The Culpability of Moderates

Continuing the theme on when it is and is not appropriate to condemn moderates, one of the situations in which moderates can be condemned is when they stand in the way of those who are trying to oppose evil.

History provides us with a good example of this, and an excellent expression of the argument for condemnation.

In 1963, Martin Luther King sat in a Birmingham Jail, arrested for civil disobedience. He received a letter from a group of clergy from Alabama who said that they agreed with King’s cause and were in favor of equality, but that King’s protests were doing nothing but making white people nervous and angry. They suggested that he suspend his protests and wait for a better time.

King’s answer, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, said that there will never be a better time.

Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

He went on to say that the biggest obstacle to black equality was not the white bigot, but the ‘moderate’ who said that blacks should accept their inferior status ‘for now’ and wait for a ‘better time’ to protest their treatment. If the moderates would, instead, side with what is right rather than what is comfortable, then they could defeat these bigoted laws and the road to true equality could open up.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."

In this vein, I have written postings in which I criticized the atheist moderate – the one who says to people such as Michael Newdow with his suits to remove “under God” from the Pledge and to challenge “In God We Trust” as a national motto, because “the time is not right.”

However, the principle also applies to any ‘moderate’ who says that atheists should not upset religious factions that treat us with such contempt. There is absolutely no reason for an atheist to hold his tongue when the national culture uses the public microphone to say that atheists are not as good as theists. It is particularly objectionable when the State uses the coercive power of the school system to create a school atmosphere that daily and as a matter of ritual tells atheist children that they are inferior to their religious classmates and are undeserving if equal participation and respect by the government of which they are, and by right ought to be, equal citizens.

This is something that Harris gets right – before he goes on and asserts that “all theists are the same.” He is right to point out that there is no obligation to refrain from criticizing another person’s false beliefs where they are false, or another person’s unfair and unjust treatment where they are unfair and unjust. The idea that atheists – that, in fact, all good citizens – are obligated to remain silent in the face of a national campaign of insults and slander that goes so far as to find its way into national pledges and mottos is ludicrous.

Any who say that atheists should shut up and take these verbal slaps in the face from their own government are as guilty as those who would do the slapping.

Any who would condemn the atheist who protests this treatment, and tells the atheists that they should “wait” are actually and actively defending the perpetrators of injustice. These people are, in fact, advocating a policy that the unjust ought not to be challenged by those who would oppose injustice.

This is fully consistent with the principles that I have set out before – including the principle of morally criticizing a person only for his own words and actions, and not for the words and actions of people that he does not condone. In this case, the moderates are not to be morally condemned because the fundamentalists are behaving immorally. In this case, the moderates are to be condemned for something that they do – which is telling (and pressuring) the victims of injustice to cease fighting and submit to their own victimization at the hands of those who treat them unjustly.

The moderates who condemned King for participating in non-violent protests against discrimination and bigotry were wrong. The fault in these cases is never to be found with the victim, but on those who created the culture of discrimination and bigotry they are protesting. They were morally wrong to have written their letters of protest to King, rather than to the bigots that created the situation King was protesting.

Moderates, in the case of separating church and state, are equally wrong when they condemn those atheists who use the court to protest their legal right to fair and equal treatment before the law and in public institutions. These are not people who are strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up restaurants. These are people who are taking keyboard to hand and writing down the legal and moral arguments that prove, “These laws are treating us in ways that are immoral, unjust, and illegal, when held up to a fair interpretation of the constitutional principles that this country has “ordained and established” as our national law of the land.

When moderates take positions such as these, there is reason enough to protest and to condemn those moderates (though, here, too, only those moderates who actually defend positions such as these, and only to the degree that they defend those principles).

The Episcopalian Schism

The Episcopalian Church, it seems, is suffering from some dissention in its ranks. Some rank-and-file members cannot accept the fact that some higher officials are tolerant of homosexual unions and the promotion of women (gasp!) to leadership positions.

As an expression of their disapproval, they are seeking some way to disassociate themselves from more liberal church members. Some are doing so by putting themselves under the governance of more conservative leaders. For example, some American churches have put themselves under the bishop of Niger because he is not going to accept homosexuality. Others are splitting from the Anglican Church entirely.

This is a good thing. I am pleased to see a split between moderate Episcopalians and mean-spirited, narrow-minded bigotry of the more conservative branch. It is useful, I think, for individual members to stand up and identify which group they are sympathetic with, so that the rest of us can more easily identify those worthy of being despised.

There are some who may disagree with this. They would want to assert that all Episcopalians are equally contemptible merely by the fact that they are Episcopalians . . . and the only good Episcopalian is . . . well, there ain’t no such thing.

It’s not that those people are advocating violence . . . at least not yet. Yet, they do ignore basic moral principles and, once one becomes an advocate of injustice it is difficult to decide just where that injustice should end.

In discussing the situation in Iraq, I have often wrote that the fundamental problem in the country is a refusal to distinguish between those who plant the bombs and kill civilians from those who do not. There is no reason to distinguish between moderate Shiite/Sunni and the more violent factions because “all Shiite/Sunni are alike,” and even the moderate ones deserve to die because, in being Shiite/Sunni, their mere existence gives aid and comfort to the bombers.

And in the conflict in Israel, the same doctrine holds. Even the moderate Jews are just as guilty as the militant Jews because, merely by existing, they aid and abet the existence of militant Jews. So, it does not matter if the people riding the bus or in the restaurant would condemn unrestrained violence against the Palestinians. We must remember, all Israeli are equally culpable, regardless of their individual beliefs.

For another example, it is much easier to fly an airplane into a sky scraper full of Americans if one believes, “They are all equally guilty. Even the moderates among them are guilty because, in being Americans, they air aiding and abetting any American policy we don’t like.”

And so, we are told, we must adopt the same attitude towards Episcopalians and other theists. Even moderate theists are to be condemned for aiding and abetting the more fundamental theists, so any hatred and contempt we would hold towards fundamentalist theists who do harm to others is equally deserved of their more moderate brethren. We are not to distinguish between them.

Now, as far as I know, no atheists are advocating violence – at least not yet. However, the statements above were meant to demonstrate a principle – the basic injustice that comes from the attitude, “They’re all alike. We do not have to distinguish among them – we can condemn all of them equally; the moderates for aiding and abetting the extremists.”

The popularity of this attitude, the speed at which it has spread and the growth of its popularity among the atheist community, only proves to me that atheists have no special immunity against injustice. This has, of course, been proved in the past as well. The atheism that guided the French Revolution did not bind the leaders at that time to justice, and neither did the atheism of many communists.

Atheists themselves must make a separate commitment to justice or injustice – separate from their views on the existence of God, and can (and do) go either way.

I want to make it clear, I am not raising any objection to saying, "You're wrong" to somebody one believes is wrong, or even "That is the most absurd, irrational piece of nonsense that any human has ever spoken," when confronted with absurd and irrational nonsense. As I have written in the past; criticism is not intolerance. My objection rests entirely with the claim, "They are all alike, and even the moderates deserve the same moral condemnation that we would give the fundamentalists."

The principle that I have suggested for peace in Iraq and in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a principle of, “Punish the guilty; let the innocent go free.” It is a principle of distinguishing between those who do or advocate harm, and those who do not, and to reject the doctrine that all X are equally deserving of condemnation because some X are dangerous.

I think that some atheists underestimate or under appreciate the possibility of being wrong. I am willing to make the bold, unsupported statement of every reader that there is not one person on the planet who agrees with you on everything. In fact, even if we limited this example to things that people are certain about, no two people’s lists will be alike.

Which means if, by chance you, the reader, happen to have a list where everything you are certain about is true, it is still the case that everybody else has at least one thing on their list that is false. Which means that the possibility (the ease) of error is very, very high.

And if you do happen to have one thing on your list that you are certain about that is false . . . well, you have no idea what it is.

I would have to say that part of my quest in life would be to go through that list and to eliminate all of the false elements that I can – knowing full well that I can never get to all of them, and that until the day I die I will absolutely certain of at least one thing that simply is not true.

Anyway, the ease of error speaks to the simple absurdity of condemning somebody for being wrong. Every one of us believes something that is wrong, where the falsity would reveal itself if we only had the will or the desire to look at the issue honestly. So, this type of condemnation would condemn everybody, including the speaker.

Condemnation comes in when that error makes one a threat to others.

In yesterday’s entry, I did not criticize Dennis Miller for being wrong. I condemned him for being wrong on a matter that can easily be demonstrated to be wrong on a matter that puts the lives and well being of others at risk.

A drunk, who wants to get in his pickup and drive around, is not guilty of the moral crime of recklessness if he limits his driving to his own ranch, where there are not supposed to be any other people. He can drive around and drunk as he wants until he puts the lives and well-being of others at risk by leaving the ranch. It is the risk of harm to others that is reckless.

