The Human Paradox

If we saw a lot of black crows (and no other kind) we might well believe that all crows are black, if we wanted to; but we could quite rationally (although we would naturally find it quite absurd to) believe in Humean Supervenience, and hence that there was no evidence for such a belief (and either way the albino crow would come as no great surprise). Facts, in other words, are what we want to believe—we want to believe the facts, because we value truth; and truth is useful, but what about when it isn't? On a Naturalistic view of humans, we value truth because to do so is so useful, in general, that primitive hominids that didn't do so died out; whence we value it even when it would be more convenient for us not to. Facts force themselves upon us as true. Snow is white, it seems, whence we believe that it is.
......That tree is pink with blossom—is its pinkness (as it seems to be) something that is out there, in the world, or is it in our heads? Naturalists believe that only the photons are out there (or rather, somewhere that corresponds to the "out there" that is similarly in our heads). And does the objective reality (for Naturalists) of particles in spacetime contain some thing that is that tree? Logically that seems unlikely; but still, does it really matter? Such is how reality is represented in our brains (evolution has probably led to the world as we perceive it being a good enough map of reality for our natural purposes). Winter seems to be closed in on itself; loved ones seem to shine—such a useful map, and presumably evolution has similarly led to moral axioms being included in our mental maps.
......Having in it some moral axioms (such as the Golden Rule) would have similarly aided our survival, as would a tendency to accept the more local rules; we value loyalty, as well as objectivity (and hominids too lacking in either would have died out). So maybe a propensity to form such beliefs as that God is watching us arose naturally. Does such a God exist, the Naturalist wonders; but still, why worry about that? Such a belief should help the worst of us to behave better (and to be more readily identified, and possibly corrected) and anyway, the best of us regard the evidence for its falsity as inconclusive. But (the Naturalist persists) surely it matters whether or not that belief is true? Well, if it's part of our natural representation then surely (for Naturalists) it's at least as true as that that tree is pink.
......The human paradox is that, even were Naturalism true, the value of our natural beliefs in something like God (assuming that we humans have such beliefs) would hardly be outweighed by the value of such objectivity as we could ever attain. We do of course value truth, but many atheists do value loyalty more (in the confusion out there), while many believers regard the Naturalistic versions of objective truth (e.g. scientific modelling) as mere shadows of objective reality—if the truth is that God is watching us, then there really could be an objective truth, one worthy of our valuing it absolutely (and there could more easily be some logical object that is that tree, only approximately analysable into particles).

Jesus lives; is Christianity a corpse?

The title derives from Jeff's deep thought, but this post is about homophobia in particular (some shallow thoughts upon which made the Philosophers' Carnival this biweek, although the following was inspired by some words of Obama's (via Parableman's discussion of them), which seemed reasonable (and certainly not homophobic) but which reminded me that I would reject any hypothesis (e.g., that one should take the whole Bible seriously) that implied that I ought to be anti-gay—I wouldn't have to reject it, insofar as I'm not gay (although I guess that, even if I was, I could just accept that I was in a fallen state), but since my conscience informs me that homosexuality is not wrong (however unattractive it may seem (and I do have homophobic tendencies)), hence any such hypothesis would seem wrong (I've yet to find any doctrine strong enough to withstand gut instincts (although I might just be too fallen to have a fully functioning conscience about such things)))...
......Recently I've been contemplating the content of the concept of Creation, the idea that this universe (and its people) were deliberately Created (that we are kept in being by the relatively almighty and all-knowing, and transcendentally immaterial person who made us up ex nihilo in He/r image), and the most useful metaphor that I've found for Creation is, well, some blend of our compositions (musical, poetic, prosaic and so forth) and our dreams: God is, to some degree, according to such analogical interpretations of "Creation" (and how else should we interpret that word?), to this world as we are to our dreams (and if we're made in He/r image then such an analogy would make sense, would even be sound insofar as we allowed for our being finite, where S/he is infinite etc.). So, the question arises, what is the metaethical content of that metaphor (for Creation)?
......After all that intro, what follows is surely far too weak (so it needs your comments!); but just as our physics would (on the posited view of Creation) be describing nothing more immutable than the stuff of (this episode of) this divine paradream (so to speak), for all that we do not, of course, regard it as variable, not in our day to day lives (cf. my comments here), so it would be apposite for our ethics to be similarly sensitive, for all that we should not ordinarily regard it as flexible (of course (e.g. homosexuality was never wrong, I feel))—we naturally project our ethics onto everything (as we project our percepts onto objects, seeing them as coloured), but surely our morality should adapt as society evolves, especially when such changes are divinely inspired (the eating of pigs, disloyalty towards the king, the emancipation of women and so forth). And would other sorts of sapient creatures (apes, dolphins, angels and so forth) have to have a morality like ours, in order to be good? Probably there is a continuum of ethical law, from God's own definition of the Good, to local conventions within He/r paradreams. And it strikes me that even those Christians who are anti-gay would, many of them, allow for the possibility of an acceptable incest (in order to retain the literality of Genesis) on such grounds as that our biochemistry might, in those days, have been less corrupted.

