I think that Hume’s two most famous arguments are his argument against induction and his argument against belief in miracles. I also think that if Hume embraced either one of these arguments, he ought to have rejected the other.

Hume’s brief argument against induction is found in his Treatise on Human Nature, Book 1, Part 3, Section 6. Without reproducing Hume’s comments in full, in a nutshell the claim is this: We can only ever observe a finite number of things. There is nothing about examples of things that we have observed that justifies making generalisations about all events of that sort. “From the mere repetition of any past impression, even to infinity, there never will arise any new original idea, such as that of a necessary connexion; and the number of impressions has in this case no more effect than if we confin’d ourselves to one only.” In short, we cannot reason from a finite number of examples that we observe to a general rule that applies to all examples of that sort.

Don’t base your criticism of the argument (if you have one) on my necessarily brief summary. Before commenting on Hume’s argument, read Book 1, Part 3, Section 6 in full here. Failing that, just accept my very brief summary.

Now, what was Hume’s argument against belief in miracles? His position was that we cannot have a justified belief that miracles have ever occurred. Why is this? Hume’s argument against (belief in) miracles is found in section 10 of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Suppose, for instance, that the fact, which the testimony endeavours to establish, partakes of the extraordinary and the marvellous; in that case, the evidence, resulting from the testimony, admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual. The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. But when the fact attested is such a one as has seldom fallen under our observation, here is a contest of two opposite experiences; of which the one destroys the other, as far as its force goes.

What about natural events that we have not ourselves experienced? Hume uses the example on an Indian Prince who, because he lives in India, has never seen water freeze. True, says Hume, the Prince should regard the description of frost as extraordinary, but there is still some natural analogy that might be of use in considering whether or not it is possible. Besides, he has never seen water in a very cold place, so he cannot call frozen water in very cold climates contrary to his experience.  While the event would be hard to believe, “still it is not miraculous, nor contrary to uniform experience of the course of nature in cases where all the circumstances are the same.” As I start quoting from Hume on miracles, notice the occurrence of phrases like “uniform experience of the course of nature.” Hume gives another example of something that would not be a miracle: “It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen.”

Let me state for the record that I have never observed a seemingly healthy man suddenly dying. If you tell me that you have seen this, that is all well and good, but to ask me to believe it is a matter of me being asked to accept testimony. But Hume then immediately says: “But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.”

Notice the step taken here. Hume has said now that in fact – regardless of what you might think has happened in the past – nobody has ever been witness to a resurrection. As soon as Hume says this, of course, he will be justly dismissed by Christians as merely begging the question. At issue is whether or not the New Testament witnesses to the resurrected Jesus really were genuine witnesses or not. To show one’s hand as obviously as this by claiming – as part of one’s argument against belief in miracles – that they were not really witnesses at all, is simply to walk away from genuine debate. But I want to set this collapse of argumentation aside for a moment. I will ignore it and stick with Hume just a little longer for the sake of seeing something else. Hume’s next comment reveals the shape of his argument more or less in totality:

There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior.

Question time: How does Hume claim to have given a proof that no miracle has happened in the past, even when we have testimony telling us that something he would call a miracle has happened in the past? The proof, answers Hume, is that our limited number of observations of what has happened in cases that we can see amounts to the establishment of a uniform rule concerning what has always (and could have) happened in the past. It is, he said, “a direct and full proof.”

Maybe you think this is a good reason to say that no miracle has ever happened, and maybe you don’t. But here’s my second question: What type of argument is this? The answer is that it is an inductive argument. What did Hume say about inductive reasoning?

What is ironic is that these are the two arguments for which Hume is most famous, the arguments that earned him his reputation for fierce scepticism and cool headed – even stubborn – rationalism.

Glenn Peoples

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Sue Bradford has been one of the worst politicians that this nation has ever had the misfortune of enduring in Parliament. She was the architect – if you can call her that – of the now infamous and incredibly unpopular “anti-smacking” legislation. The reality is that her grasp of law, its meaning, implications and its structure is such that she almost certainly didn’t write it. On the other hand, the lack of clarity and apparent conflict within the law also suggests that she had input, so who knows?

