You can no find the 125th Skeptics' Circle at Effort Sisyphus, with two ways to experience the journey. Is your pill red or blue?
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Thursday, December 3, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Review of TLS -- God uniquely and uniquely God?
Welcome to the sixth installment of my review of Dr. Edward Feser's The Last Superstition. You can find parts one, two, three, four and five at those links. In Chapter 3 Dr. Feser presents arguments for the existence and nature of God. Having covered existence in part five, I will not turn to some of the arguments offered for the nature of God. For the purposes of this post, I will treat Dr. Feser's arguments for existence as being completely convincing, and see if they really do tell us what he claims concerning the nature of God.
As an aside, given that the Unmoved Mover depends on the impossibility of an infinite essentially ordered causal series, it's rather curious that the Unmoved Mover themself must possess infinite power (otherwise, use of any causal power would diminish the Mover). It seems we can't avoid the infinite, no matter what.
While Aquinas may have written thousands of pages on the arguments about these attributes, Dr. Feser's words are considerably more brief, and I should be able to discuss them below the fold.
Starting with the Unmoved Mover, who has been revealed to be pure act and no potential, Dr. Feser says there can only be one of them. After all, if there was more than one, there would need to be some way of distinguishing them, and any possible distinction, such as one having more power than another, would be a potential for one that was an actuality for the other. It was difficult to take this argument seriously. No where else in his book does Dr. Feser use one being's actuality to assess a potentiality of a different being. My actuality as a human is not affected by the potential of soil to turn into an oak tree in the presence of an acorn. Unmoved Mover A can easily have some feature X that is not a potentiality nor an actuality at all for Unmoved Mover B. Now, you can certainly argue that A can in no way change or affect B, and vice-versa, but this does not make them the same.
Another argument is that the Mover can not be material, because to be material is to have potential to be something else. However, this seems to be a generalization based on the material things that we know. There is no reason to think that the Mover can't be a material thing with no potential to change at all. If you care to go back to Russell's teapot, the teapot is by definition at the center of the universe, and all other things circle it. Nor does it have any potential to become a cereal bowl or a silver spoon, it is fully expressed, unchanging as a teapot.
Finally, as the source of all causes, the Mover must possess all attributes in the highest degree. Of course, these are only the positive attributes like goodness and love, negative attributes like badness and hate are privations, states identified by the absence of a positive feature. I don't find that description metaphysically persuasive. Just sticking with emotions, the enjoyment of seeing another person in pain (schadenfreude) is not in any way the lack of some other attribute. Empathy is an attribute, but you can have neither empathy nor schadenfreude, just indifference, which would seem to be the privation of both. However, I find it unlikely Dr. Feser would claim schadenfreude is a feature of the Mover.
The last feature is that the First Cause, who merges every other essence with its existence, had no other being to merge it's essence and existence together. Thus, the Cause is simple, in that its essence is its existence, and its existence is its essence. This argument makes sense to me, and I have no objection to saying God is simple. What's interesting is that I hear this doctrine of simplicity used as statements why the Teapot, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and/or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are not comparable to God, because their existence is composite, being both material and essence. However, I can't see that. Just because for everyday, potential-laden, material things we separate essence from the matter does not mean this applies to the Cause. We should not let our analogies limit who the Cause can be.
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As an aside, given that the Unmoved Mover depends on the impossibility of an infinite essentially ordered causal series, it's rather curious that the Unmoved Mover themself must possess infinite power (otherwise, use of any causal power would diminish the Mover). It seems we can't avoid the infinite, no matter what.
While Aquinas may have written thousands of pages on the arguments about these attributes, Dr. Feser's words are considerably more brief, and I should be able to discuss them below the fold.
Starting with the Unmoved Mover, who has been revealed to be pure act and no potential, Dr. Feser says there can only be one of them. After all, if there was more than one, there would need to be some way of distinguishing them, and any possible distinction, such as one having more power than another, would be a potential for one that was an actuality for the other. It was difficult to take this argument seriously. No where else in his book does Dr. Feser use one being's actuality to assess a potentiality of a different being. My actuality as a human is not affected by the potential of soil to turn into an oak tree in the presence of an acorn. Unmoved Mover A can easily have some feature X that is not a potentiality nor an actuality at all for Unmoved Mover B. Now, you can certainly argue that A can in no way change or affect B, and vice-versa, but this does not make them the same.
Another argument is that the Mover can not be material, because to be material is to have potential to be something else. However, this seems to be a generalization based on the material things that we know. There is no reason to think that the Mover can't be a material thing with no potential to change at all. If you care to go back to Russell's teapot, the teapot is by definition at the center of the universe, and all other things circle it. Nor does it have any potential to become a cereal bowl or a silver spoon, it is fully expressed, unchanging as a teapot.
Finally, as the source of all causes, the Mover must possess all attributes in the highest degree. Of course, these are only the positive attributes like goodness and love, negative attributes like badness and hate are privations, states identified by the absence of a positive feature. I don't find that description metaphysically persuasive. Just sticking with emotions, the enjoyment of seeing another person in pain (schadenfreude) is not in any way the lack of some other attribute. Empathy is an attribute, but you can have neither empathy nor schadenfreude, just indifference, which would seem to be the privation of both. However, I find it unlikely Dr. Feser would claim schadenfreude is a feature of the Mover.
The last feature is that the First Cause, who merges every other essence with its existence, had no other being to merge it's essence and existence together. Thus, the Cause is simple, in that its essence is its existence, and its existence is its essence. This argument makes sense to me, and I have no objection to saying God is simple. What's interesting is that I hear this doctrine of simplicity used as statements why the Teapot, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and/or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are not comparable to God, because their existence is composite, being both material and essence. However, I can't see that. Just because for everyday, potential-laden, material things we separate essence from the matter does not mean this applies to the Cause. We should not let our analogies limit who the Cause can be.
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Friday, November 27, 2009
Review of TLS -- the unmoving First Cause argument
Welcome to the fifth installment of my review of Dr. Edward Feser's The Last Superstition. You can find parts one, two, three, and four at those links. I have reached Chapter 3 in TLS, which starts start discussing some of Dr. Feser's argument for the existence and nature of God, along with a few other things. In this post I'll focus in the existence arguments, of which three are offered, namely that of the Unmoved Mover (better understood, perhaps as the Unchanged Changer), the First Cause, and the Supreme Intelligence.
First, a few brief paragraphs about Dr. Feser's comments on the reliability of these proofs. He sees them as being a mixture of formal and empirical reasoning, because they use premises that are empirical as well as conceptual. and that this make the proofs more certain to be true than either method can produce on its own. Personally, I see the methodology as being purely formal. Taking a few empirical notions as being starting points (Edit:does) does not alter what is basically a formal exercise in TLS. To be sure, there are ways of trying to mix empirical and formal (as well as revelatory) reasoning, much like mixing oil, vinegar, and parsley to make a salad dressing. I just don't see that being done in his arguments.
Second, Dr. Feser does sneak in a fourth attempt at proof prior to the listed three. The claim is basically that since universals exist, they have some sort of reality even when there is no matter to take their form and no mind to appreciate their essence, but they are not real in the Platonic sense. So there must be a mind that instantiates them even when there is no mind instantiating them. He does not even present this as a reducito ad absurdum argument, just as ~A => A.
Finally, I think I have come to understand some of the motives behind the constant stream of invective being launched at Dawkins, Hume, and various others. Dr. Feser's stated goal may be to convince atheists of some of these claims, but the more likely result of these continual insults is to get people who like what Dennett, et. al., have to say so upset that they don't read the logic itself objectively or clearly, and so miss the important points that are understated and focus on the repeated, emphasized, not-exactly-correct shortcuts (there's also a little playing to the crowd in that, too, since the best market for his books is almost certainly not atheists). Then, when the upset reader treats those shortcuts as the real argument, they can be dismissed as missing the point of the argument. I have seen one example of this directly, and I'll expand on it in the discussion of the Unmoved Mover below the fold.
The argument for the Unmoved Mover is based upon several ideas: change is movement from a potential state to an actual state, no object can activate it's own potential, and every activation has an immediate efficient cause. He takes the time to distinguish between accidentally ordered causes and essentially ordered causes. One example he gives equates to saying that one cause of your father having you is your grandfather having your father. Even your grandfather died when your father was young, that did not prevent your father from having you. This is an accidentlly ordered causal series, in that the separation of time means that the earlier cause doesn't need to be present to have the causal chain continue, that the causal chain is transmitted independently of the continued existence of your grandfather. Another example would be that you don't have be smoking while you actually develop lung cancer in order to have the smoking be a cause of the cancer. This is contrasted with an essentially ordered causal series, which is basically that the cause's presence is required while the potential is activated. The offered example is that of a hand shaping a clay pot. Whatever the past reasons that motivate the potter, without the hand directly present, the clay is not shaped. The clay does not continue shaping itself when the hand is withdrawn, all the change is completely dependent on the hand.
Taking a break from the argument to comment on style, Dr. Feser presents this dependence-oriented description of an essentially ordered causal series precisely once. He then says the actions appear to simultaneous in the essential series due to the dependence. In fact, over the next 5 pages, he uses various derivatives of simultaneous 9 times, twice in italics, to describe essentially ordered causes. Naturally, when the occasional reader sees this repetition, they take away the notion that simultaneity is essential to the argument, and see that fact that elements of an essentially ordered series are not truly simultaneous as a disproof of the line of reasoning. This allows Dr. Feser to dismiss the reader based on a lack of understanding, and I have seen him do this in the comments on his blog. Of course, I don't really know if this is a deliberate deception on Dr. Feser's part, if he is too incompetent as a writer to understand the effects of repetition, or if he just let some other hack write or edit his book that way (no doubt other possible explanations exist). I can only comment on the effect, not being able to fathom the purpose (or final cause, if you like).
Going back to the argument, Dr. Feser presents that these essentially ordered series of causes have terminating points, so they have starting points as well. Further, since each event in the series does not have the potential to activate itself, it cannot be considered the initiating force of the series, but only a participant therein. He likens the series to a train have a caboose and several railroad cars: at some point, there must be an engine that sets the essentially ordered series in motion. Since nothing activates its own potential, this origin does not change, it only activates changes. This origin is God, continuously activating all the events in the world, such as a rock rolling down a hill, a spider spinning a web, one man feeding the hungry, and another (or the same) man molesting a child.
