The Boston Sunday Globe has an article in its Ideas section by Ed Power (behind the paywall) today called "What Tolkien Didn't Do". The article is concerned with making the point that Tolkien is not truly the father of modern fantasy (the author has in mind works like Game of Thrones). The argument is that modern fantasy owes more to the pulp fiction of the 20's and 30's than to Tolkien.
It's clear along the way that the author is not a big fan of Tolkien (guilty of "plodding" prose), and in particular what he thinks of as the simplistic moral universe of Tolkien. Tolkien has an "old-fashioned sense of moral certainty" and his failings include "prudishness, his sometimes archaic prose, and his Boy Scout characters." Power much prefers the grittier worlds of pulp fiction: "A cesspool of inequity [sic - does he mean iniquity?], populated with feuding guilds, conspiratorial cults, and cutthroats lying in wait. Lankhmar feels vividly alive in a way Middleearth arguably never does. You can almost smell the exotic spices, the open gutters, the freshly spilled blood."
I'm not concerned with whether Tolkien truly is the father of modern fantasy, but I would dispute the common presumption that "gritty" fiction is somehow more realistic than the allegedly simplistic fiction of a writer like Tolkien. Ultimately, it involves the mistake of thinking that vice is more real than virtue. But Boy Scouts, whether or not Power has a use for them, are after all real people. And as philosophers since Plato have argued, vice cannot be more real than virtue (or evil than good), because both vice and evil are parasitic on virtue and the good. The feuding guilds, conspiratorial cults and cutthroats of Lankhmar are only possible because somewhere else in that universe are good, ordinary (and, from the sophisticated perspective of Power, boring) people tending the crops, spinning the wool, minding the shops and raising the children. Without the latter the former would soon starve to death. But the latter can get on quite well without the former, in fact better without them, which is why the classical philosophers understood that good is more fundamental, and real, than evil - even if modern pulp writers prefer not to show the goodness on which their worlds depend.
Tolkien was not afraid to show it. The difference between Tolkien and the pulp writers preferred by Power is not the presence of conspiratorial cults and cutthroats in the one and their absence in the other. Middle Earth has its cult of Saruman and its conspiracies (Grima Wormtongue). The difference is rather the location of the moral center of the story. In The Lord of The Rings the moral center is The Shire, the pastoral home of the Hobbits inspired by the English countryside of Tolkien's youth (a real place, after all). The Shire is real, perhaps the most real place in Middle Earth (except, perhaps Rivendell), and it is rather evil places like the Mines of Moria and Mordor that suffer a murky reality in comparison. The story has morally complex characters (like Boromir) but there is never any doubt that some things are truly good and others truly evil - and "there is some good in this world, and it is worth fighting for" (Sam Gamgee).
Contemporary writers like Power find such moral certainty unsophisticated- or "old-fashioned." The use of "old-fashioned" as a criticism is revealing, however, as it is nothing other than an historical conceit. Surely the relevant question regarding moral certainty is whether it is true or false, not whether it is old-fashioned, for if moral certainty is possible, would it not remain stable over time? What's really going on is that Power find's Tolkien's description of goodness boring (thus the "plodding") and wants to dismiss it without doing the work to substantively address it, and what easier way to do that than to dismiss it in terms of the calendar.
But Power never addresses the fact that Tolkien has an enduring permanence that his favorite pulp writers do not. The Lord of the Rings is a work beloved by more than just fantasy nerds. And that is because the pulp works provide a certain superficial thrill, but having no moral center - and you can't have one without moral certainty - they have no depth and no staying power. Men may dabble with the fun of the gutter or conspiracies, but what they really want is to come home - to the Shire.
Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Thursday, October 24, 2013
The Empathic Civilization or The Just Civilization?
My brother pointed out an interesting video by Jeremy Rifkin here, on what Rifkin calls The Empathic Civilization. The basic idea is that we are hardwired for empathy and should strive to expand our range of empathy beyond tribe and nation to embrace the whole world, and even into the animal kingdom.
That's all well and good, but the problem is that empathy by itself isn't enough to serve as a moral guide. I may feel empathy for both the Red Sox and the Cardinals in the World Series, but one of them has to win and one of them has to lose. More seriously, our moral life often consists in making difficult choices between parties both of whom may engage our empathy. We may empathize with the poor man and support taxes to help him, but might we not also empathize with the working man who has his life's work confiscated from him through those taxes? We may empathize with the young woman who finds herself pregnant when she didn't plan it, but what about empathy for the unborn child in her womb who finds himself a potential victim of abortion? Empathy by itself doesn't decide which empathy takes precedence.
Even when empathy has a clear focus, it is not always a good guide. We may empathize with a child getting a shot, but we understand that the shot is in the best interests of the child even if getting it is unpleasant. More important than empathy is a well-developed sense of justice, which is simply willing the good for others - whether we empathize with them or not. We owe it to a child to give him the shots he needs whether he likes it or not, and however we feel about it.
Using empathy as a moral guide is to mistake the engine for the captain. Empathy can drive us to act for the good of others, but it doesn't by itself reveal what that good is or how it is to be achieved, nor how to balance competing goods. For that we need justice.
That's all well and good, but the problem is that empathy by itself isn't enough to serve as a moral guide. I may feel empathy for both the Red Sox and the Cardinals in the World Series, but one of them has to win and one of them has to lose. More seriously, our moral life often consists in making difficult choices between parties both of whom may engage our empathy. We may empathize with the poor man and support taxes to help him, but might we not also empathize with the working man who has his life's work confiscated from him through those taxes? We may empathize with the young woman who finds herself pregnant when she didn't plan it, but what about empathy for the unborn child in her womb who finds himself a potential victim of abortion? Empathy by itself doesn't decide which empathy takes precedence.
Even when empathy has a clear focus, it is not always a good guide. We may empathize with a child getting a shot, but we understand that the shot is in the best interests of the child even if getting it is unpleasant. More important than empathy is a well-developed sense of justice, which is simply willing the good for others - whether we empathize with them or not. We owe it to a child to give him the shots he needs whether he likes it or not, and however we feel about it.
Using empathy as a moral guide is to mistake the engine for the captain. Empathy can drive us to act for the good of others, but it doesn't by itself reveal what that good is or how it is to be achieved, nor how to balance competing goods. For that we need justice.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Sam Harris and the Moral Landscape
Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values is several years old at this point but is still generating controversy. Ross Douthat's recent take on it is here. For my part, Harris is worth reading because of the straightforward, transparent manner in which he argues his case; Harris is an honest atheist and sincerely wishes to rationally persuade his audience. He also has a certain philosophical naivete, such that he does not always perceive the philosophical consequences of his positions, consequences that atheists have long struggled to avoid. I think this latter aspect of Harris's writing accounts for the not quite friendly response he has gotten from some secular reviewers. But more on this later.
Harris has issued a challenge to critics, offering a cash award for the best criticism of his book and an even larger cash award if that criticism persuades him. (Given that Harris is by definition the judge of the latter, it's not too much of a leap to suppose that prize is in no danger of being won.) I might submit an essay to this challenge just to see what happens. If I do, the essay will run along ideas like the following.
Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape acknowledges a fundamental challenge to his attempt to determine human values through science: If it is through science that human values are to be determined, how is the value of science itself to be determined? Harris recognizes the only possible answer: Science cannot determine its own value, so that value must be recognized pre-scientifically:
In the chapter "The Future of Happiness", he argues in this way:
The interest of finding truth through science is, of course, the principal interest Harris has in mind. In the Afterword to the paperback edition, Harris puts the matter in a way that makes the philosophical implications clear:
The italicized sentence is the one that will cause heartache in Harris's secular critics, for although Harris appears not to know it, it is a foundational principle of traditional natural law philosophy, something modern philosophers have been hoping to discredit since the Enlightenment. Indeed, the typical modern philosopher thinks natural law philosophy was discredited at the dawn of the Enlightenment with the "discovery" of the fact-value distinction. This is why Harris's secular critics sometimes, like Colin McGinn, simply repeat the fact-value distinction and think they are done - for the fact-value distinction is a foundational principle of modern philosophy and functions as something of a litmus test. Denying it serves to identify oneself as one of those naive pre-modern philosophers who still believes in things like the natural law, and therefore may be justifiably and summarily dismissed (which is what McGinn does).
