Yet There Is Method In It

A great deal of philosophical discourse revolves around the concepts of truth and falsity. We are generally expected by virtue of the consensus of meanings to attribute truth to rectitude, to fact, and falsity to wrongness, lies and fantasy. As Richard Dawkins recently commented regarding religious belief and the existence of God “God either exists or he doesn’t. It’s a matter of the truth.” But as with any attempt at analytical philosophy we shouldn’t simply accept meanings at face value, surely we must tease meanings out of them? To this end then I am compelled to ask as did Pontius Pilate on the seat of judgement:

What is Truth? John 18:38

Kierkegaard famously said “truth is subjectivity” and accordingly I am going to have a look at the notion of truth in subjectivity. After all looking at truth as objectivity is rather singular, fixed and boring. My main focus of interest will be William James, American psychologist and philosopher and founder of the school of pragmatism. James was an individualist and his philosophy was subjective, according to his pragmatism any idea is true so long as belief in it is of some practical consequence to our lives.

The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief. Pragmatism 42

James and his followers frequently summed up their philosophy in the simple maxim “what is true is what works“. This naturally aroused great criticism, what if someone chose to believe in a falsehood, particularly one that makes the individual happy – in such a circumstance one could not identify truth with long-term satifactoriness. Naturally many philosophers tested this pragmatic theory with regards religious belief and both believers and unbelievers were said to have been shocked to the core by his declaration

if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. Pragmatism 143

What about reality though? Why believe in something that is not real and yet maintain that it is true, surely such an attitude is nonsensical? Not according to James, he insisted that his general theory did not involve any denial of what may be called objective reality. Reality and truth, he stated, are radically different from each other. Things have the quality of reality; ideas and beliefs have the quality of truth.

Realities are not true, they are; and beliefs are true of them. The Meaning of Truth 196

It is not by discovering whether the consequences of a belief are good that we learn whether it is true or not; but it is the consequencesd that assign

the only intelligible practical meaning to that difference in our beliefs which our habit of calling them true or false comports. The Meaning of Truth 273.

Yet for many people it is considered that what makes a belief true is its correspondence with reality. James does not deny this altogether but he enquires what is it we mean by the notion of correspondence? When we speak of an idea ‘pointing to’, or ‘fitting it’, or ‘corresponding’, or ‘agreeing’ with it, what he argues we are really talking about is the processes of validation or verification that take us from the idea to the reality. This mediation process James says is what makes the idea true.

Thus the truth is something we make by verifying an idea with real consequences. William James held that these real consequences (being an individualist) were matters of personal utility. James extended this princinple of the practicality of truth to include ethics and religion along with the more obvious scientific empiricism that it is more usually associated with. It is worth noting that not all pragmatists agreed with James’ extension.

One of the key tenets of James’ pragmatic theory was its conceptual relativism, and to an extent this is common to all philosophers in the pragmatist tradition. The later Wittgenstein and Quine were both heavily infuenced by this aspect of James.

Conceptual relatvism holds that not only do we make things true by verifying them, but that there is no such thing as truth without a conceptual framework within which those truths can be meaningfully expressed.

Schiller uses an analogy of a carpenter making a chair to demonstrate that the manner in which we make truth is not divorced from reality. Just as a carpenter makes a chair out of existing materials and doesn’t create it out of nothing, truth is a transformation of our experience but that doesn’t imply reality is something we’re free to construct or imagine as we please.

Finally in an echo of Wittgenstein the pragmatic notion of truth could be described as thus:

Unless we decide upon how we are going to use concepts like ‘object’, ‘existence’ etc., the question ‘how many objects exist’ does not really make any sense. But once we decide the use of these concepts, the answer to the above-mentioned question within that use or ‘version’, to put in Nelson Goodman’s phrase, is no more a matter of ‘convention’. (Maitra 2003 p. 40)

I wondered if indeed you would post on this, but was suprised at the largely negative and dare I say polemical response.

Why no mention of his entreaty to religous believers to “respect atheists” and agnostics and to treat them with “deep esteem”?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7390941.stm

And lets not forget the implicit mea culpa in his comments that quite possibly some of the adverse reaction to religion in this country is the fault of religion and religious believers…. it seems to me this is rather an important statement.

Your comments were interesting and I will deal with just a couple.

You suggest that there is a contradiction in saying that theology is coherent and yet God is unknowable?
But there is no contradiction. One may argue quite feasibly that in terms of material evidence for a spiritual entity there is no evidence.
But despite Dawkins (as a common example) insistence that lack of evidence renders the proposition meaningless, this is as Wittgenstein would point out not a solution to the question but a dissolution.
It is like me asking “can you see that invisible man over there?” and berating you as a liar if you say “yes I can see” or stupid if you say “no I cant see”.

However it is possible to advance to an utterance by analogy. And much philosophical speculation on the existence of God(s) etc. originates in analogical thought. Divine watchmakers, the author of destiny and so on.
Analogous reasoning is of course an entirely different type of reasoning than empiricism.

Ah, but, you might say an analogous God does not equate to a real God… this indeed may be true, but I would propose that the more coherent response would be to say that the attributes of an analogous God may not correspond to a real divinity. By which of course I mean such attributes as goodness, knowledge, absolute power etc.

The via negativa a theology of negation that I have mentioned plenty of times before of course doesnt posit positive attributes to a divinity – hence of course the gist of the Augustine quote.

But we are missing out one key factor here that essentially muddy’s the water and makes the argument difficult. If theological statements about God were purely analogous then one could take it or leave it with absolute ease. But as an example Christianity does not claim to be solely analogous, it claims that along with the ineffable approach of analogous reasoning it also bases its belief on positivistic statements which they call “revelation”.

This claim to revelation then is used to systematically shore up analogous reasoning and the two tanatalisingly dance around the other providing the other (particularly in the mind of the believer) with necessary balance.

Dawkins comments his extreme dislike of this “I believe because I believe” reasoning but ignores the fact that those who believe attribute some sort of truth-claim to the revelatory aspect of their religious belief. And that as time goes on can be very hard to undermine.

“Implicit atheism” in babies.
This seems to be a particularly weak conjecture, do you have any evidence about what it is that babies in particular believe if anything?
I could perhaps sympathise with you a little more if you were to ascribe implicit atheism to mean a neutral statement of belief – a state of affairs where ignorance is the de facto position.
If this is how you mean it then implicit atheism is not a belief system in any sense of the term. And why simply pick out theological opinions as a paradigm case for infantile belief systems? I dare say that babies are also implicit nihilists, implicitly asexual, implicitly non-nationalistic, implicitly self-centred etc.

“The burden of proof is not on atheists to proof unbelief” Why get yourself caught up in fly-bottle like this? Belief or unbelief is a psycho-cognitive state of affairs not an epistemic one.
The burden of proof belongs to an entirely different language game than the psycho-cognitive one. Proof only enters into the matter if and when one chooses to attempt a correlation between belief in something and observable or verifiable statements about something.
And of course a “lack of proof” does not equally also mean the absence of proof, but all scientists should be aware of this state of affairs.

Now in terms of “if God exists where does the burden of proof lay” then if I am a theist and wish to convince you that God exists beyond the merely psycho-cognitive proposition that you ought to because I do, then yes indeed the burden of proof, or rather the burden to provide an epistemic framework with which to test any such hypotheses rests with me the theist.
But similarly the same burden to provide an epistemic framework is placed upon the evangelical atheist who wishes to demonstrate to his God-believing contemporaries that there is no God.

And the trouble with this “burden” is as I have already intimated before muddied by the fact that belief-systems often dance around a mixture of psycho-cognitive-like and epistemic-like statements.

To cut an already very long story short, a convinced theist and a convinced atheist have about as much chance of convincing the other about the rectitude of their point of view as the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament has of being won by virtue of a checkmate.

Although I agree with your comments on the anti-pomo views, I would point out that he isn’t expressing a particularly modernist viewpoint either. The key issue of respect and tolerance that was completely absent from your analysis are principles of a decidedly pluralistic and postmodernist understanding of the human condition.

And as for his comment on private belief versus public expressions of that belief I am firmly of the opinion that a pluralistic society should encourage that form of life.

And finally your point about the fusion of religion with rationality and science, and your demand that if they wish to play rational then they should play by the rules…

well you probably know what I have to say!

There is no objective rulebook and the internal logic of each language game is defined by its users.

*(Btw this post was originally intended as a comment but for some reason it would not – or at present is not posting – needless to say conspiracy theories abound!)

Comments on a recent lecture by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor which had many references to atheism. On one hand, he says Catholisism is very clear on theology.

Catholic Christianity is characterised by [...] the clarity of its theology which brings theology and philosophy together and gives us an articulate intellectual expression of the knowledge born of faith[...]

On on the other, he states that God is unknowable. How can you have a clear study of a fundamentally unknowable entity? This is a contradiction.

A God who can be spoken of comfortably and clearly by human beings cannot be the true God. Si comprehendis, non est Deus, said St Augustine: ‘if you understand, it is not God’.

He accuses atheism as being a “product” of straw man logic. Does he notice that (implicit) atheism is the starting belief system of humans (i.e. babies)? The burden of proof is not on atheists to proof unbelief – Russell’s tea pot, etc.

How much of modern unbelief is a product of a facile, deductive treatment of God, so that the God who is often rejected by people is the product of our thinking rather than being God in the mystery of his life?

Also, I detected an anti postmodernist tone:

To some extent this is the effect of the privatisation of religion today: religion comes to be treated as a matter of personal need rather than as a truth that makes an unavoidable claim on us. I heard of a Muslim scholar recently who expressed an admiration for Pope Benedict on the grounds that he thought that Benedict understood exactly what religion is about. ‘Pope Benedict knows,’ he said, ‘that religion is about truth and not social cohesion.’ A very accurate remark I think.

TS Eliot once observed that it was a dangerous inversion to advocate Christianity not because of its truth, but because of its benefit.

Only a modern person would think that religion is a private matter, something the individual does in his or her solitude, but the tradition of Catholicism is that Christianity is profoundly social.

and later:

One of the things which I challenge is the desire to separate Christianity from rational inquiry

And I noticed an interesting wording in this section that ties in with existentialism and my series on the TV series B5:

His remark brings to mind that other haunting statement, so common now that I don’t know who said it first: ‘If there is no God, there is no one to tell us who we are.’

I know who I am, thanks. And that person is a non constant entity.

I also was reading about the Templeton Prize of which I generally disapprove. This is another attempt to unify Chritianity with rationality and science. If they want to play by rationality’s rules, they better stick to the rules.

Anti Citizen One

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs(ACMD) yesterday delivered its report to the Home Office. The group of 23 scientists have been investigating the classification of cannabis since September 2007. It was specifically asked to consider its supposed impact on mental health, particularly schizophrenia. The committee found that reported cases of schizophrenia actually fell between 1998 and 2005 suggesting little link to cannabis use which has increased in the last two decades. The Register

Why is the UK government increasing restrictions on cannabis? Because of the alleged harmful effects? Supported by what evidence?

Reminds me of a certain basis for preemptive war… Unless there is a reliable causal link between two events, they would be treated as independent factors. And beware of confusing the effect with the cause. As always, we need to focus of preventative action rather than gestures – especially gestures aimed at the media and the population at large.

Update: Where is the evidence to link this policy and a reduction in whatever it is meant to be reducing? Remember prohibition did not reduce criminality associated with alcohol – prohibition increased organized crime. The new London mayor is to ban alcohol on the underground tube network. Is drinking alcohol on the tube a source of crime? I don’t think it is. (If you disagree, evidence please?) It is again the state trying to target criminal behavior, not by addressing the cause, but by addressing the effect.

Anti Citizen One

I just finished Huxley’s Brave New World. I like it.

Especially the beginning with the authors challenge of the readers assumptions of right and wrong, and then controllers tales of our society’s ideals of family life which the audience find disturbing to the point of nausea. This juxtaposition is repeated again with John the Savages encounter with the “brave new world”.

This book is a perfect complement to Orwell’s 1984 – but the totalitarian government is not enforced by any “thought police” but by preconditioning and persuasion. This is repeated in a smaller scale in Philip K Dick’s “The Mold of Yancy”. The characters who are considered deviant are not taken away and tortured/killed (as in 1984) but are simply pressured to conform. Failing that, they are deported.

“Still shouting and sobbing Bernard was carried out.
‘One would think he was going to have his throat cut’, said the Controller, as the door closed. ‘Whereas, if he had the smallest sense, he’d understand that his punishment is really a reward. He’s being sent to an island. That’s to say he’s being sent to a place where he’ll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren’t satisfied with orthodoxy, who’ve got independent ideas of their own. Everyone, in a word, who’s anyone. I almost envy you, Mr Watson.’”

It is 1984 but touchy-feely and just as effective.

Anti Citizen One

Well this website has survived for a whole year! That is longer than I expected. I almost gave up last autumn over the whole dialectics quagmire. I am glad I didn’t. I still have not finished that Babylon 5 series… Any comments El Sordo?

To give you an idea of our readership, in the last 3 days we have had about 47 human readers (discounting the authors!) from Ukraine, Poland, Turkey, Sweden, United States, UK, China, Latvia, Germany, Russia, Jamaica, Japan, Slovakia, Colombia, Vietnam and Finland. That is pretty diverse!

To invert Spider-Mans motto: “With great power comes no responsibility!”

har har har AC1

Searle published an attempt to answer Hume’s Is-Ought Problem. It states:

Consider the following series of statements:
(i) Jones uttered the words “I hereby promise to pay you,
Smith, five dollars.”
(2) Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars.
(3) Jones placed himself under (undertook) an obligation
to pay Smith five dollars.
(4) Jones is under an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.
(5) Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars.
Searle J R, How to Derive “Ought” From “Is”, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Jan., 1964), pp. 43-58

Searle states that the following are tautological truths:
“All promises are (create, are undertakings of, are acceptances of) obligations,”
“One ought to keep (fulfill) one’s obligations.”

With these definitions, we can see the logic to go from statement (2) to (5) because it is a tautological, according to Searle, to equate “promise” with “ought to”. It is then possible to simplify the above argument with:

(A) Jones uttered the words “I hereby ought to to pay you,
Smith, five dollars.”
(B) Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars.

I cannot see any way B automatically follows from A. And since this is logically equivalent to Searle’s response, we can see the original argument is invalid in going beyond step (1). Another way to state my objection is to consider if “One ought to keep (fulfill) one’s obligations” is really tautologically true? If we can say “promise = obligation”, then is “One ought to keep (fulfill) one’s promises” a tautological truth? No, it isn’t.

And, even if Smith believes he ought to pay back Smith, why ought he believe that? The whole argument is couched in social convention and definition of words – to a critical eye this reeks of faulty reasoning.

Ayn Rand’s attempt also relies on the loose interpretation of words. “The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the relation between ‘is’ and ‘ought’” Which is suddenly appears similar to Searle’s answer.

Update: I also noticed Searles definition “All promises are (create, are undertakings of, are acceptances of) obligations,” does not really reduce to “promises are obligations”; the words in the brackets are important. Promises are only representations of obligations. Obligations may be represented without actually existing!

Anti Citizen One