Parfit on brute facts

Derek Parfit’s article “The Puzzle of Reality: Why Does the Universe Exist?” has been reprinted several times since it first appeared in the Times Literary Supplement in 1992, and for good reason.  It’s an admirably clear and comprehensive survey of the various answers that have been given to that question, and of the problems facing some of them.  (Unsurprisingly, I think Parfit’s treatment of theism, though not unfair, is nevertheless superficial.  But to be fair to Parfit, the article is only meant to be a survey.)

Walter Mitty atheism

While writing up my recent post on Jerry Coyne’s defense of his fellow New Atheist Lawrence Krauss, I thought: “Why can’t these guys be more like Keith Parsons and Jeff Lowder?”  (Many readers will recall the very pleasant and fruitful exchange which, at Jeff’s kind invitation, Keith and I had not too long ago at The Secular Outpost.)  As it happens, Jeff has now commented on my exchange with Coyne.  Urging his fellow atheists not to follow Coyne’s example, Jeff writes:

If I were to sum up Feser’s reply in one word, it would be, “Ouch!” I think Feser’s reply is simply devastating to Coyne and I found myself in agreement with most of his points.

Links of interest

Has mathematics misled modern science?  Bryan Appleyard, channeling physicist Lee Smolin and philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger, makes the case.

But maybe mathematical elegance should trump empirical evidence?  Some physicists seem to think so.  In Nature, physicists George Ellis and Joe Silk will have none of it.  Further commentary, and a roundup of other responses, from physicist Peter Woit. 

At the OUP Blog, John Searle on the intentionality of perceptual experience.  At the same blog: Federica Russo and Phyllis Illari on causation in science and Tad Schmaltz on causation in Aristotle and Hume.

Philosopher John Lamont on Thomism, “manualism,” and the nouvelle théologie, at Rorate Caeli. 

Della Rocca on PSR

The principle of sufficient reason (PSR), in a typical Neo-Scholastic formulation, states that “there is a sufficient reason or adequate necessary objective explanation for the being of whatever is and for all attributes of any being” (Bernard Wuellner, Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy, p. 15).  I discuss and defend PSR at some length in Scholastic Metaphysics (see especially pp. 107-8 and 137-46).  Prof. Michael Della Rocca defends the principle in his excellent article “PSR,” which appeared in Philosopher’s Imprint in 2010 but which (I’m embarrassed to say) I only came across the other day.

Among the arguments for PSR I put forward in Scholastic Metaphysics are a retorsion argument to the effect that if PSR were false, we could have no reason to trust the deliverances of our cognitive faculties, including any grounds we might have for doubting or denying PSR; and an argument to the effect that a critic of PSR cannot coherently accept even the scientific explanations he does accept, unless he acknowledges that there are no brute facts and thus that PSR is true.  Della Rocca’s argument bears a family resemblance to this second line of argument.

Summer web surfing

My Claremont Review of Books review of John Gray’s The Silence of Animals is now available for free online.

Keith Parsons has now wrapped up our exchange on atheism and morality at The Secular Outpost.

The latest from David Oderberg: “Could There Be a Superhuman Species?”  Details here.

Liberty Island is an online magazine devoted to conservatism and pop culture.  Music writer extraordinaire (and friend of this blog) Dan LeRoy is on board. 

James Franklin asks “What is mathematics about?”  (See also his new book An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics.)

A second exchange with Keith Parsons, Part II

Prof. Keith Parsons has posted his own opening statement in our second exchange, which is devoted to the topic of atheism, naturalism, and morality.  (An index of the posts in our first exchange can be found here.)  As it happens, there is a remarkable amount of agreement between what Keith says in his newest post and what I said in my opening post.  Both of us take a broadly Aristotelian approach to ethics, grounding the good for human beings in the biology of human nature.  Unsurprisingly, though, there is also disagreement.  I have argued that human biology can have moral import only if interpreted in light of an Aristotelian metaphysics.  Keith argues that it ought to be interpreted in light of a purely naturalistic metaphysics.  He would interpret the biological functions that ground what is good for us, not as instances of immanent teleology of the sort the traditional Aristotelian affirms, but rather in terms of Darwinian natural selection.  As Keith indicates, in this regard his views parallel those of Larry Arnhart.

