My first book, Sense and Goodness without God, was completed in 2003 and published in 2005. Since then I have collected a long list of corrections (mostly typos, a few clarifications or improved wording, and updates to all the bibliographies) that I would certainly make if I ever do a second edition. I likely won’t, because I’m planning a new, shorter, popular market version—which will simply reference this one. And further updates will likely be separate volumes by subject (epistemology, ethics, etc.).
Nevertheless, Sense and Goodness still holds up as a really good and solid worldview survey. Nothing like it exists (by me or anyone). It’s still the place to start if you want to examine and build a complete worldview. After twelve years, none of it is relevantly incorrect, and even though its bibliographies could be updated, those updates (all the new science that has happened since 2003) simply confirm further the conclusions already reached in the book. The only thing it lacks is more attention to feminism and social justice as an integral part of moral and political philosophy, and the integration of Bayesian epistemology. But there are many minor corrections worth making.
In this post I will survey the substantive ones, then list all the known typos I and others have caught. I will also update this article as I get further notions or discover more typos.
Revision Notions
The revisions I would have in mind are actually minor. Except in the politics section
(1) For example, in section III.3.3 (pp. 75-76). Though the coverage there remains factually correct, for various reasons I now believe Chaotic Inflation Theory (CIT) is more likely to be correct than Smolin Selection Theory (SST), although they are compatible and thus could both be true, and either remains plausible on known evidence (I did note my preference for CIT in SaG, but I could have emphasized it more). Both are also simpler theories than theistic creationism, since they require less specified complexity in their reductive explanatory parts. God has vast specified complexity because he must know everything and have all abilities and a specific set of desires, all of which have to be presumed ad hoc, and yet are highly complex in terms of information content, whereas both CIT and SST can each be described with a single equation (a variant of Schrödinger’s equation in quantum mechanics) that requires far less to be specified.
But it’s so much more complicated to explain why CIT is more probable than SST, whereas SST is far easier to grasp. And the argument still works as written. It’s enough that it could be true, and yet is so much simpler than theism and explains so much more. So if SST is less likely than CIT, theism is even less likely still! Even so, I understand a great deal more about the plausibility of multiverse theory in general now, so I could have made an even more interesting case in the book (such I now do in my chapter on design arguments in The End of Christianity). Similarly, I think the case against theism in Why I Am Not a Christian is improved as well (more succinct, hitting harder points to overcome, etc.).
(2) I have also become convinced since writing Sense and Goodness that epistemology must be Bayesian. I develop that extension of my philosophy in Proving History. For more immediate discussion see “Bayes’ Theorem: Lust for Glory.” and my many blog posts on Bayesian reasoning. I would also emphasize the cognitive science of reasoning more, and other aspects of the new critical thought (see my Resources for Critical Thinking in the 21st Century).
(3) I’d like to straighten out the vocabulary and steps in the biogenesis chapter (III.8.1, pp. 166-68).
(4) There are ableist language issues I’d like to fix in a few places.
(5) But the only significant overt factual error I have identified is in section III.6.1 (p. 136). There I state that animals lack a cerebral cortex. That’s incorrect. All mammals have one. Rather, animal cortices are simpler and (relative to an analogous body size) smaller than humans (and ours is indeed the most complex organ known), and in result they lack the organ structure within the cortex that generates self-awareness (as well as language and other associated abilities). It’s the complexity and reorganization that matter more than size (although a certain threshold size is necessary to house the complexity required, especially in conjunction with all the other satellite skills a brain needs to do its many tasks other than generating consciousness). Among the relevant works that came out after my book that I would now cite on this issue is neurophysicist Michael Gazzaniga’s Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique. For example, a long but nevertheless fascinating discussion of the different ways the human brain does (and doesn’t) physically differ from animal brains can be read in its first chapter, Are Human Brains Unique.
(6) More significantly, I have also changed many policy positions in the Political Philosophy section, after having studied far more research and evidence pertaining in the decade since I wrote. For example, my perspective on the economics of tax regimes (e.g. p. 394) has changed completely. I also see the merit of emphasizing more the need of hybrid socialist-capitalist regimes (each a check and balance against the other, with a strong equilibrium producing the most sustainable societies) and that includes more attention to national healthcare systems and examining the possible merits of universal basic income (which I would link as a lifetime reward for a stint of national service, including peace corps and other nonmilitary endeavors).
