John G. Messerly's Blog, page 50

Martin Hägglund: Mortality and the Meaning of Life

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Martin Hägglund’s, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, is one of the most sublime works I’ve ever read—and I’ve devoured thousands of books in my life. It is a work of great erudition and originality; it is carefully and conscientiously crafted; it overflows with thoughtful insights, poetic passages, and sparkling prose. It is … simply magnificent.

Since I cannot do the book justice in a brief review, I’ll focus mostly on the compatibility of Hägglund‘s views about death and meaning with my transhumanism.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first, Hägglund critiques religious ideas of an afterlife as both unattainable and undesirable. Instead, he says, we should find meaning in the fragility and finitude of this life by practicing what he calls secular faith. In part two, he argues that capitalism alienates us from our finite lives while democratic socialism best provides the conditions in which we can use our time to express our spiritual freedom.

Hägglund defines finitude as being dependent on others and living in the shadow of death. Likewise, our projects are finite because they live on only to the extent that someone is committed to them. For me, finitude also includes my physical, psychological, moral, and intellectual limitations. Regarding my projects, I’d add that they can survive us if others carry on our work after our deaths. (Bertrand Russell expressed this idea beautifully.)

Religious immortality might seem to solve the problem of finitude but, according to Hägglund, an eternal afterlife is not only unachievable but undesirable. Why? Because it would be a reality where there would be nothing to be concerned about and nothing could go wrong. Moreover, activities there would be self-sustaining—not requiring any effort on our part. Therefore, activity in a heaven wouldn’t be our own.

Hägglund offers other arguments to undermine the supposed value of immortality: that things only matter to us because we could lose them; that the question of how we live our lives only makes sense if we’re finite; and that we wouldn’t use our time well if it was unlimited. Most importantly, he argues, the unchanging, permanent nature of heaven would render it static and unappealing. 

While I agree with Hägglund that a religious afterlife is unattainable and undesirable, I don’t think his arguments apply to secular or scientific immortality—using science and technology to extend good lives as long as possible, perhaps even prolonging them indefinitely. (For more see my “Death Should Be Optional“) My wife would matter to me as much if not more if she were going to live a thousand or a million years; the question “what should I do with my life?” is perfectly intelligible without the constant threat of death; and people waste time or use it wisely independent of how much of it they think they possess.

I also agree that if things were eternally perfect, there would be nothing to do or be concerned about, but in my vision of scientific immortality, we approach perfection like an asymptote in analytic geometry—a line that continually approaches a curve without reaching it. So there is nothing static about my view of an exceptionally long life. (Ed Gibney has suggested another image. Scientific immortality can be compared to approaching a perfect circle by shaving the edges off a polygon forever.) 

Next Hägglund says that to care about this life is the essence of secular faith. Note that this isn’t faith as in believing without evidence but the faith of savoring the fragility of what we love and care about in this life. “To have secular faith is to be devoted to a life that will end, to be dedicated to projects that can fail or break down.” I’d amend this quote slightly to say “a life that [may] end…” As long as there is the possibility of loss, we can have secular faith. So again scientific immortality is consistent with and even depends on, secular faith. 

Furthermore, he claims, the prospect that the Earth will be destroyed exemplifies our finitude. Transhumanists would agree because, even if we defeat death, we may still succumb to other existential risks including the likely death of the universe itself. So secular immortality cannot promise immortality the way religion can. But the advantages of secular immortality are 1) it is based on real scientific and technological possibilities and 2) it can be reconciled with Hägglund’s emphasis on finitude. 

Notably, Hägglund states “Far from being resigned to death, a secular faith seeks to postpone death and improve the conditions of life … The commitment to living on does not express an aspiration to live forever but to live longer and to live better, not to overcome death but to extend the duration and improve the quality of a form of life.” And later he adds, “To affirm mortal life is to oppose death, to resist and delay it as best as possible … When we wish that the lives of those whom we love will last, we do not wish for them to be eternal but for their lives to continue.”

While Hägglund doesn’t long for immortality either for himself or others, I’d argue that the desirability of immortality is implicit in what he says about wanting to resist and delay death. As I’ve argued previously, all things being equal, longer lives provide the possibility for more meaning than shorter ones. Once you realize this there is no non-arbitrary point at which a meaningful life should end. As long as you find your life meaningful—whether you’ve lived a hundred or a thousand or a million years—you won’t want it to end. Yet if you do want to end your life at any time you should have that option—that follows from respect for personal autonomy. 

Hägglund also notes that, in contrast to secular faith, religious faith isn’t ultimately concerned with the fate of the Earth. For religious believers, the essential is the eternal afterlife, not this finite life. No matter what happens, they look to God to preserve the ideal order. In fact, many religious doctrines and visions look forward to the end of the world.

