Philosophy 002 - the epistemology/metaphysics bowl of oatmeal

A couple of months ago I started this revolutionary series of posts on philosophy. By revolutionary, I mean that they it will likely cause Socrates to spin in his grave. In the first post, I discussed my reading in philosophy and set down my thoughts on epistemology, particularly how little we know, what that realization should mean to us and how to tell the difference between different levels of doubt. My approach sounds a little like Abbott & Costello’s Who’s on first? routine – with the concepts of I don’t know, I don’t care and enough being my predominant principles. If you have any more interest in it or don’t have a job and nothing to do, you can read it (11/10/15).

Towards the end, I wrote: “Just to make sure we are on the same page, when I ask the question of when we can say we have knowledge, I do not also mean to ask by it - when can we know something is real or true. Our knowledge is based on what we think is true or real and we may be completely wrong. If we learn we were wrong about a belief or fact, it merely means that we now have increased our level of doubt, or do not have enough certainty to believe we have knowledge.”

I want to here tackle that question of whether we can know “reality,” that is, the essence of things. Epistemology and metaphysics are considered two separate philosophical categories, but, in truth, it is impossible to separate them as one always bleeds into the other – that is, where what we can know bleeds into what there is and vise versa. Not only is it not possible to draw a line, but probably, we are always discussing both at the same time, because we are stuck in ourselves and all attempts to escape that, even with technology, must fail.

Don’t expect a handy formula from me or that I am going to try to settle any issues. Absolute truth is, of course, unknowable – except perhaps we can know that we can know something (right or wrong) and that we are limited in what we know. But, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least discuss both reality and our knowledge of it. And maybe that means mostly discussing things that are sometimes given as an answer, but really aren’t.

The first thing that pops into my mind in thinking about how we can know what is real, is that the answer is not faith. For many people, faith allows them to believe they know the truth, but I reject it as just a matter of opinion, convenience and comfort. I’ve discussed this in previous posts on occasion, mostly concerning atheism (Atheism on 4/28/13 and I promise not to eat your children on 5/30/10). I don’t want to repeat everything I wrote there, so it will be much shorter. Faith is merely a form of belief that something is true based on something other than evidence. Probably faith is most often discussed concerning the existence or not of God. Although people may share a religious faith in general, often that means that they say that they belong to the same religion (whether or not they know anything about it) or perhaps they have memorized similar or rituals, icons, prayers, etc. Even if someone is deeply knowledgeable about their religion's dogma, it doesn’t upgrade their faith to more than a belief and I find that even people professing the same faith, if they can speak openly, often differ on precisely what it means. Hence, there were and still are many divisions of religions, claims of what is the “true” religion and what is "heresy." One man’s true religion is another man’s cult and arguably, for every religious person, there is a unique religion. 

Science, which is essentially a disciplined approach to reason made to come closer to the "truth" does get us a little closer. By that I mean that I accept to some degree the philosophies of Charles Peirce and Karl Popper to the extent that we cannot know the truth, but through rigorous procedures, scientists or we ourselves can learn what is not the truth, and thereby by subtraction add to our empirical knowledge brick by brick, unpeeling layers and chipping away by experiment, moving forward haphazardly by educated guesses – hypotheses – and sometimes dumb luck (some would argue, mostly dumb luck).

But, Popper would tell you that at the bottom of science or any rational thought is some type of faith. First, all knowledge just leads to other questions, and eventually you get to those axioms or premises that can’t be proven or disproved, and you believe them because they seem necessarily true. One is the belief that reason can lead us to the truth or experience tells you that you can rely on it (like the sun coming up tomorrow or the earth not disintegrating beneath you). How do you prove that? You can’t. Still, every philosopher and scientist inherently accepts it, at least implicitly if they don’t think about it.

But is the “faith” that lets us accept basic premises of logic or reason the same type of “faith” that there is a God or that a religion is true? I don’t think so though we use the same word for it. The first is something that without which we could not use logic or reason or function and everything that we believe is real would no longer be a belief. The second is the acceptance of a much more complicated analysis without reason. As even believers know, it is quite possible to believe in or use reason without believing in God or religion. Though some philosophers/theologists argue that reason begins with the concept of a deity or God, I consider them so divorced from any reason or logic that can be cogently stated, that I can’t take it seriously. Even among philosophers who beat these issues to death in page after page, sometimes that is what the argument comes down to – we just know it isn’t so. Others can differ, of course.

Another category, perception, without reason or faith, is meaningless as far as knowledge is concerned, but I will add that it is undeniable that what we perceive has to pass through the filters of our senses, and that we can only approach existence or reality through them. We can know about things we can't perceive - for example, we can't perceive x-rays, but we can know they exist by perceiving their affect on other things, like marks on special film, or we can reason that things exist, which probably do, such as a black hole, but again we only get there by perceiving other things which we reason about.

But, whether we are applying faith or science or other processes like intuition, nothing can ever let us know what is true or real absolutely and reason, including science, and experience can only tell us what we are pretty sure isn’t true in particular times and places - and it is very uncertain knowledge. Descartes would argue that perhaps it is a dream or perhaps a demon has caused some belief, but I don’t think we have to go that far. Both reason and experience can tell us as much.

All this presupposes that there is a “truth” to be known, something we can call “reality” at the bottom of what we experience, even if we can never really approach it closely or know it fully. We can start, again like Descartes, and say, “I think, therefore I am.” It makes immediate and intuitive sense. Even if everything thought is wrong or what we think is doing the thinking ain’t – there has to be something. And maybe that is the one thing we can be surest of – there is something, not nothing, because we wouldn’t be having this discussion if there wasn’t.

In the beginning of the 20^th century though, the idea that there is some reality, something certain at the bottom of everything we think we see, hear, feel, etc., was thrown into question. It wasn’t the first time that the idea that we are not experiencing reality directly had been considered – Plato, Mahayana Buddhists, Bishop Berkeley and many others all discussed these issues. But with all of them, though they differ in some aspects, there was an underlying if unknowable reality. Even a minimal understanding of perception tells us that what we perceive is not identical with what exists, although once we state that, it becomes much harder to understand what exactly is there that we can’t comprehend. This is the juncture of metaphysics – which concerns that underlying reality - with epistemology. They are not the same though, even if the line is gray. If epistemology is a bottomless well, metaphysics is a bottomless well that we can’t even find. Said another way, we can always discuss what we know. It is not even clear if a statement about metaphysics even has any real meaning.

But as soon as I write this, I remember the little Kant that I possess. Usually, I shy from Kant because he is hard. But there are times I see a glimpse of something in his work that I suspect may be beyond Spinoza and onto something – if only there was only an easier way to think about it. There no doubt is truth in his concept of “things as they are” - as opposed to “things as we perceive them"; that part is easy. But then you start thinking about his concept of the noumena, which I think, in one sense is like Plato’s forms (a ridiculous philosophical idea, but possibly the first fully developed one in the West – something more than an aphorism or formula, which has perhaps framed a central discussion forever). And then when I start trying to understand positive as opposed to negative noumena, I google away from it very quickly. I’m working myself up to it, but like everything in philosophy, it is interpreted many different ways and Kant wasn’t all that clear – if he really understood his own concepts himself. Some day, maybe, I'll get to it.

