A Problem of Consciousness

Since about 6th grade, I've been struck by a worry about consciousness. I've never actually been able to articulate it properly, but I think that I'll give a stab at it here. While it sounds close to solipsism (or perhaps, in a way, pantheism), I think that the issue is fundamentally different. Simply put, why am I conscious?

I think the problem comes down to the peculiar phenomena of the 1st-person point of view, which seems to demand a certain special, non-shareable quality which nonetheless is held by a particular individual, without any particular feature of that individual marking him out from others.

I experience the world from a 1st-person point of view, and that experience appears to be incompatible with other 1st-person accounts. There can be many 3rd-persons in a single universe, but multiple 1st-persons seem to demand different universes, in a way. If I am conscious, and you are conscious, then your consciousness can never be 1st-person within my own. I could regard you as a 2nd-person instead of as a 3rd-person, but never as a 1st-person.

Another way of approaching the problem is that my own consciousness seems so asymmetrical. I mean, if there were a 1st-person view of the universe experienced in consciousness, it would seem to make sense that it were God's. But this particular consciousness is a finite one, amongst other finite ones. Why this one? Why is this life the one being experienced, when there are other apparently identical options?

I'm not sure that any of this has really communicated the problem. Like I've said, I've never really found a way to articulate it, perhaps because due to its nature it can never be made general or public; it is precisely about the particular and private.

The Implications of Pluralism

If one were to be a religious pluralist, how ought one live one's life? It seems to me that, while one does have something of an obligation to explore other traditions, one should in the end root oneself in one's own tradition. If all traditions are really saying the same thing in one way or another, then they only thing left to do is to dig in deeply; and this is best done in a context in which one already knows the language, the imagery, and history, the texts, etc. So, if one is a pluralist, the worst thing to do might very well be to go off on spiritual highs in other traditions.

There is No Probability

If we can't get demonstrative truth, then it would seem that the next best we can do is to get probable truth. This seems to me to be the way most of us want to work, and it seems to be the ground for many arguments for one given religious tradition over another ("the historical claims for Christianity may not be certain, but they at least provide good evidence for the faith"). But this probability is a chimera.

Things are probable within a given context; given that miracles can happen, for example, Christ's resurrection becomes decidedly more probable then if one assumes that they don't (and the probability rises as one assumes that more miracles take place). Given certain understandings of the world, living our lives in a properly ordered fashion with analytically deduced relationships and a full political program in place is either the key to virtue and happiness (Confucianism) or their antithesis (Daoism).

Now, if x has a certain probability within a certain context, then x's absolute probability will depend on the probability of the context as a whole. But the context cannot give it's own probability; it may contain the seeds of its own incoherence, but it cannot even prove that it is consistent, let alone likely. So, without an outside assessment of the context's own probability, we have absolutely no idea at all what the probability of x is.

What is left for us to do? We can look between contexts, and judge them by each other's standards. What does the Hindu context, for example, say about the Christian one (and why; of course they disagree, but why precisely must they do so)? In order to truly do this, one must be able to set aside one's own non-truth-conducive biases as much as possible, and judge the new system as sympathetically as if it were her own, and her own system as critically as if it were that of someone else. Only after doing this with several systems would someone start to have any idea about what the probability of x could even be.

Of course, this still does not solve the problem. It could be that every traditional system thinks that a set of principles are probable, but that a new, unforeseen system would not. At this point, all we can do is work the best we can with our relative probabilities (hopefully with better understanding), and keep on searching for the truth as we can.

What are the impacts of this? Not much for practical life; we are always acting within a context to get something done, and this doesn't require anything like an absolute assessment of probability. But any system which purports to give us our values, our aims and meanings, can neither rest stably on such common-sense notions or on evidentalialist arguments which neglect to run the evidence through several different worldviews. Hence, all understanding must remain dialectical, and therefore provisional.

Perhaps all I'm really arguing for, then, is Lessing's ditch: there is an unbridgeable gap between necessary truths (or absolute probabilities) and historical claims (or the things we really want to assign probabilities to).

What's Wrong with Reformed Epistemology

I've been doing some thinking about Reformed Epistemology and related topics, and there are a few things which I think are off with it, especially within Plantinga's scheme. Maybe this post could have been "Musings on the Faults of Warranted and Proper Function" as well. At any rate, I'm not sure that I have any R.E's on this blog, so maybe I'm just preaching to the choir; but let me know whether you think the following points are worth anything. It's been a while since I've read Plantinga or Wolterstorff, so maybe I'm off on exegesis as well as philosophy.

