Apologies. You're a tough adversary, but I need to get off my high horse. Will refrain from that henceforth. — Wayfarer

Thanks (I think), but for the record, I don't consider us to be adversaries.

Well, obviously, these are theologically vexed questions; in the early part of Christian history, there was a huge conflict over them, such at the Arian controversy, and various other disputes over heresy.

Sure. But would you not agree that accepting some version of the Trinity is a prerequisite for being called a Christian? After all, if Jesus were a mere mortal, without a hint of a divine nature, then he wasn't resurrected, he won't be returning at the end of days (thus negating virtually every form of Christian eschatology), etc. One may as well consider him to be just another prophet (as he is regarded in, for instance, Islam).

Whether Jesus lived - I personally believe so. I have read something of the 'critical scholarship' and agree that story that has been subject to a lot of mythologising, but I believe there is a reality behind the myth.

I also agree that Jesus was probably a real, historical person. Scholar of Christianity (and atheist, to boot) Bart Ehrman has written an interesting book on this subject (his viewpoint has brought him into conflict with "mythicists," who believe that Jesus was in fact not real).

Eagleton's review read like it was written off the cuff. But I find it quite intelligible. It starts with Dawkins' lack of knowledge of the subject he's critiquing - 'Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is theBook of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology[...]Then, the claim that belief in God is a 'scientific hypothesis'. He says it's not, and then proceeds to try and say what it actually is.

But, again (and this seems to be a central plank of our disagreement on this issue), Dawkins may well be unacquainted with the sources which you (and Eagleton) prefer, which seems to be theology of a highly rarified bent, incorporating certain aspects of modern and post-modern thought, but it is not incumbent upon Dawkins (or any author) to grapple with the entire corpus of thought with regard to the God question (which, of course, is not even limited to Christianity in particular).

Dawkins, being an evolutionary biologist, is especially opposed to creationism in all its forms, and thus it's expected and reasonable that his critiques (whether or not we deem them to be successful) are more oriented towards those who do treat God as a scientific hypothesis, e.g., natural theologians, intelligent design creationists, and creationists-lite such as Francis Collins.

And, as I intimated before, if you find the idea of God as a scientific hypothesis (or at least something whose existence is amenable to empirical confirmation) to be so odious, you may begin by directing your ire towards those religionists who promulgate such notions. Perhaps start a thread picking apart the arguments advanced by the Answers in Genesis website, for instance, and then move on to their somewhat more benign brethren Answers in Creation. You can then rebut the claims that so-called irreducible complexity is a signal of God's handiwork in designing certain complex biological systems. You might then move on to those such as Francis Collins, who attribute mankind's supposed moral sense to the touch of a divine, and who believe in "theistic evolution." Perhaps you can then tackle arguments such as the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, which posits that humans' very ability to reason serves a defeater for the claim that evolution (at least of humans) could have been a wholly naturalistic process, devoid of divine intervention. Perhaps then you can address modern cosmological-style arguments as advanced by William Lane Craig and others of his ilk.

Or you can simply continue to complain about a book that a popular science writer wrote over ten years ago.

"Ground of being" is Christian mysticism. It goes back at least to Meister Eckhart. It's pretty much what it sounds like. As opposed to God being on high like the Great Architect, God is a primal source of all being. Maybe the quantum theory picture of a possibility field is similar. Christ is more an image than a person. Christ is an intermediary within every person through which they can connect in some way with God.

Bernard McGinn wrote a book about Eckhart. Worth the read. — Mongrel

Perhaps I'm just obtuse, but "ground of being" has no intuitive meaning to me...saying it's "just what it sounds like" doesn't help much. It likewise doesn't clarify things much to say that "God is a primal source of all being."

Allow me to posit a couple of possible explanations, and let's see if we can't get it figured out:

(1) God created the heavens and the Earth, therefore, everything which exists - at least with regard to contingent, concrete objects and entities - owes its existence to God, either directly or indirectly. Once created, however, such beings require no further intervention by God to sustain their existence.

(2) God continuously acts in the world to sustain the existence of every contingently-existing entity. That is, were it not for the constant intervention of God, such beings would simply wink out of existence.

Would you regard either of these statements to at least roughly encapsulate what it means to claim that God is the "ground of all being"?

There's a ceremony called confirmation in Anglicanism (and I'm sure the other denominations.) It's the standard rite-of-passage into the Church. It takes place at early adolescence. You have to learn a Catechism and go to a set number of services. It seemed like a lot of work to me, I was a poor student anyway, and my family was not at all encouraging about it, so I didn't go ahead with it. But that was also because I didn't know if I really believed it. I've never been atheist, but I also don't have any kind of image or idea of what God is. (That is why, later, I found the 'way of unknowing' congenial.) — Wayfarer

Yes, I'm familiar with confirmation with regard to, for instance, the Catholic Church. I just found your post somewhat confusing because you said you'd almost been confirmed "as a [generic] Christian." (I subsequently saw that in an earlier post responding to someone else, you had mentioned that you were almost an Anglican.

I think that's because of the spirit in which you ask the question. As you're naturally inclined to scepticism about anything religious, your questions are of the 'clay pidgeon' variety, i.e. elicit a response which you then proceed to shoot at.

I think this unfairly (and pointlessly) impugns my motives. Yes, I am skeptical that "ground of all being" has any substantial meaning, but my interlocutors could alleviate this skepticism by providing a meaningful definition (of course, such a definition would not necessarily convince me that (1) there is indeed a being called God, and (2) that said being actually is the "ground of all being," but it would be a start...).

