Why Desire Fulfillment Matters

A question from the studio audience reflects on the most common false assumption that gets in the way of somebody understanding the desire utilitarian theory that rests at the heart of this blog.

Christian Apologist asked:

Why does fulfillment of desire matter?

Eneasz answered:

You're asking the wrong question. There is no thing, no entity or law of nature or reason, which declares that the fulfillment of desires is what matters.

Which is correct. Desire utilitarianism is not a theory that declares that desire fulfillment matters.

Instead, what it says that, if A desires that P, then, for every state of affairs S, whether P is true in S matters to A.

P is what matters. Or, more specifically, ''P' is true' is what matters. And, in this example, it only matters to A. To the degree that A desires that P, and P is true in S, then A has a motivating reason to act to realize S.

Desire fulfillment is a term that I use to describe a state in which, "A desires that P and P is true."

What would it take for "A desires that P, and P is true" to matter?

Specifically, it would matter to B if B had a desire that Q, and Q is true in "A desires that P, and P is true". In this case, desire fulfillment would matter. But it would only matter to B, and only insofar as B has a desire that Q.

However, A’s desire that P gives P a motivating reason to realize states of affairs in which P is true. A is not, in this case, seeking desire fulfillment. A is seeking P. That is to say that A has a motivating reason to organize things in the universe in such a way so as to make P true, or to keep it true.

One of the things that A can do to create or preserve a state of affairs in which P is true is to manipulate the desires of other people. This further implies that, to the degree that he can influence whatever desires other people has, he has a motivating reason to cause them to have desires that would bring about states of affairs in which P is true.

Again, A is not doing this because he seeks desire fulfillment or because :desire fulfillment is what matters". He is doing this because he seeks to make or keep the proposition P true, and P is rue in S.

To the degree that B seeks to make or keep Q true, B has reason to promote in A those desires that will cause A to act in ways that make or keep Q true. This could involve giving A a desire that Q. It could involve giving A a desire that R, where R causes Q (or, at least, makes Q more lilely).

If we look at all of the reasons for action that exist, we will discover that there are some malleable desires that people generally have a great many strong reasons to promote, and desires that people generally have many strong reasons to inhibit.

None of this requires anybody to put any value in desire fulfillment itself. All of this could still be true and accurate even if absolutely nobody cared about desire fulfillment per se. That is to say, all of this would still make sense even if desire fulfillment per se did not matter to even one individual.

So, the objection that I always face is actually an objection that I do not have to answer. The objection is, "Alonzo, I want to hear your proof that desire fulfillment is what matters." The person raising the objection then asserts, implicitly or explicitly, that since I can offer no proof that desire fulfillment is what matters, that he has therefore disproved desire utilitarianism and can then move on.

What the person raising this objection does not understand is that desire utilitarianism denies that desire fulfillment is what matters. What matters are those things that are the objects of desires – the 'proposition P' that one finds in a "desire that P".

So, it is not an objection to desire utilitarianism that I have no argument to defend the proposition, "Why does the fulfillment of desires matter?" It is not an objection to a theory that it cannot do what it says cannot be done.

The Heliocentric Analogy

I hold that questions of God’s existence – whether you believe in a god or not – are irrelevant to questions of morality. I look at the proposition that it is almost certainly the case that no god exists in the same way that I look at the proposition that it is almost certainly the case that the earth orbits the sun. It is a claim about what is true or false in the universe, but it tells me almost nothing about how we should behave.

For a moment, let’s pretend that we were locked in a dispute between those who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, and those who believe that the Earth orbits the sun. Let us imagine the possibility that some people thought that this view had moral implications.

We could imagine somebody saying how important it is to teach geocentrism – the theory that the earth is the center of the universe – in our schools. I can well imagine somebody making the following argument:

Heliocentrism – or the sun-centered theory – threatens to drown civilization in a sea of immorality and chaos.

If we teach students that humans are infinitesimal specks on a piece of dust orbiting an average star lost in a sea of stars in an average galaxy lost in a sea of galaxies – they are going to view themselves and their neighbors as trivial and insignificant. This, in turn, can only be expected to lead to moral degeneration and chaos and, ultimately, the destruction of society.

Furthermore, we have proof of this. All we need to do is to compare the numbers of people who have been killed in human history by those who believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, compared to those who believed that the Earth orbits the sun.

We see that all of the great wars – the great atrocities of the 20th century were committed by people who believed the Earth orbited the Sun. Hitler. Stalin, Mao. Pol Pot. Every one of them believed in the earth-orbit theory. Every one of them believed that humans were specks circling an insignificant star.

On the other hand, if we returned geocentrism to our schools – if we once again filled our children with the sense of importance that comes from believing that they are the most important characters on the most important piece of real estate in the universe – the one place that the whole rest of the universe revolves around – we can have a return to morality and then, and only then, can we have a civilization that flourishes, free from the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and other heliocentrists.

We can imagine that argument. But, unfortunately, the earth still orbits an average main-sequence star in one of hundreds of billions of galaxies, and we are just going to have to learn to live with that fact. None of these arguments about how heliocentrism will lead to the immorality and the end of civilization, even if those claims are true, has anything to do with whether the Earth is, in fact, the center of the universe, or whether it orbits the sun is true.

And, of course, the argument is bogus anyway. Heliocentrism did not lead to Hitler and Stalin and Mao. A great many heliocentrists were opposed to these systems – and were a part of the armies that fought against those tyrannies. And they had good reason to do so. The fact that they were heliocentrists did not change the fact that they had no reason to live in a brutal dictatorship.

The fact that one is an atheist does not imply that one suddenly acquires a taste for living in a brutal and violent dictatorship. Atheists, have exactly the same reason to oppose those types of regimes – for their own sake, for the sake of their family, for the sake of their friends – as theists do. Perhaps more . . . because this life is the only life we have, and who wants to live this life under the heals of a brutal and violent dictator, or starving to death in a system that cannot feed its own people?

In fact, this proposition is so obvious it then raises the following question: What type of person is it who would make the absurd claim that atheists (or evolutionists) somehow lose their reasons to avoid subjecting themselves and their loved ones to tyrannical oppression, brutal violence, wonton imprisonment, and starvation?

Actually, it would be somebody who wants you to hate and fear those who disagree with him.

It’s a very common tactic – using hatred and fear as rhetorical tools. History is filled with examples of people asserting that “we” are the noble and good people and “that tribe over there” is filled with sin and evil who want nothing more than to rape your women and slaughter your children unless you take up arms – political arms, if not military arms - against them.

These people . . . those who want you to learn the history of the 20th century as being a conflict between the angelic Christians against the demonic atheists – are people who have learned to use unprincipled hatred and fear as political tools. Though they claim that their access to God gives them direct access to virtue somehow missed the part about how virtue is not found in using fear and hatred as a weapon.

The next time somebody uses the name of Hitler and Stalin as reasons for you to hate and fear atheists or evolutionists, think of what you would say if they were using the names Hitler and Stalin to teach you to hate heliocentrists. Think of the reasons that heliocentrists still have to oppose tyranny, brutality, and starvation, and you will see the argument as the piece of hate-mongering bigotry it is in fact.

Atheists Speaking about Morality

Allow me to step back a moment and put the posts of the last three weeks in a larger context.

This series of posts started with a complaint about a debate between Dan Barker and Dinesh D’Souza on the possibility of being good without God. Barker gave a definition of 'good' that left him unable to answer basic questions such as, "Why is this thing good and not something else?" and "How do you get people to actually be good?"

I then expanded my criticism to evolutionary ethicists – those who postulate that we have an evolved sense of right and wrong.

Their theory faces the same Euthyphro question that religious ethics faces.

They cannot provide an account of true good or true bad bad against which this alleged sense can be calibrated.

They do not have anything to say about how to prevent the horrendous evils that it is still within our evolved nature to perform – as proven by the fact that we are surrounded by those evils.

They fail to account for the role of praise and condemnation in morality. Does it truly make sense to praise or blame people for having or failing to have a particular gene?

Ultimately, I was understandably asked to provide what I think would be better answers than those that I criticized. I went ahead and did so. However, that defense of desire utilitarianism was substantially a side show. Even if I am totally insane with regard to the merits of desire utilitarianism, the main point of my objection still stands.

We have spokesmen attempting to answer the question of how there can be morality without God who are substantially ignorant of 400 years of moral philosophy in which this topic was discussed.

They have obviously taken upon themselves to get a superficial understanding of the subject matter. They demonstrate this with casual references to “the naturalistic fallacy” and “the impossibility of deriving 'ought' from 'is'". However, they continue to make claims that moral philosophers have discussed for centuries without any clear indication that they understand the problems with those theories.

I had one of my cringe moments a few years ago listening to Michael Newdow defend his lawsuit against 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance in a debate on C-span. Naturally, he argued that it violated the First Amendment of the Constitution. Then he was asked to explain what maid the First Amendment such a good idea – whether he could argue for the First Amendment itself. Newdow's gifts as a legal scholar left him unable to answer the moral question, "Should there be a First Amendment to start with?"

Of course, the priest he was debating then argued that the First Amendment itself came from God, it was one of our God given rights, and that it was absurd not to declare that a right that came from God would prohibit us from acknowledging Him as the true source of our rights in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Another cringe moment was listening to (I bought the audio book) Sam Harris give an act-utilitarian defense of torture in The End of Faith without acknowledging that moral philosophers had raised nearly 200 years’ worth of objections to act utilitarian theories.

If somebody is going to be a spokesperson for atheists, then that person should recognize that one of (if not the) core issues is the relationship between morality and religion and the relationship between immorality and atheism. They should recognize that moral philosophy should be something about which they have some significant understanding.

Right Actions: Summary

I have been spending the last several posts attempting to demonstrate how the desire utilitarianism account of right actions can explain a number of elements of morality. Those propositions are:

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

In those posts I have sought to provide accounts of:

Negligence (and recklessness) – wrong actions made so because the show the absence of an aversion to causing harm to others that people generally have many strong reasons to promote and that a person with good desires would have.

The Bad Samaritan – a person with desires that people generally have reason to inhibit who nevertheless performs the same action as that which a person with good desires would have performed. In spite of the bad motives, the act itself is not wrong.

Non-Obligatory Permissions – In addition to desires that we have reason to universally promote and universally prohibit, there are areas where we have reason to promote a diversity of desires. These include areas such as what to eat, where to live, who to marry, and what careers to pursue, where a diversity of desires reduces competition and makes it easier for everybody to get what they want.

Excuses – Excuses are claims that block an implication from a state that suggests bad desires (or the absence of good desires) to actual desires. A claim of 'accident', for example, if true implies that even a person with good desires could not have prevented the unfortunate event.

Mens Rea – the guilty mind that must be demonstrated in order to prove that a person deserves to be punished. This guilty mind cannot be found in beliefs and can only sensibly be found in desires.

Moral Dilemmas – rare circumstances in which desires that we have reason to promote because of their good effect in day-to-day circumstances are made to come into conflict – creating situations where an agent must thwart a desire that it is good for everybody to have.

Supererogatory Actions – actions above and beyond the call of duty suggesting that the agent has desires that it would be good for everybody to have, but at a degree of strength we can expect only a few people to acquire.

This is only a partial list. I could add others.

For example, the theory explains why praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment are such core components of morality. It is because these are the tools for molding malleable desires. It explains what subjectivists get right about value – that value depends on desire and, without desire, there would be no value.

It explains what the objectivists get right about value – that right and wrong is substantially independent of the beliefs or the desires of the speaker, and is something about which whole societies can be wrong (much to their detriment).

And so forth.

Furthermore, this account does not make any use of gods, intrinsic values, categorical imperatives, "ultimate goods", contra-causal free will, or any other supernatural or exotic entity. It talks about desires, states of affairs, and relationships between them.

Right Actions Beyond the Call of Duty

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as “morality”. In this post, I focus on acts above and beyond the call of duty.

The term that moral philosophers use to refer to these acts is ‘supererogatory’.

Act utilitarian theories have a difficult time accounting for supererogatory actions. To the act utilitarian, one is obligated to do the act that maximizes utility. That act is not “above and beyond the call of duty.” It is one’s duty.

However, we do recognize that some people perform heroic actions that we do not expect people generally to perform. These are actions that we praise – and typically praise strongly. Yet, we do not assert that everybody has a duty to act as the praised individual acted. It is morally permissible to fall short of that ideal.

In desire utilitarian terms we begin with the recognition that people are not all alike. When it comes to malleable desires, some people’s desires are more malleable than others. Of these, some people’s desires are subjected to stronger effects of social conditioning than others.

As a result of these factors, we can actually expect a bell curve of effects of social forces on molding desires. This means that we can reasonably expect a “top five percent” or even a “top one percent” when it comes to adopting good desires.

When it comes to supererogatory actions, our attitude is that, “Yes, it would certainly be a good thing if everybody had that desire. Furthermore, we have many and strong reasons to encourage everybody to have that desire.

However, the laws of human nature are such that we cannot actually expect everybody to have that desire. It is within the realm of possibility only for a small number of people to qualify. Still, our interest in promoting that desire translates into an interest in praising and encouraging as much of that desire as we can get away with.”

So, while charity is a good thing and something we have reason to promote in ourselves and others, there are limits to what we can expect to accomplish in molding people’s desires.

Those who do better than we have reason to expect are those who go above and beyond the call of duty. They become the role models that we encourage others to strive for, even if it is reasonable to expect that they will fall short of the target. It is at least worth aiming for.

Right Actions and Moral Dilemmas

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as 'morality'. In this post, I focus on moral dilemmas.

Moral dilemmas are situations where, no matter what option the agent chooses, it is a "wrong action". He must do something that he ought not to do.

A classic example of a moral dilemma involves Sophie's Choice. As the story goes, a Nazi soldier gave Sophie a choice. She could choose which of her children he was going to kill. If she did not choose one, he would kill both of them.

A modified version of this says that Sophie herself must kill one of her two children, or the Nazi guard will kill both of them.

We may have an evolved disposition to care for our children. However, a cursory glance at the news each day tells us that this desire is not naturally so widespread and so strong as we have reason to want it to be. In order to strengthen this set of desires above and beyond what nature provides, we add a layer of moral duty to it. We use praise and condemnation to augment what nature has provided us.

This moral component is what makes Sophie’s Choice a moral dilemma, as opposed to ‘merely’ a painful choice having no moral component.

Act-utilitarian theories have trouble with moral dilemmas. On an act utilitarian theory, Sophie should just kill the child that she thinks will provide the least benefit to society and be done with it. It would be better if Sophie could joyfully kill one of the children because, then, overall utility would be highest. The more Sophie enjoys killing the one child, the more overall utility there will be, and the better the action.

The desire utilitarian account of moral dilemmas rests on the fact that the desires we have reason to promote has a lot to do with the types of situations people encounter every day. The degree to which a desire tends to fulfill other desires is dependent in part on how often that desire has a role to play in real-world decision making.

A moral dilemma exists when desires that we have reason to strongly encourage people to have in virtue of day-to-day living comes into conflict with another desire that we have reason to strongly encourage people to have in some rare circumstance, such as Sophie’s Choice.

It is relevant, when considering a desire’s tendency to fulfill other desires, to note how often it will come into effect. A desire for the welfare of one’s children is a desire that be expected to effect a large number of every day actions. And it is a desire that we have reason to make, through social forces, significantly stronger than nature seems to allow by default,

Furthermore, desires are persistent entities, We have no capacity to turn a desire on and off like a light. If it is active at one time, it will remain active, even as the situation changes and the desire ceases to motivate action that tends to fulfill the desires of others.

On the other hand, the state of being in a position where one has to decide which child to kill (or which child to tell somebody else to kill) is a state that should never occur – or occur quite rarely. It is not an every-day circumstances that we must guard against in deciding which desires to promote and which desires to inhibit.

So, desires that we have many and strong reasons to promote due to every-day concerns become desires that lead to moral dilemmas in extraordinary and unusual circumstances.

Right Actions and Mens Rea

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as 'morality'. In this post, I focus on mens rea or guilty mind.

We typically encounter discussion of 'mens rea' in the philosophy of law. However, it is actually a moral concept. In fact, much of what we encounter in the criminal law actually has a moral foundation. The actions that we seek to make criminal are those actions that are actually immoral – those actions where the people who commit them deserve (in the moral sense) punishment.

Deviations between criminal law and morality are typically categorized as 'unjust' (or 'immoral') law.

Anyway, before a person can be said to deserve punishment the accuser must demonstrate mens rea. That is to say, she must prove not only that the accused committed the act, but that the accused had those mental states that would make him somebody who deserves to be punished.

