Lessing's Ditch

[theopoesis]

If no historical truth can be demonstrated, then nothing can be demonstrated by means of historical truths. That is: accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason... That, then, is the ugly, broad ditch which I cannot get across, however often and however earnestly I have tried to make the leap

Post-modernity argues that many intellectual fields are a result of particular historical processes. Specific contexts, events, decisions, discoveries, and thinkers led to a specific conclusion as part of that particular unfolding of history.

Questions for debate:

(1) Are historical events necessarily an impediment to absolute claims of truth? Is Lessing's ditch real?

(2) Are post-modernists correct in claiming that particular worldviews or intellectual fields emerge primarily out of particular histories or genealogies (or as a result of these histories or genealogies)?

(3) Does the historical embeddedness of many fields of knowledge lead to problems for the secularist? For the theist?

[Adamoriens]

I'll discuss the rest of your post in more general fashion.

You're much better read in post-modernism than I am, and I'm getting the impression that it has affected even your theological thought deeply. I do feel that you have underestimated its acidic power, though. I can't see it as more than a form of nihilism that happens to attempt to describe the world. This would be my first, perhaps naive, challenge: how can post-modernism sustain its own meta-narrative? Its central thesis seems to be not so much contradictory as a splendid act of hari kari.

The second challenge: is your demand that naturalism provide a satisfactory meta-narrative simply an expression of your theistic meta-narrative? If so, this would be no less pointless on your account than discarding Christianity because it does not satisfy the demands of the empirically-based story of naturalism. If we carry post-modernism through with vigor, I think we would have to say that your criteria for a successful world-view (contains a meta-narrative and plays its own language game) are themselves but the expression of a pre-narrative. Power games, my friend: you've stacked the deck.

The third challenge: naturalism does have a narrative, though it is different from nearly all others. This story would admit no heroes, no villains, no arc involving climaxes, introductions or choruses singing the epilogue. But there are beginnings and endings; forces, spaces and epochs utterly beyond the ken of the human mind; clockwork catastrophes and cataclysms of enormous amplitude; the unguided genesis of utterly novel creatures; mystery that persists at the most fundamental levels; and finally a cold frigid silence. It has an indifferent beauty, like the cool marble statue of a goddess. If I was not a healthy young man in one of the most prosperous nations on this planet, I would probably respond with visceral horror. But then, under post-modernism, my apprehension is neither right or wrong, but merely coherent or not.

As an aside, I should say that I haven't committed to the naturalistic narrative yet.

[theopoesis]

Hello theopoesis,

This is fascinating stuff. So too with your blog- I realize now that my example of Das Kapital played right into your most recent post, what with your discussion of communism and all. The destruction of the meta-narrative in the wake of modernity, for which Christianity is apparently to blame, is the subject of a paper by David Bentley Hart titled Christ and Nothing. Apparently it's been quite influential, so perhaps you're already familiar with it.

I'm not familiar with it, but it was a good read. It's a common theme in recent theology. The East claims the West brought about modernism and eventually postmodernism because of their focus on the priority of ontology (Zizioulas). Some in the West, i.e. Millbank, want to return to a pre-modern, i.e. pre-Scotus theology. Any there are numerous books elucidating the links between secular modernity and early theological movements. Elshtain and Taylor are the ones I am most familiar with. In point of fact, I think Hart (et. al) is on to something. In point of fact, postmodernism did not emerge from India, but from Christendom in Europe. Therefore, there must be some connection between the two, if only minimally. The big debate is over why/where the departure occurred. Is it Constantinianism? The filioque, Martin Luther, John Calvin?

What you're speaking of appears to be an irrealist view of morality, where moral statements are either...let me quote Stanford University again:

[Naturalistic moral irrealism] includes non-cognitivist views like emotivism and prescriptivism which deny that moral judgements express beliefs (Hare 1952, Blackburn 1993, Gibbard 2003), and also error-theoretic and fictionalist views that accept that moral judgements do express beliefs about moral properties, but deny that any such properties exist (Mackie 1977, Kalderon 2005). These irrealist views are naturalist in the sense that they do not posit any moral facts in accounting for moral practice, and a fortiori do not posit any non-natural moral facts. Rather they aim to account for the significance of moral practice by offering naturalist accounts of the psychological and social processes that underpin it.

So you see that this reaction to moral statements is completely descriptive, and often rejects prescription completely. We could, as you say, reduce moral statements to brain states or something, but it seems many irrealists appeal to evolutionary theory to explain moral norms and development. As an aside, interpreting the humanities in light of established evolutionary theory may provide you with the "touchstone" you've been looking for. There is fascinating move within contemporary philosophy to reinterpret ethical statements in terms of neuroscience; an example here:

Liane Young " How to Change Someones Moral Judgment with Magnets.

Of course, interpreting history in light of the need to have sex and babies is pretty depressing. No heroism of the rising proletariat or redemption of humanity here.

I'm somewhat clear on evolutionary theory as a unifying principle (though it's clear I have more reading to do). However, I'm not sure that it can validate much of what constitutes a proper "meta-narrative." I'll respond to your large three objections later today and this will become more apparent, but I do admit we might not need a metanarrative.