There is a description of 'the ground of being' in Paul Tillich's books, and other books by recent philosophers of religion. An example:

"Existence - Existence refers to what is finite and fallen and cut of from its true being. Within the finite realm issues of conflict between, for example, autonomy (Greek: 'autos' - self, 'nomos' - law) and heteronomy (Greek: 'heteros' - other, 'nomos' - law) abound (there are also conflicts between the formal/emotional and static/dynamic). Resolution of these conflicts lies in the essential realm (the Ground of Meaning/the Ground of Being) which humans are cut off from yet also dependent upon ('In existence man is that finite being who is aware both of his belonging to and separation from the infinite' (Newport p.67f)). Therefore existence is estrangement."

"Although this looks like Tillich was an atheist such misunderstanding only arises due to a simplistic understanding of his use of the word existence. What Tillich is seeking to lead us to is an understanding of the 'God above God'. We have already seen earlier that the Ground of Being (God) must be separate from the finite realm (which is a mixture of being and non-being) and that God cannot be a being. God must be beyond the finite realm. Anything brought from essence into existence is always going to be corrupted by ambiguity and our own finitude. Thus statements about God must always be symbolic (except the statement 'God is the Ground of Being'). Although we may claim to know God (the Infinite) we cannot. The moment God is brought from essence into existence God is corrupted by finitude and our limited understanding. In this realm we can never fully grasp (or speak about) who God really is. The infinite cannot remain infinite in the finite realm. That this rings true can be seen when we realize there are a multitude of different understandings of God within the Christian faith alone. They cannot all be completely true so there must exist a 'pure' understanding of God (essence) that each of these are speaking about (or glimpsing aspects of)...."

It's unclear to me whether the passage beginning with "Although..." is part of another quoted source (as it refers to Tillich in the third person). I will consider it as such, but it doesn't really matter, as you again have not provided me with a definition of the phrase, but only a quote which contains mentions of it.

As for God being "beyond the finite realm," etc., I will again ask of putative Christians: (1) is or was Jesus (Christ) God, and (2) did or does Jesus "exist"?

This plainly diverges from the depiction of the 'god as person' given in the Plantinga quote. It's more like the approach in classical theology, which says that God is not actually good, but that 'goodness' is an analogy, likewise the other supposed attributes of God. But to really explore the question, takes at the very least an open mind towards it, as it is the kind of question that can only be explored by contemplation. It doesn't concern a crisp definition which gives a finite and obviously measurable output, like a formula.

Again, you smuggle in a rhetorical dig at me in lieu of providing an explanation or definition, by insinuating that my mind isn't open. My mind isn't closed, but it doesn't mean that I swallow just everything I'm fed. I submit that if a definition of a term such as "ground of all being" can't be provided (whether or not said definition is "crisp" we can discuss after the fact, I suppose), then the term is meaningless. I'm not asking for a formula.

I think that simply conveys your own inability to comprehend his review (and yes, it's a review, rather than a philosophical analysis.) I personally found his criticism perfectly lucid. (Thomas Nagel's review, entitled The Fear of Religion, was much more along the lines of philosophical analysis.)

The portions of the review which you quote do not lend themselves to comprehension. There is of course much of philosophy which is opaque or hard to understand, but Eagleton provides no analysis or arguments, which I would expect to find if he is to rebut Dawkins's claims. Otherwise, it's just argument by assertion.

Partially because they're inclined to be beyond argument, and partially because you're a lot less likely to encounter them on philosophy forums. But people who really do believe in biblical creationism are so immune to reason, that it is clearly pointless to argue with them. They argue with or about the fossil evidence. //ps// Although I've also come to the view that to argue against religion on the basis of fossil evidence, is a type of fundamentalism.//

Well, one can certainly argue against Biblical literalism using fossil (and archeological) evidence, wouldn't you say?

I am well aware of that. But at issue is a very difficult question of ontology - what does it mean to say that 'God exists'?

Sure. It's a thorny question to ask what it means to say that anything exists. That's part of philosophy. But we don't reach answers to that question by muddying the waters with obscurantist jargon.

As the Tillich quote above indicates, the very term 'existence' implies 'separated, standing apart'. There's another great column I quote from time to time by Bishop Pierre Whalon, God does not Exist, which has a similar perspective - that 'what exists' is of a different order to the source of existence. (Whalon's article is very much in keeping with Platonic Christianity, which in turn is very much at odds with general Protestant philosophy of religion, in my view.)

Is God capable of hearing (and answering) prayers? Did God send his son to Earth to die for the sins of mankind? Did God imbue the first man and woman with an immortal soul? Does God stand in judgment of the dead? Is Christ to return at the End of Days, as foretold in Revelation? A Christian would seem to be hard-pressed to answer in the negative to these questions; that being the case, I don't think it can be said that God stands totally apart from His creation.

This type of 'hierarchical understanding' used to be represented in the Great Chain of Being, versions of which are found in many different cultures. It differentiates between the mineral, animal, human, angelic and divine realms, which all exist on different levels or 'modes':

Steps.gif
The Great Chain of Being - traditional woodcut.

Yes, I am familiar with the "Great Chain of Being," a version of which originated with Aristotle, if I'm not mistaken (who obviously predated the Christian era)? My response to your lengthy post is itself getting lengthy, so I will leave it here for now...rest assured, I'm not ignoring your remaining points.

