The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

38 Philosophical Failure
Note the word ‘must’ here. The author writes as if he or she—never
mind who it is—has established the conclusion that if one regards the
properties of material individuals as universals, one must either accept
the existence of ‘‘elements elusive or opaque to the understanding’’ or
else accept a bundle theory of the nature of material individuals. If you
say that you could produce a much clearer example of a philosopher
who believes he has proved something of philosophical interest, I will
remind you that I really did find these words on two pages chosen at
random (and if you recognize the passage and think I meant to pillory
a particular author, I will remind you of the same thing). I mean these
words to be an example of something absolutely typical in philosophical
writing. We all write this way. We have no other way of writing—not,
at least, when we are defending a conclusion. These lectures themselves
will provide a fund, a plethora in fact, of examples of the very conception
of philosophical argument that I am now attempting to undermine.
That conception of philosophical argument is an ‘‘all but irresistible
idea’’ because it is inherent in the way we philosophers have learned
to write philosophy—not that I have an alternative way of writing
philosophy to recommend to you. We are, after all, philosophers. We
do not, we flatter ourselves, simply assert: we argue. To argue is to put
forward reasons for believing things. And what is the point of putting
forward reasons for believing things if those reasons are not decisive?
That this rhetorical question represents the way we think, or a way we
often think, is implied by the way we treat the reasons we present. The
reasons we present our readers with when we write do generally seem
decisive to us when we are putting them forward—this is shown by the
fact that we do not generally immediately qualify our presentations of
reasons for accepting philosophical theses with some variant on ‘‘But of
course these considerations are merely suggestive, not decisive’’.
But if argument in philosophy does not have the enviable indisputability
of mathematical proof, what good is it? Is there even such a
thing as success and failure in philosophical argument? If philosophical
arguments are not proofs, what can we mean by calling them successes
or failures? What can I mean when I say that the argument I am going
to examine in these lectures, the argument from evil, is a failure?
Let us consider an example. Suppose someone offers an argument
for some philosophical thesis—for the existence of God, it may be,
or for the non-existence of universals, or for the impossibility of a
private language. Let us say an argument for the existence of God. What
would it be for this argument to be a success or a failure? Here is a