Addendum to “The End of Skeptical Theism?”: On What God Would Do

Tweet

I know have already written, at nauseating length, about the topic of skeptical theism (ST). But I recently read an article by Rob Lovering entitled “On What God Would Do” and he lays out the implications of ST for theistic belief in such a well-structured manner that I thought I would share it here. This will serve as a nice addendum to the original series of posts on ST.


1. Three Epistemic Attitudes to God
As I explained in part one, ST in its modern form was introduced as a response to Rowe’s evidential problem of evil. Its proponents argued that given certain features of God (e.g. his tri-omni properties), and certain limitations in our cognitive abilities, there is no reason for us to endorse the central inference in Rowe’s argument.

Why not? Because God could, for all we know, have beyond-our-ken reasons for allowing apparently gratuitous evil to exist. Thus we should endorse an attitude of skepticism toward God and his reasons for action.

As Lovering notes, this creates problems for theists because many of the arguments they adduce for the existence of God rely, implicitly or explicitly, on claims about what God is likely to do. One example might be Robin Collins’s fine-tuning argument which relies on the claim that God would want to create morally significant conscious agents. Another example would be the various arguments to and from miracles which depend for their success on assumptions about how God is likely to intervene in the world.

So theists are left in a bit of a bind: are they to endorse skepticism and wriggle their way out of Rowe’s argument, or are they to enthusiastically assume to know God’s mind? Lovering identifies three options:

• (i) Broad Skeptical Theism: The view that, in each and every case, we cannot know what God would do.

• (ii) Broad Epistemic Theism: The view that, in each and every case, we can know what God would do.

• (iii) Narrow Skeptical Theism: The view that, in some cases, we can know what God would do, and in other cases, we cannot.

Lovering sets out to examine the plausibility of each of these options.


2. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Dependence
Lovering begins by arguing that acceptance of broad skeptical theism would force the believer to give up every positive argument for the existence of God. This is because every such argument depends on at least one claim about what god would do. One of the great virtues of Lovering’s article is his attempt to show exactly how this dependence arises.

First, he says that an argument for the existence of God can intrinsically depend on a claim about what God would do if such a claim can be derived from it after one of the following conceptual claims is added to the argument:

• (a) Conceptual Claim 1 (CC1): If God exists and X is/was the case, then God allows/allowed X to be the case.

• (b) Conceptual Claim 2 (CC2): If God allows X to be the case, then God would allow X to be the case.

These conceptual claims might seem strange, but they make sense if we think about the kind of being god is supposed to be -- the omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign creator of all reality. Given his nature, if there are red cars in existence, then it must be the case that God allows them to exist (CC1); and if there are red cars that God allows to exist, then it must be the case that God would or is likely to allow such things to exist (this is a claim about what God would allow across different possible worlds - i.e. CC2).

Lovering shows how these conceptual claims can be slotted into general arguments for the existence of God and used to derive from them a claim about what God would do. I will offer an abstract version here. Let P = some fact about the world that God is supposed to explain or account for; and let G = the claim that God exists.

• (1) If P, then G.
• (2) P.
• (3) Therefore, G.
• (4) Therefore, G and P.
• (5) If G and P, then it must be the case that God allows P to be the case (CC1).
• (6) Therefore, God allows P to be the case.
• (7) If God allows P to be the case, then God would allow P to be the case (CC2).
• (8) Therefore, God would allow P to be the case.

Although this may be a little abstract, the upshot of it is that a claim about what God is likely to do (or what God would do) can be derived from a general argument for God’s existence by means of CC1 and CC2.

The second way in which theistic arguments depend on claims about what God would do is through extrinsic dependence. This arises when a claim about what God would do can be derived from an argument if, in addition to adding CC1 or CC2 to it, we add the following:

• Intelligibility Claim (IC): We understand argument A (where “A” is the argument for God’s existence).

To see how this works in the abstract, let P = some feature or attribute of God; and let G = the claim that God exists (this is like the ontological argument).

• (1) If God is P, then G.
• (2) God is P.
• (3) Therefore, G.
• (4) We understand the argument for G in (1)-(3) (via IC).
• (5) Therefore, G and we understand the argument for G.
• (6) If G and we understand the argument for G, then God must allow us to understand the argument for G (CC1).
• (7) Therefore, God allows us to understand the argument for G.
• (8) If God actually allows us to understand the argument for G, then God would or is likely to allow us to understand the argument for G (CC2).
• (9) Therefore, God would or is likely to allow us to understand the argument for G.

So, once again, from an argument for the existence of God we can derive a claim about what God would do.

Lovering goes on to provide examples of how existing arguments for the existence of God exhibit intrinsic and extrinsic dependence. I’ll just provide one example of each.

3. Intrinsic Dependence and the Cosmological Argument
Consider the following version of the Cosmological Argument:

• (1) There exist things that are caused to be.
• (2) Nothing that is caused to be can be the cause of itself.
• (3) There cannot be an infinite regress of causes.
• (4) Therefore, there exists an uncaused first cause.
• (5) Probably, God is the uncaused first cause.
• (6) Therefore, probably God exists.

This should be a fairly familiar generic form of the CA to most people. Now see how we can derive a claim about what God would do from this argument. As follows (the language is convoluted, but read through it slowly and it should make sense):

• (7) Probably, God exists and God caused the universe to be the case.
• (8) If God exists and God caused the universe to be, then God must have allowed the universe to be caused to be (CC1).
• (9) Therefore, probably, God allowed the universe to be caused to be.
• (10) If God allowed the universe to be caused to be, then God would allow the universe to be caused to be (CC2).
• (11) Therefore, God would allow the universe to be caused to be.

Et voila, we have a claim about what God would allow to be the case. The method employed in this analysis of the CA can be employed across a range of teleological, ontological and historical arguments for the existence of God.


3. Extrinsic Dependence and the Argument from Miracles
As an example of an argument that is extrinsically dependent on a claim about what God would do, consider the following versions of the argument from miracles:

• (1) Extraordinary events occur.
• (2) At least some of these extraordinary events could not have been the result of natural law or natural causes.
• (3) In such cases, the extraordinary events must be the result of a supernatural cause.
• (4) Probably, God is the supernatural cause of such extraordinary events.
• (5) Therefore, God probably exists.

Making use of the intelligibility claim, we can expand on this as follows:

• (6) We understand the argument for God’s existence in (1) - (6). (IC)
• (7) Therefore, God probably exists and we understand this argument for his existence.
• (8) If God probably exists, and we understand this argument for his existence, then God must allow us to understand this argument for his existence (CC1).
• (9) Therefore, God allows us to understand this argument for his existence.
• (10) If God allows us to understand this argument for his existence, then God would allow us to understand this argument for his existence (CC2).
• (11) Therefore, God would allow us to understand this argument for his existence.

And so, once again, we have an argument depending on a claim about what God would do.



4. The Untenability of Broad Skeptical Theism
Through the various other examples he has offered, Lovering thinks he has shown how every positive argument for God’s existence intrinsically or extrinsically depends on a claim about what God would allow to be the case. But since broad skeptical theism denies that we have any knowledge about what God would allow to be the case, it follows that a theist who accepts God’s existence on the basis of one or more of these arguments cannot endorse this brand of skepticism.

Or to put it more succinctly: for the majority of theists, broad skeptical theism is completely untenable. What about the other epistemic attitudes?


5. Broad Epistemic Theism
As set out above, this is the view that, in each and every case, we can know what God would do. At first glance, this is more plausible because it does not force the believer to relinquish every positive argument for God’s existence. But it also creates new problems.

