Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss recently gave an interview in which he seemed, at first glance, to be shitting all over the notion of philosophy as a serious academic discipline.
Now he has written a really interesting clarification of his actual views on the subject, which I found to be an enjoyable read.
I'm very puzzled by the antagonism one often sees between science and philosophy; on the one hand, you occasionally hear someone saying that science is really all we need for answering all relevant or meaningful questions, and that philosophy is obsolete, or mere word-play, while on the other hand, some philosophically-inclined folks are very hostile to modern science, and argue something to the tune of it being inherently dogmatic or biased, or just another "religion" or "belief system" on par with all the others.
This all strikes me as unnecessary. Contemporary natural science and philosophy are, in my view, ultimately allies. They just do different things.
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Re-Fried Fish
Stanley Fish has written a follow-up to the article on which I recently commented and, to be honest, I guess I have no major objections to it. I feel it clarifies much of what was said in the previous article, and renders his claims a little bit more modest. He says he does not assert an "equivalence between the methodological premises of scientific inquiry and those of religious doctrine" and admits that "If you want to build a better mousetrap or computer, you will look to scientists and engineers" as opposed to priests or theologians. Well, that's fair enough.
Then again, priests and theologians don't often have too much to say about matters of mousetrap and/or computer innovation, but they do often have very strong claims about, say, medicine (for example, whether or not to provide medical care to a sick child). In such a situation, where science and religious doctrine somewhat overlap, I wonder (and this is an honest question) which authority Fish would tell us to consult? Although, to be fair, I guess in such a case, a religious authority doesn't necessarily tell us whether or not the medical care will work, but whether or not we ought to provide it, and I'll admit, that's a question on which science is silent. No scientific experiment or research can prove that letting thousands of children die of easily treatable medical conditions in order not to displease a deity is "wrong;" I guess it just helps being born to parents who care more about, you know, their kids' well-being in this world than about the emotional states of a God, and if you aren't lucky enough for that, then tough shit, in the grave you go!
Aside from that, I can appreciate the stuff about theory determining what counts as evidence and Fish's clearly-stated fallibilism. I still feel, however, that Fish is probably picking the wrong targets. Many of us philosophical types feel that this whole rationalist, scientistic "New Atheist" movement (dudes like Dawkins and the late Hitchens) is more of an enemy than an ally, but sometimes I suspect that this is largely out of jealously, because those guys are getting all the press and seem to have more credibility in the public eye when it comes to dogma-demolition and critical thinking. In my experience, if you actually read what some of those guys are saying, it's a lot more humble than people like Fish seem to think. I'll grant that there are strong exceptions to this, for example Sam Harris' recent project of trying to argue that science can not just tell us "what to do in order to get what we want," but can actually inform our ideas about "what we ought to want."
On the whole, outside of academia, in the public sphere, I think that the major questions being discussed (e.g. creationism vs. evolution, the age of the earth and so on) are probably better answered by folks like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris than by dummies like Ham, Comfort, and Falwell (God rest his miserable soul). I'd like to think that Fish might be tacitly conceding this, when he mentions in the article that it's the job of religious faith to give "meaning and direction to life," as opposed to describing, explaining, and predicting phenomena.
I guess I just wish that people like Fish would spend at least some time and effort shooting down religious authorities when they try to step outside of their proper sphere of activity, and start making claims about "what is the case" based on a particular interpretation of holy scripture.
Then again, priests and theologians don't often have too much to say about matters of mousetrap and/or computer innovation, but they do often have very strong claims about, say, medicine (for example, whether or not to provide medical care to a sick child). In such a situation, where science and religious doctrine somewhat overlap, I wonder (and this is an honest question) which authority Fish would tell us to consult? Although, to be fair, I guess in such a case, a religious authority doesn't necessarily tell us whether or not the medical care will work, but whether or not we ought to provide it, and I'll admit, that's a question on which science is silent. No scientific experiment or research can prove that letting thousands of children die of easily treatable medical conditions in order not to displease a deity is "wrong;" I guess it just helps being born to parents who care more about, you know, their kids' well-being in this world than about the emotional states of a God, and if you aren't lucky enough for that, then tough shit, in the grave you go!
Aside from that, I can appreciate the stuff about theory determining what counts as evidence and Fish's clearly-stated fallibilism. I still feel, however, that Fish is probably picking the wrong targets. Many of us philosophical types feel that this whole rationalist, scientistic "New Atheist" movement (dudes like Dawkins and the late Hitchens) is more of an enemy than an ally, but sometimes I suspect that this is largely out of jealously, because those guys are getting all the press and seem to have more credibility in the public eye when it comes to dogma-demolition and critical thinking. In my experience, if you actually read what some of those guys are saying, it's a lot more humble than people like Fish seem to think. I'll grant that there are strong exceptions to this, for example Sam Harris' recent project of trying to argue that science can not just tell us "what to do in order to get what we want," but can actually inform our ideas about "what we ought to want."
On the whole, outside of academia, in the public sphere, I think that the major questions being discussed (e.g. creationism vs. evolution, the age of the earth and so on) are probably better answered by folks like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris than by dummies like Ham, Comfort, and Falwell (God rest his miserable soul). I'd like to think that Fish might be tacitly conceding this, when he mentions in the article that it's the job of religious faith to give "meaning and direction to life," as opposed to describing, explaining, and predicting phenomena.
I guess I just wish that people like Fish would spend at least some time and effort shooting down religious authorities when they try to step outside of their proper sphere of activity, and start making claims about "what is the case" based on a particular interpretation of holy scripture.
Sunday, 1 April 2012
Silly Equivocation
So, about a week ago I commented on how to turn religion into an empty and meaningless concept by just following the recommendations of Reason.com contributor Kennedy, who defines religion as "anything that is about God." Aside from the fact that this excludes non-theistic religions like Buddhism from being religions at all, the real problem with that article was its clumsy and ham-handed way of dealing with concepts in an effort to support the ridiculous conclusion that atheism is not only a "belief system" but a religion. I guess the lack of belief in werewolves also constitutes a comprehensive belief system, too; how easy it is to build a systematic arrangement of beliefs by... um, just not believing in something!
In a similar effort at fudging boundaries, Stanley Fish tries to argue that science is really on a par with religion, and amounts to faith and appeals to authority. This is a common tactic typically employed by religious fundamentalists and creationists but in this particular case, is coming from a sort of postmodernist, relativist thinker. I feel that, in some sense, Fish and I are playing for the same team, at least in the sense that I sympathize with many of his criticisms of absolutist, rationalistic, and universalist positions. But I think he's picking the wrong targets on this one.
Jerry Coyne writes an excellent and straightforward response that, I feel, hits the nail on the head: Fish just "misunderstands science." Coyne doesn't come right out and say it but pretty much implies that science isn't really about "belief" at all; modern empirical science is concerned with providing tentative descriptions and explanations of natural phenomena for purposes of prediction and control and, well, for the most part, it just "works." Something like the theory of evolution isn't something you need to "believe" in at all; either you understand it, or you don't, and if you understand it, you see that it's a parsimonious and coherent explanation for the phenomenon of biodiversity. Scientific study may lead you to adopt or reject certain beliefs, but it operates well enough regardless of what you believe or don't believe. Science doesn't really need philosophical justification (although I do feel that good science and good philosophy go hand in hand, and one should not ignore one for the sake of the other; science pursued in the absence of philosophy becomes superficial and uncritical, while philosophy pursued without proper recognition of contemporary science becomes mere wordplay and fantasy).
Say we have a chemist who has a "belief" that if you put your hand into a vat of sulfuric acid it will burn your hand. You can argue all you like that this belief is just as good as belief in a loving God, and based on faith, authority, or whatever. But, well, go ahead and put your hand in the fucking vat. You can believe that the searing pain is the magical sensation of the presence of angels or that it's, you know, acid burning your hand. What you believe just doesn't matter. Science takes place in the realm of acting and doing, of natural phenomena. It isn't metaphysical, but it doesn't really aim to be. You can believe the world is flat, but if you go on a voyage in a sailing ship, you won't fall off the edge of the world, because there just isn't one.
Religion as we know it is ultimately all about having certain sorts of belief, and Fish seems to concede that they are basically just based on appeals to authority. Now, I don't feel religion has to be this way. I think we can purge religion of doctrines like theism, supernaturalism, the existence of a unitary or eternal soul and an afterlife. I think we can conceive of religion in non-doctrinal terms, as a way of living in the world, which is complementary to science, and not in conflict with it. Science, any way you slice it, does not deal with questions of meaning or value, and no descriptive account of phenomena will tell us what we ought to do (in this sense, I disagree with some folks, like Sam Harris, who feel that we actually can base some type of morality, or some account of "how we should live," entirely on scientific data). Science provides us with a rough kind of "map," but not a destination or goal, so to speak. Any talk of how we should go about things takes place in the realm of value and non-rational desire and preference. I think one could say that a "religious person" is just one who has a unified way of responding to the totality of existence and phenomena, rather than just haphazardly reacting to stimuli.
I don't think science really does put itself forward as some kind of privileged, special, authoritative way of believing or seeing the world. It's just a pragmatic way of dealing with phenomena, nothing more. Science can be conceived of in much more epistemically humble terms than Fish characterizes it.
In a similar effort at fudging boundaries, Stanley Fish tries to argue that science is really on a par with religion, and amounts to faith and appeals to authority. This is a common tactic typically employed by religious fundamentalists and creationists but in this particular case, is coming from a sort of postmodernist, relativist thinker. I feel that, in some sense, Fish and I are playing for the same team, at least in the sense that I sympathize with many of his criticisms of absolutist, rationalistic, and universalist positions. But I think he's picking the wrong targets on this one.
Jerry Coyne writes an excellent and straightforward response that, I feel, hits the nail on the head: Fish just "misunderstands science." Coyne doesn't come right out and say it but pretty much implies that science isn't really about "belief" at all; modern empirical science is concerned with providing tentative descriptions and explanations of natural phenomena for purposes of prediction and control and, well, for the most part, it just "works." Something like the theory of evolution isn't something you need to "believe" in at all; either you understand it, or you don't, and if you understand it, you see that it's a parsimonious and coherent explanation for the phenomenon of biodiversity. Scientific study may lead you to adopt or reject certain beliefs, but it operates well enough regardless of what you believe or don't believe. Science doesn't really need philosophical justification (although I do feel that good science and good philosophy go hand in hand, and one should not ignore one for the sake of the other; science pursued in the absence of philosophy becomes superficial and uncritical, while philosophy pursued without proper recognition of contemporary science becomes mere wordplay and fantasy).
Say we have a chemist who has a "belief" that if you put your hand into a vat of sulfuric acid it will burn your hand. You can argue all you like that this belief is just as good as belief in a loving God, and based on faith, authority, or whatever. But, well, go ahead and put your hand in the fucking vat. You can believe that the searing pain is the magical sensation of the presence of angels or that it's, you know, acid burning your hand. What you believe just doesn't matter. Science takes place in the realm of acting and doing, of natural phenomena. It isn't metaphysical, but it doesn't really aim to be. You can believe the world is flat, but if you go on a voyage in a sailing ship, you won't fall off the edge of the world, because there just isn't one.
Religion as we know it is ultimately all about having certain sorts of belief, and Fish seems to concede that they are basically just based on appeals to authority. Now, I don't feel religion has to be this way. I think we can purge religion of doctrines like theism, supernaturalism, the existence of a unitary or eternal soul and an afterlife. I think we can conceive of religion in non-doctrinal terms, as a way of living in the world, which is complementary to science, and not in conflict with it. Science, any way you slice it, does not deal with questions of meaning or value, and no descriptive account of phenomena will tell us what we ought to do (in this sense, I disagree with some folks, like Sam Harris, who feel that we actually can base some type of morality, or some account of "how we should live," entirely on scientific data). Science provides us with a rough kind of "map," but not a destination or goal, so to speak. Any talk of how we should go about things takes place in the realm of value and non-rational desire and preference. I think one could say that a "religious person" is just one who has a unified way of responding to the totality of existence and phenomena, rather than just haphazardly reacting to stimuli.
I don't think science really does put itself forward as some kind of privileged, special, authoritative way of believing or seeing the world. It's just a pragmatic way of dealing with phenomena, nothing more. Science can be conceived of in much more epistemically humble terms than Fish characterizes it.
Friday, 30 March 2012
Challenging the Evolutionary Challenge!
Justin Clarke-Doane puts forward an interesting argument in “Morality and Mathematics: The Evolutionary Challenge” (Ethics 2012) in an attempt to show "that there may be no epistemological ground on which to be a moral antirealist and a mathematical realist."
Braddock, Mogensen, and Sinnott-Armstrong respond here, concluding that "even if Clarke-Doane does show that some evolutionary arguments fail to distinguish morality from mathematics, a lot more work is needed" to support his conclusion.
Some of the best stuff I've read all week.
I think it goes without saying where my sympathies lie...
Braddock, Mogensen, and Sinnott-Armstrong respond here, concluding that "even if Clarke-Doane does show that some evolutionary arguments fail to distinguish morality from mathematics, a lot more work is needed" to support his conclusion.
Some of the best stuff I've read all week.
I think it goes without saying where my sympathies lie...
Monday, 26 March 2012
How to turn "religion" into an empty, meaningless concept
First of all, I want to make it clear that this blog is not intended to be one of those dime-a-dozen "atheist blogs." Not that there's anything wrong with them, but I do feel that the whole "God question" (as traditionally construed, the question of whether or not a personal, i.e. theistic God exists) is something that you deal with at one stage in your life, and then maybe poke at it once every now and then but, for the most part, you set it aside to focus on more interesting questions. Not only that, but there are some damn good atheist bloggers out there, who actually do tackle the God question on a regular basis and, you know, debate creationists and whatnot in a really entertaining and engaging fashion, and I don't want to compete with those guys or fit myself into a niche that's already well-filled by much brighter minds.
That said, I expect I'll probably be doing some of that aforementioned poking at the God question now and then on this blog, and this is pretty much one of those "pokes." Well, sort of. To be more precise, I'm dealing with the oft-heard silly claim that "atheism is a religion," specifically as it is spelled out in what is definitely one of the dumbest articles I've read this month. What a colossal mess.
The author's main argument is spectacularly weak, and hinges on the thesis that "if your [belief] system is about God—or about the non-existence of God—God is still at the center of the argument's 'aboutness.'" Because atheism is "about" God, at least in the sense that it is primarily the denial of the existence of God, that, um... makes it a religion. Yeah. Anything that is "about" God, in some broad sense, is somehow a religion. That's setting the bar pretty low, but whatever. Maybe by this logic, Marvel's Thor comics are holy scripture. I don't know.
Responding to the statement "If atheism is a religion, 'off' is a TV channel," the author makes the profound claim that "God is the TV. Religions are the channels. If it is off, maybe he's dead or disengaged, but at least you admit there's a TV." Well, does this mean that everything is a religion? Any old collection of beliefs is a religion? Is there any way at all to get away from that "TV" entirely? I mean, either you believe in God, or you don't. Even if you're an agnostic or a "fence-sitter" of some sort, that's still ultimately a non-theistic position (you're "unsure," at best, which is to say you still don't actually "believe" in God). Is the author saying that it's impossible not to be religious? If that's the case, if every set of beliefs counts as a religion, then no set of beliefs counts as a religion, because a religion is just synonymous with "any set of beliefs." The author makes a safe space for political libertarianism, of course, because that is "about liberty" just like "hockey is about mullets and pucks." So, alright, hockey's not a religion. Libertarianism isn't a religion. But even a hockey-playing libertarian either believes in God or doesn't, and so is religious! Buddhism isn't about God. If anything, it's about attaining a state of peace and tranquility in a world of impermanence and suffering, without any reference to God. Not a single one of the "Four Noble Truths" is concerned with God. Does that mean Buddhism is not a religion?
To be fair, I think the author's real targets are not atheists in general, but rather what I call "movement atheists." What are movement atheists, you ask? Well, pretty much anyone who makes a big stink out of fighting religion at every turn and promoting atheism as a "cause." The movement atheist is the adolescent cousin at Thanksgiving dinner who throws a shit fit when Grandpa says Grace. Granted, a lot of these people do admirable work promoting things like women's rights and LGBT rights, and combating efforts to introduce creationism into science classrooms, and I'm not going to shit on them for that. I just feel that a lot of this can be done (and, of course, is done) without dealing with God at all. As a result I'm not really outraged by the article in question; I just think it's a stupid and clumsy way of juggling concepts just to piss on some people the author doesn't really like.
I'm not out to "defend" atheism, because I don't believe (as the author seems to believe,) that atheism is a "belief system." It's not. At best, it may or may not be an attribute of a given belief system, which is to say that your belief system and ontology (your personal catalog of "things that exist") may or may not include a personal God. Atheism, in my view, is a lot "smaller" than the author seems to think. The author is perhaps unwittingly giving atheists more credit than we deserve. One may not have a belief system at all. I don't feel that I do. This isn't a boast, but merely an admission; I don't personally feel that I can organize my own imperfect and incomplete hodge-podge collection of beliefs, hunches, perspectives, and suspicions into a perfectly organized, coherent system of any sort, and I sympathize with Nietzsche's famous "mistrust [of] all systematizers," and his claim that "the will to a system is a lack of integrity."
But none of this changes the fact that theism is still an unsubstantiated claim, an unwarranted doctrine among many. And if you recognize this, you're an atheist or non-theist. I'll give the author credit for taking a shot at the absolutely humorless, moralizing "movement atheists." But I dislike the author's attempt to water down and weaken religion by making it into just "anything that is about God."
This is a poor definition of religion. I don't believe there is any absolutely correct or final way of defining words and terms; language is, of course, mutable and conventional. But some definitions may be better or worse, or more or less complete, than others in some practical sense, for given purposes. A religion, as I understand it, is something which provides orientation to our comings and goings, which gives some kind of coherence or unity to our dealings with sense experience and particular states of mind; we might say that the person who haphazardly acts and reacts to life's events and stimuli is not properly "religious," even if he or she believes in a personal God, while the person who has a unifying stance towards existence as a whole has a religious sense. Religion isn't about what you believe or what you don't believe, but in how you live. I have, at times, found myself to be religious in this way, even as an atheist.
I think an atheist or theist can be religious. But neither atheism, nor theism, is itself a religion.
That said, I expect I'll probably be doing some of that aforementioned poking at the God question now and then on this blog, and this is pretty much one of those "pokes." Well, sort of. To be more precise, I'm dealing with the oft-heard silly claim that "atheism is a religion," specifically as it is spelled out in what is definitely one of the dumbest articles I've read this month. What a colossal mess.
The author's main argument is spectacularly weak, and hinges on the thesis that "if your [belief] system is about God—or about the non-existence of God—God is still at the center of the argument's 'aboutness.'" Because atheism is "about" God, at least in the sense that it is primarily the denial of the existence of God, that, um... makes it a religion. Yeah. Anything that is "about" God, in some broad sense, is somehow a religion. That's setting the bar pretty low, but whatever. Maybe by this logic, Marvel's Thor comics are holy scripture. I don't know.
Responding to the statement "If atheism is a religion, 'off' is a TV channel," the author makes the profound claim that "God is the TV. Religions are the channels. If it is off, maybe he's dead or disengaged, but at least you admit there's a TV." Well, does this mean that everything is a religion? Any old collection of beliefs is a religion? Is there any way at all to get away from that "TV" entirely? I mean, either you believe in God, or you don't. Even if you're an agnostic or a "fence-sitter" of some sort, that's still ultimately a non-theistic position (you're "unsure," at best, which is to say you still don't actually "believe" in God). Is the author saying that it's impossible not to be religious? If that's the case, if every set of beliefs counts as a religion, then no set of beliefs counts as a religion, because a religion is just synonymous with "any set of beliefs." The author makes a safe space for political libertarianism, of course, because that is "about liberty" just like "hockey is about mullets and pucks." So, alright, hockey's not a religion. Libertarianism isn't a religion. But even a hockey-playing libertarian either believes in God or doesn't, and so is religious! Buddhism isn't about God. If anything, it's about attaining a state of peace and tranquility in a world of impermanence and suffering, without any reference to God. Not a single one of the "Four Noble Truths" is concerned with God. Does that mean Buddhism is not a religion?
To be fair, I think the author's real targets are not atheists in general, but rather what I call "movement atheists." What are movement atheists, you ask? Well, pretty much anyone who makes a big stink out of fighting religion at every turn and promoting atheism as a "cause." The movement atheist is the adolescent cousin at Thanksgiving dinner who throws a shit fit when Grandpa says Grace. Granted, a lot of these people do admirable work promoting things like women's rights and LGBT rights, and combating efforts to introduce creationism into science classrooms, and I'm not going to shit on them for that. I just feel that a lot of this can be done (and, of course, is done) without dealing with God at all. As a result I'm not really outraged by the article in question; I just think it's a stupid and clumsy way of juggling concepts just to piss on some people the author doesn't really like.
I'm not out to "defend" atheism, because I don't believe (as the author seems to believe,) that atheism is a "belief system." It's not. At best, it may or may not be an attribute of a given belief system, which is to say that your belief system and ontology (your personal catalog of "things that exist") may or may not include a personal God. Atheism, in my view, is a lot "smaller" than the author seems to think. The author is perhaps unwittingly giving atheists more credit than we deserve. One may not have a belief system at all. I don't feel that I do. This isn't a boast, but merely an admission; I don't personally feel that I can organize my own imperfect and incomplete hodge-podge collection of beliefs, hunches, perspectives, and suspicions into a perfectly organized, coherent system of any sort, and I sympathize with Nietzsche's famous "mistrust [of] all systematizers," and his claim that "the will to a system is a lack of integrity."
But none of this changes the fact that theism is still an unsubstantiated claim, an unwarranted doctrine among many. And if you recognize this, you're an atheist or non-theist. I'll give the author credit for taking a shot at the absolutely humorless, moralizing "movement atheists." But I dislike the author's attempt to water down and weaken religion by making it into just "anything that is about God."
This is a poor definition of religion. I don't believe there is any absolutely correct or final way of defining words and terms; language is, of course, mutable and conventional. But some definitions may be better or worse, or more or less complete, than others in some practical sense, for given purposes. A religion, as I understand it, is something which provides orientation to our comings and goings, which gives some kind of coherence or unity to our dealings with sense experience and particular states of mind; we might say that the person who haphazardly acts and reacts to life's events and stimuli is not properly "religious," even if he or she believes in a personal God, while the person who has a unifying stance towards existence as a whole has a religious sense. Religion isn't about what you believe or what you don't believe, but in how you live. I have, at times, found myself to be religious in this way, even as an atheist.
I think an atheist or theist can be religious. But neither atheism, nor theism, is itself a religion.
Is Free Will an Illusion?
An interesting collection of articles on the question of free will.
Mele's in particular strikes me as pretty weak. He points out a study which indicates that the "majority of people do not see having a nonphysical mind or soul as a requirement for free will." Well, so what? That's an observation about what "most people think," but not about what is actually the case. Any way you slice it, it's damn hard to make room for free will in a wholly naturalistic universe.
He also asks for "scientific evidence that [free will] is an illusion," shifting the burden of proof away from the believers in free will. This is always a silly and dishonest maneuver; no one has ever really "disproven" the existence of werewolves, but does that mean it's prudent to carry silver bullets with us every time we venture into the woods? It's not as though belief in free will is a "default" position, requiring no logical or evidential support. What we call free will in the traditional sense (that is, the power of a human being to "pull his or her own strings," in some sense, or to be the ultimate author of his or her own actions) is a sort of cultural artifact, something we come to believe in largely just because of, well, "what most people think," or "what we're told." I'm not convinced that just any person would come around to accept metaphysical libertarianism just by way of careful introspection or anything like that. I don't deny that deliberation and reflection occur, but I do contend that they occur within a larger causal context, and even introspective observation of our own deliberation and reflection would lead us, at best, to a feeling of uncertainty about the future, not that some future events can be things for which we are, as they say, "buck-stoppingly" responsible.
I'm also not convinced that the question of the existence of free will is a "merely academic" question, or something that has no bearing on practical activity. Both Einstein and Spinoza, for example, rejected the notion of free will and felt that without this dogma, a person can become more compassionate and understanding, and less prone to anger, envy, and hate. Einstein in particular felt that the rejection of free will "conduces to a view of life in which humor, above all, has its due place," and "prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously."
What really intrigues me is why certain philosophers put so much time and effort into constructing some kind of "proof" or argument for free will. Is this really necessary? Is there any phenomenon which requires us to posit free will for explanatory purposes? I can't think of any.
I suspect that, like theism, metaphysical libertarianism is a doctrine to which people cling for largely emotional reasons; just as many people want to feel that there is an invisible, powerful, all-knowing being out there somewhere who always loves them very much, people want to feel that they are fully in control of their own lives, that they are the authors of their own vices and virtues, that they are "responsible" for their good deeds and deserve all the credit, and that their enemies are "responsible" for their bad deeds and deserve punishment.
Mele's in particular strikes me as pretty weak. He points out a study which indicates that the "majority of people do not see having a nonphysical mind or soul as a requirement for free will." Well, so what? That's an observation about what "most people think," but not about what is actually the case. Any way you slice it, it's damn hard to make room for free will in a wholly naturalistic universe.
He also asks for "scientific evidence that [free will] is an illusion," shifting the burden of proof away from the believers in free will. This is always a silly and dishonest maneuver; no one has ever really "disproven" the existence of werewolves, but does that mean it's prudent to carry silver bullets with us every time we venture into the woods? It's not as though belief in free will is a "default" position, requiring no logical or evidential support. What we call free will in the traditional sense (that is, the power of a human being to "pull his or her own strings," in some sense, or to be the ultimate author of his or her own actions) is a sort of cultural artifact, something we come to believe in largely just because of, well, "what most people think," or "what we're told." I'm not convinced that just any person would come around to accept metaphysical libertarianism just by way of careful introspection or anything like that. I don't deny that deliberation and reflection occur, but I do contend that they occur within a larger causal context, and even introspective observation of our own deliberation and reflection would lead us, at best, to a feeling of uncertainty about the future, not that some future events can be things for which we are, as they say, "buck-stoppingly" responsible.
I'm also not convinced that the question of the existence of free will is a "merely academic" question, or something that has no bearing on practical activity. Both Einstein and Spinoza, for example, rejected the notion of free will and felt that without this dogma, a person can become more compassionate and understanding, and less prone to anger, envy, and hate. Einstein in particular felt that the rejection of free will "conduces to a view of life in which humor, above all, has its due place," and "prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously."
What really intrigues me is why certain philosophers put so much time and effort into constructing some kind of "proof" or argument for free will. Is this really necessary? Is there any phenomenon which requires us to posit free will for explanatory purposes? I can't think of any.
I suspect that, like theism, metaphysical libertarianism is a doctrine to which people cling for largely emotional reasons; just as many people want to feel that there is an invisible, powerful, all-knowing being out there somewhere who always loves them very much, people want to feel that they are fully in control of their own lives, that they are the authors of their own vices and virtues, that they are "responsible" for their good deeds and deserve all the credit, and that their enemies are "responsible" for their bad deeds and deserve punishment.
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Beyond Good and Evil
"My demand of the philosopher is well known: that he take his stand
beyond good and evil and treat the illusion of moral judgment as beneath
him. This demand follows from an insight that I was the first to
articulate: that there are no moral facts. Moral and religious judgments
are based on realities that do not exist. Morality is merely an
interpretation of certain phenomena — more precisely, a
misinterpretation."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
As I see it, what I call nihilism is primarily just the honest acknowledgment that one does not know "right from wrong," in any deep, metaphysical sense. One may know one's own emotional reaction to a given phenomenon (you may react with disgust and disapproval at the notion of, say, willful murder or some particular instance of cruelty) but this says more about your own constitution than it does about the phenomenon in question. We shouldn't mistake our own emotional reactions to phenomena as indicators of moral truth, though this is not to say that we should treat these reactions as irrelevant, or just ignore them. When we react with great disgust and disapprobation upon witnessing or hearing about some event, we "misinterpret" the phenomena in question by assuming that these sentiments highlight some objective "moral fact."
While an objective morality may be out the window, I don't think this means that we ought to abandon ethics, so long as we consider "ethics" to mean something like "dealing with the question of how to live best." The question of how to live and act is perpetually relevant, and this is so even in the absence of genuine free will or final, static answers to such a question.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
As I see it, what I call nihilism is primarily just the honest acknowledgment that one does not know "right from wrong," in any deep, metaphysical sense. One may know one's own emotional reaction to a given phenomenon (you may react with disgust and disapproval at the notion of, say, willful murder or some particular instance of cruelty) but this says more about your own constitution than it does about the phenomenon in question. We shouldn't mistake our own emotional reactions to phenomena as indicators of moral truth, though this is not to say that we should treat these reactions as irrelevant, or just ignore them. When we react with great disgust and disapprobation upon witnessing or hearing about some event, we "misinterpret" the phenomena in question by assuming that these sentiments highlight some objective "moral fact."
While an objective morality may be out the window, I don't think this means that we ought to abandon ethics, so long as we consider "ethics" to mean something like "dealing with the question of how to live best." The question of how to live and act is perpetually relevant, and this is so even in the absence of genuine free will or final, static answers to such a question.
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