"It is worthwhile reminding ourselves of just how committed to reason, and to its scientific and philosophical manifestations, mainstream Western theism has always been." – Edward Feser at HackCentralStation
It’s an amazing article. Feser seems to be claiming that liberals are ignorant bigots because they don’t accept the logical validity of medieval philosophers’ proofs of the existence of God. He also appears to claim that the reason liberal professional philosophers don’t accept these proofs is because they’re only aware of "silly caricatures" of them. Patronising buffoon.
(he also claims that Stalin and Mao were Marxists: always a good way of confirming someone doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about… Via Squander Two, who has a rather different take)
The final section of the article is best, I think. Shorter version: "It is possible to have complex, rational debates about religious issues. Therefore, we should listen to any idiot who happens to be religious."
I think Stalin believed himself to be a Marxist, at least early on, so it isn’t egregiously false to label him as such. Mao, probably not.
From the late 1920s onwards, there were no discernible elements of Marxist thought in Stalin’s behaviour, public pronouncements or private writings. The two figures he cited most often as his role models were Suleiman the Magnificent and Ivan the Terrible.
A commentator who implies Stalin was a Marxist by the time he got to do any serious killing – particularly if they’re doing so in the context of smearing Marxists by attributing Stalin’s crimes to them – is either ignorant or deliberately trying to mislead.
Yes, I agree with that.
Extraordinary. Edward Feser is a fool. My major objection to his article is that arguments for the existence of God are one thing (certaibly flawed, but maybe intricate and thought-provoking), but arguments for the correctness of some particular religion are something else: invariably obvious nonsense.
Moreover the latter are defences crafted after the fact for "matters of faith, where `faith’ is a kind of groundless commitment, a will to believe that for which there is no objective evidence". No-one converts to Islam or Catholicism because they hear a convincing watertight argument for it, they convert for personal reasons. Then the sensible ones reconcile themselves to this by reference to "faith", and the others (Feser perhaps) cobble together bogus pseudo-intellectual nonsense to con themselves and others with.
I don’t know about that – what about ‘Marxism and the problems of linguistics’, say. That doesn’t imply any connection between Stalin’s Marxism and his responsibility for mass murder. People (and I’m not suggesting you’re doing this) sometimes claim Stalin wasn’t a Marxist in order to imply that a Marxist couldn’t be responsible for mass murder, which strikes me as equally misleading.
Your kind and thoughtful link to my blog isn’t actually a link to my blog. Just saying, like. Or was it an ironic link? I can never understand you young people’s crazy sense of humour.
Anyway, Feser is both right and wrong. He’s wrong about faith: his description of what he says it isn’t is in fact exactly what it is. But, apart from that, I’d say he’s right. He’s not talking about people who’ve looked at the arguments for the existence of God and found them wanting; he’s talking about people who think that all religious belief is based purely on faith and has no rational underpinning — there are a lot of such people, especially in political debates, and they’re ignorant of the facts. Furthermore, he’s talking about the prevalent attitude among the American Left that all religious beliefs should be automatically discounted from political debate simply in virtue of their religiousness, which is bollocks.
Sorry, impaired CTRL-X CTRL-V-ing on my part – fixed now.
I think you’re reading your more sane views into Feser’s less sane ones. Sure, there are plenty of ignorant buffoons who don’t like religion. However, Feser seems to be implying this includes the academic philosophical establishment, which is bollocks: you wouldn’t even get an undergraduate degree unless you knew that:
1) Western philosophy has a glorious history of attempted logical proofs of the [necessity of the] existence of God – indeed, it was practically founded on them…
2) Nobody mainstream in Western philosophy has taken such attempts seriously for the last 200 years.
The giveaway that Feser is being dishonest is "Versions of these arguments were defended by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and Newton". This is true – but all of them were before Hume!
S2: I believe that *almost* "all religious belief is based purely on faith and has no rational underpinning." The overwhelming majority of people who believe in God do not do so because they find the e.g the ontological argument convincing. Apart from the philosophical tiny minority, there are two types of religious people: those with faith-based beliefs (who admit that their beliefs have no rational basis), and those who purport to give a knock-down rational argument for, say, Jesus’ resurrection (and therefore for the existence of God). The second group are large in number, and their arguments have no intellectual credibility at all.
Sorry: after "Jesus’ resurrection" I meant to say "or something equivalent", before people lay into me for equating "religion" with "Christianity".
Many apologies for fucking up the link. Feel free to delete my mess, John. Sorry. What I should have said was:
You may well be right about Feser’s opinions of academic philosophy. Then again, he is talking about American academic philosophers, and my one contact with their species does back up the they’re-ignorant-tossers angle.
Have done – sorry, my dodgy homebrewed CMS doesn’t support either preview or "title"s in links. I view it as a challenge for my commenters…
Was amused and amazed by how much of a cock your tutor was, but I’m sceptical you can use that to conclude he’s ignorant of the basics of the philosophical canon. You can be an utter wanker who treats students like shit and still know your academic discipline.
I seem to have deleted your comment about (approx) "philosophers all take the proofs of God seriously and some credible ones believed them until 100 years ago".
In reply to it, all philosophers have studied them, all (sane) philosophers respect the likes of Descartes and Berkeley for coming up with amazing insights that advanced the history of human thought, but as far as I’m aware nobody considered sensible by their peers has taken them seriously in the sense of "this is a proposition that can’t trivially be refuted by a half-decent undergrad who’s done the reading" for a very long time.
Yes, I know. I was just quibbling about the meaning of "taking seriously". I’d like to say that it was all this talk of philosophy that caused me to make such a quibbling quibble, but, as we all know, I’m always that pedantic. Tsk.
What else did you delete there? Oh, yeah: I said something to Larry along the lines of yes, you’re right, but what you’re sayign is only relevant in the political debate when you’re arguing about, for instance, whether prayer should be compulsory in schools or whether to disestablish the Church. What Feser’s complaining about, quite rightly, is the attitude of "You only oppose abortion because you’re Catholic; the existence of God cannot be proven; therefore, your opinion should be ignored."
John b: "all philosophers have studied [the proofs for the existence of God], all (sane) philosophers respect the likes of Descartes and Berkeley for coming up with amazing insights that advanced the history of human thought, but as far as I’m aware nobody considered sensible by their peers has taken them seriously in the sense of "this is a proposition that can’t trivially be refuted by a half-decent undergrad who’s done the reading" for a very long time."
What you claim here to be true as far as you are aware is, in fact, false. Just thought you might want to know.
Proof?
"nobody considered sensible by their peers"
Well that rules out all professional philosophers then…
Alvin Plantinga is taken seriously by his peers (or was if he’s snuffed it) and he believes a version of the Ontological Argument. So did Kurt Goedel IIRC but I may not. There’s a bloke (I think John Foster) who believes in a form of Berkeleyan idealism. I would say that they’re minority, perhaps even crank positions, but it’s not right to say that they’re held by absolutely nobody, and certainly not right to say that they could be refuted by an undergraduate. Undergraduates are really quite thick.
Check out here about Kurt G\"odel’s views:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%F6del%27s_ontological_proof
It’s highly unclear that he actually "believed" it! (Also, Godel held some rather weird views about the Philosophy of Mathematics (or so think I) and generally fucking weird views about almost anything in his later years).
It seems I have to grant you Plantinga, but this appears to be another "proof" much like Godel’s. I really don’t see how it’s an "argument" though, given it seems to assume the solution (taken with Wiki again, these are *axioms*):
# By definition a maximally great being is one that exists necessarily and necessarily is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good. (Premise)
# Possibly a maximally great being exists. (Premise)
It’s not surprising that Godel had views like this, as a common attempt to explain what mathematical objects are is to treat them as necessarily existing objects. I think this is bollocks, and so I don’t see why the ontological argument can be taken seriously. But then Larry’s point takes hold at this point, and I’ll shut up, as I’m not a philosopher.
