Stanley Fish: There Are No "Secular" Reasons
Fish was a lightweight when he was in academia...and he turned the Duke English department into a PoMo joke. But I've been surprised how clear and interesting some of his stuff has been since he started writing for the NYT. I mean, it's not astounding, but it's perfectly competent.
This is kinda sorta interesting, though the response to Fish (and to Steven Smith) is obvious:
1. This is a misuse of the term 'secular.'
2. Adding God to the picture doesn't help.
I'm inclined to agree that we need something like final causes to make sense of the world, though that's only an inclination. But God is not necessary for final causation. The error that people like Fish and Smith make is to deploy what are basically skeptical arguments against non-theistic views of the world, and then to simply assume that adding God will somehow...magically...help. Needless to say, that is an error.
The fact of the matter is, we're not sure how to make sense of either theoretical or practical reason. We are, that is, not sure how to make sense of reason at all. Personally, I'm skeptical of the contemporary scientistic/"naturalistic" view of reason and the universe--that is, the view that pretends that science is philosophically unproblematic, and that we can make sense of everything in terms of science narrowly construed and efficient causation. And I suspect that what has to be added to the picture will not be popular among the Skeptical Inquirer set. But what has to be added is more along the lines of final causation than it is along the lines of God. God, whatever other theoretical work he might do, doesn't help us make sense of reason or reasons, and he's not necessary for making sense of or defending final causation. But what's really wanted here is a discussion of final causation. But that's not going to be possible in the two minutes I have remaining to finish this post...
(h/t Sharif)
Fish was a lightweight when he was in academia...and he turned the Duke English department into a PoMo joke. But I've been surprised how clear and interesting some of his stuff has been since he started writing for the NYT. I mean, it's not astounding, but it's perfectly competent.
This is kinda sorta interesting, though the response to Fish (and to Steven Smith) is obvious:
1. This is a misuse of the term 'secular.'
2. Adding God to the picture doesn't help.
I'm inclined to agree that we need something like final causes to make sense of the world, though that's only an inclination. But God is not necessary for final causation. The error that people like Fish and Smith make is to deploy what are basically skeptical arguments against non-theistic views of the world, and then to simply assume that adding God will somehow...magically...help. Needless to say, that is an error.
The fact of the matter is, we're not sure how to make sense of either theoretical or practical reason. We are, that is, not sure how to make sense of reason at all. Personally, I'm skeptical of the contemporary scientistic/"naturalistic" view of reason and the universe--that is, the view that pretends that science is philosophically unproblematic, and that we can make sense of everything in terms of science narrowly construed and efficient causation. And I suspect that what has to be added to the picture will not be popular among the Skeptical Inquirer set. But what has to be added is more along the lines of final causation than it is along the lines of God. God, whatever other theoretical work he might do, doesn't help us make sense of reason or reasons, and he's not necessary for making sense of or defending final causation. But what's really wanted here is a discussion of final causation. But that's not going to be possible in the two minutes I have remaining to finish this post...
(h/t Sharif)
posted by Winston Smith at
3:13 PM
1 Comments:
You know, this kind of stuff is why, more and more, I'm finding myself becoming a pragmatist.
Maybe we do need an answer. Maybe religion adds something to our lives that is missing otherwise. And yeah, maybe we're going to just make something up, but if we're going to do that, surely we can do better than the religions we've been presented with. I mean, as long as we're making stuff up, let's make up something really good.
---Myca
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