If you’re ever looking for a good time, one thing that’s fun to do is go out and try to have a reasoned conversation with someone who says that they are an atheist. Such a conversation can turn out to be really entertaining and give you some good laughs. The fun starts when you ask this person why they believe what they believe. Almost certainly you will get an answer like this: “Because I just don’t see that there is any good reason to believe in God or anything like God.” Now this is the first chance for a good laugh, since its obvious from this answer that the person you are talking to doesn’t understand what you just asked them and just wants to say funny things. The reason why this is a funny thing to say is because it goes against a long-established general principle that applies to this case and many others like it. Its a principle that people are ignoring when they say these kinds of things, and its a principle that should not be ignored unless you want to sound silly.
That principle is this: It is a big mistake of reasoning to make what is called an argument from ignorance. The phrase ‘argument from ignorance’ is a technical one that comes down to us from way back in Medieval times that describes the line of reasoning that goes like this:
Lack of proof for (or lack of evidence for) one outcome is proof for (or evidence for) its alternative.
Examples of an argument from ignorance going on include the following:
(a) We do not have any evidence for there being intelligent life on other planets, and so it must be that there is none; so we can definitely conclude that there is no intelligent life on other planets.
(b) We have never found any plaid-colored whales, so we can conclude that there are none out there and that there never has been any.
Now there are two different ways in which an argument from ignorance is a big mistake of reasoning:
Case 1: It is entirely possible to find ourselves in a situation where we do not have either proof for or evidence for either of two alternatives, in which case the only thing we can say is that we just don’t know which alternative is true. While having no proof or evidence for A you may want to conclude that B, but the problem with that is that it is also possible to say at the same time that there is no proof for B and so you can conclude that A. This all means that not having proof for or evidence for something proves nothing at all about something else.
Case 2: Its entirely possible that there is more than one alternative to an outcome, that there could be three or more possible outcomes. So just having nothing to say in favor of one option does not show anything about another particular one; it could be that there is a third option out there and that this third option is what is actually true. While having no evidence for A we may want to conclude that an alternative B is true, but it could be that it is actually another alternative C that is true rather than B. So again, not having proof for or evidence for one outcome doesn’t tell us anything about another one.
(As a side note: The line of thinking involved in an argument from ignorance is a bad one, but note that it is entirely different from what is called a disjunctive argument. In this kind of argument, you know that at least one of two alternatives is true, and then later find that one is false, and then you can be confident that the other must be true. In other words, if you know that either A or B, but then find that A is false, you know that B is true. This is entirely OK.
And this bad line of thinking is also different from what is called the law of the excluded middle, where for any thing you may consider, it is either true or false, never both or neither. In other words, for any A, either A is true or A is false, and there is no other option. This is entirely OK, too.)
Consider again the two examples of an argument from ignorance outlined above, to see how it is that they are examples of bad reasoning. These two are examples of Case 1 above, where we have no proof of either alternative and have no choice but to say that we just don’t have knowledge of the truth of either, that we just can’t tell which one is true.
With example (a): While we have no evidence of intelligent life on other planets, clearly at the same time we have no evidence that there is no intelligent life on other planets. So we have no proof of either possibility; this doesn’t show that there is no life out there, and likewise doesn’t show that there is some out there.
With example (b): Not finding something doesn’t demonstrate that it doesn’t exist; it could be there and we just haven’t found it yet. But just now, we don’t have evidence one way or another. Not finding plaid-colored whales could mean there are none out there, or instead it could mean that they are out there and haven’t been found yet, and there’s no way to tell between these two possibilities.
Now the self-proclaimed atheist described above is an example of the Case 2 mistake, where not having reason to believe one outcome is taken to be proof for an alternative to it, but where it is forgotten that there is more than one possible alternative to that outcome. So to clear this person up, the best thing to say to them is this: “You really need to think about what it means to be an atheist. So step back and consider some definitions.” And then lay out those definitions for them:
Atheism: The idea that there is no such thing as a God, nor any other divine being in the normal sense. So an atheist is someone who believes that there is no God.
This would be the opposite of the following view:
Theism: The idea that there exists some God or otherwise understood divine being. So a theist is someone who believes that there is a God.
