Prosblogion readers will most likely be interested in the competition details for the Younger Scholars Prize for Philosophical Theology.
]]>Here goes the argument, which Paul was kind enough to discuss with me, prior to posting it. I apologize if there are any remnant misrepresentations.
Let's assume that there are a number of epistemically possible world views: some are naturalistic, some are supernaturalistic, let's even grant there are others (non-supernatural, non-natural, but some third, unknown view). Then we can see that the following diagram exhausts all epistemic possibilities: N (naturalism), S (supernaturalism) and not-N and not-S.
]]>Now, according to Draper S and N are equally epistemically modest (see below). There is no clear definition for epistemic modesty, except perhaps a comparative sense: a statement p is epistemically more modest than a statement q if (or iff?) p is less informative than q (e.g., p says I have a car, q says I have a red toyota; p says linda is a bank teller, q says she's a bank teller and a feminist etc.) In the absence of prior information, epistemically modest statements are more likely to be true than epistemically less modest statements.
Thus according to N the physical causes the physical and the mental (except in the case of eliminative physicalism, where the physical only causes the physical). According to S the mental causes the mental and the physical (except in the case of eliminative idealism, where it only causes the mental).
These two world views seem equally epistemically modest to Draper. They both have a burden of proof. Theism (as opposed to supernaturalism more generally) is a much less epistemically modest position than both generic S and N. Theism makes claims about the nature of the supernatural (God is one person, omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good, etc.) and is thus considerably less epistemically modest than atheism (see figure). Atheism is per definition everything that is not-theism (for Draper), so it encompasses the entire gray area on the figure. Theism is a small speck in the realm of supernatural epistemic possibilities. So according to Draper, the atheist's burden of proof is lifted. Since the theist argues for a position that is less epistemically modest than the atheist, the theist carries the burden of proof.
My main qualm with this argument is that Draper represents the atheist as the holder of a generic worldview, compared to the epistemically immodest theist. However, I think this is a misrepresentation of how most atheists would view their position. I doubt it if it's a kind of generic view that is in principle compatible with the existence of all sorts of supernatural beings like elves and demons as long as they are not God. I think the atheism that is usually argued for is a form of scientific naturalism, which, like theism is a small part of all epistemic possibilities (it excludes supernaturalism, not-supernaturalism and not-naturalism, and non-scientific naturalism).
Draper concedes that a scientific naturalist does have a burden of proof, but argues that his main point remains that one can be justified in rejecting theism without evidence but one cannot be justified in accepting theism (or any other specific view like scientific naturalism or even naturalism) without evidence.
]]>More exactly:
(PSR) Whatever obtains, but doesn't obtain of necessity, has an explanation for its obtaining.
Equivalently: Every contingent state of affairs has an explanation.
One might think that PSR has both a priori and empirical support. Regarding the a priori, when we consider an arbitrary state of affairs that obtains but doesn't have to obtain, we feel motivated to wonder why it obtains; and that wonder seems to reveal an inclination in us to think there ought to be an explanation.
As for empirical support, PSR is a simple (the simplest?) explanation of all the cases of explanation anyone has encountered.
The support is defeated, however, if there are counter-examples to PSR. And, my sense is that most philosophers these days think or suspect or worry that there are counter-examples.
Perhaps the most commonly cited counter-examples are these: (1) quantum events, and (2) the Biggest Contingent Fact. It turns out to be difficult, however, to get these counter-examples to stick, as I'll attempt to explain. I'll focus more on (2), since I take it to be the more serious candidate.
]]> First, quantum events. Suppose the link between a complete physical state A and a physical state B is indeterministic. Then we have a violation of PSR only if each of the following are true:1. The indeterminicy in question is ontological (no hidden variables).
2. There is no non-physical state that, together with A, explains B.
3. There is no indeterministic explanation between A and B.
4. There is no deterministic explanation between tokens of types A and B, despite an indeterminacy at the level of types.
Much could be said about (1) - (4). But here I wish merely to propose that we are not in a position to see that quantum events lack an explanation unless we are in a position to rule out each of (1) - (4). Perhaps there are good reasons to doubt each of (1) - (4), but the task of identifying them is surely not an easy one. (I'm not aware that it's even been attempted, since I've never seen (4) addressed.)