Determination and Determinism

Why is the Two Envelopes paradox paradoxical? After some thought I've decided that I don't really know (so the following is less clear than I'd hoped it would be) but maybe the reason is related to our difficulties with such concepts as deliberation and probability. Perhaps we overlook (for some reason) something that we intuit easily enough in the case of, for example, Pascal’s Wager:
......Even were you totally unsure, whether or not there was a God, it would clearly be silly to act as though God probably existed just because (even if you did know that) the net rewards for doing so were very much greater than those for not doing so. Intuitively, such rewards are irrelevant if there is no genuine chance of whichever is not already the case (if it is not as if someone will toss a fair coin fairly, and give you those rewards on heads)—and that is, I think, reminiscent of the calculation (see my previous post) of the expected gain on exchanging your envelope (when only one of the ‘X’s in the equation for expected gain named the definite amount in your envelope). Such a distinction, between genuine and other chances, is obscure but apposite (cf. Denyer's 'proof,' below) because whenever we are thinking rationally we have already presupposed that our decisions might make a genuine difference.
......After all, with your original choice of envelope (which gave you the 50% chance of X = 1 and 50% chance of X = 2) there was no temptation to wonder how it could be that, whilst X = 3/2 is impossible, 50% of X (= 1) + 50% of X (= 2) = 3/2. And those chances were genuine (so to speak; and even if, counterfactually, your envelope had been given to you, via some deterministic mechanism, your epistemic uncertainty would have yielded a similarly quasi-genuine, if then entirely imaginary, chanciness). By contrast, the chances that seemed paradoxical, when focusing upon just part of what you know (when ignoring the parenthetical identities in the equation below for expected gain on exchange), could have measured nothing more than your ignorance about what was already the case.
......Regarding that possibility (that ‘could’), it seems (as below) that simply to be rational is to have (rather obscurely) related presuppositions about what is possible—beliefs so obscure (so analytically dubious) that we might well overlook their import when a scenario encourages us to (and plausibly the way in which that happens within the two envelopes scenario is a clue as to how to analyse such beliefs). Similarly, we might presuppose that (certainly) 2 + 2 = 4, even those of us who think that a (Cartesian) demon, fooling us about such things, is not just possible (despite its inconsistency with 2 + 2 = 4) but is not necessarily unlikely. And if determinism is like that, if its nonexistence is a necessary presupposition of the practice of our rationality (for all that various determinisms are prima facie possible), then the fact that possible worlds are, in themselves, rather deterministic objects (whereas in no possible world is it false that 2 + 2 = 4) might help to account for why philosophers (who have tended to favour possible worlds analyses) have tended to find the Two Envelopes so paradoxical (cf. Pascal being a deterministic Jansenist, which might explain his view of his Wager).
......So maybe the answer (to why we find the two envelopes so paradoxical) has something to do with the following argument (inspired by Denyer's "Time, Action & Necessity") for free will (and against Stephen Law's most recent argument). Many Naturalists believe that there are, in reality, such relativistic particles and fields as are the subject-matter of physics, and that what the other subjects (biochemistry, psychology, politics and so forth) concern themselves with are really just relatively large chunks of that. Many Naturalists also believe that, given how much we know, from such sciences, it would be irrational to believe in such things as souls and revelations; and they think that it would, of course, be wrong to be irrational.
......Thinking is important (we can all agree, at least here). Coming to the right decision is important—it should not just be a random event, choosing what to think about the real world, of real people (many Naturalists are humanists too). One could be irrational, but that would be wrong. And thinking rationally (making a responsible decision on the basis of the evidence) cannot be something that you are bound to do, in a totally determined way, if it is something that you might neglect to do, could be at fault for not doing. Naturalists arguing against the possibility of religious knowledge are, in particular, very aware of the ‘ought’ in ‘thought;’ and ought implies can—there would be little point in arguing against irrational beliefs if believers are bound to believe as they do, as would be the case were the physics of their physicalistic minds deterministic.
......But the only alternative to determinism, in this physical universe (of which we know a vast amount, thanks to modern physics), is randomness; if there is another alternative, and if mind is reducible to physics, then it’s odd that we don't know about it in modern physics (which has even revealed to us the relativity of space and time). And how could mere randomness be the cause of the difference between a moral act (thinking properly) and an immoral act (thinking improperly); how could it be that we should try to get result A rather than B, if it is just random whether A or B? So (to end with my reply to Law) the very rationality that Naturalists are fond of opposing to religious knowledge presupposes something that cannot be either of the options (determinism or randomness) available to them, as physicalistic atheists; so that, according to their own scientific standards, all the evidence available to us, at any time, must be evidence between the major alternatives (such as some modern monotheisms).

Two Envelopes

Suppose that someone put some money (say, an arbitrary unit) into one envelope and twice as much (two units) into another. You get to choose an envelope, and since you are ignorant of their contents you have, intuitively, a 50% chance of getting 1 (arbitrary unit), and a 50% chance of getting 2 (of them). Let the amount in your envelope be X, and the amount in the other be Y, so that either X = 1 = Y/2, which I call case A, or else B is the case, and X = 2 = 2Y.
......You are asked if you want to exchange your envelope for the other. In case A you have (whether or not you look inside your envelope) X = 1, so you would definitely gain X = 1 on switching; and if you would have lost, you would have been in case B, with X = 2. In case B you would definitely lose 1/2 of that on switching (and if you would have gained, you would have been in case A). And it was 50-50 which envelope you chose (as above), so it is similarly 50-50 which of A and B is the case, and so your expected gain on switching is:
......50% of X (= 1 = Y/2) – 50% of X/2 (= 1 = Y) = 0
......No paradox yet, but if you ignore the parenthetical identities (which should not, intuitively, affect that equality) then the remainder of that equation says that you have a 50% chance of gaining X (the definite amount you are holding) and a 50% chance of losing X/2, and that those two cancel out; so a puzzle is, how could X = X/2? But the paradox dissolves with the seeing of that question as silly. Athough X is a definite amount, only one of the ‘X’s in that equation names it (since it can't be that both B and A are the case; by contrast, if someone flipped a coin fairly, gave you X on heads, and took X/2 off you on tails, your expectation would indeed be X/4).
......A puzzle remains: Why do philosophers find the above so puzzling? (To be continued (a clue: we are like this!).)

Go with the Flow...

...it's what a dead fish would do! Speaking of fishy things, what would a Naturalistic picture of the mind look like? Would the mind be, basically, the brain processing information about the body's surroundings; that information being a bit like the copy (not the paint) in some painting of some external pattern caused by the (bearer of the) latter, much as I see the Moon because that image was caused by the Moon?
......But the Moon also causes the tides, whose patterns therefore resemble those of the Moon's orbit; and while the brain processes its information, estuaries do channel tidal waters between banks that are shaped, in part, by those very waters. And while the brain has evolved, to be a relatively stable system, so have land masses (without river-dragons perceiving pearls, presumably). The thing is, the structure of a physical process is just a set (of spatio-temporal correlations)...
......So we could find isomorphic structures (e.g. of a brain's mind momentarily believing that, since there is believing, hence there is a believer) physically instantiated within land masses (e.g. as a subset of the chemical structure); and so it seems that the only reason why materialistic theories of mind are not in serious trouble is that they don't actually exist (as actual theories). And since they don't, we can't actually apply Occam's razor to the extra-physical bits (not without losing a lot of predictive power).
......Now, there are other approaches to mind, but the scientific way to judge between property and substantial dualism would be to compare what they suggest (about the extra aspects of the world) with what the world itself indicates (we should test apposite aspects, of course; psychical and parapsychological researchers have tended not to). So, whereas property dualism seems to suggest a lot of empathic communion, a natural ease to telepathic exchanges of information (at least wherever brains had not evolved to block it), such as should be noticable were it there, do we actually find that?
......No, whereas substantial dualism suggests (since our quantum-mechanically physical brains are somehow affected by our choices) that we should expect micro-psychokinetic effects (more than telepathic ones, if our souls are as distinct as they seem to be) in living brains, which would naturally be more obscure. Maybe such effects could also be observed (less naturally, but then we are creative creatures) in other physical systems, although such things (unlike spoon-benders and poltergeists) have yet to be investigated properly (even though such effects are essentially controllable); but why? (Is it that Naturalism is unscientific?)

