...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?)
Monday, February 25, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
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)...
......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.
......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 snowThat was written in 1916 by Edward Thomas, just months before his death.
The fallow fawns invisible go
With the fallow doe;
And the winds blow
Fast as the stars are slow.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Resistance is Futile
If you think the world is a clutter of existenceThat's the end of the title track of Colossal Youth, 1980
Falling through the air with minimal resistance
You could be right, how would I know?
Colossal youth is showing the way to go
Sunday, February 03, 2008
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.
......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.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
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.
......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.
Monday, January 28, 2008
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).
......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).
Saturday, January 26, 2008
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).
......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).
Monday, January 21, 2008
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.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
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 :)
......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 :)
Monday, January 14, 2008
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?
......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?
Monday, January 07, 2008
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?
......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?
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Monday, December 31, 2007
Are Bad Thoughts Good?
A list of the top ten new organisms of 2007 got me wondering whether our intuitions about our responsibilities for our creations might help us to think about the ethics of Creation. My intuition is that just because we create lifeforms, rather than being responsible for them in other ways (maybe just by coexisting with them), our moral obligations towards them (rather than our social or legal obligations) aare not at all reduced—whence I wonder whether Swinburne (The Existence of God, 2nd ed. 2004: 257-8) made too much of creators’ rights:
......How seriously an agnostic should take the hypothesis that this world was deliberately created for a good reason (which, stripped of such baggage as such talk inevitably collects, is an intrinsically hopeful hypothesis) depends upon how well the prima facie problem of evil is addressed; and I’m not sure that much progress has been made on this since Socrates.
......Bravery, for example (or compassion), presupposes hardships to be brave in the face of (respectively the suffering of others), but need they be actual hardships (others suffering)? Surely we are brave, if we are, before we display it. And while thick skins can be grown, can we learn to be brave—or do we learn to love, from which bravery (rather than rage, foolhardiness or blind obedience), amongst other virtues, flows? (And how great a virtue is bravery anyway? Prima facie it’s on a par with intelligence—it’s not a matter of how valuable such virtues are for us here, as we grow from our selfish infancies towards God, but of whether they’re valuable enough in themselves—with God—to justify the evils here.)
......Do we love lovely things because they are lovely, or are they lovely because they are loved? Prima facie it’s the former on the Monotheistic (as opposed to the Naturalistic) account, but then a perfectly good God (who would be intrinsically lovely) would not need others to love He/r; and whilst being perfectly able to self-sacrifice, S/he would not (as we might) be any better for doing so—but there are a lot more questions, of course; so first, to see why we need realistic answers, consider Swinburne’s (Is there a God? 1996: 112) defence of his theodicy:
......Partly, I think, because it’s voluntary (and not hopeless), so this thought-experiment sits uneasily with the previous quote, with God having the moral right to choose for us to be born (into this world), whence I find Swinburne’s initial supposition (that you exist somewhere else before your birth here) plausible—why would a good God not first make our souls (somewhere safer), tell them the truth there, and then ask us if we wanted to volunteer? That presupposes some meaningful enterprise for us to volunteer for, of course, and traditionally God has nothing to do; but also, God’s goodness is not traditionally of a lesser kind than that of a depraved person (who would surely, even when choosing good, be more likely to choose it for worse reasons)...
I may let the younger son suffer somewhat for the good of his and his brother’s soul. I have this right because in small part I am responsible for the younger son’s existence, its beginning, and continuance; I feed him and educate him. I have the right to demand something in return, that he is open to the possibility of his elder brother inflicting (limited) harm on him. If this is correct, then, a fortiori, a 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.Surely our need to inflict suffering upon our children derives from our lack of control over our environment, our right being the right to choose the lesser of two evils; whereas God would be perfectly (purely and infinitely) good to begin with, whence I doubt that S/he would allow an innocent creature to suffer involuntarily for the greater good of another. Furthermore, for Swinburne such a greater good is our being able to refrain from doing evils that we’re tempted to do; but were that really so much better than not even being tempted to sin (cf. Luke.15.vii?) so that it could justify the immense sufferings of this world, then surely this world would’ve been a much better place had we all wanted to do more disgusting things!
......How seriously an agnostic should take the hypothesis that this world was deliberately created for a good reason (which, stripped of such baggage as such talk inevitably collects, is an intrinsically hopeful hypothesis) depends upon how well the prima facie problem of evil is addressed; and I’m not sure that much progress has been made on this since Socrates.
......Bravery, for example (or compassion), presupposes hardships to be brave in the face of (respectively the suffering of others), but need they be actual hardships (others suffering)? Surely we are brave, if we are, before we display it. And while thick skins can be grown, can we learn to be brave—or do we learn to love, from which bravery (rather than rage, foolhardiness or blind obedience), amongst other virtues, flows? (And how great a virtue is bravery anyway? Prima facie it’s on a par with intelligence—it’s not a matter of how valuable such virtues are for us here, as we grow from our selfish infancies towards God, but of whether they’re valuable enough in themselves—with God—to justify the evils here.)
