Gangadean, Descartes, and the Ontological Argument.

I've been reading some Descartes lately. He's always a fun read. As I've said before, Gangadeanians are Cartesians at heart. It was Descartes after all that sought an indubitable foundation upon which to build an entire worldview. Throughout his meditations, he seeks to find that which he can't possibly doubt. And if you've ever taken a philosophy course with a Gangadeanian, it's likely that you'll hear the cogito argument. I know of no other philosopher either in the past or present that seeks certainty in the way that Descartes does with the exception of Gangadean of course.

There are other similarities which is what prompted this post. For instance, Descartes believed that by simply unpacking the content of an idea, we could come to know about the world beyond our concepts. For instance, Descartes begins with his idea of a triangle and says the he perceives that the nature of triangle is to be (among other things) a three-sided figure. And importantly he could ascertain this nature simply by reflecting on his idea of a triangle. Indeed since he doesn't believe that triangles actually exist (he believes they are merely imperfectly instantiated in the concrete world), there is no other way he could come to know about them except via the reason.

Gangadean similarly takes it that "in a concept, one grasps the essence of a thing". That is to say, we can know at least some things about substantial reality in virtue of reflecting on our concepts of things. For example, as Gangadean sees it, you can just sit and reflect on the concept/word 'knowledge' or the concept/word 'eternal' and certain indubitable truths will come to mind. For instance, 'eternal' just means without beginning and end. 'Knowledge' just is a justified true belief. 'Evil' just is that which is contrary to one's nature. 'God' just is a spirit, that is infinite, eternal and unchanging in his being... 'Friendship' just is a relationship with a mutual aim towards the good...I'm only scratching the surface. As I've noted before Gangadeanians have their own vocabulary and it is in virtue of this vocabulary that many of their deductions turn out valid (although far from sound). So the similarity with Descartes is hard to deny. Descartes speaks of ideas, and Gangadean speaks of concepts, but they are functionally the same thing. Descartes speaks of the natures of things, and other times the essences of things, and Gangadean does the same. More importantly, both thinkers are committed to this idea that we could learn about the nature of things just by unpacking our concepts or ideas of those things. To be clear, neither Descartes or Gangadean are saying that you can know the nature of an idea by unpacking the idea (that would merely get one to idealism). Instead, they are both saying that by simply reflecting sufficiently on our ideas, we can know about things "out there" beyond our minds (that's what Gangadean means by "grasping the essence of things").

In his Fifth Meditation, Descartes, after speaking about triangles, seems to realize that if he can know (with certainty) about the very nature/essences of triangles simply by thinking about his idea of a triangle, then he should be able to extend this method to prove that God exists. After all, he's got a "clear and distinct" idea of God. Just like he has a "clear and distinct" idea of a triangle. So in the manner by which he could come to know about the nature of triangles by thinking about his idea of triangles, he argues that he can do the same as it concerns God.

Now for Descartes and many other theists that he was following, the very idea of God contains (necessary) existence. That is to say, just like one cannot really have an idea of a triangle that doesn't contain the idea of a three-sided figure, according to Descartes, to think of God is necessarily to think of a being that exists. On the other hand he says his ideas of other things like that of a lion or a mountain, do not have this feature. He can think of a lion that doesn't exist and he can think of a mountain that doesn't exist without committing anything like a contradiction or conceptual confusion. And insofar as his idea of God contains within it the further idea of existence, he concludes that this proves that God really does exist. Just like he can prove that a triangle has three sides by thinking about his concept of a triangle and realizing that he can't separate (in his mind) three sides from a triangle, he can prove that God exists by merely reflecting on his concept of God. He can't by his intellect separate his idea of God from his idea of existence, so he concludes that it is the very nature/essence of God to exist.

It's an ontological argument which are fascinating beasts even though they are largely rejected. However, the merits or faults of the argument itself are not what I'm interested in. What I'm wondering is how or on what grounds a Gangadeanian would reject such an argument. That is, how does it differ structurally from Gangadean's argument that "something must be eternal"? Recall, that that argument depends on the conceptual analysis that 'eternal' just means without beginning, and that 'none is eternal' entails that 'all began to exist'. If you ask a Gangadeanian how s/he knows that 'if none is eternal, then all is temporal and all began to exist' they will say that it's a matter of definition--that is to say, it's a matter of conceptual truth. One can just sit and reflect on the concept/idea of 'eternal' to realize what it entails about beginning to exist and temporality. Well, this is just what Descartes thinks is happening in his ontological argument for God's existence. It's perfectly plain to him that the very concept of God contains within it necessary existence. Thus it is in virtue of his definition of God, and his commitment to the idea that (in Gangadeanian terms) "reason is ontological" that the conclusion that God really exists, follows.

As I recall, Gangadean rejects this kind of ontological argument. What I'm currently interested in is whether he's got good grounds for rejecting it. Does he reject Descartes claim that it is part of the very concept of God that he exists? That is, does Gangadean believe one can have the idea of God and at the same time imagine God as not existing? I doubt it. Isn't God according to Gangadean, by definition, a being that is infinite, eternal and unchanging? And doesn't Gangadean believe that 'eternal' just means always existing? If so, it seems he must agree with Descartes' definition of God in an important sense. That is, to have a concept of God is to have a concept of an eternal (or always existing) being.

So if Gangadean wants to legitimately reject the Cartesian argument, he must looks elsewhere. As I see it there are only two more exit points. Gangadean must either reject the claim that we can know the nature of God by reflecting on our concept of God (i.e., he must say that one can have the concept of God without grasping the essence of God), or else he must deny the final inference that Descartes makes namely, "if it is part of the very essence of God to exist, then he does exist." But I don't see how he could deny either of these. To reject the first is to admit to a counterexample to his foundational claim about concepts. Remember, he says that "in a concept we grasp the essence of a thing". But if we can have a concept of God without thereby grasping the nature of God, then his thesis about concepts is falsified. To reject the latter of Cartesian moves is to admit that it is in God's nature to exist and yet God can somehow fail to exist. But again, if Gangadean accepts that by reflecting on his concept of God, he grasps the essence of God which includes eternal existence, then it's hard to see how Gangadean could reject the Cartesian inference unless of course something can have as its very nature existence while failing to exist.

Where this leaves us is that regardless of whether or not Gangadean actually rejects the ontological argument, there's a question about whether on pain of inconsistency, he should. I think we have reason to think his views actually force him to accept Descartes Ontological argument for God's existence and so much worse for his view. This is the cost of his commitment to the claim that we can know the essences of things just by a priori, analysis of our concepts in conjunction with his definition of 'God'.

Followup

I added a couple of paragraphs to my last post so be sure and check them out!

On the possibility that matter is eternal.

As of 9/6/16, I've added a couple of paragraphs to draw out the implications a bit more. I've placed '***' next to them for your convenience.

I've been deep in my own research and so have been too preoccupied lately to attend to the blog. Anyway, I ran into an article while reading up on modern cosmology that I thought was relevant to a recent post of mine. There, I argued that Gangadean has failed to prove that the material universe can't be eternal (or more generally, that matter can't be eternal which would entail the former). In fact, I think it's a terrible argument.

Gangadean (at times) must be aware that he hasn't proven as much because as I pointed out, he shifts to talk about there being "no reasons" to believe that matter is self-maintaining and hence this supposedly gives him reason to believe that it can't be eternal (see pg. 55 of Philosophical Foundations). And I think Gangadean is simply confused at this point. Stating some positive evidence for p is by no means proof of p, but rather inclines one to present an inductive argument for p. Moreover, there's the issue of whether the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. In other words, even if it were true that there's no current evidence that the universe is self-maintaining/eternal, or that matter is, we need to ask whether that fact in turn is positive evidence that it isn't self-maintaining/eternal. And it's far from clear that this is so. Our body of evidence is in flux, and there's much we don't know or have access to. But beyond that, Gangadean needs more than mere positive evidence for his conclusion (that matter is not eternal) anyway because his project is to provide a deductive, knock-down, drag out, proof for Theism.

The other point I mentioned before is that Gangadean and his camp must rest their philosophical claims on what the "experts" of modern science tell them--because his main arguments as it concerns matter not being eternal, depend on empirical (a posteriori) claims (indeed they must, because the very existence of matter is an empirical issue). Let's ignore the thorny, but real epistemological problem that arises here--how do you know when someone is an expert or trustworthy source about some topic X, when you yourself are not qualified as an expert or trustworthy source about X? Indeed, Gangadean or the bulk of us for that matter are simply in no place to conduct the necessary experiments or work through the complicated mathematics involved. So there are serious issues for Gangadean's worldview. If he fails to prove that matter cannot even possibly be eternal, and he must rest even one of his premises on the testimony of "experts" concerning empirical matters, then any demonstrative proof is simply beyond reach and proclamations of the clarity of God's existence are beyond the pale--Gangadean's worldview is in serious danger.

Here's an article by a cosmologist Don Page who also happens to be a Christian. And here's the relevant passage. (Don Page was weighing in on the debate between Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig).

On the issue of whether our universe had a beginning, besides not believing that this is at all relevant to the issue of whether or not God exists, I agreed almost entirely with Sean’s points rather than yours, Bill, on this issue. We simply do not know whether or not our universe had a beginning, but there are certainly models, such as Sean’s with Jennifer Chen (hep-th/0410270 and gr-qc/0505037), that do not have a beginning. I myself have also favored a bounce model in which there is something like a quantum superposition of semiclassical spacetimes (though I don’t really think quantum theory gives probabilities for histories, just for sentient experiences), in most of which the universe contracts from past infinite time and then has a bounce to expand forever. In as much as these spacetimes are approximately classical throughout, there is a time in each that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity (emphasis mine). 

So here's an "expert" telling us that we simply don't know whether or not the universe had a beginning (and no doubt other "experts" like Sean Carroll and Jennifer Chen agree). That is, there are theories according to which, the universe didn't have a beginning. This roughly translates to it being at least possible that the universe didn't have a beginning--models have to be self-contained, internally consistent, and make empirical predictions, among other things to pass as models. Remember a proposition p is clear according to Gangadean if and only if the opposite of p is not possible. So plug in 'matter is not eternal' for p and you see that Gangadean must show that the proposition 'matter is not eternal' is not even possibly true. But here you have cosmologists telling us that it's at least possible that the universe is eternal because there might be mechanisms which enable it to be so. Given something like a correspondance theory of truth, that means the proposition "matter is eternal" is possibly true. Note, this isn't arguing that being comes from non-being (which is what the Gangadeanians might be inclined to try and force out).

Recall that in his book, Gangadean mentions philosophical problems with particular models (like that of Stephen Hawking) which suggest an eternal universe. This is part of his main argument for the claim that matter is not eternal. So he does in fact take the testimony of such "experts" seriously and he should (otherwise he couldn't accept the principle that entropy increases in a closed system--although many such experts speak of this as probabilistic rather than categorical as I've mentioned before). But as I've said, his criticisms are going to be limited to just those models (and those relevantly like them) that he has considered. More generally, to point out problems in current models is to do just that--point out that given our current evidence, it doesn't look probable that the universe/matter is eternal (or that it doesn't look probable that it's possible that the universe is eternal). That's the upper limit of what Gangdean can do. If he want's proof, or clarity or whatever, he's got to rule out even the logical possibility that matter is eternal. In order to do that, he's got to consider every last model--past, present, and even future (those models that haven't even yet been developed), and then show that all of them have (or at least will have) irreconcilable problems. We have an example of a cosmologist mentioning a couple of such models and there are many more (see multiverse theories). We also have to consider those that are in the process of being developed and those that will in the future be developed as we learn more and more about the cosmos.

***It's important to keep in mind just how principled this objection is and so how serious a problem it is for Gangadean. You see, substantive claims about matter are by their very nature empirically got (i.e., we have to observe the way that matter behaves to know things about it). This involves our fallible perceptual faculties, our fallible inductive and abductive reasoning, as well as our fallible practice of making generalizations from a sample. You can observe how a flamingo behaves, or even a great many of them at one point in time, but you can't be certain how the next flamingo will behave. So it is with the universe. So it is with bits of matter. You can make probabilistic claims or generalizations based on prior observations that are for all intents and purposes quite rational, but if you're after certainty,  you're going to be disappointed. Moving up a level of abstraction, we can apply the same inductive problem as it concerns cosmological models--even if some fail, it doesn't follow that all will fail. In other words, Gangadean must depend on what are observation-induction-based premises to support the claim that necessarily, matter is not eternal. But that reeks havoc for his project because such claims will ever be at the mercy of empirical fortune--it will depend on how the science turns out on the final reckoning. And science as well as common sense observation, if anything, has faced radical revisions throughout history (think about quantum mechanics vs. classical physics vs. Aristotelian physics or the Copernican revolution for instance). So even in principle, we can't have clarity or certainty regarding substantive claims about things like whether matter is eternal or not. Notice this is true even if I grant team-Gangadean the laws of thought and the "intuitive grasping of concepts" so that we can be certain of trivialities like "matter is matter" and "matter is not non-matter". Obviously, his argument against the possibility of matter being eternal depends on the substantive claims rather than on mere trivialities-- he's got to prove beyond any possible doubt that matter is not "self-maintaining" and that "if it's eternal, then it's self-maintaining" and the like. That means we can't have certainty that God exists. Again to reiterate, models featuring an eternal universe, aren't necessarily making the claim that "being comes from non-being". Instead the strategy is to suggest that we don't know all that much about the nature of the cosmos, or matter and thus we can't (rationally), from the armchair, rule out the possibility that we might learn surprising things about it in the future.

Now my point is not that any of these theories represents what's actual or even what's probably actual. If you're thinking to yourself, "well, yeah there are these theories, but we don't know that they are true or they seem unlikely to be true" then you're barking up the wrong tree. In fact, I find multi-verse theories (i.e., the view that our observable universe is among an ensemble of universes to be unlikely or fanciful--although I'm by no means even close to being certain). But if you think this is somehow an objection against what I've said earlier, then you're not distinguishing between actuality and possibility and that's a crucial distinction when talking about clarity. This is because Gangadean has set the epistemological bar so high and he falls on his own sword. Again according to Gangadean, for some claim to be clear, the opposite of that claim must be impossible. He doesn't say that p is clear if and only if the opposite of the claim is merely non-actual, untrue or probably untrue or even probably impossible. If p is clear to reason, then ~p must be impossible, full-stop. That's what's at stake here and that's where all the problems arise.

On such a standard (Gangadean's own standard) he fails. This is because at least one of the premises upon which his argument rests could be false i.e., it's possible that the universe is "self-maintaining". Moreover, it's possible that his first premise is false. That is, it might be false that "if the universe is eternal, then it is self-maintaining" (I'm also inclined to wonder at this point exactly what Gangadean means by 'self-maintaining' in the first place and see whether cosmologists find it even intelligible). The point is, we just don't know with certainty one way or another. In order to succeed, he's got to show that no consistent model of an eternal universe has or ever will be developed--and I haven't a clue how he or anyone could achieve a thing like that. Pointing out problems with a few dated models is no good (note even his criticisms against Hawking's model doesn't show us that these problems are theoretically irreconcilable. Gangadean's criticisms actually depend on "current" understandings of the cosmos and such knowledge changes with new findings). This means that proof that matter is not eternal, and thus that God must exist is simply beyond reach at least insofar as Gangadean is concerned. This is because his argument for God's existence depends on his first proving that matter is not eternal. So it's not clear that God exists. Importantly, this is so even if we grant Gangadean that the "laws of thought" are clear to reason.

p.s. Alternatively, he could fuss over the meaning of 'possibility' so that the standards for model building in cosmology don't represent what is possible or possibly true. In other words, he could insist that cosmologists have built self-contained models where matter is eternal, but this doesn't represent what is possible in the relevant sense. But this approach would be unpromising for Gangadean. The natural question to ask would be why we should trust Gangadean's dictionary--what makes it the authority on semantic matters? Of course, he could merely presuppose that his definition is the correct one as he often does (I've called this "semantic chauvinism" in the past), but that's rationally unacceptable in the current dispute (that would be the very thing at issue!). Thus he'd have to tell us how he's certain that his definition is the correct one in light of the lexical disagreement with cosmologists and I've said more than enough about why that is problematic for his worldview before.

***Nor will it help one bit to claim that what I'm doing is "appealing to ignorance/unknown" which is a common move that Gangadeanians make at such a juncture. That's rubbish. Remember Gangadean is the one making the claim that God's existence is clear to reason so that you're basically closing your mind to reason if you aren't absolutely certain that God exists. That is to say, his main project and the foundation of his entire ministry and life's work is to demonstrate to all of us that God exists and that denying God's existence is tantamount to denying that a circle is not a square. It's supposed to be that obvious if only you'll use reason consistently! To get there, he needs to show that it's patently obvious that matter/the cosmos isn't even possibly eternal (and that this is knowable at all times to all persons). So all I'm doing is holding him to this. I'm suggesting that he arbitrarily and self-servingly helps himself to the following restriction: he thinks that proof of a hypothesis H, consists in showing that a few of the current alternatives to H are not true. But why should anybody accept this restriction? No, if you want certainty or clarity so that no persons ever are with excuse for unbelief, you need a far less restricted domain--Gangadean needs to show that all alternatives are not possibly true and it seems simply impossible for him to make good on that.

It's Not "Clear" that Matter is NOT Eternal.

Gangadean purports to demonstrably prove that matter cannot be eternal. I've noted before how even if he were successful at this, it's not enough to get him to the conclusion that therefore some spirit/mind must be eternal. This is because he helps himself to an unsupported dichotomy in the process.  I suspect when pressed on it, he will try to support it merely on dialectical-historical grounds: "most everyone believes that there are at most two substances in the world". But that's no good. In my mind, this issue alone blocks his purported deduction to the existence of God and undermines his view that it is clear to reason that God exists. It's enough to show that Gangadean fails at what he takes to be so central to life--to show that God's existence is clear to reason.

I've also pointed out before that Gangadean appeals to empirical findings, and the testimony of "expert" scientists in his appeals to entropy to argue that matter cannot be eternal. Sure entropy is often taken for granted by cosmologists, but it's ultimately based on empirical observations, and inductive reasoning. The point is, it is at least possible (in the strict logical sense) that we're actually mistaken that it's an exceptionless law. In fact, physicists say that entropy very probably increases in a closed system and so while Gangadean needs it to be certainly exceptionless, scientists tend not to express such certainty in it (I'm told that the probability that entropy increases in a closed system is only very close to 1). Hence any argument that depends on the entropic principle as something entirely generalizable, and exceptionless is problematic. That is to say, Gangadean can't claim to have proven that matter is not eternal insofar as his argument appeals to entropy as a premise. At best what he could say is that, given our current science, or given what purported experts currently tell us, matter is very likely not eternal. What he should do if he's being consistent is to prove that our current science is correct about entropy, and further that all material systems conform to it (without even the possibility of exception), or that the cosmologists and physicists can't possibly be wrong or lying about their deliberations. Hence some of what I say will touch on what I've already written, but I wanted to further develop my previous thoughts.

Here's the big picture of what is to follow. On numerous occasions, I've charged that Gangadean's worldview is internally inconsistent. One way that he is inconsistent is that he claims that knowledge requires certainty/clarity and you can only arrive at such knowledge in one of two ways: 1) via a sound deductive argument, or 2) by "grasping" (I say, intuiting) a "self-attesting principle". But on occasion, Gangadean loses sight of this--and claims to know things that are neither proven by deductive inference from only indubitable premises, nor "self-attesting". The view that matter is not-self-maintaining and thus can't be eternal, is one such claim. And that's a very serious problem for his worldview.

Starting on pg 53 of his book, Gangadean states that for a thing to be eternal, it must be self-maintaining. But he claims the material world, and universe aren't self-maintaining. Therefore, neither are they eternal. He breaks the argument into three parts, but I must say I'm a little confused. He argues for the following:

1) The material world as a whole is not self-maintaining.
2) The material world in its parts is not self-maintaining.
3) The material universe as a whole is not self-maintaining.

I'm not sure what the material world in contradistinction to the universe is. Maybe the material world = earth? Or our solar system? Galaxy? In philosophy, its common to talk about a world as the entirety of reality. So I'm not quite sure what he's up to. In fact it would seem to make more sense for him to have argued that the material universe as a whole and in its parts is not self-maintaining, since that would cover everything material. In any case, I try to keep his terminology in mind, but it gets a bit confusing.

1) Against the idea that the "material world as a whole" is self-maintaining, he notes that the world is highly differentiated (between hot and cold, wet and dry, etc). I won't press him on this even though one wonders how on his worldview a person could be certain of such empirical facts. Further, he presupposes that the material world (and the physical universe?) follows the exceptionless propensity towards reaching sameness (the second law of thermodynamics). According to Gangadean, that's enough to determine that the material world as a whole is not self-maintaining. And this is where things get bad. He gives us examples from common experience: for instance, a hot coffee cup sitting in room temperature for long enough will instantiate a kind of equilibrium or "sameness". Apart from some of the other epistemological issues I've raised above (and in previous posts), a careful read of the text reveals just how far from "clarity" Gangadean has gotten in trying to argue that the material world is not eternal. Here's a quote.

In general, therefore, there is no reason to believe that the material world is self-maintaining. There is every reason to believe that the material world, governed by the law of entropy, is not self-maintaining (55, italics mine). 

Now Gangadean is full aware that he's resting on scientific theories. They are fallible. They depend on inductive generalizations which are very different things from deductions or Gangadean's purported "self-attesting principles". So instead of saying that he's just proven that the material world is not self-maintaining and instead of saying that he's just proven that the material world is governed uniformly by the law of entropy, he talks about "reasons" for and against the pertinent claims. I hope you see this vital difference. To talk about the presence or absence of reasons, in the current context, is to talk about the currently available evidence. It allows for the possibility that we don't have all the evidence or even the majority of the possible evidence. And if it's at least possible that you don't have all the pertinent evidence, if it's possible that new evidence might come along some day, it means that whatever conclusions you draw on the basis of your current evidence, could be mistaken! What this means is that on Gangadean's conception of clarity (a proposition P is clear to reason if and only if you have determined that the opposite of P is not even possible), it's simply not clear to reason that the world as a whole is not self-maintaining. So at least as this argument is concerned, it's not clear to reason that the world as a whole is not eternal.

2) Gangadean goes on to talk about the universe in it's parts. He talks about the sun for instance presumably as a paradigm part of the universe from which he can generalize (that's an issue I'll talk about later). Here's what he says about the sun.

We can know the sun will burn out without learning this from science. The sun is finite in size, and so are the stars. This is obvious to any casual observer. Anyone who wants to can see this...The sun is giving off heat. Anyone with ordinary sense experience can see this. If the sun is limited in size and giving off heat it cannot do so forever...The sun could not therefore have been burning forever. (53). 

I don't quite get this. I mean, he's skeptical of sense impressions when he criticizes empiricism as a way of knowing things. But now he's suddenly very trustful of ordinary sense impressions (even those of the "abused child in Ubangi Bangi"). I get that he's originally arguing against something like pure-empiricism, the view that all we can know is via our perceptual faculties. You need reason, too. I get that. But then what role is reason playing here? This is where he runs into a Cartesian puzzle. If our senses are not always reliable, if they are fallible, then how can we distinguish between those times when they are trustworthy and when they are not? How can we ever trust our senses without being arbitrary? Again, what role is "reason" playing here to solve the troubles that plague empiricism? He had better answer this before he takes for granted that we could know (with certainty) that the sun is finite in size and giving off heat via mere sense impressions. Plus, there's something odd going on here. It's one thing for us modern folk who purport to know all kinds of things about the sun and about thermodynamics. I say "purport to know" because on Gangadean's definition of knowledge, I doubt that such empirical knowledge is possible. But ignoring that for the moment, I just don't see how Gangadean can claim that "anyone with ordinary sense experience" can know that the sun can't give off heat forever.

You see, Gangadean is resting his case on a generalization that he thinks any thinking person should make. Now, suppose he's right that anybody at any time in history could know with certainty that the sun cannot have been burning forever. Since Gangadean is using this claim to argue that anybody "with ordinary sense impressions" could know the further claim that every part of the material world is not self-maintaining, he's got to think that all rational persons should make the generalization from things like the sun to all parts of the universe. He's got to think that this generalization is truth-conducive. But it's not. It's fallacious. It's a hasty generalization because the material universe is a vast thing comprised of a wide array of things we call "matter". Is it obvious to all thinking persons (at all times) that elementary particles behave like the sun in the relevant respects? Hardly. People at one time didn't even know that fundamental particles existed. Not everything that is true about objects of ordinary experience (medium sized objects) applies to everything in the universe. For instance, things like a table, a house, the sun, an apple all have the property of being visible to the naked eye. It doesn't follow that therefore everything that exists in the universe is visible to the naked eye--consider elementary particles, atoms, cells, and the like. So Gangadean is basically saying that all persons at all times should have made or should make a hasty generalization--but that's no way of coming to know about reality and certainly not a means to achieving certainty. It wasn't in the past, and it isn't now, and it isn't a way of knowing in Ubangi Bangi or anywhere else for that matter.

The other problem is that, even if it weren't a hasty generalization, it's still a generalization which is a form of inductive inference. Inductive generalizations don't provide deductive proof--that's a definitional point. Nor do they provide a "self-attesting" principle (another definitional point). In other words, what we have is that it's simply not clear to reason the universe in all it's parts is not self-maintaining (and hence we can't know with certainty that the universe is not eternal). In sum, it's not clear to reason that the universe in all its parts is not self-maintaining. It wasn't clear to reason in the past, and it isn't currently.

3) Finally, Gangadean attempts to argue that the universe as a whole is not self-maintaining and therefore can't be eternal. He speaks of big bang cosmology as the current view and then discusses problems for a couple of models that maintain both the big bang and the eternality of the universe. The first he refers to as "the Big Bang Oscillating Universe theory" and the second, "the Inflationary theory of the Big Bang". He says that the problems are both empirical and logical. The empirical ones have very limited application--they are problems facing these particular models or at most, particular kinds of models. For instance, of the first kind of theory he writes:

given our current understanding of the cosmos there is not enough mass in the known physical universe to allow gravity to pull the expanding universe back in order for the Big Bang to occur again. This is the problem of dark matter, which has been proposed to be present and yet not detected...No proposal has received general acceptance and the problem persists (54).

Ok, so it's "given our current understanding of the cosmos" that his criticism is supposed to apply. Further, there is not widely accepted theory of dark matter. I must say I don't understand this last bit. Assuming he's right (notice he provides no citation), what does it matter that there isn't a consensus on a particular theory of dark matter? After all, there is hardly any consensus on most philosophical matters like the thesis that God exists, and yet nevertheless he thinks it's true and clear to reason. He goes on to add,

On the face of it, there is no warrant, except the requirement of assumption, for saying the Big Bang will be repeated. Left to itself the universe will come to sameness and die a heat death. It is not self-maintaining. But claims regarding missing mass, like all empirical claims, are technically falsifiable. There is warrant for saying the physical universe as a whole is not self-maintaining. But this warrant based on missing mass, falls short of proof (ibid, italics mine).

Again, Gangadean assumes entropy as exceptionless and we've already discussed why that is not going to help him in his project of proving anything. What I appreciate about this bit though is that Gangadean is finally self-aware. He realizes that this empirically based objection, assuming it's all correct, at best gives one evidence for the claim that the universe is not self-maintaining. He realizes he needs something much stronger. Still, this is only partially correct because once again he's generalizing with haste. That a particular model, namely what he calls the Big Bang Oscillating Universe theory, faces a problem of dark matter doesn't mean that all current and future models of the universe will.

Further, Gangadean writes

Suppose the missing mass were found, and in just the right amounts, there would be a second problem of a different kind which logically encounters the problem of entropy. Since the force pulling the universe in is said to generate the force that will push the universe out again rather than the universe ending as a black hole, at some point the force pulling in would have to equal the force pushing out. At that point equilibrium would be reached and the process of expansion and contraction would come to an end. The universe would reach sameness in entropy. It would not be self-maintaining and therefore it could not be eternal (54). 

At this point, he's making some substantive empirical predictions about cosmology (does he take himself to be a cosmologist now?). For instance, just how does he know with certainty that equilibrium would be reached as a result of expansion and contraction? He's just asserted as much, but why should we believe him? In fact, in principle it isn't the sort of thing that can be proven in the deductive sense. Again it's a prediction made from a particular cosmological model which itself is informed by certain empirically based assumptions. That's no way to proving that the universe cannot even in principle be self-maintaining. So while at the end of the previous quote, he made the self-conscious admission that his problem for a particular model didn't do enough to prove that the universe is not self-maintaing, his second purported problem does no better.

Gangadean closes this bit with the following.

At this point we are beyond empirical claims, on either side of the issue...Logical objections to non-empirical claims must be logically met (ibid). 

Ok, but what are the logical objections? He's given us two empirically loaded objections which do nothing to prove that the universe is not self-maintaing. That's it, so I'm confused.

So much for that, onto the next model that he raises problems for i.e., the Inflationary theory of the Big Bang. This discussion was no less disappointing to me and no more informative. He speaks of Alan Guth's model involving a distinction between a true vacuum and a false vacuum. The details aren't important for our purposes at this point. Suffice it to say, there are problems with the model and Gangadean insists that such a model, despite the window-dressing, ultimately depends on the idea that being (energy) can come from non-being (the true vacuum). He concludes then with the following.

These three reasons--not enough mass, force in would equal force out, and true vacuum to false vacuum as being from non-being--refute the claim that as a whole the physical universe is self maintaining. Neither in general nor in its parts, nor as a whole is it self-maintaining...And it is clear. One has to give up reason to believe that being can come from non-being in the inflationary view of the Big Bang (55).  

Now this is sloppy. Remember at this point he's considered two particular cosmological models and pointed out potential problems for them. Two problems face the first model, but they aren't logical problems that undermine the very coherence of the models. On the contrary, Gangadean has to assume some empirical assumptions (which he just can't know with certainty) in order to raise those very purported problems. So at best they provide Gangadean with some warrant to believe that a particular model (to wit, the Big Bang Oscillating Universe theory) is incorrect. Then he moves on to talk about Guth's model and claims that it posits being from non-being. Suppose Gangadean is right. What has he shown? Well, at best, he's shown that Guth's model doesn't work. That's it. Importantly, that's not the same as proving that the universe is not self-maintaining.

The trouble is Gangadean needs to prove a far more general point for his purposes. He's got to show that it's a logical impossibility that the material universe is self-maintaining. That is to say, that no coherent model of any kind which "represents" a material yet eternal universe could even in principle be discovered or articulated. I don't know how he, or anyone for that matter, could prove a thing like that. Pointing out some problems with a couple very specific models, which depend on certain assumptions (e.g., classical space-time as opposed to quantum mechanics), doesn't show that a self-maintaining universe is an impossibility. That's just a bad inference. Nor does it show that an eternal universe is an impossibility.

Nor is my point an "appeal to unknown" as the Gangadeanian might be tempted to say. As best as I can understand such a "fallacy", it simply doesn't apply when dealing with Gangadean. This is because it's Gangadean that claims that it is clear to reason that matter is not eternal, and that means he has to be able to demonstrate that it's not even in principle possible that matter is eternal--which means it's not even possible that a coherent model of an eternal or self-maintaining material cosmos could ever be developed. I'm just asking him to make good on his own project. That's not an appeal to unknown or if it is, I can't see why it would be a bad thing.

Nor is my point to adjudicate between particular models in cosmology. I doubt that most of us are qualified to do so since they are sophisticated mathematical models that make predictions of phenomena that the layman generally don't have access to (which presents a problem for Gangadean itself). Instead, Gangadean makes my job way easier because he holds everyone to such a ludicrous standard of knowledge. Hence, for our purposes, it's enough to point out that Gangadean has no way of proving that all and every model of the cosmos where the universe is self-maintaining or eternal, is incorrect.

Importantly, my main point is that Gangadean hasn't shown that it is "clear to reason" that material universe is not self-maintaining (neither in general, nor in its parts, nor as a whole). That means he hasn't proven that the material universe is not eternal. This means it's not clear to reason that material monism is false and so it's not clear to reason that God exists.


Postscript:

It just occurred to me that the kind of clarity that Gangadean is arguing for (that matter can't possibly be eternal) is also something that's supposed to be knowable to all persons and at all times. Assume for the sake of discussion that 2nd law of thermodynamics is infallible grounds for believing that the universe cannot be self-maintaining. Still, could a person living long before the discovery and articulation of the second law of thermodynamics (prior to the late 1800's) have known that entropy uniformly increases in a closed system? Of course not. It took a particular kind of development in the sophistication of science and empirical testing for us to get to that point. Insofar as knowing that God exists requires that one rule out the possibility of an eternal material cosmos (which is what Gangadean claims), I can't see how God's existence is clear or knowable to persons that couldn't know (with certainty) about entropy. This too seems to be a serious problem for Gangadean's clarity thesis.

Part 4: On Gangadean's "Real" Solution to the Problem of Evil.

Let's wrap up my analysis of Gangadean's "ironic solution" to the problem of evil. The more I think about it the worse it looks to me. In fact, I'll conclude with a very serious problem with his "solution" that I hadn't noticed until today. 

Gangadean writes,

Natural evil was not originally placed on the creation. This would be inconsistent with the infinite power and goodness of God the Creator. And natural evil (physical death, to be short) is not inherent in moral evil. Spiritual death, not physical death, is inherent in moral evil. Physical death therefore was imposed by God upon mankind after moral evil and because of moral evil. And it was imposed not as punishment, which is inherent, but as a call back from moral evil...Natural evil therefore is divine mercy calling man back from moral evil. Natural evil serves multiple purposes in regard to moral evil. It serves to restrain, to recall from, and to remove moral evil and accomplishes these purposes variously in different persons in different states and stages in their lives (114).

The general thing to note is how many mere assertions we have in the above passage. There's simply no justification given for any of these claims.

1) It is inconsistent with God's infinite power and goodness that natural evil would be original in creation. 

2) Natural evil is not inherent in moral evil. 

3) Natural evil is imposed because of moral evil. 

4) Natural evil is not imposed as punishment (because punishment would be inherent). 

5) Natural evil serves to restrain, to recall from, and to remove moral evil.

Now once again I think Gangadean has simply lost sight of the dialectic. He initially thinks that the problem of evil is a real problem facing Theism. The problem attempts to show that Theism is incoherent in light of the presence of evil. And as part of his response he gives us 1) through 5). But how does he know these are true? Well, there's no deductive argument anywhere in sight for them so it must not be from general revelation. My guess is that it's based on his reading of the bible. In fact, Gangadean in connection to 2), 3) and 5) will sometimes (in conversation) cite Adam and Eve being kicked out of the garden to toil as the institution of natural evil as a call back from moral evil. But as we've discussed before, insofar as the problem of evil is aimed at the coherence of Theism, it doesn't make sense to appeal to the bible which presupposes that Theism is true. That's going to be question begging at least insofar as you take the fact that it is the word of God as giving you justification for believing what it says. If that were legitimate, then the answer to the logical problem of evil would be far simpler than Gangadean has made it out to be. We could just say that the bible tells us that God exists, therefore, God exists and so there must be no logical problem of evil. If Gangadean is assuming the bible is a trustworthy source for metaphysics because it is the word of God, then his answer is really no better than this.

It's important to note that strictly speaking, any coherent (and merely possibly true) explanation for how God and evil are compatible, is going to suffice to undermine the logical problem of evil. So if the bible were to give us a coherent account of how evil and the existence of God are compatible, then that on my view would be enough to undermine the logical problem of evil. That doesn't require anybody to accept the bible as the word of God, or anything. The source is utterly irrelevant. What matters for giving a theodicy against the logical problem is just that it shows how the existence of God and evil are not logical contradictions like a circle-square. This is essentially what the free-will defense of Plantinga aims to do--he's not saying that significant free will must entail evil, he's just saying it's at least logically possible that this is so, and therefore there is no logical contradiction facing the Theist. But Gangadean rejects such approaches showing that they face problems. Of course, every theory faces problems, but remember Gangadean is after epistemic certainty and so a problem-less theodicy he himself must give. He can't just show how it's possible that God and evil coexist, but rather must give us the actual story. This is what gets him into trouble. So it's important to keep in mind that what I have to say doesn't necessarily generalize to other Theists that are attempting to answer the logical problem of evil, but who are not interested in showing that it's clear that God exists (which describes the vast majority of Theists).

So for Gangadean's project to work, what we need from him is some independent reason to accept 1) through 5) rather than presupposing that the this is what the bible says and more importantly that the bible is trustworthy as it concerns 1) through 5) in virtue of divine inspiration. But how is it that Gangadean manages to neglect giving any justification for these crucial theses in presenting his theodicy? I'm puzzled. I mentioned before that I worry that when Christians read or learn about Gangdean's theodicy, they might be inclined to miss this circular reasoning because they already accept the bible as containing divine truths. I suspect this is why his followers haven't thought to wonder about the scripture-independent justifications for 1) through 5). Maybe Gangadean has got them, but how strange for him to leave it out of a book that purports to show that God's existence is clear to reason.

Now maybe you're thinking that at least 1) is somewhat argued for independently. Gangadean thinks that there is something incompatible between God's perfect attributes and natural evil being inherent in creation. It seems intuitive enough, but I can't say we've got anything like clarity, here. He certainly hasn't done anything like provide a sound proof to this end. But what's lurking in the background is the idea that in comparison, natural evil being imposed by God for certain purposes, is compatible with God's perfect attributes. But I see no reason why we should think that natural evil which is inherent in creation is any more incompatible with God's divine perfection, than imposed natural evil. Or alternatively, I see no reason to think that imposed natural evil is any more compatible with God's attributes than natural evil that is inherent in creation.

Natural evil is natural evil. It's the countless instances of creature suffering that occur on a moment to moment basis. All the instances of physical pain, torment, and death in the world. It's just hard to see how whether or not such evil is imposed rather than inherent is in any way germane to the issue of its compatibility with God's attributes. I just don't see on what basis Gangadean makes such a substantive distinction. Much of it depends on precisely why he thinks that God's attributes are incompatible with inherent natural evil, but he says nothing about this in his book. Again I'm puzzled. Ganagdean might respond at this point that the difference lies in the fact that imposed natural evil is purposive--it brings about good which counterbalances the heinousness of all the evils. But neither will this do. Recall, that in my last post I pointed out that we also have no reason to think that natural evil is necessary (in the strongest sense) for the restraining, removal or recalling from moral evil. And insofar as it isn't necessary (i.e., God could achieve these ends some other way), the presence or imposition of natural evil seems to be in tension with God's perfect goodness and power. If God could achieve the good of restraining, removing, and recalling "the chosen ones" back from moral evil without imposing natural evil (or even less natural evil), then he must. But the world is overflowing with natural evil and so we've got the the problem of evil all over again. So Gangadean needs to show that its logically impossible (not merely nomologically so) for God to achieve his ends (of reforming, recalling from and removing moral evil) without imposing natural evil. That is, he needs to show that the only logically possible way for the regenerated humans to be called back from sin is for the world to have exactly the amount of natural evil that it does. How could anyone ever verify a thing like that? It's a tall order to be sure. So it seems to me that it simply doesn't matter that natural evil is imposed rather than inherent on his view. He's silent on all of this, but shouldn't be.

Another related worry is what we should say about the status of moral evil. Again we talked about this last time. Gangadean claims that natural evil is not inherent in creation. But what are we to say about moral evil? Is it inherent in the creation of persons? Well, it all depends on how we define 'inherent'. As we've discussed before, according Gangadean's worldview, God created the world in such a way that Adam and Eve, and the rest of humanity would inevitably sin. The Gangadeanians can play around with words in any number of ways so as to avoid this unpalatable consequence, but in the end, on their view (i.e., their commitment to determinism and the fall), it's in accordance with God's divine justice and mercy that some are saved and some perish and you're not gonna have any of that without having people sin. Indeed that's what Gangadeanians admit---that moral evil exists because it reveals God's divine justice. That is to say, they explain the presence of moral evil ultimately via God's very nature. When we connect the presence of moral evil to one of God's divine attributes, and we also accept that God's attributes are not contingent, then we've got an incredibly strong kind of necessity connected to the presence of moral evil. So for Gangadean, there are simply no possible worlds where God exists, in which moral evil does not exist also. I'm very tempted to say that this makes moral evil inherent, but I suspect Gangadean would just fudge around with the meaning of 'inherent' and at this point my intuitions about what counts as 'inherent' get fuzzy.

What's important is whether we should think that perfect, divine justice is compatible with the necessary presence of moral evil in the creation of humans. In particular when (on Gangadean's view) this moral evil or sin is by definition, that which is contrary to the very nature or essence of human creatures. Can God create beings that are destined to go contrary to their very essences? Not only that, but it should have been no surprise to an all-knowing God that creating the world in this way would necessitate the imposition of all the heinous suffering that is part and parcel of natural evil. And it gets worse. Recall that for Gangadean, moral evil leads to spiritual death that is unending for some persons. So on his worldview, you've got moral evil, the inherent consequences of it (i.e., spiritual death) and the imposition of natural evil all as a necessary consequence of creating the world. Is this all supposed to be compatible with the divine attributes of God? That's the question to ask.

Now in order to address it we've got to have a sufficient grasp of "divine justice" since Gangadean employs the notion in partially developing his theodicy. Just what does it mean for God to be perfectly just? Again, Gangadean can't appeal to the bible for any substantial help because this discussion should be taking place when the very existence of God is under question. We can all of course take suggestions from the bible, but they've got to stand on their own merits and their truth can't simply be presupposed because they come from the bible. I don't know how we go about settling the question about what 'perfect justice' consists in. It depends on a theory of 'justice' and again how we know when we've got the right theory of 'justice'. All of this is true at least if we're after absolute certainty like Gangadean purports to be. We can't just rest on intuitions or presumptive grasps of these important concepts. We need proof.

Once again I'm at a loss about what to say concerning the rest of the 5 claims enumerated above. I have no idea how one could know (with certainty) that for example, natural evil serves to remove, restrain and call people back from moral evil or even that punishment must be inherent or that spiritual death was inherent in moral evil. They seem to me like a posteriori claims not claims that can be known a priori. How does Gangadean know so much about very substantive metaphysical issues? At the very least he's got a lot of explaining to do. Oh and for good measure there's one more contentious and unproven claim that he makes. He writes, "After death there is no more natural evil and no more call back" (114). Again, how on earth does he know so much about the afterlife from reason alone? The only sense I can make of it is that again, he's slipped into presupposing the bible as special revelation even when he shouldn't have against the logical problem of evil.

Finally, Gangadean claims that the problem of evil dissolves, hence why he calls his "solution" the "ironic solution". Here it is.

i) Because of all the evil in the world, I cannot see how it can be said that God is all good and powerful.  

ii) Because of all the unbelief in the world, I cannot see how it can be said that God is all good and powerful.   

iii) Because of all the unbelief in me I cannot see how it can be said that God is all good and all powerful.  

iv) Because I have neglected and avoided the use of reason I cannot see what is clear about God. 

Of course, if we grant him his big 5 claims which precede this argument, then the argument may seem initially plausible. But we've noted how Gangadean is essentially presupposing that the bible is the word of God to argue that God exists in the face of the problem of evil (or else he must have sound deductive arguments for each which he neglected to include in his book). But as it stands, we've just got no reason to grant Gangadean the big 5. Further, we have to buy into Gangadean's claims about the clarity of God's existence, and that good and evil are to be thought of in terms of belief and unbelief of what is clear to reason. I've challenged these ideas often in this blog and in the earlier parts of this series. What I've argued is that Gangadean hasn't succeeded in showing these claims are true in accordance with his own standards for knowledge and rational belief. Since each subsequent premise is something like a substitution instance of key terms starting in the first premise, the legitimacy of each step is questionable if the terms Gangadean claims are essentially interchangeable or synonymous, are not proven to be. And that's what I did when I pointed out that Gangadean merely asserts that 'good' for a thing is according to its nature, and 'human nature' consists in using reason to the fullest. He needs to prove these very substantial and contentious claims rather than merely state them. So the argument is no good on this front either.

Apart from that what else should we say about it? It's not by coincidence that it employs the same questionable move that Anderson makes in his book in connection to inexcusability and "giving an excuse." The above argument is supposed to get you to see that accepting the first premise ultimately leads deductively to an absurd conclusion. It's kind of a reductio. But what is supposed to be absurd about the conclusion and what can we draw about the larger question if there is an absurdity? The idea seems to be that a person who complains about the problem of evil is not going to be able to say, coherently, and from her own perspective, "I have neglected to avoid the use of reason so I cannot see what is clear about God" since that person would have to believe that God exists in order to say such a thing, it seems incoherent. But as I said with Anderson's similar move, this incoherence is utterly irrelevant to the problem of evil. Gangadean has artificially given the problem of evil a particular gloss, involving statements presented from the vantage point of a through and through nonbeliever. But the problem of evil isn't about what a nonbeliever can or cannot coherently express from her own perspective. We don't want to make the problem of evil so subjective. If it's a logical problem, then the question is whether God's existence is compatible with the presence of evil not merely from some imagined non-believer's vantage point, but in terms of logical consistency. So here's how we should describe the logical problem of evil in an impersonal way.

i) If Theism is true, then God is all powerful and perfectly good.
ii) If i), then God is able to prevent all evil and desires that there is no evil in the world.
iii) If ii), then there should be no evil in the world.
iv) But there is evil in the world.
v) Hence, Theism is false. 

Why did Gangadean change the description of the problem of evil to such a restricted gloss? I'm not sure, but it certainly serves his purposes. In fact, at the start of his discussion (pg. 108) he articulated the problem in essentially the same way I have just done, because it's the standard approach. At any rate, the important point is that even if there is some absurdity with the conclusion of his second self-serving articulation, it simply doesn't apply to the standard description of the problem of evil which I have presented above. That means his "ironic solution" at best solves only his gloss of the problem of evil, and does nothing to answer the standard one. In other words, even if we grant Gangadean the absurdity in the conclusion of his second articulation, it doesn't give the Theist anything like a general solution to the problem of evil.

Now, I'll close with noting what I think is the most important problem with Gangadean's discussion. It is it blatantly question-begging. To be honest, I'm embarrassed at myself for not having caught this before. In his discussion, Gangadean says that his theodicy presupposes a number of things, one of them being the clarity of God's existence. Here it is in his own words.

The solution to the problem of evil has certain assumptions...that there is a clear general revelation that only some is eternal, that God the creator exists. It assumes clarity and inexcusability (113). 

If the logical problem of evil is supposed to call the existence of God into question (on pain of inconsistency between divine attributes and the presence of evil), then how can a "solution" to the problem presuppose the clarity of God's existence? Whether it is clear that God the creator exists, is the very thing that is being called into question by the problem of evil (because if there's something logically incoherent about God's existence, then it's clear that God does not exist). But if it's clear or, epistemically certain, that God exists, then there is no problem of evil to begin with. Remember a proposition like, 'God exists', is "clear" according to Gangadean just in case the opposite of 'God exists' is not even possible. So Gangadean actually begs the question in giving his theodicy. As I said, I'm surprised that I haven't caught this before. The theodicy was seriously doomed from the start.

This concludes my discussion of Gangadean's "real solution" to the problem of evil, at least for now. It's badly circular and in more than one way. It turns out that it's no solution at all and a serious problem for Gangadean and his followers.

Is the logical problem of evil a real problem for Theists outside of the Gangdeanian camp? I don't think so. As I've noted before theistic and non-theistic philosophers working on this area tend not to take it seriously and opt to discuss the weaker (yet still serious issue) called the evidential problem of evil. But Gangadean has painted himself in a corner. He demands clarity or epistemic certainty that God exists which requires proof that evil is not incompatible with God. And he's faulted other theodicies for failing to do so which is how he's carved himself a place at the table to introduce his "real" solution. But his theodicy is question-begging. This means he can't appeal to other theodicies nor can he appeal to his own. The logical problem of evil then remains a serious problem for Gangadean.

Part 3: On Gangadean's "Real" Solution to the Problem of Evil.

Last time, I applied some pressure on Gangadean's notion of 'good' and 'evil'. Gangadean claims that good for a thing is in accordance with the nature of that thing and evil is what is contrary to the thing's nature. He further claims that human nature consists in using reason to the fullest and I discussed how there are problems facing this view as well. In neither case has Gangadean done anything like provide a proof or shown that these claims are clear to reason.

Starting on pg 112 of Philosophical Foundation, Gangadean says his definition of 'good' and 'evil' as it relates to the problem of evil can be illustrated in the parable of the prodigal son. I won't include it here and assume my readers are familiar with it, or at least are able to find it easily (see Luke 15:11). Now it's very important to note what it is he is up to and what he isn't doing. What does it mean to "illustrate a definition" and its relation to the problem of evil? Well, at most what Gangadean is doing is assuming his framing of the problem of evil and his definitions, and seeing how it accords with the parable. Importantly, this isn't anything like giving a proof of concept. And remember he hasn't actually defended his definitions or his framing of the problem of evil. Earlier he claimed that his definition of 'good' was known a priori, but curiously failed to give any rational justification for that claim. And I raised issues at this very juncture last time. So the parable is an illustration of the definitions and his way of thinking about the problem of evil, but not anything like proof or independent support that Gangadean's analysis is correct.

Now my fear at this point is, at least for Christians, who already have a commitment to the bible as divinely inspired (and thus consisting of only truths) that they will not be careful in properly restricting the extent of Gangadean's move here. If you already think the parable of the prodigal son is special revelation, or God's word, then you may be inclined to think that any theory of 'good' and 'evil' and way of framing the problem of evil that accords well with parts of scripture, like the parable of the prodigal son, is going to be correct. But that's no good for Gangadean's worldview. Remember, he thinks the problem of evil is a problem against the very coherence of Theism. Thus, to presuppose the bible is divinely inspired  in the current context is question-begging, because to presuppose that there is a divinely inspired text is to presuppose that God exists in the first place. You can't respond to the problem of evil, by helping yourself to any claim that assumes that God exists.

So the illustration given by the prodigal son parable shouldn't be taken as anything like proof of concept for his way of thinking of the problem of evil nor his definitions of 'good' and 'evil'. Nothing we draw from the parable can be taken as a premise in giving an answer to the problem of evil (i.e., a theodicy). All you we should do is conclude is that there's a passage in this book, which purports to be the word of God, which on a particular reading, accords with Gangadean's theory. But Gangadean isn't very careful here. It seems to me that he actually does exactly what I suggested he shouldn't (in terms of rationality) do. He follows his quote of the parable with the following.

How does this illustrate the problem of evil? Why is there evil? The younger son was in a state of unbelief with regard to his father's teaching. Day and night, for all his life, his father, by word and deed, lived out the way of life before his sons. Yet the younger son did not see or hear or understand what was clearly laid out before him...His unbelief was inexcusable and therefore evil. Evil as unbelief serves to obscure the clear revelation to the person in unbelief. The condition of unbelief is allowed to work itself out in the prodigal's life. As a result, the revelation of justice (his way came to naught in the pig-sty) and of love (his father forgives and receives him back) are deepened. If he had second thoughts about possible dangers and hardships of his way the first night away from home he could have reconsidered and returned with his fortune intact. He could have returned all to his father, simply acknowledging gratefulness to know that he had the freedom to leave if he wanted. In that case there would be no deepened revelation of justice and mercy. Evil as unbelief serves therefore to deepen the revelation of justice and mercy (112).  

For the time being, let's ignore that Gangadean is taking for granted his own interpretation of scripture as if it's the only proper one. But that's a weighty assumption and something he needs to independently support (at least insofar as he's after certainty/clarity). Now Gangadean presents the problem of evil as a question about why there is evil and seems to think that the parable (i.e., the bible) has got the answer. Recall, Gangadean is intent on answering the logical problem of evil and faults other theodicies (and thus carves a place for himself at the table) for failing to answer it. The logical problem of evil is a demand for an account of how God's perfect goodness and omnipotence can be logically compatible with the presence of evil in the world. Gangadean's strategy at this point is to try and give an account of a rationally justifiable reason that God would permit evil despite his great power and perfect goodness. In this regard, it's similar to theodicies which he has just criticized. The soul-making theodicy (that God permits evils to build in us virtues) and the free-will defense (God permits evil so that we can be free to perform morally significant actions) both try to give different reasons why God might permit evil. On Ganagdean's theory, in very general terms, God permits moral evil to deepen revelation about himself (his justice and mercy) to his human creatures. Importantly moral evil for Gangadean is fundamentally intellectual--not using reason to the fullest and thus not knowing basic things (i.e., unbelief). But we also have to keep in the background of our minds Gangadean's commitment to clarity. He thinks you must have certainty in order to know basic things. And so while other theodicies aimed at addressing the logical problem of evil merely try to show a possible answer to "why does God permit evil?" it's far from clear that this would be sufficient for Gangadean. At least insofar as Gangadean claims to know that God exists, he's got to know with certainty that his theodicy is correct. A tall order which he fails to achieve.

Importantly, all of the mentioned theodicies face of two significant and interrelated questions which we might use as a way of testing the strength of the theodicies. First, the legitimacy of the theodicies will depend on whether the reason that God permits evils is sufficient to justify him doing so. This gets to the question of whether it's worth it. Is it worth all the evil and suffering, that humans build virtues (i.e., the soul-making theodicy)? Is it worth all the suffering and depravity in the world, that some people get to exercise significant freedoms (i.e,. the free-will theodicy)? Secondly, is the necessity condition or as I'll call it, the "is it necessary?" question. Whether these theodicies are any good will depend on whether it's necessary (and in what sense) for God to permit evil and suffering to achieve whatever end is suggested by the theodicies as being worth all the evil. Is all the suffering and evil necessary for the exercise of free will? Is it necessary for building in us virtues? Or could God have achieved it some other way?

Gangadean seems somewhat aware of these two conditions. He addresses the "is it worth it?" question with respect to his own theodicy. Is revelation of God ultimately worth it when you consider all of the evil and suffering in the world? And he faults the free-will theodicies on failing to sufficiently address the "is it necessary?" question. For instance, he suggests that actual evil is not  necessary for humans to exercise their free-will and thus it's possible that humans with freedom only do what is good. He further considers whether moral evil is necessary for revelation of God? Could God have achieved it some other way?

And in fact, Gangadean's theodicy fails on both of these fronts. I've already spoken some about these in my early posts concerning the problem of evil, but I'll try to further develop those ideas.


IS IT WORTH IT? 

The "is it worth it?" question is a tricky one in a way that Gangadean doesn't seem to appreciate. The worth of some state of affairs seems to depend on values and also the relative subjects to whom the states are worth it. If I ask you whether an expensive meal was worth it, you will (roughly) consider what amount of good the meal brought to you (maybe pleasure + nutritional benefits) and consider the amount of bad that was brought about by the hit your wallet or purse. We're assuming here then that you've got some notion of good or bad in mind in virtue of which you calculate the worth of something else. Roughly, if enough good results from some state of affairs Y and there isn't an overriding amount of bad that results, then we might say that Y is worth it.

Secondly, we standardly ask whether something is worth it relative to a subject i.e., the person or being that is incurring at least some cost and at least some of the benefit. Just as I can ask whether it was worth it to you, that you paid a lot of money for a meal you enjoyed, I can ask whether it was worth it to me that you paid a lot for that meal which you enjoyed. In many cases the question won't make sense depending on the subject of interest. As my example shows, insofar as I didn't incur any costs or any benefits, it's strange to ask of me whether it was worth it that you paid a lot of money for a meal you alone enjoyed. And I'm not sure if there's a question that isn't relative to any subject whatsoever like "is it worth is simpliciter?" We've got to get clearer on all of this if we are going to make much headway in answering the question about whether all of the suffering and evil in the world is worth the revelation of God. The trouble is, the revelation of God's justice and mercy is relative to some subjects while the cost of such revelation is shared by all of creation. Both moral and natural evil are ubiquitous and according to Gangadean while moral evil is "permitted" to give some people a deeper revelation of God, it also leads to God instituting natural evil (suffering) as a "call-back" to repentance from sin. As a result, all people sin and every creature under the sun suffers and dies, but only a select few reap the benefits, if you will. Only Christians will enjoy the revelation. To add insult to injury, the evil that nonbelievers experience isn't limited to this plane. According to Gangadean, they will continue in spiritual death/moral evil, in ever increasing degrees, forevermore.

So when we ask whether "deepening revelation" is worth all of the evil in the world we've got to get clearer on who the relevant subject is. Worth it to whom? Is it worth it to Christians who by God's grace make it out, that all of creation is steeped in evils? I don't know how to begin addressing that question. That involves at least addressing the first question about values. How do we weigh the evils against the goods? By what system or calculus? I haven't a clue, but Gangadean had better have an impeccable answer here. The very peculiar part about Gangadean's theodicy, is that he merely glosses over these complications. He admits that his theodicy assumes that the revelation is worth it, but he doesn't address the "worth it to whom?" question. Instead he seems to presuppose that the only subjects we should be interested in when we address the "is it worth it?" question are Christians who reap the benefits of the revelation at the cost of grave evil experienced by all. This is not only entirely arbitrary, but also very hard to swallow. In a sense, the unbelievers who will suffer not only in this life but forevermore are casualties of God revealing himself. Combine this view with Gangadean's strong commitment to calvinism/predestination, and you've got a devil of a doctrine.

