Two kinds of cultural relativism

There are two kinds of cultural relativism, and I think the distinction between them may explain why the same confusion comes up whenever people discuss the moral argument in debates and discussions.

The two kinds are descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive cultural relativism is just the observation that different cultures have and do, in fact, hold to different standards of moral behavior and values. Sometimes they might agree in what personality traits they think are virtuous, but they differ in the degree of value they place in each of the virtues.

Prescriptive cultural relativism is the view that whatever moral norms a society accepts constitute our moral obligations. In other words, people are obligated to live and behave in conformity what their own culture's moral standards.

The descriptive view isn't that controversial. The only controvery is the depth to which different cultures disagree. I think there is far more agreement than disagreement, and that most of the disagreement is superficial. It can be accounted for by looking at the underlying moral premises and how different cultures solve moral dilemmas. But hardly anybody denies that there are at least some differences in the values and morals that different cultures hold to.

Prescriptive cultural relativism can be reduced to moral objectivism because it depends on the supposed universal principle that each person ought to behave consistently with the morals of their society. Since that principle is universal and transcendent, it's not culturally relative even if everything else is. If there is no universal moral presciption about living consistently with one's own cultural morals, then prescriptive cultural relativism would reduce to individual subjectivism.

One of the primary objections people often bring up against objective morality is to point out that different cultures (and the same culture over different times) subscribe to a different moral point of view. I used to attribute this kind of response to a confusion between moral epitsmology and moral ontology. I would grant that, yes, different people have different moral beliefs, but the moral argument isn't concerned so much with the beliefs as with the ontological reality of moral prescriptions. So the standard response to this objection was to say, "Well, people have also had disagreements about the shape of the earth, but doesn't mean there isn't an objectively true answer to the question of what the shape of the earth is."

But I wonder if, rather than being a confusion of ontologogy vs. epistemology, if the confusion is, instead, between prescriptive cultural relativism and descriptive cultural relativism. Descriptive cultural relativism tells us nothing at all about the ontological existence of objective morality. Moral objectivism (or moral realism) is perfectly consistent with descriptive cultural relativism. It's only prescriptive cultural relativism that poses a challenge to moral objectivism. So I think this distinction ought to be fleshed out when it looks like there's a misunderstanding going on in these discussions. I suspect that when people raise the observation about cultures disagreeing on morality as a challenge to moral objecivism that they are confusing the two kinds of cultural relativism. They are conflating one with the other by treating descriptive relativism as if it were prescriptive relativism.

I suppose the best way to handle the situation is just to ask questions for clarification on what the other person's objection is. Maybe they misunderstand your position and think you are claiming that moral beliefs are universal or that everybody holds to the same moral standards.

D'oh! My bad. Lewis' argument from reason revisited

For a long time now, I've complained about how other apologists have misrepresented C.S. Lewis' argument from reason. The mistake a lot of people make is in thinking that Lewis argued that determinism undermines reason, when Lewis argued no such thing.

But it turns out I've had a misconception about his argument myself. What's worse is that my misconception lead to me being inconsistent in my epistemology, and I only recently noticed my inconsistency.

For a long time, I've treated Lewis' argument as if it showed that naturalism undermines all knowledge. I've argued that if our beliefs are caused by blind mechanistic forces, then they can't be rational. The inconsistency in my epistemology was that I also have defended the notion that certain items of knowledge (the foundational a priori ones) are hard-wired. We are essentially caused to believe them. Yet they are rational, and we are justified in holding those beliefs. They count as knowledge.

What's worse is that the way I have attempted to demonstrate that the distorted version of Lewis' argument that a lot of apologists use is a fallacious argument is by pointing out that there are justified true beliefs we have that are both caused and determined, for example, by our sensory perceptions, like my belief that there's a cat on my lap.

I've got it all straightened out now, though. I still think my criticism of those other apologists is sound. I think the way they attempt to defend the argument from reason is fallacious and wrong. You can see my reasons here.

What Lewis argued, wasn't that any belief that is caused is non-rational. Rather, he argued that reasoning would be impossible if naturalism were true. The consequence is any belief that depends on reasoning can't be justified since it wasn't really reasoning that lead to the belief.