As I say, one of the attractive features of Harris is his relative philosophical innocence with respect to the larger philosophical battles waging around him. He simply calls things as he sees them, and does not hedge his views or couch them in obscurity for the sake of broader philosophical consequences. In this case, Harris acknowledges what is obviously true, that there are certain values (certain "oughts") that are self-evident to human reason and need no other justification. He does this because he sees the self-evident value of scientific inquiry. What he doesn't see (which his secular critics recognize with horror) is how much of modern philosophy is undermined, and classical philosophy affirmed, with that simple acknowledgement.
For starters, the Kantian project is shown to be misguided. For Kant's premise is that nothing can be truly known without a prior evaluation of the range of human reason - a "critique" of reason that defines its powers and limits. But if the value of something (in this case science) can be immediately known absent a prior critique, then the Kantian project is shown to be unnecessary and even counter-productive, since it may result in the obscuring of truth that can be immediately known yet might not survive a critique.
Harris doesn't see that the consequentialism he favors - and is popular amongst modern philosophers - is put in danger by acknowledgement of fundamental natural law principle:
But Harris has already given us an instance of where the talk of value without respect to potential consequences is not empty: Talk about the value of science itself, which is based on an "ought" built into the foundations of human thought, not demonstrated via its consequences. Given that Harris acknowledges the existence of at least one pre-consequentialist "ought", he must acknowledge the possibility that there might be others (maybe there isn't, but the possibility can't simply be dismissed without investigation). And if there are other pre-consequentialist "oughts", they must be discovered and understood and consequentialist conclusions evaluated in light of them rather than vice-versa.
Another way of saying the point is this: Harris recognizes that "certain oughts are built right into the foundations of human thought." He has in mind the value of science. We "ought" to prefer truth to falsehood and science is the best way of distinguishing between the two. His project is to recognize the value of science pre-scientifically, then use science to bootstrap a comprehensive theory of good and evil. All well and good.
But he fails to see certain consequences of this view. The first is that it is clear that the most important values are the ones known pre-scientifically, for it is on the pre-scientific value of science itself that Harris's whole project is based. All other values stand or fall on it. The second consequence is that there may be other pre-scientific values other than the value of science itself, other "oughts" built right into the foundations of human thought. Simply because Harris only recognizes the value of science and simply ignores any other possible pre-scientific values does not mean that they are not there (and, incidentally, violates Harris's oft-stated distinction between "no answers in practice" and "no answers in principle" p. 3)
It is no good to critique other possible pre-scientific values based on the results of Harris's scientific inquiry into morality: For those other potential pre-scientific values compete with science at the level of science's own value. To take the value of science for granted, then evaluate other potential pre-scientific values in light of science's conclusions, is simply to beg the question against other pre-scientific values that might compete with the value of science. Those other candidate's for value must be evaluated the same way the value of science was: Pre-scientifically.
What I have been just discussing exposes a typical misunderstanding of natural law philosophy found in writers like, well, Sam Harris. Traditional opposition to things like abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage and contraception comes in for rough treatment by Harris in The Moral Landscape, where he writes as though his scientific morality case against traditional views is conclusive almost before he states it. What he doesn't understand is that his case for his scientific morality on those questions begs the question against traditional natural law opposition to them: For that natural law opposition operates at the level of pre-scientific value, "oughts" built right into the foundation of human thought itself, and is susceptible to criticism of the "scientific morality" sort only to the extent that the question is begged.
The natural law opposition may be opposed, but it must be done in the same way that the pre-scientific value of science was defended - not through science, but a philosophical case.
The irony of Harris's project, an irony that I think his modernist critics recognize and want to distance themselves from, is that to the extent Harris is right he must leave off the scientific criticism of the things he most wants to attack (traditional moral views on matters sexual and life-related) and fight them on the traditionalists own turf in the arena of natural law. For the game is all about those pre-scientific values - by Harris's own account the most important ones - that he acknowledges exist but modern philosophers have been struggling to banish to the realm of mythology since the sixteenth century.
The Moral Landscape is, I think, a case of needing to be careful what you wish for.
I will have more to say about Harris's book and its relation to traditional thinking on morality in subsequent posts.
Harris has issued a challenge to critics, offering a cash award for the best criticism of his book and an even larger cash award if that criticism persuades him. (Given that Harris is by definition the judge of the latter, it's not too much of a leap to suppose that prize is in no danger of being won.) I might submit an essay to this challenge just to see what happens. If I do, the essay will run along ideas like the following.
Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape acknowledges a fundamental challenge to his attempt to determine human values through science: If it is through science that human values are to be determined, how is the value of science itself to be determined? Harris recognizes the only possible answer: Science cannot determine its own value, so that value must be recognized pre-scientifically:
Science is defined with reference to the goal of understanding the processes at work in the universe. Can we justify this goal scientifically? Of course not. Does this make science itself unscientific? If so, we appear to have pulled ourselves down by our bootstraps. (p. 17 - all references to paperback edition)
In the chapter "The Future of Happiness", he argues in this way:
It seems to me, however, that in order to fulfill our deepest interests in this life, both personally and collectively, we must first admit that some interests are more defensible than others. Indeed, some interests are so compelling that they need no defense at all. (p. 191)
The interest of finding truth through science is, of course, the principal interest Harris has in mind. In the Afterword to the paperback edition, Harris puts the matter in a way that makes the philosophical implications clear:
The fatal flaw that Blackford claims to have found in my view of morality could be ascribed to any branch of science - or to reason generally. Certain "oughts" are built right into the foundations of human thought. We need not apologize for pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps in this way. It is better than pulling ourselves down by them. (p.201-202, emphasis mine)
The italicized sentence is the one that will cause heartache in Harris's secular critics, for although Harris appears not to know it, it is a foundational principle of traditional natural law philosophy, something modern philosophers have been hoping to discredit since the Enlightenment. Indeed, the typical modern philosopher thinks natural law philosophy was discredited at the dawn of the Enlightenment with the "discovery" of the fact-value distinction. This is why Harris's secular critics sometimes, like Colin McGinn, simply repeat the fact-value distinction and think they are done - for the fact-value distinction is a foundational principle of modern philosophy and functions as something of a litmus test. Denying it serves to identify oneself as one of those naive pre-modern philosophers who still believes in things like the natural law, and therefore may be justifiably and summarily dismissed (which is what McGinn does).
As I say, one of the attractive features of Harris is his relative philosophical innocence with respect to the larger philosophical battles waging around him. He simply calls things as he sees them, and does not hedge his views or couch them in obscurity for the sake of broader philosophical consequences. In this case, Harris acknowledges what is obviously true, that there are certain values (certain "oughts") that are self-evident to human reason and need no other justification. He does this because he sees the self-evident value of scientific inquiry. What he doesn't see (which his secular critics recognize with horror) is how much of modern philosophy is undermined, and classical philosophy affirmed, with that simple acknowledgement.
For starters, the Kantian project is shown to be misguided. For Kant's premise is that nothing can be truly known without a prior evaluation of the range of human reason - a "critique" of reason that defines its powers and limits. But if the value of something (in this case science) can be immediately known absent a prior critique, then the Kantian project is shown to be unnecessary and even counter-productive, since it may result in the obscuring of truth that can be immediately known yet might not survive a critique.
Harris doesn't see that the consequentialism he favors - and is popular amongst modern philosophers - is put in danger by acknowledgement of fundamental natural law principle:
Here is my (consequentialist) starting point: all questions of value (right and wrong, good and evil, etc.) depend upon the possibility of experiencing such value. Without potential consequences at the level of experience - happiness, suffering, joy, despair, etc. - all talk of value is empty. Therefore, to say that an act is morally necessary, or evil, or blameless, is to make (tacit) claims about its consequences in the lives of conscious creatures (whether actual or potential). (p. 62)
But Harris has already given us an instance of where the talk of value without respect to potential consequences is not empty: Talk about the value of science itself, which is based on an "ought" built into the foundations of human thought, not demonstrated via its consequences. Given that Harris acknowledges the existence of at least one pre-consequentialist "ought", he must acknowledge the possibility that there might be others (maybe there isn't, but the possibility can't simply be dismissed without investigation). And if there are other pre-consequentialist "oughts", they must be discovered and understood and consequentialist conclusions evaluated in light of them rather than vice-versa.
