I'm traveling and without Gangadean's book, so I can't continue my ethics discussion at the moment. But I've been reading Plato and had a thought relevant to Gangadean's epistemology. One of the most referenced of Plato's dialogues among epistemologists is the Meno. In it, Plato considers what it is that makes knowledge more valuable or desirable than mere true belief.
Philosophers claim that not everything we believe counts as an instance of knowledge. For example, it is hypothesized that one can never know something that is false. You can't know that the earth is flat, just as you can't know that a triangle has four sides even though you can believe such things. Further, philosophers say that some of our beliefs, perhaps even a lot of what we believe, is actually false. So it follows that beliefs come apart from knowledge--the two are not coextensive.
Further, not even all of our true beliefs count as instances of knowledge again according to most philosophers. Suppose you are trying to get to the local grocery store. You come to believe a particular set of directions is the correct way to your desired location. Your belief might be true in virtue of luck in various forms. For instance, suppose that someone told you the correct directions to get to the local grocer. However, this person is a strangely mischievous informant who has meant to mislead you for kicks. Indeed, unbeknownst to you, they often lie about such matters, but you have no reason to suspect as much. Further suppose that this person fully intended on giving you false directions, but due to confusion on her part, wound up accidentally giving you the correct ones. If you take such a person at their word, because you don't know that they intended on misleading you, and form the belief that the particular directions they gave you are the correct ones, many philosophers have the intuition that you don't know the way to the grocery store. This is despite the fact that you wound up with a belief that is true i.e., you accidentally have a true belief about which way to go. Intuitive reactions to thought experiments such as this have lead philosophers to say that knowledge also comes apart from mere true belief. That is to say, not all of your true beliefs count as knowledge. Alternatively you might have just guessed the directions and on the basis of guessing come to believe the directions (you are unusually confident in your ability to guess such things). Your guess and attendant belief might be true, but there again, philosophers are inclined to say that such a true belief doesn't count as knowledge. For example, they think you need to have evidence or some sort of justification which accounts for why you have the true belief in order to have the pertinent knowledge.
Now there's a general meta-level issue here about the method by which philosophers have come to say what counts as a genuine instance of knowledge and what doesn't. At the heart of any such theory are gut reactions or non inferential judgments that philosophers call intuitions. These intuitions are taken as the relevant data and a theory of knowledge is considered good insofar as it can explain or account for them. And I think Gangadean is no stranger to this method. He claims that knowledge is (maximally) justified true belief as opposed to mere true belief, or mere belief, which may be false. But how he comes to such a theory of the nature of knowledge would be utterly mysterious if not for appeals to his own intuitions. This should set off some red flags---at least so long as Gangadean maintains that beliefs on the basis of intuitions are problematic or fideistic or whatever. The sharp reader will notice that this fully generalizes. Gangadean not only says a lot of things about eternality, causation, time, presupposition, reason, common ground, more basic vs less basic, but also uses his concepts of these very things to build upon. But at some point, he must ask himself what his method is for determining for example, what counts as the right or correct theory of eternality, or causation, or basic, or reason. I suspect that all of this will at some point, rest on raw intuitions, or observations regarding ordinary language usage, and the like. That is to say, something other than proofs, and ultimately fallible methods of inquiry.
Returning to the example of you coming to form a true belief about the directions to the grocery store: it seems like you'll get to the grocery store just fine because you've got a true belief about the whereabouts. This is despite the fact that the way you got it seems intuitively unstable. You fare no worse than in a situation where you have genuine knowledge of the fact. In other words, insofar as the aim of forming the belief is to get you to the grocery store, knowledge and mere true belief will serve you equally well. Again, intuitively, knowledge takes more than mere true belief. It's a special kind of true belief. It is filling in this "more" that will fill in one's theory of knowledge. That is, figuring out precisely what we need to add to a true belief so that it counts as knowledge represents much of the work of epistemology.
There are two related issues emerging. First, what exactly the difference is between knowledge and mere true belief. As I've noted, essentially this gets us into building a theory of knowledge. And we've discussed before that Gangadean has one such theory of knowledge. But he fails to motivate it properly. If you're going to offer a theory of knowledge as the correct one, given many alternative theories, you ought to explain why yours is the one others ought to accept. The problem here is that Gangadean, if he's being consistent with his own standards, shouldn't depend on the standard methods that philosophers employ to motivate theories namely, using raw intuitions as the data to be explained by a particular theory. As I've hinted at above, the method most often employed by theorists of knowledge is to appeal to intuitions that they have about the nature of knowledge. Often this concerns observing the conditions under which we attribute knowledge of some hypothetical subject. That is an appeal to how people talk and use the word 'knowledge' in everyday discourse. Importantly, this is nothing like proof of anything. There's no argument given at this level or at least arguments bottom out. Moreover, an appeal to language usage is far from infallible as a means of informing a conceptual analysis. After all one might be using the word incorrectly while being ignorant of this fact. This doesn't damn the whole practice of appeals to ordinary language usage--it just opens the door for rational doubt. It calls into question whether one's theories are infallible. Additionally, philosophers create thought experiments and simply ask themselves, does the protagonist of the sometimes fanciful narratives have knowledge or not. For instance, the example I presented regarding the directions to the grocery store. You read it and then have some sort of immediate reaction about whether the subject in question knows or doesn't know the directions. In other words, what philosophers do is consider their intuitive reactions to stories meant to probe one's view of a concept or the meaning of a word like 'knowledge' and use this to build a theory inductively, or better: abductively. Again, neither method should be used by Gangadean insofar as he thinks that the practice of relying on intuitions is simply unfit for philosophy and incompatible with his principle of clarity. And as I've mentioned before, if he claims to have special "rational intuitions" (he's told me this once before) that are particularly reliable and fit for such reasoning, then he's got to give a theory that explains just what makes certain intuitions rational in contradistinction to non-rational intuitions and he better not depend on more intuitions to do so on pain of circularity. I'm often surprised by the fact that Gangadeanians seem utterly ignorant of this background information about theory building in philosophy as it concerns theories of knowledge. It's almost as if they don't realize that since the birth of philosophy, philosophers have appealed to intuitions to build theories in just this manner--and Plato is certainly no exception, neither is their favored Aristotle. So much for the issue concerning theories of knowledge.
The second issue that is emerging in the Meno is often called the value problem of knowledge. So not only does Plato hint at the problem of figuring out what the nature of knowledge is as distinct from mere true belief, but he also asks why it is that we should care about having/attaining knowledge over and above mere true beliefs. So he's assuming there is a difference between mere true belief on the one hand and knowledge on the other and then asking why we should aim at the latter over the former. And this is another issue that Gangadean largely ignores in his book and in my experience, Gangadeanians are by in large ignorant of. So the main epistemological questions to ask the Gangadeanian are two-fold. First, why should anybody accept their theory of knowledge that knowledge = maximally justified true belief, over other theories of knowledge? The point to press here is whether they can prove that their theory of knowledge is the correct one sans appeals to intuition. If you pay attention and keep pressing the issue, you will see that they ultimately depend on intuitions just like everybody else.
