Category: Metaphilosophy

A Comparison of the Roles of Doubt in Philosophy and in Religion

Top o' the Stack.

This morning I preach on James 1:5-8. Of all the epistles, this, the most philosophical, is my favorite. There we read that he who is wanting in wisdom should ask it of God. But one must ask in faith without doubt or hesitation. "For he who hesitates/doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and carried about by the wind."  While I do not deny that doubt  can close us off from the help we need, I wonder whether doubt has a positive role to play in religion.

Doubt is the engine of rational inquiry, and thus of philosophy and science, as I have said many times, but I think it also plays a salutary role in religion.  Here are six reasons why.

Is the Real a Tricycle?

Had enough of doom and gloom, politics and perfidy? Try this Substack article on for size. 

I examine a point of dispute between Alvin Plantinga and John Hick,  two distinguished contributors to the philosophy of religion.

The Substack article also relates to my earlier discussion with Tom the Canadian, here.

(I am protective of my commenters, especially the young guys; I don't demand that they use their real and/or full names.  I don't want  them to get in trouble with the thought police. Never underestimate the scumbaggery of leftists.)

The Presuppositionalist Challenge to My Position

The presuppositionalism of Cornelius van Til, Greg L. Bahnsen, John M. Frame and others sets me a challenge given some long-held views of mine. I will here explain one of these views and then explain why it is incompatible with presuppositionalism. After that, I will begin to explain my reasons for rejecting presuppositionalism. This third task will require additional posts.

I have maintained that both theism and atheism are rationally acceptable by beings like us in  our present state. Theism is the view that there is a supreme transcendent being of a personal nature who created ex nihilo everything other than himself.  Atheism, then, is the view that there is no such being. Because the competing views thus defined are logical contradictories, they cannot both be true and they cannot both be false. Not everyone will accept the above definitions of 'theism' and 'atheism,' but if I am not mistaken presuppositionalists do accept them.

So on my accounting theism and atheism are both rationally acceptable. To appreciate my thesis you must understand that truth and rational acceptability are not the same. Some propositions are true but not rationally acceptable.  It is also easily shown that some propositions are rationally acceptable but not true.  This is because truth is absolute whereas rational acceptability is relative to various indices. Rational acceptability can vary with time and place and other factors; truth cannot. That there are four elements, air, earth, fire, and water was rationally acceptable to the ancient Greeks. It is not rationally acceptable to us. If one were to identify the true with the rationally acceptable, one would have to say that the number and nature of the elements has changed over time.

To claim that both theism and atheism are rationally acceptable is to claim that good arguments  can be given for both.  A good argument, as I use 'good argument,' is one that has plausible premises and commits no formal or informal fallacy. A good argument, then, is not the same as a rationally compelling or rationally coercive argument.  Every rationally compelling argument is of course good, but not every good argument is rationally compelling. A well-reasoned case for a proposition needn't be a rationally compelling case.  If it is well-reasoned, then I call it 'good.'  Here are the details. (The reader may want to skip the next section (in Georgia 12-pt) the better to catch the drift of this entry, and then come back to it.)

Excursus

Philosophers make reasoned cases for all manner of propositions, but their colleagues typically do not find these arguments to be compelling.  But what do I mean by 'compelling'?   I say that a (rationally) compelling case or argument is one that forces the 'consumer' of the argument to accept the argument's conclusion on pain of being irrational should he not accept it.  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 there are no rationally compelling arguments available to us here below (in our present state) for or against the existence of God. Or so I claim.  I do not claim to have a rationally compelling argument for this meta-philosophical claim. I claim merely that There are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God is rationally acceptable.  It follows that I will not tax you with irrationality if you reject my meta-philosophical claim. I tolerate your dissent: I allow that you may reasonably disagree with me about my meta-claim.
 
