Author: Bill Vallicella

The Paradox of the Preface and the Law of Non-Contradiction

Suppose an author exercises due diligence in the researching and writing of a nonfiction book. He has good reason to believe that all of the statements he makes in the book are true. But he is also well aware of human fallibility and that he is no exception to the rule. And so, aware of his fallibility, he has good reason to believe that it is not the case that all of the statements he makes in the book are true. He makes mention of this in the book's preface. Hence 'paradox of the preface.'  Thus:

1. It is rational for the author to believe that each statement in his book is true. (Because he has exercised due diligence.)
2. It is rational for the author to believe that some statement in his book is not true. (Because to err is human.)
Therefore
3. It is rational for the author to believe that (each statement  in his book is true & some statement in his book is not true.)
Therefore
4. There are cases in which it is rational for a person to believe statements of the form (p & ~p).

"What the paradox shows is that we need to give up the claim that it is always irrational to believe statements that are mutually inconsistent." (Michael Clark, Paradoxes From A to Z, Routledge 2002, p. 144)
  
Is that what the paradox shows?  I doubt it. The paradox cannot arise unless the following schema is valid:

a. It is rational for S to believe that p.
b. It is rational for S to believe that ~p.
Ergo
c. It is rational for S to believe that (p & ~p).

It is not clear that the schema is valid. Rational believability, unlike truth, is a relative property. What it is rational to believe is relative to background knowledge among other things. Relative to the author's knowledge that he exercised due diligence in the researching and writing of his book, it is rational for him to believe that every statement in the book is true. But relative to considerations of human fallibility, it is rational for him to believe that it is not the case that every statement in his book is true. So what (a) and (b) above really amount to is the following where 'BK' abbreviates 'background knowledge':

a*. It is rational for S to believe relative to BK1 that p.
b*. It is rational for S to believe relative to BK2 that ~p.

From these two premises one cannot arrive at the desired conclusion.  So my solution to the paradox is to reject the inference from (1) and (2) to (3).

"But doesn't the author's background knowledge (BK) include both the truth that he exercised due diligence and the truth that human beings are fallible?" Well suppose it does. Then how could it be rational for him to believe that every statement in the book is true? It is rational for him to believe that every statement is true only if he leaves out of consideration that people are fallible. Relative to his total background knowledge, it is not rational for him to believe that every statement in his book is true.

In this way I avoid Clark's draconian conclusion that it is sometimes rational to believe statements that  are mutually inconsistent.  

Can Consciousness Be Explained? Dennett Debunked

To answer the title question we need to know what we mean by 'explain' and how it differs from 'explain away.'

1. An obvious point to start with is that only that which exists, or that which is the case, can be explained. One who explains the  phenomenon of the tides in terms of the gravitational effect of the moon presupposes that the phenomenon of the tides is a genuine phenomenon. One cannot explain the nonexistent for the simple reason that it is not there to be explained. One cannot explain why unicorns run faster that gazelles for the simple reason that there is no such explanandum. So if consciousness is to be explained, it must exist.

2. A second point, equal in obviousness unto the first, is that a decent explanation cannot issue in the elimination of the explanandum, that which is to be explained. You cannot explain beliefs and desires by saying that there are no beliefs and desires. A successful explanation cannot be eliminativist. It cannot 'explain away' the explanandum.  To explain is not to explain away.

3. Summing up (1) and (2): the very project of explanation presupposes the existence of the explanandum, and success in explanation cannot  result in the elimination of the explanandum.

4. Daniel Dennett points out that there can be no explanation without a certain 'leaving out': "Leaving something out is not a feature of failed explanations, but of successful explanations."  (Consciousness Explained, 1991, p. 454.) Thus if I explain lightning as an atmospheric electrical discharge, I leave out the appearing of the lightning to lay bare its reality. That lightning appears in such-and-such a way is irrelevant: I want to know what it is in reality, what it is in nature apart from any observer. The scientist aims to get beyond the phenomenology to the underlying reality.

5. It follows that if consciousness is to be explained, it must be reduced to, or identified with, something else that is observer-independent. Dennett puts this by saying that "Only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events could explain consciousness at all." (454) For example, if your explanation of pain in terms of C-fibers and Delta A-fibers (or whatever) still contains the unreduced term 'pain,' then no satisfactory explanation has been achieved. There cannot be a "magic moment" in the explanation when a "miracle occurs" and unconscious events become conscious. (455)

6. Now if a successful explanation must explain conscious events in terms of unconscious events, then I hope I will be forgiven for concluding that consciousness CANNOT be explained. For, as I made clear in #2 above, a successful explanation cannot issue in the elimination of that which is to be explained. In the case of the lightning, there is a reduction but not an elimination: lightning is reduced to its observer-independent reality as electrical discharge.

Now suppose you try the same operation with the sensory qualia experienced when one observes lightning: the FLASH, the JAGGED LINE in the sky, followed by the CLAP of thunder, etc. You try to separate the subjective appearance from the observer-independent reality. But then you notice something: reality and appearance of a sensory quale coincide. Esse est percipi. The being of the quale is identical to its appearing. This is what John Searle means when he speaks of the "first person ontology" of mental data.

