How Should I Be A Sceptic -- the leveled playing-field

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.

This is the final entry of the section, and concludes a summary of positions reached in previous entries. I recommend reading at least the previous entry first. I concluded that entry with a paragraph where I stated that even as a sceptic "I would not propose that we can discover nothing useful and/or true about the IF."]


Closely related to this, as a sceptic I think I would discount worldviews (atheistic, pantheistic, theistic, whatever) that require the IF to be an abstract generality. The implication of such a worldview, when followed through, ends by denying the existence of the IF--or else holding such a worldview in name, I would still end up contradicting myself by treating the IF (after all) as a particular highly concrete thing. Put another way, I would understand that the implications of the relationship between the IF and 'derivative' things (even if they turn out to be parts of the IF considered as separate for purposes of convenience) require by default that the IF must be the most real and (in some way) minutely articulated, complex thing in existence. So, for instance, if I was a philosophical naturalist, I would consider the field of Nature (taken as a whole) to be by default the most real, minutely articulated and complex thing in existence. It is not a generality or an abstraction--it could not be an 'abstraction' for the very simple reason that it is by default (per the naturalism philosophy) the Total. More to the point, I would understand that generalities and abstractions and relationships describe things: they are adjectives, not nouns (even if we for convenience often treat them as nouns). It is nonsensical to claim there is an entity corresponding to Pink. Pink describes the attributes of something.

Closely related to that, I would as a sceptic reject theories which require that I do not exist, or that my thoughts must be illusionary, or something of that sort. Such philosophies can only get going by immediately positing and overtly embracing contradictions; and at the best this means I can have no reason to believe them to be true. Put more bluntly, if I really did not exist then 'I' would not be in a position either to discover this for myself or even to flatly assert it!

As a sceptic, although I would perhaps consider the question of derivative gods interesting, I would be much more concerned (at least at first) with discovering the characteristics of the IF. Put another way (for instance, in terms of typical Greek mythology), I would consider the question "Does Zeus exist?" to be subordinate to the question "Is Chaos the fundamental grounding aspect of reality?" Otherwise I would only be putting the horse behind the cart.

As a sceptic, I would be extremely suspicious of philosophies which require the IF itself to be both sentient and non-sentient; again, because deep internal contradictions are necessary to propose this belief, and also because when this type of belief is put into practice it eventually 'collapses' into a practical belief in either a SIF or an n-SIF anyway.

As a sceptic, I would try to treat metaphors fairly and realistically. When reductive metaphors are used, I would try very hard to remember that we should not then subsequently refer back to the distinctive characteristics represented by the reductive metaphor. For instance, although I might have to speak for convenience as if molecules and atomic particles made choices and initiated actions, I would be extremely careful not to hang argumentative points on the requirement that they did those things (assuming I didn't really think they did those things--which, by the way, I don't). People who talk as though parameciums and other microscopic lifeforms 'choose' and 'act' don't always think this is what microorganisms 'do'; yet sometimes these same people will require their metaphor to be literal--that more is going on than what they would otherwise propose was going on. I would always be on the watch for that kind of fudging, be it from supernaturalistic theists or atheists or pantheists or whomever--and I would especially be on the watch for it in my own arguments.

Yet, I would as a sceptic also understand that most of the time when we use metaphorical language we mean more, not less, than the language indicates. The biologist who speaks of a paramecium 'deciding' to go thataway for food probably means less than his imagery suggests--most biologists don't consider paramecia to be capable of conscious choices and other actions, but only capable of automatic reactions and counterreactions. But such use of metaphor (though important) is relatively uncommon. More often, we mean more than the imagery suggests. Language is necessarily reductive, so we have to use similar words for multiple meanings. For example, by 'reductive' in the last sentence, I don't mean that language makes real things smaller. I mean something more complex and nuanced than my language indicates. And I would also play fairly by not requiring that people somehow abandon metaphor and 'talk plainly'. It can't be done; the effort to do so results in choosing other metaphors (without realizing they are metaphors) which are often less efficient at helping the idea across than the original metaphor. On the other hand, sometimes it isn't a bad idea to restate the contention using different imagery and then using a comparison of the two images to help correct and refine the perception of the idea I am trying to communicate. This same process takes place on a somewhat larger scale when analogies are used to help illustrate a previously developed argument.

[Footnote: I would, of course, be on the lookout for the so-called 'argument from analogy' where the analogies only illustrate a blanket assertion--the argument only being presumed to have been made--but I would also be careful not to fall off the horse on the other side and accuse someone of arguing by analogy simply because he happens to use a number of illustrative analogies.]

As a sceptic, I would be very interested in 'evidence', for both my own side and another's. But I would require the burden of proof to be on the instigator of the debate (although if I was going to counter-convince I would need to be ready to marshal my own arguments and evidence).

Also, if I was going to be fair, then as a sceptic I would recognize that a purported supernatural event would very probably leave evidence not much (perhaps not any) different from a natural event. The good news (if I happened to be a naturalist) is that this usually cuts both ways. If a city buried by volcanism is found near the Dead Sea, or another city in Mesopotamia turns up the base of a large ziggurat with attendant documents suggesting that a confusion of language prevented the ziggurat from being completed, then although I might be inclined to accept that the historicity of these accounts in purported scriptures has more strength than I originally allowed, I am not necessarily obligated to assign a supernatural cause to the natural effect--no more than I am necessarily obligated to accept the existence and character of the Greek pantheon after Troy's existence and history are finally corroborated by archaeologists. Then again, if on other grounds I was persuaded that something exists which could be expected to exert supernatural influence to produce those effects, and if the stories tended to match in metaphysics the characteristics of the entity in question, I would be much further along the road to accepting the accounts as presented in the documents. Similarly, if the Greek pantheon could be established metaphysically, I might decide to take Homer's stories as being even closer to history than I originally thought.

So the evidence would have to be something that didn't depend solely on (purported) historical documents; because how I interpret those documents is always strongly affected by my trans-historical beliefs. This is true, even if that trans-historical belief reduces simply down to: "My parents and teachers (and/or preacher) told me so, and I find them to be otherwise trustworthy."

Therefore as a sceptic, I would require that the evidence in favor of, for example, a Sentient Independent Fact (SIF) should be of a type closely related in character to the proposed SIF--and that I should be able to figure out this close relation from inferences about the evidence (not have it dictated to me as an unexaminable premise). In other words, if I thought reality had only two dimensions (length and width) and did not have depth as a third dimension, I would require evidence from the 3-D proponent that some kind of 3-D effect takes place where I can detect it.

I might possibly allow that the effects would be immediately represented in terms of a 2-D effect, and so not hold this necessarily against the 3-D proponent. [Footnote: When a sphere progressively intersects a plane by passing through it, the 2-D man would see a circle grow from apparently nothing and shrink back to apparently nothing--he would not see what we would consider to be the 'shape' of a 'sphere'.]

However, I would at the same time require that this proposed evidence should not be effectively reducible (or fully explainable) in terms of 2-D causes. If the evidence can be explained that way, then although I might still allow that the evidence might perhaps still be explainable by a 3-D cause, I cannot see that I would be under any fair obligation to exclusively accept the 3-D cause over the 2-D cause. The evidence must be such that in principle it cannot be the product of 2-D causes--even if I am naturally restricted from directly perceiving the 3-D cause by being an entity with 2-D perception.

Similarly, the evidence for supernatural ultimate sentience should be such that the evidence cannot in principle be fully explained as a product of the Natural system (taking into account whatever characteristics of the Natural system we can discover, or at least agree upon). Otherwise, although I might allow that the evidence could perhaps be caused by the SIF, I would be under no fair obligation I am aware of to accept the existence of the SIF rather than accept the explanation of purely non-sentient natural causation.

I think this leaves a wide range of potential opposition to Christianity. I can see myself holding these views, and still being an atheist (of various sorts); or some type of polytheist; or perhaps a positive pantheist; or a nominal deist (God created Nature, but has never interfered with it afterwards). I could still be an agnostic (although not an 'intrinsic' agnostic). I think I could be a Jew or Muslim, or an adherent of any of a number of theisms which oppose (to whatever degree) Christianity. I could even be a Mormon, I think.

But I am not any of these. I am an orthodox Christian. And now the time has come for me to begin to build, if I can (or not, if I cannot), a positive argument for the existence and characteristics of God which, although some of my opponents may also find it useful, will (in hindsight) exclusively answer the question: "Why do I think Christianity is true?"


[Coming eventually: Section Two, Reason and the First Person]

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- a summary of results

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.]


Having followed a path throughout this section that leads to the question of evidence, I am now ready to proceed with my positive argument. However, before I begin my next section, let me summarize where I am.

As I said near the beginning of this book, my goal for this section is merely to level the playing field so that misunderstandings about religious propositions don't lurk undisclosed in the background, inspiring unwarranted and spurious opposition. In the process, I have necessarily had to pare off certain propositions here and there. But I have at least followed one of my core positions for this chapter: no matter how complicated the proposition, if it is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of the implications of propositions, then the proposition ought to be rejected.