First, it changes the nature of the response to Rowe’s evidential problem of evil. The believer cannot offer vague or aspirational rebuttals to Rowe’s main premise. For example, they cannot say “some reason for allowing prima facie gratuitous evil to exist will be forthcoming”. Instead, they must make a positive case for why God would allow such things to occur. Or, they must turn to other arguments for God’s existence and show how they tip the evidential weighing scales in favour of theism.

Second, it forces the theist to accept that they can know far more about God than they traditionally thought they could know. For instance, if in each and every case we can know what God would do, then we should be able to say whether:

• God would allow the Red Sox to win the World Series five years in a row;
• Whether God would allow another Holocaust; and so on.

Furthermore, it makes atheistic arguments such as the argument from divine hiddenness or non-belief more pressing.

It is unlikely then that a believer would be willing to embrace Broad Epistemic Theism.


6. Narrow Skeptical Theism
That leaves us with what many perceive to be the most plausible position: Narrow Skeptical Theism. This is the view that, in some cases, we know what God would do, but in other cases, we do not. This might allow the theist to keep their positive arguments and reject atheistic arguments.

But this requires some principled reason for distinguishing between claims about what God would do in those different cases. Lovering does not think any theist has yet risen to the challenge of developing such a principled distinction, so he tries to meet it himself.

He takes the claims about what God would do in Robin Collins’s teleological argument and in the evidential argument from evil as his reference point and asks the question: why is Collins allowed to claim that God would want to create conscious intelligent agents but the atheist is not allowed to claim that God would not allow apparently gratuitous evil to exist?

One potential difference is that Collins’s case just requires a general affirmation of the prima facie goodness of a particular state of affairs (“the existence of intelligent conscious agents”), whereas the argument from evil requires knowledge of whether something is an all-things-considered good or evil.

So this leads us to formulate the following principle:

• Principled Narrow Skeptical Theism - We can know whether something is a prima facie good or evil, but we cannot know whether something is an all-things-considered good or evil (only God can know that).

There are problems with this principle.

First, in relation to the problem of evil, skeptical theists are demanding a deep skepticism about our knowledge of the good. They are claiming that we cannot know whether or not a prima facie evil is necessary in order to realise a greater good because we are epistemically closed from the possible worlds in which such evils might be necessary.

But why does the same kind of skepticism not apply to our consideration of the possible worlds that God might choose to create? In particular, why doesn’t our lack of access to different possible worlds, and the forms of life possible within them, shut down any claim that this particular universe is fine-tuned for life.

A second problem with the principle is that Collins’s argument actually does require knowledge of all-things-considered goods. To see this, consider Collins’s own defence of his argument:

“Since God is an all good being, and it is good for intelligent conscious beings to exist, it is not surprising or improbable that God would create a world that could support intelligent life.”

To accept this line of argument, we must be able to say that intelligent beings are an all-things-considered good; that their existence is not outweighed by some greater, countervailing evil. To say that they are merely a prima facie (or “all else being equal”) good is to open up the possibility that their existence serves some ultimately evil purpose.

And the problem is that this isn’t only true of Collins’s argument. Since God is a morally perfect being, then every event or state of affairs that is explained by reference to him, must be compatible with his moral perfection. And since moral perfection must mean “acting so as to achieve all-things-considered goods”, it follows that we must know that the events and states of affairs explained by reference to God are all-things-considered goods.

The conclusion then is not only that the principled distinction offered above fails, but that all such principles are likely to fail.


7. Summary
Lovering began by identifying three different epistemic attitudes theists could take with respect to God. The following conclusions have been reached about each of them:

• (i) Given Broad Skeptical Theism, theists must relinquish every positive argument for God’s existence since every such argument depends on at least one claim about what God would do.

• (ii) Given Broad Epistemic Theism, theist must (a) relinquish one of the principal grounds upon which they object to Rowe’s argument from evil and other similar atheistic arguments; and (b) embrace far more knowledge claims about what God would allow to be the case than they have traditionally been willing to do.

• (iii) Given Narrow Skeptical Theism, the theist must find some principled ground for distinguishing between the set of cases in which we have knowledge of what God would do and the set of cases in which we do not have knowledge of what God would do. Such a distinction is unlikely to be forthcoming.

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 11) - Summing Up

Tweet

(Series Index)

I had originally planned to complete my series The End of Skeptical Theism? during September. It ended up taking me a lot longer than expected -- mainly because of the intervention of "real" life. Fortunately, it has now been completed. My previous post on skeptical theism (PT) and its implications for Plantinga's externalist epistemology was the last substantive entry in the series.

In the interests of wrapping things up appropriately, I thought I might summarise some of the main take-home points. There are three that spring readily to mind.


1. Rowe's Evidential Argument is Stronger Than You Might Think
As mentioned throughout this series, ST was originally conceived as a response to William Rowe's evidential problem of evil. As a result, understanding Rowe's argument is a necessary first step towards understanding ST. When I wrote the first entry on Rowe's argument, one thing that struck me was how strong Rowe's challenge to theism actually is.

Rowe argues that God, being omnipotent and omnibenevolent, could not allow for the existence of evil unless it was logically necessary in order to achieve some overriding good. Thus, the existence of evils (E1...En) for which we cannot locate a logically necessary good (call these "gratuitous evils") provides some evidential disconfirmation of God's existence.

The "logically necessary"-condition is what makes this a strong challenge to theists. Because of it, they cannot simply point to the existence of some causally connected greater good and claim that that permits the existence of evil. After all, that good could (possibly) have been brought about without the need for some intervening evil. Furthermore, the "logically necessary"- condition is justified by appeal to God's omnipotence and so seems legitimate.

Although Rowe's challenge is a strong one, it is important to make sure, when presenting it, that you are not limited to one or two examples of gratuitous evils. As noted in an earlier entry, it is the abundance of such evils that makes certain ST-responses implausible.


2. Skeptical Theism has Three Basic Forms
As a response to Rowe's argument, ST maintains that we are not warranted or justified in assuming that just because an evil seems to be gratuitous to us means that it is, as a matter of fact, gratuitous. "Seeming so" does not imply "actually so". Rowe's inference is impermissible.

Throughout the series we have looked at three basic forms of ST, each one associated with a different theorist:

• (1) Representativeness of the Sample: According to this form of ST, Rowe cannot make the necessary inference because there is no good reason to think that the sample of goods and evils which is available to him is representative of the totality of good and evil. This form is associated with Michael Bergmann.

• (2) Low-Seeability: According to this form of ST, there are certain kinds of things that we simply cannot expect to see (or otherwise perceive) due to (a) their nature and (b) the epistemic context in which we find ourselves. The prime example being, of course, God's reasons for action: they are derived from his unlimited knowledge, and we are like mere children relative to him. This form is associated with Stephen Wykstra.

• (3) Multiple Cognitive Limitations: According to this form of ST, human cognition faces a number of serious limitations which undercut our ability to make inferences of the sort demanded by Rowe. These limitations arise from our poor understanding of what is logically and metaphysically possible, as well as our inability to combine and analyse large amounts of data. This form is associated with William Alston.

3. Skeptical Theism has Several Unwelcome Implications
The problem with the three forms of ST outlined above is that the principles they invoke to justify their skepticism -- i.e. representativeness of sample, low-seeability and cognitive limitation -- seem to apply to domains beyond those invoked by Rowe's argument. As a result, ST undercuts a large swathe of human knowledge, including knowledge that a theist would like to retain.

The following examples of this were pinpointed in this series:

• ST damages moral reasoning by endorsing partial or complete skepticism about the states of affairs that we usually think to be morally commendable.

• Just as ST undermines inferences made from supposedly bad states of affairs to the non-existence of God, so too does it undermine inferences made from supposedly good states of affairs to the existence of God. As a result, arguments from design or arguments from miracles are no longer justifiable.

• ST undermines arguments based on Biblical revelation or personal experience because these arguments rely on the assumption that we are able to reliably identify direct and true communications from a perfectly good being. We can't due to {insert preferred form of ST here}.

• ST undermines Alvin Plantinga's externalist religious epistemology because it provides at least one reason for thinking that God may wish to conceal certain forms of knowledge from us.

As a result of these unwelcome implications, I think ST cannot be consistently embraced by the committed theist. To rescue ST from the Room 101 of philosophy, its proponents need to show how the principles to which they appeal only apply to the specific claims made by Rowe and not to these other domains. At present, it is difficult to see how this could be done.

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 10) - Theism's Cognitive Blindspot

Tweet

This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism? For an index, see here.

I am currently working my way through an article by Paul Jude Naquin entitled "Theism's Pyrrhic Victory". The article looks at the implications of skeptical theism (ST) for Alvin Plantinga's religious epistemology.

As we saw at the end of the previous entry, Plantinga's externalist epistemology can allow one to have warranted properly basic beliefs even when one lacks the evidential justification for those beliefs. However, this can only be allowed if one's general worldview permits the existence of cognitive faculties that satisfy the four conditions of proper function.

Plantinga argues that, according to the naturalist's worldview, our cognitive faculties are the product of an undirected process of evolution by natural selection. The problem is that there is no reason to think (and maybe good reason to think the contrary) that evolution would produce reliable, truth-oriented cognitive faculties. This is because there is no necessary overlap between beliefs that are good for survival and beliefs that accurately represent the state of reality.

The net result is that a naturalist must believe that the probability of having reliable, truth-oriented cognitive faculties, given the truth of naturalism, is either low or inscrutable. Thus, it is irrational to be a naturalist.

Plantinga contrasts the unwelcome predicament of the naturalist with that of the theist. According to Plantinga, the theist has every reason to believe that God would design their cognitive faculties so as to be reliable and truth-oriented. What's more, they have every reason to believe that God would create a special cognitive faculty that would give them direct epistemic access to the truth of his existence and the truth of any specific religious doctrines.

This is where Naquin thinks Plantinga goes wrong. If one accepts the ST-response to the problem of evil, one has a reason to think that God would not design such cognitive faculties.


1. Why Do We have Unreliable Cognitive Faculties?
The difficulties for Plantinga begin, unsurprisingly, with the responses to Rowe's evidential problem of evil. I covered Rowe's argument in the first entry in this series. Stated more briefly, Rowe maintains that the existence of evils for which we cannot locate a logically necessary greater good ("gratuitous evils") should undermine the confidence of our belief in the existence of God.

Theists of all stripes can respond to Rowe's argument by inverting it and denying the existence of gratuitous evils. In other words, they can say: "because God exists, all purported evils must have some logically necessary justification". Granting them this inversion of Rowe's argument, Naquin thinks they would have reason to accept the following argument:

• (1.1) There exists an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being, which we call God.

• (1.2) An omnipotent, omniscient, being would be capable of creating humans so that their cognitive and perceptual faculties are 100% reliable.

• (1.3) An omnibenevolent being would wish to make human cognitive and perceptual faculties 100% reliable, unless that being could not do so without sacrificing some overriding good.

• (1.4) Human cognitive faculties are not 100% reliable.

• (1.5) Therefore, God could not make humans with 100% reliable cognitive faculties without sacrificing some overriding good.

The logical structure of this argument is outlined in the diagram. Premise (1.2) is derived from (1.1) on the grounds that the creation of beings with perfectly reliable cognitive faculties is logically possible, and logical possibility is the threshold for omnipotence. 

Premise (1.3) is derived from (1.1) on the basis of an optimality assumption. The idea is that God, being perfect, would design anything he creates to be maximally efficient at achieving its specified purpose (which is "knowledge acquisition" in the case of cognitive faculties), unless there was some overriding moral reason to the contrary. 

Premise (1.4) seems to be an incontrovertible fact (indeed sub-optimality of all sorts seems to be common in the natural world). 

Thus, for a theist, the conclusion would seem to be unavoidable.

2. The ST-Reponse to the Problem of Impaired Cognition

The argument just outlined demands the existence of some overriding good that justifies the existence of sub-optimal cognitive faculties. This makes it identical to the problem of evil, which means it can be responded to in the same way.

So it could be responded to by working out what the overriding good actually is. In other words, by constructing a theodicy. The alternative, ST-response, as we have seen throughout this series, is to argue that human cognitive limitations are such that we cannot expect to know what God's moral reasons for permitting sub-optimality actually are. Thus, we must be skeptical.

As we have seen, there are some good grounds for thinking the ST-response is a plausible derivation from the basic idea of theism. After all, God is supposed to be an omniscient, transcendental and "wholly other" kind of being. This would seem to guarantee that we could not suppose or claim to know his mind. The problem, for Plantinga, is that this implies that we have reason to think that God conceals at least some truths from our knowledge.

Indeed, the ST-response makes the following argument possible:

• (1.1) There exists an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being, which we call God.

• (2.1) If God is omniscient and "wholly other" then humans cannot know that God intends for their cognition and perception to be generally reliable.

• (2.2) If humans cannot know that God intends for their cognition and perception are to be generally reliable, then they cannot know that their cognitive and perceptual faculties are in fact generally reliable.

• (2.3) Humans cannot know that their cognitive and perceptual faculties are in fact generally reliable.

This argument would seem to seriously undermine Plantinga's claim that the theist can have warranted properly basic beliefs about theism and any doctrinal extensions thereof. In fact, it would seem to provide a Humean defeater for those beliefs: the reflective theist can no longer have confidence in the existence of a direct epistemic link to God because they have found that God could have reason for deceiving us.

3. Possible Plantinga-esque Responses

Is there any way for the proponent of a Plantingan epistemology to cope with this defeater? Naquin, obviously, doesn't think so. First off, there is no reason for thinking that cognitive reliability and truth-directedness are somehow built into theism. This much has become apparent in examining the justification behind the ST-response to the problem of evil.

Additionally, there is no reason to think that revelation, Biblical or otherwise, is self-evidencing or self-justifying. If we have reason to think that God can prevent us from having perfectly reliable cognition when it comes to making moral or scientific judgments (which is what the skeptical theist must claim), then why think our judgments about the contents of revelation would be any more reliable. 

Why should you think that God is really revealing the truth to you when you read the Bible or look at the stars when you already accept that he may have (moral) reasons for limiting our epistemic access to truth?

In the end then, a Plantingan religious epistemology would appear to be incompatible with a ST-response to the problem of evil. This is just one more way in which ST fails to provide any comfort to the theist. 

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 9) - Warranted Beliefs and Epistemic Defeaters

Tweet

This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism? For an index, see here.

Previous entries in this series have afforded us the opportunity to consider the unwelcome implications of the skeptical theist response to Rowe's evidential problem of evil. In particular, we have seen how the skeptical theist's appeals to cognitive limitation and unrepresentative sampling may force a regular theist to give up their epistemic rights to a whole series of beliefs that are essential to their theism.

These unwelcome implications are, I believe, enough to put to rest the entire ST-enterprise. Nevertheless, there is a further problem with ST that I want to explore in the final stage of this series. The problem has a somewhat more specialist flavour as it focuses specifically on the difficulties that ST poses for Alvin Plantinga's religious epistemology.