Therefore as a consequence of emphasizing an eternal afterlife, the religious have less reason to care about, for example, climate change, nuclear war, and other existential threats. These are less important to them because they don’t believe the most valuable things depend on finite life. For if you have religious faith what is most valuable remains even if finite life is obliterated. Yes, religious believers care about this life too, but if they think this life is intrinsically valuable they manifest secular faith even if they’re religious. 

Secular faith is committed to finite human flourishing as an end in itself. We care about our planet and about ourselves and others because we believe they’re valuable and we can lose them. Even religious people mostly care about others—not because of divine commands or the possibility of heavenly reward—but because we are all finite beings in need of care. If we care about things besides ourselves, we have secular faith.

The idea of secular faith then leads to his conception of spiritual freedom—being able to use our time as we choose. But political, social and economic environments constrain, to varying extents, our being able to choose how we live our lives. Thus we must consider these environments in order to understand how spiritual freedom can best flourish.  

Turning to these considerations in Part 2, Hägglund argues that political theology promotes the idea that secularism has no moral foundation and cannot provide life with meaning. These are pernicious ideas, as even many religious believers admit. He notes Max Weber’s claim that secular life is a disenchanted one without values or meaning. Weber says that death once had meaning because we died fulfilled knowing that we were going to heaven. But now we die dissatisfied, believing that our lives were incomplete because we can’t know that our hopes for future progress will be fulfilled. Life and death have become meaningless—this life isn’t complete and it no longer gives way to eternal life. 

But Hägglund denies that secular life is meaningless. Weber, like Tolstoy, didn’t understand a fulfilling life. “Being a person is not a goal that can be achieved but a purpose that must be sustained.” If you say that you have had enough of life you are saying that your life is no longer meaningful. (This implies, it seems to me, that to say you haven’t had enough of life is to say that your life is still meaningful. And to say that is to say that you want to continue to live. Thus, if death precedes your desire to keep on living, then death is bad.)

Much of the second half of the book discusses how Karl Marx’s view that a meaningful life is one in which we get to choose how to spend our time. As Hägglund states, “The real measure of value is not how much work we have done or have to do … but how much disposable time we have to pursue and explore what matters to us … “our own lives … are taken away from us when our time is taken from us.”

Having taught Marx’s theory of alienation, I agree that most work in a capitalist economy doesn’t allow us to express or elaborate ourselves. We often must do what we don’t want to do in order to survive. But I’d also argue that this is a feature of much of the work we’re required to do in any economic system. Most of us are too good for the work we do. How then might this situation be rectified?

… we can pursue technological development for the sake of producing social goods for all of us and increasing the socially available free time for each of us. We can employ nonliving production capacities for the sake of our emancipation—giving ourselves time to lead our lives—-rather than for the sake of exploiting our lifetime.

Here the compatibility of Hägglund‘s vision with transhumanism is straightforward. The spiritual freedom he imagines depends on the success of future technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology. These have the potential of decreasing our labor time and increasing our free time. With an army of robotic workers and friendly AI, we might really be able to exercise spiritual freedom.

Concluding remarks

When I first heard about Hägglund‘s book I assumed he was a deathist—one who defends the value of death. But he is not. His views are consistent with living extraordinarily long, if not immortal, lives. Moreover, he has helped me clarify the difference between secular or scientific immortality and religious immortality. The former implies that we can and should be able to live as long as we want although we have no guarantees we will be able to. The latter is unachievable and undesirable.

As I’ve stated many times, I love this life so much that I want the option to live forever. My desire testifies to the value and fidelity I place on both my own life and the lives of others, especially those I love, as well as to the projects I deem important. But the long and hopefully immortal lives I imagine are not static ones but ones that continually change and evolve —all moving restlessly toward more truth, beauty, goodness, love, and joy and away from their opposites. This never-ending process is, by definition, never complete and its ultimate goal of heavenly perfection never finally achievable. Perhaps this is the best and truest existence possible.

This life is enough, but it can be more if we continually transcend its limitations—including the ultimate limitation imposed by death.

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In Defense of Naturalism

I recently came across a peer-reviewed article, “In Defense of Naturalism,” by Gregory Dawes, a member of the departments of both philosophy and religion at The University of Otago in New Zealand. He is also a Biblical scholar. The piece presents an excellent defense of philosophical naturalism. (I am a philosophical naturalist.)Below are a few excerpts along with some of my own comments.

ABSTRACT

History and the modern sciences are characterized by what is sometimes called a “methodological naturalism” that disregards talk of divine agency. Some religious thinkers argue that this reflects a dogmatic materialism: a non-negotiable and a priori commitment to a materialist metaphysics.

