On Reason

An excellent post on the evolutionary function of reasoning - it is to win arguments, rather than find truth.

- "However, for communication to be possible, listeners have to have ways to discriminate reliable, trustworthy information from potentially dangerous information—otherwise speakers would be wont to abuse them through lies and deception. One way listeners and speakers can improve the reliability of communication is through arguments. The speaker gives a reason to accept a given conclusion. The listener can then evaluate this reason to decide whether she should accept the conclusion." (Richard Rorty on reason as a "clever way of talking about things" - check)

- "When people reason alone, there will often be nothing to hold their confirmation bias in check. This might lead to distortions of their beliefs." (C.S. Peirce on knowledge generation as a social endeavor - check)

- "Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found." (John Maynard Keynes on remorseless logicians ending up in Bedlam - check)

Why anyone would want to base either their epistemology or their methodology on reason is beyond me. At best reasoning is just an internally consistent language with no guarantee of correspondence with the real world. At worst it's not even internally consistent because we don't do it well enough. It's a tool and a useful one. Internally consistent and intelligible languages and grammars are important for thinking things through, after all. But it's not a foundation.

Two points on reason

First, I was thinking about Hume on the experience of "miracles" the other day and how his point ought to be generalizable. This is the crux of his criticism in Of Miracles:

"The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish: And even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.” When any one tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion."

It seems to me that this has applications beyond experiential evidence to logical evidence as well. Often logical evidence is put on a pedestal - particularly in some of the circles that I engage with on this blog. Frequently it is assumed that the critic must find a flaw in the argument - that the burden of proof is on them. To make matters more challenging "the argument" is usually nothing more than a premise, a conclusion, and a citation of Mises, which doesn't give the critic of the conclusion much to work with. I would never deny the burden of proof placed on the critic (usually I'm simply not interested in crafting a disproof), I just wonder to what extent it is uniquely borne by the critic. This is where Hume comes in. Hume's critique of those who have claimed to see the miraculous is that they should ask themselves "is it more likely that what I see is correct, or is it more likely that I am deceiving myself?". I think this sort of self-interrogation should be done more, particularly by heterodox rationalists who derive conclusions that are apparently lost on lots of other intelligent people. I am no logician and I have never read Mises and I am not motivated to disprove Mises because I'm not all that swayed by the imperatives of a purely a prioristic science in the first place. In other words, my criticism is not a very good test to put your ideas to if you do take the imperatives of a purely a prioristic science seriously. But in the absence of a disproof, I think those who are tempted to take Mises and others as indisputable should take Hume to heart - what is more likely, that the failure to see a disproof implies the absence of a disproof, or that there is a disproof and your own logical faculties simply fail you? In other words - knowledge is not innocent until proven guilty. Knowledge is always probabilistic. And the content of the knowledge itself is not the only factor in play - your ability to scrutinize and digest that content is also a factor.

*****

Chris Perridas - an H.P. Lovecraft blogger - points us to a piece about Lovecraft by Erik Davis that I think has some interesting things to say about Lovecraft and reason. One of the things that is often noted as being unique in Lovecraft is that his horrors and monsters are not supernatural at all. In that sense, Lovecraft was not a part of the Romantic tradition. Indeed he identified himself with the Critical Realists of the early twentieth century. What's different about Lovecraft's monsters is that they are not presented as a suspension of reality or a flight into fantasy - they are presented as a reality we simply weren't aware of. Davis writes:

"For Lovecraft, it is not the sleep of reason that breeds monsters, but reason with its eyes agog. By fusing cutting-edge science with archaic material, Lovecraft creates a twisted materialism in which scientific “progress” returns us to the atavistic abyss, and hard-nosed research revives the factual basis of forgotten and discarded myths."

Insanity is a potent theme in Lovecraft, but the insanity comes as a result of the reality of the monsters. Monsters aren't a function of insanity; insanity is a function of the monsters.

More on libertarian social engineering and rationalism

Autofyrsto links to an old post of mine on libertarian social engineering, where I make the argument that libertarians are the biggest viable social engineers in America today (I'm assuming - safely, I think - that state socialism is off the table). Strict libertarianism takes a blueprint for the organization of society that it has derived rationally from a few essential principles and seeks to impose that blueprint on society. They don't see it as an imposition, of course, because they see it as a reaction to other impositions. But their perception is largely irrelevant. The strict sort of libertarians (rather than "libertarians on the margin", like Greg Mankiw) pursue radical change on the basis of very little experimentation or experience. That's not inherently good or bad, but it's something to be cautious about.

