For my part, I agree that there’s something here that is a marker for unreliable explanations, though I’m more inclined to unpack it as “explanations which require entities for which no strong evidence exists” rather than “explanations which require ontologically basic mental entities,” and it seems to me that in the real world we encounter such explanations in all sorts of secular situations as well—for example, many explanations of economic and political events seem to fall in this category.
Do you mean that we often encounter social/political explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, or the less trivial one that social/political explanations often involve (not explicitly supernatural) ontologically basic mental entities? It’s hard for me to think of mental entities employed in social explanations—“investor confidence,” “blowback,” “will of the indomitable German people,” whatever—that aren’t charitably reducible to more basic mental and non-mental entities, or explicitly mystical anyway, like say Alfred Rosenberg’s conception of the will of the indomitable German people.
Do you mean that we often encounter social/political explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, or the less trivial one that social/political explanations often involve (not explicitly supernatural) ontologically basic mental entities?
But why should the mental quality of the postulated entities be such a big deal?
Note that in the context of ideology and politics, the critical question is not so much about positive explanations of phenomena, but about normative justifications. And in this context, I really don’t see why one should privilege justifications whose metaphysical element happens not to include any antropomorphic (or as you say “mental”) entities.
For example, what is supposed to be so much more irrational about semantic stop signs that say “X must be done because otherwise we’d violate God’s commandments” versus those that say “X must be done because otherwise we’d violate human rights”? (Of course, it may be that you mostly prefer those concrete Xs that happen to be justified the latter way in the present public discourse, but surely it’s not difficult to imagine an opposite hypothetical situation, i.e. one where people justify something you otherwise favor by invoking God’s commands while others justify something you oppose by invoking human rights.)
I had assumed that the explanations we’re talking about were positive or causal.
When it does come to normative explanations in everyday life I don’t think the implied metaethical framework is particularly interesting or important, given how humans actually make decisions and employ concepts. Obviously, read literally any reference to external, not-merely-intersubjective entities like “human rights” are as silly as references to God’s commands, and if we’re having a discussion about philosophy they can be dismissed with exactly the same anti-supernaturalism heuristic, but we all know that God or human rights forbidding something, nine times out of ten, just means the speaker dislikes it and is appealing to the shared values generally connected to that metaphysical shibboleth, etc. Like, if I’m on the phone with my father and mention that something’s been stressful lately, and he says he’ll keep me in his prayers, I have no reason to be concerned that he literally believes in—that his anticipations of experience are controlled by—the power to telepathically communicate with the creator of the universe and request it to supernaturally alter the physical world on my behalf; I just note that he’s signalling that he cares for me and get a few fuzzies from that.
(And sure, it’s not even hard for me to think of concretely existing situations of the sort you mention.)
I mean that we often encounter both religious and sociopolitical explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, and that I see no benefit to differentially focusing my attention on the subset of that set of explanations that involves ontologically basic mental entities.
I don’t believe that sociopolitical explanations often involve ontologically basic mental entities, whether supernatural or not.
Do you mean that we often encounter social/political explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, or the less trivial one that social/political explanations often involve (not explicitly supernatural) ontologically basic mental entities? It’s hard for me to think of mental entities employed in social explanations—“investor confidence,” “blowback,” “will of the indomitable German people,” whatever—that aren’t charitably reducible to more basic mental and non-mental entities, or explicitly mystical anyway, like say Alfred Rosenberg’s conception of the will of the indomitable German people.
But why should the mental quality of the postulated entities be such a big deal?
Note that in the context of ideology and politics, the critical question is not so much about positive explanations of phenomena, but about normative justifications. And in this context, I really don’t see why one should privilege justifications whose metaphysical element happens not to include any antropomorphic (or as you say “mental”) entities.
For example, what is supposed to be so much more irrational about semantic stop signs that say “X must be done because otherwise we’d violate God’s commandments” versus those that say “X must be done because otherwise we’d violate human rights”? (Of course, it may be that you mostly prefer those concrete Xs that happen to be justified the latter way in the present public discourse, but surely it’s not difficult to imagine an opposite hypothetical situation, i.e. one where people justify something you otherwise favor by invoking God’s commands while others justify something you oppose by invoking human rights.)
I had assumed that the explanations we’re talking about were positive or causal.
When it does come to normative explanations in everyday life I don’t think the implied metaethical framework is particularly interesting or important, given how humans actually make decisions and employ concepts. Obviously, read literally any reference to external, not-merely-intersubjective entities like “human rights” are as silly as references to God’s commands, and if we’re having a discussion about philosophy they can be dismissed with exactly the same anti-supernaturalism heuristic, but we all know that God or human rights forbidding something, nine times out of ten, just means the speaker dislikes it and is appealing to the shared values generally connected to that metaphysical shibboleth, etc. Like, if I’m on the phone with my father and mention that something’s been stressful lately, and he says he’ll keep me in his prayers, I have no reason to be concerned that he literally believes in—that his anticipations of experience are controlled by—the power to telepathically communicate with the creator of the universe and request it to supernaturally alter the physical world on my behalf; I just note that he’s signalling that he cares for me and get a few fuzzies from that.
(And sure, it’s not even hard for me to think of concretely existing situations of the sort you mention.)
I mean that we often encounter both religious and sociopolitical explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, and that I see no benefit to differentially focusing my attention on the subset of that set of explanations that involves ontologically basic mental entities.
I don’t believe that sociopolitical explanations often involve ontologically basic mental entities, whether supernatural or not.