So, we know that an agent pointed a gun at somebody and pulled the trigger, thus shooting our alleged victim and rendering him dead.

But did he do anything wrong?

We can see that, whatever we are concerned with in making a moral judgment, it is not in the act itself. We can know everything there is to know about the action – the pointing of the gun and pulling the trigger – and not know anything about the guilt of the accused. In order to determine guilt, we need to know why he pulled the trigger.

Let us assume, for a moment, that we discover that the accused had a brain implant, and that the pointing of a gun and pulling the trigger was controlled by somebody else entirely sitting at a key board. In this case, the act cannot even be said to be the accused's action. It is the keyboard operator's action. We don't need to know why the accused pulled the trigger because the accused did not pull the trigger. We need to know why the keyboard operator pressed whatever combination of keys that resulted in the gun firing.

Just as the wrongness of an action does not preside in the specific twitching of muscles that constitute the action itself, it also does not reside in any belief. Perhaps the agent believed that the person he shot was a police officer out to arrest him on an outstanding warrant. In shooting the police officer, we certainly are not arguing that the wrongness of his conduct resides in having this belief.

After all, the statement may be true – and may be something that the prosecutor seeks to get the jury to believe as well. They may well inform the jury, "The victim, in this case, was a police officer who was seeking to arrest the accused on an outstanding warrant." This would be bizarre if the moral culpability rests in having such a belief.

So, if the wrongness is not found in the particular muscle twitching that make up the actions, or in the beliefs of the accused, we really are left with no other option but to seat the moral culpability – the mens rea – in the desires that motivated the action (or the absence of desires that could have prevented it).

We may well understand that the accused wanted to avoid arrest and imprisonment. In fact, punishment is characterized primarily as creating a state that thwarts the desires (directly or indirectly) of the one being punished. It is a way of giving people a reason for action not to perform a crime based on the threat, "If you perform this action (and we catch you), you risk the thwarting of those other desires – and you have motivating reason to act so as to prevent the thwarting of those desires."

Ultimately, the mens rea of criminal law involves demonstrating that the accused had, at the time of the crime, faulty desires. It is not the muscle twitching themselves that we are interested in, or the agent's beliefs. In determining mens rea we are seeking to determine whether the accused had desires people generally have reason to inhibit, or lacked desires that people generally have reason to promote.

Right Actions and Excuses

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as 'morality'. In this post, I focus on excuses.

What is an excuse, and why are they a part of a moral system?

Excuses are propositions that block implications from what appears on the surface to be a wrong action (an action that a person with good desires would not have performed) to the desires of the agent.

An agent drives through a red light, striking and killing a pedestrian. Or our agent points a gun at another person, pulls the trigger, and kills that person. We come upon one of these actions and we have reason to suspect that we are dealing with an agent who does not have the desires that a person with good desires would have.

Desires are like black holes. We cannot see desires directly. We know that they exist and what their properties are entirely by their effects on other things. So, we look for the signs of desires that we have reason to inhibit or the absence of desires that we have reason to promote. Going through a red light and striking a pedestrian, or shooting somebody, are good initial indicators that bad desires are present or good desires are lacking.

But, they may not be good enough. The agent has the opportunity to throw out an excuse and, in doing so, trump any implication that can be drawn from a prima facie wrong act to the conclusion that the agent had bad desires.

So, the agent who goes through the red light and strikes the pedestrian tells us that the car had a mechanical failing and he could not stop the car, even if he had wanted to. That is to say, even a person with good desires would not have been able to stop the car – so the prima facie bad act fails to show that I lacked good desires.

Or, the person who shot another tells us that he thought the other person was going to kill him. He acted in self-defense. Even a person with good desires can be expected to defend himself – with deadly force, if necessary. So, the self-defense excuse blocks the implication from the reasonable prima-facie claim that the agent had desires a good person would not have or lacked desires that a good person would have.

Let us assume that the agent who shot in self-defense discovers that the person he shot had a toy gun. In fact, the agent was not in any danger at all (since the would-be assailant had no potential to do real harm. However, our agent did not know that. The agent can offer the excuse that he made a reasonable mistake of fact.

It must be pointed out that just any old mistake of fact will work as an excuse. It must be a mistake that a person with good desires would not have made. The excuse, "I did not know the gun was loaded," is not good enough if the agent acquired that belief using less care than a person with good desires would have used. The moral concept of negligence is fully as applicable to the person who adopts beliefs carelessly as it is to the person who drives a care carelessly.

Perhaps the agents were on the set of a movie where one agent points a gun at another and pulls the trigger. Movie production allows stunt men and women to agree to accept a certain amount of risk in exchange for compensation (pay). In general, people can voluntarily assume risk.

This is justified in a desire utilitarian system because we have reason to leave decisions over what to do to the agents who participate in doing them. The person who obtains consent learns that the person with the most knowledge and most incentive to avoid mistakes believes that the action will fulfill the most and strongest of the agent’s desires. So, who are we to disagree – unless the agent is known to be incompetent at making such a decision (e.g., children).

So, the excuse of consent says that the agent trusted the best informed person’s judgment as to whether the act will fulfill or thwart desires. We have many and strong reason to promote an interest in trusting the judgment of the best informed, least corruptible agent.

So, here are four categories of excuse: (1) accident, (2) a greater value, (3) a mistake of fact, and (4) consent.

Each of them function to block the implication from a prima facie wrong act to the conclusion that an agent has some bad desires or lacks a good desire. Each of them is fully accounted for in desire utilitarian terms.

Name another theory that can explain what excuses are and how they work as well as desire utilitarianism does in explaining the elements of a moral system such as the element of excuse.

Right Actions and Non-Obligatory Permissions

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as "morality". In this post, I focus on the issue of non-obligatory permissions.

Non-obligatory permissions refer to actions that a person may perform (if one wants to), but which one has no obligation to perform. It is permissible for the agent to do something else if the agent chooses to do so.

Huge sections of our life are dominated by choices made within this realm of non-obligatory permissions. Imagine yourself going grocery shopping, walking up an down the isles deciding your meals for the week, not on the basis of taste, but on the basis of maximizing utility.

We are in the realm of non-obligatory permissions when we decide what to watch on television or what music to listen to, what to read, what to study in school and what to choose as a vocation.

Perhaps one of the most important areas where non-obligatory permissions rule is in choosing a marriage partner. If there were no such thing as non-obligatory permissions then every given marriage would either be morally obligatory (required), or morally prohibited. Act utilitarian theories have a special problem with non-obligatory permissions. Act utilitarian theories say, "Perform that act that maximizes utility." Utility, in turn, can be measured in terms of pleasure minus pain, happiness minus unhappiness, preference satisfaction versus preference dissatisfaction, or desire fulfillment versus desire thwarting.

The act that maximizes utility then becomes morally obligatory. All other possible actions become morally prohibited. There is no moral permission to do an act that does not have the best consequences because consequences are all that matter when determining the moral quality of an action.

We can say that that the agent's own utility counts in making these decisions. However, the agent's own utility counts for one seven billionth of the total utility. It would be strange to find a case in which, after everybody else’s total utility has been considered, that the result is so close to a tie that the agent’s own utility decides the issue.

Imagine going up to somebody and saying, "I have done the utilitarian calculations and I have determined that the act of marrying you will bring the most utility to the world as a whole. I happen also to have some affection for you, but that necessarily is substantially irrelevant in making this proposal – my utility being such an infinitesimal proportion of overall utility.”

Of course, that other person’s decision to accept would also have to be based on the same calculation of total utility.

The propositions above leave room for whole section of our lives to be governed by non-obligatory permissions. There are some desires that we have many and strong reasons to promote universally (e.g., a love of truth and honesty), and some we have many and strong reasons to inhibit (e.g., out-group hostility). However, there are other desires that have reason neither to inhibit nor to promote universally.

Those desires that would lead to the choice of a profession, for example, are desires that we have reason to inhibit or promote. We have no reason to use social forces to try to make sure that nobody has a love of engineering, for example. Nor do we have reason to promote a universal love of engineering. What we have, instead, is reason to promote a society in which some people love engineering more than teaching (let’s say), and some people enjoy teaching more than engineering.

Food preferences, actually, represents another area where we have no reason to promote universal likes and dislikes. If everybody liked the same food, then we would face scarcities in that food as more and more marginal methods of production are brought on line to satisfy the demand. However, a rich diversity in food tastes means that we can grow different types of food – growing each type in circumstances best for that type.

Of course, when it comes to marriage partners, there would be fierce competition for the few people who would fit that universal criteria. A diversity of interests in marriage partners means that each of us has a chance of finding somebody that matches our own interests.

None of us need to make our decisions about what careers to enter, what foods to each, or who to marry based on some sort of universal standard. In these areas, we are free to turn our attention inward and choose what we like and dislike – within certain limits, of course.

"Do that act that a person with good desires would have performed," where career, food, and mating preferences are free to vary from one person to the next, yields the conclusion that choices in this area fall into the realm of non-obligatory permissions. The person with good desires would certainly not make some choices. However, this leaves a whole realm of choices where the deciding factor is desires that society generally has no particular reason to promote or inhibit.

Right Actions and the Bad Samaritan

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am going to defend these propositions in a series of posts where I hope to show how well it explains a number of elements of morality; including such things as negligence, non-obligatory permissions, and moral dilemmas.

Here, I am going to discuss the moral concept of the “bad Samaritan”

The problem of the Bad Samaritan represents another problem (in addition to negligence and recklessness) for theories that base the morality of an action on the morality of the desires that motivate that action.

In the case of the bad Samaritan, a person performs a right action, but does so for reasons that would consider bad.

Imagine a person who wants nothing more than to see his brother suffer. He discovers that his brother has raped and murdered some children. Therefore, for the sole purpose of causing his brother grief, he turns his brother into the authorities.

For the sake of this example, we are assuming that the agent in this case cares nothing about saving children from being raped and tortured. He is entirely indifferent to the plight of the children and, if not for the fact that this is an effective way to harm his brother, he would act against his brother. In fact, let’s go so far as to say that the agent in this case knows of other people who have raped and murdered children. Only, he does not turn them in to the authorities because he does not wish to.

If it were the case that right action was determined by the value of the desires that motivated them, then we would have a moral rule that states, “If your dominant reason for reporting somebody who rapes and murders children to the authorities is your want to do harm to that person, then you should keep quiet about those rapes and murders.”

However, we have no such principle. We hold that the agent has an obligation to report the person who rapes and murders children in to the authorities even if he does so for a bad reason. We would prefer it (and we have many strong reasons to prefer it) to be the case that the agent works out of concern for the children and respect for the law. However, the rightness of the action does not demand that this criteria be met.

The principle that the right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed is consistent with the idea of this agent having the right to report his brother to the authorities, even if he does so for no good reason.

It is still the act that the person with good desires would have performed.

This is not to say that desire utilitarianism classifies the agent a good person. Quite the opposite. A good person is actually a person with good desires. The Bad Samaritan is truly a bad person. Yet, even as a bad person, in this one case, he does the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Right Actions and Negligence

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am going to defend this proposition in a series of posts where I hope to show how well it explains a number of elements of morality; including such things as negligence, non-obligatory permissions, and moral dilemmas. I am going to start with the subject of negligence.

Please note, I am not going to defend it by showing how well it conforms to popular moral judgments. I am not testing this proposition by showing that it yields the “correct” conclusions on slavery, rape, the obligation to repay debts, the legitimacy of lying to the Nazis when they come looking for Jews, or the right to freedom of speech.

People who make those types of arguments assume that their prejudices are already correct, and that we only need to account for them in a moral system.

The arguments I am making aim to show how the proposition above accounts for the elements that define a system as a moral system.

One of the elements of a moral system is that it contains the moral categories of "negligence" and "recklessness." What are these categories and what makes them legitimate objects of moral condemnation?

The problem of accounting for negligence was a fatal blow to a moral theory proposed by James Martineau about 100 years ago. He argued that the moral quality of an action is derived from the moral quality of the motives (desires) from which it sprang. If an agent’s motives were good, then his actions were praiseworthy. If, instead, he acted from bad motives, his actions were wrong or blameworthy.

A contemporary of Martineau's, Henry Sidgwick, wrote that this method of ethics did not account for the wrongness of negligence.

In my previous post, I described a case of negligence that involved somebody transporting goods on a truck, but failing to secure his load well. As a result, part of his load fell onto a freeway, putting other people at risk of serious harm.

It is almost certainly the case that this agent's only motive was to transport the goods from one place to another. This is not a bad motive – not the type of motive that would generally make a person worthy of condemnation. In fact, it is a very common motive – one that almost every one of us share every day.

Sidgwick was an act utilitarian. He sought to defend the thesis that acts can be measured by their consequences. One of the problems with this theory is that it generates a great deal of moral luck. Because I saw the load on the truck shift seconds before it fell, I was able to prevent an accident. This reduced the bad consequences of the agent’s actions. How is it the case that the agent can claim moral credit for the actions that I performed?

The proposition above can account for the moral category of negligence.

The negligent person is not to be condemned for the motives that he had. Instead, negligent people are to be condemned for the motives that they lack.

A good person is a person who would have a certain level of concern that his actions not put others at risk of harm. We (those who would otherwise be harmed and who care about people who would otherwise be harmed) have many and strong reason to promote in others a desire to take care to foresee and avoid accidents such as this. So, we have reason to use our tools of praise and condemnation to help to ensure that others take care to avoid accidents such as this.

It is not the motives of the action itself that determines its moral quality. Nor is it the consequences of the actions. It is, instead, whether the action is one that would have been performed by a person who has desires (and aversions) that people generally have reason to promote and discourage.

This theory not only shows how the concept of "right action" given above accounts for the moral categories of negligence (and recklessness). It also explains why condemnation is a reasonable response to negligence and why praise is a reasonable response for those who are careful and responsible. This is how we make concern for the welfare of others more common in the population as a whole – and how we better secure ourselves from accidents that less careful people will tend to cause.

Right Actions Defined

I have been asked a question by a member of the studio audience that is going to touch off a series of posts.

The question that would decide it for me (and for the record, I take the subjectivist interpretation of DU) is this: In any moral case - say, acting to inhibit the desire of someone to engage in insider trading - what decides that rightness or wrongness of the action? Is the rightness or wrongness up to whatever subject is opining on the matter, or is the rightness or wrongness of the action independent of any subject?

For the record (and I am certain that Kevin understands this) the "subjectivist interpretation of DU" is identical to the "objectivist interpretation of DU." This is true in the same way that DU, spoken in Spanish, should be identical to DU spoken in English. The difference that Kevin is referring to is not differences in interpretation, but differences in languages.

Now, on to the issue of right actions.

The right action is the action that a person with good desires would have performed.

This is in contrast with the theory that says that right actions are the actions that fulfill the most and strongest desires. This competing theory is a theory that I call “desire fulfillment act utilitarianism” – and is quite close to the more popular theory “preference utilitarianism” (the right act is the act that satisfies the most preferences).

However, desire utilitarianism is a rule-utilitarian theory, not an act-utilitarian theory. The right act is the act that conforms to the best rules (where the rules, in this case, are written into the brain in the form of desires), and the rules are evaluated according to their (utilitarian) consequences.

An agent always acts so as to fulfill the most and strongest of his own desires. To say that an agent ought to have done something different is to say that the agent ought to have had those desires that would have caused him to do something different.

This then requires us to ask whether it would really be a good idea to universally promote those particular desires. If those desires would do more harm than good, we retract the statement about what the agent ought to have desired. This, in turn, requires that we retract the statement about what the agent ought to have done. Either that or we declare than agent is obligated to be in an inconsistent state of performing an action in violation of the laws of nature.

The right act is not necessarily the act that fulfills the most and strongest desires – not if that act requires desires that are either impossible or that will generally do more harm than good.

This concept of right action is also in contrast to the view that holds that the right act is the act motivated by the best desires (or intentions).

James Martineau presented such a theory about 100 years ago where he said that, in order to judge an action, we must look at the motives from which the action sprang. If the motives were good, then the action was good. On the other hand, if the motives were bad, the actions were bad.

A contemporary of Martineau, Henry Sidgwick, specifically attacked Martinau’s theory, providing a number of counter-examples. One of his counter-examples was that of negligence or recklessness.

The example that I use comes from a real case. I had just pulled onto a freeway and ended up behind a truck with a large load (for that truck). I noticed that the load looked unstable and immediately moved to back away. I had just started to slow down when a part of the load fell off of the truck. Because I was already slowing down I was able to avoid a serious accident.