In response to this charge, I make a sharp distinction between procedural requirements and metaphysical commitments. The procedural requirement of history and the sciences—that proposed explanations appeal to publicly-accessible bodies of evidence—is non-negotiable, but has no metaphysical implications. The metaphysical commitment is naturalistic, but is both a posteriori and provisional, arising from the fact that for more than 400 years no proposed theistic explanation has been shown capable of meeting the procedural requirement.

I argue that there is nothing to prevent religious thinkers from seeking to overturn this metaphysically naturalistic stance. But in order to do so they would need to show that their proposed theistic explanations are the best available explanations of a range of phenomena. Until this has been done, the metaphysical naturalism of history and the sciences remains defensible.

Dawes begins by noting that historians considering the causes of the American Civil War, for example, “do not even consider the possibility of divine action; the only causal factors they will look for are natural causes.” So historians reject the suggestion that the cause, for example, was that God wanted to punish the South for their support of slavery. That just isn’t the kind of explanation that historians look for. Quoting the Christian historian Herbert Butterfield,

the historian must play the game according to the rules. Within the

scholarly realm that is here in question he is not allowed to bring God into

the argument, or to pretend to use him as a witness, any more than a

scientist, examining a blade of grass under the microscope, is allowed to

bring God into his explanation of the growth or decay of plants. (Butterfield

1979: 134; cf. 1950: 19–20)

Nonetheless, religious thinkers have increasingly rejected this idea, arguing instead “that the exclusion of divine agency … is based on an a priori and non-negotiable commitment to a godless metaphysics.” In short, modern historians “have simply decided in advance that human history cannot be the sphere of divine action.” Similar charges have been leveled against the natural sciences who also “eschew talk of divine action.”

Dawes replies by citing numerous examples of historians not being motivated by hostility toward religion or a penchant for materialism. Still, the opponents of naturalism argue that whatever their motives, “historians study the world … as if there were no God” instead of admitting God might explain certain events.

Dawes responds by distinguishing “the (non-negotiable) procedural requirement of history and the sciences and their (provisional) metaphysical commitment to natural explanations.” The procedural requirement demands

that any claims about human beings or the world they inhabit should be supported by reference to some publicly-accessible body of evidence. This procedural requirement, does not, in principle, exclude reference to divine agency. It would permit a theistic explanation if that explanation could be supported by the right kind of evidence. I shall argue that while the procedural requirement is a non-negotiable stance, it is also a relatively uncontroversial one, even among Christian thinkers.

The provisional commitment to metaphysical naturalism, Dawes argues, is

justified by reference to the history of these disciplines. It is provisional in that it is defeasible: it could (in principle) be overturned … if the theologian were to present a series of successful theistic explanations of the kinds of facts in which scientists and historians are interested. Such explanations would conform to the procedural requirements of history and the sciences, in that they would appeal to publicly accessible bodies of evidence. They would posit the existence and action of God as the most adequate explanation of the facts to which they appeal. But until religious believers do this, the metaphysical naturalism of modern historians and scientists requires no defense beyond the practice of their disciplines.

In conclusion Dawes states,

I have argued that we should make a clear distinction between the procedural demands of history and the sciences and their (provisional) commitment to natural explanations. Their procedural demand is nothing more than the requirement that claims be tested against a body of publicly-accessible evidence. While I have suggested that this procedural demand is non-negotiable, I have argued that it is also relatively uncontroversial.

What is controversial is the metaphysical naturalism of history and the sciences, which excludes talk of divine agency. This naturalism, I have suggested, rests on the fact that historians and scientists operate with a working ontology, a sense of what kinds of entities are likely to exist. This is drawn from both common sense and the results of historical and scientific enquiry. This ontology is merely provisional, in the sense that it could be revised given appropriate evidence.

But appropriate evidence is needed. Religious thinkers who fail to offer publicly-testable evidence that their proposed theistic explanations are the most adequate

explanations on offer have no reason to complain if the rest of us continue to

ignore them.

Brief Thoughts

It is rare to find such accessible writing in an academic piece—Dawes’s argument is clear and concise. Here’s how I would explain it to my college students.

The procedural aspect of science excludes gods, ghosts, goblins, and gremlins as explanations. If you want to know why earthquakes happen the “God is mad at Japan or gay people” is not a scientific explanation. If you want to know why bread rises in hot ovens, the “excited, invisible gremlins jump up and down and puff up the bread” isn’t a scientific explanation either. That’s just how science works, and boy does it work. Just look at the world around you.

Metaphysical naturalism, which rejects the existence of supernatural entities, is a philosophical position open to revision if the evidence warrants it. If the existence and action of gods provide the best explanation for something a historian or scientist is studying, then science will change its mind and begin to accept those explanations. If prayer was shown to cure disease then by all means pray. (Of course multiple studies have shown this not to be true.) But until then, I’d take the antibiotic the doctor gives you and skip the praying.