This makes good sense because the process of mechanistic cause and effect is completely distinct from the process of logical deduction, seeing that a conclusion follows from premises, or inductively extrapolating. The relationship between "All men are mortal," "Socrates is a man," and "Therefore, Socrates is mortal," is not a causal relationship, but a logical relationship. The conclusion doesn't happen by the laws of nature the way a domino falls because of the laws of collision and gravity. Rather, the conclusion is arrived at by rationally "seeing" the relationship between the propositions and drawing the conclusion through the laws of logical inference.

If naturalism is true, then all of our beliefs can be fully accounted for by appeal to blind mechanistic cause and effect, leaving no room for reasoning. Reasonining is an illusion, so any belief we appear to have arrived at through a process of reasoning cannot be a rational belief. That includes naturalism itself as long as naturalism is a belief supposedly arrived at through reasoning. One can't sensibly argue and reason toward naturalism because the position itself would undermine the process that lead to it. So naturalism is a self-defeating position to hold. It could still be true, of course, but it can't be rational to believe it.

The best a naturalist can say is that while the two modes of arriving at conclusions are distinct in kind, they actually run in parallel in the human brain. They're just two different ways of explaining the same thing. That's how calculators work. Math is a kind of logic, but calculators operatate, at their most basical level, mechanistically according to the laws of nature. I explained in another post why this is not an adequate response to the argument from reason.

The CuisinArt vs. the Breville vs. the All-Clad classic round waffle maker

I prefer the classic style waffles over the Belgian style. It's easier to get the syrup evenly distributed without having too much.

I have owned all three of the waffle irons in the subject line, and the All-Clad is the hands down winner by a large margin.

The CuisinArt cost me about $20, and it never was a great waffle maker. I'd turn the heat up to the highest setting, and when the beep happened, the waffles were still not done. I'd have to leave it in for a few cycles. The waffles were evenly cooked, which is good, but they never were crispy. But that's what I ate for years.

Then recently, I got the Breville because by the time I had enough Amazon gift card saved up, the All-Clad was no longer available. The Breville was better than the CuisinArt because (1) it had no problem getting the waffles brown and crispy without even having to crank it all the way up, and also because it had a big mote around it to capture and cook any overflow. But I did not like the waffles that came out of it. They were crispy pretty much all the way through, which I think might be because they were so thin. The plates were too close together. I tried tweaking my recipe, and I made a few different waffles on different settings, but I just could not get the waffles to come out like I liked. The Breville was the most expensive waffle iron. I think I spent something like $160 on it.

Then the All-Clad became available. By this time I was wallowing in buyers remorse over the Breville. I wasn't sure if I could return it since it wasn't defective, and I only didn't like it. But I returned it and bought the All-Clad. The All-Clad was delivered the same day (yesterday). The first waffle that came out of it was absosmurfly perfect. It was crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside. There's a small mote, but not as big as the Breville. It cost a little less--about $130. I am quite pleased with it, though. I highly recommend the All-Clad if you like waffles. I just hope it lasts.

EDIT - 3/15/2022 - It's been two months, and the All-Clad is still producing superb waffles. It is definitely worth the price.

One track mind: knife making

I think I have a one-track mind. I can't seem to give equal attention to everything that interests me. You might've noticed that I haven't been blogging much lately. That's because I've been all wrapped up in knife making. I wanted to make a video of my most recent knife-making adventure. A bunch of YouTube knife makers decided to do a Bowie knife challenge where they all made a Bowie knife, posted the videos on the same day, and had people vote on the best one. I wasn't part of the challenge, but watching all the videos made me want to make a Bowie. Since I wasn't part of the challenge, I called this a Fan Film.

I'm pretty terrible at shooting videos, and I gave up on it part of the way through. I had accumulated over an hour of video I was going to have to edit, and I just lost my enthusiasm for it. Plus, the camera angles were terrible. So there's video at the beginning of this video, but then there's just pictures with me talking after that.

I have more pictures of knives and other things I've made on my Instagram.

http://instagram.com/sambostuff.

