I have not blogged on political matters as yet. I don’t consider myself to be either far on the right or on the left, but I do have serious reservations about the wisdom of our President’s policies, and am particularly suspicious of any attempt to make the Christian faith serve the ends of partisan politics. Jarrod Cochran is a Christian whose cyber-acquaintance I have recently made, and who is the nephew of atheist philosopher Keith Parsons. He was kind enough to send me this exchange between himself and a Focus on the Family office representative. I do believe that FOTF has done some good work, but I think it tends to identify the Christian gospel with certain political positions which have to be distinguished from the central claims of Christianity.
Someone interested in the issue between religion and politics should begin my reading C. S. Lewis’s brilliant essay “Meditation on the Third Commandment,” from God in the Dock, where he warns about the dangers of attempting to form a “Christian Party.”
Dear Mr. Cochran,
Thank you for writing to Dr. Dobson (e-mail, April 24, 2005). He would have preferred to send a personal reply if circumstances had allowed. Unfortunately, with several thousand pieces of mail arriving at Focus headquarters every day, it’s rare that he is able to become directly involved with ministry-related correspondence. I’m sure you can understand why he has asked me to respond on his behalf. It’s a pleasure to serve you as his representative.
It was good of you to take a few moments to share your thoughts on a number of issues related to Dr. Dobson’s involvement in matters of public policy, including the “Justice Sunday” telecast (April 24), Focus on the Family’s position on the Senate filibuster against President Bush’s judicial candidates, the war in Iraq, and the recent “SpongeBob controversy.” Honest feedback like yours is always welcome here at Focus headquarters.
In response to the concerns you’ve raised, we want to make it very clear that the Doctor’s participation in “Justice Sunday” had nothing to do with any desire on his part to impose his own moral views or religious convictions on anyone else. Nor is he inferring that those who disagree with Focus on the Family’s stance are not true Christians or people of faith. Above all, he is not trying to say that God is a Republican or a Democrat or that true spirituality can be defined in terms of one’s political affiliations. Far from it! It’s all well and good to say that “God is above political affiliation,” but this does not excuse us as believers from our obligation to stand up for morality and righteousness in the public square. For Dr. Dobson, the issues you refer to as “political” are profoundly moral in nature. They lie at the heart of who he is what he feels called to do. In order to stay completely “out of politics” as you’ve exhorted him to do, he would have to abandon the preborn child, acquiesce to the distribution of condoms and the dispensation of immoral advice to teenagers in the public schools, close his eyes to child pornography and adult obscenity, ignore the confiscatory tax structure that weakens the family, and remain silent regarding the anti-family agenda of gay and lesbian activists. This he cannot and will not do. His conscience will not permit it.
With respect to your assertion that Dr. Dobson’s supportive attitude toward the war in Iraq is inconsistent with his strong pro-life principles, we’d like to suggest that killing within the context of warfare (and this includes the kind of killing that falls under the heading of so-called “collateral damage”) is something very different from the deliberate termination of the lives of innocent preborn babies. Something similar can be said with respect to the death penalty, which involves the execution by legitimate state authorities of criminals who have been duly convicted of capital crimes. This theme could be expanded at great length, of course; whether or not you would agree with the arguments we might advance depends to a great extent upon your interpretation of Scripture passages like Romans 13:1-4. In this connection, you need to understand that Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family generally subscribe to the classic Augustinian “just war” theory. Applying the principles of that theory, the Doctor has concluded that the campaign in Iraq is a case where the biblical and theological justifications for the use of force are fairly obvious -- as a matter of fact, he sees it as a component element of the much larger War on Terror. Nothing of the kind can be said with respect to the murder of innocent infants.
As for your reminder that “being pro-life doesn’t end with abortion” and the concerns you’ve expressed regarding our attitude toward the homeless and poverty-stricken, there is a sense in which we can’t help feeling that you are oversimplifying a highly complicated subject. If it seems to you that we have not taken it upon ourselves to address economic issues as intensively as you might prefer, we would propose that there are a couple of very good reasons for this, neither of which have anything to do with lack of concern for the poor. The first centers around the technical complexity of the problem. When it comes to economics, everybody has a different idea about the best way to end poverty, put people to work, and fix the social problems that beset us. Some believe in federal “hand-outs” -- i.e., welfare programs -- while others claim that tax breaks for big corporations will eventually have a beneficial “trickle down” effect upon workers at the low end of the income scale. These are matters we do not feel competent to analyze. In the meantime, Focus on the Family has other priorities. In a world as complex and multifaceted as ours it is crucial to learn how to choose your political battles carefully. In our view, issues such as the defense of innocent preborn life and the defense of marriage, which involve clear-cut absolute moral and spiritual values, simply HAVE to take precedence over all other social and political concerns.
More could be said -- for example, with regard to your reference to the “SpongeBob” debate, the point of which seems to have eluded you (Dr. Dobson’s statements were NOT directed at SpongeBob himself, but at the We Are Family Foundation, an organization that USED SpongeBob in a song and music video to promote an agenda of “tolerance and diversity” that includes homosexual advocacy). But perhaps it would be best to close this message with the reflection that there is a huge difference between “judging” (an activity of which you feel our ministry is guilty) and taking a stand for our convictions in the midst of an increasingly ant-Christian social environment. As we see it, Christians have as much right as anyone else to inject their values into the political process and to fight for what they think is right. Our love for our country and for our fellow human beings will not allow us to do anything less.
We hope this reply has clarified our perspective for you, Mr. Cochran. Thanks again for caring enough to get in touch. God bless you.
Dear Brother Masters,
I greatly appreciated your well-written response to my letter. I can see that we have differing views on many things. Though I do not wish to start a debate with you or cause you to anger, I would like to touch on a few things in your reply back to me.
I understand your stance that "Justice Sunday" had nothing to do with aligning politics with religion. It is my prayer that it did not; unfortunately it is apparent that it was very much about meshing religion with politics - a view that is shared by many. I agree with you that even though God is above political affiliation, I believe we have an obligation to praise our leaders when they make a good decision and to speak out against all policies and agendas that is contrary to Scripture. But Brother Masters, that means speaking out against all issues that are unjust – not just focusing on only one or two. There are unjust actions that this administration has committed, (just like all administrations), but I have not heard Dr. Dobson speak out against these issues. Our president's intentional ignorance of the poor, the environment, and Bush's raising those who justify the torture of others to higher positions (Gonzales and Rumsfeld) is a complete disregard of God’s Word. Have you looked at this administration's proposed budget? I view this as a far more urgent matter to rally against than the filibustering of judges that will interpret the law in their own fashion (just like those who fill the seats now). I'm not suggesting that Dr. Dobson remove himself from the political arena. What I and others of like-mind are suggesting is that Dr. Dobson amends his error of appearing so blatantly partisan. Claiming that one political party is wrong while ignoring the immoralities in the other is exactly what Christ was speaking of when He shared with us to remove the plank from our own eye before pointing out the splinter in another's.
As for your responses to the war in Iraq and the just-war criteria of St. Augustine, I recommend that you perform a further reading of his criteria as well as Thomas Aquinas' criteria. I believe a careful examination would prove that our pre-emptive war with Iraq was and is unjust. I believe we have gravely missed the mark of the criteria by the following:
- Right Intention: force may be used only in a truly just cause and solely for that purpose. The ultimate goal or intention of the use of force is to re-establish peace; specifically a peace that is preferable to the peace that would have prevailed had the war not been fought.
- Proportionality: the overall destruction expected from the use of force must be outweighed by the good to be achieved; a nation cannot go to war without considering the effect of its action upon others and on the international community.
- Last Resort: force may be used only after all peaceful alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted.
We were misled as a nation to the reasons we were going to war. This goes against the right intention criteria. There is still chaos and terrorism in Iraq even after Saddam's regime has been toppled; this is another strike against right intention criteria as well as the criteria of proportionality. This war was not a last resort. We did not wait for the inspectors to finish there job. We did not listen to the other less-drastic and destructive options that were on the table. This is in opposition to the last resort section of the just-war criteria. To claim this war is justifiable is to either bend the criteria given to us by St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas or to ignore it all together.
On another issue of this war, I do not believe that a pre-emptive strike – the idea of “getting them before they get us” – is an ideology that Christ approves of. Nowhere in His teachings do we find Jesus, the Prince of Peace, sharing with His followers to harm others before they can do harm to us. As a matter of fact, Christ tells us to turn the other cheek and to bless and pray for those who plot against you and do you harm. If we are to follow Christ, we have to attempt to follow all of His examples; we cannot pick and choose those that seem easier than the rest of His teachings.
Regarding your responses to the abortion issue, I completely agree that abortion is murder. But I will continue to stand behind my statement that the pro-life stance does not end with abortion. When abortion is the only topic of your pro-life stance, it is you who are over-simplifying the issue. There are those who die unjustly due to poverty, being wrongfully accused by our courts and those in other countries who are murdered for what they believe; yet by your statements in your response to me have made it seem that you believe that to follow Christ's command to care for the poor and vulnerable is too complicated an issue for one to become involved with. As you put it, there are "other priorities". That rationalization is inconsistent and incompatible with God's Word. According to our bible, God's views one life just as precious as another, be it an unborn baby or an impoverished person who received no help from Christians or their government. Do you realize that defending the poor and vulnerable is the second most dominant theme in the Old Testament after idolatry? And did you know that helping the poor and vulnerable surfaces in one of every sixteen verses in the New Testament? If this issue comes up in God’s Word as much as it does, how can any of us view this as too complicated an issue to become involved with? How can we as Christians believe that there are other priorities? We cannot get around this fact no matter what kind of rationalizations we make. There's no way to justify standing up for one of God’s stances and not for the others.
Referring to your reply that I do not understand the full issue of the We Are Family Foundation video. Let me assure that I understand the “Spongebob Debate”, as you called it, quite well. I can accept your statement that Dr. Dobson’s comments were not directed at a specific cartoon character. The problem I have is why does your organization have a problem with others teaching respect for another’s convictions? I do not believe that when we allow tolerance of others to be taught that we are endorsing their sin. I do believe that when God created mankind, He gave us all free will – the ability to choose good from evil. Many choose evil; we all stumble in sin every day. God never forced anyone to follow Him or His laws; He left that up to us. Jesus Christ never bullied anyone into His beliefs. He shared the truth that is found in following Him and He allowed those that did not want to listen to ignore Him. If we are called to be imitators of Christ and to follow His example, shouldn’t we respect another's right to have their own beliefs and views? We are called to preach/witness to the Gospel and live a life of Christian example - nothing more. The conversion of other's who hear our words is up to God and the individual that hears the truth we speak and the example we try to live out daily.
By the way, the We Are Family Foundation promoted respect of many other things besides homosexuality in that video. I and others believe that they were sharing with us that even if we do not agree with another’s opinion, belief, or lifestyle, we will respect their right to have it. I did not realize that it was wrong to respect and allow another to exercise their right as an American to believe what they want. Like I said we can disagree and share with them the truth that is in Christ, but it is still their right – not just as an American, but as a human being – to agree with what we say and act accordingly or to ignore our words and to continue in their current lifestlye.
