Lewis's Argument Research Articles

An Afterlife of a Scholarly Epic: Frazer's Golden Bough and Lewis's Argument from Myth

C.S. Lewis believed that Jesus Christ embodied, in historical fact, a mythic pattern of dying and rising exemplified by deities such as Balder and Osiris. Taken from James Frazer's Golden Bough, an enormously influential work of early anthropological scholarship, the idea of a generalized ‘dying and rising’ motif is now substantially outmoded. Resting specifically on the resemblance between that motif and the story of Christ, and not (unlike Tolkien's argument from myth) on the gospel's general qualities as a story, Lewis's argument from myth thus presupposes an incorrect vision of actual ancient pagan religion. That shortcoming is not fatal, however. In contrast to Chesterton in The Everlasting Man (another formative influence), Lewis used an aesthetic or ideal, rather than a historical, conception of myth, which he carefully distinguished from the word's ordinary senses. Although Lewis did believe that ancient myth-makers worshipped ‘dying and rising’ gods, the core of his case is ‘our’ apprehension of a mythic quality in such stories and the Gospels, independent of the beliefs of ancient writers or hearers of myths. That conclusion should discourage overly sanguine appropriations of Lewis's arguments, which never developed into a general theory of mythology and, once the historicity of the ‘dying and rising’ motif is set aside, can be developed into a case much like Tolkien's.

Dynamic Form: How Intermediality Made Modernism

Dynamic Form: How Intermediality Made Modernism

Retributive Justice and Natural Law

Retributive Justice and Natural Law Peter Karl Koritansky IN 1949 C. S. Lewis published an essay entitled "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,"1 in which he argued for what he called a more "traditional" retributive theory over one that is solely directed to the rehabilitation of criminals and/or the deterrence of potential criminals. As Lewis argued, whereas many have dismissed the concept of retribution as nothing more than a veil for vengeance and barbarism, it turns out upon analysis that it is the removal of retribution from our notion of criminal justice that truly has a dehumanizing effect. Especially striking about Lewis's argument is his claim that retribution is of great value, not just from the point of view of the law, but from that of the criminal. Once the concept of retribution is removed and we are left only with the "humanitarian" goals of deterrence and rehabilitation, Lewis says, "each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being."2 How is this so? According to Lewis, the problem with the humanitarian theory is that it "removes from Punishment the concept of Desert," a concept that is "the only connecting link between punishment and justice."3 He continues, [End Page 407] It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. . . . There is no sense in talking about a "just deterrent" or a "just cure." We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a "case."4 A criminal, argues Lewis, at the mercy of a humanitarian system of punishment will have his fate decided by experts in psychotherapy or sociology rather than by judges trained in jurisprudence. Instead of a definite sentence imposed by such a judge, the criminal will receive an indefinite sentence that is only lifted when the so-called expert considers him cured. Followed consistently, the humanitarian theory might impose a much more severe penalty upon a harmless but difficult-to-cure criminal than upon a murderer who is cured relatively quickly. The fact that such disparity of punishments strikes decent human beings as alarmingly unfair is beside the point. To the experts, fairness is another word for justice, a notion inseparable from the belief that criminals should be punished no less and no more than they deserve, and it is precisely this understanding of desert that the apologists for the humanitarian theory consider meaningless and aim to replace.5 Lewis goes on to argue that the problems with eliminating retribution are even worse if we consider deterrence, because, here, the eclipse of justice is even more evident. As Lewis puts it, when deterrence becomes the sole or even the primary goal of punishment, it is not absolutely necessary that the man we punish should even have committed the crime. . . . The punishment of a man actually guilty whom the public think innocent will not have the desired effect; the punishment of a man actually innocent will, provided the public think him guilty.6 [End Page 408] To be sure, supporters of the humanitarian theory of punishment have argued7 that punishing an innocent person to achieve a deterrent effect would never be worth the risk of the general public finding out the truth.8 Lewis, for his part, insists that "every modern State has powers which make it easy to fake a trial" and that "when a victim is urgently needed for exemplary purposes and a guilty victim cannot be found, all the purposes of deterrence will be equally served by the punishment . . . of an innocent victim."9 In the end, it may not matter so much to Lewis how likely the above scenario is to occur in the real world. The mere fact that something as startlingly wrong as the...