This does not mean I necessarily reject absolutely everything proposed by the adherents of the beliefs that I have had to treat rather shortly in this section. As I explained back in Chapter 1, I am still obligated to recognize at the very least where I agree with them and to thereby acknowledge real credit of theirs on those issues. Furthermore, it is in principle possible that many of their subordinate points may be valid taken as themselves, and might even be deductively valid if grounded using different foundational principles.

Surely the most obvious illustration of my potential relationship with these people and their beliefs, involves my actual relationship with some of my Christian brethren. I think some of them ground their positions (often without them realizing they are 'grounding' anything!) on some drastic misunderstandings; nevertheless, I actually agree with them on virtually all of their ultimate positions and very many of their subordinate ones. I just don't think they can get there from where they start.

Relatedly, an ontological dualist and I will rapidly come to many serious disagreements; but we also share a few common beliefs (sometimes even for the same reasons). The ontological dualists perhaps make a better example, because I think their core proposition of multiple-IFs, ends up becoming really a proposition for a single IF, if I follow through the implications of their position. I suggest this is one way that reconciliation can take place between myself and at least some of the advocates I have mentioned in this section.

Meanwhile, the advocates with whom I am least likely to find common ground, are the ones who explicitly or implicitly deny their (and my) own rationality (whether or not they are technically on 'my side'). But that should not be surprising: digging a philosophical hole, jumping in, and pulling it in after you, not only leaves no bar to further progress by me but also leaves no means for common dialogue (and thus no means of having, much less finding, 'common ground') between us.

In most cases, however, very many of my opponents should still be on board as viable opposition. I submit that if I had started this book sceptical of Christianity, I would still be a sceptic. But what kind of sceptic would I be?


I would be a sceptic who recognizes that it is entirely possible to discover at least something regarding religious (or anti-religious) propositions. I would not be what I have called a "negative agnostic". I would understand that the statement "discussions about religion can reach no useful answers" undercuts itself, and so cannot be true. If I was an agnostic, I would have reached my agnosticism by evaluating competing claims and finding none of them satisfactory--all of them would, in my opinion, have major problems, including naturalistic atheism. [See first comment below for a deferred footnote here.] But I would therefore be affirming that in principle useful answers one way or another could be discovered (just that, as far as I could tell, nothing I had seen yet had sufficiently accomplished this).

Very closely related to this, I would be a sceptic who does not accept that all statements about God are equally false. I would understand that such a statement refutes itself, because I myself would be claiming thereby to make a true statement about God. My claim would thus end in a necessary contradiction.

Closely related to that, I would be a sceptic who does not accept that all statements about God can be equally true. It cannot be equally true that God really exists in a particular fashion, and also does not really exist in that fashion. Various religions and anti-religions make exclusive claims about what is true or not true about God, Nature, man, etc. To accept that they all hit the mark equally well, I would have to be willing to accept flat contradictions.

Closely related to all of the above points, I would be a sceptic who understands the devastating effect of requiring necessary contradictions in a theory. I would understand that contradictions are propositions which borrow their seeming force from the coherency of language, not from any other sort of reality they may seem (on the face of it) to represent. [Footnote: for that matter, sometimes a contradiction won't even involve a merely grammatic coherency of language!] However, I would also fairly recognize that a properly paradoxical claim is not a true contradiction, but only looks like one--it points to a further link to be discovered which reconciles the apparently exclusive claims of the paradox. Of course, I would check extremely closely to ensure that a proposed 'paradox' really is a paradox and not a contradiction claimed as 'paradox' to deflect analysis (and thus save the theory by cheating). The paradox invites further analysis, in the real hope of truly reconciling the (merely) apparent conflict. I would obviously be on the lookout for requirements of contradictions in religious theories; but if I was a fair sceptic I would also keep a sharp watch for theories from any anti-religious side of the aisle which require necessary contradictions.

Furthermore, as a sceptic, I would keep an eye out for circular argumentation as support for a conclusion, on any side of the aisle; because I would understand why such methods lead a thinker precisely nowhere.

I would be a sceptic who understands that a successful system check of a theory grounded on a hypothesized proposal does not necessarily exclude other theories from being true explanations; and I would also understand that a failed system check does not mean that a given attempted conclusion must necessarily be false. Also, I would be ready to apply this concept both to theories I sympathize with, and to ones I oppose.

As a sceptic, I would be rather suspicious of theories which require that I accept anything without analysis; and this would include theories which hinge on accepting documents as normative without such confirmational analysis. At the same time, if I was going to be fair, I would be ready in principle to acknowledge when documents have details that can be historically corroborated. That would not mean I would be suddenly ready to believe everything else the purported author has claimed; but I would be ready to revise my opinions (to at least some degree) about why and how those documents were produced. [See second comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

Although I might not have started with an understanding of the intimate interrelationship between religious beliefs and reasoning, I think that after studying how we develop beliefs in other venues I would be prepared to reject any attempts (by any side) at divorcing the two concepts. As a sceptic, I think this means I would fairly conclude that religion is not necessarily a private assertion separated from the 'real' 'practical' world by some kind of negatively spiritual ditch. If I did think that, then I might be justified in blowing off the whole proceeding as not having any possibility of relevance for myself. But once I check how beliefs develop in other topics, I would be ready to allow that religious beliefs might possibly be something other than isolated psychological effects. To put it another way, in order to be fair I would deny that "only believers believe their beliefs are based on something other than belief" (as a respondent once dismissively told me). At best such a position would be fatally contradictory to my own beliefs, whatever they are as a sceptic! (It might also be grossly unfair game-rigging if someone showed up for the discussion who really did have reasons other than sheer wish-fulfillment impulses.)

Closely related to the last few points: as a sceptic I would not accept that a flat assertion functions as a belief. Of course, it could easily (and very often does) reflect a developed belief. But that isn't the same thing as being a belief in and of itself. Put another way, I would see such a position as being perhaps the ultimate in wish-fulfillment: to claim reality is such-n-such a way with no justification for this claimed truth other than my mere say-so. As attractive as that position might be to my nature (especially to my ego and my sense of self-preservation), I would still reject it not only for fairness' sake but also because I am not sure I could even reach that position (much less maintain it) without contradicting myself. Put yet another way, if I brutely claim 'no reasons' for holding a stance (no matter what pious coloring I give it using religious-faith language), then I also have 'no reasons' why I should not hold a different stance (much less 'no reasons' why something other than my assertion cannot be true.)

As a sceptic, I would not advocate the concept of an infinite regress. I would understand that this position either denies a real ground to any conclusion (rendering all theories invalid, especially any theories of mine concerning infinite regressions!), or if examined carefully actually turns out to be itself grounded on an Independent Fact. This would also, in passing, close off yet another potential attempt at claiming that 'all religious ideas are equally true/false, therefore I can safely ignore religious questions'.

As a sceptic, I would not advocate the existence of multiple Independent Facts. I would not, for instance, be a ontological dualist, either in terms of a God/Nature dualism or a God/Anti-God dualism. I would understand that the implications of such a stance either cancel themselves out in practice, or else in practice actually reflect the existence of some type of IF above and beyond the entities for which (or for Whom) I was previously claiming that title.

Putting together, to some degree, many of the previous points: as a sceptic, I would not propose that we can discover nothing useful and/or true about the IF. I would understand that such a proposition immediately contradicts itself: if it is impossible to discover true things about the IF, how did I discover that? And I would be extremely leery about proposing that the one possibly discoverable characteristic about the IF is that nothing else can be discovered. For example, there is a good chance that if I was not a Christian, I would be a philosophical naturalist. (More likely a neo-pagan naturalist than a naturalistic atheist, though--at least aesthetically...) And virtually any philosophical naturalist will affirm that true things can be discovered about Nature--which, for the philosophical naturalist, is the IF. [See third comment below for a deferred footnote here.]


[Next time: the leveled playing-field (and the end of the Section)]

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- evidence from reasonable scepticism to reasonable belief

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.

I ended the previous entry (which continues chapter 12), by asking, "If I was a sceptic, what kind of evidence would I accept?"

Please note that this is one of those entries which might not necessarily be agreed to by all Cadre members.]


I will presume I am not in the grip of a strong emotional pull toward some belief. I do not (speaking actually as a Christian) deny that God can and does convict many people through a process that doesn't seem, at first, to have much to do with analysis. But I think that sooner or later the converted sceptic, whether to or from a religious belief, should face questions of coherency and intelligibility in the new position he is taking. Otherwise, I cannot see how he would be acting responsibly. I think it is easier for errors (or ‘heresies’, religiously speaking) to hide behind overt inscrutability than behind dense logic; indeed, the density of a train of thought can only hide an error by being difficult to work through and thus effectively inscrutable to people who lack the tools and training to sift through the claim. But that kind of inscrutability can, in principle, be effectively 'seen-through', to discover real strengths and weaknesses; while the overt inscrutability of 'mystery' claims (improperly so-called, for ‘mysteries’ involve new knowledge, not un-knowledge or currently-held secrets), or of 'glorious contradictions', never pretended to be intelligible. But this also means they are humanly indistinguishable from error. That means it would be entirely up to God (insofar as a religious belief goes) to provide an emotional impulse so powerful that people are headed off from false beliefs. And this obviously is not the case; if God exists, He does not (regularly) do that.

