Engaging the World: A Philosopher's Essays on Morality and Religion

By Edmund Abegg

Philosophers enjoy working with ideas that arise as they engage the world. They like to think carefully, looking at ides from more than one perspective, and without partisan urgency or desperate defensive moves. Of course, not all people who call themselves philosophers follow this ideal, but it has a long history, having been exemplified by Socrates and others in the ancient world.

The essays in this volume attempt to live up to this ideal, which does not, by the way, prevent Dr. Abegg from reaching strong conclusionswhich are, however, always open to challenge..

While parts of some of the essays may be difficult in places for readers not acquainted with philosophy, the shorter essays written recently for this collection are easier to read and also more lively.

As a glance at the Table of Contents will reveal, the essays in this volume are on topics that should be important for all of us, such as sexual morality, abortion, Sigmund Freud, the relation between science and religion, and efforts to find a meaningful minimal religion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499040135

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Copyright © 2014 by Edmund Abegg.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

The Scope of This Collection

Part I Introduction

What kind of Anti-Intellectual Are You?*

Rationality*

The Tragedy (or Comedy) of Philosophy*

Part II Religion

A Development of John Stuart Mill’s View of Religion As Hope for the Supernatural*

Chapter I The Supernatural and the Cognitive in Modern Western Philosophies of Religion

Chapter II John Stuart Mill

Chapter III Religion As Hope

Bibliography

Hope after Fifty Years*

Joseph Glanvill, John Webster, and the Witchcraft Controversy in Restoration England*

Chapter 1 The Restoration Period and the Witchcraft Controversy

Chapter II Joseph Glanvill

Chapter III John Webster

Chapter IV Purposes

Chapter V Powers of Devils

Chapter VI Methods

Chapter VII Rational Arguments

Chapter VIII Scriptural Arguments

Chapter IX Empirical Arguments

Chapter X Conclusion

Footnotes

Bibliography

Witchcraft and Our World Today*

Part III Ethics and Values

New-Wave Moral Realism and Worlds-Without-Values Skepticism

References

The New Wave Subsides*

The Moral Significance of the Genetic Relation*

Notes

Sexual Morality under the Aegis of the Goddess Venus*

Morality and Abortion*

Historical Importance*

The Work of the Historian*

Colliding Galaxies and the Moral Order*

Complaints about the Cosmos*

Part IV Political Morality

Political Morality: The Theory from My Book*

An Array Model for the Consent of the Governed*

Notes

The Array Idea after Almost Thirty Years*

How Should We Deal with Human Weakness?*

The Constitution, the Veto Power, and Government Shutdowns*

Part V The Mind

Consciousness: Be Happy We Have Some, but Not Too Much*

Freud: We Need Some of His Ideas*

Appendix

Acknowledgements

I owe thanks to many more people than I can recall, especially since this collection covers over fifty years. But let me note a few of the prominent helpers. Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where I was a professor for thirty-seven years, was an important institutional support. Going even further back, Professor Joseph Neyer of Rutgers first nourished my interest in philosophy, and his compliment that I had a real gift for understanding philosophical ideas encouraged me, eventually leading me to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University. A fellow student at Columbia, Rex Martin, kindly hosted a sabbatical semester at the University of Kansas. He helped me with my growing interest in political and moral philosophy and introduced me to AMINTAPHIL, a social, political, and legal philosophy association. My former wife, Barbara Abegg, an English teacher in high school and very accomplished in grammar, composition, and literature, helped develop my writing skills (to whatever level they may be judged to be) and assisted editorially with some of the works collected here (and also with an early draft of my recent book on political philosophy). At Edinboro, my colleague Richard Double, with whom I have had many discussions over twenty years, has helped me develop my ideas and to understand aspects of philosophy that were unclear to me. He is, of course, my collaborator (and, indeed, the main source of most of the ideas) for one of the essays in this collection. Again, thanks also are due to many others, including Maureen Amar Double, who kindly keyed in my master’s essay on hope.

The Scope of This Collection

I have selected the previously written essays in this book from a larger group. The ones included are the ones I think are still currently relevant and of some importance, but no doubt if I had pondered more fully this collection would have been slightly different. The provenance of my older essays provides some justification for their inclusion. Most of them are either accepted master’s essays, papers presented at major conferences, or articles previously published.

In addition, there are two kinds of currently written short essays. Some are follow-up comments on previously written works. Others are free-standing essays on topics that interest me and that I hope educated readers find thought provoking.