I did warn in the opening of the Politics Part that my conclusions there were the most likely to change (e.g. p. 369). That was accurate prophecy. I have some more refined insights now even on the grounding of political theory. For example, there really is no objective difference between public sector and private: governments, like unions, are just another corporation, with their own bylaws and shareholding structure; and all the problems that plague the public sector plague the private sector as well, and vice versa, with no practical distinction in reality; and the solutions are likewise often the same. Much more could be said. But for now, just note I still agree this is the section where the most disagreement is possible; and I might no longer hold a position you find there. This was 2005, well over a decade ago. A lot has changed since then.
(7) Plus a bunch of little things like when I say scientists call something “memes” I should instead say “some scientists” call it that (p. 175); and when I talk about biological mutations, I should say most individual mutations make little difference, but of those that remain most are fatal (p. 168); every time I write “Jehova” it should be spelled “Jehovah”; I should not say synesthesia is something you “suffer” from (p. 156); in my discussion of the case Conley v. Nailor et al. I should have made it clearer who is Nailor and who else is who in the case description (p. 109); also some URLs have moved or disappeared; I need to add several terms to the index that would be useful to be there. And so on. Little accuracies of wording like that could be improved throughout. I haven’t made a complete list.
(8) If I decide instead to do a companion volume, updating these things in a shorter, more enjoyable summary, rather than a full revision (and thus continue to rely on the original edition for the bulk of arguments), the only thing that would leave is the updating of the bibliographies. I might offer that as an appendix; but regardless, the internet has changed enormously since 2005, and I think I might instead put in a section where I explain how to research each topic on your own: using Amazon, Wikipedia, and Google Scholar, and online encyclopedias, for example (like Stanford and IEP; and TalkOrigins Archive and RationalWiki) to look for the latest summaries of the science, philosophy, and history of each point, and vet them (e.g. if peer-reviewed arguments remain on both sides, which one is using more fallacies and less accurate descriptions of the facts and arguments; which one has the wider support of its field because it actually is better founded on the evidence; etc.), and assess to what extent the foundations of my position have not changed (but really, IMO, have been shored up).
Typos
p. 26: title Classical Philosophical Questions should read Classic instead
p. 50: The clause, “that is, plausible deductions,” should read, “that is, plausible inductions.”
p. 54: The phrase “is penultimate in success” should read “is next-most in success”.
p. 58: “ma th” should be “math”
p. 60: “irregardless” should be “regardless”
p. 61: “see also II.2.9” should be “see also II.2.8”
p. 70: William Shea’s book is The Naturalist and the Supernatural not The Naturalists and the Supernatural.
p. 70: The sentence “There are also many bigoted critiques of naturalism, too” has a redundancy (either “also” or “too” is unnecessary)
p. 74: “such thongs” should be “such things”
p. 87: “had lead us” should be “had led us”
p. 93: has extra period after “solar system.”
p. 93: “canvass” should be “canvas”
p. 119: “that only exists” should be “that only exist”
p. 124: in the bibliography there is a period after “Thinking About Physics (2000)”; it should be a semicolon
p. 146: “those experience” should be “those experiences”
p. 148: “but or” should be “but for”
p. 149: “lack’s” should be “lacks”
p. 152: “destroy parts of a mind” should be “destroys parts of a mind”
p. 151: “essential physical process” should be “essential physical processes”
p. 182: “degree of certainly” should be “degree of certainty”
p. 197: Moods and Their Vicissitudes is presented as if a monograph; but it’s a chapter in Emotion and Social Judgments
p. 216: “improvable or unproven” should be “unprovable or unproven”
p. 217: “pasts that test” should be “passes that test” (twice)
p. 226: “supercede” should be “supersede”
p. 228: “hoards” should be “hordes”
p. 236: missing a period at the end of the second paragraph of the bibliography
p. 245: “L. Kreppie” should be “L. Keppie”
p. 282: “coup de gras” should be “coup de grâce”
p. 308: “Torquemata” should be “Torquemada”
p. 309: “categorically different than” should be “categorically different from”
p. 311: bibliography’s top line is the wrong font size
p. 314: Railton’s essay “Moral Realism” appears in MDAP on “pp. 137-63” not “pp. 137-6”; and the author of Natural Ethical Facts is not “Jason Casebeer” but “William Casebeer”
p. 333: “must true by definition” should be “must be true by definition”
p. 344: should be a comma before Unmasking the Psychopath
p. 362: “mammls” should be “mammals” and “supercedes” should be “supersedes”
p. 365: “Picaso” should be “Picasso”
p. 375: “use force” should be “use of force”
p. 377: “supercede” should be “supersede”
p. 378: should be a comma before The Rights of Man
p. 384: in “what all its effects will actually be” the word “actually” should also be in italics
p. 404: “seeVII.5.4” should be “see VII.5.4”
p. 407: there actually is a space between Levitating and Chairs, but it doesn’t look like it because of layout
p. 416: sub-index entries under “causation” should be indented
p. 417: sub-index entries under “evil” should be indented
p. 419: sub-index entries under “knowledge” should be indented
p. 422: The “R” heading in the index should be in bold
p. 423: “The Matrix” is improperly listed under T in the index. Should be under M as “Matrix, The” (old automation error); and after the entry for “teleological argument for atheism,” the second line (“see also”) should be indented.