My primary source for this material is the following article:

• Paul Jude Naquin "Theism's Pyrrhic Victory" (2002) 40 The Southern Journal of Philosophy 557

I have come across similar thoughts in some of Evan Fales's writings. But since Fales leaves those thoughts relatively undeveloped, Naquin's article is the place to go.

Naquin's argument is essentially that ST provides an undercutting defeater for Alvin Plantinga's model of warranted Christian belief. To understand this argument, we first need to understand the nature of Plantinga's religious epistemology. Then we need to understand the nature of an epistemic defeater. Finally, we need to consider Plantinga's alleged defeater to the naturalistic worldview.

1. Warranted Christian Belief: The Extended A/C Model

I already have two posts on commonsenseatheism.com which provide, in my opinion, a reasonable summary of Alvin Plantinga's religious epistemology. The first part covers the motivations behind Plantinga's work, and the second part covers Plantinga's specific models of warranted belief. I would encourage you to read those and come back. There is also, for the undaunted, this epic interview with Tyler Wunder covering the same material in much more depth.

For present purposes, I will attempt a more bite-sized summary of Plantinga's work. Put simply, Plantinga's goal is to show how it is possible to have religious knowledge without the assistance of evidence.

"Knowledge", for Plantinga, is taken to denote warranted true belief. But classically, knowledge was said to be justified true belief, where justification was understood to arise from some subjective (internal) deduction or induction from available evidence and/or foundational beliefs. The legacy of 20th century epistemology has been to dismiss as insufficient (for knowledge) the process of internal justification; warrant is simply whatever replaces justification in a completed theory of knowledge.

Plantinga's account of warrant is based on the notion of proper function. He says that one has warranted beliefs whenever the following four conditions are met:

1. The beliefs are produced by a properly functioning cognitive faculty.
2. The cognitive environment in which the belief is formed is sufficiently similar to the one for which the cognitive faculties were designed.
3. The cognitive faculties were the product of a design plan that was aimed at truth.
4. The design plan was one with a high objective probability of producing truth-apt cognitive faculties.

The thing to note about these conditions is that they are all external to the agent. This allows Plantinga to say that one can have knowledge of something without knowing exactly why or how one has that knowledge. To put it another way: one can have knowledge without evidence. To be sure, there is an internal component to Plantinga's account that focuses on the coherence of one's noetic structure, but it is relatively less important.

With the proper function account tucked under his arm, Plantinga proceeds to develop a model of Christian belief that meets the four conditions of warrant. He argues that if God created the world, we can expect him to have created us with reliable, truth-apt cognitive faculties. We can also expect him to create cognitive faculties (e.g the sensus divinitatus) that would produce religious beliefs, including the belief in God and in the major doctrines of Christianity, in appropriate environments.

This gives rise to the Extended Aquinas/Calvin Model of warranted Christian belief. This is illustrated in the diagram below. It grants the Christian the possibility that their beliefs are true even if they have no evidence for their truth.

2. Defeaters

Although Plantinga is adamant that a Christian can have warranted properly basic beliefs about the major doctrines of their religion, he does not go so far as to say that these beliefs are unchallengeable. He accepts that one could be presented with defeaters that would, rightly, undercut one's confidence in certain beliefs.

Three types of defeater are identified by Plantinga:

• A Proper Function Defeater: This arises when someone must doubt or deny the truth of a proposition in order to maintain normal functioning. An example might be a person with a debilitating illness who must believe their chances of survival are higher than they actually are in order to live a normal life.

• The Purely-Alethic Defeater: This works from the third-person perspective. It gives an objective observer a reason to doubt the reliability of some cognitive faculty. For example, suppose your friend Crystal is convinced that she is being persecuted by the CIA. You know that Crystal has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and is prone to such delusions. Thus, you have reason to doubt her beliefs. Note, however, that she does not (yet) have reason to doubt her own beliefs.

• The Humean Defeater: This is a purely alethic defeater that reflexively applies to your own belief-forming faculties. For example, suppose you currently believe that the furniture around you is singing and dancing. Ordinarily, these kinds of perceptions might count as warranted. However, a few moments before this you took some LSD, which you know to be a powerful hallucinogenic. Thus, you have reason to doubt that your current perceptual beliefs are true.

Plantinga goes on to note that all three of these defeaters could arise in a single case. The case is a purely hypothetical one involving a drug called XX. The drug damages one's cognitive faculties and induces hallucinations. Your friend takes the drug but cannot function properly if he believes his faculties are impaired. He tells you that his doctor told him he was immune to the effects. But you realise that this encounter with the doctor is likely to be a hallucination. Thereby, you acquire a purely alethic defeater for that proposition. You share this with your friend and he acquires a Humean defeater for his belief.

The importance of all this is that if one wishes to challenge Plantinga's A/C model, one must supply some sort of defeater to the believer. This defeater must cause them to doubt that their beliefs satisfy the four conditions of warrant. This is exactly what Naquin tries to do.

3. Naturalism Defeated

Plantinga uses his approach to warrant and defeat to develop a defeater to the naturalistic worldview. Plantinga argues that the naturalist must think that their cognitive faculties were designed by the process of evolution. 

In order for the beliefs formed by these cognitive faculties to be warranted, the evolutionary design process must be one with a high objective probability of producing truth-oriented cognitive faculties. The problem, as Plantinga sees it, is that the probability that evolution would give rise to such faculties is either low or inscrutable. This is because evolution aims a survival value not truth.

There are reasons to doubt Plantinga's argument (to defeat his defeater). For example, it may be that there is considerable overlap or coincidence between what is good for survival and what is true. This coincidence would raise the probability that we have reliable cognitive faculties. For present purposes, these counter-arguments are irrelevant. We can grant Plantinga the success of his argument.

What we need to focus on is the distinction Plantinga makes between theism and naturalism. On the one hand, he thinks he has provided a defeater for all aspects of naturalistic cognition by showing how there is no reason to think evolved cognitive faculties satisfy the four conditions of warrant. On the other hand, he thinks he can vindicate Christian theism because there is every reason to think that the Christian God created us with cognitive faculties that satisfy the four conditions of warrant.

This is where Naquin thinks Plantinga goes wrong. He thinks that by using the basic precepts of ST, it is possible to construct a defeater for Christian theism that directly mirrors the defeater that Plantinga constructed for naturalism. We'll begin looking at that argument in the next part.

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 8) - A Safer Skepticism?

Tweet

This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism?. For an index, see here.

I am currently working my way through Mark Piper's article "Why Theists cannot Accept Skeptical Theism?". As with all entries in this series, this post on Rowe's evidential problem of evil is an essential reference.


1. The Story so Far
In the previous post, we closed-out the discussion of Piper's cumulative case argument against skeptical theism (ST). As we saw, Piper argues that the skeptical principles employed by proponents of ST dissolve several areas of knowledge that theists need to sustain. In particular, Piper argued that:

• (P1) ST makes confident knowledge of moral goodness and God's relation to goodness impossible.

• (P2) ST threatens a good deal of theological knowledge.

• (P3) ST undermines any arguments from the existence of a good state of affairs to the existence of a good God.

In the light of this, it is difficult to see how a theist can accept ST and remain a theist.

Piper's next task is to see whether there is anyway to moderate ST so that one can rebut the evidential problem evil without damaging one's overall commitment to theism. To make this discussion more perspicuous (from my perspective, if not from yours) I am going to introduce a new visualisation tool.

