Materialism, Theism and Universals

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, borrowing from a book by philosopher Ed Feser, argues that the reality of universals poses a serious problem for metaphysical materialism. A universal is an abstract idea, a pattern that particular objects share in common.

For example, there are probably thousands of different species of trees, but there's something about each particular tree, something we can call "treeness," that all of them share in common and by which we distinguish a tree from, say, a bush. "Treeness" is the universal manifested by particular trees.

Egnor writes that universals - abstract thoughts like treeness, or redness or circularity - are not material yet they exist, but according to materialism everything which exists, including "minds," must be material or at least completely reducible to material stuff. The materialist holds, therefore, that abstract ideas must be the product of a material brain.

Egnor argues that triangularity, the quality of having three straight sides and three angles, would exist even if there were no triangular objects and would exist even if there were no material brains to conceive it.

Here's the nut of his argument:

There are four general ways that philosophers have tried to explain universals, and they may be termed Platonism, Aristotelianism, Conceptualism, and Scholasticism. Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Scholasticism assert that universals are real, in one sense or another.

Conceptualism asserts that universals exist only as constructs of the mind, and have no existence outside of the mind. Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Scholasticism are realist/dualist views of nature, and are consistent with a dualist view of the mind. Conceptualism, while not requiring a materialist perspective, is consistent with materialism and is the understanding of universals generally (and necessarily) taken by materialists.

Platonism, following Plato but developed in greater depth by the Platonists of the early first millennium AD, is the view that universals exist in a pure realm of Forms, and that we intuit copies of these Forms in the natural world. Platonic realism has a number of well-known problems (including problems of infinite regress: is the theory of Forms a Form? is the theory that Forms are a Form, a Form?).

Aristotelianism is the view that universals exist in particular objects, not in a separate realm, and are abstracted from the particular object by the active intellect when the universal is contemplated.

Scholasticism is in some sense a synthesis of the Platonic and Aristotelian views: it is the view that universals exist first in the Mind of God, and are instantiated in particular created objects and are abstracted by the mind by the active intellect.

Conceptualism is the denial that universals have any real existence apart from concepts in the mind. It is derived from Ockham’s theory of Nominalism, which is the assertion that universals are merely names we give to categories of particular objects, but that universals themselves have no real existence at all.

It seems fairly clear that realism (whether Platonic, Aristotelian, or Scholastic) is true and that Conceptualism/Nominalism is false. A number of arguments demonstrate this. It seems, for example, that “triangularity” doesn’t exist wholly in any particular object. Nothing in the real world is “triangularity,” in the sense that nothing has three closed perfectly straight sides with internal angles summing exactly to 180 degrees.

All real triangles are imperfect instantiations of triangularity, yet triangularity is something real in a meaningful sense. We are talking about it, and if we and all triangular objects ceased to exist, triangularity — closed three straight-sidedness with 180 degrees interior angles — would still be a thing.

Triangularity is more than merely conceptual; it's real in a meaningful sense, independent of the mind, and it is not perfectly instantiated in any particular object.

Realism is the only coherent view of universals. Universals are real, and not merely mental constructs.

Very well. I'm inclined to agree that universals are real and independent of matter, but I wonder whether it's as easy to demonstrate this as Egnor's argument makes it out to be.

For instance, if universals are independent of matter would universals still exist if there were no universe, i.e. if there were nothing at all. How could anything, even immaterial concepts, exist if nothing existed? In other words, it seems to me that the only way universals could exist apart from a universe containing both matter and human brains would be if they existed in the mind of God.

If so, the realist must presuppose that God exists in order to make the case that universals are independent of matter.

In other words, it seems to be the case that universals exist, but whether they're ontologically distinct from matter and would or could exist if no physical, material stuff existed is not so clear, at least not to me.

If God exists then universals could certainly exist in God's mind. If God doesn't exist then universals would seem to be somehow ontologically dependent upon particular material objects and physical brains, and materialism would thus be correct.

Therefore, the debate between materialism (matter is the only substance) and dualism (mind and matter are two disparate substances), like many philosophical debates, is ultimately a debate between naturalism and theism.

Egnor adds this:

So how is it that the reality of universals demonstrates the immateriality of the human intellect? Since universals cannot exist wholly in particular things, universals as objects of thought can’t exist wholly in brain matter. A “concept of a universal” — a concept of redness or triangularity or whatever — must be an immaterial concept, because a universal cannot be a particular thing.

Particular things can be instances of a universal, but the universal itself, and any concept of it, is immaterial. Abstract thought, such as thought of universals, is inherently immaterial. Materialism fails to account for concepts that abstract from particular things.

If one accepts this argument the conclusion that the human intellect or mind is immaterial pushes one in the direction of theism. If, however, one rejects theism a priori then materialist conceptualism seems to be the most plausible option left.

Why, though, would anyone reject theism a priori?

Metaxas on Meaning

A one minute excerpt from a discussion between Tucker Carlson and author Eric Metaxas dovetails so nicely with what my students and I had been talking about in class last week that I thought I'd share it.

The topic of their conversation was why Americans aren't having more children, and the whole six minute segment is worth watching, but at the 1:50 mark Carlson asks: “Then what’s the point of life [if people don't want to have children and families]? Going on more trips? Buying more crap? Clothes? I’m serious. What is the point?”

Metaxas' answer is, I think, exactly right:

Nobody really says this because it’s too ugly, but if you actually believe we evolved out of the primordial soup and through happenstance got here, by accident, then our lives literally have no meaning. And we don’t want to talk about that because it’s too horrific. Nobody can really live with it.

But what we do is, we buy into that idea and we say, “Well then, what can I do? Since there’s no God, I guess I can have guilt-free pleasure. And so I’m going to spend the few decades that I have trying to take care of Number 1, trying to have as much fun as I can. By the way, having kids requires self-sacrifice. I don’t have time for that. I won’t be able to have as much fun.”

In other words, given the lurch toward metaphysical naturalism in the Western world, there's really no reason to think it's wrong to just live for oneself, to put one's own interests first, to seek to squeeze as much personal enjoyment out of this otherwise pointless existence as possible before we die.

Carlson responds to Metaxas' analysis with this,

But what a lie. What a lie. As you lie there, life ebbing away, you think, “I’m glad I made it to Prague.” Actually people don’t think that as they die.

True enough, but when they're alive and in the full bloom of life people often do think that the more things they can accumulate, the more sights they can see, the more pleasure they can experience the more meaningful their life will be. Carlson says that they're believing a lie.

Here's the video of the exchange:

Metaxas is, of course, not the first person to say what he says here. Philosophers have been making this same observation about the emptiness of modern life for decades. Two twentieth century French thinkers, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, serve as examples.

Sartre wrote that, "Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal," and Camus declared that, "...for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful."

If that's the way things are, multitudes of moderns have concluded, then why not just live for oneself and make the best of a bad situation. What sense does it make, they reason, to sacrifice the only life we have for other people, for kids and a family.

Their conviction is that matters is personal prosperity, power and pleasure and anything that interferes with the acquisition of those is best avoided.

The Eroding Consensus

One of the numerous developments that our mainstream media finds it convenient to ignore is the eroding confidence among scientists and philosophers of the explanatory adequacy of the standard evolutionary model, i.e. the model that seeks to account for the amazing diversity of living things in terms of descent from a common primordial ancestor via natural selection, genetic mutation and genetic drift.

What used to be an overwhelming consensus in favor of the Neo-Darwinian view has shrunk to the point where it seems the only thing holding it up is the lack of any plausible naturalistic alternative.

There has always been dissent from the standard neo-Darwinian model among creationists of various stripes, of course, as well as intelligent design theorists (Some ID theorists are creationists, but many are not. ID is not the same thing as creationism), but, as Dierker notes, "...the growing discontent in academia is from secular naturalists."

Benjamin Dierker writes about this eroding consensus in a piece at The Federalist. Here's an excerpt of the heart of his essay:

While Christians have long challenged Charles Darwin’s theory of undirected evolution, few appreciate the true extent of the challenge beyond the church. Current estimates are that approximately one-third of professional academic biologists who do not believe in intelligent design find Darwin’s theory is inadequate to describe all of the complexity in biology.

A controversial letter to Nature in 2014 signaled the mounting concern, however slow and cautious, among thoughtful professional biologists. Other works by atheist authors like “What Darwin Got Wrong” and “Mind and Cosmos” find “fatal flaws” in the theory and assert it is “almost certainly false.”

