Edward Feser's Blog, page 79

All Scientists Should Beg Lawrence Krauss to Shut the Hell Up Already

In The New Yorker, physicist and professional amateur philosopher Lawrence Krauss calls on all scientists to become “militant atheists.”  First club meeting pictured at left.  I respond at Public Discourse.For earlier trips in the Krauss Klown Kar, go here, here, and here. 

Poverty no, inequality si

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt is famous for his expertise in detecting bullshit.  In a new book he sniffs out an especially noxious instance of the stuff: the idea that there is something immoral about economic inequality per se.  He summarizes some key points in an excerpt at Bloomberg View  and an op-ed at Forbes.
The basic idea is very simple and not really original (I’ve made it before myself, e.g. here) but cannot be restated too often given that so many people appear to lack a grasp of the obvious.  It is that equality as such is not a good thing and inequality as such is not a bad thing.  Suppose everyone was so poor that it was difficult for anyone even to secure basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing, but no one had any more than anyone else.  It would be ridiculous to say “Well, at least there’s a silver lining here for which we can be grateful: Everyone’s equal.”  Or suppose everyone had a standard of living at least as good as that of the average millionaire, but some were multi-billionaires.  It would be ridiculous to say “It is unjust that so many have to make do with mere millions while a few get to enjoy billions.”

When people complain about economic inequality, this can make sense from a moral point of view only if talk of inequality is really a proxy for something else.  Most obviously, it certainly makes sense to lament that some people live in poverty, and it makes sense to call on those who have wealth (and indeed in some cases and to some extent to require those who have wealth) to help those who live in poverty.  But the problem here is not that the poor have less than others.  The problem is that they have less than they need.  The problem, that is to say, is poverty, not inequality. 
Similarly, it makes sense to be concerned that some wealthy people have massively greater influence over the political process than other citizens do.  And of course it is their greater wealth that accounts for this greater influence.  But as Frankfurt says, such influence can be countered “by suitable legislative, regulatory and judicial oversight,” and even if it could not be, it is not the inequality as such that is the problem, but rather something contingently associated with it.
Moreover, it very definitely makes sense to say that there are certain moral hazards associated with being wealthy.  A rich man can, if he is not careful, become too absorbed in business and other worldly affairs, too interested in acquiring fine material possessions and insufficiently interested in higher things, and thereby can gain the world at the expense of his soul.  Thus did Christ teach that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.  But that is not because there is anything wrong with being rich per se, but rather because there is everything wrong with being complacent, materialistic, and this-worldly.   And there are many rich people who are none of these things.  More to the present point, the problem has nothing to do with inequality. 
And yet many people constantly harp on about inequality as such, and not just self-described socialists.  For example, liberal political philosopher John Rawls’s famous “difference principle” is not about mitigating poverty or undue political influence per se.  While the principle allows for certain inequalities, it also rules out others, not because they entail poverty or undue political influence, but rather simply becausethey are inequalities. 
Barack Obama certainly sounded like it is inequality as such that bothers him during a 2008 presidential candidates’ debate.  Questioner Charles Gibson noted cases where government tax revenues actually increased when capital gains tax rates went down, and decreased when the rates went up, and asked why, in that case, Obama would favor raising rates.  Obama answered:
I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year -- $29 billion for 50 individuals.  And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.  That's not fair.
End quote.  Now, Obama didn’t challenge Gibson’s factual claims.  Even when Gibson pressed him later to justify his answer in light of the fact that dropping the rates might actually increase revenue, Obama simply said: “Well, that might happen, or it might not,” depending on circumstances.  But if it did happen, what would be “unfair” about the hedge fund managers making so much more than their secretaries -- given that, by hypothesis, the government would in that case have more tax money to spend on programs which might benefit the secretaries?  It is hard to see what Obama could say other than that he thinks the inequality in question is in itself unfair.
From a natural law point of view, we have a grave duty to help those who are in poverty.  But we are also obliged to recognize that inequality is simply part of the natural order of things.  The two things -- poverty and inequality -- simply have nothing essentially to do with one another.  Pope Leo XIII expressed this position eloquently in his 1878 encyclical on socialism, Quod Apostolici Muneris , which vigorously reaffirms the duty of the rich to aid the poor, but also vigorously condemns socialism, which he calls “evil,” “depraved” and a “plague.”  And one of the problems he has with it is precisely its egalitarianism:
[W]hile the socialists would destroy the “right” of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. (Emphasis added)
Similarly, in Rerum Novarum (1891), Leo argued that under socialism:
The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the leveling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation…
Socialists may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such unequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition…
But although all citizens, without exception, can and ought to contribute to that common good in which individuals share so advantageously to themselves, yet it should not be supposed that all can contribute in the like way and to the same extent. No matter what changes may occur in forms of government, there will ever be differences and inequalities of condition in the State. Society cannot exist or be conceived of without them…
[N]either justice nor the common good allows any individual to seize upon that which belongs to another, or, under the futile and shallow pretext of equality, to lay violent hands on other people's possessions. (Emphasis added)
Note that the pope was writing at a time when the standard of living of the poor in the Western world was much worse than it is now.  And note that he says these things while also reminding us in Quod Apostolici Muneris that the Church:
 is constantly pressing on the rich that most grave precept to give what remains to the poor; and she holds over their heads the divine sentence that unless they succor the needy they will be repaid by eternal torments.
and affirming in Rerum Novarum that:
those whom fortune favors are warned that riches do not bring freedom from sorrow and are of no avail for eternal happiness, but rather are obstacles; that the rich should tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ -- threatenings so unwonted in the mouth of our Lord -- and that a most strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for all we possess.
This insistence on sharply distinguishing concern for the poor from any concern for equality as such is just the sort of clear and careful thinking you’d expect from the man who also wrote Aeterni Patris and thereby revived the Scholastic tradition within Catholic intellectual life.
Anyway, it is good to see some clarity on this issue coming also from within mainstream contemporary academic philosophy.  Complaining about economic inequality is at best a gigantic time waster that can only promote muddleheaded thinking about poverty and other moral and political issues.  At worst, it is a mask for envy, which is evil.

Risible animals

Just for laughs, one more brief post on the philosophy of humor.  (Two recent previous posts on the subject can be found here and here.)  Let’s talk about the relationship between rationality and our capacity to find things amusing.
First, an important technicality.  (And not exactly a funny one, but what are you gonna do?)   Recall the distinction within Scholastic metaphysics between the essenceof a thing and its properties or “proper accidents” (where the terms “essence” and “property” are used by Scholastics in a way that is very different from the way contemporary analytic metaphysicians use them).  A property or collection of properties of a thing is not to be confused with the thing’s essence or even any part of its essence.  Rather, properties flow or follow from a thing’s essence.  For example, being four-legged is not the essence of a cat or even part of its essence, but it does follow from that essence and is thus a property of cats; yellowness and malleability are not the essence or even part of the essence of gold, but they flow from that essence and are thus properties of gold; and so forth.  A property is a kind of consequenceor byproduct of a thing’s essence, which is why it can easily be confused with a thing’s essence or with part of that essence.  But because it is not in fact the same as the essence, it can sometimes fail to manifest if the manifestation is somehow blocked, as injury or genetic defect might result in some particular cat’s having fewer than four legs.  (See pp. 230-35 of Scholastic Metaphysics for more detailed discussion.)Now, a stock Scholastic example of a property or proper accident is risibility or the capacity for laughter, which is a property of human beings insofar as it flows from rational animality, which is our essence.  (Note that the capacity in question here is not merely the capacity to make a certain laughter-like noise, as a hyena might.  Rather, it is the capacity to react with that noise to something regarded as funny.)