Secondly, even if their theory of knowledge is the correct one (a huge if), why should anybody desire to ever attain it as over above mere true beliefs? As it concerns God's existence, even supposing that one could know with certainty that God exists i.e., it's clear that God exists, it's a separate question whether one should strive to have such knowledge. After all, Gangadean claims that all people should know what is clear---and since God's existence is clear according to him, it follows that as he sees things, all persons should know that God exists. That is, they should know that God exists rather than have a merely true belief that God exists. This is why Gangadean claims that people who believe in God, but are unable to prove that God exists, are falling short in some fundamental way. Presumably Gangadean will say that such persons that believe in God for various reasons that are not the "proofs" that he offers, have a true belief that God exists, but they don't have knowledge. The value problem of knowledge suggested to us by Plato's Meno applied to Gangadeanian views brings about the following question. Why should anyone desire to know that God exists rather than merely having a true belief that God exists? That is to say, why does Gangadean think people are falling short in some fundamental respect for failing to have a maximally justified true belief that God exists?
From what I've heard, Gangadean often cites Romans 1:20 and the notion that inexcusability implies clarity. But this is no good. In the first place, any claims in scripture are unfit for the task at hand since whether we ought to know something or not is a much more basic issue than whether the bible is the word of God. The matter at hand is "logically" prior to whether a holy book provides the truths for salvation. After all, special revelation according to Gangadean presuppose a lot of more basic issues---you need to know that you're in need of salvation, and that you've sinned, and that God exists and that God is perfectly just and merciful, among other things, prior to coming to know that the bible is the word of God. This is because, as Ganagdean sees it, the bible is about redemption which presupposes that one needs redemption. It's just illegitimate then for Gangadean to appeal to the bible as authoritative on the matter of whether one ought to know that God exists rather than merely have a true belief that he does. I've also already explored more problems with this approach but am currently too lazy to add a link. A brief study of my blog will uncover them, though.
Even if we spot Gangadean the right to appeal to scripture to make his case, the glaring problem is that the bible doesn't distinguish clearly between knowledge and belief. In Romans 1:20, man is held inexcusable for unbelief. It makes no mention of knowledge. Sure if one knows that God exists this seems to entail that one believes that God exists, but the entailment doesn't hold in the other direction. So being held responsible for unbelief in p doesn't mean that one is held responsible for the lack of knowledge regarding p. When Paul speaks of God's existence being clear so that man is without excuse (for unbelief), we need to consider what makes something clear to believe. Perhaps Paul is saying that we all have sufficient reason to believe that God exists, but this need not entail that one has sufficient reason to know it let alone that one has sufficient reason to know it with certainty which is the even stronger claim made by Gangadean.
I'm not sure how then Gangadean can answer the value problem for knowledge. How can he prove that all persons must (are morally obligated to) know, with certainty, that God exists. Why can't we just have a true belief that God exists? From Gangadean's point of view, most Christians and theists have true beliefs that God exists, but they don't have knowledge, and this he views as a basic moral failure. But if knowledge is not more desirable or valuable or whatever, then it shouldn't be a problem for the rest of us to believe truly that God exists without knowing it. Of course this would threaten his entire ministry, his life's work. If Gangadean can't justify why all humans ought to know with certainty that God exists, then the purported clarity of God's existence is of little use.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Sunday, December 20, 2015
The "Laws" of Thought
I'm writing in response to this video I happened upon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulmvy4QczV0
The second speaker says that logic is "a description of existence" and uses the analogy of a map on the one hand and the thing that the map refers to, on the other. This is bad. Part of the problem (perhaps) is that 'logic' has more than one use. There's the ordinary usage as evidenced by statements like, "I don't agree with your logic" in response to an argument. Here, 'logic' seems to refer to something like one's line of reasoning. Of course, this is very different from 'logic' as a philosopher's and logician's term of art. 'Logic' in this latter sense refers simply to formal languages like first-order propositional logic, predicate logic, modal logics, meta-logic and perhaps multi-valued systems. The problem is, in neither of these uses of the term does it make sense to say that logic is a "description of existence." And I really don't get the map analogy. If the second speaker wants to get away from reifying rules of valid inference (qua abstract entities), then this analogy is not helpful because by his own words, the map represents things that exist. So if the rules of a formal system are to reality what a map is to the things it represents, then we would actually expect the rules of a given logic to represent things (and what else could they be, but either concrete objects or abstract entities?).
Moreover, 'the laws of thought' need not be coextensive with the rules given in various logical systems, but this exchange seems to presuppose this very thing. There is much debate in the philosophy of logic (this is the subfield of philosophy that studies logic) about just what formal systems like first-order propositional logic are meant to represent (though nobody I know of says it "describes existence"). We know that logics are formal, artificial languages. We also know that natural languages (e.g., English) suggest to us certain patterns of reasoning---that is to say, there seem to be certain rules beyond mere syntax which we presume are in some fashion, truth-preserving which is to say that we can get from one statement or set of statements that are deemed 'true' and then, in some suitable sense, "get to" another statement that is also true. But this is really complicated terrain. I just think whoever talks about the "laws of thought" should not conflate that with systems of logic. I have similar complaints about the first speaker as well, but it'll needlessly lengthen this post. The point is, neither of them seem to be well-versed in philosophy or logic, but it doesn't stop them from using technical jaron, and the result is confusion.
Which brings me to the Gangadeanian at the beginning of the video who raises the question, "do you accept the laws of thought?" Gangadean and his people talk a lot about the laws of thought. They enumerate them as the law of non contradiction, the law of excluded middle, and the law of identity. Gangadean draws the analogy between the laws of nature and these laws. Insofar as the physical laws of nature cease, life ceases and so it is with the laws of thought--if they cease, thinking ceases, so he claims. Notice this isn't a deductive argument. You've got something resembling an argument from analogy (at best an inductive argument). Lest I be accused of misrepresenting Gangadean and his crew, just keep reading and I'll get to ways that they try to motivate this claim. Anyway, with this analogy, you're suppose to just hear this and somehow "recognize" that it's true and that the analogy is apt. It's a picture he paints for you to elicit a certain kind of response. Again, none of this is proof of anything.
Now importantly, it's not a settled matter what a law of nature is to begin with. So this analogy is not going to prove that helpful anyway. There's considerable and ongoing debate concerning laws of nature. A Humean for instance thinks that laws of nature are purely descriptive regularities of the way that nature tends to behave. Or at the very least the Humean thinks we have no epistemological grounds to say more than this about laws of nature. Humeans question whether laws are anything more than a generalized trend based on a bunch of observations. In a terribly simplified example: a lot of things drop to the ground and so we reason that there is this tendency for things to fall to the center of the earth and call it the law of gravity. But there isn't something like a law over and above the regularity denoted. It's certainly not like you can bump into a law of nature. So they don't seem to be concrete entities by anyone's lights. Of course laws of nature could be abstract entities, but it's hard to say much more if we go down that route. The very nature of abstracta is really murky and mysterious. Abstract entities are supposed to be things that exist without being "in" spacetime. They are acausal. They don't interact with anything else that exists. But they are thought to exist nonetheless or be real in some mysterious sense but are usually posited for purely theoretical reasons (for instance, the existence of numbers is one straightforward way to account for how it is that mathematical formulas can be true). And there are other views. Some tend to reify laws of nature as if they are robust, exceptionless rules that all physical stuff "follows." But at best we use words like 'law' and 'follow' and 'rule' loosely. We have some idea of what it takes to be a man made rule like the rules of grammar, or the legislative laws or even social mores---they are prescriptions and proscriptions that cover a particular domain of behavior. But it's not like these laws actually control what people do. Instead they tell us what people should do given certain interests after all, people violate the norms of grammar all the time (and still manage to communicate). But presumably laws of nature are supposed to exert more "control" on their objects. But it's hard to say precisely what this amounts to.