The conservative Episcopalians who are splitting from the main church or supporting narrow-minded, hate-mongering leaders are to be condemned, not because they are Episcopalians, but because they are supporting narrow-minded hate-mongering leaders, which gives us sufficient evidence to assert that they, too, are people whose religion has driven them into being people who are a threat to others.

But we have no reason not to welcome those who are willing to accept homosexuality, and to form an alliance with them against their narrow-minded, hate-mongering former (in most cases) associates, and encourage them to drop association with their narrow-minded hate-mongering brethren.

I am willing to say the same thing for atheists. There is no value in associating with narrow-minded, hate-mongering bigots in our own ranks. Rather, there is every reason to recognize the difference between those who respect the principle, “Punish the guilty, let the innocent go free” from those who say, “They are all equally guilty and all deserve the same treatment, regardless of the actual threat posed by their individual beliefs.”

I have absolutely no kind or compromising words to offer to the, “They are all equally guilty” crowd. They have embraced injustice, and I have no use for them. Moderate atheists should no more fear a split with such people as moderate Episcopalians should concern themselves with the fundamentalists (and less moral) who decide to leave.

Dennis Miller, Global Warming, and Epistemic Negligence

A co-worker came to me last week and said that he saw Dennis Miller on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The subject of global warming came up, and Miller pulled out a 1975 Newsweek article on global warming called “The Cooling World (pdf)”.

For the record, the year before, Time Magazine ran a similar story called “Another Ice Age?”.

So, that’s what passes for science education in this country; comedians citing 30-year-old news publications on late-night talk shows.

I would have loved to see Jay Leno (or somebody in the same position) do the following.

First, I would like to hear something to the effect that, “Time and Newsweek are peer-reviewed scientific journals, then. I mean, the authors of these things had to pass peer review among the scientific community to get these articles accepted, right?”

Then, I would like to hear something like:

That is very interesting. As it turns out, I have brought a few publications of myself along. You’ve all heard scientists telling us that everything in the solar system orbits the sun, right? Well, look here! Our research staff has dug into the archives and found that scientists once believed the Earth was the center of the solar system. They did not believe in the sun-centered solar system at all. So, what is this sun-centered theory? It’s just another fad. Next year, they might make Jupiter the center of the solar system.

Then there’s this idea that objects, like this desk, and even our bodies, are made up of atoms. Furthermore, atoms themselves are made up of smaller things – like electrons, neutrons, and protons. Do you still buy that theory? Well, our researchers have discovered scientific writings from the past that say that atoms cannot be divided into anything. In fact, the very word ‘atom’ meant ‘thing without parts’. Now, scientists claim that atoms have parts. What will it be next year? Atoms are made up of peanut butter?

Now, there’s this idea that malaria is spread by a bacteria that people get from mosquitoes; the most recent scientific fad. Three hundred years ago, malaria was caused by swamp gas. Malaria, in fact, means ‘bad air’. Again, this germ theory of disease . . . just so much scientific hot air. In a few years, scientists might well be telling us that malaria is caused by insufficient life force in the body cavity.

Why do scientists do this? Obviously because they want research money. Scientists need to come up with different ideas all the time so they can ask for more money. If they settled on any one theory, they wouldn’t have any more work to do. They would be done. So, they have to keep changing their minds.

Actually, if you read the articles, they do not cite a single peer-reviewed scientific source. Nowhere in either article to they say that scientists are predicting a continuing decrease in temperature. They only have scientists citing the fact that, from 1940 through 1970, average global temperatures decreased. This is combined with the claim, “There have been ice ages in the past, it is reasonable to expect that we might enter one in the future.”

Scientists have learned a lot in the last 30 years. They have stacks of new data which they can use to update their theories – just like they updated their theories on the center of the solar system, the structure of atoms, and the causes of disease.

There is a matter of epistemic responsibility here. Dennis Miller is going on the air with the purpose of convincing viewers to adopt a particular point of view. There is a reason why he brought the copy of the article to show to the people. This was no accidental remark made when casual conversation drifted into a subject he would admit that he knows little about. His was a pre-meditated act calculated to have a specific affect on the attitudes of others.

If one is going to perform a calculated act of any time, one has an obligation to ask, “Am I being reckless in a way that puts others at risk of harm?”

Miller’s actions are reckless in the extreme. The above counter-arguments demonstrate how reckless his arguments are; how easy they are to refute.

Actually, the case against Miller is strengthened by the fact that Newsweek itself In revisited the article in October of this year in a web exclusive called, “Remember Global Warming.” That article explains the context of the 1975 article – the changes in the science between 1975 and today that are very much like the changes that lead to the shift from “the earth is the center of the solar system” to “the sun is the center of the solar system.”

Does Dennis Miller at all care about the harm he may be inflicting on others?

This objection does not even depend on an assumption that Dennis Miller is wrong. His actions are careless even if his conclusions prove to be correct. The form of argument that he is using is reckless.

Drunk drivers are not only morally reckless when they actually kill people. The drunk driver who happens to get home safely – this time – is just as morally contemptible as the one who kills somebody’s child. He showed the same disregard for the risk that his actions will do harm to innocent people.

Dennis Miller is morally contemptible, not because he is (almost certainly) wrong, but because he shows no appreciation for the risk of being wrong and for the harms that being wrong would impose on others. He does not care. If he cared, then – just as the good driver takes care to drive in a way that does not put others at risk, a good speaker makes sure that he does not say things that put other people at risk.

The unreasonable claims that people make are fertile grounds for moral criticism.

If you tell somebody something that he does not want to believe, then he is far more likely to see through the poor reasoning and identify the flaws then if you tell him something he wants to believe. So, if a person fails to recognize easily demonstrated flaws in an argument defending some claim, then we have reason to believe that he wants to believe that the claim is true and, because of that, he is not interested in looking for or recognizing problems with the arguments being offered to defend this claim.

In other words, mistaken beliefs give us window into a person’s desires. And desires – good and bad – I have argued is what morality is primarily about.

One of the reasons that we can condemn the anti-gay evangelical bigot is because there must be some reason why he sees the flaws in the biblical prohibition on collecting interest, but blinds himself to the fact that biblical prohibitions on homosexual sex suffer from the same flaws. His blindness lets us see through to his desires – greed and hate. A person who was not greedy, or a person who did not hate, would see that, in biblical terms, there is no justification for these different attitudes.

In the case of Dennis Miller, the fact that he wants to use his appearance on the Tonight Show to convince people of something that could destroy people’s lives and property – an argument he can quickly check and discover to be invalid - suggests that he does not care that the argument is invalid. It suggests he does not care about the risks to lives and property that he might cause. He, like the drunk driver, does not care about the trail of bodies that he might leave behind as he tries to drive home.

The next assertion that one can expect is to say that my moral criticism of Dennis Miller for making the claims he made on the Tonight Show counts as censorship. After all, Miller has the right to say whatever he pleases. If I am condemning him for his words, then I must favor censorship.

Right?

Well, in the same vein as my earlier post called “Speaking vs. Acting” in which I argued that criticism as not intolerance,” it is also true that criticism is not censorship. Claiming censorship simply because somebody says, “A good person would not have spoken as irresponsibly as you did,” is another tricks of the demagogue trying to shift condemnation from one who deserve it (himself) to one who does not (his critic).

Think of the incoherence of the idea that moral criticism is censorship. Assume that this principle is valid. If it were valid, then telling somebody that he is wrong to engage in moral criticism of others (because it is censorship) – would itself be an attempt to censor moral criticism. It would be a principle that one had to violate in order to use.

Criticism – even moral criticism – is not censorship. I am not saying that Dennis Miller should be thrown in jail for anything that he said. I am not advocating any type of violence at all. Everything I have written here is consistent with the principle that the only legitimate response to “words” are “counter-words,” and the only legitimate response to a peaceful political campaign is a counter-campaign.

However, counter-words and private action (in response to words) and political counter-campaigns (in response to a political campaign) are perfectly legitimate responses.

This is what Dennis Miller deserves – some moral condemnation (not punishment – not violence) for his use of air time to make morally reprehensible claims that have a serious potential to destroy the lives and property of others – something that no person who cares about such losses would risk imposing on others.

Military Colonel's Derogatory Comments on Atheists

From the pages of Brent Rasmussen’s Screwing the Inscrutable, we get the story of an army battalion commander Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich commenting on the case of the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman, said that his family’s “suggested the Tillman family's unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.” (cite)

Now, there is certainly reason to be upset with these words, and Mr. Rasmussen expresses his disapproval. However, I thought it would be instructive to look at the claims made and discuss exactly where Kauzlarich made his mistake and why it is appropriate to brand him a hate-mongering bigot.

One of the issues that may be seen as cluttering this discussion concerns the circumstances of Pat Tillman’s death. Tillman was killed by several fire, shot several? Times by other members of his squad while involved in a firefight in Afghanistan. The military hid the fact that Tillman died as a result of friendly fire for quite some time from his parents and the rest of the country. There is some suspicion of a cover-up, and speculation as to what it is that the government may want to cover up.

