Dialogue with a Hedonist
Posted on 29 May 2011
Part of an ongoing conversation.
I have been accused recently in this space of exaggerating the claims I make about the mental, moral and philosophical condition of the modern world, or the extremity of the emptiness.
As if perfectly to show how no exaggeration was made, now appears in my comments boxes comments that so perfectly follow, without deviation, the orthodoxy of the nihilist that I fear I might be accused of inventing them for my own purposes.
But, not so: the comments given below are unsolicited and written by hands other than mine, and, it is assumed, sincerely made by those who submit them for their value as true statements.
Here is a snip of recent dialog with first commenter, who rejoices in the somewhat Cucurbitaceaen name of Watermelonyo
I wrote:
“… there are addictions and sins and humiliations which produce much false and transient pleasure without occluding the health, but which are nonetheless self evidently moral wrongs.”
He replies:
It is far from self-evident to me that any pleasurable activities that do not occlude the health are morally wrong. This is what you must demonstrate for your argument to carry any weight. Declaring it self-evident doesn’t help you.
Let me in this place write a reply. The other points the writer raises must be answered at another time: this one, by itself, is so outrageous, and yet so easy to disprove and dismiss, as to merit taking some length to answer.
The doctrine that there is no moral properties to any human acts aside from those that physical harm to others or to oneself is called Hedonism.
Hedonism is not Epicureanism, which is a more noble philosophy claiming the good life consists of discovering those things which are true rather than false pleasures.
Epicureanism says fortitude, moderation, temperance and justice are the source of true pleasure, and needed to live a life free from turmoil and the pain that comes from immoderate pleasure seeking. To the contrary Hedonism says pleasure seeking is good, whether immoderate or no, provided it works no physical harm.
I submit, dear readers, that it is self evident that this is so: because it is something everyone believes, whether he admits it or not, knows it or not.
To prove my case, I call you, whoever is reading these words, to the witness stand, and ask you to raise your hand, and to answer the fallowing questions, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.
Do you honestly believe that anything which causes no physical harm to oneself or others is never a matter for moral contemplation, nor an issue where any moral concepts are involved in discussing the pros and cons? Never, with no exceptions of any kind, not even one? Let is consider some examples:
1. Suppose, for example, that a man made a promise to his mother on her deathbed, and swore with all solemnity, but under such circumstances that there are no witnesses, and no person who will be presently harmed, or even disappointed, should he break the oath.
If we were to discuss whether or not it is licit or illicit for him to break the oath, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, concepts like honesty and keeping one’s word or concepts like the conditions that justify breaking one’s word?
I am not here asking whether this man in this case is right or wrong. I am asking whether he confronts a moral decision as opposed to a health decision when he decides his course of action.
2. Suppose, for example, that as a prank someone phoned your wife or mother and told her to come to the emergency room immediately, as you had been severely wounded and were soon to die. The upset causes no physical damage, nothing but psychological distress.
If we were to discuss the matter, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, such as the concept of malice or dishonesty or the intentional infliction of emotional distress?
3. Suppose, for example, that out of malice a man went to the various suppliers and customers of your business, and told scandalous and sensational lies about you, under such circumstances that it was likely that he was to be believed, and, no matter what you said, you were likely to lose your reputation and the goodwill of the community, lose your customers and suppliers, and perhaps be driven out of business. No physical harm has been done to you. The loss of money to you is not due to theft or robbery in the precise legal meaning of those terms.
If we were to discuss the matter, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, such as the concepts of slander and honesty and honor and loss?
4. Suppose that you were to have sexual relations both with your mother and with your sister and your grown adult daughter, but under such circumstances as no pregnancy of a genetically defective child is likely or possible.
If we were to discuss the matter, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, such as the concept of incest and chastity, self control and decency?
5. Suppose you were to discover that the beloved man of a woman you dislike had just died, but that his body was not properly disposed of. The body is not, in the technical legal sense, the property of the widow, in that it is not personalty she can alienate or use or exploit however she so wishes.
As a prank, you enter the morgue or autopsy room where the body is kept, slice off the male member, or various organs, disfigure the face with a knife, and cook and eat the various body part, making sure to video tape the whole affair from start to finish. You release the tape on YouTube, and send a copy once an hour every hour to his teenaged and mentally retarded daughter, who, in the extremity of her grief attempts suicide. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the dead body is properly sterilized before consumption so that no diseases, such a Kuru, are likely to afflict you.
If we were to discuss the matter, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, such as the concept of trespass, cruelty, or mishandling a corpse?
6. Suppose you discovered a drug which produced enduring pleasure, but it unfortunately induced a harmless but permanent state of psychosis, such that you were never able after to tell the difference between true and false, waking and dreaming. However, no physical wounds are caused, no bleeding, and you merely become a burden to the society around you, or your loved once, who are charged with caring for your wellbeing.
If we were to discuss the matter, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, such as the concept of the duty to care for oneself, or the innate value of human sanity?
7. Suppose you discovered a drug which produced enduring pleasure, and had no ill side effect at all, but the pleasure is such that you quit your career as a brain surgeon saving lives and a physicist discovering safe and clean infinite sources of energy, and a concert pianist bringing sublime transports of joy to the lives of countless fans, but instead determined you would prefer to live on the island of lotos-eaters, doped happily (but quite healthily!) to the gills, never producing a single thing ever again in your life of any value to anyone.
If we were to discuss the matter, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, such as temperance and prudence and the duty to use your gifts for the benefit of man?
8. Suppose you inherited a valuable mansion of considerable historical interest and worth, set amid a stand of ancient trees atop hills rich with coal and uranium. Daily, hundreds of visitors come by to tour the mansion and walk the beautiful grounds. Consulting your lawyers, you discover that there is no prohibition in this jurisdiction, nor is any licenses needed, for you to level the mansion and strip mine the hills, denuding them of lumber, which you could sell at a profit, but you prefer to burn in huge piles merely for the delight of it.
Your wife is pregnant, but as yet you have no heirs apparent, and no particular person for whom you are legally obligated to keep the land intact and preserve its value.
You set about to despoil the land, doing things that will surely turn it into an eyesore and a worthless lot of property.
Inside the mansion are rare and irreplaceable works of art and antiques which you determined to burn, destroying their beauty and legacy forevermore. They are unambiguously your property, and you are legally within your rights.
If we were to discuss the matter, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, such as concepts like thrift and honoring the generations unborn, or honoring the wishes of the general community, or the antiquarian and scientific and artistic interest in irreplaceable things of beauty and value.
9. Suppose you conceive a hatred of black men in your heart, and determined to spend your days, quite peacefully, and without causing any physical harm to any others, and well within your constitutional rights, urging your fellow men in speeches and in print to hate, fear, loath, mock, despise, harass, and murder blacks in the name of Aryan Supremacy.
If we were to discuss the matter, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, such as brotherly love and racial hatred and the dignity of the human person?
10. Suppose you had a magical amulet or a science fictional ray that could rob a man or woman of his free will, and reduce him to your obedient and loving slave, willing and eager to obey your every command without any demur or thought of reluctance. The magical ray does no physical harm whatever to the victim. It does not hurt the brain nor cause cancer.
You are debating in your mind whether to use the ray on a criminal to reform him, on your mother to get her to stop nagging you, and on the sweetheart who rejected your advances whom you now would like to marry. Then you are thinking of using it on the voters of your nation to see to it that their political decisions are wise and just.
If we were to discuss the matter, would we discuss the health consequences and the physical injuries to others, or would we discuss concepts which only have meaning in the context of a moral code, such as the dignity of the human free will, or the desirability of allowing slaves to be free, even from a slavery that causes no physical harm?
———————-
I now ask the witness to depart the witness stand and enter the jury box.
While in the jury box, please, please, please do not argue the merits or demerits of the examples used here. I am not making that claim that one thing or the other is right or wrong in the circumstances listed.
I am only asking the jury whether the discussion about the issue raised is or is not a discussion about health and physical well being.
With that in mind, look over the answers you just gave.
If you answered as single question of the nine listed above in the affirmative, then you have identified at least one area where some act is both morally impermissible and at the same time does not effect physical health and wellbeing.
If there is at least one thing that is both a moral question and not a health question, then the assertion that goodness is merely whatever is pleasant and does not adversely afflict the health or self or others is a false assertion.
If not one or two, but each and every witness, and every human being on earth, answers in the same way, then we are discussing a fact known to one and all.
No fact can be known to one and all that is not self evident. This is what the word “self-evident” means.
Dear Mr. Wright,
At the risk of distracting you and your correspondent, would you please explain why you continually list “moderation” and “temperance” side by side whenever you list virtues? Are they not more or less identical? Temperance is “that due restraint upon the passions and affections which renders the body tame and governable, and frees the mind from the allurements of vice,” as the Masonic lecture so charmingly puts it. How is this significantly different from moderation?
I would guess that is done more for emphasis than to distinguish the two, since temperance of physical pleasure is so polar opposite to the beliefs that he is decrying.
One reason is that temperance is control of the appetites, moderation is restriction of the passions. A man who drinks to excess is intemperate; a man who lets his anger or his lust for fame get the better of him is immoderate. Temperance is a matter of what one desires or does not desire; moderation is a matter of the degree of desire.
Another reason why I list them together is that I have a classical education, and the classical scholars and philosophers always list the four cardinal virtues as fortitude and temperance and moderation and justice. Fortitude is sometimes called courage or longsuffering.
Among Christians, to these four classical virtues are added the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
If you read the older poets, you will see the symbolic figure of these seven virtue repeated in various places, as Spencer’s FAERIE QUEENE or Dante’s PURGATORIO and so on. If you read the classical or Christian philosophers, when they talk of virtue, these are in the foreground.
It is part of the legacy of Western thought your teachers cheated you from learning in school when they were busy teaching you about recycling, or some other popular fad.
ADDED LATER: So much for my foolish boasting about my classical education. I got it wrong, and have apparently had it wrong for the last three decades of my life. I was conflating moderation and prudence, which is the much, much more common way of saying it, and the better translation of the Greek.
I will leave the comment above as a grim warning to others that even something you’ve read and reread over the years, you still might get wrong. My apologies.
Isn’t one of the four cardinal virtues prudence?
St Thomas says so. I’ve always heard them enumerated as prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance as well.
Perhaps “moderation” in this context denotes prudence, in that prudence “indicates which, here and now, is the golden mean wherein the essence of all virtue lies… without prudence bravery becomes foolhardiness; mercy sinks into weakness, and temperance into fanaticism.”
Yes. The four cardinal virtues are usually listed as prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Plato lists them as Saphrosyne (temperance), Andreia (fortitude), Sophía (wisdom or prudence), Dikaiosyne (justice).
I was using the word ‘moderation’ to refer to prudence in the passions, which is misleading, since the word is very similar to temperance. Prudence refers to a more general concept, the balance achieved in all parts of the soul, each thing ordered to its proper end.
Etienne Gilson puts it this way.
Moderation is thus the final cause and temperance the efficient cause by which sensible goods are used to enable reason to attain its proper ends. The general rule which reason imposes is to use these pleasures to preserve our lives, not solely those without which we cannot live at all, but also those without which life cannot be passed in a fitting manner. This must take into account our duties and station. The rule of temperance in food and drink will differ between a monk, an athlete, and a diplomat (whose duties may require him to hold frequent banquets and parties in the interests of his State.)