This gay man, having lived in a large city where there was sort of a community, learned fairly early on to not speak on behalf of lesbians. Ever. In the 70s Minneapolis had a relatively large group of ferocious lesbian feminist separatists. Their coffee house on Fridays in the basement of Plymouth Congregation Church discouraged mothers from bringing even young male children with them. A 10 year old boy was anathema, let alone a man.

In Minneapolis, lesbians and gay men didn't mix a lot. So, brothers, I don't speak for our lesbian sisters, and thereby I lived long and prospered. — Bitter Crank

Oh, I wasn't suggesting that gay men should speak on behalf of gay women or vice-versa. I was just pointing out that discussions of male homosexual behavior seem to dominate discussions about homosexuality generally (for instance, when one condemns homosexual relations as "disgusting," one gets the feeling they have male-on-male anal sex in mind, and not, say, "scissoring" between two females).

As men and women each constitute roughly half of the population (with women perhaps even constituting slightly more than half), there are presumably as many gay women as there are gay men, and yet they often seem to be omitted from the discussion. (For instance, a good retort to the claim that homosexuality spreads STDs at higher rates is to ask whether this applies to lesbians.)

The gay community was beleaguered, particularly up to 1995-1996. In the HIV hot spots (New York, LA, Miami, San Francisco, etc.) the seropositivity rate was 40% to 70%, depending on location. The over-all rate of fatality for untreated AIDS (prior to 1996) was between 80% and 90%. (It's lower now, with "highly active AIDS retroviral therapy"). So, large swaths of the gay community were wiped out. — Bitter Crank

I don't think anyone can reasonably claim that the gay community (to the extent that gays even had the comfort of a community; presumably many didn't, especially those living in small towns) weren't beleaguered at that time, or that they were not disproportionately affected by the AIDS crisis.

However, I've heard some commentators refer to this period as a gay "genocide," which strikes me as extremely wrongheaded. A genocide is a concerted effort by a group (usually the dominant majority) to wipe out another group of religious, ethnic, or cultural origin (usually the minority). However, in the AIDS crisis, there was no such concerted effort (there was perhaps indifference in some quarters). The HIV virus is a naturally-occurring phenomenon, and one which disproportionately affected gay men as a result of their sexual behavior. The outbreak was to a certain extent self-inflicted.

I wonder why it is the case that discussions of homosexuality seem to far more often revolve around homosexual men than around homosexual women. Even the responses on this thread which discuss the AIDS crisis (surely a greater fear for gay men than gay women, I would think) at least tacitly concern males.

Actually, I too don't believe in a God who is a person (one of the reasons I didn't get confirmed as Christian, as that was obligatory.) But the way I interpret it is that the ultimate truth is not 'it', but a 'you'. (I think I read in another of Eagleton's books, Culture and the Death of God, that this is something from Schellling.)

But, the upshot is, that perhaps this reality is quite capable of manifesting as a being, because its actual nature is intelligent or alive (or even life itself). So, it's personal in the sense of not being a thing or force or material energy, but it's not a person in the sense of being a 'supersized human'. (I don't agree at all with Plantinga's depiction in the quote above, I think it's blatantly anthropomorphic.) — Wayfarer

I wasn't aware that one could be confirmed as a "Christian." (I've heard of, for instance, Catholic confirmation.) Whichever denomination you were at the threshold of joining, do you not find it instructive that a prerequisite of joining was that you accept a personal conception of God? It would seem to be an important part of Christian doctrine or dogma, wouldn't you say? That being the case, why get all hot under the collar when critics of religion describe the monotheistic God as a personal being?

As for 'the condition of the possibility' etc - of course, it's a highly awkward phrase. The trouble is, the subject matter is such that it resists any kind of easy verbalisation. Look at the rhetorical knots that get tied around the so-called 'hard problem of consciousness' - and there, you're talking about something which is ostensibly obvious to anyone engaged in the conversation. (After all, we're all conscious.) Whereas, here, you're ostensibly talking about 'the first principle' or 'the origin of all that is'. So getting it wrong, misunderstanding or misrepresenting it, goes with the territory.

Thank you for agreeing that that is an awkward phrase. I might go further and say that it's meaningless obscurantism (I have little familiarity with Eagleton's primary works, so if he provides a clear explication of such phraseology elsewhere, please feel free to point me to it).

I've repeatedly ask what phrases such as "ground of all being" mean, and have never been given a good answer. I suspect that it's a term of art among certain post-modern-aligned theologians which is more often stated and repeated than understood. While all philosophical subfields (phil of mind included) has its jargon, cant, and technical terminology, I don't know that they're all obscurantist.

So the fact that

perhaps most religious believers are not adherents of the sort of hot air suffused word salad that Eagleton spews here.

Doesn't really mean anything about the truth or falsehood of Eageton's critique of Dawkins. The fact that millions of people might believe something to be the case, doesn't mean it's true, as atheists like Dawkins never tire of telling us.

Ok. So if we're in agreement that "millions of people" hold the conception of God which Dawkins critiques in The God Delusion and elsewhere, I will ask the same question I've asked of you many, many times now: why fault Dawkins et al for engaging with beliefs people actually hold?

The New Atheists don't engage with your notion of God, and so they're wrongheaded, in your view. If this view is so wrongheaded, why are you not equally vituperative towards those religious believers who believe in the "wrong" sort of God? The New Atheists are but a handful of people (and they're down a member in the last few years). Surely the flock in the pews laboring under such misconceptions are much greater contributors to this theological confusion?

