Incidentally, there is a problem with saying (like positivists do) that religious statements are nonsensical. If the sentence:
“God exists”
is meaningless, then how about
“The Pope believes that God exists”,
which may be even true. It would be a good sentence with some rotten parts.
Monday 28 September 2009
Good Question Bad Answer
Religious people think that their beliefs are not only true, but also provide answers to important questions. Not so disbelievers. Positivists thought that religious propositions were not just false or unknowable, they were meaningless. Marxists were less radical. They thought that religious beliefs answered to certain human needs, but not very salutary ones. They were opium for the masses. Douglas Adams (“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) kept looking for an answer to the question about the meaning of life. He finally found one and it said “Forty two”. He still thought it was a good answer to an obscure question.
I beg to disagree. I think that religion provides answers to important questions, perhaps even philosophical questions. Questions like:
1) “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
2) “Why is there so much suffering, if everyone would be happier without it?”
3) “What is going to happen to all of us, sophisticated people with so much imagination and mines of information?”
4) “How should one live?”
5) “Why is there so much subjectivity in the world?
6) “How did the world arise?
Not all these questions are very clear, that’s right (1 and 5 are not). But there are all very good questions, prephilosophical, prescientific even.
On the other hand religious answers are almost disappointing in their clarity. How did the world arise. It was created by a powerful being. We must obey him, or else, because he is so strong. But if we are obedient, we will not die and continue to live forever.
Religion is a disappointment. I would like to know what I am doing here and why I was thrown in with all those human animals. Instead I am told a fairy tale about a God who was virgin born, can transform water into wine and part the Red Sea. There is nothing hard to understand here, these are childish stories.
Still, religious people deserve respect, because their quest is legitimate. Some of the questions 1-6 will be answered by science, some not. But it is better to have no answer, than a shallow one, potentially untrue.
Marek W.
I beg to disagree. I think that religion provides answers to important questions, perhaps even philosophical questions. Questions like:
1) “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
2) “Why is there so much suffering, if everyone would be happier without it?”
3) “What is going to happen to all of us, sophisticated people with so much imagination and mines of information?”
4) “How should one live?”
5) “Why is there so much subjectivity in the world?
6) “How did the world arise?
Not all these questions are very clear, that’s right (1 and 5 are not). But there are all very good questions, prephilosophical, prescientific even.
On the other hand religious answers are almost disappointing in their clarity. How did the world arise. It was created by a powerful being. We must obey him, or else, because he is so strong. But if we are obedient, we will not die and continue to live forever.
Religion is a disappointment. I would like to know what I am doing here and why I was thrown in with all those human animals. Instead I am told a fairy tale about a God who was virgin born, can transform water into wine and part the Red Sea. There is nothing hard to understand here, these are childish stories.
Still, religious people deserve respect, because their quest is legitimate. Some of the questions 1-6 will be answered by science, some not. But it is better to have no answer, than a shallow one, potentially untrue.
Marek W.
Sunday 27 September 2009
Why is being a godless dualist so difficult?
Why is being an atheist dualist so difficult?
The problem is as always (from the times of Descartes onwards) how to combine the material and spiritual (moral) aspect in one person. Or simply put, how to connect the body and the soul.
TRADITIONAL DUALIST in my opinion has no problem. God can do anything, so a mere juxtaposition of body and mind comes to him as natural as creating the world, or man for that matter. For a dualist the only thing is to believe in God, but 95% of the human kind do.
MATERIALIST believes only in one substance, so he does not have such problems. Nevertheless, he faces the issue of recognising other humans (and perhaps dogs) as moral agents (as opposed to stones, grasses and cockroaches). But again, the problem does not seem that big. Like God, man can decide anything (but not necessarily do everything). So he may simply decide that other people will be moral beings and protected by our ethical principles, whereas any pest, worms and cockroaches would be eliminated. The basis for our decision will be sympathy (Hume) and similitude. Simply, those being like us will be promoted and those unlike us will be eliminated. I am very subtle today.
TROUBLED DUALIST like me, who does not believe in God, but thinks that the mind cannot be reduced to the physical. He has lots of questions to answer. What is mind for, if neuroscience can (apparently) explain everything? (if not now, then in future). How is the soul connected with the body? If the soul is a special attribute of man, when did it appear on the tree of evolution (and of course I am a Darwinist). Are bats mere machines or spiritual beings? What is it like being a bat? The list of questions may not be so long (see David Armstrong’s book “A Materialist Theory of Mind”), but they all beat me.
Any I have no powerful ally like God to look to, who can do everything for me. And unlike the materialist I cannot make arbitrary decisions (almost play God). I have real questions to answer. I have been looking one way and the other. But so far, I have remained a disfunctional dualist with all my problems. Am I in a minority of one?
