Yet There Is Method In It

The Philosopher Leszek Kolakowski who rejected his former Marxism and embraced a humanistic rationalism proposed this law of the infinite cornucopia.

Which suggests that for any given doctrine one wants to believe, there is never a shortage of arguments by which one can support it.

An example given is theology and the bible. For any doctrine a biblical theologian wants to believe there is never any shortage of biblical evidence to support it.

The centre of Kolakowski’s conceptual universe was the individual – a rational and freely acting subject, aware that there is a spiritual side of life, yet eschewing absolute certainty of either an empirical or transcendental sort: “I do not believe that human culture can ever reach a perfect synthesis of its diversified and incompatible components”, he said. “Its very richness is supported by this very incompatibility of its ingredients. And it is the conflict of values, rather than their harmony, that keeps our culture alive.” (extract from the Daily Telegraph Obituary of Kolakowski in 2009)

What role then the philosopher?
It was not the philosopher’s role to deliver the truth, but to “build the spirit of truth” by questioning what appears to be obvious, always suspecting that there might be “another side” to any question. The true philosopher should approach any issue with scepticism and humility: “A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading”, he said.

Comment on previous post: ‘Picky point I guess, but the argument from design makes no reference to “good intentions” – that would be a moral telological argument (a combination of more than one set of assumptions).’

You are right that my point is not well developed in this area but I omitted a full explanation because it is rather verbose with perhaps little reward. The design argument that most people remember is “the universe looks designed therefore designer exists” but this is really only part of the full argument. The more complete statement of the design argument is the Watchmaker Analogy or similar, which is really in the same “family” of arguments as the teleological argument.

To move beyond a superficial application of the Watchmaker Analogy, we must ask “what attributes of object X that makes us think it is designed?”. Often, it is only an argument from ignorance that makes people conclude something was designed (which is a fallacy). But it is more legitimate to consider an argument by analogy and compare the design process (and to remember that “similar causes prove[/imply] similar effects, and similar effects similar causes”). So, a divine designer is compared to a human designer and both share attributes that make the comparison possible – usually the designer wants the designed object to achieve some teleological goal. A potential difficulty is we must be able to determine the “teleological purpose” in a particular object, as a step in the argument before we conclude there is a designer. (Because we must assume a teleological purpose exists, I now notice that we are in danger of circular argument.) My hand waving reference to “good intentions” was a nod to this ill defined set of designer attributes. By a “good” designer, I am also thinking “competent” and “motivated” designer, with less emphasis on the moral aspects. This would probably be clearer with a concrete example, but I have never heard one I liked.

To relate this back to my post on the problem of evil, we again see the difficult in assessing the teleology of things (which itself is a defense against the problem of evil argument). If we start trying to define criteria that may be used to assess teleological purposes, we are forced to start making assumptions on the designer (e.g. a motive) which may be without basis, particular in context of the design argument. (Random thought: what if the designer wished to create a universe that appeared to have no designer? Can we a priori know a designers attributes?)

Since I am rambling on about the design argument, Hume also raises a further objection in making an analogy between human process and divine process, due to us having no a posteriori knowledge of the latter (at least within this argument).

“That all inferences, CLEANTHES, concerning fact, are founded on experience; and that all experimental reasonings are founded on the supposition that similar causes prove similar effects, and similar effects similar causes; I shall not at present much dispute with you. But observe, I entreat you, with what extreme caution all just reasoners proceed in the transferring of experiments to similar cases. Unless the cases be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon. Every alteration of circumstances occasions a doubt concerning the event; and it requires new experiments to prove certainly, that the new circumstances are of no moment or importance.”

“To ascertain this reasoning, it were requisite that we had experience of the origin of worlds; and it is not sufficient, surely, that we have seen ships and cities arise from human art and contrivance.” Dialogues concerning Natural Religion

The point being that we can only draw analogies between things that we have previously experienced and analogies are merely inductive in nature.

And I will one day have to destroy the concept of “irreducibly complexity”, I have a good rebuttal in my head. Hint: are natural process always additive?

Anti Citizen One

PS The BBC just did a piece on the problem of evil.