Happy Valentine's

Less blogging; more slogging!

Well, today's attempt to approximate quality by quantity didn't seem to work, so what I'll do next is less blogging; more slogging out of rigorous arguments, that's what I need to do (for a while anyway). E.g. why do I think that hash, # = 1/0, is a proper number? At the moment my attitude is well, why do we think that a half, 1/2, is a proper number? Because it's an answer to "How much?" (and also, halves being primitive numbers, an answer to "How many?"), e.g. if 3 apples are divided equally between 2 boys, how many apples do they each get? One and a half. Apples being smoothly extended objects (more or less), 1 apple can be divided into 2 equal parts, into halves. Similarly (and more generally) if a unit amount of any continuum is divided into N equal parts, those parts should have measures of 1/N.
......And in particular, if # is the cardinality of the continuum (the number of points in a line full of points) then the parts will be points, with measures of 1/# = 0. That 0 is not, as the cardinal 0 and (intuitively) the more primitive half were, an answer to "How many?" but rather to "How much?" (cf. how likely we are to hit any particular point if an infinitely fine dart is thrown at random at a line of points, none of which it would be impossible to hit); and note how differently the primitive 1/2 and the rather more discovered 0 (and similarly #) relate to 'many' and 'much.' Anyway, if continua are full of points, # is a proper number (just like 0 is). Not very compelling, perhaps; but then, that's why I'll be blogging less, for a bit (if I hold myself to that)...

The sky is blue, therefore it exists

Quine thought (I gather) that revising our logic is not an option (is illogical) because to do so would be to make too many changes throughout our web of beliefs; but we might expect inferences made automatically (unconsciously) to change as readily as our natures (as we grow up, and fall under new hormones, or take on new roles, or as we grow old and lose some neurones, and so forth)—an upsetting but not untypical thing for brains to do—and inferences made more rationally (consciously) had already changed enormously by Quine's time (set-theoretical proofs having replaced Euclidean intuitions) without massive upset to most mathematics, or to the scientific method. There were huge changes to our physical (and social) world-views, of course, and there must be some ordering to our rational revisioning; but what?
......I suspect that, really, we still reason according to the Euclidean intuitions that still structure the (paradigmatically) real world around us; that we don't actually have a choice about that. Consequently we can revise our theoretical logics (e.g. adopt a quantum logic for physics, if that's easier for the physicists) without that affecting many of our scientific beliefs; although lots of people therefore have a rational distrust of modern science, because it seems (when viewed by the natural light of our common sense) quite illogical beyond its technological applications.

Blue Sky Thinking

Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself “How blue the sky is!”—When you do it spontaneously—without philosophical intentions—the idea never crosses your mind that this impression of colour belongs only to you. And you have no hesitation in exclaiming that to someone else. And if you point at anything as you say the words you point to the sky.

That’s from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, 1953, para 275; cf. Kevin Ayers, 1970—"Blue is the colour of sky, and I won’t even try to explain how or why, I’ll just show you the sky."

Whither do they wither?

Out in the dark over the snow
The fallow fawns invisible go
With the fallow doe;
And the winds blow
Fast as the stars are slow.

That was written in 1916 by Edward Thomas, just months before his death.

Resistance is Futile

If you think the world is a clutter of existence
Falling through the air with minimal resistance
You could be right, how would I know?
Colossal youth is showing the way to go

That's the end of the title track of Colossal Youth, 1980

The Odyssey Theodicy

I've renamed my theodicy as above (see that link: but basically, the acceptability of this world's evils follows from our volunteering, in a previous, more heavenly life, for these lives, which are worthwhile because of a divine purpose which is a plausible possibility given open theism) because I love repetitive syntax in titles, but also because the Odyssey connotes how our souls volunteered, for these dangerous (morally and physically) incarnations, because (we're brave and) being here, so remote (epistemically) from the Heaven where we belong (and long to be), creates a certain sensitivity (as below) to the divine, thereby enabling the transcendental possibility of other Creators (of which there may well be none) to be investigated scientifically.
......Because our dreams are human-made they are (in themselves, like our thoughts) further from our Creator even than the Earth, but they're also (in consequence) a way for us to express our deepest longings (and they're akin to that other stuff that godlike creatures can create, music). They're also (by design) the natural medium though which God (and the gods) can communicate with us personally (facilitating the aforementioned sensitivity). And to keep us safe (and on track) God also intervenes in the wider world, causing the great transformation of science, monotheism, history and literature (e.g. the tales of the travails of the traveller Odysseus, inspiring dreams which might appear, to an overseeing god, like so many slightly charged particles, arranged in arrays precisely tuned to such fields as a greater charge might generate), and more recently the incarnation of God as Jesus.

