In philosophy ‘certainty’ has a specific meaning
Jim at Apple Eaters sees Pessin’s ‘paradox’ the way I do.
Man, there is so much sloppiness here that I want to bite something. First, in philosophy “certainty” has a specific meaning, and it means that there is no doubt. If that’s not what Pessin has in mind, he should define the term. The point there is that, even if I recognize that I am fallible and capable of mistakes, I likely am not certain that I have made some mistake in my reasoning. Were that the case, I would be going over that reasoning carefully to find the error. Rather, I just see that it is possible that I made a mistake, but that is nothing like having certainty about it.
Just what I say. If he doesn’t really mean ‘certain’ then he should say so – he shouldn’t pretend he means ‘certain’ in order to pretend there’s a paradox but then treat the certainty as actually just a possibility. That’s [Jon Stewartian high-pitched squeal] cheating.
Accepting contradictions is not a way to accomplish anything except confusion. Being sloppy in your definitions only spreads confusion. Confusion is not peace. In fact, confusion is often the origin of conflict. Pessin is the kind of philosopher who gives the rest of us a bad name.
Just what I say.
I think that’s hasty.
For one thing — and I could be wrong about this — I don’t think many people use the language of indubitability. It’s very Cartesian. Often, people will use the phrase “apodeictic certainty” to describe this sense of certainty in order to distinguish the many uses even in philosophy (and to bemoan the death of certainty due to the damned empiricists).
For another thing. True, it is perfectly sensible to say that contradictions indicate confusion of some kind — but that is NOT license to say that the person uttering the contradiction is doing something wrong, with all this “give us a bad name” business.
For instance, I am among those who think it is legitimate to ascribe a contradiction to a vague statement and its negation. In these cases, we (of course) imply that there is something about vague statements that is confused. But that does not necessarily mean that the person is confused. It may very well be that the language is deficient, or that the world is confusing, or that I’m confused in my interpretation of the speaker. And often — perhaps, always — we can’t tell which one is at fault.
In brief, to accept confusion as assertable is not the same as to recognize it as meaningful. The former is questionable, the latter is mandatory. And the mere recognition of confusion means that confusion requires an analysis of some kind.
Though of course in this case I think the author happens to be confused, because his words suggest and motivate an obvious distinction. In cases of genuine paradoxes, I’m inclined to say that, yes, we ought to accept the contradiction. We might even call the contradiction “true”.
I think you’re missing Jim’s point, Ben. It isn’t merely the contradiction or confusion that grounds his claim that Pessin is giving other philosophers a bad name – it’s Pessin’s sheer sloppiness that offends Jim, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. Failure to define a key term in any argument, let alone the lynchpin term on which your entire argument turns – whether through deliberately obfuscatory equivocation (which I suspect here – it’s a long-standing tradition in apologetics, as I noted on the other thread) or simple hand-waving sloppiness – is not just sloppy, it’s positively amateurish. Bad philosopher! No cookie!
Well, sure, it’s sloppy! But it’s a different kind of slop, is what I’m saying. So we really do have different points, even if we have the same conclusion.
Can it be sloppy in both ways? That would be good!
I’m certain of each individual bit that it’s sloppy. But I’m also certain that there’s no sloppiness in it anywhere.
Russell, you win the internets for today!
I think Pessin is missing an important cause of conflict in religious believers. When he says “..and thus believe, with equal certainty, in all the things entailed by that belief: that, say, all other competing religions and doctrines are simply false.” he is missing the point that the very existence of other, competing, religions is a challenge to any religious believer’s faith. Either Jesus was divine and the son of god or he wasn’t so, to a Christian the very existence of, say, Islam, which denies that divinity, is blasphemous. If Islam is right, Christianity is wrong and vice versa.
For an ardent Christian the fact that there are other religions, and people who believe in them just as ardently, is a counterweight to certainty in that Christian’s belief. If Christianity is so obviously true, why doesn’t everyone accept it unquestioningly? There are no objective references the Christian can turn to, no experiments to perform that can support that belief over the others. This is the essence of religious faith.
For me, as an atheist, this isn’t a problem. I don’t believe in any gods but, like Richard Dawkins, I accept the possibility that I may be wrong, although I think that possibility is vanishingly small. I also can’t perform any experiments to show that I’m right, but I can look for evidence to support the existence of gods and I don’t see any, so I can continue in my atheism AND my acceptance I may be wrong in that without any conflict.
Pessin’s mistake is surely that faith requires certainty, as properly defined, with no possibility of being wrong. The existence of other religions (and atheists) is a challenge to that certainty and therefore is unacceptable. There is no room for harmony here. Because there is no possibility of supporting evidence for any one religious viewpoint the only viable strategy is that competing viewpoints must be challenged and, if possible, eliminated. I don’t see any room for accommodation without dishonesty.
I think Pessin is trying to say that you can be certain in your own beliefs while accepting that others are equally certain in theirs and live with that. I don’t think that is ultimately possible.
Spot on, Phill. Either (1) Christianity is false, or (2) Islam is false, or (3) both are false. If theology were a respectable pursuit, theologians’ top priority would be looking for evidence to choose (1) (2) or (3). On the contrary, professional theologians (incompetently), priests and imams (self-interestedly), and the faithful (forgivably) systematically ignore lots of evidence of (3). (Eg, prayers to Jesus don’t work; the Koran is ill-organised, often wrong, and often cruel.) As Richard Dawkins has pointed out, theologians, priests, and many of the faithful find that sort of clarity threatening; hence the mindless abuse of not-at-all-new atheists.
Phil’s point is, so far as I can tell, correct. (Of course, I may be wrong!) I’ve been trying to say the same thing on the C and not-C thread. Pessin is being so alarmingly sloppy (whether in two senses or one, I’m not sure, since I don’t think I understand Ben’s point — shall we have a taxonomy of sloppinesses?), that one wonders how he ventured into print with it. I think he takes the paradox of the preface seriously, and I still don’t think there’s any reason to do so. It all depends on clarity in the use of language. Makinson’s original paper on the preface doesn’t use language carefully enough, and those who have commented, I daresay, have followed in his footsteps, though the whole argument has not interested me over the intervening years. But to think that this paradox is enough to bear the weight of religious disagreement is simply tilting at windmills, because, as Phil points out, the fact that someone believes an entirely different set of beliefs to yours with equal fervour is a good reason to question the truth value of your own. And since this is something that can be carried out seriatim for a host of religious belief sets — Christianity alone includes hundreds if not thousands of conflicting belief sets — it should lead you to question whether any religious belief can possibly be true. Surely, it must look obvious, after you’ve been through a couple dozen, that the probability is pretty small, and getting smaller. Eventually, you must reach the point where it will increasingly seem vanishingly small, and that further study is really not worth it. What Pessin should have concluded from his argument is that religious beliefs do not have sufficient warrant, and that we’d all get along better if people stopped pretending that they do.
Hahaha Russell!
Eric, to be clear. When the author says, “Accepting contradictions is not a way to accomplish anything except confusion”, he overstates his case. For instance, I accept that genuine paradoxes are intractable contradictions; this doesn’t “accomplish” confusion, as if it were something I set out to do, because it’s just not my fault that the paradox is confusing by its very nature. (It so happens that Pessin is not discussing even a prime facie paradox, though.)
And when he insists that “certainty” means “indubitability”, I think he is mistaken. “In philosophy”, we distinguish between apodictic certainty and other, potentially more pragmatic, forms. It is terribly harsh to go after this as a problem. Maybe Pessin should’ve defined his terms, fine. But ‘more is less’ on the blogosphere, and these are issues that can be fruitfully raised in discussion.
“(1) Christianity is false, or (2) Islam is false, or (3) both are false.”
However, (1) Christianity is false because islam is true or (2) Islam is false because christianity is true or (3) both are false because hinduism is true are very different kinds of claims from the claim that christianity and islam are false because all religious beliefs are false, just as certainty-in whatever sense- that a religous belief is true often also includes the claim that other religious beliefs are true or true-ish, whereas certainty that all religious beliefs are false excludes that possibility and assumes that any truth expressed by a religious belief is true independently of the belief.
Not quite, Roger. (1) If, for the sake of argument, we accept that the Koran is the final word of the only god in business, then it follows that Jesus was not a god in human form, and the whole basis of Christianity is false. (2) If, for the sake of argument, we accept that Jesus was a god in human form, it follows that the Koran is in error, and the whole basis of Islam is false. (3) It is also possible that Jesus was not a god in human form, and the Koran is not the final word of the only god in business. Indeed, there is much evidence of this (eg the incoherence and immorality of Jesus’s and Mohammed’s reported sayings and deeds).
It is also, of course, possible that some religious beliefs are true. But none of them are well-founded, because faith is not a valid reason for believing anything.
“If, for the sake of argument, we accept that the Koran is the final word of the only god in business, then it follows that Jesus was not a god in human form, and the whole basis of Christianity is false”
Not the whole basis- or so muslims claim- but those aspects that were distorted along with the belief that Jesus was not a god in human form. Even if we accept your asrgument, then, in the eyes of someone who believes that there is a god or gods, then someone who also believes in a god or gods, even if it is a belief in the wrong god or gods, is less mistaken than someone who does not believe there is a god or gods. Beleievers of any kind have more in common with other believers than with unbelievers or nonbelievers, even if iot only belief in belief.