The Desirist’s Unsatisfiable Desires
Oct 15, 2010
David B. Hart
The philosopher Joel Marks is an honest man, it seems. For much the better part of a long career, he had had no difficulty in preserving a happy harmony between his atheism and his commitment to a basically Kantian moral philosophy. Naturally, he had been obliged to ignore Kant’s claim that God and the soul are necessary postulates of practical reason (which, frankly, has always seemed like something of a flaw in the deontological glass of the second Critique anyway); but, otherwise, he had kept largely to the Kantian script.
Over the past few years, however, he has had a kind of conversion experience, which has left him, he says, in the curious position of having to “learn to live life all over again.” As he explains in an article in the most recent issue of Philosophy Now, he has belatedly come to realize that for long years he has toiled under an illusion, and that he ought earlier to have examined his assumption that there is any such thing as right or wrong.
Much to his surprise, he now finds himself in agreement with all those “fundamentalists” who say that without God there can be no morality. Without a “commander,” it turns out, there really can’t be any commandments. And so, convinced atheist that he is, Marks finds himself compelled—just by intellectual honesty—to “embrace amorality.”
Or so he says. He has not, however, simply thrown over his moral principles of old in favor of, say, prudently predatory selfishness; nor has he forsaken compassion for some kind of higher hedonism (like the ridiculous Michel Onfray). He may now believe that what we call morality is merely the residue of evolutionary processes, and that its real “purpose” has been to promote the survival of the species. But, even so, he can still choose compassion, he has decided, because it pleases him to do so; he calls this position “desirism.”
He can even try to persuade others to adopt the causes dearest to his heart, such as kindness towards animals, without in the least vitiating his obedience to “Truth” (written with that mystically evocative capital T). All he has to do is reconcile himself to an ethics in the conditional mood.
When speaking to religious persons, he need not pretend to share their beliefs; he need only show that if one should happen to hold their convictions, then one ought—oh—to be a vegetarian. Similarly, he may have deserted the ranks of the Kantians, but that doesn’t mean he can’t stand above them on a nearby ridge as they march by and vigorously exhort them to be true to their own principles.
Of course, when speaking to another amoralist, Marks will have to rely largely on utilitarian arguments; but, for better or worse, he actually thinks such arguments are sound, so that’s no problem. And ultimately, he feels confident, he will always be able to fall back upon a kind of cultural default.
If his interlocutor has grown up in the same culture as he has, then the two of them will already share many predilections and prejudices in common, and Marks will be able to rely on that larger, more original “ethical” grammar. Thus, though there is nothing objectively “evil” or “sinful” about the molestation of children, says Marks, enough of us are sufficiently averse to such behavior that, even if we had to rely on purely naturalistic arguments for our ethical preferences, we would still continue to prohibit it.
Anyway, you can read the piece for yourself if you wish. For myself, I am not entirely sure how to react to it. The more uncharitable side of my nature wants simply to remark that a conversion to the blindingly obvious does not really constitute one of the more momentous events in intellectual history (even if it does constitute an important psychological episode in the life of Joel Marks).
Of course if there is no God, then there can be neither moral right nor moral wrong in any objectively real sense. The “Good as such”—the source and end of moral truth, the highest object of the rational will, which has the power to unite the longing for truth with the imperative to act in this way or that—is found nowhere within nature. Not even those who believe in “natural law” imagine that it is.
On the other hand, I feel a certain sympathy for the Marks of old, as I do for all those committed atheists who become so indignant when they think their moral competence has been impugned. Who, after all, can remain entirely unmoved by the plangent bathos of the atheist moralist’s cri de cœur, “We don’t need God in order to be good”?
We all know that countless persons of no creed whatsoever—atheists, agnostics, the indeterminately “spiritual,” the genially indifferent—are able to behave with exemplary kindness and generosity. Spend some time working with Doctors Without Borders, for instance, and you will meet many physicians who joined the organization out of religious conviction, but also many who did not, and it is impossible to discern any great differences among them as far as compassion or heroism goes.
That said, I have to observe that, in my largely aimless peregrinations through the world, I have been led to a few dark and desolate locales, of the sort that never get mentioned in tourist guides, and it is hard not to notice that the nearer one gets to the ground in places where poverty, disease, despair, and terror are simply part of the quotidian fabric of existence, the more the burden of humanitarian aid is shifted onto the shoulders of religious institutions (generally, though not exclusively, Christian). I don’t doubt the good will, decency, or dedication of atheist altruists, or the supererogation of which many of them are individually capable. But I do occasionally entertain doubts that in general, considered purely proportionately, they can rival their believing counterparts for sheer moral stamina.
That is not an accusation, however. The real question of the moral life, at least as far as philosophical “warrant” is at issue, is not whether one personally needs God in order to be good, but whether one needs God in order for the good to be good. This is something that Marks fails to address when he talks of God simply as a “commander,” rather than as the summum bonum that makes a moral metaphysics possible.
It is simply the case that belief in a real and eternal “goodness-as-such”—which has the power to draw all persons together in a communion of love and knowledge, and which is more than merely a fiction of the individual will—makes it easier for many to devote themselves indefatigably, even blissfully, to the labor of selfless love. In the absence of that conviction, even the hardiest altruistic unbeliever will still at some level tend to hold to a practical certitude regarding the reality of good and evil. This is the implicit theology within all moral longing—an assertion that annoys atheists, perhaps, but true nevertheless.
It make perfect sense to me, then, that a reflective scholar could devote his or her life to philosophy and not discover the contradiction between atheism and moral realism till rather late in life. I am predisposed to think that real and uncompromising atheism, whose intrinsic “metaphysics” is real and uncompromising naturalism, always requires some element of magical thinking in all three of the classical or “critical” philosophical realms: ontology, epistemology, and ethics. But even if that is an unjust assumption, it seems to me hardly debatable that no purely naturalistic approach to ethics has ever succeeded in producing anything resembling a compelling or attractive moral imperative.
Choose whichever you like—standard utilitarianism, Rawls’s theory of justice, attempts to ground moral thinking in evolutionary biology or neurophysiology—you will always find, if you subject your preferred ethical naturalism to sufficiently unflinching scrutiny, that at some primal and irreducible point it must simply presume a movement of good will, an initial moral impulse that, with a kind of ghostly Gödelian elusiveness, can never be contained within the moral system it sustains. All the polyphony of nature falls mute when asked to produce one substantial imperative, unless one believes (explicitly or tacitly) that the voice of nature has its origin and consummation in the voice of God.
I am not convinced, I should add, that Marks has really succeeded in becoming quite the consistent amoralist that he thinks is. Call it what he will, I still cannot regard his devotion to personal probity or his “preference” for compassion or his desire to persuade others as anything other than a morality. There are preferences and there are preferences, desires and desires, and they differ from one another in quality according to their objects and their intensity. Certainly a desire to convince someone not to be cruel to animals is not a desire simply to communicate an aesthetic inclination.
This past year, I became quite attached to the string quartets of Vagn Holmboe, and I’m quite eager to share that enthusiasm with other music lovers; but I know that that is not at all comparable to my desire that others should agree with me regarding the evil of child-molestation. And I do not think Marks’s desire to persuade others to hate vivisection (his example) has the quality—the simple existential quality—of mere personal desire.
Whatever the case, though, Marks might be wise to hope that he is wrong. There is a genuinely winsome, but dangerous, naïveté in his presuppositions regarding the cultural consensus upon which he would like to allow his ethical arguments to rest. He even goes so far as to opine that morality is not only largely superfluous to daily life, but that its removal might even make for a better world, more conducive to our common happiness. What can one say to this?
For one thing, any decent knowledge of human history should apprise one of the sheer cultural contingency of all moral premises. Not only is it the case that, throughout history, cultures have been able to thrive and perdure without ever cultivating any of the ethical “desires” Marks hopes to find among his neighbors and fellow citizens, it is also the case that the ethical predispositions of a people can shift with remarkable suddenness and violence once the intricate weave of metaphysical, moral, aesthetic, and imaginative paradigms giving shape to a culture starts to change.
That is inevitable, in any event. But surely the belief that moral principles are only a combination of evolutionary epiphenomena and sentimental predilections must weaken the will to seek the good, and a whole culture that truly came to believe that all moral choices are merely personal preferences might find that the inventiveness and spontaneity of the liberated will are capable of just about anything, and responsible to nothing. After all, it is not as if the lessons of modern history have given us no cause for apprehension on that score.
Well, who can say? Marks means well. But après moi le déluge, as Louis XV said (exhibiting a prescience rare for a Bourbon). Louis knew the French monarchy would not long survive him, but he knew also that there was enough vitality left in the moribund old estates of France to keep the inevitable at bay while he still lived. Similarly, Marks need not worry that he will live to see precisely what sort of society a truly amoralist culture might produce. And anyway, as he notes in his article, he has no children.
David B. Hart is a contributing writer of First Things. His most recent book is Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press). Joel Marks’ “An Amoral Manifesto” can be found here.
Comments:
10.15.2010 | 5:47am
Martin Snigg says:
Thank you to Mr. Hart for an exquisite essay. I appreciated the help to understand some crucial points.
1) The expectation high church atheists have that their good consciences, produced within conditions created by Christianity, though unpremised will proceed by some mechanism of good infection to society as a whole.
"... at some primal and irreducible point it must simply presume a movement of good will, an initial moral impulse that, with a kind of ghostly Gödelian elusiveness, can never be contained within the moral system it sustains."
2)The magical thinking constitutive of atheism means even when trained in conceptual analysis they rarely get as far as Mr. Marks. At this point the magical thinking becomes too manifest for their training to conceal with its obvious absurdities and odious commitments.
3)The utter futility and death embracing quality of the thing – having no children they instead propose to make ideological children of those reared in families with a natural love of God.
Rorty’s candid admission:
“The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire “American liberal establishment” is engaged in a conspiracy. Had they read Habermas, these people would say that the typical communication situation in American college classrooms is no more herrschaftsfrei [domination free] than that in the Hitler Youth camps.
These parents have a point. Their point is that we liberal teachers no more feel in a symmetrical communication situation when we talk with bigots than do kindergarten teachers talking with their students....When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists, we do not consider the possibility of reformulating our own practices of justification so as to give more weight to the authority of the Christian scriptures.
"So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours.”
... I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents. It seems to me that I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Stürmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause. I come from a better province." Richard Rorty, from "Universality and Truth," in Robert B. Brandon, ed., Rorty and His Critics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 21-22.
4) And finally - Prof. Hart confirms in my mind atheism's ultimate dependence on on Christian inspired moral grammar and driven as it is to destroy atheism is thus parasitic on our culture. High Church atheists like Marks use our institutions and relative peace to produce swarms of low church atheist orcs. As Prof. Hart writes, his ilk won't be around to answer for themselves when their rough beast reaches Bethlehem.
1) The expectation high church atheists have that their good consciences, produced within conditions created by Christianity, though unpremised will proceed by some mechanism of good infection to society as a whole.
"... at some primal and irreducible point it must simply presume a movement of good will, an initial moral impulse that, with a kind of ghostly Gödelian elusiveness, can never be contained within the moral system it sustains."
2)The magical thinking constitutive of atheism means even when trained in conceptual analysis they rarely get as far as Mr. Marks. At this point the magical thinking becomes too manifest for their training to conceal with its obvious absurdities and odious commitments.
3)The utter futility and death embracing quality of the thing – having no children they instead propose to make ideological children of those reared in families with a natural love of God.
Rorty’s candid admission:
“The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire “American liberal establishment” is engaged in a conspiracy. Had they read Habermas, these people would say that the typical communication situation in American college classrooms is no more herrschaftsfrei [domination free] than that in the Hitler Youth camps.
These parents have a point. Their point is that we liberal teachers no more feel in a symmetrical communication situation when we talk with bigots than do kindergarten teachers talking with their students....When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists, we do not consider the possibility of reformulating our own practices of justification so as to give more weight to the authority of the Christian scriptures.
"So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours.”
... I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents. It seems to me that I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Stürmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause. I come from a better province." Richard Rorty, from "Universality and Truth," in Robert B. Brandon, ed., Rorty and His Critics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 21-22.
4) And finally - Prof. Hart confirms in my mind atheism's ultimate dependence on on Christian inspired moral grammar and driven as it is to destroy atheism is thus parasitic on our culture. High Church atheists like Marks use our institutions and relative peace to produce swarms of low church atheist orcs. As Prof. Hart writes, his ilk won't be around to answer for themselves when their rough beast reaches Bethlehem.
10.15.2010 | 9:47am
Bangwell Putt says:
Thank you for "The real question of the moral life ... is not whether one personally needs God in order to be good, but whether one needs God in order for the good to be good." Also, what sort of society will "a truly amoralist culture produce?" A useful preliminary description was provided in a Wall Street Journal Op-ed piece written by a young woman who visited North Korea in search of an uncle who had been abducted. She described the silence, the emptiness provided by forced removal of all cultural monuments and signs, the despair of those imprisoned in a web of lies and fear which distorts the soul.
10.15.2010 | 10:46am
Peter Fallon says:
Persons who find their moral life an evolutionary atavism are a curiosity
of a comfort not knowing why their next meal is there for them. The first
I met were the biologists who argued that biological explanations in terms
of nature working toward an end were, "The way we think, not the way it is".
Marks has evolved beyond the taste for truth as a prompt for satisfaction
of moral hungers that come with being a person to that of the pursuit of
the good as likewise an evolutionary appendage. He has the same significance
as any bacterium that has also evolved.
May he be happy in his cozy academic world where "The System" provides for
him. He can be happy living off the rest of mankind who either are desireists
who share his commitment to desire or who think they have a moral life
governed by the appetites the make one a person. Since the former are likely
to be few in number he seems destined to be sustained by the latter until
he comes across someone who sees fit to apply penicillin to him.
We do not handle affluence, leisure, and comfort well in this country. It
permits us to live in Disney World where talking to Mickey is our contact
with reality and talking to ourselves extends that contact.
of a comfort not knowing why their next meal is there for them. The first
I met were the biologists who argued that biological explanations in terms
of nature working toward an end were, "The way we think, not the way it is".
Marks has evolved beyond the taste for truth as a prompt for satisfaction
of moral hungers that come with being a person to that of the pursuit of
the good as likewise an evolutionary appendage. He has the same significance
as any bacterium that has also evolved.
May he be happy in his cozy academic world where "The System" provides for
him. He can be happy living off the rest of mankind who either are desireists
who share his commitment to desire or who think they have a moral life
governed by the appetites the make one a person. Since the former are likely
to be few in number he seems destined to be sustained by the latter until
he comes across someone who sees fit to apply penicillin to him.
We do not handle affluence, leisure, and comfort well in this country. It
permits us to live in Disney World where talking to Mickey is our contact
with reality and talking to ourselves extends that contact.
10.15.2010 | 10:55am
Barry Arrington says:
The liberal intelligentsia’s capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze. Nietzsche was the only honest atheist. Without God there is only the naked will of the strong who dominate the weak.
We do not have to speculate about what happens when a society jettisons the truth for the atheist lie. North Korea is a glaring example. Mr. Putt, I am one of the few Americans who has visited that hell-on-earth, and I can tell you that it is a nearly perfect Nietzschian state. The strong few impose their will on the weak, who live in a nightmare of grinding fear, hunger, poverty, and despair.
And I learned something else that came as somewhat as a surprise to me. When a people ceases to worship God they do not cease to worship; they find a substitute. Kim Jong Il and his late father Kim Il Sung are literally (not figuratively) worshipped by the people of North Korea. I will never forget standing on the North Korean side of a border station waiting for our “guides.” There was a massive painting of the Kims on the wall. It was a hot day, and I noticed that someone had turned a fan toward the painting. Curious, I asked our translator to ask the border guard why the fan was pointing toward the painting. The reply: “We do not want the Great Leader and the Dear Leader to get hot.”
We do not have to speculate about what happens when a society jettisons the truth for the atheist lie. North Korea is a glaring example. Mr. Putt, I am one of the few Americans who has visited that hell-on-earth, and I can tell you that it is a nearly perfect Nietzschian state. The strong few impose their will on the weak, who live in a nightmare of grinding fear, hunger, poverty, and despair.
And I learned something else that came as somewhat as a surprise to me. When a people ceases to worship God they do not cease to worship; they find a substitute. Kim Jong Il and his late father Kim Il Sung are literally (not figuratively) worshipped by the people of North Korea. I will never forget standing on the North Korean side of a border station waiting for our “guides.” There was a massive painting of the Kims on the wall. It was a hot day, and I noticed that someone had turned a fan toward the painting. Curious, I asked our translator to ask the border guard why the fan was pointing toward the painting. The reply: “We do not want the Great Leader and the Dear Leader to get hot.”
10.15.2010 | 11:13am
Ian says:
Dear Dr. Hart,
I greatly enjoyed the article and look forward to the next. I have many atheist friends and after a few drinks I always feel compelled to ask why they persist in living and on what grounds they feel they can make normative moral claims (I’ve somehow managed to maintain their friendship). The answers are unsatisfying but unsatisfying because they don’t even see the great void; it’s as though they simply gloss over Ivan’s claim “that all is permitted” without bothering to acknowledge that this might be a valid point. The response is always that their “own morality” is enough, embracing a sort of Desirism. In contrast, during those fleeting moments of doubt I experience, I am filled with nothing but a crippling, bewildering dread. Why is my response the minority one? My gut feeling is that it’s easiest (and fashionable) to read any number of the books of the “New Atheists” and reject God, but not to actually follow through with the implications of such an admission. I’d be curious to know your thoughts on why the great void is so easily missed or sidestepped.
Kindest Regards,
I greatly enjoyed the article and look forward to the next. I have many atheist friends and after a few drinks I always feel compelled to ask why they persist in living and on what grounds they feel they can make normative moral claims (I’ve somehow managed to maintain their friendship). The answers are unsatisfying but unsatisfying because they don’t even see the great void; it’s as though they simply gloss over Ivan’s claim “that all is permitted” without bothering to acknowledge that this might be a valid point. The response is always that their “own morality” is enough, embracing a sort of Desirism. In contrast, during those fleeting moments of doubt I experience, I am filled with nothing but a crippling, bewildering dread. Why is my response the minority one? My gut feeling is that it’s easiest (and fashionable) to read any number of the books of the “New Atheists” and reject God, but not to actually follow through with the implications of such an admission. I’d be curious to know your thoughts on why the great void is so easily missed or sidestepped.
Kindest Regards,
10.15.2010 | 11:54am
Rich says:
How is God's Moral code less arbitrary than that of any other entity?
10.15.2010 | 12:03pm
unfit says:
This question occured to me as I read this article. If morality is religious in nature and occured through evolution merely to make the species fit for survival, does it follow that Mr. Marks has declared all atheists unfit for survival? Will the irrelligeous be purged from the species by natural law?
10.15.2010 | 12:10pm
Andrew Lyttle says:
Rich,
If you think God is understood as 'an entity', who simply has a moral code, then you are already completely confused regarding what the very word 'God' means. You may have noticed that Dr Hart defined God as the summum bonum, Goodness itself, and all that? This isn't the place to offer you tutelage in the traditional logic of metaphysics, but your question indicates that you should seek such tutelage.
If you think God is understood as 'an entity', who simply has a moral code, then you are already completely confused regarding what the very word 'God' means. You may have noticed that Dr Hart defined God as the summum bonum, Goodness itself, and all that? This isn't the place to offer you tutelage in the traditional logic of metaphysics, but your question indicates that you should seek such tutelage.
10.15.2010 | 12:14pm
Lindsey says:
Dr. Hart,
I found your essay interesting and thought-provoking. This subject has weighed heavily on my mind lately, as I have a dear friend who is an avowed atheist - unfortunately of the "New Atheist" variety. He is generally a polite and kind person, yet feels that morality is simply a cultural construct, perhaps with a deeper genetic source. Discussions are difficult, as he does not seem to be able to follow his beliefs to their logical (and, to me, frightening) conclusions. If I am reading Ian's comment correctly, this is similar to his situation with his friends. How does one point out the implications of this belief to someone? Should one even bother, or instead try to avoid the topics of religion and morality as much as possible?
I found your essay interesting and thought-provoking. This subject has weighed heavily on my mind lately, as I have a dear friend who is an avowed atheist - unfortunately of the "New Atheist" variety. He is generally a polite and kind person, yet feels that morality is simply a cultural construct, perhaps with a deeper genetic source. Discussions are difficult, as he does not seem to be able to follow his beliefs to their logical (and, to me, frightening) conclusions. If I am reading Ian's comment correctly, this is similar to his situation with his friends. How does one point out the implications of this belief to someone? Should one even bother, or instead try to avoid the topics of religion and morality as much as possible?
10.15.2010 | 12:20pm
arty says:
I concur with Barry. In the usual late-night discussions during my grad school days, I always argued that without God, some version of Nietzscheanism is really the only rational course to follow. This argument was nearly always rejected by my grad school compadres, but always on emotional/aesthetic grounds.
The one exception to the above, I found, was in among the really die-hard Foucauldians, but honest Foucauldians always end up as Nietzscheans anyhow...
The one exception to the above, I found, was in among the really die-hard Foucauldians, but honest Foucauldians always end up as Nietzscheans anyhow...
10.15.2010 | 1:15pm
Jason says:
This article seems to conflate two propositions.
1) Principles of right and wrong are objective in the sense that if people viewed the world with sufficient clarity they would agree about what they are
To which the atheist says: this is not a necessary truth, but as an empirical matter it may well be the case that people share certain presuppositions and self-conceptions in light of which broad agreement about what counts as moral behavior is possible when people examine carefully the principles underlying their actions (see e.g. Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism).
2) There is an independent, external reason to behave rightly regardless of one's desires and motivations, regardless of whether one cares about other people at all, regardless of considerations of how other people will respond to one's behavior, and regardless of whether one is concerned about any kind of internal consistency or coherence.
To which the atheist says: no there isn't.
I think the claim that seems "obvious" is that atheists reject 2). What is NOT obvious - and what is the point in dispute - is that atheists must reject 1). If you say to an atheist, "You deny that morality is objective!" they will rightly object because this conflates 1) and 2) and atheists do not deny 1).
What I don't understand is why it's worth getting all hot and bothered about the fact that atheists reject 2). There will be cases when our own narrow interests overwhelm our moral impulses and in these cases we sacrifice a type of long-term well-being; the atheist views this as analogous to the kind of trade-offs involved in severe procrastination, when we would like our long-term self to behave one way but our short-term self keeps betraying those long-term interests. This is different from just saying I used to like one kind of music, now I like another; by acting immorally, we have offended against an internal standard that we affirm on reflection, we have lost some of our integrity and failed to be the kind of person we would like to be.
Perhaps it would be nice to say that people who violate moral rules are also offending against the very nature of the universe or that we will be punished in the next life for our bad behavior in this life, but this just isn't so. To the extent that someone is unconcerned with consistency in their practical reason and indifferent to the benefits of internal coherence they may have no reason at all to act morally. There may exist some people with this kind of total indifference to moral behavior; the rest of us would call them psychopaths. There existence might be regrettable, but we can't expect reality to match our desires.
1) Principles of right and wrong are objective in the sense that if people viewed the world with sufficient clarity they would agree about what they are
To which the atheist says: this is not a necessary truth, but as an empirical matter it may well be the case that people share certain presuppositions and self-conceptions in light of which broad agreement about what counts as moral behavior is possible when people examine carefully the principles underlying their actions (see e.g. Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism).
2) There is an independent, external reason to behave rightly regardless of one's desires and motivations, regardless of whether one cares about other people at all, regardless of considerations of how other people will respond to one's behavior, and regardless of whether one is concerned about any kind of internal consistency or coherence.
To which the atheist says: no there isn't.
I think the claim that seems "obvious" is that atheists reject 2). What is NOT obvious - and what is the point in dispute - is that atheists must reject 1). If you say to an atheist, "You deny that morality is objective!" they will rightly object because this conflates 1) and 2) and atheists do not deny 1).
What I don't understand is why it's worth getting all hot and bothered about the fact that atheists reject 2). There will be cases when our own narrow interests overwhelm our moral impulses and in these cases we sacrifice a type of long-term well-being; the atheist views this as analogous to the kind of trade-offs involved in severe procrastination, when we would like our long-term self to behave one way but our short-term self keeps betraying those long-term interests. This is different from just saying I used to like one kind of music, now I like another; by acting immorally, we have offended against an internal standard that we affirm on reflection, we have lost some of our integrity and failed to be the kind of person we would like to be.
Perhaps it would be nice to say that people who violate moral rules are also offending against the very nature of the universe or that we will be punished in the next life for our bad behavior in this life, but this just isn't so. To the extent that someone is unconcerned with consistency in their practical reason and indifferent to the benefits of internal coherence they may have no reason at all to act morally. There may exist some people with this kind of total indifference to moral behavior; the rest of us would call them psychopaths. There existence might be regrettable, but we can't expect reality to match our desires.
10.15.2010 | 2:04pm
Fred says:
"Perhaps it would be nice to say that people who violate moral rules are also offending against the very nature of the universe or that we will be punished in the next life for our bad behavior in this life, but this just isn't so."
How do you know it isn't?
How do you know it isn't?
10.15.2010 | 2:17pm
Bob G says:
Boy, he gets at the heart of this elusive matter of goodness without faith better than anyone.
His argument reminds me of the Catholic writer Joyce Rupp, whom many Catholics love. She is basically new age, because her message is that we all have the divine within us and all we need to do is let it out. She’s a mirror image of Marks, a Catholic version of the same thing. She’s an admirer of Eckhard Tolle and his philosophy of Now. But she doesn’t realize that Tolle’s philosophy is a sort of quietism that would lead rapidly to a totalitarian government—since none of us, in our concern for our own inner peace--would any longer concern ourselves with social matters. It never occurs to her that what might arise from our depths might not be particularly divine.
One wonders why the media never see this dimension in the growing “morality” without faith. All these do-gooders think they (finally) have the correct answers, which their goodness and good intentions license them to impose on the rest of us. Would Marks join this crowd out of “personal preference.” As Mr. Hart says, these are transitional figures whom the “forces” of history will soon brush aside as dreamers. Let’s hope the rest of us will be ready to pay the bills.
His argument reminds me of the Catholic writer Joyce Rupp, whom many Catholics love. She is basically new age, because her message is that we all have the divine within us and all we need to do is let it out. She’s a mirror image of Marks, a Catholic version of the same thing. She’s an admirer of Eckhard Tolle and his philosophy of Now. But she doesn’t realize that Tolle’s philosophy is a sort of quietism that would lead rapidly to a totalitarian government—since none of us, in our concern for our own inner peace--would any longer concern ourselves with social matters. It never occurs to her that what might arise from our depths might not be particularly divine.
One wonders why the media never see this dimension in the growing “morality” without faith. All these do-gooders think they (finally) have the correct answers, which their goodness and good intentions license them to impose on the rest of us. Would Marks join this crowd out of “personal preference.” As Mr. Hart says, these are transitional figures whom the “forces” of history will soon brush aside as dreamers. Let’s hope the rest of us will be ready to pay the bills.
10.15.2010 | 3:29pm
Rich says:
Andrew, Thanks for you Courtier's Responce:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php
The phrase "God" is also somewhat arbitrary. So God is goodness itself?
"You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me"
So that is also goodness. The term looses all meaning, trapped in a tautology an unrecognizable from the human concept.
But I'm sure your too busy being pompous to "offer me tutelage in the traditional logic of metaphysics".
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php
The phrase "God" is also somewhat arbitrary. So God is goodness itself?
"You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me"
So that is also goodness. The term looses all meaning, trapped in a tautology an unrecognizable from the human concept.