Autofyrsto primarily takes issue with what he perceives to be my assault on reason and rationalism. He starts by making an issue out of the point in the David Brooks article I link where Brooks notes that Edmund Burke was "horrified" that "individuals would use abstract reason to sweep away arrangements that had stood the test of time". Atuofyrsto goes on to protest when in the blog post I link to Greg Mankiw admits that he "recoil[s] at more radical libertarian positions". Autofrysto writes that "If steam comes out of the libertarians’ ears, it is only at the frustration of arguing with people who openly and proudly muzzle the voice of reason so that they may continue to believe, at our expense, whatever makes them comfortable." Muzzle the voice of reason? This is an odd interpretation of what Brooks, Mankiw, and I were doing. We aren't unreasonable or unrational people, after all. It would be strange for us "openly and proudly muzzle the voice of reason". All we're suggesting is that human society is complex and a single person or a group of people can't map out a blueprint for it. Reason is a tool of the mind to be used, not abused. Autofyrsto seems to be arguing that the admonition not to abuse reason is an attempt to muzzle it. I disagree.

Autofrysto then goes on to cite a favorite of this blog, Thomas Paine:

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture. Enjoy, sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting. It is the prerogative of animals. And no man will envy you these honors, in which a savage only can be your rival and a bear your master."

Again, no one here is renouncing the use and authority of reason. Quite the contrary. I am renouncing the unreasonable application of reason. I am renouncing the fetishism of reason. I am upholding the idea that man's reason is a great asset but renouncing the idea that it is capable of forseeing and planning all things. I'm advocating common sense, in other words, which makes the rebuke with Paine a little laughable. Autofrysto ends with this point, which I can agree with him whole-heartedly on:

"We should carefully scrutinize the so-called “wisdom of the ages” in light of reason, and abandon it when it fails that scrutiny. I don’t even know how to explain why. It seems so self-evident."

Calling BS on "Taxation as Theft"

On several occasions, I've noted to Evan that I think people who refer to abortion as a "holocaust" are being disingenuous. Nobody actually thinks that at all - they don't draw the moral equivalence, although they find it politically useful to claim they do (or psychologically settling to convince themselves they do). But ultimately they don't. If you actually thought a holocaust worse than the Nazi Holocaust was occurring (at least four times worse), not in isolated secret camps but in clinics in your neighborhood, you would not stand idly by for decades. If people actually believed what they said about it being a holocaust, they would rise up violently against the practice. So I'm convinced there are a few clinic bombers and doctor-murderers who do actually believe it's a holocaust, but most don't. Most implicitly admit that the abortion of fetuses - even if it does raise real moral problems - is by no means the moral equivalent of killing fully developed and born human beings. It would simply be unconscionable for the pro-life movement to actually believe that but act the way they've acted. When tens of millions are slaughtered in a holocaust, you don't just picket the Supreme Court once a year. So I like to call BS every once in a while on that one.

A similar instance I've been thinking of recently is the tendency of some libertarians to refer to taxation as theft. Modern citizens of just about any state pay a lot of money in taxes. Several thousand, if not tens of thousands for many Americans. If people honestly considered this "theft", it's more than enough cause to react violently. If a thief enters your home in an attempt to steal thousands of dollars, you would be well within your rights to respond violently to expel the thief, and given the means most Americans would. One response may be that the government itself is a criminal organization that makes resistance futile. Maybe, but this counter-point is riddled with problems. When well armed criminal organization like the mafia or drug cartels infest an area, victims demand some sort of response from other organizations. Sometimes rival gangs are formed, of course. But the law is also called in. Even if people did not openly revolt out of fear of the power of the state, there would be some action to put together a countervailing organization to fight the state. You would have relatively expansive rebel groups, even if they had little chance of success. The other problem with this explanation is that even if the state were a criminal organization, it would be a criminal organization where millions of taxpayers vote at regular intervals for the leadership. If people honestly believed that taxation was theft, you would see some sign of in the polls, or you would see plummeting voter turnout accompanied with plummeting legitimacy of the government. No gang or mafia where the victims had a say in the leadership and where the mafia don had to regularly pander to his victims and had to leave after eight years would commit theft on a mass scale. The idea is absurd.

The only conclusion I can draw is that libertarians (much less some broader community of Tea Partiers or conservatives) don't actually believe that taxation is theft, no matter how many times they may tell you they do. They may not realize they don't believe this - they may have convinced themselves that they believe this. But they don't. Just like pro-lifers who refer to the holocaust to make their points, if libertarians did believe it, they would behave very differently. Since they don't behave how you would expect them to behave if they actually believed taxation was theft, it's reasonable to infer they don't believe it.

So what do we conclude? Americans broadly agree that taxation of citizens is an entirely legitimate and appropriate action. There is nothing criminal or inherently illegitimate about it. We may disagree on what the right level of taxation is, but nobody (aside from a few nuts) actually believe it is theft. It is not a reasonable moral equivalence.

As an aside, I thought of this last night when I was thinking about Jefferson (after commenting on this post and this post) and specifically the points Jefferson raised to justify the revolution against England. I thought "what would justify, or specifically what would libertarians think of as a justification for armed revolt against the federal government today?". Because it seems that whatever may theoretically justify armed revolt in the minds of libertarians hasn't occurred in the United States yet, because they haven't revolted.

I think these previous posts of mine on libertarianism and state violence and on the idea of "the empire of liberty" (which was a very well received post) are probably relevant to this point as well.

Concluding thoughts on the religion posts

Here, here, and here we engaged a lot of new commenters (who I hope will stay!) on the prospect of "knowing" God. This is way out of what I normally post on, so I'm going to leave it - but I had a few concluding thoughts.

First, in the comment section to his own post Evan says: "The thing that gets me is that "knowledge" is such a contested category to begin with, and I often feel like it's a waste of time defending the fort when all we're really fighting for is recognition of theological belief as "scientific" or "positive knowledge"."

I suppose I didn't see the debate that way because I never thought anyone ever thought of theology or religion as "scientific" or "positive knowledge" in the first place. My intent was not to knock down an understanding of religion that saw itself in these terms (because I never thought it did), but more to clarify points that I think are often left vague. A lot of the debate was around what was perceived as a stict epistemology on my part. This is why I wrote the second post - because I really don't have one. I'm a strong proponent of Berger and Luckman. I recognize social construction. I don't write off the prospect that our senses are fooling us and that we're just brains in vats. I recognize the fallibility of our perceptions (I critique the a priorism of the Austrian School of economics on these grounds all the time). I'm a fan of the pragmatist approach. My conclusions certainly don't follow (I don't think) from a strict epistemology. That's just a good first-draft way of looking at it. I tried to demonstrate in the second post that the prospects for knowing God don't improve when you start introducing these qualifications. They only improve if you invent ad hoc epistemologies specifically designed to assume your own conclusions (ie - Mike D's brief rendition of Platinga's model which uses the Holy Spirit - the existence and nature of whom we're trying to get at! - as a source of knowledge in its own right). Anyway, so I didn't intend this to be a stuck-in-the-18th-century epistemology flame war, and I hope it's progressed from that point. My point is only this: that belief in revealed religion is belief that we authorize ourselves to have, not belief that we are externally justified in having. This is faith and I still maintain that it's not that revolutionary of an insight.

My second concluding point is one that I haven't worked out completely, but that I'm thinking through. I think revealed religion is ultimately something of a Gettier Problem. A lot of this discussion has revolved not around substantive knowledge that anyone has of God, but around the prospect of substantive knowledge. The point, however, is that religions are not built on the prospect of knowing something. So we have a belief system that people hold to, that may very well be true, but where whatever justifications they think they have for believing what they do probably aren't valid justifications. All they really have is faith - self-authorization to believe - but that makes 21st century Westerners uncomfortable so they invent justifications for their belief which are not justifiable, but the belief itself may nevertheless still be true and justifiable by means of knowing that the believer isn't privy to. That sounds like a Gettier problem, which is ultimately a question of knowledge-semantics itself. But the dynamics of the Gettier problem - the question of who really knows what and on what basis, and the prospect of truth in the absence of justifiable evidence - seems to be relevant here. Does anyone know if anyone has done work on the Gettier problem as it relates to revealed religion?

OK - that's all for me on this subject for now.

A race to the bottom is no way to justify a cosmic order

There is a collection of related points that I had left unsaid and that came up in the comments that I wanted to address here.

Often in discussions, the strategy of choice isn't to elevate your point, but to bring the other person's point down. For example, in the comment section of this post, Mike D challenges what he alleges is my "classical foundationalism" on the ground that it is itself inadequate. Foundationalism itself, he argues, isn't basic or axiomatic. There's no obvious reason to take a foundationalist approach so it fails its own standards. I can agree with this to a certain extent. I'm not a strict foundationalist, and I've felt a considerable degree of safe harbor in a lot of pragmatist material that Evan has passed on to me. I'm pragmatically an empiricist and a rationalist, so I'll agree to the reservations that Mike D shares. So where does this leave us? Certainly without a proof God! Simply with a disproof of an argument for a lack of proof of God. Which if I've kept this all straight in my head is still a lack of proof of God. My claim was that we have no reason to claim knowledge of any revealed religion. We are not justified by any standard of knowledge to make those sorts of claims. If we eliminate all standards of knowledge that claim of mine still stands, doesn't it? Indeed, it stands even more firmly!

It seems to me this is all very similar to (although not quite the same as) a skeptic's "brain in a vat" argument... or for the kiddies, one might say that we're "plugged into the Matrix". We can't trust our reason and our observation - they could both be fooling us. So where does this leave us? Well, as I said before it still leaves us with no firm knowledge of revealed religion, but I at least have a pretty good basis for knowledge of the Matrix, right (at least a pragmatically viable basis)? If this is all just a dream world at least it is a dream world I can make claims about. Where does it leave a believer? Still without knowledge of revealed religion, still authorizing himself to believe what he believes, but now with an accusation that all I really know is the Matrix... ok, but at least I know something that I work and operate in on a daily basis. The initial question - the question of our knowledge of God - is still exactly where we left it.

I'm a big fan of Christopher Hitchens. Some of the work of his I'm least attracted to, though, is his work on atheism. It's not very sophisticated, it can be unnecessarily aggressive, and it's largely dependent on metaphors and analogies (sometimes I feel like I'm going to puke if I hear him use the phrase "celestial North Korea" again). But there are a few things about his approach to religion that I like, one of which is his persistent refrain that "even if we grant X, then all your work is still ahead of you". He often raises this with things like the cosmological argument that we brought up earlier in the comments. He explains why he thinks it's unconvincing, but then says that even if he were to be convinced "all your work is still ahead of you" in making that knowledge useful from the perspective of revealed religion. Who is this shell of a God you've just demonstrated with this medieval logical display? How can we fill him out? What is his character? Is he even still here or did he pass from reality long ago? What does he think of us? What is his name? Even the answers to these questions (which I have no idea how one might answer) won't get you much farther than a vague Abrahamic tradition, if that. If we allow absolutely everything that Evan, Mike D, and Christopher Lake have insisted on - every sui generis epistemological get out of jail free card - we still get to a modest deism at best. That's not revealed religion! "All your work is still ahead of you," guys! And again - this is my fundamental point. We cannot know revealed religion. We authorize ourselves to believe it. And I can't stress enough that this is not some outrageous statement that I'm making. It's what (in my mind) the best positioned and most firmly founded revealed religion on the menu (Protestantism) claims for itself clearly and emphatically. Sola fide might be epistemologically inadequate, but at least it's honest and consistent.

This speaks to Evan's point too about valid and non-valid religious axioms. Perhaps assuming the authority of the Old and New Testament specifically is a bit of a stretch, he says, but we can axiomatically identify "scripture" as "a text that is spiritually authored and inerrant" (or whatever else you want to attach to the definition). The same can be said of God - perhaps we can't axiomatically claim anything specific about God, but we can definitionally identify God. This is no different from "all bachelor's are unmarried". Every man on Earth could be married and that would still be a valid axiom. So I'm perfectly willing to axiomatically define God and scripture in this way, and accept those axioms. But again, "all your work is still ahead of you". We still don't know if such things exist even though we've defined them. And even if we knew they existed "all your work is still ahead of you" because once again you only have a modest deism. Where is the knowledge of revealed religion? We still don't have it. We're still authorizing ourselves to believe these various and sundry claims that are mixed and matched by various people across the face of the Earth.

I think people are so busy poking holes in what I've said about epistemology (which is completely valid - I'm no philosopher), that they haven't realized that their case is still left unmade. And that was really my point from the beginning - that there is no case to make. The authority for these beliefs comes from one place - from ourselves. Just be honest about it.

A Firm Foundation? Knowledge of Revealed Religion

The other day Evan and I got into a discussion about proof of religion, and I wanted to bring it over to the blog. The spark for the discussion was this post about a blogger who decided to convert from the Presbyterian Church of America (a more conservative brand of American Presbyterianism) to Roman Catholicism. Evan actually has a very good comment on the blog critiquing the fault that the convert found with the Presbyterian Church. My bigger concern was this statement (again, from the convert):

“Should I just continue to form opinions and interpretations
with lots of prayer and reflection? Should I just do my best to be part of the
group I feel conforms most closely with Scripture? No, I can't because any
options within this paradigm of Sola Scriptura lead to the same fateful
conclusion that I am my own authority.”

My concern with this approach – and the implicit claim that Catholicism would remove this autonomy – is the fundamental problem that it doesn't recognize that all revealed religion is self-referential and its “own authority”. If we take revealed religion at its word, then the self-referencing authority is a being of some sort. If it’s an all-powerful being, then perhaps that’s reason enough to submit. But the point is, what we’re trying to get at the truth of is precisely the reality of this being. If we’re unwilling to take revealed religion at its word (which presumably we aren’t if we’re asking the question “what is true?” in the first place), then what is self-referencing is the revelation itself. Having lost the author of that revelation we come back to this convert’s initial conundrum: any conclusion based on revelation is going to be a conclusion derived from our own authority, our own interpretation – from ourselves. This is the heart of what it means to have "faith" - it is to trust in your own authority and assessment of something that you have no other evidence for. If you have faith in something someone else told you, then you are authorizing them to provide you with truth, but you are still the source of any authority that you actively or passively ascribe elsewhere (to a text, to a cleric, etc.).


Standard Epistemological Foundation 1: Rationality

Traditionally, standards of what is considered "knowledge" have had to be based on more external foundations. We derive knowledge logically that is indeed contingent knowledge, but it is still independent contingent knowledge. Given a set of axioms and given a set of rules, we say that a deduction is true. This knowledge is contingent on these givens, but it is independent insofar as (1.) the axioms are not argued from authority, but from consensus and mutual agreement, and (2.) there is consensus and mutual agreement on the rules of logic. Nobody can assert axioms or rules on his own authority or on the authority of some magisterium. Moreover, the useful knowledge that we derive in this way is derived. We don't consider the axiom itself to be useful knowledge so much as tautological or definitional knowledge. In Real Analysis, you start with the "field axioms" - all the various real number properties, the existence of the additive identity, the existence of the additive inverse, etc.. Likewise, we axiomatically claim things like "all bachelors are unmarried". The claims of revealed religion (authority of scripture, apostolic succession, reality of God) are treated as axiomatic in this sense (and we can think of theology as the body of knowledge derived from these axioms), but there is a problem with this. Axiomatic claims are supposed to be simple, basic, tautological or definitional if possible, and a starting point of broad agreement and concurrence. Or, if not broadly agreed upon at least useful assumptions (neoclassical economics, for example, is built up from some dubious axioms that we explicitly assume - but then the conclusions we derive are tested for veracity).

With revealed religion or theology, the axiomatic presupposition is in fact exactly what we want to prove! God is assumed. The authority of scripture is assumed. And details are derived from there. This, of course, is backwards. It's a way of churning out volumes of doctrine, but it's not a way to find assurance of the most important questions: is there a God? and has He interacted with us? These important questions are just asserted and the less important questions are the ones that are derived or proven (if we choose to think of the tenets of a faith as axiomatic).


Standard Epistemological Foundation 2: Empiricism

Another epistemologically valid option is inference from empirical observation. This doesn't necessarily have to be rigorous if we're willing to attach an element of doubt. In other words, we can make valuable, useful inferences about the nature of water fowl without strict falsification if we keep in mind the possibility of a black swan. "Almost all swans seem to be white, but I guess there could always be a black one" is a piece of knowledge that we can work with and use in every day life, that is based on empirical evidence, even if it is weaker than the definitive "all swans are white". Revealed religion isn't based on this form of knowledge either. To the extent that people cite empirical evidence, it is exceedingly vague. It is a feeling or an intuition. For a moment we can put aside everything we know about brain chemistry and moments of euphoria, and simply observe that even if this intuition or feeling is genuine, it can't be conclusively attributed. Did it come from the Holy Spirit? Or did it come from Allah? Even assuming that it is a genuine external force acting on us, how do we have any confidence in attribution? Often, the confidence for believers comes from corroboration. An intuition is consistent with Scripture, for example ("test the spirits"). But what value is it to be consistent with Scripture? Again, the authority of Scripture is ascribed (either by oneself or by an institution to whom one attributes authority), not inherent. What revealed religion does is take a prefabricated understanding of the universe and overlays that on top of feelings and intuitions that on their own could not be ascribed to any source. There is something that objectively exists - a feeling, an intuition. That's not the problem and the observation of that feeling or intuition is not the problem. The problem comes from what sort of knowledge is derived from it. To put it in swan terms, revealed religion says "I see many, many white swans and I conclude that the white swans are black swans that have painted themselves white". The problem here isn't the observation per se (the observed white swans are analagous to the spiritual feelings or intuitions that I'm not trying to deny happen) - it is the fact that every important element of the knowledge that we try to derive from these feelings and intuitions is brought to the experience or speculated, and not inherent in the experience itself. Approaching our knowledge of revealed religion as an empirical endeavor is problematic for much the same reason that approaching it as a rational endeavor is: every informational contribution that meets epistemological standards (either rational or empirical) is vague and unattributable to any god, much less a specific god; every informational contribution that provides clarity, specificity, and significance is information that is assumed or self-referential.

This is all obviously extremely problematic. We like to think that the strength of an argument for the truth of a claim should be proportional to the significance of the claim we are making. "I am the Son of the one true God and I have come to Earth to be sacrificed, an act which will absolve your sins" presumably requires considerably more evidence than "the sky is blue". A casual, unscientific empiricism suffices for the latter. And yet the former many of us treat as axiomatic! Why? How? Scripture? That just regresses the problem back one step - what is the authority of Scripture? That too is axiomatic. The convert from Presbyterianism to Catholicism cited earlier is concerned with the shakiness of this step back to Scripture. His solution? The magisterium! But from whence does the magisterium derive its authority? God. And how do we know the magisterium derived its authority from God? Two ways: Scripture and that the magisterium told us so! It's all axiomatic! And unlike definitional axioms like the associative property or “all bachelors are unmarried”, these axioms are complex, specific, and ultimately precisely the points that we wanted to verify!

Conclusion

This may sound harsh to revealed religion, but it shouldn’t be understood that way. What I’m being harsh with are the claims of individuals who make inappropriate claims for revealed religion. Ultimately where all this leads us to is the self. Belief in revealed religion is belief in something that you authorize yourself to consider “true,” not belief in something that any established epistemological standard (either rational or empirical) allows you to claim is true. In terms of the truth-claims of revealed religion all authority is vested in the believer. Now, if those claims are indeed true, then perhaps other types of authority reside elsewhere – perhaps with God. But the claim itself by the believer is made on the authority of the believer. And that believer may delegate authority to a text or to a cleric or to a magisterium. This is what faith is – it is the self-authorization to believe something that you have no justification for believing aside from your own self-authorization to believe it (of course we can mix faith and evidence. I can say “I have faith that my wife won’t cheat on me”, which is based on observational evidence of her past behavior as well as a hope that I authorize myself to maintain for sentimental reasons, or just to keep myself sane).

Being serious and honest about the epistemological problems with revealed religion actually reinforces a lot of what (at least Christianity – particularly Protestant Christianity) has to say about itself. Whether faith is a wise choice is another question entirely, and I’m not even sure how one would answer that question.

I’d conclude with another hesitation – the point that what we are trying to understand here (the existence and nature of God) by definition eludes epistemologically sound verification. We are talking about an invisible or spiritual being that wants to let humans have a substantial degree of free will and free reign. It is a singular being supposedly – we don’t have lots of them to compare and look at, as we do with the classic case of the swans. It is a being that withholds judgment for quite a while. It is a being that said his piece two millennia ago and let a Spirit take the initiative from there. This is a being which, if we were trying to pursue empirically, we would not expect to get very far with. The noise swamps the signal. The appropriate response to this situation isn’t to declare its non-existence, but to say that we “fail to reject the null hypothesis”. We can’t make a claim one way or another, but we do declare that we are unable to embrace the affirmative.

The Danger of Libertarian Social Engineering

David Brooks had a great column up yesterday contrasting the French Enlightenment with the Scottish Enlightenment, and cautioning against people who rely unduly on rationalism to impose massive change on society.

Don Boudreaux completely missed the point - that Brooks was calling out conservative and libertarian social engineers and radicals as well as liberal ones. Boudreaux regularly advocates these huge imposed changes, derived from deduction from simple principles rather than real testing in the real world - precisely the sort of change that Burke and the Scottish Enlightenment were disposed against.

Greg Mankiw gets Brooks's point, and has this great anecdote:

"A couple years ago, I participated in a panel discussion on libertarianism in Mike Sandel's Justice class, along with my friend and colleague Jeff Miron. Jeff is a true libertarian, and he defended that position with gusto. By comparison to Jeff, I seemed lacking in conviction. I described myself as a "libertarian at the margin." By that, I meant that given our starting point today, I believe more reliance on individual liberty and less on governmental solutions is usually a step in the right direction, but I often recoil at more radical libertarian positions.

David Brooks's column yesterday offers a good explanation of skepticism about big radical ideas, such as pure libertarianism. It made me feel better about my watered-down variety."

I regularly say I'm sympathetic to Austrians and libertarians here. I think I'm clear on how I'm sympathetic. I highlight their ideas that I agree with all the time, despite the fact that I also critique. Sure - I praise Hayek and Boettke and Garrison more than I praise Mises and Salerno and Rothbard, but I'm allowed to have preferences. Anyway - my sympathy is of the Mankiw variety, and I think he and Brooks nail it. Boudreaux, as usual, completely misses the point.

Beware of libertarian social engineers, and any radical social engineers that have a massive mega-project they want to impose on society based on a huge system they've built up from some first principles. John Dewey cautions against this and highlights the point about rationalism in The Quest for Certainty:

"From the side of the object those who put forward the claims of reason have placed the universal higher than the individual; those who have held to perception have reversed the order. From the side of mind, one school has emphasized the synthetic action of conceptions. The other school has dwelt upon the fact that in sensation the mind does not interfere with action of objects in writing their own report. The opposition has extended to problems of conduct and society. On one hand, there is emphasis upon the necessity of control by rational standards; on the other hand, the dynamic quality of wants has been insisted upon together with the intimately personal character of their satisfaction as against the pure remoteness of pure thought. On the political side, there is a like division between the adherents of order and organization, those who feel that reason alone gives security, and those interested in freedom, innovation and progress, those who have used the claims of the individual and his desires as a philosophical basis."

I'm not sure the distinction is quite so sharp (and Rothbard offers an entirely opposite thesis here), but Dewey makes the right point. When you think you can just think up the best way for society to be organized, you'll countenance radical changes and impositions of a new social order on society far more easily. Movements like Communism were at least explicit about this. I think one of the biggest dangers of libertarianism is that since it is ostensibly a doctrine of individual liberty, the fact that an entirely new, theoretical order is imposed on society is obscured. Try telling a libertarian they're imposing a grand plan for a new social order and watch the steam come out of their ears either because (1.) they're furious, or (2.) they can't process the accusation - it makes no sense to them. In fact I'm sure I'll hear a little of both in the comment section (which I probably won't be able to attend to today).

Remember, for all they belly-ache about their claims to classical liberalism, libertarianism largely emerged out of French liberalism and the French Enlightenment - not the British. I'm not saying even that the French Enlightenment is a bad thing (and I don't think Brooks is saying that either). Everyone makes their own unique errors - but it's important to be cognizant about what those errors are and what the implications are, even for fellow liberals.

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UPDATE: So when people write, they don't fact check every single word - we write on the basis of the wealth of knowledge that we've collected and stored over the years. Every once in a while, though, it's good to double-check some things. After publishing this I decided to double check my claim about the roots of libertarianism in French liberalism. I found enough to conclude that as a general statement it's a fine statement for me to make - I'm not claiming that there were no other influences after all, and the French vein seems to be substantial, consequential, and freely acknowledged by libertarians. While double-checking this, though, I stumbled across an interesting (admittedly, from Wikipedia) point about the origins of libertarianism. When the word first emerged in France, it was in a critique of Proudhon. The accusation was that he was "liberal, but not libertarian"... so in other words, in the early days libertarianism was not "classical liberalism" - it was explicitly opposed and quite distinct. For those libertarians, classical liberalism just wasn't good enough.

