Properties Relevant to Causing Harm

In response to a series of posts on the proposition that evidence-based faith is not a morally acceptable justification for policies that deprive others of life, health, or liberty, a member of the studio audience choose to write:

I think that it might be more relevant to consider the irreligious people out there -- particularly the atheists -- who are calling for the sacrifice of my life, health, and liberty. The twentieth century is a catalog of atheist regimes regularly calling for such sacrifices on the part of religious people.

The purpose of such a quote is hate-mongering. There is no reason to make such an assertion other than an interest on the part of the person making it to promote an unfounded hatred and fear of atheists and, as such, to put atheists – as a group (regardless of the merits of any given individual) at a political and social disadvantage. It is, in short, an instruction to the reader to think of atheists as dangerous and morally inferior to "religious people".

To see this, we need to simply look at the fact that the author choose to identify these people as atheist. Is there, perhaps, some other quality that these people have in common?

One is that they were heleocentrists. Every regime that the author mentioned is one in which the leaders believed that the Sun was at the center of the solar system. And, yet, the author does not see fit to warn us of the injustices committed by heliocentrists. He does not think that we need a warning of the degree to which heliocentrists are disposed to take the life, health, and liberty of others.

Another quality that these twentieth century regimes have had in common is that their leaders all tend to be male. Yet, the author does not think that there is just cause to warn us against male leadership – against the fact that when males rule a country that our life, health, and liberty is at risk.

The reason for choosing atheist as the identifying characteristic, and not heliocentrism or being male, is because the author does not have the bigot’s interest in promoting fear and hatred of heliocentrists or males.

Indeed, we may assume that the author himself fits in both of these categories. His interest is in promoting hatred and fear of atheists. That explains why the author idenfitied atheism as the defining characteristic. This is the hatred and fear he sought to nurture with his argument.

The only avenues of escape for this author would be for the author to state that being an atheist is somehow relevant to the disposition to deprive others of life, health, and liberty, while being a heliocentrist or a male is not. When, actually, of the three, being male is more relevant to the disposition to deprive others of life, health, and liberty than either of the other two.

Yet, even recognizing this fact that males are more strongly disposed to take the life, health, and property of others than females, we still insist that it would be unjust to judge all males accordingly. People do not bring up the argument that violent crimes are almost exclusively commited by males is reason to hate and fear all males. Even though the premise is true, people recognize that morality still demands that each individual be judged on his or her own merits, and that the moral male is not to be condemned merely because one can point historically to great evils committed by other males.

Yet, even given this – even given the fact that a stronger link can be drawn for maleness than for atheism, and that with respect to males we do not allow the historical fact that males have committed great evil to be proof that all males must be judged culpable - the author of the above quote sought to make atheism the defining characteristic. He sought to portray the atheist as the person to be hated and feared, rather than the heliocentrist or the male.

Why is that? What desires lie in the heart of the person who would do such a thing?

What lies in his heart is an interest in promoting the unfounded hatred and fear of others – to promote their social and political denigration through whatever means necessary, regardless of whether reason or morality supports that position.

As I said, no other theory better explains the observation that the author sought to make atheism the identifying characteristic, when other common elements exist, some are more relevant than atheism, and in the cases that are actually relevant we recognize the injustice of making the type of argument that the author sought to make against atheists.

Faith and the Moral Presumption Against Harm

This week I have been arguing against the association between religion and morality by arguing that religion does not provide the kinds of evidence that is required to justify policies that costs others their lives, health, or liberty. When it comes to doing harm to others, whether by flying airplanes into sky scrapers or by banning embryonic stem-cell research, the claim, "My faith justifies this action," is not morally sufficient.

One needs the type of evidence that would be admissible in court.

Furthermore, the instant that anybody starts testifying in favor of policies that will deprive others of life, health, or liberty for any reason, then he or she must be prepared for a vigorous cross-examination. They cannot morally be permitted to sit there and assert that others may be deprived of life, health, or liberty, and at the same time assert that nobody may challenge their testimony on the grounds that doing so is “insulting”.

Consistent with this argument I want to throw in the principle that the accused in this case – those who would be made to suffer the loss of life, health, or liberty – have a moral right to the presumption of innocence. It is never the duty of those who would be harmed to prove that harming them is wrong. The burden of proof is on those who argue in favor of doing harm. They must not only present evidence, but they must present evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

This means that the morally required default attitude to take towards any religion-based claim that people may be made to suffer a loss of life, health, or liberty is the attitude that they are mistaken. They need to prove their point. It is not sufficient that they offer evidence for their claim that harms are justified. It is necessary that they offer evidence that is beyond a reasonable doubt.

If this requirement is not met, then the presumption that no harm be done wins out, and the faith-based call to do harm to others must be rejected.

Notice that I am not talking about faith-based calls to help others. Helping others requires no justification – so it does not matter how poor the reasons are a person has or being helpful.

It is still consistent with this view that people can argue where these moral requirements come from. It is still consistent with this view to say that God created a universe in which there is a moral obligation to presume that harm should not be done to the life, health, or liberty of another human being, or if it arises as a natural property. I would describe it in the latter terms – that desires are reasons for action that exist for promoting an aversion to doing harm to the life, health, and liberty of another person – an aversion that requires ore and stronger reasons to outweigh.

This is true in the same way that people can dispute where trees came from – whether it emerged through evolution or through intelligent design. Different beliefs about the origins of a tree are not relevant to its existence, its height, its mass, or its chemical composition. The tree is equally there, and equally solid, for both participants.

The obligation not to do harm to the life, health, or liberty of another without good reason – the presumption against doing harm - is equally there as well.

"It is written in this book that I consider holy that people such as yourself shall suffer a loss of life, health, or liberty," is not a good enough reason. If it were, then we all should be dead. I do not care who you are, there is a religious book out there that calls for your death.

Faith that one may do harm to the life, health, and liberty of others is also not good enough. Nor is the assertion, "I know it to be true in my heart with a certainty that could only have come from God that people such as you may be harmed."

None of these have sufficient weight to outweigh the presumption that no harm be done without good reason to do so.

And for the sake of any religious readers who might want to dispute this principle, I simply ask you to consider all of the equally religious people out there who hold beliefs calling for the sacrifice of your life, health, and liberty.

Morality and the Concept of Faith

In my recent writings on the nature of faith and morality, a member of the studio audience wrote:

My own Christian faith is quite consistent with evidence, and has been based on evidence from the start. It is also not unreasoned. Maybe you don't agree with its conclusions, but that does not mean it is unreasoned.

I hold that by definition faith is belief ungrounded on any type of evidence. So, to the degree that a person has religious belief grounded on evidence then, by that fact alone, I would hold that this is not faith. It would be religious belief, but not faith.

This might not be how others have decided to use the term but, in the end, those types of consideations are not relevant. As long as a person keeps the use of a term consistent within his own writings, no matter how far it might deviate from the way somebody else uses the term, then this cannot be made the basis of an argument against him.

Changing definitions in mid-argument would make one guilty of the fallacy of equivocation.

However, keeping a constant definition throughout an argument, even if it is an unusual definition, does not commit any fallacy or lend itself automatically to any defect of reason.

You may disagree with this use of the term. You may have an interest in promoting some other term. Yet, none of that would change the fact that such a dispute is purely semantic and bears no substantive fruit.

We may dispute whether Pluto is a planet. However, when all is said and done, the dispute does not count for much. The diameter, surface features, distance from the sun, and chemical composition do not change whether we call it a planet or not.

No dispute over where to attach the term "faith" will affect the nature of belief without evidence.

The fact remains that I am talking about a defense of policies that cost others their life, their health, and their liberty. And I am talking about the type of evidence that is morally required to make those types of claims - and religious evidence does not qualify. What matters is the type of evidence that would be admissible in court.

If a person is advocating harm to others based on any weaker type of evidence - a type of evidence that would not be found acceptable in a court of law - then that person is acting immorally towards those that he argues shall be deprived of their life, health, or their liberty.

It does not matter what the name is. What matters is whether the type of evidence available is of a quality that can justify doing harm to others. That is the question to be asked, and that is the question the courtroom analogy helps us to answer.