Part I

Introduction

What kind of Anti-Intellectual Are You?

¹*

I want to begin by congratulating those who are being honored this evening, I must confess, however, that as I participate in this celebration of the achievements of intellect, I look around and wonder whether indeed each of those honored is truly worthy. Is it not possible that some of the agents of the devil have managed to infiltrate this gathering of saints? Perhaps a few of you are saying to yourselves at this point, Don’t look at me. Can I help it if I happened to get good grades and my parents made me come here? Let me reassure you at once that my purpose here is not to request that you confess to being an anti-intellectual or that you denounce those near you about whom you have some suspicion. Especially I have no plans to recommend that anyone be burned at the stake. Perhaps after all I was unkind even to reveal any shadow of a doubt—especially since I am the beneficiary of a free meal. In any case, since I cannot now conduct any case-by-case investigation, my curiosity turns to a matter that would have to be a preliminary to any investigation, the definition of anti-intellectual.

What is an anti-intellectual? One example occurs to me from my days as a college student. When I was home one weekend, I met a high school classmate who attended another college. He told me that, in effect, he was turned off (this expression, of course, did not yet exist in those ancient days) by the academic life. He announced his intention never again to go to the library and read any books not immediately required for an examination. Another case occurs to me from this bygone age. My friend and I often kidded the engineers and aggies about being anti-intellectuals in that they seemed unwilling to consider any issue that did not fall within their narrow technological concern. The great questions of art, history, religion, and ethics seemed to them to be simply irrelevant and boring.

These examples seems to represent somewhat different types, and it now seems to me that we may expect to find not just one kind of anti-intellectual creature, but many. True, they all belong to the same species by virtue of their opposition to intellect, but perhaps the forests and grasslands are full of many varieties. Let us imagine that we are on a safari in search of these exotic creatures. Perhaps we can spot a few of them in their native habitat.

The easiest ones to recognize are the ones we have already met in our examples above. We see in the first case a negative and contrary creature who, by an act of sovereign preference, has rejected thought and reason in favor of taste. If you ask him why the sky is blue, he will show no interest in the matter. He will be concerned only with the question of whether he likes it to be blue or not. I like it and I don’t like it are the only replies that this creature cares to make.

The narrow engineer specimen is much harder to analyze, although the initial recognition was easy. After all, this creature is a strong advocate of intellect. But his focus is entirely technological, and he is unwilling to pursue even the deeper theoretical questions of science. In this way he exhibits that anti-intellectualism which falsely narrows the scope of human reason. Perhaps, we may note by way of comparison, there is an opposite kind of creature who is too entirely intellectual and who might be called anti-artistic or anti-cultural.

But wait! Over there in the bushes rolling and thrashing about is a more exciting specimen than these dull sorts that we have met so far. Here is a creature so dominated by a passion or appetite that his reason has been subverted. He cannot concentrate on any intellectual matter not connected with his one overriding passion. Such issues mean nothing to him. The only truth I know is you, our specimen exclaims as he gazes at a photo of his beloved, revealing to us the nature of his passion. But even when he considers his loved one, his reason is clouded, and it seems that in fact he knows no truth at all. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato described this type as exhibiting extreme disorder in his soul. Plato differentiated this type from that of the intellectual who suffers from a lack of will power to implement the conclusions of reason.

Next we see a more docile creature plodding along a well-worn path through the forest. He is an anti-intellectual who has abandoned reason not in the name of taste or passion but in the name of custom and habit. The way that things have been done is for him the only appropriate way to do them. He is the quintessential petty bureaucrat for whom established procedures assume the role of cosmic laws. These laws, as basic structural components of the universe, neither need nor can be given any justification. This rigid creature is one who can say in all seriousness There is no reason for it; it’s company policy. A fresh look, a probing inquiry from another point of view, a demand for a cogent justification, all these are outside his horizon.

Deeper into this strange and wild land we catch a glimpse of a most wondrous anti-intellectual, a creature who resembles a cross between a tortoise and an armadillo. Unlike the other creatures we have met, he is really quite vulnerable to ideas and arguments. While the others seemed immune to them, this creature is so susceptible that for protection he has developed a special armor. Unwilling to use reason to sort out the strong from the weak arguments, he crawls into his shell whenever ideas threaten him. As we watch from our hiding place, a philosopher walks by and engages this creature in conversation. But when the talk leads to something significant or deep, the creature withdraws behind his armor, saying Excuse me, but I never discuss politics, religion, or values.