Let's turn now to the Biggest Contingent Fact, or 'B', for short. B is a contingent fact that entails (or includes) all other contingent facts.
Here's an outline of a standard reason to think that B is a counterexample to PSR:
1. If PSR is true, then B has an explanation.
2. Whatever explains B is either contingent (non-necessary) or necessary.
3. B cannot be explained by something contingent (else circularity).
4. B cannot be explained by something necessary (else B would be necessary).
5. Therefore, B cannot have an explanation. (2,3,4)
6. Therefore, PSR is not true. (1,5)
Consider, first, (3). The motivation for (3) is that you seemingly cannot have circular explanations; for example, no chicken can make itself. Why think a contingent explanation of B would be circular? Presumably because any such explanation would be wholly included in B.
The inference is too quick, however. It could be that the explanation of B is partly contingent and partly necessary, such that the contingent part of the explanation is itself ultimately explained by the necessary part. In that case, there's no circularity (no fact explains itself). Here's an illustration. Suppose N is a necessary fact, C1 and C2 are contingent facts, N explains C1, and C1 explains C2. What explains N and C1 and C2? Here's an answer that avoids circularity: N and C1, which is itself explained by N (or by N's explaining C1). (This is an example of a fact being explained by a fact it includes, where no circularity results.)
Of course, the above scenario requires that it be possible for a contingent fact to be explained by a necessary fact. That is, it requires the possibility of non-entailing explanations. I'll discuss this possibility when discussing (4) next.
Consider (4), then. Perhaps the simplest way to motivate (4) is to suppose that every explanation entails it's explanandum. But why think that? It's worth pointing out here that I've not said anything about the kind of an explanation that PSR calls for. Leibniz says the reason/explanation is "sufficient". But "sufficient" need not mean logically sufficient (entailing). It could mean adequate, or "satisfying" to those who wondered "why". Rather than debate over words, let us place no restrictions on the sort of explanation in view.
We normally cite explanations that do not entail their explanandum: for example, I wonder why my son is crying, and I learn it's because he wanted to eat ice cream for breakfast but wasn't allowed. Of course, it could be that there are implicit additional facts, such that the cited explanation together with those additional facts would entail the explanandum. But why think that's actually the case in every case? I propose that filling in the argument here won't be easy (though I won't say it can't be done).
But even if you are convinced that explanations must entail their explanadum, we can work instead with partial explanations. Surely a partial explanation need not entail the thing it merely partially explains. So, when I say 'explanation', realize that I mean to include mere partial explanations. (Perhaps we should call the principle, 'PPR', the principle of at least partial explanation.)
We might try to motivate (4) by motivating the more specific claim that no necessary fact can explain a contingent fact. But there's a reason to doubt that claim. The reason is that the necessary fact that a necessarily existing thing wants to create a world with feature phi, is able to do so, and sees that our world would have feature phi would seem to count as a fine explanation of the contingent fact that a necessary being creates our world.
I suggest, then, that (4) is in need of argument, and that it's not easy to see how to successfully argue for (4). Furthermore, (3) is need of an argument, since it's not clear that circularity results from its denial. So, it's not just easy to see that the Biggest Contingent Fact poses a problem for PSR.
Perhaps a better way to argue that B is a counterexample to PSR is to invite candidate explanations of B and show that they fail in one way or another. Here's a candidate explanation that's as good as any: B is explained by the fact C that a necessary being choose to bring about certain contingent facts that themselves began a chain of explanations of the rest of the facts that comprise B. But now consider what might explain C? Suppose this: the necessary fact N that a necessary being wanted to bring about a world with feature phi, was able to do so, and saw that bringing about C would be a good way to do so. The problem now is that the fact that N explains C is itself contingent and so needs an explanation, yet whatever explanation we give will imply a further contingent fact in need of an explanation, ad infinitum, and we'll have no explanation of this entire infinite chain, though it is contingent.
But I've got a reply. Why not suppose that N (together with any other relevant necessary truths) provides the ultimate ground, or explanation, of the entire infinite chain of explanations? If that were so, then N would explain (at least partially) each of the following (i) C, (ii) N explains C, (iii) N explains (N explains C), and so on. It's not clear that there's a problem here. So, it's not yet clear that the proposed explanation of B leads to problems.