One way of ordering the virtues is to distinguish between the virtues of the intellect and those of the will.
Of the intellect there are three:
Understanding (of principles)
Knowledge (of immediate causes)
Wisdom (regarding final causes)
Of the will there are three:
Justice (regarding what is due to each)
Courage (to pursue what reason holds as good)
Temperance (to moderate the passions)
In addition there is Prudence, which is a sort of virtue of virtues; that is, which guides the other virtues in choosing the means leading to their ends.
As for the intellectual virtues, no one is held blameworthy for being a bad scientist or an inept artisan. It is rather the thief, the coward, and the rake who are held blameworthy, and so justice, courage, and temperance, along with prudence, are considered the moral virtues as such.
“Virtuus” means a “strength”; and these might be thought of as one’s moral muscles.
The Hedonist, to enslave himself to his appetites, must weaken the “muscle” of temperance, so that it remains flabby and powerless to restrain him. But to weaken temperance, one must turn off prudence; and prudence is the hyperlink between the intellect and the volition, between knowing the good and willing the good. The Hedonist thus ends by disconnecting his will from his intellect; that is, by fragmenting his reason. This is what lies at the root of Nietzsche’s triumph of the will. Since man is by nature a rational animal, this deflects (perverts) his life from its natural end, which is “to be a rational animal.” The Hedonist thus makes himself “less than human” and an object of pity to the charitable and of contempt to the uncharitable.
I suspect that you are going to be disappointed with some of the responses that you receive as you are not taking into account redefinition of terms.
Rather, I suspect I am going to be disappointed with the responses, because I defined hedonism and epicureanism. The appeal of the argument contrary to mine depends upon an obfuscation of terms and nothing but. The “argument” in favor of hedonism consists mainly of throat-clearing and sneering and pretending ignorance of the obvious.
If there is any term I use causing you confusion, please ask, and I will distinguish the ambiguity.
Precisely. The correspondent may merely say “well, psychological harm is also bad” and consider that he has struck a stunning blow.
“The correspondent may merely say “well, psychological harm is also bad” and consider that he has struck a stunning blow.”
Stunning blow? Unfortunately, if the correspondent says that, he has checkmated himself and his argument is lost.
All one would have to ask him in return is whether or not certain addictions, vices, bad habits, or the betrayal of one’s self or one’s beloved in adultery constitutes psychological harm.
The moment the crass materialist nihilist admits there is any higher reality aside from momentary physical pain and physical pleasure, he had taken the fatal step from being a crass hedonist to becoming something nobler, such as an Epicurean, he is forced sooner or later by logic to admit that vice creates psychological pain to oneself and to others, and the virtue creates psychological health and wellbeing.
And the whole point of Hedonism, which is a set of excuses or rationalizations meant and only meant to deflect criticism from one’s vices, is a lost and meaningless.
I think #5 needs to be reworded. What was the gender of the deceased, again?
Thank you. Correction made.
But this is not what was asserted. You argue with a straw man, or at least I hope it is a straw man; I cannot read Watermelonyo’s mind. (Nor his comments! It seems technology has passed me by; I cannot figure out how to display the comments over at Livejournal. The ‘Read More’ link just takes me to the same post on this website. :confused: )
You spend much time demonstrating that there exist moral issues not directly related to health; very well. But your interlocutor did not deny this, unless perhaps he did so in some part of his missive you did not quote. He said that you had not demonstrated the wrong in particular acts. It appears to me that this is an invitation to discuss the morality of the situation; not a denial that there is a moral matter to discuss in the first place, which is the proposition you then proceed to argue against.
It is fine to establish that sex is not an area for moral indifference, that there are rules. But that in itself is not sufficient to demonstrate that the rules you want to follow are the correct ones. You accuse your commenter of nihilism, of having no morality at all, when – judging, at least, by the words you quoted – he merely disagrees with you on morality. The words “It is not self-evident that X is wrong” do not, it seems to me, indicate a belief that there cannot be any wrong except as defined by bodily harm. They simply indicate an honest puzzlement as to why you think X is wrong. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to others, without those others therefore being nihilists.
Taking it as agreed that there exists some correct set of actions, can you demonstrate – preferably without reference to theism – that (to take a specific example) premarital sex is wrong? Please be explicit in listing your assumptions and axioms.
“But this is not what was asserted.”
The words he used were “It is far from self-evident to me that any pleasurable activities that do not occlude the health are morally wrong.”
The statement “there is no pleasurable activity which is morally wrong except that which occludes the health” is Hedonism.
Therefore the statement “It is far from self-evident to me that any pleasurable activities that do not occlude the health are morally wrong” is logically equivalent to the statement “It is not self-evident that Hedonism is untrue.”
Therefore, if we prove the statement “It is not self-evident that Hedonism is untrue” to be a false statement, then the statement “It is far from self-evident to me that any pleasurable activities that do not occlude the health are morally wrong” is also proven wrong.
If not, there is some way to have the first statement be true while the other is false. Perhaps Watermelonyo merely meant he happened not to understand the argument, and did not mean the argument is false, in which case the proof given should be sufficient to amend that gap in his understanding as well.
Not only is this not a straw man, but I confess I do not see on what ground anyone might think it is. What do you think he was saying differently from what I said he said?
“He said that you had not demonstrated the wrong in particular acts…”
Unless perhaps he said this in some part of his missive I did not read, this is not what he said.
“It appears to me that this is an invitation to discuss the morality of the situation; not a denial that there is a moral matter to discuss in the first place….”
Can you cite some ground for this appearance? Do you have any evidence or access to something else he said, perhaps?
“It is fine to establish that sex is not an area for moral indifference, that there are rules. But that in itself is not sufficient to demonstrate that the rules you want to follow are the correct ones.”
I am not sure what to make of statements like this. Why do you assume he meant something other than what he said, or that I am trying to establish something other than what I am trying to establish? He is defending sexual vice on the ground that there is no such thing as as virtue and vice at all, or, more specifically, that there is virtue and vice aside from questions of health and disease, wellbeing and illbeing.
Obviously, I cannot discuss the pros and cons of something my interlocutor denies exist. First we must establish whether it exists.
“Taking it as agreed that there exists some correct set of actions, can you demonstrate – preferably without reference to theism – that (to take a specific example) premarital sex is wrong? Please be explicit in listing your assumptions and axioms.”
I have done so, and at length, here:
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/274771.html
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/275118.html
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/275388.html
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/275518.html
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/275940.html
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/276183.html
You had said you were not going to discuss this matter with me, allegedly so as to not tempt me again to the mortal sin of ire.
There are much weaker axioms that have the same effect; for example, “In the absence of moral concerns, pleasure is good”. If that is his axiom, your demolishing of the much stronger claim of hedonism is utterly irrelevant.
Well, you seemed much calmer in this post… :embarrassed: Even so it is true that I would rather discuss materialism. But perhaps you are bored with that inquiry? “A fanatic is one who will not change his mind and cannot change the subject”; I try to at least be capable of changing the subject.
This V-part series on materialism ought to interest you. Each segment is short.
http://thomism.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/materialism/
http://thomism.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/materialism-ii/
http://thomism.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/materialism-iii/
http://thomism.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/iv/
http://thomism.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/materialism-end/
I must confess that, if the writer has any sort of point, it is lost on me. I cannot make out what he is trying to say, or even whether he is trying to say anything at all. He defines matter as “that which remains through change”, without giving any argument for why this is a useful or correct definition; then he uses this for… something, so obscurely expressed that I can’t make head, tail, or Euclidean point of it.
Best stay out of the philosophy sandbox, then. He explained it in the first paragraph in pretty plain language.
All accounts of matter since Democritus have insisted that there is an atom: an unbreakable particle. These are not what we call “atoms” today. Our Dalton-Bohr-Sommerfield atoms are complex extended bodies composed of parts and therefore in principle breakable. We have in fact broken some of them. Even the protons are composed of parts, at least in theory; viz., quarks. And quarks have differing properties and so in principle have parts as well, something that distinguishes top from bottom, up from down, and so forth.
If there are unbreakables, then by definition they cannot change. They must persist through change. That seems straightforward enough.
Heisenberg thought that mass-energy might be this proto-matter, due to the conservation law. But mass-energy already has form. Since natural science concerns itself with matter-in-motion (that is, with “change”), it cannot access proto-matter, which persists through change and hence does not move.
The difficulty Late Moderns have is that they imagine matter not as matter per se, but as an extended body. They see about them material things and suppose that matter must also be a material thing, and it isn’t. When we consider that Democritus said that atoms were colorless, tasteless, etc., we find that his materialism did not do far enough. Quantum mechanics tells us that atoms do not have actual locations or definite shapes, properties which the Scientific Revolutionaries declared the very exemplars of objective properties. So materialism does not give a very satisfactory account of matter.
Did you finish reading all five segments?
I did.
You express the argument much more clearly than is done in the essays, but now that I understand it, I find it unconvincing. In particular, this assertion:
is equivalent to the claim that there can only be one kind of unbreakable, and I do not see why that should be so. Additionally, it is at least conceivable that there are “parts all the way down” – that there is no atom in Democritus’s sense. This is unappealing to human intuition, but that is not a strong argument against it.
Well no. You are confusing indivisibility, having no parts, with indestructibility, the property of being eternal, and also with featurelessness, the property of having no properties other than existence. None of these features are necessary to a materialistic approach.
I suspect that your second sentence is meaningless.
That does not look right. Consider the quantum wave-function of the whole universe, extending through time as well as space, as a single object; obviously it does not change, because there is no time for it to change in. Yet it is clearly not correct to say that a concern with matter in motion screens you off from this unchanging, unmoving thing; you are looking at a small part of it.
Atoms (well, quarks and gluons) do, however, have definite momentum-and-position amplitudes, spins, colours (not in the optical sense, of course!), electroweak charges, parities, and probably some other quantum numbers that are slipping my mind at the moment. I do not see why modern materialists should have to be bound to the declarations of your Scientific Revolutionaries; if they were wrong about which properties are fundamental, very well, they were wrong, but what of it? Now we know better.
If that was his axiom, he should have said it.
“There are much weaker axioms that have the same effect; for example, “In the absence of moral concerns, pleasure is good”. If that is his axiom, your demolishing of the much stronger claim of hedonism is utterly irrelevant. ”
There are no weaker axioms with the same effect. You are not reading the words as written. If that were his axiom, then his conclusion “It is far from self evident that vice exists, except as whatever causes physical harm to self or other” does not follow from that premise.
If this had been the argument of our Watermelonic friend, he would not have bothered to write. If I say “Vice exist, and it is self evident that vice exists” it is neither relevant nor interesting to write back, “Some acts which are not vice, but which also create harmless pleasure, also exist.” His argument is that ‘vice does not exist’, where “vice” means moral wrong causing no physical harm. This is the only statement that contradicts the statement that ‘vice exists’.