I can only speak with naivete here: it appears to me that a naturalist would have to deny the communicative nature of the text, but only in the strictest sense. In "communicating" an idea, all-natural agents are not conveying some "other" or "non-natural" entity, but rather attempting to induce a identical apprehension in other all-natural agents. The symbols we would use, such as written text and speech, would be attempts to illicit uniform understanding among multiple individuals.

This is a communitarian sort of theory. I think Fish is quite similar. Meaning, then, would likely be reducible to a group-influenced coherence of thought. The influence of culture/society would likely create groups of convergence in this induction of identical apprehension, but i imagine cross-cultural communication would be difficult.

But I'm not sure what your point was: do you think there is a tension between moral non-naturalists and strict naturalism? Is my little post-modern spiel (I think that's what it is) even relevant? For now, I'll refer to moral non-naturalists instead of Wielenberg and say that they are not proposing the autonomy of meaning from communication, but the autonomy of ethical facts from the physical world. That is all.

I think I am just not fully clear on what naturalistic morality looks like. I think your posts are helpful. I also am not positing a divide between meaning and communication. I am simply, in a very simplified manner, sugesting that naturalism would seem to tend towards a lack of communication. It's tangential, so I'm not sure we want to parse Derrida vs. Searle on these matters.

I thought you were Orthodox? Arrgh, the Reformed and their presuppositional apologetics. And I missed all the warning signs right in front of me! Never mind. You're much more polite than the last presuppositional apologist I talked to. He was a [insert provincial insult of choice]! I think that's what happens with you simultaneously believe in total depravity and the complete impregnability of your own position.

It's a big leap from having read presuppositional apologetics to being a reformed presuppositional apologist. I read Van Til in high school, and abandoned him for the evidentiary method in college. Only when I started reading postmodern thought did I recognize the similarity in some respects between Van Til, Bahnsen, and postmodernity. I think presuppositionalism has some valid contributions, but its feng shui is off.

It's astute of you to think me Orthodox. The past few years, I've been increasingly influenced by Orthodox thought. I think it escapes some of the problems that Bentley Hart and others point to. But not completely, perhaps. I'm also influenced by Radical Orthodoxy, ecclesial ethics, and various schools of political thought.

Anyway, my ugly little outburst aside, I think we could throw out Lewis and Bahnsen and go for Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, which asks the same questions in a more pointed manner. Given natural selection, we could indeed only expect our cognitive faculties to be competent at matters of survival and procreation. The question is whether one should expect that true beliefs would be more beneficial at guaranteeing fitness, and thus whether our cognitive faculties tend to form true beliefs.

It seems self-apparent to me that true beliefs are more likely to aid survival. But suppose that they are not: that would require a set of false beliefs about the world, which would have to be surprisingly regular given the lack of correspondence with the real world. It seems more likely on this that our cognitive faculties tend to produce true beliefs. This would my preliminary response, but I think I'll be able to elaborate on subsequent posts after a little research (if pressed; these posts are pretty long as it is). If natural selection did favor cognitive faculties which tended to produce true beliefs with regards to survival and procreation, then we would expect specific vagaries as we progressed to different cultures where survival was not the prime concern (such as ours, for example). I think I could muster some impressive evidence that would suggest precisely this.

I think this assumes naturalism. Partly, the problem is that I am still unclear on how naturalism can exist except as irrealism. True beliefs about the physical are more likely to aid survival, but if (as I posit) ethics and such are metaphysical or irreal, then I am not sure the category of "truth" makes any sense evolutionarily. Can we say that an ethic, political system, or anthropologically derived identity is "true" or is it merely "expeditious to survival" or even "irrelevant." I see your point, and do not deny evolution as an explanatory mechanism for our ability to work in science and related fields, but I just don't see the relevance of it for metanarrative elements. I know i'll need to qualify this later with respect to your second post, but I am low on time today.

Of course the most radical naturalist will not shy away from undermining identities, universals, and any other such "non-naturalistic nonsense":The Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide to Reality.

More on your post later.

Agreed. I am persuaded the options (in the West at least) are Christianity as metanarrative, liberalism/marxism/secularism as incomplete metanarrative, or nihilism. I think the most logical naturalist would be a nihilist. Again, more on this later.

sorry for the half response.

[theopoesis]

Adamoriens:

I now have time to address the larger issues in your second post. I hope I can do them justice.

I'll discuss the rest of your post in more general fashion.

You're much better read in post-modernism than I am, and I'm getting the impression that it has affected even your theological thought deeply. I do feel that you have underestimated its acidic power, though. I can't see it as more than a form of nihilism that happens to attempt to describe the world. This would be my first, perhaps naive, challenge: how can post-modernism sustain its own meta-narrative? Its central thesis seems to be not so much contradictory as a splendid act of hari kari.

