Some cosmological comments: what might rule out certain cosmological arguments?

I’ve received some really interesting questions over email from James Taddeo, who kindly reads my blog:

Do you think the Cosmological Argument Aquinas sets out is undermined by Newtonian Physics/the idea the things might just be perpetually in motion?

Some people argue that the effective modelling of the Universe with methodological natural Science is evidence that the Universe is metaphysically naturalistic, is this a fair argument?

Given that these are pretty thought provoking questions and that I really appreciate having this dialogue, I thought I would use a blog post to respond. Blogging is, I think, a great way of thinking aloud – I don’t think I ever produce definitive answers, but I learn a lot from trying to articulate things. So, here we go …

Newtonian physics and the cosmological arguments of Aquinas

In many ways, I think that Newton did severely undermine Aquinas, though he probably didn’t think of it this way himself. I suppose it’s somewhat ironic that Newton fervently believed that his natural philosophy and physics supported belief in God, albeit in his own very idiosyncratic way – he had some rather unusual ideas. The successors of Newton in mechanical physics tended towards deism and agnosticism, and occasionally atheism – presumably he would have found this very distressing. I wonder what Newton would have made of Laplace.

The main reason why Newtonian physics would seem to contradict the cosmological arguments of Aquinas is, I think, the fact that it undermined the Aristotelean view of causation which Aquinas assumed.

The first of the five ways (from motion), for example, starts off with the idea that things can potentially move but cannot do so without some kind of change agent. There needs to be a trigger to cause something to move. That trigger has to be historically antecedent to the motion, and so would  have to be there earlier in time. Aristotle and Aquinas both reasoned that this process could not go back to an infinite regress, because nothing would have started the process as a whole. So, there must be a God. For Aristotle, that God was nothing like the personal Creator of Christianity, more an abstract principle, but for Aquinas that God was the Christian God.

It’s a bit like balls moving around on a billiard table. If you see them moving, you know that somebody or something has triggered them – they couldn’t have just started by themselves.

While Aquinas sees causation in terms of one event sequentially being caused by another, that seems to be quite crude in comparison to the view of Newton. In this case, objects move because of forces acting in accordance with natural laws: the laws of physics. Those things are always in operation everywhere, even on objects which aren’t apparently ‘doing’ anything. The whole universe always has and always will be the home to these laws. Because this is quite impersonal and indeed it doesn’t require an ‘agent’ to make something happen all the time, it doesn’t seem to lead towards the need for an ultimate change agent or first cause. The world is a system of forces acting, for all we know, indefinitely.

Newton himself thought there would still ‘have’ to be a God, to correct the little problems and irregularities that might crop up (to prevent the mechanical system of the planets getting messed up, for example). However, most of the later Newtonians didn’t see it that way and famously Laplace thought he had no need of the God hypothesis.

Without wishing to step beyond my expertise (I am not a good scientist), I would say that both Aquinas and Newton were wrong as it turned out. The universe isn’t like a game of billiards, but it is not like a clock or other mechanical object either. The history of the philosophy of religion is littered with failed analogies. It doesn’t mean that all analogies will be wrong on principle; it’s more the case that as we move from one level of understanding to another, our previous model needs to be discarded and replaced with something more reflective of our current knowledge. There isn’t a cosmological argument out there at the moment which persuades me, including Craig’s version (which obviously fits better with our current knowledge than that of Aquinas), but maybe there will be one day. Today’s physics is nothing like as straightforward and accessible as the Newtonian version; it will be really difficult to develop a good cosmological argument in a universe of quantum mechanics, dark matter, etc. Good luck to those who try!

Naturalistic modelling of the universe and natural science

James asks whether the effective modelling of the universe with natural science shows that the universe is naturalistic. There would be nothing ‘beyond’ it (in metaphysical terms) to explain it, because there’s no need to go beyond the science that works.

If I had to pick one argument for atheism that really is effective, it would go something like this. Why believe in God if you don’t need to? If science is doing a good job explaining the universe, then there is no need to go further than it or engage in metaphysics. Think of Ockham’s Razor – don’t add God on as an additional hypothesis if you don’t have to. There is the obvious reply from theists that scientific knowledge isn’t complete and much is unexplained: God is still needed. However, I don’t think that’s a huge problem for atheists. Science is a gradual thing; as long as it keeps moving forward, there is no need to worry much about what it hasn’t explained.

However, I think there is a problem if atheists try to take this type of argument further. I would take issue with somebody who said that effective modelling of the universe shows that the universe is naturalistic. I tend to take quite a pragmatic view of knowledge. The fact that a model is working well doesn’t show that the model is ‘true’, just that it is true enough on its own terms. I would agree with a weaker statement like this: effective modelling of the universe by natural science shows that the universe can be interpreted legitimately as naturalistic. I personally would have no issue with somebody who said that they felt no need to believe in God; I would disagree with somebody who thought it was true that God does not exist.

To say that you know that the universe has no explanation beyond the universe itself is a very silly thing to say. Any number of thought experiments will show this is false – you could be stuck in a dream, or in one of Nozick’s experience machines. You can never prove that the universe is what you think it is. You can, however, pragmatically think that science does enough for you to leave it there and go no further, God included. That is the kind of atheism I respect.

Personally, I like metaphysics and the philosophy of religion – it can be like playing a good game or reading poetry. I don’t worry too much what is true, but get a lot of satisfaction from kicking around the ideas. I don’t think I can prove the existence of God, but I think that I have learned a lot from manipulating the language and ideas of the various arguments. I like to think with the idea of God and find that it has tremendous imaginative value. I know that lots of people will find this deeply dissatisfying, but there you are.

Religious debate: now just a commodity?

Another academic year has started, is now in full swing, and it seems like the summer is a vague and pleasant memory of distant past. As I work my way through old classes, new ones, and ideas for updating things, I am utterly astounded at the sheer quantity of media productions there are which perpetuate religious debate. We watched an Alain de Botton TED today in a Philosophy of Religion class, which was new to me, and with every new resource I see there seems to be twenty others helpfully recommended.

I haven’t decided whether I like de Botton’s thesis yet (that atheists should ‘steal’ the good bits of religions, which are not all bad after all), but he makes a welcome change of tone in an otherwise annoyingly strident field.

What is interesting about his book Religion for Atheists is that he seems to be addressing a whole sub-culture of anti-religious polemic and the predictable pro-religious response. We know what he is referring to – the books, the talks, the debates, the TV shows, the Twitter feuds. There seems to be a media war that is remarkably self-perpetuating.

Obviously, it’s not surprising that these disagreements take place. People have been passionately opposed to or supportive of religions for centuries. What surprises me, though, is that last point – the sheer staying-power of public interest in something which, almost by definition, cannot be a new story. The obvious thing to do would be to hear what Dawkins/Hitchens/whoever has to say, think about, make up one’s mind, and move on. But people don’t move on. Many of us seem to return to it over and over again.

I suppose that I have imposed this own personal hell upon myself by teaching the Philosophy of Religion, but even I could probably ignore it most of the time – it’s not as though the public polemic really touches upon the ‘real’ philosophy that you get in academic critiques of theism from, say, Mackie or Le Poidevin. But it seems to be so ubiquitous that I struggle to ignore it. It would also be shirking responsibility to completely ignore what seems to be the most public discourse about religion (that it is supposedly the root of evil, or not, etc.).

Given the constant and seemingly successful production of commercial religious debate, it’s an interesting question as to why it is so strongly self-perpetuating. Some people must be pretty much addicted to religion-bashing or atheism-bashing, as – to put it biblically – a dog returns to its vomit (… “so fools repeat their folly”). My answer, I think, is that religious debate has become a kind of commodity – a psychological package that people feel they need to consume.

Defeating our enemies has always been tied to some notion of a utopian future – a world without Nazis, Communists, atheists, or … religious believers. The 1990’s could be seen as the boring transitional decade in which there was no dragon to slay, and Richard Dawkins was pretty much a voice in the wilderness. Post 9/11 we have moved into a new era in which our future is contested between so-called ‘religious’ and ‘rationalist’ world views. That kind of dualism I think is the main part of the psychological product people keep buying.

There is also the rise of entertainment intellectualism (classically, the TED talks, Twitterarti), and that surely only strengthens that trend. Why present something as a dialogue, when it can be a comic book?

De Botton is interesting … something a bit different. But can his humble atheism really get anywhere in competition with the well marketed commodities of the new atheism and its conservative religious enemies?

Philosophy and Religion News Digest Fri 31st May – Thu 6th June

Slightly late this week. Many thanks as always to @Welly_Library for this fantastic resource.

 

Will Smith and a world beyond mathematics

 

The lions bred for slaughter

 

Gay marriage: it’s only fair

 

Obituary – Father Andrew Greeley: Roman Catholic priest who argued that his ‘salacious’ bestselling novels were ‘theological comedies of grace’

 

Archbishop of Canterbury: gay marriage bill will undermine family life

 

Twenty-first-century suffragettes: what would you fight for now?

 

Syrian war widens Sunni-Shia schism as foreign jihadis join fight for shrines

 

Islamophobic hate crime: is it getting worse?

Philosophy and Religion News Digest Fri 26th April – Thu 2nd May

Credit again to the Mallinson Library, Wellington College (@Welly_Library) for producing this great resource. As before, please note that some articles are linked to subscription publications – you can only access them if you are paid up. The original article information is provided, however.

Comment by Desmond Tutu: To protect our children, we must talk to them about rape

 

US schools weigh bulletproof uniforms: ‘It’s no different than a seatbelt in a car’

 

From Texas to Dhaka, economic exploitation continues to spill blood

 

Optimism is appealing, but pessimism, alarm and anxiety have their uses

 

Founder of Methodism struggled with his wife’s taste for extravagance

 

Susie Orbach talks about feminism and female roles in society:

‘I’m always perplexed as to how heterosexuality happens…’

 

BBC bosses found Jewish film ‘too hot’

The Times, 29/04/13, page 17

 

Busy parents ‘failing to teach children right from wrong’

 

Roman Catholic Church ‘to take over secular schools’

 

Assisted suicide poll shows support among majority of religious people

 

Danielle Allen: Equity not equality

 

Gay sports star is walking in open rebellion to God, says commentator

The Times, 01/05/13, page 32

 

At Boots, science is for boys and pink princess toys are for girls

 

Irish abortion bill accused of being misogynistic and offensive

 

North Koreans tune in for a glimpse of the outside world

 

People must be free to be unwise, judge rules

Telegraph, 02/05/13, page 15

 

Young desire wealth ‘but don’t want to earn it’

Philosophy and Religion News Digest Fri 19th April – Thu 25th April

Credit to the Mallinson Library, Wellington College (@Welly_Library) for producing this list. I am simply passing on their hard work. Please note that some articles are linked to subscription, such as the Times – you will only be able to access these if you are paid up. Still, there is information on where to find the original article in print form.

Burma’s Bin Laden, the Buddhist monk who fuels hatred – video

Archbishop backs law change to allow straight civil partnerships

It’s really not easy being a handsome devil

Twenty years after Stephen Lawrence’s murder, what’s changed?

France’s gay marriage bill fought over on streets as much as in parliament

Gay marriage gains approval as police clash with protesters

Times, 24/04/13

Cameron is told to drop snooping on web users

Stick figures show the basics in sex guide for ultra-Orthodox Jews

Times, 23/04/13

Web censorship: the net is closing in

Archbishop of Canterbury’s daughter: My battle with depression

New miracle set to secure speediest sainthood of John Paul II

Times, 24/04/13

Sexual violence: is Bollywood to blame?

Times t2, 24/04/13

Catholic midwives win right to object over abortion planning in Scotland

Some interesting arguments from students, about the ontological argument

Long time no post – an apology

Firstly, there is the slightly embarrassing point that I haven’t posted since January. Shame on me, I’m sorry. There is one obvious reason for this, which all UK teachers will recognise in an instant – the period of January to early April surely is our walk through the inferno of exam preparation. Work loads in teaching are very uneven and seasonal, but things are starting to get a bit lighter now. So … hopefully this is a good thing as far as you are concerned … I’m going to get back to blogging. I’m also going to try to make some improvements to this blog site, link to more interesting things, etc. etc.

I know, I know, the best laid plans of mice and men …

But anyway, I digress.

The ontological argument, and what we were discussing

If you’ve read this blog before, you will recall that previous posts discussed the ontological argument for the existence of God, particularly in relation to the interesting criticisms from Mackie. It so happens that I was teaching this topic earlier in the week and heard some interesting things from my students. So, I thought I should take the time to write some of it up. Please give them the credit for any good ideas you see, and me the blame for mal-communication or lack of oversight.

If you don’t know the ontological argument, read a previous post, google it, or have a look at my brief attempt below to summarise the argument given by Anselm of Canterbury:

• God is defined as the greatest conceivable being (GCB)
• We have this idea, and so the idea of the GCB exists in the understanding
• The GCB cannot exist in the understanding only, for otherwise we could think of something greater, which also existed in reality
• Therefore, the GCB exists both in the understanding and in reality
• Therefore, God, the GCB exists

You may well be thinking all kinds of things right now, most probably along the lines of “wait a minute, that can’t be right!” At least, that is how most students respond. To those students I say: Okay, so let’s assume that it’s wrong. Who can do the best job of explaining why it’s wrong? And that really is an interesting challenge. As Russell supposedly once said, the ontological argument may be wrong, but it’s quite difficult to say precisely why it is wrong.

And of course, sometimes we find people who think it isn’t wrong. I have changed my own mind about this several times in the past, but at the moment I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work.

Is existing a good thing?

The debate in class this week was most interesting, because it ultimately became an argument about a really abstract principle which is much wider than the ontological argument. One of my students basically responded like this, in a position similar to that of Immanuel Kant:

The argument basically doesn’t work because existence isn’t a real property that an object has. You can’t say that something must exist to be the greatest, because that is saying that existence is one of the positive attributes that the object possesses. But it isn’t. Existence is just something that all objects with properties possess, and it makes no sense to compare objects and say that the existing ones are ‘better’.

This is a really good response, I think, given that it comes unprompted from a young student. It’s working at a pretty high level for students to find abstract principles that go on to cause specific problems for arguments, if that makes sense.

But anyway, what was the response? A couple of students disagreed along these lines.

Existence is a property, because there is a clear difference between objects that are in the mind only and those that exist in reality. There is a clear way in which objects that are ‘real’ are ‘better’. For example, let’s say we give you the choice between two really nice sports cars: one that is in your garage and one that is in your mind only. Which are you going to choose? You will choose the car in your garage every time, so it is clear that existing makes something better, because you can positively distinguish between the real object you want and the less desirable object in your mind.

Well done again to our students at Wellington – I don’t think that I could have come out with arguments like this when I was 16. Now, the reply went something like this:

Okay, but the car in your garage isn’t better than the one in you mind, it’s just more accessible. If you look at all the things that make the car what it is (shape, engine, colour, etc.) then they are both exactly the same. The only difference is that you have access to the car in your garage but not the one in your mind. The car is better for you, but it isn’t better. A God who existed would give a better situation for you, but wouldn’t have better qualities than one in the mind.

And this really is a great argument for a teenager, as it’s really precise about the use of language. When we talk about something being ‘better’ we sometimes mean ‘having better qualities’, and on other occasions we mean ‘that’s a better set of circumstances’ or that it’s preferable to us. So what came next? The reply went something like this:

But the car in your garage and the car in your head do not have the same qualities, because real ideas about real things do truly have better qualities. That is, the car in your mind is present in your mind and is existing in your mental experiences, but the idea of the car that isn’t real isn’t as good as the idea of the car that is real. An idea is stronger and is going to be more complete if it is linked to something in reality.

At this point we were running out of time, but the student putting forward this criticism stuck to his guns. I think his final response went along these lines:

But the car in your garage and the car in your head do still have exactly the same qualities. Your idea of the car is better in the sense that you have a better idea of the car, but it is not better in the sense that it is an idea of a better car. You are saying that the idea is clearer and vivid, and seems more real to you. But that still just means that it is better for you, not that one car actually has better qualities than the other.

I think we’ll have to continue the discussion with these students later one. But I was really pleased that they ended up talking about some of the underlying principles and tried to be precise about what they were saying. Sometimes students get a bit frustrated that they are arguing about semantics and are not sure whether it really matters. But I think that frustration misses the point – if you can handle fine distinctions, then you are going to have some really good analytical skills, which will help you with many problems completely unrelated to the philosophy of religion. And surely the philosophy of religion might be just a little bit important (!).

On balance, I think I side with the student putting forward the Kant-style criticism, but I’m open to being persuaded the other way. And this leads me to a few reflections on my own.

Is existing a good thing?

The ontological argument often seems to ‘work’ because it fits with established ways of thinking. if someone were to ask you whether it’s good to exist, you would probably think it a pretty strange question, but you would probably also recognise that you think it is good indeed. You are probably not suicidal and happy to be alive. We also tend mentally to associate the word ‘real’ with ‘good’. Wearing real Levi jeans is a good thing, but wearing fake ones is somehow less so. Having a ‘real’ social life is preferable to having an internet one.

The ontological argument draws on these deeply ingrained ideas. And, once you combine such ways of thinking with being open to the possibility of a greatest conceivable being (for that’s all the argument asks for, to begin with), then you are working your way towards the position of having to accept its logic. To get out of the argument, you probably have to deny either the goodness/existence connection, or deny that you ‘have an idea’ of God.

What I think is a really interesting queston for those studying the ontological argument is the historical question of why and how the real or the existant came to be associated with the good. What are the origins of Anselm’s contention that existence is a great making property? I can see some obvious antecedants for this in Plato, but would love to hear or find out more about it.

Perhaps that’s another little project for my students.

Glad to be back on the blog, friends. Hopefully another post is not far away.

Some gun related thinking mistakes

It’s been a little over a week now since the tragedy of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut. I have deliberately avoided posting about it in the last week and don’t want to say too much about it now – it’s a source of profound sadness, is highly sensitive, and I think it’s important to avoid advancing my own agenda and opinions on the basis of other people’s misery.

So, I won’t be offering ‘my solution’ to the problem (whatever the problem is) today. In part, I would hold back because I doubt whether there is a clear solution to America’s problems of gun violence. I am also guarding my comments because I don’t want to be another smug British armchair commentator pointing out that we don’t have mass shootings over here (and more on that later).

Instead, I would like to draw attention to some of the (bad) reasoning that has emerged thus far in the post-shooting debate. With such a strong sense of urgency, mixed with raw emotion, there is a pretty fierce discussion going on – a discussion rooted in some established and deeply entrenched previous disagreements about this same issue. Without wishing to take sides (why do there have to be sides?!) here, I would like to do my bit of service as a semi-professional corrector of bad logic to point out some of the problems I perceive in the current arguments. I’m not sure whether I have ‘good’ arguments of my own; I just know that I have heard a lot of bad ones.

1. Guns are evil / not evil

This is very obviously a misplaced category; I’ve never known an inanimate object yet which I would ascribe moral agency to (though of course we still all get angry with our obstinate computers/cars/dishwashers, etc.). I think that there are very few people actually using this as an argument for restrictions on firearms, though I have heard a few commentators say that guns are evil. This is also sometimes implied in the disbelieving rhetorical question ‘why would anybody want to own a gun?’ The suggestion is that guns are somehow bad or impure. But I don’t think there’s any value in this. Most of us own objects that cause plenty of deaths every year (knives, cars) and think nothing further of it.

On the other hand, opponents of firearms control can often be found using this reasoning to form a straw man opponent. Instead of dealing with the real objection to firearms (that they facilitate murder on a larger scale), supporters of guns can be found reciting the now notorious mantra that “guns don’t kill people, people do”. Well, obviously so. But since that isn’t what the objection is, it’s not a real riposte either.

2. False dichotomy – it’s mental/moral health or it’s guns

The whole attempt to find a single, causal explanation for what happened I find quite bogus and potentially enables all parties to simplify the issues for their benefit. Although I have seen only a small fraction of the coverage, I think that a common false dichotomy has emerged whereby Americans are being presented with a choice of two causal explanations: either the shooter typifies an America that is mentally/morally/spiritually unwell, or he typifies an America in which access to weapons is far too straightforward. The question then becomes, what is the ‘real’ problem that needs to be addressed?

I honestly don’t see any reason why these factors, and indeed many other factors, could or should exclude each other. For instance, if the NRA states that the media is part of the real cause of the tragedy, why could guns not be part of that real cause also?

3. Analogies with other countries

Analogies are being drawn by all sides of the debate. In favour of restricting firearms, analogies are drawn with Australia and the UK. In these countries, notorious mass shootings led to a ban on handguns, which in turn led to an end (just about) to mass shootings. However, on the other side of the debate people pick out Switzerland, which has a heavily armed population (with automatic weapons) and a very low level of gun violence. The fact that analogies can work so dramatically both ways should be sending out a warning signal about their applicability.

Generally, analogies can only be suggestive argumentative devices, and their strength depends very much on the connection or similarity between the objects being compared. So, to find a really good analogy to apply to the USA, we would need to find a country very much like the USA, which is difficult, perhaps impossible. Firstly, the comparison with Australia and the UK is unhelpful. Neither of these countries started out with a legal right to bear arms and the scale of gun ownership was much lower to begin with. Secondly, however, the analogy with Switzerland is also quite useless. America is not a small mountain nation with an economy based on the banking industry and nearly zero poverty.

4. Other errors

And briefly, here are a few more common bits of questionable reasoning:

• Restrictions on automatic weapons / other guns could lead to a wider erosion of constitutional rights (slippery slope)
• I don’t understand why you would want a gun, so you shouldn’t have one (argument from personal incomprehension)
• The framers of the constitution really thought … (argument from authority)
• We should be suspicious of any statement coming from a source as discredited as Obama, the NRA, etc. (ad hominem)

What next?

I don’t know exactly what will happen next and it will be interesting to see whether new restrictions and regulations are brought in. To an foreign outsider looking in, this event really shows how strong a fixed point the Bill of Rights is for America and it is striking that the basic right to carry weapons isn’t really being questioned. Banning automatic weapons would, I guess, make mass shootings more difficult to execute, but certainly not impossible. Such a (renewed) ban may be the limit of what is realistically possible, but we shall see whether other measures are also brought forward. Whatever is the case, the typical line that one hears in Britain (why don’t they just get rid of the guns?) just isn’t on the table.

This all probably makes the problem seem pretty intractable. However, I do think that a certain amount of clear thinking and a focus on evidence based policy could make a real difference. I sincerely hope so, because we all know what the price of failure would be.

 

My students are more intelligent than I: post script on weird beliefs and the sufficient reason for the universe

It so happened today that I was talking to some of my students about issues related to my previous blog post, and they actually did a really great job of explaininf why Mackie would accept that there doesn’t need to be a ‘sufficient reason’ for the universe. In fact, they did a much better job than I did – perhaps I should get them to write my blog for me from now on!

We had in fact been reading an extract from Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic and ended up discussing Ayer’s suggestion that only scientific propositions can be meaningful. I will try to summarise the contents of our discussion in a rough sketch of dialogue below.

A conversation in my class:

Student: How can Ayer rule out religious beliefs as unverifiable? If science is explaining the processes in the universe, doesn’t religion provide a complimentary account of why these things occur? Science could explain how the Big Bang happened, but don’t we need God to explain why it happened?

Me: Well, Ayer wouldn’t allow that, because when you ask why the Big Bang happened you are assuming that it has a reason, that somebody intended it to happen. That belief isn’t necessary. According to Ayer, you shouldn’t believe in things unless verification suggests that there is good evidence for such things being true. Verification doesn’t support God causing the universe.

Student: But that doesn’t make sense. The whole point of science is that you try to explain everything that happens. How can Ayer turn around and say that the universe itself doesn’t need an explanation? Isn’t he contradicting himself?

– at this point Guy Williams whips out a classic J.L. Mackie argument –

Me: That’s not the case. It may be true that science looks for an explanation of how every process in the universe works, but you can’t take that from every case and apply it to the whole. Explanations of how things happen do not prove that there needs to be a total explanation of the whole. In other words, for Ayer we can only talk about what happens within the universe (the ’empirical world’) and there’s no point in speculating about whether there could be anything outside of it or causing it.

– now my student uses my own argument against me, the point I made against Mackie and Russell yesterday in my very own blog! Much as I would like to believe that my students read my blog, I think that this is just an amazing coincidence. –

Student: But that still doesn’t make sense. It’s not like our experience of things suggests that sometimes things don’t have any explanation. Everything we investigate with science can have an explanation; there are no exceptions. So, doesn’t it seem really far fetched to say that this one thing – the universe – exists without there being a reason for its existence. It’s possible that the universe has no explanation, but it doesn’t seem very convincing given that everything it contains needs an explanation.

Me: Er … (running out of arguments at this point) … I know it sounds strange, but for Ayer and others trying to explain the universe isn’t really the same thing as trying to explain objects within it. It’s a kind of mistake or confusion.

– here another student helpfully pitches in –

Student 2: Isn’t that a bit like what Ryle was saying about the mind? That it’s a category mistake to think that it’s a thing in its own right? Couldn’t it be argued that asking about the reason for the universe confuses what sort of object the universe is? Maybe the universe isn’t a whole thing that needs an explanation, just like the mind isn’t a real thing like regular objects.

Me: (relieved!) I think that’s exactly how you could defend Ayer or atheism more generally. It’s about thinking about the universe in the right way. To see the universe as a real thing is quite a theistic way of thinking, whereas you could just see it as a collective term for all the stuff that exists.

– the first student at this point is interested but still isn’t convinced – 

Student: But isn’t that really strange? I accept that the universe could be understood that way, but isn’t the universe like a real object? It’s quite easy to think about it as an object and that’s how it makes most sense to me. I still think you have to ask why it exists.

Some reflections

At this point we were running out of time and ended in something of an impasse, with some students deciding that the universe should have a reason for existing and others deciding that it isn’t necessary. I was really pleased by the quality of their ideas, though, and the comparison with Ryle was something I hadn’t thought of before.

Either way, I think my students have really helped me out, as I think I have a better understanding of where Mackie is coming from in rejecting the sufficient reason for the universe. It requires a certain amount of re-ordering the way you might think about the universe. So, I can honestly say that I am not quite sure what to make of the sufficient reason argument at the moment. I still stick by my previous comments, however, that weird beliefs ensue either way – either we have some sort of theistic explanation (which is strange), or we accept that we inhabit a universe which is some kind of unexplainable non-entity (which is strange). I can see that I am going to have to give this some more thought.

Regardless of where that takes me, I am very privileged to have such gifted students – that’s the one certain conclusion I’ve drawn thus far!

The inevitability of having weird beliefs: Leibniz, Mackie and the cosmological argument

My journey through J.L. Mackie’s Miracle of Theism continues. I am still greatly enjoying it, even if I’m not reading it that quickly. If you do pick up this book (I really recommend it), you will find that some chapters are a lot more technical than others; for example, the discussion of the ontological argument (ch 3) and Berkley’s idealism (ch 4), which I have just been through, took quite a lot of concentration. Still, what I really like about this book is the way Mackie peppers his arguments with assertive, perceptive, and sometimes ironic comments. It reads a bit like an after lunch conversation with a wise and funny uncle. Mackie is also a philosopher’s philosopher, and so the only thing he really likes is a well reasoned argument. Some theistic philosophers he clearly admires, giving them ten out of ten for effort (though he is of course not convinced), whereas others don’t live up to his exacting standards. I do also suspect that a bit of snobbishness creeps into this Oxford don’s thinking; at times the criticism of Plantinga’s ontological argument is blurred by his ad hominem remarks about “Saint Alvin” featuring in Time magazine (the thought of it!).

Anyway, at the current point in my reading Mackie has rejected the ontological argument, which is probably fair enough (though I do keep changing my mind about this one), and has rejected Berkley’s claim that ideas are generated in the mind of God, on which I can more confidently agree with Mackie. I am now working my way through his criticism of cosmological arguments (ch 5).

Must there be a sufficient reason for the universe?

The discussion here reminds me a bit of some comments I heard from Richard Dawkins many years ago at the Cambridge Union. He was asked the question – implicit in the cosmological argument – of why there is anything at all. Why is there something rather than nothing? I remember very clearly that he described the question as ‘vacuuous’ though superficially profound; I don’t really remember why he thought this and at the time I think I was confused by his answer. Even thinking about it now, I can’t really think of a good reason why the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ is a bogus one. I suppose the word ‘why’ might be taken as implying that there is a discernable reason for the universe, which is explicitly what Dawkins denies. That is debatable.

But anyway, back to Mackie.

The first form of cosmological argument he confronts is Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason. This argument basically runs thus:

1. Nothing occurs without a sufficient reason
2. Every event / object in the world may be explained by its sufficient reason
3. The world (=universe) as a whole must have a sufficient reason for its existence
4. The world cannot be the sufficient reason for its own existence; that reason must be external
5. An external sufficient reason for the world implies the existence of a necessary being, which contains its own sufficient reason for its existence
6. Conclusion: God exists, a necessary being, the sufficient reason for the world’s existence

Mackie makes a fair but in my opinion none-too-interesting criticism of the latter part of the argument, stating that we don’t need to suppose that there could be such a thing as a necessary being. It’s not a knock-down objection; it is more the simple point that Leibniz (like many others) hasn’t provided a really clear explanation of why a necessary being is a good idea. I suppose many theistic philosophers have been guilty of this; they spend their time arguing for the intellectual space that God could occupy, without offering a thorough defence of the explanatory power of their hypothesis. This criticism probably isn’t that fair when applied to pre-modern philosophers, in that they lived in societies which regarded the explanatory value of theism as quite self-evident (think of Aquinas). Perhaps an Enlightenment thinker such as Leibniz should have known better – that’s another issue for another day.

Now, let’s put aside the problem of whether a necessary being is a useful idea or not. What really has excited me in Mackie’s discussion is his willingness to question the principle of sufficient reason itself, and especially P3. On this point, I’ll quote him directly (p. 85):

Even if, within the world, everything seemed to have a sufficient reason, that is, a cause in accordance with some regularity, with like causes producing like effects, this would give us little ground for expecting the world as a whole, or its basic causal laws themselves, to have a sufficient reason of some different sort.

Which is less weird: theistic explanation or accepting that there is no explanation?

In effect, Mackie accepts that Leibniz’s principle would drive you to some sort of theistic-style explanation. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a classical or very ‘God-like’ God, but supposing that there is an external sufficient reason for the universe does imply something a bit ‘God-ish’ as the explanatory background. It is in this sense, then, that the cosmological argument has its effect; it does not provide a compelling proof for theism, but it does exact a cost for the non-theistic option. That is, the price you pay for rejecting theism is accepting that there may be no explanation for the universe and its causal laws.

On a point of pure logic, I must say that Mackie is absolutely correct. There is nothing to show that the principle of sufficient reason has to be elevated from applications within the world to an application to the whole. I think that’s basically the point Russell was making when he said that each human has a mother, but the human race has no mother.

However, Russell’s analogy is really quite a bad one, I think. Of course the human race has no mother; he is simply pointing to the fact that we are aware of some categories of objects having emerged gradually without a definitive moment at which that category of objects was brought into being. Our experience shows us that some sets of objects have an overall cause and others do not – the world is not uniform in this respect. Yet, our experience of the world is uniform with respect of the principle of sufficient reason – we never do encounter objects which happen to exist for no reason at all. So, to say that the world as a whole must have a sufficient reason for its existence is not as obviously weak a logical step as saying that the human race must have a mother; it builds upon our uniform experience of everything, not just one class of objects.

In other words, on a logical level I think that rejecting P3 is fine; the world may not have a sufficient reason for its existence. However, I think Mackie has significantly understated how weird and counter-intuitive this step is. By ‘weird’, I mean having to accept circumstances that are totally alien from those which we usually encounter, disconcertingly so. In practice, we are allowed to ask the question ‘why is that here?’ of every object, except the totality of objects: the world itself. In my reflections, this has led me to ask: is Mackie’s belief in no explanation really any less far fetched than theistic explanation?

Inevitable weird beliefs

‘Weirdness’ certainly isn’t a real category for sorting out truth claims; many weird things are true. However, given how much criticism theism gets for being a strange and grandiose hypothesis, I think it’s only fair to emphasise how this criticism cuts both ways. Scientific reductionism may be true, but if it is, it is strange but true. The scientific reductionist is basically in the business of saying that everything in the universe has a causal explanation that science can in principle discover, except for the universe itself, which has no causal explanation. I have really tried to enter into Mackie’s way of thinking on this point and see the world from his perspective, but I find this last part cognitively jarring – weird – as I cannot incorporate an unexplained universe into the way I see the world around me. I cannot grasp the uncaused-ness of the universe within my mind: I cannot imagine it, describe it to myself, etc.

But please don’t think I am trying to let theism off the hook. Theism is also incredibly strange: supposing that something like a mind is eternally responsible for the existence of everything. This hardly fits with my usual experiences either. But when I compare the two options that Leibniz and Mackie have put before me, I genuinely don’t think that there is an option that is easy to swallow. Weird beliefs are inevitable for anybody who thinks about why things exist. The only way to dodge this particular bullet is to live an unphilosophical life, which of course I cannot recommend.

The Idea of God and the Third Meditation: on Mackie’s Criticism of Descartes

I’m still reading and very much enjoying Mackie’s Miracle of Theism. Earlier in the week I worked through Mackie’s discussion of Hume’s critique of miracles, though it seemed to me that Mackie does little with that other than provide lucid explanations and expansions. The following chapter on Descartes’ Third Meditation really has caught my interest, however.

I haven’t had a look at this particular text and its theistic argument since my student days, and haven’t taught it to my own students (though I think I might now). Until this week, I had vague recollections of it, of finding it interesting when I read it, but I think I had dismissed it as too good to be true. I think this was my general impression of Descartes’ philosophy as a student – there was no way somebody could prove that much stuff in books that short. As I am now getting older (31 and counting), I think that I am developing some scepticism of such scepticism. That is, you can’t just dismiss an idea because it sounds suspicious (especially not in philosophy); are there reasons for rejecting the really simple arguments Descartes makes for really big conclusions?

Mackie, despite some obvious deep respect for Descartes, thinks that we are indeed justified in rejecting the argument from the Third Meditation. Interestingly, he firmly opposes Descartes’ argument, but does not in anyway see it as outlandish in its scope or ambition. Though false, it is quite an understandable form of reasoning (p. 37):

This argument, then, is not absurd, and its assumptions connect with very familiar and widely used principles of interpretation and explanation. Nevertheless, it is open to criticism …

The argument in the Third Meditation

Just in case you haven’t read this or don’t remember, it will help to have a quick re-cap of what Descartes said. In a nutshell, his argument runs thus:

1. Ideas (like objects) have an efficient cause
2. There must be at least as much reality in the efficient cause of an idea as in the idea itself
3. I have an idea of God, as a perfect being
4. There must be an efficient cause of my idea of a perfect being
5. I cannot be the cause of my idea of God, for I am not sufficient to produce the idea of perfection
6. There must therefore be an external efficient cause of my idea of a perfect being: a perfect being
7. Thus, “it is absolutely necessary to conclude” that God exists

I suppose that the argument could be attacked from many angles. Some people will of course deny P3, saying that they have no concept of a perfect being and that nobody can really manage this properly. That’s an argument for another day, though for now I will say that I don’t buy it (I see no reason in principle why somebody couldn’t achieve the conditions of having this idea). Mackie’s focus is on P2 and P5, which is what I want to look at now. This presents a most interesting dispute.

Mackie on where the idea of perfection comes from

Mackie has a number of points, but his real beef is with the idea that there must be a being of genuine perfection to have produced the idea of a perfect being. Why is this so? Well, the main reason is that we could explain our concept of perfection as derived from our experience of imperfection (p. 38):

I do not have in my mind a genuine picture of perfection. My grasp of this notion resides only in my ability to recognize other things, including myself, as finite and imperfect … given a series of past corrections and amplifications, I can easily project it into the future, so as to see my present state of knowledge, and indeed any likely future state, as still defective, as partly mistaken, and certainly incomplete. In this way I have a positive grasp of my own imperfection, out of which I can construct the merely negative notion of a state of perfect knowledge.

And this seems to be a pretty conclusive reply to Descartes. At least, that’s how it seemed to me on first impression. Certainly, Mackie’s argument is sufficient to show that an individual could be justified in rejecting the argument from the Third Meditation, as long as one is happy with Mackie’s concept of perfection. That is to say, if I am happy to say that my concept of perfection derives from my experience of my limitations, then who may argue with me?

On further reflection, however, I can’t help but wonder whether Mackie has missed the point.

The idea of an idea

What does it mean to have a concept of perfection, or of a perfect being? Mackie takes the idea to be an abstract definition – an analytic arrangement of terms. This is not unreasonable, in the sense that this is one way that people conceive of ideas and it fits with some important aspects of Descartes’ own philosophy (i.e. his mathematical tendencies and interests). However, in starting from an abstraction, Mackie begins his counter-argument from the position that the idea of perfection is separate from the idea of a perfect being. In other words, he takes as his starting point an interpretation of Descartes which Descartes himself would not allow. If you think about it, the outcome is thus fairly obvious; it’s a bit like saying “if you interpret perfection non-theistically, you will then find that it doesn’t prove theism”.

Well indeed.

But what other ideas of an idea could we have, other than abstract definition? Descartes says that the idea of God is “very clear and very distinct”, which to me indicates that he thinks it can’t be inferred from our own experiences of being imperfect. This also fits, I think, with what theists actually do when they think up their idea of a perfect being. When a theist ‘does’ his or her mental production of God, I am pretty sure that he or she will not be putting together concepts from abstract inferences. Rather, the ‘idea’ of God is likely to be a complex synthesis of known and unknown factors: of emotion, memory, imagination, and even bodily sensations (some people feel a certain way when they think about God). To be a theist is basically to say that this idea is non-reducible, ultimate, and seems more real than anything else.

If you start with this idea of a perfect being – admittedly, that is a very big if – then I think Descartes’ argument in the Third Meditation works just fine. Of course, by this interpretation it’s no good as a proof to a non-theist, as it works within a theistic framework. However, what the argument therefore does do very well is to show that theists may find justification for their beliefs if they are willing to engage in a certain ordering of the life within their own minds. If you are happy to say that you can ‘see’ the idea of God as something very clear and very distinct – the vivid and powerful idea that theists claim it is, then it wouldn’t make much sense to not believe in God.

As an agnosto-theist with religious sympathies (my idea is “somewhat clear and somewhat distinct”), I have a lot of time for both Descartes and Mackie, and will continue to read more from both of these fine thinkers.