From: hyder@cs.utexas.edu (Syed Irfan Hyder)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Re: Bad arguments for religion: Inadequacy of "Pure Reason"
Date: 7 Apr 1992 15:14:00 -0500
Organization: U Texas Dept of Computer Sciences, Austin TX
NNTP-Posting-Host: pageboy.cs.utexas.edu

In article <nadeem.702616599@deathstar> nadeem@deathstar.Stanford.EDU (Nadeem Hussain) writes:

|
|I have been getting quite depressed reading this bboard and have kept 
|myself from engaging in the discussion both because of a lack of 
|time and because I don't really have a clear idea of how to deal with 
|the pro-Islamic views on the table.

I appreciate this putting of "views on the table", because in
the process of going through the debates on this "bboard"
I have learned world of things of which I was not aware. It
has given me new inspiration and new energy and new ideas
of which I never thought I was capable of.

 Because of the
technicality of the discussion, and lest things are taken out
of context, I would appreciate if the contributors retain at least
major portion of the origninal remarks. Although, this will add to the
length of the posting. 
However, I would like that we be very clear about what we are
saying. So that the discussion do not meander out of context. 

|
|But I think there is an interesting family of arguments that gets 
|used over and over again.  My hope is that looking at the structure of 
|the arguments might help us get the discussion moving along more 
|productively.

An excellent idea.

|
|There are several arguments that go as follows:
|	(A1)	Individuals in the West carry out an action of type A.
|	(A2)	When the individuals in a large population carry out an 
|		action of type A the negative consequence B results.
|therefore
|	(A3)	We should not do A.
|and
|	(A4)	Islam prohibits doing A.
|therefore
|	(A5)	We should follow the Islamic path.
|
|It's a good form of argument for a pro-Islamic view because it does 
|not explicitly rely on a religious premise, i.e., that Allah exists, or 
|that Islam is the truth.  

The reason for taking this approach is not arbitrary and it is
not  some kind of an 
intuition coming out of the blue. There is a whole history of 
"experience" in the Islamic thought and its experience of the
challenges which necessitates such approach.

i. It is very clear (at least to the Islamic scholors) that the fact
	"that Allah exists, or that Islam is the truth" can never
	be proven ('for' or 'against') by the use of "pure reason". Here
        is the fallacy: How can the "creation" estimate and
	understand the "complete logic of the creator" except by what
        the "creator" chooses to tell the "creation". Eg. A gear
	of car comes in contact with other gears, has a limited
	"experience" of the parts of car with which it comes in
	contact, the fluids used, their viscosity etc. How can
	a "gear" know, with its "limited domain of senses", its
	objective, in the grand scheme of the totality of the
	whole car. A particular "gear" may not even engage
	the fourth one, because the car may have been wrecked on its
	first drive while it had been just on the third. 
        
	Similarly, how can a 
	man with the "limited domain of his 6 senses" (6th one of which
	is itself controversial) understand the grand design of
	the whole universe, let alone that of its creator. Just imagine
	what our "experience" would have been if our eyes would have
	been sensitive, not in the range of "visible spectrum", but
	in the range of "gamma rays"!!!!!!!!!!! Most things in
	this universe would have simply been not observable.
	Does this means that those things do not exist?

ii. The above position became clear when all the attempts of past
	Islamic philosophers (Ibn-Rushd, IbneSIna, Razi etc.)
	failed to develop a coherent, consistent philosophical 
	edifice (or theology, if you will) of Islam (900-1300 AD). 
	They were comprehensively
	beaten on their own wicket (philosophy) by their own bowling- 
	styles (tools of logic), by that genius, the Imam Ghazali.
	His books "ihyal-ululoom" and "Incoherence of the Philosophers"
	had the googlies and the legbreaks with  which they were
	beaten time and again and finally for good!

iii. After beating them, Muslims discovered their own, purely Quranic
	strategy of dealing with such challenges of "pure-reason".
	For this we owe to the brilliance of Imam Taiymiyya and
	his literalist, pure Quranic interpretation of the logic of
	Ghazali. 

iv. After being defeated in the East, when the "age of reason"
	suddenly dawned in the West (1600- AD, from Neitche to 
	Sartre), and it tried to
	make inroads in Muslim lands, it was simple for Islamic
	scholors, with the hindsight of the previous experience, 
	to avoid the pitfalls of Mutazillites and philosophers.
	Maudoodi's approach and that of Syed Qutub is simply a
	slight variation on that of Ibn-e-Taiymiyya (15th century AD).

