Cover of Sense and Goodness without God, showing a spaceman in a red space suit descending from a dodecahedron shaped white landing ship onto a strange grasland under blue sky, image on a black background, author name Richard Carrier in white against red on top and title below in blue over black for Sense & Goodness and White over red for Without God and then subtitle white over black A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism. The image is Richard Carrier's One and Only Oil painting, so titled and mentioned in the book. More about that at https://www.richardcarrier.info/coverart.html.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 are neutral, 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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