A second exchange with Keith Parsons, Part I

I’d like once again to thank Keith Parsons, and moderator Jeffery Jay Lowder, for the very fruitful first exchange we had a few weeks ago.  You can find links to each installment here.  Per Jeff’s suggestion, our second exchange will be on the topic: ”Can morality have a rational justification if atheism or naturalism is true?”  Jeff has proposed that we keep our opening statements to 2500 words or less, and I will try to rein in my logorrheic self and abide by that limitation.  That will be difficult, though, given that my answer to the question is: “Yes and No.”

Let me explain.  I’ll begin by making a point I’m sure Keith will agree with.  Many theists and atheists alike suppose that to link morality to religion is to claim that we could have no reason to be moral if we did not anticipate punishments and rewards in an afterlife.  I am sure Keith would reject such a line of argument, and I reject it too.  To do or refrain from doing something merely because one seeks a reward or fears reprisals is not morality.  I would also reject the related but distinct claim that what makes an action morally good or bad is merely that God has commanded it, as if goodness and badness were a matter of sheer fiat on the part of a cosmic dictator who has the power to impose his will on everyone else.  This too would not really be morality at all, but just Saddam Hussein writ large.

I was wrong about Keith Parsons

Longtime readers know that Prof. Keith Parsons and I have not always gotten along.  Some years ago he famously expressed the view that the arguments of natural theology are a “fraud” that do not rise to the level of a “respectable philosophical position” worthy of “serious academic attention.”  I hit back pretty hard at the time, and our subsequent remarks about each other over the years have not been kind.  I had come to the conclusion that Prof. Parsons was unwilling to engage seriously with the best arguments of natural theology.  But I am delighted to say that I was wrong.  Prof. Parsons has said that his earlier remarks about the field were “unfortunate” and “intemperate and inappropriate, however qualified.”  He has shown admirable grace and good sportsmanship in his willingness to bury the hatchet despite how heated things had been between us.  And he has most definitely engaged seriously with the arguments of traditional natural theology in our recent exchange.  I take back the unkind remarks I have made about him in the past.  He is a good guy.

Keith is now wrapping up his side in our initial exchange.  If you have not done so already, give it a read.  In the near future we will have an exchange on the subject of atheism and morality.  I look forward to it.  Keith has also expressed to me his admiration for the quality of the comments readers have been making on our exchange.  I agree, and I thank the readers both of my blog and of Keith’s blog over at Secular Outpost.

Can you explain something by appealing to a “brute fact”?

Prof. Keith Parsons and I have been having a very cordial and fruitful exchange.  He has now posted a response to my most recent post, on the topic of “brute facts” and explanation.  You can read his response here, and find links to the other posts in our exchange here.  Since by the rules of our exchange Keith has the last word, I’ll let things stand as they are for now and let the reader imagine how I might respond.

Another one of my old sparring partners, Prof. Robert Oerter, raises an interesting objection of his own in the combox of my recent post, on which I will comment.  I had argued that if we think of laws of nature as regularities, then no appeal to such laws can explain anything if the most fundamental such laws are regarded as inexplicable “brute facts.”  Oerter writes:

An exchange with Keith Parsons, Part IV

Here I respond to Keith Parsons’ fourth post.  Jeff Lowder’s index of existing and forthcoming installments in my exchange with Prof. Parsons can be found here.

