Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Authority Without Inerrancy? Part III: A Fuller Explication of the Progressive Christian View of the Bible

As I was preparing my discussion of the third objection to the progressive Christian view of the Bible ("The Argument from Human Hubris"), I found that I needed to offer a more careful and complete account of exactly what I have in mind when I speak about "the progressive Christian view." That account started out as a section of a blog post discussing the Argument from Human Hubris, but it became so lengthy in its own right that I have now decided to make it a post of its own.

Most of what I say in what follows should be familiar, since it elaborates on points I’ve already made. But I think it will be helpful to put all the points together, and explain them a bit more fully, so as to offer a more perspicuous picture. It is not my intention here to defend the progressive Christian view, but simply to describe it and contrast it with the dominant alternative.

According to the progressive Christian understanding, the Bible is an important authority in the Christian’s life but not an inerrant one. The progressive Christian does not accept the Doctrine of Plenary Verbal Inspiration (the doctrine which holds that the Bible says exactly what God wants it to say from cover to cover). Rather than viewing the Bible as the very Word of God, the progressive Christian views the Bible as a seminal human testament to divine revelation.

The idea, roughly, is this: God has revealed Himself to humanity in a number of ways through history: in profound mystical encounters, in providential events, and through our relationships with one another (especially insofar as those relationships operate as channels through which divine love can flow in the world). For Christians, however, the most significant revelation of God is that which occurred some two thousand years ago in the person and life of Jesus.

On the progressive Christian view of things, the Bible collects the writings of people who have experienced divine revelation in these various ways, and who have sought to express their understanding of those revelatory experiences through poetry, words of wisdom, stories, theological ruminations, etc. The Bible also collects and redacts other things—such as transmitted oral histories, religious myths, and folk tales, as well as records of the laws and holiness codes of earlier peoples. In many of these cases, the actual writers were probably not striving to express their own experience of divine revelation so much as striving to faithfully put to writing stories that expressed the religious experiences of earlier generations.

Put more simply, the Bible collects both first-hand and second-hand (and sometimes third- or fourth-hand) human testaments to divine revelation. On this progressive Christian view, the testaments themselves do not bear the stamp of divine inerrancy, since they are human testaments and as such are subject to the fallibility of their human authors. And this means that approached on a verse-by-verse basis, one cannot confidently say, simply because the passage appears in the Bible, that it truly expresses the will of God or offers us an accurate understanding God’s nature.

Instead, it is the collection, viewed and read holistically, that has the greatest value. On this point, two issues are of particular significance. First, a collection of fallible testimonials can, when read holistically, offer a clearer and more accurate picture of the truth than any of the testimonials can offer in isolation.

Although I’ve used the following analogy before, it bears repeating here: If a police officer arrives at the scene of an accident and has the good fortune of having multiple witnesses to interview, he is more likely to arrive at a reliable understanding of what transpired than if he had only a single witness. While each witness will have seen the events from only one perspective (in some cases through the filters of their own biases), and while each witness may misremember this detail or that fact, the officer can still get a good sense of what really happened by putting together the various perspectival stories, accounting for the influence of discernible prejudice (which may require some investigation into the characteristics of the various witnesses and the biases that might have influenced them), and identifying common themes and recurring observations.

The second point has to do with trajectories or trends. When belief systems are seen to evolve over time and across generations, there is at least some reason to suppose that what we are observing is the outcome of an ongoing collision between culturally inherited worldviews and a reality that transcends culture, one which imposes itself on the experience of people within a culture in ways that force them to revisit their inherited presumptions.

Such change is often going to be piecemeal, especially given the extent to which the possibilities of experience are shaped by cultural inheritance. In effect, our culturally inherited belief systems effect both how we experience reality and how much of reality we are able to experience. And so a deeply imperfect belief system will produce a deeply imperfect (both incomplete and error-riddled) experience of reality. But even as this happens, the collision between the belief system and reality will expose flaws in the belief system and will force revisions. The revised belief system, while still imperfect, will be more attuned to reality than its predecessor, and so may offer a fuller and truer access to the reality that lies beyond and behind experience.

But the process is ongoing and, in philosophical terms, "dialectical." As more of the reality "out there" is allowed in by our belief system, there is more opportunity for reality to correct that belief system. And so a belief system that is closer to the truth may in some cases encounter more flaws, more "contradictions," as more of reality breaks through to enlighten us. This leads us to revise our belief system yet again, and experience the world through yet another set of intepretive lenses. And the process continues.

Put briefly, it isn’t until our cultural inheritance has been modified by a deeply imperfect experiential encounter with reality that it becomes possible to have a somewhat more accurate experiential encounter, which in turn forces a further modification, etc.

The result is the development of our belief systems through fits and starts, with cultural conventions warring against experiences that don’t fit naturally with those conventions. Often, when we step back and look at a history of change within a culture’s worldviews, we can see a trajectory, one which may actually tell us something about the character of the reality that is impressing itself persistently upon a resistant human psyche.

The progressive Christian tends to look at the Bible as just such a record of evolving ideas about God within a broad cultural tradition. On such an interpretation, an inerrantist approach is going to be viewed as an impediment to getting at the lessons of the text. If every claim about God is taken to be a perfectly accurate description of the divine, then the reader will suppose there is no trajectory of development to look for. In the resultant picture of God, every culturally inherited prejudice will have to be accommodated along with the insights derived from God’s efforts at self-disclosure. Instead of seeing earlier biblical images of God as stages in a process of fuller and truer understandings of the divine, the biblical inerrantist has to adopt a picture of God in which these earlier ideas about God are fully accommodated along with the later ones, resulting (perhaps) in an absurd mishmash of opposing characteristics.