We are preparing to return to our base camp when we hear the loud thunder of hoofbeats approaching. Suddenly a large and powerful beast emerges from the undergrowth and charges straight at us. Our guide screams to us to hide behind a large tree that is fortunately near, and we just escape with our lives as the horns of this creature scrape the bark of the tree as he rushes by. After we hurry away before it can charge again, our guide explains that anti-intellectual creature is one that does not ignore or defend itself against reason but instead aggressively attacks it. Some creatures of this variety attack reason by ranting and raving about the quibbling of philosophers or the vagaries of pointy-headed intellectuals or brains or bookworms. But others of this type have learned to use the semblance of reason to attack reason. These amazing creatures spend their lives in libraries and often write books themselves. But these books attack intellect and advocate instead decision, intuition, artistic imagination, or mystical insight. One such creature, Theodore Roszak, in his book The Making of a Counter Culture, called upon us to downgrade science and in its place put magic and the visions of enchanted seers.

As we return to our camp, we are amazed at the several varieties of anti-intellectuals that we have seen. But, a little like Darwin after his voyage to the southern hemisphere on the ship called Beagle, we are not at all sure how these different types are interrelated. The narrow technological type seems very close to the creature with the armored shell, for example. But this further analysis will have to wait until we return home. There we will study the reports of other observers and will attempt to work up a comprehensive report. There may be other varieties, sub-varieties, and hybrids that will complicate our work. We must also be careful not to include specimens who are not true anti-intellectuals, such as the addict or victim of a passion whose intellect remains clear while he suffers from a lack of will power. And, of course, those who lack the potential for intellectual activity (this too is a difficult thing to measure) are not to be called anti-intellectual.

One terribly deep and difficult problem must be solved, however, before our work can proceed very far. We must determine what intellect is. Some literary anti-intellectuals have even claimed that the name of Reason should be given to the intuition that they have substituted for analytical reason. For over two thousand years, philosophers have debated and explored the question of the nature and function of human reason. Each school of philosophy adopts its own formulation by way of an answer to this question. There are long debates over the source of such basic axioms as the law of identity, which holds that a thing is what it is. But we cannot go into this further here, you will be relieved to hear. After all, what could you say if I asked you how it is that we know that a table is a table?

While we are working on this problem, there is nothing to prevent our doing some further field work. I began by wonder whether any of you are anti-intellectuals. Our safari could not reach your native habitat, and I must depart then without an answer. But perhaps I could interest some researcher in this project. So if you see Marlin Perkins or Jim Fowler lurking in the lawns, shrubbery, or gardens of Fairview, do not be surprised. I do hope, however, that none of you end up inside one of their capture bags.²* I hope that, contrary to my suspicions, none of the students at Fairview who are being honored here tonight are anti-intellectuals. And, of course, even the thought that any teacher or administrator could be anti-intellectual is too absurd to be considered.

Let me add one more remark in the spirit of my optimistic musings about Fairview. If we do find any anti-intellectuals, not in Fairview, of course, but in other places in the world like Tibet or Girard, perhaps our study of them can lead us to a cure. Perhaps we can find ways of changing their attitudes and opening their minds to the adventures of the intellectual.

Rationality

³*

This book is filled with philosophical thinking, and in addition to making some comments on the nature of philosophy, I need to explain rationality, which is at the heart of philosophy.

There is a long tradition in philosophy, called rationalism, that claims that we can gain important knowledge by reason alone, apart from sensory observation, and that we can be motivated by reason alone, quite apart from desire, and by reason judging desires. In the eighteenth century, especially, we find many Enlightenment paeans to Reason, both in Leibniz and Kant in technical philosophy and in Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man in the broader culture. (Pope, I might note, while very indefinite about epistemology and while stressing the limits of human reason and humanity’s place in the Great Chain of Being, further claimed that humans can be taught by nature and can know at least the general scheme of the physical and moral cosmos, including God’s grand plan.)

David Hume, the famous Scottish 18th century empirical philosopher, was a dropout from this Enlightenment extravagance who tried to deflate reason. It is from Hume and others that my views on reason descend. I will explain them after I present my critique of traditional rationalism.