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UPDATE 2: Jonathan Catalán shares his thoughts on Mankiw's post here, and seems to think that libertarian sympathies aren't compatable with "strict adherence" to Keynesianism.

A Salutary Servitude

Tim Lacy offers a great quote from Tocqueville on the inability to pursue comprehensive analysis, and the social basis of our beliefs.  I think the wider paragraph is worth quoting, and further, I think it applies to more than simply the philosophers.  This is how we all reason in whatever capacity we do so, and as Tocqueville points out, this isn't a bad thing.  I have for some time been quite interested in the relationship between freedom and constraint, and I think this passage highlights a large part of what is significant about constraint and lack of freedom:

If I now consider man in his isolated capacity, I find that dogmatical belief is not less indispensable to him in order to live alone, than it is to enable him to co-operate with his fellow-creatures. If man were forced to demonstrate to himself all the truths of which he makes daily use, his task would never end. He would exhaust his strength in preparatory exercises, without advancing beyond them. As, from the shortness of his life, he has not the time, nor, from the limits of his intelligence, the capacity, to accomplish this, he is reduced to take upon trust a number of facts and opinions which he has not had either the time or the power to verify himself, but which men of greater ability have sought out, or which the world adopts. On this groundwork he raises for himself the structure of his own thoughts; nor is he led to proceed in this manner by choice so much as he is constrained by the inflexible law of his condition. There is no philosopher of such great parts in the world, but that he believes a million of things on the faith of other people, and supposes a great many more truths than he demonstrates. This is not only necessary but desirable. A man who should undertake to inquire into everything for himself, could devote to each thing but little time and attention. His task would keep his mind in perpetual unrest, which would prevent him from penetrating to the depth of any truth, or of grappling his mind indissolubly to any conviction. His intellect would be at once independent and powerless. He must therefore make his choice from amongst the various objects of human belief, and he must adopt many opinions without discussion, in order to search the better into that smaller number which he sets apart for investigation. It is true that whoever receives an opinion on the word of another, does so far enslave his mind; but it is a salutary servitude which allows him to make a good use of freedom.

Of Miracles

Who has taken the time to read their Hume?:

A.) The Insane Clown Posse

B.) Christopher Hitchens

Here's a tougher quiz. Who is more entertaining and offensive to the tender, mild-mannered mainstream:

A.) The Insane Clown Posse

B.) Christopher Hitchens

Philosophical Musing 1: Historical Determinism, Epistemology, and Total War

***This will be one in a series of probably three "philosophical musings" posts from me. They've been slowly written over the last month and a half or so. This one frames the total war of the first half of the 20th century as an important historical singularity that was made inevitable by the epistemological projects that emerged from the Enlightenment.***
A couple weeks back, I worked through this documentary on the Spanish Civil War, which is especially rewarding because it is interview-heavy. It, along with a lot of thinking I've been doing over the last year on the inter-war economy, has helped to focus my attention on broader, more fundamental questions about the period from 1914 to 1945 - quite possibly the most catastrophic and revolutionary period in human history.

Although we present WWI and WWII in light of "making the world safe for democracy", to a large extent this was not the point or purpose of the wars at all. To a large degree, this extended war was a war between communism and fascism. Fascism lost, liberals became quickly disillusioned with communism, and the Cold War slowly wore communism down as well. I think instinctively we don't like this understanding of the wars. Great wars should have "good guys" and "bad guys" and the "good guys" should win, right? The point that the defining conflict of the 20th century was a conflict between two "bad guys" comes across as somewhat surprising.

I want to argue that this interpretation should not be a surprising thing at all. In a lot of ways, total war was pre-ordained at the Enlightenment, which released the forces of Reason. Reason applied to society constructs social mega-programs built from considerably smaller logical axioms. Undue faith in our reason leads us to trust these mega-programs, which are iterated synthetic a priori propositions: "true" propositions which are not axiomatic but which are also considered "a priori" because they are true independent of experience. These rational mega-programs are what we also know as the "-isms": communism, fascism, libertarianism, syndicalism, anarchism, etc. All are thrust upon society with absolute confidence in their own self-evidence. They are not tested or evolved - they are deduced - that is their hallmark: logical deduction. This is the spawn of unchecked Reason.

In societies where Empiricism dominated or at least competed vigorously with Rationalism, these "-isms" did not take hold. The value of a mega-program had to be demonstrated, so change was slower and planning was less grandiose. The political, economic, and social systems of Empiricist societies evolved, and were generally conservative and relatively undisruptive.

