C. D. Broad on Religious Experience

The following is reproduced from Keith Burgess-Jackson's weblog:

[W]hen persons without religious experience regard themselves as being on that ground superior to those who have it, their attitude must be treated as merely silly and offensive. Similarly, any theories about religious experience constructed by persons who have little or none of their own should be regarded with grave suspicion. (For that reason it would be unwise to attach very much weight to anything that the present writer may say on this subject.)

(C. D. Broad, "Arguments for the Existence of God, II," The Journal of Theological Studies 40 [April 1939]: 156-67, at 159 [italics in original])

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Retronyms

Keith Burgess-Jackson writes, "First there was a copy; then there was an electronic copy; then there was a physical copy."

To which I add:   First I had a plain old address; then I acquired an e-mail address, so that now my plain old address is a physical address.

Should we speak of retronymic families?  'Physical address' and 'snail mail' belong together in one family, 'acoustic guitar' and 'acoustic set' in another.

Nescio, Dutch Author

I learned yesterday that there was a Dutch novelist (1882-1961) who rejoiced under the pen name, Nescio, which is Latin for I don't know.  His Amsterdam Stories is now available in English.  Memo to self: get a copy!

Nescio would be a good title for a philosopher's weblog.  Plato's Socrates is the hero and patron saint of philosophers, and he was the man who knew his ignorance.  Intellectual humility is built into philosophy's name, philosophia, which signifies the acquisitive love of wisdom, not its possession. 

Ideologues possess, or think they do.  Philosophy dispossesses them of their pretended possessions.

Nowadays it is perhaps the ideologues of neurobabble who are in direst need of such dispossession.

Truth and Accuracy

I heard Paula Deen's son say that some statements made about his mother were not accurate.  But I think what he should have said, and perhaps wanted to say, is that they were not true.

What is the difference between truth and accuracy as properties of statements and such cognate items as declarative sentences, propositions, beliefs, judgments, etc. ?  I don't know, therefore I blog.  Nescio ergo 'blogo.'

It seems obvious that 'false' and 'inaccurate' do not have the same meaning as is indicated by their differential usage by competent speakers of English.   To say that JFK finished his first term in office in good health is to say something false, not inaccurate, while to say that he was assassinated on 23 November 1963 is to say something inaccurate (and also false).   Suppose someone says that there are people now living on the Moon.  No one competent in English would say, 'That's inaccurate!'

Intuitively, an inaccurate statement is near the truth (whatever exactly that means!).  Kennedy was shot by Oswald on the 22nd of November, 1963.  If I state that, then I make a statement that is both true and accurate.  If I say he was shot on the 23rd, then I say something very near the truth but inaccurate.  Similarly if I said that he was shot on the 22nd in Fort Worth rather than in Dallas.  Inaccurate but near the truth.

If I simply say that Kennedy was assassinated, then I say something true.  But is it also accurate?  If every inaccurate statement is false, then, by contraposition, every true statement is accurate.

If I say that Kennedy was not assassinated, then I say something false.  But is it also inaccurate? 

Perhaps we should say the following.  While every statement is either true or false, only some statements are either accurate or inaccurate.  Which statements?  Those that feature terms that admit of degrees or somehow imply numerical values.  'Tom is a smoker' would then be either true or false but not either accurate or inaccurate.  But 'Tom is a pack-a-day smoker' would be either true or false and either accurate or inaccurate.  Of course, if it is accurate, then it is true, and if it is inaccurate, then it is false.

It is plausible to maintain, though not self-evident, that while accuracy admits of degrees, truth does not.  A statement is either true or not true.  If bivalence holds and there are only two truth values, then, if a statement is not true, it is false.  It does not seem to make  sense to say that one statement is truer than another.  But it does make sense to say that one statement is more accurate than another.  'The value of pi is 3.14159' is more accurate than 'the value of pi is 3.1415.'  Neither statement is entirely accurate, and indeed no such statement is entirely accurate given the irrationality of pi.   But I suggest that the following is both entirely true and entirely accurate: 'Pi is the mathematical constant whose value is equal to the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter.'

Here is something bordering on a paradox.  Given its irrationality, pi is such that every statement that can be made in a finite time about its value is inaccurate.  But if every inaccurate statement is false, then every statement that can be made in a finite time about the value of pi is false.

The blood libel is an outright lie perpetrated by many Muslims.  It would be absurd to speak of it as 'inaccurate.'

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Truth and Truthfulness

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Suicides

Del Shannon (Charles Weedon Westover), December 30, 1934 – February 8, 1990, known prmarily for his Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit, Runaway, 1961.  "Suffering from depression, Shannon committed suicide on February 8, 1990, with a .22-caliber rifle at his home in Santa Clarita, California, while on a prescription dose of the anti-depressant drug Prozac. Following his death, The Traveling Wilburys honored him by recording a version of "Runaway"." (Wikipedia)

Dalida, O Sole Mio.  I think I'm in love.  "Dalida (17 January 1933 – 3 May 1987), birth name Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a singer and actress who performed and recorded in more than 10 languages including: French, Arabic, Italian, Greek, German, English, Japanese, Hebrew, Dutch and Spanish." [. . .]On Saturday, 2 May 1987, Dalida committed suicide by overdosing on barbiturates.[7][8] She left behind a note which read, "La vie m'est insupportable… Pardonnez-moi." ("Life has become unbearable for me… Forgive me.")" (Wikipedia) 

The Singing Nun, Dominique, 1963.   "Jeanine Deckers (17 October 1933 – 29 March 1985) was a Belgian singer-songwriter and initially a member of the Dominican Order in Belgium (as Sister Luc Gabrielle). She acquired world fame in 1963 as Sœur Sourire (Sister Smile) when she scored a hit with the her French-language song "Dominique". She is sometimes credited as "The Singing Nun". [. . .]

Citing their financial difficulties in a note, she and her companion of ten years[8][9][10], Annie Pécher, both committed suicide by an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol on 29 March 1985.[11][12]
In their suicide note, Decker and Pécher stated they had not given up their faith and wished to be buried together after a church funeral.[7] They were buried together in Cheremont Cemetery in Wavre, Walloon Brabant, the town where they died.[13] The inscription on their tombstone reads "I saw her soul fly across the clouds", a line from Deckers' song "Sister Smile is dead". (Wikipedia)

Phil Ochs, Small Circle of Friends. There but for Fortune.   "Philip David Ochs (/ˈoʊks/; December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) was an American protest singer (or, as he preferred, a topical singer) and songwriter who was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, earnest humanism, political activism, insightful and alliterative lyrics, and distinctive voice. He wrote hundreds of songs in the 1960s and released eight albums in his lifetime." [. . .] "On April 9, 1976, Ochs hanged himself.[110]" (Wikipedia)

On Criticizing Something for Being What It Is

If a person or institution is essentially F, then to criticize it for being F  is equivalent to criticizing it for existing.  (If x is essentially F, then x cannot exist without being F.  If x is F, but not essentially, then x is accidentally F: capable of existing without being F.)  Let's test this thought against some examples.

1. Its core doctrines are essential to the Roman Catholic Church; to demand that it abandon one or more of them is to demand that it cease to exist.

2. The rejection of capitalism is essential to communism.  Therefore, to demand that a communist embrace capitalism is to demand that he cease to be a communist.

3. The moral legitimacy of killing the other side's combatants in times of war is an essential commitment of the miltary.  To demand that the military be pacifistic, that the Marine Corps become the Peace Corps, for example, is to demand that the military cease to exist.

4. If marriage is essentially between one man and one woman, then to demand same-sex marriage is to demand that marriage cease to exist.

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The Bible as the Christian Faith's 'Constitution'

Allan Gotthelf on Ayn Rand on the Existence of God

In January and February of 2009 I wrote a number of posts critical of Ayn Rand.  The Objectivists, as they call themselves, showed up in force to defend their master.  I want to revisit one of the topics today to see if what I said then still holds up.  The occasion for this exercise is my having found Allan Gotthelf's On Ayn Rand (Wadsworth 2000) in a used bookstore.  Gotthelf is a professional philosopher who teaches at Rutgers.  So I thought that if anyone is able to disabuse me of my extremely low opinion of Ayn Rand he would be the one to do it.

On p. 48 of Gotthelf's book, we find:

The "first cause" (or "cosmological") argument maintains that God is needed as the creator and sustainer of the material universe.  But that is to say that existence needs consciousness to create or sustain it.  It makes a consciousness — God's consciousness — metaphysically prior to existence.  But existence exists.  It can have no beginning, no end, no cause.  It just is.  And consciousness is a faculty of awareness, not of creation.  The first cause argument violates both the axiom of existence and the axiom of consciousness.

Now axioms are self-evident truths needing no proof. (37)  So if the cosmological argument violates the two axioms mentioned, it is in bad shape indeed!  But what exactly are the axioms?

According to the axiom of existence, "Existence exists."  Gotthelf takes this to mean that Something exists. (37)  If that is what it means, then it is indeed a self-evident truth.  For example, it is self-evident (to me) that I exist, which of course entails that something exists.  But it is equally self-evident (to me) that I am conscious.  For if I were not conscious then I would not be able to know that I exist and that something exists.  "That one exists possessing consciousness is the axiom of consciousness, the second philosophic axiom." (38)

The first axiom is logically prior to the second.  This is called the primacy of existence and it too is axiomatic though not a separate axiom. "The thesis that existence comes first — that things exist independent of consciousness and that consciousness is a faculty not for the creation of its objects but for the discovery of them — Ayn Rand call the primacy of existence." (39)

Now how does the cosmological argument (CA) violate these axioms?  Gotthelf tells us that the argument makes God's consciousness metaphysically prior to existence, and therefore violates the axiom of consciousness.  But it does no such thing.