My position is that there is a terrible scandal in the way philosophers have used the concept of reason. Few today will openly agree with Plato and his followers that we have a special rational intuition (nous, in Greek) that can grasp a reality hidden from our senses, but in subtle ways philosophers still advocate this bad ancient idea. For example, it is claimed that we can act on the basis of reasons rather than desires (or any emotion). Sometimes this may be an echo of the claim made by Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and others that there are special intellectual emotions and desires that are quite distinct from our animal ones. Intellectual emotions are rational. But commonsense psychology, using ordinary observation and introspection, does not find this distinction. Some objects of desire are physical and others mental, but the feeling we call desire is the same in each case. Since the objects differ so much, the desire-object whole will differ from one case to another, but we are not entitled to conclude that the desire itself is different in kind. On this last detail I disagree with Hume, but he and I both deny special intellectual emotions. Surely a downgrading or rejection of the physical is the underlying motive for this special claim. In the contemporary world this distinction is carried forward under the guise of a separation of desire and motive (Charles Taylor) or in a claim that what motivates us morally are reasons, not desires (Christine Korsgaard). Again, commonsense psychology does not support this. On the contrary, reasons, if they motivate, are simply desires. As David Hume said, reason by itself is inert. Prudential reason uses human desires to motivate us by pointing out the likely effects of proposed actions. We seek to reach our goals and avoid injuries.

The kind of rationality that Hume’s position offers is an instrumental account that covers both the rationality of belief and action. On this view, to be rational is to

1. Be consistent: avoid contradictions (and violations of other laws of logic).

2. Make deductive inferences according to the rules of logic.

3. Avoid incoherence and confusion, even when they do not quite rise to the level of violating 1) or 2) above.

4. Accept good evidence.

5. Proportion belief to the strength of the evidence.

6. Refuse to believe in entities for which no persuasive evidence exists, but do not carry this rule to the extreme of denying the ordinary things of the world.

7. Use inductive reasoning in conjunction with other rules on this list.

8. Take steps to attempt to reach adopted goals, ceteris paribus (means-end coherence), but use cost-benefit analysis along the way.

9. Withdraw from or disable or destroy what is dangerous.

10. Compare goals in order to rank them in importance.

These criteria specify instrumental rationality in that they hold that reason can only be useful in helping us to meet our goals but not in establishing them. Concerning the final criterion, sometimes goals may be judged to be of roughly equal importance, presenting us with dilemmas when both cannot be attained. Depending on the case, sometimes we can gain a little of each goal. Further, when we deal with goals, we need to do cost-benefit analysis (CBA) before we make a final decision. But all relevant goals (values) need to be attended to in this analysis, which complicates our task. Knowledge, self-governance or autonomy, and well-being may be among our goals. Instrumental rationality may most usefully be regarded as a separate goal, one adopted for its own sake so that we have a noninstrumental reason to adopt instrumental rationality. Of course, instrumental rationality itself is instrumentally valuable, useful in reaching a goal of self-governance or well-being.

The concept of rationality is often used not only to describe certain modes of thought and action but to judge them. To call people irrational is to attack them as defective. This usage is entirely appropriate, but my intent here is to do psychology and to minimize the judgmental aspect. Rationality is one pattern of thought and action that occurs. Irrationality is another. Nevertheless, I support the claim that to try to justify irrationality is self-undermining in that one is then trying to use reason to attack it. Irrationality can be lived, but it cannot be (rationally) justified. We need to note that only a very few persons exhibit complete rationality (perhaps no one perfectly) and that most people are only rational under certain conditions. Psychology does not make normative judgments, and its task is to describe the different patterns that people live although, of course, as science it uses rationality. Personally, of course, I prefer rationality, and my larger work will reflect this attitude, but psychology does not endorse such preferences.

Of course, within the theory of instrumental rationality there can be disputes about its precise extent and content. For example, one type, theoretical reasoning, is the effort to interrelate data such that explanations are simplified and successful predictions can be made. One aspect of theoretical reasoning is the use of inference to the best explanation, which involves some of the rational moves above. The best explanation is the one that is the most coherent, consistent with other knowledge, falsifiable, predictively fruitful, and simple. The last criterion evokes Occam’s Razor, which is the famous dictum that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity. What is necessary is what best meets the other criteria, and if two explanations equally satisfy these criteria, only then should we use simplicity to select one.

Romantic philosophers, both modern phenomenologists and traditional metaphysicians, have happily populated reality with whole tribes of angels, demons, occult forces, and the like, but their evidence for this richness and complexity is slim to none. The best explanations lie elsewhere. Whether contemporary physics goes beyond what sober reason and Occam’s razor require is a weighty question beyond my competence to settle. There surely are worries about whether some of the stretched or altered meanings of older terms like dimension are after all helpful (the claim that there are eleven in string or membrane theory). But ultimately these exotic theories are judged according to their ability to organize data and make predictions. Certainly we all sat up and took notice when the arcane theory of subatomic particles and functions led to the astounding and highly visible explosion of an atomic bomb.