For purposes of this posting, the question of a conspiracy regarding Tillman’s death is not relevant. We can accept for the sake of argument that Tillman died as a result of friendly fire. Somebody made a mistake. It was a type of mistake that happens in war time. In spite of the desire of some to have the shooter’s head on a pike, it simply is not productive. In fact, under some circumstances, it may well be counter-productive to have soldiers so worried about shooting the wrong person that they end up not shooting the right people when they need to.

I am not saying that this is true of the case in question. I am saying that its truth or falsity is a different issue than the one I am writing about. Even if it is true, it would not excuse Col. Kauzlarich’s bigoted comments.

So, what’s wrong with Kauzlarich’s comments?

If we look at them, we see that Kauzlarich is proposing a regularity – a relationship between two events. In this case, “absence of a Christian faith” is said to cause “Tillman’s family’s unhappiness with the findings of past investigations.”

This is an attempt to describe some sort of regularity, like a discovery that, “flammable materials kept near the hot water heater in the basement caused the fire.”

Kauzlarich adds some detail to this theory.

"When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don't know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough."

So, “absence of Christian faith” implies “dead people are worm dirt” implies “hard to get your head around that” which, finally, implies “unhappiness with the findings of past investigations.”

As a part of this theory, Kauzlarich adds:

But there [have] been numerous unfortunate cases of fratricide, and the parents have basically said, 'OK, it was an unfortunate accident.' And they let it go. So this is — I don't know, these people have a hard time letting it go. It may be because of their religious beliefs.

Really?

So, Christians who lose their children due to “unfortunate cases of fratricide” do not become “unhappy with the findings of past investigations.” Only atheists have this problem.

Bigotry is making up negative stereotypes about a group of people based on . . . well, based on nothing. Bigotry is saying that slavery is good for blacks because black people lack the basic intelligence to take care of themselves and, so, it is better that they live on a plantation with good, intelligent white people to care for them (in exchange for some labor on the cotton plantation) than that they suffer the inevitable failures of life as a free person.

The same can be found in the idea that women are creatures of emotion, lacking a basic capacity to reason, meaning that they need to be put under the care of men – taught first to blindly obey their father until they are old enough to marry, at which point they are to blindly obey their husband.

Kauzlarach’s theory is that atheists lack the capacity to accept death, which makes them fundamentally incapable of accepting the military’s story about how Pat Tillman died, because, we all know that Christians do not concern themselves with such questions.

So, if a Christian’s child is killed, and there is suspicion that the person responsible for his death acted in violation of rules and procedures, Christians simply do not care and are willing to allow the individual to get off without punishment. Is that what we are supposed to believe?

I suspect that even a Christian parent, for example, will tell somebody they catch lying that, “The problem with lying is that I lose any reason to trust you. You have shown that you are willing to hide the truth when you want to – you have no respect for honesty. How can you stand there and say, ‘trust me’ when you have already shown that you are not to be trusted with the truth?”

The claim that these are atheist traits not shared by Christians is blatantly untrue.

Yet, Colonel Kauzlarich uses these false claims to assert that atheists are inferior to Christians in their ability to handle the death of a loved one.

Another fact worth mentioning is that this is simply the most recent of a long list of stories describing bigotry in the military towards atheists.

It needs to be considered in the context of Army Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum's comments that said that atheists are the equivalent of bigots when he said, "Agnostics, atheists and bigots suddenly lose all that when their life is on the line." (cite) Blum’s remarks, among others, spurred first Lieutenant Wayne Adkins to resign from the national guard. In a column he wrote explaining his resignation, Adkins wrote

Army Regulation 600-20, section 6-2, paragraph a says “The U.S. Army will provide EO and fair treatment for military personnel and family members without regard to race, color, gender, religion, national origin, and provide an environment free of unlawful discrimination and offensive behavior. They have failed miserably at providing an environment free of offensive behavior for atheists. The regulation defines several terms in these sections which make it clear that the public comments of Blum and others constitute “unlawful discrimination”. Disparaging terms are defined as “Terms used to degrade or connote negative statements pertaining to race, color, gender, national origin, or religion”.

There is no reasonable way to deny that Kauzlarich’s statements are also, “…those meant to degrade or connote negative sentiments pertaining to . . . religion.”

Does one think that the military will start to enforce its own rules?

For some reason, I have decided not to hold my breath.

However, I do have to say that there is a reason why the military does a better job of enforcing its rules against degrading treatment of others, but not atheists. Substantially, it is because athiests do not protest - so we do not give them a reason to be concerned with the wrongness of their actions. It is much like the silence (except for private complaints to each other) following President Bush's comment that no person who denies that our rights come from God is qualified to be a judge - a statement that would have ended his political career if he had targeted some other group. But did not. I suspect that Kauzlarich’s statements will end up being ignored in much the same way.

Personally, I think it is time to insist on a public appology and admission of wrongdoing on the part of any military officer making derogatory comments such as these.

Morality as a Result of Natural Selection

I have a question from the studio audience.

Beepbeepitsme asked, “What do you think about morality/ethics as a result of natural selection?”

Answer: About the same as what I think about round squares. The concept is incoherent.

Okay, let me back up a moment.

Natural selection has certainly had an effect on our dispositions to desire. We are disposed to acquire those desires that tended to keep our ancestors alive and reproducing. This includes an aversion to pain, a desire for sex, a ‘comfort zone’ regarding temperature, thirst, a desire for high-calorie foods, affection for one’s children, and the like.

These dispositions are morally relevant. That is to say, any moral theory that ignores these facts would go as far as a theory that concludes that an agent ought to alter the gravitational constant to one that better maximizes utility, or ought to ignore the second law of thermodynamics in case of extreme emergencies.

However, when people talk about morality itself being a result of natural selection, they tend not to be talking about the fact that evolutionary pressure has shaped the desires we are disposed to have. They tend to be talking about something more specific – the evolution of what our ‘moral sentiments’ pick out as good or bad.

The claim is that evolution caused us to develop moral sentiments (in the same way it caused us to develop eyes, nipples, and an appendix) and to link those moral sentiments to objects that tended to promote genetic replication. In other words, we are disposed to perceive something as being wrong because the perception that it was wrong helped our ancestors reproduce, and we acquired the same dispositions.

The ‘Is’/’Ought’ Problem

My first question is: What does it mean to ‘perceive that something is wrong’? What is the ‘something is wrong’ that we are allegedly perceiving something to be?

What concerns me is the implication, inherent in the concept of “ethics as a result of natural selection, that says, “I have evolved a disposition to value killing people like you. Therefore, you deserve to die.”

It’s the basic invalidity of this inference that I am referring to when I compare “morality as a result of natural selection” to “round squares”. The two concepts of , “I have an evolved disposition to value killing people such as you,” and, “You deserve to die,” has as much in common as the concepts of “round” and “square”.

This is not a new argument. This is simply an application of David Hume’s ‘is’/’ought’ argument. Hume said that those who attempt to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’ need to explain how the ‘ought’ relationship is related to the ‘is’ relationship. It is an inference that he finds inconceivable. My objection above simply asks Hume’s question of those who accept the idea of morality as a result of natural selection to explain the inference from “is disposed to value killing people such as you” and “deserves to die.”

People who have followed my writing know that I think that the ‘is’/‘ought’ problem can be solved. I argue that if we had to choose between ‘is’/‘ought’ dualism and ‘is/‘ought’ reductionism, we need something a lot stronger than, “I don’t see how it can be done” to force us into dualism. Reductionism is the default position unless we are forced into dualism. Even then, we at least need a theory that starts to explain how something not a part of the ‘is’ universe can have any influence or relevance in the real ‘is’ world.

Yet, the inference form, “I have an evolved disposition to value killing people like you,” to “you deserve to die” does not solve that problem. It exemplifies the problem.

The Euthyphro Problem

The idea of morality as a result of natural selection suffers from the Euthyphro problem.

“Wrongness,” in this case, consists in being the type of person that others have an evolved disposition to kill (or to harm in other ways). If this is what “wrongness” is, then “wrongness” could be just about anything.

Above, I mentioned the fact that evolution has given us (even men) nipples and an appendix. It has given us a fondness for high calorie food, to store excess as fat, and to store as much fat as possible (because our ancestors were those that actually survived those frequent famines).

In short, evolution has given us traits that are useless, and traits that are positively harmful now that our environment has changed. We even have very real reason to worry that our evolved dispositions will ultimately lead to our extinction through war or global environmental catastrophe.

Even if it made sense to speak about an “evolved disposition to view something as wrong,” we still have to ask the question, “Is it such a good thing that we have this evolved disposition?” Perhaps it is an evolved disposition that we are well advised to get rid of. This, in turn, invites the question, “How do we determine if an evolved disposition to view something as wrong,” is, itself, a good or a bad disposition?

