Tag: god

Parochialism in metaphysics

Here is an underdeveloped thought:

Humility) Whatever the ultimate nature of everything is at the deepest possible level (if that even makes sense), it’s probably not what you were thinking. You are probably wrong.

Ok, as a statement of intellectual humility, it’s not that interesting I guess. But let’s push it a little bit further.

It’s a simple anthropological observation that people tend to project ideas onto this existential canvas that are ‘parochial’. That is, people tend to project things about their local experience and blow them up to metaphysical importance. A classic example of this would be how typical it is in times of war for religious authorities to assure the army that God is on their side, or even that the war itself will decide something of cosmic significance. What this is doing is saying that God, the deepest metaphysical explanation for absolutely everything there is, is interested in how you do on a particular day in a fight.

Here is another example. Maybe you think that the deepest level of reality happens to be mental (maybe you think God is a mind, or maybe you are an idealist, etc). Assuming you take yourself to (at least partly) be a mind, this means you are saying that the deepest level of reality happens to be just like you.

Here’s another example. Suppose you are not a nihilist about value, but you think (as many atheists do), that values are all in the head, specifically in the heads of humans. This again puts us at the centre of things, assuming that there’s no more to value than how it relates to us. This is (perhaps) another form of parochialism.

What’s the significance of this? Well, what it does (I think) is establish a mild sort of epistemic tilt away from such ideas. Sure, maybe the deepest level of reality happens to care a lot about how your tribe does in a given conflict, but it seems quite unlikely. After all, there are limitless possibilities. Maybe there is nobody out there at all (atheism), or maybe there is a god but he doesn’t care about humans at all, or maybe something I can’t even begin to imagine. It’s impossible to quantify. But it starts to seem like a coincidence if it happened to be parochial.

Perhaps the best way to think about it is like Hume’s argument about miracles. I can think of lots of parochial (human-centred) reasons why people might claim that, for instance, god is on our side in a battle. Maybe it makes me feel more confident. Maybe it makes me more prepared to kill my fellow man if I feel I have cosmic permission, etc. But those sorts of considerations are patently not truth tracking. How many times in history did the priestly caste announce before a battle that after doing rigorous checking that god actually was on the other side? I’m guessing not often. And that goes for both sides of every battle.

So we have reason to think that people have a tendency to project parochial things, and that this tendency isn’t epistemically well grounded. This mirrors Hume’s observation that people have many diverse reasons for claiming to have witnessed miracles, including simply lying or otherwise being mistaken. And that this tilts our expectations away from their claims. We have a starting point of scepticism towards them.

The tilt that parochialism induces could be overcome. It’s not decisive. Just because people tend to project a protective all powerful backer when they go off to war doesn’t mean that on this occasion right now that he isn’t on our side. But what it does is mean it’s reasonable to raise an eyebrow if that’s what you are being told on the eve of war. ‘Of course that’s what they are saying. That’s what they always say,’ etc.

As I said at the start, this is an underdeveloped thought. But it rings true with me. One of the reasons I don’t believe in Christianity, or anything like that, is that it seems to be exactly the sort of thing I would expect people to project. It’s parochial. Of course you want there to be a super powerful protector out there that agrees with your specific political and social views and has your interests at heart. Who wouldn’t want that? But we shouldn’t promote that above other, less psychologically appealing, or just less familiar sounding, possibilities.

Here is just one very sketchy application of the idea. Take the fine tuning argument. As Standardly presented, it argues that the fine tuning of the constants of nature strongly favours theism over atheism. Seeing this through the lens of my parochial analysis, I want to say that the right conclusion is that the evidence strongly favours ‘non-randomness’ about those constants over ‘randomness’. Something is making the constants take those values, rather than it just being pure chance. But that leaves open so many possibilities. A benevolent god is one of them. But so is a god who is interested in something other than us. Maybe we are an otherwise uninteresting side product of this universe, which is actually fine tuned for some other reason. Maybe there is some naturalistic disposition (for lack of a better word) that is the reason they take those values. Maybe it’s something non-random that I can’t imagine.

it’s only unchecked (rampant!) parochialism that would lead you to think that the FTA is an argument for anything like us, or like the sort of thing we tend to project for social or psychological (etc) reasons.

So this parochial analysis is a fruitful new lens to revisit some familiar territory through.

I’m still thinking it all through, so feel free to tell me if I’m being thick somehow. I usually am.