[For an excellent and breathtaking overview of this history (from
modern perspective), please
refer to "Islam" and "Reason and Revelation in Islam" by the Late
Professor of Chicago University, Dr. Fazlur Rahman. For a pure 
Islamic view of this history see Maudoodi's "Tajdid-e-Ihya-o-Deen"
(also available in English "A Short History of Revivalist Movements
in Islam")
or Syed Ali Nadavis 3 volume history "Tarikh-e-daawet-o-Azeemat"]

|However there are still several points that 
|should get people thinking:
|
|A.	First of all (A2) is what we philosophers would call a 
|contingent fact.  It happens to be true now but there does not, at 
|least prima facie, appear to be any necessity involved.  One could 
|argue for an account of history or social facts that has some form of 
|necessity built into it but that would be an additional argument.  It 
|would probably also be implausible given the lack of success such 
|arguments have had in the past.  It looks in particular as if one 
|would have to take on scientific epistemology (in my opinion the 
|interesting battleground!) - a challenge that the above argument 
|structure so neatly avoids.

I think I know where you are leading. In light of the above four
points (i-iv), you can now understand why such reasoning "neatly"
avoids the "uselessness" of resorting to pure-reason, which
is what you probably mean by "scientific epistemology" or the
"challenge"!

You see, we who are the believers of Islam are not in the
business of "proving without reasonable doubt". Even Quran
is very explicit about all this and says clearly:
The people who ask for such "proofs" are arrogant (istukbara),
they are not looking for truth. They are trying to circumvent
the truth through such "useless" demands.
	[Would any one please furnish the exact quotes?]

You see if tomorrow there comes suddenly a being, which envelops
the whole earth, so that every one can see it, tells every one
the truth by filling every nook and corner of the earth by
the "voice of truth", hovers around for couple of weeks and
dissappears, even then, would you guarantee to me that 
such philosophers will not come back?
asking for more proof that whatever they saw, heard and
felt was not just some magic, or apparition!!!!!!

Quran says that asking for such proof is not because they want
to know the truth, but because they want to hide it! They can
neither see,  nor hear, nor feel, they will indeed never know
... (Sumun-bukmun-Umyun Fahum la yaa lamoon)

|	The contingency of (A2) has some serious consequences.  One 
|would not want, I would think, to ultimately base arguments for 
|religion on premises like (A2).  After all we only accept (A2) as 
|being true because we are buying into a particular methodology of 
|social science, a particular theory of social action, and a particular 
|account of how society's doing A results in B (I am not making the 
|stronger claim that all knowledge obtained by any methodology we 
|would be willing to label as being part of a social science is 
|necessarily contingent).  Do you really want to give up Islam the 
|minute one of these bits of your social science fails?  Or perhaps 
|more appropriately, do you want to give up Islam the minute the 
|social facts change?  This was a problem that I think I noticed in 
|passing raised by another poster while referring to the attempts to 
|find scientific conclusions in the Quran.

You are correct about basing Quranic interpretation to any of
the social sciences. But this is not only true for only the
"social sciences", including "science of pure reason". Such
defects will for ever remain in all man-made-sciences.
In the light of the above, I would simply like to refer to
an article in Times about Millineum 2000, "Is it begining or
an End" (March 30 issue, last pages) by Grunwald. There
Grunwald seems to be suggesting that the "age of reason"
has been  proven by "experience" to be hollow and 
non-satisfying. I would also like to refer to "Creation
of the Universe" by Timmothy Ferris
 for an insight of what I am saying about
the inadequacy of "reason and pure science".

Quran says and explains again and again "these are signs for those
who reflect". It is the "experience" of this world around us which
teaches us that there is a grand design. It is our own willingness
to overcome our own arrogance and ego, which will open our heart
to the truth. There are million of signs opened us. It is only
through our own willingness that we can see it. For a person
who doesn't want to see nothing is visible.

 Let me relate to you my own experience. On birth of my son,
the whole process, especially here where the father needs to be
in the delivery room, I realized that so many factors have to 
occur together, so many things have to happen simulataneouly
that for me it is inconceivable that all such things would
have happened by chance! Do you know that the first time a
baby breathes is just when his chest comes out under the
atmospheric pressure (before that he gets respiration through
mother's blood), that his circulatory systems is working the
other way round in the womb (i.e. artries carry foul
blood, veins clean), and switches to the normal mode the moment
umbilical link is severed, and so many more that you need to go through
the whole to "experience" it.

I admit that the same may not be enough for you.
It may not even be "conclusive". But such are the signs,
 so often repeated in Quran. It is these signs for which
we should keep our eyes, ears and senses open. Who knows
the next "sign" for which we are  yearning, appears around
the corner, this very  next instant!



|	Thus you still need the grand arguments for God's existence 
|and the truth of Islam - and those, I would readily propose, are well 
|nigh impossible.
|

Yes, we do need the grand arguments. But not the way philosophy
tries to give them. Mind is only one of the faculties of the
human being. There are so many. We need to employ the whole
gamut of "experience" to this end. See how Ibrahim arrived at
truth! He was in a cave. He saw the stars and wondered that
they might be god, but then came the moon and made all of
them a non-entity. He then wondered it must be the moon who
is god, for it is big and bright. But then came the sun, eclipsing
the luminosity of all others. Ibrahim said it must be the sun
for it is the brightest and biggest. However, when dusk came,
the sun itself dissappeared. And then dawned the real truth on
Ibrahim. He said "indeed I am wary of all these. My God is
one, the only one, who created all these. I am indeed not
among those who make attributions to Allah."

Subhanullah [would any one please post the Quranic
description? I just don't know how any translation can
render these  most profound Arabic words of Quran,
in English and do justice with Allah's words!]

|B.	A similar contingency problem arises when we consider the 
|argument going from (A4) to (A5).  For (A5) to follow strictly from 
|(A4) you need another premise something along the lines of 
|	(A4.5)	Islam is the only or perhaps most efficient way of 
|			preventing B by preventing A.
|This is usually, that is for most As and Bs mentioned in the 
|arguments, a extremely strong empirical claim to make and again a 
|decidedly contingent fact.  Indeed to back this claim it is not merely 
|enough to point out that if everyone was Islamic then B would not 
|happen.  One would have to compare Islam to other approaches to 
|solve the problem and defend the practicability of Islam - part of 
|which involves arguing that Islam can actually come to reign across 
|the world - a strong claim to say the least particularly given that 
|there will be people like me in the way :-)
|	And again to reiterate my point above in A. one wouldn't want 
|to base an argument for believing in Islam on a contingent and 
|empirical fact of this kind.

This is indeed the whole beauty of "philosophy" and its missing
the "point". On the one hand, it first tries to locate the
deficiencies of Islam (from its own standards, mind you, man-made
and thus fallible). But on the other hand, fails to provide
a perfect solution itself, for it knows it can't on
the basis of its own axioms and postulates. First Islam never
makes the claim to be the "truth" on the base of "pure reason",
 so it has no obligation to prove itself on the basis of the
"logic of philosophers". If philosophers find some thing of
fault, then why not they come up with a better and most
profound, most ideal, the perfect version of "truth"? 
Let's then
compare whose ware is better. As Quran says they wouldn't (and
they can not). For they are not searching for truth. If you
are not searching for one, how can you find it? But, it is
difficult for them to understand because they are 
only trying to impede the truth and not understand it!

|
|C.	Hyder at Austin, TX wrote a long article directed at my earlier 
|postings about relationships both sexual and non-sexual.  (Hyder - I 
|hope this serves as a much belated reply)  He mentioned the phrase 
|"fallacy of composition" and used the principle in a manner directly 
|opposed to how I would have used it.  To quote him, the fallacy of 
|composition points out that "what is good for one may not be good 
|for all."  His example was the one of an individual who stands up in a 
|crowded stadium to get a better look and of course the point is that 
|if everyone did it she would not get a better view.
|	This principle and the examples can be taken in several 
|different ways.  One can view them as n-person prisoner dilemmas.  
|It is instrumentally rational for the individual to stand up 
|particularly when they can make a good bet that others won't 
|immediately stand up too and block her view or at least that the 
|people who will stand up will be the ones behind her.  This could 
|then be taken as a serious *problem* for Hyder's argument.  Why 
|*is* it irrational to stand up?  One can of course argue that it isn't 
|an issue of rationality but rather an issue of moral responsibility (I 
|will return to this point in a second).  And then there is of course 
|the Kantian line where the rationality claimed to be involved is such 
|that the one has to, on pain of irrationality, universalize one's own 
|action and then one realizes, supposedly, that there is some kind of 
|contradiction involved.  This last conception of rationality has been 
|traditionally terribly hard to back up though I would love to discuss 
|it with anyone who wants to try.
|	My point is not to settle the issue but to show that in fact it is 
|not at all immediately obvious what force large scale consequences 
|of many people doing the same action should have on the individual's 
|reasoning about his own particular action.

First, as the article you mentioned, states very clearly the 
context, in which I was referring to the fallacy of composition. I don't
know in what context it is used in philosophy. But I do know
in what context it is used in economics. As the quotation says:

    "...There is a principle of ``fallacy of composition'' which is
	frequently used in economics. ..." 
	
	[What is wrong with having a relationship and/or sex]

It is clear in what context I am using that principle. Secondly,
I am sure I used that principle correctly, at least where
economics is concerned.  My text was Paul A.
Samuelson's "Principles of Economics" (for those who don't know,
Mr. Samuelson is a Noble Laureate(sp?) and this book of his
is a standard text in many institutions and the edition I
had was probably 31st or something thereof, showing its wide usage)

It is the principle on which Keynesian economics is based (economists
please correct me if I am wrong, the course I took was 7 years ago,
and this is from my memory). Suppose all people start to save,
would the economy work? Keynesian economics was the solution to
the tragedy of "great depression", i.e. by making the government
use its spendings as a tool to boost the economic engine. It is therefore
that US govt. is trying to increase its spending in the areas
of highways to overcome this depression!

Thirdly, the principle of fallacy was not the only argument I was
using in that article.

Finally, the above is a typical example of yet another paradox
one comes up with where pure reason is concerned. The chicken
and egg paradox (which was first, the chicken or the egg?). In
that article I showed how an arbitrary limitation of domain
by "pure reason" resulted in the abortion paradox (whose rights
come first, the baby's or the mothers?). Are not both very
similar?

|
|D.	One of the possibilities I mentioned above was with regards to 
|a moral concern about the outcome B.  I emphasize the phrase moral 
|simply to point out that in a lot of the cases where this argument is 
|run, B is not a direct consequence to the actor involved but rather to 
|society as a whole and then only if others follow A's example.
|	The degree to which the argument (A1)-(A5) is convincing 
|depends to a large degree on the fact that the consequence B is 
|considered bad by almost all S.C.Pians.  But of course a complete 
|argument would have to point out that these are actually bad.  And 
|that as we all know is phenomenally difficult.
|	In some sense the issue is compounded if the proponent of the 
|argument is religious.  You want to ultimately base the fact that B is 
|bad on God and your religion but how is that going to be done without 
|the, as I mentioned above, grand, ultimate arguments for God and the 
|truth of your religion.

When I see old people doing their groceries unable even to read the
labels and barely walking, thrown away discarded into old-homes,
given doses upon doses of drugs to let them doze and not create trouble
in such old care homes, and then see how my mother, father, brothers
and sisters in my home, back in Karachi, are  making all that effort to
care for my ninety-ish grand-mother, then I don't need any logic,
or reason or grand proof-logical systems to tell me which one
is right and which one is wrong! I would definitely  never
like to spend my old-age in such home, whatever grand logic
you come up with. Sir, in this case one sees the difference
b/w logic and "experience".

I am sure that our point of view and the strategies we use
are problematic for philosophers and their use of "pure reason".
If I am not wrong, they can not even "prove" we are here, and
discussing this,  let alone we exist, and are created by Allah,
and Allah exists and so forth. This reminds me of a very amusing
anecdote:

	A father and his son were having their breakfast. 
	There was only	one egg on the table. The son has
	just taken a course of philosophy. The son 
	remarked, "Abba Jaan, I can prove that there are
	two eggs on the table and not one." The father
	simply took the egg which was their and put it in his plate
	and replied, "OK, you eat the second one, I
	will take this one!"

I would not take the risk and see the "only" egg (this life) 
dissappear by. You see this is not logic, but it is
called wisdom. "Knowledge" is in the books and "wisdom"
is in the "experience". When Luqman (who is probably known
in the West as Aesop) was asked "from where he learned
wisdom". His reply was not only rational, logical, and
full of insight, but was one which you can never get
from "books of knowledge and philosophy".

He replied that he got the knowledge "From fools!".

So, dear SCPian I would follow the advice of Hakim
Luqman, rather than fall in the trap of the "philosphers of
pure reason" and thereby, for ever remain entangle in the endless 
debates of "pure reason". Afterall, what they have to show after these
unlimited debates, nothing. They can not even prove
we are here !

|
|What I haven't discussed are the arguments that proceed with a 
|liberal scattering of premises of the form "Allah says . . . " and "The 
|Quran says . . . ".  Those only have weight with those who buy the 
|religion in the first place and don't matter one bit with me.  But I 
|hope the above preliminary points can get some more serious 
|discussion going.

So in the light of the wisdom of Luqman and that 
of a very ordinary  father's "grasping the egg 
and leaving the son with the other hypotheticl one", I
would rather observe around me fools making mistakes 
and learn from them, instead of cramming in useless axioms
and their futile theories and working all my life to
find the perfect fit!

Indeed these are signs for those who reflect.

Clarification:
=============

From the above, one should not conclude that I am totally
against reason and logic. In fact, I am currently working
on giving "Temporal logic" semantics to the theory, I
am working on as part of my research. My problem with
such "reason and logic" is in its use in "illogical"
domains as explained in (i) above. "reason and logic"
is a tool. Like all other tools it is useful for
specific tasks. Just as a hammer can not be used to
cut the wood logs, similarly, in my opinion using
logic for inappropriate tasks is counter productive.

Secondly, the above posting is not specifically 
addressed to the person who has posted the article
to which I am replying. It is addressed to all
who care to read it.

Thirdly, Philosophers here refer to
the group subscribing to the views of  "Ibne-Sina"