Plato and Kant and all of that thought, sometimes hopelessly sharp and gloppy at the same time, but always untestable, at first glance seems to have lost a great deal of importance in the advent of quantum theory, which has been experimentally shown and has remarkable staying power. Even with all its paradoxes and mind-boggling concepts, most physicists believe it is the correct interpretation of nature. No, I don’t intend to work my way through that here either in any great detail, as I can’t satisfactorily summarize it in a few paragraphs. But it is not without its paradoxes too and that is where I want to focus. 

Standing on Max Planck’s shoulders (Planck was the initiator of the concept of quanta) Einstein’s work on the quanta of light in the same “miracle year” in which he formulated special relativity and two other revolutionary theories was a primary generator for later quantum theory by Bohr, Born, Heisenberg, Dirac, Schrodinger and others. But he himself was also quantum theory’s greatest critic. For quantum theory, as most widely interpreted (usually called the Copenhagen interpretation) has a view of reality that does not seem very real at all. It posits that underlying the material world we know are not just particles and waves, but probabilities about them.

If that sounds confusing, or just ridiculous, you are on the right track. The great physicist Richard Feynman famously said (at least everyone is sure it was him, though it isn't clear when and where) that if you think you understand quantum physics, then you don’t understand quantum physics. If that is true, then we are right back to the type of zen-like concepts that brings Plato, Berkeley, Kant and so on roaring back.  And that would be fine with most physicists. Because, first, most don’t seem to care if their theory is complete, because it is testable and therefore, in at least one sense of the word, provable. And, second, most if not all of the great physics theorists, if you scratch the surface, are philosophers at heart, and often wrote quite a bit about it.

Wasn’t I talking about Einstein? It's so easy to get lost in this stuff that I can’t blame any of the philosophers for the muddle. It’s like Bilbo Baggins told his nephew, Frodo –“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Dammit, I did it again. Anyway, Einstein would have these intense informal debates with Niels Bohr, who was perhaps as great a theorist, that were sometimes the real show at physics conventions. Bohr would hold strongly that there was essentially nothing underlying reality but probabilities which would “collapse” upon being observed into what we think is reality. Einstein claimed that “God does not play dice with the universe,” to which Bohr replied “Einstein, stop telling God what to do.” It was a lot more specific than that, but those are pithy summaries. They’d go back and forth but Bohr seemed to always come out on top, at least in the mind of most quantum theorists. 

Einstein, with two colleagues, Podolsky and Rosen, formulated a thought experiment which, if correct, meant at least that quantum theory was incomplete. In my own admittedly sketchy understanding, it goes like this: Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle holds that you cannot measure both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time, because the measurement of one itself affects measuring the second. You can conceive of a thought experiment though which would enable a particle to know of the spin of another particle at a distance – even an unimaginable distance like a different galaxy.

And this “spooky action at a distance” (Einstein’s phrase) concept, now usually called entanglement, would require that the information travel faster than light, which relativity says is impossible. All that probably sounds rather murky. Except, entanglement has been tested experimentally over and over again in every conceivable way, including with the most modern instrumentation. And the particles do act as if they seem to know instantaneously what a paired particle is doing.

To be clear as possible in this miasma, the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox did not mean quantum theory was wrong at all – some aspects of it have been declared to be the most experimentally proven concept of all time – but is an interpretation of the results. And there are other interpretations of it that I’m not going into here. Einstein simply offered that the theory was not complete and Heisenberg’s principle, which seemed unassailable, was therefore not necessarily true. But no matter what he threw out there, Bohr always seemed able to convincingly bat it down.

Except . . .  only recently, a group of scientists (Aephraim Steinberg and friends at the U. of Toronto) have claimed that their experiments have shown that Heisenberg’s principle does not always hold so tight (relax, not even going there), which, would mean, if they are correct, that now it appears that maybe Einstein was right after all, although it is too late to tease Bohr about it. All of this is the subject of those who are looking, as did Einstein, for a theory of everything or a quantum-relativity theory. Maybe it’s possible. Maybe it’s just not understood at all yet. But, if it is possible to solve this paradox, the technological revolution it would engender would probably make the computer revolution look like tinker toys in comparison.

So, of course, I went through all of that stuff in as light and fluffy a way as I could jn order to tell you what I think. Even with the most accurate of scientific apparatus, the answer to the questions of - is there an underlying reality, is there something more than potential or probabilities until something is observed, are there things as they are, and so on - continues to elude us. I'm not at all convinced by the Copenhagen interpretation. Plato’s answer that ideal forms exist is not more unsatisfying than the idea that probability is all there is until there is a collapse of waves into reality, at least metaphorically. Some may know the story recorded by Boswell that when he and Dr. Johnson came out of church and he said to Johnson that despite the unsatisfactory nature of Bishop Berkeley’s argument that matter did not exist, they could not refute it. Johnson simply stated, “I refute it thus,” and kicked a big rock. It seems though that Bohr and Heisenberg and others have determined that Johnson refuted nothing in terms of what existed before Johnson observed the rock and the wave pattern collapsed into its form. They hold it did not exist, and they and their successors can wave oodles of experimental results which say they have the better of the argument.

A well-known thought experiments popularly called Schrodinger’s Cat, was conceived by Erwin Schrodinger, one of the most brilliant of quantum theorists, who helped provide a mathematical basis for the science. Stated succinctly, if you have a cat in a locked box and dropped poison in the box, there is a 50% chance that the cat is alive or dead before you open the box, because that is when the probability waves collapse into reality - you just can't know when that is. You are probably thinking, I don’t care what anyone says, that cat is either dead or alive. And I agree. The truth is, as often as you read about Schrodinger’s cat, remember in your head that the experiment was made not to prove the Copenhagen interpretation, and that he himself rejected that interpretation. I admit to some confusion as to whether this is originally so or that he changed his mind, as I've read both, and to be honest, there is only so much rereading or research I can do on a topic if I ever want to post. I know as much as I do about him because I’ve read him directly, particularly a little read essay. But I believe that Schrodinger's original or latter interpretation is rarely stated accurately or fully in any popular retelling and perhaps even in physics’ books. Schrodinger, like many great physicists, was quite taken with philosophy, particularly ancient Greek philosophy (both he and Heisenberg wrote on the topic). His own views in the end are possibly even weirder than quantum theory, in short, that all existence is one great mind. But, this is not my conclusion either and I really don’t think even the most brilliant physicists have the advantage over us in thinking about it.

I doubt you disagree with Einstein and Schrodinger (and much less importantly, me). Something happens in that box. We don't know what it is, but it happened at a certain time that can be fixed, if we only knew how, and it isn't going to change upon our observation of it. There was a time, probably like many young people and some fictional authors, when I wondered if after I left a room, it blinked out of existence. This solipsism (all that exists is our own mind) or ego-centrism that the universe exists just for us, or whatever you want to call it, is passed by rapidly by most people as they age.

So, yada, yada, yada, let me sum up even shorter what I take from all of the above, in which I’ve as pithily as possible condensed my decades of reading philosophy, without all that many references to any particular philosopher or scientist from whom I may have glommed this or that idea:

There is a something which we can say is real. Upon saying that I am suddenly reminded of Thomas Carlyle’s response upon hearing that American transcendentalist Margaret Fuller remarked that “I accept the universe.” He said, “Gad, she’d better.” And so better we all. In fact, if you don’t read philosophy or about quantum science where the idea is batted about that maybe there is nothing, of course you accept the universe and never think about it. And even if you adopt a Bishop Berkeley approach or the Copenhagen interpretation, you’d better have something to eat and watch out for traffic or everyone else will get a chance to debate it except you. Whatever all this is - of course it is something. What it is, we will probably never know for sure and that is simply because we are limited in what we can perceive and understand. I’ve always been attracted to mysticism (but not rituals) for some reason, but, I don’t believe in it. We can’t expand our minds by yoga or LSD or any other manner other than study – and in that we are very limited – such that we can comprehend the universe sufficiently to approach its core unity or complexity and get by in life. Some would say this core unity is God, and I don’t believe that (I’ve always believed “God” used in that manner is synonymous with the words “I don’t know.”)

