What’s Wrong with the World

Of course, there still remains the, "Well, we know that positivism is false, and we know that our postmodernist pretense of god-manhood is also illusory, but we will treat this ironically, and proceed as if nothing has changed" liberal ironism of Richard Rorty; this, if anything, seems to be the implicit creed of the post-positivist liberal world. They know that it is all pretend, but will to continue the game, because they loathe the alternative.

Define "positivism."

Define "positivism."

That is probably every bit as tricky as defining postmodernism. But I know it when I see it, hah!

One way of thinking about it is as the notion that there are two kinds of knowledge, formally justified certain or solid knowledge and uncertain knowledge which can be dismissed as private (and thus not authoritative or relevant) faith, and that the boundary between them is clear or at least clear enough for all practical purposes.

Another is the notion that metaphysics is controversial and irrelevant because controversial: that there exists a special class of knowledge utterly divorced from metaphysics which cannot be controverted and which is therefore authoritative. A variant is the notion that there is no such thing as metaphysics.

Another is the notion that the meaning of some formal expression (text) is (either in truth or as a practical matter) exhaustive or complete.

Still another is the idea that as we gain more knowledge the gaps in our knowledge - the things we know which have not been reduced to some kind of formalism - become smaller. Related is the idea that some autonomous pieces of knowledge can be reduced to nothing but a formalism.

Yet another is the idea that we can avoid ultimate truths and operate strictly at a level of formalized practical truths as a way of avoiding conflict.

And another is the idea that meaning is (either for practical purposes or as the way reality works) identified with symbols: that the formal expression of meaning is the same thing as meaning.

"What is positivism" is in general a big topic, as is "what is postmodernism" and "what is a Thanksgiving turkey". But all of them are cooked.

See, when I was in graduate school, "positivism" was always this word the postmodernists used as a negative thing without defining it. Usually what they obviously meant was "rationality" or "evidentialism." So "positivism is bad" really meant, "It's bad to ask for reasons, arguments, and clarity, and to demand evidence." Needless to say, I was always going around yelling (well, not exactly yelling) things like, "If you mean by 'positivism' what you seem to mean, then let's hear it for positivism!"

Of course, when pressed, they would always retreat to some sort of pablum like, "We need to admit that we can make mistakes," which wasn't _at all_ what they had been saying just five minutes before, and, indeed, isn't very interesting, exciting, or revolutionary. It was sort of as if Derrida would morph into a watered-down version of Karl Popper and become a mild-mannered fallibilist the minute you tried to scrutinize him closely. Which is absurd.

Historically, the logical positivists were, of course, a specific group of people with specific theses. I can't exactly recognize any of their theses (some of which were indeed objectionable) in yours, though the disdain for metaphysics comes close.

I don't know what all of the theses above mean. I don't see any of them that I think I want to endorse in full, though there are parts I would endorse. For example, I do think that knowledge can be divided into "certain" and "uncertain," but so far from calling the uncertain knowledge "private," I would say just the opposite: It's what we have direct and private access to that is certain and ordinary, garden-variety bits of knowledge (like, "It's a Sunday in August") that we could, in principle, be wrong about. But that doesn't make uncertain knowledge anything to disdain. To the contrary, we couldn't get along without it.

I guess I _would_ endorse the claim on one construal that some kinds of knowledge are just formal. I'm thinking of mathematics and logic. But that's good. And that doesn't mean in any sense that we should be engaged in a project to reduce all other kinds of knowledge to formal knowledge. It's impossible anyway. Sensory data, for example, can bear certain formal relations to various propositions, but it (e.g., the unique smell of a lemon) is not itself reducible to anything else--such as mathematics. The sensory experience of the smell of a lemon is sui generis.

I guess I _would_ endorse the claim on one construal that some kinds of knowledge are just formal. I'm thinking of mathematics and logic.

That is precisely the claim that Kurt Godel proved to be false even when taken on its own terms, though, except in a very limited sense in trivial cases. IIRC Rebecca Goldstein claims that he was motivated to do so from the time he spent with the Vienna Circle: that as an extremely introverted and conflict-averse Platonist he didn't want to argue until he knew he could prove the antithesis with absolute certainty. He was supposedly quite distraught that his proof did not simply end the argument: a brilliant thinker with very little understanding of human beings, it seems.

I think the reason postmoderns think everyone else is a positivist is because they are really positivists themselves: that is, they believe along with the positivists that if positivism isn't true then the possibility of meaning vanishes.

I shall have to consult my home oracle about your summary of Godel. I had not been under the impression that he had proved, nor was attempting to prove, nor indeed could have proved, that there exists no type of knowledge that is in its nature formal. Perhaps we aren't using the term 'formal' in the same sense.

Perhaps we aren't using the term 'formal' in the same sense.

Could be. As I understand the Platonist view of a formalism, it is a mechanical set of symbols and procedures which represents some truth other than itself. To a (certain kind of) positivist the formalism just is the thing known: it is not something which represents a truth which transcends the formalism itself.

I've just been reviewing the summary of Godel's Theorem with my home consulting bureau and thus far don't see that it proves, in either of its parts, mathematical Platonism. (All I've ever understood of it is a summary, I should add.) Godel certainly _was_ a mathematical Platonist, though.

Myself, I'm dubious about the assertion, "The number 5 exists." Not sure what it means. But this hardly makes me a Vienna Circle Positivist, because I have a whole truckload of other metaphysical theses that would make a true-blooded logical positivist howl: The existence of the mental self, of God, the atonement, even a mild-mannered Anglican version of the Real Presence. Heck, to believe in the number 5 on top of all the rest of it would be excessive! :-)

I do think there are analytic a priori truths that are simply true in virtue of meaning--of connections between and among concepts. This is what I would have in mind in terms of "purely formal truths." I would want to describe them as "all structure." They don't _refer_ to concepts but consist of the relations of concepts. Concepts, however, do exist in minds, not in physical symbols like marks on paper. What a card-carrying logical positivist would have said about this, I'm not sure. I think he might like it. But my history of 20th century philosophy could use a little polishing up, I have to admit.

Zippy,

Thought you might enjoy this article about Godel and Einstein.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/28/050228crat_atlarge

Godel only proved that large deductive formal systems of knowledge must contain true yet unprovable statements. I don't believe his proof was a subversion of all formal knowledge, just that there are fuzzy areas where it can be caught in recursive contradictions.

Myself, I'm dubious about the assertion, "The number 5 exists."

I am doubtless a fool for taking on the entire McGrew brain trust on a matter of epistemology, even if only obliquely. But rather than looking at "the number 5 exists" as a positive assertion it might help to think of "the number 5 is nothing but a symbol in a formal system subject to certain mechanical rules of manipulation". I wonder if we might at least agree about the falsity of that proposition?

To me this all seems extraordinarily obvious as an intuitive matter, but perhaps that is in part because of background: because I know pretty much exactly what it would take to start with sand on a beach and produce a machine that multiplies, but I am certain that I cannot take sand on a beach and make a machine which understands multiplication.

Godel only proved that ...

Well, there is the matter of what he proved, and there is the matter of what he thought he proved, there is the matter of what various people think he proved, and the matter of what I am convinced that he proved. Those all may differ somewhat, and not everyone can be right.

Thanks for the link.

I don't believe his proof was a subversion of all formal knowledge ...