(1) RE wants to make out the "sensus divinatis" as a correlate of the sense perception. But sense perception doesn't give us concepts directly; we don't see "blue", we see light of certain wavelengths which we organize into the category blue. Russians, by contrast, organize the same wavelengths into синии, dark blue, and голубой, light blue. So, there is something we perceive which is subsequently shaped.

What is it that is perceived in the case of God? There's an awful lot of baggage brought into the notion of God; do we really perceive such a complex notion as REers seem to want to hold? Plantinga's God certainly isn't the simple God of the Neo-Platonists; the latter might be a better option for perception, but then would be different from what most believers hold (and so the sensus divinatis wouldn't do the work it is supposed to).

Therefore, for RE to work, the concept "God" must be something hardwired into our brains, and not perceived like with the senses; or else perceived in a very different way. If the former, then what is this unchanging concept which would need to exist across cultures? Whatever it is, it would again not look too much like the common God of the American conservative church, or of modern analytic philosophy. If the latter, we need much more explanation of the mechanics of the situation (or at least possible mechanics) in order for it to avoid being ad hoc.

This latter point seems to be the Great Pumpkin objection revisited. But here's where I think that it works: the "Great Pumpkin" is illegitimate as an object of some sensus pumpkinatis because people don't claim to know about such; people do claim to know God. But, what if "God" is a hopelessly equivocal term amongst communities? If "God" is a complex perception, then this perception would have the possibility of changing over cultures, which empirically is the case. So, not as many people would know "God" as would initially seem to be the situation, and the answer of RE becomes at least more ad hoc then we would like.

So, in sum, perception of God through the sensus divinatis is either a simple perception, a complex perception, or a hardwired concept. Simple perceptions are unlike anything the average American, Evangelical or Reformed (and often lay or educated) believer believes. Hardwired concepts are hard to fit with religious pluralism. Complex perceptions are ad hoc and need further explanation, as we have nothing else like them.

At this point, I would most likely encounter the Sin objection: there would be a unified concept of God, if it weren't for the fact that our sensus divinatis were "blinded" and must be regenerated, at which point sin would still mar our conception. I guess I can't really argue against that; it's hard to defend oneself against a position which says that one is wrong by default and without any recourse. But at least my argument should show how different the sensus divinatis is from other faculties.

(2) There is this notion in Plantinga's epistemology that when I see something blue, it must really be blue in itself or my faculties are not functioning properly. But what do I care about this? All I care about is that my perceptions are coherent, within themselves and when matched up with those of other person. Since I myself am not stuck in an epistemic loop with eagles and rocks (and I am not sure that such a case could occur in the actual world to a person whom we would still consider to be a rational agent), all I need to do is to be able to group like things together, differentiate different things, and further produce approximately the same groupings as other people. Whether the qualitative property of blueness exists either in another person's eyesight as in mine, or in some unfathomable way in the futon at which I am looking, is irrelevant and does not come into play in our concept formation or use.

But if this is the case, then Plantinga's argument against naturalistic evolution looks very shaky. First, as with the first point above, the idea that we all of a sudden get odd concepts (like that we should run a footrace with sabre-tooth tigers) is almost nonsensical; maybe it is logically possible, but why think (especially on an evolutionist scheme) that we get concepts out of the blue? They come largely from experience (at least, anything which an adult knows that a baby does not comes from experience, whether or not there are hard-wired concepts), and this experience is not piecemeal. Like situations are grouped together and unlike divided; there are no merely ad hoc concepts, as every one affects others by its similarity or dissimilarity. This is a very useful survival mechanism: if I see a fire, feel its heat, and burn myself, and then go over to another fire and repeat because I cannot tell that it is similar to the other case, I will not live very long. One has to reach a very high level of complexity before one could get even approximate particular stand-alone ideas, and by that time one would have had to have developed some sort of proper response to sabre-toothes.

But if this is the case, the at very least naturalistic evolution can explain our practical behavior. And if theory comes out of practice and refers back to it, then the stability of practical understanding would grant some stability to theoretical. So, the naturalistic evolutionist has grounds for thinking that her reason can discover something about the world.

If concept formation does come from such practical similarities and dissimilarities (and the vast majority of Western philosophy has held that concept formation begins with working through experiential input), we come back to the problem of the sensus divinatis; if the concept "God" is anything like "I should run a footrace with a sabretooth", then I have grounds for rejecting such a concept thrown into my skull from who-knows-where, without regard to typical causal mechanisms. We simply do not form concepts like that in any other circumstance, but only through a process which must be explicated. If "God"-concept-formation is something different, then what is it?