For example, it may be the case that we have an evolved disposition to value ridding land of people who “do not look like us” so that it can be populated by people who “look like us”. It is not outside the realm of possibility that we are the descendents of ancestors who had this disposition and who, because they were successful at ridding the land of rivals and populating it with like-minded people, actually ended up winning the war of natural selection.

It might also be the case that we have more ancestors disposed to rape than we may want to admit. As such, men might have an evolved disposition to force sex on women, rather than wait patiently for their consent and possible rejection.

Yet, I suspect that many people would see problems with the argument, “I have an evolved disposition to kill those who do not look like me; therefore, those who do not look like me deserve to die,” or, “I have an evolved disposition to value sex with you whether you want it or not; therefore, you have an obligation to let me have sex with you.”

These are not idle possibilities. Male lions, for example, have an evolved disposition to value killing their step children when they take over a new pride. This is evolutionarily useful – since they then devote their resources to raising their own genetic offspring, rather than the offspring of the pride members they drove off or killed.

Plus, of course, evolution has not given lions any altruistic attitudes at all towards antelope. Indeed, evolution has selected lions to value the hunting and killing of antelope. There is a long list of very obvious observations that easily falsify the idea that there is some necessary link – even conceptual link – between ‘evolved disposition to value’ and ‘altruism.’

Research

Some people look at the results of brain research that shows what happens in the brain when people make moral judgment to argue for a biological – and, from there, an evolved foundation for morality. Yet, these inferences are also flawed.

We can inevitably expect that some sort of brain process is going on when people make moral judgments. This is not a surprise. Moral judgments are a mental process – we knew this before we started the experiments.

However, the fact that we can take a picture of what happens in the brain when a person processes some information is not proof that the processes are valid.

I could, perhaps, take a picture of what goes on in the brain as a subject is converted to Christianity. Yet, the fact that I have data describing the mental process does not, in any way, prove the legitimacy of the inferences and implications that were a part of it. In fact, every time a fallacy has an effect on a listener, I should (theoretically) be able to generate data on the mental processes that result. Yet, the existence of physical evidence does not prove that the arguments were, in fact, valid.

If we were taking an MRI of Bush’s brain when he decided to attack Iraq, or that global warming was not a threat, or that the only people qualified to be judges are those who believed that our rights come from God, we would find that some mental process had to take place.

Not a very good mental process, but a mental process nonetheless.

And that’s the point. An MRI or similar brain experiments will show us what the mental process was. However, we have to do a lot of extra work to determine the quality of those brain functions and the relationships of the results to that which is true.

A research-oriented bio-ethicist points to a brain scan and says, “Ah ha! There’s my proof! I was right!”

Right about what? Do you think that I deny that moral judgments are brain function? That is something I am not going to deny. In fact, it is something I readily agree to. Yet, we still need a theory to distinguish good brain functions from bad brain functions, and that is what I am seeking to offer.

Effects of Evolution

One of the things that natural selection has given us is a malleable brain – one that changes as a result of experience.

This makes sense. If our survival depends entirely on genetic factors, then we need to hope that there are enough members of the species that has the right genes to fit into the new environment every time the environment changes, or that’s the end of its survival. When the environment shifts again, it needs enough members with a gene to fit it to that environment. In each instance, the genes that fit it to the new environment need not have given any special advantage in the original environment.

With a malleable brain, we do not need this type of luck. As the environment changes, it gives different feedback, which modifies our behavior to fit the new environment without any need for any genetic shift whatsoever. Furthermore, we can adapt others to the new environment without changing their genetics – simply by changing the (malleable) structure of their brain to match the new circumstances.

A round peg can only fit in a round hole. However, a malleable peg can fit in a round hole if the hole it encounters is round, or a square hold if the hole it encounters is square.

Natural selection has not only given us malleable brains, but a form of malleability where changes are more likely to promote survival over extinction. That is to say, there must be a way of making sure that changes in brain structure actually fit the creature to the environment. Of course, a history of environmental change, with only those whose malleable structure fit it to the new environment surviving, gives us this.

If you have a malleable brain whose structure is affected by environmental factors, and I wish not to be killed, then all I need to do is ‘figure out’ ways to modify the structure of your brain in ways that make it less likely that you will not kill me. Better yet, I might find ways that will cause you to care for me when I am sick or injured.

Meanwhile, you are doing the same to me.

Please note, we left “natural selection” behind once we had malleable brains influenced through interaction with the environment. At that point, we can start asking questions about how to influence the environment in order to generate useful brain states. If, as I argue elsewhere, desires are the only reasons for action that exist, then we only have ‘reasons for action’ to mold brain states to promote those that fill other desires and inhibit those that thwart other desires.

Now, let be briefly revisit my claim that “morality as a result of natural selection” is like “round squares.” Ultimately, this rests on the idea that moral questions are questions about how we are going to use environmental factors to influence mental states. In other words, morality is about social selection. Natural selection (except insofar as it makes social selection possible) has nothing to do with it.

Survival vs. Property: Part Deux

On Monday I wrote a post called "Survival vs. Property" about how the moral permissibility of breaking into a cabin and obtaining help for one’s stranded family raises problems for those who hold that property rights are an absolute.

A commenter named inquisitor responded. I would like to add some detail to my original argument and answer some of these responses.

The Slippery Slope

Once society or the state can say that they know better how to utilize your posessions, then you don't really own anything. Your ability to use or transfer your property is subject to the whims of others…. Legalizing theft, for whatever purpose, is a slippery slope. If property rights are not absolute, then they do not exist at all.

This slippery slope is not valid. Clearly the fact that we acknowledge the right to perform actions that kill innocent people (in war time), to destroy their property (to create a firebreak that will prevent destruction of an entire city) do not imply that we think it is legitimate for our neighbors to kill or blow up houses on a whim. Nor does the claim that a person can lie to the Nazis about the Jews she is hiding in her attic does not imply that the there is no obligation to tell the truth in ordinary circumstances.

The right to take property when what is taken is that which a good person would not put as much value on as the opportunity to save a life does not imply the right to take property on a whim.

Intrinsic vs. Desire Dependent Value

Allow me to take your logic to the other extreme. Let's say that my kidneys have failed, and I will die without a transplant. You are the only person who is a match for me. By your logic, my life trumps whatever ownership you might have to one of your kidneys.

Actually, this is false.

The claim that “life trumps ownership” can only be understood as an intrinsic value claim – a claim that life has more intrinsic value than ownership and when the two come into conflict that which radiates the greatest intrinsic merit (the most goodons and fewest badons) determines what we ought to do.

However, I reject all intrinsic value theories.

By the way, this includes the claim that taking property is intrinsically wrong. Taking property is wrong to the degree that it is reasonable for people to use the tools of social conditioning to promote an aversion to taking property. However, that reasonableness ends at the point that strengthening the aversion to taking property does more harm than good. Strengthening it to the point that a father will not break into a cabin to save the life of his wife and children goes beyond that point.

Speaking more generally, note that the theory that I employ says that we always act so as to fulfill our desires (given our beliefs), and that morality consists in promoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires.

In this, it is easy to make an argument for an aversion to taking property without consent. In fact, some of inquisitor’s arguments are arguments about the value of this particular aversion. It promotes peace by avoiding disputes that could lead to violence. It makes a person’s life more predictable so that he can plan more efficiently – knowing that the tool he expects to use will still be there when he uses it. It also gives an incentive for productive labor, since there is less value in creating something if it gets taken by the first person who wants it.

However, this aversion to taking the property of others will always be one desire among many. When more and stronger desires get stacked against it, they will eventually defeat it. When more and stronger good desires get stacked against it, a moral person’s aversion is overridden by greater concerns.

The types of cases I describe – the father who breaks into a cabin to save his family, and the father who takes a car without permission to get his child to the hospital, all have in common the fact that person takes what the other person (if he had good desires) should have been willing to sacrifice. Whereas, at the same time, the agent is acting on a desire that we all have reason to strengthen and promote – care for the welfare of one’s children.

The instruments of praise and condemnation, and reward and punishment, exist as a way of communicating how strong those different desires should be (the strength at which the desires are desire-fulfilling and not desire-thwarting). Punishing the person who breaks into a cabin to save his family communicates the idea that we want citizens who value the protection of trivial amounts of property to the lives of one’s children.

There is not much sense in that.

The factors I mentioned above argue for a presumption against taking property - prima facie assumption (borne on the value of the good person’s aversion to such a thing) that this is not to be done. However, prima facie assumptions can be overridden in cases where the evidence is compelling. The presumption of innocence unless proven guilty does not imply that nobody can ever be proved guilty. The presumption against taking property unless it can be proven that the property taken is of trivial concern that a good person would not really miss and the benefits are as significant as saving a life does not prove that no wealth transfer (as with breaking into a cabin or taking a car to get one’s sick kid to the hospital) can never be justified.

