So people are saying that today is the Rapture. Oh noes…
With a special dedication for all of those silly silly people, here’s a little something I wrote on my final year. I also expect all of the people who follow logic, reason and science to enjoy themselves today and onwards.
Photo: Jonathan Elliot via eatliver.com
Rene Descartes, David Hume, John Locke and Immanuel Kant walk into a bar and join the pub quiz. The first question is: Does god exist? This causes a discussion between the four philosophers:
Kant: I do not believe in god. It is an absurd idea.
Descartes: I do. If the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something that entails everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God? Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one that I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature (Descartes, 2000).
Kant: Just because you can imagine something, does not mean it exists. If we say that existence is part of the definition of god, in other words, an analytic judgment, then we are simply repeating ourselves in asserting that god exists. We are not making a synthetic judgment that would add new information about the real existence of god to the purely conceptual definition of god.
Descartes: Reason is the fundamental source of knowledge. Based on my reason and intuition I believe that god exists.
Hume: But no being could ever be proven to exist through priori demonstration! Nothing can be based on intuition and reason alone. It is absurd!
Kant: The use of words (or “predicates”) alone does not necessarily imply the existence of their referents. We can only assume the existence of entities named by our words; we cannot prove “existence” by means of the use of language alone.
Locke (backs up Descartes by arguing): our idea of God is a complex idea framed from simple ideas we have acquired through reflection on the operations of our own minds, it is our knowledge.
Kant: But I think that knowledge must be limited within the bounds of possible experience and is not available in the area of metaphysical ideas; therefore I would have to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith. I think that knowledge is a joint production of the external world and the mind.
Descartes: Well, if you involve mind, would that not make existence of god possible then? I think that mind is separate from body, and the mind is one’s soul.
Kant: No, I cannot stress enough the importance of experience with the accessible knowledge and reason, the existence of god plain does not make sense as it lacks any proof at all. Besides mind and soul are not the same entities. Mind is brain. The mind is complex set of abilities (functions). The functions that are crucial for mental, knowledge-generating activity are spatio-temporal processing of, and application of concepts to, sensory inputs. In your late works you said that you were not exactly sure how mind interacted with the body. If you lived in the 21st century you would learn exactly how they interact through evidence gathered using fMRI and other technology, and you would not have to fill in the gaps with superstition.
Locke: I still agree with Descartes in thinking of matter and mind as two sorts of substances which agreed in owing their being to deity (Webb, 1949). Since something cannot be conceived from nothing, something must have existed from eternity.
Kant: Well, I think that religion makes an observation and makes a conclusion and then tries to create evidence to support it whereas science experiments first and then comes to a conclusion.
Locke: as an empiricist myself I must say that this cannot really be. There is no such thing as non-biased observation.
Hume: in that case, if all knowledge is dependent upon observation and sensory input, then knowledge is impossible.
Locke: What do you mean? Our knowledge is based on historical, plain method, which gives us a genetic account for how we come about our ideas!
Hume: Such propositions are based on mere association of ideas through habit, psychological expectancy and compulsion – little more than animal faith.
Locke: But it is more. I think that our minds are like ‘blank slates’ (tabula rasa) and our experience writes all the outer and inner experiences and then form ideas. So like I said before, our idea of god is built from smaller ideas built into a complex one!
Hume: That argument is even worse than Descartes’! That is like believing unicorns because you combined a horse with a narwhal in your imagination. I must say that when it comes to god I agree with Hobbes. He said that based on human knowledge, we have no idea of god and as such it is incomprehensible to us.
Kant: Yes, the human situation, with respect to our idea of God, is like that of a blind man trying to frame some idea of fire or an elephant.
Hume: Exactly! Hobbes said that “to have any imagination what kind of thing fire is; yet he cannot but know that somewhat there is that men call fire, because it warmth him.” (Hobbes, 1996; Hobbes, 1994) All we can understand by the word God, therefore, is “the cause of the World”. Beyond this, however, we can say only what God is not. Hobbes placed a particular emphasis on the need to avoid any anthropomorphic conception of God clearly, then, Hobbes employs his empiricist principles to emphasize the “narrow limits of our phantasy”, which puts knowledge of God beyond the scope of human cognition and understanding.
Locke: I object to Hobbes’ views. We do not even have grounds for supposing that a separate material reality is co-eternal with the necessarily cognitive first being, it [god] is actually immaterial. Besides, I think that all innate ideas such as God, substance, cause etc. are very abstract and general, they cannot arise from experience, and they are clearly and distinctly intellectually intuited. That is why they are source of indubitable a priori knowledge about nature and reality.
Descartes: with respect to God, if I were not pre-occupied by prejudices, and my thought beset on all sides by the continual presence of the images of sensible objects, I should know nothing sooner or more easily then the fact of his being. For is there any truth more clear than the existence of a Supreme Being, or of God, seeing it is to his essence alone that necessary and eternal existence pertains? (Descartes, 2000) And although the right conception of this truth has cost me much close thinking, nevertheless at present I feel not only as assured of it as of what I deem most certain, but I remark further that the certitude of all other truths is so absolutely dependent on it that without this knowledge it is impossible ever to know anything perfectly. (Descartes, 2000)
Kant: but again, that is just you reassuring yourself that you know god exists. The universality of the laws of nature is dependent on the structure and functioning of the human mind, not on the objects of perception. All we can know of objects is how they appear to the mind (phenomena). Things-in-themselves (noumena), things as they are outside of our perception of them, we can never know. Besides, did you not say ‘cogito ergo sum’?
Kant: If you think and therefore you are, that is right, and I can agree with that. But because you think that god exists that does not mean there is a god. You can be certain of your own existence through thinking but not that of somebody else.
Descartes: I can, however, go further with this. This consciousness of myself, which does not admit of doubt, I shall find on examining it to be a consciousness of self as something imperfect, limited, finite, and therefore as involving an idea of something perfect and infinite, which I contrast myself and find myself short of it (Webb, 1949).
Kant: Interesting and yet so wrong. My concept of consciousness is that of apperception. It is not to be understood as self-consciousness or self-awareness. Rather, apperception is a capacity to be aware of one’s spontaneous activities, and it can be further analysed as the ability to respond to rules and norms.
(at this point Descartes leaves to visit the Gent’s; they are in a pub; I drink therefore I wee)
Kant: Now that Rene is not here, how do we know that he exists? We cannot prove that he exists without observing him, and you say that observation is biased. He is now an object of pure thought, just as god is.
Locke: We can prove his existence because we have experienced him.
Kant: You cannot guarantee his continuous existence once we are not observing him. And when was the last time you ‘experienced’ god Locke?
Hume (interrupts): We cannot prove he exists. There is no being whose existence can be demonstrable. Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction. Nothing, that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction (Hume, 1990)
Kant: You cannot say to ‘know’ something to exist when you simply believe in its’ existence. From epistemological point of view, knowledge is distinct from belief by justification. In Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, belief in a supernatural God is outside the natural domain of scientific investigation because all scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable in the natural world. Therefore Locke, as you are an empiricist, do you not agree?
Locke: The argument from degree suggested by Aquinas, states that there must exist a being which possesses all properties to the maximum possible degree. As I wrote in my Essay V: since I know intuitively that I exist as a thinking thing, and since nothing can be made to exist except by something else which both exists and has powers at least equal to those of each of its creations, it follows that from all eternity there must have existed an all-powerful cogitative being.
Kant: But nothing dictates that there really has to be a being like that! And besides, the concept of God is in any case not the concept of one particular object of sense among others but rather an “object of pure thought”, of something that by definition exists outside the field of experience and of nature. With regards to previously mentioned unicorns, we can specify how we could determine that unicorns exist, i.e., what spatio-temporal experience of them would look like. With regard to the concept of God, there is no way for us to know it as existing in the only legitimate and meaningful way we know other objects as existing. We cannot even determine “the possibility of any existence beyond that known in and through experience” (Kant, 2007)
Descartes (returns and interrupts): All of this proving, knowing and investigating the existence of god miss the point entirely. The word God has a meaning in human culture and history events occur due to the ‘spirit of the time’, really when talking about god, should we not consider the cultural and intellectual context?
Kant: as in all of science, you always have to consider all contexts. But think about it, the idea that god could possibly be a ‘changeable being’ is purely an anthropomorphised projection of human will onto a non-existent being, if an infinite being of infinite wisdom existed it would be infallible and not limited by human concepts such as decision, whims, opinions, etc. and therefore, forever unchangeable. The fact that the will of the so called god changes over time implies that this is a human construct rather than the will of a supreme being.
Hume: Besides, as philosophers it is our duty to separate the truth from need to produce a qualitative approach to life. It seems Rene, that you cannot separate your need of god from reality. As Kant just said, it is your human nature that is craving an existence of god.
Descartes (seems agitated): you are coming at me with all that psychological stuff, while we are supposed to be dealing with one of the most important questions of all times!
Kant: But would you not agree that psychology sets the boundaries for philosophy? Psychology sets the boundaries within which philosophy can range. The narrower the range of a person’s psychological understanding of life, so correspondingly will the authentic range of his philosophy also be narrow. Without an adequate understanding of life, so the thinker is dependent on imagination and prejudice when trying to stretch his ideas to fit aspects of reality that he has never experienced. You simply have been presented with the level of truth that contradicts your pre-determined beliefs, rather than restricting yourself to logical boundaries you are taking illogical leaps to accommodate those beliefs.
Descartes: Oh yes! The truth and knowledge! I have defined knowledge in terms of unshakable conviction, I do not know if you are aware of that? I think there is no stated requirement that the would-be knower’s conviction is to be true, as opposed to being unshakably certain.
Locke: So, truth is not a requirement of knowledge?
Descartes: The goal is not absolute truth but absolute certainty!
Kant: You are extremely biased! And again, you just simply twist and turn things to fit with your thinking. It seems that all your arguments are that you really, really believe in something.
Descartes: As I wrote in my Meditations. I insist on indefeasibility, my aim is to once and for all, to lay a lasting foundation for knowledge. To achieve this, I contend that we cannot possibly go too far in our distrustful attitude. It is better to have a standard that excludes some truths, than one that justifies some falsehoods.
Hume: You have no grasp of irony! In attempt to prove your point, you said something against it! You say that you can imagine something so it is true and then you say that you have to distrust even if you were to omit some truth, however, you have no evidence that your beliefs are true. Either you are contradicting yourself or you do not follow your own rules.
Locke: Either you discover the demonstrative connections through which the truth of an individual proposition can be established with certainty, or it plays the most crucial role in certifying the legitimacy of a revealed proposition as divine rather than merely delusive. Even though faith can play a role in human life, reason remains the most important basis for genuine human knowledge
Freud (All along was sitting at the next table, he interrupts): It seems that your mind is at conflict with itself, which in my opinion causes you great anxiety and unhappiness. I think that it must stem from some innate need for a parental figure. The need to have a dominant figure in life. When we grow up, there is a need for structure, which is usually provided by the parents, the father who enforces things, and nurturing mother. When we are grown, we lack that in our lives. So perhaps god is that nurturing and guiding power that people lack otherwise. It is something that you can look up to, once you lost the innocent idea that parents are the strongest, truest and most perfect people in the world. God is omniscient, according to many that believe in a god. That is something that the human nature admires.
Kant: That is a great suggestion. That would explain the account for his inability to use reason on this subject. Regardless, whether god exists or not, humans have a desire for one and use him to fill in the voids in their lives.
Freud: They need somewhere to run to with their fears, ignorance, and their problems Nonexistance outside the realm of life is a scary though. Life is uncertain and people need something they can count on.
If you read all the way to here, then congratulations, and thank you.
As an extra treat here’s a clip of one of my favourite comedians explaining religion:
References:
Descartes, R. (2000). Meditations and other metaphysical writings. London: Penguin Books
Hobbes, T. (1996). Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hobbes, T. (1994). Human nature and de corpore politico. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hume, D. (1990). Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. London: Penguin Books.
Kant, I. (2007). Critique of pure reason. London: Penguin Books
Webb, C. C. J. (1949). A history of philosophy. London: Oxford university Press.
