Do you care about justification? Yes = you care about philosophy. No = bye.
Friday, November 28, 2025
Sunday, November 23, 2025
Evan Fales on problems with the Bible
1 hr 14 - Creation Ex-Nihilo
Evan Fales mentions that Creation Ex-Nihilo, a doctrine of classical theism, is not as supported by Genesis 1:1 as Christians have historically thought. It's arguable that the more accurate translation is not that God created the heavens and earth, but that God is creating the heavens and earth (or as I've heard it, fashioning, implying pre-existing material).
1 hr 16 - Imago Dei
Fales claims that Paul says that the image of God is something humans lost, except Jesus, due to original sin. (If this is accurate, then doesn't that mean Paul repudiates the immaculate conception? If Mary is without original sin, then Paul should say Jesus and Mary are the only humans who've kept the image of God.) Fales claims that Paul says that while man is made in the image of God, women are made in the image of man. I'm not sure that's the correct interpretation of 1 Cor. 11:7. If that verse does imply that the Imago Dei doesn't apply to women, but only to men, then that sounds strange and misogynistic. But Paul has egalitarian verses elsewhere (assuming the authorship is indeed Paul in those cases).
"These are not clear and
perspicuous. The Bible itself is a defeater of many aspects of Christian
faith in which people presume that they know what God's Word is, and
there's good reason, from the Bible itself, to believe that they do
not."
1 hr 27
Evan Fales suggests that if we give a skeptical theism response—like that of Stephen Wykstra—then that leaves us clueless as to the balance of goods and evils that God aims for. If God can allow massacres, genocides, mass deception, disease, starvation, and so on, then all bets are off. God can allow basically anything. For all we know, God could allow Christianity to develop as an enormous hoax. But if I have to admit that this is possible, then this provides an internal defeater for Christian belief, says Fales.
Fales suggests that Ezekiel 20 and Isaiah 55 suggest that God would be capable of this. I'm not exactly sure what Fales has in mind, but my guess is the following:
Isaiah 55 says (NRSVUE):
"so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it."
When someone speaks the truth, they don't know how people will respond. Speaking the truth is good for its own sake, meaning that even if people respond poorly, it still makes sense to speak the truth.
But when someone speaks for the purpose of generating an effect, then they don't care about the truth of what they are saying as long as it generates the desired effect. It appears that God is saying here that God speaks power, not truth, in this way.
Since God knows for sure that speaking the truth will not convince everyone, in what way will the words of God accomplish God's purpose?
So these are some ways the Bible provides defeaters for Christian belief.
Craig on the problem of evil
"When you consider the extent and the depth of human suffering in the world, whether it is due to natural disasters or to man's own inhumanity to man, then I think we have to admit that it is hard to believe in God."
-William Lane Craig
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Dual economy system
An idea that has popped into my head a number of times goes like this:
* Have two economies, one planned and one free.
* For the planned economy, the government provides food, clothing, shelter, and other goods and services deemed essential for basic survival (basic medicine, electrical, plumbing, water system, sewer system, distribution of goods, public transport, gas, car maintenance, cell phone service, internet...).
* To opt into government products and services, you must pay credits for them.
* You earn credits by working jobs related to these essential services. One credit = One labor hour.
* Access to government services requires paying a monthly credit fee. Shelter could be 20 credits per month (5 hours a week). Food is 4 credits per month (1 hour a week). And so on.
* The idea is that by working something like 15 hours a week, you can have all of your essentials covered. Food, clothing, shelter (including maintenance), utilities (clean water, heating, cooling, plumbing, and electricity), internet, phone, transport (car repair, public transport, gas), and at least basic medicine if not full on healthcare would all be included within those essentials.
* People who are disabled, sick, or struggling can receive credits for free from people who donate. This simplifies charity and takes a lot of the guess work out of trying to decide which charities are worth giving to, how much one should give, etc. Very simply, just work more than the 15 hours a week that you need to cover your own basics, and donate credits to a public charity bank. This provides free credits to people in need who, for whatever reason, are running out of credits (perhaps because of needing sick days).
