Pragmatic Argument for God's existense

[gaara4158]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. If you're saying that foundational beliefs should be such that testable predictions can follow as a result, then theism is actually very effective. The conviction that the world was the product of a rational God, and therefore intelligible, was very crucial for the development of what would become modern science in the medieval universities. There are certain approaches to theism that are pretty harmful to the idea that reality is intelligible, but the Catholics kind of struck gold with theirs.

I should have been more clear. The testable prediction should differ from that of the assumption that intelligibility is a brute fact. I don’t see theism doing that.

1) Reality appears to be intelligible, and this makes more sense if a Maximally Great Being exists as its cause, so let's go with that as our foundational hypothesis, even though there might be other options.

2) Reality appears to be intelligible, and the types of metaphysics whereby this would be possible entail an intelligent First Cause, since if the order we see is arbitrary and accidental, it is not actually intelligible after all.

Option 2 is admittedly seductive. I think one possible way out is to suppose that intelligibility of reality might be necessary; there can be no truly chaotic, lawless reality because arbitrary chaos would itself need to be an inviolable law. Requiring an intelligent first cause sort of begs the question that an intelligent first cause is even necessary. Intelligibility would be a function of our intelligence which evolved as we contended with reality through the eons, not a trait of reality itself.

It’s a lot to wrap your mind around and I’m sure I can’t tell you anything you haven’t already considered. But I maintain that if there’s no real explanatory power in an answer, it’s on par with no answer at all, so it doesn’t really matter what the answer is.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I agree. I think it's proper to talk about truth in terms of correspondence to reality, but I feel quite strongly that the importance of truth is directly related to its pragmatic value, which does require coherence. So if we're going to talk about truth, then we have to assume from the start that reality is intelligible without any justification for doing so. If you don't make that assumption, you can't hope to communicate that fact to anyone outside of yourself. But when you do make that assumption, empirical data seems to line up with the predictions it makes.

I can agree with this in general terms. However, once you say that the universe is "intelligible," then you've already started the ball rolling on our having to come to terms with philosophical pot-holes that will appear in our path. The first pot-hole being that I don't think it's so easy to tease out just EXACTLY what it means to say that the universe is "intelligible." Maybe it is intelligible, but to say that it is equally so for each and every person, and in the same identical way, is problematic. And if it isn't the same for each and every person, then we have a quandry to consider and to grapple with.

If we're going to try to justify our belief that beliefs must be justified, that leads to an infinite regress.

Could be. However, I don't think that one level of justification is thereby dealing with the same kind and/or quality of essences or entities; it's one thing to assert that we should have structure for our beliefs to be intelligible and to be demonstrable to another person in the communication process (prescriptive), but it's another thing to then actually lay out a bona-fide justification for our beliefs and then claim that we have indeed justified our beliefs in a completely satisfactory way (descriptive). So, these aren't the same thing. They're on different levels or different tangents of thought.

So we’re going to have either at least one unjustified (perhaps self-justifying) belief at the foundation, or an infinite regress of beliefs justifying one another. Where I depart from proponents of a theistic solution to this dilemma is it seems to me that any founding unjustified belief should itself make testable predictions. If it doesn’t, even in principle, then we cannot tie these beliefs to reality in a way that has any pragmatic value. If we can’t tie a belief to reality, we can hardly say it’s justified. I don’t know of any theistic solutions that make testable predictions. Ergo... I don’t see how theism can solve this dilemma.

...well, I'm not a Foundationalist when it comes to religious belief, although I might be with beliefs in general if I were a NASA scientist/engineer who is building a rocket or other hardware to travel outside of our planetary orbit. As far as a "theistic solution," I'm not aware that theism is supposed to provide explanations of "all things." As you may have seen me say elsewhere, I don't think the purpose for which the Bible was written was to tell us or inform us of the 'nature' of the world, other than simply to let us know that God made it. No, the Bible is simply, for the most part, a message from beyond to tell us how to meet up with God and how He expects us to live with other people while in this life. So, if there's no intended goal in the Bible to explicate certain essences about our reality, then there's of course not going to be some statement for say, rocket science, for us to tie to reality that we'd take from the Bible. And to expect it to be there when it wasn't purposed for that in the first place is a kind of "begging the question."

Of course, like you I'd like to have a religion that 'works.' But for Christianity, as I peruse its integral concepts, I see that there are to be expectations for limits to my finding satisfaction in how I think God should act and govern His work and His Word. The New Testament, for instance, despite what some modern denominations assert in their theology, isn't really presenting to us a "Genie-in-a-bottle Jesus"...

