One thing Russell is doing in this passage is making an unexceptionable point about burden of proof and/or the
ad ignorantiam fallacy. If the existence of X has not been disproven, it does not follow that X exists, or even that it is reasonable to believe that X exists. So if anyone were to affirm the existence of something like Russell's celestial teapot or Edward Abbey's
angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon, then the
onus probandi would be on him to support his outlandish claims. The burden of proof would not rest on those who deny or dismiss such claims.
So far, so good. Russell is of course doing more than underscoring a couple of obvious points in the theory of argumentation. He is applying his points of logic to the God question. Here too I have no complaint. If the existence of God has not been disproven, it does not follow that God exists or even that it is reasonable to believe that God exists.
But the real appeal to atheists and agnostics of the Teapot passage rests on a third move Russell makes. He is clearly suggesting that belief in God (i.e., belief that God exists) is epistemically on a par with believing in a celestial teapot. Just as we have no reason to believe in celestial teapots, irate lunar unicorns (lunicorns?), flying spaghetti monsters, and the like, we have no reason to believe in God. But perhaps we should distinguish between a strong and a weak reading of Russell's suggestion:
S. Just as we cannot have any reason to believe that an empirically undetectable celestial teapot exists, we cannot have any reason to believe that God exists.
W. Just as we do not have any reason to believe that a celestial teapot exists, we do not have any reason to believe that God exists.
Now it seems to me that both (S) and (W) are plainly false: we have all sorts of reasons for believing that God exists. Here Alvin Plantinga sketches about two dozen theistic arguments. Atheists will not find them compelling, of course, but that is irrelevant. The issue is whether a reasoned case can be made for theism, and the answer is in the affirmative. Belief in God and in Russell's teapot are therefore not on a par since there are no empirical or theoretical reasons for believing in his teapot.
Another suggestion embedded in the Russell passage is the notion that if God existed, he would be just another physical thing in the physical universe. But of course this has nothing to do with anything maintained by any sophisticated theist. God is a purely spiritual being.
Another problem with the teapot analogy is that God as traditionally conceived in the West is not an isolani — to use a chess expression. He is not like an isolated pawn, unsupported and unsupporting. For if God exists, then God is the cause of the existence of every contingent being, and indeed, of every being distinct from himself. This is not true of lunar unicorns and celestial teapots. If there is a lunar unicorn, then this is just one more isolated fact about the universe. But if God exists, then everything is unified by this fact: everything has the ground of its being and its intelligibility in the creative activity of this one paradigmatic being.
This is connected with the fact that one can argue from general facts about the universe to the existence of God, but not from such facts to the existence of lunar unicorns and celestial teapots. Thus there are various sorts of cosmological argument that proceed a contingentia mundi to a ground of contingent beings. But there is no similar a posteriori argument to a celestial teapot. There are also arguments from truth, from consciousness, from apparent design, from desire, from morality, and others besides.
The very existence of these arguments shows two things. First, since they move from very general facts (the existence of contingent beings, the existence of truth) to the existence of a source of these general facts, they show that God is not a being among beings, not something in addition to what is ordinarily taken to exist. Second, these arguments give positive reason for believing in the existence of God. Are they compelling? No, but then no argument for any substantive philosophical conclusion is compelling.
People like Russell, Dawkins, and Dennett who compare God to a celestial teapot betray by so doing a failure to understand, and engage, the very sense of the theist's assertions. To sum up. (i) God is not a gratuitous posit in that there are many detailed arguments for the existence of God; (ii) God is not a physical being; (iii) God is not a being who simply exists alongside other beings. In all three respects, God is quite unlike a celestial teapot, a lunar uncorn, an invisible hippopotamus, and suchlike concoctions.
I am quite at a loss to explain why anyone should think the Teapot analogy any good. It leaks like a sieve.
I agree with much of what you say, but it isn't clear to me that Russell is making the third move you ascribe to him. Why can't we read this passage as making a point about the burden of proof and nothing more?
Incidentally, my own view is that theist and atheist equally share the burden of proof, as do teapot believers and teapot deniers. I hold that in the absence of sufficient evidence one way or the other, we should be agnostics, not deniers.