Keith, as we near the end of our first exchange, I want to thank you again for taking the time to respond to the questions I raised, and as graciously as you have.  You maintain in your most recent post that explanations legitimately can and indeed must ultimately trace to an unexplained “brute fact,” and that philosophers who think otherwise have failed to give a convincing account of what it would be for the deepest level of reality to be self-explanatory and thus other than such a “brute fact.”  Unsurprisingly, I disagree on both counts.  I would say that appeals to “brute facts” are incoherent, and that the nature of an ultimate self-explanatory principle can be made intelligible by reference to notions that are well understood and independently motivated.

An exchange with Keith Parsons, Part III

Here I respond to Keith Parsons’ third post.  Jeff Lowder’s index of existing and forthcoming installments in my exchange with Prof. Parsons can be found here.

I’d like to respond now, Keith, to your comments about Bertrand Russell’s objection to First Cause arguments.  Let me first make some general remarks about the objection and then I’ll get to your comments.  Russell wrote, in Why I Am Not a Christian:

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause.  If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.  (pp. 6-7)

An exchange with Keith Parsons, Part II

Here I respond to Keith Parsons’ second post.  Jeff Lowder is keeping track of the existing and forthcoming installments in my exchange with Prof. Parsons here.

Keith, thanks for these remarks.  The question we are now considering is: Why would the material universe or anything in it (an electron or a quark, say) require a cause to conserve it in existence?  Your view is that the supposition that it requires one is “gratuitous.”  You write: “Is there anything missing from an electron that would have to be filled in or supplied from outside?  There is nothing in our physical theories that indicates such a lack.”

An exchange with Keith Parsons, Part I

Prof. Keith Parsons and I will be having an exchange to be moderated by Jeffery Jay Lowder of The Secular Outpost.  Prof. Parsons has initiated the exchange with a response to the first of four questions I put to him last week.  What follows is a brief reply.

Keith, thank you for your very gracious response.  Like Jeff Lowder, you raise the issue of the relative amounts of attention I and other theistic philosophers pay to “New Atheist” writers like Dawkins, Harris, et al. as opposed to the much more serious arguments of atheist philosophers like Graham Oppy, Jordan Howard Sobel, and many others.  Let me begin by reiterating what I said last week in response to Jeff, namely that I have nothing but respect for philosophers like the ones you cite and would never lump them in with Dawkins and Co.  And as I showed in my response to Jeff, I have in fact publicly praised many of these writers many times over the years for the intellectual seriousness of their work.

Four questions for Keith Parsons [UPDATED 2/21]

Keith Parsons’ feelings are, it seems, still hurt over some frank things I said about him a few years ago (here and here).  It seems to me that when a guy dismisses as a “fraud” an entire academic field to which many thinkers of universally acknowledged genius have contributed, and maintains that its key arguments do not even rise to the level of a “respectable philosophical position” worthy of “serious academic attention,” then when its defenders hit back, he really ought to have a thicker skin and more of a sense of humor about himself.  But that’s just me.

Cosmological argument roundup

A year ago today I put up a post with the title “So you think you understand the cosmological argument?”  It generated quite a bit of discussion, and has since gotten more page views than any other post in the history of this blog.  To celebrate its first anniversary -- and because the argument, rightly understood (as it usually isn’t), is the most important and compelling of arguments for classical theism -- I thought a roundup of various posts relevant to the subject might be in order.

Classical theism roundup

Classical theism is the conception of God that has prevailed historically within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Western philosophical theism generally.  Its religious roots are biblical, and its philosophical roots are to be found in the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian traditions.  Among philosophers it is represented by the likes of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Maimonides, and Avicenna.  I have emphasized many times that you cannot properly understand the arguments for God’s existence put forward by classical theists, or their conception of the relationship between God and the world and between religion and morality, without an understanding of how radically classical theism differs from the “theistic personalism” or “neo-theism” that prevails among some prominent contemporary philosophers of religion.  (Brian Davies classifies Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, and Charles Hartshorne as theistic personalists.  “Open theism” would be another species of the genus, and I have argued that Paley-style “design arguments” have at least a tendency in the theistic personalist direction.)   