The worldview dilemma

Introduction

In presuppositional apologetics, you often hear people using the term ‘worldview’, as in ‘x is true on the Christian worldview’ or ‘on the atheist worldview you can’t say that’ etc. But what is a worldview?

Here I’m going to present a simple dilemma. There seem to be two plausible options for what a worldview could be, but on either route there are problems for the presuppositionalist. Perhaps there is a third option, but I suspect proposals will likely collapse back into one of the two options I gave (but have a go at coming up with your own).

The dilemma

My idea is that the notion of ‘worldview’ is most plausibly one of two things:

  • The set of everything believed by a given person, or
  • Beliefs about things like metaphysics, epistemology, and morality (etc), which are coherent and collectively offer a ‘big picture’ explanation of everything around us.

Analysis

The first horn of the dilemma fits nicely with some things that presuppositionalists say. For instance, they often insist that “everyone has a worldview”. And that’s correct if a worldview just is the set of all beliefs a person has. Clearly, everyone believes something, and if all a worldview consists in is this set of beliefs, then everyone has that. But notice that there are no constraints on this. Beliefs in this sense can be about anything, such as what day of the week it is, what your favourite colour is, etc. And there is no expectation that this set is coherent or comprehensive. Perhaps two beliefs contradict one another. Perhaps there are topics about which someone has never formed any belief whatsoever.

And this is where it causes issues for the presuppositionalist. They will typically try to show you that your worldview is incoherent, or lacks the resources to explain a given phenomenon. But that’s not really a criticism of this notion of worldview. I would think that any person whatsoever that we consider would have some inconsistencies in their beliefs. Who among us can genuinely say they know they have no hidden conflicts between any two beliefs? I discover such confusions in my own beliefs all the time. Maybe you have transcended to a perfectly consistent sphere, but clearly most people are not at that level. And if all ‘worldview’ means is all my beliefs, then it’s not completely coherent or completely comprehensive. And that’s ok. You don’t get any prizes for showing me that I don’t have everything worked out. I’ll admit that if you ask me, and I’m pretty confident the same applies to you, whoever you are. Pretending that points can be scored by merely showing that someone’s ‘worldview’ harbours some incoherence or lacks some explanatory power is no big achievement.

So the first horn looks good for a presuppositionalist, as they are correct that everyone has a ‘worldview’ in the first sense. But then it backfires because it’s not interesting to show that these are typically somewhat incoherent and not comprehensive.

So let’s consider the other option. Now ‘worldview’ means something like a big philosophical or religious system. Think about how a sect in a religion might define itself by how they answer various philosophical or theological questions. Calvinists believe in sola scriptura, but catholics don’t, etc. We can imagine a ‘worldview’ as being a fully consistent and comprehensive system. One that has answers for every question and where every belief is consistent with every other belief.

This seems to me to be the target concept for a lot of presuppositionalist questioning. For one thing, it makes more sense of phrases like “the atheist worldview”, as opposed to ‘John’s worldview’, as if it is a non-personal system that anyone could adopt. Secondly it makes more sense of the demand that explanations be given for things, such as “what is logic on the atheist worldview?”, etc. This ‘big system’ idea of a worldview is the sort of thing that is required to have an answer for all questions like this. And that makes the attack at least somewhat plausible as a result if you can’t explain what logic is, etc.

The problem now is that it’s not at all plausible to suppose that everyone has such a worldview. Perhaps a professional philosopher who has spent their life trying to develop such a system might have one (although I know plenty, and I know plenty who say they don’t have big systems like this in the background of how they approach philosophical analysis, or just life generally). A person adhering to the doctrines of a religion might have one (although most religions don’t explicitly provide explanations of every obscure metaphysical question you can dream up). Put simply, it’s ok if you don’t have a ‘big system’ that answers all questions for you. Thinking that you need such a system is kind of already a bias that people who are in very controlling and toxic forms of religion display. Sure, they will claim to have an answer to every question, but that can be seen as a mechanism the institution they belong to uses to control them, and perhaps they have internalised that mechanism and mistake it for a commonplace observation about worldviews. Surely everyone interprets absolutely everything through a similar totalising system, they might think. Well, no. That’s a weird way to look at it.

So the upshot is that the second notion of worldview (‘big system’) looks like the sort of thing that could be criticised if it is incoherent in some way or fails to provide an answer to a given question. But the downside is that there’s no obligation to have such a worldview. It’s certainly not true that “everyone has a worldview” on this understanding.

