Atheism & Moral Naïveté

Posted in Atheism, Morality, Philosophy on  | 3 minutes | 76 Comments →

I recently expressed my belief that most atheists have a very naïve understanding of morality that goes something like, “saving lives = moral good.” A commenter asked me to explain my position, and that’s what today’s brief post is about.

cl, no offense, but I don’t think this is a common atheist ethic. I think this is a cornerstone of any common sense morality: that is to say, “this” being the principle that saving lives is good. If you hear a child crying out for help that is drowning, would you bother to save him? Would not saving him be immoral if one was totally aware of his presence/distress and capable of saving him?

My first response is that “common sense” has led us down the wrong path, countless times. “Common sense” told us the sun went around Earth. “Common sense” told us air travel and telephony were impossible. “Common sense” told us that quantum mechanics just couldn’t be true. For these reasons, “common sense” merits a low position in any rational truth-seeker’s tool shed.

Why do I assert that “saving lives = moral good” is a naïve moral claim? There are several reasons. Here are a few, phrased as questions:

1) On atheism, everything is just the chance results of mindless atoms interacting. Atheists routinely deny that humanity is special. We are just one of many possible arrangements of matter. So, why is “saving lives” the ultimate moral good, as opposed to, say, “rocks falling,” or “clouds forming?”

2) When atheists like Peter Hurford assert that “saving lives = moral good,” on what empirical ground do they rest?

3) If Hitler fell into the Ammersee after Reichstag, would “saving lives = moral good” still apply?

4) It is mathematically undeniable that saving lives promotes overpopulation. It also seems undeniable that scarcity of resources promotes greed and leads to an increase of suffering. Hence, might “saving lives = moral good” be a misguided error of “common sense” like the others?

Seriously people. I demand the same thing from Peter or any other moralist that I did from Luke Muehlhauser and Alonzo Fyfe regarding desirism. Hell, I did more actual work trying to uphold that theory than they did. I’m not saying my attempt deserves to be published. I’m just saying that atheists needs to bring the empiricism required to ground their claims—especially since they often present themselves as committed to rationalism and evidence—.

So, atheists, let’s see it.


76 comments

  1. dale

     says...

    RE:
    1) On atheism, everything is just the chance results of mindless atoms interacting. Atheists routinely deny that humanity is special. We are just one of many possible arrangements of matter. So, why is “saving lives” the ultimate moral good, as opposed to, say, “rocks falling,” or “clouds forming?”

    Yet, atheists put themselves in a superior position over theists, of every kind, as “having a better argument” due to their collection of physical evidence facts.

    And as CL’s examples of common senses from the past show, facts fade in time. Truth, however is never changing. On top of that, doesn’t a self proclaimed superior position place them in the realm of being “special”?

    Dogs don’t question God, and neither do dolphins.

    This type of situation always reminds me of when a scientist performs a controlled experiment in a laboratory, in which they recreate the exact environmental situation in which they believe primordial life began on earth.

    When they create an amino acid or whatever base life form they wind up with, by introducing natural elements and natural action/reaction situations, they jump up and down with excitement that “life could have happened this way, so God must not exist.”

    All the while, they can’t see past their own nose and realize that God is pretty much a a scientist who performs/ed a controlled experiment in the laboratory/universe, in which he created the exact environmental situation in which primordial life began on earth.

  2. Garren

     says...

    That sounds too challenging. Glad I can skip all that work by being a moral anti-realist.

  3. Thinking Emotions

     says...

    Garren, what’s moral anti-realism? Isn’t it like moral truths aren’t transcendent or universal, but rather merely composed of the actions that they label? Something like that?

    Anyway, this is some deeply complicated stuff, and I have not the patience or clarity to deal with it right now. I’ll just address 1 and 4 and revisit this later on.

    1) I find this argument utterly uncompelling, and you’re not the first to make it. Shelly Kagan flawlessly addressed it during his debate with WLC and used an analogy of a rainbow. For example, understanding that a rainbow is just a series of light refractions does not make it any less special i.e., degrade its beauty or value. He then goes onto argue that at some point, you just have to admit (out of the meaning of the word special) that some of the things humans are capable of are pretty special. He says that humans call fall in love, can write poetry, can perform calculus, can do astrophysics, etc. Isn’t this pretty special?

    If you reduce this to, “Well, that’s just the colliding of atoms, matter, etc!” then that’s fine, but it doesn’t fix your assertion. Regardless of what you call it, we’re the only species to my knowledge that can do all those things. Kagan states that we can do the same exact BS with theists.

    Atheist: What’s so special about us humans, anyway?
    Theist: Well, God made us and…
    Atheist: Oh yeah, but what’s so special about THAT? After all, God made everything else, too!
    Theist: Well, we have SOULS, you-
    Atheist: So? What’s so special about a SOUL?
    Theist: Ugh. Listen, souls give us free will-
    Atheist: What’s so special about FREE WILL?
    *Repeat ad nauseam*

    Reductio ad absurdum, and maybe even just possibly QED. IIRC, Craig was a stumbling moron after Kagan said all this. I know you’ll have something more interesting than Craig had to say in rebuttal, though :)

    4) I think this is just a case of a very slight logical misstep: your conclusion follows, but it is not sound. Your argument is that saving lives promotes overpopulation. Overpopulation is bad. Therefore we shouldn’t save lives. Let me give an opposite but totally analogous argument.

    1. Murdering people and neglecting to save lives combats overpopulation.
    2. Overpopulation is bad.
    3. Therefore, we should murder people and neglect to save lives.

    So, what do you say, cl? Oh! To address something else. You keep talking about how common sense is so wrong and such, but I’m not sure if it’s really applicable here. After all, common sense morality is indeed truth to many people (namely moral intuitionists, methinks). This is kinda what I’m getting at with the whole judgment/measurement thing… folk psychology and folk physics are HORRIBLE compared to real psychology and real physics. You want to know what made the difference? Empirical data via measurements. This is also precisely what found out the truth of QM, the possibility of telephony and air travel, etc etc etc.

  4. Thinking Emotions

     says...

    Slightly irrelevant, but I just need to know, cl. Is it logically possible for God to have any subjective preferences?

  5. cl

     says...

    TE,

    I find this argument utterly uncompelling, and you’re not the first to make it.

    You misunderstood the argument the question implies. You’re so far out in left field I can’t even read the numbers on your jersey.

    I think this is just a case of a very slight logical misstep: your conclusion follows, but it is not sound.

    In order to make that claim, you need to demonstrate the falsity of one or more premises—but you haven’t.

    You keep talking about how common sense is so wrong and such,

    Now you’ve gone and completely misrepresented what I said, so, I’m content to leave it there and chalk it up to your remark about not having the patience or clarity to properly address these things right now.

    **Actually, wait, you said something quite relevant:

    folk psychology and folk physics are HORRIBLE compared to real psychology and real physics. You want to know what made the difference? Empirical data via measurements. This is also precisely what found out the truth of QM, the possibility of telephony and air travel, etc etc etc.

    Yes, that’s exactly my point that you’re echoing there. So then, where is *YOUR* empirical data? Where is Peter Hurford’s? If neither of you can bring it, why should I give your claims any more credence than folk physics or folk psychology?

  6. Garren

     says...

    Thinking Emotions,

    As I’m using it here, “moral anti-realism” is the view that moral properties aren’t properties in the world that exist independently of our thinking. They are properties that we define, project, etc. rather than discover.

    This means things like “saving lives” or “increasing happiness” or “having desires that tend to promote other desires” don’t have (or could have, but lack) a moral goodness property for us to discern empirically. Instead, the situation is more like: we value life/happiness/desire-promoting-desires/etc. or something they promote, so we call these things “good.”

    I broadly agree with cl that atheists who esteem rationalism and empiricism so highly often try to include moral judgments in this scheme, but don’t pull it off convincingly.

  7. Thinking Emotions

     says...

    I wrote a ton, and that’s all you have to say in response? I’m not offended or hurt, but just a little confused. Also, just because I said I was too busy to address all of this at the moment doesn’t mean I didn’t give 1 and 4 the time they deserved. I’ll be blunt: did you read everything I wrote and thoughtfully consider it or did you skim because you felt some of it was irrelevant? Either way, some of your response was clearly rushed, so let me dive into details.

