(Hace poco escribi esta nota. Comentarios bienvenidos)

It is often claimed that religious people tend to hold their beliefs come what may, even in the face of recalcitrant evidence. And I do think that some religious people (I think not all of them –though I don’t have the statistics needed in order to be more specific) is plainly fanatic. The fact is that I’ve heard the same attack now in the side of the religious: unreligious people can come to be fanatically atheist, they say, even coming to the point of intolerance.
I do agree that atheism can come to be intolerant, as is the case for almost every human conception of whatever you may think. (To be sure, I also do agree that theism can come to be intolerant. But this is not suprise). To start an investigation of the roots of this intolerance of both opposites, one day reading Nozick’s The examined life, I came to imagine some stories that may be interesting. Let’s see.
[In advance, I apologize for any grammatical or syntactical or semantical or... ...errors you may find through the text]

Imagine, just for a moment, just for the sake of fanciful argumentation, that there is a unique god. Call it, him or she (whatever), “God”. (I don’t wanna be mysoginist or anthropocentric. But for the sake of brevity I’ll call Him, “Him”). Furthermore, imagine history had been just as it actually has been up to this moment but, diferring from our history, in the story we are imagining God decides to become known to us humans tomorrow (or what, in the story, would correspond to our history’s tomorrow). Now ask yourself what could God do in order for us to recognize God’s existence. So Imagine God somehow manages (after all, God is the god) to write his name in the Sun, in a way anyone speaking any language could see it was the name of the god –”God”, “Dios”, “Gott”, “Dieu”, all of those in one, so to speak. Could this be evidence for God’s existence?
Many people –let’s call them “The Irrationals”– would say this: Yep, it is so evidence. (And even conclusive evidence).
Many people –let’s call them “The Rationals”– would say this: Nope, it is not. It is not conclusive, if only because it is no evidence at all.
And in which side truth may lie?
The Rationals may then speak thus: “the appearance of God’s name is of no help to the Irrationals. For we have plenty of alternative explanations for the phenomenon in question, other than the theological. Consider theory 1: there are aliens, and were they who somehow (and here comes theory zero) managed to write that. Now consider theory 2: there a solutions to equations X such that, though extremely improbable, are still possible. And these solutions imply events of this kind –bording with the unnatural only because their extremely low probability but not because their being above natural laws. The disanalogy with the unnatural is this: the probability of these solutions to equations X is infinitesimal, as close to zero as you can get –while the probability of the unnatural is just zero”.
And so we would be led to think that God’s name written in the Sun’s surface is of no help (at least, not decisive help) to the Irrationals.
Now I think we should ask what could count as evidence for God’s existence, in the face of this story.
To have more grounds over which ask that, let’s continue imagining. And imagine one day God decides to appear to us. So He asks Himself (metaphorically speaking –for, by definition, God knows all the answers) how shall He appear to us in order for us to recognize Him not only as existent but as existent and the god. There seem to be two ways: He could appear to us as human or not.
Imagine, even more fancifully (if it is possible), that He decides to appear to us as nonhuman. So he must appear to us as something like an event, an inanimate object of whatever the number of kinds of inanimate objects there may be, an animal, a plant, a fungus, a process… what would be preferable? How could we consider a, say, stone, God? How different should we be as we are now in order to understand that this rock is God? And even more so for things like events or classes. (For can we even imagine that a set, say, could manage to make ourselves be sure that we were coming to be sure of God’s existence? (What kind of axiom would that be which were describing that set? If not before, we are here peeking at the absolutely unintelligible)). How about an event? Well, we may ask: How about? How could an event make us think that that event is God making Himself present to us? Even, maybe, for animals. For imagine one animal one day gets on two foots (or not, this may be not so important), and starts speaking to us. So he would be making Himself (Itself) present by resembling a human, and we would take this fact –or so it seems to me– as a serious revelation of God’s existence only to the extent that we would a take a speaking human claiming himself to be God as a serious revelation of God’s existence.
So imagine (as fancifully as before) that He decides to appear to us as a human. Now this human, it seems, could take two ways for making ourselves aware that not only is He God, but that we must be shure he is God. So he could tell us, well, “I am God” or he could not tell us so. And in this last way he could tell us “I am not God” (which would make Him just a wacky passerby) or He could say nothing about God –about him. (In one sense (favoured by the de dicto reading) it seems He could tell us a lot of things about him without making us aware of facts about God. For imagine He says to His friends: “I like fishing”. It would be strange if one of them came, just by that, to believe that God likes fishing. So it seems He could speak about Him without making us aware of facts about God; but a theory of opaque contexts is needed here to reach the ultimate answer).
Now, both ways of saying nothing seem to be strange ways, if the goal is to make us aware that He is God: the one, existent God. For if not by talking to us and saying, loudly (making it explicit) that HE IS GOD, how could we came to even consider that possibility? (The possibility of He being God: the epistemic possibility, that is). It seems He would have to appeal to some inanimate object, or event, or anything but a person, in order to make us aware of His divinity. But then we would be back to where we started to think the possibility of being necessary to Him to express Himself as human.
