Thinking Christian Comments
Original Post: The Beauty of Virtue
Tom,
At the risk of re-opening old debates...
A few ethical philosophers doubt that they are; they doubt that there really is an actual category of "goodness." Rather than mounting a technical refutation, I refer you to your own reactions. Which kind of person do you prefer: the one with or without these qualities of virtue? Most of us quite instinctively and intuitively know that there is something good about goodness.First, I can't think of anyone who denies that people can make personal distinctions between good and bad. What is disputed is whether this distinction is rooted in how we happen to be or whether it is objective beyond circumstance.
Second, you argue that we ought to be informed about "moral reality" by how we feel and by our preferences. Yet this isn't evidence or "best fit" for moral realism. It's evidence and best-fit for moral relativism.
Finally, you seem to be saying that you find Christianity appealing because it integrates your preferred moral values into the fabric of the universe. Yet, if you did not think the virtues defined by Christianity were appealing (as perhaps you don't presently find the virtues of some other religion appealing), then you would have one less reason to prefer Christianity.
DL:
Your moral qualms are self-asserted as subjective and therefore no better than personal opinions. They are duly noted... and ignored.
This forum is interested in truth and Truth, not personal, subjective opinions. Among the subjective opinions you attempt to impose here are those regarding what YOU personally accept as evidence, verification, observability, and measurability within the confines of your narrow-minded scientism.
Many electrons—especially recently—have been spilled here on showing just how narrow and out-of-touch-with-reality your personal philosophy is. (And, your philosophy is unverifiable, by the way.) Your repeating the same tired mantra of MES-based evidence and verifiability as the ONLY means by which to validate knowledge doesn’t make your point any clearer or coherent. You’ve already demonstrated by your neo-Kantian world-view (“neo-“ meaning cherry-picking and overlaying other failed philosophies like positivism over a Kantian and materialist base) shuts you inside your own mind—with access only to your own, personal ideas/patterns—with no access to objective reality. That is why, at a deep level, you display irrational angst in your demands for “evidence, verifiability, etc.” that are only a priori acceptable to you... and moreover, by your own rules you can never have any access even to incorrect categories of evidence, verifiability, etc.
Your repeatedly being wrong is tiresome and disruptive. You are, as a general once noted in the wake of Katrina, stuck in something… of your own making.
doctor(logic)
First, I can't think of anyone who denies that people can make personal distinctions between good and bad. What is disputed is whether this distinction is rooted in how we happen to be or whether it is objective beyond circumstance.
I think that is the point I was trying to make. Your second sentence here is an alternate version of my statement that some ethical philosophers deny there is an actual category of "goodness." I meant that in the sense of objective beyond circumstance. That's a helpful clarification.
Second, you argue that we ought to be informed about "moral reality" by how we feel and by our preferences. Yet this isn't evidence or "best fit" for moral realism. It's evidence and best-fit for moral relativism.
It's not best-fit for moral relativism, it's best-fit for moral awareness. You see, I wasn't arguing that our feelings and preferences tell us what is moral and what is not (which would be the moral relativism argument). I was arguing that:
a) It is a fact that we have moral awareness or an appreciation of virtue (my preferred ways of naming it), and
b) That fact (a) stands in need of explanation, and
(c) The explanation for (a) fits better under theism than under alternative systems.
Finally, you seem to be saying that you find Christianity appealing because it integrates your preferred moral values into the fabric of the universe. Yet, if you did not think the virtues defined by Christianity were appealing (as perhaps you don't presently find the virtues of some other religion appealing), then you would have one less reason to prefer Christianity.
I was addressing my case to those who do find those virtues appealing. (It's an aesthetic argument, after all.) If you don't find trustworthiness, love, industry, honesty, self-sacrifice, courage, humility, etc., appealing, then you won't be much moved by my presentation here and there's not much I can do about that.
Tom:
A suggestion regarding this post—with extension to the concept of beauty animating this particular series of posts (which I very much applaud you for): I think it would have substantially strengthened this particular post if you had initially defined what virtue is. Part of DL’s problem, for example, is that he constructs so many straw men of Christian issues that he finds himself in the middle of a field of menacing self-made scarecrows... and reacts accordingly but in a manner limited to his own philosophical straitjacket. Clarifying what a virtue is from the get-go would help avoid some of his complaints.
A virtue is defined as a good habit by which one lives righteously, or, alternatively, as a habit inclining one to choose the relative mean between the extremes of excess and defect. Vice, as the contrary habit, would incline one to choose either of the extremes—both morally evil. For example, fortitude is a virtue: one acts “bravely” (an adverb) in the face of adversity and between the two extremes of rashness and cowardice.
We can (and probably should) apply this to your example of humility, which St. Thomas claims “Consists in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one’s superior.” (Summa Contra Gent., bk. IV, ch. lv, tr. Rickaby) There are other acceptable definitions of humility, and admittedly St. Thomas’ is somewhat cold and “technical”… but that’s because he knows any branch of philosophy and theology are sciences (writ large) in their own right, and he’s trying to be very, very exacting.
Given this, what I can’t agree with is your claim that humility is a kind of “meta-virtue.” Consider the careful distinctions drawn in the following excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
The four cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, and all other moral virtues are annexed to theses either as integral, potential, or subjective parts. Humility is annexed to the virtue of temperance as a potential part, because temperance includes all those virtues that refrain or express the inordinate movements of our desires or appetites. Humility is a repressing or moderating virtue opposed to pride and vainglory or that spirit within us which urges us to great things above our strength and ability, and therefore it is included in temperance just as meekness which represses anger is a part of the same virtue. From what we have here stated it follows that humility is not the first or the greatest of the virtues. The theological virtues [Faith, Hope, Charity] have the first place, then the intellectual [cardinal] virtues, as these immediately direct the reason of man to good. Justice is placed in the order of the virtues before humility, and so should obedience be, for it is part of justice. Humility is, however, said to be the foundation of the spiritual edifice, but in a sense inferior to that in which faith is called its foundation. Humility is the first virtue inasmuch as it removes the obstacles to faith… It removes pride and makes a man subject to and a fit recipient of grace according to the words of St. James: “God resisteth the proud, and giveth his grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Faith is the first and the positive fundamental virtue of all the infused virtues, because it is by it we can take the first step in the supernatural life and in our access to God: “For he that cometh to God, must believe that he is, and is a rewarder to them that seek him” (Heb., xi, 6). Humility, inasmuch as it seems to keep the mind and heart submissive to reason and to God, has its own function in connection with faith and all the other virtues, and it may therefore be said to be a universal virtue.
It is therefore a virtue which is necessary for salvation, and as such is enjoined by Our Divine Savior, especially when He said to His disciples: “Learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls” (Matthew 11:29). He also teaches this virtue by the words, “Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven” (Matthew 5:11-12). From the example of Christ and His Saints we may learn the practice of humility, which St. Thomas explains (Contra Gent., bk, III, 135): “The spontaneous embracing of humiliations is a practice of humility not in any and every case but when it is done for a needful purpose: for humility being a virtue, does nothing indiscreetly. It is then not humility but folly to embrace any and every humiliation: but when virtue calls for a thing to be done it belongs to humility not to shrink from doing it, for instance not to refuse some mean service where charity calls upon you to help your neighbors… Sometimes too, even where our own duty does not require us to embrace humiliations, it is an act of virtue to take them up in order to encourage others by our example more easily to bear what is incumbent on them: for a general will sometimes do the office of a common soldier to encourage the rest. Sometimes again we may make a virtuous use of humiliations as a medicine. Thus if anyone's mind is prone to undue self-exaltation, he may with advantage make a moderate use of humiliations, either self-imposed, or imposed by others, so as to check the elation of his spirit by putting himself on a level with the lowest class of the community in the doing of mean offices."
Tom,
The word "virtue" isn't fading away. In fact, it is being rejuvinated by some folks that fall into the "postmodern" camp. They ask: what does it mean to love or to be courages in everyday terms? How can I bring these virtues to life today? To make justice happen today?
I have to agree somewhat with DL. It doesn't much matter what one's religion happens to be, people around the world set limits between what is good and what is bad. Those limits vary and they are enforced differently--but they are limits just the same.
God and Love may be at the heart of our beliefs, but those concrete touches make all the difference. Consider the crusaders and their violent efforts to expand God's Love to the heathens whether they wanted it or not. Love for some may be violent conversion for another.
And as you noted, the Greeks were the first to start talking about "virtue." So, in some sense, the virtues are rooted in pre-Christian pagan philosophies, which doesn't make them the "core" of Christian belief so much as a borrowed element.
"I have to agree somewhat with DL. It doesn't much matter what one's religion happens to be, people around the world set limits between what is good and what is bad. Those limits vary and they are enforced differently--but they are limits just the same."
I don't think findings from social scientists actually support this sentiment. Guenter Lewy shows that there is a clear distinction between the particular beliefs of people and their engaging in good and bad behavior/ as well as their views on those behaviors. And that the distinction increases with how devout the individual is with their religious beliefs (Christianity).
If you are curious as to where this information can be obtain you can read his book "Why America Needs Religion". He pulls from numerous different studies, and information for these particular studies can be found in the notes section of his book.
GB(McStagger),
Historically speaking, prior to the emergence of Christianity, Romans had concepts that destinguished between good and bad. Geographically and culturally speaking, we can visit places and communities today that are not Christian--yet they still have some kind of standards that divides acceptable actions from unacceptable actions.
Tom:
I'm going to soften my suggestion that you provide an encyclopedaic defintion of beauty and virtue. The reason I'm saying this is because I re-read the last paragraph of your response to DL. It was, if you permit me, "beautiful," and it bears repeating:
I was addressing my case to those who do find those virtues appealing. (It's an aesthetic argument, after all.) If you don't find trustworthiness, love, industry, honesty, self-sacrifice, courage, humility, etc., appealing, then you won't be much moved by my presentation here and there's not much I can do about that.The concrete and detailed definition of "virtue" has its place, of course. But I, for one, would be saddened to see such a definition potentially downplay the aesthetic nature of your argument. Besides, I love to see DL driven crazy by things he can't mathematicize and things his personal, subjective worldview can't handle.
Second, you argue that we ought to be informed about "moral reality" by how we feel and by our preferences. Yet this isn't evidence or "best fit" for moral realism. It's evidence and best-fit for moral relativism.
What gets me about these repeated comments is that DL keeps asking us to consider that the beauty of the elephant in the room is feelings-based and subjective, while we keep asking him to consider how the elephant got in the room.
We can argue over interpretations of what is more good and what is less good, but we can't ignore the fact that moral goodness is as objective as the elephant in the room.
As Tom said, the awareness of good/evil has to be dealt with and explained - we all see it. How did the elephant get in the room? That's the question.
Steve,
Maybe you can clarify your analogy.
An elephant is in the room. That is objective. You feel it is beautiful.
I see a man rob a bank. That's objective. I feel it is evil.
elephant ~ bank robbery
you ~ me
beautiful ~ evil
What am I missing?
Steve,
I just re-read your post, and see that maybe you are asking about the origin of our feelings.
Okay... so, the origins of both beauty and evil should be explained, if possible, right?
DL:
Understand that my elephant analogy is imperfect as all analogies are.
Similar to what Tom said, I would call it an awareness of good/evil brought about by reason or perhaps "forced" upon our minds without the ability to ignore it. We all "see" the good or the evil in the world. The emotions of joy, anger, disappointment, love, etc. associated with that awareness follow.
The elephant analogy might go something like this: I reason my way to an awareness of an elephant in the room (moral good) rather than, say, a giraffe (moral evil). The emotions associated with that awareness follow.
BTW, who considers moral goodness an emotion? To me that's like saying North is angry.
Tom,
If you don't find trustworthiness, love, industry, honesty, self-sacrifice, courage, humility, etc., appealing, then you won't be much moved by my presentation here and there's not much I can do about that.You are resorting to intersubjective persuasion here. Not that I'm complaining. It's what I regard as the basis of relativistic moral argument.
In this approach, person A claims that some course of action is appropriate if person B shares A's moral values.
For example, you suggest that if I share your laundry list of values, I too should see some aesthetic appeal in Christianity. That's reasonable, assuming my aesthetic taste is for moral harmony (which I think it is).
However, though we share an appreciation for many virtues, our definitions of virtues differ. Your idea of love, justice, and mercy are different from my own. For me, these virtues are sorely missing in your theology.
God's love is conditional, God is merciful in the slightest possible way (given the zero cost of mercy to him), and Christian culture is obsessed with deserved punishments and submission to God. So, sure, I like the virtues you list, but I don't recognize all of them in your religion.
BTW, while I recognize honesty as a part of the Christian code of conduct, I regard Christian theology as being untrue. So, I can't find honesty appealing and commit to theism without contradiction. Of course, as you say, your post was not addressed to me...
DL:
to Tom: "Your idea of love, justice, and mercy are different from my own."Your ideas/patterns can't cross the is-to-ought gap. Your ideas/patterns on morality are subjective/relative per your own words. Your ideas/patterns are the ONLY thing you can know per your own words, and therefore they cannot cross the gap from your mind to reality... and yet you continue to impose your personal subjective assertions that they can. Your ideas/patterns are therefore mere opinions—trapped within the epistemological barriers you have imposed upon your own mind... and as such irrelevant to reasoned and objective discourse.
DL,
God's love is conditional, God is merciful in the slightest possible way (given the zero cost of mercy to him), and Christian culture is obsessed with deserved punishments and submission to God.
You demean both humanity and God with your arbitrary complaints and you miss seeing these virtues in Christianity only by your own choice.
What is this so-called unconditional love of which you speak and to which you compare God's love? We are still waiting for your definition of "love", which is required to back up your claim from a previous thread that it would need redefining if it were to be applied to God. You made this claim with regard to the word "good", but perhaps you will fare better this time around.
Whom do you love with no regard to who and what they are? And if you have such a love of what worth is it that it doesn't ask your loved one to be lovable? No one should care for nor aspire to this kind of love which is independent of our merit and is so trivially given. Who would want your love?
Nonetheless, God does love each and every one of us. But it is exactly in His loving us that He makes demands of us.
Here's some C.S. Lewis on the subject:
There is kindness in love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness (in the sense given above) is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it. page 32
It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on ay terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting ad would rather see them suffer mush than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.
I'm not sure how that happened ... here is the remainder of that comment.
page 33, The Problem Of Pain
This ties in with your other complaints here, mercy, for instance: the cost of this unlimited mercy which you seem to think exists but is not being displayed by God would be borne not by God but by us. Mercy without justice is nothing but a condoning. And to condone evil is either to ignore it or to treat it as good. Neither of these is just or merciful.
And you complain about the so-called Christian obsession with deserved punishment. This is as opposed to what, undeserved punishment? Indeed, by looking down their noses at retributive justice, as so many enlightened folk would do, is to render all punishment unjust. If one cannot deserve his punishment what can be more cruel, more immoral, than inflicting it?
If there is no good element in retributive justice, if punishment is never deserved, then the whole idea of prison is a farce and any idea of rehabilitation becomes nonsensical.
Finally you also accuse Christians with harbouring an obsession with submission to God. To that I will just quote Lewis:
If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows - the only food that any possible universe can ever grow - then we must starve eternally.
page 47 The Problem Of Pain
Charlie,
What do you believe is necessary for salvation? As I understand it, many Christians believe that all that is necessary is faith in Jesus as savior.
This means that, in terms of deeds, there's no difference between the saved and the unsaved. This isn't about corrective action. The people who go to Hell don't get corrected. They get tortured without parole.
The people who go to Heaven don't get corrected either, not unless God waves his magic wand and corrects them. But if God could do that, then he could correct us all by the same process.
If you're going to work by analogy, stick to a proper analogy. God is like an adult, and a human is like a 5-year-old. Suppose you love the toddler, and speaking in soft tones explain what is correct behavior. Unfortunately, the toddler has rowdy friends, and picks up a bad habit of setting stuff on fire. If you love this toddler, and you could wave a magic wand and correct his behavior, would you do so? Suppose you would not. Suppose then that the kid says he believes you will save him and that he likes you. Does that make the difference between how you love the child, and whether or not you will save his life?
Another note in the analogy. The cost to God in these matters is negligible. If a kid burns down your house, it costs you a bundle. A kid can't cost God anything. For humans, love takes a lot of effort. God has an infinite reserve, so the cost of God's love to God is virtually zero.
It seems to me that Christianity says that at age 6, the toddler is either magically corrected or tortured forever for mistakes and behaviors that were expected of him all along (he's fallen after all). I don't see the mercy, don't see the love, and don't see the forgiveness.
So how do you love a 5-year-old? Conditionally?
I had a 16-hour day yesterday and didn't get back to any of this until this morning. First word--Holopupenko, thanks for that clarification on the virtues, and on humility. I hope I'm at least not incorrect in having said that humility ought to ride under all the other virtues, for to display any of the other virtues without humility would be a travesty.
Gatsby Blastyn (McStagger),
What a great blogging handle! I love it!
Jacob,
And as you noted, the Greeks were the first to start talking about "virtue." So, in some sense, the virtues are rooted in pre-Christian pagan philosophies, which doesn't make them the "core" of Christian belief so much as a borrowed element.
That might be true if the virtues had actually been elements borrowed from the Greeks, but they go back hundreds of years prior, to the time of Moses and even Abraham or Noah.
(The Greeks' understanding of virtue likely arose independently of Hebrew influence. This is understood biblically as an expression of common grace, which I spoke about. By the way, I should have also referred to this passage from Romans at that point.)
Further, the virtues are "core" to Biblical belief not just by their provenance but also by their "fit." That was the major point of my post. They have a far more natural place of belonging within the entirety of the worldview than they have in other worldviews.
DL,
This means that, in terms of deeds, there's no difference between the saved and the unsaved. This isn't about corrective action.
True that deeds will not earn you salvation. Jesus made it clear that the kinds of deeds we can perform on our own will always leave us short of His demands.
I am tempted to go on and on about the difference between being saved by works versus being saved by faith and how the one will be manifested because of the other, but I believe it will be an unnecessary side-excursion.
The very fact that the soul is aligned to God's will, that His free gift of salvation is accepted is the correction. It is not our J-walking that needs repair, but our rebellious spirit. Yes, it is about submitting, but it is first in properly viewing the universe so that you can know that there is something worth submitting to.
The people who go to Heaven don't get corrected either, not unless God waves his magic wand and corrects them
I contend the exact opposite: you can not get to Heaven without having been corrected.
If you're going to work by analogy, stick to a proper analogy.
There is nothing wrong with my analogies. There is nothing wrong with yours either, for that matter - you just don't use them properly.
If you love this toddler, and you could wave a magic wand and correct his behavior, would you do so?
Of course not. Many times I have just that opportunity and that is exactly what I don't do. When a child sits and forces himself to cry and then go into a tantrum because a particular desire is thwarted I can magically correct his behaviour - I can succumb and fulfill his desire and he will cease the behaviour and become as sweet as could be. But I am much more interested in correcting his personality, knowing that each experience will shape his life and who he will become. Children at every age can start learning control and the proper alignment to proper goals.
Another note in the analogy. The cost to God in these matters is negligible. If a kid burns down your house, it costs you a bundle. A kid can't cost God anything. For humans, love takes a lot of effort. God has an infinite reserve, so the cost of God's love to God is virtually zero.
You act as though God has but the one attribute. The cost to God in indulging evil and applying your twisted version of mercy, in fact, is infinite. He would lose everything if it were logically possible for Him to violate His own nature. He would cease being God if His justice were to become less than just, if His mercy became mere contempt and His forgiveness nothing but indifferent tolerance. He would certainly lose us.
It seems to me that Christianity says that at age 6, the toddler is either magically corrected or tortured forever for mistakes and behaviors that were expected of him all along (he's fallen after all).
If this is truly how it seems to you then you and I have wasted an awful lot of time here.
More fun with Lewis, on correcting your toddler:
Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it - believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt.
...
The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions. But for this claim there would be nothing to agree or disagree about. page 15
Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.
...
Plato before him has said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.
page 16
In a word, the old was a kind of propagation - men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.
page23
The Abolition Of Man
What is problematic in your view seems obvious to me. You don't believe Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, the Tao, the universe or God. You believe yourself and your selfish genes.
This is what needs correction.
Yuck.
Sorry for the formatting.
The part that I finally got in blockquotes at the end was not a quote, but was my summation.
DL:
I just re-read your post, and see that maybe you are asking about the origin of our feelings.
Okay... so, the origins of both beauty and evil should be explained, if possible, right?
I responded to this immediately after your comment. Care to comment further?
Steve,
We all "see" the good or the evil in the world. The emotions of joy, anger, disappointment, love, etc. associated with that awareness follow.Let's see what our common ground is...
1) Physical facts are objective.
2) Emotions are subjective and somewhat accidental to the individual. That is, how we feel about a thing is not a direct measure of that thing. For example, how I feel about Fran Drescher is not just a measurement of Fran Drescher, but is a function of my biology and personal history. My emotions with respect to an objective fact can change with broader experience.
3) There is a correlation between evil as we perceive it, our emotions, and the physical facts.
Do we agree on these?
I would add to 3) that the correlation applies to everything we perceive, even the perception of the physical facts in 1), though to a lesser degree. Emotions permeate every aspect of our lives, we are not robots. Other than that I think we agree.
SteveK:
DL is trying to have it both ways from the very first point he makes: physical facts are NOT objective to DL. Per his own words, the only thing he can know are the patterns/ideas (supposedly) generated by things external to him. He cannot know the thing itself. We've asked him to come clean on why he believes his assertion that there is no gap between the actual thing and the pattern in his mind... and he has not. That's point one.
Point two is, yet again we hear the broken record of him imposing physical measurement upon feelings. That's a non-starter from the get-go because he doesn't define clearly what a feeling IS.
He's trying to set up the rules of the game: don't fall for it.
Very good point Holo.
Regarding feelings, I've got questions prepared for DL on that too should it come up again. I'm waiting for him to comment further.
DL:
What Holo is saying is 100% true per your recent comments on our inability to know anything about "bare things". We can only know our experiences.
So far, all you have done is assert that physical facts are objective. Per your comments, the physical facts are "bare things" and are unknowable.
Steve,
Okay, my attempt to find common ground was too ambitious.
Objective is not the same thing as 'bare'.
If we can distinguish between the subjective and the objective, then we do so by identifying some correlation of experiences. This is true whether or not it is meaningful to speak of bare stuff.
So...
What patterns of experiences tell you that a thing is objective versus subjective? IOW, how do you recognize something as objective?
DL:
Okay, my attempt to find common ground was too ambitious.
I hope you realize your recent comments on patterns and "bare things" are mostly to blame here. I am eager to find common ground with you so let's get to it!
Objective is not the same thing as 'bare'.
Perhaps you misunderstood. According to you, "bare things" are anything outside the patterns of our experience. That includes the physical objects that remain behind when we no longer experience them - or perhaps never experienced them. You say we can't know anything about these things.
What patterns of experiences tell you that a thing is objective versus subjective? IOW, how do you recognize something as objective?
Now that's a really good question. Really, it is. I hope we don't spend 400+ comments going over this again. I mean, please....
First, you haven't dealt with the claim that 'patterns of experience' are all we can know. Can we know anything about the "bare thing" sitting before us on the table - the thing that remains after we both leave - the thing that was there before we arrived?
Why should the same patterns in your mind find their way into my mind, unless there are external "bare things" pressing upon each of our minds?
Aside from that huge challenge to your own position....
I said once before, and maintain it today, that objectivity is really a lower degree of subjectivity. Nothing is perceived as objective because we are not robots.
You are asking me to find the line that separates subjectivity from objectivity and I don't think there is one. When does dark blue become light blue? I don't know, but I can objectively tell the difference between dark and light colors when the difference becomes great enough.
In the same way I can tell when something is less-objective than something else when the difference becomes great enough -- God being less-objective than my house, the concept of good/evil being less-objective than the concept of the number 2.
But what does being less-objective mean in the grand scheme of things? Does it mean the less-objective becomes an opinion, trivial, meaningless or perhaps an illusion? How 'less-objective' does it have to be before it becomes opinion or an illusion?
You appear to know where the line of objectivity is drawn and what that means for the subjective concepts below it. I don't.
One last reminder... don't forget to address the 'patterns of experience are all we can know' issue that is preventing us from really going forward.
Steve,
I know this is a subtle concept, so I'll give it one more go.
Suppose I see a 2-D lifelike image of an apple. This is a pattern of experience.
Now, it could be a lifelike photo, or I could be looking at the real thing. What is the real thing? A real apple would be 2-8 inches across, solid, but soft, three-dimensional, and be filled with organic compounds, show signs of organic growth, and so on.
You and I both agree that the apple is "real" if the 2-D pattern we first observe is part of the extended 3-D pattern of phenomena I just described.
Well, this is what "real" means. We don't require apples possess unseeable properties in invisible dimensions. The reality of the apple is fixed in our experience. If we believe the proposition "this apple is real," then we have an expectation that the apple is 3-D, solid, organic, etc.
Thus, when we say that "the apple that is sitting on the table is real," we are using a code that means that our experiences will be in accordance with our conventional definition of an apple. The apple will participate in our experiences in expected ways - it won't walk away, spontaneously disappear, it will rot if we go on vacation for a week, and so on.
Unfortunately, the situation isn't even this simple. If I find that the apple has no seeds in it, I will be faced with a choice. I can declare that the apple is not a "real apple" (since I have ever seen a seedless apple) or I can extend my definition of "real apple" to include seedless apples. Through a lifetime of experience, our definitions of "real stuff" have been so defined, often in a subjective way. (People disagree as to whether certain species of banana are actually bananas at all. "That's not a real banana," they say.)
Sooo...
I am saying that "real apple" is a mnemonic for a pattern of experiences we have associated with apples. It is not the case that an apple is only real if it has some "unexperiencable" property. No. Any apple that our experience tells us is real is real by definition.
This means that, 99.9% of the time, you and I have the very same intuitive sense of reality. Galaxies, big bangs, hamburgers, and politicians are all equally real to us both.
However, there's a strong (and quite natural) psychological desire to say that reality is more than this. There are several reasons why.
1) The list of patterns of experience that constitute a "real object" is far more extensive than we can think of at once. If I were to ask you to list all of the attributes of cars, and define the boundaries of what is and is not a real car, you would be at it for a whole week. Throughout our lives we constantly evaluate whether X is a real car, and if X is sufficiently car-like, it gets incorporated into the definition of "real car" even if X is fairly bizarre (e.g., lowriders).
2) We are often in a position in which we are fooled about real stuff, and another person isn't. We can be swindled. We can be confused in such a way that another person is better informed than we are about what is real. It is natural to feel that, since there are cases in which other people are better informed than ourselves, there must be some frame of reference in which the definitions of what is real are absolute and observers are impartial.
So, the everyday use of the term "real" has an intuitive conception of existence in some magic, absolute sense where we cannot be fooled.
This is the cognitive equivalent of believing in an absolute rest frame. We're so used to thinking about things being at rest in everyday activity, that we are compelled to believe in a frame which really is at rest, even if we're not sure how to find it or define it. Special Relativity showed that this intuition was unjustified, if not wrong.
For me, the "real apple" is an intersubjective definition of a pattern of phenomena. If experience demonstrates these phenomena, then the apple is real. If it doesn't, either we refine our definition or the apple isn't real.
For you, if the apple is real, it exists in a fashion that has nothing whatsoever to do with any experience you will ever have. I think this is psychologically natural, but ultimately an inconsistency because reality isn't defined in terms of stuff we don't experience.
According to you, "bare things" are anything outside the patterns of our experience. That includes the physical objects that remain behind when we no longer experience them - or perhaps never experienced them. You say we can't know anything about these things.I hope you can now see how your quote here doesn't capture my position. Yes, bare things are beyond experience, and I reject them as nothing more than mnemonics. However, physical objects that remain behind when our attention wanders fall squarely within my definitions of what is real. The real apple doesn't vanish into thin air when my attention is elsewhere by the definition of a real apple. The definition isn't about the apple in any space of unobservable, inexperiencable attributes.
OK. Instead of beating this to death let's go forward. I've already responded to your objectivity question so it's your turn.
SteveK:
DL’s monotonous broken record tune of “keep repeating it and it will be true—because I say so” continues to entertain us. And, his arrogance comes out again: “I know this is a subtle concept, so I’ll give it one more go,” which means, SteveK, you can’t belong to his Gnostic guild of secular scientists because you just don’t get it—you don’t possess the secret knowledge. This is kind of funny given the only person DL’s convinced (err, fooled) is himself. And, you are correct, he’s done nothing to convince anyone of his personal take on objectivity.
Consider his latest example of the photo—DL thinks he’s clarifying things when, in fact, he buries himself even deeper. Why? Because he’s introduced another layer of ambiguity—the photo. Let’s repeat his own words so that the point is not lost: DL claims the only things we can know are the patterns/ideas of the real things outside our minds. In other words, we cannot know the real things—end of story. But note how the photo undermines even further his position: the photo itself is a real thing! He’s put the photo in between the real thing (which he can never know), when in fact he can’t even know the photo itself: it’s now become a pattern within a pattern! At first, he wanted us to believe (in the context of his personal epistemology) that the patterns in our minds (the only things we can know) somehow reflect accurately those things we can never know (per his own words), i.e., the real things outside our minds. (He never demonstrates this—he simply demands it be so.) Now, he introduces another thing—the photo—between the real thing and his trapped mind. Clarity? No, in fact, it’s even deeper subjectivity. I’ll enumerate what’s going on:
(1) DL (the knowing subject) only knows the patterns in his mind. This is subjectivism in its purest form, for its only anchor is in the knowing subject.What I’ve just explained is the Kantian error he makes. Here’s the Humean error: “Through a lifetime of experience, our definitions of “real stuff” have been so defined, often in a subjective way. What DL is doing is reducing experience and causality to tradition—precisely what Hume tried to do.
(2) DL (the knowing subject) cannot know (per his own limiting epistemology) the object (to be known) beyond his own mind. Without access to the object to be known, all objectivity is lost. (And, sadly, DL tries to convince us he does real science when the object to be studied—to be known—is forever inaccessible to his trapped mind.)
(3) DL (the knowing subject) demands that we simply accept that there is a direct correspondence between the object to be known (outside his mind, which he’s already said we can’t know anyway) and the patterns in his subjective mind. But you are correct, SteveK, he can’t demonstrate this nor can he demonstrate that the pattern in your mind (per his epistemology) matches the pattern in his mind. Note the hole he’s dug: not only can he not know the object outside his mind, but he can’t even convincingly and verifiably communicate his knowledge with you or you with him.
(4) Now DL (the knowing subject) introduces further subjectivity: a real object (the photo of the object to be known—let’s play his game and call it a pattern) is inserted between the patterns in his mind and the object to be known: DL’s patterns --> patterns of photo --> the real object. So now DL has two gaps (represented by the arrows) which he can’t cross—he can’t cross them per his own words: not only can’t he know the real object, but he also can’t know the real object known as the photo.
DL’s position is nothing short of absurd, and to intentionally belabor the point, it is absurd because of his own epistemological rules of the game.
Then comes the Nominalism: I am saying that “real apple” is a mnemonic for a pattern of experiences we have associated with apples.” As I pointed out earlier, he refers to the names of things which refer to the patterns which supposedly refer to the real thing. Sad, really.
Then comes the a priori anti-metaphysical baggage he constantly brings into these discussions (which he shares with the book-burning Hume he admires): ”There’s a strong (and quite natural) psychological desire to say that reality is more than this… the everyday use of the term “real” has an intuitive conception of existence in some magic, absolute sense where we cannot be fooled. What’s so ironic is DL himself is doing what he sets out to eliminate. Metaphysics is the science of studying being as being, i.e., it studies what it means to be something, what “beingness” is. DL introduces his own personal notion of what it means to BE real, while at the same time asserting metaphysics is “magic.” You can’t beat this kind of incoherence with a stick.
And then there’s this—my jaw actually dropped when I read this 100% imposition of scientism upon all of reality: “This is the cognitive equivalent of believing in an absolute rest frame. We’re so used to thinking about things being at rest in everyday activity, that we are compelled to believe in a frame which really is at rest, even if we’re not sure how to find it or define it. Special Relativity showed that this intuition was unjustified, if not wrong.” Do you see what he’s sneaking into the discussion? (Remember: this is a person who, when pressed, claims the MESs don’t explain everything, but then doesn’t adhere to his own claim as I’ve shown earlier.) He’s trying to say that because Special Relativity is a correct descriptor of the behavior real objects in the world, that this kind of physics applies to patterns in the brain. (By the way, he can’t know that because the objects Special Relativity study are beyond the patterns in his mind.) If he were a physicist on my staff, I’d fire him in a heartbeat: DL knows very well Special Relativity doesn’t deal with “patterns” but with real objects in inertial frames of reference relative to observers. What that has to do with the patterns/ideas in his brain—let alone the “patterns” of his famous photo example, is beyond reasonable thinkers.
And then DL concludes with this howler: “For you, if the apple is real, it exists in a fashion that has nothing whatsoever to do with any experience you will ever have. I think this is psychologically natural, but ultimately an inconsistency because reality isn’t defined in terms of stuff we don’t experience. Folks, this is case-study incoherence—the first sentence is a killer: after all the trouble DL has gone through to vainly convince us that our experiences alone (expressed as the only things we can know—patterns/ideas in our minds) define what we can know about things that are out of our reach in the first place, he now says the reality of the apple has (I quote) “nothing whatsoever to do with any experience you will ever have.” Bingo! This is a direct admission that he will never know the real object outside his mind, this is a direct admission that he cannot jump the gap from the patterns in his mind to the real object. Therefore, all of DL’s knowledge is purely subjective: he (the knowing subject) will never know the thing (the object to be known) outside his own mind.
Based on this, I stand firm: not only is DL not a philosopher (we know that), he’s not even a scientist, for reasonable people in the pursuit of truth don’t care about subjective patterns in his mind—we’re interested in the objective truth about reality. DL has, apparently, just joined Jacob’s postmodernist camp… may it rest in peace.
Aw, I'm fired, H? I hope you have a good severance package.
I'm afraid you're still missing the point at step 1:
(1) DL (the knowing subject) only knows the patterns in his mind.How do you know when something is "in your mind?" You know it by its temporal, spatial and functional separation in your experience. So, I'm definitely not saying that everything experienced is within the mind.
We both introduce the concept of objects as an explanatory model for experience. But, in your view, the explanatory model is more "real" than the world itself.
You have frequently criticized me for allegedly doing this. You have said that the equations of physics are not the universe, and do not control the universe. I agree. The equations are an explanatory model of the universe. Ironically, you are the one guilty of making this mistake with the concept of bare objects. You are saying that the explanatory model of (bare) objects is more real than the experience it is explaining.
How do you explain the inconsistency in your views?
Tom,
The point isn't so much that the "virtues" were borrowed from the Greeks. Rather, the point is that the "virtues" pre-date Chritian thinking/living--they are borrowed elements.
The Greeks' understanding of virtue "likely" have arose independently? Maybe. But maybe not. Greek merchants/soldiers/learned folks were active all around the region--as were Jews I don't doubt. It wouldn't be surprising to me to find that they arose from interactions. But either way, we are both just speculating. We would be better served by turning to histories on the topic.
So, the question of provenance is more open than closed. Following my line of argument above, the "virtues" are not immanent to the Christian project--they are borrowed from other peoples/communities/cultures/philosophies.
The "fit" of the "virtues" in the Christian project shouldn't be thought of as natural, in other words. It is man-made. Like the word "fit" suggests, it usually takes a little work, a little shimming back and forth to get a good "fit." And you want a good "fit," I would guess, because you value the "virtues" and their relationship to Christianity
That work is precisely what your blog post--"The Beauty of Virtue"--is all about. Or at least that is what I would argue--your blog post can be seen as the act of shimming the "virtues" and the Christian project together into a tight (even "natural") "fit."
DL:
You are putting words in my mouth—although I'm not going to pursue that because you could (correctly) claim I (also) have not fully and properly presented the case for how be can know the thing itself.
However, that is not my intent here. All this time, across a wide range of philosophical issues, I've shown from where your ideas arise (historically and through idea-lineage) and why they don't work. In fact, some of them are incoherent.
Take the latest one: you work so hard at asserting we can't know the thing itself, you can't cross the mind-to-object gap, and hence (among other things) you destroy verifiable science. I'm pushing you either to come clean or admit you don't know. If you can at least admit you don't know or admit to the serious problems with what you've presented, then we might be able to investigate others options. Unfortunately, I don't see much promise in the latter because you've shut the door so tight against things which somehow you think have to do with theology (red herring alert: they do not).
If you can't do that, then at least read my criticisms of your assertions from the philosophical-only perspective (and please do SteveK and Charlie the courtesy of addressing their questions to you).
BTW, no, there is no serverance package whatsoever.
Jacob, you continue with your previous theme, that anyone with an opinion about what the Bible means is imposing that opinion on the Bible. Earlier you said it was an imposition on Christianity to say forgiveness is central to Christianity. Now you say that virtues have to be force-fit into Christianity.
What's odd is how you have chosen such incredibly clear, uncontroversial, central, core positions of Scripture to contest. Next you'll be saying it's not at all clear that the Bible teaches there is a God; we only think it says so because we impose that interpretation upon it.
Your pattern is clear, from your earlier comments on this blog. Truth, to you, is a matter of personal choice and preference, and you choose to accept the "truth" that believing these things of Christianity is just a matter of preference and/or power.
f anyone here wants to accept your word I won't argue. I won't argue because it's pointless. You do not make your points based on a reliable form of logic--you have said there are many kinds of logic (or rather, in a more slippery fashion in fact, you have said, "why can't there be more than one kind of logic?")
Based on the way you define knowledge, truth, and logic, there is no point in trying to use logic to come to agreement with you on knowledge and truth. I could use the clear texts of the Bible to refute what you have said, but you would pull out your power-imposition game, as if the matter could not be determined by actually reading and understanding what the Bible clearly and uncontroversially says. I'm not playing that game, so I'm not going to follow this discussion any further with you than what I've written here.
DL:
I'm willing to let the topic of "bare things" go for now until it comes up again - and I'm certain it will. Back to our 'common ground', which is looking to be less common than I had hoped.
But what does being less-objective mean in the grand scheme of things? Does it mean the less-objective becomes an opinion, trivial, meaningless or perhaps an illusion? How 'less-objective' does it have to be before it becomes opinion or an illusion?
You appear to know where the line of objectivity is drawn and what that means for the subjective concepts below it. I don't.
Tom,
I did not say that "virtues" and Christianity have to be "force-fit." That is your exageration of my words.
Actually, you first used the word "fit" and I just reinterpreted its use. You said that they "fit" naturally. I said that the "fit" wasn't natural--it is man made and man sustained. Historically, we can trace that "fit" out and see how the relationship between "virtues" and Christianity has unfolded.
I do not think that truth is merely a personal choice or a preference.
It is not odd at all that I am choosing the topics that I choose. They are commonsense topics that most would agree on. How is that agreement sustained over time?
I would disagree with your claim that I do not argue according to a reliable form of logic. Rather, I think that to you I make no sense becuase we are arguing from two desinct logics. I am not a philosophical realist--as I have said over and again. But that doesn't mean that I am not arguing according to a logic.
To say that the Bible is "uncontroversial" is to be blind to the vast number of controversies that make up modern-day Christianity. Historically, moreover, there have been countless controversies over the Bible and just what it says and more importantly, what it means to those different folks that read it.
The Words of the Holy Bible are plain and clear on the page (in its great number of translations) for us all to read. But what we readers make of those Words is not all the same--and has never been except maybe to relatively small communities/churches/groups of believers that interpret the Bible in a closed way.
Jacob, what you have said here about fit makes sense, provided that one views the Bible as having come just from man. If it came from God, then the fit is God-made and God-sustained.
If they are there just from man, then no commonly-accepted worldview today exhibits a very good fit for virtue, in my opinion.
You say you "do not think that truth is a personal choice or preference." But you do think, based on prior contributions on other threads, that truth is a "metaphor of value;" and when asked to explain what that means you said that different people may have different truths, and you would not explain what the metaphor is making reference to (as metaphors always have some kind of external reference).
You say you argue according to logic, but it is not classic logic, because you do not accept the law of non-contradiction. You have not described your form of logic, you have just said you believe there can be other forms of logic. That's as if we were in a basketball game, and you said you thought we could play by other rules, and that's what you would do. You don't explain those rules to us; but you're counting points in your favor by your private rules. Maybe you're counting one point for your team every time the ball touches the rim. But you don't tell us, so we're playing one game and we're playing another one, and the score you keep is private. Then when it's over you tell us you've won, because there's no need to have just one set of rules. Heck, you'd probably be willing to allow that we had won too; after all, we can all have our own rules. Why impose all this structure on each other?
So, do you see how we're running around in circles over and over again--because you keep saying there are other modes of truth, and other forms of logic, but you won't tell us what they are?
Oh, and by the way, I am quite convinced that without the law of noncontradiction, you cannot have a reliable form of logic. If you have a logic that allows you to both agree and disagree at the same time and in the same relation, that's not logic, that's word games. (If I'm wrong about that, you're welcome--here is yet another invitation to you--to explain how that is so. Whatever you do though--see my next comment--please explain something for a change.)
Next: I'm not blind to the controversies surrounding the Bible as you charged me with being. But you did not read what I said. I said that the Biblical beliefs you have chosen to take exception to here are among the beliefs that are not controversial; for not everything is. It is not controversial in any historic Christian community, or even in heretical movements springing out of Christianity, to say that Christianity involves forgiveness or virtue! (I know, you're likely to argue that my use of the term "heretical" is a power-imposition. Just take the main point then, please: there are movements that have historically been considered orthodox and others that have been considered heterodox, and all of them agree on these two points of interpretation.)
In your last paragraph you say that what we readers make of those words is not all the same: but with the exception of perhaps some fringe movements so tiny that virtually no one has heard of them, on the two doctrines you've taken exception to, all readers actually do make the same of those words.
Here's the form of how you have been "arguing," so you can see it more clearly:
Jacob: "To say that x is a Biblical teaching is imposing a view on the Bible, and you must recognize that the Bible is controversial, after all."
One of us: "Well, no, x is in the Bible, as virtually all communities of readers have recognized, and here's how I support that assertion."
Jacob: "To say that x is a Biblical teaching is imposing a view on the Bible, and you must recognize that the Bible is controversial, after all."
One of us: "Well, no, x is a core teaching of the Bible; it's there throughout, it's clear, and it's central to all that the Bible teaches; as virtually all readers have agreed."
Jacob: "To say that x is a Biblical teaching is imposing a view on the Bible, and you must recognize that the Bible is controversial, after all."
One of us: "Of course there are controversial topics in the Bible, but that the Bible teaches x is not in controversy. You can't find controversy over whether the Bible affirms x in any community of significant size or effect."
Jacob: "To say that x is a Biblical teaching is imposing a view on the Bible, and you must recognize that the Bible is controversial, after all."
Do you see how your parroting style here gets us absolutely nowhere?
Now, if you had said the Biblical interpretation of the Trinity was controversial, or the Resurrection, or infant baptism, then I would agree right away. If you had said that it's controversial whether the Bible's teaching on forgiveness or virtue is authoritative, because the Bible's authenticity is controversial, I would agree right away. Those controversies do exist.
But you say that it's generally, historically or socially controversial that the Bible teaches in favor of forgiveness and virtue. On these topics, making the limited claim that they are presented favorably in the Bible, you're simply wrong. So I take strong exception to this, given the context, in which I questioned why you choose the topics you choose to dispute:
It is not odd at all that I am choosing the topics that I choose. They are commonsense topics that most would agree on.
No, most would not agree that these topics are controversial in any way.
Jacob, in my last comment I violated what I said earlier about not carrying this discussion further. Here's why I have done that. Your response was filled with complete untruths and/or absolute rabbit trails that had to be answered. I'll reiterate some things now, because I want to make my point very forcefully. The force I'm going to employ is just this: I'm going to repeat what you have said, and I'm going to repeat what seems to be the problem with it:
You've said you do not think truth is a personal choice or preference; yet you have said elsewhere we can each have our own truths. You contradict yourself.
You've said you argue according to a different logic and it is not unreliable, but you have not explained your logic, and especially you have not begun to explain how a logic can be reliable apart from the law of noncontradiction.
You have said that the Bible is controversial and that I was blind to that fact. But you have completely missed the point, which I made over and over again when we were earlier discussing whether forgiveness is a Biblical theme or not, that there are at least some Biblical teachings are not controversial in any meaningful way at all; and somehow you've tried to manufacture controversy out of them where none exists.
So let me state something as strongly as I can without making any personal judgment on you: the things that you bring to this discussion very often do at least one of two things:
1) When someone points out that something may be wrong with something you have said, you repeat your assertion without responding to the actual point made against it. You do not engage in discussion; you ignore it.
2) Your assertions are based on your private view of truth and logic; "private" because you say that you have different views but you have not explained them, you have refused earlier attempts to explain them, and yet in a manner that (to me) seems smug, you imply that we ought to realize there can be other forms of truth and logic--all the time not telling us what they are, let alone why we should accept that they have validity.
What's common in both of these is you make your statements over and over again without actually explaining a thing. Conversation never moves forward. It's stuck; it's fruitless.
I've gone long here, and I'm rambling, I know, because it would take too long to go back and edit this to tighten it up. Sorry about that. I've actually been laying a groundwork for a final statement and question, and I'll be interested in other readers' opinions:
Jacob, what you bring to these discussions is very tiresome and seems (to me) completely unproductive, because you are using private "truth" and "logic" that you repeatedly refuse to share with or explain to the rest of us, and you continually repeat assertions without explanation, even after one of us here has shown that there is reason to think your assertion is in error.
It feels like a childish game is being played here that wastes time and goes nowhere. Is it worth the time? What do others here think? Have I over-stated the problem with Jacob's contributions here? And do we want to hear more from Jacob or not?
Jacob, are you interested in continuing in discussion here? If so, would you be willing to actually explain your points, your "truth" and your "logic;" and would you be willing to actually engage with responses made to your points without mere parroting of your assertions?
Steve,
I think one of the problems with the term 'objective' is that it has several different meanings. Objective can mean intersubjective, bare, or external to the self.
The three kinds of objectivity are largely independent. For example, my taste for donuts is not purely about donuts, but about my personal interaction with donuts. My taste for donuts is probably intersubjective because others will agree I like donuts. My taste may or may not be bare (if you believe in that sort of thing).
How do we test for externality? Correlation is insufficient. If all I know is that when I see a puppy I feel happy, I'll have a hard time establishing whether the feeling is internal (i.e., happiness my reaction to seeing the puppy), or external (I am measuring happiness rays emanating from the puppy).
What we need to do is to isolate the seeing and the feelings of happiness. If I can sense the happiness without knowing there's a puppy, then I will know that the puppy is externally a happiness transmitter.
Of course, this doesn't happen. We are unable to sense the happiness rays of puppies without first recognizing them as puppies. Isolation is a good basis for establishing whether a property is a subjective reaction to an external thing.
None of this implies that there isn't an objective principle behind our subjective reactions to the external. Pain is a subjective reaction to bumping my head on the door frame. The pain is not a property of the frame itself. The pain is internal. However, we may discover that there is an objective principle about chemistry, nerve cells and pressure that explains some aspect of my interaction with the door frame. (Yet, the pain is still not in the door frame, and door frames do not contain essence of pain or somesuch.)
As applied to morality... we may discover objective reasons why I identify theft as morally wrong, but that doesn't make theft wrong in and of itself. I would have to be able to sense wrongness without knowing the details of the act ahead of time to make that inference to externality. In principle, there is a way this could happen: universal justice. If the incidence of disease in a person correlated with that person's moral character, then we would be able to sense the morality of a person without knowing the details of their actions. For example, you would see a guy come down with terminal cancer and you would know that he was a murderer. Of course, this doesn't happen.
So, when I say that morality is not objective, I mean that it is not external. We feel good and evil like we feel pleasure and pain. Good and evil are as real to pain for us, but one person's good may be another person's evil.
Does it mean the less-objective becomes an opinion, trivial, meaningless or perhaps an illusion?Not at all.
I think that the things we care about most are subjective. Love, taste, and hope are all subjective.
Compare these with the theorems of non-commutative algebra which are objective, but not things you care much about.
So, I don't equate subjectivity with a lack of value, lack of meaning, or triviality.
I also don't think subjectivity is the same as illusion. I would say that an illusion is a circumstance in which you think a proposition is true when it isn't. You think there's an oasis ahead, but when you get there, you find it was an illusion. But love, taste and hope aren't illusions. They cannot themselves be illusions. They are how we feel.
What could be an illusion is what we predict from those feelings. If we hope to win the lottery, and we predict from this hope that we will win the lottery this year, that would be an illusion.
In my view, good and evil are largely intersubjective because many people will often agree on what is good and evil.
However, good and evil are not about external things in and of themselves. They are about how I feel about those things. There may be objective reasons why I personally feel the way I do about an act, but that doesn't mean I'm sensing 'ought'.
SteveK:
DL is wrong yet again—this time regarding his personal understanding of objectivity—as he was regarding the simple logic of what a proper definition is, and as he continues to be wrong regarding his own epistemological limitations. Please forgive me for repeating this, but it should be lost on no one how locked in his own mind DL is: DL claims the only things we can know are the patterns/ideas of the real things outside our minds. His reliance on Wikipedia-level information (per his latest reference), rather than taking the time and making the effort to come to a rigorous philosophical understanding of “objectivity,” is an insult to intellectual inquiry: anyone can look up a term in the encyclopedia and claim to understand the issues. Whether they indeed do understand the issues is a whole other matter. DL does not.
First, on what is an object existing external to our minds. The object of the external five primary senses is called a sensible because it can modify the senses. Second (and this must be stressed), all knowledge is acquired through the senses, but not all knowledge is sensory knowledge: one can see the sun rise and set today, but one must reason to understand the immaterial concept known as the “day after tomorrow.”
From the perspective of sensory (as opposed to intellectual) knowledge, the senses know the object itself, and not simply its substitute, the impressed species. (The impressed species is a concrete image of a singular object “observed” by the senses.) The reason for this is that the impressed species is a formal sign, not merely an instrumental sign.
(Digression: A “sign” is that which, over and beyond the impression it produces on the senses, brings to the mind something other than itself. Another way of stating this is that a “sign” is that which represents something other than itself to a knowing subject. (1) A “natural sign” is a species of “sign” that arises from nature without intentional human intervention: smoke is a “natural sign” of fire; a groan is a “natural sign” of pain. (2) An “instrumental sign,” in contrast, owes its signification to human reason and will—they are, in fact, human artifacts… like traffic lights or stop signs or warning signs or bells signifying class breaks. Mathematical “instrumental signs” are wholly arbitrary, for we can employ any symbol to signify a concept such as infinity. (3) Finally, a “formal sign” is wholly within the knowing subject, of which there are two: (a) within sense knowing it is the image; (b) within intellectual knowing it is the concept. Here’s an example that contrast all three: a footprint is a natural sign representing the earlier presence of an animal of some kind, but it is also a physical object itself. One grasps this physical object by means of an image and a concept. The image and concept of the footprint are formal signs; the footprint itself is a natural sign. From this we see that we grasp all natural and instrumental signs through formal signs, but we do not thereby confuse the different kinds of signs. DL, unfortunately, is confused in this regard.)
An instrumental sign must be known in itself before the thing it signifies can be known; a formal sign, on the other hand, is not known in itself, but it is the means whereby the signified object is known—contrary to DL’s claim. An example of a formal sign is the retinal image, or picture of the perceived object no the retina of the eye; man never sees the image itself, but through it he sees the object. In sensation, more generally, man knows the object itself and not simply the impression made by the object. If someone knew only the impression or pattern (as DL claims), he would be forever cut off from reality, and he would never have real knowledge.
I hope that makes clear why DL does not know what he’s talking about in (allegedly) parsing what “objectivity” means to his personal liking. By the way, here’s another point regarding DL’s being trapped in his own mind: “Real” is anything that can “stand in our way.” Here the original meaning of the word is revealed: “to object” as ob-iectum (thrown against) or ob-jicere (to throw at one), from which the English to object derives, makes it clear that an object is something which throws itself at one and therefore “objects.” G.K. Chesterton, to emphasize this point, asserted “There is an is!” Etienne Gilson (The Unity of Philosophical Experience) asserted the truth, “There are things, and I can know them.” There is no denying that real objects or things are before they do anything else: we don’t create reality with our minds—reality “objects” to us… waking us from the danger of DL’s Idealistic slumber. Now, consider the following example that demonstrates just how silly it is for DL to claim that the only things we can know are the patterns/ideas in our minds, and that the objects outside us are forever out of reach: DL should try staring directly at the sun on a clear day for twenty seconds to understand just how “objectionable” the sun can be. If, as he claims, the only we things we can know are the patterns in our brains, then surely DL will never be hurt by the real object called the sun. (Waring to DL: please don’t try this at home!)
Now, here is DL in his usual “I say one thing but don’t believe” mode: If all I know is that when I see a puppy I feel happy, I'll have a hard time establishing whether the feeling is internal (i.e., happiness my reaction to seeing the puppy), or external (I am measuring happiness rays emanating from the puppy). Sorry, DL… according to your rules you can’t even know the puppy, only the patterns within your epistemologically-constrained mind.
And here is DL with his usual psychologizing knowledge: So, when I say that morality is not objective, I mean that it is not external. We feel good and evil like we feel pleasure and pain. Good and evil are as real to pain for us, but one person's good may be another person's evil. Wrong, for the straightforward (albeit not rigorous) point Tom was making with his aesthetic argument on beauty and virtue: Objects and actions external to us can, in fact, be known, and are not wholly dependent on our “feelings” as DL would have us believe. Observing a third party torture a child is evil that is not dependent on my feelings. If DL can’t capture that with his symbolic logic and materialism, well, too bad. It’s the same reason he can’t understand the difference between (to steal from Tom) Eleanor Roosevelt and Britney Spears.
The rest of what DL provides in his latest comments fall per the above, and aren’t worth pursuing. So, to repeat a previous conclusion: DL doesn’t know what he’s talking about regarding a significant number of philosophical issues. He builds his knowledge base upon these mistakes, and you (as well as Charlie, Tom, and others) intuitively understand him to be wrong. I’m just trying to formalize for you why he’s wrong (sigh…) again.
Tom,
We agree. If the Bible is man-made then the “fit” is man-sustained. If it is God-made, then it is God-sustained.
When I used “metaphor” to try to explain myself, it didn’t seem to work. So I tried to use the phrase “linguistic resource” to talk about the concept of “truth.” My claim is that empirically it is the case that people/communities articulate and argue about different “truths” all the time. We can see this. What is so controversial about that?
I’m not concerned with squabbling over and ranking these “truths”--which is more “true” than the other “truths“. I like to leave that to the philosophers. As I’ve said over and again, I’m more interested in talking about and examining the way these “truths” are mobilized to support this or that course of action.
For instance, Tom, when you say that my comments are filled with “untruths,” I can analytically see how you are mobilizing this linguistic resource to disqualify/delegitimate my argument. You are using “truth” to explicitly undermine my claims and implicitly support your claims. That is the way I like to think and talk about “truth.”
I’m not sure what “classic logic” is. But I have tried over and again to explain the logic I’m applying. It is based on a sociological, relational or monistic ontology. If you like, I would be happy to give you citations to any number of people who have written about the this ontology and its contentious relationship to philosophical realism.
It is great that you use the basketball analogy because it points to the fact that we are often playing two different games that are based on two different logics. I personally don’t feel capable of explaining the social constructivist logic I’m using. Why? Because I don’t feel that you are willing to step outside the game that you are playing to even recognize the possibility that there can be alternative logics. (To continue with your example, while the basketball game is going on in the gym, some kids could be playing marbles over in the corner. Both are games and both work according to different logics) Until you can see that multiple logics can constitute any situation (as opposed to just “classical logic“ or “basketball“), then me talking about multiple logics and ontologies makes little sense to you. So, you are right, what is the point?
What constitutes a heretical/orthodox movement? Who decides that a movement is heretical and orthodox? Who benefits from that decision? Those are three great questions that one might ask. Your claim that “all” of these heretical/orthodox groups agree on some core points is a claim that I find difficult to swallow based on my readings of the histories of the Christian project. I would be more willing to accept that the groups that don’t agree with your claims and these core beliefs--are precisely the groups labeled as heretical, fringe groups.
You seem to want to blame me for our misunderstanding. But from my view, you are unwilling to step outside of the philosophical realist position that you argue for. I think you make little effort to try to understand my view of things--you want me to explain myself in your terms, to “fit“ my argument in your terms. As my father-in-law has wisely noted, effective missionaries learn the native’s tongue--they don’t demand the native to speak English.
“And do we want to hear more from Jacob or not?”--I didn’t know this blog was a democratic space. If you don’t want me to comment here, say so. But don’t pose it as a democratic question, because ultimately it is your decision.
I would love to continue to make comments here and continue a discussion. I am willing to explain as well as I can a relational understanding of “truth,” “logic” and so forth and their relationship to your blog posts. But me explaining it is only half the story.
Tom:
I'm breaking my vow of silence wrt the previous commentor: as a friend, I'm imploring you to be quite careful and to diligently stick to your guns. The last comment mimicked Genesis 3:1-7 so much I was almost brought to tears. Call me a crazy philosopher... but also call me concerned.
Jacob,
For instance, Tom, when you say that my comments are filled with “untruths,” I can analytically see how you are mobilizing this linguistic resource to disqualify/delegitimate my argument. You are using “truth” to explicitly undermine my claims and implicitly support your claims. That is the way I like to think and talk about “truth.”
Jacob, I sense you're trying to move toward some kind of explanation here. I appreciate that.
You moved from metaphor to "linguistic resource" to describe "truth." Then you have said,
My claim is that empirically it is the case that people/communities articulate and argue about different “truths” all the time. We can see this. What is so controversial about that?
The controversy is this: different people and communities articulate and argue about different opinions or beliefs regarding truth all the time. That is not at all the same thing as different truths. It is different opinions or beliefs. Some, at least, of those opinions or beliefs regarding truth are wrong; and therefore they are not truths; for whatever the definition of a truth is, it must at least be something that is not wrong. What is controversial about that?
You are concerned with dealing with the sociological aspects of how people and communities deal with their "truths." Fine. That's a worthy occupation. But you must bear in mind you are discussing "truths" in quotes; that is, things that people say they believe are true. Unfortunately you do not carefully distinguish between these "truths" and truth. It's hard to find any place in your comments to date where you distinguish between the two at all, carefully or otherwise.
You're not sure what classic logic is. In a nutshell, it requires at least a few core principles: the laws of identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle, for example. The only one of these we have discussed here is non-contradiction, which you have rejected.
If you would like to explain your sociological, relational, or monistic ontology (or your social constructivist logic) here, or else on your website with a reference here to that, please do so; otherwise we don't have any idea what you're talking about. Or if you don't feel ready to do that, please refer us to a concise source for that information.
You're right; so far I'm unwilling to recognize there can be alternate logics. There are two reasons for this. One is that you haven't explained any other logics, you've just told us there is such a thing. I can't accept anything that vague. The second is this: if you are using an alternate logic that denies the law of non-contradiction, I will be prepared to ask you, "Does that therefore mean the law of non-contradiction has been contradicted? And if the law of non-contradiction has been contradicted by a logic that disallows any meaning to contradiction, then what on earth are we talking about?" I'd have to see a coherent answer to that question before I could move out of this logic, and I admit to being highly skeptical that anyone can provide it. I'll take a look at your attempt if you have one to suggest, though.
You didn't get the point of my basketball analogy. I wasn't talking about two different games, basketball and marbles. I was talking about two people the same game together at the same time, but one of them using their own set of secret rules. Basketball and marbles can co-exist very happily. Basketball in which two teams are playing together, one of which is using their own private and secret rules, is impossible.
You have trouble agreeing that *all* movements from a Christian tradition agree on certain core principles. I don't know of any exceptions in the cases we've been discussing (forgiveness and virtue). Not even antinomianism (which possibly comes closest to this) claims that virtue is irrelevant to the character of God or the nature of reality. So I don't think you can substantiate yoru claim. If you can, it would certainly be a fringe group. And I would say they are wrong, by virtue of a plain reading of the Bible and strong agreement of an overwhelmingly vast majority of readers.
If that's not amenable to you, then you are in effect saying that it's impossible for any group, no matter how fringe or strange, to have a wrong opinion. That goes back to our disagreement about truth and "truth." I think right opinions are possible, and wrong opinions are possible. Do you?
You suggest I am at least largely to blame for our misunderstandings. I don't know--because I haven't seen you really try to explain yourself. You say that I have imposed on you a requirement that you explain yourself in terms I can understand. What's wrong with that request? If I understood only German, you might answer:
"Du hast nicht rechts, weil du always insist on classic logic!" I would understand you saying I was wrong, but I wouldn't understand your reason for that. Would it be wrong for me to ask you to stick to a language that communicates?
I'm actually willing to try to learn your language, but I'm not willing to hear you repeat yourself continually as it seems you have done. Give me a little help here, after all!
“And do we want to hear more from Jacob or not?”--I didn’t know this blog was a democratic space. If you don’t want me to comment here, say so. But don’t pose it as a democratic question, because ultimately it is your decision.
You're right that it's my decision. It was also my decision to ask for others' opinions.
Holo,
Wrong, for the straightforward (albeit not rigorous) point Tom was making with his aesthetic argument on beauty and virtue: Objects and actions external to us can, in fact, be known, and are not wholly dependent on our “feelings” as DL would have us believe. Observing a third party torture a child is evil that is not dependent on my feelings. If DL can’t capture that with his symbolic logic and materialism, well, too bad. It’s the same reason he can’t understand the difference between (to steal from Tom) Eleanor Roosevelt and Britney Spears.This is the area of discussion I've been trying to focus on since the beginning. I believe it touches on the heart of our disagreement with DL. Specifically, what does it means to 'feel' something is objective, subjective, right, wrong, moral, beautiful, immoral, etc.
I'm not talking about emotions here, and this is where DL gets it very wrong by saying knowledge of morality is emotions-based. You and I are talking about the non-emotive 'feeling' a person gets that says the knowledge of morality is about something real. It's the same 'feeling' we get that says purchasing is not stealing or that a sunken sailboat is not a sailboat anymore, it's a man-made reef. I probably could have said that much better, but I hope you get the idea.
SteveK:
Correct and well-said.
By the way, I'm not sure whether you're familiar with a sub-movement in analytic philosophy known as the "emotivism" school. They had some good things to say in asking philosophers to be careful about surreptitiously bringing emotions into analytical discussions. That, of course, is common sense, but their contribution was to formalize the thinking behind their ideas.
The bad part was that a good number of them then "idolized" this view and reduced all moral discussions, categories, analyses, imperatives, etc. to emotions. Atheists cling to such idols (as is evident in DL's contribution above and throughout) because they can't formalize the truths of morality with mathematics and the MESs.
As cool as Mr. Spock was, I'd rather be a human any day.
Steve,
You and I are talking about the non-emotive 'feeling' a person gets that says the knowledge of morality is about something real.Sorry to interrupt if you're in the process of composing a reply, but I have a couple of questions.
What does it mean to you to say that your "knowledge of morality is real?"
I think it's real, too. However, I think we'll make more progress if you feed me some more information. You obviously think that something in particular follows from the claim that knowledge of morality is real. What is that? IOW, why is it important to you that it be real?
It's the same 'feeling' we get that says purchasing is not stealing or that a sunken sailboat is not a sailboat anymore, it's a man-made reef.There's a physically observable difference between stealing and purchasing that is to be found in the definition of each action. I think that the difference is quite objective. Don't you see that morality is nothing like this? Morality is about whether stealing is good or bad. What experience determines whether it is good or bad?
Tom,
That is my point about me trying to explain myself in your terms, based on your philosophical realist ontology. I can’t do it in a logically consistent manner--I would contradict the relational logic that I am working from. A relational ontology that is consistent argues that the enunciation of “truth” is the production of “truth.” These aren’t merely “opinions” about the Real Truth--they are the only empirical “truth” that we have or can point to. They are “truth” enough for people to die over and that is “truth” enough for me. The distinction that you make between Truth and “truth” is not a distinction that I make. I do not infer beyond “truth” that there is a Truth that we are referring to when we talk.
I will do a follow up on my blog about a monistic ontology. But in brief here goes. The key difference between a relational ontology and a philosophical realist ontology hinges on language. Language does more than merely reference things--it constitutes the meanings of those things that we talk about. This is not an ontological dualism (e.g. philosophical realism) that presupposes a distinction between subjects and objects, words and things. And it does not argue that the aim of epistemology is to bridge the gap between words and things with a tighter “fit.” It is not about an “accurate” correspondence. Rather, words are actions, they are ways of doing things, of acting toward things--there is no gap between word and thing, they are interconnected. In Conversational Realities, John Shotter makes the analogy that words are akin to a blind man’s stick--words are meaning-making resources or devices that enable humans to get around in the world. We do things with our words--like when you delegitimate my claims by saying that they were filled with “untruths.” You are, in effect, parrying my attempts to articulate a different interpretation.
You didn’t get the point of my reinterpretation of your basketball analogy. I’m playing marbles in the corner of the gym where you are trying to play basketball--we aren’t even playing the same game. That’s my point about two distinct ontologies and logics.
Virtues may be relevant to the character of God. But my point is simply this: the virtues are not immanent to Christianity. They are imported in from other peoples/communities/philosophies. And I’m sure that you would call any group that argued counter to your claims as “fringe” and “wrong“--you disagree with them and calling them “fringe” and “wrong” are two ways of showing that difference and two ways of implying that your beliefs are mainstream and right.
For me, its not about people or groups having “wrong” opinions about things. People are always saying that other folks are “wrong.” For me, it is about the consequences of having a “wrong” opinion--sometimes it can get you killed, shunned, stoned, excommunicated, etc. So, yes people certainly can have “wrong” opinions and there are real consequences for being defined as such.
What’s wrong with you requesting that I explain myself in your terms is that if I do so, I must adopt your philosophical realist stance. But more than that, its poor missio-logical practice and strategy to demand the natives to speak English. An effective missionary joins an alien culture, while keeping one foot in their circle. The aim is to understand the Other so that the Other can understand You and the significance of what you are trying to convey.
Jacob, I don't know how you can progress through even your last comment as you have.
You said early in the comment,
[T]he enunciation of “truth” is the production of “truth.” These aren’t merely “opinions” about the Real Truth--they are the only empirical “truth” that we have or can point to. They are “truth” enough for people to die over and that is “truth” enough for me. The distinction that you make between Truth and “truth” is not a distinction that I make. I do not infer beyond “truth” that there is a Truth that we are referring to when we talk.
And later,
It is not about an “accurate” correspondence. Rather, words are actions, they are ways of doing things, of acting toward things--there is no gap between word and thing, they are interconnected. In Conversational Realities, John Shotter makes the analogy that words are akin to a blind man’s stick--words are meaning-making resources or devices that enable humans to get around in the world. We do things with our words--like when you delegitimate my claims by saying that they were filled with “untruths.” You are, in effect, parrying my attempts to articulate a different interpretation.
So I take that to mean that an enunciation of a "truth" makes it in some sense a "truth," and to contradict another's views "deligitimates it. What then are you doing when you write this?
Virtues may be relevant to the character of God. But my point is simply this: the virtues are not immanent to Christianity. They are imported in from other peoples/communities/philosophies.
It sounds for all the world like you're saying I was actually wrong when I claimed that virtues have a natural fit within Christianity, or that they were within Judaism from the very beginning (which is what I claimed; not that they were original to Christianity but that they are original within Biblical religion).
So if you can say that I was wrong about this, what has happened to my enunciation of "truth" becoming "truth," which is what you said is the way the world works? Are you saying I was actually wrong, or are you merely deligitimating my claim?
And what has happened to this?
For me, its not about people or groups having “wrong” opinions about things.
As I said, every time you disagree with me, it sure seems like you're saying I'm wrong. If not, then what do you mean? I'm not trying to pull tricks on you; those are genuine questions that I think reveal problems with the approach you've briefly explained here. I await your further explanation.
Then you said this:
What’s wrong with you requesting that I explain myself in your terms is that if I do so, I must adopt your philosophical realist stance. But more than that, its poor missio-logical practice and strategy to demand the natives to speak English. An effective missionary joins an alien culture, while keeping one foot in their circle. The aim is to understand the Other so that the Other can understand You and the significance of what you are trying to convey.
I have a request of you here. I think you understand my language. I do not, apparently, understand yours. I don't even (as missionaries generally do) know where to go to learn the language, because you haven't really told me enough to know what language you're speaking.
This is not a one-way attempt at persuasion. You are, it seems, trying to convert me. So, view yourself as the missionary. Try to speak my language.
(At the same time, I'm interested enough to try to understand yours, if you'll point me in some halfway accessible direction for it. But I don't accept that the burden is only on me.)
Oh, and one more thing: I don't think there are two games, basketball and marbles. There is either one or the other. There is such a thing as Truth, as understood through something like correspondence theory, or there is not. We can either rely on the law of noncontradiction (and other classical logic), or we cannot. If I'm playing by one game and you're playing by another, one of us is playing a game that is entirely out of touch with all of reality.
And here's yet another thing that just popped into mind. You said earlier "I'm not sure what 'classic logic' is." Did you mean that you have no prior exposure to the kind of logic I've been speaking of (law of noncontradiction, identity, excluded middle, etc.)? Or did you mean that you weren't sure what kind of logic I was referencing? Because if you are a student and devotee of post-structuralism without understanding what preceded it, it seems to me that would be (at least) a very unusual educational progression. I don't know, maybe they teach it that way at some schools, but it seems odd.
Tom,
When I wrote this: “Virtues may be relevant to the character of God. But my point is simply this: the virtues are not immanent to Christianity. They are imported in from other peoples/communities/philosophies.”
I precisely did not articulate it as the “truth.” Why? To quote the philosopher of science Ian Hacking in his The Social Construction of What?: each position is logically independent of the others and can be stated “without using elevator words like ‘fact,’ ‘truth,’ or ‘reality,’ and without closely connected notions such as ‘objectivity’ or ‘relativism.’ Let us try to stay as far as we can from those blunted lances with which philosophical mobs charge each other in the eternal jousting of ideas.”
But what was I trying to do? I wasn’t saying that you were “wrong.” I think that you are possibly ignoring the empirical history and contexts of that time and place when you posit that the virtues are “original within Biblical religion.” Original implies a kind of purity in formation. I’m saying that we need to look concretely at what various historians, archeologists, and so forth suggest about the relationship between Greeks (and other pagans) and Jews and early Christians. I’m betting on the side of interactions, relationships and unfolding history, rather than closed systems that have a linear and teleological development, as your argument suggests. I’m betting that the “virtues” are imported into the Biblical and particularly the Christian project.
Now, what does this argument do? It offers a different possible interpretation. If you think about it in zero-sum terms, then you could say that it is a counter to your parry. An attempt to challenge your claims--or to delegitimate your claims as the Meta-claim.
When you say this: “There is either one or the other. There is such a thing as Truth, as understood through something like correspondence theory or there is not.”
My response is this: Yes, from within philosophical realism, there is indeed “such a thing as Truth, as understood through something like correspondence theory or there is not.”
When you say: “If I'm playing by one game and you're playing by another, one of us is playing a game that is entirely out of touch with all of reality.”
My response is: Yes, from a philosophical realist perspective that is logically the case--some views are more or less in or out of touch with reality. But what about perspectives other than philosophical realism? Or said differently, it seems that neither marbles or basketball are out of touch with reality. Both seem to be firmly grounded.
Is it possible for two different games to be played at the same time in the same gym? And both of those games make sense to those playing in them? Yes, it seems so to me. What do you think?
Formal logic and symbolic logic--yes. Classic logic--no, never heard of it. Plus, its better to ask, I think.
DL:
What does it mean to you to say that your "knowledge of morality is real?"
It means I can see it carried out in the physical world and so I have knowledge of it.
Isn't this what "The Problem of Evil" is all about? People know something about evil in the world and they are asking questions.
Do people ask questions about something they have no knowledge of??
There's a physically observable difference between stealing and purchasing that is to be found in the definition of each action. I think that the difference is quite objective. Don't you see that morality is nothing like this? Morality is about whether stealing is good or bad. What experience determines whether it is good or bad?
Ahhh, we have reached the crux of the disagreement once again. You say stealing is observable in the physical world and that it is found in the (human) definition of each action. But I'm making the same claim: Morality is observable and is found in the definition of each action. Show me stealing and I'll show you morality.
Stealing has no physical or chemical properties, it's a description of a situation in context. Same with morality. Morality describes the situation in context.
What experience determines whether it's good or bad? That's the wrong question to ask. The context determines good/evil, not your experience. Does stealing depend on your life experience? Of course not. It depends on context. Context determines if the man taking a car is stealing it, purchasing it or borrowing it.
SteveK:
It does not matter what DL says about morality: per his own words, it's all relative, subjective, i.e., personal opinion. What does it ultimately matter? In fact, what does it proximately matter? Because DL wants it to matter? Who cares, and why should anyone care: DL closes off even any possiblity for agreement or disagreement—if moral categories, imperatives, etc. subjective, discourse is stopped dead in its tracks... and no action can be judged objectively. Period. Who cares what DL says?
Ah, but then there's the hypocrisy: God is evil, Christians commit evil acts... and DL spouts this in objectively absolutist terms. Dawkins says there are no such concepts as "good" and "evil," so what is the point of bellowing otherwise when applied to Christians... yet not applied (selective inattention) to the piles of bodies left in the wake of atheism?
Like I said, who cares?
SteveK:
Here’s a brief follow-up on why DL’s applying Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity is a non-starter—not only because he makes a monumental category error (physics with morality conflated… and this from the guy who claims the MESs can’t explain everything) per my highlighting his scientism at 03.10.07 - 4:26 am, but because he’s being deceptive in his use of a physical theory to impose alleged complete subjectivity to morality.
DL is deceptive (or a very poor physicist given he doesn’t seem to understand the theory) because he intentionally neglects to inform you of Einstein’s intent in the first place. Einstein, through his Theory of Special Relativity, made time and position relative to the observer precisely to maintain the absolute value of the speed of light and the invariance of basic physical laws in the systems of all observers.
What’s the point? Even if we close our eyes to DL’s foolish notion of conflating physical laws with moral laws (which is part of his materialist reductionism), his own original point collapses if applied consistently: he’s trying to convince you that moral categories / laws / imperatives must be subjective when, in fact, the theory demands absolute invariance of physical laws. Yet again, deception. Yet again, trying to have it both ways. Yet again, trying to force reasoned discourse to fit his own personal—and very small—worldview.
Jacob,
I'm going to fumble around for a while as a "missionary trying to speak your language." I'm sure I'll make mistakes, so I beg your patience. I also still ask you to try to speak my language.
I don't know yet what the basics of your post-structural logic are, or why one would prefer to adopt it over classical logic. (I prefer that term over "formal logic" or "symbolic logic," which I believe are ways of practicing classical logic. Maybe you prefer the term structural logic--you can let me know about that.)
So I ask myself, does Jacob perceive this logic as better than the classical form? It would certainly seem so, otherwise he would not be practicing and advocating it here. Better in what sense? Of course we couldn't judge it as more (or less) logical, because then we would have to have already decided which system of logic would rule that decision. So then, is it more internally coherent or consistent than classical logic? That would be difficult; classical logic does quite well on that count. And this post-structural logic, which is open to multiple competing truths, does not seem to hold consistency as one of its values.
So I don't know yet how one comes to prefer it. What does it hold as an epistemic virtue? What features of a thought or an idea would it recognize as that would lead a person to say, "I ought to believe this, rather than that"? Now, you have been careful to say there is no hierarchy of thought, no pecking order of that sort, yet it seems to me there is at least one point where there is, and that is the point where one chooses this form of logic instead of classical logic. Am I understanding correctly?
So while I await your answer to that, I muddle on with some speculation; and here you'll really have to tell me if I'm wildly off base, because I know I might be. I wonder, if one does not choose post-structural logic on account of its being more logical, or its being more internally consistent or coherent than classical logic, then what virtues does it have?
Does it commend itself by its seeming more humane than classical logic, by its admitting more "truths" into the fold, and not "deligitimating" persons' beliefs? Is the virtue one in the realm of humane-ness rather than epistemology?
Has it possibly arisen because certain philosophers saw the extreme difficulty over the years of coming to one truth, and gave up on the quest, concluding that the one truth has not been found because there is more than one truth?
Enough speculation. I have two questions before you now: what is this post-structuralist logic, and what virtue does it hold that causes you to prefer it over classical logic?
Steve,
Ahhh, we have reached the crux of the disagreement once again. You say stealing is observable in the physical world and that it is found in the (human) definition of each action. But I'm making the same claim: Morality is observable and is found in the definition of each action. Show me stealing and I'll show you morality.Just so I don't misunderstand you...
You are saying that stealing is evil by definition?
Would you say that stealing from the Nazis by the French Resistance was also evil by definition, but that the alternative was more evil by definition?
I mean, one can certainly declare a linguistic convention that says that evil means the following acts: theft, murder, rape, embezzlement, etc. That would be objective in my book.
The problem I see with this is that this doesn't connect good and evil with a moral imperative. If you say gay sex is evil and I say it isn't, I don't think we have a linguistic conflict. Or, put another way, if I agreed with your definition, I would have to say that I am an evil person because I like some things on your evil list (like atheism), but that being evil is the right thing for me to do.
I am saying that evil connotes some property of an act in a context. It's not just a historical or chance convention/definition. There's something about the act that makes me think I ought to commit it or prevent it. Good and evil seem to be connected with the appropriateness of an action, so I don't see how stealing can be defined to be evil if it can sometimes be appropriate.
Tom,
I'll address your questions in more depth in a post later today.
But for now, can you answer this query:
Is it possible for two different games to be played at the same time in the same gym? And both of those games make sense to those playing in them? Yes, it seems so to me. What do you think?
Tom:
I'm sorry, but he's playing games with you. Let's make the question easier: Can one both walk through and not walk through the same doorway at the same time and in the same manner (meaning all accidental categories being equal)? If he responds yes (and believes it to be "true" - Ha!), I suggest you avoid such sophisms like the plague. If no, then he must accept the First Ontological Principle of Non-Contradiction without reservation... but then there goes his whole world view.
Holo,
Sorry, I'm not playing a game. I'm asking a genuine question that derives from an analogy that Tom made about basketball and that I extended about marbles.
Can multiple games be played at the same time in the same gym and they all make sense to their respective participants?
Can basketall make sense to those playing basketball and marbles make sense to those playing marbles?
Tom,
What is interesting, though, is that Holo wants you to continue to shun me, to close me out. I bet he would be one of those commenters that would vote me off the blog if given a chance.
Just as you say you want to learn to speak a different language, to do something different, Holo would rather you not. Continuing with the language of parry and counter, Holo is acting defensively. He is on guard for any of my "sophist" tricks--a term that he seems to be using to devalue my words and position and implicitly envalue his words and position.
Why is Holo intervening in our discussion? How does his interventions fortify his arguments and benefit his claims?--these are good questions that are worth asking, I think
Of course this is possible, Jacob (referring to the 9:45 am comment). That was easy!
Does the analogy work for all of reality? That's the question. If there is one reality, then the analogy fails. We're all playing basketball, and the group who thinks they're off in the corner playing marbles have simply lost them.
SteveK:
DL’s example of the Nazi vs. French Resistance is a red herring, and very clearly demonstrates a unidimensional understanding of morality. Don’t buy it.
The three components that comprise what is properly termed a human act (object, circumstances, and end or intention) are factors that must be taken into consideration to determine whether any given act is morally good or morally bad. This approach not only enables one to comprehend the very “essence” of morality, it also establishes a foundation upon which his later argumentation and lines of reasoning will rest.
Digression on this point: To obtain a moral act (what is termed a “properly human” act), three components are necessary: (1) the morally-acting object, (2) the intention on the part of the individual who is acting, and (3) the circumstances. The moral object projects the question, “What is it that is supposed to be done?” The moral agent (the one who is intelligent, who can choose freely) must intend to act to that object. He must intend to do what he has indeed done. It might be that from the physical order he has done something that he did not intend to do. For example, he may pick up a radio at the beach and walk away with it because it looks like his radio, and he thinks that it is. In that case he has not committed theft, morally speaking. He has taken away somebody else’s property but he didn’t intend to do so. He is not subject to moral scrutiny because the intention was not there. The good act that the moral actor performs may no longer be a good act in certain circumstances.
Saint Thomas said, “to be good a thing it must be entirely good. It is made evil by any defect.” I may, let’s say, perform an act of alms giving. I may give money to somebody who is poor, do it in the context of the Church. The circumstances are good, the moral object of my action is good. But let’s say I’m doing it not out of love for this person who is poor. In fact maybe I harbor resentment, an ill will toward that person, but I know that I will gain great notoriety and great acclaim if I do this act. I’m really doing it for vain glory. Even though from outward appearances this could be a very good act, if my intention is bad, if my intention is not to give alms, not to express my love and charity toward this man in need, then that defect has initiated that act. It has disordered that act from within and is no longer the act that it appeared to be.
To summarize: to obtain a morally good act the object of the act must be good; the intentions must be upright and good; the circumstances must be the proper ones for that action to take place. (End digression)
This is why why DL is confused by and won’t accept stealing as an evil act that is modified by circumstances and intent. Moreover, the black-and-white view he takes limits his ability to understand what is termed a “sin of omission,” i.e., to not take from the Nazis in order to save the lives of others is also evil by privation of the act. But then, of course, this is not stealing in the sense of the Ten Commandments, is it? It is actually a relative good that prevents or weakens the ability of the Nazis to carry out a greater evil: to not act in such a case is to commit an evil. Also, note DL’s hypocrisy: he’s imposing upon you the demonstrably false idea that moral acts are subjective, but at the same time is trying to pin you down by claiming in absolute terms that stealing from the Nazis is wrong. That’s dishonest.
DL seeks to limit everything to black-and-white scientistic word games. His unidimensional categories and rules don’t apply, but he is hell-bent on making them apply. Power… kind of plays into the postmodern game, doesn’t it? Anyway, either DL does not understand this, or he does not want to understand it because it will undermine his subjective view of reality—which we’ve now seen applies to objective knowledge of real things outside his own mind... the bars behind which he is trapped by his personal epistemological rules.
Just so I don't misunderstand you...
You are saying that stealing is evil by definition?
No. I'm saying morality is observable and is found in the definition of each action. The physical action requires context though, but this requirement is the same for stealing. You can't determine stealing/purchasing/borrowing absent context.
Holo:
I understand what's going on. I'm doing what I can to find common ground and working from there.
Also, note DL’s hypocrisy: he’s imposing upon you the demonstrably false idea that moral acts are subjective, but at the same time is trying to pin you down by claiming in absolute terms that stealing from the Nazis is wrong. That’s dishonest.
Perhaps he is being dishonest. I hope not. Anyway, there are plenty of examples in life where things appear different when viewed from different perspectives, yet remain objective when viewed from the proper perspective so DLs argument goes nowhere with this.
I just want to know why he chooses to take exception to this known fact when it comes to morality.
Steve,
What is it about stealing that makes it evil? How do you know stealing is evil?
Suppose we devised some new action called "sporking". How would you tell if sporking was evil?
What is it about stealing that makes it evil? How do you know stealing is evil?
I've answered this already, but to answer in a different way I'll ask you: What is it about the physical actions and the proper context that makes it 'stealing'?
Steve,
What is it about the physical actions and the proper context that makes it 'stealing'?Taking an item is stealing when
1) by convention, the item belongs to another party,
and
2) the other party has not given consent that the item be taken.
All pretty objective.
Yet, accepting a gift is also objective.
Taking an item is accepting a gift when
1) by convention, the item belongs to another party,
and
2) the other party has given consent that the item be taken.
Obviously, the two situations are physically different. But why is stealing evil and accepting gifts not evil?
DL:
Your example of stealing is one where you assert the facts (both physical and contextual) and then declare that stealing has been observed/demonstrated. I can do the same with morality...
Taking an item (stealing) is immoral when
1) by convention, the item belongs to another party,
and
2) the other party has not given consent that the item be taken.
All pretty objective.
DL:
You didn't spell out the entire context in your example for stealing and neither did I wrt morality. There is more to it than what was written.
SteveK, Holopupenko and DL,
What do you make of the following statement?
I am saying that evil connotes some property of an act in a context. It's not just a historical or chance convention/definition.
Charlie:
I think that sounds right. An act within a certain context.
Steve,
our example of stealing is one where you assert the facts (both physical and contextual) and then declare that stealing has been observed/demonstrated. I can do the same with morality...Okay, Steve, this isn't making sense. You just restated my definition of stealing.
Taking an item (stealing) is immoral when
1) by convention, the item belongs to another party,
and
2) the other party has not given consent that the item be taken.
All pretty objective.
The form I gave was this:
(def.) A is B
Then you claim that
A is C when it is B
But, by definition, A is always B, so you're simply stating that
A is C
You're just stating your conclusion without evidence. (Earlier you denied that stealing is immoral by definition, so I'm assuming this is not a definition.)
Let me show you an analogy for why this makes no sense. Suppose I define compact celestial object.
(def.) A compact celestial object (CSO) is
1) a visible collection of atoms
2) between ten thousand miles and four million miles across
3) surrounded by the vacuum of space.
Then, in order to claim that CSO's are spherical, I say:
An object (CSO) is spherical when the object is
1) a visible collection of atoms
2) between ten thousand miles and four million miles across
3) surrounded by the vacuum of space.
It doesn't matter whether all my examples of CSO's are spherical. The term spherical isn't defined by the definition of CSO's. The definition of spherical is something logically accidental to CSO's. The universe could have been different so that CSO's were cubic. This only makes sense if we can tell the difference between cubes and spheres outside the context of specific examples.
Jacob,
You’re right that “If there is one reality, then the game analogy fails.” That is the basic standpoint of philosophical realism--that there is One Reality that can be grasped through the scientific method.
But what about a poststructural perspective? The game analogy works this way: the world is akin to the gym and in that gym (as in the world), a number of games are going on simultaneously. It makes no sense to say that marbles is any more or less in or out of touch with reality than basketball. As it makes no sense to say that the scientist is any more or less in or out of touch with reality than, say, a priest or preacher--they are both playing different games in the same gym (or world).
One of the problems is that there will probably always be fans (fanatics) that believe their game is the only game in town--there will always be basketball players that think marbles is not really a game and football players that think basketball and marbles both are illegitimate sissy sports. And there will probably be shrill scientists that think religion and religious folks are “crazy” and “irrational.”
I wouldn’t say that because poststructuralism can account for different views of “truth” without declaring one view Right and the rest Wrong that it is necessarily logically inconsistent. A rigorous poststructural methodology is internally consistent. Three illustrative social scientific examples are Patrick Thaddeus Jackson’s Civilizing the Enemy (an examination of post-WWII reconstruction) and Lena Hansen’s Security as Practice (an examination of the Bosnian war) and Iver Neumann‘s Uses of the Other (an examination of European identity formation). They offer the best explications to date of the poststructural methodology and its application to concrete data--at least in the field of International Politics. The real point here is that as in any rigorous analysis, they are internally consistent--or are at least striving to be.
And I might add that from a postructural stance, philosophical realism looks just as contradictory as poststructuralism looks to the realist. Why? These are two different paradigms looking across their frontiers at each other--of course the Other looks strange and bit askew.
But why take a poststructural stance? What value is there in assuming it?
One important reasons is that for social scientists, a poststructural analysis enables us to account for stability without appealing to invisible structures--like Capitalism or God or the West or any other metaphysical deceits that have helped organize positivist explanation. A poststructuralist accounts for what a philosophical realist presupposes--namely, stability. When a realist asks: Why did X cause Y? The poststructuralist asks: What constitutes X? And How is X stabilized in this particular context? What mechanisms are involved in its stabilization?
Two is that for faith, a poststructuralist perspective does not try to “fit” the world and God into a rationally explainable box. Or said differently, poststructuralism sees the universalist tendency in philosophical realism as destructive of the leap of faith. Poststructuralism does not try to confine God to rationality or a rationality explicable formula or set of methods. In a poststructural stance, there is room for an inexplicable God (and for a genuine leap of faith that does not reduce God to a hypothesis to be tested) and for scientific explanation.
Tom,
I'm a dumbas*. That last post that I addressed to myself is actually for you.
DL:
The term spherical isn't defined by the definition of CSO's.
You're right. It's defined within the confines of the proper context.
The definition of spherical is something logically accidental to CSO's. The universe could have been different so that CSO's were cubic. This only makes sense if we can tell the difference between cubes and spheres outside the context of specific examples.
The term spherical requires a proper context in order for something to be labeled spherical. Absent that proper context, things that were spherical are no longer that way. For example in the context of 2-D a sphere is no longer a sphere.
Everything requires a proper context so there is no such thing as "outside the context of specific examples".
You're asking me to look at things through the proper context so that I will see it as it ought to be. I agree with that approach. I'm asking you to do the same with respect to morality. Why do you refuse?
Tom:
That is the basic standpoint of philosophical realism—that there is One Reality that can be grasped through the scientific method. Well, now we can add plain ignorance to this fellow's rants. That is a narrow, self-serving definition of Realism. And, quite revealingly, for someone who has "no hangup" regarding truth, he states his position in absolutist terms hoping we believe him to be, yep, "true." And note his latest appeals to you against me: he implicitly appeals to a right and wrong, and to a truth... and yet is opposed to knowing truth. Postmodernism = Incoherence 'Я Us.
Go with your gut sense on this one, Tom: you are correct. I've studied this stuff and experienced first hand the devastation postmodernism's power-hungry approach leaves in its wake. Most of these guys think its profound when you start questioning truths school-age children know. In fact, their ideas are a joke. Like most topics in philosophy (= love of wisdom, which this fellow hand waves away as unimportant) to unpack this stuff would be beyond the reasonable bounds of a blog comment section.
Oh, and note, by the way, that the simple non-contradiction door example I provided was avoided: cowardice in facing reality is another clear indication of postmodernist trash.
Steve,
You have not defined what the criteria are for saying that an act is evil. Sure it depends on context, but in what way? Specifically?
Suppose a guy I don't know breaks my car window in the lot outside and steals my music CDs for his own listening enjoyment. Is that specific enough context?
I think it is. So tell me, what is it specifically about these facts that make the thief's act immoral? How do we know that the thief ought not do that?
Let me give you some possible answers:
1) Because I will feel bad - what makes me feel bad is evil.
2) Because the action causes more suffering than the alternative.
3) Because the action causes less happiness than the alternative.
4) Because God prefers we not perform this action, independent of its human outcome.
etc....
Charlie:
To address your question of 03.12.07 - 12:03 pm:
Evil is opposed to good (no surprise there), which is the integrity or perfection of being in all orders: material, moral, and spiritual. (Note that evil presupposes good.) Always keep in mind the transcendental (meaning philosophically, not spiritually) terms in the following principle: a thing is good, true, beautiful, a unity, etc. to the extent that it IS, i.e., to the extent it exists. A tree is “true” to the extent that you can know truths about the essence of a tree. It is “good” (in the transcendental—not moral—sense) to the extent it does well what a tree is supposed to do: grow, obtain and utilize nourishment to maintain its “metabolism,” produce fruit and seeds and hence make little trees, etc. A tree is “beautiful” when it is well balanced as a tree, i.e., to the extent its biological systems and its growth pattern reflect the perfection of “treeness.” A tree can suffer privations of these if it tries to grow in harsh climates with little water, too much sunlight, not enough insects to pollinate its flowers, etc. In such a case, a tree is “less than” good, true, beautiful, one, etc. These are NOT moral characteristics because a tree has no free will. (Wine may go sour and lose its “wineiness” but it can never be “evil” in the moral sense.) Moreover, all created things (apart from humans and angels) cannot lose their beingness unless they are destroyed: a tree always has its “treeness” just like a dog will always have “doginess.” A human being, however, can be “inhuman” in his evil acts. Which leads to the next point.
While evil can sometimes be applied as a thing that is evil, i.e., the subject affected by evil can be (loosely speaking) termed “evil,” it is more formally correct to state it as the ill by which a subject is affected. What this means is that the perfection of a thing is affected and it is made less than that perfection. NOTA BENE 1: evil is not a simple negation—it is a privation, i.e., a particular being may lack a good it requires to enjoy the integrity of its nature (like the tree example above). NOTA BENE 2: While this implies that evil is non-being (it is a privation), this does not imply evil is non-existent. Blindness may truly exist, but to say that “DL is blind” (metaphorically wrt to the ideas he can’t seem to grasp, or physically because of his poor eyesight) is not to attribute blindess to him as a thing possessed: the predicate “is blind” does not signify being but simply the reality of the lack of a perfection or the presence of a defect.
There are various ways of categorizing evil depending on the subject and circumstances, but a common division is (1) metaphysical evil, (2) physical evil, and (3) moral evil. The first is abstract and relates to the lack of complete perfection in the nature of a thing. Usually, it is improper to use evil in this sense: a dog is not a man, but even though that dog “lacks” the perfections of a man, the dog by its nature is not “deprived” of those perfections. The second evil is clear from the blindness and treeness privation examples noted above. The third, moral evil, is a disorder of the will. So, to counter what was stated earlier, evil does not “reside” in an action, for the action itself can never be evil: it is only a human (or angel) who commits the act with intention in given circumstances whereby the act can be termed “evil.” The will is ALWAYS attracted to and “pushes” one to do the “good” as known by a person’s reasoning capacity, but if a person’s reasoning is disordered and presents to the will what is less than “good” for the person—in some cases quite intentionally, then the act committed is evil to the extent it doesn’t meet the goal of fulfilling for what humans are destined.
Thanks Steve and Holopupenko.
Holopupenko, I especially appreciate the effort you made in discussing evil, and some ideas of mine have been clarified (physical evil versus moral evil, for instance.
It makes me a little embarrassed about what question I was actually implying, however.
That is, why is DL's statement not one of an absolute and objective evil/good, where evil/good is an existing element independent of the observer and his definitions?
SteveK:
With respect to your 03.12.07 - 11:05 am response, I’m afraid there is no common ground. To understand this, one should keep straight the important distinction between contradictory ideas and contrary ones. Permit me to employ Hegelian terms to make the point. (Hegel erroneously believed that truth was obtained and reality was actualized when the historical “pendulum” went from one extreme to another until it finally came to rest in middle. In fact, in certain narrow cases the result is actually this, but not because of the nature of Hegel’s false ideas.)
For example, the claim that objective truth does not exist is an outright error. It’s contradictory antithesis—namely, “There is objective truth,”—is true. In this case, a synthesis of thesis and antithesis to obtain common ground is out of the question: the two propositions are contradictories. You can’t have “partial” truth anymore than you can be “partially” pregnant, any more than you can “bend” a rule.
Contraries, on the other hand, are propositions that cannot both be true, but they can certainly both be false. In the latter case, the truth usually lies “above” both of the propositions: when it is proper or improper to use coercive authority to enforce issues, for example, can be better resolved if authority is provided a more substantial basis that respects both freedom and order.
The so-called “happy-medium” or “common ground” notion does apply to many rational choices: food should be neither too salty nor saltless; the temperature in a room should be neither too hot nor too cold. When, however, it comes to the exploration of truth, to philosophical controversies, to antithetical approaches to the world, or to opposed world views, the theory of the happy mean does not apply.
DL’s views are contradictory—antithetical—to any true philosophical worldview and certainly wrt to God’ existence. There can be no middle ground between subjective moral categories and objective ones, or to God’s existence or God’s non-existence. Otherwise you’d fall into the deadly trap of postmodernism, which believes simply thinking about such possibilities merits it intellectual dignity or a “wow” factor… when, in fact, lurking in the background is sheer power-grabbing.
DL:
Suppose a guy I don't know breaks my car window in the lot outside and steals my music CDs for his own listening enjoyment. Is that specific enough context?
If the sole reason is for listening enjoyment and if there are no other relevant data then this is immoral.
So tell me, what is it specifically about these facts that make the thief's act immoral? How do we know that the thief ought not do that?
Specifically it's the proper context, that context being theism. Go outside theism and things can, and do, look quite differently.
In the sphere example I gave, the sphere might appear to be a circle (disc) depending on who you ask and the context they choose to view it in. A sphere is not a sphere in-and-of itself. It's a sphere only within the confines of the proper context. That context being 3-D space.
In the same way, good might appear to be evil depending on who you ask and the context they choose to view it in. When viewed in the proper context of theism, good is as objective as a sphere in 3-D space.
You aren't a relativist when it comes to spheres and circles because you assume your context is the proper context which to view the object in question. But let me ask: "Who says so?" (to borrow a childish phrase). Who says your context is the proper context? It should be clear that "it depends on how you look at it" (a relativist favorite). You say sphere, I say circle.
Charlie:
I'll get back to you in more detail tomorrow. For now, I suspect DL (and certainly this is the case for the ill-informed Jacob) thinks that Christians hold that there are Platonic or neo-Platonic versions of good, evil, truth, etc. existing somewhere out there--floating about in "Idea" space. There aren't, of course, and it is a common straw man they've set up if indeed that is what they believe. These concepts "reside" in the objects (or other ideas) in as much as they exist and can be "percieved" my our minds (as opposed to merely our senses). DL can't see that because he's locked himself inside his own mind. Jacob intentionally refuses to see it because of the muddled postmodern baggage that polluted his thinking. Both are on the extreme ends of rational thinking on these matters.
Jacob,
I wasn’t saying that you were “wrong.” I think that you are possibly ignoring the empirical history and contexts of that time and place when you posit that the virtues are “original within Biblical religion.”
What in the world is your definition of wrong, then, if your charge against Tom here does not amount to him being wrong? Why point out his "possible ignoring" if it is not somehow deficient?
Aaron,
I'm not calling Tom "wrong" because I don't necessarily think I'm "right."
I think we have two different stories.
DL:
I'll also add that you aren't a relativist when it comes to stealing and borrowing because you assume (correctly) that there is a proper context in which to view the action correctly. You are an absolutist in that sense. No other context is acceptable.
But what about someone like Jacob who disagrees? There is no way to test or verify your absolutist notion of 'proper context' so you might as well give up on that. If there is no proper context which to view the action correctly then there can be no stealing, no borrowing, no harming, no helping, no good, no evil. There can only be IS.
Jacob, I have been giving some lengthy thought to your previous comment. But in regard to your 5:28 note to Aaron, what would be your response to this:
"The difference between our views is not one of story but of truth; and I, Tom, am right and you, Jacob, are wrong."
And I also have this two-part question:
If we just have two different stories, do you have some reason for preferring yours over mine? If so, is this reason the kind of thing you would present to some third party, as a reason that person should prefer your "story" over mine?
Back to your comment earlier, Jacob:
The game analogy works this way: the world is akin to the gym and in that gym (as in the world), a number of games are going on simultaneously. It makes no sense to say that marbles is any more or less in or out of touch with reality than basketball. As it makes no sense to say that the scientist is any more or less in or out of touch with reality than, say, a priest or preacher--they are both playing different games in the same gym (or world).
This works if the world is akin to the gym and in the world a number of games are going on simultaneously.
But if that is the case, then you have a definite, absolute statement about the world. You are saying that the world is a certain way, and it is not another way; and it seems that the world has to be that certain way.
So you are positing a system in which there is no certain way that the world exists, but only ways in which persons construct the world. But in order for that system to work, there needs to be a certain way that the world exists. So you are saying there is no certain way the world exists, and there is a certain way the world exists.
Is that possible in your logic? Or is this why you have been telling me all along that you don't like the law of noncontradiction?
Further in response:
You reference three examples of poststructuralism in use. I was really hoping that if you were going to explain it to me, I would not need to obtain and read three books to learn about it. Surely there must be a shorter version somewhere.
It may be my failing, but your explanation of poststructuralism's virtues in terms of stability is completely opaque to me.
Your defense in terms of faith carries little force in my mind, for it is filled with straw-man versions of faith:
Two is that for faith, a poststructuralist perspective does not try to “fit” the world and God into a rationally explainable box. Or said differently, poststructuralism sees the universalist tendency in philosophical realism as destructive of the leap of faith. Poststructuralism does not try to confine God to rationality or a rationality explicable formula or set of methods. In a poststructural stance, there is room for an inexplicable God (and for a genuine leap of faith that does not reduce God to a hypothesis to be tested) and for scientific explanation.
The "leap of faith" is one of those terms with a hundred definitions, most of them either unbiblical or tendentious. So for me to be able to affirm or deny its value in this context I would have to know what you mean by it.
But I think it's quite in error to conclude that philosophical realism "reduces" God to a hypothesis to be tested. It seems to me that your poststructuralism reduces God by making his reality optional according to who you're asking about it.
God is not, according to the Bible, entirely inexplicable, nor did he intend to be. He is beyond complete comprehension, but he intended himself to be known, truly though not comprehensively, according to his revelation to his people. So this point of yours for poststructuralism also seems to be a point against it instead.
Tom,
When you say: "The difference between our views is not one of story but of truth; and I, Tom, am right and you, Jacob, are wrong."
There are a couple of ways I might respond.
1). I might say one of the ways that you are legitimating your claims to have a superior argument than mine is through the use of "truth." The use of "truth" effectively bolsters the legitimacy of your story and implicitly undermines my story as "false." It is an "elevator word," to use the phrase of Ian Hacking--that ups the social value of your claim in relation to mine.
2). I might ask you to be more specific about your story. By being more concrete, we might be able to find more precisely what points we agree on and disagree on when you say that your story is the "truth" and mine is not. I would try to shift you away from the abstract claim of "truth" to be more concrete about it--about what exactly you mean by "truth."
3). I might simply say: yes, you would say that because that is a typical response from someone working from a philosophical realist perspective. I might then urge you to be more explicit and systematic about your philosophical stance--that is, rather than presupposing a philosophical realist ontology and a correspondence epistemology, let people know from where you are working. In science, transparency is highly valued.
You also said: "If we just have two different stories, do you have some reason for preferring yours over mine? If so, is this reason the kind of thing you would present to some third party, as a reason that person should prefer your "story" over mine?"
My response would be this: I would ask you what you want out of the story?
If you want to investigate the fit of the claim (e.g. its propositional truth value, whether its right or wrong) to reality, then we could subject the stories to an empirical test based on historical and archeological data. Based on which fit the empirical data better, I would argue that we should pick that story.
If you want to investigate what the stories do (e.g. how the stories work as resources that help organize our lives and give them meaning), then testing the story against data is not the best route. I would recommend that they pick neither story. Rather, I would suggest that they do an analysis of different sites where that story is articulated--with a keen eye toward what the story is doing in practice.
My answer would depend on what you want out of the story at hand.
One more thing, Jacob:
You've moved beyond empty repetition and use of unexplained catch-phrases. I appreciate that. Thanks.
Note: I've just re-set the comments system to recognize Daylight Savings Time (the U.S. switched to it yesterday), and time references may now be off by one hour.
Tom,
I’m honestly trying to explain poststructuralism to you. I bet you didn’t learn German in a blog session.
I’m sure my explanations are opaque. I can‘t be expected to fill you in on International Relations disciplinary debates--but unfortunately that is from where I happen to speak. And that is only one view on these matters. These are huge debates among theorists across the social sciences and the humanities.
But I know from my readings that usually in Christian writings for general audiences, the debates are chalked up to the scourge of “postmodernism” on campus--something else that probably has a hundred and counting definitions, but still works as Enemy number one for many evangelicals.
I don’t expect my defense of faith to carry force in your mind. You shouldn’t expect your defense of faith to carry weight in my mind. But hopefully we can respect the different views and see that they both have downsides and that they also bear fruit.
Explain to me why it is “in error to conclude that philosophical realism reduces God to a hypothesis to be tested.”
Faith in God is optional or possible--that is what agency is about, I would say. The ontological Reality of God is not a topic of concern for poststructural methodologies.
Why is it an error to conclude that philosophical realism reduces God to a hypothesis to be tested? Well, you're asking me to show what's wrong with a conclusion, but you haven't given me your steps toward that conclusion, so there's a high probability that my answer will address something other than what you had in mind when you said this.
But I did say it was an error, so I'll proceed to explain why. My answer has to be a general one; for I think it is generally an error.
First, let's distinguish ontology and epistemology. And let us acknowledge we're not just talking about any philosophical realism, but specifically of a theistic version. I'll call it theistic philosophical realism, or TPR for short. TPR most certainly does not agree with poststructuralism that "the ontological Reality of God is not a topic of concern." It takes it as a reality that God exists, that he is foundational to all of reality, and by the nature of his being, he just isn't subject to being reduced. To suggest that TPR makes him a reduced thing, a hypothesis to be tested, is quite odd: it says that if God truly and uniquely exists at the base of all reality (in a TPR sense), that makes him smaller than if he exists only contingently, dependent on each individual's belief about him.
That's a brief look at it ontologically. How about epistemologically? Is there something about TPR that makes our knowledge of God, our understanding of him, a matter of hypothesis testing? And if so, is that a "reduction?"
God's revelation of himself in history is full of demonstrations of his being and his power. God invites us to try him. See Psalm 34, for example: "Taste and see that the Lord is good." He often says, "Try me." The message Paul gave to the Corinthians was with demonstrations of the Spirit and of power. So God doesn't seem to mind being put to an epistemological test.
Still, some conclude from their experience or knowledge that there is no God. Does that reduce him? Ontologically he is not reduced by that. And even epistemologically, the story is not yet fully told. In the end, in the final day, as it says in Philippians, "every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." So God is not reduced even by those who for today fail to recognize him.
And I would suggest that poststructuralists who today consider God's ontological reality "not a topic of concern" will themselves find, on that day, that it actually is.
Steve,
You say that morality is objectively evil in the context of theism. IOW, when you talk about context, you don't mean the context of the action and its participants, but in the context of your complexion of philosophical beliefs.
However, I think this is a trivial statement. Of course it's one of your beliefs that stealing is objectively evil. What I am asking is WHY you think it's objectively evil within theism.
Now, I don't want to challenge all of theism in this thread. What I'm trying to do is establish what reasons you have to believe that stealing is objectively evil. Maybe you can't put your finger on why you believe what you believe. Maybe this belief is axiomatic, and you feel no need or desire to justify it. But maybe, just maybe, you have specific reasons why you believe that stealing is objectively evil and you can tell me what they are.
I'll also add that you aren't a relativist when it comes to stealing and borrowing because you assume (correctly) that there is a proper context in which to view the action correctly. You are an absolutist in that sense. No other context is acceptable.This is false. I have strong preferences for what is proper behavior, but that doesn't make me an absolutist. If you think that it does, then you don't really know what absolutism and relativism mean in a philosophical sense. Suppose a murderer does whatever is in his power to avoid capture. Well, his utmost efforts to survive free are not an indicator of his philosophical beliefs about his guilt, nor the objective status of his guilt. He's not an absolutist because he evades capture. He may not even believe he is innocent to evade capture.
Likewise, my utmost efforts to avoid theft , murder, etc. are not an indicator that I am a philosophical absolutist.
Charlie:
As promised, to follow up on your question yesterday as to why DL can’t “see” morality as objective outside his own mind, you’ll have to bear with me on this fairly lengthy explanation that includes what a universal is, how we know things, and why my previous point on transcendentals is so important.
The term universal (from the Latin universalis (unum versus alia, one against many) signifies a unity with reference to some plurality. It is a “something” that can be communicated to many, as “dog” is understood by many to apply to a plurality of particular animals who share a common general essence. There are three distinct senses:
(1) in the context of being, an essence is said to be universal when it is possessed or can be possessed by many individuals (many dogs possess “doginess”)
(2) In the context of causality, a cause is said to be universal when it is capable of producing specifically different effects.
(3) In the context of thought, a concept, an idea, or a term is said to be universal when it signifies a certain plurality. This plurality is signified in two ways: (a) by representing many, e.g., many individual men are represented by a single term or concept; and (b) by being predicable of many, e.g., the specific term man can be said univocally of many individual men.
The term universal is a metaphysical concept concerning the objective, ontological status of essences that are perceived universally by the intellect and that are seen to exist in many individuals. For Plato and the absolute realist tradition universal essences have, as such some kind of reality independent of the mind. (Mathematicians and physicists tend to be Platonists because they believe in “laws”—as if matter could be anthromorphized to follow rules!—that exist somewhere out there.) For Aristotle and the tradition of moderate realism essences exist as individuals in reality but these individuals possess a real basis in reality for the intellectual perception of universality. For nominalism (what DL tends toward), only words are universal, since one word can be applied to distinct individuals that appear to be similar, but have no ontological similarity in reality in any way. For conceptualism, universal terms signify universal concepts that are mentally constructed and correspond to nothing in reality (what Jacob tends toward).
Broadly speaking, a universal is any intellectual concept (as opposed to concrete sensory image) obtained by abstraction Both sensory and intellectual knowledge are real and valid forms of knowledge, but whereas sensory knowledge only pertains to concrete individual entities (this tree), intellectual knowledge is universal (trees are known through the essential aspect known as “treeness”). Universal knowledge is an abstraction that is actually a mental separation of the essence from the concretizing individual/accidental aspects of an entity: an object is intellectually cognized as a universal because the intelligibility of any physical thing is shrouded by its matter. The matter is what individuates it—distinguishes it—from the universal aspect of the thing: this oak tree may have characteristically-shaped leaves that are green in the summer, while this maple tree has its own characteristically-shaped leaves that are red in the autumn, but we know both “treeness” and “leafiness” as universal terms because when we obtain the concept (as opposed to image) of a tree or a leaf in our minds, it is stripped of its material, individuating, accidental aspects.
(Digression: By the way, since matter is what individuates concrete individuals within a species, because angels “have” no matter, the only way they can be distinguished from each other is that each individual angel is its own species based on what function it plays in God’s Providence. Try to conceive of (because you won’t be able to imagine it) the most perfect aspects of what it means to be a human being all rolled into one individual who has nothing but universals and you begin to gain the smallest insight into how far above us each angel is. End digression.)
We know trees through their forms which become a part of us without inducing material change: in a sense we “become” the tree—it (it’s essence) “objects” to us, kind of “throwing itself” into our minds. That is why we can know any individual tree and trees in general for what they are: we can know their essence—the “bare” it-ness—in contrast to DL’s closed-mind. (I’ve already explained why DL’s idea is so silly—ruining his ability to know anything outside his own mind, including science—and it is this he so fears to address.)
(Digression on how we know anything: What is required in any object for it to be knowable by the human intellect is that it be, or, at least, that it be able to be. For this reason the total or the adequate object of the intellect is being—whether corporeal or spiritual. (You know that something is before you know what it is: the ontology must precede epistemology—to think otherwise is to believe the knowing subject creates reality.) Harkening back to my previous response regarding transcendentals: the intellect knows such being from the viewpoint of its truth or intelligibility, while the will knows such being from the viewpoint of its attractiveness or its repulsiveness as informed by the intellect. The following analogy may help: the soul is to the body as the intellect is to the senses. This analogy may also help (warning: it is weak because if relies on images rather than concepts): the form of an object (it’s “whatness”) is to the knowing subject’s mind as the imprint left by a ring is to the wax in which is imprinted—in a sense the was “becomes” the form of the ring, except, since our minds are immaterial, by knowing something our minds “become” the immaterial “whatness” of the object known. End digression.)
Anyway, the sensory-accessible is the phenomenal in things (their accidental aspects such as size, color, smell, etc.): these aspects project its concreteness. However, the meaningful aspect of any entity—its essence, its “whatness,” is the stable, definable object of intellectual insight. The “whatness” know as “treeness” is only accessible to the intellect: it is a universal because if can be said of many things indifferent to individual differences in quantity, quality, time, place, etc. When a child asks “what’s that?” we can respond “that’s a tree” and eventually the child learns to intellectualize what it means to be a tree. Atheists and postmodernists are like crotchety old men who don’t want to know anything new—in fact anything at all—apart from their personal, subjective presuppositions. They will—they impose—knowledge rather than seek it, and hence why the nature of what they propose is fallacious.
Charlie: all that is a summary introduction to a fascinating aspect of epistemology as deeply dependent upon ontology. I’ve tried to explain in yesterday’s comment, and as continued in today’s, why we are the ones who can know goodness (or moral categories, imperatives, concepts) in the beingness and acts of real things. But in order to do so we need to intellectualize—we need to use our minds and to open our minds to being affected by real existent objects outside our minds (DL won’t permit this). The brute animals can’t intellectualize: they have only sensory knowledge—albeit at a quite sophisticated level—and instincts. They will look upon the scene of a man stealing candy from a baby and either “think” to themselves “Hey, that smells good… can I have some candy?” or they will react to “protect” the child from the intruder if their internal “videocam” has been habituated (not taught!) to react that way per certain rewards or punishments.
You and I, on the other hand, “see” the injustice perpetrated—and it is not only (despite DL’s whining to the contrary) dependent on us (the knowing subject) but on the objects and what they are undergoing. We “see” and know the humanity of the child in the child itself, but in context—per SteveK’s point—we see and know the baby, the act, the intent, the circumstances, and the injustice, and hence we can know the moral evil we experience. But, hey, DL’s already asserted that we can only know the “patterns” or ideas and not the actual things out there… so within the closed confines of his own mind, he’s correct. He demands we confirm and verify (subtext: only using the MESs in a positivist manner), but he himself has closed off our ability to confirm and verify. Sad, really. You’ll note that DL uses a grade-school-level approach to dismiss ontology—especially as it relates to metaphysics—because he can’t “see” the concepts per his own subjective and closed-minded rules of the game. Jacob dismisses philosophy altogether as unimportant… all while philosophizing himself. Their ideas cannot be taken seriously precisely because they are so destructive of knowledge (including science) and truth.
Okay, Jacob, that previous comment answered a question from you. I have some more for you.
One, I go back to my earlier question of what virtues exist in your theories of truth or logic that cause you to prefer it over mine. You haven't said a word of explanation about your logic yet, despite my several requests, but you have addressed some things relating to truth or reality. The values you have listed are, as far as I can tell (and copying only from this thread for convenience's sake):
As I’ve said over and again, I’m more interested in talking about and examining the way these “truths” are mobilized to support this or that course of action.
...
A relational ontology that is consistent argues that the enunciation of “truth” is the production of “truth.” These aren’t merely “opinions” about the Real Truth--they are the only empirical “truth” that we have or can point to. They are “truth” enough for people to die over and that is “truth” enough for me.
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Language does more than merely reference things--it constitutes the meanings of those things that we talk about. This is not an ontological dualism (e.g. philosophical realism) that presupposes a distinction between subjects and objects, words and things. And it does not argue that the aim of epistemology is to bridge the gap between words and things with a tighter “fit.” It is not about an “accurate” correspondence. Rather, words are actions, they are ways of doing things, of acting toward things--there is no gap between word and thing, they are interconnected.
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You also said: "If we just have two different stories, do you have some reason for preferring yours over mine? If so, is this reason the kind of thing you would present to some third party, as a reason that person should prefer your "story" over mine?"
My response would be this: I would ask you what you want out of the story?
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One important reasons is that for social scientists, a poststructural analysis enables us to account for stability without appealing to invisible structures--like Capitalism or God or the West or any other metaphysical deceits that have helped organize positivist explanation. A poststructuralist accounts for what a philosophical realist presupposes--namely, stability. When a realist asks: Why did X cause Y? The poststructuralist asks: What constitutes X? And How is X stabilized in this particular context? What mechanisms are involved in its stabilization?
From this, though (as I said before) that last paragraph is not at all clear to me, I conclude your conception of truth is pragmatic: truth is whatever leads us toward some (so far unstated) desired end, relating to some action or other. Then there is:
each position is logically independent of the others and can be stated “without using elevator words like ‘fact,’ ‘truth,’ or ‘reality,’ and without closely connected notions such as ‘objectivity’ or ‘relativism.’ Let us try to stay as far as we can from those blunted lances with which philosophical mobs charge each other in the eternal jousting of ideas.”
...
I might say one of the ways that you are legitimating your claims to have a superior argument than mine is through the use of "truth." The use of "truth" effectively bolsters the legitimacy of your story and implicitly undermines my story as "false." It is an "elevator word," to use the phrase of Ian Hacking--that ups the social value of your claim in relation to mine. ..
From that last set of quotes it seems that another value you have in epistemology is that no person claim that their truth is higher than another's.
So I'm going to hazard a guess that the virtues you see in poststructuralism, that cause you to prefer it over correspondence theories of truth, are (1) pragmatic usefulness of "truths," and (2) egalitarianism. This is your chance to correct me if I'm wrong.
Of course, that's an odd thing to offer, in a way. If I have this theory of your beliefs, who are you to tell me it's wrong? My theory may be useful to me, and it's very unegalitarian of you if you tell me I've made a mistake. But I still live in a correspondence-theory kind of a world (even as I try to understand your thinking), so I'm pretty much impelled to make that invitation to you anyway.
Also: I continue to await your explanation of post-structural logic, and your response to my comment at 9:15 last night. That was the one in which I suggested that your system seems very incoherent/self-contradictory, in that it requires that there be one certain way the world is in order for you to be able to sustain an argument that there is not just one certain way the world is.
when you talk about context, you don't mean the context of the action and its participants, but in the context of your complexion of philosophical beliefs.
You can't talk about one without the other. Q: Which context do you consider to be the proper context? A: It depends on your philosophical beliefs.
Of course it's one of your beliefs that stealing is objectively evil. What I am asking is WHY you think it's objectively evil within theism.
You're sounding more like Jacob all the time. It's like you're asking me why I think there is a God within theism, or why I think that Jesus is God within Christianity. Can your questions get any more ridiculous?
Maybe this belief is axiomatic, and you feel no need or desire to justify it. But maybe, just maybe, you have specific reasons why you believe that stealing is objectively evil and you can tell me what they are.
More ridiculous questions. Read my response in the paragraph above. Let's turn this around to see how ridiculous your questions are.
You believe in objectivity. Is that an axiomatic belief or do you have specific reasons why you believe that certain concepts/objects are objectively objective?
You believe in stealing. Is that an axiomatic belief or do you have specific reasons why you believe that certain actions and intentions are objectively stealing and can you tell me what they are? Example: why can't intent be left out of your belief? I'm looking for an objective reason why intent must be considered, or maybe it's just a personal feeling you have about the way the world works.
Tell Jacob that you believe the law of non-contradiction is objective and see where that conversation takes you.
I have strong preferences for what is proper behavior, but that doesn't make me an absolutist. If you think that it does, then you don't really know what absolutism and relativism mean in a philosophical sense.
I'm not asking you about proper behavior. Read this carefully: I'm asking your about which context is the proper context in which to view something.
One man's circle is another man's sphere. One man's stealing is another man's helping. One man's kindness is another man's hate.
Is stealing really stealing, or is it helping? If there can be no proper context in which to view the action then neither one applies. It situation just IS.
On the other hand, if there is a proper context then you are an absolutist in that sense. You are an absolutist in the sense that intent should always be considered in cases of stealing, and that hitting with intent to harm should never be considered stealing.
Tom,
Theistic philosophical realism sounds pretty idiosyncratic to me--a sort of make it up as you go along philosophy. I say this for two reasons: 1) because none of the key names of realism--Roy Bhaskar, Hillary Putnam, John Searle--mention a word about God. Pragmatically speaking, this isn’t a problem. But for someone claiming to be a realist, it seems to be a problem. 2) When these guys posit an ontology, they do not claim to know the nature of that ontology--they just posit an ontological reality separate from the ways we know that reality. This is problematic because on several occasions you have described God in an intimate way--as if you know His wants, desires, motivations, rules, etc. The question really comes to mind--how do you know these things about God? Through correspondence or revelation?
So, on these two accounts, I have a problem even calling you a philosophical realist. Why not just call yourself a theist that has an affinity for a correspondence theory of truth? That would seem to be a more “accurate” description of your position.
But more to the point, I wasn’t saying that TPR made God into a hypothesis to be tested. I didn’t even mention TPR, as it seems to be your idiosyncratic construction.
Let me be more clear about my claim. The philosophical realism isn’t really the problem. It is the correspondence theory of truth that you attach to your TPR that is the problem.
Why? To answer that I will quote John Caputo: “Religious truth is not the truth of propositions, the sort of truth that comes from getting our cognitive ducks in order, from getting our cognitive contents squared up with what is out there in the world, so that if we say ‘S is p’ that means that we have picked out an Sp out there that looks just like our proposition. Religious truth belongs to a different order, to the order or sphere of what Augustine called ‘facere ceritatem,’ ‘making’ or ‘doing’ the truth, even if, especially if, what we are called upon to do exceeds our powers and we are asked to do the impossible.”
So, it is the correspondence epistemology that you combine with your TPR ontology that essentially makes God a hypothesis. Or, more specifically, because the aim of the epistemology is to match up “God” with God, it makes God into a hypothesis. As a result, you get best selling books like Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict. These are books that, in effect, try to test the hypothesis. They try to show us that the evidence for “God” does indeed match up with God.
One more point, poststructural methodologies do not concern themselves with the Reality of God because it is a metaphysical question of faith. Either you have faith or you don’t. Poststructural methodologies bracket questions of ontological Reality (they leave it to the philosophers to joust over in their endless debates) and examine the concrete effects of people doing things together (e.g. human practices that organize our lives and give them meaning).
I’ll respond to your other post later today.
Tom:
Be very careful of what is being presented as, well, "true" by someone who doesn't have a "hang-up" about truth. I don't have time to get into this... yet—but suffice it to say the "experts" he throws at you have certain agendas.
Searle, for example, is a substance materialist and a property dualist. On the one hand Searle believes intentional properties can't be reduced to physical properties, yet on the other hand he asserts (without demonstration!) that we don't need substance to explain in what properties inhere. It's like saying your accidental properties (your height, weight, color, position, age, etc.) may exist, but the person (the "what" and "who" you are) is not there. (They will try to deny this, but their "logic" takes them there anyway.) Searle seems confused about trying to get out of naturalism, but still adhering (practically speaking) to its principles—hence why these muddled thinkers try to eliminate First Principles: they want to freedom to talk trash and not be criticized for it... even if that trash undermines their own ideas. Searle is also confused over the distinctions among "signs" I provided earlier: there's a certain linguistic reductionaism present in his ideas that avoids the real thing pointed to by the words we use, and as a result Searle produces little more than language games—like his infamous and roundly-criticized Chinese Room fairy tale. If there's anything I can agree with Dennett upon, it's some of the criticisms he directs against Searle.
Finally, I'd like you to notice something that's on the level as DL's not understanding (as one example) what a proper definition is: Jacob's throwing around "theistic philosophical realism" is a cute term made up to criticize a straw man, and in a real sense it is so backwards I can't even reach my zipper (to borrow Charlie's line). It betrays a deep ignorance of what realism and ontology are all about.
they want to freedom to talk trash and not be criticized for it... even if that trash undermines their own ideas.
Well said!!
Tom,
Scientifically speaking, I can agree with the pragmatists conception of truth--that which brings agreement and coordination is more true than less. I value it because it is tied to action and doing and effect, rather than correspondence.
In terms of faith and religious truth, no my understanding of truth is not pragmatic. It makes perfect sense to me to say that God is Truth, Love, Beauty, Justice and Light. This isn’t a hypothesis and I don‘t even think it is possible to “test” this or find enough evidence to support this claim. To me, those are ridiculous efforts that are basically a waste of time. Why? Because I think that many folks are ultimately trying to measure their faith up to scientific standards--they are caught up in the modern moment.
Or again to quote Caputo: “While rejecting the modernist idea that science is the exclusive depository of truth, we should have learned something from modernity--postmodern means having passed through and learned a thing or two from modernity--namely, that religious truth is true with a truth that is of a different sort than scientific truth. Religious truth is tied up with being truly religious, truly loving God, loving God in spirit and in truth…. Loving God in spirit and in truth is not like having the right scientific theory that covers all the facts and makes all the alternative explanations look bad.”
When you say this: “From that last set of quotes it seems that another value you have in epistemology is that no person claim that their truth is higher than another's.” I do not value all “truths” equally--some things I accept and some things I do not. To act, one surely has to be able to draw a line.
Poststructuralism “seems very incoherent/self-contradictory.” Look at where you are looking from. Imagine going into downtown Jakarta--I bet it would seem pretty darn incoherent, confusing and probably contradictory to your everyday life. But again, look at where you are looking from. You stand in one paradigm--some kind of a philosophical realist position that you have invested much time and energy in coming to understand and defend--and your looking over at another paradigm. It would be amazing if it weren’t a bit unclear.
But again, let me point out that from a poststructural perspective, philosophical realism looks “contradictory.” Two central criticisms that people have leveled at realism is this:
1). Realists presuppose ontological structures prior to analysis--in your case, this presupposition would be God and among social sciences this might be some structure like Capitalism or Anarchy. The criticism is that these stabilities or structures are posited and thus remain unaccounted for--unexplained. The aim of poststructural analysis is to account for these structures--to account for how they are stabilized. So, again, they look at how people use “God” to organize their day and make it meaningful. They look at how people make “God” into a structure around which they carry out their everyday life.
2). Realists offer no way to have unmediated observation--observation is always communicated. Or said differently, realists cannot show poststructuralists how their language does not constitute the meanings of their observations. The criticism hinges on a fundamentally different view of language. But the point still stands, from a poststructural perspective, realists seem contradictory and unable to account for their own language use in constituting their observations.
Poststructuralism doesn’t “require that there be one certain way the world is.” Like the question of God, it leaves metaphysics to the philosophers. Poststructuralism argues that the “world you know” is constituted. In other words, there are many possible worlds/communities/ways of being--as is historically and empirically the case.
I’m not sure how to answer your question about logic. What exactly do you want to know? Have the above answers helped?
Jacob:
The question really comes to mind--how do you know these things about God? Through correspondence or revelation?
That's a non-question. We know these things as truth (correspondence) by revelation. Note that I'm not conflating types of knowledge here. We've discussed this before. There is true experiential, relational knowledge of God, and there is true propositional knowledge about God. Both are initiated by God, in his revelation of himself to persons. Both are incomplete, not exhaustive. Both nevertheless have a share in real truth.
Caputo has a position that you quote here, which sounds similar to John Hick's view that God-language has no actual referent in reality. Caputo's view, judging from this quote, is that there is no propositional knowledge of God. Alvin Plantinga took Hick's view apart in Warranted Christian Belief, showing that those who would deny that we have any knowledge of God are (I'm summarizing here very incompletely) saying thereby that they know something about God: that he is unknowable. This is self-referentially defeating. Further, it leaves no room for the quite unremarkable possibility that God is the kind of God who can actually, successfully communicate something about himself to us.
Your paragraph on making God an hypothesis doesn't address anything I said about it. As I said, God has invited us to test him, to try him, and that doesn't reduce him any.
I spent 11 hours with Josh McDowell last Thursday, by the way--eight of those in direct conversation, following a 3-hour seminar he gave. He doesn't follow God as he would a scientific theorem. He follows God as God.
And Plantinga, in the same book, helps make it clear that God's revelation to us (while supportable by apologetics approaches) is not dependent on it.
Finally, you said,
Either you have faith or you don't.
Either there is a God or there isn't.
Poststructuralism doesn’t “require that there be one certain way the world is.”
But I think I showed that it does, based on what you said earlier. Do you want to just hand-wave that away, or do you want to respond to it?
I like the way in both your last two comments you have been arguing philosophy by saying there are certain vital questions you "leave to the philosophers." You are doing philosophy; but there are some questions you don't care to deal with. Funny.
About pragmatism: you have said that in order to be able to act you have to be able to draw a line. You said that in some fields of knowledge your approach is pragmatic. In other fields it is not. Where do you draw that line?
As to post-structuralism being incoherent/self-contradictory: it certainly is so, according to classical logic. No doubt about that. You tell me that is because I'm viewing it through foreign eyes. But you won't tell me by what logic it is coherent. Classical logic has certain standard axioms, beginning with the big three (identity, noncontradiction, excluded middle). Does post-structural logic have any axioms at all? That's the logic question I've been asking you to address.
Your two points of philosophical realism's being contradictory:
I'm not going to worry about social scientists and Capitalism or Anarchy; I'll stick with the question of God. Is there something contradictory about God existing prior to analysis? I don't see how--unless you are viewing God as a social construct. But then you are the one traveling in our country with foreign logic.
Your second point must have more behind it than you have expressed here. Observation is not always communicated--my observations out the window here are not communicated; my awareness of God is not either. You said, "realists cannot show poststructuralists how their language does not constitute the meanings of their observations." I think that means you think there is no language-independent meaning; but does that translate to there being no language-independent reality? Why should that be so? And why should it not be possible for God to communicate truly (not exhaustively) with his creatures, by all kinds of means: propositional revelation, demonstration of his actions in history, direct encounter with the Holy Spirit, and so on?
Tom,
When you say: “We know these things as truth (correspondence) by revelation.” You are conflating two logically distinct kinds of “knowledge“--revelationary knowledge of religious truth and modern correspondence theory of scientific truth. From my view, you are stuck in the modern moment. You don’t seem to be judging revelationary knowledge by scientific knowledge. Rather, you seem to be conflating them into one whole with which you legitimate your view of God.
Josh McDowell’s book presupposes a philosophical realism. And the exercise carried out in the book, in my view, basically comes down to testing the evidence against the Reality of God. You can call it what you want. I’m sure Josh calls it something too. But that is the way I see it.
“Either there is a God or there isn't.” I agree. Its funny those various points we agree on.
Tom (SteveK, Aaron, Charlie, etc.):
The grace of God does not destroy human nature, it perfects human nature. This is a deeply true principle echoed in various ways by the Fathers, the Scholastics, and built upon by solid theologians up to our day. (My favorite modern expression of theosis is C.S. Lewis saying in A Grief Observed, “God said to this hairless monkey, ‘get on with it, become a god.’”) Of course, it is our faithful assent to Him—our participation in His Plan—that makes us open to the outpouring of His grace. That grace then perfects us to the extent that we trust in Him, etc., etc.: we become new creatures in Christ—including the perfection of our capacity to reason. This is where I open myself up to criticism—no doubt rightly deserved: we as Christians can “see” because of the gift of faith, because to the extent we believe, our whole being (including our ability to reason) is a recipient of His grace. I go after DL’s and Jacob’s false (and in some cases deadly) ideas like a banshee, and tend to neglect the fact that these guys probably can’t “see” in the first place. It tears me up to see such destructive ideas promulgated, so much so, in fact, that it’s sometimes difficult to keep between the navigational beacons and stay focused on the ideas themselves. You guys know—intuitively as buoyed by God’s grace perfecting your reasoning—these ideas leave much to be desired. In this respect, I think it was Elie Wiesel who said something like the following quotation that I try to keep in mind… failures notwithstanding: “I don’t wake up in the mornings cursing Hitler, but praising God.” Anyway, enough of that.
Elie Wiesel also has a wonderful quote that applies to the incoherence of postmodernism: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” To this I would add, the opposite of logic and truth are not incoherence and falsity, it’s indifference. (He also has one on indifference: “Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.”) Poststructualism is indifferent to truth for it promulgates the false notions that we can be “more free” and sound “more profound” while muttering meaningless or incoherent assertions. Poststructuralism promotes the idea, for example, that one should not be confined to the “strictures” and “confines” of melodic composition—that banging away at a keyboard randomly truly empowers and frees the individual. Maybe. But it’s certainly not music that’s produced. Poststructuralism enjoins us to move away from the concept of a conductor leading the orchestra or an author writing to convey beauty and truth… with the result that the orchestra is reduced to a cacophony and we have no more poetry and prose. It is chaotic in pretty much all its aspects, and is proud of being “without form and void, and darkness…” for then when rationality is thus destroyed, there’s nothing left but sheer will to power: postmodernism is in cahoots, to some extent, with Nietzsche. I end with a final quote on power from Elie Wiesel: “Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”
Tom,
As far as I know, you have never read any piece of scholarship from a poststructural point of view. I mean, just yesterday you were asking me to explain it to you. So, I’m a bit doubtful that you have shown us anything about poststructuralism. You may have argued a point with me. But, you see, I’m not poststructuralism. I’m just a person who tries to argue from a poststructuralist perspective and I’m fallible.
It depends on what you mean by “philosophy”--and not the blunted lance, a “lover of wisdom.” But specifically, what do you mean by philosophy?
Pragmatics is about empirics--“radical empirics” it was referred to when William James wrote. Faith in God is not about empirics--or at least it is not for me. It is a leap of faith, to use that phrase you don’t like. A leap away from the empirical--to something that transcends the empirical. The boundary, in short, is between what we can see and speak about and between that which we should pass over in silent reverence.
When you say: “As to post-structuralism being incoherent/self-contradictory: it certainly is so, according to classical logic.” My response is: OK. Classical logic, with its deductively asserted “standard axioms,” is a structuralism. It is therefore little surprise that it seems incoherent from your viewpoint. Now, I wonder what it looks like from inside the poststructural perspective. For sure, it isn’t incoherent--just like to those playing marbles the rules of marbles make a lot of sense.
Does post-structural logic have any axioms at all? No axioms. It is a methodology, a way of reading social phenomena. The logic is relational. How are things related to one another? To be general about it, the logics of relation can be analytically broken into two modes of reading. Watching for logics of differentiation and logics of resemblance in practice. The methodology reads social phenomena through these logics. So, for instance, in your talk about Josh. You clearly seemed to be linking yourself to him more closely--you were applying a logic of resemblance. This, in turn, distanced and differentiated you and your story about God from me and my story.
My point in bringing up Capitalism and Anarchy is to make the point that I made a few posts back. The way you articulate your relationship with God seems to make God into another kind of structure like a Marxist talks about Capital.
Is there something contradictory about God existing prior to analysis? No. Not unless you are trying to prove God’s existence or test the validity of God through empirical evidence.
I don’t view God as a social construct. God is God. Religion and all the icons, symbols, stories, hymns, prayers, and so forth--they are socially constructed and we can sit and watch people do the work of construction right before our eyes. Don’t confuse the raft for the sea, or, said differently, don’t confuse churches and crosses for God.
“But then you are the one traveling in our country with foreign logic.” I’m not sure what you mean by “country.” But if you mean the blog, I know that I’m traveling in a foreign country. Hence, my examples about natives and missions and so forth.
You said: “Observation is not always communicated--my observations out the window here are not communicated; my awareness of God is not either.” Tell me what your observations are without communicating them to me in some form or fashion.
How do you think that “scientific knowledge” is made and spread? Scholarly journals and books. Observations are written in field notes. Experiments are written in field notes. They are discussed with colleagues. Presentations are made at conferences. Responses are written up and published. Communication is part and parcel of the scientific enterprise. Writing/speaking is part of scientific practice. (On this topic you might read Bruno Latour or Michael Lynch)
You said: “I think that means you think there is no language-independent meaning; but does that translate to there being no language-independent reality?”
My response: I believe that there is a language independent reality. I don’t think we have access to it in an unmediated way. Trees don’t constitute their own meaning. Meaning is made by humans telling stories about their environment and relationships with other people and things in that environment.
You said: “And why should it not be possible for God to communicate truly (not exhaustively) with his creatures, by all kinds of means: propositional revelation, demonstration of his actions in history, direct encounter with the Holy Spirit, and so on?”
I didn’t say otherwise. I don’t *know* what all God can or cannot do. I practice faith toward God--that’s all I know to be truth (in a religious way, let me caveat that, not a scientific way).
Holo and Tom,
Beautiful! But...
When you say: "Poststructuralism enjoins us to move away from the concept of a conductor leading the orchestra or an author writing to convey beauty and truth… with the result that the orchestra is reduced to a cacophony and we have no more poetry and prose. It is chaotic in pretty much all its aspects, and is proud of being “without form and void, and darkness…” for then when rationality is thus destroyed, there’s nothing left but sheer will to power: postmodernism is in cahoots, to some extent, with Nietzsche."
My response: I would encourage you to read further and look a bit closer at poststructural literature. The perspective poststructuralism operates from is the agent and how agents construct order. It is not a structuralist argument--but an agent-centered approach.
You're right, Jacob, I have read no scholarly poststructural works. But did you notice that you still haven't answered the question I raised? I can't believe you're intentionally ducking it, but I've had to ask it several times now. You may not "be poststructuralism," but there's a question before you, relating to assertions you have made on behalf of poststructuralism.
This is an interesting discussion. It's still extremely unclear to me why anybody would adopt poststructuralism as a viewpoint. I can't find any epistemic virtues in what you've shared. I asked for them, and you answered in terms that I thought represented a value for pragmatism and for egalitarianism. You partially rejected one and almost completely rejected the other. I haven't heard you present anything positive on behalf of your approach yet.
You have pointed out that language is key to knowledge, as in your example about the growth of scientific knowledge. That's a weak virtue, as I see it, because that fact is easily accounted for and accommodated within a correspondence theory of truth and classical logic. You have said that poststructuralism is internally coherent according to unnamed principles of logic. Again, not impressive. You have presented it as not being reductionistic in regard to God, but there's nothing inherently or necessarily reductionistic in a correspondence theory of truth relating to God. (It's possible to be reductionist within that viewpoint, and it must be guarded against, to be sure. But as I wrote above, poststructuralism seems to say that God's reality is contingent on persons' viewpoints regarding him, which is considerably reducing.)
And what you have said in regard to my viewpoint is often way off the mark:
So, for instance, in your talk about Josh. You clearly seemed to be linking yourself to him more closely--you were applying a logic of resemblance.
Sure, I was linking myself to him. Does that change what I said? You see, I was trying to show that advocating a certain kind of apologetics didn't turn him into a person who treated God as a scientific hypothesis. You sidestepped that completely. You treated something else about it instead.
Have you ever been around a person who fancied himself a psychoanalyst--who continually responded to your statements with, "The reason you say that is because deep in your background..."? That's the same class of response you gave me in regard to the Josh McDowell reference. It's frankly annoying. Deal with my words, not the social construction you imagine to be behind them, please.
Or do you also adhere to the postmodern view of literature, that my words as I intended them have no authority to you the reader, so you can feel free to disregard (or apply unfettered imagination upon) their actual content?
You said: “Observation is not always communicated--my observations out the window here are not communicated; my awareness of God is not either.” Tell me what your observations are without communicating them to me in some form or fashion.
Are my observations not my observations until I tell someone? Sounds reminiscent of behaviorism, somehow.
Finally, I think your distancing of empirics from God is opposed to the way God has revealed himself. As I have written twice previously (and you have studiously ignored), he intended himself to be, on some level--truly though not exhaustively--empirically knowable. Josh McDowell, like many others, has rightly pointed out that if the events of the Bible did not happen, then the revelation of the Bible ought to be rejected. If theism cannot be found to make intellectual sense, then it ought to be rejected. If you are trying to have a relationship with God apart from Biblical revelation, you are turning your back in his own word given for you.
Furthermore, if you deny a correspondence theory of truth, then you are denying any genuine ability to know anything actually true about God. But he has urged us, made the way clear for us, invited us, even commanded us to know him. This is in clear language that you can deny only by applying the sidestepping that you have exhibited here. And this God, who has opened the way to know him, is--must be--a mind- and language-independent reality.
Jacob, please note that I've been trying to ask the right questions, to understand your system. Please note that in this comment I have listed more than one question that has gone unanswered over the course of several exchanges. I'm not seeing anything here at all so far to commend your system to me or anyone else.
In response to your most recent, Jacob, I do recall your saying often, a few weeks ago, that language was about power...
Tom,
I’m not sure what post. The link takes me to the top of the blog line. Which question?
Why would anyone adopt philosophical realism? Did one day you just adopt philosophical realism as your philosophy? I don’t recall one day just adopting it. Through experience, I have come to find it useful for living a fruitful life--it has become part of who I am, like your realist defenses of your faith are part of who you are. But I’m not asking you to like it or agree with it. I’m just saying here I am--deal with it! That means either continuing to engage with me or kick me out.
You said: “You have pointed out that language is key to knowledge, as in your example about the growth of scientific knowledge. That's a weak virtue, as I see it, because that fact is easily accounted for and accommodated within a correspondence theory of truth and classical logic.”
This “easily accounted for” accommodation has yet to be done by any philosophical realist to the satisfaction of prominent poststructuralists--at least that I know of. Perhaps it is because these are two logically distinct ontologies and doing so would make analytically sloppy work that is internally inconsistent. But who knows. Give it a try.
You said: “Poststructuralism is internally coherent according to unnamed principles of logic. Again, not impressive.”
My response: Not trying to be impressive--just argue a point. But I think that a correspondence theory of truth is destructive of faith. I think that the epistemology reduces God to the dimensions of a rational box. Some think that they can rationally know God through a correspondence theory of epistemology--that they can match “God” with God. I don’t buy it.
Again, poststructuralism says nothing about God. It is a social ontology-epistemology combo--in other words, a methodology that you apply to social phenomena.
You said: “Deal with my words, not the social construction you imagine to be behind them, please.”
My response: what you don’t seem to get is that I am interpreting what your words do. What are Tom’s words doing? How are they effecting relationships in his talk? That kind of thing. --Sorry if you find it annoying. But you are saying what you are saying. I don’t think there is Any One Right Way to interpret what you are saying.
Sure, your observations are yours. Until, of course, you speak or write them. Then, they become social--they are between you and me and the members of this blog. And thus, they can be interpreted in any number of ways.
You said: “Finally, I think your distancing of empirics from God is opposed to the way God has revealed himself….”
My response: Like I said, there will always be those that think they got the only game in town. I’m still playing marbles over in the corner.
I very much appreciate you taking the time to engage with the ideas I’ve put forth. I hope we can continue.
Steve,
My questions are ridiculous? I'll try not to take that personally. I don't suppose it has occurred to you that I wouldn't be asking the question if you were making any sense to me.
Words are symbols for experiences we recognize. A rose is a conventional name for a particular kind of plant. I see a bunch of roses, learn the pattern of their smell and petal shapes, and, by convention, call anything with those properties/patterns a rose.
Stealing is one such conventional definition. I see a situation in which one person takes something without consent (as we discussed earlier), and I call that pattern stealing.
My question is, what is the pattern you recognize in stealing that makes it evil?
From your responses so far, it sounds like the pattern is:
1) You have a prior belief that X is wrong (intuition)
2) Other people believe X is wrong (consensus).
3) By definition, any X satisfying (1) and (2) is wrong.
I agree that such a recipe would be objectively executable. It's just the selection of the recipe is not objective.
See, what if I said that any act listed in my little black book is evil? That's objectively executable, too. But is my choice of my own little books as a moral guide an objective choice? If the book says it is?
Can't you see what I'm getting at?
Tom:
Have you read Mein Kampf or Das Kapital? If not, do you really think you need to? I’ve read both: you’re not missing much of what you might not already know. I wonder whether Jacob has read the Summa… although I strongly doubt it. He’s trying to pull a cute rhetorical trick on you—it’s a fallacy, actually. But, hey, logical fallacies don’t matter to him because Jacob rejects formal, traditional, structured logic. Logic, the art and science that structures and guides thinking, is deemed a personal power play. What a joke! But that’s what poststructuralism does to a person: it ruins their capacity to reason by admonishing them, for instance, that a scientist who claims the stick in the water is not really bent because refraction is at work is just trying to impose his own “scientific” logic. When the message in the rear-view mirror warns you Caution: Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, poststructuralist will claim this is an example of an imposition of power by the car manufacturer rather than true concern by the manufacturer about the truth of the matter and concern for the safety of the passengers. Here are some real-life examples of poststructuralist attacks against science:
French-Belgian feminist “philosopher” Luce Irigaray asserts that Albert Einstein’s famous mathematical expression for the convertibility of mass-energy, E = mc^2, is a “sexed question.” Why? Because “it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us.” [As quoted in Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science, (Picador: New York, NY, 29 October 1999), page 109.]Well, there you go, Tom: consider yourself now having read at least some poststructural material. Impressed? I’m not, for this is terrifying stuff coming from the mouths of amateurs seeking power. As for me and my house, we will read Plato, who wisely notes, “Isn’t it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.” I bet you never thought of science as imposing a perspective rather than seeking truth about the material world, have you? Science doesn’t do that—it’s muddled philosophical thinking that does: neo-Darwinist philosophical naturalism tries to ruin science. Postmodernism tries to ruin science. But does that mean we should drop the pursuit of truth? Of course not. Does that imply we can never achieve the truth of things? Of course not… not least of all because this kind of trash is also a claim on truth! What makes their position any more privileged than that of those who honestly do seek truth? Aren’t they imposing their own disordered views on us? We know our personal mirrors influence, to one extent or another, the pursuit of MES knowledge, but (taking off from the rear-view mirror example) we’re not stupid because we can adjust to see things in truth. Postmodernism simply claims we’re all stupid, that there is no truth because we can’t adjust our perspective. What utter nonsense.
Katherine Hayles claims “The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, [Irigaray] attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids… From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders” [Hayles, N. K., “Gender Encoding in Fluid Mechanics: Masculine Channels and Feminine Flows,” Differences: a Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 4 (2), 16 – 44, 1992: (page 17)—which restates Luce Irigaray, (1985) “La Mécanique des Fluides,” in Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un, (Éditions de Minuit, Paris. English translation by C. Porter and C. Burke: This Sex Which Is Not One. (1985) Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Originally published in L'Arc 58 (1974).]
The point is, why would anyone in their right mind read something whose overall point is to dismiss truth and to reduce structured human reasoning to a power play that underprivileges others? Wouldn’t this be making a claim on, well, some kind of truth? Gosh, that’s profound stuff!! I’m going to have to think about that while I contemplate the lint in my navel...
Tom and other interested parties,
Here is a link to a website that lays out some poststructural assumptions.
http://www.brocku.ca/english/
cou...poststruct.html
Thanks, Holo. That was a helpful additional note.
Jacob, thank you too for your response. I'm going to respond to your points, and then let you know the direction I'm going to need to take from here.
First, the link I gave should have taken you to the middle of the discussion, to the comment I posted at 9:15 pm, 3/12/07. I've referred to this question more than once now, and it's about what appears to be a basic contradiction in your own view of the world. If the link doesn't take you to the right place, you can search for it by the time it was posted. See the question at the end of that comment.
Why would anyone adopt philosophical realism? There are, of course, long answers to that question. Much of the reason, for me, has to do with maintaining a consistent view of Scripture and of God; for if there is no reality behind the word "God," then our knowledge and faith are empty. There is also the difficulty of living consistently with one's presuppositions if one supposes the world is not real. Of course I've read Kant and Berkeley on that, and I know some of the difficulties in proving realism, but the difficulties do not seem as great as the difficulties posed by the opposing views.
And there is a special difficulty in the view I take it you are advocating, which is that reality is constituted by language and person-dependent. It bumps up terrifically insuperable obstacles. The most basic one has to do with the most basic foundation of reality. Is there a God who is behind all of reality or is there not? It seems to me that your answer is yes, there is, and no there is not; as if language had the power to make it so. This is absurd.
You say were "not trying to be impressive" in your accounting of logic. I hope you recognized that I was speaking wryly there. You may not have been "trying to be impressive--just argue a point" but you have been telling me all along that poststructuralism has its own logic, and when I asked you for it, you punted. So when I said that was not impressive, what I meant was that there was nothing there that would impress itself upon someone's thinking as a reason to move toward your line of thinking. If you are indeed trying to explain your thinking to someone in a way that would nudge them at least somewhat toward agreement that it holds water, you didn't do it this time. In fact you absolutely did not argue a point.
Again, poststructuralism says nothing about God. It is a social ontology-epistemology combo--in other words, a methodology that you apply to social phenomena.
The correspondence theory as a methodology also does not say anything about God, except that if there is a God, there is definitely not not-a-God. Poststructuralism, as I understand what you're saying, says you can have it both ways.
[W]hat you don’t seem to get is that I am interpreting what your words do. What are Tom’s words doing?
It's a game, then. But interpreting what my words say really ought to be prior to interpreting what they do; else you can make any interpretation of their effects whatever. You can even interpret the lack of progress in fluid dynamics as an instance of sexism. Heck, you could even make my arguments about the correspondence theory of truth an instance of fluid dynamics (and of course, by extension, another instance of sexism).
There may not be One Right Way to interpret my language, but there can be a limited range of options; and the attempt to understand it as close as possible to the intent really could be of higher importance than telling stories about its effect.
Sure, your observations are yours. Until, of course, you speak or write them. Then, they become social--they are between you and me and the members of this blog. And thus, they can be interpreted in any number of ways.
But that misses the point, which is that when the question was originally raised, you suggested there is no observation without communication. That's just wrong. But you went on from that statement to a refinement of your point that I think we have already discussed.
Thank you for your statement about my trying to engage the ideas you have put forth. I appreciate that. I have to say that I could ask you to be more engaged in the ideas I have put forth. I refer you to my previous comment, in which I pointed out several issues I've raised, and which you have sidestepped. You see, what I see you doing is making assertions, which I question (either for clarification or for some kind of support), and which you do not address very clearly if at all. For example, you keep repeating (as you did here again) that a correspondence approach to truth is destructive of faith. I've answered that at least twice with points that you have (as I already said) studiously ignored. That is not engaging in discussion.
You requested something of me that I have passed over so far in this comment:
This “easily accounted for” accommodation has yet to be done by any philosophical realist to the satisfaction of prominent poststructuralists--at least that I know of. Perhaps it is because these are two logically distinct ontologies and doing so would make analytically sloppy work that is internally inconsistent. But who knows. Give it a try.
I will "give it a try," but it will take a while and would certainly make this long comment even much longer. It will come later; probably not today. (And Holopupenko, if you're open to it, you probably have more background to address this than I have.)
Apart from that, though, I'm going to have to slow the pace of my part in this exchange, because there are other topics I want to turn to. It's been interesting, and I'm surely not finished. I have learned a lot through it, which I appreciate. I'm not seeing anything here yet that leads me to think I might want to change my basic understanding of truth or rationality, though.
Thanks for that John Lye link, Jacob. It arrived here while I was composing that last comment, and I'm reading it now.
Tom,
I would like to slow down the pace of posting too. I've got other things going on.
I'll address your post later today.
But one point that I want to impress on you: I do not want to convert you into a poststructuralist. Trust me on that or not.
I just want to be recognized as doing a bit more than being "childish," as you remarked a few posts back, which implicitly sets you and your comments up as the serious adult in the interaction. We are both here and we are both trying to argue points and engage one another--no matter how poorly we say it.
Tom:
While the interesting post below from the Just Thomism blog certainly refers to all of us, I experience a similar kind of feeling when reading/discussing postmodernist ideas… as well as some ideas of atheism: my soul shivers and I feel like something is dripping off it. Call me melodramatic…
I found myself on hands and knees, wrist deep in a brackish swamp. With one hand I felt my way through the darkness, and whatever my hand fell on, I would shove into my mouth. At times I would glance up or to either side, and the sewage would always fade far off into the horizon, nothing living in sight. And then, at once, my hand hit something above the water. It was a foot, still bearing the wound. I heard my name… and then one phrase: Stand up.
DL:
Stealing is one such conventional definition. I see a situation in which one person takes something without consent (as we discussed earlier), and I call that pattern stealing.
I know what stealing is and I agree with the conventional definition. However, just as you keep asking me HOW I know the Theistic definition of good is objective, I keep asking you HOW you know the modern definition of stealing is objective. All I keep getting from you is "I see the pattern". Well, humans throughout history have "seen the pattern" of good and evil in the world.
All you can do is show me a "pattern" and then refer me to the modern definition of stealing and magically link the two together by saying the magic words "That pattern you saw is the same as this modern definition". The definition verifies the pattern -- the pattern verifies the definition. For some reason this method of explanation is acceptable when you do it, but not when I do it.
My question is, what is the pattern you recognize in stealing that makes it evil?
There are many "patterns" seen in stealing: The pattern of injustice makes stealing evil. The pattern of malicious intent without just cause makes stealing evil.
See, what if I said that any act listed in my little black book is evil? That's objectively executable, too. But is my choice of my own little books as a moral guide an objective choice? If the book says it is?
This is the same question I asked you with respect to stealing. It’s the same thing I discussed at the beginning of this comment and why I said for some reason this method of explanation is acceptable when you do it, but not when I do it. HOW do you know the modern definition you chose (stealing) goes with the pattern you saw? Perhaps you used the wrong definition (or the wrong book) and the pattern is really "helping" or "loving" or "fishing".
You’re either playing a game with me, or you can’t see that the questions you ask of me apply equally to you. Which is it?
Tom,
I know this may not make sense to you. But I, too, feel that I maintain a consistent view of Scripture and of God. I too believe that there is a world apart from our language--but we do not have access to that world apart from our language. God is God regardless of whether we call him “God” or not.
For me, faith is not a matter of fullness or emptiness, but of fruitfulness. A strong faith practiced well bears good fruit. Or put another way, I practice hard to measure up to my weight in salt.
You said: “Is there a God who is behind all of reality or is there not? It seems to me that your answer is yes, there is, and no there is not; as if language had the power to make it so. This is absurd.”
My response: God is God. The “reality” that we know are meanings that we make and sustain for ourselves through talk and interaction. We tell stories about “God.” But do you honestly think your words correspond with the Reality of God. I do not. I think that shows hubris and pride on our part as fallible human beings. That seems absurd to me.
I say don’t confuse the man made raft for the sea on which it floats.
You 9:15 question/comment. You said that the analogy “works if the world is akin to the gym and in the world a number of games are going on simultaneously.”
My response: your question comes down to what you think the function of an analogy/metaphor is. Do you think analogies refer to the world accurately? Or do you think that analogies/metaphors construct the world in a meaningful way? I, of course, bet that they construct the world as meaningful. So saying that the world is akin to a gym filled with different games is not at all to say the world is A Gym Filled With Different Games. Rather, the analogy is a resource that helps us organize our arguments and lives in meaningful ways. Analogies do things. They say nothing about the ontological Reality of the world--unless of course you infer they do, which I don‘t.
Empirically we can see a number of different “games” going on around us. Generally speaking, “evangelicals” are one game among many. What do we see concretely? We see the boundaries that divide these communities. We can see the “heretics” being pushed out of the “evangelical” center, as was Carlton Pearson. These are “fringe” groups and interpretations, to use your word. My point is that they are “fringe” groups because some body of people have defined them as such, they have excluded them. So, the point is, we can see the limits between groups by looking at marginal figures that threaten to collapse down barriers between “us” and “them.”
As the web link hopefully impressed upon you, a poststructural methodology is pragmatic (e.g. dynamic and pluralistic). It is not a closed system based on a set of structures or axioms, but a way of reading and interpreting practice. The aim is to look for tactics/strategies of inclusion and exclusion. These are ways that people/communities make and sustain boundaries between themselves and other groups of people. As a hobby, I like to interpret evangelical identity formation and maintenance. It is interesting to me to see how this group of people make sense of their world--their “reality.” This is not to objectify them as a group or simply dismiss their claims as “irrational,” but to genuinely engage with them and try to understand. I’m trying to be fruitful, you see, to build relationships.
As an epistemological theory, you are right that correspondence does not say anything about God in particular. But as I said, your combination of a theistic ontology (TPR) with the correspondence epistemology is deadly to faith. Why? Because you seem to presuppose the existence of God (e.g. your theistic ontology), then you seem to go about looking for evidence to support/test your hypothesis and simultaneously you work to refute challenges to your claims (all your work on evolutionary theory, etc). God is reduced to a rationally explicable possibility. Or said differently, 1) you tell stories about how rational faith in God is and 2) how God can be explained by using a correspondence epistemology.
Why not just practice faith and fidelity toward God?
Why “ought” I interpret what your words say before I interpret what your words do? Why do you presuppose there is a difference between what your words say and what they do? Maybe these are just two different ways of reading and neither is necessarily superior to the other. Maybe my way of reading/interpreting your words is more fruitful than your way.
I agree that “there can be a limited range of options” when interpreting words. I think the limit should be as close to the empirically available words on the page as possible. This goes back to past points that I’ve brought up here--show me in the Bible where Jesus talks about “free will.” I say we should keep close to the Word--don’t you? That seems to set a nice limit that we can all see.
How do we empirically get at “intent”? I think that examining what stories do--how they effect social relations--is 1) more consequential than “intent” and 2) empirically available for us to interpret (whereas “intent” is not).
I’ve tried to engage your comments and questions and I will continue. If I’ve missed some, it is not because I am sidestepping them. The points that you place significance on are not necessarily the ones that I do. Engage me by asking me again until I get it.
You said: “I will "give it a try," but it will take a while and would certainly make this long comment even much longer. It will come later; probably not today. (And Holopupenko, if you're open to it, you probably have more background to address this than I have.)”
My response: Good luck! One of the key figures in International Politics that has attempted this is Alexander Wendt in his book: Social Theory of International Relations. Probably not one you want to go out and buy. But it is sharp example.
Personally, however, I don’t tend to find bridging attempts between (what I take to be) analytically and logically distinct paradigms to be all that cogent. They ultimately seem to produce internally inconsistent approaches. But may grace be with you.
Tom:
Do you remember the interesting way Satan was portrayed in Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ? As a beautiful woman… except, there was something wrong (apart from the hooded darkness), wasn’t there? You couldn’t put you finger on it, but something was unsettlingly wrong. Satan’s words, her pale skin, her voice seem out of whack. Then, it became clearer: was she a “she” or some androgynous nightmare? Still somehow beautiful, yet... still something wrong. Then you notice it: no eyebrows. That was more significant for me than the maggot crawling almost unnoticed out of and into Satan’s nostril. The Deceiver is beautiful—Lucifer was created as the most beautiful angel. And yet after his fall…
According to St. Thomas Aquinas’ definition of beauty, it is an intrinsic property of an observed object “which pleases in the very apprehension of it,” while Aristotle said, “beauty is order, symmetry, and definition.” St. Thomas also said, “Three items are required for beauty: first, integrity or perfection, for things that are lessened are ugly by this very fact; second, due proportion or harmony; and third, brilliance—thus, things that have a bright color are said to be beautiful.”
Satan in the movie lacked all three: missing eyebrows were a lack of integrity; a man’s voice dubbed in was a lack of intrinsic harmony; and Satan certainly lacked brilliance. Satan seemed at first glance beautiful… but out of whack. When it comes together, you shudder—especially when you see the anti-Madonna-and-Child scene as Christ is being scourged.
What’s my point?
Far be it from me to judge what is in a man’s heart… but would you characterize Jacob’s vision of faith as, well, “beautiful”? I don’t know about you, but it makes me shudder. (“God is God.” Okay, but isn’t that an absolute truth claim based on the First Principle of Identity?) Again, not to judge what is in the heart… but the words we read are at once “normal”—almost innocent—yet nonetheless creepy… and words do originate in the soul as expressions of innermost thoughts. (“Why not just practice faith and fidelity toward God?” Well, what are the true meanings of these terms? They have none if we apply Jacob’s rules, so what’s the point?) Something is out of whack: the words sound okay… but still…
I have to admit, Jacob has given me something to ponder… but it’s uncomfortable to say the least. The rest of the postmodern stuff he’s presented really isn’t worth the time, so I’m left with trying to understand how, a person who has “no hang-up” about the truth, can even have a faith—how he can mouth the words, but leave me feeling unsettled. This “leap” of faith stuff he proposes is missing something I can’t put my finger on at the moment, but I suspect it has to do with the lack of truth. Faith, after all, is geared toward Truth… Is this, therefore, all clever deception?
Any thoughts?
Holopupenko, you've stated this very, very well. I agree there is something disturbing about the kinds of things Jacob has been putting forth for us.
His response to that is going to be that we're committing some kind of culturally-based, contingent, power move on him by agreeing on this.
What I think bothers me most, Jacob, is something I'll call slipperiness. You can call it something else if you like. I'll try to describe it for you.
It comes out in several ways. One is an unwillingness to commit to any definite statements other than statements of method. You won't conclude much.
Another is your not engaging the things that I (and others) have presented for your consideration. I've mentioned that several times now.
Another is (as Holo said) your believing in God without any apparent conception of what you're believing in. It's so empty!
Have you ever leaned on a fence and had it collapse under you? One time I stepped off a stage onto a set of stairs that fell out from under me--they weren't built properly (no damage to me, thank God, and the stairs were taken care of properly after that). Have you ever picked up a package that you expected would be heavy, and it was empty?
When I engage the world, it just feels wrong when it won't engage me back--when it's not there, the way I expect it to be. When I have a discussion with a person, it feels wrong when they won't discuss back, or when their response is so dreadfully light that it seems empty. I don't get substance back from you. I get sidestepping and lack of commitment to any meaning.
I don't expect you to fully understand this, but that's the feeling. To borrow a line of thought from my recent posts, and to echo Holopupenko, there is beauty missing.
I'll come back in a moment with a more direct response to your last comment.
Holo,
Sometimes when you write, I'm not sure whether I should laugh, be angry, or be afraid.
Either way, as I suggested several posts ago in another blogline--I could have predicted you would have gestured toward me as "evil," or in your words, "Satan."
I'm glad that it makes you feel "uncomfortable." Maybe there is some value in being unsettled a little bit. It keeps you quick on your feet.
I wonder: you continue to treat me (the concrete author-speaker) as a stereotype of something negative you've heard about "postmodernism." You have never really engaged me, sort of the way you banned me from commenting on your blog site. You closed me out rather than engaged me. That, my friend, is not very fruitful missio-logical practice. You have to engage to evangelize, am I right? Or is evangelizing not that important to you?
Jacob, I want to first respond to this:
My response: God is God. The “reality” that we know are meanings that we make and sustain for ourselves through talk and interaction. We tell stories about “God.” But do you honestly think your words correspond with the Reality of God. I do not. I think that shows hubris and pride on our part as fallible human beings. That seems absurd to me.
I say don’t confuse the man made raft for the sea on which it floats.
If they were man-made words originally you would be exactly right. But if we start with the word of God, it is hubris and pride on our part not to accept it for what it is. (See my earlier post on this.) We do not make up the truth, we do not "hold" the truth in any meaningful sense, but we must be held by the truth. To deny it is a denial of God.
Regarding the 9:15 question, you wrote,
Rather, the analogy is a resource that helps us organize our arguments and lives in meaningful ways. Analogies do things. They say nothing about the ontological Reality of the world--unless of course you infer they do, which I don‘t.
Empirically we can see a number of different “games” going on around us.
First you say we can't make any generalizations about the world based on analogy, and the next thing you do is go ahead and do it. You are saying there is more than one game, and you imply strongly that these games are representations of different realities. (You won't commit to that implication, though, will you?)
As the web link hopefully impressed upon you, a poststructural methodology is pragmatic (e.g. dynamic and pluralistic). It is not a closed system based on a set of structures or axioms, but a way of reading and interpreting practice. The aim is to look for tactics/strategies of inclusion and exclusion.
Wouldn't you love it if a system could be closed in the sense of apprehending truth and landing there, being closed to what isn't true? Sure, it's a challenge to discern which is which; but you won't even enter into the challenge. This business of looking only for inclusion/exclusion is distasteful, to refer to Holo's and my most recent comments here.
And this is really, really, one time too many:
God is reduced to a rationally explicable possibility.
It's not just that I disagree with you. It's that in all the several times I've disagreed with you about God being "reduced" you've just parroted the same thing back to me, over and over, without paying the slightest attention to what I wrote. Do you see how your parroting style here gets us absolutely nowhere? Can you imagine how annoying it becomes?? There's no substance in your responses, nothing there at all. There's no engagement.
Why “ought” I interpret what your words say before I interpret what your words do? Why do you presuppose there is a difference between what your words say and what they do? Maybe these are just two different ways of reading and neither is necessarily superior to the other. Maybe my way of reading/interpreting your words is more fruitful than your way.
Pragmatism. Not truth. Maybe your way of interpreting my words is to say that they are about fluid dynamics.
Oh, and that part to Holopupenko about him not engaging you: that's what I've been begging you to do with me. You keep answering, but you've hardly ever actually engaged. But I am losing hope that you will.
For your reference on this fruitless back-and-forth about "reducing God," go to these entries. I can't put links on them; HaloScan won't allow that many. (The source follows each quote.)
In a poststructural stance, there is room for an inexplicable God (and for a genuine leap of faith that does not reduce God to a hypothesis to be tested) and for scientific explanation.Jacob | Homepage | 03.12.07 - 2:11 pm | #
But I think it's quite in error to conclude that philosophical realism "reduces" God to a hypothesis to be tested. It seems to me that your poststructuralism reduces God by making his reality optional according to who you're asking about it.Tom Gilson | Homepage | 03.12.07 - 9:23 pm | #
Explain to me why it is “in error to conclude that philosophical realism reduces God to a hypothesis to be tested.”Jacob | Homepage | 03.12.07 - 10:07 pm | #
Entire post (442 words)
Tom Gilson | Homepage | 03.13.07 - 9:46 am | #
You have presented [poststructuralism] as not being reductionistic in regard to God, but there's nothing inherently or necessarily reductionistic in a correspondence theory of truth relating to God. (It's possible to be reductionist within that viewpoint, and it must be guarded against, to be sure. But as I wrote above, poststructuralism seems to say that God's reality is contingent on persons' viewpoints regarding him, which is considerably reducing.)Tom Gilson | Homepage | 03.13.07 - 8:29 pm | #
But I think that a correspondence theory of truth is destructive of faith. I think that the epistemology reduces God to the dimensions of a rational box. Some think that they can rationally know God through a correspondence theory of epistemology--that they can match “God” with God. I don’t buy it.Jacob | Homepage | 03.13.07 - 9:49 pm | #
you seem to presuppose the existence of God (e.g. your theistic ontology), then you seem to go about looking for evidence to support/test your hypothesis and simultaneously you work to refute challenges to your claims (all your work on evolutionary theory, etc). God is reduced to a rationally explicable possibility. Or said differently, 1) you tell stories about how rational faith in God is and 2) how God can be explained by using a correspondence epistemology.Jacob | Homepage | 03.14.07 - 4:37 pm | #
Why not just practice faith and fidelity toward God?
It's not just that I disagree with you. It's that in all the several times I've disagreed with you about God being "reduced" you've just parroted the same thing back to me, over and over, without paying the slightest attention to what I wrote.Tom Gilson | Homepage | 03.14.07 - 8:10 pm | #
In all of that, you have not addressed my answers to your charge of reductionism, especially the 3/13 9:46 am post. You've just repeated the same thing again and again.
You're not engaging in this thing at all.
OK Steve,
There are many "patterns" seen in stealing: The pattern of injustice makes stealing evil. The pattern of malicious intent without just cause makes stealing evil.Good. We're making progress.
Now, let's regress.
First, injustice. I presume by this you mean that the victim of the theft did not choose actions that merited his stuff being stolen. Then, we regress further. What constitutes merit? An eye for an eye? Should the thief have his property taken? Should the thief's hand be cut off? Should the thief be imprisoned? And for how long?
Let's assume some sort of proportionality. The degree of pain inflicted upon the deserving party is proportional to the pain that party inflicted on the victim. (Personally, I think this is a poor basis for justice, but I think it's the one most people accept.)
Second, malicious intent. I think this means intent to harm the victim.
I expect there are other patterns you want throw in to the evil category, but we'll start with just these two.
Suppose a firefighter breaks into a house to save the occupants from a fire. As he breaks down the door, he accidentally kills a child just about to open the door. Is he evil? No. The victim did not deserve to get killed, but the firefighter did not have malicious intent. Both are required for evil.
Let's consider how gay sex fits into this. There's no injustice, and no malicious intent. In fact, there's frequently love between those who engage in it. Apparently, no evil there.
How about atheism? There's no malicious intent there either. Not evil.
How about sending atheists to burn in Hell for eternity? Well, the victim in this context is the atheist. Did the atheist merit the punishment by God? No, because it's not proportional. It's a harsh and infinite punishment for a trivial and finite offense. If someone says they can't find evidence of my existence, and I know they have limited knowledge, I'm really not going to get worked up about it. I haven't been wronged, especially when that person cannot harm me. Is there malicious intent on the part of God? Yes. God intends to do harm to the atheist. Hence, God is evil.
So, how does merit work? Is it proportional? Or is merit a red herring?
As soon as you get into questions about merit, you'll get into emotional issues. What do you do when you cannot inflict on the criminal the level of pain he inflicted on his victim? Do you develop more cruel punishments? How important is revenge in justice?
DL:
Good. We're making progress.
No we're not. You ignored the questions I asked about stealing and you marched on as if you were actually going somewhere. Well, I'm staying right here. Let me ask again:
HOW do you know the modern definition you chose (stealing) goes with the pattern you saw? Perhaps you used the wrong definition (or the wrong book) and the pattern is really "helping" or "loving" or "fishing".
Somehow you said the magic words that magically linked the pattern to the modern definition. I want to know HOW you do that trick using your own requirement for objectivity.
It's been an interesting night, and since I'm awake anyway I thought I'd correct the way I described Jacob's communication earlier (at 7:54 pm). I think a better description of how it affects me is something like dark and cold.
Rather than addressing ideas, he seems to be fixated on the odd phenomenon that I have them. He doesn't address their content but their effect. It feels like I'm in a position of a laboratory specimen in his hands: "look at the way language pours out of Tom, like secretions." I don't think Jacob strongly endorses the scientific laboratory mindset in any conscious way (I admit I'm guessing there). It strikes me, though, that he practices it in his approach to communication.
I would much rather be told that I am wrong, than that by expressing an opinion, I have made a "deligitimating" maneuver. That's a coldly uninvolved word with holier-than-thou overtones; as if my opinions are immoral without being wrong. (Right or wrong is not his interest.)
Opinions can be immoral, certainly. Even expressing correct opinions can be immoral if done a certain way in certain contexts. But mere disagreement in the context of debate with a thinking person--when the accuracy of opinion isn't even part of the assessment, but the mere act of speaking it--how is that an immoral act?
Or is "deligitimating" morally neutral--since Jacob is doing it as he writes, and everyone does it every time we express an opinion? If so, that's cold too. Very cold, in fact.
This, I think, is what caught my attention in what Holopupenko recently wrote about the strange conjunction of the attractive and the dark. Jacob provides an impression of engagement in ideas, when really, over time, it's apparent something entirely different is going on. He is just engaged in his hobby (see above, 3/14/07, 4:37 pm):
As a hobby, I like to interpret evangelical identity formation and maintenance. It is interesting to me to see how this group of people make sense of their world--their “reality.” This is not to objectify them as a group or simply dismiss their claims as “irrational,” but to genuinely engage with them and try to understand.
Jacob, from where I stand, I feel objectified. A lab rat under observation. You are not engaging with me; you are looming over me with your analytical equipment.
Frankly, I'm not threatened for myself by that, because I don't give much credence to your lab gear or your analytical schemas. But I worry for you. It's not a human way to treat other persons.
Jacob:
Of course evangelization means a great deal to me (and to Tom, Charlie, Aaron, SteveK, etc.) for it is the great mandate, the great commission... but it is not a blind or mindless commission (see Scriptural references below). The question is, however, whether evangelization even has meaning for you. No, in fact it does not, for you are opposed to truth as such: you are not “hung-up” on truth… yet, hypocritically, you want us to believe what you claim is true. What you claim, in fact, is wrong, false… and ultimately a lie. Now, given your rules of the game, you cannot criticize me or even claim I’m wrong—or correct—in what I just asserted. You said it yourself to Tom: “I’m not saying you’re wrong…”
You have no point, nothing is right or wrong, nothing can be concluded, no one can be seriously engaged, you reject and accept nothing… and perhaps worst from a purely philosophical standpoint, there is no goal, no teleology, no direction, no striving, no final cause. You treat other humans as empty talking boxes, and the best response you can offer is “oh, that’s nice… and I’m not saying you’re wrong…” We show you over and over again how false and self-immolating your position is. (I support Tom: you have NOT responded to his requests.) Your condescending and slippery response: “Well, I’m not saying you’re wrong…” Have I repeated this enough times that it’s sinking in?
Your ideas are worse, in fact, than atheism—whose adherents at least have some desire for truth… as disordered as it may be. You, Jacob, are like the barely visible ghosts in C.S. Lewis’ depiction of the edge of existence between Purgatory/Hell and Heaven in The Great Divorce: reality is anathema to you—it hurts you and you flinch from it… better to take the bus trip back to your own individual hut in the cold, gray mist of Purgatory where you move further and further from others.
We have tried to enter your hut to engage you, you drive us away not directly, but by the cold, dark, non-committal web you’ve spun. So, taking my cue from most of what was said yesterday and last night, I’m left with the following:
And whatsoever house you shall enter into, abide there, and depart not from thence. And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off even the dust of your feet, for a testimony against them. (Luke 9:4-5)
But into whatsoever city you enter, and they receive you not, going forth into the streets thereof, say: Even the very dust of your city that cleaveth to us, we wipe off against you. (Luke 10:10-11)
These things saith the Amen* the faithful and true witness, who is the beginning of the creation of God: I know thy works, that thou art neither cold, nor hot. I would thou wert cold, or hot. But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, not hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:14-16)
---------------------------------
* The True One; the Truth itself; the Word and Son of God—Jesus Christ; the beginning, the principle the source, and the efficient cause of the whole of creation.
Tom and Holo,
Of course you would rather me tell you that you are "wrong" and I am "right," at least then you would be on familiar ground--that warm and comfortable battle ground where you have spent so much time honing your skills and counterarguments.
You have spent so much time learning how to defend yourself and your worldview from the commonplace attacks of the likes of Dawkins and crew that when you really encounter someone arguing something different, it throws you off balance. The modern and false dichotomy between secular and religious, theist and atheist, is bogus (I'm delegitimating it, to use my language). We live in a late-modern world (or at least those of us with advanced communications technologies at our fingertips) that is post-secular in its orientation. Those old dichotomies that you have used and relied upon to help organize your world are coming undone. The times they are a changing--to paraphrase a sixities hippy.
The analogy that I like to use is that of a pond. One that sits too long without some fresh water becomes stagnate. Fighting the same battles over and again may make us feel comfortable in our shoes and secure in our belief, but we grow stagnate and ritualized in our strategies. Nothing shows us this stagnation and ritualized strategy like enountering something different.
Is there no value in being on foreign territory? Is there no value in being a missionary and trying to get your feet in a new/different place? To listen to you two bemoan me and where I'm coming from suggests to me that no, there is no value in it.
I'm sorry that my attidudes don't agree with you, but you calling me "childish" and "tirsesome" and pushing me to moralize about "right" and "wrong" doesn't agree with me. It doesn't agree with me either to use those blunted lances ("relativism", "objectivism", "truth", etc) that philosophers and theologians like to use to batter one another in their endless struggle over abstract ideas.
Life is a big old gym--people don't always play the same games and no matter how hard you try to fit marbles into basketball, you can't do it. Two different games are going on. They overlap to some degree (they both are games afterall), but they diverge greatly on other points. That doesn't make me "Satan." And in the end, you may well pull back and say--"I got the only game in town." But that might be expected, as the logic of exclusion is a commonplace reaction to difference and strangeness (as perhaps best evidenced by Holo's banning me from commenting on his blog site even though he has referred to me by name in his own posts).
What I would really like for you to see is that I genuinly want to understand and engage, but I neither want to convert into an evangelical Christian nor do I want to convert you into whatever you think that I am (and Holo has a number of names for that). I prefer to sit in the gap, with one foot on either side. I don't have any desire to bridge the gap between your view and mine--just to look at it, talk about it, compare the fruitfulness of the two places and try to understand what in the hell people are doing over on your side.
Instead of "right" and "wrong," which you two seem so fond of using, how about fruitfullness and salt? How about we use those to describe the value of a way of acting? For instance, in terms of building relationships, I believe it is fruitful to engage with different folks in different ways. It is less fruitful to ban them from commenting on your blog or to just vote them off so you don't have to deal with them. One way of interacting clearly seems to be more fruitful (in terms of bearing relationships) than the others. Wouldn't you two agree?
And Holo, all you have ever done is repeat over and over and over and over how I am "wrong" and you are on the side of "truth." You have never really engaged me--you have only called me names and thurst your blunted lances at me. And while evangelizing may be rhetorically important for you, in practice, to evangelize you must engage with people. Gesturing toward me as "Satan" isn't really engaging--its dismissing. So, your evangelizing skills clearly have room for improvement.
One more point, Holo. You often use the word "sophist" to describe me. Reading your arguments (or, more precisely, your naming calling and hyperbole) makes be believe you call me a "sophist" to cover your own attempts at "sophistry."
Steve,
HOW do you know the modern definition you chose (stealing) goes with the pattern you saw? Perhaps you used the wrong definition (or the wrong book) and the pattern is really "helping" or "loving" or "fishing".I associate the pattern of taking without consent with the word stealing because it is conventional. Because the word stealing was used by another speaker to describe the pattern of someone stealing that we were both witnessing. As in "Billy, don't steal Bob's crayons!"
These definitions have limited precision. That is, we make up a theory about the meaning of a word based on its usage in shared experience, one that can be refined with more experience.
So, we both had a fuzzy idea of what evil was before we tried to define it precisely. Since humans agree 90% of the time on what acts are evil (especially in the same culture), we have a definition of evil that means no stealing, murdering, etc.
Due to culture and biology, we feel these things are evil. That's why they are grouped together. Our brains find something largely in common with the things described by the word.
The question is, what is it that we find in common, and why do we find it that way?
If we find culturally evil things share some common thread due to cultural history or accidents of biology, then our morality isn't objectively normative. It's subjectively normative, even if it's objectively descriptive.
Jacob,
It's not about being off balance. It's about being objectified by someone who says he's not objectifying, and it's about corresponding with someone who repeatedly says he's engaging but never actually does. (Notice that you didn't engage much, if any, of the actual content of my last three posts to you. Again.)
The modern and false dichotomy between secular and religious, theist and atheist, is bogus (I'm delegitimating it, to use my language). We live in a late-modern world (or at least those of us with advanced communications technologies at our fingertips) that is post-secular in its orientation. Those old dichotomies that you have used and relied upon to help organize your world are coming undone. The times they are a changing--to paraphrase a sixities hippy.
You see this happening, apparently. I don't see any reason to believe it's as widespread a movement as you think; and you haven't given us a good reason to think that if it is happening, it's a good thing.
Life is a big old gym.... Two different games are going on.I'll ask you again, for the fourth time, is that a statement of absolute truth? (Remember how often I've asked you to answer that 9:15 question? You partially answered it in a 4:37 post, to which I also responded; and then you ignored that response. I don't think you've established your case, but you certainly do repeat the assertion.) I think that one game is going on, but some people are badly misunderstanding it. Are you going to tell me that I'm absolutely wrong about that? Because if I'm not absolutely wrong about that, then you are. Some dichotomies you can't escape.
By the way:
If one of us is wrong on that point--and it must be so, that (at least) one of us is wrong--then that one is not "deligitimated." That one is wrong on that point.
Deligitimation has to do with interpersonal power relationships. Being right or wrong has to do with being right or wrong. In the case of some dichotomous situations, it is necessary to use those terms.
Does the arithmetic teacher "deligitimate" a child when she says, "no, 2+2 does not equal 5, it equals 4"?
Also, if one of us is wrong on that point, is it a moral evil (as "deligitimation" implies) to be moved closer to a correct understanding? It seems to me that would be a good thing. But please, do not resort immediately to an objection that "there is no 'correct understanding'" without first addressing whether you think at least one of us is--must be--wrong on what I wrote last time.
Tom,
Look back at my posts and count the questions that I have asked you and that you have ignored. Engagement apparently is a problem we are both having.
If I've missed something, keep asking. I'll get to it--unless you kick me off the blog.
The very idea that there can be something called "morally neutral" seems absurd to me. Saying "morally neutral" is like saying someone picked me up and removed from my surroundings and nothing I say or do has any effects. Saying "morally neutral" is a hold over from a belief in "objectivity"--the belief that indeed, one can speak from nowhere and have no effect. I'm not "morally neutral"--I'm trying to be hyperaware of what I am doing and to whom I'm doing it to. I apologize that you feel objectified.
What can I do to not objectify you? How can you help me not objectify you, while at the same time not pushing me to speak your langugae of "right" and "wrong"?
You don't see these processes happening because 1) they are literally right under your nose (or fingertips) and 2) because when was the last time you thought/talked about them. Think about the significance of talking in real time with someone from the Ukrain, from California, from Washington DC at the same time. Here and there aren't what they used to be. Time isn't what it used to be.
People who write about the "postmodern" condition (e.g. David Harvey, Charles Taylor, Frederic Jameson, Jean Francois Lyotard, etc) talk about the combination of fragmentation and globalization. Communities are breaking down and at the same time reforming--this notion is all over Christian literature, haven't you heard? Rather than circling the wagons against the lost "postmoderns" or simply trying to get them to come on back over to the "right" side of things, some people are trying to build new communities.
My analogy about the gym is an analogy that helps us organize our arguments. I don't think that they are statements of "absolute truth." Why ever would you infer that an analogy said anything about "abolute truth"?
What is "absolute truth"? And how do you determine "absolute truth" from "relative truth"? By what standard do you use to measure "absolute" from "relative"? How do you know "truth" when you see it? How do you know an "absolute" when you see it? How do you know a "relative" when you see it?
Tom,
In response to your "by the way" comment.
Why *must* one of us be "right" and the "other" wrong? Can there be no other possibility? Is the world that closed? Or is your way of thinking that closed?
I agree that "Deligitimation has to do with interpersonal power relationships." Are you not in interpersonal relationships? Does our discussion not constitute a relationship? Do you think the relationships that you are in have no effect on the people that you interact with? Are your actions innocent (or free of effect and power)?
I would disagree. It is not *necessary* to use the terms "right" and "wrong"--we participate in a culture in which those are familiar resources that we draw on to describe the world in significant ways. Is it necessary to describe the world in any one way in particular? I don't think so. Why? Becuase the world I live in is not a functionalist system--I am not a cog in a machine.
The teacher trains the child to emit the signs that the teacher was taught to emit and their teacher was taught to emit and the people that certify teachers were taught to emit. Or said differently, of course 2 + 2 = 5 is an illegitimate answer. The child will probably be corrected, or retrained, if they said that it equalled 5.
What is a "correct understanding"? What do you mean by that turn of phrase? My guess is that a "correct understanding" is one that you happen to agree with or think that others should agree with.
I don't just feel objectified; I am being objectified. But thank you for the apology.
"Keep asking"--how many times does it take?
You answered the secondary question about moral neutrality and deligitimating, while missing (failing to engage?) the primary one, which I quote again:
Opinions can be immoral, certainly. Even expressing correct opinions can be immoral if done a certain way in certain contexts. But mere disagreement in the context of debate with a thinking person--when the accuracy of opinion isn't even part of the assessment, but the mere act of speaking it--how is that an immoral act?
I don't know how you can pull away from objectifying me. That's up to you. I'll re-explain what you are doing that is objectifying: you are treating my language as a lab object to be analyzed in terms of its power effects. You are not treating my language as the actual thoughts of an actual person, thoughts that can be answered in terms of their content. If you can't avoid that in the context of your system, then you can't avoid objectifying. That would then be a mark against the value of your entire system, it seems to me.
I do see the processes happening that you refer to. But I don't see the poststructual implications being accepted universally, and I certainly do not yet see that it would be good if they were.
My analogy about the gym is an analogy that helps us organize our arguments. I don't think that they are statements of "absolute truth." Why ever would you infer that an analogy said anything about "abolute truth"?
Your analogy is something that helps you organize a non-argument, apparently, because you don't defend it, you simply state it. Here's what I mean. There must be some reality behind your analogy, or else it's just so many words in the air. I take it that the reality behind your analogy is that you believe there are multiple apprehensions, among communities and persons, about what constitutes reality. You also believe that language itself constitutes reality, and the result of that is that there are multiple realities.
Now this must be true in order for the rest of your system to make any sense at all. It must be true in the sense that its contradiction is false: that it is false to say that there is only one reality, and that our differing perspectives represent our varying degrees of successful, accurate apprehension of that reality.
That is what I mean by absolute truth in this context (in other contexts it would require a much longer explanation). I mean that something must be true.
Further there is at least one thing that must be true. Regardless of whether we agree on other things, we must agree on this. Consider the two propositions:
1. There are multiple realities constituted by persons' or communities' language and apprehensions.
2. There is only one reality, and persons' or communities' differing views represent varying levels of success in apprehending that one reality.
We must agree on this: both of those cannot be true. If there is but one reality, there are not multiple realities.
Are there other questions you've asked that I've missed? (And have I failed to engage them over as many repeated requests for a response, as you have done with my questions?)
That anon is me--jacob
To respond to your 10:54 comment:
Why *must* one of us be "right" and the "other" wrong? Can there be no other possibility? Is the world that closed? Or is your way of thinking that closed?
I think I just answered that in my previous comment. Of course it's possible that both of us are wrong. But the reason at least one of us has to be wrong is that 1 does not equal 2 or more. (Though I don't know if you believe that--see below.) If there is one reality, then there are not multiple realities. Both cannot be true at the same time, therefore at least one of us is wrong.
I agree that "Deligitimation has to do with interpersonal power relationships." Are you not in interpersonal relationships? Does our discussion not constitute a relationship? Do you think the relationships that you are in have no effect on the people that you interact with? Are your actions innocent (or free of effect and power)?
Straw man. Of course I know there are interactions of this kind in a relationship.
First, I disagree with your definition of "innocent," if by innocent you mean "free of effect and power." Why are effect and power necessarily wrong?
Second, "deligitimation" is a poor choice of word because (a) it does not get at the full reality, which is that if someone is wrong, then they are wrong; (b) to be corrected from being wrong may be a good thing; (c) it is indiscriminately applicable: I can deligitimate you by suggesting you ought to be a serial killer instead of the kind person you are, or I can deligitimate a serial killer by suggesting he change his ways; and (d) in spite of its indiscriminate applicability, the word nevertheless carries moral overtones as if it's always a wrong thing to do.
I would disagree. It is not *necessary* to use the terms "right" and "wrong"--we participate in a culture in which those are familiar resources that we draw on to describe the world in significant ways. Is it necessary to describe the world in any one way in particular? I don't think so. Why? Becuase the world I live in is not a functionalist system--I am not a cog in a machine.
Can you actually disagree with me without suggesting you are right and I am wrong? What else does disagreement mean? What if I said we do not "participate in a culture in which those are familiar resources that we draw on to describe the world in significant ways." How would you disagree with that without suggesting I was wrong? And also see the following.
The teacher trains the child to emit the signs that the teacher was taught to emit and their teacher was taught to emit and the people that certify teachers were taught to emit. Or said differently, of course 2 + 2 = 5 is an illegitimate answer. The child will probably be corrected, or retrained, if they said that it equalled 5.
This is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really (I hope I'm making my point) really straining to avoid commitment to an opinion. If you can't commit to an opinion that 2+2=4 instead of 5, how can you commit to an opinion that there are multiple realities? How can you commit to an opinion that we "participate in a culture in which those are familiar resources that we draw on to describe the world in significant ways"?
Does this explain why you don't engage--because the only opinion you have is that no one should hold their own opinions with any sense of commitment?
And would you make change for a dollar based on your arithmetical belief systems?
What is a "correct understanding"? What do you mean by that turn of phrase? My guess is that a "correct understanding" is one that you happen to agree with or think that others should agree with.
I'll answer by way of illustration. One example of a correct understanding would be that 2+2=4, and always equals 4 in every time and place and culture (with appropriate language translation, of course); and if in any culture or translation it is made out to equal something other than 4, it is just wrong. So yes, "others should agree with it," not because the teacher has been trained to train others that way, not because of interpersonal power relationships, not because of some socially constructed "reality," but because it is true.
Tom,
I say you keep asking until its answered--that is a dialogue, I think.
Yes, I look at your language effects. I don't think that is what objectifies you--although I'm sure it could be my delivery and my tone that makes you feel objectified. (My wife chides me to be nice when I play.) My looking at your language effects is what makes you feel uncomfortable because you seem to prefer to ignore your language effects and deal only with abstract ideas. Not looking at the effects of what we actually say and do is a mark against your epistemology.
I'm not suggesting the fragmentation/globalization argument is accepted universally. I don't know of anything that is accepted universally. The idea of universals--that all people in all times accepts anything--is a mark against your epistemology. It is this universality that is destructive of faith and God--because the whole world and beyond can possibly be explained in a rational sized box.
Why *must* there be some reality behind my analogy? Why can't analogies just help organize our ways of thinking and acting toward one another? You infer too much if you infer that there must be any particular reality behind my analogy.
Why *must* analogies be "true"? Why can't they just be stories that we tell and organize our lives around?
Is there any such thing as "absolute truth in this context"? If we are talking about different contexts, then we are talking about different "truths," at the very least. An "absolute truth" it seems would transcend contexts--otherwise it is not "absolute." It is just "relative truth" in any particular context. But either way, these are just linguistic contructs that we use to organize our everyday lives. Why even talk about "absolute" or "relative" when you can just say I agree with that and disagree with this?
Your two propositions are not mutually exclusive. One does not have to be "true" and the other "false." My account can encompass both stories. You have one story that you tell about their being "one reality" and I have a story that I tell about there being "multiple realities." Neither are "true," we just have different stories.
To me, its not like Newtonian physics was "wrong" and Quantum mechanics "right." Quantum mechanics just encompassed Newtonian physics. One story encompassed another.
I say you keep asking until its answered--that is a dialogue, I think.
If you never answer it's a monologue. But I'm not convinced the distinction makes a difference to you, given your weak commitment to arithmetic.
It's not your looking at my language effects that bothers me so much as that it's been your dominant mode of responding to me. If it were one mode of response in the midst of genuine engagement with content, that would be fine. But that's not how it's been.
Why must there be some reality behind your analogy? Because otherwise it's an absurd waste of time. If you say that reality is a gym where two games are being played, then I think that's actually what you mean; that you think this metaphor represents something. If it doesn't represent anything, then quit telling me that you don't adhere to my statement that there's only one game going on. Because if neither statement represents anything, then there is nothing that we're talking about. It's word games and nothing more.
Why must analogies be true? I don't suppose they need to be. In the case of poetry or fiction it would be quite boring if they always were. But it would be desirable if, in the case of discussing what reality actually is, they represent something real, or at least something that can be discussed. And it's desirable in the course of discussing that "something that can be discussed," we make it a value to pursue that which is true.
You missed the point of my term "absolute truth in this context." What I was saying was that "absolute truth" has a long definition if one wants to define it in such a way that it applies in all contexts. Within just the context of our discussion, I thought I could provide a shorter working definition for just these purposes. That purpose is not to show all of what is meant by "absolute truth," but to make a case that there is at least one absolute truth.
But either way, these are just linguistic contructs that we use to organize our everyday lives. Why even talk about "absolute" or "relative" when you can just say I agree with that and disagree with this?
That's one of your tropes. You repeat it often. It seems to be a truth you will commit yourself to. Is it then true that "these are just linguistic contructs that we use to organize our everyday lives"? I think it's false. I think these are more than linguistic constructs. Are we both right? How could we be? If we're not both right, is one of us wrong? If one of us wrong, is that person just relatively wrong? How could a person be relatively wrong about this?
Your two propositions are not mutually exclusive. One does not have to be "true" and the other "false." My account can encompass both stories. You have one story that you tell about their being "one reality" and I have a story that I tell about there being "multiple realities." Neither are "true," we just have different stories.
Your account can "encompass both stories," you say, but this is not so, because I insist there is at least one true account that is not just story.
Sure, you can provide a story-explanation for your beliefs and for my beliefs. But your story-explanation must include the proposition that my beliefs are incorrect. That is because my beliefs include the proposition that your story approach to explanation includes a false representation of reality. I also say that my view of reality is not just story, while you say that it is just story. Your view can provide a social/psychological opinion on my view; it cannot accommodate it as to its truth, because my view says that your view is not true.
The Newtonian/Quantum example does not apply here, for the two are complementary theories. But our views are not complementary, they are contradictory. I say there is one reality with multiple, more-or-less-accurate apprehensions of that reality among different persons or communities. You say there is more than one reality. We absolutely disagree on this.
I associate the pattern of taking without consent with the word stealing because it is conventional. Because the word stealing was used by another speaker to describe the pattern of someone stealing that we were both witnessing. As in "Billy, don't steal Bob's crayons!"
* slips on vision-distorting glasses of relativism *
I'm certain you feel that this is the only way to look at the world, but I don't see anything here other than personal opinion and the desire to follow the convention/tradition of a particular group. If you look at it another way you'll see that Billy was helping Bob get over his dependence on crayons. He wasn't stealing, he was helping.
I'm still waiting for something objective - per your own requirements.
If I steal your keys to prevent you driving drunk, I'm still stealing your keys, Steve. If Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor, he's still stealing, even if he's helping.
Tom,
A quick response and then I have to go. I will return, however.
You said: "I can deligitimate you by suggesting you ought to be a serial killer instead of the kind person you are, or I can deligitimate a serial killer by suggesting he change his ways; and (d) in spite of its indiscriminate applicability, the word nevertheless carries moral overtones as if it's always a wrong thing to do."
My response: By calling the person a "serial killer," you have just delegitmated him. That is the effect of your language. Not to mention, his actions have delegitimated himself in the eyes of the community in which he lives--hence the penalty of incarceration.
I don't think it is the "wrong" thing to do to take a stand and call somebody "wrong." I just don't think you have some Ultimate and Unchanging Ground on which you stand to call them "wrong."
The problem with your math example (2 + 2= 4) is because it is a-historical. Recall that was one of the problems with structuralism--per the web link I sent you. Do you believe that before the symbols (1,2,3,4...) were invented by people that 2 + 2 still equalled 4.? That seems unlikely. To those that have never heard of the symbols 2 + 2, like a small tribe in some remote part of the Sudan or Amazon, does it still equal 4? Or how about the centuries that passed before Christians in the West could accept that 0 was a number. These symbols have not just been there waiting on us. We invented them. They are not Universal.
You said: "Can you actually disagree with me without suggesting you are right and I am wrong? What else does disagreement mean? What if I said we do not "participate in a culture in which those are familiar resources that we draw on to describe the world in significant ways." How would you disagree with that without suggesting I was wrong? And also see the following."
You can infer from "disagreement" what you will. I guess some might infer that you are "Satan." As to your claim about culture, I would ask what scholarship do you cite for your claim? I then would respond that if you understand what I mean enough to respond to me, then we are participating in the the same cultural context. I see you writing words that I generally have an understanding of--it is not like you are clicking and grunting to me. In that case, we would be participating in different cultures. How do we know this? Intelligibility.
I think you should have strong commitments. I do. I don't think that they are based on some Unchanging Reality. Making a commitment is taking a stand on some point in the flux of life. It is not to fix yourself to the Universal Good--or at least that is inferring a bit more than do.
Oh, and by the way, I do agree that 2 + 2 = 4, I just think that it is 1) a logical construct (a raft) and not some fact external to our language (the sea) 2) and not universal or ahistorical. It is invented and partial to different peoples (although with the expansion of modern mathamatical discourse it is indeed globalizing and homogenizing people all around the globe).
DL:
If I steal your keys to prevent you driving drunk, I'm still stealing your keys, Steve.
* relativism glasses still in place *
You're taking my keys, that's all you can say objectively. Where do you see stealing? I admit that is one of many ways to look at the situation depending on how you feel about it.
If Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor, he's still stealing, even if he's helping.
Once again, he takes from the rich and gives to the poor - that's all you can say objectively. Stealing and helping are subjective terms.
Stealing can be helpful? This is good to know.
My response: By calling the person a "serial killer," you have just delegitmated him. That is the effect of your language. Not to mention, his actions have delegitimated himself in the eyes of the community in which he lives--hence the penalty of incarceration.
This is almost funny. To call a serial killer a serial killer deligitimates him. Ha ha. Ha. Ha. (Pardon me. I know that laughing deligitimates your language, which is apparently a greater sin than serial killing. I press on regardless.) And being deligitimated in the eyes of the community--is that the reason he's incarcerated? The only reason?
The math example being ahistorical: that's a tough case to make, given the fact that two sticks set down next two sticks always produced four sticks set next to each other, even apart from symbolism to put it that way. And it's also tough in view of the extraordinary "fit" mathematics has with reality, as demonstrated through the natural sciences (especially physics and chemistry). So I think that before the symbols were invented, 2+2 equaled 4. And I can't believe that you honestly believe that equality is really that contingent.
So far you have not fully addressed my question:
"Can you actually disagree with me without suggesting you are right and I am wrong? What else does disagreement mean? What if I said we do not "participate in a culture in which those are familiar resources that we draw on to describe the world in significant ways." How would you disagree with that without suggesting I was wrong?
Maybe I didn't ask it clearly enough. Because you did address it in terms of answering what your initial response would be--to check my scholarship, for one thing. But what is the point you mean by participating in the same cultural context? (So what? in other words.)
Why then do you want me to consult the scholarship? Usually it's so I can find out what research shows to be more or less likely to be true. It's about being right and wrong again.
I could extend out the question by presenting it this way: "Suppose I have done all the scholarship and found reliable supporting sources, and still disagree with you..." But I don't think I want to pursue that, because we have a much clearer example to hand, which is arithmetic. If you think 2+2=4 is culturally contingent, just a sign that students emit because their teachers were trained to train them to emit it, then we'll never find a common ground on any of this. You're only emitting signs you were trained to emit, after all; and your signs can't possibly have any more reality than arithmetic has.
So I'm done trying. You believe that your emission of signs on this blog is no more grounded in reality than the culturally contingent possibility that 2+2=5. You are quite insistent that there is no reality behind anything you say. So I scratch my head and wonder, "Why does he bother saying it?" The only answer can be the one you gave repeatedly in your first posts here, on other threads: you are applying power.
I'm not about applying power. But there are times when it is called for. There is such a thing as illegitimate power (not deligitimate, but illegitimate). There are certainly many examples of such. One of them is power applied for no purpose whatsoever. You do not have any pretension of seeking truth. You objectify. You do not engage here; and especially you do not engage for the purpose of discovering what is right or honorable or true; for you discount the existence of such things. It seems inescapable to conclude that you are writing here for no purpose.
So in view of that, your comments here are an illegitimate expression of power. There has been good opportunity for learning in this, and I have in fact learned a lot. I think that opportunity has run its course. Your (by your own admission, not mine) meaningless contribution is not advancing our purposes here, which is to advance meaning and understanding. It ends now. Thanks for some interesting discussion scattered along the way; I only wish we had had more engagement from you.
Steve,
Once again, he takes from the rich and gives to the poor - that's all you can say objectively. Stealing and helping are subjective terms.I agree that "helping" is subjective, but stealing is objective. It can be subjectively justified or unjustified, but the stealing itself is objective.
I guess this is the source of our mutual misunderstanding. You think that stealing has an implicit moral judgement embedded within it, and I think it's a term for an act independent of its moral value.
So, from your perspective, it made no sense for me to say that stealing was objective and morality not objective. From my perspective, knowing that stealing was objective had nothing to do with morality being objective.
It doesn't really matter which perspective we use from here. Suppose we take yours. On what basis do you know that Robin Hood wasn't stealing? Do we get back to malicious intent and the question of the merit to the victim? Suppose we can assess malicious intent and merit so as to apply the label "stealing". Maybe malicious intent and victimization are good things. How do you know that stealing is something one ought not do?
I haven't been watching this discussion on stealing at all, as I've been trying to sort things out with Jacob. So this may be completely out of context.
Is the problem in the definition of stealing? Would it help to resort to the more general definition that "love is the fulfillment of the law"? In other words, an act done with the intent of helping another person is moral, and an act done with the intent of harming another person is not.
Tom:
There's too much going on to summarize this easily. My post 03.14.07 - 12:31 pm
is a good place to hear my complaint about DL's double standard (a staple of relativism).
Right now I'm trying to get DL to play by his own rules and tell me HOW he knows the pattern (his word) he sees is the objective pattern of stealing and not something else like the objective pattern of helping, borrowing, taking, fishing, etc.
I'm afraid that referencing books won't fly because DL said (and I quote)
My question is, what is the pattern you recognize in stealing that makes it evil?
From your responses so far, it sounds like the pattern is:
1) You have a prior belief that X is wrong (intuition)
2) Other people believe X is wrong (consensus).
3) By definition, any X satisfying (1) and (2) is wrong.
I agree that such a recipe would be objectively executable. It's just the selection of the recipe is not objective.
See, what if I said that any act listed in my little black book is evil? That's objectively executable, too. But is my choice of my own little books as a moral guide an objective choice? If the book says it is?
Did you get that?? It's the selection of the book/definition to match the recognized pattern that is subjective.
So...how does DL objectively select the correct definition to go with "the pattern" he recognizes as stealing? I'm still waiting to find out.
Tom:
Maybe as a way of closing this discussion on the inherent self-stultifying character of postmodernism, Barry Carey over at With All Your Mind (an interesting blog to which I was recently introduced via e-mail by one of your regular readers) comments on the fourth part of Greg Koukl’s article “Truth Is A Strange Sort of Fiction” which can be read here. I recommend it.
SteveK:
IMHO, I suggest you drop it: DL has refused to address concrete questions I posed to him or to address the exposed fallacies he makes, he's playing duck-and-cover with you... and most of the time he simply doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to philosophy... let alone faith and theology. (He's retreated to the safety of his blog to regurgitate the same stuff to his choir of believers.) His non-responses and false ideas don't merit a reasonable response. Jacob eliminates truth altogether, DL shapes it to fit his preconceived worldview.
Tom:
One more note on our recent favorite topic. There’s an interesting interview of Dr. Brad Harper, professor of theology at Multnomah Bible College in Portland, Oregon, over at Ignatius Insight. He gently links postmodernism with the recent “emergent church” phenomenon:
Perhaps the “emergent church” is even more difficult to define than Evangelicalism. Some insiders even want to make sure we distinguish between the “emergent” church and the “emerging” church. To be honest, the importance of most of that is beyond me. What is clear is that there is a transformation in the American church today which, in my view, is much more profound and systemic than the transformation that took place in the 1960s and 70s, illustrated by the “Jesus Movement.”
At the risk of severe oversimplification, I believe that this new transformation is fueled by the dramatic cultural paradigm shift from modern to postmodern, not by the antiestablishment and social progress inclinations which were more at the heart of the revolution of the 1960s and, I believe, much more tame. The result is that many younger Christians desire a faith experience that is much less rationalistic and individual and much more experiential, communal, and multidimensional. One of the results of this is the resurgence of many of the “traditional/ancient Christian practices” you refer to. But in my opinion, most of the young Christians drawn to this kind of church experience are unconcerned or ignorant of the traditional or ancient origins of these practices. They just know that when they walk to the front of the church, light a candle, kneel, and pray before an icon of Christ, they connect with their faith in a way that is more holistically experiential than what they have grown up with in the Evangelical church.
I've just borrowed a book with multiple views on postmodernism in Christianity. It's because I want to get a handle of sorts on this kind of thing.
Experience is great; it's essential. It's like art and beauty--they're all part of being a whole person. I'm all in favor of a more experiential religion as long as it stays grounded and connected in truth. Disconnected from truth it can lead in all kinds of odd and unhealthy directions.
Tom:
Very well said!
Tom:
That's weird: HaloScan must have burped and called me "Anon." Well, I guess that's better than being called a postmodernist...
Steve,
You didn't respond to my 03.15.07 - 2:11 pm comment. Ball's in your court.
Steve:
DL's trying to turn the tables when, in fact, he's the one that owes LOTS of explanations—not just to you—as well as responses to the fallacies and errors he's raised that have been brought to light... over and over. Again, IMHO, you should ignore him. There are many forms of deception... and self-deception.
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