The image below depicts a web of belief. The web consists of five nodes of belief (with a sixth empty node) supporting one central belief. In this case, the five beliefs all relate to God's nature, his interventions in history, the ultimate path to salvation and our own cognitive limitations. Collectively, they support a central commitment to Christian Theism.

Christian Web of Belief

Some of the beliefs support one another, as is illustrated by the arrows connecting them. For present purposes, I am going to assume that this web of belief is representative of the average Christian. I have no doubt that in reality the web of belief for a given believer would be far more complex, consisting of religious and non-religious beliefs, and with far more interdependencies between the nodes. I think it would be useful to draw out a more complex web, but I don't think it is necessary for understanding the next stage in Piper's article.

The following image represents the state of the Christian's web of belief after they have been confronted with the problem of evil. As you can see, the problem of evil knocks out one of the original nodes (red arrow) and will thereby destabilise the overall commitment to Christianity. If I were being more bullish, I might suggest that the problem of evil knocks out more than this one node. However, I won't push that point right now.

Web of Belief after Problem of Evil

The next image depicts the skeptical theist response to the problem of evil. As you can see, the goal of the skeptical response is to prevent the belief in prima facie gratuitous evil from knocking out the belief in God's goodness. This essentially restores the Christian to their original position.

Web of Belief - Skeptical Theism to the Rescue

The following image represents the situation after the full import of skeptical theism has been considered (as in Piper's argument). The idea is that the skeptical theses propounded by the likes of Wykstra, Alston and Bergmann actually end up knocking out every important node in the Christian's web of belief. This is clearly unsustainable.

Web of Belief - The Spread of Skepticism

So what is the theist's response? How can they stop the spread of ST to other nodes in their web of belief? The answer is that they must introduce some addtional belief or commitment (a new "node" in the web) that stops the skepticism spreading and reinforces the commitment to the other beliefs. As in the image below.

Web of Belief - Stopping the Spread of Skepticism

Piper considers three possible additions to the web of belief: (i) faith-based considerations; (ii) independent philosophical arguments; and (iii) a more careful, limited formulation of ST.


2. Faith-Based Considerations
It could be that certain faith-based considerations help to support a limited version of skeptical theism and reinforce commitments to other aspects of Christian belief. However, these faith-based considerations must have some source, what is it?

Piper thinks that certain aspects of the bible could provide the appropriate source for such faith-based considerations. Specifically, he cites portions of Paul's letters to Romans and Corinthians, as well as God's confrontation with Job. These passages suggest that God may have beyond our ken reasons for justifying prima facie evil. Further passages could then be cited in support of God's goodness, core doctrines of faith and so on. Collectively, these would undermine Piper's argument against ST.

There are two problems with this response as it has been developed to this point. First, it technically amounts to an abandonment of ST. After all, it is now the pic-and-mix of biblical passages that is undermining the problem of evil, not considerations of CORNEA or cognitive limitations.

Furthermore, the response only works if we have some reason for believing that biblical revelations are true. It is not clear that we can have such reasons, at least not without renewing our licence to the epistemic strategies that gave rise to the evidential problem of evil in the first place.

At this stage, the committed believer may wish to claim that faith is beyond philosophical analysis and defence. If they wish to do so, that's fine, but in doing so they concede that no philosophical defence of a moderate ST is possible.


3. Outweighing Philosophical Argument
It may be that independent philosophical arguments lend some support to Christian theism such that concerns arising from spreading skepticism are overridden or outweighed.

Again, it is not clear how this could be done without reopening the evidential problem of evil. After all, independent arguments working from historical evidence, miracles, personal experience or design to the existence of a good God all depend on the principle of warranted induction (using what appears to be good to infer what is actually or ultimately good). Such warranted induction was what ST was designed to prevent. Even the ontological argument relies on our ability to imagine maximal goodness, something that ST-ists think we cannot imagine.

For example, Wykstra's CORNEA principle is supposed to show that "just because we cannot perceive X does not mean X does not exist". But surely the principle can also be used in reverse to argue that "just because we perceive X, does not mean that X exists"? Indeed, there are many everyday examples of hallucinations and mirages where what appeared to be the case was not actually the case. On CORNEA, why do we have any reason to think that we can properly interpret signs of God's existence?

Finally, other arguments, such as the cosmological argument, tend not to carry indications of God's goodness (or otherwise). Thus, it would seem like this attempt to moderate ST will fail.


4. Internal Limits of ST
It may be that we are misunderstanding the nature of ST. Perhaps ST, when properly understood, has internal limits that prevents the spread of skepticism outlined earlier. This proper understanding might look something like this:

The ST position is that our experience and knowledge is not representative of the kind of moral considerations that would figure in a God-justifying reason for permitting evils. Our experience and knowledge may be perfectly representative in relation to other matters.

The first problem with this kind of response is that skepticism of even God-justifying reasons for permitting evils may still be damaging for ordinary epistemic practices. Hasker raised this point when discussing Bergmann's form of ST. He argued that since the concern in the PoE is with evils affecting human beings, it would be disturbing if we lacked representative knowledge.

The second problem is that the response seems unjustifiably ad-hoc. The skeptical principles advanced by the likes of Alston, Wykstra and Bergmann do not seem to have the internal limits that they wish them to have. Concerns about metaphysical possibility, low seeability and unrepresentative sampling seem to apply equally well to other domains of knowledge.


5. Conclusion
Piper has argued that the basic tenets of ST have unwelcome implications: they force theists to give up their epistemic licence to make claims about certain core aspects of theistic belief. Furthermore, attempts to moderate ST so that the unwelcome implications do not arise seem doomed to failure. Consequently, theists cannot endorse ST.

That ends our discussion of Piper's article. In the final portion of this series I will consider the relationship between ST and Alvin Plantinga's religious epistemology.

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 7) - Theological and Evidential Skepticism

Tweet

This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism?. For an index, see here.

I am currently working my way through an article by Mark Piper entitled "Why Theists Cannot Accept Skeptical Theism". As with all entries in this series, this discussion of Rowe's evidential problem of evil is the primary reference point.

Piper's goal is to present a cumulative-case argument against skeptical theism. In the previous entry, we saw how Piper supported his claim that ST leads to unwelcome skepticism about the nature of goodness and God's relation to it. In this entry, we will consider Piper's case for the following two claims:

• (P2) ST threatens a good deal of theological knowledge;

• (P3) ST undermines any inference from supposedly good events or states of affairs to the existence of a good God.

1. Theological Skepticism

What skeptical theists want, more than anything in the world, is to create a distinction between the claims we make about the mundane world in which we live and the super-mundane realm in which God operates. Only by creating such a distinction can they undermine the key inference in Rowe's argument from evil.

But to create this distinction is, as we have been exploring, to create a sword with several theologically unwelcome edges. In particular, it seems to undermine any claims we would like to make about the nature of God. This would force many theists to reconsider their theological commitments.

If we are told that God is the kind of being who would send his son to atone for our sins, we can surely respond in a manner that echoes William Alston's brand of ST. So for example, we can say that we don't have access to all the relevant data about divine intentions; that God's ultimate plan of salvation possesses more complexity than we can handle; and that we simply do not know what schemes of atonement are metaphysically possible or necessary.

It would also, perhaps fittingly, affect Alston's ability to support his own argument from religious experience.

Alston tries to fend off this general theological skepticism by claiming that his skeptical principles only apply to negative existential claims about the super-mundane (theistic) realm. This is because Rowe's argument relies on a negative existential claim, i.e. that there is (probably) no greater good justifying observed evils.

But if you look back over Alston's list of skeptical principles, it is clear that they apply equally well to positive existential claims such as those made about the resurrection. Indeed, Piper notes that Alston never makes the argument for the limitation of skepticism to negative existential claims, he merely asserts it.



2. Evidential Skepticism
The final link in Piper's chain of argumentation is to point out the unwelcome implications of ST for typical evidential arguments for God's existence. We encountered this problem when looking at Bergmann's form of skeptical theism.

As noted by Bergmann himself, when ST is fully imbibed, we lose the ability make inferences from apparently good events or states of affairs to the existence of a good God. Piper notes that this is particularly troubling for those who take the existence of Satan seriously. After all, if we cannot know that an apparently evil state of affairs is not a necessary precursor to some ultimate good, then it is equally true that we cannot know that an apparently good state of affairs is not a necessary precursor to some ultimate evil.

The same problem applies to the historical claims of the major religions. As mentioned above, one of the central pillars of Christian belief is the belief that God became incarnate in Yeshua of Nazareth and was sacrificed for our sins. This self-sacrifice is thought to be the kind of thing we would expect from a good God. But how can we know that, if we are not allowed to make claims about what is ultimately good or bad?

That concludes Piper's initial case against ST. He goes on to consider how proponents of ST might respond to his critique. That will be covered in the next post.

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 6) - Goodness and a Good God

Tweet

This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism?. For an index, see here.

I am currently working my way through an article by Mark Piper entitled "Why Theists Cannot Accept Skeptical Theism". As with all posts in this series, this discussion of William Rowe's evidential problem of evil provides some essential background.

In the previous entry, I briefly sketched Piper's cumulative-case argument against skeptical theism. His basic idea is that those theists who accept ST lose their epistemic licence to certain key components of the religious worldview. Three specific examples are given:

• (P1) ST makes confident knowledge of our own conception of moral goodness, and confident knowledge of God's actual moral will, highly questionable and perhaps even impossible;

• (P2) ST threatens a great deal of theological knowledge;

• (P3) The epistemic limitation principles contained in ST can be consistently used in reverse, i.e. to rule off limits any attribution of good events to the will of a good God.

In this entry will consider Piper's case for P1.

1. The Problem with Goodness

In their attempt to refute the evidential problem of evil, skeptical theists argue that our cognitive limitations are such that we do not know whether there is some greater good that necessitates the existence of putative gratuitous evil. To put this more pithily, albeit esoterically, we can say that ST mandates skepticism about the possible orders and modalities of goodness and their relations to evil.

But in practice what does this skeptical thesis actually entail? Piper identifies three possibilities.

• (a) No Access to Higher Goods: It may be that there are two levels in which goodness exists: one, the mundane level, in which we live out our everyday lives; and another, the transcendental level, in which God plots, plans and acts. And it may be that we know nothing about goods in the transcendental level but know plenty about goods in the mundane level.

• (b) Misunderstanding of Hierarchical Relationships: It may be that we do not understand the proper hierarchical relationships between the different goods. Indeed, human history supplies examples of how we occasionally need to revise the hierarchical relationships that we think we have. Christians, for instance, often believe that although the law of the Old Testament has some importance, it was superseded by the values espoused by Jesus in the New Testament.

• (c) Misidentification of Goods: It may be that some things that we think to be good are not actually good in relation to some unknown goods. A potential example of this comes from our experience with racism. For a long time, it was thought that racial purity was morally commendable. This is no longer thought to be the case as it is eroded by respect for human dignity. 

Skeptical theists would prefer if (a) were the only thing entailed by ST, but clearly (b) and (c) are also entailed by the central claims of ST. After all, they are both concerned with the orders and modalities of goodness.

It is equally clear that a theist cannot endorse (b) and (c) and remain a theist. Why? Because theists must be able to claim that certain hierarchical relations exist between goods, e.g. that piety is a greater good than pleasure. Likewise, they must be able to claim that certain goods definitely exist and will not be wiped out by unknown goods, e.g. that charity and the alleviation of suffering are goods.

2. The Problem with God

There is a further difficulty associated with skepticism about the orders and modalities of goodness, namely: we cannot be certain about God's relation to goodness. Indeed, on the central claims of ST, the following are possible:

• (i) God's relation to goodness, for reasons beyond our ken, necessitates his active enjoyment of our suffering.

• (ii) God's relation to goodness, for reasons beyond our ken, necessitates his complete indifference to our welfare.

A theist will no doubt balk at these suggestions. For example, a central component of a Christian worldview is a belief that God does care for us and that he will help us to achieve salvation. But if the theist endorses ST, they cannot rule out the possibilities in (i) and (ii).

That concludes Piper's case in favour of P1. In the next entry, we will look at his case in favour of P2 and P3.

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 5) - Wykstra and Alston

Tweet

This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism? For an index, see here.

In this entry, I will begin my summary of the arguments contained in the following paper:

• Piper, M. "Why Theists Cannot Accept Skeptical Theism?" (2008) 47 Sophia 129-148 

The paper presents a cumulative-case argument against skeptical theism. Specifically, Piper argues that skeptical theism gives rise to three unwelcome types of skepticism. Again, as with all entries in this series, this post on Rowe's evidential problem of evil is an essential reference point.

Three things are up for discussion today. First, I will look at Stephen Wykstra's case for skeptical theism. Second, I will look at William Alston's case for the same thing. Finally, I will sketch Piper's cumulative-case argument.


1. Wykstra's CORNEA
One of the nice things about Piper's paper (nice alliteration there) is that it complements the Hasker paper I previously covered. Whereas Hasker focused his attention on Michael Bergmann's version of skeptical theism, Piper focuses his attention on Wysktra and Alston's versions. Thus, by covering both papers we get a decent overview of the varieties of skeptical theism that are out there.

Before getting to Wykstra's position, a quick recap is in order. As you no doubt recall, Rowe's argument rests on an inference from apparent cases of gratuitous evil to actual cases of gratuitous evil. That is, it takes an instance of evil or suffering that seems, to us, not to be logically necessary for the existence of some greater good and infers that it is highly unlikely that a logically necessary greater good exists. Skeptical theism (ST) responds by saying we have no grounds for making that inference.

Wykstra was, as far as I know, the first person to run the ST-objection and he based it on something he called the COndition of Reasonable Epistemic Access (CORNEA). The idea behind CORNEA is that Rowe's inference from "X seems to be the case" to "X actually is the case" is only permissible when X has "reasonable seeability".

For example, it is reasonable for me to say that there are no dogs in my room because a dog is the kind of thing I would expect to see if it were in the room. By way of contrast, it is less reasonable for me to say that there are no bacteria on my desk just because I can't see them since bacteria are not visible to the naked eye.

Applying this to problem of evil, Wykstra employs the parent-child analogy. An infant child is unlikely to understand (to "see") the greater good that motivates his parents in allowing him to suffer a painful injection for the purpose of vaccination. And we are like infant children when compared to the creator of the universe.

This would seem to undermine the inference in Rowe's argument.

William Alston

2. Alston on Multiple Dimensions of Cognitive Limitation
William Alston's version of skeptical theism makes reference to six different dimensions of cognitive limitation. Combined, these would also undermine the inference in Rowe's argument. They are as follows (they seem slightly repetitious to me):

• (i) Lack of Data: we know very little regarding such matters as the remote past and future, the afterlife, the ultimate structure of reality etc...

• (ii) Complexity of subject matter: It is difficult for the human mind to hold together large complexes of fact.

• (iii) Difficulties with Metaphysical Possibility and Necessity: It is difficult to say what is metaphysically possible given the essential nature of things (something that is also obscure) and this difficult is amplified is we deal with total possible worlds or total systems of natural order.

• (iv) Ignorance of Possibilities: We don't know whether or not there are possibilities beyond the ones we have thought of.

• (v) Ignorance of full range of values: We are in a very poor position to know whether there exist unknown goods that would justify God in allowing apparently gratuitous evil if we don;t know the extent to which there are modes of value beyond those of which we are aware.

• (vi) Limits to our capacity to make well-considered value judgments: We face tremendous difficulties when making comparative evaluations of large complex wholes.

One thing worth noting about these six dimensions is that, with the exception of (v) and (vi), they do not directly concern cognition limitations with respect to moral value. I think that is significant since ST needs its skepticism to be narrowly confined and yet Alston's reasons for skepticism are broad ranging.

Anyway, Alston thinks that the many dimensions to our cognitive limitations help to undermine Rowe's argument for two main reasons. First, Rowe needs to show that there are no beyond-our-ken goods which negate his crucial inference. Second, Rowe also needs to show that every theodicy fails. Neither of these seem likely given our cognitive limitations about the nature of moral value and possible worlds.


3. Piper's Argument
Piper is willing to grant Alston and Wykstra their success in defeating Rowe's argument, but he is going to turn the tables on them by arguing that skeptical theism ultimately undermines theism. The idea is that by endorsing ST, religious believers lose their epistemic license to certain core doctrinal commitments.

Specifically, Piper thinks that ST has three unwelcome consequences:

• (P1) ST makes confident knowledge of the correctness of our own conception of goodness, and confident knowledge of God's actual moral will, at a minimum highly questionable and at the most virtually impossible.

• (P2) ST threatens a great deal of theological knowledge.

• (P3) The epistemic limitations at the heart of ST can be consistently used in reverse. That is to say, they can be used to deny that apparently good events are evidence of the work of a good God.

Piper believes that his argument applies to both expanded and restricted forms of theism. The terminology might be unfamiliar but it is taken from an article by William Rowe. Rowe defines God in the standard tri-omni fashion. He then suggests that restricted forms of theism are only committed to the existence of a tri-omni being, whereas expanded forms are committed to specific doctrinal extensions, e.g. the Christian God.

In the next part we will take a look at Piper's argument in favour of P1.

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 4) - The Incoherence of ST

Tweet

This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism? For an index, see here.

I am currently working my way through William Hasker's paper "All too Skeptical Theism", which is a critique of Michael Bergmann's brand of skeptical theism. As with all entries in this series, this post on the evidential problem of evil serves as an essential reference point.

We have previously discussed Bergmann's four skeptical theses (ST1-ST4) and seen how they give rise to a fairly extreme form of moral skepticism. In this post, we will wrap up the discussion of Hasker's paper by looking at a potential contradiction or blindspot in Bergmann's thinking.


1. How is moral Reasoning Possible?
The question is a straightforward one: how, given Bergmann's skeptical theses, is it possible to engage in any species of moral reasoning that results in the issuance of a moral judgment? Bergmann thinks he can answer this question; Hasker thinks the answer contradicts his advocacy of skeptical theism.

Bergmann begins by noting that skeptical theism is largely a doctrine about moral consequences. It states that just because something appears to be a prima facie evil, does not imply that it is not logically connected to some morally superior set of consequences. Bergmann goes on to note that moral reasoning need not be strictly consequentialist in form: we could have duties that constrain our actions irrespective of their consequences. Nevertheless, he accepts that consideration of consequences is an important part of moral decision-making.

This leads him to make the following proposal:

What is relevant are the likely consequences we have some reason to be confident about after a reasonable amount of time and effort aimed at identifying the expected results of our behaviour. If after such consideration, a particular action seems clearly too maximise the good (or minimise the bad) among the consequences we're able to identify [and no consequence-independent duties apply] ... then that action is the morally appropriate one for us to perform.

2. Hasker's Response
Hasker thinks that Bergmann's proposal is certainly admirable, but that it can't be consistently espoused by a skeptical theist who is cut from the Bergmannian cloth.

Recall from the previous entry how ST1-ST4 demand that we be completely unable to assign any degree of probability to something which is alleged to be an all-things-considered good or evil. For example, they would imply that we have no way of knowing whether the murder and rape of a five-year-old girl is an all-things-considered evil. It's not just that we think there is a high probability of an outweighing good, it is that such probabilities are inscrutable. Bergmann needs this extreme variety of skepticism if he is going to undercut the evidential problem of evil.

But then it becomes truly perplexing as to why Bergmann thinks we should consider the foreseeable consequences of our actions when making moral decisions. On his own theory, there is no reason to think that the apparent goodness or badness of those consequences bears any relation to the actual goodness or badness of the action and its consequences. This relationship is, by his own lights, completely unknowable.

For Hasker, this reveals the crucial incoherence in Bergmann's position: he gives central role, in his moral decision-making, to a procedure that is morally insignificant. Ultimately, any actions chosen by the skeptical theist amount to little more than an arbitrary preference.

They are like John Cleese's black knight in Monty Python's the Holy Grail: still trying to fight the fight despite the fact that they've lost the means to do so.

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 3) - Extreme Moral Skepticism

Tweet

This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism? For an index, see here.

I am currently working my way through William Hasker's article "All too Skeptical Theism?" which is a critique of Michael Bergmann's preferred brand of skeptical theism. As with all the entries in this series, it is worth referring back to this post on the evidential problem of evil to get a feel for what is a stake in this debate.

In the previous entry, we looked at Bergmann's four skeptical theses (ST1-ST4). Combined, they help Bergmann to undercut the crucial inference in the evidential problem of evil, but they do so at a price. We have already looked at two initial worries. In this entry we will focus on the moral skepticism that is engendered by Bergmann's theses.


1. Farewell to the Design Argument
To say that skeptical theism seriously undermines our moral judgment is nothing new. I have even covered such arguments in the past. However, Hasker takes a strong line on this issue that begins by pointing out an interesting concession made by Bergmann.

Bergmann notes that his skeptical theses (ST1-ST4) crucially undermine any arguments for the existence of God that are based on the identification of an all-things-considered good. He says:*

If the order one sees in the natural world or the joy one witnesses in people's lives is identified as reason to think that there is a good being who is the cause of such things, one is failing to take into account the lessons of ST1-ST4. Given our cognitive limitations, we simply don't know what evils may be entailed by those good things and this prevents us from being able to conclude that they are all-things-considered goods that an omnibenevolent being would bring about.

It is worth pausing to reflect on how sweeping this kind of value skepticism really is. Consider, if one accepts Bergmann's ST1-ST4:

• One cannot accept any design-based argument for the existence of God, be it in terms of biological design or cosmological fine-tuning. Both of those arguments are based on the idea that there are certain states of affairs (e.g. the existence of conscious, rational beings) that are good and that God would wish to realise.

• One cannot accept some types of experience-based arguments that are based on inferring God's goodness from one's experience of nature.

• One must withhold judgment about whether a state of affairs that is a prima facie good/evil is an actual good/evil.

This, Hasker suggests, is a truly extreme variety of moral skepticism.

You can ask: is the skeptical theist really committed to such an extreme position? Hasker argues that they are and that this can be seen when we consider Bergmann's response to a criticism that was first made by Richard Swinburne.

2. Swinburne's Criticism

Swinburne asks us to imagine a case of prima facie gratuitous evil such as the previously-given example of a five-year old girl who was raped and killed by her mother's boyfriend. He takes it that when presented with such an example we would assign a high subjective probability to it being an actual gratuitous evil. This would make the evidential problem of evil a genuine doxastic threat.