We need to bear in mind  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. Every circular argument of the above form is valid, and some are sound; but none are probative. By that I mean that no such argument constitutes a proof.  That ought to be perfectly obvious. Equally obvious is that one cannot prove a proposition by presupposing it. I trust that the reader understands the standard definitions of 'valid' and 'sound.'  Proofs are demonstrative; they establish their conclusions with  objective certainty. There is of course non-demonstrative reasoning, inductive and abductive.  But no inductive argument, no matter how strong, amounts to a proof. This is a point I share with Greg L. Bahnsen: "Inductive arguments are always inconclusive . . . ." (Presuppositional Apologetics, American Vision, 2021, p. 302) Since every argument has a conclusion, what does it mean to say that an argument is inconclusive? It means that the argument does not amount to a proof of its conclusion.
 
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 its 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 any proposition external to themselves.  Such propositions could be said to be, not just evident, but 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 our concern is with things external to consciousness such as God as opposed to what Roderick Chisholm calls self-presenting states such as the state I am in when I feel pain.   In the case of felt pain, subjective and objective self-evidence coalesce. Felt pain is an internal state: to feel pain is to be in pain. Felt or phenomenal pains are such that their esse (their to be) is identical to  their percipi (their to be perceived) But with respect to propositions that are about external things, things that exist independently of finite consciousness, 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 objectively self-evident?  No.  Why can't there be an uncaused event?  "Uncaused event,' unlike 'uncaused effect,' is not a contradictio in adiecto. 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.  (There are implausible truths, and false plausibilities. Exercise for the reader: give examples.) And if you do not know (with objective certainty) 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.  A proof of a proposition is a rationally compelling argument for it.
 
My point is that there are hardly any rationally compelling arguments for substantive theses about matters external to consciousness.  But one can make reasoned cases for such theses.  Therefore, a reasoned case is not the same as a compelling argument. Again, I do not claim to have a rationally compelling argument for the bolded thesis.  I claim merely that the thesis is rationally acceptable. The thesis is both substantive and self-applicable; it implies with respect to itself that is not provable, strictly speaking, or compellingly arguable. I accept that consequence as I must.
 
Because people are naturally dogmatic and crave doxastic security, security in their beliefs, they are unwilling to accept my meta-philosophical thesis that there are hardly any compelling arguments for substantive theses about such matters external to our consciousness as the existence of God.  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 probative any old argument for the conclusions they antecedently accept, no matter how shoddy the argument,  and to reject as non-probative arguments that issue in conclusions they do not accept.  I am not saying that all give in to this tendency in its crude form, but the tendency is there and is operative.
 
One way to refute what I am saying would be by providing a rationally compelling argument for the existence of God, or a rationally compelling argument for the nonexistence of God.  You won't be able to do it. Or so I claim. But I am open to challenge. If you think you have a rationally compelling/coercive argument for or against the existence of God, send it to me. 
 
The reader might suspect that it is the fact of disagreement among highly competent practitioners that leads me to hold, or at least plays an important role in leading me to hold, that on the theism-atheism issue (and on many others) both sides are rationally acceptable, but neither is provable, demonstrable, compellingly arguable. If that is what the reader suspects, then he is on the right track. My position is close to the one articulated in Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics (Hackett, 1981, 7th edition; originally published in 1907):
. . . it will be easily seen that the absence of such disagreement must remain an indispensable negative condition of the [objective] certainty of our beliefs. For if I find any of my judgments, intuitive or inferential, in direct conflict with the judgment of some other mind, there must some error somewhere: and if I have no more reason to suspect error in the other mind than in my own, reflective comparison between the two judgments necessarily reduces me temporarily to a state of neutrality. (342, emphasis added)
 
End of Excursus: Back to the Main Line
 
Neutrality is the key word here. A stock claim of presuppositionalists is  that there is no neutrality with respect to the existence or nonexistence of God, which for them is the God of the (Christian) Bible.  That is to say: there is no neutral point of view from which to evaluate impartially the arguments for and against the existence of God and thereby objectively adjudicate the dispute between theists and atheists. There is and can be no neutrality or impartiality with respect to God because the existence of God is taken by them to be the ultimate presupposition of  all reasoning such that, were God not to exist, neither would the possibility of correct or incorrect reasoning.  No God? Then no correct or incorrect reasoning. According to John M. Frame,
 