But I'm sure your too busy being pompous to "offer me tutelage in the traditional logic of metaphysics".
10.15.2010 | 3:53pm
Ben Finiti says:
Mr. Marks is only the latest in a long line of atheists who conclude that they don't need morality or religion as long as their neighbors have it.
10.15.2010 | 4:00pm
Ray Ingles says:
David Hart - Of course if there is no God, then there can be neither moral right nor moral wrong in any objectively real sense.
Jason - There is an independent, external reason to behave rightly regardless of one's desires and motivations, regardless of whether one cares about other people at all, regardless of considerations of how other people will respond to one's behavior, and regardless of whether one is concerned about any kind of internal consistency or coherence.
To which the atheist says: no there isn't.
Not exactly. Consider chess. There are certain fundamental 'rules of the game' that define it. An 8x8 board, 8 pawns per side that move in certain ways, two rooks per side that move in other ways, castling, the initial configuration of the pieces, etc. Now, there is no rule that you can't sacrifice your queen in the first few moves of the game. It's illegal to move your king to a threatened square, but it's perfectly acceptable by the rules to stick your queen in front of a pawn at the start of the game.
However, if you want to win the game, you shouldn't do that. There are almost no situations (at least, assuming evenly-matched opponents) where giving up your queen at the start will lead to your victory. Similarly, it's rarely a good idea to move your king out to the center of the board. It's usually a bad move.
Note words like "shouldn't" and "bad". They are value judgements. They prescribe 'oughts'. They are not part of the 'rules' of chess. From where do they come? From the combinations of two things - first, the rules and structure of chess, and second, from the player's desire to win the game. They are strategic rules.
We have physical laws, and we have human desires. "Oughts" - strategic rules - morals - arise from those two things. Some basic game theory, and voila - cooperation, etc. I contend that I am ethical and moral, that people in general are ethical and moral, because the alternative is running naked in the woods fighting over scraps of food.
That's the nutshell version. Click on my name above to be taken to the long, detailed version.
Jason - There is an independent, external reason to behave rightly regardless of one's desires and motivations, regardless of whether one cares about other people at all, regardless of considerations of how other people will respond to one's behavior, and regardless of whether one is concerned about any kind of internal consistency or coherence.
To which the atheist says: no there isn't.
Not exactly. Consider chess. There are certain fundamental 'rules of the game' that define it. An 8x8 board, 8 pawns per side that move in certain ways, two rooks per side that move in other ways, castling, the initial configuration of the pieces, etc. Now, there is no rule that you can't sacrifice your queen in the first few moves of the game. It's illegal to move your king to a threatened square, but it's perfectly acceptable by the rules to stick your queen in front of a pawn at the start of the game.
However, if you want to win the game, you shouldn't do that. There are almost no situations (at least, assuming evenly-matched opponents) where giving up your queen at the start will lead to your victory. Similarly, it's rarely a good idea to move your king out to the center of the board. It's usually a bad move.
Note words like "shouldn't" and "bad". They are value judgements. They prescribe 'oughts'. They are not part of the 'rules' of chess. From where do they come? From the combinations of two things - first, the rules and structure of chess, and second, from the player's desire to win the game. They are strategic rules.
We have physical laws, and we have human desires. "Oughts" - strategic rules - morals - arise from those two things. Some basic game theory, and voila - cooperation, etc. I contend that I am ethical and moral, that people in general are ethical and moral, because the alternative is running naked in the woods fighting over scraps of food.
That's the nutshell version. Click on my name above to be taken to the long, detailed version.
10.15.2010 | 4:06pm
Ray Ingles says:
Hart - For one thing, any decent knowledge of human history should apprise one of the sheer cultural contingency of all moral premises.
Sam Harris has an answer to this: http://www.avclub.com/articles/sam-harris,46226/
The notion of a 'moral landscape', with peaks and valleys. (Some peaks are higher than others, though.)
Part of his point is: Multiple right answers to moral questions doesn’t at all mean that there’s not a clear difference between right and wrong answers. The analogy I give for this is food. I would never argue that there is one right food to eat, but there are clearly many things that are not food that will kill us.
Sam Harris has an answer to this: http://www.avclub.com/articles/sam-harris,46226/
The notion of a 'moral landscape', with peaks and valleys. (Some peaks are higher than others, though.)
Part of his point is: Multiple right answers to moral questions doesn’t at all mean that there’s not a clear difference between right and wrong answers. The analogy I give for this is food. I would never argue that there is one right food to eat, but there are clearly many things that are not food that will kill us.
10.15.2010 | 4:19pm
Andrew Lyttle says:
@ Rich
Lad, if you don't know anything about an intellectual tradition, then making wild sweeping assertions about it is silly. All I meant was: if you think of God as an entity who has a code, the way a king might, then you're talking about an idea of Good that has nothing to do with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism (etc., etc), so it's not a very interesting argument. As for quoting scripture, surely you must know that neithe Judaism nor Christianity has, over the course of its intellectual tradition, read the Bible as a literal set of prescriptions or descriptions of God. So, if you want to argue with fundamentalists, do so, but you're not going to find them writing in a mainstream journal like First Things.
@ Ray Ingles,
Please, give us a break. Sam Harris? Why not Bozo the Clown while you're at it? If you have to start talking about game theory or anything like that, then you've already conceded the metaphysical point. RUles are conventions for achieving certain results; if you don't care about those results, then you don't have to worry about the rules. So, without God, there's no absolute right or wrong. There's only a conditional right or wrong. Simple, obvious, unarguable.
Lad, if you don't know anything about an intellectual tradition, then making wild sweeping assertions about it is silly. All I meant was: if you think of God as an entity who has a code, the way a king might, then you're talking about an idea of Good that has nothing to do with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism (etc., etc), so it's not a very interesting argument. As for quoting scripture, surely you must know that neithe Judaism nor Christianity has, over the course of its intellectual tradition, read the Bible as a literal set of prescriptions or descriptions of God. So, if you want to argue with fundamentalists, do so, but you're not going to find them writing in a mainstream journal like First Things.
@ Ray Ingles,
Please, give us a break. Sam Harris? Why not Bozo the Clown while you're at it? If you have to start talking about game theory or anything like that, then you've already conceded the metaphysical point. RUles are conventions for achieving certain results; if you don't care about those results, then you don't have to worry about the rules. So, without God, there's no absolute right or wrong. There's only a conditional right or wrong. Simple, obvious, unarguable.
10.15.2010 | 4:20pm
Ray Ingles says:
Barry says, "Without God there is only the naked will of the strong who dominate the weak."
Arty says, "I always argued that without God, some version of Nietzscheanism is really the only rational course to follow."
I'd like to relay a story I read in Newsweek back in 2003:
"When one of the most secure and luxurious of his palace-and-bunker complexes was completed in 1984, at a cost of $70 million, Saddam Hussein moved in right away. But even protected by enormous layers of concrete, sand and steel, behind zigzag corridors and blast doors made to withstand a Hiroshima-size explosion, and guarded by men who knew they'd have to be ready to die for him, or be killed by him, Saddam apparently could not sleep. 'All night long he heard a sound like the cocking of a pistol,' remembers Wolfgang Wendler, the German engineer who supervised the project. Wendler was summoned by angry officials to find out what was wrong. He discovered a faulty thermostat."
Saddam, of course, deserves no pity. But this is the kind of life he led - literally jumping at shadows, because there was no one he could fully trust. He had all the material comforts one could ask for... and given up any chance of enjoying them without fear of assassination, let alone sharing them with loved ones. Atheists can love people, too...
Arty says, "I always argued that without God, some version of Nietzscheanism is really the only rational course to follow."
I'd like to relay a story I read in Newsweek back in 2003:
"When one of the most secure and luxurious of his palace-and-bunker complexes was completed in 1984, at a cost of $70 million, Saddam Hussein moved in right away. But even protected by enormous layers of concrete, sand and steel, behind zigzag corridors and blast doors made to withstand a Hiroshima-size explosion, and guarded by men who knew they'd have to be ready to die for him, or be killed by him, Saddam apparently could not sleep. 'All night long he heard a sound like the cocking of a pistol,' remembers Wolfgang Wendler, the German engineer who supervised the project. Wendler was summoned by angry officials to find out what was wrong. He discovered a faulty thermostat."
Saddam, of course, deserves no pity. But this is the kind of life he led - literally jumping at shadows, because there was no one he could fully trust. He had all the material comforts one could ask for... and given up any chance of enjoying them without fear of assassination, let alone sharing them with loved ones. Atheists can love people, too...
10.15.2010 | 4:24pm
Paige says:
Ray Ingles,
Your argument doesn't work, but that's not important. You missed the point about cultural contingency here. Hart wasn't saying "Values change, so you can't know which ones are right without God" or anything of that sort. He was saying, "Cultural values aren't the stable properties Marks seems to think they are, so he shouldn't necessarily count on others sharing so many of his desires down the line."
As for Sam Harris, it's all nonsense. He's a perfect example of the sort of fellow Hart is talking about when he says people who try to construct a plausible moral theory on a naturalist basis always have to rely secretly on a moral impulse that comes from outside the system. In a godless universe, there are neither right nor wrong moral answers except within an agreed context of aims and meanings; but there is no moral imperative that one has to agree to that context. As Hume points out, you'll never get an ought from that sort of is.
Your argument doesn't work, but that's not important. You missed the point about cultural contingency here. Hart wasn't saying "Values change, so you can't know which ones are right without God" or anything of that sort. He was saying, "Cultural values aren't the stable properties Marks seems to think they are, so he shouldn't necessarily count on others sharing so many of his desires down the line."
As for Sam Harris, it's all nonsense. He's a perfect example of the sort of fellow Hart is talking about when he says people who try to construct a plausible moral theory on a naturalist basis always have to rely secretly on a moral impulse that comes from outside the system. In a godless universe, there are neither right nor wrong moral answers except within an agreed context of aims and meanings; but there is no moral imperative that one has to agree to that context. As Hume points out, you'll never get an ought from that sort of is.
10.15.2010 | 5:39pm
Gil Costello says:
Conscience is what keeps every person united in the Holy Spirit, that room where the deepest moral conversations take place. An interviewer was surprised to learn that Ted Bundy in the beginning of his sadistic exploits did suffer from pangs of conscience, but over time the voice of conscience was reduced to a whisper, or whimper—whatever one in a pride-filled freedom prefers. And this ability to suppress conscience is proof-positive of transcendent freedom, that we really do possess a radical freedom that can choose to reject God's voice.
Of course, many atheists would say that conscience is simply super-ego, an external authoritarian voice that, through indoctrination, usually in infancy and early childhood, became internalized, now having a voice of its own, and thus the persistence of a moral sense of things. But through a willfulness born in freedom these voices can be quieted, and we can then truly be free, especially in the realm of sex and power, and why Sade becomes more and more a hero to contemporary culture.
Children in sex educations classes are being taught ways in which they can overcome internalized authoritarian voices, and that's why Wilhelm Reich in the 1930s wrote that the real freedom of the individual cannot be attained anywhere other than in sex education classes, for there was little hope for adults so thoroughly indoctrinated and repressed, and he was convinced that sexual expression embedded in our will to power is the most dynamic form of free expression, what rapos have always known.
I consciously chose to be a criminal at age 11, and step by step in consummating this goal there was an ongoing battle with conscience, even after I totally rejected God: he persists, no doubt, in his love. And what has been the most mind-blowing experience for me is how criminals came to respect those they had formerly held in contempt: rapists. Because of their education from Sade, Nietzsche, Reich, Foucault and others, they finally came to learn that they could be truly superior not only to the moralists, but the immoralists and amoralists as well, for the latter half-step in their trudging towards absolute freedom, the total negation of morality, which means one doesn’t even contrast or concern oneself with ethical motives: one simply does whatever the hell one wants to do.
This is all summed up by Dostoyevsky in the first 35 pages of his "Notes from Underground" where he explains through the voice of the underground man that moralists, including atheist moralists, always talk of the human advantages in adopting some moral code, that there can be advantages in acting moral in particular situations in getting what one wants. Dostoyevsky then goes on to explain that when these advantages are discussed the most important advantage of all is always left out: doing whatever the hell I want whenever I want for no reason at all, not even a selfish one: a pure act of the will, the highest expression of freedom.
So many committed criminals, especially sex offenders, are so far ahead in developing this freedom, this act of rebellion against all authority, moral or immoral, but especially God. Joel Marks needs to turn to the modern criminal in his commitment to absolute freedom to understand what he really desires, and perhaps then he will not longer have to trudge along in pursuing it.
Of course, many atheists would say that conscience is simply super-ego, an external authoritarian voice that, through indoctrination, usually in infancy and early childhood, became internalized, now having a voice of its own, and thus the persistence of a moral sense of things. But through a willfulness born in freedom these voices can be quieted, and we can then truly be free, especially in the realm of sex and power, and why Sade becomes more and more a hero to contemporary culture.
Children in sex educations classes are being taught ways in which they can overcome internalized authoritarian voices, and that's why Wilhelm Reich in the 1930s wrote that the real freedom of the individual cannot be attained anywhere other than in sex education classes, for there was little hope for adults so thoroughly indoctrinated and repressed, and he was convinced that sexual expression embedded in our will to power is the most dynamic form of free expression, what rapos have always known.
I consciously chose to be a criminal at age 11, and step by step in consummating this goal there was an ongoing battle with conscience, even after I totally rejected God: he persists, no doubt, in his love. And what has been the most mind-blowing experience for me is how criminals came to respect those they had formerly held in contempt: rapists. Because of their education from Sade, Nietzsche, Reich, Foucault and others, they finally came to learn that they could be truly superior not only to the moralists, but the immoralists and amoralists as well, for the latter half-step in their trudging towards absolute freedom, the total negation of morality, which means one doesn’t even contrast or concern oneself with ethical motives: one simply does whatever the hell one wants to do.
This is all summed up by Dostoyevsky in the first 35 pages of his "Notes from Underground" where he explains through the voice of the underground man that moralists, including atheist moralists, always talk of the human advantages in adopting some moral code, that there can be advantages in acting moral in particular situations in getting what one wants. Dostoyevsky then goes on to explain that when these advantages are discussed the most important advantage of all is always left out: doing whatever the hell I want whenever I want for no reason at all, not even a selfish one: a pure act of the will, the highest expression of freedom.
So many committed criminals, especially sex offenders, are so far ahead in developing this freedom, this act of rebellion against all authority, moral or immoral, but especially God. Joel Marks needs to turn to the modern criminal in his commitment to absolute freedom to understand what he really desires, and perhaps then he will not longer have to trudge along in pursuing it.
10.15.2010 | 6:32pm
Johnny R. says:
Hello, Dr. Hart.
I've always enjoyed reading whatever it is that you may be writing on; I tend to agree with a lot of your viewpoints (at least, the points of any given argument my feeble mind can follow).
I am a student at Arizona State University, and will be attending a conference this Novemeber, entitled: "The Great Debate: Can Science Tell Us Right From Wrong."
The panelists include: Sam Harris, Steve Pinker, Patricia Churchland, Simon Blackburn, Lawrence Krauss, and Peter Singer. So, needless to say, I'm not sure of how much this conference will actually be a "debate," (i.e., one said arguing for the affirmative, the other arguing in the negative) but one can be sure that it will not be a welcome place for a believing Catholic such as myself, though a true believer in Evolution (and all that) I may be.
I've planned to take notes and run through the arguments. I would love to at least touch base with you and ask you some questions that are deeper than my shallow mind can afford to dive.
If you think you could, I'd love for you to drop me an e-mail at: johnny.ramirez@asu.edu, whenever you got free time, of course.
*I realize posting my e-mail to a public forum seems a little, well, stupid; but I don't have any other way of getting in contact with you. And besides, I'd like to think I can have a little faith in my fellow First Things readers.
Thanks again.
-Johnny
I've always enjoyed reading whatever it is that you may be writing on; I tend to agree with a lot of your viewpoints (at least, the points of any given argument my feeble mind can follow).
I am a student at Arizona State University, and will be attending a conference this Novemeber, entitled: "The Great Debate: Can Science Tell Us Right From Wrong."
The panelists include: Sam Harris, Steve Pinker, Patricia Churchland, Simon Blackburn, Lawrence Krauss, and Peter Singer. So, needless to say, I'm not sure of how much this conference will actually be a "debate," (i.e., one said arguing for the affirmative, the other arguing in the negative) but one can be sure that it will not be a welcome place for a believing Catholic such as myself, though a true believer in Evolution (and all that) I may be.
I've planned to take notes and run through the arguments. I would love to at least touch base with you and ask you some questions that are deeper than my shallow mind can afford to dive.
If you think you could, I'd love for you to drop me an e-mail at: johnny.ramirez@asu.edu, whenever you got free time, of course.
*I realize posting my e-mail to a public forum seems a little, well, stupid; but I don't have any other way of getting in contact with you. And besides, I'd like to think I can have a little faith in my fellow First Things readers.
Thanks again.
-Johnny
10.15.2010 | 6:34pm
Ray Ingles says:
Paige - "...people who try to construct a plausible moral theory on a naturalist basis always have to rely secretly on a moral impulse that comes from outside the system."
Or they could, you know, do it explicitly.
"In a godless universe, there are neither right nor wrong moral answers except within an agreed context of aims and meanings; but there is no moral imperative that one has to agree to that context."
Do you think there's such a thing as 'human nature'? Is it meaningful to say that someone's "human" as opposed to something else?
There's a lot of variation about the theme of "human", but there's so much more commonality. Humans have desires and goals. Some are very basic and inborn and apparently universal (air, water, food, sleep, shelter, etc.) and some are so common that only extremely rare individuals seem not to need them (e.g. the company of other people), and some are deeply personal and not common at all (a desire to write a novel, say).
Why can't common strategies arise - given the fixed physical laws we have - that 'work' for an extremely broad range of desires and goals? If you want to have kids, then you want a stable government, a safe society, economic well-being, etc. If you just want to party, then you want... a stable government, a safe society, economic well-being, etc. Look up tit-for-tat as an example of a class of strategies that does well in wide range of situations.
Or they could, you know, do it explicitly.
"In a godless universe, there are neither right nor wrong moral answers except within an agreed context of aims and meanings; but there is no moral imperative that one has to agree to that context."
Do you think there's such a thing as 'human nature'? Is it meaningful to say that someone's "human" as opposed to something else?
There's a lot of variation about the theme of "human", but there's so much more commonality. Humans have desires and goals. Some are very basic and inborn and apparently universal (air, water, food, sleep, shelter, etc.) and some are so common that only extremely rare individuals seem not to need them (e.g. the company of other people), and some are deeply personal and not common at all (a desire to write a novel, say).
Why can't common strategies arise - given the fixed physical laws we have - that 'work' for an extremely broad range of desires and goals? If you want to have kids, then you want a stable government, a safe society, economic well-being, etc. If you just want to party, then you want... a stable government, a safe society, economic well-being, etc. Look up tit-for-tat as an example of a class of strategies that does well in wide range of situations.
10.15.2010 | 8:52pm
Jason says:
Ray - from David's standpoint, you're just begging the question (I'm actually an economist, so I am very familiar with game theory...). I agree with you that game theoretical explanations can provide an adequate positive explanation for many of our moral norms. However, David is asking a different question - he is asking why, on reflection, we should choose to act according to those norms rather than reject it when it is convenient. One could answer this by trying to give an internal account of why the motivation to accord with those norms is particularly strong, but David is asking for some kind of external reason why it is especially bad to fail to live up to those norms, even if there are no strategic consequences and even if no internal motivation is to be found (e.g. I kill someone and take their money when I am certain that I could never be caught). I agree with David that no such external reason exists. What I don't see is why this is a problem for atheist accounts of morality. It seems to me that this is just the way the world is. Fortunately, most people can find adequate internal reasons to act morally. It's possible as an empirical matter that believing in God would provide a more powerful motivation, but that doesn't actually provide a reason to think that God exists. Believing that the ghost of George Washington would poke your eyes out if you lied would also provide a powerful motivation to be moral if it were believed, but that doesn't make it any more plausibly true.
10.15.2010 | 10:23pm
Ye Olde Statistician says:
Rich says:
Andrew, Thanks for you Courtier's Responce:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php
Ye Olde Statistician
Oh, no! Not the old "courtier's reply" meme! The Give-it-a-Name Fallacy. Put forward **as if it were a refutation!** I can hear it now:
Fundamentalist: "...and because of this evolution is wrong."
Rich: "But that is not at all what evolution is all about."
Fundamentalist: "Rich, thanks for your Courtier's Response."
But the "Give it a Name Fallacy" simply avoids the ugly necessity of dealing with what the Other has actually argued.
+ + +
Rich says:
The phrase "God" is also somewhat arbitrary. So God is goodness itself?
Ye Olde Statistician
Not sure what is arbitrary about that. It pretty much follows logically from the existence of kinesis in the world.
+ + +
Rich [quoting scripture]
"You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me"
So that is also goodness.
Ye Olde Statistician
No, that is hyperbole. The Hebrews began with an almost-pagan view of deity and gradually worked out a deeper understanding. Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher, believed that marine fossils found in the mountains of Greece were evidence for a primordial world flood. He was wrong; but that does not mean fossils don't exist. If the early Hebrews understood God as a clan patriarch writ big, that doesn't mean there was no God to be understood.
The problem with you fundamentalists is that you take everything as superficially literal.
Andrew, Thanks for you Courtier's Responce:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php
Ye Olde Statistician
Oh, no! Not the old "courtier's reply" meme! The Give-it-a-Name Fallacy. Put forward **as if it were a refutation!** I can hear it now:
Fundamentalist: "...and because of this evolution is wrong."
Rich: "But that is not at all what evolution is all about."
Fundamentalist: "Rich, thanks for your Courtier's Response."
But the "Give it a Name Fallacy" simply avoids the ugly necessity of dealing with what the Other has actually argued.
+ + +
Rich says:
The phrase "God" is also somewhat arbitrary. So God is goodness itself?
Ye Olde Statistician
Not sure what is arbitrary about that. It pretty much follows logically from the existence of kinesis in the world.
+ + +
Rich [quoting scripture]
"You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me"
So that is also goodness.
Ye Olde Statistician
No, that is hyperbole. The Hebrews began with an almost-pagan view of deity and gradually worked out a deeper understanding. Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher, believed that marine fossils found in the mountains of Greece were evidence for a primordial world flood. He was wrong; but that does not mean fossils don't exist. If the early Hebrews understood God as a clan patriarch writ big, that doesn't mean there was no God to be understood.
The problem with you fundamentalists is that you take everything as superficially literal.
10.15.2010 | 11:11pm
Rich says:
Andrew Lyttle - more courtier's reply. How disappointing. And then some bizarre appeal to credentialism - this highbrow website we're on eh? putting the fact that this faith is an entirely self-referential, bootstrapped endeavour unanchored to reality aside, If god is goodness and goodness is god, you're in trouble. You're very close to Machiavellian 'might is right' .Also, as the bible seems the only, dubious source of epistemic assess to this truth, you're on shaky ground with your a-la-carte christianity. You could lean a lot from the fundies, you complex thinker, you.
10.15.2010 | 11:16pm
Rich says:
Ye Olde Statistician
- There's a very sophisticated argument that comes from from a rich intellectual tradition that refutes your point but which you seem sadly unfamiliar.
- There's a very sophisticated argument that comes from from a rich intellectual tradition that refutes your point but which you seem sadly unfamiliar.
10.16.2010 | 2:09am
Ye Olde Statistician says:
Rich says:
@ Ye Olde Statistician
- There's a very sophisticated argument that comes from from a rich intellectual tradition that refutes your point but which you seem sadly unfamiliar.
YOS
How mysterious. At least you didn't cry "courtier's reply." That would be the rich intellectual tradition of ducking.
@ Ye Olde Statistician
- There's a very sophisticated argument that comes from from a rich intellectual tradition that refutes your point but which you seem sadly unfamiliar.
YOS
How mysterious. At least you didn't cry "courtier's reply." That would be the rich intellectual tradition of ducking.
10.16.2010 | 2:59am
Bret Lythgoe says:
Thanks to David Hart, for another beautifully written essay. The philosophical problem, of the origin of morality, is a difficult one. In the history of philosophy, this was first addressed, in Plato's early dialogue, EUTHYPHRO, and has since beem referred to as the Euthyphro problem, is where do we derive our moral concepts? From God, or the gods? And if so, does God create morals, or is God moral because He's following some already existing moral system? If the former, then how do we know that God won't create some arbitrary moral rules, that increase suffering, etc.? And, how can we form a rational understanding of morality? That is, if the basis for morality is merely God's word, then how can we decipher what the rational basis (if there is one, God wouldn't need one, he's God after all!) for it? And, if morality exists, independently of God, then God's existence seems superfluous, at least as far as morality is concerned.
These reasons, among others, of course, form the basis for many atheists rejection of God's existence. Our nature seems to demand that there be good reasons for morality, as humble and finite, as we humans are, we're not content, with a God merely stating that something is moral, and not provide some reason, or reasons for it. But then if He did that, the reasons themselves, would be enough to explain morality, and our need to follow it, not God's command.
These reasons, among others, of course, form the basis for many atheists rejection of God's existence. Our nature seems to demand that there be good reasons for morality, as humble and finite, as we humans are, we're not content, with a God merely stating that something is moral, and not provide some reason, or reasons for it. But then if He did that, the reasons themselves, would be enough to explain morality, and our need to follow it, not God's command.
10.16.2010 | 7:55am
Free to Decide says:
The Church and believing Christians propose a God from whom each person proceeds; a God who is in loving relationship with each person and desires his best good; a God to whom all will return. Atheists of good will offer a moral universe arduously obtained through trial and error by human beings through time.
One "proof" of either position is a person and by extension a community of persons who have lived the ideas and therein lies the danger. This process takes time. All are free to decide among these two and other alternatives as long as he or she can persevere even unto death - as many have done.
There are those who "decide" to eliminate others who do not accept a position other than their own - and all the carefully constructed logic in the world cannot permanently restrain those who do not have love.
One "proof" of either position is a person and by extension a community of persons who have lived the ideas and therein lies the danger. This process takes time. All are free to decide among these two and other alternatives as long as he or she can persevere even unto death - as many have done.
There are those who "decide" to eliminate others who do not accept a position other than their own - and all the carefully constructed logic in the world cannot permanently restrain those who do not have love.
10.16.2010 | 8:41am
Clay says:
To put it in simple terms (the only ones I know): I am not convinced that belief in a supernatural being is a prerequisite for treating fellow human beings with kindness and respect. Tim Keller goes so far to say in "The Reason for God" that atheists who do so are being dishonest, which seems to literally damn them if they do and if they don't.
I was also annoyed by the glibness of the "God is goodness" remark. If all God commands is by definition good, that must include the slaughter of every man, woman and child of the Amalekites, the stoning of women who do not cry out during rape, and all the other OT atrocities and rules commanded and set forth by Yahweh. To disagree that the Amalekite genocide was a good command would require you to either impose your own morality on God, or is an admission that there is a morality that precedes the idea of God allowing you to decide what is good and what is bad.
I was also annoyed by the glibness of the "God is goodness" remark. If all God commands is by definition good, that must include the slaughter of every man, woman and child of the Amalekites, the stoning of women who do not cry out during rape, and all the other OT atrocities and rules commanded and set forth by Yahweh. To disagree that the Amalekite genocide was a good command would require you to either impose your own morality on God, or is an admission that there is a morality that precedes the idea of God allowing you to decide what is good and what is bad.
10.16.2010 | 8:43am
Joe the Human Person says:
Your main assertion is false. It's just not true that if there is no God, there are no rules: the fact is, Nature is an ordered system, with rules.
