Vacation

I will be going away on vacation for 10 days. The next time you will hear from me should be the night of September 9th.

The traffic reports for this blog tell me that many readers are college students. I would like to welcome those students back to the blog.

While I am away, if you are looking for something interesting to read, I had an interesting discussion with a few members of the studio audience over the relationship between beliefs, desires, and value. That exchange started on August 8th with Potential versus Actual Desires and ended on August 21st.

The comments in this case are particularly worth reading.

Also, last year, I was writing a series of posts on the weekends covering the Beyond Belief 2006 conference. This conference was attended by a number of excellent thinkers such as Paul and Patricia Churchland, Richard Dawkins, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. I wrote a posting about every presentation given at the conference.

The June 6th post, Beyond Belief 2006: Summary contains a link to each of the posts tied to that series.

In the mean time, please feel free to help yourself to some chocolate and Diet Dr. Pepper. You're free to talk among yourselves in the comments section. I have over 700 posts for you to browse through, or you can use the search feature to find subjects that interest you.

I will see you when I get back.

Alonzo Fyfe

Morality and the Possibility of Harm

As I understand it, the driver who rear-ended the bus my wife was involved in, got out of his vehicle, stepped onto the bus, and asked, “Is anybody hurt?” He then said, “I’m going to go move my vehicle.”

He then got into his vehicle and drove off.

I am not going to say that this story is accurate. For the purposes of this essay, it does not matter whether it is accurate. The mere possibility is enough to illustrate the points that I want to write about today.

When I was in high school, I became distracted by some fire engines and police cars at a nearby house. When I turned my attention back to the road, I found that I had drifted, and was near to rear-ending a parked car. I hit the breaks, and stopped before doing any damage.

I can well imagine the driver of that truck suffering the same lapse in judgment. And because of that momentary lapse, he hit a bus during rush hour.

According to what my wife told me, he then got out of his truck and came up to the back door of the bus. He asked, “Is anybody hurt?” He then said, “I’m going to move my truck. I’ll be right back.” Only he took off.

Again, I can well imagine an individual in that situation, seeing how much harm was done, suffering an overwhelming panic. I can imagine myself in that situation – with all of the things that I wanted to do in my life, and all of the things that I have tried to do – undone, with a short lapse in judgment.

“It’s not fair. I don’t deserve this.”

Of course, neither did the people on the bus – and the only thing they did was seek a ride home on public transportation. This is hardly an act worthy of being tossed around inside of a bus.

The real universe is indifferent to our survival, or to the quality of our lives. It simply does not care if a momentary lapse of judgment causes so much harm. It does not care if its laws create tsunamis and plagues that wipe out hundreds of thousands to millions of people who have done nothing wrong. The universe does not care, so it is up to us to care.

As much as I can understand what this imaginary driver (I do not know if any of these statements are true of the real incident), it is still important to assign moral responsibility for these momentary lapses in judgment.

There is an important difference between that imaginary driver and me. When I suffered through these near accidents while I was a teenager, I learned a lesson. Driving was a dangerous activity. I asked myself whether driving was so important that it was worth not only the price of a car and the gasoline that fueled it, but the potential for hitting a bus full of passengers. I can easily imagine driving down a street, seeing a kid on a bike as he rides out in front of my car, the crunch, and the mangled body laying on the pavement.

Those types of thoughts convinced me that I did not want to drive. When my first driver’s license expired, I did not renew it.

My wife does not drive either, by the way – because medical problems prohibit her from driving. So, our household does not have a vehicle of any type (unless you count bicycles),. We make our way on public transportation.

I saw another story that is similar to the case of the hapless driver. This story was about an individual who picked up a rock and tossed it over the edge of a cliff, then leaned over, just in time to see the rock strike a comber coming up the hill. The climber was killed instantly.

Luke Rodolph, who threw the rock, did not run. He did not try to claim that this was an accident. He confessed.

Again, I could imagine the horror of somebody who was basically a responsible person, suddenly discovering that he had done something horribly wrong. I can well imagine it because, as a young teenager, I once threw a rock over a cliff into a fog bank below. The fog cleared after that, and I saw that there was a road below me. There was nobody on the road at the time. I learned a valuable lesson. However, people could have died, and I would have been responsible.

The universe does not care about the size of the price tag that it attaches to the lessons it teaches.

It take the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people caught in the middle of an ill-planned war, or vacationing and living on the shores of the Indian Ocean, or a whole planet full of people wiped out by a celestial impact that some foresight and planning could have prevented.

It is sometimes argued that if a particular type of mistake is common – if anybody can do it – that it is wrong to hold people morally responsible for those mistakes. However, if a type of mistake puts a lot of people at risk of great harm, then we need stronger barriers – internal and external – against making those types of mistakes, not weaker. We have reason to make those mistakes less common by putting up stronger psychological barriers to committing those mistakes, not more common by telling people “It’s alright. It doesn’t matter.”

I argue that this is a significant problem for much of what passes for moral philosophy these days. Philosophers test their moral intuitions against highly contrived and almost-never-going-to-happen-in-the-real-world situations. Morality is not a discovery of properties inherent in nature and nothing for a special faculty of ‘moral intuition’ to pick out. It is an institution that aims to manipulate the desires of individuals to prevent them from creating real-world harms to real-world people in real-world possible circumstances.

I suspect that there is a far greater chance that my life, health, and well-being will is more at risk from some driver’s momentary lapse in judgment than from some doctor needing to take five organs to save five patients. As a result, I have far stronger reason to inhibit others from suffering these momentary lapses in judgment, than from refraining to kill me to harvest my organs, or to need to kill somebody else to save me from death. (The ‘need to kill’ part is important here. If doctors have sufficient organs coming in from voluntary sources this diminishes the magnitude of the significant. Furthermore, I will have the ability to reduce the risk further by promoting the voluntary contribution of one’s organs.

We have reason to be paying far more moral attention to those who are guilty of momentary lapses of judgment in every-day circumstances that could get people killed, then those whose sentiments might cause them to behave in appropriately under circumstances that will almost certainly never arise.

Physics vs. Prayer

I have always been quite surprised at how kind and considerate emergency response personnel (police, fire fighters, paramedics) can be. I do not think I have ever met one who struck me as an individual who was just doing his job and collecting a paycheck. They have always provided a level of kindness and concern that could never be motivated by “just collecting a paycheck.”

Yesterday evening, the bus that my wife was riding home stopped at the stop before hers, when a fairly large vehicle hit the back of the bus at full force. This was at the stop before that which my wife Lesley typically gets off at. She called me from the bus (cell phones are a wonderful invention) and I walked over to meet her. Seven or eight people were going to the hospital. Lesley’s injuries were minor. We spent about 4 hours in the hospital, then walked home.

The driver of the other vehicle left the scene, but was arrested a short while later. Or, at least, a person was arrested who was alleged to have been the same person who left the scene of the accident.

The laws of physics being what they are, the impact imparted energy into the bus, causing the bus to suddenly accelerate forward. However, the impact did not impart the same energy onto the passengers of the bus (inertial dampeners not yet being standard equipment for RTD busses). So, the passengers, being at rest, tended to stay at rest until acted upon by another force. That force was typically some other part of the bus.

The laws of physics being what they are . . .

This is one of the nice things about having people understand the laws of physics. The laws of physics being what they are, it is possible to make reasonable predictions about what would happen to the bodies on a bus, when the bus is struck from behind by a fairly massive vehicle going appreciably faster than the bus (relatively speaking).

Knowing these things, it becomes possible to determine explain and predict what will likely happen to a bus under such circumstances, and to make design changes to reduce the amount of damage that people are likely to suffer.

Using these tools, it is possible to preserve and protect human life.

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that a better understanding of physics and an application of those principles to events such as rear-ending a bus will do far more to prevent injury and death to humans than ‘praying for a safe trip’ ever will. Even if society’s investment in ‘praying for a safe trip’ (in terms of the hours that people spend and the institutions established that cater to the practice of praying for a safe trip) were a million times that invested in understanding the laws of physics and applying that understanding to the design of busses, the physics option will still save more lives and prevent more injury than the prayer option.

In fact, I hold that the prayer option does not save any lives or prevent any injury – that the only practical tool we have for this end is the application of physics to the problem of bodies in a bus when rear-ended by trucks.

Another aspect of the case that I mentioned above is that the driver of the vehicle that hit the bus left the scene of the accident. The police apprehended a person whom they believe was driving the vehicle that hit the bus. I understand that they have strong reason for believing this – that they caught the person in the vehicle as he was leaving the scene.

The laws of physics being what they are, it seems most reasonable to believe that the person who was apprehended was the same person who was driving the vehicle that struck the bus and who left the scene of the accident.

The point that I want to stress here is that the decision that the person arrested and the person who fled the scene of the accident are the same person is a conclusion that we tend to insist be based on evidence. If we were to discover that the person was arrested because some detective, used an Ouija Board that spelled out the name of the accused, this would not be considered good enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

What if the detective, instead of using an Ouija Board, reported that he prayed and asked God to identify the culprit? If there is a God, then He should know who the person is, right? So, it seems, we would have to consider this to be a very reliable source. If God said that the accused is guilty, then the accused is guilty. He might as well confess.

Of course, we do not accept this type of evidence in a court of law either. In fact, we consider it highly suspect. Though, I am curious as to why those people who will not accept religious testimonial in a court of law where the fate of a single person is at stake, have no problems hearing that President Bush used the same type of evidence to determine matters of national policy – that he prays for guidance, and does whatever he thinks God tells him to do. We will not send an accused criminal to jail on the basis of this type of evidence, but we will condemn millions of people to war (as soldiers, or as potential ‘collateral damage’) based on this type of evidence.

I am not saying that legislation requires the same standards of proof that is required in criminal courts – proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

[Okay, sometimes I argue that legislation requires this type of evidence. A right means that there is a presumption in favor of a particular view, and that this presumption must be outweighed by the evidence against it. A right to freedom of speech means that freedom of speech is the default position. However, freedom of speech is not an absolute right – people cannot say whatever they want to say whenever they want to say it. The proverbial case of (falsely) yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater is an example. However, the right to freedom of speech means that the judges should start with a presumption in favor of the speaker, and side with those who would silence him only upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt. However, this does not apply to all legislation, only to legislation that is stood up against a right.]

What I am saying is that the same types of evidence permissible in a trial are the only types of evidence that are legitimate to deciding how to vote on legislation.

Along these lines, there is another question that I would like to make a standard part of the political process. I will add this to the list of questions that I want to see become a standard part of the political process. “Candidate A, this question is for you. In deciding on how to vote for a policy, will you base your decision only on the types of evidence that would be acceptable in a court of law? Or will you go outside that list to include evidence considered sufficiently unreliable to justify sending even one person to jail – evidence such as divine revelation, astrological calculations, or favors for those who contribute to your campaign?”

We are accustomed to hearing of the big ticket items where religion has been a source of harm. Yet, we can find our examples even in something more mundane, like a traffic accident. Here is an excellent opportunity to take the time to ask which option would save the most lives and prevent the most injury; prayer, or physics? If we add up all of the small gains that we could make in human well-being with a population that devoted a fraction of the time they now spend studying scripture to studying science, it may reduce the big-ticket items to insignificance.

Bush Administration View of American Principles

The actions of the Bush Administration since 9/11 seem to suggest that the Administration itself thought that the American experiment was a failure, and could not survive this type of attack.

Honestly, look at the reasons that the Administration continues to offer for its decisions to:

• repeal the 4th Amendment prohibition against warrantless searches

• arrest people without charges and to hold them indefinitely while subjecting them to ‘cruel and unusual’ treatment

• repeal habeas corpus

• repeal the rights of a defendant to a fair trial and to hear the evidence offered against him so that he can respond to it and offer evidence to refute it

• eliminate as much as possible the system of checks and balances by (1) cutting off the authority of the legislative branch (through signing statements) and (2) cutting off the judicial branch (through executive orders making the President and the Justice and Defense departments the judge of their own actions)

• hide everything under a cloak of secrecy while shouting ‘traitor’ at all who question their judgments.

This argument has always been, “Because the American system does not work. It is fatally flawed, and it needs to be replaced by a system having the characteristics described above in order to keep us safe. All things considered, these characteristics, that we have until now classified as the mark of tyrannies, are all legitimate government actions.”

In other words, “We were wrong to have condemned these policies in the past. America, and Americans, made a mistake to raise objections to them. We now recognize the error of our ways and adopt these policies as our own.”

I wonder if the Bush Administration plans on offering a formal apology other countries that it once condemned for engaging in these practices? After all, if I tell my neighbor that he is doing something wrong and condemn him for it, only to later discover the error of my ways, I should say something like, “I’m sorry I condemned you for setting fire to your cat. I have come to realize that this is a perfectly legitimate activity, and I plan on doing it myself from now on.”

Yet, there has to be a reason why the Bush Administration has opted for warrantless searches and seizures over warrants, unification of powers under one branch rather than separation of powers, and the effective abolition of the idea of a right to a fair trial. It is clearly not the case that they would have thrown away these practices if they had any faith or reason to believe that these policies would work for the benefit of the country.

There are only two possible explanations for these types of decisions.

(1) They did not believe that these policies would work. That is to say, they considered America to be a failed experiment and that it was time to admit to those mistakes and to adopt the practices we once condemned.

(2) They still believed that these practices would work for America, but they were not interested in America’s future, only their own. Towards that end they replaced institutions that were meant to secure the blessings of liberty for all Americans with a different set of institutions that preserved and promoted the wealth and power of a few.

Or some combination thereof.

There were a group of people involved, and they likely had different motives. Of these, I think that the first option deserves more attention than it has received. The Bush Administration thought that the principles of individual liberty written into the American system of government were a mistake.

This possibility has some interesting implications. For example, as odd as it may sound, the people who share Bush’s assumptions that the American system is fatally flawed are those who tend to wrap themselves most tightly in the American flag. If a poll were taken, I would predict it to show that those who consider themselves the most patriotic are significantly more eager to help Bush dismantle the American system of government.

In other words, those who are most eager to defend the flag are least eager to defend what it stands for, and those who are eager to defend what the flag stands for are least eager to defend the flag.

I want to point out that just because Bush disagrees and does not support the ideals under which this country has operated for over 200 years does not prove that he is wrong. The founding fathers were not divine persons who were merely transcribing the wises of an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly beneficent God. It is as much of a fallacy to say that something is unquestionably true and good because it was said by Washington as it is to say that something was unquestionably true and good because it was said by Jesus. After all, the founding fathers defended slavery (most of them) and never thought that women should be given a right to vote.

In fact, the founders substantially admitted their own fallibility when they wrote the Constitution. They wrote procedures into the Constitution for people to follow if future generations should ever believe that the founders had been mistaken.

(If only the authors of scripture had the same humility. Then they, too, would have included provisions for altering the text over time to at least remove the most significant errors. However, they had the arrogance of asserting their own infallibility, which gives is legions of people asserting that their texts cannot be altered as a matter of principle.)

So, as with the issue of slavery and women’s rights, perhaps we need to consider the Bush Administration’s suggestion that the principles of separation of powers, warrantless searches and seizures, and the right to trial by jury were bad ideas that need to be repealed. We can do so using the tools that the founders provided – by entertaining amendments to the Constitution to correct these mistakes.

If only the Bush Administration were honest enough to pursue that option.

I suspect that the reason they do not do so is because they know how the decision would go, if they only decided to present their position honestly and accurately.

A Place at the Table

Tom Krattenmaker’s article, “Secularists, What Happened to the Open Mind” contained the following passage:

The worst tendencies of atheists (who, by definition, believe God does not exist) and secularists (who are best described as "unreligious") were framed for me during a recent e-mail exchange I had with a staff member of a humanist organization.

Discussing the relationship between science and religion, I had expressed my view that religion should leave scientific research to the scientists and devote itself, along with the fields of ethics and philosophy, to the mighty issues of the human condition: good and evil, the meaning of life, the nature of love and so forth. To which my correspondent replied: Why would something as inherently foolish as religion deserve a place at the table for discussions of that magnitude?

I would like to quickly point out that Krattenmaker got the definition of ‘Secularist’ wrong. A secularist is somebody who believes in the separation of church and state – that the government should not be used by any religion to impose its beliefs on those who do not voluntarily join with that church. Many secularists are extremely religious.

Often, they come from a religious history that has suffered some rather barbaric persecution, and so are (justifiably) afraid of what happens when the State gets involved in matters of faith. Or they simply know enough about history to know what happened when political monarchs asserted and believed that they were God’s chosen leaders. The 18th century reaction to that was simply to deny the state a role in enforcing religious doctrine.

However, the more important question is, in matters such as the meaning of life and the difference between good and evil, “Why would something as inherently foolish as religion deserve a place at the table for discussions of that magnitude?”

I have shared one of Krattenmaker’s criticisms of the Dawkins, Harris, and Hutchins, that they unfairly and unjustly go from, “Some theists are X” to “All theists are X” However, having said this, there is a case to be made that religious ethics, insofar as it is religious, does not deserve a place at the table for discussions of ethics and meaning of life.

Okay, actually, I do not fully understand the metaphor, “a place at the table”. If “the table” is the public forum, then everybody deserves a place at the table, because nobody should be prohibited from speaking peacefully in public, no matter how stupid their ideas happen to be. However, I think that the phrase typically refers to something narrower than this.

However, this is not the sense of ‘at the table’ that I think the claim refers to. The claim refers to a special table, where people get down to business on the matter at hand. It is a sense that says, “These people can make an important contribution to the subject we are talking about, so excluding them would be a mistake.”

Imagine sitting at the chemistry table, where the participants are talking about atoms and molecules when somebody shows up, sets down a stack of old, dusty books, and starts proclaiming, “It says here that there are five elements – four material elements (water, air, earth, and fire), and one immaterial element (spirit). I want to contribute this to the discussion.”

Chemists can be forgiven for refusing this person a place at the table. In fact, his contributions are effort. The ideas that he wants to bring up have either been considered long ago and rejected, or are already built into current theories. (Note: It was the ancient Greeks who discovered the atom; modern scientists only refined the knowledge as to its structure.) His “contribution” is, at best, a waste of time.

At the astronomy table, astronomers want to compare the results of their research and form reasoned, scientific theories about the history and structure of the universe. They talk about things happening 13 billion light years away, which means 13 billion years ago, whose information-carrying light has just reached us. Here, the theist wants to come to the table and say that the universe is only 10,000 years old, created by God, where the Earth, even if it is not the physical center, is certainly the central focus of this all powerful divine force.

At the biology table, the religious want to propose their theory of intelligent design. They want to introduce a theory where God plays an important role, even though they cannot come up with a simple experiment whereby, under conditions C, this god theory makes predications that are more accurate than theories that do not have a god variable.

In both places, religion does not have a voice, unless and until religion can come up with a theory T, with a god variable, that better explains and predicts astronomical observations than the current theories, none of which has a God variable. Some of the recent criticisms of religion coming from the biology table is precisely because religions want to bring things to the table that are senseless wastes of the biologist’s time. The theist cannot produce any experiments that support their theory, and time spent on these worthless claims is time not being spent making real scientific progress.

The same is true in ethics and the meaning of life.

Unfortunately, theism has held the chair at the ethics and meaning of life table, even as their influence at the chemistry astronomy, and biology tables has (rightfully) waned. It is their claim that atheists have no place at the table, because, without a god, there can be no ethics and no meaning to life. People take their chairmanship of the ethics and meaning of life table almost for granted.

That’s a mistake. Religion is doing the same thing to ethics that it is trying to do to astronomy and biology. It fills the discussion with ideas that come from primitive tribes of people who knew as little about their moral universe as they did about their physical universe. It fills the discussion with fiction and myths that actually get in the way of making real moral progress. In fact, the very reason that moral progress has fallen behind our scientific and technical progress is because ethics and meaning of life issues are carrying so much religious dead weight.

This is not to say that religious people cannot be moral. However, honestly, most moral progress that we have seen in the past 400 years has come from secular moral thinkers. Remember, ‘secular’ does not mean ‘non-religious’ – it simply refers to somebody who does not use religious assumptions as a part of their argument.

John Locke, for example, was clearly a religious person. However, his argument for human rights did not come from postulating the existence of a God. It came from postulating humans living in a state of nature, without government. This, in fact, is the secular view of human life, not the typical religious view.

In fact, religion . . . most religion . . . is in direct conflict with moral progress. Most religions state that we hit our moral peak long ago in our barbaric and primitive past, and that every deviation from their concepts of right and wrong is evil. When a religious view holds that scripture cannot be wrong, this means that those who created scripture were morally perfect. Any deviation from their opinions is evil and must be avoided. Where modern thinkers disagree with these primitive tribesmen, we must believe that the primitive tribesmen had the truth of the matter, and the most we can hope for is to think as they did.

For the most part, religions have responded to four centuries of secular moral progress by taking secular morality and using it to rewrite (reinterpret) their religious texts. Where populations have been most willing to rewrite scripture to conform to secular morality, these are the areas where we have seen the most moral progress. Where people are so strongly tied to their religious doctrine that they cannot stand the idea of reinterpretation, that is where we see the least moral progress. In fact, there, we often find barbaric cruelty.

Most Christians, for example, have rewritten their scripture to insert the secular prohibition on slavery, equality of women, permission to charge interest, permission to work on the Sabbath, prohibition on killing witches, prohibition on killing blasphemers, and permission to inoculate against disease (condemned by the church as ‘playing God’).

In all of these cases, moral progress flowed from the secular to the religious. The ideas came from arguments that ignored scripture and relied on reason. Of course, those Christians who wrote these secular ideas into their interpretation of scripture would often go on and pursue those ideas with religious passion. However, this again is due substantially to the fact that religious leaders have claimed a monopoly on moral truth. Few people look deep enough to note that their moral truth does not come from scripture, but is taken from secular thinkers.

I expect that some critics of this view might think that they can bolster their side by bringing up what I have previously called “The Hitler and Stalin Cliché.” These regimes show how flawed secular ethics are compared to religious ethics.

There are a number of problems with this objection, which I discuss in the post linked to above. However, one objection is that Christianity, Islam, and every form of religious ethics are, like the regimes of Hitler and Stalin, moral systems made by humans without any divine input. God did not have a hand in any of these systems. All of them show some measure of human failing. Some fail more than others, but they all fail.

