"Thought for the (Christmas) day": the intellectual battle we face

On this Christmas Eve, when Christians throughout the world are reminded of their belief that the Creator God adopted human personhood, I am struck by this quote:

"I am more than ever convinced that the question of what it is to be a human person is the biggest intellectual question of our day."

I am inclined to agree, and also when the same writer says,

"... there is a major intellectual battle going on, especially in the West, between those who adopt a purely materialist view of human persons and those who believe that there is a distinctive reality and value about human minds, and that such minds far transcend their physical embodiments both in their nature and in their moral worth. [...] It is about what it means to be human and about the distinctive importance of human personhood in our physical universe. It is a metaphysical battle, a battle about what sorts of things exist and about whether persons are distinctive sorts of things that are different from purely material things. This metaphysical battle is real."

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Everything was going fine until we came along ... ;-)

What an interesting idea ...

"... the whole world ... [perhaps] is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapour, and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the fauna of [today], with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day."

A very similar thought had occurred to me. It also raises the interesting suggestion that until organisms capable of choice appeared, everything that brought the universe to that point happened because it had to happen according to those same "definite laws" which the writer invokes. Thus before we arrived, things pretty much had to be the way they were. Now they don't.

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Now you see us, now you don't, or "Who knows where the time goes?"

Earlier in the week I posted a ‘musing’ about time.

I’ve been thinking about the issues raised there for quite a while, but more recently I’m inclined to suggest they have some bearing on our present-day intellectual battles.

I have just begun reading Keith Ward’s More Than Matter?, which makes the following point:

Most people ... accept a philosophy of common sense. They assume that things continue to be roughly what they are observed to be even when nobody is observing them. We live in a world of real objects in three-dimensional space, and we observe it more or less as it is (this is ... sometimes called naive realism, because many philosophers think it really is rather naive). (30-31)

That, I think, pretty much describes where most people are at. Indeed, I would go further and say that is pretty much where the public discourse encourages them to be at. We are encouraged to think of the world on a ‘what you see is what you get’ basis, within which we are marginalized as mere accidents, able to observe for a while but due to disappear quite soon, whilst the ‘reality’ of the universe continues as it has always done.

At the same time, however, we are also encouraged to regard human affairs as of mammoth importance — the state of the economy and the behaviour of governments, for example, are prominently headlined, even though, for the most part, most of what is headline news only affects us emotionally (and, indeed, is written up precisely to affect our emotions).

Thus one could say we actually live in a ‘Matrix world’, imagining we are busy with important things, but shielded from too much present awareness of the real reality.

Of course, those who understand much science (and especially physics), know the naivety of this ‘naive realism’ all too well. Matter is not matter ‘as we know it’. Nor, indeed, is time what we ‘know’ it to be. Indeed, our ‘real’ world of space-time is avowedly elusive, and, at the level of ‘common sense’ almost illusory.

One illustration of the latter, it seems to me, is the question of when ‘now’ becomes ‘then’.

Common sense says we live in the now — the present moment — which has an extension in time. My guess is that for most people ‘what is happening now’ is quite a flexible concept. Right now I am typing. Right now in Africa people are starving. It is now early evening in Perth — and so on.

Yet if we think about ‘now’ as ‘that which has not become the irrecoverable past’, it becomes contracted almost to the point of vanishing. By the time I finish typing this sentence, the production of the capital B is already ‘the irrecoverable past’. I can go back and correct a mistake, but I cannot go back in time and not make it in the first place.

Worse than that, however, by the time I have typed the w at the end of ‘now’, the n at the beginning is already in the ‘irrecoverable past’. And so it goes on, as we slice ‘now’ (both the action of producing the word, and the concept itself into smaller and smaller sections.

But, of course, it is not just the ‘time’ that is irrecoverable, it is also the matter — the physical reality that we think of as ‘permanent’.