It depends on what one means by subversion. He proved that knowledge of something as mundane as the number 5 cannot be exhaustively captured in a formalism.

Actually, Tim is a mathematical Platonist on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and alternate Saturdays. :-) I don't think I ever have been. And he believes in the existence of propositions as abstract entities, but I don't. So you wouldn't be taking him on on that part. He's more Platonic than I. But he doesn't think Godel proved Platonism in his well-known proof.

"Because I know pretty much exactly what it would take to start with sand on a beach and produce a machine that multiplies, but I am certain that I cannot take sand on a beach and make a machine which understands multiplication."

I couldn't agree with this statement more. But that just shows that I believe in minds. In other words, it shows that I'm a Cartesian, not a Platonist.

But he doesn't think Godel proved Platonism in his well-known proof.

Well, what I think Godel proved - by proceeding as if it were true and demonstrating a contradiction - is that positivism is false, as opposed to that Platonism of some specific flavor is true, FWIW. Though I am definitely a mathematical Platonist of a sort.

I was trying to think of something pithy to conjecture about the vocabulary of the McGrew domestic life, but I rather expect that anything I might come up with would be a shadow on the cave wall compared to the reality.

I'm trying to think of a clever reply to that one, but nothing comes to mind. Honestly, my scintillating conversation recently, and far too many brain cells, have been almost entirely taken up with comments and thoughts about the weather forecast, because I am sick unto death of watering the lawn.

But I did get the re-summarization of Godel's proof over dinner, when I could get a word in edge-wise around the chess conversation among three other members of the family. (I'm rather outnumbered and left out of the loop around here when it comes to chess.) Hope I get this right:

Godel proved that any formal system powerful enough to support mathematics would be such that you can make statements in the formal system which you cannot prove to be true within that system. Second, he proved that any system with the resources to support mathematics would not be provably consistent within the system itself. I gather there is something called "mathematical induction" (about which I, personally, know no more than the name) that does make it possible to prove mathematics to be consistent, but many are of the considered opinion that it's no easier to see that mathematical induction is legitimate than it is to see that mathematics is consistent, so this is no gain, proof-wise.

The trouble with saying that either of these proves positivism to be false is that a) you would just basically have to define "positivism" as the negation of one of the things Godel proved, and why do that? and b) I don't see why it should be important to some sort of Big Questions that Godel be right about this. It's not like either "Mathematics is provably consistent" or "There are no propositions statable within a system strong enough to sustain mathematics that cannot be proved to be true within that system" implies "Metaphysics is bunk" or something like that.

Honestly, I think people think there is way more "heaviness" for philosophy generally or something in Godel's proof than there is. If you're a mathematician, sure, it's important and interesting. So was Fermat's last theorem. But that didn't mean that Life, the Universe, and Everything depended on whether or not we could prove Fermat's last theorem.

That _does_ lead me to a mildly cool "McGrew in-house" story: One evening in the early 90's, I went to the store. There were no cell phones back then, and we don't have them even now, so eventually the time came for me to call home on a pay phone, I guess for a ride. (This seems odd, because normally I would just have taken the car myself, but I think for some reason I was being picked up when I was done shopping this time.) So I call, and Tim, who was babysitting Eldest Daughter, then a little baby, answers the phone. When he knew who it was, he said, "They proved it! They proved it!" He was almost incoherent with excitement. It was Wiles, and Fermat's last theorem. And _that_ was what we talked about that time on the way home from the store. Not that I understood much of it, but I managed to get the gist.

Oops. Make that "transfinite induction."

Zippy,
Godel is taking a first order logic system, finding a higher order expression of it, and then showing the resulting incompleteness. His proof is true, but it is limited in the ways that it is true.

Godel proved that any formal system powerful enough to support mathematics would be such that you can make statements in the formal system which you cannot prove to be true within that system.

Almost. You can make meaningful true statements using the language of the formal system which cannot be proven using the formal system. IOW, any claim that a formalism is capable of exhaustively stating what is meaningfully true about even trivial objects (e.g. the number 5) in trivial languages (e.g. arithmetic) is false. IOW, positivism is bunk.

I don't see why it should be important to some sort of Big Questions that Godel be right about this.

It is more the case that it is important for positivism that Godel be wrong. Godel could be wrong and positivism could still be false; but positivism can't be true if Godel is true.

If one is congenitally inclined to think that mathematics cannot say anything important about epistemology then one will by definition probably not think much of the epistemic implications of a mathematical result though.

Step2: In my view, talk of different levels (language versus metalanguage, etc) is mostly handwaving in an attempt to understand (I might even suggest "deflate the importance of") the result.

Basically, the proof is set up such that if the statement G is true as a matter of arithmetic, it is necessarily also true that G is itself not provable using the machinery of the formal system. The statement G is true: you can tell by doing the arithmetic. So either arithmetic is inconsistent or the machinery of a formal system is incapable of exhaustively capturing what is arithmetically true. This is the case for all possible formal systems that can represent arithmetic. So in general languages - even the most highly constrained and rigorous languages we know - are representations of something else, something else which they cannot comprehensively capture other than in trivial artificially constrained cases.

That doesn't tell us a lot about what a priori truths are. But it tells us something significant about what they are not: they are not reduceable to formalism and only formalism.

"Basically, the proof is set up such that if the statement G is true as a matter of arithmetic, it is necessarily also true that G is itself not provable using the machinery of the formal system."

Actually, I think that's incorrect. There are tons of truths of arithmetic (an infinite number, I believe) that _are_ provable. It's just that if the system is consistent, there are also tons that are not provable using the system.

Oh, by the way, I believe that sentential logic is both provably complete and provably consistent.

There are tons of truths of arithmetic (an infinite number, I believe) that _are_ provable.

Sorry, I wasn't clear: "the statement G" refers to the specific Godel statement constructed in the proof, not to any statement whatsoever which I am merely labeling G. So what I said was true: the arithmetic truth of G - and it is arithmetically true - necessarily implies that G itself is not provable using the machinery of the formal system.

I am not saying that no statements are provable using formal methods. That would be obviously wrong and silly.

What I said was this:

"...any claim that a formalism is capable of exhaustively stating what is meaningfully true about even trivial objects (e.g. the number 5) in trivial languages (e.g. arithmetic) is false."

It's just that if the system is consistent, there are also tons [of true statements about the objects referred to by the formal system, e.g. numbers] that are not provable using the system.

I agree with this as long as the bit I inserted in brackets is included. That is what I mean when I say that a formalism cannot exhaustively state what is meaningfully true about (e.g.) the number 5.

It is true that there are forms of propositional logic which are complete, but that is one of what I referred to as trivial cases. It is possible to be a positivist as long as you restrict yourself to not saying anything interesting.

Zippy,
A) Your focus on complete knowledge seems to me like a requirement that we know the outcome before performing a test. Formalism establishes rigorous guidelines for conducting a reproducible test. The importance of formalism is in fact its consistency, not its completeness.

B) "G is itself not provable using the machinery of the formal system." There is a slight yet significant difference between saying it is not provable and it cannot be expressed by the machinery. That is what Hoftadter was getting at in his description of a phonograph that self-destructs playing certain records. There are other ways to fill in the gaps, such as Gentzen's consistency proof.

C) I think you are inflating the importance of Godel's theorem. Not that it was a minor achievement by any means, but it relies upon a series of improbable leaps to prove its case, to the extent that the limitations it does clearly show are not sufficient to overcome the general strength of formalism.

