No cause or anything, it just happened." You wouldn't take me seriously, right? Well, what goes for bunny rabbits should go for universes. To say that the universe began without a cause doesn't make sense.
Or does it? Opponents have argued that in Big Bang theory the time begins when the universe begins. So there never was a time before the Big Bang in which time existed but the universe did not.
Somehow, this doesn't in my mind alleviate the need for a cause. It seems to me that something that doesn't exist contingently should have existed through an infinite duration. if it doesn't have a cause, similarly, it should exist through an infinite time, or be outside of time.
But why believe that the universe had a temporal beginning? The most prominent theory in cosmology seems to still be the Big Bang theory, a theory that says that there was a beginning. But Craig also endorses arguments that there can't be an infinite number of past moments.
Think about this. Suppose I ask you to loan me some money. I offer you 100% interest compounded daily. But you, quite rationally, want to know the term of the loan. I reply that even though it may take an infinite length of time to pay it back, you'll get your money. This somehow doesn't satisfy you. But if the past is infinite, that means that there are an infinite number of moments in time that have ALREADY HAPPENED. How is that possible?
I have a link to a presentation of three arguments in favor of the claim that the past must be finite and not infinite.
1. Whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
The first premise of the argument seems intuitive, at least at first. Suppose you and I are eating lunch. You turn your head away from the table, only to discover that a bunny rabbit is munching on your salad. You ask "how did that rabbit get there?" and I say "Funny thing. It just popped into existence. No cause or anything, it just happened." You wouldn't take me seriously, right? Well, what goes for bunny rabbits should go for universes. To say that the universe began without a cause doesn't make sense.
Or does it? Opponents have argued that in Big Bang theory the time begins when the universe begins. So there never was a time before the Big Bang in which time existed but the universe did not.
Somehow, this doesn't in my mind alleviate the need for a cause. It seems to me that something that doesn't exist contingently should have existed through an infinite duration. if it doesn't have a cause, similarly, it should exist through an infinite time, or be outside of time.
But why believe that the universe had a temporal beginning? The most prominent theory in cosmology seems to still be the Big Bang theory, a theory that says that there was a beginning. But Craig also endorses arguments that there can't be an infinite number of past moments.
Think about this. Suppose I ask you to loan me some money. I offer you 100% interest compounded daily. But you, quite rationally, want to know the term of the loan. I reply that even though it may take an infinite length of time to pay it back, you'll get your money. This somehow doesn't satisfy you. But if the past is infinite, that means that there are an infinite number of moments in time that have ALREADY HAPPENED. How is that possible?
I have a link to a presentation of three arguments in favor of the claim that the past must be finite and not infinite.
Sex-selective abortion?
Here's a dilemma. Is this anti-female discrimination, or a woman's right to choose?
Monday, July 09, 2007
Summary and assessment of Craig-Jesseph
This is the summary of the 1997 Craig-Jesseph debate that we will be seeing in PHI 101. It has a link to the print-out of a previous debate between the two participants that was held the previous year at North Carolina State.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Christianity and the War in Iraq
This is an article on the relationship of Christians to the war in Iraq.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/07/08/god_and_country/
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/07/08/god_and_country/
Brain Science and The Case against Brains
A discussion on Telic Thoughts concerning a cognitive scientists argument that mind-independent physical objects don't exist. Of course, if the argument works, it's an argument against realism about cognitive science. The minute brain science proves that there are no brains, it has put itself out of business.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Bonds and Aaron
Does anyone disagree with Doug Groothuis's assessment of Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aaron's record? Will anyone celebrate when the record is broken?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Punishing the innocent by mistake
Is it better for a hundred guilty criminals to go free than for an innocent person to be wrongfully convicted and deprived of their liberty? Why do you think this? Does this affect how you think when it comes to the death penalty?