Dr. Feser recommends that the best way to show his arguments are invalid is to demonstrate errors in the reasoning and the starting premises, so naturally I will take him up on this offer and select both a premise and a bit of reasoning. From the starting premises I will pick one that stands out (besides the notion no act can be its own cause which I discussed in an earlier post): in the material world, essentially ordered series do not terminate. His example is that of a hand pushing a stick, which stick pushes a rock, and he treats the rock as the final object in the sequence. However, the rock pushes the ground and the air, each of which engage in their own set of reactions with other air and ground molecules, in a never-ending series. So, while the ideas that a last member implies a first member is also highly debatable, this debate is not relevant because there is no last member. From his reasoning, let's choose the notion that each member of the series is a passive link to the next. In fact, the ability of one event to activate the potential in the next event is a motive force. In the train analogy, it's much more like each railroad car has an oxygen tank inn the front, a hydrogen tank in the rear, and in between each car is a little motor that burns the fuels to power the following car. The engine is not only quite possibly infinitely far away, it is not needed at all.
Dr. Feser decreases the number of word he devotes to each of the causes as he progresses, and I shall do likewise. The First Cause argument is based on the notion that forms are real, and they include the essence, a definitive form, of things. Since the forms can exist without being instantiated in any particular material object, merely having an essence does not guarantee existence, such as the essence of unicorns exists, but this does not mean unicorns exist. Since they are initially separate, something must combine an essence to an existence, and this is the cause of that object. Since this combination of existence and essence must be performed for every object in the universe, it must be performed for the universe as a whole.
There is brief break in the argument, where Dr. Feser discusses the fallacy of composition. One example of this fallacy: I can step over each cinder block from a group of 20, so if you stack all 20 vertically, I can step over the whole stack, as well. Dr. Feser says that since the fallacy of composition is sometimes true (the individual cinder blocks are gray, so the stack will be gray), he can use it here to say if every object in the universe has a cause (an event that joined essence to existence), so does the universe as a whole. No, I'm not kidding, he really claims that since a fallacy sometimes works, he can use it in this argument. He offers no other justification for applying it.
Anyway, these joining of existence to essences wind up being the essentially ordered causal series, and in a similar argument against infinity, the series must have a first element, the being whose essence includes existence without a cause, that set every existence in motion directly or indirectly, a First Cause, aka God. Further, since God initiates all these objects, he is constantly maintaining them. This is offered with no justification at all, he just slides from creating to maintaining as if they are the same thing.
This is basically the Unmoved Mover argument, expect the supposed terminus is the change of beginning an existence, as opposed to a different type of change. It offers no corrections or improvements to the defects of the previous argument. It is not any more rational as a position, and actually less so, since it depends on the fallacy of composition, where as the Unmoved Mover did not.
Finally, we get to the argument from the Supreme Intelligence. Since final causes are presumed to exist, the future oak exists as the eventual form of the acorn. Since the oak itself doesn't exist yet, its form must be in the thought of some intelligence that allows the form to direct the acorn in becoming an oak. This Supreme Intelligence Is ... (wait for it) ... God! Yes, the suspense was killing me, too.
This argument certainly clarifies why Dr. Feser likes formal causes so much, even though it makes no sense to claim that the form of the oak is not already in the acorn, within the DNA that will direct its development. Not too mention, in examples like this, how come we never hear the form of the oak is in the soil, or the rainwater? Certainly the oak is much more soil and rainwater than it is the original acorn. Maybe that's too complicated for our discussion, though. Needless to say, as I have outlined above, I found the argument for God as outlined in TLS to be completely lacking in accurate empirical starting points and also to have a couple of steps of poor reasoning. I was not convinced, at all. Despite that, for the purpose of part 6, I'm going to grant Dr. Feser has proven his case for existence, and then respond to the attributes he attributes to God based on these arguments.
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First, a few brief paragraphs about Dr. Feser's comments on the reliability of these proofs. He sees them as being a mixture of formal and empirical reasoning, because they use premises that are empirical as well as conceptual. and that this make the proofs more certain to be true than either method can produce on its own. Personally, I see the methodology as being purely formal. Taking a few empirical notions as being starting points (Edit:
Second, Dr. Feser does sneak in a fourth attempt at proof prior to the listed three. The claim is basically that since universals exist, they have some sort of reality even when there is no matter to take their form and no mind to appreciate their essence, but they are not real in the Platonic sense. So there must be a mind that instantiates them even when there is no mind instantiating them. He does not even present this as a reducito ad absurdum argument, just as ~A => A.
Finally, I think I have come to understand some of the motives behind the constant stream of invective being launched at Dawkins, Hume, and various others. Dr. Feser's stated goal may be to convince atheists of some of these claims, but the more likely result of these continual insults is to get people who like what Dennett, et. al., have to say so upset that they don't read the logic itself objectively or clearly, and so miss the important points that are understated and focus on the repeated, emphasized, not-exactly-correct shortcuts (there's also a little playing to the crowd in that, too, since the best market for his books is almost certainly not atheists). Then, when the upset reader treats those shortcuts as the real argument, they can be dismissed as missing the point of the argument. I have seen one example of this directly, and I'll expand on it in the discussion of the Unmoved Mover below the fold.
The argument for the Unmoved Mover is based upon several ideas: change is movement from a potential state to an actual state, no object can activate it's own potential, and every activation has an immediate efficient cause. He takes the time to distinguish between accidentally ordered causes and essentially ordered causes. One example he gives equates to saying that one cause of your father having you is your grandfather having your father. Even your grandfather died when your father was young, that did not prevent your father from having you. This is an accidentlly ordered causal series, in that the separation of time means that the earlier cause doesn't need to be present to have the causal chain continue, that the causal chain is transmitted independently of the continued existence of your grandfather. Another example would be that you don't have be smoking while you actually develop lung cancer in order to have the smoking be a cause of the cancer. This is contrasted with an essentially ordered causal series, which is basically that the cause's presence is required while the potential is activated. The offered example is that of a hand shaping a clay pot. Whatever the past reasons that motivate the potter, without the hand directly present, the clay is not shaped. The clay does not continue shaping itself when the hand is withdrawn, all the change is completely dependent on the hand.
Taking a break from the argument to comment on style, Dr. Feser presents this dependence-oriented description of an essentially ordered causal series precisely once. He then says the actions appear to simultaneous in the essential series due to the dependence. In fact, over the next 5 pages, he uses various derivatives of simultaneous 9 times, twice in italics, to describe essentially ordered causes. Naturally, when the occasional reader sees this repetition, they take away the notion that simultaneity is essential to the argument, and see that fact that elements of an essentially ordered series are not truly simultaneous as a disproof of the line of reasoning. This allows Dr. Feser to dismiss the reader based on a lack of understanding, and I have seen him do this in the comments on his blog. Of course, I don't really know if this is a deliberate deception on Dr. Feser's part, if he is too incompetent as a writer to understand the effects of repetition, or if he just let some other hack write or edit his book that way (no doubt other possible explanations exist). I can only comment on the effect, not being able to fathom the purpose (or final cause, if you like).
Going back to the argument, Dr. Feser presents that these essentially ordered series of causes have terminating points, so they have starting points as well. Further, since each event in the series does not have the potential to activate itself, it cannot be considered the initiating force of the series, but only a participant therein. He likens the series to a train have a caboose and several railroad cars: at some point, there must be an engine that sets the essentially ordered series in motion. Since nothing activates its own potential, this origin does not change, it only activates changes. This origin is God, continuously activating all the events in the world, such as a rock rolling down a hill, a spider spinning a web, one man feeding the hungry, and another (or the same) man molesting a child.
Dr. Feser recommends that the best way to show his arguments are invalid is to demonstrate errors in the reasoning and the starting premises, so naturally I will take him up on this offer and select both a premise and a bit of reasoning. From the starting premises I will pick one that stands out (besides the notion no act can be its own cause which I discussed in an earlier post): in the material world, essentially ordered series do not terminate. His example is that of a hand pushing a stick, which stick pushes a rock, and he treats the rock as the final object in the sequence. However, the rock pushes the ground and the air, each of which engage in their own set of reactions with other air and ground molecules, in a never-ending series. So, while the ideas that a last member implies a first member is also highly debatable, this debate is not relevant because there is no last member. From his reasoning, let's choose the notion that each member of the series is a passive link to the next. In fact, the ability of one event to activate the potential in the next event is a motive force. In the train analogy, it's much more like each railroad car has an oxygen tank inn the front, a hydrogen tank in the rear, and in between each car is a little motor that burns the fuels to power the following car. The engine is not only quite possibly infinitely far away, it is not needed at all.
Dr. Feser decreases the number of word he devotes to each of the causes as he progresses, and I shall do likewise. The First Cause argument is based on the notion that forms are real, and they include the essence, a definitive form, of things. Since the forms can exist without being instantiated in any particular material object, merely having an essence does not guarantee existence, such as the essence of unicorns exists, but this does not mean unicorns exist. Since they are initially separate, something must combine an essence to an existence, and this is the cause of that object. Since this combination of existence and essence must be performed for every object in the universe, it must be performed for the universe as a whole.
There is brief break in the argument, where Dr. Feser discusses the fallacy of composition. One example of this fallacy: I can step over each cinder block from a group of 20, so if you stack all 20 vertically, I can step over the whole stack, as well. Dr. Feser says that since the fallacy of composition is sometimes true (the individual cinder blocks are gray, so the stack will be gray), he can use it here to say if every object in the universe has a cause (an event that joined essence to existence), so does the universe as a whole. No, I'm not kidding, he really claims that since a fallacy sometimes works, he can use it in this argument. He offers no other justification for applying it.
Anyway, these joining of existence to essences wind up being the essentially ordered causal series, and in a similar argument against infinity, the series must have a first element, the being whose essence includes existence without a cause, that set every existence in motion directly or indirectly, a First Cause, aka God. Further, since God initiates all these objects, he is constantly maintaining them. This is offered with no justification at all, he just slides from creating to maintaining as if they are the same thing.
This is basically the Unmoved Mover argument, expect the supposed terminus is the change of beginning an existence, as opposed to a different type of change. It offers no corrections or improvements to the defects of the previous argument. It is not any more rational as a position, and actually less so, since it depends on the fallacy of composition, where as the Unmoved Mover did not.
Finally, we get to the argument from the Supreme Intelligence. Since final causes are presumed to exist, the future oak exists as the eventual form of the acorn. Since the oak itself doesn't exist yet, its form must be in the thought of some intelligence that allows the form to direct the acorn in becoming an oak. This Supreme Intelligence Is ... (wait for it) ... God! Yes, the suspense was killing me, too.
This argument certainly clarifies why Dr. Feser likes formal causes so much, even though it makes no sense to claim that the form of the oak is not already in the acorn, within the DNA that will direct its development. Not too mention, in examples like this, how come we never hear the form of the oak is in the soil, or the rainwater? Certainly the oak is much more soil and rainwater than it is the original acorn. Maybe that's too complicated for our discussion, though. Needless to say, as I have outlined above, I found the argument for God as outlined in TLS to be completely lacking in accurate empirical starting points and also to have a couple of steps of poor reasoning. I was not convinced, at all. Despite that, for the purpose of part 6, I'm going to grant Dr. Feser has proven his case for existence, and then respond to the attributes he attributes to God based on these arguments.