"I think you are inflating the importance of Godel's theorem."

Watch it, Step2. Remember what you said over on Right Reason: You just hate to be agreeing with Lydia.

I think you are inflating the importance of Godel's theorem.

If you read the thread you may note that I only brought it up in response to the specific claim that mathematics is nothing but formalism. GT does, in fact, refute that specific claim.

Suppose we imagine some mathematical statement that is true but is not provable within mathematics. Why does the fact that it is not provable within the system show it not to be a formal truth? For one thing, for any such truth, you could invent an enhanced formal system in which it _would_ be provable. That system, in turn, would have _other_ statements that could be made within it but would not be provable. But you would have made the initial statement provable.

For another, we need again to consider what we mean by formal truths. What _I_ mean is "true in virtue of meaning" or "true in virtue of the relations of ideas in the statement." Now, this can apply to all sorts of things that aren't mathematical at all and hence, of course, can't be proved using mathematics--e.g. "Nothing red all over is also green all over at the same time." It isn't required for that to be true that there be any real red or green objects in the actual world. Nor do "redness" and "greenness" need to refer to entities, as if the properties were Platonic Ideas existing apart from any actual red or green objects. So no sort of "color Platonism" is required for it to be true, but it is indeed a conceptual (i.e. analytic) truth. So it would seem to me that it could easily be the case that mathematical truths that were not provable within a mathematical system would nonetheless be "formal" in this sense. I can't see any reason why not, anyway.

I shd. add that I don't see how either my notion of "formal truth" is any sort of threat to anything--metaphysics or whatnot.

What _I_ mean is "true in virtue of meaning" or "true in virtue of the relations of ideas in the statement."

Well, then we are just back to you meaning something entirely different by "formal" than I meant when I said "[r]elated is the idea that some autonomous pieces of knowledge can be reduced to nothing but a formalism" in response to your request for my understanding of positivism.

Okay, I'm still not sure I have a very good grip on your notion of what it would mean for there to be "formal truths." Is it just supposed to be the physical signs or symbols or something that make for truth? I can't believe anyone has ever really thought that.

Be that as it may, suppose someone thought there were such truths. What difference would that make for Big Questions? For example, why could not a person hold to this odd and silly view w.r.t. some truths while still reasonably believing all manner of other important things on subjects like morality, God, and so forth? Those, presumably, would _not_ be formal truths in any sense at all, and he wouldn't think that they were.

Is it just supposed to be the physical signs or symbols or something that make for truth?

That and the rules for manipulating them, yes. Sola symbols on paper. Though "truth" isn't quite the word for it, since positivists are suspicious of transcendent truth. Often it is put that transcendent truth may exist but doesn't really matter: that the only useful or authoritative knowledge is what can be produced formally in this sense starting from undisputable axioms. (This is where the attempt to saw the truth in half, into the authoritative public kind and the useless private kind, comes in).

If postmoderns are so radically subjective that they make objective reality disappear, positivists are so radically objective that they make the subject disappear. The trend in modern philosophy to make the mind disappear into an epiphenomenon is a direct result of positivist tendencies of thought, in my opinion.

I can't believe anyone has ever really thought that.

See Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle.

And yes, it is possible to be positivist w.r.t. some things and not others. (In fact it isn't really possible to be a consistent positivist or postmodern at all, so as with other incoherent belief systems like liberalism it leads to all sorts of incoherent belief structures.)

Lydia,
What I wrote was that I hesitate to agree with you. Some of that was related to the specific position you were defending (or what I thought you were defending), which had some complications I did not want to explore.

Zippy,
Rather than inconsistent, I would suggest the word modal. It is very unclear to me why the mind should not be something natural, incredibly complex, and oriented by its dual ability to analyze and synthesize.

Rather than inconsistent, I would suggest the word modal.

If I thought that positivism or postmodernism were modes of thought which are in the least bit tenable rather than self-refuting then I might use the word modal to describe them. But I don't, so I don't.

Hey, Zippy,

I've been double-checking, and it appears that I'm right in my tentative take on the history of 20th century philosophy here: Ayer and Carnap qua positivists (I imagine they even carried cards at the time :-)) definitely did advocate truth in virtue of meaning. It was this notion of the analytic/synthetic distinction of the positivists that Quine was attacking in his famous "Two Dogmas" article. (That was one of the things he was attacking.) Moreover, logical positivists couldn't actually be physicalists, because they would have said that the whole question was a pseudo-problem, given their verification criterion of meaningfulness (which, of course, I reject).

But I do accept the analytic/synthetic distinction. It's very important, in fact.

It's an interesting suggestion that one could argue that you have to take a definite position on the existence of the mind in order to hold to truth in virtue of meaning. That is, that you have to be definitely a non-physicalist. Hence, you can't be a logical positivist and dismiss the question. That may be correct.

Lydia: I have no doubt that you know the history of philosophy better than I do. But on the question of mathematics as formalism I really do have this right. The Hilbert program - the whole point to it really - was to construct all of mathematics as a formalism in exactly the way I described: as nothing but symbols and mechanical rules of inference. The dreams of the mathematicians - not unlike the dreams of today's strong AI proponents - was to capture all of thought in this way, starting with mathematics. And Godel destroyed the Hilbert program.

To be perfectly honest, though, I'm not sure that I do accept the analytic/synthetic distinction. That is to say, I don't hang my understanding of the possibility of meaning on such a distinction. Said still differently, if God told me tonight that it is illusory I wouldn't be in the least bit distressed or disappointed.

I do think that physicalism is unintelligible by definition, since he-who-understands is denying his own existence when he asserts it.

It's funny: Just as I was writing and getting vetted that previous post, Tim said to me, "He's confusing logical positivism with formalism-- Hilbert."

So, this is what I'm getting: Hilbert was a formalist, and he (and many others) also had high hopes of the logicist program, to which Godel put paid (unless you accept transfinite induction). But I gather it's possible to be a formalist without being a logicist, a logicist without being a formalist, and a logical positivist without being either one. And of these only formalism involves something like the position you've been describing re. uninterepreted (non-semantic) formal systems.

I'm puzzled by the notion that "the possibility of meaning" hangs on the analytic/synthetic distinction. I would say it the other way around: The fact that there are meanings is part of what makes the distinction possible. Meaningful, in fact. If I had an experience in which it seemed that God was saying to me, "There is no analytic/synthetic distinction," I would figure it was a dream or else that He didn't mean what I mean when I say there is one. The analytic/synthetic distinction is one of those things that, as Descartes said in a slightly different context, I can deny only when I'm merely using words carelessly and not really focusing on what I'm talking about.

But I gather it's possible to be a formalist without being a logicist, a logicist without being a formalist, and a logical positivist without being either one.

Sort of. This assumes that all of the above are completely unrelated autonomously coherent positions to begin with. I am not at all convinced that that is the case. It is possible to be a liberal without being a communist too, but as ideologies they are (1) taxonomically related and (2) internally incoherent.

Is it really your position that the Hilbert programme is completely unrelated to the goals of the Vienna Circle? That they had no stake in it, didn't see its presumed and forthcoming success (before Godel) as validating their "what we can sayism" world view? Just as an historical matter that strikes me as a very odd claim.

Also, I don't doubt that as with positivists we could come up with various categorizations of postmoderns and say that one can be this without being that, etc. That is all very interesting - truly - but taken categorically it begs the questions of internal coherence and unrelatedness. Positivism, like postmodernism and for that matter political liberalism, is a tendency of thought which leads to a great many distinct errors.

Zippy,

There are many good reasons for rejecting logical positivism, but Gödel’s proof, which showed that Hilbert’s program could not be carried out in the manner Hilbert intended, is not one of them. Formalism did not entail an optimistic answer to Hilbert’s consistency problem, and in any event not all logical positivists were formalists: vide the discussion and critique of formalism on pp. 132-34 of Richard von Mises, Positivism (1951), where Gödel’s proof is mentioned. (This is essentially a translation of von Mises’s Kleines Lehrbuch des Positivismus (1939).) It is not very helpful to ask whether the Hilbert programme was “related” to the goals of the Vienna Circle; “related” is too weak a conduit to carry refutation from the former to the latter. Logical positivism flourished in the 30s and 40s despite the clear recognition of the significance of Gödel’s 1931 result among the positivists themselves.

As Lydia notes above, it is important in such discussions that we define our terms as clearly as possible. The logical positivists identified themselves chiefly by their rejection of metaphysics and their endorsement of the verification principle. As a movement, logical positivism gradually disintegrated because of a growing internal recognition that the verification criterion could not be formulated in a fashion that eliminated what the positivists viewed as undesirable metaphysics without also shaving off non-negotiable parts of empirical science. Carl Hempel’s classic essay “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning” documents this well.

In general, it is not a good idea to equate “positivism” with “modernity” or “the Enlightenment.” Too many dissimilar things are easly rolled together once the distinctions among these terms are blurred. While there are certainly villains aplenty among the self-appointed high priests of reason, I have to say for the record that postmodernism seems to me distinctly the greater evil.

There are many good reasons for rejecting logical positivism, but Gödel’s proof, which showed that Hilbert’s program could not be carried out in the manner Hilbert intended, is not one of them.

Let me try to remind everyone once again how Godel came into the discussion, and what specifically - which particular claim - was being addressed.

Lydia said:
I guess I _would_ endorse the claim on one construal that some kinds of knowledge are just formal. I'm thinking of mathematics and logic.

I replied:
That is precisely the claim that Kurt Godel proved to be false even when taken on its own terms, though, except in a very limited sense in trivial cases.

Notice (again) that the claim I am addressing here is not some general set of claims by positivists, but the specific claim that mathematical knowledge is strictly formal. At the end of the day, Lydia apparently didn't mean what I meant by "formal". That is OK, but for some reason this specific branch of the discussion carries on, mostly with the specific claim and counterclaim out of focus.

...“related” is too weak a conduit to carry refutation from the former to the latter.

Positivism, like postmodernism, is at bottom an incoherent way of thinking. (And the two are related to each other). Incoherent ways of thinking are in their nature intellectual hydras which spout many heads. I am not suggesting that Godel refutes all of them. I am merely pointing out that Godel proved that mathematical knowledge isn't strictly formal.

While there are certainly villains aplenty among the self-appointed high priests of reason, I have to say for the record that postmodernism seems to me distinctly the greater evil.

I don't think so, because I have the perception that postmoderns are just so obviously silly to everyman, whereas positivists are not.

Please define "postmodernism" as a very general category with the same analytic clarity that you are demanding of my use of the term "positivism" as a very general category. I'll throw in "liberalism" as a challenge to boot. (The request is intended as rhetorical, but you are certainly welcome to take it up).

I wish postmodernism looked silly to people. I guess it depends on which people we're talking about. In the academy, it seems not to look all that silly at all.

I may make a stab at a definition of post-modernism later. But for the nonce, this: Positivism, insofar as it was a real phenomenon, was over a long time ago. This isn't the case with postmodernism, which wasn't dreamed or thought of until long after Vienna Circle logical positivism fizzled in philosophical circles. The recent (say, last twenty-five years) revival of the term "positivism" as a negative word to express what they are opposed to is, as far as I know, the creation of post-modernists themselves, most of whom have no clue as to what they are talking about and will call you a "positivist" if you ask them for reasons. It's in there with "logocentrist" as a vague term of abuse for people who like rationality.

All of this means that it is almost certainly more useful to talk about postmodernism as a present problem or threat--since there are plenty of self-styled postmodernists walking around today and poisoning young minds--than to talk about positivism as a threat. If I were surrounded by young people applying the verification criterion to get rid of metaphysics, then I might have to talk about the dangers of positivism. As it is, I've never met a single one. If you want to say that materialism is far too plausible to too many people, or that the vague notion that religious beliefs are subjective and irrational is far too plausible to too many people, those statements are true, and I'll concur in them. But why bring a decades-dead and fairly well-defined philosophical movement into it for a label?

In the academy, it seems not to look all that silly at all.

That is a fair point, and it may well account for the difference in our perspectives. Though I wonder if this is more a reflection of the state in the humanities rather than the sciences.

Positivism, insofar as it was a real phenomenon, was over a long time ago.

That perception may also reflect the same difference. I am surrounded by young people (and not a few older ones) who disbelieve in metaphysics and who think the only authoritative truths are or should be truths which can be verified through some positive procedure or method; that anything which cannot be so verified is a matter of private faith and has no public quiddity.

This is indubitably a matter of perspective, at least at some level. My perception of the influence of PM in the academy was such, as a result of the presentations of my academic adviser, that I scarcely blanched - at the time - when my father asked me to assist him in the family business upon my completion of a degree. Why would I desire to spend a few years in graduate school immersed in that? Ugh.

PM does appear rather more serious when you've recently emerged from a liberal arts program, for example.

Zippy,

You quote Lydia:

I guess I _would_ endorse the claim on one construal that some kinds of knowledge are just formal. I'm thinking of mathematics and logic.

Then you quote your own reply:

That is precisely the claim that Kurt Godel proved to be false even when taken on its own terms, though, except in a very limited sense in trivial cases.

Actually, Lydia is on firm ground here. It makes very good sense to speak of the theorems of the fundamental systems of logic as formal. Gödel-style results do not apply there in any event. Truth-functional propositional logic, which is in several senses the fundamental system of logic, was proved consistent by Emil Post in 1920; a sketch of the method of proof is given in Nagel and Newman's book Gödel's Proof. First order predicate logic, the philosopher's everyday tool, was proved consistent in 1928 by Hilbert and Ackerman and semantically complete by Gödel himself in 1930.

It is misleading to say that Gödel proved that mathematics is not formal. Even the suggestion that it is not axiomatizable in a consistent and complete way needs to be made with caution. Elementary number theory with addition but without multiplication was proved consistent by Presburger in 1929; with multiplication but without addition, by Skolem in 1930. It is only the combination of the two that cannot be proved consistent by finitary means, though in his doctoral dissertation of 1957 Feferman showed that there is a formula of Peano arithmetic that expresses, in a sense analogous to that of a Gödel sentence, the consistency of the system and that this formula is a theorem of the system.

You quote me:

While there are certainly villains aplenty among the self-appointed high priests of reason, I have to say for the record that postmodernism seems to me distinctly the greater evil.

Then you reply:

I don't think so, because I have the perception that postmoderns are just so obviously silly to everyman, whereas positivists are not.

Would that it were so! But within the academy they are an immensely powerful force, and they are moving into the churches as well.

You ask:

Please define "postmodernism" as a very general category with the same analytic clarity that you are demanding of my use of the term "positivism" as a very general category.