You stated in your reply that we have to take a stand for our beliefs “in the midst of an increasingly anti-Chrsitian social environment”. I want to point out that we have a President who claims to be a Christian and was voted for a second term by many evangelicals who claim that he’s the “Christian President”, we have the majority in both the House and the Senate that listen intensely to conservative evangelicals, we have movies and television shows that deal with Christian issues (i.e. - “The Passion of the Christ”, "Joan of Arcadia”, “Kingdom of Heave”, etc.), and your organization’s leader, Dr. Dobson along with several others recently hosted a nationally televised event called “Justice Sunday” with the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist. In lieu of all this evidence, I am very curious as to what exactly you believe is so “anti-Christian” about this nation?
I believe what is truly anti-Christian in America is the “Christianity” that is portrayed by the many evangelicals who agree with pre-emptive wars, believe in protecting the baby in the womb while ignoring the needs and injustices of those who are already born, who believe that homosexuality is some “ultimate sin” surpassing all others, and who believe that being a good witness of the Gospel of Christ with our words and actions is not enough – that we must enforce our beliefs and values upon others.
I agree that we as Christians have every right to voice our values and beliefs in our politics and speak out for what we think is right. Where we stumble is when we attempt to force our values and beliefs upon others in the political arena and in our neighborhoods. When we cross that line, we do a disservice to our nation - the land of the free - and to God Himself.
Thank you again for replying to my message. I hope that this final letter I have written has further clarified my thoughts to you, brother Masters. Thank you again for caring enough about my thoughts to write me back. While we may disagree on many issues, we still can agree that we have the joy in worshipping a resurrected Savior. I can see that we both agree that a right to life and a right to freely express our religious beliefs is not a negotiable issue. I think the major difference between myself and your organization is that I believe that non-negotiable right to life continues after birth and that non-negotiable right to freedom of religion is given to all regardless of race, religion, or creed. Take care and God bless.
Your brother in Christ,
Jarrod Cochran
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Geoffrey Madell on Indexicals
This is from Geoffrey Madell's Mind and Materialism (Edinburgh: Edinbugh University Press, 1988) "It has been clearly recognized by some that the fact of indexical thought presents a special problem for physicalism. The problem is seen most clearly in in relation to the first person. Thomas Nagel put his finger on it in his paper 'Physicalism" (Journal of Philosophy, 1965). Let us envisage the most complete objective description of the world and everyone in it which it is possible to have, couched in the objective terminology of the physical sciences. However complete we make this description, "there remains one thing I cannot say in this fashion--namely, whcih of the various persons in the world I am'. No amount of information non-indexically expressed can be equivalent to the first-person assertion "I am G. M.' How can one accomodate the existence of the first person perspective in a wholly material world? A complete objective description of a particular person is one thing, the assertion, The person thus described is me is something in addition. But this information isn't of a character whcih physical science could recognize. If reality comprises (of) assemblies of physical entities only, it apperas utterly mysterious that some arbitrary element of that objective order should be me. (p. 103).
Madell spends an entire chapter defending this claim.
Madell spends an entire chapter defending this claim.
Dialogue with Lippard on Neurophysiology
My previous post on neurophysiology was a response to an e-mail sent to me by Jim Lippard. I thought I should ask his permission before sharing his comments, so I responded to them rather than reproducing them. Lippard originally wrote:
I've been out of academia for 11 years now, and a lot has happened in
cognitive science (and neuroscience in particular) since I've been
actively keeping track, as I learned last weekend while attending the
Skeptics Society's conference on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness at
Caltech.
There were fascinating presentations by Christof Koch on neural
correlates of consciousness, by Paul Zak on neural correlates of
economic transactions (the hormone oxytocin is correlated with trust),
and many others (see http://www.skeptic.com/conf/speakers.html).
I was struck repeatedly by how much the evidence is growing in favor
of a completely physical explanation of mind--and how little room is
left for a dualist one. (Frankly, I think dualism for anything more
then epiphenomenal qualia has been dead for decades already, and is
certainly scientifically moribund.)
One speaker who was unable to attend due to a family emergency in
India was V.S. Ramachandran, but I purchased his short book, _A Brief
Tour of Human Consciousness_, and read it on the plane home from
Pasadena. In that book, I learned of "mirror neurons"--there are
specific neurons which activate when we perform certain actions, and
which also activate when we see others perform the same actions.
Ramachandran has some very interesting speculations about how these
structures may have enabled the origin of language. I've just found
he has an article on the same subject (accompanied by commentaries
from other luminaries--a feature of the journal Behavioral and Brain
Sciences that I always loved) here:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html
Commentaries:
http://www.edge.org/discourse/mirror_neurons.html (I particularly
recommend Raul Nunez's for a critical view)
I believe it's quite likely that many of the philosophical problems
about the mind will evaporate with scientific advances.
Meanwhile, Plantinga's proposal for a new paradigm of theistic
science--along with the "intelligent design" hypothesis--is still
barren of any empirical fruit, so far as I know (and I'd like to
hear of any evidence to the contrary).
As I have indicated, my previous blog entry on neurophysiology was in response to Lippard's e-mail. He answered:
I don't see what evidence there is for causal interaction from a
nonphysical substance, or what functions are present in nonphysical
machinery.
Surely you're not suggesting a "radio receiver" or "remote control"
model of the brain.
The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of not just visual awareness
being localized in the brain, but pain processing, emotional
processing, face recognition, the storage of memory, and everything
else that makes us who we are. Who we are is clearly deeply causally
connected to our brains, and when the brain is damaged or
deteriorates, we have mental deficits, lose capacities, lose
awareness, and cease to be. I don't see how the phenomena that are
actually observed can be made sense of with a model in which the brain
is just a body control center for a disembodied mind. Perhaps that's
not what you have in mind (pun intended)--but if you are offering
something other than, say, Chalmers' nonreductive property dualism, I
don't know what it is. If memories are stored in the brain, then of
what value is an immortal soul that survives when everything I know,
my ability to recognize people, my language capacities, my stored
emotional connections to memories, all goes away? (I take it the
only possible answer there is a physical, bodily resurrection, including
all of the neural connections.)
Where is the spirit model that explains Capgras' syndrome, where a
person becomes convinced that those he knows best have been replaced
with exact duplicates who are impostors? A physical explanation is a
severing of the neural connections between the visual
processing/facial recognition on the one hand, and the emotional
processing on the other. (Ramachandran's book gives an example of a
patient with Capgras who still has the appropriate emotional reaction
to a parent's voice on the telephone, and doesn't consider them an
impostor, but seeing them in person yields the imposter result.)
Where is the spirit model that explains both blindsight (no conscious
awareness of seeing, but when asked to "guess" where objects are, a
patient points accurately), neglect (patient claims to be consciously
aware of seeing, with no gaps, but is clearly not seeing part of their
visual field, usually an entire hemifield), and denial (e.g., where a
patient's left side is paralyzed, but the patient insists that nothing
is wrong and that he can, for instance, move his arm)? These are
explainable on a physical model, and the mirror neurons mentioned
earlier can explain an even more bizarre phenomenon, where a patient
with denial will deny that *another* patient is paralyzed.
Where is the spirit model that explains the mapping of amputated
limbs to other body parts that are physically proximate in brain
maps (but not on the body)--e.g., an amputated left arm maps
the fingers of the missing hand to the left cheek? The neural
model involves the physical connections between the neurons
processing the face stimuli and the immediately proximate neurons
that used to process the hand stimuli.
Where is the spirit model that explains motion-induced blindness,
where objects disappear from the visual field as a result of other
moving objects in the visual field (yet still produce afterimage
effects)?
Have any dualist neuroscientists written commentaries on the works of
Oliver Sacks, A.N. Luria, V.S. Ramachandran, or others?
Your response, Victor, seems to be an attempt to completely isolate
the mental from the physical--that seems to me essential
in order to avoid empirical refutation, but not very productive or
useful in gaining knowledge or understanding.
And I replied:
I thought my point was that sophisticated dualists like Bill Hasker have never denied the extensive reliance of the mind upon the brain. So we would not be appealing to soul theory to explain the Capgras problem, for example, or blindsight. In fact, Hasker specifically appeals to these things to argue that a more traditional, Cartesian form of dualism is inadequate, in favor of an emergent kind of dualism in which the soul emerges from the activity of the brain. It's substance dualism not because the soul that thus emerges does not occupy space (I never try to argue for that) but rather the activities of the emerging item are teleological at the ground level and can exercise libertarian free will. That would be to commit "skyhookery" according to people like Dennett, though, as I have argued, we could even call this a nonstandard form of materialism. If "material" means "occupies space" then I think I am a materialist about the mind. It's what the thing does that matters (no pun originally intended, but now that it's there...), not whether we call it matter or not. Even Charles Taliaferro, a more traditional Cartesian dualist, believes in "integrative" dualism; there is an extensive dependence of the soul upon the brain. I don't see how the sort of dualism Hasker has in mind is refuted by these sorts of phenomenon. If I am right a lot of anti-dualist arguments attack a straw man.
One move I like to make at this point is to grant, for the sake of argument, that materialism is true, that whatever it is that we are talking about should be referred to as matter, but then to argue that that "matter," which is found in the "brain" has some rather weird, teleological, "soulish" properties. That has the effect of taking away the illusion that the "soul" is something radically separate from the brain. It's matter all right, it just doesn't obey the normal laws of matter.
Now if standard materialism accounts for all the stuff that I appeal to, then I suppose you have an Ockham's razor argument not only for accepting standard materialism not only over dualism but over nonstandard materialism. But I think the interthoeretic reductions that would permit you to do that invariably go awry. But that's the other big debate.
The radio receiver analogy looks, on its face, like a good one. When I started this e-mail, my computer crashed, and I had to start over. Clearly, deficits and enhancements in my computer result in defecits and enhancements of the message I received. So can we argue that the computer I am using is sufficient to itself, and that there is no Lippard who sent me the message? You should hope not.
I've been out of academia for 11 years now, and a lot has happened in
cognitive science (and neuroscience in particular) since I've been
actively keeping track, as I learned last weekend while attending the
Skeptics Society's conference on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness at
Caltech.
There were fascinating presentations by Christof Koch on neural
correlates of consciousness, by Paul Zak on neural correlates of
economic transactions (the hormone oxytocin is correlated with trust),
and many others (see http://www.skeptic.com/conf/speakers.html).
I was struck repeatedly by how much the evidence is growing in favor
of a completely physical explanation of mind--and how little room is
left for a dualist one. (Frankly, I think dualism for anything more
then epiphenomenal qualia has been dead for decades already, and is
certainly scientifically moribund.)
One speaker who was unable to attend due to a family emergency in
India was V.S. Ramachandran, but I purchased his short book, _A Brief
Tour of Human Consciousness_, and read it on the plane home from
Pasadena. In that book, I learned of "mirror neurons"--there are
specific neurons which activate when we perform certain actions, and
which also activate when we see others perform the same actions.
Ramachandran has some very interesting speculations about how these
structures may have enabled the origin of language. I've just found
he has an article on the same subject (accompanied by commentaries
from other luminaries--a feature of the journal Behavioral and Brain
Sciences that I always loved) here:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html
Commentaries:
http://www.edge.org/discourse/mirror_neurons.html (I particularly
recommend Raul Nunez's for a critical view)
I believe it's quite likely that many of the philosophical problems
about the mind will evaporate with scientific advances.
Meanwhile, Plantinga's proposal for a new paradigm of theistic
science--along with the "intelligent design" hypothesis--is still
barren of any empirical fruit, so far as I know (and I'd like to
hear of any evidence to the contrary).
