Philosophical Percolations

A very brief introduction to Dialetheism

by Axel Arturo Barceló Aspeitia

In philosophy, as in any other theoretical endeavour, it is not rare to face conflicting positions - one that says that an object A is P and another that says that A is not P. In these situations, philosophers have several options. Obviously, they can defend one of the positions and criticise the other – in what I will call a “monist” solution. In fact, in most philosophical debates, responses of these monist types are the most common. However, throughout history, philosophers have developed a few, more sophisticated options that attempt to incorporate the insights, intuitions and arguments from both sides of the debate, into a third conciliatory option. The purpose of this article is classify the kinds of possible positions that can be taken, in general, in philosophy when we faced with two conflicting positions, each based on prima facie equally good arguments and intuitions. Besides the aforementioned obvious choices of defending one thesis and criticising the arguments and intuition behind the other, there are at least five other options that try to incorporate the insights behind the two positions into a unified theory:

1. Dialetheism
2. Gradualism
3. Pluralism 
4. Relativism

In this and following posts, I will analyse each of them in detail, giving not only the advantages and disadvantages of each one, but mostly trying to determine in which situations is one more appropriate than the others. I am starting with dialetheism:

Dialetheism

The first, and perhaps most radical solution to conflicting evidence is to accept the ensuing contradiction, not as a problem to solve, but as a feature of the phenomenon. The basic idea is that, since both the evidence for and against A being P must be accepted as equally good, then what it shows is that, for the particular case of A and P, it must be true true that A its both P and not P. That this sort of solution is not absurd has been productively explored by philosophers and logicians like Graham Priest (1985) or JC Beall (2009), among others. This solution is usually accompanied by a proposal to change the underlying logic to a paraconsistent logic to allow this kind of contradictions. The main feature of these logics that makes them fit for dialetheism is that they help us distinguish between exploding and non-exploding contradictions, that is, contradictions that entail everything and, therefore, make any theory that contains them collapse into absurdity, and contradictions that do not and, therefore, can be incorporated into a theory without catastrophic consequences.

This option is especially attractive when the evidence in favor of each of the options is the same or similar. In such cases, inserting a wedge between A being P and A not being P is especially difficult. For example, in considering the Liar sentence – “This sentence is not true” – the reasons we might have for taking it to be true are so intimately interlocked with those we might have for taking it to be not true that any attempt to argue for one and against the other would seem doomed from the start. Similar considerations have moved some philosophers to embrace dialetheism as a solution to the metaphysical problem of Transition states. A very simple example is given by (Priest & Berto 2013): 

when I exit the room, I am inside the room at one time, and outside of it at another. Given the continuity of motion, there must be a precise instant in time, call it t, at which I leave the room. Am I inside the room or outside at time t? Four answers are available: (a) I am inside; (b) I am outside; (c) I am both; and (d) I am neither. (a) and (b) are ruled out by symmetry: choosing either would be completely arbitrary. As for (d): if I am neither inside not outside the room, then I am not inside and not-not inside; therefore, I am either inside and not inside (option (c)), or not inside and not-not inside (which follows from option (d)); in both cases, a dialetheic situation.

For another, recent example, JC Beall (Manuscript) has argued that, since the conciliar fathers if orthodox Christianity have supplied the very same sort of evidence in favour of the contradictory claims that Jesus is both mutable and immutable, the best option for the Christian theologian is to accept as true the contradiction that Jesus is both mutable and immutable. Arguing for just one of the contradictory claims would entail diverging from Christian theology in an unacceptable manner and, furthermore, since the evidence is exactly of the same sort for each one of the claims, there is no principled way of choosing a single side.

It has been argued (for example, in Littman & Simmons 2004) that since dialetheism is a symmetric proposal, the same reasons that make it seem as a better solution than monism define a dual argument for taking it as a worse solution than monism. Yes, it is true that dialetheism incorporates the good reasons we have for accepting that A is P and accepting that A is not P and thus seems, at least prima facie, a better option that just accepting the good reasons in favour of one of them and not those in favour of the opposite one. Unfortunately, defenders of A being P commonly also have good reasons for rejecting A not being P (actually, the same reasons can be interpreted both ways: as reasons for accepting that A is P and reasons for rejecting that A is not P) and vice versa. Thus, since dialetheism accepts both that A is P and that A is not P,  it goes against both the reasons we have for rejecting that A is P and for rejecting that A is not P. And thus it is not better, but worse that either monist option. The monist option of, say, accepting only that A is P, and rejecting that A is not P, at least do justice of our good reasons for rejecting that A is not P, even if it does not incorporate our other good reasons for rejecting that A is P.

Similar concerns regarding the symmetry of dialetheism have given rise to a dual strategy, known as “analetheism” (Beall & Ripley 2004), according to which instead of accepting both that A is P and that A is not P, we must reject both. Since we have good reasons against each of the contradictory claims, that means that we have also good reasons for rejecting them both. And just as dialetheism is well accompanied by a paraconsistent logic where propositions of the form P and not P can be true, so analetheism is well accompanied by a  paraconsistent logic where where propositions of the form P or not P can be false. Instead of distinguishing between exploding and non-exploding contradictions, what this logic allows the analetheist is to distinguish between imploding and non-imploding disjunctions of the form P or no P, where an imploding proposition is one that follows from anything.

Does it matter if religious stories are true? Yes, but not in an obvious way (response to Eric Schwitzgebel)

By Helen De Cruz

A few years ago, I was singing in the choir of a local Anglican church (something I have had to give up, but hope to take up someday again). One of the carols we were practicing was Adam Lay Ybounden; the relevant lines in this intriguing late medieval macaronic text goes as follows: 

Ne hadde the appil take ben, the appil taken ben, Ne hadde never our lady a ben hevene quen. (If Adam had not taken the apple, our lady would never have been a heavenly queen).

I discussed this text with a fellow singer, a baritone who is also a natural scientist, and asked him: "Do you think that if the Fall had not happened, the Incarnation wouldn't have happened" (as this song implies). He thought deeply and said: "No, I think God would still have been incarnate because we had still so much to learn from him". Now, neither the baritone nor I believe in the literal Fall narrative. There was no literal Adam, no apple (or other fruit) etc. But yet it seems that the question is theologically interesting.

This short conversation indicates that one can find theological significance in something one does not believe to be true. Indeed, I wonder how many congregants, that Christmas eve, really believe the Christmas story, cobbled together from diverse biblical passages and the tradition. 

Does it even matter if such stories are true for the religious believer? Eric Schwitzgebel recently argued, using the case of Passover, that yes, it does matter. He writes: 

It matters ... because if the story is literally true, then a god who works miracles really exists. It matters if there is such a god or not. I don’t think I would like the moral character of that god, who kills innocent Egyptians. I’m glad there is no such god.

Philosophy of religion, diversity and inclusion

By Helen De Cruz

Much has been written about Richard Swinburne's recent SCP keynote talk, among others excellent posts by Eric Steinhart, Eric Schliesser, J Edward Hackett and Clayton Littlejohn. I am not going to reiterate the points made in these posts, but I would like to dwell on a particular section of Michael Rea's public apology post (see here for the full post)

As President of the SCP, I am committed to promoting the intellectual life of our philosophical community. Consequently (among other reasons), I am committed to the values of diversity and inclusion. As an organization, we have fallen short of those ideals before, and surely we will again.

Some commenters have interpreted this as a plan to silence unpopular--but in the Christian community (still) widely accepted--positions, but that is not how I see it. Rather, I think, straightforwardly, that Michael Rea says philosophy of religion has a diversity problem, that the SCP has fallen short, will surely fall short again, but that he, as the president of the SCP, is committed to diversity and inclusion. 

If you open the main philosophy of religion journals, which I take to be Faith and Philosophy, Religious Studies, and International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, they are usually dominated by Christian philosophy, especially of the theist variety. Such homogeneity creates a degree of comfort, and perhaps, inevitably partisanship (hence Justin Weinberg coining the term "resonance conferences" for the SCP conference). There is also a sense of camaraderie and common purpose.  Many academic philosophers regard philosophy of religion as silly, unserious, and not worthy of philosophical attention. While they may have arrived at these views through a careful consideration of the field of philosophy of religion and its merits and demerits, I suspect that many philosophers who look down upon philosophy of religion merely do so because of pervasive bias against religious views in academia. Sociologist George Yancey, for instance, found that sociologists and academics from other fields would be less likely to hire (by their own explicit admission) someone if they knew that person was religious, especially if that person was an evangelical or from another conservative denomination. The relatively high percentage of atheists in academia, and in philosophy in particular, may be explained by an association of class and religiosity, and by an implicit association of religiosity with lower intelligence, a stereotype that leads Christians to underperform in science tasks when they are primed with it. 

Given how philosophy values cleverness, it is perhaps not surprising that, like other disciplines that value cleverness (such as physics), the percentage of theists is particularly low in comparison with other humanities, around 25%, whereas other humanities disciplines commonly have 40-50% theists. Thus, I think the concerns of philosophers of religion that traditional, orthodox Christian viewpoints are being marginalized (many such concerns were voiced following the debates about Swinburne's keynote) are not unreasonable.

However, it becomes problematic when viewpoints in that discipline are themselves exclusionary and hurtful. How many people who self-identify as gay, lesbian, bi, trans, or queer are philosophers of religion? That is difficult to say, but one way to get a sense of relative proportions is to go to the database of underrepresented philosophers, select those who self-identify as gay, lesbian, bi, trans or queer and then see how many philosophers of religion are in the database. 

I found that of the 172 philosophers in that category, only 14 have as specialization philosophy of religion (i.e., 8%). By comparison, there are 50 epistemologists, 28 philosophers of mind, 37 philosophers of science in the same database. This does not take into account baseline rates of these specializations. The AOS that is most similar in terms of % of philosophers who do it is applied ethics, according to the PhilPapers survey. There are 32 LGBTQ philosophers who list applied ethics as an AOS. Since the list is self-selected and may not be an accurate representation of the field, this 8% may be an underestimation. Still,  it would seem that LGBTQ philosophers are not flocking to philosophy of religion. 

There may be several reasons for why this is the case, but one may well be the negative attitude towards LGBTQ persons in various Christian churches (even relatively progressive ones such as the Church of England have mixed attitudes), and these attitudes are expressed in philosophy of religion. As I said earlier, nothing in Michael Rea's public apology suggests that the SCP will henceforth police such speech. But by taking positive, inclusive actions, philosophers of religion could already go far in signalling that LGBTQ philosophers are welcome.

Updating Stoic Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Guest Post by Eric Steinhart)

Updating Stoic Theology for the Twenty-First Century

Guest post by Eric Steinhart

Massimo Pigliucci is working on updating Stoicism for the twenty-first century. You can read about it on his excellent blog, How to be a Stoic. But one controversial aspect of his revival of Stoicism is its atheism -- Massimo aims to purify Stoicism of its religious and theological elements. I think removing the religious and theological elements of Stoicism mutilates it to the point where it really shouldn't be called Stoicism any more. It should just be called cognitive behavioral therapy (or something like that). It reduces Stoicism to just another self-help movement. Recent efforts to reduce Stoicism to modern atheism have been criticized here and here and here. You can read a good debate about it here. Mainly, I think this reduction to modern atheism is culturally unfortunate. Stoicism ought to be revived as a religious movement (I would not say it should be revived as a religion, since I think the very concept of a religion is essentially Abrahamic). We desperately need better religious options. Stoicism can be one of those.

Philosophy of Religion Right Here Right Now (Guest Post by Eric Steinhart)

By Eric Steinhart

Many philosophers have observed that philosophy of religion, especially analytic theism, has become extremely narrow-minded. It focuses obsessively on the Christian God, especially the God of classical theism. But classical theism isn’t the only concept of God in Christianity; and of course Christianity isn’t the only religion.

After recognizing this narrowness, some philosophers have encouraged philosophy of religion to go global. Philosophy of religion should include all the major world religions, both Eastern as well as Western. One reason to go global is that our students live in a global world – they might do business in China, and so might want to know something about Confucianism, or traditional Chinese folk religions. But that’s a contingency. Our students are in our classrooms now, living their current lives. And, at least in many areas of the United States, Christianity is no longer the only option. Does this mean they have abandoned their familial Christianity for some other “Axial Age” religion like Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam? It does not. Does it mean they have converted to atheism? It does not. The situation on the ground is far stranger.

Philosophy of Religion and the Reverse BB Thesis

By Jon Cogburn

1. The Reverse BB Thesis

In analytic epistemology there's a longstanding debate about whether or not knowing that a proposition is true entails knowing that one knows the proposition is true (henceforth, "the KK thesis"). I'm not up to date on this literature, so as far as I know what I'm about to say is old hat to epistemologists proper. Even if that is the case, I think it's still important for philosophers of religion to think carefully about the semantic and epistemic issues I'm about to raise.

Since propositional knowledge is something like justified true belief, debates about the KK thesis should raise issues about a JJ thesis, a TT thesis, and a BB thesis. Truth is probably in good shape here.* If something is true, then it's true that it's true. Likewise with respect to the reverse TT thesis. If it's true that something is true, then that claim is true.

Philosophers of religion, as far as I can tell, often assume that the same thing holds for belief.** If someone believes something then they believe that they believe it (BB), and if somebody believes that they believe something then, they believe it (reverse BB). This is largely because contemporary philosophy is so centrally (for better and worse) concerned with discerning true beliefs. As a result, we think of religion as providing an explicit answer to the very question posed by Pontius Pilate, one that we have no record of Jesus answering.***

Christians as Capitalism's Useful Idiots

By Jon Cogburn

One of my fundamental life experiences happened right after high school when, over a few weeks in 1987, I helped to build a small church and medical clinic in the Dominican Republic. We stayed in a little compound and walked through the countryside to the building sites every day. There was running water about half the time and power less than that. When not setting rebar, cementing cinderblocks, or laying roofing I practiced my horrible Spanish with barefoot Dominican kids who wore weird mismatching, dirty and torn hand-me-down Kmart type clothes* and often had running sores on different parts of their bodies, in a few cases a constantly oozing eye. The Dominican kids practiced their English on me, which was much better than my Spanish. The nutrition was bad, so most of the people in the village looked like kids until their late teens and then looked like young adults for a very short period before starting to look old. Two things really stuck out from these conversations: (1) the depth of the racism directed at Haitians, real pride in not being Haitian, and (2) the resentment about the U.S. occupation (1916-1924) and later (1965)  invasion of the Dominican Republic. As an American teenager during the Reagan years, of course I'd never heard of these things and would have reflexively thought them good had I heard about them in any other context.

A Transgender Theology Primer

What should a Christian think about transgender people? (Like Rev. Cindi Knox, the UCC minister and transwoman pictured to the right) Why? What kind of Biblical support can one find for various positions, or which Bible stories might shed light on the lives of transgender people? Perhaps you're a minister and thinking about transgender people who might be in your congregation. Or maybe you're a parent whose child has come out to you as transgender and is trying to understand what your attitude should be. Or maybe you have a co-worker who is trans, or just saw some trans folk on TV, and got into conversations about it. Or maybe you're a trans person and your wondering if Christianity can be a support for you, or only an opponent of you. My assumption here is that you are in the early stages of trying to explore what Christianity can or should say about transgender folk. I'm a transgender person myself, and a former professor of philosophy of religion, and I actually think most Christian denominations should be extremely accepting and encouraging of trans people, and should support the transitions of people who want to transition. But I want to outline some of the main Christian arguments opposing transition and open acceptance of trans people too, and discuss where some denominations currently stand.  My experience is that the theological issues around transgender identities are actually fairly different than in the case of Christian reflection on lesbian, gay, or bisexual identities, and there is a lot less serious discussion in most places.  Last week I went to a talk on Biblical issues concerning LGBT folks, and none of the others there were at all familiar with how the T fit into their discussions, or what the relevant passages or issues might be when we turn to thinking about trans folks. So I'd like to provoke reflection and grappling with the issues. I'm focusing on Christianity and trans people, but some of what I say will be relevant for Jews or other kinds of non-binary people too. This is intended only as an introduction and overview, so I have some suggestions for where to look for further information at the end. Also I'm assuming you're familiar with the basics of what transgender people's lives are like, if not check out GLAAD's trans FAQ, or this Trans 101 written by trans folks.  Both trans issues and obscure Biblical terms can be unfamiliar, so I'm putting a small glossary at the end and bolding each term I discuss there where it first appears.