In some ways this is a difficult request with which to comply, since the positivists took the trouble to define their views fairly clearly and the postmodernists, to put it mildly, do not. However, a good first approximation to a definition of postmodernism -- one that captures many of the breed -- would be that it is an intellectual movement predicated on the assumption that it is not possible to grasp truth rationally and that logic, in particular, is merely a social construct, perhaps even a coercive instrument of political oppression. As one devotee of Heidegger once said to me with great earnestness: "What you have to understand is that in continental philosophy those three laws of logic -- noncontradiction, excluded middle, and ... and ... I can't remember the third one, but I have it written down somewhere -- they don't hold!"

I spent four years of my life among people who took pronouncements like this very seriously. The chairman of the department where I took my Ph. D. told me in all seriousness that I needed to undergo a kind of psychotherapy to do an "archaeology" of the reason that I felt reasons to be important. One could not argue with these people: at the moment that logic closed the circle, they would shrug off logic. Aristotle nails them in Metaphysics, book 4: they have reduced themselves to a level of plants, and it is not possible to have rational discourse with them. And undergraduates in humanities programs are eating this up as though it is a new revelation from an angel of God. The scale of the damage to the minds of a generation is difficult to grasp.

All that said, Lydia is right that a sort of watered-down, second-drawer positivism is prevalent among young people in the sciences. Some of them will grow out of it, as the positivists themselves grew out of positivism. Some ... won't make it. But the postmodernists need the kind of conversion experience described in Chesterton's marvelous story "The Crime of Gabriel Gale."

It is misleading to say that Gödel proved that mathematics is not formal.

I suppose it might have been misleading if I had said that mathematics is not formal. But I didn't say that.

What I said is that mathematics cannot be reduced to nothing but a formalism. This is quite directly related to logical positivism because saying that mathematics cannot be reduced to a formalism is to say that no particular formalism constitutes a verification procedure for mathematics. The Hilbert program is positivism applied to a particular area of knowledge: an attempt to construct a specific actual verification procedure to completely cover a particular area of knowledge.

All that said, Lydia is right that a sort of watered-down, second-drawer positivism is prevalent among young people in the sciences.

I expect that is precisely what prepares their minds for postmodernism. Postmodernism is the natural progression of positivist tendencies of thought, in my view. They are not unrelated: positivism is postmodern larvae. Neuter the queen and you kill the nest.

"'All that said, Lydia is right that a sort of watered-down, second-drawer positivism is prevalent among young people in the sciences.'

"I expect that is precisely what prepares their minds for postmodernism. Postmodernism is the natural progression of positivist tendencies of thought, in my view."

I think this is correct; postmodernism is not a separate unrelated 'project,' but is largely modernism gone to seed. On the lingering effects of positivism, see this piece by Patrick Henry Reardon from Touchstone a few years ago:

http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=14-07-028-f

Zippy,

You write:

I suppose it might have been misleading if I had said that mathematics is not formal. But I didn't say that.

I don't follow this. Lydia said that she believed that "some kinds of knowledge are just formal," and she identified "logic and mathematics" as what she had in mind. You, in your post at August 8, 2007 2:29 PM, quoted this sentence from her. Then you said (your words in bold):

I replied:
That is precisely the claim that Kurt Godel proved to be false even when taken on its own terms, though, except in a very limited sense in trivial cases.

The "I replied" here sure makes it look like you think the claim you had just quoted from Lydia was false. But it looks like we're sorting things out here in any event; Lydia's claim that mathematics and logic are formal doesn't seem, on explication, to be objectionable in the sense you had in mind. Or at least that's how I'm reading it.

On the other issue, I see a connection between naive scientism and postmodernism, but I don't think it's a logical progression. What I've seen is that the foolish overreaching of some scientistic types gives the postmodernists a target that they can attack with some plausibility. But where the postmodernists go from there is something else again.

My own strong impression is that it's a lot easier to work with someone who has watered-down (perhaps rather sophomoric) positivist tendencies and to move him beyond them than to do the same with someone who has similarly sophomoric PM tendencies. The only thing that will do for the latter is a total conversion. The former can, in my opinion, more easily be gotten to see that "metaphysics" is not synonymous with "irrationality," while retaining the laudable desire for argument and evidence that were part of his opinion set in the first place.

I have barely skimmed the Reardon piece, but I note just a couple of things: First, he seems to assume that any time someone criticizes a claim by saying it has no possibility of being verified or falsified, such a person is, in a bad sense, manifesting "positivism." Well, write me down a "positivist," then, because when I make such a criticism, I'm asking for evidence where I think evidence needs to be given. He also makes a passing and seemingly positive (no pun intended) reference to Kuhn's "paradigm shifts." To my mind, the whole notion that we have to lurch along through arational or irrational paradigm shifts is pernicious and should be thrown out the window post-haste. It isn't at all good that philosophers have "recognized" this idea. I would say rather "been seduced by."

Thanks for the perspectives.

Tim: Just for the sake of understanding where I was coming from, I did not respond to Lydia's "formal mathematics" comment as a tabula rasa statement. I took it to be a controverting response to my prior statement that "[r]elated [to positivism] is the idea that some autonomous pieces of knowledge can be reduced to nothing but a formalism." (Probably because I specifically had mathematics in mind with that one).

For all I know at this point, she may not have even had that specific statement of mine in mind. It isn't as though I spent a lot of time on that initial gloss. But as you say, I think it has been sorted out.

'[Reardon] seems to assume that any time someone criticizes a claim by saying it has no possibility of being verified or falsified, such a person is, in a bad sense, manifesting "positivism."'

I don't see that assumption in his piece. Likewise on Kuhn, I'm not sure how, in context, you can assume he looks either favorably or unfavorably on the notion of the 'paradigm shift.' Seems to me that he mentions it as merely an example of how the philosophy of science has dumped Logical Positivism.

Rob, I want to be careful not to seem to saddle Zippy or even anyone else with a defense of Reardon's piece, which is quite long and which may or may not represent anything he wants to defend. You're certainly right that the reference to Kuhn in the piece is really short and admits of multiple interpretations. As to the other claim, I was thinking of Reardon's discussion of McGrath and Hick and of how McGrath's criticisms of Hick supposedly manifest the remaining bad influence of logical positivism in scholarship. I would be interested in seeing a little more of the context, both of what Hick says and of McGrath's critique. But nothing in the bits of McGrath that Reardon quotes commits him, as far as I can see, to "logical positivism" in some objectionable sense. Consider that the debate in question is over whether all men will be saved (it's in a four views of salvation book), a topic which the Logical Positivists wouldn't have been caught dead discussing in the first place. It _looks_, from the bits given, like Hicks's universalism is of the "all religions are really saying the same thing" variety, and it's perfectly legitimate to ask for evidence, yea, even empirical evidence, for such a sweeping claim. Just because someone uses the words "verification" and "falsification" and criticizes a view for not being subject to either, as McGrath does, it doesn't follow by a long chalk that he's doing something epistemologically illicit or that he's going to start slashing all metaphysics out of the "meaningful statement" category as his next move. I'm sure McGrath isn't, given Reardon's own characterization of him as a conservative theologian!

'Just because someone uses the words "verification" and "falsification" and criticizes a view for not being subject to either, as McGrath does, it doesn't follow by a long chalk that he's doing something epistemologically illicit or that he's going to start slashing all metaphysics out of the "meaningful statement" category as his next move. I'm sure McGrath isn't, given Reardon's own characterization of him as a conservative theologian!'

Agreed, but I think that what Reardon is doing there is showing how a lingering positivist influence can affect even such a careful scholar as McGrath. In other words, if even a conservative like McGrath can fall prey on occasion to the residue of positivism, and that in an area of study where its presence isn't (or wasn't) normally seen, we should be careful in dismissing its influence in other areas.

See, just on the basis of those quotations, I don't see this as "falling prey" to anything at all. And it certainly isn't anything incompatible with being a careful scholar. Rather the reverse. Perhaps McGrath is being a careful scholar _by_ his criticisms, and showing himself to be one. You have to understand that I see seeking verification as often a _good_ thing. Usually the word can just mean "evidence," and in the case in question it looks to me as though even empirical evidence may well be relevant in a fairly obvious way. For example, _are_ all religions really "instantiating the same content"? The whole notion that this is a bad thing, that McGrath is "falling prey to the residue of positivism," is something I reject, at least prima facie. The _residue_ of positivism may well be a _good_ thing, if what that means is criticizing sweeping claims with no rational defense given, claims that should be empirical treated as if they are not, and the like, and seeking proper arguments for them. It sounds to me like this is what McGrath is doing, though again, I lack the full context of his and Hicks's arguments.

McGrath's critique of Hick, though, could also be used against a statement such as "Jesus died for the sins of the world," right? The positivist critique, then, could apply to any theological claim, not just the ones that McGrath disagrees with. Metaphysical statements of this sort are by their nature unable to be verified in a positivist, 'scientific' manner. Carnap, et al, concluded that such statements therefore carry no cognitive meaning. I'm sure McGrath would disagree, but I think he still errs by using the principle of verification in dealing with a metaphysical statement, even a bad one!

Fr. Reardon's example seems to show how a sort of 'functional' positivism still survives in rather odd places, despite the demise of its more strictly philosophical form.

The Reardon piece is interesting, though I don't know if I would endorse everything in it. I think Lydia's characterization of Kuhn isn't quite right though: paradigm shifts happen precisely because evidence of a foundational nature (e.g. quantum mechanics) mounts and undermines the current paradigm, the way I read Kuhn. A paradigm shift isn't irrational or arational: it is what happens when what has been assumed all along to be rational breaks down in the face of evidence and reason. It isn't irrational to abandon physical determinism and/or locality in the face of the evidence of QM, it is necessary because of the evidence; a reevaluation of what is considered to be rational is driven by mounting evidence against the previous paradigm. It is a fact that science as an historical matter has proceeded in this way, a fact that Kuhn documents. Kuhn's original insight may have been misused, perhaps even by himself (I didn't read his later book and it has been a long time since I read Structure). But that doesn't mean that the notion of a paradigm shift -qua- paradigm shift is irrational or arational starting from positivist premeses. Going to a new formalism in which G is provable is a mathematical analog to a paradigm shift: a change of verification procedure. Postmodernism starts with the realization that there is no universal verification procedure.

I think almost everyone in science and industry has positivist tendencies, and plenty of them are full-blown positivists. Positivism is all about the distinction between consistency and completeness. (Completeness in the abstract means that a verification procedure exists covering every truth in the domain specified; that every truth can be verified simpliciter using already established facts, that truths which cannot be so verified are irrelevant). To look for evidence is to look for facts which are consistent with the truth that is being tested, which is simply rationality. To insist on a particular verification procedure covering all facts accepted as facts within a given (sufficiently interesting) domain is positivism. The difference is subtle yet profound in its implications, because when positivism breaks down it becomes postmodernism.

In the early 1990's at a large corporation we had an actual seminar that all the technical employees had to attend. It was a seminar on "paradigm shifts". The idea I think was to get technical people to be more creative by indoctrinating them with a little postmodernism, starting from positivist premeses. Everyone thought it was really interesting, because technical geeks are positivists by predisposition and training.

So I think in a way it is far worse than Tim and Lydia see it from their perspective on the academy. It isn't that this same error dominates merely the academy in the form of postmodernism. It also dominates the high school science classes and all of industry in the form of positivism. It is hard to become a postmodern when you are cranking out silicon that has to work; but softening up the mind with positivism for a decade will get the job done. They are of a piece in the assault on rationality, not distinct enemies of reason.

There's a real "smoking gun" quotation or two from Kuhn on that issue, Zippy, though I don't have them immediately to hand. He then later got upset that people took him for a relativist, but he'd given plenty of ammo. The whole question of interpreting Kuhn is a vexed one, because I think he wanted to sound like he was saying something more sexy than he really could support historically, then he didn't like the relativist sound this gave his work and the use relativists made of it. His influence has been very pernicious, I believe. He's cited frequently in the humanities in support of plain old epistemic relativism. I, for one, will never ever use "paradigm shift." I think that the usage it has as it's come into common language has a very strong whiff of arationalism to it.

I actually think the situation is very bad just w.r.t. the influence of PM on the culture generally. An example I frequently give is of the way people watched the whole Clinton fiasco without _caring_ whether he was telling the truth to them. They didn't seem to mind being lied to; they were just morbidly curious and even impressed if it could be done cleverly. When the tide of PM comes in and goes out, it leaves behind it a vast skepticism, cynicism, and politicization, as well as a deliberately cultivated contempt for truth and for integrity in jobs and disciplines.

Rob, it seems to me that a statement about what all religions are instantiating has at least some aspects of what we might call anthropology: What do people really believe? What is the content of their religions? Is it plausible that these are all in any meaningful sense "saying the same thing"? In itself, the statement that all religions are instantiating the same content needn't be theological at all.

The question of how empirical evidence relates to more strictly speaking theological statements, including the statement that everyone is going to heaven and the statement that Jesus died for our sins, is a very important one. As I understand them, the Logical Positivists had a verification criterion of _meaning_. This meant not just that we shouldn't believe things for which there wasn't empirical evidence, but that such things are strictly meaningless, pseudo-problems. This is certainly false.

How about the weaker claim? Should we have empirical evidence for our beliefs about God, the atonement, and so forth? Could we have it, in the nature of the case?

I believe that we can, and indeed that we do. The argument is indirect, though strong. God (as large numbers of evidentialist apologists have said for centuries) can show himself to exist and can put his stamp of approval upon a revelation by way of miracles, which are themselves verifiable by sensory evidence and to others by testimony. The revelation can be extremely rich, theologically, and can include many claims (like the one about Jesus dying for our sins) that could not be supported empirically in any _direct_ way by the nature of their content. This is an apologetic line of thought that goes back very far. I myself would say that it goes back to the Apostles, but that, perhaps, is tendentious. Alvin Plantinga (in the course of dissing it), calls it "Lockean," and it was the standard approach of the English apologists when answering various skeptics. It's in my opinion a good kind of modernism or "enlightenment rationalism"--the kind we need lots more of.

Whether God could give rational support to theological claims in some other way is another difficult question. For example, suppose some given person received private revelations which he was able to "check out"? They might, for example, be prophecies. He would then legitimately come to trust "that voice." Does this count as good evidence? I'm strongly inclined to say that it does. Whether it should be called "empirical" or not is perhaps a less important question, though I would so call it.

When, however, we get into straight mysticism and/or revelations without any other tie-down, I'm not sure how one would know that they were true. And in any event, I do not see how one could expect other people to be moved by them, as they wouldn't have access to them at all. So their legitimate apologetic or evangelistic value would be nil.

I'm mostly in agreement with you here, Lydia. The 'enlightenment' type of apologetic is valuable for those who still believe that there is such as thing as truth, and that if something is true, it exerts a claim on one. But for those who've been infected by the postmodernist bug, i.e., those who say, "So what if it's true? What does that mean to me?," that approach is far less effective. The "Evidence That Demands A Verdict" type of apologetic doesn't work too well with postmoderns.

It seems to me that the Apostles, apologists, and church fathers were not really either evidentialists or presuppositionalists (in the Van Tilian sense); what they did primarily was to appeal to metaphysics in a cultural milieu where the notion of metaphysical argument was valid, and indeed, taken for granted. In that sense, it may be helpful to study 'pre-modern' apologetics to learn how to communicate with postmodernists. Narrative plays a part in this as well, and that may well be a touching point between pre-Enlightenment thinking and the postmodernists.

I'm afraid I really do think that the apostles were staunch evidentialists. :-) This is just one of many reasons that I dislike the "modern/pre-modern" way of talking about these things.

I'm not interested chiefly in whether evidential apologetics works for reaching post-modernists. I think, in fact, that this is the wrong direction from which to approach the whole question. The question is whether we should be looking for evidence for belief in God and, then, whether such evidence is available. I think the answer to _both_ of these questions is "yes." The post-modernist needs to get his head straightened out fairly radically. He doesn't need anybody catering to his bug, which is a vicious virus that will kill his mind if it isn't decisively rejected.

"Narrative" is just a word that means "story." I don't think it has any distinctly epistemological usage. I tell stories to my children. I tell them Bible stories. They believe me because they have good reason to trust me, from a multitude of pieces of evidence, whether they are self-conscious enough to articulate that evidence or not. As they get older, I give them other reasons for accepting those historical stories as true, reasons that go beyond my credibility with them. This process is already beginning even with Middle Daughter, who has rather a disconcerting mind for only eight years old. But when it comes to adults, even young adults, I don't even know what it would mean to use "narrative" in apologetics.

There's nothing at all wrong with making a straightforward proclamation. I'm not saying that there is. But I would never call preaching the gospel "using narrative." And when it comes to communicating with real post-modernists, I think their post-modernism has to be dealt with straight-on. If they don't care about truth, how can they become Christians at all?

P.S. Evidential apologetics gets _so_ much better than Josh McDowell. :-)

There's a real "smoking gun" quotation or two from Kuhn on that issue, Zippy, though I don't have them immediately to hand.

Could be, and I allowed for the possibility that he may himself have misused what he observed. It has been too long since I read Structure to be a Kuhn defender, I frankly don't remember how favorably I received it at the time, and in any case his personal views are beside the point. In the practice of science, paradigm shifts do in fact occur - that is to say, what is considered to constitute rational inquiry itself changes in major epistemological phase shifts. And it does so in response to evidence, not as some arbitrary assertion of the will. This may be a meta-rational process, but it is simply wrong to call it an irrational or a-rational process in my understanding. Hearing the name "Kuhn" isn't going to make me reflexively chamber a round, because what he observed is in fact real.

"Evidential apologetics gets _so_ much better than Josh McDowell."

Really!! Ya think??? ;^)

The apologetic question with po-mo's seems to be, do we attempt to convince them that there's such a thing as objective truth first, then hit them with the Gospel, or do we hit them with the "meaning" of the Gospel and how it speaks to them, then work on the truth issue?

What I mean by a narrative apologetic would be to use the "story" aspect of the Gospel itself as its defense, as opposed to presenting only deductions or propositions that derive from the story. N.T. Wright, in SIMPLY CHRISTIAN, makes a case along these lines, I think. And to quote my friend Stuart Koehl, "As for 'narrative theology' as a hermenuetic approach, I think if you look at the Fathers, for the most part, this is what they did, seeing the Bible as essentially a narrative history of the people of God culminating in the incarnation, passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even before the New Testament canon emerged, they were doing this through the liturgy of the Church, which was a dramatic reenactment of this history in song, gesture and sacramental action."

Now Stuart made this statement in regards to hermeneutics, but I think it can also apply to apologetics.

Rob,

I just don't get how the "story" aspect of the Gospel is a defense. I mean, if it's all just myths, then it's all just myths. The fact that it's a charming or attractive myth really has next to no evidential value, and I would never pretend that it does.

If I told some person--be he a po-mo or anybody--the story of the Gospel, I'd be assuming that it was true and stating it as objectively and historically true. He'd figure that out pretty quickly. Again, I have no problem with telling anybody the gospel before presenting reasons for it, or even with presenting reasons for believing it only as these might come up naturally or seem appropriate in conversation. What I am very leery of is telling somebody anything along the lines of, "Believe this, because it speaks to your life situation, because it can mean so much _to you_, because it will [in essence] make you feel so much better." If somebody comes to me sobbing and says, "I need Jesus. I'm a sinner. I need to be forgiven," I'm certainly not going to launch into an historical apologetic! We'll get down to praying pretty quickly. (This has, sad to say, never happened.) But I'm going to assume that somebody who says that means what, on the face of it, he seems to mean--namely, that he already believes in Jesus as a real person. What I'm not going to try to do is induce in a person, po-mo or anybody, a feeling that the Gospel can have some subjective, personal, meaning-for-you to get him to embrace it because he _wants_ it.

Zippy, I can't help wondering if what you're thinking of in terms of rational phase shifts has to do with taking seriously ideas that were not taken seriously before. This definitely seems to be the case with non-locality in QM. Now colloquially this might be called "rethinking what counts as rational," because before the evidence comes in, a person who proposed rethinking locality might have been thought of as a kook--irrational. But it isn't truly a fundamental rethinking of evidential relations, probability theory, and so forth. In fact, if we couldn't tell what counts as evidence, we couldn't tell that the evidence requires us to rethink locality.

But it isn't truly a fundamental rethinking of evidential relations, probability theory, and so forth.

Then why all the hubbub between Einstein and Bohr about God, dice, cause-and-effect, and stuff? I'm left unsure on what you think would constitute a "fundamental rethinking" if you don't believe that QM and Godel both involved one. It sounds like you are simply ruling it out of school by fiat: that whatever happened it can't be considered a paradigm shift because that would grant some credence to Kuhn as an observer of history.

'I just don't get how the "story" aspect of the Gospel is a defense. I mean, if it's all just myths, then it's all just myths. The fact that it's a charming or attractive myth really has next to no evidential value, and I would never pretend that it does.'

Doesn't that depend, though, on the hearer? Isn't it possible that a "myth," whether true or not, may speak to a given person in a stronger way than a proposition might? Narrative may be able to break down some folks' defenses against not only hearing the truth, but against the concept of truth itself.

"What I'm not going to try to do is induce in a person, po-mo or anybody, a feeling that the Gospel can have some subjective, personal, meaning-for-you to get him to embrace it because he _wants_ it."

I completely agree with you, if the attempt were to stop there. But why not present it this way if need be, as long as you don't downplay or negate the truth aspect in the process? In other words, if necessary, start with the subjective and personal, but never forget to proceed to the objective and universal.

