I imagine that Leon Wieseltier and I disagree about many things. But I’ve long found him to be a reliable enemy of cant. I was not disappointed by his recent Washington Diarist column in The New Republic.
He takes Duke University philosophy professor Alex Rosenberg and author of The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions to the woodshed.
We had a fine and hard-hitting review by Edward Feser back in the November issue (Scientia ad Absurdum). Feser observed, as does Wieseltier, that Rosenberg simply asserts an untenable scientism, which means the presumption that because science explains things so effectively, the only things that exist are those that science explains.
Here is Feser’s devastating assessment:
Why should anyone accept scientism in the first place. Rosenberg gives a single brazen non sequitur in its defense. The predictive power, explanatory range, and technological successes of physics, he says, far outstrip those of other purported sources of knowledge. And this, he concludes, shows that what physics tells us is real is all that is real. But this is like arguing that since metal detectors have far greater success in finding coins in more places than any other method, metal detectors show that only coins exist.
Wieseltier is a bit less delicate, but makes essentially the same point:
I thought that the argument for imagination and interpretation as instruments of human knowledge was settled long ago—when Vico read the ancients, or when Mill read Coleridge, or when Dilthey read Schleiermacher; but here we are, still wrestling with the distinction between explanation and understanding, still enduring the old crap about the hegemony of the natural sciences.
Above and beyond the simple-minded scientism, Wieseltier observes that “this shabby book is riddled with other notions that typify our time.” He enumerates some. One he omits, however, is this: In our time it’s OK for elite professors to write shabby books.
As I pointed out in my recent criticisms of Stephen Greenblatt’s shabby book on Lucretius, they aren’t criticized by their peers. No doubt this is part because, as Wieseltier points out, their disregard for reason serves the Establishment that pays their salaries. Smug complacency has always characterized decadent elites, and our elite universities are nothing if not decadent (thought they are sometimes more than that as well).
And there’s another reason. These sorts of books are meant to make money, and that rather than truth has become the summum bonum among our academic careerists.
January 4th, 2012 | 8:38 am
“As I pointed out in my recent criticism of Stephen Greenblatt’s shabby book on Lucretius, they aren’t criticized by their peers. No doubt this is part because, as Wieseltier points out, their disregard for reason serves the Establishment that pays their salaries.”
I increasingly wonder how many are even equipped to do such criticism. They don’t seem to understand faith at all. They lack the vocabulary and the mental furniture. They are literal-minded and their brains are stuck in that inflexible mode. They are blind in one eye and do not realize it.
It occurs to me that John Haldane’s assessment of Michael Dummett, which appeared yesterday in this blog, might pertain:
” Dummett was an outstanding example of a type once familiar among teachers, academics, librarians, and writers, but which is increasingly rare: the highly educated, culturally rounded, morally serious, socially aware and publicly spirited intellectual.”
January 4th, 2012 | 9:18 am
Thanks for posting this.
The best part of the review highlighted the evidence that Rosenberg, a philosopher at an elite university, is seemingly unacquainted with the standard authors of the Western canon.
What does that tell you about the discipline today?
January 4th, 2012 | 9:21 am
Note that on Feser’s site I haven’t seen an atheist comment yet who agreed with Rosenberg in full…
January 4th, 2012 | 11:26 am
[...] Reductionists on Parade Wednesday, January 4, 2012, 11:26 AM Matthew J. Franck I thank R.R. Reno for pointing us to Leon Wieseltier’s essay on Alex Rosenberg’s exercise in [...]
January 4th, 2012 | 3:20 pm
Note that on Feser’s site I haven’t seen an atheist comment yet who agreed with Rosenberg in full…
Not that I would consider your sample representative or anything, but the basic problem with the Enlightenment-as-belief-system in general remains the same: to believe that the scientific method can explain more than the merely physical requires a leap of faith.
Some people take on faith that the physical is all there is, and hence science can explain everything.
This would not be a problem – we are all entitled to our religious beliefs – except that these people claim there is no leap of faith involved. They themselves describe their reasoning with flattering words like ‘rational’ and ‘reason’; perhaps they pretend even to themselves that no “faith” is involved.
