Questions Leftists Rarely Ask and Couldn't Answer

What is a right? What does it mean for something to be a right or for someone to have a right to something? Where do rights come from? What endows something with the quality of being a right? What does this quality entail for oneself? For others? What is the relation of right to duty?

What is freedom? Is it reducible to something, like physical ability or the absence of political constraints? If so, is freedom unlimited? If not, what are the limits of freedom? Are they arbitrary? If so, why should anyone care about someone being unfree in some respect but not another? How is freedom related to rights?

What is good? What is evil? Where do good and evil come from? What endows a thing or an action with the character of "evil" or "goodness"? Is it possible for something to be "pure good" or "pure evil"? What would such things look like? Are good and evil reducible to something else, such as pleasure or pain? If so, why don't we simply say "pleasurable" and "painful"? What imbues the pursuit of good and the avoidance of evil with the force of moral obligation? What is morality? What is the difference between "moral" and "good," or is there one at all? Where does morality come from? Is there a difference between a "good person" and a "person who does good things"?

What is reason? Why should we care about reason? What is truth? Why should we care about truth? Is truth good? If so, what makes it good? What is the relation of reason to truth? Is truth better than happiness? If so, why? If not, why not let societies delude themselves with Christianity (assuming it's false)?

What is knowledge? What does it mean to know something? Can you know something if it is false? (Is there such a thing as falseness? If so, what does it mean?) How does one come to know something? Is science the only way to know things? If so, how do you know that science is the only way to know things? If not, what other ways are there to know things? Is introspection valid? Syllogistic reasoning? Intuition? If intuition is valid, how does it differ from common sense? From reason? (What makes a method of acquiring knowledge "valid" or "invalid"?) If common sense is valid, doesn't historical consensus -- the cross-generational continuity of common sense -- matter? If so, why don't you respect it? If not, what makes it questionable?

What is thought? Do "I" think, or does my brain think? Do "I" really exist, apart from my brain? Does my brain really exist apart from the cells that constitute it? What does it mean to "think critically"? Why should we? How do you know you're thinking critically and not merely recycling prejudices acquired through years of conditioning in a leftist society?

What is beauty? What does it mean for someone or something to be beautiful? Why has every society and every culture had some idea of beauty? Why do these ideas differ in their particulars? Is beauty good? Is it the same thing as goodness?

What is life? What does it mean to be alive? Is life reducible to matter? If so, why do we talk about "life" at all? If not, how does it differ? In what ways? Is it a difference of degree or of kind? Is there a "right" to live? What does this right mean, and where does it come from?

What is being? What does it mean for something to be, instead of not to be? Is it meaningful to talk about something not being? Is death the same as not being? If so, why does part of me (my corpse) remain after death? If life is mere matter and my matter remains after death, what does it mean to say that I have died? What is death?

What is authority? Why should we question it? Is "question authority" not an authoritative statement? If not, why not? If so, why shouldn't I question it? Is it the case that we should question authority because it is morally suspect? If so, what makes it morally suspect? And if so, doesn't that make your command to question authority itself morally suspect? Or are you commanding me without authority? If so, why should I listen to you? If there's a good reason for me to listen to you, doesn't that make the command authoritative? If it does, doesn't that make you morally suspect? Does that mean I should only listen to those whom I have no good reason to listen to? (But if so, doesn't this imbue them with the character of authority?)

What's the point of everything? Is there one? If so, what is it? How do you know? How do you know you're right? (What is right, anyway?) Is it objective and real or subjective and solipsistic? If the latter, is it really the point? If not, why not just say there is no point? And if there is no point, why live? Why respect the lives of others? Why care about "good" or "evil"? Why even care about pleasure or pain?

Are all of these questions answerable? How do you know? Have you tried to answer them all?

If not, are you so sure you're a critical thinker?

Comments

[Bill]

You are shouldering a heavy burden of proof here. Philosophers are a bunch of leftists, and they certainly appear to spend most of their time grappling with these problems---so some leftists sure seem to be doing what you say leftists don't do. You may say and I may agree that they do a bad job of it, but that's different from saying that they don't think about the questions.

