E-mails from a philosopher: Part II

Dearest Gnu,

Please do pray. I don't think anything you wrote was "bull". Furthermore, even though when I wrote to you I wasn't clear about what sort response I longed for, now I feel that your response is exactly what I longed for.

I am currently in the position of having stopped being a disbeliever, but it's not a static position, for I feel that I have a direction of inquiry. I am glad to see that there is practical and intellectual advice you can give to someone in this position. I did not know that such an agnostic position could have value. "I see this as an intrinsic motivation, I desire for restored communion with the previously alienated God rather than seeking "fire insurance"." (I used to think that, if God exists, then someone in such a position would upset God almost as much as the position of someone who just disbelieves. Granted, you never wrote in terms of what makes God happy and what upsets him--I take it that these are not applicable predicates here. But I seem to digress...) What I was trying to say was that I am happy that there is some intrinsic value to the position I am in. To the extent that, even if merely remained in this position, I am at a better place than I was before. Like I said, though, my feeling is that this is not a static position, I feel a directedness. But appreciating the value of being this way takes off some pressure. "Oh my! There may be God, and if there is, then I should start believing as soon as possible." This pressure is uncalled for, as I undestand now. (It wasn't a constructive sort of pressure anyway.) But the curiosity remains, which is what is driving me to understand.

You said "This [the naturalist-externalist standpoint] seems to at least point us in the direction of questing for God even if we cannot yet simply believe in him. But whether or not one chooses to do so seems to depend on whether or not a person has certain values. (Another Humean point in my would-be Christian apologia.) Some people value a certain self-sufficency here rather than perhaps recognize humble dependence and frailty to humanity and such an attitude would stip such a search before it starts. Perhaps we may have residual attitudes of both kinds and the tension between them tracks with whether and how intensely we search for God. This is one place where the Christian concept of the Fall comes in, which is a picture of the moral deminsion of this whole thing. An important contrast between believers and non-believers is whether they have one certain set of attitudes or the opposing set. But these passions, affections, emotions, whatever, are part of the externalist story too. God could provide the set which points in the right direction and this seems to be what grace in part means. "I would not have sought you unless you already had found me." This emotional difference plus externalism may not be relativism but the only possible cure for it. "

I grew up as a member of the self-sufficient camp. All the while thinking that even if God exists, he cannot be mad at me, for I am a good person after all. I of course wasn't understanding that "being mad at people" is not quite the right predicate here after all. Whether I was doing the right thing is different from whether I was doing it for the right reasons. But I also always thought that being good to your parents because you are afraid of burning in hell cannot be as good as being good to your parents because that you believe that's the right thing to do. It's hard not to think so, and thinking so pschologically fosters one's self-sufficient perspective. However, there is a fallacy here. One's reasons for being good to one's parents is one thing, the causes of one's being good is another. Not the reasons but the causes of one's good behavior are relevant to the self-sufficiency vs. humility issue.

You know what it was that helped me understand the concept of grace after all? My reaction to Galen Strawson's "Basic Argument"--just to remind you, the one that goes "You do what you do because of the way you are in psychological respects. You are not responsible for the way you are. Therefore you are not responsible for what you do." Of course many students think that we would find ourselves in a state of anarchy if we all bought this argument. Well, their mistake is obvious. But what's interesting is to see what you're left with (in terms of morality) upon being exposed to this argument. I am copying from my handout for my students: "I am more aware now [upon being convinced by Strawson's argument] that if I want to act better than I usually do, I must try to do the things that would change my personality. I can’t expect myself to miraculously act out of character. I should rather try to change my personality. And if I succeed, I can’t get credit for it. If I fail, I shouldn’t blame myself. All in all, I am lucky that I turned out to be the kind of person I am rather than a worse one. I try to spread the luck by being a good influence on the way other people are. What’s wrong with this ethical outlook?"

So, I have moved to the humility camp already. One other major influence was Derek Parfit's work. I take him to have shown, once and for all, that any (non-dualist) relations (between earlier and later states of putatively enduring people) we see near and dear for our continued existence are duplicable relations in the sense that they can hold between two pairs of entities such as a now and each of b and c later. And since one earlier person cannot be identical with two later persons, the relations we see near and dear for our continued existence are the important relations even though they don't necessarily grant our continued existence. With continued existence off the table, he then shows how nice and comforting it actually can be to cherish the existence of future persons who merely happen to be causally and psychologically related to you as you are now. One step from here it to notice how unimportant you-as-you-are-now is (once its continued existence if off the table.) Next step--but this is where I take the liberty to read into Parfit : there is no categorical difference (such as the difference between self and non-self) between you-now's being the cause of happiness in some future entity which is psychologically continuous with you-now and you-now's being the cause of happiness in some future entity which is not so continuous with you. There is no terribly important reason for favoring to please a future entity which is continuous with you-now, rather than doing something to please some future entity which is continuous with your-neighbor-now.

I am not sure that either the Strawson-inspired or the Parfit-inspired humility is consistent with the Christian metaphysic of personhood. (Though I suspect they would be reconcilable) But I see that as beside the point right now. The main point it that there is already good reasons in favor of humility. At any rate, the self-sufficiency idea is already undermined. Moreeover, when combined, Parfitian and Strawsonian humility is very much in tune with the agnostic's prayer. (One interesting Parfitian result is that if there is God but people don't have souls, then the wish for salvation uttered by me-now can be granted by grace being given to some future entity which is not psychologically continuous with me-now. This of course, in the Parfitian-inspired view of happiness, must be a result me-now should equally welcome. The Parfitian's agnostic prayer is for entirely selfless desire for restored communion--not for oneself but for someone, whoever it is.-- It is interesting that you brought up that such prayer is not necessarily selfish.)

You said: "But if one sincerely and seriously prays that prayer and maintains the seeking attitude of which the prayer is a paradigm exhibition, one spins a certain pragmatic context between themselves and God, if he exists. One perhaps should not expect the kind of knock down evidence that one craves as a way of being able to assure oneself of the truth. But God may act in such a way in response to that prayer which by all appearances seems to be God responding to the seekers prayer. In such a case it would be to wrong God and resisit the good that God would do us to be overly suspicious of it are to suddenly impose impossible epistemic standards on the whole thing."

I am afraid this is exactly what I was doing at the church last Christmas. And I feel a certain amount of guilt for having done so. Except that since there is paranoia and schizophrenia in my close blood line, the question as to whether I was hallucinating the whole thing was pressing. (But then again, I read how Jesus was got angry at his disciples when they were very scared upon seeing Him walking on water.) But since I thought it through again, spoke with Mr. Smith, started reading the Bible, and finally today read your words, I feel a lot more open-minded.

"If we request something of God and it looks like he has answered we have already committed ourselves in our request to respond appropriately, I think. "

I understand, I am thankful for your making me notice this.

About how to approach the Scriptures. I have so far only read Matthew. I am continuing to read. It makes me very happy to now see that I was reading with the right attitude. Not with a view to refute, obviously not. Since my direction is not the direction of one who is trying to be skeptical but rather the opposite, reading the Bible with a pen of skeptical criticism in hand would have been irrational. At any rate it didn't occur to me to do so. I possess a concept of God which I seek to understand better, but that concept itself is consistent with the passages in the Bible (that I have read so far) which would be the obvious targets of a skeptic.

"There might be some clear principles here but the basic idea is that you may already be able to judge for yourself whether what you taste is good. This sort of use of reason though may be applied to all the great religious traditions of the world and I think that there is a sort of thing we might call religious rationality by means of which religions are comparable in some sense. "

This I find puzzling. Suppose that God exists but you don't know which religion describes Him and His rules best. It doesn't seem to be such a good idea to follow your own intuition. What seems to me to be not bad may be very bad in God's eye. To take a crude example, if I follow my intuition, I would probably end up choosing a religion according to which not all abortion is sin. Similarly for other aspects of conduct. But practically this is nothing but finding a religion which fits to your currect way of life and thought. However it is likely that in God's eyes my current ways of life and thought are in need of reform. I'm sure this is not a new puzzle; maybe you can help me. Mr. Smith pointed out the psychological predicament to have to follow your nose in this matter. I had basically asked him: suppose I believe. How do I decide whether to be Catholic or Protestant? Or which kind of Protestant? I understand the psychological predicament. But noticing that it is a predicament doesn't make it rational.

However, you wrote of "religious rationality". Probably, my problem, once again, stems from seeking certainty as we do in our non-religious studies. Probably, the externalist-naturalist line of reasoning should be helful here, combined with the thought that if I believe, that's only because God let me, and He would also be directing the way in which I follow my nose--steering me away from a sect that gives thumbs up to practices that He doesn't want me to perform even if my previous tendencies were to agree with those practices. Probably this is the answer to this puzzle. Am I right?

You wrote: "Obviously this is all very unsatisfying philosophically and evidentially, but it illustrates how I think that someone might be persuaded enough tomake a decision. There is such a thing as a moral certainty to faith even if there cannot be a philosophical certainty, a sense of knowing that your doing the right thing. The possibility remain open that someone will come up with a decisive argument or evidence that defeats such a faith, showing it to be false or incoherent. If so, that will be the end and a responsible believer will give up his belief. ... But still, the believer can only be dogmatic in certain contexts, he cannot claim absolute certainty and must at some level continue to be open to criticism. But in practical matters, a person cannot suspend judgment until the investigation is resolved.... But even though we can't be certain philosophically, I think that something like the above story shows we need not be the parochial fools that Socrates and Bertrand Russell are always chiding religious yokels for. Socrates knows nothing and neither do I if knowledge is internal). As someone with at least some philosophical sesnibilities, I regret having nothing more satisfying but it is clear to me that this is sufficient ..."

Ahh Bertie... I should show you my paper on his work about the existence of the external world. In essence he reinvents the method of logical constructions (formerly only used in philosophy of math and geometry) as an epistemological tool, through a principled use of which you can get something like-- "well at least I know these logical constructions, and if the external world exists, then since I can know these constructions thereby I know the external world." It seems like a big circle but it's not. It's a lot less agnostic than "we can't know whether there is an external world". It's not dogmatic acceptance of the existence of the external world either--the whole thing is built on sense-data only (almost only). The constructions are out of sense-data. But if the external world exists, then sense-data are not merely image-like entities and qualia and whatnot but rather particular properties of the things themselves. If there is no external world, then we haven't made a mistake, for what we assert is merely that we know the logical constructions. If there is an external world, then what we know happens to be the external world and not merely a representation of it. It's rather ingenious. I actually think it's the right sort of proof for this kind of inquiry. The resemblance between this and a religious proof is a bit tenuous of course, but the common idea is to notice what sort of proof is impossible for a certain subject of inquiry, and to hope to approximate. And that, Bertie would say, IS rational--in the philosophical sense. (So, if he were consistent, Bertie should have been the last person to be disrespectful of the religious rationality you mentioned. But he was never charitable when it came to other belief systems. ) So, I think that religuous rationality may be worked out rigorously. The key is to notice what form and amount of rigor should be the desideratum. (And you explained that very nicely in your message.) Once a reasonable postulate of this is made, then belief in God would cease to be seen as philosophically and evidentially unsatisfying. Besides, what you describe as "But in practical matters, a person cannot suspend judgment until the investigation is resolved" is just an instance of a rational principle of reflective equilibrium. (Which Russell himself championed but is not given credit for in the literature.) What do you think of this?

The funny thing is, a couple of months ago one of my major worries was to figure out how to reconcile my professional standards of belief-forming with the seemingly looser standards of religious faith. (I should emphasize "seemingly".) I was wondering, for example, how Dean Zimmerman can reconcile his religious side with his philosopher side. Mr. Smith was thinking that you can't-- all you can do is to bracket one of the sides when you are focusing on the other. That seems hypocritical, and I understand that's a sin itself. So I wasn't satisfied with this answer. But just when I was writing this I noticed how reconciliation may be possible. So your response had an additional good consequence on my thinking --one which you most likely didn't intend. (How ironic would it be if you found my previous paragraph helpful!)

I am grateful for all the advice here. If I can say so, I sure hope that you'll remove the adjective "failed" from your future letters to me, for your words in this letter are not of the sort to be uttered by someone who has failed but rather someone who is at the very least in the process of succeeding. (I would like to think so, especially since I consider you a mentor to me in my search.)

With love and in hopes of peace,

Mrs. Smith

My dear Mrs. Smith,

Please forgive my melancholy moments. I'll try to mitigate the "fail" language in the future but it seems to be an intransigent aspect of my personality that is always besetting, especially when i am about something that I care a lot about or think is very important -- like this exchange.

I am really fine with the Strawson and Parfit stuff. I think that it is important to allow that folks in the Bible were not metaphysicians and wrote mainly in terms of folk psychology and folk metaphysics and folk epistemology without raising deeper questions. And I think that it is important to be aware of this when translating between biblical stories as in some sense or another being instances of ordinary discourse and theoretical reflections on all this. God is not exclusively interested in dealing only with those few with the gifts for theoretical thought and is 'happy' to accommodate to folk conceptions to reach widely -- and thus divine accommodation finds folk conceptions to be sufficient for communicating. Calvin is singled out especially for his thoughts on this -- God 'lisps' to us as a parent does to a toddler with more limited capacity to speak in such a way that accommodates to the child but is sufficient to carry out the parents good purposes for it. It may be a kind of economy of means that God "does not bother" to produce elaborate theoretical schemes to appeal to the brilliant. And one may perhaps discern a kind of brilliance in all this simplicity behind what is meant to be effective for all.

Further, you might want to pick up Pascal's Pensees on both this theme and the problem with "religious rationality" that you mentioned. Mr. Smith has got it about the following your nose problem. It is possible and in some sense likely that as I am aware that my passions may influence my thinking it may be that my passions so corrupt even my religious intuitions. We thus get a skepticism based on our resistance to the views the intuitions support. Christian tradition introduces the limiting notion of common grace here. Suppose such fatal corruption where really to have full sway what a mess! It must be that such corruption is under restraint - mankind is prevented from being as bad as it can be. In fact, we see that humanity is capable of doing great things and exhibiting substantial moral character outside of the church (in fact, it seems to me that some non-Christians are more "holy" than some Christians). But this general restraint gets labeled "common grace" that benevolence of God toward all humanity that will not allow evil dispositions to be unrestrained. This makes a religious rationality basically possible but not inevitable. It becomes a desideratum of religious rationality as to how well different religions handle this problem. It turns out as I recall that the great world religious traditions have something to say about it.

Pascal illustrates this in his own work and spends a great deal of time clarifying this as a desideratum. Man is a puzzle because he exhibits greatness and smallness, both dignity and depravity. People exhibit the greatness in their capacity to think but the universe may still crush them. Man is a reed, but a thinking reed. Also, man exhibits graet marvels of character and integrity but also even in the same person great monstrosity and inequity. Man is a chimera; who can account for it. According to Pascal, Christianity accounts for it particularly well; "created in God's image but fallen". You might want to look at Tom Morris' study on Pascal "Making Sense of it All", Grand Rapids : Eerdmans).

I am actually really keen on your Bertie paper. I didn't expect Russell to make that sort of argument but it seems to be in the classic vein of philosophy, see my post about "Natural Theology as Mythology" which is a meditation on Plato's Meno. I do like it very much -- I'll certainly buy that or something like it and I will look into it some more. Maybe you can send me your paper.

As far as Catholic/Protestant stuff goes, I learned an important lesson while in seminary watching other people behave in religious controversy. My observation was that the level of histrionic vitriol in overt conversation was inversely proportional to the relative importance of the question -- as if the relative shallowness of the issue permitted one to sport more drama in debate. This tends to be less visible as the questions get more and more important. I think that in spite of the apparent and dramatic looking differences between various expressions of the church there is a universal unity in the following sense. Christianity embraces several distinctive views but these fall into a hierarchy of concerns such that the greater the importance of the doctrine the greater degree of consensus among the churches and there is a meta-consensus about the ranking of the most important questions. Consequently the things that unite us are more important than what divides us. I think there is such a thing as "Mere Christianity", a basic consensus of the most important beliefs that represent the framework from within which all other concerns are assessed. I would rather urge that. I am not concerned that you become a Presbyterian even though I am.

It's a pleasure to save you. ( I mean, serve you.)

The Gnu

(The exchange continues here.)

E-mails from a philosopher: Part I

Hello Gnu,

I was hoping to see you today, but you haven't called us and we haven't gone out anyway... I'm not even sure Eric is celebrating his birthday.

Never give out your blog address in a bar, even if it is a relatively quiet bar, and even if it is a relatively well-lit bar and you're asked to check the web address on a written format. First I looked at www.newblog.blogspot.com . (Get it? Gnu - New)That was in Italian. I know you're not a Catholic, so I quickly ditched the hypothesis that you were writing your blog in Vaticanese.

Then I was at www.thenewblog.blogspot.com , which is, mind you, maintained by a philosophy major. A new one, I gather, since he was only (but only) writing about how much he missed his family but that it was very cool since he got to meet with another new chic and "click with her" right away. Good for him, the stupid bastard. For several reasons I knew that wasn't you.

Finally I typed "wildebeast wardrobe" in google. It said "Did you mean "wildebeest's wardrobe" ?" --or something like this, and there I was.

I only took a quick tour around at this time. I was trying to find a bit I could grasp without having to discover back references. And I did. I read the piece about Christians having to be ready to give a rational defense of their faith when asked. I thoroughly find it reasonable when you say "This wouldn't show that we did not have a reason to believe, just that we cannot give a reason. It would not mean that we are being unreasonable in our belief in Christ or that the only motives we have are practical ones, or that our belief must be merely hypothetical. The fact that we cannot express our reasoning in terms of an formal argument that must needs find universal acceptance in all its assumptions and premises, does not mean that we do not have an argument in the sense of having a process that rationally guides our thought to the conclusion that Christianity is true."

Here's a question, though. Consider someone (and this is me--but more on this later) who has been receiving prima facie direct evidence of God's existence. Direct because she has experiences as of having a conversation with God. Prima facie, because, well, she could be wishful-thinking, projecting, imagining things, going crazy, or whatnot. And these conversation experiences only happen when she's in a Christian, and incidentally, a Catholic church. Moreover, three years in a row, when Christmas comes and she hears carols like "what child is this" or "o come all ye faithful" (but not "jingle bells" or the like) she is taken over with immense joy coupled with the strange feeling that she has been wrong all this time. (Not necessarily that she has been acting immoraly; rather that she has had the wrong beliefs. I think this is important.)

Is this person in a similar position as the devout, you think? That is, does she have reason but is unable to give reason? Suppose the answer is "yes". That is, the evidence she has, prima facie as it is, is reason for her to believe that Christianity is true. I can only accept this part if we are to understand "having reason" in an externalist sense. (I think your use of "rational processes" in the above paragraph is a sign that you too are endorsing the externalist sense here.) The evidence she has (as I laid out above) is of course reason in an internalist's sense too, but if we go for the internalist conception of having reasons, then we won't be able to univocally say "she has has reason but she is unable to show that she has reason" --the interalist conception doesn't allow this.

Okay, step one then: In the externalist sense, she has a reason to believe Christianity, but she isn't able to give reasons.

Furthermore, she is at a junction, trying to figure out whether to adopt Christianity or not. Can she rationally adopt Christianity, on the basis of the evidence she has? The answer seems easy doesn't it? Yes she can, since we're working on the assumption that she has reason to do so. Fine, but can she tell herself that it is rational to do so? No! We have already accepted that she doesn't have the ability to give reasons; she can't give reasons to herself either! (Crappy, eh?) How on earth can someone justify to oneself that Christianity is true when what I described above is all the evidence one has?

There has been times when I demanded for more evidence. I understand it was obnoxious of me to do so, but I don't think it's immoral. (Also, I would think that if God is just, he would not judge someone strictly by the rules in the book while the person is in good faith trying to figure out whether to accept the book. Maybe me thinking this is even more obnoxious. Anyway...)

I'm not claiming that there is any paradox here. In fact, I got the answer already. Last Christmas in church, my "correspondence" provided the answer. (I guess not completely, since I still use quotation marks around the word 'correspondence'.) I had experiences as of Him saying "What more do you want? I sent two mercenaries [she means 'missionaries' ;) - TG.] to you in Istanbul (whom you managed to puzzle with your 'divine foreknowledge and blameworthiness' argument), I spoke to you twice in Istanbul when you were in St.Antoine Cathedral, I helped you come over here where you got married to someone who has Catholic upbringing, and you became daughter-in-law to a woman who plays music at my church. I spoke to you last Christmas and this time. When you mentioned these feelings to Mr. Smith, he gave you the Bible to read. What more do you need?" I said "I have no clue what to do next, for I still cannot believe." "Just read." "I will, but what if I loose these feelings after I leave the church? What if I become as skeptical as I was before?" "You know better than to ask that. Just read. You know (better than most) that you can read something without having the slightest the intention or expectation to be convinced by it. Just read."

So it seems that one answer to the puzzle should go along the lines of saying "She cannot tell herself that it is rational to go ahead and believe Christianity. But she can (and maybe she epistemically-ought to) tell herself that at this point it is most rational to read the Bible."

And I will. But I had to speak to someone about this, to someone who believes. Do you think I have a chance? Well, it's not fair to ask you that, you cannot say no and remain faithful yourself. But say something please. Just tell me what you think.

You know, for a long time I've been meaning to tell you this. But I never found the right circumstances. I guess it was very serendipituous that you mentioned your blog last night. (Here we go again...)

Hope to see you soon,

Mrs. Smith

The Gnu's Reply:

Dear Mrs. Smith,

First, I few things.

One, I deeply respect that you shared this with me and I will be very circumspect with this. I have a good track record with keeping confidences.

Second, in the following, I refer to God as "he" according to my tradition. I don't think that God is male or female. Its just a convenience. If it helps to think of God as She, go ahead.

Third, I agree with your analysis and I have agreed with similar analysis for years and a lot of my own philosophical reflections have been focused around trying to think of at least helpful things to say to intellectuals both inside of your (and still in many respects my) situation and outside of it. I have to admit that I have never found anything that has been able to satisfy me all the way down and maybe such a thing is impossible. Let me put together some thoughts, which if they work for you, that's good but if not just drop them.

One thing, and this is in part in appropriation of criticisms of internalism, I have a radical comment to make that helped me deal with some of this. Even though God is omnipotent, theologians have not taken that to mean that God can do what is logically impossible like make a world with round squares in it. And I suspect that this also applies to Russell-like demands for evidence for theism. It could be (and "could bes" are sufficient for my needs here) that humans instantiate a natural kind that simply cannot receive absolutely non-question begging evidence for anything. It is not logically possible for God to meet such evidential demands because to do so for creatures like us is contradictory. God is not guilty for not doing what he logically cannot do. Why make beings of such a kind in the first place? On the one hand, there may be good reasons that we cannot see but given the purported greatness of God's wisdom, our not being able to see is not a defeater. We are understandably not in a good epistemic position to see. But on the other hand, having the ability to have internally available non-question-begging evidence for anything, under closer examination, may turn out to be a divine attribute anyway -- if anyone has it, that one must be divinely perfect. There are plausible Leibnizian reasons for why God does not create other Gods like himself. So none of us are God II.

Given that God cannot provide for such a demand of evidence, and given that a good God may want his objects of care to be able to know him, it seems that we should expect this would be provided for by nature in an externalist way. This seems consistent with some features of our experience. Even Hume claims that "custom" continues to see the world around us as an artifact of divine design even while being aware of objections to the conclusiveness of design arguments and his experience seems to be at one with the great majority of members of our species. If there are no other conclusive objections to the coherence of the possibility of God existing and providing knowledge of himself this way (and to be honest, while I have never found a conclusive demonstration of this I have also not found a conclusive objection to it either in all my searching) then such a possibility might be and probably should be taken seriously.

This seems to at least point us in the direction of questing for God even if we cannot yet simply believe in him. But whether or not one chooses to do so seems to depend on whether or not a person has certain values. (Another Humean point in my would-be Christian apologia.) Some people value a certain self-sufficiency here rather than perhaps recognize humble dependence and frailty to humanity and such an attitude would stop such a search before it starts. Perhaps we may have residual attitudes of both kinds and the tension between them tracks with whether and how intensely we search for God. This is one place where the Christian concept of the Fall comes in, which is a picture of the moral dimension of this whole thing. An important contrast between believers and non-believers is whether they have one certain set of attitudes or the opposing set. But these passions, affections, emotions, whatever, are part of the externalist story too. God could provide the set which points in the right direction and this seems to be what grace in part means. "I would not have sought you unless you already had found me." This emotional difference plus externalism may not be relativism but the only possible cure for it.

At any rate, if one has any sincere desires to seek and has no reason not to seek, it seems that someone is rational enough to pray the agnostic's prayer "Dear God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul". I see this as an intrinsic motivation, I desire for restored communion with the previously alienated God rather than seeking "fire insurance". The image of Hell could well be a mental picture for the intrinsic self-defeating suffering of abiding divine alienation. It is not necessarily a selfish motivation that per hypothesis would alienate God even more. But as we are often a mixed bag of motives full of conflicts and contradictions and have plenty in us to stand in the way of being reconciled to God, the important thing is not an absence of perfect rectitude but the presence of some genuine desire for communion. As long as we are dreaming and dreaming that God is good, let's dream that he is benevolent and gracious too.

But if one sincerely and seriously prays that prayer and maintains the seeking attitude of which the prayer is a paradigm exhibition, one spins a certain pragmatic context between themselves and God, if he exists. One perhaps should not expect the kind of knock down evidence that one craves as a way of being able to assure oneself of the truth. But God may act in such a way in response to that prayer which by all appearances seems to be God responding to the seekers prayer. In such a case it would be to wrong God and resist the good that God would do us to be overly suspicious of it or to suddenly impose impossible epistemic standards on the whole thing. The case is analogous with other minds. We may doubt they exist due to lack of a convincing argument but we still are appropriately offended when they don't keep their promises to us. If we request something of God and it looks like he has answered we have already committed ourselves in our request to respond appropriately, I think.

Of course, it may be that God has already provided the answers to such requests somewhere at sometime. And here is where I think Mark's advice comes in. The Scriptures are a putative account of God's dealings with humanity stemming from a particular point of entry into world history. There are other such accounts and we may have to look at them all or at least some of the main alternatives. But sticking with the Bible as an example of how we might approach this, on the one hand we see that it is first of all a kind of historical report with an essential positivistic dimension to it. There are some historical standards being observed even if they are not as precise or demanding as our modern critical views, but the intention is certainly to get things more or less right. But it is not history in any disinterested or neutral sense. But the presuppositions of the account are at least very similar to the set of presuppositions I have tried to sketch on independent grounds, namely the possibility that God exists and makes himself to disclosed to humankind not by offering assumption transcending evidence but by providing such "evidence" that would indicate some kind of personal assurance that he cares and has done something in humanities behalf, sort of like the handshake that seals the deal. The reader will have to be open to the possibility that God "interacts" with history and not assume automatically that such a thing is impossible in order to test the assumption that God might have heard and responded in an appropriate way. If one is willing to consider the possibility of God, one must be open to certain other possibilities

Here I think the standards of judgment are more like the standards of evidence one finds in a courtroom jury trial-- these are not philosophical standards but they are appropriate for the occasion. There might be some clear principles here but the basic idea is that you may already be able to judge for yourself whether what you taste is good. This sort of use of reason though may be applied to all the great religious traditions of the world and I think that there is a sort of thing we might call religious rationality by means of which religions are comparable in some sense.

When I first became a Christian, I was home alone listening to Billy Graham as a teenager. He gave a brief and plain presentation of the basic message of the New Testament Church. I was struck by several features. One, that the New Testament diagnosis of the human condition as "sinful", as severe as it truly is, had made better sense of my life than anything else; it was the only view that took my personal case with sufficient seriousness. Two, the provision of atonement for the guilt of sin had to be a divinely initiated provision of something divine like to satisfy the retribution due toward me in order to make possible the renewal of fellowship with God again. Three, the necessity of having to appropriate that gift by faith seemed logical with all the constraints involved especially that new life had to be all of God and none of me, the hand that merely receives is the only appropriate device to use to return to God. The whole story struck me as having a certain genius to it that would be hard for a set of humans to come up with merely on their own and not merely because of the intellectual hurdles but also the demands it makes on a person's character just to attend to such matters; this also encouraged me to think that God was at work in all of this. Finally, when I surrendered my life to God by praying with Graham on TV, I had a powerful experience of release and relief but was even more important about it was that along with that experience I underwent a powerful change of attitude -- "Lord, you have given so much to me, what can I do for you?". (Also, something freaky happened to the house cat right then but I don't make that a part of my case.)

Obviously this is all very unsatisfying philosophically and evidentially, but it illustrates how I think that someone might be persuaded enough to make a decision. There is such a thing as a moral certainty to faith even if there cannot be a philosophical certainty, a sense of knowing that your doing the right thing. The possibility remains open that someone will come up with a decisive argument or evidence that defeats such a faith, showing it to be false or incoherent. If so, that will be the end and a responsible believer will give up his belief. In fact, it seems that the biblical account encourages such testing as an aspect of trusting God itself. But until such a falsification comes along, I am obliged not to give up the belief that I have willfully contracted myself to even in the case of apparent difficulties in believing -- such obstinacy under the conditions is a virtue -- we must be willing to trust God and not leave at the first sign (or perhaps the second or third sign) of smoke. But still, the believer can only be dogmatic in certain contexts, he cannot claim absolute certainty and must at some level continue to be open to criticism. But in practical matters, a person cannot suspend judgment until the investigation is resolved ("art is long, life is short"), and one of the most important tests can only be done by being existentially committed to a faith anyway.
But even though we can't be certain philosophically, I think that something like the above story shows we need not be the parochial fools that Socrates and Bertrand Russell are always chiding religious yokels for. Socrates knows nothing and neither do I (if knowledge is internal). As someone with at least some philosophical sensibilities, I regret having nothing more satisfying but it is clear to me that this is sufficient and that one of my exercises toward holiness is to at some level be content with that although I admit I have had a hard time doing it. Such is the simplicity and difficulty of believing. Faith is ultimately a choice.

Of course, I cannot say whether you have a chance, but to speak pastorally (and I am a failed pastor as well as a failed apologist) the way to go about this is to examine yourself along the following lines, by the light of the Ten Commandments and the example of the life of Jesus as you see him in the gospels. Do you notice in yourself a certain recalcitrance toward obedience and selfless love either toward others or God as the Sovereign Good? It is better to not face this question in the abstract but to think about concrete examples either in the parables or stories in the life of Jesus and also in your own case. Do you find a sense that what is called sin is also "sinful" to you such that it seems that you abhor what God abhors at any point even should you find that in yourself. Is there a certain sense in which you are even able to acquiesce in God's judgments even if they should apply on you?

Further, in examining Christ, do you find in him that excellence of character you long for in yourself? Does the account of the significance of the cross seem to you to be an adequate solution? Would you be willing to appropriate such a solution for yourself perhaps as even the necessary solution in your case? In the face of the possibility of such grace, would be willing and even find some delight in turning away at least in resolution if you cannot in immediately do so in action from those besetting behaviors that you see to be sinful and to turn to holy character of God as to a great pleasure? Would you thus be willing to accept Jesus as your Christ and King and be his disciple in the Kingdom that he came to establish by his death? These are the sort of questions to ask. If you you find that the answer to them is in accord with acceptance of Jesus as Lord, there is no choice but only the need to act on your desires. Turn from sin and trust in Him. Repent and receive the good news and you will have the life of God in you.

But if this is not true as yet and you still would wish to consider it, the answer is that you are better off putting yourself "in the way of grace" then not. Try reading the Bible and soliciting prayers. Pray the agnostic's prayer hopefully. Go to places where Christians meet and hear the exposition of Scripture. Don't give any money or take any sacraments until you are assured that you desire to believe, since these are both privileges of believers only and God is not indifferent about them. Go where the Spirit of God is visible through the obedience of the people of God and be expectant. I don't have any prescriptions about how long or other practical questions, either you will meet God or eventually feel the whole thing to be pointless. This assumes that you have or are concurrently investigating other alternatives. That's okay.

And if you want, I will pray that you find the truth your looking for. If what I say is so much bull, I of course understand and simply ask that you ignore this post. "

In Him, The Gnu

The exchange continues here.

E-mails from a philosopher: Introduction

A while ago, I was in a pub getting re-aquainted with my fellow grad students in our philosophy department. I had just started teaching adjunct positions and had not been asa available that semester. But we caught up with each other after attending a paper from some distinguished figure in contemporary philosophy (or soon to be such). I was suprised at how everyone seemed to miss my but that is my pathology not theirs. They were also interested when I mentioned, not very enthusiatically, that I had a blog, and wanted to know the address. I assured them that, as even part time visitors here (and you know who both of you are) will attest, that this blog is nothing but crap, unworthy of the attention of seriously aspiring professional philosophers. That did not disuade them, so I relented and gave the address.

This led to an amazingly powerful exchange between myself and one of my colleagues. I expected the series of questions to stretch out for years, but the exchanges you are about to read happened in the course of a week and all occured over the internet, even though the person is someone I knew IRL. Nicodemus visited Jesus by night but this person and I only spoke of these matters in the catacombs of the internet, hidden in plain sight. The remarkable aspect of it was that at the begining of the exchange the philosopher in question was an inquirer but afterward, she was a believer in Christ.

Given that it is very hard for a philosopher, as much as for a rich man, to enter the kingdom of heaven, I received permission from this person to post our exchanges on my blog, in case they are of any value to similarly situated folks. I have changed her name to Mrs. Smith to protect her from nosyness and to allow her the control over whether to reveal herself to people or not. But I will say that Mrs. Smith is from Turkey and came from a secular and Muslim background. She is also a brilliant philosopher in the analytic tradition and will someday soon be regularly published in peer reviewed journals. She is currently teaching in Turkey with her husband from America who recently received his doctorate from our department and who she influenced in bringing to Christ.

The first exchange begins here.

C.S. Lewis' argument in his "Miracles"

"To call the act of knowing -- the act, not of remembering that something was so in the past, but of 'seeing' that it must be so always and in any possible world -- to call this act 'supernatural,' is some violence to our ordinary linguistic usage. But of course we do not mean by this that it is spooky, or sensational, or even (in any religious sense) 'spiritual.' We mean only that it 'won't fit in;' that such an act, to be what it claims to be -- and if it is not, all our thinking is discredited -- cannot be merely the exhibition at a particular place and time of that total, and largely mindless, system of events called 'Nature.' It must break sufficiently free from that universal chain in order to be determined by what it knows. ... The description we have to give of thought as an evolutionary phenomenon always makes a tacit exception in favor of the thinking which we ourselves perform at that moment." -- C.S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Collier Books), 1960, p. 23.

Dr. Houston A. Craighead of Winthrop University has a paper available on-line ("C. S. Lewis' Teleological Argument", Encounter, vol. 57.2 (Spring, 1996), 171-185) which defends Lewis' revised argument against Naturalism from his book "Miracles" from contemporary objections such those from Beversluis and evaluates other related arguments by Richard Purtill and Richard Taylor. He argues that the argument, construed as a teleological argument from analogy, fails to demonstrate the existence of God but nonetheless provides a legitmate and compelling reason for believing in God. He also argues that Lewis' corrections to his earlier version of the argument as a result of losing his debate with G.E.M. Anscombe have made the argument stronger and postively valuable. Rather than being utterly defeated in his apologetic hopes and ambitions, the encounter with Anscombe brought him closer to realizing them.

Before reading this paper, I had been re-reading the book and came to a similar conclusion. Although Lewis' views and argument take him out of the mainstream of professional analytic philosophy, they remain represented in it by able philosophers and may also provide a ground for a reasonable theism that should satisfy the ordinary folk who may understand him here. Once Lewis' point and the nature of the force of his argument is understood recent objections to it can be seen to miss the point. (Objecting that naturalism is not committed to physical determinism and allows for quantum indeterminism certainly does.)

The argument is not, as Lewis originally thought, that the truth and validity of an inference to Naturalism was inconsistent with Naturalism's causal account of thought, but rather that the claim for the existence of a basis to provide the prior probability for true beliefs and valid inference processes is inconsistent with the claims that Naturalism is true and is a reasonable belief based on evidence and inference. So if we want to claim that beliefs based on evidence and inference are rational beliefs, then we are caliming that the world is such that such a claim is well motivated. Naturalism is not enough to satisfy that further claim. Lewis' strategy also speaks against one usual reply, that any naturalistic explanation, however remote or so far unimagined, is better than a non-naturalistic explanation. If this claim is also to be supported by inference, it begs the question since the motivation for holding to the validity of inference itself is being questioned by naturalism.

New Link Posted

I added a link to free on-line games in the Gnu things to do section. Thanks, Aaron Williams.

Evangelical Atheism

I ran accross the phrase "evangelical atheist" in an article as a descriptor of a certain type of believer who not only thinks that atheism is true but that it is good news and is active in persuading others to discover and apply it. It reminded me that I once met a brilliant undergraduate student in philosophy who told me that she was an evangelical atheist. I have also met students who were devoted, active followers of Ayn Rand. Atheism is not just an opinion, its a message.

In this post I am not going to quibble much about the atheist/agnostic distinction. In practice, it involves only a difference in degree of belief and circumspection. Academic agnosticism may not know if God exists but it remains convinced the theistic philosophy is a waste of time and an abuse of reason. So I will use "evangelical atheists" to cover active self-styled agnostics as well.
What is an evangelical atheism (hence forth 'EA')? Clearly there are fundamentalist atheists around (often they are the "foaming at the mouth" or "village" atheists for whom atheism is doing other work than providing a rational framework or philosophy of life. And they usually are atheists fully, rejecting even the agnostic view of religion. This is atheism in obvious unhealthiness.

In contrast, EA is robustly healthy. It captures the highest powers of the human psyche and focuses them in productive ways. It is associated with, but not exclusively with, youth and captures the interest of those aspiring in society who have the greatest intellectual and aesthetic potential, as well as moral passion in behalf of liberty and human rights. EA is not ionly naturalistic in ideology but is pulled into the intelectual aesthticism and contemplative mysticism of the idea of a world completely homogenuous. One recalls the picture of Watson and Crick, in the PBS movie adaptation of Watson's account of the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule; that of the two young 'scientists' jumping back on their heels saying "No, no, no! Nature is beautiful, harmonmious" where the issue was beauty of the algorithmic pattern of a crystal. In such a state they are swept away out of themselves in raptuous contemplation as much as the mystic beholding the Beatific Vision.

The also have a palpable sense of Epicurius' discovery of the relief from oppressive guilt one receives if one gives up the notion of the gods and of immortality. If death is the end, there is no need to be weighted down with the oppressive sense of an impending judgement beyond life whether of a personal throne of judgement or a rational principle of karma. We need only tend to the wise cultivation of all our pleasures as whatever workd best. This is the atheist counterpart to justification by faith in protestantism -- a doctrine which removes the sting of death by removing the guilt of sin, which only has power when it is accepted and internalized.

There is also the zeal of a moral crusade. The leveredge of atheism provides the foundation of extracting all the balliwick of dogma that keeps mankind bound and gagged. Sure traditional morality is removed but that is a good thing. What remains are the minimalist obligations on us that impose themselves in virtue of there not being any real power to choose otherwise such as doing things that seek ultimately our own happiness. Consequently, things that stand in the way of this, like anti-sodomy laws or scruples, or ant-abortion laws, etc. get scraped off with a strong new broom. On the other hand no scruple keeps us from using force to redistribute wealth to everyone egalitarianly. Sure quibbles are still possible about what the best way to promote pleasure is, but once the arbirary dictates of tradition are either set aside or muted through complete parity of cultures, there is nothing stopping us from getting down to the buisness of doing the only thing we could possible be attracted to.

So we should try to discover if we can even more exotic and traditionally transgressive pleasures if we can, but yet there is also a sacred canon of truth which cannot be violated, namely science. And science is the excercise of construing our concept of the universe to as much as possible conform to the image of a homogenious aggregated unit, absolutely and explicitly intelligible to our concept forming abilities and data aquiring capacities. Whatever satisfies Ockham's Razor (wielded with Sweeney-Todd-like fury) is what we settle on as truth. Of course, we must have solid research to establish any particular point but in the meantime, the most remote unsupported explanation that conforms to the homogenuous concept of the universe as a closed system is better than any otherwise plausible and sense-making one that does not.

Summing up, it seems that point for point we can come up with an evangelical model of atheism that resembles an evangelical model of Christianity. Both have their sacred canon; Christianity has the Holy Scripture, atheism has Science. Both have their Messiah; Christianity has Christ, atheism has Matter. Both have their proclamation; Christianity has justification by faith in Christ, atheism has the insight that sin and judgement are not possible in the first place. Both have their spirituality; Christianity has absolute dependence on the Power of the Holy Spirit, atheism has the self-distancing and mystical encounter of the idea of homegenuous nature. Both have their ideas of the necessity of conversion; Christianity has the necessity of turning from sin and trusting in Christ, atheism has the necessity of turning from dogma and trusting in human calculation. Finally, both have their mission; Christianity to preach the good news of forgiveness of sins to all nations, atheism to liberate all mankind from the throes of prejudice and tradition.

This seems to show that the differentiation between fundamentalist, evangelical, and mainline not only applies to Christianity and other religions, it also applies to secular philosophies as philosophies of life. It seems clear that we can abstract the form of life called evangelical from its particular instances in Christianity, other religions, and atheism for consideration in its own right. For starters, the evangelical mood is one that combines sincere activistic commitment and belief with a healthy commitment to reason, balance and tolerance. It also represents humanity in one of its most productive modes, it is reform minded but not unduly violent and it is effective. Everybody should be an evangelical version of something or another, all other things being equal and we have good reason to aspire to an evangelical mood for its own sake.

But evangelicalism has its problems. Since one could be an evangelical Christian, or an evangelical Hindu, or an evangelical atheist, or an evangelical communist. Such exclusive commitments will necessarily come to loggerheads in society, they will fight for their views in the courts, they will insist on their rights to fair hearing and fair treatment. It may be necessary for different sides to recognize the "evangelical character" of the other side as a point of sympathetic contact.

But the most crucial implication of such an analysis is this; Being an evangelical is not a sufficient condition for being a Christian, it is possible to be evangelical robustly and not be a Christian. Further, if we admit that at least some Fundamentalists and Mainliners are geneuinely saved and Christian, then being an evangelical is not a necessary condition of being a Christian either. Christianity is not evangelicalism.

The Gnu

Armitage the ad hoc RPG

GAME ENGINE:
"Talk about your simple programs!"

Here is an RPG based on the premise of the animes "Armitage the Third: Poly-Matrix" and its sequel "Armitage: Dual-Matrix". It uses the game engine, All Outta Bubblegum, copyrighted by Michael Sullivan and Jeffrey Grant and linked to the title of this post. The rules and discussion of this engine are linked to this post. For an introduction and links to source material for this game, see the links under "The Armitage Syllabus" in the sidebar of this blog. The rules use some strong language. I am going to assume familiarity with standard RPG notations (d6, NPC, GM, etc.) This a fan tribute work to the Armitage storyline and its creators and developers and not intended for commercial profit. Be sure to give the OAV and two movies a chance. You can see my review of the films under "the Armitage Syllabus" heading in the left column under "Yes, Yoko! There is an Armitage!"

CONCEPT:
"Hope is a human feeling, isn't it?"

The time is the near future and the place is a city on the colonial and partially terraformed planet Mars. The Martian government has taken an ambivalent attitude to the idea of Martian independence from Earth. At first, the desire for independence was strong and efforts were made to facilitate it. The chief obstacle has been the small population of Mars and the decline in immigration. A provisional solution has been to proliferate robots who are able to fulfill most service jobs. Robot technology is quite well developed and has advanced in several stages. Besides various automatons, including monstrously sized and idiosyncratically designed "gadgets", the most sophisticated robot the general public is aware of and which is widely used is the series called "Seconds". Seconds are user friendly robots capable of interacting with humans in various straightforward ways. These robots are designed to resemble humans in appearance (their distinguishing features are the control knobs on their foreheads) and to fulfill various service functions (waitress, stewardess, receptionist, even personal use for entertainment). However, because of their ready availability, they are easier and cheaper to employ than humans. This has lead to uprisings by the general populace over lack of employment and to strong anti-robot activism and pro-robot activism of both a civil and uncivil sort.

What the general public does not know is that the Martian government has attempted a secret robot development project, the Thirds. Originally intended to be super soldiers and assassins designed to operate in complete secrecy by perfectly blending unnoticed into human society, the project was redirected to producing a female humanoid robot with the remarkable ability of reproducing human children. This was in order to increase the Martian population without having to rely as much on further immigration from Earth to do it. In order for this project to succeed, it was necessary to make the Thirds as human-like as possible, resembling them not only in alluring appearance, but also emotionally and intellectually. In fact, Thirds typically have the ability to produce original creations like artists. They often take up creative professions like art, theatre, and dance. Further, they are designed, unlike Seconds, to function autonomously according to their own personal judgment. Structurally, Thirds are covered with a bio-engineered tissue surface as well as some tissue and organ functions (they can bleed when hurt) which resemble human tissue, while their interior structure remains engineered machinery, hydraulics, and circuitry, including a very sophisticated AI system and CPU. This makes them almost perfectly indistinguishable from humans. The only way to identify them on sight with certainty is by damaging them and exposing their electro-mechanical structures.

Some acquainted with the project, as well as some Thirds themselves, wonder if the Thirds are the first robots with souls.

The project was successful in producing several members of the series. However, the Martian government abandoned its Third project when it seemed to them that they would not be successful in their bid for independence. Switching canoes in mid-stream, the government began to seek a reconciliatory strategy with Earth. This required dismantling the Third project and terminating the Thirds. To do this, the government commissioned the original assassin-robot project to hunt, expose, and destroy all the Third types that had successfully mingled into society. The personality of the assassin-robots allows them to mingle in human society but only enough to perform their function. Consequently, they seem to be more simple and more psychotic than the female Thirds. All the old assassin robots are male and all the other Thirds are female.

The Martian government has destroyed all the research facilities of the Third Project, including some of the scientists who engineered it, and made all robot models beyond the Seconds illegal. The secret to Third robot design is mysterious and appears to be lost. This has not kept interested parties from trying to reproduce this research on their own, both on Mars and on Earth. But the Martian government assumes that the Thirds are all destroyed. This may be far from the truth. Those Thirds that remain, stay in hiding and seek to live indistinct human lives. However, because of the innate ability that each has to network and telecommunicate with each other, the cannot avoid being aware of the existence and well-being of other Thirds. The troubling question of who they really are drives them again and again to risk their lives to find an answer.

SOCIAL CONTRACT:
"I'll try to keep that in mind, Ms. Armitage."

This RPG can be played in the traditional style by assigning one person to be the Game Master and having her determine the setting, characters, and objectives for the players as well as being the interface between the players and the game world. But the linked game engine allows for other possible negotiations concerning arrangements between players as to who has the authority to determine the world and narrative, including quick and dirty one-offs between players. Make sure you settle such questions before playing this game.

CHARACTER DESIGN:
"The List of Thirds."

Every Player Character (PC) is a Third. PCs have only one attribute -- Humanity, which is represented by "Bubblegum" in the "All Outta Bubblegum" game engine. The only other type of character that has Humanity are assassin-robots. Thirds generally start with 8 Humanity according to the rules but some may start with 7 or 6 if they are in military or police occupations rather than creative ones. Assassin-robots are non-player characters and may start with much less Humanity, say 3 or 4, because of their psychotic drive to terminate all Thirds. All other characters are either all human or all robot for game purposes. Non-player characters may be normal humans, cyberneticly repaired or enhanced humans, "gadgets", simple robots, Seconds, assassin-robots, or other Thirds (or Fourths).

Besides Humanity, all Thirds have the following; a cover identity and a husband and perhaps family who shares their identity. The other family members may or may not know at any given time that mom is a robot. Other qualities that Thirds possess but which are not quantified for game purposes are a devotion to the welfare of other Thirds and a sense of shame in the knowledge that at some level they are "just another robot". These affections may be suppressed, kept reserved, or openly shared and acted on. Discuss your characters story with your Game Master or other players if no Game Master is being used.

TASK RESOLUTION - NON-COMBAT:
"Making children takes more than just a female form."

There are two type of tasks; non-combat and combat. These are resolved as per the linked game engine. The sense of Humanity is preserved through successful integration of the Third in ordinary human life. For most mundane tasks, there is no need to roll. But if one's identity is on the line, roll as per the rules. These situation involve conceiving a child, persuading someone, especially a human, to be a friend, colleague, or lover, crucial tasks involved in investigating your origins, etc.

A special power that all Thirds have is tele-presence, the ability to communicate their "ego" into cyberspace through the air or through computer and communication networks. This allows them to communicate with one another and with assassin-robots. Because of the uniqueness of this ability to Third types and thus its closeness to their shame in their identity, when not used for combat purposes, this requires a non-combat roll to be successful. However, tele-presence can also be used to turn off safeties in weapons hardware or detonate or overheat weapons causing them to explode. These are handled as combat tasks are (see below). In some cases, like shutting off alarm systems or opening security doors, it may not be immediately clear whether the task is combat or non-combat. As a general rule of thumb, anything that results in something destructive and pyrotechnic that does immediate damage to an enemy the character is aware of should be considered to be more likely a combat task.

TASK RESOLUTION - COMBAT:
"'Heaven's Door'!"

In seeking her goals, a Third may run into a combat situation with another Third, an assassin-robot, or regular robots or gadgets. Because the Third prototype is based on the original assassin-robot design, Thirds are super skilled, super-strong, and devastatingly destructive. But since most Thirds start in creative and non-military occupations, it may take them awhile to get in touch with their "inner assassin" before they can perform combat maneuvers very effectively.

Any successful hit to an ordinary robot or gadget is enough to destroy it. To score a hit, the player must describe in cinematic detail (weapons, acrobatics, martial arts) what she is doing and roll for success according to the rules of the game engine. However, when fighting another character with the Humanity attribute, the character cannot be destroyed by a successful hit until their humanity is reduced to zero. Generally speaking, because of the original interest of the Martian government, most of the combat soldiers, security guards, and special police tactical forces will be robots.

Thirds are not fatally damaged while they have any Humanity left. However, any fight may involve some non-fatal physical damage to either the surface texture or the interior frame of a Third's body. It is possible that the Third may not even be aware of the first type of damage, although others may see it and realize that she is a Third. Any Third detected this way will initially alienate most any human witnessing it, which the Third may discover is difficult to recover from, especially in the case of such a discovery being made by family members. She will have to roll for a non-combat resolution to try to persuade them of her humanness in spite of being a robot. If there is any structural damage, she may find it difficult to find a source of maintenance without exposing her existence to the government or the police. All this kind of damage is worked out narratively.

LOSING THE GAME:
"'Kill' robots? You mean 'destroy', don't you?"

The player's general objective is to obtain all of her goals and restore a sense of integration into the human community before her Humanity reduces to zero. The degree of victory depends on how well she does this. When any character's Humanity is reduced to zero, they are "dead" and are treated like a pure killing machine for purposes of task resolution and become an non-player character as far as the contract between the players and the Game Master is concerned.

Whether it is possible to recover lost Humanity is up to the Game Master and the players. The original project members are gone and the secret to their technology is deeply mysterious. It is not enough for any scientist to know the hardware and software features of Third program design and mere reverse engineering will not reveal it. If Humanity is to be recovered, it will be an extremely difficult mission.

TWEAK OPTIONS:
"It's a little too angelic for my taste."

Tweak #1 - Other dice: the linked game engine uses a ten-sided die mechanic. For longer durability, you might try a twelve (d12) or twenty sided (d20) die. This will also allow you to set higher levels of Humanity. You may also consider rolling three six sided dice (3d6), regarding the sixes as zero points and having Thirds start out at 10 Humanity and assasin robots start out at 5 humanity. This produces a number between 0 and 15 along a probability curve emphasizing how difficult it is for a Third to reconnect with her assassin programming and how easy it becomes to lose her humanity in a cascading fashion. It is possible to still win a non-combat skill check. Players may decide to allow that or simply say that at zero the character is "dead".

Tweak #2 - Saving Throws: At a significantly low number of Humanity, say 2 or 3, a Third runs a risk of reverting to her old programming and functionally becoming an assassin-robot, targeting only other Thirds. The GM or another player may call for a saving through when the number of Humanity is that low. The player must successfully make a non-combat roll in order to not become an assassin-robot. One could also simply confine this option to Thirds that are non-player characters.

Tweak #3 - Degrees of Success/Failure: Allowing degrees of success or failure to have different relative values fits well with the narrative style of the setting, even if it complicates things a little. For the basic d10 version of the rules, there are different lists for non-combat and for combat rolls. Roll the dice, determine degree of success or failure according to the following lists, and narrate events to justify the rolled degree description. Let TN be the target number, based on the number of Humanity left, that you must roll equal to or less for non-combat rolls and higher than for combat rolls. For Non-Combat rolls: TN = incomplete success, TN - 1 = adequate success, TN - 2 = good success, TN - 3 = great success, TN - 4> = outstanding performance, while TN +1 = failure, TN +2 = terrible failure, and TN +3> = abyssmal disaster, as well as -1 to Humanity. For Combat rolls: TN = non-stunning damaging hit, TN - 1 = mere grazing hit, TN - 2 = distructive but still a miss, TN - 3 = clean miss, TN - 4> = self-destructive misfire, while TN +1 = solid hit on the money, TN +2 = significantly davastating hit, and TN +3> = brilliantly davastating hit, as well as -1 to the opponent's humanity.

Tweak #4 - Cyberpoints: You may want to introduce another set of counters (spearmint gum as well as bubble gum) to provide more strategy in the game, especially if you are using the traditional GM/PC type of social contract. Because Thirds are connected with one another through telepresence abilities in cyberspace, they can often provide a kind of ambient community support to one another in times of need. Of course, if Thirds can do this so can assassin robots. This form of "grace" is represented by "cyberpoints" (CPs). At character development, every character belonging to a player receives two cyberpoints ( two alternate counters). Players also receive an additional CP whenever they roll a 1 and lose a CP (if they have it to lose -- there are no cyberpoint deficits) if they roll a 10 on a non-combat roll, and conversly for combat rolls (+1 CP for 10, -1 CP for 1 if they have any CP). If a player character wants to re-roll a non-combat or combat result they do not want, they can 'spend' a CP before rolling again if they have it. But the player must go by the results and lose the spent CP even if they are not happy with the new result (but they can spend another CP and roll again if they have it). GMs may reward players for exemplary performance along some aspect or another of roleplaying by giving them additional CPs at their own discretion.

Tweak #5 - 1D6 version: (For those who want a little more Sullivan in their game engine.) If all you can find is a six-sided die, this tweak adjusts the rules to allow the use of one six sided die and uses a mechanic suggested by Stephan O'Sullivan, the creator of the Fudge system (a.k.a. the "pop-o-matic" mechanic). It also uses the descriptor ladder like Fudge but this is clearly another way of doing "All Outta Bubblegum". All rolls use one six sided die and each roll is a kind of open ended roll. For any roll, the player or GM rolls the die and rerolls it if the result is a 1 or a 6. The result is a number between +3 and -3 according to the following chart:

(+3) : 1st roll=6, 2nd roll=5 or 6
(+2) : 1st roll=6, 2nd roll=1,2,3, or 4
(+1) : 1st roll=5, no 2nd roll
(+0) : 1st roll=3 or 4, no 2nd roll
(-1) : 1st roll=2, no 2nd roll
(-2) : 1st roll=1, 2nd roll=3,4,5, or 6
(-3) : 1st roll=1, 2nd roll=1 or 2

The values are also assigned a comparative descriptor word according to the following table:

(+3) Superb
(+2) Great
(+1) Good
(+0) Fair
(-1) Mediocre
(-2) Poor
(-3) Terrible

Each Third starts with ten counters for Humanity but arranges them in five rows ("levels") of two counters each from top row to bottom. Each row is also assigned a value each for non-combat actions and for combat actions:

Level 1: (+1 for non-combat)(-1 for combat)...OO
Level 2: (+0 for non-combat)(+0 for combat)...OO
Level 3: (-1 for non-combat)(+1 for combat)...OO
Level 4: (-2 for non-combat)(+2 for combat)...OO
Level 5: (-3 for non-combat)(+3 for combat)...OO

This represents the following formulae; Non-combat value = Humanity/2 - 4 (rounded up), Combat value = 0 - Non-combat value. You can also determine the values by writing the above descriptor ladder on a buisness or index card and setting it alongside of the rows of your Humanity counters with the bottom level of the ladder indexed to the bottom row of counters. Then identify and use the value assigned to the level corresponding to top-most row of your remaining counters. Use the card right side up for non-combat actions and upside down for combat actions, until you can assign the values in your head.

Whenever a player loses a point of Humanity, a counter is taken off the the top-most row. The values assigned for action resolution are the ones assigned for the top-most row that the player still has counters on. So at the begining of the game, a Third has +1 for non-combat actions and -1 for for combat actions. When she loses three Humanity, she has +0 for non-combat and +0 for combat. An assassin robot starts like a Third who has lost 5 Humanity already.

To resolve an action, determine which value your current amount of Humanity assigns for actions of that type. Once you have determined the value assigned for your character's Humanity for that type of action, roll the six-sided die according to the procedure above, add the result to the assigned value, and then narrate the situation to justify the comparative descriptor assigned to the adjusted result. (Example; Trish has three Humanity and must fight an assassin robot. Her assigned value for a combat roll at this point is +1. She rolls a -2 making a total result of -1 which is Mediocre. She flinches and manages just to knock the smile off the robot's face.) If the adjusted non-combat roll is 'Mediocre' or worse, the player character loses one point of Humanity. If the adjusted combat roll is 'Good' or better, remove one Humanity point from the player character's enemy. When a point of Humanity is removed, one counter is taken off that character's top-most row. When Humanity is all gone the character is "dead" as understood in the regular rules. You will probably want to add the Cyberpoint tweak to this (awarding a CP for every natural +3 die roll and taking a CP for every -3 die roll).

THANKS:

"Tell 'em Eddie says, 'What's up'!"

Thanks to Michael Sullivan and Jeffrey Grant for permission to mention and use their game engine and Takuya Sato, Chiaki Konaka, Katsuhito Akiyama, Naoko Hasegawa, and Hideki Kakinuma and associates for the Armitage films. Be sure to examine the referred links for all the credits for the real work on this. Thanks also to the inspiration of Stephan O'Sullivan.

The (non-) Emergent (or non-) Church?

D.A. Carson has as good but critical introduction to the emergent church movement as you can find on the web so far.

(Copied from ABC) Here is my own take on this. The assumption that seems to be put forth by the emergent church is that we are shifting from a modernist culture to a post modernist culture and therefore we need to shift from a modernist church to a postmodernist church. The perception of a cultural shift is the main grounds for altering not only the practice of the church but the formulation and presentation of doctrine as part of that practice. But this assumption is open to evaluation.

My own assessment is that the evidence that the culture is shifting from one paradigm to another is largely false and may even be wishful thinking on the part of certain evangelicals. If one is relying on high culture in the USA (the Big City-Big University-Big Media complex) to be the bellweather for cultural change, there is no real evidence for any substantial change in the basic mindset of that high culture since the pre-twentieth century inductrial age. The fact is that such culture has gotten more "conservative" and more effcient in globalizing itself and there is no logical end to its bootstrapping. The new boss is the same as the old boss.

Rather than think of pomo as the response and reaction to mo, I find that it makes better sense to distinguish between what I call "Hard Modernism" (HM) and "Soft Modernism" (SM) and also between "Hard Postmodernism" (HP) and "Soft Postmodernism" (SP). Modernism emphasizes disciplines of research (complexly structured skills with measurable performance, Gessellschaften), such as (paradigmaticly) the natural sciences, ideal frameworks (math and logic), and conventional social structures (social psychology, economics, technology, and contracts). Postmodernism emphasizes fields of research (contiguously related topics of study approached open endedly and more informally, Geimenschaften), such as culture, art, anthropolgy, religion, material culture, subjectivity, etc. "Hard" or "soft" refers to the radicalness of the application of the program and more specificly to the two possible responses to scepticism within and among the disciplines. The Hard approach embraces scepticism and confines meaningful discourse to whatever may be trivially true, incorrigibly known, or empirically verified. The Soft approach, while admittedly indicating that it cannot refute scepticism adopts the policy of rebuting and resisting it and preserves in its discourse what the Hard side discounts. In practice this distinction can be vague but not so much so that it cannot be relevent and useful, I think.

Therefore HM is reductionistic about science and all other disciplines. Only those things that can receive empirically verifiable formulation are true and whatever else is true is only true because it can be exactly paraphrased by something that is verifiable. Consequently except fro some narrow formal principles (if even those) ordinary discourse, morality, first person psychology, and religion are all something like pure fiction. Further, HP is relativistic and diverse, not only in the sense that there are diverse cultures but even in the sense that diversity and intranslatibility are created with every novel point of view anyone anywhere takes so that there is no personal identity over time since all of your current thoughts must be seen as radicaly equivocal to any of your previous thoughts. It also accepts that there is no truth value that can be assigned to these perspectives and that they are mere constructs after all. As you can see, in spite of the squabbles between them HP presupposes HM and is the implication of it to human experience.

On the other hand, SM returns to the phenomena and ordinary language and is aware of all the discrepancies between the naturalistic account of the world and the appearance of the world. While acknowledging the appearance/reality distinction, they also recognize the need for an adequate account of the world to answer all the relevent questions experience raises. SM is not automaticly hostile to experience or ordinary language and finds analogies to scientific ways of knowing to other ways of knowing (like aesthetic, moral, or religious experience) such that they stand or fall together. SP recognizes that there are other functions of reason besides scientific ones and that there are diverse systems of values, but that there is no reason to suppose that this makes all candidates for a function of reason or a system of value acceptible or intranslatable and that cross cultural moral criticism is possible. Further to say that there are a plurality of diverse and legitimate values is not to say that there are no objective values. There is more than one way things could be good. There is nothing necessarily that makes SM at any way incompatible with SP.

So my contention is that the Hard/Soft distinction is more relevnt than the modern/postmodern distinction. And my further contention is that if we have to ask what respect traditional evangelicalism (the evangelical protestant conservative movement of the 19th and 20th centuries in Britian and the USA as well as elsewhere) is a modernist movement, the answer seems clearly to be that by and large it was a movement of SM, both in Jonathan Edwards adoption of a system of thought like Berkeley's, in the dependence on the Old Reformed Scholastics, in Butler's reply to the deists, and the over all commitment of North American theology on the Scottish Common Sense Tradition and its resistance to Humean scepticism, as well as for the reason that a HM "version" of evangelicalism would be an oxymoron. Capitulation to HM gives you the Liberalism of the mainline churches. It's in this light that I think questions of the "modernism" involved in Warfield's doctrine of inerrancy should be understood.

Turning to the emergent church, we can ask a similar question with respect to postmodernism. And the problem is that the movement is so new that we have no clear idea if the attention to the difference between Hard and Soft is being given suffcient weight. Some things some of the leaders say seem to be reasonable adoption of SP such as their embracing of the work of Alistair MacIntyre. But as Basil Mitchell points out, MacIntyre is working out the thesis defended by C.S. Lewis in "the Abolition of Man", not known to be a tract for pomo. So such an enbrace seems hardly a radical shift implied by the word "emergent". On the other hand, where the emergent church seems to be its most "faddish" is in its "using relativism to balance out absolutism" and similar gestures. Here we don't know what is being accepted and what is being rejected.

We can at least say this, either the emergent church movement is an expression of HP or SP (or at least is heading toward the embracing of one or the other). If it enbraces HP, it is truly radical but also something other than evangelical Christianity. Rather than augmenting the ability of Chritianity to have a witness in contemporary society, it winds up embracing the absolute impossibility of such a witness even between members in the association called "church". But if it is moving in an SP direction, then it is embracing what may prove to be worthwhile features of contempory thought to faciliate its witness but these same features hardly put it at odds with traditional evangelicalism. The better view would be to argue how catholic traditional evangelicalism is to be able to enbrace these more reasonable currents of thought without giving up its original features (in the spirit of traditonal evangelical theologian, James Orr). But then its claim to be "radically emergent" is really empty. There is nothing Copernican or Galilean going on here. The emerging church movement has to decide whether its going not be emergent or not be the church.

However, if the emergent church is more tempered that some of the rhetoric, all it could be saying is that the church is having to make a shift in emphasis on some themes (say the SM themes) to an emphasis on other themes (say the SP themes). This is a change of thema which while not a Copernican shift is still fairly consistent with cultural shifts that the church has adopted in the past over time as it carried out its missionary program. But if the church changes its emphasis this way, its more like not because the culture is becoming morepost modern but that our part of western culture is remaining adamantly modernistic, as in HM, and forcing the church to adopt SP themes in order to oppose principle for principle. That is, the church is defending say a pluralistic account of moral values precisely to oppose the view that there is only one way the world is, the reductionist way. It may also be adopting a reasonable person standard of warrant pricely to oppose that restriction of legitmate certainty to either deductive or quantifiable inductive standards. In doing so and in claiming that "we are all postmodernists now" the church is appealing to the authority of an existing but non-expert culture. But against the program of HM, the ordinary average person on the street looks more SP-ish anyway, and this may be what is being construed as a "cultural movement toward postmodernism".

If the emergent church movement were in Europe rather than the USA, one expects that it would lose its motivation altogether, because Europe is adamantly unreconstructed HP, and the church remains looking like SM in contrast to it. Which means that church continues to maintain the image of Victorian Evangelical "fundamentalism". The emergent church may not be a strategy that makes sense in all parts of Western culture, on this less radical and more defensible view of it.

So at best, the emergent church, rather than picking out a Coperincan revoltion may just be marking a fairly typical sea change in the church in light of its history and geography. And these changes are often worthwhile.

Grab your dice!

Its not that hard to find free games on the net (see link). I tend to be fascinated with RPG rules systems so I like to explore the mechanics. But I decided to go ahead and link the free RPGs that I've found with some real street cred (see sidebar), hopefully to make it easier for people to act on the mood of trying to organize a game with few resources. Most of the games can support most any genre and they are all well supported themselves. "Brickquest" is specific but is designed to help use something around the house for miniture gaming. The systems span the continuum of play complexity. Some just require six-sided dice.

Paul Czege's "Nicotine Girls" is highly reviewed and brilliant. Czege's work is valuable for getting you to rethink the possibilities of RPG design. Be sure to look at his other work.

What's your excuse now? Grab some dice and play!

David Hume: Mysterion?

The famous Scottish Skeptic David Hume, starting with the fundamental principles of Brittish Empiricism in the tradition of Locke and Berkeley, seems to undermine many of the motivations for the modern turn in philosophy, one of which is to provide a philosophical rational for science by following science as a model for philosophical justification. He seems to show that rather than succeeding at this, Brittish philosophy in principle cannot provide any warrant for science or common sense. But to relieve ourselves of this, he says "Nature" leads us where wisdom fails us and appeals to "custom" to account for our continued efforts at scientific induction and other things, including morality and religion.

It is hard for me to understand what he is doing here. Surely after sustaining such crititicism on Berkeleyan though for postulating "spirit" as the fundamental substance and saying that this is as unmotivated empirically as Locke's substratum -- his "something I know not what", such an appeal to "nature" is also unmotivated. What could we really say about nature and custom now when we couldn't say anything before?

This is especially puzzling when he talks about society as being something determined by a kind of evolutionary selection process. He seems to prefer the views of his fellow Scot Adam Smith who gives an evolutionary account based on natural egoism; socially benefiting institutions supervene of self-interested activities by the "invisible hand" of natural economic selection. But what this invisible hand is is not clear. Supposedly we might assume that the process refered to by the phrase 'invisible hand" is a completely socially natural process. On this view, Smith's account is just an extension of Hobbesian materialism and mechanism. We will have to say that apparently altruistic behavior is ultimately to be explained in terms of natural survival and self-regard.

But if that's right, it seems Hume is guilty of a kind of "bait and switch", appealing to skepticism to remove from the table views he does not like such as Berkeleyan Theism, in order to appeal to "nature" to re-introduce views he likes such as Hobbesian social materialism. But then Hume would be guilty of a double standard in his appealing to a skepticism which rules out both equally while supposedly appealing to one account of nature as opposed to another for reasons that skepticism is just not applied to. But if that is the case, Berkeley is at least prima facie legitimate in offering his own reasons for his preferences (a point that I think is not lost on Berkeley and is precisely what he does do in his three dialogues).

But what if Adam Smith is not offering a strictly Hobbesian account (see link) but simply asserting that there are both survival oriented but also genuinely self-disinterested motives in human nature but that both happened products of natural evolution, then human altruism appears mysterious against any sort of Hobbesian account. The view would be that "evolution" is just a name for the "that whatever it is" that produces the various moral affections in humans, some of which are egoistic and some of which are not. If that is the case, then all the method does is document what we do in fact place our affections on withou offering any prefered way of dealing with the paradoxes. But this is just to take such affection with equal seriousness. If this is what Hume is appropriating in his account of nature, Hume seems to be a kind of 18th century counterpart to those "mysterions" in contemporary philosophy that find reductionistic accounts of human nature to materialist sources inadequate but find nothing yet to replace them with.

A Night at the Roddenberry

Not my generation on either source but I know a good joke when I see one. Thanks to Aaron Williams for pointing this out.

Dilbert on ID

I will join the many recommending Scott Adam's comments of Intelligent Design Theory. See the link to his blog.

I think that Mr. Adams restrictions on who should count as a credible authority on ID are too strong. As to the criterion that science must not be based on pre-conceived notions, this seems to elliminate a lot of good science. Crick and Watson (according to Watson's account, "The Double Helix") were lead directly to the DNA model from the data because they had the pre-conceived notion that "nature is beautiful", that it is harmonious, symetrical, resonant, or whatever depending on the aspect of nature you were studying. In general, to the extent that scientists don't know they have only intuitive pre-conceptions to guide them in research and part of being an experienced scientist is aquiring good jusgement about what pre-conceptions to go with. So one can be a good authority in science and be guided by pre-conceptions. Concerning the criterion that a credible authority will not have any career or financial interests involved, it is difficult to imagine that there could be a good scientist in who we would invest trust in her authority if she was not fully employed in the work of science by a professional institution of research. We are not likely to listen to or even hear from the isolated bayou pond researcher who pays for his livelyhood through aligator poaching and does his research on the side, no matter how good he is. Consequently, any prima facie candidate for authoratative opnions is ruled out by his career and financial connections.

One expects that he needs to have such a strong criterion because it has to be strong enough to eliminate attaching credibility to ID scientists who are as much employed research professionals with different but educated pre-conceptions as those scientists who aren't. He says that he does not deny that there is knock down evidence for blind evolution, just that there are reliable competent people who can identify this evidence for him. he might say the same thing about the existence of knockdown evidence for ID theory. One wonders what he would say about Dr. David Berlinski who wrote a very competent and "Dilbert friendly" book, A Tour of the Calculus, and who also, in an article for Commentary magazine, wrote that he could not even find probable evidence for either one much less knockdown evidence.

Yes, Yoko, there is an Armitage!

WARNING! This post contains spoilers for the anime films "Armitage III: Poly-Matrix" and "Armitage: Dual-Matrix". These films contain strong language, some nudity, sexual references, violent images, and continuity problems and are not recommended for everyone.

I am currently going through a phase where it seems to me that there are anime productions that live somewhat up to their promised potential. More specificly, I can't seem to get enough stuff related to the anime hit films in the "Armitage" storyline. I was thrown off of course because of ignorance and picked up "Dual Matrix" first, mostly because it gets a higher profile at my FLGS, but also because "Armitage III" sounds like a sequal. (Of course, I couldn't help but wonder what happened to the availability of "Armitage II".) Both films, and epecially the second film ("Dual Matrix") deserve high praise for the outstanding production values, not only in the art and story development but also in the voice talent casting for Anglophonic audiences (thank you, thank you, thank you) and in the outstanding incidental music in both films.

But more importantly than that, the storyline and depiction were valuable to me both philosophically and religiously, which is what I want to focus on. In general, anime has always fascinated me in its consitent attempt to try to picture the humane and mystical into the space of science and technology -- and here we have a fine example of that conceptually. What I want to do is summarize the plot in both films and then reflect on it from a philosophical point of view.

In the near future, the Earth has carried out a more or less successful colonization of Mars but part of what has made this reasonably possible is the development of robot technology. However, this has led to the formation of new frontiers of crime. Ross Sylabus is a detective from the Chicago police force who transfers to the Mars police department after his partner is killed by an assassin robot. In general the proliferation of robots in society, ones which closely resemble humans and mainly serve in service capacities, are becoming quite controversal in general, and especially so in the case of Earth/Mars political and economic relations. But Sylabus is especially pained by robots because of the death of his partner. Mars PD is less orthodox than Earth police and he is assigned a partner, a feisty, petite, but aggressive women detecteve named Naomi Armitage, who tends to shoot first and ask questions later.

Ross's role in the MPD is to investigate crimes involving technology. No sooner does he get there but he becomes involved neck deep in a series of altercations involving the shooting of robots. But these robots are not standard service robots (called 'Seconds' to indicate the series of robots they are the members of). These robot terminations are of robots that have effectively assimulated themselves into society so as to be indistinguishable from humans. They tend to function with complete autonomy and to occupy creative roles such as artists, writers, and musicians. Apart from the damage of being shot, they were assumed to be normal members of the human race. In fact, the purpose of the shootings seems to be to expose their presence and infiltration into human society. Another disturbing fact is that they seem to be all female. This series of robots (called 'Thirds') is off the books and seems to be an illegal underground production line to the police. Since these altercations involve terminating robots, it is not clear that there is even being a crime committed, even though it seems like the police are hunting a serial killer.

Ross is warned that there is no room for sympathy with robots on Mars, since many Martians are struggling with the loss of jobs due to the availability of robots as cheap labor. Ross is already with them based on his own experience. But he eventually discovers that his partner Armitage is also a Third. At first it seemed that she was a robot rights sympathisizer, but her position becomes more clear after getting shot up going against the assassin. "I feel like some grotesque puppet. I can walk and talk and I can laugh and I can cry. But I'm only a monsterous doll!" Strikingly, Armitage is filled with shame at her true nature, she sees herself as a mere instrument though she tries to hide this from everyone. But the police department is beginning to suspect her connection to the Thirds. Ross finds himself faced with the dilemma of whether to help Armitage solve the mystery of what she is for or to do his duty to help bring her into police custody. When Armitage asks why he has decided to help her and become a rogue cop, Ross becomes angry and frustrated. "'Why? How come? You sound like a child. There is no reason at all!" Ross seems frustrated by his inability to make clear his motivations for risking so much in order to help her.

Armitage discovers that the government of Mars originally designed the Thirds as assassins for military use and that the shootist is actually one of many of these series of robots. But the series agenda was changed to deal with the Martian interest to obtain a political identity distinct from Earth. Since the population of Mars was in remission after colonization, the Thirds were developed to be robots that could bear live human children and consequently were designed to possess artficial intelligence, emotional responsiveness, and creative autonomy as a human woman (a variation of the 'Mars needs women' plotline). But in a change of policy, the Mars government abandoned the repopulation project in order to have a more stable reunion with Earth and in order for this to be acceptible to Earth government, Mars had to terminate its aspirations of autonomy and the project of the thirds. This move is what was in progress when the assassin robots were activated to kill and expose the presence of Thirds in society.

Ross is faced with the further dilemma now of becoming a fugative from Martian justice and defend Armitage's life from the now uniform will on all levels to terminate her. At this point, in the story Ross has been so badly damaged in the line of duty that more and more of his body has been replaced with cybernetic parts so that the line between him and Armitage becomes more and more blurry. He finally decides to give up everything and assaults the Martian military in order to go into hiding with Armitage and the two become husband and wife. According to Ross, "I know a true heart when I've met one."

In the second film, "Dual Matrix", time has passed and the two have successfally altered their identities and assumed a non-descript place in Martian society. In this period, Armitage has given birth to a daughter, now four years old named Roko, but they have labored to keep Armitage's nature as a robot a secret from her so that to her Armitage is like any human mom. Unfortunately, an illegal attempt to ressurrect the project of developing the Thirds brings Armitage back into her investigative work in behalf of new Thirds. Further, a successful attempt to thwart a terrorist attack on the company that Ross is serving as a security guard brings Ross and his family out in the open to interested parties and forces him to serve the cause of robot rights. The villian who is responsible for both reviving and then terminating the new Thirds project is trying to corner the market and discover the secret of producing robots that procreate. He seems to assume that the humans born to such will be human but be complete tools, instances of Aristotle's natural slaves. But all of his attempts to discover the secret of reproduction fail since even though coming to possess full details on both Armitage's hardware and software, he can find nothing in them that will show him how to produce a child. Armitage's explanation of the mystery does nothing to clarify it; "Being able to bear a child takes more than just a female form. The secret is of child bearing is in her heart!" But the villian is unconvinced; "The answer is in the software. I know that's it."

He captures Yoko and holds her hostage, forcing her parents to attempt to rescue her from his own high tech weapons and robots. The family makes an attempt to escape but not before the damage done to Armitage exposes to her daughter her robotic systems through her flesh. At that point the daughter (at four) is put in the same position Ross Sylabus was in years earlier, faced with the dilemma of whether to accept her mother knowing that she is a robot. At this point the little girl clings to her father and refuses to talk to her mother/that robot, confused and frightened. In her eyes, Armitage rediscovers the sense of shame of what she is again, this time not in the eyes of society in general but in the eyes of her precious daughter and fears that she has lost her forever even if they escape. It takes a long time but Armitage's defense of her family to the point of near self-sacrifice and self-destruction finally draws out the child who begs her mommy to stop because if she keeps going on she will die. In the end, the villian is exposed and the family escapes back to Mars, to a planet seeing a brand new day. The family is now fully intergrated and fully established in Martian society like a typical human family but with the full consent and understanding of all of its members. Armitage is now completely identified as human and free. (But we are not allowed to just leave things there without being further disturbed. Be sure to catch the redivus at the end of the credits.)

In the movie-world, the characters including Armitage herself, are faced with the dilemma of deiciding what Armitage is. Everyone who looks at her sees to things simultaneously; (1) a creative and autonomous agent with concerns and values and the feelings and emotions that go with them and with the capacity to reason, to be aware, and form intentions to think about things and more particularly about people, and (2) a machine whose componantry can be completely described and analyzed with precision, an artifical apparatus, an instrument or tool. The movies make it clear that the assumption that Armitage is nothing but a machine is not safe no matter how well we understand her make-up. Is Armitage just the machine or is she a soul within the machine? This point is underscored in several ways, in the larger debate about robot rights that forms the cultural backdrop, in the personal dilemmas that confront the human characters who know her personally, and in the symbol of childbearing as an evidence of life that cannot be cashed out from the software. The basic dilemma that all face is whether Armitage should be treated as a mere means as the Seconds are and as we take it that any robot would and should be or should Armitage be treated as an end in herself. She especially needs to know that Ross will perfect in his own attitude and with full awareness the vision of Naomi as an end in the relation of covenantal partner love. What will the man do when he hears, "Oh Ross, I love you so much!"?

The basic problem is, even given what we know about Armitage in the hard science, we are confronted with a conflict of metaphysical visions about her, that these visions underlie the moral dilemma about how to treat her, and that this choice is not one that can be made abstractly since she herself plays a role in the decision by our characters always being in communication and relationship with her. Once the decision is made and one makes a commitment, one can begin to cultivate the relationship; the commitment opens up communication and interaction, especially in the case of Yoko for whom the decision to accept her mother as her mother is simutaneously expressed in her resuming commincation with her to plead with her to stop. Were Ross and Yoko (especially Ross of course) rational in the fictional future world to wholey commit 'heart and soul' to the autonomous agency and personal devotion of Armitage, which is to ask if they were rational to accept the existence of Armitage as something other than a mere machine? The decision called for was one of total commitment on metaphysically desputable premises and yet the decision carried with it finally kind of intelligible certainty as to what to do. Is it really the cas that no explicit reason counts as having "no reason at all"?

But this dilemma in the Armitage world is directly analogous to our real situation with each other. It is not possible for us to take each other seriously as mere machines but that is the picture that science puts forward as most credible -- that there is waiting some complete description of human nature along Hobbesian materialist lines. But if we must pause at the idea of a robot being nothing but a machine when exhibiting such characteristic traits of personal agency we must also pause at the same phenomena with regard to each other. The question Ross faces as to whether to take Armitage to wife is faced in a similar way to any of us taking anyone as our spouse. This is made much weaker if the typical understanding of marriage is of the no-fault divorce type of contract, but this model fails to capture the profound need for personal devotion in the case of Ross and Armitage. The decison is as to whether we treat each other as ends (humans) rather than mere means (robots). I think that we have demonstrated that we have faced the dilemma and are committed to the existence of a world of 'non-natural' persons by our actions. Armitage is a way into metaphysics.

Finally, this not only applies to the issue of personhood but to the universe as a whole. Through an evolutionary account we seem to have a completely full potential description of the universe as a lucky machine. But the phenomenology of the universe may suggest something more if anything strikes us about its design and complex functionality or even the commitment to the existence of rational relational agents. If evolution were true there could be no geneuinely altruistic conduct by any person and we would have to treat appearances to the contrary as needing further explanation of their true selfish roots. But we are in no better position to deny the existence of love as we are to deny the existence of the lover. The question remains open and the sKeptical and suspicious appraoch remains rebuttable even though not refutable. We may make as deep a commitment to the existence of an agapistic theism if we were to discover one in history as we are to one another in marriage with full communication practices fully in place, such as prayer and worship. Thus, there is a philsophical approach to legitmate faith to which Armitage points, a way which shows that religious belief and practice need not be motivated by mere sentiment or convenience, a kind of "existential rationalism".