I still vividly recall when she came down to Dunedin to discuss the anti-smacking Bill at public meetings. As people explained the legal ramifications of the Bill, her blank stares and bizarre replies made quite a few people freeze in a moment of terror with one common thought in their minds: This law maker has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about.

Today she anounced her departure from the House. Thank God. It’s a time when people feel obliged to flatter her, lie, and tell the mdeia that she made great contributions and that she acted in the best interests of families and those she cared about. There is no such obligation. Mrs Bradford made no such positive contributions, she did not act in the best interests of families, and the fact that she believed otherwise does not make things better. It is not a redeeming fact that “at least she was doing what she thought was best for people.” No. The fact that she believed in mammoth power transfers from the family to the nanny state, the fact that she entertained the view that it is best for everyone to slaughter the economy in the interests of meeting environmental protocols  that larger economies themselves do not meet is evidence of just how confused, morally unwell, and unfit she really was to serve in the first place.

I am very pleased that she is leaving. The only regret in her departure is that it isn’t retroactive, which leaves us with the mess she created while in Parliament.

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1936-2009

I grew up with Howard Morrison on TV. My parents were (and are, I assume) big fans. He was easily one of the biggest icons in New Zealand entertainment – one of our original Rock n Rollers (part of the Howard Morrison Quartet), a person very hard not to like, a person passionate for the good of others, and always the perfect gentleman.

What is it with good people dying this year? Don’t you ever wish that there could be exceptions?

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Each month my blog goes through a cranky period. Yes, you read that right (almost as bad as Moody Monthly, the once publication of Moody Bible Institute). Yes, I have performance issues.

That’s because every month I exceed my bandwidth allowance on my hosting plan and when that happens things slow down. I already have what, for me, is an expensive plan, at $24.95 per month, which includes my domain name (that’s $299.40 per annum). That only gets me 8 Gigabytes of data transfer (bandwidth) per month, and I always exceed that – which is nice, of course. Details of my hosting plan are here.

I’m looking to upgrade to something that gives me a little more room, because the site slowing down really isn’t a good thing. Here’s what I would be looking for at a minimum:

• New Zealand Based
• Linux based
• 10 Gigabytes of storage (I must be able to store all my podcast eps on the server (not at a free storage site), and I am about to exceed my 2Gig limit here)
• Ideally at least 30 Gigabytes of bandwidth before performance is impacted (I always exceed my 8GB limit, currently using around 13GB in a light month, close to 19-20GB in a busy month)
• Domain based email
• MySQL
• The usual php capabilities
• A straight-forward control panel, preferably similar to the widely used Plesk control panel (Plesk itself would be great)

Are you in a position to help? Perhaps you know of a better deal than I’m currently getting. Perhaps you can offer a better deal than I’m currently getting. If either of these is the case, please let me know.

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Flicking through a short but enjoyable book on the book of Revelation by Jeff “Obadiah” Simmons (and to my charismatic friends, please, it’s “Revelation,” not “Revelations”) today, I was reminded of something that really stood out to me as interesting.

Due to its use in Revelation chapter 13, the number 666 has gained the notorious epithet “the number of the Beast.” Conspiracy theorists in the modern age have accused a wide assortment of modern figures, from Pope John Paul II to Ronald Reagan to Saddam Hussein, of being “the beast,” this nasty figure who appears in Revelation 13 and persecutes followers of Christ.

What you might not also be aware of is that some early manuscripts of the book of Revelation – in fact the earliest that we have, such as the fragment found in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri – did not contain the number 666 at all. Instead they contained the number 616. Why?

It is very unlikely to have been a simple scribal or copying error. The numbers 666 and 616 don’t look very much alike in Greek, whether written as words or numerals. There’s a consensus among New Testament scholars that the use of two different numbers was intentional. What reason could anyone have had for the change? Consider this: In the first century, both in the Hebrew and Greek speaking world in the Roman empire, it was common practice to, either as a game, a joke, or a literary device, to make use of the numerical value of letters. Consider that in Hebrew, Nero Caesar (the ROman Emperor who eprsecuted the church in the first century) is Neron Kesar, and that the numerical value of the name based on the value of the Hebrew letters, as would have been well known by John, the author of the book of Revelation, is 666.

Now consider the fact that Nero’s title (Nero Caesar) in its Latin pronunciation, when transliterated into Hebrew, has a numerical value of 616.