The question of the day is whether those who preach a religious ethics deserve a place at the table in the discussion of morality and the meaning of life. In fact, their ideas are just as flawed as the flat earth, the geocentric universe, and the 6000 year old earth. They get their moral ideas from the same place as others get these ideas about the structure of the solar system. And their source was just as ingorant of the moral univese in which they lived as they were of the physical universe.

Honestly, they just do not have much of value to contribute. And that which they contribute which is of value, is that which they have taken from secular philosophers for the past four centuries anyway.

Insulting Religious People

I am intrigued by this question, which Jacques Berlinerblau asked in an article on Newsweek Online called, "Secularism: Boring (Part I)"

Query: Can an atheist or agnostic commentator discuss any aspect of religion for more than thirty seconds without referring to religious people as imbeciles, extremists, mental deficients, fascists, enemies of the common good, crypto-Nazis, conjure men, irrationalists, pedophiles, bearers of false consciousness, authoritarian despots, and so forth? Is that possible?

Berlinerblau's question brought to mind a closely related question: Is there anything inherently contradictory in a group of rational people debating the truth of the proposition, "All X's are imbeciles" and concluding, as a result of reasoned debate, that the proposition is true?

Now, I have repeatedly raised objections against the claim that "All theists are X". A theist is simply a person who holds that the proposition, "At least one god exists" is probably or certainly true. Nothing of consequence follows from this. In order to get to any substantive conclusion, one has to make further claims about the nature of this God. Since no two people share the same beliefs about God, it is difficult, if not impossible, to defend any statement that says, 'All theists are X' for any X other than X = 'people who believe that one or more gods probably or certainly exist'.

However, what of the proposition, "Some theists are imbecels?" or, more directly, "Any theist who believes X on the basis of Y is an imbecel?"

Is it not possible to hold a rational and reasoned debate and come to the conclusion that, at least in some cases, this is true?

One of the terms that Berlinerblau used was "pedophile." I believe that it is beyond dispute that the claim, "some theists are pedophiles" is almost certainly true, and that it is sometimes true that "those theists over there are pedophiles." A person who makes and defends a claim of this type does not automatically demonstrate that he has given up his devotion to truth and reason.

Or, let us consider a criminal court case. In this case, the proposition being debated is, "Is the defendant a murderer?" In the court, the defense and prosecuting attorneys engaged in a reasoned debate, each bringing their evidence before the jury, where the prosecuting attorney is charged with proving that the proposition, "The defendant is a murderer," is true, and the defense attorney trying to prove that the proposition is false.

It would be insane to suggest that there is something flawed in a court case that can be illustrated using the rhetorical question, "Can a prosecuting attorney discuss any aspect of an active case without referring to defendants as murderers, arsonists, drunk drivers, child abusers, embezzlers, thieves, robbers, con-men, liars, and so forth?"

Given the nature of the subject, the answer is no. However, given the nature of the subject, this is not necessarily a problem for prosecuting attorneys.

Indeed, it is the role of these "atheist and agnostic commentators" to play the role of social prosecutors. At least, I will assert that I take this as my role. I look at the actions performed by different agents and present reasons for holding that the agent can be properly, reasonably, and rationally labeled a bigot, sophist, liar, or perpetrator of some other moral wrong. It would be difficult to have an ethics blogs that did not make ethical judgments about people who perform certain actions.

It would be absurd to suggest that a person attempting to reason whether a person has committed a moral crime is necessarily closed-minded by that fact alone. It is not close-mindedness to listen to the evidence yet to draw the conclusion that the original assertion of moral wrongdoing was correct.

The same applies to every term that Berlinerblau has used in his question. Is it the case that "Some theists are extremists?" Well, given a sufficiently precise definition of "extremism" (one that is consistent with the proposition that people generally have many and strong reasons to inhibit extermism), this proposition is sometimes true, and a proof that it is true need not show that the speaker has abandoned principles of truth and reason.

So, let us take the word 'imbecile'. This term refers to people whose mental capabilities are similar to those of a young child.

Now, the reasoning capabilities of a young child, however poorly developed, are able to see through the problems behind the Santa Claus myth. The impossibility of delivering all of those toys to all of those people in such a short time, in particular, gives the child reason to believe that the Santa Claus story is not true.

Many religious myths are as unreasonable as the Santa Claus myth. This means that they would only be found reasonable by those people whose capability of reasoning about such things are on a par with those children who still 'believe in' Santa Claus. That is to say, beliefs in these specific myths are imbicilic or child-like beliefs.

The difference between the Santa Claus myth and the Abrahamic myths, for example, is that, at the age when the child obtains the ability to question these myths, they are praised and encouraged for their ability to see through the Santa Claus myth, but condemned if they should question the Abrahamic myth. The message that the eight-year-old receives for questioning Santa Claus is one of positive reinforcement; but questioning the Abrahamic myth results in condemnation and, in many cases, punishment.

Face it, the advocates of the Abrahamic myths cannot use reason to convince the child that these myths are true; even a child can see the holes. The only tool they have left is the tool that, "Those who question these truths are bad people. The deserve to be punished, as we will punish you, if you question these myths." This message is built into every Abrahamic religion.

I am not saying that this is some back-room conspirasy against children by adults who know better. Children raised in an environment, "God doubters are bad people," will simply pass these attitudes on to their own children in a chain of abuse that is self-perpetuating. That is, at least, until enough people stand up and question the "God doubters are bad people" myth.

The decision to put "In God We Trust" on the money and "under God" in the pledge owe themselves to these same social forces - a despirate need to force society to think in terms of God-beleivers as "we" or "fellow Americans" - giving them a sense of belonging, while associating God-doubting with alienation and rejection.

The decision to allow God-doubters to sit out the Pledge of Allegiance actually reinforces this message. While the God-doubters remain seated everybody gets the message that those who believe in God are included, and those who doubt God (deserve to be) excluded. The movement to put "In God We Trust" on public buildings is also a blatant attempt to communicate the message - particularly to children - that God doubters are bad people. At least, if you want acceptance, if you want to be a part of "we" rather than "them", you must trust in God.

This also suggests that it is particularly important to block any attempt to communicate to young people - particularly in public schools - the message that "God doubters are bad people." Since this message is written into the Pledge of Allegiance, this is why it is particularly important that schools not be permitted to engage in a ritual whose primary purpose is to help parents communicate the message, "Those who believe in God are good people, and those who doubt

Those children carry this message into adulthood, which is why, even as adults, they continue to hold the attitude that God doubters are bad people.

These social forces explain why it is that so many adults adopt such imbicilic beliefs. However, they do not show that the beliefs themselves are not imbicilic. It does not disprove the claim that those who believe such things, insofar as they believe them, believe things that a rational young child would be able to see are false, if socially permitted to do so.

Saying so does not automatically mean that the person who says it has abandoned reason and evidence. Indeed, asserting that such a person has abandoned reason and evidence is to beg the question – it is to assume that one’s own position on what is under debate is the correct position. Without this assumption, it is perfectly reasonable for reasonable and rational agents to argue in defense of the thesis, “Religious beliefs R are beliefs that children would normally be able to see as flawed at about the same age as they doubt the existence of Santa Claus, if they were socially permitted to do so.” Or, in other words, “Religious beliefs R are imbicilic.”

The same applies to every other term that Berlinblau used. And I sincerely like to see those who question religion to begin putting these arguments in this type of structure.

Bush Don't know much about history

President Bush is launching a new offensive to convince the people of the necessity of staying in Iraq. His new propaganda offensive tries to draw a lesson from history that argues in favor of this policy.

Specifically, Bush’s argument goes as follows:

We stayed in South Korea, and South Korea became a model democracy, producing a thriving society that became the envy of Asia. We withdrew from Vietnam, and Vietnam (at least for a while) became a nation of boat people, re-education camps, and killing fields. Therefore, staying in Iraq means that it will become a thriving democracy that is the envy of the Arab world, while withdrawing will mean slaughter.

Here is what is wrong with this type of reasoning.

Two evenings ago, I did not exercise before going to bed, and two nights ago there was no rain. Last evening, I did exercise before going to bed. Last night we had a rather spectacular thunderstorm. Therefore, not exercising this evening means that there will be no rain, whereas if I exercise we will have a spectacular thunderstorm.

Another possible explanation for these same events can go as follows:

The South Koreans had a culture that was amenable to establishing a peaceful state; therefore, there was more reason to stay than to leave. The Vietnamese had a culture that was not amenable to establishing a peaceful state, so it was better to leave than to stay.

The mark of a good theory is that you can apply it to a large number of cases and get similar results. If we apply this model to World War II, we see that Germany and Japan were internally coherent societies. As a result, they were capable of forming peaceful states, and remaining was a reasonable option. China, on the other hand, was not capable of creating a peaceful state, at least until one side won and drove the losers onto the island of Taiwan, and sufficiently drove out, re-educated, or slaughtered the dissenters that remained.

In deciding what to do in Iraq, perhaps we should look at the possibility that the Iraqis are capable of producing a peaceful state. Intranational peace would be a good sign that staying would be fruitful, while intranational conflict means that staying would simply prolong the agony.

In Vietnam, once one side won the war, and was able to sufficiently drive out, re-educate, or slaughter the losers, they were able to establish a peaceful state, and we have the country we see now.

In Iraq, it may well be the case that if one side was allowed to win, and to drive out, re-educate, or slaughter the losers, that Iraq could establish a peaceful state. Indeed, this seems to be the way that the nation is going, with millions of people having already fleeing the country

In South Korea, we did not pacify the whole country. Instead, the country was divided, with those who supported one faction moving to one side of the border, and those who supported a different faction moving to the other side. The resulting successes or failures did not depend on how much social harmony the nation had, but on the rationality of their institutions. I suspect that both sides thought, “We will have X years of peace, during which our wisdom will shine through to make us wealthier and more powerful than you can imagine, at which time we will finish this job and unify the country.”

On this measure, it appears that the South Koreans were more right than the North Koreans – though this social harmony that brings prosperity does seem to require a reluctance to go to war. Wars, after all, are quite wasteful of the wealth that one has built.

One of the implications that we can draw from this is that if we are able to identify an internally coherent and peaceful section of Iraq, separate it from the rest, call it its own country, and keep insurgents out (with the cooperation of the otherwise peaceful citizens of that region), there may be some hope of success. For example, creating a Kurdish state and defending it, while remaining Iraqis maim and kill each other, might result in an economically prosperous section of Iraq that would become the envy of the Arab world.

Reasonableness

Nobody should read the above section and come to the conclusion that I have, with any certainty, identified the truth of these historic trends. I have, at best, offered a hypothesis. It is not my intent to suggest that I know the natural laws of history and can predict the future of Iraq from them. It is only my intention to show that there are reasonable options that belie Bush’s claim. Once again, he is proving that he has not done his homework..

Which is, actually, no less than we should expect from somebody who is as arrogant, ntellectually lazy, deceptive, and manipulative personality as Bush is.

Also, please recall that I am not a member of the ‘bring the troops home now at all costs and with total disregard to the consequences’ fan club. Nor am I a fan of ‘stay and fight’.

I am a fan of the ‘ask the experts who have spent their lives studying the middle east and can afford to focus their attention on these issues from sunup to sundown, and who respect the power of reason over faith,’ plan. Of which, I am not an expert.

Nor am I a fan of, ‘Whoever gives me an argument that supports a conclusion that I like shall be judged reasonable, and whoever gives an argument that conflicts with a conclusion that I like shall be judged unreasonable,” way of thinking. That way of thinking gets people killed. Indeed, we ended up in this mess in Iraq precisely because our President was so foolish that he embraced the doctrine of, “Evidence that can be interpreted as supporting my desire to go to war shall be judged sound, and evidence that conflicts with my desire to go to war shall be judged the product of traitors or incompetents.”

I condemn Bush and the members of his administration for their intellectual recklessness. I see this ‘argument from history’ to be yet another example where the Administration seems not to have thought out the implications of their own claims. This is only one set of a huge galaxy of moral failings that characterize this administration.

However, it is not a rare failing. Many of those who criticize Bush are hypocrites, who exhibit exactly the same characteristics they condemn. So, I am concerned that they would apply those characteristics here, and I do not want to contribute to the results. Thus, the long list of disclaimers.

Still, one thing that I do not disclaim, is that Bush is an arrogant idiot who is even too stupid to realize just how stupid he is. He continues to put weight in weak arguments whenever those arguments support the conclusions that he wants to believe in. He continues to exercise his religious training of accepting conclusions on faith, and judging the merits of arguments on their ability to support what he beliefs for no good reason.

When somebody in his position engages in this type of intellectual recklessness, good people die. That is what we have seen in Iraq, and what I suspect we will continue to see under this Administration.

Ben Stein's 'Expelled'

Dear Ben Stein:

I have heard that you have a movie coming out – a documentary, "Expelled – about how creation scientists (a.k.a., intelligent design theorists) are suffering from violations of their free speech rights in academia.

Naturally, I have not seen the documentary yet. Consequently, I am not going to raise any objections against the movie itself. However, I have read reports about its content and if true these reports indicate that the documentary will try to portray the claim that intelligent design is not science as a violation of freedom of speech.

I also suspect that you will hear a lot of objections based on the fact that you failed to properly understand what a scientific theory is, and I have no interest in repeating what they would say.

However, the film (or at least descriptions of it) bring up the issue of freedom of speech, which is a moral issue, and that is the sphere that I write in.

Legacy

I want to begin by pointing that your legacy, as a result of your work on this particular project, will be the suffering and early death of countless people who otherwise could have been saved or benefited from advances in science.

I am going to have to say something about the nature of science to demonstrate this point. Science is involved in explaining and predicting real-world events. This includes real-world events that cause real-world death and suffering. The better we are at understanding the real world, the better we will be at avoiding the death and suffering that nature would otherwise inflict on us.

Science does this by comparing theories. Theory A predicts that under conditions C, that R will result. Theory B predicts that under conditions C, S will result. Scientists then set up or observe conditions C, and see if they detect R or S. If they detect R, they go with theory A. If they detect S, they go with Theory B.

Over time, they continually revise their theories. Theory A1 predicts that under conditions C1, R1 will result. Theory A2 predicts that under conditions C1, R2 will result. (The conditions have to be the same, or there is no way to rule out theories). They then try to detect R1 or R2, and refine their theories accordingly.

It is not the case that everything that scientists like to study has an effect on human death and suffering. However, the methods that they use to study nature in general are the same methods that they apply to those things that result in death and suffering. They are continually involved in refining their theories about things that cause human death and suffering. As a result of their work, we have become extremely good at avoiding human death and suffering – at least in those cultures that are wise enough to put these scientific advances to practical use.

Now, please, try for me to put the concept of intelligent design into the description that I wrote above about how to compare scientific theories. Come up with a condition C, and a result R1 or R2, that will tell us whether or not to accept Theory A or Theory B, where Theory B is intelligent design.

You will fail.

No scientist has yet been able to present a “Theory B” that includes a God variable that produces more accurate results under Conditions C than any comparable theory that lacks a God variable.

Intelligent design tells us nothing that we can use to better understand and cure cancer or Parkinson's disease. There is nothing it can tell us that can lead to the discovery of a way of preventing malaria that would have otherwise gone undiscovered. It will not provide us with food sources that can survive droughts to that people in arid parts of the world can feed themselves. It says nothing at all useful in determining the effects of different chemicals that we are putting in our air, our water, and our food to tell us whether they are poisonous or beneficial. It tells us none of the things that science tells us - things that protects our lives, health, and well-being.

So, what these people want to do instead of providing us with the fruits of their research is to force scientist to use another criterion – other than the criterion of coming up with a theory that better predicts results under given conditions. That criterion is the criterion of force - perhaps not the force of a gun to the head, but the force of legislation and social sanctions.

I want to repeat this in case a reader might skip the point of this post. Intelligent design has no 'condition C' with an R1 and an R2 where evolution produces one prediction, intelligent design produces another, and observation confirms intelligent design. If it did, it could count as science. In the absence of scientific evidence favoring intelligent design, its proponents want to introduce something other than evidence into the scientific process - political bullying. Under this system, a theory is viable to the degree that its proponents can use lies and distortions to manipulate the public into including it in the scientific discussion. That's what the movie 'Expelled' is - an propaganda instrument for the sake of rallying people into bullying science educators into including an idea that has absolutely no merit as science.

What is going to make a scientific theory “worth considering” on this standard is not whether its defenders can provide experimental evidence, but whether its defenders can get the government and the mob to threaten scientists who reject their views.

On this system, force replaces truth as a standard of truth.

Causing Harm

Part of the problem with introducing force as a standard of truth is that you will end up promoting systems that will do more harm than good. Intelligent design itself finds its home in a context that does a particularly poor job of predicting and explaining the causes of human death and suffering, and of helping people avoid death and suffering.

A scientist says that hurricanes are too large for us to be able to control where they go. However, by taking measurements of air speed, ocean temperature, pressure, the principles of evaporation and condensation of water, and the like, we can make increasingly accurate predictions of where hurricanes will strike and how best to avoid the worst consequences. The consequences suffered in New Orleans show the price to be paid by those who ignore science.

Theocrats want to argue that we can control the severity – even the existence of hurricanes by passing laws against homosexuality, putting prayer in school, and closing down abortion clinics. They have got the fanatical belief that these variables somehow influence the nature of hurricanes.

Now, we can test these types of claims. We can come up with theories that determine relationships between the frequency and course of hurricanes based on number of abortion clinics, presence of laws against homosexual acts, and the numbers of state-sponsored school prayers. Yet, in 400 years of science, these types of relationships do not hold up. The people who advocate these types of solutions will add to the total amount of human suffering (the suffering imposed on people as a result of these laws) without doing any good whatsoever.

We see from this that the type of thinking that surrounds intelligent design will cause death and suffering in two ways. First, there is the death and suffering surrounding the laws that those who think this way would impose on others – the diseases not prevented, the poverty promoted, the prohibitions that deny people the opportunity to realize important values in the brief lives they have.

Second, this way of thinking will result in more death and suffering than there would otherwise be because it will take attention from reason-based policies that show a scientifically provable effect of reducing death and suffering. People devoted to preventing harms from natural disasters through community prayers and repressive social laws are not devoting their energy to scientific research and understanding. People who are demanding that science yield to a ‘political force as proof of scientific validity’ way of thinking are not allowing scientists to discover those methods that truly do the best job of predicting and explaining real-world events.

Both of these pathways lead to death and suffering, and both pathways will be opened up by the false and irresponsible claims that, at least judging from the press reports, will sit at the heart of your documentary.

Fear Mongering

A standard political move these days would be to take an argument like the one that I gave above and use it to accuse the person who made it of ‘fear mongering’ – of trying to manipulate people through fear. President Bush suggests that staying in Iraq will harm our national interests, and he is immediately condemned for fear-mongering by those who do not want the public to even consider (and debate) the possibility.

So, let us take a look at fear mongering, and see whether the term would apply in this case.

Imagine a room with a table in the center, and a pitcher in the middle of the room that you know contains poison. A woman enters the room and fills a glass from the pitcher. If I were to warn her that the pitcher contains poison, it would not be wrong to think that I was attempting to manipulate her behavior – attempting to warn her against drinking from the pitcher. However, it would be wrong to accuse me of fear mongering.

In order to be guilty of fear mongering, it would have to be the case that I did not believe that the pitcher contained poison or that I adopted the belief irresponsibly based more on convenience than on evidence. Furthermore, I would need some motive to prevent the woman from drinking the liquid – a motive that the woman would probably not find persuasive. So, I make false or irresponsible claims about the harmfulness of the liquid in order to prevent her from doing something I have other reasons to prevent her from doing. This would be a case of fear-mongering.

The arguments that I gave above deflect any charges of fear mongering. Science is, as a matter of fact, involved in a practice of comparing theories by determining what the theory says will happen under conditions C, making observations about those happenings, and determining which theory most accurately predicted the results. This method is particularly important when the results provide information useful in avoiding human death and suffering. The type of thinking that surrounds and permeates intelligent design is a type of thinking that rejects this method. So, the type of thinking that permeates intelligent design is a type that will interfere with our abilities to prevent death and suffering.

That particular drink is poison, and a morally responsible person would warn others not to drink it.

Freedom of Speech

As a matter of fact, people who advocate intelligent design pretty much prove that they are incompetent in matters of science, in the same way that an engineer who advocates making a bridge out of common clay proves that he is an incompetent engineer.

The fact that the common clay bridge builder is able to rally his friends to beat up on (legislatively or socially) the steel-bridge builders if they do not give their friend an engineering license is no proof that the friend’s engineering is sound. People can be forced to deny reality, but reality does not yield to individual stupidity. Give the common-clay bridge builder a license, and a lot of people are going to start suffering death and injuries in the collapsing bridges that result.

His ‘opinion’ that clay bridges are as sound as steel bridges is not enough to prevent clay bridges from collapsing.

However, let us assume that this engineer does not want to build clay bridges. He wants to teach at an engineering college where he will inform countless students that clay bridges are structurally sound. And when the engineering department denies him a position, he goes to court, claiming that they are violating his rights to free speech. Clearly, he has a right to stand before a bunch of students and tell them that common clay bridges are structurally sound.

By your standards, such a teacher must be permitted to teach that common clay is as good as steel, because refusing to do so would be a morally impermissible violation of that individual's right to freedom of speech. In fact, if we were to make your principle a universal law, as the moral philosopher Immanual Kant contends, any attempt to regulate the quality of teaching is a violation of free speech. No individual shall be denied a position in a university based on the quality of his research - but all individuals shall be permitted to teach whatever they want to whomever they want.

As I said, the policies and principles that appear in your documentary, at least as reported in the press, are clearly policies and principles that will lead to death and suffering.

Conclusion

I have no illusions that this letter will change the course of events. The documentary will play. People who would have otherwise studied and applied the principles of science to discover or at least understand how certain policies can reduce death and suffering, will instead pursue policies that promote death and suffering. The institution that best seeks to explain and predict the forces of nature that kill and maim individuals will be weakened, and death and suffering that could have been prevented, will not be prevented.

