In which I do the expected
Harriet Baber likes to put things in a provocative way (as do I), and she does so in answering the Comment is Free belief question of the week. Lots of provoking, and I will oblige by being provoked into commenting.
I see no reason why I should believe that life is, as Tony Soprano’s perfectly awful mother Livia put it, “a great big nothing” after which we are annihilated. That may very well be the way things are. But I see no benefit to believing it is so.
Yes but that’s a false choice, because it’s an incomplete description of the alternative to believing that life is made into Something by the existence of god. The choice is not: 1. god, and life=something, or 2. no god, and life=nothing. I don’t think of life as a great big nothing. In fact that’s a very odd way to describe life – life is very much something. The amount and variety of life on this average-size planet is staggering; it’s light years away from “nothing.” If the idea is that life feels like nothing to people who don’t believe god exists, that’s wrong too. Harriet must know that, but…she likes to provoke.
But if I believe in God and a blissful afterlife contemplating him, then even if I am wrong I will not be disappointed. I would rather live in a fool’s paradise than no paradise at all.
Really? An eternity of blissfully contemplating god? Wouldn’t that start to get boring after about, oh, say fifty years?
Truth is overrated. And it’s remarkable that the very individuals who are most vocal in their opposition to religiously motivated puritanism are the most fiercely puritanical when it comes to truth.
No. It’s not remarkable at all, because the two are not the same kind of thing. (And who are these people, anyway?) Thinking that truth matters is not the same kind of thing as thinking that pleasure is sinful.
People in any case overestimate the value of truth and underestimate the difficulty of arriving at it. There are a great many truths in which I have abolutely no interest – truths about the lifecycle of Ctenocephalides felis, (the common cat flea) or the extensive body of truths about the condition of my teeth that my dentist imposes on me. I see no reason why I should bother with these truths or make a point of believing them.
I see no such reason either, but the whole thing is a red herring. It’s not a question of bothering with every truth there is, it’s a question of paying attention to the truth or otherwise of what one already believes.
There is some notion that even if we can ignore these workaday truths we should be concerned about the larger, more significant truths about the meaning of life, if any, and the human condition. I don’t see why. In any case, I’m a satisficer, quite happy in every department of life with good enough…I don’t much care about getting the right answers to what are commonly called the big questions.
An interesting remark from a philosopher.
That is no doubt what she wanted people to say. I’m nothing if not obliging.
In other words, Baber is satisfied with “a great big nothing” when it comes to knowledge and truth.
*furrows brow*
What a bizarre statement. She has absolutely no interest in truths about the condition of her teeth? Um…OK. What a jerk her dentist is, imposing them on her like that. Does she think cavities and gum disease go away if you’re not interested in them?
Heh. Well spotted. I guess I was thinking she meant she didn’t need to know the details, just what she should be doing about it, but you’re right – what she actually said is very cavalier.
I could hardly believe it when you said she is a ‘philosopher’.
(They’re normally about twice as verbose and way more dense in their sophistry when they say pretty much exactly the same silly things.)
“There is some notion that even if we can ignore these workaday truths we should be concerned about the larger, more significant truths about the meaning of life, if any, and the human condition. I don’t see why.”
She might see why if, for example, she lived in today’s Afghanistan. This appalling callousness occurs only with privileged navel-watchers. To say nothing of her explicit nastiness about the scientific mindset, which fuels all exploration — including the condition of her teeth. As for Pascal’s Wager, any real god would put its practitioners straight into the circle of hell reserved for hypocrites.
Interesting, the claim that “Truth is overrated”.
Is that the exciting new paradigm that will now be taken for granted by the editors of The Guardian?
It’s a very disappointing standard, but I’m grateful that they’ve let us know.
Excellent post! And what sloppy thinking on Baber’s part. Truth is “overrated”? If only we had more of it! Imagine if the average person behaved as an adult, willing to go wherever the truth leads, trusting what can be corroborated/verified/tested. Hm, imagine what a “free press” could do with that idea? Even a philosopher might take such a position! I certainly agree with Baber that there is “difficulty” in arriving at the truth. Too bad she’s too lazy to do the work.
Baber’s is a surprisingly lifeless interest in religion. Although about meaning, it doesn’t seem to provide her with much. Although as interesting as a boy’s interest in steam engines and trains, it has none of the excitement that trains were to so many who heard them whistling in the distance their stories of unknown landscapes flashing by. Religion for Baber seems to be like the frosting on a cake, the surfeit of too great a wealth of things and experiences, a wish that there might have been more uncertainty. That’s why she’s so ready to risk her life on a game of pitch and toss. Only someone who has too much truth, can care so little for it. Only someone who is bored with life can think that there is something better. Those who suffer don’t look on life as a passing show. They know what they are losing.
Why would anyone want to hear from a philosopher that’s not interested in the truth of beliefs? And according to her these beliefs include the origin of the Universe, the existence of a being that created it, and the possibility of eternal life. She wants to believe things about these questions, and considers them to be important, but says the truth of such beliefs is not important.
I won’t pretend to be shocked by this because I think this attitude is not uncommon among believers. My view is that if these beliefs had any chance of being true then it would be important. It’s only because they are implausible in the extreme that truth becomes unimportant. But what value can such beliefs have? Isn’t Pascal’s Wager an admission that belief isn’t possible so it must be asserted without any real belief going on?
That’s a bit of poetry. And that sound haunted my childhood. It was off in the distance, past field after road after field after field…going who knows where. Probably just from Philadelphia to New York, but it might as well have been Samarkand.
I can hear trains from where I live now, too – not just whistles but the trains thundering over the tracks. I can also hear ferries blasting their horns, especially when it’s foggy. It’s a good life. No “great big nothing” here.
(Right now I’m hearing 6 fighter jets blasting by overhead. It’s Seafair weekend, and they’re rehearsing. Always a noisy time.)
I used to listen as the “Frontier Mail” (from Bombay to Peshawer, I think – not called ‘Frontier Mail’ any longer, though you can see a YouTube video of it here ) whistled by in the night, driven by big steam engines with bullet noses made in Canada. Used to get to ride the engine for a few stations (quite a few, since it was an express), too, sometimes, if we could convince the engineer to take a chance. Then we’d come back on a slow freight. The adventure and romance was palpable. No ‘great big nothing’ for me either.
Harriet Baber = Cypher (of The Matrix).
From Bombay to Peshawar – now that’s Samarkand! Lucky you, Eric.
“Truth is overrated”
So, she won’t mind if everyone she meets consistently lies to her? She wouldn’t care if the belief she bases her entire philosophy of life on turned out to be untruthful?
Am I being dim here, or do these people have a radically different definition of the word ‘truth’ from the one I use? You know, ‘representing reality.’
Ernie Keller: “Why would anyone want to hear from a philosopher that’s not interested in the truth of beliefs?”
Quite so. From that point on it’s ‘come in, Sucker; let me entertain myself at your expense.’
Confess an indifference to truth and your roof will soon collapse. How do we know she actually believes any of this stuff she has written for the Grauniad?
Well she explained about that, at least regarding the religious part of her philosophy of life. It won’t turn out until she’s dead, so if it turns out to be untruthful, she won’t know about it.
It’s a familiar thought, of course, but I do think it’s rather depressing, because childish. “It might be an illusion, but the way it’s set up, I’ll never find that out, so I don’t need to worry about it.” That’s kind of degraded.
Her major complaint is evidently that new atheists hold puritan beliefs. In her view, new atheists think that all truths ought to be believed. But that’s guano. As far as the ethics of belief go, I can be an atheist while still being more on the side of William James than on the side of WK Clifford. She’s just too bewitched by Pascal’s stupid argument to see that other people have opinions that differ from hers.
Her confusion on that point is probably because she has misinterpreted the rationale behind the self-assertiveness of the new atheists. So you can clear up a lot of this dubious nonsense by just getting right to the point: new atheists are only doing the kinds of things that make people uncomfortable — that there’s no benefit in being a new atheist (apart from having a smug sense of superiority, perhaps).
But then the issue is not about what people ought to believe. Rather, it’s about what it’s appropriate to argue.
Well then, what should we think about argumentative self-assertion? HE Baber has a paper on this (from “In defence of proselytizing”, Religious Studies (2000), 36:3:333-344 Cambridge University Press), where she explains:
So evangelism is okay. Got it.
In that case, how does she get to complain when the new atheists proselytize? We might say: “It’s clear the new atheists want to make the benefits of non-belief available to everyone, to bring about an increase in appreciation for the natural order and solidarity between naturalists, and to promote the survival of science and rational inquiry, which benefits atheists and theists alike by maintaining university property, providing access to university libraries, and providing fodder for shows on the Discovery Channel.” The only thing you could complain about this description is that it undersells the point.
Good sleuthing!
We’ll be cognitively altered to find the contemplation of God blissfully enjoyable. The cognitive alteration will ensure that we cannot get enough of this pleasure and it never palls. As (many) people seem to say these days, apropos of another thread, we’ll never get “bored of” it. I’m not sure why we should look forward to that now, prior to the cognitive alteration, but I suppose you could say that an eternity of doing anything that we actually find blissfully enjoyable has something going for it. For example, God could alter us cognitively to gain blissful pleasure from rolling rocks uphill, then set us to doing exactly that forever and ever. It doesn’t sound great this side of the cognitive alteration, but if you think about it … well, it’s an eternity of blissful enjoyment. Why knock it back if offered it?
That was my excursion into sophisticated theology for the week. Hope you enjoyed it.
Russel:
So by that argument, the religious should also condone drug abuse? Interesting.
So we’ll have our minds so fundamentally changed that we will no longer experience human emotions such as boredom (or anger, or jealousy, or sadness, or…)? I’m not clear how this is essentially different from undergoing severe neurotrauma. At the very least, it sounds like what make me “me” <i>won’t</i> actually survive death, regardless of the promise of some sort of immortality.