Zippy,

That's why I focused on the non-localism option. The non-determinism option is rather a different kettle of fish. The question there, it seems to me (insofar as I understand the issues, which means only partially) is whether or not *in this context* a denial of determinism involves a denial of the principle of sufficient reason. Obviously, I'm not a determinist w.r.t. personal agents. But nobody is claiming that angels are causing non-determinism in QM. If the non-deterministic interpretation is taken as fundamental (rather than sticking with a purely instrumentalist understanding, in which case the theory is ontologically incomplete), and if this involves denying the PSR (which I fear it does), then it's indeed a radical claim, but analytically false. It seems to me that this is where the stuff about God and dice comes in.

As for Godel, that's a matter of a mathematical proof. I thought we were talking about the empirical sciences.

Rob, I guess I'd have to see it in action to be sure. (I haven't read the Wright book you mentioned.) But right off the bat, it sounds illegitimate. How can I present the Gospel "this way" (i.e. as a myth) even initially if I think it the most objective historical fact, as historically factual as the assassination of JFK or Caesar's crossing the Rubicon?

I'd be much more open to, say, getting a person to see that he's a sinner. Now that doesn't involve getting right away into the historicity of the Gospel, it might indeed create a feeling of a need for God, and it might do so chronologically before the person actually believes that God exists, that Jesus lived and died, etc. That gets him going searching for a solution to his problem, which perhaps he didn't admit he had before. That sort of preparatio evangelium makes a certain sense, and it follows roughly the structure of the book of Romans. But that involves conveying a stark truth to him. There's no sense, I think, in which it's trying primarily make him feel how _attractive_ the Gospel is, how _deep_, how _meaningful_ (in some vaguely profound sense), how _suited_ to his needs, and so on and so forth. Any charlatan can do that sort of thing, and many have. Christians--evangelists, apologists, friends, ordinary Joes--shouldn't get into the business.

A fan of spooky action at a distance rather than God playing dice, eh? I'm not sure which one is less intuitive.

If the non-deterministic interpretation is taken as fundamental (rather than sticking with a purely instrumentalist understanding, in which case the theory is ontologically incomplete),...

If I understand you correctly, the interpretation must be fundamental: that is, there are provably no "hidden variables" solutions. Either the randomness is fundamental or the nonlocality is fundamental.

As far as Godel is concerned, I don't see why a paradigm shift doesn't apply. Mathematical theorems are discoveries too, and new discoveries can unmake - in this case did unmake - previous understandings of what it meant to think rationally about the domain of inquiry.

If people didn't agree about what counted as a proof, they wouldn't have been able to tell that Godel proved what he did prove.

Spooky per se is no problem. I'm a Cartesian dualist. Spooks R us. Things happening for no reason--now that's a problem.

If people didn't agree about what counted as a proof...

In point of fact people often disagree about what constitutes proof, and (as portions of this thread illustrate) people absolutely disagree about what precisely Godel proved.

Things happening for no reason--now that's a problem.

Welcome to the minority interpretation of QM.

"I'd be much more open to, say, getting a person to see that he's a sinner. Now that doesn't involve getting right away into the historicity of the Gospel, it might indeed create a feeling of a need for God, and it might do so chronologically before the person actually believes that God exists, that Jesus lived and died, etc."

To my mind, the person already has a feeling of a need for God -- he just doesn't identify it that way, or can't identify it at all. It's the moral itch that can't be scratched.

"There's no sense, I think, in which it's trying primarily make him feel how _attractive_ the Gospel is, how _deep_, how _meaningful_ (in some vaguely profound sense), how _suited_ to his needs, and so on and so forth."

I'd disagree, citing the parable of the prodigal son as an example. Doesn't that story move the hearer by being "attractive" and "meaningful?" And yet the narrative is used not only to move the hearer but to express a truth (which does not exclude the fact that we're all sinners like the prodigal son.)

"Doesn't that story move the hearer by being 'attractive' and 'meaningful?'"

No. At least, I don't think that was its purpose. Jesus was never into warm fuzzies. Ever. He was a great story teller, but if his hearers (and we) had no reason to believe he was who he said he was, the parable of the prodigal son would be just a literary curiosity. A great story. Nothing more. Yet his hearers _did_ have reason to believe he was sent from God. Being "on the ground" they had good access to his miracles(he told them they should believe on him "for the works' sake"), even before he rose from the dead, and some would have seen and heard the voice of the Father at his baptism.

He told parables to get his points across, and did it well. The purpose of the parables was didactic, not apologetic. They were mostly supposed to make people uncomfortable, I would guess, exactly the opposite of drawing them by the heartstrings!

Zippy, we all agree on Godel to a point. It's the Big Picture Significance where we tend to go in different directions. But the rules of logical proof don't change. We might make mistakes about them, but that's a different matter. And nothing in Godel forces us to reconsider, say, modus tollens. How could it?

...we all agree on Godel to a point.

We all agree on everything to a point. We couldn't talk to each other if we didn't. I'm not a postmodern: I don't conclude from the fact of paradigm shifts in math and science that there is no such thing as rationality, that nobody can be objectively right or wrong and conflict is just about power relations. Neither do I deny that paradigm shifts occur, which I think would be just as fallacious. It is a fact of history that they do.

Also IIRC Godel only applies for two-valued logics, so as with QM you kind of get to pick your poison. Give me a reason to question modus tollens in a particular domain and I'll question it.

Zippy,

You write:

Give me a reason to question modus tollens in a particular domain and I'll question it.

What could count, in any domain, as a reason to question the validity of modus tollens?

(And yes, I've read the quantum logicians; Susan Haack is a friend of mine, so I know about many-valued "logics," etc.)

What could count, in any domain, as a reason to question the validity of modus tollens?

No idea, at least off the top of my head. I wouldn't expect us to have any idea on this side of the question. Physicists had no idea what would lead them to question ontological determinism before QM, but the evidence mounted to the point where asking it is no longer an insane question.

I guess I'm a bit confused, Lydia. How does appealing to someone's personal, individual 'place' constitute a descent into 'warm fuzzies?' You seem to be positing a sort of radical either/or here -- don't you think it's more of a continuum with extremes at both ends?

Well, Rob, as I said before, I'd have to see it in action to be sure. I'm giving you my impressions of the approach in the abstract, which are negative to no small extent because of the idea that we need in some special way to appeal to the postmodernist qua postmodernist, to have a special narrative method _for him_, and that because he doesn't believe in truth or doesn't care about truth. Right away, that sounds alarm bells with me. I can't imagine saying to someone anything like, "Okay, never mind for the moment whether it's true. Listen to it as a story and see if it grabs you." To me, it doesn't matter if the person is a postmodernist or not. You have to give it to him straight up.

There certainly are some sorts of addressing a person where he is that seem perfectly fine to me. I've tried to give a couple of examples of that.

(I'm afraid I have heard some rather dreadful passages from N.T. Wright just this morning. All about worldviews and "no neutral ground" and such. They made me say that as an epistemologist, he's a great historian. I fear that gives me some idea of what's up in the book you cited, though I could of course be wrong.)

Zippy, just for the record, I do disagree. Fundamental logic is irrevisable and a priori. "Alternative logics," insofar as they are internally consistent at all, involve alternative semantics, not real alternatives which then must be pondered or examined according to empirical evidence to such basic rules in two-valued logic as modus ponens, modus tollens, etc. But I'm not trying to start yet another rabbit by saying this. I know you must be a bit tired of all the new topics.