D2 is right. For Matt Daws to say that “Godel held some rather weird views about the Philosophy of Mathematics” is a bit like saying “Einstein held some rather weird views about Physics.” As I said in a similar debate on a CT comment thread, Plantinga (still alive, btw; got drunk with him last year*) has forgotten more than most of us will ever know about modal logic, and he certainly thinks that a version of the ontological argument is sound. The idea that someone like that could “trivially be refuted by a half-decent undergrad who’s done the reading” is absurd; and John b’s implication that all significant philosophers who took arguments for the existence of God seriously were pre-Hume is laughably ignorant. Kant, Hegel, Newman, Kierkegaard, Cantor, Frege, Dummett, Geach, Smiley, Goedel, van Fraassen, Kripke, Putnam, Plantinga (the last ten being logicians of the first rank), Anscombe, Charles Taylor, van Inwagen, R M Adams et al, in addition to the current philosophers mentioned by Feser, are/were all committed theists and some of them subscribe to arguments for the existence of God. That this should be news to someone, like John b, who takes an interest in philosophy can only be explained by the vast amounts of prejudice and propaganda put about by Humean naturalists and their ilk, of precisely the sort Feser alludes to. Feser’s claims that “[most naturalist philosophers] typically make no serious attempt to familiarize themselves with the actual writings of the classical theistic philosophers or with the work that is being done today in defense of the classical arguments. Their naturalism tends instead to be merely an unreflective adoption of current philosophical fashion” are, far from being a piece of “patronising buffoonery,” largely true, as is much else that he says. He certainly doesn’t claim, or imply, that “liberals are ignorant bigots because they don’t accept the logical validity of medieval philosophers’ proofs of the existence of God,” and it’s hard to believe that John b could be unaware that this is a grotesque misrepresentation. John b’s main quote from Feser, “It is worthwhile reminding ourselves of just how committed to reason, and to its scientific and philosophical manifestations, mainstream Western theism has always been” is, again, eminently defensible. John b’s response, “sometimes all you can say is ‘WTF’?” is a perfect expression of the kind of ignorant prejudice Feser identifies. That Augustine, Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas and Suarez (three of them saints, four in holy orders) were very great philosophers is not open to serious dispute and, like it or not, the intellectual culture of medieval scholasticism was the cradle of modern science (most of the fellow-scientists Galileo had any respect for were themselves priests and cardinals). There have been virulent anti-intellectuals in the Christian tradition, most notably Tertullian, but they are marginal figures. Many advocates of secular enlightenment ideals talk as though the scientific revolution sprang fully-formed ex nihilo, thereby manifesting a touching faith in the miraculous which is not, on the face of it, fully compatible with their commitment to secular enlightenment ideals.
*Sorry; you should never namedrop. (Bobby de Niro told me that.)
“It is worthwhile reminding ourselves of just how committed to reason, and to its scientific and philosophical manifestations, mainstream Western theism has always been”
This is indefensible. Mainstream western theism (i.e ordinary Christians) don’t give a damn about the ontological argument, etc. but defend their beliefs either through "faith" (they are therefore not "committed to reason") or through bogus arguments which "prove" that the resurrection took place.
We can (and probably will) argue for eternity about how seriously which eminent philosopher takes what argument for the existence of God, but what is non-negotiable is that a philosophical conclusion that God exists is totally unlike and entirely unrepresentative of the religious beliefs of the vast majority of people.
In all fairness, though Jimmy is right about the list of theist philosophers he presented, not all of them believed that they could prove the existence of God by philosophical means and one of them (Kierkegaard) famously believed that he couldn’t.
Obviously Feser doesn’t mean that the majority of ordinary Western theists have been strongly committed to "reason, and to its scientific and philosophical manifestations." That would be too obviously absurd; it would involve the claim that for most of the last two millenia the majority of ordinary people have been strongly committed to reason. He is talking about the mainstream high culture of Western theism, which has for most of its history been bound up with philosophy and learning in general, and provided the conditions which made the scientific revolution possible.
Yes, it’s disingenous to equate being a philosopher who believes in God with being a philosopher who believes he can prove the existence of God.
I’m willing, however, to take seriously Jimmy’s arguments that I’ve been bamboozled by the Humeans, and go explore some ontologicians. Will report back on my efforts…
“Godel held some rather weird views about the Philosophy of Mathematics” is a bit like saying “Einstein held some rather weird views about Physics.”
Not really. Einstein was primarily a physicist, but Godel was primarily a mathematician, not a philosopher.
