I've asked what your argument is, and I've even tried to represent it: — Leontiskos

I'm sorry for not making this clear: I'm withdrawing my argument, because I lost faith in my interpretation of your view. Any argument I make is necessarily against what I take to be your view, there is no point if I don't have some degree of confidence in my grasp of your position.

What I would like you to attend to are the questions I asked about the your view on the relationship between rationality and rational norms, because it's something I'm confused about right now.

If you are unwilling to state your position clearly and without ambiguity, then I see no reason to continue. — Leontiskos

Understandable, but I maintain that I am absolutely not unwilling. Anyway, you're not under any obligation to keep this up, if you're just bored or annoyed with this talk that's a perfectly legitimate reason to bow out.

So you think we should put it on the blender that it has failed to follow a "norm"? — Leontiskos

Yes, and the consequences for the blender will probably be quite harsh.

Well, you have to be able to "attend" to the norm in a non-metaphorical way, and for that you need rationality. We can say that the blender "attends" to the purée-norm, but this is just whimsical or metaphorical speech. — Leontiskos

Then how is it that you agreed with what I wrote here:

The way I see it, we can judge whether an act is moral/rational/whatever simply by checking it against the appropriate framework, but strictly speaking there is no need for the agent of the act to be aware of that framework. — goremand

So the agent doesn't have to be aware of the framework, but they need to capacity to "attend" to it? What does that mean?

That's your strange definition, not mine. So the circularity seems to be coming from your own definitions. — Leontiskos

I'm really surprised to see you object to this ("being rational means following rational norms"), I thought this was at the core of what you wanted to say. Originally you made an analogy to with moral norms, do you also have problem with "being moral means following moral norms"? What is the actual relationship between rationality and the associated norms, if not this? Can you follow rational norms without being rational, or vice versa?

We could say, "The blender is abiding by the norm of blending up fruit. He hasn't deviated from that norm yet." But that is metaphorical language. We don't actually think the blender is abiding by norms. — Leontiskos

More likely we would express it like "a blender should be able to purée fruit", in particular we might be quite disappointed if a blender failed to do so. I don't think this is a metaphor at all, I think we have expectations about how machines should behave.

First, do plants, animals, and machines "defy (rational) norms"? I don't see that they do, or can. — Leontiskos

It think that depends on our willingness to ascribe beliefs to non-humans, I am open to reasonably intelligent animals and maybe computers behaving irrationally. Plants not so much, I guess you could even say that plants are always rational, but only in the same sense in which they never lose at football.

You would have to spell that argument out in more detail. — Leontiskos

My idea of "norm-following" is conforming to a set of norms. Your idea seems to be the same, but with the added requirement that you have to be rational.

Let us say we want to figure out whether or not an entity is rational. Since being rational means following rational norms, we have to first establish whether the entity is capable of norm-following. According to you, that depends on whether or not the entity is rational, which is what we're trying to figure out in the first place. So we could never know whether the entity is rational or not.

(4) and (5) are especially opaque to me. — Leontiskos

Maybe I overinterpreted what you wrote, it took "rational norm-following" to mean "rationally justified norm-following". So I took you to be saying that adopting a set of norms requires rational justification, which doesn't makes sense if rational justification itself depends upon a set of norms.

What has any of this to do with the topic of this thread - an account of the distinction between having a philosophy and doing philosophy?

Can someone relate it back to the theme? — Banno

To my understanding, Leontiskos objected that you can't "do philosophy" without already "having a philosophy", and so to him this distinction doesn't really make sense. Then he made the more specific claim that rational norms are a condition for "doing philosophy", and I took issue with that. I'm sorry if our discussion is a weed in this beautiful garden of a thread.

I simply do not think that non-rational norm following is coherent. — Leontiskos

I take this to mean you stipulatively define norm-following as necessarily rational. Leaving aside how I think it's pretty common to apply norms to animals, machines etc. that clearly aren't rational, given that rationality is a set of norms, haven't you now made being rational a necessary condition for becoming rational?

To me, if you transition from from defying rational norms into following them, you've transitioned from irrationality to rationality. But that transition obviously can't be compelled by the rational norms themselves, so under your definition it appears simply impossible, because you don't allow that one can be rational for irrational reasons.