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Friday, November 20, 2009
The 124th Skeptics' Circle
There is a huge collection of links at Beyond the Short Coat for the 124th edition of the Skeptics' Circle. I might get to them all this weekend, but you can bet Jay Leno's "reading" by Sylvia Browne will be near the top of the list!
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Review of TLS -- Just cause or just 'cause?
Welcome to the fourth installment of my review of Dr. Edward Feser's The Last Superstition. You can find parts one, two, and three at those links. I have finished the book and some background reading, so hopefully from this the pace of these responses will accelerate.
First, I want to thank Thomas, author and blogger at Tearing Down the Mask of Maya, who very kindly presented some supplemental reading material on the topic of today's post, the metaphysics of Aristotle. Without his contributions this response to Dr. Feser would have been devoid of much of the level of understanding it possesses, even poorer than its likely impoverished condition. Also, I want to thank aintnuthin, who challenges me to keep my head level and whose thoughts in the discussions of this book occasioned some valuable realizations. The discussion of Dr. Feser's material is below the fold.
One of the interesting aspects of both TLS and the supplemental material is that abandon the traditional translations of act and potency, Dr. Feser preferring actuality and potential. The basic idea is that every object has both the ability to be what it currently is, and also contains (in a sense) what it might become under given conditions. A glass vase contains the potential to be melted and cast as a figurine, or to be shattered. One of the primary principles is that no potential activates on its own, there is always some outside agency. So everything is what it is, and only changes when something else influences it. Dr. Feser describes this distinction as the first step on the way to seeing there is a God. But even here, at the first step, we find it is not descriptive of how some of the world works. Protons don't decay from any outside influence that can be determined, nor do atomic nuclei. Bell's theorem has actually shown there must be random quantum effects, in that the existence deterministic effects lead to predictions that are countered by experimentation. So at the very beginning of the discussion, Aristotle's metaphysics is, at least, not universal in scope. If you are going to convince an atheist that their position is insane, wicked, and counter to reality, you really should start with a position that reflects reality.
Another point Dr. Feser makes, with no particular argument to justify it at this time, is that you can have actuality without a potential for change, but you can't have a potential to change without having something there. I'm not sure that is true, depending on what "something" is.
Next the discussion turns to form and matter. The illustration used is that of a rubber ball. Rubber would be the matter; the spherical shape would be the form. Just as it's not a rubber ball if it is made from some other matter, it's not a rubber ball when the form is not spherical. Here Dr. Feser again makes a claim, sans justification, that all matter must have a form but that form can exist without matter (an immaterial form).
This is then followed by a discussion of the four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. The material and formal causes are the matter and form of the object, portrayed as directing influences on the object. So, it's not just that the ball is made of rubber; the rubber in the ball provides it with certain potentials. It's not just that the ball is spherical, the shape of the ball guides what the ball's actuality is. The efficient cause is an account of the material aspects of the creation of the ball, and the final cause is the reason the ball was constructed. These four causes are declared to be completely general, applicable to everything in the natural world.
According to Dr. Feser, formal and final causes have been banished from modern thinking. Oddly, he never addresses the concept of the properties or capabilities of an object in this discussion. It certainly seems to me that formal causes have been displaced by properties, that being spherical is true of some pieces of rubber and not others, and that being a sphere doesn't seem to impose any actuality on the ball. He uses the heart as an example of a final cause (it is there to pump blood), but that's just as well accounted for by saying the heart is capable of pumping blood and the rest of the body has come to rely on this capability. There is no need to treat the capability as an independently shaping event. One might almost suspect Dr. Feser of deliberately distorting the picture on this, but you would need to believe he has the potential to engage in that sort of deliberate deception. Still, the importance of having a final cause is of paramount importance to his future conclusions.
I was completely unconvinced by the attempt to elevate properties and capabilities of objects into formal and final causes for the objects. I suppose it is rational to assert them in the sense you can't disprove they exist; in the same sense you can assert rationally there are invisible pink unicorns. However, much like the invisible pink unicorns, formal and final causes will prove impossible to observe objectively, and be the products of declarations, assertions, and faith, not of reason.
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First, I want to thank Thomas, author and blogger at Tearing Down the Mask of Maya, who very kindly presented some supplemental reading material on the topic of today's post, the metaphysics of Aristotle. Without his contributions this response to Dr. Feser would have been devoid of much of the level of understanding it possesses, even poorer than its likely impoverished condition. Also, I want to thank aintnuthin, who challenges me to keep my head level and whose thoughts in the discussions of this book occasioned some valuable realizations. The discussion of Dr. Feser's material is below the fold.
One of the interesting aspects of both TLS and the supplemental material is that abandon the traditional translations of act and potency, Dr. Feser preferring actuality and potential. The basic idea is that every object has both the ability to be what it currently is, and also contains (in a sense) what it might become under given conditions. A glass vase contains the potential to be melted and cast as a figurine, or to be shattered. One of the primary principles is that no potential activates on its own, there is always some outside agency. So everything is what it is, and only changes when something else influences it. Dr. Feser describes this distinction as the first step on the way to seeing there is a God. But even here, at the first step, we find it is not descriptive of how some of the world works. Protons don't decay from any outside influence that can be determined, nor do atomic nuclei. Bell's theorem has actually shown there must be random quantum effects, in that the existence deterministic effects lead to predictions that are countered by experimentation. So at the very beginning of the discussion, Aristotle's metaphysics is, at least, not universal in scope. If you are going to convince an atheist that their position is insane, wicked, and counter to reality, you really should start with a position that reflects reality.
Another point Dr. Feser makes, with no particular argument to justify it at this time, is that you can have actuality without a potential for change, but you can't have a potential to change without having something there. I'm not sure that is true, depending on what "something" is.
Next the discussion turns to form and matter. The illustration used is that of a rubber ball. Rubber would be the matter; the spherical shape would be the form. Just as it's not a rubber ball if it is made from some other matter, it's not a rubber ball when the form is not spherical. Here Dr. Feser again makes a claim, sans justification, that all matter must have a form but that form can exist without matter (an immaterial form).
This is then followed by a discussion of the four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. The material and formal causes are the matter and form of the object, portrayed as directing influences on the object. So, it's not just that the ball is made of rubber; the rubber in the ball provides it with certain potentials. It's not just that the ball is spherical, the shape of the ball guides what the ball's actuality is. The efficient cause is an account of the material aspects of the creation of the ball, and the final cause is the reason the ball was constructed. These four causes are declared to be completely general, applicable to everything in the natural world.
According to Dr. Feser, formal and final causes have been banished from modern thinking. Oddly, he never addresses the concept of the properties or capabilities of an object in this discussion. It certainly seems to me that formal causes have been displaced by properties, that being spherical is true of some pieces of rubber and not others, and that being a sphere doesn't seem to impose any actuality on the ball. He uses the heart as an example of a final cause (it is there to pump blood), but that's just as well accounted for by saying the heart is capable of pumping blood and the rest of the body has come to rely on this capability. There is no need to treat the capability as an independently shaping event. One might almost suspect Dr. Feser of deliberately distorting the picture on this, but you would need to believe he has the potential to engage in that sort of deliberate deception. Still, the importance of having a final cause is of paramount importance to his future conclusions.
I was completely unconvinced by the attempt to elevate properties and capabilities of objects into formal and final causes for the objects. I suppose it is rational to assert them in the sense you can't disprove they exist; in the same sense you can assert rationally there are invisible pink unicorns. However, much like the invisible pink unicorns, formal and final causes will prove impossible to observe objectively, and be the products of declarations, assertions, and faith, not of reason.
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Friday, November 6, 2009
The 123rd Skeptics' Circle
Colin channels Galileo in the 123rd edition of the Skeptics' Circle at Blue Genes, with a list of links that is simply huge. Highly recommended.
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Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Review of TLS -- realism, really?
This is the third in what looks to be a decently long series of posts looking at the argument Dr. Edward Feser presents in the The Last Superstition. You can find parts one and two at those links.
As was noted in part two, Dr. Feser claims to prove quite a few things in his first chapter, and he begins chapter two with a brief history of Greek philosophy from Thales of Miletus, with stops to mention Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, the Sophists, and Socrates, before delving somewhat more deeply into Plato. I certainly don't know enough of historical Greek philosophy to comment on the accuracy or inaccuracy of his summations, nor is that my purpose in this series. As a reminder, my purpose is to comment on what I find convincing in Dr. Feser's book, what I find unconvincing, and whether he has lived up to any or all of his claims by the end of it, either to the extent of convincing me that he is correct, or his fallback position of convincing me his position is rational. To that end, his historical accuracy is barely a footnote. The first step on that path will be below the fold.
After a discussion of Plato, the first bit of meat for my meal appears: a discussion of realism, nominalism, and conceptualism. As Dr. Feser himself acknowledges, the position of realism is indeed central to his arguments later in the book:
Before we get into Dr. Feser's nine justifications for this position, I wanted to note what these things are. Universals are adjectives being treated as nouns. His three examples: triangularity, humanness, and redness. Mind you, he never pulls out the word 'adjective' and carefully avoids using the adjectival forms of triangular, human, or red. Nevertheless, he is saying that the common features of the descriptions of various objects are themselves real. By numbers, he means the ordinary sorts of numbers on a real line, making quite a bit of the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 is a necessary truth (even though this is not always true, for example, 2 liters + 2 liters will often be less than 4 liters). Propositions refer to the meaning behind sentences that make a claim about the world. For example, he says that "John is a bachelor" and "John is an unmarried man" are the same proposition.
His first justification applies primarily to universals, and is the notion of "one over many". That is, you can describe many different objects with the same adjective, and that the description could apply to something even when it doesn't actually apply to anything, and even when no mind is thinking about it, therefore it is real. So, even though unicorns and griffons are not real, the concept of being a unicorn or being a griffon is a real concept. Oddly, he does not use fictional examples like unicorns and griffons to illustrate this point. No doubt this is an oversight.
The second and third justifications apply to mathematical objects like circles, numbers, etc. (they are divided into two for some reason). Again, Dr. Feser relies on the notion that these statements are always true, as opposed to models that true given the right circumstances. I am firmly opposed to the notion that mathematical truths are real, because I understand there are too many situations where they are not true.
The fourth is an argument from the nature of propositions, and is basically the idea that a true proposition will often be true even when there is no one around to state it, and that it has no material component. He makes an excellent argument for these propositions being true. However, he makes no argument for them being real.
The last of the arguments directly supporting realism, as opposed to attacking the alternatives, is the argument from science, which amounts to saying that science uses universals and mathematics, and both are real based on arguments 1-3, so anyone who accepts the results of science accepts 1-3. I found this argument did not add any force to his position, as it rests entirely on arguments 1-3.
The remaining four justifications discussed are arguments against the plausibility of nominalism and conceptualism. Nominalism is presented as basically denying the reality of universals (and presumably numbers and propositions, although this is not specifically discussed). Instead, we apply the same descriptions to items because they resemble each other in some fashion, but that resemblance is not some instantiation of a universal. Conceptualism is presented as saying that any existence to universals occurs only in the mind, not in the exterior reality. While acknowledging there are many varieties of nominalism and conceptualism, Dr. Feser prefers to focus on the most extreme variations for his criticisms.
The first of the two arguments directed against nominalism specifically is the vicious regress problem. When the nominalist speaks of resemblances, is the property of resembling something itself a universal? If not, and we identify them all as resemblances because they are similar to us in some ways, is that similarity a universal? Personally, I don't see where there is a good answer to those questions either way. I can certainly understand why someone would reject nominalism on this basis.
The other argument against nominalism, which is also the second argument presented against conceptualism, is that words themselves must be universals. Otherwise, every time we used a word, it might mean something different, and communication would not be possible. Of course, this objection works only if this situation is different with realism, and it seems to me that realism suffers this same communication defect, in a different fashion. Because there are so many universals, we can never be sure which universal the other person is invoking. After all, in addition to redness, there are universals for scarlet, rose, burgundy, crimson, etc., and all of these are particular types of redness. There is nothing in realism that prevents Person A from invoking the universal of red that is close to rose, while person B hears the universal of red that is close to crimson. I recall reading there have been studies that the white universal of people is the USA is more bluish that the white of the South Americans (which looks pinkish to USAers). This theme of an overwhelming number of universals, and the arbitrariness that people use to select from among them, will appear again in future parts of this review.
Finally, the first argument against conceptualism is the objectivity of concepts and knowledge. Dr. Feser claims that when we entertain concepts of the same thing, such as a dog, the concepts are the same inside our brain, that when we think about the Pythagorean Theorem, we are discussing the same proposition. Similarly to what I wrote above, I do not agree. We often are thinking about difference concepts when we think about dogs (since we have two beagles, my dog concept is very beagleish) and while I don't know how beagleish his dog concept is, it's fairly clear our concepts of the Pythagorean Theorem are different.
Coming to my purpose for this review: Dr. Feser presented no evidence that realism is a better position than conceptualism from what I can see, while his argument against nominalism was stronger. So, I would say he failed in the part of the task where he wanted to convince me he was right. However, I can certainly see why people might reasonably hold to realism, so he was successful in his fall-back option of convincing me that his position is rational.
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As was noted in part two, Dr. Feser claims to prove quite a few things in his first chapter, and he begins chapter two with a brief history of Greek philosophy from Thales of Miletus, with stops to mention Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, the Sophists, and Socrates, before delving somewhat more deeply into Plato. I certainly don't know enough of historical Greek philosophy to comment on the accuracy or inaccuracy of his summations, nor is that my purpose in this series. As a reminder, my purpose is to comment on what I find convincing in Dr. Feser's book, what I find unconvincing, and whether he has lived up to any or all of his claims by the end of it, either to the extent of convincing me that he is correct, or his fallback position of convincing me his position is rational. To that end, his historical accuracy is barely a footnote. The first step on that path will be below the fold.
After a discussion of Plato, the first bit of meat for my meal appears: a discussion of realism, nominalism, and conceptualism. As Dr. Feser himself acknowledges, the position of realism is indeed central to his arguments later in the book:
Indeed, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that virtually every major religious, moral, and political controversy of the last several decades -- of the last several centuries, in fact -- in some way rests on a disagreement, even if implicit or unnoticed, over the "problem of the universals" (as it is known)., with realism being the position that these universals, numbers, and propositions are real in one fashion or another. He notes there are many flavors of realism.
Before we get into Dr. Feser's nine justifications for this position, I wanted to note what these things are. Universals are adjectives being treated as nouns. His three examples: triangularity, humanness, and redness. Mind you, he never pulls out the word 'adjective' and carefully avoids using the adjectival forms of triangular, human, or red. Nevertheless, he is saying that the common features of the descriptions of various objects are themselves real. By numbers, he means the ordinary sorts of numbers on a real line, making quite a bit of the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 is a necessary truth (even though this is not always true, for example, 2 liters + 2 liters will often be less than 4 liters). Propositions refer to the meaning behind sentences that make a claim about the world. For example, he says that "John is a bachelor" and "John is an unmarried man" are the same proposition.
His first justification applies primarily to universals, and is the notion of "one over many". That is, you can describe many different objects with the same adjective, and that the description could apply to something even when it doesn't actually apply to anything, and even when no mind is thinking about it, therefore it is real. So, even though unicorns and griffons are not real, the concept of being a unicorn or being a griffon is a real concept. Oddly, he does not use fictional examples like unicorns and griffons to illustrate this point. No doubt this is an oversight.
The second and third justifications apply to mathematical objects like circles, numbers, etc. (they are divided into two for some reason). Again, Dr. Feser relies on the notion that these statements are always true, as opposed to models that true given the right circumstances. I am firmly opposed to the notion that mathematical truths are real, because I understand there are too many situations where they are not true.
The fourth is an argument from the nature of propositions, and is basically the idea that a true proposition will often be true even when there is no one around to state it, and that it has no material component. He makes an excellent argument for these propositions being true. However, he makes no argument for them being real.
The last of the arguments directly supporting realism, as opposed to attacking the alternatives, is the argument from science, which amounts to saying that science uses universals and mathematics, and both are real based on arguments 1-3, so anyone who accepts the results of science accepts 1-3. I found this argument did not add any force to his position, as it rests entirely on arguments 1-3.
The remaining four justifications discussed are arguments against the plausibility of nominalism and conceptualism. Nominalism is presented as basically denying the reality of universals (and presumably numbers and propositions, although this is not specifically discussed). Instead, we apply the same descriptions to items because they resemble each other in some fashion, but that resemblance is not some instantiation of a universal. Conceptualism is presented as saying that any existence to universals occurs only in the mind, not in the exterior reality. While acknowledging there are many varieties of nominalism and conceptualism, Dr. Feser prefers to focus on the most extreme variations for his criticisms.
The first of the two arguments directed against nominalism specifically is the vicious regress problem. When the nominalist speaks of resemblances, is the property of resembling something itself a universal? If not, and we identify them all as resemblances because they are similar to us in some ways, is that similarity a universal? Personally, I don't see where there is a good answer to those questions either way. I can certainly understand why someone would reject nominalism on this basis.
The other argument against nominalism, which is also the second argument presented against conceptualism, is that words themselves must be universals. Otherwise, every time we used a word, it might mean something different, and communication would not be possible. Of course, this objection works only if this situation is different with realism, and it seems to me that realism suffers this same communication defect, in a different fashion. Because there are so many universals, we can never be sure which universal the other person is invoking. After all, in addition to redness, there are universals for scarlet, rose, burgundy, crimson, etc., and all of these are particular types of redness. There is nothing in realism that prevents Person A from invoking the universal of red that is close to rose, while person B hears the universal of red that is close to crimson. I recall reading there have been studies that the white universal of people is the USA is more bluish that the white of the South Americans (which looks pinkish to USAers). This theme of an overwhelming number of universals, and the arbitrariness that people use to select from among them, will appear again in future parts of this review.
Finally, the first argument against conceptualism is the objectivity of concepts and knowledge. Dr. Feser claims that when we entertain concepts of the same thing, such as a dog, the concepts are the same inside our brain, that when we think about the Pythagorean Theorem, we are discussing the same proposition. Similarly to what I wrote above, I do not agree. We often are thinking about difference concepts when we think about dogs (since we have two beagles, my dog concept is very beagleish) and while I don't know how beagleish his dog concept is, it's fairly clear our concepts of the Pythagorean Theorem are different.
Coming to my purpose for this review: Dr. Feser presented no evidence that realism is a better position than conceptualism from what I can see, while his argument against nominalism was stronger. So, I would say he failed in the part of the task where he wanted to convince me he was right. However, I can certainly see why people might reasonably hold to realism, so he was successful in his fall-back option of convincing me that his position is rational.
Read more!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The 122nd Skeptics' Circle
As the lone self-aware monobrow on the skeptical comittee dominated by humans, I was in general peased with the overall quality of their presentations, and offer my congratualtions to the hosts, the Young Australian Skeptics, and in particular Mr. Hughes.
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Monday, October 19, 2009
Review of TLS -- Promises are made
This is the second in a series of posts that will be reviewing and responding to the arguments of Dr. Feser's The Last Superstition. This was part 1. I haven't read many books of philosophy, and none aimed at popular audiences, so when I note that Dr. Feser starts out with a list of claims that he promises to demonstrate later, I have no idea if that is standard procedure or not. It does make the first chapter, Bad Religion, devoid of meaningful content with regard to establishing Dr. Feser's claims. However, one of the things I want to do is to in this post is list all these promises Dr. Feser makes in Chapter 1. After I review the last chapter, I will return to this list and we will see what has actually been proven.
Claims Dr. Feser says he will demonstrate
Secularism is inherently immoral and irrational, only a specific sort of religious view can be moral, rational, and sane
On intellectual grounds, atheism can not be true
Secularism can never spring from reason; its true grounding is from a willfulness and desire for it to be true
The basic metaphysical assumptions that make atheism possible are mistaken
Secular propaganda is the source of fideism
It is as impossible to say nature has no meaning or purpose as it is to square a circle (more on that below)
Secularism is parasitic on religion for all its important ideas, it is strictly a negation
What is characterized as a war between science and religion is really a war between competing metaphysical systems
The classical metaphysical picture is rationally unavoidable, and thus so is the traditional Western religious view derived from it
Given atheism and naturalism, there is no persuasive argument that allows you to trust in either reason or morality
Edit on 2009-NOV-17 to add: The abandonment of Aristotle's metaphysics has led to the abandonment of any rational or moral standards that can be used to justify moral positions, and is responsible for the curent civilizational crisis of the West.
Dr. Feser allows himself a full 241 pages in the next five chapters to accomplish all this. Of course, with so modest an undertaking, he leaves himself plenty of space to continue to denigrate atheism, secularism, the New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens), Hume, and many more in those chapters as well.
I do have a few other comments on some of Dr. Feser's remarks in chapter 1. While I still intend to avoid responding to the mere demagoguery that he indulges himself in, there are a few points that reveal interesting and noteworthy aspects of both him and his opinion of his audience.
There is nothing particularly noteworthy or striking about his claim that the less people know, they less they realize their ignorance. In fact, I read similar thoughts from a variety of science books and scientists growing up, typically along the lines of 'The more you know, the more you realize how little you know'.
I do not agree that attempts to account for phenomena such as the mind without referencing God is a religious discussion. You might as well say that attempts to account for lightning without referencing God is a religious discussion. Then again, perhaps Dr. Feser would say that. I would not be surprised at all to see him claim that any discussion of any natural phenomenon is inherently religious.
One of the common hallmarks of purveyors of woo is a sense of persecution that results from being treated equally. This comes out twice in Chapter 1, where first Dr. Feser complains that some philosophical positions distasteful to him are considered still worth discussion even when they can't be demonstrated, while the subject of religion is considered not to have made its case. Of course, the second standard is a far higher hurdle than the first, and certainly not to be awarded lightly. To imply that religion must be granted the second when other positions are granted the first, or else the supporters of the second are receiving unfair treatment, sounds very much like a persecution complex. Shortly after that, he complains that the distasteful propositions are referred to as making people think, whereas in this context religion is apparently not worthy of a moment's notice. He acknowledges that most people are raised religiously, but somehow misses the point that immersing people in thoughts they already find comfortable will be doing the opposite of making them think, it is much more likely to lull them to stupor. However, the concern seems to be for some sort of time equality, not purpose, because otherwise religious ideas are just not being treated fairly.
Dr. Feser pulls out the old saw about the desire to disbelieve in hellfire being a motivation for atheism. Oddly, I have met very few Christians who believed they, personally, were going to hell. I certainly never did, back in the day. He doesn't seem to understand the human tendency for exceptionalism, or to be deliberately ignoring it.
Dr. Feser declares that the notions of a selfish gene, or design via natural selection, can only be true and interesting if by these terms we attribute some superhuman, literal intelligence to the gene and the process. I'm not sure what to make of this. Obviously he knows the terms are metaphors that describe the complex interactions of various feedbacks mechanisms. He doesn't think that the study of feedback mechanisms is interesting, that the feedback mechanisms are not true, or that the use of metaphor makes the concept untrue or uninteresting?
Dr. Feser complains about 'Easter Bunny comparisons to God', which he disdains. This is all fine for him, but the authors upon whom he heaps this disdain are do not have the audience of his peers in mind; their books are for the general public, and often specifically the religious members thereof. The Easter Bunny example actually strikes right at the heart of what many of these people believe. If the religious group doesn't have their followers trained in the ideas of Aristotle, why should it be the job of Dennett, et. al., to train them? Later on, Dr. Feser says that this is an example of these authors not being willing to take on the real issues against the formidable opposition. With all the diminutions hurled against these authors, you would think he believe this is the appropriate level of opposition for them, but I suppose he thinks even more poorly of his fellow believers in this regard. At any rate, while I might not have the training of a Dennett, I am happy to accommodate Dr. Feser by engaging his ideas directly. Having read through Chapter 4 so far, I have not found any reason to see his presentation of reason, faith, and religion as having a superior metaphysical basis to your typical Sunday preacher.
Finally, Dr. Feser likes to make great use out of the metaphysical absurdity of square circles. He is unaware that all circles are indeed squares, under the taxicab metric (I'll devote a separate post to that). This is a problem with his metaphysical analysis that we’ll cover in more detail later. For now, let’s just say that like any other formal system, Aristotle’s metaphysics will turn out to be founded on arbitrarily chosen premises that are inherently improvable and not obviously better than a variety of alternatives as a description of reality.
Read more!
Claims Dr. Feser says he will demonstrate
Secularism is inherently immoral and irrational, only a specific sort of religious view can be moral, rational, and sane
On intellectual grounds, atheism can not be true
Secularism can never spring from reason; its true grounding is from a willfulness and desire for it to be true
The basic metaphysical assumptions that make atheism possible are mistaken
Secular propaganda is the source of fideism
It is as impossible to say nature has no meaning or purpose as it is to square a circle (more on that below)
Secularism is parasitic on religion for all its important ideas, it is strictly a negation
What is characterized as a war between science and religion is really a war between competing metaphysical systems
The classical metaphysical picture is rationally unavoidable, and thus so is the traditional Western religious view derived from it
Given atheism and naturalism, there is no persuasive argument that allows you to trust in either reason or morality
Edit on 2009-NOV-17 to add: The abandonment of Aristotle's metaphysics has led to the abandonment of any rational or moral standards that can be used to justify moral positions, and is responsible for the curent civilizational crisis of the West.
Dr. Feser allows himself a full 241 pages in the next five chapters to accomplish all this. Of course, with so modest an undertaking, he leaves himself plenty of space to continue to denigrate atheism, secularism, the New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens), Hume, and many more in those chapters as well.
I do have a few other comments on some of Dr. Feser's remarks in chapter 1. While I still intend to avoid responding to the mere demagoguery that he indulges himself in, there are a few points that reveal interesting and noteworthy aspects of both him and his opinion of his audience.
There is nothing particularly noteworthy or striking about his claim that the less people know, they less they realize their ignorance. In fact, I read similar thoughts from a variety of science books and scientists growing up, typically along the lines of 'The more you know, the more you realize how little you know'.
I do not agree that attempts to account for phenomena such as the mind without referencing God is a religious discussion. You might as well say that attempts to account for lightning without referencing God is a religious discussion. Then again, perhaps Dr. Feser would say that. I would not be surprised at all to see him claim that any discussion of any natural phenomenon is inherently religious.
One of the common hallmarks of purveyors of woo is a sense of persecution that results from being treated equally. This comes out twice in Chapter 1, where first Dr. Feser complains that some philosophical positions distasteful to him are considered still worth discussion even when they can't be demonstrated, while the subject of religion is considered not to have made its case. Of course, the second standard is a far higher hurdle than the first, and certainly not to be awarded lightly. To imply that religion must be granted the second when other positions are granted the first, or else the supporters of the second are receiving unfair treatment, sounds very much like a persecution complex. Shortly after that, he complains that the distasteful propositions are referred to as making people think, whereas in this context religion is apparently not worthy of a moment's notice. He acknowledges that most people are raised religiously, but somehow misses the point that immersing people in thoughts they already find comfortable will be doing the opposite of making them think, it is much more likely to lull them to stupor. However, the concern seems to be for some sort of time equality, not purpose, because otherwise religious ideas are just not being treated fairly.
Dr. Feser pulls out the old saw about the desire to disbelieve in hellfire being a motivation for atheism. Oddly, I have met very few Christians who believed they, personally, were going to hell. I certainly never did, back in the day. He doesn't seem to understand the human tendency for exceptionalism, or to be deliberately ignoring it.
Dr. Feser declares that the notions of a selfish gene, or design via natural selection, can only be true and interesting if by these terms we attribute some superhuman, literal intelligence to the gene and the process. I'm not sure what to make of this. Obviously he knows the terms are metaphors that describe the complex interactions of various feedbacks mechanisms. He doesn't think that the study of feedback mechanisms is interesting, that the feedback mechanisms are not true, or that the use of metaphor makes the concept untrue or uninteresting?
Dr. Feser complains about 'Easter Bunny comparisons to God', which he disdains. This is all fine for him, but the authors upon whom he heaps this disdain are do not have the audience of his peers in mind; their books are for the general public, and often specifically the religious members thereof. The Easter Bunny example actually strikes right at the heart of what many of these people believe. If the religious group doesn't have their followers trained in the ideas of Aristotle, why should it be the job of Dennett, et. al., to train them? Later on, Dr. Feser says that this is an example of these authors not being willing to take on the real issues against the formidable opposition. With all the diminutions hurled against these authors, you would think he believe this is the appropriate level of opposition for them, but I suppose he thinks even more poorly of his fellow believers in this regard. At any rate, while I might not have the training of a Dennett, I am happy to accommodate Dr. Feser by engaging his ideas directly. Having read through Chapter 4 so far, I have not found any reason to see his presentation of reason, faith, and religion as having a superior metaphysical basis to your typical Sunday preacher.
Finally, Dr. Feser likes to make great use out of the metaphysical absurdity of square circles. He is unaware that all circles are indeed squares, under the taxicab metric (I'll devote a separate post to that). This is a problem with his metaphysical analysis that we’ll cover in more detail later. For now, let’s just say that like any other formal system, Aristotle’s metaphysics will turn out to be founded on arbitrarily chosen premises that are inherently improvable and not obviously better than a variety of alternatives as a description of reality.
Read more!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Pure Denialism at vere loqui
Martin Cothran joins in the denialfest on the news that the level of snow melt is at a 30-year low.
Both from the terminology and from a small bit of research at a couple of sites, including NASA, the snow melt in any given year seems to be how much the difference in the snow cover over the previous years. Any snow melt is a sign of warmer temperatures. So, saying that this was a year of smaller gains in temperatures than we have seen for a while doesn't really change the message that the warming is going on.
Read more!
Both from the terminology and from a small bit of research at a couple of sites, including NASA, the snow melt in any given year seems to be how much the difference in the snow cover over the previous years. Any snow melt is a sign of warmer temperatures. So, saying that this was a year of smaller gains in temperatures than we have seen for a while doesn't really change the message that the warming is going on.
Read more!
Never thought it would happen
Watching the lastest Real Time with Bill Maher Sunday, Dr. Bill Frist completely dressed down and embarrassed Bill Maher over Maher's anti-vaccine rhetoric. I cheered out loud. I never thought I would cheer Dr. Frist like that, but he richly deserved my support on that topic (and, for that matter, on most of the health care positions he seems to be taking).
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Friday, October 9, 2009
The 121st Skeptics' Circle
The 121st Skeptics' Circle is up and running at The Mad Skpetic, where Myron does an amusing bit as an announcer for W.E.B.S.
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A discussion of asymptotes
One of the objectives in the Intermediate Algebra class is identifying some basic properties of a relation from looking at a graph (domain, range, is it a function). So, on a test I put in a graph that could roughtly correspond to -log (-x). This graph has the y-axis as an asymptote.
While I have done this a few times before, this is the first time I've had members of the class question whether it was possible for a graph to be an asymptote. As one student said, "Doesn't it need to either go straight up or curl back?" No, not exactly.
So, to make it easier to understand, I talk about how y=1/x behaves as x increases. I won't bore with the details. I get to end the discussion with one of my favorites things to tell a student: It makes perfect sense, it's just counter-intuitive.
If you know anything at all about mathematics, you should know that.
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While I have done this a few times before, this is the first time I've had members of the class question whether it was possible for a graph to be an asymptote. As one student said, "Doesn't it need to either go straight up or curl back?" No, not exactly.
So, to make it easier to understand, I talk about how y=1/x behaves as x increases. I won't bore with the details. I get to end the discussion with one of my favorites things to tell a student: It makes perfect sense, it's just counter-intuitive.
If you know anything at all about mathematics, you should know that.
Read more!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Review of TLS -- a preface
I'm starting a multi-part project today, my first in almost a year (the last one would be a critique of Nagel's paper, if I recall correctly). I will be reviewing/critiquing/responding to Dr. Feser's The Last Superstition for probably the next couple of weeks, at least. I'm going to start this post with a preface of my own, and then look at the preface in the book.
My main purpose will be to look at one thing only: does Dr. Feser present any sort of proof that atheism is untenable, and in particular for his version of God? I have read a variety of comments on Dr. Feser, his variations on the teaching of historical figures, his own associations, etc., from comments on this blog and elsewhere. I understand that many of them are probably legitimate, but I'm not going to address them. Other topics, such as the nature of morality or the practical and political applications thereof will creep into the discussion only because Dr. Feser insists that his proof is evidence that his own particular brand of theism offers these positions obvious rational support. I'm also not going to address the judgemental rhetoric, except to examine any underpinnings they seem to be stemming from, as I don't particularly care what Dr. Feser's opinions are nor how he states them. Further, my goal is to address Dr. Feser's argument on his own ground, in his own terms. Any argument crafted with so much effort deserves at least that much.
Dr. Feser starts with a quote of Plato and then follows with this quote from Aquinas, "A small error in the beginning of something is a great one at the end." I find it ironic that even at the beginning (the preface) of his book, we find errors of category and an error of fact. Now, I don't think these particular errors will be overly relevant to Dr. Feser's argument (certainly not the error of fact), but that just makes them small errors. Whether they have blossomed into great ones at the end, I don't know yet (I'm still in Chapter 2). Both of these errors appear in the same passage:
Just in case you were wondering whether Dr. Feser means that the Pythagorean Theorem is actually true, he leaves no doubt of that in chapter 2 when discussing Platonic Forms: he does indeed mean the Pythagorean Theorem is true as a real-world proposition. This is of course an error. In a formal system where all of Euclid's postulates hold, the Pythagorean Theorem is deducible. However, not all of Euclid's postulates hold in reality (in particular, the postulate regarding lines crossed by a transversal meeting on the side of line where the sum of the interior angles is smaller than 180 degrees, the equivalent to the parallel postulate, does not hold). So, for the followers of realism (as is Dr. Feser), the Pythagorean Theorem is actually false.
The second error is more subtle, and I doubt Dr. Feser would even agree. The types of knowledge used, and the ways that we decide, what marriage is and whether religion is good is completely different from how we derive the Pythagorean Theorem, and the knowledge that H2O is water is a third way of knowing what is true. The three are not comparable. In fact, we aren't completely certain H2O is the formula for water, the Pythagorean Theorem is not real (nor any other purely mathematical concept), and my strong suspicion is that there can be no demonstration of a proper definition for marriage or the goodness of religion.
Isn't nostalgia great? How all those ordinary people were so sexually moral that prostitution was practically unknown, were so religious that they never cursed God and went to church every day. Not to mention, and maybe he missed this, but a modern lower-middle class family of today would be part of the elite back in the days of Aquinas. So, even if his position is true, the modern libertinism and contempt represent no change at all from previous times except for the higher percentage of the population in the elite status.
Read more!
My main purpose will be to look at one thing only: does Dr. Feser present any sort of proof that atheism is untenable, and in particular for his version of God? I have read a variety of comments on Dr. Feser, his variations on the teaching of historical figures, his own associations, etc., from comments on this blog and elsewhere. I understand that many of them are probably legitimate, but I'm not going to address them. Other topics, such as the nature of morality or the practical and political applications thereof will creep into the discussion only because Dr. Feser insists that his proof is evidence that his own particular brand of theism offers these positions obvious rational support. I'm also not going to address the judgemental rhetoric, except to examine any underpinnings they seem to be stemming from, as I don't particularly care what Dr. Feser's opinions are nor how he states them. Further, my goal is to address Dr. Feser's argument on his own ground, in his own terms. Any argument crafted with so much effort deserves at least that much.
Dr. Feser starts with a quote of Plato and then follows with this quote from Aquinas, "A small error in the beginning of something is a great one at the end." I find it ironic that even at the beginning (the preface) of his book, we find errors of category and an error of fact. Now, I don't think these particular errors will be overly relevant to Dr. Feser's argument (certainly not the error of fact), but that just makes them small errors. Whether they have blossomed into great ones at the end, I don't know yet (I'm still in Chapter 2). Both of these errors appear in the same passage:
It is no more up the courts or "the people" to "define" marriage or to decide whether religion is a good thing than it is up to them to "define" whether the Pythagorean Theorem is true of right triangles, or whether water has the chemical structure H2O. In each case, what is at issue is a matter of objective fact that it is the business of reason to discover than democratic procedure to stipulate.
Just in case you were wondering whether Dr. Feser means that the Pythagorean Theorem is actually true, he leaves no doubt of that in chapter 2 when discussing Platonic Forms: he does indeed mean the Pythagorean Theorem is true as a real-world proposition. This is of course an error. In a formal system where all of Euclid's postulates hold, the Pythagorean Theorem is deducible. However, not all of Euclid's postulates hold in reality (in particular, the postulate regarding lines crossed by a transversal meeting on the side of line where the sum of the interior angles is smaller than 180 degrees, the equivalent to the parallel postulate, does not hold). So, for the followers of realism (as is Dr. Feser), the Pythagorean Theorem is actually false.
The second error is more subtle, and I doubt Dr. Feser would even agree. The types of knowledge used, and the ways that we decide, what marriage is and whether religion is good is completely different from how we derive the Pythagorean Theorem, and the knowledge that H2O is water is a third way of knowing what is true. The three are not comparable. In fact, we aren't completely certain H2O is the formula for water, the Pythagorean Theorem is not real (nor any other purely mathematical concept), and my strong suspicion is that there can be no demonstration of a proper definition for marriage or the goodness of religion.
To their minds (or what is left of them) sexual libertinism and contempt for religion, as public, mass phenomena (rather than the private eccentricities of a decadent elite, which of course have always been with us) constitute the final victory of reason ...
Isn't nostalgia great? How all those ordinary people were so sexually moral that prostitution was practically unknown, were so religious that they never cursed God and went to church every day. Not to mention, and maybe he missed this, but a modern lower-middle class family of today would be part of the elite back in the days of Aquinas. So, even if his position is true, the modern libertinism and contempt represent no change at all from previous times except for the higher percentage of the population in the elite status.
Read more!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The 120th Skeptics' Circle
You can fine the 120th Skeptics' Circle at Pro-science, with a straight-forward roundup and topic indicator, and a lot of very good reading.
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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Scientific jargon does not support the Fifth Way
Dr. Feser regularly complains that modern's critics of various aspects of design claims and ontological proofs don't really understand the deepness of the arguments of Aquinas-Thomists, and instead are responding to less-rounded arguments made by later philosophers. While I find it curious that his position indicates philosophers seem to have regressed when so many other disciplines have progressed, I feel that the least I can do is repond to Dr. Feser at the level of the arguments he is making. So I'm responding to a post he made on the comments of Jim Manzi regarding the Coyne review or Wright's book and Wright's response. First of all, as a part of my regular theme that we all misread based on our preconceptions, let me say Coyne's review is quite funny in light of Wright’s responses, which boil down to 'I agree with Coyne's point, my book made the same point Coyne is making, and I am not sure why Coyne thinks otherwise'. It's a little embarrassing for Coyne.
Manzi, while claiming to defend Wright, actually addresses a part of Coyne's review that does not even directly refer to Wright's book, but is some stage-setting by Coyne. So, the title to the article is rather incorrect, as Manzi does nothing to defend Wright at all. However, Manzi does defend his own ideas about the comparison of genetic algorithms on computers to the way genes behave, trying to set abiogenesis aside as a philosophical study (without referring to it by name), the importation of a goals into evolution, and the non-physical randomness of mutations. I might decide one day to fisk that article directly, but not today. Below the fold I will excerpt some of Dr. Feser's response to the article, and intersperse some of my own thoughts.
I actually agree with Dr. Feser here, for a given definition of "Darwinism" at any rate. To the degree that we are relying on the science, we have no method of elimination all sorts of exterior teleology and causality. If Dr. Feser is referring to ideas that go beyond the science, then we get into metaphysical assumption whose basis in reality can never be firmly demonstrated.
This is a fine example of 'heads I win, tails you lose' argumentation. Any failures by science to explain something, such as the emergence of consciousness in the brain, is of course evidence that there is something non-physical at work. On the other hand, finding the causes and explanation things can only serve to strengthen the 'Fifth Way' argument of Aquinas for the existence of God. Dr. Feser relies on the work in his book (The Last Superstition, he abbreviates it TLS) regularly rather than outline its arguments, and I have not read it so far. However, I don't find the notion that there is some supernatural "final causality" to be any more likely a proposition than a natural final causality.
I'm not sure whether Dr. Feser understands this or not, but terms like algorithm and information means very different things when applied to biological objects or other non-human-created systems than to computer programs. Algorithms are merely cycles enacted and altered by external stimuli and ended, if at all, by other stimuli (possibly external or internal), while information represents how easily a string can be compressed by interpretations functions that are not aimed specifically at that string. Neither concept has any recognition of teleology or lack thereof, they are statements of content, not purpose.
I do distrust the notion of being "flatly impossible in principle" for many reasons, not the least of which comes from my mathematical training. I find that the Axiom of Choice, or more precise the equivalent statement that the cross-products of non-empty sets is not empty, to be intuitively obvious, to the point that I find it ridiculous to claim that can be an empty cross-product of non-empty sets. The "flatly impossible in principle"Banach-Tarski paradox is a result does not change my mind, since I am forced to choose between to different flatly impossible notions, one of which must be true. I'm Dr. Feser feels he has a good argument for the impossibility of an infinite string of ontological causality, but my recent encounters with philosophers trying to use infinity in a mathematical way leaves me skeptical to the general abilities of philosophers who don't have an extensive mathematical background.
Having read up just a little on what Dr. Feser means by action and potentiality, this strikes me as being pure doggerel. The questions of why the universe exists and operates the way it does do not ever need to end, and they certainly do not end simply because we have an Unmoved Mover or Uncaused Cause. I don't know, nor pretend to know, that such a Mover/Cause does or does not exist, but I do know that, even if we arrive at such an august figure, they are not immune to the further questions of why the Mover/Cause does this, why they feel that, etc., and that the inevitable terminus of this chain is 'We just don't know'. This makes the end of the chain no different from the end of the chain of questions to the naturalist, except the naturalist stops the chain earlier in the process.
This actually reverses motivation and effect from Coyne's point, which is not that attributing purpose to evolution allows the elevation of humans, but that the refusal to accept a non-elevation of humans results in the attributing of purpose to evolution. A => B is quite different from ~B => A.
Again, we have a reversal of cause and effect. It is not the algorithm that acts upon species causing new species to arise, it is the arising of new species in regular ways that is described in terms that look like algorithms to us.
I'm not sure if that is a necessary choice, but I do happen to be on, or at least closer to, the former side. We use terms like "information" and "algorithm" in a jargonistic sense to describe non-human-created systems, and this jargon has its beginning in metaphor. However, the terms have been fairly precisely defined in the given context, so I think it is going too far to say they are merely metaphorical now.
Another good case of a person seeing what they are pre-disposed to see.
Read more!
Manzi, while claiming to defend Wright, actually addresses a part of Coyne's review that does not even directly refer to Wright's book, but is some stage-setting by Coyne. So, the title to the article is rather incorrect, as Manzi does nothing to defend Wright at all. However, Manzi does defend his own ideas about the comparison of genetic algorithms on computers to the way genes behave, trying to set abiogenesis aside as a philosophical study (without referring to it by name), the importation of a goals into evolution, and the non-physical randomness of mutations. I might decide one day to fisk that article directly, but not today. Below the fold I will excerpt some of Dr. Feser's response to the article, and intersperse some of my own thoughts.
I argued in The Last Superstition that whatever one thinks of Darwinism, its truth or falsity is (contrary to what New Atheists like Richard Dawkins suppose) irrelevant to the cogency of the Thomistic proofs of God’s existence, including Aquinas’s Fifth Way (which Dawkins incompetently assimilates to Paley’s Design argument).
I actually agree with Dr. Feser here, for a given definition of "Darwinism" at any rate. To the degree that we are relying on the science, we have no method of elimination all sorts of exterior teleology and causality. If Dr. Feser is referring to ideas that go beyond the science, then we get into metaphysical assumption whose basis in reality can never be firmly demonstrated.
Indeed, if Darwinism has any relevance to the latter argument at all, it is in fact by slightly reinforcing rather than undermining it. The reason is that Darwinism, like any scientific theory, posits various causal mechanisms, all causal mechanisms presuppose (for reasons set out in TLS) final causality, and thus (since the take-off point of the Fifth Way is the existence of final causality) Darwinism, qua scientific theory, only lends further support to the Fifth Way.
This is a fine example of 'heads I win, tails you lose' argumentation. Any failures by science to explain something, such as the emergence of consciousness in the brain, is of course evidence that there is something non-physical at work. On the other hand, finding the causes and explanation things can only serve to strengthen the 'Fifth Way' argument of Aquinas for the existence of God. Dr. Feser relies on the work in his book (The Last Superstition, he abbreviates it TLS) regularly rather than outline its arguments, and I have not read it so far. However, I don't find the notion that there is some supernatural "final causality" to be any more likely a proposition than a natural final causality.
I also argued in TLS that the application by biologists, physicists, and other scientists of concepts like “algorithm,” “information,” “software,” “program,” etc. to the natural world evinces a tacit recognition of the reality of teleology or final causation. The reason (set out, again, in detail in TLS) is that the sort of directedness-towards-an-end that these concepts entail just is the core of the Aristotelian-Scholastic conception of final causality.
I'm not sure whether Dr. Feser understands this or not, but terms like algorithm and information means very different things when applied to biological objects or other non-human-created systems than to computer programs. Algorithms are merely cycles enacted and altered by external stimuli and ended, if at all, by other stimuli (possibly external or internal), while information represents how easily a string can be compressed by interpretations functions that are not aimed specifically at that string. Neither concept has any recognition of teleology or lack thereof, they are statements of content, not purpose.
Again, Aristotle and his followers do not argue for a temporal beginning of the universe (even though some of them do happen to believe, on independent grounds, that it had such a beginning). Nor do they think that an infinite regress is a “problem.” For by “infinite regress,” one either means an infinite regress of accidentally ordered causes extending backward in time – in which case such a regress is perfectly possible (and, indeed, actual, in Aristotle’s own view) – or one means an infinite regress of essentially ordered causes of the sort that trace ultimately to simultaneously operating instrumental causes here and now – in which case such a regress is, not merely “problematic” or mysterious (as if such a regress could exist in some as-yet unknown fashion), but flatly impossible in principle. (Again, all of this is explained at length in TLS.)
I do distrust the notion of being "flatly impossible in principle" for many reasons, not the least of which comes from my mathematical training. I find that the Axiom of Choice, or more precise the equivalent statement that the cross-products of non-empty sets is not empty, to be intuitively obvious, to the point that I find it ridiculous to claim that can be an empty cross-product of non-empty sets. The "flatly impossible in principle"Banach-Tarski paradox is a result does not change my mind, since I am forced to choose between to different flatly impossible notions, one of which must be true. I'm Dr. Feser feels he has a good argument for the impossibility of an infinite string of ontological causality, but my recent encounters with philosophers trying to use infinity in a mathematical way leaves me skeptical to the general abilities of philosophers who don't have an extensive mathematical background.
But Manzi’s remarks can be interpreted in another, more Aristotelian way. He might mean that even if the universe had no beginning in time, the basic laws that govern it, and the fact of their continual operation at any given moment, would still require an explanation. Talk of “laws of nature” is more a modern than an Aristotelian way of speaking, but the basic point remains that there is nothing inherent in material reality that can account for the “actualizing” of its “potential” for existing and operating in just the way it does at any particular instant. Unless we trace it down to that which is “pure actuality,” an Unmoved Mover or Uncaused Cause sustaining it in being and operation here and now and at any moment we are even considering the question, we would have no way in principle to account for why the universe exists at all and operates in precisely the way it does. The “problem of infinite regress” on this interpretation is not a matter of accepting a mystery which might have a solution – just one we do not and perhaps cannot discover – but rather the fatal (to naturalism) problem that without acknowledging that the regress of essentially ordered causes operating here and now terminates in an Unmoved Mover, the material world becomes unintelligible even in principle. (You know the drill: See TLS for the details.)
Having read up just a little on what Dr. Feser means by action and potentiality, this strikes me as being pure doggerel. The questions of why the universe exists and operates the way it does do not ever need to end, and they certainly do not end simply because we have an Unmoved Mover or Uncaused Cause. I don't know, nor pretend to know, that such a Mover/Cause does or does not exist, but I do know that, even if we arrive at such an august figure, they are not immune to the further questions of why the Mover/Cause does this, why they feel that, etc., and that the inevitable terminus of this chain is 'We just don't know'. This makes the end of the chain no different from the end of the chain of questions to the naturalist, except the naturalist stops the chain earlier in the process.
Manzi is clearer on the issue of final causality. Coyne seems to think that to attribute purposiveness to evolution entails seeing the human species, specifically, as having somehow been the end result toward which natural selection was working; and he trots out the usual ad hominem response to critics of Darwinism to the effect that they just can’t handle evolution’s humbling implications, blah blah blah.
This actually reverses motivation and effect from Coyne's point, which is not that attributing purpose to evolution allows the elevation of humans, but that the refusal to accept a non-elevation of humans results in the attributing of purpose to evolution. A => B is quite different from ~B => A.
And if this “algorithm” talk is taken seriously, then (to put things more strongly than Manzi does) it necessarily entails, given the nature of algorithms, that there is an end-state towards which the processes in question point – not, to be sure, the generation of some particular species (human or otherwise) at some temporal culmination point, but rather the (in principle non-stop) generation of species after species meeting certain abstract criteria of fitness.
Again, we have a reversal of cause and effect. It is not the algorithm that acts upon species causing new species to arise, it is the arising of new species in regular ways that is described in terms that look like algorithms to us.
Hence one either has to agree with the judgment of thinkers like John Searle that talk of “information,” “algorithms,” etc. is at best a misleading set of metaphors and at worst a complete muddle; or, if one thinks such talk is indispensible (and there is good reason to think it is) one must acknowledge that something like the Aristotelian conception of nature is correct after all.
I'm not sure if that is a necessary choice, but I do happen to be on, or at least closer to, the former side. We use terms like "information" and "algorithm" in a jargonistic sense to describe non-human-created systems, and this jargon has its beginning in metaphor. However, the terms have been fairly precisely defined in the given context, so I think it is going too far to say they are merely metaphorical now.
And, of course, I have noted the many neo-Aristotelian themes to be found in the work of many contemporary philosophers and scientists – including many who have no theological ax to grind – both in TLS and in earlier posts like this one and this one.
Another good case of a person seeing what they are pre-disposed to see.
Read more!
Monday, September 21, 2009
My first hour in a Geometry class
This is basically a longer form of the signature quote at the bottom of the page, originally created by a poster named HRG on CARM. My personal attitude toward mathematics is much closer to some combination of formalism and fictionalism than any other position, and I find it useful to remind students that what we are studying is doesn't have to be a perfect representation of the real world in order to be valuable. Indeed, since at the very least the parallel postulate doesn't hold for reality, we are not studying such a system.
So, I start of talking about three criteria that we would like any sort of knowledge to possess. The differ slightly from the usual description of epistemology.
The next part discusses what I see as three different systems that focus on knowledge using the desired attributes above. Of course, any truly broad system of inquiry will make us of all three of the systems I discuss below, but generally only one of them at time. Like a three-way combination of oil and vinegar, they don't seem to mix together. In the examples, I try to offer samples where the primary dependence seems to match the system I use, and the other systems are of secondary significance.
Then the question that guarantees a minute of silence and ten more of discussion: which one of these is mathematics?
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So, I start of talking about three criteria that we would like any sort of knowledge to possess. The differ slightly from the usual description of epistemology.
Reality
We prefer knowledge that reflects the world in which we live, one that has an application to things outside of our imagination. Saying that a ball is red, that an action is evil, that 2 + 2 = 4 would ideally say something about the apple, the action, or the numbers themselves.
Demonstrability
We prefer knowledge that we can show, by some sort of objective process, holds to be true. This allows us to convince skeptical people that the knowledge is valid. Saying that a ball is red, and action is evil, or that 2 + 2 = 4 would mean we had accepted means of demonstrations so that every observer who accepted such means as valid would accept the result.
Certainty
We prefer knowledge that won't change with time, that stands firm. when something is true, it should stay true and not become partly true or even false later on. A red ball should always be red (assuming the ball itself does not change), an evil action should always be evil, and 2 + 2 should always equal 4.
The next part discusses what I see as three different systems that focus on knowledge using the desired attributes above. Of course, any truly broad system of inquiry will make us of all three of the systems I discuss below, but generally only one of them at time. Like a three-way combination of oil and vinegar, they don't seem to mix together. In the examples, I try to offer samples where the primary dependence seems to match the system I use, and the other systems are of secondary significance.
Empirical systems
Empirical systems rely on the investigation of the real word and use inductive processes and assumption to decide what is more generally true about that world. They use demonstrable methods such as taking measurements, running controlled experiments, and making predictions to be verified by further observations and experiments. Because the observations are founded in actual investigations, their reality to the world is a natural consequence. However, the use of the inductive method means that the results can not be certain, that all finding are provisional and possibly erroneous. The best that can be hoped for is beyond a good reason to doubt a finding. Examples of empirical systems would include physics and the results of national polls regarding elections.
Formal systems
Formal systems rely on working from a starting point accepted as being true and using an accepted, objective, deductive means of deriving new truths within that system. The method of deriving new truths within the system is the demonstration of that truth, and the process of deriving the truth would be repeatable regardless of the observer. Also, given a specific starting point, the same truth will always be the result (at least, ideally). However, since the starting point is selected rather than derived, there is no guarantee that such a starting point will have any bearing on the world around us. A formal system may be a useful model of reality, but we can never know whether it matches reality. Examples would include philosophy and law (as practiced at the appellate level).
Belief systems
Belief systems use the trusted, revealed knowledge of an authority of some sort to provide as description of the world and its operation. The truths that we get from this authority are accepted because of the level of trust, not because of any independent test that we run. Belief systems do provide a view of reality and knowledge about the state of affairs in the universe. Also, because the source is some consistent authority, they have the feature of certainty, of not changing within the system itself. However, because our acceptance of this knowledge is based upon trust rather than a means to validate them, these truths are generally not demonstrable to others in a significant or meaningful way. Examples include Shintoism and Objectivism.
Then the question that guarantees a minute of silence and ten more of discussion: which one of these is mathematics?
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Thursday, September 10, 2009
The 119th Skeptics' Circle
You can find the 119th Skeptics' Circle up at Cubik's Rube, with a long narrative and a host of links i don't have time to read today. There is also a shorter, link-only version.
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Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Why ID advocates need proof of a Designer
In my recent discussions with JoeG at the self-styled Intelligent Reasoning, one of the topics that arose was that design is offered the default status in Dembski's Explanatory Filter. You supposedly rule out necessity at the first step, and chance at the next two, and are left with design at the end. This is also true of Dembski's Complex Specified Information formulation and of Behe's Irreducible Complexity. By claiming they can defeat the argument that certain types of objects can not arise through chance alone, they then present you with their only alternative: some outside-the-process designer who deliberately sought to create life as we have it, apparently with special care given to clotting cascades and bacterial mobility. In the course of the aforementioned discussions, I pointed out that there are two other alternatives beside the Designer and no design. JoeG, with the usual deftness of ID advocates, disputed that these were alternatives, and in the process created two I had not even considered, helping to defeat his own position. While I have seen reference to other possibilities existing, I don't recall reading a listing of them, so I thought I would provide one. Let's say that at some point in the future ID proponents succeed in their efforts at convincing us that necessity and chance can provide no sufficient explanation for life. For any program to prove a Designer exists, all of the options below will need to be disproved as well.
Suggestions from the commentators are welcome and may be added. In fact, I may make this my other annual re-post. Details below the fold.
The first option I proposed is life as a by product of some other intention by an outside agent. Life on earth might be a spandrel, something that happened when the Agent was in the process of organizing some other thing. This allows for all sorts of possibilities in the history of life, including the sudden appearance of features of organisms, or even entire organisms, not because the Agent cares about or even notices life here, but as a side-effect of some other intended cause. Any functions we perceive in biological systems would be reflections of the real design, unheard echos.
The next option I proposed was the interior designer, life having a gradually emergent consciousness that began to direct its own activities. The geek in me would call it the Force. As life grows, it begins to direct and design itself, shaping itself into greater levels of complexity, sacrificing some of its own forms in favor of other forms, weathering mass extinctions with determination and ferocity. Life would add it's own functions, choosing to make sure the bacteria got its flagellum, leaving all the hallmarks of design and purpose directly but having no outside designer they are attached to. It's very New Agey.
While disputing my first option, JoeG suggested the outside agent who doesn't even care what he's doing as an attempt at rebuttal, creating a third option: the random outside agent. ID proponents are fond of the tornado-in-a-junkyard argument, the equivalent metaphor here might be a sledgehammer-in-a-junkyard. Of course, the key difference is that the sledgehammer still has to be swung by some person. This is an outside agent that would leave traces that looked like they might design all over the places (the marks from the hammer), but involve no actual design intention on the part of the agent. So, merely detecting signs of design is not proof of design.
Finally, while discussing my second option, JoeG derisively referred to it as "poof". I thought about it, and decided that Poof is a poor description of that option, but an interesting alternative to it. One variation would be a sudden, persistent appearance of a consciousness for life, but an even more interesting variation is a consciousness life creates that appears only when it is needed to direct or preserve something about life, or life itself. Poof awakens when an asteroid hits the planet, or the global temperatures get too warm or too cold, etc. Poof then gets to work in changing the living things that remain, adding a flagellum her or altering a blood cascade there, to make sure life goes on as it should (or at all), and then disappears, ready to be summoned again at need.
So, even if the ID proponents somehow manage to topple the possibility of chance and necessity being sufficient, they have a long way to go to get to their Designer. I doubt I have exhausted the possibilities, either. If you want to say there is a Designer, you need proof of a Designer.
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Suggestions from the commentators are welcome and may be added. In fact, I may make this my other annual re-post. Details below the fold.
The first option I proposed is life as a by product of some other intention by an outside agent. Life on earth might be a spandrel, something that happened when the Agent was in the process of organizing some other thing. This allows for all sorts of possibilities in the history of life, including the sudden appearance of features of organisms, or even entire organisms, not because the Agent cares about or even notices life here, but as a side-effect of some other intended cause. Any functions we perceive in biological systems would be reflections of the real design, unheard echos.
The next option I proposed was the interior designer, life having a gradually emergent consciousness that began to direct its own activities. The geek in me would call it the Force. As life grows, it begins to direct and design itself, shaping itself into greater levels of complexity, sacrificing some of its own forms in favor of other forms, weathering mass extinctions with determination and ferocity. Life would add it's own functions, choosing to make sure the bacteria got its flagellum, leaving all the hallmarks of design and purpose directly but having no outside designer they are attached to. It's very New Agey.
While disputing my first option, JoeG suggested the outside agent who doesn't even care what he's doing as an attempt at rebuttal, creating a third option: the random outside agent. ID proponents are fond of the tornado-in-a-junkyard argument, the equivalent metaphor here might be a sledgehammer-in-a-junkyard. Of course, the key difference is that the sledgehammer still has to be swung by some person. This is an outside agent that would leave traces that looked like they might design all over the places (the marks from the hammer), but involve no actual design intention on the part of the agent. So, merely detecting signs of design is not proof of design.
Finally, while discussing my second option, JoeG derisively referred to it as "poof". I thought about it, and decided that Poof is a poor description of that option, but an interesting alternative to it. One variation would be a sudden, persistent appearance of a consciousness for life, but an even more interesting variation is a consciousness life creates that appears only when it is needed to direct or preserve something about life, or life itself. Poof awakens when an asteroid hits the planet, or the global temperatures get too warm or too cold, etc. Poof then gets to work in changing the living things that remain, adding a flagellum her or altering a blood cascade there, to make sure life goes on as it should (or at all), and then disappears, ready to be summoned again at need.
So, even if the ID proponents somehow manage to topple the possibility of chance and necessity being sufficient, they have a long way to go to get to their Designer. I doubt I have exhausted the possibilities, either. If you want to say there is a Designer, you need proof of a Designer.
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Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Keeping the kids in a bubble
I probably won't mention the Illinois Family Institute very often on this blog. For the most part, their particular flavors of intolerance and woo don't interact with the subjects I like to write about. Once in a great while they'll put up some bland global warming denialism, but mostly it's just politically slanted tripe and homophobia, and there are other bloggers who are really passionate on those topics. My rant is below the fold.
However, Laurie Higgins decided to direct her focus at my kid's school, and in particular at the Challenge Day program they are bringing over. Before I go on, there are two things you should understand about O'Fallon: we are the dead center of the most conservative area of St. Clair County (many residents are current or past Department of Defense workers, as Scott Air force Base is quite close), and our school system has plenty of money (we have 2 new schools built in the past 2 years). So, we really don't need some conservative wingnut protecting our family values, we already have an elected school board that is almost as right-wing anyhow. I'm not going to pretend I have enough information on the program to evaluate its true value, and am skeptical of any week inducing a life-changing experience on people (shy of physical trauma), but if this program was really just some touchy-feely lib-fest, it would not have been funded.
Of course, Ms. Higgins has to pull out some made-for-right-wing expert testimony, and her choice is the book One Nation Under God, a book described as "...a literary version of the thankfully defunct TV show "Crossfire"' and 'They are also waging a dated war against an imagined army of censorious liberals, ... It is culture-wars kitsch'. This of course makes them fabulous sources for a blog devoted to those culture wars.
Fortunately, we get to find out the real problems directly from Ms. Higgins. She quotes from the website:
Note that I did not add the emphasis, nor did the goals of Challenge Day. The emphasis is being added by Ms. Higgins, because that's the stuff that's really concerning. Not that she approves of stereotypes, intolerance, sexism, or homophobia. Just because she thinks children should be pulled from school when teh school allows protesting homophobia does not mean she supports it herself, no siree. She just doesn't think children should be exposed to other children opposing homophobia. You know, because being exposed to homophobia-opposition will be so damaging for the kids.
Ms. Higgins, your attention is not needed, productive, interesting, nor welcome.
Read more!
However, Laurie Higgins decided to direct her focus at my kid's school, and in particular at the Challenge Day program they are bringing over. Before I go on, there are two things you should understand about O'Fallon: we are the dead center of the most conservative area of St. Clair County (many residents are current or past Department of Defense workers, as Scott Air force Base is quite close), and our school system has plenty of money (we have 2 new schools built in the past 2 years). So, we really don't need some conservative wingnut protecting our family values, we already have an elected school board that is almost as right-wing anyhow. I'm not going to pretend I have enough information on the program to evaluate its true value, and am skeptical of any week inducing a life-changing experience on people (shy of physical trauma), but if this program was really just some touchy-feely lib-fest, it would not have been funded.
Of course, Ms. Higgins has to pull out some made-for-right-wing expert testimony, and her choice is the book One Nation Under God, a book described as "...a literary version of the thankfully defunct TV show "Crossfire"' and 'They are also waging a dated war against an imagined army of censorious liberals, ... It is culture-wars kitsch'. This of course makes them fabulous sources for a blog devoted to those culture wars.
Fortunately, we get to find out the real problems directly from Ms. Higgins. She quotes from the website:
Challenge Day successfully addresses some common issues seen at most schools during our school programs including cliques, gossip, rumors, negative judgments, teasing, harassment, isolation, stereotypes, intolerance, racism, sexism, bullying, violence, homophobia, (emphasis added) hopelessness, apathy, and hidden pressures to create an image, achieve or live up to the expectations of others....Be challenged to celebrate the diversity of ALL people.
Note that I did not add the emphasis, nor did the goals of Challenge Day. The emphasis is being added by Ms. Higgins, because that's the stuff that's really concerning. Not that she approves of stereotypes, intolerance, sexism, or homophobia. Just because she thinks children should be pulled from school when teh school allows protesting homophobia does not mean she supports it herself, no siree. She just doesn't think children should be exposed to other children opposing homophobia. You know, because being exposed to homophobia-opposition will be so damaging for the kids.
Ms. Higgins, your attention is not needed, productive, interesting, nor welcome.
Read more!
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