In re: “So evangelism is okay. Got it.” (Benjamin Nelson @ # 17″
–No silly, –Christian evangelism is o.k. Baber doesn’t want the Scientologists, Moonies, Mormons, etc. spreading their beliefs. Baber thinks it’s okay to evangelize regarding HER beliefs. And she is a person who has made it clear that she is more interested in what makes her FEEL good and not so much in whether it’s true. She doesn’t care whether her beliefs are true, but I’m sure she’d want people evangelizing about conflicting dogma to care whether theirs was true.
Personally, I think many people would like to be free from the fear of hell. In fact, the reason Pascal’s wager works so well is probably due more to the threat of hell than the promise of salvation. But Pascal failed to notice that everyone is going to hell according to someone’s religion (or reincarnating into tragic lives).
I think that those who understand that gods, demons, and souls are most likely an illusion have a responsibility to pave the way for those that are unlike Baber– those who would prefer to know the truth rather than committing the only life they have to a lie. As you note, Baber complains when people are as passionate about this view as the evangelicals are about their own. (But as long as she doesn’t have to think about her hypocrisy, then I’m sure the satificer in her can be happy.)
Baber does seem to miss the distinction between a claim based in fact and a claim based in opinon. From my observation, all theists seem to have problems with this distinction. In regards to claims based in fact, there are an infinity of wrong answers and only one right answer. Even if Baber doesn’t want to know the details of her dental work, I’m sure she doesn’t want to be lied to about the state of her teeth. Yet when it comes to god, Baber’s made it clear, that she’d rather believe a lie if it makes her happier. When it comes to claims based on opinions answers may vary. There is no “wrong” answer. But the truth doesn’t have “sides”; all answers except the right one are wrong. I’d rather not know something than to believe a lie no matter how satisfying.
Pascal’s wager appeals to some people because it makes them feel like god is a 50-50 proposition (god or no god)… but that’s an incorrect conclusion. You can plug in any mythical entity and see why. Is there a 50-50 chance that Xenu is real? Either some invisible immeasurable entities exist or none exist. Even if some existed, no one would be able to tell us anything about them because they are immeasurable.
Baber is a bozo. But she is a self-satisfied bozo, and I guess that’s what’s important to her.
Well, that answers that question.
Oh, dear. That essay by Baber really should embarrass her. It’s embarrassing me, right now, on her behalf. Really. I don’t mean that sarcastically; it’s so childish I’m squirming.
Arti, fair enough. Consider me duly chastised!
Speaking for myself, Pascal’s wager seems perfectly stupid in the following sense: even if I accept his argument, it has no practical or rhetorical value. For if a religion considers bad works to be good, then I have extremely good evidence to believe that their concept of heaven is actually hell. And pretty much all religions that I know of consider bad works to be good. So it is my divine duty is to struggle against religion. Thanks Pascal!
I was intrigued by the word “satisficer” as in “I’m a satisficer” – it’s not a word I have come across before. So I looked it up. And very interesting it proved to be.
As I understand it, a satisficer is someone who accepts a reasonably satisfactory solution if the best solution is not attainable. Well, that’s maybe good enough for most of us ordinary slobs having to make a living and keep the family happy, but for a seeker after truth?
I always thought a philosopher was someone in fervent pursuit of the truth, someone who is willing to die, if necessary, for the truth. But no, it would appear that some philosophers are quite happy with a reasonably satisfactory solution, perhaps – to quote Marx on the subject – a little opium for the masses.
Sweet dreams philosopher!
Regarding Pascal’s wager.
I fail to see how anyone could convince themselves to believe something, with no additional persuasion or evidence, on the grounds of what amounts to a threat. Rationalising after the fact, sure. That’s so common it’s hardly worth mentioning. But before the fact? I don’t think so. They might make a show of believing, but that’s another thing entirely.
It is remarkable how religious appologists don’t even pretend to be honest.
Daz:
“So by that argument, the religious should also condone drug abuse?”
articulett:
“And she is a person who has made it clear that she is more interested in what makes her FEEL good and not so much in whether it’s true.”
Apparently so.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Danny Strickland, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: In which I do the expected http://dlvr.it/3TS5P […]
I have always been interested in religion in that way, in the way that railroad buffs are interested in trains. I am a hopeless high church junkie. And I am a Christian because I just plain like religion.
This sort of thinking may be more common than not, sad to say. Back when I was in college I acquired some expertise in astrology, and whenever I mention natal charts I find people disturbingly attentive, even after I tell them that as a Virgo I don’t believe in astrology.
People want a fast fix. Religion’s got cupcakes and we’re offering broccoli.
@Daz, obviously I’m in sympathy with Ophelia and there was, to say the least, some irony in most post … as of course you realise. But I don’t see that appeals to the supposed wrongness of “drug abuse” help one way or another in this argument. There’s a lot more to say about this, but suffice to say that I’m not opposed to everything that gets labeled “drug abuse”.
@Russel.
Nor am I. I was merely struck by the similarity in description of the cogitative alteration to produce bliss.
Yes. It’s making me rather angry, actually. She can evince unconcern for knowledge about the condition of her teeth because she is fortunate enough to live in a world in which dental research and practice are reality-based and to be in a position to have her teeth well cared for on the basis of that science. But she’s actually suggesting that “we” can ignore these truths:
“We” can do no such thing. She has the privilege of leaving it to others to care enough about reality to do the truth-finding work required to keep her healthy, and even expresses resentment at their imposition of that reality on her.
I doubt she really thinks it doesn’t matter whether her dentist is right about the condition of her teeth or materials scientists are right about compounds or medical researchers are right about mouths. If she wants to put her money where her mouth is, so to speak, to be consistent in her desire for blissful ignorance and a genuine absolute lack of concern with “workaday truths,” she needs to stop seeing her dentist and find one who works solely on the basis of dental truths derived from Christianity.
“But if I believe in God and a blissful afterlife contemplating him, then even if I am wrong I will not be disappointed.”
This is the self-help version of Pascal’s Wager.
Belief in God has consequences long before one realises that the light is fading rather than getting brighter. They may make one’s life worse, and they often make other people’s life worse. It’s Pascal’s wager with other people’s money…
jan frank: Satisficing is (at least how H. Simon and so on used it) being misused here, or at least used sloppily. Simon’s point was not that truth was irrelevant, but rather that sometimes we need approximations to the truth because of practical considerations (think of giving a numerical solution to a differential equation, for example). Baber doesn’t seem to explain how her viewpoint is an approximation to the truth; in fact the notion is rejected when it is said that truth is unimportant.
It seems to me that the proper way to live your life should be precisely the opposite of what Barber recommends. Even if it turns out there’s an afterlife, surely it’s better to have lived on the assumption that only what you do in this one can possibly give it meaning. If you think the only meaning comes from what comes later, what would be the point in trying, say, to alleviate suffering here and now? (Unless just so you can be rewarded in the afterlife, but how that can be construed as a morally laudable motive I have never understood).
I find this notion, that the choice is ‘God and afterlife therefore meaning’ ‘no God and no afterlife therefore meaninglessness’ really quite appalling. My life has plenty of meaning, thank you, and I don’t need to think one day I’ll be floating on a cloud playing a harp.
“But if I believe in God and a blissful afterlife contemplating him, then even if I am wrong I will not be disappointed. I would rather live in a fool’s paradise than no paradise at all.”
Stupid kind of stupid!
The paradise afterlife is in fact a political means to justify denying people a paradise on earth; like: hey we might oppress you in life, but the more you endure the more likely you will be rewarded after death..
Die to please us is the only way to not suffer eternally.
So in fact you won’t even have a fools paradise, you’ll just be a tool for someone else his political means;
like a suicide bomber.
As I said, Baber likes to provoke…but she may have overdone it a little this time. :- )
Pascal’s Wager is a silly reason to become religious because the wager ignores one of the possible outcomes: there is a God, but he doesn’t want us believing in him and sends those who do to an afterlife of hellfire.
“Don’t bother me with the truth, I’ve already made up my mind.”
This was the WORST thing my mother ever accused me of…having arrived at a conclusion in the absence of (or in contravention to) the facts.
I think I “got” why this was wrong when I was about 10. And now, we have an apparently “professional” philosopher telling us that it’s a BENEFIT to do so?
Wow. Just. Wow.
@31 Jim:
I disagree. We’re offering cupcakes. They’re offering broccoli which they CLAIM are cupcakes. And truthfully, they’re offering only the future potential for cupcakes — after you die. But until then, only broccoli.
Is ignorance really bliss? I think not.
If only we could get all of the religious to be this honest. She’s christian because truth doesn’t matter, and she wants to believe something that makes her feel good even if it’s completely wrong. That is a valid albeit weak reason. I was a jehovah’s witness but now I am an atheist because I wanted truth above all else. Many people I knew that were witnesses saw the problems and nonsensical aspects of our beliefs but chose to believe it anyway because they couldn’t deal emotionally or philosophically with a world in which they were wrong about the bible and god.
If truth is not your goal or priority in life then you will end up believing whatever feels best to you. It’s not an argument for christianity or religion in general being correct, merely a statement that one personally may be afraid, or depressed, or lack the philosophical chops, or internal strength to deal with the world on their own. I wish all religious people were as honest as her about why they are religious, because I bet there are a great deal more like her that either would never admit it, or don’t even realize it.
Maybe she’s an atheist agent provocateur.
And, it appears, a willful ignorance of oral hygiene. A winning combination. :)
Intellectual decadence. Nasty
What the hell is Pieret smoking over at Russell’s blog ?
God, I don’t know. Grumpy and Rong weed?
Whatever the reason, he pisses me off. A nasty combination of incompetence, laziness and arrogance.
Have you seen the post he has up at his blog dismissing Coyne’s take down of Pigliucci ? He is worse at writing than Rosenau.
Well he pisses me off too, to say the least – first announcing that he knows little about the subject but nevertheless saying he couldn’t imagine why Russell thinks it’s important, then rudely and inaccurately retorting to my reply to that, then saying that my reply was “being a jerk” and an answer to the question whether or not new atheists really are blah blah blah. Honestly!
Yes I did see that. My curiosity was piqued by that display of truculent non-thinking so I followed the link and read a bit. Not very impressive.
Glad it was not just me.
I guess I should say where this is, so as not to tease people.