I recently finished Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Emerson. It was well worth reading. Emerson was ordained as a pastor but distanced himself from institutional religion. He developed his ideas of transcendentalism and the value of the individual. He utilizes paradoxes in writing and his call for to me at peace with your own nature puts him as a precursor to existentialism. (He is a contemporary of Kierkegaard but I am not aware of any cross influence. Nietzsche did read Emerson but probably not Kierkegaard.)

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

In his iconoclastic “Divinity School Address” he calls for ministers to use ones own instinct to reinterpret religious teaching and not to rely in previous experts to define doctrine that is set in stone.

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man [Jesus] is made the injurer of man.

Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.

They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.

As you can probably tell, his writing style is very quotable. But it takes a surprise effort to read, as his sentences tend to be fairly lengthy. This is not ideal for scan readers. In agreement with Kierkegaard, he does think there is an objective (and transcendental) truth behind everything. But the unknowableness of this objective truth makes it rather superfluous to my mind.

Anti Citizen One

A quick recap on these two arguments:

• We observe that universe has certain properties
• These are consistent with properties that we would expect from a designer (with good intentions)
• Therefore the universe was designed

• Bad things happen
• A good and omnipotent God would prevent bad things from happening
• Therefore God is not both good and omnipotent
• A Defence: what apparently is “bad” might have be “good” but we cannot fully comprehend it from our current point of view.

Recently, I noticed an interesting thing. If we admit this defence of “bad things” are really good, we therefore say “we are not in a position to assess the attributes of the universe”. This statement may then be applied to the design argument, which undermines the first axiom of us observing the “designed” attributes of the universe. So these arguments are in fact the same argument, two sides of the same coin! So things that appear designed at this point in time might be the work of a short sighted designer, only to backfire later (or as the product of many other origins). This possibility cannot be distinguished from a competent designer using the design argument.

(I omit discussing the other objections to both these arguments, false dichotomy being the most obvious.)

Anti Citizen One

PS Happy new arbitrary length of time!

PPS Ireland’s anti-blasphemy laws come into effect that forbid causing “outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of [a] religion”. Nice step backwards. They need to amend their constitution to remove the moronic basis for this law. Given the hysterical nature of many religions, we can look forward to curtailment of free speech… idiots.

PPPS A topical quote that illustrates some of the above issues:

“God is ultimately responsible for the earthquake in Haiti and has a reason that is beyond our ability, trapped in time, to understand or comprehend. But it would be theological ignorance coupled with absolute arrogance to try and interpret God’s actions as a judgment against a particular person or nation.” — Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, for Newsweek.

This is hardly news worthy to people who know that “There are more idols than realities in the world”:

God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues.

“Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one’s own beliefs,” writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. New Scientist

I have started reading some Emerson. It is actually quite a good read!

Anti Citizen One

Swiss voters have supported a referendum proposal to ban the building of minarets, official results show.

More than 57% of voters and 22 out of 26 cantons – or provinces – voted in favour of the ban. BBC

An interesting issue is at stake. Amnesty International, for whom I have great respect, is against this – as well as the Swiss government. But democracy is a funny thing – freedom in politics conflicts with freedom of religion. It again illustrates the self conflict of natural rights. On the other hand, is this really a matter of religion? Admittedly, my knowledge is limited but I was not aware that minarets was a religious duty? And if it is a cultural convention, can’t Swiss culture said to have precedence on its own ground? Even if it was a religious law, why does religious freedom trump architectural tradition and taste (and therefore cultural practice)?

I feel somewhat unsatisfied with the above, as it raises several questions and hints at my views with very little commitment… What is my view? Good question… mmm. I don’t think minaret construction is a major issue. More significant are the values that go with it. By “it” I mean religion generally and particularly institutional religion. Political control lies behind most or all additions to early manifestations of religions. I’d say let them be built but question the goal of their construction – to cement the influence of institution over personal religious or mystical experience. But very few have the appetite for individual ventures in this rocky terrain.

(Looking at the above, I think post-modernism has warped my fragile little mind.)

Anti Citizen One (still reading Derrida! for now…)

Human rights lawyers reviewed computer games with a war setting.

The group chose games, rather than films, because of their interactivity.

“Thus,” said the report, “the line between the virtual and real experience becomes blurred and the game becomes a simulation of real life situations on the battlefield.” BBC

This key assumption, that actions in games are morally equivalent to actions outside the game is laughably untrue. We don’t see people getting post traumatic stress disorder from computer games. Playing games is nothing like being in a war. Other studies show that gamers are not desensitised to actual war violence (stated later in the article). Therefore, the choices are not the same as those posed outside games. Games are more or less works of fiction and the choices posed to the player are almost forced outcome moral choices, since the player is not acting as “himself”, but as the character created by the game’s script writer.

I was recently hearing about the Australian Prime Minister apologising for the treatment of child migrants. This apology was presumably done on behalf of the institution that he represents i.e. the state. But the state does not feel “regret” since it is merely a concept. Even if the people comprising “the state” feel the actions were wrong, it is the individuals themselves that are responsible, not the state itself – which cannot act or think independently! Unless the individuals themselves were responsible, guilt does not even apply. Although it may cheer the victims of injustice, I am concerned that if we shunt the responsibility (and “guilt”) for wrong actions onto institutions, it diminishes the personal responsibility that each individual bears and transfers in onto a mere concept. In the extreme case, it may lead to the bystander effect, were everyone does nothing to correct injustice because it is “the state’s” responsibility. So I distrust all institutional apologies and think of them as political tools.

In agreement with our favourite existential thinkers, a new study has linked suffering with religiosity:

Gray and Wegner created a state-by-state “suffering index” and found a positive correlation between a state’s relative misery (compared to the rest of the country) and its population’s belief in God. Sciam

That’s all the news that’s fit to print.

Anti Citizen One

Interesting piece on the choice of degree and the change in student’s religiosity. (Annoyingly, I have not found the original research paper.)

How important do students think religion is in their lives? For scale, Miles Kimball says, if the difference between the religiosity of people living in the Bible Belt and those in the rest of the country equals 100, then the effect of majoring in a particular subject would be:

-47 Social science
-28 Humanities
-24 Physical science/math
-14 Engineering
-13 Biology
0 No college
+2 Business
+10 Other
+16 Vocational
+23 Education NYTimes

Ah, those Godless social scientists! One conclusion is this effect seems to be smaller than regional variation of religiosity.

Anti Citizen One

In interesting issue is being debated by the UK Supreme Court (yes there is a Supreme Court now): what rules can faith schools apply to school admission? It can be an interesting conflict in freedom of religion with freedom to attend competing with freedom to define a schools identity.

An article on the BBC outlines the Jewish school situation: can a convert to the religion attend an orthodox school that insists on Jewish decent on the mother’s side? Is this a case of freedom or of racial discrimination?

Other faith schools may be affected by the presidence in the above case. For example can a Catholic school insist on church attendance for admission? I am interested by the possibility that non-attendance might make a person more Christian based on the writings of Blake, Kierkegaard, etc. I was trying to recall the basis for church going on the Bible (within the New Testament) and I could not recall any; until I remembered I only have passing familiarity with the gospels and hardly anything in acts, etc. There does seem to be a contrast in institutional religion between the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Every instance of Jesus going to the Temple seems to highlight the gulf between what he stood for and what organised religion represents… Not to mention: “Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts[...]” Luke 20:46

I was on a bit of a rant there after C S Lewis’s pro-institutional views….

Anti Citizen One

I finished reading Mere Christianity by C S Lewis. Well written but the ideas are not worth analyzing on this blog. (”Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” LW) But there are two points of interest that made reading it worth while. Kierkegaard fans might like to read the final chapter of “Christian Behaviour”. It is like a pro-institutional version of SK (yikes!) and he references the verse speaking of “fear and trembling”. Nietzsche fans might like to read the chapter “The New Men”, where he claims the “superman” is in fact a Christian. He uses one similar expression by likening Christianity to lightning, perhaps a distant echo of Nietzsche calling the superman “lightning out of the dark cloud”.

Anti Citizen One

PS Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion contains better arguments FOR god than this! (among other things…)