Nor would I have written back to him, had that been his statement. The statement is trivial, not worth discussing. No orthodox Christian denies that “in the absence of moral concerns, pleasure is good.” We think God created pleasure for our delight and joy. The pleasure of marriage delivers more joy than it promises; the pleasure of adultery produces less joy than it promises. That is why the pleasure is called a false one.
This is a cogent argument, but I have a devastating, nay, annihilating comeback which will silence you for good, and it is this: You are right and I was wrong.
I did not read in sufficient detail the comment to which Watermelonyo was responding; you did indeed make the assertion “vice exists”, not the assertion “premarital sex is a vice”, which I thought was being argued. I therefore reasoned thusly: “The assertion that vice exists is not sufficient to demonstrate that any particular act is a vice”, and then I went to find the quote where you had asserted that some particular act was in fact a vice. My mistake! You had indeed asserted only that vice exists, and Watermelonyo was indeed arguing against that assertion. I sit corrected.
You are a gentleman. My faith in humanity is restored.
Now, once Watermelon and I agree that vice exists, the more interesting part of the conversation, and the one perhaps more interesting to you, is whether or not a lack of self-control in sexual matters is or is not a vice; and that, if we can reach agreement on what that exactly means, whether monogamy, polygamy, or anarchy is the preferred system or lack of system.
That will indeed be the more interesting argument.
I can’t read Watermelonyo’s mind, but I suspect his answer would be a variation on No True Scotsman, simply expanding the definition of the phrase “occlude the health” as to include most of the harms listed in your examples above. (Depending on his determination to be consistent, the incest example might in fact be genuinely defended as something that could not be condemned, providing all involved consented and the purely moral proscriptions were not accepted.)
One of the things I find simultaneously most frustrating and fascinating about the antinomian gnosticism you’ve decried is its ability to shift rules at a moment’s notice without caring for any inconsistency. (Everybody moves goalposts now and then, of course, but the ability not to care or think of it as a weakness is what mesmerizes me.) In this particular case, it’s the ability to invoke the argument for indirect harms as being of equal culpability with direct ones when that benefits one, and simultaneously to deny that argument when it doesn’t. Most of your examples, after all, could quite easily be imagined to cause immense amounts of physical harm by only a step or two of very likely inference, or an increase in their frequency. To “disqualify” all your examples, one need only say that “occlude the health” includes this presumption of likely consequence.
Yet when someone points out the likely consequences of much lesser vices, suddenly that argument falls on deaf ears and shatters upon indignant insistence of individual authority and responsibility, and the “injustice” of condemning all those who practice a vice when those consequences occur only to some, and those their own fault in that they could have been prevented or avoided with more attention or less pressing of luck.
I do have to admit that I do not consider another man’s alcoholism reason to deny me the right to drink — but then again, another man’s sobriety is not reason enough to excuse my drunkenness, either. Either moral culpability for one’s actions extends to their indirect and likely consequences as well as their direct ones, or it doesn’t; but turning that culpability on or off as it suits one rubs me the wrong way.
The anitnomians also shift between the libertarian stance (“such and such an act is morally wrong, but to have the law punish it leads to unwelcome or even dangerous consequences”) and the nihilist stance (“such and such is not wrong because it is not illegal”.)
Using these two stances in tandem, if one pays no particular attention to logical consistency, one can show how anything that is not forbidden at law is therefore not immoral. Those of us who believe race-hatred is wrong in and of itself even if never acted upon, or who believe coveting your neighbor’s wife, ox, or manservant is wrong even if you never commit theft or adultery, are deeply unimpressed with this argument.
As foe argument like the ones you mention, I have had correspondents tell me that hate-speech must make it illegal to shout out racist epithets because such a thing may lead to violence, and in the next paragraph scoff at the idea that the secular power should make adultery illegal, because, as we all know from the play Othello, or the tales of the fall of the Round Table, adulterous love never leads to violence.
The so called philosophy of hedonism and nihilism is better understood not as a real world view or a serious attempt to understand reality, but as a rationalization, a set of excuses on par with “the dog ate my homework” designed not to persuade, but merely to evade. They are things intellectual say when their conscience is or should be bothering them.
“I have had correspondents tell me that hate-speech must make it illegal to shout out racist epithets because such a thing may lead to violence, and in the next paragraph scoff at the idea that the secular power should make adultery illegal, because, as we all know… adulterous love never leads to violence.”
Well, I’d be willing to grant a distinction there, simply because inciting racial hatred is not the same thing as committing adultery, and a case could be made that laws against the former are feasible and beneficial enough to be desireable whereas laws against the latter are not. (I do not say I would necessarily buy such a case myself, but it could be made.)
What I wish more people on the rad-prog-antinomian side would do is actually take the time and effort to make such cases. I like to think I am not averse to changing my mind if strong evidence can be presented that I should.
Certainly such a distinction could be made. And anyone taught history through the lens of a theory that established race hatred as the only source of evil ever to have plague mankind, and whose knowledge of history is limited to race riots, would have a powerful reason to support limits to speech of anyone inciting race hatred. For myself, I know two men serving time in jail for murdering their rivals for a woman. Working for a newspaper or as a country lawyer introduces you to a side of life and a class of people many people don’t see.
My point here is that the distinction cannot be maintained in the abstract, on the purely libertarian or the purely hedonist ground that the law should be restricted (in the case of libertarians) to retaliation against specific acts of violence, fraud, or trespass, or (in the case of hedonists) that it is not wrong to shout out whatever one might fancy to shout, to copulate with whomever or whatever one might fancy to copulation, provided only it does no physical harm.
Once we leave the world of abstractions, and start talking about what is practical for a lawmaker to do, or an ethicist to preach, the hedonist becomes increasingly hard to believe and hard to fathom, depending on how much wisdom and experience his audience of decreasingly gullible listeners might possess.
They argue abstractions rather than argue the evidence because the case law does not support them. The hedonists talk like people dropped down from the moon, who seem not to realize, even still, that fornication is illegal in many jurisdictions, perhaps even the one where they live. They talk as if such laws are unheard-of and unthinkable rather than the common practice and opinion of mankind in all continents for all history, and, as best we can guess, all prehistory.
I’m more bothered that he didn’t use “occlude” correctly.
Occlude = obstruct, clog, block, plug. There is no misuse in saying a disease is blocking one’s health or obstructing it. It is an unusual use of the word, but it is not incorrect. It implies that the vice or sin does not destroy the health and wellbeing, but instead merely cuts off enjoyment and access to it: that is the vice were removed, the health and its benefits would return.
I readily admit that your vocabulary is better than mine (and I had missed that you used the word originally, not Watermelonyo). So I shall replace my understanding with yours.
My impression originally was that you were saying that the vice must negatively affect physical health in the same manner as a disease; if it is merely that it cuts off its enjoyment, well, then I would think every vice is by definition an occlusion of health or wellbeing of the person committing the sin.
RT @CurtJester: Dialogue with a Hedonist http://bit.ly/k88BYR Posts like this is why i so love John C. Wright
Dialogue with a Hedonist | John C. Wright’s Journal http://j.mp/m0r8SO (via Instapaper)
I’m afraid you have ascribed certain beliefs to me that I don’t hold and have never expressed. I do not believe, and have never claimed, that there are no moral properties to acts that do no harm. I have only claimed that those acts can never be morally wrong. And when I say “harm,” I mean it in a general sense, not just physical harm. This misunderstanding renders most of your post irrelevant. In all your scenarios (indeed, in all conceivable scenarios), when considering their morality, I would consider their potential to cause harm, and weigh it against their potential to do good. That is how I make moral decisions. Everything else is irrelevant.
And if you don’t correctly guess something’s potential to cause harm, and bad things happen that you did not intend, does that mean you did something wrong? What if someone warned you that you were going to cause harm, but you didn’t believe them, so you did it anyway and bad things follow: is that your fault, or someone else’s or no one’s at all?
When evaluating the morality of our decisions in retrospect, we can of course take into account the harm they actually caused.
Does other people warning you about harm affect whether your action is morally wrong or not? Or does it only matter what harm you *thought* you would cause, going into it?
In the context of sexual ethics, it seems like the modern “anything goes – as long as it doesn’t hurt someone” philosophy ignores the centuries of people’s experience in finding out that, actually, there’s a lot of things that DO hurt people, in the long run. That’s a lot of what I was trying to get at with the question about whether it matters if someone warns you. That kind of thinking always strikes me as being very like a teenager who just doesn’t want to listen to his parents – immature, and dedicated to finding things out the hard way.
Other people warning me about harm will necessarily affect what harm I think I will cause. Of course how much it will affect it depends on how trustworthy I find those people. In the context of sex, I think there are certain obvious possible negative consequences. I think “anything goes as long as it doesn’t hurt someone” doesn’t necessarily ignore these consequences. In fact, it emphasizes that the important question in deciding matters of morality is: does it hurt anyone? That’s where the debate is.
The debate may be about whether it causes harm… but one side in that debate is ignoring billions of people’s observations about what DOES cause harm, just because those people lived before the 20th Century.
I don’t think this is really the case.
Because you believe the mores of earlier generations come out of their own inferiority or stupidity or evil prejudice, instead of their own experience?
No, because our experience differs from theirs.
Ah, so you think the harm caused (in previous generations) is just because of the culture or circumstances, which no longer apply to us, yes? You don’t think the harm caused is connected directly to the behavior and to what all humans have in common. That seems… rash, to me.
But in certain cases, it’s obviously true. One of the major harms of having sex before marriage in previous generations was unwanted pregnancy. We now have the technology to avoid this harm.
We have the technology to reduce that likelihood; the number of abortions happening clearly shows that we haven’t “solved” the problem of unwanted pregnancy. And what about the generations of people who have believed that intentionally trying to separate the possibility of a baby from the act of having sex was, in itself, something harmful to people? Was that just due to ignorance? To circumstance? Does their experience in that regard somehow not apply to us anymore?
“We have the technology to reduce that likelihood; the number of abortions happening clearly shows that we haven’t “solved” the problem of unwanted pregnancy.”
True, but this is mostly an issue of economics and education.
“And what about the generations of people who have believed that intentionally trying to separate the possibility of a baby from the act of having sex was, in itself, something harmful to people? Was that just due to ignorance? To circumstance? Does their experience in that regard somehow not apply to us anymore?”
What about the generations of people who haven’t believed this? I try to take the sum total of human experience into account.
I doubt that it is mostly an issue of either economics or education. I suspect the bigger issues are (a) people’s unwillingness to sterilize themselves completely, (b) the limited effectiveness of the technology itself, and (c) people’s lack of discipline in applying it.
Do you think there are more generations of people who have thought that birth control was ok, than there have been generations that believed attempts at birth control to be fundamentally harmful? When there is a conflict between what people have historically thought, what measure would you use to gauge what is true? Or, more specifically, why do you think that there is no such gauge to determine the truth about morality?
Sure, well-off brain-proud folks aren’t reproducing themselves. Darwin’s future belongs to those who reproduce successfully.
“I doubt that it is mostly an issue of either economics or education. I suspect the bigger issues are (a) people’s unwillingness to sterilize themselves completely, (b) the limited effectiveness of the technology itself, and (c) people’s lack of discipline in applying it.”
