Richard Carrier's Bogus Epistemology

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

In his book “Sense & Goodness Without God,” Richard Carrier begins building his epistemology. (Starting on pg. 23)

He says this:

He provides 3 steps that we must take in order to do so:

  1. We must have a sound idea of what we are asserting.

  2. We must have a sound idea of how to discover if it can be asserted.

  3. Once discovered, then follow through.

So,

At this point Carrier has asserted two things:

(1)He’s said that we must have a criteria to distinguish truth from false, and (2) he’s given us an actual 3-step criteria.

The question arises: "If assertion (1) is true, then what criteria establishes assertion (2)?

Carrier responds:

So to answer the question I posed above, Mr. Carrier would respond by saying: “we know assertion (2) is true, because, even though it is arbitrarily asserted, it works out in practice.”

This, Mr. Carrier assures us, is a stroke of genius! It doesn’t MATTER where the ideas come from, as long as they work!

Much can be said in response to this.

  1. Carrier asserts that “if something works out in practice, it must be close to what really is the case.” This is not a criteria that has been self-consciously arrived at using Carrier’s 3 steps.

  2. “If something works out in practice, it must be close to what really is the case” is a non sequitur. Just because the librarian happens to stamp a book at the same time a loud BANG occurs, does not mean that the librarian’s act of stamping caused the bang! Indiana Jones could be in the next room looking for buried tombs!

  3. Carrier flaunts his arbitrariness. In philosophy, arbitrarily asserting an epistemological foundation is not a mark of genius. For an example of what a serious philosopher describes as an epistemological ‘starting point’ listen to Harry Frankfurt’s statement:

In contrast to Carrier, Frankfurt attempts to transcendentally ground his epistemology by claiming that doubting an assertion is impossible if, through the very act of doubting it, rational thought itself is undermined. I’m sure Frankfurt would be surprised to learn from Carrier that this unique attempt is not genius because it is not out of the blue or arbitrary!

There is more that can be said. Carrier builds on the above and attempts to construct an epistemology.

But as Christ says…only a foolish man builds his house on sand!

2

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism

3

cmfnow.com/articles/pa001.htm

4

I can quibble here, but I agree with the bolded thesis provided that “Christianity” could be taken to mean any theological/teleological system involving a knowable creator (which basically limits us to the Abrahamic lineage anyway). I spent some time detailing that relationship as well as where Christianity now runs into some trouble here. Though I doubt you’ll find my problems with Christianity convincing because of, well, I’ll get to that in a little bit . . .

Already here there is a major departure from how the scientist and the theologian approach the concept of the truth and how they miscommunicate with each other. I usually post Asimov’s article “The Relativity of Wrong” at this point and this thread will prove to be no exception. Science approaches truth as a function of what works, so what results is a process of digging and sifting. So ideas are proposed and they are incomplete by their nature. How good these ideas are is evaluated by how well they work in an empirical setting. In religion and rationality, basal axioms are initially proposed and evaluated by how sound they are based on the rules of logic. The divide here is between utility and soundness. Confusing one metric with the other, as is being done here, results in claptrap.

Back to the point I promised I’d return to above, I think that it is the same Christian notion of truth that kicked science off that is hamstringing Christianity and science right now. When science contradicts one’s understanding of scripture one has the choice of revising one in order to incorporate the other, or rejecting one in order to maintain the other. Given your particular Fundamentalist (in the technical, not necessarily pejorative sense) understanding of the Bible and the obvious importance that Biblical revelation plays in such a system, it is entirely understandable that you’d reject science in favor of your understanding of the Christian message.

Back to the article, after that portion, it goes on to create a false dilemma based around the origin of life – a question around which much speculation exists but science remains largely silent on. An unfortunately common dog-and-pony show in apologetics and one that by now ought be worn out. The triune god portion makes a good argument as to why such a system would involve a triune god, so that could be effective apologetics for a Jew, Muslim, or any number of other faiths, but in this framework makes little sense. In keeping with that misapplication, it creates a false dilemma between a world of complete disorder and an ordered, created world. We have to reason to believe such a dilemma exists. It is reasonable for a Christian to assume such a stance, given the foundational nature of their deity, but that needn’t follow for the non-Christian.