Another way of saying the point is this: Harris recognizes that "certain oughts are built right into the foundations of human thought." He has in mind the value of science. We "ought" to prefer truth to falsehood and science is the best way of distinguishing between the two. His project is to recognize the value of science pre-scientifically, then use science to bootstrap a comprehensive theory of good and evil. All well and good.
But he fails to see certain consequences of this view. The first is that it is clear that the most important values are the ones known pre-scientifically, for it is on the pre-scientific value of science itself that Harris's whole project is based. All other values stand or fall on it. The second consequence is that there may be other pre-scientific values other than the value of science itself, other "oughts" built right into the foundations of human thought. Simply because Harris only recognizes the value of science and simply ignores any other possible pre-scientific values does not mean that they are not there (and, incidentally, violates Harris's oft-stated distinction between "no answers in practice" and "no answers in principle" p. 3)
It is no good to critique other possible pre-scientific values based on the results of Harris's scientific inquiry into morality: For those other potential pre-scientific values compete with science at the level of science's own value. To take the value of science for granted, then evaluate other potential pre-scientific values in light of science's conclusions, is simply to beg the question against other pre-scientific values that might compete with the value of science. Those other candidate's for value must be evaluated the same way the value of science was: Pre-scientifically.
What I have been just discussing exposes a typical misunderstanding of natural law philosophy found in writers like, well, Sam Harris. Traditional opposition to things like abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage and contraception comes in for rough treatment by Harris in The Moral Landscape, where he writes as though his scientific morality case against traditional views is conclusive almost before he states it. What he doesn't understand is that his case for his scientific morality on those questions begs the question against traditional natural law opposition to them: For that natural law opposition operates at the level of pre-scientific value, "oughts" built right into the foundation of human thought itself, and is susceptible to criticism of the "scientific morality" sort only to the extent that the question is begged.
The natural law opposition may be opposed, but it must be done in the same way that the pre-scientific value of science was defended - not through science, but a philosophical case.
The irony of Harris's project, an irony that I think his modernist critics recognize and want to distance themselves from, is that to the extent Harris is right he must leave off the scientific criticism of the things he most wants to attack (traditional moral views on matters sexual and life-related) and fight them on the traditionalists own turf in the arena of natural law. For the game is all about those pre-scientific values - by Harris's own account the most important ones - that he acknowledges exist but modern philosophers have been struggling to banish to the realm of mythology since the sixteenth century.
The Moral Landscape is, I think, a case of needing to be careful what you wish for.
I will have more to say about Harris's book and its relation to traditional thinking on morality in subsequent posts.
Friday, October 4, 2013
The Breaking Bad Finale and Moral Truth
/*** Warning Breaking Bad Spoiler Alert ***/
Breaking Bad may be the best television series ever. Certainly I can't remember savoring every moment of a series the way I have this one. And the series finale lived up to the quality of the rest of the series. Vince Gilligan did his fans a service by resolving all the major plot lines and not taking a cheap way out (ala Lost).
But although I enjoyed the series finale, it did nonetheless break the arc of the plot and, in the end, muddled the moral truth that was at the heart of the series. Gilligan has stated that his idea with Breaking Bad was to turn "Mr. Chips into Scarface". Walter White certainly started out as Mr. Chips, but he wasn't really Scarface at the end. In fact, in many ways Walter White at the end of the series is a more virtuous man than the Walter White at the beginning of the series.
At the series start, Walter White is a mild-mannered chemistry teacher and something of a milquetoast. He lacks self-confidence in everything but his chemistry. Diagnosed with cancer, he embarks on a secret career as a crystal meth producer in order to make money for his cancer treatments and to leave a legacy to his wife and family. In this secret life Walter is put in a number of life and death, kill or be killed situations that force him to find inner resources of courage, cleverness and coolness under pressure. In that sense, Walter grows in virtue through his criminal life, for courage and coolness under fire are certainly virtues. This is all well and good because Walter also grows in ruthlessness and develops a coldly calculating heart, to the point that, besides committing a number of cold-blooded murders, he also permits a girl to drown in her own vomit and poisons a child. It is clear that Walter is becoming an evil man, even a monster, and whatever practical virtues he has developed are overshadowed by the degeneration of his soul and its moral compass. One of the great virtues of the show is the manner in which it shows that Walter, even as he grows in self-confidence and practical cleverness, becomes ever moral blind to both the moral truth and the truth of his own nature.
And this is, of course, one of the consequences of sin. We don't become wise through sin, we become ignorant. Sin leads to darkness and lies to oneself and to others, not self-awareness. The Godfather series shows this in Part 2, which ends with Michael sitting silently alone in his Lake Tahoe boathouse, pondering his life as the execution of his brother is carried out on his orders out on the water. There is no flash of self-awareness, just a parade of images of where he was and where he is now, which only serves to show how much more (morally) attractive Michael was at the beginning of the series than he is now.
Breaking Bad shows this through most of its length as Walter's lies become ever more elaborate and his rationalizations ever more flimsy. In the penultimate episode Walter kidnaps his own daughter and calls his wife with the authorities listening on her end. He engages in a self-justifying, irrational rant that his brother-in-law got what was coming to him by crossing Walter. This would have been an excellent way to end the series, or to end it by following it up with the traditional shootout with the police ("Top of the world!"). But it turns out that the phone call was really just a clever con job by Walter to get his wife off the hook, who was in trouble for being an accessory to his crimes.
In the last episode, Walter has one final meeting with his wife, where he admits that his standard justification for his criminal life ("everything I did was for the family") was a lie: In fact, he admits, everything he did was for himself and because he liked it. It made him feel alive. This is a level of self-awareness well beyond that of the Mr. Chips at the beginning of the series, and it is a level of self-awareness that should not be available to someone who has corrupted himself through sin as deeply as has Walter White. Despite his crimes, the Walter White at the end of the series is more attractive than the Walter White at the beginning of the series. The later Walter is stronger, more courageous, more self-aware, and even more at peace with himself than the earlier Walter. This makes for an enjoyable ending, but not one genuinely reflective of the moral character of the universe.
Breaking Bad may be the best television series ever. Certainly I can't remember savoring every moment of a series the way I have this one. And the series finale lived up to the quality of the rest of the series. Vince Gilligan did his fans a service by resolving all the major plot lines and not taking a cheap way out (ala Lost).
But although I enjoyed the series finale, it did nonetheless break the arc of the plot and, in the end, muddled the moral truth that was at the heart of the series. Gilligan has stated that his idea with Breaking Bad was to turn "Mr. Chips into Scarface". Walter White certainly started out as Mr. Chips, but he wasn't really Scarface at the end. In fact, in many ways Walter White at the end of the series is a more virtuous man than the Walter White at the beginning of the series.
At the series start, Walter White is a mild-mannered chemistry teacher and something of a milquetoast. He lacks self-confidence in everything but his chemistry. Diagnosed with cancer, he embarks on a secret career as a crystal meth producer in order to make money for his cancer treatments and to leave a legacy to his wife and family. In this secret life Walter is put in a number of life and death, kill or be killed situations that force him to find inner resources of courage, cleverness and coolness under pressure. In that sense, Walter grows in virtue through his criminal life, for courage and coolness under fire are certainly virtues. This is all well and good because Walter also grows in ruthlessness and develops a coldly calculating heart, to the point that, besides committing a number of cold-blooded murders, he also permits a girl to drown in her own vomit and poisons a child. It is clear that Walter is becoming an evil man, even a monster, and whatever practical virtues he has developed are overshadowed by the degeneration of his soul and its moral compass. One of the great virtues of the show is the manner in which it shows that Walter, even as he grows in self-confidence and practical cleverness, becomes ever moral blind to both the moral truth and the truth of his own nature.