Of course, you will deny any responsibility for this. Unfortunately, reality does not care about what we believe. A person's unwillingness to accept reality does not change reality; a person's unwillingness to accept responsiblity for the harm he has done to others does not prevent them from being harmed.

These effects are real. You have made the world a worse place than it would have otherwise been, and some will pay with their lives. Hopefully, they (or those who survive them) will at least have the wisdom to know who is responsible for their situation.

Note: The National Center for Science Education also exposes a number of inaccuracies in its site, Expelled Exposed.

Focus on Harm

I have said that this is a blog about ethics, not about tactics. One of the reasons for this is that what is practical and what is moral are not always the same thing. Karl Rove has provided a number of examples in which that which was practical (for special interests getting favors from Washington) deviated from what was moral.

Yet, today, I want to speak about an area where the two may well overlap.

Now, since I devote much more time and energy to issues of morality than issues of marketing, I am more likely to make a mistake about the ‘practical’ aspects of what follows. However, I think I can give at least a few reasons to believe the practical conclusion.

The topic for today is one of atheist strategy. Now that the public voice of atheists has been raised, there is a question of what to do from here. There is considerable talk about getting atheists to come out of the closet and be heard. However, this begs the question, “What are they going to say?”

My suggestion is not to focus on the question of whether God exists, but to focus on the harms being done where some sort of religious belief lies behind it.

In talking about harms done, I do not recommend talking about past wrongs. Those wrongs are, of course, in the past, and it is easy for anybody living in the present to deny responsibility for them. I am talking about current harms done. I am talking about taking contemporary news reports about impending suffering, a set of religious beliefs, and demonstrating the connections that exist (where they exist) between those religious beliefs and the suffering.

This is really the argument that came out of 9/11 attacks. Sam Harris’s book, The End of Faith is a look at harms done – current and real harms done – and a look at the religious beliefs behind those harms done. I have raised objections against accusing those who were not responsible for the harm. However, as long as accusations are limited to those who are actually guilty, it is quite legitimate to say, “Here are people doing harm to others, and they do harm to others due to their religious beliefs.”

There are countless examples to choose from. There is the spread of disease and the growth of poverty in regions where religious reasons are given for opposing birth control. There is the suffering of people who have been denied access to abortion providers, particularly in the cases of rape and incest. There are cases of people dying or suffering from diseases and injuries that might have been treated through stem-cell research. There is the blatant irrationality of faith-based foreign policy (as opposed to evidence-based foreign policy) which characterizes the decision to attack Iraq.

There is the fact that, contrary to claims that connect religion with morality, we find that religious people in America are still the most vocal defenders of an administration that not only advocates but practices torture and other forms of abuse, wars of aggression, unchecked and unbalanced executive power, and other practices that have, in the past, been the criteria by which we judge governments to be immoral.

Who are these people who call themselves ‘Christians’ who cheer injustice, brutality, and murder (in the name of God)? The problem with these is not that they are ‘un-Christian’ – we need not question their interpretation of scripture. We can, instead, well question that being Christian is such a good thing if being Christian means being a supporter of injustice, brutality, and murder.

Let the Christians fight among themselves about how best to interpret scripture – whether to interpreted it as a defense of injustice, brutality, and murder or a call to action against these moral crimes. This is not relevant. All that is relevant is the simple focus of, “Here there are agents of injustice, brutality, and murder, who justify their moral crimes by appeal to scripture.”

We have already seen one religious reaction to these types of arguments. It is to say, “Your attacks only apply to some religious people – but not to us. We are not causing harm.”

The standard reaction to these types of claims has been to accuse those who make it of being just as guilty as those who commit the crimes.

A better response would be, “Does your religion tell you to stand back with passive indifference while others commit injustice, brutality, and murder? Or does your scripture tell you to help put and end to it. By your behavior, it seems your scripture demands that you do nothing. But passive indifference to injustice, brutality, and murder is still a moral crime. So, you still have a scripture that induces you to commit moral crimes – even if they are not the same moral crimes.”

And if they take action against injustice, brutality, and murder, then there is little reason to complain.

This does not mean that the less harm inducing factions are not doing anything wrong. If you had a choice between stopping the detonation of a nuclear bomb in New York or the rape of a child in Los Angeles, the fact that you focused your attention on stopping the nuclear bomb in New York does not imply that you think that the child rapist is a good person. It simply acknowledges the fact that in a world of limited resources we have to make choices. The best choice is the reduction of harms done.

Here, I want to repeat something that I have written a number of times. I think it is extremely important, but others do not seem to be hearing it. So, I will say it again, this time with a pointer that says, “Look here! This is important!”

The most potent weapon of mass destruction is not nuclear, biological, or chemical, but legislative. Our attention is drawn to the religious person who uses a bomb or poison gas to do harm to others, but their victims number only into the hundreds individually. Those who use legislation as their weapon of mass destruction have hundreds of millions of victims. If it is important to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of those who would use them to harm others, then legislation should be considered one of those weapons.

Bomb explosions with scattered body parts make nice images on the television and, as such, are a natural ratings booster. However, the fact that these are the most entertaining harms does not imply that they are the greatest. Unfortunately, the harms inflicted through the use of legislation get far less attention, even though they do more damage, simply because they have less flash and bang.

This significantly greater amount of damage that religious factions create when they employ legislation to do harm to others implies a greater legitimate concern in making sure that these weapons do not fall into their hands.

I also want to clarify that when I speak about harms done, where those responsible to harm appeal to religious text to justify it, I am not talking about the actions of the common criminal. Imagine that a child rapist or embezzler having been discovered working in an atheist organization, and even imagine that the organization tried to cover up the crime to protect their reputation. It would be unfair to suggest that this is a reflection of the moral character of all atheists. It is just as unfair to hold that religious criminals are a reflection of religion in general.

The types of harms that count are harms caused by behavior that includes a widespread belief in the truth of some part of scripture. When people object to embryonic stem-cell research for religious reasons, the people whom they kill may be properly charged to their religious beliefs. Not to all religious beliefs, but the beliefs of those who actually make such claims. If an agent’s actions can be explained by the fact that he believed that X, and those actions are actions that bring about the death of others, then his belief that X has made him into somebody that brings about the death of others. It is, then, perfectly honest and legitimate to blame those who have belief X for those deaths – as long as the connection can be justified.

“You’re killing people, and otherwise ruining your lives – sacrificing them to a creature that does not exist and, if he did exist, would need to be condemned for demanding that his followers inflict these harms on others. Here are real people, suffering real harm, because of those who think that their God commands them to inflict these harms. Do you want to know what type of people they are, simply look at the harms that they do, and that they seek to justify by claiming ‘In harming others, I serve my God.”

There are both tactical and moral reasons to repeat these claims as loudly and as often as possible, whenever they are true.

Last Post on Desires and Reasons

Okay, I promise, this is the last theory post for a while. I need to get back to real-world policy decisions.

(1) Drives aren't reasons. Consider the reluctant drug addict, compelled (against his will) to get his next fix. How is this any different from a mad scientist controlling him via remote control? We may be coerced from within, just as from without. Merely coming from a drive in your head does not suffice to make an action 'yours'.

If drives are not reasons, then no reasons exist.

I consider the reluctant drug addict. He is a person with a desire to get high and either an aversion to having a desire to get high or beliefs that the desire to get high is a desire that stands in conflict with other desires he might have such as a desire to live a long life, to pursue a career, and to avoid jail.

This is quite different from the scientist who is controlling him via remote control in that the desires we are speaking about are his – they are encoded into his brain. They are ot some external entity. The addiction is a desire he does not wish to have (that thwarts his other desires), but it is still his.

We can define a desire as ‘yours’ according to whether or not you endorse it. Using this definition (that the addiction is a desire that the agent wishes to be without) might be enough for a person to successfully disown it.

However, the claim that there is some other type of entity involved is a rather extreme hypothesis. Ultimately, my defense against these types of arguments is simply that I have no need for such entities. I see no compelling reason to adopt them.

Ultimately, my main reason for rejecting these other entities is that, when it comes to analyzing them, they turn out to be totally mysterious.

Any minimally adequate action theory must account for the difference between intentional ("free" - though of course not contracausal) action and mere behaviour. This requires differentiating value-desires (goals) from mere drives, and giving pride of place to the former.

The difference between intentional action and behavior is that intentional action is caused by intentional states – beliefs and desires. Behavior does not. An amoeba has behavior, but it does not have intentional states (beliefs and desires).

That’s it.

Our goals are defined by our desires. If an agent has a desire that P, then he has a goal to bring about a state of affairs in which P is true. If the desire that P is the further object of a desire that desire that P, or the agent has desires that Q, R, and S, that the desire that P fulfills, then the agent has reasons to endorse or embrace the desire that P.

The real question is: What evidence is there that compels us to introduce other entities into this theory? It is not sufficient to argue that ‘it seems to be the case’ that another entity is at work. There must be some set of phenomena that the current theory cannot explain. The new entity must be something that fills the gaps. The argument for the new entities have to rely on something stronger than ‘it seems to be the case’.

Some people argue for the existence of God by claiming that they can quite simply and directly ‘see’ God in a sunset or hear God in a child’s laughter. It is quite easy to dismiss these types of arguments. The agent is interpreting an event that has an explanation that does not involve God. There is no God in a sunset, only in the agent’s interpretation of a sunset. There is no ‘motivational belief’ in the badness of an addiction, only the agent’s interpretation of that addiction.

The greatest problem for these new entities is in explaining what they are, how we know about them, and how they fit into our scientific understanding of life, specifically, our evolutionary history. Without answers to these types of questions, ‘motivational beliefs’ or any other type of entity cannot actually explain anything. It does not have enough substance to serve as much of an explanation.

Let me explain the problem in another way.

Let us assume that if a person has a motivational belief that P is worthwhile that he is motivated to bring about P. Now, a belief that P is true if and only if P is true. So, a belief that snow is white is true if and only if snow is white. A belief that P is worthwhile is true if and only if P is worthwhile. So, do we have an analysis of what ‘P is worthwhile’ means? How is it that the proposition ‘P is worthwhile’ can be true? How can we know ‘P is worthwhile’ is true?

Is ‘P is worthwhile’ true if and only if I believe P is worthwhile? Assume that I have no belief that P is worthwhile – and I have no interest in making P true. You want to convince me that P is worthwhile. While I am standing here denying that P is worthwhile and having no reason to bring about P, how is it that you are going to convince me that ‘P is worthwhile’ is true? What premises support the conclusion ‘P is worthwhile’?

If the truth of ‘P is worthwhile’ depends on my believing it, we have stranger problems. Here, you are trying to convince me that P is worthwhile when, in fact, ‘P is worthwhile’ is false (because I do not believe it). However, let us assume that you succeed. Now I believe ‘P is worthwhile’? Suddenly, as soon as I accept the proposition, it becomes true.

How does that work?

This strangeness suggests argues against ‘motivational beliefs’. There are standard beliefs, and standard desires, nothing more.

(2) Weighting Desires. What dimension of 'strength' are you referring to? Felt strength? Behavioural impact (motivational force)? Degree of reflective endorsement? These are all logically distinct, though you seem to be conflating them.

The second option: behavior impact (motivational force).

Insofar as you treat desires as being revealed by behaviour, you seem to be assuming the second option. But this seems to be the least normatively relevant. (Why should a mere 'cause of behaviour' be thought to reveal what's worth doing?)

Because that is how this particular ‘cause of behavior’ works. A ‘desire that P’ in the brain takes any state of affairs in which P is true and motivates the agent to bring about P. ‘P is worth doing” is simply a piece of language that we have adopted to refer to this phenomena of an agent preferring one end over another.

Yes, we go one step further and we identify the drives towards particular ends as good, neutral, or bad. But we do not need to invent a special property of “worth doingness” to explain this phenomena. We simply need to recognize that certain drives tend to fulfill or thwart other drives, which gives us reason to promote or inhibit those drives. The language of “worth doing” is used to refer to the objects of drives we have reason to promote.

Some people are not going to like this answer. This is substantially because so many people have been raised to value a type of “worth doing” that is independent of all desire. They have a desire for desire-free value. However, in the real world, that desire will never be fulfilled. There is no desire-free value for them to fulfill. However, the fact that many people have been raised not to like this situation does not give them any reason to doubt that it is true. People who have a desire to serve God may be unhappy that no God exists, but this is not proof that God does exist.

Besides, isn’t it the case that ‘motivational beliefs’ if they exist would also just be a mere ‘cause of behavior’ that reveals what is worth doing? Or does ‘worth doingness’ have an existence independent of these beliefs? If so, what is it?

I care about the goals I endorse, not necessary just whatever moves my body. (Fortunately for me, these usually coincide! But again, there's no reason in principle why this must be so.)

I care about the goals that I endorse also. But this only means that I have second-order desires for the first-order desires that I endorse, and/or I have beliefs that the goals that I endorse are such as to fulfill my other desires (which happen to include desires that tend to fulfill the desires of other people, which other people have had reason to instill in me through certain cultural and social tools). There is no reason to believe that ‘caring about goals’ is in some fundamental way a different type of caring.

(3) Begging the question on motivation - you write: "The thesis that ‘normative reasons must always motivate us to act’ turns out, in the real world, to mean that ‘the only normative reasons that exist, when it comes to my actions, are my own desires’."

This is simply to assume what is in question, namely: whether desires/motivation can follow from evaluative beliefs (judgments about what we have normative reason to do), or if desires are only ever an input to practical reasoning, and never an output.

Actually, in an argument such as this, there is no choice but to beg the question. The question concerns how the theory I am proposing would handle certain issues, so the answer must take the form of taking the theory as an assumption and applying it to the issue. If it is true that desires are the only motivating reasons that exist, and the only motivating reasons that I have are the desires that I have, and ‘normative reasons’ must motivate, then those ‘normative reasons’ say that I should fulfill the more and stronger of my own desires.

Some might want to take this as a reduction as absurdum of my position. Yet, the challenge remains for any alternative to this theory to come up with an account of these alternative motivating reasons. A full account must show that there are some observable phenomena that this theory cannot handle that some other theory can handle better. Those observable phenomena cannot legitimately take a form like, “I see the hand of God in a sunset.” Observations like this (e.g., “I see motivational desires behind these actions.”)

(4) Whose reasons? I recall we argued about this last year some time, but "I have no reason to phi" just means "there is no reason for me to phi", which in turn entails that "it is not the case that I ought to phi." So if you have no normative reason to promote truth, then it is (by definition) false that you ought to. Similarly for morality itself.

We need a distinction between ‘reason-for-me to phi’ as opposed to ‘reason for me to phi’. The first interpretation speaks about the desires that I have to phi. The second option speaks to reasons that exist for me to phi – which may not be reasons that I currently have, but are reasons that others have reason to cause me to have.

‘There is no reason-for-me to phi” does not imply ‘There is no reason that others have reason to give me to phi’.

For other people to have reason to manipulate you into phi-ing, is not in any coherent sense the same thing as you having normative reason to phi.

Define ‘normative reasons’ as you please.

If you define ‘normative reasons narrowly’, in the ‘reasons-for-me’ sense, then the set of normative reasons is limited to the set of desires that I have, and is captured under the concept of ‘practical ought’. If you define normative reasons broadly, they include the reasons that others generally have reason to cause me to have, which means that there can be normative reasons that do not motivate me – because others were not successful in creating those reasons.

Reasons as a Related Topic

Miguel Picanco made the comment recently,

Thanks for clearing all that up.. I can't wait for you to move on to a new, unrelated topic!

I have been feeling increasingly anxious about the need to switch to a new topic. After all, I created this blog in part because one of my frequent critics at the Internet Infidels Discussion Board challenged me by saying something like, “That’s all fine in theory, but how does it work in practice?” So, I created the blog to apply theory to practice, while still showing enough theory to give regular readers an idea of the foundation on which my arguments are built.

This has been an excellent opportunity to look at some of the features of that foundation in detail.

Yet, in moving one, I would not be moving on to an “unrelated topic”. Anything I wrote on would be very much related to what I have written in the last few days.

In fact, one of the common views that I am very much opposed to is the idea that moral theory is unrelated to moral practice – that when people start talking about the nature of value they cease to say anything of practical importance.

Perhaps the most important practical implication to draw from this is that, when evaluating arguments for or against a particular policy, arguments that relate the anticipated states of affairs to good desires are the only arguments that are sound.

If you look at an argument, and you see premises that speak about divine reasons, those premises are false, and cannot legitimately support any conclusion about policy. Any premise suggesting that we should support the policy because it will bring about a state that has intrinsic value can also be dismissed. If somebody argues, “There are reasons to support X not based on any desire, but on motivating beliefs that X is worthwhile,” I would argue for rejecting those claims as well, since they are also false.

On the other side, we may hear people argue, “Everything is just a mappter of personal preference, and there is no basis on which we can judge some preferences or desires to be good and others bad.”

This is also false. Yes, it is true that all real value relates states of affairs to desires, but this still allows us to evaluate desires according to their tendency to fulfill or thwart other desires. Using the same standard that we use to determine if everything else is good or bad, we can determine whether desires themselves are good or bad. Once we know the quality of different desires, we can make truthful statements about what a person with good desires (desires that people generally have reason to promote) would do.

While the advocates of divine and intrinsic value and motivational beliefs are throwing fictions into the decision-making process, the ‘all desires have equal value’ crowd is ignoring an important part of the real world – the reasons that people have for promoting or inhibiting certain desires.

So, this theory has a great many practical applications when it comes to evaluating policy – particularly in terms of telling us which premises to accept and which to throw away for being false.

Internal vs External Moral Evidence

One widespread practice that I want to argue against is the practice of turning one’s attention inward in order to make a moral evaluation – invitations like, “Let your conscious be your guide,” or “You must do what you feel is right.”

When a person turns his attention inward, this does not give him access to any special sort of moral truth. He is actually turning his attention on his own desires, and basing his moral conclusion entirely on what will fulfill his desires. If he gives any concern at all to the desires of others, it is only because he wants to.

Morality requires turning one’s attention outward, and may result in conclusions that ‘feel’ wrong to the agent because the agent was raised to have a warped sense of value. There is no doubt that interracial marriage ‘feels’ wrong to a racist. When he ‘lets his conscious be his guide’ he will discover conscience telling him to do what he can to put an end to these types of relationships, spreading the word as far and as wide as he can while setting up an environment to discourage these types of relationships. I am confident that Hitler and Stalin both let their conscience be their guide, as do most people who engage in criminal and violent behavior.

God does not exist, so where do the commandments come from that have been attributed to God? Mostly, they came from people who said, “I cannot get people to stop doing something I don’t like just by saying that I don’t like it. They will ask why my desires matter so much. Ah, but if I were to say that God doesn’t like it, and describe what God will do to those who disobey, that should work, if I can get them to believe it.”

The other systems that I criticize here also serve the same function. They are used to give the agent’s desires additional weight – additional (and imaginary) reasons to condemn others or, at least, to protect oneself from condemnation. “These are not my desires, they are God’s desires (as determined by me by cherry-picking an incoherent piece of scripture)” serves this purpose.

“These are not my desires; these are states of affairs having intrinsic power – a special worth-doingness that is built right into their nature,” also functions the same way So does, “These are not my desires that motivate me; they are special motivational beliefs in the worthiness of an object. And, finally, “These are my desires; but I have my desires and you have yours and there is no basis on which my desires can be evaluated as good or bad.”

In fact, none of these people have ever been motivated to act by anything other than their own desires, and nothing about desires makes them immune to evaluation relative to other desires. Desires that people generally have reasons to promote or inhibit are real. But we can’t know what they are by turning our attention inward. We can only learn what they are by turning our attention outword – at what people generally have reason to promote is not something we have any special capacity to learn by looking inside ourselves.

These facts, about which premises that we see in evaluating policies are true and relevant, and which are false or irrelevant, are not an ‘unrelated topic’. They are very much related to every argument about any specific policy. Yet, it is also not productive to spend all of one’s time discussing the foundation, without spending any effort trying to build something on it.

According to Krattenmaker

We have another person, Tom Krattenmaker saying that what I do in this blog is something that atheists have no business doing. In an editorial entitled "Secularists, What Happened to the Open Mind?" in Sunday's USA Today, Krattenmaker wrote of an email exchange with a humanist in which he expressed his view,

. . . expressed my view that religion should leave scientific research to the scientists and devote itself, along with the fields of ethics and philosophy, to the mighty issues of the human condition: good and evil, the meaning of life, the nature of love and so forth.

So, I suppose that Krattenmaker thinks that I should simply close off this blog and go home because, in his view, questions of ethics, good and evil, and the meaning of life are questions that cannot be answered without religion. I, who am without religion, should stick to test tubes and microscopes. The fact is, these religious texts are almost entirely wrong, and they have done just as poor a job getting the moral facts right as they did getting the scientific facts right. Giving the realm of ethics and the meaning of life over to religion is like saying in the realm of science we will live in the 21st century, but in the realm of morality we should go back, even past the dark ages, to the moral system and system of values that created the dark ages. Krattenmaker suggests that a statement like that which I wrote in the above paragraph is somehow contrary to the principles of critical thinking. He endorses the claims of Jacques Berlinerblau:

Berlinerblau suggests that Hitchens and other in-your-face atheist authors are becoming the "soccer hooligans of reasoned public discourse.

