Intolerance, Militancy, Fundamentalism, and Trying to Eradicate Religion

I am afraid that I feel compelled to interrupt "beyond belief 2006" weekend to address an Associated Press article that Atheists are Split over their Message, which is getting very wide distribution.

There are so many things wrong with this article that need clarification.

It starts with the opening paragraph:

BOSTON (AP) - Atheists are under attack these days for being too militant, for not just disbelieving in religious faith but for trying to eradicate it. And who's leveling these accusations? Other atheists, it turns out.

It sounds as if atheists are planning some sort of Holocaust, with theists as the victims.

Yet, in fact, atheists are only 'trying to eradicate' religious beliefs in the same sense that 16th and 17th century scholars were busy 'trying to eradicate' the idea that the earth is the center of the solar system, and in the same way that psychiatrists have 'tried to eradicate' the demonic possession theory of mental illness. The above paragraph is true in the same way that every author of an article that appears in a peer reviewed journal is 'trying to eradicate' alternative possible explanations for the same data.

It is pure nonsense to use the phrase 'trying to eradicate' in this context, when it really means nothing other than 'trying to convince people that alternative views do not correspond to reality'.

Indeed, I can hear Sam Harris's voice in my mind telling an audience, "If you disagree with what I write, I will muster the evidence and try to show you how the evidence supports my position. I will not try to defend myself by accusing you of 'trying to eradicate' my beliefs."

Yet, if we accept this new definition of 'trying to eradicate', then that is precisely what the critics of Harris and Dawkins are trying to do - 'trying to eradicate' what these critics call 'militant atheism'.

'Militant atheism'. Just like 'trying to eradicate', people who use this term are more interested in promoting irrational fear and hatred than in having an intelligent discussion on the issues. This term is used precisely because it frightens readers and listeners, warning them to stay away from (even, to hate and despise) the speaker's targets.

I had written about this topic earlier, in "Militant Atheists". There, I wrote about the blatant absurdity of calling a person who files a court brief telling the courts to enforce the Constitution, or writes a book deploring violence and seeking to target the causes of untold death and destruction, a representative of some sort of militancy.

As I said, these terms are used because of their capacity to generate fear and hatred, not because they accurately describe some component of the real world.

Here's a paragraph with a couple more propaganda terms.

Epstein calls them `atheist fundamentalists.' He sees them as rigid in their dogma, and as intolerant as some of the faith leaders with whom atheists share the most obvious differences.

Intolerant?

Fine. Do you want tolerance? Then, sure, let's tolerate the hijacking of airplanes and flying them into sky scrapers. Let's tolerate suicide bombers.

Tolerance has to end somewhere.

I argue that it ends the moment that somebody picks up a weapon.

I also argue that legislation is the most destructive weapon of mass destruction around. Yet, to preserve the peace, in an open society, it is still not appropriate to use physical violence in the face of a political dispute.

'Tolerating' laws that enforce and reinforce bigotry and hatred, that unjustly denigrate whole segments of the population, that deny people the benefits of medical care, that lie to children about sex and contraception, and the like simply means refusing to take up arms - as long as people have the liberty to take up pens and keyboards instead.

Using the term 'intolerance' for something less - for arguing for a better way of doing things in a public (nonviolent) forum, is an abuse of the word 'intolerance'.

Imagine that you are laying in a hospital, and you feel like you are going to die. There are two doctors standing over you.

octor 1: "I believe that the problem is focused on your gall bladder. We are going to have to remove it."

Doctor 2: "No! The evidence clearly shows that this condition is caused by a bacteria. We should start the patient on antibiotics"

Doctor 1: "I do not see why you militant bacterialists simply refuse to tolerate the opinions of us defective organists. We have as much of a right to our opinion as you do. We have a sick patient here. We should learn to tolerate each other's beliefs and work together."

As soon as I heard Doctor 1 make that statement, I'm firing him as my doctor. Clearly, he does not understand what medicine is about and that treating a patient involves finding the best treatment based on the available evidence.

I simply do not want my doctors arguing in terms of 'tolerating' conflicting medical opinions that are not based on the evidence. I want them arguing in terms of body temperature, white blood cell count, X-rays, MRIs, glycerin levels, location and type of pain, and those types of claims.

The terms 'tolerance' and 'intolerance' only enter the picture when one of them turns violence. It is the violent person who becomes 'intolerant' in any morally meaningful sense. As long as the debate is in terms of words and not guns and explosives, the term 'intolerance' has no place.

I have written about this before, in "Speaking vs. Acting" where I make the point, and I made the point that criticism is not intolerance.

In fact, I have been thinking about making T-shirts and bumper stickers with this slogan on it.

Criticism Is NOT Intollerance

It is not an act of intolerance to tell somebody that they are mistaken. If it were, than every teacher in every school who ever gave a student something other than a perfect grade is guilty of intolerance. Because she certainly is not respecting the student's belief when she counts the statement "12 * 24 = 188" wrong.

Then there is the phrase 'atheist fundamentalists'.

Others have written on this topic. Here, the challenge is, "Please, please show me what the atheist is being 'fundamentalist' about? Where is the atheist bible that the atheist interprets literally? What are the doctrines that the atheist refuses to give up in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? Show me, please, this list of 'fundamentals' for atheism."

So why use this term?

Again, it is not because the speaker has any interest in representing the real world. The speaker's purpose is propaganda. The speaker's purpose is to misrepresent the facts for the purpose of gaining a political upper hand.

People who read my blog know that I have a serious issue with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. However, my problem has absolutely nothing to do with 'trying to eradicate' religion, 'militant atheism', 'atheist fundamentalism', or 'intolerance'.

My objection is that they both violate the moral principle of personal responsibility. I argue that justice demands holding people reasonable only for their own actions, and that it is unjust to condemn one person because of somebody else's evil act. Dawkins and Harris speak in places as if one theist's evil actions is a stain on all theists - a position that I reject as strongly as the view that all atheists may be morally judged based on the actions of Stalin.

See, "The Hitler and Stalin Cliché" and "My Basic Problem with Dawkins and Harris".

I call this type of behavior bigotry. It involves branding a whole group of people based on the wrongful acts of some of its members - which I take to be the very essence of bigotry. I do not soft-peddle my criticism when it is aimed at other atheists. Wrong is wrong.

Yet, this error comes nowhere near the 'fault' of 'trying to eradicate' religion, 'militant atheism', 'atheist fundamentalism', or 'intolerance'. None of these terms apply to what Dawkins and Harris are trying to do.

They do not apply to anybody, as far as I know.

I suspect that there are militant atheists out there who have not yet acted on an urge to react violently to religion, who are 'intolerant' in the morally meaningful sense, are 'militant' in that they are willing to use arms, and would in fact be more than happy to 'try to eradicate' religion. Those people deserve our condemnation (as I argued in "The Atheist Terrorist".)

However, I just don't see evidence of such people in the writings of Dawkins and Harris. Equating their writings with such people by using the terms 'intolerant', 'militant' and 'trying to eradicate' religion is pure political demagoguery - an attempt to obscure reality for the purpose of political gain.

Elizabeth Loftus: False Memories

The weekend is here, and it is time to return to Beyond Belief 2006. This weekendly series of blogs have been going through the presentations and discussions made at that conference and posted on the web for people such as me to look it. It contains presentations in a rich range of subjects relevant to the subject of religion, morality, and the meaning of life.

The last presentation on episode 6 (out of 10) came from Elizabeth Loftus. Loftus is concerned with memory research. Specifically, she has been involved in the study of implanting false memories in individuals. Effectively, one takes a susceptible subject, proves that subject with an authority who says that something happened in the past, and with a little bit of coaxing the individual will start to remember that event. However, the event never happened. The subject was manipulated into believing something that simply was not true.

Loftus suggested the possibility that some people have made themselves quite wealthy using these techniques on others. There are past-lives therapists who use this technique to cause their subjects to ‘remember’ their past lives. There are alien abduction therapists who ‘coax’ from their victims memories of being on board a flying saucer being subject to medical experiments.

However, the cases that Loftus was most concerned with are cases in which people were caused to ‘remember’ being severely abused as children – even being involved in satanic rituals – that simply did not happen. In these cases, people used the technique of planting false memories to inspire their victims to testify against family members and others, to accuse those others of all sorts of abuse. Those others have gone to jail over these accusations. It is reasonable to expect that some of them are there still, placed there by a therapist planting false memories in their patients.

Now, I am not saying that these people placed false memories in others intentionally. Instead, the practitioners stumbled on the recipe for planting false memories, and thought that they were getting true memories. This recipe involved using an authority figure – a doctor or a therapist of some sort – to provide the subject with positive feedback if the subject should report such a memory. The subject who says, “Yes, this happened” is praised. At the same time, the subject who says, “I don’t remember anything like that,” gets a reaction of disappointment and some coaxing to change her story. “It’s okay. Maybe next time.”

Loftus reports that her group has been able to use these techniques to plant false memories in about 30,000 people since her research started We are not talking pure hypothesis here. We are talking about experimental research with results that can re replicated.

There are still questions to be asked about the moral culpability of these two groups – those who stumbled upon a technique that planted false beliefs in their subjects and sent innocent people to prison, and those who continue to use these techniques to make a business out of ‘helping’ people discover their past lives or to deal with the trauma of alien abduction and demonic possession – traumas that are simply imaginary.

The moral culpability of the latter group is easy to determine. It is doubtful that a person with good desires would subject another person to memories of imaginary trauma, or to give them false beliefs about their own history. The moral person would take seriously the prohibition on doing harm, take seriously the vast body of literature that suggests that there is no trauma of alien abduction or demonic possession, and not perform procedures that have not passed muster in the peer-reviewed literature. Or, at the very least, the concerned individual will inform his or her voluntary patients of the vast amount of literature that suggests that these actions are nonsense and that an intellectually responsible person would take that research seriously.

Are the false memories of past lives harmful? Well, whether direct ‘harm’ can be found in all instances, desire utilitarianism can still support a claim of wrong. The person with good desires would have a love of truth. There is no truth in telling people about past lives, so it is not something that a person with good desires would want to do. A person who performs these activities wrongs their victims in the same way that anybody who lies or engineers false beliefs wrongs their victims.

These moral charges remain valid even if the therapist actually believes in past lives, alien abductions, or demonic possession. The fact remains that a person who puts himself in a position of authority over others gives up the right to believe whatever he or she pleases. He now has an obligation to those who will turn to him for the sake of his alleged expertise to provide them with good counsel. This implies an obligation to make sure that the counsel one gives is, in fact, good.

This claim that people can be held morally accountable for false or negligent beliefs has an important implication in these types of cases. If we are not going to let the counselor off of the hook for their false beliefs – claiming that he has an obligation to check his beliefs for a secure foundation – then it difficult to claim that the victims in these cases are entirely blame free. If we can say of the counselor that he should have known better, and should have evaluated his beliefs for a sound foundation, then we can say of the victims that they should have known better as well.

The therapist is not the only one who is in a position to know that this chain of causation will destroy somebody else’s life. The patient should know it as well. It is somewhat hypocritical to condemn the counselor because he had an obligation to check his beliefs, and let the patient go free. Everybody has an obligation to check their facts before they harm others (to the degree that available time allows), not just counselors.

In the case of alien abductions and the like, perhaps the obligations of the victims to double-check their own beliefs are weaker. Perhaps one can argue that since they do not harm others and the harm they do to themselves is punishment enough.

However, those who fall for these absurd beliefs are not entirely free of wrongdoing.

If I vouch for somebody – if I give somebody a good recommendation – then I am as responsible for that intentional act as I am for any other. If they turn out to be less than trustworthy – if they turn out to be reckless with their ideas – then the person who recommends them has some culpability for recommending such a person.

All of this applies even more so to the person who takes a stand at a trial. Indeed, it applies even more strongly. The harm that he does, at sending an innocent person to prison and labeling him or her as an abuser for life, is far more direct. If he cannot recognize the potential for harm if he does not get his facts right, and does not feel a need to take seriously research that shows that he is probably making false claims, then he is culpable for harms done.

In fact, some people who planted false memories in others and who falsely accused others, have been subject to lawsuits, and they have lost.

Which is as it should be, where a violation of professional ethics can be shown.

The last two cases that I want to consider are the teacher and the priest. These people are in a position of authority as well. Therefore, they are in a position to plant false memories in others – particularly children. Particularly in the minds of those who trust them. Anybody who teaches children is a person in a position of trust. Anybody who teaches something that he or she has not checked out in a responsible manner has abused that trust. It is somebody who cannot accurately be called a good person.

Rob Olson on Atheist Morality

In the California Agate, columnist Rob Olson wrote a second column responding to criticism he received in a first column about atheists. In that first column, he said it was understandable that people are unwilling to vote for atheists - because atheists have no grounding for their morality.

It was a column worthy of criticism. I think that it is quite good that he got this criticism. In general, I am beginning to see a welcome trend, where claims being made that are hostile towards atheists are getting a much deserved response.

I wrote a piece covering his response to that criticism,

Greetings:

You wrote in a recent column that you were ready for a second wave of outraged atheists shouting in your inbox. I wish to contribute to this project, but I tend not to be much into shouting.

I write a blog called "atheist ethicist" (http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com) where I discuss moral matters.

When I was 16, knowing that some day I will die and nothing of me will survive but my contribution to this world, I decided I wanted to make the world a better place. I went to college for 12 years to study moral philosophy, have 2 undergraduate degrees, and missed out on my PHD because of an unfortunate illness (not mine) and lack of funds. Wanting to make the world a better place, it seems, is not a profitable career goal.

I find your statements contradictory. You express a view as if to support it. Then, when challenged, you say, "I was just mentioning it. I wasn't actually endorsing it." Yet, simply by deciding what to put into your column you demonstrate what you think is worthy of being mentioned. There are an infinite number of claims you could have put into your column. Why did you pick the claims that you did, if not because you thought them important and worthy of being mentioned?

As for your 'perception' that atheists are not charitable, I would hold that it is the same as the bigot's 'perception' that Jews are greedy, blacks are lazy, and that mexicans are dirty. You have no objective evidence to go on, only 'impressions'. However, these types of 'impressions' are fed by our prejudices. People see what they want to see. It takes a serious attempt to look at the facts objectively to see what is really there.

There is a reason why atheists do not build hospitals or engage in charity in the name of atheism. It is because atheism is not an organized religion. An atheist does not make a contribution in the name of 'no god'. He makes a contribution . . . period.

For example, two leading atheist billionaires - Bill Gates and Warren Buffett - have contributed $60 billion in private charity. This is more than all of the top 50 Christian billionaires combined. Yet, nowhere in their charitable work will you see the word 'atheist'. This is because atheism is not a religion. Atheism is simply a belief that, because there is no God to take care of us, we must take care of each other.

There is no more reason to create an 'atheist hospital' then there is to create a 'heliocentrist hospital' or a 'string theorist hospital'. Yet, the person who infers from this that atheists are less generous shows that his opinions are drawn more from bigotry than from fact. Clearly, the fact that there are no heliocentrist hospitals does not imply that heliocentrists are not charitable. It only means that their charity does not wear the label 'done in the name of the belief that the sun is at the center of the solar system'.

And yet if those same heliocentrists were forced to endure living a society that takes as its motto a pledge of allegiance to geocentrism, or a national motto that claims, "We believe in Geocentrism", heliocentrists have every right and reason to protest, don't you think?

Then, the geocentrists go before the cameras and before the courts and say, "When we pledge allegiance to geocentrism, and put 'We Believe in Geocentrism' on our money, we are not saying that geocentrism is better than heliocentrism or trying to establish geocentrism as some sort of national standard." The fact that they actually seem to believe this obvious absurdity is even more disturbing than the fact that they make the claim.

Bad inferences, such as the inferences that 'atheists do not give to charity in the name of atheism; therefore, they do not give to charity', are instances of drawing implications that some group of people tend to be inferior based on poor evidence - betrays a want to view those people as inferior, and a hunt for evidence (good or bad) that supports that prejudice.

It does no good to attempt to salvage the situation by saying, "I did not say that ALL atheists are bad." This is an example of the racist cliche, "I'm not prejudice. Some of my best friends are black." The charge of prejudice is not defeated by showing that, through extraordinary effort, a few individuals might have a chance to rise to the top of the atheist crop and be viewed by you as equals. It has to do with whether you judge atheists as a whole fairly or unfairly. The invalid inferences and groundless assertions you expressed above prove that you are not able to do this.

More importantly, at least to me, and to any fair-minded person, it does not matter what 'most atheists' do. I have no control over their actions, so what other atheists decide to do is their own responsibility, and not mine. If they want to come to me and ask for my advice, I have a whole blog full of advice to give them. Yet, my responsibility ends with that advice. They are responsible for what they decide to do with it.

Judging individuals as members of a group - claiming that 'atheists' as a group are inferior to 'Christians' as a group is the essence of bigotry. I know that people on both sides of the divide are guilty of this wrong. Anybody who reads my blog will find sufficient evidence, I trust, that I am not.

However, the same cannot be said of your article. Near the end of your article, you close with "I'm not saying we should believe in God because he demands it or I demand it, but that I think it helps out society."

You explicitly said, in your first article, you wrote, "It is only to say that if I have that adjective alone to go off of, that sole characteristic, I would begin with an unfavorable impression of the person."

In other words, if you had to choose from among a group of people who to have as your neighbors and who you would wish not to see move in next to you, you think your neighborhood would be better with Christian neighbors, and that the atheists be required to move on to the next town.

This would help out your society.

At best, you may be willing to accept your share of atheist neighbors, simply because you would not want all of them forced on the next village. But, as a matter of personal preference, atheist neighbors are not to be preferred. They do not help out society.

That, I'm afriad, is the essence of bigotry.

It is particularly ironic that you claim that theism gives you a moral advantage over atheists. It certainly does not seem to have helped you to avoid treating others unfairly and unjustly in this regard.

Sorry for the shouting.

Alonzo Fyfe

Atheist Ethicist

Reckless Argumentation

Brendt Rasmussen at “Screwing the Inscrutable” posted a video clip in which creationist Chuck Missler attempts to disprove evolution using a jar of peanut butter. His claim was that if new life can start from molecules and energy, that we should occasionally find new life in a jar of peanut butter.

From here we can expect the standard response that the speaker filed to distinguish between abiogenesis and evolution – the former concerning the emergence of live from nonliving matter, the latter dealing with the change of living organizations over time (irrespective of their origin). Plus, even as a critique of abiogenesis, the clip does not address the actual claim (there exists a combination of energy and organic molecules from which life can emerge) and substitutes a straw man (all combinations of organic molecules and energy can result in new life).

This response is not inaccurate. It is, however, incomplete and, I would suggest, rather trivial. Ultimately, in the lives of the vast majority of the population, it does not really matter how life came about. What really matters is what we are going to do with the lives we have. Food, clothing, shelter, the welfare of one’s children – these are the things that matter.

There is a moral dimension to this clip that actually does have an impact on these types of concerns.

In addition to saying that Missler and others who helped produce this clip are mistaken about the facts, we can also say that they represent a type of person – a type of moral character – that makes this world a worse place than it would have otherwise been.

One thing that we can say about everybody involved in this video is that, because of their efforts, the world has been made a worse place. This is not to say that they have brought down civilization as we know it. Their contribution will not be that great. However, the person who walks into an office or a school and starts shooting, or who causes a fatal accident on the highway while he tries to drive home drunk, does not bring about the end of civilization either. Yet, they do real harm, and that real harm has a moral dimension.

It would have taken very little effort for the people involved in making this clip to have sought an answer to the question, “Why does this argument not defeat your theory?” This is what an intellectually responsible person would have done.

A responsible person would have said to himself, “I am about to devote a portion of my life making this contribution to the world. A responsible person needs to make sure that he is making a responsible contribution. My responsibility here includes a responsibility to make sure that I present the view that I am criticizing honestly and accurately. Failure to do so is reckless. Of course, I believe that my understanding is correct, but – just like the airline company that believes that its airplane is airworthy, one has an obligation to double-check these things. It would take just a few minutes to find out whether this peanut-butter argument actually works. So, it is time to do a little inspection before I invest this energy.”

Yet, the concept of moral responsibility seems to be beyond their grasp, because they did not see fit to respect this simple moral obligation.

These are people for whom we are quite justified in saying, “Have you no shame? Didn’t anybody ever teach you the difference between right and wrong? Did you never learn the concepts of personal responsibility and obligation? You are an example of what is wrong with the world – you with your recklessness. How would you like it if everybody behaved as you did?”

This last question is particularly important.

If we look at the world as a whole, the harms done by a single drunk driver killing a few members of some family is rather trivia. The world will go along much as before, for most people. The real evil of drunk driving involves the risk that we all suffer at the hands of drunk driving generally. It is the practice of drunk driving that we have reason to condemn, more than any individual act. Our condemnation of the act is merely the condemnation of an instance of the more general problem.

The same is true with lying. An individual lie is typically of little significance. Yet, we have many very strong reasons to avoid a culture of lying. Our condemnation of any given lie is a condemnation of an instance of a larger problem that we have reason to answer.

We have just as much reason to condemn intellectual recklessness as we do lying.

Intellectual recklessness spreads more false beliefs than lying and, as a result, does far more harm to innocent people than lying. Chances are, the thought process that got us into this war in Iraq had little to do with genuine deception, and had a lot to do with intellectual recklessness. A morally responsible person – a person who realizes that his moral obligations include intellectual obligations – would have asked more and better questions about what we are getting into.

This video is not only an instance of intellectual recklessness, it promotes a culture of intellectual recklessness. The video not only contains a lesson about peanut butter and energy (that gets the facts wrong), it contains a moral lesson about how a person is obligated to act with respect to the facts. In this case, it teaches a moral lesson that is more perverse and contemptible than its scientific lesson. It teaches viewers to disregard individual moral responsibility to get the fact straight and to make a positive contribution to human learning.

Its scientific mistakes can be dismissed as relatively unimportant. Its moral lesson is of great importance. People who contribute to a culture of intellectual recklessness get innocent people maimed and killed. They destroy quality of life, adversely affecting those who have too many real-world concerns to care about (food, clothing, and shelter) to devote much time to studying theories of abiogenesis.

In fact, people like those who prey on this video prey upon those who are too busy trying to take care of real-world concerns to study the issue in detail. Those people do not have time to go through the facts and find out if the fact of the matter. As a result, they put their trust in others – in people like you and me and the people who produced this video – to act responsibly when we make claims such as this.

This video represents an abuse of that trust.

In earlier posts, I criticized the idea that simply stating the true proposition that a child is being raised within a society that follows a particular tradition represents child abuse, or that even raising a child in a religious tradition is, by itself (without any consideration given to the specifics of that society) a form of child abuse. Those claims generated a fair amount of discussion.

Those claims do not imply that nothing associated with theism can be classified as abusive.

My argument against the idea that theism is abusive by default is that theism does not, by itself, demonstrate a willingness to harm or a callous disregard for the wellbeing of the child. Many theists are good people.

However, if material such as this is being offered as a way to ‘teach’ children, then this does represent a form of abuse. Children need to trust adults to accept a certain degree of responsibility in determining whether the information they feed the children is true or false. An adult who does not take proper care, who acts in an intellectually reckless manner, and does so in a way that affects children, has betrayed the child’s trust. He has, in fact, demonstrated a willingness to harm or, at least, a callous disregard for the child’s welfare that does qualify as abuse.

It does not matter whether these people are ultimately right or wrong about the existence of God or the possibility of abiogenesis. This is not an argument that says that these are bad people because they are wrong. They are bad people because they are reckless, even if they turn out to be right. They are bad people in the same sense that the drunk driver is a bad person, even if the drunk driver manages to get home without killing anybody. The irresponsible person’s luck may protect him from the condemnation that would follow in fact from good people recognizing his failings – because they do not notice. However, they do not protect him from deserving condemnation.

So, here is my suggestion: Do not stop at merely pointing out that these people are mistaken. Go the extra step of asserting the fact that, in addition to having the intellectual high ground, you also have the moral high ground. Yours is the position of intellectual responsibility and a love of truth. Theirs is an intellectual recklessness that, like the recklessness of the drunk driver, makes people worse off.

They truly should be ashamed of themselves.

Being Effective

Yesterday, a commenter asked for permission to send a copy of one of my posts to several representatives, and asked if I thought that it would be ‘effective’. This brought me to thinking that I would like to say a few words about being effective.

Before I get started, I want to say that I write for the purpose of trying to make the world a better place than it would have otherwise been. This was an objective that I set for myself in high school. My essays do no good unless people read them. So, if you think that some benefit can be had by having somebody read what I have written, then please do so. I would be honored.

Be Right

Actually, before a person asks, “Will I be effective?” a responsible person has to ask a prior question. “Will I be right?” A great many people are quite effective at doing a great many things that end up making the world a worse place than it would have otherwise been.

The 9/11 hijackers had an opportunity to ask, “Will I be effective?” Indeed, perhaps they were, depending on what their goals were. However, what they really needed was to ask, “In the real world, will I be right?”

Exxon Mobile, in its quest to pocket as many billions of dollars as possible regardless of the costs inflicted on others, asked their public relations firms to come up with a campaign that will confuse the public on the question of global warming, so that they will continue to give billions of dollars to Exxon-Mobile, rather than save themselves and their descendents trillions of dollars in economic harm. They asked their public relations firms, “Will you be effective?” It seems that they forgot to ask, “Will you be right?”

I am always in doubt as to whether the things that I say are right. The fact is, none of us can ever be sure. Absolute certainty is no reliable indicator of truth. So, in asking the question, “Am I right?” it is never wise to be too certain of one’s answers.

Writing to Representatives

I do not believe that writing to any representative or Senator is really worth the effort. Take a real-world look at what happens. Your letter (email or otherwise) will end up on some staff member’s desk. That staff member will likely read it, look for a key word such as ‘abortion’, ‘pledge of allegiance’, or ‘Iraq’, open up a pre-written document on that issue, throw your name and address on it, perhaps change a few lines of text to reflect the content of your letter, print, and mail it.