Faith-Based Foundations for Causing Harm

As a point of clarification, when I said that the "Achilles' heel" of faith-based morality is the exclusion of faith-based testimony in a court of law, a member of the studio audience responded:

I always thought the Achilles' heel of faith-based morality was that it was based on something non-existent.

I want to distinguish, in these posts, between a fault and a vulnerability. Achilles had many faults. That the coating of invulnerability that protected him did not cover the back of his foot was not one of them. The Achilles' Heel represented the spot at which Achilles was vulnerable to attack.

In these posts, I am not seeking to demonstrate where faith-based morality is mistaken. I have done a fair amount of that in previous posts. I want to show where it is vulnerable – where and how a person can effectively press this argument that faith is not a good enough when it comes to defending policies that cause harm to others.

That is done by demonstrating the role of faith-based testimony in criminal court – against allowing prosecutors to call witnesses who declare that, as a matter of faith without evidence, they believe that the accused is guilty and the jury should deliver such a verdict.

In the discussions that have followed these postings, an anonymous member of the studio audience posted a link to a site that contained four different community brochures opposing homosexual marriage – a Jewish, a Protestant (called "Christian" at the site in question), a Catholic, and a Secular tract.

The point that I am arguing for is to argue that the first three are inadmissible.

Imagine a prosecutor, attempting to gain a conviction of the accused, calling four witnesses to the stand. The first witness is Jewish, who claims that as a matter of unsupported faith he believes the accused to be guilty. The second is Protestant. And the third is Catholic.

Furthermore, imagine a court system where this testimony is meant to persuade those members of the jury who subscribe to that religion. That is to say, when the Prosecutor calls the Protestant witness, swears him in, and has the witness declare, "I believe with a certainty that can only come from God and that needs no evidence that the accused is guilty," this is meant to actually persuade the six members of the jury who are Protestant. That is why the prosecutor put that witness on the stand – to persuade the Protestant jurors to vote that the accused is guilty.

Similarly, not only does the Prosecutor next summon a Catholic to the stand to declare, "I declare as a matter of unreasoned faith that the accused is guilty," the Catholic members are supposed to accept that as proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt – proof strong enough to vote for conviction. And the Jewish jurist is expected to vote for conviction on the testimony of the Jewish witness who says, "I believe as a matter of ungrounded faith that the accused is guilty."

Furthermore, these witnesses are being called in a social context where it is considered insulting for the defense attorney to question these three witnesses on a matter of faith. The instant the defense attorney stands to challenge the groundless faith-based testimony of the witness he is called bigoted, intolerant, and militant.

Apparently, justice does not allow the best defense of those who would be harmed. Instead, it requires the unquestioned acceptance of those who insist on doing the harm, as long as the advocates of harm claim that the harm they do is based on evidence-free, faith-based beliefs.

The only arguments that are relevant – and that should be considered – in justifying a policy that deprives others of life, health, and liberty are the secular arguments.

Even here, it is not sufficient that secular arguments exist. It is not even sufficient that there are people who believe those secular arguments. Secular objects must meet more rigid standards than this to count as evidence. These standards are what make secular evidence the only evidence fit to be presented in a court of law.

Furthermore, there is no piece of secular evidence that the prosecutor can provide that the defense attorney is not at liberty to challenge. There is no legitimate claim that the defense attorney must bite her tongue and accept evidence without question on the grounds that the witness would be insulted by the implication his claims are mistaken. The instant that the witness presents secular evidence, the defense attorney is free to challenge that evidence.

The very idea that an individual may be justly harmed by reasons that others offer only on the basis of evidence-free faith, and that the advocate of harm can claim an immunity from criticism on the grounds that criticizing their faith is insulting is, itself, a paradigm of injustice.

Secular Arguments for Religious Morality

My comments that morality does not allow claims that others are to be deprived of life, health, or liberty to be grounded on faith produced the following response from the studio audience.

Of course the whole post presupposes that people who oppose homosexual marriage or the use of human embryos in stem cell research neither have, nor offer, any reasons besides faith for their positions. Which is patently false.

Actually, it makes no such assumption.

To make my point, I compared the use of faith in order to justify policies that cost others their life, health, and liberty to the use of faith in a criminal trial. I used the principle that it would be wrong to allow a witness to declare in a courtroom, "I have a faith-based conviction that the accused is guilty." Proof of guilt requires more than the faith of the accuser.

Now, please note that my argument does not require any assumptions at all about the ability to convict the accused based on solid scientific reasoning. No matter how solid the prosecutor’s hard scientific evidence happens to be, it would never be appropriate for him to call somebody to the stand to say, "I think that the accused is innocent," based on faith.

Similarly, the ability to ground opposition to homosexual marriage or stem cell research on solid evidence does not change the fact that faith is not a fit ground for moral claims such as these. It is still a claim that only hard evidence is a fit ground for claims that others are to suffer policies that will take their life, health, and liberty.

If the accused can be proved guilty based on the evidence, then this is how it should be done. If the accused cannot be proved guilty based on the evidence, then the only morally responsible conclusion to draw is that the case for doing harm has not been made – that causing harm is not justified.

In neither case is it legitimate to make accusations grounded only on the faith of the accuser – whether independent evidence for a conviction exists or not.

Yet, there is another issue related to this. This is the fact that while people who base their conclusions on religious premises often claim to have secular arguments for their position, those are secular arguments that themselves are so poor they would never be accepted in a court. They are examples of poor arguments embraced, not because reason gives the person cause to embrace them, but because they give an illusion of support to conclusions that the person wants to see supported.

We can see this in the past with absurd beliefs that were held by those who favored black slavery. Their desire to embrace conclusions that allowed them to profit from the institution of slavery encouraged them to clutch a number of secular straw arguments that gave the illusion of support to slavery. For example, it was argued that blacks were not mentally developed enough to be treated like adults. They needed to be thought of as, at best, children (though no good parent would treat the child the way slave masters treated their slaves).

Whenever we see people embrace poor arguments we get a window into their desires – and, thus, into their moral character. If it is not reason that is driving them to accept these conclusions, we have cause to look for another reason. Commonly, when people embrace an argument and support it with poor reasoning it is because they want the conclusion to be true. They want it so badly that anything that looks like it might support the desired conclusion is accepted.

However, in the case of promoting policies that deprive others of life, health, and liberty, this means that we are dealing with people who have learned to embrace these harms. They have so much affection for the idea that others can be made to lose their life, health, or liberty that they will grab onto any argument that appeals to justify their conclusion.

Whereas somebody not so eager to see the harm to the life, health, and liberty of others as legitimate would be able to see the holes on those arguments. Their aversion to seeing others harmed will drive them to say, "I'm not going to accept that argument unless and until reason leaves me no alternative."

By giving us a window into the desires of people, a willingness gives us a window into the moral character of those people. It gives us reason to ask, "What type of person is it who is so eager to believe that others are deserving of this loss to their life, health, and liberty?"

The Achilles' Heal of Faith-Based Morality

The Achilles' heal for the idea that morality is somehow tied to faith can be found by looking at the model of the criminal court.

If faith were such a great foundation for knowledge, then why do we not allow proclamations of faith in a court of law?

We should pass legislation allowing prosecutors to call witnesses to the witness stand who believes, as a matter of groundless faith, that the accused is guilty and deserving of whatever punishment is befitting of the crime he is accused of.

Prosecutor: Let me be clear about this. You have is a firm conviction that comes from God that the accused is guilty.

Witness: Yes, sir.

Prosecutor: I want to remind you that you are under oath. You have sworn to tell the truth.

Witness: I am telling you the truth. Even though I have no evidence I am firmly convinced that the accused is guilty. I could not be this certain unless God himself is responsible for my certainty, and God would not lie.

Prosecutor: No further questions. You may step down.

See, under our contemporary social rules, the defense attorney is not permitted to question the witness if the witness grounds his belief on faith. If the prosecutor challenges the witness in any way, then he is guilty of being 'militant' and 'intolerant'.

However, the view that evidence is an appropriate ground for the conviction of the accused is just as much an article of faith as the view that groundless religious belief is an appropriate ground. The idea that evidence shall be required in convicting a person of a crime is just another religion.