Again, it is not our essence or nature to be risible.  Rather, our essence is to be rational animals.  Still, we exhibit risibility because we are rational.  Risibility is a consequence or byproduct of our rational animality.  Hence it is because man is a rational animal that he is also a risible animal.  The fact that humor does not exist in other, non-rational animals lends credence to this judgment.
Suppose we accept this standard Scholastic view (which is expressed by thinkers like Aquinas).  It naturally raises the question of why risibility follows upon rationality.  What exactly is the connection between them?
Here it seems to me that the incongruity theoryof humor has an advantage over its rivals, additional to the other advantages which (as I indicted in the earlier posts) I think speak in its favor.  The basic idea of the incongruity theory, you’ll recall, is that we find something funny when we detect in it some kind of anomalous juxtaposition or combination of incompatible elements (though as I’ve also noted, this idea requires various qualifications). 
Now, notice that, in order to detect such an incongruity, you need to be able to grasp concepts.  For example, to see the humor in something like (to take a pretty random example) the “Gandhi II” sequence in the otherwise forgettable “Weird Al” Yankovic movie UHF, you have to grasp the concept of nonviolence, its association with Gandhi, the concept of an action movie, the concept of a movie sequel, etc., and the anomalousness of these being combined in just the way they are in that sequence.  But the grasp of concepts is the core of distinctively intellectual or rational capacities.  (See this article, reprinted here.)  So, the incongruity theory explains the link between rationality and risibility. 
Other theories of humor arguably fail in this regard.  For example, the release theoryof humor holds that finding something funny involves the release of tension or pent-up feelings.  But non-rational animals can experience a kind of tension -- think of a trapped horse panicking in the face of danger, or a frustrated dog trying to get to some food or to the mailman’s leg -- yet exhibit no risibility upon its release.
Or consider the play theory.  I suggested in one of the earlier posts that, rightly understood, the play theory should be regarded as an account of the psychological function humor plays in human life, rather than as an account of why we take things to be funny.  But suppose we interpreted it in the latter way -- as a claim to the effect that we find things funny when they afford some pleasure or relaxation.  One problem with such a proposal is that some animals exhibit playful behavior, but without exhibiting anything like a sense of humor about it. 
It might seem that the superiority theory of humor can also account for the relationship between rationality and risibility.  It holds that finding something funny involves a feeling of superiority over and contempt for others.  And surely only a rational animal can feel superiority or contempt?
But there are a couple of problems with this suggestion. First, as some critics of the theory have pointed out, it isn’t clear that the laughter associated with contempt really involves finding anything funny.  Just as we can cry with sadness but also with joy, so too it seems that laughter can be associated with very different psychological states. 
But even if there is some connection between the laughter involved with contempt and the finding of something to be funny, there is another problem with the suggestion that superiority is the key to our finding things funny (as opposed to something merely occasionally and contingently associated with finding something funny).  Or at least it is a problem if we accept certain other aspects of the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of human nature.  Man is not only a risible animal, but also a socialanimal.  We are not atomistic individuals of the sort described by Hobbes (who was, as it happens, an advocate of the superiority theory of humor).  Our natural relationship to others is not one of seeking advantage, either via domination or contract.  But it seems that risibility considered as a manifestation of superiority or contempt could be a proper accident or property of human beings only if they did have this Hobbesian nature.  Hence the idea that risibility is a proper accident tells against the superiority theory. 

The absolute truth about relativism

I don’t write very often about relativism.  Part of the reason is that few if any of the critics I find myself engaging with -- for example, fellow analytic philosophers of a secular or progressive bent, or scientifically inclined atheists -- take relativism any more seriously than I do.  It just doesn’t come up.  Part of the reason is that many other people have more or less already said what needs to be said about the subject.  It’s been done to death. 
It is also possible to overstate the prevalence of relativism outside the ranks of natural scientists, analytic philosophers, theists, and other self-consciously non-relativist thinkers.
As Michael Lynch notes in his book True to Life: Why Truth Matters , remarks that can superficially seem to be expressions of relativism might, on more careful consideration, turn out to have a different significance.  For example, when, during a conversation on some controversial subject, someone says something like “Well, it’s a matter of opinion” or “Who’s to say?”, this may not be intended to imply that there is no objective fact of the matter about which view is correct.  The person may instead have simply decided that the discussion has reached an uncomfortable impasse and would like to change the subject. 

On the other hand, many people seem not to understand the difference between the claim that there is no agreement about such-and-suchand the claim that there is no objective truth of the matter about such-and-such.  Hence even many people who are primarily concerned to assert the first proposition rather than the second may nevertheless affirm the second one too if pressed.  And in that case they are at least implicitly relativists.  Thus, while Lynch is right that there are probably fewer self-conscious relativists than meets the eye, that is not necessarily because the people in question are all self-consciously non-relativist.  Many people just have confused or inchoate ideas about these things.

