Why Take Philosophy

In the course of my teaching I often encourage students to consider taking as much philosophy as they can schedule because I believe that a study of the questions philosophers address affords the most important background a thoughtful and intelligent student could acquire. I don't necessarily encourage students to major in philosophy, but even so, occasionally some will express an interest in pursuing a philosophy degree. These students love thinking about ideas and want to continue pursuing that love by taking additional courses, but they're rightly concerned about what they can do with a philosophy degree once they graduate.

My reply is that most philosophy majors actually don't do anything professionally with their degree but rather they find themselves with an excellent preparation for the sorts of careers they do choose to pursue. Employers in most occupations prefer to train their employees themselves in the skills they'll need anyway, and, moreover, most professions require graduate level work in their specific field. Philosophy prepares a student well for either path.

A friend sent along a link to a post by Dr. Roy Clouser - author of the outstanding book The Myth of Religious Neutrality, and professor of philosophy at Trenton State College - in which he addresses these same concerns. His post is entitled Why Major in Philosophy? and it contains a lot of good advice for a young high schoolers or undecided undergrads who think they might enjoy philosophy but who aren't sure if it will prepare them for making a living. Clouser writes:

For most students arriving at college, philosophy is the one subject they've never had before so it's natural that it's one of the last they consider majoring in. It's also natural to wonder what the major is good for--after all, few people ever plan to be professional philosophers! Yet, year after year, students switch their major to philosophy, and others tell us they wish they'd discovered it sooner so they could have done so.

What these students discovered - surprising as it sounds - is that philosophy is the single most useful major in the entire undergraduate curriculum! (Yes, useful!)

It's true, of course, that not many people become professional philosophers. But neither do most history majors become historians or English majors go on to become novelists. The fact is that most students don't pick a major because they plan to make their living in that field. They choose a major based on their interests and on how well it will prepare them for the widest possible number of occupations after college. If you are deciding that way too, we can say this for certain: If you have the interest, philosophy is the best possible major - hands down.

Let me explain.

Philosophy deals with theories about the most basic beliefs and values that people have. These include topics like the nature of reality and human nature, the nature and sources of knowledge and morality, the proper structure for society and government, and the nature of religious belief. It also studies theories about the nature of science, art, language, and law. In this way, every philosophy major is exposed to the most influential interpretations of the most important issues people face across the entire spectrum of human experience.

But more than simply learning about these issues, philosophy includes a keen training in logic and critical thinking - in the ability to argue and debate the truth of the various theories and viewpoints that are studied. It sharpens one's ability to spot difficulties, pose questions, and to weigh the evidence for and against the reasons given for any view on any topic. (A bank V.P. once told me that his logical training was the most valuable thing he got in his entire undergraduate education - even more valuable than his business courses.)

Even from this short description you may be able to see why a philosophy major is the best possible background for anyone who wants to deal with the public or who wants to write - whether as a novelist, or news reporter. It is also the very best major for those thinking of pursuing any sort of career in religion. And it should come as no surprise that law schools consider it the best background for the Law SAT and a career in law. (Speaking of standardized tests, the highest GRE scores consistently come from three majors: math, physics, and philosophy.)

But there's more. It seems that a solid background in the influential viewpoints over a wide range of issues, and an ability to think logically about them, is also splendid training for a career in business according to several top business schools. But what may be most surprising of all is that the records of some of the best medical schools show philosophy as the undergraduate major of some of their most outstanding alumni!

So, if you have doubts about the major that's best for you - especially if you are presently an undeclared major - why not make an appointment at the philosophy department to talk over your interests with one of our faculty? Philosophy might, at least, be the ideal minor subject for you even if you decide not to major in it.

I offer only one caveat. Philosophy departments, like departments in any of the humanities, often are loaded with instructors who favor a particular school or style of philosophy. Some of these styles may be deadly dull to students who expect their philosophy experience to be an exciting intellectual excursion into the best that's been thought and written about life's most important questions. The student who wants to major in philosophy would do well to check out what approach the department is inclined toward before committing him or herself to majoring in it.

Even if your school doesn't offer a philosophy major or minor it probably offers a few philosophy courses. Do yourself a favor and take as many of them as you can.

Why Study Philosophy?

In the course of my teaching I sometimes encourage students to consider an undergraduate philosophy major or minor because I believe that a study of the questions philosophers address provides the most important background a thoughtful and intelligent student could acquire.

Students often ask, though, what they can do with a degree in philosophy. My reply is that most majors don't do anything professionally with their degree, but rather they find it excellent preparation for the sorts of careers they do choose to pursue. Employers in most occupations prefer to train their employees themselves in the skills they'll need, and most professions require graduate level work in a specific field. Undergraduate philosophy prepares a student well for either path.

A friend sent along a link to a post by Dr. Roy Clouser, author of the outstanding book The Myth of Religious Neutrality, and professor of philosophy at Trenton State College, in which he addresses these same questions. His post is entitled Why Major in Philosophy? and it contains a lot of good advice for a young high schooler or undecided undergrad who thinks they might enjoy philosophy but who isn't sure if it will prepare him or her for making a living. Clouser writes:

For most students arriving at college, philosophy is the one subject they've never had before so it's natural that it's one of the last they consider majoring in. It's also natural to wonder what the major is good for--after all, few people ever plan to be professional philosophers! Yet, year after year, students switch their major to philosophy, and others tell us they wish they'd discovered it sooner so they could have done so.

What these students discovered - surprising as it sounds - is that philosophy is the single most useful major in the entire undergraduate curriculum! (Yes, useful!)

It's true, of course, that not many people become professional philosophers. But neither do most history majors become historians or English majors go on to become novelists. The fact is that most students don't pick a major because they plan to make their living in that field. They choose a major based on their interests and on how well it will prepare them for the widest possible number of occupations after college. If you are deciding that way too, we can say this for certain: If you have the interest, philosophy is best possible major - hands down.

Let me explain.

Philosophy deals with theories about the most basic beliefs and values that people have. These include topics like the nature of reality and human nature, the nature and sources of knowledge and morality, the proper structure for society and government, and the nature of religious belief. It also studies theories about the nature of science, art, language, and law. In this way, every philosophy major is exposed to the most influential interpretations of the most important issues people face across the entire spectrum of human experience.

But more than simply learning about these issues, philosophy includes a keen training in logic and critical thinking - in the ability to argue and debate the truth of the various theories and viewpoints that are studied. It sharpens one's ability to spot difficulties, pose questions, and to weigh the evidence for and against the reasons given for any view on any topic. (A bank V.P. once told me that his logical training was the most valuable thing he got in his entire undergraduate education - even more valuable than his business courses.)

Even from this short description you may be able to see why a philosophy major is the best possible background for anyone who wants to deal with the public or who wants to write - whether as a novelist, or news reporter. It is also the very best major for those thinking of pursuing any sort of career in religion. And it should come as no surprise that law schools consider it the best background for the Law SAT and a career in law. (Speaking of standardized tests, the highest GRE scores consistently come from three majors: math, physics, and philosophy.)

But there's more. It seems that a solid background in the influential viewpoints over a wide range of issues, and an ability to think logically about them, is also splendid training for a career in business according to several top business schools. But what may be most surprising of all is that the records of some of the best medical schools show philosophy as the undergraduate major of some of their most outstanding alumni!

So, if you have doubts about the major that's best for you - especially if you are presently an undeclared major - why not make an appointment at the philosophy department to talk over your interests with one of our faculty? Philosophy might, at least, be the ideal minor subject for you even if you decide not to major in it.

I offer only one caveat. Philosophy departments, like departments in any of the humanities, often are loaded with instructors who favor a particular school or style of philosophy. Some of these styles may be deadly dull to students who expect their philosophy experience to be an exciting intellectual excursion into the best that's been thought and written about life's most important questions. The student contemplating a major or minor in philosophy would do well to check out what approach the department is inclined toward before committing him or herself to signing up.

Why Major in Philosophy?

This is a post I put up about a year ago and which I'd like to re-post because a number of students have asked what I thought the advantages of pursuing a philosophy major or minor might be:

In the course of my teaching I often encourage students to consider an undergraduate philosophy major because I believe that a study of the questions philosophers have addressed provides the most important background a thoughtful and intelligent student could acquire. Students often ask, though, what they can do with such a degree. My reply is that most majors don't do anything professionally with their degree but rather they find it excellent preparation for the sorts of careers they do choose to pursue. Employers in most occupations prefer to train their employees themselves in the skills they'll need, and most professions require graduate level work in a specific field. Philosophy prepares a student well for either path.