And this is, of course, one of the consequences of sin. We don't become wise through sin, we become ignorant. Sin leads to darkness and lies to oneself and to others, not self-awareness. The Godfather series shows this in Part 2, which ends with Michael sitting silently alone in his Lake Tahoe boathouse, pondering his life as the execution of his brother is carried out on his orders out on the water. There is no flash of self-awareness, just a parade of images of where he was and where he is now, which only serves to show how much more (morally) attractive Michael was at the beginning of the series than he is now.
Breaking Bad shows this through most of its length as Walter's lies become ever more elaborate and his rationalizations ever more flimsy. In the penultimate episode Walter kidnaps his own daughter and calls his wife with the authorities listening on her end. He engages in a self-justifying, irrational rant that his brother-in-law got what was coming to him by crossing Walter. This would have been an excellent way to end the series, or to end it by following it up with the traditional shootout with the police ("Top of the world!"). But it turns out that the phone call was really just a clever con job by Walter to get his wife off the hook, who was in trouble for being an accessory to his crimes.
In the last episode, Walter has one final meeting with his wife, where he admits that his standard justification for his criminal life ("everything I did was for the family") was a lie: In fact, he admits, everything he did was for himself and because he liked it. It made him feel alive. This is a level of self-awareness well beyond that of the Mr. Chips at the beginning of the series, and it is a level of self-awareness that should not be available to someone who has corrupted himself through sin as deeply as has Walter White. Despite his crimes, the Walter White at the end of the series is more attractive than the Walter White at the beginning of the series. The later Walter is stronger, more courageous, more self-aware, and even more at peace with himself than the earlier Walter. This makes for an enjoyable ending, but not one genuinely reflective of the moral character of the universe.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Dennis Prager and the Natural Law
Richard Dawkins, unsurprisingly, thinks that religion doesn't provide us with a true moral compass. Dennis Prager responds to Richard Dawkins's at National Review here.
Unfortunately, Prager's argument undermines itself. He seems to favor some version of a divine command theory of morality: "To put this as clearly as possible: If there is no God who says, 'Do not murder,' murder is not wrong." He then goes on to denigrate reason in its quest to discover the nature of good and evil:
The question naturally arises as to why Prager is writing the article at all. If reason is little more than rationalization, and if reason loses when it collides with self-interest, who is the intended audience? Those who already agree with Prager need no convincing, and those who don't won't be convinced by his arguments - since they will rationalize in favor of their self-interest. The only point of writing an article in the first place is if reason, at least sometimes, can overcome self-interest and rationalization and apprehend the truth. To the extent that Dawkins believes this more than does Prager, I'm on the side of Dawkins.
I wonder if Prager has thought through his divine command theory of morality. The natural law view is that God wrote morality into the very fabric of the universe; it isn't something he later pasted on with the Ten Commandments. (Was murder okay before God announced its immorality on Sinai?) Murder is wrong because it is the nature of rational creatures to be ends in themselves; it is true that God is ultimately responsible for the creation of this nature, but it is also true that it is possible to reason to the nature of man (to the extent of appreciating him as an end in himself) while failing to reason to the existence of God, or to God as conceived by Judaism and Christianity. If murder is only wrong because God says it is, rather than being written into the nature of man himself, then man can't be an end in himself (otherwise there would be the possibility of reasoning to morality which Prager denies). It would then follow that man may be licitly used as a means (rather than an end in himself) unless God has explicitly spoken against the case in question. Slavery, for instance, is the paradigmatic case of treating a man as a means rather than an end, and it is famously permitted in the Old Testament (as atheists are not shy about pointing out). Neither it is explicitly condemned in the New Testament, although here the case is a little more ambiguous given certain Pauline texts (e.g. the Letter to Philemon). Since God has not explicitly condemned slavery, what is the basis for condemning it? There is either a case founded on reason or there is no case at all.
Generally speaking, God's pronouncements to us are necessarily finite (we can only listen to so much) but the moral life is potentially infinite; it is forever presenting us with novel circumstances and situations. Either we can reason our way to an authentic moral understanding of such novelties, or our divine command version of morality will always be a day late and a dollar short.
Unfortunately, Prager's argument undermines itself. He seems to favor some version of a divine command theory of morality: "To put this as clearly as possible: If there is no God who says, 'Do not murder,' murder is not wrong." He then goes on to denigrate reason in its quest to discover the nature of good and evil:
So, then, without God, why is murder wrong?Is it, as Dawkins argues, because reason says so?
My reason says murder is wrong, just as Dawkins's reason does. But, again, so what? The pre-Christian Germanic tribes of Europe regarded the Church's teaching that murder was wrong as preposterous. They reasoned that killing innocent people was acceptable and normal because the strong should do whatever they wanted. In addition, reason alone without God is pretty weak in leading to moral behavior. When self-interest and reason collide, reason usually loses. That's why we have the word 'rationalize' - using reason to argue for what is wrong.
The question naturally arises as to why Prager is writing the article at all. If reason is little more than rationalization, and if reason loses when it collides with self-interest, who is the intended audience? Those who already agree with Prager need no convincing, and those who don't won't be convinced by his arguments - since they will rationalize in favor of their self-interest. The only point of writing an article in the first place is if reason, at least sometimes, can overcome self-interest and rationalization and apprehend the truth. To the extent that Dawkins believes this more than does Prager, I'm on the side of Dawkins.
I wonder if Prager has thought through his divine command theory of morality. The natural law view is that God wrote morality into the very fabric of the universe; it isn't something he later pasted on with the Ten Commandments. (Was murder okay before God announced its immorality on Sinai?) Murder is wrong because it is the nature of rational creatures to be ends in themselves; it is true that God is ultimately responsible for the creation of this nature, but it is also true that it is possible to reason to the nature of man (to the extent of appreciating him as an end in himself) while failing to reason to the existence of God, or to God as conceived by Judaism and Christianity. If murder is only wrong because God says it is, rather than being written into the nature of man himself, then man can't be an end in himself (otherwise there would be the possibility of reasoning to morality which Prager denies). It would then follow that man may be licitly used as a means (rather than an end in himself) unless God has explicitly spoken against the case in question. Slavery, for instance, is the paradigmatic case of treating a man as a means rather than an end, and it is famously permitted in the Old Testament (as atheists are not shy about pointing out). Neither it is explicitly condemned in the New Testament, although here the case is a little more ambiguous given certain Pauline texts (e.g. the Letter to Philemon). Since God has not explicitly condemned slavery, what is the basis for condemning it? There is either a case founded on reason or there is no case at all.
Generally speaking, God's pronouncements to us are necessarily finite (we can only listen to so much) but the moral life is potentially infinite; it is forever presenting us with novel circumstances and situations. Either we can reason our way to an authentic moral understanding of such novelties, or our divine command version of morality will always be a day late and a dollar short.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Objective and Subjective Morality, with reference to Kierkegaard
Steven Novella has a post on objective and subjective morality at his blog here. He introduces the discussion this way:
Kierkegaard is invaluable in understanding what is really going on in these kinds of discussions. For we learn from Kierkegaard that this way of using "subjective" and "objective" obscures the truth, the existential truth, of our situation, and in that obscurity ethics can never appear. In fact Novella's entire discussion is taken objectively, and subjectivity is only considered objectively, when in truth subjectivity can only be understood subjectively.
There is only one truly subjective paragraph in the post, and that is the first:
"Morality is a code of behavior that aspires to some goal that is perceived as good" Novella informs us. This is perfectly stated from the objective standpoint, but it will never result in an ethics that is subjectively compelling. For what does such a code have to do with me? At what point does the objective discussion of such a code end, or get to the point that I must stop debating it and start following it? Kierkegaard, in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, shows us that objective thought can never result in something that is subjectively compelling, precisely because the subject is removed at the outset. The only way to get the subject back in, that is, to make the results of objective thought subjectively compelling, is for the subject to reinsert himself through an act of the will; I must choose to apply the results of objective thought to my life, and that act of choice is beyond reason, for it is "subjective" in the modern (non-Kierkegaardian) sense. This is the real reason for the "fact-value distinction" in modern thought.