So that we are constrained by Nature. And its laws and rules.
Natural Law suggests that even (many of) the better social conventions, are ultimately natural laws; rules that allow us to flourish.
And by the way, the Catholic Church acknowledges Natural Law. As does the Declaration of Independence (the "laws of Nature and Nture's God").
So that we are constrained by Nature. And its laws and rules.
Natural Law suggests that even (many of) the better social conventions, are ultimately natural laws; rules that allow us to flourish.
And by the way, the Catholic Church acknowledges Natural Law. As does the Declaration of Independence (the "laws of Nature and Nture's God").
10.16.2010 | 8:51am
Common Sense says:
God is sovereign. Alpha and Omega. He is Almighty.
He can do anything. He is free to do anything at all. He is unchanging.
What is so difficult comprehending the world with God in mind?
I am not the Almighty, but on occasion, I pretend I am. Get your hand out of my wallet, get your boot off my throat, or I'll kick your ass. Can we start there pal?
He can do anything. He is free to do anything at all. He is unchanging.
What is so difficult comprehending the world with God in mind?
I am not the Almighty, but on occasion, I pretend I am. Get your hand out of my wallet, get your boot off my throat, or I'll kick your ass. Can we start there pal?
10.16.2010 | 9:09am
Andrew Lyttle says:
Rich, my little bunny,
Invoking a fatuous phrase like 'courtier's reply' when someone points out that you don't know what you're talking about--because you're unacquainted with the tradition of thought you're attacking--still doesn't change the fact that you don't bloody know what you're talking about. But feel free to shield your ignorance with casual dismissals of the 'courtier's reply'. It's an old and handy strategy for the mentally lazy. That you can't distinguish between the claim that God is the transcendent actuality of all transcendental perfections and the notion that God is an arbitrary despot shows you still don't have a clue. It's a silly and confused argument, one that you wouldn't venture if you had ever bothered to get a good grounding in the logic of traditional metaphysics. You might still end up rejecting that logic, but at least you'd have a chance of rejecting it for a coherent reason. And your characterization of faith has all the sophistication of a bludgeon to the back of the skull. It corresponds to no actual psychological, social, or cultural realities, but at least it gives you room to imagine that you're very bright and clever and able to see round all those irrational arguments favoured by believers. And, of course, you're in a safe position, knowing that no one on a comments thread will have the time to give you a comprehensive account of metaphysical tradition, you can continue to pretend that you've simply been shoved off with the 'courtier's reply'. How very cosy for you. But, if you are interested, there are actually libraries. Visit a few.
Invoking a fatuous phrase like 'courtier's reply' when someone points out that you don't know what you're talking about--because you're unacquainted with the tradition of thought you're attacking--still doesn't change the fact that you don't bloody know what you're talking about. But feel free to shield your ignorance with casual dismissals of the 'courtier's reply'. It's an old and handy strategy for the mentally lazy. That you can't distinguish between the claim that God is the transcendent actuality of all transcendental perfections and the notion that God is an arbitrary despot shows you still don't have a clue. It's a silly and confused argument, one that you wouldn't venture if you had ever bothered to get a good grounding in the logic of traditional metaphysics. You might still end up rejecting that logic, but at least you'd have a chance of rejecting it for a coherent reason. And your characterization of faith has all the sophistication of a bludgeon to the back of the skull. It corresponds to no actual psychological, social, or cultural realities, but at least it gives you room to imagine that you're very bright and clever and able to see round all those irrational arguments favoured by believers. And, of course, you're in a safe position, knowing that no one on a comments thread will have the time to give you a comprehensive account of metaphysical tradition, you can continue to pretend that you've simply been shoved off with the 'courtier's reply'. How very cosy for you. But, if you are interested, there are actually libraries. Visit a few.
10.16.2010 | 9:16am
Paige says:
@ Rich
I hope you don't mean that as a serious argument.
Well, if being the infinite reality of all things, the very being of what is and the very goodness of what is good, the infinite source in which all things participate and by which all are sustained in being, is an example of "might makes right" in your eyes--then so be it. In this case, might does make right, because the power at issue is the omnipotence of the infinite "Good Beyond Being." In the same way, I suppose, the fact that sunlight proceeds from the sun is arbitrary, and just another example of the privilege of arbitrary power. Sunlight from some other source could be just as valid.
But I wouldn't use that argument around too many qualified philosophers if I were you. As a species, they are notorious for their inability to contain their derisive laughter.
I hope you don't mean that as a serious argument.
Well, if being the infinite reality of all things, the very being of what is and the very goodness of what is good, the infinite source in which all things participate and by which all are sustained in being, is an example of "might makes right" in your eyes--then so be it. In this case, might does make right, because the power at issue is the omnipotence of the infinite "Good Beyond Being." In the same way, I suppose, the fact that sunlight proceeds from the sun is arbitrary, and just another example of the privilege of arbitrary power. Sunlight from some other source could be just as valid.
But I wouldn't use that argument around too many qualified philosophers if I were you. As a species, they are notorious for their inability to contain their derisive laughter.
10.16.2010 | 9:25am
A Lyttle says:
Rich says:
--as the bible seems the only, dubious source of epistemic assess [sic] to this truth, you're on shaky ground with your a-la-carte christianity
Actually, the epistemic access to metaphysical ideas is a few millennia of metaphysical arguments. Again, old man, libraries...libraries.
Incidentally, I'm not a Christian, but just a convert from atheism to theism via my doctoral studies in philosophy.
Oh, and also incidentally, fundamentalism came into being in the 1920s in America. Since biblical literalism wasn't a part of Christian hermeneutical tradition from antiquity to early modernity, is it really your contention that the philosophically trained church fathers and medievals simply didn't understand why they believed what they believed? And that their Christianity was a-la-carte? Curious if so, because they were often so good at making cogent logical arguments. Well, just shows you how confused those 'complex thinkers' can be.
--as the bible seems the only, dubious source of epistemic assess [sic] to this truth, you're on shaky ground with your a-la-carte christianity
Actually, the epistemic access to metaphysical ideas is a few millennia of metaphysical arguments. Again, old man, libraries...libraries.
Incidentally, I'm not a Christian, but just a convert from atheism to theism via my doctoral studies in philosophy.
Oh, and also incidentally, fundamentalism came into being in the 1920s in America. Since biblical literalism wasn't a part of Christian hermeneutical tradition from antiquity to early modernity, is it really your contention that the philosophically trained church fathers and medievals simply didn't understand why they believed what they believed? And that their Christianity was a-la-carte? Curious if so, because they were often so good at making cogent logical arguments. Well, just shows you how confused those 'complex thinkers' can be.
10.16.2010 | 12:07pm
G. Kyle Essary says:
Clay,
I think you are missing what both Hart and Keller are saying. Neither claims that belief in God is a prerequisite for treating others kindly. Both would claim that there are atheists who live much more moral lives than their Christian brethren. They are claiming instead that the atheist has no rational justification for such a move that can be defended beyond an (ultimately arbritrary) utilitarianism. It's very difficult to defend a categorical imperative apart from God (as the complete failure of secular ethics has proven...read Wolterstorff's final chapter in his recent book "Justice: Rights and Wrongs" for an introduction).
Whenever the atheists acts in accordance with a transcendent moral regard to claim those from other cultures or other time periods are immoral, they are "borrowing" from a metaphysical position that allows for a transcendental moral realm, and thus acting inconsistently with their confessed worldview. Hart simply points out that Marks is being honest in his new confession, but arguing that living such a life will be nearly impossible (and inherently contradictory).
I think you are missing what both Hart and Keller are saying. Neither claims that belief in God is a prerequisite for treating others kindly. Both would claim that there are atheists who live much more moral lives than their Christian brethren. They are claiming instead that the atheist has no rational justification for such a move that can be defended beyond an (ultimately arbritrary) utilitarianism. It's very difficult to defend a categorical imperative apart from God (as the complete failure of secular ethics has proven...read Wolterstorff's final chapter in his recent book "Justice: Rights and Wrongs" for an introduction).
Whenever the atheists acts in accordance with a transcendent moral regard to claim those from other cultures or other time periods are immoral, they are "borrowing" from a metaphysical position that allows for a transcendental moral realm, and thus acting inconsistently with their confessed worldview. Hart simply points out that Marks is being honest in his new confession, but arguing that living such a life will be nearly impossible (and inherently contradictory).
10.16.2010 | 12:28pm
Rich says:
So you assert that God is "God is the transcendent actuality of all transcendental perfections", (I have never seen any credible support for this). I'm also told God is "the omnipotence of the infinite "Good Beyond Being."
How do we 'know' this? Scripture (bible?), personal revelation (voices in your heads), logic (Cosmological, Ontological, etc) or is it simply wishful thinking?
If we take this Scripture then this "goodness" isn't reconcilable with any human concept of goodness.
Personal revelation is epidemically week because we can't falsify it
I've yet to see a logical argument for god that withstands serious scrutiny.
When you claim "knowing that no one on a comments thread will have the time to give you a comprehensive account of metaphysical tradition, you can continue to pretend that you've simply been shoved off with the 'courtier's reply'. How very cosy for you. But, if you are interested, there are actually libraries. Visit a few.", you're actually going for the Courtier's meta-reply, which is new. I like it. Still anchored only to itself and without anything salient.
Here's the issue with the courtier's reply - people have been openly challenged to show why it's false:
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2010/10/no-brainer.html
Maybe one of you great philosophers can go and set the record straight if you're not to busy calling me "lad", "bunny", etc. Can you guys ever get 'round to a serious argument for God?
Anyways, back to Ethics. Or in this case metaethics. We're at the point where we're asserting that god=morality=goodness.
I'll actually point to you something more substantial that the vague intellectual tradition of hand-waving:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma
Next we have the fact that our observable world shows our ethics are evolving, changing and have a cultural component. One would think that if they were transcendental we'd all be a bit closer. Plus, they're all very contextual. This doesn't seem to support the transcendental thesis.
So let me 'courtier' myself, a little. Ethics may be 'emergent' - for example Sharon Steet's 'Constructivism'
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jrs477/Sharon%20Street%20-%20What%20is%20Constructivism%20in%20Ethics%20and%20Metaethics.pdf
There are also emperically testable (sorry supernaturalists!) ethical models such as David Gauthier's 'Morals by agreement'
http://www.amazon.com/Morals-Agreement-David-Gauthier/dp/0198249926?ie=UTF8&tag=philosophdisq-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969
Gauthier uses a uses a minimax relative concession (MRC) approach.
How do we 'know' this? Scripture (bible?), personal revelation (voices in your heads), logic (Cosmological, Ontological, etc) or is it simply wishful thinking?
If we take this Scripture then this "goodness" isn't reconcilable with any human concept of goodness.
Personal revelation is epidemically week because we can't falsify it
I've yet to see a logical argument for god that withstands serious scrutiny.
When you claim "knowing that no one on a comments thread will have the time to give you a comprehensive account of metaphysical tradition, you can continue to pretend that you've simply been shoved off with the 'courtier's reply'. How very cosy for you. But, if you are interested, there are actually libraries. Visit a few.", you're actually going for the Courtier's meta-reply, which is new. I like it. Still anchored only to itself and without anything salient.
Here's the issue with the courtier's reply - people have been openly challenged to show why it's false:
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2010/10/no-brainer.html
Maybe one of you great philosophers can go and set the record straight if you're not to busy calling me "lad", "bunny", etc. Can you guys ever get 'round to a serious argument for God?
Anyways, back to Ethics. Or in this case metaethics. We're at the point where we're asserting that god=morality=goodness.
I'll actually point to you something more substantial that the vague intellectual tradition of hand-waving:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma
Next we have the fact that our observable world shows our ethics are evolving, changing and have a cultural component. One would think that if they were transcendental we'd all be a bit closer. Plus, they're all very contextual. This doesn't seem to support the transcendental thesis.
So let me 'courtier' myself, a little. Ethics may be 'emergent' - for example Sharon Steet's 'Constructivism'
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jrs477/Sharon%20Street%20-%20What%20is%20Constructivism%20in%20Ethics%20and%20Metaethics.pdf
There are also emperically testable (sorry supernaturalists!) ethical models such as David Gauthier's 'Morals by agreement'
http://www.amazon.com/Morals-Agreement-David-Gauthier/dp/0198249926?ie=UTF8&tag=philosophdisq-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969
Gauthier uses a uses a minimax relative concession (MRC) approach.
10.16.2010 | 1:24pm
Gil Costello says:
Rich - At the heart of your argument is this statement: "I've yet to see a logical argument for god that withstands serious scrutiny." In fact, we can logically impose any meaning or meaninglessness on anything we choose. I've said often enough that dialectics is not only a great intellectual gift of reasoning, it is also a sure sign of the limit of reasoning/logic. For example:
Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, states that "All men are created equal." He no doubt imposes a religious view, one without logic on two counts: he does not first logically prove the existence of a creator God, and he has given no logical evidence that there is any such thing as equality at all.
The fact is the world has been "infected" with what Christians call God's revelations, which includes the revelation that we humans are all equal, and these Christian revelations keep getting in the way of humans determining a future independent of God's revelations. The dominant political theme of the 20th century was the story of individuals seriously taking on the task of creating a future for us humans independent of the so-called revelations of God.
My dad was a gambler, and his guiding philosophical outlook was summed up in two statements: "The only crime is getting caught," and "Everything's according to Hoyle." The latter statement referred to his understanding that to be successful in life one had to abide in the laws of probability, revealed in every card game that required skill. His strategy in all that he sought was to always manipulate the odds in his favor. But then the time would arrive where he couldn’t resist the fever of placing a bet, and we would during my childhood lose three homes. Ah, desire—trouble and desire, so thoroughly examined by Proust, the most gifted atheist I can call to mind. But his solution to the omnipresence of trouble and desire—isolation and reflection—simply will never cut it for the vast majority of atheists.
Proof for the existence of God? I see it everywhere in every second when I simply let go of all impositions, religious and non-religious. In fact, the fundamental movement towards awareness of God is to let go. Logic, like the Law, is a great gift, but is limited, and to make an idol of Logic or Law traps one in a curse, a curse of stifling limitation, of not ever encountering God who is Love absolute, who alone can heal the sickness of the world.
Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, states that "All men are created equal." He no doubt imposes a religious view, one without logic on two counts: he does not first logically prove the existence of a creator God, and he has given no logical evidence that there is any such thing as equality at all.
The fact is the world has been "infected" with what Christians call God's revelations, which includes the revelation that we humans are all equal, and these Christian revelations keep getting in the way of humans determining a future independent of God's revelations. The dominant political theme of the 20th century was the story of individuals seriously taking on the task of creating a future for us humans independent of the so-called revelations of God.
My dad was a gambler, and his guiding philosophical outlook was summed up in two statements: "The only crime is getting caught," and "Everything's according to Hoyle." The latter statement referred to his understanding that to be successful in life one had to abide in the laws of probability, revealed in every card game that required skill. His strategy in all that he sought was to always manipulate the odds in his favor. But then the time would arrive where he couldn’t resist the fever of placing a bet, and we would during my childhood lose three homes. Ah, desire—trouble and desire, so thoroughly examined by Proust, the most gifted atheist I can call to mind. But his solution to the omnipresence of trouble and desire—isolation and reflection—simply will never cut it for the vast majority of atheists.
Proof for the existence of God? I see it everywhere in every second when I simply let go of all impositions, religious and non-religious. In fact, the fundamental movement towards awareness of God is to let go. Logic, like the Law, is a great gift, but is limited, and to make an idol of Logic or Law traps one in a curse, a curse of stifling limitation, of not ever encountering God who is Love absolute, who alone can heal the sickness of the world.
10.16.2010 | 1:29pm
Ray Ingles says:
Jason - "However, David is asking a different question -he is asking why, on reflection, we should choose to act according to those norms rather than reject it when it is convenient... David is sking for some kind of external reason why it is especially bad to fail to live up to those norms, even if there are no strategic consequences and even if no internal motivation is to be found (e.g. I kill someone and take their money when I am certain that I could never be caught)."
Part of that is a misunderstanding - if game-theory strategies apply, then asking "Why should I follow them; what's in it for me?" is pretty weird. It's like asking, "Why shouldn't I sacrifice my queen for a pawn?" The answer is, "Because you want to win the game, and that will hurt your chances." If morals can be justified in game-theoretic terms, then ipso facto they are good strategies and deviating from them is a bad idea.
But the problem of corner cases is always brought up. Note that they apply both ways - you propose "murder with no chance of detection", I propose "kill one person to save the entire world".
Still, the question deserves an answer beyond pointing out difficult questions for the 'other side'. Part of the answer is, how often do you really get the chance to murder someone with zero chance of detection? We as a society try to set the consequences high enough to outweigh even small chances of detection.
The second issue is, why do you want to murder in the first place? Does it make you feel powerful? Are you acting out traumas from your youth? If so, is murder the best way to deal with that? Might there be better strategies?
And if you're dealing with a total sociopath, someone with no empathy... well, first off, is that a healthy way to be? Wouldn't they be better off learning to love and be loved? Isn't that about the best thing in life?
And secondly, if they can't... can anyone provide an example of a total sociopath who was restrained by theistic morals? You know, someone who would wake up in the morning, think, "What a beautiful day! I think I'll go down to the mall with an automatic weapon and kill people! Oh, wait, God says I shouldn't do that. Darn. Guess I'll go fishing instead." I don't know of any system of morals - theistic or naturalistic - that can actually restrain such people.
Part of that is a misunderstanding - if game-theory strategies apply, then asking "Why should I follow them; what's in it for me?" is pretty weird. It's like asking, "Why shouldn't I sacrifice my queen for a pawn?" The answer is, "Because you want to win the game, and that will hurt your chances." If morals can be justified in game-theoretic terms, then ipso facto they are good strategies and deviating from them is a bad idea.
But the problem of corner cases is always brought up. Note that they apply both ways - you propose "murder with no chance of detection", I propose "kill one person to save the entire world".
Still, the question deserves an answer beyond pointing out difficult questions for the 'other side'. Part of the answer is, how often do you really get the chance to murder someone with zero chance of detection? We as a society try to set the consequences high enough to outweigh even small chances of detection.
The second issue is, why do you want to murder in the first place? Does it make you feel powerful? Are you acting out traumas from your youth? If so, is murder the best way to deal with that? Might there be better strategies?
And if you're dealing with a total sociopath, someone with no empathy... well, first off, is that a healthy way to be? Wouldn't they be better off learning to love and be loved? Isn't that about the best thing in life?
And secondly, if they can't... can anyone provide an example of a total sociopath who was restrained by theistic morals? You know, someone who would wake up in the morning, think, "What a beautiful day! I think I'll go down to the mall with an automatic weapon and kill people! Oh, wait, God says I shouldn't do that. Darn. Guess I'll go fishing instead." I don't know of any system of morals - theistic or naturalistic - that can actually restrain such people.
10.16.2010 | 1:41pm
A Lyttle says:
Rich wants to keep repeating the same assertions over and over again about 'empirically testable' and 'naturalist' ethical systems. He also wants to pretend the failure of anyone on this thread to spend six years writing out an account of metaphysical tradition and its classical arguments is somehow a proof that those traditions have nothing to say; I suspect though that he knows the problem is that they have far too much to say for any of them to be summarized handily here. Again, I suggest learning how to visit good libraries. Maybe try W. Norris Clarke, Erich Mascall, or someone like that who gives good synoptic treatments of the classical positions. And Rich really thinks that repeating 'courtier's reply' over and over again somehow exculpates him of his lack of education in philosophical matters. OK. It's a way of being, I guess. But why would anyone take that seriously.
Once again, the metaphysical claims made about God do not come from the Bible. I don't give a fig about the Bible myself, except for the good stories and the Sermon on the Mount. I don't belong to any religion. There are, however, millennia of philosophical arguments about whether there is a God, what the divine nature would be, etc. That's where one looks if one wants to understand a conversation like this And until one's done the basic leg-work, everything is just a clash of rhetorics.
Once again, the metaphysical claims made about God do not come from the Bible. I don't give a fig about the Bible myself, except for the good stories and the Sermon on the Mount. I don't belong to any religion. There are, however, millennia of philosophical arguments about whether there is a God, what the divine nature would be, etc. That's where one looks if one wants to understand a conversation like this And until one's done the basic leg-work, everything is just a clash of rhetorics.
10.16.2010 | 2:29pm
Rich says:
Actually A Lyttle, may I humbly suggest that anyone who tells you there is an argument without articulating it should be questioned.
Also, your Theism smells like Deism.
TAG, The Ontological argument, the Kalam cosmological argument etc are all philosophical arguments (and all wanting, in my opinion) but you can't even be bothered to name them. At some point, you're going to have to anchor to something more tangible than your 'philosophical tradition'.
Also, your Theism smells like Deism.
TAG, The Ontological argument, the Kalam cosmological argument etc are all philosophical arguments (and all wanting, in my opinion) but you can't even be bothered to name them. At some point, you're going to have to anchor to something more tangible than your 'philosophical tradition'.
10.16.2010 | 9:07pm
Jason says:
Ray,
When you said that morals can be justified in game-theoretic terms, I presumed that you meant that the evolution of moral norms can be explained via game-theoretic models. You seem to intend a much stronger statement - namely, that moral behaviors are always rational from the standpoint of the individual in question when their aims and the aims of all the other actors in question are properly specified. This claim seems either trivially true (and meaningless) or obviously false. It is trivially true if you say that preferences are lexicographically ordered and define morality to be whatever people care most about. But this definition will dramatically conflict with our usual understanding of the word morality.
Otherwise, your claim is just clearly false - there are many situations where what we judge to be moral conflicts with our other desires and where we have no good reason to act morally other than that doing so is perceived as the right thing to do. I used the example of murder just because it was stark, not because I couldn't find more commonplace examples. In business, there are many examples where unscrupulous behavior ultimately leads to greater success and few regrets. In many social situations, one could endear oneself to some people by saying nasty things about other people (evidence: ever been to a high school?). This is a very common way of establishing one's membership in a social group. One could come up with logically possible scenarios in which this would backfire: maybe the fat kid you made fun of in high school will someday be your boss, or maybe later in life you will become depressed at the thought of how much suffering you caused that poor kid. But it would be a fantastic and completely implausible empirical claim to say that as a general matter, this behavior usually backfires or backfires in expectation (there is a reason it persists in equilibrium after all!). Most of the time it leads to faster integration into a new circle of friends, and no bad consequences for the person involved (despite being morally objectionable). It is only by making completely implausible empirical assertions that you can assume away the problem of asking why we should be moral when it conflicts with our individual interests.
I agree with you that theistic morality will be unlikely to motivate the sociopath, although some people apparently value the solace that comes from believing that the sociopath will someday get his comeuppance or that the sociopath is behaving in a way that he should be able to see for himself is wrong.
When you said that morals can be justified in game-theoretic terms, I presumed that you meant that the evolution of moral norms can be explained via game-theoretic models. You seem to intend a much stronger statement - namely, that moral behaviors are always rational from the standpoint of the individual in question when their aims and the aims of all the other actors in question are properly specified. This claim seems either trivially true (and meaningless) or obviously false. It is trivially true if you say that preferences are lexicographically ordered and define morality to be whatever people care most about. But this definition will dramatically conflict with our usual understanding of the word morality.
Otherwise, your claim is just clearly false - there are many situations where what we judge to be moral conflicts with our other desires and where we have no good reason to act morally other than that doing so is perceived as the right thing to do. I used the example of murder just because it was stark, not because I couldn't find more commonplace examples. In business, there are many examples where unscrupulous behavior ultimately leads to greater success and few regrets. In many social situations, one could endear oneself to some people by saying nasty things about other people (evidence: ever been to a high school?). This is a very common way of establishing one's membership in a social group. One could come up with logically possible scenarios in which this would backfire: maybe the fat kid you made fun of in high school will someday be your boss, or maybe later in life you will become depressed at the thought of how much suffering you caused that poor kid. But it would be a fantastic and completely implausible empirical claim to say that as a general matter, this behavior usually backfires or backfires in expectation (there is a reason it persists in equilibrium after all!). Most of the time it leads to faster integration into a new circle of friends, and no bad consequences for the person involved (despite being morally objectionable). It is only by making completely implausible empirical assertions that you can assume away the problem of asking why we should be moral when it conflicts with our individual interests.
I agree with you that theistic morality will be unlikely to motivate the sociopath, although some people apparently value the solace that comes from believing that the sociopath will someday get his comeuppance or that the sociopath is behaving in a way that he should be able to see for himself is wrong.
10.16.2010 | 10:42pm
G. Kyle Essary says:
Rich,
First, since Lyttle is not a Christian I doubt he cares what the Bible says. Of course he stated this before your last response where you accused him gaining knowledge via the Bible, and arguing that Scripture is incompatible with his position. Maybe you should read what he says before typing a response to him. This is but one example of you making this mistake.
Second, you also apparently don't understand the arguments that you name (TAG, KCA, ontological), because A Lyttle has yet to present any of those arguments. Just because someone mentions transcendentals does not mean they are arguing TAG (I'm assuming his mentioning transcendentals is where you came up with this assertion, but I have no idea where you see him arguing the KCA or ontological argument).
Third, he has suggested a metaphysical tradition that many of us would name classical theism. This is far removed from deism. Whereas a bland design argument such as that of Paley would lead to deism, the stronger and more readily accepted arguments by modern philosophers lead to a more robust form of theism. Even the KCA that you mention entails the existence of a personal being, which rules out deism. The maximally great being of the ontological argument definitively rules out deism. Take Lyttle's advice and get off of the internet and into a library. Wikipedia does not offer quality answers to your pursuits (but even if you insist on only scouring Wikipedia on Euthypro for your answers, there are more than adequate responses listed to it in the article).
The classical arguments for God, require a God who is much more than the god of deism. If there is kinesis in the world (as Ye Olde Statistician suggested above), then there are certain logical conclusions that can necessarily entail concerning God. Someone above suggested David Oderberg. I would agree, and also suggest reading "Aquinas" by Edward Feser. He explains Aquinas' thought and how it fits with modern philosophy. Heck, read Aquinas beyond his five ways. It's actually after the five ways when things get really good.
First, since Lyttle is not a Christian I doubt he cares what the Bible says. Of course he stated this before your last response where you accused him gaining knowledge via the Bible, and arguing that Scripture is incompatible with his position. Maybe you should read what he says before typing a response to him. This is but one example of you making this mistake.
Second, you also apparently don't understand the arguments that you name (TAG, KCA, ontological), because A Lyttle has yet to present any of those arguments. Just because someone mentions transcendentals does not mean they are arguing TAG (I'm assuming his mentioning transcendentals is where you came up with this assertion, but I have no idea where you see him arguing the KCA or ontological argument).
Third, he has suggested a metaphysical tradition that many of us would name classical theism. This is far removed from deism. Whereas a bland design argument such as that of Paley would lead to deism, the stronger and more readily accepted arguments by modern philosophers lead to a more robust form of theism. Even the KCA that you mention entails the existence of a personal being, which rules out deism. The maximally great being of the ontological argument definitively rules out deism. Take Lyttle's advice and get off of the internet and into a library. Wikipedia does not offer quality answers to your pursuits (but even if you insist on only scouring Wikipedia on Euthypro for your answers, there are more than adequate responses listed to it in the article).
The classical arguments for God, require a God who is much more than the god of deism. If there is kinesis in the world (as Ye Olde Statistician suggested above), then there are certain logical conclusions that can necessarily entail concerning God. Someone above suggested David Oderberg. I would agree, and also suggest reading "Aquinas" by Edward Feser. He explains Aquinas' thought and how it fits with modern philosophy. Heck, read Aquinas beyond his five ways. It's actually after the five ways when things get really good.