The important note is that these are not ideologues or religious zealots, nor do they propose a god or biblical solution. Rather, they find problems with the explanatory value of Darwin’s theory in light of modern understanding of mutation, variation, DNA sequencing, and more. These expressions of doubt do not reject naturalism or evolution per se, but the rigor of the Neo-Darwinian model for explaining the development of life.

In fact, they want to help Darwin, not tear him down. That he needs help is news to the academy.

The leading critics have been intelligent design supporters, who are looked down on by naturalists. But as each group adds to the scientific literature, certain critiques and findings inevitably bolster or redirect the research of the other.

The effects go at least one way. Following work and theories of Stephen Jay Gould, Michael Denton helped shape a generation of skeptics with his 1985 book “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.” An evolutionist and agnostic, Denton has continued his criticism.

In the past decade, the works of professor Michael Behe, Steven Meyer, and others have given more life to the debate on the national stage. In “Darwin Devolves,” Behe points to the process of mutations to describe the inadequacy of an unguided materialist process to add information. Meyer explores the Cambrian explosion and the complexity of the cell to show the biodiversity and complexity we observe, and notes that natural processes have never been observed to produce such results.

Importantly, these two men, and many others, believe in the standard multibillion-year timeline for the Earth and make their findings based on deduction of natural evidence rather than starting from authority in scripture or elsewhere. The growth of the intelligent design community is noteworthy, but not as interesting as those who are apart from it, secular, and nonetheless find Darwinian evolution to contain serious flaws.

Behe explained that, “Based on conversations with my own colleagues at Lehigh [University], dozens of other biologists, and news stories in journals I would guesstimate that a third or more of biologists are quite skeptical that Darwin’s theory explains all of biology.” The growing literature speaks for itself.

There's more at the link. When students hear that there's no doubt among biologists that the Darwinian explanation of life is at least a close approximation of the truth, when their teachers or the media tell them that there's no controversy among scientists about the basic truth of Darwinian paradigm, students should be more than a little skeptical.

What most commenters mean when they give these sorts of assurances today is that some naturalistic explanation, whether Darwinism or something else, must be true. The discerning student, however, will recognize this as an assertion of metaphysical faith, not a scientific claim. It simply reflects the speaker's philosophical commitment to naturalism.

Unfortunately, too many people who make such pronouncements dress them up in a white lab coat and give the impression that naturalism has been scientifically proven - a feat, were it possible, would be the most spectacular accomplishment in the history of science.

Our Fascinating Universe

Have you ever wondered how big the universe is or how small the smallest things are? Actor Morgan Freeman takes us on a journey in this eight and a half minute video to plumb both the vastness of space and its incredible minuteness.

Take a look:

Some insist that our universe is all a grand fluke, an accident, others insist it's intentionally designed. Some believe that there are a near infinite number of universes (the multiverse), others argue that ours is the only one for which we have any evidence.

Most scientists agree, though, that the universe described in this video started out as a point-like object which contained within its tiny circumference all the mass-energy the universe now possesses.

This miniscule point, called a singularity, expanded with unimaginable rapidity at the moment of the universe's origin in an event that has come to be known as the Big Bang, and it's still expanding today.

It's all very fascinating.

The Continuing Holocaust

The recent massacre of over 250 worshipping Christians by Muslim terrorists in Sri Lanka is a reminder that the slaughter of Christians is by far the greatest human rights atrocity of our time, and strangely, one about which much of the American media is silent.

About five years ago I posted a piece about this on VP based around a column by Kirsten Powers that, in the wake of last weekend's horror in Sri Lanka, is worth posting again. Here it is:

Kirsten Powers, writing at The Daily Beast, reminds us of the slow-burning holocaust occurring today around the world but particularly in Muslim and atheistic countries. It's the oppression, torture and murder of tens of thousands of Christians whose only crime, like the Christians in ancient Rome, is that they refuse to accept the religion of those in power.

The details are horrifying. It's perhaps the greatest human rights crisis of the last sixty years, but the Obama administration seems to have little to say about it.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from Powers' essay:

Some of the most harrowing stories about how Christians are persecuted have come from the African country of Eritrea, which Open Doors lists as the twelfth worst country in the world for Christian persecution. In his 2013 book, The Global War on Christians, reporter John L. Allen Jr., writes that in Eritrea, Christians are sent to the Me’eter military camp and prison, which he describes as a “concentration camp for Christians.”

It is believed to house thousands being punished for their religious beliefs.

Prisoners are packed into 40’x38’ metal shipping containers, normally used for transporting cargo. It is so cramped that it’s impossible to lie down and difficult even to find a place to sit. “The metal exacerbates the desert temperatures, which means bone chilling cold at night and wilting heat during the day....believed to reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit or higher,” Allen writes. One former inmate...described [it] as “giant ovens baking people alive.” Prisoners are given next to nothing to drink so “they sometimes end up drinking their own scant sweat and urine to stay alive.”

The prisoners are tortured, sexually abused, and have no contact with the outside world. One survivor of the prison described witnessing a fellow female inmate “who had been beaten so badly her uterus was actually hanging outside her body. The survivor desperately tried to push the uterus back in” but couldn’t prevent the inmate’s excruciating death.

The situation is different but no less horrific in North Korea and Syria. Read about it at the link. Powers closes her piece with this:

At a December 2013 speech to a conference organized by Georgetown’s Religious Freedom Project, Allen told the audience, “I always ask Christians in countries [where persecution occurs], what can we do for you? The number one thing they say is, “Don’t forget about us.”

It would certainly be welcome if our leaders in Washington would show the world that they haven't forgotten these wretched martyrs and that they care as deeply for them and their circumstances as they do for, say, immigrants seeking to enter our country illegally.

No Culture Is Better Than Another

Are all cultures equal or are some cultures superior to others? The question is difficult to answer without clarifying what is meant by "equal." Usually what's referred to are the values of a particular society, and the assertion that all cultures are equal is equivalent to saying that all values are equal.

This would seem to be a very difficult claim to defend, but it's popular today among those who call themselves "multiculturalists."

Multiculturalists are generally ethical relativists who believe that moral right and wrong, good and bad values, are determined by the time and the culture in which people live and that no culture's views on these matters is superior or "better" than any other culture's views. They're just different.

It follows, then, that a culture that produces hospitals, charitable organizations, modern science and technology, women's rights, Bach and the Chartres Cathedral is no "better" or "worse" than a hunter-gatherer culture that produces nothing at all or a culture that condones and practices slavery, wife-beating, female genital mutilation, honor killing and infant sacrifice.

This is certainly counterintuitive, but it follows from the postmodern denial that there exists any objective moral standard. If right and wrong are simply arbitrary cultural conventions, like a preference in food or dress, then how can one group claim their conventions to be superior to another group's?

Dinesh D'Souza argues against the multicultural view in this short video from Prager University. See what you think:

Intellectual Honesty

Anyone who engages in public commentary and debate is often tempted to color facts to better fit his position, to overstate his case, or to do something which might be intellectually not-quite-honest.

Some ten years ago a blogger who called himself Mike Gene did a post titled Ten Signs of Intellectual Honesty in which he listed ten good rules to follow when participating with others in dialogue.

Since the link to his post no longer works I'll take the liberty to list his ten rules along with his explanations (slightly edited). They're very much worth heeding for anyone who wishes to participate in the debates occurring in our contemporary public square.

Here they are:

1. Do not overstate the power of your argument. One's sense of conviction should be in proportion to the level of clear evidence assessable by most. If someone portrays his opponents as being stupid or dishonest for disagreeing, intellectual dishonesty is probably in play. Intellectual honesty is most often associated with humility, not arrogance.

2. Show a willingness to publicly acknowledge that reasonable alternative viewpoints exist. The alternative views do not have to be treated as equally valid or powerful, but rarely is it the case that one and only one viewpoint has a complete monopoly on reason and evidence.

3. Be willing to publicly acknowledge and question one's own assumptions and biases. All of us rely on assumptions when applying our worldview to make sense of the data about the world, and all of us bring various biases to the table.

4. Be willing to publicly acknowledge where your argument is weak. Almost all arguments have weak spots, but those who are trying to sell an ideology will have great difficulty with this point and would rather obscure or downplay any weak points.

5.Be willing to publicly acknowledge when you are wrong. Those selling an ideology often have great difficulty admitting to being wrong as this undercuts the rhetoric and image that is being sold. You get small points for admitting to being wrong on trivial matters and big points for admitting to being wrong on substantive points. You lose big points for failing to admit being wrong on something trivial.

6. Demonstrate consistency. A clear sign of intellectual dishonesty is when someone extensively relies on double standards. Typically, an excessively high standard is applied to the perceived opponent(s), while a very low standard is applied to the ideologues' allies.

7. Address the argument instead of the person making the argument. Ad hominem arguments are a clear sign of intellectual dishonesty. When resorts to insulting their opponent, often by relying on stereotypes, guilt-by-association, and superficially innocent-sounding "gotcha" questions they're revealing the inadequacy of their own arguments and trying to deflect attention away from that inadequacy.

8. When addressing your opponent's argument, do not misrepresent it. Misrepresenting an argument in order to make it look weaker and easier to defeat is called the "straw man" fallacy. Straw man often occurs when people are quoted out-of-context or are paraphrased incorrectly. When critiquing an argument one should show that one has made a good faith effort to both understand it and to represent it in its strongest form.

9. Demonstrate a commitment to critical thinking. This seems self-explanatory.

10. Be willing to publicly acknowledge when one's opponent has made a good point or criticism. If someone is unwilling to admit that his opponent has made a telling point or an incisive criticism it demonstrates an unwillingness to honestly engage in the give-and-take of dialogue.

My own experience has been that even when I think I'm doing the best I can to abide by the rules Mike describes I sometimes find myself teetering close to the boundary nonetheless. Luckily, I have friends and students among my readers who are not shy about calling me on it when they think I've transgressed.

Sometimes I think they're wrong, but sometimes not.

I think it's wise to keep in mind that none of us is perfect and to watch carefully how we express ourselves in discussions on matters we feel strongly about. I've printed out Mike's Ten Signs of Intellectual Honesty and have them posted over my computer.

Maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to do that.

Despicability Sweepstakes

It's not news that people today on both left and right have little confidence in the trustworthiness of what they hear in our news media. For some their lack of confidence stems from little else than the fact that media personalities on the other side of the ideological divide from themselves present ideas and arguments which lie at variance with their own beliefs.

This is in itself warrant enough for some to consider the personalities unreliable and even dishonest.

For others their lack of confidence stems from the inveterate sloppiness with both facts and reasoning on the part of some in the media that seems at times to border on the intentional.

One of the most common shortcomings among those who serve up opinion on television, radio and print, perhaps, is the failure to be see how their criticisms of those with whom they disagree are often just as applicable to those whom they support. Donald Trump, to give one example, is frequently criticized for his paleolithic attitudes toward women by folks in the media who nevertheless loved Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy.

One wonders how those who deplore Trump's boorishness and Trump himself for being boorish reconcile their disdain for the president with the fawning admiration they had for men who were at least as bad and possibly worse. After all, Donald Trump, as far as we know, was never responsible for a girl's death.

While not of the same species as this sort of blindness Stephanie Ruhle at MSNBC offers us a good recent illustration of the intellectual sloppiness and silliness that induce suspicion and contempt among the viewing public.

In one segment in a show last week (see the clip below) she made the startling asseveration that Russia's meddling affected our election.

“What are people on the ground telling you there,” Ruhle asked a correspondent, “and are they mentioning Russia at all? Because,” she continued, “they have a chance to vote for a Democrat or a Republican, but we need to remind our audience of the first thing in the findings — that Russia interfered, foreign interference affected the election and could affect the next one.” (emphasis mine)

Well, where she got this from is unclear but the context of the exchange was the Mueller report, and nothing in Mueller's findings substantiates the claim that "foreign interference affected" the 2016 election. This is more than just a minor faux pas. If the election was affected by foreign actors then the results would be illegitimate and the current president would be politically crippled.

This state of affairs would precipitate a constitutional crisis and would not be at all good for the country.

Then Ruhle follows up with a bit of rhetorical snark: "Are the Republicans capable," she wonders, "of nominating someone who's not a despicable human being who will still do good things for the country?"

Ms. Ruhle is evidently burdened with an attenuated political memory. She forgets 1992 (G.H.W. Bush), 2008 (John McCain), and 2012 (Mitt Romney) - and she forgets that, as Ed Morrissey points out at Hot Air, the Democrats cast every one of these gentlemen as despicable human beings.

A minority of Republican voters finally decided in the 2016 primaries that if the Democrats are going to treat virtuous Republican candidates as despicable persons they might as well nominate the genuine article, especially since the Democratic candidate herself is a rather strong competitor in the despicability sweepstakes.

Here's the video clip:

As long as folks like Ruhle fail to get their facts straight and fail to see the obvious inconsistencies in their rhetoric they can hardly expect to attract a viewership that consists of anyone other than those already ideologically committed to her point of view and indifferent to the actual truth and reasonableness of what they're hearing.

John Updike on the Resurrection

The American novelist John Updike (1932-2009) was not only a great writer, he was something of a paradox. The recipient of two Pulitzers and many other prestigious awards, he wrote stories that some consider at least mildly pornographic, stories which reflect his own marital infidelities, but he seems nevertheless to have been devoutly Christian.

A poem he wrote in 1960 titled Seven Stanzas at Easter reflects his piety. Updike makes the point that if one is a believer he/she should really believe. No wishy-washy liberal protestantism for him. The resurrection of Christ was either an actual, historical, physical return to life of a man who had been actually, historically, physically dead or else the whole story doesn't really matter at all.

None of this "Jesus' body actually, permanently decomposed, but he rose in the sense that his spirit lived on in the hearts of his followers" nonsense for Updike. Either it happened objectively or Christianity is a fraud.

About that he was surely correct.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Best wishes for a meaningful Resurrection Day tomorrow.

Tanya and the Prince

Some time ago I did a post based on a remark made by a woman named Tanya at another blog. I thought that Good Friday might be a good time to run the post again, slightly edited.

Tanya's comment was provoked by an atheist at the other blog who had issued a mild rebuke to his fellow non-believers for their attempts to use the occasion of Christian holidays to deride Christian belief. In so doing, he exemplified the sort of attitude toward those with whom he disagrees that one might wish all people, atheists and theists alike, would adopt. Unfortunately, Tanya spoiled the mellow, can't-we-all-just-get-along, mood by manifesting a petulant asperity toward, and an unfortunate ignorance of, the traditional Christian understanding of the atonement.

She wrote:

I've lived my life in a more holy way than most Christians I know. If it turns out I'm wrong, and some pissy little whiner god wants to send me away just because I didn't worship him, even though I lived a clean, decent life, he can bite me. I wouldn't want to live in that kind of "heaven" anyway. So sorry.

Tanya evidently thinks that "heaven" is, or should be, all about living a "clean, decent life." Perhaps the following tale will illustrate the shallowness of her misconception:

Once upon a time there was a handsome prince who was deeply in love with a young woman. We'll call her Tanya. The prince wanted Tanya to come and live with him in the wonderful city his father, the king, had built, but Tanya wasn't interested in either the prince or the city. The city was beautiful and wondrous, to be sure, but the inhabitants weren't particularly fun to be around, and she wanted to stay out in the countryside where the wild things grow.

Even though the prince wooed Tanya with every gift he could think of, it was all to no avail. She wasn't smitten at all by the "pissy little whiner" prince. She obeyed the laws of the kingdom and paid her taxes and was convinced that that should be good enough to satisfy the king's demands.

Out beyond the countryside, however, dwelt dreadful, horrid creatures who hated the king and wanted nothing more than to be rid of him and his heirs. One day they learned of the prince's love for Tanya and set upon a plan. They snuck into her village, kidnapped Tanya, and sent a note to the king telling him that they would be willing to exchange her for the prince, but if their offer was refused they would kill Tanya.

The king, distraught beyond words, related the horrible news to the prince.

Despite all the rejections the prince had experienced from Tanya, he still loved her deeply, and his heart broke at the thought of her peril. With tears he resolved that he would do the dreadful creatures' bidding. The father wept bitterly because the prince was his only son, but he knew that his love for Tanya would not allow him to let her suffer the torment to which the ugly people would surely subject her. The prince asked only that his father try his best to persuade Tanya to live safely in the beautiful city once she was ransomed.

And so the day came for the exchange, and the prince rode bravely and proudly bestride his mount out of the beautiful city to meet the ugly creatures. As he crossed an expansive meadow toward the camp of his mortal enemy he stopped to make sure they released Tanya. He waited until she was out of the camp, fleeing toward the safety of the king's city, oblivious in her near-panic that it was the prince himself she was running past as she hurried to the safety of the city walls. He could easily turn back now that Tanya was safe, but he had given his word that he would do the exchange, and the awful people knew he would never go back on his word.

The prince continued stoically and resolutely into their midst, giving himself for Tanya as he had promised. Surrounding him, they pulled him from his steed, stripped him of his princely raiment, and tortured him for three days in the most excruciating manner. Not once did any sound louder than a moan pass his lips. His courage and determination to endure whatever agonies to which he was subjected were strengthened by the assurance that he was doing it for Tanya and that because of his sacrifice she was safe.

Finally, wearying of their sport, they cut off his head and threw his body onto a garbage heap.

Meanwhile, the grief-stricken king, his heart melting like ice within his breast, called Tanya into his court. He told her nothing of what his son had done, his pride in the prince not permitting him to use his son's heroic sacrifice as a bribe. Even so, he pleaded with Tanya, as he had promised the prince he would, to remain with him within the walls of the wondrous and beautiful city where she'd be safe forevermore.

Tanya considered the offer, but decided that she liked the allurements of the life on the outside far too much, even if it was risky, and besides, she really didn't want to be in too close proximity to the prince. "By the way," she wondered to herself, "where is that pissy little whiner son of his anyway?"

Have a meaningful Good Friday. You, too, Tanya.

Of Resurrections and the Multiverse

The Christian world prepares to celebrate this Sunday what much of the rest of the Western world finds literally incredible, the revivification of a man 2000 years ago who had been dead for several days. Modernity finds such an account simply unbelievable. It would be a miracle if such a thing happened, moderns tell us, and in a scientific age everyone knows that miracles don't happen.

If pressed to explain how, exactly, science has made belief in miracles obsolete and how the modern person knows that miracles don't happen, the skeptic will often fall back on an argument first articulated by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (d.1776). Hume wrote that miracles are a violation of the laws of nature and as a firm and unalterable experience tells us that there has never been a violation of the laws of nature it follows that any report of a miracle is most likely to be false.

Thus, since we should always believe what is most probable, and since any natural explanation of an alleged miracle is more probable than that a law of nature was broken, we are never justified in believing that a miracle occurred.

It has often been pointed out that Hume's argument suffers from the circularity of basing the claim that reports of miracles are not reliable upon the belief that there's never been a reliable report of one. However, we can only conclude that there's never been a reliable report of one if we know a priori that all historical reports are false, and we can only know that if we know that miracles are impossible. But we can only know they're impossible if we know that all reports of miracles are unreliable.

But set that dizzying circularity aside. Set aside, too, the fact that one can say that miracles don't happen only if one can say with certainty that there is no God.

Let's look instead at the claim that miracles are prohibitively improbable because they violate the laws of nature.

A law of nature is simply a description of how nature operates whenever we observe it. The laws are often statistical. I.e. if molecules of hot water are added to a pot of molecules of cold water the molecules will tend to eventually distribute themselves evenly throughout the container so that the water achieves a uniform temperature.

It would be extraordinarily improbable, though not impossible, nor a violation of any law, for the hot molecules on one occasion to segregate themselves all on one side of the pot.

Similarly, miracles may not violate the natural order at all. Rather they may be highly improbable phenomena that would never be expected to happen in the regular course of events except for the intervention of Divine will. Like the segregation of warm water into hot and cold portions, the reversal of the process of bodily decomposition is astronomically improbable, but it's not impossible, and if it happened it wouldn't be a violation of any law.

The ironic thing about the skeptics' attitude toward the miracle of the resurrection of Christ is that they refuse to admit that there's good evidence for it because a miracle runs counter to their experience and understanding of the world. Yet they have no trouble believing other things that also run counter to their experience.

For example, modern skeptics have no trouble believing that living things arose from non-living chemicals, that the information-rich properties of life emerged by random chaos and chance, or that our extraordinarily improbable, highly-precise universe exists by fortuitous accident. They ground their belief in these things on the supposition that there could be an infinite number of different universes, none of which is observable, and in an infinite number of worlds even extremely improbable events are bound to happen.

Richard Dawkins, for example, rules out miracles because they are highly improbable, and then in the very next breath tells us that the naturalistic origin of life, which is at least as improbable, is almost inevitable, given the vastness of time and space.

Unlimited time and/or the existence of an infinite number of worlds make the improbable inevitable, he and others argue. There's no evidence of other worlds, unfortunately, but part of the faith commitment of the modern skeptic is to hold that these innumerable worlds must exist.

The skeptic clings to this conviction because if these things aren't so then life and the universe we inhabit must have a personal, rather than a mechanistic, explanation and that admission would deal a considerable metaphysical shock to his psyche.

Nevertheless, if infinite time and infinite worlds can be invoked to explain life and the cosmos, why can't they also be invoked to explain "miracles" as well? If there are a near-infinite series of universes, a multiverse, as has been proposed in order to avoid the problem of cosmic fine-tuning, then surely in all the zillions of universes of the multiverse landscape there has to be at least one in which a man capable of working miracles is born and himself rises from the dead. We just happen to be in the world in which it happens.

Why should the multiverse hypothesis be able to explain the spectacularly improbable fine-tuning of the cosmos and the otherwise impossible origin of life but not a man rising from the dead?

For the person who relies on the multiverse explanation to account for the incomprehensible precision of the cosmic parameters and constants and for the origin of life from mere chemicals, the resurrection of a dead man should present no problem at all. Given enough worlds and enough time it's a cinch to happen.

No one who's willing to believe in a multiverse should be a skeptic about miracles. Indeed, no one who's willing to believe in the multiverse can think that anything at all is improbable. Given the multiverse everything that is not logically impossible must be inevitable.

Of course, the skeptic's real problem is not with the claim that a man rose from the dead but rather with the claim that God deliberately raised this particular man from the dead. That's what they find repugnant, but they can't admit that because in order to justify their rejection of the miracle of the Resurrection they'd have to be able to prove that there is no God, or that God's existence is at least improbable, and that sort of proof is beyond anyone's ability to accomplish.

If, though, one is willing to assume the existence of an infinite number of universes in order to explain the properties of our universe, he should have no trouble accepting the existence of a transcendent Mind that's responsible for raising Jesus from the dead.

After all, there's a lot more evidence for the latter than there is for the former.

Nones

It has frequently been noted that religious belief in the United States is in decline and that the trajectory is similar to that experienced in the late-19th and 20th century Western Europe. According to what's called the "Secularization Hypothesis," as a nation becomes more advanced and prosperous it will inevitably become more secular.

The most recent General Social Survey of religious affiliation in the United States seems to confirm that something like this is happening here. According to a couple of articles on the GSS findings (see here and here),

The number of Americans who identify as having no religion has risen 266 percent since 1991, and is now statistically tied with the number of Catholics and Evangelicals.

People with no religion – known as 'nones' among statisticians – account for 23.1 percent of the U.S. population, while Catholics make up 23 percent and Evangelicals account for 22.5 percent, according to the General Social Survey.

Those three groups now represent the largest three religious groups in America.

It appears from the chart that much of the rise of the "Nones" has come at the expense of what's called mainline, or liberal, Protestantism. As the "Nones" have ascended, the number of mainline Protestant Christians has fallen 62.5 percent since 1982, to now account for just 10.8 percent of the U.S. population, according to the survey.

The trend is not being fueled by a rise in atheism which is still relatively rare and not much more common than it was in the 1990s - somewhere between 3 and 4% of the population.

Evangelicalism (a more conservative protestantism) and Catholicism seem to be down but not much. The stability of the numbers of Catholics is really quite remarkable given the scandals that have rocked the Catholic church in recent years.

Another interesting aspect of the report is that religious affiliation seems to track political affiliation, or vice versa:

Political conservatives identify far more with organized religion than political liberals do; political moderates fall between them in religious identification, as they do in politics. In 2014, 9 percent of political conservatives had no religious preference compared to 19 percent of political moderates and 38 percent of political liberals.

In 1990, 5 percent of conservatives, 6 percent of moderates, and 15 percent of liberals had no religious preference. Hout and Fischer wrote extensively about this trend in their 2014 article in the Sociological Science, pointing to political polarization and generational succession as the keys to understanding the trend in religious preferences.

The alliance between conservative politicians and the leadership of conservative religious denominations was pushing political liberals who had been raised in conservative denominations away from organized religion.

This may be true, but it doesn't seem to explain why the heaviest losses are in the most liberal denominations while the more conservative groups seem to be holding fairly steady. As mentioned above, though, whatever is going on it doesn't seem that belief in God is declining significantly:

Conventional religious belief, typified by belief in God, remains very widespread — 59 percent of Americans believe in God without any doubt. Atheism is barely growing; one percent of Americans positively did not believe in God in 1965, two percent in 1991, and three percent in 2014.

Nor is disbelief fueling the trend toward no preference as beliefs changed much less during these years of institutional defection than between the 1960s to the 1990s when religious preferences changed little (and differential birth rates explained the changes that did occur).

