Indian Logic Forum

Tendai Boy · Guest 100.00 points

Critique of God (Ziporyn Notes #1)

We are a group of aspiring comparative philosophers who have organized a small informal reading group of intriguing, difficult and seminal modern philosophical texts. Right now weвЂ™re reading Brook ZiporynвЂ™s Being and Ambiguity. We are tentatively planning to take up HofstadterвЂ™s Godol Escher Bach next, but we are open to suggestions. I am posting these dispatches as summaries of our discussions, in an attempt to open up the conversation to others who have perhaps broader or otherwise oriented philosophical expertise or experiences. Comments are thus very welcome, whether or not you have read ZiporynвЂ™s book.

This time we took up ZiporynвЂ™s critique of God, specifically the monotheistic concepts of God. It is what might be called a вЂњspiritual critiqueвЂќ in that it sees God as detrimental to the spiritual life of mankind. In this sense Spinoza and Nietzsche are obvious antecedents. But his approach is cognitively rigorous in a sense that is perhaps closer to Hume. That is, God is both intellectually implausible and pragmatically disastrous.

First, there is what is almost an вЂњontological proofвЂќ of the *impossibility* of GodвЂ™s existence. This is unique, as far as I know. Critiques of God generally assume that the burden of proof is on the side of those who assert the empirically questionable belief in GodвЂ™s existence. Ziporyn goes further. His proof assumes only one premise: causality. Since this premise is also assumed by most attempts to prove GodвЂ™s existence (first cause argument, etc.), it should be uncontroversial. But ZiporynвЂ™s exploration of Causality, based on Buddhist resources, stipulates that causality cannot be understood as a single cause creating a single effect, nor a single cause creating multiple effects, nor multiple causes creating a single effect: in every case, by definition, causality must be multiple causes creating multiple effects. (Multiplicity is the centerpiece of both the logical and the pragmatic critiques of God. ZiporynвЂ™s book is in one sense an extended critique of oneness in any form.) The critique of God is just one consequence of the critique of вЂњa single cause producing effects.вЂќ Empirically, this is unproblematic: no case of single-cause effectivity has ever been observed, and we have no reason to infer or extrapolate causality in this form from the empirical world: our concept of causality derives solely from observed multiple-cause effects (although the secondary causes are often ignored, because they are relatively constant or more long-lasting than the primary cause.)

But there is also a logical proof: if a single cause could create an effect, there is no reason why it would not have always been creating that effect. There would be no reason for the effect to arise at moment M rather than any other moment. If it is eternally present in or with the cause, then the effect is not a second entity, but just a constant aspect of that cause, and in the final analysis none other than that cause itself; no causality of one entity by another has taken place. The fact that causality вЂњtakes placeвЂќ as a temporal event at a specific moment in time means that there was at least one more condition besides the existence of cause C that brings about that effect: at the very least, вЂњthe passage of a certain amount of time.вЂќ Even if C creates the effect вЂњspontaneouslyвЂќ after being left to itself for awhile, this вЂњawhileвЂќ constitutes another cause. It is something heterogeneous to the original cause, the combining of causes and conditions. E.g., two causes are necessary to produce effect E: Cause C + the passage of X amount of time.