As I have indicated, my previous blog entry on neurophysiology was in response to Lippard's e-mail. He answered:
I don't see what evidence there is for causal interaction from a
nonphysical substance, or what functions are present in nonphysical
machinery.
Surely you're not suggesting a "radio receiver" or "remote control"
model of the brain.
The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of not just visual awareness
being localized in the brain, but pain processing, emotional
processing, face recognition, the storage of memory, and everything
else that makes us who we are. Who we are is clearly deeply causally
connected to our brains, and when the brain is damaged or
deteriorates, we have mental deficits, lose capacities, lose
awareness, and cease to be. I don't see how the phenomena that are
actually observed can be made sense of with a model in which the brain
is just a body control center for a disembodied mind. Perhaps that's
not what you have in mind (pun intended)--but if you are offering
something other than, say, Chalmers' nonreductive property dualism, I
don't know what it is. If memories are stored in the brain, then of
what value is an immortal soul that survives when everything I know,
my ability to recognize people, my language capacities, my stored
emotional connections to memories, all goes away? (I take it the
only possible answer there is a physical, bodily resurrection, including
all of the neural connections.)
Where is the spirit model that explains Capgras' syndrome, where a
person becomes convinced that those he knows best have been replaced
with exact duplicates who are impostors? A physical explanation is a
severing of the neural connections between the visual
processing/facial recognition on the one hand, and the emotional
processing on the other. (Ramachandran's book gives an example of a
patient with Capgras who still has the appropriate emotional reaction
to a parent's voice on the telephone, and doesn't consider them an
impostor, but seeing them in person yields the imposter result.)
Where is the spirit model that explains both blindsight (no conscious
awareness of seeing, but when asked to "guess" where objects are, a
patient points accurately), neglect (patient claims to be consciously
aware of seeing, with no gaps, but is clearly not seeing part of their
visual field, usually an entire hemifield), and denial (e.g., where a
patient's left side is paralyzed, but the patient insists that nothing
is wrong and that he can, for instance, move his arm)? These are
explainable on a physical model, and the mirror neurons mentioned
earlier can explain an even more bizarre phenomenon, where a patient
with denial will deny that *another* patient is paralyzed.
Where is the spirit model that explains the mapping of amputated
limbs to other body parts that are physically proximate in brain
maps (but not on the body)--e.g., an amputated left arm maps
the fingers of the missing hand to the left cheek? The neural
model involves the physical connections between the neurons
processing the face stimuli and the immediately proximate neurons
that used to process the hand stimuli.
Where is the spirit model that explains motion-induced blindness,
where objects disappear from the visual field as a result of other
moving objects in the visual field (yet still produce afterimage
effects)?
Have any dualist neuroscientists written commentaries on the works of
Oliver Sacks, A.N. Luria, V.S. Ramachandran, or others?
Your response, Victor, seems to be an attempt to completely isolate
the mental from the physical--that seems to me essential
in order to avoid empirical refutation, but not very productive or
useful in gaining knowledge or understanding.
And I replied:
I thought my point was that sophisticated dualists like Bill Hasker have never denied the extensive reliance of the mind upon the brain. So we would not be appealing to soul theory to explain the Capgras problem, for example, or blindsight. In fact, Hasker specifically appeals to these things to argue that a more traditional, Cartesian form of dualism is inadequate, in favor of an emergent kind of dualism in which the soul emerges from the activity of the brain. It's substance dualism not because the soul that thus emerges does not occupy space (I never try to argue for that) but rather the activities of the emerging item are teleological at the ground level and can exercise libertarian free will. That would be to commit "skyhookery" according to people like Dennett, though, as I have argued, we could even call this a nonstandard form of materialism. If "material" means "occupies space" then I think I am a materialist about the mind. It's what the thing does that matters (no pun originally intended, but now that it's there...), not whether we call it matter or not. Even Charles Taliaferro, a more traditional Cartesian dualist, believes in "integrative" dualism; there is an extensive dependence of the soul upon the brain. I don't see how the sort of dualism Hasker has in mind is refuted by these sorts of phenomenon. If I am right a lot of anti-dualist arguments attack a straw man.
One move I like to make at this point is to grant, for the sake of argument, that materialism is true, that whatever it is that we are talking about should be referred to as matter, but then to argue that that "matter," which is found in the "brain" has some rather weird, teleological, "soulish" properties. That has the effect of taking away the illusion that the "soul" is something radically separate from the brain. It's matter all right, it just doesn't obey the normal laws of matter.
Now if standard materialism accounts for all the stuff that I appeal to, then I suppose you have an Ockham's razor argument not only for accepting standard materialism not only over dualism but over nonstandard materialism. But I think the interthoeretic reductions that would permit you to do that invariably go awry. But that's the other big debate.
The radio receiver analogy looks, on its face, like a good one. When I started this e-mail, my computer crashed, and I had to start over. Clearly, deficits and enhancements in my computer result in defecits and enhancements of the message I received. So can we argue that the computer I am using is sufficient to itself, and that there is no Lippard who sent me the message? You should hope not.
References for the Unity of Consciousness
David asked where the Kant and Hasker passages came from with respect to the unity of consciousness argument, and I realized that I had forgotten to reference this. The Kant passage is from the Second Paralogism of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kemp Smith translation, St. Martin's) p. 335. The formal argument was generated by Paul Draper (who I think does not endorse it) but it encapsulates the argument as Hasker develops it in The Emergent Self, (New York: Cornell Universitiy Press, 1999), pp. 122-146.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Does neurophysiology prove physicalism?
Does the evidence and success of the science of neurophysiology provide overwhelming evidence that the mind is physical? I have some doubts. Now neurophysiology could do two things.
1) It might provide knowledge of correlations between mental states and physical states. It can tell us that while we are dreaming a certain type of neurophysiological activity is going on, and when we are playing chess, another. But a sophisticated dualist like Hasker can say "Of course the ghost needs the machine. Tell me something I didn't know." It seems as if a dualist can easily acknowledge a heavy dependence of the mind upon the brain.
2) Or, it might provide an intertheoretic reduction of mental activity to physical states. This is a much dicier operation, and while I wouldn't want to argue against a neurophysiologist about what mental states are correlated with what brain states (that would be real armchair science, to use Richard Carrier's term) I think that a presumptive case can be made that attempts to analyze the mental in terms of the physical are going to fail; they will end up doing a behind-the-back skyhook, slipping the mental in through the back door and calling it physical, or else it will end up explaining the mental away, explaining it in such a way that it cannot serve as the inferential foundation for the very science of neurophysiology on which the reduction is based. Even though I am not myself a neurophysologist, it seeems that I am competent to raise questions concerning the coherence of intertheoretic reductions.
Do I fail to understand how the neurphysiological argment works?
Also an ionteresting disucssion is going on the Internet Infidels Discussion Board; www.infidels.org. Just click on "forum" and find "philosophy" and the "Richard Carrier's Sense and Goodness Without God." The atheists who have been disucssion with me have been courteous.
1) It might provide knowledge of correlations between mental states and physical states. It can tell us that while we are dreaming a certain type of neurophysiological activity is going on, and when we are playing chess, another. But a sophisticated dualist like Hasker can say "Of course the ghost needs the machine. Tell me something I didn't know." It seems as if a dualist can easily acknowledge a heavy dependence of the mind upon the brain.
2) Or, it might provide an intertheoretic reduction of mental activity to physical states. This is a much dicier operation, and while I wouldn't want to argue against a neurophysiologist about what mental states are correlated with what brain states (that would be real armchair science, to use Richard Carrier's term) I think that a presumptive case can be made that attempts to analyze the mental in terms of the physical are going to fail; they will end up doing a behind-the-back skyhook, slipping the mental in through the back door and calling it physical, or else it will end up explaining the mental away, explaining it in such a way that it cannot serve as the inferential foundation for the very science of neurophysiology on which the reduction is based. Even though I am not myself a neurophysologist, it seeems that I am competent to raise questions concerning the coherence of intertheoretic reductions.
Do I fail to understand how the neurphysiological argment works?
Also an ionteresting disucssion is going on the Internet Infidels Discussion Board; www.infidels.org. Just click on "forum" and find "philosophy" and the "Richard Carrier's Sense and Goodness Without God." The atheists who have been disucssion with me have been courteous.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Why indexicals can't be eliminated
Can science know everything? I have my doubts, at least if certain kinds of truths are excluded from science.
Well, the concept of the first person, to begin with. Scientific facts are supposed to be objective and third-personal, true from no point of view in particular. But there are important truths that end up being lost. Consider the following story. During the height of the Watergate scandal President Nixon takes a nasty fall and loses his memory. He stumbles into the White House tape room, listens to some of the tapes, and concludes that the President must be a crook. He rushes across the street to Impeach Nixon headquarters, and asks to join. Startled, the impeachment supporters say "It would be easy for you to get Nixon out of office. All you have to do is resign. You are Richard Nixon." But instead, of course, he went back to the White House and continued to try to stay in office.What did Nixon learn to change his behavior so drastically, and how could it be described from a third-person perspective? The truth, "I am Richard Nixon" has an indexical in it. You can't change the statement and eliminate the indexicals without eliminating the meaning. So not all truths are accessible from a "neutral" perspective, and if science requires a "neutral" perspective, there are truths that science cannot know.
Well, the concept of the first person, to begin with. Scientific facts are supposed to be objective and third-personal, true from no point of view in particular. But there are important truths that end up being lost. Consider the following story. During the height of the Watergate scandal President Nixon takes a nasty fall and loses his memory. He stumbles into the White House tape room, listens to some of the tapes, and concludes that the President must be a crook. He rushes across the street to Impeach Nixon headquarters, and asks to join. Startled, the impeachment supporters say "It would be easy for you to get Nixon out of office. All you have to do is resign. You are Richard Nixon." But instead, of course, he went back to the White House and continued to try to stay in office.What did Nixon learn to change his behavior so drastically, and how could it be described from a third-person perspective? The truth, "I am Richard Nixon" has an indexical in it. You can't change the statement and eliminate the indexicals without eliminating the meaning. So not all truths are accessible from a "neutral" perspective, and if science requires a "neutral" perspective, there are truths that science cannot know.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
memeplexes and rational inference
Ahab on Internet Infidels Discussion Board wrote: So this really seems to boil down to your definition of what the self is. Unless someone agrees with your definition of the self they don’t believe in consciousness. According to you.
Sorry, but you'll need to do better than that if you hope to show that naturalism denies the existence of consciousness.
Since I'm not even sure what you mean by 'unified consciousness', I see no need to bother denying it. I will say that I believe firmly in the reality of human consciousness. So I fail to understand why I should see your syllogism as a valid argument against my naturalistic philosophy.
If you are so concerned about the possible undermining of the natural sciences, you might do better spending more time supporting and learning what neuroscience has to show us about the brain (that wonderful biological mechanism which is able to produce consciousness) and less time trying to make science fit into your predetermined world view.
I replied: Ok, Ahab, my question is quite simple. If you claim to be firm in believing that consciousness is real, tell me what you think is conscious. I don't think the idea of free-floating consciousness makes any sense (though perhaps you do). If I have the thought "All men are mortal" and you have the thought "Socrates is a man" and Carrier has the thought "Socrates is mortal," then no one has perfomed an inference. There has to be an entity that does the inferring. What is it. Is the brain an entity? Or is it a conglomeration of entities that we call an entity for the sake of convenience? If that's the case then we have nothing metaphysically real that does the inferring.