It would be as if a student of science found a collection of historically important science writings from the seventeenth century on, and decided that the writings of the earliest scientists had the same authority as later ones, and so insisted that our view of nature must fully accommodate everything said by every scientist in the book.

More significantly, if we follow the progressive Christian view here, seeing the Bible as recording a rich assortment of evolving ideas about the divine over time, we are likely to be led to the following conclusion: the process of refining our understanding of God probably didn't end in biblical times. The journey is an ongoing one, a journey in which each succeeding generation participates.

If so, we need to ask how we can make the most progress in this ongoing journey of discovery. It seems clear, with respect to this question, that we do not make the most progress by disdaining what we inherit and throwing it out, nor by treating what we inherit as an infallible treasure to be protected from all criticism. We make the most progress when we revere the progress made by generations past, receive what they pass on to us with respect, and then honor their legacy by building off of that inheritance—by critiquing it fairly and honestly in the light of our own experiences (recognizing all the while that those experiences are fallible).

The progressive Christian view of the Bible, in short, treats the Bible as a resource of seminal writings in an evolving tradition through which God is still revealing Himself. As such, progressive Christians obviously approach the Bible very differently than do inerrantist; but they also approach it very differently than do secular scholars, insofar as they treat the Bible as offering a seminal testimony to a divine reality that transcends our finite human understanding. Reading the Bible is thus not primarily about learning about what ancient peoples believed. It's primarily about participating in a journey in which the aim is a deeper connection with God.

Progressive Christian are, however, also characterized by their allegiance to Christ. And that makes the Biblical witness especially important. Insofar as Christians believe that God effected His most profound revelatory act in history through Jesus of Nazareth, the earliest stories about that revelation (the Gospels), and the earliest theological reflections on its significance (the epistles), have a profound kind of significance. There is reason to suppose that it is still in and through our encounter with this central revelation that the greatest progress in our understanding of God will come. But for the progressive Christian, the questions, "What precisely happened?" and "What does it mean?" are questions that were not necessarily answered perfectly by the biblical writers.

But this is not to say that what the biblical writers had to say was so much chopped liver. A source can be authoritative without being inerrant--as is the case with our senses, a point I made in the first post in this series. But there's another point to be made here: in a way, the progressive Christian's willingness to question the perfect accuracy of the biblical account of Jesus' story reflects the seriousness with which they take the resurrection story.

Above all else, the resurrection means that Jesus is someone with whom we can have an experiential relationship now, today. We, today, can become His disciples every bit as much as those who followed Him two thousand years ago--not just in the sense of following His recorded teachings, but in the sense of sitting at His feet and experiencing His love. And so our understanding of Christ is not wholly dependent on the mediated reports of the biblical writers. Those reports--themselves mostly second-hand reports by those who had become Jesus' disciples after His death--are important for orienting us, by introducing us to the seminal story around which Christianity was born.

But the empty tomb (the dramatic ending to Mark's Gospel) tells us that the story isn't finished. We can become a part of it, with our own experiences to share. And as a community of would-be disciples, we can learn from each other as well as from the disciples who lived long ago.

35 comments:

  1. Very nicely said. I agree with the thrust and with the detail. This doesn't often happen.

    Perhaps you've touched on this idea before, but I believe that the sort of liberal hermeneutic you propose is not only desirable but inevitable. I came to theology from philosophy. A did a bit of history of philosophy, and I was always struck by the fact that equally perspicuous, equally knowledgeable scholars could come to quite different interpretations of one and the same set of works. (There is a school of Aristotle scholarship which makes that great philosopher out to be a nominalist. Extraordinary!) Of course they would agree on much. But they would often disagree on the big-picture and, as a result, on much else too, for the the big picture is the interpretative lens through which all is seen.

    It seems to me that one should expect just this same state of affairs as regards Biblical interpretation; and when one surveys the field of Christian scholars, indeed this is what one finds - equally perspicuous, equally knowledgeable, but with quite different interpretations. Moreover, I suspect that this is not a mere historical accident but an inevitability. Scholars have always disagreed, and thus (by a little inductive argument that seems quite sound) they do now and always will.

    The upshot is this: even if the Doctrine of Plenary Verbal Inspiration is true, we should not expect that we can know with any certainty just what God wished to communicate to us through Scripture. Evidently the complexity of Scripture opens up the very real possibility of difference of interpretation, a difference that cannot be avoided. Thus whether we wish it or not, we cannot simply read off from Scripture what it means; we must rather (as you often put it) engage it as we would a wise and learned interlocutor. The great virtue of the liberal hermeneutic you propose is that this fact is made explicit. It does not labor under the false assumption that the intent of Scripture can be read off in any easy and infallible way.

    Even if the text were infallible, there is no reason to suppose that the interpretations of it are (or ever will be). Thus the hypothesis that it is infallible is moot.

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  2. Hello Dr Reitan,

    -Rather than viewing the Bible as the very Word of God, the progressive Christian views the Bible as a seminal human testament to divine revelation.-

    One hopes he'll deal, then, with the fact that Jesus thought very differently.


    -in profound mystical encounters-

    Which are anything but objective.


    -in providential events-

    Which don't communicate much of anything specific, w/o a framework already in place thru which to interpret said event.


    -through our relationships with one another-

    Which are sometimes good and reflect holiness and are very often evil, disgusting, harmful, and sinful. "Progressives" live in happy-happy-land.