Better, Kierkegaard tells us, is to never lose the subject in the first place. Rather than beginning with a fictitious objective origin to morality in facts about our feelings or evolution, which isn't really a beginning at all, a subjective origin may be found in the fact that I am becoming. This simply means that my being is not static but dynamic. Everyday I wake up I am a day older; every act I do or avoid doing changes me in some way. I am becoming something; the process is unavoidable, and the only question is what am I becoming.
There is an analogous situation with dieting (or, rather, dieting is a response to the physical fact of becoming). I must eat to live, and what I eat determines what I become. Eat too much or the wrong things and I become fat; do not eat enough and I become weak and underweight. There are people who take a great deal of interest in what they eat and investigate various diet plans to achieve certain physical outcomes, and others who take no interest at all. But whether one takes an interest in diet or not, the existential fact of "becoming what you eat" remains nonetheless, and existence forces one to deal with food one way or the other. There is no mystery, then, in the origin of dieting. I don't need to look for an evolutionary explanation concerning our feelings about food, about what I care and don't care about. I need only recognize that eating is a fact of life, my life, and the only question is whether I will eat well or poorly. A response to food (which is what dieting is) is inevitable given the nature of our existence.
The point may be made general. Life forces me to act, and my actions change me in one way or another, and the only question is whether I will act well or badly, i.e. what will I become through my actions? Note that I become something through eating whether or not I take an interest in what I become. The man who is not interested in dieting and eats nothing but coke and chips all day will get fat and ruin his health; he is not exempted from the consequences of his eating simply because he does not acknowledge that eating has consequences. Similarly, I become something or other through my actions in general, and those consequences follow whether or not I acknowledge them. Ethics is my response to the fact of becoming, just as dieting is my response to the fact of eating.
One criticism of Kierkegaard is that in works like the Concluding Unscientific Postscript he spends very little time debating what most moderns consider the important ethical questions: Rules of behavior and how to tell right actions from wrong ones. This is because, contra our modern view, the answers to those questions are really the easiest part of ethics; they only seem hard to us because we have lost the true starting point for ethics in subjectivity. This becomes apparent when we are brought to a point of approaching ethics subjectively (despite ourselves) through art.
An example of this is the film It's A Wonderful Life, which I explore in detail here. At each critical moment in his life, George is faced with a choice between fulfilling his own ambitions or sacrificing those ambitions for the sake of others. At each point, he denies himself and does what we all know is the right thing to do, sacrificing his own ambitions for the sake of others. The film works because the filmmaker can count on the fact that his audience knows what the right thing to do is in each successive dilemma; the drama is found in whether George can meet the ethical challenge, not whether the ethical challenge can meet some inappropriate "objective" standard of ethics.
And it is not an accident that Hollywood tends to make films with a pro-life message (e.g. Knocked Up) despite its leftwing political bent. For a film is a story, and therefore a story of becoming, and therefore a story of becoming good (at least if it is a comedy rather than a tragedy). Knocked Up wouldn't work if Seth Rogen abandoned Katherine Heigl, for whatever "objective" reasons he might offer, because we know it is the wrong thing to do and Rogen would just be rationalizing. Similarly, Katherine Heigl can't get an abortion, because the audience, whether or not they are politically pro-choice, cannot but admire a woman has the child more than one that aborts it.
We can agree with Novella that morals can only be understood in the context of the moral actor. But that context must start in subjectivity, not end there.
The discussion is between objective vs subjective morality, mostly focusing around a proponent of objective morality (commenter nym of Zach). Here I will lay out my position for a philosophical basis of morality and explain why I think objective morality is not only unworkable, it’s a fiction.
First, let’s define “morality” and discuss why it is needed. Morality is a code of behavior that aspires to some goal that is perceived as good. The question at hand is where do morals and morality come from. I think this question is informed by the question of why we need morals in the first place.
I maintain that morals can only be understood in the context of the moral actor. Humans, for example, have emotions and feelings. We care about stuff, about our own well being, about those who love, about our “tribe.” We also have an evolved sense of morality, such as the concepts of reciprocity and justice.and later describes his position in this way:
Much of the prior discussion came to an impasse over this issue – are moral first principles, therefore, objective or subjective. This, I maintain, is a false dichotomy. They are complex, with some subjective aspects (the values) and some objective aspects (explorations of their universality and implications).Novella subscribes to the Enlightenment derived fact-value distinction (empirical facts only describe the way things are, not the way they should be), which is the reason he says values are subjective. By "subjective" he means not rationally justifiable in a way that is publicly compelling, i.e. the way math and science are rationally publicly compelling.
Kierkegaard is invaluable in understanding what is really going on in these kinds of discussions. For we learn from Kierkegaard that this way of using "subjective" and "objective" obscures the truth, the existential truth, of our situation, and in that obscurity ethics can never appear. In fact Novella's entire discussion is taken objectively, and subjectivity is only considered objectively, when in truth subjectivity can only be understood subjectively.
There is only one truly subjective paragraph in the post, and that is the first:
I am fascinated by the philosophy of ethics, ever since I took a course in it in undergraduate school. This is partly because I enjoy thinking about complex systems (which partly explains why I ended up in Neurology as my specialty). I also greatly enjoy logic, and particularly deconstructing arguments (my own and others) to identify their logical essence and see if or where they go wrong.The subject of a truly subjective statement can only be me; if I speak about someone else's subjectivity, I am speaking objectively about subjectivity. Truly subjective statements inevitably involve a story of becoming, as Novella mentions how he ended up in Neurology. And that is not by accident, because the basic truth of our existence is that it is one of becoming. This is the existential truth that is obscured by speaking about subjectivity and objectivity from a purely objective standpoint, for there is no becoming in objectivity. And it is the truth that provides the only genuine foundation of morality.
"Morality is a code of behavior that aspires to some goal that is perceived as good" Novella informs us. This is perfectly stated from the objective standpoint, but it will never result in an ethics that is subjectively compelling. For what does such a code have to do with me? At what point does the objective discussion of such a code end, or get to the point that I must stop debating it and start following it? Kierkegaard, in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, shows us that objective thought can never result in something that is subjectively compelling, precisely because the subject is removed at the outset. The only way to get the subject back in, that is, to make the results of objective thought subjectively compelling, is for the subject to reinsert himself through an act of the will; I must choose to apply the results of objective thought to my life, and that act of choice is beyond reason, for it is "subjective" in the modern (non-Kierkegaardian) sense. This is the real reason for the "fact-value distinction" in modern thought.
Better, Kierkegaard tells us, is to never lose the subject in the first place. Rather than beginning with a fictitious objective origin to morality in facts about our feelings or evolution, which isn't really a beginning at all, a subjective origin may be found in the fact that I am becoming. This simply means that my being is not static but dynamic. Everyday I wake up I am a day older; every act I do or avoid doing changes me in some way. I am becoming something; the process is unavoidable, and the only question is what am I becoming.
There is an analogous situation with dieting (or, rather, dieting is a response to the physical fact of becoming). I must eat to live, and what I eat determines what I become. Eat too much or the wrong things and I become fat; do not eat enough and I become weak and underweight. There are people who take a great deal of interest in what they eat and investigate various diet plans to achieve certain physical outcomes, and others who take no interest at all. But whether one takes an interest in diet or not, the existential fact of "becoming what you eat" remains nonetheless, and existence forces one to deal with food one way or the other. There is no mystery, then, in the origin of dieting. I don't need to look for an evolutionary explanation concerning our feelings about food, about what I care and don't care about. I need only recognize that eating is a fact of life, my life, and the only question is whether I will eat well or poorly. A response to food (which is what dieting is) is inevitable given the nature of our existence.
The point may be made general. Life forces me to act, and my actions change me in one way or another, and the only question is whether I will act well or badly, i.e. what will I become through my actions? Note that I become something through eating whether or not I take an interest in what I become. The man who is not interested in dieting and eats nothing but coke and chips all day will get fat and ruin his health; he is not exempted from the consequences of his eating simply because he does not acknowledge that eating has consequences. Similarly, I become something or other through my actions in general, and those consequences follow whether or not I acknowledge them. Ethics is my response to the fact of becoming, just as dieting is my response to the fact of eating.
