I am returning to the Ed Feser exchange because it relates to a question I have been pondering about sophisticated Catholics and other Christians.
I had asked Mr. Feser if he could suggest an experimental design to test the efficacy of petitionary prayer, in light of his claim that religion is “scientific.” He pointed me to his book, where I will find sophisticated arguments for the existence of God as the “uncaused first cause,” he says.
The answer was nonresponsive, and not only for the “courtier’s reply” problems so ably set out by Bradlaugh and several readers. I’m not asking for a logical proof of God, but simply for a way to verify an oft-praised sign of his love for mankind: his response to believers’ prayers. “Rational arguments” for God’s existence answer the question of how to test the efficacy of prayer only if answering prayers is a necessary attribute of God’s existence as the “uncaused first cause.” That assertion strikes me as an even more imaginative leap of theology than usual.
Mr. Feser displays an impatience with the practice of religion, so I will remind him of one of the most frequent topoi of Christians: If someone recovers from a devastating heart attack, say, it’s because God answered the prayers of friends and family (we won’t ask why the cardiac patient in the next hospital bed, equally prayed-over and–we should surely assume–equally worthy, died). After nine miners were pulled from a collapsed mine in Pennsylvania in 2002, believers posted a sign: “Thank you God, 9 for 9. (Either God was busy or the prayers were defective in 2006 when twelve miners died in a West Virginia mine explosion).
I was not asking for an empirical test of God’s existence, but just of his effects in the world, which are claimed to be real. The Templeton experiment, while crude in its details, was at least a start.
(Perhaps the apologist’s response is: well, we can’t measure the incidence of prayer efficacy, because it happens on such a random, sporadic basis. But if that is the case, then the claim that “God is just” falls apart. A just God would treat equally meritorious petitions alike—the bare minimum standard for justice.)
Mr. Feser is equally miffed to be asked about the Fra. Galvao pills, which contain tiny scrolls with prayers written on them. The Vatican attributed a live birth following multiple miscarriages and a recovery from kidney disease to the ingestion of the pills, when it canonized the Brazilian eighteenth-century friar Antonio de Santa Ana Galvao last year. Mr. Feser can’t even bring himself to name the pills, referring instead to the “magic pills or whatever the hell it is she was going on about.”
In dismissing my questions, Mr. Feser chastises me for taking my cue from “unsophisticated religious believers,” whose understanding of religion is “always oversimplified, usually at least partially mistaken, and sometimes even grotesquely off base.” But the religious beliefs that I have asked Mr. Feser to explain are not some fringe behavior of untutored yokels, they are propounded by Church authorities themselves. It is ministers, priests, and pastors the world over, not just their unwashed flock, who thank God for answering prayers. And the Fra. Galvao pills are manufactured and distributed by nuns, with the presumed blessing, so to speak, of the Vatican, not to mention being officially recognized by Rome in canonizing their namesake.
Several readers have suggested approvingly that the church “spoon-feeds drivel to the masses” in order to bring them into the fold. I can’t tell if Mr. Feser shares this cynical view of the priesthood. Perhaps he thinks that ministers and priests merely tolerate “partially mistaken, and sometimes even grotesquely off base” beliefs, rather than actively promote them. (Though the Fra. Galvao pills and petitionary prayer are official practices.) But whether the priesthood solicits or merely allows false beliefs, shouldn’t sophisticates like Mr. Feser (and also Michael Novak, who has said that he does not “like” the Fra. Galvao pills) strive to combat them? Doesn’t it matter whether someone lives in truth or in falsehood? We hear that God is Truth. Why, then, not make sure that everyone has a shot at it? Maybe Mr. Feser or any other religious sophisticate could put together a list of the “partially mistaken, and sometimes even grotesquely off base” beliefs of everyday believers, so that the Church can correct them.
Unlike Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, I don’t take a consequentialist approach to religion. Hitchens and Harris argue against religion on the ground that it has caused great harm in the world. That line of reasoning does not interest me. Even if it could be proven that on balance, religion has done more good than harm—and clearly, religion has achieved great good–I would still argue for religious skepticism, simply because I believe that it is better to live in truth than in delusion. The idea that we are superintended by a loving, just God strikes me as a delusion, in light of the daily slaughter of the innocents.
But maybe sophisticated believers think that certain delusions are acceptable in the service of a greater Truth.
I see this attitude a lot, actually. Virtually every religious intellectual believes that the vast majority of his coreligionists are superstitious nuts.
I do think that they’re still very concerned with capital-T Truth, but they look at it as an optimization problem. These intellectuals don’t think that all religious beliefs are equally important – a general acceptance of Christ and self-identification as Christian is much, much more important than understanding the general inefficacy of prayer or a belief in evolution. And if a belief in the efficacy of prayer makes people much more likely to accept Christ, it’s a worthwhile trade-off.
The problem is that, in many ways, Feser’s beliefs (and those of other religious intellectuals) regarding metaphysics are less reasonable than those of the average believer, given the rest of the beliefs of each. It’s perfectly reasonable to be a Christian if the evidence shows that every living thing popped into existence six thousand years ago, if Christians lead ‘charmed’ lives relative to non-Christians, and if prayer to the Christian God has a demonstrable and positive effect. That kind of belief, while based on some delusions about the physical world, requires much less abstraction and convoluted reasoning (by Feser’s own admission, one can’t understand his arguments properly without reading and understanding a whole book).
Were I on the other side, I’d answer that our understanding of justice is inferior to God’s. For me, the fact that prayers are answered on such a random sporadic basis is evidence that randomness is in charge. I suppose I could then say that randomness is God’s idea of justice.
There way too many excuses given to explain away the random nature of how God answers prayers – It’s his will, he has a plan, he answered, you just didn’t like the answer, etc.
If you pray and your prayer is answered, it keeps you from being arrogant about you being responsible for whatever outcome you wanted. If the prayer wasn’t answered (or answered in the negative) then you are spared the guilt of somehow failing. You never have to take complete responsibility either way, God always had a more powerful hand in the outcome. Prayer is a handy little tool.
hmm… I tried to fool some code and failed. The above quote is from Heather’s post, not commenter Gotchaye. Sorry!
I’d be interested to hear why the consequentialist approach doesn’t interest you. Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens structure their arguments very differently (I’m not suggesting you are conflating the two), but I would say that at least to Sam Harris, the question of whether “religion has done more harm than good” is never really central to his thesis. Don’t get me wrong, he thinks that religion can be an incredibly dangerous force (but recognizes that it has been a force for some good as well), but he doesn’t really seem to care to engage in the arithmetic of good deeds and bad deeds done in its name — rather, he is arguing against a way of thinking that he considers both pernicious and fundamentally unhealthy.
Science will never find the proof because God changes all the results with his noodly appendages.
Why? To test our faith. Why test our faith by trying to disprove his own existence? Because he works in mysterious ways.
I’m not sure what makes the arugula eating zealots think their version of the story is any better than that of the rest of the sheep.
This whole “god SAVED me from [%nasty event]” (with optional “because I prayed”) phenomenon.
Just recently, a co-worker told me of a horrible car accident that she and her husband experienced a few years ago. It truly sounded like they were lucky to be alive from it. Then she said “I’m still here because God wanted me to, I firmly believe that.”
All I could think was “So why didn’t God just avert the whole car accident in the first place? wasn’t it a lot more “work” for Him to “cause” an accident and then “save” you from it instead of having it never happen in the first place?”
The Grand Inquisitor, in the Brothers Karamazov, speaking on behalf of the clergy:
We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being so powerful and clever, that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our wrath, their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears like women and children, but they will be quick to shed tears like women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us to pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song.
Yes, we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life like a child’s game, with children’s songs and innocent dance. Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves.And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviour who have taken on themselves their sins before God. And they will have no secrets from us.
We shall allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children—according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient—and they will submit to us gladly and cheerfully. The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil.
Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.
Prayer, first of all, for a Christian is an act where you are recognizing something higher than yourself. This is a revolutionary act for a fallen human being in rebellion to his/her Creator.
Vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will refuse to recognize anything higher than ‘me, myself, and I.’
Fallen humans will worship anything other than the Creator. Anything that has been created by God they will worship. That is comfortable for them. The creation doesn’t threaten the standing of one’s vanity and worldly pride and self-will inside one. God does threaten that standing. What created you is higher than you.
So prayer for a Christian at its most simple and basic level is an act of worship by recognizing that which is higher than you.
There is a reason the very word ‘God’ sticks in the throat of the currently unbelieving. “G-G-G-G-G-Guh-Guh-Guh-Gah-ah-ah-d-d-d…” That is your prison wardens vanity and pride saying: “Careful, that is a dangerous word. Very threatening to our existence. Why do you want to say that word?”
Prayer then, as it is being discussed here, is also a confession to God of your needs and desires. That is the main thing. You are confession to God that you have a need.
The answer to prayers are indeed often unexpected. For instance if a woman who is being treated badly by her husband prays for her husband to stop hurting her the answer to that prayer may be the act of the woman leaving her husband. Not an answer she was expecting, but maybe the opportunity arose and there it is. Her husband is no longer hurting her.
Prayer in the context of spiritual warfare can be very interesting. When I knew I was going to potentially experience some very damaging false witness made against me to authorities I prayed long before hand that I would be able to be calm and effective in handling it when the difficult event did occur. That prayer was effective. I say prayer in the context of spiritual warfare is interesting because you will see more of an obvious direct line in such prayer.
Prayer that doesn’t receive what it desired can often mitigate negative aspects of the inevitable event. The suffering or other difficult aspects involved in a death, for instance, can be mitigated.
But it’s important to see that prayer by believers is a means in God’s overall plan of redemption, and being so it is done in God’s will and for the glory of God.
This putting God to the test through prayer is a great idea, and I see no reason why its application should be limited to God. Why not a purely secular application?
I think I’ll apply the petitionary prayer test to my wife. I’ll tell her that I’m testing her love for me, and if she doesn’t respond to my demands a statistically significant number of times, I’ll conclude that she doesn’t love me. If it’s good enough for God, it should be good enough for the missus, right?
I’ll get back to you with the results…
Things did not go as well as I hoped. It turns out I’m sleeping on the couch tonight. Apparently my wife is not as tolerant of science as is God.
She also quoted Matthew 4:7 to me, which I’ll look up when I can find my Bible.
Heather makes a couple of points similar to some things I have observed:
– I think every priest/minister who has studied Biblical criticism knows things about the Bible that he would be reluctant to tell his parishioners.
– I think most believers who have not studied theology believe things that are completely wrong, but others are hesitant to correct them.
David Tye, that misses the point, and your analogy doesn’t work. One could scientifically test the efficacy of prayer without praying only in order to test prayer. Just have people pray for something that they’d ordinarily pray for (that a sick loved one recovers, for example) and track the outcomes. Similarly, one could test the efficacy of requests made to your wife by keeping track of the things you ask of her. I imagine that you’d pretty quickly be able to conclude that requesting things of her is more efficacious than not asking. And come on, claiming that any attempt to test one’s claims against reality is illegitimate in principle is the last refuge of the charlatan, don’t you think? I don’t think Matthew 4:7 means what you think it means.
That’s all well and good Panopaea, and I agree with your account of the psychological and religious purposes of prayer, but all you’ve done is offer a ‘theodicy’ of prayer. No one’s saying that the apparent uselessness of prayer demonstrates that God absolutely can’t be considering and answering prayers according to divine justice.
@Panopaea:
‘Vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will refuse to recognize anything higher than ‘me, myself, and I.’
‘I prayed long before hand that I would be able to be calm and effective in handling it when the difficult event did occur.’
I find these statements to be at odds with each other. It sounds to me like you were praying to yourself rather than a higher power. Why would you pray to God for something you should be able to find within yourself?
‘What created you is higher than you.’
We would have never even evolved into multicellular organisms under this thinking. Do you tell your children how much better you are than they will ever be? I would wish for my children to be greater than me, and I don’t see why God would think any differently, especially if I were created in his image.
Matt B:
‘- I think every priest/minister who has studied Biblical criticism knows things about the Bible that he would be reluctant to tell his parishioners.’
Is this justified?
‘- I think most believers who have not studied theology believe things that are completely wrong, but others are hesitant to correct them.’
Wrong? In what sense?
Heather: Thank you for stating, so clearly, a nearly unanswerable objection to religious sophisticates’ “bad-mouthing” their own co-religionists beliefs without actually having the nerve to disown or at least challenge those beliefs directly.
It is intellectual cowardice or disingenuousness for them not to do so. For a Catholic apologist to hide behind “the throne” here will not do, unless they then bite the bullet and give up on their claim that all of the official beliefs and/or practices of their religion are consistent with rational principles. (Or, alternatively, bite the bullet and reverse themselves of their implicit derogation of these beliefs and practices.)
Indeed, until such a list as you describe is produced (preferably by Rome), we should consider Feser’s and Novak’s rejection of these “lower” sorts of beliefs and practices as illegitimate. They bought this farm, they’re stuck with the slop as well as the silo.
It is not for them to say what can and cannot be accepted by the community of believers. Rome endorses things like the Fra Galvao pills, so they can either refrain from criticizing belief in their efficacy or criticize Rome directly.
Your move, Feser and Novak. Which’ll it be? Your loyalty to Rome or your sense of reason?
He pointed me to his book, where I will find sophisticated arguments for the existence of God as the “uncaused first cause,” he says.
The answer was nonresponsive, and not only for the “courtier’s reply”
Here is my “courtier’s reply”. The only way anyone who calls themselves a philosopher can think they have sophisticated arguments for the existence of God as the “uncaused first cause,”, is for them to be completely ignorant of Kant and Schopenhauer. Since the time of those two, it is embarrassing to speak of uncaused first causes.
>Heather: Thank you for stating, so clearly, a nearly unanswerable objection to religious sophisticates’ “bad-mouthing” their own co-religionists beliefs without actually having the nerve to disown or at least challenge those beliefs directly.
It’s called the Reformation.
Ivan K… You know Dostoevsky was a Christian, don’t you? It’s a fair question considering left-wing ‘sophisticates’ referenced Dostoevsky all through the 20th century apparently blithely unaware that Dostoevsky skewered them to a rather prophetic degree. One has to assume the leftists never actually got around to reading those Dostoevsky novels they liked to reference in conversation and print.
…and it may be that he beats her to death. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to God’s “answers”.
Panopaea: How about challenging the idea that so-called free will is compatible with a pre-ordained fate? Or is that one of those things you just “have” to accept in order to *regenerate* and get Jesus-armor and such?
(Not really looking for an actual answer, just trying to show that you too, have dearly and deeply held beliefs that flow from an Authority, not reason & experience, which you are not at liberty to question.)
You know Dostoevsky was a Christian, don’t you? It’s a fair question considering left-wing ’sophisticates’ referenced Dostoevsky all through the 20th century apparently blithely unaware that Dostoevsky skewered them to a rather prophetic degree. One has to assume the leftists never actually got around to reading those Dostoevsky novels they liked to reference in conversation and print.
This seems a mighty stupid argument.
Well, it doesn’t seem too “mighty stupid” to suppose that an atheist might be referencing Dostoevsky while being blithely unaware that Dostoevsky was a Christian in the same way a leftist would reference Dostoevsky while being blithely unaware Dostoevsky skewered leftists.
Come on, David Hume. See the parallel there?
to suppose that an atheist might be referencing Dostoevsky while being blithely unaware that Dostoevsky was a Christian in the same way a leftist would reference Dostoevsky while being blithely unaware Dostoevsky skewered leftists.
Are you god? How do you know these people don’t know Dostoevsky was a Christian? You simply make a blithe assertion, transform the supposition into fact, and off to the races! This is embarrassing. Great literature and thought is great literature and thought. It’s stupid to act as if people agree with the sum totality of someone’s world-view just because they accept aspects of someone’s greatness. Many admire the artistry of Wagner without acceding to other aspects of his Weltanschauung. I sometimes quote Wittgenstein though I am not favorably well disposed toward him.
Now, granted, most people are stupid, and perhaps they would be taken aback if they found out that Dostoevsky was a Christian and traditionalist. But most people prone to quoting Dostoevsky in the first place are also quite likely to know something of the author’s background. So your supposition rests on the empirical state of matters, which I see no evidence offered to advance or refute.
>But most people prone to quoting Dostoevsky in the first place are also quite likely to know something of the author’s background.
Unless… Unless they only bought the paperback of the Grand Inquisitor extract…
Hello again Ms. MacDonald,
I have replied to your latest in a post you can find, as before, over at my own blog, or at What’s Wrong with the World:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2008/12/open-letter-to-heather-macdonald.html
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2008/12/an_open_letter_to_heather_macd.html#more
“Now, granted, most people are stupid….”
….except the folks who are prone to quoting Dostoevsky. Apparently.
Gotchaye,
If every claim should be tested against reality, then surely my wife is wrong to object to my testing her claims about her love for me, isn’t she?
In any case, I’ll let her know that I’m no longer asking things of her to test her, just keeping track of her response rate to things I normally ask. That should get me off the couch. I can tell her this, can’t I, since God must know that we are tallying up his responses to our prayers?
My point is this: Surely personal relationships are not open to testing in the same way other things may be tested. How do scientists test whether two people are genuinely in love? Or that someone is truly just? Prayer is a personal relationship with God, and I think it must be approached with as least as much intelligence, delicacy and sensitivity as we approach any other relationship. The notion that we can test God as though he is the Great Laboratory Rat In the Sky strikes me as, well… vulgar.
This post started with the demand that Feser provide a scientific demonstration of petitionary prayer because of his alleged claim that religion is “scientific.” If you follow the link, what Feser actually said is:
“Yet these same people are quite happy to parrot today’s equally groundless conventional wisdom about religion, viz. that it is irrational and unscientific, resting on “blind faith,” etc.”
Something can be rational and scientific without having every element reducible to mathematical formulation or laboratory demonstration. I think my relationship with my wife is as rational and scientific as it could be, but it doesn’t follow that it is a reasonable request to put her love for me to scientific test, or to demand a scientific tally of her responses to my requests. Religious belief – at least according to believers – is rational because they think they can demonstrate the existence of God and give good reasons why their version of the Faith is the true version. Now those reasons may be disputed, but is it really fair to demand that the personal element of religion also submit itself to rational and scientific scrutiny?
I have read Mr. Feser’s lengthy post. He argues that (1) belief in God is not irrational or unscientific; and (2) specific claims about God that have been contested on this website, such as the “magic pills” are either oversimplifications or superstitions. What I find lacking in what he’s said thus far is any taxonomy of which claims about God are false, which are dubious and how broad are the rationally provable ones. Let’s say for the sake of argument that he’s right that without God, rational inquiry would lack some necessary element and science would be unintelligible. Do rational inquiry and science tell us anything further about God other than that he exists–anything at all about whether he’s good, or a conscious entity, or intervenes in the natural world, or wants to be worshipped? For example, does Mr. Feser’s philosophy give any reason to believe in the divinity of Christ, or is that one of those simplifications or superstitions that should be omitted from discussion?
Take his masterpiece, the one I have taken my handle on this blog from. ALL points of view show up in one character or another. So which character (or characters) is Dostoevsky himself, hummm? Does it matter?
And considering the times he lived in, can you think of a better way to get controversial views out there, than to put them in the mouth of a fictional character?
Even in the 1960’s, folk singers in the land of the 1st amendment were singing,
“But if I really say it,
the radio won’t play it,
unless I lay it between the lines.”
I’m not claiming to know which views were Dostoevsky’s own. I simply quoted a passage that I think is substantially correct, of many clergy. Hitchens’ has mentioned often, first hand “confessions” to him of the clergy’s own unbelief.
Do you doubt it?
Also, I’m going to ignore your insult implying I’ve read only excerpts, and don’t know the context.
I’m not Heather, and she will no doubt answer for herself, but I say again, you mention many philosophers in regard to the “the un-caused first cause”. I’d like to hear why you think Kant and Schopenhauer have not undermined your cause [pun intended].
Dear Mr. Feser: That’s so kind of you to have not reposted that especially ugly picture of me that you put up on your first post; where you found it is a mystery!
I’m more than happy to put our little exchange to rest.
I will just say that I have never taken on “religious belief per se.” As I wrote to Michael Novak in our Beliefnet exchange (http://blog.beliefnet.com/blogalogue/to-believe-in-god-or-not/), I am willing to concede–as a placeholder for future knowledge–a highly-stripped down version of God as an abstract “uncaused first cause.” My dispute has rather always been with the much more bulked up version of God that Christianity provides. That God possesses a whole host of human attributes. It is above all the claim that God is characterised by love and justice that I find incompatible with the world as we know it.
But the less said right now the better. In the interests of closure, let’s call it a draw. Yours, Heather
“That God possesses a whole host of human attributes. It is above all the claim that God is characterised by love and justice that I find incompatible with the world as we know it.”
Do you mean logically incompatible, in the sense that one cannot be a married bachelor or observe a square circle? If so, then you need to show there is no possible way that God and this present world can both exist. But as long as the theist can provide an account that can reconcile this apparent incompatibility, the logical problem is solved. For example, it is possible that in every possible world that God could have created, free creatures perform evil. That is, there is no possible world in which free creatures exist and they do not commit sin.
Well, the picture‘s not hard to find.
Dear Ms. MacDonald,
Sounds good to me. Re: the picture, I don’t myself think it’s ugly at all. I just thought you looked a bit tired, which seemed to go well with the “burden” in the title of my post. In other words, I was trying to be light-hearted rather than mean-spirited. If I gave the latter impression, please accept my apologies.
Anyway, in the interests of fairness, here’s a link to an unflattering image of me, delivering an erudite reply to a critic at a recent academic conference:
http://blomsterpotte.blogg.no/images/one_really_ugly_man_6f8_1152632721.jpg
Best,
Ed
David, the whole point of this data-mining approach to testing relationships, though, is to avoid treating people as lab rats. You’d basically just be keeping a journal of your interactions with your wife, and you’d be seeing what could be concluded from those interactions.
While I can imagine some people taking offense at that kind of analysis, a rational being understands that this is really just a less error-prone version of what we already do – don’t you already examine your interactions with other people to try to determine what they’re thinking? I imagine that you did that extensively when you first met your wife, since we’re wired to clearly remember the words and actions of people we’re attracted to so that we can do precisely this kind of thing. I know that, after meeting a girl, I often find myself running through our conversation in my mind, wondering “does she like me?”
If explicitly doing this sort of thing with your wife is insulting, it’s only because the evidence for it is so overwhelming that it seems a bit silly to need to keep careful track. I can come up with tons of examples off the top of my head of my family doing things for me that strangers have almost never done. However, we have no such on-face reason to think that prayer is efficacious. The very prevalence of ‘theodicies’ of prayer, which try to explain how God might still be answering prayers even though lots of prayer doesn’t seem to do anything, tells us that we do need a more rigorous analysis of that belief.
Regardless, if testing religious claims is impossible in principle, the reasonable thing to do is to withhold both belief and disbelief.
>I’m not claiming to know which views were Dostoevsky’s own.
His biography is clear enough. He came into a deep faith while in a prison camp in Siberia. It changed him as writer, and made him the great writer he went on to be.
Regarding the Grand Inquisitor he wrote in his notebook:
“Even in Europe there are not and have not been atheistic expressions of such force; consequently, it is not as a boy that I believe in Christ and confess Him, but my hosanna has passed through a great furnace of doubts…”
Who cares about “fairness” in pictures. Answer the Kant, Schopenhauer question.
Ivan, the short answer to the Kant/Schopenhauer question is that no, of course I don’t think they have undermined the arguments, and the reason is that the epistemological and metaphysical assumptions that their objections rest on are false, indeed (I would say) demonstrably false.
Why? Well, again, that brings us into all the complex philosophical issues I have been talking about. Do you really expect me to present to you in the comments section of a blog a detailed analysis of the problem of universals, the metaphysics of causation, the problems with representationalist theories of knowledge, etc. etc., all of which lay behind my objections to Kantianism? And to do so when I’ve just written a book that details all of this at length? Of course you don’t.
So, if you are really interested in finding out what is wrong with Kant et al., read the book. If not, fine, but don’t pretend that the answer isn’t there, or that I have a duty to post lectures about it for you here.
Oh, and the reason I didn’t answer your comment initially is that the response should have been obvious. But the obvious is something not everyone has a grasp of, especially not blog trolls with too much time on their hands.
“Who cares about “fairness” in pictures. Answer the Kant, Schopenhauer question.”
I second the motion to hear an answer from Feser. Are you seriously swayed by the 1st-cause argument? How, then, would you answer Kant?
Your silence on this is telling…
He should have listened more to his “doubts”, then. The Grand Inquisitor monologue is about as eloquent and as close to how-it-is, as it gets.
Maybe Dostoevsky was one of those unlucky folks who, in the depths of despair, inadvisedly promised a lifetime of belief if only they would be “delivered” from their current trouble.
If so, it would have been better were he this fellow:
An Irishman, very late for a downtown meeting, is frantically circling the block, looking for a parking space. “Lord,” he says, “give me a spot and I’ll go to church each Sunday.” No spot appears. “Lord,” he adds, getting more desperate, “give me a parking spot and I’ll go to church each Sunday, and give up smoking!” Still nothing. Finally, near wits end, “Lord, give me a parking spot and I’ll go to church each Sunday, give up smoking, and give up the drink.” Just then, a car pulls out and an open parking spot appears, at which point he exclaims ‘Never mind! I just found one.”
Ivan, how did Kant or Schopenhauer prove that there’s no such thing as an uncaused cause? Or, if you don’t want to say how, can you at least say where? Was it in the antinomies section of the first Critique? Or do you have something else in mind? And since I don’t have Schopenhauer’s works, what is his argument?
Also, and following up on Feser’s point, keep in mind that the metaphysical picture with which Kant was working was the following one: space and time don’t exist in themselves, but are pure intuitions created by the human mind, which we can prove because we can make statements about all of space and time that are necessarily true; the only way a universal statement can be necessarily true, though, is if that statement is referring to something that our own minds create. Thus, space and time are projections of our own mind.
Not just space and time, though, but also the categories of experience, like substance and cause. In themselves, there are no substances and causes; rather, we have to categorize our experiences according to the categories of substance and cause because otherwise things wouldn’t make sense to us.
I hope you realize that not all philosophers, indeed, probably the vast majority of philosophers don’t think the above picture is true.
“So, if you are really interested in finding out what is wrong with Kant et al., read the book. If not, fine, but don’t pretend that the answer isn’t there, or that I have a duty to post lectures about it for you here.”
FWIW, fine. (I doubt you accomplish what you think you do, but fine. Thanks for answering.)
Really quick though, and just to give me a sense of your bearings: Do you accept Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds” scenario? How about Anselm’s ontological argument? Plato’s “Forms”?
How about the Parmenidian Dictum?
Thanks.
I can’t really do justice to what is quite complicated and takes many chapters in their works, and I probably shouldn’t even try, but a very pithy layman’s summation might be that it is their view that one can’t take the laws of Space, Time, and especially Causality, and expect them to be applicable and used to “explain” their own existence, or the existence of anything/everything. The concept of an un-caused cause is unthinkable by an organ that is itself objectified causality. Like a square circle, and un-caused cause is a reductio ad absurdum. Perhaps Wittgenstein’s “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” gets close to the point.
It is permanently unknowable, for us, as to why there is anything, rather than nothing at all. But that does not mean that it is permissible to postulate a God that is the un-caused cause of it all. That is clearly begging the question and as they say, “it’s turtle’s all the way down”.
As the eye, by itself, can see everything but itself – and will be doomed to endless frustration if it insists that it will not be able to rest, until it sees itself, unaided – so is the mind restless and frustrated that it can’t conceptualize an un-caused cause. But that gives it no right to postulate a “God”, just so it can rest and claim a closed system.
As Westley says to Inigo in The Princess Bride, “Get used to disappointment.”
In any event, if you are interested in Schopenhauer’s views on all this, you must, as he himself says, read “all of him”. Most of him would do, I would say.
You could start, with Bryan Magee’s excellent book. Then I would recommend S. himself, beginning with The Fourfold Root, followed by The World as Will and Representation, I and II.
But Schopenhauer (quite the rascal) himself cautions the reader, “A book is like a mirror. If an Ass peers in, you cannot expect an Angel to peer back out.”
Johnson’s quote, paraphrased, is kinder, “I have provided an explanation. I cannot furnish an understanding.”
Good luck.
Never mind Kant, answer Schopenhauer ( if you’ve read him), who advanced Kant, as Spinoza did for Descartes ( but to an estimable, though dead, end ).
Your comment about what is “obvious” simply proves that you don’t embarrass easily. But then we knew that.
A-Bax,
No to the specific ideas of Leibniz, Anselm, and Parmenides that you mention, though I regard all of them as outstanding thinkers who had real insights and who have been victimized by crude misreadings. No also to Plato’s theory of Forms, though I do think that realism in some form — I would opt for Aristotle’s moderate form rather than Plato’s extreme form — is rationally unavoidable.
Ivan,
Schopenhauer, as you say, advanced Kant, which means that he built on broadly Kantian premises. Hence what I would say about Kant applies to Schopenhauer as well.
Re: your claim about my not embarrassing easily, that’s cute, but, I think, groundless. Had I been saying that it is “obvious” that Kant and Schopenhauer are wrong, then your remark would be a fair one. But that’s not what I said. I said it should have been obvious from everything I have been saying that I am aware of such criticisms, that I try to deal with them in the book, and that my responses would involve complex philosophical arguments that cannot be summarized here. Nothing embarrassing about thet.
Exactly wrong. Schopenhauer is an advance on Kant, because though he stood on Kant’s shoulders, he corrected some serious Kant mistakes, and then went on to original contributions.
I’m sure this is boring to other folks, so I’ll let you have the last word, after I just say this. My initial comment to you would have been better written simply as “You write as if Schopenhauer had never existed.”
>“You write as if Schopenhauer had never existed.”
You write as if Luke Ford never existed. Seriously. Ford demolished Kant *and* Schopenhauer sometime back in…2002. Blood everywhere.
Nevertheless there’s nothing new under the sun [Copyright: King Solomon], Ivan K. I’m sure you’ll find Schopenhauer in there somewhere among that gallery of fellows Socrates was debating all the time.
(Apologize for the Luke Ford reference. I use to kill time at the Matt Welch warblog, and learning that L. Ford interviewed H. MacDonald somehow didn’t faze me though it has an hallucinogen level of about infinity.)
Ed Feser: “Schopenhauer, as you say, advanced Kant, which means that he built on broadly Kantian premises. Hence what I would say about Kant applies to Schopenhauer as well.”
Ivan: Karamazov: “Exactly wrong. Schopenhauer is an advance on Kant, because though he stood on Kant’s shoulders, he corrected some serious Kant mistakes, and then went on to original contributions.”
Um, Ivan, you’ve basically just repeated what Ed said while disagreeing with him. There is no necessary contradiction involved in saying both that “Schopenhauer advanced Kant, which means he built on *broadly Kantian premises*” and “Schopenhauer advanced Kant, but corrected some serious mistakes and made some original contributions.” You can build on broadly Kantian premises while making advances, correcting mistakes and adding original contributions. (Think Aristotle and Aquinas: it would be foolish to say that because Aquinas added to, corrected and made original contributions to Aristotelianism that he therefore couldn’t be said to have built his philosophy on broadly Aristotelian premises!) The question is whether the Kantian premises Ed is referring to, and which he critiques, don’t under-gird some of the advances, corrections and original contributions to which you’ve alluded. If they don’t, you may have a point; however, since you’ve not established that, it’s premature at best to assert that Ed’s criticisms don’t apply with equal force to Schopenhauer. Read his book first, and then perhaps you’ll have some ground to stand on.
Reference, please. Give me a link or something.
As far as taking the time to read Feser’s book, I’m in the same position as someone who has to decide if they have the time to read the latest book about perpetual motion machines. But I’ll think about it.