7. It follows from #6 that if one were to explain the conscious event in terms of unconscious events as Dennett recommends, the explanation would fail: it would violate the strictures laid down in #2 above. The upshot would be an elimination of the datum to be explained rather than an explanation of it. To reiterate the obvious, a successful explanation cannot consign the explanandum to oblivion. It must explain it, not explain it away.

8. I conclude that consciousness cannot be explained, given Dennett's demand that a successful explanation of consciousness must be in terms of unconscious events. What he wants is a reduction to the physical. He wants that because he is convinced that only the physical exists. But in the case of consciousness, such a reduction must needs be an elimination.

9. To my claim that consciousness cannot be explained, Dennett has a response: "But why should consciousness be the only thing that cannot be explained? Solids and liquids and gases can be explained in terms of things that are not solids, and liquids, and gases. . . . The  illusion that consciousness is the exception comes about, I suspect, because of a failure to understand this general feature of successful explanation." (455)

Dennett's reasoning here is astonishingly weak because blatantly question-begging. He is arguing:

A. It is a general feature of all successful explanations that F items be explained in terms of non-F items
B. Conscious items can be explained
Ergo
C. Conscious items can be explained in terms of nonconscious items.

(B) cannot be asserted given what I said in #6 and #7. I run the  argument in reverse, arguing from the negation of (C) to the negation of (B): conscious items such as pains are irreducible.

10. Recall from #4 that Dennett said that successful explanations must leave something out. But in the case of a conscious item like a pain, what is left out when we explain it is precisely what we needed to explain! For what is left out is precisely the sensory quale, the felt pain, the Feiglian "raw feel,' the Nagelian "what it is like."

11. Amazingly, on p. 455 he retracts what he said on the previous page about successful explanations having to leave something out. He now  writes:

     Thinking, mistakenly, that the explanation leaves something out, we
     think to save what otherwise would be lost by putting it back into
     the observer as a quale — or some other "intrinsically" wonderful
     property. The psyche becomes the protective skirt under which all
     those beloved kittens can hide. There may be motives for thinking
     that consciousness cannot be explained, but, I hope I have shown,
     there are good reasons for thinking it can. (455)

Do you see how Dennett is contradicting himself? On p. 454 he states that a successful explanation must leave something out, which seems plausible enough. Then he half-realizes that this spells trouble for his explanation of consciousness — since what is left out when we explain consciousness in unconscious terms is precisely the explanandum, consciousness itself! So he backpedals and implies that nothing has been left out, and suggests that someone who affirms the irreducibility of qualia is like a lady who hides her 'kwalia kitties' under her skirt where no mean neuroscientist dare stick his nose.

The whole passage is a tissue of confusion wrapped in a rhetorical trick. And that is the way his big book ends: on a contradictory note.  A big fat load of scientistic sophistry.

12. To sum up. A successful explanation cannot eliminate the explanandum. That is nonnegotiable. So if we agree with Dennett that a successful explanation must leave something out, namely, our epistemic access to what is to be explained, then we ought to conclude that consciousness cannot be explained.

Jerry Coyne on Why You Don’t Really Have Free Will

It does not inspire much confidence when a writer begins his piece with a blatant confusion.  But that is what Jerry A. Coyne does in Why You Don't Really Have Free Will:

Perhaps you've chosen to read this essay after scanning other articles on this website. Or, if you're in a hotel, maybe you've decided what to order for breakfast, or what clothes you'll wear today.

You haven't. You may feel like you've made choices, but in reality your decision to read this piece, and whether to have eggs or pancakes, was determined long before you were aware of it — perhaps even before you woke up today. . . . And those New Year's resolutions you made? You had no choice about making them, and you'll have no choice about whether you keep them.

Suppose you have chosen to read Coyne's essay and have decided on scrambled eggs for breakfast.  Well then, you have made a choice and a decision and it is nonsense for Coyne to claim that you haven't just done those things.  It is also nonsense to claim that you had no choice concerning your New Year's resolutions.  It is a plain fact that one chooses, decides, and deliberates.  What is debatable, however, is whether one freely chooses, decides, deliberates.  Coyne gets off to a rocky start by conflating these two questions:

1. Do human beings ever choose, decide, deliberate?
2. Do human beings ever freely choose, decide, deliberate?

Only the second can be debated reasonably, and this, to be charitable, is the question Coyne is posing.  His answer is that we never freely choose, decide, deliberate.  His thesis is that "free will is a complete illusion."

Suppose you ordered the scrambled eggs.  No one held a gun to your head: your choice was uncoerced and in that sense free.  So you made a choice and you made a free (uncoerced) choice.  But there is another sense of 'free' and it is the one with which Coyne is operating:

3. Do human beings ever freely choose, etc.  in the sense that they could have done otherwise even if all the antecedent conditions up to the point of the choice, etc. were the same?

Call this the libertararian sense of 'free' and distinguish it from the compatibilist sense of the word.  To refine Coyne's thesis, he is claiming that libertarian freedom of the will is an illusion.  Why should we believe this?  Coyne says that there are "two lines of evidence."