I agree that postmodernism cannot sustain its own meta-narrative. I think it claims not to. I am very influenced by postmodernism, but only because I believe it is a pretty sound logical conclusion to specific secular and naturalist turns in philosophy and other fields. For my purposes, post-modernism is a tool for deconstructing the secular. I have theological responses to most of the challenges of postmodernity, but lack them for secularism. For me this means two things: (1) I need to try to find if there are secular rebuttals to post-modernity. Hence, for example, my attempt in this thread to see if the post-modern challenge to history concerning meta-narrative can be overcome. (Modernity is, after all, a movement requiring meta-narratives). (2) I need to develop a theology that is applicable to all areas of life. Since Kant, the tendency has been to relegate theology to the private domain. More recently, liberation theology and others have sought to make theology public; but these moves were made with thoroughly modern tools. Radical orthodoxy and Eastern Orthodoxy both offer a theology that is (at least attempting to be) thorough enough to replace the secular when/if the secular commits hari kari through post-modernity. To me, post-modernity is the grave through which a contemporary meta-narrative/theology of resurrection must pass.

The second challenge: is your demand that naturalism provide a satisfactory meta-narrative simply an expression of your theistic meta-narrative? If so, this would be no less pointless on your account than discarding Christianity because it does not satisfy the demands of the empirically-based story of naturalism. If we carry post-modernism through with vigor, I think we would have to say that your criteria for a successful world-view (contains a meta-narrative and plays its own language game) are themselves but the expression of a pre-narrative. Power games, my friend: you've stacked the deck.

I may have stacked the deck. I am quite certain that I cannot completely maintain a bias-free perspective. On the other hand, this thread is only one aspect of a larger series of questions that I am asking (both here and elsewhere). I have a series of questions and a series of tentative answers. I'm seeking to test the validity of my answers, and to flesh out my reasoning. The questions which concern me are as follows. I've included my short answers in italics:

(1) What viable metanarratives exist in the contemporary West? Christianity. Modernity is decaying from the inside out through post-modernity. Nihilism seems to be its logical conclusion. Perhaps another religion could suffice. I have not studied them enough, but I do find the incarnation and the Trinity to be invaluable aids against the tide of post-modernity, and I cannot imagine a complete defense apart from them.

(2) Is Christianity really a coherent meta-narrative? Christianity is sufficiently comprehensive, coherent, and pragmatic, if a few Eastern ideas are re-introduced to correct Catholic and Protestant mistakes, and if a holistic theology is adopted. Some elements of both Protestantism and Constantinianism should also be abandoned.

(3) Why is modernity collapsing? I agree with Radical Orthodoxy that modernity is built upon theological precedent. Once theology and God are abandoned, the foundations of the modern meta-narrative collapse. A fully post-Christian West is also post-modern.

(4) Is a metanarrative necessary? Apart from meta-narrative, civic participation declines. Identity crises emerge. Morality is vacuous, apathy is ever growing, and beauty is reduced to a farce of itself. I think I have sociological and cultural analysis to indicate this. Moreover, I believe that nihilism is a dissimulation of what is tacitly known about the world: morality exists, humans have identity, and the mind is irreducible to its biological components.

I've tried out various threads concerning these ideas. I've not been thoroughly repudiated, though I do suspect that I have been simplifying in many respects. Of course, when I am trying to analyze all aspects of human knowing and the entire history of thought from the first century to present, this reductionism isn't too surprising.

Anyway: the point is, at another time I ask whether meta-narrative is necessary. I have my reasons to think it is. However, I do grant that these reasons may be biased.

The third challenge: naturalism does have a narrative, though it is different from nearly all others. This story would admit no heroes, no villains, no arc involving climaxes, introductions or choruses singing the epilogue. But there are beginnings and endings; forces, spaces and epochs utterly beyond the ken of the human mind; clockwork catastrophes and cataclysms of enormous amplitude; the unguided genesis of utterly novel creatures; mystery that persists at the most fundamental levels; and finally a cold frigid silence. It has an indifferent beauty, like the cool marble statue of a goddess. If I was not a healthy young man in one of the most prosperous nations on this planet, I would probably respond with visceral horror. But then, under post-modernism, my apprehension is neither right or wrong, but merely coherent or not.

I think that you rightly describe the naturalist narrative. However, I think there is an important distinction between a narrative and a metanarrative. A narrative is merely a coherent story. A metanarrative must be capable of uniting the disparate aspects of human endeavor into a sum total. It must be capable of directing and legitimating individual and collective human endeavor. And it must be capable of sustaining rationality and rational inquiry.

The narrative of a cold, frigid silence is a beautiful and terrifying thing. But I suspect that the silence has no directing or legitimating capacity. Instead, I think it leads us to nihilism.

And so, I am a relativistic fideist. I'm back to Van Til, strangely enough. I acknowledge the inner coherence of the naturalist perspective, but I question this narrative's ability to be a meta-narrative. I see it as producing science and silence. My faith in God is not merely faith in a particular mythos. It is a faith in God as the source of Good. In God as Communicator. In God as director of history. God as Creator of human identity. God as redeemer of human culture. And as such, my faith in God is based on what I consider to be the reality of these things. Only time will tell whether I am simulating, or whether the nihilist is dissimulating.

The only problem is that I might be setting up a false dichotomy...

(hence this thread)

As an aside, I should say that I haven't committed to the naturalistic narrative yet.

Then there is hope for you yet.

