From the mailbag:
Greetings! First, you have a terrific blog, keep up the good work! I'm just an undergrad who is minoring in philosophy, so a lot of your posts are a little over my head, but I try to follow along when I can.
I was just having a quick glance at your post on Russell's Teapot, and one paragraph stuck out to me:
"Now it seems to me that both (S) and (W) are plainly false: we have all sorts of reasons for believing that God exists. Here Alvin Plantinga sketches about two dozen theistic arguments. Atheists will not find them compelling, of course, but that is irrelevant. The issue is whether a reasoned case can be made for theism, and the answer is in the affirmative. Belief in God and in Russell's teapot are therefore not on a par since there are no empirical or theoretical reasons for believing in his teapot."
I think I have an issue with your statement about atheists not finding theistic arguments compelling to be irrelevant, and all that is important is that, according to you, a reasoned case can be made for theism. So, it sounds to me like you are distinguishing between 2 statements:
"Atheists don't find theistic arguments compelling."
and
"A reasoned case can be made for theism."
You accept the former statement, but you say it's irrelevant, because you accept the latter statement. But to me, I find both statements to be essentially synonymous.
BV: They cannot be synonymous since they don't have the same meaning: they express different propositions.
For example, if I find an argument compelling, then that should also entail that I believe a reasoned case can be made for it. Likewise, if a reasoned case can be made for X, then an argument for X is compelling.
BV: I agree with your first conditional, but not with the second. Philosophers make reasoned cases for all manner of propositions, but their colleagues typically do not find these arguments to be compelling. So a reasoned case need not be a compelling case. But it depends on what exactly is meant by 'compelling.' I suggest that a (rationally) compelling argument is one which forces the 'consumer' of the argument to accept the argument's conclusion on pain of being irrational. I will assume that the 'consumer' is intelligent, sincere, open to having his mind changed, and well-versed in the subject matter of the argument. Now it may be that there are a few arguments that are rationally compelling in this sense, but precious few, and surely no arguments for or against the existence of God.
To appreciate this, note first that arguments have premises and that no argument can prove its own premises. (An argument of the form p therefore p is an argument valid in point of logical form in which premise and conclusion are identical, but no one will take an argument of this form as proving that p.) Now given that no argument can prove its own premises, what reason could one give for accepting the premises of a given argument? Suppose argument A has P1 and P2 as premises and that conclusion C follows logically from the premises. Why accept P1 and P2? One could adduce further arguments B and C for P1 and P2 respectively. But then the problem arises all over again. For arguments B and C themselves have premises. If P3 is a premise of B, what reason could one give for the acceptance of P3? One could adduce argument D. But D too has premises, and if you think this through you soon realize that you have brought down upon your head an infinite regress which is vicious. The regress is vicious because the task of justifying by argument all the premises involved cannot be completed.
To avoid argumentative regress we need premises that are self-justifying in the sense that they are justified, but not justified by anything external to themselves. Such propositions could be said to be self-evident. But what is self-evident to one person is often not self-evident to another. This plain fact forces a distinction between subjective and objective self-evidence. Clearly, subjective self-evidence is not good enough. If it merely seems to subject S that p is self-evident, that does not suffice to establish that p is objectively self-evident. Trouble is, when someone announces that such-and-such is objectively self-evident that too is a claim about how it seems to that person, so that it is not clear that what is being claimed as objectively self-evident is not in the end itself merely subjectively self-evident.
Example. Suppose an argument for the existence of God employs the premise, 'Every event has a cause.' Is this premise self-evident? No. Why can't there be an uncaused event? So how does one know that that premise is true? It is a plausible premise, no doubt, but plausibility is not the same as truth. And if you do not know that the premises of your argument are true, then your argument, even if logically impeccable in every other way, does not amount to a proof, strictly speaking.
My point is that there are hardly any rationally compelling arguments for substantive theses. But one can make reasoned cases for theses. Therefore, a reasoned case is not the same as a compelling argument.
Because people are naturally dogmatic and crave doxastic security, they are unwilling to accept my metaphilosophical thesis that there are hardly any compelling arguments for substantive theses. They want to believe that their pet beliefs are compellingly provable and that people who do not accept their 'proofs' are either irrational or morally defective. Their tendency is to accept as sound any old argument for the conclusions they antecedently accept, no matter how shoddy the argument, and to reject as unsound arguments that issue in conclusions they do not accept. Rand & Co. provide examples in spades.
One way to refute what I am saying would be by providing a compelling argument for the existence of God, or a compelling argument for the nonexistence of God. You won't be able to do it.
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