Some letters may make it to the Legislator’s desk for a personal response. However, that legislator is running a business – the business of getting elected. Paying customers will come first. He is going to give more serious thought to the letter from somebody who can control a large pool of labor, a large block of voters, or a large bundle of campaign contributions, before he will give your letter much concern.

Those are the facts.

To be effective with the legislator, you need to become one of those people who can influence a large pool of labor, a large block of voters, or a large bundle of campaign contributions.

Talk to the People

A legislator listens to the polls. We say that we do not want our legislators to have this trait. Yet, in fact, the legislator who refuses to listen to the polls will find himself replaced by the legislator who does. What the people say they want, and what they vote for, are not the same thing. President Bush says that he does not care about polls. Yet, he gets his political advice from Karl Rove. You will scarcely find Karl Rove talking about political strategy when he is not talking about polls. Bush was confident that the Republicans would hold on to the legislative branch in the last election, because Bush listened to Rove, and Rove claimed to have a system that more reliably measured the voters’ mood than the polls that the news organizations were using.

So, if you want to bring about effective change in the legislature, you need to change the way that the people answer polls. You need to talk to the people. You need to communicate with friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, club members, and strangers, and let them know what you think a good person’s answer is to any poll that might come along.

Do not be discouraged by the fact that you have never been polled and that you know of nobody who has. People draw their opinions on a great many issues like a plant drawing moisture from the air. If the overall mood of society is hostility towards a policy, then that mood will make it into the polls. So, the trick here is to affect the overall mood of the society. That begins by talking to your family, friends, neighbors, and the like.

Now, nobody likes to be an obnoxious boor. Well, I guess, some people might like to be an obnoxious poor, but many people do not like to bring their political or religious opinions up in public because it causes friction and produces animosities. When out with others, we want to get along This means refusing to participate in anything controversial. People who bring up political issues typically do so only when they know that they are talking to the converted.

That does not do any good, other to reinforce existing opinions, without any respect as to their merit.

However, there are a number of situations where a person can speak their mind in front of an audience. There are conventional and traditional venues – letters to the editor, government meetings where public input is encouraged, public debates, political events, and by joining a political party and participating in its discussions. Modern technology gives us the opportunity to write blogs, discussion boards, MySpace, and a number of other venues where one can go to express a public opinion.

The Fence

In speaking to others – in trying to sway the mood of a society on certain issues, I typically use the metaphor of a fence. Imagine that you are in a vast yard with a fence down the middle. Place people in the yard according to their position on that issue. There are the fence sitters and those who are near the fence. There are also those in the far back of the yard, as far away from the fence as one can be.

The objective, here, is to speak to the fence sitters. What you want to do is to get those who are on the fence to step down on your side of the fence, for those just beyond the fence to climb on, and for those on your side of the fence to step a little further away from it.

Assuming, of course, that you are on the right side of the fence. This is what determines whether your actions are good or bad.

However, I would also argue that it is wrong to step too far away from the fence yourself – to close your mind to the possibility that you might be on the wrong side, and need to climb over it yourself.

Talking to a hard-core creationist is not a productive use of one’s time. Of course, it is not the case that every moment of one’s time has to be spent in productive activity. It is just useful to know the difference, so that if one wants to do something constructive one knows what to avoid.

Talk to the Kids

This is actually the most important lesson if one wants to be effective – to talk to (and in front of) the children. Tell children of the power of reason and science to explain and predict real-world events, and about the usefulness in being able to predict real-world events if one wants to avoid being maimed or killed, and one wants to give one’s actions the greatest chance for success. Do not let the children grow up thinking that atheists are some mysterious ‘them’ that one hears about but never sees.

If you care about that child, then it is important to let the child know that the best way to engineer success and to avoid harm is to be able to explain and predict what happens in the real-world. Pursuing imaginary solutions and working to avoid imaginary problems will not do the child, anybody the child cares about, or anybody the child will care about, any good at all.

If one wants to help the child to have a meaningful life, then the best thing to do is to teach the child that the best way to have such a life is to pursue that which has value in the real world, and not pursuing those things that have only imaginary value or value only within a realm of fantasy.

I look at it this way. I have nieces and nephews whom I care about. The quality of their lives will depend, to a large extent, on the quality of their neighbors. With the world being such a small place, virtually everybody is a neighbor these days. Events half way around the world can have a strong local impact.

Those children will have a much better future to the degree that the people they interact with are intelligent, rational people seeking and finding intelligent, rational solutions to real-world problems. They will have better lives to the degree that others do not wish to harm them in the name of God. And, of course, I do not wish my nieces and nephews to spend their adult years harming others in the name of God (or in any other name, for that matter). So, I ask, “What can I do to make sure that they are surrounded by honest, reliable, helpful, and kind neighbors – rather than hurtful, mean, and vicious neighbors?”

If one of those children should grow up to be gay, will that person be tormented by their neighbors, denied the joys of a true partnership? Or will they live in a world where others find value in depriving them of that which would enrich their lives (at no expense to others)? Will they grow up in a society that has medical treatments for whatever diseases might inflict them, or will they suffer and die because others have decided to block their access to effective treatment in the name of God? Will they be forced to endure the economic costs of climate change, robbing them of the standard of living that we could, with limited cost, have provided them?

Conclusion

So, these are the secrets to being effective. (1) Make sure that you are right, and that you are effective at doing what should be done. If you are not pursuing that which is right, then I sincerely hope that you are not effective. (2) Work to create a social culture – an overall social mood – that supports what is right and condemns that which is wrong. (3) In doing this, focus your attention on the children, who will determine whether future generations will live in peace and prosperity, or in war and loss.

Bush's New Moral Order

Every moral tradition has a test for virtue that asks the agent to measure the rightness or wrongness of an option by asking, “What would you have others do unto you?”

Now that Iran has 15 British soldiers who have apparently “confessed” to an incursion into Iranian waters, we have an opportunity to ask what we would have Iran do unto those soldiers, and ask if the Bush Administration – the administration that sought office substantially on the basis of the great moral virtue of its leaders – has followed this principle.

So, our 15 soldiers are marched off to a Guantanamo Bay style prison.

What are our moral standards here? Has Iran proved by this that they are a morally upright nation? Have they shown that they are acting as people of good moral character? I would like any who think so to call or write the families of those 15 British soldiers and say to them, “You have no reason to complain. Iran is proving that its national moral character is as good as that of the United States. They are doing exactly what the United States leadership has claimed a nation of morally upright leaders should do, which is to haul such people off into Guantanamo Bay style prisons.”

We must imagine that nobody is allowed to have contact with these prisoners. They get no visits from the United Nations, the Red Cross, or any other organization to determine how they are being treated. They are kept in complete isolation. Friends and family do not hear from them and have no idea what has happened to them.

In imagining your letter to these families, do not forget to write that this, too, is what any nation of good moral leaders would do. “You have no right to complain, because your family members are being treated morally and justly. The government of Iran is living up to all of its moral obligations regarding the treatment of foreign prisoners.”

The years go by. The Iranian government continues to insist that the British soldiers are guilty. There has been no trial. There have not even been any formal charges. Whenever the Iranian government speaks about these people, they say how foolish it would be to let these invaders go free, where they will once again be able to plot and scheme with others who hate Iran to attack the country again, or to harm Iranian interests elsewhere in the world. They speak as if the 15 prisoners are all, in fact, members of a plot to attack Iran and bring down its government.

Oh, does somebody in one of these families want to complain that these British soldiers were not actually in Iranian waters? Well, according to President Bush and the New Moral Order, that is not really a problem. A country is perfectly within its rights to send agents into another country to capture ‘enemy combatants’. All of the niceties of extradition and due process are of no concern to the model of post 9-11 morality.

Then, we get news out of China. Remember, we do not have any contact with these soldiers in Guantanamo-Iran. Officials in China now tell us that they have monitored airplane flights from Iran to North Korea. Evidence suggests that Iran is now operating black-site prisons in Korea for prisoners who, they think, need some special treatment. They have turned three of these 15 soldiers over to the North Koreans, and kept two others in their own prison that they were secretly operating in Korea.

So, in your next letter, make sure to tell these soldiers’ families that Iran is behaving no different than any morally concerned, justice-loving, model nation should behave. It has not crossed any moral line. Its leaders still exhibit the most spotless of moral character. Because, as the model of moral virtue himself, the leader of the United States, now tells us, this is the new morality. This is what the 21st century elite now knows as virtue. Whatever is happening to those soldiers, remember that they are being treated exactly how the American government says they should be treated.

Then, finally, the Iranian government starts talking about a trial. The year is 2012. In conducting this trial, the Iranian government is going to use military tribunals. There will be no open court – no system whereby the Iranian government needs to prove to the world that it has just cause to punish these soldiers. Instead, there will be a secret trial, where the Iranian government will be permitted to present secret evidence as well as information gained through five years of ‘interrogation’. The accused will not even be present at the discussion where the Iranian judge, Iranian prosecutor, and appointed Iranian defender decide his fate.

He will have no opportunity to tell them that they are jumping to conclusions, that they have their facts mixed up, or that he can prove that so-and-so was lying. This is because he will never know about these conclusions, facts, or so-and-so’s testimony.

Now, write your letter to the soldier’s family saying that they got a fair and just trial, were properly convicted in a court of law, properly sentenced, and that the punishment was properly executed. Tell the family that they still have nothing to complain about because, at no time, did the Iranian government treat these soldiers inhumanely, immorally, or unjustly. In fact, they showed perfect virtue. They proved themselves to be the moral equal of the United States under the leadership of its most morally perfect President, George W. Bush.

Terrorist Sympathizers

In an op-ed written for the Los Angeles Times, (“God’s Dupes” ) Sam Harris again accused anybody even slightly soft on religion of being a terrorist sympathizer.

The problem is that wherever one stands on this continuum, one inadvertently shelters those who are more fanatical than oneself from criticism. Ordinary fundamentalist Christians, by maintaining that the Bible is the perfect word of God, inadvertently support the Dominionists — men and women who, by the millions, are quietly working to turn our country into a totalitarian theocracy reminiscent of John Calvin’s Geneva. Christian moderates, by their lingering attachment to the unique divinity of Jesus, protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn. Christian liberals — who aren’t sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally — deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality. And in this way centuries have come and gone without an honest word being spoken about God in our society.

I am not here to repeat arguments I have given before. I want to bring up a couple of new points.

Post-Modernism

Attributing the view that we ought not to criticize another person’s beliefs to religious moderates – or to theists in general – is revisionist history. That doctrine actually gained a lot of its strength in the last 30 to 40 years from a non-theist European philosophy called ‘post-modernism’.

Though this is a gross oversimplification of the theory, post-modernists hold that there is no external, objective truth. Instead, each of us creates our own reality and imposes it on the world. As such, none of us has any absolute, objective foundation on which to build an objection to somebody else’s constructed reality. The only thing we can do is say that our constructed reality is different from their constructed reality; but neither of us has access to an external world of ‘truth’ that we can use to find out which is right.

On this theory, if you construct a theory in which there is a God, then the proposition “God exists” is true for you. The proposition, “No gods exist” is true for me. None of us have the ability to escape our own minds to discover if there really is or is not a god.

This is the model that tells us that we cannot criticize other cultures. Notice that it makes no reference to scripture or to religion. In fact, over the past 30 years, the biggest opponents of this philosophy have been the religious fundamentalists who insist that an objective reality does exist and arguing against it is just another piece of liberal nonsense.

On this issue, I side with the theorist. Whenever I confronted a post-modernist when I was in college, I as always very strong tempted to simply tell him, “Well, I have constructed a reality in which post-modernism is nonsense and noise. Which makes the proposition that post-modernism is nonsense ‘true for me’ – and, by your theory and mine, you have no basis on which to criticize me for that. So, since we both agree that you have nothing important or meaningful to say – since we both agree that you have no objective truth to convince me of, there is no reason for this conversation to continue.”

This response ties in with another of Harris’ criticism of religion – that it ends conversation. If a person believes that everything in their scripture is literally true, then there is no room for debate or discussion. The same applies to post-modernism. If there is no reality other than the reality each of us invents – what is ‘true for me’ – then there is no room for discussion. It represents a blanket permission for everybody to ignore anything that counts as evidence – because, what matters is whether it is ‘evidence for me’.

The one point that I want to make absolutely clear is that post-modernism is not and was not a ‘religion’ and has no ‘scripture’. You cannot attack this theory under the same umbrella as “religion is irrational an does horrible things to people’s way of thinking.” Non-religion can do the same thing. So, “The End of Faith” is not necessarily “The Beginning of Enlightenment.”

The Continuum

Harris also describes a ‘continuum’ of beliefs. He puts violent religious extremism in the center of a circle, and draws concentric circles of belief around it. Each circle ‘shields’ everybody in the circles that are smaller than itself. So, the religious conservative shields the religious extremist, the religious moderate shields both the extremist and the conservative. Even the religious liberal is guilty of sheltering the moderate, conservative, and extremist.

This ‘target’ analogy is not actually the more accurate. Instead, Harris is drawing a line – with his own views on one end, and religious extremism on the other. What he is saying is, “Anybody who stands on this line, closer to my opponent’s beliefs than I am, shall be regarded as ‘shielding’ my opponent from criticism. You are either with me – which means that you are standing with me on my end of the line, or you are with the terrorists. If you oppose me any way, then you are in bed with the terrorists.”

We have heard this rhetoric before – from President Bush. We still hear it from the Bush Administration, who tell us on a regular basis that anybody who does not give unquestioned support to the Bush Administration in this war on terror is giving aid and comfort to the terrorists.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, many people who condemn Bush for his ‘you are either with us or you are against us’ mentality– calling it simple-minded and politically naive, find themselves in enthusiastic agreement when it comes from Sam Harris against all theists.

Yet, those problems do go away. It remains.

Besides, when you stand on a point in a continuum, and you shout, “Either you are with me (on this end-point), or you are against me,” you are saying that everybody who insists on standing on the line is against you. That includes me. Sam Harris is saying that an awfully large percentage of the population of the planet is against him. One has to ask, can he truly afford to have that many enemies? Would it not be useful to have at least a few friends, even if they are not ‘with you’ 100%?”

This Blog

My third point is that there is a lot of valid and honest criticism of this blog. I have been accused of asserting false premises, and of invalid arguments. Sometimes, my critics are right, and I am wrong. When that happens, I attempt to make adjustments, as I wrote about last week in “Desires and Ought“ and “Hate“.

However, it will never be a legitimate criticism for anybody to come to me and say, “Somebody has taken something that you have said and defended and used it as a justification for doing evil.” Their actions are their responsibility, not mine. Unless I actually wrote something that said that his ‘evil’ was not evil, or after the fact I write something that endorses his actions, I have no moral responsibility for some item that somebody may take out of my writing and use out of context.

If something that I wrote entails some evil, that would be a different story. In this case, I would be a problem regardless of whether there really was somebody out there drawing those implications. The mere fact that it supported those conclusions would be sufficient criticism. However, the fact that there were people drawing conclusions that my writings do not entail is not a problem with anything that I write.

Hitler and the Nazis used ‘2 + 2 = 4’ to help in its holocaust. Yet, it is hardly sound criticism of ‘2 + 2 = 4’ that it was used that way.

Conclusion

Harris has a habit of talking about ‘them’ who shield the terrorists from criticism. Let us be honest about who ‘them’ are. Harris says that anybody who stands on a continuum between him and the targets of his criticism are ‘shielding’ those targets and there thereby morally responsible for the harms those people inflict.

Well, it seems that I am one of ‘them’.

I am standing on the line between Harris and the targets of his criticism – shielding them if we take Harris at his word. I am a friend of terrorism, morally responsible for every bomb that goes off and every airplane that crashes into a sky scraper – because I dare to stand somewhere on the line between Harris and the targets of his criticism.

Unfortunately for Harris, I have no intention of getting off. I hold that the right place to be is somewhere on the line between Harris and his targets.

I guess that makes me a terrorist sympthizer.

Loyal Rue: The Nature of Religion

Loyal Rue, the second presenter in Session 6 of “Beyond Belief 2006” , is professor of Religion and Philosophy at Luther College. He came to the conference to talk about the nature of religion.

Religion, he tells us, is a story that is meant to unite two separate fields on inquiry. It is meant to tell us how the world is, and to tell us what is important. More importantly, it unites these two fields of inquiry in a single author – a God who is both the ultimate explanation of everything that exists and the ultimate justification for everything that has value.

All religious traditions are narrative traditions. They have at the core, way down deep, a myth, a story . . . The central story really brings together and integrates two different kinds of ideas. Every religious tradition has cosmological ideas – that is, ideas about how things are ultimately in the world. And every religion has moral ideas – that is, ideas about which things matter ultimately for human fulfillment . . . Ideas about how things are are brought together and con – fused with ideas about what things matter.

Rue’s use of the term ‘con-fused’ here takes some explanation. He means to say that ideas about what things are and ideas about what things matter are fused together in an all-encompassing integrated myth or story.

Of course, the pun here is not intentional, because Rue also asserts the claim that there is a sharp distinction between fact and value – that mixing the two commits the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’.

This Beyond Belief conference was an excellent project that brought people together from a host of different disciplines to share their research with people from other disciplines. It would have been great if the philosophy of mind professionals would have gone up to any moral philosopher or philosopher of religion, and anybody else who mentioned as if to endorse ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy’, slapped them hard across the face, and shouted, “Snap out of it!”

I hold that values are facts about relationships between states of affairs and desires. The claims that I make are fully wrapped in this ‘naturalistic fallacy’ such that, if this is in fact a fallacy, you can quit reading this blog and go on to somebody who is saying something sensible. However, this ‘naturalistic fallacy’ does not concern me.

Philosophers of mind killed this ‘naturalistic fallacy’ idea long ago.

Let me explain how this fallacy is used in ethics. Then, I will draw a parallel to it in the philosophy of mind. Then, I will explain the death-dealing blow that philosophers of mind have delivered to this argument. Then, I will argue that its ghost needs to be exercise from all other branches of philosophy as well.

The Naturalistic Fallacy comes from G.E. Moore. Moore argued that it is impossible to reduce moral properties to natural properties. To prove this, he employs ‘the open question argument’. He points out that it if anybody ever attempts to make the claim that ‘good’ is ‘naturalistic property N’, that it will always be reasonable to ask, “X is N, but is it really good?” The mere fact that this is a reasonable question shows that it is impossible to equate being N with being good. That is to say, it is impossible to reduce ‘good’ to any natural property.

Now, let’s apply this to the philosophy of mind.

One could argue that it is impossible to reduce a mental state to a brain state. That is to say, it is senseless to argue that we can study mental states by studying the brain. We can defend this claim by employing ‘the open question argument’. If anybody ever attempts to make the claim that ‘mental state M’ is ‘brain state B’, that it will always be reasonable to ask, “X is brain state B, but is it really mental state M?” The mere fact that this is a reasonable question shows that it is impossible to equate being mental state M with brain state B. That is to say, it is impossible to reduce mental state M to any natural property.

If somebody ever tries that argument in the philosophy of mind, their PhD is revoked and they are sent back to the graduate school for a remedial education in logic.

So, what do philosophers of mind say against this type of argument?

First, there is a plausibility issue. “We seem to have two ideas here that have come into conflict. The first is this naturalistic fallacy of yours. However, if we accept this naturalistic fallacy, then we are going to have to accept mind/body dualism. However, mind/body dualism has so many problems with it, that it is almost certainly false. Before we can even begin to give any credence to mind/body dualism, somebody needs to give us a theory of what mind is, how it can be distinct and separate from body, how we can know about it, and how it interacts with body. If I were a gambling man, and I was forced to bet on which would happen first – for somebody to come up with a theory of mind distinct from body that actually makes sense, or for somebody to find a problem with this ‘naturalistic fallacy’ of yours, I’m going to bet that the naturalistic fallacy will fail long before mind/body dualism has any hope of succeeding.”

Second, philosophers of mind have identified the fatal flaw with the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. It refers to the fact that some terms are ‘referentially opaque’. They refer to what the agent thinks about an object, but tell us nothing about the object itself. The ‘open question’ argument is referentially opaque. It tells us nothing about ‘good’ or ‘mental state M’. It only tells us what people think about ‘good’ or ‘mental state M’.

Of course, people are not accustomed to referring to any given brain state as a mental state. We have not known enough about brains for people to be able to do this. As we learn more, it will become more and more possible to either identify brain states that correspond to mental states. We may not be totally successful. Some mental states may not correspond to any brain state. Some mental states may not correspond to reality at all. However, the conclusion to draw here is not that mental states are something distinct and separate from brain states or some other aspect of physical reality. The conclusion to draw is that they never existed, and it is time to eliminate them from our real-world descriptions.

The way to tell if a brain state corresponds to a mental state is not to determine if we have a priori knowledge of the relationship. It is to say, “Here, if we look at mental state M, we see that it is related to A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. If we look at brain state B, we see that it has all of these same relationships to A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. From this, I conclude that mental state M is brain state B.”

The ‘naturalistic fallacy’ argument is an instance of a person saying, “Hold on a minute. One of the things that is true of mental state M is that I am accustomed to thinking of it as mental state M. However, I am not accustomed to thinking of brains state B as mental state M. This is one thing that is true of M that is not true of B. Therefore, they are not the same thing. In fact, this is true of every single brain state you can ever name that you say is equivalent to some mental state. It will always be the case that I am accustomed to thinking of that mental state as a mental state, and never be the case that I am accustomed to thinking of that brain state as a mental state. So, it is a ‘naturalistic fallacy’ to ever try to reduce a mental state to a brain state.”

The answer to this argument is, “Your habits of thinking about mental state M or brain state B in particular ways is not a property of M or of B. They are properties of you. If you should die, you shall cease to think of M or B in any way at all. Yet, neither M nor B will change as a result of your death, because none of the properties of M or B will change.”

This is where the term ‘referentially opaque’ comes in. Claims about how a person thinks of something are ‘referentially opaque’. They do not ‘shine through’ to the object one is talking about. They stop at the person who is doing the thinking.

So, the same can be said about attempts to reduce ‘good’ to some naturalistic property. We look at ‘good’ and discover that it has all of these associations with A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. In this case, our relationships concern concepts such as “excuse”, “mens rea”, “’ought’ implies ‘can’”, “the role of praise and condemnation”, “three categories of moral action – prohibition, permission, and obligation”, “negligence”, and “the ‘illness/evil’ distinction”. You find a naturalistic property that can accommodate all of these relationships.

When somebody comes along shouting “naturalistic fallacy”, I simply shout back, ‘referrential opacity’ and continue.

Rue went on to provide some other interesting comments about the function of religion and how religion maintains itself. Many of these claims do not depend on his acceptance of such a thing as a ‘naturalistic fallacy’. As a result, the rest of his presentation remains useful and relevant, even without the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ error.

But it is an error.

.

Discussion: Susan Neiman's Science and Morality

As regular readers know, I spend my weekends discussing the presentations at the Beyond Belief 2006 conference. This is the ninth weekend devoted to this project.

One of the reasons I do this is to show that I can stand up to some of the best thinkers in the field of morality, science, and religion.

Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine honored me recently by putting in the magazine that:

I recently found this blog summary of my lecture at the Beyond Belief conference at the Salk Institute November 5–7, 2006. I wanted to call it to your attention because this is the only account I have seen thus far that understood what I was saying about the necessity for compromise between science and religion if we have goals beyond the scope of the realm of these two enterprises (which I do). All of the press accounts of the conference simply quoted the most extremist positions in short sound-bites, missing out entirely on much of the subtle discussions that went on. - Michael Shermer

After Susan Neiman's presentation, which I discussed last weekend, there was a question and answer session that focused on the relationship between science and morality. (name) made the claim during her presentation that we cannot have a science of morality because ‘ought’ is necessarily separate from ‘is’. Paul Churchland and (name2) from the audience raised some objections to that view.

Naturally, I have some objections of my own.

To illustrate her point, Neiman drew upon two examples which she was eager to call “moral progress”. This was the Neiman abolition of slavery, and the prohibition on torture. She argued that these changes represent an honest improvement in our moral culture. However, she argues, she could not see a change in attitude as being represented in a mere fact. For example, when she spoke about Bush’s endorsement of torture, she called this moral regress, but she could not think of any mere fact that could be taught to Bush to change his thinking.

Morality as a Biological Phenomenon

Before I address Neiman's examples, I want to point out that these examples of slavery and torture create an insurmountable problem for those who assert that there is a direct relationship between biology and morality. Scientific theories are to be evaluated by their ability to explain and predict observable phenomena. However, the theory that morality is grounded directly on biology cannot explain and predict phenomena like the spread of anti-slavery and anti-torture attitudes through a population. These changes are much more like the changes in learned properties than in inherited properties.

In other words, morality is a biological phenomenon, then we would expect changes in moral attitudes to move through a population like changes in other biological properties. For example, if we were to link hostile attitudes towards slavery to some biological property, then we should expect to see a population to change from being pro-slavery to anti-slavery the same way that it may change from being light skinned to dark skinned, or from blue eyes to brown eyes.

Yet, this is not what we see. When we examine changes in moral attitudes spreading through a population, we see a pattern that is much more like a cultural change than a biological change – more like changes in hair style than changes in (natural) hair color.

This gives the advantage to theories that hold that moral attitudes are learned, not inherited.

However, biology still has a great deal to say how we learn – whether it involves learning math and logic to recognizing faces and shapes. If we apply this to morality, it says that there may still be (and, I would argue, there are) important links between biology and meta-ethics, not between biology and ethics itself.