But, whatever reality is, I believe it is beyond us.  We’ve been conditioned by the processes of evolution for millions of years to survive on this planet in certain situations. That does not include a brain that can comprehend the cosmos from every perspective. Nor do I believe we can create machines that extend our abilities, like telescopes or computers, because in the end, they are limited by our ability to design and comprehend them. Is it conceivable that there is the possibility of intelligent life that is so vastly beyond us such that it might understand it all? I guess anything is possible, but I doubt that exists either, on this planet or another. I take another philosopher’s observation as a starting point. “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” So too, I would add, does every organism take the limits of its species' perceptual abilities, even extended by mechanical means, for the limits of existence. I qualify most everything with “I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.”

We are, at least so far, helplessly trapped in our minds. Not to worry. They are big places and even a John von Neumann, who seemed so smart to other smart people as to be almost like another species, so vast was his comprehensive ability, could not comprehend but a tiny fraction of what is probably possible, just like if you trap an amoeba in a small pond, it will not have an opportunity to explore it all.

I also stand with Einstein, rather than Bohr. Just as a younger Einstein was able to show how to unwind the paradox between the then law of relativity with the propagation of light (for that is what his theory of special relativity sought to do), just as his predecessor and benefactor, the undersung Max Planck, was able to unravel a paradox of heat radiation by the realization that energy may travel in discrete amounts (quanta), eventually science and/or philosophy cuts through it or expands our horizons and we suddenly understand better. Or at least some of us Homo sapiens do and the rest of us hang on for dear life until technology makes it so that if we can’t understand how something works, we don’t care, because we can push a button.

I am not suggesting at all that we are not, as a species, going to continue to do and learn amazing things. I am, to the contrary, convinced that we cannot even see where we are likely going 30 years from now, never mind a century or two. But there are limits, and if Schrodinger and Spinoza or the Buddhists or mystics and others are right, and it is all just one big bowl of oatmeal or as they would otherwise describe it, we cannot get there and remain human, for it would require a nirvana like experience in which we would be something much more and less at the same time. That's for mystics and frankly, they are deluded.

So, yes, Einstein, there is something behind all of this scenery, and we can learn more about what it is. But, just as I believe he was right that quantum theory was incomplete, so I believe that all theory is by necessity incomplete and always will be. As long as I can watch football on Sundays five or so months a year, it doesn’t bother me at all. But, I do enjoy thinking about it.

You know, and I promise this is my last thought on it. Maybe my blend of metaphysics and epistemology is really the same as my epistemology. Because the last few paragraphs started to sound a lot like I don’t know, I don’t care and – mercifully, enough.

Philosophy 001 - Epistemology

I am almost always reading one philosophy book or another ever since I first read Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy, which, whenever that was, was a long time ago. It is possible that I read Plato or Spinoza before that or at the same time as a freshman in college. I just can’t remember anymore. But before I ever read philosophy, I was a philosopher of sorts, however uninformed or juvenile my thoughts may have been, since at least second grade. What I mean by that is that it was my impression – still my impression - that I thought about things such why the universe is as it is, why people believed what they did, should we blindly follow traditions, was there a God or gods, why do people argue as they did - more than other people seem to do to me. Even today, though there are certainly many others who do the same, it is not all that common.  Perhaps it led me to be somewhat unorthodox, in that I didn’t believe things just because my parents said so or because they were popular. The first of these issues, to my memory, was atheism, hardly popular and not what my parents were pushing either. 

However, I foolishly resisted reading philosophers once I knew there actually were such people, so that I would not be tainted by their thoughts and my philosophy would be purely mine. Of course that was ridiculous as I was a product of my environment to some degree like everyone else and it merely restricted me to the views of a small group of people I knew or read. 

I have a deep interest in science as well, but more so the history of science and theoretical issues about science itself.  Science I see as a subset of philosophy, however, it is often the case, particularly in modern society, that the tail wags the dog between the two. Science is for me the best method we have of understanding what is real or not of those things that are testable, however slow and imperfect it might be. However, it is not possible without philosophy, that is, at least epistemology – how we know what we know – and logic, the rules of reason without which we cannot assign truth or false to any propositions. As for metaphysics, which concerns things like being and reality, I do not reject it as completely meaningless as some philosophers do, but I do not think we have sufficient means to say much about its main questions – why is there anything and what is its essence? And, sometimes, metaphysics is indistinguishable from epistemology (how do we know what we know). It depends on how you frame the question.

As I get older, I read fewer philosophers directly (some of them are just so hard to get through and there is a lot of gibberish), and read more books about them or their theories by scholars who separate the chaff from the wheat for us. Here’s a list, probably partial, of some of the philosophers I’ve read directly in some depth, leaving aside those theologians others might consider philosophers, but who I do not consider sufficiently so (roughly but not quite in chronological order):

·        Lao-Tze supposedly wrote the Tao te Ching with which I am in at least theoretical sympatica; I include him knowing that he did not likely exist; Who cares? The book exists, probably written over time collecting like thoughts forming a very early philosophy which still exists.

·       Confucius. I’ve actually read a very compelling book arguing that he did not exist either, though he is more often believed to be an actual person; the ostensible creators were actually Christian missionaries to China a couple of millennium after he was thought to have lived.

      

      Plato. This is as close as we can get to Socrates. We don't really know either when Socrates is really speaking through him and when it is purely Plato or some combination. It has been said that all philosophy is commentary on Plato, and while it is an exaggeration, it is not hard to understand why it is believed.

·       Aristotle was in some senses, the most significant of all Greek writers for us, along with Homer, who again probably did not exist, and Plato. The breadth of Aristotle's knowledge and expertise (even where he was completely wrong) is remarkable.

·       Thomas Aquinas. I read him to no great advantage but he is historically important.

·     

          Epictetus. He’s not that well known to the general public. He was a stoic; we have some aphorisms, many of which pass the test of time, even if at the same being more to aspire to rather than live fully.

·     

          Marcus Aurelius was a stoic emperor; again, what we have is very aphoristic but often wise.

·       William of Ockham (or Occam). He is best known for a single statement he never wrote, but which was a logical expansion of what he did write; however, it is relatively unknown that he also played a role in the great march of freedom. I’ve only read him recently and had to go to a university library to do so. These aren't exactly bestsellers.

·     

         Bacon. The Elizabethian Aristotle. This British philosopher is not only great fun; but he was also capable of great wisdom. I have more than one copy of his essays (possibly three – one a gift) and I pick it up and read it all the time.

·    

         Spinoza. I have to date not made up my mind about the value of his philosophy, however original, brilliant, etc., he was; nevertheless, his influence cannot be doubted. Although much of what he wrote was really a commentary and in imitation of Descartes, I’ve never read but a few pages of Descartes directly and leave him off my list. Much of Spinoza also seems to me derivative of the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. I'm sure that every philosophy can be shown to have been derived from others in some way, but, I think Spinoza might . . . I say might . . . be given more credit than he deserves.