. . . our [apologetic] argument should be transcendental. That is, it should present the biblical God, not merely as the conclusion to an argument, but as one who makes argument possible. We should present him as the source of all meaningful communication, since he is the author of all order, truth, beauty, goodness, logical validity, and empirical fact. (Five Views of Apologetics, Zondervan 2000, p. 220)
So if God were not to exist, there would be no meaning, truth, or logical validity. And if that were the case, then atheism could not count as rationally acceptable as defined above. Atheism is rationally acceptable, i.e., reasonable, only if arguments can be adduced in support of it. But if "God makes argument possible," then any argument the atheist gives would presuppose the existence of the very entity against which he is arguing. If "God makes argument possible," then atheism cannot be rationally acceptable, but is instead ruled out ab initio by the ultimate presupposition of all reason and argument, namely, the existence of God.  By "God makes argument possible" I take Frame to mean that the existence of God is a necessary condition of the possibility of both correct and incorrect reasoning about any topic including God.  Following Kant, such a necessary condition of possibility is called a transcendental condition.
 
The reader should pause for a moment to appreciate just how powerful this presuppositional strategy is assuming it stands up to scrutiny.  If it so stands, then to deny the existence of God would be like denying the existence of truths. Anyone who denies that there are truths presupposes that there is at least one truth, namely, the truth that there are no truths. There is thus a clear sense in which the existence of truths is rationally undeniable.  Surely, there is no neutral point of view from which to evaluate impartially the arguments for and against the existence of truths and thereby objectively adjudicate the dispute between those who assert that there are truths and those who assert that there are no truths. That there are no truths is not rationally acceptable.
 
Similarly, presuppositionalists think that there is a clear sense in which God is rationally undeniable: anyone who denies the existence of God, presupposes the existence of God.  This is a powerful argument strategy if it works, and vastly superior to the fallacy — the 'logical howler' — of thinking that one can prove a proposition by simply presupposing it, which is what some presuppositionalists sometimes do or at least seem to do. It is perfectly plain that a circular argument for God is probatively worthless. But a transcendental argument for God is not a circular argument.  Might it do the trick?
 
Here then is the precise place where my long-held view that there are rationally acceptable arguments on both sides of the God question collides with presuppositionalism. If I am right, then the presuppositionalists are wrong, and if they are right, then I am wrong. This is why my intellectual honesty requires me to confront the presuppositionalist challenge. 
 
The issue is this: Is the God of the (Christian) Bible the ultimate transcendental condition of meaning, truth, and logical validity? That there is such a transcendental condition  I do not deny. What I question is whether the God of the (Christian) Bible is this transcendental condition. Thus I do not deny that we must presuppose the existence of truth in all of our intellectual activities. To seek the truth is to presuppose that there are truths to be discovered.  If someone were to assert that there are no truths, that person would be asserting it to be true that there are no truths, thereby presupposing what he is denying, namely, that there are truths. We, therefore, cannot fail to presuppose the existence of truths when we prosecute our intellectual activities which include forming concepts, making judgments, and drawing inferences.
 
But this is a far cry from presupposing the existence of the biblical God. There is clearly a logical gap between
 
1) We finite cognizers in pursuit of our cognitional goals must presuppose the existence of truths
and
2) We finite cognizers in pursuit of our cognitional goals must presuppose the existence of the biblical God.
It is easy to understand how (1) could be true without (2) being true. I will mention two ways. It might be that the truths that we must presuppose, such as the necessary truths of logic,  have a 'platonic' status: they just exist as abstract or ideal objects whether or not the biblical (Christian) God exists. These necessarily true propositions necessarily exist: they don't just happen to exist.  Since they are non-contingent, one cannot sensibly ask why they exist, any more than one can sensibly exist why a necessarily existent God exists. 
 
The second way is the one suggested by Martin Heidegger in the notorious section 44 of Sein und Zeit (1927), Dasein, Disclosedness, and Truth. Roughly, the truth we must presuppose arrives on the scene with us and leaves the scene with us. I do not endorse this second way and will say no more about it here.  
 
On the face of it, then, (1) can be true without (2) being true. But Frame seems to think that they stand and fall together. He seems to think that a  transcendental presupposition in a broadly Kantian sense of the term could be identical to a transcendent metaphysical entity such as the biblical God.
 
Thinking this, however, Frame conflates two different senses of 'transcendental.' In one sense, 'transcendental' means transcendent. The God of the Bible is transcendent in the sense that he is other than the created realm and in no way dependent on it for his own existence. The biblical God exists in himself and from himself, a se.  In a second sense, 'transcendental' has the roughly Kantian sense invoked by Frame when he describes God as "the one who makes argument possible." By conflating the two senses of 'transcendental,' Frame conflates (1) and (2).  
 
Frame's conflation of the two senses occurs in the paragraph immediately following the one I quoted above:
 
We can reach this transcendental conclusion by many kinds of specific arguments, including many of the traditional ones. The traditional cosmological argument, for example, argues that God must exist as the First Cause of all the causes in the world. That conclusion is biblical and true, and if it can be drawn from true premises and valid logic, it may contribute to the goal of a transcendental conclusion. Certainly if God is the author of all meaning, he is the author of causality. And if God is the author of causality, the cause of all causes, he is the cause of all meaning. Therefore, the causal argument yields a transcendental conclusion. (pp. 220-221)
 
This is by no means obvious. What the causal argument purports to yield is a transcendent conclusion. If successful, what it proves is the existence of a transcendent metaphysical entity, a concrete entity, that exists whether or not finite cognizers exist. The truth of (1), however, does not require that the ultimate transcendental presupposition be concrete. For on the broadly 'platonic' approach, the transcendental conditions are of an abstract or ideal nature.   (And if the early Heidegger is right, the truth of (1) does not require that the ultimate transcendental presupposition exist whether or not finite cognizers exist. But we leave Heidegger aside for now.)
 
By 'concrete,' I mean causally active or passive or both. Thus Socrates is concrete because he both acts and he can be acted upon. Leaving aside the question whether God can be acted upon, the biblical God surely acts by causing creatures to exist. So God too counts as a concrete entity by the definition. And this despite his being outside both space and time. What makes God concrete is his capacity for the exercise of causal power. Whatever is neither casually active nor causally passive is abstract.  Abstract entities lack the capacity for the exercise of causal power.
 
Now the biblical God is obviously no abstract object. He is after all causa prima, the first or primary cause. So if the causal argument manages to establish his existence, what it manages to establish is the existence of a metaphysical concretum. Could this transcendent concretum be identical to the transcendental presupposition mentioned in (1) above?  Frame and Co. will presumably say, Why not? 
 
Here is an important difference. The transcendental presupposition of truth (and whatever else truth can be shown to presuppose such as truth-bearers, meaning, etc.) is objectively certain.  The presupposition of truth is rationally undeniable such that to deny the existence of truth is rationally unacceptable.  But that is not the case with respect to the causal argument and the rest of the standard theistic arguments including the quinque viae of Aquinas. These arguments are  reasonably rejected and have been rejected by distinguished Christian theologians. Therefore, Frame is not justified in his conflation of (1) and (2). Equivalently, he is not justified in thinking that the standard theistic arguments constitute specifically transcendental arguments for the existence of God.
 
There is a lot more to be said, but this entry is already too long. To sum up the argument in the preceding paragraph:  (a) The transcendental argument to truth is conclusive; it is rationally compelling; (b) none of the standard theistic arguments are conclusive, which implies none of them are rationally compelling; therefore, (c) pace Frame & Co. one cannot enlist the causal argument or any of the standard arguments to do the transcendental job; therefore, Frame's presuppositionalism, at least, does not prove the existence of God.

The Difference between Philosophy and Polemics

Top o' the Stack. 

Tony Flood comments:

Congrats on another vital post, Bill. You referred to our spectatorship and to theoria without adverting to the etymological connection between them. (You can't do everything in one post! (:^D) ) In Philosophy after Christ, p. 39n1, I noted: 

The Greek theoreō (θεωρέω) means to look at; gaze; spectate; form a picture. “Theory” comes from the noun for “spectacle” and the verb “to behold,” theaomai (θεάομαι), from which we get “theater.” A theoros is a spectator. “When all the people who had gathered to witness this spectacle (θεωρίαν, theōrian) saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away” (Luke 23:48). “He [Jesus] beholds (θεωρεῖ) a commotion with people crying and wailing loudly” (Mark 5:38).
 
