I reported earlier (see here and here), that the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF), as well as two seemingly reputable philosophical societies (the Analysis Trust and the Aristotelian Society), are sponsoring a conference in Oxford next March on “The Metaphysics of the Trinity: New Directions“. This is part of a larger TWCF project on “Metaphysics of Entanglement,” which of course to refers to a concept in physics, and thus mixes science and superstition.
Note that although the TWCF is not identical to the John Templeton Foundation, both are funded by Sir John Templeton’s huge mutual-fund legacy, both aim at answering (!) the Big Questions of human purpose and meaning, and both want to see how science can produce new “spiritual information.”
The philosopher and atheist Anthony Grayling, Master of the New College of the Humanities and a supernumerary fellow at Oxford, didn’t like this conference at all, and expressed his displeasure in a letter to the director of the Aristotelian Society, which I reproduce with permission.
Dr R. Madden
The Hon Director
Aristotelian SocietyDear Rory (if I may)
I write to you as one who had the privilege and pleasure of being the Society’s Hon Secretary (when your office was so described) for ten years, to express a concern. I note that the Society is supporting a conference in Oxford next year entitled ‘The Metaphysics of the Trinity.’ My concern is twofold. First, I do not think that the principal British philosophical society should be supporting a partisan religious event: I explain what I mean by this shortly. Second, a major supporter of this conference is the Templeton Foundation, which has offered a significant money prize for an essay on the conference topic. This Foundation has specific interests in promoting religion and religious ideas – which it is of course entitled to do – but alas it does so in ways that are often deliberately and seriously compromising to other and arguably more intellectually serious endeavours, not just philosophy but physics, cosmology and biology. I return to this point shortly also.
On the first point: the concept of a ‘Trinity’ is one that is discussed in certain specifically Christian religious settings – not in all: think Unitarians, Hussites, Quakers, and more – and is therefore a component of one particular parti pris position in one particular religion. I think the Aristotleian Society has been misled by the word ‘metaphysics’ in the conference title: the conference is a partisan religion event, and should not be benefitting from funds dedicated to responsible philosophical discussion. The conference is, in its partisan character, no different from (say) a Conservative Party conference or a conference on why Shi’ite beliefs are superior to Sunni beliefs: I would sincerely hope that the Society would not see its role as giving money to support any such.
On the second point: Templeton does its best (and alas too often successfully) to insinuate religious beliefs, notions, terminology and attitudes into discussion of science and philosophy. It offers an extremely large prize to anyone who will make friendly noises to religion – witness the £1,000,000 prize awarded to Lord Rees, Astronomer Royal, Master of Trinity College Cambridge, and President of the Royal Society, for doing precisely that; given Rees’s credentials, his doing so is a dream ticket for Templeton, and with so substantial an inducement to offer they are not without takers. But I should not, I hope, have to explain to fellow-philosophers in any detail why, given the deep disparity between the assumptions, methods, aims and principles of religious ideologies, on the one hand, and those of responsible intellectual enquiry in the sciences and philosophy, on the other hand, that the two domains should be kept as separate as we keep astrology and astronomy—this comparison is acutely apt—and that it should therefore refuse to associate with a foundation whose well-known purpose is to muddy these waters as much as it can.
My chief present point, however, is that the Society has made a mistake in supporting a partisan religious conference, and I hope the sum offered can be recovered and put to the proper use to which the Society’s resources are pledged.
With my very good wishes,
Anthony
I strongly suspect that this letter will be futile, but of course we must raise our voices when serious intellectual inquiry is polluted by both Templeton’s cash and by its mission to find evidence, via such inquiry, for God.
sub
I’m waiting for the conference that decides whether there are miraculously and simultaneously three kinds of cheeses in His Noodliness’ sauce.
Three??! Do you say three???
Heresy!
There are four cheeses! Let there be cheddar, Parmesan, Romano, and Roquefort! In all other combinations lies damnation!
Not to mention the seventy two virgin olive oils.
Actually, the fact of the matter is that pretty much any cheese worth eating on its own can be made into a suitable accompaniment for pasta. Different cheeses have different chemistries that will dictate the mode of preparation…some will melt better as is, some will melt will with sour salt or a similar emulsifier, some will be best crumbled and tossed, and so on. But all are worthy.
(Of course, it should go without saying that so-called American cheezy byproducts are not actually cheese and therefore should be excluded from the previous discussion.)
b&
Ben ,Ben , Ben
You’re being reasonable here. This is a discussion about religion.
It is? I thought it was a discussion about cheese. And aren’t cheeses so much more worthy of discussion than Jesus? Gimme goudas, not gods. More feta, less faith.
b&
More feta?
You made me just realize why satan is often depicted with a goats head. That stuff is wicked good!
Yup. Even the generic pre-crumbled kind, which went in last night’s salad…along with romaine, olives, pine nuts, and some oil and vinegar….
b&
We Americans grew up on Cheez Whiz and Velveeta…from my cold dead hands!
Yes, processed food-like petroleum derivatives are no small part of the reason why so many Americans suddenly develop cold, dead hands (and bodies).
b&
Do you not worship also the Baby Cheeses?
No. They have to be worth eating.
I’m going to assume people just didn’t get the pun, rather than they did but are, correctly, ignoring it.
Cheeses No. Now you made me regret not ignoring it. 😉
E.O. Wilson famously, and perhaps a BIT unfairly, noted that “MOST of philosophy … consists of failed models of how the brain works”. These folks are just carrying on that great tradition!
But it does include some gems like Anthony Grayling, Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker, just for example.
The difference with the trio you mention is that the work they’ve done that matters comes down to rigorous (if high-level) analysis of empirical data. Science, in other words.
Philosophers are permitted to use foundations of “ought,” of how they think the world should work and therefore conclude that that’s how it does work. If whatever you happen to pick as something that ought to be true actually is true, you’re in luck; you have a reasonable chance of coming up with useful answers. But if your “ought” actually has no basis in reality, all you’re building is faery castles in Neverland.
What is the ruler against which you measure success? That is what your model will most closely align itself to. Religion measures itself against the fantasies of the priests; philosophy against the favored ideology of the philosopher; science against empirical observation. The results speak for themselves.
Cheers,
b&
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Pinker is not a philosopher but a cognitive scientist.
Grayling is a great philosophy teacher and popularizer, and a first-rate public intellectual, but his own original contributions to philosophy have been very modest.
And I agree with Ben that whenever scientists and philosophers have disagreed about something in the recent years, Dennett and Grayling always sided with scientists.
Pinker is indeed a cognitive scientist.
Having Templeton money trumps data. There’s only one kind of figures that matter.
I feel uncomfortable when Grayling lumps philosophy in as “responsible ” inquiry, since philosophy has no method to deliver answers – knowledge. Only science has been observed to do that. How responsible is it to continue trying after many millenniums of futile and divisive inquiry? (I would reach for “personally satisfying” inquiry.)
But else it is the philosopher’s table, so I applaud Grayling for trying to oust the beggars of inane questions from the temple of “failed models”.
Typo: lumps philosophy in – lumps philosophy in with science.
To be fair, the subjects tackled by philosophy are worth studying. There’s epistemology (how we know what we know), aesthetics (the nature of beauty), ethics (the field of right and wrong), cosmology (the world in general), and even metaphysics, which is just about the nature of reality and isn’t antithetical to physics or astronomy. And at least in principle, philosophers use reason, rational inquiry, logic, and so on to justify their positions. Where it goes wrong is in practice, as a combination of incompetence, misleading intuitions, motivated reasoning, and just plain deception has resulted in an uncomfortably low ratio of strong ideas to weak ones.
All of your examples are best addressed, if they’re even addressable at all, by a rational analysis of objective observation — science, in other words.
And how could it be otherwise? Without that grounding in reality, all answers are equally valid. So you come up with some brilliant philosophical argument for why purple-eyed people are the most beautiful and the only ones with a moral right to freedom of expression…fantastic. But how do you know it’s so until and unless you actually go out and find some purple-eyed people and check the validity of your philosophy?
The so-called “is / ought” dilemma is umop-apisdn. Who cares whether or not you can or can’t derive an “ought” from an “is” when so much of the world is stuck on “ought, therefore is.” That’s really all that religion and philosophy and all the rest boil down to…some sort of insistence on “first principles” or the like that such-and-such ought to be true, so therefore it is true. There ought to be a celestial father-figure watching over us; therefore, there is one. It ought to be the case that swift retribution reduces crime; therefore that is the proper ethical framework for a moral code.
Sorry, but the real world doesn’t give a flying fuck what you think about how it should be. It’s what it actually is, and you’d be wise to at least pretend to recognize the fact.
Cheers,
b&
Philosophy is a very broad category which INCLUDES empirical investigation and science. Philosophy sets out the entire process of asking and answering controversial questions in group discussion.
By placing religious ideologies on the one hand and “responsible intellectual enquiry in the sciences and philosophy” on the other, I think Grayling brilliantly cuts off one of the most popular (and annoying) strategies of the Templtonians: the sly coupling of religion to philosophy in general. Theologians are like alternative medicine advocates trying to define their field as “preventative and lifestyle health care which uses remedies from nature.” Grant that and science-based medicine has lost too much. The same applies to us giving the field of philosophy over to dogmatic, irrational faith.
If we’re supposed to treat the existence of God as an ethical, aesthetic, epistemic, or mega question (ie “metaphysical”), then they can always play any game they want when it comes to dealing with its relationship to science.
Grayling has framed the issue in a way where they can’t do this, making sure that theological-style philosophies (untested and untestable ideological fact claims) can’t sneak in legitimacy through the back door. Clever.
I think the problem with a lot of philosophers is the inability to effectively communicate their ideas, which may be associated with the relevance of their ideas. The philosophers I like the most are the ones that can make some sense to someone outside the inner circle. If all they want to do is score points within the club, they’re not worth taking seriously. Grayling makes sense.
That’s the claim, yes, but I have to reject it.
Theologians tell us that science is a subset of religion because the true aim of science is a fuller understanding of the great glory of the works of the favored gods, and because science grew out of religion and religious institutions.
Astrologers tell us that astronomy is a subset of astrology because it’s a more detailed cataloguing of the motions of the stars and because the early astronomers were astrologers.
Philosophers tell us that science is a subset of philosophy because philosophy is about deep thinking and science is some of the deepest thinking there is, and the early great scientists were all philosophers.
It gets tiring to have so many non-scientists constantly take credit for all the great advances made with science.
In reality, there’s one hard dividing line between science and everything else. Science measures its results against reality. At no point in science is it considered acceptable to conclude anything unless it’s consistent with actual reality as actually observed. All those other disciplines claiming credit for science…they’re all quite happy to add all sorts of stuff on top of observation for all sorts of reasons. Sure, when they rein in such impulses, they’ll sometimes produce useful stuff…but that’s just another way of saying that, when they stop playing play-pretend fantasy games and do science, they get the same benefits anybody else does when they do science.
b&
I think one of the quickest ways to explore questions re which fields are foundational to other fields — and which ones are simply trying to reach over and appropriate credit from other areas — is to look carefully at the definitions. Clarity.
According to Wikipedia, Philosophy is “the study of the general and fundamental nature of reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language … As a method, philosophy is often distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its questioning, critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.” Looks to me like science is a well-focused subset of this.
Have you read Jerry’s fellow Dawkins Award winner Rebecca Goldstein’s Plato At the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away? I think you’d enjoy it.
Only in the sense that the natural is a well-focused subset of the supernatural.
If we take apart that definition:
Philosophy declaring itself to be in the best position to divine the fundamental nature of reality in the age of the LHC and the Higgs Boson is one or more of comical, insulting, or pathetic. Philosophical discussions about the fundamental nature of reality have barely advanced since the days of the original atomists. Today, we know everything there is to know about the fundamental nature of reality as it applies to human scales and an awful lot more, and we know that philosophy is utterly useless at figuring out the fundamental nature of what applies at scales beyond what we’ve already got nailed.
You want to understand the fundamental nature of reality? Ask a physicist. The philosophers are exactly as useless as the theologians on the matter. Any philosophical answer is either going to be perfectly congruent with the Standard Model or it’ll be as idiotically fantastic as a Cosmic Ground Mind Of Being Earnest.
How else is one supposed to determine existence of anything other than through observation? Of what hypothetical use could anything other than empiricism be when it comes to questions of existence?
We live in the Information Age. You want a theoretical understanding of knowledge, you want to read up on Claude Shannon, Alan Turing, and the like. For practical applications, you want either computing or cognitive neuroscience. A philosophical approach to knowledge is worse than useless — exactly the sort of “other way of knowing” Jerry so regularly dismisses.
