At Uncommon Descent — though not only there! — one often come across the view that naturalism is inconsistent with rationality: if one accepts naturalism, then one ought not regard one’s own rational capacities as reliable. Some version of this view is ascribed to Darwin himself, and we can call it “Darwin’s Doubt” or simply “the Doubt.” Should we endorse the Doubt? Or are there reasons for doubting the Doubt?
Here are some positions I can think of about the relationship between naturalism and rationality:
(1) Endorse the Doubt: if naturalism is true, then rationality is undermined; but rationality is a basic presupposition of all thought and discourse; so we should reject naturalism. (C. S. Lewis seems to have held this view, and Alvin Plantinga has a really nice, very powerful version of it he calls the EAAN, or Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism — we can get into that in the comments, or we can start another thread just about the EAAN);
(2) Endorse the Doubt (inverted): if naturalism is true, then rationality is undermined — but naturalism is true, and therefore so much the worse for rationality. (I would ascribe a sophisticated version of this view to Nietzsche.)
(3) Defuse the Doubt: naturalism and rationality are consistent, if we have a sufficiently emergentist (non-reductive, non-materialist) naturalism and a deflationary conception of what the philosophical tradition has called “rationality” — e,g. “intelligence”. (On my reading this is John Dewey’s position, and he’s very clear that we should reject the entire Plato-to-Kant/Hegel tradition — what he calls “the Quest for Certainty” — in favor of a more modest conception of human cognitive abilities.)
(4) Reject the Doubt: naturalism and rationality are consistent, if we think of rationality in terms of (a) discursive, inferential capacities that intrinsic to <I>language</I>; and (b) these capacities emerge from, and are grounded in the perceptual-practical abilities that we share with other animals (and that characterize each of us at a very early moment of our lives). (On my view, (a) was nicely worked out by Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom, and (b) is implicit in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty.)
The key issue at stake between (3) and (4) is how much continuity or discontinuity there is between the cognitive abilities of non-sapient animals and the discursive-inferential abilities of sapient animals. But I take it that a satisfactory hybrid view of (3) and (4), one that locates correctly the different dimensions of continuity and discontinuity, would be sufficient to refute both (1) and (2).
I have some thoughts about how to sketch out such a view, but I thought it better to turn this over to comments before saying too much more.
Intelligibility is unimportant. There are some differences in the various theistic traditions. Some stress obedience to rules. Christianity stresses love as the source of morality and says if you don’t have the inner desire, the appetite for goodness, you are morally deficient.
If you have love, you don’t need a list of rules. If you don’t, you are likely to miss the point of morality and spend your life lawyering the rules.
None of this requires intellectualization. In fact the intellect gets in the way.
For once you got it right, KN. Credit where credit is due.
Atheists may feel obligated to use reason, to discern truth, and to be moral, but that “feeling” of obligation is (under naturalism) subjective – a matter of taste. It’s not required for survival or procreation. There are no necessary consequences involved, nor any means to significantly infer (under naturalism) that one is being properly moral, properly truthful, or properly rational – “properly” is unavailable.
The kind of rationality, morality and truth available under theism is categorically different from what those words can mean under naturalism/atheism, yet atheists and naturalists still employ those terms, and use them in implication, as if they mean the kinds of things they mean under theism.
Note the nonsensical nature of arguments presented here against my position as if my position was “untrue” in an absolute sense, and as if what they are arguing for is true in an absolute sense. They have never adopted their own theory of “subjective” truths, reason, and morality or else they wouldn’t imply that my views were “untrue”,or not rationally valid.
If physics creates in me these views, they are necessarily as valid and as true as any other views physics generates, because there is no external arbiter of truth, reason, and morality under naturalism.
IF they were true to their premise, there would be no need to bother trying to argue others out of their positions, because that would be as futile as trying to argue with a rock that it is tumbling down a hill the wrong way.
