Rationality

The problem of God’s omniscience was incidentally brought up in my metaphysics class and we had a brief discussion about how the arguments might be symbolized in modal logic.  This spurred my interest in spelling out the notion of free will in terms of possible worlds.

My first thought was that if I am free, for example, to go to class or not, then the presence of that choice spawns two possible worlds before me (metaphorically, that is, I’m not a modal realist) – one in which I go to class and one in which I don’t.  However, this seems insufficient since even objects that we agree have no free will can have possible worlds branching in their future in exactly the same way (i.e., a stone may roll down the hill on one side or the other, so there are two such possible worlds in the stone’s future).

It doesn’t help matters to say that I freely choose to go to class in one possible world and freely choose not to in another, since “freely” is just what I am trying to explain.

My second thought was that freedom must have something to do with one’s power to actualize a possibility.  In addition to there being two possible worlds branching ahead of me, if I have free will, it is within my power to actualize one or the other (i.e., to make either one of them the actual world).

In formulating the problem of God’s omniscience we have the following:  God is omniscient.  God’s omniscience entails that he knows everything, including what will happen in my future in the actual world.  So let’s say, for example, God knows that I will go to class today.

On my theory, if I have free will I should be able to actualize the possible world in which I don’t go to class today.  But since this would contradict God’s knowledge, I have no such power and therefore no free will.  We can conclude that I will go to class today in the actual world as a matter of fact.

One might be inclined to say that there is a possible world in which I stay home, in which God foreknows that I stay home – but it seems no such possible world can exist.  The reason is that God’s omniscience requires that there is only one possible world (I’ll expand on this below).  Consequently it is trivially true that I will go to class in all possible worlds and so it is a necessary truth in that sense.

When I say my attending class becomes a matter of fact, what I mean is that “Andrew goes to class on August 31st 2010″ is a true statement in the same way that “Andrew was born in March 1982″ is a true statement.  If God is omniscient and my view is right, then my future is unchangeable, that is to say determined, in the same way that my past is unchangeable.

To complete the picture, as it turns out, we have to say that everything is determined – everything about the way the world is, was, and will be, may be stated as facts and could not have been (be, or turn out to be) any different.  Since God knows every fact about the world, those facts are determined (unchangeable).  For example, if God knows that the stone will roll down the left side of the hill, it cannot possibly happen any other way.  The only possible world is therefore the actual one.

A weak objection that pops into mind is that one might argue God knows all possibilities and that he knows which possibility I will freely choose to actualize.  This response doesn’t get us anywhere since the one he knows I will actualize, in virtue of his knowing it, is the only possible world.  Thus the claim that God knows all possibilities just amounts to the claim that God knows what will actually happen.

Things are complicated by the fact that we think God, being all powerful, should be able to create any possible world.  Keeping this in mind, the problem of God’s omniscience becomes deeper than it initially appears – it exposes a conceptual inconsistency in the properties traditionally attributed to God.  That is, if God knows what he will do, then he cannot do otherwise.  If he knows now (in the absolute sense, viz., perfect knowledge) that he will eat pizza for lunch tomorrow, then if he chooses to eat sardines instead he will have contradicted his omniscience.  So if he knows he’ll eat pizza, he cannot eat sardines instead.  But if he cannot choose to eat the sardines, then he is not all powerful.  Either way he doesn’t fit into our traditional conception of God.

P.S. The king of France is bald.

P.P.S. I think asserting that God exists outside of time doesn’t solve the problem, since if that is the only way out of the predicament, it follows that God cannot exist in time, which contradicts his omnipotence.  Not to worry though, it’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just that omnipotence is an incoherent concept.

The Is-Ought/Naturalistic fallacy has come up a number of times in my intro classes this semester.  First, it’s worth pointing out that I have had trouble finding clear definitions of these things – even the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy goes so far as to mention that the definitions are not agreed upon amongst professional philosophers.  The problem I have in mind, though, is basically this: It is a mistake to think that something is morally permissible just because it is natural and it is a mistake to think that something is morally wrong because it is unnatural.

So stated it seems clear to me that those are mistakes and should be avoided.  One reason is that ‘natural’ is not a well-defined term or, at least, it is certainly not used consistently by the ‘folk’.  The go to example would be homosexuality – some conservatives think it’s unnatural and might thereby conclude that it is immoral; some liberals think it’s natural and might thereby conclude that it is moral.  The uses of ‘natural’ are different in each case.  The former might be not much more than a synonym for disgust (i.e., it’s gross, so it’s unnatural), while the latter might be an appeal to the observations of homosexuality in non-human animals.  I don’t think either interpretation of ‘natural’ warrants the conclusions drawn.