I think it's reasonable to suggest that from the outset global, total war was an inevitable result of the rise of Reason. Reason results in social mega-programs and complete faith in the value of these mega-programs. Since the logical faculties of human beings are bound to fail or vary, a myriad of these self-confident mega-programs could have been expected to emerge, and indeed did emerge. In this sense, Reason is very likely to be a divergent epistemological endeavor, whereas empiricism can be thought of as a convergent epistemological endeavor (this is quite a claim, I know - at first glance you would assume that experience would vary much more widely between individuals than logic would - I don't think this is true, although I can't really prove it here... I'm thinking along the lines of "the wisdom of crowds" type argument).

If, back in 1700 or so, we had to predict what would happen in the far future given the emerging landscape of epistemology, what would we conclude? I would argue that we would conclude that Empirical societies would slowly change and evolve into more efficient societies. They would try out new forms of organization, evaluate the adjustments they make, and proceed forward from there. The outcomes can be expected to be roughly as variable as human experience is. In societies where Reason dominates, we can imagine social theorists not moving incrementally, but designing and promoting programs constructed from basic axioms of human behavior. Whereas in empirical societies, a program of social organization may take decades of incrementalism to evolve, in rational societies, a philosopher dedicated to the task of designing a program of social organization could produce his tailor-made program in under a decade. So, back in 1700 we could expect socieites grounded in Reason to produce a number of mega-programs that involved a radical alteration of social organization. These mega-programs would appear paradoxical to the empiricist, because they are (1.) entirely untested, and yet (2.) vigorously believed in.

Given a basic assumption that human collectives can be extremely violent, I think someone in 1700 could have concluded that the Enlightenment and the rise of Reason necessitated:

1. The emergence of several different mega-programs for social organization grounded in Reason and a unique, internally consistent deductive logic,

2. Which are both untested and attract exuberant devotees, and that

3. That the incompatibility of these mega-programs will lead to conflict between the devotees of the mega-programs, so that

4. As soon as technology allows, and as soon as a critical mass of states capitulate to the various mega-programs, a total war between the logically deduced mega-programs will errupt

Contingent on the presence of a decently large population of Empirical societies, the early 18th century observer might also conclude that:

5. The empiricists will be left to pick up the pieces, because empirical social organizations will always be more robust than logically-deduced social organizations. Therefore, any rationalists allied with the empiricists will share victory, but will themselves slowly be superceded by the empiricists.

We think of the world wars just another spectacular episode in the march of human history. The earliest we date the "inevitability" of WWII is November 11th, 1918. The earliest that we date the "inevitability" of WWI is perhaps German unification and the inauguration of the Second Reich under Bismark in 1871. I argue that we should have seen this coming much, much earlier than that. History is a series of choices by human beings, and human choice is dictated by the way we understand and interpret our world. As soon as Reason emerged in the modern world as a major and pervasive force for understanding the world, a global, total war was inevitable (clearly Reason pre-dates the enlightenment, but it seems to me it was kept in check by revealed religion before the modern era). The world wars were not another episode in history: they were a pre-determined historical singularity, necessitated by the epistemology of the Enlightenment. The precise actors and battles may not have been pre-determined, but the forces driving the conflagration were.

I've presented this largely as a modern drama: an internicine struggle among rationalists, as well as a contrast between rationalists and empiricists. Looking forward, what I think is significant is that modernism is not a foregone conclusion at all. First and foremost, pre-modern thought patterns have reasserted themselves in the age of holy terror. While the pre-modern factions in Islam that have lately resisted the West and sought to establish a new caliphate are the most prominent example, other (admittedly less problematic) examples abound as well. Christian Fundamentalism holds considerable sway in no less a polity than the United States. By "Christian Fundamentalism" I don't simply mean "Christian Conservatism," which can be entirely benign and often even beneficial. I'm refering to fundamentalism, which brooks neither logic nor experience as the primary path that humans must travel to find truth. In the former Soviet Union, many societies are reverting to their pre-Rationalist days, before the Communist mega-program, to the tsarism of a bygone era. This is also true of much of Africa, which, after throwing off the oppressive yoke imperialism (or more accurately, after having this yoke removed for them by a repentant imperialist) have not embraced constitutional democracy, but instead have relied on strongmen, warlords, and tribalism. And of course in other regions, Rationalism has not yet even been tempered. Marxism still dominates much of South America. Fortunately, East Asia has joined the empiricist camp with gusto, and even China and India are tentatively following in the footsteps of Japan, Korea, and Australia. On top of this re-emergence of pre-modernism, there is also the looming specter of post-modernism, which I honestly can't make heads or tails of in this schema.

This is one view of modern history, one that I find relatively convincing and meaningful. It doesn't answer every question, but I think it sheds new light on the world wars and the Cold War. These are epochal events, pre-ordained for centuries. We got through them. Thinking in these mega-epistemological-trend terms may be a useful guide for the future.

Or by promoting this view of modern history, perhaps I'm just setting up the prologue to a Rationalist mega-program of my own! In case that's what I'm inadvertently doing, I'll end on this entreaty: err on the side of evidence, experience, and caution.