JD – but Feser is (explicitly – see final few paragraphs) using his discussion of rationalist theism as a base to claim that ignorant rednecks also ought to be taken seriously if their religious views happen to match the serious religious philosophers’ views:
"If a policy can be supported with serious arguments made by serious thinkers, what does it matter whether someone who is uneducated also supports it for less sophisticated reasons?"
"Godel was primarily a mathematician, not a philosopher." True, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t also a philosopher. His work in mathematical logic has dramatic philosophical implications, and his papers "Russell’s mathematical Logic" and "What is Cantor’s Problem?" are classics in the philosophy of mathematics.
Jimmy,
classics in the philosophy of mathematics.
So why, exactly, are Godel’s views on religion sound? He was a great (if not the greatest) mathematical logician of his generation, but he was not a general philosopher. Larry’s complaint is still valid; furthermore, Einstein *did* hold some rather weird views on physics (such as the view that, roughly, Quantum Mechanics is a load of rubbish, and his famously incorrect views on the cosmological constant).
Your entire argument is from authority; you haven’t given a single defense of the ontological argument, and you haven’t dealt with my complaint that Godel admitted himself that he didn’t take his defense of the ontological argument seriously, he merely thought it was an interesting logical puzzle that deserved to be made rigourous.
John is still correct in saying "this is a proposition that can’t trivially be refuted by a half-decent undergrad who’s done the reading": any decent undergraduate would be expected to be able to point out the obvious problems in any form of the ontological argument. We have to accept that some philosophers think these problems can be circumvented, but again Larry is correct that most (all?) feel that this in no way settles the question of whether gods exist, and fall back on some form of faith to make the decision.
Finally, all of this in no way refutes that fact that Feser is talking out of his arse.
Also, and this I would be genuinely interested in, is there any (recently modern, say within the 20th century) philosopher who thinks that belief in a *christian* god can be proved without recourse to faith? (Feel free to change christian to any other form of organised religion). I ask, because often in such discussions, we really are talking about a god as revealed in some holy book, not "god" in the abstract.
“It is worthwhile reminding ourselves of just how committed to reason, and to its scientific and philosophical manifestations, mainstream Western theism has always been”
This is still indefensible. Mainstream Western theism (at whatever level of culture) involves Christian beliefs, not just the existence of an abstract God as given by the ontological argument, but a personal God, whose only son was Jesus, who in turn was born on earth as a man, was killed, and who was resurrected, and a whole lot more to boot. No-one who was "committed to reason" could sensibly hold these beliefs.
Matt Daws:
“So why, exactly, are Goedel’s views on religion sound?” That wasn’t the issue. The origin of this particular strand of dialectic was your own assertion that “Goedel held some rather weird views about the Philosophy of Mathematics.” I made the Einstein comparison, and then Larry said that Goedel was not “primarily” a philosopher. I was making the case for Goedel as a philosopher of mathematics, to sustain the Einstein comparison.
“[Goedel] was a great (if not the greatest) mathematical logician of his generation, but he was not a general philosopher.” True, but the family of arguments for the existence of God known as “ontological” are highly abstract a priori arguments; the people who are best equipped to evaluate them are not philosophers of religion but logicians. So we cannot avoid the necessity of taking Goedel’s views on the ontological argument seriously.
“Furthermore, Einstein *did* hold some rather weird views on physics (such as the view that, roughly, Quantum Mechanics is a load of rubbish…).” It’s a bit tendentious to call this view “weird”; the most we are really entitled to say is that it was eventually discredited. But even when Einstein was wrong about physics, only a fool would ignore what he had to say *prior* to its being discredited. After all, he was Einstein. Which brings me to…
“Your entire argument is from authority; you haven’t given a single defense of the ontological argument…” Of course I haven’t; I’m not trying to establish that the ontological argument is sound. I’m just trying to establish, *contra* John b, that it’s just not true that “Nobody mainstream in Western philosophy has taken…attempts [at proving the existence of God] seriously for the last 200 years.” (I might just as well have cited David Lewis, an atheist many consider the greatest metaphysician of the twentieth century, who took the ontological argument seriously enough to publish a paper on it.) Since the issue is whether the arguments are taken seriously, and not whether they are actually sound, the only way of deciding the issue is by looking at whether reputable philosophers actually take them seriously. This is *not* “argument from authority” in the sense in which that is a fallacy. To reaffirm that “any decent undergraduate would be expected to be able to point out the obvious problems in any form of the ontological argument” is simply to deny what I have made plausible. If any decent undergraduate could do this, it would be very mysterious why any reputable philosophers take the argument seriously or believe it sound. But some do. So the most you are really entitled to say is “any decent undergraduate would be expected to be able to point out the *apparent* problems in any form of the ontological argument” – but since the apparent problems may not be real, the argument is still a live philosophical issue.
“Finally, all of this in no way refutes that fact that Feser is talking out of his arse.” But whether Feser is talking out of his arse is simply a matter of whether his main claims are defensible, and whether John b’s “WTF” response is justified. I’ve tried to show that they are, and it’s not. So pending further critique of Feser, you can no longer take comfort in the thought that he is, after all, talking out of his arse.
“Is there any (recently modern, say within the 20th century) philosopher who thinks that belief in a *christian* god can be proved without recourse to faith?” Not that I’m aware of. Besides, such a view would be unchristian, since (as I understand it) the mainstream of the tradition has held that belief in God, although rationally demonstrable, cannot be sustained with the requisite confidence over the long term without the additional divinely-bestowed gift of faith. The rational demonstrations are not sufficiently incontrovertible to defend against the temptation to doubt. But this is a complicated issue, and I’m not confident about the details.
Jimmy,
Rubbish: logic has no subject matter, so the ontological argument is sound if and only if the starting assumptions are sound. This is of course where criticisms are rightly made, and is why it *does* matter if G\"odel was a philosoper of religion: he showed that the logical argument was sound, but (rightly in my opinion) held back from saying that the underlying assumptions were correct.
I think Eistein did hold weird views: he won a nobel for his work in QM, and then decided it was a load of rubbish. Fortunately physics ignored him, by and large, and QM has been proved correct (subject to philosophical technicalities). His views about the C.C. are perhaps more reasonable (though arguably more wrong).
Not that I’m aware of.
Great! So God exists (logically). Take the intersection of the beliefs of any religion, and one gets a belief in God and not much else. Thus any argument from religion cannot be logically proved, but instead relys upon faith. But this is precisely Larry’s criticism of Feser which you have not addressed!
“Logic has no subject matter, so the ontological argument is sound if and only if the starting assumptions are sound.”
But there are no empirical “starting assumptions” to the ontological argument, any more than there are to the incompleteness theorem. God’s existence is (according to the argument) a necessary, conceptual truth and in a sense only the resources of logic are deployed in proving it. (Again, I’m not saying that the argument is sound.) Goedel is in as good a position as anyone to evaluate it.
"But there are no empirical “starting assumptions” to the ontological argument, any more than there are to the incompleteness theorem."
Well may be not "empirical" ones, but the incompleteness theorem does have starting assumptions, as does (any version of) the ontological argument. In earlier versions of the argument, these assumptions were concealed, in Godel’s and others’ versions they were made explicit.
As I’ve tried to point out I think this chatter about the ontological argument etc misses the point. You’re nearer the mark here:
"the mainstream of the tradition has held that belief in God….cannot be sustained with the requisite confidence over the long term without the additional divinely-bestowed gift of faith."
which is true, but doesn’t go far enough (since it still only addresses the question of belief in God in abstract rather than a Christian God in particular). In any case it’s incompatible with:
“just how committed to reason, and to its scientific and philosophical manifestations, mainstream Western theism has always been”
which is nonsense, and is what Feser said (out of his arse).
Jimmy, Oh, come on! The ontological argument, as done Godel style, starts with axioms (or assumptions, if you will), proves some theorems (logical deductions) and results in God’s existence. Much like the incompleteness theorem starts with the axioms of a certain type of formal deductive system (which, in particular, allows certain forms of arithematic). There are some deductive systems which *are* decidable. It’s simply meaningless to suggest that there are not starting assumptions to the Incompleteness theorem, unless one is willfully twisting the meaning of "starting assumptions".
And, yet again, you completely ignore my (and Larry’s) other points!
"There are some deductive systems which *are* decidable."
This is true, but you mean "complete" rather than "decidable" (admittedly decidability does imply completeness).
Matt: I said that there were no empirical starting assumptions; it would obviously be silly to suggest that there could be an argument that has no premises. Insofar as we can identify the premises of the various forms of the ontological argument, one’s acceptance of them will depend upon one’s views about whether all existence is contingent, whether existence can be viewed in any sense as a property, whether there are objective logical or metaphysical necessities (as opposed to necessity being merely a product of the conventions that govern our means of representation), and other issues of this kind. These are all issues that belong to philosophical logic, and in my view logicians are better-qualified to pronounce upon them then your average philosopher of religion; and indeed it is logicians who contributed most to our understanding of the various forms of the ontological argument in the twentieth century. I realise that there are complete (and decidable) deductive systems; this would be silly to deny and I’m not sure why you thought I denied it.
I’ll get to the other objections later. Bloody studes are clamouring for my time.
You said But there are no empirical “starting assumptions” to the ontological argument, any more than there are to the incompleteness theorem
Which seems to imply that the incompleteness theorem comes out of nowhere: it doesn’t; it’s a logical consequence of formal systems which model certain axioms (or, as I meant it, "starting assumptions"). To me, you were suggesting that incompleteness theorem applies to anything (if not, then surely that are "starting assumptions" which limit the situations in which it can be applied).
I agree with your broader point, but you are now using "logic" to mean "philosphical logic", which I would consider to be rather distinct from "mathematical logic". Godel was a mathematical logician: hence I don’t see him as the unquestionable authority that you seem to on matters of wider, philosophical, logic.
Larry: thanks for clearing up what I presumably meant to type, rather than what I did!
No; all I meant was that there were no *empirical* assumptions involved, so the various versions of the ontological argument are just as much exercises of “pure thought,” as it were, as the incompleteness theorem. (I realise that the incompleteness theorem applies only to formal systems capable of modelling arithmetic.)
Certainly Goedel was primarily a mathematical logician. I never meant to imply that he was an “unquestionable authority” in matters of philosophical logic; but his opinion should carry some weight. My sense is that mathematical logicians are more competent than philosophers of religion to pronounce on matters in philosophical logic, other things being equal.
Larry said, “Mainstream Western theism (at whatever level of culture) involves Christian beliefs, not just the existence of an abstract God as given by the ontological argument, but a personal God, whose only son was Jesus, who in turn was born on earth as a man, was killed, and who was resurrected, and a whole lot more to boot. No-one who was “committed to reason” could sensibly hold these beliefs.”
I strongly disagree. Larry implies that Kant, Cantor, Frege, Dummett, Geach, Smiley, van Fraassen, Plantinga, Anscombe, Donagan, van Inwagen and R M Adams are not committed to reason. (This is not an “argument from authority”; it just seems absurd to deny that Kant and Frege were ‘committed to reason,’ even if you disagree with my view that the other names on the list are first-rate philosophers.) Certainly Christians are committed to believing in divine revelation, and this is often contrasted with reason as a source of beliefs. But this contrast is misunderstood if it is taken to mean that belief in divine revelation is positively irrational. After all, the testimony of others in general can be contrasted with reason (in the sense of ‘working things out for yourself on the basis of your direct experience”) as a source of beliefs; but no-one thinks that it is irrational to acquire beliefs on the basis of testimony, and indeed our stock of beliefs would be immeasurably impoverished, and arguably our lives would be impossible, if we didn’t. The content of Christian revelation may strike you as highly implausible, but I do think that accepting it is epistemically perfectly permissible, and there are rarely-acknowledged epistemic costs involved in rejecting it. (I should add that I think that Clifford’s principle, that “it is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence,” is false, and is implicitly acknowledged to be false by anyone who believes that their partner is faithful.)
Jimmy:
"it just seems absurd to deny that Kant and Frege were ‘committed to reason’"
Why? It doesn’t involve denying that they were great thinkers, merely that they held that reason was not the only source of knowledge. In my opinion, if they believed in divine revelation then they were not committed to reason, whatever their other virtues. I’m not saying they were fuckwits.
