Tipsy has a piece with some fascinating (to me) thoughts on faith and reason. It’s in the context of the marriage equality debate, but the themes are larger than that. A couple of items that caught my eye:
-“[O]ur culture assumes a fundamental split between faith and reason . . . the severing of faith and reason has led to a nihilism wherein the greatest good is the fulfillment of whatever desires among consenting adults. Is that all reason can really say, that anything one wants goes as long as no one else gets hurt?”
-“William of Occam’s nominalist and voluntarist theology . . . conceived of God not as reason but as raw arbitrary will.”
You might recall William of Occam from Occam’s Razor, the methodological principle of parsimony that suggests, if an element is unnecessary to explain a phenomenon, there is no reason to assume that element. The simplest explanation is usually best. (If gravity explains why a celestial object moves from place to place, there is no need to posit that a herd of invisible angels is moving the thing around.) Which brings to mind a Simpson’s quote on conspiracies:
Bart: So finally, we’re all in agreement about what’s going on with the adults. Milhouse?
Milhouse: [steps up to blackboard] Ahem. OK, here’s what we’ve got: the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people —
Bart: Thank you.
Milhouse: — under the supervision of the reverse vampires —
Lisa: [sighs]
Milhouse: — are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish
plot to eliminate the meal of dinner. [sotto voce] We’re
through the looking glass, here, people…
But, I most certainly digress. Probably because these themes are of the type that can be done justice only by a lifetime of reflection and writing. Pre-coffee blog posts aren’t going to do them justice.
Any religious skeptic I have talked to has been familiar with the phenomenon of debating this or that matter of religion with a believer and getting to the point where the believer says something along the lines of “you just have to have faith.” That’s the most immediate example that comes to mind of the separateness of faith and reason. But, I suppose it’s probably only superficially related; having more to do with the relative mental agility of the debaters as to the relationship between faith and reason.
Also there is the interesting notion that it’s nihlism to believe that the greatest good is fulfillment of the desires of consenting adults where no one gets hurt. Rather than nihlism, that description sounds not too far off from utilitarianism; a school of thought for which I have a great deal of respect.
Greater goods that are abstractions, not necessarily accounting for individual’s desires for themselves, are tough. One has to have faith that the person espousing that greater good is actually speaking for the Almighty and not merely dressing up their own individual desires about how other people should behave.
“You’ve just gotta have faith” could mean that the religious person has drunk too deeply at the well of nominalism, which pervades our culture and infects almost all of us, including Your Obedient Servant, Tipsy.
Tipsy: “Nomanilism” is a huge word so early in my own pre-coffee world this morning…..and too lazy to Google……do you have a 15 cent definition handy?
This is a kind of a thing for me.
One, it was William of Ockham, FWIW.
Second, Occam’s Razor is really, “explain with as much complexity as necessary, but no more”. That isn’t at all the same as “the simplest explanation is usually best”.
The thing is, most people don’t like a lot of complexity in their explanations. So, they simplfied Occam’s Razor to suit themselves.
What’s the substantive difference between “eliminating all unnecessary complexity” and “simplest”?
And, as for, “Occam” v. “Ockham” – I just assumed this was a difference caused by the more casual spelling sensibilities of earlier times. Not the case?
Don: I’m going to try to distill nominalism tomorrow, to demonstrate how its tentacles reach our discourse these days. If you can’t wait, or if you take seriously (as you should) the disclaimer that I haven’t mastered it, the two Robin Phillips articles I link to only take about 10 minutes of sustained attention. Caveat: Phillips is a very bright guy but he just recently turned his attention to nominalism versus realism.
I’ll eagerly await that distillation. Cheated a bit and looked a Wikipedia (plese don’t tell) but it goes beyond 10 minutes. Just don’t talk about things that are “identical or substantially similar” to nominalism because I had to promise Doug I’d refraining from turning every thread into something having to do with HJR-6.
Good thing I’m “on vacation.” I think Occam and Ockham are just variant spellings.
And I think the first application of Occam’s Razor may have been “who needs this Aristotelian concept of ‘universals,’ of ‘natures’ of things?”
Wow. Is this what you think about in the morning? It’s after 11 and I’m still trying to find a pair of socks.
Doug, the difference is that too many people distill that to “the simplest explanation -I can think of- is the best explanation”. Sciences and philosophy are replete with examples where oversimplying leads to incorrect conclusions.
This kind of imprecision leads straight to purporting generalities as truth, when the reality is much more complex (and may not even have the generality as a true causation). Pasimony doesn’t mean “least”, it means “stingy”. Do it well, just don’t overdo it. Not, do it with the least, forget about “well”.
Considering it is a Presidential election year, I may be just be tilting at windmills here.