Thoughts re: today’s debate – Philip Clayton vs Dan Dennett
JB on February 16, 2010 in Axiological, Cosmological, Methods & Approaches, Provisional Closures & Systems, Uncategorized, the descriptive - Science, the evaluative - Culture, the interpretive - Religion, the normative - Philosophy 7 Comments »
Emerson said that God arrives when the half-gods depart. Dennett has spent recent years tilting at the windmills of half-gods and imagines himself as Don Quixote. The fact of the matter is that I am largely in agreement with Dennett in that ALL of the gods he’s been dispatching are not worthy of anyone’s belief.
To some extent, it is a matter of two ships passing in the night. We all inhabit elaborate tautologies wherein our syllogistic conclusions are often hidden in the very terms we employ in our premises. So, the first problem will always be the proper disambiguation of terms.
If we do employ the same terms, then I think believers must concede that science, philosophy and culture, without religion, can realize truth, beauty and goodness in abundance, even. (At least this is a fundamental premise of anyone who holds a radically incarnational view. Life is good. Living a good and moral life is transparent to human reason.) So, it is not like religion even introduces a new horizon of concern vis a vis values. Values are already in place. Science, then, is descriptive. Philosophy is normative. Culture is evaluative.
Religion introduces a question re: truth, beauty and goodness. Even abundance. That question is: Might there be more? Might there be superabundance? Then, in an effort to augment these values, it amplifies the epistemic and existential risks we have already taken (such as in our falsifiable science, provisional closures in philosophy) by venturing forth to further wager with faith, hope and love. We then cash out the pragmatic value of these wagers by seeing if we have indeed fostered human growth: intellectually, affectively, morally, socio-politically and religiously.
There is no question that the life of religious faith, hope and love is riskier. That’s why it is called FAITH and HOPE. No one is being intellectually dishonest, here. No one is claiming that the Object of our worship can be empirically measured, logically demonstrated or practically proved. We are not saying that our cosmology of descriptive science, normative philosophy or evaluative culture differs one iota from Dennett’s such that WHAT we see when we engage reality is going to be any different. (If someone put a gun to my head, I’d say consciousness is an emergent phenomenon vis a vis a nonreductive physicalism. But I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if it were wholly reductive. My bets are on a physicalist account of the soul but, if it ended up being a radically Cartesian dualism, it wouldn’t bother me a bit.)
We do say that HOW we see this cosmology through an axiology, or via our religious interpretive axis, does differ when we imagine that reality has more in store than meets the eye and when we participate together with others in this imaginative vision. While we don’t adjudicate our claims, finally, evidentially, it doesn’t mean there is no evidence. While we do not demonstrate them conclusively, rationally, it doesn’t mean that we have no good reasons.
Dennett will point out that all of this behavior has adaptive significance. Who would not disagree with this rather trivial grasp of the obvious?
His tautology quits processing reality at this point. No problem.
Ours does not.
He might invoke Occam’s Razor. But one can only wield that weapon when one has already achieved explanatory adequacy and is choosing between two equally good explanations. Last time I checked, we have no Theory of Everything and, furthermore, it has just recently dawned on Hawking what others of us have known for decades, which is that Godel-like constraints (incompleteness theorems) will apply to any and all closed formal symbol systems aspiring to a TOE. It is, ergo, a stalemate.
The only enduring question where the 4 Horsemen are concerned is whether or not they are familiar with the work of Judith Martin?!?
There is a fundamental misunderstanding if anyone thinks people like Phil, Jack Haught, Joe Bracken et al are making religion look scientific or are conflating the autonomous methodologies of science and theology. What they are doing is what is called a Theology of Nature which begins within the faith. It is very much akin to St. Francis’ hymns to nature and to the parables of nature found in scripture even though it is employing analogies and metaphors that are derived from the theory of evolution, speculative cosmology and the heuristic of emergence, for example. In this regard, they are not only not doing science, they are not even doing philosophy or what might be considered a natural theology.
When these gentlemen do begin within philosophy, a natural philosophy or natural theology, their excursion is brief and for the purpose of disambiguating concepts, clarifying categories, formulating arguments or, in other words, framing up valid questions, which we might consider to be reality’s “limit questions.” They do not then aspire to answer these questions such as through formal syllogistic reasoning as if there could be proofs for God’s existence or final explanations for reality. All a philosophy of nature demonstrates is the reasonableness of our limit questions, questions which cohere with our ultimate concerns.
Contrastingly, this is precisely where Dennett et al go astray in that they do claim to have answered such limit questions and to have eliminated the ultimate as a matter of concern. In doing so, it is Dennett who has conflated the otherwise autonomous methods of science and philosophy in what is known as a scientism, a label Dawkins apparently accepts but which Dennett claims is but a caricature of his naturalism, which is not philosophical but, rather, methodological (or so he protested to Jack Haught, when they last debated). This leaves a question left begging, however, for Dennett, which is that – if he is truly a methodological naturalist, then, – doesn’t that mean that, vis a vis reality’s limit questions, he must either remain, in principle, agnostic or otherwise transparently admit that his position, at bottom, is essentially one of faith, which is what Phil would also admit?
The only thing that Dennett will typically counter is that he goes no further than his empirical science and rationalist philosophy warrant, which he manifestly has!
What he must admit is that his is a type of faith, too, and that it is warranted. He might also claim that his position has more warrant than that of a believer in God. And our counter might be that our stance, epistemically, is indeed riskier, but that, existentially, this amplification of risks has huge rewards in terms of augmented human values; this value-augmentation is, itself, truth-indicative. And we must reassert, here, that our stance does not refer to the caricatures of belief that Dennett habitually engages as strawgods.
And thus would commence a whole other debate regarding the nature of justification and warrant.
But I doubt seriously Dennett can escape the tautology he’s trapped in, which ironically, is the same mindset that snares his fundamentalist counterparts. By conflating philosophy and science, both the religious fundamentalists and Enlightenment fundamentalists are committing HUGE category errors and, ergo, represent the obverse sides of the same epistemic coin — fideism and scientism — neither which has a purchase on reality.
Most of all, I really feel sorry for their poor horses …
Their riders are giving horse manure a bad name.
Below is a relevant Tweet Archive:
Okay, so a New Atheist and a Christian Theologian walk into a bar… thoughts on the Tues. debate with Dan Dennett at http://ow.ly/17mNf 8:49 PM Feb 14th
@pdclayton7 Dennett told Jack Haught he’s NOT scientistic but a methodological naturalist. He’s agnostic, not atheistic, re: cosmic origins? 10:31 PM Feb 12th from web in reply to pdclayton7
@pdclayton7 Wim Drees’ critique http://bit.ly/9vy00P keeps gods out of gaps, which is fine; but doesn’t it validate our limit questions? 11:28 PM Feb 12th from web in reply to pdclayton7
@pdclayton7 Does Dennett lose sleep b/c Popperian falsification & solipsism are not falsifiable or b/c logical positivism is incoherent? 11:32 PM Feb 12th from web in reply to pdclayton7
@pdclayton7 re: God, world’s BRIGHTest philosophers tender Scottish verdict = unproven & not dis/proved. Do Dan’s peers think he’s bright? 11:36 PM Feb 12th from web in reply to pdclayton7
@Cathlimergent — Thanks for the great suggestions — I’ll keep you posted! — Philip
Below is a bibliography I put together the first time I lost interest in Dan Dennett’s work. Click below to continue >>>
I like many of the distinctions Charles Sanders Peirce offers. He says that we can interpret Occam’s Razor vis a vis the word “simple” in terms of epistemic facility rather than ontological complexity. In other words, it’s not the needless multiplication of ontologies we need to avoid; instead, we need to pay attention to the facility or ease with which an abduction or hypothesis comes to mind when we’re confronted with a problem because that, in my words, is often truth-indicative. He also distinguishes between an argument, the initial abduction or hypothesis formulation, or, in his words, “any process of thought reasonably tending to produce a definite belief,” and argumentation, in his words, “an argument proceeding upon definitely formulated premises.” Peirce devised what he called the “Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” but he derisively considered formal argumentation, where God was concerned, a fetish. He distinguished, too, between God’s so-called “existence” and God’s “reality.”
In other words, most of our knowledge in life does not proceed from mere formal argumentation via indubitable premises with clearly disambiguated concepts and logical validity to incontrovertible proof. Most of our knowledge comes from a cumulative case-like approach, is very much informal and probabilistic. From a rigorously philosophical approach, formal proofs of God, taken alone, lead only to Scottish verdicts of unproven. Taken together as arguments (facile abductions) along with other evidential, experiential, presuppositional and existential strands, we have quite a strong and resilient cable of belief that is eminently reasonable and existentially actionable, which is to say, with more than sufficient epistemic warrant.
We must remain mindful of an important distinction re: so-called common views, does one mean a view commonly held by academics & theologians or that held by the majority of persons no matter their education. That will be in play, below. Another critical distinction is that between the Catholic hierarchy or magisterial teaching office (a/k/a Rome) versus mainstream theologians versus even what the faithful (sensus fidelium) actually believe and practice.
A question that begs, then, is what could one possibly mean by the qualifier REALLY core or peripheral. While it is true that, in addition to Scripture & Tradition, Faith & Reason, Mysticism & Experience, Catholics have another leg to our stool called the Magisterium or hierarchical teaching office, in THEORY the Magisterium is NOT structured as a TOP-DOWN reality, although IN PRACTICE, that dynamic does seem to be in effect, at least in part, because their’s is a “temporal” power of the purse and of juridical authority that very much controls the destiny of many people’s lives vis a vis their expression of and experience of church. Being less abstract: 1) women cannot be ordained 2) some priests must remain celibate 3) some politicians get visibly interdicted at the communion rail 4) some ex-priests cannot teach in a parochial school because they weren’t laicized via a formal dispensation 5) some divorced and remarried teachers, similarly, are turned away from church employment because they did not obtain a marriage annulment.
Catholic progressives, both Roman and Anglican, are more closely related hermeneutically to each other than they are to their coreligionists in their respective denominations. Same thing with our traditionalist brothers and sisters. Increasingly, I have found that progressive Roman and Anglican catholics have a GREAT deal in common with much of liberal Protestantism and the emerging church conversation(s). This is to say that we are in large agreement regarding essentials vs accidentals, core vs peripheral beliefs. I am in much more agreement with the Anglican approach to moral doctrine, church disciplines and church polity than I am with my own Roman tradition, but these are not essentials in my view, while our creeds, our sacraments, our liturgical traditions and incarnational outlooks are. Otherwise, out of personal integrity, I’d have to offer myself up in the recent prisoner swap (yes, that’s a euphemism for a recent impolitic event).
It’s not Greek metaphysics. Even the hierarchy is clear in that science and philosophy are autonomous from faith. While theological discourse will employ inculturated language in articulating beliefs, it is no more tied to this or that metaphysical concept than it is tied to a particular language. It simply translates the essentials of the faith into this or that idiom. I am heavily invested in the American pragmatist tradition (Peirce, less so James, much less so Dewey) and the best parts of our Transcendentalist tradition (Josiah Royce) and don’t do substance metaphysics or Thomism, so my (meta)metaphysical constructs are going to be nondual vis a vis a triadic semiotic. Rome doesn’t publish catechisms in this idiom, only a group of folks who belong to the John Courtney Murray Society at Berkeley find it engaging (best I can tell, anyway; I’m not an academic and I do not get around much).
Do people articulate anthropologies, epistemologies, metaphysics and philosophies that would be incompatible with faith? Of course, but that’s because they are doing bad anthropology, bad epistemology, bad metaphysics and bad philosophy, in ways that don’t employ philosophical rigor and can’t withstand philosophical scrutiny. Do believers articulate scientific and philosophical perspectives derived from their religious stances? Sure, but that’s because they’re doing bad science and bad philosophy. In other words, category errors are not uncommon.
Because I was first immersed in the mystical literature of both the patristic and medieval periods and also Merton, when I did eventually encounter the postmodern critique, it did not seem entirely new. Dionysian logic and Scotistic semiotics, at least inchoately, recognized this language play.
While reality remains wholly incomprehensible, it is still partly apprehensible. We will fall short, but our falling short involves such a very tall reality. Thus our alternating apophatic negations and kataphatic affirmations, which tender very little knowledge of God’s nature, nevertheless provide us a great deal because to know very little about a reality that LARGE still amounts to an overwhelming amount of information for us as creatures. And this knowledge, which is more participatory & relational (nondual) than propositional & cognitive (dual), is of profound existential import insofar as it addresses our most insistent longings, our most urgent needs and our most pressing ultimate concerns. And this knowledge is accessible to us through simple common sense combined with a simple open heart.
In Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, where it relates the conversion of King Edwin, a nobleman counsels the King:
Will it eschew evidentialism, rationalism, presuppositionalism and existentialism in favor of a more holistic perspectivalism but without defining holism in terms of a facile moderation or simple balancing act, acknowledging that certain approaches will sometimes enjoy at least a primacy if not an autonomy? This is to ask, then, if the dual and nondual approaches to reality might better be described as the transdual, which necessarily goes beyond, but not without, our dualistic, problem-solving mind in approaching life’s most important values, primarily, from a nondual approach?
Many words that end in -ism and -ist are merely descriptive and only get pejorative when morphed into -istic. There are some, however, that describe realities precisely in terms of their normative implications, typically involving over- and under-emphases of various epistemic perspectives, e.g. empiricism, scientism, rationalism, positivism. In the realm of faith, for example, an overemphasis on the 1) kataphatic and affective is pietism, sometimes fideism 2) kataphatic and speculative is rationalism 3) apophatic and speculative is encratism and 4) apophatic and affective is quietism.
There are many terms that otherwise describe what I like to consider in terms of giftedness vis a vis the roles one might play in community, for example, as a settler or pioneer, conservative or progressive. Following St. Augustine’s aphorism – in essentials, unity; in accidentals, liberty or diversity; in all things, charity – those with a conservative or traditionalist charism help preserve and celebrate the essentials of the faith, while those with a liberal or progressive charism help explore and celebrate the plurality of our faith expressions.
In this vein, then, it seems there have always been some who are traditionalistic or fundamentalistic in their tendency to treat faith’s accidentals as if they were essentials and no too few who are, conversely, liberalistic or progressivistic in that they tend to treat essentials as if they were accidentals. (Which elements of the Christian faith are the essentials and which are the accidentals is not the focus, here.)
