Philosophy Humor

The just desserts of a bit of goofing around on the internet (when I should be sending out job applications, calling apartment managers, and eating strawberry cake). The more you know about these philosophers, the funnier this stuff will be. Consider yourself warned.

Monty Python's International Philosophy Football Match:



Monty Python's Philosophers Drinking Song

Here is an absolutely hilarious collection of Philosophical Powers philosopher action figures conceived by a grad student at Indiana University some years back. This is what I should have been doing with myself for the past several years. There has to be some way to market my degree. Perhaps philosophy children's books would still work...

The Postmodern Generator -- randomly generates essays with a postmodernist twist.

There's more, like philosophy in one syllable words, but I need some sweets.

The Philosophy-Culture Pipeline

Periodically I hear (mostly non-Academia) folks tout philosophy's importance along the lines of some sort of trickle-down effect that it has on culture at large. I suppose the claim could be made for most any discipline, but, honestly, I don't know quite what to make of it. On the face of it, it seems to me a connection that would be very difficult to track. I suspect that it rests on some sort of false cause fallacy: we see what philosophers are saying, we see what the hoi poloi say, and we find that they are roughly similar. So, we assert a causal connection, one in which the masses follow the thoughts of the practitioners in the Ivory Tower. But why should we think that the causal flow of ideas goes in that direction? Does Academia really hold that much influence over culture? If so, how?

Assuming that it does, perhaps the connection could be traced through the fact that nowadays most people end up going to college, and at the university they learn certain things that they take with them back into the populace. Take ethical relativism as an example. Have people learned this at the university and transmitted it like a cold to their fellow travelers? Or this amorphous thing called "postmodernism"--do people catch it in the Tower and spread it through the countryside? I have my doubts.

Maybe it's through the proliferation of books that ideas get disseminated. People read them, ingest the ideas in them, and expel them at different points in their lives. But this reading, along with the previous one, suggests that the Educated Ones set the cultural marks. Of this I am suspicious, though it may very well be true. (Perhaps I am suspicious of it because it is true.)

Of course, all of this assumes that we have a referent for "culture," but to what does the term refer? The Average Joe? The Businessman? The Academician? The Son, Daughter, Father, Mother? And how do we assess the ideas of a culture--polling data? (The Poll, what a dangerous invention!) Subject matter of books? (Ah, but then we're caught in a circle!) What the Academicians are teaching? (The circle!)

The more interesting question to me is not one of causal influence, but of existence. How does a Zeitgeist even come about? Think of the Middle Ages, a time when the Church was the big kid on the block. By the 17th and 18th centuries, this was no longer the case. What happened? We could cite both the Renaissance and Reformation here--both were reactions against the Church, though in starkly different ways. The Renaissance focus on divinely-unaided reason seemed to win out eventually, and soon Nietzsche signaled the death of God. (Was he simply putting in words what was already the case? Or did he bring it about?) The rise of science, practiced (for the most part) in terms of natural rather than divine explanations, surely played a part. (Were the scientists simply applying an already-present mindset where God had no special explanatory place? Or did they bring it about?) But after a series of aborted attempts to show that reason could figure everything out, even its privileged place came under attack. And here we are. We don't need God and human reason is basically suspect. Is this the spirit of our age? It seems to flow with a life of its own*, and everyone gets caught up in it.

Philosophers, like everyone else, are necessarily immersed in a culture, in a way of life, in a (dare I say it?) Zeitgeist ("spirit of the time"), a Volksgeist ("spirit of the people"). So, I suspect that the philosophy-culture influence runs both ways. The Academician does not live in the Tower; he only works there. The Academician manipulates the geist in various ways--puts words and labels to it, tests connections, concretizes abstractions, which then get taken up once again outside of the Tower. Perhaps in some eras the influence is more one-sided, but in the main I'm guessing it's a two-way street.


*I say "seems." In these ruminations, I certainly don't mean to bracket the providence of God in history. All of history is God's history. It is not as if it has slipped out of His hand. But within His ultimate providence there are secondary influences, and it is these of which I speak. To cite the providence of God is not to annul them.

Meeting A Stranger

Existentialist thought is very much concerned with the existing individual. Heck, the existing individual (as opposed, say, to the abstract, metaphysical, or theoretical individual) is absolutely central to existentialist thought, as it is that around which existentialist themes and issues revolve. The center of the existentialist solar system. The music in the Sartrean iPod. The creamy nougat center of...well, maybe not that, but for an atheistic existentialists like Sartre the absolute freedom and complete autonomy of this creamy nougat center is jeapordized by the Other, by the outsider, the not-I who imposes limitations on the self. What others think of me limits the possibility open to me as to how I not only could imagine but also could create myself to be. And if I'm interested in keeping hold of my absolute freedom and complete autonomy, others are my existential enemies. They put me in a box, but I cannot be caged. They see what I am not; they perceive an illusion, that I am "this way" or "that way," that I have this essence or that essence. There is no essential nature that I fall into in my existing; rather, it is my existing, my making the choices that I make, that creates whatever responsibility-inducing "essence" I may have.