p. 424: The “W” heading in the index should be in bold
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How embarrassing, this is the second of your “scholarly” works that you couldn’t even bother to have someone proofread. It is no mystery why legitimate scholars view you as nothing more than a crank. Perhaps you should invest some of your $15,000 a year income in hiring an editor for your next book if you wish to be taken seriously.
I’ve had material pass through several professional editors that still had typos in it.
You have a naive view of how easily typos miss even multiple professional eyes in these kinds of texts.
If you judge the merit of an argument by typos, you are clearly too irrational to appeal to anyway.
Hi Richard
1. You rarely bring up any mention in your debates of the comparison of Mark’s Gospel and the Odyssey despite your stunning review of Dennis Mac Donald’s book, why is that?
2. Are you attempting to get a professorship, or is independent scholar your aim? I thought you would be fighting for a university position.
Many thanks.
1. Because debates are on the clock, there is only time for the strongest arguments, which produce the greatest support for the conclusion, that can be made with the least complexity of educating the audience. The Homeric emulation in Mark and Luke-Acts fits none of those criteria. It takes too long to explain why we should agree it’s there; every example can be disputed in a debate of its own (and though I believe a long drawn out debate over that would end in favor, that would then become the whole debate); and accepting the conclusion doesn’t get us to the conclusion that Jesus didn’t exist. It also faces irrational hostility (Christians are spiritually offended by the idea that Mark was emulating pagan mythology), and that also gives it a negative emotional load to overcome, which should be avoided if it isn’t necessary to trigger it. So it’s easier to pick very strong examples of fabrication (ones that require minimal argument to convincingly prove or explain), to illustrate that the Gospels fabricate, and just reference the books that establish many more examples, putting the burden on the Gospel-citer to establish that anything in a Gospel isn’t just as fabricated. The Homeric argument is the least effective way of doing that in a clocked debate. It would be fine in a debate solely about that. But I’ve not been asked to such a debate (I sat in audience to an informal one, with MacDonald himself defending his own theory; the opposition was so weak though it was hardly worth mentioning).
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2. I have grown very much to dislike academic life. By the time I finished my Ph.D. I had seen so much inside the belly of the beast, that it looked to me like the most miserable place any academic can be. The for-profit model universities have moved to (which has only gotten significantly worse) has made professorships, especially in the humanities, an extremely undesirable profession. They over-work them, are striving to under-pay them, and are burying them in the misery of departmental politics and endless committee work, and are taking away academic freedom protections for anyone who doesn’t tow the party line. (On that last point, tenure is a vanishing plum; fewer tenure track positions exist every year, and they are gradually being phased out as those holding them leave, so they are almost impossible to get, unless you tow every party line for years and years, so increasingly only mainstream yes-men and yes-women get them; and even tenured professors can be endlessly punished now for saying anything unliked, as administrations and colleagues have figured out a dozen loopholes to fuck with someone even who has tenure; meanwhile, no one else has job security, and in the rise of schools adjuncting every position they can, academics increasingly are even being paid less than minimum wage.)
In short, I cannot think of a single reason to want a professorship anymore. Other than salary-for-drudgery.
I’m much happier being poor and publishing with complete academic freedom and freedom of travel, unburdened by the drudgery of endless classes and committees, the misery of backstabbing departmental politics, and controlling and meddlesome administrations.
And I am producing content that is helping and educating far more people than the academic machine allows. As an educator, that is another huge reason not to want to be trapped in the bowls of universities that limit who you can teach—and limit not just in numbers, but to who can outrageously pay—and making demands on your work product for advancement that make it all but unreadable or inaccessible to the general public.
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Just for reference, here are some examples of why university teaching has become a shit job:
Universities, Inc.
One Weird Trick to Get Hired in Academia
I Will Not Be Lectured To. I’m Too Busy Teaching.
I was a liberal adjunct professor. My liberal students didn’t scare me at all.