At this point, someone might worry about the possibility of giving a contrastive explanation: why does N explain this chain rather than some other? But again, I'm placing no requirement on the kind of explanation to be given. Even if there's no contrastive explanation, we can still suppose that N's nature provides a (partial) explanation of its activities. That's not clearly problematic.
What I've said here is just an opener. There are other potential counter-examples to consider, and there may be better ways of arguing for the above candidates than the arguments I've considered.
What's become increasingly evident to me, however,--and this is the main point I wish to propose--is that identifying a counter-example to PSR (or to PPR) is no easy task. It might be easier just to believe PSR (or PPR), if indeed it seems evident to you.
I'll close by floating a hypothesis in support of PSR. The hypothesis is this: one's basis for thinking of any particular fact that it has an explanation is equally a basis for thinking that contingent facts, in general, have an explanation. Why do I suggest this? Well, suppose you discover milk on your floor. You do not think the milk appeared there with no explanation at all; you think there's an explanation of the mess. But why? What's your basis for thinking there's an explanation here? If PSR is true, then your basis could be this: you realize that the situation didn't have to obtain, and you instinctively see that whatever obtains, but need not obtain, has an explanation. But suppose that's not your basis. Then what is it? You might say that you've observed events similar to milk spilling that have an explanation. But in what way are they similar? There are infinitely many respects in which the members of the class of events you've observed to have an explanation are similar. Which respect is relevant here? If you say all the situations anyone has observed to have an explanation had a beginning and that therefore the milky situation has an explanation on account of its having a beginning, then by the very same reasoning you could also say that all the situations anyone has observed to have an explanation are contingent and that therefore the milky situation has an explanation on account of its being contingent. And then you'd have a basis for PSR. I confess that I don't see what basis one might have for thinking that spilled milk has an explanation if one doesn't have an equally good basis for accepting PSR--unless one has good reasons to think there are counterexamples to PSR.
The conference will focus on three main challenges to religious and moral beliefs:
Organizers:
For more information, including how to register, go to www.knowinginreligionandmorality.com/conference.html.
Now this, according to Ross, puts the atheist in a tricky position, because God's relationship to the happenings in the world is quite unique. In ordinary cases, when, say, Smith murders Jones, it is because of Smith's role in the natural causal chain leading to Jones's death that secures Smith's moral responsibility. But God, according to the broadly Thomistic metaphysics Ross endorses, is not a cause among other causes in the way Smith is. Rather, God atemporally causally sustains the world as a whole. God is not an actor in the order of natural causes.
Fleshing out this Thomistic line of thought, Ross says that God is at a higher level of reality than natural objects, and the cosmos is metaphysically dependent on God. This sort of dependence is what God's 'causal' role in the history of the world amounts to, and this is a very different sort of thing than ordinary natural causation. As a result, to formulate some general principle like 'it is prima facie wrong knowingly and intentionally to cause the death of a sentient being' and then apply this to God is to equivocate on the word 'cause.' The principle that we know is a principle about natural causation, not the sort of metaphysical conservation that God is engaged in.
So suppose the atheist tries to formulate some principle that does apply across reality levels. According to Ross, the only case of this that we have a good grasp of is the relationship of human persons to fictional and imaginary objects. This is a case where an agent freely and intentionally brings about beings at a lower level of reality. It is also similar to the creation in that the author is not one of the causes within the fiction, although the author is the cause of the fiction as a whole, and the cause of each individual event in it. (We can distinguish, perhaps, between the 'fictional' cause of each event and the 'authorial' cause of each event.)
Now, Ross is quite clear that he does not mean to argue by analogy between divine and literary creation. The claim he is making instead is that the only kind of general, known, non-question begging principles the atheist could appeal to would be principles broad enough to apply to some ordinary, concrete cases we know about, and be supported by these instances. So, if the relation of authors to fictions (and imaginers to imaginings) are the only cases of this sort that we have a good grip on, then the atheist will have to formulate some general principle known to be true in the case of fictions. The atheist, that is, will be forced by the dialectical situation to argue by means of this analogy.