    Woops, looks like I confused validity and soundness. I meant that your argument wasn’t necessarily valid, and that’s completely true. Come to think of it, I remember reading an old discussion where you and dguller were having a conversation and he made the same exact mistake. You asked if he had confused validity and soundness. I find it weird that I made a direct reference to the definition of validity, but you ask me to show if one of your premises is wrong. Yeah, I obviously don’t think that, given that I also said each premise was true. Did you actually fail to pick up on this, or were you just not paying attention?

    By the way, “rocks falling” and “clouds forming” are obviously not moral actions, so that might be just one of many reasons why saving lives is a more defensible moral principle. The purpose of my response (or Kagan’s, rather) was to highlight that human actions are still special, no matter which way you want to slice it. Human beings can feel things, have subjective experience, etc. This might be why a human falling down a well and the choice to save him or not is a moral decision while the event of a rock falling or cloud forming is not. Until you involve a human dropping a rock on a man’s head or a mad scientist forming a mutant cloud in a lab to harm others, there is nothing moral about the two scenarios you gave in any sense whatsoever.

    I took that statement as an implication that human actions and ordeals are no different from any other ordeal because they both reduce to atoms, and this is erroneous. I even said something just like this in my original response. So, I guess at this point I’m *still* scratching my head in confusion. What argument were you implying exactly…?

    Regarding common sense, how did I misrepresent you? Let’s look at this as simply as possible and see.

    My words: You keep talking about how common sense is so wrong…

    Your words: My first response is that “common sense” has led us down the wrong path, countless times… [f]or these reasons, “common sense” merits a low position in any rational truth-seeker’s tool shed.

    Am I the only one seeing this? This is kind of funny, especially since I go on to say something complementary to your reasoning. Heck, even though I agree that common sense is misleading, I even tried to rebut your statement in a moral sense. Moral intuitionists rely upon common sense, or something similar to it, yeah?

    Anyway, a good question to ask at this point: I’m a weak moral nihilist, man — what claims do you think I’m making? / What claims are alleging to me? The reason I support Peter’s cause is because it’s what I care about practically. I did meatless March last month and I’m still continuing eating this way because I don’t like eating the grapes of brutal, unnecessary suffering. I don’t do things or not do things because they’re wrong or right — seriously, what a terrible way to make decisions. I can’t think of two squishier words than right or wrong.

    Empathy is probably the best moral compass one can come to adopt, and it’s not even a necessarily moral compass. I think this really says something about morality as a whole. IOW, how well does morality even do its job practically? If we lose sight of what morality does and how it works, its truth value means very little, I say.

    3) is horrifically irrelevant and almost a red herring. There would be a lot of other horrible disasters people could point to had the Holocaust not happened, since many awful things happened prior to it. I’m not even going to answer the question because it’s so loaded.

    2) is something I wonder myself, but I think 2) heavily applies to you. While you may have deductive arguments supporting your belief, you don’t have anything substantial or “empirical.” Isn’t it important to follow your own guidelines? Even if there were some sort of empirical data we could interact with WRT to morality, moral skepticism would still largely undercut a lot of it. The argument from queerness may as well be the ethical version of the interaction problem.

  8. cl

     says...

    Garren,

    They are properties that we define, project, etc. rather than discover.

    In other words, they are subjective preferences not unlike one’s tastes in music, art or literature. From there it follows that they can only be binding to those who share the subjective preferences. It would seemingly also follow that forcing dissenters to abide by them becomes tantamount to fascism, or forcing an anti-rap rocker to listen to Lil Wayne. There’s a reason practically no atheist would ever go there, and I think it’s because they implicitly recognize that morality is *NOT* just a set of subjective preferences. This, in essence, is the argument from objective morality. Frankly, the only atheist I respect (intellectually) is the nihilist. At least they hold to their beliefs the whole way through.

    This means things like “saving lives” or “increasing happiness” or “having desires that tend to promote other desires” don’t have (or could have, but lack) a moral goodness property for us to discern empirically. Instead, the situation is more like: we value life/happiness/desire-promoting-desires/etc. or something they promote, so we call these things “good.”

    With all due respect, I don’t think this gets the moral anti-realist off the hook. The question of whether “life/happiness/desire-promoting-desires” actually achieve the desired end is 1) up for grabs, and 2) undeniably an empirical question, don’t you think?

  9. cl

     says...

    TE,

    Yeah, I obviously don’t think that, given that I also said each premise was true. Did you actually fail to pick up on this, or were you just not paying attention?

    Neither. You did *NOT* say “each premise was true.” Go reread your words. You said, “my conclusion follows but it is not sound.” Well, to say an argument is “valid” is to say that the conclusion follows. Since you’re an intelligent, amicable fellow, I extended charity and took you at your word.

    Regardless, this is meaningless minutia. The real gauntlet is here: if you assert that the argument you think I’m making is not valid, you have to show how the conclusion does *NOT* follow, even though you admit each premise is true.

  10. joseph

     says...

    2) When atheists like Peter Hurford assert that “saving lives = moral good,” on what empirical ground do they rest?

    Surprised as previously you’ve said such things can be definitional. Also many Christians, including Christ, seem not to deny that saving life is to be regarded as a moral good.

    Good point about common sense.

    As for the others I genuinely struggle to see how good adds explanatory power.
    Adamoriens and Tai Chi asked very good questions of your moral ontology argument, and I am curious to know your answers.

  11. cl

     says...

    joseph,

    …previously you’ve said such things can be definitional.

    Exactly what “such things” are you alluding to, and where did I say they were definitional? Further, what does it mean to say something is “definitional?” That said thing is relative / subjective as opposed to factual?

    Adamoriens and Tai Chi asked very good questions of your moral ontology argument, and I am curious to know your answers.

    I’d be glad to answer them if you can identify them.

  12. Peter Hurford

     says...

    All,

    I’ve been weighing a few different ways for getting involved here. I thought about writing a response essay, but I have so many more essays left to write first, and I’m still hella busy. So I think I’m going to comment here, we can get the discussion going, and if it’s still a problem after a bit of talk, I can then expand into blog essays. Hopefully my series on morality will have caught up by then.

    Garren: That sounds too challenging. Glad I can skip all that work by being a moral anti-realist.

    Garren and I have the same meta-ethical beliefs. I agree with him that we are moral anti-realists by most definitions. Let me see if I can outline what’s going on here and Garren can disagree as he sees fit if I stray from his views.

    ~

    Cl: 1) On atheism, everything is just the chance results of mindless atoms interacting. Atheists routinely deny that humanity is special. We are just one of many possible arrangements of matter. So, why is “saving lives” the ultimate moral good, as opposed to, say, “rocks falling,” or “clouds forming?”

    This doesn’t follow. Just because things are chance-ish (see “Is Life an Accident?”) doesn’t mean that everything is meaningless. This is because humans create their own meaning in lives. We decide what is meaningful and special. So my reaction to the true claim that we are arrangements of matter is “So what?”.

    And humans definitely are special in many senses. There are a lot of things that humans can do that no other arrangement of matter yet discovered can. Humans have preferences, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, ideas, and are capable of emotions and a wide variety of connections. Rocks and clouds can’t do that.

    So why do humans matter and rocks and clouds don’t matter as much? It’s because we’re the ones capable of mattering, and we care about humans a lot more than rocks or clouds. Rocks have no feelings or preferences and are incapable of pain, and thus cannot be harmed in any way. Humans definitely aren’t. Many nonhuman animals also definitely aren’t, and thus are special-ish too. Some nonhuman animals aren’t as special. It’s a scale.

    Now, there are also many ways in which humans aren’t special. The universe wasn’t made for us, doesn’t progress for us, doesn’t care about us, and doesn’t really do anything for us unless we make it. The universe is indifferent to humans. Furthermore, humans don’t have souls, don’t survive death, and aren’t loved by any gods.

    Of course, you and I disagree about this, and we can have conversations about these things, but it’s the ways in which I assert we are not special. My arguments are elsewhere, and you know where to find them. I’ll follow up on your comments on my other posts at a later date.

    So why humans, and not clouds or rocks? Because humans have much greater capacities for pain and for connections, and just matter more to me. And I assume they matter more to you, and to every other commenter here.

    But now more into if and how that matters morally, and about this “saving lives” bit versus other things we could do.

    ~

    Cl: 2) When atheists like Peter Hurford assert that “saving lives = moral good,” on what empirical ground do they rest?

