Antiexplanation

If an explanation is a truth or hypothesis that removes or would remove mystery from the proposition to be explained, then an antiexplanation is a truth or hypothesis that adds or would add mystery to the proposition to be explained. Like in the case of explanations, we need to be sensitive to context with antiexplanations. That Alice dislikes bananas is, in typical contexts, antiexplanatory of why Alice ate the banana. But if we add to the background that it’s Lent and Alice wishes to do penance, then Alice’s dislike of bananas becomes explanatory.

It is widely held, though still moderately controversial, that:

1. The fact that a hypothesis p is explanatory of some known truth is evidence for p.

A parallel claim about antiexplanations would:

2. The fact that a hypothesis p is antiexplanatory of some known truth is evidence against p.

This sounds even more plausible than (1). In a typical context, the antiexplanatoriness of a dislike of bananas to actual consumption of a banana provides evidence that Alice who ate a banana does not dislike bananas. Similarly, the fact that Bob is in perfect health is antiexplanatory of Bob’s death, and hence if Bob has died, we have evidence that Bob’s health was imperfect.

There are lots of explanatory arguments in philosophy based on (1). But it would be worth exploring whether one can’t also give antiexplanatory arguments based on (2).

In fact, I think some fairly intuitive arguments can be rephrased as antiexplanatory arguments. For instance:

3. Materialism is antiexplanatory of consciousness.

4. Consciousness is a known fact.

5. So, we have evidence against materialism.

The thought behind (3) is simply that there is intuitively something particularly mysterious about a purely material thing having a conscious point of view.

C. S. Lewis’s version of the moral argument for theism can be taken to be in part an antiexplanatory argument.

6. Atheism is antiexplanatory of moral law.

7. Moral law is a known fact.

8. So, we have evidence against atheism.

Further evaluation of such arguments would call for a deeper philosophical analysis of antiexplanation and an examination of (2). This is a task worth doing. Someone should do it.

Taste and cross-cultural encounters

After visiting the British Museum yesterday, I find it rather hard to take seriously the argument for the relativity of beauty from the diversity of taste. It seems clear that just as C. S. Lewis has argued for a moral core cutting across cultures, one can argue that there is an aesthetic core across cultures.

There is, however, an interesting apparent difference between the diversity of taste and the diversity of morals. I think a cross-cultural encounter involving a difference of taste regarding the best cultural artifacts—by each culture’s own standards—should typically lead to a broadening of taste. But a cross-cultural moral encounter should not typically lead to a broadening of morals. Very often, it should lead to a narrowing of morals: for instance, one culture learning from the other that slavery sex is wrong.

Why this difference? I think it may come from a difference in quantifiers.

As Aquinas already noted (in a somewhat different way), to be morally good, an action has to be good or neutral with respect to every relevant dimension of moral evaluation. If it is good with respect to courage and kindness and generosity, but it is bad with respect to justice (Robin Hood?), then the action is plain wrong. Thus as new dimensions of moral evaluation are discovered, as can happen in cross-cultural encounter, we get a narrowing of the actions that we classify as morally good.

On the other hand, for an item to be beautiful, it only needs to be beautiful with respect to some relevant dimensions of beauty. A musical performance is still beautiful on the whole even if the orchestra is dressed in dirty rags, and a painting can be beautiful even if it reeks of oil. Thus as we discover new dimensions of beauty, we get a broadening of the pieces that we classify as beautiful.

Inside and outside

In The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis sketches a picture of heaven which is like an onion, with multiple layers, but with the inside of each layer bigger than the outside.

We can get a two-dimensional model by imaging a spherical space with an even bigger bubble sticking out of the sphere in one area.  A two-dimensional being could seamlessly transition from the original area to the bubble area. And of course we can enhance this by supposing bubbles on bubbles, larger and larger. The result would look like a snowman.

But even in the single bubble case, there is the question of the sense in which the bubble area counts as the inside and the rest as the outside. After all the bubble area is the larger one.

I think scenarios like C. S. Lewis's make us realized that the distinction between inside and outside may be rather arbitrary.

This reminds me of the joke about the mathematician who was given a rope and told he could have as much land as he could enclose. He made a small circle of rope around himself and said: "I stipulate that I am on the outside."

Charity and God

Last night, I led an Honors Colloquium on C. S. Lewis's Four Loves. Lewis's main point is that Affection, Friendship and Eros all run the danger of falling into a whole host of problems which he describes with great insight. There is only one solution: charity. It is charity that orders all the loves, keeping them faithful to themselves—keeping Friendship from usurping the role of Eros, keeping Affection from imposing on those close to one, keeping Eros from becoming a tyrant, and so on. Note that this is an empirically informed claim: it is informed by the universal human experience of the difficulties of love, and centuries of Christian experience in finding charity to be a remedy for these ills. Suppose that these quasi-empirical[note 1] claims are correct. Then we have the following plausible argument, which Lewis does not himself make in this book:

1. (Premise) Ordering one's loves in charity is a good solution to the ills of love.
2. (Premise) Ordering one's loves in a love for an imaginary being is not a good solution to the ills of love.
3. (Premise) Charity is a love for God.
4. (Premise) Either God is imaginary or God exists.
5. Ordering one's loves in a love for God is a good solution to the ills of love. (1 and 3)
6. God is not imaginary. (2 and 5)
7. God exists. (4 and 6)

This argument is closely related to this one.