h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It has gone quiet hasn't it?

I liked the Rushdie quote, too. Not too dissimilar in intent from my own remarks somewhere waaay back in the blog that some see the working of the world as deriving from agency, and some see agency as deriving from the working of the world.

Noggin

Hi Noggin. I hope you don't think I'm always picking on you!. It's just that what you say usually has sufficient content for analysis.

I guess I must have missed the earlier entry you refer to, but I would like you to unpack that word 'deriving' which, knowing you, must have been carefully chosen.

Unlike the Rushdie quote, what you say seems to me to posit a false dichotomy. According to me, we use evidence from the 'working of the world' to infer agency. Then we might causally attribute the former to the latter. So our belief in agency derives from the world, which leads us to believe that the world derives from agency. You seem to be trying to say something different. Please explain.

toxx

If you believe in Christianity, as described in the Bible, you have to believe that the people who wrote it speak the truth as given to them by God. However, the author(s) of the Bible were trying to start up their own club, and to do so, they had to make all the other clubs look as bad as possible. For example, the Jews are given most of the blame for the crucifixion of Jesus, but historically, Pontius Pilate was a tyrannical ruler who ruthlessly put down those who would rebel (or appear to rebel) against his rule. So, if their really was a Jesus, he was put to death not by the Jews, but his willingness to openly espouse "subversive" ideology in a highly hostile environment.

Greetings, MT. I'm not quite clear what your main point is there. After all, the authors of the gospels were Jewish while Saul/Paul was more Roman influenced. Are you saying that they present radically different views of the historical Jesus. I don't see it myself.

toxx

Hi MT.

toxx

I'm not at all sure that we do infer agency from the workings of the world (though we do have to have experience of the world to acquire the concept and apply it.) But we seem to respond to other persons as agents before we acquire the concept (and it has been suggested that certain forms of autism result from a failure to ascribe agency to other persons, even when the sufferers have enough experience of the world to do so.)

Noggin

Noggin. I guess I should have said that 'if we infer agency', we infer it from the workings of the world. Please excuse my regrettable tendency to shorthand. I would argue, though, that the difference under consideration is the range of cases in which one is prepared to contemplate agency as a sound conclusion.

The question arising from this is how do we justify having the range that we do have? Is there a superordinate rule, a rule of thumb, do we judge each case on its merits, is there an entrenched practice or do we merely have individual prejudices subject only to psychological explanation?

Well, it is still a bit quiet round here so I'm hoping to rattle the odd cage - assuming the occupant is still at home.

toxx

It seems I must reply to myself. Here's a link I might just have posted before. UK mirror site for encyclopaedia of philosophy: http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/contents.html

toxx

Interesting link, Toxxin, I just had a look, I'll have another look later.

My point was that it's very hard to believe in any kind of God when our only "direct" sources of information are so obviously biased. Also, the authors of the Bible were Jewish/Roman before they began work on the Bible . . . they had obviously abandoned many of the basic tenets of their respective faiths at that time.

toxxin,
My point was that it's very hard to believe in any kind of God when our only "direct" sources of information are so obviously biased. Also, the authors of the Bible were Jewish/Roman before they began work on the Bible . . . they had obviously abandoned many of the basic tenets of their respective faiths at that time.

"The question arising from this is how do we justify having the range that we do have? Is there a superordinate rule, a rule of thumb, do we judge each case on its merits, is there an entrenched practice or do we merely have individual prejudices subject only to psychological explanation?"

And a good question it is, Toxx.

It appears to me that the 'range of cases' is shrinking all the time. Some Victorians assigned agency to the opening of flowers in the spring, in Mediaeval times agency was assumed for most natural events; the movement of celestial bodies, the weather etc. Today even the religious rarely automatically assume some kind of agency is directly at work controlling these phenomena but many would point to some agency as the initial cause of all things. Conspiracy theorists of course assume agencies are at work all over the place, controlling our lives and determining world events, but in a much more corporeal sense than those considered earlier.