Monday, June 18, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
A poor criticism of the cosmological argument
From John DePoe's blog. I wonder if Dennett could explain the difference between a kalam cosmological argument and a Thomistic cosmological argument.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Aristotle's doctrine of the Mean
Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean
Keeping things in balance
I. What does the mean mean?
Back in grade school we learned to distinguish the mean, the median, and the mode. The mean is the average, the median is the middle number, and the mode is the number the occurs most frequently.
Aristotle says that virtue lies on the mean, which means that an level of activity can go beyond what is virtuous or less than what is virtuous. In other words, it can be analyzed in terms of a deficiency, virtue, excess.
II. Aristotle’s analysis of virtue as the mean between extremes--example: inthe activity of confidence in facing danger, courage is the mean, rashness the excess, cowardice the defect.
Remember the Song of Sir Robin sung by his minstrels in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? The brave knight described in the beginning of the song isn't courageous, he's rash. Of course, we discover after the encounter with the Three-headed Knight, in which Robin buggers off, that he's really a coward. Run Away!
III. Other virtues that can be charted
There seem to be other things that can be similarly charted. For example, let’s take the tendency to "hold on" in a troubled primary relationship. The excess would perhaps be called co-dependence (or stalking) the mean would be commitment, and the deficiency would be fickleness.
Or again let’s take the activity of making peace. The deficiency would be combativeness, the excess would be the ‘peace at any price" attitude.
IV. The mean is relative to us
It should be re-emphasized that Aristotle, just as much as Plato, is a believer in objective moral values. One can have erroneous ethical beliefs.
However, what is right is to be determined by looking at the situation closely. The principles are objective, the application is relative.
V. Examples
A child putting his head in the water who is afraid of it is courageous. For a lifeguard to do so is not courageous.
A well-balanced diet may be different for a football player and for a much smaller person.
Giving $1 to charity may be virtuous in a poor person, but be stingy for Bill Gates.
VI. The mean determined by practical wisdom
Even though the mean is person-relative, given there is a right degree to which on should give money, hold on in relationships, etc.
However, this involves a lot of "judgment calls." It’s more like riding a bicycle than like doing math.
VII. The best form of life
The best form of life is a life of contemplation, because
A. Reason is the part of us that most fully expresses our humanity.
B. We can engage in reason continuously.
C. Rational contemplation is a self-sufficient activity.
D. When we reason we imitate the Unmoved Mover, who is pure thought thinking itself.
Keeping things in balance
I. What does the mean mean?
Back in grade school we learned to distinguish the mean, the median, and the mode. The mean is the average, the median is the middle number, and the mode is the number the occurs most frequently.
Aristotle says that virtue lies on the mean, which means that an level of activity can go beyond what is virtuous or less than what is virtuous. In other words, it can be analyzed in terms of a deficiency, virtue, excess.
II. Aristotle’s analysis of virtue as the mean between extremes--example: inthe activity of confidence in facing danger, courage is the mean, rashness the excess, cowardice the defect.
Remember the Song of Sir Robin sung by his minstrels in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? The brave knight described in the beginning of the song isn't courageous, he's rash. Of course, we discover after the encounter with the Three-headed Knight, in which Robin buggers off, that he's really a coward. Run Away!
III. Other virtues that can be charted
There seem to be other things that can be similarly charted. For example, let’s take the tendency to "hold on" in a troubled primary relationship. The excess would perhaps be called co-dependence (or stalking) the mean would be commitment, and the deficiency would be fickleness.
Or again let’s take the activity of making peace. The deficiency would be combativeness, the excess would be the ‘peace at any price" attitude.
IV. The mean is relative to us
It should be re-emphasized that Aristotle, just as much as Plato, is a believer in objective moral values. One can have erroneous ethical beliefs.
However, what is right is to be determined by looking at the situation closely. The principles are objective, the application is relative.
V. Examples
A child putting his head in the water who is afraid of it is courageous. For a lifeguard to do so is not courageous.
A well-balanced diet may be different for a football player and for a much smaller person.
Giving $1 to charity may be virtuous in a poor person, but be stingy for Bill Gates.
