An Indirect Argument for the Existence of God
I was standing on line in the DMV in downtown Buffalo yesterday when
the following argument for God's existence formed in my mind. For
posterity's sake, I thought I ought to put it out there on record. It
runs as follows,
1) The DMV exists.
2) Therefore some superhumanly evil agent must exist.
3) The devil (as conceived in the Judeo-Christian/Islamic worldview)
is a superhumanly evil agent.
4) Therefore the devil must exist.
5) But if the devil exists then the JCI worldview is true.
6) From (4) and (5) it follows that the JCI worldview is true.
7) From (6) it follows that God must exist.
Some will question premise (2). But they haven't recently been to the
DMV.
Posted by Adam Taylor at 11:59 AM 8 comments
Thursday, March 8, 2007
New Focus
At the request of my fellow graduate students, I am pleased to annouce
Ungrounded Dispositions will be widening its focus to include a
broader spectrum of philosophical subject matter. So look forward to
to posts on everything from metaphysics, to ethics, to Plato, to
American pragmatism. if any UB philosophy grads interested in this
wider focus would like to be added as authors, please let me know.
Posted by Admin at 12:52 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Baker and Olson on the Overcrowding Problem
Eric Olson (The Human Animal 1997, What We Are forthcoming) has an
intriguing theory about the metaphysics of persons. He thinks that we
simply are our animals (or bodies). This yields a highly
counterintuitive result: it contradicts the 'Transplant Intuition'.
The TI is strong intuition that in cases of cerebral transplantation
our consciousness and ipso facto our personhood will move with our
cerebrum. Or as Harold Noonan puts it, the TI is just the intution
that in cases of transplantation the donor of the cerebrum and the
recipient of the cerebrum will be same person.
It contradicts the TI, but animalism solves at least one serious
metaphysical problem, which Olson makes frequent use of: the
overcrowding problem. In his discussions of the constitutionalist
account of persons (in What We Are ch. 3, and Thinking Animals and the
Referent of 'I' among others), he presses the claim that
constitutionalism gives us at least two distinct thinkers for each of
our thoughts. Which is absurd. Now Lynn Rudder Baker, Olson's primary
target in these discussions, maintains that Olson gets
constitutionalism wrong on this point.
According to Baker (On Making Things Up 2002) the constitutionalist
account of persons makes the following claims about persons, animals,
and their thoughts:
1) All persons stand in a 'constituted by' relation to their human
animals (or bodies).
2) The 'constituted by' relation is asymmetrical, transitive, and
irreflexive
3) Person's have their thoughts non-derivatively
4) Human animals think as well, but only derivatively
5) Given any self-referential statement (e.g. 'I am hungry') There are
not two I's involved in the utterance, rather it is the case that both
the human animal and the person are refering to the same 'I', namely
the person. The person refers to herself non-derivatively, while the
human animal refers to the person derivatively.
Baker thinks it is naive of Olson to fail to see the difference
between two entities being numerically distinct and two things having
seperate existences. If, according to Baker, the constitutionalist
view maintained the latter, then it would lead to absurdity. But it
doesn't. Baker claims that all that is needed for the view to go
through is that the human animal and the person are numerically
distinct entities.
Now, I have difficulty understanding the distinction that Baker is
running with here, and this is one of the points I would to get
other's opinions on. It seems to me like this business about
derivative properties, while helpful in solving various ontological
problems, packs a real can of worms for the constitutionalist when it
comes to the problem of overcrowding. Part of my problem is, I just
cannot make sense of what it means for a thing have a property
derivately. Whenever I stub my toe and feel a pain, and I say, 'ow,
the pain in my toe is killing me' my human animal says exactly the
same thing, only his case the sentence expresses the proposition :
(T) the pain in toe of the referent of 'I' is derivatively killing me.
I have the pain non-derivatively, the animal has it only derivatively.
But what can it possibly mean to have a derivative pain? Is it the
same as saying that one's arm hurts when one's elbow is struck with a
small hammer?
Baker thinks that it makes sense to talk about two things being
numerically distinct even though they cannot be seperated in their
existences. This seems plausible when we think about the statue and
the lump. We seem to want to say that even though the statue and the
lump are numerically distinct (i.e. they are not numerically
identical) they nevertheless share a single unseperated existence, or
a sameness such that, we do not count two objects being in their
location; even though we do count two sortals in their location. The
statue and the lump, during the time in which they are
constitutionally related, are the same thing. Consequently, Baker
supposes that we can have sameness, without numerical identity. So
that the statue and the lump can be the same, whilst still being
numerically distinct (non-identical)
I am, to say the least, skeptical about Baker's program. It looks
circular. In order to get the constitution view to work out and give
you the right answer to the question, "how many thinkers are in
presently in my chair?", you need to posit two numerically distinct
but exactly similar things in my chair: a human animal and a person.
both will be thinking all the time but only one will do so
non-derivatively. But in order to get the only clear notion of
'numerically distinct but exactly similar' that makes sense, so far as
No comments:
Post a Comment