So it seems we are led to conclude he would have to appear to us as a human, and a human which says, publicy, that HE IS GOD. But imagine the poor possibilities of that poor guy. Should he ask for a two-minutes speech (or even less: he would speak and say “I AM GOD” and then do some miracles) at the UN General Assembly? Should he ask for some of Oprah’s time? Well, if He is God then He, as imagined, could do some miracles. So what miracles could count as evidence that He is God?
Imagine He manages to get into the UN General Assembly and, standing in front of all the countries’ delegates, He turns water into wine, then the wine back to water, and then multiplies the water and walks over it. And imagine He does it in the five minutes everyone (everyone permitted by coherence with the assumption that this story resembles our world as close as possible) is watching TV, and watching the proceedings of the UN General Assembly. So an enourmous part of the world’s population comes to know there’s a man in TV who claims to be God and has turned water into wine and wine back into water, who has multiplied this water and has, then, walked over it for some seconds –precious few, but still visible, seconds.
Would then we all become theist and accept there is a God, an existent God, who, in order for us to know about His existence, has come to Earth and manifested as a man who turns water into wine and wine back into water?
I’m not sure we would. More exactly, I’m not sure we all would. And, importantly: I’m not sure all of the Rationals would. Let’s call the Rationals who remain unconvinced even after the UN eventuality “The True Rationals”. (I would like to know how big is the percentage of Rationals who are True Rationals –unfortunately, I may never know it).
The True Rationals may speak thus: “This is still no evidence. For let us put our hands over this ‘God’. (If he or his frieds deny us to do so, that runs contrary to their supposed security in believing he’s God). And let us investigate how come he turns water into wine. And then we may say if he is, or is not, God”.
So imagine God offers himself to the True Rationals to investigate his psychology, phisiology, neurochemistry, and all that. Given time, either the True Rationals will find the source of the so-called ‘miracles’ in the self-claimed God or not. If they do find them, then they (given the assumption that True Rationals are doing science and not magic) could explain what the underlying causal mechanism of the so-called ‘miracles’ was –and so, the self-claimed God would amount to nothing but as an experienced illusionist, one of those who have some training in both physics and hypnosis.
But if they don’t find the causal explanation for the so-called ‘miracles’, why stop there? How many things have been taken as a mystery for a long time before they are explained? Aren’t there many cases in which a revolution in science is bred by the need to account for something deeply troubling?
I think the True Rationals would have open an answer of that fashion –and not only open, but obliged upon them in pain of leaving Truerationism in favor of theism.
And now I think we should ask what could count as evidence for God’s existence, in the face of this story. More exactly, what could count as evidence-for-God’s-existence which would be acceptable for the True Rationalist. So let’s ask:
What possible fact, object, person, word, event in the world could count as acceptable evidence for God’s existence, given Truerationism?
Is it that Truerationism knows, somehow, a priori that the concept of ‘God’ is per se impossible? Then we may ask on what grounds could this be. For this concept seems neither inconsistent (for all logic tells us, God exists –or he does not) neither conceptually impossible (for all the non-theological concepts we have (and even perhaps for most of all our theological concepts (and perhaps even for all of our theological concepts, including that strange one, possessed by some, of existing God)), God exists –or he does not).
Of course, it may be inconsistent with concepts or theories from physics, biology, chemistry or else. But precisely the point of imagining all of what we have claimed to be imagining was to test the very possibility of some God’s manifestating. This manifestating may be physically impossible (for all physics tells us, God is not possible), but that is not a priori, and even it is extra-physical: to derive, from an axiomatization of physics, that God does not exist, one must express (in the ‘physics language’, let’s say) the concept of ‘God’, and that is an extra-physical concept. So to say that God is physically impossible is to accept one prior conception of God which, then, is said to be inconsistent with our present conception of our (physical) world. And again: precisely the point of imagining all of these was to test to what extent even a flagrant violation of physical laws (turning water into wine and things like that) would count as evidence for God’s existence. We seem to be led to think that Truerationism would consider this either a priori and metaphysically impossible or, though possible, as no conclusive evidence for God’s existence. So we seem to be led to think that Truerationism seems to be, by definition, the position that denies God’s existence.
And so we seem to have a case of a theory which: (i) defines itself (as least partly, but importantly) as a negation of something’s existence, and then (ii) claims that nothing (nothing possible? or nothing epistemically possible?) in the world would count as evidence for that thing’s existence. So we seem to be faced with a theory that just asserts (at least partly, but importantly) its own truth and a priori denies all possible ways to falsify it.
As said, I do not know how many Rationals are True Rationals. I just thought it would be fun to check what could be happening on this side. Because if Truerationism is just the position that affirms its own truth and denies every possible way to falsify it, then it shouldn’t come out as surprise that even some atheism can come to the point of being fanaticism: it seems that, at least partly (but importantly), fanaticism is defined as a view that just affirms its own truth and denies every possible way to falsify it.

Hoy, el último día de este mes (justamente este mes), pienso: Jaja, Over it. (Lo cabrón fue ese intermedio… but destiny has its own times)
Just over it. (Over. Think about it: over)

Cumple número 23, Rozz Williams y Luomo y Placebo y Somatic Responses y Rolling Stones, un día frío y bonito y gris. No pasa nada. La vida de siempre. Esto, de nuevo: otras cosas por hacer.

Por fin terminé el primer draft de mi tesis. Agradeceré no sólo el interés de leer más de dos páginas, sino de lanzarse a hacer cualquier comentario que crean útil.
Carlos Romero: Tesis, Draft 1
yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Supongo que las crisis son esenciales para la formación de la personalidad en el mismo sentido en que la homeostasis continua, según algunos teóricos, impediría la evolución de la vida. Así que, después de todo, aquí estoy. Me puse un día límite para cerrar la tesis: hoy. Tengo proyectos en la cabeza, papeleo por hacer. Amanece todavía (en un sentido metafórico: strictly speaking, son casi las cuatro de la tarde, jajaja) y estoy feliz de preguntarme, de nuevo, qué voy a hacer, qué debo hacer, y cómo debo hacerlo. Pronto estaré subiendo el primer draft oficial de mi tesis, lista para ser revisada por asesores y sinodales.

(Pensar que J.W. Waterhouse te pintó, así, línea por línea, hace tantos minutos)

Hablando de pasada sobre el (pretendido) argumento desde la nostalgia de C.S. Lewis (del cual hablé hace un par de posts), una amiga me comentó esto:

is it really that difficult not to give too much credit to whatever extrapolations we may make from the strong feelings resulting from the contemplation of nature? Beauty sometimes causes similar reactions. Some people find it hard to accept that a beautiful person (adult, child) could act in an evil way (“How could those pristine eyes do such a thing?”). There are probably as many reasons to resist the temptation to link beauty with goodness as there are for linking the magnificence of nature with a maker. They are both just a result of strong feeling and a misguided effort to make sense of it.

Lo que le respondí habla de uno de los temas que más me fascinan:

(Kant called it “Metaphysica naturalis”: The seemingly inherent tendency of (at least one big section of) humankind to seek explanation where none more is to be found). I myself feel some sort of fascination about it — strong feelings and misguided efforts. These feelings may prove nothing — but may be pointing towards something. The mere possibility, low as its probability is, seems insufficient for people –religiousness is not satisfied with mere possibility: it seeks certainty; science dismisses it by probabilistic reasoning–, but it’s a line I feel tempted to draw, a line reason tells me to never cross. Just a tension some like to feel sometimes.

Metaphysica naturalis. Ese tema que seguramente la filosofía nunca resolverá (me gusta pensar que los estudios empíricos sobre la humanidad tampoco: como ya muchos saben, traer a cuenta “las condiciones materiales” (como decían los viejos marxistas) que dan pie al surgimiento de la religiosidad institucionalizada, o los síntomas que el psicoanalista captura, o los desórdenes de personalidad que la psicología explica –esto, todo esto, es lógicamente indendiente de la corrección de la Metaphysica naturalis)

Kafka’s pathological optimism:

No es necesario que salgas de casa. Quédate a tu mesa y escucha. Ni siquiera escuches, espera solamente. Ni siquiera esperes, quédate solo y en silencio. El mundo llegará a ti para hacerse desenmascarar, no puede dejar de hacerlo, se prosternará extático a tus pies.

(Consideraciones acerca del pecado, el dolor, la esperanza, y el camino verdadero).

The light at the end of the tunnel, this seemingly endless tunnel. (“One day…”, hopefully. One day. (The resilience of pathological optimism)).

(“Te has ataviado de manera ridícula para este mundo”, escribe Kafka): al final de una escalera, al borde de un pequeño barranco. Es todo tan simple. Algo se ha acabado, y es momento de empezar con otra cosa. The resilience of the substantive self. The resilience of open possibilities. And one moral’s duties: in order to live…

Cacho de una ponencia en la UACM Tezonco sobre mi tesis:

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Y en los comentarios a un post anterior hablé de la filosofía pura y aplicada. Creo que está relacionada con otras cosas de las que he hablado en este blog, dejo los links:

Sobre los aspectos vivencial y teórico de la filosofía

La educación no es sólo un derecho, también es una obligación

Esta postura a su vez fue motivada por algunos textos de Pierre Bourdieu. También dejé algo de ello en mi blog:

Bourdieu: por un scholarship comprometido

Bourdieu; la academia undergrasa

¿Qué significa “ser conservador”?

Y algo de Kant y Lisa Simpson (Por supuesto, pensaba en el “¿Qué es la Ilustración?” de Kant; también está relacionado con el “Mysticism and logic” de Russell, pero de eso hablaré después)

Autogestión, horizontalidad e Ilustración

La función de la crítica

Y una ponencia sobre, justamente, la filosofía pura y la aplicada

Y algo de Zizek: uno y dos

Y algo sobre mi posición oficial acerca del socialismo/comunismo/eso…

Y aquí está un comentario de Ernesto a una entrada anterior:

[...] pregunté que para que sevía un filósofo y acompañé mi pregunta con una lista de profesiones y su utilidad para la gente común: si me enfermo consulto a un médico, si mi casa se cuartea voy con un ingeniero, si me quieren meter al bote voy con un abogado, si tengo que pagar impuestos voy con un contador…¿cuando tendré la necesidad de ir con un filósofo? La jiribilla de la pregunta era que reflexionaramos sobre el concepto de la gente común sobre lo que es el filósofo y su utilidad social , más o menos la reflexión de este post, yo creo que la representación mental de un filósofo para mucha gente es la del tipo tirado en el cesped viendo pasar las nubes echando la weba a toda madre, si la gente tiene ese concepto no extraña que se considere prescindible a la Filosofía.

Y mi respuesta:

Pensar en el papel del filósofo en la sociedad es un tema complejo y al que pocos filosofos (fuera del sector de la filosofía política) se meten. Hay varias posturas:
Hay gente que opina que un filósofo es algo parecido a un matemático o un físico puro: alguien que, simplemente, se dedica a discutir y proponer teorías que expliquen cosas muy abstractas; tan abstractas que sólo accesa a ellos quien tiene acceso a los journals especializados y a los posgrados de los departamentos de filosofía. Como tal, un filósofo no está ni más ni menos calificado para influir en la sociedad de lo que un matemático o un físico lo está. Ser filósofo no te hace más o mejor ciudadano, ni más importante, ni con mayor potencial, ni nada. Claro que tampoco te hace peor; eres simplemente otro ciudadano normal con afición a cosas abstractas y ya. En esta postura, tenemos que sustentar a la filosofía por la misma razón que sustentamos a las matemáticas o a la física pura: primera, por que el conocimiento vale por sí mismo; segunda (si no te convenció la primera), porque nunca sabremos cuándo le encontraremos aplicación a lo que el filósofo hace, así como nunca sabemos cuándo encontraremos aplicación a lo que hace el matemático puro o cuándo podremos hacer un experimento con lo que hace el físico puro.
Otra postura está del lado radicalmente opuesto a la primera y dice lo siguiente: un filósofo es un ente social distinguido, una sociedad está esencialmente comprometida con la filosofía dominante y por ello el filósofo es alguien a quien debemos considerar de una enorme importancia. (Platón llegó a defender que el estado debe ser gobernado por un rey filósofo).
Una postura que parece intermedia (y que es básicamente la que yo acepto) es que, por un lado, la filosofía sí tiene este aspecto ‘puro’ (como las matemáticas y la física), pero también tiene un aspecto ‘aplicado’ (como las matemáticas y la física), y es este aspecto aplicado (dependiente del aspecto puro) el que nos importa para asuntos como el sentido de la vida, la organización social y el amor. (Depende del aspecto puro porque las respuestas a problemas en esos asuntos presupondrán una cierta metafísica, una cierta epistemología, una cierta ética pura y, por supuesto, una cierta lógica). Este aspecto aplicado es el valor social más directo de la filosofía; y es fácil notar que existe al hojear libros de administración (en USA es común saber de CEO’s filósofos), superación personal (en un sentido muy chafa), ética en varios campos (médica, ambiental, social, jurídica…), y manuales de muchas disciplinas científicas (regularmente suelen presuponer visiones de filosofía de la ciencia). Lo cagado es que no se nota a menos que un filósofo apunte a ello: cualquier filósofo que se respete podrá identificarte miles de posturas filosóficas (que en el ambiente de la filosofía ‘pura’ son discutidas, algunas de ellas hasta rechazadas) en discursos políticos, programas sociales del gobierno, actividades de difusión de la ciencia, normatividades, creaciones artísticas y reflexiones de los artistas sobre ello, debates religiosos, debates en todo sentido… etcétera.
¿Por qué se necesita que un filósofo apunte a las teorías filosóficas de fondo, para que uno pueda notarlo? A eso mismo apunta Estrada, por un lado: el filósofo está tan encerrado en la cuestión pura que pocas veces conversa con otros sectores en los que, indirectamente, sus teorías están influyendo.
Eso por un lado. Por el otro (como argumenté en un post anterior), estamos políticamente comprometidos al aceptar vivir en un sistema político como en el que vivimos. Esto, aunado a las características intrínsecas del estudio de la filosofía, parecería que lleva a pensar que un filósofo debería comprometerse más en política (esta postura está influenciada por un par de lecturas de Bordieu sobre el compromiso intelectual). Pero no es así, y la razón de ello no es, me parece, intrínseca a la filosofía, sino a la personalidad de la generalidad de los filósofos: nos suele divertir más el puzzle-solving que el hundir las manos en el profundo pozo de mierda de nuestra situación política actual.

