Specter of Reason

Presuppositional apologists make the following two claims: 1. All valid arguments do not beg the question. 2. All knowledge presupposes the existence of God. Atheism may here be defined as any explicit or implicit denial of the existence of God. Thus, if one presupposes the existence of God in an argument, one begs the question against atheism. Now consider that all valid arguments presuppose knowledge. Combining this with the second claim above, we find that all valid arguments presuppose the existence of God. Therefore, all valid arguments beg the question against atheism. Therefore, all valid arguments beg the question . This contradicts the first claim. Therefore, at least one of the two claims is invalid. To avoid contradiction, presuppositional apologists must abandon one of their two claims. They must either claim that valid arguments can beg the question, or they must claim that there is knowledge which does not presuppose t...

I’ve been involved in a discussion at Triablogue , a Christian blog whose “default mode” is Calvinism. A couple weeks ago, I hadn’t even heard of Triablogue. Then they picked up on my harsh treatment of Rhology and decided to make a point of criticizing my arguments and views. I’ve been trying to respond to all of the posts aimed at me, but there are many I haven’t gotten to at all, and others which I haven’t been able to respond to in full. The discussion might be dying down, but I can’t be sure. At the moment there are a total of three Triablogue discussion threads devoted to me (links: one , two , three ). I don't know if I should be honored or dismayed. I can’t say I’m impressed with the argumentative tactics being employed over there. There are a few contributors who might be genuine, thoughtful and sincere, and who I could probably have a simple, intelligent discussion with. Those few are unfortunately overshadowed by a handful of arrogant, manipulative, and seemingl...

A guy named Steve is currently trying to mangle my views into submission. Here's my response to his latest post . Steve: “by your own definition of morality, fascism is a social convention. A social contract.” That doesn’t follow from my understanding of morality. By my definition of morality, fascism is the negation of contracts, because it denies the ability of individuals to negotiate contracts. You said Nazi Germany satisfied my conditions for morality. Yet, Nazi Germany was not based upon the most rational arguments available. It does not meet my criteria. You say that “a process of negotiation assumes at the outset that we have a right to enter into contractual negotiations.” No, it need not make that assumption. You say, “We can observe an event, but the rightness or wrongness of an event is unobservable. Moral properties are not empirical properties. We can observe a bank robbery, but the bank robbery doesn’t look or sound or smell or taste or feel right or wrong.” This i...

This post won't do its title justice. I'm not going to delve too deeply into the nature or history of logic. But I want to paint a general picture of how I understand the topic, because it came up in a discussion I've been involved with on another blog. The question was raised, If there are no minds to recognize the laws of logic, do the laws of logic still exist? If there are no systems which instantiate the rules of inference, then the rules of inference do not exist. When something exists that does instantiate the rules of logic, then the rules of logic exist. I wouldn't assume that human brains are the only systems capable of instantiating the rules of logic, of course. Now, consider how mundane my point here actually is. What I am saying about logic can be said about anything at all. Like apples, for example. If there are no entities which structurally correspond to what we call "apples," then there are no apples. It is conceivable that we could live in...

This post is a response to a blogger named Rhology whose empassioned misunderstanding of atheism and morality is somewhat disturbing. Rhology most likely isn't stupid, just misguided and stubbornly devoted to misconceptions about the nature of philosophy. As annoying as it is to be misunderstood and misrepresented, I do appreciate these kinds of discussions at times, because they often lead me to find clearer, stronger statements of my views. For the history of this discussion, see these two blog posts and their comments on Rhology's own blog: To Whom Rights Belong and Just What Are Rights? Rhology, You have wholly misrepresented my statements and my views. I said I have found it impossible to take religious belief seriously. You say that is me "admitting my bias." Nonsense. As you very well know, I have explained why I reject religious belief . It's not bias. It's just common sense and reason. You make a blanket assertion that atheists have no b...

This post is meant to present a clearer explanation of my sense of atheism. I discussed the distinction between weak and strong atheism earlier, (see "Why I Am Not A Teapot Agnostic" ) but I will go over it in more detail here. Weak atheists are ultimately concerned with evidence. Some simply claim that there is no evidence of God's existence, and so no reason to believe in God. Others say that the evidence is so strongly against God's existence that they cannot take the God hypothesis seriously. Generally speaking, weak atheists view the God hypothesis the way most people view the Thor hypothesis. It is theoretically possible that Thor exists, but the odds are overwhelmingly against it. Weak atheism is thus a form of agnosticism, because it does not deny the possibility that God might exist. While weak atheists accept that there is a very small chance that God exists, they see no reason to put any stock in the idea. Strong atheism is different, and it comes in tw...

I recently read a paper by Robert A. Delfino, “ Replacing Methodological Naturalism ,” and t he only logical conclusion I've come to is that the author (an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University) is a junk philosopher. It is telling that Delfino’s paper was not published in an academic philosophy journal, but rather in “The Global Spiral,” a publication of the Metanexus Institute, which calls itself “a global interdisciplinary group.” What that apparently means is that they analyze a variety of disciplines from religious perspectives, and promote the injection of religious views into all disciplines as much as possible. I am not sure if they are in any way associated with the infamous Discovery Institute, but they are funded by the Templeton Foundation. Based on what I've seen, their standards of intellectual integrity are highly questionable. My goal here is not to criticize the Metanexus Institute, however, but to criticize Robert A. Delfino an...

I propose the following definition of "science": Science is the formalization of discovery. All knowledge is ability, be it mathematical, empirical, kinesthetic, or what have you. Discovery is the attainment of new abilities. Discovering that something is the case is not essentially different from discovering how to do something. Science, as the formalization of discovery, is the formalization of methods and principles which produce new abilities. Any method may be considered science, so long as it produces new abilities in a formally definable way. And any abilities may be considered scientific, in so far as they are defined with respect to some formal method of discovery. (We can have grey areas here. We don't have to decide ahead of time how formal is formal enough.) Math, the empirical sciences (physics, chemistry, etc.), and philosophy (which includes logic) are focused on different sets of tools, all of which are required for the formalization of new knowled...

I'd like to elaborate on a point I made in my last post (the topic was consciousness), as it will help explain my views on science in general and consciousness in particular. I wrote: "If there were any evidence that consciousness (or anything else) were so unique that it could not be explained objectively, that evidence could not be shared. For, if it could be shared, then it would be objectively determinable. Therefore, from a scientific point of view—that is, from a point of view which regards facts as sharable and repeatable through well-documented experiments—there can never be any evidence that consciousness (or anything else) is beyond the hopes of a scientific explanation." One might ask, W hy can't we have evidence that is not scientific? Can't we have evidence based on our own intuition or personal experience? Why must all evidence be sharable and repeatable? I acknowledge the fact that we are often in the position of having to make decisions based o...

Nothing is more obvious or immediate to our minds than the fact of our own consciousness. And yet, consciousness seems so bizarre and mysterious, some say it is beyond any hope of an explanation. How can something be so clear and present in our minds, and at the same time be so hard to understand? Philosophers and scientists have argued for ages about how to solve this puzzle, and sometimes about whether or not there really is a puzzle at all. My view is that consciousness is not a philosophical puzzle, but a scientific issue which can only be worked out through a better understanding of physiology. In our case, that means understanding how our bodies and brains function. One of the reasons consciousness is so valuable to us is that it allows us to capitalize on amazingly complex information processes without having to pay attention to many of them. If we had to focus on everything going on in our heads, we'd never get anything done. C onsciousness is not directly concerned wit...

In the comments to my post, Irrationality and Religious Belief , my friend Erik has been pushing me to offer a more comprehensive statement of my views on order, intentionality, and the universe. What I want to do here is fully explain what plans are and how they are different from order in general. I will also explain why order is never, in itself, indicative of a plan, and why DNA and evolution by means of natural selection should not be confused with intentional, planned behavior. I'll start by responding to these two questions: Is a plan the predetermination of an event or series of events? Does your conceptualization of "plan" differ in any significant way from this? A plan is an idea which directs behavior towards a specified end. Ideas indicate, to varying degrees, an end result, but they do not predetermine events. Rather, they organize events in a relatively flexible manner, with many undefined variables, and usually in a way that allows for their own modifica...