Part 2: On Gangadean's "Real" Solution to the Problem of Evil.

Continuing the discussion from last time concerning Gangadean's "real solution" to the problem of evil, let's consider what he says. Gangadean begins with some assumptions about the nature of good and evil as well as the nature or essence of humans (to use reason to the fullest). But they are merely assumptions.

Starting on page 111 of his book, he states

as an a priori, good for a being is according to the nature of that being and evil is what is contrary to the nature of that being."

It's very easy to forget Gangadean's standards for knowing or rationally believing something and this is what I think many Gangadeanians fail to keep in mind when assessing his claims. They often fault alternative views along these unreasonably high standards (e.g., if evolution isn't deductively proven, then it shouldn't be believed or can't be known), while they assess Gangadean's teachings on much more laxed terms (e.g., they claim to know that humans but not animals are minded but do so via abduction--which is a form of induction a.k.a-- inference to the best explanation). The inconsistency is glaring to me. But now notice that applying Gangadean's high standard to his claims just rehearsed entails that to know something like "good for a being is according to the nature of that being" is to rule out the very possibility that it's not true. It's literally got to be impossible for the claim to be false! But has he proven this? No, I think he's simply stated something that his followers somehow "feel" is right. It's sort of common sensical. I mean he doesn't ever give any arguments to that end and even if he were to give arguments, I suspect they wouldn't be deductive proofs with indubitable premises.

And what does he mean it's an a priori? Philosophers sometimes distinguish between a priori (a part from experience) and a posteriori (via experience). These have to do with how things are known or justified. It turns out that it's a rather tenuous distinction and not without real controversy. To say that something is known prior to or apart from experience, isn't to tell you very precisely how you know that thing. 'From experience' and 'apart from experience' are very general categories. So we've got to get into the specifics of how a thing like the claim about goodness might be known and again in accordance with Gangadeanian epistemic standards.

One way that a thing can be known apart from experience, is if it's a matter of conceptual truth. Some statements are trivially true, because they are true by definition. That all bachelors are unmarried is a paradigm example. All that is required for a person to know that such a proposition is true is that they understand the terms 'bachelor',  'unmarried', 'male', the copula 'is/are' and of course the quantifier 'all'. Philosophers sometimes refer to such propositions as analytic truths (i.e., true by definition).  The idea is that it doesn't take any experience to verify the truth of such a claim at least once you've got the meaning of the terms right--but this last bit is where problems arise. Anyway the general idea seems to be that you didn't have to go out into the world and learn about every bachelor to know that they are all unmarried in order to legitimately affirm the proposition that all bachelors are unmarried. But things are not so clear cut.

Gangadeanians are often unaware that the whole idea of something being true by definition is a matter of controversy. In the first place, Quine pointed out that the very meaning of 'analytic' is not clear. We can try elucidating it by using other words, but then we get into this potential circularity. Suppose by analytic we mean synonymous, but now what does synonymous mean? If you say 'analytic', you've just given a circular account. If you give other words like 'true by definition' to account for synonymy, then we need only ask what the meaning of 'true by definition' is and so on. We seem to face a regress or circularity concerning meaning. So Gangadean following his requirement of clarity should be able to explain where the buck stops and how we can be certain of even the very meaning of 'analytic' or 'true by definition'.  Now I'm not a full out skeptic about there being such things as conceptual a priori truths, but neither am I certain that there are such things (I think there's just a presumption in favor of the idea that is ultimately defeasible). The reason for my hesitation is that it's a difficult matter figuring out exactly what counts as being true by definition and also what counts as being known/justified apart from experience (even if we have a sufficient enough grasp of what these expressions mean). We've got what we take to be paradigm examples of each, but it isn't as if we've got a complete list of analytic truths vs. non-analytic (or synthetic) ones. So when we encounter a claim that purports to be true analytically, or true by definition, it isn't clear exactly which criteria we are to use to make such an evaluation. For instance, ask yourself, what counts as being part of the very meaning of 'dog', 'house', 'chair', 'solar system', 'unicorn', 'phlogiston', 'species', etc. If you're reflective, you'll start to wonder how you begin to determine what is part of the very meaning and what isn't. And Gangadean, insofar as he depends on the notion of conceptual/analytic truths to reach certainty, had better be in a position to give us a theory here. The same goes for things known a priori vs. a posteriori. 

As I've mentioned, insofar as the proposition that all bachelors are unmarried is solely verified as true on the basis of one's understanding or grasp of the meaning of its component terms, if we want Gangadeanian certainty through and through, we've got to be certain that our grasp of the meanings are right in the first place. And how do we get to be sure of a thing like that? I've written before on how we have good reason to believe that getting to the "right" meaning of a word is an a posteriori, and fallible process. The meanings of words in a given language are a matter of convention. If you want to say that people misuse or misunderstand the meaning of a word like 'bachelor' you've got to have some standard or basis in virtue of which you distinguish between the right and wrong meaning and you've got to think critically about the legitimacy of this standard. And I simply can't imagine that there is anything but a fallible, empirical process of the sorts of research they do in linguistics that we can rely on. Now Gangadean sometimes acts as if he's got privileged access to an infallible dictionary of words in the English language or as if whatever he thinks a word means is automatically just what the word means, but neither of these is plausible and more importantly he's got to argue for them.

Instead, I contend that you've got to see how people actually use words and make your best guess at the definition based on such behaviors. This is why I say it's a fallible process and also a posteriori (requires experience). Insofar as determining that 'all bachelors are unmarried' requires knowing what each component expression means in a given language, and that the latter is an empirical process, the idea that the statement is known to be true entirely apart from experience (or a priori) becomes tenuous to say the least. Traditionally philosophers have avoided this issue by proposing that for a statement to be analytically true just means that once you've got a sufficient grasp of the meaning of it's component parts, you can know that the entire statement is true entirely apart from experience. But I have no idea why this is an acceptable way of cutting things up conceptually. Why shouldn't the experience involved in determining the meanings of the component terms in the first place, call into question whether the process of verifying the truth of the statement count against the a priori status?

Anyway let's relate all of this to Gangadean's original claim about the nature of goodness. According to Gangadean it's known, apart from experience, that the following are true.

'X is Good for A' = 'X is in accordance with A's nature.'
'X is evil/bad for A' = 'X is contrary to A's nature.' 

As we've explored, one way that statements like these might be known a priori (apart from experience) is that they are true by definition. But this whole business of statements being true by definition is again not without difficulties in particular as it concerns Gangadean's claims of certainty/clarity. Learning what the meaning of a word is, requires experience (and is ultimately fallible). And as I've noted above, it's not clear why this experience is not germane when it comes to evaluating whether a statement that is composed of such words (and their meanings) is known from experience (a posteriori) or apart from it (a priori). If knowing that a statement is true by definition requires knowing what the component terms of the statement mean, and the latter requires experience, then there's a real sense in which knowledge of the truth of the statement is a posteriori. For Gangadean to claim that 'good' means something like 'in accordance with the nature of the thing' he's got to know with certainty that he's not mistaken about the meaning of each of the component words. But if the only way he can verify the meanings of his words is via empirical investigation, that is, to see how the members of the language community actually use the words, then this seriously calls into question whether Gangadean could know apart from experience and more importantly it calls into question whether it can be known with certainty, that "good for X is in accordance with X's nature." Again he must be presupposing that the way he and people he is familiar with use the word in just the manner that supports this analysis. But that isn't to prove that he (and his) are correct in doing so. The payoff is that Gangadean has much more work to do in order to settle his premise that it's an a priori, that good for a thing is in accordance with its nature.