And yes, I've heard various skeptics say, with regard to their own "pragmatic" concerns about the Bible, that "nothing fails like prayer." My rejoinder to that--with all things epistemological considered--is that when we attempt to justify and then build and put into effect our beliefs "...nothing often fails like human perception, conception, and understanding, either."

 

[Silmarien]

I should have been more clear. The testable prediction should differ from that of the assumption that intelligibility is a brute fact. I don’t see theism doing that.

Well, positing something as a brute fact really just means that we do not want to look for further explanations behind it, so there are no testable predictions there at all. For the purposes of scientific pragmatism, I do agree with you--theism should be the consequence of accepting reality as intelligible, not an additional hypothesis tacked on for its aesthetic appeal.

If we're looking strictly as arguments from pragmatism, however, I would question whether theism is actually untestable if we step outside of scientific methodology. If a specific spiritual path says, "Follow me and your life will be improved," you can actually measure whether the promised improvement occurs or not. I wouldn't say this has much weight concerning the actual truth value of a particular religion, but for the purposes of pragmatism, it seems to work.

Option 2 is admittedly seductive. I think one possible way out is to suppose that intelligibility of reality might be necessary; there can be no truly chaotic, lawless reality because arbitrary chaos would itself need to be an inviolable law. Requiring an intelligent first cause sort of begs the question that an intelligent first cause is even necessary. Intelligibility would be a function of our intelligence which evolved as we contended with reality through the eons, not a trait of reality itself.

Well, as soon as you start suggesting that aspects of reality might in fact be necessary, you've stepped into ontological argument territory, and that's where the fun begins. (Or the gnashing of teeth. ) We're dealing with the concept of metaphysical necessity now, which is already going to be a problem for most naturalists. What would make something metaphysically necessary?

In the absense of something like a realm of Platonic Forms, I don't see laws as metaphysically necessary, nor would I consider arbitrary chaos to be an actual inviolable law. I'd say that even a truly chaotic, arbitrary reality could give the impression of being intelligible for a time, since as you've pointed out, there would be no law preventing it from doing so. We could in fact live in a universe that for no actual reason has taken intelligible shape, but the problem is that this intelligibility would be illusory. It could cease at any moment. Time itself could cease to exist. (This is why I do not accept the multiple universe solution whereby we've necessarily ended up in the one intelligible universe that could support life, since this isn't a jackpot that we win just once. It's a jackpot we win constantly and continuously as long as our universe remains intelligible.)

We may be using the term "intelligibility" in different ways, though. I am very specifically talking about a trait of reality rather than a function of our intelligence--"intelligibility" for me is the causal regularities and existence of order in physical reality itself that allows it to be grasped by the human mind. This is radically different than the sort of reasoning you'd see from someone like Plantinga, who seems to take the intelligibility of reality for granted and focuses instead upon how the mental processes to cope with it could develop in a naturalistic universe.

 

[gaara4158]

If we're looking strictly as arguments from pragmatism, however, I would question whether theism is actually untestable if we step outside of scientific methodology. If a specific spiritual path says, "Follow me and your life will be improved," you can actually measure whether the promised improvement occurs or not. I wouldn't say this has much weight concerning the actual truth value of a particular religion, but for the purposes of pragmatism, it seems to work.

I wouldn't say theism is testable if the most we can actually measure is the effect of its prescribed behaviors on subjective well-being. Spiritual paths can work whether their underlying religious premises are true or not. For the purposes of pragmatism, what's confirmed is that the belief works, but it fails to confirm that nonbelief doesn't also work. Both are important in pragmatism. I don't have a problem with anyone's theism if it leads to a spiritual path that truly improves anyone's life who applies it. That's pretty much what the self-help genre of literature aims to do.

In the absense of something like a realm of Platonic Forms, I don't see laws as metaphysically necessary, nor would I consider arbitrary chaos to be an actual inviolable law. I'd say that even a truly chaotic, arbitrary reality could give the impression of being intelligible for a time, since as you've pointed out, there would be no law preventing it from doing so. We could in fact live in a universe that for no actual reason has taken intelligible shape, but the problem is that this intelligibility would be illusory. It could cease at any moment. Time itself could cease to exist. (This is why I do not accept the multiple universe solution whereby we've necessarily ended up in the one intelligible universe that could support life, since this isn't a jackpot that we win just once. It's a jackpot we win constantly and continuously as long as our universe remains intelligible.)

We may be using the term "intelligibility" in different ways, though. I am very specifically talking about a trait of reality rather than a function of our intelligence--"intelligibility" for me is the causal regularities and existence of order in physical reality itself that allows it to be grasped by the human mind. This is radically different than the sort of reasoning you'd see from someone like Plantinga, who seems to take the intelligibility of reality for granted and focuses instead upon how the mental processes to cope with it could develop in a naturalistic universe.