10.16.2010 | 11:27pm
Mark VA says:
I did my homework and read the entire "Amoral Manifesto". I can't say that I read anything novel in it, except perhaps for this:
"And of course if I did not value honesty, additional tactics would become available to me"
Well, that's good to know.
I see this "manifesto" as salon, academic, or bourgeoisie variety of atheism. The situation becomes much more serious when atheism becomes "applied", that is, when it gains political and economic power. All sorts of opportunistic epiphanies then happen to some of those who don't believe in God and in human souls. The twentieth century already provides us with a record of applied atheism, thus we should know what the roadmap here is.
"And of course if I did not value honesty, additional tactics would become available to me"
Well, that's good to know.
I see this "manifesto" as salon, academic, or bourgeoisie variety of atheism. The situation becomes much more serious when atheism becomes "applied", that is, when it gains political and economic power. All sorts of opportunistic epiphanies then happen to some of those who don't believe in God and in human souls. The twentieth century already provides us with a record of applied atheism, thus we should know what the roadmap here is.
10.17.2010 | 12:34am
Kenny Gee says:
So we are all agree no behaviour not based on Gods laws are good laws. In fact only biblical laws are moral and if we feel that they are wrong then it is us that must change?
So questions who’s version of Gods laws should we follow?
Many people believe God guides the Taliban.
Or is it that people who don’t support the death penalty based on their view on God’s law’s are just plain wrong. Slavery is fine and bashing people senseless is okay too. Don’t work on the Sabbath, but is that Friday, Saturday or Sunday? Hell even human sacrifice can be justified by Gods laws.
Oh that’s it I’ve got the hang of this, as long as you can link your ideas of right and wrong to a super natural source then your personnel code of behaviour is moral and if you don’t then your amoral. Gee that makes all the difference doesn’t it.
So questions who’s version of Gods laws should we follow?
Many people believe God guides the Taliban.
Or is it that people who don’t support the death penalty based on their view on God’s law’s are just plain wrong. Slavery is fine and bashing people senseless is okay too. Don’t work on the Sabbath, but is that Friday, Saturday or Sunday? Hell even human sacrifice can be justified by Gods laws.
Oh that’s it I’ve got the hang of this, as long as you can link your ideas of right and wrong to a super natural source then your personnel code of behaviour is moral and if you don’t then your amoral. Gee that makes all the difference doesn’t it.
10.17.2010 | 12:41am
Chomsky says:
As usual, a thoroughly engaging article from Dr. Hart.
I have to say that, as a student of a philosophy at a secular institution, I have been both appalled and unsurprised by the lack of substantive metaphysical discourse in contemporary moral philosophy courses. Even before becoming a Christian, I'd never been convinced that moral systems wholly disconnected from an overarching metaphysical framework - such as act consequentialism, rule consequentialism, deontological ethics, intuitionism, social contract theory, and so on - had or could ever hope to have the conceptual resources to establish morality in any objectively real sense, and whenever I'd nag my teachers with questions such as "Why should I want to maximize human happiness (whatever that is)? Why should I not instead do the culturally fashionable thing of locking myself in a narcissistic dreamworld and living out the rest of my life in a self-indulgent, hedonistic manner," I was almost always met with some variant of, "It's just commonsensical," "To not do so is to violate practical reason," or, "Our 'moral intuitions,' on the whole, will always point in roughly the right direction."
Frankly, the idea that one can "do" moral philosophy without getting much into metaphysics is too stupid for words. But if the only plausible atheism is some sort of metaphysical naturalism, and, if all philosophers intuitively realize, at least on some level, that metaphysical naturalism logically entails moral nihilism, then the aversion to metaphysics in the realm of secular moral philosophy is understandable.
In addition to the standard reason articulated by Dr. Hart - that any notion of real good or real evil requires Goodness Itself as a metaphysical postulate - I find the following line of argument to be at least equally logically damning and (to my mind) more intuitively damaging: If we are to believe the naturalistic Grand Narrative, then we must believe that the spatiotemporal world of physical objects, properties, and processes, is all there is, was, and ever will be, and determinism must be embraced on the macroscopic level (ignoring the effects of quantum accumulations; even if they imply that randomness is an ontologically real phenomenon, they don't in any way diminish the force of the main point regarding the ontological status of morality). The singularity "before" the Big Bang is billiard ball number one, it "explodes," and all of natural history, in particular the whole process of naturalistic evolution on Earth, is subsequently a colossal cascade of billiard balls, and the human race and its entire history reduce to and can be totally explained as a big, unraveling system of complex systems of interacting billiard balls. Choice is meaningless. You have as much choice in what you do as a billiard ball on a pool table has a choice to stop moving once it gets smacked. Human history, as we understand it, becomes a total farce. Logically, you can only look back on your personal failures and the myriad of humanity's social failures as being cosmic necessities. Wars, genocide, acts of terrorism, etc., had to happen, and had to happen in the particular way they did. There is only action and reaction, and everything, including the thoughts you have and the actions you take, is bound by causal history. Without genuine choice, moral responsibility, and hence morality, goes straight out the window. To put it another way, once any action has been completed (or, more accurately, an 'event' has 'occurred'), morally condemning the actions of a wacky Florida pastor, an Islamic fascist, or an anti-Semitic mass murderer is just as unintelligible as morally condemning space debris that has been drifting through space for the past 13.7 billion years. Like earthquakes and tsunamis, and like the rest of the mechanical universe, human beings don't choose anything, whether it be a thought or an action. Like everything else, they are just events or 'happenings' that 'happen' or unfold according to the laws of physics. The world will be world. Whatever will be will be.
Does the secular naturalist have a grand humanistic dream that all races on earth would recognize a "common humanity" in each other and would begin to treat all strangers with gentleness and respect? Does he wish that he could fall in love with the woman of his dreams and start a happy family? Do he deeply yearn for humanity to cast of those pernicious "shackles of religion," embrace some vague "spirituality," improve its medicine, improve its technology, find a way to avoid the entropic heat death of the universe, and one day colonize the vast frontier of space? Or would he rather succumb to misanthropy, whereupon he becomes a dictator and slaughters spades of people in the name of some secular ideal? Well, whatever his "decision," he can only hope that the initial conditions of the Big Bang have allowed for the realization of his wish.
As for me, I consider this existential situation to be completely absurd and unlivable; it is ridiculous.
---
In any case, all of that clumsy rant was simply intended to be a sketch, illustrating my intuitions for why I think that there are few things more amusing, in the sense of absurd, than an atheist making moral pronouncements, either thinly veiled or explicit, that he believes are not merely expressions of personal taste, but apply to the very fabric of reality. If one wants to embrace an atheistic, naturalistic worldview wherein the entire human race and its history undergo a total dissolution into the one great flux of nature, he must, if he is logical, admit that it is straightforwardly disingenuous to pretend that morality can be preserved in any truly real form.
I have to say that, as a student of a philosophy at a secular institution, I have been both appalled and unsurprised by the lack of substantive metaphysical discourse in contemporary moral philosophy courses. Even before becoming a Christian, I'd never been convinced that moral systems wholly disconnected from an overarching metaphysical framework - such as act consequentialism, rule consequentialism, deontological ethics, intuitionism, social contract theory, and so on - had or could ever hope to have the conceptual resources to establish morality in any objectively real sense, and whenever I'd nag my teachers with questions such as "Why should I want to maximize human happiness (whatever that is)? Why should I not instead do the culturally fashionable thing of locking myself in a narcissistic dreamworld and living out the rest of my life in a self-indulgent, hedonistic manner," I was almost always met with some variant of, "It's just commonsensical," "To not do so is to violate practical reason," or, "Our 'moral intuitions,' on the whole, will always point in roughly the right direction."
Frankly, the idea that one can "do" moral philosophy without getting much into metaphysics is too stupid for words. But if the only plausible atheism is some sort of metaphysical naturalism, and, if all philosophers intuitively realize, at least on some level, that metaphysical naturalism logically entails moral nihilism, then the aversion to metaphysics in the realm of secular moral philosophy is understandable.
In addition to the standard reason articulated by Dr. Hart - that any notion of real good or real evil requires Goodness Itself as a metaphysical postulate - I find the following line of argument to be at least equally logically damning and (to my mind) more intuitively damaging: If we are to believe the naturalistic Grand Narrative, then we must believe that the spatiotemporal world of physical objects, properties, and processes, is all there is, was, and ever will be, and determinism must be embraced on the macroscopic level (ignoring the effects of quantum accumulations; even if they imply that randomness is an ontologically real phenomenon, they don't in any way diminish the force of the main point regarding the ontological status of morality). The singularity "before" the Big Bang is billiard ball number one, it "explodes," and all of natural history, in particular the whole process of naturalistic evolution on Earth, is subsequently a colossal cascade of billiard balls, and the human race and its entire history reduce to and can be totally explained as a big, unraveling system of complex systems of interacting billiard balls. Choice is meaningless. You have as much choice in what you do as a billiard ball on a pool table has a choice to stop moving once it gets smacked. Human history, as we understand it, becomes a total farce. Logically, you can only look back on your personal failures and the myriad of humanity's social failures as being cosmic necessities. Wars, genocide, acts of terrorism, etc., had to happen, and had to happen in the particular way they did. There is only action and reaction, and everything, including the thoughts you have and the actions you take, is bound by causal history. Without genuine choice, moral responsibility, and hence morality, goes straight out the window. To put it another way, once any action has been completed (or, more accurately, an 'event' has 'occurred'), morally condemning the actions of a wacky Florida pastor, an Islamic fascist, or an anti-Semitic mass murderer is just as unintelligible as morally condemning space debris that has been drifting through space for the past 13.7 billion years. Like earthquakes and tsunamis, and like the rest of the mechanical universe, human beings don't choose anything, whether it be a thought or an action. Like everything else, they are just events or 'happenings' that 'happen' or unfold according to the laws of physics. The world will be world. Whatever will be will be.
Does the secular naturalist have a grand humanistic dream that all races on earth would recognize a "common humanity" in each other and would begin to treat all strangers with gentleness and respect? Does he wish that he could fall in love with the woman of his dreams and start a happy family? Do he deeply yearn for humanity to cast of those pernicious "shackles of religion," embrace some vague "spirituality," improve its medicine, improve its technology, find a way to avoid the entropic heat death of the universe, and one day colonize the vast frontier of space? Or would he rather succumb to misanthropy, whereupon he becomes a dictator and slaughters spades of people in the name of some secular ideal? Well, whatever his "decision," he can only hope that the initial conditions of the Big Bang have allowed for the realization of his wish.
As for me, I consider this existential situation to be completely absurd and unlivable; it is ridiculous.
---
In any case, all of that clumsy rant was simply intended to be a sketch, illustrating my intuitions for why I think that there are few things more amusing, in the sense of absurd, than an atheist making moral pronouncements, either thinly veiled or explicit, that he believes are not merely expressions of personal taste, but apply to the very fabric of reality. If one wants to embrace an atheistic, naturalistic worldview wherein the entire human race and its history undergo a total dissolution into the one great flux of nature, he must, if he is logical, admit that it is straightforwardly disingenuous to pretend that morality can be preserved in any truly real form.
10.17.2010 | 1:20am
Rich says:
G. Kyle Essary -
"you accused him gaining knowledge via the Bible,"
I actually stated that scripture is one of the ways people claim knowledgeabout 'God':
- 'How do we 'know' this? Scripture (bible?), personal revelation (voices in your heads), logic (Cosmological, Ontological, etc) or is it simply wishful thinking?'
"Maybe you should read what he says before typing a response to him."
Paging the glasshouse repairman to the Essary residence, we have substantial stone damage.
"Second, you also apparently don't understand the arguments that you name (TAG, KCA, ontological), because A Lyttle has yet to present any of those arguments."
- I could certainly have been clearer here, I was trying to proffer potential, common arguments, as he didn't seem to have any (but he does have a rich philosophical position).
I'll try to revist Aquinas in the next week or so, but in the meantime if any of you could articulate an actual argument rather than referring me to a text, I'd be delighted.
"The maximally great being of the ontological argument definitively rules out deism" - you presuppose that interacting with us at some level is optimal. Clearly we don't have maximal interaction, so I'd be interested to see where you'd take that..
So it's still Courtier's Reply at some level - and perhaps some Poverty of Historicism
"you accused him gaining knowledge via the Bible,"
I actually stated that scripture is one of the ways people claim knowledgeabout 'God':
- 'How do we 'know' this? Scripture (bible?), personal revelation (voices in your heads), logic (Cosmological, Ontological, etc) or is it simply wishful thinking?'
"Maybe you should read what he says before typing a response to him."
Paging the glasshouse repairman to the Essary residence, we have substantial stone damage.
"Second, you also apparently don't understand the arguments that you name (TAG, KCA, ontological), because A Lyttle has yet to present any of those arguments."
- I could certainly have been clearer here, I was trying to proffer potential, common arguments, as he didn't seem to have any (but he does have a rich philosophical position).
I'll try to revist Aquinas in the next week or so, but in the meantime if any of you could articulate an actual argument rather than referring me to a text, I'd be delighted.
"The maximally great being of the ontological argument definitively rules out deism" - you presuppose that interacting with us at some level is optimal. Clearly we don't have maximal interaction, so I'd be interested to see where you'd take that..
So it's still Courtier's Reply at some level - and perhaps some Poverty of Historicism
10.17.2010 | 2:07am
Jarrett says:
@ Kenny Gee,
I don't wish to get into a debate, but I think you are confusing the ontological (the actual being/existence of something) status of objective morals with the epistemological (the actual knowledge of such things that exist) status of objective morals. What a theist can say that an atheist cannot say, is that there is a realm of objective morals.
The question you raise is, how do we know what religion (or even philosophical thought) accesses this realm of objective morals correctly. This, however, does not hurt the position theists have been bringing up in this thread -- that only with God is there such things as objectively rights and wrongs.
[I apologize for any grammatical errors, I'm tired :-< ]
I don't wish to get into a debate, but I think you are confusing the ontological (the actual being/existence of something) status of objective morals with the epistemological (the actual knowledge of such things that exist) status of objective morals. What a theist can say that an atheist cannot say, is that there is a realm of objective morals.
The question you raise is, how do we know what religion (or even philosophical thought) accesses this realm of objective morals correctly. This, however, does not hurt the position theists have been bringing up in this thread -- that only with God is there such things as objectively rights and wrongs.
[I apologize for any grammatical errors, I'm tired :-< ]
10.17.2010 | 8:30am
Ray Ingles says:
Jason - "In many social situations, one could endear oneself to some people by saying nasty things about other people (evidence: ever been to a high school?). This is a very common way of establishing one's membership in a social group."
Right... hence the condescending phrase, "Come on, this isn't high school!" that often comes when people do such things later in life... when they're supposed to have learned better ways to handle social situations. And when people's worlds have opened up to more realistic, non-zero-sum situations.
"...it would be a fantastic and completely implausible empirical claim to say that as a general matter, this behavior usually backfires or backfires in expectation (there is a reason it persists in equilibrium after all!).... It is only by making completely implausible empirical assertions that you can assume away the problem of asking why we should be moral when it conflicts with our individual interests."
There's a difference between short-term and long-term interests. Even theistic moralizers point out how nice and cooperative the world would be if everyone followed their rules (that is, they appeal to self-interest). I agree that there will always be cheating and aggression... but on the other hand, humans are capable of giving up short-term interests in favor of long-term ones.
As I noted above, real life isn't zero-sum, and while individual situations within life can mimic zero-sum games, we are capable of what Hofstadter has called superrationality (and really, to me, a big chunk of moral education seems to me to basically exist to encourage just that).
Now, you're free to think me foolish, misguided, or whatever. Maybe you're correct. However - *if* I were right, *then* morals could follow from human desires and the properties of nature, and not depend on a Lawgiver to instantiate them. Hart overstates a bit above.
Right... hence the condescending phrase, "Come on, this isn't high school!" that often comes when people do such things later in life... when they're supposed to have learned better ways to handle social situations. And when people's worlds have opened up to more realistic, non-zero-sum situations.
"...it would be a fantastic and completely implausible empirical claim to say that as a general matter, this behavior usually backfires or backfires in expectation (there is a reason it persists in equilibrium after all!).... It is only by making completely implausible empirical assertions that you can assume away the problem of asking why we should be moral when it conflicts with our individual interests."
There's a difference between short-term and long-term interests. Even theistic moralizers point out how nice and cooperative the world would be if everyone followed their rules (that is, they appeal to self-interest). I agree that there will always be cheating and aggression... but on the other hand, humans are capable of giving up short-term interests in favor of long-term ones.
As I noted above, real life isn't zero-sum, and while individual situations within life can mimic zero-sum games, we are capable of what Hofstadter has called superrationality (and really, to me, a big chunk of moral education seems to me to basically exist to encourage just that).
Now, you're free to think me foolish, misguided, or whatever. Maybe you're correct. However - *if* I were right, *then* morals could follow from human desires and the properties of nature, and not depend on a Lawgiver to instantiate them. Hart overstates a bit above.
10.17.2010 | 9:45am
Clay says:
Do Christians who posit a supernatural being as a requirement for moral behavior believe that if they themselves were to lose their faith in Yahweh, that they themselves would devolve into some previously buried state of immorality and dissolution? Of course not. They would live the same way they always had. No pie in the sky or threat of hell required.
The inconsistency I find most revealing is the requirement that a Christian must believe himself and all those around him worthy of 27 trillion years of eternal torment and damnation (I use 27 trillion b/c it's easier to grasp than "eternity"). Who deserves that? No one. Not Mao, Stalin, and Hitler combined. Yet even Christians are resentful or seek justice when wrongs are committed against them. If you are truly the wretched creature your theology submits that you are, worthy of eternal torment, then what right do you have to complain about anything? Perhaps God is just working in mysterious ways his justice to unfold.
The inconsistency I find most revealing is the requirement that a Christian must believe himself and all those around him worthy of 27 trillion years of eternal torment and damnation (I use 27 trillion b/c it's easier to grasp than "eternity"). Who deserves that? No one. Not Mao, Stalin, and Hitler combined. Yet even Christians are resentful or seek justice when wrongs are committed against them. If you are truly the wretched creature your theology submits that you are, worthy of eternal torment, then what right do you have to complain about anything? Perhaps God is just working in mysterious ways his justice to unfold.
10.17.2010 | 12:30pm
Andrew Lyttle says:
@ Clay
I quite agree with you on the idea of eternal torment--one of the reasons I think a lot of Christianity in many of its traditional claims to be unconvincing and even a little silly and warped. I should point out, though, that that notion of hell is not found in a lot of the fathers of the church or the mystics and theologians. The Eastern Orthodox, for instance, tend to talk of hell as a self-imposed condition of the rejection of love, which transforms love into torment, but not as a punishment visited by a wrathful God. It's almost Buddhist--you make your karma. Many Western mystics and theologians talk that way as well. And St Paul had no doctrine of hell at all, it appears, according to almost every good New Testament scholar (though he was an annihilationist, it seems: Hitler will probably just disappear along with the rest of the Old Age).
All that said, the picture of hell you describe is part and parcel of a great deal of Christian tradition, and evidence to me that the tradition is deeply defective. I am a theist, of very classical sort, deeply influenced by Christian philosophy, but also by Neoplatonism, Vadanta, and other traditions. And I believe in saints--persons who have had a real experience of the presence of God. But dogma, to my mind, is always a flawed human attempt to confine the mystery of God within categories as limited (intellectually and morally) as we are.
Dr Hart, incidentally, does not believe in any picture of hell such as you describe. He's pretty clear on that (and, as a lot of people know, he's basically a universalist, like his beloved Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac the Syrian, Origen, and--maybe--Gregory Nazianzen).
@ Rich
Well, if you want me to lay out the traditional arguments for God at such length here, then can I ask you t lay out the arguments against God with comparable exhaustiveness. Because you have been referring us to texts and URLs (like a Wikipedia article on the Euthyphro dilemma, for God's sake, notoriously a non-problem for traditional monotheistic theology). Apparently it's OK when you do it, but we're not supposed to give you a bibliography: we have to write treatises, or we're just being evasive courtiers.
I quite agree with you on the idea of eternal torment--one of the reasons I think a lot of Christianity in many of its traditional claims to be unconvincing and even a little silly and warped. I should point out, though, that that notion of hell is not found in a lot of the fathers of the church or the mystics and theologians. The Eastern Orthodox, for instance, tend to talk of hell as a self-imposed condition of the rejection of love, which transforms love into torment, but not as a punishment visited by a wrathful God. It's almost Buddhist--you make your karma. Many Western mystics and theologians talk that way as well. And St Paul had no doctrine of hell at all, it appears, according to almost every good New Testament scholar (though he was an annihilationist, it seems: Hitler will probably just disappear along with the rest of the Old Age).
All that said, the picture of hell you describe is part and parcel of a great deal of Christian tradition, and evidence to me that the tradition is deeply defective. I am a theist, of very classical sort, deeply influenced by Christian philosophy, but also by Neoplatonism, Vadanta, and other traditions. And I believe in saints--persons who have had a real experience of the presence of God. But dogma, to my mind, is always a flawed human attempt to confine the mystery of God within categories as limited (intellectually and morally) as we are.
Dr Hart, incidentally, does not believe in any picture of hell such as you describe. He's pretty clear on that (and, as a lot of people know, he's basically a universalist, like his beloved Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac the Syrian, Origen, and--maybe--Gregory Nazianzen).
@ Rich
Well, if you want me to lay out the traditional arguments for God at such length here, then can I ask you t lay out the arguments against God with comparable exhaustiveness. Because you have been referring us to texts and URLs (like a Wikipedia article on the Euthyphro dilemma, for God's sake, notoriously a non-problem for traditional monotheistic theology). Apparently it's OK when you do it, but we're not supposed to give you a bibliography: we have to write treatises, or we're just being evasive courtiers.
10.17.2010 | 12:53pm
Jason says:
Ray,
I don't disagree with you that many (perhaps most) real-life decisions pose no moral dilemmas because what is individually rational accords with what is morally right. For what's it worth, I also think it's a good idea to design institutions which increase the level of concordance.
However, I don't think there is a single serious philosopher - Hofstadter included - who subscribes to anything like your position because it is just obviously false and not worthy of serious consideration. You suggest that people learn later in life not to make nasty comments about others, but this is obviously false. People of all ages gossip and say mean things about people outside their social circle, and it is totally implausible to claim that in every or even most cases this behavior leads to adverse consequences in expectation in the long-term. There is strong prima-face evidence that it does not because it persists in equilibrium. This is one commonplace example among hundreds I could name.
For what it's worth, I agree with the sentence, "morals could follow from human desires and the properties of nature, and not depend on a Lawgiver to instantiate them." However, this is not because what is right never differs from what is rational if we take an appropriately long-term view. It is because the presuppositions underlying moral claims are shared by the vast majority of people (e.g. the belief that good reasons should be objective, so that if I tell you to stop stepping on my foot because it causes me pain, the same reason would compel me to stop stepping on your foot if our roles were reversed). So even when people act immorally they can usually appreciate when the consequences of their actions are made sufficiently clear that they failed to live up to their own internal standards. But the fact that morality is objective in this sense - the fact that these propositions are shared - is an empirical matter, so in extreme cases people may lack any kind of motivation or reason to act morally. And further, even people who do have this motivation may decide that more selfish goals are more important to them than living up to their internal standards. They may sacrifice some long-term good to make this decision such as a sense of moral purpose or they may be sufficiently deluded not to notice that they violated their own principles; in either case, we have no basis for saying that this sacrifice does not leave them better off all things considered from the standpoint of individual rationality.
That's just the way the world is. You and the theists seem to have in common that you would like the world to be otherwise - you would like to say to people who act immorally that they are making a mistake for themselves, that they personally would be better off in the long-term if they would behave in a more ethical way - but the fact that you want to say this doesn't make it true.
I don't disagree with you that many (perhaps most) real-life decisions pose no moral dilemmas because what is individually rational accords with what is morally right. For what's it worth, I also think it's a good idea to design institutions which increase the level of concordance.
However, I don't think there is a single serious philosopher - Hofstadter included - who subscribes to anything like your position because it is just obviously false and not worthy of serious consideration. You suggest that people learn later in life not to make nasty comments about others, but this is obviously false. People of all ages gossip and say mean things about people outside their social circle, and it is totally implausible to claim that in every or even most cases this behavior leads to adverse consequences in expectation in the long-term. There is strong prima-face evidence that it does not because it persists in equilibrium. This is one commonplace example among hundreds I could name.
For what it's worth, I agree with the sentence, "morals could follow from human desires and the properties of nature, and not depend on a Lawgiver to instantiate them." However, this is not because what is right never differs from what is rational if we take an appropriately long-term view. It is because the presuppositions underlying moral claims are shared by the vast majority of people (e.g. the belief that good reasons should be objective, so that if I tell you to stop stepping on my foot because it causes me pain, the same reason would compel me to stop stepping on your foot if our roles were reversed). So even when people act immorally they can usually appreciate when the consequences of their actions are made sufficiently clear that they failed to live up to their own internal standards. But the fact that morality is objective in this sense - the fact that these propositions are shared - is an empirical matter, so in extreme cases people may lack any kind of motivation or reason to act morally. And further, even people who do have this motivation may decide that more selfish goals are more important to them than living up to their internal standards. They may sacrifice some long-term good to make this decision such as a sense of moral purpose or they may be sufficiently deluded not to notice that they violated their own principles; in either case, we have no basis for saying that this sacrifice does not leave them better off all things considered from the standpoint of individual rationality.
That's just the way the world is. You and the theists seem to have in common that you would like the world to be otherwise - you would like to say to people who act immorally that they are making a mistake for themselves, that they personally would be better off in the long-term if they would behave in a more ethical way - but the fact that you want to say this doesn't make it true.
10.17.2010 | 12:56pm
A Lyttle says:
@ Clay
Who said otherwise, by the way? The question of this article is whether there is right or wrong in any objective sense, without God, not whether non-believers can be good. That is explicitly not the issue in Marks's article or in Hart's response. Two qualifications only have to be made:
1)If everyone explicitly believed there is no right or wrong, the social results might not be nearly as cheery as Marks thinks.
2)Nonbelievers are often just as decent as believers, but they certainly can't compete for believers when it comes to the hard work of charity in poor and suffering regions of the world. You only have to travel in the third world to learn that.
Who said otherwise, by the way? The question of this article is whether there is right or wrong in any objective sense, without God, not whether non-believers can be good. That is explicitly not the issue in Marks's article or in Hart's response. Two qualifications only have to be made:
1)If everyone explicitly believed there is no right or wrong, the social results might not be nearly as cheery as Marks thinks.
2)Nonbelievers are often just as decent as believers, but they certainly can't compete for believers when it comes to the hard work of charity in poor and suffering regions of the world. You only have to travel in the third world to learn that.
10.17.2010 | 1:20pm
Rich says:
Andrew Lyttle, well inductively we've got a good track record of things giving no evidence for their existence not being there. God can be proffered as a gaps explanation for a lot of things, but we're basically substituting "don't know" for "god" and in many cases don't hold the God concept to the same level of epistemic integrity as other concepts.
No I can't come out and say "there is no God(s)", that would be intellectually dishonest what with it being a universal negative and all. Also as a God could perhaps do *anything* we can special plead all absecence of evidence away.
But what God are you left with? One that doesn't want to be found, presumably.
No I can't come out and say "there is no God(s)", that would be intellectually dishonest what with it being a universal negative and all. Also as a God could perhaps do *anything* we can special plead all absecence of evidence away.
But what God are you left with? One that doesn't want to be found, presumably.