And of course, there is an alternative to these views which is:
Agnosticism: The idea that there is no good reason either to believe in the existence of God, or believe that there is no such thing as a God. And furthermore, that there probably never will be any good reason one way or another; the fundamental idea here being that we probably do not have the ability to determine whether there is a God or not. And so, not being able to determine anything on this matter, the only reasonable thing to do is to suspend judgment one way or another. In other words, we should not have beliefs one way or another as to whether there is or is not a God.
Now it is obvious that what the funny atheist is using as a defense of their claim to hold to atheism is not in any way, shape, or form a defense of atheism. If you do not have any good reason to believe in God or in any such thing as God, this does not count as a reason to conclude that there is none. By saying that they just don’t see any good reason to believe in God or anything like God, all this person has is a good reason to be an agnostic, or at least half of one.
Overall, of the people out there who claim to be atheists, there are very few who actually have some reason to think that there is no God. Usually after talking with a professing atheist who turns out to be not one after all, one thing that normally comes out is that, after you get past their surface reasoning, you find that there is actually something else entirely going on with them. What is actually motivating a great many of the professing atheists out there is that there are psychological factors driving them to say what they say, and that its not actually any kind of reasoned argument. These psychological factors usually include some kind of personal or emotional problem with theism and/or with people they have met who they describe as theists. Maybe, for example, these professing atheists have met people who believe in God who happen also to be silly themselves, or really obnoxious, or just plain simpletons whose belief patterns are very uninteresting. In the end, atheism is more often than not a frustration with or a reaction to the idea of theism or the people who profess it, rather than a reasoned view in and of itself.
This realization about the motivations of professing atheists is useful because it helps in understanding motivations behind other patterns of belief. Specifically, the exact same behavior can be seen to be in operation in some people’s attitudes about government. Some people see that there are obvious problems with government and how it does what it does, and with the people who are in government, and they react against these problems by being opposed in principle to government. And as a result, there are people out there running around claiming that they are anarchists. However, in the end this profession of belief in anarchism is not only merely psychologically motivated, being an emotional reaction to evident problems, but it is also misguided in the sense that the reasons put forward in its favor are not reasons for it in itself; they are actually reasons in favor of another, separate alternative. In other words, reasons put forward in defense of anarchism are actually reasons for something else other than anarchism. And so as a result of this, we find that in the end, anarchists just can’t help but to sound silly.
To try to make sense of this fact, that there are professing anarchists out there, review the definition of that idea.
Anarchism: The idea that government itself is unjustified. In other words, the idea that we should not have any government, in that government is wrong in and of itself.
Suppose you happen to find someone who says that they are an anarchist, and ask them why they are committed to the anarchist view. Most likely you will get a response such as this: “In history, and in almost every society, it is seen that government frequently assumes too much power to itself, and in so doing, violates people’s basic Rights. And because of the inherent nature of government to take on far too much power to itself, or even claim all power to itself, and do harm in the process, the very idea of government should be rejected.” And if you really wanted to press an anarchist on this statement for more details, you might get a further response such as this: “There are many and various historical examples of the over-reach of government, cases where government gets it into its head that it can do pretty much anything it wants. For that matter, there are glaring cases of government-gone-wild even in the history of societies that have been considered advanced and/or enlightened. Specifically, there are many such cases like this in the history of England.” And to fill in those details, the anarchist can lay out specific historical examples like these:
(1) Prior to 1066 AD, what was then known as England was a relatively loose collection of many different groups of people: some Saxons, some Angles (both from the Continent), and some of the old Britons who had been there for a lot longer than all the others. This loose collection was held together for the most part by the head men of the counties, which under their system of the time were called Earls. The Earls and the other influential people weren’t elected or anything like that, so of course this was not some type of representative republic, but most people went along with the system since it was their tradition and it allowed a reasonable amount of freedom, at least relative to other places. At any given time, at least one of these Earls was able to get enough support behind him to be proclaimed King over everyone, and so was called King of England, though everyone knew that this was more honorific than anything, as everyone made it clear that they kept their own thing going on in their own places, and that the King didn’t have control over that much of it.
That all changed when the Normans pushed in and took over, as they had their own entirely different system for doing things (being Scandinavian/Viking types), and this system was a lot stronger on the role of the King. That meant that government became a lot tighter and more controlling than it was before.