Possible theistic objection: Does causality apply internally to the monotheist God? HeвЂ™s supposed to be вЂњfree,вЂќ isnвЂ™t he? Does that mean free from causal constraints? The Ziporyn point would be, assuming that God exists, there is no reason why He would create a world at one time rather than another; the second condition for world-creation would be GodвЂ™s act of will, his decision to create. But why does this willing arise at one time rather than another? We have an infinite regress, which has to take refuge either in the idea of continuous creation (which already undermines somewhat the usual anthromorphic God of tradition), of timelessness before God created Time (we hear St, Augustine puzzling over it, finally concluding with a threat and an appeal to authority), or GodвЂ™s freedom as exempt from causality internally, although capable of exercising causality externally, e.g., in creating a world. Or the usual theistic refuge: it is beyond human understanding, requires faith, etc. This is perhaps equivalent to the assertion of acausal freedom: it simply means unintelligibility, it means that no questions can be asked or answered, because, as Kant showed, causality in some sense is synonymous with explanation, with undertstanding. To say, вЂњHe does it freely, not because of any causeвЂќ is just another way of saying вЂњI donвЂ™t know anything about it.вЂќ Hence it is devoid of meaning, and equivalent to giving no answer at all.
The theological question would be: is GodвЂ™s being different from GodвЂ™s will? If different, how does his being generate his will? Again we have to imagine some sort of causal relation, and the same question applies. If not different (as Maimonides, Aquinas and Spinoza all assert, I think), there can be no event of creation. But isnвЂ™t continuous creation (not of this or that, but of the entire world, ex nihilo) a bit of an oxymoron? Creation is by definition an event, a passing from non-being into being; if itвЂ™s always happening, no event occurs.
In any event, the use of God as an explanation of the world fails. If we are willing to admit inexplicability for God, we might as well admit it for the world and save ourselves this detour. In fact, this is just where Ziporyn is heading with his doctrine of global incoherence. Our concepts of causality and so on are inadequate not only for God, but for any event, or for the world itself, for which no single account can be given: it is in this sense beyond words and thought, but in a way that makes it still describable in terms of local coherences, and allows the orderliness and predictability of the world as local coherences. But here we start to get to the spiritual critique of God: the draining of all the mysteriousness into the God side leaves the world despiritualized, a thoroughly knowable and controllable machine, which can be given a single meaning and purposeвЂ”and ourselves as well. We become substances with a finite set of predictable qualities, or else we ourselves are bifurcated into a free soul and a mechanical body, constitutively at war with ourselves. Rather, Ziporyn claims, all possible entities without exception are locally knowable but globally mysterious. (So we really are at war with ourselves in a way? Yes, but he goes on: global incoherence is local coherence!)
This is the first part of the logical critique of God, God as cause. The next concerns a demolition of the concept of вЂњNatural Law,вЂќ which attacks God as philosophical principle of unity or guarantor of the consistency or orderliness of the world. Next there is the critique of God as omniscient observer, which is part of the critique of the concept of GodвЂ™s spiritual effects on man. I will post further summaries of our discussions in the coming weeks.
Comments?

crajenin@yahoo.com · Guest 100.00 points

I would like to know how Ziporyn would explain the universality of the concept of god cutting acroos all civilizations.Is the human mind programmed to hav e such a hypothesis?
C.Rajendran

Avi Sion · Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 10:15 am Post subject: "refutations" of G-d

1. The Buddhist idea of multiple causes and effects that you appeal to does not stand up to logical scrutiny. If we understand this as the interdependence doctrine that вЂ?everything is caused by everything elseвЂ™ (meaning presumably, everything preceding it in time; and ignoring the issue of the time causation takes to go through space) вЂ“ then this doctrine is a claim that all causation is partial-contingent causation (i.e. no causative is by itself sufficient or necessary). But it can be shown the latter claim is untenable, or at least arbitrary. (See my Logic of Causation.)

2. The cause-effect relation assumed here refers to causation, but wholly ignores volition. Yet the doctrine of Creation is one that this is an act of volition by G-d, not an act of causation. A Spinozan static, mechanical G-d might be subject to the critique you propose, but a spiritual, Biblical G-d would not be. The issues of time you raise are irrelevant to volition; they are pulled over from causation. (See my Volition and Allied Causal Concepts.)

3. Your attempt to disprove G-d is as futile as attempts to prove Him. A consistent concept of G-d is possible. But the idea of G-d is neither provable nor disprovable вЂ“ logically, philosophically, it is a speculation, but that does not imply it false anymore than true. Faith is fully legitimate, though a private choice. It is not de-spiritualizing in everyoneвЂ™s experience; if properly practiced, without excessive rigidity, it does spiritualize вЂ“ that is why so many people are drawn to it. (See my Judaic Logic.)