Thanks for reading. No time today, but I hope to respond tomorrow. What we should do in the absence of sufficient evidence one way or the other is an interesting and important question.
Regarding burden of proof, I agree with Spur that every claim faces a burden of proof in that it is always fair to challenge the claim by asking for its grounds or justification. That said, I don't think it follows that theist and atheist "equally" share the burden of proof. Rather, it seems to me that the extent of this burden can be modified by at least three factors:
(1) Prima facie plausibility. All other things being equal, one who makes a claim having less prima facie plausibility has a greater burden of proof than one who makes a claim that has greater prima facie plausibility.
(2) High stakes. All other things being equal, the more deleterious the consequences of a claim's being false, the greater the burden of proof on the one making the claim. (e.g., Before a new prescription drug is approved, it ought to go through extensive testing for harmful side effects.)
(3) Conventional stipulation: In some contexts (e.g., a formal debate, or a criminal trial) there is a conventional burden of proof that each of the participants implicitly accepts.
Assessments of (1) and (2), in particular, exhibit a degree of audience-relativity. Thus, an atheist like Russell may judge that the idea of God is so antecedently implausible that, given the inconclusiveness of the standard arguments for God's existence, the theist has failed to meet his burden of proof and thus has failed to establish his rational bona fides in believing in God. A theist or an agnostic, however, may find the traditional theistic arguments more than adequate to establish the rationality of theism because they don't judge theism to have such a high prima facie implausibility.
Granting all that, however, your point--and I think it's a good one--is that Russell fails to appreciate the fact that principled arguments can be given for theism and that, even if all of those arguments prove unconvincing, that's still a lot more than can be said for invisible unicorns and such.
If you read the quoted passage in the context of the whole article, it seems evident to me that Russell is not merely making a point about the burden of proof. He is suggesting, though he is not explicitly stating, that the existence of God is no more plausible than that of a celestial teapot. And surely this is what people like Dawkins think. And even if Russell is not suggesting this, this is what atheists who invoke the passage typically take him to be suggesting. See, for example, how the quotation is used at this site.
Suppose we canvass all the arguments and considerations for and against theism and come to the conclusion that they balance out. Then, according to you, we should be agnostics. Here I think Alan makes the right response in his #2.
We are not mere theoretical spectators, but interested agents, and the stakes are high. Analogy. I am dying of thirst in the desert. I come upon two water sources. I know one is poisoned with arsenic, the other potable, but I don't know which is which. Do I remain agnostic, suspend judgment, and refuse to drink? Or do I just drink from one and hope for the best? Surely it would be prudentially irrational for me not to drink at all. If you say that, nonetheless, theoretical rationality enjoins suspension of judgment, then my response will be that we are not merely theoretical beings.
Thanks for the excellent comments. Your three points are a very helpful supplement to thi discussion.
It doesn't bother me that there are atheists; what bothers me is that most of them seem incapable of seeing that theism is a live option. For me, and perhaps for you too, atheism is a live option. Why isn't theism a live option for atheists? It is not as if they have knock-down arguments. At this point one is tempted to psychologize. Any thoughts?
You used the phrase 'sufficient evidence.' One could say that p is sufficient evidence for q just in case p entails q. If you don't intend this strong reading of 'sufficient evidence,' what do you mean by the phrase?
Well, I wouldn't attempt to psychologize atheists as a group. Some, like William Rowe, strike me as paradigms of fair-mindedness. But with regard to Dawkinsesque atheists - those that think that theists are invariably stupid, insane, wicked, etc. - I think psychologizing may be in order. Many of those atheists are so uncharitable toward theism and theistic arguments, that it begs for an explanation. Thomas Nagel's famous admission in The Last Word that he doesn't want there to be a God suggests that a volitional explanation may be appropriate. (Of course, it might fairly be argued that many theists are excessively uncharitable toward atheists and that this shows that they are to some degree engaged in wishful thinking.) As you point out, we aren't mere theoretical spectators.