Academia’s Indentured Servants
The College President-to-Adjunct Pay Ratio
(This) Adjunct is Dead
It’s very sad.
Mr. Carrier so are you going to be making a new book that is based off this?
Sort of. I’m not sure what you are asking. But I do plan an updated pop market version of Sense and Goodness without God, which will be retooled for a slightly different function, and which will reference Sense and Goodness for more detail.
What is truth? Sometimes we say “true” means “correct.” Sometimes it means “exemplary,” like a “true friend.”
Derrida Teaches there is no such thing as “truth,’ just “point of view grounded in bias.” For example, when Republicans and Democrats debate in politics, one side is not “right” while the other is “wrong,” one side just has a “Republican bias,” while the other side has a “Democratic bias.” One side will win because they get the most votes, but that doesn’t make their position the “true one.” Or, take the example of the Supreme court: Late judge Antonin Scalia didn’t rule as he did because his positions were true, he ruled as he did because his rulings agreed with his “Conservative, originalist bias.” There isn’t just one “truth” when there are “conservative” and “liberal” Supreme court justices. Recalcitrant evidence can disconfirm a point of view, but agreeing evidence can only support, never “prove,” a bias driven point of view. Every point of view is biased because they always carry along with them uncritically accepted assumptions that are considered “self evidence.” A self evident proposition is just one that no argument is being given for. We often say certain things are “obvious,” but we have all thought things that we believed were “obvious” that we later changed our minds about. As Derrida said, obviousness is evidence of the “feeling” of certainty, not of the “truth.”
Ehrman said “But I’d say that it is true that Obama is the President, even if it can’t be established as true or false if he’s a *good* president.” This is a good illustration of what I was talking about. If you ask the Republican presidential candidates (Trump, Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich), Obama was a terrible president. If you ask the Democratic presidential candidates (Clinton, Sanders), Obama was a wonderful president. These are all judgements grounded in bias. It is not objectively “true” Obama was a “good” president, but rather it is “true” from a “liberal point of view.”
But perhaps there is a higher kind of truth (aletheia). Plato says about the essence of truth, that we have our guiding perspective, and we follow the implications of that perspective down the path which it leads, until we reach a block in the road (aporia), and experience wonder (thaumazein) that our guiding perspective has lead us to contrariety, and must hence rethink our guiding perspective. For Plato, this wonder (thaumazein) is experienced by encountering something that is beyond being, the idea of the good (idea tou agathou). “Epekeina tes ousias,” “Beyond Being,” is a phrase from Plato’s Republic 509b. The idea is that what starts out as “real” for us is the guiding perspective that we have (on whatever issue). We explore the implications of that perspective until it leads us into contrariety (Plato repeatedly shows how it happens in the early Socratic dialogues). Plato says the philosopher experiences wonder (thaumazein) when he or she realizes his or her guiding perspective, when followed, leads into contrariety which the guiding perspective can’t resolve. As a result, the guiding perspective must be rethought. For example, it would be like a religious person examining their religious theology to the point they become an atheist. The “beyond being” is the surplus that overthrows the guiding perspective.
Hi Richard
I certainly agree with your earlier comment to stick with the strongest argument for mythicism . There are plenty of those, and the evidence for mythicism is overwhelming. Getting drawn in the nitty gritty stuff is a waste of time. Having read, among others, Doherty, Price, Lataster and yourself, I believe the academic case for mythicism has been made. In fact, “on the historicity of Jesus”, clinches it. Suddenly, the questions about why there was such an incredible diversity in early Christian beliefs, and why Paul knows nothing about a historical Jesus of Nazareth have been addressed! There is no longer a need for to develop an argument for “oral tradition” such as Ehrman is doing in his latest book. The Gospels and in particular the Pauline Epistles now make sense – even to an Atheist..
Joseph Tyson, who is probably not a mythicist, and “The Acts Seminar Report” have also helped me to clarify the process of the mythicist model. They, and others, identified Acts as fabricated history, with Luke using the Pauline letters as a source to create the early second century anti-Marcionite Acts narrative.
My main point of writing this comment is that you, and others, have done a great job In making the academic argument. But most of us are not academics. It is my opinion that there is a lack of understanding of the mythicism argument within the general secular public. We now have a simple model that says that Paul’s epistles identified a celestial Jesus and that Paul’s letters were one of the inputs for the Gospel of Mark, etc. People need to get their heads around this reversal and how this explains numerous NT issues. I got the impression that you want to move on and leave the mythicism argument for others to pursue. Before you do that, I would urge you to consider writing a non-academic version of, “on the historicity..”. This has been one of Ehrman’s strengths. A popularised version should be short, identify the issues up front, leave out Bayesian calculations and identify the relative ease at which anyone can check their own Bible supporting the superior fit of Mythicism. Thanks again.