Just joking. Thanks for taking the time to present and defend a perspective that you aren't sure if you accept.

theopoesis

[Adamoriens]

I agree that postmodernism cannot sustain its own meta-narrative. I think it claims not to. I am very influenced by postmodernism, but only because I believe it is a pretty sound logical conclusion to specific secular and naturalist turns in philosophy and other fields. For my purposes, post-modernism is a tool for deconstructing the secular. I have theological responses to most of the challenges of postmodernity, but lack them for secularism. For me this means two things: (1) I need to try to find if there are secular rebuttals to post-modernity. Hence, for example, my attempt in this thread to see if the post-modern challenge to history concerning meta-narrative can be overcome. (Modernity is, after all, a movement requiring meta-narratives). (2) I need to develop a theology that is applicable to all areas of life.

I see. Post-modernism as the self-destructive consequence of secular world-views. It's funny: in my amateur investigations of contemporary philosophy, I never see post-modernism mentioned. Perhaps the problems that post-modernism brings up have simply been around for a very long time in other areas. Skepticism in ethics and epistemology is at least as ancient as Socrates.

Whether the despair at attaining any sort of objective truth is the logical consequence of non-theism, and whether a non-theist can consistently hope for truthful apprehension still seems like a wide-open question to me.

(2) Is Christianity really a coherent meta-narrative? Christianity is sufficiently comprehensive, coherent, and pragmatic, if a few Eastern ideas are re-introduced to correct Catholic and Protestant mistakes, and if a holistic theology is adopted. Some elements of both Protestantism and Constantinianism should also be abandoned.

I think that your epistemology is far too credulous, not because it accepts Christianity but because it cannot meaningfully reject other meta-narratives which meet all of its demands. More importantly, if pragmatism is a criterion for successful meta-narratives, than it seems to me that your epistemology ought to value science very highly. By this I mean: pragmatism presupposes an element of adherence to reality, or at least adherence to experience. This is essentially the concern shared by basic empiricism. It seems, then, that if your Christian meta-narrative does not cohere successfully with an empirical science, it cannot be maintained. Is this a liability you are willing to assume?

Perhaps I've read too much into your criteria?

(4) Is a metanarrative necessary? Apart from meta-narrative, civic participation declines. Identity crises emerge. Morality is vacuous, apathy is ever growing, and beauty is reduced to a farce of itself. I think I have sociological and cultural analysis to indicate this. Moreover, I believe that nihilism is a dissimulation of what is tacitly known about the world: morality exists, humans have identity, and the mind is irreducible to its biological components.

Tacitly believed, at any rate. Keep in mind that it is logically possible that a non-theistic universe could have the features of a true meta-ethic and substance dualism, so it is not a logical conclusion that nihilism follows from strong atheism. I'm increasingly of the opinion that belief in moral nihilism and moral realism are a consequence of one's personal epistemology or other non-rational influences (evolutionary proclivities, or the noetic effect of sin, if you like), not a logical conclusion of God's existence or non-existence.

My comments may be all beside the point if you're simply talking about the alternatives commonly on hand. Certainly theists are more likely to be moral realists than non-theists...

I've tried out various threads concerning these ideas. I've not been thoroughly repudiated, though I do suspect that I have been simplifying in many respects. Of course, when I am trying to analyze all aspects of human knowing and the entire history of thought from the first century to present, this reductionism isn't too surprising.

You're very kind. Mostly, I've seen you ignored or misunderstood. I doubt I've risen to the challenge, but thanks for sharing your learning.

I think that you rightly describe the naturalist narrative. However, I think there is an important distinction between a narrative and a metanarrative. A narrative is merely a coherent story. A metanarrative must be capable of uniting the disparate aspects of human endeavor into a sum total. It must be capable of directing and legitimating individual and collective human endeavor. And it must be capable of sustaining rationality and rational inquiry.

The narrative of a cold, frigid silence is a beautiful and terrifying thing. But I suspect that the silence has no directing or legitimating capacity. Instead, I think it leads us to nihilism.

Naturalist as an academic and scientific endeavor has very clearly defined aims and projects, so it seems in the main to escape any criticism of lacking purpose and direction. Also, I'm not sure what where the difference between narrative and meta-narrative lies; from your description it appears that meta-narrative is merely an attribute of certain narratives. Certainly there is nothing barring me from constructing a narrative as fictitious and fantastic as I please, so long as it contains imperatives and an overall interpretive principle, and is plausible enough for popular belief. As you probably agree, the latter is not the least bit difficult to achieve (ie. Scientology, Mormonism etc.).

What is strange is that naturalists always appear to be on the whole very optimistic people, such that critics often describe them as unrealistic or naive Utopian-idealists. Many, many naturalists imagine the creation of artificial intelligence, the colonization of space, the eradication of disease, and immortality. I imagine that atheists are more given to an inordinate love of science fiction and to thinking of the distant future. Despite its occasional sophistication, nearly all forms of Western theism are disposed to apocalyptic thinking, to the incorrigible belief that the veil that is the world is soon to be torn.