The driver of that truck had no malicious desire motivating his actions. He simply wanted to get his load from Point A to Point B. Yet, his actions could be legitimately condemned. He was negligent in securing his load and, as such, he put others at risk.

This, then, describes the desire utilitarian account of right actions. In the rest of this series, I will apply this account to a number of moral concepts and show how the desire utilitarian concept of right action provides the best fit.

(1) Right Actions Defined (this post)

(2) Right Actions and Negligence

(3) Right Actions and the Bad Samaritan

(4) Right Actions and Non-Obligatory Permissions

(5) Right Actions and Excuses

(6) Right Actions and Mens Rea

(7) Right Actions and Moral Dilemmas

(8) Right Actions Above and Beyond the Call of Duty

On Subjective and Objective Value

The debate among members of the studio audience has wandered into questions about objectivity and subjectivity.

This is an area where I think that the concepts are so muddled and inconsistent that they are guaranteed to keep debates going indefiniately as participants talk past each other at every step.

At one point I had been asked to participate in two debates on the objectivity of ethics. In one case, I was billed as defending subjectivism, because I hold that there is no value without desires. That is to say, no desire (or brain-state) independent value exists in the universe.

At about the same time, in a second debate, I was held billed as the defender of moral objectivism. This is because I hold that moral properties are substantially independent of the beliefs or desires (mental states) of the speaker. They exist in the real world as properties that existed before the assessor was even born, and will continue to live long after his death.

The way that this happened is that I tend to shun labels. I simply declared that I will present my views and allow people to determine how they want to categorize me.

People do not, in fact, all have the same understanding of subjetivism. So, some people hold a definition of subjectivism where they classify me as a subjectivist. Others use a definition of subjectivism that results in their classifying me as an objectivist.

These are not inconsistent views. While I hold that moral properties are dependent on mental states, they are at the same time substantially independent of the mental states of the speaker. They are dependent, instead, on the desires that people generally have the most and strongest reasons to promote or inhibit.

There is a discoverable fact of the matter regarding how these desires relate to each other that is substantially indepdendent of the beliefs and desires of the assessor.

Intentional actions are explained by the interaction of beliefs and desires.

Beliefs and desires are propositional attitude. A belief that P is the attitude that P is true. A desire that P is a motivational state that drives the agent to create or preserve states of affairs in which P is true.

Desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

People act so as to fulfill the most and the strongest of their desires, given their beliefs. However, they seek to act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires.

We know that (beliefs and) desires exist because we use them to fairly reliably explain and predict a huge set of real-world observations - intentional actions.

Desires are the only (ends-producing) reasons for action that exist. If there are any other, ends-producing reasons for action, let me know what evidence there is of their existence.

Some maleable desires tend to fulfill the desires of others, Those others, then, have reasons to act so as to promote those desires.

Some maleable desires tend to thwart the desires of others. Those others, then, have reason to act so as to inhibit those desires.

The tools for promoting the first type of desire and inhibiting the latter type of desire are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

The fact that a desire tends to fulfill other desires means that people generally have motivating reasons to promote those desires using the tools described above. That fact that a desire tends to thwart other desires means that people generally have motivating reason to inhibit that desire using those same tools.

You can call me a subjectivist if you wish - based on the fact that I deny the existence of desire-independent reasons for action. However, do not equivocate from this to the conclusion that I am the type of subjectivist who denies the existence of moral facts - that all it takes for the rape of a child to be "right for me" is for me to adopt a particular attitude towards the rape of a child.

You can call me an objectivist if you wish - based on the fact that I assert that there are moral facts and that those facts are substantially independent of the beliefs or desires of the assessor. However, do not equivocate from this to the conclusion that I hold that there are desire-independent values - some sort of intrinsic prescriptivity that adheres to states of affairs independent of any human mental state.

Moral Sense and Dangerous False Beliefs

Some false beliefs are harmless and can lend themselves to casual debate. Some beliefs are dangerous, and dissuading people of those beliefs takes on an added importance.

Moral sense theories fall into the latter category.

Evolutionary ethics is not the only moral sense theory that is out there. Many religious views of ethics put them in the same category. They hold that God has written a true moral code into their brain. Reflecting on how they feel about a particular action is considered pretty much the same as asking God, "Is this right or wrong?" If it feels good to them, then this is taken as God's permission to go ahead and do it.

Common subjectivism is another moral sense theory. Only, the common subjectivist denies that there are any external moral values to sense. Consequently, one's feelings can never be mistaken - there is no fact of the matter to check them against. This, too, leads to the conclusion that "if it feels good to you, then do it."

Evolutionary ethics says that we evolved a faculty for sensing moral properties that we can consult to determine right from wrong. Though individuals might suffer from the occasional "moral illusion" (similar to optical illusions), this sense organ can still be trusted to be reliable.

What all of these theories have in common is that they tell people to answer moral questions by turning their attention inward - by asking and answering the question, "How do you feel about this?"

These internal theories of morality stand in contrast to external theories that say that, to determine moral facts, you have to look outside of yourself at the real world.

Desire utilitarianism, for example, is an externalist moral theory. Instead of looking inside yourself and asking how you feel about something to determine right from wrong, you need to look outside of yourself and ask whether people generally have reason to promote or discourage such a feeling.

If you are perfectly comfortable with the thought of torturing somebody, abusing a child, lynching a black, locking the members of a particular religion in a church and setting fire to it, herding Jews into death camps, enslaving a race, exterminating the Native Americans, raping, stealing, lying, or engaging in reckless conduct that puts others at risk, this is not morally relevant. What is relevant is whether people generally have reason to promote or discourage that feeling.

The reason that moral sense theories are not just wrong, but dangerous, is because it tells people like those listed in the paragraph above that they can trust their feelings when it comes to measuring the morality of their conduct. In telling them this, it gives them a moral permission to act on those feelings. In the cases listed above, this is not a good thing.

Internalist theories of ethics are fine to the degree that an agent has an aversion to harming others, a desire to tell the truth, and aversion to breaking promises, a desire to repay debts, a fondness for liberty, an aversion to punishing innocent people, and the like. That is to say, internalist theories of ethics are fine for people who are already good.

However, it represents terrible advice when given to somebody who lacks a certain amount of virtue.

We can assume that, among the desires that most people have a desire to do that which is right (or, perhaps more commonly, an aversion to doing that which is wrong). If a person has such an aversion then all we need to do is to point out that X is wrong and he will acquire a motivating reason not to do X. It might not always be a sufficiently strong motivating reason. However, in some cases, it will be.

Now, we tell such a person that to judge whether X is right they need to focus their attention on their own feelings. "To determine the morality of your actions you should look inside yourself, at your moral sense, and determine if you are comfortable doing X. If you are comfortable with it, then it is permissible, and your aversion to doing that which is wrong should not be triggered."

Or, we can tell such a person, "How you feel about performing these actions is not relevant. What is relevant is whether people in the world have reason to encourage or discourage people from having those feelings. If they have reason to promote an aversions to this type of action, then you should consider the action to be wrong, and your aversion to doing wrong actions can be triggered."

Of these two options, the first option is going to get people defrauded, robbed, raped, murdered, enslaved, and otherwise abused. The latter option has the potential to reduce some of those frauds, robberies, rapes, murders, enslavements and abuse.

The moral question is not, "How do you feel about this?" The moral question is "How should you (and everybody else) feel about this?"

Moral sense theories – telling people that they can judge moral qualities by measuring their feelings – are not only wrong; they are dangerous. Externalist theories that tell people to look outside of their own feelings at the reason for action that other people have are a little safer.

Just a final note: I am not arguing that a proposition should be considered false if it is dangerous. I am arguing that false propositions exist on a scale - some false beliefs are more dangerous than others, and we have legitimate reason to be more concerned about dangerous false beliefs than harmless false beliefs.

A Statement on Moral Sense

I want to thank Kevin, a heavily contributing member of the studio audience, for providing me with a statement that I can use to illustrate the bulk of my objections to any type of "moral sense" theory in general, and to the idea of an evolved moral sense in specific.

Kevin wrote:

[O]n introspection, we know that we don't like to suffer. Many, including myself, hold that we have evolved a 'moral sense' akin to the ‘golden rule’ which gives us the ability to sympathize/empathize with others, and therefore, want others to avoid suffering when at all possible

First problem: Some people have acquired a desire to rape and kill children. What justification is there for denying that they, too, have evolved a 'moral sense', that gives them the capacity to rape and kill children when at all possible?

There are those who have an aversion to homosexual relationships. The mere thought of a homosexual relationship causes in them a sense of revulsion. What argument is there against the claim that they have evolved a 'moral sense' against those sex acts that are 'unnatural' that gives them the ability to recognize the wrongness of homosexual relationships and to put obstacles to engaging in those types of relationships whenever possible?

It is not sufficient to answer this question by saying, "Well, if we consider all of the evidence then we can come to see how some of our perceptions are right and some are wrong, in the same way that we can come to see that a straight stick appears bent if it is sticking out of the water."

It is necessary to get beyond this and at least provide an example of this 'considered judgment' in action.

My view is that this 'considered judgment' ultimately takes us to the conclusion that no 'moral sense' exists, that value is a relationship between states of affairs and desires. It is entirely question begging for somebody to assert that we can answer the difficulty I mention above by applying our 'considered judgment' without providing some evidence that this 'considered judgment' actually supports the claim of a “moral sense”.

Second problem: Introducing the concept of a 'moral sense' brings with it a huge amount of conceptual baggage. It includes concepts of duty, obligation, moral prohibition, right, and wrong. Of particular importance is the fact that it imports assumptions about justifications for harming others through fines, imprisonment, and even death. What justification is there for bringing all of this conceptual baggage into the picture.

A person may well be able to argue that we have evolved an aversion to doing harm to others. He may be able to argue that this aversion itself is linked to mirror neurons by which we experience some of the pain that others experience as our own pain.

Actually, I not only hold that a person can argue this. I believe it is true and well supported by empirical research.

However, the leap from this to 'moral sense' is entirely without justification. In fact, it is the very leap from 'is' to 'ought' that Hume warned us about. Hume wrote that in all vulgar systems of morality people begin with all sorts of claims about what is the case, then suddenly jump to claims about what ought to be the case, without explaining how their 'ought' claims can be inferred from the 'is' claims they began with.

The leap from 'aversion to the suffering of others' to 'moral sense' is precisely that – an unjustified and unfounded leap from 'is' to 'ought'.

Third problem: This account of a 'moral sense' faces the same Euthyphro problem that religious ethics has.

Let us assume that we never evolved motor neurons that allowed us to experience the pain of others as our own and, through this, acquire an aversion to the suffering of others. What would this imply?

Would it imply that it is permissible to bring about the suffering of others?

Or would it be the case that causing the suffering of others is still wrong, only it is a wrongness that we lack the ability to sense?

If we go with the first option, then the claim that we have a 'moral sense' is a meaningless tautology. What we sense to be moral, and what is moral in fact, is necessarily the same thing. If we evolved a disposition to kill our step children when we took over a pride, that would be moral. If we evolved a disposition to decapitate our lovers and eat them after sex, that would be moral. If we sensed an interest in slaughtering anybody who belongs to another tribe, that would be moral.

If we go with the second option, we are left with the question, "What is this thing called 'moral' that can exist independent of our ability to sense it? How can we find it? And how can we know that what we 'sense' to be moral is calibrated correctly to what is moral in fact?"

The latter question becomes particularly problematic because evolution would hijack any true moral sense and turn it into a sense of genetic fitness. Unless we assume a remarkable coincidence between genetic fitness and moral value, we must assume that it is likely that at least one state with moral value does not promote genetic fitness.

Fourth problem: People concerned with morality as an institution are not concerned with the harms we cannot do because of some evolved disposition to behave in a particular way. They are concerned with the crimes that, even with our evolved dispositions, are a very real possibility and a very real object of concern.

Allowing that we have some evolved aversion to the suffering of others, it is not nearly as strong as we have reason to want it to be. There are a great many careless accidents (e.g., from drunk driving), lies, thefts, frauds, rapes, assaults, murders, terrorist attacks, political corruption, all forms of tyranny and abuse, holocausts and other attempts at genocide, the slaughter of whole villages, all of them making it plain that whatever aversion to the suffering we may have acquired through evolution is far weaker than we have reason to want it to be.

So, the next questions to come up are, is it possible to cause people to have an even stronger aversion to suffering than nature provided us with and, if so, how? If there is, we certainly have many and strong reason to promote those institutions that would boost this innate desire.

That is what morality is concerned with – not the aversion to suffering that we acquired through evolution, but any additional aversion to suffering that we could acquire as a result of the way we organize our society.

Fifth problem: It makes no sense to hold that people are morally accountable for their genetic makeup. To claim that a person is evil because he has a particular strand of DNA assumes that, somehow, he acquired the choice to determine his DNA. Which is absurd.

Moral concepts are applicable only to those things that involve some element of choice. Which is one of the reasons why I argue that moral concepts are applicable only to malleable desires – desires that are not fixed by nature, but are susceptible to change from social forces.

Ultimately, we are better off abandoning the idea of any kind of moral sense. Our observations are adequately handled by merely postulating an aversion to the suffering of others generated by the firing of mirror neurons. We can also make sense of reasons that exist to promote this aversion to the suffering of others beyond the level that nature provides for us – which is obviously far weaker than we have reason to want it to be. It is this additional aversion, molded through praise and condemnation, that is the concern of morality.

On Monkey Morality

An article in New Science declares that scientists say that "Monkeys have a sense of morality."

See: New Scientist Monkeys Have a Sense of Morality, Say Scientists

Since I have been arguing that there is no evolved sense of morality, I thought it would be useful to look at these findings.

Before I begin, I want to point out that desire utilitarianism suggests that we can find moral systems among any population that has maleable desires. Creatures in such a system have desire-baced "reasons for action" for promoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires.

The dispute here is not going to be answered by deciding whether morality among animals exists, but how best to understand that morality.

So, animals allegedly understand the idea of fairness.

The animals were asked to perform a set of simple tasks and then rewarded with food or affection. The rewards were varied, seemingly at random. De Waal found the animals had an acute sense of fairness and objected strongly when others were rewarded more than themselves for the same task, often sulking and refusing to take part any further.

This is question-begging. De Waal might well have found that animals objected strongly when others were rewarded more then themselves for the same task. However, is this a "sense of fairness?"

One question that comes up is whether the animals objected strongly when others were rewarded less than themselves for the same task. Because this, too, is a part of fairness. where they reacting to a lack of fairness in the state of affairs, or just to the lack of reward?

Consider the possibility that the monkeys are not responding to "unfairness", but to a lack of reward. Non-participation is a strategy that tends to have the effect of causing the target to offer greater rewards in the future. There is no "sense of fairness" involved. There is only a "desire for more reward in the future."

It would seem, if we employ Occam's Razor, that the person who wants to add a "sense of fairness" into a set of observations that seem adequately explained in terms of "desire for future reward", that the person who wishes to introduce the entity needs to explain why it is necessary. Otherwise, we are justified in calling for its elimination.

Another study looked at altruism in chimps - and found they were often willing to help others even when there was no obvious reward.

Okay, chimps have desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others - other humans, and other chimps.

Bees are also willing to help others even there is no obvious reward. In fact, they are willing to sacrifice themselves to preserve the hive. Only, it may be a stretch to say that they are intentionally acting to preserve the hive. Instead, it is quite likely that they are simply responding to certain environmental conditions with attack behavior. We have no justification for muddying up our explanation by throwing in entities such as a "sense of duty" or even "self-sacrifice" The bee is just doing what bees do in a given situation, with no moral component at all.

Related research found primates can remember individuals who have done them a favour and will make an effort to repay them.

The objection to the evolutionary ethicist is not that this type of behavior exists, but what counts as the best explanation of this behavior. Do we need to postulate a "moral sense" in order to explain it?

The desire utilitarian explanation would be that primates are generally more intelligent than most mammals in that they have longer-term memories and can plan better (make more efficient use of their tools). It is useful to be surrounded by creatures that tend to behave in ways that fulfill the desires of others. So, one rewards those beings (in order to keep them around) and punishes/condemns those who lack this trait (in order to drive them off).

Furthermore, as the first experiment that I mentioned shows, monkeys pay attention to when others are being rewarded. Reward (and punishment) have effects on the behavior of others – not just on the one being rewarded or punished. A being that gives unequal rewards for the same behavior generates confusion and uncertainty. There is no way to predict how such a creature will behave, so no way to make plans governing their behavior. On the other hand, if a being is consistent in its rewards, one can better predict the effects of certain types of actions.