VI. The mean determined by practical wisdom
Even though the mean is person-relative, given there is a right degree to which on should give money, hold on in relationships, etc.
However, this involves a lot of "judgment calls." It’s more like riding a bicycle than like doing math.
VII. The best form of life
The best form of life is a life of contemplation, because
A. Reason is the part of us that most fully expresses our humanity.
B. We can engage in reason continuously.
C. Rational contemplation is a self-sufficient activity.
D. When we reason we imitate the Unmoved Mover, who is pure thought thinking itself.
Aristotle on Virtue and Choice
Virtue and Choice
Voluntary and Involuntary Actions
There are two types of actions, voluntary and involuntary.
Good actions are the result of good choices. An action must be voluntary in order to be the proper object of praise or blame.
Compulsion and Ignorance
Acts you are compelled to do and acts that you do by reason of ignorance are acts you are not responsible for.
If I slip on a rug and break your favorite vase I am not blameworthy.
There are gray areas and mixed cases. What if I deliberately do some immoral act because a gunman is holding my wife and kids?
Not all ignorance excuses
If I murder someone, I can’t avoid blame if I say I didn’t know murder was wrong.
But if I in good faith offer someone water and it turns out to be poisoned, my act is unfortunate but not blameworthy
Acting in ignorance and acting by reason of ignorance
Sometimes blameworthy ignorance causes harm. If I ought to have known the gun was loaded, but I didn’t bother to check to see that it was, then I can be blamed for killing my small child.
If a 5-year old shoots himself with a gun that I left on the table carelessly, then that’s my fault, not his. He acted by reason of ignorance, I acted in ignorance.
Voluntary and Involuntary Actions
There are two types of actions, voluntary and involuntary.
Good actions are the result of good choices. An action must be voluntary in order to be the proper object of praise or blame.
Compulsion and Ignorance
Acts you are compelled to do and acts that you do by reason of ignorance are acts you are not responsible for.
If I slip on a rug and break your favorite vase I am not blameworthy.
There are gray areas and mixed cases. What if I deliberately do some immoral act because a gunman is holding my wife and kids?
Not all ignorance excuses
If I murder someone, I can’t avoid blame if I say I didn’t know murder was wrong.
But if I in good faith offer someone water and it turns out to be poisoned, my act is unfortunate but not blameworthy
Acting in ignorance and acting by reason of ignorance
Sometimes blameworthy ignorance causes harm. If I ought to have known the gun was loaded, but I didn’t bother to check to see that it was, then I can be blamed for killing my small child.
If a 5-year old shoots himself with a gun that I left on the table carelessly, then that’s my fault, not his. He acted by reason of ignorance, I acted in ignorance.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Killing to save others
Suppose you were a prisoner, and your captors told that you had to kill an innocent person, because if you didn’t, your captors would then kill 100 other prisoners. Would you do it?
Platonistic Metaphysics and morality
XA: A non-theist need not be a naturalist in such a crude sense that all entities are physical or reducible to the physical in some sense or another (e.g., in terms of logical supervenience). One could hold a gazillion different views here. Here's the one I hold at the moment: all *contingent* being is reducible to the physical, but since abstracta exist (including moral properties), and exist of metaphysical necessity, then they need no causal or explanatory ground in terms of the physical; nor, for the same reason, need they be caused or explained in terms of a god (being the necessary beings they are). If this is plausible -- and I think it obviously is -- then (2) is implausible. On the other hand, if you're just dead set on characterizing physicalism so that it requires the reducible of everything to the physical, then since the alternative view I mention is plausible, then (1) is implausible (well, it's implausible anyway; this is just an extra reason for thinking so).