I have held throughout this blog that morality has a lot to do with relationships between desires and other desires. The desires we have, their relationships to other desires, how cultural forces affect our desires (how we learn to like some things and dislike others) are all important questions that biologists can help answer. However, the biologist is making a serious category mistake if he thinks he can find a gene for, “Homosexuality is immoral”.

Morality as Learning New Facts

In a way, I have agreed with Neiman's statement that a change in moral behavior is not merely limited to a change in beliefs. The shift in attitudes regarding slavery and torture – and the future changes in attitude to be hoped for regarding homosexuality and voting for atheist candidates – are not merely changes in beliefs. They also represent changes in desires.

If you give more and more facts to a person with a desire to torture young children, the effect will not be to cause that desire to go away. The effect will only be to make him more and more efficient at fulfilling his desire to torture young children without thwarting other desires he may have. Facts are not directly relevant to selecting ends themselves; they are only relevant to selecting the means to ends.

A person’s desires are like his weight. You can fill a person with facts from now until Thursday, but that that alone will not change his weight. However, those facts can show him that he has reason to change his weight. It gives him reason to take actions that will, some day, cause him to have a different weight. However, at any time, he will weigh what he weighs and not an ounce more or less.

You can fill a person with facts from now until Thursday but that alone will not change his desires. They may teach him that he has reason to change his desires. However, until those desires actually change, he will continue to act on those desires. A society will not suddenly acquire an aversion to slavery simply because that aversion can be shown to be a good idea. It must undergo a period of hard work over time while that new aversion is cultivated.

So, (name) is looking for the moral equivalent of a set of facts that can directly and immediately cause a change of desires – that can generate an aversion to slavery where none was before. She is correct to state that she cannot imagine what such a fact will be. There are no facts that will instantly cause a change in desires. However, there are facts that will show that people have reason to grow such an aversion in others.

What are some of those facts? We can start with the fact that if people are not averse to slavery, then there is no telling who they might decide to slave. The northern factory workers were not far from slavery. (Name) even suggested that they were in a state not much better than slavery. However, as long as a society has no aversion to slavery, there is a risk as to who they may decide to enslave next – if not in this generation, then the next. An effective way to secure oneself and one’s children from slavery is to cultivate an aversion to slavery in society as a whole. People, seeking to fulfill their desires given their beliefs, will then be less likely to enslave others.

The moral issue is not one that is limited to slavery. The Constitution contained a long list of rights that all people were supposed to have, and no person was to take from another. The Constitution itself, and the philosophical foundation on which it was built, created its own growing aversion to a whole list of wrongs, many of which directly focused on slavery. A population that was sincerely devoted to protecting people from those wrongs was a safe population to live in. However, a population that cast those wrongs aside when it was convenient or profitable to do so was a dangerous society to live in, and to put one’s children in.

Growing an aversion to slavery is like growing a desire for exercise and for healthier food. All of the facts in the world are not enough to bring about change. However, those facts are relevant to determining if there are reasons enough to work for change.

The same argument applies to the Bush Administration’s view on torture. There are arguments that torture does not work and that we are better off trying to get prisoners to voluntarily side with us. However, this only tells us whether a specific instance of torture is a bad idea. We have another argument to make suggesting that promoting a general love of torture is a bad idea. Bush’s administration has likely had the affect of weakening the aversion to arbitrary arrest, indefinite imprisonment, and torture around the world. This means that people around the world are now at greater risk of suffering these ills than they would have been in a society that was generally averse to this type of behavior.

An example of this comes from Egypt, as reported in Newsweek, "Actors in a Play of Democracy", where the ruling government is forcing through a set of constitutional changes that opposition parties say is designed to give the ruling party absolute power. Among these:

The most controversial aspect of the amendment package is a new antiterrorism law that will replace the heavy-handed Emergency Law--in place since the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat--which had been used for the past 25 years to repress political opposition to the regime. The new law, capitalizing on a slew of terrorist attacks in Egypt over the past few years, would enable the government to violate civil liberties in the name of national security. “The responsibility of safeguarding security and public order in the face of the dangers of terrorism,” the new amendment reads, “cannot be hampered by the measures stated in the articles…[about] the private life of citizens.” The legislation also allows the president to bypass traditional courts and to refer terror suspects to military tribunals whose rulings cannot be appealed.

The concerns in Egypt are, of course, over who the government will eventually call a 'terrorist'. People in power have a notoriously poor ability to identify as 'enemies of the state' any who would protest their absolute power.

This is what it means to say that these things are wrong. Not that we do have an aversion to these activities, but that we have reason to promote an aversion to these activities. It may be quite natural to look at what we have an aversion to in order to judge what we should have an aversion to. It is natural, but it is still filled with error. Just because we do not like something, this does not prove that it is a good idea that we (and others) not like it.

Conclusion

So, Neiman was partially right. She was correct in pointing out that there often is not a set of facts that will, by themselves, cause a person to act any differently. A person will act to fulfill his desires, given his beliefs. Facts will only allow him to fulfill his desires more efficiently.

However, facts may also tell him that it is not a good idea that people generally desire the things they desire, and that there are reasons to bring about socially strong desires for things they do not currently desire.

When this happens, it tells an agent that he has reason to work for a change in attitudes. Those attitudes will not change immediately. It will take time and effort. However, the fact that something takes time and effort is no proof that it is not a good idea.

Hate

My post, “Bigotry and the Values Voter” brought a number of comments worthy of further consideration.

One of those comments is that I use the term “hate” too easily. Atheist Observer wrote,

I think you use the term “hate” too easily. I know good people who do not “hate” anyone, but they are told every Sunday that good morality comes from God, and honestly believe that without God you would have no reason to be moral. They are guilty of false beliefs, but not necessarily of hate.

Upon reflection, I am going to plead guilty to the charge of using the term “hate” too easily. In coming to this conclusion, I had some interesting thoughts about the issue.

Desire’s Effect on Reason

I have arguments for my position and my use of the word “hate”. It is grounded in part on the premise that a people seem to be reliably (though not perfectly) able to see the holes in an argument where they want to see them.

For example, I think that if I could snap my fingers and turn an anti-gay bigot into a homosexual, that he will probably find it easy to recognize the flaws in the arguments used to condemn homosexuality. That is, he would likely come to see how absurd it is for people to assert that his relationships are a threat to traditional marriage – that they are as much of a threat to traditional marriage as traditional marriage is to his relationships. He will likely recognize the bigotry of condemning him because somebody else molested a young boy – that this is as foolish as condemning all heterosexuals because somebody molested a young girl.

This is not a sure thing. The possibility of a Ted Haggart exists, that he will come to hate himself and to consider that hate justified. However, the general tendency is for people to see the flaws in arguments where they have reason to sincerely look for the flaws.

This is an argument for putting oneself in another person’s shoes when evaluating a moral argument. When we consider an action from the point of view of others, this will help us to determine if the arguments being used to ‘justify’ doing harm are, in fact, good arguments.

Reluctance to Do Harm

Above, I suggested that people tend to do a better job of seeing holes in arguments yielding conclusions they do not like. Here, I want to combine that with another premise – that a good person does not like to do harm to others. He will do harm to others, but he will first need to be convinced that it is justified. The presumption is that harm to others is not justified, and that it is the duty of those who advocate harm to prove their case.

These are the moral principles that ground the presumption of innocence and a right to a fair trial in criminal cases. The good person takes the default attitude that the accused is not to be harmed, and that the challenge is on those who argue for harm to show that they actually do have good reason.

When a person fails to see the flaws in an argument that are said to justify harm, we have at least prima facie evidence that he either (1) desires to see the victim harmed, or (2) is so indifferent to the suffering of the victim that he does not care to see if the argument for the necessity of harm is sound. Both of these are wrong, and make the individual worthy of moral condemnation. Yet, the issue here is not whether the accused is deserving of condemnation, but whether it is accurate to say that they “hate” their victims.

Hate and Indifference to Harm

I have been going straight from this desire to do harm or indifference to harm straight to “hate”. That was a mistake. Hate may easily be associated with a desire to do harm. However, it is not associated with passive indifference to the harm that others may suffer.

The drunk driver is indifferent to the harms that his (potential) victims may suffer. He does not care enough to prevent those harms and seems to have no aversion to putting others at risk. If he had such an aversion, then he would take steps to make sure that others are not put at risk. The claim that the drunk driver does not believe that he puts others at risk of harm does not shield him from these accusations. A concerned individual who truly wishes to avoid harm would put those beliefs under scrutiny – particularly with so many people insisting that it is wrong, and would not be easily tricked into believing that the arguments against risk are weak.

However, the drunk driver does not ‘hate’ his (potential) victims. Casual indifference to the suffering of others is not hate.

People often use the terms bigotry and hate interchangeably. However, the bigotry includes this callous disregard for the welfare of others that is far from hate. Martin Luther King opposed those bigots who truly sought to harm the blacks. Yet, he also criticized the moderates who stood back and did nothing while the extreme racists brutalized blacks. Those moderates are like the apartment dwellers who hear screams coming from a parking lot. They look down to see a man dragging a woman into a dark alley. They do nothing. Such a person is truly evil. However, it would be nonsense to say that he hates the victim of the crime.

Hate and False Beliefs

On the other hand, the Atheist Observer’s comment about hate also has a problem. The Atheist Observer seems to be suggesting that a mistake of fact is incompatible with hate.

On the contrary; hate is not only compatible with false beliefs, it can be grounded on false beliefs. A person might suspect that a co-worker is attempting to undermine his work. He may have picked up some evidence suggesting the co-worker has been spreading lies about him, and bad-mouthing him to the boss. His beliefs about his co-worker could generate some actual hate.

In this case, we would not say that the agent does not really hate his co-worker. Instead, we would say that the hate is real, but that it is also unfounded.

The person who has learned to regard the atheist as somebody who is inherently immoral, who is always badmouthing the theist and attempting to undermine his good deeds, and who has abandoned God because he seeks to deny judgment for his decision to live an immoral life, is somebody who has learned to hate atheists. His claim that he does not actually hate atheists rings as false as the KKK member who says that he really is not racist. He only wants the blacks to leave so that he can live in a wholly white society.

There is, I would argue, more hate going on than Atheist Observer accounts for with his argument. Yet, there is less hate going on than I asserted in mine.

Hate and Wrong

Indifference to harm may not qualify as “hate”, but it scarcely qualifies as a virtue either. People generally have a lot of very strong reasons to condemn an indifference to harm, to make the trait less common than it would otherwise be. In fighting this indifference (and condemning those who exhibit it), the goal is not to promote a desire to harm. This is not indifference, but it is not good either.

The goal is to promote an aversion to harm. Such an aversion would cause the agent to question any claim that that the victim deserves to be harmed. This will make it more likely that he would see the flaws in an argument to do harm, if there are flaws to be found. If the agent accepts flawed arguments for harm too easily, we may conclude that he lacks the aversion to harm that a good person would have.

Oughts and Desires

In the last couple of weeks, I have had three people make comments suggesting that I explain the relationship between ‘ought’ and desire - including a line in a post by eenauk that he is not sure how I link my desires and my oughts.

Therefore, I shall see if I can clarify the issue.

Though I fear that I am cutting my own financial throat with respect to selling copies of that book I wrote. Why should anybody buy the book if I keep giving away all of its arguments?

Actually, I will start with ‘should’. ‘Ought’ is a species of ‘should’ and it is easier to understand the species by first understanding the genus.

Should and Reasons for Action

‘Should’ = ‘There are more and stronger reasons-for-action in favor of doing X than against doing X.’

‘Should’ is intimately related to reasons for action. If there are no reasons for action for doing something, then it makes no sense to say that it should be done. If there are more and stronger reasons against doing something, then it also makes no sense to say that it should be done. In order for it to be the case that something should be done, there has to be a reason for doing it.

Please note that, in writing this, I have ‘should’ on one side of the equation, and an ‘is’ statement on the other side. ‘Are’ is just the plural form of ‘is’. When David Hume made his famous assertion that one cannot derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’, he used the premise that ‘ought’ describes a different sort of relationship, and that one needs to explain the connection between this new type of relationship and ‘is’ relationships to make these inferences valid.

He was wrong. ‘Ought’ relationships are a specific type of ‘is’ relationships. They are ‘is’ relationships – relating actions to reasons for action. As such, there is no mystery in deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’, as long as we ‘is’ talking about a reason for action.

So, let’s get to these reasons for action.

Reasons for Action and Desires

Desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

As such:

’Should’ (when true) = ‘Is such as to fulfill more and stronger desires in question’.

In my younger days, as a contributor to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board, I said that this equation was true by definition.

I was wrong.

People have, throughout history, postulated the existence of reasons for action other than desires. They have postulated reasons built directly into the fabric of the universe – either by God, or intrinsic to the commands of God, or in nature itself, or in the form of some sort of supernatural property. These other reasons for action do not exist. However, if they did exist they would count as reasons why a certain action should or should not be performed. The word ‘should’ does not exclude them a priori.

As it turns out, desires are the only reasons for action that exist. It is not true by definition, but it is nonetheless true.

Because ‘should’ refers to reasons for action, and desires are the only reasons for action that exist, ‘should’ either refers to desires, or it refers to something that is not, in the real world, a reason for action. If it refers to a reason for action that does not exist, then the ‘should’ statement is false.

The Ambiguity of Should

Now, ‘should’ in this sense is an ambiguous term. It raises the question, “Which desires?”

The answer to this question has to be picked up in the context in which the ‘should’ statement appears.

If I were to say, “The keys are on the table,” this raises the question, “Which table?” In order to answer this question we have to look at the context in which the statement was made. Typically, when I use a phrase like ‘the table,’ I assume that the listener can pick up from the context which table I am talking about. If not, then I may have to be more specific (e.g., “the dining room table”).

When a speaker uses the term ‘should’, he usually uses it in a way where the listener can pick up the desires in question from the context in which the statement is used. If not, then the speaker may need to be more specific.

Example #1, two people are sitting in a car outside of a convenience store. The passenger pulls a gun, checks it for bullets, cocks it, stuffs it in his coat, and opens the car door as if to leave. The driver hands him a ski mask and says, “You should wear this.” In this example, the ‘desires in question’ in this case are the passenger’s desires, and not the desires of the store clerk or other customers.

Example #2: I meet a friend for lunch. She has no idea what to get her husband for his birthday. We discuss options for a while, and I say, “You should buy him a hot tub.” The person listening to the conversation would have heard my friend say how much she wants a hot tub but cannot afford one, in part because she wants to get something special for her husband. They would have heard her say that her husband has also talked about buying a hot tub as well, but was also worried about the expense. My recommendation, in this context, would take the form of fulfilling more and stronger of both of their desires.

Another friend complains about her job. I tell her that she should just tell her boss, “I quit,” and walk out. She knows that I am not serious because, even though this act would fulfill some of her desires, it would not fulfill the more and the stronger of her desires (e.g., the desire for food, clothing, and shelter).

It is important to note that these are clearly not moral statements. The robber does not have an obligation to wear the mask, my friend is under no obligation to purchase the hot tub, and my other friend has no duty to keep her job. These are all non-moral senses of the word ‘should’. So, we still need to look for what is special about moral senses of the word ‘should’.

But first, we have a complication.

Ought and Can

‘Should’ lives under a restriction that it implies ‘can’. For example, it is not the case that an agent should teleport a child out of a burning building unless the agent can teleport a child out of a burning building. It is not the case that he should fire his boss unless he can fire his boss.

However, at the moment of action, the only act that an agent can perform is the act that will fulfill the more and the stronger of the agent’s own desires, given his beliefs. In other words, the only act that an agent can perform is the act that an agent does perform.

Does this imply that an agent always should do only what he does?

Not really.

Typically, when a person asks, “What should I do?” it is possible to interpret this as the question, “What would I do if my beliefs were true and complete?” We act so as to fulfill the more and stronger of our desires, given our beliefs. However, we seek to fulfill the more and stronger of our desires. When our beliefs are false or incomplete, there is a gap between these two that often causes an agent to do what she should not have done.

This does not change the fact that an agent can only act so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of her desires, given her beliefs. The agent, in asking, “What should I do?” is seeking a set of relevant and true beliefs (or a closer approximation to what is relevant and true) that would actually allow her to fulfill the more and stronger of her desires, when she acts so as to fulfill the more and stronger of her desires given her beliefs.

Future Desires

In addition to the gap between what an agent should do and will do caused by false and incomplete beliefs, there is a problem of future desires. Desires are not capable of backwards causation. Therefore, there is no way for a future desire to directly cause a present action. Whenever an agent acts, she acts so as to fulfill her current desires, given her beliefs. Future desires are left to fend for themselves.

It is still sensible to ask, “What should I do?” in a sense that considers future desires. The hypothetical question, “What would I do I had all true relevant beliefs and future desires had the power to influence present action,” is still a valid question, and an important question to answer for some people.

There are two ways that present actions can bring about the fulfillment of future desires. This is important, by the way, because I would estimate that a majority of the objections to what I write then I cover this subject comes from a failure to distinguish these three different relationships. People assume (wrongly) that I am talking about one of these relationships and raise all sorts of objections against that straw man, when in fact I talk almost exclusively about the other relationship.

So, let me cease to be cryptic and answer the question.

One way that a present act can fulfill future desires is if the agent simply has a desire to fulfill future desires. If I know that I will have an aversion to pain 10 years from now, and I have a present desire to avoid future pain, then I have a ‘reason for action’ for avoiding future states in which I will be in pain. If I know that I will want to eat 10 years from now, and that this will take money, my present desire to see that my future desires are fulfilled will cause me to save money.

The problem of drug addiction exists because future desires have no direct affect on present action. If a person has a particularly strong desire for nicotine, alcohol, or cocaine, for example, they will act so as to fulfill the more and stronger of their current desires, given their beliefs. Their future desires cannot mediate their actions. Therefore, they continue to use the drug, even though they know that their actions will thwart future desires.

The other relationship, and the relationship I always use when I talk about desire utilitarianism, is that a desire can be a desire that tends to fulfill future desires. This is not a desire to fulfill future desires. This is a desire for something else, where the pursuit of that “something else” tends to bring about future states of affairs that will fulfill future desires.

For example, a person can acquire a desire for exercise. She does not exercise because she will live longer. She exercises because she truly enjoys exercise. As a result, she is healthier, and her future desires stand a much greater chance of being fulfilled. Yet, the fulfillment of future desires is not what she is after when she exercises. It is, instead, a side effect.

We can see the difference between the person who exercises out of a desire for future health and a person who exercises for current enjoyment. Assume the news were to report that a comet will slam into the Earth in two months and end all life. The first person – the person who exercises for future health – no longer has a reason to exercise. He will stop. The second person – the person with a desire to exercise – still has a reason to exercise (her current desire to exercise), and will continue to do so, until the comet hits (unless other concerns force her to abandon her favorite past-time).

Now, we do, in fact, have the capacity to choose our desires. A person knows that cigarettes are designed to give the user a particularly strong desire to smoke cigarettes. That is to say, they are addictive. To prevent himself from acquiring a desire to smoke cigarettes, he refuses to smoke. This person is actually choosing a desire by knowing what causes the desire and choosing not to do that which would cause a desire he does not wish to have.

We also choose our current (or near-future) desires by deciding to acquire new habits. For example, a person may start to exercise out of a desire for future health. However, after she does this for a while, she discovers that she has come to value exercise for its own sake, and not for the sake of future health. She has acquired a new desire.

Because we have the capacity to modify our desires, we have reason to ask (and to answer) not only the question, “What should I do?” We also have reason to ask (and to answer) the question, “What should I want?”

Of course, the answer to the question, “What should I want?” has the same general answer as all other “Should” questions. “What reasons exist for and against my wanting X?” This is the same as asking, “Is it the case that wanting X would be such as to fulfill the desires in question?”

Other People’s Desires

Future desires have no capacity to directly influence current actions, or current desires. However, there is another set of desires out there that can have an effect on our current desires – the desires of other people.

The same two relationships that exist between current desires and future desires also exist between current desires and the desires of other people. I can have a desire to fulfill the desires of other people. Or (actually, ‘and’) I can have desires that tend to fulfill the desires of other people. My future self has no capacity to reach back in time and mold my present desires towards their fulfillment. However, other people can easily reach across space and affect my current desires. Furthermore, they have reason to do so. If they have a desire that Q, then they have reason to cause me to have those desires that will bring about or maintain a state of affairs in which Q is true.

So, in addition to my questions, “What should I do?” and “What should I want (given future desires)?” there is a question, “What should I want (given the desires of other people)?” Or, in other words, what desires do other people have reason to cause me to have? And, correspondingly, what desires do I have reason to cause other people to have? Of course, they have reason to cause me to desire that which will fulfill their desires, and I have reason to cause them to desire that which will tend to fulfill my desires.

There are, in short, desires that people generally have a lot of strong reasons to cause others to have, and desires that people generally have a lot of strong reasons to cause others not to have. If there are actions that one can perform (e.g., praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment) to cause people to have stronger desires that people have reason to strengthen, or to cause people to have weaker desires that people have reason to weaken, then there are reasons to perform those actions.

These posts tend to get very long, so I will end here.

However, I would like to note that nowhere in this essay did I use the word ‘moral’ – other than to make some distinctions near the introduction. I started off with a notion of practical ‘should’, and ended up talking about desires that people have reason to promote in others – in some cases, a lot of very strong reasons.

I will leave it up to the reader to decide if, at any point in this essay, any ‘should’ that I spoke about started to sound suspiciously like a moral ‘ought’.

Morse and the Juneau School Board et al. v. Frederick

It has been a while since I have written on a Constitutional issue, so let me briefly go over the rules.

This is not a blog about what the law does or does not say. I am not a Constitutional lawyer and I have no special training in that area. Okay, fine, I had a strong emphasis in philosophy of law while I was studying ethics, and took a few History of the Constitution classes. I still know less about constitutional law than I do about moral theory.

This is a blog about what the law should or should not say. If there is a gap between what the law does say and what the law should say, then this gap is filled by unjust law – law that ought to be changed.

I object to the practice, which is far too common, of deciding what one wants the law to say, then turning to law to find evidence for what one desires. It is a practice that involves cherry-picking the data, giving strong emphasis to legal precedent that supports one’s desired conclusion, while ignoring as aberrations any precedent that conflicts with one’s desired results. There is simply no basis for the assumption that the law says what one wants it to say.

So, this essay has nothing to do with whether the case before us involves an instance of constitutionally protected free speech.

That case is Morse and the Juneau School Board et al. v. Frederick (06-278). It concerns a high school student, Joseph Frederick, who presented a banner saying, "bong hits 4 Jesus" at an event where the Olympic torch was moving through the city. The principal, Deborah Morse, told Frederick to remove the banner. The student refused, which lead Morse to suspend Frederick for 10 days for violating a school policy against promoting drug use.

The Right to Free Speech

In this blog, I have employed a principle that states that the only legitimate response to words are words said in response and private actions. Violence is not an appropriate response to mere words. (Note: There are, of course, exceptions – revealing military secrets, libel, slander, clear and present danger, and invasion of privacy, but none of them figure in to this case.)

If this is truly an important principle, then it is one that students should be learning in school. One useful way for students to learn this principle is to see it applied in the school setting. That is, the school itself should be a place to honor the principle to never respond to words alone with violence, just as the school honors moral prohibitions against killing, rape, theft, lying, and cheating.

Clear and Present Danger

Frederick was ultimately charged with “promoting drug use.” This is an example where the “clear and present danger” principle applies. If I am a mobster, and I say to my hit man, “Kill him,” my right to free speech cannot protect me from a charge of murder. The situation is one in which I am the proximate cause of the victim’s death. However, if I were to post on my blog, “somebody should kill that man,” where my words command nobody in specific, then I am not morally guilty of his murder.

This principle would also rule out the right to make actual threats against an individual, and defend oneself on the basis of “free speech.” If I were to point a gun at you, you would be within your rights to consider me a threat and to act accordingly. If I say, "I am going to get my gun and fill you with so many holes they can use you for a sieve," you would still be wise to take me at my word and take steps to defend yourself – or to call upon the state to defend you.

Frederick’s banner, as far as I can tell, was not a command to any group of people to take up drug use. Those who read the sign still had every freedom to accept or reject its prescription. There was no “clear and present danger”, and no reason to hold Frederick morally responsible for any drug use that might be attributed to his sign. In fact, as far as I know, no attempt was made to actually accuse Frederick of ordering any particular incidence of drug use.

Speech as Violence

There are situations where the speech itself is an act of violence, and as such can be punished. The distinguishing trait here is that the speaker is to be condemned regardless of the content of his beliefs.

Examples of this involve speech acts that are disruptive, such as an individual standing and shouting slogans in a crowded theater or in a classroom. By filling the room with noise, the speaker is engaging in an act of sonic vandalism. It does not matter what he is saying, others have reason to silence him.

In the case of the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" poster, I may be able to make the case that Frederick’s intention was to be disruptive. His act was not unlike that of a man standing and shouting in a theater or breaking out in song in the middle of a class lecture.

Such a charge would not stick if others were allowed to have banners as well. This would make it obvious that the objection to Frederick’s sign was based on content, rather than on the basis of inhibiting disruptive behavior.

Besides, as a matter of fact, Frederick was not suspended for causing a disturbance at a school event. He was suspended for “promoting drug use.” This makes it obvious that he was punished because of the content of his speech – that a different statement would have gone unpunished.

Offense

I deny that offense is a legitimate reason to censor speech. If a person is going to live in a free society, then he should be prepared to be offended from time to time. That is the cost of freedom. The only way to remove offense is to destroy freedom. And even that is offensive.

This is another important lesson that high school students should be learning. I would suggest that our society would be much better, all things considered, if more of our citizens had learned that offensive speech does not justify a violent response – that the “words for words” principle applies in this case.

For example, let us assume that a student were to wear a T-shirt that contains the first President Bush’s statement, “I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” Naturally, I would consider this to be ‘offensive’. However, more important than my wish not to be offended is the principle of refusing to respond to words alone with violence or government censorship. A more legitimate, and more educational response would be to explain why this is a bigoted and hate-inspired sentiment that is a throw-back to the 1600s.

Some people are making the claim that the right to freedom of religion and the right to freedom of speech implies a prohibition on ever telling somebody, “You’re wrong; and your mistakes are going to get innocent people maimed and killed.” If this becomes our policy, then we are saying that those innocent people being maimed and killed have less of a right to avoid death and injury than certain religious groups have in avoiding offense.

The position is inherently contradictory. If there is a right to free speech, then there is a right to say, “Those people are wrong and their mistakes are going to cost innocent people their lives, their health, and their quality of life.” If this type of statement is banned, then free speech no longer exists.

The Teacher

I imagine myself a teacher. I have given my students an assignment to give a speech on any topic of interest to him or her. What limits are there (if any)on what a student may say?

The limits I spoke of above seem to cover the options. No student may threaten another student or be disruptive in his speech act. However, a student may defend whatever position he pleases, even if some find his position offensive. I would invite any student who wanted to respond to the speech with words to do so. I would even allow them to argue the position that, “Any who would say such a thing is a contemptible human being lacking even a trace of moral decency,” or words to that effect. I would remind the students that they are free to use this behavior to help them to determine who to befriend, who to eat lunch with, who to trade with, and the like.

However, I would make it clear that offensive speech must not be met with violence.

Setting an Example

One of the slogans that people will speak about in a case like this is that speech cannot disrupt the school’s mission or function. This is a principle that determines when an act of speech is, itself, an act of violence. However, one of those missions should clearly be to teach the students the scope and limits of a right to freedom of speech – that violence is not a legitimate response to the content of somebody’s speech. This is a mission that a school can best accomplish by not using violence against the content of somebody’s speech. Otherwise, they are setting a very poor example.

That is how free people live, and maintain their freedom, while also maintaining peace.

Bigotry and the Values Voter

In a recent blog, “President Wanted: Christians Only,” vjack at Atheist Revolution spoke about the bigotry involved in refusing to vote for an atheist candidate – something that approximately half of Americans said they would do.

Refuse, that is.

In that posting, vjack used a cliché in the political sphere, that they “simply want someone in office who shares their values.” This, he said, does not excuse their bigotry. However, he did not explain why it does not excuse their bigotry.

This statement has become such a political cliché that I often pass over it without thinking about it. This time, I thought about it.

The Values Voter

My first thought was, “Of course they want somebody in office who shares their values. Doesn’t everybody?”

That is to say, it is not bigotry to vote for a candidate that shares one’s values. Nor is it bigotry to refuse to vote for a candidate whose values conflict with one’s own. In this sense, every voter is a values voter.

Even the KKK member who only votes for those who would segregate the races is a values voter. He certainly wants somebody in office who shares his values. The Nazi who would support the modern contemporary of Hitler is a values voter is also searching for somebody to put into office to share his values.

This is part of what got Bush in trouble in the Middle East. Radical Muslims are values-voters as well. Only, the values that some of them vote for includes the destruction of Israel, execution of apostates, support for suicide bombings, and eradication of the infidels. They refuse to vote for anybody else.

It is not bigotry to vote for somebody who shares one’s values and against those whose values contradict one’s own values. Bigotry is not to be found in the fact that a person votes his values. It is to be found in the values that a person votes on.

Vjack did not say otherwise. I am not criticizing anything he wrote. In fact, this makes explicit what is implicit in vjack’s post.

The problem with the Christian right is not that they are values voters. It is that their values are the bigotries and prejudices of primitive tribesmen that causes its follows to engage in a number of actions harmful to others – in some cases imposing death and suffering on hundreds of millions of people. There is nothing wrong with being a values voter – we all are. The problem comes from the fact that some people’s values are quite poor.

Where is bigotry? If we are going to call a particular attitude towards a group of voters ‘bigoted’, what is it that we need to establish?

Bigotry involves treating the members of a group unjustly by attributing to its members some derogatory or denigrating property that, in fact, is not true of all of those members. An example of bigotry involves inferring a lower intelligence based on gender or on skin or hair color. (Yes, blonde jokes are a form of bigotry, and I do not condone them.)

So, in order to determine if refusing to vote for an atheist counts as bigotry, we need to know why a person is refusing to vote for an atheist.

Holding All Else Constant

Typically, the poll question asks something like, “Assuming a candidate is qualified in all other respects, would you be willing to vote for the candidate if the candidate were an atheist.”

This question asks the listener to assume that he has no other reason not to vote for a candidate. In other words, the candidate shares his values. The only reason for voting against the candidate is the fact that the candidate is an atheist. Is that enough of a reason to vote against him?

Half of the population says, “Yes.”

If we take this situation as described, then having a belief that no God exists (the definition of atheism as the term is actually used among native English speakers) is the sole criteria for judging an individual to be inferior to his neighbor. It says that if we take two people, make them identical twins in appearance and (most important) in disposition, and change only the fact that one believes that God exists and the other does not, even where both treat their neighbors with identical kindness, this belief alone is enough to judge the one person inferior to his twin.

This is bigotry. There is no basis for the negative evaluation. It is grounded on nothing but blind, unreasoned, unfounded, hatred.

Value Differences

Now, this assumes that the person taking the poll understands the question as I have described it. Chances are, he will not. He will associate ‘atheism’ with a number of other traits. Chances are, he will take the assumption – that an atheist and a theist can be otherwise equally qualified – to be inherently impossible. He will reject the assumption and answer accordingly – that he will not vote for the atheist.

However, are the traits that he is attributing to the atheist fair and accurate. Is it true that atheists have those qualities. More importantly, is it true that all atheists have those qualities – that there cannot be one in which those qualities are absent and is worth voting for?

With respect to religion, it might be possible to claim that one will not vote for a member of a particular religion on the grounds that the religion advances objectionable values. If a religion says, "Kill all unbelievers," defining ‘unbeliever’ as anybody who disagrees with the interpretation of holy text provided by the religious leader, then this alone would be reason enough not to vote for a member of that religion.

However, atheism is value-neutral. Anybody who asserts that atheists must necessarily hold certain values, and that those values make the person unqualified to be President, is making an unjust attribution. Atheism has as much to say about value as heleocentrism does. It is a belief about what exists, a belief that is not inherently in conflict with any value claim.

An atheist can even believe that serving God is the ultimate value. Such an atheist will be filled with regret over the fact that this value can never be realized. He will be like the person who thinks that the ultimate value is in having a raising her own biological child, who discovers that she is sterile and will never be able to realize this value. However, this belief that a particular value will not be realized is different from holding that the state would not have value.

By way of comparison, theists and atheists may disagree on where trees come from. Yet, they need not (probably would not) disagree on the height, weight, shape, or color of a tree. Similarly, an atheist and a theist can disagree on where values come from without disagreeing on what has value.

More importantly, an atheist’s values can more closely match the values of any theist than an opposing religion whose values are fixed by their interpretation of scripture. In other words, it should be easier to imagine an atheist agreeing with the voter on matters of value than to imagine a follower of a different religion sharing the voter’s values. If the voter cannot see this – if the voter falsely (unfairly, unjustly, immorally) attributes to the atheist values that are far alien from her own, this is bigotry.

Statistical Reasons

The reason not to vote for an atheist might be based on a false belief in what atheists value. People might hold the belief that atheists value sautéing kittens on an open grill and skinning toddlers alive in a bath of salt water. Of course, these attitudes are clearly bigoted.

Even if, statistically, an atheist neighbor was more of a threat than a theist neighbor, it is the essence of bigotry to blame a person for wrongs committed by others. This would not be an excuse against holding that the best atheists are as fit for public service as the best theists. This, too, would be bigotry – like refusing to vote for a black candidate because, statistically, the per-capita crime rate for blacks is higher than it is for whites.

There is no way to account for this attitude towards atheists other than as an unfair and unjust attribution of negative value to a person merely because he does not believe in God. That is to say, there is nothing to be found in these poll results but unvarnished bigotry.

Where Bigotry Comes From

I hold that the biggest cause of anti-atheist sentiment rests in the policy of having children pledge every day to regard all who are not 'under God' or who do not trust in God that they are not true Americans. This indoctrination into a culture of hate helps most children to become bastions of hate who cannot accept an atheist as American.

I continue to hold that there can be no real progress in the status of atheists until good people demand that the government cease teaching the lesson 'atheists are evil'

Indeed, the Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto themselves are bigoted. They both make the unfair and immoral attribution to all who are not under God or trust in God as being anti-American. A national motto of 'one white nation', based on the fact that those who signed the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were all white and obviously wanted this to be a white nation, would be no less immoral.

Of course, this is hate's vicious cycle. The Pledge and the motto were modified in the 1950s as an act of hatred - an act motivated by a desire to teach all citizens, but particularly children, to hate those not under God or who do not trust in God. Ultimately, they wanted to promote hated of Marxists, but used the opportunity to teach a more general hate.

And, you know what?

It works.

Foundational Moral Principles

The impetus for this pulse is a comment to my post two days ago, “Patricia Churchland: The Biology of Morality” .

That comment hinted to me that the author was assuming that there must be some type of fundamental moral principle, and that my job was to account for them.

However, it is my position that there is no such thing as a ‘fundamental moral principle’, and nothing to account for.

Background

In Churchland’s presentation, she suggested that oxytocin levels, for example, may be used to determine if an individual should or should not be promiscuous.

I answered that if we accept Churchland’s initial assumptions, and we can affect oxytocin levels through social actions such as praise and condemnation, it is reasonable to ask whether we have reason to do so, and whether they are stronger than any reasons we have not to do so. If, for example, praise will increase oxytocin levels, and oxytocin levels make others kinder and more considerate of others, then we have reason to use praise. I further claimed that moral questions operate on this level, not at the level where Churchland placed them.

Michael, in his comment, suggested that we can raise the same question about my “kinder and more considerate of others” are moral reasons facing the same problem as Churchland’s – that they, too, are in need of justification.

I am not certain if this is what Michael had in mind. However, the context of his comment suggested that we have two options. Either we have an infinite regress of moral reasons – that is, we justify one moral principle in terms of a more basic moral principle, which we justify in terms of a more basic moral principle, and so on to infinity. Or, we must reach an end point – a basic, fundamental moral principle that needs no further justification.

If we generalize this objection we find its use all over the place. With respect to the history of the universe, we find those who argue that the universe must either be infinite, or it must have a ‘first cause’. In the area of knowledge itself, people assert that justification or ‘proof’ must either be infinite, or go back to a set of foundational premises that, themselves, must be taken on faith and can never be justified.

Coherence of Beliefs and Harmony of Desires

In some cases, philosophers have held that this dilemma between an infinite regress and self-justifying foundational propositions is a false dilemma. There are other options.

Philosophers interested in theories of knowledge have another option for justifying beliefs – coherentism. To picture this theory at work, think of a web. A belief sits at each node in the web, and is connected to other beliefs through strands of logic. Each belief is justified by its relationship to other beliefs, themselves justified in terms of connection to other beliefs, which (eventually) which are all tied together. There are no foundational beliefs – no self-justified propositions that serve as a “foundation” for all others. Everything is justified by the quality of its connections to everything else. Some beliefs are very well connected. Others are connected only by thin threads.

The desire-utilitarian view of value is the same. All value exists in the form of relationships between states of affairs and desires. Desires themselves are evaluated by their relationship to other desires, which in turn are also evaluated by their connection to other desires, and so on.

In the case of beliefs, the relationship for the web with the most and strongest connections is “coherence”. Under coherence theory, if one person believed that P, and another believed that not-P, this would be taken as a sign of incoherence. One of the two would have to be mistaken.

Desires have a place for a similar type of ‘coherence’, but it also has important differences. I can illustrate these differences with an example. When it comes to eating chicken, I have a preference for dark meat. My wife likes white meat. As a result, we never get into a disagreement about who gets which pieces of chicken. This situation allows both of our desires to be more easily fulfilled – precisely because we like different things. I call these types of relationship ‘harmony,’ to distinguish it from ‘coherence’.

With respect to beliefs, we are looking for the greatest coherence. With respect to desires, we are looking for the greatest harmony.

If we accept this model of value, we do not need to postulate anything more bizarre or strange than desires, states of affairs, and the relationships between them (whether a desire is fulfilled or thwarted in any given state of affairs). The idea of evaluating desires simply applies this models to “states of affairs” in which individuals have particular desires. Just as we can evaluate everything else (knives, movies, friends, jobs, houses, meals) by their ability to fulfill desires, we can evaluate desires by their ability to fulfill (other) desires.

There is no dark mystery here, no special powers that transcend the real world but interact with it giving things value, no ‘foundational ought’ that seem to emerge from nowhere and cannot be bound to anything in the world of ‘is’.

Nor do I need to postulate, explain, or account for some sort of foundational ‘oughts’.

Accounting for Foundational Oughts

If you think about it, a great deal of effort is spent in debate over the nature of these foundational ‘oughts’. We have people who are called ‘realists’ and ‘objectivists’ who assert that these foundational ‘oughts’ really are real-world entities. They exist. They must exist. Yet, these ‘realists’ cannot even start to answer the question of what they are, what they are made of, how they work, or how we can know about them. If they exist, they are extremely strange entities. They are not strange in the way that black holes are strange. They are strange in the way that ghosts are strange – a type of strangeness that suggests they do not exist.

On the other hand we have the ‘subjectivists’ who state that the brain can simply make up these foundational oughts. They have no independent justification, and can be whatever the agent or the assessor wants them to be. Strangely, these foundational ‘oughts’ are a lot like hallucinations. They appear only to the person who claims to be able to see them. They guide his actions. The agent takes them to be real even though they have no existence outside of his ability to perceive them. Yet, even though they have all of the qualities of subjective moral hallucinations, people can draw upon them to justify killing, imprisoning, or otherwise harming those that these hallucinations point to and call ‘guilty’.

On the ‘harmony’ model that I am defending here, I have no need to trace a line of moral reasoning back to some set of self-justifying moral ‘oughts’. In fact, I assert that they do not exist. The reason that the ‘realist/objectivist’ and the ‘subjectivist’ above have so much trouble coming up with a theory of these foundational moral ‘oughts’ that make sense is because they are both starting from a false assumption – that there must be foundational moral ‘oughts’ and we must have a theory that makes sense of them.

The most important conclusion to draw from this is that when somebody else comes to me and asks, “How do you account for foundational ‘oughts’?” I answer that their question is misplaced. My situation with respect to foundational ‘ought’ is much like the situation that 19th century astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace when Nepoleon asked him where God fit into his theory of celestial mechanics. Laplace’s answer, “Sir, I have no need for that hypothesis,” is the same answer I give to any question of where I put foundational ‘oughts’.

Reasons and the Web of Harmonious Desires

For the sake of completeness, I want to add one more item to this account – reasons for action.

I have stated that desires are the only end-reasons for action (reasons for action that identify ends or goals) that exist. If an agent has a desire that P, and P is true in state of affairs S, then agent has an end-reason for action for bringing about or maintaining S.

In an agent’s quest to establish or maintain a state of affairs S in which P is true (given that agent has a desire that P), the agent has end-reason to ask what he can do to influence the desires of others. This desire that P that is his y end-reason for action gives him an end-reason to perform those acts that will promote desires in others that will help establish or maintain S. This end desire also gives the agent an end-reason to perform those acts that will make less common in others those desires that will tend to prevent or destroy S.

In this web of all desires, the more a desire comes into conflict (destroys harmony with) other desires, the more and the stronger the reasons that exist to act so as to inhibit that desire. At the same time, the more a desire tends to fulfill other desires, the more and the stronger the end-reasons are for promoting that desire.

There is no mystery as to why a person with a desire that P has an end-reason to influence the desires of others in this way. It is a part of the desire that P, where desires are the only reasons for action that exist, that it gives him an end-reason to seek harmonious desires in others.

Susan Neiman: Religion and Science

In this series on the Beyond Belief 2006 conference, I am now up to Session 6, where the first speaker was Susan Neiman.

Neiman, a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, was asked to speak about the possibility of morality without God. In doing so, she decided to take on the ‘intolerance’ of Richard Dawkins, telling Dawkins directly, “I have not said anything to offend you yet, but I am about to.”

She began her presentation by comparing and contrasting two stories of concerning Abraham; the story of Sodom and Gomorrah where Abraham attempting to convince God to spare the cities. The second was the story of Abraham bundling up his infant child and heading off to sacrifice that child to God.

In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Neiman focuses on the report that Abraham negotiated with God to save the city. At first God said that he would destroy the city. However, Abraham was concerned about the innocent people of Sodom, getting God to agree that it would be wrong to destroy the city if there were 50 good people in the town. Ultimately, through negotiation, Abraham gets God to agree not to destroy the city if Abraham can find 10 good people. Ultimately, however, Abraham fails and God destroys the city.

However, when God commands Abraham to take his son Isaac up into the mountains to be sacrificed, Abraham obeys without question, refusing to question God's actions. According to Immanual Kant, Abraham should have thought that whoever would have asked him to do such a thing was not God.

I have no qualms about being partisan. The Abraham who risks God’s wrath to argue for the lives of unknown innocents is the kind of man who would face down an unjust tyrant anywhere, is deeply human in the best of all senses, and neither his fear nor his frailty stands in the way of his own reason. He is reverent but not deferential for his faith is based on his moral background and not the other way around. He is, in short, what I would like to call ‘enlightenment hero’. As Kierkegaard taught us, the Abraham that takes his son to Mount Mariah left ethics and enlightenment behind.

She reports that her purpose for bringing up this story is to show that the bible is equivocal. The Bible contains stories of complete and unquestioned obedience to God. At the same time, the Bible (or, Neiman claims, all three Abrahamic faiths) contain a rationalist tradition – a tradition of biblical leaders using reason to argue against God and, sometimes, winning.

[F]ar from viewing our capacity to reason as threatening our capacity to obey God, this tradition sees thinking as its very fulfillment . . . . If reason is God’s gift, he meant for us to use it even against Him if He turns out to be wrong or hasty. On this tradition, our ability to make sense of the world whether with Science or through right moral actions is just further proof of God’s goodness.

Neiman’s point in this is that it is a mistake to divide the world along religious and secular lines. On the question of whether religion and science is compatible, Neiman wishes to give the answer, “Sometimes, it depends on the religion.”

Here, she also uses Socrates of an example of a compatibility of religion with reason. Socrates, she claims, was not put on trial for atheism, but was put on trial for holding that we need reason to determine what is good, which in turn determines what the gods love. Socrates actually did believe that the gods loved them because they are good (in themselves).

Neiman also quickly brings up a non-religious philosophy that she suggests is resoundingly anti-science; post-modernism. This is a theory that holds that there is no truth, just different interpretations of reality, with the scientific model being just another tradition no more or less valid than any other.

With this, Neiman has shown that being religious is not a sufficient condition for being anti-science (some religious traditions are pro-science and view our capacity for scientific inquiry as ‘God’s gift’). Religion is also not a necessary condition for being anti-science (there are non-religious traditions that are also anti-science).

After establishing that it is a mistake to conflate anti-science with religion, Neiman goes back to the question of whether it is possible to have morality without God. To this question, she says that the answer is a resounding yes even within some religious traditions.

There are deep sources for rejecting the question, ‘Do we need religion to maintain ethics,’ because the answer is a resounding, ‘No.’ The Abraham of Sodom and Gomorrah certainly didn’t. It was he who gave God lessons in ethics at extreme peril.

I want to stress here that Neiman was dividing religion itself into two camps. She was not denying the fact that some religious traditions would hold that Abraham could give God lessons in ethics is absurd. This would deny that God is all-knowing and deny that God is morally perfect. She has nothing favorable to say about those who act more like the Abraham who unquestioningly sets out to kill his own child over the Abraham of Sodom and Gomorrah. She only goes so far as to point out that there are religious traditions that do hold that humans can give God moral lessons.

She uses this in a criticism of unnamed critics of religion.

Some of the objections to religious thinking that I have heard during this conference really does precede on the assumption that there haven’t been religious thinkers and, honestly, there have been.

This all makes sense as far as it goes, but how far does it go?

There are others who have accused critics of theism of arguing against a “crude theism”, leaving the more complex theories untouched. Thomas Nagel raised this objection to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in a review published in the New Republic. In effect, these philosophers accuse Dawkins (and, I assume, Sam Harris) of creating a straw God.

On this issue, I would like to distinguish three different types of arguments, and show an important difference between two of them and the “straw man” that Dawkins and Harris are accused of.

The straw man argument takes the following form.

Person 1 asserts position P. Person 2 answers by ‘reinterpreting’ position P as position Q. He then defeats position Q, and claims that he has defeated position P. In this form of argument, position Q stands in as the “straw man” in place of position P. Q’s easy defeat generates an illusion that P has been defeated.

This is, indeed, a fallacy, and a form of argument that a person of sound reason will avoid.

However, this interpretation of events assumes that there is nobody out there asserting Position Q.

If there are position Q defenders, then we can have another situation.

Person 1 asserts position Q. Person 2 then defeats position Q. Person 3 then comes along, asserts that there is a position P that is like position Q, accuses person 2 of failing to defeat position P. Person 1 then asserts that this criticism of person 2 means that his position Q has not been defeated after all.

In this type of case, person 2 has been unfairly maligned. He has defeated the position he intended to defeat. If we take position Q as the fundamentalist, anti-science, obey God at all times position, Dawkins and Harris have had some harsh words to say against that position that stick. Neiman’s suggestion that there is a position P, a science-friendly religion where humans can use reason to question God even on matters of morality, does nothing to defeat or even criticize the position that Dawkins and Harris has taken against their intended targets.

Furthermore, we have reason to believe that the ‘theology’ that Neiman describes is far too rare to be worth more than a massing mention. Dawkins and Harris are free to dismiss them in a footnote. “Footnote: My criticisms here do not apply to position P, which also exists, but is so rare that it is of little practical importance.”

In fact, neither Dawkins nor Harris is entirely free to take this route. Both of their writings contain elements that suggest an alternative track. They can be interpreted as saying,

“Against position P; this is similar to position Q. As I have shown, position Q is not only wrong, it is dangerous. Furthermore, those who hold position Q gain moral support from those who hold position P. They claim, ‘Because there are defenders of position P about, I am justified in holding position Q, even though P does not imply Q.’ We must destroy all straws that the defenders of position Q might grab on to. Therefore, we must reject position P.”

This argument does not work. There is only one legitimate reason for rejecting position P, and that is because position P itself is flawed. There is no sense (and a great deal of injustice) in asserting the argument:

• P does not imply Q, but some misguided people think that P implies Q.

• Not-Q.

• Therefore, not-P

This is bad reasoning.

Patricia Churchland: The Biology of Morality

Since I started this series on the presentations of Beyond Belief 2006, I have been aching to get to this section – the section on morality. In the section on morality, I have been aching to get to Patricia Churchland’s presentation.

This is because Churchland’s position represents a massive speeding train which is heading entirely down a wrong track. Like logical positivism in philosophy, behaviorism in psychology, and communism in economics, Churchland takes a road that is fundamentally flawed.

Churchland's Relationship between Morality and Biology

Churchland is the chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of California, San Diego. In her presentation, she attempts to describe a relationship between morality and biology.

She begins with this pair of claims:

Evolution sets the brain’s style of drives and emotions. Experience in a culture shapes the style into specific habits and preferences using the reward system.

This I happen to agree with. Our aversion to pain, desire for sex, preference for certain types of food, our drive to seek out a comfortable environment avoiding excessive cold or heat, are all under evolutionary influences. We evolved as beings that will tend to have desires that have, in the past, perpetuated the species.

(Note: It is tempting to say that we desire things that will perpetuate the species. However, this is a mistake. There is no law of nature that says that the desires that have perpetuated the species in the past will continue to do so as the environment changes. Those desires that will perpetuate the species will survive into the future – that much is axiomatic. However, there is no guarantee that all or even most of us have those desires.)

From there, she went on to tell the story of two species of voles (fuzzy little mole-like mammals). From studies of the voles she concludes, “In male prairie voles, you can predict the degree of monogamy . . . as a function of the density of vasopressin receptors in certain very specific parts of the brain.” With females, behavior is related to oxytocin levels.

I found this to be just an astonishing result. Because here is something that many people have thought is really a cultural concept, that is whether you should be and monogamous whether you should be promiscuous, and it turns out that it’s importantly related to your specific biochemistry.

Whoa! Stop!

Should?

'Is' and 'Should'

The research that Churchland has described says nothing about 'should'. What this research shows is that whether a vole is monogamous or promiscuous is importantly related to specific biochemistry. They have not discovered anything about should.

Here’s the rub. Unless you believe in some type of magical power, all behavior is going to be linked in some way to brain chemistry or brain structure. What else is there that controls behavior?

One of these days, we may well discover a specific brain structure associated with rape, murder, theft, whatever. When we do so, this brain structure will indeed be importantly related to whether a person does or does not commit rape. Yet, it will not at all be related to whether the person should or should not commit rape.

Churchland provides her own counter-example. In the discussion that followed her session, she spoke about a tendency among chimpanzee males, when all is comfortable within the group, to wander to the edge of their territory, find a lone chimpanzee from a different tribe, and to kill it in a horribly brutal way. She wants to know the brain chemistry of this type of behavior so that it can be stopped. Yet, if we accept her analysis above, then this brain chemistry determines if the chimpanzees should go seek out a chimpanzee from a neighboring tribe and kill it.

Churchland's Answer to 'Is'/'Should'

Churchland, of course, is aware of the claim that one cannot derive an 'ought' (or 'should') from an 'is'.

She acknowledges that the inference from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ is formally invalid. However, she says, there are a number of ways in which people draw inferences other than through formal logic. She mentions how we take in a set of observations and draw an “inference to the best explanation.” She uses as an example a mother knowing that her daughter has been playing outside in the brush on a warm spring day coming home with a rash on her arms. She infers “my daughter has been in poison ivy,” without this being a formal deduction from true premises.