5

I’d love to correct your misunderstandings of Dr. Bahnsen’s article in another thread.

Here, I’d like to stay focused on my critique of Carrier’s epistemology.

I’ve listed 3 problems.

What do you think of them?

6

In his argument, Richard Carrier is conflating logical positivism and its position on language and how that relates to epistemology and instrumentalism and its position on utility as it relates to epistemology. The problem, as you pointed out in (1) is that you can’t readily go from positivism to instrumentalism – that is why they are normally considered distinct philosophical system! They do share a fair degree of overlap, so the mistake is a common enough one to make but a mistake it remains. If he included modal realism, he could have completed the circuit, alas he left that one out.

The problem with the situation you’ve described in (2) is rendered moot by repetition and statistics, both of which are vitally important to any experimental epistemology.

As for (3), I’m not sure what you mean by what you’ve said. If it is a rebuke of radical skepticism, I’m behind you on that one. But doubt already presumes a belief. There is no reason to assume that the knower in question already holds any particular belief unless we are talking about a specific knower.

7

Mr. Xun,

I appreciate your interaction with my post.

I object to your critique of 2.

James Anderson surveys secular responses to Hume’s problem of induction. Anderson closely follows Laurence Bonjour’s discussion of induction, and at the end of the article concludes, along with Bonjour, that only an a-priori justification for induction will suffice. proginosko.com/docs/induction.html

Your particular objection, (citing repetition and statistics) is classed by Anderson as the “naive inductive response.”

In short:

Claims about the future are not indubitable even if they have been true multiple times in the past.

To stick with the analogy in my post:

Just because the librarian has stamped a book, with a loud BANG resulting, 10 times in the past, doesn’t mean that the stamp is causing the loud BANG.

Thus, statistics and probability are not providing any information about the future…they only provide information about the past.

8

Hume’s problem of induction is a reductio ad absurdum. Taking it seriously is, in-and-of-itself a mistake.

9

I don’t know what you mean by calling it a reductio ad absurdem.

Hume’s observations certainly do reduce many positions to absurdity…positions like naive realism.

Can you further clarify what you meant by that?

Additionally…

As Anderson’s essay shows, many well-respected philosophers have seen this as a serious problem. Philosophers like Karl Popper, Wittgenstein, Quine, and Bertrand Russell.

In light of their serious discussions, I’m not sure why you would want to dismiss discussions of causality. I’m not sure HOW you would dismiss them…

At any rate…Richard Carrier’s position (as I’ve recounted it above) must interact with, and explain causality before relying on it epistemically.

10

Instrumentalism/pragmatism both dismiss the question quite effectively. Now, as noted earlier those traditions have a contingent definition of the truth that is at odds with the theological conception of the truth so communication between those elements is pretty much a non-starter.

Hume’s argument is a reductio ad absurdum. Hence the “tincture of doubt” he comes to recommend as opposed to the outright skepticism posited in the argument we are discussing. A lot of it deals with the tension between rationalists (complete system based off assumptions) and empiricists (incomplete system where assumptions may be present but ultimately play so small a role that they can be dismissed as nonexistent even when present). Hume provided a lot of the groundwork for that particular tension but because of that he necessarily predates it.

So, does induction require justification? For a rationalist, of course it does! It needs those basic assumptions upon which logical systems can be built! For an empiricist it doesn’t because induction is the basis of empiricist knowledge. The rationale for this started out rather amorphously (as befits an incomplete system) but eventually the pragmatists and instrumentalists managed to provide a narrative in rationalist language for these events. But by that point, language itself was so heavily in debate (due to the [logical] positivists, who had tried to resolve the problem using language) that no one outside of the empiricist tradition really noticed.