* Homelessness is avoided easily because you only need to work a few hours a week to access government housing. Plus, charity credits would prevent those who are struggling from being evicted from government housing.
* You can also bank extra credits for your own sick leave or for general paid leave. Though at only 15 hours a week, I don't expect many people needing vacation. In theory you could work many hours and amass a large number of credits, and... retire, more or less.
* A single payer healthcare system could be designed along these lines too. You pay credits into the healthcare fund when you are healthy and withdraw them when you are sick. This will depend on how healthcare is handled. I'm thinking that over the counter medicine, preventative care / family physician appointments w/ checkups, diagnostics, and basic prescriptions like pain meds and anti-biotics would fall under the government essentials. Basic dental care like yearly check ups and cleanings and cavity fillings could be included. Yearly eye appointments could be covered as well. More serious and specialized care and surgeries, and perhaps emergency care, would be covered under the open economy. Credits have a cash value. To prevent a few people from bankrupting the entire fund,
actuarial science could be used to create caps on how much a person can
withdraw (similar to banks and liquidity risk). So for credit-based insurance, you pay credits into the insurance each month, and if you need specialized or emergency care, you get credits up to a cap that are cashed out for your medical bills. You could have the insurance mandated similar to the Affordable Care Act where everyone is required to pay at least a minimum number of credits into the fund.
* Many people search for jobs but are rejected. Because the work is (usually) simple, and in constant demand, good work would always be available to those searching. And the rewards you get for the work are generous, increasing motivation. The idea is that with so many more people working than would be otherwise, many hands make light work; that's why it only takes ~15 hours a week to cover these needs per person.
* These services are very basic and designed to just cover survival. So government housing, food, and clothing would be not glamorous, fancy, customized, marketed, or anything like that. They would be designed to just cover the basics with zero fluff or fancy. If you want something more customized or with more personality, you will have to look to the open economy.
* This system prevents capitalists from exploiting workers. If an open economy job becomes toxic or exploitative, the worker can simply quit and survive fine on just 15 hours a week worth of work. This provides serious pressure on jobs to offer fair compensation, to not be bullsh**ty, to offer meaningful work, to provide a good work environment, and to treat the employee with respect.
* Very importantly – this system prevents abuse. If a teenager is abused at home, he can move out at a measly 15 hours a week. Same with abused spouses.
* This system prevents the alienation of labor. Your government labor is tied directly to the survival of yourself and others. No bullsh** jobs!
* This system promotes art, because it allows artists to easily support themselves while pursuing their art.
* This system prevents underemployment. At any time there are many people who are able-bodied and able-minded and could provide for society in a variety of ways. But with our current system, employment is an all-or-nothing deal. Either you don't work at all, or you work grueling hours and sell your soul. There are many stories of people who can and want to work but send out countless applications only to get nothing back. That's because labor is extremely expensive, and companies are encouraged to either not hire or only hire when they know they can get a deal on the labor (I've also heard that employment listings are dishonest but that might have been moreso in the PPP loan era, but I digress).
* The open economy accomplishes a number of things.
A) It provides goods and services that the planned economy doesn't offer. For example, government rations probably wouldn't include beer. So if you want beer, you'll need cash. More complex services, like specialized healthcare, would be privatized within the open economy. If you want to upgrade your living situation to a nicer apartment or a house, you'll need cash.
B) The open economy allows for individual freedom and autonomy, both in doing business as a business owner and as a customer looking for products and services the government doesn't offer. If you want, you can operate entirely outside of the planned economy. So there's still plenty of room for innovation.
C) The open economy provides products and services that compete with the government. This prevents the government from being monopolistic and allows for greater customization and potentially increased product / service quality for the customer.
D) Specialized jobs, like lawyers, doctors, engineers, and so on, require intense training and work schedules. These professionals do not have the means nor desire to work the 15 mandatory hours to partake in the government economy (in some cases professionals will do some moonlighting, but it's not expected). And we as a society do not want to force a pediatrician to abandon their more essential pediatric duties to do some plumbing on the side. So we need the open economy to provide for those individuals who work specialty jobs that take precedent over the more basic work they would be doing otherwise.