You'll no doubt see other implications.

Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?

Retorsion (retortion) is the philosophical procedure whereby one attempts to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who denies it. It is as old as Aristotle and has been put to use by philosophers as diverse as Transcendental Thomists and Ayn Rand and her followers. Retorsion is something like an ad hominem tu quoque except that the homo in question is everyman, indeed every rational being. Proofs by retorsion have the following form:

Proposition p is such that anyone who denies it falls into performative inconsistency; ergo, p is true.

Suppose a person asserts that there are no assertions.  That person falls into performative inconsistency:  the propositional content of the speech act is 'inconsistent' with the performance.  *There are no assertions* is the propositional content, or content, for short.  The speech act of asserting is in this case the performance.  The inconsistency is not strictly logical, which is why I employed scare quotes.  Strictly logical inconsistency/consistency obtains between propositions, and a performance such as asserting is not a proposition.  Performances belong to the category of events, not that of propositions. And yet it is clear that there is some sort of analog of inconsistency here, some sort or analog of 'contradiction.'  The content asserted is falsified by the act of asserting it.  The performance 'contradicts' the content.

 

Continue reading “Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?”

Occam’s Razor: Its Use and Abuse

Ockham chooses a razorI am not historian enough to pronounce upon the relation of what is standardly called Occam's Razor to the writings of the 14th century William of Ockham. The different spellings of his name will serve as a reminder to be careful about reading contemporary concerns into the works of philosophers long dead. Setting aside historical concerns, Occam's Razor is standardly taken to be a principle of theoretical economy or  parsimony that states:

   

OR. Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.

It is sometimes formulated in Latin: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. The principle is presumably to be interpreted qualitatively rather than quantitatively, thus:

   OR*. Do not multiply TYPES of entity beyond necessity.

Thus it is not individual entities that are not to be multiplied, but types or kinds or categories of entity.  To illustrate.  Some criticized David Lewis' extreme modal realism on the ground that it proliferates concreta: there are not only all the actual  concreta, on his view, there are all those merely possible ones as well.  He responded quite plausibly to the proliferation charge by pointing out that the Razor applies to categories of entity, not individual entities, and that category-wise his ontology is sparse indeed.

'Multiply' is a picturesque way of saying posit. (Obviously, there are as many categories of entity as there are, and one cannot cause them to 'multiply.')  And let's not forget the crucial qualification: beyond necessity.  That means: beyond what is needed for purposes of adequate explanation of the data that are to be explained.  Hence:

OR**  Do not posit types of entity in excess of what is needed for purposes of explanation.

So the principle enjoins us to refrain from positing more types of entity than we need to explain the phenomena that need to be explained. It is obvious that (OR**) does not tell us to prefer theory T1 over theory T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity than T2. What it tells us is to prefer T1 over T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity AND accounts adequately for all  the data. So there is a trade-off between positing and accounting.

It seems to me that the Razor as I have just described it ought to be in every philosopher's tool box.  But how useful is it? Not very. For it tells us not to posit more than we need, but it does not tell us what we need. For example, do we need mathematical sets? Given Manny, Moe, and Jack, do we need to add to the ontological inventory the set {Manny, Moe, Jack}?  It is not obvious that we do. But it is also not obvious that we don't. There are arguments on both sides which I won't go into now.

Here's the punch line: simply brandishing the Razor has no tendency to show that there are not such abstract objects as sets. That would be an abuse of the Razor.  It would be the mistake of thinking that T1 is to be preferred to T2 solely on the ground that T1 posits fewer types of entity.

Note that I presupposed above that philosophy is an explanatory enterprise. Is that obvious? As Hilary Putnam says somewhere, "It ain't obvious what's obvious."

Genuine Inquiry and Two Forms of Pseudo-Inquiry: Sham Reasoning and Fake Reasoning

Steven Nemes sent me to his Substack site where he has an article entitled Theology and Philosophy in Roman Catholicism. His way of thinking reminds me of my younger self. What follows is a revised re-posting of an article of mine from September 2014 which explores similar themes. At the end of the re-posting I offer some comments on Nemes' article.

…………………….

In Philosophers Who Compartmentalize and Those Who Don't,  I drew a distinction between

1. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (defend and rationally justify) an antecedently held thesis or worldview whose source is extra-philosophical

and

2. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (by generating) a thesis or worldview that is not antecedently held but arrived at by philosophical inquiry.  

But we need to nuance this a bit inasmuch as (1) conflates the distinction between

1a. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (defend and rationally justify) an antecedently held thesis or worldview whose source is extra-philosophical, a thesis or worldview that will continue to be maintained whether or not the defensive and justificatory operations are successful

and

1b. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (defend and rationally justify) an antecedently held thesis or worldview whose source is extra-philosophical, a thesis or worldview that will continue to be maintained only if the defensive and justificatory operations are successful.

Alvin Plantinga may serve as a contemporary example of (1a). I think it is fair  to say that his commitment to his  Dutch Reformed Christian worldview is such that  he would continue to adhere to it whether or not his technical philosophical work is judged successful in defending and rationally justifying it.  For a classical example of (1a), we may turn to Thomas Aquinas.  His commitment to the doctrine of the Incarnation does not depend on the success of his attempt at showing the doctrine to be rationally acceptable. (Don't confuse rational acceptability with rational provability.  The Incarnation cannot of course be rationally demonstrated. At best it can be shown to be rationally acceptable.)  Had his amanuensis Reginald convinced him that his defensive strategy in terms of reduplicatives was a non-starter, Thomas would not have suspended his acceptance of the doctrine in question; he would have looked for a  defense immune to objections.

There are of course atheists and materialists who also exemplify (1a).  Suppose a typical materialist about the mind proffers a theory that attempts to account for qualia and intentionality in purely naturalistic terms, and I succeed in showing him that his theory is untenable. Will he then reject his materialism about the mind or suspend judgment with respect to it?  Of course not.  He will 'go back to the drawing board' and try to develop a naturalistic theory immune to my objections. 

The same thing goes on in the sciences.  There are climate scientists who are ideologically committed to the thesis that anthropogenic global warming is taking place to such a degree that it poses an imminent threat to life on Earth.  They then look for evidence to buttress this conviction. If they find it, well and good; if they don't, they keep looking or adjust their thesis by shifting from the species to the genus, from global warming to climate change.  Clearly, the ideological commitment drives the well-funded research, and raises doubts about whether the science itself is more ideology than science.

According to Susan Haack, following C. S. Peirce, the four examples above (which are mine, not hers) are examples of pseudo-inquiry:

The distinguishing feature of genuine inquiry is that what the inquirer wants is to find the truth of some question. [. . .] The distinguishing feature of pseudo-inquiry is that what the 'inquirer' wants is not to discover the truth of some question but to make a case for some proposition determined in advance. (Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 8)

Haack SusanHaack, again following Peirce, distinguishes within pseudo-inquiry sham inquiry and sham reasoning from fake inquiry and fake reasoning.  You engage in sham reasoning when you make  "a case for the truth of some proposition your commitment to which is already evidence- and argument-proof."  (8) Characteristic of the sham 'inquirer' is a "prior and unbudgeable commitment to the proposition for which he tries to make a case." (9)

There are also those who are indifferent to the truth-value of the thesis they urge, but argue for it anyway to make a name for themselves and advance their careers.  Their reasoning is not sham but fake.  The sham reasoner is committed to the truth of the thesis he urges; the fake reasoner isn't: he is a bullshitter in Harry Frankfurt's sense.  I will not be concerned with fake inquiry in this post.

