I am currently reading Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. It is making me crazy. I love Taylor - his Sources of the Self was hugely important to my intellectual odyssey (I understand this is not any kind of recommendation!). The theism that was not explicit in Sources is in full force in this new book. What I first learned from Taylor is the what I'll call the autonomy of the normative and the inadequacy, as a a consequence, of naturalistic explanation in the social sciences. Norms have "authority" and part of the explanation of a person's action in accordance with a norm is, I think, the correctness of the norm - just as the explanation of a person's holding a belief is often the truth of that belief - often, not always. I think we can't make sense of science itself without a notion of objective norms (Cf, inter alia, Jean Hampton's The Authority of Reason). But anyway, does a commitment to the autonomy of the normative commit me to theism, as Taylor's later work more and more seems to imply?! Because then I have a major dilemma on my hands, given my long-standing atheism.
Oh well, Happy New Year, everyone!
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteMe thinks that normative data is not subject to evaluative concepts such as right or wrong. One's behavior can bve judged right or wrong, but the statistical occurence of such behavior is independent of its moral or functional value. The determination of normative, as applied to behavior, occurs after the fact. Some behavior becomes the norm as a function of that behavior's utility. It is not the mormalicy of the behavior that makes it correct or useful, but vise versa. On the other hand there are norms which have little
functional utility. The basis for such norms are, for that reason, difficult to explain.
In some sub-sets of our own culture bigotry and violence are normative phenomenon. Religion is certainly the norm throughout our culture. Being so may imply utility, but certainly lends no weight to the existence of a god.
Did you mean to say, "does a commitment to the autonomy of the normative," or "..the authority of the normative?" In either case theism is not fundamental to the commitment, unless you pray to the gods of utility or irrationality.
well, i am tempted to offer my usual remarks on a subject like this, but it would be better if the blogger had acutally said anything i didn't have to go to the library to read.
ReplyDeletei can't imagine how someone can claim to know anything about reason, or how reason could support "atheism."
we all "reason." even the religious nuts "reason." so do the anti-religious nuts.
the question would be how do we evaluate reason... someone else's of course, our own is a priori reasonable, and necessary for the evaluation.
"the scientific method" offers a pretty successful model. but all it amounts to is "check your work,"
or better, "check his work," and this restricts the universe of the kinds of things we can talk about...as scientists.
when we start talking about religion, we are no longer talking as scientists or about science.
that still leaves a role for "reason," but i think you'd be hard put to find a determinative formula for deciding between "good" reason and "bad" reason... though there still seem to be community standards that apply.
to cut this shorter... when you talk about "religion" in terms of something like laboratory proof that "god" exists, or that some other objective fact is verifiable, you are not talking about religion.
i don't know so much about the various ways religious people feel, and justify their actions, but my guess is that at bottom they are founded on the same doubts, fears, intense feelings, and reasonable speculations about the universe as i find in myself... and believe you find in yourself, though you call your religion "science."
religion, for lack of a better word, is concerned about all that non verifiable stuff that so motivates behavior.
not quite non verifiable. but it takes a journey.