Arguing over the meaning of words

There are two ways that words can come to have meaning--common use and stipulation.

Most words we use in every day life get their meaning through common use. Unless we invested our words with meaning by having an intention behind them when we use them, they would just be arbitrary sounds, scribblings, or gestures we made. It is because there is a thought or intention behind the words that they have meaning to us. Effective communication depends on everybody using words in the same ways. It's through interacting with people that common use takes place.

Language changes over time and can be different from place to place. That's because words can take on new meaning as people begin to use them in different ways. And if people are isolated from each other, they can take their language in a different direction. Eventually, they can become so different that they are different languages altogether.

Since language grows organically, it can be a rough process. It's inevitable that while a group of people are ironing out precise meanings to their words, there's going to be some conflict and misunderstanding along the way. If two people use the same words but with slightly different meanings, they will have a miscommunication. Sometimes miscommunication can happen without either person realizing it.

Sometimes, in the process of ironing out the meaning of words, we resolve conflict by accepting that each word can have more than one meaning. To understand each other in those situations, we have to rely on signs, the most important of which is context. The fact that words can have more than one meaning (since they are used in more than one way) can result in mistakes in reasoning. For example, if we use the same word with two different meanings, but treat them as if they refer to the same thing, then we can commit the fallacy of equivocation. People commit this fallacy sometimes on accident because they aren't thinking carefully enough about what they are dealing with. But people can also exploit equivocation to deceive and manipulate. People can also exploit equivocation to make a joke.

Dictionaries exist for the purpose of capturing the various uses of words. A good dictionary will put the most common use at the top. It's important to note that dictionaries don't give words their meaning; rather, they try to accurately capture the meaning they already have through common use. The definition a dictionary gives is only "correct" insofar as it accurately captures how people use words. A dictionary isn't right just because it's the dictionary. It's not right by definition, in other words. A dictionary can even be wrong if it fails to capture how words are used.

Words can also get their meaning through stipulation. We often use dictionaries in this way. While they are originally written to capture the common uses of words, a dictionary can carry authority if we're all willing to grant it authority. Then we can use the dictionary to settle disputes about the meaning of words. We treat the dictionary as if it's correct by definition. This can have some practical advantages.

When words get their meaning through stipulation, it most often happens when words are being used as terms of art. So, for example, if you're a physicist, an historian, a philosopher, a painter, or whatever, you might have particular words that are used in those fields with meanings that are peculiar to those fields. The meaning of those words in those contexts may be quite different than common use.

When somebody writes a paper in some specialized field or subject, they will sometimes either invent a word or use a word with some particular meaning that may differ from common use. If it's a good paper, and the author intends to use a word in a particular way that may be different than common use, they will be careful to define the word in their paper so the reader knows precisely what they mean by it. It could be that the definition they give is "wrong" according to common use, but that shouldn't matter. As a matter of praticality, all that should matter is that the reader knows what the author means.

The reason I'm belaboring all these points is because I see language causing a lot of unnecessary conflict between people, and I want to offer some suggestions for avoiding that conflict.

Conflict can happen when there's a misunderstanding between people. While most of us can agree that we should all define our terms so as to avoid miscommunication, we don't always know what terms need defining and which can just be taken for granted. So in spite of our best efforts at avoiding misunderstanding, it's still going to happen. The solution is not to accuse somebody of being deceptive or inconsistent, but to ask them what they mean. If it turns out that whatever meaning they tell you is not the most broadly accepted meaning of that word, the solution is not to correct them and tell them that's not what the word means. The solution, instead, is to interpret what they are saying in light of how they are using that word. That's the more amiable way of dealing with people.

If you treat language pragmatically, there's no reason to get up in arms with somebody over what you perceive to be the wrong use of a word. Arguing over the meaning of words is pointless if the bottom line is just to understand what each other are saying. The pragmatic approach is to listen to each other, ask each other what you mean, and interpret what they say in light of the definitions they give you.

There are times when it's useful to argue over the meaning of words, though. When two people are trying to interpret a third person (especially when that third person is long dead and left some writing behind), it's useful for the two people to argue over what the third person meant by their words since that deterimines the correct interpretation.

