In mathematics we define most things precisely, and usually the solutions to problems are presented as a step by step progression starting from clearly defined things and finishing with an answer that is proven to be a correct solution.

But it is sometimes useful to jump straight to consideration of a final solution, asking “Suppose there were a solution to this problem, let us call this solution X, what properties must X have?”

This can be a useful approach and, even for problems that turn out to have no valid solutions, we would still consider the signifier “X” to be something that we have succesfully ascribed meaning to: we could talk about “X” to other mathematicians and they would respond back to us in a manner that we can predict based upon the supposition that they share with us an understanding of what “X” is intended to refer to.

The same applies when we consider the meaning of words, rather than the meaning of mathematical symbols.  Words can acquire meaning inductively, based upon sense data, the way a child learns language.  But words can also be defined deductively, as solutions to problems set up by applying logical conjunctions to propositions or by analogy.

And, as with “x”, just hypothetical definitions can be useful and should be considered meaningful, even if there is no actual thing to which they can refer, or it is unknowable as to whether the referent exists.

Brain in a Vat

Putnam (Putnam, 1981) argues that a Brain in a Vat couldn’t think or reason about Brains or Vats because the thing it referred to as “Brain” could only be the simulation of a Brain fed to it by the supercomputer maintaining its illusory world, rather than the actually piece of flesh sitting in the jar.   However suppose the Brain engaged in thoughts upon the following lines:

I am going to refer to the world accessible to my sense data as “World 1″, and use the phrase “Type 1 Brain” to refer to the sort of physical thinking organ that my senses tell me exist in World 1.

I am going to refer to the virtual world running on the computer on my desk as “World 2″, which is a subset of World 1, and use the phrase “Type 2 Brain” to refer to the locus of thought of any being whose perceptual universe is limited to World 2.

I am going to refer to any hypothetical superset of World 1 that is larger than World 1 as “World 0″, and use the phrase “Type 0 Brain” to refer to a hypothetical type of thing that bears the same relationship to Type 1 Brains as Type 1 Brains do to Type 2 Brains.

The phrase “Type 0 Brain” does indeed contain the word “Brain” which the Type 1 Brain originally defined, as a child, by reference to parts of World 1 that it could sense.  But the phrase itself is more than the sum of its constituent parts.  It is a hypothetical definition, and as such can be said to meaningfully refer to things the Type 1 Brain will never directly sense.

If, for instance, the Type 1 Brain wrote down in on a piece of World 1 paper “Hello World 0, please reply”, a computer programmer in World 0 examining the bits of data in the computer running the World 1 simulation could decode this message and program the simulation to make appear a piece of paper in response, carrying the message “Hi, this is Frank, how are you enjoying my simulation, would you like me to make you a pet unicorns ?”.   They could engage in  a meaningful dialog, even though the Type 1 Brain would still be limited to its Type 1 senses.

And, just as a mathematician can consider what properties a valid solution would have to have, and perhaps elliminate some from consideration by demonstrating that two contradictory properties would both be required, by engaging in thought about our hypothetical World 0, and then looking around our World 1 and noticing the lack of pet unicorns, we can start to place constraints upon what World 0 is likely to contain.

Doubt all that can be doubted?

Descartes (Descartes, 1641) advocated starting by doubting all that can be doubted.   But that takes us nowhere, because everything can be doubted.

The Ken Thompson Hack (Thompson, 1984) explains why, once the security on a machine has been fully breached, you can not necessarily detect this by using the compromised tools.  The same applies to reason.  We may think that valid syllogisms always produce true conclusions if given true premises.  Indeed, that may even be how we define what “valid” means.  But our only means of deciding which syllogisms are valid depend upon our memory and those same syllogisms.

Suppose Frank, a World 0 computer programmer, in order to write a paper on the nature of logic, decided to see if he could create a World 1 simulation in which all the intelligent inhabitants thought that “If A can see B, and B can see C, then A can see C” was a valid syllogism.  Could he do it?  Well, he might have to ensure that evolution gave the beings in the simulation visual telepathy so that, in most cases, the reasoning did work in practice and the beings didn’t die off.  But yes, there is no intrinsic reason why he could put a routine in the simulation that ensure that whenever a particularly philosophically inclined World 1 being started trying to reason it out, the conclusion was places in his thought stream that the syllogism was valid.

Indeed, there is no intrinsic difficulty preventing Frank from including in the simulation a method for the beings to arrive at conclusions that was more reliable than reason, such as sacrificing an animal while chanting certain words, then meditating for a few minutes and awaiting an internal emotion or insight inclining the being towards or away from certain options they were deciding between.

Don’t doubt just for the sake of doubting

So, if doubting everything gains us nothing, can we gain anything by doubting some things but not others?

To answer that it is helpful to consider our purpose.  What Descartes was seeking, that he hoped to gain by his method of doubt, was truth and certainty.  That, alas, is overly ambitious, but suppose we think of reason as a tool with many uses.  People can try to use the tool to find pure truth, but it can also be used in everyday life to helping us avoid mistakes and delusions.  So, setting aside the possible existence of other tools, let us restrict ourselves to the purpose of honing the tool of reason, and ask ourselves how we may use doubt to increase the effectiveness and reliability of this tool.

Reason

The first thing we can allow ourselves to stop doubting is reason itself, because doubting it has no predictable advantage for our purpose.  Our purpose allows us no outside check on the effectiveness of  reason compared to outside tools, and, if we are being deluded by some higher agency into thinking that various invalid syllogisms are valid, there is nothing that reason can tell us about the consequences of that so, as far as reason is concerned, following the syllogisms we believe to be valid might be just as effective at reaching true conclusions as rejecting them.  And, since we have no basis to decide which syllogisms to reject as pranks by Frank, and Frank could just as easily be fooling us into thinking invalid some syllogisms that actually are valid, we do not reduce the false-positive rate of our tool by not making the assumption.  So:

WORKING ASSUMPTION 1 : First-order logic is sound

Probability

Deductive reasoning, by itself, can’t take us far enough to affect our decisions.  It needs something to work upon, and for that we need inductive reasoning (of the non-mathematical kind) and, for that we need probability.  The minimum set of axioms needed is Zermelo and Fraenkel’s extensions of Paeno, with the addition of the axiom of choice, which mathematicians refer to as ZFC.

WORKING ASSUMPTION 2 : ZFC

Occam’s razor

Duns Scotus wrote (translated) “Plurality is not to be posited without necessity” which is a dictum that can be traced back to much earlier philosophers, and is best known in the version attributed to Occam.  The reason why this is wise advice has now be demonstrated by Hutter (Hutter, 2005) who has proven that, other things being equal, the simpler theory is actually more likely to be true (Reay, 1988).   This is a key result however, since it is a direct consequence of our first two working assumptions, we don’t need to list it as an additional one.

Reality

So we now we have a way to make decisions, we have a decision to make.  Consider the standard mental model of how ‘reality’ functions.   There is an external world which our body perceives through our senses that translate into electrical and chemical changes in the physical brain, some of which our conscious ‘mind’ is aware of and experiences subjectively as qualia and these, plus what we think of as our direct perception of our memories and thought processes constitute our internal worldview based upon which our conscious (and subconscious) mind reacts or makes decisions that direct our body and our further thoughts and emotions, which get stored as further memories.

Which parts of this model must we choose not to doubt, for our purpose, or are there at this point several possibilities that still leave reasoning as an effective tool?

Some would argue that we might be brains in a vat, so we should definitely doubt the reliability of an apparent regularities in the external (World 1) reality, and so the logical starting point is to accept our own existance and the qualia as that ‘we’ perceives them.

Others argue that various psychiatric ailments are known to interfere with memory and sense of self; and that the body’s perception system has known defects (eg optical illusions) which makes assuming an objective shared external reality a more reliable starting point.

If we craft the wording of our next working assumption carefully enough, we can remain agnostic on this point, accepting both possibilities, and using Occam’s Razor to allocate probabilities to them.

WORKING ASSUMPTION 3 : There is sufficient regularity to the reality that can be accessed or modeled by the reasoning process we identify as our own being, that we can apply inductive reasoning to it with better than random results.

Time

A corollary of adding this third working assumption is the nature of time, because it assumes the concept of results – of testability.  The concept of having a model of how reality works, using reasoning to form a prediction based upon that model, then later getting a result (an action guided by that prediction achieving or failing to achieve the anticiapted result) at a later time.

It is logically possible that Frank only started his simulation running 5 seconds ago, and everything we think happened before that time is merely what we were programmed to think by the initial starting state.  It is also possible that there are regularities in the simulation, but that at midnight Frank is going to upload a software patch that changes the laws of nature in the simulation, and that everything will work differently from that point on.

This is known as The Problem of Induction.  Just because induction has worked in the past, that’s no evidence that induction will work in the future, because that would be using induction to support induction which is circular reasoning.

However we can bootstrap induction supporting induction if we can find an initial reason to think that induction is even just slightly more likely to be correct than not.  And Occam’s Razor gives us that reason, because the theory that Frank will upload a software patch a midnight contains an additional piece of information (the time of the change), which increases its Chaitin-Kolmogorov complexity (Chaitin, 1987).

Our third working assumption isn’t quite the same as ontological naturalism or Hume’s Principle of Uniformity of Nature, but it leans sufficiently far in that direct that we can perform physics, while still leaving open the technical possibility of a World 0 and supernatural intervention in World 1.

And alternative formulation of our third working assumption might be “There are, in our lives, at least some decisions (choices between possible options for an action to take) where reason can help us predict what some of the likely consequences would be of choosing each option, with better than random odds.”

From ‘Is’ to ‘Ought’

These first three working assumptions are sufficient to let us function in reality, and act towards goals.  But they tell us nothing about what goals to set.  For that we need one final step:

WORKING ASSUMPTION 4 : At least some of the decisions in our life will matter.

This a safe assumption to make because, if none of the decisions matter, then our decision (to make a false working assumption) doesn’t matter (because it is one of the decisions we made in our life).

Once we have this fourth working assumption, we may apply Occam’s Razor to the various competing theories of what matters, to find the simplest that has at least as much predictive power as any of the others.

References

Chaitin, G. J. [1987] “Algorithmic Information Theory“ Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521343062

Descartes, René [1641] “Meditations on First Philosophy” http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/

Hutter, Marcus [2005] “Universal Artificial Intelligence: Sequential Decisions Based On Algorithmic Probability” ISBN 3-540-22139-5 http://www.hutter1.net/ai/uaibook.htm

Putnam, Hilary Whitehall [1981] “Reason, Truth, and History” ISBN-10: 0521297761

Reay, Douglas William Windle [1988] “Reay’s Lemma” http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?ReaysLemma

Thompson, Ken [1984] “Reflections On Trusting Trust” http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html

Before we can gain an understanding of the practical application of virtue ethics by examining the theory within a whistle blowing situation, we must first explore a few concepts related to virtue. Rosalind Hursthouse provides a very basic structure for understanding how a virtue ethical approach to moral decision-making works. The first premise of this approach is that an action is right if it is what a virtuous agent would do in the circumstances. A virtuous agent is a person who has and exercises the virtues. In turn, a virtue is a character trait that is essential for a human being to flourish or live well, and the important point here is to recognize that the concept of right action cannot be explained without reference to the character of the agent who performs it. Also, Hursthouse is endorsing the Aristotelian contention that human flourishing is the ultimate end of our actions. According to Aristotle the nature and scope of character is directly related to living a flourishing life, so we will now turn our attention to an examination of character and character traits.