Although Coyne uses the word 'evidence' and postures as if empirical science is going to step in, do some real work, and finally solve a problem that philosophers in their armchairs merely endlessly gas off about, the first "line of evidence" he provides is just a stock deterministic argument that could have been given in the 18th century. Determinism is the thesis that the actual past together with the actual laws of nature render only one present nomologically possible. Determinism has two consequences: it deprives the agent of alternative future possibilities, and it insures that the agent is not the ultimate source of any action. For if determinism is true, the agent himself is nothing other than an effect of causes that stretch back before his birth, so that no part of the agent can be an ultimate origin of action.  Hence when you chose the scrambled eggs you could not have done otherwise given the actual past: you could not have chosen oat meal instead.  You made a choice all right; it is just that it wasn't a libertarianly-free choice.

There 's nothing new here.  We are just complex physical systems, and determinism is true.  So everything that happens in our bodies and brains is necessitated, and libertarian freedom of will cannot exist.  Hence our sense that we are libertarianly free is an illusion.

That's a nice philosophical argument that makes no appeal to empirical facts.  Amazing how so many of these scientistic science types with their contempt for philosophy cannot help doing philosophy (while disingenuously denying that that is what they are doing) and simply trotting out old philosophical arguments all the while displaying their ignorance as to their origin and how to present them rigorously.

The argument is only as good as its premises.  Even if we assume determinism, it is scarcely obvious that we are just complex physical systems:  "Memories, for example, are nothing more than structural and chemical changes in your brain cells. Everything that you think, say, or do, must come down to molecules and physics."

Really?  I am now enjoying a memory of hippy-trippy Pam from the summer of '69.  So my memory state is identical to a brain state.  But that  is arguably nonsense: the one exhibits intentionality ,the other doesn't, and so by the  Indiscernibility of Identicals, they cannot be identical.  No materialist has ever given a satisfactory account of intentionality.

So the first argument is rather less than compelling despite Coyne's scientistic posturing: "And what they're [neuroscientists] finding supports the idea that free will is a complete illusion."

The other "line of evidence" is from neurobiology:

Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject "decides" to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. [. . .] "Decisions" made like that aren't conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we've made them, then we don't have free will in any meaningful sense.

This argument is hardly compelling.  For one thing, it appears to confuse predictability with unfreedom.  Suppose I am able to predict accurately how Peter will behave in a range of situations.  It doesn't follow that he does not act freely (in the libertarian sense) in those situations.  On the basis of my knowledge of his character and habits, I predict that Peter will smoke a cigarette within an hour.  That is a prediction about the future of the actual world.  Suppose he does smoke a cigarette within an hour.  My correct prediction does not entail that could not have done otherwise than smoke a cigarette within an hour.  It does not entail that there is no possible world in which he refrains from smoking a cigarette within an hour.

So if, on the basis of unconscious brain activity, it is predicted that the subject will make a conscious decision, and he does, that does not entail that the decision was not free.  Furthermore, why should 'decision' be used to cover the whole seven second brain process? If 'decision' is used to refer to the conscious pressing of the button, then no part of the decision is unconscious, and Coyne's argument collapses.  What scientistic types don't seem to understand is that empirical science is not purely empirical.  It cannot proceed without conceptual decisions that are a priori.

If Coyne thinks that contemporary neuroscience has proven that there is no libertarian freedom of the will, then he is delusional: he is passing off dubious philosophy as if it were incontrovertible science while hiding the fact from himself.

In the sequel I will will adress the question whether libertarian free will could be an illusion.  Does that so much as make sense?

Companion post:  Free Will Meets Neuroscience.

Kant on Ignava Ratio, Lazy Reason

Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, p. 25:

     Theology cannot serve to explain the appearances of nature to us.
     In general it is not a correct use of reason to posit God as the
     ground of everything whose explanation is not evident to us. On the
     contrary, we must first gain insight into the laws of nature if we
     are to know and explain its operations. In general it is no use of
     reason and no explanation to say that something is due to God's
     omnipotence. This is lazy reason. . . .

As Kant remarks in a footnote to A 689 = B 717 of the Critique of Pure Reason, ignava ratio was the name given to a "sophistical argument" of the "ancient dialecticians," the so-called Lazy Argument. 

Diligent reason attempts to account for all natural phenomena in natural terms. The role of God is accordingly attenuated. He becomes at most a sustaining cause of the existence of nature, but not a cause of anything that occurs within nature. See my earlier discussion of divine concurrence. The squeeze is on, and it is no surprise that Schopenhauer squeezes God right out of the picture by rejecting the very notion of causation of existence, as I explain in Schopenhauer on the Cosmological Argument.

This is relevant to my series on Plantinga's new book.  The crucial question is whether there is any room for divine guidance of the evolutionary process.

Plantinga Versus Dawkins: Organized Complexity

This is the third in a series on Plantinga's new book.  Here is the first, and here is the second.  These posts are collected under the rubric Science and Religion besides being classified under other heads.  This third post will examine just one argument of Dawkins' and Plantinga's response to it, pp. 26-28. Here is Plantinga in Chapter One of Where the Conflict Really Lies quoting from Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, p. 141.  (The ellipses are Plantinga's; the emphasis is Dawkins'; I have added a sentence from Dawkins that Plantinga did not quote; and I should note that Plantinga gives the wrong page reference.  The passage is on 141, not 140.)