A friend sent along a link to a post by Dr. Roy Clouser, author of the outstanding book The Myth of Religious Neutrality, and professor of philosophy at Trenton State College, in which he addresses these same questions. His post is entitled Why Major in Philosophy? and it contains a lot of good advice for a young high schooler or undecided undergrad who thinks they might enjoy philosophy but isn't sure if it will prepare him or her for making a living. Clouser writes:

For most students arriving at college, philosophy is the one subject they've never had before so it's natural that it's one of the last they consider majoring in. It's also natural to wonder what the major is good for--after all, few people ever plan to be professional philosophers! Yet, year after year, students switch their major to philosophy, and others tell us they wish they'd discovered it sooner so they could have done so.

What these students discovered - surprising as it sounds - is that philosophy is the single most useful major in the entire undergraduate curriculum! (Yes, useful!)

It's true, of course, that not many people become professional philosophers. But neither do most history majors become historians or English majors go on to become novelists. The fact is that most students don't pick a major because they plan to make their living in that field. They choose a major based on their interests and on how well it will prepare them for the widest possible number of occupations after college. If you are deciding that way too, we can say this for certain: If you have the interest, philosophy is best possible major - hands down.

Let me explain.

Philosophy deals with theories about the most basic beliefs and values that people have. These include topics like the nature of reality and human nature, the nature and sources of knowledge and morality, the proper structure for society and government, and the nature of religious belief. It also studies theories about the nature of science, art, language, and law. In this way, every philosophy major is exposed to the most influential interpretations of the most important issues people face across the entire spectrum of human experience.

But more than simply learning about these issues, philosophy includes a keen training in logic and critical thinking - in the ability to argue and debate the truth of the various theories and viewpoints that are studied. It sharpens one's ability to spot difficulties, pose questions, and to weigh the evidence for and against the reasons given for any view on any topic. (A bank V.P. once told me that his logical training was the most valuable thing he got in his entire undergraduate education - even more valuable than his business courses.)

Even from this short description you may be able to see why a philosophy major is the best possible background for anyone who wants to deal with the public or who wants to write - whether as a novelist, or news reporter. It is also the very best major for those thinking of pursuing any sort of career in religion. And it should come as no surprise that law schools consider it the best background for the Law SAT and a career in law. (Speaking of standardized tests, the highest GRE scores consistently come from three majors: math, physics, and philosophy.)

But there's more. It seems that a solid background in the influential viewpoints over a wide range of issues, and an ability to think logically about them, is also splendid training for a career in business according to several top business schools. But what may be most surprising of all is that the records of some of the best medical schools show philosophy as the undergraduate major of some of their most outstanding alumni!

So, if you have doubts about the major that's best for you - especially if you are presently an undeclared major - why not make an appointment at the philosophy department to talk over your interests with one of our faculty? Philosophy might, at least, be the ideal minor subject for you even if you decide not to major in it.

I offer only one caveat. Philosophy departments, like departments in any of the humanities, often are loaded with instructors who favor a particular school or style of philosophy. Some of these styles may be deadly dull to students who expect their philosophy experience to be an exciting intellectual excursion into the best that's been thought and written about life's most important questions. The student who wants to major in philosophy would do well to check out what approach the department is inclined toward before committing him or herself to majoring in it.

Why Major in Philosophy?

In the course of my teaching I often encourage students to consider an undergraduate philosophy major because I believe that a study of the questions philosophers have addressed provides the most important background a thoughtful and intelligent student could acquire. Students often ask, though, what they can do with such a degree. My reply is that most majors don't do anything professionally with their degree but rather they find it excellent preparation for the sorts of careers they do choose to pursue. Employers in most occupations prefer to train their employees themselves in the skills they'll need, and most professions require graduate level work in a specific field. Philosophy prepares a student for well for either path.

A friend sent along a link to a post by Dr. Roy Clouser, author of the outstanding book The Myth of Religious Neutrality, and professor of philosophy at Trenton State College, in which he addresses these same questions. His post is entitled Why Major in Philosophy? and it contains a lot of good advice for a young high schooler or undecided undergrad who thinks they might enjoy philosophy but who isn't sure if it will prepare them for making a living. Clouser writes:

For most students arriving at college, philosophy is the one subject they've never had before so it's natural that it's one of the last they consider majoring in. It's also natural to wonder what the major is good for--after all, few people ever plan to be professional philosophers! Yet, year after year, students switch their major to philosophy, and others tell us they wish they'd discovered it sooner so they could have done so.

What these students discovered - surprising as it sounds - is that philosophy is the single most useful major in the entire undergraduate curriculum! (Yes, useful!)

It's true, of course, that not many people become professional philosophers. But neither do most history majors become historians or English majors go on to become novelists. The fact is that most students don't pick a major because they plan to make their living in that field. They choose a major based on their interests and on how well it will prepare them for the widest possible number of occupations after college. If you are deciding that way too, we can say this for certain: If you have the interest, philosophy is best possible major - hands down.

Let me explain.

Philosophy deals with theories about the most basic beliefs and values that people have. These include topics like the nature of reality and human nature, the nature and sources of knowledge and morality, the proper structure for society and government, and the nature of religious belief. It also studies theories about the nature of science, art, language, and law. In this way, every philosophy major is exposed to the most influential interpretations of the most important issues people face across the entire spectrum of human experience.

But more than simply learning about these issues, philosophy includes a keen training in logic and critical thinking - in the ability to argue and debate the truth of the various theories and viewpoints that are studied. It sharpens one's ability to spot difficulties, pose questions, and to weigh the evidence for and against the reasons given for any view on any topic. (A bank V.P. once told me that his logical training was the most valuable thing he got in his entire undergraduate education - even more valuable than his business courses.)

Even from this short description you may be able to see why a philosophy major is the best possible background for anyone who wants to deal with the public or who wants to write - whether as a novelist, or news reporter. It is also the very best major for those thinking of pursuing any sort of career in religion. And it should come as no surprise that law schools consider it the best background for the Law SAT and a career in law. (Speaking of standardized tests, the highest GRE scores consistently come from three majors: math, physics, and philosophy.)

But there's more. It seems that a solid background in the influential viewpoints over a wide range of issues, and an ability to think logically about them, is also splendid training for a career in business according to several top business schools. But what may be most surprising of all is that the records of some of the best medical schools show philosophy as the undergraduate major of some of their most outstanding alumni!

So, if you have doubts about the major that's best for you - especially if you are presently an undeclared major - why not make an appointment at the philosophy department to talk over your interests with one of our faculty? Philosophy might, at least, be the ideal minor subject for you even if you decide not to major in it.

I offer only one caveat. Philosophy departments, like departments in any of the humanities, often are loaded with instructors who favor a particular school or style of philosophy. Some of these styles may be deadly dull to students who expect their philosophy experience to be an exciting intellectual excursion into the best that's been thought and written about life's most important questions. The student who wants to major in philosophy would do well to check out what approach the department is inclined toward before committing him or herself to majoring in it.

Is a Philosophy Degree Worth It?

I thought this was funny even if it's not quite true:

I say it's not quite true because an undergraduate degree in philosophy is often a gateway to graduate degrees in law, medicine, theology, and a host of other careers. Even if a student doesn't wish to take a degree in philosophy, taking philosophy courses can be, depending on how they're taught, a richly rewarding experience.

About eight years ago I wrote a post for VP in which I discussed the value of an undergrad philosophy degree, either major or minor, for anyone who has the intellectual interest and is strongly attracted to the life of the mind.

You can read that post here. If you're a high school student who enjoys ideas and is wrestling with whether you should go to college and, if so, what you should take when you're there, check it out.

Why We Need Philosophy

Robert Tracinski has written some wise words on the topic of the importance of philosophy in these times.

Whether we're consciously aware of it or not each of us adopts a particular philosophical view of life and the world. We do this as individuals and we do it corporately as a society. To study philosophy is to consciously examine the views we're adopting and to ask ourselves and others whether they make sense.

Here's a portion of what Tracinski writes:

The primary purpose of philosophy is to offer guidance for one’s life. It asks questions like: How do we distinguish truth from falsehood? How do we know what is right or wrong? What is the moral purpose of our lives? Do we have a choice over our personality and control over our destiny? When we say philosophy talks about “the meaning of life,” that’s not an understatement. These are the kinds of questions that, depending on the answers, can give meaning and coherence to the course of our lives.

