The Arrogance of Philosophy(ers)

I'm not sure why we separate 'philosophical truths' from 'empirical truths'. Both epistemological systems are based on the same foundation of experience - our own existence and the usefulness of our five senses. All that we know, we know through our five senses. We have developed words that represent things we have experienced through our senses in order to communicate those experiences to other people and even communicate them to ourselves. 'Philosophical laws' like the law of non-contradiction, the law of identity and the validity of syllogisms, and even 'mathematical laws' of association and distribution have been discovered through our experience of the natural world, an experience that continues to grow. These laws do not come from some special, isolated part of the brain that reasons independent of experience.

I am not a linguist, nor have I studied the development of language in a university. However, from observing my own linguistic development and the development of people around me and having a bit of knowledge about the development of language as it relates to our brain, I have learnt a few things. When young, much of our experience is jumbled together in a few words. All trees are trees and trees alone. If you tell a child that this tree is a portugal (puteegal) tree and the other is a lime tree, it may be slightly confusing to them at first. They would either think that all of them are the same thing, or that they are all completely different. It is difficult for a child to appreciate subtlety. The ability to discriminate and categorise, analyse and synthesise are skills that develop with us as we grow and are aided by education. As our experience of the world increases, we create new words, and we apply the discovered laws of reasoning to these experiences to make sense of them.

Now, our brains have been able to take concepts from the natural world, combine them with others, expand them, twist them, turn them inside out to make them into something 'new'. However, these things are not new, but re-worked or re-done, exaggerated or reduced, old things. We call this ability 'imagination'. The end results of our imagination - like Superman, Batman, Pokemon or the Perfect Spouse - are built with old colours and concepts we have experienced but are not things we have experienced in themselves.



Our brains have evolved over millions of years in a way that has aided in our survival, building communities, appreciating art and all the other things we do. However, just as a blind-mole rat is blind, unable to see, because evolution saw eyes as an uneccessary waste of energy in the mole's environment, our brains and what it is able to perceive is limited in the same way. There is no reason for us to believe, that we 'see' the world exactly as it is. If there are blind mole rat philosophers, they never speak about the nuances in the spectrum of colours. But we, gods to them, know of these things and more, but not all.

When a philosopher, then, in spite of this limitation makes ultimate claims, I get worried. I get even more worried when these claims are important for the salvation of the all souls and cause war, strife, continued poverty, and psychosis in its name. The philosophical laws that we have discovered, developed and refined over time are just as useful as our eyes and our noses. However, there is no justifiable reason to think they are absolutely accurate, especially since dogs smell better, and eagles see farther than I do. What our science does is play within the sphere of our ever-increasing experience of the world.

One of William Lane Craig's arguments for the existence of a God is the Kalaam argument:
1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause (He shows that this cause is God by using another argument).

In his book Reasonable Faith, he goes into the two premises of the syllogism at great length. Here is the problem with this syllogism. The first premise sounds nice off the bat, but it is what I like to call an unjustifiable absolute claim. Intuitively, we say that things have causes, and science definitely operates largely on the law of cause and effect. However, this 'law' is a construct that we have made, again, based on our experience thus far. We have never experienced something that never began to exist and therefore have nothing to juxtapose the universe to. All we have is the universe and it's contents. To say that 'whatever' begins to exist has a cause is to make an ultimate claim that we cannot back up. To say that there are no other options, while it may be true, does not warrant making the absolute claim. At best, we can only rightfully assert that many of the phenomena observed thus far in the universe have causes. That's all. And even this may not be absolutely true, because Quantum Physics has been observing for quite some time the seemingly random popping of particles in and out of existence - stress on the word "seemingly". As far as we can see, this occurs without cause. Now, this does not mean that there is no cause, it just means that if there is one or not, we cannot tell.

As explained earlier, philosophical reasoning cannot be devoid of empiricism because they both stand on the same axioms, however, it does run the risk of entering into the realm of imagination by making these types of claims. We are essentially using old information, extrapolating them and making a claim. At one point in time, this could have been a syllogism:
1)All swans are white
2) This bird is a swan.
3) Therefore, this bird is white.
It took the discovery of Australia to learn that some swans were actually black. The science on this matter of the universe is far from conclusive. In the absence of conclusive science, we can make all sorts of beautiful claims that are logically sound (based on current knowledge) but untrue. For instance, why do you think the earth goes around the sun? If you're not an astronomer or something close to it, you basically believe so because you read it in a book where the science was laid out for you. The same is for evolution. Neither of these facts of science, however, can be intuitively grasped. No philosopher can reason his way to discovering these truths independent of empirical evidence. If a philosopher tries to philosophically refute evolution without bringing evidence, she would be laughed off stage, as sometimes happens.

We cannot continue to assert ultimate truths, if all we have are 'philosophical truths' based on logic and helped along by a growing, and sometimes sketchy, science. As commendable as Craig's work is in terms of logic, thoroughness and rigor, it goes a bit overboard by committing this crime. The basic laws of philosophy are used to do science, but as soon as these laws begin to separate themselves from empiricism, it can do crazy stuff.

Let me re-create the Kalaam argument with a little less hubris. Let's cal it Kalaam 2.0. It's not as attractive, but it's more intellectually honest:

1) Most of the phenomena that we have observed thus far which began to exist have causes.
2) Based on what we know so far, it seems as though the universe began to exist at some point in time.
3) Therefore, it is probable that the universe has a cause.

There. A much humbler assertion. What this does is allow for intellectual curiousity of the type that broke Ptolemy's back. In this syllogism, the opening premises are wide open for future update and correction. To operate in absolutes like the original Kalaam argument is to set a limitation to reasoning by answering the question before we even arrive at it. There may be arrogant scientists, but there is no arrogant science. Science is forever humble, self-correcting and open to new ideas, nervously sharing what it has discovered with a hidden fear that tomorrow can make her obsolete.

Does God exist? We don't know. As it stands, we have no universally reliable evidence of the existence of a deity as they are usually defined. Science does not say that all there is is nature. There may be a supernature. But, how would we ever know this? Not through our senses? Wouldn't we need to place these things under reason and determine their validity as well as an orthodox priest discerns whether a woman is possessed or psychologically afflicted before reading the Demon Riot Act? And if the supernatural is outside of our ability to reason, how can we assert it's existence? And if we do so because it has revealed itself to us, hasn't it done so in through our senses and, therefore, is susceptible to reason?

Philosophers can continue to go insane over the question if they so desire, but to say yes or no is currently unjustifiable. Richard Dawkins recently got popular press after saying he was not an atheist in an interview but really an agnostic. What Dawkins was doing was distancing himself from the definition of atheism that says 'There is no God' and he was right to do so. I hate that definition because it is an arrogant one and it is not useful. It is only useful for theists who like to use it as some sort of solace - they can't say he doesn't exist so it is okay for us to believe.

I do find it funny, however, that we get so harped up over his existence as though all God has to do is exist at the end of a syllogism for all to be well. He could exist and be too lazy to give a damn about us. He does seem to be lazy if he sends his philosophers out to 'prove' that he exists instead of just showing up to a party. What does this God do other than fill in the gaps in our equations? All the other things God is said to be, like 'good' for one, cannot be seen in any compelling way in the universe. Maybe he's the one behind the random and queer phenomena in quantum physics. Is he? We don't know. And to claim to know is worrying to me. To believe is less troubling, but irrational.

Here is a link to an engaging debate between Betrand Russel and Fr Copleston around this topic.

Karl Popper taught us that the strength of a theory is not in its explanatory power - explanation only requires you to go one 'logical' and 'intuitive' step beyond the limits of your own knowledge. The problem is that we do not know what lies beyond in the darkness and so, our explanations may make sense, but be erroneous. How long will it take, I wonder, for Craig et al to recognise that their syllogism-gods are but theories awaiting justification? How long will it take for them to stop preaching this to children as absolutely true?