(I also invite you to see comments on this topic in my Buddhist Illogic and Phenomenology. Use the site Search facility, or see the tables of contents. These works are posted in www.thelogician.net)

Plamen · Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 5:12 pm Post subject:

In fact pratitya-samutpada (that given, this appears) does not make any strong claims about the causal relations between the condition (that) and the conditioned (this). One cannot say, post hoc ergo propter hoc because - if we analyse the 12 nidanas link by link - we shall see that they are not unidirectly linked as cause and effect. I think, only the first 5 conditions enumerated in Patthana have the potential to be regarded as causes in the philosophical sense of that word. To my mind, sahajata (lit. co-generated), number six, is a causal condition, rather than cause in the sense required by the Sanskrit karana. Actually the hetu-pratyaya distinction is not a cause-condition distinction. Here are the translations of our three terms:

1. Karana - cause
2. Hetu - reason
3. pratyaya - (have no idea how to translate it unequivocally, but since many are claiming that it is etymologically related to pratitya, hence the misleading translation as) condition.

My discontent with the translation of pratyaya and pratitya, wrongly rooted in our mind, is based on the following:

Pratyaya is split into prati (against, in front of) and aya (eye), what is immediately before the eyes - the notion of an object, its mental representation, idea, conception, settled conviction, established knowledge, e.g., pratyaya-buddhi.

Pratitya stems from pratita, meaning well established, confirmed, proved, acknowledged, believed. Pratitya-samutpada means Arising of the things as we believe it is, depending only on our pratyayas, not on the things themselves; there are no things in themselves, according to Buddhist ontology - all things are empty, so being empty, they cannot depend on each other. It is only in our mind that the relations of codependent origination are constituted.

Mary · Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 4:38 pm Post subject: Ziporyn and Nagarjuna

Hello, TB - This is a complex issue, as you know. I'd like to make a couple of observations about previous responses to your post.

Avi

Plamen · Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 7:48 am Post subject:

Not only the early Cittamatrins - it is also the belief of a later Brittish philosopher known to have caused Kant's awakening from his dogmatic slumber. So Kant became a Buddha thanks to similar ideas. Smile

Avi Sion · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 11:27 am Post subject: Anti-theism

To Tendai Boy, again:

Looking again at your post in search of some coherence I may have missed, I am moved to highlight and respond to some of your specific statements:

Avi Sion

To Crajenin:

You wrote:

Avi Sion · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 11:30 am Post subject: co-dependence

To Plamen and Mary:

The twelve nidanas is a great analysis of mental processes, which was one of the main doctrines that aroused my interest in Buddhism (and which personally, psychologically, I found very helpful). The conclusion you highlight:

Tendai Boy · Guest 100.00 points

Thanks to everyone for the interesting responses. For Mary and Avi, here is a quote from Ziporyn which gives his understanding of Nagarjuna:

"For any entity X, to exist means to be determinate, for its non-existence must differ in some real way from its existence. There must then be some range, whether conceptually (i.e., among the set of all conceivable entities), or of literal time and space, where X does not apply, some place, time or conceivable entities in which X is lacking. Hence X cannot be omnipresent and eternal. Otherwise it would be indeterminate, and hence non-existent. Thus it appears only under certain conditions, at a certain time and a certain place. Now the conditions of the existence of X must have some kind of relationship with X in order to accomplish the work of вЂњconditioningвЂќ it, of causing it to exist. Conditioning, in other words, is some kind of relationship between two entities, the conditioning and the conditioned. This applies whether we are speaking of material causality or any other kind of conditioning (e.g., conceptual contrast). But for two entities to have any kind of relationship, they must both exist. These two terms must both exist for there to be any relationship between them, and вЂњconditioning the existence ofвЂќ is a kind of relationship. This however can never be the case if we are speaking of the conditioning not of the state of X, but of the very emergence of X into existence. If we imagine a ground of XвЂ™s existence, which coexists with X and sustains it in being, we must ask why X arose at some particular time after the ground was already in existence. The cause of X cannot be simply the pre-existing ground itself, for otherwise X would have to have arisen as soon as the ground was present. If X and the ground came into existence in the same instant, then we can call the entire system вЂњX and its groundвЂќ one entity and ask about the causes of the emergence of this entity. X can coexist with the conditions that sustain it, but it cannot possibly co-exist with the conditions of its own arisal, the causes that begin its existence. For if it did, X would already exist prior to this relationship, and thus would require no conditions to allow it to exist.
Moreover, even in the case of conditioning the state of a pre-existent thing, we must ask if this вЂњstateвЂќ exists or not. If not, it cannot modify the thing it is the state of, but if this state in any way вЂњexists,вЂќ the same impossibility also applies to the conditioning of its existence. Therefore, X cannot possibly arise, cannot possibly be X as a real вЂњsimply locatedвЂќ entity so conceived. X as such is вЂњempty.вЂќ
This is easy to understand if we consider the state of the entire totality of being at moment M and at moment M+1. The state of things at M is thought to have the power to cause the arising of the state of things at M+1. But if M is gone when M+1 arrives, it cannot вЂњreachвЂќ M+1 to do anything to it; it is already gone, non-existent, and thus can do nothing. If the state of things at M continues to exist when M+1 arrives, however, time has failed to move ahead, or we must admit the coexistence of two alternate total states of being at the same time. If the appearance of M+1 does not necessitate the disappearance of M (which by our hypothesis possesses the power to bring about M+1), M would then continue to generate precisely M+1 repeatedly forever. In either case, time would not be possible, and no real entities could arise. Hence the Mahayana claims that without Emptiness, if there were any being that were not empty, nothing could come to exist. The same argument applies equally to causality of one state by another in space, or of one part of the totality causing or conditioning another. We have a parallel argument about coexistence or superimposition in space, about the impossibility of contact between two diverse entities in a single unit of space.

The Emptiness argument is also sometimes presented this way:

To exist is putatively to be a thing which is just itself and nothing else; to do this it must have (at least) one "mark" or characteristic that distinguishes it, which is unshared by anything else. Is the distinguishing mark the same or different from the thing it is the mark of? If the same, then no marked thing is distinguished--just a mark has arisen, not a marked thing, and hence no existence. If the mark is different from the marked thing, it is not this thing's own mark, but another thing; we have two existent entities, a marked thing and a mark, each of which demands the mark/marked structure in order to count as "existent entity," and again no marked thing is established. Does this mark itself "exist"? If not, how can the thing be marked by a non-existent mark? If so, the mark must itself possess a mark, the same mark/marked structure must apply to it as any other existent thing, and we have the same problem. Hence it is concluded that the mark/marked structure makes no sense, and with it any meaningful claim that "some particular things, disposed in some way or other, with some characteristic or other, exist" cannot be established. In this sense, it is said that the existence of things is purely illusory, a category mistake. They are not "real existences" in the sense of being entities with properties, characteristic marks."
(from "Being and Ambiguity")

I have been slow to respond because Avi referred me to his very interesting website, and obviously these works need to be studied carefully before a response can be given. But two quite remarks for the time being:

Avi's critique of Nagarjuna is very interesting, and it seems to me it rests on the point that "non-identity does not imply non-relationship," which it clearly true and important. However, as I understand Madhyamika, the refutation of "caused by other" is not simply that otherness implies no relationship. It's rather that it cannot be the characteristic "otherness" as such that serves as the effective cause, because then it would apply to *all* others without exception. Hence "X is caused by non-X" has to followed up by "what specific characteristics of non-X account for the arisal of X," and then "what is the relation between these specific X-causing characteristics and non-Xness? Are these characteristics the same as non-X or different?" This is where the, in my opinion, profounder "object and its mark" point becomes important. Mary is right that we must take into account just what is being refuted here. I would say it is "the idea of an entity with certain fixed characteristics." The point is that for causality to occur there must be an overlap of mutually exclusive entities somewhere, and this is impossible. This is why non-identity is taken to imply non-relationship: as Ziporyn says, how can non-X be related to X without there being some contact between them? (Or between both and a third, neither-X-nor-non-X medium)? But for contact an interface is required, and then we have to ask if the interface is part of X, part of non-X or part of both? If either of the first two, there is no interface. If the third (part of both), we have X and non-X overlapping, which means they cannot really be mutually exclusive, which they had to be by definition, and for any causation by an "other" to have occurred.

I'm not sure why you think volition is excepted from the general requirements of causality, if the latter is construed in its broadest sense as indicated here (dependence for existence on the presence of some other entity): isn't a volition "caused" at least in this sense by the agent of causation?