10.17.2010 | 2:36pm
G. Kyle Essary says:
@Clay
You ask, "Do Christians who posit a supernatural being as a requirement for moral behavior believe that if they themselves were to lose their faith in Yahweh, that they themselves would devolve into some previously buried state of immorality and dissolution?"
I responded to you above, but you are making the same mistake. It was a strawman in your first comment and continues to be one here. As such, I'll simply restate what I said above:
"I think you are missing what both Hart and Keller are saying. Neither claims that belief in God is a prerequisite for treating others kindly. Both would claim that there are atheists who live much more moral lives than their Christian brethren. They are claiming instead that the atheist has no rational justification for such a move that can be defended beyond an (ultimately arbritrary) utilitarianism. It's very difficult to defend a categorical imperative apart from God (as the complete failure of secular ethics has proven...read Wolterstorff's final chapter in his recent book "Justice: Rights and Wrongs" for an introduction).
Whenever the atheists acts in accordance with a transcendent moral regard to claim those from other cultures or other time periods are immoral, they are "borrowing" from a metaphysical position that allows for a transcendental moral realm, and thus acting inconsistently with their confessed worldview. Hart simply points out that Marks is being honest in his new confession, but arguing that living such a life will be nearly impossible (and inherently contradictory)."
Thus, what you are saying is that theists claim that belief in God is a requirement for moral behavior. The problem is that theists are not saying any such thing. We are arguing that all people have the capacity to act morally, but that if moral facts exist and are universal across time and cultures (as most atheists act as though they are when they "judge" Israel, Hitler, etc. as acting evil), they must have a metaphysical grounding. Ethicists (theist and secular) have tried for hundreds of years to find a potential secular grounding for such moral facts, but have been unsuccessful.
You ask, "Do Christians who posit a supernatural being as a requirement for moral behavior believe that if they themselves were to lose their faith in Yahweh, that they themselves would devolve into some previously buried state of immorality and dissolution?"
I responded to you above, but you are making the same mistake. It was a strawman in your first comment and continues to be one here. As such, I'll simply restate what I said above:
"I think you are missing what both Hart and Keller are saying. Neither claims that belief in God is a prerequisite for treating others kindly. Both would claim that there are atheists who live much more moral lives than their Christian brethren. They are claiming instead that the atheist has no rational justification for such a move that can be defended beyond an (ultimately arbritrary) utilitarianism. It's very difficult to defend a categorical imperative apart from God (as the complete failure of secular ethics has proven...read Wolterstorff's final chapter in his recent book "Justice: Rights and Wrongs" for an introduction).
Whenever the atheists acts in accordance with a transcendent moral regard to claim those from other cultures or other time periods are immoral, they are "borrowing" from a metaphysical position that allows for a transcendental moral realm, and thus acting inconsistently with their confessed worldview. Hart simply points out that Marks is being honest in his new confession, but arguing that living such a life will be nearly impossible (and inherently contradictory)."
Thus, what you are saying is that theists claim that belief in God is a requirement for moral behavior. The problem is that theists are not saying any such thing. We are arguing that all people have the capacity to act morally, but that if moral facts exist and are universal across time and cultures (as most atheists act as though they are when they "judge" Israel, Hitler, etc. as acting evil), they must have a metaphysical grounding. Ethicists (theist and secular) have tried for hundreds of years to find a potential secular grounding for such moral facts, but have been unsuccessful.
10.17.2010 | 2:57pm
G. Kyle Essary says:
@Rich
Thanks for your response. I think I see where I was misreading your comment. As you agreed, it was somewhat unclear. Thanks for offering clarifications.
I'll be interested to see what you have to say about Aquinas in the future.
As for the Courtier's Reply, have you read Ed Feser's response in "The American" titled, "The New Philistinism?" It's rather good for a basic response: http://www.american.com/archive/2010/march/the-new-philistinism
Of course, the best reply was actually in response to Larry Moran whom you cite above (Sandwalk). It is by a philosophy professor and highlights as he puts it the way "has mangled, and continues to mangle, the whole Courtier's Reply."
Are you the same "Rich" who comments at Common Sense Atheism sometimes? By your writing thus far, I have a feeling that you are, and if so there is no need for me to point you to Luke's critiques and comments on the Courtier's Reply as well.
Thanks for your response. I think I see where I was misreading your comment. As you agreed, it was somewhat unclear. Thanks for offering clarifications.
I'll be interested to see what you have to say about Aquinas in the future.
As for the Courtier's Reply, have you read Ed Feser's response in "The American" titled, "The New Philistinism?" It's rather good for a basic response: http://www.american.com/archive/2010/march/the-new-philistinism
Of course, the best reply was actually in response to Larry Moran whom you cite above (Sandwalk). It is by a philosophy professor and highlights as he puts it the way "has mangled, and continues to mangle, the whole Courtier's Reply."
Are you the same "Rich" who comments at Common Sense Atheism sometimes? By your writing thus far, I have a feeling that you are, and if so there is no need for me to point you to Luke's critiques and comments on the Courtier's Reply as well.
10.17.2010 | 2:58pm
G. Kyle Essary says:
@Rich
I forgot the links:
Larry Moran's initial post: http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/04/on-existence-of-god-and-coutiers-reply.html
Brandon Watson's reply post: http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2009/04/moran-and-courtiers-reply.html
Moran's response: http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/04/brandon-thinks-im-illogical.html
Watson's response: http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2009/04/moran-and-courtiers-reply-ii.html
I forgot the links:
Larry Moran's initial post: http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/04/on-existence-of-god-and-coutiers-reply.html
Brandon Watson's reply post: http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2009/04/moran-and-courtiers-reply.html
Moran's response: http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/04/brandon-thinks-im-illogical.html
Watson's response: http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2009/04/moran-and-courtiers-reply-ii.html
10.17.2010 | 3:24pm
Ye Olde Statistician says:
Clay says:
I am not convinced that belief in a supernatural being is a prerequisite for treating fellow human beings with kindness and respect.
Ye Olde Statistician
Those who would argue against you include
1. Jean-Paul Sartre ( There disappears with God all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that 'the good' exists, that one must be honest or not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. -- Existentialism is a Humanism)
2. Friedrich Nietzsche (When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. - The Twilight of the Idols)
3. Richard Rorty (For liberal ironists, there is no answer to the question 'Why not be cruel?' - no noncicular theoretical backup for the belief that cruelty is horrible. ... Anyone who thinks that there are well grounded theoretical answers to this sort of question ... is still, in his heart, a theologian or metaphysician. -- Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity)
4. Alex Rosenberg (Naturalism denies the existence of objective moral value, of beliefs and desires, of the self, of linguistic meaning, and indeed of meaning or purpose of any sort. All attempts to evade this conclusion, to reconcile naturalism with our common sense understanding of human life, inevitably fail, and we just have to learn to live with that. A belief in meanings and purposes is what puts us on a 'slippery slope' to religion. -- The Disenchanted Naturalists Guide to Reality)
On the contrary, arguing on your side is St. Paul of Tarsus (Romans 2). "For it is not those who *hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who *observe the law will be justified. For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law unto themselves... They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people's hidden works through Christ Jesus.
So it is nice that you adhere to the old Christian teaching of the natural law and not the logic of modern atheism, which holds to the contrary. Although to grant Sartre his due, he said that it was the *non-existence of God that scuttled an objective morality, not the mere non-belief in God.
After all, one may disbelieve in oxygen and still breathe.
I am not convinced that belief in a supernatural being is a prerequisite for treating fellow human beings with kindness and respect.
Ye Olde Statistician
Those who would argue against you include
1. Jean-Paul Sartre ( There disappears with God all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that 'the good' exists, that one must be honest or not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. -- Existentialism is a Humanism)
2. Friedrich Nietzsche (When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. - The Twilight of the Idols)
3. Richard Rorty (For liberal ironists, there is no answer to the question 'Why not be cruel?' - no noncicular theoretical backup for the belief that cruelty is horrible. ... Anyone who thinks that there are well grounded theoretical answers to this sort of question ... is still, in his heart, a theologian or metaphysician. -- Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity)
4. Alex Rosenberg (Naturalism denies the existence of objective moral value, of beliefs and desires, of the self, of linguistic meaning, and indeed of meaning or purpose of any sort. All attempts to evade this conclusion, to reconcile naturalism with our common sense understanding of human life, inevitably fail, and we just have to learn to live with that. A belief in meanings and purposes is what puts us on a 'slippery slope' to religion. -- The Disenchanted Naturalists Guide to Reality)
On the contrary, arguing on your side is St. Paul of Tarsus (Romans 2). "For it is not those who *hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who *observe the law will be justified. For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law unto themselves... They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people's hidden works through Christ Jesus.
So it is nice that you adhere to the old Christian teaching of the natural law and not the logic of modern atheism, which holds to the contrary. Although to grant Sartre his due, he said that it was the *non-existence of God that scuttled an objective morality, not the mere non-belief in God.
After all, one may disbelieve in oxygen and still breathe.
10.17.2010 | 3:56pm
Joe the Human says:
Hart:
There are no "imperatives" in natural law? How about this one: if you try to disobey the law of gravity, and jump off a cliff, you will be killed. Or this looser but real one: if you kill your neighbor's wife, likely your neighbor will injure you. So that we can find the origins of morality, in a series of attempts to stay alive, and so forth; a common biological urge or foundation, in itself.
The fact is, against Hart, Nature is full of imperatives.
Is there some ultimate, cosmic Imperative or Good that should out-trump all others? Serve as our immovable Achimedian rock? The fact is, even God himself, an allegedly ultimate "Good," depended in large part for his own "ultimate" authority, on these lesser ones: if you sin, God or the Lord will execute you.
While for that matter, God, the alleged rock, moves constantly; from one old "covenant" to a "new covenant," etc..
So that I see no stronger "imperatives" in religion, than in Natural law. While furthermore, many of the imperatives in Nature are strong enough to compel obedience; the threat of death for example, for violating certain laws of nature.
There are no "imperatives" in natural law? How about this one: if you try to disobey the law of gravity, and jump off a cliff, you will be killed. Or this looser but real one: if you kill your neighbor's wife, likely your neighbor will injure you. So that we can find the origins of morality, in a series of attempts to stay alive, and so forth; a common biological urge or foundation, in itself.
The fact is, against Hart, Nature is full of imperatives.
Is there some ultimate, cosmic Imperative or Good that should out-trump all others? Serve as our immovable Achimedian rock? The fact is, even God himself, an allegedly ultimate "Good," depended in large part for his own "ultimate" authority, on these lesser ones: if you sin, God or the Lord will execute you.
While for that matter, God, the alleged rock, moves constantly; from one old "covenant" to a "new covenant," etc..
So that I see no stronger "imperatives" in religion, than in Natural law. While furthermore, many of the imperatives in Nature are strong enough to compel obedience; the threat of death for example, for violating certain laws of nature.
10.17.2010 | 4:16pm
Ye Olde Statistician says:
Rich
I'll try to revist Aquinas in the next week or so, but in the meantime if any of you could articulate an actual argument rather than referring me to a text, I'd be delighted.
YOS
But why bother when it has already been done. Is it permissible to refer to a Wikipedia entry on the "Euthyphro dilemma" but it is not permissible to refer directly to the Euthyphro? http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html
How so then is it mandatory to forego reference to the originator of an argument (http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.html), its articulator (http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/gc.htm), or even a modern-day explicator (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1851686908/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0RW4EPGHKY1T0JYAX4EZ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846)
It cannot be that a comm box is somehow more conducive to this sort of thing than a "book" or some other sort of Modern Age device.
+ + +
Clay says:
Do Christians who posit a supernatural being as a requirement for moral behavior believe that if they themselves were to lose their faith in Yahweh, that they themselves would devolve into some previously buried state of immorality and dissolution?
YOS
Of course not. The Christians believe in the natural law. See Romans 2, as above. As Augustine put it, a man can find his way to the same town by following the highway or by cutting across woods and fields. It is just that the high way is faster and one is less likely to get lost or confused. Hence, the medieval notion of "the naturally Christian man", of which type Socrates was so often held an example that Nietzsche felt it necessary to attack him as well as Christ as a purveyor of "weakling" ethics.
What we can expect in the long run is that a house cannot stand for very long once the foundation is undermined.
+ + +
The inconsistency I find most revealing is the requirement that a Christian must believe himself and all those around him worthy of 27 trillion years of eternal torment and damnation (I use 27 trillion b/c it's easier to grasp than "eternity").
YOS
Of course, that is not at all what it is. 27 trillion is not "eternity," because eternity is not the same thing as "time." That is, there is no "duration." Time is the measure of change in changeable being; that is, of matter. No matter; no time. (Which is why time began with the Big Bang, and there was no "before.")
And the "torment" is to be deprived of perfect happiness by one's own determined efforts; much like a man who has been invited into a warm, cheery Inn, but insists on remaining outside in the sleet and freezing rain.
Andrew Lyttle says:
The Eastern Orthodox, for instance, tend to talk of hell as a self-imposed condition of the rejection of love, which transforms love into torment, but not as a punishment visited by a wrathful God.
YOS
Ja, that's pretty much the way I got it in RC grade school back in the 50s.
+ + +
the Euthyphro dilemma
YOS
assumes there are only two options.
+ + +
Rich says:
God can be proffered as a gaps explanation for a lot of things,
YOS
This assumes that God is an efficient cause in the material universe, in competition with other causes. But even in such a universe, we can see by analogy. One may explain Mozart's Clarinet Concerto by reference to physical causes, such as the physics of vibrating reeds, of changing the length of air columns with holes and keys; one may even abstract additional "natural laws" regarding chord progressions, inverted fifths, diminished sevenths, alternation of statement and exposition, etc. But none of this dispenses with the necessity for Sharon Kam (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr3aB4v8hXI) let alone for Wolfgang Mozart.
Tolstoy once famously declared that one cannot explain why a locomotive moves without understanding gears and rods and pistons and steam pressure; to which Lukacs commented that he had forgotten the engineer.
I'll try to revist Aquinas in the next week or so, but in the meantime if any of you could articulate an actual argument rather than referring me to a text, I'd be delighted.
YOS
But why bother when it has already been done. Is it permissible to refer to a Wikipedia entry on the "Euthyphro dilemma" but it is not permissible to refer directly to the Euthyphro? http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html
How so then is it mandatory to forego reference to the originator of an argument (http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.html), its articulator (http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/gc.htm), or even a modern-day explicator (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1851686908/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0RW4EPGHKY1T0JYAX4EZ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846)
It cannot be that a comm box is somehow more conducive to this sort of thing than a "book" or some other sort of Modern Age device.
+ + +
Clay says:
Do Christians who posit a supernatural being as a requirement for moral behavior believe that if they themselves were to lose their faith in Yahweh, that they themselves would devolve into some previously buried state of immorality and dissolution?
YOS
Of course not. The Christians believe in the natural law. See Romans 2, as above. As Augustine put it, a man can find his way to the same town by following the highway or by cutting across woods and fields. It is just that the high way is faster and one is less likely to get lost or confused. Hence, the medieval notion of "the naturally Christian man", of which type Socrates was so often held an example that Nietzsche felt it necessary to attack him as well as Christ as a purveyor of "weakling" ethics.
What we can expect in the long run is that a house cannot stand for very long once the foundation is undermined.
+ + +
The inconsistency I find most revealing is the requirement that a Christian must believe himself and all those around him worthy of 27 trillion years of eternal torment and damnation (I use 27 trillion b/c it's easier to grasp than "eternity").
YOS
Of course, that is not at all what it is. 27 trillion is not "eternity," because eternity is not the same thing as "time." That is, there is no "duration." Time is the measure of change in changeable being; that is, of matter. No matter; no time. (Which is why time began with the Big Bang, and there was no "before.")
And the "torment" is to be deprived of perfect happiness by one's own determined efforts; much like a man who has been invited into a warm, cheery Inn, but insists on remaining outside in the sleet and freezing rain.
Andrew Lyttle says:
The Eastern Orthodox, for instance, tend to talk of hell as a self-imposed condition of the rejection of love, which transforms love into torment, but not as a punishment visited by a wrathful God.
YOS
Ja, that's pretty much the way I got it in RC grade school back in the 50s.
+ + +
the Euthyphro dilemma
YOS
assumes there are only two options.
+ + +
Rich says:
God can be proffered as a gaps explanation for a lot of things,
YOS
This assumes that God is an efficient cause in the material universe, in competition with other causes. But even in such a universe, we can see by analogy. One may explain Mozart's Clarinet Concerto by reference to physical causes, such as the physics of vibrating reeds, of changing the length of air columns with holes and keys; one may even abstract additional "natural laws" regarding chord progressions, inverted fifths, diminished sevenths, alternation of statement and exposition, etc. But none of this dispenses with the necessity for Sharon Kam (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr3aB4v8hXI) let alone for Wolfgang Mozart.
Tolstoy once famously declared that one cannot explain why a locomotive moves without understanding gears and rods and pistons and steam pressure; to which Lukacs commented that he had forgotten the engineer.
10.17.2010 | 4:41pm
Clay says:
@G Kyle, are you saying that atheists can live decent lives but have no standing to make moral proclamations? I'm not sure if Christians do either, given that their God has come down on both sides of many issues.
I'll bring up the Amalekites again, since no one else will. How does the attempted genocide of that tribe (as commanded by God, for sins committed generations before) comport with Thou Shall Not Kill? Since God said both, they are from the Christian perspective both universal truths. "Thou shall not kill...unless it's an Amalekite."
@A Lyttle said, in response to me: "the picture of hell you describe is part and parcel of a great deal of Christian tradition, and evidence to me that the tradition is deeply defective."
It'd be easier to swallow Christianity if the espousers would get their stories straight (that's not a slam on you A Lyttle, I'm just using your belief as a jumping-off point).
The Christian tradition of my childhood certainly took what I still consider to be the proper Biblical interpretation of hell: Eternal suffering. Yet more and more say it doesn't exist ("sheol," the garbage dump) or reach outside the Bible for that comforting C.S. Lewis cliche, "the doors of hell are locked from the inside." That's now how I read the Bible, which in my Southern Baptist upbringing is how you interpret God, and which is still the approach that makes the most logical sense to me now as an atheist. For a perfect being, Yahweh certainly did put together a confusing book (through humans, by vote, over several hundred years). For what purpose this multitude of interpretations?
I'll bring up the Amalekites again, since no one else will. How does the attempted genocide of that tribe (as commanded by God, for sins committed generations before) comport with Thou Shall Not Kill? Since God said both, they are from the Christian perspective both universal truths. "Thou shall not kill...unless it's an Amalekite."
@A Lyttle said, in response to me: "the picture of hell you describe is part and parcel of a great deal of Christian tradition, and evidence to me that the tradition is deeply defective."
It'd be easier to swallow Christianity if the espousers would get their stories straight (that's not a slam on you A Lyttle, I'm just using your belief as a jumping-off point).
The Christian tradition of my childhood certainly took what I still consider to be the proper Biblical interpretation of hell: Eternal suffering. Yet more and more say it doesn't exist ("sheol," the garbage dump) or reach outside the Bible for that comforting C.S. Lewis cliche, "the doors of hell are locked from the inside." That's now how I read the Bible, which in my Southern Baptist upbringing is how you interpret God, and which is still the approach that makes the most logical sense to me now as an atheist. For a perfect being, Yahweh certainly did put together a confusing book (through humans, by vote, over several hundred years). For what purpose this multitude of interpretations?
10.17.2010 | 7:10pm
Ray Ingles says:
Jason - "...it is totally implausible to claim that in every or even most cases this behavior leads to adverse consequences in expectation in the long-term. There is strong prima-face evidence that it does not because it persists in equilibrium."
You know, this is a very valuable discussion for me. I'm nearly universally discussing this position with theists, and the way I express it is generally tuned to that audience. This is a good chance to clarify it with respect to skeptical nontheists.
The fact that the behavior persists in equilibrium is evidence of at least a local maximum, sure. But obviously that doesn't automatically mean it's a global maximum. Imagine a utopia where everyone was generous and thoughtful and kind. It would be a "conspiracy of doves" (a phrase I'm sure you're familiar with) and a nice place to live. Of course, the obvious objection is that it's evolutionarily (and probably psychologically and politically, etc.) unstable. An aggressive, nasty invader would have a big advantage. Indeed, this is a big chunk of what you've been saying.
But I don't come from a philosophical or economic background. I come from an engineering background, with an emphasis on control theory. Modifying systems to maintain their state far from their normal equilibrium(s) is what control theory is about. Humans are capable of intelligent foresight and - however imperfectly mastered it often is - impulse control. I see no reason why we can't do better than armed standoffs and Nash equilibria.
Consider - many people today don't read very well, and there's still a noticeable percentage that's illiterate; true, they survive and reach some kind of local maximum. But a couple centuries ago no one would have believed we could come as close as we have to universal literacy. When you point out adults today who behave like vicious teenagers and get by... well, I don't see a major difference.
"That's just the way the world is."
But look at 'the way the world is'. It's still astonishingly better than it has ever been, especially in regard to moral behavior. (If you doubt me, read this: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html ) We'll never reach a utopia, sure. But can you make a cogent case why we can't make a lot of progress in that direction?
Are you prepared to essay a guess as to the limit? How close are we to that?
You know, this is a very valuable discussion for me. I'm nearly universally discussing this position with theists, and the way I express it is generally tuned to that audience. This is a good chance to clarify it with respect to skeptical nontheists.
The fact that the behavior persists in equilibrium is evidence of at least a local maximum, sure. But obviously that doesn't automatically mean it's a global maximum. Imagine a utopia where everyone was generous and thoughtful and kind. It would be a "conspiracy of doves" (a phrase I'm sure you're familiar with) and a nice place to live. Of course, the obvious objection is that it's evolutionarily (and probably psychologically and politically, etc.) unstable. An aggressive, nasty invader would have a big advantage. Indeed, this is a big chunk of what you've been saying.
But I don't come from a philosophical or economic background. I come from an engineering background, with an emphasis on control theory. Modifying systems to maintain their state far from their normal equilibrium(s) is what control theory is about. Humans are capable of intelligent foresight and - however imperfectly mastered it often is - impulse control. I see no reason why we can't do better than armed standoffs and Nash equilibria.
Consider - many people today don't read very well, and there's still a noticeable percentage that's illiterate; true, they survive and reach some kind of local maximum. But a couple centuries ago no one would have believed we could come as close as we have to universal literacy. When you point out adults today who behave like vicious teenagers and get by... well, I don't see a major difference.
"That's just the way the world is."
But look at 'the way the world is'. It's still astonishingly better than it has ever been, especially in regard to moral behavior. (If you doubt me, read this: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html ) We'll never reach a utopia, sure. But can you make a cogent case why we can't make a lot of progress in that direction?
Are you prepared to essay a guess as to the limit? How close are we to that?
10.17.2010 | 7:27pm
Billy Bean says:
Can one deduce an "ought" from an "is" (an ethical imperative from an ontological indicative)?
10.17.2010 | 7:53pm
Andrew Lyttle says:
Mr Joe the Human,
Your remarks have absolutely nothing to do with the article above. Hart did not say there was no law in nature, even law governing behaviour. He merely agreed with Marks that, sans God, there is no such thing as an ontologically objective right or wrong in the moral sphere. Read what's written.
Mr Clay,
If you were raised in a literalist biblical tradition, which treated the Bible as an inerrant book directly written by Mr Yahweh, then of course you should have lost your faith. But since that's not the way the book was regarded by Christian tradition, or read by Christians, until the modern period, maybe modern fundamentalism confused the Christian understanding of scripture with the Muslim understanding of the Qur'an. I mean, the church fathers I've read all seem unanimous in saying that God never commanded the slaughter of the Amalekites or anything of that sort, that that is just the literal level and a story produced by human beings, and therefore Christians should use these stories as allegories of other things. Thus the Amalekites become allegories of sins within the soul, etc. We don't read things that way today, perhaps, but it was standard hermeneutics in the ancient world. Whatever the case, fundamentalism is a modern invention, as is the notion that the Bible is the verbatim word of Mr God, and so complaints of the sort you raise just aren't very powerful when posed against the two-millennia of Christian thought.
By the way, you're wrong about eternal suffering being the Biblical picture of hell. I'm sorry, but that's because we read the text through later depictions, and our translations reflect as much. NT Wright--a very orthodox sort of evangelical Anglican--has shown that quite persuasively.
Oh, and sheol is not the dump; gehenna is--it was a trench where worms fed constantly on offal and animal corpses, and where fires were constantly burning for the destruction of waste. Sheol is a Hebrew concept, which in the Greek New Testament is called Hades (which is not the place of eternal torment).
All that said, Christians throughout history have preached the idea of eternal damnation, and that is enough for me to regard Christianity as a deeply defective human tradition, full of spiritual truth perhaps, but dogmatically ridiculous in many of its standard expressions.
Your remarks have absolutely nothing to do with the article above. Hart did not say there was no law in nature, even law governing behaviour. He merely agreed with Marks that, sans God, there is no such thing as an ontologically objective right or wrong in the moral sphere. Read what's written.
Mr Clay,
If you were raised in a literalist biblical tradition, which treated the Bible as an inerrant book directly written by Mr Yahweh, then of course you should have lost your faith. But since that's not the way the book was regarded by Christian tradition, or read by Christians, until the modern period, maybe modern fundamentalism confused the Christian understanding of scripture with the Muslim understanding of the Qur'an. I mean, the church fathers I've read all seem unanimous in saying that God never commanded the slaughter of the Amalekites or anything of that sort, that that is just the literal level and a story produced by human beings, and therefore Christians should use these stories as allegories of other things. Thus the Amalekites become allegories of sins within the soul, etc. We don't read things that way today, perhaps, but it was standard hermeneutics in the ancient world. Whatever the case, fundamentalism is a modern invention, as is the notion that the Bible is the verbatim word of Mr God, and so complaints of the sort you raise just aren't very powerful when posed against the two-millennia of Christian thought.
By the way, you're wrong about eternal suffering being the Biblical picture of hell. I'm sorry, but that's because we read the text through later depictions, and our translations reflect as much. NT Wright--a very orthodox sort of evangelical Anglican--has shown that quite persuasively.
Oh, and sheol is not the dump; gehenna is--it was a trench where worms fed constantly on offal and animal corpses, and where fires were constantly burning for the destruction of waste. Sheol is a Hebrew concept, which in the Greek New Testament is called Hades (which is not the place of eternal torment).
All that said, Christians throughout history have preached the idea of eternal damnation, and that is enough for me to regard Christianity as a deeply defective human tradition, full of spiritual truth perhaps, but dogmatically ridiculous in many of its standard expressions.
10.17.2010 | 8:01pm
Paige says:
@ Ray Ingles
How near can we get to utopia? Well, maybe you see some sign of progress in the relatively stable form of society in liberal democracies just now. A few decades ago, we were engaged in genocidal wars, though, and I don't see any good reason to think that a few decades of relative calm is indicative of very much.
But it's all nonsense, even your well meaning talk of equilibrium. The world isn't better than it's ever been; it's just better on the little islands of stability where we live. And there's no reason to think things are getting better on the whole. Moreover, equilibrium is a meaningless concept. Slave societies were more stable than most democracies, socially speaking. Totalitarian regimes are every bit as good at producing a cooperative society. Progress is just a way of saying "Our way is best" because it just happens to be what we're used to. If there is a transcendent order of moral truth, then progress is possible. Otherwise it's just one damned thing after another, and some people are lucky and some aren't.
How near can we get to utopia? Well, maybe you see some sign of progress in the relatively stable form of society in liberal democracies just now. A few decades ago, we were engaged in genocidal wars, though, and I don't see any good reason to think that a few decades of relative calm is indicative of very much.