Here's the problem I have with all of this. You have the physical world, which is a closed system of physical causes. I take it that all contingent states, on this view, can be explained from the stand point of the closed and mechanistic physical order, and by whatever supervenience relations obtain. And there are the necessary moral truths, which do not rely on anything, God or the physical, for their existence. The trouble is that for Plato himself, we have a soul, which had a previous existence, and had a direct awareness of the Forms, but now that we are encased in fleshly bodies, we forgot all that knowledge of the Forms, unless it is somehow brought out of us through midwifery of some kind. In other words, Plato postulated some kind of interconnection between the world of forms and how our thoughts get caused in the real world. The Augustinian doctrine of divine illumination is the Christian replacement for the Platonistic doctrine of recollection. But this view you're propounding doesn't have any conduits from the truths of morality to the real world of our experience. If our duties are determined by the abstracta, then we may be able to act in accordance with duty, but we certainly can't act from duty, as Kant would say. If we act morally, the morality of our actions is at best epiphenomenal. Our state of acting rightly would be determined by whatever state the physical was in, and would not be determined by the state of what is morally true. I think this makes the position thus sketched wildly implausible.
Here's the problem I have with all of this. You have the physical world, which is a closed system of physical causes. I take it that all contingent states, on this view, can be explained from the stand point of the closed and mechanistic physical order, and by whatever supervenience relations obtain. And there are the necessary moral truths, which do not rely on anything, God or the physical, for their existence. The trouble is that for Plato himself, we have a soul, which had a previous existence, and had a direct awareness of the Forms, but now that we are encased in fleshly bodies, we forgot all that knowledge of the Forms, unless it is somehow brought out of us through midwifery of some kind. In other words, Plato postulated some kind of interconnection between the world of forms and how our thoughts get caused in the real world. The Augustinian doctrine of divine illumination is the Christian replacement for the Platonistic doctrine of recollection. But this view you're propounding doesn't have any conduits from the truths of morality to the real world of our experience. If our duties are determined by the abstracta, then we may be able to act in accordance with duty, but we certainly can't act from duty, as Kant would say. If we act morally, the morality of our actions is at best epiphenomenal. Our state of acting rightly would be determined by whatever state the physical was in, and would not be determined by the state of what is morally true. I think this makes the position thus sketched wildly implausible.
A DI2 discussion
While I haven't been over on Dangerous Idea 2 much lately, there has been a very interesting discussion related to the argument from reason which has the comment count up to 48. (I think you guys on ethics without metaphysics broke the record for DI with 53 comments).
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The future of godless ethics
Is atheism demoralizing? Does it undermine morality? Of course, there are plenty of atheists with robust ethical codes who try their best to live up to them. But is this enough? Layman at Christian Cadre thinks not.
A quote from Gary DeMar's essay "Why Atheists are Theocrats"
Quoted in Christopher's Price's post on CADRE
If atheists get their way, they will be running the world in terms of some ultimate principle. At the moment, atheists have the benefit of a vibrant Christian worldview where they can borrow moral plugs like compassion and kindness to keep their hole-filled materialist boat afloat. Given time, future generations of atheists will logically throw off these moral precepts that at one time had been mined from "ancient literature." Consistency will lead these newly empowered atheists to conclude that "kindness" is a superstitious remnant of an ancient book-led religion that once proposed that immaterial entities exist. Science will show that there is no way to account for these religion-defined virtues given naturalistic assumptions.... When atheists no longer have Christianity to borrow from, from what bank will they draw their moral capital?
Are moral atheists borrowing their moral capital from Christianity?
If atheists get their way, they will be running the world in terms of some ultimate principle. At the moment, atheists have the benefit of a vibrant Christian worldview where they can borrow moral plugs like compassion and kindness to keep their hole-filled materialist boat afloat. Given time, future generations of atheists will logically throw off these moral precepts that at one time had been mined from "ancient literature." Consistency will lead these newly empowered atheists to conclude that "kindness" is a superstitious remnant of an ancient book-led religion that once proposed that immaterial entities exist. Science will show that there is no way to account for these religion-defined virtues given naturalistic assumptions.... When atheists no longer have Christianity to borrow from, from what bank will they draw their moral capital?