Neuroscience is, of course, worth learning about, though it is always difficult to distinguish between genuine scientific discovery and philosophical presupposition. What I am saying is that if these scientists are right about what the mind would be like if it were a physical system, and they are themselves scientists, then the physical story cannot be the whole story about their own activities. If they are right then there are no scientists per se, just overpaid conglomerations of memeplexes that make no real rational inferences.
To say that I ought to support the results of neuroscience assumes what you are trying to prove, thus begging the question and assuming that there are no metaphysical issues (issues that go beyond science) to be considered. Of course we can broaden the concept of science so that it includes so-called supernatural entities, (or just entities for whom teleological explanations can be basic explanations) and if we did that I wouldn't have any problem with it. But if scientists keep saying that we have to be naturalistic in order to be doing science, then a scientific account will, on my view, always have to be incomplete.
Sorry, but you'll need to do better than that if you hope to show that naturalism denies the existence of consciousness.
Since I'm not even sure what you mean by 'unified consciousness', I see no need to bother denying it. I will say that I believe firmly in the reality of human consciousness. So I fail to understand why I should see your syllogism as a valid argument against my naturalistic philosophy.
If you are so concerned about the possible undermining of the natural sciences, you might do better spending more time supporting and learning what neuroscience has to show us about the brain (that wonderful biological mechanism which is able to produce consciousness) and less time trying to make science fit into your predetermined world view.
I replied: Ok, Ahab, my question is quite simple. If you claim to be firm in believing that consciousness is real, tell me what you think is conscious. I don't think the idea of free-floating consciousness makes any sense (though perhaps you do). If I have the thought "All men are mortal" and you have the thought "Socrates is a man" and Carrier has the thought "Socrates is mortal," then no one has perfomed an inference. There has to be an entity that does the inferring. What is it. Is the brain an entity? Or is it a conglomeration of entities that we call an entity for the sake of convenience? If that's the case then we have nothing metaphysically real that does the inferring.
Neuroscience is, of course, worth learning about, though it is always difficult to distinguish between genuine scientific discovery and philosophical presupposition. What I am saying is that if these scientists are right about what the mind would be like if it were a physical system, and they are themselves scientists, then the physical story cannot be the whole story about their own activities. If they are right then there are no scientists per se, just overpaid conglomerations of memeplexes that make no real rational inferences.
To say that I ought to support the results of neuroscience assumes what you are trying to prove, thus begging the question and assuming that there are no metaphysical issues (issues that go beyond science) to be considered. Of course we can broaden the concept of science so that it includes so-called supernatural entities, (or just entities for whom teleological explanations can be basic explanations) and if we did that I wouldn't have any problem with it. But if scientists keep saying that we have to be naturalistic in order to be doing science, then a scientific account will, on my view, always have to be incomplete.
the argument from computers
Perhaps one of the most frequently used arguments against the various arguments from reason is that computers are undeniably physical systems, computers reason, and therefore physical systems reason. Now it is not enough to respond to this argument by saying that human beings, who according to the arguments, are not purely physical systems, created the computers. Of course they did, but the naturalist might respond by saying that regardless of how the computers got there, they reason. But it isn't just that humans made the computers, they also provide the framework of meaning in which the activity of the computer can be regarded as "reasoning." The intentionality found in the computer is derived intentionality, not original intentionality.
Consider the following. Imagine a possible world just like ours, except that in that world chess is never invented. Along with my fellow card-carrying members of the Guild of Chess-Playing Philosophers I call this world I for Impovershed. In I, a pair of computers, connected to one another, miraculously appears in the Gobi desert and goes through all the physical states which, in our world, occurred in a chess game between Fritz and Shredder in the World Computer Championship. The question is, did these computers play chess? Since chess was never invented in I, since no terms in the world refer to "rook," "bishop," "king" "exchange sac" "en passant" or "Dragon Variation," I suggest that these "computers" did not play a chess game.
Consider the following. Imagine a possible world just like ours, except that in that world chess is never invented. Along with my fellow card-carrying members of the Guild of Chess-Playing Philosophers I call this world I for Impovershed. In I, a pair of computers, connected to one another, miraculously appears in the Gobi desert and goes through all the physical states which, in our world, occurred in a chess game between Fritz and Shredder in the World Computer Championship. The question is, did these computers play chess? Since chess was never invented in I, since no terms in the world refer to "rook," "bishop," "king" "exchange sac" "en passant" or "Dragon Variation," I suggest that these "computers" did not play a chess game.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Response to Ed Babinski
Here are some comments by Ed Babinski which I would like to take a moment to respond to:
Ed: Vic, Why can't you be satisfied as a philosopher with simply trying to get more people to acknowledge which things they know the MOST about, and which they know the LEAST about, rather than tying to get others to agree with you concerning your "Christian" beliefs about so many things both seen and unseen, in nature and supernature, in this life and the next?
VR: Ed, people care about the beliefs they hold, and they would like to see others hold the same beliefs as themselves, especially if they think those beliefs really matter. Being agnostic about everything, and holding "suspicions" instead of convictions is fine, but doesn't comport too terribly well with trashing people who have firmer convictions and try to defend them. Or at least some people with firmer convictions; I have yet to see you criticize dogmatic fundamentalist atheists like Richard Dawkins, a man who treats any doubt about full-blown Darwinian naturalism as proof of stupidity or ignorance. (OK there's no hell for people to go to, but they do suffer intellectual damnation on his view nonetheless. I don't find him any more tolerant than Jimmy Swaggart). It does matter to you that people "leave the fold" and stop accepting evangelical Christianity. So you are interested in getting people to agree with you about that. Since you don't know what the truth is, you have to admit that evangelical apologists might be right. Nevertheless, you seem sure that even though you don't know the truth, anything has to be better than evangelicalism. Why?
Ed: Your work thus far also seems to be assuming that there are only two choices, 1) no meaning whatsoever to life, or, 2) meaning lay in accepting the dogmas, doctrines and holy book of one particular religion.
VR: I don't think I ever said that. The post on which you were commenting was an exploration of the idea that we can explain natural evil in terms of Satan. You will notice that I presented both sides and threw the issue out for discussion. In what part of that post was a trying to convince people to agree with my spiritual beliefs about this world and the next? You know what my main motive for writing that post was? I was trying to give my daughter material for her paper on the problem of evil. No more, no less.
You have a very bad habit of assuming that if someone is interested in defending or writing Christian apologetics, that everything they say must be some calculated attempt at evangelism. That is certainly not true of me, and I can assure you that it is not true of most Christian philosopher I know.
Ed: Vic, Why can't you be satisfied as a philosopher with simply trying to get more people to acknowledge which things they know the MOST about, and which they know the LEAST about, rather than tying to get others to agree with you concerning your "Christian" beliefs about so many things both seen and unseen, in nature and supernature, in this life and the next?
VR: Ed, people care about the beliefs they hold, and they would like to see others hold the same beliefs as themselves, especially if they think those beliefs really matter. Being agnostic about everything, and holding "suspicions" instead of convictions is fine, but doesn't comport too terribly well with trashing people who have firmer convictions and try to defend them. Or at least some people with firmer convictions; I have yet to see you criticize dogmatic fundamentalist atheists like Richard Dawkins, a man who treats any doubt about full-blown Darwinian naturalism as proof of stupidity or ignorance. (OK there's no hell for people to go to, but they do suffer intellectual damnation on his view nonetheless. I don't find him any more tolerant than Jimmy Swaggart). It does matter to you that people "leave the fold" and stop accepting evangelical Christianity. So you are interested in getting people to agree with you about that. Since you don't know what the truth is, you have to admit that evangelical apologists might be right. Nevertheless, you seem sure that even though you don't know the truth, anything has to be better than evangelicalism. Why?
Ed: Your work thus far also seems to be assuming that there are only two choices, 1) no meaning whatsoever to life, or, 2) meaning lay in accepting the dogmas, doctrines and holy book of one particular religion.
VR: I don't think I ever said that. The post on which you were commenting was an exploration of the idea that we can explain natural evil in terms of Satan. You will notice that I presented both sides and threw the issue out for discussion. In what part of that post was a trying to convince people to agree with my spiritual beliefs about this world and the next? You know what my main motive for writing that post was? I was trying to give my daughter material for her paper on the problem of evil. No more, no less.
You have a very bad habit of assuming that if someone is interested in defending or writing Christian apologetics, that everything they say must be some calculated attempt at evangelism. That is certainly not true of me, and I can assure you that it is not true of most Christian philosopher I know.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Ad hominem arguments
I just posted the following to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=2342284#post2342284
Originally Posted by Ahab
And I would recomend it to anyone as a great example of the intellectual mush that passes for christian apologetics today.
To me it seems that its primary purpose is to provide a morale boost to those already convinced of the truth of its message. Secondly, to help dissuade those wavering believers from leaving the faith.
VR: Mr Carrier and I have profound disagreements; we both think the other mistaken. However, I think he would probably not use the term "intellectual mush" to descibe my book, (You've read it carefully I'm sure) and I am sure he does not think that much is to be gained by speculating about the motives of our intellectual opponents. I present and defend my arguments because I believe them to be good. I probably could have made stronger claims on behalf of my arguments (and some of my supporters think I should have) but I want to defend claims and positions that I really do think are defensible. I have no doubts about Mr. Carrier's sincerity, nor do I have any concern at all to speculate about his motives. He thought I was making an argument from motive against naturalists, but I was able to show him that I reallly think motive arguments can be addressed to all sides all day long and that they come out to a wash.
If my arguments played a role in someone's conversion, or if they prevented an otherwise wavering believer to remain a Christians, of course I would welcome that, but I am primarly concerned, like Mr. Carrier, in defending what I think is true. If I thought something else was true, I would be defending that. Some of my favorite discussions about theism and Christianity have been with atheists who have come, after the discussion, not to give up their atheism, but simply to recognize that Christianity, or C. S. Lewis, or theism, or what not, had more credibility to it than they had previously thought. To me, that's a huge success, even if the person remains an atheist for the rest of their lives.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=2342284#post2342284
Originally Posted by Ahab
And I would recomend it to anyone as a great example of the intellectual mush that passes for christian apologetics today.
To me it seems that its primary purpose is to provide a morale boost to those already convinced of the truth of its message. Secondly, to help dissuade those wavering believers from leaving the faith.
VR: Mr Carrier and I have profound disagreements; we both think the other mistaken. However, I think he would probably not use the term "intellectual mush" to descibe my book, (You've read it carefully I'm sure) and I am sure he does not think that much is to be gained by speculating about the motives of our intellectual opponents. I present and defend my arguments because I believe them to be good. I probably could have made stronger claims on behalf of my arguments (and some of my supporters think I should have) but I want to defend claims and positions that I really do think are defensible. I have no doubts about Mr. Carrier's sincerity, nor do I have any concern at all to speculate about his motives. He thought I was making an argument from motive against naturalists, but I was able to show him that I reallly think motive arguments can be addressed to all sides all day long and that they come out to a wash.