It's like: don't try and use fancy philosophical analysis to talk about what it might really mean; what it really means is what the believer-in-the-street says it means. And what they say it means, is a sky-father-god figure, who throws thunderbolts, and designs. Therefore a 'lowest common denominator' criticism of religion is all that's needed, as that is the only kind of religious sensibility that needs to be discussed.

I've never seen Eagleton offer any sort of analysis in any of the works which you've quoted. He offers discourse and assertions, but no real arguments. He says, "Doesn't Dawkins realize [word salad, word salad]," and then calls it a day. Unlike, say, a theist such as Alvin Plantinga, who offers myriad arguments for his view (Plantinga also had a scathing review of The God Delusion, if you want to check it out).

As for the LCD-criticism, natural theology has a long pedigree in philosophy, and cosmological and teleological arguments for God's existence (yes, existence) abound today. Again, simply because it's not the sort of God which you prefer doesn't mean that it's wrong, and it doesn't mean that Dawkins is committing any sort of error in criticizing it.

Nor is [God] a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing — Wayfarer quoting Eagleton

Well I find that simply incredible, but since I haven't gone to personally ask "a great number of religious believers" to explain precisely what they believe; I will have to remain reliant on my incredulity. All I can say is that if they truly believed that, then they must be either hopeless morons, or have failed to gained any decent education beyond about year 5. — John

Or perhaps most religious believers are not adherents of the sort of hot air suffused word salad that Eagleton spews here. If the typical Christian, say, believes that God is merely "the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever" (whatever that Mad-Libs of a sentence may mean), how to account for intercessory prayer? Are those so engaged aware that they're praying to a non-existent entity?

(I would also ask: did Jesus exist? Is or was Jesus God? If a Christian answers "yes" to those questions, what of the claim that it is somehow theologically naive to say that God "exists"?)

On the personhood of God, I will quote Plantinga and Tooley:

According to classical theistic belief — classical Muslim and Jewish as well as Christian belief — first of all there is God, the chief being of the universe, who has neither beginning nor end. Most important, God is personal. That is, God is the kind of being who is conscious and enjoys some kind of awareness of his surroundings (in God’s case, that would be everything). Second (though not second in importance), a person has loves and hates, wishes and desires; she approves of some things and disapproves of others; she wants things to be a certain way. We might put this by saying that persons have affections. A person, third, is a being who has beliefs and, if fortunate, knowledge. We human beings, for example, believe a host of things… Persons, therefore, have beliefs and affections. Further, a person is a being who has aims and intentions; a person aims to bring it about that things should be a certain way, intends to act so that things will be the way he wants them to be… Finally, persons can often act to fulfill their intentions; they can bring it about that things are a certain way; they can cause things to happen. To be more technical (though not more insightful or more clear), we might say that a person is a being who can actualize states of affairs. Persons can often act on the basis of what they believe in order to bring about states of affairs whose actuality they desire. ¶ So a person is conscious, has affections, beliefs, and intentions, and can act… First, therefore, God is a person. But second, unlike human persons, God is a person without a body. He acts, and acts in the world, as human beings do, but, unlike human beings, not by way of a body. Rather, God acts just by willing: he wills that things be a certain way, and they are that way. (God said “Let there be light”; and there was light.)

http://afterall.net/quotes/alvin-plantinga-on-god-and-personhood/

There's an interesting article on blindness by Oliver Sacks called The Mind's Eye. In it he even describes how someone who was once sighted but lost his sight (due to an issue with his eyes, not with his brain) can't even imagine visual things any more — Michael

Interesting. I wonder how widespread this phenomenon is among the non-congenitally blind. In cases in which this "imagination blindness" occurs, perhaps it's because the visual cortex is being co-opted by something else (assuming that the visual cortex is even involved in imagining sight to begin with).

You know the old joke. "Why can't you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito? Because you can't cross a scaler with a vector." That joke depends on conflating the engineering definitions of scalar, vector and cross (as in cross product) with the common English meaning of a climber -- a "scaler" -- and the medical meaning of vector -- a means of disease transmission, and the biological meaning of cross, as to cross-breed living things based on their genetic makeup.

But this is a JOKE, not something you can take seriously in a philosophical discussion. — fishfry

I'll bet that it's a big hit with the ladies on the bar scene, though. :D

Well, I don't see how two locations separated by zero distance can be different locations. — aletheist

I suspect that there's a failure of imagination on one (or both) of our parts. Consider:

[X][Y]

[X] and [Y] are discrete regions of space. There is no boundary of any breadth between them, and no distance separating them. Does it then follow that [X] and [Y] are the same region of space? It does not appear so to me.

If the distance between adjacent locations is zero, then by definition they are the same location, not adjacent locations at all. — aletheist

This still doesn't seem right. That there is zero distance between adjacent locations only seems to entail that there is no boundary of any breadth between them. I don't see how it follows that they would be the same location.

I'm not endorsing any religion. I'm only suggesting that caution is necessary in this matter. — TheMadFool

I wasn't suggesting that you were, and in truth my comment was more of a general proclamation. I should ask, though, as you believe that God's mind is inscrutable, do you adhere to the notion that we cannot say what God's wishes and wants may be on any matter?

Again, this is backwards; movement is only possible because space and time are continuous. If they were discrete, then it would be impossible to traverse the finite distance between adjacent locations. Where would the object be during the finite interval of time between the instant when it left one point and the instant when it arrived at the other? — aletheist

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why must there be a finite distance between adjacent locations (assuming that you mean a non-zero finite distance; if there's zero distance, then your objection is moot)?

