Thursday, August 8, 2013

Experience and evidence

I didn't bother reading Gary Gutting's piece on Zeus when I saw that he said that "back in the day (say, 500-400 B.C.), there would seem to have been considerable evidence," for the existence of Zeus. I can't take this seriously, but I was impressed by the thoroughness and care of Miles Rind's criticism of it at Skeptical Observations. As he says there:
if I were an ancient Greek, I would experience religious observances as involving the presence or the influence of Zeus and company. That does not mean that I would regard my experiences as having a sort of divine-presence quality to them and then, from the fact that I had experiences of this character, draw the conclusion that I had genuine experiences of divine presence. Such a manner of thinking would be a bizarre case of self-dissociation.
He now has a shorter piece on the same subject, in which he argues that:
The issue of whether the ancient Greeks could have had good evidence of the existence of their gods comes down to the issue of whether a theistic explanation of their religious experiences can be a better explanation than any naturalistic one. 
It seems to me that experience is not evidence, that evidence is something like clues, and that direct experience is not so much a really good clue as no clue at all. If someone asks me what evidence I have that deer have been eating the berries in the garden, and I reply that I have seen them do it, then I am not supplying the evidence requested but insisting that there is no question of evidence. I don't need evidence, I have seen it with my own two eyes. (But according to Wikipedia evidence is "anything presented in support of an assertion," so maybe I'm wrong. In that case there could, it seems, be evidence that 2 + 2 =4. This sounds wrong to me, but perhaps does not to others.)

Experience is a funny thing. One thought about religious experience as evidence of the existence of Zeus (or any other deity) is that we might look for a correlation between the existence, or actions, of Zeus and the occurrence of religious experiences. But of course we can't do that. So in a way we have no evidence at all. Or we could ask what the most likely explanation is, and here we are in Hume-on-miracles territory. What are the odds that this phenomenon has a natural explanation, and what are the odds that it has a supernatural explanation? But we can't even guess at the latter, so this gets us nowhere. Those arguments from design that say, "The universe's being as it is statistically is like the various parts of a commercial jet being assembled into a working plane by a strong wind, therefore God exists," suffer from the same problem. Is God's existence more likely than that? How do you know? (It is a logical and ethical mistake, an error in grammar and theology, to think of the existence of God as a question of probabilities. This might become clearer if one tried to calculate the odds, although I think people have done this and not achieved the clarity I have in mind. In case it isn't clear, it's a mistake because it treats God as the same kind of thing as a fluke gust of wind, i.e. something whose odds we might calculate or at least estimate, i.e. as something natural, however super. To think of God this way is to misunderstand what believers believe in a way that is both simply wrong (that isn't what they believe) and insulting (it is to treat God as something less than what they believe). This is complicated by the fact that some believers (or "believers") are idolaters in just this way, but that isn't the kind of belief that interests me. There's also the question whether non-believers like me should care about the alleged badness of insulting God, but we can at least respect the feelings of believers. And I think we can respect the concept of God, too, and want to do justice to it.)

Religious experience is something like the feeling of absolute safety or that everything is (is going to be) all right. It's weird that experience can have propositional content, but it sort of does. There is some gap, a kind of elastic field between the experience and the description or verbal expression of it, but not much. You can't have one without the other. Perhaps one can feel that Zeus is in control. All's right with the world. This feeling might cause belief in Zeus. It might make it impossible for one to make sense of life without religion. But it doesn't prove anything or provide evidence of anything beyond itself. And once the experience has faded it is always possible (conceivable) that one might dismiss it and say, "What was I thinking?" That might be the only way to make sense of life too. It depends on one's life, on one's ability to make sense of things, and one's style or way of doing so. These are culturally and historically shaped, of course, but there's room for individual variation, at least in our culture. Not infinite variation though. Not belief in Zeus, for instance. 