Robert Audi gives an exceptional account of character and the traits of which it is composed. Audi defines moral character specifically as a set of interconnected traits, which we can imagine as being analogous to a web where we cannot adjust one strand in the web without altering others. These traits are deeply held dispositions to act in a certain way. Importantly, a trait is not an inclination to act a certain way at one particular time; character traits exist within us over time. Even more importantly, these traits are changeable, and in my view, can even be overridden in the moment by the agent. However, the agent must have a motivation to override the vicious character trait. What this means is that a more deeply held conviction must exist, something even more essential to the personal identity of the agent. Later we will explore ways in which to shape our character into a more virtuous one, but now we must look at the virtue ethical concept of a regulative ideal to better understand the relation between character and action.

Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking introduce the concept of a regulative ideal in their book Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles. They define a regulative ideal as an internalized conception of correctness or excellence. Since the ultimate goal of all our actions is to flourish, then our regulative ideal is the internal standard that we believe will lead us to flourish. According to Oakley and Cocking, we have both a broad regulative ideal guiding our actions in a very general sense, and more specific regulative ideals that guide us in more precise areas of life. For example, a lawyer who has identified the end of her profession as the upholding of justice will believe that in order to achieve flourishing she must take actions in that particular domain (her profession) which she believes will conform to that end. Likewise, her colleague may hold the view that making money is what will facilitate flourishing, and thus making money is the end of the profession for him. For both of these professionals, their ideal lawyer has specific values, specific motivations, and would take specific actions in certain circumstances. It is my assertion that this ideal is the more deeply held conviction alluded to in the previous paragraph.

So, a regulative ideal is that deeply held standard which exists in various specific contexts, as well as in a more general sense. This ideal is not necessarily held consciously and in contrast to character traits it cannot be overridden. However, like our character traits, it is able to change due to our capacity for what Aristotle called practical wisdom (phronesis). As we navigate through our lives our rational capabilities ensure that we become increasingly knowledgeable about what constitutes human flourishing. Naturally, that knowledge will alter and mold our various regulative ideals. While this will not automatically alter our character as well, it can provide us with the notion that maybe some of our character traits are in need of revision too. Making those changes to our character will be discussed more fully after we have fleshed out the practical implications of these concepts, which will require us to shift our focus to the whistle blowing dilemma.

Let us put ourselves in the shoes of a young lawyer named Pat. Pat has been working at a law firm for the past few years and it has recently been revealed to her that her firm is committing the unethical action of excessively billing clients for hours that have not been worked. Furthermore, the clients being excessively billed are government agencies and corporations, meaning that this activity is having a negative effect on taxpayers and others associated with those corporations. In this situation, Pat is confronted with a choice: reveal the wrongdoing in order to curtail the illicit activity, in other words blow the whistle, or stay quiet and continue on with her work as usual. From an objective perspective it seems that Pat should reveal the wrong doing because doing so would uphold values that we as a society find important, such as integrity, loyalty to the public good, and honesty. However, when we attempt to understand the situation from Pat’s perspective it becomes much less clear because revealing this wrong doing may violate other values such as loyalty to friends or coworkers, responsibility for her personal welfare or that of her family, or reliability. This perspective shows us that the question of whether or not to blow the whistle is a true dilemma because there are legitimate ethical concerns on both sides of the issue.

In order to gain a full understanding of the situation that Pat has found herself in, I will now lay out a few elements of this situation that Michael Davis cites as being necessary for a true whistle blowing dilemma to present itself. First, this activity poses a threat to the public interest and were Pat to reveal the wrongdoing, it would most certainly arouse its audience. Next, Pat must first either attempt to alert her superiors to the problem or be sure that outside intervention is needed in order to end the wrongdoing. Pat must also be a member of the organization responsible for this wrongdoing and the illicit activity must be revealed to Pat due to the trust generated through her relationship with the wrongdoers or the nature of her professional role. Also, Pat must possess or have the ability to obtain the needed evidence in order to prove to an outsider that the threat exists. Lastly, Pat must have good reasons to believe that revealing this threat will actually end the wrongdoing. All of these elements ensure that Pat is not simply out for revenge, not prematurely sounding a false alarm, and that she faces a genuine dilemma, not simply an inter office problem.

In addition to this basic structure of a whistle blowing situation, Sissela Bok puts forth three additional elements that, “lend acts of whistle blowing special urgency and bitterness.” In other words, these three elements contribute to the feeling of conflict between possible actions and these elements are directly connected to the character of the agent. The first element is dissent, which Bok defines as a difference between the whistle blower’s convictions and the majority or authority view. The most common form of disagreement in a whistle blowing situation is whether or not the wrongdoing should be revealed publicly. While a potential whistle blower may think that the public needs to be aware of this wrongdoing, the culprits would disagree. What is important to understand is that this disagreement may be rooted in legitimate concerns from the culprits, such as the belief that blowing the whistle would produce more harm than good, or that it violates a supreme value such as loyalty. Let us assume that Pat’s professional regulative ideal is guided by the contention mentioned earlier that the end of the lawyering profession is upholding justice, while those responsible for the wrongdoing conceive that end as making money. If both parties truly believe that their perceived ultimate end will lead to flourishing lives, then we can see how the dissent arises.

The next element cited by Bok is the breach of loyalty that is involved. After finding herself in this situation, Pat will be forced to examine where her loyalties lie. It seems that in either path taken by Pat, she may feel like she violated a commitment to loyalty, either in the form of loyalty to the public good or loyalty to her coworkers or her firm. Again, if upholding justice is her ultimate criteria for determining what to do within her professional life, then it seems that she must follow her loyalty to the public good. But just as a regulative ideal can change for the better, Pat may find herself convinced by coworkers that making money is far more important for a flourishing life. This skewing of her regulative ideal may lead her to override the character trait of doing what is best for the public good. Whatever Pat happens to feel, the point is that she must decide where her loyalties lie.

Bok’s last element is accusation because if Pat decides to blow the whistle it will mean that she is accusing specific individuals or groups within the firm of posing a genuine threat to the public interest. This is dilemmatic because even if Pat is sure that the activity is unethical, other considerations may still weigh heavily on Pat’s mind. If she believes that those committing the wrongdoing are generally good people and simply wants them to stop excessively billing clients, but not suffer the other social sanctions of blowing the whistle, then this may prevent Pat from making the accusation. To relate this to her regulative ideal, maybe Pat’s general regulative ideal keeps her from making the accusation because of the practicality of the situation. For instance, if she believes that blowing the whistle will cost her job, or that the individuals responsible hold such an enormous amount of power that her accusation will not carry enough weight then once again that may lead her to override a more admirable character trait.

It seems clear that the structure of a whistle blowing dilemma and Bok’s three elements, against the backdrop of a virtue ethical approach, lead us to the assertion that the action of a potential whistle blower is less about what to do, and more about who we want to be. While it is tempting to focus on the action itself when pondering how to best be ethical in a dilemma like whistle blowing, it is more prudent to think about the influences which lead us to act. By doing this, Pat will be able to be confident that the decision that she ultimately makes will be the decision that is most in line with leading a truly flourishing life.  Now that we have explored virtue ethical concepts related to the person that we want to be, and also have a general understanding of what a whistle blowing dilemma entails, we can discuss how to become more virtuous.

Many critics of virtue ethics point to the fact that we cannot apply the principles of the theory to help us make an instantaneous decision as a case against the practicality of using virtue ethics. I will allow that theories such as Utilitarianism and Kantianism do provide us with a more systematic application of rules and principles in order to come to a decision on which action to take. However, it does not seem to follow that these theories give us an adequate account of how to live an ethical life. By actually living an ethical life, which is the ultimate in practicality, we remove the need for those kinds of theories because we can be sure that our decision-making already falls in line with achieving flourishing. By thinking about whom we want to be, striving for the acquisition of practical wisdom, and subsequently reflecting on that knowledge in order to shape our regulative ideal and character, we will find that navigating an ethical dilemma like whistle blowing is much easier. Next, we will examine the roles that motivation, habituation, practical wisdom, and intelligence play in shaping our regulative ideal and character so that these concepts conform to leading a flourishing life.

Motivation plays a very important role in determining whether or not we actually shape our character into a virtuous one in order to take the correct actions. Let us imagine that Pat has obtained the sort of practical wisdom that would allow her to be sure that upholding justice is the correct end of her profession. This in turn would alter the regulative ideal that guides her professional life. As previously mentioned, that would not automatically alter her character as well, meaning that she may still be disposed to act in a way that would not conform with upholding justice. If up to that point she has habitually done actions which conflict with upholding justice, for instance, maybe she regularly cuts corners for clients who pay her less per hour than other clients, that disposition will be a part of her character which is the main informant for her actions. Since she has become accustomed to doing this, even after her regulative ideal has shifted she will still have a natural disposition to continue that activity because she has yet to employ any steps to alter her character. However, now that her deeply rooted regulative ideal has changed, when she attempts to participate in an action which conflicts with that change she will inherently feel a conflict. At this point she now has a motivation to override that character trait.

Overriding a certain character trait one time will not eliminate Pat’s possession of the trait. While our character traits are not as deeply rooted as our regulative ideal, they remain a vital part of our identity and are more immediate than our regulative ideal in providing motivation to act. In Julia Annas’ article The Phenomenology of Virtue she states that becoming virtuous is never immediate, but rather requires time, experience and practice. Both Annas and Aristotle analogize this process to learning a practical skill, and this is the correct approach to take when attempting to possess a virtuous character. If Pat wants to become a better lawyer, she must identify those who are already exceptional lawyers. She will recognize certain skills that these lawyers exercise, say speaking well, maintaining good credibility, and understanding and articulating sound arguments. At first, it will be necessary for Pat to think about and consciously apply these characteristics to her own work. Eventually, through time, practice and the habituation of these skills, these thoughts will no longer be necessary. In addition, her experiences as she becomes more accustomed to the profession will lend her the advantage of applying certain aspects of the trade that she learned first hand. Obtaining virtuous character traits works in essentially the same fashion. If Pat would like to eliminate the character trait which causes her to fail to do the best work for certain clients, then she must continually work to eradicate the trait, which will naturally be replaced by the more virtuous trait of giving her best effort for all of her clients.

Annas states that, “a virtue is a disposition built up through intelligent practice” and we can turn to Aristotle to provide us with a method for determining how to practice our desired dispositions intelligently. This method is known as the golden mean and it calls for the use of our rational capacity to determine which actions are more virtuous than others. For every situation that we encounter in our daily lives, our rational capacity allows us to make a choice on which action to take. There is a wide spectrum of possible actions in response to all situations, and through the accumulation of practical wisdom we will become more adept at recognizing which action will accord with the golden mean. Aristotle wrote about avoiding the excessive and the deficient areas of this spectrum of choices. To borrow a widely used analogy, imagine an archery target, with a dot directly in the center of the target. When shooting at the target we are trying to hit the dot and avoid the areas outside of the dot. However even if we do not hit the dot directly but come close, that is always preferable to hitting the target on the outside edges or missing it altogether. Striving to do the most virtuous action is the same sort of process. We may not always hit the bull’s-eye but the more we practice, the better we become and the more likely we are to make a virtuous choice.

So how does all of this relate to the whistle blowing dilemma? Well unfortunately Pat will not be able to make a very virtuous decision if she has not made any attempt at being virtuous prior to the appearance of the dilemma in her life. However, by focusing on determining what sort of person she wants to be and why, she will be taking a step in the right direction. All professionals must strive to cultivate a virtuous character through the process described in this paper if they want to make a virtuous choice when they are faced with a dilemma. Not only will this help them to recognize when a certain situation fits the structure of a whistle bowing dilemma, but it will also give them a good grasp on where they stand in relation to Bok’s three elements. So much of our general regulative ideal, what we deem will ultimately facilitate flourishing, is dependant on our professional lives that we must cultivate a virtuous character long before we encounter a professional dilemma like whistle blowing in order to make a truly ethical decision. By doing this, we will shift the focus of our deliberations on the dilemma from the action itself to the reasons why we may choose one action over the other. This will allow us to make a comfortable decision when we are confronted with a dilemma like whistle blowing in our own workplace, which would be quite practical.