If my arguments played a role in someone's conversion, or if they prevented an otherwise wavering believer to remain a Christians, of course I would welcome that, but I am primarly concerned, like Mr. Carrier, in defending what I think is true. If I thought something else was true, I would be defending that. Some of my favorite discussions about theism and Christianity have been with atheists who have come, after the discussion, not to give up their atheism, but simply to recognize that Christianity, or C. S. Lewis, or theism, or what not, had more credibility to it than they had previously thought. To me, that's a huge success, even if the person remains an atheist for the rest of their lives.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Beversluis on C. S. Lewis
One issue that arose in relation to the discussion of John Ku's story is the critique of C. S. Lewis which impressed him. The book came out at the time when I began my doctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana, and was the subject of numerous discussion amongst myself, fellow graduate student Tim Erdel, and Dr. Hugh Chandler, the eventual chair of my dissertation committee. The following is material for an essay I intend to publish in a volume I am co-editing with Steve Lovell on Lewis and philosophy, so comments are more than welcome.
My early reaction to the book was a very critical one, and I would still have to say (no surprise here) that I differ with the substance of the book at nearly every point. However, the book really does contribute to our understanding of C. S. Lewis and does advance the discussion. This is, to be honest, a good deal more than I can say for a number of more friendly books.
What the book succeeds in doing is providing the reader with a perspective on C. S. Lewis from the point of view of the unpersuaded reader. When I look at a great deal of the literature on Lewis, it isn;t so much that I think the literature too adulatory, but that I find that perspective of the critic is not given consideration. What that means is that people writing about Lewis very often do not succeed in making Lewis plausible to anyone who is not persauded already.
Criticism of a thinker you oppose can come in a couple of different forms. You may criticize someone because you think them an intellectual fraud whose has received an undeserved reputation in some quarters. You are attacking your target not because you think them a respectable opponent, but because you think them unworthy of respect. Or you can criticize a thinker because you think that, while their efforts are worthwhile, then nevertheless get it wrong in the final analysis, and you want to show why. The tone of the first type of critique is bound to differ profoundly from the tone of the second. In short, you can criticize someone as a Respected Intellectual Opponent or as an Intellectual Fraud.
In Beversluis we find a considerable ambivalence as to how to treat Lewis's works. In some passages he shows admiration for Lewis's intellectual gifts and achievements., suggesting that he intends his critique to be of the second variety. In other passages we find what seems to be Lewis-bashing. Richard Purtill, in an early review of the work, wrote:
"There is a notable lack of the principle of charity in the logician's sense, as well as of charity in the theological sense, despite much rather patronizing praise of Lewis." On this interpretation, anything Beversluis says about Lewis is patronizing, concealing his profound contempt for him. A recent book, S.T. Joshi's God's Defenders: What they Believe and Why They Are Wrong. 1clearly takes the contemptuous approach in his critique of Lewis while quite consciously building on Beversluis's work. And certainly the text of the book gives considerable ammuntion for this kind of a reading. As Thomas Morris writes:
It is Beversluis's aim to put his readers into a position where they can see Lewis's failures. In representative passages, he characterizes Lewis's 'irresponsible writing' as exhibiting a presistent tendency toward carelessness, inaccuracy, and oversimplfication wheneveer he discusses opposing views," and blasts Lewis's own positive positions as "confused," wrongheaded," shipwrecked," "disgraced," "considerably worse than fuzzy," "tendentious" and "desperate". Colorful passages in Lewis are labelled as "bellicose outbursts," and we find that Lewis doesn't just state his positions, he "gives vent to them. " The overall tone should be evident.
Reading Beversluis in this way, I was inclined to be a hostile critic of Beversluis. I believed that Beversluis was operating by the W. C. Fields-ish motto "never give a popular apologist an even break." I thought, and stiill think, that Lewis's arguments can by and large be defended against Beversluis's criticism. However, I also think that Beversluis's own views on Lewis are somewhat more complex, and probably less consistent, than I had been reading from his book. One would have thought that A. N. Wilson's hostile Freudian biography on Lewis would be right up Beversluis's alley, but in a review article for Christianity and Literature in 1992 entitled "Surprised by Freud", Beversluis takes Wilson to task for his attempt to psychoanalyze Lewis away. In the review essay he criticized Wilson for failing to treat the enormously influential apologist to who Beversluis actually ascribes the word "greatness" with adequate seriousness, and failing to consider how Lewis would respond to this kind of Freudian attack. In the review of Wilson he completely abandons any appeal to what I have referreed to in my book as the Anscombe Legend, the idea that Lewis gave up apologetics after being "defeated" by Anscombe at the Oxford Socratic Club. As he writes:
JB: First, the Anscombe debate was by no means Lewis's first exposure to aprofessional philosopher: he lived among them all his adult life, read theGreats, and even taught philosophy. Second, it is simply untrue that the post-Anscombe Lewis abandonedChristian apologetics. In 1960 he published a second edition of Miraclesin which he revised the argument of his third chapter and thereby repliedto Anscombe. Third, most printed discussions of the debate, mine included (65-73), failto mention that Anscombe herself complimented Lewis's revised version onthe grounds that it is deeper and far more serious than the originalversion (see Anscombe ix-x). Finally the myth that Lewis abandoned Christian apologetics overlooksseveral important post-Anscombe articles, among them "Is Theism Important?"(1952) -- a discussion of Christianity and theism which touches on philosophical proofs for God's existence and their relevance to the religious life -- and "On Obstinacy of Belief" (1955) in which he defendsthe rationality of believing in God in the face of apparently contraryevidence (the issue in philosophical theology during the late 1950s andearly 1960s). It is rhetorically effective to announce that thepost-Anscombe Lewis wrote no further books on Christian apologetics, but itis pure fiction. Even if it were true, what would this Argument fromAbandoned Subjects prove? He wrote no further books on Paradise Lost orcourtly love either.
In short, I think Beversluis intended for his book to be a critique of a Respected Intellectual Opponent, not an attack on what he took to be an Intellectual Fraud. And a critique of Lewis from the point of view of someone who takes him as a Respected Intellectual Opponent would be well worth reading. But I don't think the book succeeds as this type of critique, because if his criticisms of Lewis are correct, then not only was Lewis in error, he erred in ways that are not intellectually respectable.
Let's put it this way. Suppose I am playing a chess game with someone who is ranked above me, like Monokroussos or Rowley. And I see a quick and easy way to win the exchange (Rook for bishop or knight, almost always an advantage). Now maybe Dennis or Bob is just dropping the exchange. But, if I have more than a minute or so on my clock, I had better take a close look. It might be a trap. I might not have such hesitation if I were playing a beginner. Having studied Lewis for as long as I have, I can safely assert that when Lewis is wrong, he is rarely simply wrong. There is a good deal to be considered on his side before the view he espouses can be dismissed. In my susbsequent discussion of Beversluis's book, I wish to show how even if you think Lewis wrong, you have to take the measure of what he says before you can say that it is wrong. As a critic attempting to respond to a Respected Intellectual Opponent, Beversluis's book does not succeed because if Lewis is really guity as charged by Beversluis, he cannot be merely a Resepcted Intellectual Opponent who got it wrong, but an Intellectual Fraud who, in spite of a good reputation in some quarters, really can't think his way out of a paper bag.
Now he does not at any point in the review
My early reaction to the book was a very critical one, and I would still have to say (no surprise here) that I differ with the substance of the book at nearly every point. However, the book really does contribute to our understanding of C. S. Lewis and does advance the discussion. This is, to be honest, a good deal more than I can say for a number of more friendly books.
What the book succeeds in doing is providing the reader with a perspective on C. S. Lewis from the point of view of the unpersuaded reader. When I look at a great deal of the literature on Lewis, it isn;t so much that I think the literature too adulatory, but that I find that perspective of the critic is not given consideration. What that means is that people writing about Lewis very often do not succeed in making Lewis plausible to anyone who is not persauded already.
Criticism of a thinker you oppose can come in a couple of different forms. You may criticize someone because you think them an intellectual fraud whose has received an undeserved reputation in some quarters. You are attacking your target not because you think them a respectable opponent, but because you think them unworthy of respect. Or you can criticize a thinker because you think that, while their efforts are worthwhile, then nevertheless get it wrong in the final analysis, and you want to show why. The tone of the first type of critique is bound to differ profoundly from the tone of the second. In short, you can criticize someone as a Respected Intellectual Opponent or as an Intellectual Fraud.
In Beversluis we find a considerable ambivalence as to how to treat Lewis's works. In some passages he shows admiration for Lewis's intellectual gifts and achievements., suggesting that he intends his critique to be of the second variety. In other passages we find what seems to be Lewis-bashing. Richard Purtill, in an early review of the work, wrote:
"There is a notable lack of the principle of charity in the logician's sense, as well as of charity in the theological sense, despite much rather patronizing praise of Lewis." On this interpretation, anything Beversluis says about Lewis is patronizing, concealing his profound contempt for him. A recent book, S.T. Joshi's God's Defenders: What they Believe and Why They Are Wrong. 1clearly takes the contemptuous approach in his critique of Lewis while quite consciously building on Beversluis's work. And certainly the text of the book gives considerable ammuntion for this kind of a reading. As Thomas Morris writes:
It is Beversluis's aim to put his readers into a position where they can see Lewis's failures. In representative passages, he characterizes Lewis's 'irresponsible writing' as exhibiting a presistent tendency toward carelessness, inaccuracy, and oversimplfication wheneveer he discusses opposing views," and blasts Lewis's own positive positions as "confused," wrongheaded," shipwrecked," "disgraced," "considerably worse than fuzzy," "tendentious" and "desperate". Colorful passages in Lewis are labelled as "bellicose outbursts," and we find that Lewis doesn't just state his positions, he "gives vent to them. " The overall tone should be evident.
Reading Beversluis in this way, I was inclined to be a hostile critic of Beversluis. I believed that Beversluis was operating by the W. C. Fields-ish motto "never give a popular apologist an even break." I thought, and stiill think, that Lewis's arguments can by and large be defended against Beversluis's criticism. However, I also think that Beversluis's own views on Lewis are somewhat more complex, and probably less consistent, than I had been reading from his book. One would have thought that A. N. Wilson's hostile Freudian biography on Lewis would be right up Beversluis's alley, but in a review article for Christianity and Literature in 1992 entitled "Surprised by Freud", Beversluis takes Wilson to task for his attempt to psychoanalyze Lewis away. In the review essay he criticized Wilson for failing to treat the enormously influential apologist to who Beversluis actually ascribes the word "greatness" with adequate seriousness, and failing to consider how Lewis would respond to this kind of Freudian attack. In the review of Wilson he completely abandons any appeal to what I have referreed to in my book as the Anscombe Legend, the idea that Lewis gave up apologetics after being "defeated" by Anscombe at the Oxford Socratic Club. As he writes:
JB: First, the Anscombe debate was by no means Lewis's first exposure to aprofessional philosopher: he lived among them all his adult life, read theGreats, and even taught philosophy. Second, it is simply untrue that the post-Anscombe Lewis abandonedChristian apologetics. In 1960 he published a second edition of Miraclesin which he revised the argument of his third chapter and thereby repliedto Anscombe. Third, most printed discussions of the debate, mine included (65-73), failto mention that Anscombe herself complimented Lewis's revised version onthe grounds that it is deeper and far more serious than the originalversion (see Anscombe ix-x). Finally the myth that Lewis abandoned Christian apologetics overlooksseveral important post-Anscombe articles, among them "Is Theism Important?"(1952) -- a discussion of Christianity and theism which touches on philosophical proofs for God's existence and their relevance to the religious life -- and "On Obstinacy of Belief" (1955) in which he defendsthe rationality of believing in God in the face of apparently contraryevidence (the issue in philosophical theology during the late 1950s andearly 1960s). It is rhetorically effective to announce that thepost-Anscombe Lewis wrote no further books on Christian apologetics, but itis pure fiction. Even if it were true, what would this Argument fromAbandoned Subjects prove? He wrote no further books on Paradise Lost orcourtly love either.