·        Locke. Also, a highly influential person in politics and psychology and certainly an inspiration to the founding class in America.

·        Berkeley. George Berkeley’s exploration of the nature of reality is much overlooked, easy to  criticize, but also prescient of modern physics. What’s underneath it all – nothing?

·        Hume is my favorite philosopher; leave aside his not surprising views on non-whites which is sometimes used to discredit him; he is in my view, the most influential philosopher in the west since the Greeks. More so than Spinoza, Kant and even Descartes.

·        

      Kant. Feel free to try, but he is largely unreadable and we are all much better off with a summary, which some other writers will tell you is a mistake.

·       

      James Madison - to the extent that The Federalist Papers and other writings are political philosophy.

·       

          Alexander Hamilton – again, to the extent that The Federalist Papers are political philosophy.

·       

           Schopenhauer. Sometimes a nutty guy (try his views on women), he was a preview and more understandable version of Nietzsche; but also a gateway to eastern philosophy.

·       

            Nietzsche. I appreciate some aspects of his philosophy, but much of it is incomprehensible to me and as much poetry and fictional as philosophy.

·        Lord Acton. He was a proto-libertarian mostly famous these days for a statement in a letter which is  now misquoted as – Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, or some such version.

·        Emerson. The father of American philosophy, he did not excite me the way Thoreau did, but  certainly he was Thoreau’s mentor; he did not create the tag Transcendentalism for his loose group,  but whatever linked that group, he was undoubtedly the leader.

·        Thoreau. I’ve written several posts on him; he was one of the three greatest American writers in my  view and I am not sure whether he influenced me directly or I just found him to be the philosopher  who most closely matched my own opinion. Surely though, many of my own thoughts mirror or are  very consistent with his and that is undoubtedly gratifying for me as I greatly admire him. Or is it  that I greatly admire myself and therefore think I admire someone who agrees with me? Maybe, but  he was such a great writer, I am not worthy to sharpen his pencils.

·       Charles Peirce. If you haven’t heard of him (and that’s likely), it is because he was disgraced over adultery and slandered. An original American philosopher and scientist little known in his time or ours, but very important - hard to exaggerate in fact, particularly in logic and epistemology and he is having a bit of a renaissance. Although on some subjects he is crystal clear, on some he is impenetrable, including pragmatism and semiotics, both topics which he founded. His fallibilism, which described the process of modern science, long preceded Popper, often thought of as the father of modern science theory. 

·       

      Bertrand Russell. Perhaps the easiest of all to read and pretty much a poly-math; he wrote one of the two best summaries of philosophy, Durant’s being the other, that I’ve read and also authored endless books and pamphlets on a myriad of philosophical topics.

·       

      Einstein. I consider him a philosopher as well as a theoretical scientist because he probably went further in explaining the nature of the universe than anyone else; I’m still working on relativity and will be for the next 100 years, or shorter, if I can do so while traveling at the speed of light.

·        Heidegger. Oh . . . my . . . God – I tortured myself  reading him as a young man and I don’t think I ever understood it. I tried. I tried. I think I read Being and Time. He was also a Nazi, but, I tried to get past that too if he had something worthwhile to say. I do not, in the end, think he is influential.

·        A. J. Ayers, Russell’s biographer and a very knowledgeable philosopher himself, but I believe with little important to say himself and capable of writing some of the most convoluted prose I’ve ever read.*

         I feel compelled to quote Ayer, just because I find it so funny: "For, roughly speaking, all that we are saying when we say that the mental state of a person A at a time t is a a state of awareness of a material thing X, is that the sense-experience which is the element of A occurring at a time t contains a sense-content which is an element of X, and also certain images which define A's expectation of the occurrence in suitable circumstances of certain further elements of X, and that this expectation is correct: and what we are saying when we assert that a mental object M and a physical object X are causally connected is that, in certain conditions, the occurrence of a certain sort of sense-content, which is an element of M, is a reliable sign of the occurrence of a certain sort of sense-content, which is an element of X, or vice versa, [a]nd the question whether any propositions of these kinds are true or not is clearly an empirical question."  Oy vey.

·        Sartre. If I ever pick up Being and Nothingness again, it will be as a paper weight – I couldn’t get far; but I do enjoy his fiction and some of his essays. I know just enough about him to say that I disagree with most everything he has to say.

·        Wittgenstein. The anti-Popper in some senses; they can probably be described as personal enemies; Wittgenstein was not an easy person to get along with; despite his meager published writings; he was a deep and original thinker and is still influential.

·        Popper. As with Hayek below; not surprisingly, these two Austrians were friends. Popper is considered the great philosopher of science and his epistemology is very dominant now. Some of it I think a little crazy. Other parts brilliant. I much prefer his political philosophy, and The Open Society and its Enemies is one of the last century's greatest non-fiction works.

·        Hayek, who I probably have read more from directly than any of the others is, along with Popper, the writer I have learned the most from about why I actually believe as I do. In other words, I've found that they provide a deep basis with great scholarship for things I've concluded with much less evidence.  The Road to Serfdom is Hayek's most famous work, although I believe little read by those who celebrate it; I found his Constitution of Liberty, similar in nature, more complete and important, though it is now virtually unread by anyone.

Others of the above philosophers are as unreadable as Ayer, particularly some of those discussing metaphysics like Heidegger, Sartre and Kant, and not just because they are translations. Admittedly, many of the easiest philosophers for us to read wrote in English. However, some translations are very good and it is not hard to read English translations of Plato or Aquinas, Occam (who though English wrote in Latin), Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hayek or Popper among others. Sometimes it is the writer, not the translator.

But, I do not consider that above listed group of philosophers to be the best source of my philosophical knowledge. Many philosophers that I have found fascinating or important cannot be read in the original, if they even existed. From the east, the Buddha (who, again, likely did not exist) and the sages of the Vedas or all important to me. From ancient Greek, the some of the pre-Socratics like Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Leucippus and Democritus made contributions still resonating today. Arguably, we are what we are in the west today to a large extent because of their philosophical investigations, even if we never heard of them. Other than Epictetus, I have not read of whatever little is available of the stoics like Zeno, Chrysippus or Seneca, but enough in general works to feel that I know what they believed, their strengths and weaknesses. I could make a long list of other philosophers of whom I have read a little bit or summaries of their work, but I don’t see it as important. What feels important to me is that I feel satisfied that I have learned sufficiently, because you can never learn perfectly or about everything.  I never stop reading or learning, but, my philosophy is generally my own, to some degree formed before I read Durant.

Does all this reading philosophy do me any good in life? I’m not sure. But, I take what I want from them and exclude the rest without any problem. I have known some people who stopped reading philosophy because it depressed them. Russell wrote in one of my favorite of his philosophical works, Unpopular Essays, “[c]ommentators on great philosophers always politely ignore their silly remarks,” but that shouldn’t stop us. Don’t let it detract from wisdom where it strikes you true.