But it's all nonsense, even your well meaning talk of equilibrium. The world isn't better than it's ever been; it's just better on the little islands of stability where we live. And there's no reason to think things are getting better on the whole. Moreover, equilibrium is a meaningless concept. Slave societies were more stable than most democracies, socially speaking. Totalitarian regimes are every bit as good at producing a cooperative society. Progress is just a way of saying "Our way is best" because it just happens to be what we're used to. If there is a transcendent order of moral truth, then progress is possible. Otherwise it's just one damned thing after another, and some people are lucky and some aren't.
10.17.2010 | 9:38pm
Jason says:
Ray,
I am actually a big fan of Steven Pinker and I agree with you completely that the world now is better than it has ever been before by most any objective measure.
But I think you're misunderstanding my point. My argument is not that there are no social or institutional arrangements that would be better for everyone (or almost everyone) than the existing arrangements. That argument I think is plainly incorrect. My argument is that viewed just from the standpoint of each individual - taking everyone else's actions as fixed - it is false to claim that what is moral and what is individually rational tend to coincide. Now you might say, "Why take everyone else's actions as fixed? Maybe you can convince your friends to be more moral as well and things will be better for everyone." This is fair enough as far as it goes. But we can still ask the question: even once we acknowledge that each agent's space of possible actions is multidimensional and includes trying to persuade other agents, that they are maximizing over the long-term and all of these other caveats, does what is moral correspond with what is individually rational?
I think it clearly does not, and the fact that nastiness persists in equilibrium is evidence of this. If convincing other people to be more moral were individually rational (in the sense that the payoff was worth the effort), people would have tried that strategy rather than the strategies they currently try and it would be more frequently practiced. So the equilibrium argument says *nothing* about even a local maximum of the *social* welfare function. What it says is much of the time, when we observe behaviors in a wide variety of contexts and social settings, this is because they are optimal judged from the standpoint of individuals given the options available to them, the goals they are maximizing, and given the constraints on their choices imposed by the behavior of others. That is just an a priori theoretical argument however, and I think it is more convincing to consider examples like the one I gave and ask yourself if you really believe that almost all examples of nasty behavior are contrary to the individual's self-interest all things considered (or for example, that business people who engage in immoral behavior and get rich because of it are almost all filled with paralyzing regret). This is a Hollywood trope, but not an accurate description of the world.
Paige,
Ray's point wasn't about whether there is a transcendental foundation for morality. He was just saying - given that many of us agree about what constitutes progress (people living longer and healthier lives, people forming meaningful and lasting relationships, etc...) - the empirical evidence indicates that these things have improved over time. Even with the genocidal wars of the 20th century, life expectancy increased dramatically, and poverty declined dramatically.
You seem to be complaining because according to us atheists all of these things are only good because they are things we desire - they're not good in some way which is written into the fabric of the universe. But who cares? If you were somehow convinced that God didn't exist, wouldn't you still want to be healthy, and wouldn't you still value relationships with people you care about?
Equilibrium is not a meaningless concept (although admittedly Ray seemed to misunderstand my use of the word). It is an extremely powerful concept in the social sciences which is completely distinct from the question of social stability. If you are interested in learning more, you should consult the following wikipedia articles which provide an introduction to what social scientists mean when they use the term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory
I am actually a big fan of Steven Pinker and I agree with you completely that the world now is better than it has ever been before by most any objective measure.
But I think you're misunderstanding my point. My argument is not that there are no social or institutional arrangements that would be better for everyone (or almost everyone) than the existing arrangements. That argument I think is plainly incorrect. My argument is that viewed just from the standpoint of each individual - taking everyone else's actions as fixed - it is false to claim that what is moral and what is individually rational tend to coincide. Now you might say, "Why take everyone else's actions as fixed? Maybe you can convince your friends to be more moral as well and things will be better for everyone." This is fair enough as far as it goes. But we can still ask the question: even once we acknowledge that each agent's space of possible actions is multidimensional and includes trying to persuade other agents, that they are maximizing over the long-term and all of these other caveats, does what is moral correspond with what is individually rational?
I think it clearly does not, and the fact that nastiness persists in equilibrium is evidence of this. If convincing other people to be more moral were individually rational (in the sense that the payoff was worth the effort), people would have tried that strategy rather than the strategies they currently try and it would be more frequently practiced. So the equilibrium argument says *nothing* about even a local maximum of the *social* welfare function. What it says is much of the time, when we observe behaviors in a wide variety of contexts and social settings, this is because they are optimal judged from the standpoint of individuals given the options available to them, the goals they are maximizing, and given the constraints on their choices imposed by the behavior of others. That is just an a priori theoretical argument however, and I think it is more convincing to consider examples like the one I gave and ask yourself if you really believe that almost all examples of nasty behavior are contrary to the individual's self-interest all things considered (or for example, that business people who engage in immoral behavior and get rich because of it are almost all filled with paralyzing regret). This is a Hollywood trope, but not an accurate description of the world.
Paige,
Ray's point wasn't about whether there is a transcendental foundation for morality. He was just saying - given that many of us agree about what constitutes progress (people living longer and healthier lives, people forming meaningful and lasting relationships, etc...) - the empirical evidence indicates that these things have improved over time. Even with the genocidal wars of the 20th century, life expectancy increased dramatically, and poverty declined dramatically.
You seem to be complaining because according to us atheists all of these things are only good because they are things we desire - they're not good in some way which is written into the fabric of the universe. But who cares? If you were somehow convinced that God didn't exist, wouldn't you still want to be healthy, and wouldn't you still value relationships with people you care about?
Equilibrium is not a meaningless concept (although admittedly Ray seemed to misunderstand my use of the word). It is an extremely powerful concept in the social sciences which is completely distinct from the question of social stability. If you are interested in learning more, you should consult the following wikipedia articles which provide an introduction to what social scientists mean when they use the term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_equilibrium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory
10.17.2010 | 10:47pm
A Lyttle surprised says:
Jason,
You admire Steven Pinker. May I ask why. I mean, his attempts at philosophy always seem so clumsy, his scientific books always seem to be made up of so much conjecture that it's almost impossible to say in what sense they're scientific, and his addiction to statistics leads him to make some of the silliest arguments ever attempted in public. His statistical attempt to prove that the modern age has been less violent than previous ages is not only prima facie idiotis; it actually manages to combine three classical logical fallacies in one page.
I can see why atheists might admire JL Mackie or Quine or any number of other non-believers, but I just don't get the whole Pinker thing. Even when I was an atheist, I thought he was a farcical fraud. Of course, if you buy into his historically-blinkered notions of social progress, then I guess you have to like him on principle. But can't you find an intellectual to admire who's actually got an admirable intellect? Pinker?
Sorry, but that's a real question--Why?
You admire Steven Pinker. May I ask why. I mean, his attempts at philosophy always seem so clumsy, his scientific books always seem to be made up of so much conjecture that it's almost impossible to say in what sense they're scientific, and his addiction to statistics leads him to make some of the silliest arguments ever attempted in public. His statistical attempt to prove that the modern age has been less violent than previous ages is not only prima facie idiotis; it actually manages to combine three classical logical fallacies in one page.
I can see why atheists might admire JL Mackie or Quine or any number of other non-believers, but I just don't get the whole Pinker thing. Even when I was an atheist, I thought he was a farcical fraud. Of course, if you buy into his historically-blinkered notions of social progress, then I guess you have to like him on principle. But can't you find an intellectual to admire who's actually got an admirable intellect? Pinker?
Sorry, but that's a real question--Why?
10.17.2010 | 11:01pm
Ronald Van Wegen says:
Ray wrote,
“But look at 'the way the world is'. It's still astonishingly better than it has ever been, especially in regard to moral behavior. (If you doubt me, read this: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html )”
Jason then wrote,
"I am actually a big fan of Steven Pinker and I agree with you completely that the world now is better than it has ever been before by most any objective measure."
I did a word search in the linked Pinker article and there is no mention of abortion. And what about contraception, fornication and euthanasia. Or separation, divorce, child-abuse, pornography, loneliness... and on and on.
Yes, we're living longer but better? Well, yes, everything is getting better if you redefine what better means! More of the above better? You might think so. I disagree vehemently.
“But look at 'the way the world is'. It's still astonishingly better than it has ever been, especially in regard to moral behavior. (If you doubt me, read this: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html )”
Jason then wrote,
"I am actually a big fan of Steven Pinker and I agree with you completely that the world now is better than it has ever been before by most any objective measure."
I did a word search in the linked Pinker article and there is no mention of abortion. And what about contraception, fornication and euthanasia. Or separation, divorce, child-abuse, pornography, loneliness... and on and on.
Yes, we're living longer but better? Well, yes, everything is getting better if you redefine what better means! More of the above better? You might think so. I disagree vehemently.
10.17.2010 | 11:40pm
Jason Abaluck says:
@A Lyttle Surprised,
I think it will be more productive to discuss specific substantive points then to argue about whether it is reasonable to admire someone. But for what it's worth, I think many philosophers are insufficiently informed about psychological and scientific theories relevant to the questions they ask, and so someone like Pinker with less philosophical training but more substantive scientific knowledge is more likely to provide a useful perspective on philosophical questions related to the fields he studies than a philosopher in the reverse position. To give another example, I'd be much more interested to know what Ed Witten thinks about the argument that the fine-tuning of the universe implies a designer than what somewhat like William Lane Craig or Alvin Plantinga thinks.
I think Pinker is often dismissive of philosophical arguments he does not agree with, and so this gives the impression that his views are ill-considered or that he is unfamiliar with the common rejoinders. I don't think that impression is correct, but saying I am a big fan of someone is not the same as saying I agree with all or even most of their substantive positions. I agree that many of Pinker's books are filled with speculative ideas, so if a naive reader read them thinking that everything he discussed was firmly established they would be mislead (not that Pinker makes this claim). So let's focus on specific issues rather than assessing whether Steven Pinker is worthy of our admiration.
Ronald,
As I note above, saying that I am a big fan of Steven Pinker is different than saying that I agree with everything he has written, but in this case I do agree with him (although I also agree that the evidence he alludes to in his article is not definitive!). The claim Pinker was defending in the article was that the world has become less violent over time. Loneliness, fornication and divorce have nothing to do with this. Euthanasia accounts for a vanishingly small fraction of violent deaths even if you insist on categorizing it as such. I agree that child-abuse is relevant - do you know of evidence that child-abuse is more common today than in the past? I also don't really see how contraception could be considered violence, but if you disagree on the basis of your interpretation of some ancient texts, let me know and we can discuss further.
More generally though, I would not defend the claim that *everything* is better now than in the past; that is just crazy. I would defend the claim that all things considered, the vast majority of people if given the choice would rather be a random person born today then a random person born 500 years, 1000 years ago or 10,000 years ago (presuming of course that they make this choice given all available information about the quality of life in these different time periods). I agree that this broader claim involves evaluating what is good and what isn't, and that we disagree about the badness of fornication, contraception, euthanasia and divorce. I think there are also large areas of agreement (death from disease is bad, death from violence is bad, child-abuse is bad, loneliness is bad, etc...), and my assessment of the evidence on these issues is that where good evidence is available, it indicates that the world is better today than in the past.
I think it will be more productive to discuss specific substantive points then to argue about whether it is reasonable to admire someone. But for what it's worth, I think many philosophers are insufficiently informed about psychological and scientific theories relevant to the questions they ask, and so someone like Pinker with less philosophical training but more substantive scientific knowledge is more likely to provide a useful perspective on philosophical questions related to the fields he studies than a philosopher in the reverse position. To give another example, I'd be much more interested to know what Ed Witten thinks about the argument that the fine-tuning of the universe implies a designer than what somewhat like William Lane Craig or Alvin Plantinga thinks.
I think Pinker is often dismissive of philosophical arguments he does not agree with, and so this gives the impression that his views are ill-considered or that he is unfamiliar with the common rejoinders. I don't think that impression is correct, but saying I am a big fan of someone is not the same as saying I agree with all or even most of their substantive positions. I agree that many of Pinker's books are filled with speculative ideas, so if a naive reader read them thinking that everything he discussed was firmly established they would be mislead (not that Pinker makes this claim). So let's focus on specific issues rather than assessing whether Steven Pinker is worthy of our admiration.
Ronald,
As I note above, saying that I am a big fan of Steven Pinker is different than saying that I agree with everything he has written, but in this case I do agree with him (although I also agree that the evidence he alludes to in his article is not definitive!). The claim Pinker was defending in the article was that the world has become less violent over time. Loneliness, fornication and divorce have nothing to do with this. Euthanasia accounts for a vanishingly small fraction of violent deaths even if you insist on categorizing it as such. I agree that child-abuse is relevant - do you know of evidence that child-abuse is more common today than in the past? I also don't really see how contraception could be considered violence, but if you disagree on the basis of your interpretation of some ancient texts, let me know and we can discuss further.
More generally though, I would not defend the claim that *everything* is better now than in the past; that is just crazy. I would defend the claim that all things considered, the vast majority of people if given the choice would rather be a random person born today then a random person born 500 years, 1000 years ago or 10,000 years ago (presuming of course that they make this choice given all available information about the quality of life in these different time periods). I agree that this broader claim involves evaluating what is good and what isn't, and that we disagree about the badness of fornication, contraception, euthanasia and divorce. I think there are also large areas of agreement (death from disease is bad, death from violence is bad, child-abuse is bad, loneliness is bad, etc...), and my assessment of the evidence on these issues is that where good evidence is available, it indicates that the world is better today than in the past.
10.18.2010 | 10:52am
Joe the Human says:
Lyttle & Bean:
My argument would be that what "is, the Natural order, eventually became seen as "ought." But that in effect, there is no "ought" at all. Morality as such thereby collapses into what is. And any "ought" is mere illusion.
My argument would be that what "is, the Natural order, eventually became seen as "ought." But that in effect, there is no "ought" at all. Morality as such thereby collapses into what is. And any "ought" is mere illusion.
10.18.2010 | 11:44am
Ray Ingles says:
Jason - "...even once we acknowledge that each agent's space of possible actions is multidimensional and includes trying to persuade other agents, that they are maximizing over the long-term and all of these other caveats, does what is moral correspond with what is individually rational?
I think it clearly does not, and the fact that nastiness persists in equilibrium is evidence of this. If convincing other people to be more moral were individually rational (in the sense that the payoff was worth the effort), people would have tried that strategy rather than the strategies they currently try and it would be more frequently practiced."
Hold up. Do you think science is a better way of understanding the world "in the sense that the payoff [is] worth the effort"? I'd say that things like m
edicine, engineering, and so forth prove that it's a much better way of learning about the world than any other method that's yet been developed. So why
did it take so long to develop? (I mean, it's only been around in any recognizable form for at most 2% of humanity's lifespan.)
I agree with Winston Churchill that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." The first society to put anything even vaguely resembling it into practice, the ancient Greeks, managed to hold off the vast Persian empire. In the american Civil War, the South had tied themselves to slavery, and even though they had much better generals than the North, they simply couldn't match the production of the North, and got overwhelmed. (Simplified, yes, but definitely a kernel of truth there.) So why didn't they catch on sooner?
"So the equilibrium argument says *nothing* about even a local maximum of the *social* welfare function."
True... but an individual's well-being is related to the "social welfare function". And not all individuals recognize that.
"...ask yourself if you really believe that almost all examples of nasty behavior are contrary to the individual's self-interest all things considered (or for example, that business people who engage in immoral behavior and get rich because of it are almost all filled with paralyzing regret). This is a Hollywood trope, but not an accurate description of the world."
Alcoholics pursue their well-being, too, as they understand it. I don't think that all alcoholics are filled with paralyzing regret; there are ones that are happy with their condition. Even the ones that are unhappy frequently - very frequently - aren't unhappy enough to change. (And that's not just a Hollywood trope - that's a reality that loved ones and substance abuse counselors are painfully aware of.) That doesn't mean I can't think they are mistaken - gravely mistaken - about what's in their long-term best interest.
You argue that since nastiness persists in equilibrium, it must be because people judge it as an optimal strategy. I can tell you come from an economics
background. ( :) ) Do you think that, because "we observe" *alcoholism* "in a wide variety of contexts and social settings, this is because" it is "optimal judged from the standpoint of" alcoholics "given the options available to them, the goals they are maximizing, and given the constraints on their choices imposed by the behavior of others"? If so, do you think they are in general *correct* about that? Do you think that maybe they could be even happier in other, less alcoholic circumstances? That they are at a local rather than global optimum?
I think it clearly does not, and the fact that nastiness persists in equilibrium is evidence of this. If convincing other people to be more moral were individually rational (in the sense that the payoff was worth the effort), people would have tried that strategy rather than the strategies they currently try and it would be more frequently practiced."
Hold up. Do you think science is a better way of understanding the world "in the sense that the payoff [is] worth the effort"? I'd say that things like m
edicine, engineering, and so forth prove that it's a much better way of learning about the world than any other method that's yet been developed. So why
did it take so long to develop? (I mean, it's only been around in any recognizable form for at most 2% of humanity's lifespan.)
I agree with Winston Churchill that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." The first society to put anything even vaguely resembling it into practice, the ancient Greeks, managed to hold off the vast Persian empire. In the american Civil War, the South had tied themselves to slavery, and even though they had much better generals than the North, they simply couldn't match the production of the North, and got overwhelmed. (Simplified, yes, but definitely a kernel of truth there.) So why didn't they catch on sooner?
"So the equilibrium argument says *nothing* about even a local maximum of the *social* welfare function."
True... but an individual's well-being is related to the "social welfare function". And not all individuals recognize that.
"...ask yourself if you really believe that almost all examples of nasty behavior are contrary to the individual's self-interest all things considered (or for example, that business people who engage in immoral behavior and get rich because of it are almost all filled with paralyzing regret). This is a Hollywood trope, but not an accurate description of the world."
Alcoholics pursue their well-being, too, as they understand it. I don't think that all alcoholics are filled with paralyzing regret; there are ones that are happy with their condition. Even the ones that are unhappy frequently - very frequently - aren't unhappy enough to change. (And that's not just a Hollywood trope - that's a reality that loved ones and substance abuse counselors are painfully aware of.) That doesn't mean I can't think they are mistaken - gravely mistaken - about what's in their long-term best interest.
You argue that since nastiness persists in equilibrium, it must be because people judge it as an optimal strategy. I can tell you come from an economics
background. ( :) ) Do you think that, because "we observe" *alcoholism* "in a wide variety of contexts and social settings, this is because" it is "optimal judged from the standpoint of" alcoholics "given the options available to them, the goals they are maximizing, and given the constraints on their choices imposed by the behavior of others"? If so, do you think they are in general *correct* about that? Do you think that maybe they could be even happier in other, less alcoholic circumstances? That they are at a local rather than global optimum?
10.18.2010 | 2:58pm
Jason says:
Ray,
I think you're paying too much attention to the theoretical portion of my claim and insufficient attention to the empirical portion. I think the argument you are making is completely indefensible from an empirical standpoint. Your claim implies that all (or the vast majority of) business people who have acted unscrupulously would have been better off from the standpoint of individual rationality if they had behaved more ethically. Why should we think this is so? Doesn't this strike you as very implausible? (e.g. that the rich would gladly give up all their ill-gotten gains in exchange for piece of mind rather than just rationalizing them in some way?). Your claim implies that Genghis Khan would gladly have given up his conquests if only he could have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that one has treated others with kindness and respect - don't some people just enjoy dominating others? Your claim implies that anyone who has ever gossiped or said something nasty about others to ingratiate themselves to a new social group would rather go back and take a moral stance even if it means losing their friends. I'm somewhat at a loss here because there are just countless examples I could give of this sort. To give you an analogy you might appreciate, my reaction to your claim here is similar to my reaction to Leibniz's claim that this is the best of all possible worlds and that all the evil in the world exists only because if things were otherwise they would be even worse. It's the kind of claim that cannot be definitively falsified, but nonetheless seems contradicted by thousands of commonplace examples as far as we can determine.
Re: your response to the theoretical argument, the important point to make is that the fact that a behavior is observed in equilibrium gives us a strong *prima-facie* reason to think it is individually rational, not a definitive reason. I agree with you that there are several reasons this prima-facie argument might be overridden; for example, if we had reason to believe that most individuals were not aware of an alternative course of action (as in the case of not yet invented scientific advances), or if we had reason to believe that most individuals lacked self-control or were behaving in a time-inconsistent way (as in the case of an alcoholic or drug-addict, whose behavior is characterized by the fact that while they would like their future selves to behave in one way - not consuming alcohol - when the future becomes the present they find themselves consistently acting in a different way). In the case of alcoholics or drug-addicts, I think there is an argument one could make that they would be better off if their behavior could be brought into line with the aims of their long term self (i.e. the behavior they would proscribe for their future self). However, you are too quick to dismiss the prima-facie argument on the basis of these exceptions, neither of which seems to apply in most of the cases I mention above. There may be some people who engage in unscrupulous behavior despite repeatedly wishing that they could stop doing so in the future, but I think the psychological evidence indicates that this is far less common than just rationalizing the behavior as not particularly harmful to anyone.
Incidentally, I agree that my claim above about the relationship between individual and social welfare functions was too strong - what is individually rational does indeed tell us something about what is socially optimal since individual interests are an important (and arguably the primary or sole) input into the social welfare function. What I should have said was that the fact that a behavior is individually rational is not a sufficient condition for believing it is a local or global social optimum.
I think you're paying too much attention to the theoretical portion of my claim and insufficient attention to the empirical portion. I think the argument you are making is completely indefensible from an empirical standpoint. Your claim implies that all (or the vast majority of) business people who have acted unscrupulously would have been better off from the standpoint of individual rationality if they had behaved more ethically. Why should we think this is so? Doesn't this strike you as very implausible? (e.g. that the rich would gladly give up all their ill-gotten gains in exchange for piece of mind rather than just rationalizing them in some way?). Your claim implies that Genghis Khan would gladly have given up his conquests if only he could have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that one has treated others with kindness and respect - don't some people just enjoy dominating others? Your claim implies that anyone who has ever gossiped or said something nasty about others to ingratiate themselves to a new social group would rather go back and take a moral stance even if it means losing their friends. I'm somewhat at a loss here because there are just countless examples I could give of this sort. To give you an analogy you might appreciate, my reaction to your claim here is similar to my reaction to Leibniz's claim that this is the best of all possible worlds and that all the evil in the world exists only because if things were otherwise they would be even worse. It's the kind of claim that cannot be definitively falsified, but nonetheless seems contradicted by thousands of commonplace examples as far as we can determine.
Re: your response to the theoretical argument, the important point to make is that the fact that a behavior is observed in equilibrium gives us a strong *prima-facie* reason to think it is individually rational, not a definitive reason. I agree with you that there are several reasons this prima-facie argument might be overridden; for example, if we had reason to believe that most individuals were not aware of an alternative course of action (as in the case of not yet invented scientific advances), or if we had reason to believe that most individuals lacked self-control or were behaving in a time-inconsistent way (as in the case of an alcoholic or drug-addict, whose behavior is characterized by the fact that while they would like their future selves to behave in one way - not consuming alcohol - when the future becomes the present they find themselves consistently acting in a different way). In the case of alcoholics or drug-addicts, I think there is an argument one could make that they would be better off if their behavior could be brought into line with the aims of their long term self (i.e. the behavior they would proscribe for their future self). However, you are too quick to dismiss the prima-facie argument on the basis of these exceptions, neither of which seems to apply in most of the cases I mention above. There may be some people who engage in unscrupulous behavior despite repeatedly wishing that they could stop doing so in the future, but I think the psychological evidence indicates that this is far less common than just rationalizing the behavior as not particularly harmful to anyone.
Incidentally, I agree that my claim above about the relationship between individual and social welfare functions was too strong - what is individually rational does indeed tell us something about what is socially optimal since individual interests are an important (and arguably the primary or sole) input into the social welfare function. What I should have said was that the fact that a behavior is individually rational is not a sufficient condition for believing it is a local or global social optimum.
10.19.2010 | 7:18am
Joe says:
If Amalekites are any thing like the American political class and wall street bankers, I can see exactly why a righteous man could be ordered by the Almighty to slaughter every one of them and their children, goats, wives and grandchildren. The blood may flow pretty deep in the streets of lower Manhattan.
The problem with atheists is that their morality shifts as the wind blows. They cannot be depended upon for anything, accept their service as slaves. Atheists are double-minded and cannon fodder.
The problem with atheists is that their morality shifts as the wind blows. They cannot be depended upon for anything, accept their service as slaves. Atheists are double-minded and cannon fodder.
10.19.2010 | 10:09am
Ray Ingles says:
Jason - "What I should have said was that the fact that a behavior is individually rational is not a sufficient condition for believing it is a local or global social optimum."
Ah, and my point is that just because a behavior is individually rational is not a sufficient condition for believing it is anything more than a local optimum for the *individual* either. "[T]he fact that a behavior is observed in equilibrium gives us a strong *prima-facie* reason to think it is" a local optimum. It is *not* strong evidence that it's a global optimum for the individual any more than the society.
"Your claim implies that all (or the vast majority of) business people who have acted unscrupulously would have been better off from the standpoint of individual rationality if they had behaved more ethically."
In *some* senses (but see below), their optimum would be (a) a society where everyone was moral and ethical *except* them. Next best would be (b) a society where everyone was moral and ethical *including* them. Well down from there is (c) a society where large fractions of the population are frequently immoral and unethical. I don't see any way to arrange (a) short of mind control or radical re-engineering of humanity. However, I believe we're in situation (c) right now, and moving at least a fair piece on the way to (b) is both possible and desirable. I think history supports this pretty well, too.
And guess what? Humans are empathetic and social beings who like other people. We get our deepest and greatest joys and pleasures from our experiences and relationships with other people. Sheer material well-being doesn't get there, any more than alcohol does. *That's* actually my key point of agreement with the theists. I think they are wrong about the reasons for that, but hey - Ptolemaic astronomy actually worked pretty well. There was even a period where it worked better than Copernican astronomy. (It's only tangentially related, but I think you'd probably enjoy Geoffrey Miller's "Spent". I doubt you'd agree with everything in it - any more than I did - but it does make some points that act to support my contentions about 'real satisfaction', and decidedly not from a theistic point of view.)
As I said before, you're free to think me foolish, misguided, or whatever. But I'm not claiming that we live in a utopia now, or that utopia is reachable. I'm saying that working in a 'utopian' direction is, in fact, in people's rational self-interest.
Ah, and my point is that just because a behavior is individually rational is not a sufficient condition for believing it is anything more than a local optimum for the *individual* either. "[T]he fact that a behavior is observed in equilibrium gives us a strong *prima-facie* reason to think it is" a local optimum. It is *not* strong evidence that it's a global optimum for the individual any more than the society.
"Your claim implies that all (or the vast majority of) business people who have acted unscrupulously would have been better off from the standpoint of individual rationality if they had behaved more ethically."
In *some* senses (but see below), their optimum would be (a) a society where everyone was moral and ethical *except* them. Next best would be (b) a society where everyone was moral and ethical *including* them. Well down from there is (c) a society where large fractions of the population are frequently immoral and unethical. I don't see any way to arrange (a) short of mind control or radical re-engineering of humanity. However, I believe we're in situation (c) right now, and moving at least a fair piece on the way to (b) is both possible and desirable. I think history supports this pretty well, too.