The Infinitude of God

The metaphysics of continuity (my thesis topic) is actually related to Monotheism, as follows. Given Naturalism, our concepts probably evolved, through a succession of brains performing various functions within changing environments, so that although primitive concepts like continuity (smooth extension) would have been effective enough building-blocks of the world-views of primitive humans (and may remain the foundations of a folk metaphysics adequate for common sense), we would have little reason to expect them to cohere (beyond such limited applications), let alone correspond (to the structure of reality). But while set-theoretical continua would then be quite adequate for our needs, why should we (and is it even rational to) accept such a dismal view of our own reasoning powers (in the absence of a proof of atheism)?
......But, if we were created by (and in the image of) a perfect person, then we might reasonably expect our most basic concepts to carve nature at its metaphysical joints; and if (as reason and revelation indicate) that person exists everlastingly (rather than timelessly) then (unless we think of God as existing within time) time would be primarily an aspect of a perfect person, whence time would probably (since it appears to be smooth) be full of a perfect (or absolute, rather than merely transfinite) infinity of instants—if continua are full of points; and it's quite conceivable (think of a square) that perfectly sharp edges exist geometrically, and a point is where two such lines could intersect, as they can (think of its corners), and (since there is nowhere in a line where it could not be intersected by another line) hence there are points everywhere within it.

People = Particles

This brown desk (to borrow John Hick's analogy) has a flat top; but it's also true that it's covered in little dips and bumps, that it's not flat. And a bat would perceive it quite differently, certainly not as brown, and perhaps not even as an object; and even I believe that it's (probably) a fuzzy set of atoms (so that alien nanoprobes, for all their precise observations, would only see, where my table is, such sets of atoms as my table isn't), whence I wonder if it really is one thing...
......But it can be moved about (and it was made) as one thing, so it clearly is; so, there's a pragmatic element to truth (correspondence between our concepts and the cosmos, our words and the world), arising from how we fit our thoughts, our language to reality (even within modern physics). But that shouldn't threaten our common sense realism about ordinary objects. After all, we can even say something about the bat’s view of things: If the bat manages to avoid flying into the (flat, brown) desk, then its view of such things is probably true enough (is good enough for its purposes).
......Similarly, if conceptual frameworks connect animals (via perception) to physical objects much as (on Hick's analogy) religious traditions connect people (via revelation) to God then, much as I know I'm sitting at a brown desk (which, I also know, might not even be an object really), so I might know of the God of Abraham (and that a Buddhist's view, for example, of such knowledge might also be true—not that Buddhists are batty, but there is, for example, an obscure context-sensitivity to the extrapolation of our concepts beyond the mundane).
......After all, most of us aren't like Abraham, aren't actually perceiving much (of the details), but are rather reading descriptions of (what is metaphorically) the brown desk at which Hick sat, writing of how (apparently) contradictory descriptions might not be of different objects; which is an argument (not for Hick's pluralism but) for a range of inclusivisms because surely we should not stop thinking of a flat, brown desk as a desk (as one object) or as brown, or even as flat when using it as a desk (when engaging with it directly).
......That suggests (appropriately obscurely) that even contradictory propositions (with ordinarily well-defined terms) might be true of a being as transcendent (to us much as we are to our dreams) as God; but some could not be, e.g. regarding whether God is a person or impersonal Hick noted how (even something as mundane as) light seems to be both particles and waves, but while light is physically well-modelled by a quantum-mechanical wavefunction (and a desk might be a fuzzy set of similar particles) surely if God is a person then S/he will know that fact directly, and if not then no such awareness (of that fact) would exist.
......Still, the Abrahamic faiths having falsely attributed a gender to God (much as we would naturally attribute physical continuity, rather than atomicity, to water), for example (and saintly believers being equally present in all the well-established traditions, as Hick rightly emphasizes), it does seem unlikely that our own religion would contain an exceptionally penetrating description of God (especially in view of such things as the place of politics in the history of its doctrines, and the traditional view of history and metaphysics generally).