Then, along comes a skeptical theist waving around ST1-ST4 and telling us not to be so quick with our talk of doxastic threats. After all:

• (1) We may fail to recognise the existence of some good state of affairs that is made possible, or some evil that is averted, because this instance of evil is not prevented.

• (2) We may fail to grasp the logical connection between this particular evil and some good that is made possible, or some evil that is averted, as a result of its not being prevented.

• (3) We may fail to evaluate properly the moral significance of this evil state of affairs, or of the good that is made possible, or of the evil that is averted, by its not being prevented.

These would reduce our subjective probability assignment and reduce the doxastic threat posed by the evidential problem of evil.

That's fine, but Swinburne points out that ST1-ST4 could easily be employed to make the opposite argument. As follows:

• (4) We may fail to recognise the existence of some additional evil state of affairs that is made possible, or some good that is prevented, by this instance of evil.

• (5) We may fail to grasp the logical connection between this particular evil and some additional evil that is made possible, or some good that is prevented, as a result of its not being prevented.

• (6) We may fail to evaluate properly the moral significance of this evil state of affairs, or of the further evil that is made possible, or the good that is prevented, by its not being prevented.

These would cause us to increase our subjective probability assignment, thus making the evidential problem even more of a problem.

3. Bergmann's Response

Bergmann responds by pointing out that Swinburne has misunderstood the skeptical argument. It is not that skeptical theism causes us to lower our probability assignments when confronted with prima facie evils; it is that skeptical theism entirely discredits any such probability assignments.

Hasker thinks this is right insofar as it goes. If Bergmann wants to undermine the evidential problem of evil, then he really does need to entirely discredit any assessments we would be inclined to make about prima facie evils.

To see this, imagine that ST1-ST4 only caused us to lower the probability that we assign to a prima facie evil by 80% (0.8) and to increase our confidence in the existence of some logically necessary outweighing good by the correlative amount. This would not be sufficient to undermine the evidential problem for there are vastly many instances of prima facie evil and, given enough of them, the probability that each and every one is outweighed by some greater good becomes vanishingly small.

This argument underscores the importance of two things. First, it shows how, when discussing the evidential problem, it is important not to get bogged down by one or two specific examples (e.g. E1 and E2) and to remember the vastly many instances of prima facie evil that do arise (E1...En).

Second, it shows that Bergmann's brand of skeptical theism is probably the best bet if one wishes to undermine the evidential problem of evil. But this forces us to accept that Bergmann has provided an undercutting defeater for any belief that we may have about something being an all-things-considered good or evil.

So this really is an extreme form of moral skepticism.

That's it for this post. In the next part we will consider whether Bergmann's skepticism is ultimately incoherent.


* From Bergmann, M. "Skeptical Theism and the Problem of Evil" in Thomas and Rea (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology (Oxford: OUP, 2009) p. 389

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 2) - Bergmann's Skeptical Theses

Tweet

This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism? For an index, see here.

In this post I will begin to work my way through the following article:

• Hasker, William "All too Skeptical Theism" (2010) International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion (Online first)

Hasker's article is a critique of the brand of skeptical theism endorsed by Michael Bergmann. It is worth bearing in mind that although there are other varieties of skeptical theism, Hasker offers an interesting observation in the middle of his article as to why Bergmann's variety is, paradoxically, the most acceptable.

As with all the entries in this series, I recommend reading this post on the evidential problem of evil first since most of the discussion and debate revolves around this problem.

Google images tells me that this is Michael Bergmann

1. Bergmann's Skeptical Theses

As with all skeptical theists, Bergmann objects to the inference from apparently gratuitous evil to actual gratuitous evil in Rowe's evidential problem of evil. Bergmann does so on the seemingly reasonable supposition that God, if he existed, would have a mind that is far greater than our minds, and so it wouldn't be surprising if he had reasons for permitting evil and suffering that we weren't able to think of.

This leads him to formulate four skeptical theses about our knowledge of moral value, goods and evils, and their relationships to one another:

• (ST1) We have no good reason for thinking that the possible goods we know of are representative of the possible goods there are.

• (ST2) We have no good reason for thinking that the possible evils we know of are representative of the possible evils there are.

• (ST3) We have no good reason for thinking that the entailment relations we know of between possible goods and the permission of possible evils are representative of the entailment relations there are between possible goods and the permission of possible evils.

• (ST4) We have no good reason for thinking that the total moral value or disvalue we perceive in certain complex states of affairs accurately reflects the total moral value or disvalue they really have.

ST1-ST3 constitute the core of the skeptical theist's case; ST4 is simply an additional consideration that supports the lesson of ST3.

Taken together, ST1-ST3 completely undercut Rowe's evidential problem of evil: they prevent us from drawing any conclusions about whether God has reasons for allowing great suffering, even if those conclusions are only defeasible or probabilistic in form.

Hasker thinks that Bergmann's theses have several unacceptable consequences. In the remainder of this entry we will look at two initial worries.

2. Good and Evil to Whom?

ST1-ST3 tell us that the goods, evils and entailment relations with which we are familiar are not representative of all possible goods, evils and entailment relations. Bergmann himself says that this means representative relative to "the property of figuring in a (potentially) God-justifying reason for permitting the inscrutable evils we see around us". In other words, Bergmann is arguing that the goods and evils that concern us in our mundane lives need not be representative of the goods and evils that concern God when he is crafting his divine plan.

A question arises: for whom are the goods and evils identified in ST1 & ST2 supposed to be a benefit or harm? If it is to God and, say, his angels, then it might be plausible to say that we know nothing of them. But if the benefit or harm is supposed to accrue to human beings then it would seem highly implausible to suggest that we know nothing about them.

Consider, even if we accept a typical religious claim that mystical or spiritual union with (or appreciation of) God is the ultimate good, it would seem odd to suggest this is something which is completely unknown in all of human history. True, it may be rarely or imperfectly achieved in human life, but surely it is something that many Christians feel they have some inkling of. 

By suggesting our experiences of good and evil need not be representative, Bergmann seems to be undermining the contents of the religious worldview it is his purpose to defend.

3. Anti-Induction

The other initial worry with ST1-ST3 is their strongly anti-inductive character. The ability to make inductive generalisations is essential to human life, without it we could not function. It's certainly true that inductive generalisations can be false and that we must learn to be more discriminating and careful when doing so. But ST1-ST3 go further than just urging caution: they actively forbid any such generalisations.

To be fair, the ST-prohibition is designed to only cover generalisations about moral value. Bergmann himself argues that generalisations can be acceptable whenever we can make a fairly complete survey of the reference class in question, (the example of "there are no blue crows in Indiana" is given). It's just that we can't make a complete survey in the case of moral value.

Hasker argues that this is unacceptable: we must be able to confer some degree of warrant on generalisations even when a complete survey is unavailable. Take the generalisation "men are mortal". We have not surveyed the entire reference class of men who have or will come into being, so we don't know for sure if this is true, but we can surely assign a proportional degree of warrant to the claim.

Hidden in a footnote, Hasker offers the following humorous application of Bergmannian skepticism (I've altered it a bit):

• The early Christians reasoned that Jesus's resurrection from the dead demonstrated that God was with him and approved of his mission and message.

• (STvi) We have no reason for thinking that the natural causal processes we know of are representative of the natural causal processes there are (since we haven't surveyed the entire reference class).

• So we cannot infer that the resurrection has any theological significance.

Surely a reductio, no?

That's it for now. In the next post we will take a look at some further problems with Bergmann's skeptical theism.