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-comment-that-has-not-appeared-let.html
Say wha now? If anything, the exact opposite is closer to the truth, I’d say. Don’t lots of people find learning difficult, have bad memories of school and not see the point of algebra class? The “math is hard, let’s go shopping!” quip may be apocryphal, but I’m pretty sure the sentiment exists.
She’s not a cat person, then, I take it. C. felis can cause skin infections, lip ulcers, hair loss, dehydration, severe allergic reactions, anemia, typhus, tapeworms . . . and has the ability to spread diseases to humans, including, quite possibly, the Black Death.
Impose is a frightfully odd choice of verb here. It sounds either like Dr. Torquemada, DDS is compelling her to endorse a body of statements about teeth, under threat of thumbscrew, or like the dentist’s assertions are making the statements come true (imposition in the sense of “imposing order on chaos”). Either way, it’s pretty weird.
Prescription: take one root canal and call me in the morning. It’s not the dentist who makes you suffer for your mistakes; the microorganisms thriving on your teeth do that for you.
Paging Mother Teresa…Mother Teresa to the white courtesy phone.
And the stuff about her dental care. My first thought was “is that the explanation for British teeth?”
Heh heh.
Ditto for CanadaGoose.
Baber has accomplished one thing; she’s bringing the eloquent out in people.
She may have jumped the gun a bit, as nominations for the 2011 Templeton Prize aren’t due until October 1.
I have come across this quite frequently:
A female pundit who believes that women should remain as a support to their husband and not seek to engage in an independent public life. (Barbara Kay)
And now:
A philosopher who doesn’t value the truth. (Baber)
What makes either of these categories think we should listen to them once they have stated that position? Whatever they say next is self defeating by definition.
Absolutely stunning BS. If one decides that life after death does or does not exist it will effect innumerable important decisions over the years. Among other more prosaic things, life is tough and dangerous. It’s not the kind of thing one wants to be fluffy-headed about. Baber seems oblivious to the ways in which her brain chemistry induced high can harm not only herself but those she cares for as well. As others have said, this is a theology for the very wealthy/powerful.
Ha! I have a great new mathematical theory, which depends on 2+2 being at least 4 and at most 5. Not sure whether it’s valid but it makes me feel good.
Daz:
Well, there’s at least one philosopher who argued that religion was in fact opium to the masses…
“British teeth”
Oh, the hilarity. We just use different signifiers of class in the UK. No laughing at the white trash and their inability to pay for dental insurance for us. None of us get decent dental care, so-err, wait, that went a bit wrong…
Remember, the faith Baber chooses to pretend to believe in is folk religion:
This sounds to me a little like Karen Armstrong waxing on lyrically about the beauty of ritual and religious practice — all the while holding that God is some unknowable transcendent Other and nobody who is really religious takes the supernatural claptrap literally. They just go through the motions in hopes they will feel transcendent. Well, unlike Armstrong, Baber does take it literally — but she doesn’t care if it’s true or not, as long as it works for her. So apparently she is also just going through the motions in hopes that she will feel, if not transcendent, then comfortable.
It’s like there is some kind of Intellectual Fan-World for “church buildings and furnishings, ceremonies, holy days and religious customs,” where the Believers in Belief like to playact at being religious, and sneer at atheists. This, they call “faith.”
My mother wasn’t a puritan about truth, either. She preferred to believe that sickness, pain and death are illusions, and that God heals such illusions provided one believes strongly enough.
She died at 44, of untreated spinal meningitis.
Beliefs have consequences. Not caring what is true, has consequences.
I despise mental masturbators like Baber with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns.
I love how people find it so easy to break out the anti-intellectual rhetoric when they’re out to condemn someone whose entire problem is a lack of intellectual honesty.
Baber’s argument is bovine, dangerous, feckless, hypocritical, implausible, irresponsible, silly, solipsistic, unmotivated, unrealistic, and wrong. But in order to be all of these things, it can’t just be idle nonsense.
Either she does not believe what she wrote here, or she does.
Consider:
A. Reasons she could have submitted this without believing it:
(1) She passed exams, obtained degrees, got a professorship, lectures, and presumably thinks deep thinks; so it could be that she intended this purely to provoke, her readers as potential volunteers to an exercise, with all comments being data. (When the study comes out, we will laugh and feel enlightened.)
(2) Her dentist gave her objective truths on the state of her teeth and she just lost it: all sense of perspective on her belief system and the responsibilities of her position.
B. Ways she could believe in what she submitted:
(1) She is bonkers.
(2) She is a fraud.
(3) Her position indicts the standards at certain universities.
These choices seem to me more likely to contain the objective truth her piece disses.
She must be the dumbest philosopher on the planet.
Imagine that! A philosopher who is not interested in truth nor the big questions of life, the universe and everything!
— H. Baber, My tooth loss is an informed choice: I’ve decided to embrace dentures because I’m fascinated by them – and because it’s the logical thing to do.
You can’t handle the tooth!
It always amazes me how pious secularists can be.I was flabbergasted at how much comment this Guardian piece got and have been trying to figure out what it was about it that so got under people’s skin. Maybe it’s because I am on principle a completely cynical, dishonest, self-serving, hedonist. And am a religious person precisely because I am amoral.
That you’re a babbling numskull who was published in the Guardian. Mystery solved.
Gotta write for the Guardian–I’m earning the co-pay for my dental work.
Dental work! What a joke!
I have been considering the notion of subjective and objective language.
and it occurs to me that the most vigorous discussions resolve around contrary definitions. perhaps a good example would be God/Truth. Here i suggest they may be the same thing from differing perspective, but when seen from within either perspective the other is obviously wrong.
This could help with Baber’s comment about the vociferous defenders of truth “And it’s remarkable that the very individuals who are most vocal in their opposition to religiously motivated puritanism are the most fiercely puritanical when it comes to truth”
I don’t agree with Baber, and parts of her article were poorly phrased, but I don’t think she deserves all this vitriol. She never said truth is unimportant. She said it’s overrated, which is compatible with its being very important. She’s just denying that truth has any value in and of itself. It’s important only insofar as it serves the attainment of the truly important things.
E.g. (if I’m interpreting her right), we need to discover those truths that are relevant to improving the human condition (by spreading pleasure). If what she calls ‘the hard truths’ (which I take to be claims that there’s nothing in our long-term future but oblivion, there’s no real value in the world, etc.) really are true, they’ll only make life less pleasurable, so it’s better to disbelieve them.
Also, in the 1st paragraph of her article she acknowledges that believing isn’t always a voluntary matter. That is, in some cases we become aware of evidence that demonstrates conclusively the truth of some claim. In those cases, if we see that the evidence confirms the proposition in question, then we just will belief that claim — it won’t be up to us whether to believe it since the evidence (once grasped) will compel us to. Here, belief isn’t voluntary.
But in cases where the evidence is not conclusive, it might be up to me to choose voluntarily what I will believe. In such a case, a hedonist, since her ultimate goal is pleasure, will believe whatever doctrine makes her life more pleasurable.
No. That’s when we reserve judgement. We might tend toward one conclusion or another. But that’s not belief.
This is utter nonsense. Should smokers not believe that smoking can kill them, because that will make life less pleasurable? Should the world not believe that global climate change will detrimentally impact the world in a generation or so, because that would make our (current) life less pleasurable? Should I not save for my retirement, since doing so makes my life at this age less pleasurable?
Surely you want some criterion other than naked, naive, short-sighted utilitarianism to determine “truth”.
Tulse: Smokers should pay attention to the health threats because if smoking wrecks your health, it makes your life less pleasurable than it would have otherwise been. The same goes for not saving for retirement; here, again, one secures present pleasure only at the cost of having less pleasure down the road. Your global warming example is tougher since it’s not clear whether Baber is concerned to maximize pleasure just for herself, or just for today’s actual population of humans, or for all sentient creatures that exist or are likely to exist. I believe a true hedonist (I’m not one) aims at pleasure for himself as the ultimate goal, while utilitarians want to maximize for all sentient beings. If Baber were to adopt the latter view, she’d want to combat global warming since, otherwise, we’d again be securing present pleasure at the cost of greater future suffering.
Daz: Sure, in a lot of cases we should reserve judgment. For hedonists, that’s because in these cases (usually ones involving scientific hypotheses) rashly endorsing an unsupported claim can have harmful results. I take it that Baber’s version of religion isn’t supposed to include a ‘God of the gaps’, that is, it isn’t supposed to involve doctrines that conflict with the hypotheses that have been confirmed scientifically. Instead, it makes untestable claims about a non-physical deity, an afterlife, etc. So her religious beliefs are supposed to be ones that won’t have harmful results even if they’re false. In which case, the reason for suspending judgment disappears (if one adopts her hedonism).
Praymont:
I have to disagree. The thing believed in might not be harmful but talking oneself into believing something without evidence, or at least strong persuasion, is intellectually lazy. Yet this woman is supposed to think for a living. Belief, after all, is the acceptance that something has reality, is true. So saying truth doesn’t matter when applied to belief is to introduce a paradox.
Also, why should we only reserve judgement if the subject is important or possibly harmful? If someone mentions they’ve heard a great new song on the radio, should I instantly believe that I’ll like it too, or wait until I hear it? It’s not a matter of importance, just of common sense.
The same applies to preventative dental care, but Baber has “absolutely no interest” in truths about the state of her teeth.
Found this in my inter travels.
http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-myers-on-baber.html
Thoughts?
Allen Wood, “The Duty to Believe According to the Evidence.” International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion (2008) 63:7–24.
The dental work that you don’t believe in? And don’t want the truth of imposed on you?
The entire piece reads as if you are a turtle, withdrawing into your shell to shield yourself from the unpleasantness of reality, and that doing so is the best way to go about living. That’s just sad, and much less than one would expect from someone who makes their living via philosophy.
<I>Gotta write for the Guardian–I’m earning the co-pay for my dental work.</I> – H.E. Baber
Whatever the truth of that they didn’t have to be stupid enough to publish the crap you came up with. That’s what got under people’s skin.