Are moral atheists borrowing their moral capital from Christianity?
Ethics with and without God II
I'm redating this post.
I think there are two cases of atheistic morality that would have to be considered. Some world-views are not theistic per se but believe that there is a given purpose for human existence. If you accept something like Aristotle's inherent purposes (Aristotle had the unmoved mover but the UMM is not a personal God), then what is right fulfils that purpose and what is wrong fails to do so. I'm not sure that the idea of inherent purpose makes sense without the idea of intended purpose, but if you bought that it looks like you can get an objective moral standard out of it.
A theistic account of morality would, I think, combine the idea that as creatures of God we are created in such a way that our intended purposes and our inherent purposes are identical: we fulfill our purpose as human beings by doing what we were made to do. (How that solves particular problems like abortion, for example, may be more difficult, but right now I'm just working on the general idea of a moral life).
If you're going without God and without inherent purpose, then I think Hume is about the best source. He pointed out that a lot of ethical behavior can be justified by enlightened self-interest or social utility, and that we have feeling of sympathy for one another. But with his system, I have trouble seeing why we should do the right thing when it isn't in our enlightened self-interest and when we are feeling a lot of other feelings a lot more strongly than we feel sympathy. Why should sympathy trump other, stronger, feelings?
I think there are two cases of atheistic morality that would have to be considered. Some world-views are not theistic per se but believe that there is a given purpose for human existence. If you accept something like Aristotle's inherent purposes (Aristotle had the unmoved mover but the UMM is not a personal God), then what is right fulfils that purpose and what is wrong fails to do so. I'm not sure that the idea of inherent purpose makes sense without the idea of intended purpose, but if you bought that it looks like you can get an objective moral standard out of it.
A theistic account of morality would, I think, combine the idea that as creatures of God we are created in such a way that our intended purposes and our inherent purposes are identical: we fulfill our purpose as human beings by doing what we were made to do. (How that solves particular problems like abortion, for example, may be more difficult, but right now I'm just working on the general idea of a moral life).
If you're going without God and without inherent purpose, then I think Hume is about the best source. He pointed out that a lot of ethical behavior can be justified by enlightened self-interest or social utility, and that we have feeling of sympathy for one another. But with his system, I have trouble seeing why we should do the right thing when it isn't in our enlightened self-interest and when we are feeling a lot of other feelings a lot more strongly than we feel sympathy. Why should sympathy trump other, stronger, feelings?
Monday, June 04, 2007
Ed Babinski on morality: Interesting stuff, but what follows?
Moral Objectivity, Victor Reppert, Edward T. Babinski
Dear Vic (Victor Reppert for the sake of blog search engines *smile*),
I enjoyed reading your discussion at your blog on moral objectivity, along with comments left by others.
Is it me, or are you asking more philosophical questions concerning moral objectivity than you have in the past? Asking questions and analyzing the answers (interminably so, especially when such questions are large overarching ones) appears to be what philosophy does best.
VR: I have never stopped or slowed down in asking philosophical questions. It’s what I do. Though, if we have no prospect of getting an satisfactory answers, at least satisfactory enough to help us in making choices that guide our conduct, I’m not sure what the questions do for us. There are some things that I think are true philosophically; this does not mean that I ask any fewer questions than those who don't hold to any philosophical truths.
EB: On the question of "moral objectivity," I think that the most objective thing any of us can say with anything near certainty as fellow philosophical debaters is that we each like being liked and hate being hated.
We certainly like having our particular thoughts appreciated by others. And we are a bit perturbed when others don't "get" what we're saying, so we continue trying to communicate our views in ways we hope others might understand.
I also assume each of us generally prefers not having lives nor property taken from them, and generally prefer not being abused either psychologically nor physically.
I also assume that when one person has something in common with another, be it a love of a game (chess, golf, soccer), a song, the sight of a sunset/sunrise, a philosophical point of view concerning the big questions, or a religion, that liking the same thing tends to bring people together and increase their joys.