It can also be useful to argue over the meaning of words when it seems like they are being used in equivocal ways. This is especially the case when a word can carry a negative connotation but doesn't have to. Imagine this conversation:

Jim: Bob, you are a BLANK (used with a negative connotation).
Bob: Yes, I am a BLANK (used without a negative connotation).
Jim: Oh, did y'all hear that? Bob just admitted that he's a BLANK (used with a negative connotation).
Bob: Well, no, I'm not a BLANK like that. [picking up on Jim's negative meaning]
Jim: Oh, don't backpeddal now, you just admitted it. [Jim exploiting the equivocation in a dishonest way and treating Bob uncharitably].
Bob: When I said I was a BLANK, I didn't mean it the way you're using it.
Jim: But my definition is correct.

I suppose some people mean to engage in conflict when they try to stick somebody with whatever negative connotation a word might carry. If they can get the person to admit to owning that word, even if in a benign sense, then they exploit the opportunity to treat the person as if they've just admitted to something nefarious. In the cases like that, it makes good sense for a person to defend themselves by arguing over the meaning of a word. It's a shame one must do this, though.

I can't answer every question or objection

The other day, I saw a comment somebody left on a YouTube channel saying that he went from being a Christian to an atheist because of the failure of Christians to answer all his questions. I suspect a lot of Christians saw that and thought, "We need to do a better job of educating ourselves so we can answer people's questions so this doesn't happen." I think it's great and all that being able to answer everybody's questions is the goal, but realistically, I don't think it's a goal that can ever be met or that we should even expect that it should ever be met.

After all, no matter what worldview you subscribe to, there are going to be questions you can't answer about that worldview. If anybody claims to have all the answers, we ought to be suspicious because it seems more likely that they're making stuff up than that they actually have all the answers.

I don't know specifically what questions this person had that didn't get answered, but I think when it comes to adopting a worldview, there are two things we ought to consider without having to answer every single question or every possible objection somebody might raise to that worldview. One thing is that given all the information we have, which worldview is the best fit? Which worldview has the least problems and explains the most information?

The second thing you should look at is the core essentials of that worldview. There are some aspects to a worldview that are more important than others, and you want to focus on the most important stuff. The fact that adopting a worldview raises all kinds of questions isn't a big problem for that worldview unless those questions raise serious doubt about the essential elements of that worldview.

I think that as an honest defender of any point of view, you ought to be comfortable saying you don't know when you don't know. What I like to do when somebody asks me a difficult question is first let the other person know that I'm not sure, but then to offer whatever thoughts I have on the subject. If you try to offer your speculations before letting the other person know that they are speculations, it's just going to come across as dishonest.

One more point I want to make is that not all questions amount to objections. Whenever you find out something new, it almost always raises new questions. But the mere existence of an unanswered question doesn't amount to an objection. Not knowing how something happens or why it happens is not enough to argue that it doesn't happen. Our lack of knowledge doesn't, by itself, imply that there's nothing to be known. Our ignorance doesn't imply that there's no answer to be found. Questions can amount to objections, but you need a little more than ignorance to make those objections go through.

Two arguments against the empty tomb

Most responses to the empty tomb are designed to undermine arguments for the empty tomb. If sound, they don't show that there was no empty tomb. They just show (if successful) that the arguments for the empty tomb are inadequate.

But there are two arguments that attempt to show, positively, that there was no empty tomb.

The argument from Paul's silence

The earliest source we have about the death and resurrection of Jesus comes from the tradition Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5. It reads:

that he died for our sins according to the scriptures, and
that he was buried, and
that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and
that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Paul mentions the death and burial of Jesus, but there's nothing about the empty tomb. And since this is our earliest source, it supposedly follows that the empty tomb was a later addition to the story. Paul failed to mention the empty tomb because he knew of no such thing.

This is the weaker of the two arguments. Consider a similar formulae:

I was exhausted from the day's hike
I went to bed
I got up the next morning
I rejoined my friends

Notice that although I got up the next morning, there's no mention of an empty bed. Would anybody conclude from a formulae like this that me getting out of bed did not imply that my bed was left empty? To say that my bed was empty would've been an awkward and unnecessary redundancy. It would sound weird if we included it.

Likewise, saying that Jesus' grave was empty would've been redundant. If Jesus was buried, then raised, of course his grave would be empty. As I argued in my series on Resurrection, a resurrection just is when a dead corpse comes back to life and rises from its grave. If the New Testament authors meant anything different than that, they would not have called it a resurrection.

But one mustn't press the point too far. While Paul's words clearly imply that there was an empty grave, they do not necessarily imply an empty tomb since although Paul said Jesus was buried, he did not say Jesus was buried in a tomb. William Lane Craig goes too far in some of his writings to claim that Paul implies an empty tomb.

But I'm not trying to defend the empty tomb from Paul's tradition. Rather, I'm just answering an argument against the empty tomb from Paul's silence on the matter. Paul's silence on the empty tomb tells us nothing at all about whether Paul knew about an empty tomb. That's my point.

The argument from standard procedure

Crucifixion was used by the Romans to maintain the Pax Romana (aka, the Peace of Rome). It was meant to discourage revolutionary type movements among other things. They did this by making them public spectacles of extreme torture. It was meant to be humiliating and horrific in order to discourage people from rebellions.

In keeping with this practice, most people did not receive honorable burials afterward. Instead, their bodies were either left on the crosses to rot, or else they were disposed of in mass graves or wherever people got rid of their garbage.

The argument from standard practice is that Jesus would not have been buried in a tomb in the first place since he was a crucifixion victim, and that's not how the bodies of crucifixion victims were typically treated.

This argument would carry some weight if we had no actual information about what happened to Jesus' body. In that case, we could surmise that Jesus was probably discarded in the usual way merely because it's the usual way. But you can't undermine specific evidence for an event merely on the basis of what usually happens. Specific evidence always trumps these kinds of probablistic arguments.

The argument might go through if one could establish that as a rule, crucifixion victims cannot be buried in tombs and must be gotten rid of some other way. If it could be estblished that dishonorable disposal was what always happened, then we could say there's a probability that our specific evidence in the case of Jesus is mistaken.

But it turns out we have evidence, not just in Jesus' case, but in the case of other crucifixion victims that some people did get decent burials. This was especially the case in Judea where the Jews were typically allowed to practice their religion (which required burying people hanged from a tree on the same day - Deuteronomy 21:22-23) even under Roman rule. Josephus, for example, writes that, "the Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun" (Jewish Wars, Book 4, Chapter 5, Section 2). So, standard practice outside of Judea did not apply to crucified victims in Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified.

We also have archaeological evidence of a crucified victim in Judea who was buried in a tomb. The usual course was to bury somebody in a tomb until their bodies were decayed to the bones. Then the bones were taken out and put into ossuaries. A crucifixion victim named Jehohanan was found in one of these ossuaries with a nail through his heal and other evidence that he had been crucified.

There's more on this subject in one of InspiringPhilosophy's YouTube videos.

He won't last long in the Everglades

The more I hear about the search for Brian Laundrie, the more it sounds like "The Everglades" song by The Kingston Trio. There are just some minor differences, and I'm cutting out a few lines.

He was born and raised around Jacksonville
A nice young man, not the kind to kill
But a jealous fight and a flashing blade,
Sent him on a run through the Everglades.

The posse went in and they came back out
They said he'll die, and there ain't no doubt.
It's an eye for an eye, so the debt is paid.
He won't last long in the Everglades

Where a man can hide and never be found
And have no fear of the baying hounds,
But he better keep moving and don't stand still
If the skeeters don't get him then the gators will

The years went by, and his girl was wed.
His family gave him up for dead.
But now and then the natives would say,
They seen him running through the everglades.

Well, he never heard the news on the radio.
He ws deep in the 'glades, so he'll never know.
His running and hiding didn't make much sense,
For the jury had ruled it was self-defense.

By the way, has anybody ever noticed that the tune of "The Everglades" is the same tune as that old Louis the Lighteningbug commercial?

When your parents and you go to sail for the day
Make sure the power lines are far away.
When your daddy and you make the house look fine
Don't bring ladders or antennas near power lines.