In fact, this serves as a model for what the 'new atheists' have attempted to accomplish in the past few years. These defense attorneys have stood up and dared to question the faith of those who use their faith to ground social and political attitudes harmful to others.

The faith-based conviction that the people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon deserved to die is not good enough.

The faith-based conviction that people with injuries and illnesses that can be treated or cured using stem cell research should be left to suffer or die is not good enough.

The faith-based conviction that homosexuals should not be permitted to enjoy the benefits of marriage are not good enough.

The faith-based conviction that women can be raped by their husbands and imprisoned in their own homes for life, denied decent medical care and an education, is not good enough.

The 'new atheist' defense attorneys are standing up and saying, "Your faith is not sufficient reason to condemn others to death, suffering, and the loss of liberty. To do these things, you need evidence."

However, in demanding evidence for imposing death, suffering, and the loss of liberty on others, the atheist is accused of being militant and intolerant – intolerant of those who insist that faith-based justification for bringing about death, suffering, and the loss of liberty is, in fact, better than evidence. Consequently, the advocates of faith-based harms now insist that respect for their religion requires that people making a demand for evidence now be silenced. This should not be allowed because it insults those who wish to ground the harms they would inflict on others on (their) faith alone.

Let me be clear, I have some moral objections to raise against the 'new atheists' as well.

One is their disposition to leap from propositions about 'a religion' to conclusions about 'religion' without justification – to commit the informal fallacy of hasty generalization when it seems politically or socially expedient to do so.

The other their hypocrisy. They condemn behavior on the part of theists and then engage in the same behavior themselves when it is convenient to do so. For example, while they condemn the theist for abandoning reason while they leap to the defense of “new atheists” who use the informal fallacy of hasty generalization.

Yet, when these errors are scraped away (as they should be), the bulk of what the 'new atheists' are saying is that when it comes to condemning people to death and suffering, the faith of those who do the condemning is not good enough. Evidence is required – evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that this death and suffering is necessary. Otherwise, the accused shall enjoy the benefit of the doubt.

Just as within a court, real evidence must be provided before the accused can be justifiably deprived of life, health, or liberty. It is not wrong to say of the accuser who simply has faith that the accused may be deprived of life, health, and liberty that this simply is not good enough.

Faith, Reason, and Justifications for Harm

In a moral context, I have nothing good to say about faith.

When it comes to making the claim, "You deserve to suffer harm," the person to be harmed has a right to ask what reason exists to do that harm.

The answer, "I have no reason to harm you, but I have faith that you deserve to suffer nonetheless," simply is not good enough. When a person to be harmed asks what the reasons are, those reasons need to be real and demonstratable.

I see a great deal of similarity between somebody who will fly an airplane into a sky scraper in the name of God (driven by his faith), and a person who will vote against stem cell research or to ban homosexual marriage (driven by his faith). Both do harm to others. Both do it because they claim that God told them so. Both are driven by faith and are beyond the reach of reason.

The latter - the person who supports a ban on stem cell research or homosexual marriage - is even the more deadly of the two. The costs of a prohibition on stem-cell research, in terms of lives lost and monetary costs, easily exceeds the costs of 9/11.

To make matters worse, while these people do not consider it wrong to support legislation harmful to others - that, in some instances, gets people killed - they insist that it is wrong to question their faith. Getting people killed - that's okay. Questioning the faith that gets people killed - that's prohibited.

I bring this up because a member of the studio audience brought up the issue of faith.

Many theists claim that faith in god or a supernatural force is the same as having faith that say, the earth revolves around the sun, or that there are other galaxies out there trillions of miles away. My thoughts are that I do have a sort of faith in other people. Scientists, doctors and other people who HAVE the means by which to find out this information. I have to say that having faith in another person is much different than having faith in something supernatural.

Convicting a person of a crime on the basis of scientific evidence (to use one example), as opposed to convicting him on the basis of an evidence-free "faith" that he is guilty, is not the same thing.

I have no faith in science. Science earns my respect through its ability to predict the future. It earns my respect because it can tell me that a particular medical procedure will decrease the odds that a cancer will be fatal, because it can tell me when a hurricane will hit, because it can tell me how to build a sky scraper that can withstand an earthquake, because it can tell me what to do to prevent the spread of disease.

And when the scientist makes these claims, she can back them up. The percentage of patients who die of that type of cancer actually goes down, the hurricane goes where predicted, the sky scraper remains standing during the earthquake, and small pox and polio disappear (or nearly so) from the face of the earth.

Religion requires faith precisely because it cannot produce these types of results.

Religious people tell us that prayer in school provides protection against terrorist attacks, and that laws against abortion will prevent a city from being hit by a hurricane. However, they have never been able to provide any demonstrable evidence that this is the case. If they could, then variables such as "number of abortion clinics in an area" would turn out as a significant variable in scientific equations predicting the course of hurricanes, in addition to ocean surface temperature, the location of various high and low pressure systems around the hurricane, and the spin of the earth.

Some instances that the defenders of faith attempt to count in their favor is simply a rational application of principles of probability.

I have no faith in my doctors. I do know that if I visit a doctor on getting the signs of some sort of malady that the probability that the malady will be fatal goes down. There is a reason why it goes down - because doctors, in general, have the best information on how to discover a particular malady and on what courses of action have (in scientific studies) demonstrated the best success rates against those maladies.

When I choose an option with a 10% chance of dying over one with a 50% chance of dying, I am not acting on faith. I am playing the odds.

A person's natural right to liberty gives them a right to act on faith - without any knowledge but with "certainty" in the results - if they so wish. Up to the point where their actions are harmful to others. Those who demand harm to others on the basis of faith clearly violate this principle. Those who also insist that it is insulting and wrong to question their faith-based claims that others may be harmed take this evil to an extreme.

Hypothetical vs Moral Ought

In an earlier comment, Luke wrote:

In the last two posts it seems you're trying to bridge the gap between a hypothetical oguht and a moral ought, but I don't see how you do it.

There is, in fact, a link between hypothetical ought and moral ought. Moral ought is a species of hypothetical ought. It is a hypothetical ought that applies to using the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires.

Let me explain.

Hypothetical ought is the ought of means and ends. It says, "If your end is X, and Y will bring about X, then you ought to do Y."

There is no rationality of ends. At least, there is no rationality of ends as ends. If X desire that P, there is no sense in which P "deserves" to be the object of a desire or that having P as the object of a desire can be "right" or "wrong" it self.

However, every end is also, at the same time, a means. We cannot evaluate the desire that P according to whether this P inherently deserves to be the object of a desire. However, we can evaluate the desire that P according to whether the desire that P will fulfill or thwart other desires.

In other words, can promoting a desire that P be a useful way to fulfilling other desires? Or, at least, a useful way to remove things that might thwart those desires?

Here, we are talking about hypothetical oughts. If (other desires that exist), then it makes sense to promote a desire that P or inhibit a desire that Q.

However, these hypothetical oughts, as opposed to other hypothetical oughts, are specifically applied to ends (or maleable desires). These are the only types of oughts that are applied to ends - though it applied to ends as means, not to ends as ends.

Moral oughts are hypothetical oughts that apply to people generally that say, "You people have many and strong reasons to promote a desire that P, or inhibit a desire that Q."

As it turns out, the common social tools for promoting or inhibit maleable desires are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. So, a moral claim is a claim that people have hypothetical-ought reasons to apply the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote or inhibit particular desires.

In saying that a person morally ought not to perform some act A is to say that people generally have hypothetical-ought reasons to apply the tools of condemnation and punishment against people whose desires are such that they will tend to perform acts of type A.

Other People's Desires

I often say, "Desires are the only reasons for action that exist."

However, we should be clear. My desires are reasons that exist for my actions. Your desires are reasons that exist for your actions. My desires are not reasons that exist for your actions, nor are your desires reasons that exist for my actions.

As it turns out, if everybody's desire was a reason for everybody else’s action, we would have no need for (criminal) law or morality. Everybody would automatically consider everybody else’s interests. It is because reasons for action cannot cross personal boundaries that we have a need for (criminal) law and morality.