And guess what? Humans are empathetic and social beings who like other people. We get our deepest and greatest joys and pleasures from our experiences and relationships with other people. Sheer material well-being doesn't get there, any more than alcohol does. *That's* actually my key point of agreement with the theists. I think they are wrong about the reasons for that, but hey - Ptolemaic astronomy actually worked pretty well. There was even a period where it worked better than Copernican astronomy. (It's only tangentially related, but I think you'd probably enjoy Geoffrey Miller's "Spent". I doubt you'd agree with everything in it - any more than I did - but it does make some points that act to support my contentions about 'real satisfaction', and decidedly not from a theistic point of view.)
As I said before, you're free to think me foolish, misguided, or whatever. But I'm not claiming that we live in a utopia now, or that utopia is reachable. I'm saying that working in a 'utopian' direction is, in fact, in people's rational self-interest.
10.19.2010 | 10:14am
Ian says:
It looks like this is a popular topic, the New York Times adds its voice: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/morals-without-god/?src=me&ref=general
10.19.2010 | 11:43am
Joel Marks says:
How can I thank David Hart enough for his thoughtful, sincere, and generous consideration of my essay (Part I, actually)? Let me say at the outset that I don’t know how people keep up with the blogosphere. I barely have enough time for my own correspondence and other writing and reading (and with no television, to boot), not to mention, life at large (i.e., away from my desk). Still, as with television, there is so much of tremendous value in cyberspace, and I thank David Mills for alerting me to Hart’s commentary. I apologize to everyone else who has responded to it for addressing Hart’s comments without first reviewing theirs; perhaps they have anticipated what I have to say.
There is really very little with which I disagree in Hart’s remarks. One might almost conclude that he is making my case for me, although that would no doubt be reading him at a superficial level. But I shall try to tease out our fundamental disagreement. First let me just note in passing that I would not speak of my “choosing” to be compassionate. It will come as no surprise to Hart that I am also a causal determinist. Hence I attribute my own compassion, to the degree that I genuinely have such, to the congeries of contingencies that have made me, me. I take no more credit for my compassion than I would heap scorn on an ax-murderer. Oh, I would enjoy being praised. And if I could be convinced that heaping scorn on ax-murderers – in other words, adding insult to the injury of incarcerating or otherwise inhibiting them – would significantly reduce their tendencies and/or numbers, I might be tempted to go along with that fiction. But if we’re just talking about what’s real, then I would have to say that merit for being compassionate and blameworthiness for being an ax-murderer must both go by the board.
Let me also acknowledge at the outset that a major objection to my arguments against both morality and religion could be that they are ignoratios: I may be attacking only phony religion and phony morality. I have no deep objection in turn to that objection. If someone would prefer to describe my project as offering an analysis of morality rather than a rejection of morality, I won’t get too bent out of shape. My reason for going the extra mile is only that, because I feel moral language carries so much extraneous baggage, we could be better off with a different way of speaking about the relevant phenomena.
Thus, Hart sees me as still being a moralist. (Others have made the same remark.) In part I might simply dismiss that as referring to some atavistic moralism in myself, who have been an ardent moralist for most of my 61 years. A habit like that is not easy to kick. But I could also take it as referring to a part of myself that I gladly retain, including my very (so-called) amoralism. This might no more cease to be morality than Jesus’s driving the moneychangers out of the temple ceased to be religion. Indeed, one could look at much of the modern history of ethics as offering analyses of morality that are hardly less naturalistic than my amorality, perhaps are even identical to it.
Now to Hart’s argument (as I understand it). He writes, “It is simply the case that belief in a real and eternal “goodness-as-such”—which has the power to draw all persons together in a communion of love and knowledge, and which is more than merely a fiction of the individual will—makes it easier for many to devote themselves indefatigably, even blissfully, to the labor of selfless love.” I reply: Maybe so, but that is an empirical claim and tells us nothing about the truth of such a belief. Thus, there are two claims at issue: Does a belief in a summum bonum make a person more likely to act with selfless love? and, Is the belief in a summum bonum justified? Of course one might attempt to collapse those into a single issue by arguing that the power to produce selfless-love is justification enough of the truth of a belief. But barring that dubious assumption, we are left with the possibility that there is no summum bonum even if a belief in it may be very useful.
Hart goes on to argue that such a belief is not only useful but also ineradicable. In a variation on the “no atheists in foxholes” refrain, he writes, “even the hardiest altruistic unbeliever will still at some level tend to hold to a practical certitude regarding the reality of good and evil.” This is another empirical claim, whose truth I would not begin to know how to ascertain. But again, even assuming its truth, it does nothing to establish the truth or validity of that “practical certitude.”
Finally, Hart speaks of “the implicit theology within all moral longing.” But if that is meant as a further argument, it strikes me as itself an ignoratio, since I have taken it as one of my own premises that morality is replete with theism. That is precisely why an atheist needs to reject morality ... a(n explicitly or implicitly) theological morality, anyway.
Hart continues: “There are preferences and there are preferences, desires and desires, and they differ from one another in quality according to their objects and their intensity. Certainly a desire to convince someone not to be cruel to animals is not a desire simply to communicate an aesthetic inclination.” That is exactly right. But that only shows that morality requires an analysis, not that morality exists. Unicorns are different from bears, but unicorns do not exist … that is, under the standard analysis. But analyze them simply as “animals sporting a single horn on their head,” and you’ve got rhinos; hence unicorns do exist. Just so: Morality understood as a form of desire – different from aesthetic desire as aesthetic desire is different from, say, sexual desire -- then morality does exist. But morality, if understood as a set of objective demands and/or values, does not exist. And since the latter analysis seems to attach to a great deal of our moral discourse, we might do better to replace it with the discourse of desire. At least we would be speaking more literally. On the general assumption that the truth shall set ye free, that would seem to be recommended.
There remains the pragmatic question of whether human beings who were “freed” in this way would end up committing more mayhem them they already do. I have to say that it is hard for me to imagine how that could be so. Hart writes, “a whole culture that truly came to believe that all moral choices are merely personal preferences might find that the inventiveness and spontaneity of the liberated will are capable of just about anything, and responsible to nothing.” But could he possibly deny that that same “inventiveness” has proved infinitely resourceful in “justifying” whatever atrocities – including against nonhuman animals -- you care to imagine on either moral or religious grounds? I am content, therefore, to call it a wash (although I still suspect that we’d be better off without the delusions). But then truth would break the tie: ergo Q.E.D.
One final note: I do indeed have children – two wonderful stepsons – in whose well-being I am thoroughly invested. When I wrote that I am “sans famille,” I only meant that my children are grown and no longer live at home. Sorry for the confusion.
There is really very little with which I disagree in Hart’s remarks. One might almost conclude that he is making my case for me, although that would no doubt be reading him at a superficial level. But I shall try to tease out our fundamental disagreement. First let me just note in passing that I would not speak of my “choosing” to be compassionate. It will come as no surprise to Hart that I am also a causal determinist. Hence I attribute my own compassion, to the degree that I genuinely have such, to the congeries of contingencies that have made me, me. I take no more credit for my compassion than I would heap scorn on an ax-murderer. Oh, I would enjoy being praised. And if I could be convinced that heaping scorn on ax-murderers – in other words, adding insult to the injury of incarcerating or otherwise inhibiting them – would significantly reduce their tendencies and/or numbers, I might be tempted to go along with that fiction. But if we’re just talking about what’s real, then I would have to say that merit for being compassionate and blameworthiness for being an ax-murderer must both go by the board.
Let me also acknowledge at the outset that a major objection to my arguments against both morality and religion could be that they are ignoratios: I may be attacking only phony religion and phony morality. I have no deep objection in turn to that objection. If someone would prefer to describe my project as offering an analysis of morality rather than a rejection of morality, I won’t get too bent out of shape. My reason for going the extra mile is only that, because I feel moral language carries so much extraneous baggage, we could be better off with a different way of speaking about the relevant phenomena.
Thus, Hart sees me as still being a moralist. (Others have made the same remark.) In part I might simply dismiss that as referring to some atavistic moralism in myself, who have been an ardent moralist for most of my 61 years. A habit like that is not easy to kick. But I could also take it as referring to a part of myself that I gladly retain, including my very (so-called) amoralism. This might no more cease to be morality than Jesus’s driving the moneychangers out of the temple ceased to be religion. Indeed, one could look at much of the modern history of ethics as offering analyses of morality that are hardly less naturalistic than my amorality, perhaps are even identical to it.
Now to Hart’s argument (as I understand it). He writes, “It is simply the case that belief in a real and eternal “goodness-as-such”—which has the power to draw all persons together in a communion of love and knowledge, and which is more than merely a fiction of the individual will—makes it easier for many to devote themselves indefatigably, even blissfully, to the labor of selfless love.” I reply: Maybe so, but that is an empirical claim and tells us nothing about the truth of such a belief. Thus, there are two claims at issue: Does a belief in a summum bonum make a person more likely to act with selfless love? and, Is the belief in a summum bonum justified? Of course one might attempt to collapse those into a single issue by arguing that the power to produce selfless-love is justification enough of the truth of a belief. But barring that dubious assumption, we are left with the possibility that there is no summum bonum even if a belief in it may be very useful.
Hart goes on to argue that such a belief is not only useful but also ineradicable. In a variation on the “no atheists in foxholes” refrain, he writes, “even the hardiest altruistic unbeliever will still at some level tend to hold to a practical certitude regarding the reality of good and evil.” This is another empirical claim, whose truth I would not begin to know how to ascertain. But again, even assuming its truth, it does nothing to establish the truth or validity of that “practical certitude.”
Finally, Hart speaks of “the implicit theology within all moral longing.” But if that is meant as a further argument, it strikes me as itself an ignoratio, since I have taken it as one of my own premises that morality is replete with theism. That is precisely why an atheist needs to reject morality ... a(n explicitly or implicitly) theological morality, anyway.
Hart continues: “There are preferences and there are preferences, desires and desires, and they differ from one another in quality according to their objects and their intensity. Certainly a desire to convince someone not to be cruel to animals is not a desire simply to communicate an aesthetic inclination.” That is exactly right. But that only shows that morality requires an analysis, not that morality exists. Unicorns are different from bears, but unicorns do not exist … that is, under the standard analysis. But analyze them simply as “animals sporting a single horn on their head,” and you’ve got rhinos; hence unicorns do exist. Just so: Morality understood as a form of desire – different from aesthetic desire as aesthetic desire is different from, say, sexual desire -- then morality does exist. But morality, if understood as a set of objective demands and/or values, does not exist. And since the latter analysis seems to attach to a great deal of our moral discourse, we might do better to replace it with the discourse of desire. At least we would be speaking more literally. On the general assumption that the truth shall set ye free, that would seem to be recommended.
There remains the pragmatic question of whether human beings who were “freed” in this way would end up committing more mayhem them they already do. I have to say that it is hard for me to imagine how that could be so. Hart writes, “a whole culture that truly came to believe that all moral choices are merely personal preferences might find that the inventiveness and spontaneity of the liberated will are capable of just about anything, and responsible to nothing.” But could he possibly deny that that same “inventiveness” has proved infinitely resourceful in “justifying” whatever atrocities – including against nonhuman animals -- you care to imagine on either moral or religious grounds? I am content, therefore, to call it a wash (although I still suspect that we’d be better off without the delusions). But then truth would break the tie: ergo Q.E.D.
One final note: I do indeed have children – two wonderful stepsons – in whose well-being I am thoroughly invested. When I wrote that I am “sans famille,” I only meant that my children are grown and no longer live at home. Sorry for the confusion.
10.19.2010 | 12:01pm
Joe the Human says:
Many people are converted, without religion, to the point of view of selfless altruism, sacrificing themselves ... for the sake of their children.
10.19.2010 | 12:44pm
Andrew Lyttle says:
@ Joel Marks,
I'm glad you noticed that Hart wasn't actually arguing with your conclusions; he was just stating that he does not have your confidence in the future for which you express a longing.
In the end, I think your basic premise is wrong (that is, naturalism); I believe that it is a logically incoherent picture of reality, and so I don't believe your moral longings are simply epiphenomena of your evolutionary lineage. I also believe that the hard and fast line between moral desire and objective morality is easy to maintain on paper, but not in moral action. That, think, was why Hart spoke just of your desire's existential quality.
But, like Hart, I appreciate the clarity and honesty of the views you have expressed.
I'm glad you noticed that Hart wasn't actually arguing with your conclusions; he was just stating that he does not have your confidence in the future for which you express a longing.
In the end, I think your basic premise is wrong (that is, naturalism); I believe that it is a logically incoherent picture of reality, and so I don't believe your moral longings are simply epiphenomena of your evolutionary lineage. I also believe that the hard and fast line between moral desire and objective morality is easy to maintain on paper, but not in moral action. That, think, was why Hart spoke just of your desire's existential quality.
But, like Hart, I appreciate the clarity and honesty of the views you have expressed.
10.19.2010 | 12:50pm
Paige says:
Dear Dr. Marks,
I'm sorry, but when you say:
"There remains the pragmatic question of whether human beings who were “freed” in this way would end up committing more mayhem them they already do. I have to say that it is hard for me to imagine how that could be so."
I have to wonder if you're paying attention. The twentieth century was full of mass movements that were premised on exactly that understanding of reality, and they did indeed create more mayhem than it is comfortable to contemplate. I know there are people out there like S. Pinker who argue that somehow the modern secular age has been less violent than most of human history, but their arguments are inane. A grade-schooler can see through Pinker's silly statistical analysis of history (By his reasoning, a bar fight at a remote Alaskan outpost that results in the death of one of ten resident trappers is more violent than the holocaust or the bombing of Hiroshima.) And while the violence of the twentieth century was not all the work of materialist amoralists, it was certainly mostly the result of their special contributions to their time.
I'm sorry, but when you say:
"There remains the pragmatic question of whether human beings who were “freed” in this way would end up committing more mayhem them they already do. I have to say that it is hard for me to imagine how that could be so."
I have to wonder if you're paying attention. The twentieth century was full of mass movements that were premised on exactly that understanding of reality, and they did indeed create more mayhem than it is comfortable to contemplate. I know there are people out there like S. Pinker who argue that somehow the modern secular age has been less violent than most of human history, but their arguments are inane. A grade-schooler can see through Pinker's silly statistical analysis of history (By his reasoning, a bar fight at a remote Alaskan outpost that results in the death of one of ten resident trappers is more violent than the holocaust or the bombing of Hiroshima.) And while the violence of the twentieth century was not all the work of materialist amoralists, it was certainly mostly the result of their special contributions to their time.
10.19.2010 | 1:31pm
Joe the Human Person says:
Paige:
Christians all-too-commonly like to say that it was non-Christian secularists, amoralists, that were responsible for most of the violence in the 20th century. But that is wrong.
It takes two to tangle. Note that the war by Communism, was seen in part by the Russian communists, as a just response to the repressions of a Christian monarcy (the "White" Russians?); so arguably, it was Christianity that started this giant conflagration. Certainly it was a major party in the contest.
Likewise, Nazis claimed that a religion - the Jewish religion - had deceived the world with false promises of miracles and so forth; and their own actions were a defensive response to that.
While the pacification of Africa was undertaken not just by Christian missionaries ... but also Christian armies.
While most of the major conflicts in our own era - the IRS vs. the Ulsters, miliant Islam vs. everybody else - find Christians as one or two, of the main participants.
To be sure, these a-moralist parties had problems on their own. But the massive deaths of the 20th century, had two, probably equally responisble parties or forces to blame.
It takes two to tango, or fight; Christians were one of the major antagonists.
To blame the wars of the 20th century solely or even only on non-religionists, is a commonplace. But one that is not accurate.
Christians all-too-commonly like to say that it was non-Christian secularists, amoralists, that were responsible for most of the violence in the 20th century. But that is wrong.
It takes two to tangle. Note that the war by Communism, was seen in part by the Russian communists, as a just response to the repressions of a Christian monarcy (the "White" Russians?); so arguably, it was Christianity that started this giant conflagration. Certainly it was a major party in the contest.
Likewise, Nazis claimed that a religion - the Jewish religion - had deceived the world with false promises of miracles and so forth; and their own actions were a defensive response to that.
While the pacification of Africa was undertaken not just by Christian missionaries ... but also Christian armies.
While most of the major conflicts in our own era - the IRS vs. the Ulsters, miliant Islam vs. everybody else - find Christians as one or two, of the main participants.
To be sure, these a-moralist parties had problems on their own. But the massive deaths of the 20th century, had two, probably equally responisble parties or forces to blame.
It takes two to tango, or fight; Christians were one of the major antagonists.
To blame the wars of the 20th century solely or even only on non-religionists, is a commonplace. But one that is not accurate.
10.19.2010 | 2:15pm
Gil Costello says:
Joe the Human Person - How do you get to a place where you can view the gulags and the concentration camps as simply reactions to Christian violence? In making your case, do you actually agree with the Nazis when you write, "Nazis claimed that a religion - the Jewish religion - had deceived the world with false promises of miracles and so forth; and their own actions were a defensive response to that."?
When John Paul II acknowledged the excesses of the Christian Crusades (the crusades went far beyond responding to cries for help from those being invaded by Islamic armies), he didn't qualify the apology in any way. Do you really want to be an apologist for Stalin, Mao and Hitler?
When John Paul II acknowledged the excesses of the Christian Crusades (the crusades went far beyond responding to cries for help from those being invaded by Islamic armies), he didn't qualify the apology in any way. Do you really want to be an apologist for Stalin, Mao and Hitler?
10.19.2010 | 6:12pm
Jason says:
Paige,
Your critique of Pinker's reasoning is misguided. By your reasoning - in which only absolute magnitudes matter - a world in which billions of people live long lives free of direct violence while a few million of are subject to it is many times worse than a world with only a few hundred thousand people alive half of whom die violent deaths. Or that living in North America is more dangerous than living in tribal Afghanistan (because after all, there are more violent deaths every year in North America then in tribal Afghanistan).
When assessing the degree of violence in a society, it makes sense to normalize by the number of interactions that could possibly result in violence. Whether this number of opportunities scale directly with the population size is not obvious, but as a first approximation, this seems a better assumption than that they are independent of population size. If you have an even more accurate assumption, please share it with us and show us directly how it would impact Pinker's analysis.
Ray,
I think we're talking past one another. You seem to be saying that it is rational for individuals to work for a world in which everyone behaves more morally. I certainly agree with that. What I disagree with is that it is rational in most situations for individuals themselves to behave morally regardless of whether they work to encourage others to do so. I think while it often is rational to behave morally for reasons you describe such as empathy among others, it sometimes is not. This is David's point as well. Sometimes other desires and goals just overwhelm the desire to be moral and in extreme cases (such as psychopaths), the desire to be moral might be absent entirely. If that is the case, theists would like to say that such people are still erring in some fundamental sense, or that they will someday be punished for their behavior. I don't think this is true, and what I don't understand is why theists see my view as problematic.
Again, just to clarify what I see as the central misunderstanding: the question we are debating is about the incentive for individuals to act morally when they make choices, NOT whether individuals would be better off if everyone acted more morally more often.
Your critique of Pinker's reasoning is misguided. By your reasoning - in which only absolute magnitudes matter - a world in which billions of people live long lives free of direct violence while a few million of are subject to it is many times worse than a world with only a few hundred thousand people alive half of whom die violent deaths. Or that living in North America is more dangerous than living in tribal Afghanistan (because after all, there are more violent deaths every year in North America then in tribal Afghanistan).
When assessing the degree of violence in a society, it makes sense to normalize by the number of interactions that could possibly result in violence. Whether this number of opportunities scale directly with the population size is not obvious, but as a first approximation, this seems a better assumption than that they are independent of population size. If you have an even more accurate assumption, please share it with us and show us directly how it would impact Pinker's analysis.
Ray,
I think we're talking past one another. You seem to be saying that it is rational for individuals to work for a world in which everyone behaves more morally. I certainly agree with that. What I disagree with is that it is rational in most situations for individuals themselves to behave morally regardless of whether they work to encourage others to do so. I think while it often is rational to behave morally for reasons you describe such as empathy among others, it sometimes is not. This is David's point as well. Sometimes other desires and goals just overwhelm the desire to be moral and in extreme cases (such as psychopaths), the desire to be moral might be absent entirely. If that is the case, theists would like to say that such people are still erring in some fundamental sense, or that they will someday be punished for their behavior. I don't think this is true, and what I don't understand is why theists see my view as problematic.
Again, just to clarify what I see as the central misunderstanding: the question we are debating is about the incentive for individuals to act morally when they make choices, NOT whether individuals would be better off if everyone acted more morally more often.
10.19.2010 | 7:54pm
Ray Ingles says:
Paige - "I know there are people out there like S. Pinker who argue that somehow the modern secular age has been less violent than most of human history, but their arguments are inane."
Because in terms of *rates* of violence... it *has* been. As Pinker notes, the murder rate in modern England is *one fortieth* what it was in the 14th century. (And few people argue that Britain is more religious now than in the 1300's, btw.) Ask the Albigensians if their time was more or less violent than now... oh, wait, you can't.
More people died in the 20th century than in any previous - thanks to advances in people-killing technology. But more people *lived* in the 20th century than any previous, too - thanks to advances in agriculture and food distribution that supported massively larger populations than any before. (Oh, and speaking of that, look up Lysenkoism for an example of dogmatism killing tens of millions. It's ironic that people try to tie 'Darwinism' to Stalin and Mao...)
If you want to say their arguments are inane, then you'll need to make a better case than they do.
Because in terms of *rates* of violence... it *has* been. As Pinker notes, the murder rate in modern England is *one fortieth* what it was in the 14th century. (And few people argue that Britain is more religious now than in the 1300's, btw.) Ask the Albigensians if their time was more or less violent than now... oh, wait, you can't.
More people died in the 20th century than in any previous - thanks to advances in people-killing technology. But more people *lived* in the 20th century than any previous, too - thanks to advances in agriculture and food distribution that supported massively larger populations than any before. (Oh, and speaking of that, look up Lysenkoism for an example of dogmatism killing tens of millions. It's ironic that people try to tie 'Darwinism' to Stalin and Mao...)
If you want to say their arguments are inane, then you'll need to make a better case than they do.
10.19.2010 | 11:52pm
Gil Costello says:
Anyone interested in a biblical comparison of those committed to secularism and those committed to what God revealed, read chapter 2 of Wisdom (post-modern long before post-modern). After reading it one can easily discern why secularism tends toward death. Again, secularism is still infected with the Judaic-Christian ethic, and the Holy Spirit still resides with every person in conscience.
The will to power can go in one of two directions: a subsuming into the will of God for full actualization of freedom, or a willing unto death, for the freedom that is not the freedom of God always moves us in the direction of our origin: nothingness, and why death for the godless is the ultimate achievement: not only the gulags, purges and the concentration camps, but abortion, euthanasia and the rest. These horror stories can become ideal only if one idealizes death.
The will to power can go in one of two directions: a subsuming into the will of God for full actualization of freedom, or a willing unto death, for the freedom that is not the freedom of God always moves us in the direction of our origin: nothingness, and why death for the godless is the ultimate achievement: not only the gulags, purges and the concentration camps, but abortion, euthanasia and the rest. These horror stories can become ideal only if one idealizes death.
10.21.2010 | 9:09am
Joe the Human Person says:
In attempt to reconstruct Morality from nature and reason and science, we need to consider not only rational Utilitarianism, but also Natural Law arguments. Not only are there 1) some natural - Natural Law - sentiments for altruism: like a fairly natural love for, sacrificing to, our children.
But also there's 2) a fairly rational argument or two for individuals acting in a way to favor society over themseves; one of which is partially rehersed in the Bible.
The argument there, is to say to the otherwise selfish individual, that he might try to serve his own individual life; but eventually he will die. And lose it all. So that "all is vanity." Unless some part of what we do, lives on after us. In religion, it is often said that some part of what we are, lives on in our spirit or soul; and/or our children. Our "seed." Who carry on our "memory," some of our culture, values, ideas, and DNA.
There are 3) other similar arguments for a natural, anti-individualistic collectivism in Biology; where an individual might sacrifice his own apparent immediate self interest, because his DNA is telling him to sacrifice his own life to save the community.
Here there are two major elements to consider; not just reason and the hedonistic calculus, but also our natural instincts; Natural law. Ourbiological instincts. Some of which are altuistic.
While 4) as for sociopaths? Religion isn't reaching them either. Though finally can be brought into the fold, just by sending them to prison; there is the rest of society that will enforce collectivism, whether they feel individually compelled or not. And in a world in which there are more and more cameras, it is harder and harder for social deviants to escape simple Human Law.
But also there's 2) a fairly rational argument or two for individuals acting in a way to favor society over themseves; one of which is partially rehersed in the Bible.
The argument there, is to say to the otherwise selfish individual, that he might try to serve his own individual life; but eventually he will die. And lose it all. So that "all is vanity." Unless some part of what we do, lives on after us. In religion, it is often said that some part of what we are, lives on in our spirit or soul; and/or our children. Our "seed." Who carry on our "memory," some of our culture, values, ideas, and DNA.
There are 3) other similar arguments for a natural, anti-individualistic collectivism in Biology; where an individual might sacrifice his own apparent immediate self interest, because his DNA is telling him to sacrifice his own life to save the community.
Here there are two major elements to consider; not just reason and the hedonistic calculus, but also our natural instincts; Natural law. Ourbiological instincts. Some of which are altuistic.
While 4) as for sociopaths? Religion isn't reaching them either. Though finally can be brought into the fold, just by sending them to prison; there is the rest of society that will enforce collectivism, whether they feel individually compelled or not. And in a world in which there are more and more cameras, it is harder and harder for social deviants to escape simple Human Law.
10.21.2010 | 10:11am
Billy says:
Gil:
It is not true that the only alternative to Christian-based morality, is the Will to Power, and/or love of Death.
There is an impulse just in Human nature to love our children for example; totally aside from Christianity.
THen too, a system of law can enforce many moral systems, whether people believe it very strongly, internally, or not. Indeed, much of Christianity was based not on internal convictions, an idea of the good, but on simple external threats: do what God says, or God or his local respresentative, will kill you.
Regarding love of death? For that matter, nobody idealizes death more than Christianity; when it tells us to sacrifice our lives here on earth, for future rewards after death, in Heaven. "To die is gain," said Paul.
By the way, all, when JOhn Paul II began thinking of the Theology of "Hope," in effect, he acknowledged indirectly, our Christian hopes of heaven as in part a "hope" - or "desire"; as opposed to an absolute "assurance." Thus the author being criticized here, the advocate of morality as "desire," is strangely in tune with ... contemporary Catholic theology.
It is not true that the only alternative to Christian-based morality, is the Will to Power, and/or love of Death.
There is an impulse just in Human nature to love our children for example; totally aside from Christianity.
THen too, a system of law can enforce many moral systems, whether people believe it very strongly, internally, or not. Indeed, much of Christianity was based not on internal convictions, an idea of the good, but on simple external threats: do what God says, or God or his local respresentative, will kill you.
Regarding love of death? For that matter, nobody idealizes death more than Christianity; when it tells us to sacrifice our lives here on earth, for future rewards after death, in Heaven. "To die is gain," said Paul.
By the way, all, when JOhn Paul II began thinking of the Theology of "Hope," in effect, he acknowledged indirectly, our Christian hopes of heaven as in part a "hope" - or "desire"; as opposed to an absolute "assurance." Thus the author being criticized here, the advocate of morality as "desire," is strangely in tune with ... contemporary Catholic theology.
10.21.2010 | 12:26pm
Ray Ingles says:
Jason - "You seem to be saying that it is rational for individuals to work for a world in which everyone behaves more morally. I certainly agree with that."
So far, so good.
"What I disagree with is that it is rational in most situations for individuals themselves to behave morally regardless of whether they work to encourage others to do so."
Remember my classification above situations (a), (b), and (c)? I think (a) is hopelessly unstable. It can't work. But I think (b), or something approaching it, *can* be made stable. Therefore, aiming for (b) is rational, aiming for (a) isn't.