    -In many of these cases, the actual writers were probably not striving to express their own experience of divine revelation so much as striving to faithfully put to writing stories that expressed the religious experiences of earlier generations.-

    Even when they specifically state that they're writing the very revelation of God? All those "thus saith the Lord"s are "their own experiences" and "stories"?


    -this means that approached on a verse-by-verse basis, one cannot confidently say, simply because the passage appears in the Bible, that it truly expresses the will of God or offers us an accurate understanding God’s nature.
    -

    Leaving the "progressive" completely and utterly in the lurch. If God has not spoken clearly, we have nothing, no objective way to tell right from wrong, holiness from sin, Heaven-bound-ness from Hell-bound-ness. In short, it sucks to "progress".


    -Witnesses-

    This really seems just to beg the question. Numerous fallible witnesses lead sometimes to what we think are correct verdicts and sometimes lead to the OJ Simpson trial. What about INFALLIBLE witnesses, inspired specifically by the final, infallible God?


    -The revised belief system, while still imperfect-

    You mean "while still imperfect, ***I THINK (without any standard outside of myself to distinguish whether I'm right)***".


    -But the process is ongoing and, in philosophical terms, "dialectical." -

    So we could still be in our sins, and we'd have no idea. Heaven could be a fantasy.
    Progressing towards...whatever...is purpose-less and w/o a goal or destination. You're bowing before the mirror.


    -If every claim about God is taken to be a perfectly accurate description of the divine, then the reader will suppose there is no trajectory of development to look for.-

    And how do you know that "development" is a good thing? This is apparently your fundamental presupp, and I can't question this more strenuously.


    -Instead of seeing earlier biblical images of God as stages in a process of fuller and truer understandings of the divine-

    Well, it depends on what you mean. We inerrantists recognise the reality of progressive revelation. But it's up to YOU to point out precisely how our understanding is a mishmash and doesn't work. And we all know how much progressives love actual substantive debate! (Not very much.)


    (cont)

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  3. (cont)

    -the process of refining our understanding of God probably didn't end in biblical times. -

    We agree there, but you're not just talking about refining our understanding. You're functionally downgrading our primary source of info about God to the same level as the clueless pundits of today. It's foolish.


    -in an evolving tradition through which God is still revealing Himself. -

    I'd love to see a theory of what it means that God reveal Himself, on your view. It is apparently alot like ME revealing MYSELF. What's special or authoritative about that?


    -A source can be authoritative without being inerrant--as is the case with our senses, a point I made in the first post in this series.-

    And I invite anyone to see how we interacted in that combox and at my blog on that topic.
    This supports my contention that God revealing Himself = me revealing myself. And what special insight do I have on the ultimate nature of reality, about sin, about good and theodicy, about eternity?



    -in a way, the progressive Christian's willingness to question the perfect accuracy of the biblical account of Jesus' story reflects the seriousness with which they take the resurrection story.-

    That's so rich. We think it's full of holes, and that just means we RESPECT it that much more!
    This is exactly like the wife-beater who cooes to his bleeding, semi-conscious wife: "I hit you like that b/c I love you so much!"


    -Jesus is someone with whom we can have an experiential relationship now, today. -

    And maybe that contention is supported from the errant part of the text. You have proposed no objective way to know that. It would appear you'd say that we can have a relationship with Jesus if we THINK we can. Happy-happy-land, like I said. Wishful thinking, pixie dust, "Think of a wonderful thought, any happy little thought" and you can fly, first star on the right, straight on till morning. How this kind of thinking appeals to anyone who is seriously considering the truth (or not) of whether God has anything to say to us and anything to do with us is completely beyond me.
    Give me Romans 8 any day, not this happy-pill crap.

    Peace,
    Rhology

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  4. Good point by Franklin on making the whole thing moot.

    I feel like Rho is not really trying to interact substantively with the arguments being made. Maybe it's all the ad hominem stuff that makes me think that.

    I like: 1) the relational aspect of the hermeneutic, 2) the Jesus-centered part of the hermeneutic, and 3) the distinction between inerrantists, progressives, and secular scholars.

    I guess I'm not quite ready to dismiss as much of the Bible as this allows for though. And, I think it was a bit unfair to the hermeneutics of those in the inerrantist camp. They have pretty sophisticated ways of accounting for progressive revelation while still holding to inerrancy. I'm not saying that they solve all of the problems with inerrancy, I'm just saying that the analogy of the scientific writings doesn't do justice to how inerrantists are able to get around issues and hold some parts of the Bible as more worthwhile than other parts while still holding to inerrancy.

    I like all the weird, crazy parts of the Bible. Why can't that be God's revelation too? I like that God can't be labelled in a nice, neat little box that works with whatever my overarching theological theme is, whether it is love and compassion, sovereignty or whatever. I like to be challenged when I read the text, and a lot of times that happens because what I'm reading doesn't necessarily fit very well with what I think God should be like, or how I think things should be. It seems to me that this progressive Christian view of the Bible is too quick to get around stuff like that and not willing to sit with it long enough and be challenged by God's weirdness.

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  5. I'd like you, CPO, to quote my ad hominems. I'm curious how you define "ad hominem", really.

    Also, didn't Jesus use some a few times? I'm curious what you make of that and most of all why you use it as a shield and an excuse not to deal with my arguments, to check your brain at the ad hominem.

    Peace,
    Rhology

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  6. I think some of those stories are pretty fun, too, C.P.O., but some of them are also about YHWH ordering his chosen people to slaughter the children of their enemies or asking a father to murder his son or hating hating one man and favoring another capriciously. If the word 'loving' actually means anything, then it simply cannot be reconciled with these actions.