Some of my Christian (or other theistic) brethren might say that He never compulses, but He does always provids enough information in this life for someone to know which is the true belief, so that a rejection of it is due to willful rebellion. Perhaps He does--I am certainly not convinced that this is how He works in regard to a set of religious doctrines per se--but by advocating even this, these fellow-believers have abandoned a 'faith-not-reason' stance: for they are now saying that people are faced with a rational choice and are responsible for analysis of something as part of accepting or rejecting truth.

And, at bottom, that is exactly what I have been proposing throughout this section; we would only be differing in regard to what God provides for the analysis.

But if He provides one thing, we cannot automatically exclude the possibility that He would provide something else to help people to the same critical point. [See first comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

So, sooner or later I should honestly and responsibly check evidential claims, if I care about whether I follow a true belief rather than a false one. And if I was a sceptic who cared about believing true claims rather than false ones, I would be acting responsibly to require sufficient evidence of some kind. Psychologically speaking, different people will require different levels of 'evidence' before they choose to accept a belief. But if I wanted to maximize my chances of choosing the most 'realistic' belief--the one that most closely matches the way reality 'really' is--what kind of evidence should I responsibly look for?

Let me go a bit further: as a 'sceptic' I am not sitting around in some positivistic vacuum, even for purposes of argument--only newborn babies who have never thought at all, yet, are in that position, among living, conscious persons. Even if I am a 'sceptic', then I already have a definable opinion of some sort (with attendant reasons of varying strengths) for believing (or doubting) reality to be a certain way. The question should be: what kind of evidence might I responsibly require to actively reject my (sceptical) belief and accept another view of reality as being more accurate?

As I think about it, it becomes clear that not just any evidence will do. The best type of evidence would need to have the following characteristics:

a.) It must be evidence I actually have access to, and that I can clearly detect that I have access to.

b.) It must be evidence that is clearly distinctive without question-begging. It might take a lot of detailed and difficult study to ascertain that some documents claiming to be God-inspired are more historically grounded than others (especially if I am a sceptic); and even then, that conclusion doesn't immediately demonstrate that the documents may be trusted to convey metaphysical truth. If my brethren have trouble understanding this concept from the sceptical point of view, let me remind them that historians have demonstrated Homer's Iliad contains quite a few accurate historical details; but virtually no one (especially an advocate of one of the Big Three Theisms) accepts this to mean the truth of the Greek divine pantheon as represented in the Iliad has thereby been solidly established.

c.) Ideally, it must be evidence which can in fact provide a solid foundation from which a deductive argument can be developed; because only a deductive argument can be functionally exclusive. [See second comment below for a deferred footnote here.] This would be important to me as a sceptic; because I am not being asked to reinforce a belief I already have, but instead to reject a belief (or beliefs) I already have in favor of another belief; and this requires some type of exclusive conclusion. Furthermore, it is, perhaps, technically possible that the deductive argument will not exclude my belief I am being asked to reject; the result may be parallel and complementary to my own belief, in which case you (the believer) would be unfair (and making a logical misstep) to ask me to give up my belief. So if I am asked to reject my belief in favor of the alternative, the alternative must be functionally and formally exclusive.

d.) The argument deduced from this evidence must be valid. If the logical pathway from the evidence to the conclusion is broken, then by default I should not be expected to reach that conclusion via that pathway.

I think these general guidelines are fair ones for an apologist (of whatever belief, religious or non-religious or anti-religious) to work within when arguing a position with an intelligent, informed sceptic. These are the general guidelines I would apply if I was a sceptical opponent of Christianity; and they are the general guidelines I do apply as a Christian when I am asked to reject part or all of my beliefs for an exclusive alternative!

Having established these parameters for my positive argument, it is time for me to finish this section.


[Next time: what kind of sceptic should I be]

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- a sieve of curious similarities

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.

Near the end of the previous entry, which begins chapter 12, I introduced an example featuring myself making a cloud through supernatural power, and considering what a naturalist friend of mine, Chase, might decide about my claim that I had done such a thing. This entry continues the chapter by expanding the complexity of the example.]


Let us say Chase has a friend, Reed, who is a supernaturalist. The possibilities become complex from here, so I will set up a sieve to help distinguish them. Remember, however, that in every case I am in fact producing the cloud through supernatural power. My claim is presumed (for purposes of this illustration of principles) to in fact be true.

I.) I create a cloud with supernatural power, and then call Chase (the naturalist) and Reed (the supernaturalist) to come look at it. I claim I did this with supernatural power. (Although I don't have a (II) element, I am assigning this a (I) label in order to help emphasize the ovearaching unity within which the suboptions are occurring.)

I.A.) I am someone who, for one reason or another, often claims what is not true.

I.A.1.) Chase.

I.A.1.a.) Chase knows me well; and so knows I am someone who often claims what is not true. So he has no preliminary expectation to believe me--thus, prudently speaking, he should not believe me.

I.A.1.b.) Chase does not know me. But Chase is a naturalist; as far as he knows, supernatural manipulation of Nature cannot happen. Why should he believe me? Anyone can point at a cloud and say, "I created that."

I.A.2.) Reed.

I.A.2.a.) Reed knows me well. As far as he knows, such a thing could occur; but also he knows I am someone who should not be trusted. Unless he had good prior (or other concurrent) grounds for accepting my word (which I have not provided in this example), there is no good reason why he should be expected to believe me.

I.A.2.b.) Reed does not know me. At this point, it's a toss-up; but I think he would be justified in a fairly agnostic stance, reserving judgment until he finds or receive more evidence (which, in practice, could amount to provisionally discounting my claim, of course).

I.B.) I am someone who usually tells the truth, or someone who would not be expected to invent something like this in my circumstances.

I.B.1.) Chase.

I.B.1.a.) Chase knows me well. It would therefore be quite fair for him to conclude that I believe what I am saying; but he has no good reason to deny his naturalism on my mere say-so. And, after all, a cloud is pretty much a cloud. His most reasonable conclusion would probably be that I am mistaken. (Medically, psychologically, coincidentally, whatever.) Let us go further: he gives me a medical/psych exam and (assuming no exam-rigging presumptions based on my claim vs. his philosophy) I receive a clean bill of health; meaning that he has good grounds to believe I saw the cloud form when I wished for it to form. And the chances that an atmospheric phenomenon of this sort would spontaneously arise at that point in time (when I wished for it) are remote; but even the most remote possibility is better than what Chase thinks is impossible. So he should go with that, and disbelieve me.

I.B.1.b.) Chase does not know me. He is basically in the same position as option I:A:1:b--anyone can point at a cloud and claim to have made it through supernatural power. Given his philosophy, he would be justified to disbelieve me.

I.B.2.) Reed.

I.B.2.a.) Reed knows me well. He would still have to contend with the possibility that I am mistaken, or even the possibility that I am playing a game with him. But he would be inclined, I think, to believe me; and it would be fair of him to do so. Still, it might be a very cautious and provisional sort of belief. He did not actually see me make the cloud.

I.B.2.b.) Reed does not know me. Basically the same as I:A:2:b.

I could introduce the concept of witnesses now. When Chase and Reed arrive they find x-number of witnesses who claim to have seen me do this. The weight this lends to my claim would usually be positive, but could vary widely according to circumstances.

In the best-case scenario, numerous witnesses who are demonstrably upstanding sensible and honest citizens (perhaps even likely to suffer by the claim, certainly not gain much) might convince Chase that he is not being intentionally deceived. Their testimony might even convince him to take a closer look at his core belief (upon which his judgment of the possibility of the cloud's supernatural formation depends). But as long as that core belief remains honestly accepted as valid (even if he has done 'the math' wrong, and just hasn't found the error or hasn't carried the math far enough yet), Chase might still properly decide that a spontaneous mass hallucination, or mass lying by people not otherwise known to be liars, or a freak atmospheric phenomenon, or some other (perhaps unknown) grotesquely improbable explanation must be true--because (he thinks) the other cannot be true. [See first comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

Reed, meanwhile, believes that something like this could happen, and so such ideal witnesses would be good grounds for him to more strongly advocate a good belief in the cloud's appearance.

Please note that both Chase and Reed are (I believe, and am claiming) making proper decisions in every one of the situations I have presented. Chase (in this example) happens to be wrong, but it is a very understandable error. In the case of the numerous ideal witnesses, he might possibly be a bit embarrassed--or maybe even honestly relieved!--to be shown after all to be wrong; but he was still making a very prudently proper choice (in my idealized example) given his data. I do not think he would have anything to be ashamed of, given his core belief plus only scanty evidence. [Footnote: or, worse, given countervailing evidence! If the crowd of people asserting my little miracle happen to be obviously untrustworthy and/or likely to gain heavily by lying, then this might count very fairly against my claim!] Of course, if the truth ever does become clear to him, he could still choose to reject (as far as possible) what he himself has now recognized to be true. But that is another issue for another chapter. [Footnote: I will be thoroughly considering this behavior, its implications, and its consequences, in Section Four--primarily in connection to my responsibility as a person.]

This is the type of situation in which most people find themselves concerning 'evidence' of supernatural events (or even often of claims about natural events!) If a supernatural event occurs, it will either be perceptible or imperceptible. If it is imperceptible in its effects (immediately or otherwise), there is an end to the matter. No matter how perceptible such an event may be to me, if it is functionally (according to its characteristics) imperceptible to you, then I do not think you can legitimately be considered unreasonable for not believing it happened. From your perspective, it would be indistinguishable from a lie or a mistake. If, for example, God speaks to me and gives me a message to pass on to you, how are you to tell whether I am lying or mistaken or not?

I think this is why prophets in Jewish and Christian scripture (and to a certain extent in Muslim tradition--and not discounting other religious traditions as well) almost always are portrayed as being able to back up their claims with "attesting signs". Whether or not those events actually happened, you should be able to understand why such events would be considered very useful and helpful; especially to a population who lacks access to formal analysis principles. Once authority has been solidly established, the attesting signs would not strictly be necessary.

For that matter, if the signs were sent by an Entity Who strongly wanted us to establish a personal and loving relationship to Him, I think there would very probably be a sharp limit to how many (and under what circumstances) signs would be given by this Entity. Such events would excite (almost inevitably) fear and wonder; which are not necessarily bad feelings in themselves, but could possibly build up attitudes of cowed submission rather than personal trust and love.

If, besides all this, the sub-entities in question were rebellious to one degree or another (and thus likely to abuse any authoritative power given to them), then an even sharper limit could reasonably be established by the Entity as to where, when and how many attesting signs would be sent.

Finally, if this Entity was also the IF--the Independent Fact of reality upon which everything else is based, including Nature--and if the IF was supernatural; then at the level of the system we call Nature, 'natural' events would be by default the 'norm': this is why Nature could be distinguished as one system and not another. Thus, effects introduced into this system by the IF, other than what we might call 'maintenance' effects (normally below our threshold of perception), would be relatively rare purely by Nature being, per the supernaturalistic hypothesis, an established and distinct subsystem.

Of course, I have not yet argued positively for any of this. But it doesn't take much imagination to see, that if certain conditions could be established, then the frequency, circumstances, and types of 'obvious' miracles--obvious interruptions or supercessions of the natural process--might easily follow an inferable pattern.

Let me jump ahead quite a lot, for a moment: it does not surprise me in the least (once I have thought the situation all the way through) to hear that God sends obvious miracles at what He (not necessarily I) would consider to be lynchpins of history; nor does it surprise me to see a lack of obvious activity (setting aside what I may think of as suspiciously convenient circumstance!) in my own general vicinity; nor that there should be few prayers of mine granted in an obvious and immediate fashion; nor that missionaries in underdeveloped regions should report a higher incidence of obvious miracle than either they or I find in already heavily Christianized societies (even if increasingly apostate ones) such as the United States and most of Europe; nor that the reports of Christianity's spread through 1st Century Mediterranea in the face of strongly established religious/state conflicts of interest should include reports of an unusually high incident-rate of miraculous activity; nor that as the burgeoning Church becomes stronger over time, such activity begins to drop off in the reports; nor that such activities are reported to be lesser in scale than the reported activities of the founder of Christianity himself.

I easily grant that particular instances of these reports should always be up for discussion (and also debate--which is the only means a sceptic has of entering into discussion, I remind my brethren!) And I also grant that elements of this pattern can be explained in other ways. I even grant that the total pattern can be explained in other ways. Yet the general pattern that emerges from my own tradition and experience, does also fit the inferred pattern I find emerging (subordinately) from my metaphysic. And this increases my confidence, that by following this particular tradition, I am on the right trail. [See second comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

As I have said, however, this is jumping ahead quite a lot; it may be only of direct interest to my Christian (and perhaps other theistic) fellow-believers. My sceptical readers should very properly have a different perspective on the subject of 'evidence': specifically, what kind of evidence could a sceptic fairly accept? This leads me back to my main topic for this chapter.

If I was a sceptic, what kind of evidence would I accept?


[Next up: evidence from reasonable scepticism to reasonable belief]

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- evidence and the burden of proof

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.]


At the end of my previous chapter, I demonstrated that metaphor does not necessarily need to mean something less than its imagery suggests; and that to immediately presume otherwise is a common fallacy in the discussion of religious propositions. Incidents and claims should be taken on a case-by-case basis, and filtered through an already developed philosophical position.

So, to return to my example of Jesus' Ascension into heaven: what you or I believe this imagery can mean, is constrained by what you or I have already decided is, or is not, possible. If a supernatural God does not exist, then Jesus cannot have moved from our Nature to a Supernature while exhibiting the extent of His divine authority and/or existence. The story must reflect some other set of objectively real events: for example, perhaps the story was invented for any of a number of purposes; or perhaps aliens levitated Jesus to a throne-shaped craft.

If, however, God does exist as the supernaturally transcendent Sentient Independent Fact--what can we say about the story?

Frankly, such a belief does not automatically exclude the forgery explanation--or even the alien-superscience explanation!

But it does include as a live possibility (to be strengthened or refuted on further grounds and evidence) that the traditionally 'orthodox' or reading of this passage is true. I have not yet begun to argue positively for the truth of a reality where the 'orthodox' interpretation could (much more would) subsequently also be true. But I have now reached the question of the principles of 'evidence', for such an inquiry.

When we are attempting to prove or disprove metaphysical and/or historical claims (and for convenience I am limiting my discussion here to religious issues), we all apply to 'evidence'--if we can. 'The burden of proof' comes to the forefront. In the case of purportedly historical claims (especially claims exhibiting circumstantial characteristics which match characteristics common to other historical claims we have found to be trustworthy), the burden of proof is almost always placed on the detractor who wants to discredit the purported historian.

This is a widely recognized principle of historical inquiry, and its widespread authority can be accepted as a practical affair by anyone who understands the principle involved: either we must assume that most of the time people are not only telling what they believe to be true but that they have a certain amount of accuracy in their reports; or else we will have no presumptive grounds for believing that any historical data can be recovered from documents--including modern ones. [See first comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

On the other hand, when the accounts conflict drastically with what we have already established to be 'the way reality works', then we have quite reasonable grounds (whether or not we are in fact correct about our philosophy!) for an initial scepticism of the claim. In that case, I suggest the burden of proof for the claim should fall on the purported historian and his defenders.

Thus, I do not begrudge the sceptics who demand more than a document (or other account) as evidence of real historicity for a claim. I am no different from them. Neither, I will add, are almost all of my brethren. The most fundamentalistic Bible-based 'faith-only' Baptist preacher would suddenly turn quite a different eye upon a conflicting claim from, say, the specifically Muslim or Mormon or 'Christian Scientist' documents. And he would do so for at least the reason I have just given: he can tell the claims are quite different from the way he thinks reality is (historically and/or metaphysically). He would require the burden of proof to be on the adherents of Islam, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or the 'Church of Christ, Scientist'.

At the same time, and for the same basic reason (along with perhaps other reasons), a Jewish rabbi, or a member of the Internet Infidels, or even a Muslim Iman, will look to this preacher (and his supporters) for burden of proof.

I do not think this necessarily indicates sinful obstinacy by anyone involved. It might instead be a prudent (and loyal) recognition that the new claim conflicts strongly with what the resister accepts as a true underlying philosophy or history; although the resister may not describe it quite that way, of course.

Let me emphasize, before you misunderstand me, that I am not saying the burden of proof must always be put on the shoulders of one definable side of an argument. Historians do generally agree that the burden of proof should fall on the detractor, but not because there is some intrinsic property of being a 'detractor'; rather, because most of the time underlying metaphysical positions are not being called into question by historical analysis.

But when core beliefs are challenged, then I think the burden of proof ought to be placed on the shoulders of the asserter. This would mean, ideally, that in a dialogue entered into freely by two sides, both debaters should be ready to shoulder the burden of proof! But in the case of an intrusion by a detractor into the life or lives of asserters (i.e. where the detractor is also the initiator), then the detractor (mere politeness suggests it!) should not expect the established and assaulted position to sortie out onto his ground (so to speak), nor see a refusal to do so as a tacit or explicit surrender. [See second comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

Very well then; but in a situation like this--in a discussion or argument about what the Final Reality is and what He or It (or She?) has done--what type of 'evidence' is appropriate? I think the answer to this question is all-too-often oversimplified by believers and sceptics alike.