They also make a tangible difference in how we live it. If you don’t think you have control over your life—if you think everything is determined by your genes, upbringing, God or “the system, man”—then you’re not likely to take much action to improve your life. So the questions philosophy deals with are the kind of questions that really matter.

What philosophy does for a single person’s life, it also does for the political life of a nation. If we want to make America great again, for example, we need to know what “greatness” is and how to achieve it. We need to know what government can do, ought to do, and shouldn’t do. All of these questions have huge, life-and-death consequences.

Politics is about ideas and power. Philosophy asks us to follow our ideas to their logical conclusion to see whether those endpoints are really best for ourselves and our nation. It helps us to consider how power should be exercised in a society that aspires to justice.

In that regard, there are whole schools of philosophy—including the ones dominant today—that undermine the role of philosophy itself. They are helping to turn us into an unphilosophical country with an unphilosophical political culture.

The dominant schools today are essentially subjectivist. They encourage you, Oprah-style, to assert “your truth,” which is valid because you feel it, so there’s no need to listen to anyone else. The subjectivists have cultivated a reputation for being “open-minded” and freewheeling, but this actually shuts down discussion. ... this is how we get the peculiar dogmatism of political correctness [according to which]...[t]here is no universal truth, just your ‘perspective,’ as a trans person of color or a left-handed lesbian tugboat worker, or whatever.

And no one else is entitled to question your perspective. It’s true because it’s true for you. If you are aggrieved, the very fact of your grievance validates itself.

If that’s the case, what’s the point of discussing any of it? It’s not for others to question or for you to explain. You just scream out your rage and frustration, and they have to cave.

In other words, so much of what passes for "dialogue" today is merely emotive venting (see the video here, for example). People often are unable or unwilling to give a rational defense of what they believe so they substitute yelling, name-calling, intimidation, censorship, and/or violence, all of which are tacit admissions that they have no good reasons for their beliefs and cannot persuade others to accept them but can only impose them on others by refusing others the opportunity to analyze, debate and promote an alternative point of view.

We see this often whenever matters of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, evolution, climate change, or politics arise in the classroom or in informal discussions. As soon as an opinion is raised which clashes with conventional orthodoxy, especially the orthodoxy of the left, the dissenter is treated like a heretic or a social leper.

In some cases on university campuses where the heretics have been grad students they've been expelled from their degree programs, when they've been faculty members they've sometimes been denied tenure or their classes have been disrupted. In cases where the dissenters from the approved opinion have been invited speakers they've often been disinvited or shouted down or even assaulted.

Tracinski continues:

When we disregard philosophy, when we don’t used reasoned debate to examine our moral and political assumptions, then all that’s left is some kind of appeal to emotion. When you appeal to emotion, as most people do these days, then the only people you can gather to your side are those already inclined to feel the same emotions you do. You end up appealing only to people like you, to those with the same background and upbringing.

College-educated blue staters will agree with college-educated blue-staters. Blue-collar red-staters agree with blue-collar red-staters.

Actually, in today’s politics, the responses are even narrower, because so much of the political debate is based on an appeal to our emotions about a particular person. Do you love or hate Hillary Clinton? Do you love or hate Donald Trump? That’s all you need to know to determine where you stand in a partisan fight, and even on public policy.

The end of the road for the appeal to emotion is the kind of tribalism and cult of personality we see in today’s politics.

The only cure for it is philosophy.

The Relevance of Philosophy

Robert Tracinski has written some wise words on the topic of the importance and relevance of philosophy in these times.

Whether we're consciously aware of it or not each of us adopts a particular philosophical view of life and the world. We do this as individuals and we do it corporately as a society. To study philosophy is to consciously examine the views we're adopting and to ask ourselves and others whether those views make sense.

Here's a portion of what Tracinski writes:

The primary purpose of philosophy is to offer guidance for one’s life. It asks questions like: How do we distinguish truth from falsehood? How do we know what is right or wrong? What is the moral purpose of our lives? Do we have a choice over our personality and control over our destiny? When we say philosophy talks about “the meaning of life,” that’s not an understatement. These are the kinds of questions that, depending on the answers, can give meaning and coherence to the course of our lives.

They also make a tangible difference in how we live it. If you don’t think you have control over your life — if you think everything is determined by your genes, upbringing, God or “the system, man” — then you’re not likely to take much action to improve your life. So the questions philosophy deals with are the kind of questions that really matter.

What philosophy does for a single person’s life, it also does for the political life of a nation. If we want to make America great again, for example, we need to know what “greatness” is and how to achieve it. We need to know what government can do, ought to do, and shouldn’t do. All of these questions have huge, life-and-death consequences.

Politics is about ideas and power. Philosophy asks us to follow our ideas to their logical conclusion to see whether those endpoints are really best for ourselves and our nation. It helps us to consider how power should be exercised in a society that aspires to justice.

Tracinski continues:

In that regard, there are whole schools of philosophy — including the ones dominant today — that undermine the role of philosophy itself. They are helping to turn us into an unphilosophical country with an unphilosophical political culture.

The dominant schools today are essentially subjectivist. They encourage you, Oprah-style, to assert “your truth,” which is valid because you feel it, so there’s no need to listen to anyone else. The subjectivists have cultivated a reputation for being “open-minded” and freewheeling, but this actually shuts down discussion. ... this is how we get the peculiar dogmatism of political correctness [according to which]...[t]here is no universal truth, just your ‘perspective,’ as a trans person of color or a left-handed lesbian tugboat worker, or whatever.

And no one else is entitled to question your perspective. It’s true because it’s true for you. If you are aggrieved, the very fact of your grievance validates itself.

If that’s the case, what’s the point of discussing any of it? It’s not for others to question or for you to explain. You just scream out your rage and frustration, and they have to cave.

In other words, so much of what passes for "dialogue" today is merely emotive venting (see the video here, for example). People often are unable or unwilling to give a rational defense of what they believe so they substitute yelling, name-calling, intimidation, censorship, and/or violence, all of which are tacit admissions that they have no good reasons for their beliefs and cannot persuade others to accept them but can only impose them on others by refusing others the opportunity to analyze, debate and promote an alternative point of view.

We see this often whenever matters of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, evolution, climate change, or politics arise in the classroom or in informal discussions. As soon as an opinion is raised which clashes with conventional orthodoxy, especially the orthodoxy of the left, the dissenter is treated like a heretic or a social leper.

In some cases on university campuses where the heretics have been grad students they've been expelled from their degree programs, and when they've been faculty members they've sometimes been denied tenure or their classes have been disrupted. In cases where the dissenters from the approved opinion have been invited speakers they've often been disinvited or shouted down or even assaulted.

Tracinski concludes:

When we disregard philosophy, when we don’t used reasoned debate to examine our moral and political assumptions, then all that’s left is some kind of appeal to emotion. When you appeal to emotion, as most people do these days, then the only people you can gather to your side are those already inclined to feel the same emotions you do. You end up appealing only to people like you, to those with the same background and upbringing.

College-educated blue-staters will agree with college-educated blue-staters. Blue-collar red-staters agree with blue-collar red-staters.

Actually, in today’s politics, the responses are even narrower, because so much of the political debate is based on an appeal to our emotions about a particular person. Do you love or hate Hillary Clinton? Do you love or hate Donald Trump? That’s all you need to know to determine where you stand in a partisan fight, and even on public policy.

The end of the road for the appeal to emotion is the kind of tribalism and cult of personality we see in today’s politics.

The only cure for it is philosophy.

Well, maybe not the only cure but the ability to think philosophically is certainly an essential part of any cure.

Defender of the Faith (Pt. I)

Somehow Jim Wallis of Sojourner's has become the media's chief arbiter of what it means to be a Christian. Some time ago he wrote a book titled God's Politics in which it turned out that God was an uber Democrat, and ever since then whenever Christian conservatives start feeling a little feisty Wallis shows up on MSNBC or HuffPo to set us all straight as to why these benighted rubes don't really represent the true Gospel. Now he has a piece in the Huffington Post wherein he argues that the Tea Party movement, because it embraces a libertarian political philosophy, is unbiblical.

There are two major shortcomings to his argument: First, Wallis fails to give a fair picture of libertarianism. Second, the Tea-Party is comprised mostly of conservatives, not libertarians.

Wallis writes:

Since the Tea Party is getting such national attention, our God's Politics blog is going to begin a dialogue on this question: Just how Christian is the Tea Party Movement -- and the Libertarian political philosophy that lies behind it?

