Challenge and Response
The first note is a comment by Graham Veale (who lives in Scotland, I believe) about my contretemps with Edward Feser:
Eric
Dr Feser has made some serious accusations about your review of his work. You are either deliberately misrepresenting him, in his view, or are not competent to review works of philosophy of religion.
You would need to respond to his posting, and especially to the charge that you insert words were they do not appear in the text, and that you portray Feser as a champion of ID and Irreducible Complexity (when anyone who has googled “Feser Intelligent Design” would know that this is not the case).
This is now, officially, an issue of trust. The allegation is that we should not trust your posts, as you either lack the integrity or the competence to represent Feser fairly. Sorry to be so blunt, but there it is.
Perhaps you could clear this issue up. There seems to be an animosity on your part that I cannot account for. I have to wonder if you would have responded in quite this way to a similar book by an evangelical protestant, or conservative Jew.Graham Veale
This was my response. I do not intend to say any more about this matter, and will consider Feser’s The Last Superstition a closed book. It will not find a permanent spot in my library.
Animosity? Really?! Really! Well, Feser hasn’t read or responded to this particular post, so perhaps I should wait. I acknowledge — and acknowledged to you in the last thread, that I was not comfortable with my conclusions in that post, and that I had misunderstood.
I’m afraid that I find Feser blustering, indignant and unclear, not to mention hostile and crudely impolite, and since he had to point out himself later that his argument was not one about irreducible complexity, it is clear that he thought this misunderstanding could arise. And so it did, but this is largely because his argument was and still is very unclear to me, and why he should have chosen this particular way to make his point is beyond me. I don’t think it succeeds, but not for the reasons that I had thought.
This post gives my more detailed reflections on the argument, though you may find it unsatisfactory as well. However, so far as I am concerned this is about argument, not about bluster. I admit to some resentment towards Feser. I bought his book in all seriousness, hoping to read a thoughtful religious response to the new atheism, but then, to be told a few pages in that I am deeply immoral and insane did not really help to keep things in proportion. I note that this lack of proportion is still a quality that Feser exhibits to an extreme degree. I am willing to discuss with him, but I will not respond to the kind of hostility that I witnessed on his blog this morning. He knows that I accompanied my wife to Switzerland where she was helped to die as was her wish. To have cast his response in the way that he did quite frankly appalled and offended me, and until Feser can change his tone, I have no intention of responding to him in any detail at all, nor do I feel the need to.
As to responding in quite this way to an evangelical protestant or a conservative Jew, I think I would have to read the books first, wouldn’t I? However, I do find Feser’s style bombastic and hostile. He steamrollers over very complex issues with a kind of bravado that makes Zorro look pretty tame. I find his moral thought rebarbative and in many places plainly repulsive. And while he claims that there is a foundation for his views in a natural moral law which, so far as I can understand it, is simply an incoherent view of moral value, there seems very little reason to think that there is anything of substance that can be said here. Besides that, the consequences of this view seem to me simply inhuman. I linked a NYT article which I think provided evidence for the inhumanity that is reflected in this moral view, and yes, I do think it is obviously inhuman. I also referred to the case of the 9-year-old pregnant with twins in Brazil, or the woman whose life was saved by abortion in Phoenix. I think to most ordinary people, who are not bamboozled into believing the extreme views of Catholic natural law theory, these things do seem simply inhuman and immoral. However, taking Feser’s book as a guide, just his language about sex and the uses of sex is deeply troubling in my view. To suppose that sex for human beings is just biological function, something which contains no human meaning, is simply repulsive. And the harm that this view of sex has done is probably immeasurable, not least in Africa, where population has been allowed to grow far beyond the capacity of the land to accommodate people in a rich human environment. It was in Africa that JP II made his most urgent appeal about the immorality of contraception. The suggestion that was made by JP II’s advisor for family affairs, that it is better for a man to infect his wife with HIV than to use a condom, because some things are more valuable than life itself — a view that, though qualified by Benedict, has not been revised — is to me simply monstrous.