The Gap of Creation

Swinburne's explanatory argument is basically that while Naturalism cannot explain the origin of minds (e.g. he asks, "how far could the science of the future explain the evolution of souls," in his 1997, p. 174), Monotheism can explain the world's evils (e.g. via my theodicy), whence the latter is the best explanation... but of course, that is so only if Monotheism can explain the origin of souls (otherwise it would be rather like postulating a pork chop to explain crop circles).
......In particular, Swinburne postulates a perfect person as a simple hypothesis (with a correspondingly high prior probability) to explain the world, but that is only explanatory if creating worlds is conceivably something that a person could do. Now, we know that people can rearrange things, but so can evolution. We know that people dream (can even deliberately daydream), so maybe people can create lower sorts of being (if dreams have a sort of being-in-themselves; if we do indeed create them, rather than just experience them), whence a transcendent person might create a physical world; but if God makes people like us (as souls, with free will) as a lower sort of being (not just an imperfect or finite sort), then we seem to lose our sense of God as a perfect person, and the high prior probability without which the God hypothesis isn't even contending...

We seem to, but the criterion of simplicity itself stands in need of justification (or explanation). Maybe what we really want are, to begin with, a few hypotheses that promise to be worth looking into and which seem fairly exhaustive (the alternatives being clearly too odd); hypotheses that we can hope to work with easily enough (simplicity), which promise enough of a pay-off (if they win) and which are naturally unweighted to begin with (prior to the evidence). I'm not suggesting that a big reward for belief can make us believe (Pascal's Wager is off) but after all, the reason why we value truth that highly is, under Naturalism, that genes for such valuations were rewarded, with reproductive success (while under Monotheism truth relates us to God; and incidentally were we made in God's image, simpler concepts would be more likely to resemble those behind creation).
......So Monotheism remains a contender... And while creation remains mysterious, so do mind and matter given Naturalism; and if it's conceivable that matter could spontaneously appear in a Big Bang, and that minds like ours could (somehow) arise from such material, then surely it's similarly conceivable that a sufficiently unlimited person could cause such things deliberately (and incidentally the substance dualism that is our common sense experience is more explicable given Monotheism).

On knowing that One is Irrational

Can one know that one is irrational? It seems contradictory; but suppose I believe that I'm the product of billennia of natural selections—that my most basic concepts, and ways of reasoning (and of judging, and so forth), were probably just the normal ways in which human brains happen to make sense of sensory information, having been selected (from random variants) for not being ways that led more primitive brains (of apes, rats, fish and so forth) into inviability; and also that knowledge was one such concept, one fuzzily orientated towards experts (social authorities) and what they tell us, rather than infallibility. I might then believe that I knew that I was irrational.

Mr. E. and Miss Tree

A couple of mysteries, concerning our selves. The first mystery relates to how we come in two sexes (as a rule), male and female. Considering how profound this sexual division is biologically (even plants have two sexes), the difference between men and women is surprisingly shallow. (The sexism of most religions is therefore ironic, for the asexuality of people qua people argues rather strongly for our being essentially souls.) So my first mystery is, how should we handle a third person of unknown or no sex? I've been using s/he and he/r, for want of anything better, for I've been regarding a perfect person as asexual.
......We naturally think of people-as-people as (potentially) sapient beings, so that anyone who could (e.g. when awake, and well) access such higher mental faculties as language-use (e.g. silicon-based aliens, or intelligent robots) might count as a person. Maybe whales, or birds are sapient; but what if fish have souls that might reincarnate as birds? Or, what if a human has a damaged brain and so can't use language? To look at it another way, plants are alive, but a machine that did pretty much what some plant did would not normally be thought of as alive. Machines do not seem to be any one (in the apposite way, as above), whence a computer could not, after all, be sapient. Our sapience is intimately connected with our being sentient, aware, subjects, something we associate with apes, rats, fish, maybe worms, but hardly plants, bacteria, viruses (are they even alive?). Computers, however powerful, are not alive, do not even have a sex (though we could give them a gender) let alone sentience, so how could they be sapient?
......I even wonder if sentience can exist without the capacity (perhaps in some other life) for sapience; would an animal without its own will not be (as Descartes thought) a mere machine? Anyway, my second mystery is, what should we call ourselves? How about "males" and "girls"? They are syntactically similar, and whilst "girl" has connotations of youth, "male" applies to animals and plants too (and one problem with "man" is that it can mean any human, while a problem with "woman" or "female" is that they are derivative). Any better suggestions, for either mystery? (Anyone reading this far who missed Newborn babies have a preference for the way living things move, about two weeks ago, is rewarded with that link :)