Libertarians are social and economic minimalists when it comes to government. They want the maximum individual freedom in both spheres that's consistent with an orderly society. They believe that government has certain limited constitutional roles and that our modern government has far exceeded those bounds. The difference between conservatives and libertarians is complex, but basically conservatives would assign a stronger role to government in regulating our social life (unlike libertarians, they would not oppose, and would even favor, government regulation of pornography, obscenity, drug use, and abortion on demand. Libertarians would be indifferent to gay marriage whereas conservatives generally oppose it.).

On economic matters the differences are generally matters of degree. Libertarians are laissez faire with regard to the marketplace whereas most conservatives think government does have some role to play in protecting the consumer and the environment from abuses and unscrupulous business practices.

Tea-partiers are, by and large, social and economic conservatives. Surely there are libertarians among them, but libertarianism is not the official philosophy of the movement. The people in the Tea Party are simply citizens who are fed up with a government that is spending recklessly and unsustainably and which aspires to total control of every aspect of our economic life. One need not be a libertarian to object to the irresponsible spending of the last two administrations.

Wallis pronounces Rand Paul's views on the Civil Rights Act, and the administration's criticisms of BP, to be unChristian, but he fails to do Rand the courtesy of elaborating on Rand's reasons for saying what he said. Then, having blurred the distinction between Tea Party conservatism and Rand Paul's libertarianism, he tries to discredit the former by impugning the latter.

Wallis writes:

The Libertarian enshrinement of individual choice is not the pre-eminent Christian virtue. Emphasizing individual rights at the expense of others violates the common good, a central Christian teaching and tradition. The Christian answer to the question "Are we our brother's keeper?" is decidedly "Yes." Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God and love our neighbor. Loving your neighbor is a better Christian response than telling your neighbor to leave you alone. Both compassion and social justice are fundamental Christian commitments, and while the Christian community is responsible for living out both, government is also held accountable to the requirements of justice and mercy.

This is what rhetoricians call a straw man argument. It consists in misrepresenting an opponent's argument, the more easily to discredit it.

First, Tea-Partiers are not philosophically opposed to government itself but rather to statist government, an all-encompassing, economically smothering state that seeks to transfer wealth from those who produce it to those who don't.

Second, conservatives do not wish to emphasize individual rights at the expense of the well-being of other people (Indeed, this is actually a trait of the Left which perpetually fights against obscenity and pornography restrictions on the basis of individual rights). What Tea-Partiers want is a government that will not trample individual rights, particularly property rights.

Wallis seems to think, absurdly, that because I don't want the government taking money out of my pocket to give to others whom it thinks deserve it more than I do that I'm being unChristian. In fact, the major objection among Tea-Partiers to government welfare does not arise from a lack of concern for the poor but rather from the obvious fact that government only exacerbates the problems of the poor, perpetuates their poverty, and wastes our money.

Thirdly, the commandment to love our neighbor is not one that Jesus enjoins upon government. It's given to us as individuals. I don't want Barack Obama or Jim Wallis telling me how best to love my neighbor or who, exactly, I should be helping. The government should provide a minimum safety net for the helpless, but beyond that it should let the people decide for themselves how and who they will assist.

Wallis goes on to defend his view that government should be deeply involved in social welfare by citing a number of Old Testament passages which really don't support his case:

Just look at the biblical prophets in their condemnation of injustice to the poor, and how they frequently follow those statements by requiring the king (the government) to act justly (these requirements applied both to the kings of Israel and to foreign potentates). Jeremiah, speaking of King Josiah, said, "He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well."(Jeremiah 22:16). Amos instructs the courts (the government) to "Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts" (Amos 5:15). The prophets hold kings, rulers, judges, and employers accountable to the demands of justice and mercy.

Of course any government should act justly, but that doesn't mean, necessarily, that the government should confiscate your property and give it to others, or, as candidate Obama put it, "spread the wealth around." What it means is that the laws of the state should protect the poor from being victimized, exploited and harmed by the rich and powerful. The meaning of these justice passages seems so obvious, and so incompatible with what Wallis wants them to say, that one wonders why he cites them.

We'll look at the rest of Wallis' essay tomorrow.

RLC

The Very Angry Tea Party

J.M. Bernstein at The Stone/Opinionator frets about Tea Party anger, meditates on its causes, and comes to a number of what I think to be erroneous conclusions about what the Tea Party (TP) is all about.

Mind you, I don't presume to speak for the TP. I'm not affiliated with any of its affiliates, and I don't get any mailings they might distribute. Nevertheless, I think I can surmise some things about it that Bernstein apparently misses. He writes:

It would be comforting if a clear political diagnosis of the Tea Party movement were available - if we knew precisely what political events had inspired the fierce anger that pervades its meetings and rallies, what policy proposals its backers advocate, and, most obviously, what political ideals and values are orienting its members.

Of course, some things can be said, and have been said by commentators, under each of these headings. The bailout of Wall Street, the provision of government assistance to homeowners who cannot afford to pay their mortgages, the pursuit of health care reform and, as a cumulative sign of untoward government expansion, the mounting budget deficit are all routinely cited as precipitating events. I leave aside the election of a - "foreign-born" - African-American to the presidency.

Bernstein cannot resist poisoning the well with the obligatory innuendo hinting at racist motivations. He evidently wants us to believe that whatever other nefarious impulses animate the TP we should keep in mind that before we had an African-American president there was no TP. Ergo, Bernstein hints, the TP is a movement caused by the election of an African-American president.

This egregious bit of post hoc, propter hoc reasoning is very unbefitting a college philosophy professor, and thankfully he moves quickly along before the reader has a chance to digest what he's just said:

It is not for the sake of acquiring political power that Tea Party activists demonstrate, rally and organize; rather, [Mark Lilla in the New York Times Review of Books] argues, the appeal is to "individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice, all in the service of neutralizing, not using, political power." Lilla calls Tea Party activists a "libertarian mob" since they proclaim the belief "that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone." Lilla cites as examples the growth in home schooling, and, amidst a mounting distrust in doctors and conventional medicine, growing numbers of parents refusing to have their children vaccinated, not to mention our resurgent passion for self-diagnosis, self-medication and home therapies.

This, I believe, is not true. Most TPers would gladly acknowledge their need for community support, even for the support of their state, and even, to some degree, the support of the federal government. What they object to is being controlled by forces and bureaucrats who have no accountability and who are as remote from their everyday lives as they are indifferent to them.

What Lilla cannot account for, and what no other commentator I have read can explain, is the passionate anger of the Tea Party movement, or, the flip-side of that anger, the ease with which it succumbs to the most egregious of fear-mongering falsehoods. What has gripped everyone's attention is the exorbitant character of the anger Tea Party members express. Where do such anger and such passionate attachment to wildly fantastic beliefs come from?

Well, now. Bernstein has thrown the allegation out there that TPers are attached to wildly fantastic beliefs, as if we all know exactly what beliefs he's talking about. Maybe we would if he would tell us, but he doesn't. He just leans out of the car, fires this volley at the crowd, and speeds away.

He does spend some time decrying the libertarian inclinations he descries lurking in the background of the TP which then occasions a rather pedantic excursis into the philosophy of Descartes and Hegel. Finally, though, he gets around to putting his finger on the source of TP anger, or at least he thinks he does:

Hegel's thesis is that all social life is structurally akin to the conditions of love and friendship; we are all bound to one another as firmly as lovers are, with the terrible reminder that the ways of love are harsh, unpredictable and changeable. And here is the source of the great anger: because you are the source of my being, when our love goes bad I am suddenly, absolutely dependent on someone for whom I no longer count and who I no longer know how to count; I am exposed, vulnerable, needy, unanchored and without resource. In fury, I lash out, I deny that you are my end and my satisfaction, in rage I claim that I can manage without you, that I can be a full person, free and self-moving, without you. I am everything and you are nothing. This is the rage and anger I hear in the Tea Party movement; it is the sound of jilted lovers furious that the other - the anonymous blob called simply "government" - has suddenly let them down, suddenly made clear that they are dependent and limited beings, suddenly revealed them as vulnerable.

The problem with this is that it's almost entirely wrong (not to mention fatuous), or at least I think it is. The TP is not libertarian so much as it is conservative and it's animus has not suddenly arisen with the Obama presidency. It's been simmering since the sixties. The discontent of TPers stems largely from a frustration with the direction this country has been moving for fifty years. As leftists have been making their long march through the institutions of our culture, more and more people have grown increasingly alarmed at the erosion of traditional values and freedoms.

Periodically, they were given hope that things would change course - in the eighties when Reagan was elected, in 1994 when Republicans took control of congress for the first time in fifty years, and again in 2000 when George Bush was elected with a Republican congress. But these all proved to be only temporary impediments to the inexorable advance of progressivism which has moved through the culture like army ants devouring everything within reach.

By the last years of the Bush administration the tinder was as dry as parchment and three sparks came together to set it ablaze: The first was talk radio. Rush Limbaugh, and even more importantly, perhaps, Glenn Beck, have diligently and cogently exposed the left's agenda in ways that average people can grasp and have provided the ideas and insights which have fueled, informed, and stoked the kindling anxieties of conservatives throughout the nation.

Then the Obama administration came along and began confirming what Beck and Limbaugh had been saying on radio and tv every day. Mr. Obama was clearly the most left-wing president ever to make it to the Oval Office and he began almost immediately to "fundamentally change" the country in ways that appalled both conservatives and independents, many of whom in the latter group had voted for Obama thinking he would bring a touch of class and competence to the White House.

But the spark that finally galvanized ordinary people to engage in public protests and demonstrations was Rick Santelli's spontaneous performance on CNBC in February of 2009 which immediately went viral. Santelli's call for a modern tea party had an amazing resonance with people, tapping into the discontent that had been smoldering for over a generation and moving average people to finally say they had simply had enough:

Bernstein, however, acknowledges none of this history. Indeed, he seems oblivious to it. He then compounds his ignorance of the movement he writes about by making this baffling assertion:

In truth, there is nothing that the Tea Party movement wants; terrifyingly, it wants nothing. Lilla calls the Tea Party "Jacobins"; I would urge that they are nihilists.

Nihilists?! Here Bernstein is just being silly. It's simply not true that TPers want nothing. They want the government to stop spending money it doesn't have, to stop insulting our allies and bowing to our enemies, to stop raising our taxes to feed the ravenous bureaucratic appetite of Washington, to stop allowing people to enter the country illegally, to stop devouring major corporations, to stop crony capitalism, to stop imposing policies like the freeze on oil drilling that are costing tens of thousands of jobs, to stop telling us what kind of light bulbs we have to use, and on and on. There's a lot the Tea Party wants, but most of all it wants the people responsible for the corruption and sleazy politics of the last two years to be unemployed come November of 2010 and 2012.

To date, the Tea Party has committed only the minor, almost atmospheric violences of propagating falsehoods, calumny and the disruption of the occasions for political speech - the last already to great and distorting effect. But if their nihilistic rage is deprived of interrupting political meetings as an outlet, where might it now go? With such rage driving the Tea Party, might we anticipate this atmospheric violence becoming actual violence, becoming what Hegel called, referring to the original Jacobins' fantasy of total freedom, "a fury of destruction"? There is indeed something not just disturbing, but frightening, in the anger of the Tea Party.

With this paragraph Professor Bernstein has managed to scale the highest peaks of asininity. For fifty years we've heard nothing but excuses for the rage of the left or the rage of minorities. Liberals witnessed the destructive rage of left-wing nuts who tried to assassinate several presidents (and did assassinate JFK), and said nothing about the ideology that motivated the assassins. They witnessed the mob rage at every gathering of the World Trade Organization and tut-tutted the youthful misbehavior. They laid the deadly rage of African American mobs in L.A. and elsewhere squarely at the feet of the larger society with which minorities had "legitimate" grievances. Now a bunch of senior citizens, housewives, home-schoolers, small businesspersons and other such folk finally get tired of seeing the country they love - the country they've spent a lifetime to build and in some cases defend - get flushed down the toilet, and Bernstein is quaking with fear at what these "Jacobins" might actually do.

It's hard to take such piffle seriously. It's the sort of thing only a liberal college professor could really believe.

RLC

Three and a Half Problems

One of the most fascinating problems philosophers wrestle with is the problem of consciousness. What exactly is consciousness? How is it produced? What is its relationship to the brain? Etc.

Usually we think of consciousness as a state of being aware, but how does awareness arise from inanimate matter? How can atoms and molecules make us aware of ourselves and of the world external to ourselves? How does this all happen? How, for example, does an electro-chemical reaction in the brain generate the sensation of red?

Peter at Conscious Entities has an interesting discussion of what he calls the Three and a Half Problems of Consciousness.

The problems he discusses are the problems of Qualia, Intentionality, Morality, and Relevance. The article is a good primer on what is one of the most cutting edge fields in contemporary philosophy and also one of the most vexing because the problems seem so intractable.

Qualia are the sensations that we experience as part of our conscious awareness of the world. The sensations of color, sound, emotions, etc. are the qualia of our experience.

Intentionality refers to the fact that thoughts are about things. How is it that a particular flow of atoms, chemicals, and electricity can be about something.

The problem of moral responsibility concerns, among other things, the question of how we can be responsible for our actions unless we somehow cause them, but if we are bound by the laws of physics then in what sense is it us who causes our actions rather than the laws of physics which constrain us?

Anyway, read what Peter has to say on these things and you'll be well on your way to a graduate degree in the philosophy of mind.

Kripgenstein

The New York Times has an interesting profile of perhaps the most prominent of contemporary philosophers, Saul Kripke. Kripke is a true genius and a genuine eccentric. The Times article is a good read. Here's part of it:

Mr. Kripke, a rabbi's son, grew up in Omaha, and by all accounts was a true prodigy, so brilliant and precocious that the so-called prodigies of today are by comparison mere shadows flickering on the wall of our collective cave. In the fourth grade he discovered algebra, which he later said he could have invented on his own, and by the end of grammar school he had mastered geometry and calculus and taken up philosophy. While still a teenager he wrote a series of papers that eventually transformed the study of modal logic. One of them, or so the legend goes, earned a letter from the math department at Harvard, which hoped he would apply for a job until he wrote back and declined, explaining, "My mother said that I should finish high school and go to college first."

The college he eventually chose was Harvard. "I wish I could have skipped college," Mr. Kripke said in an interview. "I got to know some interesting people, but I can't say I learned anything. I probably would have learned it all anyway, just reading on my own."

While still a Harvard undergrad, Mr. Kripke started teaching post-graduates down the street at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after getting his B.A. didn't bother to acquire an advanced degree. Who could teach him anything he didn't already know? Instead, he began teaching and publishing. His 1980 book "Naming and Necessity," based on work he began in high school, is among the most influential philosophy books of the last 50 years, and his book-length interpretation of Wittgenstein, published two years later, is so thoroughgoing that some scholars now refer to a sort of composite figure known as Kripgenstein.

He certainly sounds like an amazing character.

The Camel's Nose

One of the major problems in philosophy, particularly for those of a materialist disposition, is what is called the "hard problem" of consciousness, i.e. how do the material structures of the brain translate physical stimuli into an immaterial sensation (a quale). What, in fact, is a "sensation" anyway? How, for example, does the experience we call "sweet" arise from the interaction of sugar molecules with sensory neurons?

The materialist assumption has been that since the brain is a physical structure, and since everything that happens in the brain can be explained in terms of chemistry, conscious experience must be ultimately explicable in terms of chemical reactions in the cells of the brain. Unfortunately, for materialism this assumption just doesn't seem to be supported by the science.

In a lengthy review of a pair of books on the subject, neuroscientist Raymond Tallis explains why. Here's an appetizer for those who may be interested in the subject:

The republic of letters is in thrall to an unprecedented scientism. The word is out that human consciousness - from the most elementary tingle of sensation to the most sophisticated sense of self - is identical with neural activity in the human brain and that this extraordinary metaphysical discovery is underpinned by the latest findings in neuroscience. Given that the brain is an evolved organ, and, as the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky said, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, the neural explanation of human consciousness demands a Darwinian interpretation of our behaviour. The differences between human life in the library or the operating theatre and animal life in the jungle or the savannah are more apparent than real: at the most, matters of degree rather than kind.

These beliefs are based on elementary errors. Just because neural activity is a necessary condition of consciousness, it does not follow that it is a sufficient condition of consciousness, still less that it is identical with it. And Darwinising human life confuses the organism Homo sapiens with the human person, biological roots with cultural leaves. Nevertheless, the coupling of neuromania and Darwinitis has given birth to emerging disciplines based on neuro-evolutionary approaches to human psychology, economics, social science, literary criticism, aesthetics, theology and the law.

These pseudo-disciplines are flourishing in academe and are covered extensively in the popular press, in articles usually accompanied by a brain scan (described by the writer Matt Crawford as a "fast-acting solvent of critical faculties"). Only last month, David Brooks asserted in the New Yorker that "brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy".

