Category: Reason and Rationality

Practical and Evidential Aspects of Rationality: Is it Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?

I need to get clearer about the rationality of beliefs versus the rationality of actions. One question is whether it is ever rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence. And if it is never rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence, then presumably it is also never rational to act upon such a belief. For example, if it irrational to believe in God and post-mortem survival, then presumably it is also irrational to act upon those beliefs, by entering a monastery, say. Or is it? 

W. K. Clifford is famous for his evidentialist thesis that "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence." On this way of thinking, someone who fails to apportion belief to evidence violates the ethics of belief, and thereby does something morally wrong. Although Clifford had religious beliefs in his sights, his thesis, by its very wording, applies to every sort of belief, including political beliefs and the belief expressed in the Clifford sentence lately quoted!  I take this as a refutation of Clifford's evidentialist stringency. 

 If I took Clifford seriously I would have to give up most of my beliefs about politics, health, nutrition, economics, history and a crapload of other things.  For example, I believe it is a wise course to restrict my eating of eggs to three per week due to their high cholesterol content.  And that's what I do.  Do I have sufficent evidence for this belief? Not at all.  I certainly don't have evidence that entails the belief in question.  What evidence I have makes it somewhat probable.  But more probable than not?  Not clear!  But to be on the safe side I restrict my intake of high-cholesterol foods.  It's a bit like Pascal's Wager.  What I give up, namely, the pleasures of bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning,  etc. is paltry in comparison to the possible pay-off, namely living  and blogging to a ripe old age.

And then there is a problem  whether Clifford has sufficient evidence for his evidentialist thesis.  It is obvious to me that he doesn't but I'll leave that for the reader to work out. 

‘Practical’ and Religious Attitudes Toward Philosophy

Philosophy is unserious to the onesidedly worldly and 'practical' because it bakes no bread. To which the best response is: "Man does not live by bread alone." 

To the onesidedly religious, philosophy is unserious because it begets pride and does not lead unto salvation. "Not worth an hour's trouble," said Pascal with Descartes in his sights. Both types, the worldly and the religious, dismiss philosophy as 'mere theory' and 'empty speculation' but for opposite reasons. 

Strangely enough, both types make use of it when it suits their purposes. Each justifies his own position philosophically. How else could he justify it? Assertions and arguments about philosophy are philosophical assertions and arguments — and it cannot be otherwise. Such assertions and arguments cannot come from below philosophy, nor can they come from above it: metaphilosophy is a branch of philosophy.

Blaise Pascal wrote a big fat book of Pensées — and a magnificent book it was. But why did he bother if philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble? Because he made an exception in his own case: his philosophy, he felt, was different! Well, all philosophers feel that way. All feel themselves to be questing for the truth as for something precious, even when they, like Nietzsche, say things that imply that there is no truth. None feel themselves to be engaged in 'empty speculation' or 'mental masturbation' or 'meaningless abstraction.'

One of the curious things about fair Philosophia is that you cannot outflank her, and you cannot shake her off. She outflanks all would-be outflankers. Ultimate dominatrix that she is, she always ends up on top. So you'd better learn to live with her and her acolytes.

Camus and Shestov

Albert Camus is a frustrated rationalist. He values reason and wants  the world to be rationally penetrable, but he finds that it is not. What he calls the Absurd consists in the disproportion between the human need for understanding and the world's unintelligibility, "the unreasonable silence of the world." (Myth of Sisyphus, Vintage 1955, p. 21, tr. Justin O'Brien)

Lev Shestov, on the other hand, is an irrationalist. He delights in  what he takes to be reason's impotence.

Such wild diversity in the life of the mind and spirit does not delight me, but it does fascinate me and serve as a goad to struggle on, day by day, for as much light as can be attained in these inasuspicious circumstances until the curtain falls — or lifts.

Reason, Passion, and Persuasion

1. The cogency of an argument is neither augmented nor diminished by the passion of the arguer.  Cogency and passion are logically independent.  The same goes for the truth or falsity of an assertion.  The raising of the voice cannot transform a false claim into a true one, nor make a true one truer.

2.  What's more, any display of a passion such as anger is likely to be taken by the interlocutor as a sign  that one's argument is nothing but an expression of passion and thus as no argument at all.  He will think your aim is to impose your will on him rather than appeal to his intellect.  The interlocutor will be wrong to dismiss your argument on this ground, but you have yourself to blame for losing your cool and failing to understand human nature.  If your aim is to convince someone of something, then you must attend  not only to your thesis and its rational support, but also to the limitations of human nature in general and the particular limitations of those you are addressing.  'Tailor your discourse to your audience' is a good maxim.

