Idolatry and the speaking theist

In a couple of previous posts I discussed a potential reinvigoration of religious language, focusing in particular on the use of the word God. I approached this usage from the perspective of the nonbeliever, and tried to answer the question of why it might be reasonable to retain religious language despite rejecting supernatural ontology. But I reckon that the same use of the language of God would be helpful for the believer, shattering the box in which (so they think) He must be confined. It is this case which I'll be presenting here.

The main motive which I'll present for believers in God to prune the ways in which they speak of Him will be avoidance of idolatry. Because the charge of idolatry carries such heft, it has been constantly reappropriated and reapplied to condemn a wide variety of activities, from the worship of wooden statues to greed. There is a particular thread of meaning, however, which is more directly relevant to the use of religious language. A paradigmatic example is found in Exodus 32:

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him."

Aaron answered them, "Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me." So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD." So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

Notice that the festival is to the LORD, not to some other god or gods in competition with Him. The golden statue isn't a rival of the LORD: it is a misrepresentation. Misrepresenting the LORD is a very serious offence, as the sequel shows:

When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.

He said to Aaron, "What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?"

...

Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, "Whoever is for the LORD, come to me." And all the Levites rallied to him.

Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.' " The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, "You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day."

It isn't just the golden calf that Moses objects to, but the practice of the people, which is misrepresenting the LORD before His enemies.

So what kinds of representation are OK? Deuteronomy 4 is pretty clear:

You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven. But as for you, the LORD took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are.

No representations of God are allowed. Why not? Because any representation is, and must be, a misrepresentation; a reduction of God to something common, to a part of His creation. This idea has been taken very seriously in some kinds of Judaism, so that even the name of the LORD is not spoken. It is also famously the source of the abstract constellations of pattern so prevalent in early Islamic art. It has been taken less seriously in Christianity, a point to which I shall return later.

Working out the full implications of this prohibition leads not just to a condemnation of some kinds of statuary. I'll argue that, taken seriously, its range is so wide that it undermines a great deal of religion, including its own frame of reference. This ironic reflexive undercutting begins to show in the instructions Moses gives the Israelites for when they enter the promised land, in Deuteronomy 27:

When you have crossed the Jordan into the land the LORD your God is giving you, set up some large stones and coat them with plaster. Write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over to enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you. And when you have crossed the Jordan, set up these stones on Mount Ebal, as I command you today, and coat them with plaster. Build there an altar to the LORD your God, an altar of stones. Do not use any iron tool upon them. Build the altar of the LORD your God with fieldstones and offer burnt offerings on it to the LORD your God. Sacrifice fellowship offerings there, eating them and rejoicing in the presence of the LORD your God. And you shall write very clearly all the words of this law on these stones you have set up."

There are two lots of stones to be set up. First there are the stones for the altar, in which great care is taken to avoid even attempting to represent God. These stones are used just as they are, and not marked in any way. But opposite these stones stand another group, which are thick with inscriptions. These inscriptions represent God, despite their formulation in language, and despite their protestations against any such representation. They stand as a testimony against themselves.

The marks on the stones cannot be God, despite their aroma of (Platonic) heaven. They can only represent Him. So they can only misrepresent Him. Language is no less an attempt to circumscribe God than pictures, and no less a blasphemous failure. The iterability on which language relies deprives it of the power to capture the unique; the transcendent is debased and rendered translatable for `all the nations under heaven'. The quotation from deuteronomy 4 above slyly undercuts its own exclusive rhetoric by witnessing the possibility of a comprehensible translation for us heathen English.

The idea that misrepresentation of God with language, even with the best of intentions, is seriously problematic is eloquently presented by Job. Faced with a mystery about God, Job's friends do their best, given their limited understanding, to present a picture of God which sets Him in a good light. Job's response is damning:

Will you speak wickedly on God's behalf?
Will you speak deceitfully for him?

Will you show him partiality?
Will you argue the case for God?

Would it turn out well if he examined you?
Could you deceive him as you might deceive men?

He would surely rebuke you
if you secretly showed partiality.

Would not his splendor terrify you?
Would not the dread of him fall on you?

I'm often reminded of these lines when I encounter Young Earth Creationism; adherents of this movement have repeatedly spoken decietfully for God. That they are misrepresenting God is reasonably clear, given our current scientific understanding. But not all representations are so clearly misrepresentations at the time they are made. This is beautifully illustrated by a later passage from Job in which, apparently, God is speaking:

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,

which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?

What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,

to water a land where no man lives,
a desert with no one in it,

to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?

This representation of how God acts to bring about the weather made perfect sense at the time. It was reasonable, for example, to suppose that hail was stored somewhere by God, rather than magically appearing in the sky when needed. But given our current understanding of the weather, this passage is clearly full of howlers, and these howlers lie at the level of the basic assumptions used to form the picture of God. Our own current state of knowledge is very likely to also contain such howlers, so relying on it to represent God puts us at a serious risk of idolatry. These mistakes were to do with scientific knowledge, which is (at any given time) relatively clear-cut. Most of the language used to picture God is not scientific but theological, and thus far more seriously disputed. Therefore it is impossible for more than just a small fraction of theological discussion to avoid the serious error of idolatry; indeed, it follows from the argument I am making that all theology that attempts to represent God, however reasonable it might seem at the time, falls into this trap.

However, there is an even deeper problem here. The very use of language itself implicitly provides a picture of that which is spoken about. For example, the use of a noun suggests that there is a particular thing which can be referred to by means of that noun, and which behaves in a regular manner reflected by the grammar of nouns as we use them in our language. I've commented on how this picture is reflected in the way we use words like `exists', for example, here. Some of the key blunders in the history of science involved the use of nouns where they would turn out to be inappropriate, and the implicit pictures of the world that go along with that use; think of the ether or phlogiston, for example. Something similar may be happening with current discussions of dark matter and dark energy.

Of course, our own ways of thinking are so closely tied in to our language that it is difficult to see how the implicit pictures which the grammar of that language presents could fail. However, as I've suggested here, there are good reasons to think that they do break down even when we seek to speak of perfectly ordinary matter on a very small scale. These pictures serve us well when we want to talk about things on our own scale, but there is no reason to suppose that they will work equally well for addressing all domains where we wish to have knowledge. In particular, to return to the main theme of this post, there is no reason to suppose that God will fit our grammatical boxes. To use the word God simply as a noun is to implicitly represent, and so misrepresent, Him. This, too, is insidious idolatry.

How, then, is this idolatry to be avoided? I mentioned earlier one attempt - namely the avoidance of the name of God in some flavours of Judaism. However, this practice can only stand as a reminder of, rather than an escape from, the blasphemy of language, for some equally arbitrary string of symbols (Adonai, G-d) can always be hauled in to continue the desecration. Alternatively, we could attempt to cut out all God-talk completely. I've argued against this practice elsewhere. For now, it suffices to note that God-talk began to be used in some particular contexts and that at present it seems to be the only language we have for addressing those contexts. The importance of maintaining the space into which this language began to point was argued in a recent address at the unitarian church here in Cambridge.

Indeed, thinking (at least for ourselves) about those contexts in which God-talk seems most appropriate suggests a possible way to use this language without falling into the traps outlined above. To take a simplified case, recall a time when you were struck dumb by the expanse of the stars on a cloudless night. This experience of awe includes a sense of something encountered beyond ourselves, even beyond the physical world. In such a case it is natural to say you have encountered God: to use the word `God' as a placeholder indicating the direction in which this sense points. But it is important at this point not to be drawn into the supposition that this word, `God', can now be treated as any other noun; that we may, for example, sensibly ask whether two distinct Gods were encountered on two different such occasions or whether it was the same God both times.

Indeed, if what I have said above is right, we should not even suppose that to ask at this point a question like `Does God exist?' is a sensible use of language. Since it may have weight for some theists, I should flag up that I think this illustrates a proper response to strong atheism. It would be tempting to say that, prior to all their arguments, strong atheists have made a mistake in supposing that the question `Does God exist?' may sensibly be asked. But in fact, of course, they have made no such mistake. For the question was already appropriated and answered in the affirmative by theists, and the standard arguments of strong atheists are quite properly directed against this idolatry.

Now that I have laid out how the use of religious language in a nonmetaphysical manner may be approached from the side of more traditional theism, it is worth taking a little time to consider some objections to this approach.

The first kind of objection is the suggestion that the approach I have sketched must simply be switching one idol for another. For example, since the characteristic example I mentioned above involves the internal experience of a single person, perhaps all I am doing is substituting the self and personal experience as a new idol in place of God. But this can't be right; like the simplified models in physics textbooks, I chose the example above for its simplicity and clarity, but not for its typicality. Typically, religious use of language will emerge from the practice of a community, not just a single person.

Is it the community which is being substituted for God, then? This doesn't seem right either. After all, it is not the community which is being discussed when religious language is used. That language is directed away from ourselves, and towards the divine (indeed, it is in order to gesture in this direction that we are most in need of religious language). Faced with the infirmity of our langauge in the face of God, there is indeed a danger that we will seek firmness elsewhere, but it is not inevitable: in any case there is no excuse for seeking that firmness in misrepresentative pictures.

The next kind of objection runs a little deeper. In order to lay out my initial account of idolatry, I had to speak of God using religious language in a traditional manner. But this is exactly the use of language which I later condemned as blasphemous. So, just as I earlier suggested that the book of Deuteronomy undermines itself, so does my own argument. In order to make the argument, I must stand on the very foundations I am undercutting.

This objection does not remove the force of my argument, but it does show that it can only serve as an internal critique of a special kind: as a kind of deconstruction. For I have sought to show that traditional religious accounts conceal within themselves the seeds of their own condemnation. Once this is made explicit, I claim, the structure implodes, taking the argument with it. However, this very movement serves to gesture in the direction of the holy, and of a more tentative way of addressing God.

A third objection is that what I have said is an overblown attack on sincerely held beliefs, which will serve only as an excuse for violence and condemnation. Because of the extreme force of the language of idolatry, the objection runs, it should be used with more caution. It has been used to excuse murder in the past. First of all, it is worth noting that even if this objection were accurate it would not be a reason to reject my argument. That a claim has been used in the name of violence does not make it false. We can't deny the truth of nuclear physics just because of the horrific weapons it underpins.

However, in fact this objection is not even accurate; all its force is drawn away by the second objection. After all, in the moment in which we are drawn to condemn traditional religious language as idolatrous, even before we are able to strap on our swords in the name of divine retribution, that condemnation undercuts itself, together with the language, and falls away, having removed only our own inclination to speak of God in a certain way, and left us with no resources to condemn others.

We might try to save the objection by pointing out that even if the argument is internal it opens a possible charge of hypocrisy. This, too, is a serious enough charge that it should be used with caution. But even this revised objection will not stick. For we can not say, as an outer criticism, that those using religious language are commiting idolatry even on their own terms. For this would involve accepting those terms as sensible, if false. But such an acceptance would be a misuse of religious language of precisely the kind I have been arguing against. Even this attempt at violence undercuts itself. The only objection to be made from the outside is that we cannot make full sense of the traditional religious language without condemning ourselves. This is hardly a vicious allegation.

There is a final objection, which I suspect is likely to be confined to a Christian approach to theism. The objection is that, just as God somehow, mysteriously, became a man (who could, no doubt, be modelled in bronze), so too He is able to lift our language to the level of picturing Him, thus humbling Himself to the point of being captured in human speech. On this account, when theists talk about God, they are saved from the dangers I have outlined above by His own divine action. It is, I think, thoughts of this kind which have made Christians less coy about representing God than Jews and Muslims.

This objection relies on perpetual miracles to correct the potential idolatry of theists all over the world. These miracles are of a rather odd character; they cannot be simple corrections which smooth over inaccuracies in the meaning of speech which is approximately right. The very idea of approximation is tied to our ways of picturing things with words, and so any approximation to what we say would still be blasphemy if attributed to God. Instead, God must be making a radical break in meaning at each point, and causing theists' statments to mean something wholely other than their usual meaning and inexpressible in language.

There is a certain arbitrariness here. Why does God fix up images of Himself made in language, but not graven in metal? Or why not mysteriously cause discussion of the weather to secretly mean wonderful things about Him, whilst reducing the meanings of potentially blasphemous statements to pleasantries about the weather? Of course, part of the problem here is that the language of meaning is overstretched, and that to follow the pictures it presents us with can be problematic in the same ways as doing the same with religious language. This idolatry of meaning is a displacement of the original idolatry and does not resolve it.

Nevertheless, let us suppose for the sake of argument that there is some sense to this superstitious hope that God will sanctify certain kinds of speech - He is supposed to move in mysterious ways, after all. It would follow that the usual conventions we follow based on our normal understanding of meaning would not apply in such cases. For example, we normally try not to affirm both a sentence and its negation together. But there is no reason for this convention if the meaning of the sentence is not tied to the form of words used. In particular, it is inappropriate for theists to deny the claims of others (such as `God has no Son') on the grounds that they contradict other claims which they affirm (such as `God has a Son').

In a similar way, we usually count utterances as knowledge when they are connected to their content through an appropriate causal chain including the mind of the utterer; it is not at all clear that religious utterances could count as knowledge under the `perpetual miracles' account. In short, even if there is no way to rule out this objection, its consequences for the treatment of religious language fall far short of what would be needed to support the usual practice.

It is this standard practice, which unthinkingly supposes that the implicit linguistic pictures evolved to capture the material word can be directly transplanted onto descriptions of God, which I have been objecting to. I suggest that instead it would be proper to limit our talk about God to the point where we find ourselves unable to express the superstitions which are such a common accompaniment to engagement with Him.

A rearrangement of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

I had a look at Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus recently, and the format is crying out for expression with an outliner. I poked around on the internet for a while, and I couldn't find it. So, I did it myself. Here it is:

The Tractatus in an outliner.

Reading it this way brings out the coherence of some of the structure of this book. It's particularly impressive since Wittgenstein didn't have any such software to play around with.

I built it from a Project Gutenberg e-text, though I've corrected some typos and put in some sections that had been left out of the e-text. I've also cleaned up the notation for the mathematics, which had become mangled in the e-text version. The only major problem is that I couldn't include any of the diagrams from the original book. But this isn't too serious, as Wittgenstein doesn't rely very heavily on the diagrams.

It is clear that, on its own terms, the Tractatus is nonsense. Wittgenstein was well aware of this when he wrote it. The trouble is that most of it is in fact perfectly sensible use of language and so, not being nonsense, it shows itself to be false. We could, perhaps, imagine that Wittgenstein's project was more modest: To set up a bastion of sensible language without commenting on the sense of the remainder (with which that bastion is constructed). But even this fails, since the set-up of the bastion relies on a classical foundationalism which has been smashed by quantum mechanics, as I hope to explain in my next post.

An amusing diversion.

If I told you I didn't believe in rationality, what could you do to convince me? You could try to present an argument, but I, believing the argument to be necessarily irrational, would have no reason to accept it, or even listen to it. Your best bet would probably be to medicate me, though such techniques don't really fall under the banner of 'convincing'.

This is because rationality is so basic. Any proof that rationality exists must be in some sense circular, in that it must rely at some point on reason. This isn't a problematic kind of circularity, though, in that we simply rely on the proper function of reason in our brains to understand reasonable arguments. We don't, and can't, rely on our knowledge that we are rational in order to do this. But lack of proper care in thinking about this can lead to paradoxes.

It's much easier with the existence of things like tables. We have a sensible theory of the world into which tables snugly fit. More precisely, in this theory there is a role for tables as existing objects which fits pretty closely with our experience of them and of the world. To return to the theme of this post, our physical theories of the world give good reason to believe that continuing to use the word 'table', as we do, as if it were a noun, will not lead us into serious difficulty. So, according to that post, we shouldn't be at all surprised that we find ourselves, from time to time, making claims like 'tables exist'. There is no paradox here, despite the fact that tables have been widely used by those who put these theories together.

Let's pause at this point to notice the dizzy heights we haven't reached. The dalliance with the word 'exists' in the post referenced above gave no explanation at all of what existence is, or of what it is for a thing to exist. It was simply an observation about the linguistic use of a word, a piece of anthropology. Accordingly, we needn't worry about things relying for their existence on the ideas introduced there. This is good: It avoids vicious circularity - those ideas needn't rely on themselves for their own existence, for example. Bafflement easily ensues if this is not kept in mind.

In fact, there are quite a few things which exist, and whose existence may be explained in this very limited sense, but for which the explanation invokes the things themselves. The problem is only apparent, since what is explained is only the fact that, given the way we use language, we sensibly use the word 'exists' about those things. It is amusing to examine a few cases, and see how in each case familiar paradoxes are generated. I'll look at numbers, language, time, probability and deconstruction, but I'm sure you can think of your own examples.

Numbers

Although numbers aren't made of physical stuff in the same way as tables, our basic physical theories give us good reasons to accept that using the words for numbers nounishly will be unproblematic. For the world is generally divisible into discrete bits which we can count, and preservation of cardinality is a general rule which emerges from our understanding of how those bits of stuff behave. However, the more deeply we look into the behaviour of stuff and our understanding of it, the more we find that in order to explain what is going on we must make use of mathematics.

Because of the misunderstanding I outlined above, this phenomenon has often been taken to show that such explanations are circular and therefore inadequate. So the question of how our minds can interact with numbers has been singled out as a mystery. How can our minds, which are made of physical stuff, possibly interact with such abstract nonphysical entities? Even the brilliant thinker Roger Penrose has taken pains to express how baffling he finds this, in terms of a triangular structure of mental, material, and mathematical worlds, each enclosing the previous one:

In order to confront the profound issues that confront us, I shall phrase things in terms of three different worlds, and the three deep mysteries that relate each of these worlds to each of the others. The worlds are somewhat related to those of Popper (cf. Popper and Eccles 1977), but my emphasis will be very different.

The world that we know most directly is the world of our conscious perceptions, yet it is the world that we know least about in any kind of precise scientific terms. ... There are two other worlds that we are cognisant of ... One ... is the world we call the physical world ... There is also one other world, though many find difficulty in accepting its actual existence: it is the Platonic world of mathematical forms.

Language

Though we are far from completely understanding it, linguistics has given us a pretty good outline of how language emerged and how it is used in day to day life. Mundanely enough, in order to express this stuff even linguists must humbly rely on the very linguistic structures they are studying. Pulling a mystery from this banality, I've seen this fact used to reject the explanations of linguists as fundamentally unable to address the 'deep questions' of language, such as when a sentence is true. This misunderstanding is used to claim that there is a sacred territory here on which we must proceed philosophically barefoot.

Time

Great strides have been made in understanding what time is. Newton and others produced a sensible mathematical model into which time fits. Einstein showed that the model in question was slightly off (in a way that reflects our simple mental pictures of time), and proposed a better one. This better perspective has yet to be fully integrated into quantum mechanics, but there's no reason to suppose that this won't ever be achieved. In any case, we are close to having an understanding of how time exists (that is, of why using the word time as a noun doesn't screw us up) which is built on cunning maths which makes no reference to and doesn't rely on a prior concept of time.

Being human, though, when we consider these mathematical models, our brains (being so tied up in a primitive model of time) situate them in a kind of timeless present. Besides the obvious confusion this leads to (nonsense like 'Relativity implies the future already exists'), this has led to the claim that this present, for example, is prior to and in principle cannot be accounted for by scientific models. Once more, there is a purported need to abandon all our usual tools when addressing our day-to-day experience of time. I'm told Heidegger followed a line of this kind, but I haven't checked this in his writings.

Probability

This is a slightly odd special case. The normal way we introduce probability into scientific models is at the ground floor, with a variety of possible worlds whose actualities are assigned various prior probabilities. For this reason, like numbers, probability is difficult to explain except by exemplifying the proper use of the language (and remarkably it seems not to have been understood systematically until a few centuries ago).

To some extent this can be dealt with, though it normally isn't, by considering appropriate strategies for a limited reasoning being in a deterministic, patterned reality. Such a being could represent its ignorance about that world by assigning various probabilities to ways it reckons the world might be. So we can see how probabilistic language might become useful and how the probabilities of particular events could be said to exist without having to invoke probability in the explanation.

Unfortunately, though, as far as we can tell such 'probability-free' basic models aren't adequate to the behaviour of the world that we find ourselves in, where there appear to be genuinely random events if you look on a small enough scale. Quantum mechanics forces us to once more build in randomness at the bottom. Actually, the situation is a little more complicated still, in a way that is so outlandish that I'll have to leave an explanation to a later post.

Deconstruction

A lot of the language Derrida originally used when introducing deconstruction appears to fall into this category. I can't comment for myself on later postmodernists, since I haven't looked into them, but I'm told that to a large extent they were trying for something a little different. There is, as far as I can tell, no current systematic understanding of why 'differance', or 'trace', for example, are a sensibly nounish words. I can see that they are, but not in terms that I can explain without resorting to the vocabulary of Derrida, and even that isn't well enough developed to explain it thoroughly. This linguistic oddity may turn out to be explicable in other terms eventually, for example with an adequate development of neuroscience, or it may not. It almost certainly won't be done whilst I'm still alive.

Weaving a spectral existence.

Stand back! I'm going to try PHILOSOPHY!

I've had some thoughts recently which I want to get clear in my head, but first I need a whole bunch of philosophical setting-up. Hence this post. Hopefully I'll get round to the more important stuff in later posts. For now, I'll be looking at the way we use words like 'existence'. I have an approach which captures most of the use of this word, though inevitably it doesn't account for all the jagged edges.

No doubt you've seen a rainbow. Striking in their purity, but always distant and ready to vanish away, they've fascinated us monkeys for generations, and have been woven into our disparate mythologies. We now understand that there is nothing supernatural in their appearance; we can explain it with a bit of optical theory. Hence rainbows became iconic once again: Iconic of the mundanification that, it is feared, will follow if we profane the divine by trying to understand it with the methods of science. Yet rainbows have not become mundane. The explanations provided by science only rip away the comforting stories we had used to cushion ourselves from the mystery, leaving the mystery itself pristine.

I want to focus on one striking paradox that our understanding of rainbows lays bare. On the one hand, they clearly exist. There they are, in the sky, resplendant. On the other hand, they are in the eye of the beholder; a trick of the light. They lack most of the normal qualifications for existence, like a physical location, constituent materials, or even observer-independence. Though we can see them, they are noWhere to be found. This marks them out as a special case.

Mostly, we can give a simple account of the things that exist. We can say where they are, what they are made of, how they work, and so on. They are regular features of the structure of our world, and we relate to them in a patterned, regular way. This pattern is reflected in the structure of many languages, including English. There is a particular kind of word, called a noun, which fits into the language in a specific way. Nouns were originally used to refer to simple bits of physical stuff, and the way that they are used linguistically relies on and is fitted to the way that simple bits of stuff behave in the world.

Language, then, and particularly the use of nouns, is helpful to us because the patterns of its structure mesh so well with the patterns of physical stuff. The very repetition of words relies on a corresponding repetition or at least continuation of things. We relate to these things in terms of the useful bits of information we store about them, their properties. This is reflected in the simple sentence structure 'that mountain is big'. We also encounter them at particular times, and this is reflected in tense structures.

But there are many nouns where something a little odd happens. We use them as ordinary nouns, and we flex all the linguistic variations we know around them. This use of language works just fine, and is helpful to us, as if the words were anchored in simple patterns of physical stuff. We rely on the magical fact that this all works despite the fact that there is no physical anchor, no pile driven into the mud. It is as if we had found a kind of rock that, when governed in a properly democratic manner, would be as productive as any normal human citizen.

Numbers are a good example. Nobody ever managed to trap even the most humble number to keep it in a cage. When we teach children numbers, we cannot point them out or introduce them. We can only persistently use the words in the presence of the children and hope that they pick up on the pattern we are using. For there is a pattern; we do not go far wrong using the word 'three' as if it were a noun, in listing properties ('three is prime') and in dressing the word up in all the linguistic garb befitting a noun of the soil. So long as we don't look down, but just weave the word into our patterns of speech in the standard way, we find that it serves its purpose admirably.

Indeed, there is no need for all this talk of 'as if' and 'garb befitting'; 'three' really is a noun, and the number itself does exist, despite the fact that we will never touch or smell it. For we have come to use whatever words will helpfully fit the patterns etched in our language as nouns, and as referring to existing things, whether this is backed up in a physical instantiation or not. I reckon, to a good approximation, this captures how we use the word 'existence'; we use it relative to those words which we can helpfully use as full-fledged nouns.

Coming back to the example of rainbows, we can see how it is that they exist despite being relative to the viewer. For our understanding of how they form tells us not only that this formation is observer-dependent, but that it is so in such a regular way that the observers will not go far wrong if they continue to use the word 'rainbow' as though it referred to an observer-independent thing. Accordingly, if what I claimed in the last paragraph is right, the word does refer to something. We pay the word well, and it does good service for us.

At this point we must go carefully; there is a trap to be avoided. There is a strong temptation to say at this point something like 'and so the reality of things really only consists in the patterns of language' or even 'it is only the words that have true reality'. This would, of course, be nonsense. Having spotted a slightly odd fact about the circumstances in which we use the word 'existence', in order to make these claims we would have to ignore related oddities in the proper use of the word 'reality' or at least 'true reality'. Perhaps there is something to be said here, but since it cannot be said except in confusion I must leave you to try to formulate it yourselves. Language constrains us only to talk of this coincidence of certain linguistic patterns with our use of the word 'existence' as though it were a kind of accident; it only allows us to explain the use of the word, and not to pretend we have got near its meaning.

There are some linguistic patterns which don't fit well with particular nouns. It makes no sense, for example, to enquire about the colour of an electron; electrons are too small to have colours. There is nothing to see here. But in other cases where a word we can normally use nounishly does not quite fit with the patterns of language, we make of this a deep metaphysical puzzle. The structure of tenses, for example, is not quite helpful when we speak about truth, and we prefer to talk about it in a perpetual present tense. This rather dull fact about language has provoked a fair few into deep puzzlement; is truth somehow mysteriously outside time, or in another plane of existence? Since we can talk sensibly about the locations of most things, must we invent a Platonic heaven to contain all those for which we cannot do this? Surely not. All we need to do is mark in our minds those places where these words cannot quite be used as nouns, and circumscribe our speech accordingly. For if we use the words properly, we will never need to refer to the spatial or temporal locations of such things as truth and justice.

Sometimes a word can be used sensibly as a noun throughout a large body of text without referring to anything that exists. Authors of fiction take great pains to ensure that, within the books they create, the words they use as nouns are used as normal nouns are in our day to day lives. But we know that outside the covers of the books this orchestration cannot be maintained. What sweets did Sherlock Holmes prefer as a young child? Though this is likely to be recorded somewhere, it is as likely to be recorded differently in a hundred other places. We know that if we were to attempt to use these these words in the usual way without conspiring together (as each author forms a conspiracy of one) we would run into insurmountable difficulties. To put it another way, Sherlock Holmes does not exist.

These kinds of thought are particularly helpful in a religious context, for treating such questions as `does God exist', or indeed `does God exist' (the difference is in the hyperlink). But there is so much to be said about this that it will have to wait for another post.

Do you know?

Strong agnosticism can be summed up on a bumper sticker: 'I don't know and you don't either.' With respect to Christianity, a strong agnostic would typically believe that nobody can know whether it is true or false. Initially, this seems possible; most major religions have spread by politics or violence, rather than by rational argument. But doesn't a little thought show that strong agnosticism is inconsistent?

Imagine a strong agnostic, Steve, contemplating a Christian, Dave. Steve says 'Dave doesn't know whether Christianity is true or false'. But then, looking in a Bible, Steve sees that it claims that people can know that it is true. Steve could then conclude that the Bible is false, and so that (at least evangelical) Christianity is false. He could go so far as to say 'I know Christianity is false,' thus refuting himself, for he believes that nobody knows whether Christianity is true or not.

It is just such an inconsistency that Alvin Plantinga points at in the book 'Warranted Christian Belief'. However, he goes further. After all, faced with the above argument, Steve is more likely to conclude that Christianity is false than that it is possible for people to know that Christianity is true. To escape this possibility, Plantinga sets up a model of how Christian belief could have warrant (for a discussion of warrant, see my previous post). He claims that none of the current arguments for strong agnosticism exclude his proposed model, so they don't show that nobody knows Christianity is true.

Of course, it wouldn't be inconsistent for Steve to say 'You propose that Christian belief is warranted in the following way. Although I don't know whether Christian beliefs are true or not, I do know that your account is flawed. I have an argument showing that Christian belief does not get warrant in the way you suggest.' The cunning argument above would not apply in this case, unless it could be shown that if Plantinga's account is incorrect, so is Christianity. Plantinga makes a claim of this kind ('if Christian belief is true, then the model in question or one very like it is also true'), but he provides little justification for this claim.

If Plantinga's account were to turn out to be fundamentally incoherent, Christians would be more likely to jettison Plantinga (together with his claim that if his argument falls so does the whole of Christianity) than to abandon Christianity itself. Indeed, this is true of any account of warrant. Dave would not be too worried if Steve were to show that any particular account of how Christian beliefs get warrant fails. He could just abandon that account, which is after all not fundamental to Christianity.

Surely, however, a similar thing would happen if Steve were to come up with an absolutely watertight argument showing that Christian belief, irrespective of whether it is true, cannot have warrant. Dave, forced to accept the argument, would not abandon Christianity itself. He would instead reinterpret the claim that Christians can know that their beliefs are true. Perhaps he would say 'This knowledge is not the petty kind that philosophers are able to tie up with words and play around with. This is a higher, a deeper kind of knowledge; in a sense it is more real, rather than less.'

Most strong agnostics are aware of this ploy; it has been used throughout history when part of Christian belief has been demonstrated to be false. The damaged part is abandoned, and the related claims are reinterpreted. This awareness means that they can't claim a proof that nobody knows Christianity is true as a proof that Christianity is false. For this reason, strong agnostics are not guilty of the inconsistency cited above. The argument is neat, but fails to take into account the realities of human nature.

Of course, this by no means shows that strong agnostics are justified in their claims. Indeed, Plantinga's model was constructed to show that they are not. Using the model, and other arguments, Plantinga considers several arguments for the strong agnostic conclusion, and finds them all wanting. Here Plantinga shows his skill as a philosopher: If the arguments are as he reports then they fail.

How does the model work? Well, Plantinga has defined warrant in terms of proper function. For example, it is through the proper function of my visual system that my beliefs about what I see have warrant. He claims that, similarly, there is a system (the sensus divinitatis) the proper function of which is to give us true beliefs about God. Accordingly, when we get beliefs about God in this way (such as that He exists, is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good), those beliefs have warrant.

A typical case of the operation of this sensus would be the arising of the belief, in a person looking up at the stars, that they must have had a majestic creator. It is also intended to include more specific religious experience, as well as the 'sense of the presence of God'. The claim is not that these experiences are evidence for Christian belief, but that the fact that they arise from a properly functioning cognitive system aimed at producing true beliefs gives them warrant.

It is therefore necessary to examine the idea of proper function. I believe that the principal system whereby I am able to know about my past, namely memory, is functioning properly and is aimed at giving me true beliefs. This is the case even though I have hardly any idea how it works. I would believe that my visual system functions properly and is aimed at giving me true beliefs even if I didn't have the slightly greater, but still extremely weak, grasp of how it works that I do have.

Why is that? Well, when I see something red, and I talk to other people, they also say it is red. Where I see a tree, others also claim that they see a tree. In much more complex systems, involving complicated interactions with other people or other senses, my visual system is vindicated time and again. This vindication is not the same thing as proper function, but it is certainly evidence of it. Accordingly, I have a second-level model of the world in which I model myself as seeing things via a visual system which gives me true beliefs about the world (for a discussion of this kind of model, see this post).

This higher-level model does not justify my visual beliefs; they do that for themselves. It explains them, and explains them in such a way that I believe that they have warrant. The model does not give the beliefs warrant (it is the proper function of the visual cortex which does that). Instead, the model justifies my belief that my visual beliefs have warrant: That they constitute knowledge.

Things do not always turn out so well. When I look at the systems that give me my beliefs, I sometimes find that they are not reliable, so that they either don't function properly or aren't aimed at producing true beliefs. Suppose, for example, that I have a particularly malignant kind of cancer. I may find that I nevertheless believe that I will survive. Careful study may show that this belief is common amongst those with terminal illness, and that it is as commonly false. I would have to conclude that the belief doesn't have warrant for me. The system that produced it is aimed at survival, rather than truth.

Of course, no system is perfect. Careful study of a system should allow us to discover under what circumstances a belief produced by it will have warrant for us. The idea that we can have beliefs, but believe that those very beliefs don't have warrant for us may seem odd, but it is a natural concept and one that we express using the words 'as if'. It looks as if the pattern is in motion, but I know that it's just an illusion. It feels as if there must be something I can do to contact my spouse, who is dead, but there is nothing.

Whatever system it is that philosophers use to come to their philosophical beliefs, it can't normally be functioning properly. This can be seen by considering the notorious and extensive disagreements amongst philosophers over the most basic things. Accordingly, you should take all philosophical ideas I present on this blog with a large pinch of salt (particularly since I'm not very good at philosophy).

What about the sensus divinitatis? Does study of the beliefs this system produces suggest that it is functioning properly? Frankly, no. The main reason is that it does not produce consistent results. Jews and Muslims believe on the basis of this sense that there is just one god. Christians believe something similar, though they are led to believe that that god consists of three persons. Hindus believe that there are very many gods, in just the same way. For still others, this sensus seems to give no more than the belief that the universe is a deeply mysterious, beautiful and awesome place.

Of course, Plantinga is aware of this problem, and is able to circumvent it. According to him, in anybody who is not a Christian the sensus divinitatus is malfunctioning as a result of the fall. Only in Christians is it functioning properly. This miraculous proper function is achieved through the proper function of yet another process (faith), which acts in Christians although it is not part of their native cognitive equipment. Since this second process is only given to Christians on the basis of grace, we should not expect to find it operating in non-Christians.

How does this secondary system work? First, there is the existence of the Bible, of which God is the principal author. When a Christian reads the Bible, a system called the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit (IIHS) kicks in, which when functioning properly gives the Christian the belief that what they are reading is true. This belief, coming as it does from a properly functioning system, has warrant. In such a circumstance, we say that the Christian knows by faith.

So now, it is necessary to ask, is faith (described in these terms) a properly functioning cognitive system aimed at the truth? Again, we must answer no. The first reason is once more the inconsistency of the beliefs produced in this way. The history of the Church is full of schisms and disagreements, some over substantial points of Christian doctrine, in which both sides claimed that they believed what they did by faith through the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit revealing to them the truth of scripture.

The second reason is one of inaccuracy. Some passages of the Bible suggest, on a naive reading, that God will answer any prayer whatsoever. Scientific studies have shown that this is false; in all circumstances that have been tested, God answers no more prayers than you would expect to be answered by chance if there were no God. You may not be so naive as to believe that the passages about prayer should be interpreted in a literalistic way, but others have been. They would have said that they believed God answers prayer, if not always, at least in such a way as to be distinguishable from coincidence, and that they believed this by faith through the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit revealing to them the truth of scripture.

Very well, the Christian may say, not everybody who says they believe something by faith is right. Nevertheless, in my case, faith is functioning properly, and so my beliefs have warrant. Even if this were true, the Christian surely does not have good reason to believe it. After careful consideration of the people with whom she disagrees, she concludes that people may have similar experiences to her and may be misled into false beliefs on the basis of those experiences. So she can't conclude with certainty that the same experiences in her are the operation of a properly functioning system. Nor can she claim that she knows by faith that her particular beliefs have warrant. On this model, only truths revealed in the Bible are known by faith, and claims about her particular beliefs aren't there. The best she can say is 'It feels to me as if these things are true'.

Even worse, faith can lead people to believe things in the face of strong contrary evidence. For, faced with strong evidence in favour of evolution, the Christian may reason thus: 'If my cognitive faculties were working perfectly, I would believe what the Bible says, and I would see its truth so clearly that this evidence would pale into insignificance. What's more, my belief would be warranted. So I can be perfectly warranted in believing this. Accordingly, I won't believe the theory of evolution by natural selection on the basis of this evidence'. This may seem like an extreme exaggeration of Plantinga's view, like a disfigured straw man. But in fact, it is precisely this sort of argument which Plantinga gives in response to the problem of evil in the last chapter of his book.

Plantinga's definition of faith, then, draws dangerously close to the caricature suggested by Richard Dawkins:

Faith ... means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.

Then again, as Plantinga himself says,

What is supposed to be bad about believing in the absence of evidence?

Show me your warrant.

Imagine yourself on a walking holiday in the Lake District with an optimist. Despite forecasts of heavy rain, the optimist is convinced that the weather tomorrow will be fine, and plans a serious walk. As it turns out, the weather is perfect. The optimist triumphantly says 'You see; I knew it would be fine.' However, there is a sense in which they did not know. They had no good reason even to think that there would be no rain, and were right by pure chance.

Is Christian belief similar? If Jesus were to return tomorrow, and a Christian were to say 'You see, I knew it,' would they be misusing the word 'know' in precisely the same way? This is the question Alvin Plantinga addresses in his warrant trilogy. The main concept Plantinga uses is 'warrant': That quantity, enough of which makes true belief into knowledge. He begins by trying to answer the question 'just what is warrant?' This is a typical philosophical question, and comes with some typical philosophical issues.

We human beings, who spend most of our time interacting at sensible speeds with objects about the same size as ourselves, have developed language to allow us (among other things) to communicate truth about the world in which we live. In doing so, we have given words meanings. A philosopher, seeing that people use a word like 'exist', may wonder precisely what that word means. They will not be satisfied with the synonym-based definitions in dictionaries; they want to get to the heart of the matter.

Unfortunately, although we all get along perfectly well using the word in normal life, we become very confused trying to apply the word in extreme special cases (do possible worlds exist?). There may not be any precise formulation which captures the meaning of the word and corresponds to our intuitions in all special cases. One skill philosophers have honed is finding how close to this ideal they can get. In the course of their investigations, they have discovered that finding the meaning of words is hard, and often impossible.

Sometimes, if you are very lucky, it is possible to find a precise definition of an idea which is both helpful for talking about the world and close to the meaning of the original word. If this project is successful enough, the meaning of the word will eventually change to fit the definition. Something of this kind has happened with words like 'energy' and 'symmetry'. These definitions are often 'definitions in use': Rules for turning sentences involving the word into other sentences with the same meaning not involving the word. Unfortunately, when this is done successfully, the word is normally claimed in the name of science or mathematics.

More often, as with words like 'self', there is a definition-in-use which is helpful for talking about the world and fits very roughly with the original word, corresponding closely in some situations and deviating wildly in others. There may be more than one such definition, in which case philosophical arguments spring up. Occasionally, the project becomes so difficult that philosophers despair of the task. Something like this has happened with words like 'exist'.

What about warrant? Well, Plantinga is not using the word 'warrant' in a standard way; he instead defines it as the quantity enough of which makes true belief into knowledge. So the word whose meaning is being considered is 'know'. Where on the above continuum does this word lie? It has caused so much trouble that the study of it has been given a name of its own: 'epistemology'. Some have despaired of ever understanding it. Most, whilst agreeing that it is a stubbornly difficult case, have kept trying since it is such an important word.

Plantinga follows current fashion in saying that knowledge consists of true belief together with some other quantity: Warrant. In the first book of the trilogy, 'Warrant: The Current Debate', he tears apart several misguided attempts to give a precise definition of warrant. In each case he does so by considering some extreme special cases, in which the purported knower is suffering from severe cognitive dysfunction.

In 'Warrant and proper function', the next book in the trilogy, he suggests his own approach. Having just demonstrated how likely it is that any precise definition can be decimated, he presents a broad-brushstroke picture about which he is careful to make no claim of precision. Except in the heat of argument, he avoids phrasing his idea in terms of 'severally necessary and jointly sufficient conditions'.

The idea is that a belief is warranted if:

1. It is produced by cognitive faculties that are working properly in an appropriate cognitive environment.
   
2. The segment of the design plan governing the production of the belief is aimed at the production of true beliefs.
3. There is a high statistical probability that a belief produced under those conditions will be true.

In using the concept of proper function, this approach recognises that very often we rely on nonconscious processing within our brains to arrive at our beliefs. When I see a face, I do not carefully consider the raw sense-data being sent up the optic nerve from my eye and conclude that it matches a complex structural pattern I have designated as characteristic of faces. Instead, some pre-processing in my brain lets me know directly that it is a face I can see. I trust this pre-processing implicitly, because I know it functions properly. It is by means of this proper functioning that I get my knowledge that it is a face that I see.

It isn't that I say to myself 'My pre-processors are telling me I see a face, and I trust them, so I really must be seeing a face'. I just know, without the need for such redundant reasoning, and I get the knowledge from that pre-processing. The belief has warrant because whatever part of my brain it is that subconsciously recognises faces is working properly.

Plantinga discusses some of the other ways we get knowledge, for example by memory or empathy. He concludes in each case that we get the knowledge via some such process, and that the knowledge has warrant because the process is functioning properly. He is a little short on detail, which is fair enough, as the way in which our brains actually do these remarkable things is not yet well enough understood to give a detailed account.

He also doesn't give a clear explanation of what a design plan (specifications for proper function) is, or what it means for such a thing to be aimed at the truth. Of course, we have an intuitive grasp of this idea. We can imagine a designer designing something. But we can also recognise that something is working properly if we think it was not designed; if we think it was produced by natural selection, for example. It is this sense that Plantinga intends at:

Here I use 'design' the way Daniel Dennet (not ordinarily thought unsound on theism) does in speaking of a given organism as possessing a certain design, and of evolution as producing optimal design.

Plantinga doesn't give details of how, if you come across a system, you can tell if it is functioning properly or what it is aimed at. He delights in not doing so; after all, he thinks that there was in fact an intelligent designer so no further explanation is needed. In this, he is mistaken. For if the definition of 'proper function' is 'functioning in the way that the designer intended', then we would have no way of determining, by observation of the system itself, whether it is functioning properly or not. However, microbiologists (for example) claim to be able to do exactly that; they are working with the intuitive notion of 'proper function', which Plantinga also uses but does not explain.

He thinks that the idea of an intelligent designer would explain what it is for a thing to be designed. But in that case, to determine the design plan of something, it would be necessary to know the mind of the designer (in this case, of God). But to say that the explanation of a difficult philosophical idea is that it may be found in the mind of God (as Plantinga does with many ideas, such as number, proposition, proper function and therefore also warrant and knowledge) is to say nothing. There is no more content there than in the more colloquial 'God knows'.

Ranting aside, however, the link Plantinga establishes between our ideas of knowledge and of proper function is valuable. The intuitive notion of proper function should suffice for the rest of this post. This account of warrant isn't quite right; it faces some minor technical difficulties. It does provide a strong enough support for a discussion of whether Christian belief is warranted, a topic which he tackles in the final book of the trilogy, 'Warranted Christian Belief', which I'll discuss in my next post.

Survival of the thickest?

I recently came across a novel argument by Alvin Plantinga, which aims to show that it is irrational for a human to believe both in naturalism and the theory of evolution by natural selection. Unfortunately, Plantinga never managed to write it up properly, but a draft may be found here. It is only worth reading the first part; the rest consists of a turgid and incomplete response to some objections which differ greatly in character from that which I give below. Essentially, Plantinga argues that evolution is unlikely to produce rational creatures whose reasoning is reliable: This gives those who believe that they are the result of unguided evolution a reason to doubt the reliability of their own reasoning, and so to doubt all of their conclusions; in particular they should doubt their belief in evolution.

Plantinga does not query the idea that natural selection can produce rational creatures. Instead, he aims to show that rational creatures arising in this way are unlikely to reason reliably; that their beliefs are likely, on the whole, to be false. It is necessary to introduce the idea of rationality in this way in order to make the argument apply to us. Evolution produces a great diversity of creatures, but we are the only rational creatures on Earth.

Since selection occurs on the basis of behaviour, Plantinga considers four possible ways in which the beliefs of a rational creature could be related to its behaviour.

1. Not at all. In this possibility, beliefs have no effect at all on behaviour. So true beliefs are no more likely to be selected for than false ones. Natural selection is unlikely to produce creatures with such useless baggage. Also, we would have no way to recognise that creatures of this kind were rational. We have no way of knowing that, for example, trees are not rational in this way. Since a key starting point of the argument was that we are the only rational creatures on Earth, the word rational must be being used in some sense that excludes this possibility. Humans are recognisably rational; it is ridiculous to think that our beliefs do not affect our behaviour.
   
2. Beliefs do affect behaviour, but in a way unrelated to their content. The same comments apply to this possibility as to the first.
3. Beliefs are causally efficacious: The creatures act on the basis of their beliefs. However, the behaviour this produces is maladaptive. Such creatures would die out. The probability of rational creatures produced by natural selection being of this kind is therefore tiny. Equally, our own continued survival as a species shows that we are not of this type.
   
4. Beliefs are causally efficacious: The creatures act on the basis of their beliefs. What's more, the behaviour that this produces is adaptive, so that the creatures survive. By a process of elimination, we are of this type. This is a good sign, since any rational creature produced by natural selection is overwhelmingly likely to be of this type.
   

Plantinga claims that the first two types of rationality would be fairly probable, a claim which the above analysis shows to be incorrect. He agrees that the third case is improbable. We can therefore focus in on the fourth case, where he claims that the probability that the beliefs of the creatures are, on the whole, reliable is not much more than 1 in 2. After all, it is possible to conjure up scenarios in which a creature survives by acting on the basis of false beliefs. To quote him:

Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely that the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief. Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it. . . . or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a regularly recurring illusion, and, hoping to keep his weight down, has formed the resolution to run a mile at top speed whenever presented with such an illusion; or perhaps he thinks he is about to take part in a 1600 meter race, wants to win, and believes the appearance of the tiger is the starting signal; or perhaps. . . . Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behavior.

Plantinga acknowledges that most such scenarios involve creatures whose belief-desire structures are, on the whole, maladaptive; they are only appropriate in very special circumstances. He therefore introduces a more subtle scenario. In this scenario, the creatures believe that everything is conscious, so that for example they have no word for 'tree', but rather one for 'conscious tree'. In particuar, almost all beliefs of the creature are false. This is, of course, a simplification of what early humans believed.

Suppose we were to meet such a creature, who spoke a different language to us. Let us suppose that their word for 'conscious tree' is 'shrubbery'. We, after talking to them for a while, would conclude that their word 'shrubbery' meant tree, and that their beliefs about trees were on the whole correct, but that they also had a false belief; namely, that trees are conscious. But any account of beliefs that accords with the way we use the word (to account for something which humans express by their language) must be such that in this case the beliefs of the beings are on the whole true, as we see, but that they include the false belief that everything is conscious.

This shows that Plantinga is simply working with an inadequate notion of what a belief is. That is fair enough; after all, we don't (as far as I know) have a good working definition to which he could refer. Nor can I give one. This unfortunately leads to incorrect arguments being put forward from time to time, of which Plantinga's is an example.

We may, however, say that we would expect some of the beliefs of the beings to be false. For example, it seems to be better to believe that there are causal links in situations where there are not than to risk missing actual causal links. So we would expect evolved rational beings to believe in causal links where there are none. We can easily observe that this is true of ourselves; it is called superstition. The field of studying what errors evolved beings might be expected to make is a growing one.

On the whole, we have found that we make errors of the expected kinds, and so this endeavour allows us to clear up our thinking. For example, those who understand some of this often actively guard against their tendency towards superstitious thinking. A sensible study of the limitations we would expect to find in ourselves given that we have evolved leads to humility, and to hope that understanding the truth about ourselves may yet set us free, but it does not swamp us in the kind of radical doubt Plantinga envisages.

Speaking of the truth...

One of the books I was given for Christmas was 'Think', by Simon Blackburn. This is a basic introduction to philosophy. It's one of the best books I've read. I wasn't bothered by the clear bias of the author, as it doesn't come from any attempt to coerce agreement. Instead, Blackburn seems to be motivated by the simple joy of exploring and sharing ideas. He explains, rather than demeans, ideas he disagrees with. The explanations are clear and captivating, and I was thoroughly drawn in.

To follow it up, I've been reading 'Truth: A guide', also by Blackburn. Once more, I was delighted by the clear exposition and fascinating range of ideas. I can't help but try to explain and extend some of them here. After introducing various understandings and rejections of truth, from absolute realism to postmodernism (which he managed to clear up some of my confusions about), Blackburn is reasonably explicit about where his allegience lies.

First, he notes that to say that a statement is true is simply to assert the statement. As a result, he counsels us not to get caught up in elaborate negotiations about the nature of truth itself, but to be content, when we hear claims of truth, to understand the intention of the speaker, namely to assert the statement which is being claimed as true.

Of course, this does not resolve the battles over the nature of truth. To recognise that the question 'Why is that true?' can be simplified to 'Why?' is not to see how to answer the question itself in any circumstance. The circumstance is important; there is no reason why we should not give different answers, or even different kinds of answer, to this question in different circumstances. The issue has been refocused as one of justification.

Blackburn then proceeds to look at various kinds of answer that can be given, and various reasons why we might not want to answer the question at all, or even believe that to be a sensible thing to attempt. Though the arguments and ideas he outlines are interesting, and provide historical perspective, you should look in the book to find out what they are. Blackburn takes inspiration from them, but it is what he goes on to say that I'm interested in.

Blackburn zooms in on a kind of claim which does seem to be justified in a real way; by being a claim about the world, to which it corresponds. That is, he looks at the claims of science. Why do we say that these claims are about a real world? We do so in order to account for the quality of the success of science. We find that people who use a map to find water are more successful than those who use a dowsing rod. We explain this by postulating a real world, to which the map corresponds. Here's how Blackburn puts it:

Suppose my practice is successful: my space rockets land where and when they should. What is the best explanation of this success? I design my rockets on the basis that the solar system has the sun at its centre, and it does. Why is our medicine successful? Because we predicted that the viruses would respond in such-and-such a way, and they do. In saying these things we are not at all stepping outside our own skins and essaying the mythical transcendental comparison. We are simply repeating science's own explanation of events. There is no better one - unless there is a better scientific rival. Once we believe that the best explanation of geographical and optical data is that the world is round, we also believe that the best explanation of our successes as we proceed upon this hypothesis is that the world is round. It is not that there was a further set of data about science (its success) that required something like an independent, sideways explanation. It is just that the very regularities in the phenomena that required the theory in the first place should now be looked on as including any success we have in using the theory. Shadows fall at night because of the revolution of the earth, and success awaits those who expect shadows to fall at night because of the revolution of the earth. Science explains the success of science.

Blackburn notes an obvious objection: There are alternative explanations of the success of science. For example, 'Any scientific theory is born into a life of fierce competition, a jungle red in tooth and claw. Only the successful theories survive.' But these explanations are not mutually exclusive; they are complementary. It may well be the case that a scientific theory survives precisely because it is a description of the way that the world is. Indeed, a glance at the history of science suggests that this is the best explanation of what is happening.

Another objection is that this only allows us to accept the empirical adequacy, or the accuracy, of science, not to go so far as to call it true. Blackburn argues that this is a false distinction. He carefully examines several ways we might try to separate empirical adequacy from truth: All are found wanting.

Blackburn says 'We are simply repeating science's own explanation of events,' and he is right. But he appears to conclude that therefore the actual giving of this explanation is a task for scientists, rather than philosophers; that philosophy has nothing helpful to say here. This is because the account he gives is a little oversimplified.

Scientists explain the world by making models of it. Nowadays, these models are often highly abstract and mathematical, but they need not be so abstract nor so detailed. For example, a gas is modelled as a large number of atoms, all jostling around and banging into one another. This model was introduced to explain the behaviour of the gases that we observe, and it does this extremely well. The model talks about individual atoms. What are these atoms? It makes no sense to try to answer this question from outside the model. When we discuss atoms, we are using the model, not just mentioning it. For example, to say that the atoms are aspects of the observations which led us to introduce the model would be to stretch language beyond breaking point. It would be to mix levels, and to confuse categories. Hopefully the mistake is clear in this case, but when there is a more subtle interplay of models it is an easy one to make.

Now let's return to what Blackburn says above: 'Shadows fall at night because of the revolution of the earth, and success awaits those who expect shadows to fall at night because of the revolution of the earth.' It is easy to make sense of the first part of this sentence. We have a model of the world as a slowly revolving globe with light coming from a particular direction. The globe has bumps on it, and within this model we can say things like 'the rotation of the earth causes these bumps to cast shadows at night.' Let's call this rather useful model 'model I'.

Model I is not sufficient for the second part of the sentence. There is nothing referred to by model I as 'those who expect shadows to fall at night.' We must consider a more complicated model, model II. Model II is like model I, except that it includes some observers. These observers have expectations, which may be successful or unsuccessful. Blackburn switches from model I to model II in midsentence.

This may appear to be pedantry at first, but awareness of this extra layer of complexity allows us to explain how this might tie in with some previous philosophical ideas. Let's return to the illustration of the theory of gases, based on a model involving atoms. As I'll be introducing more models in a minute, I'll christen this one model III for the sake of clarity. The most obvious model to introduce next, model IV, is one in which not only is there a gas, composed of atoms in the same way as before, but there are also observers, who make predictions on the basis of models. Some of these observers use model III, and model IV explains their success.

Suppose now that we consider the statement 'atoms are real'. It isn't a statement we can make within model III: Model III doesn't have a notion of 'reality'. Nor is it a statement about model III. Instead, it's a statement we can make within model IV. Model IV is something we might consider in order to explain the behaviour of scientists who study gases. As a part of this explanation, we may wish to say 'The scientist successfully predicted the behaviour of the gas because he used the atomic theory, and the gas really is made of atoms'. It is in a context like that of model II or model IV that Blackburn's explanation 'I design my rockets on the basis that the solar system has the sun at its centre, and it does,' makes sense.

You may smell a rat at this point. If the idea of reality is introduced to explain the behaviour of scientists, isn't that saying that, for example, the reality of atoms consists in nothing more than the success of scientists who use models like model III? No. To say so would be to make a category error like that described 5 paragraphs ago. In saying 'Atoms are real' we use model IV. but the success of certain scientists is what model IV was to explain; it is not something within the model itself.

The other philosophical mistake which is clarified by this approach is Dualism. After all, a crude model including observers would have the observers being genuinely different to that which is observed. But, remarkably, this is not a necessary feature of such models. Indeed careful study of the observers we are most familiar with, ourselves, suggests models in which the observers are of precisely the same stuff, and the observation is itself a process obeying the same laws as that which is observed.

Now we can return to the claim that we can only ever get at empirical adequacy. We could, for example, consider a complex model in which some observers study a real world and have theories about it which are accurate but wrong. For example, gravity may really behave according to the theory of relativity, but the scientists could be working with Newtonian mechanics. As long as they don't measure too precisely, the scientists will make successful predictions. Their theory is empirically adequate but not true.

This is just the kind of situation most scientists think we are in at the moment. All the evidence suggests that quantum electrodynamics is both extremely accurate and false. It's just a really good approximation. However, because it is a good approximation, coarse-grained statements it makes will be true. The scientists in the model above may be working with a false theory, Newtonian mechanics. But the broad-brush statements they make, like 'the gravity of the moon causes tides twice every day', are nevertheless true of reality even in this model. That is just what it means to say that they are working with a good approximation.

So we can accept that our best and most detailed scientific theories are no more than unbelievably good approximations, and still say that the cruder claims of science, such as 'stuff is made of atoms' are true. It is within this kind of model, of a real world which we have a good but imperfect approximation to the workings of, that we can say things like 'chairs are real'. Luckily, this kind of model also gives a great explanation of what we observe.

The key feature of these expanded models is that they are modelling us, the observers. In particular, they model us as somehow making models of the world. One key tool we use is language. So the model must include some account of how we use language to talk about the world. For this reason, though possibly not aware of it in these terms, philosophers have made a careful study of how we use language, and how our linguistic behaviour relates to the meanings we intend. This study of language-games gives philosophers a head start in producing good higher-order models. So philosophers need not merely recount science's own explanation: They can add their insights to it.

One example is the study of truth and falsity. Blackburn appears sympathetic to the quietist position:

We should leave truth alone. We sould not enter the fields of meta-theory or philosophical reflection, to try to say something more, to gain a 'conception' of truth, as both absolutists and relativists have been presented as doing.

This is fair enough, to a degree. But if we are to make models like those above, which include notions of truth, then good models will have some conception of truth; of how it works. For example, they ought to include some notion of logic; of when it is that we can deduce some statements from others. Again, philosophers have made progress here. A lot of their work has fed into detailed mathematical models of deduction.

There has been a remarkable development in recent years. Aspects of the most detailed models we have of the world are being combined with the most intricate models of truth mathematicians have come up with. Both the physics and the mathematics have been slightly tweaked. The claim is that, just as notions like position break down at a small scale, and are only useful as approximations, the same is true of notions like truth and reality. It is not at all clear whether this exciting attack can be made coherent, but it should be worth watching to see.

I have talked in detail about physical truth; truth about the world. What about moral truth? Do we have a similar model, of moral statements corresponding in some sense to reality? Well, such models do exist, but their acceptance is on the wane. There has been a lot of work in the last century on how evolutionary processes could produce beings who speak and feel as we do about morality, in the absence of a moral reality to which they refer. These models are still crude, but they do seem to have explanatory force.

Leaving aside the question of whether such models are accurate, it is worth drawing a consequence from their nature. It is from within such models that we might make the statement 'Morality is relative, and not absolute'. Accordingly, this statement is about the world, about the way that things are. It is not a moral statement, and so it does not have direct moral consequences. In particular, from 'Morality is relative', we cannot deduce things like 'Anything goes'. 'Anything goes' is a moral statement; it does not form a part of such models of moral behaviour.

It is not necessary to use these ideas to see that moral relativism has no moral consequences. Indeed, I'll conclude with Blackburn's able exposition of this theme:

Suppose I believe that foxhunting is cruel, and should be banned. And then I come across someone (Genghis, let us call him) who holds that it is not cruel, and should be allowed. We dispute, and perhaps neither of us can convince the other. Suppose now a relativist (Rosie) comes in, and mocks our conversation. 'You absolutists,' she says, 'always banging on as if there is just one truth. What you don't realise is that there is a plurality of truths. It's true for you that foxhunting should be banned - but don't forget that it's true for Genghis that it should not.'

How does Rosie's contribution help? Indeed, what does it mean? 'It's true for me that hunting should be banned' just means that I believe that hunting should be banned. And the opposite thing said about Genghis just means that he believes the opposite. But we already knew that: that's why we are in disagreement!

What should I do?

I mentioned in my first post that I'd talk a bit more about my moral beliefs here. I'm not going to be writing about the details of what I think is right and wrong, but rather about why I'm not too worried by the fact that I do think some things are right and others wrong. After all, in my last post I mentioned that I don't believe in God. Nor do I believe in anything else supernatural. If you claim to derive your morality from some supernatural source, you may think I'm being inconsistent here. After all, isn't any moral system automatically supernatural?

One variation of this argument, which was given at a talk I attended yesterday, begins with the idea that we think that some things are right, and that others are wrong. We make such judgements about things by comparing them to an absolute moral standard. If you are sceptical about this claim, consider the fact that we feel so strongly that some things are evil that we are not prepared to accept the possibility of argument on the matter: We would say that they are absolutely wrong. But it is impossible to produce such a moral standard from examination of the natural world, however carefully you do it. Careful investigation may reveal that a person's actions caused extreme suffering, but it cannot reveal that that suffering itself is a bad thing. So it is impossible that the world we live in, which includes this moral standard, can be explained in purely naturalistic terms.

I'm afraid that in order to bring out the flaw in this argument, I'm going to have to indulge in a little formalism. The argument is trying to show that a particular limitation (to naturalistic explanations) leaves us unable to account for the world that we observe. Some evidence (our strong moral feelings) is given for a proposition (the existence of a moral standard). It is demonstrated that the truth of this proposition cannot be explained given the limitation. But it is the evidence for the proposition which is part of the world that we observe, not the proposition itself. So it is necessary to show that, given the limitation, we are unable to account for this evidence. But that is not true.

To put it another way, it is possible to explain how there could be conscious beings like us who feel extremely strongly on moral matters even in a purely natural world in which there is no moral standard. Evolutionary theorists have had a good stab at this, and have made enough progress to show that it is possible in principle, though they are very far from a complete theory. I do not mean to imply by this that evolutionary theory can answer moral questions; to do so would be to justify, rather than simply explain, our moral feelings and beliefs. When I discussed this with the speaker after the talk, he concluded that although it is possible to account for the qualities of morality which he mentioned from within a naturalistic framework, it is not possible to justify any particular moral statement. That, I think, is fair enough.

So, my beliefs about the way that the world is are unable to justify any moral statements. Yet I do have some moral beliefs. Isn't that a little problematic? This is a topic which I was discussing with some friends recently, one of whom suggested I should start this blog. So I believe I ought to have a go at answering it. Before I do so, though, I shall explain why I think the problem is one that we all face. We believe some moral statements, and some amoral statements. Sometimes it is possible to deduce a moral statement from some other statements, some of which are amoral. But it isn't possible to deduce a moral statement from other statements, all of which are amoral. So, nobody's amoral beliefs are able to justify any moral statements. Yet almost everybody does have some moral beliefs. This is a little problematic.

However, I don't find it to be a problem in actually making moral decisions. Instead, I find that they are often obvious. When I bring to mind the idea of killing or hurting a person, it is immediately clear to my mind that it is wrong. When I hedge the idea about with details, it usually, but not always, remains clear that it is wrong. For example, it is not obvious that capital punishment is wrong. I may need to examine the world to find out such details. But there is no need for me to examine some other bits of the world to find out if the action itself is right, and I do not do so.

Given the subject matter, it is quite possible that the above summary is misleading. I'll try to clear up a few possible misunderstandings.

Sometimes other people disagree with me on moral questions. It is easy to imagine that this could occur to the extent that any moral statement would be meaningless. But it does not. In fact, it's quite rare. That is not too surprising, given that we're all members of the same species. This general agreement suggests that whatever part of my brain it is that sees what is right or wrong is functioning properly. So if I do kill somebody, then I deserve to be punished. On the other hand, if a person murders another but is unable to see that it is wrong, that person should be treated; something in them is not properly functioning. Aside from the physiological evidence, the general concensus allows us to talk about proper functioning in this way. But it does not provide any justification for any moral belief.

So am I setting myself up as an infallible moral judge? Absolutely not. I can easily think of times when I have had moral beliefs which were wrong, and I conclude that I must also currently have some false moral beliefs. In a similar way, I can easily think of times when I have had geographical beliefs which were wrong, and I conclude that I must also currently have some false geographical beliefs. But I'm nevertheless quite confident in my moral and geographical beliefs and in the ways that I come to them. I'm just prepared to accept that I might be wrong.

In some cases, I do not know whether a thing is right or wrong. If there were an absolute standard of morality, this ignorance would show that it could not be completely determined in the way described above. However, I do not believe in any such absolute standard.

I have probably also given the (false) impression that when I make moral decisions it involves no thought. However, the moral beliefs which I see most clearly are those which are most abstract, so it is often necessary to throw some amoral beliefs in and do some thinking to come to a conclusion in any particular case. To illustrate this, here are a couple of areas where I have very clear moral beliefs, together with some details of how they might be used together with amoral ideas.

Firstly, I have clear moral beliefs related to my own benefit. When I feel pain, it is clear to me that this is bad, and when I feel pleasure, that it is good. When I think of my own death, I can see that it is a bad thing. Of course, these are just crude examples, and some of the things that I feel are good in myself are much more complex, like liberty or self-expression. Initially it may appear that no sensible morality may be derived from this selfishness, but by mixing in some amoral ideas you can get surprisingly far. Nevertheless, a clear-eyed look at history is enough to show that it is possible to act in your own interest without your actions being good.

Secondly, I believe that all persons are equal from a moral point of view: That in deciding whether an action is right or wrong, the identity of the actors is irrelevant. Although this is one of my strongest beliefs, it is extremely abstract, and it is necessary to combine it with both the first belief and some amoral ideas. For example, when I meet someone, I know that they are a person and that I am a person (amoral belief). I know that when I feel pain, it is bad. So, when they feel pain, it is bad. So it is right for me to try not to cause them pain.

Of course, this account is greatly oversimplified. In order to apply the above ideas in complicated situations it is necessary to work out what the consequences of various courses of action are, which can involve complicated amoral reasoning, and then to evaluate how good or bad those consequences are, according to my moral beliefs. It is also necessary to decide whether particular things are persons. For example, is an embryo a person? Is a chimpanzee? I must confess that I do not have a precise definition of a person, but that in most cases it is clear. If in doubt, I err on the side of supposing things are persons. This works because so many things are obviously not.

I will conclude with an extraordinary claim: What I have outlined above also describes how you justify your moral beliefs. You may claim that you do so in another way, such as looking in the Qur'an. But those who look in the Bible and those who look in neither book have similar moral beliefs, which closely reflect parts of those books and are hard to reconcile with other parts (such is the nature of religious texts). If you claim that without a particular guidebook you would be unable to see for yourself that murder is wrong, I can only conclude that whatever it is in your brain that sees what is right or wrong is not properly functioning, and that you should see a doctor at once.