It does not surprise me that his response to my posts has been so hostile and over the top. I agree that the comparison of the pope with Himmler was perhaps as over the top as well, though it was something that came naturally to me when I was reading Feser’s book, where he speaks of the overemphasis that we place on life on earth. I think there is a similarity between what he was saying and what Himmler so chillingly says, though perhaps that was not quite the way to express it. It was, however, the way it seemed to me as I read. But I do find in the moral views expressed by Feser a deeply inhuman code, cold to the concerns of real people, who live their lives, very often, without much in the way of cushion between themselves and the brutality of the reality they face day by day. To proffer them the kind of hope that he does, based on what seems to me a callous disregard for the concerns of real people, is in fact, to my mind, a deeply immoral thing. Since Feser can only see in my repudiation of his world view immorality and insanity, it is only fair that pay him back in some of his own coin.
Not at all. I’m no fan of outrageous comparisons, but your point was well taken. The Church teaches that when empathy is outraged (as in the Bishop Olmsted matter) by natural law, it is noble to repress empathy. The Himmler comparison is quite apt.
I have noted this exchange but have been baffled by it. Your posts seem to make sense but I lack the backgound in philosophy to follow along very well. Feser’s posts were so filled with bitterness and invective against anyone that disagreed with him that they were almost impossible to read with any pleasure or comprehesions. (Also, he didn’t seem to be trying to actually make a point but rather to sell his books.) Feser’s Followers also turned me off…this is probably unfair but there seemed to be a few sockpuppets floating around as well.
Early on in the exchange I had a question which I have kept to myself until now: Has philosophy *ever* proven anything in the absence of some real world observations? Given the expected negative answer to the above question, the “proof” of god through an application of philosophy seems to be an exercise in self-delusion.
I’m not sure whether some theists realise the problem with describing nonbelievers as deeply immoral. A sense of morality is something innate to us, thinking morally and reasoning morally comes naturally to us. It really is a dim view of humanity if the veneer of Catholicism rooted in the grouunding of a magic sky daddy is the only grounds to avoid deep immorality. You’d think that how we treat each other would depend on the individuals affected…
Why anyone would desire the inquisition and hate autonomy of the individual is beyond me. In his worldview, it’s my soul that is eternally damned, not Feser’s. Before then, I prefer my freedom.
Mike: I’d say that the answer to your question is, like many questions about philosophy, “Yes and no.”
Yes, there have been philosophers throughout history who have thought that truths about the world could be arrived at by reason alone (typically called a priori truths), without appeal to evidence from the world (a posteriori): Plato springs to mind. But there have also been philosophers throughout history who have offered devastating criticisms of such arguments, so the claims to a priori truth can hardly be said to have been proved. I would say that the consensus view in philosophy today — to the extent that there is anything resembling a consensus in philosophy — is that the only truths which can (maybe, possibly) be arrived at by reasoning alone are truths about the reasoning mind itself, and that reason alone can never establish the truth of any claim about the external world.
Also, MIke, I offer this caution: Please try not to confuse philosophy and theology. Philosophy proceeds by arguments based on conceptual clarification, rigorous reasoning, and evidence (where evidence is available, which is tricky in many areas, such as ethics). Theology proceeds by rationalization — pseudo-argumentation in which the conclusion is already determined in advance — and almost always relies on deliberate conceptual obfuscation, and when evidence is considered at all it is heavily cherry-picked or reinterpreted until it supports the desired conclusion. Of course, the whole point of engaging in rationalization is to make it resemble argumentation as much as possible (even to the person doing the rationalizing, often enough), so it can be difficult to tell the difference: The best guideline, therefore, is to turn an especially critical eye looking for signs of rationalization in any argument that involves God in any way.
D’oh! I should have hit the ‘Reply’ button to put my comment found below here. Anyway, I started by addressing it to “Mike,” so I hope it was clear that I was trying to answer the question Mr. Walton poses above.
Philosophical Primate,
Your last paragraph seems to be using a lot of words to say something simple- theology is deductive. Theology begins from the top and works down. No one is claiming anything else. Philosophy, on the other hand, is inductive- it starts from the facts on the bottom and works its way up. No theologian thinks deductive reasoning is sufficient- that’s why theologians such as Aquinas provide philosophic arguments for the key premise in theology- namely God. No one should confuse philosophy and theology, and that’s why Aquinas spends a lot of time differentiating them and confining them to their proper roles. For example, the distinction between “revelabilia” and “revelata.”
What enrages Feser is misrepresentation. He is not bothered by disagreement. He openly states in his books that he knows that people will disagree with his arguments and conclusions. One of his primary goals is to show atheists that one can have a belief in classical theism, for example, based upon reasonable arguments, and that reasonable people can disagree on this without either side being an utter moron or idiot.
And it is clear that Eric has unfortunately misrepresented almost everything that Feser has written. If you want some details, feel free to read my comments on Eric’s posts. In fact, even Eric has admitted that he misunderstood some of Feser’s points in his posts. And it is completely understandable why he did so, and it has to do with his inability to give Feser a fair and charitable reading, mainly because of Feser’s abrasive tone in TLS and Eric’s revulsion at the ultimate conclusion of Feser’s arguments, which is Catholicism. However, one can reject the conclusion, and still find merit in a number of arguments that occur upstream from the conclusion.
Certainly, Feser makes a number of arguments that even an atheist like myself can appreciate as forceful, and the fact that most of them have been made by prominent atheist philosophers should be a signal that it is not all about justifying religion.
The real arrogance is shown by the Christians – even if they accuse atheists. If they studied history – which they claim atheists don’t do – they would realize that every religion dreamed up by humans has ultimately gone extinct. Why should Christianity be any different? I would be happy to claim a god or gods existed if there were any evidence for them. So far, not so much.
“What enrages Feser is misrepresentation.”
That he’s enraged by misrepresentation is no excuse for Feser’s behaviour.
He should make his argument clearer and/or approach misrepresentations that he himself attributes to a lack of training with less animosity and treat it as a “teachable moment”. Not too much to ask of a professor, no?
If you’ve written something that only the two people in the world who have what you consider to be the adequate background training can understand — which is what most of his critical responses suggest — then you’ve done it wrong.
This is empty bluster unless you say which arguments are forceful and why, and which prominent atheist philosophers make them — which content I did not glean from any of your comments on prior threads. But that’s almost beside the point.
More importantly, how can you admit that Feser’s tone is abrasive (which I think is far too mild a term) and not see that Feser’s own approach makes it almost impossible for someone to read his arguments charitably unless they already have a perspective much like Feser’s — deep faith convictions and an equally deep loathing for atheists — which would obviate the need for charitable reading. Feser’s constant snide dismissals and outright rudeness toward atheist thinkers — along with his egregious straw man misrepresentations of atheists’ arguments — makes a mockery of his claim that one of his goals is “to show atheists that one can have a belief in classical theism, for example, based upon reasonable arguments, and that reasonable people can disagree on this without either side being an utter moron or idiot.” Since Feser clearly demonstrates that he believes everyone who disagrees with him about the reasonableness of faith is an utter moron, he cannot possibly trying to persuade those who disagree with him: Rather, he is preaching to the choir. Given that abuse of atheists is so integral to his choir-preaching project — that is, integral to his real goals as evidenced by his writing, not the goals he merely claims to have — it’s downright silly for you to call out any atheist for not being able to see past Feser’s abrasive and abusive rhetoric to his purportedly substantive arguments.
Eric, FWIW, I couldn’t believe that Feser titled his post so given the overall project of your blog and the experiences that have informed it. I’m sorry that anyone is so stupid and callous as to think that that is at all appropriate. Rather indicative, though, of the RCC viewpoint that you’ve been at pains to illustrate: one can harm real people however one pleases, so long as it’s in service of the greater goal, some loftier ideal — even if it’s just to be right.
One thing’s certain: Feser’s books will never (dis)grace my shelves, and he’ll not get a dime of my money.
From Feser’s “Reply to Torley and Cudworth” (May 4, 2011) blog post …
“Both sides agree that God is in some sense the designer of the world.”
“that doesn’t mean that God isn’t ultimately the source of the ‘information’; He is, and necessarily so if Aquinas’s Fifth Way is correct (which I think it is)”
“But as I have said, I have never denied and would never deny that God has designed the world or that we can know that He has. On the contrary, I have at length and in two books defended several arguments for God’s existence – including Aquinas’s Fifth Way, which is an argument from the (immanent) final causality evident in the natural world to the existence of God.”
Why is this not just arguing for dressed-up creationism?
“One of his primary goals is to show atheists that one can have a belief in classical theism, for example, based upon reasonable arguments, and that reasonable people can disagree on this without either side being an utter moron or idiot.”
So this quote is a misrepresentation? “Only a (certain kind of) religious view of the world is rational, morally responsible, and sane; and an irreligious worldview is accordingly deeply irrational, immoral, and indeed insane. [5-6]” Because that doesn’t sound like Feser thinks that reasonable people can disagree…
Yeah, a lot of people seem to think philosophy is made up bullshit. A lot of that can be blamed on the post-modernists whose ideas carry currency with the cranks. But in general philosophy is about clarifying our thinking, determining the limits of our knowledge, making sound decisions. Certainly it can be misused or misapplied, but philosophy is also what gives us the tools to dismantle bad arguments like those made by theology. Theology is to philosophy as pseudoscience is to science.
No, what enrages Feser is that his lifelong efforts to justify his ludicrous superstitions have all been failures. He is enraged because he belongs to a dying cult that no longer has the power to enforce its privilege. He is enraged because he wants respectability for what are at the end of the day unrespectable ideas. He’s a second-rate thinker who’s developed a small following of sycophants simply by being bombastically arrogant. Believers will flock to anyone who promises to protect them from the evil new atheists.
Well, what can I say? I have tried to understand the twists and turns of Feser’s thought in his last chapter, which claims to show that there is an inherent teleology in the world which can only come from a supernatural mind. As Anne Hannah said in response to you in an earlier post, I don’t buy this, and the only way that he could have come to this conclusion is by reading it in in the first place. I don’t think I have badly misrepresented Feser. I have tried very hard to find a real argument in that last chapter that would deliver the conclusion that he comes to, but, if what I have represented as his argument is not his argument, then I am at a loss as to what his argument really is.
What is it? What is Feser’s argument that leads him to his conclusion that “the material world points beyond itself to God”? If, as you say in your exchange with Ms Hannah, he defines algorithm in terms of mind, then of course the conclusion that hecomes to is that there must be a supernatural mind to explain the teleological mechanisms that produce the universe and mind. But in fact evolutionary biology claims, I think with more substance than Feser can, that it has discovered the mechanisms that lead to the abundance of life forms that inhabit the earth. The idea that Feser has shown this to be incoherent is ludicrous, and I cannot find, in this final chapter, an argument which demonstrates this, or even comes close to doing so.
As I have said, independently, in a note to you, while I may not know a lot about biology or the philosophy of biology, it seems clear to me that Feser’s argument about evolution and function, if it does not make the simple mistake that Fodor makes in his “Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings”, then it is hard to see what mistake he has made, for it seems ridiculous to suppose that, by arguing against Millikan and Dennett, he has made the more general point — which is why I subsituted “evoltionary theory” for “it” on the top of page 251 — that “any attempt to “reduce,” “analyze,” or “explain” teleology or function in Darwinian terms is muddleheaded,” (251) is nonsense, since, so far as I can understand it, Searle notwithstanding, function just is what enables a feature to be selected for (in the strong causal sense), and the supposition that mind is necessary for anything to have a function is meaningless. There seems to be no reason, as the paper referred to earlier by the Philosophical Primate explains (“Teleology”, by James Lennox) to suppose that teleological function cannot exist in physical systems quite apart from minds. And if, as Feser claims, function, that is action or process for a purpose, as in “a heart is for pumping blood,” does depend on mind, then Feser is, after all, an advocate of Intelligent Design, for according to him there is no other way for function in biological systems to exist.
And this reminds me, by the way, that despite everything, JPII’s acceptance of the theory of evolution was premised on the assumption that human beings are an exception, and that at some point God in fact created beings with souls, as we supposedly are, thus undermining the science of evolutionary biology at a stroke. Feser too thinks that intentionality depends, somehow, on intentionality in nature, and that this intentionality points beyond itself to a creative mind. Isn’t this just Intelligent Design?
