Alan Rhoda on the Theologian's Fallacy
This is a good post. I agree with it and hereby stamp it with my imprimatur and nihil obstat.
Posted by William F. Vallicella on
Saturday May 17, 2008 at 1:57pm
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BTW, I've been enjoying your ongoing discussion of thick vs. thin theories of being.
More generally, his post seems like yet another in a long history of arguments that seek to delegitimize the arguments of all believers by complaining about the fallacies of some of them.
You of course appreciate the irony of my Latinisms above.
Doc,
I am sorry you didn't get Rhoda's point, which is important, and which he makes with considerable skill. And please note that his argument can be extended to include a trump of scientism (not science). Suppose a Dawkins gangster claims that it has been scientifically established that there cannot be an intelligent designer. Then he would be "whipping out" as Alan puts it the trump card of scientism.
As Bill observes, you seem to have missed my point. I have no anti-religious or anti-Christian agenda. Quite the opposite, in fact. What I'm critiquing is a certain argumentative practice that, unfortunately, is commonly used in theological circles and which contributes in no small measure, I believe, to the widespread opinion that religious people are less than fully rational. Every time a religious person whips out a trump it reinforces the pejorative "fundamentalist" stereotype that many people have of religious believers.
As Bill also notes, the practice of trumping isn't limited to religious circles. When Richard Lewontin says that he takes "the side of science [i.e., materialism] in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs" for the reason that "we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door", he's playing the trump card of materialist philosophy.
The strategy of my four questions is as follows. Questions 1 and 2 assess whether one is absolutely committed to Truth and to Trump, respectively. Question 3 and 4 then consider whether it is epistemically possible for those two to come apart. If so, then the Trumper is faced with a choice. Is his fundamental commitment to Truth (and thus to rationality), or is to his Trump (over and against rationality)? Either way, trumping isn't rationally defensible.
But in a way, two 8-year-olds can adopt the same argument. Either adult reason is reducible to 8-year-old concepts or it is not, you can't just say "My father said so." Which could be seen as a sort of trumping behavior among 8-year-olds.
I also see that regardless of who is committed to truth, nobody knows everything that is true (excepting God, or the Divine Observer, should one exist) so our
"commitment" to the truth has directly to do with "what we don't know". Observing #3 is a reaction to the nature of Truth (#1).
That I would have the same reaction to #2, which I believe to be a subset of #1, should not really be that surprising, and characteristic of Truth. Whatever the Bible is, it contains a book on the "Meaninglessness of everything". So even as an authority, it partakes in the same humbleness as #3.
Furthermore, it seems that there is an equivocation in here. The person who believes in revelation, was never making a commitment to the "human method of gaining truth" as Truth. In some sense, he was always holding out on the idea that the truth to which he has a commitment might outstrip the human process. Fallible humanity was always in the picture, and thus the commitment to truth is not the same thing as a commitment to believing that human process is the best way to the truth.
We can put the counterpoint in the same straightjacket. Commitment to truth? Yes. Commitment to the human process of rationalism? Admission that human rationale may not be the best path to truth--or that one could be wrong in a major part of this endeavor? Thus is your commitment to Truth or human rationale?
Revelation works like this: I take a time machine and go back to colonial Pennsylvania. I tell somebody there I came here in a "cart" that travels through time. Whenever they repeated this, their statement would correspond to reality. It doesn't matter how well they could integrate this into their worldview.
Suppose I gave a couple of "predictions" some of which came true the next year, some within a decade. Suppose to all that, I let slip that "Bill Clinton is president in the year 2000." Bill Clinton does not have to be deducible from first principles, in order for that to be true. They don't have to know what a president is, or why I would tell them that.
Saying that statements about someone who arrived in a "cart that travels through time" have to be reducible to what other things colonists understand misunderstands the meaning of all that they suggest is true when they engage in that line of argument--should it be true. Of course, all of it might not be true--or they might have undersetood it wrong--and the humbler the proponent then the more likely they are to accept this.
Their commitment to the truth might contain 1) the proper way to use a plow--something that is well reducible to their context, and 2) how the guy came from the future might be part of the many things they don't know--given the nature of truth--not as a method, but as a set of true and false statements, all of which are not known.
Sextus Empricus didn't have any lack of commitment to the truth when he observed that anything known was once not-known, and so the counter to all that we "know" might yet to be learned. That was his response to his experience of truth. But such is what I invoke when I cast the model of human reason as The Trump.
2. I’m sorry I missed the irony of Bill’s Latinisms (until he pointed them out – now I understand).
How is the bambino Alan?
“Revelation works like this: I take a time machine and go back to colonial Pennsylvania. I tell somebody there I came here in a "cart" that travels through time. Whenever they repeated this, their statement would correspond to reality. It doesn't matter how well they could integrate this into their worldview.”
The argument seems to be this. Explaining the divine mysteries are comparable in a sense to explaining the complexities of time travel to eighteenth century Pennsylvanians. They would have to take it on trust, without integrating it into their worldview, or science, or whatever. Thus, suppose I meet an outlandishly dressed, strange-looking person who claims to be from another planet. He tries to explain the mysteries of intra-galactic travel, use of wormholes, the intricacies of a warp drive and so on. Then
(A) the fact that everything he says is unintelligible is consistent with the possibility that he is an alien from an extremely advanced civilisation, whose understanding entirely outstrips human comprehension
(B) Ergo I should take everything he says at face value (?)
