Martin Amis (a famous and good writer) wrote a piece in the Guardian about Christopher Hitchens. Generally, it is interesting and fun to read. But the piece culminates in an attempt to persuade Hitchens to switch from being an atheist to being an agnostic (last 3 paragraphs). Here Amis’ argument seems very weak, and very unlikely to convince Hitchens.
My suspicion is that Amis actually does not care whether he has presented a logically rigorous case, since his argument is best thought of as “concept art,” (as defined by blogger Robin Hanson) i.e. that it reads superficially like an argument grounded in logic, but that really it is just art made out of concepts. Robin Hanson defines a concept artist as follows:
To the naive, “concept artists” may sound like they intend mainly to make claims about reality, and to evaluate those claims in terms of how well they cohere with each other and data about reality. But in fact concept artists evaluate claims more the way most any artists evaluates art – in terms of beauty, elegance, provocation, intrigue, etc. This can make concept artists a bit more tolerant of ambiguity, logical gaps, etc., though the difference can be subtle – being too obviously tolerant of such things usually isn’t good art.
This seems to be exactly what Amis is doing. He is putting words in a page which will make readers feel the same pleasure they feel when looking at art. The difference (in my opinion) is that when viewing “concept art” rather than normal art, the reader thinks he is processing a logical argument, not consciously aware of the fact that he is just viewing art.
Amis’ argument proceeds as follows (there is no need to read anything but the last 3 paragraphs in the article if this argument is the only issue you’re interested in. If you’re interested in some witty comments made by Christopher Hitchens over the years, you should read the rest):
1. The 3rd to last paragraph consists of some fluff at the beginning, followed by a quote from Hitchens about how gaining wisdom involves more fully understanding one’s own ignorance (it is disappointing that Hitchens went to the trouble of making his own version of this tired old saying), followed by the observation that agnosticism is an acknowledgment of ignorance, while atheism is not. Then one more sentence of fluff.
2. The 2nd to last paragraph begins with a sentence that I don’t understand, but that I think I would not care about even if I did understand it:
The atheistic position merits an adjective that no one would dream of applying to you: it is lenten.
Then there is a jab at cosmologists for not accomplishing as much as Amis would have liked over the last 30 years, followed by an incorrect statement:
It cannot be altogether frivolous or wishful to talk of a “higher intelligence” – because the cosmos is itself a higher intelligence, in the simple sense that we do not and cannot understand it.
3. The last paragraph actually probably shouldn’t count as part of the argument at all, more just a gratuitous repetition of Hitchens’ own frequent reminder that we are made of “stardust” and that the sun will explode in the future.
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Am I just not smart enough to understand Amis’ argument? Or is it really nothing but art, masquerading as argument?
You give your readership an awkward choice of agreeing with you that Amis’ “argument” is only art masquerading as an argument, or asenting to the proposition that you are too stupid to understand the argument. Nevertheless, if there can be an exception allowing me to make my point without calling you stupid, I think Amis’ argument is comprehensible. Amis is saying that it makes more sense to profess uncertainty (agnosticism) rather than certainty (atheism) about the non-existence of a deity because the universe (or as he says, “multiverse”) is hard for us to understand and make definable statements about (“indecipherable”) and what we do understand has qualities in common with a deity (eg. “grandeur,” awesomeness, it creates us from and returns us to ashes and dust, it humbles us). Also, the statement about the multiverse, “we do not and cannot understand it” echos Amselm’s proof of deity (“that than which a greater cannot be thought”).
I am glad you introduced me to the concept of concept art. I am looking forward to accusing you of making concept art next time we are in an argument.
Morgan:
I see your point. Maybe there is a sliver of substance to Amis’ argument, along the lines you suggest. Part of the dispute is due to the way that the argument is framed. Believers in God have made a claim whose correctness (according to Amis) we know far too little in order be able to evaluate. Then, we have invented 3 words to describe the various stances one can take on the correctness of the claim: believers, agnostics, and atheists. Just by the existence of these 3 words, those who dispute the unfounded claim that is being made (atheists) have been bullied into having to profess almost absolute certainty if they do not want to be recategorized as agnostics. This is unfair to atheists. We would never do that with another dispute. If I say “I believe that there are between 10000 and 20000 butterflies in Delhi, India,” and then create 3 words to describe the levels of agreement with that claim, analogous to believers, agnostics, and atheists, forcing people to accept 1 of those 3 positions, this would already be quite a coup on my part. Clearly my claim is absurd, but Amis’ argument would just as well apply to the analogue to the “atheist” case (i.e. the case that i am wrong about the butterflies). Bottom line: Amis’ argument is somewhat effective in rebutting the atheist’s argument if the atheist claims to be a roughly 100% certain of his position. If the “atheist” (maybe Amis would have us call him an “agnostic” — that’s the part that I think is unfair) is only 80% certain, then I think Amis has not done his job. I believe I can be 80% certain there is no God and still concede that I don’t have all knowledge that could be had about cosmology, and Amis has done nothing to convince me that this is not true.
And, you didn’t respond to my pointing out Amis’ use of an incorrect statement as part of his “argument.” This does seem to me to be good evidence that he is creating concept art.
The lenten thing is further evidence: he is not primarily concerned with conveying an idea — if he were, he’d be much clearer on this point. He’s much more concerned with intrigue.
Jonathan
In calling the atheist position “lenten,” I think Amis means that Hitchens is aligning himself with an intellectual position that goes hand in hand with a dreary, hopeless mindset, the kind of mindset that Christians traditionally work themselves into during Lent.
Amis may not be attempting to change Hitchens’ mind at all. If Amis thinks Hitchens has an 80% certainty of the non-existence of a God, Amis may not be attempting to move this number. He may only be trying to persuade Hitchens to express a wonder-filled attitude when it comes to the topic of the existence or non-existence of something that could be called a god. So is Amis asking Hitchens to do something dishonest by asking Hitchens to use a word that connotes a different degree belief if Amis does not expect Hitchens to change his assessment of the facts that underly his “atheistic” convictions?
Not necessarily. After all, belief, disbelief, and agnosticism are fungible terms. There is a broad distribution of likelihoods that churchgoing people who call themselves “believers” would assign to the existence of a deity. Some say simply that they believe in some contexts, but when ask to clarify, they say there is a less than 50% chance that a personal God exists. Others would insist they are 100% sure that such a god is watching over them. The fungibility of “belief” when it is applied to God should not surprise you, because the level of certitude it implies changes according to context in other matters as well. I seem to recall Matt Damon speaking of his deep “belief” in President Obama 2 years ago, but he doesn’t seem very surprised when he now says he is quite disappointed in Obama, because Damon’s belief probably wasn’t approaching 100% when he professed it two years ago. In ordinary usage, “belief” is just not a very precise word, and by the same token, neither is “disbelief.” The third term, “agnosticism” does not make “belief” or “disbelief” any less open to interpretation, but it joins them as another fungible word.
This fungibility is only problematic when someone (such as you or perhaps Hitchens) wants to feel solidarity with a community defined by a precise concept of belief disbelief. The battle lines just aren’t clearly drawn, because most people don’t think there is a battle.
To distill my point, Amis is asking Hitchens to make a choice between two things Hitchens values: (1) his sense of solidarity with a community defined by a high degree of certainty in an idea that does not inspire hope or wonder, and (2) rejecting a term that unites the above community because such a rejection will dispose Hitchens to feel a greater sense of hope and wonder.
As to what you call the incorrect statement, I think it is sort of like a pun, deliberately conflating the idea of something that is beyond our understanding with something which itself possesses great understanding. The rhetorical effect makes the sentence artistic speech, but not necessarily “concept art” because it may have a place in an actual argument. Maybe Amis is alluding to the idea that if something is complex, it may itself be intelligent or may have been created by something intelligent. More likely, however, Amis is simply suggesting that a broader notion of the “higher intelligence,” which includes something very complex and awe-inspiring. This is a position taken by many Unitarians, who import religious language to describe non-divine sources of awe. They say they believe in a god, but that they do not believe in a “theistic” god. “God” is just an awe-inspiring term they use that puts them in the mood for activities like stargazing. Amis is perhaps suggesting that Hitchens use “agnostic” the same way these Unitarians use “God.”