I’m not to sure who is qualified to criticise whom; however, I do not think that Feser has shown himself competent to criticise evolutionary biology, his continuing bombast notwithstanding.
Gonna compare the Stoics to Himmler then as well? Or even Utilitarians (see trolley cases)?
Look, if it is morally right to do something — and even morally demanded — and your empathy disagrees, then absolutely it’s noble to repress empathy. You have to make sure you’re right, but if you are sure you’re right this would basically be you saying you prefer empathy to morality. And that’s not a good stance to take.
So is Graham Veale Feser’s second ? What’s next, pistols at dawn ? Does Feser live on a plane of existence so ethereal that he is unable to respond personally ?
For someone named ‘Verbose’ you’re singularly pithy. Yes, indeed, if it is indeed one’s duty, then one must suppress acting on empathy, a situation that happens, for example, in wartime or other extreme situations (and I’m not sure that troleyology really helps us to understand morality very well). However, in general, empathy is a fairly good indicator of duty, and to suppress empathy in the face of massive human suffering — think of absurd appeals to the immorality of contraception in a world bursting with people, and all the children who are born in straitened circumstaces, live three or four years, and then die, or the great suffering of women who must be forced by their “natural function” either to restrain themselves from natural sexual desire or bear children ceaselessly — is an indication that something is badly awry with your moral sense. As for comparing stoics to Himmler, exactly what was the comparison that you had in mind?
I’m normally more verbose, actually [grin].
Anyway, I’m Stoic leaning, which means that that whole “Oh my God, it’s so terrible for people to have to suppress their natural desires” stuff doesn’t play all that well. Which is also why I strongly, strongly, strongly disagree that “empathy is a fairly good indicator of duty”. I don’t think it is, and certainly don’t think it is unless you’ve had a rational and rationally defensible and defended morality conditioning it to be right. Emotion, on its own, just gets things too wrong to be trusted. As we even see in trolley cases, where saving 5 lives in exhcange for 1 life is considered somehow distasteful just because you might have to push someone in the way. I don’t trust emotion or empathy, and see no reason to.
As for the comparison, it was basically Ken’s claim about how your comparison was justified:
“The Church teaches that when empathy is outraged (as in the Bishop Olmsted matter) by natural law, it is noble to repress empathy. The Himmler comparison is quite apt.”
The Stoics pretty much hold this as well (it would be quibbling to debate over how close their natural law and the Catholic Church’s is, but they’re close to Aristotle so it’s a reasonable comparison). Utilitarians would hold it about the trolley cases if we replace “by natural law” with “by the right moral considerations”. Thus, if that’s what makes your comparisons apt, then compare the Stoics and Utilitarians as well, and anyone who thinks that there is any right moral code. At which point, I think, the comparison would lose all its force.
His argument is clear. Trust me. It may not be correct, but anyone reading his book with any sense of charity would be able to see it. And just because Eric seems to have difficulty seeing the arguments does not mean that they are not there at all. Furthermore, even prominent thinkers, such as Anthony Kenny, who have offered substantial criticisms of Aquinas, for example, have stated that Feser provides significant arguments for his positions, whether one ultimately agrees with them or not.
And remember the circumstances here. Not only was Feser’s work misrepresented and misunderstood, but he was also declared to be the equivalent of a Nazi. I think that it is perfectly understandable for anyone in such a situation to respond with anger and rage. I hold him to no higher standard than I hold myself to.
Oh, and if you were compared to a Nazi, I suppose that you would be Zen-like?
This is a failure of rhetoric as much as anything else.
Look… Feser believes that many of his points are self evident to anyone who truly understands them. This is a core aspect of his position.
This commits him to ONLY FOUR POSSIBLE RHETORICAL STRATEGIES.
1. He can attempt to explain to you more clearly what he believes, or to tell you that you obviously don’t properly understand what he believes, and need to study more after which things be as obvious to you as they are to him.
2. He can accuse you of being so incredibly stupid that things which are self evident to others are not self evident to you.
3. He can accuse you of being immoral, ie, he can claim that you recognize the self evident nature of his position, but are denying it in bad faith.
4. He can accuse you of insane, such that you are unable to draw basic connections between facts and concepts.
Those are the only possible options.
If he were to actually try to give you arguments and reasons why he is correct, he would be conceding that his position is not self evident. And that he will not do. Were he to concede that informed, intelligent, honest, and rational people can disagree with him, he would again be conceding that his position is not self evident. And that he will not do.
This is a black hole. You are staring into a void.
And the ironic part is that you don’t even need to prove that Feser is wrong to know that he’s not worth listening to. Once you prove that an informed, intelligent, honest, and rational person can disagree with him, you know enough to realize that he cannot, or will not, teach you anything.
Of course he does. Read the full context of that quote. He goes on to say that this does not mean that atheists cannot be good people, but only that they lack good reasons for being good, because their assumptions lead to irrationality, immorality and insanity. He is making claims about ideas and not people.
You can read some of my comments to Eric’s posts on Feser to see some examples.
Because I can appreciate good arguments when I see them, even if they are couched in rude language. I have read Feser’s works, even though I totally disagree with him on a number of important points. I am a left-wing atheist, and he is a right-wing Catholic. That did not prevent me from benefiting from his arguments, even if only to better understand the worldviews of my interlocutors. Actually, I was sick of battling straw men, and wanted to read a forceful presentation of an alternative worldview, and that is what I found in Feser.
Care to cite one example?
Untrue. He thinks that the ideas of those who disagree with him lead to incoherence, but that does not mean that those who hold them are stupid. In fact, most people do not even know why they believe what they do. That does not make them idiots.
Is it wrong for me to assume a level of maturity in atheists? Or does hurt fee-fees result in a breakdown of reason? Am I to believe that my fellow atheists are so thin-skinned that they cannot take what they frequently dish out? If so, then that is just sad.
And Feser has another post on MacDonald: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/08/final-word-on-eric-macdonald.html
“I don’t trust emotion or empathy, and see no reason to.”
Don’t conflate empathy and emotion or empathy and sympathy. Empathy is not a feeling one has; it’s the ability to understand how and why someone is the way he is or behaves the way he does. Empathy is one of the most rational faculties available. Consider a murder trial — the prosecutor has to empathize with the defendant to establish motive, the jury has to empathize with him to convict him of manslaughter and not 1st- or 2nd-degree murder, and the judge has to empathize with him in order to produce a proper sentence. Yet none of these people need sympathize with the defendant, but they do need to be able to reason from his beliefs and his emotional state. Another way of putting this is, if you’re in the habit of suppressing your sympathy we call that “being a hardass,” but if you’re in the habit of suppressing your empathy we call that “psychopathy.” No, it’s almost never noble to suppress your empathy.
Oh, please. Feser himself wasn’t compared to a Nazi; the analogy was about natural law morality. Hm. This is somehow reminiscent of your own defense of Feser (in response to Kel): Eric was writing about an idea, not a person. Let’s not be hypocrites, now, especially since the post you so kindly linked to below contains precisely that accusation.
As far as I’m concerned, Feser’s behaviour toward Eric is inexcusable. Whether or not you see it that way matters not a whit to me. I’m certainly not interested in a discussion with someone who sees no problem with Feser’s bullshit personal attacks and who insists on trying not only to excuse but to justify them using the same tired misrepresentation — and since it’s been clarified umpteen times, I can conclude only that it is willful and malicious misrepresentation — of Eric’s argument.
Another Matt,
You’re not talking about empathy, but about what is called “mind-reading”. Empathy is part of that, but it isn’t the totality of it. The Intentional Stance, for example, is a mind-reading technique, but it doesn’t have to relate to empathy at all.
Empathy is knowing what someone’s emotions are, either by reasoning them out or by experiencing them yourself in reaction to them. Reasoned empathy is almost certainly NOT how most people do empathy; autistics seem to use this, and still have deficiencies in empathy. So most of us figure out what other people are feeling by, essentially, asking ourselves what we’d feel in that case, which usually means feeling it.
So the link between emotion and empathy is pretty strong, and that’s what I don’t trust.