3.  While bearing in mind points 1 and 2, you must also realize that a failure to show enthusiasm and commitment may also work against your project of convincing the other. 

4.  'Rhetoric' is too often employed pejoratively.  That is unfortunate.  The art of persuasion is important but difficult to master.  It is not enough to know whereof you speak; you must understand human nature if you will impart your truths to an audience.

A Farewell to the Philosophy of Religion? Why not a Farewell to Philosophy?

Steven Nemes  informs me that Keith Parsons is giving up teaching and writing in the philosophy of religion.  His reasons are stated in his post Goodbye to All That.  The following appears to be his chief reason:

I have to confess that I now regard “the case for theism” as a fraud and I can no longer take it seriously enough to present it to a class as a respectable philosophical position—no more than I could present intelligent design as a legitimate biological theory. BTW, in saying that I now consider the case for theism to be a fraud, I do not mean to charge that the people making that case are frauds . . . .  I just cannot take their arguments seriously any more, and if you cannot take something seriously, you should not try to devote serious academic attention to it.

John Beversluis is also quitting:

Keith [Parsons] and I have emailed about getting out of the philosophy of religion. I've made the same decision. I'm through wasting my time trying to convince people who don't want to be convinced of the irrationality of their beliefs. And I have had more than enough verbal abuse from the Richard Purtills, the Peter Kreefts, and the Thomas Talbotts. We are all getting older and I, for my part, would much rather read books I want to read (or reread) and listen to great music that I either don't know or want to know better. Not to mention, spending more time with my wife instead of constantly yielding to the lure of the computer to work on yet another project that will convince few, antagonize some, and be ignored by most. Interestingly, Keith and I came to this conclusion more or less simultaneously but independently.

Steven Nemes comments in his e-mail to me:

I don't imagine you think the case for theism is so bad . . . . Any arguments in particular you think are promising? Any anti-theistic arguments you think are particularly good, too? (It was Parsons who said that the case for atheism/naturalism has been presented about as well as it ever can be by philosophers like Michael Martin, Schellenberg, Oppy, Gale, et al.)

Or perhaps you don't think the issues are so clear and obvious one way or the other in the philosophy of religion? In fact, is such dismissive hand-waving like Parsons' and Beversluis' ever acceptable in philosophy? Are there any issues that are settled?

Steven has once again peppered me with some pertinent and challenging questions.  Here is a quick response.

Of course, I don't consider the case for theism to be a "fraud," to use Parson's word. I also don't understand how the case could be called a fraud if the people who make it are not frauds.  But let's not enter into an analysis of the concept fraud.  We may charitably chalk up Parsons' use of 'fraud' to rhetorical overkill, which is certainly not a censurable offense in the blogosphere.  And when Parsons tells us that he cannot take the theistic arguments seriously any more, he is presumably not making a merely autobiographical remark.  He is not merely informing us about his present disgusted state of mind, although he is doing that.  He is asserting  that the case for theism is not intellectually respectable, while the case for atheism and naturalism (which Parsons in his post brackets together) are intellectually respectable.  (It is worth noting that while nauralism entails atheism, atheism does not entail naturalism: McTaggart was an atheist but not a naturalist.  But this nuance needn't concern us at present.)

Parsons' metaphilosophical assertion does not impress me.  I make a different assertion:  There are intellectually respectable cases to be made both for theism/anti-naturalism and for atheism/naturalism.  I don't think there are any 'knock-down' arguments on either side.  There are arguments for the existence of God, but no proofs of the existence of God.  And there are arguments for  the nonexistence of God, but no proofs of the nonexistence of God.  But of course it depends on what is meant by 'proof.'

I suggest that a proof is a deductive argument, free of informal fallacy, valid in point of logical form, all of the premises of which are objectively self-evident. I will illustrate what I mean by 'objectively self-evident' with an anecdote.   In a discussion with a Thomist a while back  I mentioned that the first premise of his reconstruction of Aquinas' argument from motion (the First of the Five Ways) was not (objectively) self-evident, and that therefore the First Way did not amount to a proof.  The premise in the reconstruction was to the effect that it is evident to the senses that the reduction of potency to act  is a real feature of the world.

I granted to my interlocutor  that what Thomas calls motion, i.e., change, is evident to the senses as a real feature of the world.  But I pointed out that it is not evident to the senses that the actualization of potency is a real feature of the world.  That change is the reduction of potency to act is a theoretical claim that goes beyond what is given to sense perception.  For this reason, the first premise of the reconstruction of the First Way, though plausible and indeed reasonable, is not objectively self-evident.  One can of course give many logically correct arguments for the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, but we can ask with respect to the premises of these arguments whether they are objectively self-evident.  If they are not, then they do not amount to proofs given my stringent definition of 'proof.'

It is equally true, however, that one cannot prove the nonexistence of God, from evil say. 

But it is no different outside the philosophy of religion.  God and the soul are meta-physical in the sense of supersensible.  But there is nothing supersensible about the bust of Beethoven sitting atop my CD player.  It is a material object, a middle-sized artifact, open to unaided perception.  But such a humble object inspires interminable and seemingly intractable debate among the most brilliant philosophers.  I am currently exploring some of these issues in other threads, and so I won't go into details here.  But consider Peter van Inwagen's denial of the existence of artifacts (which is part of a broader denial of the existence of all nonliving composite objects).  You could say, very loosely, that van Inwagen is an 'atheist' about artifacts. Other philosophers, equally brilliant and well-informed, deny his denial. 

Now it would take an excess of chutzpah to label van Inwagen's carefully argued denial of artifacts as intellectually unrespectable.  I suggest that it takes an equal excess of chutzpah to label the case for theism intellectually unrespectable.

Steven asked me whether the dismissive attitude of Parsons and Beversluis is acceptable.  I would say no.  It is no more acceptable in the philosophy of religion than it is in other branches of philosophy where there are equally genuine but equally difficult and interminably discussable problems.

Let me end with this question:  If one's reason for abandoning the philosophy of religion is that one cannot convince those on the other side — "I'm through wasting my time trying to convince people who don't want to be convinced of the irrationality of their beliefs." (Beversluis) — then is this not also a reason for abandoning philosophy tout court?  After all, the brilliant van Inwagen did not convince the brilliant David Lewis that the latter was wrong about Composition as Identity — and this is a very well-defined and mundane and ideology-free question.

 

Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers

"God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — not of the philosophers and scholars."  Thus exclaimed Blaise Pascal in the famous memorial in which  he recorded the overwhelming religious/mystical experience of the night of 23 November 1654.  Martin Buber comments (Eclipse of God, Humanity Books, 1952, p. 49):

These words represent Pascal's change of heart.  He turned, not from a state of being where there is no God to one where there is a God, but from the God of the philosophers to the God of Abraham.  Overwhelmed by faith, he no longer knew what to do with the God of the philosophers; that is, with the God who occupies a definite position in a definite system of thought.  The God of Abraham . . . is not suspectible of introduction into a system of thought precisely because He is God. He is beyond each and every one of those systems, absolutely and by virtue of his nature.  What the philosophers describe by the name of God cannot be more than an idea. (emphasis added)

Buber Buber here expresses a sentiment often heard.  We encountered it yesterday when we found Timothy Ware accusing late Scholastic theology of turning God into an abstract idea.  But the sentiment is no less wrongheaded for being widespread.  As I see it, it simply makes no sense to oppose the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the God of religion — to the God of philosophy.  In fact, I am always astonished when otherwise distinguished thinkers retail this bogus distinction.  Let's try to sort this out.

It is first of all obvious that God, if he exists, transcends every system of human thought, and  cannot be reduced to any element internal to such a system whether it be a concept, a proposition, an argument, a set of arguments, etc.  But by the same token, the chair I am sitting on cannot be reduced to my concept of it or the judgments I make about it.  It too is transcendent of my conceptualizations and judgments.  The transcendence of God, however, is a more radical form of transcendence, that of a person as opposed to that of a material object.  And among persons, God is at the outer limit of transcendence. 

Now if Buber were merely saying something along these lines then I would have no quarrel with him.  But he is saying something more, namely, that when a philosopher in his capacity as philosopher conceptualizes God, he reduces him to a concept or idea, to something abstract, to something merely immanent to his thought, and therefore to something that is not God.  In saying this, Buber commits a grotesque non sequitur.  He moves from the unproblematically true

1. God by his very nature is transcendent of every system of thought or scheme of representation

to the breathtakingly false

2. Any thought about God or representation of God (such as we find, say in Aquinas's Summa Theologica)  is not a thought or representation of God, but of a thought or representation, which, of course, by its very nature is not God.

As I said, I am astonished that anyone could fall into this error.  When I think about something I don't in thinking about it turn it into a mere thought.  When I think about my wife's body, for example, I don't turn it into a mere thought: it remains transcendent of my thought as a material thing.  A fortiori, I am unable by thinking about my wife as a person, an other mind, to transmogrify her personhood into a mere concept in my mind.  She remains in her interiority  delightfully transcendent.