    What does it mean to say that something is a “moral good”? I think it’s only when you clear out that definition will you understand if saving lives = moral good. You’re basically asking for a demonstration that “saving lives = quibblebrox” or that “9 = x, for a specific x”. What is quibblebrox? What is the value of x? What is “moral good”?

    The way I take it, I don’t like to throw around moral terminology. I still do it because others do it, and out of habit, but I’m trying to get out of it. Instead, everything is framed in terms of goals that we care about. What is moral? Well, what do you value? Then we’ll figure out how to get it.

    Many people assume that this is going to start rampant selfishness. But most people don’t value themselves and only themselves. And if they do, tricking them into thinking morality has this objective nature external to them certainly isn’t going to help. Instead, we’d have to turn to the fact that selfless behavior often creates meaning and happiness in your lives. …I’ll drop by later to provide some study citations for this, I don’t have them with me here.

    I personally care deeply about preventing suffering and maximizing the well-being of anything capable of suffering or of being well. That’s subjective to me; it’s a personal goal. It’s no metaphysical binding property of the universe.

    So where does saving lives come in? Mainly because saving lives does reliably prevent an awful lot of suffering. People often die in painful ways that can be prevented, and people often prefer not to die and are harmed by all the things they cannot do because they are dead.

    Sure, saving lives isn’t the only way or the best way to achieve this end. But I don’t carry it out to the naive extreme of forcing people to stay alive who really want to die. And I’d much rather focus on systematic changes that can end up dramatically increasing quality of life, or save a lot more lives later than direct interventions. I just think direct interventions matter a lot too, mainly because they’re far more reliable and currently very underfunded.

    ~

    Cl: 3) If Hitler fell into the Ammersee after Reichstag, would “saving lives = moral good” still apply?

    Depends again on what moral good means. If everyone suddenly stopped valuing other people, then it would be true that no one would need be motivated to help others.

    But still, that wouldn’t mean that certain ends aren’t furthered by saving lives. It still would be true that “In order to prevent suffering and maximize well-being, we should save lives”, it’s just that no one would care.

    And it could be that people would care, if taking the end of preventing suffering made them more personally fulfilled and content, but they’re brainwashed to not accept that. But if they were altered biologically to make it so that helping others made them less fulfilled and content, then there would be even more reason for them not to do that.

    But again, all this adds up to a giant “so what?”. I guess we’re all motivated to make sure that the universe never becomes like this…

    ~

    4) It is mathematically undeniable that saving lives promotes overpopulation. It also seems undeniable that scarcity of resources promotes greed and leads to an increase of suffering. Hence, might “saving lives = moral good” be a misguided error of “common sense” like the others?

    if it turns out that saving lives just causes more suffering overall, then we should stop saving lives in that way, and instead do something more effective. But I wouldn’t even be so fast to make this leap, because you’re misguided here.

    It may be mathematically undeniable, but what you say still isn’t a logically valid conclusion, because overpopulation is driven a lot by large birth rates. And it turns out that life saving measures that increase survival rates also result in dramatically decreased birth rates, thus making saving lives also a somewhat effective means of reducing overpopulation.

    See this report from the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, and this GiveWell article.

    ~

    Thinking Emotions: Garren, what’s moral anti-realism? Isn’t it like moral truths aren’t transcendent or universal, but rather merely composed of the actions that they label? Something like that?

    Mainly, that moral truths are just means that fulfill the specific ends that we have and find moral. Typically, the ends we call “moral” involve taking the preferences of others into account. My favorite moral end is to reduce suffering and maximize well-being among all entities capable of such a thing.

    ~

    Cl: In other words, they are subjective preferences not unlike one’s tastes in music, art or literature. From there it follows that they can only be binding to those who share the subjective preferences.

    It certainly doesn’t. Consider chess — just because you may not care to follow the rules of chess doesn’t mean you won’t be thrown out of the tournament for trying to move your bishop like a queen. The rules of chess are binding on you.

    Likewise, we can institutionalize some other rules as well. In fact, we do this with laws all the time. A ban on murder is applied to you whether you share the aversion to murder or not.

    ~

    Cl: It would seemingly also follow that forcing dissenters to abide by them becomes tantamount to fascism, or forcing an anti-rap rocker to listen to Lil Wayne.

    Again, also completely false. We don’t force anti-rap rockers to listen to Lil Wayne because that would only harm them, and get us nothing. We do however, force pedophiles to stay away from children because that does harm people, and we personally value these interventions to save children, as well as creating a deterrent effect, and getting a chance to reform people.

    ~

    Cl: There’s a reason practically no atheist would ever go there, and I think it’s because they implicitly recognize that morality is *NOT* just a set of subjective preferences. This, in essence, is the argument from objective morality.

    What objective morality are you planning on pointing to? I’ve never seen a successful one, but maybe you can change my mind. I think many atheists are under the false sway of an objective morality, but I also think that many atheists recognize that there’s no point in respecting other people’s preferences when they cause harm to others, and when there are ways we can intervene.

    ~

    The question of whether “life/happiness/desire-promoting-desires” actually achieve the desired end is 1) up for grabs, and 2) undeniably an empirical question, don’t you think?

    I agree here. I think all of this value stuff is empirical — we need to discover what it is that we personally value, and we need to discover how to achieve these things.

    That’s all I have for now, and I look forward to continuing the discussion. I have thousands of more things to say on the subject of morality, but I think this will do for the time I have.

  13. Dominic Saltarelli

     says...

    All hail quibblebrox.

  14. Dominic Saltarelli

     says...

    Seriously though. The empirical evidence for “saving lives = good” lies in the fact that trying to save lives is what most of us do when presented with the opportunity. Call the police if we see someone in danger, that sort of thing. If an action wasn’t good, the majority of people would not feel compelled to do it.

    Surely it can’t be that simple, you might say, people aren’t fundamentally good. Well, actually, in a large society that manages to survive itself after a few generations, most people in that society are. The numbers vary, but it’s usually between 2-6% of individuals who are fundamentally evil, technically referred to as sociopaths. Once the sociopaths take over and replace the natural state of moral judgments in society with their own (e.g. communist regimes), the society quickly collapses.

    Its evolutionary. Instinctive dogmas that promote a healthy society are good. The empirical evidence is in observable human behavior.

    All hail quibblebrox.

  15. cl

     says...

    Peter,

    After this exchange, let’s aim for brevity.

    Just because things are chance-ish (see “Is Life an Accident?”) doesn’t mean that everything is meaningless. This is because humans create their own meaning in lives.

    Strawman. I neither accept nor endorse any variant of Craig’s “without God everything is meaningless” argument. In fact, I criticize that argument, here. So, your response doesn’t address my request: either support your moral claims with empirical data—unless of course you don’t believe your moral claims require empirical data (which I suspect)—or give an accounting of when it’s okay to eschew empirical data as the most reliable means of discovering truth.

    So why humans, and not clouds or rocks? Because humans have much greater capacities for pain and for connections, and just matter more to me.

    So… the “moral good” is what “matters more” to you, or anybody else? IOW, morality is just what you personally believe?

    What does it mean to say that something is a “moral good”?

    Apparently it means “whatever matters to Peter Hurford.”

    …most people don’t value themselves and only themselves.

    Is that another one of those “gut feeling” claims you’re prone to making? If not, what reason can you give me to believe it? When I look around, I see a non-trivial number of people who seem to only value themselves.

    And if they do, tricking them into thinking morality has this objective nature external to them certainly isn’t going to help.

    I don’t know if it would or not—that seems like another one of your “gut feeling” claims—but do you mean to imply that telling them “whatever matters to them is moral” is going to help?

    …saving lives does reliably prevent an awful lot of suffering.

    How do you know? This is at least the third “gut feeling” claim you’ve made in this comment. Is this is another one of those claims you’ll provide citations for later?

    [people] are harmed by all the things they cannot do because they are dead.

    Charity requires me to assume you misspoke, unless of course you really believe that the dead can be harmed. I assume you meant the fear of what they can’t do is the harm here? If so, you seem to extend your definition of “harm” to “anything that causes mental uneasiness, worry, or anxiety. Is that the case? If not, what are you talking about?

    It still would be true that “In order to prevent suffering and maximize well-being, we should save lives”,

    Peter, that’s exactly the naive, folk morality assertion I’m asking you to support with empirical evidence. You simply assert this, ostensibly because it “matters to you” or “most people you know” or some other such criteria. How do you know this is true?