Asymmetry of counterfactual dependence and defense of Lewis's argument

Arrow of time is well known problem in physics and concerns explanation of the status of the second law of thermodynamics. The problem, however, soon made noise in various philosophical discussions: on knowledge, causality, etc. David Lewis, partially motivated by his counterfactual analysis of causality, introduced the problem of arrow of time in discussion on counterfactuals. After his article in which he had tried to ground asymmetry of counterfactuals in the second law of thermodynamics, there were numerous reactions on such kind of project. In the first part, I will introduce Lewis' theory in detail, and in the second part I will introduce some of the main critiques of such a view, focusing on Elga's critique. The third part will be saved for Loewer's and Albert's argument in favor of a very broad view of Lewis' project. In the part four, I will present strengthening of their argument, while explaining how we could apply it closer to Lewis' original view. Finally, I will make some concluding remarks regarding possible confusion on argument for supporting Lewis, as well as the additional requirements for any future work in that direction. Also, because of the nature of the mentioned arguments, in the appendix I will, very briefly, present an overview of the arrow of time problem from the perspective of physics.

BH-CIFOL: Case-Intensional First Order Logic: (II) Branching Histories.

This paper follows Part I of our essay on case-intensional first-order logic (CIFOL; Belnap and Müller (2013)). We introduce a framework of branching histories to take account of indeterminism. Our system BH-CIFOL adds structure to the cases, which in Part I formed just a set: a case in BH-CIFOL is a moment/history pair, specifying both an element of a partial ordering of moments and one of the total courses of events (extending all the way into the future) that that moment is part of. This framework allows us to define the familiar Ockhamist temporal/modal connectives, most notably for past, future, and settledness. The novelty of our framework becomes visible in our discussion of substances in branching histories, i.e., in its first-order part. That discussion shows how the basic idea of tracing an individual thing from case to case via an absolute property is applicable in a branching histories framework. We stress the importance of keeping apart extensionality and moment-definiteness, and give a formal account of how the specification of natural sortals and natural qualities turns out to be a coordination task in BH-CIFOL. We also provide a detailed answer to Lewis’s well-known argument against branching histories, exposing the fallacy in that argument.

Prisoner's dilemma and Newcomb's problem: why Lewis's argument fails

Prisoner's dilemma and Newcomb's problem: why Lewis's argument fails

TESTIMONY AND SINCERITY

AbstractIs there a justified presumption that a speaker is testifying sincerely? Anti‐reductionism about testimony claims that there is, absent reasons to the contrary. Yet why believe this, given the actuality and prevalence of lies and deception? I examine one argument that may be appropriated to meet this challenge, David Lewis's claim that truthfulness is a convention. I argue that it fails, and that the supposition that there is a presumption of sincerity remains unsupported. The failure of Lewis's argument is instructive, however, for it shows us a better way of approaching language use than the standard anti‐reductionist treatment. As speech is an intentional action, so a presumption of the sincerity or otherwise of others' testimony must be explicable in the terms we normally use to explain action.

Does Eros Seek Happiness? A Critical Analysis of C. S. Lewis's Reply to Anders Nygren

Anders Nygren's antithetical juxtaposition of eros and agape became enormously influential in twentieth-century Protestant theology. Among other interconnected tenets, Nygren promulgated the idea that eros is eudæmonistic, i.e. always seeking the happiness of the lover. In The Four Loves (1960), C. S. Lewis vehemently denies this. Lewis's use of the word ‘happiness’ in The Four Loves is so close to Nygren's eudæmonism that Risto Saarinen has called it ‘a conscious showdown’. In this article I evaluate this engagement. After presenting and deconstructing it, I challenge Lewis's argument. I argue that eros does, as Nygren claims it does, seek happiness – although not only this. Perhaps surprisingly, Lewis, despite all appearances, may actually be compelled to agree with Nygren on this point. But not on every point. The final analysis reveals what I take to be Lewis's true concern. Contrary to what Nygren thought, for Lewis, the pursuit of happiness is not morally culpable and even eros has an agapistic opening. While getting these points across, Lewis was driven to exaggeration in denying eros's happiness-seeking character altogether. This exaggeration is corrected (probably inadvertently) by the overall argument of his last, posthumously published essay, ‘We Have No “Right to Happiness”’ (1963).