Anyway, the point is not to get into a substantive debate about the nature of laws in general. It's a fascinating issue, but highly complex. The point I want to drive home is that contrary to how the Gangadeanian's present things, the notion of a law of nature is not something we have a satisfying account of. It's not a settled matter that for instance, Humean's must necessarily be wrong in their deflationary account. Laws of nature might simply be generalizations or regularities that we observe or they might not be, but the jury is still out. If the Gangadeanian disagrees, she had better be in a position to disprove any alternatives to her view and explain just what she takes laws to be ontologically speaking.
What this means for present purposes is that the analogy is not very elucidating. If laws of thought are to thinking as the laws of nature are to life, then we need to first settle the matter of the nature of the laws of thought. And part of that will involve determining whether a Humean analogue to the laws of thought is correct. That is, minimally, we need to figure out whether the laws of thought are merely descriptive generalizations about the way that humans characteristically think. If both kinds of laws end up being merely regularities that are determined inductively by observation, then the normative import is inclined to be limited. We have to make room for exceptions (generalizations after all admit to these and are formed by instances and counter-instances). More precisely, it would seem that we would have to put less credence in the notion that every rational being must necessarily think in accordance with them insofar as they are actually thinking.
Now faced with this issue the Gangadeanian is likely to pull the transcendental move. They will ask you to give them one instance of a thought which does not instantiate the laws of thought. They will say, "look, take any thought, aren't you assuming 'a is a' in having that thought? Can you give an example where you don't?" And they will think that they have proven something substantial. The correct response to this is to point out that they've done nothing more than appeal to intuition or common sense. For anybody to determine that a particular thought instantiates the law of identity (or not) for instance, requires that they just immediately "see" it as such. There's no argument. It's an immediate apprehension of sorts. So the Gangadeanian should recognize that they are resting ultimately on intuitions which won't satisfy the skeptic they are always intent on answering.
More crucially, my inability to provide an example of a thought that doesn't (intuitively) instantiate the laws of thought is not any proof that the laws of thought are not merely descriptive generalizations. That simply doesn't follow. Here's an analogy. Suppose you claim that every raven is black. That is you make an absolute claim about all ravens just as the Gangadeanians make a claim about all thought. Suppose I question you. I point out that it isn't obvious to me that all raven's are black. It does nothing to prove your point, if you merely ask me to produce a non-black raven even if I am unsuccessful. Sure, provided that I have access to a large sample of ravens, my inability to produce a counter-instance of your generalization does provide some inductive evidence for it. But that's not the same as proving your categorical rule!
In response, the Gangadeanian will attempt to pull a reductio. They will say. "Ok let's assume that the laws of thought are merely descriptive generalizations of the way that people tend to reason. If so, then there's no reason why people should adhere to them. But all arguments presuppose that people should adhere to certain principles of reasoning otherwise there's no point. So, you see, you actually accept that they are more than purely descriptive generalizations." Unfortunately, this is just another pull on your intuition strings. The claim that all arguments presuppose that people should adhere to certain principles is far from trivially true. It's stated as a platitude, but that doesn't make it one. The problem is that you've got to just intuit that what was said is true. Once again I don't even know what would count as a proof here. What would possibly prove that all arguments presuppose that certain principles be adhered to? At best what we can say is that all the things we so far have determined to count as arguments appear to presuppose certain principles. But that's not nearly strong enough to support the line we're considering. So here too, the Gangadeanian would have to rest their case on intuition.
Another criticism is that the Gangadeanians seem to be generalizing from a limited sample to the whole which not only definitionally falls short of proof, it's bad induction in the form of a hasty generalization. In other words, you might challenge them on grounds that they have at best weak inductive evidence for their claim that all thinking requires the laws of thought. This is because they have experience with only those thoughts they've encountered in their lifetimes. And suppose we ignore the fact that they are merely using their intuitions to make generalizations about this set of thoughts--still this is a tiny subset of the set of all thoughts in the universe (present, past and future). So it's no good to conclude from this limited sample, anything general about all thoughts.
In response Gangadeanians are inclined to say something about "grasping a concept." Gangadean claims, but has no way of proving, that we grasp the essences of things whenever we "have" a concept. He just says this is so. Hence he and his followers sometimes claim that they grasp the concept of thought---and just by sort of thinking about thinking, they uncover the categorical truth that all thought presupposes or requires or exemplifies the laws of thought. But here again, this is little more than banking on their own raw intuitions. There's no argument given for the claim that "in a concept, we grasp the essence of things." More importantly, how does one argue or prove that one's concept is correct over another's? Suppose that you think it's essential to the nature of water that it is composed of hydrogen and oxygen molecules and I disagree because I think that water in a fundamentally different universe might have been composed of different elements. How can you possibly prove me wrong? There's no basis in argument about whether water is necessarily H20.
Another move they might try in response to the charge of generalizing hastily is to say that thoughts come in types. That is, they concede the point that they couldn't possibly have encountered a sufficient number of thought tokens to make a good case for their claim about all thoughts. So they might try to claim that they have at least experience of a sufficiently wide range of the kinds of thoughts that there are and they generalize from there. Of course, this still falls short of deduction--it's induction. But it's also very dubious for other reasons. First of all, they would need infallible access to the properties of every single kind of thought there is--which would beg for a comprehensive taxonomy (for proof of concept). What counts as an argument type? Moreover, there's still just no way to know that we've nailed down every type of thought that there is, possible. And again, if there are any debates about what counts as a thought type (which there are bound to be), there would be no way of demonstrably settling it.
So don't be impressed by Gangadean's claim that the laws of thought are transcendental, or are preconditions to thought and that all thinking would cease without them. Or at least don't take his word for it that he knows these things with certainty (or that these things are absolutely clear to reason). He hasn't shown us that much. True many philosophers accept the law of identity, and the law of non-contradiction (while fewer except the law of excluded middle). But they don't claim absolute certainty regarding them and freely admit that they accept them on the basis of intuition not via some deductively sound argument. My point here is not to say that the laws of thought are bad in some way to accept. My claim is that Gangadean should admit that he's got no privileged epistemic position regarding them. In the end, if he's consistent, he's just an intuitionist like the rest of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulmvy4QczV0
The second speaker says that logic is "a description of existence" and uses the analogy of a map on the one hand and the thing that the map refers to, on the other. This is bad. Part of the problem (perhaps) is that 'logic' has more than one use. There's the ordinary usage as evidenced by statements like, "I don't agree with your logic" in response to an argument. Here, 'logic' seems to refer to something like one's line of reasoning. Of course, this is very different from 'logic' as a philosopher's and logician's term of art. 'Logic' in this latter sense refers simply to formal languages like first-order propositional logic, predicate logic, modal logics, meta-logic and perhaps multi-valued systems. The problem is, in neither of these uses of the term does it make sense to say that logic is a "description of existence." And I really don't get the map analogy. If the second speaker wants to get away from reifying rules of valid inference (qua abstract entities), then this analogy is not helpful because by his own words, the map represents things that exist. So if the rules of a formal system are to reality what a map is to the things it represents, then we would actually expect the rules of a given logic to represent things (and what else could they be, but either concrete objects or abstract entities?).
Moreover, 'the laws of thought' need not be coextensive with the rules given in various logical systems, but this exchange seems to presuppose this very thing. There is much debate in the philosophy of logic (this is the subfield of philosophy that studies logic) about just what formal systems like first-order propositional logic are meant to represent (though nobody I know of says it "describes existence"). We know that logics are formal, artificial languages. We also know that natural languages (e.g., English) suggest to us certain patterns of reasoning---that is to say, there seem to be certain rules beyond mere syntax which we presume are in some fashion, truth-preserving which is to say that we can get from one statement or set of statements that are deemed 'true' and then, in some suitable sense, "get to" another statement that is also true. But this is really complicated terrain. I just think whoever talks about the "laws of thought" should not conflate that with systems of logic. I have similar complaints about the first speaker as well, but it'll needlessly lengthen this post. The point is, neither of them seem to be well-versed in philosophy or logic, but it doesn't stop them from using technical jaron, and the result is confusion.
Which brings me to the Gangadeanian at the beginning of the video who raises the question, "do you accept the laws of thought?" Gangadean and his people talk a lot about the laws of thought. They enumerate them as the law of non contradiction, the law of excluded middle, and the law of identity. Gangadean draws the analogy between the laws of nature and these laws. Insofar as the physical laws of nature cease, life ceases and so it is with the laws of thought--if they cease, thinking ceases, so he claims. Notice this isn't a deductive argument. You've got something resembling an argument from analogy (at best an inductive argument). Lest I be accused of misrepresenting Gangadean and his crew, just keep reading and I'll get to ways that they try to motivate this claim. Anyway, with this analogy, you're suppose to just hear this and somehow "recognize" that it's true and that the analogy is apt. It's a picture he paints for you to elicit a certain kind of response. Again, none of this is proof of anything.
Now importantly, it's not a settled matter what a law of nature is to begin with. So this analogy is not going to prove that helpful anyway. There's considerable and ongoing debate concerning laws of nature. A Humean for instance thinks that laws of nature are purely descriptive regularities of the way that nature tends to behave. Or at the very least the Humean thinks we have no epistemological grounds to say more than this about laws of nature. Humeans question whether laws are anything more than a generalized trend based on a bunch of observations. In a terribly simplified example: a lot of things drop to the ground and so we reason that there is this tendency for things to fall to the center of the earth and call it the law of gravity. But there isn't something like a law over and above the regularity denoted. It's certainly not like you can bump into a law of nature. So they don't seem to be concrete entities by anyone's lights. Of course laws of nature could be abstract entities, but it's hard to say much more if we go down that route. The very nature of abstracta is really murky and mysterious. Abstract entities are supposed to be things that exist without being "in" spacetime. They are acausal. They don't interact with anything else that exists. But they are thought to exist nonetheless or be real in some mysterious sense but are usually posited for purely theoretical reasons (for instance, the existence of numbers is one straightforward way to account for how it is that mathematical formulas can be true). And there are other views. Some tend to reify laws of nature as if they are robust, exceptionless rules that all physical stuff "follows." But at best we use words like 'law' and 'follow' and 'rule' loosely. We have some idea of what it takes to be a man made rule like the rules of grammar, or the legislative laws or even social mores---they are prescriptions and proscriptions that cover a particular domain of behavior. But it's not like these laws actually control what people do. Instead they tell us what people should do given certain interests after all, people violate the norms of grammar all the time (and still manage to communicate). But presumably laws of nature are supposed to exert more "control" on their objects. But it's hard to say precisely what this amounts to.
Anyway, the point is not to get into a substantive debate about the nature of laws in general. It's a fascinating issue, but highly complex. The point I want to drive home is that contrary to how the Gangadeanian's present things, the notion of a law of nature is not something we have a satisfying account of. It's not a settled matter that for instance, Humean's must necessarily be wrong in their deflationary account. Laws of nature might simply be generalizations or regularities that we observe or they might not be, but the jury is still out. If the Gangadeanian disagrees, she had better be in a position to disprove any alternatives to her view and explain just what she takes laws to be ontologically speaking.
What this means for present purposes is that the analogy is not very elucidating. If laws of thought are to thinking as the laws of nature are to life, then we need to first settle the matter of the nature of the laws of thought. And part of that will involve determining whether a Humean analogue to the laws of thought is correct. That is, minimally, we need to figure out whether the laws of thought are merely descriptive generalizations about the way that humans characteristically think. If both kinds of laws end up being merely regularities that are determined inductively by observation, then the normative import is inclined to be limited. We have to make room for exceptions (generalizations after all admit to these and are formed by instances and counter-instances). More precisely, it would seem that we would have to put less credence in the notion that every rational being must necessarily think in accordance with them insofar as they are actually thinking.
Now faced with this issue the Gangadeanian is likely to pull the transcendental move. They will ask you to give them one instance of a thought which does not instantiate the laws of thought. They will say, "look, take any thought, aren't you assuming 'a is a' in having that thought? Can you give an example where you don't?" And they will think that they have proven something substantial. The correct response to this is to point out that they've done nothing more than appeal to intuition or common sense. For anybody to determine that a particular thought instantiates the law of identity (or not) for instance, requires that they just immediately "see" it as such. There's no argument. It's an immediate apprehension of sorts. So the Gangadeanian should recognize that they are resting ultimately on intuitions which won't satisfy the skeptic they are always intent on answering.
More crucially, my inability to provide an example of a thought that doesn't (intuitively) instantiate the laws of thought is not any proof that the laws of thought are not merely descriptive generalizations. That simply doesn't follow. Here's an analogy. Suppose you claim that every raven is black. That is you make an absolute claim about all ravens just as the Gangadeanians make a claim about all thought. Suppose I question you. I point out that it isn't obvious to me that all raven's are black. It does nothing to prove your point, if you merely ask me to produce a non-black raven even if I am unsuccessful. Sure, provided that I have access to a large sample of ravens, my inability to produce a counter-instance of your generalization does provide some inductive evidence for it. But that's not the same as proving your categorical rule!
In response, the Gangadeanian will attempt to pull a reductio. They will say. "Ok let's assume that the laws of thought are merely descriptive generalizations of the way that people tend to reason. If so, then there's no reason why people should adhere to them. But all arguments presuppose that people should adhere to certain principles of reasoning otherwise there's no point. So, you see, you actually accept that they are more than purely descriptive generalizations." Unfortunately, this is just another pull on your intuition strings. The claim that all arguments presuppose that people should adhere to certain principles is far from trivially true. It's stated as a platitude, but that doesn't make it one. The problem is that you've got to just intuit that what was said is true. Once again I don't even know what would count as a proof here. What would possibly prove that all arguments presuppose that certain principles be adhered to? At best what we can say is that all the things we so far have determined to count as arguments appear to presuppose certain principles. But that's not nearly strong enough to support the line we're considering. So here too, the Gangadeanian would have to rest their case on intuition.
