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The correct metaphysical views about everything
There are “repeatable” fundamental “kinds”, which explains why there are relations of causal necessity. Realism about universals confuses the semantic generality of concepts for ontological generality. “Instantiation” and “exemplification” relations add nothing useful to property instances (tropes).
So there, you scoundrels! Will Wilkinson has more, in his very entertaining post. Why can't we get more of this from him?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 3, 2007 at 07:39 AM in Philosophy | Permalink
Comments
Arrogance is the enemy of wisdom, and Wilkinson strikes me as quite arrogant. He's impatient to arrive at a quick conclusion, so he places little weight on evidence that contradicts his pat answers. For example, he writes "God, for instance, is the best explanation for nothing." Gee, why did I waste so much time reading the great philosophers of history. It would have been so simple to just read Wilkinson. But great philosphers such as Nietzche, Camus and Sartre have concluded that morals are irrational, and impossible, without God, as are love and meaning. Honest scientists, such as Dr. Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, have concluded that evolution alone can't explain the ascent of life from nonliving matter. A tad bit of humility would keep Wilkinson from being so bored with metaphysics.
Posted by: Fundamentalist at Jan 3, 2007 9:50:10 AM
Will Wilkinson believes that "God" doesn't exist?
That's quite all right. Will Wilkinson is the one who doesn't exist -- he is simply a name associated with collection of thoughts and experiences "God" is having.
Posted by: Advaita at Jan 3, 2007 10:00:04 AM
But great philosphers such as Nietzche, Camus and Sartre have concluded that morals are irrational, and impossible, without God, as are love and meaning.
Is this a joke?
Posted by: Barbar at Jan 3, 2007 10:44:43 AM
"Is this a joke?"
No. Have you read them?
Posted by: Fundamentalist at Jan 3, 2007 10:46:33 AM
Some philosphers argue that without a rational God, even reason is an illusion, although I can't think of their names at the moment.
Posted by: Fundamentalist at Jan 3, 2007 10:54:20 AM
What did these "great philosophers" think about the existence of God?
The idea that the existence of God rescues the rationality and sensibility of morality is also nonsensical, by the way. "Why should I love my fellow man? Oh yeah, because the all-powerful God wants me to. Now it all makes sense!"
"Do I have free will? What a tough question... oh, there's an omnipotent and omniscient God, who can see the future, and everything works out according to His Plan. Now the question of whether or not I am free is no longer absurd!"
Posted by: Barbar at Jan 3, 2007 11:19:34 AM
What's the matter, don't you people want to debate Naming and Necessity, or possible worlds?
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Jan 3, 2007 11:21:09 AM
Just take a deep breath everyone. That was just an example from Wilkinson's views on ontology. If you guys think that God is the best explanation for something, you can still agree with Wilkinson's main point.
Posted by: josh at Jan 3, 2007 12:01:28 PM
Lucretius seemed to think that the existence of natural kinds necessitated the existence of god. For without god, what would prevent cats from giving birth to mice? Such is another possible world.
Posted by: BJANKDERSON at Jan 3, 2007 12:06:33 PM
Not that I'm a consequentualist, but the idea of multiple worlds is troublesome for the concept of morality. If there is an infinite number of parallel universes and we're simply traveling from one snapshot to another, then doing something moral has no effect in the great scheme of things, since the world in which you do the immoral thing also exists and you're merely choosing which world to be in. Trying to make the world better would also be futile since the effect of your actions will merely be changing which universe you're in and relegating other copies of you to less desirable ones. Once you determine that it's all about you, then all morality goes out the window.
Or so the argument goes. I don't believe this will actually happen if enough people are convinced of multiple worlds, just as plenty of atheists manage not to rape and plunder.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Jan 3, 2007 12:20:24 PM
There's always the coevolution of society and the individual to explain that, Hei Lun Chan.
Posted by: josh at Jan 3, 2007 12:23:48 PM
Debating intellectual propositions is engaging, but at the end of the day the only world that actually exists is not any mental concept at all but instead the simplicity of the witnessing awareness in which arise and are seen all thoughts, emotions, and sensations.
This awareness itself is ultimate truth, ultimate reality.
Until this is seen, identification with the illusion of personal identity and thought continues and mind chases its own tail, absorbed in worlds of its own creation, debating "free will", "possible worlds", "multiverses" all describing the emergence and properties of apparent separate entities that are actually, as Einstein put it: "optical delusion[s] of consciousness".
This all can be seen by looking directly at the nature of the apparent "I".
Posted by: Advaita at Jan 3, 2007 12:32:11 PM
Well, when you reject modal notions of necessity, of course you get crazy results like that.
Posted by: Emery at Jan 3, 2007 12:39:07 PM
Barbar:What did these "great philosophers" think about the existence of God?
They were atheists, all of them.
Barbar:"The idea that the existence of God rescues the rationality and sensibility of morality is also nonsensical, by the way. "Why should I love my fellow man? Oh yeah, because the all-powerful God wants me to. Now it all makes sense!"
You're confusing acting morally with having a rational justification for morals. Most atheists are moral people and many religious people are very immoral. But the great philosophers would say both are irrational in that their believe one thing and do another.
Barbar:"Do I have free will? What a tough question... oh, there's an omnipotent and omniscient God, who can see the future, and everything works out according to His Plan. Now the question of whether or not I am free is no longer absurd!"
You're exactly right if you take the Deist or Islamic positions about God. In both, we can be nothing but puppets on God's strings. However, the God of the Bible permits free will. His knowledge of the future is based on his existence outside of time, not because he has determined the future. As an example, I often can predict what my children will do, but I don't determine it for them. Don't confuse foreknowledge with determinism.
By the way, the Hindu/Buddhist concept of God is very similar to the Atheist one in that Hindu?Buddhists conceive of reality as a dream, so evil action don't mean anything.
Posted by: Fundamentalist at Jan 3, 2007 12:46:21 PM
If God wants me to kick my sister in the teeth, does that make it moral to do so?
Posted by: josh at Jan 3, 2007 1:08:45 PM
Does she need to be kicked in the teeth? Perhaps if you cannot afford a dentist:)
Posted by: Bill at Jan 3, 2007 1:27:25 PM
A loving God would not want to kick your sister in the teeth, at least, not without a reason consistent with a boundless love for you sister (her teeth were rotten, she needed to be punished to teach her not to engage in harmful behaviors, etc...)
More generally, your question echoes Plato: is a man holy because he is loved by the Gods, or is he loved by the Gods because he is holy? The lesson is that ethics that come from God's decree are arbitrary (Why not make killing ethical?). But if ethics transcend God, then God is not needed to justify moral behavior.
Of course, the theistic response is that ethics involve following God's nature. God's nature is not just omniscient and omnipotent, he is also omnibenevolent. God loves everyone infinitely. That is His nature, and our model to follow.
Posted by: Justin at Jan 3, 2007 1:30:05 PM
"Of course, the theistic response is that ethics involve following God's nature. God's nature is not just omniscient and omnipotent, he is also omnibenevolent. God loves everyone infinitely. That is His nature, and our model to follow."
Proving the non-existence of a particular god isn't always difficult. Such is the case with the god described above.
If God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent and love's everyone infinitely, and would like everyone to model their behavior after his nature, then it would be necessarily true that: 1) God would know how to have me believe in his existence, and, 2) God would possess the power to have me believe in his existence, and 3) God would desire that I believe in his existence, so that I would know of his desire to have me model my behavior after his nature, and finally, 4) God would have no other contradictory desire of greater importance that would preclude him from acting to fulfill his desire to have me use his nature as my model to follow.
Given all that, my lack of belief in this God is proof that he doesn't exist. (credit: Theodore Drange's Argument from Nonbelief, paraphrased with a cleaver, i.e. butchered, but hopefully still recognizable.)
Cheers,
Michael
Posted by: Michael Giesbrecht at Jan 3, 2007 2:41:00 PM
I'm sympathetic with many of Wilkinson's claims, but not his ultimate conclusions. His rejection of modality is heartening, since arguments from the Kripkean modal hierarchy get us unnecessarily baroque ontologies, but, being more conventionalist (and conceptualist) than he is about meaning, I think phrases like "gold might have had a different atomic weight" to be perfectly meaningful.
I would like to know if he's a simple compatibalist about freewill (and thus be innocuous, if uninteresting), or a full-blown libertarian (which is interesting, but hopelessly wrong). From his separation of determinism and freewill, I think the former is more likely.
Posted by: Urstoff at Jan 3, 2007 2:42:23 PM
If God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent and love's everyone infinitely, and would like everyone to model their behavior after his nature, then it would be necessarily true that: 1) God would know how to have me believe in his existence, and, 2) God would possess the power to have me believe in his existence, and 3) God would desire that I believe in his existence, so that I would know of his desire to have me model my behavior after his nature, and finally, 4) God would have no other contradictory desire of greater importance that would preclude him from acting to fulfill his desire to have me use his nature as my model to follow.
I agree with every premise except for #4. I would submit the following condition has greater importance: (5) that people *freely* chooose to follow God.
Posted by: Justin at Jan 3, 2007 3:33:07 PM
Michael,
Does the lack of insight of a particular dreaming person as to the nature of his or her condition make the waking state unreal?
Posted by: Advaita at Jan 3, 2007 4:13:21 PM
Justin,
"I agree with every premise except for #4. I would submit the following condition has greater importance: (5) that people *freely* chooose to follow God."
You can sub out your condition (5) for my (4). Doing so doesn't change the result. The fact that I am without belief in this God precludes me from freely choosing to follow him. If (5) were true, then surely this God would see to it that I, along with a great many other people who are also without belief, believed in his existence. For according to his defining characteristics, he has the power, the knowledge, and the desire to make it so.
Posted by: Michael Giesbrecht at Jan 3, 2007 4:43:12 PM
Advaita,
"Does the lack of insight of a particular dreaming person as to the nature of his or her condition make the waking state unreal?"
The "waking state" is "real" by definition. If it weren't, what would it be? Lack of insight is not a condition unique to dreaming, nor do dreamers necessary lack insight.
Other than that, I don't understand what you're getting at.
Posted by: Michael Giesbrecht at Jan 3, 2007 4:49:35 PM
Michael,
The gist of condition (5) is that not just that following God is freely chosen, but that belief in God is freely chosen. Consider it this way: Suppose God forced us all to believe in Him, but then gave us the free choice of whether or not to follow Him. This does not leave much room for genuine freedom. You would have a lot of resentful, bitter "God-fearing" believers, rather than joyful "God-loving" believers. There are already too many in the former category!
In summary, our freedom has to be in our beliefs in order to be meaningful. Only the insane would refuse to follow a God they believed in.
Posted by: Justin at Jan 3, 2007 5:14:10 PM
4) God would have no other contradictory desire of greater importance that would preclude him from acting to fulfill his desire to have me use his nature as my model to follow.
The problem with this conclusion in the concept of love. In the traditional understanding of the God of the Bible, love is closely tied to free will, for if God forces us to follow him, then we haven't chosen to love him and we're mere slave, which Islam teaches. Can a slave love his master? Possibly, but the master wouldn't know unless he freed the slave and the slave chose to remain a slave. In Christianity, God places so much value on those who freely choose him, that he was willing to accept the consequences from others choosing to rebel against him.
Posted by: Fundamentalist at Jan 3, 2007 5:36:13 PM