BTW, as you might have surmised from the above comment on rational empathy, autistics are also deficient in empathy — more so than psychopaths, who do at least seem able to figure out what people are feeling since they are so successful at manipulating them — and yet seem to be reasonably moral, if a little cold (for example, autistics will tend to claim that a woman stealing bread to feed her children is still morally wrong, while non-autistics won’t). And note that in this “autistics” covers quite high-functioning autistics, like Aspberger’s cases.
(As a point of interest, you might want to look up simulation vs theory-theory. I believe that simulation theory is how most people do mind-reading, but simulation would in fact give you an emotional feeling as a side effect … which is what I’d be against. This also relates to mirror neurons.)
Correction in the interest of intellectual honesty: By Eric’s own comment, the analogy to Himmler was to a person*. However, it was an analogy to the pope, not Feser.
* From his post, above: “… the comparison of the pope with Himmler…”. The way I read it, originally and on subsequent clarifications, was as an argument about natural law morality itself. It certainly can work that way — what Eric does show is that natural law functions analogously in RCC and Nazi ideologies — and the concession that it was about any one person is unnecessary.
Yes, you are right, AR, the application of the analogy to a person was irrelevant to what I wanted to say. I do, however, have an abiding abhorrence of the popes and what they stand for, because they do, in a sense, define what will be considered natural law morality for the rest of the church. JP II’s (or Karol Woytija’s) Evangelium Vitae is a signal example of this, and actually redoubled the church’s active political intervention in issues concerning birth control, abortion and euthanasia.
Feser at one point asks whether I think that it is right that my values should be enshrined in law and that his should not be. This is hardly to the point, since for his to be enshrined in law freedom and autonomy must be violated. For mine to be enshrined in law enables greater freedom and autonomy. He will of course refer at once to unborn persons, but this is a defintion which no one is bound to accept, and since he would also hold that contraception is gravely immoral, he would effectively confine women to Kinder, Küche, und Kirche, or kids, kitchen and kirk, for that, clearly, is their natural law function. I think that women should be freed from the burden of childbearing — not that they should have no children, if that is what they want, as many understandably do — and therefore should be free to make such decisions for themselves, including the right to terminate a pregnancy.
AR:
You are right. This is how easy it is to forget that saying that one’s ideas are horrific necessarily means that one is horrific.
That’s fine. I was not justifying his response, but only trying to understand it. Similarly, I can understand Eric’s revulsion of Catholic morality as possibly distorting his ability to objectively appraise Feser’s arguments, because he sees it all as supporting that which he abhors, and thus he will be unnecessarily hyper-critical, even upon points that he may otherwise agree to. Human psychology is a fascinating thing, after all.
Andrew P: I call nonsense! Firstly, fields of academic inquiry are defined broadly and loosely by many things — tools and modes of inquiry, subjects of inquiry, the standards and practices of the recognized professionals in the field, etc. Your pronouncement that theology is deductive and philosophy is inductive is vastly oversimplified at best, and deliberately misleading at worst. When a theologian engages in inductive arguments instead of deductive arguments, that does not make what the theologian is doing philosophy — any more than a philosopher engaged in deduction suddenly becomes a theologian.
More importantly, since ALL of the traditional arguments for God made by people like Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, etc. have been shown many times by many thinkers to rely on highly implausible assumptions that can only be deemed plausible by people who already believe the conclusion, I (and many, many others) reject your claim that these arguments are genuinely inductive: They are just as deductive — that is, they rely as much on the axiomatic assumption of God’s existence — as every other theological argument (and often assume much more than just God’s existence, but many unsupportable claims about God’s nature as well).
In a way, though, I need to thank you for offering me another way to think about and explain the distinction between genuine argumentation and mere rationalization. To rationalize is to pretend* to be making inductive arguments (arguments capable of expanding knowledge by discovering new truths) when really one is making deductive arguments from concealed axioms (arguments which can only ever draw out the implications of their axioms, and can never establish the truth of those axioms, nor the truth of any claim that doesn’t depend on those axioms). You claim that sometimes theologians are engaged in deduction (which you say characterizes theology) and sometimes they are engaged in induction (which you say is philosophy, not theology). I think the evidence supports a much less charitable analysis: Sometimes theologians openly engage in deduction based on faith-based preconceived axioms, and sometimes they attempt to conceal those same axioms behind a smokescreen of rhetoric, obfuscation, and equivocation. They do this in order to convince their audience (and often themselves) that their arguments are genuinely productive inductions that can generate new truths, when in fact they are just more stagnant deductions that can do no more than elaborate on the implications of their starting assumptions.