There are, based on what you’ve written, at least 3 areas where you are not certain what Amis is trying to say (although you have what you seem to think are good guesses). Yet this lack of clarity has nothing to do with the complexity of Amis’ argument. Rather, it is due to his deliberate attempt to be hard to understand. The arguments you have interpreted Amis to be channeling (and it is just that; there is nothing original in the actual content, except maybe the point in your 2nd to last paragraph above – but there your interpretation seems to be a stretch: Amis says he wants to “convert” Hitchens to a new “persuasion” – as normally interpreted, that suggests a change in belief, not simply a recategorization) are easily understandable when represented clearly (as you have done, using hardly any more space than Amis did in the original). Why didn’t Amis write them clearly? Because he wants to be intriguing.
When I have read arguments by philosophers on topics such as God (or economists on economics, or physicists on physics), I sometimes have had trouble understanding their arguments, and sometimes not. But when I have, it has not been because these writers have deliberately used words that they think I won’t understand (e.g. “lenten”), nor because they are masking the simplicity of their arguments in confusing language, nor because they have used arguments which are literally incorrect, forcing me to explore possible “pun” interpretations. It has been because the content itself is difficult. These writers have, in general, appreciated the complexity of the content, and recognized the utmost importance of using totally unambiguous language to make their arguments.
This is exactly the opposite. The content itself is bland and almost trivial (“We don’t understand the universe! How can we say whether God exists?!”). Amis has buried it in art.
And you cannot escape the tradeoff: the more “artistic” and hard to understand the argument (the more guesses, such as the ones you’ve provided, that need to be made by the reader), the less convincing from a purely logical point of view.
One final point: the use of “pun” meanings and other metaphorical language is more insidious than you seem to appreciate. When Amis uses the term “higher intelligence” to describe something “very complex and awe-inspiring,” he is not simply reappropriating a word. He is deliberately using the term “higher intelligence” because despite his (not quite explicit) modification to the definition, he knows that it is impossible to fully scrub away the original connotations of the term “higher intelligence.” Similar to the way Unitarians use the term “God” – despite their re-defining, they want to smuggle in the original connotation, so that the readers, while perhaps on one level accepting the re-definition, still have in their mind a much more powerful and substantive entity when they think of this new “God.” It is no mistake that Amis doesn’t use a new term (other than “higher intelligence”) and tell us the definition, and that Unitarians hang on to that old term “God” – they need the old, nominally shed but not completely forgotten, connotations to remain. A clear example of “having your cake and eating it too”: insist on using the original, forceful word (“God”, “higher intelligence”) in order to have an apparently relevant and interesting argument. But then, when confronted with an apparent logical gap, quietly note that you are using an alternative definition of these words, so the same rules don’t apply, at the same time taking comfort in the fact that this caveat will not be fully appreciated by your readers.
The word Mr Hanson is looking for is Conceptual art, not ‘concept’. And I don’t think one can make generalisations about the movement or the approach in the way that he has.
I found this plea by Amis to be inexplicable rather than intriguing. I can’t find an explanation for it that protects Amis from the nagging suspicion that he doesn’t get atheism as defined or described by H, or the motives that take H’s arguments in the direction they go.
Agnosticism is not more exotic than Atheism for wondering more earnestly about farcically obscure and tiny possibilities as adjuncts or elaborations to the known, which is the difference between them. The agnostic’s smugness in doing so, that is, the pride he or she takes in using the unknown or unknowable to lever itself some sort of ah ha more in heaven and earth than in your philosophy nana-na-nana superiority, and it is only that old cliché, from he who makes war on cliché’s, that we have here (isn’t it?), – can that really be anything other than the product of a very mediocre ambition?
I have never seen Christopher make such a cheap trump. I love Amis, but increasingly his brilliance seems confined to the production of style, through which he finds fresh and affecting resonances, but not pertinent comment. That’s thinking like a child and writing like a genius. Christopher speaks like a genius and bloody well thinks like one too.
Mixotrich:
I agree that Amis’ article shows child-like thinking and genius-like writing. Once you get past the flowery language, you are left with hardly any argument at all, and what is left is cliche. I don’t think agnostics in general are smug (the expression of uncertainty is generally humble), but in this particular case Amis is — he seems to view himself as superior to the point of not having to put forth a rigorously argued case. He’d rather put together an opaque piece of art and leave the reader guessing and wondering what the genius must be thinking.