Conclusion

I’ve sketched out two accounts of what a worldview is. On the first, a worldview is just everything you believe. Of course, you have such a worldview (trivially). But there’s no reason to expect it to be completely consistent or comprehensive. I might like to try to make it more coherent and comprehensive, but it’s probably not like that now and may never be so (you will feel better when you accept this). On the second horn of the dilemma, a worldview is a big system that is maximally consistent and comprehensive. Now it should answer every question and not harbour any contradictions. But it’s not something that everyone has. If a cultish religious person (like a presuppositionalist) can’t understand why not everyone adheres to a big system like that, that’s a them problem. You do you.

Theisms, naturalisms, and fine tuning

Basic Stuff

Basic Theism =  

  1. There is a supernatural a creator of the universe 
  2. They set the parameters for physics 

Basic Theism generates no expectations over what the parameters of physics end up being. If there are a million different ways the parameters could be set supernaturally, then our expectations of any one in particular becoming actual should be one in a million. It is a flat probability distribution.    

Basic Naturalism =  

  1. There is no supernatural a creator of the universe
  2. The parameters for physics are determined naturally

Basic Naturalism generates no expectations over what the parameters of physics end up being. If there are a million different ways the parameters could be set naturally, then our expectations of any one in particular becoming actual should be one in a million. It is a flat probability distribution.    

The fact that the basic parameters of physics are finely tuned for life is not evidence for Basic Theism over Basic Naturalism. They generate exactly the same predictions, and so the evidence of fine tuning is completely neutral between them.  

Enriched Stuff

Enriched Theism =  

  1. There is a supernatural a creator of the universe 
  2. They set the parameters for physics 
  3. They desire for there to be life 

The standard idea here is that Enriched Theism generates a non-flat probability distribution across all the possible ways the parameters of physics could be set. Because they desire for life, the enriched god is more likely to pick worlds where there could be life; that is, she would be more likely to pick worlds where the laws of nature allow life to exist. For any pair of worlds, w1 and w2, if the parameters of physics allow for life in w1 and not in w2, then (on Enriched Theism) we should expect w1 more than we do for w2.  

Enriched Naturalism = 

  1. There is no supernatural a creator of the universe 
  2. The parameters for physics are determined naturally 
  3. Nature has a metaphysically necessary disposition (somehow) towards setting values for the parameters of physics that allow for life 

It seems to me that Enriched Naturalism generates exactly the same expectations as does Enriched Theism. Let’s just specify that the disposition assigns exactly the same probabilities as does the desire in Enriched Theism.   For any pair of worlds, w1 and w2, if the parameters of physics allow for life in w1 and not in w2, then (on Enriched Naturalism) we should expect w1 more than we do for w2.

The fact that the basic parameters of physics are finely tuned for life is not evidence for Enriched Theism over Enriched Naturalism. They generate exactly the same predictions, and so the evidence of fine tuning is completely neutral between them.  It’s still a tie.

Breaking the tie

We could, of course, try to break the tie by comparing something basic with something enriched. For example, compare Basic Natualism and Enriched Theism. Now the evidence that the parameters of physics are finely tuned for life does favour Enriched Theism (over Basic Naturalism). Basic Naturalism assigns each possible way the parameters could be set an equal probability to every other. Enriched Theism favours worlds where there could be life (like worlds where the parameters are finely tuned for life), and assigns them a higher expectation value.  

But that’s not interesting. We could equally well say that the evidence favours Enriched Naturalism over Basic Theism. After all, Enriched Naturalism generates exactly the same expectations as Enriched Theism. It’s a perfect symmetry. When we compare apples with oranges, the one simpler theory predicts less and so it loses out. When we compare oranges with oranges, it’s a tie.

Stalking horse hypothesis

Let the ‘stalking horse hypothesis’ just be the hypothesis that for any possible enrichment of Basic Theism (by adding auxiliary assumptions), there is a mirror version of enriched naturalism which generates exactly the same predictions. If so, there’s never going to be an oranges to oranges comparison of the type considered here where fine tuning favours theism over naturalism. There will always be a suitable orange ready at hand to be the relevant comparison, guaranteeing the tie.

Is it possible to prove this hypothesis? Not sure at the moment. It’s an interesting idea though, I think.