Moreover, outside of analytic philosophy and natural science, there are many academics who do express relativist views of some variety or other.  And of course, students often evince relativist attitudes.  (Every philosophy professor is familiar with the notorious “freshman relativist,” whom Simon Blackburn once characterized as “a nightmare figure of introductory classes in ethics.”)  So the subject is worth addressing now and then.  And since I get asked about it myself from time to time, I thought I’d write up a post summarizing the main problems with relativism.
Truth and relativism
What is relativism, anyway?  The best way to approach that question is by asking first what truth is.  A lot of ink has been spilled on that question, but the traditional notion -- the commonsense notion and the notion one finds in philosophers like Aristotle and Aquinas -- is that truth is a matter of conformity or correspondence between thought and reality (and, by extension, between language and reality, since we express our thoughts in language).  You have the thought that the cat is on the mat, and perhaps you go on to express this thought by uttering the sentence “The cat is on the mat.”  If the cat really is on the mat, then your thought is true, and so is the sentence by which you expressed it, because in that case the thought and the sentence conform or correspond to the way things really are.  And if the cat is not really on the mat, then your thought and utterance are false, because they fail to conform or correspond to reality.
There is nothing especially fancy or sophisticated about this.  In particular, there is nothing in it that entails a commitment to some high falutin’ “theory of truth” which attempts to analyze “correspondence” in terms of a “mirroring” relationship between Cartesian inner representations and external reality, or in terms of some sort of structural relationship between propositions and facts, or in terms of disquotation, or whatever.  Such theories are of philosophical interest, but we needn’t get into them here, because it is the commonsense notion itself -- rather than merely some technical way of developing it -- that relativism takes aim at.
Again, common sense and traditional philosophy alike say that there is or can be a conformity or correspondence between thought and reality -- between our beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. on the one hand, and the way things really are on the other.  Relativism denies this.  There are different ways one might formulate this denial.  One might say, for example, that there are no such things as truebeliefs, opinions, statements, etc.  There are only people’s beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. themselves, and that’s that.  Truth drops away as a mere fiction.  People call some of these more widely accepted beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. “truths,” but this is at best a useful fiction, and we should (on this view) never make reference to “truths” without using scare quotes.  Let’s summarize this formulation as follows:
(I) There is no truth.
But the relativist need not say flatly that there is no truth.  He might say instead (and perhaps most relativists would say instead) that there is truth, but not of an absolute sort.  There is what is true for you, what is true for me, what is true for this culture, what is true for that culture, and so on.  But there is no such thing as what is true full stop, no such thing as what is true absolutely, apart from what different individuals and cultures happen to think.  That is to say, there is only what is true in a relative way (relative to those individuals, or to those cultures, or whatever).  Let’s summarize this formulation as follows:
(II) There is no absolute truth.
Formulation (II) is clearly a formulation of relativism, but some readers might wonder whether (I) is really a formulation of relativism.  For the proponent of (I) is saying not merely that truth is relative, but that it is non-existent.  He is eliminating truth, rather than relativizing it.  However, to the extent that the advocate of (I) is willing to use the word “truth” as long as there are scare quotes around it, it seems he is plausibly counted as a kind of relativist.  He is saying, in effect, that there is what this group or individual falsely calls “truth,” what thatgroup or individual falsely calls“truth,” but there is no actual truth at all.  And insofar as he is thereby emphasizing, as the advocate of (II) does, that there is no genuine relation of conformity, correspondence, or truth between these different opinions on the one and reality on the other, he is saying something pretty close to what the advocate of (II) is saying.
Indeed, I would say that he is essentially saying the samething as what the advocate of (II) is saying, but in a more straightforward way.  Hence it is useful to consider formulation (I) as well as formulation (II), since (II) really collapses into (I), or so I will argue below.
(Momentarily to digress: There is a parallel here to eliminativismand reductionism in philosophy of mind.  Eliminativism explicitly denies that some mental phenomenon or other -- qualia, say, or intentionality -- really exists.  Reductionism does not explicitly deny that it exists, but claims that it is “really” something other than what it appears to be.  A reductionist might hold, for example, that the quale of an experience is “really” “nothing but” a neural process of such-and-such a type.  Like John Searle, I’ve long argued that reductionist theories in philosophy of mind tend to be disguised versions of eliminativism, implicitly denying the existence of the phenomena they claim to be explaining.  Now, the formulations of relativism I’ve been considering -- formulations (I) and (II) -- are, I think, like that.  Formulation (I) explicitly denies that truth exists, while formulation (II) does not, but instead claims that truth is “really” something other than what it appears to be.  In particular, it is not a matter of a relation of correspondence between sets of beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. and a reality external to them, but rather something entirely internal to sets of beliefs, opinions, statements, etc.  And just as reductionism in philosophy of mind collapses (I argue) into eliminativism, so too does formulation (II) collapse (I will argue) into (I).  End of digression.) 
So far we’ve been talking about what is sometimes called globalrelativism, which denies that there is absolute truth of any sort -- moral, scientific, religious, you name it.  Localrelativism is less radical.  It acknowledges that there is absolute truth in some domains, such as natural science.  But it denies, of certain specific domains of discourse, that they include any absolute truths.  Moral relativism would be the best-known version of local relativism.  It holds that, while some truths (such as scientific truths) might be absolute, no moral truths are absolute.  I’ll come back to moral relativism, but let’s look now at the central problem with global relativism, whether formulated in terms of (I) or (II).
Either self-defeating or only trivially true
The problem with formulation (I) is pretty well-known:  It is self-defeating.  For suppose we ask about (I) -- the proposition that there is no truth -- whether it is itselftrue or not.  If the proponent of (I) says that (I) is true, then it follows that there is at least one truth, namely (I) itself.  But in that case (I) is false, since what it says that there are no truths.  So, if (I) is true, then it is false.  Suppose the proponent of (I) says instead, then, that (I) is not true.  Then in that case too, (I) is false.  So, either way it is false.
Now, the proponent of (I) may respond by saying that this objection presupposes that there is such a thing as truth and falsity, and that that is precisely what he denies.  He might say: “Yes, if I were to claim that (I) is true, then I would indeed be contradicting myself.  But I’m notsaying that (I) is true.  But neither do I acknowledge that it is false.  Rather, I refuse to speak in terms of truth or falsity at all.”
The trouble with this response is that if the proponent of (I) refuses to characterize his utterances as either true or false, then he cannot really claim to be asserting any proposition or statement at all, since a proposition or statement is susceptible of being either true or false.  His utterance of “There is no truth” will therefore have to be taken as a mere string of sounds lacking meaning or semantic content -- like a grunt or a moan -- rather than as a literal English sentence.  He won’t literally be saying anything with which we can intelligibly either agree or disagree.  He also won’t be saying anything that is logically inconsistent with maintaining that there is such a thing as truth, for the simple reason that a meaningless sound cannot be logically inconsistent with anything, since, lacking meaning or propositional content, it cannot bear any logical properties or relations (consistency, inconsistency, entailment, etc.) at all.  Formulation (I) will therefore turn out to be of no more philosophical interest than yelling “Aargh!” is of philosophical interest.
Suppose the relativist opts instead, then, for formulation (II).  He might suppose that he will be able thereby to avoid the problems with formulation (I), since he doesn’t deny that there is truth, full stop, but only that there is absolutetruth.  But in fact he’s not out of the woods.  For suppose we ask about (II) -- again, the proposition that there is no absolute truth -- whether it is itselfabsolutely true or not.  If the proponent of (II) says that (II) is absolutely true, then it follows that there is at least one absolute truth, namely (II) itself.  But in that case (II) is false, since what it says is that there are no absolute truths.  So, if (II) is absolutely true, then it is false.  Answering “Yes” to our question will thus put the proponent of (II) into the same bind that the proponent of (I) is in if he answers “Yes” to the parallel question facing him.
So, suppose instead that the proponent of (II) answers “No.”  In other words, suppose he says that (II) is not absolutely true, but only relatively true.  It is true for him and for other relativists, but not true for anyone else.  But what exactly does this mean?
It cannot mean that the proponent’s belief in (II) corresponds to reality -- even if just “for him” (whatever that would mean) -- because that would entail that there is something external to the beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. of individuals and cultures by virtue of which the beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. are either true or false.  And in that case the relativist would be saying that (II) is true absolutely, which (as we’ve just seen) would be self-defeating.  So, he has to mean something else.  But what?
The only interpretation left of the claim that (II) is true “for him” would be that (II) is somehow true by virtue of something internalto his set of beliefs, opinions, statements, etc.  In particular, it must mean that the belief that (II) is true happens to be among the members of his personal set of beliefs and opinions, and perhaps also that it follows from some of the other beliefs or opinions he has in that set.  And by acknowledging that (II), being true only relatively and not absolutely, is not true for non-relativists, he must mean merely that the belief that (II) is true is not among the members of theirpersonal sets of beliefs and opinions.  For the relativist to assert that (II) is true for him but not for others ends up being equivalent to saying something like: “I don’t myself believe in absolute truth, but other people do.” 
But that, of course, is completely trivial and uninteresting, telling us nothing we didn’t already know.  Certainly it does not entail that there is no absolute truth.  It’s just a report about some opinion the relativist finds he has floating around in his mind.  And what more are we supposed to say to that than: “Um, thank you for sharing”?
But it’s worse than that.  For the proponent of (II) is not merely making the trivial assertion that he happens to have this belief floating around in his mind.  He’s also denying that there is anything moreto a belief’s being true than it’s being among the beliefs one has floating around in one’s mind.  And how, exactly, does that differ from what the proponent of (I) thinks? 
The proponent of (I) says: “There are no true beliefs, opinions, statements, etc.  There are just the beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. themselves, and that’s that.  People falsely call some belief, opinion, statement, etc. ‘true’ when it happens to be among the beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. they affirm.”
The proponent of (II), on analysis, essentially says: “There are no absolutely true beliefs, opinions, statements, etc.  There are the beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. themselves, and a person’s belief, opinion, statement, etc. is relatively true when it happens to be among the beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. he affirms.”
Verbally these claims are different, since the proponent of (II) adds the adverbs “absolutely” and “relatively” so that he can retain the word “true.”  But substantively they are identical.  Saying “There is relative truth” amounts to the same thing as saying “There is ‘truth’ in the sense of there being what people call ‘true’.”  And like the proponent of (I), the proponent of (II) thinks that there is nothing moreto truth than that -- nothing more than being called “true.”  So, the latter’s notion of “relative truth” is really just the same as the former’s notion of “’truth’-in-scare-quotes.”  In which case, saying “There is no absolute truth” does not really differ after all from saying “There is no truth” -- unsurprisingly, since what the proponent of (II) calls “absolute truth” is just what common sense calls “truth.”  Formulation (II) thus really amounts after all to formulation (I), and seems not to only because the proponent of (II) uses “truth” and “true” in a novel way.  And thus it inherits all the problems of (I).
Bad arguments
So, formulations (I) and (II) of relativism are ultimately incoherent.  Another problem is that there are no good arguments for either proposition.  One well-known “popular” argument for relativism in its different versions appeals to the fact of disagreement as evidence for relativism.  The argument might be summarized as follows:
(1) Individuals and cultures differ in their beliefs, opinions, etc.
(2) So, no beliefs, opinions, etc. are absolutely true but only relatively true.
Though many undergraduates seem to find this “reasoning” compelling, it is, of course, an absolutely atrocious argument.  The fallacy should be obvious, but in case it isn’t, we can illustrate it with a simple example.  Suppose that because of a heat mirage, Fred believes that there is water on the road ahead of him, whereas Bob, who is standing at the spot on the road Fred is looking at, believes that there is no water there.  Fred and Bob thus differ in their beliefs about whether there is water on the road.  The reason, though, is not because there is no absolute truth about whether there is water on the road.  There is, absolutely, no water on the road, and Fred is just wrong.  The reason for their difference of opinion is rather that Fred is making a mistake because of the illusion generated by the heat.  So, a difference of beliefs doesn’t by itself entail relativism, so that the inference from (1) to (2) is a non sequitur. 
A relativist might claim that this objection begs the question against him, but that is not the case.  The objection doesn’t presuppose that there is in fact absolute truth.  Rather, the objection merely points out that the thesis that there is absolute truth but that people can make mistakes about it is an alternative way to make sense of disagreements between them, so that the relativist needs to appeal to more than premise (1) if he is validly to infer to his conclusion (2).  Indeed, if anyone is begging the question here, it is the relativist, because to get from (1) to (2) validly he will have to add some premise to the effect that differences in beliefs, opinions, etc. cannot be made sense of if truth is absolute, but only if it is relative.  And no one who is not already a relativist would accept such a premise.
On the other hand, as we have seen, formulation (II) of relativism, if it is going to avoid self-refutation, will have to be read in such a way that it is trivially true.  In particular, it is going to have to be interpreted as the claim that the relativist does not personally believe in absolute truth -- a claim which is, of course, correct, but which in no way entails that there is no such thing as absolute truth.  Relativism, on this interpretation, reduces to the trivially true thesis that people have different beliefs.  In that case, we might read (2) as just a colorful restatement of (1).  That is to say, we might read the claim that there is no absolute truth but only relative truth as entailing nothing more than that people have different beliefs and opinions.  In that case, the inference from (1) to (2) will be tautologous and thus perfectly valid.  But (2) will also end up saying something that the non-relativist can happily accept, since (of course) the non-relativist does not deny that (1) is true.