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Notes.

Butterfield, Herbert. 1950. Christianity and History. London: G. Bell and Sons.

――――. 1979. “Does Belief in Christianity Validly Affect the Modern Historian?”

In Herbert Butterfield: Writings on Christianity and History edited by C. T.

McIntyre, 133–50. New York: Oxford University Press.

This draft paper is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. You are free to cite this material provided you attribute it to its author; you may also make copies, but you must include the author’s name and include this license.

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Can We Know Anything with Certainty?

Rene Descartes

There are many reasons we might want to philosophize—become better people, gain self-knowledge, understand the history of thought, etc. But I was drawn to philosophy because I wanted to know, as far as is possible, what was true. This sentiment echoes the very first sentence of the very first book in my very first college philosophy class, way back in 1973. They are the opening lines of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and they go like this:

It is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis; and from that time I was convinced that I must once for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I had formerly accepted, and commence to build anew from the foundation, if I wanted to establish any firm and permanent structure in the sciences.

Later I read Descartes’ Discourse on Method where he states the origins of his doubts:

I was nourished by study from my earliest childhood; and since I was convinced that this was the means to acquire a clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life, I had an extreme desire to learn. But as soon as I had finished a course of studies which usually culminates in one being accepted as one of the learned, I changed my opinion completely; for I found myself troubled by so many doubts and errors that the only profit I had gained in seeking to educate myself was to discover more and more clearly the extent of my ignorance.

As many of my readers know, Descartes begins with skepticism but doesn’t end there. In fact, he’s trying to do the opposite—rid himself of his false beliefs so that he can replace them with true ones based on the firm foundation of clear and distinct ideas. He begins with “I think, therefore I am.” And this presumably indubitable proposition leads to the discovery of other clear and distinct ideas—most notably the external world, and God.

Then as a graduate student, I encountered  Edmund Husserl‘s Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. There Husserl developed what he called presuppositionless philosophy. He advanced the idea of philosophy without any presuppositions, (although I’m  skeptical of this approach.) At any rate, Husserl believed he could place philosophy on firm foundations by examining subjective consciousness.

Yet a problem always bedevils those who seek foundations of knowledge. On what foundation does that foundation rest? If we ask this question indefinitely, we find ourselves in an infinite regress. Aristotle avoided this regress by appealing to intuitive truths, basic laws of logic on which all knowledge is based. Another approach is that of Jean Piaget who argued for “the circle of the sciences.” The idea is that psychology reduces to biology which reduces to chemistry which reduces to physics which reduces to mathematics which reduces to logic which then reduces back to psychology. (For a detailed discussion see my Piaget’s Conception of Evolution[image error].”)

A different approach rejects foundationalism altogether. Consider the following quote from the Austrian-born philosopher Otto Neurath,

“We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood, the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.”1

In this vision of philosophizing we always necessarily begin in the middle. We can’t escape our situation or get outside of ourselves to construct some foundation. According to Neurath, contra to Descartes and Husserl,  we can’t raze all that came before and begin anew but philosophical inquiry can improve our pre-philosophical views.

I think this is about right. While I desperately wanted firm foundations for my philosophical beliefs when I was a teenager, I long ago gave up that dream. Even my intellectual hero Bertrand Russell came to a similar conclusion. In  Portraits from Memory and Other Essays he wrote on his reaction to Gödel’s ‘Theorems of Undecidability‘:

I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers wanted me to accept, were full of fallacies … I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.

Life is full of ambiguity, and we either tolerate it, ignore it, or escape into a fanatical ideology. We can never be absolutely certain of anything; we know of no absolute foundation on which to build knowledge. In the end, I’m a fallibilist, any idea I have might be wrong.

Still, we needn’t accept an epistemological relativism either because … some ideas are much more likely to be true than others.

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Otto Neurath (1921), “Spengler’s Description of the World,” as cited in: Nancy Cartwright et al. Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics, Cambridge University Press, 28 Apr. 2008 p. 191

Nietzsche: Active and Passive Nihilism

What is Nihilism?

Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine that denies the existence of one or more of those things thought to make life good especially truth, values, or meaning. A nihilist doesn’t believe that knowledge is possible, that anything is valuable, or that life has meaning. Nihilism also denotes a general mood of despair or pessimism toward life in general.

As a consequence of considering nihilism, we are forced to see that reality may be random, irrational, futile, worthless, and meaningless. Thus nihilism serves to break down the illusions, myths, and other social and cultural constructions that have hitherto given us security, hope, and, most of all, meaning. Given the stakes, many philosophers have wrestled with the problem of overcoming nihilism.