The connection noted here is not a novel one entertained by only a few. One of the great textual scholars of the 20th century, Bruce Metzger noted the two numbers 666 and 616 in use in the early church and noted:

Perhaps the change was intentional, seeing that the Greek form Neron Caesar written in Hebrew characters (nrwn qsr) is equivalent to 666, whereas the Latin form Nero Caesar (nrw qsr) is equivalent to 616.

Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London: United Bible Societies, 1971), 752.

As the book of Revelation began to be circulated beyond its first, largely Jewish audience (as illustrated in it’s obviously Jewish style and plethora of Old Testament references) and moved into a more Latin or Greek setting, this numerical device had to be updated so that it might be understood by the new readers. What all of this can be taken to suggest is that the copyist were so sure that the “Beast” was in fact a reference to Nero Caesar, they were quite comfortable simply inserting another number that, like 666, represented Nero’s name.

Glenn Peoples

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My kids love the reality TV show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The basic plot of each episode is the same. The team reviews application tapes from a number of families (they only show the winning application on TV), and the application is a video clip explaining that someone (usually the parents of the household, or one of them, since sometimes the other has passed away tragically) is a really good person who gives a lot to other people and that he or she has undergone difficulties, and they don’t have a very nice place to live and wouldn’t it be wonderful to do something for them – you get the idea.

Next, the team goes to visit this person and announces that they’re getting a home makeover. They send that person and their family away for a week to Disneyland or some other fun place, and then they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of which is donated, some of which comes in the form of donated materials from businesses, and they make the old house into a huge luxurious mansion of a home complete with every mod-con, a home fit for a Hollywood celebrity. There will usually be computers, televisions, amazing kitchens and lounge suites, beds fit for kings, often a flash brand new car – you get the idea.

Then the family comes home, the crew have the bus moved away from in front of this spectacular new residence, the family goes wild and then we get the guided tour of the house, watching the kids scream and squeal about how wonderful their new bedroom is, they hug the team and thank them, telling them how wonderful it all is, the parents tearfully thank them for the wonderful work they done for them, and eventually the heroes drive off into the sunset.

Charity should not foster materialism

I hate to be the Grinch. I really do. And don’t get me wrong – people are free to be as generous as they like to anyone they like. It’s a free world! Well, some parts of it are. I also don’t want people thinking that I’m against everything these guys do. I’m not. But there’s something wrong with this picture. There’s just no need for it. Even if we’re committed to giving to the poor, even to the point of giving away a new house (!!!), there’s still no need for the super duper huge, pimped out mansions replete with console games and laser defence systems (OK, not quite) that I see on that show. What would be wrong with renovating their house for them so that it’s nice and meets all their needs? If they need transport, how about a modestly priced minivan? Why the need to, effectively, get them living like the rich and famous?

With the resources poured into one of these extravagant dream homes that house one family, several families could have been placed in decent homes. Having a quick look around the web, I can see (thankfully) that I’m not the only one who sees this. Talking about Nathan, a man whose family was the recipient of the lavish Home Edition treatment, one person said (here):

My family and I have been close with Nathan for years, and while I’m sure they are eternally grateful for this opportunity, it is in no way “fulfilling their dreams.” These are the kind of truly selfless people who would rather these millions of dollars be spent on the less fortunate -because yes, there are plenty of less fortunate people than the Montgomery’s, here in our community- than on an extravagant mansion for their relatively small family. ABC would be better off sticking to actual renovations (I don’t interpret “makeover” as “demolish”), and giving all of that saved money to Salt and Light.

[Salt and light is a charity Nathan runs that provides food, clothing and counselling to the poor and disadvantaged.]

Well said. Yes, it’s an emotional rush to see people’s lives turned upside down in this way, especially when accompanied by (very genuine) sob stories and soft music. But I really think it distorts the meaning of charity and uses smoke and mirrors, overshadowing the ongoing hard work of charities on a daily basis worldwide. I’d love, for example, to see Extreme Makeover: Home Edition use that resource pulling power and to put it behind, say, Habitat for Humanity.

Glenn Peoples

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A while ago (mid 2006) I became a contributor to Theopedia. It’s an online encyclopedia of theology, run as a wiki project where articles are contributed and edited by the public.

