The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

40 Philosophical Failure
proved by an argument that was a success by the standard we are
considering. Then I discovered that at least one important authority
(László Kalmár) had his doubts about the cogency of the argument I
had found so impressive and was in fact inclined to think that Church’s
Thesis was false. 1 Since I was unwilling to suppose that Kalmár was
mad or irrational, I changed my mind. ‘‘Back to zero,’’ I thought. (And,
in any case, Church’s Thesis is a best a borderline case of a substantive
philosophical thesis.)
The account of philosophical success we have been examining sets the
bar too high. I propose to lower it by relativizing success in philosophical
argument to context. A few moments ago, I said, ‘‘Philosophical
arguments are not best thought of as free-floating bits of text’’. By
‘‘free-floating’’, I meant detached from any context—that is, I meant
that a philosophical argument should be evaluated only in relation to
the various circumstances in which it might be offered. I will mention
two ways in which whether a philosophical argument was a success or a
failure might depend on context.
First, whether an argument was counted a success or a failure
might depend on the purposes of the philosopher who has offered the
argument. Did this philosopher mean, for example, to produce converts
to its conclusion? It is not invariably the case that the purpose of a
philosopher in offering an argument is the winning of converts. The
philosopher may frankly admit that the argument is unlikely to convince
very many people to accept its conclusion—and not necessarily because
he thinks most people are mad or stupid or ‘‘logically challenged’’
or irrationally attached to some false view of the world. Perhaps he
thinks that the conclusion of his argument lies in an area in which it
is very difficult to reach any conclusion with certainty—owing, in the
words of Xenophanes or someone of that sort, to the obscurity of the
matter and the shortness of human life. And yet he may think that
the argument is a pretty good one. (This is the attitude I try, without
any very conspicuous success, to cultivate with respect to arguments
I am particularly fond of.) To take a different sort of example, there
are philosophers who have devoted a great deal of time and care to
arguments for conclusions that almost everyone was going to accept in
any case. Arguments for the existence of an external world, for other
minds, for the mathematical or physical possibility of one runner’s
overtaking another .... Presumably, the purpose of such philosophers
is not to increase the number of people who accept the conclusions of
these arguments. (It is not even, necessarily, to provide a rational basis