Mars Need Women
A continuation of a recent column:
When asked if there was an independent and objective ground for moral judgments, such as, for example, a condemnation of abducting another man’s wife, comments returned three types of replies, of which these below are typical.
The first:
There are many [objective grounds] aren’t there? The need for order. Help me overcome my despair for them. I might reward them. The reasoning I might roll out is endlessly diverse.
This and answers like it assumes the value of moral behavior without saying whence that value comes. It is merely not answering the question.
The second:
Morality is just our introspection of the goal-seeking behavior of the brain. We label paths toward a goal as “good” and paths away from a goal as “bad”. The state space for life is much, much greater than that of chess or Go, so we have to use heuristics to guide our choices. Evolutionary biology shows that nature has used the problem of the iterated prisoner’s dilemma in game theory to shape our brains. We have a “common objective morality” because our brains are similar.
Or, more verbosely:
Morality is an inherent and emergent property of the universe in the same way that gravity is; theoretically equally mathematically modelable and predictable, based on long-term benefit relationships of the sort analyzed (on a very basic level) in the Prisoner’s Dilemma – relationships whose nature and outcomes are as inextricable from the overall structure of this universe as any merely physical interaction. When you feel something is “just wrong”, it’s because it’s written into your DNA to react that way because timeless experience has shown that whatever-it-is should be reacted to in that manner because if you don’t have that reaction it will be the worse for you and those like you over time, in the same way that fear of heights is not really irrational.
This and answers like it assumes that identifying an instinct or genetic compulsion to perform a behavior is the same as saying the behavior is valuable, without saying whence that value comes. It is speaking on an irrelevant topic, the historical cause of the desire for morality, without addressing the question of the formal or final cause of morality, that is, without saying why morality is objective, or what morality is for. It ignores the question while pretending to answer it.
It is also scientific gibberish. When some scientists isolates the ‘evil’ gene, then is the time to assert that moral judgments and legal reasoning principles are somehow ‘written’ into our DNA.
Until then, one might as well say your moral judgments are due to the influence of Jupiter ascending in Libra at the hour of your birth. If you are going to believe in magic, at least have the dignity to bow to stars and shining planets rather than bow to sperm.
And, far less reasonable, the third:
“My aversion to kidnapping women is simply a brute fact about who and how I am. I don’t like people who kidnap women; I would enjoy doing violence to them.”
This and answers like it takes morality as a given, and ignores the question with a show of grand disdain, as if a lack of curiosity about these paramount issues was praiseworthy rather than shameful.
Now, my argument, for those who care to understand what is actually being said, is that atheists can give no coherent reason to support a belief in an objective moral order to the universe, a law binding on all rational beings.
Let us use a simple example. A Martian from the movie MARS NEEDS WOMEN kidnaps the lovely Yvonne Craig.
I assume every red blooded man, once he overcomes a shameful twinge of envy, will decry the act as a morally evil act, not merely an act he prefers not to be done. That is, all men will talk and act as if the abduction violates an objective standard to which the Martian is obligated to adhere, and which obligation the Martian has broken.
It is also true that this act may cause the Martian discomfort, as when, for example, the ferocious yet lovely Miss Craig claws out his eyes.
Suppose for the sake of argument the Martian successfully performs the abduction with minimal discomfort to himself, perhaps because he is equipped with girl-fingernail-scratch-proof goggles, and retreats to his exotic pleasure-dome atop Olympus Mons, beyond any reach of any possible Earthboy retaliation.
The sadistic Martian forces Miss Craig to dress up in a slinky costume, paint herself green, and dance suggestive dances for his selfish yet prurient pleasure.
No manmade law nor any evolved gene is shared between the two worlds. All arguments about genetic similarities between human brains being the historical cause of a desire for a moral code can be tossed aside as irrelevant here. Our Martian has a Martian brain, and he may or may not have been evolved to care about the sacrament of marriage or the dignity of the human person.
The question we are addressing is why morality is universal, for example, why it recognizes all persons who are moral actors as having an innate value.
If rational beings have an innate moral value, that is a fact, and it is true whether you are a member of a race (such as Martians are) whose brain programs you to treat others as beings possessing innate moral dignity, or whether you are a member of a race (as I am) whose brain programs you to treat luscious earthgirls as tools for your own selfish prurient pleasure.
My point is not that I am programed to carry off Yvonne Craig to my exotic pleasure palace on Mars. The point is that whether it is right or wrong to do so does not depend on whether I am programmed to do so. If it is wrong, it is wrong whether I am programmed to do so or not; if it is not wrong, it is not wrong whether I am programmed to do so or not.