The second reason against such arguments is the fact that counter-examples abound.  I might find the sight of a needle puncturing one’s skin (e.g., to administer a flu vaccine) to be gross and unnatural, but I wouldn’t thereby consider it immoral.  I might notice that in their natural habitats chimpanzees throw their feces at one another, but I wouldn’t thereby consider such acts morally permissible in human beings.  Thankfully these kinds of examples suffice to curtail the use of similar arguments among my students (e.g., we naturally eat meat, so it is morally permissible).

However, there is a deeper problem that is not so easily resolved.  The “is-ought fallacy” is not quite the same as the “natural, ergo moral” arguments above.  In short, the claim is that it is a mistake to derive an ‘ought’ statement from an ‘is’ statement, that ethical conclusions cannot be drawn from factual statements.  It is not as clear to me that this is really a fallacy – perhaps a topic for my next post.

I’ve had lucid dreams before and they are always interesting experiences, but a couple of days ago I had one that was especially noteworthy.  I can’t recall much of the detail, but it doesn’t much matter.  I remember peeling what seemed like a hard-boiled egg but which turned out to have some kind of an embryo in it – upon seeing what it was I think the bizarreness shocked me into going lucid (the realization that something one is experiencing cannot possibly be real will sometimes throw one into lucidity).  As is often the case when I go lucid things started to take on a kind of glimmering fuzziness that made it hard to focus.  I imagine this sensation might occur in the real world when one’s pupils have been dilated and everything looks too bright, or if you have bad vision like me, when bright objects or lights take on an a luminous aura when you aren’t wearing glasses or contacts.  The first thing I tried to do in the dream was to bring the world into focus – I was trying to open my eyes wide and, alternatively, to squint in order to see things clearly.  This, of course, was folly.  I had the sudden realization while still dreaming that I was trying to use my eyes to see, but that my eyes were closed and the objects of my perception were all in my head – that I was seeing things without using my eyes!   I then found that by relaxing my dream-eye (is this my mind’s eye?) things would begin to focus.  At this point, as is often the case, the stress of being consciously aware of my dream led me to awaken.

I’m not a huge fan of using the Matrix to explain metaphysical notions, but soon after I woke up I recalled a pertinent scene from the movie.  There is a point where Neo and Morpheus are training in the matrix and Neo is exhausted and sweating profusely.  Seeing his struggle, Morpheus says something like, “you think that’s air your breathing?”  in an effort to get Neo to realize that he wasn’t and shouldn’t be trying to overcome the seeming ‘physical’ obstacles since the things he was experiencing were non-physical.  This was exactly my experience in this particular dream – I couldn’t cope or take control of the dream world until I realized that I wasn’t seeing ‘things’ at all and I wasn’t using my eyes to see them.  It was quite extraordinary.

I’ve gone semi-lucid a number of times before, but on the occasions where I am completely lucid I find it very difficult to stay asleep.  Lucid dreaming, though, is a skill, believe it or not.  Practice can enable one to go lucid more frequently and learn to control one’s dream world.  I’m still a novice, but it sure would be a fun skill to master – opening endless possibilities, like seeing without seeing.

I recently stumbled across a version of the problem of evil (given by Peter Singer – though he is not the first to point it out, it is an especially important matter for him) that strikes me as especially problematic for the Judeo-Christian concept of God.  In case you don’t know the basic version, it may be presented as follows:

1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is omni-benevolent.
3. God is omniscient.
4. Evil exists.

The problem is that while each of these propositions are individually acceptable, they appear to be inconsistent – that is, it appears that they cannot all be true at the same time.  Virtually no one will deny (4), that evil exists in the world.  However, if (1)-(3) are also true, then God knows about the evil, he has the power to do away with it, and being all-good he should want to do away with it – yet evil still exists.

Of course, as I said, it may be argued that these propositions merely appear to be inconsistent and that, in fact, they are not.  Some of the typical (and most effective) Christian responses are that evil is the result of (i) free-will, (ii) original sin, or (iii) the fact that evil is necessary in order for us to learn life-lessons but for which evil we are eventually repaid in the afterlife.  I find these answers to be prima facie plausible and consistent with Christian teachings.

The problem of animal suffering, however, cannot be resolved by any of the typical responses.  We can take the same set of propositions as before, but replace (4) with (4a): Animals suffer needlessly.  Once again, God knows about their suffering, he could stop it, and he should want to stop it – yet they still suffer.  Virtually no one will deny (4a); it seems clear that animals feel pain.  Animals have nervous systems conducive to their feeling pain and they clearly behave as if they feel pain.  Anyone who has had a dog , cat, or other animal as a friend surely believes animals can suffer and that we, as moral beings, have some kind of obligation to prevent their suffering.