Please could you give me an example of a belief (preferably one which is not demonstrably false) which you do think is inconsistent with "commitment to reason"? Because I reckon that divine revelation (or something similar) can be used in defence of just about any belief . Therefore presumably one can believe just about anything and remain "committed to reason". This rather devalues the nature of the commitment.
"The content of Christian revelation may strike you as highly implausible"
It does.
"but I do think that accepting it is epistemically perfectly permissible"
What do you mean by "permissable"? People are permitted to believe whatever they like, it’s just that it might entail being wrong.
"and there are rarely-acknowledged epistemic costs involved in rejecting it."
Namely?
“[denying that Kant and Frege were ‘committed to reason’] doesn’t involve denying that they were great thinkers, merely that they held that reason was not the only source of knowledge.”
Larry, you are equivocating. Your original allegation was that “No-one who was ‘committed to reason’ could sensibly hold [Christian] beliefs.” In context, it was clear that you meant that holding Christian beliefs was irrational, and obviously so. When faced with the consequence that one of the two indisputably greatest geniuses in the entire history of logic had based his life around an obviously irrational set of beliefs, you began a Tour de France of backpedalling. To deny that Frege (and Kant) were “committed to reason,” you now say, was merely to assert that “they held that reason was not the only source of knowledge.” But since even the most demented rationalist would agree that reason is not the only source of knowledge, the charge against Frege doesn’t look quite so serious now, does it?
“I reckon that divine revelation (or something similar) can be used in defence of just about any belief . Therefore presumably one can believe just about anything and remain ‘committed to reason.’ This rather devalues the nature of the commitment.”
I did not say or imply that merely to invoke “divine revelation” was sufficient to guarantee that belief in the content of the purported revelation was consistent with a commitment to reason. That would certainly be absurd. I claimed that belief in the content specifically of Christian revelation was consistent with commitment to reason.
“What do you mean by ‘permissible’? People are permitted to believe whatever they like, it’s just that it might entail being wrong.”
I meant what I said: *epistemically* permissible; ie believable consistently with epistemic norms (norms governing the rational acquisition of belief).
On the epistemic costs of rejecting Christian revelation, see
http://www.faithquest.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=83
and
http://www.faithquest.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=84
The content of Christian revelation may strike you as highly implausible, but I do think that accepting it is epistemically perfectly permissible, and there are rarely-acknowledged epistemic costs involved in rejecting it.
Does the same apply to rejecting Islamic revelation? I’m guess not…
I think you are mis-representing Larry: his original contention that, roughly
Only nutters would claim that they hold Religious views because of purely rational reasons.
The authorities you quote didn’t claim this: they held that their religious beliefs were, at least partly, because of "faith".
Jimmy: I am entirely aware that plenty of intelligent people hold Christian beliefs, including several geniuses, and lots of thinkers who I personally respect. I was not therefore equivocating when faced with your examples of Kant and Frege, nor was it my intention to backpedal.
The problem is that no-one has given a sensible suggestion for what "commitment to reason" might entail. I (rather absent-mindedly) attempted one: "holding that reason is the only source of knowledge". I’m quite prepared to concede that it’s not a good attempt. (How disastrous an attempt it is depends on what one means by "reason" – you chose the least charitable possible interpretation, but we needn’t pursue this.)
However whatever it may be, "commitment to reason" is in my view not compatible with beliefs arrived at via divine revelation. I do not accept that anyone who is "committed to reason" in any reasonable(!) sense, can hold Christian beliefs. I’m entirely happy therefore to conclude that Frege, Kant, Godel, and the rest were not committed to reason. This does not strike me as absurd, and nor does not imply that I think they were fuckwits.
You believe that Christian beliefs arrived at via divine revelation are compatible with commitment to reason. Why? i.e Why are they "epistemically permissible"? And why aren’t other divinely revealed beliefs? And please can I have (as a bench-mark) an example of a belief which is in your view not compatible with commitment to reason?
Thanks for the links, I’ll have a look at them in due course.
Incidentally I may have accidentally given the impression that I don’t think that holding faith-based Christian beliefs is irrational. I do.
One more thing: lots of made up comedy nonsense is "epistemically perfectly permissible" in that it’s
believable **consistently** with epistemic norms (norms governing the rational acquisition of belief)
unless of course you’re going to use the definition of "norm" to retreat further into semantics.