Maverick Philosopher – Page 673 – Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

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.

It is Good that Osama is Dead, but No Gloating

I was a bit disappointed with Dennis Prager this morning. He said he was "certain" that bin Laden is in hell. No one can be (objectively) certain that there even is a hell, let alone that any particular person has landed there. (Is Prager so en rapport with the divine nature that he understands the exact relation of justice and mercy in God and the exact mechanisms of reward and punishment?) And although there is call for some celebration at the closure this killing brings, I can't approve of Prager's joy at this event. This attitude of Prager's plays right in the hands of leftists and pacifists who confuse retributive justice with revenge and oppose capital punishment and the killing of human beings on that ground.

Anyone who doesn't see that capital punishment is precisely what justice demands in certain circumstances is morally obtuse. I agree with Prager on that. I also agree with his statement this morning that pacifism is "immoral" though I would withhold his "by definition." (I've got a nice post on the illicit use of 'by definition.') And of course I agree that terrorists need to be hunted down and killed. But there should be no joy at the killing of any human being no matter who he is. It would be better to feel sad that we live in a world in which such extreme measures are necessary.

The administration of justice ought to be a dispassionate affair.

Is Osama bin Laden in Hell?

Jeremy Lott, Osama bin Laden in Hell:

To keep Osama's purported martyrdom from inspiring others, the point needs to be made, loudly and repeatedly, that killing innocent people is not the path to heaven. This will put the US government, and Barack Obama in particular, in an an awkward spot. It is undoubtedly a theological statement and an uncomfortable one at that.

It is uncomfortable because to assert that Osama did not go to heaven is to suggest that he went to hell. That could be a problem, given the current state of America's religious ferment. As the controversy over Rev. Rob Bell's new book has shown us, a great number of religious Americans do not want to believe in eternal damnation.

1. The notion that there is heaven but no hell smacks of the sort of namby-pamby feel-good liberalism that I feel it my duty to combat. Of course there may be none of the following: God, afterlife, post-mortem reward, post-mortem punishment. But if you accept the first three, then you ought to accept them all.

2. One reason to believe in some form of punishment after death is that without it, there is no final justice. There is some justice here below, but not much. One who "thirsts after justice and righteousness" cannot be satisfied with this world. Whatever utopia the future may bring, this world's past suffices to condemn it as a vale of injustice. (This is why leftist activism is no solution at all to the ultimate problems.) Nothing that happens in the future can redeem the billions who have been raped and crucified and wronged in a thousand ways. Of course, it may be that this world is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Life may just be absurd. But if you do not accept that, if you hold that life has meaning and that moral distinctions have reality, then you may look to God and beyond this life. Suppose you do. Then how can you fail to see that justice demands that the evil be punished? Consider this line of thought:

a. If there is no making-good of the injustices of this life, it is absurd.
b. There is no making-good of the injustices of this life in this life.
c. Only if there is God and afterlife is there a making-good of the injustices of this life
d. This life is not absurd.
Therefore
e. There is a making-good of the injustices of this life in the afterlife, and this requires the punishment/purification of those who committed evil in this life and did not pay for their crimes in this life.

This is not a compelling argument by any means. But if you are a theist and accept (a)-(d), then you ought to accept the conclusion.

3. A second reason to believe in some sort of hellish state after death for some is because of free will. God created man in his image and likeness, and part of what that means is that he created him an autonomous being possessing free will and sensitive to moral distinctions. In so doing, God limits his own power: he cannot violate the autonomy of man. So if Sartre or some other rebellious nature freely decides that he would rather exist in separation from God, then God must allow it. But this separation is what hell is. So God must allow hell.

4. Is hell eternal separation from God? Well, if Sartre, say, or any other idolater of his own ego wants to be eternally separated from God, then God must allow it, right? Like I said, man is free and autonomous, and God can't do anything about that. But if Stalin, say, repents, how could a good God punish him eternally? The punishment must fit the crime, and no crime that any human is capable of, even the murdering of millions, deserves eternal punishment. How do I know that? By consulting my moral sense, the same moral sense that tells me a god that commands me to murder my innocent son cannot be God. See Kant on Abraham and Isaac.