HE Babor – “And am a religious person precisely because I am amoral.”
Why didn’t you put this in your article? Why didn’t you make it perfectly clear that you are Christian because you want good stuff for you and you don’t give a damn about anybody or anything else?
I think we both know the answer: because it wouldn’t get you closer to a Templeton grant.
[edit]
Well, I guess there’s no reason for Baber to care about the truth of anything unless it grabs her attention — or might grab her attention. Since toothaches are the sort of thing she wants to avoid, then it’s perfectly reasonable to practice good dental care, and go to a dentist who knows the names of the nasty things that can eat away at your teeth. She’s not denying the truth of these nasty things. Why should she?
Apparently, she thinks religion is a safe zone. You can believe that there is a heaven, or that there are 50 types of heaven, and nothing will ever happen to grab her attention and make her say “whoa, I was wrong. Looks like I’m going to run into problems if I keep believing this.”
In order to activate Jame’s Will To Believe, you have to have a “live option.” Someone who chooses belief over doubt will only be able to do so if the thing they’re choosing to believe in doesn’t sound just too stupid, or too unlikely, to make the cut. One has to be able to slip into it smoothly. So I suppose that, if your criteria for what makes an option live, as opposed to dead, is looking for things that will never grab your attention in an unpleasant way, a china teapot just this side of Mars is a live option. No unwelcome report from NASA will ever come in, disconfirming it.
Oi! Enough! Disagree with the substance, but enough with the insults. Too much, really – I should have stepped in before.
That was directed at Yahzi (and others), Sastra, not you.
By the way, feel free also to agree with the substance. I meant “disagree-without-insults.”
But it wasn’t an insult. It was a statement of fact.
What do you call a philosopher who says things that aren’t true in exchange for money? I mean, there’s only one word for it. Babor made it clear that she doesn’t care about truth as long as she’s getting paid off. I simply cannot think of any more appropriate term.
Nonetheless, I concede to (and admire) your defense of civility.
Sure, but I’m still trying to figure out the substance. Or if there is any.
When discussing or debating the existence of God with people who believe in God, I have found it useful to start off with 4 very general questions (if I can):
1.) What do you mean by “God?” Define it.
2.) Is it possible that you’re wrong, and God does not exist?
3.) If you are wrong, what would change your mind?
4.) If you are wrong, would you care?
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but has Baber answered the 4th question with a “no” — and thereby pretty much cut off the point of asking the other 3? Maybe I should put the last question first.
Sastra – you should always start with question 3.
There really is no point in having a discussion if #3 is off the table. It’s not even a discussion; at best it’s a pair of monologues. If nothing can change your mind, then you aren’t discussing anything.
Yahzi #91 wrote:
I’m trying to imagine having a serious discussion if any one of those questions is off the table.
Yahzi @ 89 – yes, ok, but then you can talk of prostituting one’s talents or similar. But putting it in terms of “what do we call a woman when…” – that’s a whole different territory.
Anyway, thanks for being so agreeable about it!
Sastra, right – but as I’ve attempted to remind a couple of people at CisF, one can’t do everything in 700 words. I chose to go the rather boring, define your terms route; Harriet went the “set off a tiny bomb” route.
Daz (78): Okay, here’s a case where suspending judgment might not be required. Jo’s being treated for a potentially lethal disease. It’s not clear that the treatment will work. The evidence supports neither the claim that it will work nor the claim that it won’t. It’s plausible that Jo should nonetheless try and convince herself that it will work if she sticks with the treatment. That belief has good effects only and none that are bad (it’ll increase her determination to stick with the treatment, it’ll make her happier, and maybe there’s something to the ‘power of positive thinking’). What’s wrong with Jo’s going beyond the evidence in this way? Of course, it’s not at all clear that Baber’s case of religious belief is relevantly similar to Jo’s case.
Tulse (79): Yes, her phrasing there was esp. sloppy. I take it she meant to say that she’s not interested in all the dental details, but her actual words meant she’s not interested in any of them.
But I’m not even sure that Baber does actually “believe” in a god, at least in the way that the term is usually used. She seems to have adopted the view almost as intentional play-acting, rather than a true cognitive commitment. Thus, I’m not sure that the usual arguments regarding the existence of god(s) would be all that effective on her, since she admits that she really doesn’t care about the truth of her beliefs, in radical contrast to most “true” believers who are deeply committed to their beliefs being true.
Was the bomb set to go off on question 4?
I suggested on Pharyngula that Baber might be satirizing her own view. Or not. I can’t tell. Is she defending playacting?
During a Q & A, Christopher Hitchens once responded to a challenge from someone in the audience with something much like this: “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What you have just said is so incredibly stupid, so pointlessly inane, so hideously inept, that I can’t believe that anyone with any modicum of intelligence would think, let alone say, such a thing. So I must have misunderstood you. You simply could not have meant, what it sounded like you meant. So could you please rephrase that?”
That’s how I remember it, anyway. And I feel a bit like that now. It would be nice if Baber would go the boring define- your- terms route, and rephrase her essay.
Heh. That’s one drawback to Baber’s style, I suppose – it is hard to know how much she means and how much is coat-trailing.
praymont – I offered a similar view on the Guardian thread a couple of hours ago – that some kinds of belief without evidence are ok.
In very specific cases like that, yes. But I’d classify it more as a desperate hope than an actual belief. Not sure where the line is, where hope becomes belief, but it’s surely more of a sliding scale than a switch anyway.
Not just desperate cases though. I think it’s quite reasonable to believe, and to decide to believe, as a matter of policy, that the future will be good (in some sense). To have a sense of expectation. Not delusional optimism, but reasonable optimism. It’s healthy; it makes life better; it motivates. We don’t know what the future will be (in detail) so we might as well believe it will have some good things – until of course we fall off the cliff into the lake of fire.
Isn’t that more expectation or hope than belief? Of course, there are levels of belief. I truly believe, in the sense that ‘belief=I know it for a fact,’ that I have a mole on my left wrist, because I can see it. To a lesser degree, I believe that the highest concentration of Mormons in the world is in Utah — reasonable but not proven.
An impromptu rule I just made up states that if you can substitute ‘hope,’ ‘suppose,’ ‘strongly suspect’ or ‘expect’ for ‘believe,’ in a statement, and still keep the same general meaning and strength of feeling, then you’re not talking about belief in its strictest meaning; the one used by religious folks, for instance. The list of substitute words could do with a bit more rigorous thought, but I think you’ll see what I mean. It’s possible we’re just quibbling differing definitions of the word itself.
Yes, I do see what you mean. The C is F question was all over the place about what kind of belief it was talking about. There are a lot of shades of meaning to the word. You’re right, belief that (say) tomorrow will be intersting is not a firm belief, it’s more like a background belief, which is both tentative and non-specific.
I seem to recall from a course in my undergrad days that Pascal devoted some time to the question of how one might choose to believe something. I think he acknowledged that it’s difficult to form a belief (in the short-term) in the absence of compelling evidence. He said that getting oneself to believe in some religious doctrine might require a long-term effort in which one engaged in religious practices, read the pro-religion books, hung around pro-religion people, etc. Only after a while would one’s relatively superficial religious ‘belief’ then take root and become genuine. Or, in the terms of my above example (#94), one might decide to tune out the naysayers and spend more time with the doctors/nurses who are more encouraging.
I think Baber takes a Kierkegaard approach to writing. Her prose is much clearer, but, like Kierkegaard, she sometimes takes on a persona, a fictional character that fits the mindset of many of her contemporaries, and tries to sound it out and see where it leads. In the Guardian piece, I’d say she took on the mindset of people who say things like, “Life’s a bitc$ and then you die,” “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” — in short, have fun now because there’s nothing beyond the grave — and then she tries to show that within that framework wish fulfilment (in the form of religious belief) makes a lot more sense than any dreary devotion to ‘hard truths’.
Again, I don’t think she’s establishes her conclusion, since she doesn’t address some well-known objections to Pascal’s Wager (e.g., why opt for the Christian view rather than, say, a Hindu one?) and because it’s not at all clear that a theistic doctrine is a case where it makes sense to go beyond the evidence.
Daz, very true that a lot rests on the concept of ‘belief’. Here are some important features of a belief: they’re mental-states, they involve tacit epistemic commitments, and hence they allow us to infer other beliefs.
True, mere hopes aren’t beliefs, because it isn’t clear what we can infer about the world based on our hopes. But surely delusions are beliefs. For, when they are pressed, genuinely deluded people infer all kinds of false things from their false beliefs (though usually in a flailing, cranky sort of way). At the moment, I’m attracted to the idea that positive illusions (like the one that praymont describes) are in the middle. They may or may not be beliefs — it really depends on how vigorously they’re willing to draw inferences from their illusion. The more coherent they show themselves to be, the more we have to admit that their illusion is a genuine belief (and not just saving face with a rhetorical flourish or whatever).
[…] PZ (of the science-based Pharyngula blog) has a nice take-down of it (click here to read PZ’s posting). Ophelia Benson is also debating it on her blog (click here). […]
WTF?
Now I’m curious what the edited-out insult was. Sophist? Prostitute?
Baber’s opinion piece does seem like pretty lame sophistry, unbecoming a professor of philosophy. And if she justifies it by saying she needs to pay the dental bills, well, that doesn’t make it better.
But of course it’s a joke of some sort, right? (And is that part of the point of the simplistic over-the-top humorous hedonism?) We’re just too nerdy and literalistic, or something. We care too much about what’s true and dopey stuff like that, and can’t enjoy a funny little toss-off.
I don’t think that really makes it better. I don’t think it gets provocateurs like Ann Coulter off the hook; why should it get Baber off the hook?
It’s bad enough that she writes that way for the Guardian, but then she comes here and makes it worse by writing more of the same—a dismissive little “joke” or something about her dental bills—when people are discussing serious issues, and trying to figure out if there’s anything worth listening to in what she says.
Ophelia, it sounds like you’re saying to take it easy on her. Why should we?
She may be a serious philosopher with a serious and even good point to make, in her provocative fashion, somewhere in there, but what she actually published was superficial drivel. It’s just not clear enough what she actually means, and what’s a joke, and that’s careless at best. Then she came here with more superficial drivel, right to our faces.