Nietzsche and Nihilism

Nihilism is often associated with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who thought that nihilism was a widespread phenomenon of Western culture. Traditionally Christianity supplied an antidote to nihilism in the West by providing a source for truth, value and meaning for Christians. But as the influence of Christianity declined, so too did its cultural power to assuage fears of nihilism. In other words, as Christian beliefs were undermined, especially by the rise of modern science, they could no longer serve as the source for truth, value, and meaning.

As a result, Nietzsche believed that when we find out that the world doesn’t possess the objective value, meaning or truth that we want it to have or have long believed it to have, we find ourselves in a crisis. We find ourselves confronting nihilism.

However, Nietzsche thought of nihilism as a disease, calling it ‘pathological.’ He argued that we should strive to rid ourselves of it, remembering that simply because our previous beliefs about how life had meaning were false, doesn’t mean that all beliefs about life’s meaning are false. And our search for meaning may be successful if we look in the right places, which for Nietzsche was in this world, not in an imaginary supernatural one. 

Passive Nihilism

However, Nietzsche didn’t think everyone was capable of curing themselves of nihilism.  What Nietzsche calls passive nihilism is a view that accepts nihilism as the endpoint of the search for meaning. Passive nihilists lack the strength to be the creators of their own values and meanings. For Nietzsche, a passive nihilist is characterized by a weak will, by the inability to create meaning, and by the tendency to withdraw from the world.

In response to a lack of meaning and weak will, passive nihilists often join mass movements—supporting a political party or leader, a war, or a country—as a way to give their lives meaning. This provides followers with a sense that there is still some authority in the world and the movement functions as a kind of narcotic. Individuals in such movements experience a belonging that used to be called being part of God’s plan. (Sometimes they straightforwardly conflate the two as in “Trump has been called by God.”)

Nietzsche recognized passive nihilism in the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer and in Buddhism. (Life is an “unprofitable episode,” in Schopenhauer’s words.) It involves turning away from life and rejecting all the values of this world. In other words, passive nihilism accepts the destruction of value and meaning.1

Active Nihilism

The other response is what Nietzsche calls active nihilism. Active nihilists don’t stop at the destruction of value and meaning but construct new ones, instead of succumbing to despair or joining a mass movement to ameliorate their fears. Nietzsche envisioned active nihilists as people who bravely forge ahead even after losing the beliefs which previously gave meaning to their lives. They overcome nihilism by freely creating their own values and meaning. For Nietzsche, an active nihilist is characterized by a strong will.

After ridding yourself of your previous beliefs you stand alone as a free spirit rather than having meaning imposed by authority figures. Active nihilism is not an end then but the beginning of the search for values and meanings. Put differently, active nihilists rebel against the situation they find themselves in. (Albert Camus would be another example of an active nihilist.) But in their rebellion, they find strength in the creative power that allows them to be the source of their own meaning. For Nietzsche, this is the heroic path.2

Notes.

I don’t think this is a fair characterization of Schopenhauer or Buddhism in that they both embrace the value of sympathy. Perhaps this goes to the tension of whether passive nihilism continues to accept some values or not.
It is easy to see how Nietzsche is a forerunner to existentialism with his emphasis on creating your own meaning. This idea is expressed most clearly by Jean-Paul Sartre.

How Prevalent Is Atheism?

Epicurus is credited with first expounding the problem of evil.

(Excerpts below from the Templeton Foundation.)

In 2017, University of Kentucky psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle published a paper titled “How Many Atheists Are There?” arguing—on the basis of provocative preliminary research—that traditional surveys of religious attitudes may consistently and significantly undercount the number of people who are atheists.

They suspected that the concept of atheism carried enough of a negative social stigma that many people who met the criteria of disbelief would be unwilling to admit it directly, even in an anonymous survey. In the paper, Gervais and Najle argued for a different approach—the unmatched count technique, a survey method pioneered in the late 1970s and since used as a way to get accurate, anonymous estimates for delicate or even incriminating questions on topics ranging from drug use to domestic violence.

Now, University of British Columbia psychologist Azim Shariff is working with Gervais to design and deploy experiments that will refine the survey technique for questions about religious beliefs, both in North American contexts and internationally in societies like Saudi Arabia or Sweden whose members may feel different levels of social pressure when it comes to admitting atheism, even anonymously.

The abstract of the original research report read as follows:

One crucible for theories of religion is their ability to predict and explain the patterns of belief and disbelief. Yet, religious nonbelief is often heavily stigmatized, potentially leading many atheists to refrain from outing themselves even in anonymous polls. We used the unmatched count technique and Bayesian estimation to indirectly estimate atheist prevalence in two nationally representative samples of 2,000 U.S. adults apiece. Widely cited telephone polls (e.g., Gallup, Pew) suggest U.S. atheist prevalence of only 3-11%. In contrast, our most credible indirect estimate is 26% (albeit with considerable estimate and method uncertainty). Our data and model predict that atheist prevalence exceeds 11% with greater than .99 probability and exceeds 20% with roughly .8 probability. Prevalence estimates of 11% were even less credible than estimates of 40%, and all intermediate estimates were more credible. Some popular theoretical approaches to religious cognition may require heavy revision to accommodate actual levels of religious disbelief.

Thus Gervais and Najle strongly suspected that atheism is significantly underreported. The new research will use the unmatched count technique. Here is a description from the Templeton Foundation website which summarizes how this works.

“The gold standard of survey research often involves face-to-face interviews with survey participants, often conducted by people of similar cultural backgrounds,” Shariff says. “This method has been used in some of Gallup’s international polls on religion, and the data that derives from these surveys is widely used across the social sciences, but it creates exactly the circumstances under which people feel pressured to embellish their virtuous responses, and disguise or outright lie about ones they feel enjoy less societal approval.”

The unmatched count technique attempts to avoid this by never requiring participants to directly answer the question at hand. Instead, they are given a list of statements and are only asked, “How many of these are true for you?” The control group generates baseline data for a set of innocuous statements (for instance, “I use a computer every day” or “I own blue shoes”) while the other group receives the same set of statements plus an additional question such as “I believe in God.” Since the participants only report a number, but never have to indicate which items on the list are true for them, any individual’s answer is not a definitive admission or denial. But by comparing the average number of agreed-to statements for large-enough control and experimental groups, the group’s rate of agreement with the target question can be deduced.

I’m really looking forward to the results of the new research. I’m guessing that the original speculation of Gervais and Najle will be correct—non-belief is widely underestimated. I’d also argue that the actions of many theists belie their supposed belief.

Philosophical Music Videos

I have recently become aware of a new young artist, Syne, who produces music videos with a philosophical bent. I really like them. As an example, in the above video, the poetic and other-worldly sounds and lyrics of “Siddhartha” tell about the universal struggle of dealing with change, told through the story of Siddhartha Gautama—the Buddha.

“Forget the Borderlines” is a folk song fused with electronic, cinematic, and world sounds. It celebrates diversity and calls on humanity to cherish our differences and work together. It reminds us that we are one people; we are all in this together.

“Midas” highlights the catastrophic impact of humanity’s greed on the natural environment and on humanity itself. It was released on April 19th in honor of Earth Day.

“Plato’s Cave” is a poetic folktronica song with cinematic, pop, world, and rap elements that molds the philosophical concept of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave to address the theme of our tendency to become immersed in society’s flow and lose our sense of wonder.

I applaud Fernando (Syne) for these beautiful productions. And I’m glad that he, in his words, “decided to contribute his grain of sand by creating mindful music.” You can find out more about Syne and his artistry here. Best of luck to him.

Polytheism and Reformed Epistemology

Triumph of Faith over Idolatry by Jean-Baptiste Théodon (1646–1713)

[My post “Faith and Properly Basic Beliefs” provoked this response from Dr. Darrell Arnold. It both clarifies and adds considerably to my argument.]

My Beliefs Are Basic, Your’s Are Not

Sociologists and historians can show us many cultures in which individuals have had beliefs that they probably thought were properly basic. I suppose the major ideologies into which we are indoctrinated seem quite basic to those who have internalized them. Growing up in a slave state, many may think slavery stands in no serious need of justification. Growing up in a misogynist society, a belief in the natural superiority of men may appear (nearly) basic. These just are relatively easily accepted by those in the cultures as the way things are.

But there is some difference between the examples of properly basic beliefs like “I see a tree,” or “I’m in pain” and beliefs like “There is a god” or “slavery and the subordinate place of women in society is natural” — namely, we don’t generally even ask for justifications for the properly basic beliefs, even if we are from a different culture with different views of metaphysics, proper political arrangements and so on. We would only ask for justifications of a statement, “I see a tree” if upon looking, we didn’t see it. We could ask about the views someone expresses about pain if the individual didn’t have bodily expressions that we associate with pain, but maybe ones we associate with joy instead. By contrast, in the case of the statements that God exists and has some particular set of characteristics, unless we are indoctrinated into the same cultures, we tend to want to know why an individual believes that God exists or has the characteristics the individuals attribute to Him or Her. For those kinds of statements, we want to see some evidence.

Christians demand evidence for why a Hindu believes what a Hindu believes or a Muslim believes what a Muslim believes. If told, “look within yourself and you will see,” many of these Christians would accuse the Hindu or the Muslim of having demonic possession, or of not rightly interpreting the internal perception. They typically apply one set of criteria to their own beliefs and another one entirely to those who seem to reach different conclusions based on their alleged properly basic beliefs.