For my money? I figure I don’t know more than I know, so any complete system I would build off of what I know would ultimately fall prey to that which I don’t know. So instead I’ll work with incomplete, contingent systems that work. Personally, I think these incomplete systems asymptotically approach complete systems, so we’ll never be there because there is always some extra degree of knowledge to attain. But I’m fine with that.

That doesn’t mean complete systems aren’t nice tools to use for trying to contextualize incomplete systems. But since complete systems are only as good as the assumptions which provided their framework, I see them as being necessarily contingent upon incomplete systems if we want them to actually be meaningful.

To make it more explicit, according to Hume:

  1. The position of universal doubt (taking skepticism to its logical end-point) is undesirable. Treatise (book I, part IV)

  2. Causal relationships are matters of fact. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

  3. Causal relationships are established via induction. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

  4. When skepticism/universal doubt is applied to the inductive process, there is no reasonable justification for it to be so thereby casting doubt on the conclusions arrived at via induction. A common interpretation of the argument in Inquiry.

So, matters of fact are established via induction (2-3), but when extreme skepticism is applied to induction we are forced to doubt matters of fact arrived at via induction (4). This is absurd. Therefore, we ought not apply skepticism (seeking a justification for) induction (1). The problem of induction stands but is a non-issue for the same reason Zeno’s paradoxes are non-issues. They arise when mistaking incomplete human understanding for complete systems.

11

I have strong disagreements with your commentary on the history of modern philosophy.

I’ve done some work with James and especially Dewey as well as A.J. Ayer, and I don’t see them trying to dismiss Hume in the way that you suggest. (Nor is Pragmatism consistent with itself.) I certainly don’t see any reason (in anything you’ve said) to see statistics or probabalistic assertions as indubitable.

At any rate, I don’t want to spiral off into various discussions and debates about what this or that philosopher meant.

Instead, perhaps you could present a way that Carrier’s epistemology can be saved from the 3 critiques I’ve thus far offered?

I don’t see how it can be saved.

12

As I understand your critique, I think he could pick either logical positivism, pragmatism, or modal realism as the basis for his epistemology. Then he could go from there! Trying to synthesize them, while tempting, is a bad idea.

13

Hello Shotgun:

I am not familiar with Carrier’s position, but I’ll follow what you have presented, because my argument is that the criteria for truth which you could use against Carrier’s position, or the critique about his epistemology, works against the theist position. It takes less belief to believe in his system than to believe in theism. I stress “less” and not “free of” because when it comes to facts about the world, we find very little ground for certainty.

— “…anything you intend to investigate, or assert, first requires that you have some criteria on hand to distinguish the true from the false…”
O- Again, it would not be just that you require some criteria but that you BELIEVE to have some criteria on hand. Whether the criteria is true or false cannot even be asked without presupposing that we are aware of facts about reality. The statement is self-evident because to deny it would require that someone affirms it.

— He provides 3 steps that we must take in order to do so:

  1. We must have a sound idea of what we are asserting.
    O- Or honestly believe that we do…

— 2. We must have a sound idea of how to discover if it can be asserted.
O- Or honestly believe that we do…

— (1)He’s said that we must have a criteria to distinguish truth from false, and (2) he’s given us an actual 3-step criteria.
The question arises: "If assertion (1) is true
O-…that we must have a criteria to distinguish true from false…

— then what criteria establishes assertion (2)?
O-…or that “he’s given us an actual 3-step criteria” to distinguish true from false. It is very responsible to run after the origins of our criterias, but the point might be lost that asking about the basis for a criteria is in-itself supposing another criteria, and so on and so forth, in an infinite regress. It should be sufficient to simply state that the possibility of criticising a given criteria rest upon the belief in criterias and this belief is irrational- that is, not something we arrive at after deliberation but a belief through which we arrive at a conclusion. Justifications do not enter here, because they are “imbeded” in the process of reasoning itself. Whether it is a 3 step or a 30 step criteria it does not matter-- the form is accidental-- but question 2, necessary or not, is impossible without assuming 1.

— Carrier responds:
“The real test will be its results in practice. But prior to this we must begin with some first principles that make sense on their own. Only then can we embark upon putting those principles to the test, in order to refine them by studying their results. How we arrive at those first principles is not important…so long as they first make sense to us, and then are vindicated by their results in practice. This is a little known secret of thinking like a genius…”- page 24
So to answer the question I posed above, Mr. Carrier would respond by saying: "we know assertion (2)
O- …His 3 step-criteria…

— …is true
O-…defined as “true” as approached from the criteria…

—… because, even though it is arbitrarily asserted, it works out in practice."
O- …By their fruits you shall know them…

— It doesn’t MATTER where the ideas come from, as long as they work!
O- Without this feat, then what do you really know? Or at least, if your criteria is what works, then you need to connect the dots to understand what it is that works.

— Much can be said in response to this.

  1. Carrier asserts that “if something works out in practice, it must be close to what really is the case.” This is not a criteria that has been self-consciously arrived at using Carrier’s 3 steps.
    O- His criteria is :
    1- We must have a sound idea of what we are asserting.
    2- We must have a sound idea of how to discover if it can be asserted.
    How does he dare to assert that “if something works out in practice, it must be close to what really is the case.”? Obviously he must1- have a sound idea of what he is asserting (WHAT “really” is the case) and he has a sound idea about how to discover it. So he presupposes the criteria. Up to now this is consistent with what he has provided. So far he has made the points that:
    – anything you intend to investigate, or assert, first requires that you have some criteria on hand to distinguish the true from the false.
    – In his case this is broken down in 3 steps (really two, if you ask me). Following this criteria, which is mandated by the first principle above, he asserts that:
    – “if something works out in practice, it must be close to what really is the case.” At least that is how I understand the argument he is out to build.

— Just because the librarian happens to stamp a book at the same time a loud BANG occurs, does not mean that the librarian’s act of stamping caused the bang! Indiana Jones could be in the next room looking for buried tombs!
O- It does not mean, but it could mean so as well= it could be true or false, so, you have to suppose a criteria for when it is which to even say when it does not mean. Obviously the loud bang was PROBABLY NOT CAUSED by the librarian, but How do you know for sure? Carrier proposes that his criteria to find out, would be experimental. Put the options available to the test.
If every known time the librarian stamps a book a loud BANG is heard, and no loud BANG is heard otherwise, then we can conclude from our experimental criteria that the stamping is the cause of the loud BANG. If doesn’t matter if this is entirely false. It is “true” by the criteria we are using to measure “what is the case”. If on the other hand we experience no loud BANG most of the time we have seen the librarian stamp books, EXCEPT on this singular occasion, then the overwhelming instances of the former makes us disbelieve that the latter reflects what is the case and therefore that it is explainable by something else, say, Indiana Jones on the other room battling Nazis.

— In philosophy, arbitrarily asserting an epistemological foundation is not a mark of genius. For an example of what a serious philosopher describes as an epistemological ‘starting point’ listen to Harry Frankfurt’s statement:
“The claim that a basis for doubt is inconceivable is justified whenever a denial of the claim would violate the conditions or presuppositions of rational inquiry…- Encyclopedia of Philosophy Vol 2 pg. 414.”
O- The basis of experimental knowledge is experience. What Mr. Frankfurt is talking about is Rationalism, the basis for which is that you cannot deny something of that would eliminate the very possibility of denying or affirming. It is therefore not applicable to the 2nd statement but to Carrier’s first statement that says that: “anything you intend to investigate, or assert, first requires that you have some criteria on hand to distinguish the true from the false”. That is a necessary supposition, without which you could not “investigate” or “assert” anything at all. To doubt this necessity would “violate the conditions or presuppositions of rational inquiry”, which is no less than what Frankfurt states. It is based on this unassailable foundation that Carrier then presents his three step criteria. The criteria is arbitrary because it depends on the fancy, the imagination of the researcher and not on what is being studied, until, that is, it is put into practice.

14

No offense Mr. Omar, but I have a hard time following what you’re trying to say here.