At this point, it’s hardly necessary to sterilize oneself completely to avoid pregnancy. There is always a small chance of getting pregnant when using any sort of birth control, but condoms combined with birth control pills come pretty close to 100% effectiveness when both are used properly. (C) is the bigger issue, and I certainly agree that people who don’t want children and aren’t willing to use birth control shouldn’t have sex. Of course, that’s to say nothing of sexual practices that don’t lead to pregnancy anyway, which was actually the topic that drew me into this conversation. Unwanted pregnancy isn’t even an issue in considering the morality there.
“Do you think there are more generations of people who have thought that birth control was ok, than there have been generations that believed attempts at birth control to be fundamentally harmful?”
I don’t know what the statistics are on how many people throughout history have approved/disapproved of birth control. I don’t even know how one would go about finding that out.
“When there is a conflict between what people have historically thought, what measure would you use to gauge what is true?”
My own experiences.
“Or, more specifically, why do you think that there is no such gauge to determine the truth about morality?”
It depends on what we mean by “truth about morality.” I think the truth about morality is that we all come to our own moral decisions based on a combination of experience, instinct, emotion, and reason. If there is such a thing as “objectively true morality,” I have yet to find any way of discovering it.
“Of course, that’s to say nothing of sexual practices that don’t lead to pregnancy anyway, which was actually the topic that drew me into this conversation.”
Let me ask you: What are eyes for?
Attracting a mate. Communicating one’s mood. Food in some cultures.
Eyes are for food? In what sense?
Oh, and I wrote this blog post and as I finished writing it, I thought of this conversation. Perhaps it will shed light on why some of us don’t think much of the “I don’t see what harm it causes” line of reasoning.
If there was actually a God stopping us from doing harmful things, that would be great.
In this case, I had the option of stopping my daughter without hurting her or infringing on her free will. I think that is often not the case with God.
My sincere apologies for attributing to you ideas you did not say and do not hold: I should have asked and clarified.
When weighing the potential for harm against the potential for good, do you invent the meaning yourself, or do you find the meaning pre-existing in the situation? I ask because you said in another thread that ascribing meaning to innately meaningless data is itself meaningless, so I am wondering what are your guidelines.
“My sincere apologies for attributing to you ideas you did not say and do not hold: I should have asked and clarified.”
No problem. I think it was partly my fault for continuing with your use of “occlude the health,” which I didn’t mean literally.
“When weighing the potential for harm against the potential for good, do you invent the meaning yourself, or do you find the meaning pre-existing in the situation? I ask because you said in another thread that ascribing meaning to innately meaningless data is itself meaningless, so I am wondering what are your guidelines.”
I’m not sure what you’re asking here. Are you asking how I define “harm” and “good?”
I am not asking how to define harm and good. I am asking whether you discover the harm and good that exist as an objective reality, or whether you invent the harm and good and ascribe them to an otherwise meaningless situation as an act of will in a subjective reality.
“I am not asking how to define harm and good. I am asking whether you discover the harm and good that exist as an objective reality, or whether you invent the harm and good and ascribe them to an otherwise meaningless situation as an act of will in a subjective reality.”
Neither of those sounds accurate. I would say we observe events that take place in an objective reality and compare our observations of those events with our intersubjective definitions of “harm” and “good.”
Then on what ground would one person, say, who does not consider fornication to cause any harm, criticize an “intersubjective” definition of norm from his society, say, the English Speaking or Chinese, whose laws and customs have always defined fornication as harmful?
His experience that it is not.
Just to clarify, what we think of as society’s definition of harm is really just the opinion held by the majority in any given situation. Everyone still has their own individual conception. What makes them “intersubjective” rather than just “subjective” is that they greatly influence each other and generally agree on most issues.
So if everyone in society deemed it “no harm” to ethnically cleanse the region of subhumans, then that “inter-subjective” opinion makes it good?
His experience? What of the experiences of everyone else, incl. his ancestors? Or is it simply the Triumph of his Will, and the notion that “truth” is what heightens his individual feeling of power?
How does he distinguish his “experience” from wishful thinking or the mere activation of his pleasure center? What of his inability to recognize “harm” (whatever that is) through the haze of his own self-deception?
“So if everyone in society deemed it “no harm” to ethnically cleanse the region of subhumans, then that “inter-subjective” opinion makes it good?”
If God deemed it “no harm” to ethnically cleanse the region of subhumans, would his opinion make it good? What is the point of such hypotheticals?
“His experience? What of the experiences of everyone else, incl. his ancestors? Or is it simply the Triumph of his Will, and the notion that “truth” is what heightens his individual feeling of power?”
Learning about others’ experiences is part of his experience.
“What is the point of such hypotheticals?”
Hypotheticals one the method reasonable men use to check their premises. The point is that an honest man, even when caught in a paradox, would bravely attempt to answer an honest question. Either you are not honest or you are not brave.
I am asking you to resolve the paradox in your thinking you mask beneath the weasel-word “intersubjectivity” — it is a word you use and only use to avoid such questions as I am asking you. On what ground do you deny what all men of all ages have affirmed, that fornication and unchastity and adultery is harmful to the soul and to the society? On what ground do you affirm the manifest absurdity that a life of sexual malfeasance and egocentric addiction is permissible because it is harmless?
When I asked you the ground, you answered with the weasel word. I am now asking you about the weasel word, and you are now weaseling out of answering that.
In Christian theology, the good is neither something superior to God, nor is it merely what God deems. The good is what God is. Inter alia, any intention that intends an evil (a.k.a. a privation), such as depriving others of their natural right to life, liberty, or property (cf. Aquinas, Ockham, Vittorio, et al.) is objectively and a priori not a good. God cannot change this because God does not change. Such an act may be the lesser of two evils, but the lesser of two evils is still an evil.
“In Christian theology, the good is neither something superior to God, nor is it merely what God deems. The good is what God is. Inter alia, any intention that intends an evil (a.k.a. a privation), such as depriving others of their natural right to life, liberty, or property (cf. Aquinas, Ockham, Vittorio, et al.) is objectively and a priori not a good. God cannot change this because God does not change. Such an act may be the lesser of two evils, but the lesser of two evils is still an evil.”
But then the question just becomes “what if God was different?” You can ask these sorts of questions about any possible system of morality. They aren’t particularly insightful.
If the majorities opinion is merely opinion, and can be set aside by any individual whose experience is too limited to confirm the opinion, in what sense is this not subjective and arbitrary? If it is subjective and arbitrary, in what sense can it said to be harmful therefore wrong?
If all is merely subjective, on what grounds can an individual assert society has made a bad judgment? When (for example) is John the Baptist right to condemn his generation as a brood of vipers?
Likewise, if all is merely subjective, on what grounds can a society assert than an individual has made a bad judgment? When (for example) is the consensus right to condemn some deviant practice like child pornography or infanticide?
“‘Intersubjective” is a weasel word. It allows one to clothe the opinion of the majority with sacred authority when and only when one wishes to laud the majority, but to strip that authority away in a twinkling when one wishes to disparage the majority.
So when a man whose limited and emotion-poisoned experience tells him that fornication and adultery please him in the short run, and he perhaps wishes to indulge his sinful and selfish nature, he regard the fact that the moral and legal authority of his society and of all civilized societies outlaw the practice as “intersubjective” and he calls it harmless so that he can harm others and himself with a clean conscience.
But when he wishes to be protected from harm, or to protect those who stir his pity, such as minorities being mocked, or sexual deviants being derided, he calls the wish of the majority to protect these mascots “intersubjective” and says that is has the force and authority of law. Society can therefore condemn racism as “unacceptable” because it is “harmful” but allow the exploitative degradation of women by filthy Lotharios as “acceptable” because “harmless” — the word harmless being bent by the Lesbian Rule to fit whatever the standard of the moment might be.
It’s too bad that you find “intersubjective” to be a “weasel word.” It’s quite useful in explaining why certain concepts that are ultimately subjective find so much agreement among so many people. I think if you took the time to understand why so many people agree about morality when it is ultimately subjective, you’d understand my point of view a lot better. I don’t know if I have the time or energy to go into all this in detail. Just think about this…
“When (for example) is John the Baptist right to condemn his generation as a brood of vipers?”
This is the key to your answer. When, indeed? Ultimately, we both answer this question the same way: when we believe he is right. You may believe that he is right in some objective way, but you have no way of knowing this. You simply believe it.
“It’s quite useful in explaining why certain concepts that are ultimately subjective find so much agreement among so many people.”
It is useful in the same way lies are useful: it allows you to seem to answer a question without answering.
“I think if you took the time to understand why so many people agree about morality when it is ultimately subjective…”
Oh, but I have taken the time, and I understand all too well.
“I don’t know if I have the time or energy to go into all this in detail…”
How convenient for you.
“Ultimately, we both answer this question the same way: when we believe he is right. You may believe that he is right in some objective way, but you have no way of knowing this. You simply believe it.”
It is to laugh. If your statement were true that I do not know what I say I know, by the same logic, you would not know it to be true: by your own admission, you are not saying anything true about me, or about reality, you are merely uttering words that you would like to believe, but for which you can give no warrant, and offer no grounds.
Your philosophy is absurd because you cannot open your mouth without contradicting yourself.
Yes, it is true that I believe the truth because it is true, and you believe falsehoods because falsehoods comfort and flatter you. It is true that the common element is “belief.” It is not true that I have no warrant for my belief, and one of my warrants is that when someone (as yourself) tries to equate a true belief to a false belief, he contradicts himself.
Also, just to provide an answer to your questions: Morality is not arbitrary, since it is shaped by our experiences, instincts, emotions, and thoughts, many of which are common to all of humanity. These are the grounds on which we make our moral judgments. You and I both, along with everyone else.
when considering their morality, I would consider their potential to cause harm, and weigh it against their potential to do good. That is how I make moral decisions.
Actually, as Stanley Fish once pointed out, you made the moral decisions much earlier, when you decided what was “harm” and what was “good.”
That you then decided that you could know these things ahead of time is a secondary problem. Is it expedient that one man should die for the whole people?
“Actually, as Stanley Fish once pointed out, you made the moral decisions much earlier, when you decided what was “harm” and what was “good.””
More accurately, I formed my system of morality much earlier when I decided what was harm and what was good. I decide the morality of each decision I make based on this system. I believe this is true of all of us.
“That you then decided that you could know these things ahead of time is a secondary problem.”
That I decided I could know what is “harm” and what is “good” ahead of time? Or that I decided whether a certain action would result in harm or good ahead of time? If you mean the former, we all do this. We can’t help it. If you mean the latter, I don’t claim to be able to know. I just use my best judgment. Again, this is something we all do.
“I formed my system of morality much earlier when I decided what was harm and what was good. I decide the morality of each decision I make based on this system. I believe this is true of all of us.”
Unless you are speaking metaphorically somehow, no, this is not true of all of us, or even of most. It is true only of hedonists and epicureans and eudaimonians, who take pleasure and pain to be the standard of good and evil. There are other approaches, such as those who look at the purpose or final cause of an act to determine its goodness, or the approach the weighs ends and means and the nature of the act. This is called the teleological view.
You’ve still made a decision as to what is good and what is harmful. You’ve just made the decision about the act itself rather than the consequences.