There is a response to this of course, and what I just asserted is by no means obvious; but this is a topic for a separate post.

I suppose I am a bit of a theological liberal. Theology must be rationally constrained and constrained by our God-given moral sense. Irrationalism is out. Fideism is out. No fundamentalism. No Bibliolatry. No inerrantism. None of the excesses of Protestantism, if excesses they are. No sola scriptura or sola fide or, for that matter, extra ecclesiam salus non est. The latter is also a Roman Catholic principle.

5. As I see it, then, justice does not demand an eternal or everlasting hell. (In this popular post I blur the distinction between eternity and everlastingness.) But free will may. Again, if Russell or Sartre or Hitchens refuse to submit any authority superior to their own egos, then their own free decision condemns them everlastingly. Justice does demand, however, some sort of post-mortem purification/punishment.

6. Will I go directly to heaven when I die? Of course not (and the same goes for almost all of us.) Almost all of us need more or less purgation, to even be in a state where we would unequivocally want to be with God. If your life has been mainly devoted to piling up pleasure and loot, how can you expect that death will reverse your priorities? In fact, if you have solely devoted yourself to the pursuit and acquisition of the trinkets and baubles of this world, then punishment for you may well consist in getting them in spades, to your disgust. If the female ass and the whiskey glass is your summum bonum here below, you may get your heart's desire on the far side. I develop this idea in A Vision of Hell.

7. Is Osama bin Laden in hell? Anyone who claims to know the answer to this is a 'damned' fool. But not even he (Osama or the fool) deserves eternal separation from God — unless he wants it. But it is good that the al-Qaeda head is dead.

Inquiry, Doxastic Equipose, and Ataraxia

Seldom Seen Slim writes,

I'm very happy to see you writing (so well) about the summum bonum.

I don't have the text of Sextus at hand to cite you chapter & verse, but I think I recall this correctly.

It would be pretty ironic for a skeptic to denigrate inquiry since skeptikos means precisely one who inquires. The skeptic arrives at adoxia (if he does) not by deciding or choosing to walk away from an issue like AGW [anthropogenic global warming], but by inquiring into it assiduously. If he does so, then something begins to happen in his mind as he accumulates many many arguments pro and con. He eventually finds himself in a state of equipoise, as inclined to believe as to disbelieve. Adoxia is the spontaneous product of assiduous inquiry.

Slim is alluding to, and taking issue with, the last sentence of Ataraxia and the Impossibility of Living Without Beliefs. What I said there implies that the Pyrrhonian denigrates inquiry. Slim rightly points out that the skeptic is by his very nature an inquirer. And as I myself have said more than once in these pages, doubt is the engine of inquiry. So my formulation was sloppy. It is not that the skeptic denigrates inquiry; it is is rather that he denigrates the notion that inquiry will lead to a truth that transcends appearances.

The Pyrrhonian skeptic inquires, not to arrive at the truth, but to achieve doxastic equipoise and adoxia, belieflessness. This in turn is supposed to engender ataraxia.

It's a bold conjecture, and, alas, a completely false one, in my experience at least. The more I inquire into an issue, the more likely I am to settle on one side or another, and not find myself floating in tranquil equipoise betwixt them. Maybe your experience is different? In any case, the skeptical remedy for partisan belief is study, study, study. They believe studying something to death will take you to equipoise and ataraxia. Willfully choosing to ignore an issue like AGW, they believe, will not buy you ataraxia at all. You remain disposed to believe or disbelieve according to your prejudices, and only the therapy of inquiry can work these doxastic prejudices out of you.

Slim here offers an excellent and accurate summary of The Skeptic Way, which is also the title of a fine book by Benson Mates.

One can doubt whether ataraxia is the summum bonum and whether it is achievable in the skeptic manner. But one thing to me is clear: insight into just how inconclusive are the arguments on both sides of many if not all issues leads to a salutary decrease in dogmatism.

