Is it too risky to do philosophy if there is no God?

If we are created by a loving God, there is good reason to expect that what is good for us to believe—maybe even good for us as moral agents—and what is true tend to go together in the case of the most important beliefs. But if we’re not created by a loving God, then I wouldn’t expect the true and the beneficial to go together, except in the case of straightforward empirical beliefs about the external world, such as that apples are nutritious and that lions eat us. If there is no loving God, it would seem pretty likely to me that—as some non-theist philosophers indeed worry—it is good for us to have various philosophical illusions (say, that God exists).

This means that if one is sure there is no loving God, there is a pretty decent argument against doing philosophy. For either philosophy leads to truth or not. If it doesn’t lead to truth, there is little point to doing it: for then philosophy fails to promote the non-instrumental value of truth and we have no reason to think that it would be any more beneficial instrumentally than our pre-philosophical views. But even if it leads to truth, then unless we think there is a correlation between truth and utility, we are still risking endangering beliefs—such as in moral responsibility—that are crucial for human society’s functioning. Given how much is at stake here, it seems not to be worth the risk. One might hope, of course, that philosophy would lead to beliefs—true or false—that would let society function much better than it has done in the past, and that the hope of this benefit at least cancels out the fear of harm. But I think this is unrealistically optimistic: it seems far easier to undermine society than to build it up. (Think of the sweeping tragedies arising from Marxist and fascist philosophies in the 20th century.)

That said, one doesn’t need to be confident that there is a God to justify doing philosophy. One just needs a sufficiently high probability that once one takes into account the possibility that God exists and hence that truth and utility are correlated, the expected value of doing philosophy is positive.

And the above line of thought doesn’t apply to the kind of abstruse philosophy which is unlikely to connect with everyday life.

Optical and emotional illusions

It's a pleasant and innocent pastime to look at optical illusions, planning to be initially pulled to error but then to overcome. On the other hand, it's not innocent to invite certain kinds of emotional illusions, to pursue a line of thought that one plans to excite in oneself an unjust scorn for someone or a feeling of class superiority, even if one plans and reasonably expects to overcome these mistaken emotions afterwards. Similarly, it can be a valuable exercise to take what one knows to be a piece of pseudoscientific reasoning and put oneself in the shoes of the reasoner, try to feel the force of that reasoning from the inside, as long as one is confident that one won't be finally taken in. But to do this with faulty moral reasoning seems deeply problematic: it is a bad thing to read Mein Kampf or watch Birth of a Nation while putting oneself in the author's or director's shoes, trying to feel the force of the moral convictions from the inside, even if one is confident that in the end one won't be taken in.

Likewise, there need be nothing wrong with reading science fiction or fantasy that presents a world with laws of nature different from ours and to engage in the willing suspension of disbelief. It may even be fine when the world has a different mathematics from ours--to read, for instance, a story about a message encoded in π, a message that, we suppose, isn't there (at least not where the story says it is). But to engage in the willing suspension of disbelief when reading fiction that presents a morally different world--say a world where enslaving the weak is actually right (and not just seen as right)--is much more problematic.

Ever since I met it in Plato's Protagoras, I've been attracted to the idea that emotions are a kind of perception, akin to visual perception. But the above disanalogies need to be taken into account. I see two ways of doing this. The first is to say that emotion differs frmiom the senses qua perception. Perhaps, for instance, the senses present things as prima facie, something that needs to be weighed further by reason, while emotions present things as ultima facie. I doubt that that works, but maybe some approach along those lines works. The other is to say that the difference has to do with content. We might say, inspired by Robert Roberts, that emotions have as their subject matter evaluative matters of concern to one qua evaluate matters of concern to one. Maybe this makes the pursuit of emotional illusion problematic.

But is pursuit of all emotional illusion problematic? While it would be wrong to pursue a feeling of class superiority, would it be wrong to pursue a feeling of class inferiority, for instance to better feel compassion for people who have been socialized into such a feeling? I am inclined to think that even pursuit of a feeling of class inferiority is morally problematic. That's a feeling no one should have, and it is contrary to self-respect to feel it.