“On what ground do you deny what all men of all ages have affirmed, that fornication and unchastity and adultery is harmful to the soul and to the society? On what ground do you affirm the manifest absurdity that a life of sexual malfeasance and egocentric addiction is permissible because it is harmless?”
Sorry, but I’m not answering loaded questions. Leave the rhetoric and assumptions out and we might have something to discuss.
“It is to laugh. If your statement were true that I do not know what I say I know, by the same logic, you would not know it to be true: by your own admission, you are not saying anything true about me, or about reality, you are merely uttering words that you would like to believe, but for which you can give no warrant, and offer no grounds.”
Please show where I made any such admission or retract your statement. I stated that you can’t know that your moral judgments are correct. I certainly never said anything that could be construed as an admission that I wasn’t able to know that my statement about moral knowledge was correct. My warrant and ground for making that statement is the fact that people have been debating morality throughout human history and have as yet come to no definitive answers.
“Your philosophy is absurd because you cannot open your mouth without contradicting yourself.”
You have yet to show a contradiction.
“Yes, it is true that I believe the truth because it is true,”
The question is how you know it’s true.
“It is not true that I have no warrant for my belief, and one of my warrants is that when someone (as yourself) tries to equate a true belief to a false belief, he contradicts himself.”
I don’t dispute that you have reasons for your beliefs. I only dispute that you have enough justification to raise your beliefs to the level of knowledge, and my support for this dispute is the fact that moral knowledge remains an open philosophical question. And you have yet to show a contradiction in anything I’ve said.
“Sorry, but I’m not answering loaded questions”
Or any questions at all, it seems.
“I only dispute that you have enough justification to raise your beliefs to the level of knowledge, and my support for this dispute is the fact that moral knowledge remains an open philosophical question.”
No, sir. You have disputed nothing. To dispute something means to engage in a reasoning process. What you have done is made a windy assertion that, when questioned, you lacked the honesty or the courage to answer, and yet will not even admit that you cannot answer.
Indeed it is true that one may raise a philosophical question on this or any topic: a philosopher might doubt his own existence, or the existence of his doubts about existence, or anything else he pleases. This means that he can formulate a question.
But if the question cannot be asked without presupposing the idea being question, it is a logically incoherent question, and requires no other answer than to point out that incoherence. The answer to “how do I know I exist?” is to point out that the act of asking the question logically presupposes the questioner exists, at least, exists long enough or real enough to ask a question.
Since you have not bother actually to inquire what my justifications are, you therefore must be reasoning in the abstract, having concluded that all justifications of any kind whatsoever share the property that they cannot be justified. The only reason stated so far for their blanket assertion is the flimsy ground you give above: if it can be questioned even by an insincere question, it must be unknown and unknowable. This is nonsense on stilts: it is like saying if a man can be put on trial, he must be guilty.
“You have yet to show a contradiction.”
1. You stated that your beliefs and mine were both believed, but that neither could be known true.
2. Your is one of your beliefs.
3. Therefore it is not known true.
Any statement that holds that it itself is not true or not known to be true impeaches itself: it is a self contradiction.
“Or any questions at all, it seems.”
That you don’t like the answers doesn’t mean that they weren’t presented.
“No, sir. You have disputed nothing. To dispute something means to engage in a reasoning process. What you have done is made a windy assertion that, when questioned, you lacked the honesty or the courage to answer, and yet will not even admit that you cannot answer.”
What question would you like me to answer? Keep it free from unjustified assumptions, and I’ll answer.
“Since you have not bother actually to inquire what my justifications are,”
Maybe not with a question mark, but that was my intention in typing “The question is how you know it’s true” in my previous post. So what are your justifications?
“you therefore must be reasoning in the abstract, having concluded that all justifications of any kind whatsoever share the property that they cannot be justified. The only reason stated so far for their blanket assertion is the flimsy ground you give above: if it can be questioned even by an insincere question, it must be unknown and unknowable. This is nonsense on stilts: it is like saying if a man can be put on trial, he must be guilty.”
What is nonsense is that you think the great question that has haunted mankind throughout the ages of whether we can have moral knowledge has been definitively answered. If you actually had an objective system of moral knowledge, we wouldn’t be having this debate. You’d be able to demonstrate it to me in a way that I could test, since it would be objective. If you think you can do that, then by all means do.
“1. You stated that your beliefs and mine were both believed, but that neither could be known true.”
Our moral beliefs. “Moral” is the key missing word there.
“2. Your is one of your beliefs.”
But not a moral belief. A statement about moral beliefs is not itself a moral belief. You’ve made a category error, similar to the one you made in the other thread when you conflated acts with the mental process of ascribing meaning to acts. You seem to have a habit of deducing false contradictions by making category errors.
What is nonsense is that you think the great question that has haunted mankind throughout the ages of whether we can have moral knowledge has been definitively answered.
It has only haunted mankind since Descartes and his epigones mucked up philosophy with a series of incoherent and mutually contradictory philosophies. That an answer has merely been denied does not mean that it has not been definitively answered. Here’s to 400 years of philosophical squid ink.
That you personally accept a certain answer doesn’t make that answer definitive. As I said, if an objectively true system of morals existed, demonstrating it would be easy. You’d just point to the “right” particles that surround us when we give to the poor and the “wrong” particles that surround us when we steal. Everyone would have exactly the same moral system. Debates like these would not exist. The fact that no such thing has been demonstrated means the question has not yet been answered.
That you suppose the subject has something to do with “particles” would seem a disqualifier, and perhaps something of a category error.
It was just a hypothetical example of how morality could be objectively demonstrable. It’s not the only possible example. But until someone presents an actual demonstration of objective morality, I will continue to withhold belief in such a thing.
Ooh! Ooh! I know! It is objectively wrong to off granny for her purse money in order to buy drugs.
I certainly agree that it’s wrong. I just don’t understand what’s supposed to make it objective. I also don’t understand what’s wrong with just admitting that it’s subjective. It’s not a dirty word. It doesn’t mean “arbitrary” or “worthless” or “meaningless” or “mutable with any passing whim.” It just means that it only exists in the mind. All my experiences with morality lead me to the conclusion that this is an accurate description of it. Saying so doesn’t cause morality to fall apart or cease to be meaningful or useful as a concept.
“As I said, if an objectively true system of morals existed, demonstrating it would be easy.”
“If an objective system of physics existed, demonstrating it would be easy, and Ptolemy would have discovered Quantum Mechanics before the telescope was invented.” Is there anything wrong with this sentence?
That something outside the mind exists for physics to describe has always been known. The same is not true of morals.
“If you actually had an objective system of moral knowledge, we wouldn’t be having this debate. You’d be able to demonstrate it to me in a way that I could test, since it would be objective.”
I think you are confusing objective with empirical. The Christian notion is that, while morality can, in theory, be seen by observation, in practice, people’s sins and desires and emotions usually get in the way of seeing moral issues with full clarity. Morality is, as you say, not a matter of physical measurement, and it cannot be reliably determined by experiment, not because it is not objective, but because we are not neutral observers.
For morality to be objective means that it does not matter that people’s beliefs about it vary; that is only an indication that some people are wrong about what they believe, not that morality itself varies.
I suspect that you already believe that at least some moral issues are objective; that it was wrong for the Spartans to leave their weak infants out to die, regardless of their cultural belief in it; that the Holocaust was wrong, despite the Germans’ “intersubjective” acceptance of it.
When you understand that your own observations about morality can be corrupted by your whims and desires, you can turn instead to a line of reason to come up with an objective system of morality, such as the teleological reasoning that Mr. Wright suggested. And if/when you find that your own reasoning has been corrupted by your whims or pride or whatnot, then you can try to find a reliable outside source to test your thinking against. And if you do, then you will be in the position that religious people throughout the ages have been in, who have turned to prophets, Scriptures, God, and Church to find something more reliable.
“I think you are confusing objective with empirical.”
No, anything objective can be tested, even if it’s not empirical. For example, we test logical deductions by checking their form.
“Morality is, as you say, not a matter of physical measurement, and it cannot be reliably determined by experiment, not because it is not objective, but because we are not neutral observers.”
In which case there is no practical difference between your position and mine. Even if there is an objective morality, we both admit that we can’t know it, which makes the morality we actually adopt ultimately subjective.
“I suspect that you already believe that at least some moral issues are objective; that it was wrong for the Spartans to leave their weak infants out to die, regardless of their cultural belief in it; that the Holocaust was wrong, despite the Germans’ “intersubjective” acceptance of it.”
No, I subjectively believe those things were wrong. We happen to share this belief intersubjectively.
“When you understand that your own observations about morality can be corrupted by your whims and desires, you can turn instead to a line of reason to come up with an objective system of morality, such as the teleological reasoning that Mr. Wright suggested.”
I believe we do use our reasoning (in part) to form our morality. I don’t see how this makes it objective though. And I certainly don’t agree with Mr. Wright’s moral reasoning.
“And if/when you find that your own reasoning has been corrupted by your whims or pride or whatnot, then you can try to find a reliable outside source to test your thinking against. And if you do, then you will be in the position that religious people throughout the ages have been in, who have turned to prophets, Scriptures, God, and Church to find something more reliable.”
Given the vast amount of differences between various prophets, scriptures, gods, and churches throughout human history, I have very good reasons to doubt the reliability of their moral reasoning.
“No, I subjectively believe those things were wrong. We happen to share this belief intersubjectively.”
That’s like saying that you subjectively believe that evolution is true and we happen to share this belief intersubjectively. After all, lots of people *don’t* believe evolution is true, and we can’t disprove or test the theory that God put dinosaur bones in the earth just to mess with us.
All beliefs are subjective in the sense that not everyone believes them; we call our moral beliefs objective for much the same reason that we call our scientific beliefs objective: because we believe that murder is wrong, and gravity is true, regardless of whether the murderer or the person jumping off a cliff acknowledges it so.
“Given the vast amount of differences between various prophets, scriptures, gods, and churches throughout human history, I have very good reasons to doubt the reliability of their moral reasoning.”
Actually, that’s not a very good reason for tossing them all out. People’s beliefs about the physical world have had vast differences throughout history – fire/earth/air/water/quintessence vs. chakras vs. modern science and so on – but we don’t throw out modern science just because others haven’t believed it (and still don’t). If we really want to know the truth, we compare and contrast the different systems, examining their internal logic, their explanations for the world, and so on. Likewise with religion and morality, instead of just tossing it all out, the better response to all the variety is to compare and examine them, testing their internal logic and comparing what they say about the world with what you know about the world.
“All beliefs are subjective in the sense that not everyone believes them; we call our moral beliefs objective for much the same reason that we call our scientific beliefs objective: because we believe that murder is wrong, and gravity is true, regardless of whether the murderer or the person jumping off a cliff acknowledges it so.”
The difference is that we can test our beliefs about evolution and gravity (not including unfalsifiable beliefs like God putting dinosaur bones in the earth or angels pulling us down to the ground) by observation of physical events. There is no way to test our moral beliefs.
“Likewise with religion and morality, instead of just tossing it all out, the better response to all the variety is to compare and examine them, testing their internal logic and comparing what they say about the world with what you know about the world.”
I have done this. I find no way of reconciling any religious claims with what I know about the world.
Different sciences require different methods. You cannot test your beliefs about mathematics by observation of physical events, either. Even the testing of physical theories is limited, because scientific theories are logically underdetermined. Through any finite collection of facts, you can draw an unlimited number of theories, among which those physical observations are unable to distinguish.
Moral beliefs can of course be tested by logic and reason, just as mathematics can. It would take considerable time and impose on our Host’s indulgence to set it forth in detail. So very briefly:
To be a good triangle, any particular instance of a triangle must approach closely the ideal nature of triangularity. To be a good doctor, a person must approach closely the ideal nature of doctoring. To be a good gray squirrel, a squirrel must perform all those tasks required by the gray squirreling niche as well as it can. This approach to the ideal is called “perfection.” If a triangle has a crooked line or a gray squirrel cannot fake out a hawk by juking, it is an imperfect instantiation or even (in the squirrel’s case) a dead one. What is good is to fulfill as perfectly as possible one’s nature.
Now, human nature is “to be a rational animal.” On the animal side we recognize such things as “smoking is bad for you” or “exercise is good for you.” As for the rational part…
Princeton brain scientist Jonathan D. Cohen examined MRI patterns of brain activity while subjects responded to moral dilemmas and made moral decisions. The soul is the form of a living being, so the MRI patterns may be thought of as pictures of a portion of the soul. (It’s not just the brain neurons that matter; it’s the patterns among the brain neurons, and patterns are formal, not material.) Cohen found that the brain patterns related to moral decisions need to be trained. The soul must be disciplined. (“The Vulcanization of the Human Brain: A Neural Perspective on Interactions Between Cognition and Emotion” http://www.pni.princeton.edu/ncc/PDFs/Neural%20Economics/Cohen%20%28JEP%2005%29.pdf )
Cohen showed that our solutions to ethical problems are influenced by communications between different parts of the brain. Subjects with lots of neural activity linking the brain stem to the frontal lobe tend to allow their emotional responses to override rational assessments of moral dilemmas. This impairs their nature as rational animals. Subjects make more rational decisions, Cohen reports, when the neuro-activity from the primitive part of the brain is blocked from interfering with the frontal lobe. These open/blocked neural patterns are not fixed by nature. They “solidify” over time. Cohen says our brain patterns are “vulcanized” by constant repetition. Traditional moral philosophers use the term “habits” or “habituated.”
Now, sexual desires are closely associated with the primitive, pre-cognitive part of the brain. If these are vulcanized by constant repetition, they build “durable pathways” to the frontal lobe and “flood our capacity to reason with seething, unsettling neural activity more suited to instinctive life than rational reflection.” Our souls, as traditional thinkers have pointed out, can be disordered. So habitual behaviors like, oh, spanking slatterns for sexual arousal, results in irrational decision-making and thus a human being who is less perfect.
Now, even a slight familiarity with recent cultural history – say 1968 et seq., although it started earlier – can see how the increasingly libidinous culture has engaged in “a massive critique and rejection of moral discipline, especially the kind that once worked very hard to pattern our brains not to give in to sexual instincts.” Neuroscience tells us that this cannot help but interfere with our ability to think rationally. To test this: say the word “Palin” or “Obama” and you will receive a deluge of adolescent illogic either pro or con. Or consider the man-boys of today versus the men of yesteryear.
I was with you until that sentence. I think you’ll find that science does actually have a method of distinguishing between competing theories. Not coincidentally, it’s called the scientific method.
That’s all great. Now you just need to come up with a reason why rationality is morally better than emotion. Just declaring it so doesn’t work.
Except that there is always another theory that accounts for all the same facts; so tell me again how the scientific method can distinguish them.
I gave several examples illustrating how a thing is more perfect the closer it fulfills its nature. Rationality is not “morally better” than emotion; but human beings are rational animals, so that human beings are more perfect the more they fulfill their rational nature. This is difficult for Nietzscheans to understand, since the Triumph of the Will has subordinated intellect to will in the popular and unreflected imagination. You merely take it one step further and subordinate reason to the emotions or sensitive appetites. Hence, your dismissal of “stuff” about rationality versus emotion.
However, it is clear that you cannot desire what you do not know, so the intellect is clearly prior to the will, just as the will is prior to the emotions.
+ + +
They are not separate meanings. You have inserted the word “morally” into one of them. But the good is the good. Morality enters with the act of will: when one chooses the defectus boni rather than the bonus. Now, if triangles were alive and rational then a deliberate distortion of his lines, or of the lines of a fellow triangle, would mean that the triangle had acted in an immoral way.
The point, lost on the unimaginative, is that we come to understand that which is less easily grasped by study of that which is more easily grasped. Hence, we approach knowing by considering eating; etc. Since abstract and inanimate bodies are more easily grasped than animate or willful bodies, it is useful to start there. I am sorry that you feel that Aristotle (and everyone afterward) did not recognize he had equivocated, esp. given that he sort of invented the whole concept.
You could say that, but it would be arbitrary. All animals have emotions, so humans cannot be defined as “emotional” animals. “Emotional” would divide animals in general from plants in general, but would not divide humans from other animals. Emotions are good, btw, but they are subordinate to reason. Just as chocolate is good, but too much chocolate is bad; just as light is good, but too much light will blind you, emotions are good, but unrestrained emotions are bad for you. It leads to lynchings.
Again, it grieves me that you think Aristotle has begged the question; esp. inasmuch as he invented logic. Funny no one else ever noticed that.
a) It depends on whether bibrachiality is an essential or an accidental. Some of you emotional people once tried to claim that skin color was an essential part of human nature. A key question is whether a one-armed man is still recognized as human.
b) Let us assume that bibrachiality is part of the human essence, and therefore a good for humans. An evil is defectus boni, a defect or impairment of a good. Therefore, being one-armed is an evil. This is precisely why we regard it as a condition to be cured or treated with good acts, like prosthetic devices.
c) The error of all judgmental people is to suppose that if John suffers an evil that John somehow is evil. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the maxim “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
d) If John chooses to hack off his arm, the act of will makes it a moral evil. If he is one-armed through no choice of his own, then it is a physical evil only. If it was a desperate choice between amputation and death, as in a recent book and movie, then it was the choice of the lesser of two evils, no less so than when a judge deprives a thief of his liberty rather than set him loose to rob others. Liberty and property are both goods and so any lessening of them are evils, but the judge must decide which is the lesser evil in a particular case.
I can’t think of any examples of this other than supernatural explanations, which the scientific method ignores because they are unfalsifiable.
Yes, but you begged the question when you defined their natures.
In which case it does in fact change the meaning.
So your triangle example was an equivocation, since good triangles in reality are not morally good. Your next paragraph is simply an attempt to justify your equivocation.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
I suspect the divide is a bit narrower than that. I seriously doubt all animals have emotions. “Rational,” btw, doesn’t divide humans from other animals either.
Nice to hear you admit that.
I agree! The same, however, is true of too much rationality. It leads to genocide in the name of greater good. Or, in the case that started this debate, to condemning people for doing things that aren’t hurting anyone. Both emotion and rationality are required to form a balanced moral system.
What if humans have evolved such that most of them have one arm, but some have two?
Some of you rational people once did this as well. The point is that any definition of “essential part of human nature” is arbitrary.
Oh, also, you need to come up with a reason why the wife-beating lunkheads of yesteryear were morally better than the sharing, compassionate husbands of today. Whee! Rhetoric is fun! I can see why you guys like to use it so much!
Easy: They are not. It was always an evil to beat your wife, or to clobber your husband with the proverbial frying pan or rolling pin.
Also, to make the problems with your argument clear…
This is a rather severe equivocation on the word “good.” When someone draws a triangle and one of the lines is curved, and we say, “that’s not a good triangle,” we don’t mean that the triangle is morally wrong. We mean that it doesn’t conform to our definition of the word “triangle.” These are two separate meanings of “good.”
This, specifically, is where your argument begs the question. I could just as easily say that human nature is “to be an emotional animal.” Now, by definition, emotions are good.
Or, to make your earlier equivocation of “good” even clearer, I can say that the nature of a human is to have two arms. Now all one-armed people are evil. This is a terrible argument.
Religious claims are very seldom claims about the world. But let’s take a look at some that do have implications for the physical world, and how they might be tested.
1. “God created…” implies that there must be an objective universe. This is impossible to test, since any evidence presupposes the existence of that universe. Still…
2. “In the beginning…” implies that the present world must have had a beginning in time. We ought to look for evidence of, I dunno, some sort of “Big Bang,” perhaps a cosmic background radiation, receding galaxies, or the like.
(BTW, dogma does not require belief in a literal seven days. St. Augustine did not, and he is often regarded as a big name theologian-type person.)
3. “God endowed matter with natures capable of acting directly on one another.” For proof, we must search for evidence that natural phenomena have natural causes.
4. “God is constant and rational.” This would result in those natural causes being ordered and consistent; that is, we should check to see if there are any natural laws or “common course of nature” by which causes act “always or for the most part” in the same manner.
5. “God ordered the world by number, weight, and measure.” This would imply that those natural laws are accessible to human reason by numbering, weighing, and measuring natural bodies. This would be an interesting program to undertake. Because it would result in “knowledge” about “natures,” we could call it “natural science.” Perhaps there are quantifiable laws of, say, gravity.
6. “All men are descended from Adam.” This would imply that all human beings share a common descent and belong to the same species. Perhaps we can one day read the genetic code and see if this is true.
(BTW, note that the dogma does not require that there be no other ancestors. All of my cousins are descended from the same grandfather. But many of them had grandmothers and even other grandfathers.)
7. “Adam’s sin (imperfection) has been inherited by all mankind.” This would imply that the original selfishness of Adam has been embedded somehow in human nature, perhaps by something we might call a “selfish gene,” and this gene has been inherited somehow by all humans.
8. Genesis says that God told the world to bring forth the living kinds and the world did so. There is no evidence He told the world to stop. Augustine said this must be considered causally: that God gave matter the power to do these things. Aquinas said that “a multiplicity of species is a good,” so there ought to be some sort of process for the origin of species to increase the good. Per 3, this ought to be a natural process.
Hmmm. Actually, these religious claims do not seem at all difficult to reconcile with what we know about the world.
Bzzt. Term has no apparent referent.
Meh. I could say the same about, oh, protons or gluons. We deduce their existence through a complicated chain of logic, based on some observations. The same might be said of God.
Bzzt. Term [God] has no apparent referent.
You asked how religious claims have implications for the “real” [sic] world. Religious claims often involve the term God. That you do not grasp the referent may only indicate an unwillingness to rely on “stuff about rationality.”
It is also a fairly obvious ploy to avoid responding the to case examples.
The difference is that in science, we start with the observations and create the theories to explain them. With religion, you start with the theory, and selectively pick the observations that you think support it.
Or the failure of any rational arguments to demonstrate the existence of God.
The case examples start by positing the existence of an entity for which there is no evidence. There’s no point in going further until we get past that.
“The difference is that we can test our beliefs about evolution and gravity (not including unfalsifiable beliefs like God putting dinosaur bones in the earth or angels pulling us down to the ground) by observation of physical events. There is no way to test our moral beliefs.”
From a semantic point of view, I am still inclined to insist that “not testable” does not translate to “not objective”. Objectivity is not about our ability to prove something true; it’s about whether the truth of the matter is independent from our thoughts or feelings about it.
This conversation reminds me of a discussion I had in a college English course about the nature of history. A guy was arguing that there is no such thing as history, per se; all of what we “know” is influenced by our own biases, and so on. I argued that history is real; that what happened, happened, despite our inability to know and understand it perfectly. I still believe that it is important to have that point of view when doing historical research, lest we miss out on an opportunity to get closer to the truth.
So, too, with morality. As there is with history, there will always be people who re-write morality to suit themselves, and come up with elaborate reasoning to defend such. Telling the difference between the truth and the made-up isn’t going to be easy, and no one will get it perfect. But if we abandon our belief that there IS a truth to morality, one that exists outside of an individual’s belief about it, then we will get lost, pushed farther away from our approximation of that truth, just as the historian who doesn’t believe objective history exists will be pushed farther away from the truth of what happened.
“I find no way of reconciling any religious claims with what I know about the world.”
If you could give me your one single biggest objection to religion, what would it be? What one thing do you *know* about the world, that is incompatible with any religious claims at all?
I agree, but anything objective is in principle testable. It may just not be within our current capabilities to do so. If you want to claim that this is the case for morality, however, the question becomes how you could possibly know this.
My biggest objection to religion is that I have no reason to accept it. Here’s what it comes down to. I’ve never experienced anything that could remotely come close to being described as supernatural. I have heard many people claim that they have, but none of them have provided sufficient objective evidence (ie. enough to overrule competing natural explanations, which are prima facie more likely), and furthermore, their claims are all mutually contradictory. I’m left with no choice but to withhold belief in any of them until sufficient evidence is provided.
I am inclined to call it unwise to test morality, rather than impossible. It would be too like finding out how much mercury people can withstand by giving people higher and higher amounts until they sicken and die. And, of course, the damaging effects of immorality can be more difficult to detect than physical damages, since the effects cannot all be seen with our eyes. (If, say, greed leads us to be more petty, “pettiness” is not something we can quantifiably measure… but if we were omniscient, or merely had the ability to read men’s souls the way we read their bodies, we could “test” morality.)
Are the people’s supernatural experiences themselves contradictory, or merely the religious belief systems that they build up around those experiences? This religious-beliefs-contradict-each-other thing seems to be a big deal to you; why is that?
“That you don’t like the answers doesn’t mean that they weren’t presented.”
Again with the same trick? You don’t answer my question, and you use the words “I am not answering that question” and in order to hide your own craven failure to stand up like a man and defend yourself, and, when confronted you try to throw the blame on me, and claim it is my subjective and arbitrary opinion?
Don’t you know any other trick? Ad hominem. That is your whole argument.
Are you actually asking what my justification is for not believing a manifest self-contradiction? Simple: logic works. A is A. No statement that contradicts itself is true.
“A statement about moral beliefs is not itself a moral belief.”
Your qualification does not change the argument, unless you are using a different type of logic to deal with moral beliefs as with beliefs. If you do not have a moral code, you cannot even discuss philosophy, because that requires honesty and intellectual courage and integrity, all of which are moral qualities.
The contradiction I pointed out still exists: if you actually practiced what you preach, you could not say what you have said. The fact that we are having this conversation proves that you know the difference between honest and dishonest, justice and fair-mindedness and intellectual integrity, for you would not speak if you did not expect me to live up to that standard.
I am not sure what you are calling a category error here. That moral beliefs are a type of belief? That would seem to be self evident.
“Again with the same trick? You don’t answer my question, and you use the words “I am not answering that question” and in order to hide your own craven failure to stand up like a man and defend yourself, and, when confronted you try to throw the blame on me, and claim it is my subjective and arbitrary opinion?”
I said I wouldn’t answer loaded questions. I’ve answered every reasonable question you’ve asked. If you think there’s one I’ve avoided, please identify it.
“Are you actually asking what my justification is for not believing a manifest self-contradiction?”
No, I’m asking what your justification is for your moral beliefs. They are not tautologies.
“Your qualification does not change the argument, unless you are using a different type of logic to deal with moral beliefs as with beliefs.”
Explained in another post. There are different types of beliefs.
“If you do not have a moral code, you cannot even discuss philosophy, because that requires honesty and intellectual courage and integrity, all of which are moral qualities.”
Utter nonsense. One does not have to have a moral code to exemplify the qualities someone else considers moral.
“I am not sure what you are calling a category error here. That moral beliefs are a type of belief? That would seem to be self evident.”
That there are other types of beliefs as well, to which you mistakenly took my statement to refer.
Actually, your consistent mistake seems to be considering your moral beliefs tautologous. You may define everything you think is right to be right, but so could someone whose beliefs were the exact opposite. If you have no justification other than “I believe it’s true because it’s true,” how does an outside observer tell which of you is right?
I just realized you may have misinterpreted my claim about your belief about John the Baptist. You seem to have taken it as a claim that you can’t know that any of your beliefs are objectively true. That was certainly not what I meant, and I didn’t even realize it could have been taken that way until just now. I only meant that we can’t know that our beliefs about what is right and what is wrong are objectively true. We can, of course, know that some of our beliefs are objectively true: those dealing with physical reality and those that are part of formal systems. Moral beliefs don’t deal with physical reality, since right and wrong aren’t physical properties. Objective moral knowledge within a formal system can technically be said to be possible, but this is somewhat trivial, since the question of which system to adopt is still subjective.
“I only meant that we can’t know that our beliefs about what is right and what is wrong are objectively true. ”
Is your statement a lie? I assume it is not, for you know it is wrong to tell a lie, and right to tell the truth, except, perhaps, in certain specific and exceptional circumstances, as to hide from an enemy or spare tender feelings. Those exceptions do not apply here.
But you are saying you do not know it is wrong to tell a lie. If so, then anything you say, including your statement above, could be a lie, and you simply do not know it is wrong to tell lies.
If your statement could be a lie, why should you say it?
Some conversations are not meant to be taken literally. Boasts or flattery or jokes, or the sweet nothings a boy whispers to his sweetheart, are meant to be taken in a different spirit. But all philosophical conversations, all scientific reasoning, theology, and so on, is meant by all parties involved to be honest.
You see, in order to have this conversation, or any philosophical conversation at all, you have to assume all persons in the conversation are honest. They cannot be honest if they do not know they have a duty to tell the truth. The mere opinion or habit that they ought to tell the truth when it suits them is insufficient.
If you believed what you are saying, you would not say it. Your words impeach themselves.
If you don’t know that what you are saying is the truth, why waste my time telling it to me? You might as well tell me about a dream you had last night. It would be the same: a string of words having no relation to reality.
“Is your statement a lie? I assume it is not, for you know it is wrong to tell a lie”
No, you assume it is not because you assume that I, like you, believe that it is wrong to tell a lie. It’s a reasonable assumption, since this is a belief most (though not all) people share.
“If you don’t know that what you are saying is the truth, why waste my time telling it to me? You might as well tell me about a dream you had last night. It would be the same: a string of words having no relation to reality.”
I do know that it’s true that our moral beliefs are subjective. That’s why I’m telling it to you.
So if your own experiences with Jews have been unpleasant, your moral behavior toward them would be formed by those experiences? What of John Doe, whose experiences with black people have comprised a) being accosted and shaken down for money by a black “youth group,” b) his brother being robbed at gun point at his place of employment, c) another brother being tied to a tree, d) getting chased as children from the local basketball court, e) a dead body at the corner, f) gang-bangers taking refuge in the house at said corner followed by business competitors firing shots at said house, g) a cousin raped as a teenager. Does this entitle Doe to take a certain moral stance toward black people at odds with the society around him?
Or should he consider that his own haphazard experiences – which do not rise even to the level of a random sample – ought not take precedence over rational thought and logic?
+ + +
Certainly not to anyone lacking insight. One can ask all sorts of nonsense questions. “What if carbon only had one proton?” (Well, then, it would not be carbon, would it?) “What if God were different?” Well, then, he would not be God, would he? The divine attributes are deduced from the fact of motion in the world, not arbitrarily assigned on whim.
+ + +
Like color and sound? But the problem with idealist philosophies is that they wind up where you are: with the notion that because something exists in the mind, it must necessarily differ from mind to mind. But if this is true of “morality,” then it must also be true of “colors” or “sounds,” indeed of anything that is non-material. So what is green for you may not be green for me. If one were to instead take the nominalist position and hold that such terms were only convenient labels to refer to a group of things, one runs into a different problem: how could you have a label for a group of things if there were nothing in the things by virtue of which they could be called a “group”? Thus, the only coherent position is philosophical realism, and that narrows the choice to Plato or Aristotle. Platonic realism holds that such things are neither objective nor subjective (neither material nor mental), but exist in some “third realm.” Aristotelian realism is more empirical: it holds that such things exist in the mind, but have been abstracted from something real in the physical. Thus, they are not merely subjective, as there is something real that has been abstracted.
“Or should he consider that his own haphazard experiences – which do not rise even to the level of a random sample – ought not take precedence over rational thought and logic?”
Once again, you are ignoring that learning about other people’s experiences is part of one’s experience. I also never said that experience should take precedence over rational thought and logic. They are both components in the formation of morality, along with emotion and instinct.
“Certainly not to anyone lacking insight. One can ask all sorts of nonsense questions. “What if carbon only had one proton?” (Well, then, it would not be carbon, would it?) “What if God were different?” Well, then, he would not be God, would he? The divine attributes are deduced from the fact of motion in the world, not arbitrarily assigned on whim.”
If you think you can deduce the moral wrongness of murder from the fact of motion in the world, I’m open to a demonstration.
“Like color and sound?”
Not exactly. Color and sound have clear external sources. Morality is more like language or measurement. Once we have a system, we can apply it objectively to the physical world, but the system originates in our minds.
“But the problem with idealist philosophies is that they wind up where you are: with the notion that because something exists in the mind, it must necessarily differ from mind to mind. But if this is true of “morality,” then it must also be true of “colors” or “sounds,” indeed of anything that is non-material. So what is green for you may not be green for me.”
I don’t consider myself an idealist, but this is not a very strong objection. It may be that what is green for you may not be green for me. It may, however, be that it is. There is no reason to think that something that exists only in the mind must necessarily differ from mind to mind.
“If one were to instead take the nominalist position and hold that such terms were only convenient labels to refer to a group of things, one runs into a different problem: how could you have a label for a group of things if there were nothing in the things by virtue of which they could be called a “group”?”
Also not much of an objection. The labels/groups could be subjective. (Indeed, it seems very likely that they are.)
“Aristotelian realism is more empirical: it holds that such things exist in the mind, but have been abstracted from something real in the physical. Thus, they are not merely subjective, as there is something real that has been abstracted.”
To an extent, I would agree with this view, but I would still say they are subjective. (Again, why the pejorative “merely?” What is wrong with subjectivity?) The real thing from which they are abstracted is the mind (ie. neural patterns).