27 comments:

  1. I am honored to have my blog posts discussed here! I hope, though, that your readers will not be led to think that I accept Gutting's assumption that to have experiences of theophanies, or what one takes to be such experiences, is tantamount to having evidence of the existence of gods (or, for that matter, of anything else). I hold—in agreement with you, I think—that if someone's belief in gods or a god is founded on religious experience then it is not founded on evidence, and vice versa.

    What I am conceding to Gutting in the second passage that you quote from me is just that someone who has had such experiences could conceivably cite them (under a suitable description, viz., one that is neutral with respect to the actual influence of gods, and with the addition of some further premises) as evidence of the occurrence of theophanies.

    Of course, merely citing such experiences lends no credibility to a theistic conclusion. That would be like trying to prove that extra-terrestrial beings have visited earth by citing the testimony of people who claim to have undergone abduction by such beings. Further premises would have to be supplied, such as, "Fifty million [or however many] Greeks can't be wrong"—lame though that is. In fact, I do not know of any suitable premises that would be credible, and Gutting makes not the slightest suggestion of any. As far as I can tell, his argument has the following form: "I know of no good argument that p; but it is conceivable that such an argument could be made; for that reason, we should remain agnostic as to whether p or not-p." There may be good reason for agnosticism as to whether Zeus and company existed, but Gutting's argument supplies none.

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  2. Thanks for the clarification. I don't think it's needed--I think we agree, as you say--but it can't hurt.

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    1. And I hope I didn't present your views misleadingly. Apologies if I did.

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  3. Ah, our monthly fix of Gutting gutting.

    [...] if I were an ancient Greek, I would experience religious observances as involving the presence or the influence of Zeus and company. That does not mean that I would regard my experiences as having a sort of divine-presence quality to them and then, from the fact that I had experiences of this character, draw the conclusion that I had genuine experiences of divine presence. Such a manner of thinking would be a bizarre case of self-dissociation. (Rind)

    I was very surprised that no reference was made in the debate to Paul Veyne's classic Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, of which there is a synopsis here. Veyne, a serious classicist – although a somewhat whimsical French one – suggests that the Greeks themselves viewed the myths as true, in some relevant and non-secondary sense; but only in what was itself already the distant past by that time. So in effect he suggests that the Greeks themselves already took a Gutting-type position on the knowability of the past.

    This is relevant, I think, because Veyne would continue "If I were an ancient Greek ..." differently. But of course none of us is an ancient Greek; if one of us were, we could settle the matter by just asking.

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    1. Sorry that I did not see these comments when they appeared (I failed to subscribe for notification after posting my own). Tommi, thanks for the reference to Veyne and the summary of his views at Sacnoth's Scriptorum. "The Ancients thought mythical time had been different from the contemporary time they themselves lived in. So there might have been monsters in the time of Hercules or Odysseus, but not anymore. . . . Veyne draws the demarcation line as about the time of the Trojan War, after which Gods ceased to appear and epic monsters died out." So for Greeks of the period from which we have writings, "ancient Greece" meant the age that ended with the Trojan War. One can imagine Gutting's disappointment, upon being transported back to the 5th or even the 8th century BCE and asking thoughtful Athenians about their theological views, when they answered, "Well, our world contains no good evidence that the gods exist or that they intervene in affairs, but, for all we know, our ancestors in ancient times may have had such evidence!"

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  4. But according to Wikipedia evidence is "anything presented in support of an assertion," so maybe I'm wrong.

    You can't use Wikipedia to settle controversies of this type. If you want, I can edit Wikipedia to say something completely different. More generally, Wikipedia has a way of distorting things, to put them into an odd key as it were, without necessarily making any empirically false claims about them at all. For instance, there is an entry about me on the Finnish one, and although nothing is factually wrong in the slightest, I don't much recognise myself in it.

    For what it's worth, the OED defines "evidence" as 'ground for belief; testimony or facts tending to prove or disprove any conclusion', and also as 'an appearance from which inferences may be drawn; an indication, mark, sign, token, trace'. These leave it nicely open like a good dictionary should: which are the inferences that may be drawn; inferences may be drawn but are not required to be drawn; ground for belief for whom?

