Talking About Atheism Part II: The Evils of Religion

This is the second in a short series of posts on Greta Christina's article in AlterNet describing why atheists have to talk about atheism.

(See: Alternet, Why Do Atheists Have To Talk About Atheism)

Reason 2: The Evils of Religion

Another part – and probably more important – is that many atheists see religion not just as a mistaken idea but as a harmful one . . . We see people bombing buildings, abusing children, committing flagrant fraud, shooting political dissenters, etc., . . . all behind the armor of religion . . . and we feel the need to speak out.

Yes, atheist bigots do this.

There is a principle of logic called modus tollens that says that if A implies B, then whatever counts as a reason for rejecting B also implies the rejection of A.

So, if the proposition, "at least one God exists" entailed that it is legitimate to bomb buildings, abuse children, commit flagrant fraud, or shoot political dissenters, then the reasons that exist to reject those conclusions would also imply that we should reject the proposition that at least one God probably exists.

However, the simple fact is that A does not imply B in this case. You cannot draw any moral implications from the simple proposition, "At least one God exists." Therefore, the claim that the reasons we have to reject B are reasons to reject A violate the fundamental principles of logic.

This, in turn, is evidence atheists are just as capable as theists at letting their need to denigrate others cloud their thinking, causing them to embrace illegitimate arguments purely because it helps them to feel good about treating others unjustly.

Religions are make-believe stories. As such, people do not get their morality from religion. Instead, they assign their morality to religion. All of the moral faults that one might assign to those who believe in God are a part of human nature.

The evils that some people assign to God others are just as capable of assigning to a non-religious moral power.

Intrinsic values, categorical imperatives, social contracts, impartial observers, Gaia, man-qua-man, the fundamental nature of humans, these are all just as imaginary as any God. As such, people are just as capable of assigning their evils to these entities as they are of assigning their evils to God. Any one of these can be turned into a justification for bombing a building, or for shooting a political dissenter.

We see this in Sam Harris' argument in defense of torture, Christopher Hitchens' defense of the invasion of Iraq, the defense of defrauding churches of their property (when PZ Myers sought a communion wafer to desecrate), and, indeed, the very example of illogical and unjust anti-theist bigotry being discussed in this posting.

We also have moral subjectivism, by which an agent can justify anything he wants to do merely by recognizing the fact that he wants to do it.

Those who want to give their natural desires an illusion of legitimacy without assigning them to God can now assign them to evolution instead. On this account we have evolved a moral sense such that if one has no 'evolved sense' that something is wrong, then it isn’t wrong.

If the block the channels by which people assign their prejudices to God to give them an illusion of legitimacy, it is a simple matter to shift to one of these other non-religious channels instead. These evils come from human nature itself, and it is foolish to think that atheists are somehow immune (or that you can make somebody a better person merely by changing his beliefs about God).

The real culprit here is not belief in God. The real culprit is the practice of blinding oneself to easily disproved logical fallacies embraced, not because they are reasonable, but because they give an illusion of legitimacy to a conclusion that one finds emotionally appealing.

The practice of claiming that 'religion' is responsible for bombings, shielding child abuse, and shooting political dissenters rather than ‘rationalization’ turns out to be just one more example of people abandoning reason to give an emotionally appealing conclusion an illusion of legitimacy.

Talking About Atheism Part I: Anti-Atheist Bigotry

Greta Christina had an article recently in AlterNet in which she gave three reasons why atheists have to talk about atheism.

(See: Alternet, Why Do Atheists Have To Talk About Atheism)

In the next three posts, I would like to consider each of these three reasons in turn.

Reason 1: Anti-Atheist Bigotry

Atheists talk about atheism because there's a lot of misunderstanding and hostility toward us. It's nowhere near as severe as racism or sexism; but it does exist, and it has real-world consequences. . . . Making ourselves visible, coming out about who we are and what we do and don’t believe, is the best way to counter that.

I disagree with this statement.

Certainly, there is reason to talk about atheism grounded on the fact that people have false beliefs and it is worthwhile to make them true. However, bigotry has a long and solid history of being an impermeable barrier to certain facts. An anti-atheist bigot is going to interpret anything and everything an atheist does through his taint eye-glasses. There is nothing an atheist can do to present himself in a better light.

The hypothesis that “coming out” is the best weapon against anti-atheist bigotry flies in the face of the fact that bigotry against Jews, blacks, and women were all perfectly compatible with the fact that the members of these groups were not hidden.

If we want to take effective action against bigotry, we should not be talking about atheism per se. We should be talking about bigotry itself. It’s not the atheist that we need to expose to the public. It’s the bigot. We need to explain to people what a bigot is and then demonstrate the degree to which those qualities can be found in the words of certain segments of the population.

The fault for which the bigot deserves condemnation is not belief in God, but belief in whatever propositions he or she holds towards the target group against which that person happens to be bigoted or prejudiced.

Another problem that arises from blaming religion for these faults rather than bigotry itself is that it allows atheist bigotries to live and grow unchecked. Effectively, it invites the kind of thinking that goes along the lines, "I do not believe in God, so I do not have these moral faults."

Yet, an atheist can be just as bigoted as any theist.

If those bigotries are not held in check, then future generations may discover that atheists are capable of bigoted injustices that rival those that we have seen in religious regimes. On matters of human psychology, it is absurd to assume that if one denies the existence of a God that this will make the individual immune to the type of mental viruses that go along with forming unreasoned hatreds and prejudices of target groups.

It is not outside of the realm of possibilities for a group of atheists to decide that they have had enough of the "evils of religion" that "poisons everything" and decide that the time has come to simply rid society of this harmful influence of religion, which means ridding ourselves of those people who are carriers of this mental virus.

So, the proper target should not be theism. The proper target when it comes to fighting bigotry are the bigots themselves – whether they are theist bigots, or atheist bigots. Such a project requires knowing what bigotry is and how to identify it, then identifying the bigots and pointing them out in a context of public condemnation. And it requires not checking the religious (or a-religious) credentials of the speaker and allowing one set of bigots to continue to act on their bigotry without challenge.

One of the important things about this strategy is that one does not have to be an atheist to use it. One merely has to be opposed to bigotry. Just as whites joined the battle against racism, and men joined the battle against sexism, it is not impossible to have Christians and other theists join the battle against anti-Atheist bigotry.

To Inspire and Convince

What do you want from a moral theory?

A member of the studio wrote to say:

I would want it to inspire me, to convince me to change my ways. I want it to go towards guiding my life . . . . That’s why we study moral theories, to become better people, to do better.

The inspire and convince standard of moral theories strikes me as being somewhat problematic.

If we look at the things in human history that have had the power to ‘inspire and convince’, they have not had a particularly stellar track records.

The 9/11 hijackers were inspired and convinced. So were a great many followers of Hitler. Stalin did an excellent job of inspiring and convincing people and religious wars in Europe at one time inspired and convinced people to lock up whole villages of people in the town church and set it on fire.

Many of the proponents of Proposition 8 in California acted on a deep sense of inspiration and were convinced beyond all possible doubt that they were the 'better people' and were 'doing better'. It is also true of the members of Operation Rescue and those who are trying intently to get intelligent design taught as a scientific theory. These people are as inspired and convinced as it is possible for person to become.

I am not saying that people who seek to be inspired and convinced in this sense are necessarily going to take part in these types of atrocities. What I am saying that the capacity of an idea to inspire and convince people is not a reliable measure of its quality. The search for something to inspire and convince us is not necessarily the same as the search for something to help us actually become better people and to do better.

Not only is it the case that people seeking to be inspired and convinced often get caught up in movements that perform the most horrendous evils, many well-supported truths lack the capacity to inspire and convince.

Look at the huge numbers of people who are exposed to the theory of evolution, and yet fail to be inspired and convinced by it. In fact, they are more strongly inspired by and convinced of ideas that deny evolution than they are by evolution itself. Clearly, the value of the theory of evolution is not be found in its capacity to inspire and convince. It is found in its ability to predict and explain.

When I went looking for a moral theory, I did not take that journey with an eye to measuring theories according to a desire to be inspired and convinced. I went looking for a theory that followed the basic principles of reason.

I went looking for a theory without exotic entities. Whenever a theory started talking about God, intrinsic values, categorical imperatives, a natural moral law, social contracts, impartial observers, decision-makers behind a veil of ignorance, my first question was, "Is it real?" If the answer was, "No," then my next move was, "Throw it out."

This got me into trouble when I ran into the so-called is-ought distinction; the idea that there are two realms of being, an is realm and an ought realm, that are independent of each other with the power to interact. If this is what ought requires then I am ready to toss it out as well. I will stick solely with what is.

Yet, even doing this, the phenomenon of pain, the desire for sex and to eat, an interest in having a room at a comfortable temperature, my interest in my wife’s happiness and my desire to say or do something that will make the world better than it would have been if I had not existed – all of those things clearly exist in the world of is.

There is no sense to the idea that we would have none of those things unless a separate realm of ought exists to infuse the world of is with value. Things have value because of the way the world is, or they have no value at all.

None of these goods requires a search for that which has the capacity to inspire and convince. We could speak in a sense, I suppose, of the power of fire to inspire and convince me to keep my hands out of a hot flame. Of course, this happens in the same way that a sight of a homosexual couple might inspire and convince somebody to contribute great amounts of effort to a Constitutional amendment to allow gay marriage.

The only thing that has the power to inspire and convince us in this sense are things that we personally like and dislike. Which is why the standard of inspire and convince so often ends up inspiring and convincing people to do horrendous evil.

Ultimately, this is what the inspire and convince crowd is looking for. They wish to discover a set of ideas that tickle the pleasure centers of the brain in the right way – something that, like a narcotic, makes them feel good.

Unfortunately, one of the things that tends to make humans feel good is membership in a tribe or a gang who adopts the attitude, "We are the only people who truly matter – and all others are beneath us." This is a message with a huge capacity to inspire and convince - with a historic track record of inspiring and convincing people to do horrendous things to those deemed beneath us.

This explains why the standard of inspire and convince has been associated with so much evil in the past, predicts that it will put us at risk of so much evil in the future, and gives us practical-ought reason to promote an aversion to this particular standard.

A Few Answers

I’m just going to answer a few questions from a member of the studio audience.

Identifying a person who would torture a child as somebody that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn is captured in the moral statement, "It is wrong to torture a child." From which it follows that I or you should not torture a child.

How does it follow? Remember, "[t]o say that S is prescribed for A, but A has no reason for action to bring about S, is incoherent". From the fact that "people generally" have good reasons to oppose child-torturing does not imply that you or I have reasons for action to stop child torturing.

Because moral claims are not prescriptions for the individual they are addressed to. They are prescriptions for people in general. A moral claim is a claim that people in general have reasons for action to bring the forces of praise and condemnation to bear on a particular desire.

They are also, at the same time, prescriptions against the agent insofar as it is the case that people generally have reason to deliver praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to that person. However, moral claims remain true in virtue of the reasons that people have to deliver praise and condemnation.

The key point is not that people in general condemn something, but that normative people do, and we are that.

Actually, the point is that people in general have many and strong reasons to, whether they actually condemn it or not. I have already mentioned how false beliefs and bad desires (desires that people in general have reason to inhibit) sometimes cause people to do that which they do not, in fact, have sufficient reason to do.

To move from description of desires as "good" to prescription of actions that "morally good" implies, you need something more. You need to bridge the gap between practically-should and morally-should, or your theory is not prescriptive.

Practical-should claims are prescriptive. In fact, they represent the only type of prescriptivity that is real. Moral-should is a species of practical-should. It is concerned with the practical-should of bringing social forces such as praise and condemnation to bear to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires.

There is no gap for me to cover. The gap that you write about is as fictitious as God and angels. The demand that a moral theory include an account of this gap is as misguided as the demand that evolution include an element of intelligent design.

[Desire Utilitarianism] logically ends at "Those reasons give them reason to bring the social tools of condemnation to bear against those whose desires are such that they would torture a child." It cannot bridge the gap and be descriptive without further assumptions. I agree that people would generally also have mistaken beliefs and so on, but even brushing all these problems away for now, DU only gets that far.

There is no place further to go. Desire Utilitarianism stops at the boundary between 'is' and 'is not' - the boundary between fact and fiction. That is as it should be.

The Morality of the Lone Survivor

Suppose that, suddenly, every person on earth would suddenly be gone from the earth except for you. You will be alone in the universe. Do you think you could not take any moral or immortal actions? Will pissing on people's grave be amoral? Would trying to work to re-create the human race with genetic know-how be amoral? Would bearing your condition with acceptance and bravery count for nothing? Would taking your life be an amoral, meaningless choice?

We have many and strong reason to promote a set of aversions that would make people reluctant to piss on people’s graves. Our desires are better fulfilled in a society where those we live with are interested in helping to fulfill the desires of others, and disinclined to thwart the desires of others. We capture a part of this in the concept of respect. Respecting others means showing a regard for their interests, while disrespect shows a disregard for their interests.

Recall that a desire that P is fulfilled in any state of affairs in which P is true. A person can have a desire for respect even after his death. This desire is fulfilled in any state in which he is treated with respect after his death, and disregarded in any state in which he is treated with disrespect after his death. In fact, an agent might have many and strong desires that he may wish to see fulfilled after his death – desires for the care of his children, desires to promote the fight against particular diseases, desires to have one’s poetry or music remembered for generations to come. All of these are reasons for action to promote a current desire to show respect for the dead.

So we have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to the thought of a person left alone after everybody else is gone pissing on our graves.

It is also the case that we have many and strong reasons to promote in people the desire to restart the human race if the rest of us should be wiped out.

There are a group of soldiers in combat. One of them writes a final letter to his family and says, “In the event of my death, make sure my unborn son gets this letter.” We have many and strong reason to promote an aversion to those kinds of promises. If we are surrounded by people averse to breaking those promises we can have greater confidence that our desires will be fulfilled after our death. Promoting in each other today a strong desire to restore the human race if possible is one way to help to ensure that our current desires will be fulfilled even in a universe in which only one person is left.

The story of the person leaving a will with his lawyer, or setting up a trust, is simply another version of the story of the soldier. The will is a letter that accompanies a request for a promise to “take care of these things if I should die.” Because, even in our final days, we have reason to act so as to realize states of affairs in which the propositions that are the objects of our desires become true.

We also have many and strong reasons to promote a sympathy and consideration for the plight of others. We have reasons to be averse to the last person on earth simpering in a corner waiting to die. Our desires – and, in fact, desires we have many and strong reason to promote – are better fulfilled in a state where a person alone on the world reacts to his state with bravery and acceptance, that he may find value in the end of his life even though nobody will follow after him.

We have many and strong reasons to act to create people whose desires are such that they are disinclined to piss on our graves after we die, will try to restore the human race if possible, and to face any fate they cannot change with courage and acceptance.

We have these reasons.

All of these values are dependent on the reasons for action that we have. This is not the morality of a person alone in the universe. This is the morality of 6.5 billion people living on Planet Earth (what those 6.5 billion people have reason to what a lone survivor to want) that is then applied to a state in which one person has survived the disappearance of the rest of us.

There is no evidence here of reasons for action that exist that are independent of desire.

Even if it were to be taken of evidence of such a thing? What are those 'reasons for action that exist'? How do we find them in the real world? What are we really looking at when we claim we are looking at a desire-independent reason for action? The person who wants to propose such a theory would still have a great deal of work to do.

The Sad Fate of Future Generations

One area in which I am pessimistic is on the question of whether future generations will be well cared for by present generations. It is not likely.

The United States in the future will be a nation collapsing under the strain of a mountain of debt, while rising sea levels destroy the states of Florida and Louisiana and several coastal cities.

The Definition of Moral-Should

The question of whether the definition of moral-should includes the desires of future generations or not is not a serious question. It is as trivial as the question of whether the term planet should include Pluto.

The size, shape, and orbit of Pluto does not hang in the balance depending on how we define our terms. Similarly, the objective facts concerning the relationship between future desires and present action is also not dependent on how we define our terms.

What matters are those objective facts.

Future Desires and Present Action

Future generations, if they exist at all, will certainly have reasons to reach back in time and mold our desires to be compatible with theirs. However, they lack the power to do so. The reasons for action that will exist are entirely impotent in the current world.

All of the motivation to bring current desires into harmony with future desires has to come from the people living today. If those reasons for action do not exist today, then people simply cannot be brought to act in ways that are harmonious with future desires.

Even the effort to mold current desires into those that are compatible with future desires must be motivated by current desires. We may find those motives in the national parental concern for the well-being of their offspring, in the interest to promoting an aversion to harm, and in the interest in promoting a desire to help the defenseless. Wherever we find it, if that motivation is not found in current desires then it cannot be a reason for action that exists for current actions.

Even to the degree that it does exist, the total weight of reasons for current action to make current desires compatible with future desires will never be as strong as they would have been if future generations could reach back in time. Future generations will always be worse off than they would have been if they could find the power to mold current desires to be harmonious with their own.

The National Debt

The National Debt, above a particular level, is an example of intergenerational slavery.

You have a group of populations, a group of people who vote, and a group of people who do not vote. The politicians, in a bid to get elected, engage in a policy of taking whatever they can from those who do not vote (taxation without representation) and redistributing their wealth to those whose votes they want to buy. Effectively, they make those who do not vote economic slaves to those who do vote.

The people who do not vote are future generations – and there is no way to give the a vote in current elections. The people who do vote are the people who are of voting age today.

The National Deficit is the redistribution of wealth – the value of the slave labor – that is to be taken from those who have no political voice to be handed out to those whose votes the politician wants to buy.

It is no different than imposing a tax that is imposed only on those who are black, then using that money to write checks that are distributed to white people.

There are some legitimate reasons for government debt. If the future generation is going to enjoy the benefits of an action it is reasonable to ask them to pay for that action. So, it is reasonable to ask future generations to pay to construct a road (by issuing bonds), to expect future generations to pay for their own public education, and to expect future generations to pay to fight current wars in defense of their liberty.

However, to a large degree, with our current deficit, we enslave future generations for our own enjoyment.

Future generations will never get a vote in current elections. Therefore, politicians will continue to confiscate the wealth of future generations and use it to buy the votes of current voters. This will continue to the point that future generations can no longer stand the weight of the burden placed on them, and the system collapses.

We may find the motivation to end this practice – to promote such an aversion to enslaving those who cannot vote that we choose not to do so. However, if we cannot find the motivation to make this change in current desires, then it does not exist. Defining moral-should to include future desires will not change this fact.

Should Do vs. Will Do

Some more comments from a member of the studio audience:

If it is demonstrated that keeping women in-doors is harmonious (tending to fulfill more and stronger desires than it thwarts), it would still be wrong - because we value the freedom of women, not just the average desire fulfillment, and am willing to sacrifice desire fulfillment on the altar of freedom and autonomy.

First, I have to ask where the term 'average' came from in 'average desire fulfillment'?

Second, nothing in desire utilitarianism states that we value desire fulfillment. What we value is chocolate, sex, the company of friends, praise, physical comfort, the absence of pain, name recognition, excitement, and thousands of other things – different things and to different degrees for each person. There is probably some desire for desire fulfillment in there somewhere, but it would still only be one desire among many.

Desire fulfillment is just a word to describe a state in which there is a desire that P and P is true.

Third, the moral question is not what we are willing to sacrifice on the altar of other values. The moral question is what we should be willing to sacrifice of other values. It does not follow from the fact that we are willing to make a particular sacrifice that we should make that sacrifice.

Fourth, if it is demonstrated that keeping women in-doors is harmonious, it would have to be harmonious with the love of freedom, would it not? The only way to allow this type of imposition is if we inhibited or suppressed the love of freedom. However, if we inhibited the love of freedom, then we would have to do without the desire-fulfillment that freedom brings.

There are, as I have argued repeatedly, many and good reasons to promote an overall love of freedom. They begin with the fact that the most informed, least corruptible agent to put in charge of each person's desire fulfillment is typically that person himself. This might not be the case for young children and mentally handicapped adults, but it is generally true.

Since each of us is the most knowledgeable and least corruptible agent to put in charge of our own lives, we have reason to promote an inhibition in others against interfering with that liberty – and they have reason to create the same inhibition in us. This would give us reason to oppose “keeping women in-doors”.

So, as it turns out, you have started with a contradiction – that a violation of liberty can be harmonious with a love of liberty.

Furthermore, you seem to deny the descriptive nature of your theory. If all you're doing is describing a common should, then there is no "universal" should, in the sense that your "should" is not prescriptive.

Well, if I am describing 'should' then I am describing what prescription is and how it works, am I not?

And if I am describing the phenomenon of prescription accurately, then I should be able to identify that which is correctly prescribed and that which is incorrectly prescribed.

A state of affairs S is prescribed for agent A if and only if (and to whatever degree) the agent has a 'reason for action that exists' to bring about S. To say that S is prescribed for A, but A has no reason for action to bring about S, is incoherent.

Desires are the only reasons for action that exist. I have not seen the slightest bit of evidence supporting the existence of any other reasons for action. It is still the case that a claim that we should do something when there is no reason for action that exists to do that thing is nonsense.

DU doesn't, cannot, say that I or you "should" not torture a child…

Sure it can.

I or you should not torture a child.

That wasn’t difficult at all.

It appears quite obvious that a person who tortures a child has desires that tend to thwart the desires of others, or at least lacks desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others. The bulk of people have many and strong reasons to condemn a person whose desires are such that he would torture a child. Those reasons give them reason to bring the social tools of condemnation to bear against those whose desires are such that they would torture a child. Identifying a person who would torture a child as somebody that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn is captured in the moral statement, "It is wrong to torture a child." From which it follows that I or you should not torture a child.

[Desire utilitarianism] merely points out that society at large will tend to exert social forces opposed to child torturing.

This is false.

What society at large will tend to do is not the same as what people in general have many and strong reasons to do.

What an agent will do is act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of his desires, given his beliefs. What an agent moral-should do is act as a person with good desires would act. This means that there are two ways in which what a person will do can deviate from what a person should do.

The first source of deviation from what a person should do is caused by a lack of good desires or the presence of bad desires. If an agent does not have good desires, then there are circumstances in which he will not act the way that a good agent will act. That is to say, there are circumstances in which the action that will fulfill the most and strongest desires of the agent will not fulfill the most and the strongest desires of a hypothetical agent that has good malleable desires and no bad malleable desires.

The second source of deviation springs from false beliefs. A person who believes that there is a God that declares that homosexual acts have negative value and that people should condemn or even punish those who engage in those acts treat others unjustly on the basis of false beliefs.

It is still the case that there is something wrong with their desires. A person is blameworthy with respect for false beliefs when a person with good desires would have gone to the effort to make sure that beliefs arguing for doing harm to others would have sought a more secure foundation for those beliefs.

Future Desires

A member of the studio audience has asked that I report on what desire utilitarianism has to say with respect to obligations to future generations.

What timeframe does DU consider when calculating desire fulfillment? Shouldn't future desires be considered? But, if they are, then how far in the future? And if they aren't, then it seems that "making the world a better place" only examining the current desires might end up making the world a worse place in the future.

Desire utilitarianism is concerned only with what is objectively true. So, in determining what desire utilitarianism has to say about future desires, one has to ask what is objectively true about future desires.

(1) There is no intrinsic moral virtue in considering future desires.

Intrinsic values do not exist. The person who claims that a person who considers the desires of future generations has more intrinsic virtue than somebody who does not is simply wrong.

(2) Future desires are not reasons for action that exist. They are reasons for action that will exist.

Future generations (if they exist) will certainly have reasons to reach back in time and mold our desires to be harmonious with theirs. They will have reason to promote in us those desires that will tend to promote their desires, and to inhibit in us those desires that will tend to thwart their desires.

However, they will not have the capacity to do so. Outside of a narrow band of time (where the younger generation of today can condemn the older generation and change their desires), future desires are not directly relevant.

(3) Future generations will have the ability to thwart some of our desires.

A 'desire that P' is a desire to realize a state of affairs in which P is true. The objects of desires are not limited to personal experiences. I have a desire that descendents of the human race continue far into the indefinite future. I hope that there are human descendents when the Andromeda galaxy combines with the Milky Way. My desire will be thwarted by future actions that result in human extinction.

(4) We have certain limited natural desires for the well-being of at least some members of future generations.

A parent’s desire for the future well-being of a child is a parent’s desire that the child’s future desires be fulfilled. That child’s future desires will likely include a desire that the desires of the child’s future child be fulfilled, and so on, fading off into the distance.

(5) Insofar as we have reason to see that the desires of future generations are fulfilled, we have reason to promote in others those desires that are compatible with those future desires.

We have reason to praise those who exhibit malleable desires compatible with fulfilling the desires of future generations, and condemning those who exhibit desires that will tend to thwart the desires of future generations.

However, the only reasons for action that exist are current desires. The reason for actions that exist for the praise and condemnation of those whose desires will tend to fulfill or thwart future desires comes from current desires that future desires be fulfilled. It does not come from the future desires themselves, because future desires cannot reach back in time to cause current actions.

(6) We have many and strong reason to promote in others a general aversion to doing harm, even to those who cannot defend themselves.

To the degree that we are successful in promoting in others a general aversion to causing harm, to that degree we are safe from being caused harm even by people who face no risk of retribution and revenge. We are each better off in a community of individuals averse to causing us harm, than we are in a community of individuals indifferent to causing us harm and, thus, willing to cause us harm whenever they can avoid punishment.

However, this aversion to doing harm is promoted by including an aversion to doing harm to animals or to future generations. Those are beings that can be harmed without fear of retribution, but a willingness to do harm when there is no risk of retribution is a dangerous desire for us to permit. We (and those we care about) may well become the victims of that willingness to harm when there is little or no risk of retribution.

Combining (6) with (4), the set of ‘those we care about’ who may be at risk of harms inflicted without the possibility of retribution include are own children, their children, and so on.

To the degree that we promote in others desires compatible with the fulfillment of the future desires of those we care about, and they promote in us desires that are compatible with the future desires of those they care about, the set of future people each of us care about has reason to grow. Ultimately, we have reason to promote desires compatible with the fulfillment of desires of future generations generally, to the degree that we can determine what they are and how they might be fulfilled and thwarted.

Conclusion

These are some of the facts regarding future desires. Make of them what you will. Future desires have no influence on current desires. If future desires are to be fulfilled or thwarted, it depends on whether people’s current desires are such that they have reason to promote desires that tend to fulfill (or, at least, do not tend to thwart) future desires.

The Harmony of Desires

A member of the studio audience has given me reason to go a little deeper into the nature of desire.

People are not actually moved by the desire to maximize the harmonicity of desires. They have more specific and diverse desires.

This is true, and this is exactly what desire fulfillment theory claims.

Consider a being that has a desire that A, and a stronger desire that B.

Such a being would prefer a state of affairs in which both A and B are true. If this option is not available, the next best thing is a state in which B is true. Failing that, the being would settle for a state in which A is true. The being would be indifferent to a state in which neither are true.

(Note: An aversion is a negative desire, not the absence of a desire. This agent is not averse to the state in which neither A nor B is true. The agent simply sees no value in a state. An aversion is a negative desire (a desire that not-A. It is not the absence of desire (a not desires that A.)

I do not need to postulate – in fact, it would be foolish to postulate, a third desire – a 'desire to maximize the harmonicity of desires.' What would this give me? Now, we would have three desires – a desire that A, a desire that B, and this desire that C where C = "the maximization of the harmonicity of desires". This does not answer any questions, because we still need to figure out how this desire that C fits with the original desires.

Think of a hot air ballon being launched. It has a force causing it to go up. It has another force (wind) causing it to move to the east. The result is that it will move up and to the east. We do not need to postulate a principle of physics that says that things should ‘maximize the harmonicity of the forces acting upon it.’ All we need are the two forces themselves. They will do all the work.

The presence of a desire that A motivating the agent to realize states of affairs in which A is true, and a desire that B motivating the agent to realize states of affairs in which B is true, is sufficient. The agent then has sufficient reason to act so as to realize a state of affairs in which both A and B are true.

Now, let us introduce a second person into this system. Furthermore, we give our agent the option of choosing to give this second person a desire that D, or a desire that E. A desire that D will motivate our new agent to act in ways that will bring about a state in which A and B are both true. A desire that E will bring about a state in which neither is true (or only one is true).

Clearly, our agent has reason to act to give this new agent a desire that D.

Again, I do not need to postulate any type of desire to maximize the harmonicity of desires. I do not even need to postulate altruism or empathy. I need nothing but the desire that A and the desire that B.

Again, I do not need to add anything else to the mix. The fact that the agent has a desire that A and desire that B is sufficient to give him a reason to choose harmonious desires for other agents.

[T]he idea that all desires should be fulfilled equally ignores their separate nature (so that one sense can overcome the other), the existence of other intuitive desires.

There is no idea that all desires should be fulfilled equally. There is only the desires themselves motivating agents to act so as to realize states of affairs in which the propositions that are the objects of their desires are true.

Our agent, in the case above, does not need an idea that his desire that A should be fulfilled equally with his desire that A. He simply has a desire motivating him to realize a state of affairs in which A is true (that fulfills desire A), and a desire that B motivating him to realize a state of affairs in which is true (that fulfills desire that B). This agent is motivated to choose a state in which both A and B are true above all others.

And this agent, having the motivation to realize states of affairs in which A and B are true, has otive to cause others to have desires compatible with realizing those states of affairs.

An idea that all desires should be fulfilled equally does no work. It serves no purpose, and can be discarded. So, it is no objection to this theory that I cannot defend such a thesis.

The Persistence and Malleability of Desires

A member of the studio audience has asked me a series of questions on the persistence and malleability of desires and their implications for desire utilitarianism. This is an ara that I have not explored in any depth before, so here goes . . .

Alonzo, one of the tenets of DU is that desires are malleable & persistent. Can you discuss and expound on these concepts?

Desires contain two relevant components, an 'object' and a 'strength'.

Desires are propositional attitudes - they can be expressed in the form, "Agent desires that P," where P is a proposition capable of being true or false. The object of a desire is found in this proposition P that the desire motivates the agent to make or keep true.

The strength of a desire is, of course, the intensity of the drive to create a state of affairs in which P is made or kept true.

Malleability refers to changing either the strength of a desire, or its object, or both.

For example, we have a desire to eat, However, our tastes in food are subject to the experiences of our childhood. We tend to eat as adults the kinds of food we were fed as children. In this way, the object of our desire to eat is (somewhat) malleable. This malleability accounts for cultural differences in native foods. This is an example of altering the object of one's desires.

As for strength, the strength of a desire determines how much effort an agent is willing to put towards realizing a particular proposition P, particularly if the desire comes into conflict with other desires. To the degree that a desire for alcohol (or a desire to be drunk) increases in strength, to that degree the agent is likely to forego the fulfillment of other desires in order to fulfill the desire to be drunk. Maleability, here, has to do with the ability to strengthen or weaken desires.

Even though desires are maleable, they do not change easily. It typically takes a number of experiences to change an individual's desires and, even then, they change slowly over time, and there seems to be limits to the extent to which they can be changes. Another fact that seems evident is that a child's mind is more plastic than an adult's mind.

A desire that exists at a particular time (e.g., a fear of flying, a fondness for chocolate, shyness) cannot be expected to change overnight. In some rare instances it will, but not often.

The persistence of a desire is the degree to which a desire can be expected to continue to exist in (approximately) its current form over time.

Particularly, I think you have said that not all desires are malleable.

Yeah, I probably have said that.

However, now that you have planted a flag here, I immediately see that it is not entirely true. There is clearly one case in which all desires are malleable - that of execution. Any desire that does exist at the time of execution ceases to exist shortly thereafter.

One thing I can say is that, when it comes to malleability, we are talking about a range of values. Some desires are more maleable than others. Desires appear to be more maleable in a child's mind than in an adult's. Some desires are more maleable in certain directions (towards or away from particular objects) than in others. There is a variety in the degree to which desires are maleable and some of them are very difficult to change - short of or significant brain damage.

How do we know which are which?

How do we know what materials are more elastic in others? Through experimentation and observation. If we are effective in altering a desire - or we see changes in the variety of a desire that we have no reason to link to genetics - then we have reason to believe that the desire is maleable. If we never see a change, we have reason to suspect that it is not maleable.

If someone has a desire that is not malleable, but it is causing the thwarting of a lot of other desires, shouldn't we be concerned with that?

If a desire - even a fixed desire - tends to thwart other desires, then those with the desires that are at risk have a reason to be concerned with the desire in question.

However, if a desire is not malleable then it makes no sense to use the social tools for molding desires against it. These types of desires harmful to others requires an alternative approach.

This happens to be the place at which we draw the distinction between those who are sick and those who are evil. We use the term ‘evil’ to direct the social forces of condemnation and punishment against those whose desires are susceptible to those influence. If, on the other hand, it make no sense to blame a person, we use the medical language of illness. We withhold condemnation and, instead, go for treatment or confinement.

In both cases, we have reason to be concerned with desires that tend to thwart other desires. However, we respond to the malleability of the desire with whatever tool is most effective.

Or, at least, it is our ideal to do so – and for good reason.

You have also said that desires are persistent -- and this seems to be the crux of why desire fulfillment act utilitarianism fails. But, it seems to me that not all desires are persistent; in fact, some are very fleeting.

As I wrote above, a more precise way of speaking is to say that some desires are more persistent than others. I’m not sure that I would agree with you that a desire itself is fleeting.

Here, we have to be cautious about the fact that the term ‘desire’ is an ambiguous term. We use it both to refer to ‘desires-as-ends’ (the final goals of intentional action – the proposition P that is the object of an actual desire), and ‘desires-as-means’ (desires as a stepping stone to ultimately get to what an agent desires-as-ends).

Desires-as-means can be fleeting because an agent might quickly discover that what he thinks will help to bring about the fulfillment of a desire will not work. He thinks he wants to take a ride on a roller coaster, until he gets on the roller coaster and discovers that the propositions P that are made true by such an experience are not those he has a desire for. In fact, he may discover he has an outright aversion to those propositions P.

Ultimately, however, it will not harm the theory to discover that some desires-as-ends are fleeting. Certainly, it is not the case that all of them are. If a desire is fleeting then it would make less sense to worry about the persistence of that specific desire over time. However, this does not change the legitimacy of worrying about the persistence of other desires over time when those desires are significantly more persistent.

None of this raises any objections to desire utilitarianism. At most, it argues that arriving at certain moral conclusions is difficult. However, it is not an objection to a moral theory that the theory states, “Discovering the answer to these moral questions is difficult,” when it happens to be true that discovering the answer to those moral questions is difficult.

In fact, it should be taken as a mark in favor of a theory that it correctly identifies the moral difficulties that actually do exist.

So, this definitely seems to be a bit of a quandary for DU -- for DU to work, desires must be malleable, yet persistent -- but not too persistent, lest they not be malleable, and not too malleable, lest they not be persistent.

There is no quandary.

It is true that, if desires were not persistent, then we would have less reason to be concerned with desires persisting over a period of time.

It is true that, if desires are not malleable, it would make less sense to use social tools such as praise and condemnation to mold desires.

However, a great many desires are persistent and they are malleable, so we do have reason to bring social forces to bear to promote some desires and inhibit others. In doing so, we do have reason to be concerned with the effects that the desires we promote and inhibit will have over time.

Reasons for Action that Exist

There is no mutually exclusive 'is – ought' distinction. The only mutually exclusive alternative to 'is' is 'is not'. This means that 'ought' either needs to find a comfortable home in the realm of 'is', or needs to be tossed into the realm of 'is not'.

A person comes to me and says, "Alonzo, you ought to do X."

I answer, "Prove it."

That person then says, "Well, as you know, an 'ought' statement cannot be derived from any set of 'is' statements . . . .”

"You can top right there," I say. "We're done. You have just told me that your 'ought' statement is a work of fiction – an artifact of the realm of make-believe. If your claim that I ought to do X is false, then why are you telling me I ought to do X?"

The person may try to say, "Well, no, there is a realm that is distinct and separate from the real world – the world of 'is' – that is the realm of 'ought'. This separate way of being that is separate and distinct from the 'is' universe. However, it is still relevant to the 'is' universe. In fact, it is only by infusion with this 'ought' power of the 'non-is' universe that things actually have significance.”

"You have a lot of work ahead of you if you want to convince me that a story like that is true. Your job will be made all that much harder because, even though you want me to accept this as true, you are asserting that 'true' does not actually belong in the realm of 'ought'. The realm of 'ought' is concerned with value, and 'true' only fits into the concept of fact. All things considered, this is sounding more and more like a work of imaginative fiction."

At this point, I can imagine my frustrated guest saying, "Okay, you try it. I've read your blog. Your blog is filled with claims about what we should or should not do. Prove to me that your claims about what I ought and ought not to do."

"Well, when I say that you morally ought to do something I mean that people geneally have many and strong reasons for action that exist to condemn those who do not do that thing. Note, I say the have many and strong reasons. I am not talking about the reasons they think they have, or they claim to have. I am talking about the reasons they have as a matter of fact."

I then continue, "I can prove this by showing that not doing X means the presence of a maleable desire that people generally have reason to inhibit, or the absence of a desire that people generally have reason to promote. One of the key tools that people generally have for promoting desires they have reason to promote, or inhibiting desires they have reason to inhibit, is the tool of condemnation. So, people generally have many and strong reasons for action that exist to condemn those who do not do X."

My opponent answers, "Yes, but you still can't get from an 'is' to an 'ought'. You can't get from, 'people generally have many and strong reasons for action that exist to condemn those who do not do X' to 'I ought to do X'. How do you justify that one final step?"

I would tell my opponent, "I have no need for that 'last final step' that you're talking about. If I can demonstrate that people generally have many and strong reasons for action that exist to condemn those who would not do X. That's all I need to do. Why would I want to go further? Why would I want to carry my 'ought' statement into your realm of fiction and make-believe?"

My critic presses, "Then you haven't really derived an 'ought' from an 'is'. All you have derived is a 'people generally have many and strong reason to condemn those who do not do X' from an 'is'. That's not the same thing."

My answer, "The rest is just semantics. 'People generally have many and strong reasons to condemn those who do not do X' functions exactly like your 'ought', except it exists in the real world. If it walks like an 'ought', and it quacks like an 'ought', and it flies like an 'ought', it's an 'ought', for all practical purposes. This difference - the fact that my 'ought' is a real-world claim and your 'ought' is a work of fiction and make-believe only serves to make my 'ought' truly relevant in the real world, and your 'ought' that cannot be derived from 'is' irrelevant.

My critic continues, "Well, that's just arbitrary. I could say 'you ought to sit in that chair' and assert that when I say this I mean that I want you to sit in that chair.' It wouldn't follow that you have an obligation to sit in the chair."

I shrug and say, "Well, if you define 'obligation' in terms of 'doing what you want me to do' then I would have an obligation to sit in the chair in that sense. However, I think you have to admit that the implications of the literal truth of the claim, 'I want you to sit in that chair' and the claim 'people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn those who do not do X' are somewhat different.

I continue, "Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you name things. All that matters is the objective facts that surround the things being named. It turns out that the objective facts surrounding, 'People generally have many and strong reasons to condemn those who do not do X' are substantially the same as those that surround the term 'obligation' the way that people use the term. And it doesn't require all of that mumbo jumbo about a realm distinct and separate from both the realm of 'is' and the realm of 'is not' that gives value to all things in the real world.

If you don't want to call it an obligation, that's fine. However, what is objectively true of 'people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn those who do not do X' remains objectively true, no matter what you call it.

Objection to Desire Utilitarianism

ACIn this posting I would like to address a common form of argument against desire utilitarianism in order to show that the argument is far weaker than those who use it seem to be aware of.

It is the form of argument in which one creates some sort of fictional situation involving relationships between actions and desires and between desires and other desires. They state that, "In this situation, desire utilitarianism implies Q." Q turns out to be something we tend not to want to be implied by a moral theory. They then use this to argue that this counts as reason to reject desire utilitarianism.

Common examples involve stories where the author attempts to draw the conclusion that desire utilitarianism would condone murder, or the torture of a child, or genocide, or some other great evil that the reader is uncomfortable with endorsing.

This form of argument has a number of weaknesses. I will discuss three.

Typically, desire utilitarianism does not actually imply the conclusion that the agent claims it does. Many of these arguments confuse desire utilitarianism (the primary object of evaluation if desires which are evaluated according to whether they generally tend to fulfill other desires), with desire-fulfillment act utilitarianism (the primary object of evaluation is actions which are evaluated in each instance according to whether or not they will maximize the fulfillment of all desires.

Desire utilitarianism allows that there will be specific acts that will generally thwart desires. However, before we condemn the act we have to ask what the world ould be like in the absence of the desire that motivated the action. If the world would be a worse place, we keep the desire, even if it does motivate harmful actions in some set of rare and exotic circumstances.

However, let's imagine that the story gets the conclusion right. Furthermore, it yields a conclusion that the reader does not like. The reader does WANTS the right answer to be something else.

Where is it written that if a reasoned argument reaches a conclusion that an individual does not like, that this proves that the reasoned argument must be flawed? People have an annoying tendency of asserting that our “moral intuitions” are so flawless that if any reasoned argument comes into conflict with a moral intuition that the moral intuition must be preserved.

I hold that moral intuitions are nothing but learned prejudices. Historic examples from slavery to the divine right of kings to tortured confessions of witchcraft or Judaism to the subjugation of women to genocide all point to the fallibility of these 'moral intuitions'. There is absolutely no sense to the claim that its conclusions are to be adopted before those of a reasoned argument.

In fact, the prejudice that we have 'moral intuitions' that are superior to any type of reasoned argument is a groundless conceit – something children should be warned against the instant they can understand the warning.

However, the most important objection rests in the response, "Okay, so what other types of reasons for action exist to get the results you want?"

If the individual has truly considered all of the reasons for action that exist, yet insists on getting a different answer. The only way this can happen is if the individual introduces some other type of reason for action other than desires.

This part is always missing. Whenever I start to read this style of objection, I ask myself whether the person raising it is going to give me evidence – any evidence at all – for a type of reason for action that exists other than desire. If he does not, then the fact that he does not like the conclusion that comes up when we consider the reasons for action that do exist is irrelevant – there are no more reasons for action that exist that can change that answer.

So, these are the three hurdles that somebody is going to have to clear when they present a story that says that desire utilitarian yields a conclusion that they do not like.

The first hurdle is to show that the unwanted conclusion is actually a conclusion from desire utilitarianism rather than (for example) desire fulfillment act utilitarianism.

The second hurdle is to justify the step that goes from, "I don't like that particular implication," to the conclusion that "It is your theory, rather than my feelings, that are the problem here. My feelings cannot possibly be subject to error, so the error must be in your theory."

The third hurdle is to come up for reasons for action that exist other then, or in addition to, desires.

Desire Utilitarianism: A Few Details

So, a member of the studio audience writes:

So, desires are the only reason for action that exist. And "good" is 'that for which there are reasons for action that exist to realize'. So, "good" is that for which there are desires to realize. Hmmm... interesting.

Well, yep, that’s the crux of it. Would you mind if I added a couple of details just for flavor?

For example, this is an account of generic goodness – not moral goodness. It applies not only to the case of the person who rescues a child from a raging river at the risk to his own live, but to the man who climbs out of the basement after torturing and killing his most recent victim, collapses on the couch, and explains, "Now, that was good!" There are reasons for action that exist for realizing the state in which he was torturing the victim in the basement. However, we would be hard pressed to say that torturing the victim was morally good (obligatory) or even permissible.

So, once we have a generic account of goodness we need to start splitting it up into the different species of goodness. One of those species would be the species of moral goodness.

Whereas goodness is that for which there are desires to realize, moral goodness are malleable desires for which there are more and stronger desires to realize.

The time-honored test of a moral theory is to test the theory against our moral intuitions. The degree to which a theory calls moral that which people generally call moral, and calls immoral that which people generally call immoral, is widely used as the definitive test to determine whether one has a good moral theory or not.

I reject that test. Our moral intuitions tell us nothing but the prejudices and concerns we have at the moment. A moral intuitions test in Georgia in 1800s could only be passed by a theory that defended slavery, and a moral intuitions test in France in the 1500s would require a defense of the divine right of kings.

The proper test for a moral theory is not a moral intuitions test, but a moral practices test. It must make sense of the elements of morality, not its conclusions.

Why are praise and condemnation such an integral part of our moral practices?

Answer: Because praise and condemnation are two of the greatest social tools available for molding desires.

Why are there three moral categories for action – obligations, prohibitions and non-obligatory permissions?

Answer: Because there are desires that people generally have reason to promote universally (e.g., charity, honesty), desires that people generally have reason to inhibit universally (e.g., rape, killing), and desires that people have reason to promote in some people but not in everybody (e.g., the desires associated with being a teacher, engineer, writer, or doctor). Also, in some areas such as food preferences and mate preferences diversity reduces competition and helps to ensure that more individuals are able to fulfill their desires.

What accounts for the moral category of negligence?

Answer: Negligent acts are acts that that show evidence of the absence of a desire that people generally have reason to promote – namely, a concern for the welfare of other people. A person who cares about what happens to the clock her father made for her will take steps to ensure that it is not damaged. If she throws the clock around, she shows that she lacks a concern for what happens to the clock. A negligent person shows that he lacks a concern for the effects that his actions might have on other. This absence of a desire that people generally have reason to promote is what makes negligent acts deserving of condemnation.

What is an excuse and how do you account for its role in moral claims?

An excuse is a statement that breaks the link between an action that looks wrong on its surface and the desires of the agent apparently responsible. A car crashes through a crowd of pedestrians. A person would good desires would take pains to avoid such a state. The agent offers the excuse that a vehicle malfunction is responsible for the accident. This means that even a person with good desires could not have prevented the state in which the car plowed into a group of pedestrians. Yet, we can still ask whether a person with good desires would have done a better job maintaining the car.

These are some examples of areas in which desire utilitarianism explains, no our moral intuitions but our moral practices. It does so without inventing exotic entities such as such as divine commands, intrinsic values, categorical imperatives, social contracts, or impartial observers.

The list of moral practices that desire utilitarianism can account for is actually quite lengthy. Other examples can be found in Luke Muehlhauser's Desire Utilitarianism FAQ.

Bob the Slave

Today, I would like to address some of the issues that are presented in a hypothetical case brought forward by a member of the studio audience.

"Bob" will have to obey the orders of the VAST majority of people not named "Bob" and work for those people's benefit, under pain of torture/death. Now, in that case it seems "generally" people DO NOT have a desire to inhibit this desire. Most people are not named "Bob" and this desire therefore benefits them. Do we then refer to some vague overall desire for "decency" that should make people oppose this desire, even if will benefit them. Even if there is absolutely no chance that further laws will be passed that will make them a slave?

First, I would like to direct the user’s attention to the post, The 1000Sadists Problem, where I deal with the hypothetical case in which 1000 sadists have desires that would be fulfilled by the torture of a single individual. This is a similar, though not identical, to the case presented above.

The problem here is that the 'problem' comes from a failure to distinguish 'desire utilitarianism' from 'desire fulfillment act utilitarianism'. Desire fulfillment act utilitarianism says, 'Do that act that will fulfill the most and the strongest desires'. Whereas desire utilitarianism says, 'Do that act that a person with good malleable desires would perform'.

Good malleable desires, in turn, are desires that are capable of being molded through social forces and that tend to fulfill other desires. Thus, they are desires that people generally are able to promote through social forces such as praise and condemnation, and are desires that people have many and strong reasons to promote (because the desire promoted tends to fulfill other desires).

Second, morality is a tool invented for use in the real world. Prospects such as, "absolutely no chance that further laws will be passed that will make them a slave" are not real-world concerns.

Furthermore, it introduces such contrivances into the situation that it would make judgment impossible. What else would have to be true for it to be the case that there is 'absolutely no chance' that further laws will be passed that will make them a slave? If we have no answer to that question, then we do not have the facts that we need to go any further.

In the real world, we know that this decision to enslave Bob is completely arbitrary. A person who is willing to enslave people named Bob can, at any type, acquire a desire to enslave people named Alonzo or Tip. We have good reason to avoid such a state of affairs, so we have good reason to promote an aversion to slavery. In fact, we have good reason to ally with Bob so as to make this aversion to slavery universal.

Furthermore, if people are generally comfortable with slavery, then that makes them less likely to take action to protect freedom. There are a great many ways to limit peoples' freedom other than slavery. Limitations on where they may live, where they may work, who they may marry, what they may say, who they may speak with . . . these are all ways, short of slavery, of limiting freedom.

If I can create in others a love of freedom, then I can trust them to act so as to avoid states of affairs in which freedom is being inhibited, which will help to protect my freedom and those of others that I care about.

However, this love of freedom entails an aversion to slavery – so my reasons for promoting a love of liberty are also reasons for promoting a dislike of slavery. Promoting this love of freedom means promoting an aversiont to slavery - which means condemning those who would promote or sustain the institution of slavery.

If people are willing to tolerate slavery, then they cannot have a love of freedom. This means not only that I and those people I care about are at greater risk of being enslaved. It means that I and those I care about are at risk of having our liberties lost in other ways.

On the other hand, if I – and others – get together to promote a general love of liberty, then our own freedoms and the freedoms of those we care about are more secure.

Of course, while a society is busy promoting a love of liberty in people generally, this includes promoting a love of liberty in ourselves. This love of liberty motivates us to avoid states of affairs in which we limit the liberty of others, just as it motivates others to avoid states of affairs in which they limit our own liberty.

We have many and strong reasons to promote a general love of liberty in others, just as they have many and strong reasons to promote a love of liberty in us. The way to do this is through praise of those who support and defend liberty generally, and the condemnation of tyrants and those who deny liberty.

Generally Fulfilling Desires

Some members of the studio audience have focused attention on my use of the term 'generally' when I talk about a desire being good or bad. The claim is that this term is too vague, and they wish to have something that is more precise.

This objection has been raised specifically against my use of the term in discussing evil:

A person is evil to the degree that he has malleable desires that people generally have reason to inhibit (because that desire tends to thwart other desires), or to the degree that he lacks a malleable desire that people generally have reason to promote (because that desire tends to fulfill other desires).

However, it applies more generally to any part of the theory in which I use the term 'generally'

As one member of the studio audience put it:

Perhaps my biggest issue, when it comes to accepting DU explanations and definitions, concerns the term 'generally'.

When I use the term 'generally', I am using the term in the same way that a person might say that the prevailing winds in the United States generally come out of the west, or that the bus generally shows up on time. It means that you might be able to find me one or two exceptions – instances in which the wind is not blowing from the east or in which the bus was late. However, these findings will not defeat the proposition that a particular desire generally tends to fulfill other desires.

In other words, do not come to me with a wild story in which, quite by chance, an act of rape happens to provide all sorts of benefits. This will not defeat the thesis that a desire to commit rape is generally a desire that tends to thwart other desires.

Or do not come to me with a story about how a robbery victim was shot in the head and the damage happened to cure his obsessive compulsive disorder. This does not challenge the claim that a shot to the head can generally be understood to thwart most of the desires of the person who has been shot.

We have reasons for action that exist to promote an aversion to committing rape and an aversion to shooting people in the head based on the fact that rape and shooting people in the head generally can be expected to thwart desires, not fulfill them.

One of the most common forms of objection to act-utilitarian theory is to invent some exotic story in which an action that can generally be expected to produce negative utility happens in this one instance to maximize utility. The doctor has a chance to kill a healthy patient to save five patients who would otherwise die, or reporter is told that if he executes a single villager then the evil warlord will spare the lives of 20 villagers and the warlord can actually be trusted.

Desire utilitarianism is not open to these types of objections because it is not concerned with the rare and exotic story in which utility is promoted or inhibited. It is concerned with whether a desire generally fulfills other desires, not with whether it fulfills other desires in every single instance.

Furthermore, there is a reason to be concerned with whether a desire generally fulfills or thwarts other desires, rather than whether it fulfills or thwarts other desires in every instance. This is not just an arbitrary condition tacked on because it allows me to avoid objections like those raised against act-utilitarianism.

It is justified by the fact that desires are persistent entities. They do not come and go on a whim, and people cannot turn them on and off at will. A desire, once cultivated, will be there to motivate a range of different actions over an extended period of time. It does not make sense to be concerned with whether a desire fulfills other desires at every single moment during its long life. What matters is that, over its long life, it tends to generally fulfill other desires.

So, this is not some ad hoc qualification tacked on for no reason other than that it allows me to side-step a family of objections. It is a qualification required because of a certain set of facts about the world – that desires are persistent entities that are capable of generally fulfilling (or thwarting) other desires even though one can imagine strange and exotic cases in which they thwart (or fulfill) desires.

What Atheism Is Not

Sorry, I need to interrupt myself for a moment.

I have recently encountered a large set of articles from people telling the world what an atheist is. What they say is so absurd that it is embarrassing.

An example of what I am referring to can be found at the Daily Kos.

(See Daily Kos: Understanding atheism, the atheist strawman arguments and what atheism isn't.)

The posting begins with an equivocation. It begins with the claim that atheism is not a belief system, which is true enough. However, snkscore then shifts to saying that atheism is not a belief – as if to say that the fact that atheism is not a belief system that it is not a belief. Which makes as much sense as saying that since tigers are not herd animals then they are not animals.

However, the issue that I am referring to is the claim that atheism is not a belief.

So, snkscore states:

So, if someone asked me "Do you believe there is no god?" I would probably simply respond "Yes" but really the correct response to convey my position is "I don't believe that there is a god."

This is false.

In fact, it is such an absurd falsehood that every time I read it or hear it written it embarrasses me – because there are people out in the world who will think that because I call myself an atheist, I, too, must embrace such absurdities.

Here's the proof.

You determine the meaning of a term by looking how native speakers of a language use that term. Competent English speakers do not use the term 'atheist' to refer to cats, rocks, chairs, tomatoes, or any other thing incapable of having beliefs. However, they would certainly accept the proposition that the phrase, "does not believe that there is a God" applies to cats, rocks, chairs, tomatoes, or any other thing incapable of having beliefs.

The claim that the latter is a meaningful substitute for the former is even more absurd than claiming that the earth is 6,000 years old. At least the counter-argument that the earth is 6,000 years old takes more than a paragraph to write.

The fact that I have seen so many atheists embrace this absurdity in spite of the fact that it is so easily shown to be false is one of the reasons why I hold that atheists are just as capable of ignoring evidence when it flies in the face of a favored proposition as any theist.

What is an atheist?

An atheist is someone who, if asked whether the proposition, "At least one God exists" is true or false, would confidently answer that it is false.

No cat, rock, chair, or tomato would do such a thing.

If a person, when asked whether the proposition, "At last one God exists" is true or false, merely stands there and drools, he may well lack a belief in God, but he is not an atheist. An atheist confidently assigns the value 'False' to the proposition..

An atheist does NOT assign the value 'False' with absolute certainty. An atheist can hold that there is some measure of doubt as to whether the proposition is true or false. However, he does not hold that this ‘doubt’ makes it a coin toss.

However, an atheist is assigning a value to a proposition and, as such, needs to justify why he assigns that value and not some other, and why he assigns the value confidently rather than uncertainly.

The reason why atheists seem to like the absurdity of "has no belief in God" is because it gives them a way to bypass this second step. It is absurd to ask an entity that lacks a belief in God to justify its state. Try it. Walk up to the nearest inanimate object and demand that it justify to you its lack of a belief in God.

If it answers, go see a doctor.

However, once the atheist admits that an atheist actually assigns a truth value to a proposition, he can't be lazy any more. Since he is actively assigning a value to a proposition, he needs to justify that assignment.

It's just so much easier to be lazy.

What really happens is that this absurdity that atheism refers to the lack of a belief in a God actually does little more than to demonstrate that atheists lack certain key mental faculties that make them blind to what is obvious. If the atheist can be so blind to something so obvious, then it is no wonder that he is also blind to the evidence for the existence of God.

To make matters worse is that this absurdity comes from people who claim that it is a virtue to embrace reason – yet who, in practice, simply ignores an argument that so clearly demonstrates that a favored proposition is false.

This mind-numbing absurdity is only convincing to people who start with a desire to embrace this mind-numbing absurdity. To the rest of the English speaking population, it is just another demonstration of the intellectual incompetence of atheists.

Two Types of Moral Relativism

A member of the studio audience reported:

I once again have to strongly disagree with your definition of evil. First of all it's far to vague, the phrase "malleable desires that people generally have reason to inhibit" is so vague it's borderline moral relativism.

It is interesting that the author used a concern with vagueness in a sentence in which he accuses the definition to be borderline moral relativism. Because borderline moral relativism is itself a vague term. Or, more precisely, it is ambiguous – having multiple meanings (with no clear indication in context of which meaning the author had in mind).

On both definitions, however, the claim is false.

Using one definition of 'moral relativism', I would answer, "What do you mean, borderline?"

The theory explicitly states that value properties are relational properties. They describe relationships between states of affairs and desires. That is, they describe how a state of affairs stands in relation to – or relative to - a set of desires. This is not borderline relativism. This is relativism.

However, most, if not all, scientific claims are relativist in the same sense.

I often use location as my preferred analogy. Give me the location of something . . . anything . . . in absolute terms; that is, without referring to something else. I’ll wager it cannot be done. The only way to describe the location of something is to describe its position relative to some other thing. All location claims are relational claims.

Yet, locational relativism is not considered a barrier to objectivity. Scientists fill their papers and books with location statements, yet we do not hear anybody protest that this location relativism somehow detracts from the objectivity of those science reports.

It’s even the case that no natural law dictates what one uses as the relationship in any claim. If I wanted to describe where Denver was, I could say that it is southeast of Boulder, Colorado, or that it is north of Colorado Springs. Both descriptions are true. Neither conflicts with the other. Yet it is an objective fact that Denver is southeast of Bounder and north of Colorado Springs. Science does not come crumbling down as a result of introducing this type of relativism.

We can even go further. Why would a person choose to describe the location of Denver in relation to Boulder as opposed to Colorado Springs? We can find the answer to this question in terms of the interests of the speaker and those he communicates with. He chooses the relationships that are personally important to him, and he ignores the rest.

Yet, still this does not in any way threaten the scientific objectivity of location statements. We are still talking about statements that scientists accept as models of objectivity.

Of course, moral relativism has another meaning.

Using the other definition of moral relativism, I would answer, "Your statement is a flat contradiction. Moral relativism in this sense means that objects of evaluation are measured according to their relationship to the sentiments of the evaluator."

Desire utilitarianism specifically states that moral statements describe relationships between malleable desires and all other desires, not just those of the agent. Saying that one is borderline the other is the same as saying that all desires that exist is borderline equivalent to the desires of the specific evaluator.

These are two different and incompatible theories.

So, we have two definitions of moral relativism. On the first definition, it is absolutely true that desire utilitarianism is a relativistic theory. It says that moral statements are relational statements – but so are almost all scientific statements. On the second definition, saying that desire utilitarianism is the same as “moral relativism" is as absurd as saying that "all the desires that exist" is the same as "the sentiments as the assessor."

Paying Penance to God

I was just telling a member of the studio audience late last week that it was time for me to write a few posts on moral theory. Coincidentally, a couple other members of the studio audience decided to give me the opening to do just that.

One wrote:

For example, let's say that someone wishes to lash themselves to punish themselves for a deed that they committed which they feel guilty for and to pay penance to God. If this person lived on a monastery then that action would fall under that category of a desire that people have a desire to promote, but if they were living in a secular society that would probably fall under the category of of a desire that people have a reason to inhibit.

No, it would not. It would fall under the category of a desire that people believe they have reason to promote or inhibit respectively, but this does not imply that it is a desire that they have reason to promote or inhibit in fact.

Desires are propositional attitudes that can be expressed in the form, "Agent desires that P", where P is a proposition (a sentence) capable of being true or false. A desire that P is fulfilled in any state of affairs in which P is true.

So, people can have a desire to "pay penance to God", but this is a desire that cannot be fulfilled. This is because there is no state of affairs in which the proposition, "I am paying penance to God" is true. People might come to believe that this desire is being fulfilled, but it is not a desire that anybody in fact has ever fulfilled.

There is no evidence that any person in all of human history has ever fulfilled a "desire that I am paying penance to God," by lashing themselves or by any other means. Ever.

In saying the, it is also the case that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to violent interference in other people's mistakes. I typically refer to John Stuart Mill's On Liberty for a solid defense of that moral principle. However, the fact that we have no right to interfere violently with those people who harm only themselves does not contradict the fact that they are mistaken.

Your definition of good is entirely dependent on the moral atmosphere of the society that the person is living in and cannot say anything about good or evil objectively.

You get this by confusing what people believe will fulfill a desire (which is entirely dependent on the given culture) with what does, in fact, fulfill a desire. What people believe fulfills a desire has no more relevance to moral facts than beliefs about the age of the earth have for biological and geological facts. You take at face value the fact that people in a particular culture believe that P, and you bring it into the theory as if P were (or could be made to be) true, even though P is not and cannot be made to be true.

Now, this still leaves open the issue:

First of all it's far to vague, the phrase "malleable desires that people generally have reason to inhibit" is so vague it's borderline moral relativism.

I will deal with that tomorrow.

Atheists' Use of Moral Language

Finishing up this week’s theme on how nice atheists should be I would like to note a continuing deficiency among atheist writers – the degree to which they shun genuine moral language – terms like virtue and evil.

Even though they deny a necessary relationship between religion and morality on an intellectual level, when it comes to actually using moral language it is as if they feel ashamed or nervous. It is as if they hold that the use of a moral term is like quoting a biblical passage – something that no decent atheist could do.

I have a nice definition of evil that has nothing to do with any type of God or supernatural entity – that makes reference only to things found in nature.

A person is evil to the degree that he has malleable desires that people generally have reason to inhibit (because that desire tends to thwart other desires), or to the degree that he lacks a malleable desire that people generally have reason to promote (because that desire tends to fulfill other desires).

Conveniently, saying that somebody is evil means directing people generally to afflict condemnation on that person. Being identified as, “somebody who has malleable desires that tends to thwart other desires’ should be enough to make anybody nervous. It says that he (and people like him) are a rational target for condemnation. It directs people generally to treat the target individual with hostility, and this is something that no individual has reason to seek.

None of this requires any type of supernatural or divine element.

Of course, many religious people will raise the challenge, “How can you call me evil? You do not believe in a God. Without a God there is no morality. Your assertion that I am evil is, itself, an admission that there is a God from which evil springs.”

This type of circular reasoning is to be expected from a bunch of self-serving, hate-mongering bigots. “You want to think this because it gives you an excuse to make arrogant presumptions as to your own moral superiority. You like the thought that you are morally above everybody else, so you desperately grab onto whatever excuse touches your brain that gives you the ego stroking you so desperately crave.”

This is as legitimate an answer as any, and one that can be sufficiently demonstrated. People generally have many and strong reasons to inhibit the type of egoistic self-importance exhibited in the remark the comment above is responding to. The moral tool that they have for inhibiting arrogance is by targeting examples of arrogance (even fictional examples of arrogance as depicted in art, for example) with condemnation and ridicule.

There are two unfortunate consequences of the atheist disposition to avoid actual moral language.

The first is that it yields the moral ground to the theists. It perpetuates the myth that morality only springs from religion when moral claims only come from those who profess to have a religious moral authority. When atheists make moral claims, and they mean what they say, it gets people accustomed to the idea of morality coming from a non-religious source. It would be useful for people to get a stronger taste of this type of claim.

The second is that it leaves fertile ground on which to grow the types of entities that the people generally have reason to inhibit. If we are not calling people evil when they are evil, if we are shying away from applying the social tool of condemnation whose main use is to inhibit that which is condemned.

If we do not take steps to actively weed the social garden, we should not be at all surprise to find our garden dominated by weeds. And if you do not take steps to feed and water the good plants growing in the garden, we should not be surprised to discover that the good plants have shriveled up, failing in competition to the weeds and noxious plants that we allowed to flourish.

In using moral terms, it is important to use them accurately. There are also problems associated with praising that which people generally have the most and strongest reasons to inhibit (unknown to them, perhaps), and with inhibiting that which they have reason to promote. The use of moral language demands a certain amount of moral responsibility in making sure it is used accurately.

But not using moral language carries a certain amount of moral irresponsibility. Not using moral language means leaving fertile ground for immorality to grow. In the case of atheist reluctance to use moral language, it feeds the illusion that morality belongs in the realm of the theist. Neither effect can be counted as a good thing.

The Accomodationists vs the Truth Seekers

The war between the "accomodationists" and the "new atheists" is heating up again. This flare-up started with a couple of books that attempt to reconcile science and religion, some highly critical book reviews taking the view that science and religion are not compatible, criticisms of those book reviews, and off we go.

I find the debate to be misguided. Both sides are making mistakes that are causing them to waste a fair amount of effort. In point of fact, the accomodationists and the "new atheists" are both necessary, given certain political facts.

I can illustrate my point by looking at some recent news regarding the issue of homosexuals serving only in the military.

The Supreme Court recently refused to hear a case that would have questioned the military’s "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The policy states that homosexuals may serve in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation a secret. They are not permitted to say that they are gay, or to engage in any homosexual activity. Should they do either of these things, they are removed from the military.

In this dispute, President Obama played the accomodationist role. He asked the Supreme Court not to review the case, claiming that the military has made its decision based on considerations of unit cohesion and troop morale. I believe that Obama is well aware that the aversion to homosexuals serving in the military is pure bigotry. However, Obama has a lot going on, and has probably decided that his political capital can more efficiently be spent elsewhere.

In adopting this position, it is certainly NOT the case that all gay-rights activists must adopt the same agenda. It does not follow that all homosexuals must defend the President and argue that this accomodationist view is correct, merely because the President has a need to maintain some alliances. There is still a place for another political group to argue that this is a hateful and discriminatory practice (which it is) that no decent person would support.

If we were to adopt the position that all homosexuals should adopt the President’s agenda, the effect of this will be to ensure that these hateful and discriminatory practices will never end. In fact, without opposition – without a group out there defending the proposition that these practices are hateful and discriminatory, the hate and discrimination will probably get worse.

So, a society has two roles to fill. One role is that of the "truth seeker" who seeks to discover and report what the facts are without regard as to the popularity of those facts. The other role is that of the practical politician who says, "I need to get 51% of the people with a wide variety of beliefs to pull together to get something accomplished."

Both groups perform a useful function. The people who are in error are the people who say that we must rid ourselves of one group or the other. We are foolish to rid ourselves of the accomodationists because then the only thing that will 'get done' is the ostracism and alienation of those who hold even a moderate position on the issue under debate. We are foolish to get rid of the truth seeker because that would make the compromise position the default position (which, in turn, risks pushing the compromise position even further to the right.)

I hope that this blog fits into the category of the truth seekers. I am not at all interested in accommodating anybody. I present the propositions that I hold to be true, then I offer my arguments for that position.

In this role of truth seeker (which I may or may not be any good at), I will argue against any atheist I hold to be mistaken as readily as against any theist. Sometimes I will argue against atheists that a particular criticism of theists is mistaken. I do not do so under a policy of being nice to theists. I do so under the policy of having respect for the truth.

I also sometimes note that the atheist tribe is willing to abandon morality for the sake of the enjoyment of treating others (theists) unjustly. I also point those things out, and for the same reason. I am after the truth about what is right and wrong, which implies criticizing atheists when they abandon morality for the sake of enjoyment or political convenience.

But I have no interest in appeasing either atheist or theist egos with claims that they would like even though I dispute their truth, or remaining silent on truths that I suspect they might not like.

That is not my role. That is not why I am here.

In saying this, I recognize that those who are on the front lines of "getting things done" are going to have to make compromises. It is in the nature of that particular role. Without an accomodationist Obama, the White House would still be in the hands of the religious right. That is the cost of demanding purity.

What both sides need to do is to avoid the conceit of thinking that theirs is the only legitimate role, and that there is justification in saying to those in the other role, "Your role should not exist."

A Responsible Disclaimer Against Violence

In the wake of another hate-motivated killing, MSNBC posted an article on the rise of hate groups in the United States. They attributed the growth to a 'perfect storm' of causes. These include the election of a black man as President of the United States and the use of the economic downturn to argue that they (brown immigrants) are taking your (white Americans) jobs.

(See MSNBC Homegrown hate groups increase in number)

I would like to note that neither of these are specifically religious causes. They are the types of arguments that can have an affect on a person regardless of whether or not they believe in God.

There is nothing in this type of us versus them mindset that is necessarily linked to religion. It is not a disposition of the specifically theist brain, it is a disposition of the human brain. Atheists, insofar as they are human, are also disposed to fall into an us versus them mindset that threatens to cause a certain portion of that population to commit similar acts of violence.

I have argued in recent weeks that it is a mistake to condemn statements of the form, "X is wrong and those who do X deserve to be punished" as inciting violence. That absurd position would condemn all moral discussion, including a substantial portion of the posts in this blog.

However, a morally responsible person must consider the possibility that a portion of those who are reading or hearing what he says are at risk of drawing invalid inferences. People generally, including atheists, are disposed to certain invalid inferences, and this appears to be one of them.

No doubt, if some atheist did commit such an act of violence, atheist writers from one end of the blogsphere to the other will be saying exactly the same thing that Bill O’Reilly is saying with respect to the Tiller murder. "It's not my fault. I did not tell anybody to go out there and commit private acts of violence."

One of my questions will be, "Perhaps not. However, did you tell them not to?"

Yet, this is a bit like spreading fertilizer on a well watered field and saying, "Don't blame me. I did not tell the plants to grow there."

Perhaps not. However, one did lay the groundwork for plants to grow, and the morally responsible person would have taken into consideration the possible the potential consequences of one’s actions and how they might affect others.

So, I reject the idea that somebody such as O'Reilly is to be condemned for saying, "X is wrong, and those who do X should be punished." However, it is fully acceptable to condemn somebody such as O’Reilly for negligence in not saying, "None of this justifies anybody committing an act of private violence."

I think this is a good time for those atheist writers who are heavy into the us versus them debate with respect to theists to explicitly state, "Whenever I say, 'X is wrong and those who do X should be punished,' I am putting this thesis out as a topic for public debate. I'm not telling anybody to decide on their own to go ahead and inflict punishment."

Private violence is an ultimate expression of arrogance. The person who uses guns and bombs to make a point, rather than pen and paper, is stating the, even though he lacks the ability to persuade others of 'the truth' of the matter, the fact he could not possibly be the one who is in error justifies escalating into violence.

A morally responsible person would take these types of precautions. A person not willing to take these types of precautions cannot be thought of as having the appropriate level of concern over the potential consequences of their actions.