Organized complexity is the thing we are having difficulty in explaining. Once we are allowed simply to postulate organized complexity, if only the organized complexity of the DNA/protein replicating engine, it is relatively easy to invoke it as a generator of yet more organized complexity. . . .  But of course any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein replicating machine must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself. …. To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like "God was always there", and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say "DNA was always there", or "Life was always there", and be done with it. (1986, p. 141)

Dawkins seems to me to be arguing as follows.

1. What is needed is an explanation of organized complexity as such.
2. God is an instance of organized complexity.
3. If God is invoked as that whose existence and operation explains organized complexity as such, then the explanation is manifestly circular: the explanandum has been imported into the explanans.
4. Circular explanations are worthless: they explain nothing.
Therefore
5. To posit God as cosmic designer fails as an explanation of organized complexity as such.

The argument on my reconstruction is unexceptionable, but how is it relevant? if the task is to explain organized complexity as such, this cannot be done via an instance of it.  No doubt.  But the argument misses the point.  The point is not to explain organized complexity as such, or even the organized complexity of all actual or possible life, but to explain the organized complexity of terrestrial life.  More precisely, the point is to show that this cannot be done by invoking God in one's explanation.  Obviously the argument as reconstructed does not succeed in showing that.

Note that there is no mention of any facts of biology in the above argument.  Now Plantinga doesn't say the following, but I will: the argument is purely a priori.  It is a proof, from concepts alone and without recourse to empirical facts, that an explanation of organized complexity as such cannot be had if the explanans mentions an instance of organized complexity.  How then, Plantinga asks, does the (empirical) evidence of evolution reveal a world without design? (p. 27)

Now suppose we substitute the following proposition for (1):

1* What is needed is an explanation of the organized complexity of terrestrial life.

But if we plug (1*) into the original argument, and modify (3) accordingly, then (3) is false and the argument is unsound.  If we are not trying to explain organized complexity in general, but only the organized complexity of terrestrial life, then there is nothing fallacious about invoking an explainer that is an instance of organized complexity.

The Dawkins passage suggests another sort of argument, oft-heard:  If there is a supernatural designer, what explains his existence?  If you say that God always existed, then you may as well say that life always existed.

This puerile argument is based on a failure to understand that explanations, of necessity, must come to an end.

Why did that tree in my backyard die?  Because subterranean beetles attacked its roots.  If the explanation is correct, it is correct whether or not I can explain how the subterranean beetles got into the soil, or which other beetles were their parents, and grandparents, etc.  Explanations come to an end, and an explanation of a given phenomenon in terms of its proximate cause can be perfectly adequate even in the absence of explanations of other events in the explanandum's causal ancestry.

It is the puerile atheist who demands to know what caused God.  As Plantinga remarks, "Explanations come to an end; for theism they come to an end in God." (p. 28)  I would add that this is obvious if God is an necessary being: such a being is in no need of explanation.  But it holds also if God is a contingent being.  For again, not everything can be explained.

But if God was "always there" as Dawkins puts it, why not say that life was "always there"?  Because life wasn't always there! 

Ultimately, the theist explains everything in terms of the divine mind.  Since explanations must come to an end, the theist has no explanation of the existence or complexity of the divine mind.  But, as Plantinga remarks, p. 28, the materalist or physicalist is in the same position. He cannot explain everything. He "doesn't have an explanation of the existence of elementary particles or, more generally, contingent physical or material beings . . . ." (28)  I would also ask whether the materialist can explain why there are natural laws at all, why the universe is intelligible in terms of them, and why there are these laws and constants rather than some other possible set. 

There is one point that ought to be conceded to Dawkins, however.  It certainly would be a "lazy way out" to invoke divine intervention in cases where  a naturalistic explanation is at hand. 

So far, then, Plantinga 1, Dawkins 0.

Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies: Notes on Chapter One

This is the second in a series on Alvin Plantinga's latest book.  The first post, on the preface, provides bibliographical details and an overview of Plantinga's project.  In this post I will merely set forth what Plantinga understands by Christian belief and what he understands by evolution and where he sees real conflict between the two.  Things will heat up a bit in my third post wherein I will come to grips with Plantinga's critique of Richard Dawkins.  There is a lot of good material that I won't mention, in particular, the discussion on pp. 4-5 on the narrow and broad construals of imago Dei.

A. Plantinga proposes that we take Christian belief "to be defined or circumscribed by the rough intersection of the great Christian creeds: the Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed . . ." but not in a manner to exclude particular creeds.  (p. 8) The "rough intersection" of all of this is ably presented in C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.

B. As for evolution, Plantinga distinguishes six theses (pp. 8-10):

1. Ancient Earth Thesis:  The earth is "perhaps some 4.5 billion years old."
2. Progress Thesis: "life has progressed from relatively simple to relatively complex forms . . . ."
3. Descent with Modification Thesis:  "The enormous diversity of the contemporary living world has come about by way of off-spring differing, ordinarily in small and subtle ways, from their parents."
4. Common Ancestry Thesis:  "life originated at only one place on earth, all subsequent life being related by descent to those original living creatures . . . ."
5. Darwinism: "there is a naturalistic mechanism driving this process of descent with modification: the most popular candidate is natural selection operating on random genetic mutation . . . ."
6. Naturalistic Origins Thesis:  "life itself developed from non-living matter without any special creative activity of God but just by virtue of processes described by the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. . . ."

Plantinga uses 'evolution' to refer to the first four theses, and 'Darwinism' to refer to "the mechanism allegedly underlying evolution." He adds that "the sixth thesis thesis "isn't really part of the theory of evolution."

Now where is there real conflict wth Christian belief?  That God created  man in his image is an absolutely  nonnegotiable element of Christian belief. But on Plantinga's account it does not conflict with any of (1)-(4) or with all of them taken together.  Nor does it conflict with Darwinism, the fifth thesis, "the view that the diversity of life has come to be by way of natural selection winnowing random genetic mutation.  God could have caused the the right mutations to arise at the right time . . . and in this way he could have seen to it that there come to be creatures of the kinds he intends." (p. 11)

This will of course sound crazy to a naturalist.  Every naturalist is an atheist (though not conversely), and most atheists consider the notion that there is a purely spiritual, providential being superintending and directing the goings-on of the physical universe to be risible, a childish fantasy on the order ot the Tooth Fairy, and as such  simply beneath serious discussion. But in point of strict logic, there is nothing inconsistent in one's maintaining all of (1)-(5) and the proposition that evolution is divinely guided.

But how could random genetic mutations be caused by God?  Doesn't 'random' imply 'uncaused'?  No. Plantinga quotes biologist Ernst Mayr, and philosopher of biology Elliot Sober.  The following is from a credible source  I found:

Mutations can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful for the organism, but mutations do not "try" to supply what the organism "needs." Factors in the environment may influence the rate of mutation but are not generally thought to influence the direction of mutation. For example, exposure to harmful chemicals may increase the mutation rate, but will not cause more mutations that make the organism resistant to those chemicals. In this respect, mutations are random — whether a particular mutation happens or not is unrelated to how useful that mutation would be. [Be sure to click on internal link.]

If mutations are random in this precise sense, that does not rule out their being caused.

Real conflict between Christian belief and evolution first arises with respect to the sixth thesis, the Naturalistic Origins Thesis.  Here is the source of the incompatibility according to Plantinga. If the sixth thesis is true, then Christian belief is false.

 A question.  Suppose all six theses are true.  Could not one still be a theist who holds that man is made in the divine image?  If the sixth thesis is true, then God does not intervene in the workings of nature.   He does not cause or prevent genetic mutations; he does not preserve certain populations from perils, etc.  He creates the universe ex nihilo and sustains it in existence moment by moment 'vertically' so to speak, but he  does not interfere 'horizontally.'  He does not insert himself, so to speak, into any unfolding causal chains.  As primary cause alone, he has nothing to do with natural, 'secondary,' causation.  Accordingly, man as an animal has a purely naturalistic origin. But of course imago Dei has nothing to do with man as an animal . . . .  Just a question, to be put on the back burner for now while we continue to examine how Plantinga's overall argument unfolds.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Memorable Instrumentals from the ’60s

Jorma Kaukonen's Embryonic Journey from The Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow LP, 1967.

Bent Fabric, Alley Cat, 1962.

The Village Stompers, Washington Square, 1963.

Kenny Ball, Midnight in Moscow, 1962.

David Rose, The Stripper, 1962.

Acker Bilk, Stranger on the Shore, 1962.

Dick Dale and the Deltones, Misirlou, 1963. If surf music had a father, Dick Dale was the man.

The Chantays, Pipeline, 1963. A nice college boy effort, but the definitive version is the Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughan cover.

Floyd Cramer, Last Date, 1960.

Michael Bloomfield, Albert's Shuffle, 1968.

It’s Nonsense, but it’s True Nonsense!

Lawrence  Krauss writes:

Classical human reason, defined in terms of common sense notions following from our own myopic experience of reality is not sufficient to discern the workings of the Universe. If time begins at the big bang, then we will have to re-explore what we mean by causality, just as the fact that electrons can be in two places at the same time doing two different things at the same time as long as we are not measuring them is completely nonsensical, but true, and has required rethinking what we mean by particles. Similar arguments by the way imply that we often need to rethink what we actually mean by 'nothing', from empty space, to the absence of space itself.

Perhaps this passage that I just dug up answers or helps to answer the question I posed yesterday:  How can someone so intelligent spout such nonsense as I quoted Krauss as spouting?  Answer: he's a mysterian!  We have discussed mysterianism before in these pages in connection with the theologian James Anderson and in connection with the materialist philosopher of mind Colin McGinn.  With Krauss (and others of course) we find the mysterian move being made in the precincts of physics.  Marvellously manifold are the moves of mysterians!

Yesterday I quoted Krauss as saying, "Not only can something arise from nothing, but most often the laws of physics require that to occur."  I commented:

This is just nonsense. Whatever the laws of physics are, they are not nothing. So if the laws of physics require that something arise from nothing, then the laws of physics require that something arise without there being laws of physics. [. . .]