......Do we love lovely things because they are lovely, or are they lovely because they are loved? Prima facie it’s the former on the Monotheistic (as opposed to the Naturalistic) account, but then a perfectly good God (who would be intrinsically lovely) would not need others to love He/r; and whilst being perfectly able to self-sacrifice, S/he would not (as we might) be any better for doing so—but there are a lot more questions, of course; so first, to see why we need realistic answers, consider Swinburne’s (Is there a God? 1996: 112) defence of his theodicy:
Suppose that you exist in another world before your birth in this one, and are given a choice as to the sort of life you are to have in this one. You are told that you are to have only a short life, maybe of only a few minutes, although it will be an adult life in the sense that you will have the richness of sensation and belief characteristic of adults. You have a choice as to the sort of life you will have. You can have either a few minutes of very considerable pleasure, of the kind produced by some drug such as heroin, which you will experience by yourself and which will have no effects at all in the world (for example, no one else will know about it); or you can have a few minutes of considerable pain, such as the pain of childbirth, which will have (unknown to you at the time of the pain) considerable good effects on others over a few years. You are told that, if you do not make the second choice, those others will never exist—and so you are under no moral obligation to make the second choice. But you seek to make the choice which will make your own life the best life for you to have led. How will you choose? The choice is, I hope, obvious. You should choose the second alternative.Maybe—but were the making of such a choice such a great good, in itself, those “considerable good effects” could simply be repeats of this very scenario; whereas no good God would allow such an endless succession of agonies, just because each should have been chosen (by people ignorant of that bigger picture). And although we should choose the second alternative (as it would be the more heroic), why do we admire such heroism?
......Partly, I think, because it’s voluntary (and not hopeless), so this thought-experiment sits uneasily with the previous quote, with God having the moral right to choose for us to be born (into this world), whence I find Swinburne’s initial supposition (that you exist somewhere else before your birth here) plausible—why would a good God not first make our souls (somewhere safer), tell them the truth there, and then ask us if we wanted to volunteer? That presupposes some meaningful enterprise for us to volunteer for, of course, and traditionally God has nothing to do; but also, God’s goodness is not traditionally of a lesser kind than that of a depraved person (who would surely, even when choosing good, be more likely to choose it for worse reasons)...
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Why I don't like Possible World Semantics
I've previously expressed unease with possible worlds (roughly, sets of propositions), as a way of understanding what "possibility" means, partly because of the sets (which like numbers may well be explicable only in terms of possibilities) and partly because of the propositions (which seem too artificial to cover all possibilities) but mostly because far from helping us to understand possibilities, they just seem to make it easier for us to get them mixed up.
......The first time I met PWS, it was in a reply (I forget whose) to Cartesian scepticism: The idea was that, since we know that we're not BIVs, hence BIV-worlds are remote, whence they can be ignored by whatever truth-tracking (across close possible worlds) criteria is required by our concept of knowledge, which seemed circular and to entirely miss the point.
......More recently the following—Gale and Pruss (2003, eds. "The Existence of God": xl-xli) describing their New Cosmological Argument (1999, Religious Studies 35: 461-76)—seemed to confuse subjective or epistemic possibilities (e.g. Goldbach's conjecture might be false, or true, for all I know) with logical or metaphysical ones (for us platonists, if it is true then it is necessarily true, and not possibly false):
......The first time I met PWS, it was in a reply (I forget whose) to Cartesian scepticism: The idea was that, since we know that we're not BIVs, hence BIV-worlds are remote, whence they can be ignored by whatever truth-tracking (across close possible worlds) criteria is required by our concept of knowledge, which seemed circular and to entirely miss the point.
......More recently the following—Gale and Pruss (2003, eds. "The Existence of God": xl-xli) describing their New Cosmological Argument (1999, Religious Studies 35: 461-76)—seemed to confuse subjective or epistemic possibilities (e.g. Goldbach's conjecture might be false, or true, for all I know) with logical or metaphysical ones (for us platonists, if it is true then it is necessarily true, and not possibly false):
Using the semantics of possible world for modal propositions, according to which a proposition that is possible is true in some possible world, and the weak version of [the Principle of Sufficient Reason], they show that there is some possible world in which there is an explanation for [the conjunction of all contingent propositions that are true in the world, say P] about the actual world. But since a possible world is individuated by its [P], it follows that this possible world is identical with the actual world.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Reasonably inconsistent
(Merry Christmas :-) Religious pluralism is complicated (cf. dogmatism or nihilism) but God is, after all, naturally odd; and even the relatively mundane paradoxes (such as the St. Petersburg) take us beyond belief and into a complicated realm of thinking (about things). And although we regard it as irrational to hold inconsistent beliefs (which usually lead us to precisify our language) we could hardly reason (about the world) if we did not. E.g. when perceiving ordinary objects (such as trees) we naturally picture them within Euclidean space, even if we believe that space is non-Euclidean.