So, I have desires that would be fulfilled by performing action A.

Action A has an effect that can be presented in the purely descriptive statement D.

You have a particularly strong aversion to D (e.g., D is a state in which you are in excruciating pain or one in which your child is made to suffer permanent and severe harm).

You tell me that I should not do A.

I ask, "Why?"

You answer, "Because A will bring about D"

I answer, "So?"

If you want a purely descriptive statement to have any relevance to my decision as to which action to perform, then it must either be the case that I have a reason not to perform D (D will thwart some desire of mine), or D will bring about E and I have a reason to not bring about E.

(We need to add caveats in that my actions will also depend on my beliefs. However, for the sake of simplicity, let us assume only true beliefs for now.)

The fact that D is something that you have reason to avoid is not, in itself, a reason for me not to bring about D.

However, your aversion to D (e.g., your aversion to pain or your aversion to your child suffering permanent harm) is a reason for you to give me a reason not to bring about D.

You have two ways to give me a reason not to do A.

Method 1: You say to me, "You also have a desire that Q. If you perform A, then I will thwart your desire that Q."

Method 1 is the way of criminal law.

"Thwart your desire that Q" involves such things as fines, imprisonment, maiming, and execution. All of these tend to universally thwart desires of those who are subject to them. Consequently, all of these give others a reason for action to not perform the act that would result in punishment.

Method 2: You act in ways that alter my desires. You either reduce or eliminate the desires that would be fulfilled by my doing A, you give me an aversion to doing A itself, or you give me an aversion to some effect of A (such as an aversion to causing others great pain or to do permanent harm to children).

Method 2 is the way of morality.

If you can give me an aversion to causing others great pain, then I can no longer respond to your statement, “Your action will cause me great pain," by saying "So?" If I have an aversion to causing others great pain, your statement that A will cause you great pain, added to my aversion not to cause others great pain, means that I have a reason not to do A.

If that aversion to causing others pain is made sufficiently strong, then I can be given more of a reason not to do A then I have for doing A.

Method 2 has certain advantages over Method 1.

Threats to thwart the desires of others depend (a) on having enough power to carry out the threat, and (b) on the ability to acquire enough information to direct the threat effectively. Method 1 is not effective against those who are too powerful to be punished, or on those who have an opportunity to perform A without getting caught.

However, Method 2 works even on those in power, and even on those who can act without getting caught.

If I am an extremely powerful individual, then I am going to put that power to work fulfilling the most and strongest of my desires. If those desires include an aversion to causing others pain, then that is one of the desires that I am going to use my power to fulfill. My power would be no threat to you.

If I have a strong aversion to causing your pain then it does not matter whether I can cause you pain in secret – and get away with it. People do not do things that they have reasons-for-action not to do even in secret. Nobody has to worry about the person sneaking food that he hates when nobody is watching him, or of doing great harm to somebody that he loves when he can get away with it. He does not want to do these things, so he will not do them, even in secret.

So, I have desires that would motivate me to perform action A.

You respond that I should not do A.

I ask, "Why?"

You say, "Because it is wrong."

I say, "So?"

Assuming that I have no aversion to doing what is wrong, you are stuck. The claim that something is wrong is not necessarily a reason for me not do it.

However, the claim, "Because it is wrong," is a flag to everybody that people generally have many and strong “reasons for action that exist” to bring Method 1 and Method 2 to bear against those who have desires that would motivate them to perform Action A. It is not a reason for action for me not to do A, but it claims that there are reasons for action for people generally to act in ways to give me a reason not to do A.

There is one more point that I would like to make. Even if I have no aversion to causing people pain, I have “reasons for action” to promote an overall aversion to causing pain. Even if I have no aversion to taking the property of others without their consent, I have "reasons for action" for promoting an overall aversion to taking property without consent. And even if I have no aversion to wantonly killing others, I have "reasons for action" to promote an overall aversion to killing others.

Which means if a person answers, "So?" to the statement, "X is wrong," one possible response is, "How would you like to live in a world where people freely go about causing everybody pain?" Or, "What if everybody did that?"

So, I might not have an aversion to causing others pain, and I might not have an aversion to doing that which is wrong. However, I cannot simply say, "So?" to the statement "X is wrong," because this typically means that even I have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to people doing X.

Shouldness

Somebody tells you, "You should do X."

You ask, "Why?"

The only sensible answer to this question is that the speaker must give you a "reason for action" for doing X. If he says anything that does not count as a reason for action, then you have grounds to challenge him with the question, "If you are not giving me a reason for action, then why are you saying that your claim is relevant to what I should do?"

Furthermore, that sensible answer must refer to something real. It must exist. If he gives you a reason for action that does not exist, then . . . well, then his claim that he has a reason that is relevant to a real-world action is false. Imaginary reasons are only suitable for imaginary actions.

So, when you ask, "Why should I do X?" the appropriate answer would be one or more reasons for action that exist.

One can change the meaning of "should" if she wants. She can change the meaning so that it has nothing to do with reasons for action that exist. However, if she does this, then she changes the meaning away from anything that is at all relevant to prescribing a given action. Recommendations for courses of action require reasons for action that exist. Either the speaker's statement refers to reasons for action that exist, or it has nothing to do with recommending an action.

Desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

However, desires ARE reasons for action and they DO exist.

Desires are also real, just as protons, black holes, and subroutines in computer programs. As with these other entities, they yield statements that are true or false in the same sense that any claim in science can be true or false.

Desires can be expressed in the form of propositional attitudes. To say that, "Agent desires that P" is to say that Agent is motivated to act so as to realize states of affairs in which "P" is true. The "desire that P" selects the goal or the end of his action. He then goes about selecting the means that will realize that end.

The selection of means depends on beliefs, but the selection of ends does not. Desires alone select the ends. Desires and facts about the world determine what is the best or most efficient means. However, desires and beliefs will determine what the agent will do.

A person may be thirsty. She sees a glass that she believes contains fresh water on the table. Her thirst (desire-as-end) and her belief that the glass contains good thirst-quenching liquid, drives her to drink the contents of the glass.

However, we are assuming that the contents of the glass had been poisoned.

Our agent's desires select the end (a state in which her thirst is quenched without killing her). Our agent's desires and her beliefs (e.g., that the glass contains thirst-quenching liquid) determines her actual actions.

However, our agent's desires plus facts about the world (including the fact that she has desires that are more likely to be fulfilled if she remains alive, and the fact that glass contains a poison that will kill her) determines what she should do - which may be different from what she will do

She should not drink from the glass.

Meaning, there are reasons for action that exist that recommend against drinking from the glass.

"Why shouldn't I drink from the glass?"

"Because you have desires that can best be fulfilled if you continue to live and those desires will be thwarted if you drink from the glass."

Where this statement is true, it is objectively true. Where this statement is false, it is objectively false.

If somebody wants to claim that desire utilitarianism does not account for an account of what a person should do, ask them this. "What would you use in answering this 'why' question? Other than desires, your only option is to answer with a statement that does not refer to reasons for action at all, or to reasons for action that do not exist. Neither option is relevant to answer the question, 'Why should I do X?'"

This, however, still leaves us with an interesting question. What do we do with desires that are not our own? Other people's desires are 'reasons for action that exist'. However, they are reasons for their action, not for mine. When it comes to my action, other people's desires seem to have no relevance. Others may be harmed by my action. However, how does their aversion to states that would result from my action count as a reason for me not perform that action?

Stay tuned.

Descrption, Prescription, and Reasons for Action

I have gotten a number of comments recently concerning the distinction between a descriptive claim and a prescriptive claim.

For example, this relates to Luke's question:

Yes, but then you are only describing the reasons for which people actually do things. This is a descriptive theory of intentional action. How do you get from descriptive to prescriptive?

Actually, I describe the reasons people have for doing things. What people actually do is a combination of their desires and beliefs. If a person drinks a glass of water that happens to be poisoned, I describe why she actually drank the water (she was thirsty and she believed the water was not poisoned).

However, I can also prescribe that she not drink the water (because the relationship between the state of affairs that will result from drinking the water and her desires is not what she believes it will be).

At the root of it, if somebody wants to assert that there is some sort of objective moral truth (as I do), they had better be prepared to defend moral claims as being both (at the same time) descriptive and prescriptive. Insofar as it is a moral claim, it must be prescriptive. Insofar as it is objectively true, it must be descriptive.

I do need to clarify that by objective in this sense I do not mean independent of any mental state. I am talking about objective in the sense of refers to something in the real world. Mental states are a part of the real world, as are relationships between mental states and states of affairs in the world.

Relationships between mental states and sates of affairs in the world are clearly not objective in the sense that they are independent of any mental state. In the absence of mental states, they would cease to exist. However, they are still objective in the sense that you can point to something in the real world and say, "That's it," even if the thing you are pointing to is at least partially made up of mental states.

It does not follow that, just because a claim is descriptive that it cannot be prescriptive. If you begin with this assumption, then you are begging the question against any type of moral realism. This is a claim that has to be defended. It cannot be assumed. So, "Hey, your claim here is descriptive," is not proof that one is not talking about values (prescriptions). One needs to claim something more. One needs to claim, "Hey, your claim here has nothing to do with reasons for action."

If this is true, then one has proved that the claim being challenged has nothing to do with value.

Value exists as a relationship between reasons for action that exist and states of affairs.

True value claims are descriptive in that they are concerned with actual relationships between reasons for action that exist and states of affairs. The claim points to something real – even if that which is real happens to be a mental state (i.e., a desire).

True value claims are prescriptive in that they are concerned with actual relationships between reasons for action that exist and states of affairs. The claim points to a reason for doing something – an end or a goal – and identifies the action as an effective way to realize that goal or end state.

True value claims are descriptive and prescriptive at the same time.

Now, I also hold that desires are the only reasons for action that exist. Divine commands, intrinsic values, categorical imperatives . . . if any of these reasons for action actually existed, they would be relevant to moral claims. However, they do not exist.

Consequently, any claim of the form, "Here is a reason for action that the agent not drink the water – because God commands that no water be drank on Wednesdays and today is Wednesday." This type of claim is false. No such reason for action (or, in this case, inaction) exists.

Or, any claim of the form, "There is a reason for action that says that the woman ought not to drink the water in that women drinking water on Thursdays is intrinsically bad, and today is Thursday," is also false. If intrinsic values existed they would be morally relevant reasons for action. However, they do not exist. Therefore, any claim that refers to an intrinsic value is a false claim and does not describe a reason for action that exists.

Any claim that refers to a desire refers to a reason for action that exists. These claims can be true. They can also be false – if they refer to a desire that does not exist, or they assert a relationship between a state of affairs and a desire that is not true.

Of course, we also have the power to make claims about relationships between states of affairs and desires that people generally have reason to promote or inhibit. These types of claims are also real.

If an action bears a particular relationship to desires that people generally have reason to promote, then they have reasons for action to bring the social tools of praise and reward to bear to do the promoting. If an action bears a particular relationship to desires that people generally have reason to inhibit, then people have reason to bring the social tools of condemnation and punishment to bear to do the inhibiting.

In both cases, if you are describing a relationship between an object of evaluation and reasons for action that exist, you are also (at the same time) prescribing that object of evaluation in virtue of its relationship to reasons for action that exist.

Now, not all descriptive claims are prescriptive. This is true because not all descriptive claims refer to reasons for action. However, a descriptive claim that describes a relationship between an object of evaluation and a reason for action is, at the same time, prescriptive.

Evidence of descriptivity is not proof against prescriptivity.

Steve Harvey's Anti-Atheist Bigotry

We have another candidate for next year’s list of examples of anti-atheist bigotry.

The Friendly Atheist has reported on an episode of the Tyra Banks show in which Steve Harvey vilified atheists as inherently immoral and dangerous.

(See Friendly Atheist, Relationship "Experts" Rip on Atheists)

You are sitting up there talking to a dude and he tells you he’s an atheist, you need to pack it up and go home. You talking to a person who don’t believe in God… what’s his moral barometer? Where’s it at? It's nowhere. You gotta get into this stuff.

There might be some sense in the claim that a woman looking for a spouse should consider religious differences. Differing religious views might well bring future conflict that would not be healthy for a marriage. In the same way that a person may seek compatible tastes in the number of children to have, career ambitions, and financial matters, there is some sense in seeking a mate with religious views that one is comfortable with.

However, this was not Harvey's point. Harvey’s comments speak to two prejudices.

The first is that he speaks of atheists as other – as outsiders – "them". His advice only makes sense under the assumption that he views his audience to include only people who have a personal relationship with God by default. It runs on the assumption that whatever "atheists" are, they are people that it is fit for him only to talk about, not people who are fit subjects to be talking to. That is to say, "We certainly will not want anything to do with them."

And, of course, the reason they are unfit marriage partners is because they lack a moral footing. They are a threat – likely to do harm. They are people to be feared.

Imagine somebody making the claim that a person seeing a perspective mate should certainly not marry somebody who is black. Here, if one looks at the statistical evidence, we do see that blacks are more likely to divorce than whites and more likely to be convicted of a crime.

Immediately, he would be denounced for the bigotry inherent in this statement because, morally, it does not matter what statistical group we get lumped in – we have a right to be judged according to our own qualities.

Every one of us can be put into a huge number of groups. In addition to being an atheist, I am also white, male, born in Montana, with post-graduate education, a blogger, somebody who studied moral philosophy, married, born in July, non-smoker, non-drinker, living in his own home, non-driver, and so on.

Of all of the groups that belong to, members of each one have a particular percentage of its members in prison, for example. It is also mathematically inevitable that at least one of them has a larger percentage of its members in prison as that of any other group that I belong to. Maybe it is Montanans, or people born on a Thursday, or right-handed people with freckles. Somewhere in the infinitely long list of groups I can be thrown into there is one with a substantial portion of its members in prison.

The same is true of you – and of every other human being on the planet. This is true as a matter of mathematical necessity.

Now, let it be said that you are an unfit marriage partner because of your membership in that group.

If this is a valid form of reasoning then none of us are fit marriage partners because every one of us belongs to at least one group with a high incidence of criminal behavior. And the decision to use that membership, as opposed to any of the infinite number of memberships that are also applicable (we also have membership in a group with a lowest incidence of criminal behavior than all of the other groups we belong to), is entirely arbitrary and capricious.

It is, in short, malicious bigotry.

However, it is also evidence of malicious bigotry to make derogatory claims about a group of people that are not even true – to promote groundless hatred and fear. Whenever anybody makes a false claim we can ask why that person came to adopt that error as opposed to the millions of other errors available.

We will typically find that explanation in what the person wants to believe. So Harvey wants to believe that atheists have no moral anchor. In doing so, he shows that he values the hatred and fear of atheists. It is not a belief he stumbled upon and been forced into by the overwhelming weight of the evidence. It is a belief he sought out and embraced - one that he cherishes and has value to him. The reason the belief that atheists have no moral grounding is loved is precisely because it gives weight to the hatred and bigotry he is seeking to justify.

And Tyra Blanks is, at best, afraid to challenge expressed bigotry against atheists.

It is also relevant to note that host Tyra Banks did not see fit to call Harvey out on his prejudice. Her guest was saying that all atheists are unfit to be married – that any woman who marries an atheist is making a mistake. She let it slide either without noticing, or noticing and not caring about, the bigotry being exhibited in front of her.

We can well imagine what her reaction would have been – what it should have been – if Harvey had declared that a woman looking for a mate should make sure that her perspective husband is not a "Christ killer" who would certainly only see her as a financial asset. What we would expect to hear is shock that somebody would come on her show to say such a thing and a quick declaration that, "I think those claims are wrong and bigoted and I certainly cannot agree with them."

Tyra Banks gave us silence.

An External Purpose for Being

I notice that there are still a lot of atheists who attempt to attach some sort of mystical purpose to their existence. For example, there is the claim that we are the instruments by which the universe discovers itself, or that we are here to find out the nature of our existence (a purpose thwarted by covering up the facts with religious fairy tails).

I do not know where this want for an external purpose comes from. Perhaps it is some left-over brain program from our childhood where we are inclined to prefer the values of our parents. Perhaps it is something that is taught from one generation to the next without stopping to consider the wisdom (or foolishness) of doing so.

Whatever its source, there is no external purpose and, even if there were, it would not have any special significance.

With respect to the above case – the universe has no desires. It particularly has no desire to discover itself, Furthermore, it has no means to create us as an instrument for discovering itself.

Finally, even if all of the above claims were false, why would it be more valuable to be an instrument or tool being used by another for the fulfillment of its own desires? This is akin to valuing slavery or rape – because the slave and the rape victims are also treated as mere instruments for the fulfillment of external desires.

To see the problem with this idea that an external purpose is somehow necessary for a life to have value, I imagine that the universe is some sort of reality show.

Imagine that some omnipotent being who was bored with his life seeking some entertainment. He creates a planet and populates it with people who he has made disposed to split up into tribes that go to war with each other.

To help matters along, he appears in different ways to different people telling each of them, "You are the chosen ones. You have the one true religion. Everybody else is a bunch of infidels." All of this is then designed to set up conflict and war. God then sits down on his heavenly recliner with a bag of chips and a beer to watch and see who wins.

If this story were true, we would have our external purpose – our divine "reason for living". However, it does not follow from this that there is any greatness to be found in sacrificing ourselves for God's amusement. The claim, "You must believe in and obey God because, without God, our life would have no meaning and purpose," falls flat if that meaning or purpose is to have a bit part in the ultimate game of Survivor Earth.

The relevant facts are

(1) There is no external purpose to our being here

(2) Even if there were an external purpose it would have no special claim to our allegiance,

(3) If there were an external purpose, and it was a good purpose, the drive to adopt that external purpose is still internal.

There is no justification that a person who serves an external purpose has a better life than one who does not. Even if an external purpose has value we are still trapped by the need for an internal desire to serve that external purpose.

No matter what we do we cannot escape the fact that, ultimately, our motivation and the purposes we serve are internal, not external – or external only in the derived sense of being an external object of an internal desire.

Consequently, it makes no sense to say that a life governed by an internal purpose is "empty" and "meaningless" on account of this absence of some type of external purpose. Indeed, a life spent in service to an external purpose can be even more meaningless and empty. However, even a person who finds value in ‘serving God’ or ‘helping the universe discover itself’ or some other external purpose is still merely following an internal desire to do so.

It can be downright evil.

Even in the absence of an external purpose, there are internal purposes that people generally have reason to promote or to inhibit. However, when we talk about the reasons that people have to promote or inhibit certain malleable desires, at least we have the advantage of talking about something real. Plus, we have the advantage of talking about something where we are not inclined towards the false belief that those reasons have a special merit above and beyond their status of being other people’s reasons for action.

We come into the world with the opportunity to view a cosmic flash of the universe’s life. We have no external purpose for being here. We are simply here. For now.

But, now that we're here, what are we going to do with ourselves?

What Representative John Shimkus and Confessed Child Killer Ria Ramkissoon Have in Common

There are two stories reported over the weekend that are interesting when held up next to each other.

Story 1 (See: Associated Press: Md. mom pleads guilty in cult starvation death)

A former religious cult member pleaded guilty Monday to starving her 1-year-old son to death after making an unusual deal with prosecutors: If the child is resurrected, her plea will be withdrawn. Ria Ramkissoon, 22, also agreed to testify against four other members of the now-defunct religious group known as 1 Mind Ministries. All four are charged with first-degree murder in the death of Javon Thompson.

According to a statement of facts, the cult members stopped feeding the boy when he refused to say "Amen" after a meal. After Javon died, Ramkissoon sat next to his decomposing body and prayed for his resurrection.

Story 2: Rep. John Shimkus: God decides when the "earth will end".

Representative John Shimkus of Illinois 19th district uses religious text, "the infallible word of God" to stake a position on global warming.

So, it seems, if one uses religion to justify actions that kill a single child, one is a murderer fit only to go to prison.

If one uses religion to justify a political policy that puts millions of children at risk, one is fit to be a member of the House of Representative and to put those policies into action.

Imagine somebody choosing to hire Ria Ramkissoon to run a child care service and to willingly put their child in her care.

Though clearly absurd, it is orders of magnitude better than selecting John Shimkus to serve in the House of Representative and to give him athority over decisions that will affect millions of children for generations to come.

And while Ramkissoon will almost certainly go to jail (as will the members of the cult that she will testify against), there is no court for convicting the likes of Shimkis and for holding him responsible for the harm his absurd religiously based views will do to future children. He will live out his life as a free man with whatever power and money his polical position will allow, granting power to those who think as he does.

In fact, mere words warrant no more of a response but words and private action.

However, words can legitimately include words of condemnation, and voting is a private action - as are contributions to political candidates who might stand in opposition to somebody such as Shimkis in either a primary or a general election.

Defining Reasons for Action

A member of the studio audience forwarded a question to me about desire utilitarianism.

What does "there are reasons for action that exist such that..." actually mean?

1. There are reasons why people do act such that... 2. There are reasons why people should act such that... 3. Something else. Please explain.

1 is just describing people's mental states, which makes this subjectivism. 2 makes the definition circular. Is there a 3?

Let’s look at the first option presented to us. We need to clarify (1) because there are two main types of reasons. There are what we might call blind reasons – reasons without intention. And there are goal-directed reasons or reasons that form intentions.

A blind cause is something that just happens without an objective. If a mountainside should give way, rock and dirt into a valley that blocks a river and creates a lake, the goal of gravity was not to create a lake. Gravity did not say, "I would like to have a lake here, I know, I'll bring the mountain side down and then I will have my lake." There was no intention – no purpose – behind the avalanche.

Goal directed action, on the other hand, is something where an end is identified, then the agent begins looking for means to achieve that end. The end, perhaps, is to control flooding, or to provide water for irrigation, or to generate electrical power. For each of these a means is selected of dropping a bunch of material into a river and forming a lake behind it.

"Desires are the only reasons for action that exist," points to the fact that desires are the only entities that direct action by identifying an end and searching for means to that end. These goal-directed reasons are used as the explanation for intentional action.

We use beliefs and desires all the time to explain why the people around us did what they did, and to predict what they will do in the future.

The objection is that if I select option 1 that this "makes this subjectivism". I have always stated that there is one sense of the word "subjectivism" that applies to desire utilitarianism. Desire utilitarianism holds that value depends on desire – that there is no value independent of desire. If all of the desires were to disappear, then all value will disappear, since all value exists in the form of relationships between states of affairs and desires.

However, it is still the case that desires are real, and we cannot understand (objective) reality except as a place that contains desires and relationships between desires and states of affairs. Value depends on mental states, but mental states are real. And so are values.

The type of "subjectivism" that I complain about are those that reduce moral terms to relationships between objects of evaluation and the desires of the agent as if these were the only relationships that exist. This form of subjectivism needs to be rejected because, what also exists, are reasons for action for promoting or inhibiting malleable desires, and relationships between objects of evaluation and desires that people generally have reason to promote or to inhibit.

And all of these relationships exist. We can make objectively true and false claims about all of them. Call it "subjectivism" if you will. It is "subjectivism" with right and wrong answers, a great many of which are independent of the attitudes of the speaker.

Railton2: The Fully Informed Agent

Faithlessgod, in a comment concerning Railton's ethics, posted an account that describes it in the following terms:

there is the question over ethics serving to best fulfill the desires of Agent versus advised by Agent+. Railton and Griffin argue that ethics should only serve to fulfil the informed desires of Agent (that is as informed by Agent+) even if the Agent is, in fact, actually uninformed.

Agent+ is described as:

the Agent as full informed, having succeeded at a cognitive therapy etc. and so would know that certain actual desires-as-ends of the Agent are unfulfillable.

The question that I would then have is: What is the difference between the option that best fulfills the desires of Agent versus those advised by Agent+? Would Agent+ ever have any reason to recommend anything other than wht would best fulfill the desires of Agent?

We can draw a distinction between what uninformed Agent believes will best fulfill his desires, compared to what fully informed Agent+ believes will best fulfill the desires of Agent. Furthermore, it follows from the hypthesis that Agent+ only has true beliefs, while Agent is likely to have false beliefs.

However, it does not follow from this that there is a difference in the fact of the matter with respect to what will fulfill the desires of Agent.

This is true in the same case that Agent may have different beliefs about the chemicals that are found in an orange than a fully informed chemist. However, the fact that the uninformed Agent and the Chemist disagree, or the fact that the chemist knows the right answer, argues that the chemical composition of an orange is actually different depending on whether it is being referred to by Agent or by a chemist. There is still only one fact of the matter, and it is the same for both individuals.

We can see this in terms of the fact that Agent+ knows that certain desires are unfilfillable, while Agent is ignorant of this. The ignorant Agent may well waste energy trying to fulfill unfulfillable desires. However, the answer to the question, "What best fulfills the desires of Agent?" does not change.

The account above mentions cognitive therapy. We can describe cognitive therapy by looking at one of its specific applications. Cognitive therapy is used, in one set of cases, to deal with irrational fears by pointing out to the patient and getting the patient to fully realize that the fear is irrational. The patient is asked to fully visualize "the worst that could happen" from a situation and to realize - to truly know - that the worst that could happen is not really that bad.

So, let's assume that I have a fear of public speaking. The cognitive therapist helps me with this by helping me to realize that the consequences of public speaking are not as bad as I have imagine them to be. Once I realize this fact, I find it easier to get up in front of a crowd and give a speech.

Has the cognitive therapist actually changed my "desires-as-ends?" Or did the cognitive therapist actually only help me to realize that certain actions will not not, in fact, actually bring about the types of ends that I thought they would bring about - that is, brought me into a more rational appreciation of desires-as-means?

If it is the latter, then there is still no difference between what will best fulfill the desires of Agent, and Agent+ (Agent after having gone through cognitive therapy) would advise for Agent. The only difference is that Agent+ knows facts that Agent does not know. Desires-as-ends remain the same and, consequently, what best fulfills desires-as-ends remain the same.

If, on the other hand, the claim is that the cognitive therapist actually changes desires-as-ends, then we are no longer talking about "what would fulfill the desires of Agent as advised by Agent+". We are talking about "What would best fulfill the desires of Agent+, as advised by Agent+, whose desires-as-ends are different from those of Agent."

We are left with a series questions.

(1) What reason is there to believe that there is some type of inference from belief to desires-as-end that the cognitive therapist claims to exist? What is this inference? How can you derive a desires-as-end from a belief?

(2) Why should Agent act so as to best fulfill the desires of somebody other than himself - particularly somebody who doesn't exist?

In desire utilitarian terms, my fear of public speaking may be a bad desires-as-ends. It may well be a desire that tends to thwart my other desires. However, that merely implies that I have reasons-for-action (residing in the desires-as-ends being thwarted) to rid myself of this fear of public speaking.

Furthermore, one of the ways that I might accomplish this is by visualizing or imagining myself engaging in public speaking and realizing that the consequences are not that bad - making myself comfortable with the likely consequences through imagined and real-world practice.

However, the fact that I have a desires-as-ends that I would be better off without does not imply that the desires-as-ends is not an actual reason for action. I might be better off without the aversion to the pain that I would feel by having a dentist drill into the nerves of my tooth. However, that does not change the fact that the pain that I would feel gives me a valid reason-for-action to ask for some type of pain killer.

False Beliefs and Unfulfillible Desires

In response to my previous posting where I declared that value is independent of belief, a member of the studio audience asked if I believed in the possibility of 'infeasible desires'.

What about the theist. Say they have a desire-as-end to serve the will of god. They mistakenly beleive this desire is... feasible? If they knew all the facts, then they would know that this desire is...infeasible?

Actually, in desire utilitarian terms, they would be unfulfillable desires. A desire that P cannot be fulfilled if it is not possible or P to be true. A desire to serve God is an unfulfillable desire. God does not exist, so the proposition "I am serving God" can never be made or kept true.

A person can be made to believe that he is serving God. As a result, a person with a desire to serve God and a belief that he is serving God can be made to feel a certain amount of satisfaction in his life. However, this type of satisfaction is similar to the satisfaction a person might feel if he wishes to be Napoleon and believes that he is Napoleon, or if he wishes to own a Rembrandt and believes the cheep painting in his living room is actually a Rembrandt. It has no real value.

In these types of cases, a change in the agent's beliefs may well result in a change in what the agent believes to have value. This is true. This is, actually, quite trivially true. However, it is compatible with this that beliefs are not relevant to whether something has value. Saying, "X has value means A would believe that X has value if A was fully informed," is still as trivial as saying, “The earth is 93 million miles from the sun means A would believe that the earth is 93 million miles from the sun if A were fully informed.”

In fact, learning that the painting is not a Rembrandt constitutes learning that it never did have the value the agent thought it did. It was never a Rembrandt – it was only believed to have been a Rembrandt. And it never was as valuable as the agent thought it was.

This is true in the same way that learning that somebody was born in 1950 instead of 1955 constitutes learning that she is 59 years old rather than 54 years old. Depending on her birthday, the proposition "She is 54 years old." did not suddenly go from being true to being false. It was always false (for the year in which this example applies).

"The painting is valuable" did not suddenly go from being true to being false, in just the same way that "The painting is a Rembrandt" did not go from being true to being false. Only beliefs about its value changed, not its actual value.

One of the implications of this is that, if a desire is unfulfillable, then no harm is done by any action that prevents the desire from being fulfilled. For example, a person may believe that he has the power to teleport from Los Angeles to New York as long as I do not trim my finger nails. My trimming my finger nails does not do constitute a harmful action because it does not prevent the proposition “I can teleport from Los Angeles to New York” from being true. The laws of physics do that for me.

So, if a person values legislation opposing homosexual marriage because he thinks that his actions serve God, and he desires to serve God, opposing that legislation does him no harm. Opposition to that legislation prevents him from serving God in the same way that my trimming my fingernails prevents the person in the previous example from teleporting from Los Angeles to New York.

Now, agents do tend to have a desire for the satisfaction that comes from having a desire that P and a belief that P is true. Though the desire that P cannot be fulfilled, the desire for the physical sensation that comes from the combined desire that P and belief that P is true can be fulfilled. That desire for satisfaction can be thwarted.

The anguish that a person may feel when he discovers that I have trimmed my finger nails or I have prevented her from passing legislation harmful to the interests of homosexuals are real and morally relevant – even if the desires that give rise to that anguish are not.

That anguish has some moral weight.

Peter Railton, Beliefs, and Values

A member of the studio audience has sent me some snippets of Peter Railton’s moral theory for my consideration.

It includes this:

"Consider first the notion of someone's subjective interests... For me to take a subjective interest in something is to say that it has a positive valence for me... [But] let us introduce the notion of an [objective] interest, [what someone would want if he knew all the facts]...

I do not have time to investigate Railton’s moral theory in detail. I wish I did, but it would require a sufficiently large gift for me to quit my day job. However, I can present some thoughts on the ideas expressed in this quote.

First, let us recognize the distinction between what a person desires as an end and what a person desires as a means to that end.

Desires-as-ends are not subject to beliefs. There is no difference between what a person desires-as-ends and what that person would desire-as-ends if he knew all of the facts. These would be the same thing.

In this, desires-as-ends are like an agent’s age. There is no sense in talking about a person’s “objective age” as being what the agent’s age would be if she knew all the facts. The person’s age is independent of these types of considerations.

We can, of course, speak of an agent’s “subjective age” as how old she thinks she is – if, for example, there is no record of her birth and nobody alive knew her history. And we can speak of an agent’s “objective age” as the age she would believe herself to be if she knew all the facts. However, we do not need such a convoluted account of “objective age”. There is only one fact that is relevant here – the fact of how old she is.

Similarly, the only facts a person needs to know to determine her objective desires-as-ends are what her desires-as-ends are in fact. No other facts are relevant.

Desires-as-means, on the other hand, are dependent on beliefs. A person can desire a glass of “whatever is in that pitcher over there” because, given her beliefs, she thinks that the contents of the pitcher will quench her thirst. She may be mistaken. The contents of the pitcher might be contaminated in some way. Here, it makes sense to talk about what the agent would desire-as-means if she knew all the facts. In this case, it would not be to drink the contents of that pitcher over there.

Desires-as-means is made up of part desires-as-ends, and part beliefs. Since beliefs can be mistaken, desires-as-means can be mistaken. We can speak of the agent believes would be an effective way of realizing something the agent desires-as-end, and what the agent would claim to be an effective way of realizing a desire-as-end if she knew all of the facts.

Yet, here, too, there is really only one fact that the agent needs to know to make an accurately claim about realizing a desired end. She only needs to know what will bring about a desired end in fact. No other beliefs are relevant.

Here, too, if an agent’s beliefs differ from what is true then she is simply mistaken. Similarly, if her “subjective interests” in Railton’s sense differ from the “interests” she would have if she were fully informed, then those “subjective interests” are merely mistaken. She thinks that the route she has taken will realize what she desires-as-ends, and she is wrong to believe such a thing.

Ultimately, this account simply fails to distinguish properly between desires-as-ends and desires-as-means. Desires-as-means are under the influence of beliefs, and we can distinguish between the means an agent would choose with her current knowledge versus those she would choose if fully informed. This account takes these facts and adds the false claim that desires-as-ends function the same way.

When it comes to desires-as-ends, what objectively fulfills a desire-as-end is a state of affairs in which the proposition that is the object of the desire (as a propositional attitude) is true. That’s it. The agent’s beliefs are irrelevant.

When it comes to desires-as-means, what objectively has value as a means is what will bring about a state of affairs in which the proposition that is the object of the desire-as-ends is true. Again, the agent’s beliefs are irrelevant.

Bringing the agent’s beliefs into either of these concepts merely muddies the water.

Referring to them may provide a useful heuristic for approximating the fact of the matter, but they do not determine what those facts are.

Bigotry and the Necessity of God to Morality

One of the most common issues that comes up is the question of how do you get people to act morally if there is no God? If you take away God, what reason is there not to rape and pillage and engage in all sorts of mayhem and destruction for the simple pleasure of it?

When a member of the studio audience named Craig asked that question, I thought I was just giving an answer to yet another post. The post in which I answered him continues to be one of the most widely read posts on this blog. So, Craig ended up getting his name attached to what I then referred to as "The Hateful Craig Problem."

(See: Atheist Ethicist, The Hateful Craig Problem

You will find my answer to the question of how to motivate people to act morally in that post. Given the fact that people seek to act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires, the trick is to give people desires that tend to fulfill other desires. It is also useful to prevent them from acquiring desires that tend to thwart other desires. Then, he will act morally because he wants to – even if there is no one to watch over his shoulder.

This is what the institution of morality is for – molding people's desires so that they tend to want that which fulfills other desires, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires.

However, there is a second, related question I would like to address.

Why do you consider this a serious question?

Let's assume that somebody made a claim about the nature of dissolved carbon dioxide in water – claiming that it was explosive whenever it was exposed to air. One of the implications of this is that every carbonated soft drink, when opened, would explode in the face of the person who opened it.

There are two possible responses to this type of claim.

One response is, "Why are we letting children open soft drink containers! This should b banned!"

The other possible reaction is, "Why are you feeding me this nonsense? Since we don’t see soda cans exploding all over the place, your claim is obviously nonsense. Go away and leave me alone."

We do not have evidence of atheists engaged in all sorts of violent and criminal activity, so the reaction to this question should be, "Why are you feeding me this nonsense? Obviously, whatever morality is, it is something that atheists see a reason to conform to at least as well as everybody else."

More importantly, a moral person will not look for excuses to see others as worthy of condemnation. The act of pre-judging others immoral is the act of a bigot. The fair and just person takes the assumption that others are innocent of any wrongdoing and waits to see evidence to the contrary before condemning them.

The anti-atheist bigot ignores this moral requirement.

The person who asks the question, "How can an atheist be motivated to do good," is a bigot. He is somebody consumed by a desire to condemn others that is so strong that he looks for excuses that will give his hatred some appearance of legitimacy. It does not matter how transparent the excuse happens to be – if it yields the conclusion that the atheist may be legitimately hated, it is good enough for the bigot.

So, it is not only the lack of evidence that atheists cannot be motivated to be moral that tells against this type of claim. It is the naked bigotry of the person who would want so badly to hate others that he clutches to this particular bundle of straws that speaks against the moral character of the person asking the question.

The fair and just individual, on the other hand, would be asking the following question. "I wonder what morality is that it appears to have the ability to motivate individuals regardless of their belief in God?"

I have an answer to that question. Given that people seek to act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires, and desires are malleable, people generally have reason to give others those desires that tend to fulfill other desires. Praise and condemnation are two of the tools they have available for this. So, they have both motive and means to cause others to have desires that tend to fulfill other desires. And desires affect a person even when nobody else is looking. We have no need for a God to explain this behavior. We only need the rationality of promoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires.

However, the fair and just person would not need this or any other answer. The fair and just person would say, "There must be an answer out there, even though I do not know what it is, given the fact that atheists are motivated to act morally."

This is true in just the same way that it is true that a reasonably intelligent person does not need to know why carbonated soda does not explode when exposed to air. He knows that there must be an explanation somewhere, even if he does not know what it is, given the fact that carbonated soft drinks are not instantly exploding when opened.

The Proper Object of Moral Evaluation

A member of the studio audience asks Why are desires the primary object of moral evaluation?

[M]aking desires the objects of evaluation seems like an arbitrary "trick" to make your normative theory "come out right," rather than a solid inference from what we observe in the real world. Making desires the objects of evaluation solves lots of problems that plague act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism, but why should we think that desires are the CORRECT objects of moral evaluation, rather than the most CONVENIENT?

This question repeats a common mistake in the field of ethics – the mistake of confusing questions about the meanings of terms with questions about the things the terms refer to.

When we are concerned with the meanings of terms, there is no law of nature that dictates what any term should mean. It is a mere accident that we call the color of ripe McIntosh apple 'red' and a four-legged domesticated feline 'cat'. Nobody can give any answer as to why this must be the case. Nor can they give us a reason as to why we cannot reverse these, if it pleases us to do so.

Yet, once we set a definition, the real questions of an objective science are questions about what is true of this thing we call 'red', or these entities we call 'cats'.

I cannot give an answer to the question of why relationships between malleable desires and other desires are to be called 'morality'. This is simply an arbitrary choice that we seem to have made as we mutually work to help to create the English language.

The questions that I can answer are questions about what is objectively true of these relationships – that desires are the only reasons for action that exist, that some desires are malleable, that people generally have reason to promote malleable desires that tend to fulfill other desires and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires.

I can point out the coincidence between many of the implications of this set of claims and what is true of that institution that we call 'morality'. I can say that, among these relationships and their implications we can find an account of what an 'excuse' is and distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate excuses, can understand the claim that 'ought' implies 'can', and can handle the concepts of negligence and moral dilemmas.

However, I cannot give an objective answer to the language question, "Why call these complex relationships between malleable desires and other desires 'morality'?"

It is not a mere convenience that we have reasons to use social tools such as praise and condemnation to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, or inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. This is a natural fact.

Nor is it a mere coincidence that any claim that breaks the inference between an agent’ desires and some prima facie appearance of wrongdoing is a claim that says that applying the social forces of blame or reward makes no sense. There is no sign, in these cases where an agent has a legitimate excuse, that there are bad malleable desires out there to be molded.

These facts remain no matter what people decide to do with the term 'morality',

This is true in just the same way that the physical properties of Pluto remain the same regardless of what the astronomers decide to do with the concept 'planet'.

So, why are relationships between desires and other desires the correct references for the term 'morality'? The answer is – they are not. The assignment of meanings to terms is arbitrary and wholly guided by human convention.

But it also isn't important. The real-world facts of the matter regarding the relationships between malleable desires and other desires remain the same, regardless of what we decide to call them.,/p>