It is therefore bogus to oppose the God of the philosophers to the God of Abraham, et al.  There is and can be only one God.  But there are different approaches to this one God.  By my count, there are four ways of approaching God:  by reason, by faith, by mystical experience, and by our moral sense.  To employ a hackneyed metaphor, if there are four routes to the summit of a mountain, it does not follow that there are four summits, with only one of them being genuine, the others being merely immanent to their respective routes.

I should think that direct acquaintance with God via mystical/religious experience is superior to contact via faith or reason or morality.  It is better to taste food than to read about it on a menu.  But that's not to say that the menu is about itself:  it is about the very same stuff that one encounters by eating.  The fact that it is better to eat food than read about it does not imply that when one is reading one is not reading about it.

Imagine how silly it would be be for me to exclaim, while seated before a delicacy: "Food of Wolfgang Puck, Food of Julia Childs, Food of Emeril Lagasse, not of the nutritionists and menu-writers!"

Fruitful Tensions

Mike Rand e-mails,

I was interested to see your recent correspondence and post on the radical vs the conservative. I couldn't help but notice that there is a potential parallel between this and a common interest of yours [ours?], the productive tension between Aristotle and Plato. A radical may be liable to point out that it because Plato is prepared to build a state upon rational rather than traditional grounds that he is prepared to consider women as equally well qualified to rule the state on meritocratic grounds (a la Mill), a thesis which is well supported in the contemporary world though unthinkable in ancient Greece. They may also contrast this against Aristotle’s impression of women which appears indefensible in the modern era but natural in his own time, and they may also draw attention to Aristotle’s defense of slavery. The conservative Aristotle on these points alone appears monstrous to a modern audience against the radical Plato. In accord with the recent post, we might very well conclude that the conservative is a reality-based thinker (within his own environment), whilst the radical is a utopian (prepared to look beyond his environment). The conservative in reply would of course draw attention to the realistic and practical view of Aristotle on running a state and compare this to the proto-communist authoritarian and elitist Plato who would construct a state, mentally at least, that would appear equally monstrous to a modern audience.

This is very perceptive.  Since I am first and foremost an aporetician keen to isolate and sharpen problems under suspension of the natural tendency to glom onto  quick solutions, it interests me and indeed worries me that there may be a tension between my tendency to give the palm to Plato over Aristotle and my conservative tendency.  As I said recently:

One cannot be a philosopher unless one believes that at least some important truths are attainable or at least approachable by dialectical and argumentative means.  Thus there is no place in philosophy for the misologist, the hater of reason, and his close relative the fideist.   Reasoning and argument loom large in philosophy . . . .

But now I must add that to the extent that I favor reason over experience and tradition, the universal over the particular, the global over the local, the impersonal over the personal, to that extent I am in some conflict with my conservative tendency.  One of the differences between conservatives and their liberal/left/radical brethren is that they are skeptical aqbout the value of reason in the ordering of political affairs.

Continue reading “Fruitful Tensions”

Sacrificium Intellectus

No thank you.  A God that would demand the sacrifice of the intellect or even the crucifixion of the intellect is not a God worthy of worship.  Imagine moving at death from the shadow lands of this life into the divine presence only to find that God is nothing but irrational power personified, the apotheosis of arbitrarity.  What could be more horrible?  Far, far better would be to be annihlated at death.

The Infirmity of Reason Versus the Certitude of Faith

Reason is infirm in that it cannot establish anything definitively. It cannot even prove that doubting is the way to truth, "that it is certain that we ought to be in doubt." (Pyrrho entry, Bayle's Dictionary, tr. Popkin, p. 205) But, pace Pierre Bayle, the merely subjective certitude of faith is no solution either! Recoiling from the labyrinth into which unaided human reason loses itself, Bayle writes:

Continue reading “The Infirmity of Reason Versus the Certitude of Faith”

Lycan, Rationality, and Apportioning Belief to Evidence

Is William G. Lycan rational? I would say so. And yet, by his own admission, he does not apportion his (materialist) belief to the evidence. This is an interesting illustration of what I have suggested (with no particular originality) on various occasions, namely, that it is rational in some cases for agents like us to believe beyond the evidence. (Note the two qualifications: 'in some cases' and 'for agents like us.' If and only if we were disembodied theoretical spectators whose sole concern was to 'get things right,' then an ethics of belief premised upon austere Cliffordian evidentialism might well be mandatory. But we aren't and it isn't.)