The Beginnings of Philosophy

Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder. Sometimes, I find that my own philosophizing begins in dread.

Quite honestly, I am afraid of the world. I am trying to make due with life the best that I can, and adapt myself to it; but I'll never have enough information to be able to be sure that I know everything that would really matter to me. But I know that at any given point, I don't have enough understanding, and so I must keep going. I start off with a lack, and will always have a lack.

If philosophy starts with wonder, as my learning used to do when I could still believe in certain demonstrations and such, then we begin in a plenitude and explore it. We are not driven to do so, but we learn about the world because of the sheer joy of doing so.

Now, I can't just go back to that stage of wonder, as much as I may need it psychologically in order to get through my work. When one runs about against religious and moral problems which call for changes in life, one can't pretend that it's all about the thrill of exploration any longer, and one even starts to wonder whether chasing that thrill for its own sake is a self-centered enterprise.

Maybe Diotima's speech in the Symposium is a way of bringing these strands together. Eros is the child of Craft and Poverty, and is also chasing after Aphrodite. Eros himself has nothing; desire comes from lack. But, he is also enraptured by the object of his desire. Similarly, the philosophical pursuit is always situated in lack, but always desirous of its object as well, rendering unto it equal parts dread and wonder.

Jesus and the Delphic Oracle

Returning to the discussion of the True vs. the Good: One way of looking at it could be be through the lens of two maxims, "Know Thyself" and "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Self-knowledge without love is sterile, love without self-knowledge is blind. We can all point to people who, through lack of wisdom, harm with their love; this is often the criticism of the golden rule as a moral mandate. Therefore, love requires knowledge, and I would venture to say that it requires us to know ourselves well so as to properly relate to others. At the same time, Socrates could not accomplish his task of finding self-knowledge without a partner, and often a relatively inconsequential one according to matters of wisdom and virtue. From this one can see how love and humility are essential for the quest of knowledge.

Why Not Pluralism?

I must admit, religious pluralism is tempting me an awful lot; I have no reason left for believing the Christian story, other than that I don't have an alternative yet (or rather, perhaps that elements of my upbringing still cling); and despite Pascal's advice to participate in church and soon you'll start believing, I find myself sickened by the intellectual (and concomitant moral) laziness I see every Sunday, unless I interpret it through a mythological lens. But I don't have any arguments for pluralism, merely reasons why it is not as contradictory as I hear people say. So, here's at least the anti-criticisms:

Sometimes I hear that claim that pluralism says that everyone is right by saying that everyone is wrong. But the non-pluralist is saying that the vast majority of people in the world are simply dead wrong, and that even members of her own religion are usually only right in a practical sense (almost everyone in the pew is a modalist, tritheist, and docetist, I bet). So the pluralist really seems to be no worse off then anyone else; every view says that only a few people are really right, and at least the pluralist works out how most everyone else has some part of the truth. What is denied is that truth is merely binary, that everyone who does not have the truest expression of reality is thereby completely wrong; people can approach truth, and pluralism allows more people to do so.

Another problem that I here is that "Religions obviously conflict, so they can't all be true." To be perfectly blunt, this is a poor, lazy excuse for a criticism, and reveals immediately a lack of willingness to engage with the subject. The pluralist denies that the straightforward, literal truth of the different religions is what matters; there aren't any terribly strong arguments for any given metaphysical or historical truth, except those agreed by everyone (i.e. everyone can agree about basic facts of Muhammad's life, whether or not they are Muslims), and so for most people, the actual effect of such propositions are either (a) in virtue of their reality, or (b) in virtue of how they shape worldviews. If the latter, this is perfectly compatible with a mythological approach. If the former, someone had better do some significant empirical study to show this; without some empirical evidence, we are still left with (b) for most people, and myth again is how most people operate irregardless of metaphysical and historical concerns.

Another criticism one could hold is that pluralism negates God's grace. First, though, this seems to come from a grace/works dichotomy that in its eschewal of works as any practical dimension reflects the Reformation more than the New Testament; recent scholarship has shown that the Jews against whom Paul was arguing did not have the notion of works-based salvation which has been imputed to them, and so Paul's own conception of faith and works needs to be revised. Second, what sort of cheap grace is it which demands that God has grace so that less people can be saved? But then, why can't God have grace on people outside of his chosen religion but yet less than everyone, for one reason or another?