I suppose that existentialism is one response to the silence. But it appears to me that Christians on the whole orient their lives in the same fashion as non-theists: the acquisition of power, respect, knowledge, respect and security. What life is not oriented to these goals? Perhaps some have in mind sacred purposes, but it always seems that these purposes orient very neatly with common mundane purposes ("I am fulfilling God's purpose in providing for my family, helping my community, and being an accountant...").

And so, I am a relativistic fideist. I'm back to Van Til, strangely enough. I acknowledge the inner coherence of the naturalist perspective, but I question this narrative's ability to be a meta-narrative. I see it as producing science and silence. My faith in God is not merely faith in a particular mythos. It is a faith in God as the source of Good. In God as Communicator. In God as director of history. God as Creator of human identity. God as redeemer of human culture. And as such, my faith in God is based on what I consider to be the reality of these things. Only time will tell whether I am simulating, or whether the nihilist is dissimulating.

The only problem is that I might be setting up a false dichotomy...

(hence this thread)

The alternative to being assigned purpose, I suppose, is determining purpose for one's self. I expect that you think self-determination is empty. Unsurprisingly, self-determination is often the highest goal of those secular views which you criticize.

However, fideism at base seems to require a significant act of self-determination, a "leap of faith".

Thanks for taking the time to present and defend a perspective that you aren't sure if you accept.

I should say that, what with my head deep in classical/evidential apologetics, you've blind-sided me with a unique perspective. This is a good thing.

[theopoesis]

I see. Post-modernism as the self-destructive consequence of secular world-views. It's funny: in my amateur investigations of contemporary philosophy, I never see post-modernism mentioned. Perhaps the problems that post-modernism brings up have simply been around for a very long time in other areas. Skepticism in ethics and epistemology is at least as ancient as Socrates.

I think part of what is going on is the distinction between analytic and continental philosophy. Any significant reading in continental philosophy either encounters the predecessors of postmodernity (Neitszche, Kuyper, Hegel, Heiddeger, Husserl, Lacan), or postmodernism itself (through Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida, Zizek, Baudrillard, Deleuze, etc.). Analytic philosophy, from what I can tell, just shrugs and moves on. Theology is traditionally heavily influenced by Germany (higher criticism, language, dialectics, and theological innovation) and France (existentialism, Catholicism, Saussure, etc). Thus, theologians tend to focus on continental theology. I suspect this explains the disjuncture in many ways.

(2) Is Christianity really a coherent meta-narrative? Christianity is sufficiently comprehensive, coherent, and pragmatic, if a few Eastern ideas are re-introduced to correct Catholic and Protestant mistakes, and if a holistic theology is adopted. Some elements of both Protestantism and Constantinianism should also be abandoned.

I think that your epistemology is far too credulous, not because it accepts Christianity but because it cannot meaningfully reject other meta-narratives which meet all of its demands. More importantly, if pragmatism is a criterion for successful meta-narratives, than it seems to me that your epistemology ought to value science very highly. By this I mean: pragmatism presupposes an element of adherence to reality, or at least adherence to experience. This is essentially the concern shared by basic empiricism. It seems, then, that if your Christian meta-narrative does not cohere successfully with an empirical science, it cannot be maintained. Is this a liability you are willing to assume?

More or less on your question of science. I have a recent post on scientism that might be helpful in the random ramblings subforum. Mine is not a call against science, but against science and nothing else.

As for evaluating between other metanarratives, there is a sense in which this is not fully possible. One metanarrative meets another as pure other. It cannot comprehend it unless there is a point of contact (as is the clear case between Judaism, Islam, Secularism, and Marxism and Christianity). These metanarratives (if indeed secularism sustains one) have enough commonalities that dialogue seems possible. That is why I reserve my analysis to the West. The East seems so categorically different that it might be impossible to evaluate between the two.

(4) Is a metanarrative necessary? Apart from meta-narrative, civic participation declines. Identity crises emerge. Morality is vacuous, apathy is ever growing, and beauty is reduced to a farce of itself. I think I have sociological and cultural analysis to indicate this. Moreover, I believe that nihilism is a dissimulation of what is tacitly known about the world: morality exists, humans have identity, and the mind is irreducible to its biological components.

Tacitly believed, at any rate. Keep in mind that it is logically possible that a non-theistic universe could have the features of a true meta-ethic and substance dualism, so it is not a logical conclusion that nihilism follows from strong atheism. I'm increasingly of the opinion that belief in moral nihilism and moral realism are a consequence of one's personal epistemology or other non-rational influences (evolutionary proclivities, or the noetic effect of sin, if you like), not a logical conclusion of God's existence or non-existence.

I think there is a difference between beliefs and sustaining those beliefs rationally. To be sure, one's opinion in regard to nihilism or realism is a consequence of many non-rational factors. My question is simply whether the "Rational" can be sustained with the "Givenness" of opinions and belief.

My comments may be all beside the point if you're simply talking about the alternatives commonly on hand. Certainly theists are more likely to be moral realists than non-theists...

This is not my full argument, but a notable point nonetheless.

I think that you rightly describe the naturalist narrative. However, I think there is an important distinction between a narrative and a metanarrative. A narrative is merely a coherent story. A metanarrative must be capable of uniting the disparate aspects of human endeavor into a sum total. It must be capable of directing and legitimating individual and collective human endeavor. And it must be capable of sustaining rationality and rational inquiry.