You raise an important point about the relation between 'epistemic' and 'pragmatic' justification. In my view, these two cannot be completely separated. Peirce argued, and I think he's right, that epistemic justification is a species of ethical justification, which in turn is a species of aesthetic justification. The science of intrinsic goods (aesthetics) determines what we ought to strive for (ethics). Rational thought or inquiry is a striving after the truth. Hence, epistemic norms are ultimately grounded in ethical and aesthetic norms. We ought to pay attention to the evidence, be careful and systematic in our thinking, and so forth, because truth, understanding, and knowledge are intrinsic goods and by conducting our inquiries in such a manner we thereby maximize our chances of reaching those goals.
With respect to high stakes, if mistakenly accepting a certain claim would make it significantly less likely overall that we would be able to obtain certain intrinsic goods (the chief of which being the summum bonum), then we ought (morally) to be more careful before accepting that claim. But to be more careful about accepting a claim is to be more careful about assessing the evidence for that claim. So the moral ought naturally gives rise to an epistemic ought.
Bill,
You may be right about Russell's intent; I haven't read the broader context of the passage.
By 'sufficient evidence', I meant something like 'evidence sufficient for justifying belief in X'. So it is definitely something weaker than entailment.
Bill and Alan,
I am unconvinced by #2, and I think Tim and I are on the same page here. Consider the example of the new prescription drug. One side claims that the drug is safe, the other that it is unsafe. I believe that until we are given good reason to think either that the drug is safe or that it's unsafe, we should remain agnostic. It would be wrong for us to believe, until someone proves otherwise, that the drug is unsafe. Likewise it would be wrong to believe the drug safe until someone has proven otherwise. Our view should be that until someone makes a good case one way or the other, we don't know whether or not the drug is safe. Still, given that the stakes are so high, our policy for approving the drug will be that we will not approve it until it has been shown to be safe. So with respect to approval, the proponents of the drug will have to shoulder the burden. But with respect to what we ought to believe about the safeness of the drug, both proponents and opponents will equally share the burden.
Something similar applies to Bill's example about the poisoned water. Given that the stakes are so high, and that not drinking will mean certain death, whereas drinking gives one a 50/50 chance of living, it is clear that we should pick one and drink from it. But that tells us nothing about what we should believe about the water. If I arbitrarily choose to drink from source A, I can (and should) still remain agnostic about whether A or B is poisonous. The high stakes should have no effect on what I believe.
The case of Pascal's wager is interestingly different, because there the high stakes concern what we believe, not just what we do. In the examples provided by Alan and Bill, one can remain agnostic while drinking the water from one of the sources and not approving the drug, but if Pascal were right, then the high stakes would lead one to give up agnosticism. In that case, the burden of proof would perhaps be on the atheist and not the theist. But if Pascal's wager fails, then the burden of proof should fall equally on theist and atheist.
Good response, not easily met. The subject matter is difficult and I confess to being 'at sea.'
Suppose I am in a room with human beings and extremely life-like humanoid robots. I can't tell them apart. I approach what seems to be a charming woman, but I have no evidence one way or the other for her being a human being or a robot. (I look inside her mouth as she talks and it looks just like a human mouth; she drinks wine and gets inebriated; etc, etc.)
On your way of thinking, I have no justification for believing that she is a human being or that she is a robot. I should therefore suspend judgment. But I want to have a personal relation with her (maybe sexual too, but first and foremost personal). I want to get to know her and get her to like me (if possible). So I need to open up to her psychologically. I have to address her as a person, as a Thou not as an It. This 'treating her as a person not as a thing' seems impossible without my (unjustified) belief that she is a person, not a robot. Without this belief and this behavior, I close off any possibility of a relationship.
If I suspend judgment, then I fail to attain a good. If I affirm a proposition for which I have evidence, but insufficient evidence, and act on it, then I attain a good.
Now suppose, as I think you are supposing, that Wm. James is wrong and that the true is not the good in the way of belief (in the long run, etc), that the true need not conduce to human flourishing or happiness. Then I ask: why is epistemic as opposed to pragmatic rationality a value? And why is truth a value? Assuming that they are values, it would seem that there would have to be some systematic connection between truth and human flourishing.
We are indeed on the same page.
Alan,
I agree with your distinction between Rowe-type and Dawkins-type atheists. It is very striking. And yes, there are some parallels on the other side of the line as well.
