Dear Internet Infidels,
I have read a good deal of the writings on "The Secular Web", and overall, I have a few questions (for the people who run the site, not the people who post in the forums).

(1) It seems that many of the writings assume, without defending or at least acknowledging, a particular theory of language, namely one that requires an individual to be able to define, in exact terms, what they mean by a certain term, and if they can't, then that word is often rendered "meaningless", "absurd", etc. For example, this obviously applies to the word "God", as some of the writers attempt to show a contradiction in the definition or attempt to show it's meaningless (such as Nielsen would do something like). I'm curious, first, what overall theory of language a metaphysical naturalist subscribes to, and particularly why many tend to view a word as meaningless if it can't be defined in very specific details. This type of language theory seems rather odd, considering if pressed the majority of people can't state in detail what they mean by the majority of words. In other words, it doesn't seem to be the case that we have to mean what we say, but just that we attempt to say what we mean, particularly what we mean by the term "God". At least among the masses, I would think most would say one cannot say exactly what God is, since to define him and understand him perfectly would render him not God, so to ask for a specific, in detail description, would be rather silly, or at least impossible.

(2) My second question follows from the first I guess, but it seems that "The Secular Web" overall assumes epistemology methodism, which i reject because i think one can know something without having an exact criterion, etc., of how one knows what they know. I'm curious why "The Secular Web" appeals, or follows, this type of epistemology as opposed to one of the many others.

(3) It seems that the majority of the writings, particularly concerning humanism or how we should live, assume we have free will, yet no one really argues on "The Secular Web", aside from Carrier's essay on Brunettes and Biology, why this is so. While Carrier adhers to combatibilism, I think Taylor, and others, have made a good case that this type of view ultimately fails.

(4) I realize "The Secular Web" is a volunteer organization and you can't post, or don't have time or permission, to post every single thing on the foundation of your beliefs, but i'm just curious mainly about the underlying epistemology theory and theory of language (assuming they are different).

Any books, responses, articles, etc., would be appreciated.
Bryan

-DM-

[Note: This was copied here from Feedback. Although the post asks for comment from Secular Web staff, and although I have contacted some Secular Web staff and authors who might be interested in providing a response, anyone who participates in this forum and who has something to say should also feel free to respond. --Don--]

copernicus

Bryan, I'm just a member of II, not anyone "official", but I am a linguist. So I would like to respond to your question about "theory of language".

I think that you might be equivocating on the term "meaningless", which itself can have more than one meaning. Contradictions are not meaningless. They are simply statements that are inherently false. For example, "Boys are not male" is a contradiction because being male is part of what it means to be a boy. Since contradictions are always false, it is nonsensical to assert them, and that is why some people call them "meaningless"--devoid of significance.

There is another kind of "meaninglessness", which we sometimes refer to as semantic anomaly. This is the case where a presupposition fails, thus rendering the speech act itself infelicitous. Noam Chomsky has a famous sentence that is often used to illustrate anomaly: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". Every collocation of words in that sentence is semantically infelicitous. The sentence is not false or contradictory. It is just that certain propositions must be true in order for the assertion to have a truth value, and those propositions are false in that sentence.

Neither contradictions nor semantic anomalies are literally "meaningless". It is the very clear meanings of the words that allow us to say that they are contradictory or anomalous. Tautologies certainly have meaning, but there is a sense in which they lack significance. I could perfectly well say to you that it is "meaningless" to assert a tautology.

Now I want to introduce a different kind of meaninglessness--semantic vagueness. Words are vague when they have no exact definition. For example, the word "mountain" might seem to have a clear definition, but it is vague in the following sense. If I asked you to count all of the mountains in the Rocky Mountain chain, you wouldn't be able to do it. How would you count a "saddle mountain"--as one or two mountains? The boundaries between mountains are vague.

Finally, there is the kind of "meaninglessness" that is unresolved ambiguity. For example, the sentence "Your face is red" could mean many things outside of a context. It might be an assertion about the face on your head, or it might be an assertion about the face of the watch you are wearing. And then, of course, there is the idiomatic sense, where the sentence means that you are blushing.

Now, as an atheist, I don't have any problem asserting that statements like "God is good" or "God exists" are "meaningless". The problem isn't that the word "God" lacks meaning, but that its meaning is variously contradictory, anomalous, vague, and/or ambiguous. Which "God" are you talking about? Even people who attend the same church can have wildly different opinions about God's attributes, but different religions have certainly come up with very different definitions. Until someone says what their concept of "God" is, it is a little like trying to assert that there are 883,452 mountains on earth. Impossible to verify, because you have to come up with a precise enough definition of "mountain" to be able to count them. Some people believe that God defines what is "good", so it is really meaningless to assert that "God is good", since it is a tautology. The problem isn't that "God" is meaningless. The problem is that the word has too many different meanings, too many apparent internal contradictions, and too much vagueness. Unless you can clarify what you mean by "God", then all statements about the alleged entity are meaningless. (BTW, I tend to call myself an "igtheist" or "agnostic" until someone clarifies what their particular view of "God" is. If they succeed, then I am willing to accept the label "atheist".)

[ January 27, 2002: Message edited by: copernicus ]</p>

Bill

Well, let me give it a shot here.

First, I would state that the only unifying philosophical thought around which the Secular Web is organized is the idea that Metaphysical Naturalism is true and Metaphysical Supernaturalism is false. We don't define exactly how one obtains that thought; or what the epistemological, ethical, and other consequences of holding to that thought might be; only that this is the unifying philosophical stance which the Internet Infidels hold to as the maintainers of <a href="http://www.infidels.org/" target="_blank">The Secular Web</a>.

Second, on the matter of language, I would say that 20th century philosophy has been largely concerned with issues related to language, and that much of 20th century philosophy is grounded in the writings of <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/w/wittgens.htm" target="_blank">Ludwig Wittgenstein</a> (1889-1951). Here is a quote from the <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/w/wittgens.htm" target="_blank">Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy about Wittgenstein</a>: I have read that there were three great schools of philosophy which began in the 20th century, and Wittgenstein greatly influenced, if not founded, at least two of them. Thus, again, the focus of most 20th century philosophy has been on language, and in particular, in attempting to clarify thought by constraining language, particularly meaning, in various ways. This process is is the one which you feel is "assume[d], without defending or at least acknowledging." Since it seems to be fairly central to most 20th century philosophy, but absent from earlier or more popular works, you may well get the idea that you appear to have. But it appears clear to me that when a professional philosopher makes a claim about a particular assertion being "meaningless" or "absurd" he is subjecting that assertion to some form of criticism grounded in some way in the writings of <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/w/wittgens.htm" target="_blank">Wittgenstein</a>.

Third, I am not a professional philosopher, but I do deal with them on a regular basis. Most of them have particular language meanings that they personally favor, and if you want to deal with them productively, you had best be prepared to adapt somewhat to their preferred usages. This sort of phenomena makes the writings of professional philosophers frequently "unintelligible" to members of the general public (which I presume includes yourself).

Fourth, we don't generally ask for a specific "in detail" definition of what God is. We usually ask only for a sufficient level of detail to ascertain the basic assertions that come along with the other person's usage of that word. For instance, most Christians believe in the Triune God, but there are some who assert that God is one thing (and perhaps Jesus is another; which is more in tune with Muslim thinking). There are so many hundreds, if not thousands, of different varients of Christianity alone that it may well appear that we are asking for a "detailed description of God" when, in fact, we are merely attempting to ascertain which of those many varients of God we are attempting to respond to. In any case, the last thing on our minds in our Library pieces is the thought that we are attempting to make silly, or even impossible, demands upon our readers.

Fifth, since we are Metaphysical Naturalists, I suppose that this does at least imply an epistemological stance compatible with that, such as Methodological Naturalism, which is more commonly called "Scientific Method." I frankly feel that this sort of naturalism in inherent in any sort of rational inquiry by natural human beings. So, while we will readily acknowledge the possibility of non-methodical epistemologies, we would hardly be in a position to advocate one!

Sixth, I will let Richard punch in with his thoughts on "free will." Personally, whether we actually have it or not, we appear to operate as if we have it, and that appears to be the limits of human knowledge.

Finally, I would like to note that the Secular Web is a LIBRARY, so please do not make the mistake of believing that everything written here necessarily makes up a coherant whole. Far from that, we frequently post essays that take the exact opposite point of view in order for our readers to be able to pick and choose what they feel is "the real truth."

=====

Anyway, I hope that I've answered at least some of your questions. For more on Wittgenstein, you might wish to try out the <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/w/wittgens.htm#Annotated%20Bibliography" target="_blank">annotated bibliography</a>. However, Wittgenstein is notoriously difficult to understand, and you would probably be better served to pick a friendly commentator to try to explain what they think Wittgenstein was actually trying to say. Our own <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_still/index.shtml" target="_blank">Jim Still</a> has written some on Wittgenstein's thoughts, including one of my favorite essays: <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_still/w_why.html" target="_blank">The Mental Discomfort of “Why?”</a> From that essay, I learned not to attempt to answer questions of the sort "why something rather than nothing?"

Again, I think that our epistemological approach is fairly scientific (and thus "mainstream"), so I doubt that you really need any particular references there.

== Bill

Vorkosigan

(2) My second question follows from the first I guess, but it seems that "The Secular Web" overall assumes epistemology methodism, which i reject because i think one can know something without having an exact criterion, etc., of how one knows what they know. I'm curious why "The Secular Web" appeals, or follows, this type of epistemology as opposed to one of the many others.

Can you elaborate on this? What is "epistemology methodism" for those of us for whom Phil 101 is a highway in the City of Brotherly Love?

Michael

Richard Carrier

Everyone has already given important answers here. Mine will therefore be brief and on occasion redundant:



To understand the proper linguistic argument that the word ‘God’ is meaningless, see <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/antony_flew/theologyandfalsification.html" target="_blank">Theology & Falsification</a> by Antony Flew. You will find it is quite different than merely showing it is contradictory (an argument that only shows that certain conceptions of God are false, not that they, or even ‘God’ in general, are meaningless--though on one sense of the word ‘meaningless’ a contradiction is so, in that we cannot imagine a contradiction, therefore it contains no intelligible information content as a whole, though it does in each of its parts). Even Flew’s argument only goes to show that you have to allow that, in principle, God might not exist, and you have to decide either way on the evidence, before your belief in God can be meaningful. It does not sweep away all God-belief as meaningless.



First, as has already been noted, MN does not entail any particular theory of language or even epistemology, only that whatever one adopts it must be compatible with science as practiced. Second, I am not aware of anyone who argues that a word is meaningless if it cannot be specifically defined, or (as your example is different from your question) that it is meaningless because people have not thought about exactly what it means. In the one case, ambiguity is accepted by all philosophers, even hardline linguists and positivists, as inherent in all natural language. In the other case, sloppy thought does characterise the masses and that is something to convict them of to their shame. It is indeed the business of any serious thinker to know what he is talking about before making any definite pronouncement about it (and in that respect, not all of the masses are as shameful as a lot of Christian intellectuals--many an average Joe has no problem saying he isn’t sure what God is and therefore cannot be sure whether he exists). That does not require absolute precision, however. In standard linguistic philosophy, it only requires knowing much of what would tend to verify or falsify the existence of a thing, such as, in this case, God. To understand how this works, see Ayer’s <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=639" target="_blank">Language, Truth and Logic</a> just for starters. But, again, not all MN’s are linguistic philosophers. Finally, none of this has to do with understanding something perfectly. Rather, you have to understand something a little before you can say even a little about whether it exists--and the less you understand, the less certain you can ever be that it exists, even in the best of conditions. I think every philosopher in the world would agree with that.



Though I have seen some authors here cloud the waters on this issue, certainly, I am sure they would all agree that, for instance, belief is justified in proportion to the rigor of its investigation and a priori support from a posteriori justified general premises. Thus, we can be more certain, the more thoroughly we can say why/how we know what we know. And that knowledge does not need direct justification if it is supported by a generalization that is relatively rigorously justified.

For instance, that your friend hasn’t moved is supported by the generalizations that your friend rarely moves and friends tell their friends when they are moving, and you can certainly spend hours listing all the experiences you’ve had that support those two generalizations, so they are well-supported, and therefore so is the conclusion, that your friend hasn’t moved, all without having to actually check every time you assert it. This remains so despite the fact that you will, on the same reasoning and at the same time, admit that you could be wrong, only that it is very unlikely that you are, in direct proportion to the strength and number of the supporting premises (whether directly observed particular facts or supporting generalizations, or both).

In short, a person who is so clueless that they can’t even think on the spot why they believe is certainly in deep trouble, and cannot claim to have a justified belief. But a person who only knows some of the reasons (perhaps requiring a few moments to think about it), and those not deeply explored, is at least partly justified, though not as justified as someone who knows more of the reasons, and those deeply--and if the latter person believes the opposite of the former, the former has good grounds to be suspicious of his own belief and thus should engage an investigation at least of equal depth, either of the fact-claim itself or of the legitimacy of the depth and accuracy of investigation of that fact-claim by the other person. And so on. Thus, a call to a methodological epistemology is a call to be careful in what you believe, not an attempt to exclude all less justified beliefs.

This is why, incidentally, science get such high place in MN. There is no more rigorous and thorough an investigation than for a well-established scientific fact. Thus, if you believe something contrary to scientific fact, you have very good cause to suspect you are wrong, and if you believe something without the support of scientific fact, you have good cause to be even more careful than usual about how much evidence you have for it.



I don’t know which Taylor you mean (I can name at least four philosophers by that name, all of which wrote on freewill), but the vast majority of philosophers today are compatibilists. Any survey of articles on the subject of freewill in the past ten years shows this, by a ratio of at least 9:1. So you cannot claim it has been refuted--if anything, it is libertarian theory that has been beaten back practically into the caves. Still, there are non-compatibilists among our writers, though none to my knowledge has written on this particular subject. MN by itself does not entail any particular view here, only that whatever the case is, it has a solely physical explanation.

When we launch our new web format we will actually have a new section of the modern library dedicated to the free will question. For there are actually several essays here on that, and many more on the net in great need of cataloguing, they just aren’t easy to find. For instance, you evidently missed my very long discussion of compatibilism vs. libertarianism in my <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/indef/" target="_blank">Review of In Defense of Miracles</a>, in the latter half of <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/indef/3c.html#freewill" target="_blank">section 3c</a>. There are others. For the whole scoop, see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198247532/qid=InternetInfidelsA/" target="_blank">Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting</a> by Daniel Dennett.

chickensoupforthebowl

Epistemological methodism generally holds that you cannot know something, without first knowing how is it that you, or anyone, knows the something. It usually, so far as I know, centers around three overall ideas.

(1) Avoiding a falsehood takes precedence over rationally (or knowing) believing the truth of something.

(2) A person must have a criterion (method)for how they know something before they can say that they know it.

(3) The burden of proof is on the one claiming a truth or knowledge (such as "God exists" or "God doesn't exist"), and if it's logically possible that it could not be the case, then a skeptical view wins by default.

(3) would apply often to a "negative atheist", who often say they take the default position of lacking a belief in God, not denying the existence of one. Epistemological methodism is often accused, in discussions, of begging the question, since it assumes it's own criteria. The main problems brought against it, one which Bryan pointed out, is that it seems we can know something without having a criterion for why we know it. The other main objection brought against it is that it leads to the "regress problem", in that if one is going to claim X as their underlying criterion, then someone can ask what the criterion for X is, which the person could say Y, which the other person responds by asking what the criterion for Y is, etc., to an infinite regress.
The regress problem is a big one in epistemology, and, again so far as I know, there is no epistemological view that can avoid it without having other problems.
If you have a copy of the book "Does God Exist", by J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, with writings by Kreeft, Flew, Craig, Parsons, and Willard mixed in, J.P. Moreland attacks Parsons for having the underlying theme of epistemology methodism, and dismissing it for the above two reasons. Moreland is an epistemological particularist.
So, that's my two cents.

Vorkosigan

Thanks for the explanation!

Michael