Steng operation

I recently linked to philosopher of physics David Albert’s take down of Lawrence Krauss’s book A Universe From Nothing.  (My own review of Krauss will soon appear in First Things.)  A reader calls my attention to this blog post in which Victor Stenger -- Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, and author of several atheist tomes -- rides to the rescue of Krauss against Albert.  (If only the other philosophically incompetent New Atheists had such a knight in shining armor!  O Dawkins, where is your Stenger?  O Coyne, where is your Victor?)

Some varieties of atheism

A religion typically has both practical and theoretical aspects.  The former concern its moral teachings and rituals, the latter its metaphysical commitments and the way in which its practical teachings are systematically articulated.  An atheist will naturally reject not only the theoretical aspects, but also the practical ones, at least to the extent that they presuppose the theoretical aspects.  But different atheists will take different attitudes to each of the two aspects, ranging from respectful or even regretful disagreement to extreme hostility.  And distinguishing these various possible attitudes can help us to understand how the New Atheism differs from earlier varieties.

The brutal facts about Keith Parsons

At The Secular Outpost, Keith Parsons comments on all the commentary about him.  (HT: Bill Vallicella)  If you check out his combox, you’ll see that he there accuses me of “Parsons-bashing.”  I think a fair-minded reader of my recent post about him would agree that I wasn’t really criticizing him so much as those who’ve made a big deal out of his “calling it quits” on philosophy of religion.  All the same, I did have a few good-natured yucks at his expense, so I don’t blame him for being a little sore at me.

I do blame him, though, for providing further evidence that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, as he does in another one of his comments.  So, this time let’s really do a little Parsons-bashing, shall we?

Readers respond

Some reader combox comments on the Keith Parsons pseudo-event that shouldn’t get lost in the ether – edited by me for typos, and followed by my clever rejoinders:

Ryan writes:

I think I know whom you primarily have in mind when you speak of "those for whom philosophy is only ever politics by other means." I don't wish to mention him by name, though, for he is a notorious self-Googler.

Yes. And he’s so vain, he probably thinks this post is about him.

Untenured writes:

Compare the reception that Parsons received to the one Antony Flew got. Parsons is a nobody; a two-bit net skeptic who writes a lot of so-so replies to Plantinga and Co. Flew, on the other hand, is a fairly prominent philosopher who has a number of well-known articles and books to his credit. When Parsons says that the case for God is a fraud: "Devastating! Maybe the case for Theism IS a fraud!" When Flew abandons Atheism: "He's soft in the head! Doesn't know enough ‘science’!”

Good point. But since Religion Dispatches didn’t mind reheating the months-old Parsons “story,” perhaps they’ll be serving up the years-old Flew story next. (Apparently their “dispatches” aren’t posted with dispatch.) On the other hand, in fairness to Parsons, Eric writes:

When this "news" first came to my attention, I wondered, "What if [insert prominent theistic philosopher of religion] announced that he was no longer going to do any work in philosophy of religion because the arguments for atheism were mind numbingly bad – fraudulent, even (to use Parson's term, which he concedes was hyperbolic)? Would we ever see a post on Leiter Reports like this: "This is Striking: Peter Kreeft Quits Philosophy of Religion, Claims the Case for Atheism is a Fraud," followed by serious analysis of Kreeft's claims about the overall weakness of the case for atheism? Not likely. (In Parson's defense, I asked him this question, and he said that he thinks his decision vis-a-vis philosophy of religion has "zero epistemic significance," and that he was surprised by all the attention it got in the blogosphere.)

Interesting. Glad to hear that Parsons himself, unlike certain people who have been pushing this “story,” isn’t as full of it as the diaper I just changed.

Finally, some fun from MMcCue, who writes:

A poem relating to "professional philosophers"

I am a Prestigious Professor of Philosophy,
At a quite Elite University.

I get generous grants,
To sit on my pants,

And write books that nobody reads

Yup. And to bitch and moan about his "workload," too.