But it is neither ‘reason’ to replace logic with the modified logic that is the scientific method. All of the modifications that have been made are assumptions that hold true under certain conditions; there is nothing ‘rational’ about assuming that because X holds true if Y, then therefore Y must always hold true.
January 4th, 2012 | 5:51 pm
These ‘location’ or ‘placement’ problems of how to account for moral values, norms of reason, or other human obligations in the naturalist world of scientific descriptions. This creates considerable anxiety about what to do with these seemingly indispensable features of our world. We really haven’t figured out a way of describing or explaining people’s actions without reference to values and norms.
But as John McDowell (Mind and World, 1994) and other philosophers have intimated, this just goes to show how narrow scientism really is and that we should reject it as an adequate description of ourselves. We need a wider view of the natural to say the least. Or you might say we need to widen our ontological inventory. McDowell calls this alternative a ‘partially enchanted’ (85) interpretation of nature.
Rosenberg is just question-begging to assume scientism as some sought of primitive fact and Feser’s analogy is entirely apt.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:40 am
Blake – The word ‘faith’ has a few variant meanings.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:58 am
Blake – The word ‘faith’ has a few variant meanings.
It still remains true that, for the atheist position to be “rational” and “logical”, it would have to be able to prove every aspect of their claims.
Of course atheism can’t really do this. God, materialism, the supernatural – these things can neither be proven nor disproven. But atheists will not honestly acknowledge that their position relies on assumptions just as much as any other religion. They pretend they are more evidence-based, more “rational”, less assumptions-based. They deliberately create the impression that they are superior to religions because they do not involve any leap of faith – but this is a lie: the atheist position relies on numerous articles of faith (that is, assumptions that are unprovable, and must be taken on faith), and their argument falls apart if you do not accept these unprovable articles of faith to be true.
January 5th, 2012 | 10:13 am
Of course atheism can’t really do this. God, materialism, the supernatural – these things can neither be proven nor disproven.
Blake,
No one would reasonably expect a logical system of thought to disprove “what can neither be proven nor disproven.” If something “can neither be proven nor disproven,” it has no place in a logical system. Do you believe that an atheist must prove that there is no “God of Abraham,” no Greek gods, no Hindu gods, and so on, so that the absence of any supernatural beings may be ruled out?
You seem to be saying that atheism and theism are on an equal footing in terms of whether they are believable or not, but theism/religion acknowledges they can’t prove what they claim to be true. Atheism and religion, in your book, are both faiths that cannot be proved, and the fault of atheism is that it claims a kind of certainty it has no right to claim. But your idea of “faith” seems to me to be quite different from what religious believers regard as faith. I think religious believers regard a “leap of faith” to be necessary to go from unbelief to belief, whereas you claim that unbelief is itself a faith.
January 5th, 2012 | 10:19 am
The last paragraph was unchivalrous and unnecessary. You don’t know academic careerists prefer money to truth more then anyone else nor does it advance your argument even if true.
Atheists can be insufferable at times, but that does not mean Christians must be so in turn.
January 5th, 2012 | 12:54 pm
No one would reasonably expect a logical system of thought to disprove “what can neither be proven nor disproven.”
Then atheists should stop making claims they can’t back up.
You seem to be saying that atheism and theism are on an equal footing in terms of whether they are believable or not, but theism/religion acknowledges they can’t prove what they claim to be true.
And atheists can’t prove what they claim to be true, either.
Isn’t that what you just said? That it’s unfair for me to actually hold you to that standard, when it’s impossible?
You can’t have it both ways. If atheists want to argue that atheism is less faith-based and more rational than other belief systems, then they’ve got to prove it.
It is tautological to suppose that your faith is “different” just because you take it as self-evident that your articles of faith are better or more reliable than some other belief system’s articles of faith. To accept as true something that cannot be conclusively proven is an act of faith – it is the essence of faith.
Atheists seem to think they’re more “rational” because they rely on X rather than Y, but if you can’t prove why X is better than Y (without resorting to yet more unprovable claims), then your “assumptions” cannot be said to be logically or demonstrably better than anyone else’s “superstition”.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact