Objective concepts in an atheist universe
ibookworm wonders
All I can report is that when I was an atheist, I believed in concepts, objective, abstract, universal, and so on. I called a concept objective if it did not depend on the observer for its properties. I called it abstract if it was an abstraction from particulars, and universal if it was independent rather than dependent on particulars.
As to where concepts come from, or why twice two is equal to four, was indeed a question I could not answer in my atheist days, since, being concepts, I did not think they "came from" anywhere.
To say "God made it so" is the same as saying "the unknown and unknowable made it so" is the same as saying "I don’t know what makes it so."
But I did not then contemplate how a concept can be ‘made so.’ I thought concepts were eternal, not part of the world of being and becoming. I did not think the legislature in Kansas could make pi equal to three, nor did I think Jove by his Olympian decree could make or change the value of pi. And the Christian God was just an inflated version of Jove.
As far as I know, relatively few people of any camp are true "metaphysical naturalists." (Or what Ayn Rand would call "Mystics of the Muscle") .
There is one or two who occasionally comments here in my comments box, but he cannot answer, and does not even seem to understand, the idea that a symbol I write is not one and the same as the written word, nor the idea that the symbol I think is not one and that same with the pattern of the molecules of the brain cells in motion.
My experience is that relatively few atheists are moral relativists. Of course, most of the atheists I know are Ayn Rand type Objectivists, who are big on moral objectivity, as their name suggests. The moral relativists I know tend to be atheist for emotional reasons: it is part of their quest for cheap self-righteousness, and their eternal rebellion against all authority and father-figures. If the establishment were atheist, they would be theists merely out of non-conformity.
An atheist is someone who does not believe in God. This does not imply any other particular believes, such as moral relativism or metaphysical naturalism. Come now: you do not believe in Thor, and yet you are not a metaphysical naturalist. Socrates and Confucius and the Buddha were not monotheists, but none of them were metaphysical naturalists either. An atheist is someone who does not believe in our God for the same reasons we do not believe in the gods of the classical world, or of the Far East.
"For those who profess to be atheists but who claim not to be metaphysical naturalists, who claim to believe in objective concepts, I suspect that they simply haven’t thought their atheism through all the way."
Your suspicion is false. I am one such, and I assure you I thought through the ramifications. Socrates can believe in ‘aidos’ or objective concepts, ideas and ideals, without being a monotheist.
" When you werean atheist did you believe it rationally possible to both disbelieve in God and believe in the objective, the abstract, the universal?"
Yes.
"If so, how?"
In this space, I can only give a sum up:
I started from the deduction that truth is true, for, if not, then it was true that truth was not true, which proved that truth was true.
Given that truth was true, it followed that I, as a rational being, was capable of knowing that truth was true: and that this knowledge was rational and not empirical.
Since this rational knowledge was something I deduced rather than invented, it did not depend on me. The statement ‘truth is true’ is true for all observers, and therefore by definition objective rather than subjective.
It also followed that, since I had deduced true conclusions from true axioms, that knowledge could be gained and could be confirmed by rational deduction from first principles. Such knowledge was necessary rather than contingent, and final rather than tentative.
I also observed that I observed objects in my environment of a different nature than objects of thought: any correct anticipation of the behavior of objects in my environment constituted empirical knowledge, which was contingent rather than necessary and tentative rather than final.
I did not believe in God, a supernatural entity, because I had no natural sense impressions requiring such a belief, and no rational deduction from natural first principles could lead to a deduction about an entity beyond human knowledge. The various ontological or ‘watchmaker’ arguments fell short.
I did believe that the various stories and statements I heard about God were either fables, or were illogical. I could not see how an omnipotent being could also be an acting being, since all desires of such a being, whatever they were, could have been satisfied immediately by an act of will the moment the desire was formed, hence would have no need to act. I did not believe in Thor merely because I never saw Thor; I did not believe in the omnipotent acting being because I held such being to be logically impossible.
So, I believed in universal and abstract concepts because it is not logically possible to believe otherwise.
(I am always amused, and sometimes disgusted, by the relativists who tell me — without even a hint of self-awareness — that it is an absolute truth that no universal statements are true. No S is P. They self-righteously tell me how unrighteous it is to be self-righteous. They condemn condemnation.)
And I did not believe in Odin or Jove because I had no compelling reason to; and I did not believe in a Monotheistic absolute necessary being, omnipotent and omniscient, benevolent and acting in the world, and the author, or, at least, the permitter, of evil, because these concepts contradicted each other. I was a Odin agnostic but a Jehovah atheist, if you take my meaning.
And, it seems to me that I thought my atheism through its various ramifications as rigorously as might be.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