In order to be a contributor at this site, one must endorse the statement of faith, which lays out a set of basic theological convictions. I accepted this, meaning that there was no barrier to contributing. One of the things I did shortly after signing up was to do some editing on the entry under “annihilationism.” It really needed to be done, as a number of other members said, because the existing piece was, to put it gently, something of an anti-annihilationist hack job. It is significantly better now (although by no means fully fair). I also offered to re-write the terrible entry on “hell,” which one of the admins encouraged me to do. I haven’t yet, although I’ve done some reasearch and writing for that entry, which I planned to add to the site when it was ready. In addition I supplied an article, written by myself, on Divine Command Ethics and one on John Locke.

In the meantime, some people were unhappy about the insistence on fairness in the article on annihilationism. Noises were being made about the site not “supporting” annihilationism, although as I pointed out to people, the statement of faith in fact permits that point of view.

Until now. The statement of faith at Theopedia has now been changed, the old statement about the eternal state has been deleted, and a new one has been added, which says “We believe that Jesus will return, bodily and visibly, to judge all mankind — receiving true believers to Himself and condemning the rest to eternal torment in Hell.”

Here’s the kicker. The statement of faith comes with a disclaimer:  “We, the board, reserve the right to make changes to the statement to guard the truth.”

Make changes to guard the truth? Is truth some sort of moving target? This was simply a move that excluded those who do not share the personal point of view of the “board” from contributing. One of the admins told me in reply to my complaint – we reserve the right to draw a line in the sand. Draw a line? The line was drawn when the statement was written. I had no problem with this. The problem is when existing lines are shifted. The terms were changed when people began to realise in horror that people as sincere in the faith as them did not think the same way as them. Oh the humanity. I’ve deleted my contributions to the site. After all, if not sharing their beliefs about hell is enough to render one unworthy of contributing, then my contributions should not be there. Here’s just another case of a thin guise of making information available to the public, veiling the same partisan spirit that contemporary evangelicalism is blighted by.

Theopedia has discredited itself in my eyes, and if you’re a user of that site, just bear in mind that just because it’s in writing doesn’t make it informative.

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OK, just one more comic, this time from XKCD:

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I couldn’t resist. I saw this today and involuntarily nodded.

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I’m not the kind of guy who tends to be fazed when people – even people for whom I hold a good deal of respect as insightful thinkers – do not agree with me. However, I’m also someone who likes to see people that I respect as insightful thinkers expressing the same conclusion as me. I like that kind of affirmation. I guess comparing these two facts just serves as evidence that I’m more likely to interpret evidence as suggesting that I got something right than that I got something wrong – even when I perhaps should!

Matt from MandM gave me a book for Christmas in 2008, and I’ve only just now started properly reading it through. The book is Justice: Rights and Wrongs by Nicholas Wolterstorff, and it’s a substantial and careful defence of his belief that justice consists in upholding inherent human rights. As I slowly progress through the book (I don’t get nearly as much time to just read as I would like) I’ll be posting my responses and comments here at the blog. I’ve got an immense respect for Professor Wolterstorff as one of the finest Christian philosophers around today, and one of the finest philosophers at all writing in political philosophy, justice and the role of religious conviction in the public square. Scanning the table of contents I can already see some areas that may provoke a few comments (either for or against what I read). His denial that rights are grounded in duties and his claim that rights are not conferred by God but exist because of human worth will prompt some close queries on my part as to whether Wolterstorff provides a theory of value where worth is not conferred by God – but these will have to wait until I have read that far into the book.

To the point – I was very pleased (in the entiely self-serving pat-myself-on-the-back sort of way) to see Wolterstorff saying in print in 2008 what I had written in my doctoral thesis in 2006 (which was later completed in 2007). I quote here from pages 15-16 of Justice:

A few paragraphs back I mentioned John Rawls. Such is the fame of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice that almost everyone who picks up this book will want to know what I have to say about Rawls. Apart from incidental comments, I do not have anything to say about Rawls. The reason for my silence is straightforward. Though Rawls’s theory of justice is an inherent natural rights theory, he does nothing at all to develop an account of such rights. He simply assumes their existence. My interlocutors will be those who do not just appeal to such rights but have something to say about them.