The narrative of a cold, frigid silence is a beautiful and terrifying thing. But I suspect that the silence has no directing or legitimating capacity. Instead, I think it leads us to nihilism.

Naturalist as an academic and scientific endeavor has very clearly defined aims and projects, so it seems in the main to escape any criticism of lacking purpose and direction. Also, I'm not sure what where the difference between narrative and meta-narrative lies; from your description it appears that meta-narrative is merely an attribute of certain narratives. Certainly there is nothing barring me from constructing a narrative as fictitious and fantastic as I please, so long as it contains imperatives and an overall interpretive principle, and is plausible enough for popular belief. As you probably agree, the latter is not the least bit difficult to achieve (ie. Scientology, Mormonism etc.).

To be sure, constructing a fantastical narrative is quite easily done. Sustaining a civilization on such a narrative seems more difficult. This is the purpose of metanarrative... the sustenance of civilization. I think science does have purposes and projects, but I suspect it is equivocation to link these purposes with the sort of purpose envisioned in a grand directing or unifying narrative. Rather, science seems prone (through specialization and fragmentation) to disunify in many respect.

What is strange is that naturalists always appear to be on the whole very optimistic people, such that critics often describe them as unrealistic or naive Utopian-idealists. Many, many naturalists imagine the creation of artificial intelligence, the colonization of space, the eradication of disease, and immortality. I imagine that atheists are more given to an inordinate love of science fiction and to thinking of the distant future. Despite its occasional sophistication, nearly all forms of Western theism are disposed to apocalyptic thinking, to the incorrigible belief that the veil that is the world is soon to be torn.

This could be explained in several ways. (1) I am a biased fool. (2) Naturalism contains vestigial elements of religious metanarrative which are only beginning to crumble. (3) There is a simulation among scientists who pretend to have the intellectual possibility of optimism when it is impossible, or a dissimulation where they pretend to be naturalists while maintaining and metaphysic. I've read the case for #2 and #3 and am unsure. I'm not popular enough to have had a book written about #1 yet.

I suppose that existentialism is one response to the silence. But it appears to me that Christians on the whole orient their lives in the same fashion as non-theists: the acquisition of power, respect, knowledge, respect and security. What life is not oriented to these goals? Perhaps some have in mind sacred purposes, but it always seems that these purposes orient very neatly with common mundane purposes ("I am fulfilling God's purpose in providing for my family, helping my community, and being an accountant...").

A more thorough indictment of Christianity does not exist. It is a sad point that I must concede. But I suspect it was not always so, is not globally so, and need not continue to be so.

Thanks for your time.

theopoesis

[afungus amongus]

I think the distinction between the social sciences and theology in this respect is not so dramatic as you suppose. Theology is a language game (by this I mean the interplay of symbols which do not, strictly speaking, correlate to something immediately evident in nature). As a language game, theology speaks of things which would not be immediately evident to the human mind apart from theology having first spoken of it. Theology justifies its speech through claims of revelation, whereby God gives the church a language which illuminates the true human condition.

Sociology is a language game, for example, because it is an interplay of symbols which do not, strictly speaking, correlate to something immediately and necessarily existing in nature. Rather, sociology studies things which would not be evident to human nature without sociology having first spoken of them. My fundamental question concerns how sociology can be legitimated as contributing positively as a "science" instead of as an "aesthetic", creating/painting its own symbolic world which it then interprets as knowledge. Apart from such legitimation, sociology seems to be nothing more than a dream which we might willingly wake from at any moment with a change in the course of history. This is my fundamental question. However, I am not convinced that such a mechanism does not exist. I am simply looking for what it might be.

Sociology is a science because it applies the scientific method. Sociology studies societies, which existed in the world before we studied them. If the institutions, practitioners, and theories of sociology were 'deleted' then we'd have reason to reinvent it because we're interested in predicting and explaining collective human activity. Sociological truth serves this function in the same manner as physical truth. Physics is also "an interplay of symbols which do not, strictly speaking, correlate to something immediately and necessarily existing in nature". Temperature, for example, is only an approximation based on the average motion of many particles. Similarly, human interactions obey approximate rules (the modeling of which is called computational sociology). Perhaps much of what you consider 'sociology' is really pseudo-science or aesthetics; but that doesn't mean that societies are fictional or unfit for scientific study.

I'm not sure how theology could be justified externally to its own dogmas, except by observing gods yourself.

The only reason we can speak of sociological "truth" today is because of an arbitrary decision by Weber or Hobbes (etc.) in the past. These arbitrary decisions have no necessary influence for the future, so any knowledge gained is in a sense ephemeral. Moreover, since the objects of sociological study do not, in many respects, exist (by this I mean that culture, society, and tradition are beyond the realm of natural/physical entities), they are not part of a study that can in any respects be considered external to the processes by which the study itself emerges.

The fact that their studies will affect and even become the objects of future studies does not revoke sociologists' rights to the language of truth. I'm not familiar with the contributions of Weber and Hobbes, but people have worked on the philosophy of every branch of science. It is absurd to suggest that any handful of individuals are the only reason we can talk about societies (or flocks, or atoms, ...).