If one is wedded to the belief that the physical is all there is then, of course, the phenomena we associate with consciousness just have to be ultimately reducible to chemical processes, but what if they're not? That would imply that there's more to reality than just material "stuff", and that would be very unsettling to those who have invested their entire professional careers in trying to provide justification for a materialist or naturalistic worldview.

If there really are immaterial entities like minds which somehow interact with brains in producing the effects of consciousness then what else might there be lurking about "out there"? Immaterial mind is the nose of the supernatural camel pushing its way into the tent of naturalism. It's a very unwelcome camel, and it'll do a lot of damage to the furniture once it gets in.

Rescuing the Humanities

It's become something of a pastime among members of humanities faculties to bemoan the decline of the humanities in our institutions of higher learning, and it certainly is ironic that although most universities were founded to instill in students a love for literature, an appreciation of history, a facility with philosophy and so on, they have over the last few decades evolved into factories for turning out students with skills in the STEM disciplines.

Meanwhile, humanities enrollments have shrunk, and administrators are dropping humanities majors because they can't afford to keep idle faculty on the payroll.

Part of the reason for this unfortunate state of affairs, of course, is that a humanities degree doesn't reward a student up to her ears in student loan debt and trying to start a family (Joke: What's the difference between a history major and a large pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.), but there are other reasons why the humanities have lost their way in our colleges and universities.

Notre Dame Sociologist Christian Smith unleashes a passionate rant against what he says is the BS (it means what you think it does) that's drowning higher education and includes in his indictment a number of reasons which apply specifically to the humanities.

BS, Smith declares, is, inter alia:

• the university’s loss of capacity to grapple with life’s Big Questions, because of our crisis of faith in truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument, civility, and our common humanity.
• the farce of what are actually "fragmentversities" claiming to be universities, of hyperspecialization and academic disciplines unable to talk with each other about obvious shared concerns.
• the ideologically infused jargon deployed by various fields to stake out in-group self-importance and insulate them from accountability to those not fluent in such solipsistic language games.
• a tenure system that provides guaranteed lifetime employment to faculty who are lousy teachers and inactive scholars, not because they espouse unpopular viewpoints that need the protection of "academic freedom," but only because years ago they somehow were granted tenure.
• the shifting of the "burden" of teaching undergraduate courses from traditional tenure-track faculty to miscellaneous, often-underpaid adjunct faculty and graduate students.
• the fantasy that education worthy of the name can be accomplished online through "distance learning."
• the institutional reward system that coerces graduate students and faculty to "get published" as soon and as much as possible, rather than to take the time to mature intellectually and produce scholarship of real importance — leading to a raft of books and articles that contribute little to our knowledge about human concerns that matter.
• the grossly lopsided political ideology of the faculty of many disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences, creating a homogeneity of worldview to which those faculties are themselves oblivious, despite claiming to champion difference, diversity, and tolerance.
• the ascendant "culture of offense" that shuts down the open exchange of ideas and mutual accountability to reason and argument. It is university leaders’ confused and fearful capitulation to that secular neo-fundamentalist speech-policing.
• the invisible self-censorship that results among some students and faculty, and the subtle corrective training aimed at those who occasionally do not self-censor.
• the anxiety that haunts some faculty at public universities in very conservative states about expressing their well-considered but unorthodox beliefs, for fear of being hounded by closed-minded students and parents or targeted by grandstanding politicians.
• the standard undergraduate student mentality, fostered by our entire culture, that sees college as essentially about credentials and careers (money), on the one hand, and partying oneself into stupefaction on the other.
• the failure of leaders in higher education to champion the liberal-arts ideal — that college should challenge, develop, and transform students’ minds and hearts so they can lead good, flourishing, and socially productive lives — and their stampeding into the "practical" enterprise of producing specialized workers to feed The Economy.

Mark Bauerlein at First Things also laments the decline of the humanities, but from a somewhat different angle:

This (the declining interest among students in humanities courses) puts humanities professors in an uncomfortable position. They must become entrepreneurs, and they don’t know how.

You know that’s true because of the directions the humanities have taken over the years. Does anybody who isn’t a true believer think that intersectionality theory is going to increase enrollments? How many nineteen-year-olds will be drawn to Queer Theory? When a student who loved Jane Austen in high school enters English 200 with great expectations, only to be hectored about imperialism and sexism in Victorian England, she likely won’t come back. Or, to take another popular claim among the humanists, how many students will say in earnest, “Hey, they teach critical thinking over there—that’s exciting—I’m in!”?

Bauerlein's right, of course. The proliferation of boutique courses that appeal mainly to disaffected students and which are "taught" by radical professors who actually despise the traditional humanities disciplines are like bad money that drives out good. More than that, the better students don't want to take classes which will do nothing to make them more marketable and will often only embitter them toward that - values, country, race, gender, or religion - which they're hectored into believing is oppressive and unjust.

Bauerlein goes on to say this:

Humanities professors have forgotten the first principle of undergraduate study in the humanities: inspiration. Students come because the material compels them. They may love modern novels, or a high school teacher may have turned them on to Renaissance art or the Civil War. They want greatness and beauty and sublimity. Professors should tell students that they have on their syllabi the works of the ages.

Why not play up the classics? Forget critical thinking, workplace readiness, and verbal skills. Highlight Hamlet, Elizabeth Bennet, and the Invisible Man. Reach out to freshmen with an invitation to the Pantheon of genius and talent. March in to college curriculum meetings and announce that everyone must take a course in Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Mozart. Take students to dinner and pass along your enthusiasm in a non-class setting....

That’s what it will take to reverse the slide, and I hope my colleagues realize it.

I hope so, too. Nothing enriches a student's mind and stirs the soul like good literature, history and philosophy taught by someone who deeply loves his or her discipline.

Egalitarianism on Steroids

Nina Power at The Philosopher's Magazine argues for the counter-intuitive proposition that we should presuppose that everyone is equally intelligent. Here's an excerpt:

The work of Jacques Rancière, who never tires of repeating his assertion that equality is not just something to be fought for, but something to be presupposed, is, for me, one of the most important ideas of the past decade. Although Rancière begins the discussion of this idea in his 1987 text The Ignorant Schoolmaster, it is really only in the last ten years that others have taken up the idea and attempted to work out what it might mean for politics, art and philosophy.

Equality may also be something one wishes for in a future to come, after fundamental shifts in the arrangement and order of society. But this is not Rancière’s point at all. Equality is not something to be achieved, but something to be presupposed, universally. Everyone is equally intelligent.

But what does the axiomatic assertion of the equality of intelligence mean? Surely not everyone is as capable as each other? Doesn’t Rancière’s claim fall to pieces when you look at differential exam scores, degree results and the entire way in which intelligence divides up and separates out humanity in general?

Rancière takes his cue from the maverick nineteenth-century French pedagogue Joseph Jacotot, whose simple question was “[w]ere all men virtually capable of understanding what others had done and understood?” What this means is that, as Peter Hallward puts it, “Everyone has the same intelligence, and differences in knowledge are simply a matter of opportunity and motivation.

On the basis of this assumption, superior knowledge ceases to be a necessary qualification of the teacher, just as the process of explanation – together with metaphors that distinguish students as slow or quick, or conceive of educational time in terms of progress, training, qualification, and so on – ceases to be an integral part of teaching.”

In other words, Ms Power wants us to believe that there are differences in knowledge but not in intelligence. Given the same educational opportunities and socio-economic background everyone could obtain the same knowledge.

This strikes me as egalitarianism on steroids. I've often been in the presence (perhaps too often) of people compared to whom I feel like a mental dwarf. Some of these people were not particularly well-educated, but they seemed to me to be far smarter than I am.

Not everyone is equally fast, equally strong, equally tall, or equally attractive. We don't all have the same personality or temperament. What reason is there to think that we're equally intelligent? Why would we be so obviously unequal in every way except in terms of intelligence? Why should we even think that in this one respect we are all the same? What is the empirical evidence for such a belief?

Indeed, it seems clear that we're not all equally intelligent. An adult is more intelligent than a toddler. Down's Syndrome children are less intelligent than "normal" children. You and I are less intelligent, probably, than Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking. Intelligence is the ability to grasp concepts and meaning, and it seems undeniable that there are some who can do this much better than others.

In fact, it seems to me so manifestly true that I have to wonder what the point is of denying it.

Is Science Becoming Less Ethical

The folks at Science Now raise the question, in light of a series of scandals involving the fudging and fabrication of data in scientific research, whether science researchers are becoming less ethical.