There are three pre-eminent reasons to read philosophy in my mind (I’m sure we could all come up with others) – First, because you teach or write about philosophy, which has to account for the smallest group, almost not worth mentioning.  Second, because you are determined to understand yourself and/or the universe better and believe it helps you do so. Third, because you feel it adds to the happiness in your life. With myself it is a mix of the latter two. One could argue that two is a subset of three anyway, and perhaps it is. But, while “learning” gives me satisfaction, there is definitely some internal pleasure I get from reading philosophy separate and apart from learning anything about the subject. It feels good, often better than it does with most novels I have read.  I can recognize the difference between the gratification of learning from philosophy and the gratification that is separate and apart from it easily enough because I find the same dichotomy, although greater, with theology. I do not read theology at all to educate myself, but only for pleasure. Why it gives me pleasure to read someone trying to explain something I am not likely to believe, I can’t say. But, it tells me there is a difference between the pleasure of learning something specific and the pleasure in learning what someone or group believes whether I believe it or not.

I suppose that if wanted to (and had the time and money) I could write thousands of pages on my philosophical beliefs, because just commenting on what others have written would amount to hundreds if not thousands of pages (I have hundreds and possibly thousands of pages of notes from books I’ve read and limit it only because there is no great purpose to it). Fear not, I have no intention of writing all that here and I have already squandered about half my self-limited post on these preliminaries words anyway. I have not given the following a lot of thought as to how to present it and don’t plan on even mentioning many philosophers. Rather, I will just put it out there unadorned (after all, the sub-title of this blog is, My thoughts, what else?). And just as I couldn’t be comprehensive in a thousand pages, don’t expect it in a few. In fact, because philosophy is so broad – even excluding the ridiculous discussion of aesthetics – I am going to concentrate on one – my favorite, epistemology and save the others for another day.

Epistemology

The center of my philosophy is also probably the thing that irritates my evalovin’ gf the most – I say I don’t know a lot. And though often enough I throw out a guess about things in answering her or others,* I notice that with respect to most questions, I’m perfectly comfortable saying I don’t know when I think I don’t. One of my earliest memories of any kind of philosophical discussions was my mother telling me that Socrates said that he was wisest because he knew that he knew nothing. My own research much later tells me that Plato never actually puts these precise words into Socrates’ mouth, but something vaguer and harder to translate into English. But, it wouldn’t matter if my mom was the first to say it because it’s the thought that counts. In reading philosophy, I find that I am most attracted to those who explain why we don’t know things or how irrational we can be, rather than those who think they know, but always fall far short when pressed even a little. Most of our beliefs or actions in life have to be based on some level of faith that reason can exist, that there are “things” in the world and it isn’t all an illusion or a misperception, but the most unsatisfactory answers are those which rely on faith for complex solutions, usually religious answers.

*Another silly story - I was walking through a mansion/museum I had been to many times before with a friend who rented the tape you play into ear phones as you walk around. We came to a great big rectangular room with a hard wooden floor, easily the biggest room in the place. She said, "What room is this?" I answered without hesitation "The ballroom." She hit the button on the tape and cracked up. She re-wound, gave me the ear phones and played what she had heard - "No, this is not the ballroom."

Coupled with I don’t know is a second principle, which is I don’t care. By that I mean that our inability to know virtually anything shouldn’t stop us from taking some things for granted or doing anything in life without some other good reason (like it is dangerous). And, not knowing generally only bothers philosophers. In real life, no one else cares that much. Things that we are used to or which seem overwhelming obvious or highly unlikely to be a fantasy, we ignore not knowing the whys and wherefores of it. 

Hume said something like this in dealing with inductive knowledge, that is, what we know through experience. As he explained, you can never take what happened before (experience) to mean something is going to happen again. I hear this argument all the time when arguing with people and consider it vastly overused. While it is technically true, it is virtually useless except in doing science or having abstract discussions about whether we can ever know anything. What I find is that people use it as a last ditch argument to avoid coming to common sense conclusions they don’t want to believe based on the best evidence or arguments. But, since Hume’s problem of induction is technically true, the only way to handle it is to not care. If we accept we can’t know anything, there is simply no reason to do anything. For Descartes it may have been sufficient to believe only in his own existence because it was all he could know without doubt. Maybe it’s true. But, if you look at his doubts of other matters that seem pretty certain to all of us on a day to day basis, based on the highly unlikely possibility they may be created as an illusion by a demon, it is pretty hard to take him seriously if you just want something to eat. In a sense, Hume’s inductive problem is the same thing as Descartes determination not to believe true anything we have doubts about. Just as Hume also said that we are crazy to worry about the inductive problem in real life, we are also crazy also to let the existence of any doubt overtake our common sense or to believe the only thing we can know is that we ourselves exist. Almost everything we do in life is based on our prior experience (sometimes aided by our instincts) or things we must have at least minimal doubts about. We get out of bed in the morning not knowing for absolute sure if the floor will be there or collapse under us. But, we do not hesitate. If we did, we’d be called mentally ill. We speak to people all day long knowing that they are not supernatural chameleons changing identities, eat food knowing it will nourish us, and so on until infinity. Doubts do come to us, but that is just part of life. And some things we doubt to a degree that we say - I just don’t know, and other things so much that we say - I don't believe it.

Where do we draw the line between things we doubt so much we don’t believe them, things we think might be so but aren’t sure about (that is, some doubt), and those things we can’t be sure about but are sufficiently so that we either believe them true or don’t even think about? I have to fall back now on the first principle. I don’t know. Our cognitive scientists don’t know how the mind works sufficiently and I sure don’t know either. When I studied (I will politely call it that) psychology in college, it was mostly all theory then. And though brain science is skyrocketing since functional mri machines and other technological tools have opened up venues unknown a couple of decades ago, the science is still in its infancy, despite carloads of new data. Only when an understanding of how our memory works – without which knowledge is impossible – can we hope to have a clue. And until then, I fall back on my second principle – I don’t care. Because our memory works and we obtain knowledge every day without knowing how the process works since time immemorial.

However, I have not written all this clap trap to just say I don’t know and I don’t care, which sounds suspiciously like an Abbot and Costello routine and gets you nowhere. There is a third principle which gets us where we need to be – able to tell the difference between different levels of doubt such that we can say we don’t know, we might know and we do know. This revolutionary theory, is actually the same as my theory of what makes a group of symbols a word – the principle of enough.

As to the question of why certain symbols are words and others not, I believe the answer is when a word is determined to be so by enough people, and that judgment is subject to time and place and to a lesser degree - individuals. If this seems simplistic, it’s not. It is actually taking into account how complex the language is and how to explain subjective phenomena that we seem to recognize as real and want to differentiate (like some symbols being words and others not) but that can’t be measured or explained with numbers or traditional measurements. That using the concept of enough (you could call it a tipping point or even something scientific sounding) sounds folksy or simple does not make it wrong.

It is relatively the same with deciding between levels of doubt – what we know or don’t know - as with deciding what is a word. It might seem at first blush that answering the question of whether a group of symbols is a word is a social question because communication between people can be involved, and it might also seem that knowledge is more a personal matter. But, in truth, both are mixed. Words are used to communicate with ourselves as well as with others. In fact, we think much more than we talk to ourselves. As for knowledge, much of it is communal. So much of what we think we know, we do so because we have been told by others it is so and have no personal experience of it at all. We are all sure that Pluto – planet or planetoid – is out there. Have we seen it? We all believe that the bump bump in our chest is a heart? We’ve heard it, but have we seen it? Some people have considered the workings of the circulatory system, and yet unless they do surgery for a living, in most cases everything they think about it comes from another person, even if found in a book. But most of us never even really give a thought to how our circulatory system works. We’ve been told we have a heart, have seen pictures of it, and take it for granted it is so. Why do we believe that?

The answer is, because of the rule of enough. We have enough information we trust to believe it is true and not reasonably doubt it even if we acknowledge that anything is possible, and maybe even that everyone could be wrong (as often happens). But, generally we don’t do that. We just feel we know. Or if you prefer, we just believe it.

And by enough – I do not mean only that we’ve heard it enough, or that there was enough supporting information or that it was logical enough. It would include enough information from any other source that would tend to lessen our doubt or support our belief including those which are logically fallacies – such as when we learn information from someone or something we consider an authority.

Just to make sure we are on the same page, when I ask the question of when we can say we have knowledge, I do not also mean to ask by it - when can we know something is real or true. Our knowledge is based on what we think is true or real and we may be completely wrong. If we learn we were wrong about a belief or fact, it merely means that we now have increased our level of doubt, or do not have enough certainty to believe we have knowledge.  

That’s it on epistemology. Just writing this last sentence I thought of a few other avenues I could go down, but I think it’s enough except for the summary of my epistemology. To some, this may seem too simple. Simple was my goal, not some high fallutin’ sounding gobbledy-gook. And, if you take a look at something considered profound, such as Plato’s allegory of the cave, it is very simplistic itself. And, you would be surprised how many philosophers would disagree with what I've written.

Atheism

This post is in part motivated by Matt Barber's article, The Fool Says 'There is no God' published on April 23rd, which essentially argues that atheists are fools because we don't realize that the Big Bang and life on earth prove there is a God. Sure.

Sometimes it surprises me that I have written so little on the issue of atheism in this blog. After all, it is not only one of the most controversial issues in history, but in my youth, anyway, it was a leading ideological division between me and other people starting in the second grade, even if of no real practical importance. And though most of my friends and family could care less (especially anymore), some occasionally do, although not to the point where anyone ever stopped being friends.  Still, I can be at least a little reluctant to tackle the issue. The main reason is that even among people I know well, sometimes it upsets them to hear what they believe is reasonable and important is not seen the same way by me.  Some see it as a challenge to their beliefs (I've heard that said). Maybe it shouldn't bother people, but we know it can.

But those are friends or people I know relatively well. In the world at large, people care a lot more and some can be a bit rude about it. Some are even murderous, but that's not what this post is about. At least, when I read online I find an awful lot of columnists, bloggers and commenters who are quite concerned with atheists, Matt Barber's article being a good example. According to many of them, we atheists are not only fools, but have no morals or values either. Of course, I have spoken with religious people, and heard religious leaders speak on the topic who think no such thing.  But, I am also aware that when Pew and Gallup take polls on what ideologies or ethnicity would cause them to rule out voting for someone for president, more would vote for any ethnicity and any religion than for an atheist. Atheists do worse than even homosexuals and sometimes Muslims. The bias is that deep. Go to Pew or Gallups websites or http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistbigotryprejudice/a/AtheistSurveys.htm, if you find this hard to believe.

Fortunately, not thinking much of atheists doesn't regularly translate into violence in America, with threats of it only a little more common.  If people do find out I am an atheist, most aren't overtly troubled, but some tell others that they feel sorry  for me or look down on me (and those people obviously tell me) but others try to convert me.

Once in a blue moon I am challenged to informally debate the issue.  I have never had one of these debates go bad, that is, degrade into an argument, though it has frustrated some of those in the conversion mode.  If I do debate it, I usually say to whoever I am debating that I have no interest in changing their opinion -- and I don't -- but will defend my own. But, I do understand that they often very much want to change my opinion. The charitable view is that they are trying to save my soul.  A more cynical view is that they find my lack of faith uncomfortable. It varies person to person. Rarely though, do I find other people who are as curious as I am about what other people believe without having the added motivation of proselytizing to them. What can I say? It's a hobby.

Admittedly, I am careful about the way I say things in a religious debate. I know that people are less sensitive about issues that can be proved in some way or another (Was Mickey Mantle no. 7 or 9? Google it) and much more sensitive about those they can't really prove at all, such as religious matters, politics or who was a better quarterback - Bart Starr or Johnny Unitas?

Following are just some of my thoughts on atheism, shorn of my usual reluctance.  I suppose I could make more detailed arguments, but, for me, atheism is not a difficult question. It's simple.

My basic premise

God is an assertion that a Supreme Being, or at least something like that, exists. It cannot be thought or argued, even if it is accepted on faith, without making that type of assertion. Atheism, to the contrary, does not necessarily require asserting anything, although an atheist can assert the negative position as a matter of belief. But, someone could theoretically grow up and never hear of or consider the issue of the existence of God.  They would be an atheist by default, but not believe in God all the same.  It is no different than that someone who has never heard of the idea of life on other planets does not have to assert that it does not exist in order not to believe in it. Again, to the contrary, to believe in the existence of anything, including God, you have to have a positive or active thought that it exists.

It is axiomatic that no burden can logically be required to prove a negative existence except in a closed system where you can measure sufficiently to rule out existence (I just made that last part up, but it sounds right to me), and I will not try. It would be fruitless. But, I certainly can claim that the proofs of God's existence that I have heard have never been sufficient for me to believe in something of which there is no evidence (and below I will get to some of the claims that there is evidence).

Ontological argument  

This is a logical argument that has been around for about a thousand years.  Some hold that it is the best proof of God. I don't get it at all.  Since, it is a logical argument, if the premises are true, the conclusion should be true. The premises are so far from rational that I do not think one needs to even argue that they aren't true, though they are not in my view. I disagree that it is truly a logical proposition at all. I do not think it follows any of the basic axiomatic logical principles that we generally agree upon (such as - If p then q: p therefore q).

Many philosophers have bought the ontological argument, some tinkering with it a little, but many others disagree. Perhaps Bertrand Russell was right when he said that it was not very persuasive to the modern mind, but it was easier to say that it was wrong than to say how. But I don't think so. It is so filled with flaws as to be almost preposterous. Because there are a number of versions of it, varying in degree of complexity - Gödel's, for example, is just ridiculous - I have to pick one.  So I will go with the original, of which all the others are variations. Anselm held that (I took this from Wikipedia):

"1. Our understanding of God is a being than which no greater can be conceived.

2. The idea of God exists in the mind.

3. A being which exists both in the mind and in reality is greater than a being that exists only in the mind.

4. If God only exists in the mind, then we can conceive of a greater being—that which exists in reality.

5. We cannot be imagining something that is greater than God.

6. Therefore, God exists."

I think you could argue that each and every one of these propositions is false or at best may be true only because it is a tautology (the premises are the same as the conclusion).  For example, take 1: This is not necessarily everyone's understanding of God in the first place. It is merely one understanding of God. Indeed, there have been arguments within the Christian religion itself whether some aspects of the trilogy are greater than other parts. If that argument is taken as true, it would be harder to argue perfection (though they do anyway).  Second, we can easily conceive of a being greater than God simply by believing that a being created God but itself did not think it necessary to create the universe that it could have. This is actually existing Hindu theology as well - Vishnu creating Brahma who created the world (not generally what you would learn in college or some other texts about them, but one version of their mythology or theology). Or we could conceive of a being who could create a superior universe and have even reigned supreme over God (rendering God a Lucifer), but deemed it superior to allow God to destroy him or simply remained inert as God created the world and heavens.

And so you could argue the falsity with each of his five premises, though I do not want to go on forever here.  But, if you look at the list closely, the logic falls apart anyway, which is my main point. The conclusion (no. 6) is not at all based upon its premises (nos. 1-5) the way this classic example is: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. There is simply no logical imperative that God exists simply because we cannot conceive of something greater than God. Also, it is a tautology because God's existence is already made part of the premises from no. 1 through 5, but especially in 3 - which explicitly states that God is real. It comes almost as a self sustaining conclusion which he could have given after any statements he made, almost a deux ex machina.

I agree with Karl Popper and others that eventually all philosophic arguments can be reduced to common sense or axiomatic grounds which we cannot prove.  And on common sense grounds, the ontological argument falls apart, as shown above.  For instance, Premise no. 4 simply makes no sense whatsoever because a) there is no such thing as an objective definition of reality; b) there is no objective definition of "greater," a concept which only exists in the mind; (c) one cannot conceive of something which does not exist only in the mind and we cannot tell ever whether anything exists outside the mind. I recently made fun of some obtuse writing by A.J. Ayer, a philosopher. In the book I had quoted from, he argued that we can know that things exist outside our minds. But, when you read what he writes closely, you have to recognize that it is simply on - as we lawyer's like say - his own ipso facto.

First cause

This is a far more substantial argument than the ontological one because it cannot be disputed that all of our experience and sense tells us that everything must be created at some point in order to exist. We know of no example for which we can say with any authority that this is not so.  This argument can also be presented in several ways, but simplest is perhaps to ask why there is something rather than nothing? It is an excellent question. Where did all this come from? Must there not be some first cause?

Excellent as the question is, it cannot be answered. And, it is inconceivable, unless there is some way to witness a second creation, that it can ever be answered unless we are all subject to what is usually termed revelation.

Of course, believers propose the answer - God did it. But, I ask then, if that is taken to be the answer, how was it accomplished? Because if we cannot know that, then we cannot know at all that it is so. It is neither evident, nor claimed by a Supreme Being to us, and the circumstantial evidence points only to God if you already believe it based on faith.  I would say that God is an appropriate answer only if the meaning of God is "I don't know."

For as Hume has pointed out, we cannot witness causation. We only can know that one thing regularly follows another. In this case, we cannot even witness the former event - whatever was or occurred preceding creation.  And it presents a paradox.  For, if a deity existed prior to existence, then existence preceded existence, unless we say that God did not exist. If God did not exist, then it could not be first cause. And, as been asked many times by many people, if God created the universe, where did God come from? If the answer is God always existed, then why couldn't the universe have always existed? More, if God and the universe are identical, what special meaning does God have? These are far more logically certain than the ontological argument. Yet, the questions are (must be) dismissed by all those who argue that first cause is proof of God.

Of course, the faithful are usually comfortable with paradox and mystery.  So, they don't mind.

But it's all so complex

Here's the theory. The world, the universe, all of it could not be so complex was there not a designer.

Is it really that complex? It's not even a real question. Complexity is purely a human construct. It does not exist, on this planet anyway, outside of the human impression that something is hard to comprehend because there are more aspects to it that one can easily arrange in one's mind. Unlike a person, a dog or even an ape may not be able to comprehend something or concept, but it doesn't recognize that its inability is due to something intrinsic in the nature of the thing that puts it beyond the comprehension of its mind. Only humans, as far as we know, have this self-awareness.

If humans are, so far as we know, the only creatures in the universe capable of the notion of complexity, were to be wiped out -- certainly not an impossible situation -- would that make the existence of God more or less likely? Of course not.  Therefore, complexity cannot be proof of God. It can't possibly have any effect on the question any more than the existence of humans can have an effect on whether a planet or a fern exists.  It is just a bogus argument that sounds good, but is entirely illogical.

Or, if you want to presume that out of the (likely) billions of solar systems in the universe there are not only other intelligent beings out there, but some which may be much more intelligent than us, it doesn't help the theist argument at all. Because the argument would then again rest on the relative intelligence of two beings -- just as it did with human intelligence and that of a dog or ape. And that really makes no sense at all.

Revelation

Very often God is asserted as a matter of revelation. That is, either the believer relies on personal revelation by God or reliance on his revelation to others. This cannot be easily combated and I don't really try.  It is arguably the opposite of science, which is the most powerful tool we have to discover what is not true and a better approximator of what is true than anything else of which we know. Science is dependent on independent verification or falsification (depending on whether you agree with the Circle of Vienna or Karl Popper, and these days, Popper won), documentation and rigorously controlling variables, among other things. Revelation has no rules other than those imposed on themselves by whoever is the recipient of the revelation.  No documentation needs to be made and certainly no verification or falsification is possible. In what other type of decision would we reasonably allow this to be considered proof?

The same argument of personal experience is made with other things which are not in common experience, such as with UFOs. I have several friends who swear that they have seen flying saucers. In one case I know an entire family that says they saw one together and I don't disbelieve them. In fact, right in front of me another person who grew up in the same town as them claimed that she saw the same phenomena and their stories matched. Since they knew each other it may just be that she had heard the story before and later remembered it as though she experienced it herself (I've seen this many times in life). What I believe in their case is that they experienced something which they interpreted to be a UFO or their belief was aided by priming and imagination.

And I readily acknowledge that I have had my own experiences when I lived in Virginia which seemed like there was a ghost in my house which were very hard for me to dismiss as just my imagination (particularly while they were ongoing). I also had a momentarily terrifying moment in Gettysburg where I felt like my arm was being lifted up in the air as I fell asleep.  But, I do not really believe there was a ghost in either place. I think in the former case there were natural explanations, probably mostly the wind. It was a drafty old house. Though the light switch going off in the ghost's room while I was in there, and just that once - is a little harder to explain. Well, and the doors repeatedly opening as I approached. Oh, and the garbage can swivel top moving. Hmmm. I said it was hard, but I really do not believe it.  Anyway, in Gettysburg I told myself I was dreaming and I fell immediately asleep, or already was, to awake early the next morning, as usual, all in one piece and alone.  Others in turn can (and have) laughed that I refuse to accept as true what they see as a reasonable conclusion of interactions with ghosts. But even were I convinced by my own experiences, I cannot experience what someone else says happened in their head or privately to them.

There are all kinds of revelation. There is that which comes either word for word or as inspiration to a Moses and Mohammed or the authors of the Vedas, etc., which are very detailed. There is that revelation which simply seems to the recipient to say "I am."  And there are other people who simply experience a feeling and believe they understand it as the presence of a deity or the deity.  None of these convinces me because I cannot know they are true. I am assuming they were genuinely experienced just as I know that I experienced something in Virginia and Gettysburg, even if only in my mind.

But, for obvious reasons, personal revelation or reliance on someone else's revelation cannot serve as proof for someone else, however satisfactory it is to a believer.  And a free choice to believe someone else's revelation cannot serve as evidence of truth either.  If it could, then completely opposite things could be true at the same time since one person can believe it and another reject it. Even were technology sufficient to see someone's thoughts as they occurred, would it change anything other than verify that they were telling the truth as to what they are experiencing? If we could not see the source of their "voice," how would we know how to differ it from imagination or even psychosis.

And, not least, how do we deal with contradiction, which is virtually inherent in revelation?  For it is likely enough that every revelation particular is contradicted by another person's revelation experience; even something as simple as feeling a presence - which asserts several things about a deity - it can be felt; it is mobile, at least into a mind; it has a will to be felt; it responds to a person's beliefs/heart/soul or favors an elect group, and so on. Each of these beliefs can be contradicted by another's revelation as to what constitutes God.

None of the above means that revelation, whether first or second hand, isn't good enough for the believer. And, they can argue also that none of it means it is not true. There is no possible logical rejoinder to that.

Verifiable?

I may have made fun of Ayer, who I mentioned above, but he was considered by some the greatest 20th century English philosopher after Russell (not by me though). He argued that the question of God was unverifiable, so it was meaningless. In fact, he considered any religious debate meaningless because it was unverifiable. Therefore, he argued, he was not even an atheist, because it was pointless to discuss it.  Like much he wrote, there is some logic to support him, but in my opinion, he pressed it too far in stating that one could neither argue that God exists nor that God does not exist. Because, if we cannot have arguments about what is unverifiable, at some level, we cannot argue about anything. And absence of certainty is the whole point of arguing. Even a philosopher may step down off his pedestal and have an opinion that cannot be verified.  If we only had opinions, even very strong beliefs about only that we can verify, it would be a very quiet and boring world. Besides, what was unverifiable, might become readily so.

I would call his position intellectual pompous anyway, as eventually he did come to refer to himself as an atheist later in life.  However, supposedly he had a dream before he died where he saw a Supreme Being. I say pish posh, and his own son had doubts it happened that way in any event. http://variousenthusiasms.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/did-atheist-philosopher-see-god-when-he-died-by-william-cash/ (I am laughing at myself now, because I included that website there thinking someone might care enough to read it. But, really, how many people would care enough to read about what some old philosopher claimed to experience when he was probably dreaming?)

And I am sure there are those who would like to point out that we cannot measure or detect gravity either,  but we do not doubt its existence.  From this they continue that just because we cannot detect or verify God does not mean God does not exist. Well, that is certainly true. But, there is a big difference.

There may not, in fact, be a thing called gravity. Perhaps it is an interaction we little or cannot at all understand.  But we certainly can directly experience it by jumping up in the air or even standing and observing and comprehending it in the motion of the planets and stars. When we say we believe in gravity what we are really saying is that we believe in the experience of it.  Whether it is a thing, like a pen or an interaction of the universe in a way that is beyond us may be determined in time, but that it may be a complex being beyond our common state of knowledge and intellect is no more proof of God than anything else.

Is atheism just another faith?

I do not know when this idea was first proposed, though I have heard it offered many times in recent years.  I think it is entirely wrong. Faith implies a belief. In order to have faith, one must have faith in something.

All knowledge relies on some kind of faith if you reduce it far enough because at some point we just can't know things through experience. We have to accept that certain things are what philosophers call a priori, that is, we know them before we experience them (like, arguably, 1 plus 1 = 2).

Why then can it not be said that atheism, like theism, is simply a faith like a religion? The answer is because one - religion or faith in a deity - is an active decision to believe in something (even if not consciously) and the other is simply a recognition that you can't prove something or everything.

There is a great and unalterable difference between believing in something without (sufficient) evidence and not believing in something when there is no (or insufficient) evidence.  But, I have learned over time if people do not or will not see the difference between these two things, there is no point in trying to argue it.

Ad hominem arguments

Arguments against the person are not really arguments but fallacies. Yet, they are more often used by many to try to prove the existence of God than anything else.  I keep an informal list of insults I receive online when I argue politics because it amuses me to do so. The other day I was called a "hit and run troll," which really means, of course, that the writer did not appreciate that I disagreed with what was obvious to him and found it unsettling that I can't stay online all day like many of the regulars on that website. But, it had nothing to do with the difference in opinion we had.

I have heard throughout my life many reasons people assert why they thought I believed or did not believe something. Among them are because I wanted to be different, I liked to shock people, I am a lawyer, I was a psych major, I was a liberal or conservative, a jerk, just wanted everything to be in the middle and so on.

There is no problem with discussing any of those things. We can certainly discuss someone having a  recognizable political or religious philosophy shared by others and then the discussion is about them (or me). Few people like to be labeled, though some do, and we all feel sometimes that we are being labeled unfairly. Me too. But, that's not what really bothers me.   What I find frustrating is when the personal quality is substituted for the argument we are discussing.  There is a difference between arguing about someone's typical mindset and using it to prove a point about something unrelated. But, I really don't think everyone gets that because they argue with me about the difference too. I remember not too long ago a fairly intelligent person looking at me bewildered at the idea that whether someone was a liberal or conservative might be a genuine subject of a debate, but whether they were one or the other could have no bearing on whether health care reform was a good idea. To her, the two were precisely the same questions.

It is, of course, not fun to have someone point out that you are engaging in a logical fallacy and if you do, be prepared to have that person spend time trying to prove that your arguments are fallacious too. Ad hominem arguments are a distraction and in my mind, almost an admission of defeat, but it is also just the way the world is, and I am long used to it.

I heard my favorite ad hominem attack on me when I was 13 and it involved whether there was a God or not. Two friends, neither who I am friends with as an adult, explained to me that the reason I did not believe in God (and did not get bar mitzvah'd) was because I was immoral.  Oh.  It was that time I came upon a tactic that I thought was brilliant but has never seemed to do me any good whatsoever.  I suggested that they presume that I was the worst of all people in the world, and that once we accept that, we should move on to discuss the topic. Didn't work then, doesn't work now. My personal immorality seems to answer the question for them.

Aesthetic argument

"Aesthetics" is what I like to call the dumbest branch of philosophy, dealing with beauty and taste. Come on.  One man's brilliant sunrise is another man's headache producing burning pile of hydrogen and that is all there is to it. Of course, there is such a thing as beauty in itself, but it is merely what appeals to us and there are many reasons for it doing so. Einstein would argue that you could know when a scientific theory was true because it had a beauty to it, and that also was dumb. Smart as he was, Einstein thought and believed dumb things just like everyone else.

Nevertheless, some people urge aesthetic arguments as if they were proof of God. I am far from immune to their appeal. There are many things I love, for example, about the Old and New Testament, particularly the stories and the language. There is a tremendous appeal to the idea of a human soul - something which I am certain will never be measured or scientifically detected (at least, validly such that we can replicate the experiment) because it does not exist. The idea of a soul can be beautiful, but, if you want to view it differently, you could make quite ugly stories about them too and this has been done as well.

When I discuss whether there is a God with people, and particularly with women, I find the question of an afterlife comes up. Don't I want, I am often asked, to believe that there is life after death? My answer is, well, sure, especially if it comes with guilt/consequence-free eating. But, wanting something to be true does not make it true either.

During my whole life myth has had a tremendous appeal to me. It is possible that the reason is nothing more than that one of the first books my mother taught me to read with was Edith Hamilton's Mythology.  Few of my brothers and sisters share this love with me at all. In fact, with the exception of my one deceased brother, the idea of fantasy seems completely unexciting to them. My oldest brother describes watching The Lord of the Rings as one of the most boring things he has ever done in his life and his son joined him in it. I find myth so appealing that I literally feel sadness for those who cannot enjoy it and think that they would if they gave it an opportunity. I am well aware that there are those who feel that way about me and the concept of God, which is not a large step from myth. In fact, it is a tiny, almost imperceptible step. Yet, the aesthetic appeal of myth to me  - even of Jehovah walking in the garden - does not translate into belief at all. If it did, as I explained to my mother when I was very young, I would as soon believe in Athena or Odin as I would Jehovah. But, the gods and goddesses were make-believe she told me, and God real. I didn't buy it then. I don't buy it now.

But, feel free if you like.