(C) By equal reasoning, I should accept at face value any such claim, i.e. any claim supported by evidence which is entirely unintelligible to me, but which is consistent with its being unintelligible (?)
I don’t see that (B) or (C) follows from (A). (Though I accept (C) may work in the case where someone claims to have Alzheimer’s, or to be mad, and backs this up with an unintelligible rant).
Imprimatur means 'let it be printed' and nihil obstat means 'nothing hinders.' If a censor or group of censors within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church finds a work free of doctrinal and moral error, then 'nothing hinders' the publication of such a work, and they say 'let it be printed.' I'm no expert on this, however, so it may be that other conditions must be satisfied before the imprimatur is given.
Now Alan mentioned the magisterium (teaching authority) of the RCC as a 'trump.' My irony consists in giving Alan a stamp of approval analogous to that of the RCC when the point of his post was to question such 'trumps.'
Those three scarecrows had it coming to them, I bet.
Quite simply: B was not implied. C is dependent on B--the idea of taking anything at "face value", so it is no more implied. To top that off, A mischaracterizes what is implied by most "Trump sources" or by my visiting people from another time, as nobody alleges that their source is completely unintelligible.
Your observation that unrelated observations B or C do not follow from straw man A is not that shocking. If you found my "rant" "unintelligible", I apologize--but as in all things "unintelligible", you might just have not understood it. On the other hand, I understand your point, and I concur that B or C does not follow from A, but it also does not relate to what I wrote other than quoting me as a springboard.
Meanwhile, all I have said related to a subjective evaluation of one's commitment to the truth, and thus, Mr. Rhoda's first pole: "Do you place ultimate value on the truth?" By method, that "you" refers, necessarily, to a proponent of a Trump. I doubt that it implies "Do you place ultimate value on what w_ockham finds rational?" So it really doesn't matter how silly you find the concept of revealed knowledge, you're not in the picture, the trump player is.
If my prose here is just too baffling for you, again, I apologize. It might be a good idea to realize that you might not understand me, and avoid commenting as if you did, though.
No I didn't find any of it unintelligible. The fact you thought I found it unintelligible suggests you didn't follow my argument. Perhaps my argument was unintelligible.
1. If an authority on quantum physics tells me my claim or argument is wrong, then it would be irrational for not to correct my argument accordingly
2. Then Brandon examines Rhoda’s argument in the light of that example.
3. The argument depends on the assumption that to use something as an authority sufficient to correct your best reasoning, you have to act as if the epistemic probability that the authority is false is zero, whereas to acknowledge the possibility that the authority is mistaken is to take the epistemic probability that the authority is false to be non-zero.
4. Which assumption is unreasonably strong: "it's clear that [this assumption] would require that we never correct our reasoning on the basis of authority; and we have a name for people who do this: crackpots. They are the sorts of people who will not correct their best reasoning on, say, quantum physics, or biology, or whatever else, no matter how many authorities, no matter how eminent, no matter how qualified, tell them they have the wrong answer".
I don't recognize Rhoda's argument in this quotation, or in the rest of what B. says, and I am inclined to say that Brandon is the one being tendentious. Someone who plays a trump card is not "correcting his understanding" but seeking to put a stop to inquiry.
Suppose I don't know much about a certain subject-matter and so consult an expert about it. Then it is reasonable for me to accept his authority and "correct my understanding" assuming it needs correcting. And it is unreasonable for me to 'argue with' the expert when he is speaking from his expertise. But when I accept the authority of a medical doctor, say, I don't accept the authority on the basis of his mere say-so, but on the basis of the fact that in principle it is possible for me to follow the rational and empirical considerations that ultimately warrant his dictum.
But it is different in the case of one who plays a trump card by, say, pointing to a Bible passage. "Look! Right here it says that Eve was created from a rib of Adam! That settles the question." Well, no it doesn't. For it is reasonable to ask: how is the Bible to be interpreted, and by whom? A Catholic might say: the magisterium decides. But then surely it is reasonable to ask: whence its authority? Inspired by the Holy Spirit? Could be, but how do you know? Are the Eastern Orthodox and the Protestants also sometimes so inspired? Or never? And if never, why not? And so on.
Given that understanding, I thought that your #2 was irrelevant to the argument and from that drew the conclusions I did. The wording of the other questions also struck me as slanted toward religious trumpers rather than other kinds. But I'm glad to hear that I was mistaken.
There's an "if" in the sentence, that makes it not a "fact" but equally an allowance. I addressed your argument, you didn't address mine. For the rest, I'll cop to a little rhetorical excess.
The argument dealt with correspondence between models and facts, not investment. Although an ample enough part of Alan's argument has to do with investment, my point did not. It was about Alan's scenario equivocating on the concept of truth--which I accept as simple correspondence--and trumping it with fully rational inquiries.
I find that your own scenario shows that adoption of the truth does not follow from rational processes that would take certain possibilities off the board ala Hume's resolution. They are simply a best guess, given what we know. I'm not saying that they aren't effective in most cases, I'm saying that they are separable and therefore, the only way Alan can possibly proceed to link them is a Trumping behavior of his own: i.e. there are no better methods than human argument, so commitment to truth is synonymous with commitment to linear best guesses.
But that's precisely why I find the time travel scenario illustrative. Nobody could blame the colonists for finding a "simpler resolution". But I've already framed the scenario in a way demonstrates the defects.
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