Clifford, James, and Communities

So we all know the story: Clifford comes out and says that it is wrong everywhere and at all times to believe something without sufficient evidence. James says that that isn't so; you can either try to avoid being wrong, and possibly get very little right, or you can try to take a more maximalist approach and possibly get a lot wrong. Further, we have live options which are up for discussion, and other options which are not; we do not simply argue through all ratioanlly possible options to come to a decision. So far, so good; I can't really see any other way of dealing with individual matters of belief than the way James puts it (although, even James admits that he would have put things differently if he had been talking to a bunch of Salvation Army people as opposed to Princeton-ites). But what about communities?

Can we say that within a community, there should not be some people, the intellectuals of the community, who should take more of a careful approach? I think what the matter boils down to is whether fideism is morally appropriate.

Now, by fideism, I mean that the believer has not rational basis. However, expert testimony is a rational basis for belief, and so the average believer would seem to be justified in trusting the intellectuals of the community. But what if the intellectuals have failed to do their job, and due to intellectual laziness, stubborness, hubris, or whatnot, have not adequately searched out the options?

A parallel situation I think can be seen in the military. The more that a person submits her will to the superior, the more the superior makes the moral decisions for the subordinate. Since I'm pretty sure that most of us would deny that "Just following orders" is a moral excuse, it follows that a bad decision on the part of the superior funnels down to the subordinate, and so the subordinate relinquishing of her decisions leaves these up to the other; she is not justified no matter what for her relinquishment.

So, if the average believer decides to get on with her life doing her thing and so gives up her intellectual decision to the intellectuals in the community, why should I say that she is justified if they are not so? Therefore, it would seem that bad intellectuals destroy the justification of the community.

But, if this is the case, don't these intellectuals have a duty to the community to search out matters as strictly and carefully as possible? Don't they have a duty to truly be experts in their fields, and so engage in the necessary self-criticism and the equally necessary searching out of all the other possible and well thought-out views?

What is required of the intellectuals of the community, then, and how spread-out do they need to be? Is a (local) church unjustified if it lacks an intellectual? Does it depends on the church hierarchy? Is it at all justifiably to adopt a Reformed Epistemology if there is no reason to support such an epistemology, just to have an ad hoc justification for the average believer when all else fails?

What should communities do when their arguments are terribly unpersuasive to everyone else? For example, as much as Christians talk about how no one else seems to recognize the seriousness of sin, everyone else who believes in a God has no problem seeing how God could forgive anyone God wants (whether or not God would and does are separate questions). How does this reflect on the community? If what they hold is rational, shouldn't they be able to explain it persuasively to at least some other party, even if not to everyone?

The True or the Good?

Is it more important to seek what is good, or what is true? What is good can only be good is it really, truly is good, and so it seems that truth is preeminent. But don't we seek the truth because we feel that we ought to do so?

We can imagine situations in which the two can come apart, at least existentially (that is, within the way we live our finite lives on a daily basis) even if not in the end. I'm not simply talking about cases where we would have to kill innocents or sell our souls in order to come by some all-encompassing knowledge; it could be the pursuit of studies instead of helping at the soup-kitchen.

So, we have four cases, given that he two do seem interconnected somehow: (1) goodness is dependent on truth, (2) truth is dependent on goodness, (3) both or dependent on some third thing, and (4) the two are mutually dependent in some way.

If (1) is the case, then contemplation and study should consume most of our time; it is no use acting without knowing what is true first. This view has some plausibility in that virtues without wisdom can often be harmful. Courage, for example, even with the best intentions, can produce a monster if it is not guided by a knowledge of its proper use.

If (2) is the case, then we should primarily be acting in the world. It does seem that the person spending all of her time in study is missing the point, and is less of a human being than the one who is out there enacting justice (although this of course betrays my non-classical aesthetic sensibilities). If so, then it is plausible that the truth comes second to enacting good.

If (3) is the case, then we have a way of reconciling the two above options: neither the true nor the good completely trump each other, but rather are both connected to some third source. But, what is this third thing? "Being," whatever that may be? So, this option cannot help us without further elucidation. It's been done in various ways at various times, but that's another topic.

If (4) is the case, then we can avoid some mysterious common source and avoid subordinating one to the other. However, in what way is (4) true? Is there one abstract object one time referred to as the truth and at another time as goodness? But how does this make sense out of our existential conflicts? Another option is a division of labor: for some it is good to give preeminence to truth, and to others a preeminence to goodness. Society overall will be balanced, though individuals may not be (or, individuals themselves may overall be balanced through giving different priorities at different times).

Metaphysical Implications of Logic?

I've been thinking through some assumptions which seem to be entailed by classical logic. I'm sure these have been mentioned in a thousand places, in much better ways (I don't actually blog about what I've taken the time to study; I'm blogging to put off that stuff). However, I am interesting in what people have to say about the following.

Problem #1: Both the law of identity (A=A) and the law of non-contradiction (A /= ~A) require that the same token have two instances. This already assumes that something can be repeated as exactly the same thing in multiple instances (maybe it even implicitly brings in Parmenides?). If everything is simply more or less similar to other things, then this is not obviously true.

Problem #2: The law of non-contradiction assumes that we can truly make negative statements. A is not ~A, where both A and ~A refer to A. Therefore, whatever A is, it cannot be ~A. However, if we always have some positive idea in mind when we make an assertion, then we never do actually refer merely to ~A; we refer to some B, which we take to be ~A. But B is not simply ~A, and refers to something other than A. As such, further investigation into B could show that it is really not incompatible with A, and so our actual use of the law of non-contradiction failed.

For something completely different: I'm currently signing up for classes for next semester. I'm presently planning on taking Kant, Early German Idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Jacobi, Hölderlin, etc.), and Neoplatonism (with an emphasis on how the early NP commentators worked with Aristotle). Should be an interesting semester.

Some Interesting Propositions

I was talking with a fellow Marquette student the other day, and came to the conclusion that we should have a philosophy based on the following principle: that which is interesting, is true.

Now, it would seem from here that things should be true insofar as they are interesting. So what is most boring does not exist, while there are things which are more and more interesting and so more and more true (existent?). Following this, we come to the That Than Which None More Interesting Can Be Thought (TTWNMICBT).

Now, certainly it would be more interesting for such to exist in reality, and so therefore it must actually exist, or it is not the TTWNMICBT. But now, there is a catch. This would suppose that we are thinking of this thing, but surely something would be more interesting if we could not think of it. So the TTWNMICBT cannot be TTWNMICBT; it is only interesting through this That Which Is Too Interesting Too Be Thought (TWITITBT).

So we have the TWITITBT, of which we can't even properly speak, but which we need to explain everything else. Then we have the TTWNMICBT, which is only interesting indirectly. But if the TTWNMICBT wouldn't continually reach out to be more interesting, then it would not be the TTWNMICBT, as there is something more interesting than it. So, now we have the TTWNMICBT considered in itself, and the TTWNMICBT considered in its striving. But since the TTWNMICBT is the TTWNMICBT, any striving must also be toward was is not itself, and so the TTWNMICBT as striving gives us a multiplicity of interesting things.

Ok, someone's been reading too much NeoPlatonism. Back to work....

Election Results

I have a presentation for my Aristotle class in an hour, so I figured that I'd spend some time blogging on something completely unrelated in preparation. The election is over, and Obama will now be our president. And I'm happy for that.

When you get right down to it, no, I don't believe any of his promises. I don't believe any politician's promises; in fact, I consider most people period to be untrustworthy (at least due to competence, if not to outright deceit). So I don't see why that affects Obama more than anyone else. And I am quite fine with his elitism; some people are just better able to handle things than others. Democracy is a necessary evil, as far as I'm concerned. But there are two reasons in particular why I am glad that he was elected.

First, it is good to have an African-American president. When you get right down to it, the leader of a country is important for their symbolic value at least as much as for what they can do, and perhaps even more so; after all, it's still Congress who makes the laws. It's hard to say that we're a diverse country, although every single one of our presidents has not only been a rich white male, but also of either German or British/Celtic stock. That just screams inequality somewhere, and electing someone with a darker shade of skin is at least a preliminary step toward giving a different appearance. The different appearance in turn such encourage more minorities to get involved in the nation, hopefully leading to a more diverse representation in government. So, will all of this happen? Who knows? But if you don't give it a start somehow, then there is no way that it will happen.

Secondly, I must say that I enjoy seeing the pissed off conservatives. Hooray for tearing down the golden conservative calf! Maybe when people see that the country is still standing in 4 years, the Evangelical church (in general) will reconsider their America-worship.... nah. Maybe I'll just be stuck listening to people whining about how abortion is the worst evil of all time while they ignore the widows and orphans.

Ok, that was a cheap shot, which I'll probably regret making; but I'm getting really sick of the pious blogging and Facebook status messages.