She claims that we do the same thing with morality. You are hiking. You see a bear and you retreat back up the trail from which you came. There, you see other hikers. It is not a deductive inference from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ but an informal inductive argument that leads you to the conclusion that you ‘ought’ to tell the hikers that there is a bear up ahead.

While in the process of illustrating how this type of inference works, Churchland in fact provides the proof against her original claims. She puts up a slide of an optical illusion where two squares that are in fact the same color (or shade) appear to be different – because of their context. The mind looks at the image and draws an inference of a difference where, in fact, no difference exists. Now, she should ask, "What is to keep the mind from looking at a situation, drawing an inference of an ‘ought’, where in fact no ‘ought’ exists?"

Worse, she does not address the possibility that the mind might infer an ‘ought’ where there is, in fact, an ‘ought not’ or vica versa.

In the case of the child with the poison ivy and the two squares on the optical illusion, we look at the evidence and draw a hypothesis. We know what it means to say that the daughter has been in poison ivy or that the two squares are of different color, from this we make further inferences, we can then test those inferences to verify or falsify our earlier hypothesis.

But when we infer that one should be monogamous, or should tell the hikers about the bear, or should go to the edge of our territory and brutally kill any lone individual from the next tribe that we might find there, how do we test that hypothesis? How do we determine whether our ‘inference to the best explanation’ is an inference to the right explanation as opposed to an inference into error?

Another problem with Churchland’s view is that it makes morality extremely easy. How do I determine whether I should be monogamous? Churchland seems to suggest that I go to my doctor and have my oxytocin and oxytocin receptors checked. One result would tell me that I should be monogamous, another result that I should be promiscuous. This, as I said, is an extremely convenient morality because the first result also says that I do not wish to have an affair and the second result will suggest that I do wish to have an affair. So, conveniently, morality will tell me that I should do exactly what I wish to do.

As I said, Churchland is not consistent on this. Though she seems to speak about deriving the should of monogamy or promiscuity directly from brain science, she does not speak about deriving the should of ripping apart a lone individual from another tribe in this way.

An Alternative to Churchland

Now, I am going to offer a solution to some of these problems. To do that, let me introduce some hypotheticals. Please note, I am analyzing concepts here, not the actual moral value of monogamy and promiscuity. I am going to suggest how this can be determined. It will be different than Churchland’s suggestion, but more consistent with her overall remarks.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that a disposition towards monogamy is related to oxytocin levels. This is a simplifying assumption. However, as I said, I am analyzing concepts here.

Let us further assume that evolution sets a base level (or range) of oxytocin levels, thus setting the base disposition towards monogamy.

So far, monogamy has the same moral status as height and weight. We have not said anything that suggests whether an individual should be monogamous.

However, let us further assume that social forces can affect oxytocin levels. Specifically, let us assume that social praise of monogamous individuals tend to increase oxytocin levels in individuals who witness that praise. Churchland herself discussed research that shows that oxytocin levels can be influenced by a simple massage. So, perhaps the prospect of an ego massage for monogamous individuals can cause higher oxytocin levels, which increases the strength of the disposition towards monogamy. On the other hand, condemnation of monogamous individuals will decrease oxytocin levels and, thereby, promote adultery and promiscuity.

Now, we have a question to ask: Should we be using praise to increase or decrease oxytocin levels? In other words, do we have reason to promote higher oxytocin levels in individuals (through praise of monogamy), or to decrease it (through condemnation of monogamy) – or does it really matter?

Let us further assume that higher oxytocin levels make individuals kinder and more considerate of others. Certainly, we have reason to make others in our community kinder and more considerate of others. This would make them kinder and more considerate of us. It will also make them kinder and more considerate of those we care about – our children, other family members, friends.

We also must consider the fact that others have reason to increase our oxytocin levels. To the degree that they do so, we have even more and stronger reasons to make people kinder and more considerate of our children, other family members, and friends. Because, now, we care more about their well-being.

Now, I have introduced a ‘should’ into the equation. What is the nature of this ‘should’? Is it subject to the same problems as Churchland’s ‘should’?

This ‘should’ simply means ‘has more reason to than reason not to’. The ‘should’ of increasing oxytocin levels in others is merely asking whether I ‘have more reason to than reason not to’ increase oxytocin levels in others. This is not a mysterious form of ‘should’ that cannot be derived from ‘is’. This is an ordinary form of ‘should’ that translates into ‘is the case that I have more reason to than reason not to’.

Applications

When we apply this to the examples we discussed so far, we get the following results:

Is it the case that we generally have reason to promote the desire to kill lone members of a neighboring tribe, or to inhibit such a desire? Let us say that we have the option of talking to members of the other tribe and, through dialogue, create an inhibition in them from attacking our lone members. At the same time, they create in us an inhibition to attack their lone members. Under these conditions, our members will have more liberty to travel alone in safety – and so would theirs. The members of our two tribes have a great many reasons to inhibit this desire to attack lone members of other tribes.

These ‘reasons to inhibit a desire’ are the reasons that Churchland quite naturally (but unconsciously) called upon when she said that she wanted to know the biochemistry of this behavior so that we can put an end to it.

On the issue of monogamy versus promiscuity, Churchland said that oxytocin levels determined whether one should be monogamous – a claim she does not make about killing lone individuals from a neighboring tribe.

Assessing Churchland's Claims

I suspect that Churchland began with the assumption that monogamy or promiscuity were permissible – or, at least, their morality were ambiguous. If she had truly approached the question with the idea that promiscuity were wrong, the way rape and killing a lone individual from another tribe is wrong, she would have seen this discovery as a way to eradicate a disposition towards acts – the way she would view a similar discovery about the biochemistry of rape or killing a lone individual from a neighboring tribe.

In other words, she assumed, unconsciously that there are no reasons to act so as to promote or inhibit desires relating to marital fidelity. As such, individuals were permitted to act in whatever way their natural oxytocin levels dictated. This absence of reasons for promoting or inhibiting desires explains and predicts why the monogamy case was handled differently from the killing case.

Even though Churchland explicitly says that she is looking to brain states to determine if something is right or wrong, her judgments suggest that she is, in fact, looking to something else outside of the brain state to judge the brain state good or bad. I would further argue that this ‘something else’ is whether the brain state itself tends to fulfill or thwart other desires.

Please note, I have not refuted or even doubted any of the brain science. I am not saying the brain science is wrong. Nor am I bringing in any bizarre properties – no supernatural (or non-natural) ‘oughts’ to clutter our ontology. My claim is not that biology fails to tell us anything useful about morality. My claim is that biology plays a different role than Churchland (sometimes – though not consistently) says that it plays.

Break

Greetings, readers

I am taking the evening off to spend it with my wife. I haven't had a day off since Thanksgiving, and I think that one is due.

I invite you to look around a bit, browse, and . . . if you find something that you like . . . take it with you. I have a fair collection of anti-Gonzales articles on the shelves that might be of current interest. Of these, I favor. "The Capture and Internment of Former President Bush."

However, I now have nearly 550 postings sitting on the shelves on a number of topics. I am certain that you would find something that interests you.

Or, you can check out my book, listed over there on the right.

I wish for you a pleasant day, and I will see you here again tomorrow.

Alonzo Fyfe

Bigotry: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Today’s post was adapted from an article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune: “Don't drop `don't ask, don't tell,' Pace says” By Aamer Madhani, Tribune national correspondent, March 13, 2007.

I’ve rewritten the article a little bit. The first few paragraphs of what I have written below are almost word for word out of the original article.

Almost word for word.

I made a few minor changes.

The Article

Gen. Alonzo Fyfe, fictional chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that he supports the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" ban on bigots serving in the military because bigoted acts "are immoral," akin to a member of the armed forces accusing another of a crime for reasons of hate or vindictiveness.

Responding to a question about a policy that is coming under renewed scrutiny amid fears of future U.S. troop shortages, Fyfe said the Pentagon should not "condone" immoral behavior by allowing bigoted soldiers to serve openly. He said his views were based on his personal "upbringing," in which he was taught that certain types of conduct are immoral.

"I believe bigoted acts are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts," Fyfe said in a wide-ranging discussion with Tribune editors and reporters in Chicago. "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

"As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of bigoted behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that a soldier claimed that so-and-so committed a crime when the accuser simply hated the accused and made things up about him. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior," Fyfe said.

The "don't ask, don't tell" policy for bigots caused an uproar in the military when signed into law. At the time, supporters of the policy inside and outside the military argued that it was essential for the cohesion of combat units, not a question of morality.

Under the policy, bigots may serve only if they keep their orientation private and do not engage in bigoted acts. Their commanders may not ask about their orientation.

However, General Fyfe expressed reservations about immediate dismissing any soldier on the first offense. "I support discipline, but not immediate dismissal, for a first offense.

"We have to remember who are enemy is, here. Whenever we dismiss a soldier willing to serve his country, we make ourselves weaker and the enemy stronger. This does not mean looking the other way when soldiers engage in immoral acts. Theft and carelessness are also crimes, but we discipline those we find guilty and try to make them better soldiers."

Some argue that bigots cannot be reformed and that Fyfe’s proposal is simply a waste of time. Fyfe answered that the military has long been a useful tool in fighting bigotry. “The Tuskegee Airmen, African Americans and Japanese Americans proved their value during World War II. This was a major cause of the civil rights movement that followed.”

When asked about the objection that the military is too important to use in some sort of social experiment, Fyfe answered, “The military is constantly looking for ways to do its job better. We test everything from weapons systems to tactics to unit composition to training methods. If we did not test new options we would still be using clubs and rocks."

Phreadd Pseudoscholar has argued that these bigots are simply following their religion, and that the military policy against bigots amounts to religious intolerance. "The Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. The military is violating that right."

Fyfe answered that the freedom of religion has limits. "Our enemies in this war on terror are also arguing for a right to the free exercise of religion. Unfortunately, their religion tells them to kill and maim others.

"The military certainly respects the religious practices of its members, up to the point where those practices require them to violate the rights of others. Our policy of "Don't ask, don't tell," is consistent with those principles. People can believe whatever they want, but they can't use religion as a reason to harm others."

We asked Gen. Fyfe about military members who claim that they get their morality from their religion, and that they do not see their attitudes as immoral.

Fyfe said, "Again, you have people who claim to get their morality from their religion, who think that blowing up infidels is not immoral. You have a choice. You can believe that there is a morality that transcends religious differences that tells people of all religions how to live together in peace, you can have them live together as master and subject, or you can have sectarian war.

“The military operates on the principle that there is a morality that transcends scripture that allows different sects to live and work together,” Fyfe said.

Fox News and the Nevada Democratic Debate

The Democratic Party in Nevada recently broke off plans to work with Fox News to host a Democratic presidential debate.

The proximate cause of this is a 'joke' from Fox News CEO that confused the names of Osama bin Laden and Democratic contender Senator Barack Obama. However, there is a much better reason against involvement in anything that Fox News is involved in. Its executives and major personalities display an appalling lack of intellectual integrity.

A Highway Example

Walk up to a busy highway. Close your eyes and, ignoring (or reinterpreting) all evidence to the contrary, convince yourself that there are no hazards in crossing the street. Then, start across the street. Continue to ignore anything you may hear or see.

Anybody foolish enough to follow these instructions would discover that reality will impose itself rather violently on those who choose to ignore it. Reality has no capacity for compassion or forgiveness. It does not care who lives, who dies, or the quality of that life. It will kill, maim, or otherwise harm anybody who will not take it seriously.

If enough people follow these instructions, pure chance will eventually allow somebody to get across the street. Let us then imagine a group of people who hear about this story. They grab every microphone they have available to announce to the world that somebody crossed the street. They attribute her success to something like a special relationship with God (rather than pure dumb luck) or invent some other story. The story does not matter. The only thing that matters is to get more people to try to walk blindly across the street.

If you are the type of person who can enjoy this type of work – convincing people to blindly cross the street by promoting those who were successful – then you might be the type of person that Fox News is looking for as either an executive or a broadcast personality.

Fox News and Conservatism

I want to make a point right away that my complaints have nothing to do with Fox News being conservative. It is quite possible to have an intellectually responsible conservative publication. Conservatives make a number of valid points – some of which I agree with.

For example, legislators are human. Like all humans, they act so as to fulfill the more and stronger of their desires, given their beliefs. This principle governs every intentional action, including their vote. The person who wins an election – whether for the Democrats or the Republicans – is not always somebody who desires only to serve the public good. Chances are, he desires such things as power, sex, money, to make his friends happy, and to make his opponents miserable. Resources handed over to a legislator for his control will not be used for the public good. It will be sold to the highest bidder. It will be exchanged with those who can best fulfill the more and the stronger of the legislator’s desires, whatever those desires happen to be.

Accordingly, it is absolutely foolish to think that people interested in buying influence in government are only going to try to manipulate Republican politics. People who want money and power in an era when Democrats have money and power to give are not going to ignore the possibility of manipulating liberal politicians and liberal ideas to their benefit.

So, there is a place to be had for an intellectually responsible conservative voice.

Fox news is not that voice.

Examples

Fox News is the paradigm for intellectual recklessness and deceit in the pursuit of profits. Fox News is the nesting ground for people whose moral character is very much like that of individual who convinces people to blindly cross a busy street if somebody will pay him to do so.

Some evidence?

A 2003 poll from the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy showed that Fox News viewers were the least well informed about the facts relevant to the case for war. Effectively, Fox was a significant tool in getting the American public to blindly cross the street into war, and for suffering the consequences that followed.

An example where Bill O’Reilly selectively edited an interview featuring Senator Joe Biden in order to misrepresent Biden’s views, where O’Reilly then asserted the position (as his own) that he cut from Biden’s interview.

Without doing any real research, Fox News repeated an unfounded assertion that Presidential candidate Barack Obama attended a Muslim madras as a young child.

The major fault in these last two stories is not that mistakes were made. It rests in the fact that Fox News did nothing to punish the perpetrators of these misinformation campaigns – establishing an atmosphere in which there is no concern with fiction over fact.

Which brings me to the fourth item:

Fox News terminated two employees who refused to insert false information in a report, winning a lawsuit on appeal for wrongful termination by arguing that news organizations have a constitutional right to make false and misleading claims.

Again, nobody was fired. Again, the problem is not that these events happened so much as the Fox News organization showed complete indifference or even a preference for putting provably false and misleading information on the air.

Respectable news organizations discipline employees for knowingly or recklessly making false and misleading statements - communicating its standards to all other employees. Fox News saves its pink slips for those who refuse to make false or misleading statements. It, too, is communicatings its standards to its employees.

These are just some examples.

Ad Hominem Tu Quoque

I would like to remind the reader that, even though there are clearly liberal media outlets that are guilty of the same crime, this is no defense of Fox News.

This practice of saying, “You cannot condemn me because you are just as guilty,” (spoken, in this case, by Fox News against liberal propagandists) has a name. It is called ad hominem tu quoque meaning, “Oh yeah! Back at you, buster.” The claims made in this family of arguments are irrelevant.

Imagine a murderer claiming in his defense that the reason he cannot be condemned for murder is because he knows that there are other people in the world who also commit murder – or a rapist claiming that his rape should go unpunished because he is not the only person who commits rape. This is the type of claim that Fox News is making when it says that its intellectual recklessness and deceit are morally permissible because they are not the only ones who engage in intellectual recklessness and deceit.

Of course, since fallacious arguments are the stock in trade at Fox News, we should not be surprised to see them haul out this fallacy in their own defense.

Sleeping with the Enemy

One of the arguments being offered against the Nevada Democratic Party and the Democrats in general is that they have an obligation to go to the enemy and meet the enemy on their own grounds.

This is hardly the case. The victim of immoral behavior has no obligation to show up and permit himself to be further victimized. Certainly, the victim of a robbery or rape has no obligation to walk into the house of the person who victimized her to do battle. In the case of Fox News, we are talking about an organization that cares nothing about intellectual integrity or truth. The victims of their deceptions and distortions have no obligation to walk into the den of those who would victimize them to suffer yet another round of deceptions and distortions.

Unless and until Fox News decides to do something to promote intellectual integrity – such as firing people who are clearly caught clearly lying or engaging in intellectually reckless reporting (by refusing to check important facts before broadcasting them), nobody who cares about truth and intellectual honesty has any reason to deal with that organization. Indeed, all decent people have good reason to avoid such an organization. People who are so clearly willing to urge people to blindly cross a street, getting many of them maimed and killed, do not have a right to any form of social interaction with more morally concerned and sensitive individuals.

Evangelicals Against Global Warming

Today’s post is an example of the value of forming an “alliance of the best 51 percent” – including some who believe in God – against the worst 49 percent.

In yesterday’s post, “Priorities and the Bottom 49%,” I wrote that if a person insists on working only with those who agree with him on every issue, then he insists on working alone. Each person must be willing to work with those who disagree with him on some issues, to form an alliance of the best 51 percent against the worst 49 percent – to make the world better than it would otherwise be.

Forming an alliance of the best 49 percent against the worst 51 percent is just foolish. Prudence suggests drawing that middle 2 percent - the most marginal of the best 51 percent – the 2 percent that one least wants to be a part of the team – into the team.

[Note: I am well aware that, technically, we are not dealing with “51 percent” but “50 percent plus 1” to get a simple majority. However, I trust that the reader can translate this posting into more precise terms. Besides, there is value in having a margin of safety.]

The news recent has reported on a schism among evangelicals on the issue of global warming.

Note that, yesterday, I listed four general areas of concern that are more important than belief in God; (1) survival of the species, (2) global catastrophes, (3) health/medicine, and (4) the intellectual virtues of honesty, intellectual responsibility, and curiosity.

The issue of global warming fits within the second category.

Details

This schism in the evangelical movement pits Reverend Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, against conservative evangelicals such as James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, and Paul Weyrich.

Cizik has been an outspoken advocate of what his branch of the evangelical movement calls ‘creation care’. Cizik and others like him take their inspiration from the Biblical claims that humans are the stewards of this Earth who are to take care of it for God. I suppose this would be like parents buying a pet for their child, and telling the child that it is her responsibility to take care of it.

Opponents to this stewardship philosophy say that the fate of the Earth is in God’s hands. Some cite Genises 8:22, “While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease.”

If I were at all interested in the subject, I would ask somebody to explain what this has to do with global warming, since global warming will not cause any of these things to cease. This strikes me as a clear example of somebody deciding what they want to believe then looking for quotes that they can twist and bend to fit their own opinion, rather than drawing their opinion from the source.

News reports also state that many of these evangelicals doubt that global warming has a human cause. Yet, this is just another piece of what is already an overabundance of evidence that these people have lost touch with reality. This is what follows from rejecting the form of study where success is measured by a proven ability to explain and predict empirical results, and adopting instead a philosophy that says that says that flights of the imagination and make-believe can pass for reality. The unfortunate consequence of that attitude is that reality proves to be tremendously unforgiving when we do not respect its laws.

Fundamentalism Threatens Humanity

Sam Harris has argued that religious fundamentalism is not only factually incorrect, it is a threat to human well-being. This branch of the evangelical community provides a case in point in support of Harris’ claim. They have lost touch with reality to such a degree that they are unable to understand, predict, and prepare for the future. The best that they can do is to comfort the victims. They price themselves on this ability. Yet, many of these victims exist precisely because these evangelicals stand in the way of those who would have been able to predict and prepare for these dangers.

It is common for fundamentalists to protest that they are persecuted by those who do not respect their beliefs. There is a limit to which one can respect the beliefs of another. Beliefs that threaten such widespread harm are not beliefs that any decent, moral person can respect. In fact, they deserve the full force of our contempt (subject to the limitation on the use of violence I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog).

We could, of course, ‘respect’ the beliefs of those whose faith leads only to their own suffering. We might say, “Go ahead. Kill yourself. It's your life.” Yet, even this represents a callousness that could not easily be justified as something a good person (a person with desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others) would feel.

However, the situation is quite different when a person’s beliefs threaten to kill, maim, or otherwise deprive others of a quality of life they would have otherwise enjoyed.

The Fishing Expedition

Imagine that you are on a fishing boat with four other people. The boat is taking on water, and the radio is out. It takes four people to man the pumps. Unfortunately, when Friday evening arrives, one of the four says, “This is the Sabbath. Scripture says that this is a day of rest. I will not man the pumps. If, God willing, the boat has not sunk by tomorrow night, then I will man the pumps. The fate of this boat is in God’s hands.”

In this case, there are three other people on the boat whose lives will be lost out of ‘respecting’ this man’s belief. ‘Respect’, in this case, does not come without a cost. It kills people.

When the other three passengers morally criticize and condemn this man, calling him a fool and commanding that he take his place at the pumps, he protests that they are the ones who are evil because they lack religious tolerance. “You do not respect my religious beliefs – and you are obligated to do so.”

There is no obligation to respect foolishness and stupidity when it gets other people maimed and killed. When it maims and kills only the fool, then there is some sense in which we can throw up our hands and say, “It is neither my fault nor my responsibility.” The situation changes when the fool threatens the lives and well-being of others.

However, let us now imagine that one of the passengers asserts that nothing in the Bible prohibits working on the Sabbath if it is to save a life. He can get the fool to the pumps without requiring that the fool abandon his religion.

The prudent atheist should recognize that the important result here is not getting the fool to abandon his belief in God – something he will almost certainly not do before the ship sinks. The important thing is to get him to the pumps. Once he is on the pumps, there will be time to talk to him about his religious beliefs and, perhaps, convince him of his errors. However, if he does not man the pumps, then much more than an opportunity to reason with him will be lost.

The atheist who says, "I will not man the pumps with a theist," is as much of a fool as the theist who says, "I will not man the pumps on the Sabbath."

Liberal Environmental Extremists

I also want to point out that there are absurdities on the other side. Those who think that conservatives cannot point to people whose views on the environment are absurd and need to be checked are mistaken.

The worst of those on the left are those who treat nature as having intrinsic value. As such, they are willing to argue for all sorts of human want and suffering, so long as nature is not disturbed. The worst of them argue for human extinction. Others argue that the proper role of humanity is to enslave ourselves to nature itself, making its care our only value.

I would also put in this category any who would argue that humanity quarantine itself on Earth and refuse to 'contaminate' the rest of the universe with our presence. It is as if an irradiated, lifeless rock in space has more value as an irradiated lifeless rock than used as a habitat for living things, such as man. As it turns out, confining humanity to Earth is substantially the same as demanding our extinction - a noble sacrifice for the protection of all of those irradiated lifeless rocks floating around out in space.

In fact, value exists only as a relationship between states of affairs and desires, and moral value exists as relationships between desires and other desires. Nature has value only insofar as it is such as to fulfill good desires – that is, desires that tend to fulfill other desires. If a modification of nature can make it better able to fulfill good desires, then that modification is good. There are fewer reasons to refrain from making those changes than to go ahead with the action.

Nature does have a number of abilities to fulfill desires. Poisoned air and water will tend to thwart desires. Furthermore, people seem to need places of natural beauty to unwind. Arguments can be made for wilderness areas, because they add an element of environmental and ecological stability to a system that could be knocked seriously out of whack if there are no limits placed on what we may do to nature. It also preserves options that may be useful in the future – just as a savings account preserves options. So, mine is not an argument that states that nature has no value. Only, it has no intrinsic value. Those who will sacrifice humanity to nature are no less of a threat than those who will sacrifice humanity to their god.

The Best 51 Percent

So, our alliance of the best 51 percent is not an alliance of atheists against theists, or even an alliance of liberals against conservatives. It is an alliance of the 51 percent who are most rational and in touch with reality, against the worst 49 percent who have broken apart from reality and whose fantasies and delusions make them a threat to others – more of a threat than most.

Among the best 51 percent, there must be room for some who believe in God.

Priorities and the Bottom 49%.

I have spent the last couple of weeks focusing rather exclusively on the relationship between religion and ethics. I think that it is time for something of a reality check.

Near the start of my series on Beyond Belief 2006, I discussed a presentation from Michael Shermer (editor of Skeptic magazine) in my posting, “Michael Shermer: The Art of Political Compromise”. In that posting, I mentioned that if a person could only work with those that they agree with on every matter, than nobody would ever work with anybody else. Politics is the art of forming alliances among the best 51% against the worst 49%.

This suggests that if one has an interest in practical problem solving, it may be worthwhile to look at the most important problems that need addressing – things that 51% of the people can be brought together to help solve. These are the problems that the other 49% either care nothing about, or who are actively seeking to make those problems worse because it profits them (in terms of power, wealth, or personal satisfaction) to see those problems grow.

In this list of people who cause more harm than they prevent, I add those who are enthusiastic about death and destruction from disasters that are either natural or man-made, because they have been taught to view this as a sign from heaven that the end days are near. These people are to be counted as those who find personal satisfaction in events that inflict harm on others.

One thing to be said about the best 51% is that they are not all atheists, or even agnostics. Atheists do not even make up 51% of the population. So, if one is going to talk about an alliance of the best 51%, then that alliance is going to include a lot of theists.

Furthermore, not all atheists are going to make it into the alliance of the best 51%. There is nothing in atheism that entails virtue, and not all vice is motivated by religion. There have been some extremely destructive and violent belief systems that included elements that said that no God exists.

So, solving real problems requires making alliances and working with people who are not atheists – working with the best of those who believe in God. This does not mean agreeing with them. This does not even mean ‘tolerating’ them in the sense that one refuses to say, “I think you are mistaken.” It simply means getting together and saying, I think we have more important problems to worry about.”

What are those more serious problems to worry about?

I am going to have to put, at the top of the list, any problem that threatens to end the human race, and any person who obstructs policies that will reduce the odds of that destruction. In this case, it really does not matter what the threat is – whether it comes from outer space or from earth – the defense against these harms are the same. It requires spreading out – disbursing human civilization around this solar system and, eventually, to other solar systems.