How many strikes does she get?
praymont:
she sometimes takes on a persona, a fictional character that fits the mindset of many of her contemporaries, and tries to sound it out and see where it leads. In the Guardian piece, I’d say she took on the mindset of people who say things like, “Life’s a bitc$ and then you die,” “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” — in short, have fun now because there’s nothing beyond the grave — and then she tries to show that within that framework wish fulfilment (in the form of religious belief) makes a lot more sense than any dreary devotion to ‘hard truths’.
OK, if you say so. Does that tell anybody anything they didn’t already know?
I don’t think anybody here—or many people anywhere—thinks that the whole truth is the absolutely best thing for everybody all the time. Nobody is ignorant of the fact that sometimes the truth hurts, and that falsehoods can be comforting. That’s just not at issue.
For example, I’m not going to chain my grandma to her deathbed and force her to listen while I explain how modern cognitive science shows pretty clearly that she’s unlikely to have an afterlife of any sort, much less a well-deserved heavenly one.
But if Baber thinks it’s okay for a philosopher to intentionally avoid knowing such things, and then publish newspaper articles about her wonderful (non-)approach to truth, I have a teeny problem with that. I think maybe she should look for another line of work.
Paul, regardless of what’s “best” for people, some hard-liners do argue that we have an obligation to have no delusions or illusions. That’s W.K. Clifford’s position: ethically, we must believe in proportion to the evidence. Allen Wood (quoted at length above) defends the spirit of that argument, albeit with some innocuous-looking hedges. In that way, Clifford (and to a lesser extent Wood) are closer to the tie-up-your-grandma camp than most of us.
Paul W: She didn’t recommend intentionally avoiding the truth, and nothing in my interpretation of her has that implication either.
Benjamin Nelson:
I suspect that very few people think they’re morally obligated to disabuse grandma about heaving when she’s on her deathbead. Even hardliners are generally more interested in things with downstream consequences, e.g., people like Baber promoting religion as a good thing, than in grandma’s last few hours.
The real argument isn’t the absolutist one—even most hard-liners are not absolutists—it’s the one about where you draw the line. Baber is clearly implying that her “Christian” views (whatever that means) are harmless enough that it’s a good idea to keep them just because they’re comforting.
I’m enough of a hard-liner to disagree. I think belief in souls and an afterlife is very dangerous, and that it’s irresponsible to promote such views if you don’t have good reason for thinking they’re actually true. I think this is one of the overwhelming majority of cases where honesty about major issues is the best policy.
Gnu atheists aren’t generally meanies who just want to take away people’s harmless, comforting falsehoods just because they can. They’re mostly people who think that ideas have consequences, and that religious ideas are more dangerous than most other people realize. (E.g., seeing a connection between belief in an afterlife and opposition to all abortion.)
praymont:
If she’s a professional philosopher who doesn’t understand the profound problems with the idea of the soul and an afterlife, but promotes such beliefs, I have to strongly suspect that she’s avoiding the truth, in much the same way Pascal recommended. (E.g., reading stuff that flatters the dubious ideas you want to believe, and not the stuff that debunks them.) She should know better, e.g, that we’re not talking about a 50/50 proposition here, preferring one reasonable belief over another; not even close.
What were talking about is promoting pretty clearly false beliefs that are actually quite dangerous, and she appears not to want to know that, or not to want her readers to know that.
Paul, the edited item was an old chestnut of Winston Churchill’s about “what do we call a woman when…”
Sorry, I take a hard line on sexist insults. I get a lot of them*; I dislike them; I don’t allow them, aimed at anyone.
*not here
And I don’t think it sounds at all as if I’m saying take it easy on her. If I were saying that, I would have failed dismally, and thus be pitching a big fit now. I’m just saying skip the substance-free insults. Argue rather than snickering “what do we call a woman who…”
As you are. So it’s not an issue.
<blockquote>Sorry, I take a hard line on sexist insults.</blockquote>
Yeah. One problem with the prostitution joke, IMHO, is that it’s unfair to prostitutes. I have nothing against prostitution in principle , and nothing against the women who end up engaging in the all-too-common prostitution that’s bad in practice.
The Sophists get a bum rap, too, as I understand it. (But since nobody seems to identify as a Sophist these days, that’s a lot less troubling.)
Bernard Knox tried to explain about the bum rap the Sophists got, some years ago, and Lynn Cheney (then head of the NEH) shouted at him, and then Garry Wills shouted at Lynn Cheney.
Well I decided to look that up, and by golly for once I remembered something accurately.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1993/may/13/hanging-out-with-greeks/
Wills:
P.S. See the savvy thread – you’re drafted to write an article!
Astonishingly, I wrote:
Heaving? When shes on her deathbead? How the hell did I write that? I spel real gud.
The semiautonomous part or mode of my mind that does the typing seems to actually get stuff out of my echoic memory (auditory buffer), as though the smart thinky part of me was mentally mumbling dictation and the dumb secretary part of me was spelling things by sound. When I write quickly, I get homonyms and near-homonyms of words, syllables, and occasionally even whole phrases which make no sense at all in the context.
Anybody else get that?
And here was me thinking it was a slightly cynical pun on ‘rosary bead.’ Oh well. I must read in the same way you type, ’cause I actually read ‘heaving’ as ‘heaven.’
Ha! I nearly did a silent correction, but I’m glad I didn’t, because that’s funny. Sure; I think lots of people get that. (I spend a significant amount of time spotting typos.) We think ahead while we type, and then sometimes an anticipated word creeps in where it doesn’t belong.
I have a thing about people who are “provocative” in that way. I find it creepy and insulting to the person’s readers – it’s sporting with people who have honored you by reading your words. I think it’s also often a post hoc excuse for sloppy thinking and/or writing. In fact, this is an example of someone I will never read again. It’s an important subject with real effects on people’s lives, and not a game.
He argues that we should. You’re playing with different readings of “must” here to insinuate something.
To what are you referring?
This is one of those statements like “Sweaters: $10 and up.” And writing a journal article about people’s ethical duty to believe in accordance to evidence shows you nothing about what Wood would do or advocate in particular situations, so you should stop suggesting that it does.
(I’m really tired of this intellectually helpless religious grandmother meme. And that’s not just because the Catholic Church caused no small amount of pain – physical and emotional – for my grandmother, or that I’ve seen religious grandmothers cause much pain to their grandchildren.)
For whom?
I don’t see how it motivates to address problems for other people that are worsening.
To spell out the insinuation, then: “must”, in this context, means rationally should, ought to, etc., on pain of inconsistency.
“In general we owe it to others, simply as fellow human beings and partners in the collective rational search for truth, to offer them, in the give and take of communication, what is best of ourselves and our unique perspective…” (italics mine)
what
That was not at issue.
But since you mentioned it, I do expect people to act according to their pronouncements, yes. Rationally, they should. Otherwise it is just intellectual masturbation.
But it played on a double reading by then talking about actions in specific circumstances, whether this was conscious or not.
How is that hedging? He’s stating it as a general principle.
What?
Well, you would know about that. But you don’t get to define for other people what acting according to their pronouncements means in particular circumstances and then claim that they are advocating your action that accords with your definition. He explicitly says “The general moral duty toward others to form one’s beliefs according to the evidence, along with moral duties in general, has to be left to the conscience of individuals; it would be an infringement of individual freedom to subject it to coercion. But there is no reason to think that this duty is less real on that account.” He surely thinks writing articles about this and trying to get this duty recognized is consistent with his “pronouncements,” and may think this is sufficient. How do you know any different? To paint him as close to the “tie-up-your-grandma camp” is without basis.
To paint him as close to the “tie-up-your-grandma camp” is without basis.
Which is aside from the fact that you haven’t established the existence of any such camp.
Is this a trial treatment? If not, there should be established odds for effectiveness. There are also odds concerning the effectiveness of experimental treatments in general and for specific conditions. Could you give a real-world example?
It could potentially lead her to avoid end-of-life issues she could be dealing with (and reality in general), and maybe to miss out on other treatments that might be better. If it doesn’t appear to be working, she might become resentful of the doctors and less likely to try other treatments. If it works, it might lead her to chalk other people’s deaths up to a negative or pessimistic attitude on their part, even when that played no role. Who knows? The thing is, as Wood notes, it’s easy to miss some of the effects – especially negative ones – of our beliefs.
Which there’s no evidence works.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided.
Wood:
Yes, same here. But there’s a fine line between that and demystification – I have read some very good demystifications from Baber. One was of the idea that women don’t do philsophy because they’re fluffy bunnies and don’t like intellectual fights. Baber loved philosophy as soon as she met it because it was the one place she could get into intellectual fights.
I’m not sure if you read Paul’s original post. If you did, you’d note that Paul’s example was tongue-in-cheek hyperbole — obviously nobody is tempted to “tie up” anyone in the name of ethics. But that’s just a distraction from the point of the case, which is to ask us to consider a) the obligations of a person to believe in proportion to the evidence, and b) our obligations to argue people out of their fantasies. Since I don’t know anything about how Wood or Clifford would respond to (b), I didn’t put them in the “disabuse grandma of her opinions” camp. But since I do know that Clifford has a strong stance on (a), that puts him close by.
You may read double, but there’s only one meaning there. And it’s not about Wood, it’s about Clifford. Read the sentence. “That’s W.K. Clifford’s position: ethically, we must believe in proportion to the evidence.” We must believe, on pain of irrationality. And then notice how the next sentence, which does mention Wood, is deliberately watered down: “Allen Wood… defends the spirit of that argument”.
Because a statement that begins with “in general” implies that there are exceptions. These exceptions bear on the question of our obligations to believe only in accord with the evidence. The more important exceptions we find, the less useful a Clifford-style account seems to be.
Take care to notice the language used to describe that connection. “In that way, Clifford (and to a lesser extent Wood) are closer to the tie-up-your-grandma camp than most of us.” Clifford. Closer to. Lesser extent.
What?
Whatever you say, Mrs. Anthony McCarthy.
Though this is an irrelevant aside, no I don’t get to define anything for others. But I do get to read them and understand them, and then infer things from what they’ve said.
I don’t know any different, because you’ve mischaracterized what I’ve said. I never said that Wood was in the same category as Clifford. I said the opposite. But they’re certainly both (in their own ways) closer to that end of the spectrum than many of us. Especially those of us who have sympathies with William James.
S.C. (123):
A real-world example isn’t needed for a point about what people ought, or ought not, to believe in given conditions. (Also, there’s room for doubt about the odds concerning an experimental treatment.)
Positive thinking needn’t be delusion. Lots of people who expect to live for many more years deal with end-of-life issues, and so could the ill person who thinks she’ll survive. There’s nothing in a ‘good attitude’ that prevents this, or that prevents the person from being well informed about treatment alternatives, and there’s no reason why she should make fallacious inferences about those who died from the illness. All I claimed is that there can be a situation in which believing beyond the evidence is rational (pragmatically rational — rational because of the effects of so believing). I didn’t deny the applicability in such a case of the other norms of rationality to which you allude, and I certainly haven’t denied that there are many other situations in which someone who engages in positive thinking is irrational in the ways that you describe.
Re. the passage you quote from Wood: Of course it’s right to worry about one’s becoming habituated to bad epistemic habits. Clifford expressed a similar worry and also rebuked those individualists who assume that it’s no one else’s business what they choose to believe, since (said Clifford) poor epistemic habits in one person encourage similar vices in others and can spread in a culture like a disease. But none of this tells us what, exactly, are the poor epistemic habits. E.g., it doesn’t tell us whether it’s wrong to believe a proposition because of the allegedly good effects of this belief when the evidence establishes neither that proposition nor its denial.
Paul W (110):
Sure, most of the participants in this forum take her religious views to have been ruled out by the evidence, so that those views are no longer an open option. In which case, Baber’s believing not just beyond the evidence but against it. To avoid this, she’d have to show that her religious views occupy roughly the same epistemic position as Jo’s belief that she’ll survive (in being neither supported by nor ruled out by the evidence). That’s a tall order, but I don’t see why it requires arguments for a nonphysical soul. Life after death doesn’t require such a substance.
Are you being purposefully dense?
Yes.
Obviously (in this context). What concrete actions in terms of arguing with people are you qualifying as extreme in this regard? Can you describe them?
What evidence have you provided about what specifically Wood (or Clifford, for that matter) are advocating about actions in this regard? What evidence have you provided for the existence of any “camp” of hardliners advocating that people have this action-obligation with regard to others in any circumstance?
Then you don’t have a basis for any statements on the subject – in the alleged camp, near the alleged camp, or in any relation to the alleged camp.
You haven’t defined what you mean by this or demonstrated that any such camp exists. And I never claimed that you did put them in that alleged camp.
It does nothing of the sort.
There were sentences that followed. They’re both talking about a moral principle.
It’s a moral duty. I have no idea what you’re on about with this “on pain of” stuff.
What significant difference are you putting forward between the two? I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but you haven’t shown it. Wood is plainly saying that we have a duty to believe according to the evidence.
No. It depends on context.
Look, I linked to the whole piece on the other thread. You can read very clearly what he says, and there are no “important” exceptions.
Yes, I had read your post. You are presenting a claim about actions they supposedly engage in or advocate, but you’ve provided nothing so far in support of this claim.
That most certainly is at issue. That’s the issue I’m raising.
I have no idea what that means.
No, that’s the point I’m trying to get you to understand.
You “get to” make baseless inferences about their nearness to an ill-defined imaginary camp, but that doesn’t make it a valid or responsible practice.
No.
Um, you said “to a lesser extent” (for some reason known only to you at this point). That’s not “the opposite.”
The spectrum being discussed is a spectrum of action. You can say “certainly” all you want, but you’ve neither defined the actions that characterize the ends of it nor shown that any “camp” exists at the extreme end. What are the behaviors associated with the “hard-liners”? Where do Wood and Clifford engage in or advocate them? So far, all I’ve seen evidence of is that both have written about this obligation.
I’m asking because the “given conditions” in your hypothetical are unclear and I’m not sure there’s anything realistic about it. I mean, you can’t come up with anything real to make your point? Are we to assume the exceptions to the duty to believe according to the evidence are all imaginary, then?
Yes, that’s part of the evidence. That doesn’t give people license to invent their own odds out of thin air.
We’re talking about specific beliefs here (that a treatment will be effective). Not a good attitude, whatever that means. But you haven’t given any description of this hypothetical condition of the research concerning mental states and survival rates under various treatment regimes, so you don’t have any basis to assume any effects in that regard.
Of course. Also lots of people don’t because they’re not expecting to die anytime soon and don’t see the urgency. The point is that having a belief about the possibilities of your death has potential effects on your actions. There’s nothing about believing a treatment will work that prevents it, but it might make it less likely. Beliefs frequently have consequences for our other beliefs and for our actions, and we might be wrong in understanding all of these.
But of course there is a common tendency to do so (with a whole industry built around it), so this is a very plausible consequence of such a belief that you didn’t consider. (As is that she could see herself as at fault in some way if it fails, when her beliefs had nothing to do with it.)
And what I’m saying is that, in addition to the broader issue Wood raises, there is the issue of being able to rationally appreciate and properly assess the effects for yourself and others of beliefs, which people like you don’t seem to get. Did you read the Wood article?
Huh?
Yes, it tells us that right there in that article.
Yes, Wood says it is – wrong to believe a proposition for which we don’t have an evidentiary basis, (a good reason to believe) especially given the tendency to delude ourselves about and be unaware of the full effects of our beliefs.
Okay. This is ridiculous. A full half of the above is the argumentative equivalent of “derp” — you could replace most of those lines with lolcats and no content would be lost. The relevant exceptions just are the kinds of cases that would cause people to answer both questions (a) and (b) negatively. For example, a fireside chat with grandma about the facts of death, minus the bondage — that seems like a relevant exception, because I think there’s no strict obligation to have that conversation with grandma, and no strict obligation on grandma’s part to face the facts.
As for your hand-wringing about drawing logical inferences from arguments to particular cases. If “your point” is something that can bring to life here by making some kind of sustained supporting argument, then I welcome that, but first you need to stop feeding it your misreadings.
Mercifully, some of your comments aren’t instances of invidious sniping. Rather, they are comments and questions that get answered in the very next quotes down the line. To take just one strand of your spaghetti, you wondered what makes Clifford and Wood “close” to the (poorly named) anti-grandma camp? My answer — which I gave you before you even asked the question — was, an affirmative answer to (a). Obviously you don’t like that, because you want to make hay out of a case of Paul’s spirited rhetoric. But — tough. That’s my criterion for “close”, that’s my definition, clear as day. Take it or leave it, but for pity’s sake, recognize that the words are in front of your face.
Similarly, my assessment of those who would come down on the wrong side of the case, are the people who endorse affirmative answers to both (a) and (b). Does anyone really live in this camp? I don’t know; maybe Penn Gillette. But then that’s consistent with everything I’ve said so far, because all I’ve done is talk about who’s nearby.
You ask about the difference between Wood and Clifford. Surprisingly, that’s an honest and productive inquiry.
What does Wood believe? I already mentioned the use of the words “in general”, which you think aren’t significant in context. I do think they’re significant. Consider the context: the words occur right before a dovish argument. He says, we owe the best of ourselves to to others when in communication, our unique first-person perspective. But that’s a personal obligation, with very little said about whether or not we should persuade others of hard truths. And then, Wood seems even more dovish when he says that the matter should be left to the individual’s conscience.
Of course, strictly speaking, Wood doesn’t actually say anything against the idea that we should have the sit-down chat with grandma. You can respect somebody’s conscience while still informing them, in the most neutral non-coercive terms, that heaven is a lie and you have the slides to prove it. But — strictly speaking — he doesn’t say anything in the other direction either.
What does Clifford believe? He believes that other people have a claim against the delusions and illusions of others. “If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it–the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.” http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/w_k_clifford/ethics_of_belief.html
Strictly speaking, this passage from Clifford is also consistent with keeping your mouth shut with grandma. But it also seems more sympathetic to (b) than Wood. Wood emphasizes that the crime is against yourself and your autonomy, and is disrespectful to others not to do your best; while Clifford emphasizes (at least in that passage) that the crime is against everyone, and something everyone has a categorical claim against. But since these are matters of interpretation, we have to talk only in degrees: Clifford is closer to affirming (a) and (b), Wood not so much.
No, that wouldn’t follow. And one can use fictional cases to illustrate an epistemic principle (about what belief-forming policies one should or may follow). The principle itself would be interesting even if it applied in hardly any, or even no, actual circumstances.
But, in fact, the relevant principle does apply in real cases. Re. the experimental treatment: there’s room for doubt about the odds of its success; this introduces uncertainty about what the odds really are; perhaps all that Jo may rationally conclude is that the odds of success are somewhere between 30% and 70% (but really in experimental cases there’s unlikely to be even that much precision about the upper and lower bounds). There’s nothing wrong (irrational) about her believing that the treatment is likely to work.
But there are other cases that illustrate the point at least equally well. Larry’s getting ready for a job interview and beforehand convinces himself that he’s a shoe-in for the job as long as he appears confident and gives good answers to the interviewers’ questions. Marvin would like to make a marriage proposal and tries to steel his resolve by convincing himself that his partner will most likely say ‘yes’. In both these cases it’s hard to imagine what basis there could be for making precise probability claims. Suppose the evidence (vague as it is) gives conclusive support to neither optimistim nor pessimism. But if Larry is the sort of person who would perform less well (be less enthusiastic) if he thought the odds of success were only very roughly 50/50, then I see nothing wrong with his trying to convince himself that he’s very likely to get the job as long as does well in the interview. Similarly, for Marvin, whose fear of rejection is so great that he’ll never propose if he takes his prospects of success to be roughly 50/50 — if confidence about the relationship and his partner’s attitude towards him makes him less self-conscious and more caring, and more likely to propose marriage, then I see nothing wrong in his forming an optimistic belief that goes beyond the evidence.
In these cases, the act of forming the optimistic belief (and behaving on the basis of it) increases the likelihood of its coming true. So, a belief that (prior to adoption) was not warranted by the available evidence is nonetheless pragmatically justified by the good consequences likely to follow its adoption.
Of course, you can change the examples so that the beliefs are likely to produce bad results, or you can worry that there might be unforeseen risks involved in adopting the optimistic belief. But that’s a recipe for paralysis — the same moves can be made for any act that one is considering. Or, in your terms, pretty much any act (including the adoption of a belief) can “have consequences for our other beliefs and for our actions, and we might be wrong in understanding all of these.” In all such cases, one just makes an informed, though of course fallible, assessment of the likely results of the act in question.
You add that the ‘positive thinking’ approach (in the medical case) will probably lead people to make additional judgments that are harmful. But compare: it might turn out that disabusing someone of his religious delusions is likely to make him depressed, or will likely result in his becoming an egoist who believes that morality is a sham. Even if some study were to establish such effects of losing one’s religion, that would not be a good reason to shut up about religion. It would instead be a good reason for showing people that there’s no good reason to be depressed, or to become an egoist, once they abandon their religious views. Similarly, even if it’s true that positive thinking in the medical context often leads people to adopt a host of other, unwelcome attitudes, that would only show the importance of arguing against the unwelcome attitudes and showing that they really aren’t supported by positive thinking.
Re. your last points: I know what Clifford says, and from the excerpts posted above I know some of what Wood says. I just don’t think they’re right about this.
Thanks for your comments and for referring me to the Wood paper (which I’ll look up). I doubt that I’ve convinced you of anything, but I’ve enjoyed this debate.
[…] who has been called out by ‘Siris’ (with John S Wilkins agreeing to some extent), and Ophelia Benson has also taken it on. Despite the objections of Siris (and having now read the above linked Stanford Encyclopedia entry) […]
You’re not very bright, are you?
You haven’t provided any evidence concerning how Wood or Clifford would answer b), and in fact admitted above that you didn’t know.
The only part that’s relevant here is the former (it isn’t at issue that Wood and Clifford think we all have the obligation to face the facts we know of and not to avoid facts inconvenient for our beliefs). You haven’t shown that Clifford or Wood have said anything about a strict obligation to have that conversation (nor have you given any details of the hypothetical). You’re making a claim about where they stand concerning certain types of action. To support it, you need to provide evidence that they have engaged in andor advocated it. You haven’t done so.
No. Inferences from arguments about principles to actions or positions concerning actions.
I’m not misreading you. You’re simply wrong.
What is the “anti-grandma camp” in terms of actions? What forms of confrontation are they pushing?
And this is an invalid inference. An affirmative answer to a) is consistent with a wide range of behaviors in terms of confrontation. The only evidence we have seen here is that Wood and Clifford both have written about the obligation to believe according to the evidence. Wood also supports laws in cases in which people’s lives are diectly at stake, and explicitly opposes coercion in this context outside of those cases, which would be a violation of human rights. This, as is living according to this principle regarding your own beliefs, is consistent with a clear, strong evidentialism. So are many other behaviors performed or advocated. You cannot validly infer from a strong statement of a position that anyone is advocating any specific behaviors in any specific circumstances.
This is important because it is not only wrong but noxious, especially when we’re talking about people who are already marginalized. This is just the invalid leap heddle made when he called Coyne an extremist at Russell Blackford’s blog. It’s just the invalid leap that Henry Gee made at Pharyngula. It’s just the invalid leap contained in references to “militant atheists” and that Mooney and Tom Johnson played on with PZ and Coyne – the idea that since everyone knew Coyne and PZ and Dawkins are openly atheist and make strong criticisms of religion in their writings, it follows that they advocate the behavior in the fabricated story or could reasonably be read as encouraging it. Openly opposing the NCSE’s having a faith page where they cater to the argument that science and religion are compatible is consistent with our views. So is going into a church during a service and disrupting it to shout that people shouldn’t believe. Both are consistent; neither follows naturally, and neither should be assumed simply from a clear statement of principles.
Blather. I’ve asked you to give some content to your own words several times.
What is? “This camp is people who practice or advocate the following behaviors: ________ in _______ circumstances.” Fill in the blanks.
They are not there.
But you haven’t provided anything about b). You’ve neither defined the confrontational acts you’re talking about nor shown where Clifford or Wood (or I) engage in or advocate them. Moreover, I think any reasonable person recognizes that appropriate behaviors depend of circumstances and specifics.
What camp? What “obligations to argue people out of their fantasies” are characterized by this?
a) Define the position. b) Provide evidence.
It isn’t consistent in that a single person does not a camp make. But you have only made what are to this point baseless assertions about people’s positions.
You’re misreading him. He explicitly throughout that piece shoots down the idea of exceptions. It’s a central point of the article.
Listen to me very carefully: The word “dovish” does not apply here. He’s not talking about obligations for confrontation. His confrontation is writing the article. He’s talking about moral principles.
The duty to believe according to the evidence as a fundamental moral principle is the point of the article. I really have to wonder if you’ve actually read the thing.
Does he say anything about this at all? Where? More to the point, does he say anything about how he thinks we should go about persuading people (beyond writing articles)? What does he say?
That’s not “even more dovish,” because this word doesn’t apply. Look at the context. He’s pointing out that we recognize this obligation in law and rules when lives are directly at stake, even punishing people for failing to meet this obligation. So people shouldn’t be surprised that this principle is not limited to these extreme situations or jobs – they’re not eexceptional cases in that sense. Then he points out, to stave off people reading things incorrectly, that he is of course not advocating coercion beyond those circumstances, which would be wrong. He says nothing there about whether or how or in what circumstances or how he thinks we should persuade others of hard truths or the moral principle itself.
He doesn’t say anything about it at all. Nothing.
And you can by not saying anything to them personally. These are both consistent with Wood’s statement of principle.
He’s not talking about what people should do in terms of confrontation. Are you seriously suggesting that evidentialists have to disavow every action that, while consistent with their positions, they don’t advocate, and that it’s valid to assume that they are advocating all of those actions they do not openly disavow in every article? You’re ridiculous. You have no basis for this at all. I agree with Wood, and you don’t know anything at all about what forms of confrontation I endorse beyond posting on blogs and those I explicitly have advocated. It is illegitimate to ascribe to people positions without evidence.
Any way of speaking, it’s consistent.
No. It’s the same argument Wood is making (without the sin language). And you haven’t shown anything by either of them addressing b).
It is morally wrong, he argues. Very clearly.
They’re making the same argument.
You have provided no evidence for this claim, and should stop making it.
I’m minded to some extent of the BeeGees for some awful reason, see: “I started a joke” (though for the image conscious, you can always reference the Faith No More cover if that helps).
Maybe I’m more tolerant of provocateurs than some, but I thought I got it when I read the article, I even chuckled, a fair bit. Anyway, the question posed was “Can we chose what to believe in?” Barber says yes, it is all a choice, I don’t see a problem there.
Early on Barber states:
First, in some cases I’d agree, hence removal of most mirrors in my house, some truths I don’t need to know, and heck Hollywood taught us important moral lessons about the truth with “Liar Liar”…
Sorry…
It’s not a defense; it’s just maybe I read it differently with some tongue in cheek. The truth is overrated, so right there Barber’s saying she’s not interested in the inaccuracies of her analogies and statements and that rationalisation isn’t a part of her choice. But it is a choice and not a natural state, that’s important.
Everything else, to me, was the bait cast out in order to attract snapping and scrapping in comments, the picking at the minutia to prove the point of the minutia.
Yes, it would.
Who cares about interesting? Is it right? In any case, it’s silly to discuss an epistemic principle with no real-world applications.
What real case are you referring to?
As I said above, uncertainty is a valid part of evidence.
I’m not sure that this is so, but these are rough odds.
Will work. Of course there’s something irrational about it. If the odds are roughly 30-70%, that’s what they are.
Are you serious? They don’t have to be precise. Without going into all of the various bases for thinking you have a chance at getting a job (e.g., your qualifications for said job, the number of people being interviewed), and allowing for immense uncertainty on that front, someone proposing marriage presumably has been in a relationship with the proposee and should have some reasonable basis for thinking she or he will say yes before proposing. (And I mean should in a moral sense. Proposing marriage to someone will have effects on that person, and it’s selfish not to think these through based on evidence before doing it.)
Stick to talking about beliefs, please.
Performance is more than enthusiasm, and excessive enthusiasm may conflict with other aspects.
But in this case as well, you haven’t thought through all of the potential consequences of this belief. In my personal experience, it makes for more pain, in fact. Can you at least try to think of some on your own? I don’t think I should have to spell things out in every case. What’s wrong with it more generally is that it violates a basic moral duty in a way that is epistemically corrupting.
Unknown odds are not the same as 50/50 odds. They’re unknown.
Huh?
What if his partner doesn’t want to marry him? What if his partner will be made uncomfortable by the proposal and it will change the relationship for the worse?
You have no way of knowing this, and you’re coming very close to The Secret territory here, which is seriously creepy territory.
You don’t know what these consequences are, and it couldn’t be justified anyway.
Or no results. It’s not a matter of changing the examples, but of appreciating that beliefs you think likely or surely to have only “good” results (and the question of “for whom?” is discussed by Wood) have numerous potentials.
That’s a central point.
Of course it isn’t. It’s a recipe for trying to understand reality and behaving in a way that is consistent with it, especially given that our actions have consequences for other people. If the odds of a given treatment working are approximately 20%, those are the odds. If they’re unknown, they’re unknown (though, again, there are broader odds). If you’re considering the treatment, you need to weigh it against risks and side effects and inconvenience and alternatives, etc., based on knowledge, incomplete though it may be, of these. And someone could simply go into a job interview thinking “I don’t know my chances. I’m going to do my best, which is all I can do, and hope it works out.”
?
This assessment isn’t the only thing at stake, and, as Wood argues, is certainly likely to be fallible (and biased in a certain direction) in a case in which someone is adopting a belief known not to be based on evidence.