An acquaintance of mine once told me (quite seriously, I think, and not at all in a hostile manner) that she would believe the Devil existed when he appeared in front of her. If I had replied that I would believe 100,000 galaxies existed in the universe when someone shows me a picture of them and counts them out for me, she would have thought I was merely being funny. And she would have been right!--but only because my conclusions (and thus my beliefs) about reality allow quite easily for the real existence of 100,000 galaxies. I don't need much evidence or argument to believe they may well exist. If I was being careful and fair, of course, I would need some strong arguments (and I also suppose some strong evidence) before I staked a conclusion on the required existence of those galaxies. My friend's understanding of reality, however, does not easily allow for the possibility (much less the actuality) of the existence of a massively powerful and thoroughly hostile supernatural creature. She would not be favorably persuaded (much less convinced) with minimal evidence and argument; and rightly so. (Let me add, by the way, that we were discussing a literary topic, and not official debating metaphysics.)

I may have taken her by surprise with my actual response, though: I would not necessarily believe I was seeing the Devil in front of me in that situation, and I do already believe he exists!

Do you see how this fits with what I have said earlier? My belief that the Devil exists (and that he can perhaps do things on occasion like pop into view in front of people, through various methods) does not automatically mean that I would (or should) take such a situation at face value. I might be suffering from a brain tumor. I might be hallucinating after eating a batch of bad shrimp. I might merely have had an especially annoying dream. Someone who thinks about such issues as much as I do (and such themes are also prevalent in the fantasy literature and computer games I enjoy, although of course the metaphysical rationales are often very different) would have plenty of imagery to draw on by association in the case of a naturally occurring mental disturbance--even if we grant the Devil's existence and abilities. At the same time, granting his existence and abilities, he might also manifest himself to me through the manipulation of such otherwise natural events! But I would need something other than that mere appearance before I concluded (and thus believed) it really was the Devil.

This example illustrates a factor of supernatural operation which sometimes escapes sceptics who demand hard proof: the character of the proposed event would very probably dictate that some kinds of 'natural' explanations could similarly be proposed to explain the event--even if the event truly was supernatural in character. (Of course, other sceptics are not only quite aware of this, but robustly--maybe even a little too robustly!--make use of the principle. I will be discussing them presently.)

Let us pretend (what I do not claim) that I can create a cloud in the sky through supernatural power. What type of evidence and/or abstract arguments could a naturalist fairly accept, concerning this claim? (I am presuming the naturalist is an honest sceptic.)

First, I am not sure he would be obligated to accept any argument or evidence, if he had already responsibly concluded 'There is no such thing as supernatural power'. That type of conclusion is a core belief, which has deductively necessary consequences about what should and should not be accepted as true. Steadily mounting evidence to the contrary might suggest a prudent consideration on the naturalist's part that he should perhaps recheck his logical math; but that is not the same as abandoning his belief. He might conclude (after doing the logical math again) that one of his most basic conclusions was wrong; but I am not sure at what point it would be proper for him to reject his core belief, where the rejection was only based on apparent evidence to the contrary around him (not bearing directly on his overarching philosophical grounds). It would, at least, have to be extremely good evidence to overturn a prior philosophical conviction. And that kind of evidence is manifestly not usually forthcoming.

I am assuming, of course, that this particular naturalist--call him Chase--is a fairly stable and intelligent person with some training in how to discern these issues; and who either has no strong emotional stake for or against 'changing his views', or who recognizes that he feels strongly about the issues and nevertheless resolves to try thinking them through fairly and clearly. [See third comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

So, what kind of evidence (within or against Chase's philosophy, either one) can I produce for him?

Let us say I supernaturally create a cloud, and then call Chase over to see it. What does he see?

A cloud.

Is he likely to believe my claims from this? I see no reason why he should, especially in regard to his opposing philosophy. I might be a liar (or, more politely, playing a joke on him). I might be insane. I might be mistaken in some other fashion. There are no other options for Chase to choose from, as a naturalist. And even given supernaturalism's truth, any of those might still have been the proper explanation--not supernatural power.


[Next time: now let us say Chase has a friend, Reed, who is a supernaturalist...]

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- an unwanted level of religious complexity?

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.

The previous entry, discussing metaphorical language use, in relation to religious belief, ended with the observation, "If we believe in God, and if we believe we have communications from Him, then we can trust (given we have already established those other notions) that He is giving us true and useful information of some sort, and so we could reasonably attach great authority to the communication. But it will still be up to us to figure out what exactly is being communicated, and why, and to what degree later information may alter our perception of what is being communicated to us by God."]


I realize this introduces what is perhaps an unwanted level of complexity for Jews, Muslims and Christians (like myself) who would prefer a straight-up straight-out reading of Scripture at all points. I am no different; but I also ought to ask myself whether the designs and intentions of God should perhaps be given some priority to my own wishes on this matter!

And, as a Christian at least, if I do consider our scriptures to be in any useful sense historically reliable (which, as it happen, I do), then I have my answer about God's actions on this subject. The man I believe to be God Incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth, rarely gave a 'literal' answer to any question, and the information he (or, rather, He) communicated to His followers was not always exactly what His followers thought He was telling them. Evidently, He did not even intend that His listeners would understand Him instantly! He expected them to work it out themselves; and sometimes the greater impact of what He said had to wait until His followers had other data at hand.

Or, as another example, if scientists (atheist or otherwise) now replace what we would call the 'scientific' details of the Genesis creation story (or stories) with more detailed information, then I think I am not working against God's own 'modus operandi' to seriously consider whether their theories help us understand better what God may have had to colorfully abbreviate for the sake of His original audience. If I flatly refuse to take modern science's attempts seriously, because God 'would not' tell our distant ancestors a story which was anything other than the pure 'literal' truth and could not be added to in understanding; then in taking that superliteral stance I would be (as far as I can tell) implicitly denying the divinity of Jesus--because that is not the way He worked!

So if we Christians think Jesus was (and is) God, then yes: God might give us information in this metaphorical, not superliteral, fashion. It remains to carefully check, on a case-by-case basis, to see whether He has done this or not. If I take seriously the message of the Hebrew prophets to Israel, as reported in the Hebrew scriptures, then God evidently communicates very often to us in this fashion: the truths of His messages have to be worked out to some degree by us, and later events and knowledge might bring expanded meanings (fully intended by God) to old communications. [Footnote: as with most contentions, there is a danger of heresy here; but by acknowledging the act of reasoning involved in the process, at least we won't be hampering our ability to avoid or reverse heresies.]

The preceding few paragraphs probably won't be very interesting to my sceptical reader--I still have a large and chewy wad of inferences (metaphorically speaking!) to successfully draw before I could fairly expect it to mean much to you--but the point I am trying to make for this chapter is that recognition of metaphor is not necessarily (or even usually) a means of explaining away religious propositions. Even in our own commonly shared 'mundane' experiences, metaphors usually mean more than they appear to say, not less.

The reality expressed by a metaphor can be (and often is) further along the lines that the metaphor itself represents, precisely because metaphors are shorthand ways of adequately (although somewhat inaccurately) expressing our ideas, to ourselves and to others. As in my solar system example, or the example of my book in your hands [assuming it was printed and bound], one single perception or expression taken by itself may be perniciously misleading; but multiple perceptions of the same event or object will (almost by default) provide us with a better composite 'picture' of what we are trying to think or say, correcting misleading perceptions but very rarely overthrowing completely our entire idea about the concept or object. You can often find authors (like myself) putting this strategy to use with illustrative analogies: different practical examples of the same principles allow us to provide for a richer and fuller understanding of the actual object or condition or idea we are trying to express to you.

Presenting the analogies as arguments, of course, is a conclusion-killing gaffe. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between the two situations; but even the abstract concept of those two situations illustrates the principle I am trying to get across here: metaphors are about something else--usually something more than the metaphor (by itself) implies. When the metaphors are mistaken for the something else in its entirety (or much closer to its entirety), then a faulty foundation is laid for whatever may follow afterward.

This is one reason why we humans make so many mistakes: the field for error can be very wide, especially when we are mistaking a piece for the whole. But we must be careful, following the same principle, not to automatically toss away every attendant proposition if we discover that someone has mistaken a false image for reality. And this brings me to Lewis' third point:

3.) "Thought may be in the main sound even when the false images that accompany it are mistaken by the thinker for true ones."

I may have my visual proportions mixed up in my necessary mental image of the Earth's proximity and size compared to the Sun; but I can still work the math and get it right. I may get some answers that consequently don't look right compared to my mental image; and of course that may be a clue my associative impression needs improving! But generally speaking it would be fallacious of an opponent of mine to attempt to refute my orbital mechanics calculations by reporting that they don't match my mental impressions, even if I happened to believe the content of those mental impressions (not realizing the content of both ideas must be exclusive). My opponent could use one of my concluded beliefs (A) to correct another related belief of mine (B), and he might rightly fault me for trying to hold both at once; but he could also be wrong to use the falsity of B to argue the falsity of A.