Now let's turn to Gangadean's proposal about the nature of humans. He writes,

Man, by the very intellectual nature of the problem of evil, is a rational being. What then is good for man as a rational being? Good for man as a rational being would be the use of his reason to the fullest. Since reason is used to grasp the nature of things, good for man as a rational being would be to understand the nature of things. Since thinking by nature is presuppositional, that is, we think of what is less basic in light of what is more basic, the good would be to grasp, first of all, the nature of basic things in light of which all else is understood. Since the nature of things created reveals the nature of the Creator, good for man is the knowledge of God...Evil is the failure to know God (111). 

That the nature of "man" is rationality is something that Gangadean seems to think he's proven. But that's far from obvious. It certainly doesn't follow from the problem of evil. How does the fact that there's an intellectual puzzle for the Theist, tell us what human nature consists of? Is it somehow logically impossible that rationality is not what makes for the essence or nature of humans? According to Gangadean's epistemic standards, that's just what he needs to show.

At this point we run into annoying questions about how we could come to know the nature of humans. Is it again something that can be known via conceptual analysis and thus a priori? We've already discussed how the distinctions are anything but neat and tidy. I actually think Gangadean holds believes it's a matter of conceptual truth that man is in essence, rational, but I'm far from sure. I say this largely in part because he's strongly inclined towards an methodological Aristotelianism. And if you read Aristotle you see that he does a bunch of arguments which depend on his take on the meanings of words (and it almost never occurs to him that he might actually be mistaken about the meanings of words!). This pattern is consistent with Gangadean's way of arguing. And it's on shaky ground. Again, why isn't Gangadean keen on answering the skeptic at this point? The skeptic is going to press Gangadean on how he can be sure that his understanding or grasp of 'human' and 'rationality' is the correct one. So Gangadean has much work to do in this area. Alternatively we might think figuring out what the nature of a human consists in is going to be an empirical process. We discovered that water molecules consists of hydrogen and oxygen, via experience even though it seems that h20 is the very essence of water. But taking such an empirical route to the question poses serious worries for Gangadean again because of his impossible standards of clarity. Empirical investigations are fallible---they are inductive and depend on our fallible perceptual faculties. So it's hard to see how Gangadean could come to know with certainty that humans are rational beings on the basis of empirical investigation. What is more, he just hasn't provided any of this empirical data! So I actually think Gangadean is stuck in a dilemma here. Conceptual analysis threatens parochialism and semantic chauvinism, and empirical investigation is at best inductive. Neither way provides clarity.

Furthermore, it turns out that it's actually the "potential or capacity" to be rational that makes up human nature for Gangadean. I say this because when you bring up the counterexample of brain damaged humans, or fetuses, individuals that Gangadean accepts as members of the set of all humans who presumably aren't (actually) using their reason, he will revise his position to say that it's merely the potential to use reason that makes for a human. But when you press him on what exactly counts as "having a capacity or potential" to be rational, there's no ready response.

Potentials and capacities have to do with non-actualities. They are modal terms/concepts. When we say that X has merely the potential to reason we mean that by changing certain facts about our reality (i.e., consider counterfactuals), X would in fact use reason.  If Bill has merely got the potential to get a job, then that means that Bill doesn't have the job, but with a few changes to the world, he will have the job. But which changes (and how dramatic of changes) should we care about? Capacities come in many forms and the problem for Gangadean will be to specify where to draw the line in a principled manner. Suppose you've got a rock, an ape, a brain damaged person, a neanderthal and a fetus. Plausibly none of these actually are using reason in the Gangadeanian sense. But Gangadean will want to say of some, but not all of these that they have the capacity/potential to use reason. And the problem is that what counts as a potential or capacity seems highly context sensitive and interest relative.

In some sense, I've got the potential to fly (sans any aircraft). Again we've got a state of affairs (me flying) which is not actual. But given sufficient changes to reality, I would fly. For instance, it's possible that God could make me have wings and paired with certain other background conditions (like my having the desire to fly), I would fly.  It's not actual of course. I haven't got wings. But with some changes to reality, I would fly. So when we pay attention to certain counterfactual situations (where we imagine changing a certain set of facts about our reality), it's true that I have the potential or capacity to fly.

But when we evaluate the very same statement (that I have the potential/capacity to fly) against a different set of counterfactual considerations (we focus on imaging different changes to our reality) the same statement is false. If say God were to have changed my hair and eye color from what it is now, then that's a change from reality. But those changes wouldn't make it sufficient for me to fly. So when we merely focus on these counterfactual conditions, the statement 'I have the potential/capacity to fly' is false.  The point is, whenever we're dealing with a statement like, 'X has the potential to be rational' we're dealing with a way the world might have been (nomological, or perhaps metaphysical modality) or might turn out to be (epistemic modality). We imagine certain changes to reality and wonder whether X uses reason, given those changes. But which changes should we focus on? That's the big question. Take a brain damaged person that is currently (and in actuality) not using reason. Do they have the potential to be rational? Well, it depends on which changes we consider in our evaluation of that statement. Changing the person's hair style from what it actually is or removing their limbs, or having the nurses read to him poetry are not going to bring it about that such a person starts to use reason. So they don't have a potential with respect to such changes. On the other hand, considered in light of some radical changes to certain physical laws, or technological advancements, and the like will make it so that the person uses reason. The question for Ganagdean then is what principled account he has of determining just which counterfactual details we should care about when we evaluate whether someone/thing has the potential to reason or not. If we're very liberal and inclusive of the changes we allow, then rocks have the capacity to reason and so should gain membership to the set of all humans. If we're too conservative, then brain-damaged persons and fetus haven't got the potential or capacity to reason and so don't count as humans. The trick for Gangadean is to navigate between the two in a principled manner which isn't question begging or ad hoc.

At this point the Gangadeanian might be tempted to respond that rocks and apes don't have the capacity to reason at all because the sorts of changes to reality that would need to be made for rocks or apes to actually use reason, would make them no longer rocks or apes respectively. Presumably, the same is not true of say a fetus. But this is no good. We need only inquire into why our imagined Gangadeanian insists on excluding fetuses from this worry. A fetus that actually uses reason (in the Gangadeanian sense) is not going to be a fetus unless we radically change the laws of nature, our taxonomies, or make the fetus develop in such a way that it is no longer a fetus. Thus we still have no principled way of figuring out which sets of counterfactual conditions we should care about in assessing whether X (be it a rock, an ape, a neanderthal, a fetus, or a brain damaged person) has got the potential to reason or not. Most philosophers will say that which sets of facts we pay attention to is not determined by any fixed standard, but rather that the conversational context in which a statement like "X has got the potential to be rational" will determine which counterfactual conditions we ought to pay attention to in evaluating whether or not the statement is true. And conversational contexts are sensitive to the goals, and interests of the the speakers and hearers. But I hardly think this sort of relativity is going to be amenable to team-Gangadean.

Another more general epistemological worry looms for the Gangadeanian at this point. The work of evaluating the truth of statements involving 'potential' and 'capacity' depends importantly on what we can conceive of and what we can imagine. We've got to think in terms of possible worlds or ways reality might be different and hope that we've got reliable judgments. Philosopher take this as a general presumption--it's an unproven assumption that just seem acceptable in some sense to rely on. But given Gangadean's epistemological standards, he can't rest his case on such presumptions--they are uncritically held presuppositions and so he had better be in a place to prove them.

The payoff is that we shouldn't grant Gangadean his claim that 'good for a thing is according to its nature' or that 'evil for a thing is contrary to its nature'. We also shouldn't grant Gangadean that the nature or essence of humans is to use reason or even the weaker claim that human nature consists of having the potential/capacity to use reason. But he's going to need these premises to develop his theodicy and so until he's settled these issue, his theodicy is a no-go. Next time, for the sake of discussion, I'll grant him these very premises and show problems for this theodicy nonetheless.