tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11017234.post1512754409790952490..comments2023-11-16T07:12:40.867-05:00Comments on Dissoi Blogoi: Gods As We See Them, part IIUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11017234.post-83601765239897940332008-11-03T16:21:00.000-05:002008-11-03T16:21:00.000-05:00Another point worth making is that some of the anc...Another point worth making is that some of the ancients were in fact quite enamored of arguments from disagreement for the view that beliefs have no objective basis, despite failing to be cultural egalitarians. Just think of Herodotus 3.38, or the role that (on most accounts) familiarity with foreign cultures played in the nomos/physis antithesis. <BR/><BR/>It also seems wrong to suppose that one needs to be influenced by Freud et al. to arrive at the basic 'projectionist' idea from observing the phenomena to which Xenophanes appeals. How <I>else</I> would one account for those phenomena, even if the gods really do look just like Greeks with bigger muscles?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11017234.post-38919574847710385942008-11-03T16:12:00.000-05:002008-11-03T16:12:00.000-05:00I rather thought that the more obvious interpretat...I rather thought that the more obvious interpretation of the argument (if there is one) is that it's a genetic argument: people imagine the gods like themselves, including all their differences, and other beings would do the same if they could; this shows that their ideas of the gods do not come from any knowledge about them, but from a projection of their own characteristics onto the divine. The genetic argument would avoid the perennial problem that such arguments face by being just one strand of Xenophanes' theological views -- so that he does not make the fallacious argument that since these ideas have suspect origins, they therefore can't possibly be true. Rather, explaining them as projections establishes that a) they aren't based on knowledge, and so we have no reason to believe that they're true; b) we know why people hold the conflicting views that, on Xenophanes' alternative view of the divine, are false. A kind of theological error theory, if you will.<BR/><BR/>But by now it has become obvious to me that nothing about Xenophanes is obvious.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com