There is nothing in critical thinking that, by its very definition, prohibits a person from following the evidence to the conclusion that religious morality and "meaning of life" are the inventions of a group of substantially ignorant, even illiterate tribesmen who knew as little about morality and "the meaning of life" as they did about the structure of the atom or the nature of disease. This is the reasoned conclusion. And while Krattenmaker and Berlinerblau claim to be defending "reasoned public discourse" from "in-your-face atheist authors", they seek to do so by branding those who hold such a few as being like "soccer hooligans." Might I suggest that this is not a "reasoned public" rebuttal to the claim that religious morality and "meaning of life" are built on primative superstitions that have no grounding in the real world. Indeed, we get very little rebuttal of that thesis from those who criticize the "in-your-face atheists." They almost exclusively focus on the tone that their critics take, while ignoring the content. While I have read many editorials like Krattenmaker's on tone, where is the reasoned defense of the proposition that religious morality and "meaning of life" claims are not the primative ideas of the Karl Roves of bronze-age politics? This proposition, that the 'morality' and 'meaning of life' claims found in scripture were the claims of primative tribesmen who knew as little about morality and the meaning of life as they did about substance and disease, is a valid proposition that we could be the focus of reasoned discussion. So, where is the 'reasoned defense' of the view that this claim is false? Where are the arguments that focus on the substance of this proposition, rather than the ad-hominem attacks on those who propose it? Ironically, Krattenmaker states, "It is unfair and just plain wrong to equate secularism with immorality . . ." Yet, he did just that. He said nothing less than that, when it comes to ethics and meaning of life, the atheists should ask a priest how best to answer these questions. Readers of this blog know that I have one significant problem with Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and others. They commit the logical fallacy of hasty generalization. They start with evidence that shows "Some X are Y," then make sweeping statements about all Y's based on this evidence. That is something that I do not approve of - either in the realm of reason, or in the realm of morality. I hold that after establishing that "Some X are Y," a person truly devoted to reason and ethics would focus their further comments on "those X that are Y," rather than "all Y". But, you know, this is an ethical judgment coming from an atheist - from somebody who holds that no priest can give him sound moral advice because the priest will ground his moral judgment on an outdated book written by tribesmen who have been dead for between 1200 and 5000 years (when the oral traditions that made it into scripture began). So, what can I possibly know about what demands morality places on people? According to Krattenmaker

Normative Reasons and Motivation

Today, I want to address ADHR's comments:

It's not incoherent to insist that some x is intrinsically valuable (people should want to pursue or promote x) and yet people may not want to pursue or promote x. The simplest case of this is when people fail to recognize that x is intrinsically valuable; more complex cases may involve some sort of akrasia (weakness of the will).

I think this line of argument would have more punch if you turned it squarely against the internalism, arguing that there's something strange about the idea that normative reasons must motivate us to act.

Taking the first item first.

There is a distinction between two different families of claims that is important here.

There is the question of whether it is coherent to say that X is intrinsically valuable, but A is not motivated to bring about or preserve X. ADHR says that it is coherent, as when X is intrinsically valuable but A is not aware of this value.

I agree with this.

ADHR brings up another example of 'akrasia' or 'weakness of will'. This is when a person realizes that something has intrinsic merit, but is not sufficiently motivated by this intrinsic value to overcome basic desires. For example, an alcoholic may realize the virtue of sobriety but not sufficiently to give up the habit of drinking.

In light of this, ADHR thinks that I should argue that there is something strange about the idea that normative reasons must motivate us to act.

As if I agree with him on this statement.

Which, I do.

Agree with him, that is.

Sort of.

Okay, let's look at the details.

All 'ought' or 'should' statements make some type of reference to reasons for action. To say that something 'ought' or 'should' be done, while asserting that there is no reason for doing it, is more than strange, it is incoherent.

I hold that the only reasons for action that exist are desires.

In recent discussion we have distinguished between drive-desires and value-desires. On this distinction, the only reasons that exist are drive-desires. What passes for 'value desires' is simply the recognition that some drive-desires are more useful than others, when it comes to fulfilling other drive-desires. Thus, our drive-desires give us reason to promote some drive-desires over others, and even reason to inhibit drive-desires that thwart other desires.

So, desires are the only reasons-for-action that exist. People still believe in other types of reasons for action; intrinsic value, divine essence, whatever. People can make sensible 'ought' or 'should' statements by referring to these reasons for action. However, because these reasons for action do not exist, any argument built on these types of reasons for action is built on false premises. Their conclusion might still be true, but it is only accidentally or coincidentally true.

So, if every true normative claim talks about reasons for action, then does it not follow that normative reasons must motivate us to act? What sense does it make to say that I have a reason for action that I can sensibly ignore and refuse to act on – or refuse to consider, even if my considerations are outweighed by even stronger reasons not to act.

Because . . .

Okay, desires are the only reasons for action that exist. However, the only desires that motivate my actions are my desires. If you want to motivate me to act, then you need to show me how a state of affairs relates to my desires. Telling me how a state of affairs relates to desires that are not mine – to my neighbor’s desires, for example – will motivate me to act only insofar that I am motivated to see my neighbor’s desires fulfilled. That is to say, I must have a desire that my neighbor’s desires are fulfilled, or at least a desire that is fulfilled by a state in which my neighbor’s desires are fulfilled. If this is not the case, then I have no reason to act.

If, as it turns out, I hate my neighbor, then your news that X will fulfill my neighbor’s desires might motivate me to act so as to make X impossible. This way, I can thwart my neighbor’s desires (which I may well have motivation to do based on my own desires).

The thesis that ‘normative reasons must always motivate us to act’ turns out, in the real world, to mean that ‘the only normative reasons that exist, when it comes to my actions, are my own desires’.

I have argued earlier that my actions are only truly mine if they come from my desires. If Tim over there, with his remote control, is able to move my body, rather than me, then the fact that the actions are proximately connected to his desires and not mine means that the actions being performed are his actions and not mine. If he should direct this body to kill his ex-girlfriend, he would be the one guilty of murder, but not me. He might be able to engineer that I be convicted of that murder, but I (meaning this bundle of desires that I have) am not morally responsible for that murder. He is – because his desires were proximately at the helm of those actions.

So, if normative reasons must motivate us to act, then the only normative reasons that exist for or against my actions are my desires – in precisely the strength that I desire them. Other people’s desires are relevant only insofar as other people serve as a means to the fulfillment of my own desires.

Objectively, relationships between states of affairs and desires that are not mine are just as real as relationships between states of affairs and desires that are mine. Not only are they real, but they are important. We have a lot of very good reasons to talk about and to think about relationships between states of affairs and desires that are not our own.

These desires that exist that are not my desires are still reasons for action, even if they are not reasons for my action. They still motivate people to act in different ways, even though they do not motivate me to act in those ways. They are reasons that people can talk about that are not their own and may not motivate them, but reasons that are real and that a rational person would be unwise to ignore.

As it turns out, other people’s desires are reasons for action for me in a sense in that it is reasons for action for them to do things that affect me. So, if people generally have a reason for action to promote X, then they have a reason for action to change my desires, or to create an environment where I can best fulfill my desires by also promoting X. It means that they have reason to thwart my desires if my desires would get in the way of promoting X. All of these relationships connect the reasons for actions of others with my reasons for action. However, none of them, by their mere existence, necessarily motivate me in any way.

Why would we have invented a language where people were only allowed to talk about relationships between states of affairs and their own desires, but not allowed to talk about relationships between states of affairs and desires not their own? If we are permitted to talk about relationships between states of affairs and desires not our own, what language would we use to do this?

Normative language discusses all reasons for action; mine, yours, ours, theirs, even reasons for action that do not exist. Or, if it isn’t, then we are in desperate need to make some significant adjustments to our language.

Specifically, I argue that moral claims have to do with what reasons for action people generally have reasons to act so as to promote and inhibit. If you were to tell me that ‘people generally have reason to act so as to promote a love of truth,’ this does not imply that I have a reason to act so as to promote love of truth (though, as a part of ‘people generally’, it is more likely that I also have reason to promote a love of truth than that I do not).

Evolution and Motivational Beliefs

One of my objections to the idea that we have some sort of ‘motivational belief’ is the difficulty in squaring such an entity with our evolutionary history.

Let us assume that an entity in nature evolved a disposition to ‘do what one (believed that) one ought to do’. How would such a trait affect our evolutionary history?

Well, let’s compare two creatures; one with a belief that X1 ought to be done, and another with a belief that X2 ought to be done. Of these two creatures, the one who is going to have the most offspring is the one whose belief that X(n) ought to be done leads to the greatest genetic replication. Nature is not going to favor the creature that can most accurately identify whether X(n) really ought to be done, unless there is some necessary connection between ‘X(n) ought to be done’ and ‘A disposition to do X(n) will result in more genetic replicaIf there tion’.

This is what we see with desires. We did not evolve dispositions to desire that which is ‘intrinsically’ good in any sense of the word. We evolved dispositions to desire those things that were more likely to keep our biological ancestors alive long enough to create viable offspring. Those ancestors who did not have these desires . . . well, they are not our ancestors.

So, we have a desire for sex. Note: we do not have a desire for reproduction. Some people might have this desire but, for the most part, reproduction is an unintended and often unwanted side effect of sex. We want sex even when we do not want reproduction; thus, we look for ways of having sex while avoiding reproduction.

We have a desire to eat – and we have a taste for those foods that kept our ancestors alive long enough to raise their children to the point that those children can have grandchildren. Thus, we have a preference for high-calorie foods – fats, sugars. We do not eat so that we can stay alive. We stay alive so that we can eat.

If we had motivating beliefs, then evolution would have picked out the objects of those mental states using the same forces it used to pick out the objects of desires – according to whether pursuing that object promoted or inhibited evolutionary fitness. In other words, the objects of our motivating beliefs would be substantially the same type of things as the objects of our desires. Neither set of objects warrants being called ‘inherently valuable’ or ‘worthwhile’ more than the other.

If there are ‘intrinsic goods’ or ‘inherent value’ or ‘worthwhileness’ in the real world, evolution would have thwarted our ability to perceive them (or perceive them accurately) unless they happened to coincide with what promoted our genetic replication. If this is the case, we have no need for a concept of ‘that which has inherent value’. ‘That which, when desired, tended to promote the genetic fitness of those who desired it,” is good enough for all real-world purposes.

For all we know, there might be an inherent goodness in killing and eating one’s own children. For all we know, some of our ancestors developed a faculty for perceiving this value and responding appropriately to it. That is to say, they killed and ate all of their children. One thing we do know is that if this ever was the case, those who can perceive this inherent value correctly would not be our ancestors. We have a better chance of being descendent from ancestors who had a perverse reaction to the inherent value of eating one’s own children and, as a result of this perversion, shunned the practice, and protected their children instead.

So, my question for those who hold that we have somehow evolved the capacity to have motivational beliefs is to explain how this capacity evolved and how it remained uncorrupted by evolutionary forces, given the effect that different motivational beliefs would have on genetic fitness.

Beliefs are mental states that fit the state to the world, such that if a belief does not correspond to the world then the belief should change. We can tell an evolutionary story of the value of matching beliefs to the world. The lion who does not believe that there is an antelope when there are antelopes will starve. The antelope who does not believe that there are lions where there are lions will become dinner. There are consequences when our beliefs about the world around us are untrue, which suggests that there are forces that aim to make our beliefs increasingly reliable – at least in those areas relevant to our genetic replication.

We also have a story to tell about desires. We have evolutionary stories to tell about the evolution of a desire to have sex, a desire to care for one’s children, a desire to eat high calorie foods, a desire for an environment that is not too warm or not too cold, an aversion to pain, and a disposition to feel pain when confronted with states of affairs that threaten our genetic fitness.

We even have an evolutionary story to tell about the malleability of our brains. If you hard-wire a brain for a particular environment, then the being with that brain is going to have a terrible time of it when that environment changes. The being that will survive environmental changes is the being whose brain changes to generate behavior that is appropriate in the new environment. The brain must not only change, but it must make the right types of changes. This means that it must be a brain that determines its shape as a result, not of genetic hardwiring, but as a result of interaction with the environment. In other words, it learns how to behave.

It is difficult (impossible) to come up with a similar story for motivational beliefs about worthwhileness.

The first question is whether there is anything in the real world essential to our survival that has worthwhileness to fix the beliefs to. If the beliefs do not have anything to fix to, then the fact that these are supposed to be motivational beliefs creates a problem. Without an anchor relevant to survival, evolution will fix these motivational beliefs on the same type of things that it fixes desires to – things that tend to promote the genetic replication of the agent. Agents may view these things as having ‘worthwhileness’, but the objects are, nonetheless, the same class of objects that desires point to, and for the same reasons (because those motivated to pursue these ends survive and have offspring).

Or, better yet, stick with the standard types of beliefs and desires, and treat ‘worthwhileness’ as a false belief in intrinsic values, blended with the realization that people generally have reason to promote those desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires.

Now, I fully recognize that evolution is not guided by any sort of sense. Evolution can promote traits that serve no purpose, and even promote harmful traits. This may be the case with motivational beliefs. However, in those types of cases, we are talking about traits that we can observe. We know that they exist, and our job is to explain them. When we talk about motivational beliefs, about things for which there is no strong evidence, an argument like the one presented here suggests that such a search would probably turn up nothing.

If somebody comes to me and says that he saw a ghost, I do not need to come up with a theory that explains what he thinks he saw without making mention of a ghost. All I have to do is point out how utterly bizarre it would be for ghosts to exist. From this I can infer that there probably is a logical explanation for what the agent thinks was a ghost, without mentioning ghosts.

That is, unless I was a character in a Hollywood script or book. If that were the case, then having a character come up to me claiming that he saw a ghost should be taken as good evidence that he really has seen a ghost – because the author has almost certainly written ghosts into the world where the story takes place. However, since I am not a character in a work of fiction (as far as I can determine), I discount ghost claims, without going to the effort of providing an alternative explanation for every ghost claim ever made.

The same is true of my skepticism of ‘motivational belief’ claims.

Intrinsic (Objective) Values

So, is all of this philosophizing about the nature of value just another example of debating the relationships between dancing angels and heads of pins? Or can it have real-world significance?

I want to expand on a response that I wrote to yesterday’s post about the nature of intrinsic value mostly because of its real-world implications. I would argue that the doctrine of intrinsic value, like the doctrine of God-given value, is not only mistaken. It is a pernicious doctrine used to seduce good people into doing bad things.

Intrinsic vs Objective Value

What I am going to be calling ‘intrinsic value’ is what others (confusingly) call ‘objective value’. Typically, when I am asked whether I think that values are objective, I think that the questioner is actually asking me if values are intrinsic.

Do I think that intrinsic values exist? The answer is, “No.”

Do I think that objective values exist? The answer is, “Yes, but they exist as relationships between states of affairs and desires, not as intrinsic properties.”

This post concerns intrinsic values, and I do not want anybody to make the mistake of thinking that I deny objective values.

What Are Intrinsic Values

More specifically, I want to deal with the view that there are properties in the word that are intrinsic to objects (works of art, wine), states of affairs (distribution of income), or actions (stabbing somebody with a knife) that determines their value as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Specifically, intrinsic value theory holds that there are properties where the mere apprehension of them motivates an agent to pursue that object, state, or action (or to prevent that object, state, or action in the case of intrinsic badness).

As I wrote to Richard yesterday, there is something incoherent in saying, “X has an intrinsic property whereby those who apprehend it are motivated to pursue X, I apprehend this property in X, but I am not motivated to pursue it.”

Consequently, people cannot sensibly assign intrinsic value to things they are not motivated to bring about.

However, desires are the only reasons for action (motivational force) that exists.

So, in practice, what we are going to get from the concept of intrinsic value is people applying it to things that they are already desire-motivated to bring about. If they are under no motivation to bring something about, they will find it incomprehensible to assign intrinsic value to that thing.

Intrinsic Value and Personal Preferences

In this sense, “X has intrinsic value” is similar to the statement, “I like X”. It is incomprehensible for a person to say that he likes something that he has absolutely no interest in bringing about, because “I like X” means “I have reasons to bring about X.” However, while ‘like’ statements explicitly tie the motivation to bring something about to the desires of the agent, “X has intrinsic values” deny that there is any such relationship.

In fact, the agent is only assigning intrinsic value to things that he is desire-motivated to bring about. However, by using the term ‘intrinsic value’ he is making a false claim about the nature of that relationship, assigning the motivation to a property in the object, rather than his own desires.

Additional Implications from Intrinsic Value Claims

Now, there is also an important difference between “I like X” and “X has intrinsic value.” In saying, “I like X” I do not imply anything about what others should like. It is as coherent for me to say, “I like X, but my friend Mike does not,” as it is for me to say, “I am over 6’ tall, but my friend Mike is not.”

However, when we attribute intrinsic value to things, we are drawing implications about how others should regard that thing. If I say that something has intrinsic value, then I am saying not only that I am motivated to pursue it, but that all people who appreciate the properties of that thing would be motivated to pursue it. In other words, those who do not feel the motivation to pursue that state of affairs is somehow defective.

Here, the issue gets complicated, because I argue that we can get something very close to this through desire utilitarianism. Desires have the capacity to fulfill or thwart other desires. So, people generally have reason to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires. So, if it is a ‘good thing’ in a desire-utilitarian sense that people value X, then there is reason to condemn those who do not value X. However, desire utilitarianism does not base this on any type of ‘intrinsic proprty’ of X. These reasons to condemn those who do not desire X are, themselves, entirely desire-driven.

The difference between these two accounts is that, under intrinsic value theory, nobody can say that something is morally good unless they are motivated to bring it about. In other words, if an agent feels no particular motivation to repay a debt, then all claims that he is under an obligation to repay a debt fall on deaf ears. “How can you say that I have an obligation to do something when I have no motivation to do it?”

On the other hand, desire utilitarianism holds that repaying has value in virtue of the fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote a desire to repay debts. It is perfectly coherent for a person to say, “Repaying debts is morally good; however, I feel no motivation to repay debts.” It is not coherent for a person to say, “Repaying debts is intrinsically good; however, I feel no motivation to repay debts.”

Even though the desire utilitarian statement is a coherent statement, there is practically no reason for a person to actually say it. Because to say that repaying debt is morally good is to acknowledge that others have reason to promote a desire to repay debts, in part by using condemnation and punishment against those who do not repay debts. People typically have little reason to invite condemnation and punishment.

The Harm of Intrinsic Value Theories

The dangerous part of intrinsic value theory in that, by linking the value of something to the agent’s motivation to pursue it, intrinsic value theory in practice tells agent to elevate their own desires to god-like status. “It is not my desire for X that motivates me to pursue it; it is X’s intrinsic value. Which means that those who do not value X must be defective. Their ailment must be treated or cured. At the very least, we certainly have reason to look down upon those poor, pathetic, handicapped individuals who are not capable of perceiving the true value of things.”

Effectively, intrinsic value doctrine tells each person to do what they want to do (since there is only ‘intrinsic value’ in that which they are already motivated to do), and to consider the well-being of others only to the degree that they are motivated to do so.

Technically, intrinsic value does not imply these conclusions. After all, it is still coherent to go to the agent and say, “No, you are the poor, pathetic individual who cannot appreciate true value. We, on the other hand, do appreciate value and recognize the intrinsic badness which you are pursuing merely as a matter of personal desire.”

There is no intrinsic value, so there is no way for either of these two agents to prove to the other that they are right and the other is wrong. They are both mistaken.

Yet, the belief in intrinsic value – that somebody gets to honestly claim that they have an appreciation of the true value of things simply by looking at what they are motivated to pursue (what, in practice, is such as to fulfill their desires given their beliefs), invites this kind of conflict.

Intrinsic value theory, like religion, is a set of false beliefs that invite conflict and encourage people to divide the world into ‘us’ who can appreciate the true value of things and ‘them’ who are defective in this regard.

The Desire to Serve God

Today, I want to bring up an important set of implications for some of the claims I made in yesterday’s post.

Yesterday, I mentioned that it is possible for a person to have a desire to realize a state of affairs that has intrinsic or inherent value, or a desire to do that which pleases God. Neither of these desires can be fulfilled because neither intrinsic values nor God exists. However, this does not prevent the desire from being any less real.

What I want to discuss today is what happens when a person with a particularly strong desire to (for example) please God confronts the possibility that God does not exist.

I want to suggest that because of the desire to serve God, arguments that God does not exist would be greeted in about the same way that a person would greet news that her child is missing and presumed dead in a war, or that he has cancer. The news threatens the strongest desires that a person may have, and that type of news is not going to be taken lightly.

Religious Denial

People often respond to news like this first with denial. It cannot be true. There must be some mistake. We need to get more information. There is a tendency to grasp on to whatever straw happens to float by that suggests that the horrible claim is not true – my child is alive, I do not have cancer, there is a God for me to serve.

I believe that people underestimate the true horror of coming to realize that desires which are of such importance to an individual cannot be fulfilled.

Meaninglessness, Emptiness

The point that I want to make in this post is that the standard view. That view focuses on the belief that a God does not exist, and asks why this belief does not succumb to reason as it should. There is some passive acknowledgement of an emotional investment in this belief, but little in the way of a full-face evaluation of what that emotional attachment is or what it entails.

For example, if a person is raised to have a particularly strong and stable desire to please God, then states of affairs that do not contain an element in which, “this pleases God” is true will have no value to that person. It is, in a word, ‘meaningless’. Those who say that the life of an atheist is meaningless are, at least in one sense, not mistaken. For these people, a life as an atheist – a life in which they are not bringing about a state in which ‘God is pleased’ is true – is truly meaningless. At least, they cannot find fulfillment in such a life.

So, we have theists who, once in a while, decide that they are going to look at the world as an atheist would look at it. They say that, just for a moment, they will entertain the idea that no God exists. What they discover is that this is very much like entertaining the idea that their child has gone missing in a war and is probably dead. It is very much like entertaining the thought that they have been just told that they have cancer. They are, in fact, entertaining the thought that the things they desire most can never come to pass. Having experienced that thought, they conclude the need to abandon atheism.

By the way, this has implications for a movement being proposed called, “The Great American God-Out.” Tell a person who desires to serve God to imagine no God exists, and he is going to find the situation absolutely terrifying. There may be no better way to ensure that he clutch the straws of belief even more tightly than before.

Anger

Grief counselors report that one of the important phases of grief is anger. When people discover that some strong desire of theirs is going to be thwarted, they look for somebody who they can claim is responsible for that cost, and they lash out. We lash out at inanimate objects (e.g., after stubbing our toe on the dining room chair). We lash out at people who had nothing to do with our injury. Religious people get angry at God.

So, one of the reactions we can expect from people when told that God does not exist – when those people not only have a belief that God exists but a particularly strong desire to serve God – is anger. They can be expected to lash out, to attack that which may prevent them from fulfilling their desire. Of course, the atheist is not preventing them from fulfilling their desire. The simple fact that no God exists prevents the fulfillment of this desire. However, the atheist is as much a suitable target for this wrath as the dining room table is when a stubbed toe is involved.

So, from the desire to serve God, some of the things we can expect to get from those who hear that no God exists is denial, a sense of meaninglessness or hopelessness, and anger. These do not come from the belief that God exists. They come from the desire to serve God. This is the true villain in these cases.