Reproductions and forgeries

You can appreciate Monet's Woman with a Parasol in person through your own unaided vision. But perhaps you need eyeglasses. If you use eyeglasses while looking at the painting in the National Gallery, you're still appreciating Monet's painting. The same would be true if there were a window opposite the painting, and you were sitting in a tree and observing the painting through binoculars. Further, surely it makes no difference how the binoculars work. Ordinary binoculars work by rearranging light through lenses as it streams from the object to the eye. Digital binoculars, on the other hand, work by having sensors transform the light from the object and then creating images on tiny screens inside. When you look at Woman with a Parasol through digital binoculars, what you're appreciating is the painting through the binoculars, not the two tiny images on screens inside the binoculars.

But notice that with digital binoculars, you can do two things. You can look at the little screens inside or you can, as it were, look through them. The intentional objects are different: if you look at the screens, you see the screens; if you look through the screens, you see the world (including Woman with a Parasol, if that's where you're pointing the binoculars). When you look at the screens, your attention is at least in part on the pixels, the quality of the color rendition, the glare, and so on. When you look through the screens, your attention is on something out there in the world. The two experiences have distinctly different phenomenal feels, and you can go back and forth between them as in the case of the two duck-rabbit.

One more step. In Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, instead of cameras they have iconographs, which is a box with an imp that paints quickly with a little paintbrush. We can imagine binoculars made on that principle. A pair of eagle-eyed imps very quickly paint two little pictures in the box, constantly updating them. You could look through imp-binoculars at Woman with a Parasol, but we could also look at the pictures in the box, admiring the imps' workmanship. You could switch back and forth just by redirecting your attention. Note, however, that both ways of using the imp-binoculars could involve skill and knowledge. It might be that when you first look into the imp-binoculars, it's obvious to you that there are paintings inside (maybe you can see the brush strokes and the texture of the canvas) and only with experience do you learn to correlate the images in the imp-binoculars with the external world. On the other hand, if your visual acuity is not as good or if the imps are really good, you might not realize that there are paintings inside--it might feel like just looking through a pair of holes in a wall, and only with experience do you learn to see the images as little paintings.

At this point, it should be clear that one can look at a painting through its reproduction. It's just a matter of directing your attention and intentionality appropriately. It does, however, take knowledge. You need to know that the painting is a reproduction, just as you need to know that the imp-binoculars track the world to see the world through them.

This gives us an account of the properly aesthetic harm done by the forger of a particular painting (the forger of a particular painter's style is a more complicated case, but perhaps can be handled similarly). By blocking the viewer from knowing that the reproduction is a reproduction, the forger prevents the viewer from seeing the original through the forgery. It is the forgery rather than the original that is seen, but it is misconstrued. On the other hand, if the forger honestly informed us that this was a reproduction, she would be doing us a service--she would be providing us with a telescope pointed at the original.

What is interesting about this account of the properly aesthetic harms done by a forger is that it does not require us to value the viewing of an original over the viewing of a perfect reproduction. In fact, this account of what is bad about forgery depends precisely on the value of reproductions. One could--though one need not--hold that viewing Woman With a Parasol naked-eye, through eyeglasses, through optical binoculars, through digital binoculars, through imp-binoculars and through a reproduction are all equally valuable when the image quality is equal. In fact, viewing through a reproduction could be even more valuable, for instance if one's eyesight is poor and the reproduction is larger in size than the original. But it is important that we see the original through the reproduction, that the reproduction be a window on the artist's production, and indirectly on the artist's soul.

Likewise, we should see God through the world and especially through our neighbor.

A weakness of eliminative materialism

I was telling my kids about eliminative materialism, the view that there are only material objects, and that there are no minds, persons, beliefs, perceptions, etc. My kids are used to hearing about nutty philosophical views, such as those of Zeno, but they noticed that the standard tool in defending wacky philosophical views is unavailable here. For while Zeno can say that motion is an illusion, eliminative materialists can't say that thought is an illusion. For illusions are among the things the eliminative materialist eliminates. I hadn't noticed this.