However, the relevant principles, as applied to fictions, are false. Macbeth is morally responsible for the murder of Duncan, and Shakespeare is not. Of course, Shakespeare is responsible for the fact that, in the fiction, Macbeth murdered Duncan, but, although Macbeth is morally criticizeable for this, Shakespeare is not. Likewise, authors are not blameworthy for writing natural disasters and other such things into fictions. So the atheist's argument from analogy fails, and no prima facie case against divine moral perfection has been made.
The atheist may, of course, say that the cases are quite different because the fictional characters are, after all, fictional; they don't really feel pain, for instance. So the analogy breaks down. But Ross, recall, insists that he is not arguing by analogy; instead, he is claiming that the atheist is forced by the dialectical situation to argue by means of this kind of analogy. To say that the analogy fails, according to Ross, is really to say that God's relation to his creation is sui generis to such an extent that we don't have an independent grasp of the moral and other issues involved in that relation.
Now, it seems questionable to me whether the atheist can really be forced to make this kind of argument by analogy, and I also don't think that Ross has adequately answered the objection that, on his view, we can't take any events in the world as demonstrations of the goodness of God. But even leaving this out, there is another problem. The atheist is in a position to use this kind of analogy to make a prima facie case against divine benevolence.
Divine benevolence is the doctrine that God wills that each of his creatures be as well-off as possible. This is, of course, a claim about what Leibniz and others have called God's antecedent will - that is, there is a ceteris paribus condition here. The well-being of a particular creature may, in a particular case, be overridden by some other consideration. So we could state this as the thesis that God values the well-being of creatures, or that the well-being of creatures is among God's ends in his volitional activity.
Now consider this argument:
Premise 1 is extremely plausible as applied to authors of fictions. One is inclined to think that if one of Shakespeare's aims was that his characters should be as well off as possible, he wouldn't have written tragedies. And, of course, the theist must accept premise 2 and 3.
Of course, this provides only a prima facie case. One can imagine a tragedian being extremely troubled by the suffering of his characters, and truly aiming to mitigate it, but feeling that he had some strong overriding reason for writing tragedies, rather than fictions of some other sort, and needing to abide by the conventions of that literary form. But the point is, there is a charge that needs answering here. Someone who claims that Shakespeare aims that his characters should be as well off as possible has a lot of explaining to do. So Ross's argument, even if sound, does not render the project of theodicy unnecessary.
(cross-posted at blog.kennypearce.net)
]]>-- Timothy O'Connor, North American Editor
]]>"People have been implying that the content of this article casts aspersons on the rationality of religious belief. I assert that that is false and confused. I dare (double dog dare) anyone to construct a cogent argument from the content of this article which casts aspersions on the rationality of religious belief. I assert that it cannot be done. I also find the article greatly misleading in multiple ways and perhaps culpably so."
I still think it is worth recording my initial reaction, though, so that friends who posted this article in ways that implied that it did cast aspersions on the rationality of religious belief--there were too many to write individually--can see the palpable frustration with which such misdirection causes people like me: Christions living in a very secularized environment where people they really like often say or do things very hurtful (though not intentionally, of course). There are many ways in which it is not easy to be a Christian in academic philosophy. Being an unprotected minority is frustrating, anxiety-inducing (I received threats as a result of this post), and sometimes deeply discouraging. [Any other Christians who feel this way should redouble their efforts to reach out to other minorities and simply set aside in good faith the fact that those minorities have advocates in a way that we do not, for we have our own Advocate.]
---------------------
That venerable publishing outlet of the Secular-Industrial Establishment the Scientific American at least once had decent journalism and intelligent writing. That started to slide at least a decade ago, and though there are still some occasional gems, there is also plenty of tripe. To wit: this article called--utterly misleadingly--"How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God: Religious belief drops when analytical thinking rises.