The Collateral Paradox

Trying to think about the crucial difference between the Train and the Hospital scenarios (as described in this post at Show-Me) got me thinking about the following pair of scenarios:
......In the first scenario you are a busy person who sometimes gives to charity (whenever you feel guilty), so you have set up an account so that some money is automatically donated to a good charity every month (without you having to think about it)—in effect, you are improving the lives of ten poor people (e.g. educating their children, and providing health cover). One day you see an advert by a much more efficient (but no less reliable) charity, who can help five times as many poor people with the same amount of money; fifty people could be saved, instead of only ten, you think. So you call your bank and alter your details accordingly.
......The second scenario is similar, except that the original charity paid their workers slightly less and instead spent the money on sending you information about the ten people you were helping (e.g. photos of them, and some letters from some of them). You were usually too busy to bother reading all that (more advertising, you thought), but as you picked up the phone to call your bank (as above) you happened to glance at one of the photos (some family looking hopeful). Before your money could help anyone else, it would have to be taken away from them, you think; so you leave things as they are (and get on with your busy life).
......But why should a mere photo make such a difference?

Is God a Bit of a Deceiver?

God, it is said, is no deceiver; Descartes famously based his worldview on that certainty, and the idea still seems popular, e.g. Swinburne (The Existence of God, 2nd edn. 2004: 241): "God, if he is not to deceive us and yet give us a real free choice between helping and not helping others, must make a world where others really do suffer." But it strikes me that, even if I grant that opportunities for displays of compassion, charity and self-sacrifice are desirable, nonetheless if any creator of such an opportunity had a choice between deceiving all the participants or else torturing one of them, then the choice of the latter (to avoid being deceitful) would display a marked lack of those very virtues (compassion, charity and self-sacrifice).
......What does the Bible have to say? Well all four Gospels tell how Peter denied Jesus; that is, that Peter lied about God. Did the disciples murder anyone, steal much or have naughty sex (et cetera)? No, so how bad a sin could it be, if Peter did it? The Old Testament contains several stories in which God's people (e.g. Moses) used deceit to outwit their enemies, apparently with God's approval (or even complicity). Matthew 13 contains a nice account of Jesus explaining why he spoke in parables; and if Noah's Ark (or any other bit of Genesis) was fictional then God was a bit of a deceiver because until recently people would have had no reason not to take such stories literally (and if not then it's deceptively fictional-looking nowadays). And was there not something like deceit in God's tempting of Abraham?
......But my grasp of the Bible is very weak, so those examples may not prove anything; but my point is really just a question: Why is divine deceit regarded as unthinkable? We would find it acceptable to tell our children white lies if that would keep them from harm, and surely (as Swinburne says of the alternative, in the first of these quotes) "God who is, ex hypothesi, so much more the author of our being than are our parents, has rights so much greater in this respect." Is it that, were the object of our compassion (et cetera) shown to be a hollow puppet we would feel that our goodness had been wasted? But suppose we were shown that after the purpose of the opportunity in question had been revealed to us; would we not then feel gratitude?
......It may depend upon what that purpose was; but suppose it was our opportunity to define ourselves as good—then our good acts, far from being wasted, would have become our good being; and being good we would not want the cost of that to be the suffering of another. And the purpose could hardly lie entirely in it being a genuine (or objective) rather than merely apparent (or subjective) helping of another, when even such a real act would add so infinitesimally little to the infinitely greater goodness of the transcendentally Real creator of the opportunity in question.
......Now, I'm not suggesting that the holocaust (for example) was hollow because (i) we should not, even were that the case, think that it was (although surely we should hope it was), and (ii) I don't think that the point of life (on Earth) is likely to be soul-building—I do think it's likely to involve some deception (if that is plausible), although nothing worse than what would follow from having chosen to be hypnotised in order to behave better (since we would have volunteered for it); whence the question, could it involve divine deception?

8 posts this month

It being 2008 now, not 2007, I shall post 8 posts this month, not 7...