The organ case does not fit the description of minor cost. However, an estate tax that takes some of the money a person has made that he has no further use for and donates it to the poor – or at least gives the owner an incentive to donate the money in order to avoid the tax, would fit this model. A good person has no reason to fear a transfer of a small amount of property. People have every reason to fear when others start cutting into their bodies without consent. The aversion to losing small things in a good person rightfully is much weaker than the aversion to people cutting into his body and taking his organs.

If I put myself in the place of your hypothetical hiker, I can say that I would, without question, break into that cabin and take whatever was necessary to survive. I would do so knowing that it was illegal and that I would have to accept whatever punishment was deemed necessary by the cabin's owner and the justice system. I am, in effect, trading my freedom for those things I needed to save my family and valued more.

Please note the contradiction in this. If breaking into the cabin is wrong, then it is something that ought not to be done. That is what wrong means – that a good person would not do such a thing, and only an immoral (evil) person would do so. If it is not wrong, then this claims that it is permissible to punish good people – that, in fact, society is rational creating systems where good people are punished and the bad person (who does not care enough about his family to break into the house) are the ones to let free.

This is incoherent. Punishment is meant to communicate the idea that “a good person would not do this thing.” It is meant to teach an aversion to doing such things. If a good person would do such a thing, then punishment communicates the idea that no good person would do that which a good person would do.

Absolutes

The idea that there are moral absolutes is always easy to defeat.

Would you destroy somebody else’s priceless unique Grecian urn if doing so will prevent aliens from capturing all humans and subjecting them unending physical torture? No replacement is possible. Under the system of absolute property rights, the owner could refuse to volunteer to have the urn broken. It is within her right to do so. We may not understand her decision, but it is still her right.

Sorry, somebody get me a bat cuz that urn’s gonna get broken.

The idea that a good person would never take or destroy another person’s property is nonsense. The only question is not whether some amount of social utility justifies the act, but how much.

I think that a good argument can be made against, ‘I kinda think it’s a good idea,” is not a strong enough standard – too many people are able to rationalize their own case as a “good idea.” Rather, I hold to the “presumed wrong until proven justified beyond a reasonable doubt” as the best standard for avoiding the rationalization of wealth transfers for the purpose of purchasing political power, aiding campaign contributors, or foolishly spending money on somebody’s good idea that he could not find voluntary funding for.

But a moral absolute?

Absolutely not.

Publishing

I will confess that I delayed publishing this blog entry because I am not very comfortable with it.

I have been made aware of some cases where people are advising others not to purchase my book, “A Better Place,” because it is self-published, meaning that it must have been rejected by every legitimate publisher – as if that is a bad thing.

I have spoken previously about the ethics of jumping to conclusions. What I said is that we must necessarily jump to some conclusions because we do not have the time to subject all of our beliefs to rational scrutiny. Our obligation to take a belief and subject it to that extra scrutiny is proportional to the degree that the belief, when acted upon, will threaten the well-being of others. In those instances, one owes extra care.

At the same time, I have argued for another set of facts, and I see no better opportunity to explain them than when they work against my interests. I have suggested that we have limited opportunity to give our beliefs a thorough review, and so we use shortcuts. These are irrational – sometimes fallacious arguments that are nonetheless efficient at generating true beliefs. Efficiency is not measured by a large percentage of success. It is measured by success per unit of output. Thus, a quick test that is less reliable may be more efficient than a long mental process that is more reliable.

Technically, there is no valid argument that states, “This book was self-published; therefore, its conclusions are false.” Yet, I cannot criticize the person who argues, “This book is self-published; therefore, I have reason to doubt that it says anything worthwhile.”

When I first published this book, I thought about burying the fact that it was self-published so that only somebody who looked would recognize the fact. Yet, as an ethicist, I despise those types of tricks.

As it turns out, no publishing company rejected the book, because I never approached any of them. I measured the cost and benefits of seeking a publisher versus self-publishing and determined that seeking a publisher was not worth the effort.

Why not?

When I write the book, and when I re-write it, I look at each sentence and ask myself, “Is it true?” When I think about finding a publisher, I look at the book through a publisher’s eyes. The publisher does not look at each sentence and ask, “Is it true?” He looks at each sentence and asks, “Will it sell?”

There is a reason why books from Anne Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, as well as volumes defending ‘intelligent design’ and “proving” the historical reality of Jesus or claiming that the Pyramids were built by aliens or that JFK was killed by the CIA or that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the government or that you can predict the future by looking at the position of the planets.

These things sell.

Publishers get this type of material, examine it on the standards that they judge all presentations, and come to the conclusion, “I can sell that!”

So, they do.

A poorly book that defends a position that people want to see defended – no matter how poorly argued – is, to the publisher’s eyes, with countless books that defend something that nobody wants to accept – no matter how well defended.

To be honest, one of the thoughts that went through my mind was, “Look at all of the garbage out there that people actually pay money for? This book, with whatever flaws it may have, certainly is of much higher quality than a lot of that stuff.”

Quality

So, am I saying that this book is a masterpiece of moral philosophical, and that publishers and readers are simply too stupid or too uncaring to see its true value?

I am, admittedly, of two minds about this.

On the one hand, I think that everything that I have written is true, and that the arguments contained within the book answer a lot of tough questions in moral philosophy. If I did not believe these things, I would not write the book.

On the other hand, I am able to take a more distant view of the project. History is filled with people who were certain that they had found the answer to serious issues, who were fully convinced that they were right and that all who disputed their claims were wrong, only to be wrong.

Christopher Columbus was convinced beyond all reason that the circumference of the Earth was only 14,000 miles and that the Indies lay just below the western horizon. He presented his arguments to scholars who rejected them, and for good reason.

Is it not more likely to be the case that I am like Christopher Columbus and that I have merely latched onto an error that makes sense only in my own mind?

I have to admit to the possibility. I do not like it, but it must be possible.

However, we are all stuck in this particular trap. If it were wrong to present the best case one could make for a position on the grounds that one might be wrong, then nothing will ever be written.

It is, perhaps, ironic that those who seem the most convinced of their own infallibility are those who tend to be the most fallible. Or, perhaps, it makes sense. I had a high school teacher who gave a lecture once in which he asked us to imagine that the blackboard represented the sum of all knowledge. He drew a little speck on the board. The speck represents what the person knows. The board not covered by the speck represents what he does not know. And the boundary between the two represents the person’s awareness of his own ignorance,

He then drew a larger circle on the board. This represented somebody who knew much more than the first person. As a result, the boundary between what he knew and what he did not know was larger. He was more aware of the vastness of the huge number of things that he did not know.

With that lesson in mind, I cannot pretend to having the certainty that the arguments that I give are as solid as they seem to me. I am well aware of how easy it is to be wrong, and to simply not see the one thing that is the key to that error.

However, I try hard.

And it is not as if I am writing in a vacuum. Through twelve years of college, I was fortunate enough to do this full time. Let us assume that I learned something in those twelve years. Maybe not enough, but something.

So, is this book a brilliant piece of philosophy?

Well, I really can’t see any serious problems with the arguments I presented. Yet, Christopher Columbus could not see any problem with his arguments either.

And, yes, that bothers me. It bothers me a lot.

All I can do is lay the arguments out to the best of my ability and invite those who are willing to come on over and take a look. Yet, even if they agree with me, and praise my work, this still does not prove that I am right. After all, Christopher Columbus also had people who praised his work – and was even willing to give him a grant and a chance to prove his theory, against the advice of the best scholars at the time.

Ultimately, the only standard that makes any sense to apply to a project such as this is, “Are the premises true (or is their probability of being true accurately assessed) and do the conclusions logically follow from the premises?

And the only test that I can ultimately make of whether I have met that standard is to put my arguments out there and let others tell me whether they can find an area where I failed.

I have put my arguments out there.

Atheists' Bleak Alternative?

What society loses when it discards Judeo-Christian faith and belief in God is something far more difficult to replace: the value system most likely to promote ethical behavior and sustain a decent society.

This is false.

It is a piece of fiction – worse, a piece of derogatory and bigoted fiction – that we see every day. When I read this, I decided that I would use this opportunity to write up my response. Then, whenever I find this type of statement in the future, I could refer them back to this post, and not have to recreate the wheel each time I could use one.

The sentence quoted above can be found in a column in the Boston Globe written by Jeff Jacoby called “Atheists’ Bleak Alternative.” In it, Jacoby lamented the fact that so few Christmas cards (in England) had a religious theme. This was taken to be evidence of a loss of religious faith (in Ameirca); a situation that, according to this author, signaled the end of civilization.

But belief tethered to clear ethical values -- Judeo-Christian monotheism -- is society's best bet for restraining our worst moral impulses and encouraging our best ones.

Again, this is false.

I am not making a subjectivist’s claim that there is no ‘right’ moral system and that I just don’t happen to like this one. My claim is that there are moral facts, just as there are scientific facts. Furthermore, just as religion has stood in the way of the discovery and teaching of scientific facts – holding science back by making it answer to a set of superstitions invented by primitive tribesmen, it has also stood in the way of discovering and promulgating moral facts – holding morality back by making it answer to a set of superstitions invented by primitive tribesmen.

In the realm of science, we can expect that a bunch of primitive tribesmen will get some basic physics and chemistry right. They will understand that water will flow down hill and what dense objects fall towards the ground. However, they are going to get a lot of the details – those scientific facts not immediately obvious – wrong.

The same is true in morals. Those tribesmen invented a crude, primitive moral system that allowed their societies to stick around. At the very least, those societies that did not meet some minimum moral standard would fail, and those that did meet that standard, even if accidentally, survived. However, even a society that survivied cannot reasonably be thought to get all the details in morals as in science right.

The problem with clinging on to these ancient moral beliefs is the same as the problem of clinging to ancient science beliefs – the vast majority of them are simply mistaken. It makes as little sense to say that The Bible is the final word in morals as it does to say that Hypocrates was the final word in medicine.

Clinging to primitive scientific error means that we will do a poorer job of explaining and predicting the world around us, making us less able to engineer buildings, fight disease, grow food, warm our homes, and basically keep ourselves alive and healthy.

Clinging to primitive moral error means that we will continue to act unjustly and unfairly to others – inflicting harm on others in the name of God that we really have no reason to inflict – harms that people believe are justified only because they are clinging on to errors borne from ignorance.

The history of the last 500 years in particular has been a history of fighting primitive moral errors.

There was the error that it is wrong to charge interest. In fact, charging interest is essential to a healthy economy. Interest rates carry a combination of information and incentive that helps to direct money (and, with it, human effort) into more useful direction. A society without interest is a society of waste, depravation, and misery. A society that allows the collection of interest is a society that . . . well, look around you.

There was the error that the government must use its power to force everybody’s allegiance to the same Church. For 1,500 years these traditional religious values demanded that heretics be killed and that nobody may be allowed to question the ‘truths’ handed to them from the church. This mental stagnation gave us the dark ages. And, when people started to wake up and actually think for themselves, these traditional values gave us crusades and ‘justified’ the slaughtering of whole cities full of people and, in later years, wars that depopulated vast regions of Europe. The concept of freedom of religion did not come from any Bible. It came from secular sources – from people desperate to end religious violence by forcing religions not to fight.

People who replaced, “Thou shalt have no God before me,” with “Congress shall pass no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” did not get their morality from any Judeo-Christian source. The First Amendment to the Constitution is not a quote out of the Bible. The First Amendment to the Constitution does nothing less than repeal the First Commandment.

In fact, none of the Bill of Rights, nor the principles in the Declaration of Independence, were derived from any religious source. They were parts of a system of secular morality that did not look to the Bible for mral guidance. Instead, they imagined man in a “state of nature” and asked a very simple question. “What rules would it be reasonable for man in a state of nature to adopt to better secure their safety and happiness?”

The rules that better secure our safety and happiness do not require a God. And the rules we tend to get from God (or, more precisely, from those primitive tribesmen prone to error on account of their ignorance) tend not to be useful rules for securing our safety and happiness.

There was the error of the divine right of kings. This is the idea that governments are formed by God and that the people had a duty to obey (and worship) their monarchs in the same way they would obey (and worship) God. Judeo-Christians had thousands of years to explain that this was a mistake – that people had inalienable rights and that governments are not created by God, but by people.

There was also the moral error of slavery – condoned and even commanded in biblical text. This is yet another Judeo-Christian moral error discovered once people started looking at ethics rationally and at the rules that would actually best secure our safely and happiness. During the Civil War, it was the South – as it is now – that clung most tightly to their Bibles and claimed the need to defend Judeo-Christian Bibles. That is not to say that the North denied the existence of God. However, they did affirm that we find moral truth by looking at things other than scripture and, if reason contradicted scripture, then it was scripture that was to be thrown out, not reason.

The same pattern continues today. We are still fighting the moral errors of primitive tribesmen. The prohibitions that many religious fundamentalists fight for – prohibitions on homosexual marriage, early term abortion, stem cell research; and requirements for prayer in school, separating populations between a ‘we’ who trust in God and ‘they’ who do not, and forcing schools to teach science fiction of ‘intelligent design’ and ‘young earth’ in place of science fact, are simply the most recent examples of moral error derived from a Judeo-Christian source. We have people fighting against peace in the Middle East, feeding violent conflict between Arabs and Jews because they think that The Bible requires that Israel be restored to its original borders.

This list are not elements of “the value system most likely to promote ethical behavior and sustain a decent society.” They are 21st century representatives of a history of harm and injustice inflicted on good people – ripping apart their lives - allegedly in the name of God.

Let us not forget that the most religious President we have had, with the greatest support from the Religious Right, is the same President that brought us a war of aggression, torture, rendition, secret prisons, a repeal of habeas corpus, and a President who claims the ability to bypass the legislature and the courts effectively writing his own laws through signing statements and executive orders.

One would expect that a group touted as holding “the value system most likely to promote ethical behavior and sustain a decent society” would be the first to abandon a leader who showed such fundamental disregard for the principles of ethical behavior and upon which decent societies are built. Yet, to this day, the religious right remains the unflinching defenders of Bush’s doctrine of tyranny and unchecked executive authority.

There leads us to another, related problem that deserves mention that speaks against the ‘value’ of this Judeo-Christian value system.

The backwards thinking that allows people to blind themselves to the overwhelming evidence that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and humans evolved on this planet during that time is the same backwards thinking that allows them to blind themselves to the fact that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and that marching into the country was a foolish idea.

It is the same backwards thinking that allows people to blind themselves to the evidence that humans are creating global climate problems that risks tens of trillions of dollars worth of damage to the world economy per year – with the majority of those costs falling on those who can least afford them.

It is the same backwards thinking that allows people to blind themselves to the overwhelming evidence that the “beliefs” that they take to be divine commandments that they use to justify actions that do such tremendous harm to others, are the bigotries, prejudices, and superstitious guesses of primitive tribesmen who were basically ignorant of the world in which they lived.

It is the same backwards thinking that leads somebody to believe, “The atheist alternative is a world in which right and wrong are ultimately matters of opinion, and in which we are finally accountable to no one but ourselves,” as if to say that an atheist could find no reason to pull his hand out of a bed of burning coals or to create a society in which his child can grow up safe and happy. It is an absurdity, but those who think backwards find it easy to accept such absurdities, particularly when they allow the person to ‘justify’ in his own mind the hate that he feels towards others.

These are not innocent mistakes, like missing a word on a spelling test. These are mistakes that bring death, disease, and destruction on a national – even a global scale. These are mistakes that destroy lives. These are not, by any stretch of the imagination, society's best bet for restraining our worst moral impulses and encouraging our best ones.

The Hateful Craig Problem

“Why should I, who for purposes of this question hate everyone, wish to fulfill the desires of others?”

Craig Ewert asked this question in a comment to my post, “First, Kill All of the Teachers” a couple of days ago. I should save my answer for theory weekend. However, this is an important question, and Craig tells me, “I've been surveying your blog for a while, but I haven't come across a clear explanation of that issue…”

I wish to correct that deficiency and, since this is my blog, I can do whatever I wish.

Should

First, Craig, I have to ask you a question. What do you mean by ‘should’? What, exactly, are you asking me? Clearly, I cannot answer a question unless I first know what the question asks, and ‘should’ is a very slippery concept.

We’re going to have to get back to this problem.

Desires, Desires, and Desires

Second, I need to make an important distinction that has extremely important implications with respect to how I describe desire utilitarianism.

You asked why you should “wish to fulfill the desires of others.” Desire utilitarianism does not say that you should “wish to fulfill the desires of others” – at least not in so many words. So, you are asking me why you should do something that I’m not so sure that you should do.

Let me make this distinction clear.

It is a three-way distinction.

Let me first draw a distinction between (1) a desire to fulfill the desires of others, and (2) a desire that the desires of others be fulfilled.

We can see this distinction at work by talking about, for example, the difference between having a desire to clean the toilet, versus a desire that toilet be clean.

A desire to clean the toilet means, “I wanna do it! Pick me! Pick me!” On the other hand, a desire that the toilet be clean is quite compatible with having an aversion to cleaning the toilet – enough so that one is willing to pay somebody else to do it, or to assign the job to one of the kids as one of their weekly chores.

In addition to these two applications of the word ‘desire’, I would like to add (3) a desire that tends to fulfill the desires of others.

To illustrate this distinction, imagine a person with a strong desire for frequent unprotected sex with multiple partners. We can assume that this person does not (1) desire to get a sexually transmitted disease. It is also highly unlikely that he (2) desires that he have a sexually transmitted disease. Yet, it is still the case that his desire for frequent unprotected sex with multiple partners is (3) a desire that tends to result in the desirer getting a sexually transmitted disease.

Now, Craig, your question contained a Type (1) desire; a desire to fulfill the desires of others. Yet, whenever I write about desire utilitarianism, I tend to write about Type (3) desires; desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others.

Examples of the types of desires I write about include a desire for true belief, an aversion to deception, an aversion to sex without consent, a desire to keep promises, an aversion to seeing people cry, a fondness for the sound of a child’s laughter.

With this distinction in mind, I am going to change your question a little.

“Why should I, who for purposes of this question hate everyone, have desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others?”

Having a Reason

Here, I want to address what I think is the most commonly made false assumption about what I write. This assumption is built into what I think would be the most common interpretation of Craig’s question.

That interpretation turns the question into a challenge.

“Using reason alone, I challenge you to convince me – somebody who hates everyone – to want to fulfill the desires of others.”

Apparently, desire utilitarianism is supposed to answer that question.

Not only is it the case that desire utilitarianism cannot answer that question, desire utilitarianism says that the challenge can never be met, anywhere, by anybody.

Desire utilitarianism is built on the assumption that each person will always act so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of his own desires, given his beliefs. This means that the person who "hates everybody" – where this is the strongest of his desires with no other desires to outweigh it – will always act like somebody who hates everybody. Every act he performs will be motivated by hate.

Reasoning with him will not change that. Reason has no effect on desires. The only thing reason does is match means to end. This means that the only thing this agent can gain from reason is information that will help him more efficiently act on his hatred.

I am going to repeat this, because I think that this false assumption represents the most serious problem people have with this theory. They assume that I am claiming to have discovered an argument that will inevitably cause the listener to do what this argument says he 'should' do. They shake their heads and think, "Poor, Alonzo. He just can't see how stupid it is to say that we can come up with an argument that will invariably convince people who understand it to do the right thing."

Ironically, the thing that I am often challenged to do, by people who assume that I have claimed to be able to do it, is something that I say cannot be done – by me or anybody – which is to change desires by reason alone or, through reason alone, convince somebody to perform an action that does not aim to fulfill the more and the stronger of his desires given his beliefs.

They continue to think this, no matter how many times I insist that a person with a particular set of desires will act so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of those desires given their beliefs and the only thing reason alone can teach him is how to be more successful at fulfilling the desires he has.

That’s it.

If a person has only one desire – a desire to destroy the Earth and every living thing on it – then reason alone will only serve to better inform him how to go about destroying the Earth and every living thing on it.

The child rapist, for example, alone with a child with no chance of being caught or punished, will rape that child. Reason alone will not be able to prevent that rape.

So, Craig, if your question is, "If I am someone who hates everybody, how can you, through reason alone, convince me to fulfill the desires of others," my answer is that it cannot be done.

Anybody who says that it can be done is making stuff up. Anybody who says that I claimed to be able to have the argument that can meet this challenge is making stuff up about me.

Reason and the Power of Change

The fact that reason alone is ineffective at changing other peoples' desires does not imply that we are powerless to bring about changes in those desires.

The way I put this point in my book,

You can reason all you want with your flat tire on your car without it changing places with the spare in the trunk, but this does not imply that you are powerless to get the flat tire changed.

More importantly, reason does have an important role to play in telling you how to go about changing the tire. It will tell you what will work, and what will not work. Reason itself is what tells you that trying to persuade the flat tire to change places with the spare in the trunk is not a good plan. It tells you to get some tools – the right tools – and how to use something other than reason to get the job done.

In the case of getting Hateful Craig to fulfill the desires of others, reason tells us that reason alone is not the tool to use. Reason tells us that Hateful Craig is a human being (I will assume). As such, he has an aversion to pain and a desire for pleasure. He desires his freedom because a lack of freedom is a lack of opportunity to act so as to fulfill his desires. He also desires money, because money is a useful tool for the fulfillment of many desires.

Consequently, reason tells me not to use reason to get Craig to refrain from thwarting the desires of others. Instead, reason tells us that we can use threats to thwart Craig's other desires as a way of modifying his behavior. We can go to Hateful Craig and say, "If we find you thwarting the desires of others (in particular ways), we will act so as to thwart these other desires you have. We will take away your money (through fines), we will take away your freedom (through imprisonment), and we may even take away your life. You may not have a desire to fulfill the desires of others. However, we – those others whose desires you do not care about – have reasons to set up institutions to make it the case that fulfilling the desires you do have is best accomplished in ways that do not thwart the desires of others too much."

However, reason tells us that this method has an important weakness. We have to actually catch Hateful Craig thwarting the desires of others in order to punish him. If Hateful Craig finds a way to act on his hate and avoid the penalties, then the penalties cease to be a deterrence. Reason tells us to look for another way to influence Hateful Craig's behavior.

The Hateful Craig Conference

Okay, now, folks gather around. We need to come to discuss the Hateful Craig problem.

Hateful Craig has dispositions that cause him to thwart the desires of others. We have threatened him with penalties if we catch him causing serious harm. However, threats have important and significant limits. We have to catch him in the act. However, Craig's hate will simply dispose him to find ways to act without getting caught. We need suggestions for how to deal with the Hateful Craig problem that can work even when we have no hope of catching Craig in the act.

One person in our meeting raises his hand. "Oh! Oh! Mr. Alonzo! I know! I know! Let's tell Craig and everybody else that we have this big invisible friend that sees everything. This big invisible friend will see to it that Craig suffers horribly in a life after death if Craig does anything wrong. Even if we do not catch him, our big invisible friend sees all. This will give him a reason not to do mean things."

In the interest of space, I will list only two of the problems with that option.

First, it's not true. One of the things that we want people to have is a love for the truth and a dislike for deception and for careless reasoning. Both of those traits tend to thwart the desires of others. Both of them are traits we would have to promote and encourage if we are going to depend on this story of the big invisible friend to keep Hateful Craig in line.

Second, what if we make a mistake? We can claim that this big invisible friend tells us what these moral truths are, but we still have to decide what this big invisible friend is going to tell us. What are we going to do if, for example, we say that the big invisible friend condemns homosexuality because it is a threat to the traditional family – only to discover that it is no threat at all. In fact, given the importance of intimate relationships, we may get no benefit at all from such a rule, and would instead be driving a lot of good young people into suicide. What do we do then? We can't say, "Sorry folks, it looks like our big invisible friend made a mistake." We might be locking in some evil for centuries – even millennia to come.

The first point also rules out the 'intrinsic value' proposal. This option says that we are going to tell people that certain types of acts have 'intrinsic merit' or are 'intrinsically wrong'. This option also depends on false premises and sloppy thinking. Besides, it will not work unless we give people a desire for that which they believe has intrinsic value. If we are going to do that, we might as well just give people a desire for something that actually exists – such as kindness and honesty itself.

The proposal that I go with does just that.

Fact: Some of our desires are malleable. Things that happen to us have effects on what we like or do not like. By controlling the 'things that happen to people', it is possible to control what they like or dislike. To reduce the amount of hatred in the world, we produce those ‘things’ that experience tells us reduce the amount of hatred.

Two sets of things that affect what people like and dislike are praise and condemnation.

With the tire – reason alone cannot change the tire, but can tell us what tools to use and how to use them to get the tire changed. Reason alone cannot change Hateful Craig's dispositions. However, it can tell us what tools to use that will change his dispositions, or to help ensure that some child born today will not grow up to be like Hateful Craig. Reason tells us how and where to use our tools of praise and condemnation.

Naturally, reason tells us that people have reason to use these tools to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and to inhibit desires that thwart other desires, where it is possible to do so. Reason tells us to use those tools against hatefulness, and in favor of kindness and generosity.

Conclusion

So, Hateful Craig asks me:

Why should I, who for purposes of this question hate everyone, have desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others?

I return to the question, "What do you mean by 'should'?"

What I am going to answer is, "The claim that you should have these desires that fulfill the desires of others is the claim that people generally have reason to use the tool of praise on those who exhibit such desires, and the tool of condemnation and, in the worst cases, punishment, on those who act are hateful. It would be nice to be able to get you to want to fulfill the desires of others through reason alone. Unfortunately, reason cannot be used for that particular job – it is ineffective. But reason tells us what tools we can use; praise and condemnation. The claim that you should have desires that fulfill the desires of others is the claim that reason tells us to use the tools of praise and condemnation to help bring it about that people generally have such desires."

That's my answer.

I think, if you look around, you will find this answer in much of what I write. However, many people do not see it, because they are assuming that I am answering a question on how to use reason alone to change people's desires. That is something that cannot be done. But that does not mean that we are powerless to change desires, and to do so in ways guided by reason.

Survival vs Property

Ethical discussions often use hypothetical (and often entirely unreasonable) cases to illustrate moral points. Sometimes, it is useful to deal with a real-world case, where the tragedy of different options is plain for all to see. The recent news about the family of James Kim, trapped in the mountains with his family, gives us just an opportunity to discuss some important points, while fully respecting the costs of different options.

So, imagine that your car has broken down on a trip through the mountains. You have left your wife and kids behind while you went for help. On the way, you come across a cabin. You knock. There is nobody home. You could break in. There might be a phone inside. If not, there is at least food. Is it permissible to break in and take what you need?