Physics, on the other hand, granting the possibility of numerous universes, can still claim to study that which exists as a primary phenomenon which is irreducible to the arbitrary result of a deeper, more objective process. Though other universes could possibly exist, we have no reason to think that a deeper process can explain the outcomes of our present field of physics, nor are the "laws" of physics so arbitrary that they are likely to change at the whim of this deeper force (i.e. history).

On this distinction, I suggest that there is a grand difference between physics and sociology. Physics finds its ground in what is, whereas sociology is too transient for this. Therefore, sociology could find its ground in what ought to be, linking its value to a telos, or to the normative aspects of study.

This 'grand distinction' is all in your head. History is not some 'deeper force' which shapes sciences at its whim; it follows along and chronicles their progress from the sidelines. I'm sure many scientists are informed and inspired by the history of their field; but sociology is no different from physics in that regard. Every field of inquiry has to appeal to telos/norms/ethics/morals to be a worthwhile human activity.

Although physicists may be studying the deepest and most objective processes known, they're perfectly aware that all of it may be the arbitrary result of an even deeper and more objective process. That's why many physicists study string theory, in hopes of relieving the awkward mix of relativity and quantum mechanics in the standard model.

There is a sense in which sociology reduces to an arbitrary result of physics; but then chemistry, biology, and psychology are reduced in exactly the same way. Far from undermining them, reductions link these truths together in a mutually supportive way.

The issue of ethical truth is a more personal matter. Simon Blackburn's theory of Quasi-Realism, and Charles Stevenson's interest theory, provide two complementary justifications for using truth predicates in ethics. Basically they show that these truth predicates are well suited to express our reactions to things. We defend some normative claims by appeal to more basic normative claims; others are taken as given.

I'm unfamiliar with these theories. It seems that the final sentence is fairly in line with my ultimate understanding of "presuppositionalism", or what I call "relativistic fideism." The ultimate ground of the normative is the "given" or the "axiom. Are these individuals worth the read?

In my humble opinion: yes! I especially recommend Blackburn's Essays in Quasi-Realism if you want to see where I'm coming from. Givens/axioms are not, according to this story, the ultimate ground of the normative. The whole point is to explain moral axioms (and therefore all moral language) in terms of their (its) ability to convey our attitudes and interests. Hume 2.0, if you will.

I'd say no, since any piece of the knowledge structure based on blind faith can be cut out, and the parts based on phenomenology are enough to support all of ordinary life.

It seems that your statement is contrary to the above comments on the normative being grounded in what is "given." How do such "given" aspects manifest if not through a functional equivalent of faith?

Also, can you elaborate on phenomenology? I've read some introductory essays by Husserl, but most of what I know is through Derrida, whose project seems more appropriate for deconstructing then for defending, even if the stronghold is limited to "ordinary life."

I used 'phenomenology' to refer to basic cognitive inputs - everything you directly experience including images, sounds, textures, emotions, memories, etc. (perhaps 'phenomena' or 'qualia' is a better term). Ordinarily we believe propositions based on our phenomena - for instance believing that you're tall because you look tall and remember being tall. Blind faith, as I understand it, means believing a proposition which cannot be justified on the phenomena alone - for instance believing you're tall despite what you see and remember. I can't think of any reason to believe the latter way, or what purpose such beliefs could serve. The former kind of belief lets us analyze our experiences, which helps us control them.

[theopoesis]

I think the distinction between the social sciences and theology in this respect is not so dramatic as you suppose. Theology is a language game (by this I mean the interplay of symbols which do not, strictly speaking, correlate to something immediately evident in nature). As a language game, theology speaks of things which would not be immediately evident to the human mind apart from theology having first spoken of it. Theology justifies its speech through claims of revelation, whereby God gives the church a language which illuminates the true human condition.

Sociology is a language game, for example, because it is an interplay of symbols which do not, strictly speaking, correlate to something immediately and necessarily existing in nature. Rather, sociology studies things which would not be evident to human nature without sociology having first spoken of them. My fundamental question concerns how sociology can be legitimated as contributing positively as a "science" instead of as an "aesthetic", creating/painting its own symbolic world which it then interprets as knowledge. Apart from such legitimation, sociology seems to be nothing more than a dream which we might willingly wake from at any moment with a change in the course of history. This is my fundamental question. However, I am not convinced that such a mechanism does not exist. I am simply looking for what it might be.

Sociology is a science because it applies the scientific method. Sociology studies societies, which existed in the world before we studied them. If the institutions, practitioners, and theories of sociology were 'deleted' then we'd have reason to reinvent it because we're interested in predicting and explaining collective human activity. Sociological truth serves this function in the same manner as physical truth. Physics is also "an interplay of symbols which do not, strictly speaking, correlate to something immediately and necessarily existing in nature". Temperature, for example, is only an approximation based on the average motion of many particles. Similarly, human interactions obey approximate rules (the modeling of which is called computational sociology). Perhaps much of what you consider 'sociology' is really pseudo-science or aesthetics; but that doesn't mean that societies are fictional or unfit for scientific study.