*Pretense need not be deliberate or willful. Self-deception is rife in theological discourse.
dguller, I’m not suggesting his quote is saying atheists are people are immoral or irrational, I’m well-aware he’s talking about the ideas. It’s just that his description of ideas doesn’t much interpretation that can show that he thinks reasonable people can disagree. If a belief is deeply irrational and insane, then how reasonable can any person who holds it be?
To use an example, take the anti-vaccination movement. Now the evidence overwhelmingly suggests vaccines are hugely beneficial, and the risks of vaccines are negligible. And there is no evidence whatsoever to link vaccinations to small-pox. Now is there grounds for reasonable people to disagree? No! To hold that vaccines don’t prevent disease or that they cause autism would be deeply irrational. No pretence that it’s a position for reasonable people to disagree on, quite simply being an anti-vaccination is wrong and being one leads to the suffering and death of children.
Correction to my last post, where it says “small-pox” it’s meant to say “autism” instead.
“Your pronouncement that theology is deductive and philosophy is inductive is vastly oversimplified at best”
It is more complicated than that. However, I was referring to part of your comment:
“the conclusion is already determined in advance.”
Deduction works from a defined axiom. This is true across all applications of deduction, and it is not scandalous. You may happen to disagree with the axiom, which is fine, but you cannot fault an deductive method for hewing to the methodology of deduction. Crying out “theology is deductive!” is not exposing anything.
“More importantly, since ALL of the traditional arguments for God made by people like Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, etc. have been shown many times by many thinkers to rely on highly implausible assumptions that can only be deemed plausible by people who already believe the conclusion”
Wow. That’s a very ambitious statement. While the numbers of people criticizing the scholastics are huge, not all of them understand what they are criticizing. For example, I encounter atheists who use the “fallacy of composition” attack on the cosmological argument all the time. Unfortunately, Aquinas’ argument does not proceed from a composition. Aquinas does not try to prove God by explaining the world in its entirety through causation- rather, his argument proceeds from a single object, any object. As such, no composition is involved. The arguments are a bit more complex than they are often made out to be.
Anyway, do you really expect me to take your word for it? I’m not that dogmatic.
“To rationalize is to pretend* to be making inductive arguments (arguments capable of expanding knowledge by discovering new truths) when really one is making deductive arguments from concealed axioms (arguments which can only ever draw out the implications of their axioms, and can never establish the truth of those axioms, nor the truth of any claim that doesn’t depend on those axioms).”
I’m not sure how well concealed the axiom of theology is- I’m pretty sure most people would identify God or revelation as the axiom.
Here you just describe a deductive process. There’s nothing scandalous about using deduction. Why aren’t you up in arms in protest against the postulates of geometry? Now, you may have good reason to accept the axioms of geometry and not theology. However, your reasons for that should be inductive, and therefore outside of geometry and theology. Obviously, we need the philosophy of math to establish as best we can the axioms of geometry, but it’s still a valid exercise for some people to try to wrest deductive truth from the axioms in the meantime.
“They do this in order to convince their audience (and often themselves) that their arguments are genuinely productive inductions that can generate new truths, when in fact they are just more stagnant deductions that can do no more than elaborate on the implications of their starting assumptions.”
Your post tells me that ALL of the arguments for God fail. Then you tell me what you personally think about the matters at hand. You then make two sets of psychological comments- one about the mindset of “rationalizers” and then about the deceptive theologians. You seem to have more comments about the people themselves than what the people are thinking about.
Try to imagine how little I care.
I agree with all of the criticisms re Feser and his adoring fellow travellers that have been made here.
Meanwhile he legendary Black Adder summed up the toxic horse-swill that Feser promotes in his famous exclamation – UTTER CRAPP.