THE EMERGING GIANT PLANETARY BRAIN: If by “purpose,” you mean “thing that lots of its actions usually do,” and by “design” you mean “mindless process,” then this article makes sense. Grrr. Why do people let their metaphors eat their metaphysics?!

In related news, a friend wrote in with a question about this post (and the ones that follow). But I just checked my inbox and found that I seem to have deleted the $#@! email with his question. I’ll summarize as best I remember it. Gene, if I get this wrong, let me know.

As I recall, he was asking how I can say that reason requires the existence of a personal and interfering God, given that, in order even to make that statement and argue for it, I have to be using reason. My answer, in two very brief sections:

a) Keep in mind that those posts (and other times I discuss this question, e.g. here and here) are about reason as a norm, a standard of value, that is distinguishable from both personal preferences and cultural conformity. So the posts are addressing the claim, “We should follow the dictates of reason!”, when that claim is being used as a basis for morality. In other words, we’re not talking, here, about the rules of logic, or whether you’ll die if you don’t eat, etc. We’re talking about whether reason can guide us not solely to learn about objects in the world, but about ethics; not solely what we can do, but what we should do. I’m not 100% sure this is what’s separating us, though, since obviously most philosophical discussion incorporates large chunks of both reason-as-rules-of-logic and reason-as-norm. The boundaries between the two are often much fuzzier than people expect.

b) Even setting that point aside, I don’t see how Gene’s claim follows. We talk about the prerequisites for reason all the time. Is he (are you?) really arguing that any time someone states, “Interesting Thing X is necessary if reason is to have content greater than my own impulses and/or culture!”, that’s an invalid line of approach because you’re using reason to make the claim? I mean, if I argued, “A self, as opposed to a pointillist array of affects and impulses, is necessary if reason is to be a guide to ethics,” would that be out of bounds? It’s not like we can settle this question through foxy boxing. (In outer space!)

…I’m not sure how we can discuss any aspect of the nature of reason without violating Gene’s stricture. If I argue that reason is simply “what my culture calls reasonable” (to oversimplify wildly), I’m using reason. If I argue, “Dude, you’re buggin’, reason is totally not just what your culture calls reasonable, here’s why,” I’m using reason. If I argue that reason (as something more than the rules of logical inference) can be founded in an atheist metaphysics, or that it doesn’t need to be founded in anything because metaphysics is lame, or anything at all about the (potentially) normative aspects of reason, I’m using reason. So either these questions can never be discussed (in which case, woohoo! Foxy Boxing for the Soul of Man!), or else it’s kosher to discuss the conditions under which reason could and could not have normative force.

Gene also has a question about free will, but that’s way above my pay grade. If I ever get a chance I’ll maybe say some stuff on that as well, but honestly, free will is one of those things–like football–that I leave to greater minds.

PS: By the way, if you’re going to argue about the reason-cannot-withstand-the-fall-of-God stuff above, please do read this (and the two after; they’re short) and the section on Habermas (and Snape!… er, sort of) here. I know some of my phrasing above was unclear, as I tried to compress a multi-part argument into a single phrase so we could get on to the meta-argument.