So later on in the 1100’s and into the 1200’s some of the people in England saw that they were being heavily taxed to help cover the global escapades of then King Richard, and they didn’t see why that was something that they had to put up with forever. While Richard was away and his younger brother John happened to be King for the moment, they found themselves being pressed even harder, as John was really hard to get along with and started thinking that he should take the opportunity to take sweeping control over everything he could. And so a lot of the people, seeing this power-grab going on that was just too much to allow, had to put their feet down, and they laid down some terms that made it clear that the King, any King whether John or anyone else, couldn’t just do whatever he wanted. Thus, we have a clear case of government that just couldn’t help itself but to go too far.
(2) Later on, the King Henry VIII, after going through many wives in order to have a son to succeed him, finally had one, but the son, Edward VI, didn’t last long. So to succeed Edward, the country eventually turned to Henry’s daughters; first, Mary, who luckily didn’t last long either, as she made it her mission to bump off as many Protestants as she could, and then after that Elizabeth, who turned out to be pretty good at the role. Now when Elizabeth died, not having any (known) children at all, the country was put into a quandary as to who to have next. The closest male relative was a guy named James Stewart, who happened to be descended from Henry VII (by the way the same Henry of Richmond who killed the usurper Richard III and brought an end to the Wars of the Roses). Unluckily however, as it turned out, this James happened at the same time to be the King James VI of neighboring Scotland. Now this James was more than happy to move himself down to England and take on the additional crown, so he did and became James I there while being James VI back home.
This turned out to be unlucky for England because James had very different ideas of what it meant to be a king than the average person in his new country had. He was quite convinced that God had led him to his new role and had given him the responsibility and the power to do as he saw fit in it. And so began a whole lot of disagreements with the Parliament of England, which group was pretty much opposed to James’ ideas. These disagreements only got much worse under James’ son Charles I, which then broke out into wide-open fighting in the following English Civil War, that in the 1640’s. The result of that warfare was a reminder to anyone in power that they just couldn’t do whatever they wanted with it. So it happened again, that a relatively advanced country had to go through a huge struggle to deal with government that tried to go too far.
(3) And again later on, after an experiment with a Parliament-driven protectorate that didn’t work out too well, Charles I’s first son Charles II is placed in the role of king, though he doesn’t last too long, and as a result the second son succeeds as James II. And it happens again, this guy had very different ideas as to what is included in the role of king compared to what the country as a whole thought. It turned out that part of what the new James thought he could do was lean strongly towards Catholicism and take the whole country with him in that direction, which was not something that the country was at all in favor of doing. And so it happened again, open warfare broke out all because government that was trying to go too far, with another king having to be taken out because of that.
The point of all this historical review for the purpose of the argument of the anarchist is this: Over and over again we see instances where government assumes far too much power to itself, or even attempts to gain all power there is, and on that basis it is clear that we can say that this is just going to happen with government. But that of course means that government has an inherent tendency to assume too much power. And so with that observation, it has to be that government is just a bad thing in and of itself.
The key to an effective response to the anarchist’s position at this point lies in the comparison made earlier with the similar pattern of belief found in the atheist. In the vast majority of people who are professing atheists, the reason why they have the beliefs that they have is because they do not account for alternatives besides the obvious two, namely, believing in God or believing there is no God. Likewise, anarchists set themselves up with a similar artificial scenario, laying out two and only two possible alternatives: On one hand having government that can do whatever it wants, and on the other hand having no government at all. And of course this sets the stage for them to make the argument that, since government with too much power cannot be allowed, we should not have government at all. But of course, just like in the case of the atheist, this limitation to two and only two alternatives is completely artificial and unreasonable.
To see that there are other views besides these two that the anarchist has accounted for, review the definitions of the two.
Anarchism: The idea that government itself is unjustified. In other words, the idea that we should not have any government, in that government is wrong in and of itself.
This view has been laid out to be the only alternative to its opposite, which can be called the absolutist view of government:
Absolutist view of government: The idea that government must have the power to do whatever is needed for the sake of or for the good of the society, and so must be able to assume all powers to itself if that is necessary. Furthermore, it is actually necessary for government to do this in response to most major problems that a society faces. This assumption of power can come about, for example, through everyone transferring their Rights over to their government. This transfer is necessary since, if some Rights are not so transferred, people will end up having to enforce some things by themselves, essentially having to “take the law into their own hands,” in order to defend any Rights that they don’t transfer over.
But of course, these are not the only two possible views of how government should operate. There is also another, which can be called the limited view of government:
Limited view of government: The idea that government has only the powers specifically transferred or assigned to it by society; and that its role is limited only to the exercise of those powers so assigned. In other words, we have only the government that we want, and that when we establish a government, we transfer or assign only some of our Rights. And in addition, the purpose of such transfer of Rights is done specifically for the protection of those Rights that remain with us. Furthermore, if government over-steps the limits placed upon it, it is no longer a legitimate government, and society is entirely justified in replacing it.
Now the biggest issue with any historical review of problems that people have had with government, like that made above, is that it will not show that there is any inherent problem with the idea of government itself. Of course any such historical review shows that, in particular instances, there are cases where government went too far. But this doesn’t provide an argument that we should have no government, and this is because the anarchist option is not the only option available for dealing with the problem of government going too far. The historical account that the anarchist has used actually just shows that it is necessary that there be limitations laid upon government and that government be held to those limitations. And so in the end, all the professing anarchist really has is a good argument for the limited view of government, not for anarchism itself. But this of course means that those who are professing anarchists turn out to be really not after all, but only just strong proponents of limited government; unless they are just being unreasonable entirely.
Overall, what the anarchist has to do in order to defend their anarchist position is to show that the limited view of government is also not a justified option, in addition to the absolutist view not being a justified option. In other words, it has to be shown that a limited government will never stay limited as it should. Not only does it have to be proven that a limited government will never stay limited, that it will eventually go beyond its limitations, but also that it will do so immediately after its founding; which is to say that limited government in itself is just impossible. This is because any proponent of the limited view of government will freely admit that it is always possible for any government to break out of its limitations. But this doesn’t defeat the whole option, as the limited view has a solution for such cases, namely, that such a government be replaced.
However, the problem with this effort, proving that even limited government is also unjustified, is just something that does not appear to be possible. No review of any historical cases is going to help matters here, as actual cases of government-gone-bad can always be interpreted as instances where limitations just need to be applied and adhered to. The only actual argument available to a would-be anarchist is one that centers on the fact that government uses coercion, force, sometimes even physical force, to do what it does. That argument can be roughly summarized like this:
Government uses coercion essentially in its actions.
Coercion is wrong.
Thus: Government necessarily does wrong, and so cannot be justified.
Now if this argument works out in the end, this would do the trick for the anarchist view, as this conclusion is applicable to any government, whether limited or absolute in nature. However, the whole weight of this effort rests on the claim in the second premise, that coercion is always wrong. That claim is a big problem though, and this problem is evident on a review of simple cases where limited government uses coercion for its assigned ends.
(a) It is obvious that government uses coercion directly against people and their goals. But when limited government uses coercion, the rationale for it to do so is for the protection of the Rights of others. But this is clearly something that a limited government is supposed to do anyway, one reason why it was set up in the first place. For example: it is supposed to see to it that some person A is forcefully restrained from doing harm to person B. Of course this is a use of coercion, but it is entirely justified.
(b) It also happens that government uses coercion to collect taxes. But when limited government does this, it does so for the collection of the resources necessary to do the tasks that were assigned to it. Taxes are payments for services rendered and for services ordered; national defense, police and fire protection, education, road maintenance, are all things people order up.
In the big picture, so long as there are specific instances like these that are supposed to be acceptable, the whole idea that coercion is just essentially wrong just doesn’t hold up. And with that claim not holding up, any professing anarchist has no grounds for any claim against limited government, and thus as part of that, has no claim any further in favor of anarchism itself.
For further review of this issue, note that the discussion above has to do with what a would-be anarchist wants to say, and all the problems that crop up when they try to stake their claims. There are other things that can be said, and these are essentially things that can be called “anti-anarchist” reasons for allowing a limited government to do what it must to carry out its tasks, even to the point of using some coercion. In other words, there is more to be said than just that anarchism can’t work; there are reasons why limited government must be allowed to do its work.
Over quite a long history, there are at least two things that have been said in favor of allowing limited government to do what it must to carry out its duties. These are:
(1) As beneficiaries of society, we automatically have obligations to it, and as a result, the limited government we set up automatically has a call upon us to do a number if things. Of course there is all kinds of room to argue about what these things include, but it must include something.
(2) There is a long tradition that limited government is something that must have the consent of the governed, but this means that once it has that consent, it has the consent of the people to do what it must to carry out its duties. Again, there has been all kinds of disagreement in many historical instances over what exact things are being consented to, but there must be some allowance for something here also.
(published 10/30/20)
Copyright © 2019 philosopherstree.com - All Rights Reserved. Site and all material.
Powered by GoDaddy