The Warfare Is Mental

Exploring My Own Moral Parameters

March 20, 2010

As I'll be discussing morality and ethics a bit more in-depth over the upcoming weeks, specifically Alonzo Fyfe's desirism, I felt I should share my thoughts concerning morality and ethics as they relate to (a)theism, so people have at least some concrete idea of where I stand. This should make it easier to identify areas of disagreement, and I felt I should begin by explaining exactly what I mean when using the terms objective and subjective morality, since most everything else flows from there.

Deep South Tragedy: An Analogy For Humanist Ethics

December 14, 2009

So, recent posts by other bloggers have got me thinking about morality, atheism, intelligence, and God. Generally, people tend to overlook the importance of factoring intelligence into assessments of morality. I think a simple analogy will drive the point home here.

Imagine a single father living with five children. Normally, the children can know the right thing to do at any given time by asking their father, who has more experience and intelligence in life than they do, hence the authority and qualifications for establishing the rules they ought to live by.

The Argument From Justice

October 22, 2009

P1 Systems that are amenable to justice are superior to those that are not;

P2 Atheism is not amenable to justice;

P3 Christianity is amenable to justice;

C Christianity is superior to atheism.

Lessons On Philanthropy & Epistemology Learned From Haight Street

July 16, 2009

I was in the blogosphere the other day when I stumbled upon a post describing a random act of kindness. The thread was interesting, and there was a person who explained he had been burned by panhandlers with sob stories, and that as a result, he "doesn't give anyone anything anymore." This commenter said this makes him feel bad, but implied he felt he had no other option. Living in San Francisco, which happens to be one of the more "panhandler-heavy" cities on planet Earth, I deal with this stuff all day and couldn't help but to think about it.

Two Quick Questions

May 23, 2009

Finals week is officially over, which means more time for life! And blogging. I have two quick questions for today, and by next week we should be back to the regular posting schedule.

I was taking out the trash this morning like I do every week. Every time I do this, our cats get scared, and I always get a chuckle out of watching them freak out. I know they're safe, but they can't seem to figure this out despite the fact it's happened once a week for their entire lives and nothing bad has happened yet. Still, they run the same program every time they hear the garbage man, and it's funny. Now here are the two quick questions:

1) Is it a violation of beneficence to behave in a way that frightens another sentient being if we know for certain they are completely safe?

2) Am I sick or twisted for finding amusement in my cats' fears?

A Chat With The Chaplain?

May 13, 2009

On a thread at DA, I remarked that,

..improving the condition of the human species and doing things for the
benefit of our fellow living beings is what true religion is all
about,

to which the Chaplain from An Apostate's Chapel replied,

What is the basis of this proposition?

The following post intends to perfunctorily answer her question. Let's refer to the idea that true religion entails improving the
condition of the human species and doing things for the benefit of our
fellow living beings as the Good Will Hypothesis (GWH).

On Blogging, Passivity, Party Lines & The Pursuit Of Truth

April 25, 2009

If you’re at all like I am, you probably consider the pursuit of truth to be pretty valuable. I think most of us can agree that the pursuit of truth is an important task. That’s the way I see it at least, and as an extension of that principle, I say one cannot accurately call oneself a pursuer of truth if they allow falsehood to remain uncorrected.

With that in mind, I’d like to discuss how passivity, especially selective passivity, can obscure the pursuit of truth – and more specifically – how these ideas relate to blogging.

A Problem Of Evil: Did I Violate Omni-Benevolence?

April 19, 2009

I’m one of those people who thinks the Problem of Evil is far from solved. I know, I know… the audacity, right? Skeptics and atheists claim the Problem of Evil logically disqualifies certain definitions of God, specifically the Omni^3 God typically advanced by Judeo-Christian monotheists. I concede that this polemic has been commonly repeated in philosophy circles for over 2,000 years now, but is it true? I cannot consider the Problem of Evil any problem at all sans a reasonable explanation of when and why the allowance of suffering constitutes a genuine breach of omni-benevolence, and I maintain that the burden falls back to the skeptic to demonstrate how or why this is so. Earlier this week, a real-life scenario recalled this question to mind.

I sometimes work in a publishing warehouse where customers can ring a doorbell to signify their presence at the Western entrance. Late one evening this week, somebody rang the bell. I opened up the window and stuck my head outside, where I saw a man and a woman with a baby. I knew instantly that they weren’t our customers, and I made the reasonable presupposition they were here to see a tenant in the residential part of the building. So, being in “work-mode,” I initially ignored them and was about to go “back to work” when the human factor kicked in. Just because they weren’t our customers didn’t mean they didn’t need help, so I returned to the window. My next intuition was to immediately engage them, but that curiously gave way to a competing intuition suggesting I merely observe for a moment, remaining watchful to ensure they got whatever it was they needed, but still granting enough confidence in their independence to assume they can solve their own problems without my meddling. A brief moment passed.

I noticed the Bay cold along with their momentary uncertainty was causing the woman to suffer. The cold itself had been causing me to suffer all day long, and I was certain where I was – inside the warehouse with a hooded sweatshirt on! No sooner than I could ask myself another question or respond to another intuition, a tenant let them inside of the building, and they were once again happy and warm.

Although it’s certainly nice that this story has a happy ending, did I violate the principle of omni-benevolence in that brief moment of observance?

*See Also:

PE/QS vs. O^3 God, I

What Do You Mean By God?

Factoring Intelligence Into Assessments Of Morality

November 18, 2008

I think there's a reason philosophy has remained unable to resolve certain problems, and by no means do I claim to have the definitive answers regarding the complicated question of morality. With that being said, I would like to comment on the role our access to knowledge plays in the formation of accurate moral judgments. In order to have this discussion, we need to assume at least the premise that a distinction exists between "good" and "evil" acts, and we'll touch upon our old pal Euthypro, and the question of whether morality is subjective or objective. The essential question is this: Is evil act X always evil? If so, then morality seems objective, but does that make it absolutely inflexible? If evil act X is not always evil, then morality seems subjective or relative.