On the epistemic and the pragmatic, I disagree pretty strongly with the view you articulate. If we do not separate the quality of our reasons from the consequences of our beliefs and our actions, I think we cannot do pure epistemology -- and unlike many modern anti-Cartesians, I am quite certain that there is such a thing. Probably finding out more about my position isn't high on your priority list, but if you find yourself with nothing else to do at some point, you might want to check out this recent book.
Bill,
Assuming that you know the setup going in regarding the indistinguishable humans and robots, you're not going to be able to come up with a rational ground for thinking the woman is a human. But be of good cheer: even if the body is robotic, she may have a soul anyway. After all, Cartesian dualism is true ... !
The ASU library has your first book, but not the new one. They should be getting it, though. I look forward to reading it. Congratulations to you and Lydia. Did you tell me that you had some trouble with a pol. correct editor?
You make an interesting distinction between belief and approval, one that, I’ll grant, seems to effectively neutralize my drug testing example. I like to set that particular issue aside, however, and comment on what seems to be a more fundamental difference between you and Tim, on the one hand, and Bill and myself, on the other.
I gather that the salient difference between belief and approval in your view is that belief is a purely theoretical matter, whereas approval has a practical dimension. To approve something is to recommend it as a means for obtaining some possible practical purpose. From my perspective, however, belief essentially has both a theoretical and a practical aspect. As I see it, belief comes in degrees (subjective probabilities ranging from 0 to 1) and the strength of one's belief just is the degree to which one is prepared to rely on it to inform one's choices and actions. A putative belief with no practical ramifications whatsoever is not really a belief in the same way that faith without actions is not real faith.
To say that we “should” remain agnostic on any given matter until evidence tips the scales one way or the other and that it would be “wrong” to depart from agnosticism otherwise suggests that we generally have control over how our doxastic scales balance out. (Otherwise, why the normative language?) Normally this is not the case. Most of our beliefs seem to come to us through the spontaneous functioning of our perceptual and cognitive faculties, and others (such as our initial trust in our perceptual faculties) seem to be ones that we start out with in advance of any evidence one way or the other. To say that we “should” or “should not” have such beliefs is beside the point. The fact is we have them, and in any course of inquiry we might embark on we’re going to be taking many of them for granted. And even in those cases in which we do start out neutral on some issue, it’s not a disinterested neutrality. The very fact that we decide to investigate that issue while ignoring others shows that our inquiry is interested, and thus practically oriented, from the get-go. Distinctively epistemological interests are oriented toward truth (on the practical assumption that truth is a real and achievable good), as opposed to “cruder” interests like how to get a job, cure diseases, or put food on the table. But epistemological interests are not non-practical for that reason. With regard to how we can maximize our chances of getting to the truth while avoiding serious error, the distinction between the epistemic and the practical collapses. When the good one seeks is the truth, sound methodology and sound epistemology coalesce.
Tim,
If by “pure epistemology” you mean something purely theoretical and not at all practically interested, then I think you’re not nearly anti-Cartesian enough. Your book looks interesting, though. Hopefully I'll get a chance to look at it in the near future. Cheers.
You misunderstood me: I'm anti-anti-Cartesian. ;)
I don't find it easy to see what you are getting at. Are you saying (among other things) that we shouldn't believe that we generally have control over what we believe?
I think what control we have over our beliefs is indirect. What we can directly control is how we engage in the process of inquiry, where we direct our attention, what sources of evidence we consult, etc. All that, in turn, will shape what beliefs we form, which we keep, and which we give up.
The contrasting position, that we can directly control our beliefs, is known as 'doxastic voluntarism'. I reject this position because it doesn't seem to me that I can just form a belief that, say, there's a raging elephant in front of me. Perhaps over time, by self-hypnosis and such, I could induce a belief like that, but that would be an indirect process, not a basic action like raising my right hand.
So, yes, I believe that we do have a measure of control over our beliefs, but it is indirect and partial.
Thanks. I understand your view better, and it agrees perfectly with my view. But I don't see how this in any way impugns my talk of what we should or shouldn't believe. Do you really think it's inappropriate to say things such as: "If all the evidence we have strongly suggests that P is false, then we should not believe P"?
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.