You certainly haven’t demonstrated that:

It takes less belief to believe in his system than to believe in theism

or

the critique about his epistemology, works against the theist position.

Nor would that demonstration be relevant to my critique of Carrier’s epistemology.

If you intend to argue:

(1) Christianity is hard to believe
(2) Carrier’s system is easier to believe than Christianity

(C): Carrier’s system is true.

Then there are numerous problems. The conclusion is not only irrelevant to the case I’m making, it also doesn’t follow from the premises.

At anyrate, I don’t suppose you intended to argue that way and I critique the argument here to make sure no one interprets your post that way in the future.

Concerning your attempted critique of what I’ve provided here:

I see numerous flaws and misunderstandings. For example, when criitquing my second objection, you say this:

How does he dare to assert that “if something works out in practice, it must be close to what really is the case.”? Obviously he must1- have a sound idea of what he is asserting (WHAT “really” is the case) and he has a sound idea about how to discover it. So he presupposes the criteria. Up to now this is consistent with what he has provided.

The assertion:

“if something works out in practice, it must be close to what really is the case.”

Was NOT arrived at using Carrier’s 3 step process. It is arbitrarily assumed…Carrier is assuming that he knows the truth in order to attempt to arrive at truth! Thus, he is NOT being consistent with himself here as you suggest.

You rightly realize that he is arbitrarily presupposing this standard, but you don’t realize that it is impossible to consistently carry out this standard. Nowhere in Carrier’s 3 step process did he list “arbitrarily assume the assumption” as a criteria. If he had, it would be painfully obvious how self-contradictory his epistemology is. He clearly didn’t mean for his 3 step criteria to prove itself. He just hopes no one calls him on it.

He’s trying to lift himself up by his own boot-straps and it wont work, even if Omar tries to help.

Haven’t you guys studied the history of western philosophy?

15

Firstly…let me be forward and state that I really won’t debate much on this as I really do not value this subject matter worth anything for my personal life; therefore it has little investment of energy behind it from me.

This said, however, I keep seeing this and thinking:

Which, Shotgun, you explain as:

Next, I will start by overtly saying, I don’t care who Carrier is or what he thinks.
I don’t care if you hang him on a cross and tar him; such would have no impact on my life; I know him not from any random picture in a pre-bought picture frame at Walmart.

But I do think of the following:
There’s no inherent need for the criteria to be absolute truth of reality.
Introduce existential perspectives of the human condition and what he has outlined is perfectly fine…although, personally, I would probably write it thus:

This doesn’t tell you what reality is exactly.
This, instead, tells you what your reality is, at least.
This is more or less how we go about discovering the world.
My children do this countless times daily as their minds peel apart the world.

Many conclusions are mostly wildly wrong; though they meet the standard of the criteria perfectly.
But their errors are typically due to that their assertions they are testing are only consequently arriving at the output that they examined and tested.

Meaning, if one of them sees a reaction from one of their parents; they aren’t sure what caused that reaction.
They come up with an idea; and you can see this in their eye expressions; of what they think may have caused this parental reaction.
They next devise a method to affirm their assertion of what they think is what caused that reaction.
They next test and examine the results.

If the desired result predicted occurs from the parent, then they are certain that their assertion was correct.
However, picking up a knife isn’t a game that gets parents to chase you around the house for a game of keep-away because they lack the understanding that the parent is chasing them, not because this is a game, but because that knife is lethal as hell to their uncoordinated and clumsy body and therefore the parent is acting in fear.

So the child predicts fun and is convinced that knives equate to fun, and are convinced of this by assertion, confirmation, testing, and examination.
And yet, the parent predicts horror and is convinced that knives equate to terror, and are convinced of this by assertion, confirmation, testing, and examination (usually borrowed from one’s experience with knives on other objects and realizing what children do not; that if a knife cuts meat and vegetables, that human skin and organs are as easily cut or stabbed).

shrug
So…I don’t really see anything wrong with it per say.
It’s just relative.