This is an interesting caricature of my position. I am not saying that societies do not exist. Furthermore, computational sociology is only one aspect of sociology. Here are a few Wikipedia links for you:
Social Constructionism
Social Constructivism
Peter Berger's The Social Construction of Reality
Performativity
Language game
Michel Foucault's The Order of Things

That should be a nice introduction to the sort of thing I am discussing here.

The only reason we can speak of sociological "truth" today is because of an arbitrary decision by Weber or Hobbes (etc.) in the past. These arbitrary decisions have no necessary influence for the future, so any knowledge gained is in a sense ephemeral. Moreover, since the objects of sociological study do not, in many respects, exist (by this I mean that culture, society, and tradition are beyond the realm of natural/physical entities), they are not part of a study that can in any respects be considered external to the processes by which the study itself emerges.

The fact that their studies will affect and even become the objects of future studies does not revoke sociologists' rights to the language of truth. I'm not familiar with the contributions of Weber and Hobbes, but people have worked on the philosophy of every branch of science. It is absurd to suggest that any handful of individuals are the only reason we can talk about societies (or flocks, or atoms, ...).

I am not saying Hobbes or Weber are the only reason we can talk about a society. I am saying that Hobbes or Weber constructed the society in which we live, thereby creating an arbitrary construct which computational society now measures and interprets as universal truth. My question is whether such an arbitrary construct can actually tell us anything about the necessary nature of society or humans themselves. Furthermore, I do not find such a line of questioning "absurd." Rather, I find it to be completely in line with an education that both recognizes key figures in the history of sociology such as Max Weber and understands contemporary developments in the philosophy of science (e.g. Kuhn, Lyotard) and sociology of science/science and technology studies (e.g. Donald MacKenzie, Peter Berger, and John Searle). It is not through my ignorance of philosophy, sociology, and cultural studies that I make these claims, but through my exposure to them.

Physics, on the other hand, granting the possibility of numerous universes, can still claim to study that which exists as a primary phenomenon which is irreducible to the arbitrary result of a deeper, more objective process. Though other universes could possibly exist, we have no reason to think that a deeper process can explain the outcomes of our present field of physics, nor are the "laws" of physics so arbitrary that they are likely to change at the whim of this deeper force (i.e. history).

On this distinction, I suggest that there is a grand difference between physics and sociology. Physics finds its ground in what is, whereas sociology is too transient for this. Therefore, sociology could find its ground in what ought to be, linking its value to a telos, or to the normative aspects of study.

This 'grand distinction' is all in your head. History is not some 'deeper force' which shapes sciences at its whim; it follows along and chronicles their progress from the sidelines. I'm sure many scientists are informed and inspired by the history of their field; but sociology is no different from physics in that regard. Every field of inquiry has to appeal to telos/norms/ethics/morals to be a worthwhile human activity.

I think the grand distinction is much larger. I've put together an extensive explanation in the random ramblings subforum titled "Scientism and theology". It explains my position.

I'm unfamiliar with these theories. It seems that the final sentence is fairly in line with my ultimate understanding of "presuppositionalism", or what I call "relativistic fideism." The ultimate ground of the normative is the "given" or the "axiom. Are these individuals worth the read?

In my humble opinion: yes! I especially recommend Blackburn's Essays in Quasi-Realism if you want to see where I'm coming from. Givens/axioms are not, according to this story, the ultimate ground of the normative. The whole point is to explain moral axioms (and therefore all moral language) in terms of their (its) ability to convey our attitudes and interests. Hume 2.0, if you will.

Thanks for the book recommendation. I'm a bit tired today, as it's been a long day, so I hope I was somewhat clear. I hope you have a good evening,

theopoesis

[afungus amongus]

I'm not sure what to make of all the Wiki articles, so feel free to reiterate any points in there that I missed.

The only reason we can speak of sociological "truth" today is because of an arbitrary decision by Weber or Hobbes (etc.) in the past.

I am not saying Hobbes or Weber are the only reason we can talk about a society.

Do you believe that none of our talk about society is truth-apt? What do you take sociologists to be doing, if not describing the features of societies? Generally we speak of descriptions being "true" or "false", or having some probability in between. If you deny that we can speak of truths in the study of societies, that is not just a denial of all past and present sociological method and results; you also must deny that there are facts about societies. For if our conclusions were wrong because of faulty methodology, we could still say there is sociological truth out there despite our mistakes in looking for it.

I am saying that Hobbes or Weber constructed the society in which we live, thereby creating an arbitrary construct which computational society now measures and interprets as universal truth. My question is whether such an arbitrary construct can actually tell us anything about the necessary nature of society or humans themselves.

Science is not limited to describing necessary truths; its method is adapted to finding and verifying any publicly observable truths. You're describing overzealous extrapolation from the data, and as I argued before this is neither inherent nor unique to sociology. If sociologists take society as it is now, and assume that that's the only way it could be, they're making a mistake. But how common is this mistake? And why is it inherent to sociology - what stops sociologists from accurately measuring variables and finding trends or correlations? Why can't they suggest hypotheses to be refuted or confirmed as societies evolve?

I feel I've not quite figured out your argument yet, but I'll look at the random ramblings.

peace