Response to Comment on Atheism post
"Happened to stumble across your very interesting weblog. It's refreshing to read something on the internet which doesn't appear to be written by Huxley's infinity of typewriting monkeys (by the way, it would take 6 billion monkeys longer than the scientifically estimated age of the universe to work out Hamlet--I recently had to calculate that for a class).
"Personally, I find atheism to be extremely ironic.
"The principal object of atheists' execration is FAITH. I would define faith to be the retention of a belief despite a void of relevant empirical evidence. Religious people of the Judeo-Christian bent certainly possess faith in a high degree, and they eagerly acknowledge this. I think that most atheists overlook the fact that they too have faith. Atheists believe in an article of faith which cannot actually be proven: the nonentity of a higher intelligent power. How do you prove the nonexistence of something that is so far from tangible? Humans can't prove the nonentity of Russell's teapot, let alone the nonentity of an intelligent higher power. So atheists possess faith. Perhaps in not nearly so high a degree as adherents of major world religions, but they believe without evidence nonetheless.
"I think that agnostics are, in a way, 'more atheist than the atheists' because they do not presume to have faith; agnosticism in its most general form tenders answers only within the realm of collectible empirical evidence.
"So, as a young scientist, the question I find interesting is which belief label gybes best with science. The only reasonable conclusion is agnosticism, because faith is science's only anathema. In fact, the current scientific thinking, established to enable the study of quantum phenomena, holds that any question that has no possibility of empirical resolution is not a valid question at all, but something approaching a dangerous error. The 'god question' certainly qualifies as such a question.
"I hate Wittgenstein. I hate him. But sometimes I am forced to agree with his general conclusions, and I think that in large part religions questions of the variety 'is there an intelligent higher power?' are a syntactic set-up with commonly-held paradigms as the culprit and with language as its accomplice."
Here is my response:
“So, as a young scientist, the question I find interesting is which belief label gybes [sic] best with science. The only reasonable conclusion is agnosticism, because faith is science's only anathema.”
“In fact, the current scientific thinking, established to enable the study of quantum phenomena, holds that any question that has no possibility of empirical resolution is not a valid question at all, but something approaching a dangerous error. The ‘god question’ certainly qualifies as such a question.”
“I hate Wittgenstein. I hate him. But sometimes I am forced to agree with his general conclusions, and I think that in large part religions questions of the variety ‘is there an intelligent higher power?’ are a syntactic set-up with commonly-held paradigms as the culprit and with language as its accomplice.”
I don’t know why you hate Wittgenstein, but perhaps that feeling has more validity than your embrace of his conclusions. In any case, if the question of God’s reality is a “syntactic set-up,” you might want to ask who is doing the setting up? Since syntax is our only way of communicating, or perhaps even of thinking rationally about things, then maybe there is more meaning to be found in the set-up than you give it credit for.
And if syntax, and hence human rational thought, does NOT correspond to ultimate reality, then science too is out the window, and then we may well ask whether there is a greater reality than what we can comprehend with human syntax. The answer will obviously not be able to be proven, or even formed in language. And yet we may have access to it in other ways—like faith.
posted by G.Rap | 3:04 PM
15 Comments:
I fully agree that it is impossible to be devoid of faith; any assertions one can possibly make presuppose a countless number of articles of faith. Possession of faith is not an option, but a necessity of human existence. For instance, the comparative amount of faith implicit in agnosticism versus the amount implicit in Christianity is not a difference of kind (ie absence of faith versus faith), not a difference of degree (amount of faith versus amount of faith), but an ostensible difference of degree between two quantities that are obviously not truly comparable (apparent amount of faith versus apparent amount of faith). Retention of faith is a huge part of human existence. I fully realize that every single word I write proves that I possess faith.
Perhaps all conceivable articles of faith are equally reasonable, but I believe people interested in learning try to pragmatically restrict their articles of faith to apparently small, individually ingestible chunks. In fact, this statement seems to be a reasonable sketch of the essence of learning. My fairly crass designation of certain religious conclusions as being more or less "scientific" was really just a pragmatic, subjective analysis of how readily digestible the requisite "chunks" of faith seem to be.
One of my most closely-held articles of faith is that faith, though unavoidable, should be restricted to the plausible (purely a subjective designation). Perhaps the faiths implicit in agnosticism and the faiths implicit in Christianity are equally ridiculous; perhaps the statement "murder is wrong" and the statement "some ethnic groups deserve extermination" are equally moral, but all I or any human can do is to pick the the more appealing, plausible articles of faith every time. Every road leads to subjectivity in discussions like these.
On a completely unrelated note, a long time ago, I read a book that I think you might particularly like, Dr Rapp. _Incompleteness: the Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel_ by Rebecca Goldstein is a short biography of the mathematician and explication of his proof, and the biographical portions are presented in a very particular way; Godel is presented as a firm believer in absolute truth working in a field dominated by often derisive logical positivists. It reminded me very much of humanities classes with you and Mr Kirk. And maybe it also explains my disdain for Wittgenstein.
B
Good. Now that we agree about that most fundamental thesis, we can begin to discuss whether there is "practican reason" (as Lewis calls it) for assuming certain fundamental moral values, so that we can do what we really crave to do, which is find good reason (admittedly founded on faith) to distinguish between the morality of "murder is wrong" and the immorality of "some groups deserve extermination." Not every road leads to total subjectivity, and we can begin to ask now whether there is reason to believe in what you call those more "appealing" and "plausible" faiths, in fact, whether believing in them is not reason itself, not only avoiding the pitfalls of Wittgenstein but also growing (at last!) out of the prison-house of Descartes!
I look forward to reading the book on Goedel. Thanks for the recommendation.
For example, it cannot be proven by science or by any other empirical activity that the laws of nature are constant (i.e., if the laws of gravitation are true today they will also be true tomorrow).
This is quite true, and it is a point that a lot of people don't understand.
Although doing science doesn't require any faith, believing its conclusions does require faith -- precisely of the sort G.Rap mentions. (See Nelson Goodman's Fact, Fiction, and Forecast for an excellent discussion of this point.)
The sort of faith required to believe the conclusions of science, however, is a proper subset of the sort of faith associated with religious beliefs. So any claim -- as I've sometimes heard it stated -- that it takes more faith to be irreligious than to be religious is incorrect.
One cannot “prove” that if A=B and B=C then A=C. It is either self-evident or not, but we can’t prove it.
This, however, is not true. If A=B and B=C, then we can prove that A=C in any of the popular self-consistent formal logic systems (e.g., Peano arithmetic).
We can't necessarily prove that the inference rules used to conclude that A=C will be useful in the real world. But that's more along the lines of the first issue (regarding the consistency of the laws of nature).
What “current scientific thinking” ought to have said is that “any question that has no possibility of empirical resolution is not a valid SCIENTIFIC question.” But human beings have all sorts of questions that cannot be empirically resolved, and some would say that those are the MOST IMPORTANT of the questions we can ask.
Agreed.
... we can begin to discuss whether there is "practican reason" (as Lewis calls it) for assuming certain fundamental moral values ...
Is "assuming" the right word here? I don't assume that murder is wrong any more than I assume that Angelina Jolie is pretty. It's more of a judgment (based on visceral reaction) than an assumption, in my opinion.
First of all, change "practican" to "practical."
Second, "popular, self-consistent formal logic systems" have to be assumed, cannot be proven outside themselves. I believe in their value, but the statement "If A=B and B=C then A=C" can be proven, if Maurile is correct, only once certain assumptions have been made, so once again, all proofs are founded on faith.
Third, that murder is wrong is both a feeling (like the visceral one that Jolie is pretty) AND a rational proposition. They mutually influence one another: our moral conviction that murder is wrong informs our feelings and our feelings confirm our moral conviction. But as propositions, we must assume fundamental moral values in order to debate the rightness or wrongness of particular cases, no matter what we feel about them. We have no way of judging whether our visceral feelings are good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate if we don't first assume the validity of fundamental principles of right and wrong. If you say all such values are only feelings, then NO judgments are valid as judgments. They remain merely feelings. But in fact we do argue about right and wrong where we don't about mere feelings. As Lewis writes, if you say "I feel sick," I don't respond by saying, "No, you're wrong, I feel quite well." But we do argue about the justice of capital punishment, and that is because we agree on the assumption that justice, whatever else it is, is a fundamental good.
g.rap, I think I initially misinterpreted your statement about A=C.
I initially thought you meant that we cannot prove A=C, even if we are given that A=B and B=C. The truth is that we can prove it within a given logic system (that is, according to a set of stipulated axioms).
In reading your above comment and then re-reading your original post, I believe you actually meant something slightly different -- namely, that we cannot prove the inference rule "if A=B and B=C then A=C," which is itself an axiom.
About that you are correct. Axioms aren't proven. But they aren't taken on faith, either. They are stipulated -- defined -- to be true within a given logic system.
Taking it on faith that if A=B and B=C then A=C makes as much sense as taking it on faith that all bachelors are unmarried. They don't have to be taken on faith because they are true simply by definition -- the first in Peano arithmetic and the second in English.
When it comes to beliefs about the real world, however, as opposed to statements that follow from word definitions, I agree that nearly all require some element of faith. In fact, I can think of only two exceptions:
1. I think, therefore I am.
2. My memory is faulty.
Anyone got any others?
I think the analogy between moral judgments and judgments about sexual attractiveness is fairly robust, so I will stick with it for a bit.
"Murder is wrong" and "Angelina Jolie is pretty" are both feelings and rational propositions. People can argue about both of them. ("Her face is too thin." "So what? She has great legs and that's more important." Etc.)
The relationship between assumed fundamental moral values and particular cases is somewhat complicated, I think. It's true that people argue about particular cases by invoking fundamental principles. But those fundamental principles, in my opinion, are generally built from the ground up by considering lots of particular cases. "Murder is wrong" is a generalization -- a conclusion we arrive at by examining our reaction to particular (real or imagined) instances of murder we consider.
Similarly, "athletic-looking legs are sexy" may be used as a fundamental principle in favor of Jolie, but (like "murder is wrong") it is really a conclusion based on many observations rather than an a priori truth.
Moreover, I disagree that we have no way of judging whether our visceral feelings are right or wrong if we don't first assume certain principles. Making such judgments is second-nature. We know Jolie is pretty even before we formulate generalized principles concerning facial symmetry and so on. And we know pushing someone off a cliff is wrong even before we formulate more general principles about killing. The judgment comes first, which leads to the abstraction of general principles, which in turn helps refine our judgments. (That individual visceral judgments precede formal statement of general principles is supported by observing the social behavior of non-human apes. Rhesus monkeys can't formulate abstract moral propositions, but given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, they will starve themselves for several days.)
Lewis is right that we share basic intuitions about right and wrong, and that these shared intuitions underly our debates about complicated issues like capital punishment. I just wouldn't say that these basic intuitions are assumed. That description connotes more arbitrariness than I think is appropriate.
My responses to Maurile:
“But those fundamental principles, in my opinion, are generally built from the ground up by considering lots of particular cases. ‘Murder is wrong’ is a generalization -- a conclusion we arrive at by examining our reaction to particular (real or imagined) instances of murder we consider.”
Maurile is being very Aristotelian. I tend to be more Platonic. I don’t believe we derive the generalization “murder is wrong” from our emotional or visceral reactions to real or imagined murders. Those reactions exist, of course, and they predate our knowledge of general principles. They are taught us by our parents and society. But when we think about them, we cannot by any sleight of hand or of mind come to believe that because we feel a certain way about particular cases it is therefore right to believe in the truth of the general proposition. The idea that our feelings are “right” on this subject, that whatever we feel, murder is bad, is an axiom. The Ten Commandments do not exist because we all feel under most circumstances icky about not honoring our parents or not coveting our neighbor’s Lexus or not sleeping with his wife. They exist to assert what we ought to believe whether we feel like it or not.
It is similar with beauty. Our love of the beautiful is a response to the perception that beauty is in the beautiful object. What it is that makes the beautiful beautiful is no more learned from multiple experiences than it is felt because we have the concept. Beauty is a kind of self-evident reality from which both our feelings and our thoughts arise, just as that murdering our own kind is a self-evident wrong from which arise both our secondary moral principles and our visceral feelings.
In both cases, feelings have no better credentials than principles, Aristotle than Plato here. Let’s call them axioms, if not assumptions. They are either self-evident, or they have no authority at all.
“And we know pushing someone off a cliff is wrong even before we formulate more general principles about killing.”
This is precisely missing the point. We don’t KNOW that pushing someone off a cliff is wrong just because we don’t like to do so. We may NOT like to do so. But that tells us nothing about its wrongness. We can only say “it is wrong” if we assume—or we’ll say take as an axiom of moral thought—that murder is wrong. Otherwise, we are reduced to saying “I don’t like to do it, but I have no way of knowing whether it is right.”
“(That individual visceral judgments precede formal statement of general principles is supported by observing the social behavior of non-human apes. Rhesus monkeys can't formulate abstract moral propositions, but given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, they will starve themselves for several days.)”
The monkey example proves nothing. It suggests that our moral axioms are part and parcel of the created universe and consistent with it. But the fact that monkeys behave in this way, while it may be a natural fact, can say nothing about what we OUGHT to do or think. Animals do all sorts of things that, on the basis of moral principles, we know to be wrong for human beings to do.
“Lewis is right that we share basic intuitions about right and wrong, and that these shared intuitions underlie our debates about complicated issues like capital punishment. I just wouldn't say that these basic intuitions are assumed. That description connotes more arbitrariness than I think is appropriate.”
Here Maurile and I are closer. I agree that the basics are not arbitrary. Perhaps only semantics gets in the way. I’m willing to give up “assumed” (as in a hypothetical word problem) and settle on “axiom” (as in a foundational given without which the conversation cannot take place at all). There is no moral discourse, even disagreement, without the acceptance of the given axiom, and that axiom cannot itself be proven to be true by reference to any other kind of discourse, including discourse with our own feelings. But once it is adopted, then discussion, disagreement, and law courts are possible. That the axioms correspond to the nature of the universe and are not arbitrary I believe to be true, but I can’t prove it. And yet I MUST believe it in order to have any foundation for arguing that one ought to behave in this way and not that.
“In reading your above comment and then re-reading your original post, I believe you actually meant something slightly different -- namely, that we cannot prove the inference rule "if A=B and B=C then A=C," which is itself an axiom.
“About that you are correct. Axioms aren't proven. But they aren't taken on faith, either. They are stipulated -- defined -- to be true within a given logic system.”
Now we’re getting closer. I accept the term “axiom” here, and my point is that it cannot be proven. The question is now the difference between “taken on faith” and “stipulated—defined—to be true within a given logic system.” I would say that “murder is wrong” and “love your neighbor as yourself” are axioms of the stipulated logic system called human moral discourse, and that in practice, since all such discourse takes place in the context of our real lives and their real decision-making, that “accepting the axiom” and “taking the principle on faith” amount to the same thing. The principles do correspond to our feelings, where our feelings are not perverse. (Note the circular logic here.) But that is not evidence that they correspond to the ultimate nature of reality. I believe they do, but that is all I can do—believe it. They cannot be proven to correspond to reality outside of the “given logic system” that must assume they do so correspond in order to exist at all.
We either assume, accept, stipulate, define, believe, or take on faith that the fundamentals of the moral life actually correspond to the real nature of the universe, or we have simply no grounds for asserting that we or anyone else ought to behave in one way rather than another. This is what I mean by faith.
Let’s say the “given logic system” is conscious human thought about right and wrong. Not to assume/stipulate/believe in the fundamental moral axioms is not to be able to think about right and wrong at all. There can be subsets of this universal system of thought, like the ethics of a particular tribe on dealing with a witch doctor or American law on capital punishment. But they are subsets of the same moral system. There is only one universe of human moral discourse.
“When it comes to beliefs about the real world, however, as opposed to statements that follow from word definitions, I agree that nearly all require some element of faith. In fact, I can think of only two exceptions:
“1. I think, therefore I am.
“2. My memory is faulty.
“Anyone got any others?”
The chain of reasoning that Descartes bases upon his “I think therefore I am” is founded on certain axioms that Descartes himself does not acknowledge, namely that his own reasoning power can be followed infallibly. But even more basic is the fact that the “I” in his “I think” is not necessarily the same entity as the “I” in his “I am.” He assumes they are. He assumes that his “I” is doing the thinking and not that it is itself only a thought. And so on.
“My memory is faulty” rests on a variety of underlying axioms, including definitions of “faulty,” the existence of an “I” who “has” in whatever sense a “memory,” the existence of an entity called a “memory,” and so on. In a Buddhist universe, in which the I itself is an illusion, there can be no such thing as a memory, or a fault. There are only maya and nirvana.
As C.S. Lewis argued, I think irrefutably, there is no escape from faith. Either we believe in first principles, or we cannot know anything at all.
The chain of reasoning that Descartes bases upon his “I think therefore I am” is founded on certain axioms that Descartes himself does not acknowledge, namely that his own reasoning power can be followed infallibly. But even more basic is the fact that the “I” in his “I think” is not necessarily the same entity as the “I” in his “I am.” He assumes they are. He assumes that his “I” is doing the thinking and not that it is itself only a thought. And so on.
I don't see the same problems with "I think, therefore I am" as g.rap does, but perhaps we can resolve the matter by rephrasing it thus: "Thoughts occur, therefore there is a means by which thoughts occur." Descartes knew that thoughts occur because the notion that they occur -- a notion he had -- is itself a thought. It took no faith on his part, then, to believe it.
As for "My memory is faulty," I know it's true because I remember forgetting things. Either I really did forget things, in which case my memory is faulty, or I've never forgotten anything and my memory of having forgotten things is wrong, in which case my memory is faulty.
I don't see that it is any more self-evident to say "I think therefore I am" than to say "I am therefore I am," and if that's the case, why do we need Descartes? As for the second example, all I have to say is HA!
We don't necessarily need Descartes, but "I am" on its own is not immediately self-evident to everybody. I may wonder whether I really exist or whether I am just a fictional character in somebody else's dream. The observation that "I think" settles it because thinking implies the existence of a thinker (and who- or whatever is thinking the thoughts I am privy to I will simply label "I" -- could be a brain in a vat for all I know, or a formless ghost in a vat, but some kind of thinker is responsible for the thought that a thinker is responsible).
So I'd say there are at least two statements, aside from strictly analytic truths, that can be believed without faith; and I'll add a third candidate for your consideration as well.
1. (Rephrased) There is a means by which thoughts occur.
2. My memory is faulty.
3. The universe contains forgeries.
(This is all just a trivial sidebar to the more meaningful discussion about the nature of morality. But I'm a sucker for trivia.)
Maurile,
I agree that you are, that I am,that Descartes was, that your memory is faulty, and that (because there are human beings) the universe contains forgeries. I also agree that these appear to be self-evident. But it's precisely the self-evident that we take on faith, one of the self-evident things being that "now we see through a glass darkly."
For fear that I'm telling you only what you already know, I'll keep this comment brief.
You are probably correct that Descartes existed and that my memory is faulty, but you can't know those things with 100% certainty. Both require faith on your part that, among other things, you are not simply a "brain in a vat" with an extensive imagination. You can't know for sure that you are not merely imagining me.
In contrast, you do know that you are not merely imagining yourself. (That is to say, you are not imagining the fact that your thoughts are really being thought of. Even if you are only a brain in a vat, there exists some means by which your thoughts are occurring, and this means we will refer to as "you," or, from your perspective, "I.") You know with 100% certainty that "you" exist, without having to take anything on faith.
There are a very limited set of beliefs about the world that can be known with 100% certainty. I have named the only three I can think of.
(That the universe contains forgeries, I know because I once purchased in a gift shot an item purporting to be a forgery of an 1896 US Morgan Dollar. Either the item was what it purported to be, in which case it was a forgery, or it was not what it purported to be, in which case it was a forgery. If I am a brain in a vat and the outside world doesn't exist at all, then the whole apparent universe is a forgery.)
So there exists a means by which thoughts occur; my memory is faulty; and the universe contains forgeries. These are the three things about the universe -- the only three things -- that I know with 100% certainty.
What about the conviction that the phrase "100% certainty" has meaning? Is that faith or certainty? (I'm in mock mode, since I can't take very seriously the importance of 100% certainty. What good is 100% certainty if those are the only things about which one can be certain? Better a life of faith.)
I want to interject with one thing in response to Brandon: "How do you prove the nonexistence of something that is so far from tangible? Humans can't prove the nonentity of Russell's teapot, let alone the nonentity of an intelligent higher power. So atheists possess faith."
That is true, but consequently Humans have failed to prove the existence of a higher being.
I think the term Atheist was wrongly defined. Atheists do not believe in God - or a higher being - but this is within the realm of still holding Faith. As G.Rap pointed out, a quality of humanity is faith. Whether it is faith in the laws of nature, in monogamy, or in God we all base our every day principals on faith of some kind. Atheists are not devoid of souls or the ability to believe as they often painted. Atheists are human, but their belief systems do not include a God.
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