Direct Reference: On the Intention to Use a Name as Previously Used

Most direct reference theories of proper names would seem to be committed to the following four theses:

1. A proper name denotes, designates, refers to, its nominatum directly without the mediation of any properties. There is no description or disjunction of descriptions satisfaction of which is necessary for a name to target its nominatum. Accordingly, ordinary proper names are not definite descriptions in disguise as Russell famously maintained. The reference of a name is not routed through its sense or any component of its sense. A name may have a sense, but if it does it won't play a role in determining whether the name has a referent and which referent it is.

2. Proper names are first introduced at a 'baptismal ceremony' in which an individual is singled out as the name's nominatum. For example, a black cat wanders into my yard and I dub him 'Max Black.' Peter Lupu reminds me that names can get attached to objects also by the use of reference-fixing definite descriptions.

3. The connection established between name and nominatum at the baptism is rigid: once name N is attached to object O, N designates O in every possible world in which O exists. On the DR theory, then, 'Socrates' designates Socrates even in possible worlds in which Socrates is not the teacher of Plato, the husband of Xanthippe, etc. This is because the reference of 'Socrates' is not determined by any definite description or disjunction such descriptions.

Indeed, the DR theory has the strange implication that the following is possible: none of the definite descriptions we associate with the use of 'Socrates' is true of him, yet the name refers to him and no one else. Well, if the sense of the name does not determine reference, what does? What makes it the case that 'Socrates' designates Socrates?

4. A speaker S's use of N refers to O only if there is a causal chain extending from S's use of N back to the baptism, a chain with the following two features: (a) each user of N receives the name from an
earlier user until the first user is reached; (b) each user to whom the name is transmitted uses it with the intention of referring to the same object as the previous user.

Problem: How is (1) consistent with (4)? Suppose I first encounter the name 'Uriel Da Costa' in a book by Leo Strauss. If I am to refer to the same man as Strauss referred to, I must use the name with the intention of doing so. Otherwise I might target some other Uriel Da Costa. It seems to follow that my use of 'Uriel Da Costa' must have associated with it the identifying attribute, same object as was referred to by Strauss with 'Uriel Da Costa.' But then the reference is not direct, but mediated by this attribute. (4) conflicts with (1).

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Chimes and Bells

Antar Blue, The Chimes of Freedom. A very competent cover of the Byrd's version of the great Bob Dylan anthem. The Byrds' version with lyrics.
The Byrds, The Bells of Rhymney
Laura Nyro, Wedding Bell Blues
Donnie Brooks, Mission Bell Fleetwood Mac version
Del Vikings, Whispering Bells
The Edsels, Rama Lama Ding Dong
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

I'm beginning to stretch now . . .

Derek and the Dominoes, Bell Bottom Blues
Alma Cogan, Bell Bottom Blues

Really stretching now . . .

Tee Set, Ma Belle Amie

Why Blog?

Here's why.

Why I am a Quasi-Atheist*

A guest post by Peter Lupu with some comments in blue by Bill Vallicella.

[This essay is dedicated to the memory of Ann Freitag, my significant other, who passed away on April 17, 2010, 11:30am. She gave me two priceless gifts: Herself and a deep understanding that the love of life is not a mere gesture, but a way of loving every living being.]

The title of this essay expresses what it is like for me to experience an ever ascending spiral of theistic aspirations inhibited by atheist inclinations, and vice versa. My predicament is both intellectual as well as existential. It is a blending of the two that fuels a restless existence, one which propels me to journey on this ascending spiral of unfamiliar territory towards an unknown destination.

I. Why I am not an Atheist

Let me begin with atheism. Atheism is first and foremost a rejection of theism. However, the rejection of theism itself springs from several often misunderstood sources. A deep and personal disappointment with a particular religion frequently converts into a fervent rejection of theism and all that it means. A second source may begin with a genuine delight in the achievements of science which now and then, and quite unnoticeably, spills over into a materialistic metaphysics. The latter, in turn, bluntly opposes theism’s commitment to a transcendent reality. Thus, what starts as a delight in the potential of inquiry to unlock the mysteries of the physical universe migrates into an impatient and often mocking rejection of anything non-physical. Theism is a casualty of such a sentiment.

Continue reading “Why I am a Quasi-Atheist*”

How Does a Direct Reference Theorist Deny the Existence of God?

First of all, how does an atheist deny the existence of God? Well, he might just assertively utter

1. God does not exist.

But suppose our atheist is also a direct reference theorist, one who holds that the reference of a name is not routed through sense or mediated by a Russellian definite description that gives the sense of the name. The direct reference theorist denies the following tenet of (some) descriptivists:

The referent of a name N is whatever entity, if any, that satisfies or fits the descriptive content associated with N in the mind of the speaker of N.

For example, on the descriptivist approach there is associated with the name 'God' a certain concept in the mind of the person who uses the name, a concept which includes various subconcepts (immaterial, unchanging, omnibenevolent, etc.). The name has a referent only if this concept is instantiated. Further, nothing having a property inconsistent with this concept can be the referent of the name. Now if our atheist were a descriptivist, his denial of the existence of God could be expressed by an assertive utterance of

2. The concept of an immaterial, omniqualified, etc. being is not instantiated.

Clearly, if one's denial of the existence of God is to be true, the existence of God cannot be a presupposition of one's denial, as (1) seems to suggest; so (2) seems to be a well-nigh mandatory rewrite of (1) that avoids this well-known difficulty pertaining to negative existentials. Whether or not God exists, the concept God exists, and is available to be the subject of judgments. We cannot say of God that he does not exist without presupposing what we aim to deny; but we can say of the concept God that it is not instantiated.

But our atheist is a direct reference theorist, and so cannot avail himself of (2). He cannot say that the nonexistence of God is the noninstantiation of a certain concept. This is because the direct reference theory implies that the referent of a name can exist whether or not it instantiates any of the concepts associated with the use of the name. The theory implies that 'Socrates' names Socrates even if it should turn out to be false that Socrates was the teacher of Plato, the wife of the shrewish Xanthhippe, snubnosed, a stone-cutter by trade, etc., etc.

On the direct reference theory, for 'God' to have a referent it suffices that (i) there be an initial baptism of some being as 'God,' (ii) there be an historical chain whereby this name gets passed down to the present user; (iii) each user in the chain have the intention of using the name with the same reference as the one from whom he received it. Thus it is not necessary that the referent of 'God' fit any concept of God that the end-user might have.

Now the direct reference theory has an advantage I have already noted. It allows a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim to be referring to the same being when they utter sentences containing 'God' despite the fact that their conceptions of God are quite different.

How then does the direct reference theorist deny the existence of God? Since his denial cannot be about a concept of God, it must be about the transmission of word 'God' anits equivalents in other languages. He must deny that the name 'God' was ever introduced in an initial baptism; or he must deny that the historical chain is unbroken; or he must deny that all the various users had the intention of using the name with the reference of the one from whom they received it.

But how can the nonexistence/existence of God hinge on such linguistic and historical facts? The nonexistence of God, if a fact, is an objective fact: it has nothing to do with the nonexistence of some initial baptism ceremony, or some break in a link of name transmission, or some failure of intention on the part of the name-users.

More fundamentally, is it not just absurd to hold, as direct reference theorists seems to hold, that it is not necessary that the referent of 'God' fit ANY concept of God that the end-user might have? For that seems to imply that anything could be God. Could God be Abraham's fear during a lightning storm on a high mountain? Obviously not. Why not? Because 'God' used intelligently encapsulates a certain descriptive content or sense that constrains what can count as God.

What am I failing to understand?

Gale on Baptizing God

Richard M. Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge UP, 1991), p. 11 :

     First, because God is a supernatural being, he seem to defy being
     indexically pinned down or baptized. There are no lapels to be
     grabbed hold of by a use of 'this.' Some would contend that we can
     ostensively pin down the name 'God' by saying 'this' when having or
     after just having a mystical or religious experience, in which
     'this' denotes the intentional accusative or content of the
     experience. This would seem to require that these experiences are
     cognitive and that their objective accusative is a common object of
     the experiences of different persons as well as of successive
     experiences of a single person.

Suppose Abraham or someone has an experience the intentional object of which he dubs 'God.' Suppose the experience is not 'cognitive,' i.e., not veridical: nothing in reality corresponds to the intentional object, the accusative, of the experience. Then there will not have been a successful reference to God. Successful reference is existence-entailing: If I succeed in referring to X, then X exists. Pace Meinong, one cannot refer to what does not exist. Reference is in every case to the existent. It therefore seems that Gale is right when he says that a successful baptizing of God requires the veridicality of mystical experience.

Andrew V. Jeffrey (Faith and Philosophy, January 1996, p. 94) responds to Gale as follows:

     . . . the religious language-game could be played as if theistic
     experiences were both veridical and cognitive even if they were
     not; i.e., people could play the referential game even with a
     radically misidentified referent.

It seems to me that this response misses the point. Suppose the referent has been radically misidentified: Abraham dubs his Freudian superego, or an overwhelming sense of anxiety, or what have you, as 'God.' Then no successful reference will have been achieved. Is a long disquisition necessary to explain that God cannot be a feeling of anxiety?

And if you say that all baptisms are successful in that, after all, something gets baptized, then I say that this shows the utter hopelessness of the causal theory of reference. For the question to be answered is this: How in the utterance of a name does the speaker succeed in referring to an object? Under what conditions is successful reference achieved? A theory that implies that one always succeeds, that there are no conditions in which one fails to succeed, is worthless.

Ataraxia and the Impossibility of Living Without Beliefs

John Lennon bade us "imagine no religion." But why single out religious beliefs as causes of conflict and bloodshed when nonreligious beliefs are equally to blame? Maybe the problem is belief as such. Can we imagine no beliefs? Perhaps we need to examine the possibility of living belieflessly. In exploration and exfoliation of this possibility we turn to the luminaries of late antiquity.

A concept central to the Greek Skeptics, Stoics, and Epicureans, ataraxia (from Gr. a (not) and taraktos (disturbed)) refers to unperturbedness, freedom from emotional and intellectual disturbance, tranquillity of soul. Thus Sextus Empiricus (circa 200 Anno Domini) tells us in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book One, Chapter Six, that "Scepticism has its arche, its inception and cause, in the hope of attaining ataraxia, mental tranquillity." (Hallie, p. 35) The goal is not truth, but eudaimonia (happiness) by way of ataraxia (tranquillity of mind). The central means to ataraxia and happiness is the suspension (epoche) of beliefs, not all beliefs, but those that transcend the mundane and give rise to contention and strife. To use some contemporary examples, beliefs about abortion, gun control, capital punishment, wealth redistribution, illegal immigration, foreign policy, the nature and existence of God etc. lead to strife and in extreme cases bloodshed. Given the difficulty and seeming irresolvability of the issues, the skeptic enjoins suspension of belief for the sake of ataraxia.

Now freedom from disturbance is clearly good, but is it the highest good? Is the highest life the beliefless life, the life that strives after the highest attainable degree of suspension of belief in respect of contentious matters?

One question is whether it is even possible to live without contention-inspiring beliefs. If it is not possible, then the beliefless life cannot be an ideal for us. 'Ought' implies 'can.' If we ought to do something, then it must be possible for us to so it. The same holds for ideals. Nothing can count as a genuine ideal for us unless its realization is at least possible by us. Now I have argued elsewhere that not even the skeptic can avoid some contention-inspiring doxastic commitments. So I maintain the view that the beliefless life is not possible for us and hence not an ideal for us either.

But even if the beliefless life were possible for us, it would still not be choice-worthy. For our very survival depends on our knowing the truth about matters difficult to discern. For example, is global
warming real, and if it is does it pose a threat to human survival? What about the threat to civilization of militant Islam? How much of a threat is it?

These two issues are extremely contentious. Acrimonious and ataraxia-busting debate rages on both sides of both of these issues. But obviously it does matter to the quality of our lives and the lives of our children and other world-mates what the truth is about these questions. It certainly made a difference to the quality of the lives of the workers in the Trade Towers on 9/11 that militant Islamofanatics targeted them. Their quality of life went to zero. Just one bomb can ruin your entire day.