'Existence' just means all existing things taken collectively, as Gotthelf points out. (p. 48, n. 6)  So if the CA makes God's consciousness metaphysically prior to existence, then the CA makes God's consciousness metaphysically prior to all existing things.  But this is just false: the CA does not make God's consciousness metaphysically prior to God's existence, nor does it make God's consciousness metaphysically prior to the existence of abstract objects.  So the CA does not make the divine consciousness metaphysically prior to all existing things.  What it does is make God's consciousness metaphysically prior to some existing things, to contingent beings, including all material beings.

One reason, and perhaps the main reason, why the vast majority of professional philosophers consider Ayn Rand to be a hack is that she argues in an intolerably slovenly way.  She gives arguments so porous one could drive a Mack truck through them.  It is surprising to me that a philosopher with Gotthelf's credentials could uncritically repeat these arguments in the same slovenly way.  Surely he understands the difference between all and some.  Surely he can see that the argument of his that I quoted is a bad argument trading as it does on an equivocation on 'existence' as between all existing things and some existing things.

A cosmological arguer could cheerfully grant that the following are self-evident truths: Things exist; consciousness exists; the existence of conscious beings is metaphysically prior to their being conscious.  The existence of God is logically consistent with each of these truths and with the three of them taken in conjunction.

One of the problems with Rand is that she smuggles substantive, controversial content into what she calls her axioms.  I grant that it is axiomatic that "existence exists" if that means that something exists.  But how is it supposed to follow from this that the things that exist "have no beginning, no end, no cause"?  My desk exists, but it obviously had a beginning, will have an end, and had a cause.

Or does she and Gotthelf mean that what has no beginning, end, or cause is that something or other exists?   That is rather more plausible, but obviously doesn't following from the trivial truth that something exists. 

Gotthelf uses retortion to show that it is undeniable that something exists. (37)  For if you maintain that nothing exists, you succumb to performative inconsistency.  The propositional content of the statement that nothing exists is shown to be false by the existence of the speech act of stating, the existence of the one who speaks, and the existence of the context in which he speaks.  But please note that there is nothing performatively inconsistent in stating that the things that exist have a beginning, an end, and a cause.

There are similar 'smuggling' problems with respect to the axiom of consciousness.  It is indeed axiomatic and self-evident that conscious beings exist.  And it too can be proven retorsively.  For if you maintain that no one is conscious, then your performance falsifies the content of your claim.  (38)  But how is it supposed to follow from conscious beings exist that every consciousness is a consciousness of something that exists independently of the consciousness?  For this is what Rand and Gotthelf need to show that "The very concept of 'God' violates the axioms . . . ." (49)  They need to show that "to postulate a God as creator of the universe is to postulate a consciousness that could exist without anything to be conscious of." (49)

Rand and Gotthelf are making two rather elementary mistakes.  The first is to confuse

1. Every consciousness is a consciousness of something (objective genitive)

with

2. Every consciousness is a consciousness of something that exists. (objective genitive).

(1) may well be true; (2) is obviously false.  One who consciously seeks the Fountain of Youth seeks something, but not something that exists.  There can be no consciousness without an object, but it does not follow that every intentional object exists. 

The second mistake is to think that (2) follows from conscious beings exist.  One lands in performative inconsistency if one denies that conscious beings exist.  One does not if one denies (2). 

It is important not to confuse the subjective and objective genitive construals of (2).  (2) is plainly false if the genitive is objective.  (2) is trivially true if the genitive  is subjective.  For it is trivially true that every consciousness is some existing thing's consciousness. 

One gets the distinct impression that Rand and Gotthelf are confusing the two construals of (2).  They think that because consciousness is always grounded in the existence of something, that every object of consiousness must be an existent object.

Gotthelf's claim that  "to postulate a God as creator of the universe is to postulate a consciousness that could exist without anything to be conscious of" (49)  is plainly false and deeply confused.  For one thing, God is conscious of himself and of all necessarily existent abstract objects.  And 'after' the creation of the universe, he has that to be conscious of as well.

What Rand does is simply smuggle the impossibility of a universe-creating conscious being into her axioms.  Gotthelf uncritically follows her in this.  But that has all the benefits of theft over honest toil, as Russell remarked in a different connection.

I come to the same conclusion via  different routes in Existence, God, and the Randians and Peikoff on the Supernatural. 

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After Aristotle

The proprietor and author of the weblog After Aristotle writes,

Having retired after decades as an academician in various capacities, both administrative and professorial, at a small college in Massachusetts, I am dedicating the next three decades or so of my life to the fullest exploration possible of all that philosophy has to offer.

Bravo! Wise move.  A human life should not be wasted on useless administrivia and teaching the unteachable in an age when so-called universities have forgotten their classical mission and have degenerated into leftist seminaries.

I get mail from people who are in a position to retire but hesitate out of fear of not having enough money.  My advice to them is that since death can come without warning, "like a thief in the night," they ought to take the plunge.  James Gandolfini died young at 51.  When he woke up on the last morning of his life did he think it was to be his last? 

The question to ask yourself is this:  In what state will death find me?  Grubbing for more loot?  Or living the best life I can live pursuing the highest ends I am able to pursue?

"The trouble is, you think you have time." (attributed to Buddha)

Related:  The Vital Imperative: Live Well, Live Now