Theology, theism, and philosophy of mind

[paulhope]

At brunch today with a few members of the Madhouse, MH (of last Spring's debacle--talked about here and here) came up. We were joking about how Asher and Ming (another Madhouse member) ought to send their senior theses to the Madhouse community listserv--something MH famously did--and they commented that MH still sends them and a small group of others his long papers from divinity school.

His latest piece was a 40+ page paper attacking liberation theology for not being left enough. This is typical. Quips follow:

Me: That sounds typical.
Asher: Yes, that's always been his stance--criticizing the left from the farther left.
Me: Unfortunately, he's doing theology, which...
Asher: ...which is like sci-fi.

I really liked the simile. (Although it's worth noting that Asher does biomedical ethics, which is arguably just the same?)

Ming was surprised at my positive reaction to Asher's quip; he thought my revelry in the denunciation of theology was incompatible with the "reluctant theism" he thought I espoused. I got on the aggressive defensive: no, "reluctance" means that I would like to change (he clarified that he thought it had meant a degree of resignation).

(At this point, Jean grew very attentive, but said nothing. I haven't ever really talked with her about religion, although she must have a general understanding of where I am, given my wisecracks at Madhouse meetings. I was curious as to what she was thinking...)

Ming: What about the agnostic position, like what [Asher] holds?
[Asher had already left the table]
Evan chimed in, speaking as an agnostic whose belief or non-belief in god has "no effect on [his] spirituality, or [his] being a Jew." Scratching the surface a bit, I discovered that to him, "spirituality" means being part of a community, perhaps one with shared history or morality, and does not involve spirits of any flavor (except maybe, I speculate, Manischewitz)

Which misses the point for me--community membership is at the periphery of my thinking about religion. Theism is, and has been for years, the crux.


So why not agnosticism? Because of Ockham's razor, which I used to think wasn't such a big deal, but now I think is a very, very important part of what justification has to be, because I think it's built into what truth has to be: a description of the world is true if it lends us efficacy in our interactions with it. Simplicity is a component of efficacy--a theory, or piece of knowledge, is made less useful the more cognitive (computational) resources are required for its use. Supporting results--about our conceptual and reasoning faculties being built for the compression and simplification of our beliefs about the world--pop out of empirical studies about psychology, (I think--and I'll get back to you later this semester, when I read some papers on this subject exactly for a class I'm taking) as well as broader theoretical concerns about what mentality is. (If mentality is information processing, then it will hit problems as the information and processing mechanisms grow more complex)

So one would argue that a belief in a god that leaves no trace is not justified. (To some of you, this might seem completely obvious, but I need to keep making the point to myself since I've got some deep running theistic mental habits)

But I didn't mean to talk about Occam's razor. I meant to talk about another angle on this problem which I am going to get to explore this semester, since I'm finally getting to take

PL177 Philosophy of Mind

How does this relate to the problem of theism?

Easy:

1. My concept of god is of an entity with mental properties--they may be concern or intentions for me or humanity, or whimsical recklessness, or whatever. A god without mental properties does nothing to me emotionally--it becomes just another force in the universe. Whatever.
   
2. The question "Is there a god?" can be reduced the the question "Is there an entity with mental properties that has other necessary godly properties--which include things like not being an animal (humans included) or (just in case it comes up) man-made artificial intelligence system.
   
3. The answer to this question depends crucially on what mentality is, and we can explore the answer to this question by thinking about philosophy of mind!
   

So that's the plan of attack, see?

Example: Take traditional substance dualism or Cartesian dualism (those articles really ought to be merged together, or rather into the comprehensive dualism article--I think I'll add the tags right now), the theistic standard. The mentality of god is not problematic at all if you think there exists an immaterial mental substance that is completely separate from physical substances, since you can just say god's got some of that stuff. (This also makes soulism easy)

Unfortunately for these people, substance dualism sucks.

And then things get trickier. More on this later as I learn more about what's going on, but I just wanted to let you know what was at stake.

Oh, also, the other reason to study philosophy of mind is that as an AI-focused cog-sci guy, the ultimate kickass thing I could ever do is somehow develop an artificial agent with genuine mentality. Is that even possible? I dunno, I'll check it out. Philosophy is, after all, contiguous with sci-fi.

EDIT:
There's another way for theism to get in, actually. Since pragmatic truth/justification gets defined in terms of particular goals (?), and theistic belief certainly accomplishes some things, I think you could run with something like that. But it would still be important, I think, to delineate between which beliefs are experience-True, and which are happiness-True. In fact, the proposition "'God exists' is happiness-True" would most likely be experience-True (although we seem to often be talking about experience-Truth when we are talking about truth, anyway, right?)

Formalizing this would be a bitch, I think, which is why I'd kind of like to deal with this in the more restricted setting.