You’ve referred to a specific belief – that a treatment will work.
Potentially. And not just to themselves, which is important here.
Don’t shift back and forth. We were talking about people convincing themselves of beliefs not grounded in evidence.
How do you arrive at the likelihood of this? Are you claiming this across the board? Why are you not taking into account that the person’s religious morality might be harmful to others, or cause him depression in the long run, or any of the other myriad possibilities? Why are you ignoring the point that holding up a standard of evidentialism is morally right and indeed probably necessary for our survival as a species?
Wood:
—
I don’t know what you’re trying to say here.
This is way too vague.
Delusional, non-evidence-based thinking, is an “unwelcome attitude.” And the negative beliefs or actions (and in thinking about negative outcomes you need to think about not just the person but others with whom she or he interacts in any way) are as much the potential outcomes of the unevidenced belief as the positive ones.
Well, that’s not an argument.
Here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fyi.php#comment-981847
(I also really do recommend the Ehrenreich book.)
Thanks. That’s nice of you to say.
Oh,
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/faith_is_a_choice_made_without.php#comment-2715541
It’s strange how some people seem to posit a binary: unevidenced beliefs that taking an action will have a positive result and or unevidenced beliefs that it will have a negative result (however these are defined). This is silly.
(Also, as I suggested above, I think you should have – based on an honest evaluation of the evidence, a far higher assessment of the likelihood of a positive response than 50/50 to propose. But this should be, again, based on an honest reading of the evidence and most certainly not on what helps you to steel yourself.)
praymont:
Doesn’t it? It would seem to require a nonphysical pattern, if not a nonphysical substance.
Scientifically, we know that what makes our minds minds, and makes them our individual minds, is encoded in the structure and function of the brain—memories, personality, beliefs, desires, etc. are all in the brain.
When you die, the structure and function of the brain fall apart. You cease to exist, like a program running in a computer that gets smashed up and melted down. The intensely patterned process that is you just isn’t patterned that way any more, so you don’t exist any more.
For you to survive, the mostly computational process that is you would have to survive the destruction of the mostly computational object that it’s a process in, or perhaps be uploaded into a compatible mostly computational object—one that just happens to be architecturally very similar to the one you got from evolution and development, at a certain level of abstraction. (Not likely!) And even then, it’s not clear that would meaningfully be you, rather than a copy of you that picks up where you left off.
Saying that we surive our physical death is like saying that my car survives being smashed and melted down and recycled.
I could assert that its essential carness somehow survives the destruction of the physical car, and even that its individuality survives, too—the essence of that car survives.
I could assert that, but I would be wrong. It’s a dumb idea, maybe not even wrong, because the car has no essence beyond its structure and function, and no individuality beyond a continuously existing pattern of physical pieces.
Given what we know about the mind/brain, belief life after death is a similar category mistake. Saying that defending the idea is a “tall order” is an understatement.
More to the point, I’m pretty fucking sure it’s a task that H.E. Baber is just not up to, so her promotion of such ideas with a blithe excuse that it makes her, personally feel good is pathetic at best, and reprehensible at worst.
She’s the kind of pseudo-philosopher that my philosopher friends complain about, who get attention from the larger public in inverse proportion to the soundness of their views—they’re “interesting” precisely because they spout outrageous crap—and thus give philosophy a bad name.
That’s just contemptibly irresponsible.
Lots of false statements there. To take one example, you persist in falsely attributing to me the idea that Clifford and Wood are in the same category, when I’ve said they’re not. What you mean to say is that you think I’m wrong about that claim. But I’ve given you textual evidence to think they’re not in the same category — look at the different origins of their claims (sin against humanity vs. self-respect and obligation to give your best). You might think that these aren’t good enough reasons to make the attribution of one being closer than the other. We don’t agree.
The mistake you make here evidently comes from your worries about how the accommodationists are making a simple inference from obligation to believe to obligation to persuade. Fine. In that case, you should tell Eugenie Scott to be as careful as I’ve been. For I’ve explicitly recognized the difference between (a) and (b), and then I’ve laid out the evidence in such a way that you can estimate where people fall on a spectrum based on the reasons they’ve explicitly maintained. You don’t think I can do that, for mysterious reasons. Fine. But it’s absolutely not the same kind of argument that the accommodationists make.
Why does it matter? Because my critique of Baber at the start of the thread involves making a connection between belief and assertion. So if you had your way, I would owe Baber an apology.
Wrong. Why don’t you try answering some of the basic questions asked?
First, you haven’t even given these categories any content or justified your categorizations with any evidence, so it matters not. Second, I’ve done nothing but repeat your words, presenting them both as closer in their position on b) to some undefined extreme than “most of us,” though Wood to a lesser extent than Clifford.
But this conclusion in the last sentence, dealing with behavior, is baseless. It does not follow from either of their writings about this ethical obligation.
They are arguing the same thing. Wood cites and quotes Clifford. Wood is saying we have a moral duty to do this, as Clifford was. Not fulfilling a moral duty – and Wood talks about this extensively as a duty not only to ourselves, and therefore others, but to others – is immoral in the same sense for both. You’ve shown no significant difference, and anyone can read both pieces. But this is really a side issue because it deals with the presentation of the principle and not with advocating confrontational actions or not. You haven’t made any case for your assertion regarding either one and your b).
Of course I don’t, because you haven’t even defined what they’re allegedly closer to, and to the extent that you have – it has something to do with individual confrontational behavior – you’ve offered nothing in the way of evidence for your assertion for either Clifford or Wood. It may exist, but you haven’t presented it, and it’s certainly not in either of those pieces.
You and the people I referred to above are making claims or insinuations about someone’s position on actions in furtherance of promoting an understanding of an obligation from the simple statement of such an obligation. This is invalid. I have radical political beliefs. It doesn’t follow that I advocate terrorism in furtherance of them. It would be invalid to assume that if I don’t advocate extreme actions by your definition and understanding of what’s most consistent that I do not hold these beliefs. I agree with Wood’s argument in that article, but that doesn’t mean we would agree on the appropriate actions in furtherance of promoting it. I don’t know what he thinks about this beyond that he apparently sees writing journal articles about it as worthwhile (though I can’t be certain about that). Aside from that, I don’t know what forms of action, including confrontational argumentation, he advocates, and neither do you.
You haven’t been careful at all. If she hasn’t, either, I’d be happy to tell her so. I don’t know what you’re referring to. What’s with this ludicrous argument from authority?
You haven’t laid out any evidence about even the b spectrum itself, although I’ve asked you to several times. Unless the principles are explicitly is about actions (e.g., “I hold as a principle that no one should ever use violence in support of a political cause”), which isn’t the case here, you cannot assume based on someone’s statement of a moral obligation which behaviors that person is engaging in or advocating in furtherance of that position. Since a large number of behaviors – from attempting to apply the principle in forming your own beliefs to teaching it to your children to being open about your skepticism to writing journal articles to protesting at church services to confronting your relatives on their deathbeds – or any subset of these and others are consistent with holding that to be a moral obligation, in order to claim that someone is advocating any particular behavior you need evidence of their doing so.
They’re not at all mysterious. I’ve spelled them out more than once above.
It is the argument that has been made in the cases I described above. Do you want some quotes?
For the reasons I’ve described. It’s wrong – intellectually and morally – to attribute to people positions, vaguely defined as these may be, without an evidentiary basis for doing so. It’s particularly bad when you’re making such claims about members of a marginalized and stereotyped group. It’s wrong.
No idea what you’re talking about.
By the way, Clifford:
That is simply wonderful. But then, I like Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir. :)
Not that anyone asked, but I think this focus on confrontation or non-, though it is extremely important, is only part of the issue. Long term, the emphasis should also of course be on making our shared institutions and public policies as evidence-based as possible and on helping people learn the skills and habit of critical thinking, assessing the evidential value of fact claims, and intellectual honesty.
Evidently you don’t, because you’re averse to scrolling upward.
And this single phrase summarizes our conversations quite well. Other people can, and do, both understand and engage, despite whatever flaws are on my end. You don’t.
It occurs to me that everything I’ve said here could be made resolutely clear to you if I just substituted my initial reaction of [img-facepalm] with a Venn diagram. Then the claims you are disputing on the subject of Wood and Clifford being “closer to” X would be revealed to be the trivialities that they are.
Getting back to the most important point. While you may not be a moron, you’ve type-casted yourself in that role. At minimum, you should come to appreciate that “?” and “What?” are not replies that impress anyone with the sense that you have reading skills. That’s what I mean when I say that half your comments could be replaced with “derp” or lolcats without content loss. I’m serious — it’s not just a cheap insult. Surely at some level you understand that you’re just not engaged in a conversation. You’re giving bite-sized sermons that suck the light out of the room instead of providing any.
In all honesty, what frustrates me the most here is that occasionally you have thoughts and inquiries that are interesting and relevant, and sometimes even plausible. But so far, your critiques are misdirected because they’re based on obstinate misreadings of what I’ve said, propped up by premises that you already know I reject, against evidence that I’ve presented and you’ve ignored, and intermingled with insinuations that are created specifically to be personally offensive. And then your critiques quickly turn into entrenched delusions when it is pointed out to you that they don’t match up with either what has been written, shown, or intended. Actually, it’s slightly worse that that. It seems like you’re entrenched beforehand — so no matter how ad hoc your reaction is, and no matter how novel the claim you’re responding to is, you know what side you’re on. That’s fantastic.
But since we’re now evidently at the level of comraderie where you feel comfortable trading advice, here is mine: you should either read very carefully and then puff up like a pigeon, or you should read carelessly and make yourself sound human enough that nobody minds. People tolerate House M.D. because he’s usually right. People don’t tolerate That Asshole Who Doesn’t Listen, because there’s not enough to be gained from it to invest the time. Don’t turn this into an issue of nasty vs. nice; it’s a question of being an belligerent fool versus someone vaguely unpleasant who has a reasoned axe to grind.
There was no substance anywhere in that diatribe. I understand that as an admission that you have no case…which I knew already, of course.