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  7. I find Dr. Reitan's inerrancy posts to be lucid and refreshing, but I'm less confident about assuming that our religious understanding is "progressing" in a single, steady direction. To use just one example, it seems to me that American culture is simultaneously improving (e.g. minority rights, prosperity and lifespan) and regressing (violent and obscene media, national debt and war), because it's such a complex entity. What's more, the things I consider "progress", like gay marriage, are signs of apocalypse according to other folks. Can you expand on what that overall "right direction" is, in our spiritual evolution, and how we know we're heading that way?

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  8. cheek,
    Who said that God loved the Amalekites (whom He commanded to be slaughtered) the same way He loves His chosen people? Besides, didn't He give them 100s of yrs to repent?

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  9. Rhology,

    I certainly didn't say that. I try not to make many affirmative statements about g-d because I have no experience or evidence on which to base them. The vast majority of Christians, (This is an act of inductive logic on my part. I have talked about these issues with literally hundreds of self-identifying Christians, and I can count the ones who don't believe in an all-loving God on one hand.) including those who view the Bible as inerrant, do believe that their God is fundamentally loving, that he loves all people.

    As for YHWH giving the Amalekites time to repent, again, I don't know. But even if he did, slaughtering an entire race of children is never an act of love. If we grant that such acts can be loving, then we must admit that the words we're using simply don't have any meaning. For the record, that is a weaker claim than 'such an act is never justified.' I think both of them are pretty self-evidently true, but you could make a consistent argument from your position that the first is true while the latter is false.

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  10. "And so a belief system that is closer to the truth may in some cases encounter more flaws, more 'contradictions,' as more of reality breaks through to enlighten us."

    Thanks for this eloquent statement of how a theist gets going in the right direction, away from psychological tropes and projections. When you are ready to engage fully with reality, give us a call, over at the reality-based community!

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  11. I had far more confidence that I understood reality before studying philosophy than I have ever since. But I think that the fallibilism with which I approach the basic beliefs which frame my worldview is "truer" to the human condition.

    That condition, as I take it, is one in which certainty about the fundamental nature of reality is persistently elusive, but one in which for practical purposes we cannot escape endorsing beliefs about precisely this elusive reality. And so I favor an approach in which, among other things, we hold to our fundamental beliefs about fundamental reality in a fallibilistic way.

    This is not the same as subjectivism. I think there is an objective reality independent of my beliefs, in relation to which I ought to struggle to conform my beliefs. And I believe there are methodologies we can and should employ for making progress in improving the alignment between beliefs and reality (the overarching methodology I favor is roughly Hegelian).

    What I deny is that we can achieve certainty with respect to these fundamental beliefs. There may well be something close to certainty with respect to less fundamental beliefs--with respect to "factual" beliefs about the content of the empirical world, for example, I think the scientific method can afford us, at least on occasion, a body of evidence so compelling as to approach certainty.

    But when it comes to understanding the fundamental nature OF the empirical world, or the question of whether the empirical world constitutes the whole of reality, whether it is a manifestation of a deeper reality, whether our conscious experience of the empirical world is reducible to the epiphenomenal by-products of elements in the empirical world or whether it is connected to some other dimension of reality--here we are in metaphysical territory in which real certainty is impossible--and in which the illusion of certainty can be achieved only by making philosophically controversial assumptions which are then treated by the believer as unassailable.

    This is what seems to me to be what is happening with both "fundamentalist" religious believers and what I would classify as "dogmatic" naturalists. They make certain assumptions which they treat as beyond question, become dismissive and/or hostile towards those who question them, and rest their certainty on these assumptions.

    It is this practice which I am most opposed to, whether it comes out of the mouths (or keyboards) of Christians or Muslims or Hindus or naturalists.

    And my reasons for being opposed to it are essentially pragmatic ones: I see this need for certainty, bolstered by false confidence in unquestioned starting points, as generating dismissiveness and hostility towards the "other," the one whose worldview is different from one's own, and thus fueling harmful dichotomies.

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  12. Not to be hostile or anything, but your desire to cordon off fundamental natures and wholes of reality, "deeper realities", etc. from empirical engagement is simply without merit. It exemplifies magical thinking about thinking- magical metathinking, one might say. As you know, conscious experience is directly altered by something as simple as alcohol, first slightly, and with increasing dose to the point of hallucination and ultimately to extinction. How, in the face of the myriad proofs of mental mechanism, you can persist in false "open-ness" to such magical ideas as souls, other dimensions, etc. is mystifying.

    Fallibaism is only relevant where you are dealing with a verifiable system, which is say empiricism. When you are dealing with fantasies, as you are with alternate realities, dimensions, souls, etc., you are dealing with ideas which no verification can touch and which thus can not be (and should not be) brought under the fallibalist rubrick. Rather you should be frankly invoking subjectivism in those areas.

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  13. Burk,

    Fallibaism is only relevant where you are dealing with a verifiable system, which is say empiricism

    Empiricism itself is not verifiable. It too is a presupposed worldview, taken on faith. One can't produce empirical proof to prove empiricism is true; to do so is simply begging the question.
    Further, don't you know that the principle of falsifiability is itself unfalsifiable?
    I don't think you've done much examination of your own principles here, so any critiques of "fantasies" from you don't go far without your having laid a solid groundwork.

    (Not that I think Dr Reitan will necessarily agree with me; I'm just expressing myself here.)

    Your comments are useful in this much, however, Burk: They help expose that Dr Reitan, due to his a priori commitments to his own worldview, descends into absurdity in an attempt to keep other allegiances afloat. It's why I'm not a liberal.

    Peace,
    Rhology

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  14. Rhology:

    If I dream that I cut off my finger, wake up and my finger is still there, I have disproven the reality of dream content. If I then go ahead and cut off my finger with empirical implements, I will have (when it remains off for some time, apparent to all empirical tests) demonstrated the difference between empirical and non-empirical modes of "knowing".

    It is delightful, really, how theists believe they can throw sand in the eyes of skeptics by citing Hume. Empiricism is admittedly a weak way of knowing. But to paraphrase Churchill, it is better than all the other ways that have been tried. Both empiricism and its child falsifiability are logical principles, given the premises that we live in Plato's cave and know that we have thoughts of both fantasy and reality-based character (fallible though the latter are). The principles do not refer to themselves, nor should they.

    The real issue is whether fantasy thoughts can even be termed fallible if there is nothing to measure them against. Our capacity for fantasy is endless and infinite. Only when we care about the truthfulness of our thoughts do we (and must we) appeal to empiricism, and consequently to fallibalism.

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  15. Burk,

    I'm curious what you mean by "empiricism". Is it any one of these?

    1.(Semantic) The view that only those propositions which have empirical content (construed roughly to mean that they make predictions about how certain experiences must go if they are true) are meaningful.
    2. (Alethic) The view that only those propositions which have empirical content can be true.
    3. (Epistemological) The view that only those propositions which have empirical content can be known.

    1 is the strongest. It goes by the name of Logical Empiricism, and was defended in one form or another by A.J. Ayer, Rudolf Carnap and others. Unfortunately, it's most certainly false. For if true, then since universal in scope, it must apply to itself. But when applied to itself, here's what we get: 1 itself has none of the empirical content that it requires of meaningful propositions, and thus by its own standard comes out as meaningless. Thus if 1 is true, it is meaningless. When realization came that LP self-refutes in this way, the death knell of logical positivism had been sounded.

    2, I take it, is some variety of metaphysical naturalism. It is the view that the only things that exist are physical in nature and thus open to empirical investigation. In my experience, empiricists who see the defect in 1 do not often accept 2 instead. Empiricists wish to tie all knowledge to experience, but 2 seems to suppose that we can have knowledge of non-existence where there is no possibility of experience and thus seems to go against the spirit of empiricism.

    I'd wager that 3 is the most common form of empiricism today. I'd guess that you have 3 in mind, and I'll end with criticism of it. (The idea is Rhology's. I'll expand.) You say that 3 is a logical principle and that it does not apply to itself. I'll pass over the first of these claims (I'm not sure what you mean by it) and consider only the second. Why, I ask, shouldn't it apply to itself? Empiricism, I take it, means to apply to all belief that is to count as genuine knowledge, not just some. For if it applies to only some, then it seems to have had the heart stolen from it. If some knowledge is extra-empirical, then empiricism would seem to collapse.

    Let me put the point in the form of a dilemma: Either empiricism applies to itself, or it does not. If it does not, then there seem to be truths, viz. 3 above, that can be known in non-empirical ways. But this is just what the empiricist wishes to deny. If empiricism does apply to itself, then it seems that it cannot be known. For 3 - our empiricist hypothesis - does not have the sort of empirical content the empiricist demands of all propositions that can be known true.

    Thus either empiricism is undermined (in the case where it does not apply to itself) or it is rendered unknowable (in the case where it does apply to itself).

    Perhaps you'll say in response that empiricism has some sort of special status (is this the import of the word "logical"?) in virtue of which it does not apply to itself but does not thereby undermine empiricism. I doubt that any such special status exists - 3 seems like a perfectly good, perfectly normal sort of proposition - but if it does, here's my challenge: whatever this special status is, I claim it for belief in God's existence, existence of the soul, etc.

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  16. Hi, Franklin-

    I think that each of your formulations are excessively condensed and fail to grapple fully with the concept of empiricism. The wiki page does a decent job of explaining it, I think. All I am saying is that any statement we make reflects our thinking. If we claim that a statement is also true in a correspondence sense, that claim can only be justified by empirical methods (in combination with logic). There is no a priori that is true in anything other than a subjective sense. My feeling of fear is immediate and real, but it is also subjective, so it is not true in a correspondence sense. For that I have to see whether there really is a snake under my feet.

    "Why, I ask, shouldn't it apply to itself? Empiricism, I take it, means to apply to all belief that is to count as genuine knowledge, not just some." The empirical principle is a matter of logic and empiricism (let us say pragmatism, perhaps!). Given A and B, then C follows. Given that our thoughts can comprise fantasy and/or models of reality (empirical fact A), and that we have a (very imperfect) grasp of reality via empirical experience and methods (empirical fact B), then it follows that classifying our thoughts into the two types requires testing them against reality, empirically.

    As for your dilemma, one can use logic without empirical content. Given a normal mathematical system of premises, then 1+1=2. In any case, the principle of empiricism is not in the same class as the judgements it classifies for us. It refers to statements about correspondence truth, while it itself does not claim to be a correspondence truth, but a logical principle given the world we find ourselves in. If we found ourselves in Neverland or in Alice's wonderland, things might be different!

    Let me try to inject God and souls in the above treatment as you recommend: given that we think of god, it must follow that god is true. Voila!

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  17. It's also important to note regarding empiricism that current physics predicts physical objects (e.g. quarks) that are impossible to apprehend empirically. I suppose one might construe materialist theories of mind to suggest that reflection is itself an act of empirical apprehension since the object of reflection on that theory would be thoughts which are themselves brain states or some other physical entity. Such semantic back-bending seems counter-productive, however, since there is a useful distinction to be made between observation and reflection in studying epistemology.

    Empiricism as a methodology has been a great success; empiricism as a philosophical system is likely to be incoherent in just the way Franklin suggests. I hold a similar theory of reality to the one you're arguing for Burk, but I don't have much hope in empiricism as a system for establishing it philosophically.

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  18. Hi, Cheek-

    I'm sorry, but there has to be something wrong with a field whose relation to reality is as tenuous as you indicate. I would suggest that philosophy as a field has some systemic problems, not least of which is being a refuge for those who confuse navel gazing for engagement with what is commonly termed "reality". You might enjoy the book "The Truth About Everything: An Irreverent History of Philosophy : With Illustrations".

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  19. Burk,

    You're doing exactly what I predicted with your finger scenario - providing evidence that evidence is a good way to discover truth, when that is precisely what's in question. Try again.

    it is better than all the other ways that have been tried.

    What's your evidence for that? :-)
    Your own standard is going to bite you every way you turn. I encourage you to man up and admit you hold to empiricism by faith, w/o evidence.


    Both empiricism and its child falsifiability are logical principles

    What's the argument for that? I don't see a strictly logical necessity for holding to empiricISM, that's for sure.
    In the interest of better mutual understanding, I DO believe in the utility of evidence for discovering truth, but only b/c the God of the Bible exists and has informed us that evidence is a good way to discover truth, and grounds the concept that our minds can discover facts, interpret them correctly, and understand the world around us. If empiricism is true, I see no reason to believe that, so I'm asking you to show it.
    Reading this might help as well.

    Peace,
    Rhology

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  20. Burk,

    When you say that empiricism is a logical principle, I'm curious what you mean.

    If I'd called something a logical principle, I would have meant that it was a topic-neutral principle of logical inference (this conforms to the use of the word within contemporary philosophy). Examples:

    All observed As have been B.
    x is an A.
    Thus x is a B too.

    If p, then q.
    p.
    Thus q.

    Notice how in each case the principles are purely formal. They have no content at all and thus are no better expressions of empiricism than they are, say, of theism.

    It seems quite obvious to me empiricism is not purely formal. It is a substantive hypothesis. It says that the only beliefs that can count as genuine knowledge come about through a process of empirical investigagion.
    This has content (quite controversial content). It makes a claim about knowledge; indeed it offers a theory of knowledge.

    Since it has content, since it is substantive, it has a truth-value; and it seems obvious that we can investigate that truth-value. Arguments can be given for it; arguments can be given against it. You cannot isolate empiricism from criticism by the declaration that it's a logical principle. You subject theism to a critique, but refuse to accept the possibility that your empiricism can be subject to critique. This is a double-standard.

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  21. Franklin--This is a very clear, concise, and lucid treatment of the versions of empiricism and the challenges they face. I wish Burk's response were as clear to me. I'm not sure I understand it.

    Cheek--With respect to the following: "I hold a similar theory of reality to the one you're arguing for Burk, but I don't have much hope in empiricism as a system for establishing it philosophically."

    This is why I enjoy your contributions to this blog. You advocate a naturalistic worldview in a way that strikes me as philosophically honest. Burk's response--denigrating the field of philosophy as a discipline--strikes me as missing your point, which is that he (and you) have gone beyond enbracing the value of empirical methodologies to embracing an empirical PHILOSOPHY which cannot be verified by purely empirical means.

    As I see it, whenever we adopt a view of reality--ANY view of reality--we are inescapably in the domain of philosophy. We therefore have two choices: We can wrestle honestly with the philosophical challenges that our view of reality poses, or not. The latter may be appropriate if one is engaging in a project which can be effectively pursued on the premise that one's chosen view of reality is correct. But as soon as one engages in a defense of one's chosen worldview in conversation with those who have a different worldview, one is in a territory in which empirical methods alone do not suffice. One is doing philosophy.

    (I could make a similar point with respect to those who believe in the objective validity of a revelatory text and base their worldview on the assumption that this text alone is a sure guide to ultimate reality: one cannot defend the truth of this view by doing more Bible study; philosophical argument is required.)

    (I should note that I am making a general point here, not a criticism of the comments from inerrantists on this blog; sometimes those comments may amount to "just more Bible study," but that's hardly characteristic.)

    Burk--I want to apologize about something. When I read your comments, I consistently come away with the impression that you are so confident about your worldview that you equate inconsistency with your VIEW of reality with being "out of touch with reality." I doubt that this impression is completely fair, but the impression itself makes it difficult for me to respond to your comments in an evenhanded way. I find myself writing up uncharitably satirical responses and then erasing them. I am going to take a few deep breaths, and if I think I can engage your comments charitably, I will do so--probably in a later post.

    For now, I must quit this so that I can pack up my office...our department is moving to a new building, a fact that raises some ethical question in its own right (because of who the new building is named after). But that will be a topic for a later post as well.

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  22. Hi, All-

    Thank you for sharpening my thinking.

    "It says that the only beliefs that can count as genuine knowledge come about through a process of empirical investigagion." No, I would not agree with this. We can have knowledge of our own feelings and ideas without any empirical recourse. It is only the claim that an idea corresponds to "reality" which depends on having a standard by which it is measured, which is to say empiricism. It is a tautology in a way, to say that if we claim that an idea reflects some outer pattern, we can only justify that claim by investigating that outer pattern from as many perspectives as possible.

    "But as soon as one engages in a defense of one's chosen worldview in conversation with those who have a different worldview, one is in a territory in which empirical methods alone do not suffice. One is doing philosophy."

    I would take this to mean that there is no truth at all. That reality is what we make of it, and that cross-perspective discussion is impossible. Sorry, but I do not buy it. We exist among (and consist of) real material objects. We may not want to take them seriously and live in other worlds of imagination instead- that is an option. But as long as we claim to deal with matter in the world, and with things that impinge on that matter (as souls supposedly do), such claims require empirical support to distinguish them from free-floating ideas. The claim is meaningless without its justification- they are co-dependent.

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  23. Burk,
    I don't believe the relationship between philosophy and reality is tenuous, or at least not relatively so. I do, however, think that philosophy addresses many questions that are not tractable via observation alone. How does one observe an answer to the challenges of the skeptic or the problem of induction? Even in the so-called hard sciences, observation is often not sufficient for carrying on. Most of quantum physics is based on abstract theories and thought experiments, not observation.

    Rho,
    Are you suggesting that evidence is not a good way to find truth? That is a pretty radical idea, which I suspect scrutiny of your daily life would undermine. Saying that evidence (I assume that you mean empirical evidence) cannot lead to knowledge and saying that evidence cannot lead to a complete theory of reality are very different claims. No one, as far as I can tell, actually disbelieves the value of empirical evidence for answering some questions, not even Hume.

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  24. "Most of quantum physics is based on abstract theories and thought experiments, not observation."

    We wouldn't even know quantum physics exists were it not for observation. All the abstractions- string theory, neutrinos, chromodynamics, etc. have no source and no truth value unless they can be tied to observations (which string theory has not been, by the way, so it could easily be delusional- we just don't know yet).

    That is why theism rankles so, where people make up whatever they like (or fear), based on feelings, hallucinations, tall tales, and collective delusions, and call it an alternate view of "reality", or better yet, philosophy. Not only errant, but baseless.

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  25. String theory is not the most apt example here since it is still highly controversial. The existence of quarks, on the other hand, is largely accepted by contemporary physicists despite the fact that quarks are inscrutable by definition.

    I understand your frustration with what seem to be baseless assertions regarding g-d. Furthermore, I think there are pretty compelling reasons for actively disbelieving in a personal g-d, but the sum of those reasons is not dominated by empirical evidence. In fact, even the two best (in my opinion) pieces of empirical evidence for disbelieving in a personal g-d of the classical conception, the existence of gross evil and the lack overt and regular physical manifestations, are only reasons for disbelief when combined with suppositions that are not accessible to observation (e.g. assertions about what a good g-d or a personal g-d would do under certain conditions). The only entirely empirical argument to made against the existence of g-d that I can think of is to say that because we have not found a g-d, one does not exist, and this argument is obviously unsound.

    One more point: you say abstractions have no truth value until they are tied to observations. I'm going to assume that you mean we don't know their truth values without observations, but correct me if I'm getting that wrong. Also, I'd suggest that while this may be your ideal, it would be hard to argue that this is the way science actually proceeds. Under those requirements, we could never make generalizations beyond discrete observed cases.

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  26. Hi, Cheek-

    You seem to be overly narrow in your view of "observation". In my book, quarks are completely scrutible. They are not visible to the naked eye, but we now have far better instruments than eyes. Quarks are a snap to see with the proper instruments, whose workings are based on a long chain of other observations, logic, calibrations, etc. that ultimately end up amounting to sensory observation by us as observers.

    As for arguments against the existence of god, the burden is really on the other foot. God is constructed as a nondisprovable entity in an invisible realm. It seems beside the point for me to look for it, or for arguments against it.

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  27. cheek said:
    Are you suggesting that evidence is not a good way to find truth?

    No, of course not. Read my last comment, where I said this:
    In the interest of better mutual understanding, I DO believe in the utility of evidence for discovering truth, but only b/c the God of the Bible exists and has informed us that evidence is a good way to discover truth, and grounds the concept that our minds can discover facts, interpret them correctly, and understand the world around us. If empiricism is true, I see no reason to believe that, so I'm asking you to show it.

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  28. Burk,

    I gather by your comments that you seem to think theism completely cut off from all empirical investigation and that its posits are thus at most flights of fancy.

    Historically, this is not at all how theism has been conceived. Thomas, for instance, thought that the existence of God could be proven by an analysis of some big-picture structural facts discovered by observation of the world (the existence of causation, for instance). The procedure, described in this way, bears a strong resemblance to contemporary physics. There is much posited in contemporary physics that is unobservable. (The Big Bang comes to mind. We see the results of it - cosmic background radiation, for instance - but we do not see it.) But belief in such non-observables can be, and has been, made warranted based upon analysis of what is observable. (Of course the analysis differs from that found in philosophy. The most remarkable difference is the dominance of mathematics with physics.) This procedure seems perfectly rational to me. We observe x. We argue that there could be no such thing as x if there were not a y too. Thus we conclude that y must exist (even if it's something we cannot observe). This is one of the paradigm ways (indeed it is perhaps the paradigm way) in which humans extend their knowledge past that quite small class of entities that are actually observed.

    You impose a standard upon science that the physicists do not accept; they will quite readily believe in non-observables if they can be convinced that such non-observables are necessary to explain that which is observed. But once we adopt the proper standard, the standard that is actually applied in science, the door is opened for theological reflection. Thomas thought God an unobservable necessary to explain the observable. Now, you might well find his arguments weak. But to continue to portray theism as if it just imagination ungrounded in the world revealed to us by our senses is just plain false.

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  29. You impose a standard upon science that the physicists do not accept; they will quite readily believe in non-observables if they can be convinced that such non-observables are necessary to explain that which is observed.

    I'd add that Burk imposes a standard upon theism that he himself is not willing to shoulder for his own position of empiricism. Such radical atheism leads to inconsistency all over the place.

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  30. Rho,
    Sorry, I missed that part. I didn't really suspect that you believed that, just wanted to clarify. After all, we do both hold beliefs that the other finds a little whacky. As for needing a deity to inform you of the value of evidence for gaining truth, a couple of points: 1. Where did God give us that info? I've read the Bible through multiple times and don't recall any such epistemology lessons, 2. Why would I need that when in a very real way, gathering empirical evidence for what's out there is a necessity of our condition. It may be that the skeptic is correct in saying our senses cannot give us knowledge, but they're all we've got.

    Also, just to clarify, while my thinking is largely naturalistic, I'm not an empiricist. I believe observation needs to be combined with reflection to yield an accurate theory of reality.

    Burk,
    You can say quarks are observable and water is observable, but the word has categorically different meanings in each case. The first involves positing a (partial) theory of reality (not an empirical act), firing up a Hadron collider, and pouring over data looking for certain irregularities that the theory predicts. The move from "such irregularities are manifest" to "there are quarks" is, I believe, a justifiable inference, but it is not justifiable by logic and observation alone.

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  31. Hi Cheek,

    We know it, for one thing, from the impossibility of the contrary. If the God of the Bible is not and has not clearly revealed Himself, then there is no other way by which we could answer these questions. Every other one fails.
    Also, in the Bible God makes clear the smallness of a human, the futility of attempts to reason autonomously, the limitations of human sight, foresight, observation, knowledge, wisdom, ability, and breadth and depth of thought. Further, we are constrained and twisted by sin. We even actively suppress the truth about very fundamental issues.

    You said:
    It may be that the skeptic is correct in saying our senses cannot give us knowledge, but they're all we've got.

    Wow, "that's all we've got." And at the same time, you admit you have no answer to my critique.
    I answer - no, it's not all we've got. We've got God's Word and all the rich and deep truth it provides. Your refusal to submit your thinking to it demonstrates the absurdity you're willing to accept, all for the sake of avoiding your need to repent before God.

    combined with reflection

    I'd say that's a distinction w/o a difference. The problem remains, just in a slightly different form.

    Peace,
    Rhology

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  32. Rho,
    Sorry, I was unclear again. My (1) was meant to ask where in the Bible or elsewhere did God tell us that evidence is valuable. I know you think your particular interpretation of the Christian faith is logically necessary. Virtually no one else (not even followers of your own faith) does, however, so that might give you pause.

    As for not answering your critique, I'm not sure what the critique is of since I haven't offered an account of my own beliefs here or anywhere else I imagine you could have read it. If you'd like to get into that kind of discussion with the understanding that the aim is mutual understanding, then I'd be happy to do that with you by email as this doesn't seem to be the appropriate forum. In this thread I've mostly offered a critique of empiricism, which you don't hold to either, and asked a few questions to try to clarify my understanding of your own critique of empiricism. I'm in this to understand as well as possible, and while most of your ideas seem pretty out there from my perspective, you are also obviously an intelligent guy. A favorite quote of mine is: If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people, and if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you. I'll let you decide which conjunct I should heed;)

    Also, at the end of your last comment, you seemed (from my perspective) to be implying that the same critique you'd given of empiricism would apply to my view as well. If I misunderstood, then please forgive me. If I didn't, then I'd respond that: 1. You don't know the specifics of my position and could not therefore make such a conclusion soundly, and 2. It's a bit disheartening to be told that I do in fact hold positions I have specifically repudiated.

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  33. cheek,

    The critique I've offered on this thread is of Burk's position, and it closely approximates your own. But mostly I refer to our previous discussion in a previous thread.

    Over and over again God instructs us in the Bible to take evidence into acct, to use our reason, to make judgments based on "by their fruit you will know them", "by the mouth of two or three witnesses let every truth be established", etc. Jesus' appeal to miracles and God's testimony to establish His deity and authority. Just goes on and on.

    Anyway, we don't have to talk about this here, but I'm loathe to discuss things over email, b/c then they're inaccessible to everyone else.

    Peace,
    Rhology

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  34. Franklin, we are talking about very much the same things. The question is the intellectual standards involved in making these inferences (making such entities "necessary", whether one labels them non-observable as you do, or observable, as I do). Math is not the issue, per se, but logic. Given the current observational and instrumental capabilities, quarks are inescapable. You can not come up with an evidence-based model of reality to that depth without putting them into it.

    On the other hand, the historical record of theistic discernment/inference is not very promising. First we observed lightning and inferred god. Now we don't. Then we observed biology and inferred god. Now we don't. I have no strict problem with straight deism as an approach to the big bang, but really, we are profoundly ignorant about it, so that just amounts to a label for ignorance, not the sort of logical necessity that would make such a conclusion inescapable, as are the other sorts of inferences you point to. It certainly wouldn't allow us to hang a beard on it and the ten commandments, and all the rest. Those subsidiary inferences are particularly egregious and without warrant.

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  35. Understood. I'll just say that if you think all naturalistic theories of reality are "closely approximate[d]" by empiricism, then you might want to look more closely at what is out there. Very few people espouse anything like the strict empiricism that began in the modern period and died a quick death in the early twentieth century. Despite that, a large number of academics do subscribe to naturalistic theories. There is a clear difference between the two positions. Naturalism is a metaphysical position regarding what kinds of things exist, while empiricism is an epistemological theory about how we may obtain knowledge.

    Someday when I have the impetus to maintain my own blog, I'll try to give a full account of my own understanding of reality there. For now I need to get back to deciphering Earnest Sosa for the summer reading group, so I'll have to limit my role in these discussions to that of a critic.

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