Note further the absurdity of the atheistic preening that they behave morally without a carrot or stick (necessary consequences), but just for the sake of being good – as if “being good” meant something worth preening about under naturalism. Nazis could equally preen about “doing good just for the sake of being good” while the gassed jews. I might as well preen about “doing good just because I want to do good” by calling eating guacamole “good” and then patting myself on the back for eating it even though nobody threatened me or promised me any reward.
When you get to call anything you want “good”, patting yourself on the back for doing it and preening that you did it without threat or promise is self-serving emotional posturing, nothing more.
That’s a keeper right there.
The “contradiction” only works if one assumes that absoluteness is the same as, or is required for, objectivity. I can understand why “theists” (construed loosely enough to include Plato and Aristotle, as well as modern Christian philosophers) would take this to be true, but I think that atheists should reject this assumption.
One reason why Kant occupies a central place in my thinking is that he was the first major philosopher to start working out an anthropocentric conception of truth, objectivity, rationality, and morality. He didn’t get it quite right, but he started us on the right path. The upshot is that we can ground the objective validity of both scientific and ethical practices in terms of how cognitive subjects interact with each other about the world. We don’t need access to a “God’s-eye view” in order to ground that objective validity.
(We might need access to a God’s-eye view in order to ground the absoluteness of our conceptual frameworks, but I think that the desire for absoluteness is something we’re better off without.)
KN,
Note that my phrasing was chosen to echo William’s. Otherwise I probably would have said that “morality is whatever people feel it is.”
That view depends on the moral premise that human flourishing is a good thing. Luckily, many of us agree on that premise. It’s still a premise, however, and if you replace it with a different premise such as “God’s will as expressed in this book must always be done”, then you get a different morality.
The same is true of your description of science going well (or badly), by the way. The premise is that “It is good for humans to successfully intervene or interfere with physical things, generate novel and testable predictions, and so on.” If you replace that premise with “Scientific knowledge is dangerous, a Pandora’s box that humanity should never open”, then science is going well when it isn’t advancing.
I meant physical survival,which is the only kind of suvival the naturalist should be concerned with.
You are a pharasee, William. Jesus would kick your butt. You are only interested in the outer form of morality. If you had a good heart you would not be asking silly questions about why people behave morally without the threat of punishment or the promise of reward. You would just know.
William,
Here’s the quote to which you are referring:
Please make it explicit. If there is a contradiction, then P and not-P must both be asserted for some P.
What is P?
Unless you are making an absolute, claim, how would you know whether or not he got it “quite right”, or that it was the “right” path? Isn’t what you actually mean here “He didn’t quite get it so that I agree with it,but he started us on a path I agree with”?
In other words, re-define “objective” so that you have a definition of “objective” that is compatible with naturalism, which essentially means redefinining “objective” to mean a form of subjectivity.
It makes me wonder why naturalists simply cannot own up to the subjective nature of their concepts, but instead keep trying to sneak in terms that imply concepts that are only available under theism.
I can’t make it any more explicit than that.
In other words, you can’t identify a contradiction.
Some atheists and naturalists in history have been able to own up to the conceptual ramifications of their worldview, without reinventing and redefining terms to con themselves into believing their worldview provides things it cannot provide. I respect that. I patterned my own time under atheism in that manner.
I really have no respect for atheists and naturalists who cling to rube goldberg compatibalisms as if such re-definitions give warrant to cling to the theistic values and concepts they claim are false. Most atheists here are just rebellious, self-deceiving theists who have no intention of going off the theistic concept reservation, and are scared to death of journeying out into the wild of the real consequences of their naturalistic worldview.
keiths,
I identified it. You, apparently, are the one that cannot identify it. My reiterating it isn’t going to change that.
Without an absolute value for “good”, any heart can be claimed to be a “good” heart. Under naturalism, my view of morality is equal to yours. And yet, here you go, once again arguing that a rock is rolling down a hill the wrong way – arguing with the product of physics.
I really have no respect for the intellectual honesty of anyone who claims to believe whatever he wishes without any desire to test it against reason or reality. You don’t get much more self-deceiving than that.
William,
You’ve already expended more effort in avoiding the question than it would have taken to answer it — if you had an answer.
You can’t identify a contradiction, and everyone who is reading this thread knows it.
You reiterate the same self-contradiction with virtually every post; and now, you extend your foolishness into claiming to know what “everyone here” thinks. Perhaps you need the emotional support of assuming the consensus agrees with you? Or you think it makes your position more significant if you speak in terms of the Queen’s “we”?
You cannot argue against certainty, reliability, or the implication that an absolute arbiter exists without self-negating contradiction undermining your position – as KF says, you are sawing off the limb you sit upon with every post.
I repeat:
You demonstrate my point that you lack something within. The appetite to love and be helpful does not follow legalistic rules.
It appears to be something like color blindness. You are asking a sighted person why he doesn’t need a spectrometer to objectively determine the color red.
petrushka must think this a trick question.
but ill play….
A. atheists like to eat, sleep, and have sex because it help ensure the survival of the species.
B. atheists care about truth, reason, and morality because in enhances the quality of their survival.
quantity verses quality…two different animals.
yes, that was a tricky one.
A contradiction, because William chooses to believe it is.
Checkmate atheists.
I’ll play too…
A. atheists like to eat, sleep, and have sex because they enhance the quality of their survival.
B. atheists care about truth, reason, and morality because they help ensure the survival of the species.
There is a reason the word used was “demonstrate” and not “assert”.
“If evolution is guided, then we are teacup poodles — beings that would not survive in the wild.”
That’s hilarious! 😛
Couldn’t be Guided to ‘survive in the wild’? No soul. Uninspiring. Dead is dead. Naturalism?
My answer is that people who care about others do so for the same reason they eat. It’s abuilt in desire. Apparently not everyone has it, or perhaps people have it in varying degrees. Just as people vary in height and skin color.
My own observation of people leads me to conclude that religious faith does not correlate with moral or ethical behavior.
Caring about others seems to be partially inborn and partially learned. Most of the learning is by imitation. There is a language and syntax of love, and the details vary from culture to culture.
There is no absolute morality because there is no absolute best way to be helpful and loving. It’s something we invent as we go along.
William seems to associate morality with rule following, so he needs some authoritative source of rules. Such people tend to game the system and test the edges of the rules to see what they can get away with. Laws, whether man made or proclaimed by scripture, are an inferior form of morality.
The evolved tendencies to be loving and compassionate produce much more useful social behavior.
Survival in the wild requires simultaneous selection of tens of thousands of varying traits — something done automatically by differential reproductive success — but beyond the capacity of a finite designer.
And why would a designer go to the trouble to mimic differential reproductive success? That’s a bit like attributing shadows to angels that follow us around and paint them continuously. Designers “theory” invents unnecessary entities that are just as well explained by observed phenomena.
There is an important point of disanalogy between empiricism (scientific practices) and ethics. There is no oughtness in empiricism. We can ground empiricism in the assumption of an intelligible objective reality (although it is arguable whether such grounding is necessary), but we cannot quite do the same for ethics. You suggest we ground ethical practices in “human flourishing,” but the question remains: why ought we act in order to promote human flourishing? Such questions cannot have an empirical resolution. They are in a class of their own.
I appreciate the objection, but I’m still willing to press the analogy.
You are right that the question, “why ought we act in order to promote human flourishing?” does not have an empirical answer. But in just the same way, “why ought we act in order to comprehend the world?” also does not have an empirical answer. Yet that the comprehension of the world is the final cause of empirical inquiry, of science, in exactly the same way that the promotion of human (and non-human) flourishing is the final cause of ethics.
There’s no empirical answer as to why we should engage in science — though empirical answers are relevant to determining whether we are doing science well or poorly. And in just the same way, there’s no empirical answer to why we should behave morally, though empirical answers are surely relevant to determining whether or not our moral practices are, in fact, conducive to human flourishing.
For the promotion of human flourishing is the final cause, or end-goal, of all practical reasoning — it is what gives practical reasoning its sense and purpose — in just the same way that the comprehension of the world is the final cause, or end-goal, of all theoretical reasoning. So the real difference between science and ethics does not depend on the contrast between the objective and the subjective, or the descriptive and the normative, but on the theoretical and the practical — to the extent that there is any real difference at all.
It must be beyond frustratingly boring to be William, cursed to exist as the only aware and intelligent agent in a world populated with no peers as all other entities are ignorant of the obvious reality William insists exists. (sigh)
I did not phrase my question well. If I do a very rough summary of his argument:
1. Beliefs are reliable.
2. The probability that naturalism and unguided evolution could generate reliable beliefs is low or unknowable.
3. Therefore, if you accept naturalism and unguided evolution, you have a defeater for 1, which (roughly) means you cannot accept 2 consistently with 1.
A key part of his justification for 2 is that there is no generally accepted naturalistic mechanism relating mental contents to brains states.
But if he believes guided evolution solves the problem, how does he account for us having reliable beliefs today? How does he relate beliefs and brains states after evolution has been guided? Is it a mysterious dualistic relationship?
Scared of those consequences? Considering it near-certain that death cannot be transcended is fearful? Meantime, casting the bones in whatever way you think the Grand Ooga-Booga is going to favour counts as brave? A topsy-turvy world you inhabit, for sure. Taunt on, old bean.
BruceS,
Yes, Plantinga is a dualist. Here is a video in which he presents his modal argument for dualism.
The interviewer’s incredulous reaction (which I share) made me laugh out loud.
I guess this merits some response . . .
Firstly, the definitions of words weren’t revealed to Saint Webster on Mt. Dictionary — they are the accumulations of patterns of use. Secondly, re-conceptualizing old notions in light of new discoveries and problems is one of the many things that philosophers do. If you have a problem with that, then perhaps you shouldn’t bother talking to people who care about philosophy.
Thirdly, I have a perfectly cogent use for “objective” and “subjective”: objective assertions are those assertions whose truth-value does not depend on the beliefs or desires of the person asserting them, and subjective assertions are those assertions whose truth-value does depend on the beliefs and desires of those asserting them. So, “it is 86 F outside” is objective, whereas “I’m in love with you” is subjective.
Theism doesn’t own the concepts of truth, rationality, or morality. Never has, never will. Those concepts belong to the discourse of humanity. (Indeed, one might plausibly argue that it is the theistic use of those notions which are “stolen concepts” — Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Epictetus were many things, but they were not “theists” in anything like the recognizable, Abrahamic sense of the term.) Theists are, of course, free to work up their own conceptions of these concepts — but so too are naturalists, and Buddhists, and pagans, and everyone else.
Besides which, as I’ve argued many times over at Uncommon Descent, the whole “stolen concept fallacy” is a sham. It doesn’t make any sense, because it confuses conditions of genesis and conditions of validity. Nor is this “fallacy” mentioned in any critical thinking textbook I’ve read or used. From what I can tell, it was invented by self-serving anti-Communist reactionaries (i.e. Objectivists).
In other words, you were never really an atheist — you accepted the theistic world-view, but subtracted God from it, without doing any serious questioning about the fundamentals of that world-view. Sounds to me like you should have read more Nietzsche and less Sartre.
The real consequences as you imagine them to be, that is. The rest of us are doing just fine.
No, I don’t think that (1) is a premise of the EAAN. The whole thing is just the if-then statement: if our cognitive faculties are the result of unguided evolution, then the probability that those faculties are reliable is low or inscrutable. But that conditional is then a defeater — an undefeatable defeater, in fact — for all the beliefs we form by means of those faculties, including our belief in naturalism and evolution. Hence the implosion.
By contrast, if our cognitive faculties are the result of divinely-guided evolution, then the probability that those faculties are reliable is fairly high. (Here is where keiths TAAT counter-argument comes into play.)
Actually, I don’t think Plantinga’s argument here is that sophisticated. I think he just assumes that there couldn’t be a naturalistic mechanism that implements semantic content. Why? Well, because Plantinga just has an intuition that semantic content and neurophysiological processes are different things. (Lord, save me from analytic metaphysicians and their a priori intuitions.) After all, they seem to be, right? And to back this up, all he offers is (as keiths points out) the Kripke-style modal argument.
Now, this is the real kicker: modal arguments tell us what is possible and what is necessary. But they do not, and cannot, tell us what is actually the case. So, sure, if Kripke and Plantinga have nailed down the modality correctly, then it is not necessarily the case that semantic content is token-identical with neurophysiological processes. But so what? That’s completely irrelevant! The real issue isn’t whether it’s necessarily the case that semantic content is token-identical with neurophysiological processes — the question is whether it is actually the case.
(I’m fudging a bit here, because Kripke thinks that identities are always necessary — so to really work around the Kripke/Plantinga argument, I’d have to back off from token identity and go with some version of supervenience, just as Neil Rickert argued here a few days ago.)
Anyway, the point is that Plantinga is the kind of old-school, analytic metaphysician who thinks that we don’t need to worry about science if we have logic, and we don’t need to worry about theories if we have intuitions.
Indeed. I will paste these words inside my hat. And ‘objectivity’. It is necessary only that objectivity have a reference outside the self, not outside all selves. (Since God is presumably a Self, indeed, any angst on such questions that WJM supposes materialists should suffer must also be suffered Upstairs.).
Allan,
That’s right.
I have argued that even God, if he exists, cannot establish the reliability of his cognition from the inside.
Reading William J Murray’s rationalization of theistic morality reminds me of the demonizing of everything secular that rains down from fundamentalist pulpits.
It also puts me in mind of a real phenomenon in which damage to certain parts of the brain can render people completely amoral, without empathy toward any other humans, and no ability to read the emotional states of others.
I would suspect that such a state would make it unlikely that the person could ever imagine that humans can empathize and learn from their interactions with other humans and with the larger environment.
Thus, without a scary, authoritarian deity constantly threatening eternal punishment for transgressions against specified rules of “correct conduct,” such an individual would be incapable of engaging in ethical and moral behavior.
When one looks at the rather remarkable fact that many fundamentalist sects in the US society seem to be safe havens for charlatans of various stripes, one begins to wonder if part of the reason for that is that members of these sects can’t read people very well. For example, it took the Amazing James Randi, an atheist, to expose Peter Popoff’s “faith healing” fraud; and yet Popoff is still in business, and fundamentalist sectarians can’t seem to bring themselves to kick him out of their midst.
Then there are the high-profile politicians and criminals who “got religion” after secular laws brought them to justice. Did these characters have no sense of right and wrong before the law came down on them?
I suspect Murray may be projecting his own inner demons with his damning of “atheists,” “materialists,” and “Darwinists.” Murray appears to be one of those characters that can’t function in society without a scary sectarian deity who will punish him for eternity if he doesn’t toe the sectarian line. And he certainly can’t seem to imagine that other people can learn from experience and from their empathy for others.
I wonder how the percentage of “amoral” humans in fundamentalism compares with that of secular society.
One doesn’t require the proclamations of a religion in order to discover the “Golden Rule;” one just has to be a normal human being with the ability to empathize and learn from experience
Hang on sunshine, don’t you “make your own reality up”?
Did you forget to make hypocrisy?
I won’t speak to the case of WJM directly, but I do think that there’s a certain strain of right-wing evangelical American Christianity which thinks that all human beings are sociopaths who need to live under constant surveillance by the Sociopath-in-the-Sky. This same strand exhibits a manic obsession with the control of sexuality, hatred of the body, and, in general, an inability to tolerate ambiguity. And it is characterized by a zealous dichotomizing — good and evil, the West and Islam, us and foreigners, the saved and the sinners, etc — a dichotomizing that reeks far more of Manicheanism than of genuine Christianity.
Mike Elzinga,
Pivoting away slightly from WJM, but still staying within the general orbit of his concerns — because they figure prominently in making the case for (1), as sketched in the OP — I want to examine the relation between normativity and necessity.
One point that WJM has repeatedly made — though he’s hardly alone in thinking this way — is that normativity requires necessity. That is, he thinks that moral (or even epistemic) norms don’t make sense as norms unless they are necessarily the case. Without the necessity to back them up, all we’re left with is a mere assemblage of preferences.
Now, I do think that WJM is correct in thinking that a mere aggregation of preferences cannot yield a norm. (This is controversial, and I expect some push-back from my fellow pragmatic naturalists here.) But I also think that WJM’s view that norms require necessities is the very inverse of the truth.
The correct view, rather, is that modality is the shadow cast by normativity: our awareness of modal notions (of possibility and necessity) depends upon our awareness of normative notions (of permissibility and obligation).
As I see it, our norms don’t require any further grounding under, beneath, or prior to them in order to function as norms — no more than we need street signs that say “this is street sign,” with a big arrow pointing to the street sign. The thought that our norms must be grounded in meta-norms — a meta-norm that authorizes our norms — is an illusion crafted by Plato to reassure himself that we do not live in a world in which tragedy is possible.
Kantian Naturalist,
If we knew in advance everything we needed to know about anything, life wouldn’t be interesting and there would be no need for scientific investigation. We would be automatons mindlessly drifting with events in the universe.
As it is, we live in a contingent universe; contingencies within our physical makeup and in our historical trajectory. Tragedy will be a part of that history; even when we are at our best.
Quite so — that’s one of the big points that I’m trying to draw with my reconciliation of naturalism and rationality. Naturalism, understood in the loose sense of “life, history, and becoming” (as Nietzsche put it), means that everything in the spatio-temporal, causal nexus is contingent. And that means that we naturalists must recover the tragic sense of life that Plato tried to suppress. But affirming the fragility of normativity — the fragility of rationality, the fragility of morality — is consistent with upholding their importance.
that was a pretty lame retort, Hooke.
whether you perceive quality in the food, sleep, or sex…it doesnt matter. You need them or you die.
on the other hand…you dont need truth, reason, or morality to survive…it just makes things less of a hassle…see,I wont have to hit you over the head to get the girl…and i dont have to persuede you to hand over your assets because you dont need no stinkin’ assets.
but you knew that already….
Citation needed.
On thing is for sure, atheists are consistent.
In order for Darwinism to work, they must wait until all the heavy lifting is done to kick start their processes.
it seems to be the same for their a-faith…assume the foundation and then paddle denial from there.
No one has died from lack of sex.
A society cannot maintain itself over the long term without reason or morality, and one cannot make sense of reason or morality without truth or objectivity.
When theists say ‘atheists would…’ I think they mean they would without god-fear. But we’re not you.
Steve,
So it seems that you can’t easily separate [sex,food,sleep] and [truth,morality,reason] in terms of quality and survival.
If there is no quality in your food,sex, and sleep… that’s a shame.
In order for plants to grow, they must wait until all the heavy lifting is done…
In order for galaxies to form, they must wait until all the heavy lifting is done…
In order for languages to work, they must wait until all the heavy lifting is done…
In order for there to be culture, it must wait until all the heavy lifting is done…
So, what is your point, Steve? Plants don’t grow? Galaxies don’t form? There are no languages? Culture doesn’t exist?
Richardthughes,
Exactly.
Which makes me wonder, though, if a more apt term would be “non-theocentric” or “post-theist” or something like that.
The apt term for someone to whom fear of an authority is the only dismotivation to murder, rape, and baby-barbecuing sprees would be “sociopath”.