And my point is that it is absurd to claim that ants are engaged in rational norm-following, so this is a massive strawman you are wielding. — Leontiskos

It makes no sense to make this about "rational norm-following" (which I assume means following a set of norms because it is rational to do so) when discussing rational norms themselves. Reason can't compel you to be reasonable, that's circular.

In the context of that quote, acting for an end via the will is much different than acting for an end via mere instinct. This is why, for example, animals do not have any developed language. — Leontiskos

I don't really see why it is much different. I believe human beings are rational by "mere instinct".

Well we agree that ants protect their queen, do we not? And we agree that ants are not rational, and therefore do not engage in rational norm-following, do we not? — Leontiskos

My point is that it's easy to "reverse-engineer" a normative framework just by observing how some entity tends to act (humans, ants, clouds, whatever), and claiming that this is how they "should" act. But this does nothing to justify the the framework, i.e. justify the claim that "this is how things should be".

And just as this determination is effected, in the rational nature, by the "rational appetite," which is called the will; so, in other things, it is caused by their natural inclination, which is called the "natural appetite."... — Aquinas, ST I-II.1.2.c - Whether it is proper to the rational nature to act for an end?

Isn't the "rational appetite" just another type of "natural appetite"? Certainly most people are inclined to be rational.

How would you answer your own question? — Leontiskos

That they would be "good ants" if I judge them according to my framework, and that this does not require that they have any understanding of said framework. Similarly, people can be rational without understanding the normative framework used to judge them as such.

Because if you are acting in accordance with a norm then you must have an understanding of that norm at some level. If you have no understanding of a norm then you cannot act in accordance with it. — Leontiskos

So If I invented a normative framework for say, ants, with rules like "ants should protect their queen", "ants should walk in a line", "ants should utilize a caste system" etc. and most ants acted in accordance with it, it must be the case that the ants have an understanding of my normative framework?

I would say that members of the rational community (i.e. everyone) do understand rational norms — Leontiskos

Is this necessarily the case (i.e. do they need to)? It doesn't seem like it if you look at norms in general. I could unknowingly be acting in accordance with any number of arbitrary norms as I go about my business. Why can't I act in accordance with rational norms without understanding those norms?

which framework is being used by a toddler when they reach the cognitive milestone of object permanence? Can it even be described as a "framework"? — Harry Hindu

I have to say don't quite understand why you would ask me that.

So would you agree with me that there is no need for the members of the rational community to understand or subscribe to rational norms? — goremand

Oh no, not at all. — Leontiskos

Sorry, "no, I disagree" or "no, there is no need"? Do object to me characterizing norms as something you subscribe to?

Which framework are you using to reach such a conclusion? — Harry Hindu

Which normative framework? Or just which framework in general?

Yeah, I think that's basically right. That is one of the points I was trying to convey. :up: — Leontiskos

So would you agree with me that there is no need for the members of the rational community to understand or subscribe to rational norms?

To believe that someone ought to do something is not the same as believing that someone has an obligation to do something. — Leontiskos

Obligation sounds very "heavy" so maybe that was a poor choice of words, but I don't see how this distinction is made strictly speaking.

But note that our touchstone for this conversation is the notion of "non-hypothetical ought-judgments," that this is taken from the thread, "The Breadth of the Moral Sphere," and that that thread is extremely clear about what such a thing is. — Leontiskos

I have read the OP, but I can't promise I've absorbed it completely. What stood out to me is that you allow for acts to be judged as moral (or as you say now, rational) even if moral judgement doesn't feature in the decision of the act, which I think is true. The way I see it, we can judge whether an act is moral/rational/whatever simply by checking it against the appropriate framework, but strictly speaking there is no need for the agent of the act to be aware of that framework.

So if you are tutoring struggling first graders, and you inevitably base the various lessons and interventions on the belief that the child ought to believe that 2+2=4, then you are thereby a member of the rational community. — Leontiskos

That seems unnecessary to me. All I have to do is explain have math involved, and the child will understand if able. What essential role does the obligation to believe a particular claim play for either the teacher or the student?