The Grim Reaper Paradox: An Argument for No-One

[I originally posted this on the prosblogion blog, but that is no longer available, so I’m reposting here]

In his 2014 paper, ‘A New Kalam Argument: Revenge of the Grim Reaper’, Rob Koons presents what is surely the canonical version of the Grim Reaper Paradox (GRP). Here I want to outline a quick, but I think novel, objection to that argument. I’m still thinking it through, so welcome comments. It’s quite likely I’ve overlooked something, and someone will point that out.

Here is the thought. The argument has a premise that is objectionable to Humeans, and another premise that is objectionable to anti-Humeans. Since the Humean / anti-Humean distinction is dichotomous, the argument has premises that are acceptable to no-one.

There are lots of ways to set the argument up, and a lot relies on the precise details of the particular version that is being articulated. However, Koons rightly stresses a few core premises, and for our purposes we can merely think about two of them:

  1. The possibility of an individual reaper
  2. The patchwork principle

I think 1 is objectionable to a Humean, and 2 is objectionable to an anti-Humean. But what do I mean exactly by Humean and anti-Humean here? Broadly, I’m following Loewer (2012), who says:

Humeans claim that there is no fundamental necessity in nature connecting spatio-temporally non-overlapping events in non-overlapping portions of space–time. … In contrast, non-Humeans think that there is fundamental necessity in nature.Loewer, 2012, p. 116

Humeans think that reality is just a bunch of ‘categorical’ (non-modal) matters of fact, which is often referred to as the ‘Humean mosaic’, whereas anti-Humeans think there are also ‘thick’ modal properties, like potentialities, or capacities, or dispositions, etc.

So why think that anti-Humeans would object to the patchwork principle? Well, the patchwork principle, and in particular Koon’s version of it, says that we can ‘cut and paste’ together non-overlapping regions of spacetime (providing they have compatible topological and metrical structures – we can’t cut and paste together slice of 11-dimensional spacetime with a slice of regular 4-dimensional spacetime, etc). In conventional cases, this principle is intuitive. As Lewis says, if a dragon is possible, and a unicorn is possible, both a dragon and a unicorn together is possible. But this conflicts with the notion of thick modal properties in the following way. Take a wine glass and its thick modal property of being fragile. This means that it has a disposition to smash in the right circumstances, such as being knocked off the table at a dinner party, etc. But the patchwork principle says we can paste in together a region of spacetime where the glass is knocked off the table with one where it lies unbroken on the floor. But if this is possible, it cannot also be that it would necessarily smash if knocked off the table. Thick modal properties therefore restrict what combinations of spacetime regions we can cut and paste together. Anti-Humeans might still like to use a restricted version of the patchwork principle when reasoning about modality, or they might just abandon it altogether. But they will reject the unrestricted version because it’s incompatible with thick modal properties. Thus, they will reject the premise that requires an unrestricted patchwork principle (like we find in Koons’ version of the argument).

Why do I say that Humeans should reject the possibility of individual reapers? Well, this is quite simple. They have thick modal properties. According to Koons, a reaper just is something that has “the power and disposition” (Koons, 2014, p. 257) to do the relevant action (e.g. killing Fred, etc) iff the relevant condition obtains (e.g. if none of the prior reapers has already killed Fred, etc). But powers and dispositions are most straightforwardly construed as thick modal properties. Koons himself rejects ‘neo-Humeanism’ later on in that paper, indicating he doesn’t have a Humean reading of powers and dispositions in mind here. But if reapers have thick modal properties, then this goes beyond what the Humean allows in her metaphysics. They are not simply categorical properties, but types of necessary relations between objects. Thus, Humeans would deny that any objects have properties like this, and thus also that reapers do.

In conclusion then, it seems to me that the GRP requires a Humean premise (the patchwork principle) and an anti-Humean premise (the thick modal properties of reapers). As such it is not acceptable to either Humeans or anti-Humeans, and so is an argument for no-one.

What sort of pushback might my argument above generate? Well, I can see two broad approaches. One could try to build the argument without using thick modal properties and thus avoid the Humean objection (making an GRP argument for Humeans). Or one could try to build the argument with a suitably restricted patchwork principle (making a GRP argument for anti-Humeans). If this is right, then we have split the argument in two, and one might have better fortunes than the other. Or they both can be shown to be absolutely fine. Or both might be shown to be problematic. In any case, it seems to me to be an interesting development in the dialectic.