A Thinking Reed

Category: Philosophy

  • Nature’s “transparent rational beauty”

    The kinds of considerations I was discussing in the last post are very similar to those that physicist-priest John Polkinghorne offered as part of a “modest” natural theology in his book Belief in God in an Age of Science. I posted on this several years back, but here’s the relevant portion of the post reproduced:

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    In the first chapter Polkinghorne discusses what he calls the “new natural theology.” There are two aspects of the physical world, Polkinghorne thinks, that provide “hints” of the existence of God. The first is the fact that our minds are fitted to understand the deep structure of the physical universe and that this structure can be expressed in elegant mathematical forumlas. “This use of abstract mathematics as a technique of physical discovery points to a very deep fact about the nature of the universe that we inhabit, and to the remarkable conformity of our human minds to its patterning. We live in a world whose physical fabric is endowed with transparent rational beauty” (p. 2).

    Polkinghorne rejects as implausible the view that our ability to comprehend the fabric of the physical world and express it in the language of mathematics is a mere by-product of our evolutionary development:

    No one would deny, of course, that evolutionary necessity will have moulded our ability for thinking in ways that will ensure its adequacy for understanding the world around us, at least to the extent that is demanded by pressures for survival. Yet our surplus intellectual capacity, enabling us to comprehend the microworld of quarks and gluons and the macroworld of big bang cosmology, is on such a scale that it beggars belief that this is simply a fortunate by-product of the struggle for life. (p. 2-3)

    He likewise rejects any “constructivist” account of knowledge which says that we merely project our preference for mathematical reasoning onto the physical world. “Nature is not so plastic as to be subject to our whim in this way” (p. 3). The great discoveries of physics, however aesthetically pleasing they may be, depend on the belief that it is nature speaking to us in revealing aspects of its deep structure.

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    Revisiting this, it now looks to me like Polkinghorne is stealing some argumentative bases with his statement that it “beggars belief that this [capability for understanding the world] is simply a fortunate by-product of the struggle for life.” That is to say, just because something seems surprising or astonishing doesn’t mean it can’t be true. Polkinghorne might well reply that in the absence of a convincing account of how it could happen “naturalistically,” this “remarkable conformity of our human minds to [the universe’s] patterning” does provide a “hint” that something beyond blind natural processes is at work. So the question is whether there is such a convincing account (or maybe more basically what such an account would have to look like). Or is it enough to say that it’s simply a contingent fact–resulting from our minds’ long evolutionary history–that we’re able to successfully model aspects of reality?

  • The reasons for reason

    Gene Callahan is going back and forth with economist Brad DeLong about philosopher Thomas Nagel’s recent book in which Nagel argues (or so I gather–I haven’t read it) that a strictly materialist understanding of evolution is insufficient to account for the human mind’s ability to understand reality.

    While I haven’t read Nagel’s most recent book, I have read his The Last Word, and it seems that he’s developing the argument he made in that earlier work, particularly the last chapter. Gene is certainly right that Nagel is a philosopher of the first rank, and anyone who dismisses him as “dumb” is being dumb himself. (Though, again, I can’t vouch for his most recent work.)

    Nagel’s argument–or arguments similar to it–has a long pedigree in the history of philosophy, arguably going all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. There has always been something seemingly mysterious about the fact that the human mind is able to understand reality. More specifically, that it can–apparently–understand at least parts of the “deep structure” of the physical world, such as the laws that govern its behavior. And that these laws themselves can be expressed in mathematical form. We might put the mystery this way: How can a trait emerging from a “jumped-up primate” (to use DeLong’s expression) have the kind of universal validity that we claim for reason?

    These kinds of considerations have led many philosophers to conclude that there must be some deep affinity between the human mind and the cosmos. One variation of this conclusion is that the human mind reflects, albeit in a limited way, the mind of God and that this is why our reason is able to uncover, to some extent, the rational order of the universe.

    By contrast, on the supposition that our rational faculties were formed solely by the blind evolutionary pressure to survive, it’s hard to see why we should expect that they would be capable of unlocking the secrets of the universe. I say, “it’s hard to see” not “it’s impossible to see” because I’ve always been uncertain just how much these considerations actually show, rather than being somewhat suggestive. In my view, a deflationary, “Humean” account of reason is inconsistent with the truth-claims usually made on behalf of science (particularly by good secular liberals); but that doesn’t mean that a more robust, yet still naturalistic, account of reason isn’t possible.

  • Liberals aren’t sexual relativists

    In an article that otherwise makes some good points about conservatives’ “populist” defense of junk food, Rod Dreher just can’t resist taking a swipe at a time-honored liberal strawman:

    For conservatives, it may be revealing to compare the defensiveness with which many of us discuss what we do in the dining room to the defensiveness liberals approach discussion of what they do in the bedroom. Liberals, to overgeneralize, believe that what consenting adults do in bed with their bodies is immune from moral judgment. Social conservatives recognize the falsity of this view, understanding that immoderation in sexual matters corrupts individual character and can have deleterious social consequences.

    I can see why this neat bit of parallelism may have been too tempting to leave on the editing-room floor, but it just doesn’t wash. A more accurate approximation to the “liberal” view would be that what consenting adults do in the bedroom is not a fit matter for state regulation. But liberals are hardly barred from making moral judgments about sexual relations. This is because consent is a necessary, but not sufficient, criterion for morally appropriate sexual acts. A liberal can easily say, for instance, that a relationship of equality and mutuality is morally superior to one based on humiliation and degradation, even if all the parties involved consent to their treatment.

    Dreher here makes the common conservative mistake of assuming that because liberals object to some longstanding moral prohibitions (on, say, homosexual relationships) that they must object to all moral judgment in matters of sex. This only follows if you treat sexual ethics as a seamless whole that can’t be altered without the whole thing unraveling. But liberals typically take a different approach: they look for the deeper, underlying principles that justify a particular sexual ethic and try to prune off the bits that seem inconsistent with those principles, understood in light of changing social contexts and new knowledge. Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant made some particular judgments about sex that nearly all of us (conservative and liberal) would now reject, but we can still use the principles of human flourishing or respect for persons to articulate a consistent sexual ethic.

  • Speaking of equality…

    From this really interesting interview with philosopher Elizabeth Anderson:

    The idea that human beings are fundamentally equals from a moral point of view is ancient. I suspect it can be traced all the way back to the origins of monotheism, in the idea that we are all equally creatures of God, all made in God’s image, all in principle equally eligible for salvation. However for most of history most monotheistic churches have promised equality only in the next life; in this one a thousand reasons were invented to uphold various forms of social, political, and religious hierarchy.

    I also recommend Anderson’s paper “What is the point of equality?” (PDF), though it’s a bit philosophically dense.

  • Animal rights is more than Peter Singer

    Tony Jones posted a link to a Peter Singer article arguing, among other things, that animal-welfare concerns should trump claims to religious liberty in cases like humane slaughter laws. Whatever the merits of Singer’s argument (Brandon pretty thoroughly demolishes it here), the post at Tony Jones’ blog provides an example of how Christians often react to Singer’s work. At least a couple of commenters dismiss Singer out of hand because of his views on abortion/infanticide/euthanasia.

    Now, as someone who would like animal-rights arguments to get a wider hearing in the Christian community, I’m disheartened by this type of response. It seems that many people–not least Christians–treat “Singerian” views on the status of non-human animals as being of a single piece with his views on issues at the boundaries of human life.

    But I think this is a mistake for at least a few reasons. First, it’s not clear that someone who accepts Singer-style arguments against irrational species prejudice (say) is committed to embracing his conclusions about the status of fetuses or newborns. It’s possible to accept Singer’s conclusion that animal interests should be included in our moral calculus without accepting his view that it’s okay to painlessly kill beings that lack certain future-oriented preferences.

    Second, even within the world of secular theorizing about animal rights, Singer’s approach is far from the only one on offer. In fact, it’s a bit ironic that he’s sometimes referred to as “the father of animal rights” considering that Singer’s moral theory does not include rights as a fundamental component. But there are thinkers who do put rights into the foundation of their theory (e.g., Tom Regan), as well as those who argue for radical changes to the way we treat animals on the basis of contractarian, feminist, neo-Aristotelian, and other moral approaches. And most of these approaches avoid the implications of Singer’s utilitarian ethic that so many balk at.

    Finally, the Christian tradition itself has resources for re-thinking our treatment of animals, as I’ve tried to document on this blog. The works of theologians like Andrew Linzey, Stephen Webb, Richard Alan Young, and Jay McDaniel, to name just a few, deploy traditional theological motifs to support an ethical agenda similar to that proposed by secular animal liberationists. They argue that the gospel, rightly understood, demands that we modify or abandon certain practices (such as factory farming) that do violence to the flourishing of God’s beloved creatures.

    My personal view is that Peter Singer’s work has contributed to the way we should think about our obligations to non-human animals (and to other vulnerable groups like the global poor). But I also agree with Singer’s many Christian critics that at least some of his other views are objectionable. Whatever one’s stance on Singer’s work, though, it shouldn’t serve as an excuse for Christians not to engage with the challenges to our traditional ways of using animals.

  • A simple argument for vegetarianism

    The New York Times “Ethicist” column recently challeged its readers to submit essays making the case for why it’s ethically okay to eat meat. The submissions are supposed to offer a pro-meat answer to the question “Whether it is right to eat animals in the first place, at least when human survival is not at stake.” The essays will be judged by a panel consisting of Peter Singer, Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Andrew Light.

    One interesting thing about this contest is that it puts the onus back on meat-eaters to justify a practice that’s usually taken for granted as the normal thing to do. Getting people to question this assumption is a worthy goal in itself.

    But for the sake of clarity, let’s flesh out (so to speak) the anti-meat (or pro-vegetarian) argument. Here, in schematic form, is what I take to be a simple, but powerful, moral argument for vegetarianism:

    1. It’s wrong, other things being equal, to be the cause of avoidable suffering.
    2. Meat-eating causes avoidable suffering.
    3. Therefore, meat-eating is wrong.

    The first premise is about as close to a moral truism as you could find. It would be a very different value system from any most of us would recognize that endorsed the idea of causing avoidable suffering. Most of us also think, of course, that sometimes there are good reasons for being the cause of suffering (e.g., a painful medical procedure that saves someone’s life). But to cause suffering when it’s not necessary seems like a paradigm case of acting immorally.

    The second premise is more contentious. Let’s stipulate, along with the Times, that we’re talking about cases where meat-eating isn’t necessary for human survival. The question then becomes: is the suffering caused by meat-eating justifiable on some other grounds?

    For this infliction of suffering to be justifiable, the human interest in meat-eating would have to outweigh the animals’ interest in avoiding suffering. So what human interest is at stake? Well, pleasure is one obvious one: many people really like the taste of meat. There are also cultural and culinary goods associated with the practices of preparing and eating meat which, in a meatless world, would have to be abandoned or at least modified (the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, for example).

    Now, the tricky thing is that there’s no mechanical way of weighing competing interests to find out whether the animal’s interest in not suffering should trump the human’s interest in having a tasty meal. That being said, though, I think it’s intuitively quite plausible that an animal’s interest in not suffering is greater than my interest in the pleasure I’d get from eating a steak. Consider the case of a sadist who derives great pleasure from torturing kittens: would any of us say that his pleasure outweighs the kitten’s interest in not being made to suffer? The only way I can see to decisively tip the scales toward meat-eating is if you’re willing to say that animal interests count for nothing, or for so little as to be trumped by even the most trivial human interest.

    You could also develop a parallel argument where “avoidable suffering” is replaced with “avoidable death.” That is, even if animals could be raised and slaughtered for food without being made to suffer (a questionable proposition, but let’s concede it for now), they would still be killed, and, other things being equal, killing a sentient being seems like a significant harm. Now, there are some philosophers (including, ironicially, Peter Singer) who say that painlessly killing an animal doesn’t actually harm the animal, because they don’t have a concept of death and thus can’t take an interest in not being killed. This response only works, though, if you’re willing to accept Singer’s particular version of preference-based utilitarianism, and other philosophers have argued (persuasively, in my opinion) that death is indeed a harm for animals.

    Assuming this is all correct, or at least plausible, let’s note a couple of things about this argument. First, it doesn’t require accepting that humans and animals are “morally equivalent” or denying “human exceptionalism.” It’s quite possible to hold that humans are more important than animals but that trivial human interests don’t justify overriding or disregarding vital animal interests. Second, it doesn’t rest on detailed claims about the horrible state of factory farming. So long as raising and slaughtering animals for food entails any significant suffering–which includes both factory and traditional farms–the argument can get some traction. Finally, it doesn’t require adopting any controversial ethical theories like utilitarianism or a particular notion of animal rights. All it assumes is that it’s wrong to cause avoidable suffering (or death) and that animals’ interests count for something, even if not as much as comparable human interests. I think these minimalist assumptions help make it a pretty strong argument.

    What do you think?

  • Biblical inerrancy, the goodness of God, and our capacity for truth

    I came across this letter of C.S. Lewis’s on the blog Undeception:

    Dear Mr. Beversluis,

    Yes. On my view one must apply something of the same sort of explanation to, say, the atrocities (and treacheries) of Joshua. I see the grave danger we run by doing so; but the dangers of believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him ‘good’ and worshiping Him, is still greater danger. The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scriptures is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible.

    To this some will reply ‘ah, but we are fallen and don’t recognize good when we see it.’ But God Himself does not say that we are as fallen as all that. He constantly, in Scripture, appeals to our conscience: ‘Why do ye not of yourselves judge what is right?’ — ‘What fault hath my people found in me?’ And so on. Socrates’ answer to Euthyphro is used in Christian form by Hooker. Things are not good because God commands them; God commands certain things because he sees them to be good. (In other words, the Divine Will is the obedient servant to the Divine Reason.) The opposite view (Ockham’s, Paley’s) leads to an absurdity. If ‘good’ means ‘what God wills’ then to say ‘God is good’ can mean only ‘God wills what he wills.’ Which is equally true of you or me or Judas or Satan.

    But of course having said all this, we must apply it with fear and trembling. Some things which seem to us bad may be good. But we must not consult our consciences by trying to feel a thing good when it seems to us totally evil. We can only pray that if there is an invisible goodness hidden in such things, God, in His own good time will enable us to see it. If we need to. For perhaps sometimes God’s answer might be ‘What is that to thee?’ The passage may not be ‘addressed to our (your or my) condition’ at all.

    I think we are v. much in agreement, aren’t we?

    Yours sincerely, C. S. Lewis

    I’ve noted before that while Lewis was very much a man of traditional and conservative disposition and views, he would be out of step with a lot of what passes for “conservative” Christianity today. A significant strain of contemporary evangelicalism–particularly Calvinist-influenced, has embraced precisely the doctrine of inerrancy and ethical voluntarism that Lewis is criticizing here.

    Closer to home, however, a lot of mainline theology has absorbed the “postmodern” critique of reason, which denies that we can transcend our particular social and cultural situation enough to apprehend any “universal” truths. Lewis, though he recognizes our penchant for partiality and self-deception, would also disagree with this, at least in its extreme form. God has endowed us with the capacity to apprehend the Good and the True. It’s true that in our fallen state, we only apprehend it in a partial and fragmentary way, but we are capable of genuine knowledge. It’s also worth noting that “postmodern” anti-rationnalism doesn’t necessarily have more progressive implications than conservative biblicism. In fact, it may lead to a very similar form of authoritarianism: if “truth” is defined by my tribe, my social group, my church, my political fellow-travelers, etc., how is criticism of the group possible?

    My personal view is that there is merit in the various critiques of “Enlightenment reason,” but at the same time, Christians should be wary of embracing a thorough-going anti-rationalism.

  • American “multarchy”

    Philosopher Gary Gutting writes that America doesn’t have a democracy, but a “mutlarchy”–a system that includes elements of the five types of government delineated by Plato in The Republic. These are

    —aristocracy: “rule by the ‘best’, that is, by experts specially trained at governance”
    —timarchy: “rule by those guided by their courage and sense of honor”
    —oligarchy: “rule by a wealthy minority”
    —democracy: “rule by the people as a whole—a ‘mob’ as Plato saw it”
    —tyranny: “rule by a despot answerable to no one but himself”

    We don’t have a single form of government, but “a complex interweaving of many forms of government.” Gutting says that the political task is not to eliminate any of these elements, since they are probably unavoidable, but finding the appropriate balance among them. This means we should avoid superficial slogans like “less government”:

    Much of our current debate over this challenge focuses on the question of whether we have “too much government,” where “government” means the federal bureaucracy. Our “Platonic” analysis suggests that this is at best a gross oversimplificaton. The question, rather, is precisely how should we calibrate the relative strengths of all five elements of our multocracy. Current calls for “less government” actually mean less power for elected leaders and for the bureaucracies that serve them and more power for the “oligarchy” of millionaires and corporations. Such calls also imply less power for the people (the democratic element), since, while elected leaders are directly responsible to those who vote, those whose power is based on wealth are not. In fact, many of us who bristle at any government interference with our freedom and privacy, accept, as an economic necessity, similar interference from the companies we work for or do business with.

    What we need is an integrated debate about all the powers that govern us, along with a recognition that all of them have essential roles but also pose dangers. In particular, “How can we recognize legitimate corporate interests while avoiding plutocracy?” is as essential a question as “Is the federal bureaucracy a threat to personal freedom?” Those worried about the evils of Big Government need to look not only at the executive branch in Washington but also at the executive offices of our major corporations.

    I think this is a helpful analysis. It shows that we define “freedom” too narrowly if we understand it simply as freedom from (federal) government interference. These other “governments” can limit people’s freedom in ways that are just as harmful.

  • What does Oxford have to do with Jerusalem?

    I’m reading Keith Ward’s More than Matter? and found it interesting to learn that two of Ward’s teachers were the Oxford philosophers Gilbert Ryle and A.J. Ayer. Ryle was famous for characterizing Cartesian dualism as “the ghost in the machine,” and Ayer was the famed proponent of logical positivism. Ward says that he came to believe that neither Ryle’s quasi-behaviorist “ordinary language” philosophy nor Ayer’s logical positivism provided a satisfying explanation of the nature of the human person. (Or, by extension, the nature of reality more generally.) The book goes on to defend a version of idealism–the view, broadly speaking, that mind or spirit is the most fundamental reality upon which everything else depends.

    Here’s Ward discussing his move from atheism to Christianity and the celebrity culture surrounding the debates over the new atheism:

  • John Macquarrie and process theology

    I’m currently re-reading Scottish Anglican theologian John Macquarrie‘s marvelously lucid Principles of Christian Theology (first published in 1966; I’m reading the substantially revised version that was published about 10 years later). I first read it as an undergrad when my interest in existentialism was at its height. In the first part of the book, Macquarrie draws on the work of philosophers like Sartre and, especially, Heidegger to develop an “existential-ontological” natural theology. It’s existential in that it uses an analysis of human existence as its jumping-off point; it’s ontological in developing the idea of God as “Holy Being.” By this Macquarrie means that God is not a being among beings in the world, but rather the very possibility of anything existing at all. God is the power of “letting-be.”

    One thing that struck me upon this reading, though, was how close some of Macquarrie’s ideas are to the process thought of A.N. Whitehead and his followers. In particular, Macquarrie’s description of human selfhood, while obviously owing a lot to the existentialists, emphasizes how the self incorporates what is bequeathed to it by the past with its apprehension of future possibilities and creates something genuinely new. This is very similar to the model of selfhood that lies at the center of Whitehead’s “philosophy of organism.” Further, Macquarrie develops what I think could be fairly called a “di-polar” version of theism which sees God as having both an eternal, unchanging nature and an aspect that is involved in and affected by what happens in history. One key difference is that Macquarrie preserves God’s ultimacy, while for Whitehead and most (but not all) forms of process theism, God is not properly speaking the ultimate creator or origin of everything. From a Christian point of view, Macquarrie’s view seems much more satisfactory.

    I just ordered Macquarrie’s In Search of Deity, which was the published form of his Gifford Lectures deliverd in 1983 and 1984. Looking at the subtitle (“An Essay in Dialectical Theism”) and browsing the table of contents suggest that Macquarrie may have moved even closer to a semi-Whiteheadian view later in his career.