So how could it possibly be right to say that the highest life is the life of belieflessness? If I suspend belief with respect to every contentious matter, every matter likely to induce mental perturbation,
not to mention bloodshed, then I suspend belief with respect to the Islamofascist threat. But then I show indifference to my own well-being. It doesn't matter whether you agree with me about the
threat of militant Islam. Perhaps you are a leftie who thinks that global warming is more of a threat. Then run my argument using that example.

Mental tranquillity is a high value, and no one who takes philosophy seriously can want not to possess more of it. But it cannot be the highest value. The happy life cannot be anything so passive as the life of ataraxia. We need a more virile conception of happiness, and we find it in Aristotle. For the Stagirite, happiness (eudaimonia) is an activity (ergon) of the soul (psyche) in accordance with virtue (arete) over an entire life. His is an active conception of the good life even though the highest virtues are the intellectual virtues. The highest life is the bios theoretikos, the vita contemplativa. Though contemplative, it necessarily involves the activity of inquiry into the truth, an activity that skepticism, whether Pyrrhonian or Academic, denigrates.

A Searle-y Objection to the Causal Theory of Names

Yesterday I argued that whether 'God' and equivalents as used by Jews, Christians, and Muslims refer to the same being depends on one's philosophy of language. In particular, I suggested that only on a causal theory of names could one maintain that their respective references are to the same entity. The causal theory of names, however, strikes me as not very plausible. Here is one consideration.

The causal theory of names of Saul Kripke et al. requires that there be an initial baptism of the target of reference, a baptism at which the name is first introduced. This can come about by ostension: Pointing to a newly acquired kitten, I bestow upon it the moniker, 'Mungojerrie.' Or it can come about by the use of a reference-fixing definite description: Let 'Neptune' denote the celestial object responsible for the perturbation of the orbit of Uranus. In the second case, it may be that the object whose name is being introduced is not itself present at the baptismal ceremony. What is present, or observable, are certain effects of the object hypothesized. (See Saul Kripke Naming and Necessity, Harvard 1980 p. 79, n. 33 and p. 96, n. 42.)

As I understand it, a necessary condition for successful reference on the causal theory is that a
speaker's use of a name be causally connected (perhaps indirectly) with the object referred to. We can refer to objects only if we stand in some causal relation to them (direct or indirect). So my use of 'God' refers to God not because there is something that satisfies the definite description or disjunction of definite descriptions that unpack the sense of 'God' as I use it, but because my use of 'God' can be traced back though a long causal chain to an initial baptism, as it were, of God by, say, Moses on Mt. Sinai.

If this is what the causal theory (or at least the Kripkean version thereof) requires, then the
theory rules out all reference to abstracta: Fregean propositions, numbers, sets, etc. But it also rules out reference to future events.

Suppose meteorologists predict a hurricane that has the power to wipe out New Orleans a second time. Conservatives to a man and a woman, they introduce the name 'Hillary' for this horrendous event, and they introduce it via some appropriately complex definite description. (They can't point to it since it doesn't yet exist.) The meteorologists continue with their work using 'Hillary' for the event in question. Since the event lies in the future, there is no question of its causing directly or indirectly any use of the name 'Hillary.' Nor is there any question of the name's being introduced on the basis of effects of the event.

What we seem to have here is a legitimate use of a proper name that cannot be accounted for by the causal theory. For the causal theory rules out reference to a thing or event to which one does not stand in a causal relation. This suggests that there is something very wrong with the theory. (See John Searle, Intentionality, Cambridge 1983, p. 241.)

The God of Christianity and the God of Islam: Same God?

One morning an irate C-Span viewer called in to say that he prayed to the living God, not to the mythical being, Allah, to whom Muslims pray. The C-Span guest made a standard response, which is correct as far as it goes, namely, that Allah is Arabic for God, just as Gott is German for God. He suggested that adherents of the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) worship the same God under different names. No doubt this is a politically correct thing to say, but is it true?