Marek
The problem is as always (from the times of Descartes onwards) how to combine the material and spiritual (moral) aspect in one person. Or simply put, how to connect the body and the soul.
TRADITIONAL DUALIST in my opinion has no problem. God can do anything, so a mere juxtaposition of body and mind comes to him as natural as creating the world, or man for that matter. For a dualist the only thing is to believe in God, but 95% of the human kind do.
MATERIALIST believes only in one substance, so he does not have such problems. Nevertheless, he faces the issue of recognising other humans (and perhaps dogs) as moral agents (as opposed to stones, grasses and cockroaches). But again, the problem does not seem that big. Like God, man can decide anything (but not necessarily do everything). So he may simply decide that other people will be moral beings and protected by our ethical principles, whereas any pest, worms and cockroaches would be eliminated. The basis for our decision will be sympathy (Hume) and similitude. Simply, those being like us will be promoted and those unlike us will be eliminated. I am very subtle today.
TROUBLED DUALIST like me, who does not believe in God, but thinks that the mind cannot be reduced to the physical. He has lots of questions to answer. What is mind for, if neuroscience can (apparently) explain everything? (if not now, then in future). How is the soul connected with the body? If the soul is a special attribute of man, when did it appear on the tree of evolution (and of course I am a Darwinist). Are bats mere machines or spiritual beings? What is it like being a bat? The list of questions may not be so long (see David Armstrong’s book “A Materialist Theory of Mind”), but they all beat me.
Any I have no powerful ally like God to look to, who can do everything for me. And unlike the materialist I cannot make arbitrary decisions (almost play God). I have real questions to answer. I have been looking one way and the other. But so far, I have remained a disfunctional dualist with all my problems. Am I in a minority of one?
Marek
Dazed and Confused
Hello everybody,
Like Socrates I do not philosophise for money. Unlike him I have a steady, nine to five job, bank job in fact. And of course I am doing all right. But my heart is in philosophy. Hopefully, my mind will follow my heart. Because at present my philosophical views are somewhat of a mess.
For one thing, I am attracted to mind-body dualism or rather double-aspect theory (the mental and the brainy are two aspects of the same thing, two features of it). This does not make me a churchgoer, rather a bland, lay humanist, unlike real dualists, who tend to believe in God, which I do not think I do. And I do not believe in immortality. Although I would like to be in heaven (even on earth), I think that hell is a logical inconsistency and I can prove it. Or perhaps some Christian bloggers can convert me.
Although I believe in rich spritual life, I strongly deny the existence of free will, which spiritual people often advocate. No freedom ex nihilo, no Chisholm, no Sartre. Freedom is possible only in the weakest sense, roughly „you can do as you please, but can you please as you please?” (G.E. Moore, B. Spinoza?) This brings me close to scientism. But if I say that the question of determinism or indeterminism has little to do with the question of our liberty, you will see how muddled and confused my ideas are.
I am old-fashioned. I like good old analytic philosophy, but I would rather have it more romantic, so that it could be discussed in Left Bank cafes, possibly in French, like existentialism, and with attractive girls around. And tell me: why is analytic philosophy so boring, dry-as-dust and unsentimental? After all, it has its origins in Hume, who put so much emphasis (especially in ethics) on empathy, sentiment, fought absolutes of his day no less adamantly than any existentialist. On top of which, he was the darling of the salons and Rousseau’s friend. Later he fell out with him, but who would not?
So read me, because I have fairly bizarre views. But what can I do? This is how I think – honest. Treat me as a member of a bizarre denomination, who nevertheless is trying to convert no one. Twentieth century philosophy was so much party-line oriented! And I would not be admitted to any philosophical party (and boy I tried!).
I started to write this diary in order to rework my philosophical Weltanschauung. Kind of philosophical therapy. You may help me with my treatment. We will see which way this goes. Maybe I graduate to become an austere positivist. Or inward-looking phenomenologist. Or perhaps my soul is really immortal. Or I will remain the philosophical correlate of the political animal invented by KoĊakowski: conservative-liberal socialist.
My philosophical views! I will put you to a real test! Beware, if you do not pass it, I will have no qualms about changing you. Although my philosophical persona can also be changed in the process. Once my blobbing starts gathering pace, I may even stop being the same monad.
NB: This blog is a companion to Blog Filozoficzny Marka Witkowskiego by the same blobber. I wish I could recommend it to you. Unfortunately, it is written in Polish, which is my native tongue, so if you do not have the language, do not even bother to click! Every philosopher should have his secret language (lingua mentalis) and I am no exception.
But do come back to this one
Marek Witkowski
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