Tony
Thank you for your response to comment 2. I have copied it and will give it to my son. He enjoys philosophy and wants to be a philosophy professor one day. I don’t want to be that scoffing father stomping on a dream but I did try to give him some mild words of caution about the difference between enjoying the subject matter of an undergraduate course and building a career with the hard realities of working in a related profession.
Engineering and computer programming are much less stressful, I think, compared to academics or medicine. For those who find the creativity of design fulfilling I think the technical fields can be creatively fulfilling and offer a reasonably good paying career in a relatively low stress environment, so I am trying to raise that possibility with him because he has a natural enjoyment in that area as well.
This comment is a bit off the topic of your book typos and all…just wanted to say thanks for the useful summary of academic pitfalls and wish you all the best in finding a non-academic career path..
Hi Richard I’ve been reading your book Sense and Goodness and have been thoroughly challenged and pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve been learning. I have a question for you about Chaotic Inflation Theory. After running across it in your book I thought I’d read more about it online. I came across a website (https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/chaotic+cosmic+inflation) in which they mention that a couple of recent experiments seem to make the theory less likely. I was wondering what your thoughts are about this? I find the theory fascinating myself.
Indeed a very great deal has changed in cosmological science since 2005. One of which is that what I am referring to then as “Chaotic Inflation” has since become just “Eternal Inflation.” Latest models avoid the issues your linked page refers to. But also, what is called “Minimal Chaotic Inflation” (which is a redux of what was in the literature when I published) can avoid those criticisms as well, because the specific parameter in question is not an essential prediction of the general model.
If I were to rewrite that section today, I’d simply replace Chaotic Inflation with Eternal Inflation, which is a larger umbrella term that covers almost all the most popular cosmological models now, and includes all the applicable insights of Chaotic Inflation (such as that the distribution of initial inhomogeneities leading to mass-clustering into, eventually, galaxies is chaotic, i.e. described by nonlinear dynamics, which we more colloquially call “random”).
I am not a biologist, but IIUC the majority of mutations that aren’t neutral are only slightly detrimental. Large biological systems are full of redundancies and checks and safety valves. IIUC this is more about dealing with cancer and parasites and infections then about germ-line mutations.
Unless I am misunderstanding the context?
“Slightly detrimental” mutations are neutral mutations, though that parlance is not obvious, so thanks to your suggestion I will revise the wording again to make that clear. But if you want the deeper dive…
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Neutral mutations include mildly effectual ones, because what makes a mutation slightly detrimental or beneficial is environmentally determined and not absolute. In other words, even standard sexual-recombinant variation puts traits on a bell curve from more or less on whichever metric, and whether “more” or “less” helps or harms (and how much) depends on the environment and can’t be predicted from the genome alone. Likewise actual mutations.
By contrast, most pregnancies self-abort due to genetic replication errors (so those mutants don’t even make it out of the womb; leaving fewer mutants to talk about as competing in the environment).
For some relative numbers, see the estimates of David Plaisted. Likewise this report and this report (“strongly harmful” equates to “eventually fatal”).
So, it would be fair to say that many mutations are indeed slightly detrimental (like, a mutation making you unusually short), but that’s just the standard neutral evolutionary playground (it’s possible an unusual short person can find a niche that exploits their height to an advantage, or negates its disadvantage). When I mean fatal, I mean significantly deleterious, as in, you can objectively say just from looking at the genome that that individual is doomed one way or another (regardless of environmental factors); and when I say neutral, I mean the standard variation that drives evolution (where it could be helpful or harmful or neither depending on interactions with the environment).
If we imagine a category of mutations that are mildly harmful but not (certainly) lethal, we are talking about either really lucky mutations (where we just happened to “turn something off” that isn’t essential for your body to live) or commonplace neural mutations (standard genetic variation).
Because most DNA is nonfunctional, most mutations have no effect or a random one. But since functional DNA is essential to live (that’s why it’s still there), it’s hard to find somewhere you can tinker and not collapse the system. It can be done (for example, accidental gene duplications tend not to do much harm and are more frequently beneficial; whereas accidental gene splits tend to kill even in the womb), but when you count up all the ways functional DNA can fail to replicate perfectly (i.e. mutate), most of those ways are catastrophic. After all those are culled out, what you have left are all of the ways that aren’t catastrophic; but now you are already in a minority of ways those genes can mutate.