‘God … or a Bad, or Mad, Man’: C.S. Lewis's Argument for Christ - A Systematic Theological, Historical and Philosophical Analysis ofAut Deus Aut Malus Homo

The proposition that Jesus was ‘Bad, Mad or God’ is central to C.S. Lewis's popular apologetics. It is fêted by American Evangelicals, cautiously endorsed by Roman Catholics and Protestants, but often scorned by philosophers of religion. Most, mistakenly, regard Lewis's trilemma as unique. This paper examines the roots of this proposition in a two thousand year old theological and philosophical tradition (that is, aut Deus aut malus homo), grounded in the Johannine trilemma (‘unbalanced liar’, or ‘demonically possessed’, or ‘the God of Israel come amongst his people’). Jesus can only be understood in the context of the Jewish religious categories he was born into; therefore, for Lewis, Jesus is who he reveals himself to be. Jesus' self-understanding reflects his identity, his triune salvific role; this is for Lewis, the transposed reality of divine Sonship. Reason and logic are paramount here, reflected in the structure of Lewis's argument. Lewis's trilemma is not so much a proof of God's existence, but a question, a dilemma, where each and every person must come to a decision. For all its perceived faults, its simplistic language, Lewis's trilemma still is a very successful piece of Christian apologetic, grounded in a serious philosophical and theological tradition.

Reply to Lewis: metaphysics versus epistemology

Peter J. Lewis (2007) has argued that the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics implies the unpopular halfer position in the Sleeping Beauty debate. We retorted that it is perfectly coherent to be an Everettian and an ordinary thirder (Papineau and Durà-Vilà 2009). In a recent reply to our paper Lewis (2009) further clarifies the basis for his thinking. We think this brings out nicely where he goes wrong: he underestimates the importance of metaphysical considerations in determining rational credences. Lewis's original argument hinged on the epistemic parallels between (a) an Everettian scenario where the x-spin of an electron in an eigenstate of z-spin is measured, with the result hidden from an observer and (b) a simplified Sleeping Beauty scenario where Sleeping Beauty is told that she will be woken on Monday and on Tuesday, with memory erasure in between. Lewis (2007: 60) pointed out that in both cases the agent's subjective experience has the same branching structure, with the agent becoming uncertain about her location therein. He concluded that the agent should adopt the same credences in both cases. Given that Everettians are committed in the spin case to assigning pre-measurement credences of 1/2 to ‘up’ and ‘down’, Lewis infers that the Everettian interpretation implies that Sleeping Beauty should similarly assign pre-sleeping credences of 1/2 to waking on Monday and waking on Tuesday. But this would of course be very bad for the Everettian interpretation, since Sleeping Beauty's credences here should clearly be 1.

An Economic Evaluation of the Moneyball Hypothesis

Michael Lewis's book, Moneyball, describes how an innovative manager working for the Oakland Athletics successfully exploited an inefficiency in baseball's labor market over a prolonged period of time. We evaluate Lewis's claims by applying standard econometric procedures to data on player productivity and compensation from 1999 to 2004. These methods support Lewis's argument that certain baseball skills were valued inefficiently in the early part of this period, and that this inefficiency was profitably exploited by managers with the ability to generate and interpret statistical knowledge. Consistent with Lewis's story and economic reasoning, as knowledge of the inefficiency became increasingly dispersed across baseball teams the market corrected the original mispricing.

Why So Tense about the Copula?

In 'Tensing the Copula', David Lewis (2002) argues that a certain view, which some endurantists adopt to solve the problem of temporary intrinsics, fails. In this paper, I argue that Lewis's argument fails. In section 2, I present the view and Lewis's argument against it. In section 3, I reply to Lewis's argument. In section 4, I conclude by considering why endurantists might want to reject the view anyway.

An Economic Evaluation of the Moneyball Hypothesis

Michael Lewis's book, Moneyball, is the story of an innovative manager who exploits an inefficiency in baseball's labor market over a prolonged period of time. We evaluate this claim by applying standard econometric procedures to data on player productivity and compensation from 1999 to 2004. These methods support Lewis's argument that the valuation of different skills was inefficient in the early part of this period, and that this was profitably exploited by managers with the ability to generate and interpret statistical knowledge. This knowledge became increasingly dispersed across baseball teams during this period. Consistent with Lewis's story and economic reasoning, the spread of this knowledge is associated with the market correcting the original mis-pricing.

The loneliness of stages

Harold Noonan has recently argued (2003) that one of Lewis's (1983: 76-66) arguments for the view that objects persist by perduring is flawed. Lewis's argument can be divided into two main sections, the first of which attempts to show that it is possible that there exists a world of temporal parts or stages, and the second, which attempts to show that our world is such a world. Noonan claims that there is a flaw in each of these two stages. We argue that there is not.

The ins and outs of Schrodinger's cat box: a response to Papineau

The so-called many-worlds or many-minds interpretations of quantum mechancis, derived from the work of Hugh Everett III (1957), continue to have a very mixed reception among the well-informed, partly because of the theories' weirdness. Peter Lewis (2000) has argued that an important class of these interpretations have the extraordinary implication that a subject confronted by apparently life-threatening situations involving quantum measurement should be fully confident of having future experience. David Papineau (2003) has attempted to block Lewis's argument and I shall argue that the attempt fails.

Children, chimpanzees, and social understanding: Inter- or intra-specific?

Theories of children's understanding of mind benefit from rigorous interpretations of demonstrations of similar understandings in closely related species. This commentary describes how Carpendale & Lewis's (C&L's) argument could be made more persuasive with a more rigorous interpretation of the studies of chimpanzees' understanding of mind.

Why believe in beliefs?

A central pillar of Carpendale & Lewis's (C&L's) argument is Wittgenstein's later work on language. I suggest that this support is not as strong as might be wished, and offer an alternative approach to their conclusion that language learning, especially of folk psychology, involves a socially embedded constructivism.

Finding your marbles in wavefunction collapse theories

Lewis (Br. J. Philos. Sci. 48 (1997) 313) has recently presented an argument claiming that, under the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber (GRW) theory of quantum mechanics, arithmetic does not apply to ordinary macroscopic objects such as marbles (known as the Counting Anomaly). In this paper, I disentangle two different lines of Lewis's argument, one devoted to what I call the standard GRW interpretation and the other to the mass density interpretation (MDI). I present both strains of Lewis's argument, and move on to criticise Lewis's position, focusing on his argument with respect to MDI. I analyse the structure of his argument, and follow this with a novel refutation of Lewis's argument, drawing on the original presentation of MDI as developed by Ghirardi et al. (Found. Phys. 25 (1995) 5). I briefly consider the debate that ensued between Bassi and Ghirardi and Clifton and Monton and interpret it within the context of my analysis. I conclude that Lewis's Counting Anomaly fails to generate a genuine problem.

Losing Your Marbles in Wavefunction Collapse Theories

Peter Lewis ([1997]) has recently argued that the wavefunction collapse theory of GRW (Chirardi, Rimini and Weber [1986]) can only solve the problem of wavefunction tails at the expense of predicting that arithmetic does not apply to ordinary macroscopic objects. More specifically, Lewis argues that the GRW theory must violate the enumeration principle: that 'if marble 1 is in the box and marble 2 is in the box and so on through marble n, then all n marbles are in the box' ([1997], p. 321). Ghirardi and Bassi ([1999]) have replied that it is meaningless to say that the enumeration principle is violated because the wavefunction Lewis uses to exhibit the violation cannot persist, according to the GRW theory, for more than a split second ([1999], p. 709). On the contrary, we argue that Lewis's argument survives Ghirardi and Bassi's criticism unscathed. We then go on to show that, while the enumeration principle can fail in the GRW theory, the theory itself guarantees that the principle can never be empirically falsified, leaving the applicability of arithmetical reasoning to both micro- and macroscopic objects intact.

David Hume, David Lewis, and decision theory

David Lewis claims that a simple sort of anti-Humeanism-that the rational agent desires something to the extent he believes it to be good-can be given a decision-theoretic formulation, which Lewis calls 'Desire as Belief' (DAB). Given the (widely held) assumption that Jeffrey conditionalising is a rationally permissible way to change one's mind in the face of new evidence, Lewis proves that DAB leads to absurdity. Thus, according to Lewis, the simple form of anti-Humeanism stands refuted. In this paper we investigate whether Lewis's case against DAB can be strengthened by examining how it fares under rival versions of decision theory, including other conceptions of rational ways to change one's mind. We argue that the anti-Humean may escape Lewis's argument either by adopting a version of causal decision theory, or by claiming that the refutation only applies to hyper-idealised rational agents, or by denying that the decision-theoretic framework has the expressive capacity to formulate anti-Humeanism.