And:

Ronald Dworkin argued that when one looks beneath the surface [of Rawls's theory], one finds inherent natural rights at the basis of the theory. Fundamental to Rawls’s theory is the principle of equal respect for all members of the social order (or for all members who can engage in the relevant “bargaining”). The question is, what is the basis for this principle of equal respect? Dworkin’s conclusion is that “justice as fairness rests on the assumption of a natural right of all men and women to equality of concern and respect, a right they possess not by virtue of birth or characteristic or merit or excellence but simply as human beings with the capacity to make plans and give justice.” Dworkin’s argument is almost entirely deductive: given other things Rawls says, this has to be his view. But there are passages in Theory of Justice that confirm Dworkin’s interpretation—though it has to be said that Rawls was evidently very reluctant to bring his appeal to inherent natural rights (and duties) to the surface, which is why most readers miss it.

And now from my thesis:

Almost incredibly on the one hand, but understandably on the other, Rawls never really argues that people are equal in any way, shape or form. I say “understandably” because Rawls does not, by all appearances, want to get bogged down in theoretical philosophical considerations, but simply wants to get on with the business of talking about how his theory of justice applies (see for example in the next chapter, page 205, where I note Rawls’ explicit claim that this is so). But it is just obvious that basic egalitarianism is an essential part of Rawls’ theory. As noted in the introduction to the new liberalism, Rawls’ most significant contribution to political science is the original position, that imaginary scenario where we, as relevantly wise and informed people, create a constitution when we are stripped of the particular information about what circumstances we will find ourselves in, such as wealth, geographical location (provided one is in the society in question), and apparently, beliefs about religion, philosophy, and much that we, in the real world, take to be important (but not, incidentally, the fact that we believe political liberalism to be just). This way we will refrain from advocating any social arrangement that favours any person on account of his wealth, geographical location or religion etc. The underlying rationale for this is that nobody should be unfairly advantaged over anyone else since we should all count equally in society. When it comes precisely to the claim that we are equal in Rawls, however, Amy Guttman’s question about Rawls’ device of the original position and the veil of ignorance must be answered by affirming the latter of the following two options: “Does it provide an Archimedean point of justification or does it simply suggest a framework that organizes the firmest intentions of someone who is already a committed egalitarian?” (Amy Guttman, Liberal Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 120.)

Rawls apparently did not think that since equality is necessary for political liberalism, it is itself subject to any of the truth tests or justificatory obligations that other beliefs must meet.

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled.

Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, 2nd ed.), 3.

But the claim that we are equal is surely – even if true – a theory. If any theory no matter how elegant must be rejected or revised if it is untrue, then the theory that citizens are such that they should be regarded as equal must also be rejected or revised if it is untrue. Notice that Rawls’ requirement for a theory’s acceptance is higher than the requirement for a policy’s endorsement. No policy should be endorsed unless it can be justified to other citizens in terms he or she accepts, but no theory should be accepted by us as philosophers and theorists unless it is true, regardless of who we could persuade to accept it. But Rawls does not argue that basic equality is true, nor does he spell out what it is. At most, he tells us what we should do because of equality. In the above quotation, the cynical reader might translate it to mean “no theory should be accepted unless it is true, or unless I need it to support my theory.” Rawls appeals to the fact of equality on many occasions. He says that the way to think of justice as fairness is to think of it as that constitution that would be reached just if people made the relevant decisions in the original position, “this position of equality” (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 102). It is a position in which all parties are “equally represented as moral persons,” unaffected by “arbitrary contingencies” such as, among other things, religion (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 104). Says Dombrowski, “the original position is meant to model what claims to justice ought to look like in the real world, for example, by modeling the idea that each is of equal worth” [emphasis added]. (Daniel Dombrowski, Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism (Alany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 13.). In other words, it shows us what equality in practice would look like in the process. “If the original position is to yield agreements that are just,” Rawls tells us, that is, if it is to work at all, “the parties must be fairly situated and treated equally as moral persons.” (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 122). Quotations could be multiplied, but it is clear that Rawls’ most important contribution to political thought is one that works (setting aside for now problems it might have) just if equality is true. It is a game, and equality is one of the rules. Equality, in Rawls, makes his theory work. He needs it to be a fact, but it is prior to his theory, and never defended by it.

Yes, I used more words, but the point is roughly the same nonetheless.

Glenn Peoples

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