Luke Muehlhauser Misleads Audience At Colorado State UniversityWell. I hopped over to Common Sense Atheism today, where I found the transcript from Luke’s talk at Colorado State University, titled The Science Of Morality: No Gods Required.
First off, I wondered how it came to be that Luke – a newbie atheist who was a self-described irrational Christian just a few years ago – was granted the authority to educate students at a major university. What are his credentials? Should anybody with a popular blog be allowed to educate the populace in our public institutions? Lest any hasty inductors be tempted to cry ad hominem, allow me to clarify.
Response To Morality In The Real World, Episode 9Though no previous objections seem to have been resolved, CSA’s ongoing Morality in the Real World podcast took a turn for the better in Episode 9, where Luke and Alonzo ponder the quantification of desires. For what it’s worth, Alonzo has written on willingness to pay before.
Early in my foray into desirism, I decided that an empirical schema for measuring desires was absolutely necessary in order for the theory to have any practical, real-world import. How else can we check against intuition? If desirism is indeed an empirical, objective theory as its defenders assert, then why not cut all the moralspeak and crunch some numbers? I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I believe my method – while certainly rudimentary and in need of further work – is a far better tool for quantifying desires than the overly simplified analysis Luke and Alonzo used in Episode 9.
On Intrinsic ValueAs opposed to his usual complaining that he “doesn’t have time” or falsely accusing me of “not listening” to his arguments, Luke Muehlhauser actually had some salient things to say about my response to his article, In Defense of Radical Value Pluralism. I will respond to Luke here, and use those responses to articulate my broader position on the concept of intrinsic value, and how it relates to our ongoing discussions of morality.
Response To “In Defense of Radical Value Pluralism”In his post In Defense of Radical Value Pluralism, Luke Muehlhauser attempts to falsify value monism. Before addressing his claims, I’d like to comment on a few lesser issues and get them out of the way. On value, Luke writes,
A cup of coffee has value when I desire it. Sunshine has value when I desire it. Sex has value because you desire it.
Come from someone who emphatically denies intrinsic value, I think imprecision with language invites confusion here. Luke’s language lends all too easily to the idea that coffee, sunshine and sex can “have” or possess value, as if value is some sort of object that can be possessed. He writes as if value were a noun, but the only way value can be a noun is if it’s a person, place or thing. Many will see this as trivial, semantic, or nitpicking, perhaps because they feel the language is accurate enough to get the point across. I agree the language is accurate enough to get the point across, but that’s too low of a standard for rigorous philosophy. I think using value as a verb would allow Luke to make his arguments with more clarity and less amenability to confusion. Nothing has value, ever: people value.
Atoms, Morality, Desirism & LanguageThat desirism is “not a moral theory” is a common objection, one that its founder Alonzo Fyfe handles in a systematic way. Today, I will try to explain why I’m skeptical of Alonzo’s response to this objection. I suppose it would be best to dive right in with some actual examples of the objection:
“Why Shouldn’t Desirism Be Considered Respectable?”In the thread of Something That Made Me Thing Of Desirism, commenter James Gray asks a salient question to bossmanham:
Great post here. This may be one of the reasons desirism hasn’t moved beyond the sphere of internet atheists who enjoy it. It falls to the same or similar objections that Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism falls to. [bossmanham]
Utilitarianism is a respectable theory that has gone far beyond the sphere of internet atheists. So, why shouldn’t desirism then be considered respectable and worthy of going beyond such a sphere? [James Gray]
I began a reply of my own, only to realize it quickly grew to post-length. Frankly, I believe several reasons exist, and keep in mind I’m not assuming desirism as comparable to Mill or Bentham’s utilitarianism. Here’s just a quick rundown:
Something That Made Me Think Of DesirismI was crawling the interwebs tonight when I came across the following snippet, taken from this introductory article on philosophical realism. In summarizing the debate between realists and non- or anti-realists, the authors describe J.L. Mackie’s argument for moral error-theory:
On PrescriptionJust yesterday I told somebody I was burnt out on blogging. Then, of course, I woke up with an inspiration. Nothing full-fledged, but more like a little mini-inspiration.
Yesterday, we traded banter over what it means to say that a moral theory is prescriptive. This got me to thinking about other instances where people use that word, for example, the doctor. When a doctor prescribes some treatment for a patient, it is an admonition declaring what the patient should or ought to do. Of course, that the patient has a desire to increase their own well-being is implicit in the scenario. So, according to that which the patient values [an increase of well-being], the doctor is justified in prescribing a treatment. If somebody wanted to be pesky and demand that the doctor justify the prescription, the doctor could reply something like, “Patient X seeks alleviation from condition Y, and there is general consensus that treatment Z is the safest and most effective means of remedy.” That would constitute a reason for the doctor’s prescription, and that reason would amount to something more than intuition or bias. I think the salient point here is that something like a social contract exists; an implicit agreement between doctor and patient that “increasing well-being” is at or near the top of the value hierarchy.
12 Objections To DesirismAccording to desirism, there is no such thing as intrinsic moral value. Rather, moral values of good, bad and permissible are determined by a desire’s relation to other desires [which I find odd in itself, as desires don’t affect people unless acted upon, but let’s leave that aside for the moment]. If this is the case, then isn’t it possible to have a state of affairs where racist and sexist desires are morally good? [cf. Cartesian’s Nazi example] On the other hand, if under all circumstances we deny the existence of a state of affairs in which racist and sexist desires can be morally good, isn’t the only valid conclusion that racist and sexist desires are examples of intrinsic moral wrongs? When are racism and sexism morally good? According to desirism, there is no such thing as intrinsic wrong. Rather, moral wrongness is determined by one desire’s relation to other desires. If this is the case, then there must be a state of affairs in which racism and sexism are morally good. If we deny the existence of a state of affairs in which racism and sexism are morally good, then we seemingly accept the notion of intrinsic right / wrong.
Cartesian’s Nazi ExampleMonths back on CommonSenseAtheism.com, commenter Cartesian offered the following argument against desirism, and I felt it was appropriate to repost here on the promise that I find the original link. Though I assure you I copied it verbatim, I agree that it’s professional to use first-order sources wherever possible, and promise to find the link. There’s also a technical reason I want to post it here instead of CSA. I’ve noticed that links to individual comments don’t work. That is, even when I used the direct URL for a particular comment, the post still loads with the page at the top, which forces the user to search for the quote his or her self. For this reason, it’s good to quote sources numerically at CSA, i.e. “So-and-so’s fifteenth on post X…”
At any rate, here’s Cartesian’s Nazi example:
Suppose the Nazis had killed or brainwashed anyone who disagreed with them, and succeeded in conquering the world. They keep a handful of Jewish people around in zoos, just to torture. Suppose the most popular television show in Naziland features ordinary Nazis — selected by lottery from among the Nazi population — torturing these Jewish people just for fun. The billions of Nazis in the television audience absolutely LOVE it. It’s like American Idol to them. They look forward to it all week. It’s what they want most in life: to see those Jewish people tortured. These Jewish people are kept in a pretty sorry mental state (due to nearly constant torture, and perhaps even some drugs), so that each of their desires not to be tortured is weaker than each of the Nazis desires to torture them.
You and your friend Jerk live in Naziland. Jerk is a typical Nazi: he really badly wants to win the lottery so he can appear on this television show and torture some Jewish people. You, on the other hand, don’t. You’ve done some thinking lately, and you’ve concluded that torturing people just for fun is awful, and you want no part of it. (Naturally, you keep these opinions to yourself, for fear of being taken in for “re-education.”)
Clearly, in this situation, your desire is good and Jerk’s desire is bad. But, in this situation, only Jerk’s desire tends to fulfill more and stronger desires than it thwarts. (His desire, if satisfied, would fulfill the very strong desires of billions of blood-thirsty Nazis, while thwarting the weaker desires of only a few Jewish people.) Your desire, however, actually tends to thwart more and stronger desires than it fulfills. So, according to desirism, *your* desire is bad and *Jerk’s* desire is good.
But that gets things exactly backwards. So desirism is false.
I agree wholeheartedly, and submit that’s an apt explanation of why good must mean something more than, “tends to fulfill the desires in question” or “tends to fulfill more than thwart other desires” or however else one wants to phrase it.