It's risky to speculate, of course, but what seems to be happening is that theologically liberal protestantism has failed to maintain its hold on the hearts and minds of many of those it formerly counted among its number. As the doctrinal positions of the mainline churches were diluted to the point of insipidity people simply drifted away, taking their children with them.

Some of these found a home in more conservative churches with a more robust theology and others have simply become estranged from the church altogether. They've not become atheists, at least not in significant numbers, but they don't care to maintain an identification with any traditional religious body.

Puzzlements

Here are four things that puzzle me:

1. When Donald Trump calls the Mueller investigation a "witch hunt" Democrats accuse him of obstructing justice. But when Democrats criticize Attorney General William Barr for suggesting that the Obama DOJ spied on the Trump campaign and that an investigation is in order, that's not obstruction, it's righteous indignation.

2. When Donald Trump tries to block the flow of illegal immigrants into this country Democrats insist on stymieing him at every turn. We need immigrants, we're assured. Legal or illegal, immigrants are good for the country, and thus cities and states run by Democrats have been declared sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. But when President Trump proposes placing illegal immigrants into those welcoming sanctuaries, the Democrats are outraged, and insist that he can't do that.

3. When Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and others propose a Green New Deal for America the Democrats warmly embrace it and insist it's what America needs. But when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calls for the Senate to vote on it, the Democrats sputter and fume and refuse to do so. Not a single Democrat, not even those who signed on to the GND, voted for it, choosing to vote "present" instead.

4. When Democrats call President Trump and Judge Brett Kavanaugh vile names that's just telling it like it is because these are, after all, odious people, but when President Trump and others simply quote Ilhan Omar's very words about 9/11 we're told that they're engaging in irresponsible speech that is likely to incite violence and need to stop immediately.

Maybe there's something in all of this I'm missing, but if not I wonder if Democrats don't feel just a teensy bit embarrassed by the obvious inconsistency in the standards to which they hold their opponents and the standards to which they hold themselves.

Disagreement Without Disagreeableness

We are now into the next election cycle in the United States. Campaigns for the 2020 presidential election are gearing up, money is being raised and positions are being staked out. It seems like it never ends, but even so, here we are.

This means that, as disputatious as the last two years have been, the next year and a half or so will likely be even worse.

As we enter this period in our nation's political life it would be good for those of us who engage in the to and fro of political debate with friends, family and acquaintances to keep in mind that there are more important things than proving ourselves right on this or that issue.

It would be good in the months ahead to keep in mind that those who disagree with us will not be won over to our way of seeing things if our demeanor is arrogant, scowling and angry. They certainly won't find our opinions compelling if we resort to insulting them or their ideas.

The most effective way to disagree in discussion is with a humble attitude, acknowledging to ourselves and to the other person that we could be wrong about whatever it is we are discussing. A winsome approach, full of humility and humor, is likely to be far more persuasive than pummelling one's interlocutor with polemical body blows.

In almost every instance, it'll be more important that we love the person we're engaged in conversation with than that we win an argument with them. After all, as an old aphorism has it, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

If the other person gets angry and insulting then it's better that we change the subject to something less contentious. What good can come of continuing it under those circumstances anyway?

If we can love those with whom we disagree, when we can say, "I don't think you're correct, but you're more important to me than my being right," I think we'll be much more attractive to those who differ with us and much more effective in presenting our views and gaining them a hearing.

Political (and philosophical and religious) differences are important, in many cases extremely so, but they're not the most important thing. The most important thing is that we treat each other with dignity, respect and kindness.

Our politicians probably won't treat each other that way, but we should.

Engineering Genius

I've shown this video to some of my classes in the past because it's so well done. Drew Berry is an animator who creates computer generated animations of cellular processes. The processes he depicts here are occurring all the time in each of the trillions of cells in your body. As you watch it keep in mind a few questions:

1. The proteins which work with the DNA to produce other proteins were themselves produced by DNA. So which came first? How did the DNA produce the helper proteins before the helper proteins existed to guide the process?

2. How did unguided processes like mutation and genetic drift produce such coordinated choreography? How did blind, unguided processes produce the information which tells the proteins where to go and how to function?

3. How does this information get processed by mindless lumps of chemicals and how is it passed on from generation to generation?

And notice how the motor proteins are structured in such a way that enables them to "walk" along microtubules carrying various items to locations where they're needed. How do these motor proteins "know" how to do this, and how did they evolve in the first place?

Perhaps we'll eventually discover naturalistic, materialistic answers to these questions, but it seems that the more progress we make in biology the more implausible naturalistic explanations sound to all but the irrevocably committed and the more it looks like the living cell has been intelligently engineered by a mind.

If you don't have time to watch the whole video start at the 2:54 mark:

Fairy Tale or Miracle

Given the topic of yesterday's post I thought it'd be appropriate to repost this one from a couple of years ago. It features a beautifully animated video that shows the development of a child from insemination to birth and provides a fitting complement to the argument made yesterday by Karen Swallow Prior that fifty years from now abortion will be as unthinkable as slavery is today.

When I watched this video for the first time I couldn't help wonder how the cells, both the sperm and the embryonic cells, "know" where to go. I marveled, too, at how the cells "know" to differentiate themselves into various tissues, and how the tissues "know" to arrange themselves in 3 dimensional patterns of a specific shape. The amount of information and organization this whole process requires, the feedback and control systems that must be deployed, are all enormously complex and ingenious.

The developmental process from sperm to newborn appears to be wonderfully programmed and choreographed, but by what? The laws of chemistry? Natural selection? How does a purposeless, mechanical process like natural selection generate the incredible amount of information - far more information than what's required by, say, a computer operating system - that's needed for embryogenesis, even given a billion years of evolutionary time?

Perhaps some purely naturalistic, mechanical process did produce this amazing developmental sequence, but if so, it's as if a fairy tale has come true. Or maybe it's a miracle.

This is breathtaking. Even moreso when we think that we're essentially witnessing the first nine months of our own existence.

Unthinkable in Fifty Years

Vox.com has been running a series in which guests are invited to offer their opinion on something commonly experienced today that they think will be considered unthinkable in fifty years. Some sample selections are "eating meat", "youth tackle football", "self-driving cars", etc.

In her submission, English professor Karen Swallow Prior believes that just as we look back today at chattel slavery and wonder how people could ever have justified the idea of owning other human beings, fifty years from now people will shake their heads as they look back at the practice of abortion on demand.

Here's the lede for her argument:

The list of those who have had few or no legal rights throughout history is staggering: women, children, orphans, widows, Jews, gays and lesbians, slaves, former slaves, descendants of slaves, those with leprosy, undocumented immigrants — to name a few.

Nothing marks the progress of any society more than the expansion of human rights to those who formerly lacked them. I believe that if such progress is to continue, prenatal human beings will be included in this group, and we will consider elective abortion primitive and cruel in the future.

The eradication of abortion may be difficult to imagine. But consider how difficult it would have been for our grandparents to foresee a culture in which nearly one in four women has an abortion by age 45. Certainly, some factors leading to this situation reflect real and substantial progress for women: greater equality, more work options, improved understanding of sexuality, and increased moral agency.

But rights for women that come at the expense of unborn children aren’t true liberation; they merely, as one writer put it, enable the “redistribution of oppression.”

Prior goes on to make the case that a fetus is a human being entitled to the same rights as humans which have been born and that pro-choice advocates tacitly acknowledge this when they declare that they want abortion to be "safe and rare." Why should it be rare if it's just a benign medical procedure like an appendectomy? Who would bother to insist that they want appendectomies to be rare?

It's also ironic that those who declare themselves firmly on the side of science will twist themselves into pretzels denying the science that shows the tiny form in the womb to be a developing child.

Ultrasound technology and prenatal surgical interventions provide dispositive scientific evidence that what's in the mother's womb is not some alien blob of tissue and extravagant gender reveal parties and the insuppressible personality of the child in the womb offer psychological confirmation to an increasing number of mothers that what they're carrying is in fact a baby.

Prior concludes with this:

Our modern-day willingness to settle for sex apart from commitment, to accept the dereliction of duty by men who impregnate women (for men are the primary beneficiaries of liberal abortion laws), and to uphold the systematic suppression of sex’s creative energy and function are practices that people of other ages would have considered bizarre.

As we enter late modernity and recognize the limits of the radical autonomy and individualism which have defined it, the pendulum will correct itself with a swing toward more communitarian and humane values that recognize the interdependency of all humans.

When we do, we will look back at elective abortion and wonder — as we do now with polluting and smoking — why we so wholeheartedly embraced it.

We will look at those ultrasound images of 11-week old fetuses somersaulting in the waters of the womb and lack words to explain to our grandchildren why we ever defended their willful destruction in the name of personal choice and why we harmed so many women to do so.

It will be interesting, for those still around in fifty years, to see whether Prior's prediction that abortion will be to those alive then what slavery is to us today is fulfilled.

Interested readers can peruse her full column at the link.

Egoism and Utilitarianism

Peter Singer is a philosopher at Princeton who has gained substantial notoriety for invoking his utilitarian ethical principles to justify infanticide and animal rights. In a piece at The Journal of Practical Ethics the editors interview Singer and question whether utilitarians can, or do, live consistently with their own ethical philosophy.

Here's part of the interview:

Editors: Frances Kamm once said...that utilitarians who believe in very demanding duties to aid and that not aiding is the same as harming, but nevertheless don’t live up to these demands, don’t really believe their own arguments....She concludes that ‘either something is wrong with that theory, or there is something wrong with its proponents’. What do you think about this argument? Why haven’t you given a kidney to someone who needs it now? You have two and you only need one. They have none that are working – it would make a huge difference to their life at very little cost to you.

Peter Singer: I’m not sure that the cost to me of donating a kidney would be “very little” but I agree that it would harm me much less than it would benefit someone who is on dialysis. I also agree that for that reason my failure to donate a kidney is not ethically defensible.... Donating a kidney does involve a small risk of serious complications. Zell Kravinsky suggests that the risk is 1 in 4000.

I don’t think I’m weak-willed, but I do give greater weight to my own interests, and to those of my family and others close to me, than I should. Most people do that, in fact they do it to a greater extent than I do (because they do not give as much money to good causes as I do). That fact makes me feel less bad about my failure to give a kidney than I otherwise would. But I know that I am not doing what I ought to do.

This response raises several questions, but I'll focus on just one. Singer believes it's wrong not to give the kidney and he feels bad, he feels guilty, about not doing so, yet why should he? In what sense is his violation of utilitarian principles morally wrong?

Indeed, why is utilitarianism morally superior to the egoism to which he admits to succumbing?

To put it differently, if Singer chooses to be a utilitarian and donate the kidney while someone else chooses to be an egoist and keep his kidneys, why is either one right or wrong? Given Singer's naturalism, what does it even mean to say that someone is morally wrong anyway?

On naturalism there's no moral authority except one's own convictions and no accountability so in what way is keeping one's kidneys an offense to morality?

Elsewhere in the interview, Singer notes that his ethical thinking is based on the work of the great 19th century ethicist and utilitarian Henry Sidgwick and mentions that,

Sidgwick himself remained deeply troubled by his inability to demonstrate that egoism is irrational. That led him to speak of a “dualism of practical reason”—two opposing viewpoints, utilitarianism and egoism, seemed both to be rational.

In other words, the choice between them is an arbitrary exercise of personal preference, although Singer doesn't agree with this because he believes evolution affords grounds for rejecting egoism. It's hard to see how this could be the case, however, since blind impersonal processes cannot impose moral duties.

Nor is it easy to see how acting against the trend of those processes can be morally wrong. How is one doing anything wrong if he chooses to act contrary to the way mutation and natural selection have shaped the human species? Why should he accept the ethical results of evolutionary history any more than we accept the physical limitations imposed on us by gravity when we go aloft in an airplane or hot air balloon?

The only reason we have for not putting our own interests ahead of the interests of others - as in the example of the kidney - and the only rational reason we would have for feeling guilt over our failure to consider the needs of others is if we believe that such failures are a transgression of an obligation imposed upon us by a transcendent personal moral authority.

Singer lacks such a belief and can thus give no compelling reason why anyone should be a utilitarian rather than an egoist. Indeed, egoism is a rational moral default position for anyone who embraces a naturalistic worldview.

Alien Hand Syndrome

This will sound very weird, but there's a phenomenon called alien hand syndrome that bears on the question of free will and determinism. Neuroscientist Michael Egnor explains the condition in an article at Mind Matters:

This neurological condition occasionally afflicts patients who have had split-brain surgery or other procedures or injuries that disconnect regions of the brain. They experience involuntary movements of limbs. Most commonly it is the left arm, which seems to have a mind of its own. The classic example...is a patient who intentionally buttons her shirt with her right hand while her left hand follows, unbuttoning her shirt, which she doesn’t intend!

In other words, the two halves of the brain seem to have conflicting wills which suggests that the will is neither unitary nor free. Here's another example quoted in Egnor's piece:

Another example [is] related to food, where the right hemisphere was not pleased with what the left hemisphere had been cooking and threw a vial of salt on the food, to render it useless. These examples do seem to imply that will and awareness are indeed split, and there is a struggle for power between the two hemispheres, and thus the two sides of the body.

These examples seem, at least at first glance, to support the materialist view that all of our willful decisions are really the product solely of our material brain, but Egnor disagrees:

[A]lien hand syndrome doesn’t mean that free will is not real. In fact, it clarifies exactly what free will is and what it isn’t. We have, broadly speaking, two kinds of volition. In common with animals, we have appetite. Appetite is volition that arises from material processes in the brain.

Appetite may or may not be entirely conscious, but it entails motor acts and perceptions linked to specifics of the environment—a keyboard, a button, a bowl of food, or a sexually attractive person. We, along with non-human animals, experience powerful appetites arising from brain processes (neurochemicals, action potentials, and the like) all of the time.

In fact, appetite is the only type of volition that non-human animals experience.

But human beings have another kind of volition as well. We have will, which, unlike appetite, does not arise from brain processes. Will follows from intellect, which is the human ability to think abstractly, without linking the thought to particular objects.

I may desire an extra slice of cake (appetite), but I think about how bad that would be for my nutritional health (intellect) and decide, based on my abstract concern for my health, to forgo the cake (will). My will can override my appetites.

Because will follows on intellect, which is an immaterial power of abstract thought, will is free, in the sense that it is not determined by physical processes such as brain chemicals. Will is, of course, influenced by physical processes. If I’m really hungry and tired, I may decide to have that piece of cake anyway because my appetite has got the better of my compromised intellect. But I still chose to have the cake.

My choice was not determined by chemistry, although it was influenced by chemistry.

Egnor argues that alien hand syndrome is a phenomenon of appetitive volition rather than of the will:

All of the examples of alien hand syndrome involve particular acts—a hand unbuttoning a button or reaching for an object, and the like. This splitting of volition to do particular acts is splitting of the appetite, not splitting of the will. There are no examples of splitting of the will— no examples of simultaneous distinct abstract intentions.

Now, I don’t mean that we don’t have times of indecision; of course we do. I mean that there are no examples of simultaneous distinct abstract decisions—say, to deliberately will justice and injustice at the same moment or to deliberately do differential calculus and integral calculus (one with the right hand, one with the left) at the same moment.

Will is metaphysically simple, in the sense that it has no parts that can separate completely from one another. In fact, unity of will is more or less what we take to define an individual person. If there are two distinct wills, there are two distinct people. ‘Splitting of the will’ defies what we know to be true of human beings.

It is the abstract nature of will that distinguishes it from appetite and makes it free and metaphysically simple, incapable of being split. Alien hand syndrome is an example of splitting of appetite, which is a brain function driven wholly by material processes.

Thus, alien hand syndrome is not an exception to free will at all. In fact, a proper understanding of alien hand syndrome helps us understand what free will really is.

The fact that split brains can dictate conflicting unconscious behaviors does not seem to be a compelling argument against the existence of an immaterial will. After all, our brains dictate a lot of unconscious behaviors including heartbeats, digestion, the coordinated movements of a baseball player catching a fly ball, etc. All of these are "appetitive" volitions.

Egnor may well be correct in what he writes on alien hand syndrome, and what he says is important, but the most puzzling question of all is still unanswered and probably unanswerable: What, exactly, is the will?

Alone in the Cosmos

Since the mid-twentieth century it's been the accepted assumption that the universe must be teeming with life. So many stars out there. So many stars like our sun. So many planets must be orbiting them. There must be billions of planets with living things many of which are biologically and technologically advanced.

But if so, where are they?

As time went on and more and more discoveries were made about the geo-physical properties that must obtain for a planet to produce and sustain life, the first seeds of doubt began to germinate. Books like Rare Earth by Ward and Brownlee and Privileged Planet by Gonzalez and Richards began to feed those doubts.

Cosmologists are loath to conclude that earth-bound life is unique in all the cosmos, but the chances of another planet meeting all the criteria that a planet must meet in order to sustain life are so vanishingly slim that some of them are admitting that it may be so. We may be all alone.