Most people would say it is permissible. There are a few who say that the right to property is so absolute that somebody must sit outside and starve to death – allow their family (their children) to starve to death, when the means to save their lives is so near at hand.

I have discussed cases similar to this in the past.

I have discussed the hypothetical case of a father who has taken his child fishing. The child starts to get an allergic reaction to the bee sting. The father cannot get his car started. However, another fisherman has left his car in the pull off with the keys in the ignition. Is it permissible to take the car?

Or, one is stranded in a city after a hurricane. Most city services are cut off. There is no clean water – but there is bottled water (and food) at the local convenience store. The store is locked. Is it permissible to break in and take the food and water one needs to survive?

These types of cases are often used as counter-examples to a strict version of libertarianism that says that it is always wrong to initiate force against another – and taking somebody else’s property without their consent is an instance of initiating force. What this branch of libertarians are afraid of is what would follow if one says that it is permissible to take something that does not belong to you when it is necessary to save your life or the lives of your children.

Those who defend the idea of strict property rights often express concern that any argument that looks like it justifies taking property without consent could then become a justification for a welfare state – for a government that takes property from those who have plenty and uses it to provide live-saving assistance (food, clothing, shelter, medicine) to those who would otherwise die.

We can alter the situation slightly and ask about cases where the government does not provide life-saving aid, but provides a safety net against the worst that could happen to individuals. All we need to do is ask what the father is permitted to do in a situation where his life and the lives of his family were not at stake, but their health would be. Perhaps the children are suffering from worsening frostbite, or the lack of food is causing damage to their physical bodies. These types of cases can be used to defend the moral permissibility of governments providing citizens with a safety net that goes beyond life-saving treatment.

Strict property rights theorists are right to worry. These types of cases do, in fact, prove the inadequacy of a strict libertarian system of property rights. They prove the legitimacy of sometimes initiating force against those who have a great deal (enough to spare without undue burden) to use those resources to protect the life, health, and well-being of others who would certainly suffer some significant depravation without this assistance.

Some strict property rights theorists go through some logical contortions to argue that it is permissible for the stranded hiker to break into an empty cabin in ways that do not establish a moral permissibility of government assistance. One argument states that, since the owner is not present, the lost hiker is free to break in and take what he needs (and no more than what he needs) as long as he is willing to offer the owner a fair compensation.

But what is a ‘fair compensation’? On a strict property rights system, it would be that level of compensation that would cause the owner to agree to perform the trade.

And what would that be?

Some owners might have sought to take advantage of the situation, offering use of the phone only after the lost hiker had signed over his home, everything in his bank accounts, everything in his investment and savings accounts, and any other real property he owns, as well as a percentage of all future income. The owner might be somebody who would not have allowed the lost hiker to use his phone at any price. The strict property rights theorist has to acknowledge that these are possibilities.

In other words, the lost parent owes the owner whatever compensation the owner would have asked for if he was present, and an obligation to leave entirely if the owner would not have allowed any assistance.

Which leads us to another variation on the case. Let us assume that the cabin’s owner is present in the cabin. We can imagine that the father came to the door, the owner was home, the father offered everything he had in exchange for using the phone, and the owner refused. “It is, after all, my phone,” the owner says, “I have the right to refuse to let other people use it.”

Does he have such a right? Is his statement correct?

Imagine that you are the lost hiker. Your family is near death. You do not have any phone, but you have a pistol you had brought with you on the trip. Would you force the owner to turn over the use of his phone and a modest amount of food? Would you consider the father who did so to be a bad person, worthy of condemnation and punishment?

To be fair, desire utilitarian does not care about our moral intuitions in these or any other types of cases. The desire utilitarian is well aware of the fact that there are cases where it is reasonable to ask, “Would you round up the Jews/Homosexuals and kill them all?” or “Would you enslave all the Negroes?” may not touch a person’s conscience at all – he would answer ‘yes’ without qualification or hesitation. Morality is not concerned with how we do feel about such cases, but with how we should feel about such cases – with the types of feelings we have reason to promote or demote.

Desire utilitarianism suggests that the owner who will not allow the free use of his phone, and even food and warmth, is not a good person. He does not have those malleable desires that tend to fulfill other desires. This means that he does not have those desires that people generally have reason to promote through their use of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. Instead, he has malleable desires that people have reason to discourage – that is, people generally have reason to condemn such a person.

The fact is, people generally have reason to condemn cruel selfishness in others. It is not a trait we have reason to encourage. We have the means to make it less common by using our social tool of condemnation against it and praise for those who oppose it. Any attempt to use a concept of intrinsic merit to defend strict property rights means basing a moral view on entities that do not exist. And any attempt to defend strict property rights on the premise that desires are the only reasons for action that exist will find that the premises do not support their conclusion.

One of the main facts about morality, is that people have reason to create a morality that deals with real-world situations and real-world possibilities. They bring to light the fact that when doing ethics, we are involved in more than just curious academic puzzles for the mind to ponder. We are, in fact, dealing with matters of life and death, and everything in between.

First, Kill All of the Teachers

First, kill all of the teachers.

This adaptation to Shakespeare is the policy of the resurgent Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan. Their program, all done in the name of God, is to take action to ensure that nobody commits the crime of teaching in the country – particularly the crime of teaching young girls.

According to a report from the Associated Press, over 20 teachers have been killed this year, and 150 schools have been burned down.

The article suggests that the reason for this is that the Taliban sees the schools (and their teachers) as traitors who are giving aid and comfort to the enemy – the United States. Indeed, anybody who works to make the lives of the common Afghani better – even aid workers – are targeted.

When I was young, and first considering how I was going to carry out my project of making the world better than it would have otherwise been, the profession that topped my list of options was that of teacher.

Of course, just being a teacher was not enough. One had to be a good teacher. A teacher always had to ask himself, “Would these students be better off with the teacher that would replace me if I were not here?” If the answer to this question was ‘yes’, then such a teacher was actually doing harm to his students by keeping them away from that better teacher.

I will admit that my first attempt at teaching was a failure. Or, at least, it felt like a failure to me. Yet, I was determined to be a good teacher and changed my teaching style in ways that seemed to work. One of the most serious changes is that I quit going to class with a stack of prepared notes to lecture on, and spent my class time instead actually interacting with my students. I would put moral arguments on the board and we would spend class time attacking and defending premises.

I had a grading policy where the students had to turn in three papers before the end of the year. They could turn in as many drafts as they would like. If I thought that the paper deserved an A, I would record an A. If not, I would hand it back with comments – questions and objections that the student needed to answer. Students always got their papers back at the next class. In one class, I had written 750 pages of typed comments for 30 students.

Yet, among the Taliban, this type of effort would be considered a capital crime.

Within the doctrine of desire utilitarianism, desires are the only ‘reasons for action’ that exist. People act so as to ‘fulfill’ their desires, meaning that they act so as to make or keep true the propositions that are the objects of those desires. This means that they need to know whether the objects of those desires are true in any given state of affairs, and how to make or keep them true. This means that they need true beliefs and sound reason.

Desire utilitarianism also says that they need good desires – desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others. A willingness to kill teachers – a willingness to kill those who are seeking to give others true beliefs and sound reason – is not a ‘good desire’ and is not an act that a person with good desires would perform. In fact, those who would attack teachers and schools show themselves to be quite evil. They are a type of people that rational individuals have many strong reasons to answer with condemnation and punishment.

In fact, teachers – that is to say, good teachers – deserve the utmost respect. Whatever political or social goals one may have, aiding those who have taken it among themselves to teach children should be among them. Whereas standing in the way of a child’s education should be considered one of (if not the) worst form of child abuse.

Because a child cannot stop growing up into the ‘grown ups’ settle their political differences. The child can not be put on pause until other work is done. A day of lost education in the life of a child is a day of lost opportunity. It is a day that will make that child’s future a little less bright – a day that pushes the door on the child’s best opportunities a little more closed. It is, in fact, a permanent scar on those children’s lives.

It will, unfortunately, have a good chance of helping the Taliban – an organization made up of men who, like the children they attack, had their own opportunities stripped from them by adults who saw no good in education, and now are fit for little more than carrying a weapon into combat for the sake of those who did them harm.

Another example of a chain of abuse.

In this environment, teachers in Afghanistan deserve our utmost support and protection. In an earlier blog, I offered the suggestion of allowing Afghan parents to send their children to schools in the United States, where they can learn in safety. They can then be graduated into the Afghan military and return home – free of the corrupting influences that they would have had in Afghanistan.

Of course, the Taliban would deliver all sorts of propaganda about those children being abused and brainwashed. That is to be expected and it must be planned for. Still, America would benefit by giving Afghan children a chance for a future that is better than that of being an agent of the Taliban, and good Americans will benefit from the fulfillment of their general interest in protecting and promoting the welfare of children.