Rarely have I been so annoyed as by this piece. And it is a token of a type that is all too prevalent. I judge, and hope I do not regret it, that the removal of the snarkiness would not be worth the effort. I don't like being drawn into such rhetoric, but it is not irrelevant that the piece made me *angry*. Anger is an emotion that can be appropriate or inappropriate and upon reflection, I think anger is an appropriate emotional response to this nonsense. #notproofread #lateforconference
]]> I should be clear that some of the nonsense is in the article itself but not all of it. A big part of it is "around" the article: that the study would be run the way it was, that so many important questions go unasked, the propagandistic title, the responses to and uses of it etc. It is a complex sociological phenomenon, and I think it best to concentrate on specific claims. I am headed off to LOGOS and will likely not follow up on this here. If I've committed fallacies or material errors, so be it: let people point them out and save the rest. My principal intention is only to be a road bump to create a little discomfort and, thus, thought. I'll go through it line-by-line to keep focus during the rage."Critical thinker" is normally taken to contrast with "UNcritical thinker" in equivalent sense to "gullible" or "stupid" person. But the contrast here is with people who are more intuitive and immediate thinkers in contrast to *discursive* reasoners. It would be a mistake to confuse intuitive thinkers with bad thinkers. Some of the best philosophers, mathematicians, and business geniuses are intuitive thinkers. In fact, intuitive thinking is very closely tied with genius.
"In 2011 Amitai Shenhav, David Rand and Joshua Greene of Harvard University published a paper showing that people who have a tendency to rely on their intuition are more likely to believe in God." So we might as well conclude that atheism is counter-intuitive, right? Well, I do think that, but I think that would be bad reporting. It would be bad reporting which was symmetric about the axis which divides it from the actual reporting.
"They also showed that encouraging people to think intuitively increased people's belief in God." So, again, theism is an intuitive idea, right? I think so, but that would be a bad way to report this: one which would reflect a pro-religoius bias. Instead, they went with the anti-religious bias. Don't we *want* people to think intuitively? Isn't that better than the alternative? Then it is a good thing to think that way. So good thinking is positively correlated with belief in God. Awesome.
"Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia found that encouraging people to think analytically reduced their tendency to believe in God." That is, changing the way they naturally think, which is intuitively, which is a perfectly good way to think.
"Gervais and Norenzayan's research is based on the idea that we possess two different ways of thinking that are distinct yet related." Note there is no prioritization implied here. There is no suggestion that one way is better than another.
"Solving logical and analytical problems may require that we override our System 1 thinking processes in order to engage System 2." And it just as often requires the opposite. In fact, I think I could make good argument that the analytical system is just a complex of System 1 stuff, but that would take us far afield. The bottom line here is that logical problems break down into individual basic premises (not lemmas) and rules of inference, both of which rest on definition or intuition. Aristotle pointed this out a little while ago.
"Gervais and Norenzayan examined whether engaging System 2 leads people away from believing in God and religion." And did it ever occur to them to test whether taking analytic types and teaching them to think intuitively--they could use it!--would lead them TO belief in God. In business, people pay good money for courses in how to think more intuitively.
This is a standard priming test. You prime people with one task to measure its impact on a second. But there is a more fundamental priming before they even walk in the door: culture. And thanks to the cultured despisers of religion in America--like, say, the folks at Scientific American--the narrative of "religion vs. reason" is firmly embedded in the minds of most Americans, religious or not. That it is mostly a myth is not to be expected to prevent the effect they measure. Only they never provide a defense of their interpretation of which event they've measured.
The Font one is interesting, and I'd like to see the numbers. However, this is hardly a lucid example. Reading an unclear font might also piss people off and evoke anger which might lower religiosity. I'll bet we could come up with dozens of other explanations--none of them controlled for in the experiment--of the result. This result is at best suggestive enough to warrant further tests to control for the dozens of other explanatory properties. It is hardly justification for some of the smug responses to this I've seen.
"Why and how might analytic thinking reduce religious belief?" Oh I can't wait to hear this! LOL First, though, note the obvious opportunity for ambiguity. This ambiguity has been seized upon with glee by the CDRA (Cultured Despisers of Religion in America (it's practically an NGO, so they might as well have an acronym)). People have been treating the assertion that "analytic thinking reduce religious belief" as something along these lines "Good critical thinking (the term used in the title), i.e. use of logic and reasoning and facts and science and stuff, reduces religious belief." That may well be so, and an Augustinian worldview would predict it, but nothing in this story suggests it. There is not a hint of a whiff of a suggestion that the religious attitudes measured in the second part of the experiment are one whit more well-founded on logic and argument than their more religious counterparts. This is a classic priming test, and so relies completely on the unconscious effects of the priming.