Given the hard facts above wouldn't it be utter hubris and foolish to boot to claim one can understand god's mind? — TheMadFool

At least certain types of theists seem pretty confident in their ability to decipher God's wishes, and have historically and currently even been willing to torture, kill, and oppress in the name of these supposed wishes and commandments.

If one claims that (1) there exists this entity called "God", and (2) this entity's mind is wholly inscrutable (beyond knowing that he/she/it has a mind, with intentions, desires, etc), that is fine as it goes, as there is nothing inconsistent there. However, one should be cautious not to claim to understand God's mind when it's theologically or ideologically agreeable to do so, and then to claim such inscrutability when confronted by inconvenient theological conundrums such as the problem of evil. (So one could not claim, for instance, that abortion, gay marriage, etc are contrary to God's wishes, or that God wishes for people to live the Golden Rule, and so forth.)

Please forgive the delay in my reply.

Not at all. It is, as I've said, an observation - a casual opinion, no more emotionally charged than my observation-based opinion that all live animals with hearts also have kidneys. I would happily (nay, eagerly!) adjust either opinion based on new data. — andrewk

I don't necessarily disagree with your claim that people often form beliefs on the basis of aesthetic judgments or emotional valence. However, this is hardly limited to philosophy: even areas of inquiry which are amenable to empirical investigation such as anthropogenic climate change, vaccine safety, and evolution are filled with politically-, emotionally-, and even religiously-charged overtones among their proponents and detractors. However, no one can reasonably claim that, in such disputes, no side is more rational than the other.

My point is that you are here also making a meta-philosophical claim, i.e. that no philosophical position can be said to be more rational than any other. By your own criteria, this position has no greater claim to rationality than its contrary, i.e. that certain philosophical positions are more rational than others.

Perhaps such a datum is available in relation to your statement that you consider panpsychism irrational, despite not seeing any obvious inconsistencies in it. Can you help me expand my horizons by explaining on what basis you consider it less rational than some alternative philosophy of consciousness?

Panpsychism is absurd in attributing mentation to the most basic, non-living elements of the universe. It makes a hash of our understanding of the natural history of intelligence, our knowledge of the sort of systems in which mentation undeniably arises, is wholly unsupported by empirical evidence, and is more of an admission of defeat in understanding consciousness rather than being a serious position in its own right (a discussion for another thread perhaps).

It was meant to be an observation of human nature rather than a philosophy, but I can see how it might have come across that way. Perhaps I should put it slightly more carefully as follows:

It seems to me that people choose philosophies, wittingly or unwittingly, mostly on aesthetic/emotional grounds.

I am certainly open to observations about other criteria people use to choose between philosophies. One thing I feel fairly confident about is that they do not do it on the grounds of which philosophy is most 'rational', because a philosophy is only irrational if it makes contradicting claims, and that sort of thing is likely to be noticed. Further, for any two philosophies that are not irrational in that sense, I can't see any way of supporting a claim that one is 'more rational' than the other. — andrewk

I don't know that a philosophical thesis is irrational only insofar as it contains (internally) contradictory claims: for instance, I would regard solipsism to be a fairly irrational standpoint, even if it is wholly internally consistent. Under this category, I would also lump panpsychism.

And again, it seems to me that you are here advancing a meta-philosophical claim (in addition to whatever observations about human nature you may be making, which I suppose are at least partly empirical in nature), i.e. that no philosophical thesis can be considered more rational than any other provided that neither contains any contradictions. By your own criterion, I must assume that you believe this for emotional/aesthetic reasons, and thus it carries no probative force.

Indeed, this "basket of deplorables" recognized the not-well-disguised hostility of many liberals and progressives towards them. — Bitter Crank

Conservatives have for years been branding themselves as the "real Americans," exalting the virtue of "small town values" (whatever those might be) over "big city values," (or "New York values," as Ted Cruz put it, in what one might reasonably suspect was an anti-Semitic dog whistle). Mike Huckabee drew a distinction between "Bubbas" (i.e. proud Southerners and Midwesterners) and those in the "bubble" (i.e. the coastal elites).

So, why is only one side of the culture war allowed to have contempt for the other?

For most philosophies it is not possible to prove them correct or incorrect. If it were there would be far fewer philosophies around - maybe only one. Choosing between them is done mostly on an aesthetic basis - ie emotionally-based. — andrewk

I doubt many philosophers would agree that they subscribe to particular philosophical theses wholly or primarily on the grounds of aesthetics or emotional valence. However, ideas are not (generally) proven correct by surveys, so perhaps you are right.

But, by your own criterion, your philosophy of philosophy has no greater claim to truth than any other, and could likewise be discarded on grounds of aesthetics were it found to be unpalatable.

Punishment is never sensible. If someone is unpleasant, they are not made more pleasant by being unpleasant to them. — unenlightened

I am curious: does this position apply to white-collar criminals, as well? That is, should Wall Street traders who commit fraud, or people like Bernie Madoff who operate Ponzi schemes not be punished?

Can we not then say that from the moment we're born we are sentenced to death. — TheMadFool

I think we can not say that, as there is nothing doing the "sentencing" when we die of natural causes at the end of our biological life span. A theist of the Judeo-Christian stripe may say that it's God which does the sentencing, or that it's all Adam and Eve's fault (original sin and the Fall and all that good stuff), but if that's the case, I'd guess you'd have to take that up with Yaweh.