Robert Nozick, a twentieth-century Harvard philosopher, argued, in a way that Hume could approve, that since our rationality evolved under practical circumstances at a distant time, we should not be surprised if reason cannot solve ultimate theoretical questions. We have evolved to accept the existence of the external world and other minds and the use of inductive reasoning. He pointed out, however, that we can use reason for purposes beyond those of primitive humans, and possibly we can solve some of the deepest puzzles (The Nature of Rationality. Princeton: University Press, 1993).

The nature of rationality has been debated since the dawn of philosophy over two millennia ago. What I can offer here is my view on the matter, one that is shared by many others.

The Tragedy (or Comedy) of Philosophy

⁴*

Of the major academic disciplines, perhaps philosophy is the most insecure, afflicted as it is with a terrible identity problem. What is philosophy, and what does it do? I would raise these questions in my introductory class and consider a few answers. If we portray reality in a pie chart, then which piece does philosophy study? It seems that none is left after we assigned pieces to various sciences. We could try values as a piece for philosophy, but this is too limiting. And, considered most deeply, are values real? Some have claimed philosophy studies all of reality, but only to provide the most general description, which would be the merengue on the pie. Or, perhaps philosophy studies only the crust, the foundations of all the areas of reality. But the general-description idea seems to restrict philosophy to a summing up of science, and, as for foundations, surely every science is permitted to look at its basis. Is the job of philosophy to study not reality itself but the language we use to interact with it? The etymology of the word philosophy provides little help: in Greek it’s the love of wisdom. Historically, philosophy was first of all the quest for all knowledge that was not how to or practical, not craftmanship. This usage persisted through the 19th century. Physics was natural philosophy, a phrase earlier included in Isaac Newton’s 17th century book title. Psychology was the last discipline to separate itself from philosophy (although here the lines have remained blurred).

If we turn to method rather than subject, there is little help. Does the philosopher use Plato’s eye of the psyche, rational intuition, to discover a priori but substantial truths? Does philosophy study the appearance of the world, phenomena, using a special approach that tries to grasp a thing’s essence? Some phenomenologists seem rather to describe how the world feels from a personal point of view. This can become romanticized sociology. Does philosophy use common sense rather than science? Perhaps, rather, philosophy could become the handmaiden of science, working to support it however it can. Or, philosophy might not seek knowledge at all but should work to support some practical goal like human well-being. This is philosophy as praxis, or pragmatism (although this can be given several definitions). These last two ideas I owe to Richard Double, who took up this topic in his Metaphilosophy And Free Will (Oxford, 1996).

Philosophy has been all of these things, and many would still support some of them. But there is controversy at every step. A humble version does not claim to discover deep cosmic truths but seeks to use basic scientific knowledge to consider important issues. This involves some armchair practice of other disciplines, but this can be acceptable—but not, of course, to everyone. My own work has been along this line. I may have a practical goal in mind, but the priority is to remain rational and respect knowledge. The project here is to argue for rationality and its use in our lives.

In the history of philosophy, groups of like-minded thinkers work on the problems and issues that they find most important. In some cases in the ancient world, this group was literally a school, like Plato’s Academy. At other times, the group is loosely knit, but the members interact, praising and criticizing each other’s work, but not straying from their paradigm. Think of all the treatises on the trinity produced at times in the Middle Ages and all the essays on metaphysical idealism written in the late 19th century. Philosophical feminism is another example. I recall that the philosopher Richard Rorty said something to the effect that truth is what your colleagues let you get away with saying. This is really bad philosophy, but as a rough sociological report of what a group regards as truth, it has considerable merit.

These groups have often produced valuable essays. We should not conclude that everything the members do is worthless or wrong. But what these members do not do, or not so often, is to disable or refute work done by some other group. They may however, quickly dismiss outside opponents, perhaps with a brief (and usually very inadequate) argument, which is all they judge this opposition merits.

There is no easy cure for all these difficulties. We might hope that eventually some agreed core beliefs on rationality and knowledge will provide relief from our philosophical inadequacy.

Part II

Religion

A Development of John Stuart Mill’s View of Religion As Hope for the Supernatural*⁵

Chapter I

The Supernatural and the