If I were asked, I'd frame the question somewhat differently. I would ask whether we are finding that practitioners of science, many of whom have forfeited any ground for thinking that there really is objective right and a wrong, are simply acting more consistently with their metaphysical amoralism.

When scientists one after another deny the existence of any transcendent basis for moral behavior, when they embrace a metaphysical naturalism that entails an amoralist view of the world, then why should we expect that they would hold themselves to arbitrary standards of conduct if violating those standards is in their self-interest?

Lest you think that I'm overstating the degree to which science (and philosophy) has abandoned such a basis let me offer just a few of the many quotes on the subject that could be adduced:

"What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler was right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question." Richard Dawkins

"[I had] been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn’t…The long and short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality…I experienced my shocking epiphany that religious fundamentalists are correct; without God there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality....Even though words like “sinful” and “evil” come naturally to the tongue as, say, a description of child molesting. They do not describe any actual properties of anything. There are no literal sins in the world because there is no literal God…nothing is literally right or wrong because there is no Morality.” Philosopher Joel Marks, An Amoral Manifesto

"For the secular man there's no answer to the question, why not be cruel." Philosopher Richard Rorty.

"Truth (including moral truth) is whatever your peer group will let you get away with saying." Philosopher Richard Rorty

"One who does not believe in God or an afterlife can have for his rule of life…only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best." Charles Darwin (Autobiography)

"Ethics is just an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate." Biologist E. O. Wilson and Philosopher Michael Ruse

"Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear – and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death....There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will...." Biologist Will Provine

“[T]he worldview of science is rather chilling. Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions. At our best we live on a knife-edge, between wishful thinking on one hand and, on the other, despair.” Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg

When people come to think this way it's just a short step to rationalizing otherwise unethical behavior if that behavior helps one gain tenure, grants, and prestige. In other words, scientific malfeasance is consistent with the naturalistic materialism held by many scientists. It's inconsistent only with the worldview of those scientists who've not succumbed to the modern infatuation with naturalism.

Egoism at Shantung Compound

Langdon Gilkey was a theologian and philosopher who, as a young man with a degree from Harvard, went to China to teach English and philosophy. While he was there WWII broke out and the Japanese invaded China. Gilkey was detained and held in a facility with 2000 others under very trying conditions.

He writes about his experience in his 1966 memoir titled Shantung Compound. In the book he describes himself at the time as holding the belief that human reason would enable him and his fellow prisoners to transcend their conditions and build a community based on their common humanity and solidarity. He also believed that religion was a "frill" that wasn't necessary for people to seek to advance the common good, a goal that "any unbelieving naturalist (atheist) can easily avow."

For a while his optimistic humanism was affirmed, but as time wore on he began to experience disillusionment. His worldview, his view of his fellow man, suffered a series of blows, but one in particular was especially jarring.

Gilkey was chosen by his fellows to head up the committee in charge of housing. Conditions were extremely cramped and the closeness led to a lot of friction. One particular housing unit had eleven inmates in a room that could comfortably accommodate only half that number, and Gilkey learned that an adjacent unit of exactly the same size had only nine inmates. The unit with nine was crowded but not as badly as the unit with eleven.

Gilkey thought that there was an obvious and rational solution: Send one of the inmates from the more crowded unit to the less crowded unit and both would have ten inmates and be on equal terms. This was a just and moral solution, he thought, that any reasonable person would accept.

But he was disappointed to find that the less crowded unit refused to accept a tenth inmate. They told Gilkey in so many words that it was not in their self-interest to make their quarters more crowded than they already were. Gilkey argued passionately that they were being irrational and unfair, but his appeals fell on deaf ears. They even threatened Gilkey with physical violence if he persisted.

He concluded from this that if rationality conflicts with self-interest men will often choose self-interest. Rationality and logic were insufficient to move men to promote the greatest good for the greatest number.

In other words, although Gilkey doesn't put it in these terms, he was confronted with a conflict between utilitarianism and egoism, and he found to his dismay that egoism frequently prevailed, even among otherwise rational men.

I disagree, though, with his conclusion that these men were being irrational. I think they were acting perfectly rationally. Gilkey simply assumed that utilitarianism is the rational ethical stance, that we should always seek to promote the greatest good for all, but why should we? Why should anyone care about the well-being of others? Why is it not rational to promote the greatest good for oneself? This is indeed the default position in a secular society. In the absence of any transcendent source of moral imperatives the rational course is to look out for #1, to put one's own interests ahead of the interests of others.

This could only be wrong if there actually is a transcendent moral authority with the power to hold us accountable for our choices and who demands that we care about others at least as much as we care about ourselves. If no such authority exists then egoism makes perfect sense.

People who are repelled by this conclusion and who are convinced that we have a moral obligation to do what is fair for all are tacitly making a case, whether they realize it or not, for the existence of God because such an obligation can only exist if God imposes it upon us.

This is not to say that those who do not believe that God exists will necessarily be egoists. People can certainly choose arbitrarily to live any way they wish. What it means, though, is that there's nothing in atheism that requires one to care about the welfare of others. On atheism egoism is perfectly rational, and any other ethical outlook is purely a matter of subjective preference.

Atheists who think this repugnant should probably rethink their atheism.

Langdon Gilkey's Disillusionment

Langdon Gilkey was a theologian and philosopher who, as a young man with a degree from Harvard, went to China to teach English and philosophy. While he was there WWII broke out and the Japanese invaded China. Gilkey was detained and held in a facility with 2000 others under very trying conditions.

He writes about his experience in his 1966 memoir titled Shantung Compound. In the book he describes himself at the time as holding the belief that human reason would enable him and his fellow prisoners to transcend their conditions and build a community based on their common humanity and solidarity. He also believed that religion was a "frill" that wasn't necessary for people to seek to advance the common good, a goal that "any unbelieving naturalist (atheist) can easily avow."

For a while his optimistic humanism was affirmed, but as time wore on he began to experience disillusionment. His worldview, his view of his fellow man, suffered a series of blows, but one in particular was especially jarring.

Gilkey was chosen by his fellows to head up the committee in charge of housing. Conditions were extremely cramped and the closeness led to a lot of friction. One particular housing unit had eleven inmates in a room that could comfortably accommodate only half that number, and Gilkey learned that an adjacent unit of exactly the same size had only nine inmates. The unit with nine was crowded but not as badly as the unit with eleven.

Gilkey thought that there was an obvious and rational solution: Send one of the inmates from the more crowded unit to the less crowded unit and both would have ten inmates and be on equal terms. This was a just and moral solution, he thought, that any reasonable person would accept.

But he was disappointed to find that the less crowded unit refused to accept a tenth inmate. They told Gilkey in so many words that it was not in their self-interest to make their quarters more crowded than they already were. Gilkey argued passionately that they were being irrational and unfair, but his appeals fell on deaf ears. They even threatened Gilkey with physical violence if he persisted.

He concluded from this that if rationality conflicts with self-interest men will often choose self-interest. Rationality and logic were insufficient to move men to promote the greatest good for the greatest number.

In other words, although Gilkey doesn't put it in these terms, he was confronted with a conflict between utilitarianism and egoism, and he found to his dismay that egoism frequently prevailed, even among otherwise rational men.

I disagree, though, with his conclusion that these men were being irrational. I think they were acting perfectly rationally. Gilkey simply assumed that utilitarianism is the rational ethical stance, that we should always seek to promote the greatest good for all, but why should we? Why should anyone care about the well-being of others? Why is it not rational to promote the greatest good for oneself? This is indeed the default position in a secular society. In the absence of any transcendent source of moral imperatives the rational course is to look out for #1, to put one's own interests ahead of the interests of others.

This could only be wrong if there actually is a transcendent moral authority with the power to hold us accountable for our choices and who demands that we care about others at least as much as we care about ourselves. If no such authority exists then egoism makes perfect sense.

People who are repelled by this conclusion and who are convinced that we have a moral obligation to do what is fair for all are tacitly making a case, whether they realize it or not, for the existence of God because such an obligation can only exist if God imposes it upon us.

This is not to say that those who do not believe that God exists will necessarily be egoists. People can certainly choose arbitrarily to live any way they wish. What it means, though, is that there's nothing in atheism that requires one to care about the welfare of others. On atheism egoism is perfectly rational, and any other ethical outlook is purely a matter of subjective preference.

Atheists who think this repugnant should probably rethink their atheism.

Consciousness All the Way Down?