Another criticism is that the Gangadeanians seem to be generalizing from a limited sample to the whole which not only definitionally falls short of proof, it's bad induction in the form of a hasty generalization. In other words, you might challenge them on grounds that they have at best weak inductive evidence for their claim that all thinking requires the laws of thought. This is because they have experience with only those thoughts they've encountered in their lifetimes. And suppose we ignore the fact that they are merely using their intuitions to make generalizations about this set of thoughts--still this is a tiny subset of the set of all thoughts in the universe (present, past and future). So it's no good to conclude from this limited sample, anything general about all thoughts.
In response Gangadeanians are inclined to say something about "grasping a concept." Gangadean claims, but has no way of proving, that we grasp the essences of things whenever we "have" a concept. He just says this is so. Hence he and his followers sometimes claim that they grasp the concept of thought---and just by sort of thinking about thinking, they uncover the categorical truth that all thought presupposes or requires or exemplifies the laws of thought. But here again, this is little more than banking on their own raw intuitions. There's no argument given for the claim that "in a concept, we grasp the essence of things." More importantly, how does one argue or prove that one's concept is correct over another's? Suppose that you think it's essential to the nature of water that it is composed of hydrogen and oxygen molecules and I disagree because I think that water in a fundamentally different universe might have been composed of different elements. How can you possibly prove me wrong? There's no basis in argument about whether water is necessarily H20.
Another move they might try in response to the charge of generalizing hastily is to say that thoughts come in types. That is, they concede the point that they couldn't possibly have encountered a sufficient number of thought tokens to make a good case for their claim about all thoughts. So they might try to claim that they have at least experience of a sufficiently wide range of the kinds of thoughts that there are and they generalize from there. Of course, this still falls short of deduction--it's induction. But it's also very dubious for other reasons. First of all, they would need infallible access to the properties of every single kind of thought there is--which would beg for a comprehensive taxonomy (for proof of concept). What counts as an argument type? Moreover, there's still just no way to know that we've nailed down every type of thought that there is, possible. And again, if there are any debates about what counts as a thought type (which there are bound to be), there would be no way of demonstrably settling it.
So don't be impressed by Gangadean's claim that the laws of thought are transcendental, or are preconditions to thought and that all thinking would cease without them. Or at least don't take his word for it that he knows these things with certainty (or that these things are absolutely clear to reason). He hasn't shown us that much. True many philosophers accept the law of identity, and the law of non-contradiction (while fewer except the law of excluded middle). But they don't claim absolute certainty regarding them and freely admit that they accept them on the basis of intuition not via some deductively sound argument. My point here is not to say that the laws of thought are bad in some way to accept. My claim is that Gangadean should admit that he's got no privileged epistemic position regarding them. In the end, if he's consistent, he's just an intuitionist like the rest of us.
Moral Law Part II.2: Justification and Personal Immortality
Continuing with Gangadeanian ethics/meta-ethics. We'll pick up where we left off. We are looking at Gangadean's arguments for what is necessary for ethics as an intelligible field of study. He made the claim that "There are certain metaphysical, personal, and epistemological conditions which are necessary in order to make rational justification for ethics possible" (118). And we looked at his first purported necessary condition (the metaphysical). Here's a brief-ish recap. If you feel like you got the gist of the last post, then you can skip the next 2 paragraphs.
Last time we discussed how Gangadean has failed to prove that the distinction between good and evil, which, as he sees it is necessary for ethics, requires that only some (spirit) is eternal. In other words, he claims that the God of theism must exist in order for rational justification of ethical views (views on right action and the Good) to be possible. But he fails to prove this. There's no deductively sound argument which has this very claim as its conclusion. In large part, his failure is due to the fact that he simply ignores the non-reductive materialists that also take it that good and evil or right and wrong are intelligible despite not being able to give a purely physicalist or naturalist account of them. But as I argued, showing that such a materialist can't explain how it is that properties like good and bad arise from physical stuff, doesn't prove that such a view is incoherent. At best it suggests that there is more work to do, or that there is some cost to the theory or that there are mysteries beyond our current capacities to account for which is entirely compatible with the naturalist picture of things.
In fact, this reminds me of a common objection against substance dualism (which is a view Gangadean adheres to). Substance dualists believe that there is a non-physical soul which is essentially the substance that underlies mentality (i.e., mental properties). This soul is thought to interact with the body/brain as it concerns human persons. After all it's commonly accepted that our psychological states influence our physical states (and vice-a-versa). Moreover many substance dualists (but not all) maintain that there are disembodied souls (as in the case of spirits, demons, angels, divine beings). But sometimes their critics argue that there is no ready explanation of how it is that nonphysical stuff (the soul) can interact with physical stuff. This is because physical stuff seems to interact on the basis of physical contact, as when a cue ball hits a billard ball causing the latter to roll. Presumably non-physical stuff can't interact in this very same way (being non physical) and so it's a bit of a mystery just how the soul can cause anything in the brain/body, or more generally, in the world. But this is not to prove deductively that substance dualism is false. Just because it can't explain a fundamental issue about mind and body interaction, doesn't mean it's a false view. One simply doesn't follow from the other. It may at best suggest a weakness in the view, but that's not disproving the view. Similarly, just because a nonreductive materialist can't explain how it is that apparently non-physical properties can emerge out of physical stuff, doesn't prove their position wrong. That's the main philosophical payoff of the last post.
Gangadean's second necessary condition for the possibility of rationally justifying an ethical position is personal immortality of the soul. He writes
"If there were not personal immortality, if death were the end of personal existence and if I and everyone else could cease to exist at any moment then I could not rationally justify to myself one course of actions over another" (118).
Unfortunately, there's little else said about this. And I'm rather surprised. We're dealing with a substantive claim that many philosophers will disagree with as will the skeptic. So it's hard to believe that Gangadean offers essentially nothing to justify the claim. He just sort of states these really contentious claims as platitudes. But he hasn't actually proven that rational justification of morally relevant actions would be pointless or impossible if there were not personal immortality. He's just stated it. So once again, Gangadean has failed his own standards for what it takes to know something. So here's his argument, in effect.
(1) If there is no personal immortality, then there is no rationally justifying one course of action over another.
(2) But rational justification of actions is possible.
(3) Therefore, it's not the case that there is no personal immortality (i.e, there is personal immortality).
It's valid, but not sound. It's valid because it's an instance of modus tollens. But logical validity is cheap. All it takes for an argument to be valid is the following: if the premises were true, then the conclusion would follow. For instance every circular argument is deductively valid because there's no way for the premises to be true while at the same time the conclusion is false. What matters is whether the premises are actually true. And the problem is the first premise (1) is far from it. At least he hasn't convinced anybody that it is so just by merely stating it. Gangadean seems to take it for granted, but that's sloppy. It's a common worry I have about Gangadean's work---that he oversimplies things where it suits his aims. So this pseudo-argument is a far cry from proving anything. A fortiori, he has failed to prove that immortality is required for the possibility of rational justification in ethics and hence has failed to prove that personal immortality is necessary.
p.s. Just to clear about the upshot here, which is important for my readers to keep in mind: I'm not saying that personal identity is therefore not required for ethics (I'm not arguing that Gangadean's thesis is demonstrably wrong). I, for one, find it intuitively plausible that there's a real sense in which worrying about how to live is a little emptier (in some sense that's really hard to get precise about) without immortality. But that's distinct from Gangadean's position. It's logically weaker. What I am pointing out is that Gangadean hasn't proven his claim to be true. And since he calls belief without proof, fideism, he's being a fideist about this unless of course, he can provide a sound (not merely valid) argument for this claim. In other words, once again I'm pointing out that while Gangadean professes to be somehow more rigorous than other philosophers and Christians, this is not evident in his published work.
Last time we discussed how Gangadean has failed to prove that the distinction between good and evil, which, as he sees it is necessary for ethics, requires that only some (spirit) is eternal. In other words, he claims that the God of theism must exist in order for rational justification of ethical views (views on right action and the Good) to be possible. But he fails to prove this. There's no deductively sound argument which has this very claim as its conclusion. In large part, his failure is due to the fact that he simply ignores the non-reductive materialists that also take it that good and evil or right and wrong are intelligible despite not being able to give a purely physicalist or naturalist account of them. But as I argued, showing that such a materialist can't explain how it is that properties like good and bad arise from physical stuff, doesn't prove that such a view is incoherent. At best it suggests that there is more work to do, or that there is some cost to the theory or that there are mysteries beyond our current capacities to account for which is entirely compatible with the naturalist picture of things.
In fact, this reminds me of a common objection against substance dualism (which is a view Gangadean adheres to). Substance dualists believe that there is a non-physical soul which is essentially the substance that underlies mentality (i.e., mental properties). This soul is thought to interact with the body/brain as it concerns human persons. After all it's commonly accepted that our psychological states influence our physical states (and vice-a-versa). Moreover many substance dualists (but not all) maintain that there are disembodied souls (as in the case of spirits, demons, angels, divine beings). But sometimes their critics argue that there is no ready explanation of how it is that nonphysical stuff (the soul) can interact with physical stuff. This is because physical stuff seems to interact on the basis of physical contact, as when a cue ball hits a billard ball causing the latter to roll. Presumably non-physical stuff can't interact in this very same way (being non physical) and so it's a bit of a mystery just how the soul can cause anything in the brain/body, or more generally, in the world. But this is not to prove deductively that substance dualism is false. Just because it can't explain a fundamental issue about mind and body interaction, doesn't mean it's a false view. One simply doesn't follow from the other. It may at best suggest a weakness in the view, but that's not disproving the view. Similarly, just because a nonreductive materialist can't explain how it is that apparently non-physical properties can emerge out of physical stuff, doesn't prove their position wrong. That's the main philosophical payoff of the last post.
Gangadean's second necessary condition for the possibility of rationally justifying an ethical position is personal immortality of the soul. He writes
"If there were not personal immortality, if death were the end of personal existence and if I and everyone else could cease to exist at any moment then I could not rationally justify to myself one course of actions over another" (118).
Unfortunately, there's little else said about this. And I'm rather surprised. We're dealing with a substantive claim that many philosophers will disagree with as will the skeptic. So it's hard to believe that Gangadean offers essentially nothing to justify the claim. He just sort of states these really contentious claims as platitudes. But he hasn't actually proven that rational justification of morally relevant actions would be pointless or impossible if there were not personal immortality. He's just stated it. So once again, Gangadean has failed his own standards for what it takes to know something. So here's his argument, in effect.
(1) If there is no personal immortality, then there is no rationally justifying one course of action over another.
(2) But rational justification of actions is possible.
(3) Therefore, it's not the case that there is no personal immortality (i.e, there is personal immortality).
It's valid, but not sound. It's valid because it's an instance of modus tollens. But logical validity is cheap. All it takes for an argument to be valid is the following: if the premises were true, then the conclusion would follow. For instance every circular argument is deductively valid because there's no way for the premises to be true while at the same time the conclusion is false. What matters is whether the premises are actually true. And the problem is the first premise (1) is far from it. At least he hasn't convinced anybody that it is so just by merely stating it. Gangadean seems to take it for granted, but that's sloppy. It's a common worry I have about Gangadean's work---that he oversimplies things where it suits his aims. So this pseudo-argument is a far cry from proving anything. A fortiori, he has failed to prove that immortality is required for the possibility of rational justification in ethics and hence has failed to prove that personal immortality is necessary.
p.s. Just to clear about the upshot here, which is important for my readers to keep in mind: I'm not saying that personal identity is therefore not required for ethics (I'm not arguing that Gangadean's thesis is demonstrably wrong). I, for one, find it intuitively plausible that there's a real sense in which worrying about how to live is a little emptier (in some sense that's really hard to get precise about) without immortality. But that's distinct from Gangadean's position. It's logically weaker. What I am pointing out is that Gangadean hasn't proven his claim to be true. And since he calls belief without proof, fideism, he's being a fideist about this unless of course, he can provide a sound (not merely valid) argument for this claim. In other words, once again I'm pointing out that while Gangadean professes to be somehow more rigorous than other philosophers and Christians, this is not evident in his published work.
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Moral Law Part II
Following up from my last two posts. Let's press forward or at least inch along on Gangadean's apology for his meta-ethical and ethical views. Quickly (and roughly), let me say a bit about the terms I just used. Ethicists tend to deal with first-order issues like what is good or what constitutes a right action (and some theories formulate right action as a function of The Good). Meta-ethicists deal with the epistemological, semantic, logical and metaphysical presuppositions related to first-order ethical issues. So when an ethicists asks, what is the right thing to do? The metaethicist pushes it up (or down, depending on your orientation) a conceptual step to ask, what do we even mean by 'good' or 'right' ? Note when something is placed in quotes in this manner, it indicates that I'm talking about the word which is surrounded by the quotes rather than using the word (see use/mention distinction).
Now Gangadean does a bit of both (or tries to at least). He does metaethics in much of this chapter, in particular, at the beginning as well as first-order ethics throughout. My last two posts took issue with many of these meta-ethical claims. Claims like, "choice assumes value" for instance. That seems like a metaethical posit. We'll continue on this front.
On pg. 118, Gangadean again makes a bunch of assertions (sans arguments). For instance, after speaking about the good being that which is of highest value (helping himself to the presupposition that there is such a thing), he writes.
But notice Gangadean has committed himself to much more than that, here. He thinks that any knowledge claim concerning the good must be rationally justifiable. And given his bizarre view concerning what it takes to have knowledge, it would seem that rational justification for a claim amounts to giving an impervious proof for it. And now if this is his claim, that he can prove beyond all doubt every moral claim he is making against the skeptic (or challenger), then this is an incredible standard that he has just set himself up against. So it will suffice our purposes to show where he fails on this front. And I guess my first point is that he's actually failed to establish that such a standard is required for the rest of us and our moral claims. He hasn't done anything like prove that anybody that partakes in ethical inquiry must prove beyond all doubt any of their ethical claims against objections. Nor has he proven that ethics in general must necessarily concern rational justification.
In section two (starting on pg 118) Gangadean asserts "There are certain metaphysical, personal, and epistemological conditions which are necessary in order to make rational justification for ethics possible." And he will go on to try and motivate each of these in turn.