Therefore, I'm not sure that "objectivity" is necessarily what I am primarily after, nor what most people are primarily after.
VR: You were doing fine until you said therefore, and committed a huge non sequitur. We have a good deal to gain from appearing to me moral, appearing to be concerned about the welfare of others, etc. We are also “after” other things besides moral objectivity. The question I am posing has to do with whether moral values can be objectively true. If a society practices, say, female genital mutilation, can we say, not just that we don’t like the practice, but that it is really wrong, if in their society it’s thought to be a good thing. Is there some standpoint overarching us and those who approve of this practice that we can appeal to so that we can say that what they are doing is really wrong.
EB: But I will say that there is a marvelous article in this week's Discover about animals with feelings. One anecdote from the article involved a magpie (freshly deceased from an accident with a car) that lay by the side of the road surruonded by four live magpies that went up and pecked gently at it, then two flew off and came back with some tufts of grass in their beaks and laid it beside the dead magpie. Then they stood beside it for a while until one by one the four magpies flew off.
VR: None of my philosophical projects requires maintaining that humans are uniquely rational. As I said when I was interviewed on Infidelguy, for all I know there may be a whole colony of dolphins off the coast of Miami that make rational inferences, or make moral judgments. (The true Miami Dolphins!) There is nothing especially Christian about the Cartesian idea that animals are just machines. Bill Hasker, for example, is not a materialist about animals either. You simply are not going to get an argument going against any of the positions I have been defending over the years by telling me all the things Koko the gorilla can do.
EB: This anecdote sparked my own memory of another one that I read in a turn of the century book titled Mutual Aid by the Russian evolutionist, Kropotkin (his theory of evolution emphasized the benefits of mutual aid & cooperation). Kropotkin cited Australian naturalists and farmers who observed the way parrots cooperated to denude a farmer's field of crops. The parrots sent out scouts, then rallied the other birds, and they would swoop down quickly and devour the crops, but sometimes some of them got shot, and rather than simply fly off altogether the birds "comrades" (remember, this is a russian biologist speaking) would squawk in a fashion of bereavement, trying to remain as long as possible fluttering near the fallen friend and group member.
I also have read stories about the intelligence of crows, even their sense of humor. One naturalist mentioned seeing three crows on a wire, and one of them slipped, seemingly intentionally, and held himself upside down by one claw, which apparently amused the others. (I'd also read about experiments and anedcotes involving birds with amazing memories and vocabularies, even speaking and acting in ways one would consider appropriate for brief human-to-human exchanges.)
Elephants and llamas were some of the other animals mentioned in the Discover piece that reacted strongly to the death of members of their own species. Elephants have come back a year later to the spot where another elephant has died (as seen on Animal Planet) and they react strongly to the bones. I also recall reading in a Jan Goodall book about a young chimp (fully grown, not a baby) reacting so strongly to the death of his mother, that he simply climbed a tree and wouldn't come down and eat until he himself had died, apparently of grief.
The works of Frans de Waal (a famed primatologist), contain some touching stories about the compassionate behaviors of primates, notably of the most peace loving chimp species, the bonobo. When Frans took his own baby son (who was sitting in a forward facing harness strapped round Frans's chest) to visit some chimps at a zoo where Frans had gotten to know the chimps well, a mother chimp with her own young one saw Frans holding his baby up to the viewing glass, and the mother took her own baby's arms and twisted her baby around in a single movement so it was facing outward, and held her baby up to the glass so that the two babys could eye each other. Frans and the mother chimp also exchanged glances. Frans mentioned a case of a female photographing chimps on their little chimp island that had a moat around it. They were bonobos, a female dominated society, and food had just been given them, and they were portioning it out amongst themselves. The photographer wanted to get a shot but the chimps had their backs to the camera and were facing the food that had been delivered instead of facing the moat with the photographer on the other side, so the photographer started to wave her hands and scream and jump up and down to get the attention of the chimps. The other chimps looked round, except one who was suspicious and didn't turn around. So the female photographer continued waving her hands and shouting until finally that last female chimp turned around, and tossed the photographer a handful of food! The chimp apparently thought she was being asked to share her food! And well, she did.
In another case I've read about, Washoe the chimp was on a chimp island with other chimps, one of which climbed the fence and started wadding out into the moat surrounding the island (chimps can't swim, they sink, their bodies are denser than human beings since they have far less body fat). This chimp started to flail around in the water, drowning. Washoe saw this, clambored over the fence, and held onto some tall grass with one hand while extending the other to the drowning chimp, who was saved.
Meanwhile Robert Hauser (Harvard prof and author of Moral Minds) has asked a lot of people a lot of tough moral questions and found out how similar their responses were across the board regardless of whether the person was religious or not.
VR: This sounds really interesting. Gosh, science magazines can be a fun read. However, you seem to think I have defended some kind of human uniqueness doctrine, when I haven’t done any such thing. Where, in anything I have written, have I said anything that is precluded by any of these observations. Is there anything in Christianity that requires that animals just be machines.
Dear Vic (Victor Reppert for the sake of blog search engines *smile*),
I enjoyed reading your discussion at your blog on moral objectivity, along with comments left by others.
Is it me, or are you asking more philosophical questions concerning moral objectivity than you have in the past? Asking questions and analyzing the answers (interminably so, especially when such questions are large overarching ones) appears to be what philosophy does best.
VR: I have never stopped or slowed down in asking philosophical questions. It’s what I do. Though, if we have no prospect of getting an satisfactory answers, at least satisfactory enough to help us in making choices that guide our conduct, I’m not sure what the questions do for us. There are some things that I think are true philosophically; this does not mean that I ask any fewer questions than those who don't hold to any philosophical truths.
EB: On the question of "moral objectivity," I think that the most objective thing any of us can say with anything near certainty as fellow philosophical debaters is that we each like being liked and hate being hated.
We certainly like having our particular thoughts appreciated by others. And we are a bit perturbed when others don't "get" what we're saying, so we continue trying to communicate our views in ways we hope others might understand.
I also assume each of us generally prefers not having lives nor property taken from them, and generally prefer not being abused either psychologically nor physically.
I also assume that when one person has something in common with another, be it a love of a game (chess, golf, soccer), a song, the sight of a sunset/sunrise, a philosophical point of view concerning the big questions, or a religion, that liking the same thing tends to bring people together and increase their joys.
Therefore, I'm not sure that "objectivity" is necessarily what I am primarily after, nor what most people are primarily after.
VR: You were doing fine until you said therefore, and committed a huge non sequitur. We have a good deal to gain from appearing to me moral, appearing to be concerned about the welfare of others, etc. We are also “after” other things besides moral objectivity. The question I am posing has to do with whether moral values can be objectively true. If a society practices, say, female genital mutilation, can we say, not just that we don’t like the practice, but that it is really wrong, if in their society it’s thought to be a good thing. Is there some standpoint overarching us and those who approve of this practice that we can appeal to so that we can say that what they are doing is really wrong.
EB: But I will say that there is a marvelous article in this week's Discover about animals with feelings. One anecdote from the article involved a magpie (freshly deceased from an accident with a car) that lay by the side of the road surruonded by four live magpies that went up and pecked gently at it, then two flew off and came back with some tufts of grass in their beaks and laid it beside the dead magpie. Then they stood beside it for a while until one by one the four magpies flew off.
VR: None of my philosophical projects requires maintaining that humans are uniquely rational. As I said when I was interviewed on Infidelguy, for all I know there may be a whole colony of dolphins off the coast of Miami that make rational inferences, or make moral judgments. (The true Miami Dolphins!) There is nothing especially Christian about the Cartesian idea that animals are just machines. Bill Hasker, for example, is not a materialist about animals either. You simply are not going to get an argument going against any of the positions I have been defending over the years by telling me all the things Koko the gorilla can do.
EB: This anecdote sparked my own memory of another one that I read in a turn of the century book titled Mutual Aid by the Russian evolutionist, Kropotkin (his theory of evolution emphasized the benefits of mutual aid & cooperation). Kropotkin cited Australian naturalists and farmers who observed the way parrots cooperated to denude a farmer's field of crops. The parrots sent out scouts, then rallied the other birds, and they would swoop down quickly and devour the crops, but sometimes some of them got shot, and rather than simply fly off altogether the birds "comrades" (remember, this is a russian biologist speaking) would squawk in a fashion of bereavement, trying to remain as long as possible fluttering near the fallen friend and group member.
I also have read stories about the intelligence of crows, even their sense of humor. One naturalist mentioned seeing three crows on a wire, and one of them slipped, seemingly intentionally, and held himself upside down by one claw, which apparently amused the others. (I'd also read about experiments and anedcotes involving birds with amazing memories and vocabularies, even speaking and acting in ways one would consider appropriate for brief human-to-human exchanges.)
Elephants and llamas were some of the other animals mentioned in the Discover piece that reacted strongly to the death of members of their own species. Elephants have come back a year later to the spot where another elephant has died (as seen on Animal Planet) and they react strongly to the bones. I also recall reading in a Jan Goodall book about a young chimp (fully grown, not a baby) reacting so strongly to the death of his mother, that he simply climbed a tree and wouldn't come down and eat until he himself had died, apparently of grief.
The works of Frans de Waal (a famed primatologist), contain some touching stories about the compassionate behaviors of primates, notably of the most peace loving chimp species, the bonobo. When Frans took his own baby son (who was sitting in a forward facing harness strapped round Frans's chest) to visit some chimps at a zoo where Frans had gotten to know the chimps well, a mother chimp with her own young one saw Frans holding his baby up to the viewing glass, and the mother took her own baby's arms and twisted her baby around in a single movement so it was facing outward, and held her baby up to the glass so that the two babys could eye each other. Frans and the mother chimp also exchanged glances. Frans mentioned a case of a female photographing chimps on their little chimp island that had a moat around it. They were bonobos, a female dominated society, and food had just been given them, and they were portioning it out amongst themselves. The photographer wanted to get a shot but the chimps had their backs to the camera and were facing the food that had been delivered instead of facing the moat with the photographer on the other side, so the photographer started to wave her hands and scream and jump up and down to get the attention of the chimps. The other chimps looked round, except one who was suspicious and didn't turn around. So the female photographer continued waving her hands and shouting until finally that last female chimp turned around, and tossed the photographer a handful of food! The chimp apparently thought she was being asked to share her food! And well, she did.
In another case I've read about, Washoe the chimp was on a chimp island with other chimps, one of which climbed the fence and started wadding out into the moat surrounding the island (chimps can't swim, they sink, their bodies are denser than human beings since they have far less body fat). This chimp started to flail around in the water, drowning. Washoe saw this, clambored over the fence, and held onto some tall grass with one hand while extending the other to the drowning chimp, who was saved.
Meanwhile Robert Hauser (Harvard prof and author of Moral Minds) has asked a lot of people a lot of tough moral questions and found out how similar their responses were across the board regardless of whether the person was religious or not.
VR: This sounds really interesting. Gosh, science magazines can be a fun read. However, you seem to think I have defended some kind of human uniqueness doctrine, when I haven’t done any such thing. Where, in anything I have written, have I said anything that is precluded by any of these observations. Is there anything in Christianity that requires that animals just be machines.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Why be Moral?
Most people like it when other people are moral, but do we have good reasons for being moral ourselves. an ancient Greek philosopher once said that we work best to our own advantage when we act as though we regarded morality in high esteem when people are watching, but when people are not watching, we should follow nature rather than the code of society. Is he right? And if he is, do we nonetheless have a good reason to be a moral person, as opposed to just appearing to be moral.
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