En resumen: según yo, la utilidad social del filósofo es doble, pues hay filosofía pura y aplicada. Ambas tienen influencia social, aunque la filosofía pura de manera mucho más indirecta y por filtración. El problema es que pocas veces el filósofo se toma en serio esta necesidad de hacer clara su utilidad social, de ahí que hace mucho que ya no tenemos claro para qué sirve en la sociedad seguir alimentando filósofos.

Creo que aquí sería relevante hablar de las implicaciones políticas (sí, políticas) de los debates filosófico sobre el realismo (tanto científico como metafísico) y el objetivismo en epistemología, pero creo que no he escrito algo sustantivo sobre ello. Sin embargo, mi postura es muy parecida a la que sostiene Paul Boghossian en Fear of knowledge (editado en Oxford University Press) o Jean Bricmont en A la sombra de la Ilustración (editado en Paidós, del cual hablé hace un par de años aquí (o en el ancestro en Blogger, da igual)). Hace poco dejé el vínculo a una entrevista con Williamson que me pasó un amigo, que me gustaría comentar después porque también es relevante en estas discusiones.

Alvin Plantinga recuerda que (entre la docena, más o menos, de argumentos teistas disponibles) C.S. Lewis dio un argumento para la existencia de Dios desde la nostalgia:

C.S. Lewis’s Argument from Nostalgia
Lewis speaks of the nostalgia that often engulfs us upon beholding a splendid land or seascape; these somehow speak to us of their maker. Not sure just what the argument is; but suspect there is one there.

El argumento, si es que hay uno, es nostálgico y bonito, pero sólo sirve para introducir el tema: la idea es que tenemos el argumento desde el amor:

The argument from Love
Man-woman, parent-child, family, friendship, love of college, church, country–many different manifestations. Evolutionary explanation: these adaptive and have survival value. Evolutionarily useful for male and female human beings, like male and female hippopotami, to get together to have children colts) and stay together to raise them; and the same for the other manifestations of love. The theistic account: vastly more to it than
that: reflects the basic structure and nature of reality; God himself is love.

El punto es el siguiente. Ahora mismo, sugerido por el video que está aquí abajito, me estoy preguntando si uno podría sostener argumentos contra el solipsismo desde el amor. (No es que el amor y yo nos llevemos muy bien, como para andar usándolo en argumentos. Pero supongo que algún día nos reconciliaremos).

Cosas por pensar: (i) el sentimiento no estándar de desear ser extrañado tanto como uno extraña; (ii) el sentimiento no estándar de esperar vivir un futuro inesperado en el siguiente sentido: si axiomatizáramos mi vida hasta este momento, el futuro a mediano plazo sería un indecidible; (iii) el sentimiento no estándar de desear un tiempo no lineal (uno podría acceder a instantes pasados). (‘El sentimiento no estándar’, me encanta esa frase); (iv) la esperanza estándar de que los horóscopos, o la galleta de la suerte de Facebook, o alguna de esas chingaderas que prometen darnos a conocer un futuro bello y emocionante, dijeran la verdad.

Y también estoy rolando una sección de mi tesis que ya está redondeada. Agradezco comentarios: Principios y Paradojas de Indiscernibilidad. Check it out now.