......More commonly, when getting about we naturally picture places as arranged in a flat plane, even though we know the world is round. We are probably born with the belief that the world is flat, and I guess that by the time we learn that the world is not flat that belief has become such an integral part of how we think about the world around us that it would be a huge waste of effort to try to eliminate it; it is more rational to have inconsistent beliefs. When asked we may say that we know that the world is not flat, but the fact that we also have the opposite belief is shown by our other beliefs.
......More commonly, when getting about we naturally picture places as arranged in a flat plane, even though we know the world is round. We are probably born with the belief that the world is flat, and I guess that by the time we learn that the world is not flat that belief has become such an integral part of how we think about the world around us that it would be a huge waste of effort to try to eliminate it; it is more rational to have inconsistent beliefs. When asked we may say that we know that the world is not flat, but the fact that we also have the opposite belief is shown by our other beliefs.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Light upon the Earth
A recent post at The Prosblogion has got me rethinking six-day literalism. Prima facie there's a problem with, for example, the creation of Daylight (in Gen.1.iii; called "Day" in Gen.1.v) before the creation of the Sun (in Gen.1.xvi) "to give light upon the earth" (Gen.1.xvii); but then, there are similar problems with omniscience and omnipotence, and they just remind us to be more careful with our accounts of God (than we need to be with tales of, for example, Santa). Dinosaur bones, for example, need not be the work of Satan, even given six-day literalism; because Creation is not that unlike Envatment, and to run Actuality (according to natural laws chosen by God) from the Big Bang (for a few billion years of our time) would surely, for God, be no easier (or harder, although it might be worse morally, in view of the suffering animals) than running it from the first incarnated people (possibly six thousand years ago).
......Anyway, "day" obviously gets its meaning (for us, now) from the revolution of the Earth (or by extension, of any planet) around the Sun (or any star), much as "water" now means H2O; but the Bible is supposed (ex hypothesis) to be the word of God (a transcendent Creator) via the medium of ancient Hebrew (not even Latin), so why should even its literal (non-analogical) meanings be so obvious? And divine creation (of a world like this) could, for example, be like God selecting propositions (in his divine language) so as to restrict a range of possible worlds until only the one is left (for the incarnation of people like us), in which case Genesis could record (quite literally) that process. For example, wanting people to have something like water, various worlds (with various physics) containing water (in some divinely descriptivistic sense) may have been considered; and similarly God may have begun with the idea of a phenomenal daylight, and only later finalised the physics so that a star was its source.
......Now, there is the further complication that the divine acts of creation themselves took evenings and mornings (or days); but such acts may well involve two basic components (creation is a great mystery, but we must have some thoughts about it), for example (i) the actualization or making (maybe testing them with avatars or angels) of the currently desirable possible worlds (maybe as phenomenologically definite but physically indefinite), naturally following (ii) the selection or design of the next restriction. And we are (ex hypothesis) made in God's image (as people), and we do have two corresponding states of being, i.e. waking (for doing) following sleeping (for dreaming). So (were this, or something like this, the correct interpretation), would such a use of "morning" and "evening" (to refer to such a division of labour) in Genesis be literal or metaphorical? Surely it would be no more metaphorical than, for example, our saying that we enlighten a living room by switching on its light as we enter it; rather less, I would guess, given the necessarily transcendental (and primary) nature of nature's creation.
......Anyway, "day" obviously gets its meaning (for us, now) from the revolution of the Earth (or by extension, of any planet) around the Sun (or any star), much as "water" now means H2O; but the Bible is supposed (ex hypothesis) to be the word of God (a transcendent Creator) via the medium of ancient Hebrew (not even Latin), so why should even its literal (non-analogical) meanings be so obvious? And divine creation (of a world like this) could, for example, be like God selecting propositions (in his divine language) so as to restrict a range of possible worlds until only the one is left (for the incarnation of people like us), in which case Genesis could record (quite literally) that process. For example, wanting people to have something like water, various worlds (with various physics) containing water (in some divinely descriptivistic sense) may have been considered; and similarly God may have begun with the idea of a phenomenal daylight, and only later finalised the physics so that a star was its source.
......Now, there is the further complication that the divine acts of creation themselves took evenings and mornings (or days); but such acts may well involve two basic components (creation is a great mystery, but we must have some thoughts about it), for example (i) the actualization or making (maybe testing them with avatars or angels) of the currently desirable possible worlds (maybe as phenomenologically definite but physically indefinite), naturally following (ii) the selection or design of the next restriction. And we are (ex hypothesis) made in God's image (as people), and we do have two corresponding states of being, i.e. waking (for doing) following sleeping (for dreaming). So (were this, or something like this, the correct interpretation), would such a use of "morning" and "evening" (to refer to such a division of labour) in Genesis be literal or metaphorical? Surely it would be no more metaphorical than, for example, our saying that we enlighten a living room by switching on its light as we enter it; rather less, I would guess, given the necessarily transcendental (and primary) nature of nature's creation.
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