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July 24, 2005

John Roberts: Wrong Line of Work?

A New York Times piece on Judge John Roberts makes this interesting statement:

"The English teacher used to talk about his papers after he had written them because they were outrageous but very well crafted," remembered John Langley, an emergency room doctor in New Orleans who was a class below Judge Roberts at La Lumiere. "He could take an argument that was borderline absurd and argue for it so well that you were almost at the point of having to accept his stance even though it was intuitively obvious that it was absurd."
Perhaps he should have been an analytic metaphysician.

Posted by Jeremy at 5:07 PM | Comments (7)

July 15, 2005

Philosophers' Carnival XVI

Philosophers' Carnival XVI is at Dinner Table Donts. Mark's open post on Hume and Chesterton is probably an appetizer, while Ben Bradley's PEA Soup post Against Satisficing Consequentialism is, of course, the soup.

Posted by Jeremy at 9:06 AM

July 12, 2005

Thurvan the Liche Lord Returns

Our Gnu has another post combining fantasy role-playing with philosophy. I can't figure out which philosophical issue this one is supposed to illustrate, though. Maybe I'm missing some crucial piece of information.

In case you missed it, here's the first one about time travel and fate, and see our discussion of it here.

Posted by Jeremy at 5:48 PM

Philosophers' Carnival XVI Plug

The next Philosophers' Carnival is coming up this Friday. As usual, submissions instructions are here.

Posted by Jeremy at 5:32 PM

July 5, 2005

Hume vs. Chesterton: Lazy Blogging and an Open Thread

I recently came across these two passages right after each other quite by accident, and I am curious about how people would compare the two positions. Since things have been so quiet around here, I thought I'd just post these as an open thread. Who has the better position here, Hume or Chesterton, and why? [and by 'better position' I mean not about whether miracles have in fact occured or not, but how we should rationally assess testimony in regards to miracles. My concern is that Hume's position seems more correct, but, if pushed to extremes, it would require us to be irrational. Notice how Chesterton's trope about the ignorant peasant is still around with the cliche yokel who sees flying saucers. This same kind of reasoning allowed the French academy in the 1700's to reject that stones fall from the sky, because these peasants kept coming to them with meteors they said fell from the sky. Since rocks can't fall from the sky, the peasants must be crazy, deluded, or lying.] David Hume: A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.... The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish....' When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion. In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed, that the testimony, upon which a miracle is founded, may possibly amount to an entire proof, and that the falsehood of that testimony would be a real prodigy: But it is easy to shew, that we have been a great deal too liberal in our concession, and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence. From David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L. A. Selby Bigge, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), pp. 114-16. G.K. Chesterton: But among these million facts all flowing one way there is, of course, one question sufficiently solid and separate to be treated briefly, but by itself; I mean the objective occurrence of the supernatural...But my belief that miracles have happened in human history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America. Upon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism--the abstract impossibility of a miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence--it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, "Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles," they answer, "But mediaevals were superstitious"; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say "a peasant saw a ghost," I am told, "But peasants are so credulous." If I ask, "Why credulous?" the only answer is--that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland. From G.K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy, pp 158-159

Posted by MarkSteen at 9:29 AM | Comments (15)