In short, I think Beversluis intended for his book to be a critique of a Respected Intellectual Opponent, not an attack on what he took to be an Intellectual Fraud. And a critique of Lewis from the point of view of someone who takes him as a Respected Intellectual Opponent would be well worth reading. But I don't think the book succeeds as this type of critique, because if his criticisms of Lewis are correct, then not only was Lewis in error, he erred in ways that are not intellectually respectable.
Let's put it this way. Suppose I am playing a chess game with someone who is ranked above me, like Monokroussos or Rowley. And I see a quick and easy way to win the exchange (Rook for bishop or knight, almost always an advantage). Now maybe Dennis or Bob is just dropping the exchange. But, if I have more than a minute or so on my clock, I had better take a close look. It might be a trap. I might not have such hesitation if I were playing a beginner. Having studied Lewis for as long as I have, I can safely assert that when Lewis is wrong, he is rarely simply wrong. There is a good deal to be considered on his side before the view he espouses can be dismissed. In my susbsequent discussion of Beversluis's book, I wish to show how even if you think Lewis wrong, you have to take the measure of what he says before you can say that it is wrong. As a critic attempting to respond to a Respected Intellectual Opponent, Beversluis's book does not succeed because if Lewis is really guity as charged by Beversluis, he cannot be merely a Resepcted Intellectual Opponent who got it wrong, but an Intellectual Fraud who, in spite of a good reputation in some quarters, really can't think his way out of a paper bag.
Now he does not at any point in the review
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Descartes and the Cogito
People following the discussion of the Cartesian Cogito will be interested in this critical response to me by Alan Cook and some further clarification from Bill Vallicella.
Victor
Victor
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Vallicella on the Cogito
This is Maverick Philosopher's take on the cogito. Someone has already responded from a Kantian perspective.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
On the philosophy of mind and consensus
I responded to a comment on Bibliocracy from an anonymous commentator, in the context of a discussion of Kim's work in the philosophy of mind:
Matthew Anderson: "a fourth to a third of scholars are theists (and hence, dualists of some sort)."
Anonymous: That doesn't follow. Significant numbers of academic theists are also physicalists.
Consider Nancey Murphy's _Whatever Happened to the Soul_. Peter van Inwagen and I believe William Alston are also physicalists. In his debates William Lane Craig always points out that theists aren't necessarily dualists as they can believe in resurrection alone.
I think the obvious fact that a lobotomy can destroy your intellect and moral inhibitions is such compelling evidence against dualism that about the only remaining motivation for defending dualism is a religious agenda rather than a genuine philosophical or scientific consideration.
I think Kim's point was that among philosophers of mind whose opinions are shaped solely by considerations having to do with the philosophy of mind, who don't bring any particular religious prejudices they feel compelled to defend to the table, there is nearly a consensus that substance dualism is false.
The "consensus" is among the remainder of philosophers of mind, those who are not a priori bound to restrict their reasoning only to those ideas which conform to religious doctrines. And that is as it should be, since the only justification for specific religious dogmas, after all, is tradition.
Even among theists, J. P. Moreland, William Hasker, and Victor Reppert are the only theistic defenders of dualism that I'm aware of. The neuroscientific
evidence for some form of physicalism has left them little wiggle room unless they want to go the way of creationists and dismiss legitimate scientific data altogether.
The NEAR-consensus lies with those who publish almost exclusively in the philosophy of mind. Those whose primary focus is in the philosophy of religion are the die-hard holdouts. That's why you are hard pressed to find enough nontheistic substance dualists to count on one hand.
4:28 PM
Victor Reppert said...
There are a significant number of other defenders of dualism besides Moreland, Hasker and myself. Geoffrey Madell's Mind and Materialism is a book that came out way back in 1988 with no explicit religion backing it up, Charles Taliaferro's Consciousness and the Mind of God came out in 1996, Swinburne's Evolution of the Soul came out in 1986, I know Plantinga has defended substance dualism, John Foster and Howard Robinson are defenders of dualism as well. Some of these people have religious commitments that have something to do with it, and some do not.
One's broader metaphysics invariably has a great deal to do with what one accepts in the philosophy of mind, and this makes sense. If you are an atheist, if you think that we started off with a physical universe and everything else got here by evolution, then you are hard pressed to find any way that a non-physical soul could possibly emerge. This is why many people in the philosophy of mind are convinced that they have to be physicalists no matter what the difficulties with physicalism are, and many of them, like Kim, McGinn, Nagel, (who isn't really a physicalist) and Searle, are prepared to acknowledge massive difficulties for physicalism. No one starts doing philosophy from a neutral position; everyone who has a world view, to some extent at least, uses the faith seeking understanding principle. See this discussion by Maverick Philosopher William Vallicella.
The arguments that Anonymous is providing show a close interconnectedness between mind and brain, but these discoveries seem to me to be quite compatible with dualism, as even Richard Carrier concedes.
You also seem to be underestimating the influence of intellecutal peer pressure, which pushes pretty strongly in favor of physicalism. At least it did back when I was in grad school!
Matthew Anderson: "a fourth to a third of scholars are theists (and hence, dualists of some sort)."
Anonymous: That doesn't follow. Significant numbers of academic theists are also physicalists.
Consider Nancey Murphy's _Whatever Happened to the Soul_. Peter van Inwagen and I believe William Alston are also physicalists. In his debates William Lane Craig always points out that theists aren't necessarily dualists as they can believe in resurrection alone.
I think the obvious fact that a lobotomy can destroy your intellect and moral inhibitions is such compelling evidence against dualism that about the only remaining motivation for defending dualism is a religious agenda rather than a genuine philosophical or scientific consideration.
I think Kim's point was that among philosophers of mind whose opinions are shaped solely by considerations having to do with the philosophy of mind, who don't bring any particular religious prejudices they feel compelled to defend to the table, there is nearly a consensus that substance dualism is false.
The "consensus" is among the remainder of philosophers of mind, those who are not a priori bound to restrict their reasoning only to those ideas which conform to religious doctrines. And that is as it should be, since the only justification for specific religious dogmas, after all, is tradition.
Even among theists, J. P. Moreland, William Hasker, and Victor Reppert are the only theistic defenders of dualism that I'm aware of. The neuroscientific
evidence for some form of physicalism has left them little wiggle room unless they want to go the way of creationists and dismiss legitimate scientific data altogether.
The NEAR-consensus lies with those who publish almost exclusively in the philosophy of mind. Those whose primary focus is in the philosophy of religion are the die-hard holdouts. That's why you are hard pressed to find enough nontheistic substance dualists to count on one hand.
4:28 PM
Victor Reppert said...
There are a significant number of other defenders of dualism besides Moreland, Hasker and myself. Geoffrey Madell's Mind and Materialism is a book that came out way back in 1988 with no explicit religion backing it up, Charles Taliaferro's Consciousness and the Mind of God came out in 1996, Swinburne's Evolution of the Soul came out in 1986, I know Plantinga has defended substance dualism, John Foster and Howard Robinson are defenders of dualism as well. Some of these people have religious commitments that have something to do with it, and some do not.
One's broader metaphysics invariably has a great deal to do with what one accepts in the philosophy of mind, and this makes sense. If you are an atheist, if you think that we started off with a physical universe and everything else got here by evolution, then you are hard pressed to find any way that a non-physical soul could possibly emerge. This is why many people in the philosophy of mind are convinced that they have to be physicalists no matter what the difficulties with physicalism are, and many of them, like Kim, McGinn, Nagel, (who isn't really a physicalist) and Searle, are prepared to acknowledge massive difficulties for physicalism. No one starts doing philosophy from a neutral position; everyone who has a world view, to some extent at least, uses the faith seeking understanding principle. See this discussion by Maverick Philosopher William Vallicella.
The arguments that Anonymous is providing show a close interconnectedness between mind and brain, but these discoveries seem to me to be quite compatible with dualism, as even Richard Carrier concedes.
You also seem to be underestimating the influence of intellecutal peer pressure, which pushes pretty strongly in favor of physicalism. At least it did back when I was in grad school!
New volume on Narnia and philosophy
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Leaving the fold and losing faith in Lewis
I would be interested in people's reactions to this story of leaving the Christian fold after having confidence in Lewis's apologetics shattered.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jsku/memoir.html
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jsku/memoir.html
Monday, April 04, 2005
Dragon Games 3: Brilliancy or swindle?
Computers sometimes tell you things about your games that you would rather not find out. This has always been one of my favorite Dragon games, a nice crushing win over a higher-rated opponent. Annotators (but not computers!) tend to suffer from result bias, they tell you that whoever won was winning all along, that the other guy never had a chance, etc. So I played this game out on Fritz one evening, and was given a major shock.
White: Ilan Brand (X) Black: Victor Reppert (A)
Intra-club League, 1972
1. e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 g6 5. Nc3 Bg7 6.
Be3 Nf6 7. Bc4 d6
Entering via the Accelerated move order avoids the 9.
O-O-O system, which according to some commentators,
such as Mikhail Golubev, is thought to be more
dangerous than the 9 Bc4 system. But it does allow
White to play the dull and boring Maroczy, uh, er Swiderski Bind with 5.c4, which for a long time was thought to provide White
with an advantage. More recently, under the influence
of Tiviakov, it has acquired a drawish reputation, but
Tiviakov has suffered a couple of losses in this line.
I don’t remember why I didn’t play 7 …O-O 8. Bb3 d6 9.
f3 Bd7, though this would only yield an independent
variation if I were to play 10. Qd2 Nxd4 11. Bxd4 b5,
a line that Dennis Monokroussos has discussed a couple
of times on his chess blog.
Which move order should a player use who intends to
enter the Dragon? Perhaps it is a question of which
lines your opponent is more likely to be happy in.
Some players are happy Maroczy Bind players, others
are not.
8. f3 O-O 9. Qd2 Bd7 10. O-O-O Qa5 11. Bb3 Rfc8 12. h4
Here 12. Kb1 Ne5 13.Bg5 is the now hotly debated Moles variation.
12...Ne5 13. Kb1
But this variation poses a set of problems as well. My theory is that it will eventually prove to be the most dangerous line of all.
Historically, this variation was thought to give White
an advantage, though this assessment has been
challenged by Ward. Here the game diverges from the
Polchinski and Rowley games.
13...b5
This is the move originally played by Korchnoi in
1967, and recommended in Ward’s Winning with the
Dragon. In WWTD2 Ward doesn’t retract the
recommendation, but presents 13…Nc4, which used to be
the main line, as a viable system for Black. However,
a testing line has arisen. After 14.Bxc4 Rxc4 15. Nb3
Qc7 (Ward’s recommendation) 16. g4 (instead of the
usual 16. Bd4) Rc8 17. e5, and now I think best for
Black is Nxg4 18. fxg4 Bxe5, with a very unclear
position that may be just a little better for White.