However, the typical Christian responses to the problem of evil will no longer apply.  As for (i), Christianity clearly does not teach that animals have free-will, since free-will is a unique gift afforded to human beings.  Regarding (ii), it is equally clear that animals do not suffer due to original sin, since they have no relation to Adam and Eve (and it’s called the fall of man after all, not the fall of animals [although I suppose by this reasoning women would not suffer due to original sin either, so let's call it the fall of humankind {and don't you hate it when I start using nested parentheses!  I blame this on my spending too many hours playing with logic proofs}]).  Last, it cannot be the case that, as in (iii), animals suffer in order to teach human beings life-lessons; this is evinced by the fact that animals have endured much suffering over the many millions of years that they existed on an Earth devoid of human life.  But even today, animals face all kinds of suffering that has nothing to do with human activities (regular things like drought, famine, or being eaten by a tiger); and to top it all off, the animals would get no recompense in an afterlife (since, sadly, all dogs don’t go to heaven).  Without appealing to ‘mysterious ways’, the ‘best possible world’ argument, or pleading ignorance in some other fashion, I’m at a loss as to what a reasonable response would be.

aka: Stop beating the dead straw-man!

Skepticism has to be one of the most widely misunderstood views in all of philosophy.  It is understandable that the folk-concept of skepticism (i.e., the average everyday person’s concept) is somewhat vague and generally wrong.  However, I recently came across a journal article (that was actually published) which summarized arguments (from a book by the same author) that allegedly refute skepticism, but the arguments only serve to knock down the folk-concept-derived straw-man of skepticism.  What bothers me is not that the average person may think about skepticism along these lines, but that someone published a book on it!  Needless to say the author is not a philosopher, but when you go out of your way to get your ideas published you should at least run it by someone who works in the relevant field.  Anyways, I thought I’d present the bad arguments and explain what’s wrong with them because, well, someone should.

Before “refuting” skepticism the author explains his position:

“critical realism”: a world exists independently of human minds (realism), but sifting, judging, and discerning (critical) are often required in the knowledge process.  This sifting enables us to discern between appearances (mirages, optical illusions, dreams) and the way things are, between truth and falsehood.

I take this to be almost everyone’s metaphysical position, I have only heard it referred to as “direct” or “naive” realism.  We all believe that there is a real world and that our perceptions are generally reliable.  This position (as presented by the author) is question-begging; to say that we have knowledge about reality because we can discern between appearances and reality is already to presuppose that there is a difference between the two (i.e., that there is such a thing as ‘objective reality’).  Anyway, the author presumably has an argument for realism and that is a fine position to take.  But problems arise as soon as he attempts to describe skepticism. He writes:

[T]he skeptic often wrongly assumes that if another alternative is even logically possible, then you should question your beliefs, no matter how well-grounded. But this just doesn’t logically follow at all! How is it the case that if it’s possible I’m wrong, therefore I am wrong?

The “logically possible” alternatives to which the author refers are things like Descartes’ evil demon scenario, or the possibility that you are really in the Matrix, etc.  However the skeptic does not use these possibilities in order to make you question your beliefs, nor do they claim that since you could be wrong, you are wrong.  The skeptic has all of the same beliefs that you do regarding regular everyday things.  The possibility that you could be wrong only shows that you may not, in fact, know what you think you know.

[The skeptic argues that] we can’t distinguish between plausible and ridiculous views, but that position is clearly silly. [...] there’s no reason to reject what seems so obvious to us in favor of less-obvious alternatives.

This passage is where the author comes closest to getting skepticism right, and naturally he misses the point entirely.  The skeptic’s claim simply is that all of our evidence is compatible with an infinite number of possible metaphysical explanations about reality.  One possibility is that our perceptions correspond to reality – that when we see a chair, there really is a chair that exists in roughly the way we believe that it does.  Another possibility is that an all-powerful evil demon is toying with our minds and there is no chair at all.  One view seems plausible to us while the other seems ridiculous – but can we distinguish between the two?  Obviously not; there is no way to check for evil-demons and there is no way to check for ‘actual’ chairs.  All we have in the way of evidence is the conscious awareness of our own perceptual states; the whole point of the skeptical scenarios is that they are 100% compatible with the whole of our evidence.  Yes, it would be silly to believe that the demon-possibility is not only possible but actual, but no one believes this (skeptics included).

[S]kepticism tends to eliminate personal or moral responsibility since it systematically ignores or evades truth, which is a crucial component of knowledge.

Here, again, the author nearly makes a good point.  The skeptic never claims that our beliefs about reality are false, only that it is impossible for us to know that they are true.  This is the fundamental problem that the skeptics are trying to point out: truth is indeed a crucial component of knowledge, yet it is the one evading us (not the other way around)!  The skeptic neither ignores nor evades the truth (whatever that would mean), since we do not have access to anything resembling objective truth.  As for the odd claim about skeptics being immoral, I have never known a skeptic to make any claims beyond the realm of epistemology, so I’m not sure where the author is coming from on this point (unless he takes skepticism to entail moral relativism).  I will just say that one does not need to be certain that they know appearances correspond to reality in order to believe in and act according to some concept of moral responsibility.