Hence the question of how (or if) our brains are programmed has no meaning whatever.
Again, if all morality is manmade, we have a situation here were there is no possibility of a law or social contract common between two worlds.
We can speculate that there is the potential for some form of social contract between the two worlds, and that the Martian, by coming on a Craignapping expedition rather than a peaceful first contact, suffers what economists call an opportunity cost, that is, he may have sour future relations with earthbabes. But the argument that there should be a social contract to forbid dance abduction between planets is irrelevant.
Nonetheless, we are talking about Yvonne Craig here, so the prudential judgment as to whether future earth visits have to overcome a slight wobble in public relations versus the clear and present pleasure of forcing her into the exotic dance harem is a judgment that we can all agree every red blooded, or green blooded, young Martian warlord will not necessarily make in favor of public relations. It is simply not the case that favorable future relations with the Earth necessary outweigh the present benefit of relations with Miss Craig in a dance costume.
So by hypothesis, this act of craignapping cannot be called imprudent or inefficient. Is it evil? Has our Martian dance fancier committed an evil act?
Those of you who say ‘no’ may leave the planet. You have excused yourself from the human race.
Those of you who say ‘yes’ must give an account, that is, give a rational reason for saying so. This is not necessarily to persuade others to help you fend off dancenappers. It is to show that you can give a rational account for your answer.
Please note that a Christian has no philosophical difficulty should he deduce that act is a moral evil even when done by a Martian. The Martian is part of creation and hence is subject to the proprietary, the paternal and the royal and the divine authority of the Creator, who as his creator, his father, his sovereign and his god would have the right to condemn the act as evil even if He lacked the power. (Being omnipotent and eternal, as a matter of happy coincidence, the Creator also has the authority conferred by merely practical considerations).
For the atheist, there are only two tactics of response: one is merely to admit that there is no objective reason for the moral judgment, and to call moral judgments a matter of mere personal taste like preferring pie to cake.
This is too obviously false to bother rebuking, but it is the tactic of the comment (and those like it) who simply boasts that the desire to retaliate against abductors is part of his nature.
So what? Abducting women might be part of the Martian nature.
(It is certainly part of Roman Nature, e.g. the Abduction of the Sabine Women, not to mention Mohammedan Nature, e.g. Boko Haram.)
By the “its my nature” logic, one nature is no more valid than another. This logic leads us to the conclusion that a rapist is no worse than a rescuer. That conclusion makes nonsense of this and all moral questions: it is absurd. When one reaches an absurd conclusion, it is time to back up and check your axioms.
Another tactic to avoid the question of the objectivity of morality is tacitly to assume a moral order to the universe, and only to discuss practical or pragmatic reasons for adhering to it, without ever actually coming out and saying there is a moral order to the universe or how it got there. This is the tactic of the first comment, which lists a number of reasons, not one of which suffices, in and of itself, to account for a moral imperative.
One cannot deduce an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.
Saying there is a need for order is meaningless unless you also say Thou Shalt Create Order When Needed. That is, the mere fact that order does not exist does not create a moral imperative to create order in response to that need unless we first assume that creating order when needed is a moral imperative.
Saying you are in despair means nothing unless you also say Thou Shalt Help Others In Their Hour of Despair. That my neighbor is in despair creates no moral duty unless helping my neighbor in despair is first a moral law.
Saying you might reward me does not create a duty to help you unless you first say Thou Shalt Help Those Who Rewardeth Thee. Again, the mere fact that you stand ready to reward me if I help you might create a desire, prompted by love of money, to help you, but it does not create a moral imperative to help you, unless we first agree that it is wrong not to help those who promise rewards. An appeal to my self interest is not an appeal to a sense of duty you and I both know would exist in this hypothetical.
Everyone reading these words knows and cannot help but know, that in this hypothetical situation we would all have a duty to help defeat the Martian and rescue Yvonne Craig, and that it would be evil to cheer him on or help him or leave her in his filthy clutches.
That is a fact, which I hold to be is safely beyond dispute. One might pretend kidnapping wives or dancing girls is licit for the sake of argument, but anyone in real life actually having that as his real opinion should be killed immediately by all honest men as a matter of our own self protection, and the protection of our wives and daughters. As a practical matter of self preservation, if nothing else, the matter is safely beyond dispute. We all know right from wrong in his case.
The question then is what can account for that fact, and actually account for it, not simply explain it away, or blame it on stars or sperms?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
