The Logical Atheist

To think of logic as constraining something is to imagine, or try to imagine, how things would be without the constraint. Since neither talk of an illogical world nor talk of illogical thought can be made sense of, the whole question cannot be meaningfully asked and so may be dismissed in good conscience: "in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable.... We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either" (Wittgenstein).... It is a sign of confusion to say either that the logicality of the world has its source in the structure of thought or that the logicality of thought has its source in the structure of the world—as though the logicality of thought and the logicality of the world were two different facts that need to be hooked together, rather than being two sides of the same fact. We cannot justify our language by pointing to its reflection of extralinguistic reality, because it is ...

Using a concept involves applying it to the real world. Since possessing a concept involves being able to use it, it follows that the possession of a concept commits us to applying that concept in various ways, and that these applications must be generally reliable and accurate in order for us to possess the concept at all. And from this it follows that one must assent to certain factual propositions employing the concept in order to count as possessing it in the first place, so that no "analytic' use of a concept is intelligible unless it is embedded in a network of "synthetic" uses of that same concept. Hence "propositions of the form of empirical propositions, and not only propositions of logic, form the foundation of all operating with thoughts (with language)” (Wittgenstein). But in this case it no longer makes sense to ask whether conceptual truths are "analytic" or "synthetic." The analytic/synthetic distinction itself presupposes a se...

God forbid! Well, I shouldn't have thought so, but Auburn University philosopher Roderick Long has me thinking again. Or, to be more precise, he again has me thinking that the theist/atheist dichotomy is false, like so many hoary philosophical dichotomies (e.g., realism versus nominalism), in that it can be transcended or synthesized. (See his paper  "God and Human Attitudes: 33 Years Later" .) Long's paper is a look at James Rachels's  "God and Human Attitudes"  (1971), in which Rachels argued that God by definition would have to be worthy of worship, yet "[n]o being could possibly be a fitting object of worship" because that would require us to subordinate our moral agency and our consciences. Yet, Long argues, medieval Scholastics regarded God as identical with truth, being, and goodness; these were not merely properties that God possessed, they were what God was ....  God is something like the logical structure of reality. On this view, the...

I see no inconsistency in being a realist about what there is, and a negative coherentist about what one is justified in believing about it. In any case, positive coherence and narrow foundationalism are no guarantee of truth either. That is, it is imperfectly consistent with a belief's being justified in any of these ways, that it be false. If we are to follow Descartes in taking the possibility of a belief's being false as incompatible with its being justified, we will end up in skepticism pretty quickly.  There are in general three ways to meet the skeptical challenge by bridging the gap between knowledge and objective reality. The first is to maintain extremely high standards for what will count as knowledge, and extremely high standards for what will count as objective reality, and nevertheless heroically attempt to bridge the gulf. This was Descartes' approach, and it is generally agreed that it failed. In its wake came two responses: One response, that of Berkeley, K...

It might be objected that the Socratic dialectical approach of seeking coherence among our beliefs has been made obsolete by the scientific method of experiment. But the scientific method is dialectical too. No belief, normative or descriptive, can be tested in isolation; it can be tested only in conjunction with other beliefs. If this liquid apparently fails to boil at 100º C, I can reject my belief that water boils at 100º C, or my belief that this liquid is water, or my belief that the thermometer is working correctly, or my belief that I am awake and not hallucinating, and so forth. And if a belief does not conflict with the evidence of our senses, we may nonetheless have the same kind of reasons to reject it once we discover that it conflicts with a sufficient number of our non-perceptual beliefs. Hence, philosophical argument and scientific argument are identical in structure, and have an equal claim to objectivity. All we have, in the end, are beliefs of various sorts, ...

But why should we believe that coherence tracks truth? Well, when I consider my beliefs from the inside, I do not need to be shown that coherence tracks truth. The beliefs I am starting with are beliefs that I already take to be truth (that is what it means to say that these are my beliefs); and so the beliefs dialectically established from these starting-points I will also take to be true. Of course, I may eventually come to ask how it is that coherence tracks truth. But here I am asking for an explanation of a recognized fact, not for proof of something in question. (I am trying to move from mere [knowledge] to [understanding].) And I will no doubt have, on the basis of my current beliefs themselves, sufficient grounds for accepting such-and-such an explanation. For example, my beliefs tell me that I am being supplied with reasonably accurate perceptual organs, reasonably reliable belief-formation mechanisms, and an environment of other knowers interacting in a truth-tracking manner...

Do the Hebrew Bible and New Testament provide grounds not only for abstaining from believing in God but, further, for affirmatively believing that God does not exist? I think so. The list of moral outrages detailed in the sacred texts is so long that it ought to prompt believers to engage in the intellectual process that Auburn University philosopher Roderick T. Long (adapting John Rawls's phrase) calls "reflective equilibration." This is the procedure (used by Socrates) in which a person who encounters a logical disturbance in his web of belief undertakes to adjust at least one of the constituent beliefs in order to restore equilibrium to the web. Equilibrium, which will likely be temporary because new evidence in empirical matters can always arise, consists in the constituent ideas not conflicting with one another; they need not affirmatively support one another, but they must not conflict. This is "negative coherence," and it seems to be the best way to acq...

Aristotle identifies the distinctively human capacity for reason and speech as the basis of our being naturally political animals, for it enables us to pursue our goals through discussion with one another. Moreover, Aristotle famously regards logos , reason or speech, as the essential trait around which a flourishing human life must be organized. This, it seems, is why Aristotle regards it as an essential component of a truly human life to deal with others politically , i.e., through reason and discourse–i.e., as conversation partners. But such an ideal creates a strong presumption  against the use of force, and in favor of relying on persuasion as far as possible.... To deal with others by force is to act in a subhuman manner, like a beast of prey; we live a more human life (and therefore, in Aristotelian terms, a better life) to the extent that our relations with other people embody reason and persuasion rather than coercion. Therefore, the need to avoid the besti...

 [W]hy should we believe that it is our flourishing [and all it implies about treating others justly] rather than our bare survival that serves as our natural end and so constitutes our self-interest?... [O]n an Aristotelian conception of rationality, one may legitimately take the fact that a goal of flourishing coheres better than a goal of bare survival with our other moral beliefs as a sufficient (though defeasible) justification for believing that flourishing rather than bare survival is our natural end.... [Philosophers such as J. L. Mackie and Ayn Rand] would no doubt object strenuously to the idea of using premises about value to derive conclusions about human nature. But for the Aristotelian, once gain, the growth of knowledge is not a matter of rigid hierarchies but of networks of mutual adjustment, and no privileged class of beliefs holds absolute veto power over beliefs of another class. Hence, we are justified in taking the greater moral appeal of flourishing survival a...

Atheist call-in show hosts like to glibly dismiss some theistic callers as guilty of using the  argumentum ad populum ; that's the claim that a proposition must be true because lots of people believe it to be true. This is considered an informal fallacy  and a fallacy of relevance rather than a formal, or logical, fallacy. But is it really a fallacy? It depends, as we'll see. I'll say right at the top that no less a thinker than Aristotle held that our knowledge is and should be chock full of endoxa , which is Greek for reputable beliefs that almost all people hold without having personally confirmed them. Oops, by dropping Aristotle's name, did I just commit the fallacy of the argument from authority  ( argumentum ab auctoritate ) ? We'll see. When I said above that "it depends," part of what I meant is that it depends on how we phrase the alleged fallacy. "That most everyone believes X is true proves that X is true" is clearly fallacious. But h...

Here's more from Auburn University philosopher Roderick T. Long ( Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand ) on coherentism and reflective equilibration . The point of all this is to show that we can rationally construct reality-based systems of belief that do not require infallibility. Aristotle thus appears to be counseling two steps. First, pursue a coherentist strategy for discovering first principles, by provisionally accepting all the beliefs that initially seem true or plausible to us (including, but not limited to, our perceptual beliefs) as defeasibly justified, and then try to see which candidates for first principles best cohere with our total set of beliefs in wide reflective equilibrium. Second, once the first principles have been thus identified, pursue a foundationalist strategy for demonstrating and thus explaining the truth of our initial beliefs (or some of them) by deriving them from these first principles. The things well-known to us are genuinely known but not ...

"Skeptical" atheists often admonish their theistic interlocutors thus: you have a hypothesis, namely, that God exists. So get out there and try to confirm it empirically -- better yet, try to disprove it. When you've done either, get back to me. This is said to be the proper way to acquire knowledge and to dispose of erroneous beliefs. Ignoring the logical problem with any notion of the supernatural (as if...), which I've discussed several times, the skeptic's admonition depends on epistemological considerations that were demolished in 1951, notably by W.V.O. Quine in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism."  (It's, again, a case of basking in the light of a long-dead star.) Specifically, the simplistic admonition depends on the analytic/synthetic dichotomy , which holds that meaningful statements can be only one of two kinds: 1) analytic: necessarily true by definition (convention) and so, as tautologies, uninformative about the world (e.g., cats are domestica...

If, as many "skeptical" atheists maintain, we cannot be certain about facts ("capital-T Truth") and if statements of value are subjective and noncognitive, then why should atheists care what theists believe and why they believe it? Moreover, what standing do atheists have that entitles them to talk theists out of their deeply held beliefs? If atheists want to be taken seriously, they need to grapple with these issues. Otherwise, their mission -- and many see it as a mission -- is doomed. Many theists get this, but the atheists I have in mind just plunge ahead, boasting of their edgy "skepticism." This is a sad state of affairs for those of us who are committed to reason, logic, and objectivity in fact and value since those values are key to a humane society. The atheists I'm thinking of seemed to be in the thrall of philosophers who have long been seriously challenged if not discredited entirely. On both counts -- fact and value -- that challenge dates...

From Auburn University philosophy professor Roderick T. Long's post "Defensor Fidei" : Secularists often criticise the notion of “faith,” which they take to mean belief without evidence, or at least belief without sufficient evidence. I think this is a mistake. I do not mean to deny that many doctrines put forward as articles of faith are in fact propounded without sufficient evidence. All that I deny is that their being so is part of the meaning of the word “faith,” either in ordinary language or in theology. Note that I am not saying that being based on evidence is part of the meaning of “faith,” but only that not being based on evidence is not part of the meaning of “faith.” Faith can either be well-grounded in evidence, or not. It is not the purpose of this post to affirm (or for that matter to deny) that any particular article of faith is true, or reasonable, or justified by evidence. I’m in formal rather than material mode here....   It seems to me that what the wor...

Some years ago, the late philosopher and atheist Antony Flew wrote a paper titled  "The Presumption of Atheism," which argued for the proposition clearly stated in the title. His point, of course, is that in considering the God question, the burden of proof ought to be on the theist, that is, the one who maintains the proof of the proposition, just as in a criminal case the burden of proof is on the state prosecutor. This certainly makes sense. For one thing, all children start life as negative atheists: they lack a belief in God. They can't be said to believe in God until they are able to be convinced (in some way and to some extent) that God exists. At that point they may be regarded as believing that God exists on the same evidentiary basis that they believe, say, that Santa Claus exists: their parents, the most trusted source they know, told them so. For a child, whose knowledge is necessarily meager, this is not irrational. Knowledge is contextual; you can be justif...

As a general matter, I accept the idea that he who proposes -- X is true (and thus ought to believed) -- has the burden of proof. But I am not troubled by the idea that propositions of the form X is not true (and ought not to be believed )   -- also require support. Drawing a hard line against this is a mistake. You may not be able to demonstrate a negative proposition  directly --  say, I did not commit a particular murder -- but you can demonstrate it indirectly by showing that a contradictory positive proposition is true -- I was somewhere else at the time . Proof that the earth is round is proof that the earth is not flat. Why can't I demonstrate that the supernatural God does not exist by showing that it is impossible? It seems to me that any negative proposition can be restated in a positive way. The negative claim God does not exist  corresponds to the positive Spinoza-ish claim that the natural world is eternal, self-sufficient, the source of all ex...

Evidentialist atheists often conflate the concepts evidence and good evidence. But I see a world of difference between saying, "You offer no evidence for your belief" and "You offer no good evidence for your belief."It's an important distinction. First off, is it really true that theists offer no evidence whatever? In "Defensor Fidei," Roderick T. Long, an Aristotle and Wittgenstein scholar at Auburn University, says this not usually the case. Theists and atheists clearly use the word faith in different senses, which impedes the conversation. Long writes: It seems to me that what the word [ faith ] means in ordinary language is not belief that goes beyond the evidence, but rather belief that goes beyond one’s personal experience. To someone of skeptical tendencies these might of course come to the same thing, but for most of us they do not. My belief that Stonehenge exists is not based on personal experience (nor on demonstrative deduction therefrom),...