So, the inference from (1) to (2) is either a non sequitur, or question-begging, or a tautology.   And that makes it a very bad argument indeed. 
Another sort of argument for relativism is the postmodernist appeal to the influence that cultural assumptions, those in positions of power, etc. have on the beliefs that people hold.  The idea here is that what we think we “know” is what has been handed on to us by our parents, churches, schools and textbooks, governmental authorities, mass media, and so on.  And all of these sources reflect certain vested interests.  The content of the “knowledge” passed on would be different if the sources reflected different interests, and indeed is different in different societies.  This is similar to the appeal to disagreement between individuals and cultures, which we just discussed, but the emphasis on the vested interests of those in power adds a novel sinister element that is supposed to make it especially doubtful that what we take ourselves to “know” reflects any absolute truth.  (The relationship between knowledge and power is a theme often associated with Michel Foucault, though as many commentators have emphasized, it doesn’t follow that Foucault himself really intended to draw a relativist conclusion from it.) 
This argument might be summarized as follows:
(3) What people regard as true is radically influenced by their cultural surroundings, by who holds positions of power in their society, etc., and by the vested interests reflected in these sources of purported truth.
(4) So, there is no truth, or at least no absolute truth.
This is also a very bad argument.  One problem with it is that it is, like the previous argument considered, simply a non sequitur.  And once again, a simple example will illustrate the problem.  Suppose you and I are in a bar and that it is raining heavily outside but that I don’t realize that it is.  Suppose you get me to believe that it is, but not in the ordinary way, e.g. by just telling me or by getting me to look out the window.  Rather, suppose you employ various techniques to brainwash or hypnotize me into believing that it is raining.  And suppose that your reason for doing so is that you want to make absolutely sure that I will not leave the bar but will stay inside it and buy everybody another round of drinks.  Of course the example is silly, but it illustrates the point that the fact that someone has, for selfish motives, manipulated me into believing something, does not entail that what I’ve been manipulated into believing is not absolutely true.  In the example, it is still absolutely true that it is raining heavily outside.  The fact that I’ve been brainwashed by a person who just wants to get a free drink does not change that in the least.   But the same thing is true when we’re thinking on the large scale of societies and the cultural and political institutions that shape opinions within them.  Even if opinions were shaped in the most manipulative way possible and for the most suspect of motives, it simply wouldn’t follow that the opinions are not true, and certainly it wouldn’t follow that there is no absolute truth of any sort.
Once again, it will not do for the relativist to claim that this objection begs the question, because it does not beg the question.  It does not presuppose that there is in fact absolute truth.  Rather, it simply points out that there are hypothetical scenarios in which there could be absolute truth even though people are manipulated into believing things for suspect motives.  Hence the relativist needs to add some further premise to (3) if he is validly going to derive (4) from it.  And if he adds a premise to the effect that absolute truth could not even in principle exist where people’s beliefs are shaped by cultural circumstances reflective of vested interests, etc.,  then hewill be the one begging the question.
A second problem with this sort of argument is that it is self-defeating -- and not merely because the relativist conclusion, considered just by itself, is, for the reasons set out earlier, self-defeating.  The argument would also undermine both its own premise and the inference from the premise to the conclusion.  For why should we accept the premise, and why should we accept whatever canons of inference would license reasoning from the premise to the conclusion?  Maybe those too are things we accept only because we’ve been manipulated into doing so via our cultural surroundings by people who have vested interests, etc.  E.g. maybe Foucault’s own books are a subtle part of the apparatus by which those in power maintain their hold over us, and are for that reason suspect.
This brings us to a third, related problem with the argument in question, which is that it is never applied consistently.  It is only ever deployed in order to undermine moral and political views the relativist doesn’t like, but not in order to undermine moral and political views the relativist does like -- even though it would in fact undermine the latter no less than the former. 
Hence, if religious claims,  or free market economics, or traditional views about sexual morality, or otherwise “right-wing” ideas are being defended by someone, the postmodernist relativist will respond by saying that we live in a society that is still very reactionary and whose ruling classes benefit from people’s accepting such conservative ideas, that contrary left-wing views are often denigrated and made invisible by being kept out of textbooks and mass media, that we ought therefore to regard all “right-wing” arguments with suspicion, etc.
But if secularist claims, or socialist economics, or liberal attitudes about sexuality, or otherwise left-wing ideas are being defended by someone, the postmodernist relativist does not respond by saying that we live in a society that has gotten very secularist and liberal in recent decades, that the journalists, professors, and entertainers who shape popular culture favor these secularist and liberal tendencies and try to promote them, that contrary conservative ideas are often denigrated and made invisible by being kept out of college textbooks and syllabi and ridiculed in movies, television, and other mass media, that we ought therefore to regard all left-wing arguments with suspicion, etc.
Now there is no non-question-begging reason why postmodernist relativism would support the first line of argument but not the second.  So, to be consistent, the postmodernist relativist will have to apply his relativism across the board and admit that it takes down all ideas – left-wing, right-wing, secular, religious, you name it.  Indeed, it will take down postmodernist relativism itself.  For given the postmodernist relativist line of argument, any system of ideas, including postmodernist relativism itself, may for all we know merely be something we’ve come to accept because we’ve been indoctrinated into it within a certain culture whose dominant members benefit from our doing so.  For example, postmodernist left-wing types benefit from students and educated people taking postmodernist relativism seriously, because this will help to promote the social and political agenda postmodernist left-wing types favor, will help to enhance the reputations of postmodernist left-wing types as serious social critics to whom attention must be paid, etc.  So, by the postmodernist relativist’s own criteria, we should apply a “hermeneutics of suspicion” to postmodernist relativism itself.
Suppose, to avoid this result, the postmodernist relativist claims that the truth of left-wing ideas somehow transcends cultural circumstances and power relationships within a society in a way that “right-wing” ideas allegedly do not, and that this is what justifies him in applying his analysis to criticize the “right-wing” ideas but not the left-wing ideas.  The problem with this is that he is now admitting that there is after all such a thing as absolute truth and has therefore given up relativism.
So, there is no way to resolve this inconsistency.   Either the postmodernist relativist applies his relativism across the board, in which case it takes down even the left-wing ideas he wants to promote, including postmodernist relativism itself; or he does not apply it across the board, in which case he ends up admitting after all that there is absolute truth.  Either way, postmodernist relativism, like other versions of relativism, ends up being self-defeating. 
Yet another argument sometimes thought to support relativism is the appeal to tolerance.  The idea here is that belief in absolute truth leads to dogmatism and intolerance, which can therefore be counteracted if we affirm instead that truth is relative.  But there are two problems with this argument.  First, the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise.  Even if it were the case that relativism would promote tolerance and undermine dogmatism, that simply doesn’t entail that relativism is correct.  Even if believing in Santa Claus had various psychological benefits, it wouldn’t follow that Santa Claus exists; even if believing that Sally is in love with you would make you happier and healthier, the sad truth may nevertheless be that Sally hates your guts; and in general, the fact that believing a certain proposition pmay have various good effects, by itself is no reason to think that p is true.
Second, the premise is in any event false.  Relativism does not promote tolerance and undermine dogmatism.  On the contrary, relativism promotes dogmatism and intolerance.  As Lynch points out, if there’s only what is true for me and what is true for you, but no such thing as what is true full stop, then there is also no such thing as being wrong, being in error.  To be true, on the relativist view, just amounts to being a part of some person or culture’s set of beliefs, opinions, etc.  And for any of these beliefs, opinions, etc. to be wrong or erroneous would require that there be absolute truth over and above these sets of beliefs and opinions, to which they fail to correspond.  But if you are never wrong -- if everything you believe is true for you -- then why shouldn’t you dogmatically cling to whatever it is you believe?  And why not go the next step and deny toleration to those who disagree with you?  (Indeed, why couldn’t those who reject tolerance as an ideal defend their rejection on relativist grounds?  Why can’t they say: “It is true for me and for my culture that intolerance and dogmatism are good, so nyah nyah!”)
Moral relativism
Finally, we come to moral relativism.  Suppose someone rejects global relativism, so as to avoid all the problems identified so far, and instead endorses only a local form of relativism, with respect to moral claims specifically.  He admits that there is absolute truth in some domains of discourse, such as natural science, at least some parts of philosophy, and so forth.  But he claims that there is no absolute truth where morality is concerned.  There are the moral claims you think are true, the moral claims I think are true, the moral claims this culture says are true, the moral claims that culture says are true, and so forth.  But there is, the moral relativist holds, no such thing as a moral claim that is true full stop, in an absolute way.
So far, this version of relativism will not be self-defeating in the way that global relativism is.  But it nevertheless has problems that are similar to the problems with global relativism.  First of all, recall that I argued that formulation (II) of global relativism collapses into formulation (I).  That is to say, to claim that all truth is relative is implicitly to deny that there is any such thing as truth at all.  The claim that there is no absolute truth but only relative truth really differs only verbally and not substantively from the claim that there is no truth, but only the beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. that people falsely call “true.”  But by the same token, saying that there is no absolute moral truth but only relative moral truth really differs only verbally, and not substantively, from the claim that there is no moral truth, but only the moral beliefs, opinions, statements, etc. that people falsely call “true.”  So, though moral relativism seems not to be eliminating morality but only relativizing it, in reality it is eliminating it in a disguised way.  Implicitly it is saying that there are no moral truths at all, that morality as such is an illusion.
One consequence of this is that it will not do to claim that moral relativism is any more likely to promote tolerance and undermine dogmatism than global relativism is.  On the contrary, moral relativism too can only give aid and comfort to intolerance and dogmatism.  For if morality is an illusion, there can be no moral reason not to be intolerant and dogmatic.
But even if moral relativism did not implicitly undermine all morality, it would still facilitate rather than undermine intolerance and dogmatism.  For if there is only what is morally true for me and what is morally true for you, but no such thing as what is morally true full stop, then there is also no such thing as being morally wrongor in error.  For, again, if there is nothing outside your set of beliefs (in this case, beliefs about morality) by reference to which they can be judged wrong, then there just is no such thing as being wrong.  And if you can’t be morally wrong, why shouldn’t you be dogmatic about your moral views, and intolerant of competing views?  Again, why couldn’t someone claim, on relativist grounds: “For me and for my culture, it is morally good to be dogmatic about our moral beliefs and to be intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them”?
There are other problems with moral relativism.  One of them is that the standard popular argument for it is just a variation on the first argument for global relativism considered earlier.  In particular, it is an inference from the premise that cultures differ in their moral beliefs to the conclusion that there are no absolute moral truths.  And this argument is just as bad as that earlier argument.  For one thing, it too is simply a non sequitur.  (You might as well argue that since cultures have disagreed about geography -- since some of them left North and South America off their maps, included Atlantis, etc. -- it follows that there are no absolute geographical truths.)  And as with the earlier argument, attempts to save this argument from being a non sequitur will only turn it into either a question-begging argument or a tautology.
Another well-known problem with moral relativism enters the picture if we add to it (as some moral relativists would) the thesis that it is wrong to judge other cultures except by their own moral standards.  If this were correct, then we couldn’t condemn chattel slavery, genocide, etc. if these practices reflected the moral norms of the societies in which they occurred.  Indeed, we would have to criticize those who worked to endslavery, genocide, etc. for violating the norms of their cultures.  Yet many relativists would (rightly) condemn these practices and praise those who worked to end them.
The problem of inconsistency runs deeper than this, though.  For consider again the thesis that it is wrong to judge other cultures except by their own moral standards.  Is this thesis itself absolutely true or only relatively true?  If the moral relativist says that it is absolutely true, then he has admitted that there is after all such a thing as absolute moral truth, and thereby undermined his own position.  But if he says that it is only relatively true, then his assertion turns out to amount to little more than the uninteresting claim that moral relativists think it is wrong to judge other cultures except by their own moral standards, though non-relativists don’t think this is wrong.  In other words, when coupled with the thesis in question, moral relativism, like global relativism, turns out to be either self-defeating or trivial.
So, moral relativism, like global relativism, is a complete mess.  As with any other philosophical position, there are moves that might be made to try to salvage the view, but the trick in this case is to do so without either falling back into the incoherence problems we’ve considered, or ending up so qualifying the position that it is no longer really relativist at all.  And that is, I submit, a trick which cannot be pulled off.
Related posts:
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Some varieties of bullsh*t
The trouble with conspiracy theories