In this case, I don't see how we can ever arrive at a meaningful answer to how or why reality is intelligible, let alone go with an intelligent first cause. How could an intelligent first cause account for it? Doesn't intelligibility necessarily precede intelligence? If not, isn't the existence of that intelligence an even bigger mystery than the intelligibility of reality? I have far more questions than answers on this subject, and I doubt I could even comprehend the answers if they were given to me

 

[Silmarien]

I wouldn't say theism is testable if the most we can actually measure is the effect of its prescribed behaviors on subjective well-being. Spiritual paths can work whether their underlying religious premises are true or not. For the purposes of pragmatism, what's confirmed is that the belief works, but it fails to confirm that nonbelief doesn't also work. Both are important in pragmatism. I don't have a problem with anyone's theism if it leads to a spiritual path that truly improves anyone's life who applies it. That's pretty much what the self-help genre of literature aims to do.

Well, anyone who has at different times tried both belief and non-belief can confirm whether or not both work, so it's not true that you can only "test" one side of the equation. I can say in no uncertain terms that I've found that non-belief does not work, so for the purpose of pragmatism, the issue does seem to be settled.

I agree that this is pretty subjective (at least on its face), but that's the problem with trying to use pragmatism in general as a tool for determining truth. If you abandon the notion of objective truth for a calculus of utility, this is where you end up. Everything is a matter of subjective valuation. These are those dragons I was warning you about before.

In this case, I don't see how we can ever arrive at a meaningful answer to how or why reality is intelligible, let alone go with an intelligent first cause. How could an intelligent first cause account for it? Doesn't intelligibility necessarily precede intelligence? If not, isn't the existence of that intelligence an even bigger mystery than the intelligibility of reality? I have far more questions than answers on this subject, and I doubt I could even comprehend the answers if they were given to me

Well, the first thing you're doing here is subscribing to a materialist ontology--matter before mind, intelligibility before intelligence. To a certain degree, I think you're right to do this, since the human mind and human intelligence do seem to be byproducts of nature. They don't precede it, so conceiving of a divine mind that is similar to a human being's but on an infinitely larger scale strikes me as a terrible place to start. (Though it is admittedly by and far the more common starting point these days.)

An older way to conceive of things is to start with transcendent reality. What do we know about it? Nothing. (Or everything.) Why do we think it exists? Because there are many things about this universe, including its very existence, that do not explain themselves. So we consider those things that are necessary to explain them. We look at the intelligibility of physical reality and say that it could not exist in the absence of an ordering principle, an intellect, so to speak. So we attribute intellect to transcendent reality in a somewhat analogous manner--we're not dealing with a mind like ours. Our minds reflect the intelligibility of reality, which in turn reflects the divine "mind."

I don't really see the existence of a divine intellect as a greater mystery than the intelligibility of reality itself, though. The idea that magical universes can spontaneously pop into existence of their own accord, that causal regularity can emerge from lawless chaos, that inherently physical systems can become self-determinant and self-conscious... that's a mystery of maddening proportions to me. Literal magical thinking. Theism just says that reality itself has to have certain properties like transcendence, intellect, and will for the universe as we know it to exist at all. (Tie into that the fact that I've come to think that when we talk about infinite regresses, the keyword there is infinite--just another aspect of eternity we can't wrap our heads around, and eternity is not something I can rationally deny.)

Hopefully at least some of that makes sense.

 

[Chriliman]

Perhaps I can be more laconic in my response.

If we have two propositions:

1) Intelligent being created our reality
2) Reality exists as an arbitrary function

Proposition 2 wouldn't even be able to justify pragmatism. It would be a cycle of "we do, because we do, because we do". The moment you look outside of the cycle... there are no reasons to keep doing it anymore... especially if doing it is painful, difficult and taxing. I'm not saying that's all it is, but in context of life... it is largely becomes a cycle of rather painful fight of keeping something intact for no other reason than doing something (if we inevitably reduce it to a pragmatic concept).

Thus, from unsupported pragmatic perspective... why do anything at all? Why have children that will suffer and die? Why build technology that merely gives us more to do. It's an existential problem, and many people who really get confronted with this problem fall into depression, which you have to find more things to do as a distraction, or alter brain chemistry to give you more dopamine to keep going through the cycle.

Thus reality devolves into meaningless absurdity. Yes you can act and pretend as though it has inherent meaning, but eventually you have to ask... does it really?

And if it doesn't have inherent meaning... why would you care to give it any meaning?

What you’re describing sounds like torment and it’s interesting because only God can free us from that torment.

Thanks for the interesting post!