Preventing Bad Desires

This argument suggests that the specific wrong involved in teaching religion to children is not to be found in teaching children to believe in God. It is to be found in causing them to desire to serve God. This type of teaching is like teaching a child who, because of some medical problem, will never be able to have children that giving birth to a child is the only thing that can bring fulfillment to a woman’s life. It is like telling somebody who will grow up to be around five feet tall that self worth is essentially tied to being tall.

Of course, in teaching children to value serving God (as opposed to teaching them the value of having their own children or of being tall), the children know when they have succeeded or when they have failed to meet these standards. In the case of God, there is the option of living a lie – of thinking that one is serving God. However, this brings as much value to a person’s life as thinking that a doll one is carrying around is a real baby that one has given birth to, or thinking that one is a foot taller than one is in fact. All three of these people are living a lie, and their life has no more meaning than living a life can provide.

Some might see these points as supporting the idea that teaching religion to a child is a form of child abuse. I continue to hold that ‘abuse’ is not an appropriate term in this case, since the term requires some sort of malicious disregard for the well-being of others that simply is not present.

On the other hand, I have compared the act of teaching religion to a child to the act of taking thalidomide in the 1950s – before its harmful effects were widely known. These parents did terrible harm to their children. Yet, in spite of the fact, it would be a mistake to say that these parents abused their children.

The claim that taking thalidomide was not abuse does not imply that there was nothing wrong with it. It certainly does not imply that there was no reason to get the news out and to get pregnant mothers to quit taking the drug. In fact, it has the opposite implication. Its harmfulness argues for good people – people with desires that tend to fulfill other desires – should take action to prevent parents from feeding this poison to their children.

There is, of course, another significant difference between spiritual thalidomide and the chemical that some pregnant mothers took in the 1950s. Many brands of spiritual thalidomide cause the children who take this poison to grow up to be people who devote tremendous amounts of time, effort, and money into harming others. Some of them wield knives, guns and bombs.

There is, of course, another significant difference between spiritual thalidomide and the chemical that some pregnant mothers took in the 1950s. Many brands of spiritual thalidomide cause the children who take this poison to grow up to be people who devote tremendous amounts of time, effort, and money into harming others. Some of them wield knives, guns and bombs.

However, there are others who devote their time to harming others through legislation. It turns them into children who will work tirelessly to prevent researchers from coming up with cures that will prevent suffering, restore health, and prolong lives. It will turn some into people who will stop social practices that will prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. It will cause some of them to become people who will demand the execution of others for no reason other than that doing so is their way of pleasing God. It will cause some of them to grow to be adults who will ignore severe harms done to the Earth and its environment because the Rapture will happen long before humans will suffer the long-term consequences of this behavior.

We have to look to the desire to understand why people are motivated to behave in certain ways, and even to understand why they are motivated to believe in certain ways. The desire to serve God explains, at least in part, the denial, the anger, and the sense of meaninglessness that many theists feel in the face of atheism. These are the constant reactions we get from people whose greatest desires are threatened. Unfortunately, in many cases, this cultural thalidomide causes people to behave in ways harmful to others. Effectively reducing this harm means effectively understanding where it comes from. Motivation comes from desire, not from belief.

Worthiness and Second-Order Desires

Richard wishes to argue that my account of morality in terms of desires – which he identifies as “mere drives and cravings” is inadequate. He wishes to reserve a role in ethics for ‘value-desires’ – a type of desire that adds the quality that its object is somehow ‘worthwhile’.

I see you are using 'desire' in a different sense from me. I am talking about value-desires, i.e. those ends we are drawn to by a perception of their worthiness. You are talking about mere drives, or craving-desires.

My response is that these value-desires do not exist. Instead, the phenomena that Richard is talking about and wishes to capture under ‘value-desires’, I capture under the heading of second-order desires or desires that certain desires exist.

These second-order desires can be desires-as-ends that other desires exist, but most often they are desires-as-means that other desires exist. They come from the recognition that some desires tend to fulfill other desires, and some desires do not. The desires that tend to fulfill other desires are desires that people generally have reason to endorse and have the real-world properties that Richard classifies as ‘value-desires’. The desires that do not tend to fulfill other desires, and perhaps even thwart other desires, are Richard’s ‘mere drives or cravings’.

ADHR provides an example of this in saying:

The error, I think, is that proper desires are, contra Hume, amenable to reason. If I realize that I can’t achieve both of two proper desires I have, in my experience, one of those desires has been extinguished or, at least, de-emphasized. Consistency is one feature of rationally; so, in these sorts of cases, inconsistency alters proper desires.

Now, without addressing the question of whether it is ‘contra Hume’ or not, when there are two incompatible desires this tells us something of the value of each desire as a means. Each desire contributes to the thwarting of the other, and thus each desire provides a reason for action to get rid of the other.

Which desire should a person get rid of?

Well, I have a desire to have a healthy body, and I have a desire for chocolate. These desires are in conflict. In deciding between them, I note that the desire for a healthy body will tend to fulfill other desires. However, my desire for chocolate does not. As such, I recognize that the desire for a healthy body has more value as a means than my desire for chocolate. I have more and stronger reasons to give up my desire for chocolate than my desire for a healthy body. In fact, the desire for chocolate is one which I would choose to get rid of.

As for the possibility that a desire will simply disappear when the agent recognizes a conflict, there are far too many examples when this is not the case. Poor eating habits, gambling, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sexually transmitted disease, all point to cases where a person may wish that desire that conflicts with others would simply disappear, but does not.

Now, ADHR did not say that all desires are like his ‘proper desires’ when they come into conflict. He has not denied the existence of what he has called drive-desires. However, the only testimony he offers is a personal testimony that he has witnessed such a phenomenon.

I would like to politely suggest that one look at this with the same attitude that one would use in looking at the claim, “I know that ghosts exist; I saw one.” I will not deny that ADHR saw something. I would question the accuracy of his interpretation.

We can get something like the suppression of one desire when we realize that it is in conflict with another when, instead of having two desires, we have one desire that can e fulfilled in two different ways. A person can have a desire for sex. He may not care whether it be with Sam or Jesse. Either option fulfills his desire and, thereby, causes the other desire to ‘disappear’. However, this was not a conflict in ends, it was a conflict in means.

The main problem with Richard’s alternative is the impossibility of coming up with any sense of ‘worthiness’ other than ‘being such as to fulfill the desires in question.’ Allegedly, objects of desire can have a property of ‘worthiness’. The simple recognition that something has this property can motivate us to bring it about. Indeed, the recognition of the ‘worthiness’ of an object of evaluation is supposed to be enough to generate a motivation to pursue it – a ‘value-desire’, or a ‘motivational belief’.

No, sorry, I don’t see any reason to go down that road. There is no real-world evidence that compels this type of metaphysics. Second-order desires – the endorsement of desires because they tend to fulfill other desires, either directly or indirectly, has all of the real-world explanatory power we need without postulating any strange entities.

Part of his justification for this belief is that humans are

. Perhaps animals' motivational system is like that, but humans are rather more complicated. We reason about our ends, and not just our means. Some ends are not wholly arbitrary, but rather pursued because we judge them to be worth pursuing.

Yes, we do ‘reason about our ends’. However, there is no such thing as a pure end. Any end we adopt has effects – it is a means to the fulfillment of other ends – or a barrier to their fulfillment. So, we are wise to reason about the value of an end as a means, and to adopt those ends that tend to promote other ends, while inhibiting those ends that tend to thwart other ends.

I will agree that animals do not have the capacity to reason about the value of their ends as means. Yet, animals still (in an unreflective – unphilosophical way) exploit the power of second-order desires. One creature in a colony acts in ways that aggravate others. The others respond with condemnation and punishment. The first animal then learns his place – learns how to behave as a member of the colony.

Because these animals are unreflective about such things, they do not use these tools as efficiently as we are capable of using them. They cannot sit down and debate whether it really is a good idea to be inhibiting this desire or promoting that one. “Maybe it has some long-range or secondary benefits that outweigh its prima-facie badness?” However, the raw materials are there, and they do not require introducing some type of ‘worthiness’ into our world view.

Richard’s objections come with a recommendation

If you like, you could accommodate this within your Humean framework by adding the bridging claim:

(B) Necessarily, a rational agent desires to do what's worth doing.

Then our reasoning is merely changing our beliefs about how to fulfill this antecedent desire, rather than creating any new desire-as-ends.

In order to respond to this objection precisely, I need to know what Richard has in mind for a ‘rational agent’ and for a quality of ‘worth doing’. Yet, I suspect that whatever definitions he offers, I am going to reject this proposition.

Others have reason to make it rational for me to do what is worth doing. Here, by ‘rational’ I mean that an action is such as to fulfill my own desires, while ‘worth doing’ means that those same desires are those that tend to fulfill the desires of others. In fact, I would agree that this is the purpose for moral practices – to promote in people those desires that they have reason to promote, those desires that tend to fulfill other desires. To the degree that they are successful, then what is rational for me will be that which is worth doing.

However, there is no guarantee of success. To the degree that moral institutions fall short, to that degree we have people for whom it is rational to do things that do not fulfill the desires of others; that even thwart the desires of others.

I do not know if Richard would accept this view of rationality. I suspect that he would not accept this account of ‘worth doing’. He has something else in mind. I will answer that this ‘something else’ he has in mind isn’t real. It is as much of an invention as God, and it is just another way to try to give special significance to ends that really obtain their value in the way I described above.

Richard suggests that I assign his quality of worthiness to my own project of making the world a better place than it would have otherwise been.

Much as you will refuse to acknowledge it, I suspect that your own desire to "make the world a better place" is an instance of this. It is a worthy project, much more so than puffing on a cigarette would be.

He knows me well enough to know that I will ‘refuse to acknowledge’ this option. My desire to make the world a better place has no quality of ‘worthiness’ has he would define it. It has the quality of being a desire that people generally have reason to promote (based on their desires). Any attempt to write anything more into that involves stepping into the realm of fiction.

In fact, the differences between our two accounts invite me to ask the following question:

Is there a case in which something fulfills one of our accounts, but not the other? Is there a case in which a desire that tends to fulfill other desires is also a desire for that which is not worthwhile? Or a desire that tends to thwart other desires is worthwhile?

If not – if the two sets are co-existent, I can get rid of Richard’s concept of ‘worthwhileness’ because I simply do not need it. It does no work.

However, if it is true, then we have ‘worthwhileness’ promoting people to do harm by promoting them to pursue that which thwarts other desires, or inhibiting them from doing good by inhibiting them from doing that which fulfills other desires.

This is not a strong argument. It is not an argument at all, since it begs every question that can be begged. However, it does provide an important illustration at what is at stake. Can something have ‘worthwhileness’ that gets in the way of desires that tend to fulfill other desires or promote desires that tend to thwart other desires?

The real argument against this concept of ‘worthwhileness’ is that, if it exists, what is it? What does it take for a proposition identifying something as ‘worthwhile’ to be true or false? How do we recognize it when we see it? How is this alleged capacity to recognize ‘worthwhileness’ made compatible with the fact of human evolution? What is happening when one person identifies a state of affairs as being ‘worthwhile’ while another identifies it as ‘a waste of time’? Who is right? Can they both be right?

These types of questions argue against adding ‘worthwhileness’ to our ontology unless we absolutely have to. I hold that we do not have to. We can do everything we need to do by evaluating the capacity of desires to fulfill or thwart other desires – and we don’t have all of these pesky questions.

Value desires are not a new type of desire susceptible to reason. They are regular desires being evaluated according to their usefulness in fulfilling other desires.

Partial Values

Today, I wish to deal with Atheist Observer’s proposed counter-example to my claim that no set of beliefs entails a desire.

Atheist Observer proposed the following:

John believes Mary is a beautiful, sexy woman. John believes Chez Pierre is a good place for a romantic dinner. John believes he enjoys romantic dinners with beautiful, sexy women. John has a desire-as-ends to have a romantic dinner with Mary at Chez Pierre.

If you wanted to change John’s desire as ends for this dinner would you: a) try to condemn, embarrass, or humiliate him about it. b) Reason with him and explain Mary hates men, can’t stand French food, and Chez Pierre is actually noisy, crowded, and ridiculously overpriced.

Unmentioned Desires

In this example, we are to assume that, in addition to the premises that Atheist Observer put in his original argument, that the following premises are also true.

(1) Mary hates men.

(2) The Chez Pierre is noisy.

(3) The Chez Pierre is crowded

(4) The Chez Pierre is ‘overpriced’

However, this account also contains several unmentioned desires-as-ends. These desires-as-ends are necessary for these beliefs to have the motivational power they do. Specifically, Atheist Observer’s example buries the following assumtions:

(5) John has no desires-as-end to form a relationship with somebody who hates men.

(6) John has an aversion-as-end to noisy restaurants.

(7) John hates crowds

(8) John has an aversion to paying too much for food.

Note: John’s aversion to paying ‘too much’ for food is actually redundant. ‘Too much’ is that amount that John has an aversion to paying. Also, more so than with the other examples, the aversion to paying too much can either be a desires-as-end, or it can be a desires-as-means of doing other things with the money.

Whatever the details turn out to be, we have a case where we can assume that John had additional desires-as-ends in play, and that the additional beliefs merely pointed out the relationship between the state of affairs John was creating and his full set of desires-as-ends.

Specifically, note that the proposition “The Chez Pierre is noisy and crowded” by itself does not motivate John to either go to the restaurant or to refrain from going there. His motivation depends on more than a belief about the crowds and noise. It also depends on his attitudes towards crowds and noise.

Perhaps John loves noise and crowds. Perhaps crowds make him feel alive and connected, while he finds quiet, restful places to be depressing. Or, perhaps, he is indifferent. Any belief that the Chez Pierre is noisy and crowded would affect him differently, depending on his desires towards things that are noisy and crowded. The belief itself carries no recommendation to go or to refrain from going.

John might well pick the Chez Pierre because of the noise and crowds.

In fact, every belief that you can feed to John, his attitude towards that belief will depend on his desires. The beliefs themselves are motivationally neutral. The motivation to preserve or to avoid a state in which that belief is true depends on desires.

[Richard: I will get to your points on this matter tomorrow.]

Partial Value

Assume that you have a column of 12 numbers, and you take 3 of those numbers at random and add them up, what are the chances that the sum of those three numbers would equal the sum of all 12 numbers?

It is possible that the sums would be the same (since we are allowing for the possibility of zero and negative numbers), but it is not likely. It is certainly not guaranteed.

This is what is happening in Atheist Observer’s example above. He starts his example by relating a case in which a state of affairs relates to subset of the agent’s desires-as-ends, then he brings in the remaining desires-as-ends and shows that the resulting new sum is different than the original sum. We have shown this to the person by affecting his beliefs – by showing that his original beliefs about the relationship between that state of affairs and his desires-as-ends were mistaken. However, none of this shows that beliefs have the power to entail a change in desires as ends. It simply shows the capacity to learn new facts relating states of affairs to desires that already existed but were not mentioned.

Desire utilitarianism says that a person acts to as to fulfill the more and the stronger of his desires, given his beliefs – and that false or incomplete beliefs may cause a person to act in ways that will not fulfill the more and stronger of his desires. Atheist Observer’s example is one in which an agent had incomplete beliefs and, as a result, considered acting in a way that would not have fulfilled the more and stronger of his desires. By better informing him about how the relevant state of affairs compared to the more and stronger of John’s desires, we have shown John that his original estimate is correct.

The Cost of Precision

I have argued in the past that the cost of information is high, and because of this cost we must sometimes take shortcuts.

Assume that somebody gives you a long list of numbers and tells you that he wants to know the total in, say, 20 seconds. You need to get as close as possible. What would you do?

Personally, I would start adding from left to right, adding the first digits in the largest numbers first and add them to get an estimate. After I got done with the highest column I would move to the next highest. I would give the person asking the question as much precision as I could. Yet, the numbers that I left unconsidered would still have the power to change the total, perhaps from a positive to a negative number.

It makes sense for people to do the same when evaluating whether a state of affairs will fulfill the more and stronger of his desires. He will compare the state of affairs to his stronger desires to get an estimate of its value, and learn not to sweat the small stuff. The estimated cost of error, at some point, becomes less than the estimated cost of acquiring further information. We all act – we all must act, on limited information.

This does not mean that desires unconsidered will not affect the agent’s choice. Desires (like forces) have an affect wherever they exist. The point that I am getting at here is that, if the desires are weak (or significantly weaker than the other desires in play) it is simply not worthwhile to an agent to find out more about whether a state of affairs will fulfill or thwart that desire – not if it costs him to the opportunity to fulfill some stronger desire.

Yet, in this case, the information that John did not seek becomes available. That information changes his mind, not because it generates new desires-as-ends. It is because the information tells him about relationships between the actual state of affairs and existing desires-as-ends that he had not taken the time to consider.

None of this shows that a change in beliefs entails a change in desires as ends. It only shows that a change of beliefs can change beliefs about how a state of affairs relates to the desires-as-ends that already exist.

Of course, one would use reason to point these types of errors out to a person – to point out, “Hey, John, I know that your desires-as-ends includes and aversion to noisy crowds. Let me tell you, Chez Pierre is a noisy and crowded place. It’s relationship to the full set of desires-as-ends that you already have is not what you think it is.”

Addendum

Atheist Observer added a second point to his comment that I would also like to address.

My point is that operant conditioning may work in rats, chickens, and dogs, and to some degree in small children, but as a method to change desires as ends in adults it effectiveness is marginal at best. “Clockwork Orange” was just a movie.

The precise degree to which conditioning works on adults is subject to further research. I agree that, as one gets older, its effects weaken. However, I see no reason to assume that humans are any different from animals in this way. It is also true in animals that, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Or, at least, it takes more effort for little gain to the point that it may not be worthwhile to try. Yet, the teaching of new tricks is not impossible and, if there is a sufficiently large gain to be had, then there is reason to try.

However, I allow that the greatest influence of these social forces rests with their effect on children. This is why I have argued in the past that the lessons of atheists ‘coming out’ and, in particular, in expressing certain moral principles should be done in the presence of or, better, while directly speaking to children.

At some point, it takes so much effort for such a little change in a person’s desires that it is not worthwhile to engage in that activity. We may decide to simply give up and ignore Grandpa’s racist rants, knowing that Grandpa was a product of another age and, with just a few years of life within him, it simply is not worth our while to try to change him. We may decide to quietly put up with Grandma’s religious-based moral attitudes until she passes away, while restricting her opportunity to infect her grandchildren with primitive superstitions.

Yet, none of this argues against the sensibility of using these tools where they do have an effect, and the cost of using them is less than the benefit that can be expected from the changes they bring about.

The Arationality of Desires

I am pleased with the response that this recent series on beliefs and desires has solicited. I sincerely enjoy this stuff – moral philosophy – and consider it a gift to be able to have intelligent discussion on some of these issues.

Richard has suggested that the following is a challenge to the theory that I have been defending:

Alonzo - I believe that I would desire X if I were more rational" is compatible with "I would desire X if I were more rational" being false.'

Of course. My claim is that the belief rationally forces one to have the desire; not that the belief is necessarily true!

Compare these Moore-paradoxical assertions: (1) P is true, but I don't believe it.

(2) I would believe P if I were ideally rational; but I don't currently believe that P.

(3) I would desire that P if I were ideally rational, but I don't currently desire that P.

My claim is that the agent who asserts (3) suffers from a rational incoherence, a kind of (almost) contradiction, the same as in (1) and (2).

That is, I claim that the BELIEF that one would desire P if one was ideally rational, rationally necessitates the agent (on pain of incoherence) to DESIRE that P.

Ideally Rational

I would like to question how, “I would desire that P if I were ideally rational” makes any sense at all.

In one sense, it appears to beg the question, in that the sentence presumes that there is a ‘rationality’ of desire, when this is exactly the point that is at issue. I am claiming that there is no ‘reason’ to desires. Rather, desires are like height, hair color, blood pressure, and location. They are facts about a person that can be changed. However, reason alone does not imply any such change.

You can argue with a person all you want, getting that agent to agree with your argument will not change his height or hair color. The best you can do is to convince him that he has reasons-for-action to change his height or hair color. However, even here, convincing him that he has such reasons-for-action means convincing him that he has desires-as-ends that would be fulfilled in a state where he has a different height or hair color.

In this context, the proper interpretation of Richard’s third proposition would be like, “I would 6’3” if I were at the best possible height for me to be; but I am not currently 6’3”.

Or, “I would have no desire to smoke cigarettes if I had those desires that it would be best for me to have, but I currently have a desire to smoke cigarettes.”

Neither of these statements involve any type of incoherence – not in the way that Richard’s first two statements are incoherent.

As I said above, once a person is convinced that having a different height or hair color would better fulfill his desires, he has reason-for-action to make the change. Changing hair color is easy, and unlikely to thwart other desires, so we can expect to see people acting so as to change the color of their hair.

Changing height is not-so-easy, and the procedures would thwart a large number of other desires (not the least of which is that the money that would go into changing one’s height could have gone into fulfilling other desires). However, where changing height can more easily accomplished, we do see people acting so as to change their height. There are, for example, children who take supplemental growth hormone in order to increase their height.

The relevant fact here is that, in neither case, do we expect an application of reason to change a person’s height or hair color. There is no set of propositions whereby, when a person accepts those propositions, his height or hair color will automatically change. We could, perhaps, come up with instances where, if we can get a person to accept a set of propositions, we can get them to change their beliefs about their height or hair color. However, changing beliefs about height or hair color is not the same as changing their height or hair color. Similarly, changing a person’s beliefs about his desires-as-ends (or about whether a particular state of affairs would fulfill his desires-as-ends) is not the same as changing his desires-as-ends.

A part of my discussion is the claim that we do have tools for changing desires-as-ends, just as we have tools for changing height and hair color. A person who has been convinced that he has reason to change his desires-as-ends has reason to put those tools to work, just as a person convinced that he has reasons to change his hair color will take action to change his hair color.

Let us assume that we have convinced a person that he has reason to be rid of his desire to smoke. His desire to smoke is causing actions that threaten to thwart his other desires (namely, smoking). There is no set of arguments or beliefs that, alone, will cause the desire to smoke to cease to exist.

Or, if there is a rational argument that can actually end the desire to smoke, I would like to see that reasoning, and I suspect that a great many people with a desire to smoke would like to know it as well.

Please recall, we are looking for a set of propositions that do not merely cause an end of the desire to smoke. Since beliefs and desires both reside in the brain, perhaps believing that the earth is 4.5 billion years old has an influence on the desire to smoke. We are looking for a set of beliefs that somehow entail no desire to smoke.

Once somebody has come up with a way to end the desire to smoke through reason alone, I would like to propose another challenge - to change sexual orientation through reason alone.

Unfortunately, as a desire-as-end, the desire to smoke is not susceptible to rational argument. The desire either exists, or it does not exist. It can be changed by applying tools that have been shown to have an affect on desire, but it cannot be altered by reason alone.

Altering Desires as Ends

Atheist Observer and Thayne have challenged me to better defend my claim that reason cannot affect desires-as-ends; that it takes something else (such as praise and condemnation.

From Thayne:

So far, I've seen no particular reason to accept Alonzo's assertion that information and reasoning cannot change desires-as-ends. As far as I can tell, it just seems that way to Alonzo. I'm curious if there is any psychological research to back his claim.

First, we need a more precise account of just the type of relationships I am talking about here.

It may be possible for reason to cause a change in desires-as-ends. For example, empirical research may show that, by reasoning with a person, and demonstrating to him convincingly that the sum of the square of the sides of a right triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse, that this may cause the agent to have a stronger preference for rhubarb pie.

After all, beliefs and desires are both brain states. Altering a person’s beliefs means altering the pathways in the brain. Those pathways may also have some significance in determining what a person desires. It may well be the case that the pathways for the quadratic equation also function as a stronger desire for rhubarb pie.

Yet, I suspect that these are not the types of relationships Atheist Observer and Thayne are talking about. They certainly are not the types of relationships that I am talking about. I am talking about something that has the structure of entailment – logical implication – inference.

Somehow, a set of beliefs (acquired through reason) are supposed to entail or imply a desire-as-end such that a person who accepts the premises (beliefs) without having the desire-as-end is guilty of some sort of logical incoherence.

When we talk about implication, we are not talking about something that is verified or falsified for psychological research. When mathematicians said that the sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse, it is a mistake to say, “I want to see some psychological research that shows that the sum of the squares of the sides must equal the square of the hypotenuse.” Asking for psychological research to verify or falsify this claim would be a category mistake.

If somebody wants to assert that a set of beliefs can entail or imply a desires-as-end in such a way that having the former but not the latter is incoherent, I simply would like to see that argument.

It would be an argument that takes the form:

• Proposition believed
• Proposition believed
• Proposition believed
• Therefore, proposition desired-as-end

Simply provide an example that has this structure where the premises actually entail the conclusion, and my thesis has been disproved.

I suggest that it cannot be done.

Furthermore, I argue that this is the insight that sits at the core of Hume’s claim that one cannot derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’.

I have argued that a person can derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’. This is the case because ‘ought’ means ‘is such as to fulfill the desires in question’ – which is an ‘is’ statement, and can be derived from other relevant ‘is’ statements.

However, these ‘is’ statements must include desires-as-ends. Without any desires-as-ends there are no reasons for action, and without reasons for action, an ‘ought’ claim makes no sense. Therefore, you cannot derive an ‘ought’ conclusion – a conclusion about reasons for action – unless the premises contain reasons for action (desires-as-ends).

Which means that the only way you are going to get ‘proposition desired-as-end’ in your conclusion in the argument above is if you include not only propositions believed, but propositions desired-as-end in the premises.

That is to say, you are going to have to have an argument in which the ‘desire-as-end’ that makes up the conclusion is going to be evaluated according to its relationship to the ‘desires-as-ends’ that fit into the premises. Or, as I have repeatedly said, we can evaluate desires-as-ends just as we evaluate everything else in the universe, according to how well or how poorly that desire-as-end fulfills other desires-as-ends.

Let’s look at what this theory says about a drug addiction, for example. A drug addiction is a strong desires-as-end for the effects of a drug that tends to thwart other desires. Now, you can reason with a person about why this desire for drugs is a bad thing. You can totally convince him that this is a bad thing. However, all of the convincing you can do will still leave him wanting the drug. The best you can hope to accomplish is to explain to him that the more and stronger of his desires can be met by not taking the drug – and that he should perform those actions that will weaken the desire for the drug. But reason itself does not change the desire.

Atheist Observer combined this with another challenge – a challenge that praise and condemnation cannot affect desires.

How many times has condemnation without any supporting reasons or facts caused you to change your desires?

However, all I am talking about when I speak about praise and condemnation changing their desires are versions of the widely known phenomena of conditioning. You do not train a pet by sitting down and reasoning with him. You train a pet by providing positive and negative reinforcement – by rewarding the types of behavior you want to see repeated, and punishing the behavior that you want to see inhibited. No amount of reasoning is involved.

There is no reason to believe that humans are somehow immune to these forces.

Reasoning can only serve to teach a person how to fulfill the desires he already has. If a person desires not to do harm to others, you can reason with him, and show him that a particular course of action causes harm to others. However, if he does not care what happens to others, if he greatest joy is found in the suffering of others, then what type of reasoning are we going to use to get him to care?

If you like spicy food, and your significant other does not, then what type of argument are you going to use to get your partner to like spicy food? What set of propositions, once believed, entail the conclusion that “spicy food tastes good to me after all?”

On the other hand if you take a kid (in particular), and expose him to spicy food, and you surround this exposure with praise for those who eat this food and condemnation for those who do not, then you create a situation where that child is at least more likely to grow up to be somebody who likes that food. This is how food traditions within a culture are preserved – how tastes in food are handed down.

You cannot reason somebody into liking liver and onions. You may be able to reason him into eating it (if eating it will help to fulfill other desires he already has), but you cannot reason him into liking it.

So, this is why I believe that beliefs cannot entail a desires-as-end (or you cannot reason a person into a desires-as-end). And why social tools such as praise and condemnation can affect desires-as-ends.

Desires, Beliefs, Moral Values, and Condemnation

Yesterday’s post about the relationship between beliefs and desires came up in part because of my views on how one should treat evil people. It relates to the attitude that one should take to those whose religion promotes attitudes that tend to be harmful to others.

On the latter subject, I reject the view that one should be nice or respect those whose religious views promote actions that are harmful to others. The greater the degree of harm, the less respect one should give to those who hold that opinion. Near the bottom of the respect category in America are those fighting to inhibit research on embryonic stem cells, deny homosexuals the opportunity to live a life in compliance with their nature, and promote the idea that atheists are some lesser form of human life.

Defects in belief should be met with reason and respect. Defects in desire are immune to reason. Condemnation and ridicule are the appropriate response to these types of attitudes.

Yesterday, I wrote that no belief entails a desire. There is an exception to that. Humans quite often believe what they wish to be true. So, if we have evidence that a person believes something, and we know that there is no sound reason for that belief, we have reason to ask, “Of all of the infinite number of things that this person could have believed without reason, why did he pick that one?” In some cases, the best explanation for a person’s irrational belief is because he wanted to believe it. If he wanted to believe something that a person with good desires would not want to believe, we have reason to bring out the social tools of condemnation and ridicule.

Please note that this is clearly not a case of logical implication. This is a case of causal implication. A strong desire can cause a false belief.

This feature dovetails into the moral crime of epistemic negligence. I have described this as a condition similar to physical negligence. My example of a physically negligent person is a driver who fails to properly secure a load. He ends up putting other people at risk that the road will shift during transport and injure or kill other people. Somebody with a proper level of concern that others not get hurt would have made sure that the load was properly secured. Lack of care in securing the road shows evidence of a lack of concern for those who might get hurt.

The same is true of those who fail to secure their beliefs – particularly beliefs that put others at risk of harm. A person with a proper level of concern that his actions not harm others will make sure that his beliefs are well secured before he acts on them in ways that might harm others. A person who acts on beliefs without making sure that they are well secured demonstrate that they are people who are not concerned about the welfare of others. They have shown themselves to be intellectually reckless. Their failing also makes them an appropriate target of condemnation and ridicule.

In these types of cases, it is important to join in on the chorus of condemnation and ridicule. If these people are coddled and favored, then this will encourage others to adopt the same apathy to the victims of intellectually recklessness.

If we were to say nothing to condemn drunk drivers, if we were to ‘respect’ their choice to drive their cars while impaired, we can expect that this will only increase the numbers of drunk drivers. This, in turn, puts us and those we love at greater risk of harm. The same is true of we coddle and refuse to condemn reckless thinkers because they, too, put us and those we care about at risk of harm.

In fact, each year, if we hold the unjustified harms inflicted on others due to reckless thinking beside the harms done to others as a result of drunk driving, the latter is almost insignificant compared to the former. Look at any child whose well-being you care about. That child is orders of magnitude more likely to suffer harm as a result of a reckless thinker than a drunk driver. And, if that child should grow up to be a reckless thinker, this could well harm her as much as if she had become an alcoholic, given the poor choices that reckless thinking can inspire.

Any who say that we should silently respect those whose reckless thinking promote death, disease, injury, and destruction, are simply wrong. The only way to promote a greater love of wisdom and contempt for intellectual recklessness is by putting the tools of praise and reward to work on the former, and to greet the latter with condemnation and ridicule.

In fact, I will confess that this has been one of my greater disappointments in writing this blog. I have wanted to inspire more condemnation and ridicule. I have wanted to take those people who hold that there is something noble in showing silent respect to people whose recklessness puts others at risk and wake them from their stupor.

Against this, some may argue that I have a strange way of showing my devotion to the practice of condemnation and ridicule since I make comments critical of the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and PZ Myers. However, my criticism of these authors has never been an objection to the fact that they use condemnation and ridicule. My objection is that they sometimes pick undeserving targets. They over-generalize, and condemn the guilty aline side the innocent. I am all in favor of condemnation, but condemnation should be tightly focused on those who are actually guilty.

This is quite consistent with believing that, against those who are guilty of intellectual recklessness, the morally concerned individual will not hesitate to express contempt, condemnation, and ridicule.

The guilty, once ore, are those who recklessly adopt a belief that puts others at risk of harm. The greater the risk and the greater the recklessness, the greater the ridicule and condemnation that they deserve.

If any protest this ‘meanness’, then the answer goes as follows:

Desires are immune to reason. They are, however, affected by praise and condemnation. The best way to promote an overall aversion to intellectual recklessness is to condemn, ridicule, embarrass, humiliate, or laugh at those who engage in intellectual recklessness. Refusing to do these things means tolerating the death, disease, injury, injustice, and other forms of harm that spring from reckless thinking – in the same way that tolerating drunk driving as just another lifestyle choice is to decide to accept the fatalities and injuries caused by drunk drivers.

Beliefs and Values

In today’s post I want to address the third of three excellent questions from the studio audience that I received over the weekend. This one, from Tom Freeman, says:

Don't many desires presuppose certain beliefs, though? A desire to serve the will of god (whether through preaching, charity or the slaying of unbelievers) goes straight out the window once one loses the belief in god's existence.

Actually, a desire to serve the will of God does not go out the window when one loses the belief in God’s existence. The desire remains, causing many people a great deal of anguish because they have come to realize that something they want very badly is something that they can never have.

The whole psychology of grief is based on the fact that, sometimes, some very strong desires continue to exist even when the object of that desire ceases to exist. Imagine that an atheist parent, who believes that there is no life after death, loses her child in an automobile accident. All of the desires that the parent had for the future of that child, all of the things that parent wanted to see and do in helping that child grow up, now can no longer be fulfilled. The child has ceased to exist. However, the desires remain, causing excruciating pain in some instances.

The idea that the desire ceases to exist when belief that it can be fulfilled ceases to exist cannot handle these types of very common cases.

In fact, if you can tell somebody that something that he claims to have valued does not exist – that it was destroyed, or it never existed to start with, and he does not experience a period of grief over the discovery, you can reasonably assert that he never cared about that thing to start with. If a father learns of his child’s death, shrugs his shoulders, and casually makes adjustments to his calendar, then this is not a sign of a desire that depended on a belief. It is a sign of a desire (a concern for the child) that simply did not exist.

Desires, Ends, and Means

Now, this does not refute the claim that there are desires that presuppose certain beliefs. It only counters a particular example of such a desire.

As it turns out, the term ‘desire’ is actually an ambiguous term, and one of the meanings of desires includes beliefs. Another does not include beliefs.

The distinction that I am talking about here is the distinction between ‘desires-as-end’ versus ‘desires-as-means’.

We often use the term ‘desire’ to refer to something that we value, not for its own sake, but for its usefulness. If I were to say, “I want go to the dentist this afternoon,” one can rest assured that I have no desire that I be at the dentist. Instead, I have a desire that I not experience future pain, and a belief that being at the dentist will help me to avoid future pain. In other words, my visit to the dentist is a means of avoiding future pain, while pain itself is something that I seek to avoid for its own sake – simply because I dislike pain.

In other words, a ‘desire-as-means’ is a shortcut way of taking about a collection of desires-as-ends and beliefs and talking about them without using so many words. Every desire-as-means statement can be scratched out and replaced by desire-as-end statements and beliefs. Only, it would result in some very long-winded statements. It is much easier to say, “I want to stop by the store on the way home,” than it is to say, “I want steak for supper and I believe that the store has steak and I believe that the store will give me the steak if I allow them to take a certain amount of money out of my bank account and I believe that I have at least that much money in my bank account.”

When I speak about desires in desire utilitarianism I am concerning myself only with desire-as-ends and beliefs. I am not ignoring desire-as-means. I am not cutting out and calling them irrelevant. I am saying that everything that is true about desire-as-means is true of bundles of desire-as-ends and beliefs. By talking about the latter, we include the former.

When it comes to desires-as-means, changing beliefs can change what a person desires. If I say that I want to purchase 1,000 shares of Company X, somebody can instantly kill that desire by causing me to believe that Company X will soon be filing for bankruptcy. This is because my desire to purchase shares of Company X was not a desire-as-end. My desire-as-end was to make money. Purchasing shares of Company X was a desire-as-means. As soon as I cease to believe that it will serve as a desire-as-means, my desire-as-means ceases to exist. However, my desire-as-end of making money remains.

Participatory Good

Let is say that I have a desire to own famous pieces of art. I cherish a Van Gogh painting that I have in my study. In this case, I value the painting because it participates in a set of things that I value – a set of famous paintings.

However, let us assume that this is not a Van Gogh painting. It is a forgery – the tpe of forgery that can have no real value. The instant that my beliefs about this painting change – the minute I go from believing that it participates in the set of famous paintings to believing that it does not participate in that set – at that moment my ‘desire’ to hold onto this painting vanishes. I might even immediately destroy it.

Participatory value is another case in which the we use value to refer to a combination of desires-as-ends and beliefs. The desires-as-ends in this case is to own famous artwork. The beliefs that are relevant here are my beliefs that this painting participates in the set ‘famous art work’.

In changing my beliefs in this case, an individual would not be changing my desires-as-ends. My desire-as-end of owning famous paintings continues. I would continue to value this painting if it was a famous painting.

Changing Beliefs

In both of these cases, changing a person’s beliefs will change the way they behave, and it will change what a person claims to desires. However, it does not affect an agent’s desires-as-ends. Nor does it affect a person’s moral character.

Consider a mother who wants to feed her child. There prepares some baby formula, believing that the contents are healthy. Unfortunately, as a result of product tampering, the formula contains poison. If we change this person’s beliefs about the formula (warn her that formula with lot number N has been poisoned and that this container is from lot number N), she then decides not to feed it to the baby. By changing this person’s beliefs, you have changed her behavior – preventing her from doing a bad thing. However, you have not improved her moral character. This is because moral character is not affected by changes in beliefs. Moral character is only affected by by changes in desires-as-ends.

Now, before she learns that her container belongs to a poisoned lot, she may have well said something like, “I want the bottle of baby food over there.” She would use the language of desires. However, in this case, she is referring to desires-as-means, not desires-as-ends.

The same is true of the man buying what he thinks is a forgery. He says, “I want that painting.” Convince him that it is a forgery and he will admit that his statement, “I want that painting “ was false. He will no longer try to buy it. By changing the person’s beliefs you have changed his attitude towards that painting, but you have not affected his moral character. His improved beliefs leave him just as virtuous or just as vicious as he once was.

The Homosexuality Example

Thayne presented an example a couple of days ago that is supposed to refute my claims.

I had a friend who, to name just one example, despised homosexuals. He supported Amendment 2 here in Colorado (an amendment to the state constitution that basically made it okay for employers and landlords to discriminate against homosexuals). Why? Because his conservative religion told him to.

After debating and discussing issues with him for quite some time, he is now not religious and believes homosexuals should be free to be homosexuals without facing discrimination. His change in belief had many other effects that I think Alonzo would deem good as well.

I did not use the tools Alonzo suggests. I appealed to reason. Heavily.

Let me present a theory of what was going on here. The value (or disvalue) that this friend placed in homosexuality was due to his beliefs about its participatory value. My guess is that the friend had a desire to promote that which is good and inhibit that which is bad, a belief that scripture contained reliable information about what was good and what was bad, and that scripture identified homosexuality as bad. Consequently, he believed that homosexuality participated in the set, “That which is bad.”

Reason would be an appropriate way to convince this person that homosexuality does not, in fact, participate in the set of ‘that which is bad’.

However, Thayne’s use of reason did not affect his friend’s moral character. His friend’s moral character was reflected in the desire-as-end of promoting that which is good and inhibiting that which is bad. This was an example of using reason to prevent a good person from doing bad things, not a case of using reason to prevent somebody from being a bad person.

It is patently absurd for anybody to claim that you cannot affect a person’s behavior by affecting his beliefs. In fact, the formula that sits at the foundation of all that I write, “People act so as to fulfill the most and the strongest of their desires, given their beliefs,” points to the role that beliefs have in behavior. Also, beliefs are governed my reason. False beliefs prevent the fulfillment of desires. People have reason to promote those desires that promote true beliefs and inhibit those desires that promote false beliefs. All of this points to an important role that changing beliefs have in changing behavior.

However, changing beliefs has nothing to do with morality. Teaching a child that all squares are rectangles is not the same as teaching him virtue – though teaching him to love math could well be.

So, I am not downplaying the role of beliefs in changing behavior. Every post that I write is an attempt to use reason to affect beliefs. Whether I am arguing that ‘genetic morality’ is an oxymoron, or that people generally have reason to promote an aversion to harming innocent people that implies presumption of innocence and proof of guilt, I am appealing to reason. If I downplayed the role of reason, then why do I use so much of it? Or, at least, I try to.

No, what I argue is that a person’s moral character is not tied up in what he believes. Beliefs are important, but ‘ought’ and ‘should’ refer to reasons for action, and the only reasons for action that exist are desires. Desires are what identify the ends of human action; beliefs only pick out the means.

Furthermore, when it comes to changing desires-as-ends, beliefs are irrelevant. No belief entails a desires-as-end. Beliefs are certainly relevant to desires-as-means and desires-as-participant. However, changing desires-as-ends requires tools such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Potential versus Actual Desires

Today I am going to address the second of three interesting questions from the studio audience that I received a couple of days ago. This one concerns the value of potential desires – desires that somebody might have in the future. This question will be important, in particular, to the question of abortion and performing an act that would have the effect of destroying certain future desires.

G-man asked:

If I recall, you support a right to abortion on the grounds that you cannot actually harm a fetus (until around the 20th week, that is). The future values and desires which that fetus could potentially have as a child seem to be irrelevant in light of the more immediate concerns of the presumption of freedom for the mother. I wonder if I can draw a parallel case here. Are the (potential) values and desires of the future world's population to be held relevant, and if so, how does this situation differ from that of an unborn child?

No, you cannot.

The potential desires are irrelevant in the case of an abortion because those future desires will not exist. The potential desires of future generations are relevant because those desires will exist. It makes no sense to speak about the value of something – that is to say, its relationship to some desire, as if the value is a real-world entity, if the desire on which that value depends is not a real-world entity. It makes sense to speak of the value that it would have had in an alternative universe where that desire existed, but not of the value that it does have in virtue of its relationship to a desire that does not exist.

There is a vital pair of concepts here which turns out to be one of the most common false assumptions about desire utilitarianism. Many people who speak about desire utilitarianism assumes that the theory says that desire fulfillment itself is intrinsically good. It says that the reason that a particular state of affairs has value is because it is a part of this intrinsically good state that is desire fulfillment.

In the realm of abortion, this line of reasoning suggests that, if a woman goes through with an abortion, then in 30 years certain desire fulfillments would not exist. Since desire fulfillment is intrinsically good, the absence of this desire fulfillment is a bad thing and, as such, must be avoided. Consequently, abortion is immoral.

To see where this argument goes wrong, I would like to invite the reader to imagine two universes.

In universe 1, there is a creature with one desire – a desire to gather stones together. That is to say, the creature has a mental state that can be expressed in the form, “I desire that I am gathering stones together.” In this universe, a state of affairs in which that agent is gathering stones together has value to that agent. That is to say, the agent has a reason for action to create a state in which “I am gathering stones together” is true. These claims are true about that universe.

In universe 2 there is no creature, thus no entity with a desire “that I am gathering stones together.” The second universe is void of life. Consequently, it is void of desire.

Which universe is better, universe 1, or universe 2?

Intrinsic value theory says that Universe 1 is better. Universe 1 has an entity with a desire and a state of affairs in which that desire is fulfilled. Desire fulfillment has intrinsic value – it is intrinsically good. Universe 1 has some of this intrinsic goodness. Universe 2 has none. So, Universe 1 is the better universe.

The problem is that intrinsic value does not exist. Universe 1 cannot have more intrinsic value than Universe 2 because there is no intrinsic value for Universe 1 to have. In fact, it has exactly the same amount of intrinsic value as universe 2, which is zero. None.

The only way that Universe 1 can have more value than Universe 2 is in relation to a desire that P, where P is true in universe 1 but not universe 2.

As it turns out, when comparing a universe in which there is an entity with a desire that P and P is true to a universe without such an entity, most of us have a preference for the first universe. What we are doing in fact, when we say that Universe 1 is better than Universe 2 is that we are saying that, of these two options, Universe 1 better fulfills our desires than Universe 2. However, this does not imply that Universe 1 has any value independent of those desires.

In fact, if an entity with an aversion to P, where P = “an entity exists with a desire that P and P is true,” then Universe 1 would thwart that desire. Consequently, this entity would see more value in Universe 2 than Universe 1.

Now, we can take this analysis one step further back. Let us now compare “a desire that there is an entity with a desire that P and P is true” (which will lead to a preference of Universe 1 over Universe 2), to “a desire that there is no entity with a desire that P and P is true” (which will lead to a preference for Universe 2 over Universe 1).

Of these two options, we have reason to prefer – and we have reason to encourage others to prefer – the first desire over the second. If we were surrounded by people with the second desire, we would have reason to worry about what they would do to us. At best, such a person would be less likely to come to our aid in circumstances when we needed it. At worst, they have reason to act to bring about a universe in which there is no agent with a fulfilled desire, and that makes them an active threat.

So, we have reason to recommend the first desire over the second desire. We have reason, when we are talking to somebody or writing a blog post, to try to recommend to engineer in others a set of desires which will cause them to pick the first universe over the second.

We could tell them that God would want us to pick the first universe over the second, and that those who do not or would not do so will be punished in the afterlife.

We could tell them that universe 1 contains more intrinsic value than universe 2, and those who do not see it are somehow defective.

Or we could tell them that we have reason to promote a set of preferences that would cause people to pick universe 1 over universe 2, because those who pick universe 1 are more likely to fulfill other desires in the real world, and those who pick universe 2 are more likely to be a threat to others in the real world.

Of these three options, I reject the God option and the intrinsic value option because they both make reference to entities that do not exist. However, the third option does not have this fatal flaw.

This third option is inconsistent with the idea that potential desires matter. Actual desires matter, and potential desires matter only to the degree that they become actual desires. In the case of an abortion, those potential desires have a zero percent probability of becoming actual future desires, so they are not relevant. Without an actual desire that exists in the real world, there is no value that exists in the real world.

Okay, in the case of murder, the victim’s possibility of having future desires also drops to zero, so those future desires do not matter either, right?

Well, yes and no. Murder does not only prevent future desires, it also prevents the fulfillment of current desires. At least, I know in my own case that if I were to be murdered this afternoon that many of my current desires will go unfulfilled. For example, I want to see the next Indiana Jones movie, but I suspect that I will not be able to do so if I should die between now and next year. So, I have reason to avoid getting killed between now and then, so I have a reason to promote a state of affairs in which others have an aversion to killing me. This is substantially true of almost all of us.

The fetus has no reason to avoid being killed. The fetus – at least one that does not yet have desires – has no reason to prefer any state of affairs over any other. The fetus’ desires cannot be thwarted because the fetus has no desires.

Finally, let us look at a test case involving alcohol poisoning or another action that does damage to a fetus. The fetus has no desires, so the fetus cannot be harmed, so this type of action cannot be wrong, right?

Again, this is wrong, because in this case there are actual future desires at stake. In this case, we can expect that the fetus will become a child and an adult who will have many of his desires thwarted because of the adverse affects of what was done to the fetus. We are talking about future desires that will exist, not potential desires that will not exist.

So, the moral of this story is: Where there are no actual desires, there are no actual values. Potential desires only matter to the degree that they will become actual desires.

The Value of Ecosystems

I woke up this morning to three excellent questions from the studio audience on three fundamental ethical concerns; the value of ecosystems, potential desires, and the relationship between beliefs and desires.

I want to devote a post to each of these in turn.

Sheldon asked the first of these three questions.

I find it interesting that you seem to focus on the word "property" in this post [on the evil of the global warming denial campaign]. Mentioning it at least five times. The focus on the destruction of property is given emphasis to the detriment of what I would think are more important phrases and concerns, such as "the degradation of the worlds ecosystems". Implicit in your choice of words is the idea that it is the damage to the (private) property of others instead of damage to the commons that is the greatest crime. Property after all is only is really temporary.

A boring part of my answer is that my word choice is a strategic choice based on my preferred audience. I do not wish to ‘preach to the converted’. Instead, I wish to focus on arguments that addresses the concerns of the unconverted. In this case, the unconverted tend to express their objections to being concerned about global warming in economic terms – fighting global warming would be economically destructive. Against this, the prospect of tens of trillions of dollars in economic destruction is a direct and relevant response.

I could talk about the destruction of ecosystems. However, since those who are concerned with that destruction already tend to recognize the problems with global warming, I would not be saying anything they do not already know.

However, this question does extend an invitation to talk about the value of ecosystems. What makes the destruction of an ecosystem a bad thing? Why, and to what degree, should we be concerned.

Ecosystems and Intrinsic Value

To start with, intrinsic values do not exist. Therefore, any claim that an ecosystem has intrinsic value is a false claim. Intrinsic values, since they do not exist, do not provide any real-world reasons for action.

The only value that an ecosystem can have is the only type of value anything in the real world can have – the value that exists as a relationship between states of affairs and desires. To the degree that there are desires that P (for some proposition P), and P is true in a given ecosystem, or Q is true in a given ecosystem and Q logically or materially implies P, then that ecosystem has value.

The value, for example of the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana (a roadless wilderness about the size of the state of Rhode Island) rests in the fact that there are people who desire that such a wilderness exist, or the wilderness brings about other states that tend to fulfill desires.

There are some environmentalists who will not like this answer. They are very fond of the idea that ecosystems have intrinsic value, and anything that damages ecosystems is ‘just wrong’. However, a desire that ecosystems have intrinsic value cannot make it true that they have intrinsic value, any more than a desire for life after death can make it true that there is life after death.

Intrinsic values simply do not exist, and wishing this were not so does not change the fact.

I have spoken recently about how false beliefs interfere with the fulfillment of desires, and that religion is not the only source of false beliefs. A belief that certain states have intrinsic merit is one of those beliefs that an atheist can have which is still false, and which can do as much harm as any religion. A person can be convinced to do just as much harm to his neighbor in the name of the intrinsic merit of some state of affairs just as easily as he can be convinced to do harm to his neighbors in the name of some god.

Desires and the Value of Ecosystems

However, the desire that some people have that certain ecosystems exist is a real desire and, like all real desires, they generate real value. The killing of an ecosystem (to those who value that ecosystem) is not metaphysically different than the killing of an individual to those who value the continued existence of that individual. In both cases, the badness is found in the thwarting of desires (or, in desires that tend to thwart other desires).

Furthermore, the value that people find in ecosystems cannot be protected in the marketplace, at least under current rules. There is a tremendous free-rider problem. If Group A invests a huge sum of money to protect an ecosystem, Person B still gets the benefit of having is desire fulfilled (his desire that the ecosystem be preserved) even though he has not contributed a dime to its preservation. Because of these free-rider problems, the preservation of ecosystems will be underfunded in the marketplace. This argues for the government to take action to fund or otherwise provide for the preservation of ecosystems to a degree that corrects for this free rider problem.

The Value of the Desire to Preserve Ecosystems

Now, the desire utilitarian will take this one step further and ask about the value of the desire that ecosystems be preserved. Is this a good desire – a desire that tends to fulfill other desires? If so, then it is a desire that ‘others’ have reason to promote using social tools such as praise (for those who exhibit this desire) and condemnation (for those who do not). Or is this a bad desire (a desire that tends to thwart other desires)? If it is, then ‘others’ have reason to inhibit this desire through the use of the same social forces. Or is it a neutral desire – a desire that people generally have no reason to promote or inhibit?

One would need to take a thorough look at empirical research to answer this question. I think that there is reason to believe that the desire to preserve and protect ecosystems will tend to fulfill other desires.

Easter Island provides us an example of the costs that can be associated with the lack of a desire to preserve and protect ecosystems. Apparently, when humans occupied the island, it was filled with trees and forest and life capable of sustaining the humans who landed there. However, they destroyed the forests, which weakened the island’s capacity to sustain life. It would have been advisable for these people to have had an aversion to making significant changes to their environment.

For a more general example, I work in a company that is heavily dependent on our computer system. We have a production environment. This is where we live and breathe, where we do our real work. Plus, we have a development environment. We have rules, including a rule against making any significant changes to the production environment without testing the changes first in the development environment so as to predict the consequences – and never make significant changes to the production environment without a rollback plan.

This is because any significant change to the production system runs a risk of crashing the whole system – which would be catastrophic to the company and to everybody who works there (at least insofar as they value their paycheck).

The Earth is our production system. We have no backup. It is a particularly vulnerable production system since we have no backup. We can’t just reboot the servers and start over. We can’t even build a new server from scratch and reload everything from backup. We are living in a system where, if it crashes, we are going to pay a very heavy price. So, it would seem, preventing the possibility of a crash should be extremely important. The way you protect a system from crashing is to be very conservative when it comes to introducing changes to the system – to make no changes to the production system that have not been thoroughly tested and understood.

In the case of the earth (and all life on it) this argues in favor of a desire to preserve ecosystems. The lack of an desire to preserve ecosystems suggests a form of recklessness that puts the whole human race at risk. Even if it does not kill us, it runs the risk of bringing down enough of the system to do significant harm. These are consequences that people have reason to avoid (whether they realize it or not). These are consequences that people can avoid by promoting an overall desire that ecosystems be preserved.

So, even though ecosystems have no intrinsic value, there is at least some reason to believe that the desire to preserve ecosystems has tremendous extrinsic value. Its absence will likely cause us and, even more so, future generations, a great deal of harm.

I sincerely hope that somebody can deliver this message to the people of China, who seem to have no concern at all for ecosystems, and sometimes appear to believe that they can do whatever they please to our production environment without risking any adverse consequences. I have a genuine suspicion that future generations around the world will turn to China and the United States and say, “I told you so.” But by then it may be too late.

Good People Doing Bad Things

Today’s post comes from things that I was going to say yesterday, but which I could not get to make sense.

Background

One claim that I have made repeatedly in this blog is that atheism is not a virtue. The proposition, “No god exists” does not entail, nor is it entailed by, any moral virtue. Consequently, convincing a person that no god exists does not change his moral character. If he is evil (has bad desires), he will remain evil; and if he is good, he will remain good.

People seek to fulfill the more and stronger of their desires with each intentional action. However, they actually act so as to fulfill the more and stronger of their desires given their beliefs. False beliefs serve to thwart people’s attempts to fulfill their desires, which is why institutions that aim to produce true beliefs are so important. When we remove false beliefs and put true beliefs in their place, we improve a person’s ability to fulfill their desires.

However, correcting a person’s false beliefs does not change those desires (or, at least, it does not logically or causally entail any change in desires). So, changing a person’s beliefs does not change his moral character. If you want to improve a person’s moral character – if you want to promote virtue over vice – then you need to focus on their desires, not their beliefs. This includes the belief that no god exists.

So, it is a waste of time to try to convince people that no God exists, right?

Implications

Some of the things I have written suggest this implication. However, the inference above is invalid, and the conclusion given above is false. Just because moral character is locked in a person’s desires does not imply that a person’s beliefs are irrelevant.

An evil person convinced that no god exists will remain evil. Correcting his beliefs only gives him the ability to fulfill his evil desires more efficiently, because his false beliefs will no longer get in his way.

At the same time, a good person convinced that no god exists will remain good. Correcting his beliefs only gives him the ability to fulfill his good desires more efficiently, because his false beliefs will no longer get in his way.

Convincing a person that there is no god may not improve his moral character. However, it will improve the ability of a person with good moral character to fulfill his desires. This (at least in desire utilitarian terms) means that it will improve his ability to fulfill desires that tend to fulfill other desires – increasing the possibility that those other desires will be fulfilled as well. It would be useful in helping this good person to do good deeds is to clear away the false beliefs that will cause him to do things that are not so good.

For example, somebody who is concerned to prevent the next terrorist attack or natural disaster, but who holds false beliefs about god, may decide that the best course of action to protect us from these threats is to institute prayer in school and to demand that the government endorse Christianity. He might think that formal support for a Christian god would make that god happy, so that it will use its magic powers to protect us from harm. As a result, issues of prayer in schools and monuments in court houses influence his votes more than issues of scientific research and investments in engineering projects. As a result of his actions, this agent is actually leaving those he wants to protect more vulnerable than they would have been if he had insisted in investing more in science and engineering, and less in prayer and magic. The science will give us a better understanding of the threat, while the engineering will allow us to best deflect the danger.

No amount of prayer in school or religious monuments in court houses will keep an old bridge from falling into the river, or a hurricane from hitting a coastal city, or terrorists from flying airplanes into sky scrapers, or he next great plague. If we want to prevent these things, we need an investment in the relevant sciences – physics, weather, psychology, biology – that will allow us to better understand these threats. We need an investment in prevention techniques that sound research shows to have a proven chance of success.

The protest may come back, “How do you know that prayer and ritual would not have prevented the bridge from collapsing? You are the one arrogantly presuming your own infallibility.”

This is hardly an effective comeback. I cannot prove that if everybody capable of doing so were to hop on one leg while whistling the star spangled banner for 15 minutes will make this country invulnerable. Yet, I can hardly scarce recommending the action. The list of things that I cannot prove will not work is infinite, picking items from an infinite list is pointless, and wasting time with things on the list will simply take resources away from options with a provable chance of success.

Under the assumption that our hypothetical agent is strongly motivated by a desire to prevent the death and misery coming from the next disaster, this agent is being thwarted in his attempt to protect people from harm to the degree that he turns to religious and magical protections. He is diverting resources that could go into understanding the phenomenon and designing real-world protections, and wasting those resources instead on empty rituals that may make us feel better, but which will not protect us.

So, it is not a waste of effort to convince good people that their religious beliefs are false – not if it prevents those people from wasting effort promoting policies that do more harm than good.

Good People Doing Bad Things

Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things -- that takes religion. -- Steven Weinberg

The preceding section seems to be arguing in the direction of Weinberg’s statement, but Weinberg’s claims go too far. In fact, this is the type of false statement that warrants the claim of bigotry, in that it unjustifiably and unjustly denigrates a whole group of people even though others who do not belong to that group are also guilty, and some members of the group are not.

Religion is not the only set of false beliefs that cause good people to do bad things. The world is filled with false beliefs causing good people to do bad things – many of them having nothing at all to do with religion. Even in a world without religion, we can expect that there will still be false beliefs within that community causing good people to do bad things.

However, criticizing Weinberg’s claim that religion is the only way to get good people to do bad things does not imply that religion (or many religious beliefs) do not, in fact, cause good people to do bad things. The world is filled with good people doing bad things and doing them because they have false religious beliefs.

The argument also suggests a somewhat different tone in addressing these people.

You’re a good person. I know that what you really want is to prevent death, misery, and the destruction of property. However, what I need you to realize that your religious beliefs are causing you to promote death, misery, and the destruction of property. You are doing so by diverting time and effort from those things that show a promise of helping to solve these problems, and channeling them instead to efforts that will not work.

Of course, if the individual really does not care about whether acts grounded on his false beliefs are causing innocent people to suffer – or he is too arrogant to worry about the possibility that he might be mistaken - then the claim that we are talking to a “good person” goes out the window. A good person does care, and a good person will admit to the possibility of his own fallibility.

Any false belief will cause good people to do bad things. We all make mistakes from time to time. A substantial percentage of the mistakes we make are grounded on false beliefs. Yet, the bulk of those false beliefs have nothing to do with religion.

However, many religious beliefs are false beliefs that cause good people to do bad things. This statement is not such a gross generalization that it ends up being bigoted. It applies only to those whose false religious beliefs cause them to do bad things, while it refuses to accuse all (if any) whose false religious beliefs do not have them doing bad things.

As it turns out, if this argument has weight, it does suggest a different tone in the issue of combating religion. It suggests a tone like:

This is not an accusatory tone that says, “You are a bad person.”

It is a tone that says, “You are a good person. You want to help. However, because of your false beliefs, you’re not helping. You’re making things worse.”

In other words, it suggests a campaign that takes the tone, “You are good people blinded by false beliefs. You really don’t want to be doing these things. You really don’t want to be hurting these people – or to prevent them from being made safe from harm. So, stop it.”

Again, this applies to those who truly are good people. It applies to those who truly want to help. The evil person – such as a televangelist who is more interested in his own social standing and political power than in the well-being of others – will not be phased by these concerns. You cannot persuade a person who has no concern for the welfare of others that his actions have a detrimental effect on the welfare of others.

When a person says that we need more prayer in the classroom and more prayer in the public square in order to keep bridges from collapsing, a possible answer would be, “Do you really want to keep bridges from collapsing? If you do, then I would advocate more inspectors, better, science, and better engineering.

Evils: Secular and Religious

This post is somewhat shorted because, in writing it, and trying to polish my arguments to make them more explicit, I discovered that they were wrong. So, I had to cut out some of what I was going to say.

However, there are a couple of items in that post that are still worth mentioning.

The focus of my attention was an article in Newsweek this week that discussed the campaign to confuse the public on the issue of global warming, called, “The Truth About Denial.”

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.

I consider those who funded and supported this campaign to be among the most evil people that this planet has hatched, easily comparing to those Nazis who not only knew about the Holocaust but actually participated in it. These people are willing to put hundreds of millions to billions of people at risk, and inflict tends of trillions of dollars, all for the sake of personal profit.

It is impossible to defend these people by saying that they did not believe that they were doing anything that would contribute to this harm. The fact is, they did not care. There is no evidence that they said, “We need to take an honest look at this evidence and see if steps need to be taken to save billions of people from harm and prevent the massive destruction of property on a global scale.”

They said, “Even if these reports are true, we must prevent people from acting on them. We must confuse and befuddle them so that, even though billions of people and tens of trillions of dollars in property are put at risk, they will not act to prevent this harm. All for the sake of defending our bank accounts.”

People who can shrug their soldiers at potential harms of this magnitude, saying, in effect, “Their lives and property do not matter at all – the only thing that matters is my bank account,” does, in fact, fit in with some of the greatest moral crimes of all time.

The main point that I wanted to draw from this is the possibility of evil on a global scale such as this, without any appeal to scripture or religion. Those who focus on religion as the source of evil are going to miss much of the evil that exists. Some of that evil puts billions of people at risk and is willing to allow the destruction of property on a scale that dwarfs the consequences of Hitler’s actions, and it does so without looking to scripture to justify its actions.

Certainly, (almost) none of those who are attacking religion as a source of evil think that there can be no evil without religion. Yet, I sometimes sense that they underestimate the magnitude of that evil – that they downplay the evil that people can do to each other without appealing to scripture.

The evils that are ignored while one focuses on the evils that are grounded in scripture are evils that can only expected to get worse, if they are not confronted as well.

I will discuss the other implications that I was going to draw from this later - perhaps by saying, "Here are some things a person can believe (those being the implications I sought to defend), and here are why they are wrong."

I really hate it when I prove myself wrong while I am writing a post. It ruins my whole schedule.

The Out Campaign

I want to declare that I will not be wearing or displaying the new atheist flag as presented by the Out campaign.

Is it because I am ashamed of being an atheist, or I am fearful of being ‘out’ as an atheist, or I consider it unimportant to do so?

Well, look at the name of this blog. Look at the profile on the right hand side. That’s my real name. Look at the photograph. That’s me.

When I created this blog, I could had a lot of different options available, depending on what was important to me. I could have called it, “The Desire Utilitarian Review” and foregone all mention of atheism. I would probably have larger readership if I did.

However, I wanted to use this blog to promote good over evil. One of the evils that I wanted to fight was bigotry against atheists. Much of that bigotry was built on a social stigma that said that atheists were immoral. So, I figured that a blog by somebody who was not afraid to give his real name, a picture, and his home town while identifying himself as an atheist and intimately connecting his blog to the subject of morality might be an effective tool towards that end.

So, why will I not use the new atheist flag?

Atheism Is Not a Virtue

First, atheism is not a virtue. My primary interest is not in the existence or non-existence of God, but in virtue and vice and the appropriate use of violence by one person against another. The proposition, “No gods exist” entails no moral premise. Believing that no gods exist brings a person no closer to virtue than believing that the sum of the square of the sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. Both are facts that carry no moral implications whatsoever.

I sense an undercurrent in the atheist community in that, though atheism itself does not imply any moral principles, rationality itself is a virtue, and this virtue supports atheism.

In this regard, I have argued that intellectual recklessness is a vice. Intellectual recklessness involves adopting beliefs that put others at risk of harm without exercising the moral responsibility to make sure that one does not cause unnecessary harm. Just as a driver carrying a heavy load down the highway has an obligation to make sure that the load is fastened down securely so that he does not put others at risk of harm, a policy maker has an obligation to make sure that his ideas are securely tied down so that he does not put others at risk of harm.

However, intellectual recklessness does not require only the use of reason. None of us have the time to hold every one of our beliefs up to the light of reason, so we must use ‘rules of thumb’ that quickly give us reliable but fallible beliefs. I have used what epistemologists call Neurath’s boat metaphor. This describes our beliefs in terms of a ship at sea, where we can replace parts of the boat at any given time, but each change must be firmly attached to the other parts of the boat that already exist. None of us can ever rebuild all of our beliefs completely from scratch. These facts put serious constraints on the obligations of belief.

If eight-five percent of the population were atheists, I suspect that most people most people will be atheists for the same types of reasons that explain why most people are Christians today. They will simply absorb the attitudes that are common in the society in which they live, unquestioningly, and assume that they are true simply because they are so widely held. This rule of thumb – accept as true what people around you generally assert to be true – is an extremely efficient and reliable way of forming beliefs. In fact, in the vast majority of cases (except in the case of religion) it works quite well. People will continue to use it even in a nation made up mostly of atheists.

In fact, one of the effects of this atheist flag would be to promote just this type of effect.

This is important, so I want to draw special attention to it. It is inconsistent for an atheist to promote the virtue of reason alone in forming beliefs, and support this campaign, since this campaign’s strength will rest in its ability to tap into the irrational ways in which people form beliefs. This big scarlet letter A does not convey any argument or refute any proposition used in the defense of God. It promotes atheism the same way that lawn signs and political buttons promote candidate – by using effects on beliefs that have nothing to do with reason – by exploiting elements of the psychology of belief that have little to do with reason.

[Also, I have argued in the past that ‘coming out’ will not likely have more than a local effect. Bigots will continue to see people through the lens of their bigotry. Those who see blacks as disposed towards criminal and violent behavior are not persuaded that they are wrong simply because they see so many blacks in their community. Just as it took more than black skin to fight racism, it will take more than a T-shirt with a red letter to fight anti-atheist bigotry.]

‘Us’ versus ‘Them’

A charismatic leader, rallying a group of followers around a flag, can get them to kill just about anybody – even if that flag is a big red letter A.

Atheists are human beings (contrary to some claims to the contrary) and are subject to the same influences that have affected humans through the last 10,000 years. One of those influences is the ability to rally people around a flag, point to some outside group as ‘them’ who are responsible for all of society’s ills, and turn ‘us’ against ‘them’ with tragic results.

Look carefully, and you will already see some of the weaker elements of this way of thinking. these psychological factors already at play, causing people to band together to show special favoritism to those who proudly wave and salute the flag, while ostracizing those who dare to criticize these loyal flag-wavers. “You are for us, or you are against us – and if you do not support us in our campaign against the hostile enemies of civilization, then, for all practical purposes, you are to be considered as in league with the terrorists theists and traitors to your own people.”

I am not speaking about people in a back room scheming to manipulate others. I am talking about an ‘invisible hand’ of human psychology whereby people habitually form ‘us groups’ and ‘them groups’ and look for some easy way to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’ – a uniform, a flag, a gesture such as a salute. Research shows that if you take a group of people, divide them up randomly into two groups, they will almost immediately exhibit the symptoms of unwarranted favoritism towards members of their assigned group and unwarranted hostility to those who do not belong.

My opening statement may sound somewhat harsh. It should be taken as a warning. A great deal of harm has been done in the world by rallying people around a flag and pointing to those outside the group as ‘the enemy’. It is absolutely foolish to say that this cannot happen – to say that atheists are somehow immune. Anybody who said this would have to be saying that atheists are not human.

The best defense against these types of abuses is to admit that they are possible, look for the symptoms, and be willing to stand up against that particular tide when one sees it starting to rise.

For my part, consider this a warning. Watch for it.

Conclusion

Some of what I said above may be taken to imply that I am against this particular movement and that my advice to readers is not to participate.

That is not true.

As I said above, my concern is primarily with ethics, and atheism is not a virtue. There are literally thousands of symbols that I am not going to display this year. This will be one of them.

This does not imply that I think that these symbols ought not to be displayed. It implies that each of us have limited time, and it is actually a good thing that there is somebody out there willing to take up each cause that is worth taking up.

I have said that this flag makes use of aspects of the psychology of belief that have nothing to do with reason. I do not believe this is a bad thing. In fact, I have said that we must base our beliefs on something other than reason because reason requires too much effort – and we simply cannot tear all of our beliefs down and rebuild them from scratch. Since we must depend on non-reason-based elements of the psychology of belief, then we might as well put them to work promoting beliefs that reason could defend. In fact, this is the ideal objective of such systems.

However, there are dangers in rallying people around a flag. People who are aware of and respect those dangers are less at a risk of falling victim to them – or, in this case, less at risk at victimizing others. People who ignore those dangers, or – worse – fall victim to them, may well do more harm than good.

Since atheism is not a virtue, there is nothing in atheism itself that will stop a group of atheists, rallied around the flag, to commit the same atrocities that humans have always been able to commit when they have been rallied around the flag. There is nothing to stop them but the knowledge of what can happen and a determination to make sure it does not happen.

Honoring the Dead: Reader's Questions

My recent posts on honoring the dead has brought forth a couple of commenters presenting test cases.

I argued that a person who sacrifices his or her life has performed a noble sacrifice if he or she acted on a good desire – a desire that tends to fulfill other desires. We honor the sacrifice of such a person by acting to make true the proposition that was the object of the agent’s desire. We cannot honor the death of anybody who dies for religious reasons because we cannot make or keep true the propositions that are the objects of their desires.

Mistaken Beliefs and Good Desires

Today, I want to discuss some cases mentioned by the commenter olvlzl.

In your list of ways to give up your life on the basis of religion you left out a few things. Being killed while a medical worker in a war zone, Catholic sisters targeted for teaching peasants, priests murdered for speaking up for the rights of peasants not to be murdered by a fascist government, and we haven't even left El Salvador of the 1980s yet. Since those who died based their adherence to these causes on their religion, you would classify them as futile. Odd way to run a system of ethics, that.

To examine this case, we need to ask what these people really wanted – what was really important to them. We can get at this by asking how these people would behave if they came to believe that the proposition ‘God exists’ is false.

I want to look at two possible responses.

Response 1: The individual comes to believe that no God exists, but says, “It doesn’t matter. These people are suffering, and I cannot leave these people to suffer. I must do something to help them.”

Response 2: The individual comes to believe that no God exists, and says, “Hey. I never cared about these people. The only reason that I came here was so that I can buy a ticket to heaven. If there is no ticket to heaven to be bought, I am out of here.”

The first person has a genuine interest in the well-being of others. She has a desire that they not suffer. She may have this desire in the context of a belief in God, but the quality of her character depends on the quality of her desires. This ‘desire that there be less suffering in the world’ is a desire that can be made true in the real world. We can honor the life of such a person, just as we can honor her death.

The second person has no interest in the well-being of others. She is only interested in heavenly reward, “What’s in it for me?” When she dies, we have no reason to honor her life or her death. We cannot make true the proposition that was the object of her desire (‘that I have a ticket to heaven’) and have no particular reason to want to make it true.

A third type of position that we can imagine is one in which a person desires to serve and obey God, and thinks that God commands her to perform this services.

However, no God has ever given anybody a command and nobody has ever obeyed God. So, where did these things that some people thought were commands from God come from?

Scripture (in every major religious tradition) is so filled with inconsistencies that people can find whatever they want to find within them. If a person finds in scripture a command to be generous and compassion to others, we have reason to assume that this is a person who desires to be generous and compassionate, so that she wrote those virtues into her interpretation of scripture. When another person reads the same scripture and finds commands to take up arms against unbelievers or other enemies of the church, then we have reason to believe that this is somebody with a love for war and power, reading into scripture a command to see the war and power he loves.

The people Olvlzl wrote about are people who wrote their own concerns for justice and the welfare of others into their interpretations of religious text. The compassion came from the individual, not from the book; and it is the individual who deserves the credit for those concerns.

The Virtuous Victim of Lies

Olvolzl also brings up a test case where a person was caused to sacrifice his life for what he thought was a good cause – only he was tricked into doing so. His example of the soldier who went to Iraq thinking he was there to defeat terrorists and prevent an attack on the United States using weapons of mass destruction. In fact, he went there to help secure profits for contractors who would be given no-bid contracts to ‘rebuild’ the country.

There is no way to make the lies that the invasion of Iraq were sold to the American People with, true. They weren't the real reason for the invasion, that, as always with the Bush Crime Family and its associates, is about money and the power necessary to steal more of it. Anyone who went to Iraq and died believing the lies died for something that didn't exist.

I am sorry, but I must offer an aside to say that I do not (yet) accept one of the assumptions in this question. I think it is possible that many of the leading advocates of the invasion of Iraq thought that this would be a good way to defend the United States from terrorist attack. Their plan was to overthrow Saddam Hussein, be greeted as liberators, and establish a freedom-loving democratic state in the model of Germany and Japan that would become the envy of the Arab world. As the desire for the peace and prosperity of such a state spread, the whole Middle East would become a flowering democracy and America’s fear of violence coming from the area would be lessened.

The desires that these people have read into their interpretation of scripture are often desires that can be fulfilled. Whether that person has lived well or died for a good cause depends on the quality of the desires that the person has read into his or her interpretation of scripture.

Unfortunately, their arrogance and intellectual recklessness – their tendency to think that they could appeal to their ‘gut’ for the right answers – got in the way of good decision making. They felt like they already knew the right answers, and based their evaluation of the quality of the evidence on whether it supported what they believed, rather than basing their evaluation of what they believed on the quality of the evidence.

Be that as it may, the question still turns on the issue of what happens when deceivers take advantage of another person’s good moral character.

The agents of this decision, in this case, rob their victims of an opportunity to do great things – causing those victims instead to work for something of much lesser, and perhaps a negative value.

These agents of deception cannot take away the soldier’s virtue. The soldier who is willing to risk his life in the defense of what is good remains a virtuous individual, even as others deceive them about whether a given act is promotes something good. The soldier is still somebody worthy of our honor and respect. It still makes sense to honor that soldier by making true the propositions that the soldier wanted to make true, not the propositions that the agents of deception sought to manipulate the soldier into making true.

In these types of situations, it will often mean holding those who manipulated the soldier into sacrificing his life for that which had no true moral value, but which merely served the interests of the manipulators, morally responsible for their shameless exploitation of the soldiers’ virtue. This is one way we can honor the soldier, and what the virtuous soldier truly valued.

Villifying Groups

I have had two comments in the past week, both touching on a common theme.

Alex, commenting on my post on Socialism and Capitalism, said:

If you have time to discuss the demonisation of various political terms and ideologies, I'd be very interested to read your views.

In addition, Michael responded to criticisms I made to a post of his in Blaming Religion: Hasty Generalizations and False Assumptions that:

Perhaps my argument might have been more 'sound' if I did keep my focus on the wrongdoers but I don't believe it would have been as effective in terms of what I was attempting to achieve.

The background behind Michael’s post is that he had written a post on his own site where he went from condemning specific people for what he saw as important transgressions – that the objects of his criticism seemed more interested in blaming Dawkins for his so-called ‘excesses’ than religious fundamentalists for their excesses. This is in spite of the fact that the former used only words and the latter use bombs, legislation, and other instruments of violence.

However, in that post, Michael switched from the specific criticism of individuals to general group terms of ‘Christian moderates’ and ‘religion’ – where his claims went from being true to false. I objected to these hasty generalizations and false attributions and argued for remaining focused on the specific transgressions and the specific guilty parties.

Michael’s answer was to say that this shift – though perhaps philosophically unsound, was justified in virtue of its effectiveness.

I wanted a reaction, I wanted my writing to do more than make people think. The problem that I often see (and this has happened throughout history) is that an individual will often excuse themselves from blame and dismiss the actions of their countrymen or piers as 'having nothing to do with me'. There's a tendency to say "Well, yes, you have a point but it doesn't apply to me, I'm not to blame, those people over there are the guilty ones."

On the question of effectiveness, I am wondering if there is any empirical research showing what the effectiveness of this type of writing might be. It seems quite sensible to me that this type of rhetoric is very easy for others to dismiss. When others note the hasty generalizations and the false attributions that come from them, I would suspect to find more than a few people say, “Here is somebody who is not interested in making sure that his claims are well founded and true, so I need not listen to what he has to say.”

Also, I argue that it is useful to generate an overall respect for sound reasoning based on true premises. The toleration of unsound rhetoric is more destructive than the toleration of religion, and in fact many of the problems with the latter can be attributed to the more general and significant problems with the former. In other words, to the degree that we can promote greater respect for sound reasoning and truth, to that degree religion will have a weaker hold on the public mind.

In fact, there is a twinge of hypocrisy in the use of hasty generalization fallacies to condemn all ‘moderates’ and all who are ‘religious’ in that much of that criticism seems to take the form, “You ignore the principles of reason and evidence.” One would suspect that a strict adherence to and respect for the principles of reason and evidence would be a requirement for making such an accusation.

In my first response to Michael’s post, I argued that these types of criticisms should be limited to named persons and those who act as they do. I suggested that the criticism take the form, “Here is what X did, here is why it is wrong, and here is why anybody who does something similar deserves to be condemned.” The advantages of this type of criticism is that it respects the principles of reason and sound evidence (or, at least, it does not automatically fail to do so) and it levels its accusations against those who are actually guilty. As such, it is harder for a person to claim, “This does not apply to me,” than it would be when the accusation takes such broad strokes that it is obviously accusing those who are not guilty.

Yet, turning to Alex’s comment, there are times in which one can challenge a system of belief by name without criticizing a named individual.

For example, it would be perfectly acceptable for somebody to write, “Desire utilitarians hold that no reasons for action exist other than desires. This means that they would deny that God’s law counts as a reason for action, unless respecting God’s law fulfills desires. If God’s law does not fulfill desires, then a desire utilitarian would have to call that that law bad, and call the God who makes such a law evil.”

This generalization about desire utilitarians would be perfectly legitimate because the author would be attacking something that is true about desire utilitarianism itself. Anybody who would deny the target of this criticism would not be a desire utilitarian. He would be a ‘desire plus whatever other reasons for action exist’ utilitarian.

So, it is not an example of the vilification of socialism that it suffers from an inability to link information to incentives for action in such a way that new information instantly generates new incentives for action and that those incentives tend to promote the public welfare. Socialism depends on individuals pretending to know more than they do and, thus, being capable of coming up with intelligent plans that work in systems as complex as a human society.

That being said, capitalism fails in that differences in income allow those with money to bid resources away from those who have a more highly valued use for those resources. A poor person has a higher valued use when the poor person would have outbid the rich person for those resourcs if the poor person had as the same resources available.

Neither of these criticisms are inappropriate because they refer to something that is essential to the doctrines of socialism and capitalism respectively.

I make claims, as I did in yesterday’s post, that no person who dies for a religious reason has an honorable death, nor can their death be honored by others. This is because all religious beliefs are false. Consequently, the agent’s attempt to make the proposition that was the object of his religious desire true was doomed before the attempt even began. Furthermore, no survivor has the capacity to make true the proposition that the agent tried to make true when he died for religious reasons.

I did not make these attacks against a specific individual. Yet, I would argue that I did not need to because my target was something that is, in fact, true of all religious propositions – that all religious beliefs are false.

Note: In saying that all religious propositions are false, am I saying that if the proposition, “Water flows downhill” appeared in scripture, that it would be false? Of course that would not be the case. By ‘religious proposition’ I am talking about a proposition that makes a necessary assumption that one or more gods exist. Since “one or more gods exist” is false, no religious proposition can be true. Consequently, no person who lives for the sake of a religious proposition can have a meaningful life, and no person who dies for the sake of a religious proposition can have a meaningful death.

Anyway, the difference between these types of claims and the claims that Michael made is that these are not hasty generalizations and false attributions. I am not saying that something is true of all Christian moderates that is not, in fact, defensibly true of all Christian moderates. I am not making a hasty generalization from what some individual has said or done to the condemnation of every member of the group that I assign that individual to.

Or, at least, I try not to.

I want to say again that Michael makes an important point in his original post. Michael wrote his post to criticize people who seem more concerned with the excesses of writers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, than with the excesses of those religious fundamentalists whose nonsense claims and policies are costing the real lives, health, and well-being of real people around the world.

To put it politely, this type of writing suggests that the authors suffer from a somewhat perverse set of priorities. They are more interested in defending God than in defending the life, health, and well-being of real people. In would do a lot to improve the quality of life in the real world if those who promoted suffering – including those who did so in the name of God or on the basis of reasons found only in scripture – would called to answer for the harms they caused.

I am not here talking entirely about criminals who claim to act in God’s name. The greatest harm is not caused by those who act in ways that violate the laws, but who act so as to institute harmful and sometimes deadly laws because (they hold that) scripture tells them that these harmful policies are ‘holy’.

The Christian moderate who has enough of a grasp of reality to realize that scripture is a poor defense of policies that cause death, disease, and other forms of suffering should be saying so, and those who do not deserve some condemnation for the suffering that they refuse to try to prevent.

Michael expressed concern that this more direct statement would not be effective – that people will say, “Those objections do not apply to me.” I have a simple test for any religious moderate to use to find out. I invite such moderates to simply state when, in the past year, they have raised objections to policies based on scripture that promote death and disease. The Christian moderate who cannot come up with many examples is guilty, it is as simple as that.

However, I would also hold that the Christian moderate who can come up with a lot of examples is not guilty.

Honoring the Dead: In Theory

For the liast couple of days I have been writing about honoring the dead. I have discussed its relevance to the tragedy for Scaled Composites, and the Bush Administration’s abuse of this principle to defend “stay the course” in Irag.

Today, I would like to expose some of the theory that sits under these remarks – the way that my statements about honoring the dead fit into the overall theory of desire utilitarianism.

First, a refresher on some of the fundamentals of desire utilitarianism.

People act so as to fulfill their desires, given their beliefs – and they seek to act so as to fulfill their desires. Consequently, false beliefs tend to get in the way of fulfilling one’s desires.

A desire is a propositional attitude that can be expressed in the form, "[Agent] desires that [proposition]". A desire motivates an individual to create a state of affairs in which the proposition that is the object of a desire is true. In a state of affairs where that proposition is true, the desire is fulfilled. In a state of affairs where that proposition is not true, the desire is thwarted.

This theory makes sense of the possibility of self-sacrifice. If we assume that a rocket scientist, for example, has a desire to better secure the survival of the human race, then this desire is fulfilled in a state of affairs where the proposition, “The survival of the human race has been better secured,” is true. If making this proposition true means risking one’s own life testing rocket engines, then – unless the agent also has other desires to continue living that outweigh the concern for the survival of the human race – he will be motivated to take these risks.

The same is true of the soldier motivated to protect the people and institutions of his or her country, and to protect fellow soldiers in the field of battle. Such a soldier will be motivated to risk his own life, where that risk can be seen as a useful way to make or keep the propositions, “The people and institutions back home, as well as my buddies on the field of battle, are more secure.”

In addition, we can honor the sacrifices of these people by making or keeping true the propositions that were important for them to make or keep true. The parent who dies to protect his children did not die in vein as long as his children are protected. He does die in vein if, in spite of his sacrifice, his children are not saved. Yet, even this does not argue that he should not have made the attempt because – motivated as he was to protect his children, and recognizing a possibility of success, how could he not act?

The Value of Desire

In saying this, something needs to be said about the value of the ends for which a person sacrifices his or her life. Desire utilitarianism does not say that we should honor the death of the person who dies (and kills) to defend the institution of slavery, or of Ayrian supremacy, or a tyrannical leadership, or a religious theocracy. In honoring a person who has sacrificed his life it must be the case that he made the sacrifice for something worthy of a human life.

Desire utilitarianism holds that all things have value in virtue of how they stand in relationship to desires. Every state of affairs is to be evaluated according to the degree to which that state of affairs fulfills or thwarts desires.

Does this mean that all desires themselves are equal – that no desire is better than any other, and we must count the desire of the slave masters or the tyrants equal to their victims?

Not at all.

States of affairs in which certain desires exist are among those states of affairs that we can evaluate according to their ability to fulfill (other) desires. On this standard, some desires (those that tend to fulfill other desires) clearly are better than others (those that tend to thwart other desires).

A malleable desire is a desire that can be influences – created, strengthened, modified (in terms of altering the proposition that is the object of the desire), weakened, or eliminated – through social forces. Those social forces include praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. To the degree that people have the capacity to influence the desires of others, they have reason to use these social forces to promote malleable desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and to inhibit malleable desires that tend to inhibit other desires.

Morality is the language used not only to identify desires that people generally have reason to promote or to inhibit using these social forces, but are a part of the use of those social forces. A moral statement not only identifies a target of that which people generally have reason to condemn, but also delivers that condemnation.

The Quality of a Country and Its People

So, to determine if an act where a person who sacrificed his life is to be praised or condemned, we must look at the quality of the desires that motivated that sacrifice and determine if they are desires that tend to fulfill other desires, or desires that tend to thwart other desires. We must also look to whether the agent lacked desires that tend to fulfill other desires – desires that people generally have reason to promote. It is difficult to promote desires we have reason to promote if we praise those who lack these desires, or condemn those who have them.

For the soldier, sacrificing his or her life for the people and institutions of his or her country, the question has to be asked whether those institutions are worthy of such a sacrifice. To answer that question, we must ask whether good people (people with desires that tend to fulfill other desires) would support or condemn those institutions.

Are the people in that country good people – people with desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others – people that others generally have reason to praise and promote? Are the institutions in that country institutions that good people (people with desires that tend to fulfill other desires) have reason to support?

The Quality of a Soldier’s Sacrifice

In order to morally ask people to make these types of sacrifices, we must make or keep our country worthy of such a sacrifice.

Anything we do as a nation that good people would not do – any institutions we adopt that good people would not support – cheapens that sacrifice that others making it the case that they made their sacrifice for something that is not worthy.

This does not imply that only a perfect nation or a perfect people are worthy of sacrifice. Quality does not come in black and white, but in shades of gray. Desires that tend to fulfill more and stronger desires are better than those that fulfill fewer and weaker desires. We may be worthy of the sacrifice even if we have our failings, as long as we make ourselves sufficiently better than any alternative. As long as we make ourselves a people and a country that those with good desires have reason to praise and promote, rather than a country that those with good desires have reason to condemn and inhibit.

Religious Sacrifice

There are some who make sacrifices, sometimes sacrificing their lives for religious reasons. These include (some) suicide bombers, crusaders, jihadists, and martyrs. They include people who forego life-sustaining medical treatment in order to abide by religious scripture, or who undergo religious rituals that result in their own deaths.

Because there is no way to make true the propositions that are the objects of these people’s desires, there is no way to honor their sacrifice. These truly are wasted deaths, just as they were wasted lives, spent in the pursuit of things that existed only in the mind.

In order for a death to be honorable (in the sense of capable of being honored), a person must sacrifice his or her life for something that is capable of being made or kept true in the real world. In order for a death to be honorable (in the sense of worthy of being honored) the agent must have been trying to make or keep true something that a good person would make or keep true.

Honoring the Dead

A person performs a deliberate act that increases his chance of injury or death. He obeys the orders of his military commander, or he tests a rocket engine on the Mohave desert. He rolls the dice, and the fates turn against him. He has died.

If the desires that caused him to take this risk are good, then we have reason to honor his death by promoting those same goals. We have reason to ask, “Have we done enough, or are we just riding on the coat tails of those who are better than us? Are we worthy of the price that they were willing to pay?” Humans are not perfect, and such an event gives us an opportunity to decide to do better – to make ourselves more worthy – and to help realize the noble ends of those who have died, when they are noble ends.