Materialism is the view that everything that exists can be reduced to material stuff. There's nothing in reality that's immaterial or which doesn't somehow derive from matter. There's no immaterial mind or soul, no immaterial beings like angels or God.

The Nobel Prize winning biologist Francis Crick (1916–2004) expressed it this way:

You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.

Of course, if materialism is true, as a considerable majority of 19th and 20th century philosophers and scientists assumed, then consciousness is some kind of illusion generated by the material brain. Moreover, if materialism is true theism becomes much more difficult to defend, since God is not made of matter.

Unfortunately, for materialists, however, there's increasing evidence accumulating in the 21st century that materialism is false.

A number of contemporary philosophers are embracing a view called panpsychism which holds that all matter down to the tiniest atom is to some degree conscious. If this is true (I'm skeptical) then consciousness is not just something that arises in complex vertebrate brains, but inheres even in the simplest material entities.

The authors of a recent scientific paper don't go quite that far but hint strongly that consciousness is a property not just of brains but of every living cell. They argue that "all biology is cognitive information processing."

Denyse O'Leary at Evolution News raises an eyebrow at the word "cognitive":

The word “cognitive” is worth examining. According to Merriam–Webster, it means "of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering)", or "based on or capable of being reduced to empirical factual knowledge."

Which definition do the authors...mean when they tell us that “As the internal measurement by cells of information is self-referential by definition, self-reference is biological self-organization, underpinning 21st century Cognition-Based Biology.” Do they mean that cells, in some sense, think?

They don’t quite say but the hints are intriguing....they write of "the contemporary recognition that cellular cognition governs the flow of biological information.”

The authors cite as evidence the astonishingly complex feedback loops in every cell in the living world. O'Leary quotes from their conclusion:

When biology is framed as an informational interactome, all forms of biological expression interact productively in a continuous, seamless feedback loop. In that reciprocating living cycle, there is no privileged level of causation since all aspects of the cell as an organized whole participate in cellular problem-solving….

So, O'Leary remarks, the cell acts on itself (self-organization) instead of merely being acted upon by [its] genes. But also, they write,

The origin of self-referential cognition is unknown. Indeed, it can now be declared biology’s most profound enigma. Yet, that instantiation can be properly accredited as equating with the origin of life.

In layman's terms if the workings of the cell exhibit consciousness then presumably the very first cell was conscious. How did something like this just pop into existence? How did consciousness arise from unconscious substrate, and if even the substrate is conscious how did the universe come to be like that?

O'Leary states:

In short, we have no idea how cells, which have been around for billions of years, could become so complex that they can be compared to intelligent beings (“self-referential cognition”) without any design in nature at all. Well, maybe they couldn’t have. Maybe the main thing to take away here, whether the authors intend it or not, is this: If biologists don’t want intelligent design, they will surely need to come up with something more convincing than Crick’s materialism.

There's more in her article. One thing she points out is that puzzles like the ones the authors of the paper adduce go some distance in explaining why panpsychism is beginning to supplant materialism among scientists if not yet in the popular culture which always lags a generation or two behind science and philosophy.

Determinism and Free Will (Pt. II)

Yesterday we looked at an argument by philosopher Stephen Cave that can essentially be stated thus:

1. Materialism entails determinism
2. Materialism is true
3. Therefore, determinism is true

The argument hinges, of course, on the second premise, but the truth of that premise is by no means obvious. It's an assumption based on a commitment to a naturalistic metaphysics. At any rate, ideas have consequences and Cave next addresses the human and social consequences of a widespread belief in the truth of determinism. They're not good:

Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency....This development raises uncomfortable—and increasingly non-theoretical—questions: If moral responsibility depends on faith in our own agency, then as belief in determinism spreads, will we become morally irresponsible? And if we increasingly see belief in free will as a delusion, what will happen to all those institutions that are based on it?

Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another. In every regard, it seems, when we embrace determinism, we indulge our dark side.

Some philosophers have suggested that given the consequences of living consistently with an awareness of the truth of determinism that the philosophical elites ought (strange word in this context) to deceive the masses and just not tell them about it. The elites should foist upon the public a kind of Platonic Noble Lie. Cave, however, demurs:

[F]ew scholars are comfortable suggesting that people ought to believe an outright lie. Advocating the perpetuation of untruths would breach their integrity and violate a principle that philosophers have long held dear: the Platonic hope that the true and the good go hand in hand.

This is a peculiar reaction, it seems, for if determinism is true, why should scholars be uncomfortable promoting a lie? What would make such a tactic morally wrong if they really had no choice in employing it? They're only doing what they've been determined by their genes and/or their social and professional environment to do.

Saul Smilansky, a philosophy professor at the University of Haifa, in Israel, has wrestled with this dilemma throughout his career and come to a painful conclusion: “We cannot afford for people to internalize the truth” about free will.

Smilansky advocates a view he calls illusionism—the belief that free will is indeed an illusion, but one that society must defend. The idea of determinism, and the facts supporting it, must be kept confined within the ivory tower.

There's something very odd about a metaphysical view - physicalism - the implications of which are so destructive that they can't be shared even among many of those who accept the view. If a belief is such that one cannot live with it consistently there's probably something deeply wrong with the belief.

Physicalism, the belief that everything is reducible to the laws of physics, does entail determinism, however, and as Cave points out in his essay, the consequences of determinism are bleak. In addition to those Cave mentions determinism also has the following consequences:

• Praise and blame, reward and punishment, are never deserved since these assume that the recipient could have acted otherwise than he or she did act.
• There are no moral obligations, no moral right and wrong, since morality is contingent upon uncompelled free choice.
• There's no human dignity since dignity is predicated on the ability to make significant choices.

It's hard to see how people could live with a belief which has these consequences without falling into nihilism and despair. Yet that's where physicalism - and the closely related views called naturalism and materialism - leads.

Philosopher John Searle offers an antidote to the determinism described by Cave in this Closer to the Truth interview:

Is Belief in Free Will Obsolete? (Pt. III)

In yesterday's post we looked at an argument made by philosopher Stephen Cave in an article in The Atlantic wherein he assumes that libertarian free will is an illusion.

Picking up where yesterday's post left off, Cave next addresses the human and social consequences of a widespread belief in the truth of determinism. They're not good:

Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency....This development raises uncomfortable — and increasingly non-theoretical — questions: If moral responsibility depends on faith in our own agency, then as belief in determinism spreads, will we become morally irresponsible? And if we increasingly see belief in free will as a delusion, what will happen to all those institutions that are based on it?

Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another. In every regard, it seems, when we embrace determinism, we indulge our dark side.

Some philosophers have suggested that given the consequences of living consistently with an awareness of the truth of determinism that the philosophical elites ought (strange word in this context) to deceive the masses and just not tell them about it. The elites should foist upon the public a kind of Platonic Noble Lie.

Cave, however, demurs:

[F]ew scholars are comfortable suggesting that people ought to believe an outright lie. Advocating the perpetuation of untruths would breach their integrity and violate a principle that philosophers have long held dear: the Platonic hope that the true and the good go hand in hand.

This is a strange reaction, it seems, for if determinism is true, why should scholars be uncomfortable promoting a lie? What would make such a tactic morally wrong if their decision to employ it was actually compelled by their environment or their genes?

Saul Smilansky, a philosophy professor at the University of Haifa, in Israel, has wrestled with this dilemma throughout his career and come to a painful conclusion: “We cannot afford for people to internalize the truth” about free will.

Smilansky advocates a view he calls illusionism—the belief that free will is indeed an illusion, but one that society must defend. The idea of determinism, and the facts supporting it, must be kept confined within the ivory tower.

There's something very odd about a metaphysical view - physicalism - the implications of which are so destructive that they can't be shared even among many of those who accept the view. If a belief is such that one cannot live with it consistently there's probably something deeply wrong with the belief.

Physicalism, however, does entail determinism and as Cave points out in his essay, the consequences of determinism are bleak. Here are a few other consequences of determinism:

• Praise and blame, reward and punishment, are never deserved since these assume that the recipient could have acted otherwise than he or she did act.
• There are no moral obligations, no moral right and wrong, since morality is contingent upon uncompelled free choice.
• There's no human dignity since dignity is predicated on the ability to make significant choices.
• If it's true one's belief that it's true is determined by many factors which have nothing to do with its truth value.

It's hard to see how people could live with a belief which has these consequences without falling into nihilism and despair. Yet that's where physicalism - and the closely related views called naturalism and materialism - lead.

Philosopher John Searle offers an antidote to the determinism described by Cave in this Closer to the Truth interview: