Evolution and Motivational Beliefs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intrinsic (Objective) Values

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

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

Intrinsic vs Objective Value

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

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

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

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

What Are Intrinsic Values

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

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

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

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

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

Intrinsic Value and Personal Preferences

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

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

Additional Implications from Intrinsic Value Claims

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Harm of Intrinsic Value Theories

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Desire to Serve God

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

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

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

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

Religious Denial

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

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

Meaninglessness, Emptiness

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

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

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

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

Anger

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

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

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

Preventing Bad Desires

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worthiness and Second-Order Desires

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

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

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

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

ADHR provides an example of this in saying:

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

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

Which desire should a person get rid of?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part of his justification for this belief is that humans are

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

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

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

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

Richard’s objections come with a recommendation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Partial Values

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

Atheist Observer proposed the following:

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

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

Unmentioned Desires

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

(1) Mary hates men.

(2) The Chez Pierre is noisy.

(3) The Chez Pierre is crowded

(4) The Chez Pierre is ‘overpriced’

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

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

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

(7) John hates crowds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Partial Value

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

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

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

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

The Cost of Precision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Addendum

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Arationality of Desires

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ideally Rational

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Altering Desires as Ends

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

From Thayne:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It would be an argument that takes the form:

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

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

I suggest that it cannot be done.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Desires, Beliefs, Moral Values, and Condemnation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beliefs and Values

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

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

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

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

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

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

Desires, Ends, and Means

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Participatory Good

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

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

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

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

Changing Beliefs

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

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

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

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

The Homosexuality Example

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Potential versus Actual Desires

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

G-man asked:

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

No, you cannot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Value of Ecosystems

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

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

Sheldon asked the first of these three questions.

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

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

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

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

Ecosystems and Intrinsic Value

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

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

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

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

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

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

Desires and the Value of Ecosystems

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

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

The Value of the Desire to Preserve Ecosystems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good People Doing Bad Things

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

Background

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

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

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

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

Implications

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good People Doing Bad Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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