Philosophy

John Lynch has a summary of the Intelligent Design movement’s achievements for 2006, along with a short list of things they failed to achieve in 2006.

Tom Gilson has posted some thoughts on the “self-undermining” arguments about rationality and naturalism that have been made by C.S. Lewis, Victor Reppert, J.R. Lucas, Richard Taylor, Alvin Plantinga, and others. The basic argument is that if our thoughts are the product of natural causes, then we have no reason to trust that the inferences we make are rational. There are many variations on the argument, and I think this basic line of argument goes back to ancient arguments about determinism. I offered my thoughts in the comments on Vic Reppert’s blog, and repeat them here: The conclusion that rationality is undermined doesn’t follow–at best the conclusion is that the connection between the physical causes and the rational inferences is at best a contingent one that is in need of explanation, which I think is a valid conclusion. But it’s one that is in the process of being answered as we learn about how the brain and perceptual systems work, how language develops, and how the mind evolved. If the fact that the brain operates in accordance with physical law undermined rationality, then the fact that computers operate in accordance with physical law would undermine their ability to perform logical inferences and computations. The real question is how brains came to be able to engage in rational inferences in virtue of the way that they physically operate, not whether they do. Gilson (and Victor) argue that they could only have this ability by being divinely designed to do so–a thesis that doesn’t seem to be particularly fruitful for scientific exploration.Naturalists and supernaturalists agree that we do engage in rational inferences. The supernaturalists think we do so using magical non-physical properties; many of them think that our minds are completely independent of our brains, though I think this is a position that is untenable in the face of empirical evidence from neuroscience (evidence which I have yet to see a substance dualist even attempt to address). In the face of arguments about the fact that computers are physical devices which engage in computation and inference, they respond that this is not real computation and inference, but only a derived computation and inference that is fully dependent upon human computation and inference. Naturalists, by contrast, think that our abilities to engage in rational inference and language have evolved, and that they are both dependent on natural causes and productive in generating additional natural causes of reasoning and action. They are far from perfect–we can identify systematic failures of reasoning that occur (e.g., examples of the sort in Kahneman & Tversky’s classic Judgment Under Uncertainty). And our understanding of our own abilities is far from complete–but is growing rapidly. Scientific examination of our cognitive capabilities has been extremely productive, while the supernatural thesis has been moribund. ...

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic, has written an strongly negative review of Daniel Dennett’s new book, Breaking the Spell. Wieseltier maintains that religion is beyond the scope of scientific examination, and so takes issue with a key aspect of Dennett’s project. Wieseltier’s review has been critiqued by Brian Leiter (at Leiter Reports, here), P.Z. Myers (at Pharyngula, here), Taner Edis (at the Secular Outpost, here), and Michael Bains (at Silly Humans, here). I disagree with Bains about the term “scientism,” even though I am quite sympathetic to “naturalized epistemology” and giving science a major role in philosophical questions. There is clearly quite a lot of room for disagreement about the idea that science should be the primary mechanism of inquiry in all domains–most scientists regularly argue that science draws no moral or ethical conclusions, which means they leave that area to philosophy or (a mistake, in my opinion) religion. There is a key passage of Wieseltier’s review that I partly agree with: It will be plain that Dennett’s approach to religion is contrived to evade religion’s substance. He thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing mistake. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason.In general, the origin of a belief is irrelevant to its truth or falsity. However, if Dennett’s mission is like Pascal Boyer’s, to give an account of why people believe in religion in general, rather than to prove that religion is false, then this is not an objection to what Dennett is doing. Further, if the explanation produced is the best explanation around, then that is good reason to believe that explanation (over an explanation that says religion is divinely inspired). The fact is that there are lots of different religious beliefs that people hold, and they contradict each other. We know from the outset that all religions cannot be true–in fact, the mere existence of the contradictions is sufficient to show that much of the content of most religions must be false. Why people continue to believe it is something that requires explanation. If the best such explanation is a naturalistic one, and that explanation fits the evidence for all religious belief better than supernatural explanations, then that is good reason to favor the naturalistic explanation over the supernatural explanations. Wieseltier seems to reject “inference to the best explanation” as a form of reason. UPDATE: Dennett has responded with a letter to the New York Times, and Wieseltier responds immediately following.

I’ve posted a commentary on the exchange between Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick about this particular argument from Carrier. The post is at the Secular Outpost.

Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick have begun a debate over at the Internet Infidels site. Wanchick gives six arguments for Christian theism, one of which is the following “moral argument”: But what makes us obliged not to mistreat humans? After all, if naturalism is true, “a human being is a biological animal,"[16] as naturalist Julian Baggini admits. But unless humans have unique moral worth not had by beasts, it seems objective moral truth wouldn’t exist. It wouldn’t, for instance, be immoral to rape or kill, for animals do so to each other regularly with no moral significance.[17]When somebody says “it seems,” that may be an indication that there isn’t a solid argument. Here, for instance, Wanchick says that unless humans have unique moral worth distinct from all animals, there is no objective moral truth. The conclusion clearly doesn’t follow without additional premises. The more obvious conclusion from the premise that humans are not the unique holders of moral worth is that animals also have moral worth, that mistreating and abusing them is wrong, and perhaps that it is immoral to kill animals for food–this is the conclusion drawn by many vegetarians and vegans. Moral worth is a distinct concept from moral responsibility, so the fact that animals don’t respect each others’ moral worth doesn’t make them morally blameworthy. One can have moral worth and rights that deserve to be respected without having the capacity for moral reasoning or responsibility. Paul Draper pinpoints the problem such properties would cause for naturalism: “every human being has a special sort of inherent value that no animal has, and every human has an equal amount of this value. Such equality is possible despite the great differences among humans, because the value in question does not supervene on any natural properties. It is a nonnatural property that all (and only) humans possess."[18] The great naturalist philosopher J.L. Mackie, and myriad others, agree.Mackie’s “queerness” argument certainly does carry some weight as an argument against the objectivity of moral properties. This argument about equality, however, I find less convincing. I would argue that the inherent value that is “equal” is that we recognize a set of individual rights for those who meet certain minimal criteria of personhood (or sentience, consciousness, capacity for pain, or whatever are the minimal features which give rise to such rights), and it is those rights which are equal, and are so for social and economic reasons. In fact, the actual value any one person has (for themselves and others) does vary from person to person based on natural properties. Unfortunately, to defend naturalism, Draper and Mackie (like Carrier) have to absurdly deny that humans have such unique inherent worth.[19] Carrier even says some animals are more morally valuable than certain humans in virtue of their superior intellect, rationality, etc.[20] But such positions are obviously false. Humans have moral worth not found in animals, regardless of their comparative capabilities, and the failure to recognize this is simply a lack of moral insight.There is no argument here except bare assertion: “such positions are obviously false.” Those who advocate animal rights would question Wanchick’s capacity for moral insight, and since Wanchick supplies no evidence or reasons to support his position on this issue, there is no reason to prefer his position to theirs. But since these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren’t natural, they must have a supernatural source. And since moral properties exist only in persons, the source of moral properties must be a supernatural person.Again, Wanchick has proceeded by bare assertion–“these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren’t natural”–that’s two assertions, neither of which he has offered any support for. He then asserts that “moral properties exist only in persons,” again without argument. I have some ideas about how such an argument could be constructed, though most of them involve non-objective meta-ethics, which would not support Wanchick’s view. I don’t think that Wanchick actually believes that “moral properties exist only in persons”–surely he would agree that there are particular actions that are objectively wrong, such as an axe murder. But an axe murder is not within a person, it is an action in the natural world, and for it to be objectively wrong is for that action to have moral properties. If Wanchick agrees with this, it undermines this entire argument. If he disagrees with it, then he owes an explanation for how his view is not a form of subjectivism. The moral order, then, is evidence of a supernatural person who grounds moral truth. Additionally, at least some moral truths are necessary, and thus their foundation must be a necessary being grounding moral facts in all possible worlds.[21]Wanchick finishes up with more bare assertion, throwing in his “additionally” remarks without any justification or argument. I’m not sure if this is the worst of Wanchick’s six arguments, but it’s quite feeble.

The “Secular Freethought Society” at Arizona State University (also known as the “Secular Devils”) has an event calendar for 2006 on the web. Gerda de Klerk, the group’s president, sent me an email inviting me to attend any of them, and asking me to pass it on to anyone else interested. The Eugenie Scott talk I’ve already mentioned is on the list, along with some Darwin Week events for February 13-17, a film screening of “Bob Smith USA” followed by “Normal Bob Smith and his Unholy Army of Catholic School Girls invade downtown Tempe” on March 3, a talk by John Lynch of the stranger fruit blog on the development of creationism into the intelligent design movement on March 28, among others.

Here’s an interesting essay/review from The New Yorker about Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit, Simon Blackburn’s Truth: A Guide, and the difference between liars and bullshitters (the former care about the truth but want to lead away from it, the latter have complete disregard for truth). Historical Comments Einzige (2006-12-09): This section resonated with me:"How would one defend philosophers like Hegel or Heidegger from the charge that their writings are bullshit? Not, Cohen says, by showing that they cared about the truth (which would be enough to get them off the hook if they were charged with being bullshitters under Frankfurt's definition). Rather, one would try to show that their writings actually made some sense."As a part of trying to better understand and appreciate Max Stirner I picked up a copy of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. My copy has a line-by-line analysis of the text by some philosopher--at least I presume he's a philosopher. I was struck by the fact that this guy's "analysis" was just as incomprehensible as Hegel's discourse. I gave up on it after about 20 pages. Go ahead and call me a moron, I guess. ...