The question I need to decide is, first of all,  whether every case of (1a) is sham inquiry.  And the answer to that is No.  That consciousness exists, for example, is something I know to be true, and indeed from an extra-philosophical source, namely, introspection or inner sense.  Those who claim that consciousness is an illusion are frightfully mistaken.  I would be within my epistemic rights in simply dismissing their absurd claim as a bit of sophistry.   But suppose I give an argument why consciousness cannot be an illusion.  Such an argument would not count as sham reasoning despite my mind's being made up before I start my arguing, despite my "prior and unbudgeable commitment to the proposition" for which I argue.

Nothing is more evident that that consciousness, in my own case at least, exists.  Consider a somewhat different case, that of other minds, other consciousnesses.  Other minds are not given to me in the way my own mind is given to me.  Yet when I converse with a fellow human being, and succeed in communicating with him more or less satisfactorily, I am unshakably convinced that I am in the presence of an other mind: I KNOW that my interlocutor is an other mind.  And in the case of my cats, despite the fact that our communication does not rise to a very high level, I am unbudgingly convinced that they too  are subjects of consciousness, other minds. As a philosopher I want to know how it is that I have knowledge of other minds; I seek a justification of my belief in them.  Whether I come up with a decent justification or not, I hold fast to my belief.  I want to know how knowledge of other minds is possible, but I would never take my inability to demonstrate possibility as entailing that the knowledge in question is not actual.  The reasoning I engage in is genuine, not sham, despite the fact that there is no way I am going to abandon my conviction.

Suppose an eliminative materialist claims that there are no beliefs or desires.  I might simply dismiss his foolish assertion or I might argue against it.  If I do the latter, my reasoning is surely not sham despite my prior and unbudgeable commitment to my thesis.

Suppose David Lewis comes along and asserts that unrealized possibilities are physical objects.  I know that that is false.  Suppose a student doesn't see right off the bat that the claim is false and demands an argument.  I supply one.  Is my reasoning sham because there is no chance that I will change my view?  I don't think so.

Suppose someone denies the law of non-contradiction . . . .

There is no need to multiply examples: not every case of (1a) is sham inquiry.  Those who claim that consciousness is an illusion or that there are no beliefs and desires can, and perhaps ought to be, simply dismissed as sophists or bullshitters.  "Never argue with a sophist!" is a good maxim.  But deniers of God, the soul, the divinity of Christ, and the like cannot be simply dismissed as sophists or bullshitters.

So now we come to the hard cases, the interesting cases.

Consider the unshakable belief held by some that there is what William James calls an "unseen order." (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 53)  Some of those who have this belief claim to have glimpsed the unseen order via mystical experience.  They claim that it lies beyond the senses, outer and inner, and that is also lies beyond what discursive reason can grasp.  And yet they reason about it, not to prove its existence, but to show how it, though supra-rational, is yet rationally acceptable.  Is their reasoning sham because they will hold to their conviction whether or not they succeed in showing that the conviction is rationally acceptable? 

I don't think so.  Seeing is believing, and mystical experience is a kind of seeing. Why trust abstract reasoning over direct experience? If you found a way out of Plato's Cave, then you know there is a way out, and all the abstract reasoning of all the benighted troglodytes counts for nothing at all in the teeth of that experience of liberation.  But rather than pursue a discussion of mystical experience, let's think about (propositional) revelation.

Consider Aquinas again.  There are things he thinks he can rationally demonstrate such as the existence of God.  The existence of God is a philosophically demonstrable preamble of faith, but not an article of faith. And there are things such as the Incarnation he thinks cannot be rationally demonstrated, but can be known to be true on the basis of revelation as mediated by the church's teaching authority. But while not provable (rationally demonstrable), the Incarnation is rationally acceptable.  Or so Thomas argues.  Is either sort of reasoning sham given that Aquinas would not abandon belief in God or in the Incarnation even if his reasoning in either case was shown to be faulty?  Bertrand Russell would say yes:

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.  (Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, p. 463)

It is easy to see that Haack is a sort of philosophical granddaughter of Russell at least on this point.

In correspondence Dennis Monokroussos points out that "Anthony Kenny had a nice quip in reply to the Russell quotation. On page 2 of his edited work, Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (London, 1969) (cited in Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 19), he says that the remark “comes oddly from a philosopher who took three hundred and sixty dense pages to offer a proof that 1 + 1 = 2.”