In theory, these professionals could still avail themselves of the government services. They would just have to exchange some of their cash from their salary for credits and use those credits to enter the system. Or, even more simply, credits could be offered as part of their compensation package, or the government could treat certain open economy work as essential and give dual credit.
*
The credit value of labor could be dynamic. More specialized and yet
essential government jobs, ones that require certification, for example,
could grant more than 1 credit per labor hour.
*
Many government jobs would still give a salary. For example, access to
air travel would probably not be included under the survival essentials.
But the government still has an interest in regulating air travel. So
these regulation jobs would be part of the open economy and pay a
salary. Political jobs would be considered specialized and part of the
open economy.
* Maybe instead of a "gold standard" there could be a "credit standard" backing up cash to control for inflation and to keep the value of cash stable and fair relative to the credit. Cash could only be printed according to how many credits are being issued. The free market decides how much a credit is worth in cash.
* A challenge for this system is the value of labor. One hour of work as a licensed septic tank engineer is not the same as one hour of work as a trainee in janitorial duties.
* One approach is to have the two currency system as described above. Another option is to totally separate the two economies. Credits represent participation in essential jobs, but do not necessarily represent value. If you think the value of your work is more than participation, then you are encouraged to seek work in the open economy. On the other hand, if you are an artist whose work has little economic value, then you can easily support yourself by helping build houses for 15 hours a week while pursuing your art.
You could get dual credit for working essential jobs but in the private sector. So a septic tank engineer working for a private company could apply to a government program and receive not only a salary through the private company, but credits as well. Same with jobs like specialized healthcare. For folks who work in non-essential roles, like entertainment, they will have to either work an extra government job on the side to support themselves or support themselves entirely through cash. Credits are tied to you as a person and cannot be bought or sold. Credits expire after X months (3 months on a tighter model, or up to 12 months on a more liberal model), encouraging consistent work. Retirement would have to come from the open economy (or children could support their parents through charity credits). Credits perhaps could be donated in limited capacity. For example: you can give to blood relatives or to legal guardians / dependents. And you can give to a general charity that randomly distributes charity credits to those with qualifying disabilities / illnesses.
* At any time there could be a gap between what the government promises and what it delivers. For example, the government promises everyone shelter, but there might not be enough housing to deliver on this promise. Ways this could be addressed: A) The government contracts out work from the open economy to address the housing shortage, or buys out houses / apartments on the open market and marks them as government housing. The government taxes the open market and uses the tax money for this. B) The government prioritizes work towards building new housing, offering extra credit incentives until output stabilizes with demand. And C) The government can increase the credit cost of shelter, encouraging people to either split rent, live with parents, or pay for open economy shelter with cash, freeing up government housing.
* On top of all the social safety benefits that this system would provide, you could still have a cash-based universal basic income along the lines of what Yanis Varoufakis recommends. Have a Universal Company that owns a public equity trust. To enlist your company on the public stock market, you must give 1% of total preferred stock to the Universal Company. When dividends are paid, the Universal Company gets cash and disperses it as a universal basic dividend to all American citizens 18 and older. In our current crony capitalist system, profits are privatized and losses are public. A universal public dividend helps amend this: Now profits are public too. This provides massive stimulus to the economy, especially since this cash would largely count as disposable income since people's basic needs are met through the 15 hour a week program. This also helps prevent companies from getting away with rampant greed, lowers inequality, increases individual freedom, and mitigates exploitation.
No idea how viable any of this is. At least this could make for an interesting set up for a story.
Really, I just want to have credits like in Star Wars 😁🤓
Friday, November 14, 2025
On the criteria of best philosopher
An interesting criterion could be how deeply a philosopher changed their mind. (Which happens to indicate another criterion: How many comprehensive systems for competing worldviews could the philosopher hold in their mind at once. A philosopher who can articulate a comprehensive naturalistic worldview—complete with objections and responses—is not as impressive as a philosopher who can articulate both a comprehensive naturalistic worldview and a comprehensive Christian worldview complete with objections and responses.)
Per the book A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand, by Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis, JJC Smart was a Christian when he was appointed at the University of Adelaide, but became a thoroughgoing atheist materialist at some point. He would have been at least 29 years old, potentially indicating a deep change of mind. But I don't know how deep Smart's Christian worldview was prior to converting, or how difficult the conversion was.
If I'm not mistaken, William Rowe had a similar late-and-thorough conversion from Christianity to atheism, and so did contemporary philosopher Felipe Leon.
Because philosophy is, at its core, the love for truth above all else, I feel like those philosophers that represent philosophy the best are those who most painstakingly give up prior beliefs for the sake of truth. Camus says in The Myth that "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined." There's something special about that person who is willing to undermine themselves and sacrifice their deepest self-conception and their most desired beliefs for the truth, committing a sort of metaphysical death and rebirth in the process. So if you especially weigh this criterion, then these philosophers are the best.
But this criterion has at least two problems: One, as already mentioned, it's difficult to know which philosophers changed their minds and how thorough and painstaking was the change. Two, the virtue works both ways: an atheist who painstakingly becomes a Christian would too be a best philosopher. I think that fairly characterizes C. S. Lewis. But I wouldn't consider C. S. Lewis to be a good philosopher at all, mainly because he got just about everything wrong. More specifically, C. S. Lewis a) Did not create a systematic philosophy; b) Left many important philosophical problems unaddressed; c) Of the philosophical problems he did address, did not address them in a comprehensive or sophisticated way (like arguments for and against the existence of God, for example); d) Failed to address serious challenges to Christian belief; e) Especially failed to solve the problem of evil, not that any theist ever could.
Per the book A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand, by Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis, JJC Smart was a Christian when he was appointed at the University of Adelaide, but became a thoroughgoing atheist materialist at some point. He would have been at least 29 years old, potentially indicating a deep change of mind. But I don't know how deep Smart's Christian worldview was prior to converting, or how difficult the conversion was.
If I'm not mistaken, William Rowe had a similar late-and-thorough conversion from Christianity to atheism, and so did contemporary philosopher Felipe Leon.
Because philosophy is, at its core, the love for truth above all else, I feel like those philosophers that represent philosophy the best are those who most painstakingly give up prior beliefs for the sake of truth. Camus says in The Myth that "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined." There's something special about that person who is willing to undermine themselves and sacrifice their deepest self-conception and their most desired beliefs for the truth, committing a sort of metaphysical death and rebirth in the process. So if you especially weigh this criterion, then these philosophers are the best.
But this criterion has at least two problems: One, as already mentioned, it's difficult to know which philosophers changed their minds and how thorough and painstaking was the change. Two, the virtue works both ways: an atheist who painstakingly becomes a Christian would too be a best philosopher. I think that fairly characterizes C. S. Lewis. But I wouldn't consider C. S. Lewis to be a good philosopher at all, mainly because he got just about everything wrong. More specifically, C. S. Lewis a) Did not create a systematic philosophy; b) Left many important philosophical problems unaddressed; c) Of the philosophical problems he did address, did not address them in a comprehensive or sophisticated way (like arguments for and against the existence of God, for example); d) Failed to address serious challenges to Christian belief; e) Especially failed to solve the problem of evil, not that any theist ever could.
(Note: by painstaking I don't just mean painful, but taking pains, evoking the image of someone carefully, slowly, meticulously, and thoroughly thinking through the issues, gradually leading to a hard-fought change of mind. But I also want to evoke the image of someone wrestling with the issues in a deeply honest, personal, and, yes, agonizing process of metaphysical death and rebirth.)