"analytic thinking may inhibit our natural intuition to believe in supernatural agents that influence the world" Wait, I thought that was the datum?!
Now look back at the title. What a joke. There is not even a suggestion in the SA article about loss of faith in God. It is not even mentioned.
The title is a thinly veiled CDRA (let's pronounce it "ceedra") marketing ploy. With the NAEF (New Atheist Embarrassment Front) making fools of themselves at every opportunity I can't blame the propaganda wing of CDRA for trying for more subtle methods. It will not, however, pass without comment. The Emperor had better hope for warmer weather.
]]>Question 1: Is this story logically possible?
Question 2: If so, what is the structure of Ike's days?
I suggest that the answers are: 1) yes, and 2) the structure of an infinite number in a nonstandard model of arithmetic, which looks a bit like:
| | | | | ... ...| | | | | | ... ....| | | | |
Note that everyday, except for the first, needs a yesterday; everyday, except for the last, needs a tomorrow -- ruling out such answers as omega + 1.
But interestingly, over a number of informal conversations, many people answer "no" to 1). I have yet to see a knock down argument. Is there such?
Detailed results
Let's start with apologetics. What the apologist would really like to do is to give arguments which will actually convince a particular audience who does not already believe the conclusion that the conclusion is true. This, of course, is a tall order, especially when it comes to anything so contentious and practically and emotionally important as religion. The apologist might, therefore, be willing to settle for less. She may instead be happy if she can give arguments which will cause the members of the audience to increase their credences in the conclusion. Note that if the apologist has this second aim, then there is a point to her activity even if her audience consists only of people who already accept the conclusion, for she may aim only to make those who are, e.g., already Christians more confident that Christianity is rationally justifiable. The point, however, is that the aim of the apologist (qua apologist) is to give to a particular audience arguments which will have a particular effect on them.
This, I claim, is not the aim of the philosopher (qua philosopher). The philosopher aims instead to discover arguments which are such that people holding certain views (which real people do, or at least are likely to, hold) will, upon considering the arguments, be rationally obligated to endorse the conclusion. Thus the philosopher differs from the apologist in two ways: first, in that the philosopher aims to discover arguments, rather than just to give them to people, and, second, the philosopher is not concerned with what will actually convince people, but only about what people rationally ought to be convinced by. Two further notes are in order on this point. First, the philosopher need not be thought of as trying to discover arguments which no human being has ever thought of. My primary research is in early modern philosophy; I'm just as happy to find an argument in the library as to think it up on my own. Second, we need here a notion of rational obligation or the rational ought on which one is not rationally obligated to endorse the logical consequences of one's view unless and until one considers an argument demonstrating those logical consequences. In other words, we need an account of the rational obligations of beings (like us) who are not logically omniscient. Giving such a theory is, of course, notoriously difficult.
Now, the philosopher's ideal aim is, again, a tall order, for in nearly all (if not absolutely all) cases it is rationally permitted to reject a premise rather than accepting the conclusion. The philosopher may therefore retreat to the weaker aim of discovering arguments the consideration of which obligates people to revise their views in some way or other, even if it leaves open more than one option for the revision. Again, if we can't achieve even this, we may feel we have still accomplished something if we discover arguments which obligate people to revise their credences in some way, even if they are not obligated to make any changes in what they outright believe.
In sum, the apologist is engaged in what could (depending on one's attitude to the apologist in question) be classified either as a public education campaign, or a propaganda campaign. The philosopher, on the other hand, is engaged in a research program. This difference is the fundamental one; it is for this reason that the apologist is concerned with whether people actually accept his arguments, but the philosopher is concerned only with whether people are rationally obligated to accept hers. Of course, an apologist might be (and in my view ought to be) principled and so refrain from trying to get people to accept arguments which they rationally ought not to accept, but this would be a moral constraint on the apologist's activity, and not part of the aim of that activity.
It's worth asking, if this is the case, why do philosophers bother publishing, and why do they care whether other philosophers accept their arguments? The answer in both cases is that philosophy, like other research programs, is a cooperative activity. The philosophical community as a whole is engaged, together, in trying to discover these arguments. This necessitates sharing proposed arguments and engaging, together, in the evaluation of them, and attaching at least some weight to the evaluation given by others.
Finally, what does this mean for the relationship between philosophy and apologetics? Well, the obvious answer is that, if the apologist adopts the principle of only trying to get people to be convinced by arguments they rationally ought to be convinced by, then the apologist is really a popularizer of philosophy. (Of course, if the apologist is not principled in this way then he may also attempt to pass off arguments rejected by philosophers, or just make emotional appeals or use other means not having to do with reason.) This, furthermore, is why I said earlier that it is possible to engage in both activities at once, especially if philosophers are the target of the apologia. That is, one may publish one's arguments both as part of the cooperative research program and in the hope of actually convincing one's fellow researchers. (Or, in an increasingly popular trend, one may publish a book in which one tries to address both one's fellow philosophers and the educated public at once.) The fact that a particular individual has both aims may effect her mode of presentation, but this need not interfere with doing good philosophy. However, it seems to me that in this kind of case the philosophy is going to constrain the apologetics a lot more than the other way around. The philosopher, for instance, must be engaged in the project of trying to figure out exactly who rationally ought to be convinced by the argument, and this may lead the philosopher to point out ways of escape from the argument which, qua apologist, she might wish could go unnoticed. But this again is something which, in my view, the principled apologist ought to do anyway (and, indeed, perhaps from a moral perspective, though not from the perspective of achieving one's ends, it is even more important for the apologist to do this, since the apologist speaks to non-experts who are less likely to discover the way of escape for themselves).
Although philosophy and apologetics may go together, it is comforting to the philosopher that they need not. Being concerned only with the rational force of arguments, the philosopher may ignore the vagaries of human psychology, or of social pressures regarding belief, because, if these are the reasons the argument is not accepted, then the philosopher may nevertheless have succeeded at her aim of giving an argument which rationally ought to be accepted.
(cross-posted at blog.kennypearce.net)
]]>If God does not exist, then the human brain is the product of a purely naturalistic evolutionary process. I will here assume that the evolutionary argument against naturalism is unsound. Authors like Evan Fales have argued that we can expect that our metabolically expensive and complex brains produce, on the whole, more true beliefs than false ones, since it is more advantageous to have true beliefs than false beliefs. Under the naturalistic worldview, human cognitive capacities are truth-tracking. For example, our ability for induction, which we also use in scientific practice, could have warrant because it is the output of a properly working cognitive system, and the best explanation of why our cognitive system evolved the way it did, i.e., as a system that spontaneously makes inductions, is that nature is indeed uniform. So, taking this naturalistic account of properly functioning cognition (which is truth-conducive because of its selective benefits), a naturalist could say that naturalism is warranted because it is the product scientific inquiry, which is the result of a properly functioning, truth-conducive evolved cognitive apparatus.
Moments of unconviction have a spontaneous, non-inferential character. One plausible cognitive mechanism that lies on the basis of them is mental time travel. Humans, along with a few other species, have the ability to assess future scenarios or reminiscence about their experienced past. According to Suddendorf and others who have worked on mental time travel, the adaptive, proper function of mental time travel is that not that it allows us to recollect past events or project the future per se, but to enable one to anticipate and predict future events on the basis of past experiences. This allows us to construct possible scenarios, which can be compared in order to optimize future behavior. However, the proper evolutionary context of mental time travel is not to have a sense of what happens after one's death.
If metaphysical naturalism is correct, moments of unconviction are conducive to a correct belief, but I cannot come up with an evolutionary scenario where they could be somehow be properly linked to the truth of naturalism in an externalist way. If so, there is - at least for the externalist - a disanalogy between areligious and religious experience with respect to justified belief. While religious experience might be a source of warrant for religious belief, areligious experience cannot - it seems to me - have such a justificatory function.
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]]>Argument A (in a paper I have in Szatkowski's forthcoming anthology on ontological arguments):
Argument B:
Argument C: