Theli

You throw in the towel already?
So, you have no objections regarding my views on the so-called standard usages of "objective"? I can't see any.
So, the "standard" usage of those words are inadequate, wouldn't you agree?
All I see is you waving of my words saying that you are not interested. I guess I will have to find other kids to play.

And as for memory as evidence, your reply looks more like a christian saying "There is evidence for god, you cannot see it, and I don't want to show it to you, but it is there. I know it.".
The only conclution I can draw from this is that the circle you were talking about exists only in a misinterpreted version of my argument. The one that says that the memory checks it's own consistency.

luvluv

Kenny and bd-from-kg, I really applaud the level of this debate. The quality of this exchange has been outstanding.

Quick question Kenny: I'm reading through The Will to Believe , by William James. I've noticed a lot of similarity to his ideas about justification and yours (and, I suppose by extension, Plantinga's). Would you consider Plantinga's notion of warrant to be in anyway dependant on James?

Kenny

Thank you; I’m grateful to bd-from-kg for providing such thought provoking responses.

Actually, no. I’m not an expert on James, but I have read The Will to Believe as well as some secondary literature on James’ views. James was a pragmatist, which, as I understand it (and anyone more knowledgeable please chime in and correct me if I am mistaken) meant that he held the view that a belief is true insofar as it helps a being function well in its environment (and so James’ views of justification follow suit and make rational justification a function of practical utility). Plantinga, on the other hand, holds a correspondence view of truth and does not understand warrant to be a function of practical utility, so his views are radically different than those of James, and I side with Plantinga in these respects.

Now, in my response to bd (which struck me as a more pragmatic type view of rational justification, though bd holds a correspondence view of truth and not a pragmatist view), I did use arguments very similar to those of James to show that, even on bd’s view, belief in God might be construed as practically basic. But, as I argue later on, I think bd’s notion of rational justification is deficient.

God Bless,
Kenny

P.S. (added after first posting) Though, on the other hand, there do seem to be echoes of James’ views in Plantinga, though Plantinga radically parts with James, with respect to Plantinga’s notion of “proper functioning” in a particular environment, so perhaps there are influences. I’m not sure.

bd-from-kg

Kenny:

It often happens that fallacious arguments are much easier to state than to refute. Your last post is a great example. So forgive me if my reply is considerably longer than the original post. (Someone else might do better; I’m not good at being concise anyway.)

To me this is a truly amazing statement. Theism (at least in any sane form) asserts that there is a creator, etc., and that the natural world exists, with just the properties that naturalism ascribes to it. How can this possibly be more parsimonious than the hypothesis that the natural world exists with just the properties that naturalism ascribes to it? “B” is by definition more parsimonious than “A & B”. The only way this could conceivably make sense would be if A entails B , so that the second hypothesis is really just “A”. But surely you’re not going to argue that the existence of this particular natural world is entailed by theism?

That’s right. It’s not an ordinary claim. It’s a very radical claim. I can’t imagine how anyone could find it remotely plausible that a claim that the nature of things is fundamentally different, at the deepest level, than it appears to be on the surface, and that it has one specific fundamental nature rather than any of the myriad of other possibilities, is entitled to be met with less skepticism than a claim about relatively minor aspects of reality. Claims with monumental significance, affecting not only how we conceptualize reality, but every aspect of our lives, are obviously the sort of thing that must be subjected to the most intense critical scrutiny. It is plainly irrational to accept any such claim without the strongest possible proof. To argue (as Christians do) that such a far-reaching hypothesis should be accepted on the basis of some ancient, conflicting, anonymous reports from ignorant, superstitious peasants, of which we have only copies of copies of copies of copies, is just ridiculous.

Well, I happen to think that it is quite bizarre on careful, rational inspection. But my point wasn’t that this hypothesis is odd or bizarre, but that it’s extremely radical.

First off, MN does not say that all of reality is fundamentally to be understood in terms of a large number of independent impersonal entities; in its modern form it says that all of reality is to be understood as the result of a single, very simple event. But suppose that it did say that the natural world could only be understood in terms of a large number of independent “ultimate causes”. This wouldn’t really help. A complete theistic ontology can’t stop with God; it has to include the natural world. (After all, the purpose of an ontology is not merely to understand the “ultimate nature of things”, but to help us to understand and interpret our actual experiences and predict the effects of our actions.) And the mere existence of God would not entail the existence of all of these independent causes. So a theistic ontology would have to postulate, in addition to God’s existence, that He chose to create all of these independent causes. For every naturalistic premise to the effect that “ultimate cause N exists”, a theistic ontology will have to have a corresponding premise to the effect that “God created ultimate cause N”. This doesn’t simplify things in the least; in fact, the theistic premises are obviously more complicated than the corresponding naturalistic ones. Thus a theistic ontology is unnecessarily complicated; that it, it is far less parsimonious than the corresponding naturalistic ontology. And that’s not even counting the fact that God must necessarily be infinitely more complex that the entire natural world, so that if we’re counting the complexity inherent in the premises rather than merely counting premises a theistic ontology is infinitely more complicated than a naturalistic one.

It might be argued that these numerous ontological premises could be replaced with one all-purpose one that might read something like, “God created the universe to be as it is for reasons known only to Himself”. But if this sort of thing were permissible the MN axioms could be pared down in the same way to read, “The universe is as it is for unknown reasons”. However, this sort of thing is not permissible. The whole point of an ontology is to allow us to interpret and predict; it has to be detailed enough to provide understanding and make predictions at a detailed level.

Indeed, a major objection to the “God hypothesis” is that it really doesn’t help us to interpret or predict any experiences at all. Any number of events, and of aspects of the universe, seem to be inconsistent with the God hypothesis, and when confronted with them theists invariably answer with some variant of “we don’t know how God would act; we can’t say anything meaningful about how God might be expected to do things; God works in mysterious ways.” (Kuyper has exemplified this nicely in this very thread.) Since the whole purpose of an ontology is to conceptualize, interpret and predict our actual experiences, there is absolutely no justification for including superfluous premises that don’t contribute anything at all to our ability to do so.

This is highly misleading; it suggests that this is a fundamental distinction at a very deep level when in fact it’s just one of many ways to categorize naturalistic explanations. All that can really be said is this: a very few of the entities that we have experience of behave in ways that can be most easily understood or interpreted by attributing expectations, desires, intentions, purposes, etc. to them. To follow your terminology as closely as possible we can refer to such entities as “persons”. (This is nonstandard, of course; by this definition many animals are “persons” and many humans, such as newborn babies, aren’t. But I have no problem with that if you don’t.) Explanations of events that involve “persons” will naturally make reference to their properties. We can define a special category called “personal” for such explanations to draw attention to this feature of them. But there’s nothing fundamental about this category. In the same way, when it happens to be convenient, we can define a category called “meteorological” for explanations that make reference to weather-related phenomena, or “thermodynamical” for explanations that make use of certain statistical properties of the behavior of matter, or “biological” for explanations that make reference to the properties of living things.

In all of these cases the explanations involve “high-level” descriptions of natural phenomena. All of the events involved can be, and in fact are being, explained in terms of fundamental natural laws. But complex phenomena are often best understood or in terms of a hierarchy of levels of interpretation.

A good illustration of the principle is a computer executing a good chess-playing program. On one level, everything can be explained (in principle) in terms of the movements of the individual molecules and electrons that compose the computer. At the next level we can explain it in terms of the operations of the hard drive, the RAM, the innumerable components of the CPU, etc. The next level of explanation talks about the instructions in the program and how the computer’s operations are “executing” them. Finally we reach a level where we’re talking about chess strategy and tactics, and explain that the computer sacrificed its bishop in order to be able to enforce the advance of a pawn to the eighth rank, where it will queen, giving it a clear winning advantage.

The important thing to notice here is that these high-level explanations do not supersede or contradict the lowest-level explanation, but are actually part of it. They involve calling attention to certain patterns in the motions of the molecules and electrons composing the computer which are far from apparent at first sight. The high-level explanations are elaborations of the lowest-level explanation, not de novo explanations of an entirely different kind.

The exact same thing is true of meteorological, thermodynamical, biological, and personal explanations. No one imagines that the weather follows “laws” of its own that have nothing to do with the basic natural laws that underlie all natural phenomena. Similarly, the “laws” of thermodynamics are simply a drawing out of certain consequences of the fundamental natural laws. Biological explanations are simply high-level descriptions of what happens (in accordance with the fundamental natural laws) when physical systems happen to be organized in a particular, very complex, way. Finally, “personal” explanations are of the same type; they are high-level interpretations of how the most complex natural systems of all operate. They are a subcategory of explanations of events in terms of the fundamental laws of nature, not an entirely separate, independent type of explanation.

As the previous discussion has made clear, this makes just as much sense as saying that there’s no reason why meteorological, thermodynamical, or biological explanations should not be thought to be more fundamental than explanations in terms of fundamental natural laws. We have no more rational reason to suppose that the “ultimate ground of being” is a personal entity than we do to suppose that it is a meteorological entity (a thunderstorm, perhaps) or a thermonuclear entity (like a really big star) or a biological entity (a huge turtle). It just doesn’t make sense to imagine the “ultimate ground of being” as any kind of natural phenomenon. It makes far more sense to think that if there is any such thing as an “ultimate ground of being” it is something so completely outside our experience and understanding that we can’t begin to comprehend it at all; any attempt to assign properties to it or to categorize it in any way are bound to be completely absurd. But in fact there’s no rational reason to suppose that there is any such thing as an “ultimate ground of being”. This whole subject is really utterly beyond our ability even to speculate meaningfully.

That’s very true, and it should give you pause.

Entities with the attributes of “personhood” – i.e., with desires, intentions, purposes, etc., (like saber-toothed tigers) tend to be far more dangerous than other entities. As a result, if we incorrectly identify an entity as a “non-person” (in this sense) the result could be immediate death, whereas the result of attributing these properties to things that don’t have them (such as dolls or storms) is relatively benign. So natural selection has “programmed” us to have a very strong tendency to perceive things as “persons” (at least initially) whenever there is any room for doubt. Also, there is a potential for benefiting enormously by constructive interactions with “persons” – far more so than with most other entities. And there are quite a few “persons” in our natural environment. Thus “personal” explanations tend to play a very large role in our thinking; a very large proportion of the events we experience require this kind of interpretation. So we tend to think of this category as very “fundamental”. And it is – but only in the sense that it’s fundamental to our survival and well-being, and therefore it looms large in the conceptual framework that we develop to interpret reality and predict future events – i.e., our ontology. But since it seems (and is) so “fundamental” to us in this sense, it’s all too easy to slip into the fallacy of thinking of this category as “fundamental” in a very different sense of being a basic or fundamental category of reality itself.

One of the hallmarks of maturity is the recognition that we are instinctively overly inclined to attribute “personal” qualities to entities. A rational person learns to recognize this tendency and compensate for it by not promiscuously attributing “personhood” to all sorts of entities. We learn that only a very limited class of entities with certain well-defined characteristics ever have this property, and to avoid attributing it to entities that don’t meet these criteria. To attribute all of reality to a personal being is to discard everything that we learn as we mature and develop a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of things and revert to a childlike mode of thought.

First off, the crucial mistakes have already occurred by the time you start thinking about what nature the supposed personal being who is supposed to be the “ground of all being” would have to have. There is no rational reason to suppose that there is an entity which is the “ground of all being” (indeed, I’m not sure that this concept is even meaningful), and there is no rational reason to suppose that if there is, it is a “person” in any intelligible sense.

Anyway, I’m not inclined to argue about whether, if we assume that there is a “person” which is the ‘ground of all being”, it is more rational to assume that it is literally omnipotent, omniscient, etc. We have at any rate to assume that it is incredibly powerful, knowledgeable, etc. Any entity capable of creating the universe and being able to know the future, etc., would have to be unimaginably far outside of all human experience. That’s enough for my argument.

That may be true. But the fact that many of those who base their beliefs on this “intuition” are not theists should serve to remind you that MN and theism are not the only alternatives, so even a decisive refutation of MN would not establish theism. For example, it can be (and has been) held that there is a “ground of all being” which is completely impersonal, and therefore cannot be understood in any intelligible sense to be omnipotent, omniscient, etc. It’s also possible to hold that there must be something that accounts for the existence of a universe with some degree of order, but to be completely agnostic as to what that “something” is – even as to whether it can meaningfully called an entity, much less a personal being.

But in any case, the fact that a large number of people have an “intuition” about what reality is “like” in very basic ways simply has no evidential value. Almost everyone has an intuition that time and space are two completely different things; that the question whether one event came before or after another has an objectively correct answer, that space is Euclidean, that matter and energy are two completely different things, that nothing can be in two places at the same time, that local realism holds, etc. Science is a very humbling thing: it teaches us that our fundamental intuitions, no matter how strong, no matter how certain we are of them, just cannot be trusted.

Jobar

Thus I refute Kenny.

Kenny

Like I said, I do not really wish to get side tracked on this matter, so this will be my final thread on this subject.

To restate my basic argument in another and more careful way:

Metaphysical naturalism is very difficult to define, but I think perhaps it is approximately equal to the idea that the universe is explicable solely in terms of an impersonal set of physical laws. It is important to keep in mind that this is a metaphysical doctrine and not a scientific one. We are not setting science against some other hypothesis when we speak of setting theism against metaphysical naturalism, but we are setting two equally non-scientific (or, if you prefer, pre-scientific) metaphysical theories against one another. Now, the relevant question here for the metaphysical naturalist is: “If all is to be explained in terms of a set of impersonal physical laws, what are the ontological and epistemological statuses of such laws?”

With respect to the ontological status of these laws, there are three possibilities:

1.) These laws instantiate solely as brute facts.
2.) These laws are ultimately instantiated by something else.
3.) These laws are somehow self-instantiating.

These three ontological possibilities tie into three epistemological possibilities.

1.) If these laws instantiate as brute facts, they have no explanation.
2.) If these laws were ultimately instantiated by something else, then they are explained in terms of something else.
3.) If these laws are self-instantiating, they are in some sense self-explaining.

Of theses three possibilities, number one might be said to be highly parsimonious in terms of ontology, but the purpose of maintaining ontological parsimony is to come up with the simplest explanation not to give up on explanation, so number one is not so desirable. Number two violates the assumption that Metaphysical Natualism begins with. That leaves us with number three.

But, what does number three mean? Well, the only way I can think to understand the concept of being “self-instantiating” or “self-explaining” is if these laws are somehow logically necessary. If that is the case, then there must be a successful ontological argument that results in the conclusion that this set of laws exists necessarily. In the broadest possible outlines, this argument would have to look something like this:

P1.) There is a conceivable set of physical laws such that if these laws are instantiated in at least one logically possible world, they instantiate in all possible worlds.

P2.) This set of laws is instantiated in at least one possible world.

C1.) This set of laws is instantiated in all possible worlds.

Now, substitute ‘conceivable maximally perfect being’ for ‘set of physical laws’ and the above argument turns into:

P1.) There is a conceivable maximally perfect being such that if this being is instantiated in at least one logically possible world, it instantiates in all possible worlds.

P2.) This being is instantiated in at least one possible world.

C1.) This being is instantiated in all possible worlds.

Of course, the above argument, in broad outline, is the contemporary modal version of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Let’s call the first of the above ontological arguments NOA (for naturalist ontological argument) and lets call the second TOA (for theist ontological argument). Every premise of NOA maps one to one to a premise of TOA. Furthermore, every ontological or epistemological assumption in NOA also maps one to one to an epistemological or ontological assumption in TOA. In other words, neither of these two arguments can outdo the other in terms of ontological or epistemological assumptions. It follows that neither theism nor naturalism has the upper hand in terms of epistemological or ontological parsimony.

Now you might protest that the contents of ‘conceivable maximally perfect being’ are vague because we do not know what ‘maximally perfect’ entails, but such is no less vague than ‘conceivable set of physical laws’ since we do not know what such a set would entail. The laws of physics as we know and understand them certainly do not look self-explaining in the way that the physical laws of the NOA would be. At best, the physical laws that we are currently aware of are a subset of the physical laws referred to in the NOA, with the content of this larger set being unknown.

Now, for a few comments on your post. I’m just going to hit what I see as the highlights since your post is long and we are already off topic.

No, theism does not assert that both a creator and a natural world exist, at least not in terms of the way ‘natural world’ is understood by metaphysical naturalism. When a metaphysical naturalism uses the word ‘natural word’ she means ‘the whole of reality.’ Well, of course the theist does not assert something else besides the whole of reality exists (that would be absurd). The theist asserts that the whole of reality contains exactly one maximally perfect being (who as part of that being’s perfection, exhibits qualities of personhood) who is such that all other existents find their ultimate explanation in that being. Naturalism asserts that the whole of reality contains some set of physical laws (or perhaps some other impersonal principle) in terms of which all the rest of reality is to be explained. So the disagreement between theism and naturalism is in terms of what the nature of the fundamental explanatory principle included in the whole of reality is, not concerning the number of objects contained within the whole of reality.

Or if B entails A, since then it would not be possible to have B without also having A.

No, but on theistic metaphysics nothing outside of God can exist apart from the will and sustaining power of God, so any particular natural phenomenon, on theistic metaphysics, entails the existence of God.

Reality doesn’t appear to be different on the surface than a world in which theism is true, at least not to myself or numerous others.

I don’t see how metaphysical naturalism does any better in this respect.

Well, the last sentence is what we’re debating on this thread, so I’ll leave it alone for the moment. Beyond that, however, this quote would apply just as equally to metaphysical naturalism as it would theism.

I can not think of a single Christian whom I personally know who would argue in such a manner (and I know a lot of Christians from a lot of different backgrounds). Beware of oversimplified stereotypes; such have not had a good history in our world.

Regardless of how you want to define it, my above arguments still apply.

No, because on a classical theistic ontology, causal agents in the universe are not understood to be autonomous sources of causation in and of themselves, but rather as being sustained in their existence and given their causal efficacy by God. In other words, on theistic metaphysics all the secondary causes in the universe are subordinate to God as the single ultimate cause. On naturalism, either you have a series of autonomous causes or you explain this series in terms of something more fundamental, so again, we have a tie in the parsimony contest.

.

That’s simply false. The term ‘complexity’ is an ambiguous one (and if you don’t agree, try banging your head against the wall by arguing with a young earth creationist who thinks that the second law of thermodynamics contradicts the theory of evolution), but I think the best way to understand complexity for the purposes of this debate is in terms of being described by a large number of independent predicates. The ontological argument suggests to us, however, that God’s existence can be understood in terms of a single predicate – namely ‘maximal greatness,’ ‘unlimitedness,’ or ‘maximal perfection’ – thus making God less complex than any other known being.

Remember that both metaphysical naturalism as well as theism are metaphysical theories and not scientific ones. As far as which of these theories does a better job in terms of accounting for reality as we observe it (including reality as we observe it through science), I think theism wins, but that throws us into a debate far broader than the one we are currently engaged in.

I won’t deny that theism has its difficulties, but so does metaphysical naturalism. Metaphysical naturalists often have their own versions of ‘God works in mysterious ways’ (such as, “that’s just the way things are” or “we don’t know now, but science will explain it some day” or “we just have to take X as a brute fact”). I agree that such answers are not ultimately satisfying and that we should look for better ones, but given our limitations that will be how things are no matter what worldview we adopt. I happen to think naturalism has far more holes than theism, but, again, that is a much wider debate.

That, in itself (the claim that personhood is not a fundamental category), is a naturalistic assumption – one that begs the question with respect to the current debate.

The jury is still out on that one with respect to consciousness. I think that there are good arguments that consciousness cannot be explained reductively in terms of physical laws (and we are no where near being able to do so). If that is so, then consciousness itself may be a fundamental category.

The type of whole to parts reductionism you are speaking of here has already been seriously discredited by modern developments in quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Many systems in nature are such that their behavior cannot be understood (even in principle) simply by analyzing the parts in isolation from the whole.

Or, perhaps personhood is a fundamental category of reality in and of itself and God has designed us in such a way that we would recognize this (perhaps by setting up the process of our evolution so that we would have such a belief tendency). In essence, that’s what the debate is about, so assuming that it is not so at the outset begs the question.

Or perhaps our tendency to over attribute personal qualities to non-personal beings reflects a deeper recognition (which we were designed to have) that at the back of all the phenomena we see lies a personal being, and that the intention of the design plan was that as we mature and are capable of the necessary levels of abstraction involved in understanding distinctions such ‘derivative’ and ‘fundamental’ this recognition becomes fully realized in our consciousness.

I did not claim it would.

I disagree. The fact that people have a strong intuitive tendency to believe something is a good reason, all else being equal, a priori to assign that belief a high initial probability. Since many of our beliefs depend on pre-scientific intuitions, to do otherwise is to concede to skepticism.

Agreed, which is why we need to be critical of our intuitions through the means provided for us by science, philosophy, and, (as a Christian) I would hold, God’s revelation. Our intuitions are not ultimate authorities to be left unexamined and unquestioned, but they often do provide us with good (and even necessary) starting points.

That all being said, I’m done with debating this issue for now given that it is off topic and the main debate is already complicated. If you have any further replies in this respect, however, I will gladly read them.

God Bless,
Kenny

Kenny

Nice try Jobar, but it all turns on what you mean by "the universe." See my comments to Bd on whether the 'natural world is all that exists' is more parsimonious than theism.

God Bless,
Kenny

Kuyper

Kenny,

I think you've provided a very useful explanation of the MN position and its implications. Well done.

K

Kuyper

I would agree. Now the question is (and I asked you this before), what must the nature of this extraordinary evidence be?
If the claim is "there's insufficient evidence to justify theism", then that appears to assume there's some notion of what would be sufficient. Thus, I think it's reasonable to ask, what evidence for theism would you take as being sufficient. Put another way, what evidence would cause you to move from atheism to theism?

Quote:

Now adding an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being to one’s ontology is about as drastic an overhaul as anything that could be imagined. So we are rationally justified in resisting doing so unless there is no alternative – that is, unless there is no other modification (more precisely, no less drastic modification, but then it’s hard to imagine anything that would not be less drastic) that could accommodate this evidence. And, of course, there are lots of straightforward, naturalistic ways to interpret all of this evidence; it can be accommodated with only minor modifications of our “baseline ontology”. So there is no rational reason whatsoever to accept the “God hypothesis” in preference to other, far more parsimonious hypotheses.

I think Kenny's discussion along these lines provides an excellent response to this. I defer to his post.

Quote:

But this doesn’t help. Accepting the hypothesis that we were designed to believe in God involves almost as drastic a modification of our existing ontology as accepting the hypothesis that God exists. And even if we accepted this hypothesis, we would have to accept the further hypothesis that it was God who designed us that way. Even the hypothesis that advanced aliens designed us to believe in God requires a far less drastic modification of our existing ontology than the hypothesis that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being did so.

Again, on the question of ontology, I defer to Kenny's excellent comments.

One further comment, there seems to be some confusion regarding the question being dealt with on this thread. The question is "does theistic believe require evidence to be rational'?
That doesn't mean that one who holds theistic belief without evidence has given some sort of proof or argument that God exists. The only issue is whether or not that individual is rational to do so.

My argument is, yes. In this respect, I agree with Plantinga's project in his "Warrented Christian Belief". But even he points out that his argument isn't intended to prove God exists. Rather, it is intended to say that belief in God doesn't require evidence to be rational. Plantinga's challenge is to the evidentialist's claim that only those beliefs that have "sufficient evidence" can be rational. In a nutshell, the response is that the belief that that requirement is necessary is itself lacking sufficient evidence, so is self-refuting.

It took Plantinga 500+ pages to get there, but that is, I think, the essence of his argument. But on its own, it isn't meant as an argument to demonstrate that God exists.

K

K

Kuyper:

What evidence would be sufficient to convince you that Zeus and the other Greek gods and godesses rule the universe? What would it take to make you believe in the Easter Bunny? How about vampires and werewolves? Elves and unicorns?

These are all extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence. Your claim is even more extraordinary. Why should it be held to any lesser standard of evidence?