Here 15…Qd8 may be an underrated alternative; the
standard refutation is 16. e5 Ne8 17. h5 Bxe5 18. hxg6
hxg6 19. Bd4 but now Bxd4! 20 Nxd4 e5! 21. Qh6 Qf6 22.
Qh7+ Kf8 23. Nd5 Qg7 is only a draw. However, 17. exd6
may be a way White can play for the advantage. 15…Qa6
and 15…Qe5 are also alternatives, but I don’t have
much confidence in either of them.
14. h5
I consider this to be the weakest of a set of three
alternatives. 14. Ncxb5 is the most popular variation,
and Rowley talked me out of 13…b5 shortly after this
game by convincing me that Black doesn’t have enough
for the pawn in the endgame after 14…Qxd2. Ward and
others had some successes in this variation, but in a
game against Reeh, Ward faced 15. Bxd2 Nc4 16. Bxc4
Rxc4 17. b3 Rc5 18. c4 a6 19. Nc3 Rb8 20. Kc3 Ng4 21.
fg4 Bxd4 (Reeh-Ward Bern 1993) and after 23. Nd5,
White could have secured and advantage, according to
Golubev. However, Golubev also suggests 17…Rcc8, which
deserves some more careful attention. Also, 15…Rab8 is
another important line, after which one line is 16.
Nc3 Nc4 17. Bg5 Kf8 18. Rhe1 a5 19. Bxc4 Rxc4 20. Nde2
Nxe4 21. fxe4 Rxc3 22. Nxc3 Bxc3 23. Re3 Rxb2+ 24. Kc1
be5 25. Rb3 Rxb3 36. cxb3 with a slight edge for White
according to Velickovic. But there are lots of
alternatives to explore here.
14. Bh6 is considered superior to the text here. Now
14….Bxh6 15. Qxh6 Rxc3 16. bxc3 Qxc3 17. Ne2 Qc5 18.
h5 Nxh5 19 Rxh5 is bad for Black, and if 18…Nc4 19. hg
fg 20. Qd2 Be6 21. Qd4 was better for White in
Grabarcyzk-Jedryczka, Poland 1994. But I wonder if
17…Qb4, which has appeared in a couple of games, might
be an improvement for Black here. Uh, no. after 18. h5 Nc4 19. hg fg 20 e5! White looks good. However, 16...Nc4! has won 2 1/2 out of three for Black in this position, in spite of being neglected by the theory books.
The other major line is 14…Nc4 15. Bxc4 Bxh6 16. Qxh6
bxc4 17. h5 Rab8 18. Nd5 Nxd5 19. exd5 Qa3 (Qc3 and
Qb4 are unexplored alternatives) 20. Nb3 cxb3 21. bxa3
Bxc3++ 22. Ka1 cxd1(Q)+ 23. Rxd1 Bf5 24. g4 was played
in the complex game Tolnai-Jovicic Leibnitz 1990.
14...Nc4
Black has the option of playing 14…Nxh5, which leads
to familiar positions with Kb1 and b5 included. Or
perhaps 14…Rxc3, which Ward played in the position
with these two moves excluded, should be considered
here.
15. Bxc4 bxc4 16. hxg6
If 16. Bh6 Black has Rab8 17. Bxg7 Qb4 (Ward).
fxg6 17. Bh6 Bh8
A well-known stratagem, preserving the Dragon bishop.
18. Nde2
24 years later, in the game Bisby-Summerscale British
Championship 1996, White played 18. Nf5 gxf5 19. e5
and here dxe5 looks like it would have given Black a
decisive advantage.
Rab8 19. Qe1 Be6 20. Qh4 Qb4 21. Bc1 a5 22. e5 dxe5
23. Ne4
This is the critical position of the game. I thought
for many years my move was brilliant, but actually
White should have won. The idea is that after White
does his worst attacking h7, he ends up with nothing
and Black crashes through. That’s what happened, but
objectively Black was better off defending with 23…h5,
which leads to a perfectly good game for Black.
c3?! 24. Nxf6+ Bxf6 25. Qxh7+ Kf8 26. b3 a4 29. Qxg6??
White misses the boat. 29. Bh6+! Ke8 30. Bg7!! was a
winner. Score one for the silicon monster.
Bf7 28. Bh6+ Ke8 29. Qf5
White gets to threaten mate in one. But it does him no
good.
Rc7 30. Bc1 axb3 31. axb3 Bxb3 0-1
White: Ilan Brand (X) Black: Victor Reppert (A)
Intra-club League, 1972
1. e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 g6 5. Nc3 Bg7 6.
Be3 Nf6 7. Bc4 d6
Entering via the Accelerated move order avoids the 9.
O-O-O system, which according to some commentators,
such as Mikhail Golubev, is thought to be more
dangerous than the 9 Bc4 system. But it does allow
White to play the dull and boring Maroczy, uh, er Swiderski Bind with 5.c4, which for a long time was thought to provide White
with an advantage. More recently, under the influence
of Tiviakov, it has acquired a drawish reputation, but
Tiviakov has suffered a couple of losses in this line.
I don’t remember why I didn’t play 7 …O-O 8. Bb3 d6 9.
f3 Bd7, though this would only yield an independent
variation if I were to play 10. Qd2 Nxd4 11. Bxd4 b5,
a line that Dennis Monokroussos has discussed a couple
of times on his chess blog.
Which move order should a player use who intends to
enter the Dragon? Perhaps it is a question of which
lines your opponent is more likely to be happy in.
Some players are happy Maroczy Bind players, others
are not.
8. f3 O-O 9. Qd2 Bd7 10. O-O-O Qa5 11. Bb3 Rfc8 12. h4
Here 12. Kb1 Ne5 13.Bg5 is the now hotly debated Moles variation.
12...Ne5 13. Kb1
But this variation poses a set of problems as well. My theory is that it will eventually prove to be the most dangerous line of all.
Historically, this variation was thought to give White
an advantage, though this assessment has been
challenged by Ward. Here the game diverges from the
Polchinski and Rowley games.
13...b5
This is the move originally played by Korchnoi in
1967, and recommended in Ward’s Winning with the
Dragon. In WWTD2 Ward doesn’t retract the
recommendation, but presents 13…Nc4, which used to be
the main line, as a viable system for Black. However,
a testing line has arisen. After 14.Bxc4 Rxc4 15. Nb3
Qc7 (Ward’s recommendation) 16. g4 (instead of the
usual 16. Bd4) Rc8 17. e5, and now I think best for
Black is Nxg4 18. fxg4 Bxe5, with a very unclear
position that may be just a little better for White.
Here 15…Qd8 may be an underrated alternative; the
standard refutation is 16. e5 Ne8 17. h5 Bxe5 18. hxg6
hxg6 19. Bd4 but now Bxd4! 20 Nxd4 e5! 21. Qh6 Qf6 22.
Qh7+ Kf8 23. Nd5 Qg7 is only a draw. However, 17. exd6
may be a way White can play for the advantage. 15…Qa6
and 15…Qe5 are also alternatives, but I don’t have
much confidence in either of them.
14. h5
I consider this to be the weakest of a set of three
alternatives. 14. Ncxb5 is the most popular variation,
and Rowley talked me out of 13…b5 shortly after this
game by convincing me that Black doesn’t have enough
for the pawn in the endgame after 14…Qxd2. Ward and
others had some successes in this variation, but in a
game against Reeh, Ward faced 15. Bxd2 Nc4 16. Bxc4
Rxc4 17. b3 Rc5 18. c4 a6 19. Nc3 Rb8 20. Kc3 Ng4 21.
fg4 Bxd4 (Reeh-Ward Bern 1993) and after 23. Nd5,
White could have secured and advantage, according to
Golubev. However, Golubev also suggests 17…Rcc8, which
deserves some more careful attention. Also, 15…Rab8 is
another important line, after which one line is 16.
Nc3 Nc4 17. Bg5 Kf8 18. Rhe1 a5 19. Bxc4 Rxc4 20. Nde2
Nxe4 21. fxe4 Rxc3 22. Nxc3 Bxc3 23. Re3 Rxb2+ 24. Kc1
be5 25. Rb3 Rxb3 36. cxb3 with a slight edge for White
according to Velickovic. But there are lots of
alternatives to explore here.
14. Bh6 is considered superior to the text here. Now
14….Bxh6 15. Qxh6 Rxc3 16. bxc3 Qxc3 17. Ne2 Qc5 18.
h5 Nxh5 19 Rxh5 is bad for Black, and if 18…Nc4 19. hg
fg 20. Qd2 Be6 21. Qd4 was better for White in
Grabarcyzk-Jedryczka, Poland 1994. But I wonder if
17…Qb4, which has appeared in a couple of games, might
be an improvement for Black here. Uh, no. after 18. h5 Nc4 19. hg fg 20 e5! White looks good. However, 16...Nc4! has won 2 1/2 out of three for Black in this position, in spite of being neglected by the theory books.
The other major line is 14…Nc4 15. Bxc4 Bxh6 16. Qxh6
bxc4 17. h5 Rab8 18. Nd5 Nxd5 19. exd5 Qa3 (Qc3 and
Qb4 are unexplored alternatives) 20. Nb3 cxb3 21. bxa3
Bxc3++ 22. Ka1 cxd1(Q)+ 23. Rxd1 Bf5 24. g4 was played
in the complex game Tolnai-Jovicic Leibnitz 1990.
14...Nc4
Black has the option of playing 14…Nxh5, which leads
to familiar positions with Kb1 and b5 included. Or
perhaps 14…Rxc3, which Ward played in the position
with these two moves excluded, should be considered
here.
15. Bxc4 bxc4 16. hxg6
If 16. Bh6 Black has Rab8 17. Bxg7 Qb4 (Ward).
fxg6 17. Bh6 Bh8
A well-known stratagem, preserving the Dragon bishop.
18. Nde2
24 years later, in the game Bisby-Summerscale British
Championship 1996, White played 18. Nf5 gxf5 19. e5
and here dxe5 looks like it would have given Black a
decisive advantage.
Rab8 19. Qe1 Be6 20. Qh4 Qb4 21. Bc1 a5 22. e5 dxe5
23. Ne4
This is the critical position of the game. I thought
for many years my move was brilliant, but actually
White should have won. The idea is that after White
does his worst attacking h7, he ends up with nothing
and Black crashes through. That’s what happened, but
objectively Black was better off defending with 23…h5,
which leads to a perfectly good game for Black.
c3?! 24. Nxf6+ Bxf6 25. Qxh7+ Kf8 26. b3 a4 29. Qxg6??
White misses the boat. 29. Bh6+! Ke8 30. Bg7!! was a
winner. Score one for the silicon monster.
Bf7 28. Bh6+ Ke8 29. Qf5
White gets to threaten mate in one. But it does him no
good.
Rc7 30. Bc1 axb3 31. axb3 Bxb3 0-1
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Some online resources for Descartes
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here and here
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Dialogue with Carrier Part I
Last November, I sent the version of my response to Carrier that appears on this blog to him, and he was kind enough to send a set of responses back. I am going to put some of his discussions here and give my response to him, not so much with the intent of just blowing them out of the water, but in the hopes of getting behind the arguments to get a feel for the source of our differences, and also with the intention of clearing aside whatever misunderstanding there might be so that the real intellectual clash between the two of us can be made clear.
