Tag Archives: morality

How Abstract Concepts can be Real

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in atheism, Catholic, christianity, logic, metaethics, Morality, philosophy, rationality, Uncategorized

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I have noticed when I talk about abstract concepts such as morality and ask for evidence of them, I am being unclear to some. I don’t mean that morality is a physical thing somewhere that we can find like a moon orbiting Saturn. But I do mean it is real.

If I say I am taller than my daughter I am invoking an abstract concept – tallness. If I say prove tallness “exists in reality” (or provide evidence that tallness exists in reality) as opposed to our minds that might mean different things to different people. Some people would think I mean we must find an actual platonic-like form of tallness that is perfectly tall. That is not what I mean at all.

I think I “really” am taller than my daughter. That is in reality I am taller. The notion of tallness is something like, when I am standing, the highest part of my body is higher than hers (when she is standing) means I am taller than her. This tie in with reality makes the notion that I am taller than my daughter objectively true. It’s not just that I believe it is true. My belief does not make the statement true or false. Reality makes that statement true or false. That is because tallness has a tie in with reality.

Does morality have tie in with reality? If I believe something is wrong does my belief make it wrong? Or does reality determine whether my belief is true or false. The latter is what I mean when I say morality is objectively real. It is not the case that I necessarily think there is some perfectly moral good form (or perfectly evil form) somewhere that we need to find. What I am asking is 1) whether these concepts have a tie in with reality. And 2) if so, how we would know in what ways morality ties in with reality.

I think I answered the first question with respect to tallness. Yes tallness ties in with reality so we can say it is really and objectively true that I am taller than my daughter. What about the second question with respect to tallness? I think we have empirical evidence that I am really taller than my daughter. We can see me standing next to her. Even a blind person would be able to feel if we are standing, and then feel the top of my head relative to the top of her head. So we have empirical evidence of how “tallness” ties in with reality.

But what about “wrongness”? Here it seems we do not have empirical evidence.

Sure we can substitute concepts for “right and wrong” and “good and evil” and then assert that this new word is promoted by such and such conduct. But whenever I see this one of 2 things is always happening. Either they are leaving the new term so vague that it is pretty much vacuous, and thus the “definition” is vacuous. (that which makes us “thrive” or that which brings “happiness” etc.) Or they do in fact put some constraints on the definition and then I have to wonder if that is really good. I gave a hypothetical that approaches one of the latter views here: https://trueandreasonable.co/2014/12/19/a-moral-hypothetical/

In any case, I do think we can have empirical evidence of abstract ideas.  But in the case of morality the the evidence of morality is the evidence for God.  I talk more about that connection here:

https://wordpress.com/stats/insights/trueandreasonable.co

 

Evidence of Objective Moral Realism

10 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in atheism, Athesism Christianity, Catholic, christianity, logic, metaethics, Morality, philosophy, rationality, Uncategorized

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A fellow blogger and sometime commentator here, Howie, asks some questions for theists.

https://truthiselusive.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/meaningful-sadness/

He wonders what effect would it have on our morals if we suddenly found out God did not exist.  It’s a great question and I found I could spend allot of time answering this.

 

In my response I indicate that “I would highly doubt any objective morality exists in reality, and if it did exist I would not believe we had any reliable way of knowing what it was.”

 

I have blogged extensively about the second part of that statement:

https://trueandreasonable.co/2014/02/24/a-problem-with-the-reliability-of-moral-beliefs/

Here I want to address the first part.  I want to explain why “I would I highly doubt any objective morality exists in reality” if I found out God did not exist.

 

But first, I want to reiterate that I do not think there is any logical inconsistency with atheism and belief in objective morality.   That said I am unaware of any actual evidence that an atheist would have for believing in objective morality.    That is, if we were to know there is no God then all the evidence we have for objective morality goes out the window.   It’s one thing to say objective morality is logically possible, it’s another to say we have some evidence that it is true.

 

To understand my position let’s start with a reverse question for atheists.   Let’s say you suddenly find out that the Christian God exists.  What would that mean for your views on morality?

 

I would think most people would agree that if the Christian God exists, then it’s very likely that objective moral realism is true.    God orchestrated our existence and reality so that we might be ultimately judged and this judgment will be just.  Reality would have been built with this moral feature.