“What of John Doe, whose experiences with black people have comprised a) being accosted and shaken down for money by a black “youth group,” b) his brother being robbed at gun point at his place of employment, c) another brother being tied to a tree, d) getting chased as children from the local basketball court, e) a dead body at the corner, f) gang-bangers taking refuge in the house at said corner followed by business competitors firing shots at said house, g) a cousin raped as a teenager. Does this entitle Doe to take a certain moral stance toward black people at odds with the society around him?
“Or should he consider that his own haphazard experiences – which do not rise even to the level of a random sample – ought not take precedence over rational thought and logic?”
I’d actually like to examine this scenario further, because, upon reflection, it’s a perfect case in point for me. Let’s say that the experiences you mention here really are John Doe’s only experiences of black people. He’s never even heard anything about them beyond this. He’s entirely unfamiliar with the history of slavery, the civil rights movement, the current U.S. president, etc. He knows absolutely nothing of black people other than those seven experiences you named. I find it extremely likely that such a person would be racist, and that he would have no way of forming the belief that racism is wrong. It is only by drawing on our own experiences that you or I can say that he should not be racist.
But you disagree. You believe, presumably, that the wrongness of racism can be logically deduced from premises that every person in any conceivable scenario would necessarily share. So, the challenge is, using only premises of which John Doe would be aware, deduce the wrongness of racism.
It could only be deduced by rational people. Those whose reason is impaired by spanking slatterns or other imperfections may vehemently disagree.
But basically:
1) It is wrong to blame one person for the deeds of another.
2) A race is a collective and has no physical existence save as an accidental and temporary collection of genes. That is, a race takes its characteristics from a mere statistical averaging of the characteristics of the actual individual human beings who are culturally assigned to the group.
Question begging. If John Doe believes this, then he already believes racism is wrong. By “premises of which John Doe would be aware,” I meant physical facts, not moral beliefs.
Oh, dear me. Physical facts? You think this is a scientific question!
I’m sorry, I thought I was talking to the person who claimed to be able to deduce the attributes of God (ie. morality) from the fact of motion in the world. Could you send him over to back up his claim please?
It’s in the comments on another post here.
You accused Mr. Wright of thinking that his moral beliefs were tautological, and you want John Doe to only reference physical facts when coming to moral propositions. It seems to me that there is a third approach between these two … that there *is* a sort of universal conscience trying to propel us towards the truth about morality, but that this conscience is easily obscured in logic and emotion.
If that is the case, then finding the truth is neither a matter of admitting the obvious truth (as Mr. Wright might have us think) nor of deducing it from physical facts (as you would prefer it to be), but rather a matter of peeling back the lies and fog in both our hearts and minds until we see clearly.
He’s made several comments that suggested this. “I believe the truth because it is true” and referring to his moral pronouncements as “self evident” and such.
Only because The OFloinn seems to have claimed that it’s possible. I certainly don’t think it is.
I think there are many other approaches.
Again, that was just my interpretation of The OFloinn’s comments on the matter. It’s certainly not what I believe or would prefer.
This strikes me, actually, as pretty similar to the view Rolf Andreassen has been expressing here. The difference, presumably, is that in your case the universal conscience would be (or come from) God, whereas in his it would be the human ideal. I don’t think this is a bad approach. I just don’t think this universal conscience can be demonstrated to exist. My approach, therefore, is simply to rely on my own conscience, as informed by both emotion and logic, as well as all of my experiences, which of course include learning about different systems of morality, religion, history, philosophy, etc. I fully admit this approach isn’t perfect, but I truly believe it’s the best any of us can do.
“Self-evident” ≠ “tautological”
Example of self-evident: The whole is greater than its parts.
Example of tautological: Those individuals of a species that are better fit are more reproductively successful. (But how do we know they are better fit? Because they are reproductively successful.)
I was not trying to say your accusation was wrong; I was trying to convey the distinction I was making while politely staying out of the issue of Mr. Wright’s attitude towards his own beliefs. Sorry I did not make that clearer; I should have said “said” instead of “accused”.
Ah, I see. Thanks for making that clarification.
I admit, I haven’t really been paying close enough attention to the various personalities in this thread to know where I agree or disagree with Rolf Andreassen.
I don’t suppose that there is *proof* that a universal conscience exists, any more than anything outside of mathematics can be proved, but it seems to me that there is good evidence for it. Take murder, for example. Pretty much every society that I’m aware of has frowned on murder in some way. Many societies come up with their own exceptions: self-defense, capital punishment, war, infanticide of weak babies, human sacrifice, or so on. But despite the exceptions, the overall trend is very strong. If there were no objective morality, no universal conscience, then this congruence would be extremely unlikely.
C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere about how adopting Christian morals was not like adopting some arbitrary set of rules, but rather a matter of recognizing within himself something higher, like a schoolboy recognizing something superior about how the older students did something or other, despite a previous conviction against those rules.
There is, probably, little practical difference between relying on your own conscience and believing in a universal conscience, except that you might, perhaps, give a bit more weight to what people have thought throughout history and what people think in other cultures today, than you would otherwise give.
I’ve observed plenty of each.
Because there is no reliable way to determine which is true. Actually, this would still be a problem even if there were no contradictions.
It would be quite likely, actually. In fact, it is an obvious prediction of evolutionary psychology.
By the way, this will likely be my last post here. It’s a huge waste of my time. I just thought I’d give you the courtesy of a response. You’re the only one here who deserves it.
You’ve observed other people’s supernatural experiences? You’ve observed religious belief systems? How could immaterial things like these be observed?
Or are you simply projecting your own beliefs?
“It would be quite likely, actually. In fact, it is an obvious prediction of evolutionary psychology.”
So … according to the theory of evolutionary psychology, there should be a large number of societies where murder was legal and customary, but which failed to reproduce in sufficient numbers to carry on this trait: Is there evidence of this large number of failed murderous cultures?
“By the way, this will likely be my last post here. It’s a huge waste of my time. I just thought I’d give you the courtesy of a response. You’re the only one here who deserves it.”
Which introduces another question: are the rules of logic, or the rule of courtesy based on some universal, or are they, like the rule against murder, an obvious prediction of evolutionary psychology? If so, how shall the polite and logical people discover if they ought to be rude and illogical, or the rude and illogical people discover they ought to be polite and logical? Would not they have to wait until after they have been dead several generations to see which behavior favored the fertility of their offspring or the spread of their laws and customs?
“Because there is no reliable way to determine which is true.”
I would like to discuss this further with you. I’m curious what you would list as the “top contenders” – those sets of religious belief that you think seem the least ridiculous at first glance? If you are interested in having an email discussion with me – if you think it wouldn’t be a waste of your time – you can reach me at annafirtree@gmail.com.
“It would be quite likely, actually. In fact, it is an obvious prediction of evolutionary psychology.”
Yes, that would make a certain amount of sense, but it seems like an inadequate explanation to me. As far as I can tell, the earliest societies we have records for already condemned murder. You can try to claim that by the time we had written history, our psychology had already evolved enough to be anti-murder, but I don’t think you can really say that there is *evidence* for that claim (or at least I know of none); it’s as much an explanation based only in a worldview as is the explanation that we have a universal conscience.
Also, if we evolved to be anti-murder, how is it that we still have as many murderers as we do? Shouldn’t they be as rare as, say, 6-fingered people? If, by the time of Hammurabi’s Code, we had already evolved enough to have laws against manslaughter, how is it we have not shown noticeable evolution in the nearly hundred or so generations since then? (Especially given that we do have evidence of evolution in other regards during that time, such as height). Or do you think there IS some evidence that we have fewer murderers now than we had back then?
Learn to read.
Just for fun, I’ve composed a short play…
John’s Temptation by the Heathen Slattern (or, as I prefer to call it, John’s Senseless Agonizing over His Decision to Have Fun with the Well-Adjusted Woman, or, perhaps most fitting, John’s Wildest Dreams)
Slattern: Spank me, John!
John: I shall not spank you, slattern, hot though it may be, for it would be sinful. And I have three excellent, not at all stupid reasons for saying so. The first, and most important reason, is that we are not married, and our union has not been blessed by God.
Slattern: Who cares?
John: Ah yes, I had forgotten you were an unredeemed heathen in addition to being a slattern. Very well, I shall appeal solely to cold, hard logic with this second reason. Observe. Spanking is an act that is somewhat related to sex but does not have the direct purpose of producing offspring. Thus, it is an unnatural act, and therefore sinful.
Slattern: I think that argument might contain just a few dozen or so hidden premises that I’m probably not likely to accept.
John: I should have known better than to expect a heathen slattern to be capable of logic. The third reason, then, will appeal to your poisonous feminist emotions. Try this on for size. Spanking is degrading!
Slattern: I know. That’s why it’s hot. But, because it’s something I choose to do rather than something someone is forcing me to do (like their housework, as a purely random example), and because I only do it in the privacy of my own bedroom, I really don’t see why I should feel ashamed.
John: Well…because…the reasons!
Slattern: What if you just spank me in an effort to teach me the error of my ways. I’ll still get off on it, but you won’t be sinning.
John: Perfect.
After the spanking…
John: Curse you thricefold, beast of Lucifer! I did become sexually aroused! You have tricked me into sin! As penance, I shall flog myself, which, unlike the spanking, will be entirely just and not at all hot.
Fin.
The difference is that in science, we start with the observations and create the theories to explain them.
Not heliocentrism or Maxwell’s electromagnetism. Science often starts with some intuition, then the search for data that will support it. Ampere created his theory of conducting bodies in just the way you describe; but Maxwell had the intuition that a theory of dielectric bodies would parallel Ampere. It was up to Herz and Boltzmann to fill in the observational gap. Then, too, Einstein developed his theory of relativity from mathematical principles, and it was taught in math departments until, years later, predicted observational evidence was found – at which point, it moved to physics. It’s really not as tidy as the mythos has it.
Or the failure of any rational arguments to demonstrate the existence of God.
Perhaps you missed it.
The case examples start by positing the existence of an entity for which there is no evidence. There’s no point in going further until we get past that.
You had asked how religious claims intersected the “real” world. The items you object to were a number of religious claims followed by their consequences for natural science. They were not proofs of the claims. Don’t ask for one thing and then shift the goal posts complaining it is not another thing.
In fact, if metaphysics were more like natural science rather than more like mathematics, we might follow Carnap’s positivism. Namely, we would start by hypothesizing God and make various predictions from the hypothesis. Then we would collect data to see if those predictions hold. Per Carnap:
If P, then Q1 and Q2 and… Qn
Q1 and Q2 and… Qk
Therefore, P with probability k/n
Now then if we hypothesize the Christian God, it would result in various predictions about nature:
i) a cosmos exists
ii) the cosmos is rationally organized
iii) material bodies can act on one another by their natures
iv) these actions are regular and follow a common course of nature
etc., etc.
The scientific conclusion would be that the existence of such a God is provisionally probable. (Of course, Carnap and the positivists were wrong, so we will not take this too seriously.)
A proper metaphysical argument does not assume God as an hypothesis, but rather starts from some material fact, such as that some things in the world change, and reasons deductively from there.
Do not confuse your visceral rejection of a rational argument with the lack of a rational argument.