The first area that I want to call attention to is his discussion of Pyrrhonian skepticism. In his review he argued that even if I succeed in showing that naturalism cannot be true because it conflicts with the possibility of rational inference, but that on a theistic world view rational inference is accounted for, this is still not a complete case because after all it is possible to reject theism and naturalism in favor of Pyrrhonian skepticism. And later on in the review he wonders why I attempt to refute naturalism and not Taoism. The simple and direct answer is that my book is designed to argue that theism is preferable to naturalism on the grounds that theism provides a better account of rational inference, and that it is it. The book is not designed to be a complete case for theism; it defends an argument that was not a complete case for theism in the mind of its primary founding father, C. S. Lewis, who was persuaded to accept Idealism as opposed to (naturalistic) realism by the argument when it was presented to him by Owen Barfield, but did not become a theist until later, and did not become a Christian until still after that. Once we fumigate that naturalist's house, those in it may go to various places. Some may go to the house of theism. At least I hope! But the it's not the burden of the book to make the case for theism vis-a-vis other non-naturalistic world views.
However, some further remarks by Carrier are interesting, which show what is behind the fact that he is complaining about my procedure.
RC: The only reason an AfR proponent needs to do more than that is that he purports to find empirical evidence against the existence of rational inferences. That creates the presumption that there are none. You can't just "assume" that there are if the evidence implies that they are not. Do you see the problem here? Once you get yourself in that position (and only you do--I do not accept that there is evidence against rational inferences, so I never end up in the position of presuming that there are none), the only logically valid way to dig yourself out of it again is to present evidence for the existence of rational inferences, evidence that is not compatible with naturalism (because if the only evidence you have is naturalistic, then you are arguing that naturalism explains rational inferences). And that is the only formally valid way to get from the AFR to any worldview, be it theism or any other. That is not my opinion. It is a fact of formal logic. Don't you agree?
VR: I must confess to a certain amount of puzzlement in understanding this passage. Why in the world does he think that I present an argument against the existence of rational inferences. Indeed, it's the point of my distinction between Skpetical Threat Arguments and Best Explanation Arguments that the AFR should not be in the business of presenting skeptical arguments against rational inference and then arguing that the theist, but not the naturalist, can refute those arguments. Carrier seems to acknowledge this in his Infidels critique when he says
RC: To be fair, Reppert does declare that he will not advance the AfR as a Skeptical Threat argument, based on a brief discussion of the problems such a form of argument presents, and this could count as an attempt to argue "against" PS, though indirectly and incompletely. At any rate, Reppert declares that his AfR will not call "into question the validity of human reasoning" but rather "assum[es] that validity as an established fact" (70), although the argument he presents does not formally vindicate this assertion. We can thus only assume that Reppert rejects PS as an alternative based on some vaguely defined or defended "established facts" that remove it from reasonable consideration. In that I think he is correct, but he has not done the work that would be needed to secure such a position for someone who actually trusts the AfR as he has defined it.
VR: But can't I say that belief in rational inferences is "properly basic?" Can't I just point out the disastrous epistemic consequences of not believing in rational inferences? Let's just take mathematical inferences as a proper subset of rational inferences. If there are no rational inferences, then there are no mathematical inferences. And if there are no mathematical inferences, then no one ever does science, at least as I understand science. All sorts of overpaid people think they are scientists, but there is really no such thing.
All of this points to what I think is a critical area of disagreement between Carrier and myself; Carrier seems to subscribe to a very strong form of epistemological foundationalism that I reject. For his there is a fact of the matter as to whether some claim or other rests upon a foundation, and this does not vary from person to person. If something is properly basic, or properly grounded, for one person, it must be properly basic or properly grounded for everyone. There is a set of propositions that are properly basic, and other beliefs are justified just in case they are supported by those beliefs. This is the thrust of Descartes' project, why he developed those conjectures about Satan controlling his mind, so that he could find those properly basic beliefs and build his system up from there. The traditional empiricist counter-move is disallow Descartes' doubts about experience but employ the same project, but I think this project also fails, as can be seen in the philosophy of Hume. I think people should reason, but they should reason from within their own belief systems and abandon the beliefs against which there is good evidence. So different people start from different places, but we can all think together toward the common goal of consensus, even though that "Omega point" seems pretty far in the distance on a lot of issues. If Carrier thinks he has an epistemological theory that will solve the problems that Descartes and his rationalist and empiricist successors failed to solve, I would like to see what it is.
Carrier does make a couple of further interesting (though puzzling) points when he says
RC: On a different level (and don't confuse this with what I have already said), it does not follow that if therre are no rational inferences, then there is no point in arguing. This presumes that the only effective argument is a rational one, which of course anyone ought to know is clearly not true even if there is such a think as rational argument. Any witness of recent American politics can see that people are routinely persauded by irrational arguments (on both sides). Rather, if there is no such think as rational arguments, then the issue becomes one of cataloguing the arguments that actually do exist by their effectiveness in persuading. But there will be such a list, and thus a point to arguing, even if "rational arguments" is not on that list. Needless to say, you and I both agree that it is on that list. But my previous point has been that only you have offered evidence that it is not. So you have to plug it up if you want that water to stop draining out. That's all I'm saying here.
VR: Again, I don't see how anything I have written raises doubts about the existence of rational inferences, whose existence I take to be properly basic, and justified by arguments concerning the epistemic consequences of denying that there are rational inferences. I am at some pains to construct my arguments in such a way as not to raise doubts about the existence of rational inferences; that's one of the most important trademarks of my versions of the AFR. But if there are no rational inferences, then the whole process of evaluating arguments, which is what Carrier and I are both doing, makes no sense. Without the use of rational inference, we would have no way of using critieria to determine which arguments are persuasive and which are not.
The first area that I want to call attention to is his discussion of Pyrrhonian skepticism. In his review he argued that even if I succeed in showing that naturalism cannot be true because it conflicts with the possibility of rational inference, but that on a theistic world view rational inference is accounted for, this is still not a complete case because after all it is possible to reject theism and naturalism in favor of Pyrrhonian skepticism. And later on in the review he wonders why I attempt to refute naturalism and not Taoism. The simple and direct answer is that my book is designed to argue that theism is preferable to naturalism on the grounds that theism provides a better account of rational inference, and that it is it. The book is not designed to be a complete case for theism; it defends an argument that was not a complete case for theism in the mind of its primary founding father, C. S. Lewis, who was persuaded to accept Idealism as opposed to (naturalistic) realism by the argument when it was presented to him by Owen Barfield, but did not become a theist until later, and did not become a Christian until still after that. Once we fumigate that naturalist's house, those in it may go to various places. Some may go to the house of theism. At least I hope! But the it's not the burden of the book to make the case for theism vis-a-vis other non-naturalistic world views.
However, some further remarks by Carrier are interesting, which show what is behind the fact that he is complaining about my procedure.
RC: The only reason an AfR proponent needs to do more than that is that he purports to find empirical evidence against the existence of rational inferences. That creates the presumption that there are none. You can't just "assume" that there are if the evidence implies that they are not. Do you see the problem here? Once you get yourself in that position (and only you do--I do not accept that there is evidence against rational inferences, so I never end up in the position of presuming that there are none), the only logically valid way to dig yourself out of it again is to present evidence for the existence of rational inferences, evidence that is not compatible with naturalism (because if the only evidence you have is naturalistic, then you are arguing that naturalism explains rational inferences). And that is the only formally valid way to get from the AFR to any worldview, be it theism or any other. That is not my opinion. It is a fact of formal logic. Don't you agree?
VR: I must confess to a certain amount of puzzlement in understanding this passage. Why in the world does he think that I present an argument against the existence of rational inferences. Indeed, it's the point of my distinction between Skpetical Threat Arguments and Best Explanation Arguments that the AFR should not be in the business of presenting skeptical arguments against rational inference and then arguing that the theist, but not the naturalist, can refute those arguments. Carrier seems to acknowledge this in his Infidels critique when he says
RC: To be fair, Reppert does declare that he will not advance the AfR as a Skeptical Threat argument, based on a brief discussion of the problems such a form of argument presents, and this could count as an attempt to argue "against" PS, though indirectly and incompletely. At any rate, Reppert declares that his AfR will not call "into question the validity of human reasoning" but rather "assum[es] that validity as an established fact" (70), although the argument he presents does not formally vindicate this assertion. We can thus only assume that Reppert rejects PS as an alternative based on some vaguely defined or defended "established facts" that remove it from reasonable consideration. In that I think he is correct, but he has not done the work that would be needed to secure such a position for someone who actually trusts the AfR as he has defined it.
VR: But can't I say that belief in rational inferences is "properly basic?" Can't I just point out the disastrous epistemic consequences of not believing in rational inferences? Let's just take mathematical inferences as a proper subset of rational inferences. If there are no rational inferences, then there are no mathematical inferences. And if there are no mathematical inferences, then no one ever does science, at least as I understand science. All sorts of overpaid people think they are scientists, but there is really no such thing.
All of this points to what I think is a critical area of disagreement between Carrier and myself; Carrier seems to subscribe to a very strong form of epistemological foundationalism that I reject. For his there is a fact of the matter as to whether some claim or other rests upon a foundation, and this does not vary from person to person. If something is properly basic, or properly grounded, for one person, it must be properly basic or properly grounded for everyone. There is a set of propositions that are properly basic, and other beliefs are justified just in case they are supported by those beliefs. This is the thrust of Descartes' project, why he developed those conjectures about Satan controlling his mind, so that he could find those properly basic beliefs and build his system up from there. The traditional empiricist counter-move is disallow Descartes' doubts about experience but employ the same project, but I think this project also fails, as can be seen in the philosophy of Hume. I think people should reason, but they should reason from within their own belief systems and abandon the beliefs against which there is good evidence. So different people start from different places, but we can all think together toward the common goal of consensus, even though that "Omega point" seems pretty far in the distance on a lot of issues. If Carrier thinks he has an epistemological theory that will solve the problems that Descartes and his rationalist and empiricist successors failed to solve, I would like to see what it is.
Carrier does make a couple of further interesting (though puzzling) points when he says
RC: On a different level (and don't confuse this with what I have already said), it does not follow that if therre are no rational inferences, then there is no point in arguing. This presumes that the only effective argument is a rational one, which of course anyone ought to know is clearly not true even if there is such a think as rational argument. Any witness of recent American politics can see that people are routinely persauded by irrational arguments (on both sides). Rather, if there is no such think as rational arguments, then the issue becomes one of cataloguing the arguments that actually do exist by their effectiveness in persuading. But there will be such a list, and thus a point to arguing, even if "rational arguments" is not on that list. Needless to say, you and I both agree that it is on that list. But my previous point has been that only you have offered evidence that it is not. So you have to plug it up if you want that water to stop draining out. That's all I'm saying here.
VR: Again, I don't see how anything I have written raises doubts about the existence of rational inferences, whose existence I take to be properly basic, and justified by arguments concerning the epistemic consequences of denying that there are rational inferences. I am at some pains to construct my arguments in such a way as not to raise doubts about the existence of rational inferences; that's one of the most important trademarks of my versions of the AFR. But if there are no rational inferences, then the whole process of evaluating arguments, which is what Carrier and I are both doing, makes no sense. Without the use of rational inference, we would have no way of using critieria to determine which arguments are persuasive and which are not.
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