 

From that, it follows that evidence that the Christian creator God exists is also evidence that objective morality is a feature of reality.   The evidence that the Christian God exists would be things like the miracles recorded in scripture.  Again people can debate whether this is strong evidence or weak evidence, and what if any burden of proof there is, but it is “some evidence.”  This also happens to be the only evidence that our objective reality contains moral characteristics. (I don’t mean to exclude other religions that teach of a Creator God who had a hand in creating a moral reality.  So yes evidence for Islam, or Judaism would also be evidence for objective moral realism but here for simplicity sake I am just taking Christianity versus atheism.)   So the logic is exhibit A suggest exhibit B.  Exhibit B Suggests exhibit C.  A = miracles B=Christian God exists and C = Objective moral realism is true.

 

Do we have other evidence that objective morals are actually a feature of reality?  I really don’t think so.  Again because “wrongness” cannot be detected by our 5 senses it seems impossible to have evidence of it outside of testimonial evidence from someone who is not bound by our 5 senses.

 

The fact that we feel strong guttural emotional responses when we see certain “good” or “bad” actions is not, to my mind, evidence that there is actually a real objective truth to moral claims.  However, if something with a supernatural understanding designed us then of course we might think our emotions are properly cued to these real moral truths.

 

So the Christian God existing would be strong evidence that real objective morals would exist.  If we were to eliminate that evidence of objective moral reality existing (Say because we “find out” no God exists) then we are hard pressed to find *any* evidence of objective moral reality.   That’s not to say its logically impossible for objective moral reality to exist without God.  Nonetheless, it would be a huge blow to objective moral realism’s case to lose – exhibit B – the existence of God.

Naturalism and Moral Progress

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by in metaethics, Morality, philosophy

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ob4c_iLuTw

As most of my readers know, one of the main reasons I give for being Christian is that it offers a much more coherent view of my overall moral beliefs than does atheism.  It is my opinion that answering the question “what should I do?” is far more important than any scientific question.  Accordingly, I form my noetic structure around this question.

Now there are many different views that atheists can hold to be sure.   Some are realists and many are various anti-realists.   But I think it’s an insurmountable problem for them.   Sure even Christianity has some weak points, but this is one that atheism has and I think it is demonstrated in this discussion.  It’s a discussion, I presume based on the title, that involves only naturalists and deals with morality.

By saying this is a shambles I do not mean at all to impugn the intelligence of the people involved.  They are all very intelligent people.  But IMO they are dealing with an intractable problem, when they try to reconcile naturalism with the belief that we made moral progress.

In particular, I would point out that I found the comments by Steven Weinberg and Sean Carrol to be very insightful.   Weinberg, in particular, made several quite interesting comments that help cut to the quick.  For example, at about 1:27:00 after he says he can’t argue with a  pro-life advocate who just believes abortion is wrong due to human life being sacred, at which point

Daniel Dennet says:  don’t even try and you let time pass and will find that people gradually change their mind by all sorts of subtle forces…

Weinberg cuts in: “but not rational arguments…”

And Dennet does not offer disagreement.

As I listened it seemed that many seemed to agree on some sort of “moral progress,” but at the end it seems that what people understood that to actually mean fell apart.  Sean Carrol agreed that views change, but are we closer to the truth?  To which Massimo Pigliucci said I thought we agreed there is no truth with a capital “T” regarding morality.   From his blog I think Massimo meant that morality is just a matter of peoples own views and not based in reality.  I am not sure everyone agreed with that.  (But Massimo would know these people better than I do.)

For a realist “moral progress” would mean that societies beliefs better mirror moral truths of reality.  E.g., our views of slavery show moral progress because slavery is really wrong.

But if there are no moral truths in reality and morals are just a matter of subjective opinion then what could “moral progress” mean?  Does it mean everyone is agreeing with me more?  Does it mean everyone just agrees with each other more?  So that if it were a Nazi society but there was more agreement with it, then it would be morally better?

I am hesitant to ascribe such positions to the people involved but sadly they had to break for coffee before they could even explain what they meant by moral progress.   I am curious how an anti-realist would understand the term “moral progress.”

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Is God Immoral?

07 Monday Apr 2014

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Like all law students I took a course on “property.”  Throughout my life, I was lucky enough to take courses from some very interesting people.  My property professor, Douglas Kmiec,[1] was no exception.

The idea that we gain rights over what we create was to some extent developed by John Locke.  He described how people will mix their labor with items from the common property and make it theirs.

 “The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to….”

John Locke Second Treatise of Civil Government Chapter 5.

I read this in my property class taught by Kmiec.  He explained that I might pick up a branch in the forest.   Now if I put it down again, then anyone else can pick it up and do what they want with it.  But if I pick it up and carve it into a wooden statue, well then it’s mine.  At that point I would have the right to do with it what I wanted even destroy it, but no one else would have that right.   I thought it was an interesting insight.