The “bottom 49%” in this case are those who insist that we solve the problems of earth before we invest any money on space development. For one thing, there will always be problems on Earth as long as humans live on this planet. Consequently, this philosophy is comparable to saying, “humans should never move off of Earth.” This is absurd. Earth will, some day, become a lifeless planet. We cannot tell if it will happen within the next 100 years or the next 1 billion. However, it will happen. At that time, this race with its problems will cease to exist. I guess, this, at least, will solve all of our problems – which apparently is what these people are after.

A corollary to this concern is the need to collect data and to figure out how the earth works, and what our biggest threats really are. Defending ourselves from a threat is best accomplished by understanding the threat – how it works – and how to protect ourselves from it. This means an investment in data collection and interpretation, by the best minds in the field of science. This also means a willingness to listen to what they have to say. It would do no good for the scientists to identify a threat, only to have the politicians ignore them because their campaign contributors find it more profitable (in the short run) to ignore the threat than to take it seriously.

After the survival of the human race (or some descendent of the human race), the next issue is to make sure that we live well. This means identifying those risks that can do damage on a global scale, even if they do not wipe out humanity. This includes a range of options from a major asteroid or comet strike (not one so large that it kills all the humans), to a global pandemic, to a global natural disaster such as a super volcano. The worst scenarios of global warming, that have sea levels eventually rising in excess of 200 feet. Yes, this will take time. However, driving a growing population of humans onto less and less land will be extremely harmful at any speed.

The bottom 49% - the worst of the worst in this case – are those who are willing to risk this destruction because it is personally profitable for them to do so. The people of Exxon-Mobile and other companies who are content to see whole countries destroyed so long as it is profitable for them to do so clearly fall into the category of the worst of the worst. The level of destruction they are willing to allow, and the reasons that they are willing to allow it, make Hitler and Stalin look like boy scouts.

Both of these first two topics identify another group to add to the “bottom 49%”. These are people who think that we can avoid these problems by making human sacrifices to their God, rather than by a study of science and the development of theories that explain and predict how the real world works. There are still those who think that we can ward off hurricanes and terrorist strikes if only we make the proper human sacrifices on their religious altar. Their so-called morals legislation ultimately has the effect of adding misery and suffering to the real world, while diverting attention from real problems, and getting in the way of real-world solutions.

Make no mistake about it. These are the actions of people causing real world suffering and death for no good real-world reason.

The alliance of the best 51% against the worst 49% must be an alliance of those capable of respecting and understanding how the real world works, recognizing real-world risks, and coming up with real-world solutions.

In addition to the concerns of space development and earth science, I must add the field of medical science as one that demands our attention. In this area, the best 51% are those who advocate promoting our understanding of biology and medicine. The bottom 49% are those who get in the way of advances in this area. This bottom 49% are the defenders of disease, suffering, and death, who have likely ruined far more lives than all of the worst dictators that have ever existed.

The fourth category that I want to present for distinguishing the best 51% from the worst 49% is defined by those who lie, engineer false beliefs, market confusion, and engage in intellectually reckless, and intellectually lazy behavior. Again, we need a real-world understanding of what is around us if we are going to avoid the worst pitfalls in store for us. Those who market in deception – who make their money lying to others or engineering false beliefs and confusion – are only working to blind people from the pitfalls that await them.

The moral character of such a person is no different than that of somebody who will blindfold children and set them out into a field full of traps, waiting for an explosion or a blade to deprive that child of limb or life. They blind the child with ignorance and confusion. In the fog that these deceivers create, they hope to manipulate the victim into action (or inaction) that profits themselves or their client. For such a person, it does not matter much what happens to the victim. All that matters is that the client profit – at whatever cost (to others).

In all four of these concerns – human survival, earth-monitoring, health research, and crimes against truth – there are degrees of guilt or innocence. Some are better than others. Many do well in each of these categories to some degree, but fail only in limited areas. In all of these, there is a best 51% that can be united against the worst 49%.

The trick is to know where to find that line, and how to draw those on the near side of it into an alliance. It means looking around and determining if one is in too small of an alliance, and finding others who may join – finding out what qualities are to be found in an alliance of the best 51%.

In this quest, belief in God (or not) simply is not the most important issue on the planet. It does not even rank near the top. There are more important things to worry about. It would be tragic to be sitting here debating exclusively belief in God, while some threatening harm cuts a wide swath of damage through human civilization – perhaps even ending it entirely.

Stephen Nadler: Spinoza

When discussing the relationship between science and religion, Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan both expressed a preference for what they called “Spinoza’s God” – the understanding of God created by the 18th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

Stephen Nadler, Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, went to the Beyond Belief 2006 conference to present Spinoza’s views on science, god, and morality.

Spinoza’s God

Nadler began his presentation by saying that Spinoza should be considered a hero of everybody in the room and that he was surprised that his name had come up only once so far.

Among the claims that Nadler attributes to Spinoza, that many modern atheists would embrace, are these:

The Bible is a work of literature – a collection of essays written by different people and brought together by a group of editors, who went through a list of submissions deciding which to accept and which to reject, and publishing the result. The bible has no more of a connection to the truth than Pride and Prejudice.

Nothing exists by nature. Spinoza considers and rejects the idea that God exists as a supernatural entity within nature (like water can reside in a sponge), because Spinoza rejects the supernatural (nothing exists but the sponge).

Spinoza also rejects the idea that it makes sense to stand in worshipful awe of nature itself (that God is the material universe, or God is the sponge). This is akin to standing like a fool with one’s mouth open before nature. Nature is to be examined and understood, not worshipped.

Spinoza's Ethics

Entering into the realm of morality, Nadler addresses two related issues: (1) Weakness of will, and (2) The motivation to do that which is right.

The difference between these two questions is that the first (weakness of will) asks, “Given that I know what is right, and that I am motivated to do it, how is it that I can fail to do the right thing.”

The second (motivation to do the right thing) asks, “Given that I know what the right thing to do is, why should I do it?”

On these issues, Nadler represents Spinoza as holding the view that people are always motivated to do that which is in their rational self-interest. He equates rational self-interest both with what a (rational) person does, and with what a rational person should do, such that the real question is not, “Why should I be moral?” but “How could I ever be immoral?”

The Possibility of Evil

In fact, what Nadler describes above the reductio ad absurdum of this view that Nadler attributes to Spinoza. The view that everybody does, in fact, promote their own self-interest as a matter of physical necessity, and that everybody should act in their own self-interests, means that everybody does that which is right, and nobody ever does anything immoral. Immorality does not exist, and all people are at all times perfectly virtuous.

Any meaningful answer to the question, “Why should I be moral?” must make sense of at least the possibility that an agent may have reason to do something immoral.

Self Interest

I agree with Spinoza, as Nadler describes him, that everybody acts so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires, given their beliefs; and that they seek to act so as to fulfill their desires.

For the sake of space, I want to assume that everybody has true beliefs. Under this assumption, I will illustrate how it is possible for a person to do something that is immoral – to be evil – even if he necessarily acts so as to fulfill his desires given his beliefs, and even though all of his beliefs are true. This means that you cannot cause a person to be moral simply by correcting his beliefs. In order to get somebody to do that which is moral, you have to manipulate his desires.

According to Nadler, Spinoza asserts that everybody acts in their own ‘self-interest’. This is a popular slogan, even today. Unfortunately, it is ambiguous, and this ambiguity creates a great many problems.

This ambiguity centers on the difference between self-interest in the sense of interests (desires) of the self versus interests (desires) in the self. This subtle difference is extremely important.

Of course, the desires that I act so as to fulfill are my own. They are desires (interests) of the self. In fact, it is as inconceivable that an action motivated by a desire that is not my own can be my action. An action belongs to the person whose desires motivated it – such that if somebody else had remote control over my body, the actions my body would be performing would be her actions, not mine. If this body were to be used to commit murder, she would be the murderer, not me.

Even though every action is motivated by desires of the self these are not necessarily (and often not in fact) desires in the self. Just because I always do what I most want to do does not imply that I only want to do that which benefits me. It is quite possible (and, in fact, quite common) for an agent to have a desire of the self that is a desire in the well-being of other people.

So, given that everybody acts to fulfill the more and the stronger of their own desires, can we make sense of the idea that some people sometimes do that which is evil? And can we answer the question “Why be moral?”

Weakness of Will

Let’s first look at the question of weakness of will. Recall, this is a person who knows that X is the right thing to do, wants to do the right thing, but does not do it. What is going on here?

Well, if we take the formula that people act so as to fulfill the more and stronger of his desires, ‘weakness of will’ suggests that X does not, in fact, fulfill the more and stronger of his desires. The agent can still have a desire to do the right thing. However, this desire is always only one desire among many. It need not be strong enough to override other desires. A rapist’s may know that rape is wrong and know that rape is evil. He even might have a desire to be a good person and an aversion to doing harm to others. However, the desire to rape might still be so strong that rape is still the act that actually fulfills the more and the stronger of his desires.

“Weakness of will” is a very appropriate term here, because the problem is that the desires that would prevent rape are too weak to override the desires that motivate rape.

Why Be Moral?

So, now, let us look at a person who has no desire to do the right thing, no aversion to harming others, but who has a desire to commit rape. Let him ask, “What reason do I have not to commit rape?”

The answer would be, “None.” If, ex hypothesi we give an agent no desires that are necessarily false in a state of affairs in which (or that results from a state of affairs in which) he commits rape then, by definition that person has no reason not to commit rape.

However, even in this instance, others in the community have many strong reasons to give the agent a reason not to commit rape.

There are two ways of doing this.

The first method of giving somebody a reason is to take the agent’s desires of the agent as a given and say, “If you commit rape, we will create for you a state of affairs that you have reason to avoid.” This could include a loss of freedom, property, or even life. This involves giving the agent a reason not to commit rape by making it the case that a state of affairs that he has reason to avoid will follow upon his committing rape. However, this method has an important weakness. A person who can avoid getting caught performing an action has not, in fact, been given a reason not to perform it. So, if this was the only reason that a person has not to perform an action, he will perform it, when he can get away with it.

A second method of giving somebody a reason avoids this problem. This is to give the agent an aversion to performing the action, or an aversion to some state of affairs that is an integral and necessary part of performing the action. If a person has an aversion to taking money that does not belong to him, then he will not do so, even if there is no risk of punishment. This is true in the same way that a person who has an aversion to eating liver and onions will not do so, even if he has an opportunity to eat liver and onions without getting caught, or where those who would catch him have no intention of punishing him. He still would not do it.

Using both of these methods, people generally have reason to give others strong reasons not to engage in rape. Even the rapist has reasons to give others reasons to not engage in rape – if the rapist does not wish to be raped or has an affection for others that he wishes not to have raped, or an affection for others who have an affection for others that they would not like to have raped.

So, I want to reject the idea that “rape is immoral” means “the agent has strong reasons not to commit rape” – because this might not be true, and rape remains wrong even if this is not true. Let us take it instead to mean, “the agent should have good and strong reasons not to commit rape” or, more specifically, “people generally have reason to cause the agent to have strong reasons not to commit rape.”

This makes sense of some very common uses of the term. If a child hits a classmate, the teacher does not say, “You feel ashamed of yourself!” Because, after all, the child might not feel the least bit of shame, and the wrongness of hitting the other child does not depend on his actually feeling ashamed. Instead, the teacher (accurately) says, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” He does not say that the child has a reason not to hit other students, but that the child should have a sufficiently strong reason – that a good child would have a sufficiently strong reason – not to hit other students.

This allows for the possibility of an agent to do (be) evil, since the act that fulfills the more and stronger of his actual desires, might not be the act that fulfills the desires that others have reason to cause him to have.

The question, “Why should I be moral?” is actually ambiguous? The question may be asking, "Why should I, given the reasons that I have, do that which a good person would do?" The answer to this question may be, "There is no reason."

However, there is another version of the question. "Why should I have the desires that people generally have reasons to want me to have?" Or, more precisely, "What reasons do other people have to get me to behave differently?"

If being moral is having desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others, there really is no mystery as to why people have reasons to cause the agent to want to do X. Those people generally have many strong reasons to cause others to have desires that fulfill the desires of others.

Socrates

Nadler actually made this point, though not so tightly tied to the reasoning that I made above. He discussed the trial of Socrates, where Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth. Socrates, according to Nadler, answered that the charge was absurd. "What possible reason would I have to corrupt the youth, given that I would have to live amongst them?"

In fact, Socrates, like all of us, have reason to cause others to have those desires that fulfill the desires of others. It would be quite irrational for us to promote desires that tend to thwart the desires of others. The difference is that our students will tend to act so as to thwart, rather than so as to fulfill, our own desires. That is not a wise option to pursue

So, we all have reason to promote in others those desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others. An efficient way to do this is to learn to identify them - to call evidence of them 'good' and to say that 'this is the type of person we have strong reasons for everybody to become."

Moral language handles the job both of identifying positive and negative desires, and providing the praise and condemnation that promotes or inhibits those desires.

Paul Davies: Levitating Superturtles

I now enter Weekend 7 in my series on the presentations at Beyond Belief 2006.

Session 5 in this series began with a presentation from Paul Davies from Arizona State University. Davies is interested in finding the ultimate meaning and purpose in the universe. More specifically, he wanted to know why the laws of physics are what they are, and why they are friendly to the development of intelligent life.

To analyze this problem, he called forth an ancient belief that the Earth stood on the back of a giant elephant. That elephant, in turn, stood on the back of a giant turtle – at least in the version that Davies used.

What did the turtle stand on?

Davis mentioned two options: (1) "turtles all the way down" (to what?), or (2) a giant levitating turtle that did not need to stand on anything.

He then described three cosmological theories by using this levitating turtle metaphor.

(a) The universe comes from God, where God is the giant levitating superturtle that depends on nothing else for its existence. God made the universe friendly to human life because it fulfilled His desires to do so.

(b) The universe itself is the giant levitating turtle that depends on nothing else for its existence. It is just by chance that the universe is friendly to human life.

(c) The universe is a part of a multiverse. Each universe in the multiverse has its own natural laws. Of course, we would come into existence in a universe suitable for life and, of all the universes that exist, it is not surprising that at least one has laws suitable for life. However, on this model, the multiverse is the levitating superturtle. We are fortunate to live in a multiverse that allows for a wide variety of universes where some are friendly to human life.

As advocates of these different schools defend their favorite theories, Davies complains that the debate ultimately ends up being a set of assertions, “My levitating superturtle is better than your levitating superturtle.” Or, as he puts it, one person’s levitating superturtle is another person’s laughing stock.

To avoid the problem of needing a levitating superturtle, Davies proposes the option that the universe itself is the reason for its own existence. The problem, according to Davies, is that we keep looking for something outside of the universe to explain the universe, when we should be looking for something inside the universe to explain it.

The Value of Levitating Superturtles

Actually, I am not going to pretend that I have the capacity to determine what quantum physics has to say about the possibility of a self-justifying universe. I have studied some metaphysics and even some physics, but not enough to offer an intelligent opinion on the merits of Davies’ claims. Davies topic is a matter for PhD physicists to discuss, not a matter for the man on the street (or on the blog).

However, I do have some experience in value theory. This allows me to ask about the value of these particular findings. What does it matter that the universe is a levitating superturtle or obtains its reason for existence in itself rather than in something external?

One thing that I do not think that Davies has any capacity to find (because it does not exist) is any type of value other than relationships between states of affairs and desires. We may desire that the universe be a particular way. Insofar as we have desires, we are motivated to make the world a particular way (to the degree that we have the power to do so). However, we will never find meaning or purpose (or value) written into the universe independent of our desires. That type of value simply does not exist.

So, certain physicists may desire to know the answers to these questions. They may even come to desire that a particular answer be true. However, none of this disproves the thesis that value is ever anything but that which fulfills the relevant desires. The value of a God existing comes from desires that would be fulfilled in a universe where God exists.

Assuming that your average driver, secretary, and retail store clerk does not have a PhD in quantum physics, what is the value of the universe being a particular way, and where did that value come from?

Many people desire a universe with God. However, that is only because they were manipulated (through social forces) to acquire such a desire. By eliminating the desire that God exists and that one is serving God, and one eliminates the psychological dependence on serving God – a psychological dependence on a fiction. There is just as little reason to argue for a psychological dependence on any of these levitating superturtles, or on the ‘internalist’ system that Davies defends. It need not matter – except in the sense of who wins the Superbowl matters, as a private interest of no overwhelming importance.

In short, what I am talking about is adopting a set of desires such that one simply has an aversion to living in a universe that is not grounded on levitating superturtle T - when the odds are increadibly low that levitating superturtle T exists. This aversion to living in any other universe is an aversion that is learned, and learning an aversion to reality is somewhat problematic at best.

To understand the question of valuing different options, I would like to use a different metaphor. Instead of elephants standing on turtles, I would like to ask you to picture in your mind a scene in which there are a group of actors on a stage. Some objects around them are illuminated, but there is darkness heading off in all directions. There may be things out there in the darkness, but they cannot be seen.

Our agents speculate what might be out there. However, they have no evidence to draw upon. They can only guess.

Because they have no evidence, any guess they make will almost certainly be wrong.

What is wrong with peering out into the darkness and, when asked, “What’s out there?” answering, “I have no idea. It’s dark. I will describe as well as possible anything I can see, but I see no reason to describe what I cannot see.”

If we mix our metaphors – if we can see the elephant, we say that there is an elephant. If we can see the turtle, we say that there is a turtle. If asked what the turtle is standing on, and we cannot see that far, we do not postulate God or a levitating superturtle or turtles all the way down. We simply say, “I do not know.”

Agnosticism

This may be thought of as a recipe for agnosticism, but it is not.

To see that, imagine a super deck of cards. This deck has one billion suits, each with one billion and thee cards (cards numbered 1 (ace) though 1,000,000,000 plus the jack, queen, and king of each suit.

A card is drawn from the deck.

I ask you, “Can you prove that the card drawn is not the king of hearts?”

You will answer that you cannot prove that.

Okay, now, the next question. Do you believe that the drawn card is the king of hearts?

A rational person would be able to answer, “Almost certainly not.” In fact, the chance that the drawn card is the King of Hearts is less than a great many things that you gamble on every day. Its chances are low enough that it is reasonable to call oneself an atheist - to hold that the existence of a God is so unlikely (not false, but tremendously unlikely) so as to defy serious consideration.

As it turns out, those who argue that the drawn card is the King of Hearts, and defend it on faith, then go and say, “Because the drawn card is the king of hearts, we may legitimately rob the following people of life, liberty, and/or happiness.” They use a premise that is almost certainly false to justify real-world harms.

Pascal’s Wager

This discussion then leads us into Pascal’s Wager. This argument states that, if you compare the huge costs of being wrong (if God condemns to eternal suffering those who do not believe in Him) to the small costs of being right, it is rational to do what one can to believe in God.

Unfortunately, Pascal’s Wager assumes that there are only two options; (1) eternal hell for not believing in God, or (2) entrance into heaven.

With our huge deck of metaphorical cards, we must consider other options.

We must consider the possibility that there is a God. However, this God gave us a brain and wanted us to use it. The faith-based thinker hears God tell him, “I saw these religions come up and sweep the land. I could have stepped forward and say, ‘Don’t believe them.’ However, if I had done that, you would never have learned to think for yourselves. This was my ultimate test – to see if you would follow self-professed prophets uttering nonsense, or whether you will use reason to see through this religious nonsense and come to me with a thinking mind, or whether you would shut off and throw away this gift of a brain that I gave you. These people have devoted their lives to reason. They used the brain that I gave them. You, however, have not. I have no use for you.”

Now, if apply Pascal’s Wager to this interpretation of God, we get a situation where it is rational to abandon God and take up reason. Taking up reason saves the individual from eternal damnation – a fate that one gets thrown into if one commits the mortal sin of taking the existence of God on faith value.

This, then, is the problem. With an infinite number of options available when we peer into the darkness, there is no compelling reason to assert one option over any other. There is an honest answer – and that honest answer is simply to report that we cannot see that far.

The Philosopher’s Quest

This does not imply that there is anything wrong with people like Paul Davies pursuing answers to this question. There is nothing wrong with wanting to know the answer. There is, however, something wrong with fixing an emotional attachment to a particular answer, particularly when it stands such a tremendously high chance of being wrong.

First, false beliefs stand in the way of an agent fulfilling her desires (she will waste resources doing things that will not bring about the desired states of affairs).

Second, if one is wrong, then a desire that the universe be a particular way will be thwarted. We do not have the power to actually cause God to exist. We only have the power to deceive ourselves into thinking that such a desire has been fulfilled. When there are things in the universe that cannot be changed, we are better off accepting them as they are over pretending that they are different.

The Atheist Terrorist

Old Business: The Webcast

Infidelguy was kind enough to provide a link to yesterday’s webcast done for Faith and Freethought program.

Just to give you an idea of how nervous I was. I was on the show to discuss my book, “A Better Place.” About 2/3 of the way through the show, I was discussing Hume’s is/ought argument, and I was thinking about a quote from Hume that qualifies his claim that one cannot derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’. I said something like, “I need to look that up.”

IT’S IN THE FRIPPEN BOOK!.

I covered the subject in Chapter 7: “Hume on ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’”.

The quote, from Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature – the quote that shows that Hume thinks we can, in fact, derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’, as long as our ‘is’ statements include claims about ‘the passions’ – is:

Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue, and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behaviour.

These sentiments of pleasure and unease are real. They are a part of the is world. It is the case that something is pleasing or that it is useful for bring about something that is pleasing. And from these is premises, Hume derives all of his virtues and vices – all of his ought conclusions.

Like I said, the rest is in the book.”

New Business: The Atheist Terrorist

One Sunday afternoon as you go about your chores you hear about a news flash. Some guy went into one of these megachurches with automatic weapons and grenades and began killing as many people, cursing the 'fundies' as he did. The news quickly discovers that he was a militant atheist, contributing heavily to atheist forums where he constantly ranted against religion.

This person would actually qualify as a militant atheist.

Theists who sell hate for a living like to use the term to refer to people who write books challenging religious beliefs and who file court briefs, as if these are somehow comparable to bombs and guns. They love to use the word 'militant' because it feeds fear to the listener. These people understand how politically useful fear can be.

But theirs is a rhetoric of hate - a quest for power through deception and manipulation.

The proof is found in the absurdity in saying that people who write books against violence and who file court briefs are 'militant'. Anybody who says such a thing must love promoting fear over truth.

In spite of this rhetorical fear-mongering, it violates no principle of logic or nature for an actual militant atheist to exist.

All it takes is one person learning the wrong lessons as he reads and hears what others say, a particular set of ideas that striking a particular mind in the wrong way, and we get a story like the one that started this blog entry.

There are two things that I want to say about this possibility.

Explicit Limits

The first and foremost is that those of us who write on this topic can take steps to reduce this possibility.

I make it a point to repeat in my own writings that the only legitimate response to words are counter-words and private action. It is quite permissible to criticize a person for what he says. Indeed, banning criticism would itself be a violation of free speech. It is also quite legitimate to use what another person says as a reason for altering one’s private actions – for deciding where to shop, who to invite to one’s wedding, what shows to watch or listen to, who to be friends with, and the like. The demand for free speech simply says that it is wrong to respond to mere words with violence - including the violence of legal penalties.

The same goes for cartoons.

Offensive speech can be soundly condemned. However, it may not be banned, and its owners may not be physically harmed – with some exceptions such as national security and provable fraud, slander, libel, and the like.

I also argue that, in an reasonably open society, one may only respond to a political campaign with a counter-campaign; never with violence. It is legitimate to raise money to run advertisements to explain one’s own side of the issue, but not to inflict violence on those defending the opposite position. These public debates over which course is best is healthy. Once again, this debate, no matter how heated it gets, should not be marred by physical violence.

I want to further argue that it is important to be explicit about this. It is not sufficient to hope that others do not get the wrong ideas from one’s criticism. It is important to spell it out – to state explicitly, "Those who take my complaints about religion as justifying violence do not understand my complaints about religion – complaints that largely rest on religion’s capacity to foster unjustified violence.”

Legitimate Response

The second lesson that I want to draw from this goes as follows:

Such an incident will inevitably be used to fuel the market for hatred of atheists. Atheism itself will be held responsible for this crime, and some will assert that all atheists are guilty. They will claim that this is the inevitable result of the atheist lack of morals.

They will conveniently ignore the huge numbers of similar attacks executed for religious reasons. They will, sometimes in the same breath, call it bigotry to condemn all theists because one theist somewhere set off a bomb for religious reasons.

But my question is, "How shall we respond to these charges?"

Will we be able to boast that when we heard of theists setting off bombs, that we knew enough not to blame all of theism? If we told them to consider the actions of this atheist the same way we took the actions of theists who killed in the name of God, would we be able to say that they are treating us justly?

Are we doing to others as we would have them do to us if the situation was reversed?

Personally, I wish to be judged by what I say and do - not by the actions of some hate-filled punk. If I enbrace or endorse his violence THEN I deserve the same condemnation. If, instead, my words and deeds are not consistent with such violence, then that is the basis on which I am to be judged - not on the basis of somebody else's violence.

And I will treat others the same way.

Please note - because others have missed this pint in the past - that I am not saying that only the violent individuals are to be blamed. Moral condemnation fits any who would cheer those actions, or who would defend them in their written and spoken words. Fault would rest with anybody who held such a person up as a role-model, rather than an example of what NOT to become.

In other words, condemnation would not only be fitting of the person in the story at the srart of this blog, but anybody who would say or write that the world needs more people like him - who shares his beliefs and attitudes.

Conclusion

So, there are two moral concerns addressed in this blog entry. The first is to look at the things that a community may do to reduce the chance that somebody in contact with that community will commit acts like those described at the start of those post - and to take those steps, and to insist that other cultures do the same thing.

The second is to consider what the appropriate response should be if something like the story that starts this blog were to take place, and to set an example by using the legitimate response to acts of terror committed by others.. Make sure that you can say to others, "The fair and just response is the same that I have given in cases C1, C2, C3 - not the bigoted hate-mongering response you have given to this case."

What Is Desire Utilitarianism?

Pardon me, but I am a little nervous. I am doing a web cast this evening. By the time I post this, the show will be over. At the time that I write this, the show is yet to come.

Understand, I am shy to the point that I get nervous ordering a pizza. Yes, I taught moral philosophy for six years. I even received an award for my teaching. There are some desires stronger than my aversion to public speaking - desires motivating me to do this webcast. However, the aversion to public speaking still exists, causing anxiety.

I can't help but try to anticipate the questions I will be asked this evening. Since that is where my mind is at anyway, I shall do my anticipating in today's post.

Desire Utilitarianism

"Mr. Fyfe, what is desire utilitarianism?"

I would love to find a way to answer this question that does not put people to sleep.

Okay, there are two ways to cut utilitarian moral theories; lengthwise, and widthwise.

All utilitarian theories say that we are going to maximize something called 'the good' and that we can talk about the good in terms of utility.

One way of cutting utilitarian theories is in terms of what 'the good' actually is.

'The good' is pleasure and the absence of pain according to Jeremy Bentham in the early 1800's. John Stuart Mill said it was happiness over unhappiness. There is a branch that says that we maximize well-being, but they need to explain what 'well-being' means. Peter Singer says that the good is preference satisfaction. I have to ask, "What is a preference, and what does it mean to say that it has been satisfied?"

The second way of cutting utilitarian theories cuts across the first. It asks, "What are we going to evaluate?"

Act utilitarians say that we evaluate actions; the right act is the act that maximizes the good. Rule utilitarians say that we evaluate rules; the best rules are those that maximize the good, and the right act is the act that follows the best rules.

Desire utilitarianism answers the second question by saying that we evaluate malleable desires - desires that we can change through social forces. We also evaluate actions, just like the rule utilitarians. However, the moral value of an action is derived from a prior evaluation of desires. The right act is the act that a person with good desires would perform. Right acts do not always maximize the good.

So, what is a 'good desire'?

A good desire is desire that tends to fulfill other desires.

The desire utilitarian does not measure utility exclusively in terms of pleasure, happiness, well being, or preference satisfaction. Desire utilitarians say that the good is found in all of the things that we desire. It is found in happiness to the degree that we desire happiness, and it is found in pleasure to the degree that we desire pleasure. It is found in the company of family to the degree that we desire the company of family. All value exists in the form of desire fulfillment.

Desires and Fulfillment

"Okay, Mr. Fyfe. You asked the preference satisfaction theorist to explain what a preference was and what it meant for a preference to be satisfied. So, I ask you, what is a desire and what does it mean to say that a desire has been fulfilled?

A desire is one of two propositional attitudes that regulate intentional action. The other is beliefs. A belief is the attitude that a certain proposition (e.g. "God exists') is true. A desire is an attitude that a certain proposition (e.g. "I am having sex with Sam") is to be made or kept true.

We are all quite accustomed to explaining intentional actions by referring to beliefs and desires. Why did Bush invade Iraq? Because he believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he desired to protect America from harm. Or so he says.

Once we make our theories, we test them by asking whether they can be made consistent with other observations. “But there was no evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So, did Bush actually believe this, or did he just claim to believe this? If he lied about the weapons, then he lied about attacking Iraq to defend the United States. Why did he really attack Iraq? What did he really want?"

Desires identify the ends or goals of intentional action (protect America from harm). Beliefs supply the means (invading Iraq will secure these weapons).

Beliefs can be true or false depending on whether the proposition believed accurately describes the real world. If the real world does not match a belief, then the belief is to be changed.

Desires can be fulfilled or thwarted depending on whether the proposition that describes the object of desire is true or false. If reality does not conform to what is desired, the agent has a 'reason for intentional action' to change reality.

So, a desire that 'P', for some proposition 'P' (e.g., "I am having sex with Sam") is fulfilled in state of affairs 'S' if and only if 'P' is true in S.

A desire that I am eating chocolate ice cream is fulfilled in any state of affairs in which the proposition, ‘I am eating chocolate ice cream' is true.

So, that is what a desire is – a mental attitude that a proposition is to be made or kept true. That is what it means for a desire to be fulfilled – a state of affairs exists in which the proposition is in fact true. Value exists in these relationships between states of affairs and desires. A state of affairs has more value to the degree that it fulfills more and stronger desires.

Back to Good Desires

So, Mr. Fyfe, how does this get us to desire utilitarianism?

If we can evaluate movies according to how well they fulfill desires, jobs according to how well they fulfill desires, relationships according to how well they fulfill desires, and everything else according to how well they fulfill desires, then we can evaluate desires themselves (or states of affairs in which certain desires exist) according to how well those desires fulfill (other) desires. This is just the standard practice of evaluation – looking at how well a state of affairs fulfills desires – and applying it to desires.

The idea that we can use desires to evaluate everything else in the universe, but that we have to take desires for what they are and not evaluate them, is nonsense. There is no reason why we cannot evaluate desires the same way we evaluate everything else.

A good desire, then – like a good knife or a good job – is a desire that tends to fulfill other desires. A bad desire is a desire that tends to thwart other desires.

A good desire, insofar as it fulfills other desires, is a desire that others have reason to promote. A bad desire, insofar as it thwarts other desires, is a desire that others have reason to inhibit.

We use social forces to promote and inhibit desires; in particular, praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. Therefore, we have reason to praise and reward those who exhibit good desires (desires that tend to fulfill other desires) to make those desires stronger and more common. And we have reason to condemn and punish those with bad desires (desires that tend to thwart other desires) to make those desires weaker and less common.

This is why desire utilitarianism is concerned with malleable desires. If a desire cannot be molded using these tools, then it makes no sense to ask questions about using these tools to mold those desires.

True Beliefs

Can you give me an example of desire utilitarianism in action?

We can see how true beliefs are important to desire fulfillment.

Take, for example, a person who is thirsty. He desires a drink. He sees a pitcher and a glass on the table and helps himself, believing that the pitcher contains clean water. In fact, the contents of the pitcher have been poisoned, and he gets violently ill. True beliefs about the contents of the pitcher would have avoided this desire-thwarting state of affairs.

The value of truth suggests that we have reason to be surrounded by truth. This implies a reason to cause others to have a love of truth, so that they will be disposed to promote truth and reduce fiction. We can promote a love of truth by praising and rewarding honesty, intellectual integrity, and curiosity. We can also do this by condemning and punishing lies, intellectual recklessness, and intellectual laziness.

Conclusion

This, then, is the basic account of desire utilitarianism, and an example of its application. I suspect that this is what I will be talking about tonight.

Of course, the hard part comes next. This involves explaining why this form of utilitarianism is better than other types of utilitarian theory and better than non-utilitarian moral theories. It involves dealing with claims like the impossibility of deriving ought from is and the separation of fact from value.

But, then, that’s why I wrote the book – which is really what I am talking about this evening. You can find a reference to the book, “A Better Place,” on the right side of this blog.

The Hitler and Stalin Cliche

A quick note: that I will be on “Faith and Freethought” tomorrow evening at 6:00 eastern time.

Okay, now, I want to rant just a little bit more on the clichés surrounding atheism and ethics, then I'll move on.

I promise.

This is the Hitler and Stalin Cliché. It is the argument that there is something fundamentally and foundationally wrong with atheism because Hitler and Stalin were atheists – and look what they did.

The reason that I want to address this argument is that I often see atheists discuss it outside of its proper context.

The typical response that I see to this claim involves a history lecture.

There are two tactical problems with history lectures. The first is that it puts the audience to sleep. They do not care about these arguments enough to be persuaded by them. The second is that you are asking the listener to trust that the claims that you make about history are true – when the listener has already been told that people such as you are not to be trusted. What reason do they have to take your word for these historic events, as opposed to the word of your opponent?

There is also one logic problem. It assumes that the Hitler and Stalin Cliché is valid, so that one has to prove that one of the premises (e.g., “Hitler was an atheist”) is false.

The argument is not valid.

My sound-byte answer: "I'm sorry, but blaming me for the crimes of Hitler and Stalin is like blaming the Amish – or blaming you, my honorable adversary – for 9-11.”

The Irrelevance of Atheism

If my opponent will grant me a few more seconds, I would add, “You would certainly object if I were to accuse you of being responsible for these crimes. You would scream that any who would make such an assertion is bigoted and unjust. You would be right. Such a person is, in fact, bigoted and unjust. So is the person who blames all atheists for the crimes of Stalin.”

I have seen atheists scramble for evidence that Hitler was not an atheist. Perhaps it is true. It does not matter to the moral argument. Assume that somebody were to assert that Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy were white males, and as such all white males are to be regarded with contempt. One possible answer would be to try to prove that Dahmer and Gacy were not white males. However, this would be fruitless. A better response would be to say that justice demands that each person be judged by his own actions, and that no person shall be judged guilty of the crimes of Dahmer and Gacy but Dahmer and Gacy themselves.

By the way, Hitler and Stalin were also both white males. I sense a pattern.

It is also the case that both Hitler and Stalin wore a mustache. Maybe it is the wearing of a mustache that disposes one to tyranny, and the wearing of mustaches should be prohibited.

They both (almost certainly) believed that the Sun was at the center of the solar system. In fact, if you take a look at history, you will discover that heliocentrists (those who assert that the sun is at the center of the solar system) have killed and maimed far more people than geocentrists (those who believe that the earth is at the center of the solar system). Obviously, heliocentrists are evil and despicable creatures! We must immediately take action to remove the doctrine of heliocentrism from our schools before this view that the Earth is not the center of the solar system . . . that humans live on just another planet orbiting just another star . . . destroys the very moral fiber of our civilization!

Hitler and Stalin were both born in Europe. They both had six letters in their first and last names.

Of all of the traits that define Hitler and Stalin, why attribute their evil deeds to atheism? Why not the mustache, or their European birth, or their heliocentrism, or the number of letters in their name, or their gender, or their race?

The answer, at least for a great many people, is that they are looking for reasons to market in hatred and bigotry of atheists, and references to Hitler and Stalin are very popular among those who sell hate for a living. If not for the love of hate, or the business of selling hate, atheism would be seen just as irrelevant as these other traits. This is because it is just as irrelevant as those other traits.

The Crusades and Inquisitions Cliché

So, just as there are theists who love to use the Hitler and Stalin Cliché, there are atheists who love to use the Crusades and Inquisitions Cliché. This is the same form of argument. Just as theists attempt to blame all atheists for the crimes of Hitler and Stalin, some atheists attempt to blame all theists for the Crusades and Inquisitions.

When their argument takes the form, "The Crusades and Inquisitions were lead by theists; therefore, all forms of theism are evil,” then they are making an argument that is as flawed as, “The Holocaust and Stalin’s Purges were lead by atheists; therefore, all forms of atheism are evil.” A consistent person cannot condemn one argument without condemning the other.

However, there is a second use for the Crusades and Inquisitions argument. If a theist were to say, “By turning to the Bible, an individual can find perfect moral guidance,” then it would be legitimate to answer, “What about the crusades, inquisitions, slavery, the divine right of kings, slavery, torture, censorship, forced tithing, and the like? Clearly, if it were possible to find perfect moral guidance in the Bible, either we would not have had these things, or one would have to argue that they were moral.

It is just as legitimate to make the same use of the Hitler and Stalin cliché. If an atheist were to say, “By turning to atheism, an individual can find perfect moral guidance,” then it would be legitimate to answer, “What about Stalin?”

(Note: Hitler makes a poor example. His religion is a matter of ambiguity. However, and more importantly, he was able to sell his program to a nation that was largely Christian without asking that they give up their religion. The German people themselves were able to reconcile Hitler with their religion and regarded Hitler as a hero up to the end of the war. This is hardly effective testimony for the virtue of religion.)

However, find me the person who says that, in turning to atheism, one can find perfect moral virtue. Find me the person who makes a claim that would make the Hitler and Stalin cliché appropriate. If one looked hard enough, it may be possible to find one or two. However, if one looks at the way the Hitler and Stalin Cliché is actually used, one would think that this assertion is a part of mainstream atheism.

In fact, atheism says nothing about moral values, other than to say that certain premises in moral arguments (those that take the form, 'there exists a God such that . . .') are false and play no role in sound moral reasoning. Atheism says nothing about what remains after this error is removed.

"That’s it!” shouts the theist. "That is precisely what is wrong with atheism. It offers no moral guidance!"

Well, chemistry offers no moral guidance either. I have yet to find a moral principle that I can derive out of the fact that xenon is an inert gas and that water is made up of H2O. Is chemistry to be condemned for its lack of guidance? What about physics? Geology? What moral guidance can we draw from the fact that quartz is an igneous rock? None? Then be rid of it!

This is yet another nonsense argument.

True, atheism says nothing about ethics other than that no God is involved. Atheism also says nothing about astronomy other than that no God is involved. Atheism says that if you want to study the stars and planets, you do not study atheism – you study astronomy. Atheism also says that if you want to study right, wrong, good, and evil, you do not study atheism – you study moral philosophy (ethics).

That is what I studied through 12 years of college. I did not study atheism. I studied moral philosophy.

Mistakes and Character

In earlier posts, I argued that you can tell something about a person’s moral character by the mistakes he makes – by the invalid arguments he is all too willing to embrace, and the false premises he is far to eager to accept. When a person makes a mistake, we can ask, “Why did he make that mistake, and not some other?”

The answer to the question “why” often leads to the agent’s desires. If he embraces a conclusion without evidence then we have reason to suspect that he wanted to believe that conclusion. This “desire to believe” tells us something about what the person likes and dislikes – about his virtues and his vices.

We have good reason to suspect that the people who make the types of mistakes I have written about desire (love) to hate. Hate is important to them. In order to protect and to serve their hatred, they need to cover it in a cloak of legitimacy. No sound argument supports their hate, so they embrace unsound arguments and false premises. They too eagerly adopt claims that a person free of hate would easily see as flawed.

This is why there are people who love to see atheism ‘to blame’ for Hitler and Stalin, but can instantly see the absurdity of blaming their mustaches, and why they can instantly recognize the injustice of attributing their evils to all white males.

These are people who profit in the marketing of hate. They sell hate for cash contributions, so that they can manufacture more hate, and sell it to raise more money. It does not matter to the hate monger whether his advertising campaign contains truth or fiction. It only matters whether it is useful – whether it increases sales, revenue, and profits – profits that come in the form of money and power.

This we get from people who claim that their religion gives them true virtue.

Moral Reasons for Religion

I promise that I will be getting off of the “religion and morality” theme in a couple more days. However, there are a couple more things that I would like to add.

I assume that the vast majority of my readers are atheists, so I have no intention of repeating arguments that are already a mainstream part of the atheist community. Instead, I seek to provide arguments that I have not seen even among atheists, in the hopes that those arguments will help you, my reader, make your own way.

On Wednesday evening, I will be on “Faith and Freethought” webcast to discuss some of these issues.

One issue that I want to discuss is the claim that atheists have no ground for morals; therefore, there is nothing to prevent an atheist society from sliding into tyranny. There is nothing to say, “This is wrong. Let’s not go this way,” so the atheist society can slip into the most horrendous decay.

I suppose, Baghdad would be a good example of the type of society we can have without a belief in God to prevent it.

The standard response to these claims is to point out that atheists can be just as moral as theists. This response treats the claim as an empirical theory. It then makes a set of predictions based on that theory – such as the likelihood of atheists committing crimes and ending up in jail. It then uses these empirical observations to verify or falsify the original thesis.

Recently, the Bush Administration has given a whole stack of empirical evidence for falsifying this theory. The most religious (and religiously backed) American President in our history has given us a war of aggression, spying without a warrant, arrests without an indictment, imprisonment without trial, cruel and unusual punishment, a unitary executive who seeks at every opportunity to bypass and marginalize the legislative and judicial branches of government, and a host of other crimes. Where theism is supposed to give its adherents a moral compass that says, “we should not go this way,” the religious right in this country seems to recognize no limits on where the government may go and what it may do when it gets there.

However, this is an argument that has already been made.

The argument that I want to examine is a deeper problem with the “theism prevents moral lapses” claim.

What does the argument say, exactly?

(1) If not for religion, then there is nothing to prevent us from entering into either into a state of tyranny or anarchy.

(2) We certainly have many and strong reasons to avoid a state of tyranny or anarchy.

(3) Therefore, we have many and strong reasons to prefer religion over atheism.

The problem with this argument (besides the empirical falsification of Premise 1) is that Premise 1 contradicts Premise 2. Premise 2 is literally the denial of Premise 1.

Premise 1 states, in effect, that in the absence of religion we have no strong reasons to avoid tyranny or anarchy.

Premise 2 states that we have many and strong reasons to avoid a state of tyranny or anarchy.

If Premise 1 is true then, in the absence of religion, Premise 2 is false for those who do not already have a religion, and the argument is unsound. It says that, in the absence of religion, there are no strong reasons to prefer religion over atheism.

If, on the other hand, Premise 2 is true (and I hold that it is so obviously true that it would be absurd to question it), then Premise 1 is false. Even in the absence of religion, we have many and strong reasons to avoid tyranny and anarchy. And if we have many and strong reasons to avoid tyranny and anarchy even in the absence of religion, then the conclusion (that we have many strong reasons to prefer religion over atheism) is false as well.

We can remove the contradiction and make Premise 2 true if we take the premise to apply to "we" who are religious and, because of this, have many and strong reasons to care for their children - but none that would survive the absence of these rules. This would imply that religious people do not truly love their children. Instead, they love to follow rules - and it just so happens that those rules tell them to care for their children. Without the rules, children - even their own children - are, to them, just things of no personal significance.

In yesterday’s post, "A Special Way of Knowing," I used a small story to illustrate my point.

The story involved a boat with 100 children that sinks in an icy cold lake. An individual with a boat of his own rescues one child, because his religion tells him he must do so. However, the rules of his religion prevent him from rescuing others. They do not tell him not to rescue others. They simply limit his actions in such a way that he cannot rescue others, no matter what he may want to do. Yet, he insists that we call him a hero because he rescued one child who would have otherwise died. He insists that the fact that his religion motivated him to save this one child proves that his religion is valuable. He tells us to “look at all of the good that results from my religion – this one girl was saved.” We are supposed to ignore the fact that we can also attribute the deaths of those children not saved to his religion as well.

Now, let us carry this analogy further. Now, the man with the boat tells us that, if he were to give up his rules – his religion – this would lead to moral relativism. Moral relativism means “anything goes.” There are no limits on what a person may or may not do. He insists that this would put the children in far more danger than the rules that prevented him from saving young lives that could have been easily saved.

He assumes that, if not for the rules, there is no reason to rescue the children.

However, he also assumes that we have reason to take action to avoid a state where the children will be harmed. He appeals to our many and strong reasons for keeping children out of harm in his argument. Yet, his argument also assumes that, without the rules, there is no reason to keep children from being harmed.

We can refute him by pointing out that the claim, “if not for this set of rules, then anything goes” is false. We clearly have reasons to save the children from drowning, even if no God exists. This is true in the same way that an atheist has reason to keep his hand out of a bed of red hot coals, even if no God exists. Things that cause harm to children (like drowning in an icy cold lake) are things that certainly do not “go”.

More importantly, he assumes that we have many and strong reasons to prevent harm to children when he tells us that we have many and strong reasons to adopt his rules. We are to adopt his rules because we have many and strong reasons to protect children from harm. Yet, we are told that we must adopt his rules because, without them, we have no reason to protect children from harm.

A Special Way of Knowing

Announcement: I have been asked to appear on “Faith and Freethought” this Wednesday evening at 8:00 pm eastern time.

A Special Way of Knowing

Sorry, but today I feel like a bit of a rant.

This rant is brought to you by once again encountering the claim, made in criticism of Richard Dawkins, that there is another “special way of knowing” that theists have access to and atheists do not. This is “special way of knowing” that gives access to moral truths, apparently. After all, it is said, nobody can know the difference between right and wrong if they do find it in God.

It is awfully convenient, I think, to have a “special way of knowing” when one wants to do things that harm other people. When standing in the way of life-saving medical treatment, denying people the harmless fulfillment of the only life they will ever have, promoting ignorance in the schools and an anti-science attitude that could very well cause us to take real-world threats, it must be very nice to have a “special way of knowing” that says that all of this is okay.

Another question that I have often heard is, “why are atheists so concerned with God? Why does it matter to you whether I pray or not?”

Actually, it doesn’t matter. If the issue of religion were simply a matter refusing to work on Saturday (or Sunday), when to eat fish, whether to eat pork, fingering rosary beads, kissing a wall, or throwing pebbles at a wall, then it would not be worth the effort to complain too loudly.

Even when it comes to beating oneself bloody with a stick, refusing certain types of medical treatments (as adults, when choosing for himself or herself), or fasting for a month, it is very easy to adopt the attitude, “It’s your life. You do what you want. I have real-world problems to take care of and you’re not worth the distraction.”

However, there are people out there who are killing, maiming, and robbing the quality of life from the only life that other people are ever going to have. And when those others say, “Why are you doing this to me? What justifies the harm that you do?” the only answer that they give is that, “I have a special way of knowing that tells me to do this harm to you – a way of knowing that is beyond proof, beyond reason, but nonetheless is a perfectly good reason to have you killed, maimed, or robbed of quality of life.”

The whole reason for being upset about religious “special way of knowing” is that the people who use this claim are killing, maiming, and robbing the quality of life of other people.

And we (or, at least, I) want that to stop. The world would be a better place without this killing, maiming, and robbing of quality of life.

Benefits/Costs Accounting

Those who complain about Dawkins and Harris and those who complain about religion often cry, “But look at the good that religion has done!” However, the only way to get to the conclusion that religion has done good is by what people in the business world would call “creative accounting.”

For example, let’s say you own a movie company. I come to you with a movie. I say, “If you hire Tom Cruse and Julia Roberts to star in this movie, Peter Jackson to direct it, and load it up with special effects, you will sell $50 million in tickets. $50 million is a lot of money!

That’s creative accounting at work. That type of accounting ignores what it costs to have those people involved in the movie and to create the special effects. It also ignores any consideration of what one could have done if one was not using those resources in this movie, but invested them in another movie instead.

If there were another possibility for a movie, using the same resources, that would bring in $500 million, then making the movie that this author is pitching would cost the company $450 million. This is what it would have to give up producing the first movie with these resources, rather than the second.

This is how true accounting works.

The ‘Good’ that Religion Does

So, when it comes to selling religion for the good that it does, we need to ask what could have been done with the same resources and the same effort. We must not only at the good that people do in the name of God and call this “the good that religion does.” We must look at the good that the devotion of these resources to religion prevented from being done. This becomes the cost of religion.

So, what else could have been done with the resources that have gone into religion? What could have been done with the labor that went into building the churches and temples and paying the priests? What could have been done with the time spent studying the religious texts? What else could people have been doing on a Sunday morning, if they had not been going to church? What else could have been done with the time and the money and the man-hours of labor that went into religious pilgrimages, religious art, and all of the activities that are a part of religious ceremonies?

What if, instead, people over the past 2,000 years had built more schools and universities instead of churches? What if there had been teachers instead of priests? What if the time spent studying the bible had been spent studying the results of this research and turning it into ways to protect people from disease and natural disasters, understanding human behavior, figuring out how to prevent war, and creating societies where the governments were of, by, and for the people, rather than societies where people were the serfs and slaves to (those in) government.

What if the resources spent on religious studies had been added to the resources devoted to science? What if, instead of 400 years of science behind us, we were now sitting on 2,000 years of scientific advances? What if people actually understood physics, chemistry, medicine, earth sciences, ecology, climatology, psychology, engineering, and the like?

What would we have today if the time and energy that went into studying the Bible had, instead, gone into studying the laws of nature?

What we do not have now because of resources that went to the church instead of the science is a part of “the good that religion does.” What our great grand children will not have 100 years from now because of resources that will go into religion instead of science will be a part of the future cost of religion.

We can ask this question in the opposite direction. What will your great grand children have in 100 years from now if we took all of the money that goes into these fields - physics, chemistry, medicine, earth sciences, ecology, climatology, psychology, engineering, and the like – and spent them on religion instead?

Do you want to save your great granddaughter the pain of diabetes, leukemia, cancer, Alzheimer’s?

Do you want to spare her the pain of having a child that suffers from any of countless possible birth defects?

Do you care if she ends up suffering from the effects of breathing poisoned air or drinking poisoned water?

Do you want to help protect her from a future hurricane, tornado, earthquake, volcano, flash flood, mud slide, drought, famine, or any of a long list of natural disasters?

Do you want to prevent the wholesale destruction of the society in which she lives from the effects of a global epidemic or a planet-wide natural disaster such as an asteroid strike?

Do you want to protect her from an accident at sea, keep her airplanes in the air, or design her car to improve her chance of surviving a collision?

Do you want to protect her from future murderers and rapists – because this, too, can be done through an investment in science? It can be done by improving our understanding of how the human mind works, at what makes murderers and rapists, how to find them, and how to better protect us from the threats they pose.

And remember, every future criminal locked up in prison or executed will be somebody’s grandson or granddaughter. We can protect people from that as well.

If you care about your great grand daughter, you can pray for a miracle, or you can help to discover the theories that best predict and explain events in the real world related to each of these sets of events.

Science is the instrument for explaining and predicting how things actually behave. If we know how these things behave, then we can learn how to protect your great granddaughter from these harms. And we may be able to provide her with benefits that she cannot even imagine.

The washing machine, the air conditioner, the refrigerator, electricity and the light bulb, telephones that keep parents and children together half way around the world, music and video on demand, a whole internet full of information at the fingertips of those who know how to sort the wheat from the chaff, a variety of food, the opportunity to visit any place on the planet and, soon, for more and more people, the opportunity to visit places not on this Earth.

I suggest that if you care about these things, one of the things you do not need is to surround your great granddaughter with people who think that the harms they do to others can be justified by a “special way of knowing” that requires no evidence, no proof, only the faith that these people have that the harms they cause to your great granddaughter serves God.

“Special ways of knowing . . .” They can be so darned convenient in a pinch, can’t they?

Analogy

On a cold wilderness lake in northern Canada there are 100 children riding in a large boat. A sudden accident – a navigation error that runs the boat over a rock and rips the bottom out of it – causes the boat to sink. One hundred children are dumped into the icey mountain water. Nearby, a man with a small boat of his own rows up, grabs the nearest little girl, pulls her into his boat, and heads for shore. His boat could probably hold a dozen children, but he rescues one.

Once on dry land, he lets the girl get out, and he gets out with her. He talks with the girl and comforts her – she has had a terrible fright.

Meanwhile, out on the lake, ninety-nine children are drowning or freezing to death.

A short while later, a couple of hikers rush out of the woods to help. They see the man and his boat. The man points to the little girl and says, “See, I am a hero. I rescued her. She would have died if not for me.”

Meanwhile, out on the lake, ninety-nine children continue to die.

For some reason, the hikers are not pleased with this man’s heroics. They insist on taking the boat out and rescuing some of the other children before it is too late.

“No,” said the man. “I have rules. Nobody rides in my boat but me. I also have another rule – no more than two people in my boat at the same time. That’s why I could only rescue one girl. Finally, I have a rule that states that those not rescued on the first attempt are in God’s hands. We must not interfere. If we interfere, then we will be playing God. We will be making decisions that are God’s decisions to make, and we can’t do that. It’s wrong.”

When they ask him why, he answers, “I have special ways of knowing that are not subject to reason or evidence. These are things that just are. My special ways of knowing tell me that it is wrong to save those children. I know this, and no amount of evidence can ever come between me and my faith.”

The two hikers are furious. They insist on taking the boat out. The man insists that if they do then they are not respecting his beliefs.

So, ninety-nine children die.

When the press hears about the accident, when they are told of the children who could have been saved but were not, he puffs out his chest and boasts, “I am a hero. I saved this little girl. She would have died if not for me. Look at all of the good that I do. Those who criticize me . . . those who condemn me . . . they all seem to forget all of the good that I have done. They forget about this one girl who would have died if not for me.”

Furthermore, he announces, as if proud of the fact, “Hey, if it was not for my devotion to these rules – the rules that told me to rescue one young girl, I would not have rescued anybody! You must love me and my rules because if not for those rules I would have even let this one girl drown with the rest of them.”

Forgive me if I find the claim that this man with his “special ways of knowing” is some kind of hero and that I am ignoring the good that he is done to be somewhat hollow.

Why care that some people have these “special ways of knowing?”

Because they use this "special way of knowing" that is not subject to evidence or proof, that the agent simply 'sees', to do real-world harm to real-world people. Because real-world children, in this generation or the next, will be suffer an otherwise preventable death, maiming, or loss of quality of life because of it.

Brain States

The next presenter for my series on the Beyond Belief 2006 conference was V. S. Ramachandran, director for the Center of Brain and Cognition. Ramachandran’s specialty is in brain science, where he studies exactly what goes on in the brain under certain controlled circumstances.

One of the central focuses of his presentation was a strong relationship found between temporal lobe epilepsy and ‘religious experiences’. That is to say, those who have temporal lobe epilepsy, or those subjected to experiments that duplicate the effects of temporal lobe epilepsy, tend to have ‘mystical experiences’ that are compatible with their particular religious beliefs.

The specifics of this research is outside of the scope of this blog. However, there are some general philosophical issues about the relevance of brain science to mental states in general and moral reasoning and moral attitudes in specific that do have relevance.

Brain States and Ethics

One line of reasoning that I have encountered in discussing moral theory takes the following general form:

“Those who study the brain have shown that when people make moral judgments, they tend to do X. However, your moral theory has no place in it for doing X. Therefore, we must reject your moral theory.”

I tend not to pay much attention to the different claims that I have heard for “doing X” because the whole line of reasoning is a non-starter. The argument fails for all X, regardless of what X happens to be.

The reason that it fails is because the person making the argument is drawing a false implication from “people tend to do X when involved in Y” to “doing X is a legitimate and sensible aspect of doing Y.” I can fully agree that people tend to do X when they are involved in Y, but still deny that doing X is a legitimate and sensible aspect of doing Y.

For example, whenever people engage in reasoning they tend to employ any of a large number of fallacies. If we are taking measurements of peoples’ brains, we could get data about what is going on in the brain when they employ these fallacies. There has to be some sort of brain function associated with fallacious reasoning. It is hardly the case that when people are rational it shows up in one of these experiments, and when people are irrational we get no data. We get data whether people are being rational or not.

We have to step outside of the data – we have to go someplace else – to judge a particular set of data as ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’.

Similarly, when we get data of people tending to do X when they are involved in moral reasoning, we cannot rationally automatically infer that doing X is legitimate and sensible. The judgment of whether doing X is legitimate and sensible has to come from someplace else. Indeed, if we allow the implication, “we have evidence of people doing X when they are involved in Y,” to “doing X is legitimate and sensible”, we will come to the conclusion that nothing can ever be illegitimate or insensible. Because all brain activities, the sensible and the insensible – are activities that we can collect data on.

Aristotle was able to give us a theory of logic – to distinguish between valid and invalid argument forms – long before we had brain scans. More importantly, it is difficult to imagine how any brain scan could be used to prove that Aristotle wrong in any of his claims. Specifically, we have no reason to accept the argument, “Aristotle’s theory of logic says that doing X is not logical (invalid). However, brain scientists have done brain scans and found that in certain circumstances there is a strong tendency for people to do X. Therefore, the claim that doing X is not logical (invalid) is mistaken.”

In other words, those who think that the study of morality is the study of brain scans are making a category mistake. It is no more true than thinking that a study of validity is a study of brain scans.

Brain States and God

Ramachandran’s presentations concerned brain scans of religious experiences. In this case, Ramachandran appeared to be making the opposite inference. Ramachandran seemed to be saying that because we have brain scans of ‘religious experiences’ that link them to the stimulation of particular parts of the brain, that this proves that ‘religious experiences’ are illegitimate. If we can account for them through brain scans, then we can explain them scientifically, then we can dismiss them as illegitimate.

Joan Roughgarden called him on this. She pointed out that, just as scientists may be able to find a “god center” of the brain, scientists may be able to find a ‘science center’ of the brain. We can easily imagine a set of brain scans that show what is happening in the brain when a person acquires a piece of scientific insight, when the pieces come together and he ‘understands’ some aspect of science. The fact that we get pictures of this would hardly prove that scientific reasoning is somehow illegitimate.

Ramachandran answered that we can connect scientific reasoning to observable and testable elements in they physical universe. If a person is making a claim about a glass of water sitting on a table, we can correspond that to an actual glass of water sitting on an actual table. If, on the other hand, he talks about an angel sitting on the table, and we have no independent confirmation of a gremlin sitting on the table, we know we have a problem. This is what distinguishes the religious experiences from the non-religious experience.

However, this assumes that angels are like glasses of water. If angels are different – if they are able to appear for some people while remaining invisible to others – then the claim that we have something that distinguishes religious experiences from scientific experiences that makes the former illegitimate and the latter legitimate runs into problems.

It is not my intent to defend religious experiences as legitimate. It is only to point out, once again, that the test of legitimacy or illegitimacy can not be read from a brain scan. It is a separate piece of information that one brings to the table. It is a piece of information that one collects somewhere else, and not form brain scans.

The Relevance of Brain Scans

If anybody were to infer from this that I thought that brain science is a waste of time, they would be dead wrong.

Here, consider an analogy to physical medicine. If we take a sonogram of a gall bladder, we can learn a lot about it. However, the sonogram itself does not tell us if the gall bladder is healthy or unhealthy. We bring something to the evaluation with us that we use to categorize different results as healthy and unhealthy.

The brain is an organ like any other. We take readings of the brain to determine how it is functioning. However, whether we categorize a particular functioning as healthy or unhealthy is not determined by the study of the brain alone. We have to evaluate that functioning according to some standard to determine its health.

It is important to note that the concepts of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ are value-laden concepts. It is not an accident or a coincidence that ‘healthy’ is good and ‘unhealthy’ is bad, any more than it is a coincidence that ‘circles’ are round and ‘squares’ are not round. ‘Healthy’ means ‘functioning well’. We can determine how an organ (such as the brain) functions by studying and measuring it, but we cannot read the value of that functioning from our instruments. At least, not from those instruments.

I am a realist about value. Values exist in the form of relationships between states of affairs and desires. Studying the brain (or the body) tells us about a certain state of affairs, but it tells us only part of what we need to know to determine its relationship to a certain set of desires. This is true in the same sense that measuring Tim tells us how tall he is, but does not tell us if he is taller or shorter than Tom. We need to bring something else with us when we look at Tim’s height to determine its relationship to Tom’s height – namely, we need Tom’s height. We need to bring something with us when we look at data on how an organ (such as the brain) functions to determine if it is functioning well or poorly. We need a set of desires.

Anybody who simply points to a brain scan and says, “This is good,” or, “This is bad,” is making a mistake.

Meta Theory

There is one other potential impact of brain scans. If we are going to relate states of affairs to desires, then desires themselves must exist. It is quite possible that brain science may, at some point, lead to the conclusion that beliefs and desires do not exist. We may come up with another explanation for intentional action, or we may discover that even ‘intentional action’ is a myth.

Clearly, if we should end up throwing away the idea that there are desires, then we must throw away the idea that value exists as a relationship between states of affairs and desires. Or, we keep the idea that value exists as such a relationship, and we throw away the idea that things have value.

I am actually quite certain that our knowledge of the brain will improve, and that many of the claims I make now will be modified or replaced over time. An individual should be open to the possibility of these types of changes, and be ready to adjust his or her thinking accordingly. The very idea that any contemporary theory can represent a complete and total truth of morality is as nonsensical as the claim that any current theory represents the complete and total truth of physics. It is reasonable to argue that a current theory is better than all theories that came before, yet it is also almost as certain that it is worse than some theory that will come along in the future.

That’s (moral) progress.

Rational Ignorance and Platonic Moral Forms

This is my sixth weekend blogging on the presentations given at "Beyond Belief 2006". I am on session 4 (of 10) from that series.

In the first presentation of Session 4, Stuart Hameroff, director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, gave a presentation on the nature of consciousness - one that does not involve spirits or souls.

Rational Ignorance

I confess that I am not at all qualified to judge his theory. I know enough about the field to know that there is a tremendous amount that I do not know. There were others in the audience more knowledgeable than I am who seemed to be highly critical. This fact, figured into the principle that one should accept the ‘received view’ in any field one is not qualified to speak in, suggests that there were problems with the theory.

The most important reason why I am not qualified to judge Hameroff’s theory is because I do not have time to study every subject on the planet. Therefore, I have to make choices. I have so many study hours in a day, and so many subjects to spend them on. Everybody makes choices about what they learn and what they remain ignorant about. My choice to study value theory means ignoring the fine details of theories of consciousness.

I bring these facts up because they illustrate a point that I have made earlier that we all must use shortcuts in determining which believes to accept and which to reject. We do not have the time to give every claim in every field of study a full rational review. So, in certain areas, we pick up those ideas that we see floating around in society and adopt them, holding that the mere fact that they exist show that they are good enough for maintaining existence.

I ran a search of my own blog and have discovered twelve posts in which I used the term “conscious”. In these posts, I used the term as I learned to use it as a part of learning how to speak English. Nobody could expect the young boy that I was when I learned this concept to give the concept a detailed and rational evaluation. I simply picked up common usage. In doing so, I picked up common beliefs about consciousness. There is an excellent chance that some of what I learned is simply false – popular myth and superstition. Yet, because my attention has been drawn to moral theory, I do not have time to look at the issue of consciousness. I consider these common beliefs to be good enough to get by.

I assert that there are others who regard religious terms the same way that I regard ‘consciousness’. As they learn to speak, they hear people talk unquestionably about God and angels, and they adopt a belief in these things as a part of learning to speak. They learn these things under conditions where they have no capacity to give the subject rational thought. Learning to speak as if there is no God is like learning a whole new language – entirely alien, and extremely difficult (if not started very early in life).

There are people who deny that consciousness exists. They argue that the term does not refer to anything that plays any type of causal role – that we could eliminate the concept entirely and still adequately explain everything event in the real world. We can, for example, imagine a robot that behaves in a way that is indistinguishable from a human, yet the robot lacks consciousness. From this, we conclude that consciousness plays no explanatory role in human behavior, which suggests that even humans are robots that lack consciousness.

It seems obvious to me that they are wrong. They probably insist that reason dictates that I am wrong. They might well consider me to be stubborn, refusing to accept their belief in aconsciousness, and quite simply deciding to live my life as I had been living it, making an occasional reference to consciousness.

If there is a justification for condemning those who believe in God, I do not see how it can be any different than the possibility of condemnation for believing in consciousness. If a belief is not harmful, then I see little reason to be overly concerned with whether people have that belief or not.

When a belief is not harmful.

On the other hand, when a belief manifests itself in behavior where the agent interferes with others living a fulfilling life, blocks access to medical advances that could save lives and end suffering, dismisses qualified candidates from positions such as judge or President, insists that the school spend education time promoting myth and superstition as fact, or seeks to kill as many people as possible who do not share his beliefs, then the qualification of 'harmless' belief no longer applies.

This, I argue, is the key difference. I do not care if a person believes in God or does not believe in consciousness. I do care if a person has beliefs that make it likely that he will devote himself to activities that make him a threat to others.

The Platonic Form of Good

In another part of Hameroff’s presentation he made a fleeting reference to a “connection to deeper reality of quantum platonic information embedded in the universe.” In this context, he included moral or ethical information. In other words, he suggested that at the quantum level – a level at which consciousness works (on his theory) – the brain has access to the platonic form of “the good” written into the universe.

This does concern my area of interest and does suggest that perhaps I might have reason after all to get into the study of consciousness, to investigate the possibility of quantum level platonic moral information. However, Hameroff made a once sentence claim that he did not seek to defend. When Susan Neiman, a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, rose from the audience to report that she did not even know what it meant to say that the brain has access to quantum level platonic moral forms, Hameroff responded by talking about mathematical information instead.

I am still not motivated to go looking for quantum level platonic moral forms because I simply do not see the need to do so. I so not see any mystery that such an entity can possibly help to answer. The questions I do know about, as far as I can tell, can be answered by looking at rather common, ordinary, macro-scale entities.

There are desires. Desires are propositional attitudes that identify the ends or ultimate goals of intentional human actions – propositions that are to be made or kept true.

There are states of affairs. These are simply sets of facts about the world, where the propositions that are the objects of our desires are either true or false.

There are intentional actions. This is the mechanism through which desires bring about states of affairs. The agent seeks to bring about states of affairs where the propositions that are the objects of his desires are true. However, because of false or incomplete beliefs, or a non-cooperative real world, agents often fail.

There is the fact that an agent, seeking to make or keep a proposition ‘P’ true, has a reason to cause others to have desires that will tend to make or keep proposition ‘P’ true. There is the parallel fact that such an agent has a reason to cause others not to have desires that would cause them to make or keep ‘P’ false. That is to say, people have many strong reasons to promote in others those desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibit those desires that tend to thwart other desires.

The tools for promoting or inhibiting desires include praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

We are seeking to make or keep true the propositions of our desires. However, those desires have been molded by others, who seek to create in us desires that tend to fulfill other desires and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. Thus, the propositions that we try to make or keep true will tend to be (to the degree that others are successful) desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others.

Please note, I do not need any “evolution of altruism” to account for altruism here. All I need is a malleability of desires and the ability on the part of others to mold those desires.

In all of this, I have been able to make use of ordinary entities of desires, states of affairs, the relationships between them, and ways of promoting or inhibiting desires in others. There are no intrinsic values and there is no mystery that requires that I go looking for evidence of platonic moral values.

I do not really see a need to study Hameroff’s theory of consciousness.

However, there have been times in the past where I saw no need to study something, only to discover that I was wrong. As a graduate student, I saw no need to study the philosophy of psychology. However, the department had a policy that required two classes in the Philosophy of Science, and I selected the Philosophy of Psychology as one of those classes.

It was in that class that I encountered the idea of desires as propositional attitudes. I went from there to consider desires as motivational reasons to make or keep certain propositions true, at the idea that ‘good’ could mean ‘the propositions that are the objects of some set of desires are true in that state.’ For example, a ‘good knife’ is a knife that is useful for making or keeping true the propositions that are the objects of the desires of people who tend to use knives.

It was in that class that I learned that, even though we cannot rationally evaluate desires as ends, that every desire is also, at the same time, a means towards the fulfillment of other desires. So, we can measure the value of a desire by its tendency to fulfill or thwart other desires.

Perhaps a study of consciousness will provide me with additional unintended and unanticipated insight. Perhaps not. I still have to make a decision based on limited information. That decision is that there is nothing to be gained by looking for quantum level platonic moral forms.

In light of this, I think that we can be a bit forgiving of those who decide that they are going to accept common wisdom on other subjects. That is, unless we start to find reason to believe that common wisdom makes an individual a threat to the well-being of others. When that happens, good people have a duty to question whether common wisdom is wise as some people think it is.

Conclusion

So, I have studied moral theory. Dr. Hameroff has studied theories of consciousness. I will admit to ignorance of theories of consciousness, mostly because I do not see in them anything relevant to moral theory. Hameroff sees a relationship, though I suspect that he has been too busy studying consciousness to learn much about moral theory.

There is nothing wrong about being ignorant of the specifics in any particular field of study. If there was, then we are all evil. There is nothing wrong with adopting conventional wisdom, whether it be on the existence of consciousness, the existence of platonic moral forms, or the existence of God.

There is no problem until we start to find reason to believe that those who adopt a particular belief are a threat to the well-being of others. When that happens, we have reason to require that others care a bit more about the truth of the matter. Until that happens, we have little moral reason to care.

Hate and Reasons to Hate

Several threads in current discussion have touched upon an important moral fact.

You can tell something about a person's moral character by the mistakes that he or she makes and by the unfounded beliefs that he or she adopts.

One of these threads can be found in rev. moe’s comment to yesterday’s post. In that post, I criticized those who would not give harmless homosexuals common respect. Rev. moe responded by writing:

As I'm sure you know, many Christians would think having a gay person living next door to them (or down the block, in the neighborhood, in their town, city, state, country - well, you get the idea) IS a threat. Of course, they can't really justify that fear, but their inability to define or explain it, or provide any valid evidence to support it, doesn't prevent them from using it to support discrimination against gays.

You can say something about the moral character of somebody who has an infinite number of unfounded, unjustified beliefs to draw upon, but who decides that his favorite includes beliefs that others may be harmed. For one thing, you can learn that such a person has a desire to do harm. Otherwise, he would not like the beliefs that harm is justified, and this would give him the power to see the problems in those arguments that say that power is justified (if there are any problems)

The Role of Evidence

Of course, I knew when I wrote yesterday's posts that fundamentalist Christians like to claim that homosexuals and homosexuality are dangerous. After all, merely tolerating homosexuals among us is enough to cause terrorist attacks to succeed and hurricanes to strike vulnerable cities, we are told. If only we had sacrificed these people like God told us to, none of these things would have happened, allegedly.

In fact, bigots usually like to wrap their bigotry in a cloak of respectability. “I do not hate members of Group G per se. I am trying to prevent innocent people from being harmed. It just so happens that the members of Group G tend to do harm. They are a threat.”

For example, “I have nothing against homosexuals per se. However, I despise those who prey on young children. It just so happens that homosexuals prey on young children.”

Or, “I have nothing against atheists per se. However, I want our schools to be a safe place to learn. Unfortunately, atheism teaches children to act like amoral animals, which destroys the whole school environment and, in fact, threatens the very foundation of civilization.”

The standard response to these types of claims is to take them as normal propositions and then to refute the reasoning behind them. A person attempts to refute these claims by proving that these conclusions are based on premises that are false, or on reasoning that is invalid, thus showing that there is no argument in defense of those conclusions. For example, this person may answer these challenges by showing that heterosexual males are more likely to molest children than homosexual males, and that a Christian has a higher probability of ending up in prison than an atheist.

An Aside on Bigotry

Actually, I need a little space for an important aside. These standard responses are actually just as bigoted as the claims they are being used against. This is because the response accepts as valid the assumption that whole groups can be held morally responsible for the behavior of individual members, and that we may judge the morality of each member of the group by looking at how the group behaves on average.

It does not matter if every other atheist on the planet becomes a drunken rapist at every opportunity; I reserve the right to be judged by my own actions. The very idea of, “Person P behaved in a reprehensible manner; you share trait T with person P; therefore, you are just as guilty,” is the very essence of bigotry. If we were to discover that the owners of blue pickups tend to be involved in more violent crimes than owners of red SUVs, would we then be justified in outlawing the ownership of blue pickups?

So, these types of refutations are as worthless and morally objectionable as the arguments they seek to refute.

The Nature of the Argument

Another fault with these types of responses is that they make the mistake of taking the original claim as a conclusion drawn from evidence. In fact, the conclusion is not drawn from any evidence whatsoever. If it was a conclusion drawn from evidence, there should be at least a plausible argument in its defense, and agents will abandon the conclusion the instant they see that there is no support for it.

Instead, these are conclusions in search of evidence. The conclusions are taken as given. The only thing that is missing is the evidence that shows that the conclusion is true.

Because this is a conclusion in search of evidence, it is useless to offer any type of counter-evidence. Any evidence that contradicts the desired conclusion will be ignored. “This is not the evidence you are looking for. The evidence you need must be elsewhere. Keep looking until you find it.”

Like the “thinking” that went on when evaluating the evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Like the “thinking” of the oil companies such as Exxon-Mobile regarding global warming.

Like the “thinking” that goes on in the mind of a young earth creationist or with most theists in general.

Because this “thinking” is in terms of a conclusion in search of evidence, any effort one puts into impugning the evidence is largely pointless. The agent merely answers, “If this evidence does not work, I will find some other evidence that does.” There is an infinite amount of evidence that one can draw upon. This evidence and the reasoning behind it does not have to be any good. It just has to be embraceable. It can involve fallacious reasoning, as long as the fallacy has the power to convince people. If the problems can be overlooked, then they will be overlooked.

The Kinder, Gentler Atheist

These points tie into the claim that if atheists were kinder and gentler people then they will be treated better. We see this view expressed repeatedly among atheists. If only those other atheists would treat the Christians better, they would treat the atheists better, and these problems would go away.

This is as absurd as saying to the Jews in Germany in the 1920s that if they had treated the Arians better then the Holocaust would never have happened (it is all the Jews’ fault). Or if the Africans had treated the Europeans better then they never would have been enslaved (it is all the Africans’ fault).

The idea that if atheists treated the Christians better then the current bigotry against atheists would not exist is just another example of this type of reasoning. If the bigot is not able to find fault in one area, he will find it somewhere else, and make up fault to the degree that it suits his purpose to do so. There is nothing that the victim can do to make himself or his group ever “look good” in the eyes of the bigot – except fall on his own sword.

The same is true of the belief that homosexuals are a threat. This is not a belief drawn from a consideration of available evidence. This is a conclusion in search of evidence to support it. If evidence can not be found in one area, the agent will look elsewhere. If he cannot find it elsewhere, he will make it up. Whatever the final story happens to be, “homosexuals are a threat” is taken as the unquestionable truth, and we simply need to find out the details of how and why they are a threat.

Why These Beliefs

From this, we can then ask, “Why, of all of the unfounded and unjustified beliefs that these people could have embraced, did they embrace that one?” What is the explanation for making the belief “homosexuals are a threat” a conclusion in search of evidence rather than an infinite number of other possible groundless beliefs they could have embraced?

A moral person begins with the assumption that others should not be harmed unless the need to harm is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. That is to say, if the conclusion argues for harm, there is a prima facie argument for holding the claims up to the light of reason to see if they are true.

These are the moral principles that govern a fair trial. Yet, they are moral principles that are just as valid outside of the courtroom. A morally decent individual needs to be convinced of the need to harm others. He requires that the conclusion that harm is necessary must be a conclusion drawn from the available evidence. A morally corrupt individual takes a belief that harm is justified as a conclusion in search of evidence. He assumes that the harm he inflicts on others is legitimate, then tries to find something – anything – that will give weight to his valued conclusion.

Of course many Christians see homosexuals as a threat. However, this is clearly not hate drawn from a careful consideration of the evidence. It is a hate that is assumed to be valid, in search of anything that will make the hate appear justified.

Threads

I said that there were several threads in recent postings that were orbiting this main point.

In recent discussions of The Blasphemy Challenge, I mentioned how an earlier post of mine was misinterpreted. I mentioned there that, when a person makes a mistake (such as in misinterpreting my post) we may ask why he made that mistake and not some other. That reason generally involves a desire to support a particular conclusion. In this case, a reasonable theory is that the agent had a hatred of The Blasphemy Challenge and needed evidence of its wrongness. A misinterpretation of my post looked like evidence, so he embraced this misinterpretation. Here was an example of a conclusion in search of evidence, and a desire to find that evidence so strong that it generated the illusion that this “reason to hate” could be found in my posting.

To be fair, I also view the claims that ‘theism is a mental illness’ and ‘identifying the culture that a child is being raised in is child abuse’ to be examples of people with conclusions (disrespect for theists) in search of evidence. This desire to believe bad things about theists causes some atheists to see validity where there is none. In other words, atheists also can be subject to the fault of having beliefs in search of evidence, rather than beliefs drawn from evidence.