Why does God permit moral evil? Answer: well, because he desires to make himself known but only to some of the people he created i.e., his people which he determined before the creation of the world. But what about unbelievers? Weren't they chosen to fail to believe from the beginning? What of their suffering on earth and of the moral evil to come forevermore? Answer: well, it's worth it to the believers that they themselves experience limited suffering and evil and further that non-believers experience suffering in this life and evil forevermore. I find it incredible that anybody should be able to stomach this kind of teaching. I don't think Gangadeanians are sociopaths and so I think there are some biases which are keeping them from seeing such views clearly. For instance, in my encounters with Gangadeanians, I got the sense that they viewed me as an enemy and that I sort of have whatever evil results from my "unbelief" (as they would call it) is something I deserve. They speak of people like me and people that the consider "unbelievers" as "filling up their cup of wrath". And I think they fail to draw out the implications of their views about predestination, soft determinism, and the problem of evil. And I suspect that if more of them saw things a bit more clearly, they would find such teachings appalling. The trouble is, Gangadean has a way of using his "a priori definitions" to confuse his people out of appreciating such problems.

On his view, God creates humans and determines that people will sin and sin a lot. That the world would be filled with moral evil--indeed God determines this so that it can be no other way. The result is that people sin and reap the benefits of such sin; the world is steeped in unbelief, and evil. Sure natural evil serves as a call to repentance, but one must be regenerated in order to heed the call and it's only those that God chooses to grant with grace that do so. For only these people does natural evil serves as a "call-back" from moral evil. In turn, they get to enjoy the great revelation of God's justice and mercy. Not because they did anything deserving. No, God chose them. He chose to have mercy on a (relatively) select group. As for the rest, they will live in just the ways that God has determined them to live. If only they would seek or want to know God, they could. But God has determined that they never seek nor want to know God, so in effect, they never will in fact, unless there is contingency in God's will, it's impossible for them to do so.  In a sense, they no more deserve their sad state than the regenerated deserve the grace bestowed upon them. These nonbelievers suffer (along with all of creation) and will live in spiritual death forevermore so that only the believers enjoy the benefits of a deepened revelation. It's hard to see how this is anything of a solution to the problem of evil. How is this exemplary of a perfectly-good, (and I would add, perfectly just and merciful) God? I just don't see it. I can't make sense of how this is the "greatest conceivable being." It seems to me that in presenting his "answer" to the problem of evil, Gangadean has inadvertently presented himself with another iteration of the problem.

Interestingly, Gangadean merely provides us with anecdotes from the bible (Job and Paul), to say that suffering is worth the revelation. But the important point is that he can't appeal to these as authoritative accounts because again that would be to presuppose that the bible is divine revelation and thus to presuppose God exists in a context where that is the very thing in question. Furthermore, I think these examples encourage one to ignore the point I am bringing up about evil and suffering in the lives of the nonbelievers. The way that Gangadean presents it, the question is something like, "is the suffering and evil in Job's life, worth the revelation that Job gets?" What I'm suggesting is that this is far too narrow. We ought to include the following unless Ganagdean can give us some principled reason to exclude it.  Is the revelation that Job and other Christians get or will have received, worth all the suffering that not only they have and will experience, but also all of the suffering that nonbelievers experience and the everlasting and ever-increasing evil that they will experience? Would Gangadean give another "a presumptive unqualified 'yes' " to this? More importantly, can he give an actual reason that we should agree with him or even what he thinks Paul or Job would say?

IS IT NECESSARY?

As I said, there's the "is it worth it?" question as well as the "is it necessary?" question in evaluating theodicies. So is it necessary for God (according to Gangadean) that there be so much evil in the world in order to deepen his revelation to the believers? After all, if God could achieve his ends another way, a way that involves less moral evil or even natural evil, then he would have. Gangadean confidently answers in the affirmative. But he's got no business doing so. He claims, but fails to argue for the idea that moral evil must be removed gradually rather than abruptly (113). And he claims that unbelief (moral evil) must be permitted to come about in every combination. He further asserts, "Some things cannot be known except by experience-- such as hunger or pain, both physical and spiritual. A book version of human history, or a movie version, cannot supply this experience and is incomprehensible without it" (ibid). I've italicized each of the modals because they are very important.

I can't begin to tell you why Gangadean feels qualified and in a good enough epistemic position to claim these without some serious hedging. They are merely speculative, but you get no indication of that from his book. How does one know that moral evil must be removed gradually rather than abruptly in order for the revelation to be deepened. Note 'must' is a modal akin to 'necessarily' just as 'can/cannot' is akin to 'possible/impossible'. The question then is whether it's logically or metaphysically impossible for God to deepen the revelation while removing it abruptly? And he must be saying that it is logically/metaphysically impossible, but how does he know so much about evil and its removal as well as its relation to the revelation of God? And how could he possibly know that physical and spiritual pain can't (i.e., that it's impossible) be known sans first-hand experience (the sharp reader will wonder if this commits Gangadean to the claim that there are some things God can't know)? Remember, we're talking within the context of trying to answer the problem of evil and so he can't appeal to scripture as any authority in supporting these claims on pain of begging the question. So it's utterly a mystery how he could know with anything resembling certainty that these very strong modal claims of his are true. He certainly owes us an explanation.

Now for the most part I've been conflating moral and natural evil because when it comes to calculating the worth of revelation in relation to the cost of moral evil, we really should include the costs of natural evil as well. This is because without moral evil, there would be no natural evil according to Gangadean. So God creates the world in a way such that people will only know about his justice and mercy if there is much moral evil in the world and this leads him to institute natural evil. He must have known this "ahead of time" of course. So it's natural to conflate them in calculating for the worth of God's revelation. But prying them apart we can also ask about the necessity of natural evil in relation to calling people back to repentance from moral evil. This is something I don't see Gangadean addressing. But it's weird that he doesn't. If it's possible for God to achieve repentance from the subset of humans that he regenerates, without making animals suffer or without the prevalence of the millions of diseases that afflict us, or without small children literally starving to death, then arguably he must as a result of his perfect-benevolence. Now recall, from last time that there are different kinds of necessity just as there are different kinds of possibility. Importantly, when we ask whether natural evil is necessary to make humans repent, we should care about logical or broadly metaphysical necessity rather than merely nomological or causal necessity. This is because God is not bound by the laws of nature or any causal regularities. He's only limited with respect to making logical or metaphysical truths false (he can't make it so that 1+1=3). And it's far from clear that it is logically or metaphysically necessary that God must use natural evil to call those he has regenerated from their sin. Gangadean had better give an argument to the contrary, or else his theodicy fails in just the ways he claims that other theodicies fail i.e., there's no obvious metaphysically necessary connection between natural evil (and to the extent we have it in this world) and people repenting from moral evil.

So I contend that Gangdean's theodicy fails on two fronts. It fails in ways that he thinks other theodicies fail. Gangadean's God is anything but perfectly-good and all-powerful insofar as he must or chooses to deepen his revelation to some of his creation at the cost of determining that the rest of his creation will suffer both in this life and forevermore. Presented in these terms, it's far from clear that evil is worth the revelation. It's certainly not worth if we consider the well-being or good of those that are perishing. That's really uncomfortable to say the least. Secondly, it simply isn't clear that moral evil is necessary for the revelation, nor is natural evil necessary for repentance.

I'll close with one more related thought concerning the "is it worth it?" question. Gangadeanians say that humans have intrinsic dignity in virtue of their rationality. This is what makes murder (even murder of the unborn) wrong and I take it is also partially why they think utilitarianism gets it wrong. But it turns out that on their view, God treats such persons (the unregenerate) as mere means to achieve his ends (his revelation). Moreover, it's weird to think that such persons are being dealt with by God as essentially rational beings. He has darkened their minds so that apart from his act of regeneration, they can't see what is clear.  How does this amount to treating them as rational beings? Or as beings with inherent dignity? The unbelievers will live, suffer both physically and spiritually, and die before being raised again for everlasting spiritual death. What makes it worth it? Well, that others will enjoy God's revelation. That sounds a lot like utility maximization gone wrong. The big moral here is that as Gangadean sees things, God calls us to act towards humans in ways that He himself is not willing.

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.