October 2009 Archives

So about two weeks ago I noted here that Alvin Plantinga seems to have a mild obsession with the Taj Mahal.

I also proposed a photo contest for the best photoshopped pics of Plantinga there "in person" (wonder if he's ever been).

Here are the pics (I've titled them) followed by brief bios (not to be confused with BIOS) of their creators (I'll put my fav above the fold and the rest below).

BEST IN SHOW (i.e. my personal fav for keepin it classy)

"Al in the Alley" Mathis Gries

Cosmological arguments in general appeal to some version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Rowe’s version of PSR is the following:

PSR. There must be an explanation for the existence of any being whatsoever, and there must be an explanation for every positive fact.

Now the cosmological argument is supposed to provide us with good reason for believing that there is a necessarily existing being whose existence—as what Rowe calls a ‘self-existent’ being— is explained by it’s necessity and which is the ultimate explanation for contingent events, states of affairs, etc. in the world. Peter Forrest’s ‘anthropic theism’ has me wondering why PSR requires that the ultimate explanation be a necessarily existing being. It would be interesting if there were another way to go. Peter does not consider the question, but why couldn’t PSR be satisfied by appeal to the intrinsic value of God, rather than the necessary existence of God?

Given dissertation and job applications and such, I'm pressed for time, so this post might be a little sloppy and quick. At the recent Pacific SCP, Wes Morriston presented on the problem of genocides in the Bible, and he presented what I took to be a very powerful argument that we should not believe that God commanded genocides in the Bible. I will extract one point from his talk, develop the argument, and hope that it creates helpful discussion.

We've been listening to C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles on CD. I read them when I was about ten years old, and I never got around to re-reading them, so some of it is almost as if I'm experiencing them for the first time. When I got to the following scene from the Silver Chair, it struck me as a strange argument, sort of like Pascal's Wager, but something rubbed me the wrong way about it. The main characters were in the Green Witch's underground domain and had fallen under her influence, which was causing them to lose their belief in the above-ground world. Puddleglum the marsh-wiggle then gives the following speech:

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say.

What rubbed me the wrong way was that it sounded as if he didn't care whether the world was real. He was going to believe in it anyway, because it's more pleasant to believe in it. How can the upper world be so much better than the underground world that its mere finite value of being better would be worth believing in a lie if it's not true?

When I raised this issue with a friend, he said, "But it's Pascal's Wager!" I said, "No, it's not!" He insisted that the upper world is Aslan's world, which I'd been thinking of as the place at the end of the world that they went to in the previous book, and the upper world was just Narnia, which is the analogue of Earth. But we were interrupted and never managed to finish the conversation.

I realized later, when teaching Pascal's Wager, what Lewis must have been up to, and it's actually a neat trick. If he was seeing Narnia as a placeholder for the eternal reward of Pascal's Wager and the underworld as a placeholder for this life, then you have an interesting argument that isn't quite Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager concedes for the sake of argument that life in this world is more pleasant if you don't believe in God but then argues that the chance of eternal reward in heaven compensates for that in terms of rational decision theory. You shouldn't even need 50% likelihood of God's existence for the wager to be worth it given that the reward is infinite and the cost merely finite if you bet wrong. But Lewis' Wager is different in exactly one way: it doesn't make the concession. It takes the finite value of life in this world to be better if you believe in God than if you don't. So life is finitely better if you believe in God, and the afterlife is infinitely better if it turns out there is one. Therefore, it's a no-brainer. You might as well believe in God. If it turns out you lose the bet (i.e. God doesn't exist), you still end up finitely better off, and if you win (i.e. God does exist) then you get an infinitely better result.

One interesting result of Puddleglum's Wager is that it easily avoids the problem Mike Almeida raises against Pascal's Wager. Mike's problem (which I'm not taking a stand on at this point) relies on its being better in this life not to believe.

[cross-posted at Parableman]

Reader James Quigley (FSU) writes seeking some input from Prosblogion contributors and commenters. The full post is under the jump. Comments may take some time to appear as I'm overseas.

An important question that seems to me to be in need of an answer in order to justify spending one's time doing petitionary prayer is whether it is reasonable to expect that God will answer one's prayer. It seems that whether that expectation is reasonable will consult information about, for example, whether God does anything, what sorts of actions he performs, how often he performs them, and how much of a difference people's prayers make as to whether he will do things. (Perhaps that carries evidentialist assumptions people will want to criticize; if so, I'd like to read those criticisms.)

Too many deadlines for a serious post, but I couldn't pass this up.

Ed Wierenga and I were talking today about a certain Plantinga quote (see Ed's review of the book _Alvin Platinga_ on NDPR today by the way) and his frequent mention of the Taj Mahal came up.

A bit of unjustified time-wasting got me at least the following:

In God and Other Minds he uses "The Taj Mahal is greater than God" in an arg concerning the relative values of existent and non-existent beings.

Ol' Taj shows up in NN at various points of course, now being pink, now being non-green, now merely existing.

It's an actual being in God, Freedom, and Evil. It's distinct from some proposition r in WCB. In WPF it's the object of a false belief that it's in Australia.

And, just about everywhere, it's distinct from some proposition or other.

Other's join the fun as well. In PvI's "Theory of Properties" Taj is red or not round.

So if someone really didn't know what the Taj Mahal was (and, like you, as a kid I thought it was "The Tajma Hall"), but they read a lot of great analytic philosophy, they could piece together this description of the famous object:

It is an existent non-pink, non-round or non-red, concrete object distinct from at least one proposition, and it is somewhere outside of Australia. That doesn't narrow it down too much, but it does at least potentially rule out the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore.

PS - 10^13 points for the best Photoshopped pic of Al at the Taj Mahal. Top entries will be posted on Prosblogion.

Ed Gracely (Analysis, ‘88) presented an instructive problem about wagering on heaven and hell. It tells us something interesting about Pascal’s Wager. Suppose you find yourself in hell and Satan himself has pity on you. He offers you this game of chance. If you win, you go to heaven for all eternity. If you lose you remain in hell for all eternity. Your chances today of winning are 1/2. If you wait one day, your chances of winning go to 2/3. If you wait yet one more day, the chances of winning rise to 3/4, then to 4/5, 5/6…. and so on infinitely. If you wait a year to play, your chances go to about 99.7. When should you play?

Gracely stipulates that each extra day in hell is only finitely bad. He does not add (but we should) that eternity in hell is infinitely bad. Eternity in heaven is, of course, infinitely good. The bizarre feature of this game is that it looks like you should play as soon as possible (NB: not Gracely’s conclusion). Suppose addition and subtraction are well-behaved for infinities. If I play today, my expected payoff is +oo + -oo = 0. I have some small chance of landing in heaven, and some small chance of landing in hell. If I play tomorrow, my expected payoff is [+oo + -oo ] + -D = -D, where -D is the finite cost of waiting in hell one more day. My expected payoff is higher if I play today!

But that can’t be right. And I think this shows part of what is wrong with Pascalian reasoning. The Wager does not give us reason to believe today that God exists. The fact is that we face a series of Pascalian wagers, not just one. Day after day, we have an opportunity to believe that God exists. Assume, as Pascal does, that believing has an infinite positive expected payoff. Each day that you do not believe you are free to enjoy worldly pleasures. So long as there is some small chance that you live until tomorrow, you should postpone believing until then. Your expected payoff is the same—it is infinitely high—and you have the additional finite payoff of one more day’s worth of worldy pleasures! But then there is no day on which you should (rationally) believe, since there is always some small chance that you live until tomorrow (or till the next minute, for that matter).That can’t be right, either.

I’ve argued that the problem of no best world in fact generates a moral dilemma for God. But some interesting and important moral dilemmas for perfect beings assume that there is a morally best possible world. We can show that there are cases in which God actualizes the best possible world and nonetheless violates a moral obligation! Suppose that the earlier Moses receives his divine message the better. But suppose that the set of possible times at which Moses can receive his message begins after 7am and ends exactly at 12 noon. Moses can receive his message at any one of the infinitely many possible times after 7am and up to (and including) 12pm. An essentially perfectly good agent is required to pass the divine message on to Moses at some time after 7am, but for every time t after 7am, there is some other time t’ (t > t’ > 7am). So there is no earliest time after 7am at which an essentially perfectly good being can pass the divine message on to Moses. Now consider the principle in (1.0).

1.0 It is morally necessary that A if and only if some time t at which A is true is better than any time t’ at which ~A is true.

        OA  ≡  (Et)(Vt')((A is true at t) & ((~A is true at t') & (t' < t)))

Let At symbolize the proposition that the divine message is passed on to Moses at time t. Prior to 7 am, an essentially perfectly good agent is morally required not to pass the divine message on to Moses at any time after 7am.

1.1 O~A12pm & O~Aj & … & O~Ak

For any time t after 7am at which he passes the divine message to Moses there is a better time t’ (t’ < t) to pass the message on to Moses.

1.2 O(A12pm v Aj v … v Ak)

But it is better that Moses receives the message at some time during the interval [7am, 12pm) than at any time outside the interval.

CALVIN COLLEGE, Grand Rapids, MI. Three year appointment, beginning September 2010, with the possibility of continuation, to fill the William Harry Jellema Chair in Christian Philosophy. Three to four undergraduate courses per year. The holder of the chair will be a scholar and teacher of considerable philosophical distinction whose record of publications constitute, or strongly promise, a substantial contribution to Christian philosophy. Areas of specialization might include positive and negative apologetics, philosophical theology, issues of metaphysics and epistemology in relation to Christian faith, and Christian theories of culture, politics, and morality. The holder of the chair will be someone who has also demonstrated excellence in undergraduate teaching. Women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply. EEOE. Calvin College is a comprehensive liberal arts college in the Reformed tradition of historic Christianity. Applicants should express their understanding of and serious commitment to this tradition in the letter of application. For further information about Calvin College, its tradition, and faculty requirements go to www.calvin.edu. The committee will begin reviewing applications on December 11, 2009. Send letter of application, CV, writing sample, three letters of reference, and evidence of undergraduate teaching effectiveness to: Dr. Gregory Mellema, Chair of Search Committee, Department of Philosophy, 3201 Burton SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546. Nominations are also welcome.

In my earlier post, I gave a Grim Reaper based argument against an infinite past. Here I want to give two more arguments. Unlike the earlier argument, these two arguments are not going to be useful for arguing for the existence of God, since they make use of premises that the atheist is likely to deny (in one case, a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and in the other, the existence of God). But they are useful in a broader sense, namely they help show what might be wrong with an infinite past.

Argument 1. If there is an infinite past, we could imagine that each January 1 in the infinite past somebody looks around and checks if there are any rabbits. If there are, she does nothing. If there aren't, she makes a breeding pair. Of course, once a breeding pair of rabbits exists, there will be rabbits forever. Nobody and nothing but one of these potential rabbit-makers makes a rabbit. The setup entails that there have always been rabbits, and the rabbits have not been made by anybody or anything, contrary to a causal version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

Argument 2. If there is an infinite past, the following scenario should be possible. The universe contains nothing but bobs, and at no time is there more than one. A bob is an asexually reproducing person who lives for a century. At the end of the century he dies, but at the end of his existence he has a choice whether to reproduce or not, and can choose either way. If he freely chooses to reproduce, a new bob comes into existence out of the old bob's body after death. So, this is a universe where every bob has always chosen to reproduce, though they could have chosen otherwise. But now consider the following very plausible Thesis:
(*) Necessarily, if a world contains at least one contingent being, then there exists something in that world determined into existence by God's will.
But the story in Argument 2 seems to violate (*), since each bob's existence is partly dependent on the free choice of the preceding bob. Maybe God has determined, then, not the fact that there is a bob, but that there is some initial infinite sequence of bobs, without determining which initial infinite sequence there is. But even that there is an initial infinite sequence of bobs already depends on bob-made choices.

Argument 2 won't impress theological compatibilists.

A Grim Reaper (GR) timed to go off at t0 is an entity which does the following at exactly t0. If Fred is not alive at t0, the GR does nothing at t0. If Fred is alive at t0, the GR instantaneously annihilates Fred. (If instantaneous action is not logically possible, one can complicate the situation by allowing shorter and shorter time intervals for these actions.) The GR Paradox then is this scenario. Fred is alive at 11:00 am today, and that he does not die today unless killed by a GR and he does not get resurrected today. There are infinitely many GRs, timed to go off in a staggered way at the respectively times t1,t2,... where tn is equal to 11:00 am + 1/n minutes. Well, by 11:02 am, Fred is certainly dead, since it is impossible that he survive a time at which a GR is timed to go off. But when was he killed? He wasn't killed by the 11:00 am + 1 minute GR, because if he were alive just before 11:01 am, then he would have been alive at 11:00 am + 1/2 minute, when another GR went off, and he can't survive a GR going off. It seems that none of the GRs could have killed him, because before each, there was another. So we have a contradiction: he both was and was not killed. Somebody has suggested that Fred is killed by the mereological sum of all the GRs, but that's mistaken in the present setting because the GRs check if Fred is already dead before they do anything, so in the present setting, none of them actually do anything--and if they don't do anything, how can they kill Fred?

The Kalaam argument needs the premise that there couldn't be a backwards infinite sequence of events. Here is an argument for this:

1. If there could be a backwards infinite sequence of events, Hilbert's Hotel would be possible.
2. If Hilbert's Hotel were possible, the GR Paradox could happen.
3. The GR Paradox cannot happen.
4. Therefore, there cannot be a backwards infinite sequence of events.

Actually, one could make steps 1 and 2 into a single step, but this is more fun, and, if it works, establishes the interesting corollary that Hilbert's Hotel couldn't exist.

Argument for (1): If there could be a backwards infinite sequence of events, there could be a backwards infinite sequence of events during each of which a hotel room is created, none of which are destroyed. An infinite number of hotel rooms would then be the result.

Argument for (2): If Hilbert's Hotel were possible, each room in it could be a factory in which a GR is produced. Moreover, it is surely possible that the staff in room n should set the GR to go off at 11 am + 1/n minutes. And that would result in the GR Paradox.

The argument for (3) was already given at the beginning of the post.

For about two years, I've smelled this argument coming, but I think my vanity has kept me from seeing it. I still have to confess that I have a really hard time accepting the corollary that Hilbert's Hotel couldn't exist--that corollary seems extremely counterintuitive to me. I wish I had some good way out.

On the other hand, establishing a major premise of an argument for the existence of God is a very happy outcome.