 

 

Ok so now many atheists want to say God is a “murderer!”  He asked/commanded people to kill others.  We have such stories in the Old Testament.  How can we worship such a God?

 

Well first of all I tend not to believe the Old Testament is literal.  I think the Old Testament is by and large a collection of stories.   Yes the Holy Spirit inspired them but how exactly that works, I do not pretend to speak for that Holy Spirit.  But even an atheist should consider that Jewish scripture consists of what possibly the very best and brightest cultures thought was some of their best literature.  I agree some books do nothing for me but other books I find delightful and wonderful.    I am somewhat saddened when I see people reading it only for the purpose they want to get out of it instead of thinking about what the author was up to.

 

Now although I do not take the Old Testament literally I do think it teaches true messages.    But what message can Abraham being commanded to kill his son possibly be teaching?   What can stories about God wiping out whole cities be teaching? One answer is that it teaches God is our creator and as such he is not like us.  We are not the same.  Regardless of what we or even God might want the truth is we are not the same.   Reality doesn’t cater to our wants.

 

Let’s think about this.   If a lion intentionally kills a human without justification we don’t say that it is a “murderer.”  If a human intentionally kills a human without justification he/she is a murderer.  What if God intentionally kills humans?  Should God be treated like other humans?  This is the hidden assumption of every anti-theist blog crying out that God is a murderer.  I just read a paper which seems to imply God committed a holocaust against children who died from natural causes.   I am not suggesting that God is not a murderer for the same reasons a lion is not a murder.  But I am saying we should not automatically assume God is just like us, in this analysis.

 

Here is something to consider.  If I create a sand castle, I can destroy it and it is not immoral.  If someone else destroys my sand castle it is wrong, unless I as the creator give them permission.  God created us and he can destroy us and it is not immoral.  Others however cannot destroy us and remain blameless, unless they are given permission by our creator.

 

I realize that this is not an appealing view.   But if God is bound by the rules of Logic not even he can change that fact can he?  If we are in fact, created by God we cannot truthfully claim otherwise.  Even God cannot make this truth, false.  This wounds our pride and tradition teaches it wounded Satan’s pride as well.  He was unhappy with the truth that he was not like God, and rebelled against it.

 

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!   For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.  Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.” Isaiah 14:12-14[2]

 

Now my point is not to say the people who claim God is a murderer are “Satans.”  Not at all.  But it is to say that they are not accounting for the fact that Christians believe God is our creator and generally we think a creator has a right to destroy his creations.  They engage in special pleading when they refuse to acknowledge this principle when discussing God’s relationship to us.  This is a double standard.  They recognize a painter has a right to destroy his painting if he is unhappy with it, but they want to deny this right to a creator God.

 

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[1] Before I did my blog arguing that marriage should no longer be governed by the state I googled to see if anyone else came to the same conclusion.  I was somewhat surprised to see my old Property and Constitutional Law Professor arguing the same thing.  Doug Kmiec is an inspirational professor who brought energy and excitement to everything he taught.  But he was always a bit too conservative for me!  Because this blog brought back memories of his property law class I decided to google him and read the Wikipedia.  Few could be as surprised as I am.  But really politics aside, I am honored to have learned from him.  I was of course surprised by what I read.  But  I am not surprised by this quote from Wikipedia:

“On July 2, 2009, President Obama nominated Kmiec as Ambassador to Malta.[24] He was confirmed by the Senate. In April 2011, he was criticized by the Inspector General of the State Department for spending too much time on what the OIG reported as unofficial (religious) duties, which Kmiec saw as integral to his ambassadorial role.”

And I likewise am not at all surprised by this quote from Tiffany Stanley of The New Republic:

“in the annals of diplomatic misbehavior, Kmiec’s is rather an unusual case. Even the critical OIG report notes that embassy morale was good, he was respected by the Maltese and his staff, and had ‘achieved some policy successes’. The problem, it seems, was that Kmiec may have taken the job a little too seriously.”[27] Columnist Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times writes: “Over the last few years, Kmiec has emerged as one of this country’s most important witnesses to the proposition that religious conviction and political civility need not be at odds; that reasonable people of determined good conscience, whatever their faith or lack thereof, can find ways to cooperate in the common good. Though Kmiec has not sought their intervention, the president and the secretary of State ought to deal with the bureaucrats seeking to silence a voice whose only offense is to speak in the vocabulary of our own better angels.”

I read some other things that make me believe he likely had some hard times.  I wish Doug Kmiec the best, and will keep him in my prayers.

[2] But see:  https://bible.org/article/lucifer-devil-isaiah-1412-kjv-argument-against-modern-translations and http://pastordougroman.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/do-isaiah-14-and-ezekiel-28-refer-to-satan/

 

A Life of Make Believe

24 Monday Mar 2014

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I generally spend more time reading and commenting on atheist blogs than I do posting my own blogs.   Since a lack of a satisfactory morality is, to my mind, a real problem for the atheistic belief system, I frequently ask atheists what they make of morality. 

 

On one atheist’s blog, the author was comparing being Christian to be being like John Nash as portrayed in the movie A Beautiful Mind. Just like John Nash believed in people who weren’t real, he argued that Christians believed in an unreal God.   He also compared Christianity to Buzz Light Year’s belief that he was really on a mission from mission control.   The author thought he could relate to Buzz Lightyear because, when he was a Christian, he thought he was on a mission from mission control and had to face the hard realization he really was not.      The blogger was hoping that he could disabuse Christians of their “make believe” ideas.      

 

As it turns out this blogger replaced the idea of mission control, with the idea that when it comes to morality we create our own meaning.    I found this interesting.  He was trying to help people stop believing “make believe” but he thinks he “creates” his own meaning when it comes to morality, and presumably lives his life based on these creations.    It became clear to me that this author and perhaps a few people who follow his blog did not see the irony.   So I explained the difference between moral realism and relativism.  He clearly indicated he is a subjectivist.   That is, he is some who thinks right and wrong is dependent on our own view of what is right or wrong.  In other words morality is a creation of our mind – just like those imaginary people John Nash believed in.    

 

I am aware meta-ethical views and their implications are really not all that well known outside of philosophers interested in the field.   I did a brief introductory blog on it here https://trueandreasonable.co/2014/01/20/what-do-you-mean-im-wrong/  So I am not trying to be critical of the blogger, or any of the other commentators, defending him.  They were all pretty intelligent and reasonable people.   I think this is an important illustration of why gaining an understanding of these issues is critical if you want to discuss the reasonableness of believing in Christianity.  Here the blogger assumed we shouldn’t live our lives based on make believe.  Yet this person admitted he lives by a morality he made up.

 

Russ Shaefer-Landau said it best:

  <blockquote>“Nihilists believe that there are no moral truths.  Subjectivists believe that moral truth is created by each individual.  Relativists believe that moral truth is a social construct.  These three theories share the view that, in ethics, we make it all up. ”  </blockquote>  Page 11 Whatever Happened to Good and Evil. 

 

But don’t take his, or my word for it, think it through yourself.  If your morality is based on creating your own meaning you are indeed “making it up.”  Now there are several reasons people might not believe in God.  But if you reject belief in God because you fear God might be “made up”, it seems you would be contradicting this principle, to then accept some sort of relativist theory of morality.  Because there you know you are living your life based on make believe.  

 

In the end if a rational person really wants to keep close contact with reality then rejecting a view that might be made up for one that you know is made up seems a poor approach. 

    

What Do You Mean, I’m Wrong?

20 Monday Jan 2014

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I have started talking about morality and I will continue to talk about morality so I should probably explain a bit about what I mean.   By morals I mean what we should do, and what is right and wrong, good and evil.  I generally don’t distinguish between these different terms.     I am a moral realist so I will usually mean the first category, I describe below.

There are several different notions that people have about what morals are and what we mean when we say something is “wrong” immoral etc.  I think the explanations I give match pretty well with how philosophers generally understand these terms.    Here are what I consider the big 4 general ideas of meta-ethics.  That is if we step really far back from any ethical debate I think these 4 concepts can help us understand what we mean when we call something right or wrong:

Objective Moral Realism:  People in this group believe that when we say something is wrong we are making a positive claim about reality that is true or false regardless of what anyone believes about it.

There are several  types of realists but one distinction is between,  Non naturalists and naturalists.  Moral non-naturalists believe that rightness or wrongness is a property of reality that attaches to certain morally relevant occurrences.

Moral Naturalists think that that the rightness and wrongness simply is the set of facts that make up certain occurrences.     For the moral naturalist there is no additional property of wrongness.    But the naturalist still believes certain events are wrong.  Just like they believe some things are water.  Water happens to be those things that are h2o.  They are not, H2O plus another “water property.” Our understanding of water supervenes on anything that has the chemical composition H2O.  Likewise wrongness supervenes on certain occurrences.

Both are realists.  Moral realists include Russ Schaefer Landau (moral realist of the non-naturalist variety) and Nicholas Sturgeon (moral realist and naturalist)  The best introduction to meta-ethics I have found is Russ Schaefer landau’s “whatever happened to good and evil?”

I am a moral realist.  I don’t really have a strong view on moral naturalism versus moral non naturalism.

Error theorists, Nihilists:    This group believes there is no such thing as morality.    So arguing about whether something is right or wrong is like arguing about whether male unicorns have 38 or 42 teeth.   It’s all based on an erroneous understanding of the world.  JL Mackie’s excellent book “Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong” is a great book that sets forth this understanding.  He is a very good writer and should be read on his own.  Among the points he makes is that if ethical properties were to exist in reality they would be queer things.   And even if they did exist how would we know what they are?

Another error theorist is Richard Joyce.   He argues that even if moral properties did exist what we know about evolution makes it extremely unlikely that we would know what they are.  He wrote an excellent book covering this theory called “The Evolution of Morality.”    He has also written several papers many of which can be accessed on his website.  Both are good writers Mackie’s book might be a bit easier for someone new to the meta-ethics to digest.

Note that although Richard Joyce argues that evolution makes our moral beliefs (if they were to exist) unreliable that in itself does not really make him a nihilist.  Richard Joyce, Sharon Street, and Mark Linville are 3 philosophers who have published papers explaining how our understanding of evolution debunks the notion that we can have reliable moral beliefs.    That is if we assume naturalism is true it debunks them.  Here btw “naturalism” just means not believing in anything supernatural.  So no God(s) or spirits or anything of the sort.  “Naturalism” is related to “moral naturalism” but not the same term.   It’s pretty clear that Richard Joyce and Sharon Street are naturalists and Mark Linville is a Christian.   I think Sharon Street is a relativist, Mark Linville is a realist and Richard Joyce is a nihilist.  So Mark Linville is making the argument based on the assumption that naturalism is true, where as the other two really think naturalism is true.

Relativism:   Generally speaking this group thinks that moral claims can be true or false by comparing it with reality but it’s not independent of what people believe.    Subjectivists might think what is right and wrong is up to each individual. Here morals are like tastes in food.   Asking if giving to the poor is good is like asking if chocolate is good.  Most will agree it is but it’s up to each individual.

More commonly relativists tend to base morals on a relevant community.  They believe that there is some relevant community (sometimes a hypothetical community which to some extent can make it like realism) that decides what is right or wrong.    Currency is a common analogy.  A $10 bill is a piece of paper.  But it is worth $10.  It would be false to hold a $10 bill up and say “this is worth $14 dollars.”  But that statement is true or false due to the beliefs of the relevant community.   Gilbert Harman is a well-known relativist.

My own view on relativism:  Ok this is where we get the problems along the lines of what if the Nazis killed everyone who disagreed with them so all that was left were Nazis who thought Jews should be killed.  Would it then be right to kill Jews?  That seems a problem with this position.  Russ Shaefer Landau asks if the same event can take place in several different societies.   For example a member of the mafia might kill a victim who is also in the mafia’s cultural community and it is not wrong in that set of circumstances according to that community.  But it also occurred in New York and according to that society it is wrong.   If it can occur in 2 societies, then the same exact event might be wrong and not wrong at the same time.

But beyond that I think I have another deeper problem.  This is taking the position that when it comes to morals we make it all up.   Do we want to believe in make believe?  It is essentially adopting the position that we are staring at the shadows on the cave and we are fine with structuring our lives around that.  For me, I can’t really get behind it.  If that is all we mean by truth when it comes to morals then moral truths lose too much significance.  I don’t really care if I live my life wrongly if all that means is I lived my life wrong according to some group or other.

Noncognitivists:   This group denies that moral claims are the sorts of claims that can be considered true or false.    Thus if I were to say “it’s wrong to stick babies with bayonets” they think this is only my expressing disapproval.  In essence they think I am saying “boo to sticking babies with bayonets!”   Now is “boo to sticking babies with bayonets” true or false?  What about “yay! 49ers” or “Boo!  seahawks”?  These utterances are really neither true or false.  They are not making a claim about reality but instead are just expressions of approval or disapproval.   According to noncognitivists moral statements are really just these sorts of utterances and should not be interpreted as propositions that can be either true or false.

These are what I consider 4 corners of what people people mean by morals.  There are many different theories and terminology involved, and these theories are not always exclusive of each other.   But I think just getting an understanding of these 4 basic ideas is helpful to navigate.

Like I said I am an objective moral realist.  So when I refer to morals that is typically the brand I am referring to.