Lewis uses the example of a little girl who thinks that poison, in any given substance, is "horrid red things". She really believes that if she separated the poison out of 'poisonous' solids and liquids, the poison would really look like horrid red things. But an adult who attempted to refute her claim that lye is poisonous by correcting her false belief about what 'poison' looks like, would still be in for a nasty shock if he drank it! Indeed, with a little investigation he might have discovered that she did not believe lye poisonous because it contained horrid red things (which she knows she cannot see in the lye), but because her mother (who may have sufficiently accurate reasons for saying so) has told her the lye is poisonous and she trusts her mother. She thinks the red things are in the lye, not because she can see them, but because she already believes the lye is poisonous; therefore it must (as far as she is concerned) have those horrid red things in it somewhere. Her imagery turns out to be, upon fair examination, ultimately of little importance to the issue at hand: whether lye really is poisonous. If she was corrected about the nature of poison, it would probably not (nor should not) affect her belief about the toxicity of lye. She would know more, but she would not necessarily be refuted in her core belief.

Lewis puts this into religious practice with the example of the story of Jesus' Ascension into heaven. We do not know whether the original promoters of this story believed in a sky palace with God on a throne (they may not have--Jewish apocalyptic can be shown to be quite abstract with relation to Jewish metaphysical belief); but the imagery can stand for something other than this without gutting the main point of their proclamation. Indeed, the type of event which Christians claim happened here--one aspect of the Incarnated God departed from this physical Nature after beginning a drastic change in it, to a new (and superphysical) Nature which shall be progressively made out of this 'older' one, while verifying His identity as the basic Action of what I have been calling the IF--is not something that by its character would be easily perceivable or understood. If it did happen, I would not be surprised in the least if God allowed the witnesses to see the images they eventually reported--that would be the type of image which they (and millions and billions of people after them, even to this day) can understand, in principle, without training in formal metaphysics. It gets all the salient points across; and allows the expansion of detail for fuller understandings of the same event. A facetiously simple sceptic might say that she will believe the Ascension if we ever discover a 1st-century Palestinian sandal in geosynchronous orbit over Israel. That is not the type of evidence I would accept; neither is it the type of evidence I necessarily expect from the story. It is not (as far as I can tell) that kind of event; so it would not leave that kind of evidence.

This leads into the question of what kind of evidence a proposed supernatural event (such as the Ascension) might be expected to leave; which in turn shall bring up the question of possible and plausible relationships between Nature and Supernature (should Supernature exist).


[Next time: evidence, the supernatural, and the burden of proof]

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- thought and imagination

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.]


People sometimes attempt to explain apparent contradictions in this fashion: "I was only being metaphorical." This does resolve the contradiction; but at the cost of retaining anything like the apparent meaning of the term or phrase thus 'metaphorized'.

If a person claims that 6 = 16, she can always later say, "I was only being metaphorical when I claimed '16'". But then, so much for '16' representing any kind of distinctive property. She really meant 6 = 6; and if she is going to play fair, she must remember that having 'explained away' 16 as a 'metaphor', she should not go back to its apparent attributes later and treat them as if they were in fact exclusively reflective of the properties of 16.

Thus I grant that this type of reductive metaphorization can be done. It can also be abused (and quite often is in discussions about religion), but if it is done fairly and the implications are kept in mind and not shuffled around for convenience, real progress can be made in hashing out the implications of an idea.

So, for instance, almost everyone except the vitalists thinks the fundamental units of Nature are blind, automatic and non-purposive; the opposite properties do not appear within Nature until a certain level of complexity is reached. Theists, atheists, dualists, all agree with this--even many (if not all) polytheists, and some pantheists might. [Footnote: specifically, some pantheists might agree that although the sum-total of Nature is really sentient, the particular units or even some complex parts are not. Our own bodies would make a handy analogy. ‘Negative’ pantheists, to give a very different example, would regard the fundamental units of Nature to be illusory; which certainly is no positive claim about their active sentience.]

Nonetheless, when discussing what these particular base-units are 'doing', we often end up talking as if we were vitalists; speaking for convenience as if muons and electrons and carbon-ring molecules were initiating actions instead of merely reacting and counterreacting purely to environmental stimulus or internal randomization.

It is very difficult to have a discussion about these entities unless we use words in this fashion. Even the most dyed-in-the-wool naturalistic atheist will occasionally (even often!) find himself speaking about the 'order' and 'design' of Nature using terms which do not fit atheism. And this isn't necessarily a bad, or incorrect, or misleading practice--unless he goes on to require as part of his theory of the origin of (for instance) sentience, that these particles really do initiate actions and have purposes after all. This would be an accident--he is an atheist, he doesn't really mean that--but the correction might have serious implications for the viability of the particular theory he was trying to build.

However, although we can and do sometimes use metaphor this way, I don't think this is the way we normally use metaphor. I think it is not only possible but also very common for us to use metaphor to stand for (or 'mean') more, not less, than what the imagery implies.

In writing this book I was inspired by the efforts of C. S. Lewis in his Miracles: A Preliminary Study. This is probably the only chapter that has a direct parallel in MaPS, though: the chapter on "Horrid Red Things".

Lewis asked us to understand three principles, all of which affect how and why and when we use metaphors. But I will be taking them out of his order of presentation, though, to better fit my own flow of discussion:

1.) "Thought is distinct from the imagination which accompanies it."

Sometimes this can be true without using metaphor, per se. For example, when I write Christian apologetics, I occasionally have background imagery in my head of cinematic fencing duels and/or epic music. When I wrote the first draft of this chapter, there were fragments of Jerry Goldsmith's score from the movie The 13th Warrior pinging around in the back of my mind. I suspect this happens because those sounds and images were stored in my memory with certain 'riders' or 'tags', so that similar emotions and cognitive thought processes would be likely to catch on those tags and 'pull them' in passing. This may be the psychological event known as 'association'; but it is not itself the event of 'building an argument'. I don't need to have associations with swashbuckling movie scores floating around in my head to cognitively analyze propositions, or to express my conclusions to myself and to you.

If I tell you about those associations, however, you can probably infer some useful and true information about the emotional and perhaps ethical quality I assign to my work. I could also choose to build sensuals like these directly into my relation of my experience, or even of my ideas: I would be expressing myself poetically, to help communicate the quality of my experience to you.

Similarly, associative sensory imagery can give me a means of expressing my ideas to myself--something to build on, and go beyond. If I am trying to think about the spatial relation of the Earth and the Sun to each other, I inevitably imagine what I am talking about. But I don't imagine it accurately; indeed, I cannot. No one can accurately imagine 93 million miles of space between the Earth and the Sun, much less the proper proportionate sizes of the Earth to the Sun, very much less the detailed physical description of each cosmic body. Granted, the physical description may not be important for expressing the distance and the calculated conclusions from the distance; my point is that even if my mental imagery was expressed to you in detail as my imagery stands, the resemblance to the 'real' things, in their real situations, would be extremely inaccurate.

But would that resemblance be inadequate?

It depends on what I am using the resemblance for, and the degree to which I mistakenly believe my imagery to reflect the reality. Thinking of the Earth as a blue dot instead of a blue/green/brown/white dot with all the clouds and continents and oceans and icecaps in their proper positions, does not mean my conclusions about orbital mechanics will be inaccurate. For that matter, the fact that I cannot quite get the distance/size proportion imagery correct in my head when I discuss the issue, does not mean I cannot reach proper conclusions about the subject.

Here, then, is a further principle subordinate to the first one. I cannot with total accuracy express the topic I am discussing with sensory imagery, even to myself. (It could be orbital mechanics, or genetics, or quantum physics, or psychology, or sociology, or legal theory, or any of a massive number of topics.) How much less, then, can I accurately express to you the details of what I am thinking about? Thus:

2.) "Anyone who talks about things that cannot be seen, or touched, or heard, or the like, must inevitably talk as if they could be seen or touched or heard."

I think this is correct; but I take it a bit further, along lines which Lewis himself discussed in that chapter and in other books (and which lines I think he would approve).

In principle, you could get in the right spatial position so that the lightstreams emanating from the Sun and reflecting off the Earth would each strike your optic nerves at the same time without you having to turn your head; and in principle, your eyes (or other recording instruments) might be sensitive enough to properly represent this state to your mind for processing. That is, in principle the spatial relationship of the Earth to the Sun can be 'seen'.

Nevertheless, I doubt whether an accurate attempt would succeed in giving the mental representation we might expect. Indeed there would still be some details inevitably missing: the Earth would at best be a mere white or whitish-blue pinprick of light, which misrepresents (as it stands) the complexity of its surface and atmospheric features. And in any case such a perception would by necessity ignore details on the other sides of the Sun and Earth!

Then there is the variety of appearances which might mislead without correction: if I am returning from the Moon to the Earth, I could possibly see the Sun and Earth together at the same time, and simultaneously I would be 'looking through' the 90+ million miles of space between them. But taken by itself, this image could be extremely misleading. The space certainly would not look like it is 90 million miles wide (because I would be looking along the space between the Sun and Earth, thus perceiving a foreshortened line, rather than perceiving the line in 'all its length'); the Earth would look much larger than the Sun; and the Sun would have hardly any visible detail, but would be a mere pinprick instead.

[Footnote: alternately, you yourself can go outside roughly once a month and see the full moon and the sun in the sky at the same time. Going strictly by that sensory image--especially during a solar eclipse--you might conclude they were roughly the same size; which is what some ancients did quite reasonably conclude!]