As Jules in Pulp Fiction says: "I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth." It strokes my ego. It tickles my pride. It romps around with my fancy. But it is I who perceive the illusion. The heart is deceitful above all else. Sartre was particularly concerned about the essence-existence relationship in light of God's existence: if God exists, then there is an essential nature that we have according to which we should (but might not) conform in our existing. This creates ethical obligations for us as existing individuals, and obligations get in the way of our freedom and autonomy, which is bad, so let's do away with God's existence--at the very least, let's say that "Christian existentialism" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

This idea that God as Creator and us as creation creates ethical obligations upon us is something that Horton focuses on in Lord and Servant. Horton even talks about our being in the image of God in covenantal-ethical terms rather than in terms of essence or ontology. Horton puts the relationship between God and man in terms of meeting a stranger. While some (like Tillich) would say that in meeting God we meet some aspect of ourselves that once remained hidden but now is revealed, while others (like Derrida) would say that we cannot meet God because is being is simply unavailable to us, Horton strikes a middle ground in saying that, yes, we actually meet God, there is a relationship to be had, but we do not meet God as He is in Himself or to Himself. He is still a stranger to us in the sense that his being is undisclosed, it is forever veiled from our mind's eye. But this ontological (regarding God's being) and epistemological (regarding our knowledge of God's being) situation is not a problem, for our relationship to God is essentially ethical (and personal) in its being covenantal. We don't need to know God in the fullness of His being in order to know Him or have a relationship with Him. We need only know Him in the ways in which He reveals Himself, ways that truly reflect who He is, ways that force a response on our part--to heed the call or to reject it.

Sartre was right that God as Creator creates ethical obligations for humanity. Sartre was right that we, in our self-righteous, rebellious autonomy, don't like it. It's tough to be told that you are breaking rules imposed by an Other, rules that you neither agreed to nor desire to follow. That's what really rankles someone like Sartre. That's what really rankles us. But we are either covenant breakers or covenant keepers. That is what essentially defines us, whether we like it or not.

Journaling and the Other

Blogging and journaling. I'm not quite sure what the proper grammatical etiquette is for turning 'journal' from a noun into a verb into a gerund. 'Blog' involves that sneaky extra 'g,' but a parallel extra 'l' just didn't look right for 'journal'--not a good ground for grammar standards, I know. (But nice alliteration, right?) Anyway, back to the topic that hasn't yet developed into a topic...which begs the question of whether I can legitimately refer to said topic. What exactly am I referring to? Not the topic as I intend it to be, since that has yet to happen. The topic has been introduced but not developed, so I could be said to be referring to the topic generatim at some stage of its being, or, more accurately, the topic in the possibility of its closed actuality. So, I am referring to the topic as I intend it, in terms of its future rather than its present, and at the same time to the topic as I don't intend it, void of the particulars I wish to attach to it. Enough of paradox.

"After my death, no one will find in my papers (this is my consolation) the least information about what has really filled my life, find the inscription in my innermost being which explains everything and what, more often than not, makes what the world would call trifles into, for me, events of immense importance, and which I too consider of no significance once I take away the secret note which explains it" (Kierkegaard, Journals, IV A 85).

One commentator claims that Kierkegaard knew that his journals would be published someday and ransacked for biographical clues to help unravel mysteries behind his published works. Doesn't it sound odd to say that when he started them at twenty years old he wrote with an audience in mind, an audience other than himself? Not really. The very act of bringing our private thoughts outside of ourselves into a common medium, whether by writing in a diary or typing on a blog, automatically involves an Other, someone else to witness it. (Not the 'Other' of the Lost kind, but the 'Other' of the existentialist kind.) No matter how small the audience, there is an audience, an audience that is other than ourselves. Despite Kierkegaard's quote above, we all want to be understood by someone else, we desire to be heard, we yearn to be acknowledged. It may be that we never actually experience this, it may be a mere possibility, a tiny hope in the back of our minds, but the longing is there. If only someone, somewhere, at some point says "Yes," it is enough. Writing out our thoughts, feelings, hopes, and desires--burying a chest that we hope will someday be considered a lost treasure. Bringing the private into the public--this is what we do when we journal, even when we purposefully place the notebook among those books on our shelves that we trust no one will go near. We entertain the guilty pleasure of someone else seeking us out even in those dusty places.

At the same time, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Other. Sartre had this in mind when, in his play No Exit, he has a character exclaim, "Hell is other people." In Being and Nothingness, he says a great deal about the fear that engulfs relationships, the fear of being misunderstood, the fear of losing one's freedom in the tyrannical gaze of the Other, of having one's self stand bare before it. We seek the welcoming Embrace of the Other, yet our fear of being known and judged in that Embrace also repels us. In journaling we walk the thin line of the embrace. No, we have a foot planted firmly on both sides. Once in high school, I remember my mom read some of a journal I was keeping. I remember she snickered about it. My fear realized? I suppose. Did I get angry? Sure. But I wasn't angry that she read it. I was angry that I was present in the Embrace. Fear lends itself to this distance, to not-being-present in the Embrace. There is even a certain self-referential fear I have in reading what I've written in the past--I'm my toughest critic. I distance myself from it to the extent that it becomes merely interesting, a "Hmph, how cute," a parental snicker at myself-become-Other. That's not me in those pages. Yet, it is.

Blogging is different. It is geared toward the public from the outset. In its very composition, it is published for public consumption. I suspect our blogs would look very different from our journals, were we to do both. Yet, what interests me is that, I suspect, even our private publications contain a public component, though I also suspect that we would rather our unveiling be postponed until we are no longer present.

The Simpsons and Cultural Decay

Is the popularity of The Simpsons a symptom of a general decay of culture and cultural literacy? It is an often silly, slapstick show appears to lack significant depth. It is a cartoon--certainly not the kind of medium that one would think of as a vessel of high culture. Among it's main characters are a slow-witted idiot dad, a rebellious son, a whiny liberal daughter, an incompetent police chief, and a herd of degenerate school bullies. Over the years, such a picture has certainly been given as a reason to steer clear of the show. But an essay I recently read on the use of allusion in The Simpsons makes the interesting suggestion that a deeper sign of our cultural illiteracy is the fact that many of the allusions made in the show go unnoticed by most people.

Being culturally literate--what does this mean? I take it to mean being familiar with a host of aspects of one's (and others') culture, with regard to both "high culture" and pop-culture. The Simpsons is chock full of allusions to both. In conjunction with the slapstick and often low-brow comedy of the show, there are enough cultural references to keep the ignorant and interested busy for a while. There are repeated allusions to both high art and pop-culture, to TV shows (old and new) and classic literature (old and new), to music, film, and (on occasion) paintings. I would even go so far as to say that attempting to understand the myriad allusions made in The Simpsons would take one a long way to becoming more culturally literate.

An allusion is not just a matter of getting a reference. It is also a matter of grasping the role that the reference plays in the context of its being given. In one episode, baby Maggie is put in a daycare called the "Ayn Rand School for Tots" where the headmaster is reading The Fountainhead Diet. So far, this is mainly a straightforward reference to the fact that Ayn Rand wrote a book called The Fountainhead, which is attached to the cultural phenomena of diets in our day being based on just about any outlandish thing. A diet based on Ayn Rand's philosophy? The absurdity alone is funny stuff. Where the reference goes deeper is when Maggie's pacifiers are taken away from her. (In the show, Maggie always has a pacifier in her mouth.) This isn't just funny--it is downright hilarious. In Ayn Rand's radical libertarian philosophy, the independence of the individual is stressed over all else. In her novels, she offers some very persuasive arguments against socialist and communist ideas like "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." That unproductive individuals are parasitic upon productive ones is condoned by society is anathema to her. In the simple and almost secondary act of taking away the child's dependence on a pacifier is completely in keeping with this philosophy, but on a level that we would not expect: the children in a daycare. The tots are taught early on to fend for themselves and not depend on other people or other things.

Granted, not every episode includes such allusions and the allusions cover a whole range of cultural references, but they nevertheless occur with surprising frequency. And getting the allusions is satisfying. There is a certain pleasure not only in getting a reference but in understand the impact of that reference on the situation at hand. An allusion presents a kind of complex reference that, due to its multifaceted nature, is gratifying to recognize. There is something intellectually--perhaps humanly--delightful about it. I think this is why I also like MST3K, whose allusions cover the gamut from low- to high-culture references. There is something aesthetically beautiful and incongruous about the allusions made in these shows--allusions that often connect references and their meanings to situations that one would not normally connect them to. Hence, the incongruity. Hence, the humor. Hence, the delight.

Christian Philosophers

The RUF at here at UGA began a Christian worldview series this past fall. The idea is to have Christians from different academic disciplines talk about how to approach and practice that discipline in a Christian manner. The first talk was on literature. I'll be giving the second one, on philosophy, in a few weeks. As I've been thinking and reading in preparation for it, I ran across this paper by Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga. His main point in the paper is to offer some advice on how to approach philosophy in a distinctively Christian way. When I came across this statement, "Christian philosophers, however, are part of the Christian community; and it is part of their task as Christian philosophers to serve the Christian community," I was struck with shame. As much as I've attempted--and continue the essay--to approach philosophical issues in a Christian way (thanks to an early influence from Christian philosophers Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen), I have very nearly ignored the potential service I could bring to the Christian community. I have thought very little about what possible contributions I could make and even less about how to practically carry them through. I have used the word "could," but Plantinga goes further, saying that it is part of my task as a Christian philosopher. It is not just something I could do--it is something I should do.

In a similar vein, I've been reading a series by Michael S. Horton where he applies a covenantal framework to various theological and philosophical issues. (The first book, which I've read twice, is Covenant and Eschatology, the second is Lord and Servant, and the third will be coming out sometime in the near future.) I've never read anything by Horton, mainly because I've known him for putting out books of popular theology and, for whatever reasons, have tended to steer clear of such reading. Generally, it just doesn't interest me much. This series, however, is some of the most serious academic and intellectual piece of scholarship I've seen in a while (not that I've seen a lot, mind you). Simply, it is a successful and stimulating attempt at developing and articulating a distinctively Christian (specifically, Reformed) approach to some very difficult and pressing contemporary theologico-philosophical problems. I have greatly benefitted from it, and it has spurred me to think more creatively and biblically about how to approach philosophy as a Christian philosopher. Highly recommended to those interested in biblical and philosophical theology.

Intelligent Design, Religion, and The Constitution

Some Pennsylvania parents are protesting the teaching of "intelligent design" (ID) decided by the Dover Area School Board in October. There seem to be two main points of criticism in the protest: (1) teaching ID constitutes teaching religion (and teaching bad science) and (2) teaching religion is unconstitutional. Granted, I don't know that much about ID, but what I do know about it doesn't strike me as a religion at all. Sure, its main tenet (as the name implies) is that an intelligent designer had/has a hand in the development of organisms, and it is touted by creationists as a viable scientific alternative to evolution, but its conclusions seem too broad to constitute religious teaching. With a little maneuvering, it could be used as part of religious teaching: the "intelligent designer" could be construed as the Christian God (laying aside whether this could be consistently managed). But this seems a far cry from being religious teaching. Any characteristics of this rather abstract "intelligent designer," beyond being intelligent and being a designer, is left open.

Nonetheless, the potential association of ID with a particular religion (or religions) is enough to bother folks. In fact, some spokespersons of the protesters cite the religious intentions of the School Board as part of their argument against ID. Now, it may be that the School Board insisted on teaching ID because they wanted to make room for some sort of Christian teaching on origins, but the intentions behind introducing ID and the specific claims that ID constitutes religious teaching are two different issues and should not be lumped together. The protesters, on this point anyway, seem to be engaged more in guilt by association than in cogent criticism. When you've got the ACLU of Pennsylvania Legal Director Witold Walczak saying things like, "Intelligent design is a Trojan Horse for bringing religious creationism back into public school science classes" and a Philadelphia lawyer saying, "The members of this school board have made their own religious beliefs part of the high school's science curriculum," you don't have a criticism of ID but a criticism of the School Board--and one that attributes sneaky motives to the Board, at that. Just today a BBC article reports that a federal judge claims that "the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom." Equating ID with the religious beliefs of the Board is just bad argumentation and comes dangerously close to an appeal to fear.

As for its being bad science or no science at all, this depends on how 'science' is defined. If by 'science' is meant a set of testable/falsifiable hypotheses or a set of statements at least some of which are testable/falsifiable, ID (as I understand it) could be considered scientific. My guess, however, is that the protesters (and most anyone else) consider anything scientific to be whatever is compatible with currently-accepted theory--in other words, whatever can fit with evolutionary theory. Of course, when you've got a working definition of science along these lines, ID isn't going to make it.

I suspect that the danger motivating these criticisms is the supposed consitutionality of the separation of church and state. The BBC article even states that "the separation of church and state is enshrined in the US constitution." Give me a break. There are few issues so enshrouded by misunderstanding and ignorance--well, misunderstanding and ignorance of the origins of the phrase 'separation of church and state' (which , BTW, does not occur anywhere in the Constitution). But the original intent of the phrase, like so many other constitutional issues, has been passed over for decades. Whereas it was originally offered by Jefferson to keep the State from promoting a State Religion, it is now used to remove anything that remotely smacks of the supernatural from anything that remotely smacks of public/civic property. The same concern with promoting religion remains, but the boundaries of what counts as promoting and what counts as religion (or, more accurately, religious) have changed considerably. Welcome to the consequences of a pluralistic society.

But it's not comprehensively pluralistic, now is it? Wouldn't pluralism mean that we would include a plurality of views in the so-called marketplace of ideas? There is a sense in which freedom of religion, for example, implies (at the very least, accomodates) a plurality of religious views among the populace. But when it comes to the realm of the government-sponsered/maintained/controlled, there is not the same room for plurality. For a view like ID to be allowed by the government (aka "public") schools amounts to its being promoted by the government schools. Since when did allowing a view to be offered amount to endorsement? Absurd.

The philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend once argued (in the 1950s) that a truly pluralistic society should allow any view to be put forward. And he meant any. He even argued that something like creationism should be allowed alongside evolution in science education. His anarchistic ("anything goes") view of science is not exactly in vogue among scientists or philosohers of science, but it has deep roots in competition. He saw scientific education as something of a battle royale: put everybody in the ring and, given enough time, someone would come out victorious. To be sure, he didn't think creationism would get the belt, but his point was that other views like evolution could only be made stronger when pitted against opponents--and the stronger the opponent, the better. Competition tests the mettle. What doesn't kill a view makes it stronger. I wonder if protesters of teaching ID in the public schools are worried that evolution wouldn't make the cut... Probably not. They probably are more worried that allowing something that even remotely resembles religion in the schools would turn into a coup by religious fundamentalists.

If your bath towel stinks, and you're not even close to it, does that mean it's time to get a new one? I mean, um, hypothetically speaking.

Of course, this question has all sorts of nasty little philosophical buggers in it, some of which we've been discussing in one of my classes. What does it mean for something to stink when I'm not smelling it? Can something stink while not being smelled? We usually think that it would smell bad even if we weren't around to smell it. But how would we know that it was stinky? We couldn't unless we were smelling it. For something to be stinky is for it to be smelled (and determined as stinky). Does this mean that smelling it (as stinky) makes it stinky? Interesting.

We have before us (at least) two choices concerning a property of a thing, sense experience of that property, and the relationship between them.

1. The bath towel's property of being stinky causes the sense experience of smelling it (as stinky).
   
2. Smelling the bath towel (as stinky) causes the bath towel to have the property of being stinky.
   

Hmm. (1) seems to be the most common sensical. But (2) isn't quite worded correctly, because we weren't concerned with the sense perception causing the property of the towel but rather with the sense perception being the reason for attributing the property to the towel. Without the sense perception, we wouldn't know that the towel was stinky, but the towel could have the property of being stinky without someone's smelling it. Epistemologically speaking (that is, regarding one's knowledge of the bath towel's properties) the sense perception is prior to the property possessed by the bath towel; this is because we wouldn't know that it had the property until we smelled it. Metaphysically speaking (that is, regarding what the bath towel is in itself), the property is prior to the sense perception; this is because we wouldn't receive a sense perception unless it had that property. Although this epistemological-metaphysical distinction might make sense, does it make sense to say that a property which is perceived by the senses can exist when unperceived?

Can't you tell that I have papers that need grading? That this is procrastination, not heartfelt philosophical monologue? That I need to go outside my apartment for the first time today?

the value of fiction

One of the last essays in The Simpsons and Philosophy that I read appealed to some accounts of the value of fiction as a pedagogical tool, particularly with regard to ethics. In one of these accounts, the usual way in which philosophers talk about ethics--abstract prose essays--is contrasted with the way in which fiction presents itself--concrete situations. The value of the latter over the former, so the account goes, is that the latter is more realistic insofar as it portrays the ethical situation in the kind of detail and with the attendant messiness of characters and circumstances that is present in a situation we would be likely to find ourselves faced with. The reason why abstract essays are the usual vehicle for such discussions (and for just about any philosophical discussion) is because it allows the level of analysis and evaluation needed to make sense out of the (abstract) concepts and principles that are at work in the concrete, realistic situations we come up against. For the most part, fictional accounts tell us how characters do act in certain situations, but they do not typically show us why we should or should not act that way. They offer examples and illustrations, not principles and guidelines. Yet, ethical principles and guidelines given in the abstract apart from concrete situations in which they might occur is nearly always pedagogically unhelpful. It is much easier for us to grasp particulars. The fact that fiction offers such realistic illustrations is a value that it has, for it is in such illustrations that values and principles are reflected or opposed (rather than taught). Last semester I used two of Camus' novels for this very purpose to illustrate some of Camus' existentialist ideas. This semester I used a portion of Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov to illustrate the problem of evil. I often refer to movies that students are likely to have seen to make points. (I am including television shows and movies as kinds of fiction.)

And yet, in many instances, fiction is not very realistic at all--at least in the sense of being an accurate reflection of how (we think) our world is. I am reminded of Tolkien's essay On Fairy Stories, the great portion of which he discusses the value and function of "fantasy" tales. (I use that word hesitatingly, but Tolkien would probably approve of it so long as it wasn't meant in a pejorative sense.) One of the strengths of what Tolkien calls Fantasy is Recovery--its ability to bring back to our attention those things that have become too familiar or trite from overexposure. This is achieved precisely because fantasy worlds are so different from our own.

"Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. . . . For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen."

Fantasy is a sub-type of fiction, one that presents a world that is purposefully different from our own; this isn't the case in any type of fiction, and so Tolkien's remarks should be qualified with regard to fiction in general. I think they can be qualified in this way: although fiction presents situations in a different world, however much like our own it is, that world is like ours in that situations occur in which characters respond in particular, determinate ways with the same sorts of emotional and intellectual responses. In so far as these fictional worlds do this, they can be instructive reflections.

In another account, a value of fiction is that it provides wealth of experiences that we ourselves could never possess in a lifetime. "In a month of reading, I can try out more lives than I could test in a lifetime" (Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction). These experiences could be instructive for potentially similar situations that we might find ourselves in in the future. We do this by identifying with characters in fictional worlds. Yet, paradoxically, while drawing us in there is a sense in which fiction also keeps us out. We can never be those characters. There is a safety that fiction brings, a safety reflected in "trying out" the lives of characters.

The identification is not complete, nor can it be--nor, perhaps, should it be. One of the things that strikes me about a show like The Simpsons is that it can make clear what we shouldn't do in certain situations, usually by making the absurdity of the situations downright hilarious. Bart and Homer are perfect examples of what not to do in a particular situation (a fact that is lost on those who criticize the show for the bad examples these characters give for children and parents alike). The caricatures of the characters, far from being "realistic," serve all the more to highlight aspects of ourselves that we should either emulate or be wary of.

Interestingly, Christ used parables--a type of fiction--almost exclusively to teach His disciples and others. In them, we come across characters who we identify with and whose examples we should follow. But there are also characters whose examples we should not follow--and yet Christ's point was often that we can (and should) identify ourselves with them, as well! How many of us are like those who passed the wounded man on the side of the road, refusing to give aid? How many of us are like the man who, having been forgiven his debt, turn right around and demand "payment" for lesser "debts" to ourselves? There is value to such recourse to fiction, but, as Christ did with His dim disciples, it should be attended with (abstract) explanations of what the fictional accounts are supposed to be illustrations of for them to be most effective.

The Evil of Katrina

Having family in the Jackson, MS area (it was still Hurricane Katrina when it passed Jackson) and a dear friend in New Orleans, I've been keeping up some with the news in those parts but haven't really had the chance to post much about it. Reading The Times Picayune's blog for the past few days has been quite sobering. With all of the flooding, looting, killing, martial law, SWAT teams, and floating dead bodies stories going around, it becomes a bit shocking, too. My brother and his family are still without power (and likely will be for weeks), but my parents got power last night. Everyone is fine, no damage to houses, etc. The MS Gulf Coast didn't fare so well. Casinos pushed up on land--one straddling Highway 90, another sitting atop a Holiday Inn. Almost nothing but slabs where houses once stood from 1/2 mile to a mile inland. (You can find some video footage of the areas hit here.)

But I'm certain the news will not be so good for my friend, who has been working for years in New Orleans as a teacher at Desire Street Academy. I haven't been able to get in touch with him as of yet, but my brother and sister-in-law tell me that he took some of the DSA boys (not sure about their families) up to Twin Lakes camp (a ministry of First Presbyterian Church, PCA, Jackson). I've been told that the boys have since been housed by families willing to take them in for the time being. The 9th Ward, where Desire Street Academy is/was, was close to where the Industrial Canal levee breached and where a lot of the rooftop rescues were taking place. (Here is an article that has a video link explaining the 17th Street Canal breach.)

Ah, but now let us get down to doing some philosophy. At least one good thing coming out of Katrina's destruction and mayhem is that it furnishes fresh examples of natural evil and moral evil, types of evil used to argue against God's existence (here is one encyclopedic article on "The Problem of Evil" argument--Section 1.1 gives the shortest version; sometimes a distinction is also made between the evidential problem and the logical problem). I'll be talking about this problem in my Intro class in a couple of weeks.

Basically, the logical or theoretical problem is that if God is all-powerful, He could stop evil; if He is all-good, He would want to stop evil; if He is all-knowing, He would know when and where evil occurs. But since evil exists/there is evil in the world, He is lacking one of those properties and, therefore, this kind of God does not exist. The question that something like Katrina's aftermath bids us ask is, Is such destruction compatible with God's existence?

Thinking about the problem only in terms of these three attributes of God narrows the argument quite a bit. In a post-Fall world, account must be taken of both the natural and moral effects of sin. After all, the ground was cursed (Gen. 3:17) and longs for restoration (Rom. 8:20-22), and there was the introduction of enmity among mankind (e.g., Cain and Abel). But does the cursing of the ground also include in its scope such things as tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, and the like? Would these have been the result of "natural laws" that God put in place at Creation, of a world that God called "good"? Perhaps. Regardless, it is clear that God not only Himself cursed the ground (and all the things that entails), but also that He uses such means to accomplish certain ends. He sent a flood to destroy everyone except 8 people (Gen. 6:13; 2 Pt. 2:5); He rained fire and brimstone down on an entire city (Gen. 19); He used the earth to swallow up blasphemers (Num. 16:31-35); etc.

The point here is that even if these natural disasters (insurance policies used to--maybe still do--put these and other things under the heading "acts of God") are, in fact, natural, it does not "excuse" God. He is not a deistic God who set up Mother Nature and then left it to run its course. He is intimately involved in the world; He is in total control. So, we could add "sovereign" or "all-controlling" to our list of divine attributes. We could also add "all-just" to the list, at the very least since the above examples from scripture are all cases where God responded to the sins of man. But this only puts the ball farther in God's court. If He is all-controlling, then there is some real sense in which He sends disasters on the world (and the people in it). And this doesn't seem like the just thing to do!

A "free will defense" of God is sometimes offered in response to the problem of evil. This touches on moral evil (rather than natural evil): evil that results from our doing bad things to one another. The idea here is that God gives us free will, but we just happen to do bad things with it--like looting stores after a hurricane, or shooting a cop in the head because he tries to stop us from looting. What kind of God would it be, the defense goes, if he kept getting in the way of our free will, especially since He made us that way? And, yet, He could stop it being all-powerful and all-controlling. But He doesn't. This just doesn't seem to be compatible with His nature. It just doesn't seem right.

In fact, it seems downright cruel. It doesn't seem like something a good designer would allow. How could God allow so many people in NOLA and on the MS Gulf Coast to be homeless for months, to have nothing to go back to, to have loved ones die? These are real evils. We shouldn't try to escape this fact and make such evil out to be less than what it is.

I have been talking about the problem of evil as a logical problem: the existence of God and the existence of evil are inconsistent with one another. One way out is to deny one, some, or all of the attributes of God that I've laid out. I will certainly not take that route. Another way out is to deny the reality of evil. That's out of the question, as well. What, then? The real core of the problem, I think, is not logical but epistemological and psychological. It is psychological in the sense that it is emotionally very difficult to deal with the cruelties we see and the often horrific effects of natural disasters such as Katrina. It is hard to find any rationale for them. And here is where the epistemological issue enters--we can't know or figure out why things like this happen. We cannot comprehend any sort of rationale for these things whatsoever. For the unbeliever, this is where the road ends. Ignorance without hope.

But for the believer, we have a God who has a sufficient reason for allowing and for bringing about the evil in the world--we just don't always know what that reason is. We are called to trust in this God, even in the face of the psychological and epistemological difficulties. So long as God has a sufficient rationale for the evil in the world, there is no longer an inconsistency. The problem is not a logical one for the believer. But we don't have to know or be able to give the rationale in order for this to be the case. We, like the unbeliever, also live in ignorance of many things...but we have hope and confidence. The unbeliever's hope is a false one. The unbeliever's confidence is groundless.

Alright! At least I have my lecture notes for that class done now...

Why Do You Believe In God?

This was a question that one of my students asked me on the first day of class. I knew, of course, that he was asking, What reasons do you have for God's existence? or something close to that. He wanted me to give an argument. But I didn't. The first answer that popped into my head was something Greg Bahnsen said in the introductory comments in his debate with Gordon Stein: he will be arguing for the Christian God's existence because he is a Christian. In the same way, he believes in God's existence because he is a Christian--because God saved him. (I heard him say this once as a response to the question of why he believed in God, but I can't recall from where.) This answer is essentially the one I gave to the student's question. I know you're asking for my reasons/evidence, but I'm going to give you a more basic answer, a causal answer, to your "Why?" question--the (causal) reason that I believe in God is because He saved me. And along with this come certain volitional (regarding the will) and intellectual changes and certain ethical/moral, ontological (regarding existence), epistemological (regarding knowledge) beliefs and principles that one takes on. It was a package deal, a worldview, that I took on, and included in that deal was the belief that God exists.

One of the first things we will talk about in that class is the question of God's existence, so I will have plenty to say later about particular reasons that I think are good ones for God's existence. But my package deal answer links up with one of my other classes. There we are reading W. V. Quine on the relationship between semantics (meaning of/in language) and ontology (existence). One of the things Quine is claiming is that semantics does not presuppose existence; words that designate things do not necessarily assume the existence of the thing designated. One consequence of this is that the terms we use to talk about things don't tell us what is, but only what we say there is. It doesn't tell us what exists; it only describes what our ontology (i.e., everything that we think exists) includes. So, Quine asks, how do we know what is/exists? How do we go about adopting an ontology (i.e., determining what exists and what doesn't)?

Well, he ties it to conceptual schemes (roughly translated: worldviews). Our ontology is determined once we have fixed upon a conceptual scheme. That is, once we have a worldview, we have an ontology--we have a list of existing things that goes along with the worldview. For Quine, the "simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged" and that "accommodate(s) science in the broadest sense" is the one we should adopt. But there are other ways one's conceptual scheme can be adopted: for instance, God could give you one. So, while I think Quine headed down the wrong path, I think he headed in the right direction by linking the question of what exists with the issue of one's worldview. (We could do the same with morality and epistemology, if we were so inclined and free of other more pressing responsibilities.)

So I don't think my answer was that far off the mark, although it wasn't the answer that was expected. In the end, the question of whether or not God exists becomes a question of rival worldviews--of which one is "better," the one that includes God or the one that doesn't. How do we answer that question? Well, I'm working on it...

What Is Philosophy?

Time to take a break from writing syllabi. I was pondering this question (a metaphilosophical question, in true philosophical fashion!) last night as I was writing the syllabi for my Honors Intro course. I have been stumped by it more than once--to the astonishment and fiendish delight of the enquirers. Any reasonably brief answer to the question "What is x?" will necessarily give only an approximate and incomplete picture of x. But it should also give an essential picture of it.

So, we can think about the question "What is philosophy?" (philosophy as an area of study) along the lines of "What is essential to philosophy?" or "What makes philosophy what it is?" We can think of what is essential to something as how it is different from other things--as what it uniquely possesses in contrast to other things. In our case, what distinguishes philosophy from science, or from history, or from mathematics?

One answer is in terms of its general subject matter. Science deals with nature. History deals with events. Mathematics deals with number(s). OK, fine, but what does philosophy deal with? Well... science, history, and mathematics, for starters. These disciplines themselves serve as the subject matter of legitimate subsets of philosophy. The philosophy of science does not "do science." It does not have the subject matter of science as its subject matter; rather, science itself is its subject matter. It asks questions about science that science qua science does not ask of itself: What counts as "science"? How is scientific progress measured? Is there such a thing as "progress" in science? How do changes in scientific theory occur? Why do they occur? Etc. The same goes for the other disciplines, history and mathematics.

This points to the general and abstract nature of the subject matter of philosophy. Truth, knowledge, reality, justice, beauty, thought, freedom, language, ethics, logic. These are among the ideas and concepts that are the stock and trade of philosophy. What does philosophy attempt to do with these general concepts and abstract ideas? Get to their essential nature, what they are--and follow the host of rabbit trails that issue from such an enterprise. This is the aim of philosophy.

This seems like a lot stuff to deal with. It is. This seems like an impossible aim to achieve. It is. One of the most frustrating things for students of philosophy is that there is always another objection, another criticism, another something that someone found wrong with the 42nd formulation of Position Y. There is rarely an intellectual resting place. And when one does arise, when there is common agreement, we call it natural science or biology or psychology. It ceases to be philosophy and becomes "the philosophy of." This, I suspect, is one of the marks--and beauties--of philosophy. But I'm not sure what to call it. Lack of unity in opinion? Certainly, there are other disciplines whose members do not agree on everything, and there are positions in philosophy upon which there is a majority of agreement. Unity of opinion need not mean unanimous agreement.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is that in philosophy anything is up for legitimate debate--even those things upon which there is the most agreement. Something to the effect of "No, we're not allowed to question that" is not a phrase you'll hear in the halls of philosophy. Are there certain assumptions in other disciplines that are not up for debate? I don't have many examples at hand, so this is likely more Kuhnian-inspired conjecture than researched fact, but I suspect so. Is the geneticist really going to allow as a genuine, open possibility that the concept of the gene is a fiction? I don't think so. Is the psychologist really going to debate whether or not we can find out anything about the workings of the human mind? No. To bring such things into question would be outside the scope of those disciplines. Is there anything comparable to this in philosophy? Is there anything that is not up for debate? It doesn't seem so. Again, there is certainly more agreement about some positions than others. But any proposed solution to any proposed problem will have detractors--and legitimate ones. Not just nay-sayers, but thinkers who bring real, legitimate beefs against the so-called solution showing that it isn't a solution after all. I imagine the reason for this is because there is no codified set of presuppositions within which philosophers must see the problems and solutions (at least none that I can think of offhand in the problem-solution context that I'm concerned with here). How can there be? Codified sets of presuppositions are part of the subject matter of philosophy!

Nonetheless, what I’ve just been talking about illustrates what I take to be the philosophical method: clarifying, justifying, and criticizing positions. In short, “doing philosophy” centrally involves argumentation. Now, it is obviously the case that other disciplines also deal in arguments. But my point here is that argumentation per se is the method of philosophy. Philosophy is a discipline centered around making and responding to arguments—giving reasons for positions held and critically evaluating those reasons and positions. Philosophy is not primarily a passive, fact-gathering discipline but one where an active, imaginative, critical spirit is at home. “Being critical” in this sense is not synonymous with being mean or tearing someone down. Such an attitude has more to do with unhealthy (and usually unfounded) arrogance than with philosophical inquiry and, for my part, has no place in philosophy. (Although, to be sure, there are arrogant philosophers!) Rather, being critical in the philosophical sense has to do with the ability to adequately understand a position and the reasons for it and to make reasonable judgments as to their worth.

To me, this is the most essential aspect of philosophy. The hallmark of philosophy is rational argument. The laboratory of the philosopher is the domain of ideas, where he builds hypotheses and looks for evidence to justify those hypotheses in the hope of actually getting somewhere.

Have I answered my question? Beats me. Break is over.