One criticism of Kierkegaard is that in works like the Concluding Unscientific Postscript he spends very little time debating what most moderns consider the important ethical questions: Rules of behavior and how to tell right actions from wrong ones. This is because, contra our modern view, the answers to those questions are really the easiest part of ethics; they only seem hard to us because we have lost the true starting point for ethics in subjectivity. This becomes apparent when we are brought to a point of approaching ethics subjectively (despite ourselves) through art.
An example of this is the film It's A Wonderful Life, which I explore in detail here. At each critical moment in his life, George is faced with a choice between fulfilling his own ambitions or sacrificing those ambitions for the sake of others. At each point, he denies himself and does what we all know is the right thing to do, sacrificing his own ambitions for the sake of others. The film works because the filmmaker can count on the fact that his audience knows what the right thing to do is in each successive dilemma; the drama is found in whether George can meet the ethical challenge, not whether the ethical challenge can meet some inappropriate "objective" standard of ethics.
And it is not an accident that Hollywood tends to make films with a pro-life message (e.g. Knocked Up) despite its leftwing political bent. For a film is a story, and therefore a story of becoming, and therefore a story of becoming good (at least if it is a comedy rather than a tragedy). Knocked Up wouldn't work if Seth Rogen abandoned Katherine Heigl, for whatever "objective" reasons he might offer, because we know it is the wrong thing to do and Rogen would just be rationalizing. Similarly, Katherine Heigl can't get an abortion, because the audience, whether or not they are politically pro-choice, cannot but admire a woman has the child more than one that aborts it.
We can agree with Novella that morals can only be understood in the context of the moral actor. But that context must start in subjectivity, not end there.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Your morality
Here is an online quiz from researchers intending to explore the relationship between morality and politics. The goal is to understand "Why do people disagree so passionately about what is right?" As I took the quiz, I found myself disagreeing passionately that it was a useful quiz. The way it works is you indicate, on a sliding scale, whether you find something "relevant to your moral thinking", with the examples ranging from "not at all relevant" to "extremely relevant." A sample of the questions:
Whether or not private property was respected.
There are times when private property should be respected and times when it shouldn't. If someone is drowning, then it's not relevant that running on to their property to save them is trespassing. Or, if the pool is behind a fence you can't get through, that running your car through the fence to make a hole is not respecting private property. If you are parachuting into Normandy in 1944, it's not relevant that you aren't respecting the property of whomever's farm you land on. But if you happen to like your neighbor's new Ford Mustang, it is relevant that it is his and not yours, and you can't just take it.
But more deeply, "respect" is inseparable from the notion of "private property." Private property for which it is never relevant that it be respected simply isn't private property at all - which is why logically consistent Communists reject the notion of private property altogether. So positing private property at all necessarily posits respect for it. This question isn't so much about whether respect for private property is relevant as whether logic is relevant.
Whether or not someone's action showed love for his or her country.
What's interesting about this one is why it is not simply the absolute "Whether or not someone's action showed love." Everyone would say yes to this. But if you would say "yes" to the question absolutely, there couldn't be any particular instances when you would say "no." No matter what finishes "Whether or not someone's action showed love..." the answer would always be yes. What the authors are probably after is whether something really counts as love of one's country, e.g. protests against the Vietnam War. The substance of the difference between Vietnam War protestors and their critics is whether the protests count as showing love for country; but both groups would claim they love their country. Because love is always good, isn't it? But if you answer "yes" to this one (because you think everything should be done with love), the researchers are probably going to mark you down as a conservative or Archie Bunker type. Nonetheless, logic demands an "extremely relevant" answer to this question because love is always extremely relevant.
Whether or not an action caused chaos or disorder.
Aristotle begins his Nichomachean Ethics by writing that "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good." If someone does something not intending that chaos result, but it does, how could this not be relevant? Whatever he intended to do (i.e. the good intended) is threatened by chaos (for the nature of chaos is to be indiscriminant). On the other hand, if chaos is intended and it does result, then in this instance it is both relevant and good; for example, in the case of a commando parachuted behind enemy lines with the mission to sow chaos. So sometimes chaos is a legitimately intended result and sometimes it isn't. But an individual who is entirely uninterested in whether chaos results from his actions isn't so much immoral as irrational - he's like a child who hasn't yet begun to think about the consequences of his actions. This poorly worded question is probably intended to get at the difference between conservatives - who tend to value stability - and progressives, who are more willing to shake things up for the sake of change. But for both people, the conservative and the progressive, chaos and disorder are relevant. The conservative wants to avoid chaos to preserve the already existing good, and the progressive wants to (sometimes) sow chaos to "bring down the system" so change becomes possible. So whatever your political or moral views, it is irrational to answer anything other than "extremely relevant" to this one.
Whether or not someone conformed to the traditions of society.
It's good to conform to the traditions of society when those traditions are good (like the tradition of fathers taking care of their children) and bad when the traditions are bad (like female circumcision in certain Islamic countries). This is what conservatives really believe... but the notion that one should "conform" simply for the sake of conforming is the caricature of conservatives embedded in this question. I would have to answer "not at all relevant" to this question because mere "conformity" is not a good.
Whether or not someone suffered emotionally.
Like the question about love of country, why is this one not simply the absolute "Whether or not someone suffered?" Emotion is one form of suffering among many, and surely someone for whom suffering (emotional or otherwise) is simply not a relevant moral consideration is just immoral full stop. Does anyone other than a sociopath really believe this? Just like love is always relevant to moral questions, so is suffering, so this one would have to be answered "extremely relevant."
Whether or not someone showed a lack of respect for authority.
This one is similar to the private property question; the very notion of "authority" involves the notion of "respect"; an authority that shouldn't be respected simply isn't an authority at all. The disagreement over authority is never whether it should be respected, but whether what is claimed to be an authority truly is. Dissidents from the teachings of the Catholic Church, for example, don't argue that they should not respect the authority of the Pope, but that the Pope doesn't have the authority he claims in the first place. So again on purely rational considerations, this one has to be answered "extremely relevant" for an authority by nature should be respected (to the extent that it is in fact an authority.)
Whether or not someone acted in a way that God would approve of.
Even an atheist thinks that God should be obeyed; he just doesn't believe there is a God to be obeyed. Someone who believes in God, but also thinks that God should be ignored, is surely a very rare bird. This question is little more than a proxy for belief in God. Why can't they just ask it directly?
Whether or not someone was cruel.
Whether or not someone acted unfairly.
Justice is the most important requirement for a society.
"Cruel" and "unfairly" are virtual synonyms for "immoral." No one thinks anyone should be treated unfairly; what they disagree on is what constitutes "fair" in any particular circumstance. The liberal and conservative both think the wealthy man should be treated fairly. The liberal thinks it is fair to confiscate his wealth for purposes the state considers good; the conservative thinks it is manifestly unfair to take from someone that which is rightfully his.
It is better to do good than to do bad.
This is tautological. The good is precisely that which it is better to do.
If I were a soldier and disagreed with my commanding officer's orders, I would obey anyway because that is my duty.
The military makes a distinction between lawful and unlawful orders. It always a soldier's duty to obey lawful orders, and always his duty to disobey unlawful ones (like shooting prisoners). Agreeing or disagreeing has got nothing to do with it. Like many of the questions in this survey, it is based on ignorance.
Whether or not private property was respected.
There are times when private property should be respected and times when it shouldn't. If someone is drowning, then it's not relevant that running on to their property to save them is trespassing. Or, if the pool is behind a fence you can't get through, that running your car through the fence to make a hole is not respecting private property. If you are parachuting into Normandy in 1944, it's not relevant that you aren't respecting the property of whomever's farm you land on. But if you happen to like your neighbor's new Ford Mustang, it is relevant that it is his and not yours, and you can't just take it.
But more deeply, "respect" is inseparable from the notion of "private property." Private property for which it is never relevant that it be respected simply isn't private property at all - which is why logically consistent Communists reject the notion of private property altogether. So positing private property at all necessarily posits respect for it. This question isn't so much about whether respect for private property is relevant as whether logic is relevant.
Whether or not someone's action showed love for his or her country.