And this realization can, I think, be somewhat mind-boggling. We are accustomed to think of the past in terms of millennia (or even ‘billennia’) that, by their sheer magnitude, establish it as something ‘real’. Yet it would seem that actually nothing ‘in the past’ exists. Certainly it existed, but only for that brief moment we call ‘now’. In our ‘now’, what is ‘then’ doesn’t exist at all.

More strangely still, the entirety of the universe is exactly the same. All the vastness, from here to whatever is the furthest point we can speak of as physically existing, is actually in existence only ‘now’. We may predict what vast swathes of it are going to be like in a moment’s time, or even millions of years time, but what we can predict nevertheless has no existence. And we can see what equally vast swathes of it were, and how that relates to the nature of things ‘now’. But what once ‘was’, now ‘is not’.

And this, I would suggest, has implications for the answer to the question, ‘Why are we here?’ For although the condition of the world ‘now’ results from its condition in the past, the existence of the world ‘now’ stands — it would seem — separated from either the past or the future.

And there I must leave it — for now.

John Richardson
16 December 2010

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The moral dilemma of Wikileaks

Not infrequently a letter arrives at our house which is intended for a neighbour. What should be one’s first instinct when that happens: to deliver it to the right address, or to open it first to see whether it contains anything of interest?

I would hope that your own answer is the former. I would take it as a sign of ‘good neighbourliness’. Indeed, I would go further, and say it is a necessary quality for a strong social order.

Trustworthiness when we are unobserved is, in short, a virtue. It is not one that we all possess, and certainly not one we all possess all the time. But that is because we are not entirely virtuous, not because trustworthiness is optional.

Imagine, though, that your neighbour is a local councillor. Imagine, furthermore, that the letter is marked ‘Confidential’. Add to that, there have been rumours about irregularities in the recent business of the Council and, furthermore, that these have directly affected you and your welfare.

Now are you so keen to take the letter next door?

Or what if another of your neighbours came to you with the same letter having opened it already, and says, “Here, I don’t understand these things myself, but perhaps you’d like to have a look through this to see if it sheds any light on what the Council’s been up to?”

What will you do now?

Philosophers love to construct such dilemmas, not least to show the fragility of our moral absolutes. What if your neighbour were a known drug dealer? What if you thought they were a spy? — and so on, and so on.

The tendency of such arguments (indeed, often the deliberate intention) is to weaken our reliance on traditional ‘rule based’ systems. And if you are a Christian, there is something to be said for that.

But the fundamental question, familiar to moral philosophers but often overlooked in debate, is not whether we can come up with a workable ‘rule’ (often we can’t), but what is the kind of thing that would be done by the kind of person we ought to be.

In short, what would a virtuous person do in any given circumstance?

This, however, may itself be the subject of some debate, and I am therefore inclined to turn the question round and ask, ‘What would a wicked person do?’ Suddenly (for some strange reason) the answer is generally clear.

If I were a wicked person, for example, I would certainly open any letter that I thought might contain anything to my advantage or offer an opportunity for causing harm to another. The greater my wickedness, the less compunction I would feel in doing so. And if my other neighbour brought me such a letter I would ask whether there were any more from the same source (all the time making sure that as little harm as possible could come to me as a result).

Of course, this still does not translate into a ‘rule’ system. It is not that the wicked person operates by ‘wicked rules’ (though we may be sure such have been devised). Rather, it is that the virtuous person and the wicked person approach a moral dilemma very differently.

Faced with the so-called ‘trolley problem’ — shall I divert a runaway train to a siding where it will kill one unfortunate individual, or leave it on its current track where it will kill five who have been tied to the rails by a mad philosopher — it is easy to know what a wicked person would do. (Indeed, the whole problem is posited on the somewhat-politically-incorrect presumption that madness produces wicked acts, such as setting out to kill people or to tax the morally virtuous with difficult choices!)

But if we may thus be sure that the wicked person would have scant regard for an accidental breach of confidence, we may equally deduce that the virtuous person will, on the contrary, seek to minimize the consequences of such a circumstance.

This still does not push us into the realm of ‘absolute rules’. What if one’s neighbour were indeed a suspected drug dealer? What if the envelope were already open, the letter fell out and one could not help noticing it described plans for an act of terrorism?

The theoretician can always come up with tantalizing situations. The fundamental answers, however, must be couched in terms of what a virtuous person would do, which can itself often be assessed in terms of what would be done by a person lacking in virtue.

Now this brings me to the subject of Wikileaks — its rationale, but also its social impact. What is the significance of such a website becoming part of our cultural ‘fabric’, and of media outlets participating in the process, particularly when they are favoured recipients of the material Wikileaks has obtained?

The reaction of many (including the editors of certain newspapers) is that such a phenomenon is vitally important, exposing, as it does, that governments are corrupt and that they have acted corruptly.

But that leads me to ask, what do we expect of governments? Or do we rather expect that they should be virtuous, and if that is the case, where will we find the men and women of virtue, and by what process will we produce them?

We seem to have forgotten that society can only work with the individuals who actually make up that society. We cannot therefore expect to produce incorruptible police officers, self-sacrificing captains of industry and honest politicians from a population of morally indifferent individuals. Virtue begins in the individual, not in theoretical ‘values’ a society demands, but fails to apply at the personal level.

Let me pose another dilemma. You find the lap-top belonging to an MP. As a virtuous person, is your first duty to open it and see what you can find? Or is it to return the lost lap-top intact to its owner as soon as possible?

What a wicked person would do is surely self-evident.

But why would a person of virtue presume that there might be damaging material on the lap-top. And why would they want to know? Surely the virtuous person would first presume virtue in the other? And the virtuous person would equally regard the keeping of a confidence and the preservation of trust as their first priority.

The problem with the Wikileaks phenomenon is that the values by which it operates either presume a lack of trustworthiness or rely on such untrustworthiness in others. There is something about it of the ‘wiki-sneak’, and a true danger of it undermining our necessary social fabric.

By all means let whistles be blown. But let them never be blown by those who love ‘whistle-blowing’ for its own sake, and let us never become people who long for the next ‘revelation’ of wrongdoing. The difference between the reader of the Guardian and the reader of the News of the World is not as great, in this regard, as the former might like to imagine.

John Richardson
30 November 2010

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Why are we here?

“... what motivates God to choose not the world consisting solely of himself, the absolutely perfect being, but, instead, a world consisting of the absolutely perfect being accompanied by a universe swarming with countless other beings, none of which — not even any that is perfect of its kind — is or could be absolutely perfect?”* [222]

I’m trying to do some work on Genesis 1-3, and find myself constantly drawn to what I now discover is a position known as ‘necessitarianism’, which apparently Thomas Aquinas denied, but which the author of the question above says actually his logic ought to have affirmed.

Thus I find myself agreeing with the following (in fact it was quite a relief to find someone else taking this line):

Goodness does require something other than itself as a manifestation of itself. God therefore necessarily (though with the freedom associated with with counterfactual choice) wills the being of something other than himself. [...] God’s will is necessitated as regards whether to create, but fully free as regards what to create. [225]

And what that has to do with women bishops, I’ll explain later.

By the way, I discovered this brilliant quote about the author on Wikipedia. It is referenced, so I trust it is true!

When his friends and colleagues wept because they knew he was dying, he consoled them by saying, "You are not a philosopher or a Christian if you are not ready to welcome death." When a colleague commented that he was treating his illness very philosophically, he replied "of course - I have a PhD in that subject."

John Richardson
3 November 2010

* Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997)

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Should atheists have children?

Some time ago, I had what I thought was a great plot for a science-fiction novel, only for it to turn up in Terminator 3. Today, I am feeling equally miffed in that the Australian philosopher Peter Singer has pre-empted me on a blog post in which I was planning to ask, “Why should atheists have children?”

The lead to Singer’s article came from the Anglican Mainstream site, which points to a comment on Singer’s post, which can itself be found on the New York Times blog site. It is the last of these which you should really read.

Singer is a truly radical thinker, with (as I argued in my debate with Richard Norman on whether we can be good without God) a much better grasp of the philosophical implications of atheism than someone like Richard Dawkins. To some people he is known as an advocate of ‘animal rights’, but that is not least because he views human beings as another species of animal, and therefore is willing to extend the same moral principles as apply to humans to the rest of the animal kingdom.

At the forefront of Singer’s thinking is the question of suffering and its avoidance. In simplistic terms, he is a ‘utilitarian’, evaluating actions overall by their outcomes in terms of bringing about the best of situations for the most of sentient organisms.

In his blog article, therefore, he pushes this thinking to examine a question which I am surprised has not been given greater prominence before, namely, given the inevitably limited quality of all human life, would it not be better, now that we know there is nothing more than this life and have the ability to control our reproductive capacity, simply to make sure that this is the last generation of human beings?

He is prompted to ask this, however, by the publication of a work by a South African philosopher David Benatar — someone of whom I admit to never having heard, but whom Singer describes as “the author of a fine book with an arresting title: ‘Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.’”

In evaluating Benatar’s work, Singer notes that there is an asymmetry in our thinking when it comes to begetting children. We are troubled at the thought of brining into existence a child whose quality of life might be very low, but we do not use the idea that they might be happy as a converse argument that we should try for conception. (In fact, as Singer observes, the reasons why people decide to have children are generally much more to do with their own happiness and quality of life than anything which might benefit the child.)

Benatar, however, notes that all human life involves some suffering and (if we are honest) considerable disappointment. Thus, for example, as followers of this blog will have noticed, my wife’s elderly father is currently in hospital where his illness may prove terminal and where he is experiencing not just weakness, but indignity. Yet every child born is potentially like to suffer the same or worse, at least towards the end of their life. Singer notes, “To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person,” but, he continues, “to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her.”

Therefore, in Singer’s words,

Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

Singer therefore offers this thought experiment to test our response to Benatar’s argument:

So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

As Singer points out, this has certain advantages, not least that we could stop feeling guilty about what we are doing to the planet. And we would not be depriving anyone of anything, for that potential ‘future generation’ simply does not, and will not, exist. As Singer puts it, “Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence?”

However, Singer himself rejects Benatar’s conclusions, and his justification for this is worth reading in full:

I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe [ie, one with no human beings]. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now.

The first point to note here is that Singer makes quite a sweeping claim: “In my judgement, for most people, life is worth living.” Yet earlier in his post he is careful to apply his standards of judgement to “most people in developed nations”.

The reason for this is obvious: in under-developed nations, life for millions, if not billions, is a constant struggle. And indeed, Singer shows he is aware of this in his next sentence, “Even if this is not the case ...” Yet Singer basis his objection to Benatar’s pessimism on his own mere optimism and faith: “I am enough of an optimist to believe ...”

Singer, it seems, finally falls foul of the problem which affects many atheists, that they just do not want to act like one. A world without human beings is, for Singer (if you’ll pardon the pun) inconceivable, even if the only justification for its continuation is the blind hope that “things can only get better”.

Yet even he can only hope for a world in which there is “far less suffering”, not one in which there is none at all. And if the avoidance of suffering is important then we come back to the questions with which he concludes:

Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

For a thinking atheist, these must be a real challenge.

John Richardson
10 June 2010

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Antony Garrard Newton Flew, died 8 April 2010

I was very sorry to read today of the death of my old professor of philosophy, Antony (Tony) Flew.

I only knew Professor Flew for a short time, whilst I was a student at Keele University between 1968 and ’72, but although I didn’t realize it at the time, he would have a massive influence on my life.

In those days, Keele University still held to the bright vision of its founders, that a proper and rounded education should introduce students to every field of human knowledge. Thus, all courses were Joint Honours, spread over three years, and in addition, all students were required to take the full Foundation Year course.

Every weekday morning of ‘FY’, students would therefore attend two lectures by a member of one of the faculties, beginning (as I recall) with Astronomy and Physics, and proceeding via History, Biology, Politics, American Studies, Psychology and, of course, Philosophy at the hands of the good Professor himself.

My chief memory of him at this stage is his dismissal of the existence of God whilst standing on one leg with his foot propped up on the front of the podium in order to tie his shoelace. It was rip-roaring stuff, and (as with all the FY lectures) I only with that I’d paid more attention.

In addition to studying almost literally every subject under the sun, FY students were required to read two ‘Sessional’ subjects, at least one of which had to be outside their main area of study. One of my chosen Sessionals, for want of a better idea, was philosophy. And thus it was that I found myself struggling with propositional logic and the works of David Hume.

It was in the third term, in 1969, that we got to meet the great man, and one sleepy morning I presented a seminar paper that I had been up all night writing and which, to be honest, I scarcely understood myself. All the way through, however, Professor Flew kept stopping and observing that I’d made a good or important point, etc. I’d determined to drop philosophy at the first opportunity, but when the essay came back marked, it not only scored well, but had a short note at the end where Professor Flew expressed his hope that I would continue the subject in the second year. Flattery, it turned out, can get even a philosopher quite a long way, and so I continued into my first ‘Principal’ year with the Philosophy of Science as one of my two ‘Subsidiaries’.

And how glad I am now that I did, for those two years of philosophy, even for someone who worked as clumsily and reluctantly as myself, were invaluable in teaching me to think. And it was this, more than anything else, which laid the foundations for my later study of theology — even though in this subject I was an equally slow learner!

At the end of the second year, driven more by the fear of failure than a love of the subject, I gained a ‘distinction’ in the philosophy course. A few days later, I found in my pigeon hole (and have in front of me now) a short note of congratulations, signed by Professor Flew himself.

There was one another way, however, in which Professor Flew was also an unintentional influence on my life. He was, of course, famously and overtly an atheist. At the same time, one of our other Professors, Donald MacKay, who led the pioneering Department of Information, was a keen Christian.

As a young student, as yet undecided about Christianity, it was obvious to me that both men were of vastly superior intellects to my own, and yet each had come to an entirely different conclusion about the Christian faith. The one thing this told me was that finding the answer as to whether Christianity was true or not could not depend on mere intelligence. If people a lot smarter than me could not agree, it was no good thinking I could wait until I was smart enough to work it out!

The decision I reached, on a late August afternoon in 1971, was not irrational, but neither was it the fruit of an intellectual journey. It was, rather, almost a case of having nowhere else to turn: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Ironically, in his final years Professor Flew’s intellect seems to have persuaded him into a form of Deism. Some have been infuriated by this ‘lapse’. For myself, I think any suggestions that this reflected a fading of his powers is patronizing in the extreme. He was clear that this was his own, reasoned, viewpoint. Yet he was equally clear that this was not the same as accepting the revealed faith of his Methodist father.

Personally, I respected the man and I respect his decision. I must hope, though, that his intellectual conviction may have been accompanied, at another level, by a relational suasion towards the person of God.

John Richardson
15 April 2010

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How can I be just? The intellectual incoherence of the West

Following the (non) reaction to my post about the ‘legality’ of the Iraq war, I wanted to return to the question of law and modern society. This is an area where I feel two issues arise. One is that Christians ought, from their unique perspective of the gospel, to have something radical to say. The other is that this issue highlights what I believe to be the increasing incoherence of modern society.

Incoherence
Why do I speak of ‘incoherence’? The reason lies, I believe, in the tension between what I will call moral demand and material narrative.

On the one hand, we see a continuing moral demand for justice and, with it, an expectation that law can be so framed as to produce that justice. Hence, according to some modern commentators, Tony Blair must not merely be condemned but ‘arrested’ for starting the Iraq war because what he did was ‘illegal’.

On the other hand, we have the prevailing material narrative which undergirds our understanding of the nature of existence. That narrative, quite simply, is that human beings are just one amongst many meaningless products of meaningless processes. We are distinct from animals —or rather from the other animals —only in degree, not in kind, and our much-vaunted ‘ethical’ values are nothing more, ultimately, than the product of evolutionary forces written into our genes by natural selection.

What is justice?
Thus, whether we realize it or not, there is a contradiction between what we believe we want and what we believe we are. The ethicist Peter Singer puts it like this:

Justice is not, as often thought, a sacrosanct moral principle imposed on us by a divine being, nor is it somehow engraved into the bedrock of the universe.

His first point is, of course, gladly embraced by most of our leading moral commentators. There is no God, therefore moral principles have no divine sanction.

What is generally missed is his second point: neither do moral principles derive from the fabric of the material world. You may look down through a microscope or up through a telescope, but you will see nothing that tells you what you ought to do when faced with a so-called ‘ethical dilemma’. What, then, is ‘justice’? Singer continues,

Justice is neither more nor less than a set of conceptual tools for making Tit for Tat work in the real world. (Peter Singer, How are we to live? [Oxford: OUP, 1997], 176)

Tit for Tat (or Doing unto others as they have Done unto you) is, quite literally, Singer’s basis for ‘moral’ behaviour, advocated because it ‘works’ in producing what Singer argues is the best outcome for everyone (and is therefore the ‘best’ outcome). In all this, Singer is thoroughly reductionist — the proof of Tit for Tat morality is in game theory and the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, and when we see it applied in human society we should recognize we are doing nothing basically more than chimpanzees grooming one another for fleas — but on it he wishes to rest the whole edifice of moral living.

Whence justice?
Singer’s particular ‘explanation’ does not appear to have gained wide acceptance. Nevertheless, I suspect that the general principles it entails are becoming almost universal in Western thinking, albeit in a semi-conscious way. The atheist who is also an unthinking materialist would surely find little to contradict in Singer’s view that justice is neither divinely imposed nor a fundamental property of the material universe. It must then, in some sense, be derived from ourselves alone.

The problem is, from whence in ourselves can such a notion of justice derive, and of what value is it once it has been so derived?

The standard ‘evolutionary’ explanation increasingly focuses on ‘altruism’ as the basic source of ethical behaviour — evolutionary altruism being behaviour which appears to be inimical to the survival of the individual but actually favours the survival of the group, and which is therefore increased by natural selection.

On this view, our sending money to help the people of Haiti is an unconsciously driven ‘human survival’ mechanism. And indeed, one can see how such an explanation has a superficial appeal. If our ‘being good’ comes down, ultimately, to prospering the human gene, then clearly appeals for help will tend to succeed, whether they be those of crushed Haitians or drowning swimmers.

But actually that is not how things work, as is shown by the so-called ‘bystander effect’. The truth is, we are not all impelled by instinct to help those we perceive to be in trouble. On the contrary, we turn off the TV, we look the other way, we regard it as ‘none of our business’, even when the personal risk is minimal. Somehow, our ‘altruistic instinct’ turns out to be rather inefficient.

On the other hand, Singer himself is adamant that argument and reason can, and must, be used to induce ethical behaviour. It would appear that our genes are not strong enough —indeed, Singer sees this as taking us beyond “the straight line of evolution” which gave us the capacity to reason in the first place (p 269).

What is ‘I’?
But that being the case, we must ask, “With what are we reasoning and on what is our reasoning working?” The automatic answer is that we are reasoning with our minds. But what is the mind? The contemporary Western material narrative says that the mind is created by physical processes resulting from evolutionary forces. (That may not be what modern research is showing, incidentally, but it is, I believe, what is being accepted as the ‘popular view’.)

The key question, though, is whether we can control those forces. If ‘I’ am the product of material forces, how can ‘I’ turn round and, in an instant, manipulate those same forces which make up ‘me’? It would surely be like a puppet suddenly grabbing its own strings. The material narrative can tell me how ‘I’ experience what I do as a result of electrical processes in the brain. I can even watch them happening. But it leaves me with a problem as to how the brain that produces those phenomena can be told what phenomena to produce.

The modern dilemma
Like many moderns, Singer is an ardent ‘moralist’. That is to say, he is a man for whom human moral issues are a consuming interest. I am sure he would make a very good neighbour (unless you were, perhaps, senile or terminally ill, in which case I am not so sure).

It is similar moralists who want Tony Blair arrested. But what, according to the material narrative, has Blair done wrong? Biologically, he is a product of evolution. Individually, his thoughts and decisions are the product of material processes in the few pounds of jelly contained in his cranium. His is, to use Desmond Morris’s terminology, a ‘naked ape’ — as are we all.

The pure materialist might argue that rather than being arrested, Blair should be put down. Yet that would surely require a judgement which would be independent of the same limitations that the nature of material reality imposed on Mr Blair. And it is difficult to see how, according to the material narrative, that is something any of us has.

Revd John P Richardson
28 January 2010

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On the problem of opinions

“Do you not see, then, that you had no right to have any opinion whatever on the subject?”

Thus said ‘the Great Knock’, the tutor of the young C S Lewis, in response to his subject’s views on the Surrey landscape. But it ought, in truth, to be blazoned across our media generally and the internet particularly. Indeed, some people ought to have it as a screen-saver.

It is more than three weeks since I last posted a ‘proper’ article on this blog. Partly that is down to the busy-ness of Christmas, partly to a holiday thereafter, partly to trying to do some reading and partly to the demands of running the Benefice during our current interregnum.

However, I have continued to visit the odd blog or two and to look at the comments made in online newspapers, and the one thing that has increasingly struck me is that most of what is written is complete twaddle, not only in what is said, but how, and even why.

Too many people, it seems, have little grasp either of basic comprehension or of logical reasoning. The result, thanks to the internet, is a constant pouring forth of opinions fiercely held and rebuttals vitriolically delivered, but little actual engagement or sense.

I am reminded of a group of largely-unemployed men who used to gather at a church-run coffee shop I knew. What characterised them when they debated together was the great passion with which so little was said. It was clear that they had strong feelings on the various subjects under discussion, but they lacked the educational or intellectual ability to get very far in their analysis. The result was doubtless fun for them —and why should it not be? —but it would have made a poor radio broadcast.

Now some, I am sure, will feel I am mocking the ‘inferiority’ of these men. I am not. But I am asserting that argument or discussion may be of a greater or lesser quality depending on the abilities and skills brought to bear. My target is not the cheerful ‘bumpkin’, who is a threat to no one, but the person who really does believe they have understanding and that therefore they have something to say.

Such a person will probably have negotiated our educational system with some success. Indeed, it is likely they have a degree. However, as the scarecrow discovered in The Wizard of Oz, a diploma is not the same thing as wisdom.

The first problem I observe is the sheer lack of comprehension reflected in many people’s comments on an article or issue. Quite simply, people read without taking things in. Their responses therefore are often tangential to, or sometimes even unrelated to, what has actually been said.

When I was in my early years at school, we were required to write two sorts of ‘English’ essay —comprehension and composition. I much more enjoyed composition, where we were allowed to express ourselves on a subject. Comprehension essays, where we had to sum up the content of someone else’s work, I found dull and repetitious. Yet I now understand the value of the latter, for if I am to engage with the ideas and opinions of others I must first comprehend what they are saying.

Such comprehension, however, is clearly lacking in many today, as evidenced by comments which miss the point, which ignore what has been said or which, most frustratingly of all, attribute to an author ideas or views which he or she has simply not expressed. The latter, which is all-too-common, arises perniciously not from the words of the author but the opinions of the reader, who has gained nothing from the effort of reading save an increase in bile.

It was a very important lesson to me, in my university days, to realize that although one might be able to read very well, it did not guarantee one understood what was written. This was brought home to me by an assignment to read chunks of David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding over the Christmas holidays. Sitting on a bus from West Croydon to Charlton, I realized that although I understood every word on the page in front of me, I simply had no idea what Hume was saying. Only during tutorials in the following term did I finally, and slowly, get the hang of comprehending Hume’s words.

Lesson number two also came through the philosophy module, where I eventually, and painfully, learned the difference between meaning something and saying it. Too often, essay marks suffered because although I knew what I meant, it simply wasn’t there in the words on the page. It was almost an epiphany when I realized this was the problem, and my writing improved dramatically. At the same time, however, I realized that what was true for me was also applicable to others, and that I could therefore only take their meaning to be what they had actually expressed in their words —for better or for worse.

Unfortunately, far too few people have any experience either of being taught to read or to write in a disciplined way. The result is too much careless reading and thoughtless writing.

And then there are the disciplines of argument and evidence. Too many people, again, imagine that philosophy and the natural sciences are about the ‘big ideas’, without grasping that these entail the basic building blocks of reason.

Recently, I was browsing the philosophy section of a bookshop, looking for an introductory work on the subject. The first book I picked up purporting to be such almost immediately introduced the reader to the question of the existence of God! (Indeed, it was surprising how many works on ‘popular’ philosophy and science touched on religion.) Of course, this is an interesting topic, and one on which much philosopher’s ink has been spilled. But the point is, how can someone who has not yet learned the basics of philosophy understand whether the presentation itself of such a topic is philosophically sound or otherwise?

Before we can usefully debate the arguments for the existence of God, we must understand the principles by which argument works, at the heart of which is the notion that “If p, then not not-p” —the axiom that two contradictory things cannot simultaneously be the case. Those who are unfamiliar with such a concept, or who find it too abstruse to grasp, are surely not in a position yet to trust their own arguments for the existence of the Deity or to dispute those of others!

As I hinted in the introductory quote, however, what is lacking today, above all, is humility —humility, in particular, about our abilities or understanding. People ‘read into’ more easily than they read, and opinionate more eagerly than they reflect. The Bible’s advice concerning the latter is clear: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself” (Prov 26:4). Equally clear is its advice regarding the former: “Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes” (Prov 26:5).

It is the wise person indeed who will stop to think before rushing to comment on how to reconcile the two.

Revd John Richardson
16 January 2010

PS: Just to illustrate the relevance of, and need for, basic 'philosophical' skills, readers might like to consider this news item and list the points which require critical awareness of the nature and rules of argument.

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Agreeing to differ

Sometimes I find Andrew Brown irritating beyond words. And he himself has written, I believe, some very unnecessary things about those with whom he disagrees. Nevertheless, I commend heartily this article by him in the Guardian's 'Comment is Free' section - though be warned, it contains the 'F' word early on. Here is his conclusion:

[The] dismissal, in advance, of everything your opponents might say as meaningless is the hallmark of all popular philosophical or religious discussion on the internet. It's odd to find it so enthusiastically embraced by academics, because it is not so very different at all from the demand of students opposed to all uncomfortable learning that anything they don't understand should be removed from the syllabus.

In County Fermanagh, religious differences were real enough for people to kill one another: my great-grandfather is buried in Enniskillen, which was the scene of one of the worst bombings. Perhaps because of that, people learned not to give offence unless there was something really serious at stake. But online, everything feels like a game, and in the teeth of all the evidence we persist in believing that there is a clear sharp line between gaming and reality.

Thank you, Andrew.

John Richardson

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