    In that case there could, it seems, be evidence that 2 + 2 =4. This sounds wrong to me, but perhaps does not to others.

    In the Philosophical Remarks (§131), Wittgenstein mentions "the proof that 2 + 2 = 4 by means of the Russian abacus", which is "precisely analogous" to "the construction in a Euclidean proof". Wouldn't the proof with an abacus be a kind of "evidence that 2 + 2 = 4"? Of course not incontrovertible evidence: Wittgenstein also makes this point (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, I, §38 – one of my favourite passages in the corpus). Context determines meaning here as everywhere else.

    For the hardcore fans, in the Big Typescript (§116) Wittgenstein has a 10-page discussion of 2 + 2 = 4, although not all of it is relevant to this issue.

    Those arguments from design that say, "The universe's being as it is statistically is like the various parts of a commercial jet being assembled into a working plane by a strong wind, therefore God exists," suffer from the same problem. [...] In case it isn't clear, it's a mistake because it treats God as the same kind of thing as a fluke gust of wind, i.e. something whose odds we might calculate or at least estimate, i.e. as something natural, however super.

    That's not even the only problem. Compare: "The universe's being as it is statistically is like John F. Kennedy, Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis all dying on the same day." The standard, frequentist interpretation of probability defines an event's probability as the limit of its relative frequency in trials whose number is larger than one, usually much larger. The probability of a one-off event is either 1.00 (if it has happened) or 0.00 (if it hasn't).

    And I think we can respect the concept of God, too, and want to do justice to it.

    I cannot, because "the concept of God" is too sweeping. My all-time favourite paper in the philosophy of religion is Paul Gastwirth's short but sweet "Concepts of God", which actually has influenced my thinking concretely as a private person without my philosopher's hat (like Richard Taylor's definition of determinism did regarding determinism). Gastwirth points out nothing more and nothing less than that "God" is for all intents and purposes (outside the one of worship) a Wittgensteinian family-resemblance concept; and so, as he puts it, "there are no knights of faith in general".

    (But then again, to me, pointing out this is in some sense to do justice to the concept of God. I don't think this is what you had in mind, though.)

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  5. Thanks, Tommi.

    You can't use Wikipedia to settle controversies of this type.

    I know. I was half kidding. But also half acknowledging the fact that what Wikipedia says is evidence that some people think that way. I think of evidence as 'an appearance from which inferences may be drawn; an indication, mark, sign, token, trace' but it can, as the OED says, also mean 'ground for belief; testimony or facts tending to prove or disprove any conclusion', as you helpfully point out. And that's the idea that Wikipedia is getting at.

    Proof that 2+2=4 is a kind of exercise, isn't it? It's not like proving that someone committed a crime, i.e. proving something we don't already know. Which is why talk of evidence (even in the sense of ground for belief) here seems out of place.

    You (and Gastwirth) make a good point about concepts of God. Perhaps I should have said that there are some concepts of God that I respect. There is at least one, which I think is all I need or want.

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  6. It seems to me that the notion of mathematical proof as "proving something we don't already know" itself admits of two opposed and competing views. Did Meno's slave boy know geometry before he met Socrates, or only afterwards? "Evidence", in the sense of grounds for maintaining-that, can be given for both views.

    And oh, there are definitely some concepts of God that I too respect. But not half as many as I don't respect.

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  7. Did Meno's slave boy know geometry before he met Socrates, or only afterwards?

    He knew it better afterwards.

    But not half as many as I don't respect.

    Sturgeon's Law.

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  8. I agree totally that direct experience is not evidence. If I watch you eat this is not evidence to me that you are eating (and if I eat the sensations involved are not evidence to me that I'm eating either).

    Belief in God is not like belief in (eg) a planet between Uranus and Neptune; it is an expression of a certain attitude towards the world. And the proofs of God's existence ventured by religion are a highly refined part of that expression. They were never intended to be foundational; they are more like an ornament on the edifice.

    However, over time many religious people seem to have taken the idea of these proofs in a naturalistic sense. They have dropped the distinction I mentioned above. (This is part of a more general move to view God naturalistically - as a strange kind of being in the world.) One might think this lays them open to the criticisms leveled at religion by the likes of Dawkins. If you're going to treat God in that way then the burden of naturalistic proof falls upon you.

    At this point responses diverge. Some fudge the issue with Intelligent Design-type pseudo-science. Others retreat back into the older conception of God as transcendence rather than a being in the world (while maintaining this latter conception for most other purposes). Still others simply state "This is proof for me, no matter what you say".

    All three responses seem less than consistent. And yet what counts as "consistent"? Or to put it another way: how far is consistency a necessary constituent of a language-game? If it is still playable then it is still playable, no matter how distant we might feel from its participants.

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  9. Thanks, that all sounds right. I suppose if a game is played then it must be playable, even if glaring problems can be seen in it (like one of those games where whoever goes first can guarantee that they win--as long as the players don't see this, or don't care for some reason, then they can keep playing). But inconsistencies or other problems like this make the game much less appealing to others. And if someone goes in for pseudo-science but insists it is not pseudo at all then you just have to back away smiling (is that the time?) or else join in or engage or feed the troll or whatever you want to call it. That is, it's hard to see in these cases how one could merely describe the use of language involved and leave everything as it is. Part of the kind of use of language involved in these cases is the insistence that it isn't that but something else. Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion (and the same might well go for politics) is tricky, because there is religiously-motivated opposition to (purportedly) Wittgensteinian descriptions of religious language use. Obviously someone who fudges with pseudo-science is not going to accept such a description of what they are doing, but there are more sophisticated examples too. I don't think Peter Geach liked D.Z. Phillips' philosophy of religion much.

    I don't mean that Wittgenstein was therefore wrong, or that Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is impossible. But it's not straightforward or easy. I find myself using words like idolatry and blasphemy, but you can't throw those around and expect to get away with it. Not without being very careful about your audience, anyway.

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    1. Yes, Wittgenstein's fragmented comments on religion are difficult if only because many of them are not, or are not obviously, philosophy in the formal sense of the word. They are made in support of his personal preference for an ascetic, mystical approach to religion.

      I also agree that Wittgenstein's claim that philosophy "leaves everything as it is" is especially problematic in this area. I think OC 609-612 is clearly pertinent, as it locates the point where logic gives way to persuasion. But there is also his remark in the PI that for mathematics his philosophy would be like sunlight on potatoes (ie, it would stop their roots growing). There's also his conversational comment that he wouldn't dream of evicting theoretical mathematicians from their "paradise" - instead he would show what this paradise really came to and expect them to leave of their own accord. Language is left as it is, but it is also clarified, and the clarification can reveal empty metaphysical confusion where there was thought to be profound, eternal truths.

      Now, could an analogous approach work in the area of religion? The problem here is that religion is not nearly as clear-cut as mathematics. For example, it is much easier to dispute the claim that the use of a form of words "over there" is relevant to language "over here".

      Moreover (and perhaps more importantly) religion has an experiential aspect which is largely missing in mathematics; it is not just a bunch of assertions or proofs, it is a way of living. And if anything the assertions arise out of the way of living rather than vice-versa. You can see this clearly in Hinduism, which has a very sophisticated theology, yet its theology is regarded as empty without the practices (ceremonies, meditation, etc) in which it is embedded. Something similar is arguably true regarding Christianity: it is something you do, not merely a list of propositions to which you assent (although it could also be argued that modern Christianity has forgotten this point to its detriment).

      In any case, when faced with logical (grammatical) comments about the sense of their articulation of belief, it is always open to theists to simply close their eyes in the face of doubt - an option which is not really available to mathematicians. And at that point, I think, logic has played its final card. You either agree to disagree, try to persuade the theists, or suppress their views.

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    2. I don't think the Lectures on Religious Belief were meant to be a defence of W's personal preferences, but it's hard to tell given the fragmentary notes we have to go on, and maybe he meant to do one thing but ended up doing another. Sometimes he does speak in the first person there (or is reported to have done so).

      Applying the kind of method described in the PI seems tricky in the case of religion (simply describing uses of language, saying only what everyone admits, advancing no theses, etc.) because you can't really avoid controversy in this area. But then he doesn't say you should, or can, avoid controversy. And the remark about paradise is relevant too. Once everything is made clear people are likely to see it differently (because it's now clearer), and of course they might feel differently about it then, even if you have made no attempt to argue them out of their beliefs. Or they might not. As you say, religion is not the same as maths and there are moves you can make within religion that aren't there for mathematicians.

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    3. D: Obviously someone who fudges with pseudo-science is not going to accept such a description of what they are doing, but there are more sophisticated examples too.

      What I think is the best sort of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is that which engages in what Marx called immanent critique: pointing out contradictions between a social phenomenon and the official self-image of this phenomenon. For instance, in the lectures on religious belief Wittgenstein comments on attempts rationally to prove the truth of Christianity: "Anyone who reads the Epistles will find it said: not only that it is not reasonable, but that it is folly." Christians who emphasise rationality can be confronted with the Epistles. It's hard to see how they are "not going to accept such a description of what they are doing" when the description comes from their holy book.

      It's not so much "Let me show you that this is a paradise and you'll want to leave it", but "Let me show you how you have never entered the paradise in the first place, according to something which you'd say you swear by if asked, but which is obviously not in the forefront of your mind right now."

      P: They are made in support of his personal preference for an ascetic, mystical approach to religion.

      But then again, Anscombe reports him as saying that one of the advantages of his philosophy was "that if you believe, say, Spinoza or Kant, this interferes with what you believe in religion; but if you believe me, nothing of the sort." (Anscombe adds: "I do not know whether he was right about this.")

      D: Sometimes he does speak in the first person there (or is reported to have done so).

      In fact the lectures on religious belief are mostly in the first person, especially the first two of the three. It's easy to forget this because almost everyone quotes the same few passages from them.

      Another thing about the lectures is how much he speaks of what he would say, not to a person he finds disagreeable, but about such a person to some audience, such as the audience of the lectures. Father O'Hara (who "is one of those people who make it a question of science") he "would definitely call [...] unreasonable. I would say, if this is religious belief, then it's all superstition. But I would ridicule it, not by saying it is based on insufficient evidence. I would say: here is a man who is cheating himself. You can say: this man is ridiculous because he believes, and bases it on weak reasons." As opposed to saying: "You are a man who is cheating himself."

      It's also striking how, despite speaking in the first person, he is completely silent in the lectures about what I would view as his "personal preferences". Consider the 1937 diaries from his extended sojourn in Norway. They are a record of a personal religious encounter (with one very particular understanding of Christianity) that is so bare and so raw and so anguished that the diary entries almost disintegrate at times into inarticulate screams of pain. The lectures on religious belief were held in 1938, the very next year, but they are dispassioned, leisurely, cool, non-eyelid-batting, light, even humorous at times. I never cease to wonder at this contrast, because it's so total.

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    4. It's hard to see how they are "not going to accept such a description of what they are doing" when the description comes from their holy book.

      True. But it's not hard to anticipate that they will try to wriggle out somehow. They might even have an answer already prepared. Not that I know what it would be. Nor would I expect to find it convincing.

      I never cease to wonder at this contrast, because it's so total.

      That hadn't occurred to me, but of course you're right.

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  10. T: ...pointing out contradictions between a social phenomenon and the official self-image of this phenomenon.

    Yes, yes, but what counts as a contradiction here? I don't think it's at all clear cut.

    Philosopher: If you agree that God is a creature in the world then you must admit you stand in need of a proof of His existence just like you would if you claimed there was a planet between Uranus and Neptune.

    Theist: No, not at all. God is a being in the world, and yet He is not to be proved by any human procedures.

    Philosopher: But surely that's a contradiction!

    Theist: Call it that if you like. If you saw existence from my perspective you would not say so.

    And that's that.

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    1. [An alternative response to the philosopher's opening remark]

      Theist: God operates according to mystical auras that we humans don't yet understand.

      Philosopher: If we don't understand them then how can you cite them in aid of your position?

      Theist: God has revealed this process to me but not the physical details of its operations.

      To me this just seems to be a more defensive version of conversation (i). To be sure, the Theist is being dishonest, but the honest response is not "Jeez, you're right, my conception of God makes no sense". Rather, it is what the Theist in (i) ends up saying.

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    2. Or how about this:

      Theist: God operates according to mystical auras that we humans don't yet understand.

      Philosopher: If we don't understand them then how can you cite them in aid of your position?

      Theist: Jeez, you're right, my conception of God makes no sense. But that's God for you....

      [Theist continues behaving as before]

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    3. Jesus: "Go ye therefore and teach all nations." (Matthew 28:19)

      I wonder what the theist's reply would be if the philosopher pointed out that nations can only be taught if their standards of good sense and ridiculousness are respected, because otherwise the nations won't stick around to hear the teaching.

      If even this won't work, then then theist is liable to viewed as someone whose conception is so far from traditional Christian conceptions that his religion is no longer the Christian religion. And this would not be the outcome of a controversial philosophical argument (thus violating Wittgenstein's impartial conception of philosophy). It would be just a raw fact of social psychology.

      "Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and heretic" (OC §611). But this refers to life outside philosophy, and not just philosophers doing philosophy.

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    4. Then the theist would just have to stagger on as best he could, hoping that his message sowed some kind of seed in a few of the hearts around him. It's worth remembering that that's quite close to the position Wittgenstein considered himself to be in: swimming against the tide of Scientism.

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  11. slight tangent but thought it was worth noting:
    http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/deflationism-and-wittgenstein/
    -dmf

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  12. Tommi makes some more good points over at Skeptical Observations. For instance: Psalm 139 does not say: "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are probably there..."

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    1. That's D. Z. Phillips's example (from his Faith After Foundationalism, pp. 9–10).

      Thinking a bit more about the discussion above, I began to wonder whether a distinction should be maintained between a philosophically confused person and a mere crank. A philosophically confused person may present problems specifically for Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy (e.g. can we accuse him of superstition without expressing a value judgement?). But a crank is a crank, and his existence is much the same problem for everyone, philosopher or non-philosopher, Wittgensteinian or non-Wittgensteinian. If a successful argument must silence even a crank, no argument in history has ever been successful (except the fallacy of argumentum ad baculum, and even that just occasionally).

      "If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by clarity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections." (Chesterton.)

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    2. I thought it sounded like something Phillips might say.

      You're right that you can't really argue with a crank. You might show him to be superstitious, but he won't accept it. A philosophically confused person, I would think, could be led out of confusion. Might they then be superstitious nevertheless? I'm not sure, but it seems possible.

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    3. well if one takes seriously, and I do, work of folks like Dan Dennett and Tonya Luhrmann on the anthropo-logoi of many aspects of religious-belief/superstition than something akin to formal logic will likely leave most religious orientations untouched, but than isn't it likely that Witt would have wanted it that way?
      http://www.luhrmann.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/metakinesisfinal.pdf
      -dmf

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    4. Right, he wouldn't particularly want to change people's religious orientations. But Father O'Hara-style unreasonableness seems to be widespread, and he might have wanted to change that. I think it's hard, though, to know what people really mean when they say unreasonable-sounding things. Some is bull (in the sense of stuff said to try to sound good) and some is honest confusion. And some might not be confusion at all. The only way that I can see is to take one person at a time and see what they say and how much sense you can make of it. Logic isn't going to make someone either religious or irreligious though.

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