We have at least started a few brushfires among the conservative blogs. There is some good argumentative stuff in the comments thread to Daniel Larison’s TAC post here.
-
Archives
- August 2019
- July 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
-
Meta
I do not understand how the “right” could be anything but secular.
How any one who truly accepts the message of Jesus be anywhere on the “right” in modern American political terms?
I mean, Jesus Haploid Christ, the man did not believe in private property!
The central argument over at TAC appears to be:
To which I find two rather significant problems:
1. No, it isn’t; and
2. Even if it were, unless one defines “transcendent” as “coming from God” — which renders the argument rather circular — Kant showed that a transcendent morality can stem from ordinary human reason 223 years ago.
The reason I’m following this blog is that it doesn’t fall into standard categories. I expect (and am seeing) some stuff I agree with, some that I don’t. At least I’m not seeing the usual cliches of either the left or the right.
There are a couple of problems with hitching your conservative wagon to the “transcendental moral order” (TMO) team.
Problem 1. There are some perfectly good explanations for the development of morality from evolutionary biology. Pop-science writers are making those explanations quite widely known, gradually eroding the general credibility of TMO. We don’t have a degree of certainty for these naturalistic explanations anything like as good as we have for, say, celestial mechanics, but there are strong reasons to expect we shall have in a decade or few. Until that happens, TMO has viability as a God of the Gaps argument. Historically speaking, however, the God of the Gaps is a terribly poor bet.
Problem 2. If established religious beliefs and the supporting practices collapse, as they might anywhere, and as I have noted they did in Wales and are doing in Ireland, what’s the fall-back? You may think naturalism is inferior to supernaturalism as a grounding for moral behavior, and you may be right (really). Truth will out, though, and if good naturalistic explanations for moral behavior are to become established, it might be wise to get some preparatory work going among our populations on the wing-walking principle. (Which is: “Don’t let go of something until you have hold of something else.”)
From a linked brushfire:
What a puzzling sentence. For one it’s an assertion without evidence and, for another, hope of what? (I’ll ignore the reference to the next world since I understand that’s part of what he believes).
I have a lot of “hope” which arises from my sometimes successful efforts against my fallibillities. Does that count? And why is “hope” vital anyway?
No, Plato showed that religion cannot be a basis for morality much earlier than a couple centuries ago. Good lord! The Euthyphro has to be one of the most often cited dialogs on the net! And, naturalistic explanations (such as from evolutionary biology or anything like that) will always beg the question. G. E. Moore showed this last century, though, I think it should be kind of obvious, actually, if you really understand what the issue is, in first place. Why people are interested in morality is something that science might help us understand, but the philosophical basis for it is a different matter entirely and something that neither science nor religion could ever shed one tiny ray of light on. They both *clearly* beg the question.
Daniel Larson gets a snort of disbelief, so to speak, for this one:
If respect for a transcendent moral order established by God is the conservative litmus test, Larson might as well be disputing the meaning of “is.”
Adrian said: “[T]he philosophical basis for [morality] is a different matter entirely and something that neither science nor religion could ever shed one tiny ray of light on. They both *clearly* beg the question.”
Huh?
I’ll second Anthony’s “Huh?” I’ve had people tell me that science can’t explain this or that; and I’ve had people tell me that religion can’t explain this or that; but this is the first time I’ve seen both science and religion ruled out of the explanatory arsenal. Who should I be looking to here — my local astrologer?
If you’re not drawing philosophical conclusions by utilizing the natural world – thus bringing the conclusions into the domain of science – exactly what *are* you using?
When you talk about philosophical questions and answers, the sound waves and the information encoded in them are clearly natural. If you have some magical non-natural thing that’s doing your thinking about philosophy, how does it cause the natural world to change like that?
Alright. Here is a long comment for you guys…
“Beg the question” is actually (originally, though it has been used in other senses in recent times in America) a term referring to a logical fallacy in which one assumes the conclusion in the premises of their argument. The classic example would be: “God wrote the bible so the bible must be true. The bible says that God exists and since the bible is true, then God must exist. Therefore, God exists.” That argument Begs the Question because it assumes the existence (and a whole bunch of other things, for that matter) of God to prove that God exists.
G E Moore coined the phrase “Naturalistic Fallacy” in the early 20th century referring to the fact that naturalistic accounts of morality inherently beg the question. They specifically suffer from the “Open Question Argument”. Whatever one says is the “Good” under some naturalistic account, it is always fair enough to ask *why* it is good. Sure, we might even all agree that it is good, but there must exist an explanation for why that is so. However, such an explanation, *if it is naturalistic*, can only ultimately refer to some other thing that is considered “good” for which we can still ask the question, once again, “Why, then, is THAT thing good?” This is the same thing as begging the question. If say, there was a serious moral dispute over the legitimacy of vigilante justice in some case, and the argument someone gave was something like “Vigilante justice has to be wrong because it conflicts with peace which is the relevant ‘good’ we should be pursuing,” then obviously the contention from the other side of the issue would be that peace is not the relevant good, in that case.
Religion, too, begs the question in this way. Could you tell the difference between God and the Devil? How so? Doesn’t the Devil try to pass him off as God? Then how would you tell if it was really God or just the Devil pretending to be God? Only because the Devil is evil right? But, then you must know in advance what is good and evil and see that God is good (and, indeed, identify him as God this way), not the other way around where you just decide that whatever God says is good is good simply because God says so. To say that “such and such is good because it is holy” is the same sort of thing as saying that “such and such is wrong because it violates “. They have some mileage inasmuch as we might all agree on the religious or the naturalistic basis we use, but they cannot be the ultimate philosophical basis for morality.
In fact, they are both just exactly the same thing, as a matter of fact. You might be an atheist and think that God does not exist, so all this religious morality is either bunk or it must come from some other source that actually does exist. But, the fact is that religionists are just basing it all on the existence of some thing that causes the reality of their morality. You say it is founded in biological and psychological natures of humans. They say it is founded in some other thing existing “out there” in the world. Your only disagreement is over which *thing* it derives from — not *how* it derives, in the first place. And, the fact is that, you need something entirely different than what essentially amounts to an empirical source for morality. Moral philosophy, like mathematics or logic, is purely a priori. That is why it derives neither from science (which is necessarily empirical) nor from the empirical observation of what some external super-being says. Instead a process of “critical inquiry” must take place where you observe empirically only what the popular conception of the basic problem is. After that, you use a process of reductio ad absurdum or whatever other valid methods are at your disposal to examine and refine that popular notion into a sufficiently precise philosophical understanding of a problem. And then, you solve it in a purely rational, philosophical manner.
So, instead of science or religion (which are both empirical as they relate to morality), you use philosophy which remains purely a priori. Otherwise, you are just going to implicitly already assume the answers to whatever moral dilemma you are encountering in your framing of the problem on scientific or religious terms. That’s not *solving* the problem. That is just (at best) post hoc rationalization for the answer you have already decided upon, regardless of whether that answer’s right or wrong. And, we are talking not just about some random moral dilemma, but the entire basis for any morality at all, here.
And, let me just add, science — like evolutionary biology/psychology, sociology, anthropology — has long been the tool of the academic left to promulgate their political agenda. In fact, it is one of many of academia’s dirty little secrets that many of these fields were literally created just for such a purpose. I strongly doubt that is where the secular right will be able to get the basis for their moral philosophy. Instead they should turn to Plato and Kant (and traditional philosophy, in general).
Bradlaugh:
Actually, I believe it would be more accurate to say that those explanations mostly derive from evolutionary psychology, a discipline that is, as yet, more speculative than scientific. In a sense, you are simply countering the Christian appeal to authority with your own.
Entirely aside from non-Christian influences on the civilization we enjoy, others have certainly pointed out that the history which produced religious/Christian conservatives also produced religious/Christian liberals (in what might even appear to be greater numbers). Christians preponderate across the political spectrum, present company excepted, so I fail to see how Larsen supports any argument that Christianity is inherently conservative, or that conservatives are any more inherently Christian that any other major political constituency. Religious conservatives themselves quickly stumble in transit from asserting that we are a Christian nation to describing the actual connective tissue between religious tenets and conservative thought. It the blink of an eye, Larsen’s own comment thread turned from considering conservatism to doctrinal navel gazing. I see that as potential trap on the secular side as well, where reason vs. religion imbroglios quickly detach themselves from conservative notions and principles.
IMO, the fundamental sticking point is not reason vs. religion, but the religious right’s conflation of the public and the private — a concept which can be scaled up as well as down. If there is anything that history teaches us, it is that religion and politics are an explosive mix, a volatility that even a putatively Judeo-Christian civilization seemed to recognize implicitly early on. One of the significant differences between Biblical & Koranic traditions is that the latter actually address issues of governance in substantive ways. You can see this even in the archetypal jailhouse conversions which routinely take place in our own prisons — conversions which are as overtly political as they are inherently religious. That tradition of Koranic religio-political imperatives obviously serves Islamicist territorial as well as ideological ambitions well to this very day.
Still stipulating, arguendo, to a western Biblical tradition, it is clearly characterized by the progressive delinking of religious and political power, something that was well underway before our own founding (See Blackstone). The differences between the precepts of sharia and secular principles of common law are emblematic. Indeed, western canons assert the Rule of Law in pretty explicit preference to religion, a rule in which public, governing authority is neither Kingly nor divine. Individuals may freely submit themselves to divine authority, or believe that we all eventually do so, and act accordingly in both their private and public lives. Aside from the stunning overreach of laying claim to such authority within the body politic itself, however, those who do so have no standing in law or governance. That too, is a distinct feature of western civilization, painfully arrived at.
“If you’re not drawing philosophical conclusions by utilizing the natural world – thus bringing the conclusions into the domain of science…”
No — you’ve clearly equivocated there. Just because my deliberation, itself, is a phenomenon occurring in the natural world and so susceptible to scientific investigation, that does not mean that the subject I am deliberating about is, then, a scientific matter, as well. There is more to reality, or at least, what is true, than just science. In fact, saying something like “everything is scientific” is a paradox, unless you seriously contend that that assertion is, itself, a *scientific* one and not a philosophical one.
Not everything can be scientific — in fact, that’s kind of the point — it keeps the riffraff out. But, unfortunately, that also means that science cannot stand on its own — it must have a purely philosophical foundation to rest on. (And, unfortunately, philosophy tends to have to allow all the riffraff in since “everything is ultimately a philosophical question”, including that one.)
Adrian, I think you’re missing the mark. People are not suggesting that science can tell us how we should act; they are suggesting that science can tell us why we act the way we do.
“So, instead of science or religion (which are both empirical as they relate to morality), you use philosophy which remains purely a priori.”
And how do you distinguish between one philosophical a priori and another? What makes assertion A valid and ~A invalid? If the assertion is arbitrary, it’s meaningless.
You seem to be suggesting that any method of thought capable of producing a justified explanation for morality is ‘begging the question’, which is simply absurd. We determine what is Right by establishing what is True.
“You seem to be suggesting that any method of thought capable of producing a justified explanation for morality is ‘begging the question’, which is simply absurd. We determine what is Right by establishing what is True.”
Yes we do establish what is right by establishing what is true. Science cannot possibly do that in the case of morality or a great many other things for that matter. Take logic, for instance. It is a purely *non*scientific matter. Or, how about the notion that science require empirical observation of the world? Or the principle of philosophical induction? (The idea that if you observe an outcome, that it could be reasonable to think it should happen again under the exact same circumstances. This is Hume’s famous problem of induction and it is essential to any sort of science.)
All of these are **a priori** philosophical considerations. No one said they were *false* or unprovable. I said they are not *scientific*. (And, they cannot be without begging the question. And, don’t act alike begging the question is some kind of brand new fallacy I just made up.)
You’ve missed the point. If your deliberation is part of the natural world, how does it concern itself with something not part of the natural world? How do we confirm that the conclusions you reach are correct? How do you confirm that your natural reasoning accurately describes the supernatural?
“How do you confirm that your natural reasoning accurately describes the supernatural?”
What supernatural? Mathematics, for instance, is not a part of the natural world.
But, what the hell, I’ll bite. On what basis do you justify your apparent assertion/insinuation that the only possible legitimate considerations are about the natural world? Do you suppose that this very discussion we are having right now is about the natural world? Is this a *scientific* question?
To Adrian:
If you develop a complete understanding of the brain’s mechanisms by which moral reasoning occurs; if you construct an evolutionary history of when certain neurological structures leading to moral intuitions and reasoning developed and in response to what sort of environmental pressures; if you examine what looks like moral behavior in different species; and if you do a detailed cross-cultural study to understand the cultural origin of differences in moral intuitions – for examples – if you do all of this, will science then have not “shed one tiny ray of light on” the philosophical basis for morality?
Do you really believe that, or am I misunderstanding what you are saying?
To Anthony:
You are correct. Not one tiny ray of light will have been shed. It has completely [though perhaps subtly] missed the point. Suppose we spent a lot of time measuring angles and testing the hypothesis that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. Suppose we measure 1,000,000 acute triangles and 1,000,000 obtuse triangles. Suppose we put our hypothesis to the test by seeing if it has predictive veracity by drawing conclusions based on the assumption that our hypothesis is correct and then testing those conclusions. And, suppose that all our conclusions test out too! Suppose all of that. Will it have shed one ray of light on WHY the sum of the angles is 180 degrees? No. Because *that* the angles sum to 180 has really very little to do with *why* they sum to whatever it is that they sum to, and without the reason why we have nothing of *philosophical* value.
And, lest we think this is an unmotivated distinction to make, the problem with your whole project lies in “if you examine what looks like moral behavior” or rather, specifically with “looks like”. You really have no way to decide what qualifies or not. And in any given dispute, all your technical scientific machinations will not have provided any extra compelling argument. I would be able (and, in fact, justified) to say “Then, I guess I must dispute that blah blah blah, too,” to whatever extra science you bring up about what is only *apparent* moral behavior. Maybe I would say “Well, then that doesn’t actually qualify as truly moral behavior in that case,” to some key empirical observation. And, how could you rebut me? Would you just say I am just engaging in apologetics for my case? But, I already have rational justification for my case and all this science you have done is just one piece to your arguments for your case. I can just as easily accuse you of apologetics as you can me.
No. These were/are all originally scams perpetrated over the years by academics trying to influence the world with pseudo science. As a nice side effect, it can potentially create some nice legitimate science once the politics is taken out of it. But, mostly the trick is simply this: by donning the semblance of science and rationality, they persuade people that they must “know what they are talking about” and so they can claim “expert” status and never really have to justify what they say the way everyone else has to.
Adrian said: “*[T]hat* the angles sum to 180 has really very little to do with *why* they sum to whatever it is that they sum to, and without the reason why we have nothing of *philosophical* value.”
Yet, whether the sum of angles in a triangle must sum to 180 degrees is open to scientific theorizing and testing, and why we think that they must is open to scientific explanation. For example, the sum of angles is 180 because the nature of space is such-and-such. We think that they must equal 180 (“a priori”) because our geometrical and mathematical reasoning evolved in an environment approximating Euclidean geometry. ?
Adrian – point blank, dude: morality is about how was act, so it involves the world of experience. Your analogy of triangles here conflates “analytic truths” with the “synthetic truths” (to harken back to the historical Hume and his Fork.)
Rationalism was debunked a long, long time ago. We tend think of Kant as uber-rationalist now, but we forget that for his time he was kind of revolutionary in that he took Hume’s and the Empiricists’ arguments seriously (“awakened from dogmatic slumbers” and all that.)
Are you a Scholastic or something? A Leibnizian? If you really think that Adrian’s scenraio sheds “not one tiny ray of light” on the philosophical basis morality, you’re living in a dream world. Almost literally.
(PS – G.E. Moore was a buffoon. He was kind of like the philosophical mascot of the early 20th century. Pretty much no one denies this.)
I meant “Anthony’s scenario”, sorry.
JM Hanes: “IMO, the fundamental sticking point is not reason vs. religion, but the religious right’s conflation of the public and the private”
I hear you, and I agree. But so long as the RR continues to so conflate, we have no choice but to “go for the throat” vis a vis their religion. I’d be happy to leave religion out of it (“relieved” is more accurate). But, when the RR is adamant that any *true* conservatism is dependant on the recognition of a transcendent order as authored by God, how else should we proceed?
Also, even if you get the RR to concede this point, they will use a most slippery slope in determining what counts as “public” and what counts as “private”. (E.g., posting of 10 commandments in Courthouses.). The more devout they are, the less reasonable in this regard.
We have to push back just to get a level playing field, and they’re the ones leading with their supernatural commitments…so it’s no surprise that our imbroglios quickly veer away from conservatism proper and into the weeds of religion.
Good point though.
“point blank, dude: morality is about how was act, so it involves the world of experience. Your analogy of triangles here conflates “analytic truths” with the “synthetic truths” (to harken back to the historical Hume and his Fork.)”
On the contrary, I think you are the one to have not received the memo. I said nothing about synthetic vs analytic truths — I spoke only of a priori vs empirical. You must assume some things, such as the impossibility of synthetic a priori truths, to arrive at your conclusion. But, that philosophy (Logical Positivism) was dead before it got out of the womb. The only reason analytic philosophy still survives at all is because there are no real alternatives.
Adrian: Indeed, I do assume the impossibility of a priori synthetic truths. “Water = H20” notwithstanding. And, as far as I know, assuming such an impossibility does not commit me to positivism, it simply prevents sloppy arguments from getting through. It prevents people from asserting “facts of the matter” by defining their terms in clever ways.
“No real alternatives” – including what you would consider your own? Not sure what you’re getting at here, or how it helps what you’re trying to claim. (Which, I admit, I’m baffled by.) You seem to sort of conceding that analytic philosophy is the only game in town. So….if you’re unsatisfied with AP, you must be unsatisfied with philosophy as a whole.
Which is fine, as far as it goes, but then, why invoke or cite any of it?
“Yet, whether the sum of angles in a triangle must sum to 180 degrees is open to scientific theorizing and testing, and why we think that they must is open to scientific explanation. For example, the sum of angles is 180 because the nature of space is such-and-such. We think that they must equal 180 (”a priori”) because our geometrical and mathematical reasoning evolved in an environment approximating Euclidean geometry. ?”
All of this, assuming I am reading you correctly, is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the angles in a triangle sum to 180 degrees. The answer to that question and the reason why the answer is what it is (that is the justification for it), is not scientific and most definitely not open to scientific theorizing or testing. Why we are interested in this question — because we exist in an approximately Euclidean space — is another matter entirely that doesn’t, in this case, even help us consider the question.
So, I would say that you are extending the analogy perfectly for me. Let me remind us what the issue, again, really was. It was about the actual solution to certain moral dilemmas — where the secular right derives its moral world view. Such explanations as to why people personally care about morality at all or think philosophically about things, even, are not the source of that moral philosophy. The moral philosophy, itself, is a priori and philosophical. It all comes from something else.
Moral philosophy is as empirical as a game of chess. The actual moves people make do, indeed, happen in the physical world. To see *what* happened you do, indeed, need to resort to empirical observation. But, to understand the significance of the moves people are making, it has nothing to do with the physical world at all.
A-Bax:
Adrian: Indeed, I do assume the impossibility of a priori synthetic truths. “Water = H20″ notwithstanding. And, as far as I know, assuming such an impossibility does not commit me to positivism, it simply prevents sloppy arguments from getting through. It prevents people from asserting “facts of the matter” by defining their terms in clever ways.
Adrian:
On the contrary, this is almost precisely what defines an logical positivist — this one assertion. I think Carnap has a famous quote to that effect. And, in any case, it has been widely discussed (e.g. by Quine who rejects the whole distinction of analytic/synthetic because of the problems Carnap et al ultimately faced with it). Also, be careful about what I am saying. Just because I do not reject the possibility of the synthetic a priori, that doesn’t mean that I think there are no empirical statements. “Water = H2O” is an analytic truth. And, “The Earth is round,” is a synthetic a posteriori (aka empirical) one. Moral judgments, mathematics, logic, epistemology and pretty much all of philosophy “proper” are all ultimately a priori.
A-Bax:
“No real alternatives” – including what you would consider your own? Not sure what you’re getting at here, or how it helps what you’re trying to claim. (Which, I admit, I’m baffled by.) You seem to sort of conceding that analytic philosophy is the only game in town. So….if you’re unsatisfied with AP, you must be unsatisfied with philosophy as a whole.
Which is fine, as far as it goes, but then, why invoke or cite any of it?
Adrian:
Well you were the one to say “rationalism was refuted a long time ago.” I think you have a mistaken impression about the history of ideas on the matter. It was not at all the case that the world was just one big rationalist wonderland until Kant awakened it from its dogmatic slumber. Actually Kant was at some backwater university and British empiricism had been thriving for centuries prior. We stand in the legacy of centuries of British Empiricism. If anything has been refuted by Kant, it was that Empiricism. And, it wasn’t just refuted by Kant, but also over and over again from then until now and particularly in the 20th century.
Adrian:
1) “”Water = H20″ is an analytic truth.” Wonder why it took so long for scientists to discover this truth then? Almost all “water” that we encounter in the everyday world is not pure, distilled H20. Thus the common referent for “water” is not the same as for “H20”. Thus, to discover that the one = the other is to discover something synthetic.
Sorry, guess we’ll have to just disagree on this one.
2) I hear you about Quine’s rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, but from what I remember it has as much to do with his rejection of the weight of the “analytic” side as any problem Carnap faced. If I remember correctly, Quine said something to the effect that it is possible we could gather data, or have an experience, which called into question the truth of “2+2=4”, and thus even the truths of arithmetic are in some ways synthetic.
Quine also forthrightly faced the “justification of empiricism” problem so often thrown up by theists, and bit the bullet on it. (Smartly, in my view). He said, along the same lines as the denial of analytic truths, that it’s possible for us to empirically discover that the scientific method is no longer “working”, in so far that the orderliness of nature is something observed, NOT taken on faith (a priori). A strange claim, perhaps, but it obliterates the theists’ equivocation of “religious faith” with “faith in the methods of science”.
For Quine then, almost all philosophy proper is “a posteriori”. The opposite view, the one you seem to be holding, is rather like the view of Liebniz or something.
3) Rationalism with a capital R was indeed refuted ages ago, as much by Kant as anyone else. Yes, yes, Kant is typically understood to have refuted Empiricism (with a capital E), but people forget that his transcendental school of thought was an attempt at a fusion between the two (thus a sort of refutation of both – not just the one or other).
Amway, we’ll have to just let our disagreement about this stand, as there doesn’t seem to be much progress made in hashing it out any further.
Thanks for the back & forth.
Adrian said: “All of this […] is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the angles in a triangle sum to 180 degrees. The answer to that question and the reason why the answer is what it is (that is the justification for it), is not scientific and most definitely not open to scientific theorizing or testing.”
I don’t understand this response. If you say that the reason the angles sum to 180 is because the structure of space is such-and-such, that is a “reason why the answer is what it is”.
When we say that we are “thinking about a non-existent thing”, this is a conventionalism, a shorthand representation that is literally inaccurate but that represents the truth that is too long and unwieldly for us to bother stating.
Sadly, some people mistake the map for the territory, the symbol for the truth.
What we are actually doing is thinking about the concept of some particular non-existent thing. That concept exists, it is part of the natural world. A non-existent concept could not be thought about. The concept of a non-existent concept, however, does exist – and so I can manipulate it in my mind to produce the conclusion that the subject of the concept could not be thought about.
Our thoughts are part of the natural world, and their contents are part of the natural world. The natural world is, by definition, all-encompassing. It is all-encompassing because we do not believe we possess absolute knowledge. The idea of the natural as a limited set known precisely is a byproduct of medieval thinking, a prejudical tendency to treat belief as fact and the familiar as absolute. Only when the category of the natural is a closed set can things outside it be considered supernatural.
“I don’t understand this response. If you say that the reason the angles sum to 180 is because the structure of space is such-and-such, that is a “reason why the answer is what it is”.”
No. That is not a reason why the angles sum to 180 — that is an identification of the external world as exhibiting some properties consistent with this fact about triangles. The justification goes in completely the opposite direction. You justify this fact about triangles and then use your further identification of space with it to subsequently draw some conclusions about space. It does not and cannot go the other way.
The reason why triangles sum to a straight line would be more along the lines of, say, sandwiching a triangle between two parallel lines and observing the congruence of various angles or something broadly similar to that line of reasoning. That is the reason, and only something like that is the reason. Nothing like, “I measured a bunch of triangles,” or “because the physical world is Euclidean,” or anything like that is the reason why the sum of angles is 180.
(I should note, just in case it comes up, I do know that non-Euclidean geometry exists in which there are “triangles” and angles and where the sum of angles in a triangle is not 180. But, as long as we are comfortable with why this is nitpicking the point, then I am happy to not mention it any further.)
Also to A-Bax…
I guess if you mean to entail inorganic chemistry, the Bohr model of the atom, and so on in “water=h2o”, then sure the statement could be seen as practically entailing all of science. I just took it to mean the (modern) definition of the term as opposed to what should by now be seen is entirely inadequate old common definitions like “a common liquid found in the world such as when it rains”.
Rationalism was not really refuted like that. That is just the cover story of empiricists like Bertrand Russel and his followers. Yeah, some kind of extreme notion that even empirical assertions can be somehow derived a priori is refutable. But, it is a blatant straw man to act like that is “rationalism”. At any rate, I was bringing up Quine not because I agree with him, just to make my point. I am a lot closer to pure rationalism than not, if you are interested in knowing. I have the exact opposite attitude that most non-professional positivists have. Instead of thinking that the “real” stuff is science, I think it is philosophy — not that science doesn’t have something going for it or anything. It just isn’t nearly as actually intellectually significant as people like to think, and most of what people revere about science is actually a priori. It is a part of the practice of the field as a discipline within academia but not really part of the subject matter the field intends to address. (For instance, a whole lot of physics is really just math. That mathematics should nor be confused with the actual physics of which there is quite frequently far less than meets the eye in many cases.)
Adrian said: “I should note, just in case it comes up, I do know that non-Euclidean geometry exists in which there are “triangles” and angles and where the sum of angles in a triangle is not 180. But, as long as we are comfortable with why this is nitpicking the point, then I am happy to not mention it any further.”
No, that’s the whole point. Why does it sum to 180 as opposed to something else? Here is a model of how the world works, including variables which when set to these values produce a world with triangles’ angles summing to 180 degrees. If the variables were set to some other value, they wouldn’t be 180 degrees. Therefore, this explains why they are 180 degrees.
“What we are actually doing is thinking about the concept of some particular non-existent thing. That concept exists, it is part of the natural world. A non-existent concept could not be thought about. The concept of a non-existent concept, however, does exist – and so I can manipulate it in my mind to produce the conclusion that the subject of the concept could not be thought about.”
If that were true, then a book would be exactly the same thing as just the ink and paper that make it up. That ink and paper is the only thing that actually *exists*. Yet, there is significance to the manner in which these existing objects are arranged, so much so that just ink and paper is almost worthless compared to certain books. Your manipulation of the ink on the paper is simply just not what anyone is referring to when someone speaks of you “writing a book”. That seems to me to be a pretty straight forward equivocation — to act like the manner in which a chalk comes apart and marks a blackboard is somehow part of the proof a mathematician is doing in class. The argument has nothing to do with chalk and chalkboards, paper and ink, chemicals and neurons or any other medium it happens to be expressed in.
(Can’t resist) Adrian: “I guess if you mean to entail inorganic chemistry, the Bohr model of the atom, and so on in “water=h2o”, then sure…”
The discovery of the molecular structure of water was indeed a DISCOVERY, and not something reasoned-to from first principles. That it is even a molecule, and not an element (as the Greeks surmised) is itself all one really needs to see that the truth of the proposition “Water = H20” cannot be described as analytic.
Further…”I just took it to mean the (modern) definition of the term as opposed to what should by now be seen is entirely inadequate old common definitions like “a common liquid found in the world such as when it rains”. How and why do you suppose that the definition of water changed? By meditating? By introspection? By deductive reasoning? No, the definition changed by doing the “not nearly as intellectually significant” hard work of science to determine, a posteriori, what the chemical structure of water is.
Yet most people, when they think of water, still actually think of something like “a common liquid found in the world such as when it rains”….they don’t think of H20. And what comes out of your tap, or your Brita, or the Dasani bottle, is not pure H20. That is why we are actually learning something when we are in chemistry class. Learning something about *matters of fact* in the world, not the *relations of ideas* that utilize various definitions and inference procedures.
Also, Anthony is absolutely right when he says “No, that’s the whole point” in your triangle debate. The idea of a triangle didn’t spring forth fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. It came from our ancestors observing (approximate) triangle shapes/spaces in the world and then abstracting from them.
Finally, “I am a lot closer to pure rationalism than not, if you are interested in knowing.” It is good to know, and I’m glad you said so. It makes your comments alot more clear and coherent (from where I’m sitting.) From what I can tell, you’re close to being even more Rationalist that, say, Leibniz, and have a perspective that goes all the way back to Plato.
Again, that’s fine, for what it’s worth, and Plato was clearly a superb thinker. But most of Plato’s substantive claims were answered/rebutted (if not “refuted”) by Aristotle, and I wonder if you have issues with even the big A.
Best,
A-Bax:
I think you’ll have lot more luck persuading the religious right the religion is a dangerous litmus test than persuading them there is no God.
“If that were true, then a book would be exactly the same thing as just the ink and paper that make it up.”
Correct. The book is the ink, paper, and the configuration of how they are put together. All of those things exist.
The ‘meaning’ of the book is a property of the system reading it, including the language and the mapping of the language to configurations. Books don’t have ‘meaning’ in the same way that they have mass and volume.