Even in the more complete sense, then, Lewis' dictum stands: we cannot even receive a fully accurate sensory impression of the relationship between things that can be 'seen' (much less what cannot be seen).

And this applies to everything in our experience. The book you are reading right now [obviously assuming I bother to publish it in print someday] presents one appearance to you; set it on the table, and it presents another appearance. The information you thus receive may be complementary by inference and conflation; but the mere presentations they make to your senses are not (taken by themselves) compatible, and may even be mutually exclusive. If I throw the book at your face, its appearance shall change once again rather drastically (a blur and a bright light in sequence) and shall be accompanied by different sensory impressions (a 'whiff' and a burst of pain-feeling, perhaps). Even when the book sits on the table without being moved around, its appearance taken by itself is misleading to the reality of the book: it does not really have three sides (the ones visible to you at any time), but six. And it is not sitting motionless on the desk. Its composite parts are in constant motion, and the book itself as a unit is hurtling through space away from the center of the universe, orbiting other galaxy clusters as part of a supercluster, orbiting other galaxies as part of a cluster, orbiting a galactic center, orbiting a star, revolving with the skin of the planet, tilting slightly as our planet's axis shifts, and drifting with our continent on a sea of magma. All these events are happening; but we cannot detect them all simultaneously and fully, nor even keep them all properly in our mind as abstract concepts!

We must use extremely inaccurate sensory descriptions of these things when communicating our ideas to ourselves and to other people, whether we know the extent to which we are being inaccurate or not.

And what happens, when we turn to concepts or physical events for which there cannot be, even in principle, accurate sensory information? The quantum physicists tell us that atoms are, in reality, unpictureable. Any illustration of a carbon atom is very inaccurate because photons don't interact with atoms like that. If you can understand this, then go one step further and consider how inaccurate the words 'understand' and 'one step further' are, to the mental events you are currently expressing! We never really see or hear or smell or taste or feel things in their completeness; but we must speak for convenience as if we do. We have no other way of thinking and communicating.

Some people would take this view into a complete philosophy of subjectivity or relativity. I do not take it that far; but neither do I claim that a perfectly objective thought or perception can be achieved--except perhaps by the IF (if It is Sentient). It is true that different circumstances will result in different appearances of the solar system or of my book in your environment. And it is true that taken as themselves these perceptions are not only misleading, but misleading to different degrees and in different ways in different circumstances.

But behind all of your and my subjective perceptions and expressions, are real objective realities, with their own composite properties. These realities might not be what I think they are--if atheism is true, for instance, then my experiences of being in a relationship with a supernatural God Who has a personality, must not be what they seem to me to be. But my subjective perceptions of such an event will reflect some other objective facts. An atheistic psychologist will agree with me that real objective events are occurring in my brain to produce this perception. But they cannot be the events that I think they are, if atheism is true.

On the chance that some readers have misunderstood me: I am not saying that all our perceptions and expressions are completely inaccurate; I would be refuting myself if I did, for I am expressing these thoughts to you and trying to convince you they have some sufficient accuracy! I am saying that all our perceptions and thoughts are (and must be, by our nature) inaccurate to some degree; but they may be accurate in one way while being inaccurate in another.

When I ask if you understand what I am trying to get across, I do not mean that I am asking whether you are standing in a deep ditch while I toss something above you spanning the sides of the ditch. I might mean that; but if you are familiar with the English language and can analyze contexts sufficiently, you will receive an adequate (not completely accurate) communication from me about the topic of your success at 'following' me in my 'point'.

And as you can 'see' from these last few sentences, I cannot 'jump off my own shadow'. Our languages are 'incurably' metaphorical. "We can make our language drier," says Lewis. "We cannot make it more literal." The 'literal' is in fact the 'actual'; our expressions and thoughts and imaginings (especially our imaginings) do not create the actual.

[Footnote: or at least very rarely do we create an actual that corresponds very closely with what we are talking about. If I deliver a speech on sound transmission, part of my communicated description will describe what I am in fact actualizing at that moment; but such circumstances are rare exceptions, not necessities.]

On the other hand, if there is a God, His expressions may be perfectly 'literal'. It is no accident, it seems, that in Judaism and its descendants, God speaks creation into existence. Then again, if there is such a God, and He communicates to derivative beings such as you and I, He will have to communicate in a fashion we can 'relate' to, through the Nature He designed and implemented (and still implements). And this means that what He tells us, however He might choose to do so, will be communicated in metaphor; just like what you tell me and what I tell you must be expressed in metaphors. To require that He could do otherwise would be not only to misunderstand how we already express ideas to ourselves and to others, but would probably require that we be God's equal in actuality and ability and independence. Even God (as I have argued earlier) cannot do what is self-contradictory; and it seems to me that expecting or requiring ultra-literal communications from God to us, requires contradiction.

Remember, however, that such metaphorical expressions may very well still be adequate (including in a historical sense). Indeed, if God expresses them then they will be fully adequate for whatever purposes He has in mind. But then again, we might ought to be cautious and careful about concluding what purposes He has in mind! If we believe in God, and if we believe we have communications from Him, then we can trust (given we have already established those other notions) that He is giving us true and useful information of some sort, and so we could reasonably attach great authority to the communication. But it will still be up to us to figure out what exactly is being communicated, and why, and to what degree later information may alter our perception of what is being communicated to us by God.


[Next time: an unwanted level of religious complexity?]

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- theism or atheism

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.

In my previous entry, I introduced two different examples of attempts to propose that the ultimate reality is both atheistic and theistic. (Not to be confused with ontological dualisms which would propose two ultimate realities with one being sentient and the other non-sentient. This concept was covered in previous entries, though it'll be discussed again in later entries where applicable.)]


On one side we have this concept: the IF is a Mind, but it has no plans and does not initiate events.

On the other side, we have this: the IF is not a Mind, but it has plans (or 'purposes') and initiates events (or 'strives').

What do these propositions offer?

The first one may seem to offer an explanation for the apparent intelligibility of the universe: the universe is not completely arbitrary, and there are notions we can discover about it which we can trust to a very large degree (maybe absolutely) to be true statements of the way reality really is.

These notions could be called static, or even objective, truths, although (like a mountain that isn't going anywhere) these truths would reflect different aspects under different conditions. Two oranges and two tomatoes will always take up four spaces in your box--unless you cut the oranges into sections, after which they are arguably no longer 'two oranges'. And the observations we make about things like this, give us data from which to infer reliable truths.

It would be easy to slur 'intelligible' into 'intelligent'; it would, in fact, be one variation of the famous (or infamous) Argument from Design. [Footnote: it would also, I think, be another variation of the externalistic fallacy: just because an entity behaves intelligibly, does not mean the entity is itself intelligent.] But I don't think the Stoics did this, necessarily. I think they looked around at their lives and their world, and concluded that the entities capable of the best efficiency were capable of reasoning. Greek thinkers were very concerned with 'efficient causes', and the Stoics were no exception; thus the final (and most 'effective') efficient cause must (they decided) be capable of Reason. The 'highest' thing they (and we) meet in our world is reasoning ability; thus Reason must in some way be a function of the highest thing. [Footnote: this would be one variant of the Argument from Reason, though not one of the variants I myself employ.]

Yet the Stoics do not seem to have been proposing an entity that could give commands or introduce effects into the natural order in any fashion; they had already had quite enough of that, thank you very much, from Greek polytheism.

At any rate, I can see that if I accepted the first variation of 'sentient and non-sentient', I might have some reassurance that reality was, at bottom, at least somewhat similar to myself--and a Stoic was very properly concerned with reaching his or her full potential, which involved interfacing most efficiently with reality (which naturally would be feasible if ultimate reality shares some key characteristics with us). At the same time, I wouldn't need to worry about this Mind personally bothering me--it has no purposes, no plans, no personality. It doesn't initiate action. It isn't going to send a priest to my door asking for contributions to the temple, or for my sons in a war--or for my soul's allegiance. I can pay attention to it as a Mind when I want to, and when I feel like it; it is convenient to me. (Time to suggest new laws at the public forum? Well, let's think about how this divine Mind would try to order things if it was faced with our particular situation, and if it had intentions.)

The second proposition offers me a very similar package, despite the switch in characteristics. Instead of the cold, unfeeling mechanism of Darwin and his ilk, Nature must be alive--like me! [Footnote: remember that insofar as natural mechanism goes, the supernatural theists would also usually be included with the "ilk" of Darwin...] Nature is 'up to something', and for all I know it could be something good--if not for me, well, then for my descendants, because self-ordering is in Nature's character, so to speak. (Or, well, somewhere in Nature's character anyway, mumble mumble entropy mumble...) I am alive; it is alive. It and I are not so different. I can look back in all sorts of history, and see Nature providing just the right events at just the right times to bring about--me! At the same time, I needn't worry about Nature bothering me--it has purposes and initiates action, but it has no personality. The kind of actions it initiates are, well, really beneath my notice; too simple and basic to bother me. It isn't going to send a priest to my door asking for contributions to the local parish, or for my sons in a crusade--or for my soul's allegiance. I can pay attention to it as a Life when I want to, and when I feel like it; it is convenient to me. (Look at the past, this is the way history is going; and that means this is the way Life itself, the irreducible Fact of the universe, is striving to go. It is mankind's destiny to be part of the plan I am advocating.)