What's interesting about this one is why it is not simply the absolute "Whether or not someone's action showed love." Everyone would say yes to this. But if you would say "yes" to the question absolutely, there couldn't be any particular instances when you would say "no." No matter what finishes "Whether or not someone's action showed love..." the answer would always be yes. What the authors are probably after is whether something really counts as love of one's country, e.g. protests against the Vietnam War. The substance of the difference between Vietnam War protestors and their critics is whether the protests count as showing love for country; but both groups would claim they love their country. Because love is always good, isn't it? But if you answer "yes" to this one (because you think everything should be done with love), the researchers are probably going to mark you down as a conservative or Archie Bunker type. Nonetheless, logic demands an "extremely relevant" answer to this question because love is always extremely relevant.
Whether or not an action caused chaos or disorder.
Aristotle begins his Nichomachean Ethics by writing that "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good." If someone does something not intending that chaos result, but it does, how could this not be relevant? Whatever he intended to do (i.e. the good intended) is threatened by chaos (for the nature of chaos is to be indiscriminant). On the other hand, if chaos is intended and it does result, then in this instance it is both relevant and good; for example, in the case of a commando parachuted behind enemy lines with the mission to sow chaos. So sometimes chaos is a legitimately intended result and sometimes it isn't. But an individual who is entirely uninterested in whether chaos results from his actions isn't so much immoral as irrational - he's like a child who hasn't yet begun to think about the consequences of his actions. This poorly worded question is probably intended to get at the difference between conservatives - who tend to value stability - and progressives, who are more willing to shake things up for the sake of change. But for both people, the conservative and the progressive, chaos and disorder are relevant. The conservative wants to avoid chaos to preserve the already existing good, and the progressive wants to (sometimes) sow chaos to "bring down the system" so change becomes possible. So whatever your political or moral views, it is irrational to answer anything other than "extremely relevant" to this one.
Whether or not someone conformed to the traditions of society.
It's good to conform to the traditions of society when those traditions are good (like the tradition of fathers taking care of their children) and bad when the traditions are bad (like female circumcision in certain Islamic countries). This is what conservatives really believe... but the notion that one should "conform" simply for the sake of conforming is the caricature of conservatives embedded in this question. I would have to answer "not at all relevant" to this question because mere "conformity" is not a good.
Whether or not someone suffered emotionally.
Like the question about love of country, why is this one not simply the absolute "Whether or not someone suffered?" Emotion is one form of suffering among many, and surely someone for whom suffering (emotional or otherwise) is simply not a relevant moral consideration is just immoral full stop. Does anyone other than a sociopath really believe this? Just like love is always relevant to moral questions, so is suffering, so this one would have to be answered "extremely relevant."
Whether or not someone showed a lack of respect for authority.
This one is similar to the private property question; the very notion of "authority" involves the notion of "respect"; an authority that shouldn't be respected simply isn't an authority at all. The disagreement over authority is never whether it should be respected, but whether what is claimed to be an authority truly is. Dissidents from the teachings of the Catholic Church, for example, don't argue that they should not respect the authority of the Pope, but that the Pope doesn't have the authority he claims in the first place. So again on purely rational considerations, this one has to be answered "extremely relevant" for an authority by nature should be respected (to the extent that it is in fact an authority.)
Whether or not someone acted in a way that God would approve of.
Even an atheist thinks that God should be obeyed; he just doesn't believe there is a God to be obeyed. Someone who believes in God, but also thinks that God should be ignored, is surely a very rare bird. This question is little more than a proxy for belief in God. Why can't they just ask it directly?
Whether or not someone was cruel.
Whether or not someone acted unfairly.
Justice is the most important requirement for a society.
"Cruel" and "unfairly" are virtual synonyms for "immoral." No one thinks anyone should be treated unfairly; what they disagree on is what constitutes "fair" in any particular circumstance. The liberal and conservative both think the wealthy man should be treated fairly. The liberal thinks it is fair to confiscate his wealth for purposes the state considers good; the conservative thinks it is manifestly unfair to take from someone that which is rightfully his.
It is better to do good than to do bad.
This is tautological. The good is precisely that which it is better to do.
If I were a soldier and disagreed with my commanding officer's orders, I would obey anyway because that is my duty.
The military makes a distinction between lawful and unlawful orders. It always a soldier's duty to obey lawful orders, and always his duty to disobey unlawful ones (like shooting prisoners). Agreeing or disagreeing has got nothing to do with it. Like many of the questions in this survey, it is based on ignorance.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Moral Reason vs. Moral Emotion
Here is an article in today's Boston Globe concerning "the surprising moral force of disgust." The article starts in this manner:
We have here the usual modern confusion between moral reason and moral behavior. Moral reason pertains to the distinction between right and wrong behavior, and the possible rational foundation of moral decision. Moral behavior pertains to the actual causes that lead people to do what they do. This was a distinction well known to ancient philosophers (and modern philosophers like Kant as well.) For Aristotle, what distinguishes the truly virtuous man is the pleasure he takes in doing good; the vicious man finds acting well to be painful. These pains and pleasures are the "efficient causes" that (in large part) explain everyday behavior.
The point of moral education, Aristotle thought, was to train the emotions to reflect moral truth. The student must learn to take pleasure in the truly good and to feel pain at the truly evil. In the terms of the Boston Globe article, the student must learn to feel disgust at the truly disgusting, and to not feel disgust at that which truly is not. Then the causes of his everyday moral decision-making will be rightly ordered and he will tend to act well.
Of course, this moral education is only possible if there is a knowledge of good and evil that is not itself simply a refection of emotions. That there is such knowledge was acknowledged by Aristotle, and Kant as well (although they disagree on its foundation.) Modern science has done nothing to undermine the reasons for recognizing it. The evolutionary explanation offered by the Globe, for instance, doesn't even begin to do the job. Such an explanation may possibly explain how feelings of disgust arose; but even if they do, they haven't started to explain the origin of our notions of good and evil, or the virtuous and the base. Good and evil are much broader concepts than the disgusting; it follows that any association between disgusting and evil could occur only in light of an already existing concept of evil.
I wonder how much time and money has been wasted by scientists catching up to where Aristotle was 2500 years ago?
“Two things fill my mind with ever renewed wonder and awe the more often and deeper I dwell on them,” wrote Immanuel Kant, “the starry skies above me, and the moral law within me.”
Where does moral law come from? What lies behind our sense of right and wrong? For millennia, there have been two available answers. To the devoutly religious, morality is the word of God, handed down to holy men in groves or on mountaintops. To moral philosophers like Kant, it is a set of rules to be worked out by reason, chin on fist like Rodin’s thinker.
But what if neither is correct? What if our moral judgments are driven instead by more visceral human considerations? And what if one of those is not divine commandment or inductive reasoning, but simply whether a situation, in some small way, makes us feel like throwing up?
This is the argument that some behavioral scientists have begun to make: That a significant slice of morality can be explained by our innate feelings of disgust.
We have here the usual modern confusion between moral reason and moral behavior. Moral reason pertains to the distinction between right and wrong behavior, and the possible rational foundation of moral decision. Moral behavior pertains to the actual causes that lead people to do what they do. This was a distinction well known to ancient philosophers (and modern philosophers like Kant as well.) For Aristotle, what distinguishes the truly virtuous man is the pleasure he takes in doing good; the vicious man finds acting well to be painful. These pains and pleasures are the "efficient causes" that (in large part) explain everyday behavior.
The point of moral education, Aristotle thought, was to train the emotions to reflect moral truth. The student must learn to take pleasure in the truly good and to feel pain at the truly evil. In the terms of the Boston Globe article, the student must learn to feel disgust at the truly disgusting, and to not feel disgust at that which truly is not. Then the causes of his everyday moral decision-making will be rightly ordered and he will tend to act well.
Of course, this moral education is only possible if there is a knowledge of good and evil that is not itself simply a refection of emotions. That there is such knowledge was acknowledged by Aristotle, and Kant as well (although they disagree on its foundation.) Modern science has done nothing to undermine the reasons for recognizing it. The evolutionary explanation offered by the Globe, for instance, doesn't even begin to do the job. Such an explanation may possibly explain how feelings of disgust arose; but even if they do, they haven't started to explain the origin of our notions of good and evil, or the virtuous and the base. Good and evil are much broader concepts than the disgusting; it follows that any association between disgusting and evil could occur only in light of an already existing concept of evil.