Pigliucci logic

In a recent article (to which I linked last week), philosopher Massimo Pigliucci wrote:
[W]hile some people may very well be “Islamophobes” (i.e., they may genuinely harbor an irrational prejudice against Islam), simply pointing out that Islamic ideas play a role in contemporary terrorism and repression does not make one [an] Islamophobe, and using the label blindly is simply an undemocratic, and unreflective, way of cutting off critical discourse.
Furthermore, to insist that “Islamophobia” is the only alternative to regarding Islam as inherently benign is, Pigliucci says, to promote a “false dichotomy [which] is a basic type of informal logical fallacy.”Not that Pigliucci, though himself an atheist, wants to attack Islam simply because it is a religion.  On the contrary, in the same article he criticizes “overconfident atheists” and “crass new atheism-style ‘criticism’ of religion,” dismisses the suggestion that any religion is somehow “the motherlode of bad ideas,” and acknowledges that “religions have done lots of good in the world throughout history.”  He simply thinks that we need to strive for “nuance” and to avoid “oversimplification,” whether we are speaking well of religious ideas or criticizing them. 

All of which is, of course, perfectly reasonable.  Good for Pigliucci!
But wait…
Recall that in a post from several months ago, I responded at length to some criticisms Pigliucci had raised against metaphysics as a subfield within philosophy.  A reader has called my attention to this Twitter exchange, in which Pigliucci is asked if he has replied to my critique.  Pigliucci responds:
[N]o, not particularly interested to engage with theologically-informed authors.  Sorry.
It is then pointed out to Pigliucci that this is a “surpris[ing]” response given that in fact my “defense of metaphysics doesn't rest on theological premises.”  To this Pigliucci replies:
[I]t lurks in the background, esp. the way [Feser] (mis) treats Hume.
End quote.  So, dismissing criticisms raised by a “theologically-informed author” is OK, even though the alleged theological premises do not actually play any role in the criticism but merely “lurk in the background” in some vague, unspecified way.  And even though this is (for the two or three readers to whom it is not already blindingly obvious) a textbook example of the informal ad hominem fallacy of poisoning the well. 
What happened to “nuance” vis-à-vis religion?  When did “oversimplification” become acceptable?  How did an atheist’s dismissing something simply because it is vaguely associated with religion suddenly become non-“crass” and non-“overconfident”?  Why are informal fallacies suddenly OK?
Apparently, all of these miracles occur when Pigliucci himselfbecomes the object of criticism.  (Ah, the calm sunshine of the Humean mind!)
In fairness, though, when pressed to justify his claim that I have somehow “mistreated” Hume, Pigliucci says he’ll “take another look” at what I wrote.  So I await his more measured response to my (in fact completely non-theological) criticisms.

The comedy keeps coming

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but while we’re on the subject of humor, here’s another mistake that is often made in discussions of it: failing to identify precisely which aspect of the phenomenon of humor a theory is (or is best interpreted as) trying to explain.  For instance, this is sometimes manifest in lists of the various “theories of humor” put forward by philosophers over the centuries.In my previous post, I mentioned (and tentatively advocated) the incongruity theory, according to which we find something funny when it involves some kind of anomalous juxtaposition or combination of incompatible elements.  Other examples would be the superiority theory, which holds that finding something funny involves a feeling of superiority over and contempt for others; and the release theory, which holds that we find something funny when it involves release of tension or pent-up feelings.  (There are several other theories too, but I’m not going to rehearse them all -- you get the idea.)

Now, Aristotle and Aquinas are sometimes represented as putting forward yet another theory of humor, called the play theory.  The basic idea is conveyed by Aquinas as follows:
[J]ust as weariness of the body is dispelled by resting the body, so weariness of the soul must needs be remedied by resting the soul: and the soul's rest is pleasure... Consequently, the remedy for weariness of soul must needs consist in the application of some pleasure, by slackening the tension of the reason's study. Thus… it is related of Blessed John the Evangelist, that when some people were scandalized on finding him playing together with his disciples, he is said to have told one of them who carried a bow to shoot an arrow. And when the latter had done this several times, he asked him whether he could do it indefinitely, and the man answered that if he continued doing it, the bow would break. Whence the Blessed John drew the inference that in like manner man's mind would break if its tension were never relaxed.
Now such like words or deeds wherein nothing further is sought than the soul's delight, are called playful or humorous. Hence it is necessary at times to make use of them, in order to give rest, as it were, to the soul. (Summa Theologiae II-II.168.2)
While excess is possible here as elsewhere, Aquinas is clear that deficiency vis-à-vis humor can even be at least mildly sinful:
In human affairs whatever is against reason is a sin. Now it is against reason for a man to be burdensome to others, by offering no pleasure to others, and by hindering their enjoyment… [A] man who is without mirth, not only is lacking in playful speech, but is also burdensome to others, since he is deaf to the moderate mirth of others. Consequently they are vicious, and are said to be boorish or rude… (Summa Theologiae II-II.168.4)
You might say that for the Angelic Doctor, “chillaxing” can be positively virtuous (as opposed to neutral, let alone bad).  And since humor facilitates chillaxing, humor can be virtuous.
Now, this is often discussed as if it were a rivalto theories of humor like the incongruity theory, the superiority theory, etc.  But it seems to me that that is not the case.  For Aristotle and Aquinas are simply not addressing the same question those other theories are concerned with.  Those theories are addressing the question of what makes something funny, of why we find ithumorous.  But the “play theory” of Aristotle and Aquinas is not trying to explain what makes something funny.  Rather, it is explaining the benefits of humor in human life, its function in facilitating our psychological well-being.  You might say that the incongruity theory, the superiority theory, etc. are theories about the formal cause of jokes and other forms of humor, whereas Aristotle and Aquinas are concerned with the final cause of jokes and other forms of humor.  They are saying, in effect: “Whatever the factor is whose presence causes us to find certain things to be funny -- and we’re not addressing that -- finding things to be funny has an important function of facilitating relaxation of mind.”
To be sure, writers on humor sometimes point out that one can combine different theories of humor, but noting that in this case the theories in question are addressing entirely different aspects of the phenomenon -- a difference which, again, can be characterized in terms of the traditional and independently motivated distinction between formal and final causes -- allows for greater conceptual precision than just averring that more than one theory may contain elements of truth. 
Take another example, from Jim Holt’s little book Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes (which is great, by the way).  Holt reports on a 1998 discovery by UCLA researchers that, by stimulating a patient’s brain, the patient can be made suddenly to find all sorts of ordinary and unremarkable things funny.  Holt worries:
If, given the application of a little current to a spot in the brain, absolutely everything becomes invested with risible incongruity -- becomes, that is, a joke -- then how can humor pretend to be an aesthetic category worthy of philosophical analysis? (Baudelaire observed that the same effect could be produced by hashish, but never mind.) (p. 122)
As that last line (and the overall tone of his book) indicate, Holt isn’t really all that worried by this finding, so I hesitate to attribute to him any weighty thesis about the implications of neuroscience for the philosophy of humor.  But (given the neuromaniarampant today) someone mightseriously think that the finding in question somehow undermines the point of philosophizing about humor.  And as with other instances of neuromania, such a conclusion would be fallacious.  For here too, we have a claim which is not actually in competition with anything the traditional theories of humor are saying. 
For one thing, if the traditional theories are addressing formal and final causes, you might say that what the researchers uncovered were material and efficientcauses.  In particular, they uncovered (some of) the material and efficient causes of the psychological state of being amused.  By contrast, the play theory is addressing the final cause of that psychological state (viz. to facilitate relaxation of mind), whereas the incongruity theory, say, is addressing the formal cause of the psychological state (viz. a perception of something as incongruous). 
For another thing, we need to distinguish between normal and deviant cases.  Neurologically induced hallucinations can tell you something about normal vision, since there are features they have in common, but it would be absurd to conclude from this that normal vision can be assimilated to hallucination.  The differences between the cases are hardly less important than the similarities.  By the same token, it would be absurd to suppose that all cases of finding something funny can be assimilated or reduced to what is going on in the case of a patient whose brain is being stimulated in such a way that he ends up finding all sorts of unremarkable things amusing.  This is a highly abnormal case, and precisely as such, it can only tell us so much about the normal cases.  Yet it is the normal cases that the traditional theories (the incongruity theory, play theory, etc.) are concerned with.
Of course, there are all sorts of nuances and qualifications that a systematic application of the Aristotelian four-causal approach would have to take account of, and I’m not addressing all that here.  Anyway, as in philosophy more generally, so too in even so esoteric a subfield as the philosophy of humor, the four causes continue to have application.  Funny, no?

Dragging the net

My recent Claremont Review of Books review of Scruton’s Soul of the World and Wilson’s The Meaning of Human Existenceis now available for free online.
Should we expect a sound proof to convince everyone?  Michael Augros investigates at Strange Notions (in an excerpt from his new book Who Designed the Designer? A Rediscovered Path to God's Existence ).
Intrigue!  Conspiracy!  Comic books!  First, where did the idea for Spider-Man really come from?  The New York Post reports on a Brooklyn costume shop and an alleged “billion dollar cover up.”
Then, according to Variety, a new documentary reveals the untold story behind Roger Corman’s notorious never-released Fantastic Four movie.  (I’ve seen the new one.  It’s only almostas bad as you’ve heard.)The notion of curved space has had predictivesuccess.  But does it make metaphysical sense? At Philosophy Now, Raymond Tallis expresses his doubts.

At National Review, John O’Sullivan on Robert Conquest and his obituaries.
The famous 1968 televised duel between Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal is recounted in a new documentary, as reported by New York magazine and The Weekly Standard .
In New Statesman, John Gray on the F. A. Hayek he knew.
Did the making of the Planned Parenthood sting videos really involve lying?  At Crisis, Monica Migliorino Miller answers in the negative.  Some commentary on Miller from Brandon Watson at Siris.
The New York Review of Books gives two cheers for the Middle Ages.  And Atlas Obscura exposes the myth of the medieval chastity belt.
Atheist philosopher of religion William L. Rowe has died.
Whatever happened to the guys behind the greatly underrated, ahead-of-its-time movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow?  The Telegraph reports .
At Salon, Camille Paglia attacks the myth of the open-minded and well-informed liberal.
Scientism: The New Orthodoxy , edited by Richard N. Williams and Daniel N. Robinson, is reviewed at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Massimo Pigliucci, at The Philosophers’ Magazine, on a false dichotomy that prevails in post-9/11 discussion of Islam.

Is it funny because it’s true?