Obviously, these two ideas throw a sop to my own pride; it is (only) up to me to figure out what the Divine Nature is up to. The Divine either isn't smart enough to understand its own plans, or despite being 'rational' it doesn't have plans. It either isn't smart enough to have opinions of its own, or despite being 'rational' it cannot initiate judgments to form 'opinions' per se. The world is on automatic pilot; and the pilot is an autistic savant who happens to be pretty good at piloting! He's going to do his job, which is only worth my time noticing on the macrohistorical scale, and I'm going to do mine (vitalism). Or, he's going to do his job (except, y'know, without intentions of doing so), and I'm just along for the ride; although it makes a difference to my happiness whether I buckle-up in a first-class seat and take the ride as it comes, or pop open the hatch to crawl out on the wing (early Stoicism). Either way, the pilot isn't going to come out of the cabin and annoy me. I may have to put up with some unruly passengers, of course; but that is to be expected.

On the one hand, we have a denial of initiation ability for the IF; but it still somehow represents the necessary order of interactions between cause/effect, ground/consequent. It is unconscious, but can still produce efficient mental effects--as I can reactively answer questions under anesthesia, although I didn't choose to.

On the other hand, we have an affirmation of initiation ability, although this doesn't include the processing of efficient mental effects. Yet despite its initiation ability, it is still considered to be (quite overtly so) 'unconscious'. Thus it doesn't consciously judge--especially it doesn't judge me! The particular actions it initiates are essentially beneath my notice. For all practical purposes, it is not initiating actions at all.

An atheist, in distinctive opposition, would say: the IF does not initiate actions. It does not think. It is blind, unconscious, automatic. There is no point in saying that It has Reason if those other claims are true about It; that is just playing with words.

A theist (including, I think, some polytheists and pantheists), in distinctive opposition, would say: the IF does initiate actions. It has purposes, and plans, which It is striving to bring to fruition. It knows where it wants to go; and It knows where It wants Nature to go. And that means It knows where It wants me (and you) to go, because one way or another we are part of It. And if It has plans and purposes, then by default--by definition of what a 'plan' and a 'purpose' is--It is intentionally, actively excluding one set of potential behaviors for another set. There is no point in saying It does not have Reason if those other notions are true about It; that is just playing with words.

The n-SIF advocate (for example the naturalistic atheist) and the SIF advocate (for example a Jewish theist) both cut pretty cleanly, I think, through the contradictions of the attempt at a middle-ground. For this reason (and for some reasons involving contradictions in general, which I have already covered in previous chapters), I will eventually be required to decide, if I can, whether the IF is sentient (as an action initiator that can, among other things, actively judge the coherency of linked propositions), or non-sentient (a blind, automatic, non-purposive mechanism that initiates no actions but very effectively reacts and counterreacts).

The middle-ground pantheist (this type of middle-grounder is typically a pantheist, although not all pantheists accept this both/and proposition about the IF) may reply that she didn't literally mean the IF has Reason, or that it has 'purposes'. She was 'only' speaking metaphorically.

I note that in the way she would use this term, she means something reductive--she means the reality is less, not more, than her description implied. I also note this can only lead to a n-SIF proposition if it is followed through consistently! No one ever bothers to say they were 'only' speaking metaphorically when they denied something had active purposes or when they denied something could accurately judge abstract links of reality in what we would consider a 'cogent' manner. No one bothers to say they were 'only' speaking metaphorically when they described reality as 'blind, automatic and non-purposive'. The middle-ground proponents could turn out to be atheists (of some sort) after all; it is, at least, another example of how the attempted position collapses into one or another distinctive position when any kind of practical application is made.

On the other hand, I don't think reductionism is a very good example of what it means to speak 'metaphorically'. Although I think such reductionistic use of metaphor can represent a definite notion that its adherent is trying to get across, such a tactic can be abused to imply that whenever anyone speaks metaphorically they really mean less than they appear to be saying.

I strongly disagree with such a use, and the removal of this misconception will help some people deal with claims about 'religion'. So to the topic of metaphor I now turn.


[Next time: 'on' metaphors]

How Should I Be A Sceptic -- theism and atheism?

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. A continually updated table of contents for all entries so far can be found here.]


I have been arguing throughout this book that philosophical positions can be most cogently divided into two mutually exclusive categories: non-Sentient Independent Fact, or Sentient Independent Fact. I have reached this position mainly by tracing the implications of apparently competitive belief-systems (it turns out they were advocating one of these at bottom all the time), or by discovering that competitive theories end in self-contradictions.

But some people throughout human history would agree there is such a thing as the IF (or at least we must presume there is, in order to build philosophies and subsequent sciences) and that we can discover particular things about it (at least in principle); yet they would also propose that this IF is, in essence or in effect, sentient and non-sentient.

For instance, the early Stoics (dating back before the Christian--or, if you prefer, 'Common'--era) believed the rock-bottom irreducible Fact of reality possessed Reason. Because of this, they insisted that human laws should be drafted and polished to mimic as closely as possible what we could discover about this divine Reason. At the same time, these Stoics insisted that this Reason had no purposes. It was, after all, the physical element of Fire (which they thought was the basic building block of all reality--today we would think of it as ‘energy’); and Fire, while it clearly ‘behaves’ very effectively, has no purposes. They thus rejected the concept that the Ultimate would initiate its own agendas or plans within 'our' world or in our societies. In a way, this philosophy was a rejection of Greek polytheism, perhaps (curiously) by combining the characteristics of two of its ultimate aspects: Chaos and the Fates. Exactly how people got to this belief is not what I am concerned with, however. Some early Stoics proposed (in effect) that what I am calling the IF was really sentient, and really non-sentient.

This type of idea can be found in many cultures, across many eras. In the late 18th through early 20th centuries, as scientists and philosophers were hammering out the implications of biological evolutionary theory, some thinkers proposed vitalism to be true. The rudimentary non-reducible Fact of reality is (according to this proposition) the space-time system we call Nature (taken as a whole); but the basic irreducibly fundamental units of Nature are alive. Yet they are too simple to have a mind: it seemed evident at the time that minds (per se) could only be exhibited in the nervous clusters we call brains. The totality of Nature, considered as a whole (since it is not a 'brain'), must therefore also be considered mindless. Yet (said the vitalists) evolution could be explained as the striving of this mass of ultimately living matter to the intrinsic purpose of self-organization. Entropy might win out in the end, but the natural cohesion of matter (despite entropy in the meanwhile) illustrated this purposeful organization.

Against the vitalists were the mechanists who proposed that Nature as a whole was not and could not be alive, and certainly its most basic units were not alive; and without life (or even with rudimentary life), purposes did not exist at that level. Obviously the mechanists included atheistic naturalists; but (for what it is worth) they also included supernaturalistic theists of various stripes, trying to make sense of the new data.

Again, the scientific/philosophical combinations involved at this juncture are too numerous for me to try to trace (and frankly I haven't the pertinent information to do so). My point is merely that vitalism was another (yet distinct) example of a belief that what I call the IF is both sentient and non-sentient. [See first comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

'It really can think, but it really has no purposes and does not initiate action.' 'It really cannot think, but it really has purposes and does initiate action.' I think either version of this concept is necessarily self-contradictory at the primary level; and anything built on this concept will either carry that self-contradiction at its core, or else emphasize (perhaps accidentally) one side at the expense of the other--thus ceasing for all practical purposes to be that sort of belief.

Where self-contradictions are maintained throughout more complicated expressions of the concept, I can literally have no good reason to accept the proposition and so no good reason to accept anything developed afterwards on those grounds: the self-contradiction itself ensures (as I illustrated earlier) that there are no grounds. Advocates of this type of notion might be saying true things about reality when they get to their more complicated proposals; but they would be saying those true things despite their initial position, and this would tell me that if they do happen to be matching reality, then there should be another way to get there.

Furthermore, an attempt to begin in flagrant contradiction must (as a practical matter) collapse into either one proposition or another, in order to maintain some kind of cogency (so far as I have examined SIF and n-SIF propositions). The Middle and Late Stoics, for instance, focused increasingly on the practical application, at both the individual and state level, of the ethics derived from the ultimate Reason. Eventually, some Late Stoics began to express their views in language that hinted an approach to--or maybe even an acceptance of--the notion that the divine Reason was a purposeful, fully sentient deity; the IF was a SIF. [See second comment below for a deferred footnote here.]

This would be only another working-out of issues I have raised before (primarily why I should avoid truly contradictory claims about the IF, if I am going to bother searching for true ideas about it); except that it also has more than a passing acquaintance with some issues I will be raising later in my second section. So I will focus a little longer on these two propositions, and see what comparing and contrasting these claims can tell me about how we, as humans, perceive 'sentience'.


[Next time: trying to have and not have sentience]