Trying to Help: What can philosophy do?

Tone is hard to get right in social media, unless you write with the clarity of CS Lewis and the charity of LM Montgomery. Since I do neither, persistence has proven to be key. If two people can keep talking, progress is possible. Trolling personalities will hit and block, but all of us interested in learning will try to keep things going.*

On the Anonymous 

Chatting with part of the Internet atheist community tests boundaries for me as many are anonymous. I understand if a person is from a country where atheists are persecuted. Atheists are also unpopular in parts of the US and so people might feel (relatively) unsafe putting views out there. However, if a person is arguing against religion hard, making very strong claims against religious people, then anonymous people lack the courage of strong convictions.

Furthermore, expertise counts (as I argue here) and this is impossible to measure in an anonymous account. If a person with a medical degree tells me something in medicine, I assume (with justification) they know more than I do. On the other hand, if a person with little philosophical training begins to discuss logical terms (for example: “necessity”), then I try to clarify to make sure that we are really using the words in the same way. Social media interactions are by nature brief and knowing how to respond is hard enough without knowing if the person talking actually knows formal philosophical terms or if they are just using words they have heard in philosophical arguments but giving them street level meanings.

Anonymity enables pretended expertise as well.

Finally, while there is a false appeal to authority (my degree in philosophy gives me no particular expertise to opine on global warming), there is also hard won authority that comes from an expert giving expert opinion in her field of study. Of course, in the end the argument should be examined from any source, but time is limited. If a person who does not know Russian says not-so-mainstream things to me about Tolstoy’s works, they will have a heavy burden of proof to show they know their stuff.

On the Usefulness of Philosophy 

Every field has a downside. Lawyers friends get asked for free advice all the time or put up with lawyer jokes. Medical doctors are asked to diagnose, at a party, the particular complaints of friends. Politicians have no friends. (Just kidding!)

Philosophy is a discipline many people use or think they use while having no training to do so. Why? They feel like “philosophy” is just word salad or “gets no place.” Anyone can do it.

Like psychology many technical terms in philosophy have passed into common use, but with different meanings. This makes communicating even harder.

Philosophy also deals with concepts (like existence or how we know what we know) that stir up strong opinions. If you doubt that try the existence of God, where all kinds of “arguments” for and against the existence of God rumble around the Internet!

Americans have a long sad history of anti-intellectualism. We have a good impulse not to worship credentials or authority, but that can easily turn into an excuse for sloppy thinking. Quite a few Americans assume they know enough just to dismiss philosophy, usually with a few simple arguments (“Philosophy does not make progress.”)

Many do not realize that as they make these arguments, they are doing philosophy. If a person asserts a theory of knowledge and what is known and can be known, then that person is doing epistemology, a discipline hard enough to do with training! Most often such a lay person ends up being confused, but disdain for philosophy makes that hard to get.

There are naturally gifted people who can read on their own and get fields, but we all know such genius is rare. Training helps us not repeat basic mistakes.

Atheism (for example) has a long history in philosophy and has developed over time. Arguments that were made as recently as the 1950’s have been refined. New arguments have been made. Theism also grows and develops intellectually and so atheism must adapt to new theistic approaches.

Philosophy of religion progresses. While it is rare for a complicated idea to be totally abandoned in a diverse field like philosophy, some forms of ideas die. For example, for a long time substance dualism was very rarely defended. It is still a small minority position, but as the new Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism shows better forms are now being defended as advances in philosophy and science make the existence of the soul more plausible. Reductive materialism, the belief that the mind can be simply reduced to the brain or brain states, is rejected by almost all atheists now. There are better forms of materialism/physicalism that can be defended. Both lay theists and atheists are unaware of the changes in the fields and so end up arguing about positions that are out of date or (fairly) indefensible.

That’s too bad.

There is nothing wrong with a lay person trying out ideas and learning. As a teacher, that’s a big goal in all interactions, but (again) often anonymous interlocutors can make knowing where to start hard.

An Example of How Education or Clarity Might Help a Bright Person 

This week I had an exchange with what I am sure is very bright person with strong opinions about philosophy, but some basic confusions.

Let me quote from the exchange (as they summarized it). I am quoted as saying:

“We know certain ideas about God are surely wrong.”

The person replied:

I agree. I would say all of them are.

The problem is, we can’t KNOW anything about god. We can perform rationally consistent thought experiments with no way to arrive at the truth. So in this instance all your philosophy in this regard is useless in a utilitarian sense.

Notice that this has a coherence problem right from the start. Our friend agrees with me and says all ideas about God are surely wrong. Then he says “. . . We can’t KNOW anything about god.”

But if we can know all ideas about God are wrong, then we do know quite a few things about God. He is not omnipotent, omniscient, a Yankees fan . . . Name an idea about God and it is wrong.

Actually, the person misunderstood my argument in the thread (and they can be hard to follow). To the assertion that we cannot know anything about God, I pointed out that some ideas about God can be shown (and have been shown) to be false or incoherent. Nobody can hold them and they cannot be true about God.

Here is a simple example. Suppose someone believed that God was omnipotent and took a simple-minded definition of omnipotence: God can do anything. A good freshman in high school will ask: Can God make a rock so big, God cannot move it? This is (generally) viewed as leading to a paradox which is why no serious theologian has ever believed that omnipotence is defined as simply “God can do anything.”

The simple definition one might give a child for the term needs refining. We know God cannot have one kind of omnipotence.

But notice our interlocutor has also limited philosophy or misunderstood all philosophy does.

One thing philosophy can do is do thought experiments. Our friend is right, but that is not all philosophers do. If by “utilitarian” he means “useful,” then philosophers do other useful things in addition to thought experiments that eliminate incoherent ideas. We look at assertions and the evidence for those assertions (scientific, experiential, supposed revelation from a deity are examples) and see if belief is warranted. Philosophers work on determining when a belief is worthy of assent (epistemology). This is very practical.

For example, what are the scientific method/s? What are the limits of science (if any)? Are there other ways of knowing beyond science? We know science uses mathematics and mathematical truths, but maths are not “science.” What is the relationship and how do all the fields of knowledge fit together?

Philosophers help with those questions and if the work is long, it is fruitful. We are closer to truth than once we were. At the very least, to reject that work one should know it.

Philosophers work to give us a more rational way of looking at all the world. However, philosophy does have limits (as does human reason). As a result, I said:

“Philosophy cannot settle the final question (nobody can)”

This statement is easy to misunderstand. There are good arguments for atheism (and many shoddy ones). There are (I think) good arguments to show theism can be held rationally. Philosophy by itself can weed out some very bad ideas, make ideas better, and move us toward truth. Science helps here. I think art, literature, and music (with many other fields) do as well.

What is true? We commit ourselves to the best choice we can find and see. The Bible calls that faith and it is how we must live.

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*I have tended to block only people who quote “Q,” send very racist things (at the height of being attacked by the alt-Right), are selling something all the time, use profanity frequently in an angry way, or distribute porn. Otherwise I don’t block (on purpose!) since a variety of perspectives and tones helps me get a better idea of what is happening and so I try not to block.