13 Comments

Brian
October 26th, 2011 | 10:51 am

John Mark Reynolds, Meh. As the famous quote says, “Not liking the Beatles is as perverse as not liking the sun.”

ctd
October 26th, 2011 | 11:23 am

Sure, the Beatles can at times be overrated, but John Mark Reynolds is way off with this one.

Ray Ingles
October 26th, 2011 | 11:25 am

Feser fails to note that it’s impossible for humans to distinguish between the “intrinsically unintelligible” and the “intelligible in themselves, but which we… cannot understand”. The putative difference makes absolutely zero practical difference.

As to Vallicella, some of his points are valid, so far as they go… but not all of them go quite as far as he seems to think. For example, he writes:

The second category is that of moral evil. These are the problems that come into the world via the exercise of free will, from the merest unkindness on up to the horrors of rape, torture, slavery, mass murder, abuse of power by governments and their agents, as well as by private individuals, and all the crimes that fill the history books

Except there actually has been progress on that front, as Stephen Pinker points out. He even makes a case for non-religious causes for that change. (Some discussion on this very site.)

And some of his points are non-problems. He writes,


We suffer from a lack of existential meaning, a meaning that we cannot supply from our own resources since any subjective acts of meaning-positing are themselves (objectively) meaningless.

I submit as a counterargument this essay, which clarifies the whole ‘meaning’ issue marvelously.
The ‘nut graf’:

To say that some event means something without at least some implicit understanding of who it means something to is to express an incomplete idea, no different than sentence fragments declaring that “Went to the bank” or “Exploded.” Without first specifying a particular subject and/or object, the very idea of meaning is incoherent.

Yet too often people still try to think of meaning in a disconnected and abstract sense, ending up at bizarre and nonsensical conclusions. They ask questions like: What is the meaning of my life? What does it matter if I love my children when I and they and everyone that remembers us will one day not exist? But these are not simply deep questions without answers: they are incomplete questions, incoherent riddles missing key lines and clues. Whose life? Meaningful to whom? Matters to whom? Who are you talking about?

Once those clarifying questions are asked and answered, the seeming impossibility of the original question evaporates, its flaws exposed. We are then left with many more manageable questions: What is the meaning of my/your/their life to myself/my parents/my children? These different questions may have different answers: your parents may see you as a disappointment for becoming a fireman instead of a doctor, and yet your children see you as a hero.

In other words, the whole concept of ‘objective meaning’ is incoherent.

Tom
October 26th, 2011 | 11:28 am

John Mark Reynolds: “Bach’s genius lies in influencing every generation since he lived.” Not quite true, actually. Bach was known primarily as a choir master in his lifetime, not a composer, and the music he composed was forgotten shortly after he died; it had to be rediscovered to be appreciated, which was already beginning to happen during Mozart’s life (Mozart was aware of Bach and played some role in resurrecting his reputation.)

Fred
October 26th, 2011 | 12:54 pm

Reynolds is obviously the same kind of contrarian as George Bernard Shaw, who claimed Shakespeare was overrated and coined the term “bardolotry.” However, somehow I doubt that Reynolds has Shaw’s talent. Reynolds’ contrariness is simply contrary with no greatness to mitigate it.

greggo
October 26th, 2011 | 1:44 pm

He listened to the music “for a few weeks.” The radio played “I want to hold your hand” twice an hour for a few weeks. Then “Please, please me,” “Love, love me do.” ETC.
Listening to Bach for a few weeks will leave some without an appreciation of his genius.

Blake
October 26th, 2011 | 7:19 pm

which was already beginning to happen during Mozart’s life (Mozart was aware of Bach and played some role in resurrecting his reputation.)

Since Mozart was writing serious music less than a decade after Bach’s death, I think it’s fair to say that if Mozart was influenced by Bach, then Bach did indeed influence “every generation since he lived”.

Fred
October 27th, 2011 | 12:35 pm

Actually Ray, you’re right that meaning is always meaning to or for, but you’re quite wrong that the concept of objective meaning is therefore incoherent. It doesn’t follow. If I read a coherent text, it has intrinsic meaning. The meaning will be the same or nearly the same for anyone who correctly interprets the language of the text. That is objective meaning. If it is gibberish and I decide that it will mean whatever I project on it, that is not objective meaning. And whatever meaning I project on it is an illusion; the text itself is incoherent. Existential meaning can be objective (or not) in the same way. If life has an intrinsic meaning, it is coherent, it makes sense, it is objective even though I am the one interpreting it. If my life has ony that meaning that I project upon it, it is intrinsically incoherent, senseless, its “meaning” is an illusion. Vallicella is absolutely correct that science cannot provide that kind of objective existential meaning. He is also correct that people naturally desire that kind of meaning and often find it in religion and that that desire will not go away unless human nature radically changes.

Ray Ingles
October 27th, 2011 | 4:10 pm

Fred –


If I read a coherent text, it has intrinsic meaning… That is objective meaning.

Don’t you mean it has a consensual meaning, one that we as (for example) English speakers/writers have agreed on? Is there an objective, necessary reason that the letter ‘n’ signifies “dental or alveolar nasal”, or that the syllable “no” indicates negation?

The “smiley-face” symbol has at least a vague agreed-upon meaning. Does this have an objective meaning?

A text certainly has a meaning intended by the author. Deconstructionism is mostly a crock, but it is true that a text can mean something rather different to the reader than to the author. (Apparently, a lot of people didn’t understand that The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” was intended to be about a stalker. Some people even danced to it at their weddings. Was the meaning they found in the song – to them – wrong?)

If my life has ony that meaning that I project upon it, it is intrinsically incoherent, senseless, its “meaning” is an illusion.

Wait, why is it an illusion? The author of that essay I linked to tackles this idea head-on:

It’s an experience, an emotion, not an assertion of fact. You either find your life meaningful or you do not, but it’s not even clear to me how one would even attempt to show that someone’s experience of meaning or lack of it was a mis-perception, let alone be outright false. What standard would you compare it against? If someone were to claim that your life isn’t meaningful to you, how would they prove it? How would you prove it to them, beyond merely expressing it? What would an argument even look like?

If I find my life meaningful to me, in what sense could that possibly be ‘wrong’?

Vallicella is absolutely correct that science cannot provide that kind of objective existential meaning.

Science, maybe not. What about a non-religious philosophy?

Blake
October 27th, 2011 | 6:23 pm

Science, maybe not. What about a non-religious philosophy?

Can a non-religious philosophy answer inherently religious questions?

Is it possible for the question “Is there a God?” to be a religious question if the answer is “yes”, but a “non-religious” question if the answer is “no”?

It depends of course upon how you define “religion”.

Ray Ingles
October 28th, 2011 | 8:36 am

Blake –


It depends of course upon how you define “religion”.

Yup.

Blake
October 28th, 2011 | 9:55 am

Blake –

It depends of course upon how you define “religion”.

Yup.


Are you quoting your Bible at me to prove your Bible is true?

Ray Ingles
October 28th, 2011 | 12:45 pm

Blake – No, I’m agreeing with you that it’s possible to disagree about the definition of ‘religion’.