"I think while it often is rational to behave morally for reasons you describe such as empathy among others, it sometimes is not... Again, just to clarify what I see as the central misunderstanding: the question we are debating is about the incentive for individuals to act morally when they make choices, NOT whether individuals would be better off if everyone acted more morally more often."
Well, my point is that *since* practically everyone "would be better off if everyone acted more morally more often", *then* working to encourage that is a rational and desirable goal.
And it seems to me that acting morally, even when tempted not to, works toward that goal. In Prisoner's Dilemma terms, it's starting out cooperative, and being willing to forgive to break out of loops of mutual recrimination.
I suppose part of that comes from that fact that I don't think opportunities to commit the perfect anonymous murder are all that plentiful. If you have a different estimate, I'd be pleased to know if it were more accurate than mine. Of course, if it were, you'd have an incentive not to tell me. :)
So far, so good.
"What I disagree with is that it is rational in most situations for individuals themselves to behave morally regardless of whether they work to encourage others to do so."
Remember my classification above situations (a), (b), and (c)? I think (a) is hopelessly unstable. It can't work. But I think (b), or something approaching it, *can* be made stable. Therefore, aiming for (b) is rational, aiming for (a) isn't.
"I think while it often is rational to behave morally for reasons you describe such as empathy among others, it sometimes is not... Again, just to clarify what I see as the central misunderstanding: the question we are debating is about the incentive for individuals to act morally when they make choices, NOT whether individuals would be better off if everyone acted more morally more often."
Well, my point is that *since* practically everyone "would be better off if everyone acted more morally more often", *then* working to encourage that is a rational and desirable goal.
And it seems to me that acting morally, even when tempted not to, works toward that goal. In Prisoner's Dilemma terms, it's starting out cooperative, and being willing to forgive to break out of loops of mutual recrimination.
I suppose part of that comes from that fact that I don't think opportunities to commit the perfect anonymous murder are all that plentiful. If you have a different estimate, I'd be pleased to know if it were more accurate than mine. Of course, if it were, you'd have an incentive not to tell me. :)
10.21.2010 | 6:36pm
Gil Costello says:
Billy:
I am convinced that Christian-based morality resides in the conscience, the place where we meet the Holy Spirit, and every person, including atheists, has access to that place, and when an atheist listens to conscience, he is being what Karl Rahner called “an anonymous Christian.” But if a person believes that conscience is an external authoritarian voice that was, against his will, internalized through indoctrination from early childhood, and thereby opposing his desires, he will in freedom, like Sade, take action if he cherishes his freedom.
You write, “There is an impulse just in Human nature to love our children for example; totally aside from Christianity.” What of those cultures that kill newborn children if they are in any way a burden? What about abortion? I suppose you could argue there is a degree of love, just not the degree that would impose a burden or sacrifice. What kind of love is that? Not agape. And certainly not the love that I would want to be trapped in.
“Then too, a system of law can enforce many moral systems…” Yes, but this won’t suffice in the actualization of who we are in the image and likeness of God who is Love and the Good. The Law was a gift, but also a curse—the curse of revealing that we are sinners who cannot overcome our sinful nature. Only grace can accomplish that.
“…nobody idealizes death more than Christianity; when it tells us to sacrifice our lives here on earth, for future rewards after death, in Heaven. ‘To die is gain,’ said Paul.” Christianity has never idealized death; in fact, our spiritual death that resulted in being subjected to physical death after the Fall has always been perceived as the first and most devastating curse. The revelation in Christ is that death has been defeated, revealed in Christ rising from the dead. For Paul, to die to this life means a baptismal dying to be born again, which means one is liberated from the possessive ontology that rules us in our futile efforts to defeat death independent of God, our immortality projects that always end in the destruction of human life, revealing that this way is always in fact, at the deepest level, a worshipping of death, for in a godless world we know with certainty that what awaits us is nothingness, so why put up with the horror show that afflicts so many lives? Precisely why euthanasia will gain progressively more ground proportionate with our loss of faith in God.
To offer “desirism” as an alternative to faith, an “ethics in the conditional mood” as Hart rightly calls it, is a call to hedonism, and so back to Sade’s camp. Hart again: “…a whole culture that truly came to believe that all moral choices are merely personal preferences might find that the inventiveness and spontaneity of the liberated will are capable of just about anything, and responsible to nothing.” And precisely why we will never outgrow the historical event called the Holocaust, because we know in our hearts that it was a mirror to the condition of our souls absent the Holy Spirit.
I am convinced that Christian-based morality resides in the conscience, the place where we meet the Holy Spirit, and every person, including atheists, has access to that place, and when an atheist listens to conscience, he is being what Karl Rahner called “an anonymous Christian.” But if a person believes that conscience is an external authoritarian voice that was, against his will, internalized through indoctrination from early childhood, and thereby opposing his desires, he will in freedom, like Sade, take action if he cherishes his freedom.
You write, “There is an impulse just in Human nature to love our children for example; totally aside from Christianity.” What of those cultures that kill newborn children if they are in any way a burden? What about abortion? I suppose you could argue there is a degree of love, just not the degree that would impose a burden or sacrifice. What kind of love is that? Not agape. And certainly not the love that I would want to be trapped in.
“Then too, a system of law can enforce many moral systems…” Yes, but this won’t suffice in the actualization of who we are in the image and likeness of God who is Love and the Good. The Law was a gift, but also a curse—the curse of revealing that we are sinners who cannot overcome our sinful nature. Only grace can accomplish that.
“…nobody idealizes death more than Christianity; when it tells us to sacrifice our lives here on earth, for future rewards after death, in Heaven. ‘To die is gain,’ said Paul.” Christianity has never idealized death; in fact, our spiritual death that resulted in being subjected to physical death after the Fall has always been perceived as the first and most devastating curse. The revelation in Christ is that death has been defeated, revealed in Christ rising from the dead. For Paul, to die to this life means a baptismal dying to be born again, which means one is liberated from the possessive ontology that rules us in our futile efforts to defeat death independent of God, our immortality projects that always end in the destruction of human life, revealing that this way is always in fact, at the deepest level, a worshipping of death, for in a godless world we know with certainty that what awaits us is nothingness, so why put up with the horror show that afflicts so many lives? Precisely why euthanasia will gain progressively more ground proportionate with our loss of faith in God.
To offer “desirism” as an alternative to faith, an “ethics in the conditional mood” as Hart rightly calls it, is a call to hedonism, and so back to Sade’s camp. Hart again: “…a whole culture that truly came to believe that all moral choices are merely personal preferences might find that the inventiveness and spontaneity of the liberated will are capable of just about anything, and responsible to nothing.” And precisely why we will never outgrow the historical event called the Holocaust, because we know in our hearts that it was a mirror to the condition of our souls absent the Holy Spirit.
10.21.2010 | 7:22pm
Gil Costello says:
An observation from my daily riding on public transportation:
On every bus there is a sign above the seating at the front of the bus reserving those seats for the elderly and disabled. ALWAYS, the majority, from every class and age group, sitting in those seats will not give up their seats to the elderly and disabled. On one occasion a mother with her young teen were sitting in the first two seats, and a man who is blind and deaf gets on the bus, and he was at first tapping his stick at the legs of the pair in the seats reserved for him, and then he started tapping their legs more earnestly, and they were looking around for someone else to offer the man a seat. Finally the man pulled the teen out of her seat and sat down. She and her mom simply smiled.
The new barbarism is, as I wrote earlier, a kinder gentler barbarism: we can be violent in so many ways, especially with cruel indifference, and almost always with a smile. This is just one of many everyday occurrences in a godless world.
On every bus there is a sign above the seating at the front of the bus reserving those seats for the elderly and disabled. ALWAYS, the majority, from every class and age group, sitting in those seats will not give up their seats to the elderly and disabled. On one occasion a mother with her young teen were sitting in the first two seats, and a man who is blind and deaf gets on the bus, and he was at first tapping his stick at the legs of the pair in the seats reserved for him, and then he started tapping their legs more earnestly, and they were looking around for someone else to offer the man a seat. Finally the man pulled the teen out of her seat and sat down. She and her mom simply smiled.
The new barbarism is, as I wrote earlier, a kinder gentler barbarism: we can be violent in so many ways, especially with cruel indifference, and almost always with a smile. This is just one of many everyday occurrences in a godless world.
10.21.2010 | 11:07pm
Ray Ingles says:
Gil - ALWAYS, the majority, from every class and age group, sitting in those seats will not give up their seats to the elderly and disabled.
Here in the Detroit area, I ride the bus nearly every day. I've never seen that behavior, ever. Indeed, when the bus is full, it's always fit younger men standing. (Well, except for one older guy who refuses to sit if any lady is standing. Same as me. :-> ) Just today on the way home a man who was at least visually impaired got on the bus and one man moved to the back of the bus to make sure he had room up front. One blind man with a seeing-eye dog is almost always at my stop, taking another bus - but I've seen several people make sure he gets on the right bus.
But the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
Here in the Detroit area, I ride the bus nearly every day. I've never seen that behavior, ever. Indeed, when the bus is full, it's always fit younger men standing. (Well, except for one older guy who refuses to sit if any lady is standing. Same as me. :-> ) Just today on the way home a man who was at least visually impaired got on the bus and one man moved to the back of the bus to make sure he had room up front. One blind man with a seeing-eye dog is almost always at my stop, taking another bus - but I've seen several people make sure he gets on the right bus.
But the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
10.22.2010 | 2:03pm
Gil Costello says:
Ray - I trust what you are saying is true, and I'm sure there are other cities as well where respect for the elderly and disabled persists. But I live in Seattle, one of the most progressive and most irreligious cities in the nation, another example of the correlation between godlessness and the new barbarism, and why a euthanasia bill passed so easily here. Recently when I was blogging at the Seattle Times, the New York Times wannabe of Seattle, I was censored when writing about gay ideology, and every gay person I was debating with protested the censorship. They all insisted that I had said nothing that deserved censorship. I've been censored as well at my parish (silenced at all parish gatherings by the pastor) for speaking out against gay marriage. I don’t think that would happen in Detroit either.
10.23.2010 | 10:41am
Joe the Human says:
Gil:
In recent Catholic theology, the certainty of "Heaven" is questioned; and so the role of promises of Heaven, in motivating our good behavior on earth, is not as strong.
"Heaven" was always partially in question, in that 1) no one has reliably, empirically confirmed its existence. But it was also alwas in question, even in Christianity, in that 2) you can never be sure that you yourself are good enough to get there. Only God himself knows and will judge and tell you, in the Last Judgement, when and where you might have erred, even without knowing it.
Cognizant of these and other things, 3) recent theologians - including JOHN PAUL II - speak of the "hope" or "desire" (a word with also, Lacanian overtones) of heaven. The idea being that, whether there is a heaven or not, or whether or not we can be sure of getting to heaven, surely the mere "hope" or desire for one, changes our behavior.
Yet to be sure, this acknowledges that the old promises might not be as assured as we thought; and therefore their old motivating effect on our morality might be less than earlier. In such a case especially, belief in other motivating agencies underwriting our morality, increases in importance. For example, those who believe in "Nature" do not loose all belief in any underlying system to our morality; they believe still, that some kind of determined structure and reality under it all. In this case, "Nature," as much as "God." Or, to put the two together: our morality is underwritten by "Nature's God," as it says in the Declaration of Independence.
So the certainty of the old Christian models, even their Heaven, is currently being questioned even by major Popes and theologians. And today, its motivating effect on morality, is beginning to approach parity with various ideas of morality based on "Natural Law." Indeed, the two - religious and scientific-based systems - begin to merge in Catholic theology. With various theories of "Natural Law" being strongly advocated by Catholicism itself.
Many here seem to have assumed that all such theories favor a radical, self-interested, selfish individualism. However, there are many theories in Natural Law that note that we are members of a species; and that much of the prosperity and many of the pleasures we get, can only be gotten by cooperating with the rest of the species. For example, if you are nice to a girl, she might spend time with you; but if you are not, she might not. Therefore, even a person pursuing his own selfish, Ann Randite interests, in the end, makes a social contract with other individuals. And eventually learns to take in social, community values.
In recent Catholic theology, the certainty of "Heaven" is questioned; and so the role of promises of Heaven, in motivating our good behavior on earth, is not as strong.
"Heaven" was always partially in question, in that 1) no one has reliably, empirically confirmed its existence. But it was also alwas in question, even in Christianity, in that 2) you can never be sure that you yourself are good enough to get there. Only God himself knows and will judge and tell you, in the Last Judgement, when and where you might have erred, even without knowing it.
Cognizant of these and other things, 3) recent theologians - including JOHN PAUL II - speak of the "hope" or "desire" (a word with also, Lacanian overtones) of heaven. The idea being that, whether there is a heaven or not, or whether or not we can be sure of getting to heaven, surely the mere "hope" or desire for one, changes our behavior.
Yet to be sure, this acknowledges that the old promises might not be as assured as we thought; and therefore their old motivating effect on our morality might be less than earlier. In such a case especially, belief in other motivating agencies underwriting our morality, increases in importance. For example, those who believe in "Nature" do not loose all belief in any underlying system to our morality; they believe still, that some kind of determined structure and reality under it all. In this case, "Nature," as much as "God." Or, to put the two together: our morality is underwritten by "Nature's God," as it says in the Declaration of Independence.
So the certainty of the old Christian models, even their Heaven, is currently being questioned even by major Popes and theologians. And today, its motivating effect on morality, is beginning to approach parity with various ideas of morality based on "Natural Law." Indeed, the two - religious and scientific-based systems - begin to merge in Catholic theology. With various theories of "Natural Law" being strongly advocated by Catholicism itself.
Many here seem to have assumed that all such theories favor a radical, self-interested, selfish individualism. However, there are many theories in Natural Law that note that we are members of a species; and that much of the prosperity and many of the pleasures we get, can only be gotten by cooperating with the rest of the species. For example, if you are nice to a girl, she might spend time with you; but if you are not, she might not. Therefore, even a person pursuing his own selfish, Ann Randite interests, in the end, makes a social contract with other individuals. And eventually learns to take in social, community values.
10.23.2010 | 2:51pm
Gil Costello says:
Joe the Human – when you write phrases like “…the role of promises of Heaven, in motivating our good behavior on earth…” and “…you can never be sure that you yourself are good enough to get there” you are referencing a legalistic approach to hope, and this is a terrible burden, for although the law remains with us to identify our failings, the law is not the way to having life more abundantly; indeed, it becomes a curse that stamps out life more abundantly. The law has been fulfilled in the revelation gifted in the Son of God, which, in being fulfilled, has been transcended in love. This transcending the law is not a negation of law, but its fulfillment, meaning every item of the law has been actualized in grace, i.e., in an abiding in God’s love.
Pope John Paul II understood with Paul that faith and hope in their legalistic dimensions are fulfilled in love. That’s why the three theological virtues must occur simultaneously, with the emphasis on love, if we are to have life more abundantly. The focus is NOT on heaven, but to live in Christ as members of his body (recall how Paul was, in love, willing to forgo heaven to save his people; in other words, love transcends even our desire for heaven). If we refuse that, or have tragically not been shown the way, then hope will always be a flimsy hope, and we will never have the trust in God’s promises that faith gives us when we abide in love. That’s why Paul insists on abiding in love, even love of one’s enemies. And because he resided in this love, he had confidence that he had won the race and would receive life everlasting. He won the race in love. In other words, again, his faith and hope blossomed in love, and without love neither faith nor hope would have any value.
The arrival for every Christian is not heaven, but to reside in Christ as a member of his body. There is no certainty in any image of heaven, only in the life of Christ who rose from the dead, defeating death for all of us, and assuring us that God desires the salvation of all, and I would recommend to every Christian not to focus on what you desire, where Joel Marks resides, be it heaven or earthly objects, but on this desire of God’s and what it means for all of us, Christian and non-Christian. He loved us first, and in the parable of the Prodigal Son we are given an example of this desire that consumes all God’s intentions for us.
Pope John Paul II understood with Paul that faith and hope in their legalistic dimensions are fulfilled in love. That’s why the three theological virtues must occur simultaneously, with the emphasis on love, if we are to have life more abundantly. The focus is NOT on heaven, but to live in Christ as members of his body (recall how Paul was, in love, willing to forgo heaven to save his people; in other words, love transcends even our desire for heaven). If we refuse that, or have tragically not been shown the way, then hope will always be a flimsy hope, and we will never have the trust in God’s promises that faith gives us when we abide in love. That’s why Paul insists on abiding in love, even love of one’s enemies. And because he resided in this love, he had confidence that he had won the race and would receive life everlasting. He won the race in love. In other words, again, his faith and hope blossomed in love, and without love neither faith nor hope would have any value.
The arrival for every Christian is not heaven, but to reside in Christ as a member of his body. There is no certainty in any image of heaven, only in the life of Christ who rose from the dead, defeating death for all of us, and assuring us that God desires the salvation of all, and I would recommend to every Christian not to focus on what you desire, where Joel Marks resides, be it heaven or earthly objects, but on this desire of God’s and what it means for all of us, Christian and non-Christian. He loved us first, and in the parable of the Prodigal Son we are given an example of this desire that consumes all God’s intentions for us.
10.23.2010 | 3:35pm
Gil Costello says:
Joe the Human - My own observations over the last 60+ years convince me that every at least somewhat convincing moral imperative has its roots in Kant's categorical imperative, and all the practical efforts at fulfilling Kant's moral vision just haven't panned out for us. I still refer people to Dostoyevsky's humorous critique of Kant's argument in the first 35 pages of his "Notes from Underground". I suppose what did me in in terms of any moral hope stemming from humans absent faith in God was when Jean Paul Sartre decided to embrace Stalin as a force for the good, even attacking his best friend, Camus, because he (Camus) couldn't embrace Sartre's moral vision, and Sartre truly was a man who had a radical concern for actualizing the good. Human starting points in constructing a better world, a good world, from notions of individuality or the collective, are doomed. I’m convinced the evidence is in on this.
In the Catholic Church we are not told to look to Christians to get evidence of how we must move morally in the world, but to the saints. For, after all, the Church is the church of sinners. Every Christian must choose whether he/she is going to be a member of the Body of Christ or reject that membership, and those Christians who reject membership will always have an excuse that resides in their individuality or the ideals of a collective they are members of, often with the label “Christian”.
In the Catholic Church we are not told to look to Christians to get evidence of how we must move morally in the world, but to the saints. For, after all, the Church is the church of sinners. Every Christian must choose whether he/she is going to be a member of the Body of Christ or reject that membership, and those Christians who reject membership will always have an excuse that resides in their individuality or the ideals of a collective they are members of, often with the label “Christian”.
10.24.2010 | 3:51pm
Joe the human says:
Much of present-day Conservatism, seems to come from the idea of Ann Rand, of the virtue of selfishness. Or "Greed" and Capitalism, as neo-cons were fond of saying at the time of Regan, and Ann Rand, c. 1983.
Specifically, many here seem to think that any new, rational morality, will focus on the individual and his interests - and fall victim to his selfishness. Or that if indeed, necessity compels us to get along with others, and sign the social contract, many will do this not out of inner conviction that it is "good," but simply because we have to. We sign the social contract or "covenant" because others - and the law - demand it.
Indeed, as an adolescent, I myself definitely had the sensation of following the social rules, only because I had to. Which reminds me of Jason's (?) observation; that after all, the many social theories now being proposed (like Kant's etc. ) may not compel us deep inside. Many will be simply following the rules externally,while never believing in them internally, in their hearts; playing the game, hypocritically. While just waiting for a chance to violate the rules for some special personal gain. Like sociopaths.
Indeed, at any given time, I'd gestimate that a rather high percentage of the population is following social rules, laws, not froman internal conviction that they work, or are "good." Nor out of any great affection for the rest of mankind; but simply out of obedience to the laws of society, and fear of punishment. Which is why indeed, a high percentage of the TV prime time audience seems to be fantasizing about committing the "perfect crime"; for once doing something bad to others, that we still WANT to do - and getting away with it. Escaping the law. Though cameras and CSI make this more and more unlikely of success.
Therefore to be sure, there have always been many people, who do not feel deep inside, the social contract. Or connection to/compassion for others. But there has long been the Law, to restrain such persons. Who, note, have always existed in both Christianity (with religious " hypocrites" who are still bad in their "hearts,") as well as will any signatories to the new social contract.
But if so then too finally, eventually, most of those who follow the rules just out of 1) fear of punishment by others, eventually 2) realize how much they themselves depend on others, and how much they owe them; or 3) they develop altruistic ties to their own children. So that, 4) in both Christianity and 5) the new secular moralities, a young hypocrisy and resentment, mere "law" following (cf. OT vs. NT), will often mature into a greater sense of unity, solidarity with the rest of mankind; honoring them, and valuing - and even loving - them.
But keep in mind this feeling of unity and love, exists in both Christianity AND say, Socialism: love of humanity being common to both (in theory).
Specifically, many here seem to think that any new, rational morality, will focus on the individual and his interests - and fall victim to his selfishness. Or that if indeed, necessity compels us to get along with others, and sign the social contract, many will do this not out of inner conviction that it is "good," but simply because we have to. We sign the social contract or "covenant" because others - and the law - demand it.
Indeed, as an adolescent, I myself definitely had the sensation of following the social rules, only because I had to. Which reminds me of Jason's (?) observation; that after all, the many social theories now being proposed (like Kant's etc. ) may not compel us deep inside. Many will be simply following the rules externally,while never believing in them internally, in their hearts; playing the game, hypocritically. While just waiting for a chance to violate the rules for some special personal gain. Like sociopaths.
Indeed, at any given time, I'd gestimate that a rather high percentage of the population is following social rules, laws, not froman internal conviction that they work, or are "good." Nor out of any great affection for the rest of mankind; but simply out of obedience to the laws of society, and fear of punishment. Which is why indeed, a high percentage of the TV prime time audience seems to be fantasizing about committing the "perfect crime"; for once doing something bad to others, that we still WANT to do - and getting away with it. Escaping the law. Though cameras and CSI make this more and more unlikely of success.
Therefore to be sure, there have always been many people, who do not feel deep inside, the social contract. Or connection to/compassion for others. But there has long been the Law, to restrain such persons. Who, note, have always existed in both Christianity (with religious " hypocrites" who are still bad in their "hearts,") as well as will any signatories to the new social contract.
But if so then too finally, eventually, most of those who follow the rules just out of 1) fear of punishment by others, eventually 2) realize how much they themselves depend on others, and how much they owe them; or 3) they develop altruistic ties to their own children. So that, 4) in both Christianity and 5) the new secular moralities, a young hypocrisy and resentment, mere "law" following (cf. OT vs. NT), will often mature into a greater sense of unity, solidarity with the rest of mankind; honoring them, and valuing - and even loving - them.
But keep in mind this feeling of unity and love, exists in both Christianity AND say, Socialism: love of humanity being common to both (in theory).
11.4.2010 | 4:54pm
MS says:
Isn't there a technical term for this fallacy? Appeal to consequences, or something like that? Roughly it goes: if A is true, bad things will result, therefore, A is not true.
That's exactly what this is: If there is no god, there is no source of morality, no reason to behave morally. Therefore, there is a god.
Even if it were true that without God there is no reason to act in a moral manner, that provides absolutely no evidence that God actually exists, just that it might be nice if He did (although given the morality of most of the Gods people have worshipped, most definitely including Yahweh, I'm not sure I would agree).
That's exactly what this is: If there is no god, there is no source of morality, no reason to behave morally. Therefore, there is a god.
Even if it were true that without God there is no reason to act in a moral manner, that provides absolutely no evidence that God actually exists, just that it might be nice if He did (although given the morality of most of the Gods people have worshipped, most definitely including Yahweh, I'm not sure I would agree).
12.1.2010 | 10:17am
Maryjane Heers says:
"I think you are missing what both Hart and Keller are saying. Neither claims that belief in God is a prerequisite for treating others kindly. Both would claim that there are atheists who live much more moral lives than their Christian brethren. They are claiming instead that the atheist has no rational justification for such a move that can be defended beyond an (ultimately arbritrary) utilitarianism. It's very difficult to defend a categorical imperative apart from God (as the complete failure of secular ethics has proven...read Wolterstorff's final chapter in his recent book "Justice: Rights and Wrongs" for an introduction). Finally, Hart speaks of the implicit theology within all moral longing. But if that is meant as a further argument, it strikes me as itself an ignoratio, since I have taken it as one of my own premises that morality is replete with theism. That is precisely why an atheist needs to reject morality ... a(n explicitly or implicitly) theological morality, anyway.
12.28.2010 | 11:43am
Joe the Human says:
There are ways to find morality, outside of theism. One is, to simply go with the most fundamental instinct of living things, or at least humans; honoring their desire to stay alive. Which is in part one of the foundations of Democracy. The "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Seemingly, a rather Natural law. The Declaration of Independence in fact invoking "the laws of Nature, and nature's god."
Since everyone wants these things, wants to live for example, but their excercise thereof, sometimes conflicts with others? Then the idea of the social contract , tweaks the basic rights; finds the need for some compromises with others. While still honoring the basic instincts as much as practically possible.
As for one specific, interesting question asked here: those who feel they can violate these various social contracts, when nobody is looking? In cases where the law will perhaps not find them? Here we might note that 1) those who get into the habit of breaking conventional laws, will probably break more ... and be found out. Then too, 2) many laws are there for your own protection, as well as proteching others.
Those who think they are getting away with breaking a law now and then therefore, will very often incur a kind of penalty. Even if they are not discovered by the police.
Indeed, the mere habit of going with one's more anti-social desires, itself, leads to an alienation from others, that is a kind of punishment in itself.
Since everyone wants these things, wants to live for example, but their excercise thereof, sometimes conflicts with others? Then the idea of the social contract , tweaks the basic rights; finds the need for some compromises with others. While still honoring the basic instincts as much as practically possible.
As for one specific, interesting question asked here: those who feel they can violate these various social contracts, when nobody is looking? In cases where the law will perhaps not find them? Here we might note that 1) those who get into the habit of breaking conventional laws, will probably break more ... and be found out. Then too, 2) many laws are there for your own protection, as well as proteching others.
Those who think they are getting away with breaking a law now and then therefore, will very often incur a kind of penalty. Even if they are not discovered by the police.
Indeed, the mere habit of going with one's more anti-social desires, itself, leads to an alienation from others, that is a kind of punishment in itself.
From my vantage (if in semi-anonymity I may sermonize a bit), I would say that while poor Joel Marks and his ilk may appear to be honest at times, it is astonishing that they do not see that their positions, e.g., "desirism," are a recipe for a chaos of competing idolatries (e.g., pet worship).
I often use the example of "growing up with cannibals" to illustrate the notion that nurture is critically important, especially in the earliest stages of our lives, and Marks's idea of a "common ethical grammar" generalizes this nicely. If one grows up in a group that frowns upon child molestation, one will be conditioned to at least hide any tendency to engage in this activity out of a self-interested strategy to fit in, despite the lack of any true belief that the activity is eternally and unequivocally wrong. But such shallow morality will fail when put to the test.
I have to say I am not as generous as you are about the real decency of atheist altruists: they themselves would argue, from evolutionary psychology, that they are merely (consciously or subconsciously) seeking opportunities to breed, i.e., by appearing altruistic, they more successfully woo mates. And anyone who even briefly entertains the notion that morality is superfluous to daily life has somehow forgotten the waves of evil that periodically overtake often large populations.
Sin begets sin. And atheism, at its core a means by which tortured minds find relief in self-justification, is a sinful luxury that freeloads on the moral wealth bought at often great price by the Faithful.
Godspeed,