In a recent article in National Review, Ian Tuttle tells us that “standup comedy is colliding with progressivism.”  He notes that comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Gilbert Gottfried have complained of a new political correctness they perceive in college audiences and in comedy clubs, and he cites feminists and others who routinely protest against allegedly “sexist,” “racist,” and/or “homophobic” jokes told by prominent comedians like Louis C. K.  In Tuttle’s view, the “pious aspirations” of left-wing “moral busybodies” have led them to “[object] to humor that does not bolster their ideology” and “to conflate what is funny with what is acceptable to laugh at.”No doubt he’s right about that.  But what does Tuttle think is the correct attitude to take to humor?  Comedy, he says, is about “speaking truth to power,” and “the comedian[‘s]… jokes are never without a bit of truth.”  Indeed, he writes:

 “Only the truth is funny,” comedian Rick Reynolds observed in the 1990s.  The comedian, in his role as fool, can never stray beyond what is true, or he will have trouble making it funny.
In his May 2014 GQfeature about Louis C.K., Andrew Corsello identified a willingness to tell the truth about what people do and think as part of C.K.’s brilliance: “He’s always striking through the mask, Louis C.K.  It’s not just a matter of braying aloud what the rest of us only dare to think; he says things we aren’t even aware we’re thinking until we hear them from C.K.  That’s his genius.”
End quote.  Tuttle is, of course, hardly the first to assert that comedy is essentially about telling uncomfortable truths.  That Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, et al. were all in the business of “speaking truth to power” has become a cliché.  But (with no disrespect to Tuttle intended) it’s also a pious falsehood.  Indeed, it is exactly the samepious falsehood Tuttle rightly condemns when he sees it in progressives. 
After all, the humorless progressives Tuttle criticizes don’t think the jokes they condemn really do contain any uncomfortable truths.  Rather, they think these jokes promote what the critics sincerely take to be falsehoods.  They think that the jokes in question do not “speak truth to power,” but rather aid and abet the powerful by facilitating lies about those who are less powerful.  This is all overheated and humorless, of course, but that is what they think.  In other words, they are applying Tuttle’s own criterion for evaluating humor.   And if Tuttle were to respond: “OK, but these left-wingers are just wrong about where the truth lies,” then he would be guilty of taking exactly the same ideological approach humor that the left-wingers do.  For of course, they would say that he is the one who is wrong about where the truth lies.
The problem is not that the progressives in question look at humor through the wrong political lens.  The problem is that looking at humor through anypolitical lens, including the right one, is simply to misunderstand the nature of humor.  The fact is that there does not seem to be any essential connection at all between something’s being funny and it’s conveying some truth, uncomfortable or otherwise.  The uncomfortable truth is rather that lots of things really are funny even though they rest on falsehoods, and lots of things are unfunny even though they are uncomfortable truths.
It’s hardly difficult to come up with examples.  To learn you have terminal cancer is to learn an uncomfortable truth.  But it isn’t funny, even if you are one of the “powerful” to whom this truth is being “spoken.”  Probably even your enemies won’t find it at all funny, but will feel sorry for you.  And even if they are very hard-hearted and don’t feel sorry for you, it probably won’t be because they think it’s funny, but rather because they think you somehow deserve it.
Perhaps someone who thinks that there is an important link between truth and humor would respond that there are at least imaginable contexts in which this sort of truth would be funny.  And that is correct -- there is such a thing as dark comedy, after all, and I’ll say more about it in a moment.  But in these cases it is precisely the additional context that generates the comedy, and not the uncomfortable truth itself.
Nor is it difficult to think of examples of things that are funny even though they don’t convey truths of any sort.  What truth is conveyed by a slap fight between the Three Stooges?  Or lines like “Don’t call me Shirley” or “Roger, Roger.  What's our vector, Victor?” in the movie Airplane?  Even jokes motivated by views one takes to be false or offensive can be funny.  For example, even the most ardent admirer of John Foster Dulles would have to admit that “Dull, duller, Dulles” is a pretty funny insult.  In his book Comic Relief , John Morreall suggests, quite rightly in my view, that the reason “Polish jokes” were popular in the U.S. in the 1970s was not because people really thought Poles were unintelligent.  George Carlin was usually pretty funny even though his views about politics and religion were usually pretty sophomoric.  (In my view, anyway; of course, some readers will disagree.  But even those who disagree have no doubt heard somecomedian or other tell a joke that prompted them to think: “I don’t agree with the view underlying it, but I have to admit it’s still funny.”)
Philosophers have over the centuries debated various theories about what makes something funny, and the “It’s funny because it’s true” theory is not among them.  Probably the most widely accepted theory -- and, I think, the most plausible one -- is the incongruity theory, according to which we find something funny when it involves some kind of anomalous juxtaposition or combination of incompatible elements.  Think of Kramer’s ridiculous antics on Seinfeld -- ineptly attempting to masquerade as a doctor, shaving with butter, preparing a meal in the shower, trying to pay for a calzone with a big sack of pennies, etc. -- or Larry David’s over-the-top reactions to minor inconveniences and offenses on Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Or consider the way that the punch line of a joke typically involves some sort of reversal of what one would have expected given the setup. 
To be sure, the incongruity thesis needs to be qualified in various ways.  There is, for example, nothing funny about a rattlesnake you find slithering up next to you after you slip into your sleeping bag while out camping, even though there is an obvious incongruity between settling down to sleep and finding a rattlesnake next to you.  However, if you “detach” yourself from such a scenario -- imagine seeing this happen onscreen in a movie, or even happening to someone else -- it certainly canseem funny.  Similarly, no one who seriously embarrasses himself in public -- by giving a horrible speech or telling a joke that falls flat, by having some personal foible revealed in front of a crowd, by losing control of his bowels, or whatever -- finds it funny at the time.  But such scenarios are nevertheless very common in comedy movies, and even someone to whom such a misfortune occurs often laughs about it later, as do those to whom he relates the story.   It is incongruity detached from any immediate danger that is funny.  (Noël Carroll suggests some other ways the incongruity theory might be refined and qualified in Humour: A Very Short Introduction .) 
It seems to me that people often overestimate the significance of certain kinds of jokes because they fail to see that it is incongruity that is key to their effectiveness.  They wrongly identify some other prominent element as key, and then overreact in either a negative or positive way.  For example, some people find “dark comedy” or “black humor” offensive, because they think it reflects insensitivity to human suffering or that it is motivated by a desire to shock decent sensibilities.  But that is not the case.  Of course, someone who tells such a joke could be insensitive or motivated by ill-will, but the point is that he need not be.  Rather, dark humor is funny precisely because of how extremethe incongruity involved typically is.  (Consider, if you have the taste for this kind of humor, this example, or this one, or the work of cartoonist John Callahan.) 
Similarly, the reason people find ethnic jokes or “dumb blonde” jokes funny need not be because they harbor “racist” or “sexist” attitudes.  Nor need religious jokes be motivated by sacrilegious or blasphemous intent.  For example, the famous Last Supper scene in Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part Iis effective because of the extremeness of the incongruity it portrays -- the preposterous juxtaposition of Christ solemnly teaching while some annoying waiter is trying to push soup and mulled wine on the disciples.  (Note that I am not addressing here the question of what sorts of jokes are appropriatefrom a moral point of view -- that’s another matter.  I’m talking about why people in fact find certain things funny.)
At the other extreme, people can react in too positivea way to comedy when they fail to see that it is incongruity rather than some other prominent element that “does the work” in humor.  And that is, I think, exactly what is happening when people suggest (quite absurdly, in my view) that standup comedy has some profound mission of “speaking truth to power” etc.  The sober, mundane truth is rather merely that comedians like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, or Louis C. K. say things that you are “not supposed” to say -- things that violate the rules of etiquette or decorum, or conflict with the conventional wisdom, or are odd or unusual.  In other words, there is an incongruity between what they say and what people usually feel comfortable saying.  Sometimes what they say captures some “uncomfortable truth,” but sometimes it’s just crackpot bloviating or rudeness.  And when it is true, it isn’t the truth per se that makes it funny, but rather the incongruity. 
Hence, just as critics of some forms of humor overreact because they misidentify the source and motivation of the joke (“That’s insensitive!”  “That’s racist!”  “That’s blasphemous!”), so too do the boosters of certain comedians ridiculously overstate the significance of what they do.  “He’s a genius, a diagnostician of our social ills, an exposer of hypocrisy, he’s speaking truuuuth to powwwwer!”
Nah, he’s just some guy telling jokes.  That’s all.

Religion and the Social Sciences

Check out the recently published Religion and the Social Sciences: Conversations with Robert Bellah and Christian Smith , edited by R. R. Reno and Barbara McClay.  The volume is a collection of essays presented at two conferences hosted by First Things on the work of Bellah and Smith.  (My essay “Natural Theology, Revealed Theology, Liberal Theology” is included.)  The publisher’s website for the book can be found here. 

Marriage inflation

When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody.
W. S. Gilbert, The Gondoliers
Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion
If you printed a lot of extra money and passed it around so as to make everyone wealthier, the end result would merely be dramatically to decrease the buying power of money.  If you make it easier for college students to get an “A” grade in their courses, the end result will be that “A” grades will come to be regarded as a much less reliable indicator of a student’s true merit.  If you give prizes to everyone who participates in a competition, winning a prize will cease to be a big deal.  In general, where X is perceived to have greater value than Y and you try to raise the value of Y by assimilating it to X, the actual result will instead be simply to lower the value of X to that of Y.You will also merely relocaterather than eliminate the inequality you were trying to get rid of.  If money loses its value, then people will trade in something else -- precious metals, durable goods, or whatever -- and a different sort of economic inequality will arise.  If grades can no longer tell you which students are most likely to do well as employees or in graduate school, you’ll find some other way of determining this -- writing samples, interviews, letters of recommendation, or whatever -- and the hierarchy of student achievement will reassert itself.  If getting a prize ceases to impress, then athletes and others engaged in competitive enterprises will simply find some other way to stand out from the pack. 

Egalitarian schemes, in short, often have great inflationary effect but little actual egalitarian effect.  They can amount to mere exercises in mutual make-believe.  You can pretendall you want that all the children in Lake Wobegon are above average.  People who wish it were true may even go along with the pretense.  But of course, it isn’t true, and deep down everybody knows it isn’t true.  Hence even many who do pretend to believe it will act otherwise.  There will be a lot of pious chatter about how special all the children are, but no one will take the chatter very seriously and everyone will in practice treat the children differently according to their actual, differing abilities. 
Now, speaking of egalitarian pretense, consider the idea of “marriage equality,” which Justice Anthony Kennedy pretends to have stumbled upon somewhere in the U.S. Constitution on a Friday morning last June, with (so far) about 42% of the U.S. population going along with the gag.  Depending on the political needs of the moment, the proponents of “marriage equality” have also often pretended that their arguments wouldn’t support polygamy, incestuous marriage, you name it. 
But everyone knows this isn’t true.  For, contrary to some further pretense from the “marriage equality” crowd, the point about the implications of “marriage equality” has nothing to do with making a fallacious slippery slope inference, but rather with making a perfectly valid reductio ad absurdum inference.  A slippery slope fallacy fundamentally involves making a causal claim to the effect that A will lead to B, where there is at best a contingent connection between A and B and where no specific causal path from the one to the other has been established.  A reductio ad absurdum argument, by contrast, involves making a logical claim about the entailment relations between propositions.  In the present case, the idea is that if you not only remove heterosexuality and even fidelity from the essence of marriage, but in general treat the institution as essentially a matter of current social convention and legal stipulation rather than something grounded in nature, then in principle there is no limit to what might be counted as a “marriage.” 
To be sure, a causal claim follows from this logical point.  The causal claim is that, when people see the implications of the redefinition, they will start demanding further and even more radical redefinitions in the directions they favor; and that legislators and courts will have difficulty resisting these demands, because these further redefinitions are implicit in the premises that justified the original redefinition.  But (a) this causal claim is secondary to the logical claim, and (b) the logical claim, since it reveals a conceptual and thus non-contingent connection between the cause and the effect, explains the causal mechanism by which the claimed effects are likely to follow.  So, again, there is no slippery slope fallacy.
And sure enough, the logical and causal claims are being confirmed, it seems, with every passing week.  The latest instance is this week’s article in Slateadvocating -- wait for it -- “marriages” between human beings and robots.  That’s on top of calls for “group marriage,” incestuous “marriage,” and “trial marriage.”  Further out on the fringes but still, it seems, a thing these days, is “self marriage.”   “Marriages” to animals and “marriages” to cartoon characters are also not lacking in advocates.
Now, the people who should be worried about all of this craziness are not the critics of “marriage equality.”  It just gives them an occasion to say “Told you so.”  The people who should be worried about it are the advocates of “marriage equality,” for two reasons.  First, because it gives the critics an occasion to say “Told you so.”  But second -- and more to the point of this post -- because it completely devalues the “marriage” label and thus undermines the whole point of the “marriage equality” movement, which was to dignify same-sex unions by sticking the “marriage” label on them. 
To paraphrase W.S. Gilbert’s line, when everything is a marriage, nothing is a marriage.  Or more precisely, marriage equality, followed out consistently, is marriage inflation.  The more kinds of arrangement there are which people are willing to call “marriages,” the less big a deal it is to have your own favored arrangement labeled a “marriage.”  “So Bob and Ted can now marry?  Whoop dee doo.  So can Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, or Bob and his niece, or Bob and his iPod, or Bob and himself.”  What “marriage equality” gave with its left hand, it threatens to take back with its far left hand. 
That’s only half the problem, though.  Remember the other aspect of the Lake Wobegon phenomenon.  People talk more egalitarian, but they don’t necessarily think more egalitarian or act more egalitarian.  It’s not just that people will use the word “marriage” in a way that so cheapens it that it is no longer much of an honorific.  They will also continue to place greater value on the actual thing that was traditionally called “marriage” than they put on the newer so-called “marriages” -- just as they continue to put greater value on actual knowledge and ability even after the “A” grade has been devalued, greater value on actual athletic skill even after athletic prizes have been devalued, and so forth.
If you want to know what people really think is the essenceof something, you look at how they describe the ideal specimen.  And everyone knows what people think of as the ideal marriage:  You fall in love, you have lots of kids, you watch them grow up and have kids of their own, and you stay faithful to each other through thick and thin and old age until death parts you. 
Why do people idealize this?  For one thing, because of the love it embodies, where by “love” I mean not merely the romantic feelings which get things going (but typically cool), but also and more importantly the self-sacrificeinvolved -- the lifetime surrender of one’s own narrow interests for the sake of spouse, children, and grandchildren.  For another thing, because of the tangible, fleshly tie with other human beings that it represents -- the literal biological connection with past and future generations, and with other living members of the current generation.  In other words, what people idealize in marriage is the perfection, and fusion, of the unitive and the procreative(to use the natural law jargon), the way complete self-giving completely enmeshes one in a literal family and extended family of other human beings. 
The novel arrangements people want to stick the “marriage” label onto are not like this.  All of them involve abstracting out mere aspects of the ideal -- romantic feelings, shared bed and board, legal rights, or what have you -- and redefining the whole in terms of those aspects.  All of these novel arrangements are products of the modern liberal ideology of individual autonomy, and thus all of them explicitly or implicitly rule out absolute, lifelong thick-and-thin commitment.   And except where people of the opposite sex are involved -- and not even there if use of contraception is the rule -- they do not involve the literal biological tie to other human beings that is the natural outcome of the sexual act.
To be sure, these arrangements can be made to seem kinda sorta like the ideal -- via surrogate or test tube parentage, for example.  And of course, as “marriage equality” advocates rightly emphasize, widespread fornication, widespread illegitimacy, easy divorce, and contraception have already moved us far away from the ideal in any case.  In practice, most people in the West are quite willing these days to settle for some distant approximation of the ideal, a watered down substitute, the marital equivalent of O’Douls or Splenda.  The novel “marital” arrangements simply push this tendency out to its logical extreme.  And evolutionary psychologists will assure us that our tendency to idealize the older model is in any event simply an artifact of the conditions under which our forebears evolved, without normative force today. 
Now, the natural law theorist will argue that it doeshave normative force.  (Cf. “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument,” in Neo-Scholastic Essays .)  But that is neither here nor there for present purposes.  What matters for present purposes is that, whether or not it has normative force and whether or not people today are inclined to try very hard to live up to it, people do still regard the traditional marital arrangement described above as the ideal.  And they attach a dignity to that ideal that they do not attach to the mere approximations.  That old couple you know who’ve been together for 60 years and have five children and fifteen grandchildren has what we call a “marriage.”  And when some actor or pop star dumps his third wife and weds his mistress, we also call that a “marriage.”  But no one thinks that the latter arrangement has anything close to the dignity of the former, or that using the same word for both somehow suffices to make them equivalent. 
Similarly, expanding the use of the word “marriage” to cover various exotic arrangements no more extends dignity to those arrangements than freely giving out As to all the children in Lake Wobegon increases general student knowledge and ability.  With the former as with the latter, some people will think: “How adorable!  I’m glad they get to feel good about themselves.”  But few will seriously think that the exotic arrangements have anything close to the dignity that the traditional marital ideal has, any more than they really think that all the children in Lake Wobegon are above average. 
So, like the “A student” who comes to realize that his “achievement” was due to grade inflation, “marriage equality” advocates may soon wonder whether their victory was a hollow one.