You are getting caught up on the details of thought experiment itself. You are like the person who hears the trolley problem and tries to find some reason to stop the trolley without killing anyone, when the real point is asking whether it is better to kill one person or let five people die. — Chany

Sometimes in such thought experiments or problems it is difficult to know which aspects we can safely abstract away, and which we can sensibly retain. Like those problems concerning how to figure out which light switch controls which light bulb in a room we can only view once. The solutions often concern feeling light bulbs to see if they're warm and such.

Obviously, it would defeat the purpose of the problem if we say we will set up a surveillance camera in the room: such solutions leave us too much latitude. On the other hand, if we got too abstraction-crazy and claimed that the fact that the problem involves light bulbs in particular is of no consequence to the logical structure of the problem, we would have abstracted ourselves right out of a valid and legitimate solution.

Indiscernability of identicals (if I'm remembering right... too lazy to look up...). As in, if two things are identical, they share all of the same properties, and there aren't two things there is one thing. Identicality of indiscernables is that if two things share all of the same properties, then they're identical. This second one is less obvious, and doesn't seem necessary. — Wosret

Yes, your summary is accurate, as far as I recall.

From Wiki:

The indiscernibility of identicals
For any x and y, if x is identical to y, then x and y have all the same properties.

∀ x ∀ y [ x = y → ∀ P ( P x ↔ P y ) ]

The identity of indiscernibles
For any x and y, if x and y have all the same properties, then x is identical to y.

∀ x ∀ y [ ∀ P ( P x ↔ P y ) → x = y ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_of_indiscernibles
— wiki

I think that in stipulating that two things are identical, you either mean in some respect, but distinct in others, or you are stipulating that there aren't two things at all. That's just what identical means. Two things can be completely indistinguishable, indistinct, but not be identical if you reject the IOD, but stipulating that they're identical does necessitate that they share all of the same properties, and are actually the same thing.

But, I believe the point is that the hay bales are not numerically identical, even if they are identical in all of their relevant properties (indeed, even if they are identical in all of their properties, period).

In any event, some forms of this paradox invoke an ass who is equally hungry and thirsty, and is placed equidistant from a bale of way and a bowl of water, each of which are equally desirable to him. So, if this identicality issue presents a serious impediment to anyone's considering the paradox, then they should feel free to think about this version, instead.

They can't be identical, or they couldn't be two things. Two things that are identical are the same thing, and one thing. Like superman and Clark Kent. You can't stand one over here, and one over there. — Wosret

This raises an interesting point. I have to brush up on my readings on the identity of indiscernibles (was that one "Leibniz's Law"?), but I seem to recall similar thought experiments involving, say, two identical spheres symmetrically distributed in a symmetrical universe which contains no other objects. Given that there is nothing that could be predicated of the one sphere which could not predicated of the other (including their relational properties, which in this case would amount to "being located such-and-such distance from a sphere with such-and-such characteristics"), in what sense would they be distinct (clearly, they are numerically distinct, as a potential observer could easily see that there are two separate spheres)?

At any rate, your idea of digging deep holes to solve the energy crisis is probably as far fetched as those posters were trying to explain. — Hanover

Evidently, Question never saw Man of Steel, else he'd know that tapping a planetary core can only lead to disaster.

If we leave the example scenario as an ass and hay, it opens the door to all kinds of cheap tricks to solve the problem, using the mechanics/determinism of the universe, biology, etc. — Efram

It seems to me that any such scenario which posits that, in a deterministic universe, the ass physically couldn't select one of the hay bales to eat (and therefore must starve to death) must assume that the universe is (and has always been, at least within the light cone of the ass) perfectly symmetrical, with a perfect counterbalance of forces. (The universe, of course, includes the ass himself.)

In order for the paradox to obtain, there can be no physiological (or otherwise physical) bias towards one side or the other for the ass (e.g. we cannot assume that his left eye works slightly better than the right). Otherwise, even the smallest difference might suffice to break the symmetry and allow the ass to choose one bale of hay to the exclusion of the other.

But, such "cheap tricks," aside, I understand that the classical paradox is about decision-making and ratiocination, and that, as you say, all else can be (and perhaps should be) abstracted away.

Trust is under-studied. It feels as if mutual trust is so obvious a basis for most human lives, we forget to mention it. Or analyse it. — mcdoodle

Francis Fukuyama wrote a book on trust about 20 years ago. I am not very familiar with that particular work, but he touches upon the topic in some of his more contemporary work such as Political Order and Political Decay.

He argues that at least part of the reason for the diverging economic fortunes between northern and southern Europe (e.g. between Germany and Greece) lies in the rampant mistrust of government among Southern Europeans, which leads to an impairment in civic and administrative functions such as tax collection (people conduct business in the "shadow economy" rather than keep it on the books and fork over the taxes to the government), leading to a substantial loss of revenue in the national coffers, and precipitating in part the financial hardships we're currently witnessing in some of those countries.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57980.Trust

Well, you were asking about p(HE|B), which, as I said, I had already covered. — tom

I know, but I had issues with your treatment of both H and K, which i will discuss in more detail below. In the meantime, I offer this correction to one of my points.

Also, I still suspect you're making an illicit move in proposing that if P(E|K) = 1, that P(K&E) = P(K). Unless K & E are both necessary truths, then the probability of their conjunction must be less than either conjunct alone (though, they probably should not be considered as statistically independent, so this point is debatable. Either way, I'm skeptical that E drops out so smoothly from the equations). — Arkady

I added bolding to my above quote, because the non-statistically independent nature of K and E (assuming that K entails E) is in fact the key here, at least according to some quick and dirty refresher research I did. I can flesh out my point, if need be, but suffice to say, I now agree that, if K entails E, then P(K&E) = P(K).

The observation of a green apple, or a black raven - the corroborating evidence - is logically implied by H, and by K.

This is part of the sticking point. I don't see how K (i.e. "not all ravens are black") implies the observation of a black raven. It is at most logically consistent with this observation. More generally, I don't see how a statement and its negation both imply the same thing (at least with regards to empirical hypotheses).

The "more formal statement" above is actually a definition of logical implication.

Yes, I take no issue with your definition.

If you don't like the "not all ravens are black" fro some reason, then change it. There are several others you could chose, "all ravens are black except the white ones", "all ravens are black or white".

I don't have a problem with "all ravens are black"...

Actually, no, I think you're right. — Michael

It gets worse: every egg-sized block of empty space we observe also confirms the hypothesis that "all eggs are white" (again, assuming that we've already observed at least one white egg), because that is one less egg-sized block of space which could potentially contain a non-white egg.

So, what happens to the millions of "confirmations"? And, why am I still seeing them? I can literally look at green apples whenever I want. — tom

Not sure what you're asking here. The apples are no less green because there are white ravens. We can accumulate evidence for a hypothesis which later turns out to be false (were this not the case, there would in fact be no difference between "justification" and "truth," at least with regards to empirical hypotheses).

Just curious. What happens to the millions of "confirmations" that "all ravens are black", by observing not only black ravens but literally every non-black non-raven thing you have ever seen, when you encounter these? — tom

A hypothesis can be confirmed by evidence but still turn out to be false. "Confirmation" is not equivalent to "verification." The observation of a single non-black raven falsifies the hypothesis that all ravens are black.

Green apples also "confirm" the universal statement "all ravens are white". — tom

Yup. Michael pointed this out fairly early on, IIRC.

I covered that earlier.

You said:

K is compatible with any evidence. p(E|K) is still 1, and (KE) and (K) have the same truth value. I certainly seems weaker, but I can see no reason that K does not logically imply E, just as it implies not(E).

You might regard this as a more formal statement:

K => E iff p(E|KB) = 1 for every B

My original concerns stand. K is a hypothesis which is supposedly compatible with "any evidence," which is completely at odds with its being falsifiable (indeed, this seems to smuggle your conclusion into the proof itself, thereby begging the question).

Also, I still suspect you're making an illicit move in proposing that if P(E|K) = 1, that P(K&E) = P(K). Unless K & E are both necessary truths, then the probability of their conjunction must be less than either conjunct alone (though, they probably should not be considered as statistically independent, so this point is debatable. Either way, I'm skeptical that E drops out so smoothly from the equations).

It's not counterintuitive it is just wrong. If green apples "confirm" "black ravens", they also confirm "white ravens".

Yes, but evidence can be consistent with multiple hypotheses, which is called underdetermination, and is well-known in the philosophy of science. (I think that most treatments of this problem, even when they allow that non-black non-ravens confirm the hypothesis, treat such observations as very weak evidence.)

My problem was in saying that a given hypothesis and its negation should entail the same evidence. If H is "all ravens are black," and K is "not all ravens are black," K is not only amenable to confirmation, it is verified by a single instance of a non-black raven. Clearly, whatever we may think about the possibility of universally-quantified hypotheses being confirmed, an observation of a non-black raven decidedly does not confirm "all ravens are black."

Let us not forget that the universal statement "all ravens are black" is in fact false!

Yes, I think we've all seen the white ravens, thanks. :D

Any philosophical discussion that reaches for QM has gone astray. — Banno

Why? Quantum indeterminacy, for instance, surely has at least some bearing on philosophical theses such as the Principle of Sufficient Reason?

This seemed to be Popper's view (as someone else pointed out). Let us consider for a moment the proposition that singular instances provide no confirmation of a universally-quantified hypothesis or statement (e.g. occurrences of white swans do not even marginally raise the probability of the hypothesis "all swans are white") by means of a thought experiment.

At the very least, this claim seems unintuitive under certain conditions. For instance, imagine that the world consists entirely of a carton of eggs, with a dozen egg cups, each containing exactly one egg. A "God's eye view" observer of the world formulates the hypothesis that "all eggs are white," and sets about inspecting each cup.

After the observer inspects, say, three of the eggs and finds that they're white, can he reasonably be more confident in the truth of his hypothesis to any degree whatsoever? After all, each cup which is found to contain a white egg is one less cup which can possibly hold a non-white egg (and we've stipulated that the world consists solely of this egg carton, so there is nowhere else for a non-white egg to hide). Does each observation of a white egg therefore confirm the hypothesis (even if only incrementally)? My intuition seems to say "yes," but of course, my intuition does not constitute any sort of rigorous proof. — Arkady

Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that my thought experiment (whether or not it presents a valid point) has limited applicability to the raven paradox. The universal statement under consideration is "all ravens are black." The contrapositive is "all non-black things are non-ravens."

Here are 4 possible observations, and how they (might) affect the hypothesis:
(1) black raven - confirms
(2) non-black raven - falsifies
(3) non-black non-raven - confirms
(4) black non-raven - neither confirms nor disconfirms

However, even in the very limited world of my thought experiment, a (4)-type observation would in fact confirm the hypothesis "all ravens are black." Assuming that we've already observed at least one white egg, observation of a white non-egg would confirm the hypothesis that "all eggs are white," because it would further diminish the probability of the carton containing at least one non-white egg (because the white non-egg, whatever it might be, is occupying space that might otherwise be occupied by a non-white egg).