I’ll take that as a proxy for ethics and morality. Again, science is the answer; do you want your medical review board making its informed consent policy based on solid science including studies of patient outcomes and surveys, or do you want it to rely on some random philosophical idealism in vogue at the time?
You just made a philosophical argument.
No; I made a scientific argument — albeit informally.
I presented evidence and rationally analyzed it. The evidence is, indeed, consistent with the fact that you can do perfectly good philosophy that has no bearing on reality whatsoever but that you simply cannot do good science unless it tracks reality as closely as possible. Therefore, your claim that science is a proper subset of philosophy is invalidated by a rational analysis of the evidence.
In contrast, your reply, “You just made a philosophical argument,” is, indeed, itself a philosophical argument, and a valid one philosophically. You have started from the (unevidenced) idealized first principle that all forms of noble thought are first and foremost the domain of philosophy, from which it obviously follows that any thought considered by the philosopher to be noble is philosophy. But that same logic — as I addressed in the previous response — also means that all science is a part of religion because the theologians claim that all true learning brings us closer to the gods through proper understanding of their creations. The theological and philosophical claims are essentially equivalent in this context; neither has any evidence in support; and both are contradicted by the observation that all sorts of perfectly valid philosophy and theology would make you the laughingstock of the scientific community.
b&
I’m basically with Ben on this whole issue. And, I just ran into a Poul Anderson quote which would make a nice commentary on this “conference” and its siblings: “All those agonizing philosophical-theological conundrums amount to ‘Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.'”
I suppose I should add the obligatory, “the questions are not silly” disclaimer. But the method of going about trying to answer them by either idle armchair speculation or religious proclamation is indeed silly. Of what we’ve learned about “life, the universe, and everything” in the last several hundred years, 100% of it has been via science, 0% via philosophy, and 0% via religion. As Jerry has repeatedly asked, when confronted with the idea that religion is an “alternate way of knowing,” “what do we know about God nowadays that we didn’t know in 1600?” We might hope that, after this conference on the “Metaphysics of the Trinity” (ask a silly question…) the answer will be “more,” but I’m not planning to place a wager on it.
“Philosophy is a very broad category which INCLUDES empirical investigation and science.”
No. It claims to. I’m sure it would love to.
But I’m with Ben on that (and I especially like his astrology – astronomy analogy).
In fact I find the claim sometimes made, that science *needs* philosophy to justify its existence or validate its conclusions, both presumptuous and absurd. Science is valid because it works, bitches
(To paraphrase xkcd): http://xkcd.com/54/
Once-upon-a-time, science was known as ‘natural philosophy’ and philosophy did encompass all knowledge, but that was a few millennia ago. I think the relevant point is whether modern philosophy as practiced by today’s philosophers has any scientific or evidential basis. If so, it could possibly claim to be a branch of science, but I rather think, as usually practiced, it would qualify more as pseudo-science.
cr
Or, as a certain Professor Jerry Coyne once wrote: “I am SO tired of this trope. It may indeed be the case that we can’t justify a priori via philosophical lucubrations that we arrive at the truth about nature only by using the methods of science. My answer to that is increasingly becoming, “So bloody what?” The use of science is justified because it works, not because we can justify it philosophically. If we are interested in finding out what causes malaria, no amount of appeal to a deity, philosophical rumination, listening to music, reading novels, or waiting for a revelation will answer that question. We have to use scientific methods, which, of course, is how causes of disease are found.”
I took an Intro to Philosophy class in college and beyond Copi’s Symbolic Logic, it was all crap.
Anthony is such a gent.
/@
I’ve never known him to fly off the handle. His debate style is pure intellect.
A new proposal for Templeton research.
Religious Science: Closed Regulatory Tenets for Insular Epistemologies.
How about “Metaphysics of Entanglement: how religious entity funding skews science.”
Such a first class response Oxford. Hope others will do the same.
Astrology…I think the greatest tragedy of astrology is that people give away the job of writing their fortunes to the astrologers.
Why not write your own horoscope, craft it to your liking, and then make the destiny it foretells come true? As Humpty Dumpty put it, the real question of meaning in words is who shall be the master.
Our stories are not written in the stars until we write them there ourselves. The stars have no power over us; we are the masters of their stories. So why delegate the responsibility of writing your own story — and especially when that’s where so much of the fun is?
The same can’t be said quite so much for Abrahamic religions or monotheisms in general…there’s one story, set in stone (figuratively literally in the case of the Ten Commandments), and virtually no freedom to deviate from the orthodoxy. Even between Baptists and Catholics there’s about as much difference in their stories as there is between Swiftian big- and little-endians. You could look to the Morons for a change of story, but you can’t mix-and-match between Moronism and Catholicism.
Now, compare with the much greater diversity of the various polytheisms, especially if you mix and match across pantheons…it becomes like a vast and ancient comic book universe with an immense palette of characters and stories to draw from to weave into a new tapestry that’s a perfect fit for whatever you need it to fit. Just be sure, of course, that, when the lights come back up, you remember who wrote and told the story….
b&
Although said by one of Shakespeare’s bad guys, the line
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
is still classic
(Cassius in “Julius Ceasar” Act I Scene 2)
“Nothing is written for them, unless they write it” Sherif Ali
I think there’s a flaw in his main argument; it seems to rest on the assumption that the Aristotelian Society is expending resources (his analogy references “giving money,” so he’s pretty clearly equating ‘support’ to financial or resource support) to a sectarian cause. However as with most things Templeton, I bet the Society is getting all their hosting costs covered plus a little extra, so they’re actually making money off the event.
There are still lots of solid arguments against being the host of such a conference (indeed, it can be argued that receiving money from a sectarian cause is more damaging to the objectivity and independence of an organization than giving it). But the primary argument Grayling is using may not apply to this situation.
I cannot help a (friendly) quip that Anthony Grayling objects to “The Metaphysics of Entanglement” due to its engaging in an ‘entanglement of metaphysics’ (with science).
Good for Grayling.
I wonder how the Aristotelian Society works – I had it explained once, but …
—
The bit about entanglement is just bizarre. God is an EPR pair?
“I wonder how the Aristotelian Society works…”
You’re allowed to use circular arguments but no ellipses.
🙂
Hyperboles, perhaps? 🙂
Only tangentially, I think.
b&
Since the Metaphysics of the Trinity is arguably The Metaphysics of Nothing, I imagine very few people will waste their valuable time by attending.
Meanwhile Oxford has been gifted with a little free world wide publicity that it is well able to put to a more sensible use.
If that were the case, then they’d get all the Heideggerians show up. I don’t know which is worse …
My sentiments are certainly on Grayling’s
side of the ledger. But I do worry reading his note that it’s a form of “no-platforming” from “our side.”
I’ve seen very similar logic used for no-platforming speakers that most of us think deserve their say. Free Speech and all that.
I see that Grayling has said it does not seem to fit within the realm of “responsible philosophical discussion.” But then, as Jerry has said and I agree, neither would someone espousing young earth creationism or holocaust denial come from a responsible position either. But we think the best response isn’t to deny a platform, but to respond to the arguments.
Though I admit I certainly may be going too fast here and misreading the situation.
I’d suggest that simply providing a platform is different from actively supporting.
Philosophy – questions that may never be answered.
Religion – answers that may never be questioned.
Science – answers that generate more & more-interesting questions?
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The Templeton Prize is a million quid?
Wow.
Dear Templeton –
JESUS LIVES! JESUS LIVES!
My bank account number is
123 52489 8765234 99
Thank you in anticipation
cr
Apropos of which –
Lord Beaverbrook (to socialite): Would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
Socialite: Well, yes, certainly.
Bb: How about ten pounds?
S: Certainly not! What do you think I am?
Bb: We have already established that, madam. We are now trying to determine your price.
(Also attributed to G B Shaw and Churchill)
cr
Pretty sure that Firesign Theater conclusively demonstrated that it was not possible to be in two places at once, so not sure why three should be any more likely.
Well, it’s like in the Army, you know? The great prince issues commands, founds states, vests families with fiefs — Inferior people should not be employed.
Considering that the most important British scientist who ever lived, Isaac Newton, who was no atheist, rejected the Trinity, the fact that a British institution such as the Aristotelian Society is sponsoring such an event is very much to their discredit.
A Million Quid for saying something nice about Religion ? anybody got their number ?
Oi! Wait your turn!
Queuejumper…
cr