    I guess we’re all motivated to make sure that the universe never becomes like this…

    I think you mistakenly project what matters to you on everyone else. Again, I know a non-trivial number of people who don’t care whether the universe becomes like this.

    See this report from the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, and this GiveWell article.

    I’m not convinced you understand the full import of the articles you cite. As for the former, it’s like 200 pages. Can you at least do us the favor of citing the pertinent section(s)?

    As for the latter, I share the author’s caution and hesitancy: “Since 1950, these countries have seen noticeable declines in both infant mortality and fertility (children per woman). However, the trends don’t sync up. In particular, since 1990, infant mortality has largely remained flat while fertility has continued to decline. (Note that literacy has improved over this time period as well.) I’m hesitant to go as far as the report in calling infant mortality a primary, or the primary, driver of lower fertility. I don’t know of any more thorough studies on the link, and would be interested in any references.”

    Hence, I think your claim that I’m misguided might be premature. Can you show that it isn’t?

    The rules of chess are binding on you.

    Only if I accept them. Notice there are no laws and/or punishments regarding rogue chess playing. Your example actually underscores my point. You are badly mistaken when you assert that your own moral preferences are somehow different from your musical, literary or artistic preferences. You’ve already said that your “morality” is “what matters to you.” That, I’m afraid, is as subjective a preference as it gets.

    Point is, laws are binding on whoever accepts the social contract. But who are you to say people in other countries are “immoral” if *THEY* value pornography? Free drugs? Child sacrifice? You either have to grant equal respect to *THEIR* subjective preferences, else give empirical evidence to support yours. Surely you’d scoff if I said it’s perfectly fine for others to teach geocentrism, right? Surely you’d respond that this is because the evidence contradicts geocentrism, right? Well, what evidence contradicts the claim drowning daughters is moral because certain people valued it?

    A ban on murder is applied to you whether you share the aversion to murder or not.

    That’s exactly my point: why isn’t a ban on rap music applied to me, whether I share the aversion or not? Is it not because “most people” deem fondness for rap music a subjective preference? Well then, why should *YOUR* subjective moral preferences be imposed on those who don’t share them? How do you know drowning daughters isn’t actually “moral,” or doesn’t actually alleviate suffering overall? I think the only honest answer is that you don’t, and you’re simply peddling folk morality. That’s fine with me, as long as you admit it—unless of course you can demonstrate that you actually aren’t peddling folk morality.

    Again, also completely false.

    Fascism wasn’t the right word. I was asking you to explain why *YOUR* subjective preferences regarding suffering should carry any more weight than subjective preferences for art, music or literature.

    With regard to objective morality, the question is why don’t you feel society should enact laws against rap music? Is it not because you implicitly recognize that rap music is just a subjective preference for one arrangement of atoms over another? I anticipate you to reply that rap music does no harm, which suggests that your moral theory is something like, “harm is bad.”

  16. cl

     says...

    Dominic,

    If an action wasn’t good, the majority of people would not feel compelled to do it.

    So, morality = what the majority is compelled to do?

    The numbers vary, but it’s usually between 2-6% of individuals who are fundamentally evil, technically referred to as sociopaths.

    LOL! Again you prove my point about atheists making moral claims with zero empirical evidence. I assume you have it, why not bring it? Forgot it with your sack lunch because you were busy at Vox’s?

    Seriously though, are you saying *ONLY* the sociopath is evil? What do *YOU* mean when you say someone is evil?

  17. Garren

     says...

    cl,

    Basically, yeah, morality is about subjective preferences we try to get others to go along with. When they share preferences with us, we can reason about means and ends in the open. When they don’t, we have to use psych tricks. Moral vocabulary itself is one of these psych tricks.

    Outside of means-ends facts and social pressure, I don’t see how morality could be binding in any possible world. My stance toward moral realism is more analogous to ignosticism than atheism.

    Also, I’m not seeing a problem with me holding a preference that I don’t listen to rap music while also holding a preference that other people listen to rap music if they like.

  18. Garren,

    This means things like “saving lives” or “increasing happiness” or “having desires that tend to promote other desires” don’t have (or could have, but lack) a moral goodness property for us to discern empirically. Instead, the situation is more like: we value life/happiness/desire-promoting-desires/etc. or something they promote, so we call these things “good.”

    If this accurately describes your position, you’re not a moral-antirealist; you’re an expressivist. You don’t say, like an antirealist (aka, error theorist) that morality is false (like Mackie); you say it is without cognitive content (like Stevenson). It isn’t a real belief, on the expressivist view, but only has some of the grammar of one. (For a consistent antirealist position, see my http://tinyurl.com/7advgq5 – new one on why people believe in something as irrational as morality coming up.)

  19. Garren,

    “My stance toward moral realism is more analogous to ignosticism than atheism”

    Yes, that’s a more accurate description of your position than the antirealist characterization.

  20. Thinking Emotions

     says...

    The real gauntlet is here: if you assert that the argument you think I’m making is not valid, you have to show how the conclusion does *NOT* follow, even though you admit each premise is true.

    I did this by giving an opposite but related syllogism that I believe is equally invalid.

    1. Murdering people and neglecting to save lives combats overpopulation.
    2. Overpopulation is bad.
    3. Therefore, we should murder people and neglect to save lives.

    Just because a certain act prevents or leads to a certain undesirable state of affairs does not automatically make that act justifiable or reprehensible respectively; I think this is where weighing the possibilities against each other comes into play. To make sure you get where I’m coming from, this is a logical claim and not a moral one. After all, at what point does saving lives cause overpopulation? It’s not like we can save everyone — even those that we have the potential to save, we may not be able to.

  21. Dominic Saltarelli

     says...

    LOL! Again you prove my point about atheists making moral claims with zero empirical evidence. I assume you have it, why not bring it? Forgot it with your sack lunch because you were busy at Vox’s?
    Seriously though, are you saying *ONLY* the sociopath is evil? What do *YOU* mean when you say someone is evil?

    Like I said, the numbers vary. Ask Martha Stout, who wrote “The Sociopath Next Door”, and you’ll get 4%. Ask Andrew Lobaczewski, author of “Political Ponerology” and you’ll get 6%. Pick your favorite source, I haven’t seen one who put the number at greater than 10%, so around 6-ish is good.

    And I’m saying sociopaths aren’t inclined to do good like normal people are. The manner in which good is distinguishable from evil empirically lies in the effect the underlying dogmas have upon society when adopted by a large enough group of people to have an impact. When murder is sanctioned, such as the Soviet gulags, society crumbles, making murder demonstrably bad. When charity and loving your neighbor is strongly encouraged, such as European Christendom, you get a civilization that lasts over a thousand years.

  22. TE,

    The argument from queerness may as well be the ethical version of the interaction problem.

    Exactly.

  23. joseph

     says...

    Hey CL,
    Adamoriens question/s are here:
    https://adamoriens.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/moral-knowledge-and-theistic-platonism/

    Taichi’s question is #10:
    https://thewarfareismental.com/2010/06/15/quest-for-second-best/

    It was in the article:

    Objective Morality: Clarifying The Questions

    That you argued moral goods (or rather objective moral facts) could be a matter of definition.

  24. cl

     says...

    Garren,

    Basically, yeah, morality is about subjective preferences we try to get others to go along with.

    I admire your candor.

    Also, I’m not seeing a problem with me holding a preference that I don’t listen to rap music while also holding a preference that other people listen to rap music if they like.

    The problem I see is that I’m almost certain you don’t feel the same way about subjective preferences for murder, theft, drug use, and many others (presumably because they cause harm). That you don’t feel the same way suggests that you either don’t actually believe morality is subjective preferences, or you think a moral attitude is a fundamentally different type of subjective preference to the extent that we can justify forcing others to accept it. If the former, I’m interested how you square that with your naturalism. If the latter, I’m interested in an explanation of the fundamental difference, and what allows us to justify the enforcement of one arrangement of atoms over another.

    joseph,

    Huh. Yesterday I begun responding to Adamoriens’ essay right before you mentioned it. Can you summarize how you think Adamoriens’ essay poses any threat whatsoever to the consistency of my moral argument(s)? That is, what, specifically, do you want me to answer?

  25. cl

     says...

    ThinkingEmotions,

    I’m not ignoring you, nor have I forgotten. I want to clear up the smaller matter before proceeding to the meat.

    Peter Hurford,

    Several weeks ago, I asked you to define both “cause” and “harm.” I understand that you’re busy, but unfortunately, our discussion on morality cannot proceed any further until you provide the requested definitions. Those two definitions are more important (to me) than 1,000 words attempting a line-by-line refutation of what I said here.

    I’m patient, I can wait. I’m really looking forward to hearing your definitions!

  26. Thinking Emotions

     says...

    cl,

    Don’t worry about me. You don’t need to post things such as that. You can respond to me at whatever interval you please. You are under no obligation to continue conversation with me.

    I’m thinking about moving away from asking questions like “Is God good?” or “Does God permit evil, and if so, why might he?” and moving toward questions like, “Is God empathetic?” and “Is empathy a quality of benevolence?”

  27. cl

     says...

    TE,

    “Is God empathetic?” I think so.

    “Is empathy a quality of benevolence?” I think so again.

    Don’t worry about me. You don’t need to post things such as that. You can respond to me at whatever interval you please. You are under no obligation to continue conversation with me.

    I know, I was just being courteous. I got the impression (from the other thread) that you don’t find this type of dialog productive, so, if that’s the case, I’m content to drop it. Although, I wonder if you understand why I think our previous miscommunication was entirely your fault?

  28. Anyone who says Christians are sophisticated about morality because they don’t embrace atheist simplemindedness should reveal the contrasting theist morality.

    Why did God command, “Thou shalt not kill”? Why is abstaining from killing a good unless avoiding killing is? Is God saying, “I forbid you to kill Tom, even though I know you hate his guts, although I don’t really give a fig whether he lives or dies”?

    Surely this isn’t the way Christian clerics have presented the commandment. Millions of them have told their congregations that Christianity teaches reverence for human life.

  29. joseph

     says...

    CL,
    It sounds like you’ve got it all covered, mostly I was interested on your take on the problem of divine hiddeness.

    How about Tai Chi’s question?

  30. Adamoriens

     says...

    My first response is that “common sense” has led us down the wrong path, countless times. “Common sense” told us the sun went around Earth. “Common sense” told us air travel and telephony were impossible. “Common sense” told us that quantum mechanics just couldn’t be true. For these reasons, “common sense” merits a low position in any rational truth-seeker’s tool shed.

    Hi Cl. I’m unsure what your precise point is here. If your argument is that our moral intuitions are unreliable at worst or that, at best, we shouldn’t trust them, the rest of your criticism looks rather strange. If our intuitions on matters ethical merit a low place in the toolshed (if any at all), why ask us to consult our own intuitions? Ex.

    3) If Hitler fell into the Ammersee after Reichstag, would “saving lives = moral good” still apply?

    Perhaps I’ve misread you or overestimated the force you intent to lend to your point. It seems to me that the only way to resolve ethical disputes is to arrive at a compromise that sits “right” with everyone’s intuitions, such that all talk about normative ethics is talk about what “seems” to be correct to one’s own self. I imagine this is why you think “saving lives=good” (ie. deontological ethics) is a naive claim (perhaps because consequentialism seems more plausible etc.).

    As for the others I genuinely struggle to see how good adds explanatory power.
    Adamoriens and Tai Chi asked very good questions of your moral ontology argument, and I am curious to know your answers.

    Hi Joseph. My criticisms were not about cl’s belief in freestanding norms, but rather whether the existence of God guarantees a better possible way to know the content of these norms. Indeed, my understanding is that cl advocates an essentially a-theistic metaethic, where ethical norms stand free of the “support” of God.

  31. TheistDude

     says...

    cl,

    How about doing a review of Sam Harris’s new free-will book? That would be interesting.

  32. joseph

     says...

    God guarantees a better possible way to know the content of these norms

    Sorry, no deliberate attempt to misrepresent you.

    If I change my words to:

    “Adamoriens asked very good questions of your moral epistemology, and I am curious to know your answers”

    Is that an improvement?

  33. Adamoriens

     says...

    Yes.

  34. cl

     says...

    In case anybody is interested, there is a “sister thread” to this one, here (sister thread meaning overlapping conversation).

  35. cl

     says...

    TheistDude,

    How about doing a review of Sam Harris’s new free-will book? That would be interesting.

    It sounds interesting. I’m sure I’d get a good laugh out of Harris—ostensibly a champion of the scientific method—advancing an inherently unfalsifiable claim whose truth can only be assumed (that free will doesn’t exist). But hey, when you’re out to preach anti-faith I guess it doesn’t matter eh? Then again, maybe he’ll argue ala Muehlhauser and contra Brass that the Libet data actually makes his case.

    I say let him make his case! After all, if he does, he either has to argue pace Strawson that there is no ultimate moral responsibility, and once he gets that far, he has to argue for the abolishment of what we call “justice,” or grant that it’s okay to believe false claims for pragmatic ends. I don’t think he has the balls to take the former route, and if he takes the latter, then he must grant the same laxity towards the theistic beliefs he assumes false.

    Either way seems like a monumental loss for atheism if you ask me, but that’s just my initial assessment without so much as seeing a page.

  36. Garren

     says...

    cl,

    “If the latter, I’m interested in an explanation of the fundamental difference, and what allows us to justify the enforcement of one arrangement of atoms over another.”

    There is no such ultimate justification. I understand much of moral discourse to be about intermediate justification, e.g. does this attitude make sense in light of a more basic attitude? Or: what are the facts in this situation so we can apply our attitudes accurately?

    In fact, I see calls for ultimate justification to be about removing all possible avenues of justification, and still insisting on justification.

  37. Garren

     says...

    Oh, and Sam Harris holds much the same view I do about free will: that it’s conceptually impossible. No need or use for empiricism at that point.

  38. cl

     says...

    Garren,

    In fact, I see calls for ultimate justification to be about removing all possible avenues of justification, and still insisting on justification.

    How so?

    Oh, and Sam Harris holds much the same view I do about free will: that it’s conceptually impossible. No need or use for empiricism at that point.

    Well there’s a total non-starter. No empiricism, no argument, no nothing, just, “it’s conceptually impossible?” Surely you understand why I’m skeptical.

  39. Oh, and Sam Harris holds much the same view I do about free will: that it’s conceptually impossible. No need or use for empiricism at that point.

    Is Harris a hard determinist or a compatibilist?

  40. Garren

     says...

    cl,

    Harris does argue up to that point, in much the same way Schopenhauer did. They both examine suggested ways a person could be ultimately responsible for his own actions, and conclude that such suggestions don’t work. (Harris goes on to offer empirical support, but I think that has the effect of subverting his conceptual arguments.)

    As far as morality goes, it seems a lot of people want to declare things good absolutely…not just good in some way. Kant’s categorical vs. hypothetical imperatives, for example. But I really don’t understand what good absolutely is supposed to mean. Same goes for intrinsic value, which sounds like “the value left over once no one values it and we leave off any consideration of what it’s valuable for.” I think what’s happening is that people are taking relational concepts, then trying to drop the relational part.

    Stephen,

    Hard determinist.

  41. TheistDude

     says...

    Harris is a hard determinist. And from what I can gather about his book, he could’ve done just as well if he wrote the words “I’m a hard determinist, google it!” in small 8 X 10 index cards and sold those instead.

  42. As a hard determinist [but a metaphysical probabilist, to avoid confusion] and moral error theorist myself I offer this solution to the problems of explaining “moral” conduct. http://tinyurl.com/7advgq5

    Harris is some kind of utilitarian, isn’t he?

  43. Peter Hurford

     says...

    Brevity?

    After this exchange, let’s aim for brevity.

    I’ll do the best we can, but there’s so much to comment about. This is a complex topic, and you’ve asked me to provide a defense for a bunch of different claims. I can’t answer all of your questions *and* be brief.

    ~

    A Short Digression on Atoms and Meaning

    Strawman. I neither accept nor endorse any variant of Craig’s “without God everything is meaningless” argument. In fact, I criticize that argument, here.

    Can you explain why you make such a big deal, both here and elsewhere, about us who believe that there is nothing more to the world than the arrangement of atoms? You still seem to think this entails a key part of the world is missing, and that we should all be depressed or something.

    ~

    What is Morality?

    Cl: So… the “moral good” is what “matters more” to you, or anybody else? IOW, morality is just what you personally believe?

    I’m unconvinced that the “moral good” refers to any one thing as people often use the term to refer to contradictory concepts — utilitarianism, deontology, divine command theory, etc. The real problem for me is that even after you adopt a definition for “moral good”, you have to figure out why people have a reason to follow it. You can’t just say “because it’s good” or “because it’s moral” without adding something else, because that would be an equivocation.

    The only way we can be rationally compelled toward a specific moral good is to actually value that moral good, or value something else that is best achieved by acting according to that moral good. But the good news is that we already do value things, and this motivates at least some of us to act according to certain moral goods.

    As for me, I’m largely motivated to reduce suffering as much as possible, wherever it can be found. That’s what matters to me. I suspect it matters to other people too.

    ~

    Moral Anti-Realism Versus Moral Expressivism

    Stephen R. Diamond: If this accurately describes your position, you’re not a moral-antirealist; you’re an expressivist. You don’t say, like an antirealist (aka, error theorist) that morality is false (like Mackie); you say it is without cognitive content (like Stevenson). It isn’t a real belief, on the expressivist view, but only has some of the grammar of one.

    I have been very disappointed by the categorizing of moral theories into “anti-realism” and “realism”, because this has never been done consistently. For Garren and I, morality is all about hypothetical imperatives — these imperatives are true independent of what anyone believes, are often empirically discoverable, and can be rationally compelling to the degree you accept the conditional.

    What we are totally confused about are categorical imperatives — these aren’t only false, but apparently incoherent. We don’t even know what it would mean for something to be just what you plain ought to do, for no other reason than it’s oughtness. We can’t make sense of ought simpliciter.

    Given that we affirm the non-existence of categorical imperatives, I think we can be considered anti-realists, but again, no consistent dichotomy here. And dichotomies don’t matter nearly as much as what we actually say.

    ~

    Causes and Harms

    Cl: Several weeks ago, I asked you to define both “cause” and “harm.” I understand that you’re busy, but unfortunately, our discussion on morality cannot proceed any further until you provide the requested definitions. Those two definitions are more important (to me) than 1,000 words attempting a line-by-line refutation of what I said here.
    I’m patient, I can wait. I’m really looking forward to hearing your definitions!

    You want a definition for “cause”? What about causality confuses you? I personally would like to bring back a naïve view of causality: an event brings about another event if, in that event’s absence, the second event would not have occurred. Sure, causality is far more complex than that, but this view works well enough. What problems do you have with it? Do you disagree that certain events are dependent upon things you do?

    Now, for “harm”. I think this is another question where I can go into far more detail if necessary and provide you with an ideal desire theory of harm, but in the end it still adds up to the same thing — people are harmed by things that make their life worse. (More specifically, people are harmed when their desires are left objectively unfulfilled, in proportion to both how strong their desire is and whether their desire was rationally and accurately formed.) Again, what problems do you have with this and what more are you looking for?

  44. Harm by Death

    Me: [people] are harmed by all the things they cannot do because they are dead.

    Cl: Charity requires me to assume you misspoke, unless of course you really believe that the dead can be harmed. I assume you meant the fear of what they can’t do is the harm here? If so, you seem to extend your definition of “harm” to “anything that causes mental uneasiness, worry, or anxiety”. Is that the case? If not, what are you talking about?

    Mental uneasiness, worry, and anxiety are often a type of harm, yes. Many people strongly desire not to die, and for these groups of people, I don’t want to see them dead, because I wish to respect their strong desires.

    I don’t think we should save lives categorically or generically without regard to who’s live were saving and what will happen in that life saved, but saving lives is important to me, and it can be done rather easily and with a fair amount of certainty.

    For example, lets consider malaria:

    (1) the empirical evidence strongly supports that malaria makes hundreds of thousands of people suffer substantially and then die each year, and I don’t want that to happen.

    (2) A large body of evidence finds insecticide treated nets to be effective at reducing malaria.

    (3) That same evidence finds malaria nets to be cost-effective at ~$2000 per life saved.

    (4) Saving and/or improving someone’s life by preventing the suffering of malaria can often empower people to solve their own problems better than we could by writing checks. (See “My Favorite Cause for Individual Donors: Global Health and Nutrition”.)

    ~

    Harm by Overpopulation

    As for the latter, I share the author’s caution and hesitancy: “Since 1950, these countries have seen noticeable declines in both infant mortality and fertility (children per woman). However, the trends don’t sync up. […] Hence, I think your claim that I’m misguided might be premature. Can you show that it isn’t?

    The take-away from this article is that I find surprising is that population isn’t increasing in places where more lives are being saved. I mean, I definitely worry about overpopulation, and therefore support condom distribution and general attempts to improve economic growth and education as well.

    On the same token, I can bounce this back to you: where’s your empirical evidence that overpopulation is morally bad?

  45. cl

     says...

    Peter,

    So much for brevity.

    Can you explain why you make such a big deal, both here and elsewhere, about us who believe that there is nothing more to the world than the arrangement of atoms?

    Because you often speak and reason as if there is more to the world than the arrangement of atoms, and I think it’s inconsistent with the world view you espouse.

    The real problem for me is that even after you adopt a definition for “moral good”, you have to figure out why people have a reason to follow it. You can’t just say “because it’s good” or “because it’s moral” without adding something else, because that would be an equivocation.

    How would that be an equivocation? It seems to me that would be a tautology. At any rate, the “why” part is easy. If one wants the state of affairs that obtains after pursuing the moral good, then they have a reason to follow it. Simple as pie.

    The only way we can be rationally compelled toward a specific moral good is to actually value that moral good, or value something else that is best achieved by acting according to that moral good.

    I agree.

    What we are totally confused about are categorical imperatives — these aren’t only false, but apparently incoherent. […] Given that we affirm the non-existence of categorical imperatives, I think we can be considered anti-realists,

    Deep down, don’t you believe that the world would be better if everybody aimed to reduce suffering, and that people who aim to increase suffering are jerks? If so, isn’t that reasoning based on a categorical imperative?

    …an event brings about another event if, in that event’s absence, the second event would not have occurred. […] people are harmed when their desires are left objectively unfulfilled

    So then, aren’t Christians “harmed” when people like you support abortion or same-sex marriage? After all, it leaves their desires objectively unfulfilled, right?

    (1) the empirical evidence strongly supports that malaria makes hundreds of thousands of people suffer substantially and then die each year, and I don’t want that to happen.

    Why? What if those people living would actually increase suffering? How do you know? Isn’t the only honest answer that you don’t know, and that you’re just going by gut feeling?

    On the same token, I can bounce this back to you: where’s your empirical evidence that overpopulation is morally bad?

    I never claimed it was. I brought it up to challenge the naiveté of your thinking here. You’re the one who says “saving lives = moral good,” so the burden of proof is on you. I think you’re contradicting your stated penchant for truth-apt claims. I think you’re just shooting from your hip and pretending your conclusions are empirically tenable.

  46. Given that we affirm the non-existence of categorical imperatives, I think we can be considered anti-realists, but again, no consistent dichotomy here. And dichotomies don’t matter nearly as much as what we actually say.

    It’s analogous to atheism and agnosticism, a point Garren alluded to when he described his position on anti-realism itself as agnostic. In both, the distinction turns on the interpretation of a discourse. What does God talk really mean to assert? What does Morality talk really mean to assert? These determine whether it’s rational to deny God and Morality.

    But it’s not a side issue. _Denying_ categorical imperatives in theory means little or nothing if your concepts don’t allow you to identify them in practice. (Conversely, if I see them where they don’t exist.)

  47. cl

     says...

    Andrés,

    You’re kidding, right? I’m sure you can find somebody who endorses such an overly simplistic view of things, but, since you’re posting here on my blog, the least you could do is engage with what I actually believe.

  48. The Preferences of Morality

    Cl: You are badly mistaken when you assert that your own moral preferences are somehow different from your musical, literary or artistic preferences.

    I agree with you completely that my moral preferences are subjective to me. I don’t think morality can be any other way. But there are two key differences: (1) I apply these preferences to others and (2) I hold these preferences much more strongly.

    Cl: But who are you to say people in other countries are “immoral” if *THEY* value pornography? Free drugs? Child sacrifice? You either have to grant equal respect to *THEIR* subjective preferences, else give empirical evidence to support yours.

    First, you have a couple of my values wrong: personally, I like pornography, and don’t find it to be that harmful at all to those in it or those who watch it. (Recreational) drugs also can be fine, depending on the drug and how often it is used, though I don’t personally want to consume anything stronger than coffee.

    That being said, I can criticize other countries for doing things which cause net increases in suffering, and think that child sacrifice, for example, definitely does this. I can then judge them by this standard, and there is nothing inconsistent about this.

    Now, what you truly challenge me with is wondering why they should listen to what I value. Well, just because I want it that way doesn’t give them this reason, but maybe they value reducing suffering and think that child sacrifice is a way to appease the gods and actually reduce suffering. So we can have a meaningful conversation about that.

    Or maybe I’m an advanced country and they want my trade or aid, and thus I can convince them to give up child sacrifice as a condition for that. But outside of those two things, there might be no reason for them to listen to me.

    To me, it sounds like you’re trying to say I objectively should respect all subjective preferences, regardless of the content of those preferences. That’s clearly not true — I have no need to respect the preferences that are contrary to what I value.

    ~

    Applying Subjective Moral Preferences to Others

    Cl: That’s exactly my point: why isn’t a ban on rap music applied to me, whether I share the aversion or not? Is it not because “most people” deem fondness for rap music a subjective preference?

    It would be because no one is sufficiently motivated to ban you from listening to rap music. In fact, I personally value you being able to listen to what you want, and would fight against such a ban should it be proposed.

    Cl: How do you know drowning daughters isn’t actually “moral,” or doesn’t actually alleviate suffering overall?

    Again, you’re going to have to tell me what “moral” is before I can explain. I also can be reasonably certain that drowning daughters doesn’t actually alleviate suffering overall because there is clear suffering in the daughter being drown, and no alleviation of suffering elsewhere. Sure, it’s possible that it might, but there’s no indication. How do we know zebras can’t fly? …This one is no argument from ignorance.

    Cl: I anticipate you to reply that rap music does no harm, which suggests that your moral theory is something like, “harm is bad.”

    Well, sort of. It’s more like “Harm is something I am motivated to get rid of, because I value people not being harmed.”

  49. Brevity, Again

    Cl: So much for brevity.

    …Plain and simple, you’ve given me an impossible challenge. I can’t both answer everything you’ve asked of me and also keep it brief enough to satisfy you.

    ~

    Atoms, Again

    Me: Can you explain why you make such a big deal, both here and elsewhere, about us who believe that there is nothing more to the world than the arrangement of atoms?
    Cl: Because you often speak and reason as if there is more to the world than the arrangement of atoms, and I think it’s inconsistent with the world view you espouse.

    What do I say / reason that says there is something not reducible to arrangements of atoms?

    ~

    Why Be Moral?

    If one wants the state of affairs that obtains after pursuing the moral good, then they have a reason to follow it. Simple as pie.

    How is that any different than the system I’ve offered?

    ~

    Better Places, Jerks, and Categorical Imperatives

    Deep down, don’t you believe that the world would be better if everybody aimed to reduce suffering, and that people who aim to increase suffering are jerks? If so, isn’t that reasoning based on a categorical imperative?

    Yes, I believe the world would be better if everyone aimed to reduce suffering, and yes I do think the people who aim to increase suffering are jerks. And no, none of that is based on a categorical imperative.

    BETTER PLACES: If everyone aimed to reduce suffering, the world would be a better place, but the word “better” is relative to what I want the world to be. So it would be a better place for me and everyone else who has reason to value that new state of affairs. For the jerks who don’t want that kind of world, it wouldn’t be a better place to them.

    JERKS: “Jerk” is a title of condemnation given to people I don’t like — the people I have judged to not do the things I value. The jerks certainly don’t think they are jerks, for example.

    CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES: No. The jerks may not have any reason to not be a jerk. If they don’t want the state of affairs that obtains after pursuing the moral good, then they have no reason to follow it.

    ~

    Balancing Desires

    Cl: So then, aren’t Christians “harmed” when people like you support abortion or same-sex marriage? After all, it leaves their desires objectively unfulfilled, right?

    Sort of. With an ideal desire theory, we can take into account that their desire was likely formed on false pretenses, such as an erroneous belief in the capacity of pain of the fetus or an erroneous belief in God.

    But even if their desire were held as either a terminal value (desire-as-ends) or a rationally derived instrumental value (desire-as-means), I’d argue that they don’t outweigh the desires of gay people or families seeking abortions.

    Cl: Why? What if those people living would actually increase suffering? How do you know? Isn’t the only honest answer that you don’t know, and that you’re just going by gut feeling?

    The same way you know that just killing people on the street at random wouldn’t actually reduce net suffering — it’s just friggin’ unlikely. What if the person who’s life you saved turned out to be Hitler? Well shucks, let’s not save anyone then, because that’s a possibility!

    Just like the drowning daughters, when we can easily identify the harm being prevented and have no indication at all of the harm being caused, then let’s not drown daughters willy nilly!

    What if you getting out of bed tomorrow is going to cause World War III? You don’t know it won’t! You can’t prove that!

  50. Garren

     says...

    cl,

    Deep down, don’t you believe that the world would be better if everybody aimed to reduce suffering, and that people who aim to increase suffering are jerks? If so, isn’t that reasoning based on a categorical imperative?

    If I can take a shot at this one…

    I would answer ‘yes’ to the first sentence, but ‘no’ to the second sentence because of the way I parse the first.

    “Better” is not a complete concept; it needs filling in before a proposition can be produced. From convention and context, I take “better” to mean something like “better for reducing suffering” which makes the filled-in question fairly tautological, which might be why you asked it. Who would deny a tautology? Now if I were to understand “better” to mean “better for increasing fairness (or godliness or beauty etc.)” it wouldn’t be such an obvious answer.

    Granted, this whole line of analysis might not trouble someone who has a conviction that categorical imperatives, intrinsic value, and the like are meaningful notions. I’m less worried about winning converts here than checking to make sure my own view remains sensible for me to hold.

  51. Garren,

    I take “better” to mean something like “better for reducing suffering” which makes the filled-in question fairly tautological, which might be why you asked it….I’m less worried about winning converts here than checking to make sure my own view remains sensible for me to hold.

    As I suggested to Peter, we differ in our parsing of ordinary discourse, which I take to be an issue in philosophy that’s more important than it sounds. To me, the question “Would the world be a better place if everyone tried to reduce suffering” is clearly categorical. Your inserting a context is arbitrary and overly charitable. If someone were interested in whether everyone trying to reduce suffering would reduce suffering, that would be the question asked. Context possibly could lead to another interpretation, but it’s pretty unlikely. That is the way people ordinarily talk when they judge categorically. Our agreement is on categorical imperatives being untrue; our disagreement on whether people actually employ them routinely in moral reasoning.

    I also disagree with you on the tangential issue of whether the claim, as you construe it, is anywhere close to tautological: I think you commit the fallacy of composition in so thinking.

  52. Peter,

    If everyone aimed to reduce suffering, the world would be a better place, but the word “better” is relative to what I want the world to be.

    Here’s one way your view differs from Garren’s. You say apparent categorical imperatives are to be interpreted relative to the agent’s entire desire set; Garren says when rationalizing apparent categorical imperatives that they’re interpreted relative to the problem set by the context (as I understand him). To the extent that some statements (“that’s a good hammer”) are to be parsed away from their surface structure, I agree with Garren. I think your view is probably based on assuming there’s an unequivocal answer to what is it rational for a person to do at time t.

  53. Peter,

    Let me put it this way. Why, when people describe the world they want, would they not say so in those terms: “I aspire to a world where there’s minimal suffering.” They say it’s a “better world” with less suffering they want because either:
    1) They think there categorical moral truths; or

    2) They would like the listener to think so.

    Garren has emphasized #2, which is perceptive of him. But what’s important to keep in mind is that #2 is parasitic on #1: if people didn’t understand this language as implying an objective fact, the con game couldn’t get off the ground. People often represent their own interests as objective moral goods, but they require of their hearers a belief there are some objective, categorical moral truths.

  54. Peter: “Given that we affirm the non-existence of categorical imperatives, I think we can be considered anti-realists…”

    Here’s a direct answer: you think hypothetical imperatives are moral injunctions. Thus, you think morality is real, even if you deny categorical imperatives are real.

    FWIW: While I’d classify Garren as an expressivist, I’d classify you as a moral relativist.

  55. Stephen,

    I agree completely that many people often speak moral discourse as if morality is absolute and categorical. I don’t deny that many people think there is an objective “better world” that all people must feel compelled to bring about. I also agree that people are often projectivist, expressivist, and/or emotivist in their discourse.

    But I don’t see any of that as conducive to actual normativity. Thus I offered a concept of “better world as a world closer to my desires” to explain how this discourse can be maintained even when faced with the actual nature of morality.

    Thus I do not assume there’s an unequivocal answer to what is rational for a person to do at time t, without also getting knowledge of that person’s desires. Likewise, I’m pretty sure Garren affirms the ability of hypothetical imperatives to be occasionally true. This makes me think Garren and I don’t disagree as much as you think we do, but rather we have explained different aspects of the same theory. Though Garren or you can correct me if I’m wrong.

  56. Peter: “Thus I do not assume there’s an unequivocal answer to what is rational for a person to do at time t, without also getting knowledge of that person’s desires.”

    To be clear, I meant given the person’s desires. Then you do think there’s an unequivocal rational thing for a person to do. No?

  57. I offered a concept of “better world as a world closer to my desires” to explain how this discourse can be maintained even when faced with the actual nature of morality.

    Then, what do you think of trying to find a way to explain how God discourse can be maintained even when faced with the actual nature of divinity?

    Why do you try to preserve one incoherent discourse when you reject another? The relevant question concerns the main supposition of the discourses; morality talk serves to invoke supposed truths. You might try to find ways to preserve the *benefits* the false discourse had served (as I do in http://tinyurl.com/7dcbt7y)

    [Here’s a litmus test of whether one is a naturalist—in idealism’s main stronghold of morality: Do you think an artificial intelligence simulating human mentation ought to be granted the rights of a human being? If one has any opinion on such a “question,” it’s hard to see how one is an antirealist.]

  58. CL: 1) On atheism, everything is just the chance results of mindless atoms interacting. Atheists routinely deny that humanity is special. We are just one of many possible arrangements of matter. So, why is “saving lives” the ultimate moral good, as opposed to, say, “rocks falling,” or “clouds forming?”

    PeterThis doesn’t follow. Just because things are chance-ish (see “Is Life an Accident?”) doesn’t mean that everything is meaningless.

    It’s a (cl-typical) non sequitur; but you, Peter, use the opportunity to deny the truth of the conclusion: saving lives is not the “ultimate moral good” because there are no ultimate moral goods.

  59. Garren

     says...

    Stephen,

    To me, the question “Would the world be a better place if everyone tried to reduce suffering” is clearly categorical. Your inserting a context is arbitrary and overly charitable. If someone were interested in whether everyone trying to reduce suffering would reduce suffering, that would be the question asked. Context possibly could lead to another interpretation, but it’s pretty unlikely. That is the way people ordinarily talk when they judge categorically.

    I’m not sure you’re wrong here. The reason I’m not an error theorist is that I believe people often do have substantial meanings under their categorical talk. Granted, it might not be as simple as “better” only meaning “reduced suffering” in some instance. It’s more likely to be an amalgamation of a few basic values, as in the four principle approach in medical ethics: autonomy, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence. When probed or challenged, people tend to give answers that make sense if they’re defending substantial values under their categorical language.

    I had assumed that language couldn’t have categorical meaning if it couldn’t possibly be true because of some conceptual flaw, but I’m rethinking that position. There’s a story about monkeys that really gets to me in one of Peter’s essays.

    If they could express themselves in language, I’m pretty sure the later monkeys would be using categorical language without any substantial value content. Hrm.

  60. JohnN

     says...

    STEPHEN R. DIAMOND

    “It’s a (cl-typical) non sequitur;”

    Congratulations on showing yourself not just a self-promoting jerkoff, but one that doesn’t read before he attacks. See 15. Cl wasn’t making the “because of atoms life is meaningless” argument. You sh ould apologize. Oh wait, you don’t believe in morality. Keep being a jerkoff.

  61. JOHNN, the one too dumb too know a point when it bites his ass, is BACK!!

  62. Garren,

    I had assumed that language couldn’t have categorical meaning if it couldn’t possibly be true because of some conceptual flaw…

    This is the source of what I think are the most interesting problems arising from error theory:

    1. How does the agent determine how much weight to attach to moral versus prudential goals if his moral judgments are incoherent? (http://tinyurl.com/7dcbt7y)

    2. How can the agent be so ridiculous as to continue to act against his rational self-interest, even understood as such, based on an incoherent claim?(http://tinyurl.com/cxjqxo9)

    But if the putative problem is just believing incoherent claims—then the common belief in “libertarian” free will serves as a prototype. (Or do the problems associated with people actually believing in free will comprise part of the motivation for compatibilism?)

    Thanks for the Finlay Link.

  63. JohnN

     says...

    STEPHEN R. DIAMOND

    “the one too dumb too know a point when it bites his ass”

    I never went anywhere. Speaking of dumb, explain why you accuse Cl of a non sequitur when he never made a “life is meaningless” argument. Come on now. Don’t embarrass the rest of the godless.

  64. Ass-bitten one,

    Get your “mind” around the possibility that Saint CL contradicts himself ALL THE TIME—and you’ve called attention to another example. No, you’ve discredited yourself intellectually so severely that I WON’T routinely respond to your nonsense—any more than to CL’s.

  65. JohnN

     says...

    TEPHEN R. DIAMOND

    How is a direct question nonsense?

    Shouldn’t you provide evidence for your claims?

  66. JohnN

     says...

    Sorry, not question, but a direct challenge. How is that nonsense?

  67. JohnN

     says...

    STEPHEN R. DIAMOND

    Let’s start over. A non sequitur is a response that doesn’t follow. How did Cl commit a non sequitur?

  68. JohnN

     says...

    ONe more thing

    “Get your “mind” around the possibility that Saint CL contradicts himself ALL THE TIME—and you’ve called attention to another example.”

    How did Cl contradict himself here?

  69. Garren (& Peter),

    Peter’s monkey posting bears on point 2:

    How can the agent be so ridiculous as to continue to act against his rational self-interest, even understood as such, based on an incoherent claim? (http://tinyurl.com/cxjqxo9)

  70. Well, ass-bitten one, if you don’t see it, there’s nothing I can say that will fill you in.

    Yes, that’s part of the advantage of not being subjected to moralistic claims: I feel no duty to help you understand.
    (http://tinyurl.com/7advgq5) I can, and will, ignore you without qualms.

  71. MattDonald

     says...

    Stephen, did I discredit myself intellectually somehow? I hope not! I’m curious because you stopped responding in the other discussion (the water/ice thing).

  72. Thinking Emotions: I did meatless March last month and I’m still continuing eating this way because I don’t like eating the grapes of brutal, unnecessary suffering. I don’t do things or not do things because they’re wrong or right — seriously, what a terrible way to make decisions. I can’t think of two squishier words than right or wrong.

    I just remembered I meant to respond to this, because I’m very inspired by it. Not only has it informed my thinking on putting moral anti-realism in an uplifting, positive light, but it’s also really inspiring to know that other people are willingly becoming more compassionate out of personal choice.

    ~

    Stephen: Then, what do you think of trying to find a way to explain how God discourse can be maintained even when faced with the actual nature of divinity?

    Because I have no need for God discourse. I do, however, have some need for moral discourse, though it mainly involves (1) fitting in to other conversations without giving everyone a two-hour anti-realism primer and/or (2) making use of the cheap psychological effect to get people to reflect about their own values.

    Though I do try to use moral discourse as little as possible, and find it possible I could be convinced to give it up entirely. I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot. I do think moral discourse can make sense from the standpoint of moral externalism.

    ~

    Stephen: Here’s a litmus test of whether one is a naturalist—in idealism’s main stronghold of morality: Do you think an artificial intelligence simulating human mentation ought to be granted the rights of a human being? If one has any opinion on such a “question,” it’s hard to see how one is an antirealist.

    I have a position on this question from a standpoint of my own values and how I personally want the world to be like, and I can attempt to prescribe standpoints to other people based on my knowledge of their values. So given a very thorough reduction of the concept of “rights” (a word I really dislike to use), I think it’s possible to take a position on this question from a n anti-realist standpoint.

  73. Here are some more comments about concerns surrounding overpopulation created via aid:

    * GivingWhatWeCan’s Myth about Aid: Overpopulation

    * GiveWell FAQ: Overpopulation

  74. Peter,

    Did you see the ruckus on Less Wrong when a GiveWell luminary recommended against contributing to SIAI? (http://tinyurl.com/7tlbbng)

  75. Did you see the ruckus on Less Wrong when a GiveWell luminary recommended against contributing to SIAI? (http://tinyurl.com/7tlbbng)

    I saw it indeed.

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