So, thought experiments of this type (even if they succeed in demonstrating that universally-quantified hypotheses can be confirmed, which hardly seems to be the consensus here...) may not have much to do with the raven paradox specifically.

We have a situation where the observation of a green apple purportedly supports an enormous number of unrelated universal statements, including the statement "all ravens are black". — tom

But, that's part of the paradox. Green apples are not unrelated to the universal statement "all ravens are black." It confirms the (logically equivalent) contrapositive, i.e. that all non-black things are non-ravens.

The solution to this problem is to recognise that there is no such thing as epistemologically valuable corroborating evidence. It simply cannot exist.

Perhaps such evidence cannot exist, but your purported proof to that effect seems flawed. Unless you can address my specific concerns, I can't accept it.

Now that I think of it, I may have found another problem: you claim that H entails E, and so that p(he|b) = p(h|b). But, I'm not sure that this follows. Even if H entails E, unless they are necessary truths, the probability of their conjunction must be equal to or less than either of the conjuncts. P(H|E) or P(E|H) are not equal to P(H&E), even when H entails E (that is, P(E|H) = 1).

The corroborating evidence E points everywhere and thus nowhere. For some psychological reason we see this in the case of green apples, but not in black ravens.

Right...hence the paradox! It's counterintuitive (to put it mildly) that the observation of green apples confirms the hypothesis that all ravens are black.

Much has been made in this discussion re: the the objective/subjective distinction, which you seem to think has been muddled in this thread.

Do you believe that an agent can have better or worse reasons for increasing or decreasing his confidence in a given hypothesis in the face of new evidence? That is, some types of evidence are "better" or "worse" than others?

Well spotted!

A couple of things:

The truth value of H and HE are the same, because H logically implies E

p(HE) = p(H)*p(E|H)

The probability of E given that H is in fact true is 1, because H logically implies E.

So by Bayes theorem

p(HE|B) = p(B|HE)P(HE)/P(B)

= p(B|H)p(H)/p(B) = p(H|B) — tom

My problem here is that I don't see how H logically implies E. Setting aside the propositional variables for a moment, I don't understand how this particular H ("all ravens are black") implies this particular E ("the sighting of another raven"). Again, I'm not sure what the E statement even means here.

K is compatible with any evidence. p(E|K) is still 1, and (KE) and (K) have the same truth value. I certainly seems weaker, but I can see no reason that K does not logically imply E, just as it implies not(E).

K is a particular hypothesis. To say that a particular hypothesis is "compatible with any evidence" means that there is nothing which can falsify K, even in principle. This is no bueno for a purportedly scientific/empirical hypothesis.

So, you are in essence saying that the same evidence would confirm "all ravens are black" as would confirm "not all ravens are black") (i.e. H and K, respectively, which constitute the hypothesis and its negation). I don't see how that could possibly be the case.

That's in all the equations!

Yes, I saw that. I wasn't reading your post correctly; the ordering threw me, which is why I deleted that paragraph from my post (seemingly long before you replied to it; not sure if the forum software is getting glitchy here). But, I agreed with your ultimate presentation of the logic of confirmation, i.e. P(H|E&B), so we're good on this point.

I beg to differ! If there is such a thing as probabilistic support for a universal statement, then green apples do indeed support "all ravens are black". I have given the solution to this paradox earlier in the thread, so now let me prove it:

A well known result from probability calculus is:

p(he|b) = p(h|eb)p(eb)

Let h = "all ravens are black" i.e. the hypothesis
Let b = background knowledge e.g. all the ravens previously encountered
Let e = new evidence - the sighting of another raven

h logically implies e, so "h and e" is equivalent to h, so

p(h|b) = p(h|eb)p(eb)

Thus

p(h|eb)=p(h|b)/p(eb)

Do this again with an alternative hypothesis:

k = "NOT all ravens are black"

And divide one expression by the other, you get:

p(h|eb)/p(k|eb) = p(h|b)/p(k|b)

Now notice that no matter how h and k generalize under new evidence e, the evidence is incapable of affecting the ratio of their probabilities! What you are left with is the ratio of the prior probabilities, which you can have done nothing except arbitrarily set.

Thus there is no such thing as probabilistic support for a universal statement! — tom

I have some questions about this. I don't see how H (hypothesis) logically implies E (evidence). I understand the hypothetico-deductive mode of reasoning (which, in very general terms, science adheres to), i.e. posit a hypothesis, deduce observational consequences of said hypothesis, and perform a test to look for said consequences. However, in this case, I don't see how "all ravens are black" implies "the sighting of another raven." I'm not sure what the latter statement even means, exactly (H seems to imply only that, if one were to observe a raven, then said raven would be black).

Also, in order for the posterior probabilities not to matter here (because E cancels out), H and K must somehow imply the same "E". But, how can a hypothesis and its negation imply the same observational consequences?

Firstly, if there are a limited number of ravens, then there are some ravens. So we are not saying merely that there are no non-black ravens, but also that there are some black ravens. Then each black raven found in the absence of any white ones decreases the population of potential non-black ravens, and so increases the probability that they are all black. — unenlightened

Yes, this was pretty much exactly the point of my egg thought experiment. So, if each black raven observed in the absence of white ones decreases the potential population of non-black ravens, thereby increasing the probability that they are all black, can we then not say that successive observations of black ravens confirms the hypothesis "all ravens are black" (contra some claims on this thread that no such confirmation can be had for universally-quantified propositions)?

Yes, it does mention the raven paradox (there may even be an entire SEP article devoted to said paradox, though I may be misremembering).