tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post4558580290326193629..comments2023-10-24T04:29:23.693-06:00Comments on Atheist Ethicist: Respect for Religious (and Other) BeliefsAlonzo Fyfehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-435813928242950302008-04-17T14:23:00.000-06:002008-04-17T14:23:00.000-06:00Doug S.if one desire tends to fulfill an infinite ...Doug S.<BR/><BR/><I>if one desire tends to fulfill an infinite number of desires and simultaneously tends to thwart an infinite number of desires, then whether or not that desire is good may be undefined.<BR/><BR/>(Again, I know you don't like the "maximizing utility" formulation of ethics, but I'm using it more in the decision-theoretic sense, as a mathematical function that describes an agent's desires and their relative strength. For the purposes of this discussion, "An agent acts to fulfill the more and stronger of its desires given its beliefs" and "An agent acts to maximize its expected utility" should be taken to mean the exact same thing.)</I><BR/><BR/>Sorry I don't think this is DU but rather Desire Fulfillment Act Utilitarianism - in other words objective preference satisfaction.<BR/><BR/>In DU a desire is evaluated compared to its absence. There is the existence of a desire's fulfillments and thwarting is unbounded (which I question next) and its absence is not unbounded then the absence is to be preferred. Then you might ask what if it absence is leads to only desire thwarting and no desire fulfillment? Well since the alternative is unbounded it does not solve the question so look for another desire to deal with it.<BR/><BR/>I question that it is possible for a desire to be <B>really</B> unbounded, instead this being an indicator that the desire is based on a fiction and can never be fulfilled. Of course desires such exist and can have implications on the real-world as we know ;-) Still it is only the real-world implications of a desire that can be taken into account. DU is a realist model.Martin Freedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16952072422175870627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-74226023415183227642008-04-17T13:01:00.000-06:002008-04-17T13:01:00.000-06:00If I say that I am communicating with the Dark Lor...<I>If I say that I am communicating with the Dark Lords of the Matrix and they will destroy the world unless you do what I say, then it is rational to increase your degree of confidence in the proposition "Douglas is communicating with the Dark Lords of the Matrix and they will destroy the world unless you do what he says" by some tiny, nonzero amount.</I><BR/><BR/>At the risk of derailling the thread, I had to ask about this, because it's also brought up in the Pascal's Mugging you linked. How is it in any way rational to increase the probability of that by any amount at all? You say it's rational to increase the probability by some tiny, almost zero, but nonzero amount. However to assign this a probability of anything BUT zero goes against everything that the agent knows about reality. A rational agent would increase the probability of "Bob is in contact with the Dark Lords of the Matrix" by 0, and would increase the probability of "Bob is a liar" and "Bob is attempting to manipulate me" by ~1.<BR/><BR/>At least by any useful definition of the word "rational" that I can imagine.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-17869909036188412242008-04-17T12:44:00.000-06:002008-04-17T12:44:00.000-06:00It's not impossible to acquire such beliefs throug...It's not impossible to acquire such beliefs through the application of reason; many things people believe, they believe because other people tell them it is so. For example, if I tell you that my name is Douglas, that's a pretty good reason to believe that my name is, in fact, Douglas. Similarly, someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens is more likely to really have been abducted than someone who makes no such claim, even if the evidence suggests that the most likely explanation is that the person had a sleep-related hallucination. If I say that I am communicating with the Dark Lords of the Matrix and they will destroy the world unless you do what I say, then it is rational to increase your degree of confidence in the proposition "Douglas is communicating with the Dark Lords of the Matrix and they will destroy the world unless you do what he says" by some tiny, nonzero amount. If a claim is grandiose enough, a "rational" agent might still decide that the low probability of the claim might be overwhelmed by its consequences if it were true.<BR/><BR/>In the real world, a fanatic is almost guaranteed to be something other than the hypothetical "rational fanatic" presented, but <BR/><BR/>Again, it's the <A HREF="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/10/pascals-mugging.html" REL="nofollow">Pascal's Mugging</A> argument. If there's even a slight chance at averting a scenario that one believes would have Nearly Infinite badness, then it tends to overwhelm other considerations. There's also the paper at http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf to consider, on the problems of infinities in ethical theories. It could even be a problem for D.U.: if one desire tends to fulfill an infinite number of desires and simultaneously tends to thwart an infinite number of desires, then whether or not that desire is good may be undefined.<BR/><BR/>(Again, I know you don't like the "maximizing utility" formulation of ethics, but I'm using it more in the decision-theoretic sense, as a mathematical function that describes an agent's desires and their relative strength. For the purposes of this discussion, "An agent acts to fulfill the more and stronger of its desires given its beliefs" and "An agent acts to maximize its expected utility" should be taken to mean the exact same thing.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-33172896939381162332008-04-16T14:41:00.000-06:002008-04-16T14:41:00.000-06:00Ok, but doesn't that conflict with the unstated pr...Ok, but doesn't that conflict with the unstated premise that the fanatic already believes that he does, in fact, know there is a hell and knows the actions to be taken that can effect someone's chances of ending up there? He obviously didn't accept these beliefs due to an application of reason.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-66879524617393122322008-04-16T13:09:00.000-06:002008-04-16T13:09:00.000-06:00In today's world, the "torture people to keep them...In today's world, the "torture people to keep them out of hell" belief is relatively rare (at least, it's rare where I live), but in the Bad Old Days, it was the explicit justification for the Spanish Inquisition's treatment of heretics and was advocated by many prominent Catholic theologians. (I think I've read that somewhere, but I could be mistaken.)<BR/><BR/>Anyway, the "obvious" way to rebut - as opposed to ignore - the fanatic's argument is to say that, given our current knowledge about the world, we have no reason to believe that our actions have any affect whatsoever on the probability of going to any hell that may or may not exist. The infinities are canceled by zeros, and we can go on living our lives as though there were no possibility of going to hell in the first place. It's basically the same kind of refutation that can be applied to Pascal's Wager type arguments.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-2563890397125842012008-04-16T10:00:00.000-06:002008-04-16T10:00:00.000-06:00Doug, I think this arguement is flawed in three si...Doug, I think this arguement is flawed in three significant ways.<BR/><BR/>First, almost no one in the real world believes as the fanatic does. You'll notice (or at least I have) that in almost every aspect of life, all people act as if there is no god, all the time. The only time god is invoked is in church, and to justify their prejudices. So this is not a situation we need to worry about.<BR/><BR/>Secondly, there is no such thing as a human with only one desire. Therefore we can help to outweigh his desire to keep us from going to hell by threatening to thwart his desires to stay out of prison, to not be harmed, to be accepted by his peers, and so on. It would be preferable if we could form a society that wouldn't produce any people with this crazy desire, but given a large enough population one or two nutters will always show up. We have laws to deal with these people. "Reasoning" with them is not the correct tool to deal with this situation, it would be like trying to reason with a flat tire to get it to change itself.<BR/><BR/>And finally, I believe you are implying that since this fanatism is justified by a literal reading of the fanatic's holy book, any normal moderate people who also give some weight to the holy book are not justified in condemn the fanatic unless they drop their religious beliefs. On paper this may be correct. However I don't care about who is philosophically more correct on paper, I care about how people act. If you tell normal people that they are on the side of the fanatic and they must drop their religion to be on the side of reason, you will NOT get a lot of converts to the side of reason to sanction the heretic. You will be creating a situation were you are forcing all religious people into a "Them" group, and putting yourself and other non-theists into a "Us" group. Seeing the the religious make up ~80% of the population, what you are doing is ensuring that reason will be overwhelmed and destroyed, and the fanatic will be that much stronger for it. If you want to strengthen your position, you fail by committing suicide.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-45594076749070781242008-04-16T07:44:00.000-06:002008-04-16T07:44:00.000-06:00Another answer to Alonzo's point is to parapharse ...Another answer to Alonzo's point is to parapharse Hume who said, if I recall correctly, "A wise man proportions belief according to the evidence". Similarly one could say "a wise man respects a belief according to the evidence" :-)Martin Freedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16952072422175870627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-73708655658382539912008-04-16T07:41:00.000-06:002008-04-16T07:41:00.000-06:00Hi Pedroe and Doug SThe attitude to justify tortur...Hi Pedroe and Doug S<BR/><BR/>The attitude to justify torture to avoid hell is an extremist/fanatical viewpoint however it is I think fairly rare (but could be more rare). Most xians and muslims regard that if you don't listen to them then you are going to hell, but that is your choice, their job is done once they have spread the "word". Xians, even as less so than muslims, regardless, are not morally obliged to take this further. Still it does give some an excuse to apply or keep double standards in society in their favour. <BR/><BR/>Alonzo's point was that we should encourage of world to emphasize real-questions and real-world answers to real-world problems. <BR/><BR/>The fanatic cant be argued wiht they need to be dealt with - as a common criminal. The double standards theists can be argued with - not to change their mind about hell etc. - but by using using the legal tools available including debate, free speech, protest, campaigning and voting to change laws to remove and prevent double standards. The rest can be free to believe whatever they want about hell.Martin Freedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16952072422175870627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-69160470569592546312008-04-16T07:24:00.000-06:002008-04-16T07:24:00.000-06:00Doug S. is absolutely correct (I've written about ...Doug S. is absolutely correct (I've written about it <A HREF="http://www.wayofthemind.org/2008/04/09/its-dangerous-for-our-children-to-even-know-that-your-philosophy-exists/" REL="nofollow">here</A> in the past). It's difficult for us to grasp how these people think, but, to them, nothing else matters compared to whether you go to hell or not, so everything else is irrelevant.<BR/><BR/>Suppose you know someone who doesn't believe in God, and you're <I>absolutely, 100% sure</I> that you have only the two following choices:<BR/><BR/>1- do nothing, and that person lives a happy, healthy life for 60 more years, then goes to hell and suffers eternally;<BR/><BR/>2- torture that person for 60 years, and that person has a <B>5% chance</B> (not a certainty, mind you) of <I>not</I> going to hell.<BR/><BR/>Isn't choice 2 the most moral? In fact, isn't choice 2 the <I>only real option</I>, if you're not a monster? Anything finite compared to infinity really amounts to nothing.<BR/><BR/>Therefore, suffering and dying but not going to hell is more than worthwhile for these people. Which means that health and even basic survival pale into insignificance compared to "being saved".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-3321598042275343022008-04-16T03:47:00.000-06:002008-04-16T03:47:00.000-06:00My friend, as an atheist I couldn't agree more wit...My friend, as an atheist I couldn't agree more with your opinion and your arguments. Unfortunately people, have the (strange for me) desire to believe that a God exists ONLY to keep an eye on them and giving them punishments or gifts for their good/bad habits. I believe that as science comes closer to our everyday life, people will become less prejudice.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-75388928107488903752008-04-16T03:17:00.000-06:002008-04-16T03:17:00.000-06:00I think you just pointed out everything that is wr...I think you just pointed out everything that is wrong with the world in one single post, and supplied a simple and therefor logical solution. You make total sense and your language is clear. Too bad about 95% of those 6.5 billion people refuse to listen to plain common sense like that.<BR/><BR/>We're doomed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-38804727131377917992008-04-15T23:31:00.000-06:002008-04-15T23:31:00.000-06:00I'm going to play devil's advocate here.[fanatic]O...I'm going to play devil's advocate here.<BR/><BR/>[fanatic]<BR/>Of course it's more important to get the God question settled first. It's not about God as such, it's about HELL. Going to HELL is, literally, infinitely bad. Nothing that happens during your life on Earth could possibly be as bad as going to HELL. It's better to be tortured by the Inquisition until you repent than to die a heretic nonbeliever and go to HELL. If suffering horribly on Earth reduces your chances of going to HELL by even the slightest amount, it will be worth it. In fact, if I knew that torturing you would reduce your chances of going to HELL by even the slightest amount, I would actually be obligated to torture you, because HELL is just that bad. I'd much rather die of dehydration than risk going to HELL. It's literally the only thing that matters, no matter how low the probability of going to HELL is.<BR/>[/fanatic]<BR/><BR/>How do you argue with this hypothetical fanatic? Suppose you two are trapped in the desert and you have one canteen of water between you. He wants to use it to baptize you and thereby keep you out of HELL when you die of dehydration, while you want to drink it in order to increase the probability you will survive to be rescued. <BR/><BR/>(I apologize for using act-utilitarian reasoning in forming the fanatic's argument. If it matters, imagine that the fanatic is an AI that has been programmed such that its only desire is the desire to maximize utility.)<BR/><BR/>See also: <A HREF="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/10/pascals-mugging.html" REL="nofollow">Pascal's Mugging</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com