Ethan Seigel at Forbes tentatively suggests the formerly unthinkable in a recent essay. He writes:

When it comes to the question of extraterrestrial life, humans optimistically assume the Universe is prolific. After all, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly special about Earth, and life not only took hold here on our world, but evolved, thrived, became complex and differentiated, and then intelligent and technologically advanced. If the same ingredients are everywhere and the same rules are at play, wouldn't it be an awful waste of space if we're alone?

But this is not a question that can be answered by appeals to either logic or emotion, but by data and observation alone. While our investigations have revealed the existence of an enormous number of candidate planets for life, we have yet to find one where intelligent aliens, complex life, or even simple life is known to exist. In all the Universe, humanity may truly be alone.

He goes on to state that,

• somewhere between 80%-100% of stars have planets or planetary systems associated with them,
• approximately 20%-25% of those systems have a planet in their star's "habitable zone," or the right location for liquid water to form on their surface,
• and approximately 10%-20% of those planets are Earth-like in size and mass.

A substantial fraction of stars out there (around 20%) are either K-, G-, or F-class stars, too: Sun-like in mass, luminosity, and lifetime. Putting all these numbers together, there are around 1022 potentially Earth-like planets out there in the Universe, with the right conditions for life on them.

Unfortunately, the assertion that there's nothing special about earth is very misleading. There are many more conditions that must be met for a planet to be suitable for life than the ones he lists. Here are just a relative few to give an idea of the complexities involved:

In order to support life in its solar system a star must be located within a fairly narrow region in the galaxy. It can't be too close to the center, where radiation would be intense, nor too far away where it would revolve at dangerous speeds around the galactic pinwheel.

The star has to be rich in heavier elements, and has to be fairly remote from other stars in the galaxy. It has to be a middle-aged star of relatively constant luminosity, not too big and not too small, not too old and not too young.

In other words, stars suitable for sustaining life are relatively unusual in our galaxy, but this is just the beginning. The star has to possess a planetary satellite capable of generating and sustaining life and this means that planet has to have perhaps hundreds of precisely-tuned properties.

It has to be just the right distance from its star which means it has to revolve around the star at just the right speed. It has to have a nearly circular orbit and the right tilt to its axis. It has to be just the right mass so that its gravity will hold oxygen in the atmosphere but not hold slightly lighter noxious gases like ammonia. It has to rotate on its axis at the right speed, lest the temperature differences between day and night be too great, and it must possess a shifting crust.

It must also have ample water and carbon, among other things, and also a large moon which has to be at just the right distance from the planet to stabilize its wobble. It must also be in a solar system where it's protected from meteorites by large gravitational vacuum sweepers like Uranus, Neptune, Jupiter and Saturn, and so on.

As the number of parameters that must be just right in order for a planet to be able to support life increases the chances of such planets existing in great numbers in our galaxy decrease.

Seigel seems to feel the weight of all this and concludes with this paragraph:

But how did life arise to begin with, and how likely is a planet to develop life from non-life? If life does arise, how likely is it to become complex, differentiated, and intelligent? And if life achieves all of those milestones, how likely is it that it becomes spacefaring or otherwise technologically advanced, and how long does such life survive if it arises?

The answers may be out there, but we must remember the most conservative possibility of all. In all the Universe, until we have evidence to the contrary, the only example of life might be us.

And if we are in fact the only conscious, sentient beings in the physical universe, does that suggest that we are in some sense special? In what sense? Could it be that we were intended?

Letter to My Daughter

Some years ago I had occasion to write a letter to my just barely teen-age daughter on the subject of happiness. I subsequently posted it on Viewpoint, and a reader digging through the archives read it and liked it, so I thought I'd like to share it again. Here it is:

Hi Princess,

I've been thinking a lot about the talk we had the other night on what happiness is and how we obtain it, and I hope you have been, too. I wanted to say a little more about it, and I thought that since I was going to be away, I'd put it into a letter for you to read while I'm gone.

One of the things we talked about was that we can't assess whether we're happy based on our feelings because happiness isn't just a feeling. It's more of a condition or quality of our lives - sort of like beauty is a quality of a symphony. It's a state of satisfaction we gain through devotion to God, living a life of virtue (honesty, integrity, loyalty, chastity, trustworthiness, self-discipline), cultivating wholesome and loving relationships with family and friends, experiencing the pleasures of accomplishment in career, sports, school, etc., and filling our lives with beauty (nature, music, literature, art, etc.).

One thing is sure - happiness isn't found by acquiring material things like clothes and toys. It's not attained by being popular, having good looks, or being high on the social pecking order. Those things seem like they should make us happy, especially when we're young, but they don't. Ultimately they just leave us empty.

To the extent that happiness is a feeling we have to understand that a person's feelings tend to follow her actions. A lot of people allow their feelings to determine their actions - if they like someone they're friendly toward them; if they feel happy they act happy - but this is backwards.

People who do brave things, for instance, don't do them because they feel brave. Most people usually feel terrified when in a dangerous situation, but brave people don't let their feelings rule their behavior, and what they do is all the more wonderful because it's done in spite of everything in them urging them to get out of danger. If they do something brave, despite their fear, we say they have courage and we admire them for it.

Well, happiness is like courage. You should behave as you would if you were happy (satisfied with the way your life is going) even if you don't feel particularly happy. When you do act that way your feelings gradually change and tend to track your behavior. You find yourself feeling happier than you did before even though the only thing that has changed is your attitude.

How can a person act happy without seeming phony? Well, we can act happy by displaying a positive, upbeat attitude, by being pleasant to be around, by enjoying life, by smiling a lot, and by not complaining. Someone who has a genuine smile (not a Paris Hilton smirk) on her face all the time is much more attractive to other people than someone whose expression always tells other people that she's just worn out or miserable.

One other thing about happiness is that it tends to elude us most when we're most intent on pursuing it. It's when we're busy doing the things I mentioned above, it's when we're busy serving and being a friend to others, that happiness is produced as a by-product. We achieve it when we're not thinking about it. It just tags along, as if it were tied by a string, with love for God, family, friends, beauty, accomplishment, a rewarding career, and so on.

Sometimes young people are worried that they don't have friends and that makes them unhappy, but often the reason they don't, paradoxically, is that they're too busy trying to convince someone to be their friend. They try too hard and they come across to others as too insecure. This is off-putting to people, and they tend to avoid the person who seems to try over-hard to be their friend. The best way to make friends, I think, is to just be pleasant, friendly, and positive. Don't be critical of people, especially your friends, and especially your guy friends, either behind their backs or to their faces. A person who never has anything bad to say about others will always have friends.

Once in a while a critical word has to be said, of course, but it'll be meaningless at best and hurtful at worst, unless it's rare and done with complete kindness. A person who is always complaining or criticizing is not pleasant to be around and will not have good, devoted friends, and will not be happy. A person who gives others the impression that her life is miserable is going to find that after a while people just don't want to hear it, and they're not going to want to be around her.

I hope this makes sense to you, honey. Maybe as you read it you can think of people you know who are examples of the things I'm talking about....

All my love,

Dad

Who Created God?

Philosopher of science Jay Richards is a proponent of intelligent design, i.e. the view that the universe and life show evidence (lots of it) of having been intelligently engineered. Richards asserts that one of the most frequent objections he encounters, one raised in fact by Richard Dawkins in his best-selling book The God Delusion is, "If the universe and life are designed then who designed the designer?"

Laypeople can be forgiven for asking the question because it seems common-sensical, but someone of Dawkins' stature should know better and he took a lot of heat from philosophers, even philosophers sympathetic to his metaphysical naturalism, for his evident lack of philosophical sophistication.

Here's a short video in which Richards addresses the question:

It's worth noting, I think, that the attempt to use this question as an indictment of the intelligent design hypothesis is misguided for other reasons besides those Richards gives.

Let's look at the first part of the question: "If the universe and life are designed...." implies a willingness to accept for the sake of argument that the universe is designed, but as soon as he's granted that the naturalist has gotten himself into trouble.

Once it's conceded by the naturalist, even if only hypothetically, that the universe is designed then whether there's just one designer or an indefinite number doesn't much matter. Naturalism would stand refuted since naturalism holds that the universe is self-existent.

Moreover, to posit more designers than what's necessary to explain the universe is a violation of the principle that our explanations should contain the minimum number of entities necessary to explain what we're trying to explain - in this case, the universe. So the simplest, and therefore the best, explanation is that there's only a single designer of the universe. There's no warrant for thinking that anyone who believes there's a designer of the universe must allow for an infinite regress of designers.

We might also point out that the universe is the sum of all contingent entities. Thus, whatever designed the universe cannot itself be contingent lest it be itself part of the universe. Now contingent entities require a necessary being as their ultimate cause and a necessary being is, by definition, not itself dependent upon anything else for its existence. So, if the universe was designed by a non-contingent being then it makes no sense to ask what designed it. Nothing designed it. If it were designed it would be contingent and thus part of the universe.

Finally, it should be noted that if there is an intelligent designer it must not only be a necessary being, but it must also transcend space and time because these are aspects of the universe. Therefore, the designer must be non-spatial and non-temporal. It must also be very intelligent and very powerful. In other words, it must be something very much like God.

Given all this, the naturalist would be better off resisting the temptation to ask "who designed the designer." It's a question which carries far less polemical punch than they think it does.

That Was Then, This Is Now

Back in 1998 when Democrat Bill Clinton was the president and an Independent Prosecutor named Ken Starr had, after a lengthy grand jury investigation, recorded President Clinton's shenanigans in his report, Congressman Jerrold Nadler was adamantly opposed to the report being made public without first being redacted.

It's illegal to release grand jury material, Nadler pointed out, because innocent people, caught up in the investigation, could be deeply harmed by embarrassing testimony and because sensitive national security information could be compromised.

Here's what Mr. Nadler said in 1998 about releasing the special prosecutor's report:

Mr. Starr in his transmittal letter to the speaker and the minority leader made it clear that much of this material is Federal Rule 6(e) material, that is material that by law, unless contravened by a vote of the House, must be kept secret.

It’s grand jury material. It represents statements which may or may not be true by various witnesses, salacious material, all kinds of material that it would be unfair to release.

So, I assume what’s going to have to happen before anything else happens is that somebody — the staff of the Judiciary Committee, perhaps the chairman and ranking minority member — is going to have to go over this material, at least the 400 or 500 pages in the report to determine what is fit for release and what is, as a matter of decency and protecting people’s privacy rights, people who may be totally innocent third parties, what must not be released at all.

Notwithstanding his scruples in 1998, Mr. Nadler today chairs the House Judiciary Committee and he's demanding that special counsel Robert Mueller's full report be released without any redactions regardless of its impact on innocent people and national security:

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the committee’s chairman, made clear that Democrats are not satisfied with Attorney General William P. Barr’s assurances on Friday that he will produce a full, albeit redacted, copy of the nearly 400-page report to Congress by mid-April.

“As I have made clear, Congress requires the full and complete special counsel report, without redactions, as well as access to the underlying evidence,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement. “The attorney general should reconsider so that we can work together to ensure the maximum transparency of this important report to both Congress and the American people.”

What might have changed Chairman Nadler's mind on releasing unredacted an report the contents of which might humiliate people in ways unrelated to the purpose of Mueller's investigation? I don't know for sure, but here's a possibility: In '98 the president was a Democrat, today he's a Republican.

Moral Skyhooks (Pt. II)

Yesterday's post addressed the scandal (called "Operation Varsity Blues") surrounding the fraudulent efforts by wealthy parents to get their children accepted into top-tier universities.

The main question I began to consider yesterday concerns the grounds people are relying upon in order to make the judgment that these parents and the others involved were doing something morally wrong.

The post was based on an article written by Jennifer Graham at Deseret News. In her column Graham says this:

Steve Mintz, an ethicist and professor emeritus at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, believes a cultural problem seethes beneath what prosecutors call "Operation Varsity Blues," and that until Americans can admit their moral compass is askew and take steps to fix it, the nation will continue to suffer scandals like this.

“There is no way to justify this type of activity. It reflects a society where people no longer live by conventional standards of morality," Mintz said. “I can’t imagine any of these parents stopped and thought, ‘Is what I’m doing harming others? Am I taking away a position from other kids who might be more worthy?’

This is what ethics is all about — considering how your actions might affect others before you do something, not after the fact, after you’re caught. To look at this one incident in isolation is wrong, in my point of view," he said.

Well, I agree with everything Mintz said, but it's what he didn't say that's most important. What he didn't tell us is why what these parents and their abettors did is wrong. Is it wrong because, as he put it, it violates "conventional standards of morality"? That can't be right.

What makes those standards obligatory? Just because the consensus opinion has always endorsed them why does that make them right? What if a society's conventional standards affirmed slavery, infant sacrifice or honor killing? Would those practices then be right and would opposing them be wrong?

It would be very helpful if Mintz would answer these fundamental metaethical questions, for if they're left unanswered then all of our theorizing about ethical standards amounts to little more than hand-waving.

Graham continues:

Mintz believes that a creeping moral nihilism, coupled with a widespread belief that few people face serious consequences for ethical wrongdoing, have erased a bright line of right and wrong, leaving in its place a “gray streak.” He said that a deterioration of public discourse is further evidence of the problem, saying “civility and ethics go hand in hand.”

“For many years, we’ve had the Golden Rule, but it’s hard to say that this is still the basic ethical or moral rule in society anymore,” Mintz said.

What Mintz apparently is reluctant to come right out and say is that a secular society in fact has no solid basis for making moral judgments. Only if there is a transcendent, personal moral authority who has somehow revealed moral truth to us can any moral judgment be anything more than an expression of one's own personal tastes and feelings.

In order to be binding people must believe that moral obligations are imposed upon them by something beyond themselves and beyond society. They must believe that morality is objectively real. That harming others is objectively, not merely subjectively, wrong and that those who harm others will ultimately be held accountable for their actions even if they get away with it in this life.

The reason the Golden Rule lacks the authority in people's lives that perhaps it once had is that fewer people today believe that the Golden Rule expresses the will of God. For too many folks the rule that we should treat others as we want to be treated is no more, and probably a lot less, authoritative than the rule that we should put our own interests ahead of the interests of others.

Morality must be divinely sanctioned if it's to have any power to motivate people to override their desires and appetites, but in a society which has abandoned the concept of the divine it's very hard to say why it's wrong to yield to those desires and appetites, whether or not doing so results in harm to others.

Maybe this is why no one in Graham's article offers an explanation for why cheating to get into college is really wrong. Unless they're willing to invoke God's law there's simply no way to support the claim that cheating is objectively wrong, but, of course, invoking God is no longer fashionable.

Moral Skyhooks (Pt. I)

Jennifer Graham at Deseret News uses the college admissions scandal to highlight moral impoverishment among our cultural elites.

Her article is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.

For those unfamiliar with the scandal, wealthy parents paid up to half a million dollars to get their children admitted into prestigious universities. The strategies employed by William “Rick” Singer, the California consultant who ran the college admissions scheme through a fraudulent charity included doctoring photos, cheating on admissions tests and paying athletic coaches to add the student to their teams even though the student wasn't an athlete.

Some 50 people, including 33 parents and 13 coaches are involved in the scheme, and Graham notes that at least some of the parents were indifferent to the moral issues involved. “To be honest, I’m not worried about the moral issue here,” said one Connecticut parent, co-chairman of a global law firm, according to court documents.

He had no "moral issue" with having his daughter fraudulently diagnosed as learning disabled so she could get extra time taking a college placement test, or with having another person take online courses on her behalf.

Graham's article contains a lot of moral hand-wringing by various ethicists, but no one in the article seems to recognize the fundamental reason for the ethical indifference of parents like those quoted above.

For instance, Graham asks, "If moral standards are encoded in our DNA, as many theologians and philosophers have taught, how can people go so wildly off course? And when our moral compass malfunctions, how can we recalibrate?"

Her first question answers itself. If morality is simply a feeling imposed on us by our genes then why should anyone think themselves obligated to heed it? After all, feelings of selfishness, lust, greed, ethnocentrism, etc. are also generated by our genes and most people think these inclinations should be repressed or ignored. How do we differentiate between genetically-derived impulses which should be followed and those which should not unless we're tacitly adverting to a higher standard which transcends DNA?

Moreover, if genes are the arbiters of moral right and wrong then if some people's genes make them psychopaths why is psychopathic behavior morally wrong?

If moral standards are encoded in our genes then what does it mean to say that it's wrong to commit fraud? At most it can only mean that we've acted in defiance of our genetic programming, but why is that wrong? What law says that we must always act in accord with what our genes dictate?

In other words it's precisely because society has bought into the notion that right and wrong are simply epiphenomenal expressions of the chemicals in our DNA that people have concluded that there's nothing wrong with cheating to get one's child into a prestigious university.

Morality has to be hung from a transcendent support or else it's like skyhooks hanging on nothing at all.

I'll have more to say about this tomorrow, meanwhile you might check out Mike Mitchell's fine piece on this scandal at his blog Thought Sifter.