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
The intellectual virtues of lifespace and access to resources
One of the most important intellectual virtues is lifespace. Consider a Muslim teenager who becomes an atheist. If his Muslim parents were to find out, it would be awkward or worse. To build out his new naturalistic worldview, he wants to write public blogposts and post public YouTube videos expressing his views and working through the philosophical puzzles he’s struggling with. This practice of talking out loud and connecting to other philosophically inclined folks across the internet is essential to him for processing information and developing his philosophical skills. He also wishes he could major in Philosophy at university. But he’s scared to express his views publicly in fear of his family and community finding out. Because he relies on his parents for education funding, and because of the economic non-viability of philosophy, he’s scared to pursue a Philosophy major. So instead of focusing on expressing himself, developing his worldview, and engaging with like-minded individuals, he focuses instead on trying to achieve financial independence. The teenager focuses on another career that can pay the bills. But that career has nothing to do with developing one’s intellectual virtue and philosophical knowledge. Many careers stifle one’s intellectual virtue and retard one’s philosophical development. Plus, the teenager wants more than anything to pursue philosophy, and so being deprived of this pursuit leads to chronic stress, and chronic stress is known to severely hurt one’s mental health and brain health, which in turn hurts one’s intellectual virtue. So we can see how a lack of lifespace leads to a loss of intellectual virtue, and indeed a lack of lifespace is perhaps the single greatest cause of the extreme lacuna of intellectual virtue we see in society. We also see how social structures tend to be anti-intellectual in nature, because maintaining one's status in a social structure requires going along with established narratives no matter how absurd and clearly false they may be.
Lifespace alone is not enough, though. Another intellectual virtue is access to philosophy resources. That means: 1) Reading materials, 2) Mentorship & training, and 3) Participation in philosophical communities and extended conversations across a wide variety of topics with a wide variety of people. Considering how rare it is to have the lifespace and access to resources needed, it’s no wonder that intellectual virtue is rare. Because becoming rich and powerful often has nothing to do with virtue, and indeed often has more to do with a lack of virtue, it's no surprise that intellectual virtue is especially rare among the rich and powerful. In a metaphorical sense then, what Jesus says is true when he says that it's harder for a rich man to go to heaven than for a camel to fit in the eye of a needle.
Monday, November 3, 2025
Inseparable subjectivity - Part 3: Inseparable subjectivity
Part 3: Inseparable subjectivity
In Part 2 I said the following:
“Person(2a) = The pure subjectivity (of a particular person) by which all first-person properties (of that particular person) are unified.
E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie all have something in common: the fact that these experiences are happening to you. There is a youness, a subjectivity, that these experiences have in common.
Person(2b) = The other properties of first-person properties that accompany the pure subjectivity by which all first-person properties are unified.
E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie have differences between them. That which distinguishes one experience from the other—the pain of venom in your veins versus the pain of the initial shock of cold water versus the happiness of the taste of melted chocolate—these differences show that these experiences cannot be the same, despite having a sameness to them, specifically the same subjectivity.
You(2a) is the ‘you’ referred to in the following sentence: You do not choose to be what you are. You do not choose to have the intelligence, rationality, or knowledge that you have. So you do not choose for your decision-making process to be what it is. So you do not choose for your choices to come out as they do. The badness (or goodness) of your choices reflects the badness (or goodness) of your inputs, but not the badness (or goodness) of you.
But you(2b) is the 'you' referred to in the following sentence: The choices you made were good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy. I.e. the causal properties accompanying the pure subjectivity of first-person properties had good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy effects.”
E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie all have something in common: the fact that these experiences are happening to you. There is a youness, a subjectivity, that these experiences have in common.
Person(2b) = The other properties of first-person properties that accompany the pure subjectivity by which all first-person properties are unified.
E.g. The experiences of being stung by a wasp, jumping into cold water, and biting into a chocolate chip cookie have differences between them. That which distinguishes one experience from the other—the pain of venom in your veins versus the pain of the initial shock of cold water versus the happiness of the taste of melted chocolate—these differences show that these experiences cannot be the same, despite having a sameness to them, specifically the same subjectivity.
You(2a) is the ‘you’ referred to in the following sentence: You do not choose to be what you are. You do not choose to have the intelligence, rationality, or knowledge that you have. So you do not choose for your decision-making process to be what it is. So you do not choose for your choices to come out as they do. The badness (or goodness) of your choices reflects the badness (or goodness) of your inputs, but not the badness (or goodness) of you.
But you(2b) is the 'you' referred to in the following sentence: The choices you made were good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy. I.e. the causal properties accompanying the pure subjectivity of first-person properties had good / bad / praiseworthy / critique-worthy effects.”
Two thoughts:
One, even if we allow a distinction between Person(2a) and Person(2b), it’s not clear that 2a is as non-causal as I claimed. If I have stressful experiences, and those stressful first-person properties cause my body to produce stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, then the “pure subjectivity” of being on the receiving end of experience actually does play a role in causal relationships. Plus, presumably pure experiences cause me to remember having those experiences. So pure subjectivity causes memory. Furthermore, memories reveal patterns that affect future actions. By remembering the pain of touching a hot stove, I avoid touching hot stoves in the future. So by causing memories, not only does pure subjectivity play a causal role, but a causal role with respect to our actions.
Two, it’s not clear that the distinction between 2a and 2b makes sense. If I treat subjectivity as a consistent property that survives through time (to explain how a person survives through time), then it sounds like I’m sneaking in the idea of a mental substance, of a subjectivity that exists independently from everything else and is subject to qualia. That’s a problem for bundle theory, which says that there are no substances, only properties. If instead I say that wherever there is a subjective property, there is personhood, and paint this picture that there is no stable, persistent, substantial, mysterious self – and that instead there is a succession of subjective properties and a directly observable, unmysterious self – then it seems like I must consider subjectivity not something separate from the subjective properties. If your subjective properties are you, then your subjective properties involved in your choices and feelings are you. So the pure subjectivity of 2a cannot be separated from the other properties, 2b, that accompany 2a.
By abstracting out my subjectivity in common with all my subjective properties, I am beholding my subjective property not as something particular and concrete, but universal and abstract. But persons are concrete, not abstract! The self is as particular and concrete as it gets. So to avoid the mistake of talking about the concept of myself when I should be talking about myself, I must avoid abstracting out subjectivity.
It seems that I have been assuming that the subjectivity of a property can be separated from ugly (or admirable) aspects of that property. For example, if someone makes the conscious, unconstrained decision to kill someone out of spite, there’s a subjectivity to that choice. But this subjectivity is replete throughout the property such that the entire property is subjective. We cannot separate the subjectivity from the rest of the property. So the ugliness of the subjectivity just is the ugliness of the entire subjective property, and thus the person.
Imagine the feeling of being judged. It's a sharp pain, which makes it vivid and easy to imagine. Is it possible to separate the feeling of being judged from the subjectivity? No. The experience is necessarily experiential. There is no pain floating around out there without a person to feel it. Pain is by its essence felt. Likewise, there is no subjectivity floating around out there without other properties characterizing that experience. Subjectivity is by its essence a particular kind of experience. So for a painful feeling, like being judged, you can't have the pain without the subjectivity, and you can't have the subjectivity without the pain. The subjectivity is replete and inseparable.
But if a person per se is identical to their subjective properties (the person per se of the moment is identical to the subjective property of that moment), then any criticism or praise directed to the ugly or admirable aspects of the subjective property are directed to the person per se (at the moment of that property).
If this is right, and if our choices come with a subjective property (the quale of making a choice), then we are our choices, just as we are our pains and pleasures and any other subjective property. If by ‘person’ we mean a collection of subjective properties that all have the same subjectivity in common, then our experiences (including experiences of making choices) are straightforwardly part of us.
Far from eliminating free will, this might provide the very resources to build an account of how free will works! Namely, that because a) our choices accompany phenomenal choice, and because b) wherever there is phenomenology there is personhood, therefore c) to criticize or praise a choice just is to criticize or praise the phenomenology, which just is to criticize or praise the person with that personhood.
Or put another way, because
a*) our choices are caused by our phenomenal choice, and because b) wherever
there is phenomenology there is personhood, therefore c*) our choices are caused by our personhood (i.e., by us). So d) the goodness or badness of the consequences of our choices reflects the goodness or badness of the phenomenal choice that caused them, which just is to reflect the goodness or the badness of the personhood that caused them.
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