In order to live a flourishing life we must strive to incorporate all of these principles into all of our decisions. It all starts by consciously striving for the accumulation of practical wisdom. Our rational capacity will allow us to recognize that certain actions are more conducive to flourishing then others. Just like obtaining practical skills and virtuous dispositions, we must continually cultivate that rationality so that we may continually develop our capacity. If we are always striving for that continual development, then this will allow us to recognize how to lead a flourishing life. That in turn will alter our regulative ideals into a standard that is truly in line with flourishing. By having regulative ideals that are pointed toward virtue, we will feel a conflict when we are disposed to act viciously and have the necessary motivation for overriding a vicious trait. By recognizing that we must eradicate those vicious traits and replace them with virtuous ones through the same habituation process in which we obtain practical skills, we will be able to shape our character into a virtuous one as well. When we are unsure of the virtuous action in a certain situation, implementing the principles of the golden mean will assist us in understanding the implications of possible actions. Having a virtuous character will dispose us to naturally do virtuous actions in all areas of life. This is beneficial because rarely, if ever, are we expecting an ethical dilemma to present itself to us. By constantly and consistently using the virtue ethical approach in all of our actions we will easily and comfortably be able to make a decision in an ethical dilemma like whistle blowing, showing the true practicality and value of the virtue ethical approach to ethical decision-making.

Works Cited

Annas, Julia. “The Phenomenology of Virtue.” PhilPapers: Online Research in Philosophy. Springer, 12 Sept. 2007. Web. 05 Aug. 2011. <http://philpapers.org/rec/ANNTPO>.

Aristotle, and W. D. Ross. The Nichomachean Ethics,. London: Oxford UP, 1959. Print.

Audi, Robert. “Responsible Action and Virtuous Character.” Ethics 101.2 (1991): 304. Print.

Bok, Sissela. “Whistleblowing And Professional Responsibility.” New York University Education Quarterly 11 (1980): 2-7. Print.

Davis, Michael. “Some Paradoxes of Whistleblowing.” Business and Professional Ethics Journal 15 (1996). Print.

Hursthouse, Rosalind. “Virtue Theory and Abortion.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 20.3 (1991): 223-46. Jstor.org. Blackwell Publishing. Web. 22 July 2011.

Oakley, Justin, and Dean Cocking. Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.

Suppose there is some controversial issue. Also suppose you have a particular view on this issue. Which one of the following two options should you choose?

1. Learn more about the controversial issue.
2. Learn how to better argue for your view on the controversial issue, and argue against those views in conflict with yours.

I think most of us have a hunch that option 1 (which we’ll call free thinking[1]) is somehow better than option 2 (which we’ll call apologetics).

Is Apologetics fairly described by option 2? Yes: almost all apologetics is covered by stuff like “here are some arguments you can use to persuade your non-Christian friends”, “this is how you knock down argument X against Christianity”, “this is why X, who wrote a book attacking Christianity, is wrong”, “tactics for persuasively arguing your case” and so on and so forth. Take a sample of the articles at an apologetics website like bethinking, or STR, or Reasonable Faith, or the titles of speeches given at a recent Apologetics conference. You probably don’t even need to do that: most apologists, apologetics organisations, etc. make it clear they are ‘providing a defence of Christianity’, ‘equipping you to defend the faith’ or something along similar lines. So describing Apologetics as apologetics is accurate.

Why is Apologetics irrational? Because apologetics is an exceptionally bad epistemic strategy. Given religious beliefs are highly diverse, mutually contradictory, and many seem at least superficially plausible (many can attract agents of considerable epistemic virtue, and there is no great trend of the epistemically virtuous to one religion or another), making it your business to convince others of the belief find yourself with is epistemic suicide. The odds are stacked against you (no matter how epsitemically virtuous you are, the cohort of those with similar or greater virtue will be widely divided, and so most of them are wrong – so probably you are too). Yet, in the probable event that your belief is false, practising apologetics is unlikely to get one to realise the falseness of your view and prompt you to change your mind if it is false. If anything, spending your time trying to enhance the plausibility of your belief is likely to make you stick to this belief despite its falseness.[2]

Free thinking is a strategy that has a far better track record. You may still get it wrong, but the idea of learning about the evidence untrammelled by the aim of spinning it to serve your prior ideology should make you track the evidence far better. If the evidence is slanted against your point of view, our free thinker seems far more likely to notice this and revise their belief, and the apologist more likely to rationalise it away and try and convince others (and themselves ) it is not so.

Why you shouldn’t be an apologist

Engaging in apologetics is always irrational. This is because free thinking is strictly superior to apologetics, regardless of how much you know. Worse than that, apologetics is plausibly worse than simply learning nothing.[3]

Why is that? Why would it not be reasonable for someone to carefully consider the matter, come to a conclusion, and then devote themselves to defending it (per many apologist self-portrayals, such as Lee Strobel). It is rational to be persuaded by a given view in the face of disagreement, even if some of these people are epistemically more virtuous than you. It is also rational to argue for your view, or to try and persuade others towards it. However, is never rational to take the evidence with an agenda to vindicating your view. No matter how much one knows, or how carefully one has considered the issue, one never wants to compromise a clear view of the data. For the fact there are people even more epistemically virtuous than you who disagree completely should raise the fear a rational person’s mind that there is some evidence or argument that refutes them that they are not aware. Consequently, they should want to keep as wide and clear a survey of the data as they can. Apologetics runs counter to this reasonable aim.

Of course, apologetics has some benefits. Given equal time invested, an apologist for Christianity is likely to provide a better case for Christianity than a free thinker who comes to believe Christianity[4].  If Christianity is true, and that it is important for others to know Christianity is true, then it is better to do apologetics: although it is not rational, the prudential consequences of convincing more people outweigh this. The problem, of course, is that this all hinges on Christianity being true. If Christianity is false, doing apologetics for it is bad. So rational people will want to be confident of Christianity being true, but that means free thinking, not apologetics. We can add a lack of epistemic humility to the rational sins an apologist commits.

Does this mean anyone who tries to argue for Christianity is irrational (why stop there, anyone who argues for anything is irrational?) Not at all. If someone, after free thinking on religion finds themselves convinced by Christianity, and further tries to argue in its favour too, they are not being irrational.  They only become irrational if they lock themselves in a Christian ideological echo chamber and spend their time trying to defend Christianity and attack other beliefs ranged against it. What one should do instead is carry on as they did before: continue free thinking about the issues, and if that happens to supply one with further reasons in support of ones view, so much the better – if not, one should be grateful for the correction.

Dealing with apologetics, dealing with apologists

Most of us lapse into apologetics without realising it: we do so when we go looking for evidence that confirms our beliefs instead of evidence in general, when we treat countervailing evidence as an enemy (‘but this means I am wrong!’) rather than a friend (‘this is not what I expected, maybe I should change my mind’), or when, when presented with an argument ‘against’ our position, our first impulse is not to seriously entertain it, but rather look for ways to undermine or defeat it. This identification of our beliefs as some object to be valued and protected rather than an estimate to be revised in the light of new information is one of the most persistent and recalcitrant cognitive biases, and almost all of us are guilty of it to some extent or another. It certainly is not unique to Christian Theism[5]. Whatever you believe, you should avoid lapsing into apologetics, and so training oneself to free thinking, and developing insight as to when you are practicing apologetics are very good ideas to keeping rational.

Apologists are prevalent (in part because apologetics can be seen as an intermediate level exploit of human rationality). How should you interact with them? How do you know someone is in thrall to apologetics: everyone will profess that they are merely following where the evidence leads. Yet not all who profess they do really are, and you shall know them by their fruits. If someone claims to be a free thinker, and yet their entire intellectual diet is devoted to material that defends, that attacks opposing beliefs, and so on, then it is a pretty fair bet they are doing apologetics instead.

Apologists are neither epistemic peers, nor are they competent judges of good arguments (it is hard to think of a worse strategy to assess argumentative worth than apologetics). Consequently, their attitudes about the truth of Christianity, or the merit of the arguments in favour and against, do not track the truth. Further, it seems unlikely that they are likely to change their mind (even if they should), and any case they present will likely appear more convincing that it should be taken to be – because their craft is devoted precisely to enhancing the plausibility of their case.

This does not mean that their arguments must be false (straightforward ad hominem), but it does give good reason not to take them seriously, and indeed to neglect to interact with them save in very special circumstances. Although apologists can be useful to provide their ‘side’ of the story, their assessment of the argumentative terrain is worthless, and at worst the arguments they present you need to be checked (as apologists are likely to selectively cite authorities sympathetic to them and other biases that need to be corrected to get a clear view of the evidence). If you are also in the business of presenting arguments to others which you think should convince them to your side, apologists are slightly more recommended – again, though, they are strictly inferior dialogue or debate partners than a free thinker on the other side. In most circumstances, therefore, they are better off ignored and avoided.

[5] That said, modern Christianity, particularly the more evangelical wing, seems to emphasize Apologetics (and thus apologetics) a lot, so it is one of the worse offenders at propagating this anti-epistemology.

The Internets Last Refuge

In the years following its spread into the lives of the general public in the early 1990s, the internet has expanded far beyond its original goals and functions. The invention of the graphical web browser dramatically lowered the learning curve which accompanied using the internet, allowing it to reach a much larger audience. This new found accessibility allowed the internet to take upon itself new commercial responsibilities, and offer more services to consumers, services beyond the original internet pioneers greatest ambitions. These pioneers, including innovators Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen, hoped to establish a free and open medium for communication; they hoped to provide a method of communication unfettered by controlling corporations, a notion known as Net Neutrality. [3] The internet has, for most of its existence, done just this, and maintained a neutral network. However, in recent years, this freedom and openness has come under fire from companies such as Google, Verizon, and other Internet Service Providers (ISPs), who hope to tighten their grip on the internet and the content and utilities it provides. [10] In response to such efforts the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has passed regulations in an attempt to establish network neutrality, freeing the internet of the control of ISPs and other corporations. However, this legislation fails to meet this lofty goal and, because net neutrality is a policy which should receive full government support, this legislation should be revised so it may ensure network neutrality properly and effectively.  [2]

The internet began as a project of the United States Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) in 1958. The project’s intent was to improve the connections between military establishments, such as the Pentagon and Cheyenne Mountain, during the Cold War. The internet first penetrated the public sphere with the invention of the world wide web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, as it had become far more accessible to a far broader audience. [3] Because the internet was an open frontier for invention and creation, largely lacking of regulation, it grew quickly, and has become an everyday tool the world over. The internet has been home to revolutionary new products and utilities throughout its history, and was able to do so because everyone who accessed it had a level playing field. The internet was neutral; no barriers existed between an idea, and its implementation. [5] However, in recent years, ISPs have begun to change this, taking it upon themselves to act as gatekeepers of the internet, picking and choosing what services can or cannot run on their networks. [5]

In response to this, the FCC took action to protect network neutrality by passing the order entitled “In the Matter of Preserving the Open Internet Broadband Industry Practices” on December 21, 2010. The order’s intent is to “preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation… and free expression.” The order requires ISPs to adhere to three guidelines specified in the order: guidelines of transparency, “no blocking,” and no unreasonable discrimination. These guidelines require ISPs to present to customers all network management policies and terms, to abstain from blocking of any lawful content, and to not differentiate or discriminate against any legal content accessed by users, respectively. All of these guidelines may be suspended when necessary for “reasonable network management,” with the addition of the exclusion of “competitively sensitive information” under the transparency clause. This is deemed by the FCC to encompass any practices tailored specifically to ensuring an enhanced end user experience for its customers, including maintaining network security and to mitigate the effects of network congestion, and is expandable on a case-by-case basis.