I wonder how much time and money has been wasted by scientists catching up to where Aristotle was 2500 years ago?
Saturday, July 24, 2010
David Brooks on the Moral Sense
David Brooks of the New York Times has a piece here on the origin of what he calls the "moral sense." The article starts this way:
Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Most people think it is a gift from God, who revealed His laws and elevates us with His love. A smaller number think that we figure the rules out for ourselves, using our capacity to reason and choosing a philosophical system to live by.
Moral naturalists, on the other hand, believe that we have moral sentiments that have emerged from a long history of relationships. To learn about morality, you don’t rely upon revelation or metaphysics; you observe people as they live.
Brooks goes on to describe the naturalist case for the evolutionary development of the "moral sense." Right off the bat, however, Brooks has posed what I can only call a false alternative, a phrase I now have a visceral reaction against since Barack Obama so often abuses it. ("There are those who pose the false alternative between spending trillions of dollars you don't have and fiscal sanity...") Anyway, God gives us the "rules" in a number of ways. One way is through direct revelation, another way is through the natural law:
There is no conflict between the natural law known by reason and the divine law known through revelation; both have their source in God. This would even include Brooks's evolution-based morality since God, if He is, would not have His Purposes stymied by evolution. Evolution would then be just another way God could reveal His Will to us. In other words, God created the kind of world in which we live, knowing that we would evolve the right sort of moral rules.
But we've got to dismiss the evolutionary basis for morality, not because it is exclusive of a Divinely Revealed morality, but simply because it is incapable of serving as a basis for morality in any case. Moral rules concern the relationship between the possible and the actual; they criticize what we are doing in terms of what we should be doing but are not. But if your moral rules are entirely based on "observing people as they live", then your rules will necessarily be nothing more an affirmation of already-existing arrangements. And no one needs rules to tell them to keep on doing what they are already doing anyway.
Brooks quotes a professor who compares the moral sense to our sense of taste:
There is, however, no gainsaying taste. Some people like sweet foods, others like salty foods. Some people act fairly and others with cruelty. We haven't gotten to morality yet until we can say that it is better to act fairly than with cruelty, and that can only happen when we acknowledge that the possible (how people should act) has authority over the actual (how people in fact do act). I believe it was Kierkegaard who wrote that the poet is higher than the historian, because the poet criticizes the actual in terms of the possible. The evolutionist is an historian.
There was a time when slavery was a universally accepted human institution. At such a time, basing morality simply on how people live, we would have to conclude that slavery is a morally acceptable institution. There was a phrase popular back in the sixties that went if it feels good, do it. The evolutionary morality version of this is, if you are already doing it, keep on doing it. But who needs to be told that? No more than than they need to be told to keep on doing what feels good.
Now the supporter of evolutionary morality might object this way: Our studies show that evolution has endowed children with an inborn sense of justice:
Slavery, the supporter of evolutionary morality will say, clearly conflicts with this inborn sense of justice. Therefore slavery is wrong. It just took people a while to figure it out, but when they did, it was because they realized slavery conflicted with their evolutionary developed sense of justice.
This doesn't work because if, for centuries, people had no problem approving of slavery despite the rudimentary sense of justice they were born with, then clearly slavery did not conflict with this sense of justice. The evolutionist is just reading back into his rudimentary sense of justice his preferred moral results. In other words, he's slipping the possible in by the back door. If our principle is to "observe people how they live", and if they live in happy accord with a slave-based society, then we have no possible basis on which to condemn that society. And historically, that is not how slavery ended. The slave trade ended in the 19th century because the British Navy decided that a world without slavery was preferable to a world with slavery (the actual one), and further decided to bring this preferable world about at the end of a cannon.
The only way to get to morality is through the notion of a final cause for man; in other words, to acknowledge that man has a rationally appreciable point to his existence that he is free to bring about (or not bring about) through his actions. The final cause serves for him as an ideal, as the possible which he has not yet brought into existence, but should. But the primary reason Darwin offered his theory of evolution was to banish final causes from the world; in doing so he banished any rational basis for ethics as well. This isn't to stay that people can't still behave morally in the era of Darwin; it only means that any attempt to make sense of their behavior in Darwinian terms must fail.
When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them... Rom 2:14:15.
There is no conflict between the natural law known by reason and the divine law known through revelation; both have their source in God. This would even include Brooks's evolution-based morality since God, if He is, would not have His Purposes stymied by evolution. Evolution would then be just another way God could reveal His Will to us. In other words, God created the kind of world in which we live, knowing that we would evolve the right sort of moral rules.
But we've got to dismiss the evolutionary basis for morality, not because it is exclusive of a Divinely Revealed morality, but simply because it is incapable of serving as a basis for morality in any case. Moral rules concern the relationship between the possible and the actual; they criticize what we are doing in terms of what we should be doing but are not. But if your moral rules are entirely based on "observing people as they live", then your rules will necessarily be nothing more an affirmation of already-existing arrangements. And no one needs rules to tell them to keep on doing what they are already doing anyway.
Brooks quotes a professor who compares the moral sense to our sense of taste:
By the time humans came around, evolution had forged a pretty firm foundation for a moral sense. Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia argues that this moral sense is like our sense of taste. We have natural receptors that help us pick up sweetness and saltiness. In the same way, we have natural receptors that help us recognize fairness and cruelty. Just as a few universal tastes can grow into many different cuisines, a few moral senses can grow into many different moral cultures.
There is, however, no gainsaying taste. Some people like sweet foods, others like salty foods. Some people act fairly and others with cruelty. We haven't gotten to morality yet until we can say that it is better to act fairly than with cruelty, and that can only happen when we acknowledge that the possible (how people should act) has authority over the actual (how people in fact do act). I believe it was Kierkegaard who wrote that the poet is higher than the historian, because the poet criticizes the actual in terms of the possible. The evolutionist is an historian.
There was a time when slavery was a universally accepted human institution. At such a time, basing morality simply on how people live, we would have to conclude that slavery is a morally acceptable institution. There was a phrase popular back in the sixties that went if it feels good, do it. The evolutionary morality version of this is, if you are already doing it, keep on doing it. But who needs to be told that? No more than than they need to be told to keep on doing what feels good.
Now the supporter of evolutionary morality might object this way: Our studies show that evolution has endowed children with an inborn sense of justice:
This illustrates, Bloom says, that people have a rudimentary sense of justice from a very early age. This doesn’t make people naturally good. If you give a 3-year-old two pieces of candy and ask him if he wants to share one of them, he will almost certainly say no. It’s not until age 7 or 8 that even half the children are willing to share. But it does mean that social norms fall upon prepared ground. We come equipped to learn fairness and other virtues.
Slavery, the supporter of evolutionary morality will say, clearly conflicts with this inborn sense of justice. Therefore slavery is wrong. It just took people a while to figure it out, but when they did, it was because they realized slavery conflicted with their evolutionary developed sense of justice.
This doesn't work because if, for centuries, people had no problem approving of slavery despite the rudimentary sense of justice they were born with, then clearly slavery did not conflict with this sense of justice. The evolutionist is just reading back into his rudimentary sense of justice his preferred moral results. In other words, he's slipping the possible in by the back door. If our principle is to "observe people how they live", and if they live in happy accord with a slave-based society, then we have no possible basis on which to condemn that society. And historically, that is not how slavery ended. The slave trade ended in the 19th century because the British Navy decided that a world without slavery was preferable to a world with slavery (the actual one), and further decided to bring this preferable world about at the end of a cannon.
The only way to get to morality is through the notion of a final cause for man; in other words, to acknowledge that man has a rationally appreciable point to his existence that he is free to bring about (or not bring about) through his actions. The final cause serves for him as an ideal, as the possible which he has not yet brought into existence, but should. But the primary reason Darwin offered his theory of evolution was to banish final causes from the world; in doing so he banished any rational basis for ethics as well. This isn't to stay that people can't still behave morally in the era of Darwin; it only means that any attempt to make sense of their behavior in Darwinian terms must fail.
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