1) Gangadean claims that "a necessary condition therefore for rationally distinguishing good and evil is the metaphysical condition that only some is eternal." Does he have an argument for conclusion? We want premises which deductively entail (not just suggest or make likely) this claim. Here's the best I can make of his meandering discussion.
a) There must be a metaphysical absolute in contrast to what is not absolute.
b) This absolute must be eternal and only some is eternal.
c) According to materialism (all is matter) the distinction between good and evil cannot be rationally justified.
d) According to spiritual monism (all is spirit), the distinction between good and evil cannot be rationally justified.
e) According to dualism (matter and spirit are co-eternal) the distinction between good and evil cannot be rationally justified.
f) Hence, only the view that some (spirit) is eternal (i.e., Theism) can rationally justify the distinction between good and evil.
g) Therefore, a necessary condition for rationally distinguishing good and evil is the metaphysical condition that only some is eternal.
This is a bad argument. It oversimplifies a great deal of material. And he really needs to do more about justifying each of these premises (at least if we are holding him to his own professed standards), not the least of which is the first premise a).
It would be really nice if he would first say more about what he means by 'metaphysical absolute.' I I think by it he simply means the God of theism. But I'm not always sure. This is another one of Gangadean's loaded terms which he simply fails to get precise on. And one should be very careful when dealing with Gangadean in this respect. Don't let him get away with failing to get clearer on his technical terms. He owes you that much since he claims that meaning is more basic than truth (and he certainly wants you to say that his claims are true).
More importantly though, why should anybody accept a)? Why must there be a metaphysical absolute in contrast to what is not absolute for there to be a means to rationally justifying the distinction between good and evil? Can he rationally justify his claim that there must be a metaphysical absolute if we are going to be in the business of rationally justifying between good and evil? The thing is, there are people that don't believe in God that also believe in objective moral values. And I'm not sure how the theist can prove that this person is wrong. At the end of the day, the theist has a deep conviction or intuition that the important sense of objective moral value is the one that requires a objective moral law giver (and I don't necessarily mean the kind of law giver according to divine command theory). I think this is an entirely legit intuition--I tend to have it, too. But it's nothing more than that. I know not what to say to someone that thinks there's a perfectly intelligible sense of objective moral value that does not require a transcendental moral law giver. I can pound the table against them. I can shake my head in puzzlement at them. Or better, I can bring up considerations that perhaps tell against their position to some extent. But I certainly can't prove them wrong (just as they can't prove my convictions wrong). There's no such argument that assumes only premises that they would fully accept. But this is exactly what Gangadean needs to do if he's going to claim a). Prove them wrong. And it's plain to see that he hasn't done anything like this in his book.
Also, I want to flag that Gangadean hasn't even told us what he means by 'good' and 'evil'. This will be important because he'll later smuggle in Aristotelian/Thomistic notions of good and evil as if they are just indubitably true. Good for humans for instance, is to be rational according to Gangadean. But he hasn't actually got deductively sound arguments for these proposals.
What about premise c)? Is it indubitably true that on the view that all is matter, that there is no rational justification for distinguishing between good and evil? How does he support such a view? Well, he says that according to material monism, everything is natural (war, famine, death, birth, etc). And sadly that's it. In an effort to be charitable I'll take some liberties to elaborate. The idea seems to be that since on materialism everything (i.e., the totality of reality) is explained in terms of bits of matter there's no way to account for moral properties. This clump of matter in a particular part of space interacting with another clump of matter that we happen to call "harming one's neighbor" can't possibly have the property of being objectively immoral. But this isn't a proof. Gangadean's discussion is as oversimplified as it is anemic.
Here's the problem. Not all materialists are reductivists. Sure a hardcore reductivist that is also a materialist is going to say that there is nothing at all, but merely bits of matter in space time. That's all there is in reality. But there are plenty of materialists that disagree with such reductivism. In fact, there are many materialist philosophers who believe that predicates like 'good' and 'evil' or 'right' and 'wrong' can be used to say true things. Goodness and badness emerge out of the physical stuff in ways that we can't understand. Just as mental properties emerge out of physical stuff in ways we can't account for. Now it doesn't matter whether or not you find such views compelling or without problems. The point is, Gangadean isn't in a position to definitively prove these positions wrong or incoherent. But that's precisely what he needs. Presumably he's after knowledge and knowledge of p according to him, requires showing that not-p is impossible. That is, if he claims to know that materialism of the sort we are considering is false (because his own view that rational justification in ethics requires the existence of God) he needs to show how it is impossible for rational justification in ethics to occur on a non-reductive materialist picture. He might shift the burden of proof--that is, to ask the nonreductivist for a proof that moral properties can emerge out of physical stuff. But that should not be confused with Gangadaean actually proving that such a thesis is incoherent. I can't supply for you a proof for the claim that the earth is spherical. I just don't have the means. But that doesn't prove that the earth is non-spherical! Alternatively, Gangadean might insist that material stuff only has physical properties (location, velocity, mass) and so by definition can't have emergent properties that are in some way beyond physical. But it's hard to see that as anything more than begging the question against the non-reductive physicalist. It's like saying, "look non-reductive materialism is by definition incoherent, therefore it is incoherent." So Gangadean has much more work to do if he's going to convince the skeptic of c). And I suspect, on his own standards, Gangadean doesn't even know c) to be true. So he really shouldn't be using it to prove anything else.
These considerations alone are enough to block the argument from establishing premise f) ("Hence, only the view that some is eternal, can rationally justify the distinction between good and evil"). Which means the conclusion, "Therefore, a necessary condition for rationally distinguishing good and evil is the metaphysical condition that only some is eternal" also fails to follow from the premises. That is to say, insofar as a) and c) are not proven beyond all doubt (i.e., according to Gangadean's own standards) the argument is not sound and thus cannot lead us to knowledge of its conclusion.
Notice I've not even criticized his discussions of spiritual monism and dualism (premises d) and e) ). I didn't need to in order to show that his argument in this section, falters.
Now Gangadean does a bit of both (or tries to at least). He does metaethics in much of this chapter, in particular, at the beginning as well as first-order ethics throughout. My last two posts took issue with many of these meta-ethical claims. Claims like, "choice assumes value" for instance. That seems like a metaethical posit. We'll continue on this front.
On pg. 118, Gangadean again makes a bunch of assertions (sans arguments). For instance, after speaking about the good being that which is of highest value (helping himself to the presupposition that there is such a thing), he writes.
And if the good is of the greatest value, and most to be desired, we would not want to come short of what truly is good and have in its place something which merely appeared to be good...We would desire and need rational justification, not mere prima facie rationalization. And in the face of conflicting views and consequent challenges to justify our actions and the moral claim made on others in the name of the good we must be able to justify any knowledge claim concerning the good. For all these reasons ethics must be concerned with giving rational justification for an answer to the question "What is the good?" For rational justification assures that we have knowledge (118).Now I just don't see how this passage suffices to prove that we need rational justification to do ethics. To be clear, I think that ethics as a field of inquiry does require (in a very loose sense of the word) that we are able to argue our points of view. However, this is tempered by the fact that our moral views ultimately bottom out at intuitions or core judgments we have that particular things are good, bad, right and wrong. Even the theist has got to admit that there is no argument for why a person should live according to God's design plan. At some point, the answer is going to be, "just because." Why is murder bad? Because humans have intrinsic dignity. Why is it bad to kill someone with intrinsic dignity? Because to have intrinsic dignity means to bear the image of God? But why is it bad to kill someone bearing the image of God? It just is.
But notice Gangadean has committed himself to much more than that, here. He thinks that any knowledge claim concerning the good must be rationally justifiable. And given his bizarre view concerning what it takes to have knowledge, it would seem that rational justification for a claim amounts to giving an impervious proof for it. And now if this is his claim, that he can prove beyond all doubt every moral claim he is making against the skeptic (or challenger), then this is an incredible standard that he has just set himself up against. So it will suffice our purposes to show where he fails on this front. And I guess my first point is that he's actually failed to establish that such a standard is required for the rest of us and our moral claims. He hasn't done anything like prove that anybody that partakes in ethical inquiry must prove beyond all doubt any of their ethical claims against objections. Nor has he proven that ethics in general must necessarily concern rational justification.
In section two (starting on pg 118) Gangadean asserts "There are certain metaphysical, personal, and epistemological conditions which are necessary in order to make rational justification for ethics possible." And he will go on to try and motivate each of these in turn.
1) Gangadean claims that "a necessary condition therefore for rationally distinguishing good and evil is the metaphysical condition that only some is eternal." Does he have an argument for conclusion? We want premises which deductively entail (not just suggest or make likely) this claim. Here's the best I can make of his meandering discussion.
a) There must be a metaphysical absolute in contrast to what is not absolute.
b) This absolute must be eternal and only some is eternal.
c) According to materialism (all is matter) the distinction between good and evil cannot be rationally justified.
d) According to spiritual monism (all is spirit), the distinction between good and evil cannot be rationally justified.
e) According to dualism (matter and spirit are co-eternal) the distinction between good and evil cannot be rationally justified.
f) Hence, only the view that some (spirit) is eternal (i.e., Theism) can rationally justify the distinction between good and evil.
g) Therefore, a necessary condition for rationally distinguishing good and evil is the metaphysical condition that only some is eternal.
This is a bad argument. It oversimplifies a great deal of material. And he really needs to do more about justifying each of these premises (at least if we are holding him to his own professed standards), not the least of which is the first premise a).
It would be really nice if he would first say more about what he means by 'metaphysical absolute.' I I think by it he simply means the God of theism. But I'm not always sure. This is another one of Gangadean's loaded terms which he simply fails to get precise on. And one should be very careful when dealing with Gangadean in this respect. Don't let him get away with failing to get clearer on his technical terms. He owes you that much since he claims that meaning is more basic than truth (and he certainly wants you to say that his claims are true).
More importantly though, why should anybody accept a)? Why must there be a metaphysical absolute in contrast to what is not absolute for there to be a means to rationally justifying the distinction between good and evil? Can he rationally justify his claim that there must be a metaphysical absolute if we are going to be in the business of rationally justifying between good and evil? The thing is, there are people that don't believe in God that also believe in objective moral values. And I'm not sure how the theist can prove that this person is wrong. At the end of the day, the theist has a deep conviction or intuition that the important sense of objective moral value is the one that requires a objective moral law giver (and I don't necessarily mean the kind of law giver according to divine command theory). I think this is an entirely legit intuition--I tend to have it, too. But it's nothing more than that. I know not what to say to someone that thinks there's a perfectly intelligible sense of objective moral value that does not require a transcendental moral law giver. I can pound the table against them. I can shake my head in puzzlement at them. Or better, I can bring up considerations that perhaps tell against their position to some extent. But I certainly can't prove them wrong (just as they can't prove my convictions wrong). There's no such argument that assumes only premises that they would fully accept. But this is exactly what Gangadean needs to do if he's going to claim a). Prove them wrong. And it's plain to see that he hasn't done anything like this in his book.
Also, I want to flag that Gangadean hasn't even told us what he means by 'good' and 'evil'. This will be important because he'll later smuggle in Aristotelian/Thomistic notions of good and evil as if they are just indubitably true. Good for humans for instance, is to be rational according to Gangadean. But he hasn't actually got deductively sound arguments for these proposals.
What about premise c)? Is it indubitably true that on the view that all is matter, that there is no rational justification for distinguishing between good and evil? How does he support such a view? Well, he says that according to material monism, everything is natural (war, famine, death, birth, etc). And sadly that's it. In an effort to be charitable I'll take some liberties to elaborate. The idea seems to be that since on materialism everything (i.e., the totality of reality) is explained in terms of bits of matter there's no way to account for moral properties. This clump of matter in a particular part of space interacting with another clump of matter that we happen to call "harming one's neighbor" can't possibly have the property of being objectively immoral. But this isn't a proof. Gangadean's discussion is as oversimplified as it is anemic.
Here's the problem. Not all materialists are reductivists. Sure a hardcore reductivist that is also a materialist is going to say that there is nothing at all, but merely bits of matter in space time. That's all there is in reality. But there are plenty of materialists that disagree with such reductivism. In fact, there are many materialist philosophers who believe that predicates like 'good' and 'evil' or 'right' and 'wrong' can be used to say true things. Goodness and badness emerge out of the physical stuff in ways that we can't understand. Just as mental properties emerge out of physical stuff in ways we can't account for. Now it doesn't matter whether or not you find such views compelling or without problems. The point is, Gangadean isn't in a position to definitively prove these positions wrong or incoherent. But that's precisely what he needs. Presumably he's after knowledge and knowledge of p according to him, requires showing that not-p is impossible. That is, if he claims to know that materialism of the sort we are considering is false (because his own view that rational justification in ethics requires the existence of God) he needs to show how it is impossible for rational justification in ethics to occur on a non-reductive materialist picture. He might shift the burden of proof--that is, to ask the nonreductivist for a proof that moral properties can emerge out of physical stuff. But that should not be confused with Gangadaean actually proving that such a thesis is incoherent. I can't supply for you a proof for the claim that the earth is spherical. I just don't have the means. But that doesn't prove that the earth is non-spherical! Alternatively, Gangadean might insist that material stuff only has physical properties (location, velocity, mass) and so by definition can't have emergent properties that are in some way beyond physical. But it's hard to see that as anything more than begging the question against the non-reductive physicalist. It's like saying, "look non-reductive materialism is by definition incoherent, therefore it is incoherent." So Gangadean has much more work to do if he's going to convince the skeptic of c). And I suspect, on his own standards, Gangadean doesn't even know c) to be true. So he really shouldn't be using it to prove anything else.
These considerations alone are enough to block the argument from establishing premise f) ("Hence, only the view that some is eternal, can rationally justify the distinction between good and evil"). Which means the conclusion, "Therefore, a necessary condition for rationally distinguishing good and evil is the metaphysical condition that only some is eternal" also fails to follow from the premises. That is to say, insofar as a) and c) are not proven beyond all doubt (i.e., according to Gangadean's own standards) the argument is not sound and thus cannot lead us to knowledge of its conclusion.
Notice I've not even criticized his discussions of spiritual monism and dualism (premises d) and e) ). I didn't need to in order to show that his argument in this section, falters.
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