I would argue against the second claim on similar grounds insofar as we concern ourselves with intellectual ought-judgments, i.e., "You ought to believe that 2+2=4." — Leontiskos

So, since I am a member of the rational community, I must believe that "I ought to believe 2+2=4", and if I deny this I am implicitly contradicting myself? Why is this? It seems to me I can get along fine simply believing that 2+2=4 without concerning myself about whether I "ought" to believe that or not.

Do all people make non-hypothetical ought-judgments? — Leontiskos

No, not necessarily. But most of all, I don't think it is a requirement for joining the rational community.

I wouldn't try to justify some to someone who doesn't see that they are already making others. Does that make sense? — Leontiskos

Yes, absolutely.

I would again liken this thread more to my thread on the moral sphere, where I try to show people that they already have moral beliefs. — Leontiskos

I think you successfully show that we can't make a sharp distinction between moral and non-moral norms such that anti-realism closes the door on only the former, and that people always act morally in the sense that their acts might be subject to moral scrutiny (which I think is a bit of a trivial truth). I don't quite understand how this gets us to the claim that people all have (implicit, I assume) moral beliefs. I would like to know if you're even interested in justifying a particular set of norms (rational, moral, whatever) rather than just proving that they are implicitly assumed.

So by "making sense of such beliefs" you mean something like achieving coherence i.e. exposing the contradiction in denying it? I think that's a step short of justification.

In that sense we would say, “Whether or not there are binding and overarching standards, everyone believes there are.” Similarly, my <recent thread> says, “We all believe there are binding and overarching standards, but can we make sense of such beliefs?”) — Leontiskos

Why bother? If we all believe there are such standards, justifying the claim that there are seems redundant.

That’s all I have to say on Plantinga. — Wayfarer

Poor man, he's over 90 and here you are picking him up and discarding him like a human shield.

Two questions:

1. Are you making the claim that naturalism undermines reason per se? Because that does not seem to be Plantingas claim in the paper.

2. Do you reject foundationalism and subscribe to Plantingas epistemology of properly basic beliefs and defeaters? It is an important part of his argument.

He is arguing that evolutionary biology may account for how animals adapt and survive, but that this in itself does not provide grounds for us to believe that an argument is true, when, according to those criteria, it might simply be adaptive. — Wayfarer

Why is that a requirement? What a strange thing to demand of a scientific theory. Why do we have to sit around and wait for for an origin story to life before we can believe that an argument is true?

I cannot imagine any argument that God's opinion matters more than human opinion or even that anyone could know God's opinion could be convincing, or that revelation could be demonstrated to be more than a human production or even that God actually can be rationally, logically, empirically or some other way, demonstrated to exist. — Janus

And I don't believe any of that so arguing for it is not my intention, I just think that claiming that suffering is sometimes good is a logically valid solution to the problem of evil.

I think this comes down to you having a different idea of goodness, I am guessing you would say it's derived from human nature or something like that? Whereas I would say good and bad are determined by objective normative properties which are wholly divorced from humanity and whose content could be pretty much anything, including "suffering is good".

We've reached the end of our conversation, because it has circled back to the point where you are saying the opposite of what I said earlier which was that it is only human opinions which matter. — Janus

I'd like to respond, but at this point it seems you have lost all interest and I'd just be wasting space. Please tell me if I'm wrong.

You continue to ignore context and try to shift the blame for your poor comprehension onto a purported lack of clarity. — Janus

I think when there are issues of miscommunication, there is no fact of the matter on whether the speaker or listener is at fault, and debating it is usually a waste of effort. I'm sorry if you think I am being dense, but I hope you don't think it's on purpose.

Of course they may think that but that only strengthens my argument: they think it is good for the evil or hated person to suffer as punishment, because they understand that suffering is bad for the one who deserves punishment. — Janus

There is something here I am not getting. Are you saying good and bad are necessarily a matter of perspective? I don't think theists are committed to believing that, but let's just say that you are right.

Then, from Gods perspective it might be good when people suffer. And since his opinion is the only one that matters, it's irrelevant how many people think it is "bad for them". The world could still be a 100% perfect place according to God, the arbiter of everything. Where is the contradiction in believing this?