So you've got this situation in which nothing at all exists, and then something comes into existence because the physical laws (which don't exist) "require" it.

This implies an explicit logical contradiction: the laws of physics both do and do not exist.  They do  exist because they govern the transition from nothing to something.  They do not exist because they are included in the nothing from which something arises.

Completely nonsensical (in the sense of being logically contradictory) but true nonetheless! 

Now this is either a mysterian position or a dialetheist position.  The dialetheist holds that, in reality, there are some true contradictions.  The mysterian does not hold this; he holds that there are, in reality, no true contradictions, but some propositions no matter how carefully we consider them appear to us as contradictory, or perhaps must appear to us as contradictory given our irremediable cognitive limitations.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions.  Here is one:  One task of science is to render the world intelligible to us (understandable by us).  But if natural science in one of its branches issues in propositions that are unintelligible (either because they are intrinsically contradictory or such that they appear or even must appear as contradictory to us), then how can one call this science?

Forgive me for being naive, but I would have thought that science, genuine science, cannot contain propositions that are nonsensical!  And would it not be more reasonable to take the apparent nonsensicality that crops up in the more far-out branches as a sign that something has gone wrong somewhere? 

Why Do Some Physicists Talk Nonsense about Nothing?

Sam Harris poses the following question to physicist Lawrence M. Krauss:

One of the most common justifications for religious faith is the idea that the universe must have had a creator. You’ve just written a book alleging that a universe can arise from “nothing.” What do you mean by “nothing” and how fully does your thesis contradict a belief in a Creator God?

The answer Krauss gives is such an awful mess of verbiage that I will not  quote a big load of it, but I will quote some of it.  The reader can read the whole thing if he cares to.

1. The "long-held theological claim" that out of nothing nothing comes is "spurious."  This is because "modern science . . . has changed completely our conception of the very words 'something' and 'nothing.' " We now know that " ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ are physical concepts and therefore are properly the domain of science, not theology or philosophy." 

Wow!  Modern science has completely changed our conceptions of something and nothing! That is something!   Something and nothing are physical concepts?  You mean, like mass and momentum?  Please tell me more!

2. "The old idea that nothing might involve empty space, devoid of mass or energy, or anything material, for example, has now been replaced by a boiling bubbling brew of virtual particles, popping in and out of existence in a time so short that we cannot detect them directly. I then go on to explain how other versions of 'nothing'—beyond merely empty space—including the absence of space itself, and even the absence of physical laws, can morph into “something.” Indeed, in modern parlance, “nothing” is most often unstable. Not only can something arise from nothing, but most often the laws of physics require that to occur."

There is no point in quoting any more of this stuff since it is obviously gibberish.  What is not obvious, and indeed what is most puzzling, is why anyone who is supposedly intelligent would spout such patent nonsense.  Or is he joking?  Pulling our leg?  Trying to sound 'far out' to sell books?  It surely sounds like a weird joke to hear that nothing boils and bubbles and 'morphs'  and is unstable with particles popping in and out of existence.  If a virtual particle popped out of existence would it be even more nothing than the nothing that it was a part of?

If I tell you that I met nobody on my hike this morning, it would be a bad joke were you to inquire, "And how is Nobody doing these days?"  'Nobody' is not the name of a person or the name of anything else. If you are confused by 'I met nobody on my hike,' then I will translate it for you: 'It is not the case that I met somebody on my hike.'  The same goes for 'nothing.'  It is not a name for something.

The point, of course, is that nothing is precisely nothing and not a weird something or even a non-weird something. Krauss is not stupid, and he is presumably not joking.  So he is using 'nothing' in some special way.  He and his colleagues are free to do that.  He and they are  free to stipulate a new meaning for an old word.  But then he is not using it in the sense in which it figures in the old principle, ex nihilo nihil fit, 'out of nothing nothing comes.'  Whether true or false, the meaning of the principle is clear:  if there were nothing at all, nothing could have come into being.  This obviously cannot be refuted by shifting the sense of 'nothing' so that it refers to a bubbling, boiling soup of virtual particles. 

The strong scent of intellectual dishonesty is wafting up to my nostrils from this bubbling, boiling cauldron of Unsinn.

If I make a tasty hamburger out of a lump of raw meat, have I made something out of nothing?  Sure, in a sense: I have made something tasty out of nothing tasty.  In a sense, I have made something out of nothing!  But one would have to have hamburger for brains if one that ought that that refuted ex nihilo nihil fit. 

"Not only can something arise from nothing, but most often the laws of physics require that to occur."  This is just nonsense.  Whatever the laws of physics are, they are not nothing.  So if the laws of physics require that something arise from nothing, then the laws of physics require that something arise without there being laws of physics. 

Not only is the quoted sentence nonsense, it contradicts the rest of what Krauss says in quotation #2 above.  For he says that there is a sense of 'nothing' which implies the absence of physical laws.  So we are supposed to accept that physical laws require the emergence of something out of nothing even if there are no physical laws?

So you've got this situation in which nothing at all exists, and then something comes into existence because the physical laws (which don't exist) "require" it.  Bullshit!  Sophistry for the purpose of exploiting rubes to make a quick pop science buck.

Krauss spouted nonsense on a previous occasion when he said  in the New York Times that human beings  are just a bit of cosmic pollution. See "We're Just a Bit of Pollution," Cosmologist Says.

See also Do Physicists Bullshit?

Ed Feser has also done good work exposing this cosmological nonsense. 

John Haldane on Christopher Hitchens

The piece ends as follows (emphasis added):

Hitchens is a case worth studying. He is more interesting than Dawkins because evidently more psychologically complex and humanly engaging. If we Catholics are right about God and humanity, why was he so wrong? Or, put another way, what can we learn from his attitude about how to understand our own religious claims and about how our lives reflect them? Hitchens pointed to the record of evil associated with Christianity and with Catholicism in particular. It is glib to reply that humanism has its own tale of terrors, and problematic if we also claim that religious adherence brings transforming grace. If I were to take up Hitchens’s campaign against religion it would be to ask again and again: “Where is your grace and your holiness?”

This challenge has particular force against those who downplay human sinfulness and the extent of depravity. Not until we have taken seriously the idea that the effects of sin and ongoing sinfulness corrupt the soul will we be in a position to fashion an effective counter to the charges Hitchens brought against Catholicism and Christianity more generally. It will not be to say that we are better than he claimed. Rather, we need to explain effectively our failings and those of all humanity in terms of a shared supernatural identity. To which we might add, adapting a saying of Wilde’s, whose style of wit Hitchens sometimes echoed: “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking to heaven in hope of salvation.”

Two comments. 

First, I don't find it at all glib to point out the horrors of atheistic humanism which in the 20th century alone are greater than those inflicted over 20 centuries of Christianity.  The purpose of pointing that out  is to underscore the fact that it is not religion as religion that is the source of the horrors, but dogmatic adherence to a worldview, whether religious or anti-religious,  that permits the suppression and murder of opponents.  Bigotry and hate have their source in the human heart, not in religion or in humanism.  Certain forms of religion and humanism may give carte blanche to the exercise of murderous impulsees, but the animating cesspool and prime mover ansd applier of doctrines is and remains the human heart.  It is a fundamental mistake of leftists to seek the source of evil in something external such as religion or capitalism when its source is in a mind made dark by a foul human heart.

But I wholly agree with Haldane that religious people need to explain why their beliefs and practices are so ineffective in transforming their character.  We all know people whose fervent religiosity has made scarcely  a dent in their fundamental nastiness.  Why does religion contribute so little to the amelioration of people?  Twenty centuries of Christianity and even more centuries of Buddhism and we are still tearing each other apart, body and soul.  As for glib remarks, Chesterton's takes the cake: "Christianity hasn't failed; it's never been tried." (Or something like that; I quote from memory.  If you have the exact quotation in its context with references, e-mail me.)  If it hasn't been tried by now, it will never be tried.

Of course, one can argue that the religious would have been worse without religion and I don't doubt that that is true.  And not only are the religious better than they would have been without it, the irreligious are also better than they would have been without it.  For religion supplies the morality that civilizes and humanizes, a morality that permeates the social atmosphere and affects even those who reject the metaphysical underpinnings.  Unfortunately, Western civilization now appears to be running on empty, on the fumes of the Judeo-Christian-Athenian  tradition, and one fears what happens when they too evaporate.  A good question for the New Atheists:  once your suppression of religion is complete, what will you put in its place?  How will you inculcate morality, and what morality will you inculcate?

Although Haldane does not mention the Fall by name, he alludes to it.  The explanation for religious inefficacy anent moral transformation has to involve the notion that man is a fallen being.  Although the religious are not much better than the irreligious, they at least appreciate their fallen condition.  They at least know they are in the gutter, and knowing this, are inclined to do something about it.

Addendum:  My thanks to several readers who have quickly responded with the correct G. K. Chesterton quotation. It is at the end of the following paragraph:

Of course, I mean that Catholicism was not tried; plenty of Catholics were tried, and found guilty. My point is that the world did not tire of the church's ideal, but of its reality. Monasteries were impugned not for the chastity of monks, but for the unchastity of monks. Christianity was unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of Christians. Certainly, if the church failed it was largely through the churchmen. But at the same time hostile elements had certainly begun to end it long before it could have done its work. In the nature of things it needed a common scheme of life and thought in Europe. Yet the mediaeval system began to be broken to pieces intellectually, long before it showed the slightest hint of falling to pieces morally. The huge early heresies, like the Albigenses, had not the faintest excuse in moral superiority. And it is actually true that the Reformation began to tear Europe apart before the Catholic Church had had time to pull it together. The Prussians, for instance, were not converted to Christianity at all until quite close to the Reformation. The poor creatures hardly had time to become Catholics before they were told to become Protestants. This explains a great deal of their subsequent conduct. But I have only taken this as the first and most evident case of the general truth: that the great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

It is from What 's Wrong with the World, Part I, Chapter 5.  I am now inclined to say, having seen the context, that my calling the quotation glib  was itself somewhat glib.

Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism: Notes on the Preface

I now have Alvin Plantinga's new book in my hands.  Here are some notes on the preface.  Since I agree with almost everything in the preface, the following batch of notes will be interpretive but not critical.  Words and phrases  enclosed in double quotation marks are Plantinga's ipsissima verba. 

1. Plantinga is concerned with the relations among monotheistic religion, natural science, and naturalism.  His main thesis is that there is "superficial conflict but deep concord" between natural science and monotheistic religion but  "superficial concord but deep conflict" between science and naturalism. 

2. The great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) affirm the existence of "such a person as God."  Naturalism is a worldview that entails the nonexistence of such a person.  "Naturalism is stronger than atheism." (p. ix) Naturalism entails atheism, but atheism does not entail naturalism.  One can be an atheist without being a naturalist.  John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart is an example. (My example, not Plantinga's.)  But one cannot be a naturalist without being an atheist.  This is perhaps obvious, which is why Plantinga doesn't explain it.  Roughly, a naturalist holds that the whole of reality (or perhaps only the whole of concrete reality) is exhausted by the space-time system and its contents.  No one who holds this can hold that there is such a person as God, God being a purely spiritual agent.

To put it my own way, theistic religion and naturalism could not both be true, but they could both be false.  This makes them logical contraries, not contradictories.  Their being the former suffices to put them in real conflict.  For many of us this is what the ultimate worldview choice comes down to.

3. Plantinga rightly points out that while naturalism is not a religion, it is a worldview that is like a religion.  So it can be properly called a quasi-religion.  (p. x) This is because it plays many of the same roles that a religion plays.  It provides answers to the Big Questions: Does God exist? Can we survive our bodily deaths? How should we live?

I would add that there are religious worldviews and anti-religious worldviews, but that natural science is not a worldview.  Science is not in the business of supplying worldview needs: needs for meaning, purpose, guidance, norms and values. Science cannot put religion out of business, as I argue here, though  perhaps in some ways that Plantinga would not endorse.

4. Given that naturalism is a quasi-religion, there is a sense in which there is a genuine science vs. religion conflict, namely, a conflict between science and the quasi-religion, naturalism.  Very clever!

5. Plantinga's claim that "there is no serious conflict between science and religion" puts him at odds with what I call  the Dawkins Gang and what Plantinga calls the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris.  Plantinga, who never fails us when it comes to wit and style, suggests that the atheism of these four "is adolescent rebellion carried on by other means" (p. xi)  that doesn't rise to the level of the the old atheism of Bertrand Russell and John Mackie.  "We may perhaps hope that the new atheism is but a temporary blemish on the face of serious conversation in this crucial area."  That is indeed the hope of all right-thinking and serious people, whether theists or atheists.

6. Plantinga fully appreciates that modern natural science is a magnficent thing, "the most striking and impressive intellectual phenomenon of the last half millenium." (p. xi)  This has led some to the mistake of thinking that science is the ultimate court of appeal when it comes to the fixation of belief.  But this can't be right for two reasons.  First, science gives us no help in the areas where we most need enlightenment: religion, politics, and morals, for example. (p. xii)  There are worldview needs, after all, and science cannot supply them.  "Second, science contradicts itself, both over time and at the same time." (p. xii)  Indeed it does.  But no one, least of all Plantinga,  takes that as an argument against science as open-ended inquiry.  A question to ruminate on:  Should not religion also be thought of as open-ended and subject to correction?

7.  I would say that if there is demonstrable conflict between a religious belief and a well-established finding of current natural science, then the religious belief must give way.  Plantinga commits himself to something rather less ringing: if there were such a conflict, then "initially, at least, it would cast doubt on those religious beliefs inconsistent with current science."(p. xii).  But he doesn't think there is any conflict between "Christian belief and science, while there is conflict between naturalism and science." 

8. One apparent conflict is between evolution and religion, another between miracles and science.  Plantinga will argue that these conflicts are merely apparent.  Theistic religion does not conflict with evolution but with a "philosophical gloss or add-on to the scientific theory of evolution: the claim that it is undirected . . . ." (p. xii) As for miracles, Plantinga says he will show that they do not violate the causal closure of the physical domain and the various conservation laws that govern it. "Any system in which a divine miracle occurs . . . would not be causally closed; hence such a system is not addressed by those laws." (p. xiii)  That sounds a bit fishy, but we shall have to see how Plantinga develops the argument.

9. As for the "deep concord" between theistic thinking and science, it is rooted in the imago Dei.  If God has created us in his image, then he has created us with the power to understand ourselves and our world.  This implies that he he has created us and our world "in such a way that there is a match between our cognitive powers and the world." (p. xiv)  I would put it like this: both the intelligibility of the world and our intelligence have a common ground in God.  This common ground or source secures both the objectivity of truth and the possibility of our knowing some of it, and thereby the possibility of successful science.

10.  But when it comes to naturalism and science, there is "deep and serious conflict."    Naturalism entails materialism about the human mind.  It entails that we are just complex physical systems.  If so, then Plantinga will argue that "it is improbable, given naturalism and evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable."  If this can be shown, then the conjunction of naturalism and evolution is not rationally acceptable. "Hence naturalism and evolution are in serious conflict: one can't rationally accept them both." (p. xiv)