Gnu Atheists, on the other hand, are a bunch of sad little ignorant retards who clearly answer to your description. So, maybe where you say leftist you really mean gnu atheist.

[bgc]

My take is that not all of these questions are ultimately answerable, and to answer them all in a mutually consistent manner, nothing better has ever been achieved than Aquinas (in fact nothing remotely approaches Aquinas for comprehensive cohesion).

So if answers are really wanted, because one is tormented by these questions, then one simply has to learn Aquinas to the best of one's ability.

And yet, all this understanding is 'straw' compared with direct mystical knowledge of Christ, according to the man himself - so it is something learned in order to be discarded.

[Alan Roebuck]

My position here is that man needs some basic instruction in these philosophical topics in order to avoid being bamboozled, but most of the answers to these questions are in accordance with man’s intuition.

I’ve heard from trustworthy sources that although most professional philosophers are commies, a significant number are Christians, or otherwise sound thinkers. The student can learn from William Lane Craig, or Alvin Plantinga, for example, how to confirm his accurate intuitions and how to parry the thrusts of the commies.

Also, the vast majority of leftists don’t have even an intellectual-sounding answer to these questions. They just follow the herd, so with a bit of study the Christian can show his opponent to be ignorant.

Of course, one can study basic questions like these for a lifetime without plumbing their depths.

[Proph]

Bill, yes, that generally is what I mean.

[godddinpotty]

Dan Dennett, the most philosophically sophisticated of the new atheists, wrote two entire books on the subject of freedom, so I guess you could say that they've given this some thought. He's also written extensively on some of your other questions, like what is "I"?

To take up another set of your questions:

> Is "question authority" not an authoritative statement?

No.

> If so, why shouldn't I question it?

You should question it.

> Or are you commanding me without authority? If so, why should I listen to you?

It's not a command. And you are free to listen or not, which is the point. Questioning authority means you are thrown back on your own judgement; you have to figure out for yourself who to trust. That can be a bitch.

On the other hand, all of you seem to be questioning the authority of what you think of as the dominant liberal order and substituting your own preferred one. So you seem to be falling in line with this non-commandment, like it or not.

[Peter S.]

Speaking of Dennet, here is his attempt to assert personal – indeed “sacred” – values:

“In spite of the religious connotations of the term, even atheists and agnostics can have sacred values, values that are simply not up for re-evaluation at all. I have sacred values — in the sense that I feel vaguely guilty even thinking about whether they are defensible and would never consider abandoning them (I like to think!) in the course of solving a moral dilemma. My sacred values are obvious and quite ecumenical: democracy, justice, life, love, and truth (in alphabetical order).”

– Daniel C. Dennett, “Breaking the Spell”, p.23

This is, of course, quite self-evidently question begging, as pointed observed by the following authors:

“These values are surely shared by theists and naturalists, but in broad or strict naturalism it is not clear how one can establish normative values on the basis of processes that are ultimately thoroughly unconscious, non-normative, and contingent in nature.”

– Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, “Naturalism", p.95

[Peter S.]

The ever-recurring issue is once again that, in the absence of the Transcendent, we are inescapably reduced to existential nihilism. This is the inevitable path taken by naturalism and humanism, the path whereby reason, intentionality, truth, morality, value and goodness are all rendered philosophically unsustainable. Under this understanding, the unavoidable conclusion is that secular moderns are – in essence – nothing other than confused, self-contradictory or semi-conscious nihilists. If they could actually squarely face up to the nihilistic implications of their worldview, it would drive them either to despair or to God.

Two closely related philosophic arguments to the points raised above are what have been termed the “Argument from Reason” and the “Argument from Meaning”. Both are briefly introduced in the following quotes:

The “Argument from Reason”:

“One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific philosophy]. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears... unless Reason is an absolute all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.”

– C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry”

[Peter S.]

Continuing from above, the “Argument from Meaning”:

The value of the argument from meaning is its ability to expose the real issues and stakes of the God question. The argument from meaning exposes the “eat your cake and have it too” philosophies that fall between full-bodied theism and radical nihilism. It exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of naturalistic humanism. Naturalistic humanism maintains that man came from nothing and is going to nothing but meanwhile is full of significance. Virtues such as honesty and industry are exalted; human values such as liberation, civil rights, and health care are extolled. But from a theoretical perspective we must ask, “Why bother with human rights if man is ultimately insignificant. Who cares if black cosmic accidents have less rights than white cosmic accidents?” Such philosophy is rooted in sentiment and sentiment alone. The sentiment is great, to be sure, but we are still faced with the question of the nihilist, “If there is no God, why should man be thought important?”
It is not by accident that since the Enlightenment’s rejection of God, the dominant theme of philosophy has been the question of the significance of man. We live in a time of genuine crisis about our own human identity. If we again open the question of the evidence of the existence of God, perhaps we may even discover that our aspirations to significance are not in vain.
Though many welcomed the “liberation” from the God-hypothesis that came with the skepticism of the Enlightenment, later thinkers have become less enthusiastic about the results of the liberation. Without the specter of God hanging over our heads, nineteenth-century man looked forward to the freedom of creating his own destiny. The marvelous advances of science and technology gave a ground basis for optimism. The optimism soon turned to pessimism when man began to contemplate the fuller implications of a godless universe. Without God man has no reference point to define himself. Twentieth-century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity.

– R.C. Sproul, “Reason to Believe”, pp.114-5.

[godddinpotty]

I wasn't particularly defending Dennett's views (although I will if you want me to), just pointing out that contrary to the main point of the main post, naturalists and liberals have given a great deal of thought to these questions and spilled a great deal of ink over them, whether or not you buy their answers.

[Peter S.]

Regarding liberals having given a great deal of thought to such questions, certainly they have and there is no reason to challenge this particular point. Of course, one might reply that the reason liberals – I tend to prefer the term “secular moderns”, but no matter – have given a great deal of thought to such questions is that under naturalism or philosophic materialism – the predominating worldview of modernity – these questions present the deepest of challenges to this worldview and must therefore be grappled with if it is to be salvaged.

Has their collective ink-spilling been successful? I certainly cannot claim to have read anything like a majority of it, but the same fundamental contradiction stands at the heart of those writings that I have reviewed, one that might reasonably be viewed as a general problem for any similar project: that, in their defenses of a naturalistic worldview from which the Transcendent has been banished, they assume reason, intentionality, truth, meaning and value in the very act of articulating the very worldview under which these have no place. In short, the entire collective exercise strikes me as a question begging performative contradiction.

So, have they given a great deal of thought? Yes. Do I buy their answers? No.

[The Continental Op]

"...these questions present the deepest of challenges to this worldview and must therefore be grappled with if it is to be salvaged."

It certainly gives them something to do. It's a real challenge to construct something out of nothing, if you're not God.

[Jewish Zionist]

Then what is the definition of definition.
Ah the wonders of arguing in an incomplete and inconsistent language.

We best stick to what we can observe then. Even tough that in itself cannot be proven to lead to valid results, it appears to at least work most of the time.

[Peter S.]

The above statement not really deserving of a response, but I’ll give one anyway.

Merriam-Webster seems to have not the slightest problem giving the definition of “definition”, giving in fact four different senses of meaning. 2.a) should do nicely: “definition (n): a statement expressing the essential nature of something.” There you are, not so bad.

As for the rest of it, the choice of a bare utilitarianism, as you are proposing here, assumes – no surprise – reason, intentionality, truth, meaning and value in the very act of proposing the choice, the very things that can in no way be assumed in a naturalistic utilitarian framework.

Let me be more blunt to drive the point home. My previous observation above, in certain respects an extension of the “argument from reason” ably defended by such figures C.S. Lewis, Victor Reppert, William Hasker and Alvin Plantinga, is – contra atheistic materialists such as Daniel Dennett – a “universal acid” that burns through and renders incoherent any purely naturalistic, material or physical world description. It is not even the case that one can flee to nihilism to avoid metaphysics, for this too is rendered fatally incoherent. Either reason, intentionality, truth, meaning and value must inhere in being, or world description – any world description – is impossible.