Our question, then, is precisely this: Does the normative Christian and the normative Muslim worship numerically the same God, or numerically different Gods? (By 'normative Christian/Muslim' I mean an orthodox adherent of his faith who understands its content, without subtraction and without addition of private opinions.) Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic. So if Christian and Muslim worship different Gods, then one is worshipping a nonexistent God, or, if you prefer, is failing to worship the true God.

1. Let's start with the obvious: 'Allah' is Arabic for God. So if an Arabic-speaking Coptic Christian refers to God, he uses 'Allah.' And if an Arabic-speaking Muslim refers to God, he too uses 'Allah.' From the fact that both Copt and Muslim use 'Allah' it does not follow that they are referring to the same God, but it also does not follow that they are referring to numerically different Gods. So we will not make any progress with our question if we remain at the level of words. We must advance to concepts.

2. We need to distinguish between the word for God, the concept (conception) of God, and God. God is not a concept, but there are concepts of God and, apart from mystical intuition, we have no access to God except via our concepts of God. Now it is undeniable that the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God partially overlap. The following is a partial list of what is common to both conceptions:

a. There is exactly one God.
b. God is the creator of everything distinct from himself.
c. God is transcendent: he is radically different from everthing distinct from himself.
d. God is good.

Now if the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God were identical, then we would have no reason to think that Christian and Muslim worship different Gods. But of course the conceptions, despite partial overlap, are not identical. Christians believe in a triune God who became man in Jesus of Nazareth. Or to put it precisely, they believe in a triune God the second person of which became man in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the central and indeed crucial (from the Latin, crux, crucis, meaning cross) difference between the two faiths. The crux of the matter is the cross.

3. Now comes the hard part, which is to choose between two competing views:

V1: Christian and Muslim worship the same God, but one of them has a false belief about God, whether it be the belief that God is unitarian or the belief that God is trinitarian.

V2: Christian and Muslim worship different Gods precisely because they have different conceptions of God. So it is not that one of them has a false belief about the one God they both worship; it is rather that one of them does not worship the true God at all.

There is no easy way to decide rationally between these two views. We have to delve into the philosophy of language and ask how reference is achieved. How do linguistic expressions attach or apply to extralinguistic entities? How do words grab onto the (extralinguistic) world? In particular, how do nominal expressions work? What makes my utterance of 'Socrates' denote Socrates rather than someone or something else? What makes my use of 'God' (i) have a referent at all and (ii) have the precise referent it has?

4. It is reasonable to hold, with Frege, Russell, and many others, that reference is routed through, and determined by, sense: an expression picks out its object in virtue of the latter's satisfaction of a
description associated with the referring expression, a description that unpacks the expression's sense. If we think of reference in this way, then 'God' refers to whatever entity, if any, that satisfies the definite description encapsulated in 'God' as this term is used in a given linguistic community.

Given that God is not an actual or possible object of (sense) experience, this seems like a reasonable approach to take. The idea is that 'God' is a definite description in disguise so that 'God' refers to whichever entity satisfies the description associated wth 'God.' Now consider two candidate definite descriptions, the first corresponding to the Mulsim conception, the second corresponding to the Christian.

D1: 'the unique x such that x is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, created the world ex nihilo and is unitarian'

D2: 'the unique x such that x is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, created the world ex nihilo, and is triune.'

Suppose that reference is not direct, but routed through sense, or mediated by a description, in the manner explained above. It is easy to see that no one entity can satisfy both (D1) and (D2). So if reference is routed through sense, then Christian and Muslim cannot be referring to the same being. Indeed, one of them is not succeeding in referring at all. For if God is triune, nothing in reality answers tothe Muslim's conception of God. And if God is unitarian, then nothing in reality answers to the Christian conception.

And so, contrary to what Miroslav Volf maintains, the four points of commonality in the Christian and Muslim conceptions listed above do NOT "establish the claim that in their worship of God, Muslims and Christians refer to the same object." (Allah: A Christian Response, HarperCollins 2011, p. 110.) For if reference to God is mediated by a conception which includes the subconcept triune or unitarian, the reference cannot be to the same entity.

A mundane example (adapted from Kripke) will make this more clear. Sally sees a handsome man at a party standing in the corner drinking a clear bubbly liquid from a cocktail glass. She turns to her companion Nancy and says, "The man standing in the corner drinking champagne is handsome!" Suppose the man is not drinking champagne, but sparkling water instead. Has Sally succeeded in referring to the man or not? Argumentative Nancy, who knows that no alcohol is being served at the party, and who also finds the man handsome, says, "You are not referring to anything: there is no man in the corner drinking champagne. The man is drinking sparkling water. Nothing satisfies your definite description. There is no one man we both admire. Your handsome man does not exist, but mine does."

Now in this example what we would intuitively say is that Sally did succeed in referring to someone using a definite description even though the object she succeeded in referring to does not satisfy the description. Intuitively, we would say that Sally simply has a false belief about the object to which she is successfully referring, and that Sally and Nancy are referring to and admiring the very same man.

But note how this case differs from the God case. Both women see the man in the corner. But God is not an object of possible (sense) experience, of Kant's moegliche Erfarhung. Hence the reference of 'God' cannot be nailed down perceptually. And so it seems that what we succeed in referring to is whatever satisfies the definite description that unpacks our conception of God.

5. My tentative conclusion, then, is that (i) if we accept a description theory of names, the Christian and Muslim do not refer to the same being when they use 'God' or 'Allah' and (ii) that a description theory of names is what we must invoke given the nonperceivability of God.

If, on the other hand, 'God' is a logically proper name whose meaning is exhausted by its reference, a Kripkean rigid designator, rather than a Russellian definite description in disguise, then what would make 'God' or a particular use of 'God' refer to God?

A particular use is presumably caused by an earlier use. But eventually there must be an initial use. Imagine Moses on Mt. Sinai. He has a profound mystical experience of a being who conveys to his
mind such locutions as "I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have false gods before me." Moses applies 'God' or 'Yahweh' to the being. But what makes the name the name of the being? One may say: the fact that the being or an effect of the being causes the use of the name.

But a certain indeterminacy seems to creep in if we think of the semantic relation of referring as explicable in terms of causation. For is it the (mystical) experience of God that causes the use of 'God'? Or is it God himself who causes the use of 'God'? If the former, then 'God' refers to an experience had by Moses and not to God. Surely God is not an experience. But how can God be the cause of Moses' use of 'God'? Causes are events, God is not an event, so God cannot be a cause.

If these difficulties could be ironed out and a causal theory of names is tenable, and if the causal chain extends from Moses down to Christians and (later)to Muslims, then a case could be made that Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all referring to the same God when they use 'God' and such equivalents as 'Yahweh' and 'Allah.'

So it looks like there is no easy answer to the opening question. It depends on the resolution of intricate questions in the philosophy of language.

Ed Schultz Plays the Race Card

Ed Schultz: "The Republican Party Stands for Racism."

For more examples of leftist scumbaggery, see my Race category.

Another example of why calls for civility are silly. You must not be civil to moral scum. You must denounce them and their lies. When they lie about us we must tell the truth about them. Every time. For they believe in the Communist principle of the Big Lie: tell a big enough lie, repeat it enough times, and people will believe it.

Michelle Malkin: "The race card is not the last refuge of liberal scoundrels but the first refuge."

Codex Vallicellianus

A curious bit of lore, of interest perhaps to only one reader of this weblog, the reader who is also its writer, is that the Bibliotheca Vallicelliana in Rome houses a Vulgate version of the Bible described
here as

V, or Cod. Vallicellianus (ninth century; at Rome, in Vallicelliana), a Bible; Alcuin's type.

When I was last in the Eternal City, in 1990, my Roman meanderings led me to the library in question, but I arrived during the long afternoon siesta. I spoke to the attendant via an intercom, but she wouldn't let me in despite my surname. The good lady was enjoying her leisurely work pause and no doubt reflecting on: Dolce far niente which is Italian for "Sweet to do nothing." It is a saying I recall from my childhood. My paternal gradfather Alfonso had it emblazoned on the pergola he built behind his house.