Of course, acknowledging this as a feeble mortal might require letting go of your own intuitions or feelings about what is good or bad, is that what you think is irrational?

But it seems to me, nonetheless, that there are important differences between the suffering of those who are in hell because they have sinned and the suffering of those like Job, who have done nothing wrong. It is the latter's suffering that cries out for a justification, or at least an explanation. Don't you think? — Ludwig V

Yes and no. The specific purpose is different, but they are both cases of God putting his stamp of approval on the suffering, which is the relevant point. It's "good suffering". And yes it does "cry out for justification", but that is what the Job story is supposed to give us.

I don't think that there is a single agreed-upon definition of a good life for human beings. But there is sufficient agreement for us to understand that those who have different definitions disagree with each other, which requires a background of agreement. — Ludwig V

Disagree with each other over what? The definition of a word?

I'm not going to spoon-feed you further. — Janus

I think the way you write is muddled and this just tells me you have limited interest in clarification.

quote what I've said and say precisely where you think it's wrong if you disagree. — Janus

Okay:

Misery cannot but be bad according to <the human conception of goodness>. — Janus

I take this to be saying that humanity has a single agreed-upon definition of goodness, and that misery is bad according to that definition. I think that is obviously false. For example, there are people who think that it is good for sinners to suffer. They think this not because they are irrational, but because they have a different idea of goodness than you do.

This discussion seems to me to have suffered from an ambiguity about whether suffering can be justified or not. Some suffering may have a justification (a beneficial effect), in which case, it might be classified as not suffering, but something else. "Suffering" would then be only "unjustified suffering" — Ludwig V

A person who believed this would have to be committed to saying there is no suffering in hell, which is a statement I don't believe I've ever heard. And I mean "hell" as in fire and brimstone, people wailing in pain etc. Imagine looking at that and saying "no suffering detected".

At first I thought you were saying that "suffering is bad" is a priori true. Then I thought you were saying "suffering is bad" is a universally held belief. Now it seems you saying "most people think suffering is bad" which is a trivial and irrelevant claim.

Do you really believe anyone thinks it is good to be miserable? — Janus

Yes, absolutely. And why not?

It seems it is your assertion that misery could be considered good, that is out of step and is merely "your conception". — Janus

That's not a problem, because unlike you I never made any assertions on behalf of humanity.

Christianity, as a universal religion, must speak to all people and cannot be elitist. It must present its insights through parables and imagery accessible to the widest possible audience. — Wayfarer

An insurmountable flaw, in my opinion. You can't be a philosopher if you're not prepared to say "I am right and everyone else is wrong".

More directly, the Christian claim is that God descends to man in man's hour of need, so it's not surprising that the "bottom-up" part would also be in place. — Leontiskos

That's not quite what I'm saying. I'm saying that in a sense the masses are the ones telling their church what kind of God they want. And the church responds to that, because they are service providers. So there is a conception of God that flows in the other direction, from the bottom to the top.

I guess I don't see why philosophical and religious notions of God must be incompatible. — Leontiskos

It's not that they must be, it's that in my experience they are. And I think there's a plausible reason why.

I'm not seeing the "good work" though. — wonderer1

Neither do I really, but I'm sure someone, somewhere put in a decent effort and deserves a pat on the back. Or at least that's what my intellectual humility compels me to say.

Where I live, neither atheism nor theism interests most people. They seem to be default atheists, with no particular arguments against gods, just a lack of interest — Tom Storm

Yes, this is the face of atheism to me as well. The idea that atheism works like an organized religion, with Pope Dawkins preaching his dogma to the faithful, misses the mark in my experience.

Christian theism is both philosophically and Scripturally informed, and therefore in that case a "personal" God is not unphilosophical. — Leontiskos

I think the aspect that you are underselling is that religion isn't just about the "top down" of disseminating doctrine to the masses, but also the "bottom up" of appealing to those masses in the first place. This is true now more than ever, I've seen what a church desperate for membership looks like and it's not pretty. Preachers need a God with charisma, it's in their interest not to make him too "weird".

Now I'm sure some good work has been done to stich together "the God that draws the crowds" and "the God that wins internet arguments" and I don't want to sell that short, but fundamentally that is what I take it to be: reconciling two very different ideas of God created for two very different purposes.

If God is fine with human misery then he is not good according to the human conception of goodness. Misery cannot but be bad according to that conception. — Janus

Exceedingly narrowminded, in my opinion. "Suffering is good" is perhaps a strange and disturbing claim but I wouldn't say it's a literal contradiction in terms. Maybe it is a contradiction under your conception of goodness, but that's all it is: your conception.

Along the same lines, I think this is just false. The caricatures that atheists present are not found in elementary religious education, among casual believers, or in church sermons—unless the atheist limits themselves to Westboro Baptist sermons, which they may well do. — Leontiskos

Let's not overstate things, I'm not saying New Atheism has had no effect on the discourse. People definitely do pick up some unfortunate attitudes, arguments from these science-y public intellectual types. I just can't see someone walking into into a Sam Harris TED-Talk without a preexisting notion God. The seed is already there, so to speak.

There is continuity between the academy and the general population. Parishioners learn from pastors who read theologians. They are all on the same page, it's just that there is a time lapse between the academy and the general population. — Leontiskos

If you say so. My impression is that a lot of stuff gets lost in this game of telephones. The God of the common believer has always felt very "human" to me, he's our father, he loves us, he'll take care of us in the end, etc. A far cry from the timeless, genderless, emotionless, unfathomable "being" all the serious thinkers seem to end up with.

Atheists who draw from more able minds are not as vocal (because they are drawing from thinkers like Nietzsche, Marx, Feuerbach, Comte, etc., and these thinkers are much more careful and nuanced in their representations of theism). — Leontiskos

Well these people sound nice. I wonder why it is that when I spoke of "atheists generally" your mind went straight to Dawkins and Hitchens and not to these guys.

Positing a purported goodness that is not good according to our understanding of goodness or a purported justice that is not just according to our conception of justice is irrational. — Janus

The idea that Gods will necessarily aligns with what is good is one of "our" notions of goodness, people just don't necessarily get that it implies that God is fine with human misery. When you do get there you can choose to reject the notion that "God is good" or the notion that "misery is bad", but I wouldn't say either choice makes you irrational.

I don't understand why you would think that something that rejects human rationality is a solution to any problem and especially in the context of philosophical thought. — Janus

Rationality? You said "goodness and justice".

It's the turning of the theological backs on human notions of goodness and justice which I find indefensible. — Janus

But it works as solution to the problem, and for a philosopher that is all that matters.

My point is that I find it hard to blame a these more politically animated New Atheist types for attacking the conception of God with the greatest social relevance. Of course we shouldn't lower ourselves to that level.

why take the beliefs of a 2.5% minority and pretend that they represent the whole group? — Leontiskos

Then why should we listen to Wayfarers conception of God? How many % does he represent?

one is made to focus on the Westboro's — Leontiskos

As opposed to what? Who is more deserving of our focus?

I don't find that plausible. I think people get these ideas independently, then they flock to Dawkins or whoever because he gives them validation. New Atheism is (was) reactionary in that sense.

And more importantly, they always cared far more about the opinions of Al Qaeda, Kent Hovind and the Westboro Baptist Church than those of Alvin Plantinga or Thomas Aquinas.

I think if you read it more you would find a lot of your own ideas reversed and turned into horror. Lovecraftian enlightenment amounts to confronting human ignorance and worthlessness and the absolute amorality and indifference of all things "higher".

Atheists complaining about the God they don't believe in doing things they don't believe God ought to do. — Wayfarer

Atheists generally get their idea of God from elementary religious education, from interacting with casual believers and from listening to sermons in church directed mainly at casual believers. You can't really blame them for not appreciating these sophisticated, esoteric alternative accounts of God of interest mainly to a small number of theology-inclined people.

Maybe the actual problem is this massive conceptual gulf between the mainstream sky-daddy and the borderline Lovecraftian "higher being" of the theistic intelligentsia?

Well, any philosophical problem can be solved if you're allowed to re-conceptualize the terms involved as you like. But I don't understand why you're entitled to your "God-child" who plays hide-and-seek and goes on adventures, but others can't have their divine hotel manager.