This does not involve any type of moral instinct. All this involves is the application of general intelligence to the fact that one is living in a community of creatures with malleable desires.

The article asks a question about human morality.

The big question now is why, alone among the primates, humans have developed morality to such a high level. It implies that humans were once subjected to some kind of powerful evolutionary pressure to develop a conscience.

If morality is the application of general intelligence in a community of creatures with malleable desires, we have an easy explanation as to why humans have developed morality to such a high level. It is the same reason why we have developed medicine to such a high level, engineering to such a high level, and math to such a high level.

Our intelligence allows us to better understand the world around us. This, in turn, allows us to more efficiently use tools – including the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

De Waal also said the following:

De Waal, who has written a book called Primates and Philosophers, said morality appeared to have evolved in the same way as organs such as the eye and the heart, through natural selection.

Actually, it does not appear that way at all. It appears that morality has evolved the same way that tool use has evolved. In the same way that we have learned to build more complex houses, communication systems, and transportation systems, we have learned to build more complex moral systems. We have good reason to do so. The better job we do promoting desires (in others) that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires, the better off each of us is (on the whole).

Our ability to use tools has, indeed, evolved. However, the evidence of tool use in primates is hardly proof that primates have an evolved "sense of tool use". It only requires that primates have evolved a better grasp of increasingly complex relationships between means (including actions such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment) and ends (the fulfillment of desires). It is useful that we do so.

More Questions from the Studio Audience

It is easier to build than to tear down. So, with that in mind, I want to focus on building rather than tearing down.

I have said that an answer to the theist's question of the possibility of morality without God has to focus on ways to reduce the suffering that it is perfectly within one person's ability to cause others in spite of any evolved altruism.

I suggested that this task is done by using social forces such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote (malleable) desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting (malleable) desires that tend to thwart other desires.

Now: Questions

Do I understand that everything hinges on malleable desires? Does this leave room for instinctual action such as fight or flight?

Well, fight or flight are, to some degree, grounded on malleable desires. Environmental forces can influence not only the likelihood of whether a person fights or flees.

However, to get at your general question, there is certainly room for fixed desires. Fixed desires simply have nothing to do with morality. It makes no sense to condemn a person because he has a gene that causes him to act violently towards others.

Such a person is sick, not evil. We still have reason to prevent him from acting on his desires. What we lack is reason to condemn him for those actions.

How do you actually define morality itself? Must it be absolute and universal to be true morality?

Regular readers know that I detest the trap of talking about definitions as if talking about the thing defined. How anybody defines morality turns out to be irrelevant. If all moral terms were tossed out as garbage, I could still say everything I need to say about desire utilitarianism without it.

On this account, there are no absolute prescriptions. Morality has to do with relationships between states of affairs and desires, and those relationships shift over time.

However, the absence of absolute prescriptions is not a threat against objectivity. Many scientific facts change over time. One of the best examples of this is age. My age changes at a rate of approximately 1 year per year. I am not the same age today as I was a year ago.

However, there is still an objective, scientifically acceptable answer to the question, "How old are you?" The fact that relationships change does not mean that statements about those relationships do not belong in the realm of science.

As for universality, there is good reason to ask whether there are some desires that people generally have reason to make universal - and whether there are desires that people generally have reason to make universally extinct.

Moral terms tend to be concerned with desires that people generally have reason to promote or inhibit throughout the whole population. Eliminate moral terms, and desires that people generally have reason to make universal or make universally extinct will still exist.

There seems to be a presumption of sorts that simply condemning someone is sufficient to actually change a malleable desire. However, the field of psychology suggests that reliably changing desires is much more complex than delivering a simple condemnation. For example, people often redouble their positions when simply condemned.

There is no such presumption.

One point I would like to be here is that a person does not need to be condemned to have his desires molded through condemnation. He could be the witness of another person being condemned.

The other person need not even be real. The condemned individual might be a character in a story or parable. However, the condemnation directed at this fictitious character can alter the desires of those who read or hear the story.

These relationships of cause and effect are, indeed, complex. The better we are at understanding them the better we will be at using them effectively. Yet, however complex they happen to be, we do manage to promote and inhibit desires in others through praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Summary: Morality Without God Debate

n a recent series of posts I have been concerned with atheists going up against theists on the question of morality without God armed with arguments that, to put it kindly, tend to misfire.

I think that it is important to look at the issue that people are truly concerned with when they ask questions about the possibility of morality without God. They look at the world and see a great deal of unpleasantness caused by other humans - rape, genocide, tyranny, torture, slavery, theft, lies - and they ask, "How can we prevent these things from happening?"

The way most Americans are taught to see this problem is that they have a choice. They can choose atheism, which leads to Nazi Germany and Salinist Russia (rampant and unrestricted rape, genocide, tyranny, torture, slavery, theft, and lies), or theism with its trust in God and a nation under God which gives us American constitutional democracy.

Given these options, one would have to be a fool to reject theism.

It does not help that the U.S. Government itself has a massive program going on that aims to convince young children to associate theism with liberty and justice for all, and to equate atheism with tyranny and injustice.

I suspect that the vast majority of readers realize that this alleged choice is simply false. However, this is the fear that the atheist confronts when he enters into battle with a theist on the possibility of morality without God. The atheist will be well served to know the terrain that the battle will be fought on and address themselves to the audience’s actual concerns.

"Can you, the atheist, give me some form of protection from these evils?"

The theist says, "Yes, I can do this because I will convince people that there is a God who will deliver eternal torture to those who engage in these types of actions. The atheist cannot give you this. This is why theism gives you American democracy and atheism gives you Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.”

What is the atheist’s answer?

I have criticized the suggestion that we can simply assert that "good" is "an intent to reduce suffering." After all, the theist has just as much of a claim that they are out to reduce suffering as the atheist. This type of atheist cannot explain why morality is concerned with minimizing suffering, or provide a mechanism for motivating agents to do that which minimizes suffering.

I have criticized the idea that we can turn to evolution for an answer to our problems. Evidence that we have evolved certain forms of altruism (kin selection, reciprocity) does absolutely nothing to protect us from evils that we know humans are capable of committing against each other. You simply can't argue that evolution rules out the possibility of a Nazi Germany or a Stalinist Russia . . . or rape, slavery, tyranny, torture, theft, fraud, and wanton violence.

I have suggested that we can find our answer in a project to use social forces to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires.

We can find motivation to do so in the very desires to be fulfilled if we succeed, or thwarted if we fail. Once a person has desires that tend to fulfill other desires and lacks desires that tend to thwart other desires, we can trust him to do the "right thing" even when there is nobody watching over his shoulder. He will tell the truth because he hates lying, and oppose tyranny because he has an aversion to tyranny.

On the other hand, the vast majority of what currently passes for religion actually gives us is blind obedience to religious leaders. Man does not get his morality from God. God gets his morality from man, and God is exactly as moral (or immoral) as the people who invented him.

These are people who realize that, "Obey me, or I will make you suffer the consequences" is a weak argument. However, "Obey me, or my invisible, omnipotent and omniscient friend will make you suffer for eternity," is a substantially more effective way of enslaving people to one's will.

We have seen, just in the last eight years, how blind obedience to the "feelings" of a leader who thinks that his own sentiments are the word of God can give us torture, imprisonment without trials, wars of aggression, lies, theft (of the national treasury to reward campaign contributors with no-bid government contracts), and a whole host of evils.

President Bush did not get his morality from God, Bush's God got his morality from Bush himself (or, probably more accurately, from Vice President Cheney).

This is the risk we face when we go with religious ethics – that the leaders who assign their morality to God and claim that their own sentiments are the word of God written into their heart. That the person who is assigning his morality to God is evil, and that we all suffer the consequences.

God is only as good (and as evil) as the people who invent him. Sometimes, the people who assign their morality to God are not very good people.

Questions from the Studio Audience

My recent series on evolutionary ethics have generated a lot of comments. Some of them have been handled by others making comments.

I wish to supplement some of that exchange.

One flaw I do find, though, is that, like all forms of utilitarianism, you run up against GE Moore's criticism that "good" is simply not reducible to "those actions which tends to fulfill other desires" or any other such formula.

There are two arguments from GE Moore that would apply here.

The first is his famous "naturalistic fallacy". He declares that "good" cannot be the same as "is such as to fulfill the desires in question" because the question, "X is such as to fulfill the desires in question, but is it good?" is an "open question." It is not an obvious tautology.

I discussed the Naturalistic Fallacy n a previous post, The Naturalistic Fallacy.

The Open Question Argument is, itself, a fallacy known as the Masked Man Fallacy. The police say that the Mayor's brother is the masked man who has been robbing people for the past several months. The question, "Jim is the Mayor's brother, but is he the masked man?" is an open question, but it does not disprove the claim that the Mayor's brother is the masked man.

The second of Moore's argument concerns a distinction between what is desired and what is desirable. There is a distinction to be made between the claim, "X is desired" and "X should be desired."

However, desire utilitarianism recognizes this distinction. Desire utilitarianism concerns compromoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires. That is to say, there is a disctinction between what is desired and should be desired - what would be desired if the agent had those desires that people generally have reason to promote.

Long and short: I cannot see that your identification of "virtue" with "action that tends to promote other desires" as a direct relationship, or as overcoming GE Moore's challenge to utilitarians to avoid the naturalistic fallacy.

I am not certain what you mean in identifying "virtue" with "action that tend to promote other desires".

I do not equate virtue with actions of any type. I equate virtues with desires that people generally have reason to promote, not with actions of any type.

Also, I reject all act utilitarian theories. The right act, in this case, is not the act that maximizes utility. It is the act that a person with good desires would perform. Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. However, it is quite possible for a right action to bring about bad consequences in a specific instance.

My, and others, points were simply that your criticism is trivial and that you are, in effect, making a one-person argument.

The whole point of this series is to address the issue of atheists entering debates into theists on the possibility of morality without God. If I am right and evolutionary ethics has nothing to offer on that subject (because it says nothing about what is truly right or truly wrong), then atheists need to look elsewhere to answer that question.

The ultimate issue that began this series has to do with atheists debating the possibility of morality without God. It is relevant to note that it would be fruitless to try to find an answer in the realm of evolutionary ethics.

Answering the Theist's Moral Question

A member of the studio audience left the natural follow-up question to my last post.

In that post, I objected that evolutionary ethicists have no answer to the question that theists are asking when they ask about the possibility of morality without God. Evolutionary ethicists claim to be able to give an evolutionary account of a "moral sense", but this is nonsense unless one can give an independent account of morality against which any "sense" can be calibrated.

We can phrase the question coming from theists in the form of, "What is this true goodness and true badness against which our 'moral sense' can be calibrated, and where does it come from, if it does not come from God?"

I argue that, once we understand true goodness and true badness, it shows that the very idea of an evolved 'moral sense' makes no sense. This thing that the evolutionary ethicist is trying to explain is just as much a fiction as God itself. Consequently, it doesn't need any explanation.

So, how do I answer the question?

If you give me any population with malleable desires (desires that are molded through experiences rather than genetically hardwired), then I can give you true goodness and true badness.

It does not matter if that population evolved or was designed. It does not matter if it is a population of robots or a population of animals. It simply has to be a population whose desires are malleable - whose desires can be altered by making changes in the environment in which the members of that population live.

Value has to do with reasons for action.

Let's look at the prescription/description divide. Prescription, by its very definition, has to do with reasons for action. It has to do with saying, "You should do this," and "You should not do that," then looking for the "reasons for action that exist" for doing this or not doing that.

Desires are reasons for action. Once you have a population of entities that have desires, you can start to make statements about what agents should and should not do. The reasons for action that you then look at in justifying such a statement are desires.

This gives us means-ends rationality. This is not yet morality. This is the type of "should" that says, "If you rape a child you should then kill her, because it is harder to be convicted of murder than it is to be convicted of child abuse." This is not morality . . . at least not yet.

Now, we add to this that desires are malleable. These creatures with desires can now alter what other creatures desire by altering the environment. Specifically, we have the ability to alter what other people desire through the use of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Because we have this power to alter desires, we have this capacity to ask and answer the question, "What should we cause each other to want?" We can look at a desire, see that it tends to thwart other desires, and bring the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to bear to inhibit that desire.

We flag desires that we have reason to promote with the term "virtue" and we call the actions that those desires motivate their agents into performing "right actions". We respond to them with praise and reward, and we respond to their absence with condemnation and punishment.

We flag desires that we have reason to inhibit with the term "evil" (or "vice" in the ancient Greek sense of the term) and we call the actions that those desires motivate agents to do "wrong". We respond to them with condemnation and punishment and we respond to their absence with praise and reward.

Now, we have a system against which we can calibrate any type of "moral sense" to determine if that sense is picking out "true good" or "true evil". We look for desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and we look for desires that tend to thwart other desires.

Evolutionary ethicists have certainly shown that evolution can favor desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and disfavor desires that tend to thwart other desires.

However, evolution, at times, can also favor desires that tend to thwart other desires. Evolution, after all, has given us predators and parasites. It has given us lions that kill their step children when they take over a pride, a human disposition towards violence against members of other tribes, genetic dispositions towards rape and racism (for favoring those who 'look like us' over those who 'look different').

History makes it an undeniable fact that holocausts and other forms of genocide, slavery, rape, theft, wanton violence, irresponsible conduct from drunk driving to intellectual recklessness, are all within the realm of our genetic potential. We know this, because we are surrounded by it.

To say that evolution provides an answer to our moral problems is nonsense.

Most importantly, morality turns out to be concerned with malleable desires - desires that can be molded through environmental factors such as praise and condemnation. To the degree that evolution gives us fixed desires to engage in kin selection or "reciprocal altruism", this is fine. But fixed desires are outside the realm of morality.

It makes absolutely no sense to issue praise and condemnation, to offer reward and punishment, for the presence or absence of fixed desires. The person genetically required to give his life for his child deserves no more praise than the person who accidentally falls off of a building and happens to land on his child's assailant.

It only makes sense to apply moral concepts - to use the tools of praise and condemnation - where they can have an effect. Where they have an effect is not with desires that are determined by our genes, but with desires that can be influenced by environmental factors.

Certainly, the existence of malleable desires and the different ways in which environmental factors mold those desires, require (at least in part) an explanation grounded in evolution. However, the concept of "the existence of environmentally influenced malleable desires" bears no relation to the concept of a "moral sense".

This answer also ties in with another of the objections that I raised against evolutionary ethics. I wrote that the theist is not concerned with evils that we have no capacity to perform (because evolution has fixed our desires in such a way that they are impossible for us). The theist is concerned with the evils that surround us every day. It is nonsense for the evolutionary ethicists to say, "We do not need to worry about those because we have evolved dispositions not to treat each other so harshly." If an evolutionary ethicist said such a thing, he would be wrong.

How can we reduce the amount of evil that we quite obviously have the capacity to perform?

Well, we do so by promoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires, by bringing the social forces of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to bear against them.

We do not need a God to do this. We do not need a God to have a reason to do this. All we need are desires and the ability to influence the desires of others. From this, we get a list of desires that we have reason to promote (desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others), and desires that we have reason to inhibit (desires that tend to thwart the desires of others).

What Evolutionary Ethics Cannot Do

In a series of posts on evolutionary ethics, one of the responses that I have received is the claim that evolutionary ethicists never claimed to be able to do what I argued it cannot do.

If this is true . . . if the accusations are false . . . this does not affect my main point in the least. I am still correct in what I say evolutionary ethics cannot do.

However, that thing that evolutionary ethics cannot do is answer the theist's concerns about the possibility of morality without God. It cannot provide us with an account of really is right and wrong. It cannot account for morality itself.

It can, perhaps, explain a "sense" of right and wrong. However, without an independent account of what right and wrong is in fact it can never say anything about how to calibrate that sense. It cannot tell us when our sense misfires and tells us that something is right when it is actually wrong, or tells us that something is wrong when it is actually right.

A fallible sense that cannot be calibrated is pretty much a waste of energy.

If this sense can be calibrated, then what is it calibrated to? What is "right" and what is "wrong" such that we can tell when this sense misfires?

Now, the fact is, since we are speaking in evolutionary terms, this sense, even if it existed, would never be calibrated to true right and true wrong. It would be calibrated to genetic survival.

If true right happens to be harmful to genetic replication, then it is not the creature whose sense is calibrated to true right that will survive. It is, in fact, the creature whose sense is calibrated away from true right - a creature that is blinded to true right - that will have genetic fitness.

Unless, of course, we make the claim that "true right" corresponds directly to genetic fitness.

On this account, we take everything else we know about evolution and we add the following. Genetic fitness also happens to be infused with an entity that we can call "true right". And, as it turns out, humans evolved a faculty to perceive "true right". In doing so, humans have increased their genetic fitness, and that is one of the reasons we are still around today.

However, we can take Occam's Razor and cut out this entity of "true right" and lose nothing from the theory of evolution. The mother who suckles her child does not do so because suckling her young has this quality of "true right" that she has the capacity to sense. She suckles her young because she wants to suckle her young.

The person who risks his life to save his neighbor does not do so because this act of self-sacrifice is infused with a quality of "true right" that the agent seeks and responds to. The agent sacrifices himself for another because he wants to.

Now, what happens when we cut this essence of "true right" out of our ontology?

This leads to one of two results.

Option 1: We are back to square 1. We have a "sense" of right and wrong, but we still do not have an idea of what "true right" and "true wrong" is. Therefore, we still lack any way to determine whether this sense is correctly calibrated. Furthermore, we have reason to believe that this sense has been hijacked to sense genetic fitness instead of "true right".

Option 2: We do not have a "sense" of right and wrong to calibrate.

In the context of this discussion, it does not matter which option we choose. We still have nothing to say to the theist about the possibility of "true right" and "true wrong" without the existence of God.

Perhaps it is a mistake to say that evolutionary ethicists claim to be able to give us a God-free account of "true right" and "true wrong". However, even if this was a mistake, my original point stands. When atheists debate theists on matters of ethics, the vast majority of them cannot even begin to give a sensible account of "true right" and "true wrong."

They cannot answer the question that the theists are asking.

Evolution, Ethics, and Philosophy

With regard to my claim that it is absurd to answer the theist challenge to come up with an account of morality by referencing evolution, a member of the studio audience had this to say:

Socrates notwithstanding, there is a lot of research in apes and humans to show Darwin had it essentially right. The "evolutionarist" position would be that we should stick with what research confirms to be accurate. Philosophy is entertaining, but it is no substitute for solid research.

This comment was made in response to the Euthyphro objection to evolutionary ethics. The person who says that what is moral is that which is loved by our genes (that we have an evolved "moral sense") needs to answer the question:

Is it moral because it is loved by our genes, or is it loved by our genes because it is moral?

The former allows anything that comes to be loved by our genes to be moral. The latter admits that the standard of morality is something other than what is loved by our genes and cannot be used to answer the question, "What is moral?"

How is it that what we "sense" really is moral?

The first thing that I want to note is that if we are going to reject the Euthyphro argument as irrelevant when it comes to evolutionary ethics, it is just as irrelevant when it comes to divine command theories of ethics.

We cannot, under pain of hypocrisy, assert that in Euthyphro we have a knock-down argument against all divine command theories of ethics. While, at the same time, when the same argument is applied to evolutionary ethics, say that it is mere entertainment and dismiss it as being irrelevant.

Under the pain of contradiction and incoherence, it must be good in both cases, or good in neither.

On the question of what research confirms, solid research requires that all of one's terms be precisely defined and, furthermore, that they be defined in natural terms.

For "solid research" to show that "morality evolved" we must have a strict definiion of what morality is and that definition must be reducable to natural terms.

Furthermore, in order to claim that Darwin "had it essentially right" we must further claim that Darwin gave us a precise definition of morality in natural terms, and that no substanstive objections have since been raised against Darwin's account of the difference between good and evil - right and wrong.

How can you tell me that your solid research demonstrates that A = B if you cannot tell me what B is? How can you tell me that we have evolved a moral sense unless you can tell me what morality is and a natural account of how it strikes our senses?

Consider a sense of direction. We know we have a sense of direction because we can point to something, independent of our sense, and know that it is North, or South.

How do we point to morality without our "moral senses"? What is it that we would be pointing at?

I also want to warn against the false dichotomy employed in the quote above. It seems to suggest that we have no choice but to accept the evolutionary ethicist's account that "morality evolved", or the divine command theorist's account that "morality came from God".

Of course morality does not come from God, since there is no God for it to come from. But neither is it the product of some evolved disposition. The "moral sense" that the evolutionary ethicist is trying to explain just does not exist. We have desires, and those desires have been under evolutionary influence, but there is no justification for claiming anything more than that.

Descriptive Evolutionary Ethics

/p>In my recent blog entries I have been raising objections to some of the things that atheists say when they enter into a debate with theists about the relationship between morality and God.

I have been criticizing the evolutionary ethicists who claim that we have evolved a disposition to view certain things as moral or immoral by confronting them with a pair of questions.

(1) Is something good because it is loved by our genes, or is it loved by our genes because it is good?

This is simply the classing argument against divine command theories of morality applied to evolutionary morality.

(2) What are we to do about all of the evil that is still within our evolved capacity to perform?

Obviously, we have not evolved such a moral sense that we do not engage in moral crimes of all sizes.

A member of the studio audience, Steelman, suggests that evolutionary ethics can avoid these objections because it is purely descriptive, not prescriptive.

if no one is saying that evolutionary psychology is in any way prescriptive of moral actions, but rather descriptive of the development for moral capacity, how are they on the horns of a dilemma?

Okay, if evolutionary ethics is entirely descriptive rather than prescriptive, than it says absolutely nothing about what we ought to do. And if it says nothing about what we ought to do, then how can it possibly be used to answer the question of the possibiity of morality (a set of things that we should or should not do) without God?

Evolutionary ethics would, in this sense, be as divorced from morality as chemistry, capable of telling us how to make a bomb, but able to say nothing about whether we should or should not use it.

Another member of the studio audiene put the objection this way:

In general they may be careful to make the descriptive/prescriptive distinction but when a theist challenges an atheist the challenge is about prescriptions and not descriptions and would you therefore agree that if they do respond with evolutionary ethics arguments they are not answering the challenge?

Steelman also wrote:

It seems to me that the theory of an evolved moral sense (kin altruism, reciprocity, the rewarding of cooperation and the punishing of cheaters) is an explanation of why we have the sentiments that Hume regarded as the impetus for moral decision making, not an argument for what actions we should take when experiencing these feelings.

Again, if it is not an argument for what actions we should take then it has nothing to do with morality - because morality is concerned with arguments about what actions we should take.

If this is what is involved, then the theist can take everything that the evolutionary atheist says and still answer, "Okay, evolution gave us a 'sense' of right and wrong. However, it cannot tell us anything about what is right or wrong in fact. Only God can do that."

If the evolutionary atheist is not talking about things being right or wrong in fact, then they have not answered the objection that god is necessary for the understanding of things being right or wrong as a matter of fact.

Now, I do not dispute that our desires have been under the influence of evolutionary forces. Nor do I dispute that there is reason to believe that have some disposition towards desires that count as "kin altruism", "reciprocity" and the like. Yet, I count these as simple desires.

However, these are just desires - like our taste for certain types of food and our desire for sex. There is no more of a "moral sense" in a mother's desire to feed her child then there was in the mother's desire to have sex to start with, or to eat the ice cream she ate when she was pregnant.

Furthermore, we do not need a "moral sense" to get us to perform these actions. Following the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the right one, all nature needs to give us is a set of desires to engage in this type of behavior. Putting those desires in the form of a "moral sense" is a lot of extra work for nothing.

What is a "moral sense" anyway? How is it different from a simple desire, and what types of evidence do we have that we are dealing with a "moral sense" instead of a set of simple desires? The descriptive evolutionary ethicist needs to explain these to us before he can justify his claim that he has found a way to account for a "moral sense". He needs to define what it is he is accounting for.

The habit of claiming that our desires represent some sort of "moral sense" is a piece of ancient rhetoric used to give one's preferences more weight than they deserve. It provides a way of making an entirely unjustified leap of logic from "I like" and "I do not like" to "You should" and "You should not."

The way we make this leap is by taking the objects of our desires and claiming that what is really going on is that we are perceiving a property that is built into the object of evaluation. This property takes the form of an intrinsic "ought-to-be-ness" or "ought-not-to-be-ness" From here we can jump straight to the conclusion that those who do not see the value that we do.

In this, it works just like the God argument works. With the God argument, a "priest" takes his or her own preferences and assigns them to God. He then asserts, "It is not the case that I am inferring from what I like and what I do not like to what you should and should not do. Actually, I am making an inference from what God likes and does not like to what you should or should not do." Ignoring the fact, of course, that the priest assigned his or her own preferences to God.

So, accounting for a "moral sense" is like accounting for ghosts. The best account we have is that there is no such thing. Thus, there is nothing for the evolutionary ethicist to account for.

Thus, the original problem still remains. When the theist challenges the ethicist to come up with an account of moral value in the absence of God, the atheist's job must be to come up with an account of things that we ought and ought not to do in the absence of a God. If evolutionary ethics is not telling us what we should and should not do in the absence of a God explanation, then it is not answering the question. Then it is not the type of thing the atheist should bring forth in this type of debate.

The Evolutionary Ethicist's Problem of Evil

Atheists generally are familiar with the argument from evil concerning the existence of God. Evolutionary ethics has its own problem of evil – a problem that shows that the thesis that humans evolved some sort of moral sense is barking up the wrong moral tree.

Clearly, humans have the capacity to do evil.

If one gets caught up in the evolutionary view of ethics, one could almost come to the conclusion that humans are incapable of doing evil. After all, evolution has given us a "moral sense" to guide our actions – to make us kind and altruistic. The main assertion made when an atheist presents an evolutionary account of ethics seems to be that we do not need to worry about humans doing evil even if there were no God. Our evolutionarily evolved moral dispositions would prevent us from doing evil even if there were no God.

Only, it hasn’t worked all that well so far.

Whatever one wants to say about an evolved moral sense and capacity to perform kindness, we also have, within our nature, the capacity to do great evil. In fact, every act of tyranny and injustice committed in human history – genocide, torture, tyranny, racial injustice, slavery – all of it is within our evolved nature.

We know this merely because of the fact that it has happened.

This leads us to a question that is by definition outside of the realm that any evolutionary ethicist can answer.

What do we do about the evils that are clearly within our evolved nature?

I then want to combine this with an observation. That this is the issue that people are concerned with when it comes to the issue of morality.

People are not concerned with those evils that we have no capacity to perform. The idea of a person fearing the possibility of somebody doing evil that it is impossible for him to do would, actually, be a paradigm example of irrationality.

The evils that people are concerned with when they think about the issue of morality are evils that surround us – the abduction and rape of our children, the slaughter of our neighbors while shopping in a mall or going to work, the lynching of man because of his race, the enslavement of thousands of people, and the imprisonment and slaughter of those who would dare speak in opposition to the current realm.

The evolutionary ethicist's response, "Don't worry. It is in our genes not to do these things," is simply false.

This may appear to be a straw man – that no evolutionary ethicist would ever say such a thing. However, my argument is not that this is a claim of the evolutionary ethicist. My argument is that the evolutionary ethicist is caught in the horns of a dilemma.

Either he must make such an absurd and false claim.

Or he must admit that evolutionary ethics has absolutely nothing to say about the questions that people are really concerned about when they address the issue of morality – the evils that surround us every day and that are clearly within our nature to perform.

How do we minimize those evils?

The Relationship Between Evolution and Morality

In my last post I criticized atheists who debate theists on issues of morality without God who assert that we have an evolved set of moral dispositions. I answered that, just as the Euthyphro dilemma provides a fatal blow to divine command theories of ethics, it provides a similarly fatal blow to genetic command theories of ethics.

Socrates' question to Euthyphro, "Is it good because it is loved by the Gods, or is it loved by the Gods because it is good?" forces the divine command theorist to either argue that anything loved by the gods is good no matter what it is, or that there is a standard that even the gods must appeal to in determining what to love and what not to love.

The same question can be applied to evolutionary theories of ethics. "Is it good because it is loved by the genes, or is it loved by the genes because it is good?" And it leads to the same dilemma.

There is a relationship between evolution and morality. However, the evolutionary ethicist gets this relationship wrong, and their error is what leads to the Euthyphro dilemma.

Our desires have clearly been under the influence of evolutionary pressures. We are the descendants of those ancestors disposed to desire that which brought about genetic replication. Where a disposition to desire brought about a pre-mature death or disinclined an individual to mate or to care for kins’ offspring, any genetic influences to those dispositions ended up in the evolutionary garbage bin.

So, we have desires for sex, for certain kinds of food, for water, for an environment with a comfortable temperature, and the like.

However, at some point along the line evolution gave us the capacity to acquire desires, not through genetic hard-wiring, but through interaction with the environment.

It was a very useful trait.

If you have a square peg, you can only fit it into a square hole. There is only one environment that the peg will fit in. If the environment should change, the square peg loses its fit.

On the other hand, if we had a peg that had the ability to modify its shape, then it does not matter what environment the peg finds itself in. It can adapt its shape to fit into that environment.

This is the advantage of malleability.

Even here, evolution will continue to have an influence, Evolution will work to fine tune the types of lessons we learn given different types of environment. Evolution will tell us what we learn when we experience pain. How does a dog, for example, come to associate his punishment with the prior act of urinating on the carpet? Or how does the trained dolphin come to realize exactly which sets of actions result in his getting a fish?

These examples of training illustrate another feature of malleable desires. If Creature A's desires can be molded by his interaction with the environment, then Creature B gains the power to influence which desires A gets simply by altering A's environment. B's own desires provide the motivating reason to mold A's desires. Specifically, given the fact that A will always act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of A's own desires, B has reason to mold those desires so that the actions also, and at the same time, aim to fulfill (or at least fail to thwart) B’s desires.

So, B has a reason to promote in A those desires that tend to fulfill other desires. At the same time, A has reason to promote in B those desires that tend to fulfill other desires. Each has the power to influence the desires of the other by manipulating the environment – by creating an environment in which each will tend to acquire those desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others, and to avoid those desires that tend to thwart the desires of others.

So, morality comes into the world. Morality is the institution of manipulating the environment (using praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment) to promote those desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart the desires of others.

Morality itself is not an evolved disposition to favor or disfavor certain actions. Morality is a consequence of the fact that we evolved malleable desires, thus we evolved the capacity to influence the desires others acquire by altering the environment, and that we have reason to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires.

Euthyphro and Evolutionary Ethics

While I am on the subject of atheists debating the possibility of (moral) value without God, without a sufficient understanding of their subject matter, I should add a word about those who think that we have an evolved set of moral dispositions.

One thing I expect any atheist, who steps into the debate ring with a theist to discuss the issue of morality, to know is the Euthyphro dilemma. This was Plato's argument (attributed to Socrates) that is thought to destroy any possibility that morality comes from God,

In the dialogue called Euthyphro, Plato has Socrates talking to a fellow citizen named Euthyphro on the nature of the good. Euthyphro tells Socrates that what is good is that which is loved by the gods. Socrates then asks whether it is good because it is loved by the gods, or is it loved by the gods because it is good.

If it is good because it is loved by the gods, then anything loved by the gods would be good. The torturing of a young child for pleasure would be good, if only the gods named it so. Furthermore, there is no reason for the gods to choose goodness in something other than the torturing of a child for pleasure, because there is nothing outside of what the gods like for even the gods to appeal to.

On the other hand, if it is loved because the gods because it is good, then goodness exists independent of whatever it is that is loved by the gods. Even the gods have to ask, “What is good?” before they can determine what deserves their love and what does not. So, we have not answered the question of what goodness is by appeal to what is loved by the gods. We have only said that, whatever goodness is, the gods love it.

The evolutionary ethicist goes into his debate with the theist knowing this objection to divine command theories of ethics in most cases, and yet utterly ignores this same problem when he presents his own theory.

When asked, "What is good?" the evolutionary ethicist effectively answers, "What is good is that which is lived by the genes."

Against this, a 21st century Socrates can ask, "Is it loved by the genes because it is good, or is it good because it is loved by the genes?"

If it is good because it is loved by our genes, then anything that comes to be loved by the genes can become good. If humans, like lions, had a disposition to slaughter their step children, or to behead their mates and eat them, or to attack neighboring tribes and tear their members to bits (all of which occurs in the natural kingdom), then these things would be good. We could not brag that humans evolved a disposition to be moral because morality would then be whatever humans evolved a disposition to do.

If, instead, it is loved by our genes because it is good, then we have not yet answered the question of what goodness is. Unfortunately, an account of goodness is a prerequisite to making and defending this theory of value. How can we demonstrate (or how can we attempt to falsify) the thesis that what is good is loved by our genes if we have no account of what goodness is that is independent of what is loved by our genes.

This, in itself, should be sufficient to destroy any evolutionary account of morality - just as the original argument should be sufficient to destroy any divine command account of morality.

Then, the evolutionary ethicists will speak in terms of moral condemnation against the theist for their "willful ignorance" of such a fool-proof objection to divine command theories of ethics. In doing so, he asserts, at least implicitly, that he is too good of a person to do anything like what the theist is doing – simply ignoring an argument that is fatal to his position because he loves the position to much to consider objections.

The evolutionary ethicist ends up being wrong here as well.

Here, too, the evolutionary ethicist is mistaken. Here, too, we find a way in which the divine-command ethicist and the evolutionary ethicist have more in common than either would care to admit. So much so that when the two debate each other on questions of morality, we really are not given much of a choice.

The Question of Being Good without God

In a previous post I complained that Dan Barker, in debating Dinesh D’Souza on the question, "Can we be good without God?" began with a conception of good that is simply mistaken. He suggested that good be understood in terms of "When a person acts with the intentions of minimizing harm in the world."

In criticizing Barker’s conception of value, I have somewhat of an obligation to address how I would address the same issue. Hopefully, I can do so in a way that avoids the same problems.

Desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

So, can we acquire those desires that people generally have reason to cause us to acquire without God?

We can. Some of our desires are innate and acquired through evolution. However, to a certain degree, our desires are malleable and subject to the influence of environmental forces. Those forces include the praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment of others It is not necessary that we be the one being condemned or praised. Public condemnation also has an effect on the audience – on those not directly praised or blamed. In fact, even hypothetical condemnation or praise – the type that one finds in a story, can have an influence on desires.

So, now, let me answer some of the questions I asked with respect to Barker’s claim.

Why is it good to perform the act that a person with good desires would perform?

Well, in ranking something better or worse we have to look at what reasons for action exist for recommending one option over the other. To call something good when there are no reasons for action to recommend it is an absurdity. The very nature of a prescription is that it identifies what people have reasons for action to realize.

Why can’t something that people have reasons for action to realize be bad?

Well, something that people have reasons for action to realize can certainly be called bad if one wants to invent a new language. It could actually be bad if there are more and stronger reasons to avoid it than to bring it about. However, it simply makes no sense to prescribe something except in terms of providing reasons for action to bring it about, or for avoiding something except in terms of providing reasons for action for avoiding it.

Among the qualities that people have many and strong reasons to promote is a desire for truth and an aversion to intellectual recklessness.

Another question that I asked was what harm is. It makes little sense to describe good in terms of minimizing harm if we do not know what it is we are minimizing.

Harm is the thwarting of a strong and stable desire. In other words, if a person has a strong and stable desire that P, and another person acts so as to cause P to become or remain false, then that other person has harmed that agent.

If a person has a strong and stable aversion to pain, and an agent acts so as to cause the person to be in pain, then the agent has caused harm to that person.

The thwarting of a lesser or fleeting desire is a "hurt" rather than a "harm" and is too insignificant to worry about.

The question, "Can we be good without God" ultimately translates into, "Can we acquire those malleable reasons for action that people generally have reason to promote without God?"

Of course we can. MWe do have maleable desires, and society is able to use its social forces to cause us to desire that which fulfills the desires of others. orality is limited precisely by the boundary defined by the degree to which our desires can be molded by social forces. "Ought" implies "can", so, that which it is impossible, also is not obligatory.

There is no mystery here. There are no non-natural properties or anything that is somehow divorced from the world of what "is". And there is no need for a god.

Dan Barker on Goodness

I cringe whenever I read about a debate between an atheist and a theist on questions of value, where the atheist really does not understand the subject he is talking about.

A recent post at ad absurdum carried a summary of a debate between Dan Barker and Dinesh D’Souza on the issue Can We Be Good Without God?

In it, the reviewer states,

How does Mr. Barker define goodness? "When a person acts with the intentions of minimizing harm in the world."

Unfortunately, that is wrong.

Let me start by asking a question to Mr. Barker. Can you explain why it is the case that acting with intentions of minimizing harm in the world is good, and something else – say – acting with intention to maximize the number of steel marbles in the world is not good?

The theist certainly has an answer.

“God did it.”

Or, in D’Sousa’s terms, “We can be good without God, but we won't know why.”

God is the one who created the universe and, in doing so, placed goodness in acting with the intentions of minimizing harm in the world, but not in maximizing the number of steel marbles in the world. You, Mr. Barker, have abandoned God, and that has left you with no answer to that question.

Related to this, I have another question. What is 'harm'? If 'harm' turns out to be that which a good person would aim to minimize, then this is not much of an account of goodness.

Then, of course, Barker’s account of goodness still has problems stemming from the fact that it is wrong.

Many good acts are committed by people who have no intention of minimizing harm in the world.

A parent’s child has an accident. He rushes to take care of the child. I will guarantee you that, in the vast majority of the cases, “minimizing harm in the world” is the furthest thing from his mind. It’s minimizing the amount of harm to his child that he is thinking about, and the world can be damned for all the parent cares at that particular moment.

In fact, let’s imagine the parent who thinks and acts in a way consistent with Barker’s definition of “good”. He is completely indifferent to his child’s welfare compared to the welfare of any other child. It is not a specific concern for his child that motivates his actions, but this generic concern for minimizing harm in the world that moves him. If he can reduce more harm in the world by abandoning his child to suffer, he would do so, without any more regret than he has for the suffering of any child in the world he does not know.

This, to Barker, would be a virtuous man?

One mistake that Barker made is that he failed to see the distinction between intentions of minimizing the amount of harm in the world, and intentions that minimize the amount of harm in the world. A given intention can do a great deal of work minimizing harm, without being an intention to minimize harm.

Let us take, for example, the intention to be honest in all of one’s dealings.

A person with the intention of minimizing suffering will instantly become dishonest – instantly lie – the instant he perceives that a lie will minimize suffering in the world. He will torture, he will engage in illegal wiretaps, he will direct his armies to invade other nations, he will take and hold slaves, he will do whatever he perceives will minimize suffering in the world.

He will round up and attempt to exterminate all the Jews if he perceives it to be the case that rounding up and exterminating Jews – though harmful – will ultimately minimize the amount of harm in the world.

Compare this to the person who intends not to minimize harm in the world, but who intends to be honest in all of his dealings, intends never to torture, intends never to participate in genocide or allow others to engage in such acts. Such a person will probably have a greater effect on minimizing the amount of harm in the world, even though that is not even listed as one of his intentions.

According to Barker’s definition, however, because he is not acting to minimize the amount of harm in the world, he lacks virtue.

Besides, isn’t it the case that the theist who performs a thousand live sacrifices to bring the sun back from an eclipse, or is willing to demand the arrest and imprisonment of all practicing homosexuals to prevent the country from being victimized by hurricanes and terrorists, who burns a suspected witch alive in order to purify her soul and grant her access into heaven, also acting on the intention to minimize harm in the world?

I think, ultimately, if one is going to claim to have the authority to debate a theist on questions of value, one should at least have a working theory of value.

About This Blog

There is a new meme floating around the atheist blogsphere that has to do with listing one's 30 favorite atheist blogs.

I will admit that it pleases me when I see this blog on a person's list. And in the Friendly Atheist's tally of the 30 most popular atheist blogs mine shows up as number 20.

However, it was my intention when I created this blog not to make it an atheist blog. I resolved at the start that I would not use this blog to argue whether or not a god exists, or debate the age of the Earth and the mechanisms of evolution or the literal truth of scripture.

Bus signs that tell viewers to enjoy life since no God exists, and signs that tell people to imagine no religion, do not interest me.

Signs that promote virtue and counter bigotry concern me, as do signs that promote bigotry and counter virtue. I am interested in the sign, “Somebody who does not trust in God is not one of us” interests me not because of its religious content, but its bigotry content.

In other words, instead of creating an atheist blog, I wanted to create an ethics blog – though one that happens to be written by an atheist.

I attach as the same significance to being an atheist ethicist as I do to Barack Obama being a black president. That is to say, I attach no direct significance at all. The only interest in these types of relationships comes from the fact that there is or has been a widespread bigoted hostility against accepting such a combination..

I decided at the start to put the word “atheist” in the title of this blog and to present myself as unapologetically atheist simply to send a message to those who think that “atheist ethicist” is a contradiction in terms. If you believe that, come here and look at this.

I considered using a title that did not mention the word “atheist” at all, and simply ignoring any discussion of God. I believe that if I had done that my blog would be a lot more popular. Far more people avoid this blog because it has the word “atheist” in the title than are attracted to it for that reason.

However, my goal was not to be popular; and in particular not to be popular through the practice of deception. My goal was to argue for that which I believe to be true in matters of ethics, and that includes dealing directly with the truth of anti-atheist bigotry.

One of the ideas that I wanted to confront was the idea that piety is linked to virtue. It is a foolish idea that allowed a group of people who embraced torture, killed hundreds of thousands of people in a war of aggression, engaged in extraordinary rendition, and used lies, threats, and personal attacks against others as a way of obtaining personal and political benefits, and generally abuse their positions of authority, to get into positions of power that no atheist, no matter how virtuous, would be allowed to hold.

I made one significant miscalculation. I did not figure correctly the degree to which people can simply avoid that which they do not want to see or hear.

Unlike atheist sites that deal with existence of God and the truth of evolution, I get almost no feedback from people who consider themselves religious. I get no hate mail, or threats against myself or my family. When I do get comments from religious people, they are almost universally of the form, “I am a Christian, but I agree with what you wrote about X.”

I have had a few comments over the years from people who drew a direct relationship between the desire utilitarian slogan, “Do that act that a person with good desires would perform,” and the Christian slogan, “Do that which Jesus would do.”

This actually makes sense to me. After all, with the contradictions and outright errors in scripture that have to be glossed over, people can read into the Bible whatever they want to see. If a person is impressed with desire utilitarianism, then they can read that theory into the Bible just as they can read any other theory.

After all, they fit the Divine Right of Kings into scripture for over a thousand years, until monarchies lost their popularity, Now, that very same text that once supported the divine right of kings now allegedly supports the inalienable rights of individuals.

People, as I said, will read into scripture what they see, and the comments I get from religious people tend to be from those who have decided to see desire utilitarianism in religious text.

Ultimately, I strongly suspect that most of my readers are atheists, so I write under the assumption that my words will be read by an atheist reader. I guess that makes this an atheist blog in a sense.

Yet, I still hold that promoting virtue over vice is far more important than promoting atheism over theism.

And that is what this blog is actually about.

The Government's Fiscal Irresponsibility

The government's decision to run huge deficits and huge debts for the past several years (decades) has been foolish and irresponsible.

A responsible person knows that, when a great many people depend on his situation, that his duty is to act in ways that protect and secure their interests. The responsible head of a family knows that, at any moment, some event might put the family in a dangerous financial situation. That her role is to make sure that some disaster does not destroy the finances of the family and that the people who depend on her are reasonably secure from harm.

The government of the United States has acted quite irresponsibly, and a people whose interests that those in power were supposed to protect has been put in danger.

First, we had a set of tax cuts that threw the nation into debt. When we are in debt we are at risk. Some unexpected event can come along and, because we have been thrown into an economic deficit, we would not have the resources to handle it.

And, in fact, we got hit with one of those unexpected events where it would have been nice to have a surplus - where it would have been nice to have had a little extra money to spend to cover a crisis.

In this case, we got hit with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Those attacks alone caused a great deal of damage to the economy.

Then, we went to war with Iraq - a policy decision that also required hundreds of billions of dollars in outlays.

And we got hit with Hurricane Katrina, causing a couple hundred billion dollars in damage.

And now we have a major recession that requires hundreds of billions of dollars in expense to get us out of.

With all of this, we would have been far better off if the government had been responsibly managed before these crisis worked - if the government had been managed responsibly - it would have been managed with the recognition that these types of events can occur and a responsible government has a backup plan.

It is no different than the way a responsible business handles the fact that some emergency may destroy its information network. It has a mountain of data on a room full of servers, and the knowledge that some unforeseen event might destroy that room full of servers. The responsibility has a disaster recover plan - a plan in place that says, "if some catastrophe hits, this is how we will recover from it."

Governments should recognize that a disaster can hit at any moment, and it should organize its affairs in such a way that, when such a crisis hits, it has the resources to deal with it.

The Bush Administration's decision to run with huge deficits is like the technology officer's decision to run with the computers in the server room and no off-site backup.

Now, three of those servers have failed, and nothing has been set up to manage a recovery. The system is in serious trouble.

It was a matter of gross moral negligence to let this situation develop.

My Definition of Morality?

I have been asked by a member of the studio audience to provide my definition of morality.

Perhaps you can help this old timer and provide me with your definition of morality if it is different than "desire" quote.

I am going to exploit the opportunity provided in answering this question to point out that a great deal of ink is spilled, and a great many electrons are abused, in moral discussions by the mistaken impression that definitions matter.

In fact, a lot of people who discuss ethics think that the core debate in ethics is a debate over the meaning of the word "morality", Two combatants enter the arena, each with their own definition of the term, and they do battle. The winner is the person who has the correct definition.

These battles go on indefinitely, with neither combatant seemingly able to deliver a telling blow, leading a few onlookers to think that there is no correct definition of morality.

What this is thought to imply is that morality is subjective – and that everybody gets to simply invent their own morality without having to worry if they have adopted a “correct” standard.

This whole arena . . . this whole fight . . . is nothing but a massive waste of time and effort, and I want no part of it.

Yes, people can pick whatever definition of 'morality' they like. There is no 'correct' definition of morality. However, there is no 'correct' definition of any word in any language.

There is no correct definition of the word ‘atom’ either – there is just a definition that a group of people have decided they are going to use in communicating with each other.

There is no correct definition of the word 'planet'. The dispute, with different astronomers bringing different definitions into the arena and doing battle is purely a political dispute that has no bearing on astronomy itself. Astronomers know it. This does not imply that they are not passionate supporters of one side or another. However, astronomers realize something that too many ethicists get wrong . . . that, in the long run, definitions do not matter.

Try going to an astronomy convention and claiming that, since (1) a dispute over the meaning of 'planet' can go on indefinitely, and (2) there is no experiment that anybody can perform to show which definition is correct, it follows that people can adopt whatever theories of planet formation they like, and they will laugh you out of the room.

Astronomers know something about the meanings of words that far too many people who write about ethics fail to grasp.

They understand the proper role of definitions.

Now, there are two types of definitions that are really of concern here. Descriptive definitions, and stipulative definitions.

A descriptive definition is the definition that actually describes how people use a term. A dictionary provides a listing of descriptive definitions. It provides a list of words and descriptions of the various ways in which that term is used.

There can be genuine disagreements over whether a descriptive definition is correct. This is a dispute over whether a particular theory actually describes how a term is used in a society. If somebody were to assert that the word 'carpenter' refers to a small domesticated version of the cat family, they would be wrong. We test different descriptive theories by seeing if the theory can accurately explain and predict how a term is used.

The other type of definition is a stipulative definition. In this model, the user of a term merely stipulates, "When I use the term T, you are to take it for shorthand for some long description that I do not want to repeat over and over again."

In desire utilitarianism, I stipulate that a desire that P is fulfilled in any state of affairs S where P is true in S. This is not a description of how people generally use a term. Rather, I need a shortcut for referring to states of affairs in which there is a desire that P, a state of affairs S, and P is true in S. Rather than using that description over and over again, I merely tell my readers that I will use the term 'fulfill' and its various cognates to refer to this relationship.

So, now, what is my definition of morality?

I don't have one one. When it comes to this term, I am actually interested in the descriptive definition – the theory that describes how the term is typically used. In observing how the term is actually used, I note the following:

Moral terms are prescriptive – they are used to recommend courses of action. That is to say, morality refers to certain reasons for action – certain types of reasons make an action right or wrong.

I also hold that desires are the only reasons for action that exist. However, that is not a part of the meaning of morality. That is a fact that, when combined with the descriptive meaning that morality is concerned with reasons for action, concludes that morality must be concerned with desires. If some other type of reason for action exist, then they are morally relevant. The definition of morality covers them. However, as a matter of fact, they do not exist.

Morality is concerned with universal reasons. A reason for action that is limited to a specific person in a specific situation has nothing to do with morality. My desire for chocolate ice cream creates no duties or obligations.

So, this suggests that morality has to be concerned with universal desires – with desires that people have reason to make universally common or universally non-existent.

Morality is also concerned with praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. If a theory of morality makes no use of these elements, then it is severely lacking something.

Desire utilitarianism holds that praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment are the tools for promoting (making universal) certain desires and inhibiting (making its non-existence universal) of other desires.

Morality contains the element that 'ought' implies 'can'. It makes no sense to say that a person ought to do something that cannot be done.

So, in desire utilitarianism, morality is concerned with malleable desires. It makes no sense to promote a desire using the tools described above if those tools can have no effect on the desire in question. It only makes sense to use those tools where they have an effect – to say that a people ought to desire something only if it is the case that they can do so.

In each case above, I have presented an element in the descriptive definition of morality, and an element of desire utilitarianism that corresponds to that part of the descriptive definition.

Two conclusions follow from this.

First, desire utilitarianism is not true by definition. There are a large number of theories that can meet the descriptive definition of morality. However, those other theories make use of reasons for action that do not exist (gods, intrinsic values, categorical imperatives, etc.). That is a problem if one wants to make moral claims about things in the real world.

Second, you can eliminate all moral language and desire utilitarianism will be unaffected. The definition of "morality" is unimportant. What matters is whether or not the items identified in desire utilitarianism really exist and have the relationships described. Just as with the astronomer’s dispute over the definition of "planet", any dispute over the definition of "morality" is just a side show.

Prayer versus Medicine

It seems that a nurse had been suspended from her job and faced a risk that she would lose her job for the "crime" of offering to pray for a patient. She has since been reinstated. (See Daily Mail NHS staff face the sack if they discuss religion with patients..

The charge is that she showed disrespect for the patient's beliefs and, for that, she must be terminated.

I would say that many atheist bloggers liked the idea of a religious person facing discipline for no principled reason. Rather, they have simply learned to enjoy the prospect of a person who believes in God suffering what, in this case, is some particularly harsh inconveniences.

I consider the idea that this nurse should be terminated or even disciplined to be absurd. She has committed no moral crime. The thesis that we live in a world filled with people who do not share our beliefs is violated, not respected, when we prohibit some of them from offering to engage in the peaceful act of praying for a patient.

It is, in fact, a demonstration of compassion, and we have far too little compassion in the world.

Having said that, I do not want a particularly religious person in charge of my medical care or the medical care of those I care about and am responsible for. I have two reasons for this.

First, I want a physician who knows and understands the relationships between evidence and the conclusions that one draws from those evidence. I do not want a physician who, when he looks at a set of symptoms and tries to make a diagnosis and design a treatment, thinks it is plausible to conclude, "I don't know what is wrong with you, so God must have done it." Whatever is wrong with me has a material cause, and I want my physician to find it and remove it.

Second, I do not want a physician who will abdicate personal responsibility for the consequence of his actions to a “higher“ authority. I worry that a physician who thinks that whether I live or die is determined by God and that his hands are tied might not be so diligent about looking for ways to save my life.

Instead, I want a physician who realizes that, if I should die, it is because of some lack of knowledge or understanding on his part or on the part of the medical community in general.

This does not imply that I want every physician racked with guilt over each patient that dies or whose suffering cannot be prevented. There are things that we do not know, illnesses we do not know how to treat, and injuries we do not know how to repair. In a sense, :God's will" can be used as a euphemism for "that which I lack the intelligence and skill to do anything about" However, the euphemism is less dangerous than the fact when a doctor or nurse denies responsibility for their own actions and assigns it to God

However, the fault, in this case, is not God's will. The fault is our ignorance. This fact should be used as motivation to push the boundaries of our knowledge out a little further, not as an excuse for wringing our hands and saying that nothing could be done.

This happens the other way as well – patients thanking God for the skill and efforts of the physician. How do you like it when you struggle to complete some task. Then, the person you did the work for turns to somebody who did not lift a finger is given all of the credit and the reward. The claim that doctors and nurses are to be held responsible for their failures goes hand-in-hand with saying that they also deserve credit for their success. It is a form of theft to take from them the thanks and the gratitude that they deserve

So, while I would not be offended by somebody who asks to pray for me, I would be worried that my health and well-being is not in the best of all possible hands. And I reserve the right to hire or fire any doctor basec

Obama Salary Caps

Not only is our Democratic Congress working to deepen and lengthen this global economic downturn by igniting a set of international trade wars, our President is acting to make sure that hundreds of billions of dollars of bailout money is left in the hands of least competent business leaders.

Let me tell you a tale of two football teams.

Both of these teams had abysmal seasons. Each team won only two games all season.

The managers of these teams decide to each adopt a different strategy.

The manager of Team1 fires the head coach and goes out looking for a new head coach. In looking for that coach he agrees to pay any promising candidates what they are worth to the franchise. The better they are, the more he is willing to pay them.

The manager of Team2 tells his head coach the he can keep his job. He then announces a salary cap for the head coach position that is so far below the industry average that he guarantees that any good head coach will have better offers elsewhere and would have no interest in taking over the position.

Now, I want you to place bets as to how these teams will do in the next season.

Ultimately, we are not concerned with the fate of two imaginary football teams. We are talking about the best way to manage America out of its worst economic downturn since the 1930s. We are looking at two potential futures for the American economy – the future of Team1, versus the future of Team2.

Where Team2 seems to be the direction Obama is leading us.

A couple of days ago, President Obama announced that there will be salary caps on the executive positions of companies that receive federal bailout money. This virtually guarantees that the money will be placed in the hands of managers who are not the most gifted business leaders on the planet.

Those business leaders will have better offers elsewhere, and will likely take those offers.

There is a chance, however small, that some underappreciated business genius may get into one of these positions and show what he is made of. Yet, even here, the instant that he has proven his worth and what he can do for a business, we can expect the job offers to start coming in, and it will not be long until he decides to accept one of those offers, leaving his former position open to the next (probably incompetent) person in line.

I agree that business leaders have been overcompensated recently. The fact that a business leader gets paid $30 million does not imply that he is actually worth $30 million. In fact, many of our current highly paid executives have proved their incompetence.

It may be (and probably is the case) that we can get competent business leaders for significantly less than what companies are currently paying.

Yet, this does not speak in favor of a salary cap. First, you find the competent leaders. Then you negotiate a salary that will get the competent leader into that position. And you go with the best bargain (the best leader at the lowest price).

Well, actually, first you get rid of the incompetent leaders who lead their businesses into this mess. That has not been done yet, but it should be. The executive offices of businesses getting billions of dollars in government bailout money should be fumigated.

However, after those existing executives have been removed, their replacements should be paid what they are worth. If the most promising manager demands $1 million or he will take a job elsewhere, then he should be given his $1 million and be put to work clearing up this hundred billion dollar disaster. It makes no sense to put a hundred billion dollars under mismanagement for the sake of half a million in salary.

"You Can Be Good Without God" Bus Campaign

I have found another potential candidate for next year's list of Anti-Atheist Bigotry in 2009. This one might not appear on the final list because it happened in Canada, but it certainly qualifies on other grounds.

The Friendly Atheist has pointed me to an article about a group that wants to put an advertisement on the side of a bus that says, "You can be good without God."

This proposal has been rejected on the grounds that

All advertisements must meet acceptable community standards of good taste, quality and appearance. Furthermore, the ads will not be considered discriminatory, or objectionable to any race creed or moral standard.

See: Friendly Atheist The Most Offensive Atheist Bus Ad Yet

Okay, imagine this.

A Jewish organization wishes to post a sign on the side of busses that say, "A Jew can still be a good person."

And the Board decides to reject this because some people in society might find it offensive.

That’s the claim. That there are people in the community who hate the message that, “"A Jew can be a good person," and for the sake of protecting their sensitivities the Board has decided to reject having such a message posted on its busses.

This opens up an interesting series of questions.

What type of person is it who would be offended by a message like, "A Jew can be a good person"? Whose sensitivities would the Board be trying to protect by disallowing such a message? Would there, perhaps, be some name we can give to people who would be outraged by the claim, "A Jew can be a good person?"

What type of Board is it that would be so concerned with protecting whatever group of people who would be outraged by the message, "A Jew can be a good person?"

One of the arguments that I have heard is that bus drivers cannot choose what busses to drive, nor can passengers choose what busses to get on. So, if we allow a sign that says, "A Jew can be a good person," a driver who is outraged by such a thought might end up being assigned to a bus that has that message. Or a potential passenger who is outraged by the very thought that a Jew can be a good person might find himself waiting at a bus stop and discover that he must now board a bus that says, "A Jew can be a good person."

Whatever we do, we must not allow any situation to develop where those citizens would actually be forced to drive or ride on a bus that carries such a message. The sensitivities of those who are outraged by the thought that a Jew can be a good person must be respected. For that reason, no such bus could carry such a message.

It appears that there is a Board in Nova Scotia that believes that this type of prohibition, somehow, is just what we need to fight discrimination and prejudice. In a conflict between the interests of Jews who wish to claim, "A Jew can be a good person," and of those who would be outraged by such a message, the Board, in the name of tolerance, declares that it must side with those who are outraged by such a message.

Or, similarly, between those who wish to claim that an Atheist can be a good person (or, alternatively, you can be good without God) and those who are outraged by the thought of anybody ever making such a claim.

Oh, I want to let you know the name of the company that thinks that it is important to protect these types of sensitivies. Pattison Maritimes. Perhaps a government near you is doing business with this organization.

Inhofe and the Greatest Moral Failing

In my last post, I identified an unwillingness to take a stand against intellectual recklessness as being the greatest moral failing of our day.

Because of that moral failing, I doubt that we will not take appropriate action against global warming. In the future, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, Washington DC, and New York will be tourist attractions for divers interested in visiting these submerged ruins, with their upper floors still sticking out of the water until the foundations rot and the structures collapse. Around the world London, Amsterdam, Cairo, Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai, and Tokyo will have the same distinction.

One of the two major pieces of evidence that draw me to this conclusion is that Exxon Mobile is still able to draw in billions of dollars worth of profits. We reward the leaders of businesses who engage in this type of destructive behavior. And that which we reward we can expect to get more of. When that reward is in the billions of dollars, we can expect billions of dollars in investment in that which will produce this destruction.

The other major piece of evidence is the fact that James Inhofe is still a Senator.

Inhofe enters our discussion because he has abused his position for the purpose of pushing lies and rhetoric onto the American people – nonsense claims and outright deception that will, if left unchecked, result in just the type of destruction that I mentioned above.

See: UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims.

He has, for example, pushed a document that claims that over 650 scientists deny that there is any man-made global warming.

A look at this document suggests how it was made. Somebody who wanted to sew doubt about the issue of global warming set to work collecting quotes that can be presented as being critical of global warming. Also, the quotes had to come from people who could be presented as having some knowledge of the subject.

It did not matter if the quotes were taken out of context, or the resumes of those from whom the quotes were taken had to be padded to make them seem more knowledgeable of the subject than they were. All that mattered was the usefulness of the quote in spreading doubt. And what gave doubt its value is the fact that it would prevent people from taking political action to prevent or restrict activities threatening this future destruction.

When this document was mentioned in a comment to a previous post, I knew that I would be able to find a document on the web that would expose the errors in this claim. I knew that, because I know the science of global warming and that denying global warming makes as little sense as denying evolution or denying that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

I am grateful to a member of the studio audience, Eneasz, for providing a link to that document. See Inhofe's Morano Recycles Long Debunked Denier Talking Points. Will the Media Be Fooled Again?

We have here quotes from scientists who believe that global warming will not be catastrophic because the author believes humans will take appropriate action in time taken out of context and presented that global warming is not a problem that requires action.

We have quotes from TV weather reporters where meteorologists are given the authority of climatologists. Here, the list plays on the fact that the public does not know the difference between weather and climate.

It contains quotes from scientists who have asked to have their names removed from the list because the list misrepresents their views, only to have their names remain on the list.

All of these is evidence that the list was constructed by somebody who has no love of truth – who will misinform so as to (profitably) stand in the way of preventing people from protecting future generations from serious harm without a twinge of guilt.

However much this speaks to the evil of Inhofe and his staff, their evil would not be a problem if society as a whole were to take a moral stand against this type of behavior. They would simply be removed from office and held in social disgrace.

I have mentioned that the right to freedom of speech means that it is inappropriate to respond to words with violence. The only legitimate responses are words and private actions.

However, voting is a private action. (Buying gasoline from Exxon-Mobile is also a private action.) As such, deciding not to vote for somebody because he is an advocate and practitioner of the art of deception and misrepresentation is a perfectly legitimate response to the fact that a candidate is engaging in deception and misrepresentation.

The discovery that Inhofe had anything to do with promoting this list should have been met with the same type of response as the discovery that a Senator had been sending sexually explicit emails to underage pages. This violation of public trust should have been (and should still be) met with demands that he resign his seat in disgrace so that the people, using whatever Constitutional methods provided by law, can get a decent human being to fill that position.

The fact that no such demand is being made is proof that the moral problem goes far deeper than the evil of Inhofe himself.

Ultimately, what puts future generations at risk is not the evil of Inhofe himself, but because the unwillingness to take a moral stand against these types of deceptive practices goes so deeply. That is why I classify the unwillingness itself as our current greatest moral failing.

The Most Significant Moral Issue

With all of the issues that I write about, if I had to pick the greatest moral failing of the modern world – the top of the list of evils that deserves our greatest condemnation, what would it be?

It would not be child rape or torture. It would not be terrorist bombings, nor would it be genocide.

Even though I write extensively on the subjects of having a pledge of allegiance that equates atheists with traitors, tyrants, and criminals and a national motto that declares, “Any who does not trust in God is not one of us,” these would not be the most important moral concern either.

The moral failing that tops my list of greatest evils is the lack of condemnation given to those who use poor arguments in defense of beliefs that threaten the well-being of others.

Please note that I have chosen my words carefully here. I am not saying that having beliefs supported by these weak arguments are the greatest evil. I am not even saying that advocating or using the weak arguments in support of these beliefs constitute the greatest evil. I am saying, specifically, that the lack of condemnation for the use of weak arguments constitutes the greatest evil.

We give those who use senseless rhetoric a free pass that they not only do not deserve, but that is more harmful to society than any of the other evils I mentioned above.

This lack of condemnation is what is responsible for having a culture in which weak arguments are capable of growing and prospering, spreading across human culture like weeds, planting themselves in human brains and killing off much of the good thoughts that would otherwise reside in those same fields.

Furthermore, I am not condemning the lack of criticism of these arguments. People do often argue criticism of weak arguments. I am condemning the lack of criticism of the people who employ these arguments. This is a moral failing, and moral criticism applies to persons, not things.

We are told that we are not supposed to criticize people. We are only supposed to look at the argument and criticize it. Criticizing the person is bad form.

That is what we are told.

However, failure to criticize the person who engages in reckless argumentation is no different than failure to criticize the person who engages in drunken or reckless driving or who otherwise puts the well-being of others at risk through his negligence.

If society were to adopt the attitude that drunk drivers were not to be condemned – if we adopted a standard where we may talk about the harms done by drunk driving but we were prohibited from holding anybody morally responsible for those harms, we can well expect incidents of drunk driving to rise. The same is true if we talked about the harmful effects of murder, rape, or theft but refused to hold any murderer, rapist, or thief responsible for his actions.

So it is the case with intellectual recklessness, demagoguery, sophistry, and similar moral crimes. The very fact that we refuse to hold people morally responsible for their transgressions simply translates to an ever growing number of transgressions. That is something that harms all of us.

There is an extremely important caveat to this post. A right to freedom of speech means that it is illegitimate to respond to mere words with violence. However, the right to freedom of speech is not a right to immunity from criticism. It is only a right to immunity from violence.

However, it is precisely because violence is not a permissible response to intellectual recklessness, criticism becomes far more important. It is the only legitimate tool we have left.

Morality. Who needs it?

To the degree that a society loses its respect for and devotion to the institution of morality, to that degree a society is doomed to decay and, ultimately, ruin.

We often hear this type of claim made by members of the religious community as an argument for why they must remain diligent against the evils of homosexuality and abortion. Against this, some have formed the reflexive reaction that morality is not important. The institution of morality is merely one group of self-important individuals forcing their will on others.

(Which is immoral?)

However, the premise is true.

In fact, in all secular moralities, the premise is axiomatic. Secular moralities are moralities that intimately tie issues of good, evil, right, and wrong to the well-being of societies or the greatest well-being of the greatest number of people within a society. It follows axiomatically that a lack of respect for moral institutions means less well-being within that society.

Desire utilitarianism is no different in this regard.

Morality is concerned with using social forces such as praise and condemnation to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires.

It follows axiomatically from this that a lack of concern about morality means that people are promoting (or, at least, failing to inhibit) desires that tend to thwart other desires, and inhibiting (or, at least, failing to promote) desires that tend to fulfill other desires.

Which means that desires are being thwarted that would not otherwise have been thwarted, and we are failing to fulfill desires that would have otherwise been fulfilled.

Any dispute between these members of the religious right are not legitimately cast as disputes about the importance of morality. They are disputes over what morality requires.

As it turns out, diligence against homosexuality is not an example of a respect for morality. In fact, it is an example of respect for immorality. It is an example of respect for prejudices and superstitions that should have died 2000 years ago. Unfortunately, certain institutions have carried those bigotries forward even to the current day where they are still being used to add misery to the lives of people who have done no wrong.

In fact, a proper respect for morality – a proper respect for institutions that allow people to realize states that have value for them and that teaches people to find value in states that tend to fulfill the desires of others – means respect for institutions that condemn the practice of carrying senseless 2000 year old bigotries forward into the future.

On this one issue, members of the religious community are correct and they should not be challenged. On the issue of the importance of respect for moral institutions, they are correct. Their demand that moral institutions should not be met with condemnation or casually dismissed. "Morality. Who needs it?"

We all need it.

Morality is what prevents people from finding value in (desiring) things that thwart the desires of others, and encourages people to find value in (desire) that which fulfills the desires of others. Which gives all of us better lives than we would otherwise have.

The Right to Terminate Executives

A part of recent discussion where I suggested demanding that the executives of these companies getting government assistance join the unemployed generated the following response:

By what right should they be removed from their jobs? The government has no right to remove them--they have committed no crime (it should also be noted that the government should not be bailing them out either. We the people don't have that right--the company does not belong to us, so how it is run and who is allowed to work there is none of our legal or moral concern. The only people with the right to fire the CEO are the people on the board (as well as anyone else the CEO answers too, depending on the company charter).

These "rights" that people allegedly have or do not have are supposed to provide reasons for action for doing or not doing particular types of actions. The question then comes up: What are these rights? Are they real or are they just made up? If they are real, how can they possibly exist as "reasons for action"?

I have discussed the issue of rights in the abstract recently. However, I thought it would e useful to look at a specific case.

The problem that I have with rights is that, on one sense in which they are widely used, they do not exist. This is the form that says that a "right" is a reason to engage in or forbear in some action that is built directly into that action. This property is at least as mysterious as any God. When I look for a right I want to see something real. Either that, or the person who claims that some “right” provides a reason for me to perform or refrain from performing some activity is simply making a false statement.

Then one confronts a dichotomy – if rights do not exist, then people may do anything without moral constraints. Nothing a person can do can violate a right if there are no rights to violate.

It is the same as the argument that nothing one can do can offend a God if there is no God to offend.

Yet, the claim that rights in this sense do not exist . . . just like the claim that God does not exist . . . is not the same as the claim that reasons to engage in or refrain from certain actions do not exist. Reasons to engage in or refrain from actions certainly do exist. They are very real. Consider the reasons that exist for keeping one’s hand out of a hot flame, or reasons for action to eat, or reasons for action to turn up the heat on a cold winter night.

The argument that people too often make, "Either this moral entity exists or reasons for action do not exist," is absurd on its face. It is a ploy, really, to manipulate people into accepting the claim 'this moral entity exists' because the opposite is too absurd to accept.

If we look at reasons for action that exist, then what reasons for action exist for keeping the executives who have driven their companies into the ground in power – or for refraining from actions that will remove such people and replace them with a better track record for running companies well?

This, ultimately, is the question to be asked or answered.

Now, we do, in fact, have good reason to promote an aversion to governments hiring or firing business executives at will. The main argument for such an aversion is that politicians will then award lucrative positions to their political supporters and terminate their political rivals. We can well imagine what politics would be like if Presidential candidates not only got to appoint cabinet secretaries and judges, but also gets to appoint the executives in Fortune 500 companies.

Imagine if Bush had such power.

It makes perfectly good sense to speak of this prohibition on - this promotion of an aversion to - governments dictating the leadership of major companies in terms of "rights". It makes perfectly good sense to say that government has no right to dictate who will lead private companies, and that the companies themselves retain this right.

Only, when we look at the reasons for action that back these rights we find them not in God's will or an intrinsic property of "ought to be doneness". We find the reasons for action in desires - in the many and strong desire-based reasons for action people have not to create a society where political figures have this power.

Punishment as Condemnation

A recent discussion among a couple members of the studio audience touched briefly on the question of what it takes for something to count as punishment.

Specifically, it touched on the question of whether taxation can be properly classified as punishment.

The discussion merely grazed the surface of this question, then ricocheted off. However, I have heard the statement a number of times – particularly by libertarians (a tribe in which I was once a member).

Furthermore, this is a blog that suggests that the institution of morality is (or should be) the application of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote good desires and inhibit bad desires. It would be useful to say a few things about what punishment is.

Punishment involves intentionally doing harm to somebody. In other words, the act of punishment seeks to create a state of affairs in which the desires of others (those who are being punished) are deliberately thwarted. The thwarting of the desires of others is not a side-effect of punishment, it is a part of the purpose of punishment.

Furthermore . . . and this is the part that those who misuse the concept of punishment often miss . . . punishment is a statement of condemnation. To punish somebody is to insult them, to put them down, to condemn them, to assert in clear language that the person being punished is somebody who deserves punishment.

On the question of whether taxation is punishment – taxation does not qualify.

First, it is not clear that the act of taxation is an act that aims to do harm to those who are taxed. Ultimately, taxation aims to provide people with benefits. It aims to provide them with goods and services – such as national defense, a police and court system, a fire department, an educated population, an infrastructure, medical care, retirement benefits, and the like, none of which count as deliberately causing harm to the individual taxed.

The benefits do not always match the costs. Some people obtain in terms of benefits more than they pay in terms of taxes, and some people pay more in terms of taxes than they get in terms of benefits. However, the aim of taxation is not to do harm.

More importantly, a tax form is not a statement of condemnation.

I just finished paying my taxes today. There is absolutely no sense (except in the minds of certain individuals) that the tax bill I received came with a statement of condemnation for the moral crime of earning a salary.

Meaning, by the way, is a matter of linguistic convention. We can assign the meaning of condemnation to just about anything. We can define it into a hand gesture, or into an act such as the act of hitting the poster of an individual with a shoe. It is quite possible that we can attach a statement of condemnation to the act of giving a person a bill. However, when we do this, we tend to call the demand for money a "fine", not a "tax".

In fact, the very quality that distinguishes a fine from a tax is the fact that the fine carries with it the meaning, "Your act is to be condemned, and you are to be condemned for being somebody who could perform an act like that."

Even penalties in a game carry a statement of condemnation. If a quarterback in a football game is sacked, the team may lose five yards. Yet, this is not considered a penalty. This is simply a loss.

However, when the referee moves the ball back five yards because a team member has been caught breaking the rules, a loss becomes a penalty. It contains within it a statement of condemnation. “The rules are to be followed, and those who do not follow the rules will be made to suffer for their transgression.

So, if somebody should use the term "punishment" in a context where the element of condemnation is missing, their statement is simply false.

As with any false statement, when a person makes a mistake such as this, we can then start to ask a different set of questions. “Of all the mistakes that one could make, why did you make this one?”

Sometimes – in morally culpable cases – we can find the reason in what the agent wanted to believe or wanted others to believe regardless of the truth of the matter. In these cases, we may discover that the person misusing the term is the one who deserves condemnation.

In other cases, a mistake is just a mistake.

Silence and Lies

There was an interesting exchange in the comments section between two members of the studio audience that generated some interesting comments on the nature of lying, the nature of punishment, and what counts as a moral reason.

Since this is an ethics blog, I thought I would weigh in on some of those comments.

This post concerns the question of whether an omission is a lie.

Eneasz wrote:

"First - is not an omission of crucial and possibly life-destroying information as morally reprehensible as a lie?"

Katecickle responded:

Why does the type of information being omitted matter? Either not mentioning something is the same as lying, or it isn't--the actual information being omitted should not matter.

Katecickle added:

(I would like to add that while companies may omit things when giving information freely, such as in marketing, it is not acceptable to omit information that has been directly asked about. I probably made that clear already, but I just wanted to be sure).

Ultimately, we cannot consider the omission of information to be the same as a lie.

In any given instance of communication, there must necessarily be a huge quantity of information that people do not give. We simply do not have time to say everything. So, we must pick and choose which information to give, and which to refrain from giving - for the sake of efficiency.

However, Eneasz did not say that withholding information is the same as lying. Eneasz said that withholding "crucial and possibly life-destroying information" is as reprehensible as lying.

Assume that I was comparing my wife to a rose bush outside of our house. I could say, "The rose bush is as tall as my wife." In saying that, I am not saying that my wife is a rose bush. I am merely saying that they have a common property. In this case, I am comparing their height.

Accordingly, Eneasz is comparing the moral quality of crucial and possibly life-destroying information to lying.

Not all lies have the same moral qualities. In fact, the lies associated with surprise parties and "white lies" are not morally bad at all. So, I am going to assume that withholding information, in this case, has the same moral quality as lying.

So, let's take an example. I invite my noisy, obnoxious, co-worker to my home for dinner. I then poison the food (because we are both in line for the same promotion and I want the job).

As luck would have it, my guest does not as what is in the food. Consequently, following Katesickle's recommendation, I do not have to tell him what is in it. If he had asked, "Is the food poisoned" or even "What's in this?" I would have been obligated to say that it contains a deadly poison. Fortunately, I was not asked, and I am not under any obligation to reveal information not asked for.

Katesickle, then, would have to conclude that I am not guilty of murder. Or, at the very least, under the presumption of innocent until proven guilty, prosecutors will have to demonstrate not only that I intentionally put poison in the food, but that I was asked if the food was poisoned and did not provide an honest answer.

Actually, Eneasz was mistaken. It is not the case that an omission of crucial and possibly life-destroying information is the same as lying. Instead, the omission of crucial and possibly life-destroying information is the same as attempted or actual homicide.

We would have to ask about the agent's intentions to determine if the agent is guilty of an intentional murder (wanting the victim dead), or a lesser form of murder (simply not caring that the victim ended up dead), but the charge is murder either way. This defines not only what the moral crime is, but what the legal crime should be.

I have defined lying elsewhere as an act of communication that seeks to persuade the victim to adopt a proposition that the agent knows to be false.

It is possible to lie through silence. However, for this to happen, silence has to be given a meaning within a language. Silence itself has to communicate a proposition that the speaker knows to be false.

For example, if we agree on a convention that says, "If you answer my question with silence, I will understand to mean that you were out with your wife." I then ask the question, and the person asked remains silent. In this case, the silence is a lie.

However, in general, it is not a lie.

Yet, there are a lot of different types of wrongs in the world. Lying is just one of them.

Global Warming and Corporate Feudalism

I would like to use a statement from a comment made by a member of the stuido audience to an earlier post to make a point against what passes for "capitalism" in America - the practice of engaging in practices that threaten the lives, health, and property of others for profit and of engaging in deceptive campaigns to protect those activities.

It is not a culture that values the property rights of others or that values truth, because such a culture would not allow these practices.

I suggested that the issue of global warming illustrated these practices. Specifically, I mentioned that if we doubled the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, it would take an act of God or some form of magic to prevent that CO2 from absorbing additional energy. This is given what we know about the absorption spectrum of CO2 and the emission spectrum of the Earth.

In response to this, Katecickle wrote:

Except we haven't doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere--again, we only contribute about 3.5% of the CO2 put into the atmosphere annually.

This simply repeats pure propaganda that no person with a respect for logic or truth would allow to go unchallenged.

It does not matter what percent humans contribute to annual CO2 output. What matters is the amount that humans contribute to the increase in concentration

Take a tub of water, and set it up so that water is pouring into the tub at 100 gallons per minute. However, the water is in equilibrium so that the tub also loses 100 gallons per minute through holes in the side.

Now, you open a second faucet into the tub. This faucet puts 3.5 gallons per minute into the tub. The tub is now getting 103.5 gallons per minute, but still only losing 100 gallons per minute.

So, the tub is filling up.

Somebody protests that the tub is filling up and suggests that we should turn off the second faucet.

Yet, the owner of the faucet argues, "It is absurd to say that my faucet is responsible for the tub filling up. After all, I am contributing only 3.5% of the volume of water entering the tub."

It not a difficult matter to understand that the contribution to the total inflow of water is not what matters. What matters is the degree to which the new faucet contributes to the change of volume over time. In this case, the second faucet is 100% responsible for the change in volume over time. The faucet puts 3.5 gallons per minute into the tub, and the volume in the tub is increasing at 3.5 gallons per minute.

This is an extremely simple argument to understand and to explain.

I need only a few minor adjustments to make this more like the case of global warming.

For millions of years, the atmosphere held between 200 parts per million and 280 parts per million of CO2. Lower values are associated with ice ages, while higher values are associated with warmer times.

Each year, billions of tonnes of carbon circulate through the system. Animals breathe CO2, plants take it up, falling leaves decay, then gets absorbed by plant growth the following spring. Oceans absorb CO2 in winter months and lose CO2 to the atmosphere in the spring as well.

This system has been substantially in equilibrium for tens of millions of years.

Along comes humans, who open up a carbon faucet that puts 7 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. Half of this "leaks out" by being absorbed into the oceans and into new plant growth.

So, humans are increasing the level of CO2 in the atmospheric tub by 3.5 units per year. We have already increased the volume from 280 ppmv to 385 ppmv and the level keeps rising.

It could reach 1000 ppmv or even higher.

This is not a difficult point to understand. And I have no doubt that many of the people who "market" this particular deception are capable of understanding this argument.

The problem is, they do not care.

The values that these so-called "capitalists" are not respect exhibit are not the values of respect for the rights individuals to life, health, and property and of truth that would mark a practice as being virtuous in capitalist terms. The values they exhibit are those of willingly destroying the lives, health, and property of others and of engaging in whatever campaigns of deception may be useful in defending those practices, as long as it is profitable to do so.

Executive Compensation and Responsibility

In a comment on a posting on corporate feudalism - the idea that corporate "lords" have the right to kill, maim, or poison or to destroy the property of non-corporate "serfs" - this issue of executive compensation came up. Specifically, the comment concerned executive compensation for companies that received billions of dollars in government assistance.

I would like to look at this issue from a desire utilitarian perspective.

President Obama has said that one of his three objectives in this bailout is to establish a regulatory framework to make sure that nothing like this happens again.

Desire utilitarianism suggests another avenue to pursue in addition to regulation. That is condemnation and punishment.

Ninety percent of the executives of companies that have received government bailouts are still on the job. Furthermore, those companies gave their executives a combined $18 billion in bonuses at the end of the year.

A bonus is a reward.

In desire utilitarian terms, rewards are used to promote that which people generally have reason to promote. Condemnation and punishment are used to inhibit that which people generally have reason to inhibit.

People generally have reason to inhibit the type of behavior that these executives engaged in over the past several years, not to promote it. So, that behavior needs to be met with condemnation and punishment, rather than reward or (at best) indifference as the people responsible keep their jobs and live their lives as normal (while millions of others lose their jobs).

So, the quick prima facie recommendation regarding these executives from a desire utilitarian perspective is that they should be told to clean out their offices and leave the company - and new executives should be brought in who will have the duty to bring these businesses back to life.

I have called this system "corporate feudalism". One of its distinguishing characteristics is that it is deemed inappropriate to strip a noble of his title. Regardless of the quality of his leadership, he is still a noble, and thus "entitled" to his throne.

So, we see little movement in the direction of dethroning this particular nobility. Little movement to strip these people of their titles and to remove them from the head of their kingdoms. Instead, in spite of the harms they cause, they keep their thrones and their (political - not moral) right to rule.

By the way, the doctrine of capitalism, for those who understand it, is a philosophy of individual responsibility and would also call for ousting these executives. What we see happening here is not capitalism.

What we see happening is marketed under the name 'capitalism'. It has been marketed under that name to convince people to buy the product. However, the marketing in this case is deceptive.

Unfortunately, this deception produces some collateral damage, when the people who respond to this particular set of injustices takes their anger out on the "fall guy" in this case, instead of the actual culprit.

Ultimately, these executives should be fired and replaced with people who have a track record of taking their moral and business responsibilities seriously.

Why are we giving multi-billion dollar checks to people with a proven track record of losing billions and billions of dollars?