I think there is often a tendency to want to apportion blame so when something goes wrong it is natural to consider some (malicious) agency at work. I often think my - computer / car / insert recalcitrant device here - has a mind of its own when it does something unexpected but I don't seriously believe it. Some do, though. On the whole I think there are a number of factors which lead people to contemplate agency, as you put it: belief system, culture, experience, wishful thinking and probably mental health.

F

Sorry about the delay in replying, toxx; the old brain needs time to digest things these days.

And now Fathom has beaten me to the draw

The main point, I think, is that agency doesn't seem to be inherent in things, but ascribed to them. I can't myself come up with any working model of agency that doesn't *presuppose* some orderliness and regularity in the agency itself.

Noggin

Isn't this a restatement of the agument from design?

I look at a watch and think "agency"; particularly since the agent appears to have stamped his name on the back. I look at a forest and think "evolution". Unless you wish to define evolution as an 'agent'.

In that sense there is indeed orderliness and regulation in evolution; but only in the way there is orderliness and regulation in, say, turbulent fluid flow. [There are patterns suggesting general rules but sufficient randomness/chaos to make accurate predictions impossible.]

I suggest it is a human trait to suspect agency unless we have evidence to the contrary. We first ask 'who did that' before we consider 'how did that occur'. In addition we would automatically ascribe human-like attributes and purpose to any agency because all our direct experience of agents - other people or occasionally animals - have those attributes and purpose. Hence we refer to ships as 'she' and swear at the car when it breaks down.

F

Hi ACW. Here is your local mirror site in Australia: http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/contents.html

toxx

Thanks, toxxin...

The way I see it, deities wasn't created until mankind could stand on it's two legs and ask questions about his surroundings, where do we come from? what is it with this lightning thing? Why doesn't the ocean disappear over the edge etc etc... With time, science has given us answers to many (but by no means all) of these questions. There simply is no reason to believe in gods anymore, except if you don't have enough confidence in yourself and constantly need someone higher up to guide you. That may be a god or it could just as easily be a parent or a husband. What I mean is, people who need to believe in various gods are people who aren't able to stand on their own.

And to say that we need christianity to give us moral guidelines is a blatant lie, if you think that we aren't able to divide good from evil without the aid of a book I think you put too little trust in your fellow human beings.

Just my two cents worth

Midnat

Although I'd accept that for many people religion
has served the purpose you discribe, so in the last century did the dogmatic political ideologies of Marxist-Leninism and Fascism.

Religions supply a ready-made moral framework for people that they don't have to think about. With the decline of Christianity (built on unsound foundations as it was) in the West many people seem to lack a moral compass and value only material success.

Moral compass

Lets look at the scandals that embroil so many of those who pretend to be pious.

Jesus threw the money lenders out of the temple but the roman catholics started selling the bigGs forgiveness to people.

Have churches that deny religious gites to homosexuals and divorcees kept their moral compass or its it the branches of the church that have found compassion and acceptance for peoples lifestyles and choices aho are true to the words of Jesus?

I have seen no evidence for the church providing any moral compass ever!

What it did at a times in UK history when church attendence was practically compulsory was provide a common map of ethics which people could choose to navigate lifes moral mazes. I think that through the course of the 20th century people have been afforded by societal changes new freedoms to live thier lives more how they would like. Yet the ruling classes have shown no difference in how they behave.

The prevailing moral climate for many centuries in Britain was based only on keepin all your skeletons well hidden. I dont think that the decline in church attendance and influence on people has made on bit of difference to peoples individual moral compasses.

True materialism is the new doctrine with cathedral like malls popping up all over the world.

one love

Blicky you're quibbling
How is a moral compass different from providing "a common map of ethics which people could choose to navigate lifes moral mazes"
I never claimed that church leaders or the ruling followed the morality they preached.

I thought the important difference is that people tend to prefer to think of a moral compass as something internal and generally a good thing.

A common map of ethics is more specific, I think, as it does not come loaded with any meaning not specific to what we are talking about.

Though I agree we are trying to describe the same thing I thought it important to mention that those in the upper reaches of the church did not always act as if they were subject to a moral compass or even in posession of one!

one love