This order, in spite of the FCCs ostensibly good intentions, falls well short of ensuring the open internet of which it speaks. The exception allowed in cases of “reasonable network management,” and “competitively sensitive information,” while in some cases necessary, are broadly defined to the point of providing ISPs near universal masks with which they may hide the very acts the FCC hopes to prevent. [2] The order makes the claim that the FCC is not aware of all that is required to properly provide internet access, and as a result will allow ISPs to “experiment, innovate, and reasonably manage their networks.” [2] This gives providers borderline absolute freedom when it comes to managing their networks, and unfair and anticompetitive acts may freely don the guise of experimentation, and network management.

The order also makes the mistakes of providing ISPs the right to filter “unlawful” content and allowing providers to forgo compliance with the orders regulations to assist law enforcement. [2] The FCC allows providers to filter illegal content, while failing to provide a definition of exactly what that consists of, or of what “unlawful” encompasses. Nor does it provide any indication of what body ultimately makes that decision. This gives providers yet another excuse with which they may exempt their actions from network neutrality regulations, as, assuming they cloak them with the disguise of safety or security measures, they may pass largely unchecked. A similar claim may be employed by providers who use the fact that network neutrality may be suspended in any case of law enforcement, not only when the provider is required to by a law enforcement body. [9] These special cases do need to be addressed, however, the manner in which the FCC has done so has transferred to providers immense power and control over their network’s traffic.

Network neutrality is a policy that deserves full federal assistance, and, given the fact that the order passed by the FCC falls woefully short of accomplishing its goals of ensuring network neutrality, this order should be revised to do so properly. Network neutrality establishes an internet which fosters the open and free transmission of ideas; it establishes an internet free from corporate control and censorship. This was an internet which the pioneers who paved the way for the creation and proliferation hoped to create. [3] Tim Berners-Lee, the man responsible for the internets explosion in popularity, explains his hopes for what the internet would accomplish, saying, “Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet…” [10] In the past the internet has served this purpose well, facilitating the formation of now multibillion dollar companies such as Apple and Google. [8, 5] The internet can only accomplish its ultimate goal of protecting free and open communication and commerce with the enforcement of network neutrality regulations.

Forgoing a policy of network neutrality would allow ISPs to run rampant, controlling what content and services were allowed to operate on their networks, and using such powers to push their own offerings. Allowing providers to decide what content and services will operate over their networks gives them unparalleled power, power which will allow them to extort money from creators of internet these tools and utilities, or to force customers into using the ISP’s own applications. This power will allow providers to require payment from innovators as an entrance fee, a fee which must be paid before an application can operate properly over a providers network. Using such means allows providers to crush competition, limit customers access to only those content providers who pay the most, or to cut off access to any applications which may compete with their own. This would also preempt the attempts at success of smaller organizations who could not afford this fee. [5]

The internet is home to some of the greatest innovations and creations of recent years, innovations made possible by an open internet which may only be preserved by network neutrality regulations. The internet, as an open medium, has allowed any person who chose to innovate to have free reign over their creations. New creations and innovations quickly proliferate throughout the internet because innovators are not required to ask permission from providers to use their innovations on that providers network; they are not at the mercy of providers. It was this freedom which allowed for the success of projects such as Google, which began as a startup out of Stanford, or Mosaic, the first graphical web browser. Were these projects required to pander to the demands of providers, they may have never experienced widespread success, and the changes they wrought upon the face of the internet would have been delayed by years.

Arguments have been leveled against network neutrality, primarily coming from ISPs themselves, claiming that its implementation would prevent practices necessary to accommodate the internets recent growth. With the dawn of ever increasingly capable media devices, including smartphones and internet capable TVs, as well as the creation of increasingly data intensive services, a growing pressure has been placed upon both wired and wireless broadband networks. Data consumption has increased exponentially in recent years, and network congestion is becoming an ever pressing issue. [6] ISPs have made the claim that practices such as data discrimination are necessary to manage such bandwidth loads, and network neutrality will prevent what they deem are necessary management practices. [6]
However, placing this power in the hands of providers has proved detrimental in the past, being abused by providers to force the use of their own services. Consequently, other, less exploitable, solutions must be sought.  The proper solution to managing increasing network loads is expanding and improving upon the networks framework. While this is an initially costly procedure, some ISPs have reported net revenues in excess of four billion dollars per quarter. [1] Were this money to be invested in improving networks, consumers would be drawn more powerfully to the providers services, increasing revenues. Further, while this may be cost intensive initially, the cost of using the newly laid cables would be extremely low, even for data intensive services. [4] By expanding their networks providers are able to continue to offer to customers a free and unfettered connection to the services they love, while not experiencing undue network stress.

Some may also claim that the “loopholes” pointed out in the FCC’s current draft of regulations will not be abused, and simply used as they are intended to be used, for necessary network management. It has been said that consumers are taking a too pessimistic view toward ISPs, and that accusations of impending restrictive policies are unfounded. However, given the track record of ISPs in recent years, including Comcast and Madison River Communications, as well as the policies and musings of corporate CEOs, this is likely to change. Providers are abusing their power more than ever before, and large companies such as Google and Verizon are showing an increased interest in expanded control of wireless networks. [5, 7, 8] Along with these outward indicators, the threat of networks overloading and bandwidth congestion are relatively new; they were not pressing concerns until the very recent appearance of extremely data intensive services, particularly the streaming of video content by companies such as Netflix and Amazon. [10] Consequently, the future intentions of providers cannot be sufficiently judged by their past actions, and can only be accurately gauged from recent actions and occurrences, the majority of which suggest monopolistic and anticompetitive policies.

Many argue that the internet is fine as is, without any regulation, and as a result the FCC’s order is both unnecessary, and contrary to the goal of maintaining an open internet. These individuals claim that the internet has provided a home for creators and envelope-pushers from its inception in the 80s, and it did so without any regulation from the government. They view the FCCs order as an attempt of the FCC to implement unnecessary government control over a vibrant, free, ecosystem. However, the threats faced by the internet are new, they were not faced by the internet in its infancy. Because of this the internet requires a fresh and new approach, not a perspective shackled by an outmoded viewpoint. [10]

The internet has long been a valuable tool, a tool which fostered creativity and ingenuity, and allowed for transmission of ideas around the globe. However, this may no longer be the case, as companies hope to impose increasing amounts of control over the internet, its content, and the ways in which it reaches consumers. Government enforced network neutrality is the open internets last refuge in the United States, the last hope of the internet surviving this wave of grabs at control. If the FCC can pass effective and efficient legislation to maintain the open internet the world has come to value so highly, then the goal of its creators can be upheld, and the internet can remain free.

Works Cited

[1] AT&T Inc. Annual Report. Rep. 2010. Print.

[2] Federal Communications Commission. “In the Matter of Preserving Open Internet     Broadband Industry Practices.” 23 Dec. 2010. Web.

[3] Hillstrom, Kevin. Defining Moments: the Internet Revolution. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics,     2005. Print.

[4] Hastings, Reed, and David Wells. “Letter to Shareholders.” Letter. 26 Jan. 2011. Web.

[5] Lessig, Lawrence. “Law Professor Lawrence Lessig on Net Neutrality, the Rise of Google and His “Change Congress” Project to Take on Corruption in Washington.” Interview by Amy Goodman. Democracy Now! Democracy Now!, 17 Apr. 2008. Web. 4 Feb. 2011. <http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/17/law_professor_lawrence_lessig_on_net>.

[6] Page, Mark, Luca Rossi, and Colin Rand. A Viable Future Model for the Internet. Rep.     A. T. Kearney. Print.

[7] Verizon Communications, Google inc. “Verizon-Google Legislative Framework     Proposal.” 9 Aug. 2010. Web.

[8] Wozniak, Stephen G. “Net Neutrality.” Letter. The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 21 Dec. 2010. Web. 3 Feb. 2011. <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/steve-wozniak-to-the-fcc-keep-the-internet-free/68294/>.

[9] Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Comments of Electronic Frontier Foundation.”     Publication. 14 Jan. 2010. Web.

[10] Tim Berners-Lee. http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144

Before addressing Chris’ latest concerns, I will take a few moments to respond to a guest post that was made on ChoosingHats by ‘ZaoThanatoo’.

On Zao’s Thoughts:

I mentioned in several places throughout my posts in this series that there must be real caution taken by the theist with regard to arguments such as these, to not assume the conclusion false to show the conclusion false. Let’s quickly recap the argument in question:

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

Now, it should be obvious that any objection to the argument which has as a component the denial of (7) is going to be fallacious. One cannot respond to this argument solely by saying, “God exists and he has morally sufficient reasons for permitting horrific suffering.’ Zao, however, extends my cautionary point into his own further analysis when he says:

Mitch contends that one must not assume that God exists (A) in order to disprove the above conclusion that God does not exist (~A).  This, he asserts, is question-begging.  However, for anyone wishing to criticize the conclusion, the alternative is to assume that God does not exist in order to argue that he does.  This is self-contradictory.  We must either assume God exists or God does not exist (A or ~A, Excluded Middle) in presenting our reasoning.  But assuming ~A to prove A is self-contradictory and assuming A to prove ~~A Mitch asserts is question-begging.

These are some strange assertions. If it’s the case that assuming that God does not exist in order to argue that he does is self-contradictory there is a real problem for argumentation in general, as assuming the negation of some proposition to prove that proposition is simply what is meant by “proof via contradiction” or reductio ad absurdum and it would be highly controversial for Zao to claim that instances of reductio are self-contradictory, yet that seems to be his suggestion. Further, it’s not clear why one need either assume that God exists or that she does not in analyzing the argument. This seems to entail that nobody who is agnostic with regards to the existence of God could ever analyze the argument, or that agnostics are committed to the claim that God does not exist, which is false. He appears to cite the “Law of Excluded Middle” as justification for this claim, but this seems confused. It may be the case that “God exists” is either true or false but this does not entail that one has to regard it as so. For example, the “Law of Excluded Middle” tells us that the proposition “Some man named Johnathan will ride a bicycle on November 21, 2014 and crash it into an Ice Cream Stand” is either true or false,  but this in no way entails that I must assume that the proposition is true nor assume that it is false. In short, nothing about the above argument begs the question. This should be clear, but it can be made clearer by formalizing the argument, if one wishes. If such is done, it will be evident that no premise is, nor has as a premise in its justification, the conclusion.

Zao also states:

I’m attempting to elevate the conversation by recognizing the epistemic role which properly basic beliefs or ultimate presuppositions (call them what you like) play in dealing with issues such as the problem of horrific suffering.

The talk about properly basic beliefs is quite confusing as it’s not relevant to the argument at all. I can only assume that when Zao speaks of “assuming” he’s not speaking of “assuming” in the logical sense, but rather in the epistemic sense. Of course, the fallacy of begging the question is a logical fallacy and so whatever might be going on with my epistemology it does not impact the logic of the argument. That is, even if I do believe that God does not exist, that does not make my giving the above argument question begging. Also, I have noticed a general trend amongst presuppositionalists to not only assume a sort of foundationalist epistemology, but to even assume others are foundationalists! How can I have properly basic beliefs or ultimate presuppositions if I think foundationalism is false? This isn’t an immediately relevant thought, but it’s interesting enough to flag.

Zao continues:

In Premise 1 we are told “Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.”  Let’s break this down quickly for definitional purposes.  We’ll take “finite persons” to be, well, finite persons.  Finite persons who “ever more fully experience the reality of God” are people living life.  Every day every finite person existing ever more fully experiences the reality of God in various ways and to varying degrees, but every aspect of life is an experience of God in one way or another.  “Realizing their deepest good” means simply that they glorify God; and one may glorify God through either salvation or judgment.

So while Mitch’s definition is good, it is incomplete, as he stated: “…Indeed such an experience of God’s reality might manifest itself in different ways to different persons.”  Indeed, some people may realize their “deepest good” (glorifying God) through horrific suffering under the judgment of God for their sins.  So, given the above definitions, Premise 2 is false since certain persons glorify God most fully by suffering horrifically under judgment for their sins; and preventing that category of people from suffering would prevent them from “realizing their deepest good.”

Here, unfortunately, Zao misconstrues the argument. The finite persons who “ever more fully experience the reality of God” are not people living life simpliciter. They are the people who believe they are in a mutually interactive relationship with God of the sort to which theists commonly attest. This is a stipulative definition and I could have perhaps made it clearer, but this is one example of why I dislike long discussions pertaining to a brief survey article of some argument, there are things which get left out or overlooked that aren’t so left out or overlooked in the primary source. But, moving on, Zao is also mistaken about what it means to “realize one’s deepest good.” If you note premise (1) it’s explicitly defining what it means to realize one’s deepest good, and it means to ever more fully experience the reality of God. The rest of Zao’s response in its current form can be overlooked since it’s simply not relevant. Zao has, perhaps unintentionally, strawmanned the argument from Horrific Suffering.

On Chris’ Thoughts:

In Chris’ recent response he begins to steer the discussion in a different direction. He states:

Mitch claims that, “In the background of the argument is the question ‘What would a perfect being do?’” However, the argument pertains to God and not necessarily a “perfect being,” thus insofar as a question like this is in the background of the argument, the question is, “What would God do?” If the Christian concept of God is in view then it is the Christian concept of God which must be evaluated in terms of what the Christian God would do. Otherwise the argument simply does not pertain to the Christian God.

The argument does take the term God to refer to a perfect personal being and insofar as Chris might propose that the Christian God is not a perfect personal being, his conception of God evades the force of the argument. I didn’t make this fact explicit in the opening post for a few reasons: the first post was never intended to be exhaustive and the position that God is not a perfect being is a minority position in the philosophy of religion, to the best of my knowledge. With that said, I do know of a recently published paper which seeks to argue against the claim that “If God exists, God is perfect” though the title escapes me at the time of writing (e-mail me if you really want to know). With that said, there are a couple of options (at least that I can foresee at this very moment) along this road of objection. One can argue against any argumentation which seeks to establish that fact, obviously. Or one can argue for the proposition, “If God exists, God is imperfect.” Also, one claim that the attributes which I’ve argued would belong to a perfect being in fact would not. We can explore Chris’ article to see which, if any, of these routes are explored.

Firstly, it’s important to note that Chris presents some citations which seek to argue against the Ontological Argument. They don’t accurately address this argument however since no appeal has been made to God being that which none greater can be conceived. For that reason, a lot of what follows will be slightly misdirected but I will respond to what I think can be redirected appropriately. Chris first cites Van Til:

[W]e should be careful when we say that God is the being than whom none higher can be thought. If we take the highest being of which we can think, in the sense of have a concept of, and attribute to it actual existence, we do not have the biblical notion of God. God is not the reality that corresponds to the highest concept that man, considered as an independent being, can think. Man cannot think an absolute self-contained being; that is, he cannot have a concept of it in the ordinary sense of the term. God is infinitely higher than the highest being of which he can form a concept…When we speak of our concept or notion of God, we should be fully aware that by that concept we have an analogical reproduction of the notion that God has of himself. (Quoted in Bahnsen, Analysis, 634)

This quotation particularly misses the mark, but it can be illustrative. Van Til is arguing against the claim that God is the greatest conceivable being on the basis that no matter how great a being human persons can conceive, God is infinitely greater. Based on this quotation, one might want to respond to Van Til by saying that God is at least the greatest conceivable being or God is no lesser than the greatest conceivable being. Both of these options satisfy the above criticisms of Van Til and allow for one to still run an Ontological Argument, albeit of a different flavor. How is this relevant to the Argument from Horrific Suffering? Well, if the objection is that no matter how many great things I think being perfect would entail my list will never be exhaustive, we can absorb the objection by simply replying that while this may be true, being perfect could not be anything less. That is, perhaps my reflections lead me to say of God that, as a perfect being, she is perfectly loving and perfectly compassionate. I should not claim to therefore have exhausted God’s attributes, but what I can claim is that any further property ascribed to God such that God’s perfection increases will add to and not take away from those about which I have managed to think. Perhaps Bahnsen is in agreement when he states:

However, God has also revealed that He is much greater than anything that we can finitely imagine. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (without our thoughts being false or misleading). (Bahnsen, Analysis, 634, n.163)

The key thing to notice here is that it is said God is much greater than anything we imagine. Greater, not worse.

Chris continues:

Recall that [Van Til] claims, “When we speak of our concept or notion of God, we should be fully aware that by that concept we have an analogical reproduction of the notion that God has of himself.” What Van Til is saying is that our concept of God  is God’s concept of God. Now this in and of itself is rather interesting, for surely no one should expect a Christian, which I would at the moment say that I am, to accept a man’s concept of God over God’s concept of God, but that is precisely what Mitch is asking us to do.

Let us keep in mind that Chris can only non-question-beggingly assert that God has a concept of God if it is non-question-begging to assert that God exists. In order for this assertion to be non-question begging, he has to mean by God something other than what the argument means by God; something other than a perfect personal being, since he has not yet argued that any of my ascriptions are false. He has suggested that my ascriptions are inexhaustive but that is of no consequence to the argument unless there is a necessary property of God such that its existence renders the operation of some other property limited. It’s yet to be seen if a suggestion such as this is even coherent, or if coherent, can apply to the ascriptions made in the previous articles.

Chris goes on to cite a previous quote of mine, I will quote the relevant portion:

Many of my discussions with Christians have resulted in their looking at the Christian story and saying that particular conceptual analyses don’t line up with the Biblical conception of God. As I’ve said before, so long as our conceptual analyses are reasonable, so much the worse for the Biblical conception of God; if a God did exist, it would not be that one.

This follows from taking the proposition “If God exists, God is a perfect personal being” to be true. If that is indeed true (and I hope to present my argumentation for this in a future article), and if the Christian story presents a depiction of God that is not a perfect personal being, so much the worse for that depiction. I hope my statement is clearer now, in light of what’s been discussed so far.

Towards the end of his response, Chris calls into question some of the ascriptions I’ve made and while I don’t see an argument against them in what he’s written, there are some questions worth answering. Chris says:

Any problems with Mitch applying his concept of “compassion” to the Christian God are now apparent as well. He writes, “Granting that there can exist no being more compassionate than God, if she exists, this perfect compassion coupled with perfect knowledge of what it is to undergo Horrific Suffering entails that God is, as Schellenberg puts it, maximally opposed to these sufferings.” But why does Mitch grant that God is compassionate at all? Perhaps some god is the very opposite of compassionate even in Mitch’s understanding of the matter. How would the argument then apply to that god?

Taking God to be a perfect personal being, we can reason as to the properties such a being would have by analyzing out the great-making properties of human persons; the great-making properties of personhood. That is, human beings possess the properties of being loving, being compassionate and being generous. These properties differ in quality from, say, the property of being deceptive or the property of being violent such that the properties of being loving, compassionate and generous can be called great-making properties. There are a lot of ways in which we can hash out this idea, but for the purposes of this article we can say that they are the properties which are intrinsically better to have than not, the properties we regard as great-making in that the more of these a person has, the more we speak of their excellence as a person in the positive sense. Now God, if the perfect personal being, will possess all the great-making properties of human persons to their maximal (highest possible) degree and probably possess some great-making properties that human persons do not. It is because of this that we can perform a conceptual analysis of what love means, what compassion means and so on, and reason (even if inexhaustively) as to which properties a perfect personal being would have. Such reasoning in this case has led us to the conclusion that because of God’s perfect knowledge and compassion which entails a profound awareness and opposition (compassion is sympathetic opposition), she will know what it is to suffer horrifically and not permit such a state if unnecessary for the deepest good of human persons. Again, since it is unnecessary for the deepest good of human persons, the existence of horrific suffering shows us there is no God.

So, in summation, and to be precise, the argument demonstrates that there exists no perfect personal being. It may turn out that this argument does not impact Chris in any way because as a Calvinist, he already agrees that there exists no perfect personal being. If this is the case, so be it, as the argument was never addressed to Chris directly (though his responses are always welcome). Certainly many people do believe in a perfect personal being and this argument has much discussion to provide amongst them. Alternatively, Chris might argue against the properties I’ve associated with perfection; arguments which I imagine will be quite interesting given how obvious the analyses seem upon reflection. At any rate, having the discussion head in this direction (if it continues) could serve to be very beneficial in understanding not only this argument, but other important issues in the philosophy of religion.

Note: For those who may not know, the article image is a reference to the old Christian poem entitled “Footsteps” which tells the story of a person told by God that they never walk alone, when God is asked then why at times there is only one set of footprints she remarks that those are the times in which she carried the person. I think this, though a story, can help to demonstrate what perfect compassion might look like.

At this point, Chris is still challenging premise (4) of the following argument:

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

In my most recent article I outlined reasons for thinking (4) is true. I want to bring out some underlying strands of the debate, that will simultaneously address Chris’ concerns.

In the background of the argument is the question “What would a perfect being do?” In answering this question, one engages in conceptual analysis (not just this question, practically all of Western philosophy involves conceptual analysis). In analyzing concepts, we take something like the concept of perfect love, for example, and ask the stereotypical philosopher question of what it means to be perfectly loving. It is the hope of the philosopher that such analysis leads to deeper understandings of the concepts in question. In my last article, I presented a series of considerations for thinking that a perfect being would only permit the existence of horrific suffering if it’s prevention would prevent finite persons from realizing their deepest goods. Forgive me for quoting at length:

Let us delve further, take the state in question, that of Horrific Suffering, defined as being “that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.” States such as this are often the most difficult times in people’s lives, one need only speak with someone who has gone through such turmoil to realize this fact. God, however, would not even need to speak with these persons. The perfection of God surely entails an omniscience that encompasses all kinds of knowledge. This includes a perfect knowledge of how particular states feel to her created beings and thus, complete insider knowledge of the experiences of every created being. Granting that there can exist no being more compassionate than God, if she exists, this perfect compassion coupled with perfect knowledge of what it is to undergo Horrific Suffering entails that God is, as Schellenberg puts it, maximally opposed to these sufferings. Granting that God stands in maximal opposition to the experience of Horrific Suffering it is surely the case, entailed by our aforementioned analyses, that God allows persons to suffer horrifically only if such suffering is a necessary condition of these persons realizing their deepest good; a relationship with the Creator that will unfold throughout all of eternity, the only thing that God’s perfect nature will deem enough. In fact, even if the existence of Horrific Suffering were a necessary condition of some very-good-other-goods such that they, perhaps in quantity, “outweighed” the non-good state of Horrific Suffering, our above analyses entail that permitting such suffering is still inconsistent with the divine nature!

Given the analysis of the concepts in question, the conclusion to which we are led certainly seems to be that (4) is true. That is, reasoning about what these particular things mean leads us to a conclusion about what a being with those properties would do.

Thus, when Chris suggests that God has morally sufficient reasons for causing or permitting horrific suffering, a few things are occurring. Firstly, he begs the question against the conclusion drawn from the conceptual analysis. He assumes that there can be a reason such that in light of this reason God would permit the existence of horrific suffering even in cases where the deepest good of persons does not have such suffering as a necessary condition. But, our conceptual analysis leads us to the conclusion that there is no such reason; God would not do such a thing. Chris cannot merely assume the failure of the conceptual analysis, he has to argue for it.

The most relevant portion of Chris’ response, is, I think the following:

Is the thought that one’s life is not worth living really something which God is “maximally opposed to?” Many of us have in fact had such thoughts and have subsequently gotten over it. Some people do not get over it. If it is true that Hitler committed suicide then it is likely the case that he did not get over it. But is God “maximally opposed” to Hitler’s horrific suffering or the possible result of him taking his own life? What about the well-to-do millionaire who decides after losing a few million that his life is no longer worth living by virtue of the fact of him losing those few million?

Well, if our conceptual analysis is reasonable (which I contend it is) then the affirmative is a reasonable conclusion to draw. I’m not sure if Chris has ever gone through such a period, but at the very least he probably knows of someone who has gone through such a period and even many who have “gotten over it” regard it as the worst point in their lives. The relevant portion of the analysis is the feeling involved with horrific suffering, not the antecedent conditions. We are reasoning about a being that is perfectly compassionate and because of her omniscience shares in our experience. Whether Hitler, a millionaire, or whomever, the experience of Horrific Suffering does not change in content. Chris has even admitted this to an extent, in pointing out that it may have led to Hitler taking his life. It is easy for us, I think, to scoff at people like Hitler and say that they deserve it or what not, but we should not assume that a perfect being, if she exists, shares our shortcomings in this respect; we many not be perfectly compassionate, but surely she is.

So, has Chris offered any reasons to think that the above conceptual analysis is in some way misguided? Not directly. Directly, he’s only begged the question against it by speaking of “morally sufficient reasons for God to permit horrific suffering.” There are hints of a better reply in his responses however, namely, that of “skeptical theism.” A treatment of that topic would require another article, so for now I will only flag it as a possible course of objection for Chris.

Something that I’ve mentioned before seems relevant yet again. Whereas I am asking the question, “What would a perfect being do?” Chris seems to be asking the question, “What has a perfect being done?” The difference is subtle, yet illuminating in how both of us approach this, and probably many other issues in the philosophy of religion. There is some initial question as to whether or not the being Bolt calls “God” possesses the properties of perfection I’ve ascribed to the term. There is a tendency that I have experienced in my many discussions with Christian people to assume that this world is the type of world that God would create, since God did create it. But if our conceptual analyses lead us to discover that this world is not the world that a God would create as I think is the case here, we are left with the conclusion that there is no such being. Many of my discussions with Christians have resulted in their looking at the Christian story and saying that particular conceptual analyses don’t line up with the Biblical conception of God. As I’ve said before, so long as our conceptual analyses are reasonable, so much the worse for the Biblical conception of God; if a God did exist, it would not be that one. While I think there are hints of this confusion occurring in Chris’ thought, I would like to thank him for not, as many confusedly and amateurishly have, done something like throw the book of Job at me or cite various parables from the Bible. It should be clear how to do so in this context, would only be to beg the question even further.

So, our conceptual analysis seems to lead us to the conclusion that this world, with it’s occurrences of horrific suffering, is not the world that a perfect being would create and thus, there is no God.

Chris’ most recent response chooses to set aside his initial two objections and focus in on premise (4) of the argument:

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

His main complaint is that no reason is given for accepting the premise. This isn’t true, in my response I provided one such justification:

Looking at an analogous instance, it seems obvious that something has gone wrong when we are saying of the parent that they are acting in accordance with anything we might remotely pick out as being “good” when they cause or permit their beloved child to suffer horrifically when the prevention of that suffering would occur at no loss to the beloved!

This is a piece of prima facie justification and whether or not Chris finds it persuasive, it is there. I will, however, take this opportunity to say much more. If there is anything that perfect goodness is not, it is the causing or permitting of non-good states to obtain for the sake of their being non-good states. What might it mean to say of some person that they are perfectly good and without repercussion can avoid the causing or permitting of some other person their experience of pain (for example), but causes or permits such pain anyhow? It is difficult to make sense of in the same way it is difficult to make sense of there being some person such that they are omniscient, and yet they do not know my name. Whatever is a property of the person in question, it surely isn’t omniscience, and in our previous example, it surely isn’t anything close to perfect goodness. We can reason then that if a perfectly good being causes or permits the obtaining of some non-good states, her doing so must in some way be necessary for some greater good state. Surely a perfectly good being, if bringing about non-good states, does so reluctantly, takes no pleasure in doing so, and would avoid doing so if at all possible without sacrificing one of the greater goods.

Good parents exemplify this in their interactions with their children. They may take their child to the dentist, permitting the obtaining of the non-good state of painful tooth extraction, taking no pleasure in the non-good state obtaining, but permitting it because it leads to the good state of having a healthy mouth. In the above example, the parents seem justified in their permitting their child to suffer because of the upcoming greater good for the child. As Chris notes, if God exists, her being our creator grants her a particular set of rights over our lives that exceeds even that of parent and child. Given such authority, however, we are not to neglect God’s perfect goodness which would ensure that the instances of non-good states are justified in some way. Let us delve further, take the state in question, that of Horrific Suffering, defined as being “that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.” States such as this are often the most difficult times in people’s lives, one need only speak with someone who has gone through such turmoil to realize this fact. God, however, would not even need to speak with these persons. The perfection of God surely entails an omniscience that encompasses all kinds of knowledge. This includes a perfect knowledge of how particular states feel to her created beings and thus, complete insider knowledge of the experiences of every created being. Granting that there can exist no being more compassionate than God, if she exists, this perfect compassion coupled with perfect knowledge of what it is to undergo Horrific Suffering entails that God is, as Schellenberg puts it, maximally opposed to these sufferings. Granting that God stands in maximal opposition to the experience of Horrific Suffering it is surely the case, entailed by our aforementioned analyses, that God allows persons to suffer horrifically only if such suffering is a necessary condition of these persons realizing their deepest good; a relationship with the Creator that will unfold throughout all of eternity, the only thing that God’s perfect nature will deem enough. In fact, even if the existence of Horrific Suffering were a necessary condition of some very-good-other-goods such that they, perhaps in quantity, “outweighed” the non-good state of Horrific Suffering, our above analyses entail that permitting such suffering is still inconsistent with the divine nature!

Premise (4) is thus established and since, as argued in the earlier articles, Horrific Suffering exists and is not a necessary condition in the relevant way, it follows that God does not exist.

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

Chris’ first objection takes aim at premise (2) of the argument. The premise is motivated by the existence of persons in the actual world who attest to experiencing the reality of God and who, themselves, have not gone through horrific suffering. Chris mentions that we must assume that these people are not “lying, deceived, forgetful, or otherwise confused about their alleged lack of horrific suffering.” He rightly notes the extraordinary implausibility of defending such a position, and I add that it would be a most uncharitable interpretation of those in question. However, he does suggest that such a question can be asked of their experiencing the reality of God. That is, of those who attest to experiencing the reality of God and not having gone through horrific suffering, how do we know that they are not lying, deceived or confused with respect to experiencing the reality of God? Chris says:

Now we need not take so strong a position as to deny that these people have experienced the reality of God in order to plant this objection. Rather, we may point out that the subjective nature of experiencing the reality of God is sufficient to raise our suspicions about these people who claim to have had the experience of God without the experience of horrific suffering. How do we know that what one non-suffering person believes is an experience of the reality of God is anything at all like what some suffering person believes is an experience of the reality of God?

To experience the reality of God, in the context of this argument, is to be in a personal relationship with the creator of the cosmos. A relationship of the type theists mention often. It is a being as aware of the existence of God as a child is aware of his or her loving mother. That such an experience occurs in the “ever more fully” sense is to simply point out that given the infinite complexity of God, there will always be more about God for some finite human person to know. That is, if God exists and is as awesome as theists often claim, it is difficult to see how any finite human person can exhaust the things there are to know about God, or exhaust the feelings there are to be had about God, or exhaust the myriad of forms a personal relationship with her might take. It is indeed doubtful that these things can be exhausted in the context of human-to-human relationships, let alone human-to-divine relationships.  Indeed such an experience of God’s reality might manifest itself in different ways to different persons; perhaps we should even expect such a thing given God’s infinite resourcefulness, creativity, and the existence of unique individuals. Chris’ question then seems misguided. Why should we have to know that what one non-suffering person believes to be an experience of God’s reality is what a suffering person believes to be an experience of God’s reality? What is it about the subjective nature of experiencing God’s reality that should lead us to, as Chris suggests, be suspicious of those who claim to experience God, having never suffered horrifically? I fear I must have misunderstood Chris here, as I cannot bring out the objection.

Chris’ next objection is also misguided, but I fear the fault is mine for not taking the time in the initial article to outline the meaning of “ever more fully experiencing the reality of God”.  Chris says that even granting that there exists one person who has not experienced horrific suffering and has experienced the reality of God, it does not follow that the individual is in a position to “ever more fully experience” the reality of God. I hope my paragraph above clarifies what is meant by that term. I am speaking here of, in many ways, an experience of God that unfolds throughout eternity and is such that, given God’s infinite resourcefulness and creativity, the fruits of which are inexhaustible by the finite human person. Now, as Chris continues there is an important distinction to be made. Chris says that:

It could be the case that the non-suffering individual experiences the reality of God in an increasingly fuller sense but that the individual will never experience the reality of God to the degree that she could have had she of endured horrific suffering.

But this is no objection to the argument. No matter which “level of experience” the finite human person initially finds themselves at, there will be an infinite amount of unfolding left to occur. This effectively diffuses Chris’ objection as the value is placed not in the degree at which the divine experience occurs, but in its unfolding nature, the “ever more fully experiencing.” But even setting this point aside, what would be preventing the experience of the non-sufferer from reaching the heights of the sufferer? Is it God, the nature of horrific suffering, or something else? And further, why think that such prevention is necessary? Thus, assuming Chris does not want to object to (2) by taking the strong position of denying that those who claim to experience the reality of God without having suffered horrifically have actually experienced such a reality, the premise seems to survive this round of scrutiny.

Chris’ next target is (4). The denial of (4) seems quite the denial indeed. To deny the premise suggests that if God exists, there can be instances of persons who undergo horrific suffering even though their doing so is unnecessary for the realization of their deepest good. Chris, being the good Calvinist that he is, writes:

It is conceivable that a perfectly good God would “justifiably cause/permit some person A to suffer” even if that suffering were not necessary for bringing about some greater good for A. God not only owns that person, but is Himself the standard of what is just. God does no man wrong by taking his life from him immediately and without any cause known to us, and the same might just as easily be said with respect to “horrific suffering.” Herein lies a serious difficulty with reasoning through atheists’ arguments; the assumption throughout this particular argument is that humanity is the main focus of God’s dealings rather than God being the main focus of God’s dealings as Scripture describes.

It would be fruitful to understand to which particular flavor of Divine Command Theory Chris adheres, if he does possess such a view. I think Chris owes us some argumentation as to how the existence of a perfectly good God is compatible with the existence of human persons unnecessarily undergoing horrific suffering. Looking at an analogous instance, it seems obvious that something has gone wrong when we are saying of the parent that they are acting in accordance with anything we might remotely pick out as being “good” when they cause or permit their beloved child to suffer horrifically when the prevention of that suffering would occur at no loss to the beloved! Chris hints that the analysis may be too narrow, assuming that humanity is the main focus of God’s dealings. The lurking suggestion might be that God causes or permits the existence of horrific suffering for her own “deepest good.” It’s difficult to see how this might work out. This does suggest, however, that there is some good-for-God which only obtains if finite persons exist. But goods in this category seem to be, for example, instances of personal relationship between God and the created. Certainly I do not want to limit the category to those things, but I want to note the prima facie implausibility of there being, as a good in that category, that finite beings suffer horrifically. What is it about the existence of horrific suffering that makes it a necessary condition for the realization of God’s deepest good?

But these considerations aside, Chris’ objection simply begs the question. Recall, he says: “It is conceivable that a perfectly good God would justifiably cause/permit some person A to suffer even if that suffering were not necessary for bringing about some greater good for A.” Temporarily ignoring the debate of whether or not conceivability is a suitable modal epistemology, that is, whether or not it is a suitable guide to possibility, the argument from horrific suffering seeks to demonstrate that such a thing is not possible. Thus, unless Chris is just assuming from the outset that this argument is unsound, the objection does not work. Chris needs to argue (in a non question-begging way) against any justification of that premise, rather than merely assuming the premise false!

It is also important to note that when Chris says, “… the assumption throughout this particular argument is that humanity is the main focus of God’s dealings rather than God being the main focus of God’s dealings as Scripture describes,” it seems he is taking it to be the case that if God creates a world, God creates this world. That is, he is taking the data presented by the argument and attempting to make sense of how it “fits” in this “Christian-God created world.” The argument, however, has as its conclusion that there is no God, so Chris must be careful not to beg the question against the argument by reasoning in a manner that assumes the conclusion false, to show the conclusion false. An appeal to Scripture to show that the existence of horrific suffering is consistent with the Christian story may easily yield to us the conclusion that “If God creates a world, God does not create this world.” More precisely, we must be careful in looking upon the actual world as being created by God when attempting to reason about the type of world God would create and the types of worlds she would not/could not! Argumentation may lead us to say, “So, Scripture claims that God made a world with unnecessary horrific suffering… so much the worse for Scripture.“

Given these considerations, Bolt’s objections to the argument in their current form fail, and we may successfully conclude that God does not exist.

Often online discussions devolve into endless block-quotes incomprehensible to anyone but the two discussants. Therefore, I’ll instead take the opportunity to summarize the lines of argument in ascending order of importance. Many of these criticisms parallel those made by others, and I fear I may well have failed to acknowledge all of them. My apologies in advance.

To remind ourselves, the most modern incarnation of the OTF is this:

(1) Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.

(2) Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false.

(3) So the best way to test one’s adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other religious faiths. This expresses the OTF.

(4) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis.

(1) Ground clearing
(2) Making OTF1-3 valid
(3) Objections
3.1. Reductio and Atheist special pleading,
3.2. Good arguments and rude dialectics
3.3. Epistemic privilege and the insider test for infidels
(4) Conclusion

Ground clearing

As it stands the OTF seems to be trying to do too much, and in a garbled way. A lot of the talk about ‘taking the OTF’, the OTF versus the argument for the OTF and so on is hard to decipher, and criticisms, counter-criticisms and defences are often lost in a haze of not-quite-precise-enough philosophical verbiage. Some distinctions might be needed to clarify exactly what is being argued over.

The first three statements appear to be offering an argument about an epistemic pathology endemic to religious belief, and the fourth to give a cure. These can (and should) be separated for clarity – the fourth statement may still be a good epistemic norm even the foregoing argument doesn’t work, and vice-versa. Let us therefore distinguish between OTF1-3, the argument for epistemic pathology in religious belief, and OTF4, the proposed cure. We will focus on OTF1-3.

Making OTF1-3 valid

A close reading of [1] suggests that [2] might be no better than a restatement. For [1] says

Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis. [Emphasis added]

This extra rider seems awfully like stating a dependency thesis. Which is what Loftus claims [2] is:

Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.

So this all seems a bit garbled. But perhaps we can see what Loftus is trying to get at, regardless of infelicities in expression: that religious beliefs show this socio-cultural patterning suggests they are often driven by cultural inertia, and not some careful reasoning untrammelled by one’s socio-cultural milieu. So let’s give a new argument that does just that.

5) The demographics of religious belief are much better explained by a cultural inertia model (that is, where people’s beliefs are driven by their socio-cultural milieu) than any other.

6) The majority hold religious beliefs due to cultural inertia.

This makes the sort of move Loftus surely has in mind: inferring from the demographics of belief to the likely mechanism of belief formation. The move from [5] to [6] isn’t formally valid either. However, it is clear on what move is being made. Further, it should also be clear that this argument can be made by adding further premises, none of which would be remotely controversial. If that’s good enough for such august philosophers like Peter van Inwagen, it’s good enough for our purposes here.

A bigger problem is the move from [2] to [3]. For on it’s face it seems a straightforward use of the genetic fallacy: to conclude from the (epistemically disreputable) mechanisms that cause people to believe p something about p’s truth.

Loftus doesn’t think this is a big deal, and refers to Parsons. Yet Parsons cautious support of genetic-fallacy-esque arguments aren’t of the sort Loftus uses in OTF1-3. The key passage is here:

Theists counter that such an argument, if taken as supporting atheism, commits the “genetic fallacy.” You commit the genetic fallacy when you conflate two questions that should be distinguished: (a) What causal processes account for the psychological origins of a belief? (b) What rational grounds are there for thinking the belief true? Just because you can explain why somebody holds a certain belief (he learned it from his mother, say) doesn’t mean that the belief has no objective truth or validity. I might be “hardwired” to think that God exists, but, nevertheless, he might really exist, as arguments and evidence might show. As the saying goes, just because you are paranoid does not mean the people are not out to get you; likewise, just because you are wired to believe in God does not mean that God does not exist (Maybe, in fact, it was God who wired you to believe in him!).

However, the charge that atheists commit the genetic fallacy is both wrongheaded and disingenuous. Sometimes, indeed, the causal history of a belief has no bearing on its credibility: I may have originally accepted the Pythagorean Theorem because my high school geometry teacher pounded it into my reluctant head, but if I can now prove it, the history of how I acquired my beliefs about the Pythagorean Theorem is irrelevant to my current judgment about its soundness. On the other hand, there are times when the causal history of a belief is highly relevant to its epistemic merits… [Emphasis added]

In other words, the ‘genetics’ of a given belief is entirely relevant to the question as to whether so-and-so is justified in believing it. But it has no bearing at all whether that belief is, in fact, true. Thus the move from [2] to [3] – from “it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree” to “the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false”  is surely a genetic fallacy.

Does it matter? Not too much. We can renovate this bit of the argument by talking about justification or warrant instead of truth. For if indeed religious beliefs are culturally dependant (and granting something fairly uncontroversial about culturally determined belief being usually unwarranted), then it would follow that most religious belief is unwarranted:

6) The majority who hold religious beliefs hold them due to cultural inertia.

7) Beliefs held due to cultural inertia are not warranted

8) The majority who hold religious beliefs are not warranted in holding their religious beliefs

Now we have a renovated version of the Outsider Argument. Call it the ‘Demographic Defeater for Faith’ (DDF).

5) The demographics of religious belief are much better explained by a cultural inertia model (that is, where people’s beliefs are driven by their socio-cultural milieu) than any other.

6) The majority hold religious beliefs through cultural inertia

7) Beliefs held due to cultural inertia are not warranted.

8) The majority who hold religious beliefs are not warranted in holding them

This expresses the sort of moves Loftus wants to make in the first three statements of the OTF, but does so more clearly and more strongly. How does this ‘OTF+’ stand up to scrutiny?

Objections

Reductio and special pleading for Atheism

Consider these three beliefs:

1. “All life on this planet is descended from a common ancestor”
2. “There is no God”
3. “Skin colour is morally irrelevant”

Demographic defeater type objections could be levied against these. Loftus freely accepts that the OTF1-3 is really a more specific form of an OTB – for beliefs which are highly culturally plastic, one should wonder whether you really are being reasonable in going with the flow of your prevalent cultural milieu.

Surely there are a diversity of beliefs about evolution, Atheism, and racism. And surely these beliefs are culturally plastic. Displace me a hundred years or a thousand miles, and I’d probably believe different things about a-c. A dependency thesis follows soon after: it seems unlikely given this cultural plasticity that these beliefs aren’t formed by cultural inertia. So, more likely than not, these beliefs are unwarranted.

This is bad news. For Loftus and those who agree with him overwhelmingly accept a-c, and further take their acceptance to be reasonable as opposed to cultural brainwashing. Yet if they believe that their acceptance of Evolution, Atheism, racial equality and so on can be held despite that DDF style can be raised against them, then why can’t religious believers shrug off the OTF? In short, what gives this argument selective toxicity towards religious beliefs?

Those who support the OTF1-3 rely on tenuous distinctions to excuse them from the force of the OTF1-3. See Loftus’s explanation of why he doesn’t need to ‘take the OTF’ for Atheism:

When Christians ask if I have taken the outsider test for my own “belief system,” I simply say “yes I have, that’s why I’m a non-believer.”

They’ll ask if I am equally skeptical of my skepticism, or whether I have subjected my non-belief to non-belief, or my disbelief to disbelief. These questions express double negatives. When re-translated they are asking me to abandon skepticism in favor of a gullible faith, for that’s the opposite of skepticism—something no thinker should do. Even if having a gullible faith is desirable, which faith should we be gullible about? And how can we decide between these faiths? The bottom line is that skepticism is a word used to describe doubt or disbelief. It doesn’t by itself represent any ideas we’ve arrived at. It’s merely a filter we use to strain out the bad ones leaving us with the good ones. So we cannot be skeptical of doubt unless we think doubt is inherently wrong, which would leave us with mere belief in belief.

This doesn’t work, and the reason it doesn’t work is it equivocates between scepticism as epistemic caution and scepticism as a label for Atheism/Agnosticism. For “There is no god” is definitely an idea that we arrive at, and not just some passive heuristic for belief formation (and no, not some ‘lack of belief’ either). This game seems a roundabout way of asserting that Atheism is epistemically respectable by equating it with good epistemic method.

This is not the only example. See the reply to Reppert. Reppert offers a series of reductios, one of which is our beliefs about rape. Loftus’s response to that charge is this:

…

So can we apply this same skepticism to moral beliefs? Should I be as skeptical that rape is wrong as I am that rape is morally acceptable? No. Absolutely not. Again, look at the specific criteria I provided. I said:

The amount of skepticism warranted depends on the number of rational people who disagree, whether the people who disagree are separated into distinct geographical locations, the nature of those beliefs, how they originated, how they were personally adopted in the first place, and the kinds of evidence that can possibly be used to decide between them. My claim is that when it comes to religious beliefs a high degree of skepticism is warranted because of these factors.

That’s what I said, and so in this instance as with many other moral beliefs they do not suffer the same consequences from applying the OTF. Beliefs like the acceptability of rape are based on religious beliefs anyway, so they are subject to the outsider test precisely because of the nature and origin of those beliefs, as I said. I know of no non-believer who would ever want to defend the morality of rape, for instance, unlike believers in the past and present who do because of some so-called inspired text. We know rape is wrong, and we also know that this kind of behavior is sanctioned by religious beliefs, as is honor killing. The religious person who thinks rape is morally acceptable should subject that belief to skepticism as an outsider. And when he does this he will begin to doubt his previously held religious/moral beliefs, as I’ve argued. When it comes to Reppert, I think his moral belief that rape is wrong will survive his own skepticism, for there is evidence that as a father of a daughter he would want to help maintain a free society where she can go about her business free from being accosted. If Reppert wants to provide an argument where he can defend the morality of rape I’d like to see this. I would find it very strange if in order to escape the OTF Reppert must defend the morality of rape. That seems too high of a price to pay, but if that’s what he wants to do, then I’m all ears.

Yet, ignoring the large red herring about how religious beliefs apparently shelter rape acceptability, it seems our beliefs about rape tick the boxes of Loftus’s criteria (at least, the ones that distinguish anything) just as well as any religious belief you care to name. For surely beliefs about “when is it acceptable to have sex with a woman without her consent?” has a large number of ‘rational’ people who disagree, who are separated particular geographical and cultural ‘camps’, which were probably picked up from the prevailing cultural mores, and so on. So the argumentative weaponry behind the DDF are just as effective against these sorts of moral beliefs, amongst many others.

Good arguments and rude dialectics

Another approach when faced with a demographic defeater is to simply provide arguments in favour of the proposition in question. One may say we can prove evolution or racial equality and marshal all sorts of evidence in favour of these things. Whereas this isn’t true for something like Christianity.

Yet such a response just begs the question against all those people who want to provide reasons for their religious convictions. The reply usually is that the people offering these arguments are scrabbling around for them after the fact of their religious convictions – they aren’t really using them to guide them to their conclusions, but rather they find take them because they confirm these convictions. Once again, of course, exactly the same reply can be made whenever Atheists offer arguments for Atheism, racial equality, or whatever.

Of course, such an explanation of disagreement is logical rudeness, little different in application to a psychoanalyst whom explains disagreement with his theories as Oedipal conflict, or the Evangelical who locates the origin of disbelief in that disbelievers are blinded by sin per Rom. 1. One might find this accusation levelled against the religious implausible, even if it is granted we get nowhere far.

There are two ways of understanding this “you’re just accepting these arguments because they have conclusions you like” response. The first is the reply made is that Christians say are coming up with these arguments expressly to defend their prior commitments, and therefore these arguments are unpersuasive. That is obviously fallacious. The second reading is an epistemic one: that because Christians are coming up with these arguments to defend their prior commitments, they will still accept these commitments whether or not the arguments they have at their disposal were any good. So even if the arguments they have are good arguments, they still aren’t being reasonable because their convictions don’t track the preponderance of the arguments. This sort of reply does work.

Yet, once again, exactly the same move can be deployed against the Atheist trying to argue for Atheism, or anyone arguing for any moral truths ‘taken as read’ in modern liberal society. Even if we do have the right arguments for these things, that is just epistemic luck, in the same way a Christian would be lucky if they stumbled onto cogent arguments for their faith when desperately looking to shore it up. In neither case, it seems, are the actors behaving in epistemically respectable ways, and thus our DDF, even in its most charitable light, doesn’t give the nod to Atheism over Faith.

Epistemic privilege and the insider test for infidels

The only robust way to answer this sort of criticism is to argue for the privileged position of our particular socio-cultural millieu in contrast to others who disagree. That in fact our cultural lens is the best available to bring the issues into proper focus.

Take the theory of evolution. Affirmation of evolution is patterned, but patterned in a manner suggestive of warrant. It correlates with scientific training, educational level, and things like that. Likewise the beliefs of Doctors regarding disease and the medical laity. That there is disagreement patterned on communities need not mean they are all scrabbling in dark. It may indicate that some, but not all, have privileged access to the truth.

In the case of medics or scientists it is fairly easy to find evidence that they possess epistemic privilege regarding matters of health or the natural world: we can look to their past record of predictive success, how they exhibit particular epistemic virtues in excelsis, and so on. When confronted with the fact that we’d likely have very different attitudes about race if we brought up in 1890s Alabama or 1930s Germany, we should be thankful that we weren’t in these environments, for we think they would have led us away from the truth. Were we faced with a white supremacist or a Nazi, we take ourselves as having a dialectical advantage, that we would be able to provide a case they could not answer – and if they aren’t persuaded, it is simply because their view on these matters is impeded relative to ours. In short, we take our culture’s view on racial equality versus its detractors as privileged, much like the doctors on medicine or the scientists on science. The equality-generating cognitive environment is superior to the racist-generating cultural environment with respect to some set of epistemic norms.

Yet everyone believes their cognitive environment is superior compared to all those others that lead to people disagreeing with them. Doubtless the racists could come up with a story as to how their environment is superior relative to ours. The only way forward, it seems, to actually argue the point of issue, and see which side’s claims to dialectical superiority survive.

The same applies to belief and its detractors. Believers and Atheists will have their own stories to tell as to who has epistemic privilege. That Atheists assert – by their own lights – the atheist-generating cognitive environments are privileged compared to the believer-generating ones is no more than an insider test for infidels: for an Atheist to say religious ways of knowing are rather delusions and to urge believers to be rational and abandon them is no better than an evangelical talking about reason being a whore to satan and urging so-called ‘rationalists’ to open their hearts to Jesus. They amount to no more than assertions of epistemic ‘other’ness.

Both sides need to swallow their shrill assertions of epistemic privilege and settle down to trying to beat each other by the usual ‘rules of the game’ for debating these matters. For if Atheist has the better of the argument or has ‘facts on their side’, that would suggest she was right all along in asserting that the athiest-generating environment is better than the believing one. Yet doing so obviates the need for the whole DDF rigmarole in the first place: instead of presenting the DDF and demonstrating it is selectively toxic to belief by vindicating atheism’s epistemic privilege by showing it to be more reasonable, one can simply stick to demonstrating that Atheism is more reasonable. In short, this sort of argument has taken us in a long circle back to where we started.

Conclusion

Loftus’s project to undermine the rationality of religious belief is a failure. We can improve OTF1-3 to provide a better argument in the spirit of what Loftus has in mind, yet even this renovated argument remains unpersuasive. It is unpersuasive simply because demographic worries like the OTF attempts to exploit are endemic to beliefs we hold – were our environments different we would almost certainly believe differently, and many (perhaps most) of our beliefs are due to cultural inertia.

Against this, there is no means to put religious beliefs (over any others) under special scrutiny which isn’t question-begging nor tendentious. If demographic data is ‘good enough’ to undercut the rationality of religious belief, it is ‘good enough’ to undercut the rationality of Atheism, or most of our beliefs about science, or most of our ‘commonsense’ moral beliefs. To avoid accepting this, we say that our environment is privileged – that other cultures who differ with us see through a glass darkly, and were we transposed into this environment the different beliefs we have would be accounted for by some loss of epistemic virtue. Yet, again, these are precisely the moves a religious believe can make to defend their religious community from similar charges, and, again, there is no reason to dismiss one defence out of hand but not the other.

These defences cannot be evaluated without settling the question of whether the beliefs in question are true, or at least reasonable. Yet this is was exactly the subject under discussion. The OTF is a detour that takes us nowhere. Our time and energy is better spent otherwise.

The Argument

Let us start by defining a term:

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

Now, the argument as Schellenberg formulates:

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

As you can see, the argument is pretty straightforward. Premise (1) is developed out of the idea that there can be no deepest good (where a deepest good is a greatest good for a particular individual) that is superior to the experiencing of God’s reality. What could be superior to the experience of the perfectly good, merciful, loving, just, and wise creator of everything? Premise (2) is motivated in part by the existence of persons in the actual world who attest to experiencing the reality of God in some way and who, themselves, have not gone through the horrific suffering defined at the beginning. Such suffering then cannot be a necessary condition of finite persons realizing their deepest goods and so, the prevention of such suffering would not prevent that realization from occurring. Premise (3) is a simple deduction. Premise (4) is motivated by a typical theistic response to the traditional problems of evil. That is, many theists maintain that a perfectly good God would justifiably cause/permit some person A to suffer, if that suffering were necessary for bringing about some greater good for A. Premise (4) reason then that there are instances of horrific suffering only if preventing this suffering prevents the realization of the deepest good for finite persons. We’ve already seen that it does not, however, and so from (3) and (4) we may reason (5). There obviously are cases of horrific suffering in the world, and (6) is proffered. From (5) and (6) we may deduce that God does not exist.

Free-Will Theodicy

One possible response to the argument would be to suggest that individuals need to be able to cause (or remove) this type of suffering in order to have a world that is serious enough for the virtues of soul-making and choices of destiny. But it is difficult to see how such a condition cannot be satisfied by a world where choices leading to or resulting from the horrific suffering outlined above would not suffice. Taking our actual world as an example, one is tempted to ask “How free are we really?” As we are no doubt exposed to, there exist instances where the occurrence of murder, rape or other such crimes seem to be better explained by the prior states of the world than by the free action of the individual. That is, those who are raised terribly such that their actions seem plausibly explained in sociopsychological terms properly considered an unfreedom. But more interestingly, there are a great many people who do not engage in bringing about horrific suffering who do not even seem able[1]. There seem to be good evidences that a great many people are simply incapable of performing actions which lead to horrific suffering. There are those who, no matter how hard they tried, could not bring themselves right now to rape, murder or launch nuclear bombs at some populated area. Is there really a relevant sense in which we are free?

Freedom in the actual world, thus, does not seem ‘bound up’ with the capacity to cause horrific suffering. But perhaps our reasoning is incorrect, perhaps this is not the case. At least, God could ensure that through the relevant stages, creatures are incapable of performing actions leading to horrific suffering without rendering them less free than they actually are. But even if this is misguided as well, surely we can think of a world where such horrific suffering is absent and note that this world still contains freedom and responsibility. Persons, even if unable to bring about horrific suffering, could have the ability to bring about many nonhorrific evils. This seems to satisfy the relevant concerns as in this world there is much for us to work on improving: emotional pain still exists, we are afraid of death, we have political disputes that may result in war, etc. Such instances are occasions ripe with the ability to produce, in the relevant creatures, choices moral/spiritual significance. We seem able, then, to detach horrific suffering from the development of our selves in this way.

Free-Will Defense

Schellenberg makes use of Peter Van InWagen’s outline of a defense (page 262). Schellenberg notes that the defense, which I will not produce here, makes the following assumptions (keep in mind that InWagen is a Christian):

(1) That love might essentially involve free will.

(2) That creatures gifted with the beatific vision might nonetheless rebel against God and leave Eden.

(3) That what it means to be separate from God might be to live in a world of horrors.

(4) That seeing the horror of life without God might provided the most effective motive of cooperation and return.

(5) That if a reconciliation plan involving horrors was implemented when the rebellion first occurred, many millennia ago, that plan might nonetheless not yet have proved successful.

(6) That those who experience horrors might all know of the existence and nature of God and of God’s call to return.

(7) That if God’s plan is thus, the number and distribution of horrors today might be great and wide enough.

These are assumptions which I want to flag for the purposes of introducing Schellenberg’s argument and a couple of responses, but for a full outline and criticism of InWagen’s Christian Story consult the primary source already named at the beginning of the article. Suffice for the purposes of this brief overview is to note the assumptions above as being assumptions which are anything but obviously (or perhaps even plausibly) true. A brief interesting question to note in passing, re (1), is “What really happens to what we know of love if we find out that we cannot have done otherwise?”

Lastly, one other type of defense would suggest that it is logically possible that God, when contemplating her creation of the world, saw that for each world she would create without horrific suffering in which free creatures achieve their deepest good in freely chosen relationship with her, the attempt to actualize it would be disrupted by uncooperative free agents. Thus, since it’s possible that God cannot achieve her goal of freely chosen relationship with persons without permitting horrific suffering, then any claim that God would necessarily prevent horrific suffering is, at best, unjustified. However, this, Schellenberg suggests, is the wrong conclusion to draw. That God would necessarily prevent horrific suffering becomes unjustified only if freely chosen relationship with God is entailed by possession of the deepest good for creatures. But, it seems clearly not. Taking God’s options in creation and the infinite number of modes of relationship with her, there must be many ways in which our deepest good can be achieved in the absence of freely chosen relationship. It could be the case that God’s glory is made so clear to creatures that our desires to oppose her simply fade away. That is simply one example out of an infinite number. 

Surely God would give consideration to the modes of relationship other than freely-chosen relationship. Alternatives to permitting horrific suffering that are still compatible with finite creatures realizing their deepest good. Any such alternative, since these worlds are equally (as Schellenberg says) splendid is always going to seem preferable to a world where horrific suffering occurs, even if the world in question is a world with freely chosen relationship. Simply consider, as Schellenberg invites, “…if a perfectly good, and loving, and empathetic, and wise God is able to choose between a scenario whose goodness is very great but requires the permission of horrific suffering and a scenario with goodness equally great and no need for such suffering, how does one think the divine would choose?”

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[1] As Schellenberg notes, where capability in this context is hashed out by my rejecting the idea of perpetrating horrors at one time, and at the same time being able to choose to do otherwise.