Well, if you’re the keeper of what is reasonable, then I guess I’d better try a new approach – one that starts with your assumptions, instead of assuming equality between us.

Except that if I have to do that, then really we can have nothing to say to each other. I already understand your argument: if your assumptions are correct, then, for example, you are right in assuming that Prop. 8 is a no-brainer and you ought to simply be able to “expect” people to believe whatever you think they ought to. You assume no logical person could possibly think otherwise, perhaps. (Therefore, since I think otherwise, I must not be a logical person?)

My email address: rememberrollen [at] gmail.com

In both of your long comments, you ran off course right from the get go. I suggest you try a new approach to this thread.

It all boils down to the articles of faith one’s worldview relies upon, doesn’t it?

Your language of doctrines is a matter of framing: if your frame is the correct one – or “the truth” – then you are in a position above me, talking down to a less “enlightened” individual. Your beliefs are truth while mine are superstition. Am I correct in believing that is the point of bringing up all this stuff about “comprehensive doctrines” – to establish whose positions/evidence/ways of reasoning are authoritative and whose are not?

The doctrine that all humanists share involves a set of assumptions derived from the Enlightenment – starting with the idea that Christianity and other religions are “corrected” by certain assumptions, which, cumulatively, are viewed as “better” or “more accurate” ways of knowing.

The Enlightenment also gives to us certain myths regarding our origins, purpose, and future (as well as the myth that Enlightenment people started out the same as Christians and other religious people, but, by virtue of becoming “enlightened”, have now “risen above” such superstitions.)

It is possible to accept most of the beliefs of the Enlightenment and still be a Christian. The point that, I think, truly separates humanists from all the other religions is materialism – when scientific method starts becoming something capable of producing “truth”.

The assumption here being that all the assumptions of the ‘scientific method’ are not constraints on what the method can and cannot test, but are rather statements of fact.

The humanist/Unitarian Universalist (that is, the person who embraces the core assumptions of the Enlightenment as “truth” or articles of faith) tends to start thinking that whatever scientists hold to be true must therefore be true, and somehow the “if” falls out of “if X, then Y”…it becomes merely “X, then Y”.

And then they argue as if it’s demonstrable that X, therefore Y.

But ultimately, there is no way to prove anything true or false, if you are assuming certain things as true and the person you are talking to does not accept these things as true. This is what humanist/Unitarian Universalists either forget or simply don’t want to believe: all their reasoning is held up by assumptions – if the world really isn’t as the materialists assume it is, then many things they regard as givens are really not true.

It is for this reason that I do not believe humanists are ‘above’ any other religion, in terms of being able to claim any superiority in their reasoning or methods.

They have three main features. One is that a reasonable doctrine is an exercise of theoretical reason: it covers the major religious, philosophical, and moral aspects of human life in a more or less consistent and coherent manner. It organizes and characterizes recognized values so that they are compatible with one another and express an intelligible view of the world. Each doctrine will do this in ways that distinguish it from other doctrines, for example, by giving certain values a particular primacy and weight. In singling out which values to count as especially significant and how to balance them when they conflict, a reasonable comprehensive doctrine is also an exercise of practical reason. Both theoretical and practical reason (including as appropriate the rational) are used together in its formulation. Finally, a third feature is that while a reasonable comprehensive view is not fixed and unchanging, it normally belongs to, or draws upon, a tradition of thought and doctrine. Although stable over time, and not subject to sudden and unexplained changes, it tends to evolve slowly in the light of what, from its point of view, it sees as good and sufficient reasons.”

Obviously, there will be significant overlap among doctrines. It may be that every reasonable comprehensive doctrine acknowledges as valid (at least implicitly) the inferences typically licensed by the typically identified rules of logic. This does not mean that an appeal to any such inference rule thereby relies on some particular comprehensive doctrine (much less all of them). In that sense, an appeal to such an inference rule would be an appeal to grounds that are, for our purposes, not dependent upon some particular comprehensive doctrine.

Comprehensive doctrines are by definition comprehensive, so each thinking person’s policy choices, preferences, and opinions will be a reflection of his or her comprehensive doctrine. I am convinced (and I will try to show this soon, hopefully tomorrow) that our policy-related beliefs or preferences always come out of and are dependent upon such doctrines. Therefore what you’re hoping for here…

One critical distinction is between particular theses that depend for their justification on some more particular comprehensive systems of belief and value (think, e.g., of Catholicism, Islam, Kantianism) and particular theses that can be justified on grounds independent of a some such “comprehensive doctrine.”

… seems utterly impossible, at least as far as any of our more difficult national policy questions are concerned.

Now perhaps you think I’m wrong in that, and you think there’s a way to resolve serious policy disputes by reference to some grounds independent of any comprehensive doctrine. I would be most interested to hear how you would propose to do that.

Your main concern, as I understand it, is that Scanlon hasn’t done enough to explain why some principles are reasonably rejectable within his framework of assessing reasonable rejection. Is that right? Or, are you rather concerned with how Scanlon goes about justifying the particular framework he suggests for assessing reasonable rejection? These are two very different questions.