Exactly right.  This is yet another proof that not every instance of (1a) above is an instance of sham reasoning or sham inquiry. 

It is certainly false to say that, in general, it is unphilosophical or special pleading or an abuse of reason to seek arguments for a proposition antecedently accepted, a proposition the continuing acceptance of which does not depend on whether or not good arguments for it can be produced.  But if we are to be charitable to Lord Russell we should read his assertion as restricted to propositions, theological and otherwise, that are manifestly controversial.  So restricted, Russell's asseveration cannot be easily refuted by counterexample, which is not to say that it is obviously true.

Thus I cannot simply cite the Incarnation doctrine and announce that we know this from revelation and are justified in accepting it whether or not we are able to show that it is rationally acceptable.  For if it really is logically impossible then it cannot be true.  If you say that it is actually true, hence possibly true whether or not we can explain how it is possible for it to be true, then you beg the question by assuming that it is actually true despite the opponent's arguments that it is logically contradictory.

It looks to be a stand-off.

One can imagine a Thomist giving the following speech. 

My reasoning in defense of the Incarnation and other such doctrines as the Trinity is not sham despite the fact that I am irrevocably committed to these doctrines.  It is a question of faith seeking understanding.  I am trying to understand what I accept as true, analogously as Russell tried to understand in terms of logic and set theory what he accepted as true in mathematics.   I am not trying to decide whether what I accept is true since I know it it to be true via an extra-philosophical source of knowledge.  I am trying to understand how it could be true.  I am trying to integrate faith with reason in a manner analogous to the way Russell sought to integrate arithmetic and logic.  One can reason to find out new truths, but one can also reason, and reason legitimately, to penetrate intellectually truths one already possesses, truths the ongoing acceptance of which does not depend on one's penetrating them intellectually.

What then does the Russell-Haack objection  amount to?  It appears to amount to a rejection of certain extra-philosophical sources of knowledge/truth such as mystical experience, authority, and revelation.  I have shown that Russell and his epigones cannot reject every extra-philosophical source of knowledge, else they would have to reject inner and outer sense.  Can they prove that there cannot be any such thing as divine revelation?  And if they cannot prove that, then their rejection of the possibility is arbitrary.  If they say that any putative divine revelation has to validate itself by our lights, in our terms, to our logic, then that is just to reject divine revelation.

It looks to be a stand-off, then.  Russell and his epigones are within their  rights to remain within the sphere of immanence and not admit as true or real anything that cannot be certified or validated within that sphere by the satisfaction of the criteria human reason imposes.  And their opponents are free to make the opposite decision: to open themselves to a source of insight ab extra.

………………….

Nemes mentions a "fundamental asymmetry." "Theology takes itself for granted and makes use of philosophy only to the extent that it is useful for furthering theology’s own purposes. Theology is never really critiqued or corrected by philosophy per se." That's right: philosophia ancilla theologiae. But secular ideologies do the same thing.  Metaphysical naturalism and its epistemology, scientism, do not allow themselves to be "critiqued or corrected by philosophy per se." Philosophia ancilla scientiae.

Where is the asymmetry? The situation is symmetrical: both magisteria put philosophy to work to shore up their respective worldviews.  Atheists and mortalists, as a group, never admit defeat.  Corner a naturalist and he'll go eliminativist or mysterian on you.  Show Dennett that consciousness has no naturalist explanation, and he'll just deny its existence and pronounce it an illusion.  We don't explain illusions; we explain them away. Drive McGinn to the wall and he will tell you that it's a mystery.  How is that different from the orthodox Chalcedonian incarnationalist's claim that Christ is fully human and fully divine, one suppositum supporting two natures? Each side is committed to its 'truths' come hell or high water.

Against Specialization

"Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

If so, there is no 'insect' like the hyper-specialized analytic philosopher. (See here for quotation and context.)

The true philosopher is "a spectator of all time and existence," (Plato) and of everything sublunary and superlunary.

Panoptics and synoptics are the optics of the true philosopher.  Spinoza the lens-grinder would agree.