What happens when our priors don't match up?

This topic has been bugging me recently, probably as a result of the interminable health care debates going on in Congress right now. Each party has certain ideological commitments that, if we grant that everyone is acting in good faith, suggest that Democrats and Republicans won't be able to agree on a healthcare reform bill that does anything useful in either direction. /end political commentary.

Politics aside, this question also dovetails nicely with Ben's post below. I think the reason we fall into the trap of Bulverism is because, if only subconsciously, we realize that logical argument can only take us so far. We can each hold totally coherent views on a subject such as religion, even if we disagree about some priors, such as which religion is the one to follow or not follow. We can argue about who is right until we're blue in the face, but these arguments are bound to end in question-begging territory, because they are arguments about what is good (or some other abstract concept) based on differing understood meanings of the word "good". If I think that good means "whatever the Flying Spaghetti Monster decrees", and you think that good means "whatever an ideal judge would decide", then unless we can agree that the Flying Spaghetti is an ideal judge, we are at an impasse. No clever reductio or overpowering logical argument can prove one definition of good correct, because logical arguments presuppose well-defined concepts.

Obviously, this is an old problem, which is why the field of metaethics can be kind of a mess to wade into. It's easy to find problems with each definition of good, but those problems only arise because we think that this particular definition of good is problematic. This is a pretty textbook fallacy in itself, so it seems pretty clear that two people who vary on such a fundamental level will always be arguing past each other. This differing definition will totally change how they view the world, and in some sense, we might even think that they inhabit different worlds. The problem becomes, how can we still have meaningful conversations with our differing definitions of certain terms?

One solution is to go the logical empiricist route and claim that all metaphysical claims are meaningless. Unfortunately, it seems that the articulation of the verification principle is itself not a verifiable claim, so the logical empiricists have just replaced one set of prior commitments with another. We have no more reason to believe the verification principle than we do the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Given that sort of impasse, the natural next move is to try to go in the other direction and probe at how a particular set of beliefs holds up as a worldview. If I both believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and that pasta can never be the main constituent of a sentient being, then I believe a contradiction. Leaving aside the human mind's wonderful ability to handle cognitive dissonance and rationalize, this argument strategy usually fails about the things we most want it to succeed for. Religious tenets tend to live at the center of Quine's web (at least for those with strong opinions about religion), and so to be less subject to revision. All this argumentation will succeed in accomplishing is getting me to drop my (supposedly) rational view about pasta.

My explanation for Bulverism is that it is an expression of the above tactic. Consider what would happen if you held the following belief.

1. I hold each of my ideas because I considered it deeply and fully.

In this case, the Bulverism tactic of saying "Oh, you're only a Christian because your parents were Christian" would be an attempt to elicit some level of contradiction. Obviously, this is an easily disputed claim on it's own merits, but in this case, it doesn't constitute a fallacy, just a different level of analysis. The Bulveristic claim is not a refutation of the existence of the deity, but of the coherence of the worldview being held by the proponent of the deity. In other words, I don't want you to say "Aha, I'm a Christian because of my parents, therefore there is no God!", I want you to say "Aha, I'm a Christian because of my parents, and this means that I am not justified (in whatever way I define justification), in believing that there's a God." This suggests why Bulverism tends to be accepted for discussions about God, but not about isosceles triangles. It's a useful rhetorical device when the direct proof lies beyond the ability of two people to agree upon, but not about triangles.

This post is dragging on now, but one last point: Bulverism doesn't usually work, even in the above regard. People don't hold two-dimensional worldviews, and if they do, they have at least convinced themselves that the worldview is three dimensional. Given that, I'm out of moves. So in the comments, my question to you all is: how do we reconcile worldviews that differ based on differing definition and prior assumptions?

Ezekiel Bulver and Religious Discussions

The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.... I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century. ~C.S. Lewis, Bulverism

This logical vice seems present in numerous arguments, but I have seen it especially present in religious argumentation. It is common to both sides. Theists claim that the atheist does not believe in God due to some moral failing. He seeks to escape his moral duties or he was raised in a terrible environment as a child, and so he denies the religion of his parents and the moral obligations it may create. Atheists often tell stories of how religion arose, say as a therapy for our fear of death, as a tool of power to control early societies, or as a way to explain misunderstood natural phenomena. In the specific case, they often claim that individuals are 'just' following their parents' beliefs.

I don't really believe that any of these claims are factual. They seem to me to be over-generalizations on both sides, and I am unaware of any scientific case showing that these stories are indeed how religion arose. The more interesting consideration, however, is to suppose that they are true. Does it really make any difference? I would contend it does not. Even if the atheist seeks to escape real moral obligations, this says absolutely nothing about propositions about the existence of a deity. Even if religion has had ulterior motives to truth, perhaps even nefarious ones, it seems to say nothing about the truth of God's existence. One might think that atheists, so often focused on science, would be aware of the truth so often discovered by man's mistakes and poor assumptions. So what if the first religious believers deigned to control their society and find an explanans to mysterious explanandums. They may have stumbled upon something quite true.

The particularly surprising aspect of this to me is how prevalent a fallacy it is. It isn't just found in discussions among 'commoners' or armchair philosophers such as us, but is very common in the New Atheist literature.

Bulverism seems like a perfectly obvious logical fallacy to me. Its changing the subject. However, when raising this objection, I almost always find resistance from both sides. Instead, these bulveristic stories are considered to be greater logical explanations to religious belief or non-belief. I'm not convinced. These stories might be interesting as a counter-argument to simple arguments such as, "So many people believe, so there must be some truth to it," but I'm not sure I'm even convinced its a good argument to this.

So my question is two-fold: Is Bulverism really a fallacy? And if it is, why is it still so prevalent in religious discussion?

The Armchair Symposium

The Armchair Symposium hopes to be a pleasure for its readers, a therapy for its writers, and the modern electronic equivalent of an Ancient Greek drinking party for both.

It will function chiefly as a philosophical blog for the armchair philosopher, with possible 'published' journals in the future.