Polytheism Properly Basic for Most of Human History

Furthermore, I rather imagine that if individuals from polytheist cultures met one another, they could see quite a few similarities in their views of the gods. If anything, through human history the polytheistic view has been more common than monotheism. Monotheism, and the view that this one God is omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving is a relatively late “achievement” of history. Looking at early history, you wouldn’t find it. By contrast, people did speak about seeing trees and feeling pain.

Throughout human history, complimenting polytheism, and then the later monotheism, there has also been a widespread belief that the gods regularly intervene in human history to reward or punish individuals or groups for their behavior. And it has been common to think that some set of rituals or actions might appease the gods, win their favor, manipulate them in some way. The magical thinking has been so common that it probably seemed to earlier generations of people to be universal and “basic.”

We can see the great confusion that this widespread belief has led to in human history. It led the Aztecs to justify the removal of human hearts from living people, it led various groups to engage in human sacrifices. It led Medieval Christians to burn witches and engage in the inquisition. It was at play in the Athenian sentence against Socrates. If anything polytheism has been more widespread than monotheism in history. It has seemed less in need of justification than that one God stands behind the many contradictory things that go on in the world.

But the fact that polytheism and magical thinking have been widespread and understood as in no special need of justification does not speak to their truth or of being basic in the sense that seeing and sensing pain is basic. This rather seems to lie in a tendency of humans to want explanations for things that we do not understand in a desire to control things outside of our control.

In addition to seeing and feeling, as basic, we have had widespread tendencies to reason badly, to be misled by wishful thinking, and to commit other logical fallacies. The fact that fallacious reasoning often has given rise to some similar sets of ideas is hardly proof of the truth of those ideas. Those ideas—which have nothing in common with properly basic beliefs other than being relatively widespread at varying times in history—need to be evaluated in light of evidence and clear reasoning. For this Plantinga doesn’t help us much.

Trump Administration Rejected WHO Coronavirus Tests: With Deadly Consequences

Cross-sectional model of a coronavirus

In “How testing failures allowed coronavirus to sweep the U.S” Joanne Kenen of  Politico describes how, according to experts, the Trump administration’s decision to reject a World Health Organization coronavirus test that was available in February has had deadly consequences. Here is an excerpt:

On Saturday Jan. 11 … Chinese scientists posted the genome of the mysterious new virus, and within a week virologists in Berlin had produced the first diagnostic test for the disease.

Soon after, researchers in other nations rolled out their own tests, too, sometimes with different genetic targets. By the end of February, the World Health Organization had shipped tests to nearly 60 countries.

The United States was not among them.

Why the United States declined to use the WHO test, even temporarily as a bridge until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could produce its own test, remains a perplexing question and the key to the Trump administration’s failure to provide enough tests to identify the coronavirus infections before they could be passed on, according to POLITICO interviews with dozens of viral-disease experts, former officials and some officials within the administration’s health agencies …

But neither the CDC nor the coronavirus task force chaired by Vice President Mike Pence would say who made the decision to forgo the WHO test and instead begin a protracted process of producing an American test, one that got delayed by manufacturing problems, possible lab contamination and logistical delays.

“Please provide an explanation for why the Covid-19 diagnostic test approved by the World Health Organization was not used,” Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Senate health committee, who represents the hard-hit state of Washington, asked in a 3½-page letter on the testing fiasco to Pence, Health Secretary Alex Azar, CDC director Robert Redfield, and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn.

So far, none has been provided.

Please read the entire article if interested. Let me just say that, in the end, incompetence, disregard of scientific experts, concern for public relations as opposed to the common good, and having a sociopathic president, among other things, have all made us less safe. And that includes those with great wealth and power.

Does Trump Care About You?

Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson – “The Great Society”

Pursuant to my last post, I’d argue that it is unsurprising that two years ago the Trump regime disbanded a crucial National Security Council Directorate charged with responding to pandemics. (The Trump White House closed the office responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic in May 2018. In today’s Washington Post Dr. Beth Cameron describes the situation in “I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it.”)

(When asked about the closing in yesterday’s news conference Trump claimed to be unaware that this had happened. But even if he was unaware of it then, shouldn’t he know about it now?) Here’s the video:

There are many reasons I find the current fiasco of a response to this crisis unsurprising. First, the Republicans are anti-government. They have been decrying government at least since Ronald Reagan told us in his inaugural address that government is the problem. The video below may make for a nice campaign slogan, but there are many, many problems that can only be solved by the power of government—using the common wealth to take collective action in the interests of us all. Of course, Republicans won’t hesitate to use that governmental power to transfer wealth and power to the already wealthy and powerful.

Second, Republicans hate democracy and will do whatever they can to gerrymander, suppress voting, and the like. Third, the Republican party “is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start.” Fourth, the Trump regime has done everything possible to replace experts with sycophants in every agency in government. Fifth, Republicans want to cut or undermine anything that might help ordinary people—such as expanding Medicaid under the ACA. This list could go on and on.

But I’d like to focus on this issue of disbanding an office dedicated to fighting pandemics as an examplar of the potentially catastrophic results for all of us of the modern-day Republican Party. (We could also use climate change, environmental degradation or other threats to civilization that Republicans pose to explain the threat they pose to our very survival.) Why then do Republicans invite these catastrophes?

It is well-established that the US government—especially when under the influence of Republicans—responds to the wealthy and powerful and is deaf to the concerns of ordinary citizens. Once you understand this basic principle it is easy to see why an office dedicated to a government’s response to a pandemic—which benefits all of us and not only the wealthy—wouldn’t be backed to the extent that issues only affecting the wealthy would. Why, for instance, have Republicans have done everything possible to subvert and dismantle the ACA, which helps ordinary citizens gain quality health care? Because insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies profit from the current system.

The reason for all this is that a Republican Party-led government simply doesn’t care much about ordinary citizens, unless doing so helps them maintain power or they find that their own interests converge with those of the masses. (Given the present pandemic, they may now be discovering that it is in their interest to make sure others have access to health care, aren’t infected, stay home from work, receive sick pay, etc. That we really are all in this together.) But generally, they respond almost exclusively to the wealthy wanting tax cuts, the military-industrial complex wanting profitable contracts, businesses wanting to eviscerate the environmental protection, etc.

This is so obvious it hardly needs to be stated. Yes, Democrats also fall victim to their corporate overseers but not to the extent that Republicans do. To claim otherwise commits the fallacy of false equivalence. Republicans will sacrifice anything—including the health and safety of their citizens—to appease their wealthy and corporate masters with tax cuts and other favors. The Democrats try to get the people affordable health care, a living wage, a clean environment, etc. (The historian Thomas Frank explained much of this years ago in What’s the Matter with Kansas?[image error])

What you are seeing with the current pandemic, among other things, results from having Republicans—who don’t believe in government—in charge of the government. They may throw you red meat to incite you against intellectuals or gays or immigrants or atheists or feminists or environmentalists or socialists or Muslims, or whoever. They scapegoat these others so that you won’t turn on them and their wealthy masters.

So yes they may hate the people you hate. But what you can be sure of is that they will never give you things that actually help you like the social security and unemployment insurance of FDR’s New Deal; or the Medicare and Medicaid of LBJ’s Great Society; or the Affordable Care Act of Barack Obama. And they will disband any offices and agencies designed to contain pandemics.

Republicans may hate the same people you hate … but you can be sure that they don’t care about you.

Trump White House Closed Office That Dealt With Pandemics

The 1918–20 “Spanish flu” influenza pandemic resulted in dramatic mortality worldwide.

If you are unaware, the Trump White House closed the office responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic in May 2018. In today’s Washington Post Dr. Beth Cameron describes the situation in “I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it.” (Dr. Cameron is vice president for global biological policy and programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. She previously served as the senior director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council.)

She begins like this,

It’s impossible to assess the full impact of the 2018 decision to disband the White House office [of Global Health Security and Biodefense] responsible for this work Biological experts do remain in the White House and in our government. But it is clear that eliminating the office has contributed to the federal government’s sluggish domestic response. What’s especially concerning about the absence of this office today is that it was originally set up because a previous epidemic made the need for it quite clear.

Dr. Cameron also made clear that when the office was closed experts “called for the office’s reinstatement at the time.” Elaborating, she says,

In his remarks Wednesday night, the president talked about travel bans and the resilience of the U.S. economy but made little specific mention of the public health crisis unfolding across America — exactly the kind of detail a dedicated NSC pandemics infrastructure would have pushed to address. A directorate within the White House would have been responsible for coordinating the efforts of multiple federal agencies to make sure the government was backstopping testing capacity, devising approaches to manufacture and avoid shortages of personal protective equipment, strengthening U.S. lab capacity to process covid-19 tests, and expanding the health-care workforce.

And she concludes,

Pandemics, like weapons of mass destruction and climate change, are transnational threats with potentially existential consequences … Pandemic threats may not arise every year, but the White House should constantly prepare for them. We can’t afford for federal decision-makers to waste time relearning old lessons when they should be innovating and acting. Covid-19 wasn’t preventable, but it was predictable.

Finally, almost two years ago “Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the NSC, spoke at a symposium at Emory University to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic.” At that time she said, “The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern,” she told the audience. “Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no.”

Update – When asked today about disbanding this office Trump called the reporter’s question “nasty.” Said he didn’t know anything about it. Even if he didn’t know anything about it when it happened, how does he not know about it now?