Smith on Parfit 5 of15: The Rationality of Desires

In this series of posts I am commenting on an article sent to me by a member of the studio audience. These are, in a sense, notes written in the margin as it were as I highlight passages in the article and explain my agreement or disagreement.

The next phrase that I highlight for comments is this one:

For example, it isn't relevant to what reasons an agent has that (say) he is so constituted that he will acquire an intrinsic aversion to spiders the very first time he ever sees one. Evolutionary considerations might well afford an explanation of why all agents are so constituted, but, even if they did, that wouldn't suffice to show that it is rational for agents to respond to the perception of spiders by acquiring such an intrinsic aversion.

My scribbling here asks:

How do we answer the question of whether it is rational for agents to have a fear of spiders?

You cannot look at the fear of spiders alone and answer any question as to whether or not it is rational to have such a fear. What would make the fear of spiders good or bad? Perhaps the fear gives you reason to avoid where spiders are found, which helps to keep you alive given that many spiders are poisonous. Perhaps, instead, it is a far that keeps you frantically searching your house for signs of a spider and going into convulsive fits when finding one.

You can only ask whether the fear of spiders tends to fulfill or thwart other desires. If the fear of spiders tends to fulfill other desires (e.g., by preventing us from getting poisoned), then we have reason to promote such a fear. If it tends to thwart other desires (by deterring us from actions that would fulfill other desires), then we have reason to be rid of or at least weaken such a desire.

Which brings up the question of whether we can do so.

We tend not to evaluate the desires of an agent as being rational or irrational unless they are desires over which a person has some amount of choice. If somebody where to cut into us to remove an inflamed appendix, we do not ask about the rationality of an aversion to the sensations generated by that act. It would be better for the patient if she did not have that aversion. Yet, it is not irrational pain. It is, instead, merely a brute fact.

It might be useful to imagine a new hospital that has decided to employ Parfitian anasthtics. Parfitian anesthetics involves giving a patient all of the relevant facts explaining why the patient has reason to be indifferent to the sensations generated by the medical procedure she is about to undergo. Realizing that she has no reason to react to those sensations with aversion, and many and strong reasons not to, means that it would be irrational for her to respond to those sensations negatively. Those aversions do not account as legitimate reasons for action. Do they, then, not count as legitimate reasons to ask for chemical anesthetics?

Ultimately, question of the rationality of desires do not seem to be about the rationality of desires at all, but the rationality of actions that have the capacity to change our desires. Where we have reason to believe that an agent has some measure of choice over whether to be afraid of flying, or of closed spaces, or of public speaking, we call a fear irrational if a rational agent would act so as to rid himself of that fear.

Smith on Parfit 4 of 15: Classification of Desire-Based Theories

In this series of posts I am commenting on an article sent to me by a member of the studio audience. These are, in a sense, notes written in the margin as it were as I highlight passages in the article and explain my agreement or disagreement.

The next phrase that I highlight for comments is this one, in which Smith is quoting Parfit.

According to one group of theories, all . . . reasons [for action] are provided by facts about what might fulfill or achieve our present telic desires or aims. Some of these theories appeal to our actual present desires or aims. Others appeal to the desires or aims that we would now have, or would want ourselves to have, if we had carefully considered all of the relevant facts. I shall call this group of theories desire-based. (On What Matters, §3)

And

[W]e should classify desire-based theories of reasons for action more directly in terms of the principles of rationality that they take to govern desire formation . . . . This is because all such theories agree that what we have reason to do is what we would desire that we do after informed and rational deliberation.

I scribble in the margins as follows:

Well, I do not agree. We have reason to do that which will fulfill our desires. We may have more and stronger reasons to do some things compared to others based on having more and stronger desires that would be fulfilled by each alternative.

That's it. Informed and rational deliberation plays no role.

This idea of desires or aims that we would now have, or would want ourselves to have, if we had carefully considered all of the relevant facts is a red herring.

There are two types of desires – desires as means and desires as ends.

Desires as means are actually packages made up of desires-as-ends and beliefs. Beliefs are subject to change through informed and rational deliberation. However, beliefs are not the component that realizes value or reasons for action in a desires-as-means.

The only part of a desires-as-means that is relevant to value are the desires-as-ends that are a part of their composition. And desires-as-ends are not subject to modification by reason or information. The desires as ends (or telic desires) that an agent would have if fully informed are precisely the same desires as ends the agent would have while wallowing in ignorance.

So, I reject Parfit's second characterization of a desire-based theory. Am I then committed to Parfit's first characterization of a desire-based theory?

This one says, [R]easons [for action] are provided by facts about what might fulfill or achieve our present telic desires or aims. Some of these theories appeal to our actual present desires or aims.

Again, I would need to qualify it that I would accept this only insofar as it is clear that we are talking only about telic desires or desires-as-ends. The extent of reasons for action that exist is limited to the set of desires-as-ends that exist.

All of the relevance of desires-as-means is fully captured by the desires-as-ends that are contained within them. An agent's reports about what he desires-as-means can well be corrupted by false or incomplete beliefs. Being fully informed can help to correct the desires-as-means. However, this has little to do with the work we are doing on actual (as opposed to merely believed-in) reasons for action - which are desires-as-ends.

Young Earth Creationism and "Being Nice"

In my readings today I came across a couple of articles that speaking to different subjects that should be brought together.

In a review of Richard Dawkins' new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, reviewer NAME wrote:

Regrettably and ironically, however, one cannot help but worry that Dawkins is preaching to the choir, that those who most need to hear his message are plugging their ears and singing 'blah blah blah blah'.

(See, Winnipeg Free Press, From Darwin to Dawkins: Evolutionary evidence may be falling on undeveloped ears)

Something about Richard Dawkins preaching to the choir while those who need to listen plug their ears and go 'blah blah blah blah'.

Earlier, I had read a posting by PZ Myers on Pharyngula criticizing an article that was written suggesting ways that atheists can seem nice. (See, Pharyngula, Advice for Atheists)

Of course, I begin with a couple of standard moral claims. The first is that criticism must remain focused on those who are actually guilty. To expand the set of accused from those who are guilty to a larger group that one wants others to hate is to commit the moral crime of hate-mongering.

The second is that a right to freedom of speech is a right to immunity from violence, regardless of how detestable the speech is. Nothing in what follows legitimizes violence or even the threat of violence.

People who plug one's ears and refuse to engage the evidence, like young-earth creationists, are engaging in immoral behavior. The world would be better off if we were rid of them, just as we would be better off if the world were rid of hate-mongering bigots, drunk drivers, liars, and thieves. They cost the lives of countless people every year and cause countless more to be maimed. Whole cities have been or will be laid to waste because of their refusal to consider evidence, and the institutions of liberty are made less secure.

This is not nice, but niceness is not deserved. What possible reason can there be to be nice to people who display such a destructive quality?

I would like to repeat that this applies to those who blind themselves to evidence. I also assert that the evidence for evolution and an old earth are so overwhelming that a young earth creationist must be blinding himself to evidence to continue with his beliefs. This is not a case of expanding a group beyond those who are actually guilty. In this case, all young-earth creationists are actually guilty.

To make the moral argument, I will start with these facts:

Plugging one's ears and refusing to engage the evidence is not a proposition. It is an action. It is, in fact, an intentional action in that it is derived from the beliefs and desires of agents. As such, it is the type of action that is subject to moral scrutiny, and is found wanting.

Because refusing to engage evidence is not a proposition, you cannot argue against it. It would like arguing against a person who is swimming by claiming that the act of swimming itself is false. The act of swimming is not a proposition, so it cannot be true or false. Those concepts do not apply. The same is true of the act of lying or of raping a child. The claim that one should respond to an act with a reasoned presentation of the evidence is absurd.

We can still say that an act is wrong. However, it is not wrong in the sense that a belief can be wrong. It is wrong in the sense that a desire can be wrong – that the agent is not motivated to behave the way a good person would behave. A good person cares to make sure that he actually does good in the world. This means that a good person cares to look at the evidence and to come to the conclusion that the evidence supports. He does not want to make a mistake.

On the other hand, the person who does not care to examine the evidence does not care if he makes mistakes. So, we may assume, he does not care of the harm he has the potential to do when he is wrong.

That people who blind themselves to evidence and reason are a threat to the well-being of others is easy to demonstrate.

If you ignore the evidence about what kills people and what keeps people alive, people die. If you ignore evidence about what maims people or keeps them safe, people get maimed. You can ignore evidence about what keeps levees standing around a town or the condition of an airplane, but your reward will be failed levees and crashed airplanes.

Most importantly, if you cannot reason as to what protects valuable institutions such as freedom of the press and freedom of speech, the right to a trial by jury, and the right to liberty itself, then you cannot recognize threats to those institutions.

Over the years of the Bush Administration we found a huge degree of correspondence between those who blind themselves to evidence and those who supported the policies of the Bush Administration. It was an administration that felt that whenever the evidence did not support a desired policy, that it had the right and the power to change the evidence. As a result, people died and were maimed, whole cities were destroyed, and the Constitution itself became a rag that they were able to 'reason' somehow justified a President who had the power to do as he pleased without legislative or judicial restraint.

We have not yet counted the toll in terms of lost lives and property and the challenge to institutions of freedom and liberty that global warming will bring to future generations because that administration sought to change the evidence of its threat rather than deal with the facts..

Now, the proper way to respond to a bad desire, such as a lack of interest or affection for results supported by reason, is through condemnation. It is by pointing out how people with those values (such as a lack of interest in what best keeps us safe and alive) are a threat to all of us, and to those we care about, and to bring the force of social condemnation against them as a result.

A society that does not properly condemn those who are a threat to its well-being will inevitably suffer the costs.

Within this society, there are many and strong reasons to bring the force of social condemnation against those who refuse to engage the evidence regarding evolution – because if they will blind themselves to evidence here, they have a disposition to blind themselves to evidence elsewhere.

The evidence is there. It is not a matter of reasoning with those who do not accept it. All of the reasoning that can be done, has been done. What we have left is a moral failing. To 'be nice' to those who are guilty of a moral failing – particularly one as destructive of this – requires that one share their lack of interest in the well-being of those who are killed, maimed, or otherwise harmed by those who can’t be bothered with evidence. That is not a wise recommendation.

Smith on Parfit 3 of 15: Agony

In this series of posts I am commenting on an article sent to me by a member of the studio audience. These are, in a sense, notes written in the margin as it were as I highlight passages in the article and explain my agreement or disagreement.

I have highlighted the following phrase:

Parfit consider(s) two practical claims in the early chapters. One is a claim that he takes to be a datum, namely, that we all have reasons to want to avoid future agony and thus to try to avoid it if we can.

In Part 1 I scribbled in the margin that desires must be reasons to realize states that are the consequence of one’s intentional actions. In Part 2 I scribbled that a person can lack a current desire that P and still be motivated by a current aversion to agony to act towards the fulfillment of a future desire that P.

In these scribbling, I ask:

Is it even possible for a being with desires to have an aversion to agony?

I ask this because agony seems to be defined as sensations towards which a person has particularly strong aversions. As such, the lack of an aversion to agony would be a lack of an aversion to sensations to which one has a strong aversion.

We can sensibly ask whether a person likes or does not like cranberry juice. It is quite reasonable to ask whether or not somebody likes cranberry juice. Some will say that they do like it, while others do not.

Yet, it is not as sensible to ask whether a person likes agony. If he likes a particular sensation, it is not agony. While it is not the case that if he likes a particular taste, then it is not cranberry juice

On this account, imaging that a person has no reason to avoid future agony is much like imagining that a person has no aversion to agony, which is like imaging a person has no strong aversion to those sensations for which he has a particularly strong aversion.

The question itself does not make a great deal of sense, and perhaps does not even require an answer.

On Love and Hunger

I have been asked by a member of th studio audience whether I consider love to be something special that transcends the physical universe, or whether I consider it a mere natural appetite like hunger.

You use the word love in your blog, but what do you mean by it? Is it just the effect of some chemical reaction in your brain whenever you think about or see your wife? If so then I do not think that this has any higher meaning than hunger does.

Of course may answer is 'neither'.

There is a sexual appetite, but this is called 'lust', not 'love'. Like other appetites such as hunger and thirst, lust manifests itself as a desire that, once fulfilled, diminishes in strength, at least for a while. A person's desire for sex builds, they have sex, and then they are satisfied for a while, until the desire builds again.

Also, like hunger, people sometimes have a desire for sex that is not good for them, or eat food that is good for them to excess The sexual appetite as well is different in different people, causing people to consume sex when it is not good for them.

But this is not love. Love is something different.

Perhaps the defining characteristic of love is a desire that the desires of another person be fulfilled. This characteristic appears to apply to all forms of love, whether it be a love for one's spouse, a love for one's child, a love for one’s friends, and even a love for one’s pet. In all cases, the person who is ‘in love’ has such a desire that the desires of the person loved be fulfilled that he puts a great deal of energy into that end.

Furthermore, whenever the desires of the one who is loved are fulfilled, the desires of both are fulfilled. "I am so happy for you," the true friend says upon hearing of her friend's acceptance into school, even if the school is far away and they will be separated.

One important difference between the value of this desire and hunger is the value of the desire itself. One of the questions for us to ask or to answer is whether we have many and strong reason to promote this desire, or to inhibit it.

In the case of hunger, the current situation is that we have reason to inhibit this desire. Our desire for food – our hunger – evolved in an environment of much greater scarcity than we have today. We have a disposition to eat when it is not good for us eat. Obesity is a serious problem in the United States. This, in turn, is driving up medical costs for all of us, and thwarting a great many other desires by reducing our ability to act (due to poor health) and making us less attractive to others, and to ourselves. Appetite suppressants sell well for a reason.

Love, however, is a desire that we have reason to promote and to encourage. People in love tend to seek to fulfill, rather than thwart, the desires of others. They are likely to protect the people that they love from harm and to help to ensure that the people they love get what they need in order to reach their desired end.

To the degree that others love us, to that degree they are willing to work to fulfill our desires, and we certainly have many and strong reasons to encourage that. To the degree that we love others, then to that degree their successes are our own. To that degree we work to fulfill their desires and, when our effort brings us to the successful completion of a quest, we both win.

One of the drawbacks of love is when nature (or other people) thwart the desires of those that we love – killing or maiming them or depriving them of that which they very strongly desired. In this case, their heartache is our heartache as well. Sometimes, when a person loves somebody who is going through a very hard time, or who is killed, the thwarting of the desires of those who loved her are very painful. The pain itself is sometimes enough to drive a person to think, "Maybe it is better if I had never loved at all."

However, the successes should outnumber the failures – and successes are a lot easier when you are working with somebody (which love helps to bring about).

There is little wonder why we hold love in such high esteem – far more esteem than hunger, at last as it is currently found, deserves from us.

The very fact that we have many and strong reasons to promote love, and many and strong reasons to inhibit hunger, is enough reason to hold that love ‘has a higher meaning’ than hunger.

Kirk Cameron and Preaching Hate on Campus

Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort are continuing to build on their legacy of hate-mongering and bigotry. Their next act, which they are bragging in interviews by groups and individuals who share their bigotry, is the moral equivalent of a Neo-Nazi group going onto campus and handing out copies of the Old Testament with a 50-page Neo-Nazi introduction. Or the equivalent to a KKK organization handing out copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin with an introduction promoting their racist agenda.

See, MSNBC, Kirk Cameron defends anti-Darwin stance

Specifically, Cameron and Comfort have decided to invest their time and their labor to handing out copies of Darwin's "Origin of Species" on college campuses with a 50 page introduction. This introduction will tell students the alleged weaknesses of evolution – namely the way that evolution says that nothing can create something, and how evolution is the intellectual ancestor of the Holocaust.

However, I have argued in this blog that you can tell a lot about what is in a man’s heart by the mistakes that he makes. With each mistake, we can ask, "Why did he make that mistake and not some other?" If their beliefs cannot be explained by an appeal to reason and evidence, then the next most likely explanation is to be found in the desires of the person making the mistake.

I do not need to tell any reader with a smidge of intelligence that evolution is not a theory about how something can come from nothing. It is a theory that explains how one type of biological entity can change into another type of biological entity over time by natural selection acting on random mutations.

I also do not need to tell any reader with a smidge of intelligence that theories of natural selection are not the intellectual foundation of the holocaust. The holocaust was wholly grounded on the long-standing practice of artificial selection. It does not take much intelligence to grasp the fact that the holocaust was not natural at all – it was clearly man-made.

In fact, this practice of artificial selection is precisely what inspired Darwin to come up with his theory of natural selection. He looked, for example, at the way that animal breeders selected for specific traits and came up with the idea that, in times of stress, nature can do exactly what the breeders are doing. In times of stress, nature will select for those qualities that will make it easier for animals to find food and, over time, the whole population will have that trait.

There are a lot of people who do not understand these facts, in spite of how simple they are to understand. These are people for whom hatred and bigotry has such a blinding effect that they cannot even see what is most obvious.

If you want to preach hatred, there are few methods more popular today than to make false accusations that those you hate and want others to hate are responsible for the most despicable acts of the 20th century.

Cameron and Comfort feel no particular need to hate farmers, ranchers, and others who have practiced the art of artificial selection for millennia. They want to hate atheists – and they want others to hate atheists as they do. So, they want to believe a lie – that the Holocaust can be blamed on a theory of natural selection instead of a theory of artificial selection. And they are desperate to spread their lies and their hate as far as they are able.

And, in fact, even if Hitler had drawn his ideas from a theory of natural selection, blaming those who developed the theory for the Holocaust would still be as absurd as blaming the true originators of the ideas of the Holocaust – farmers, ranchers, and the like.

Cameron and Comfort are into feeding a persisting form of the same type of hatred. While their actions should be treated just like the analogous actions described above – they should be seen in the same light as Neo-Nazis handing out hate-mongering propaganda appended to the Old Testament, unfortunately we live in a society where the public attitude towards atheists is more like the attitude towards Jews in the 1920s, then the attitude towards blacks today.

These are truly two despicable human beings.

As are any who praise their work.

As are any who will not respond to their efforts the way they would respond to any other hate-group coming onto campus to spread their hatred, bigotry, and lies among the student population.

Imaginary Beings and Imaginary Meaning

In my morning browsings of the internet this morning, Planet Atheism pointed me to an article from Daniel Fincke, And They Say Atheists Are Angry, about a Richard Dawkins interviewer in which:

The mixture of incredulity and contempt with which [the interviewer] keeps asking questions that are to the effect of, "Seriously, you want to say that the God that gives all these people meaning isn’t there??? How can you dare say that???"

Which represents a common sentiment, against which I give a frustrated sigh and silently respond:

Religion has never given anybody's life meaning. Religion has only given people the illusion of meaning, but real meaning can never come from an imaginary God.

In response to this one might say, But there is no meaning without God. If God is imaginary, and the meaning that comes from God is imaginary, then meaning itself does not exist.

Really?

Have you ever been in love? I have. The happiness and well-being of my spouse has a great deal of meaning to me.

Writing this blog, and all that goes in it, has meaning, I hope. I can only hope because the meaning to be found in writing this blog is in its contribution to making the world a better place than it would have otherwise been. I must acknowledge the possibility that my claims are wrong and my writings do more harm than good. However, there is a difference between the possibility of real meaning and the near certainty of imaginary meaning that religion provides.

We do not have children. However, to say that, to the parent of a child that the welfare of the child has no meaning is an absurdity.

Now, imagine, if you will, a set of parents devoted to raising an imaginary child. They shout for the child to get out of bed first thing in the morning and they set breakfast on the table. They clean the child’s bedroom – though this is such a well-behaved child that he keeps his own room very clean. They do his laundry, though they have not been able to figure out why the child must be folding his dirty laundry back up and putting it in the drawer. They meet with their child’s teachers. The child, of course, goes to a special school – a school whose administrators have found is profit in 'teaching' these imaginary children.

One of the things about these parents is that they do an amazingly good job of covering up for the fact that this child is not real.

They come up with excuses for everything.

Why is it that the child does not eat breakfast? Well, he must be eating at school.

Why is it that you have never seen this child? Come now. Of course I have seen my child. I feel his presence right now. Just this afternoon I caught a glimpse of him as he ran in the back door and up to his room. In fact, I heard him up there just a few minutes ago.

And if you take the parent up to the room, open the door, and see that the child is not there and the room is exactly as it was left that morning, then, He must have gone out again when I wasn't looking, and he has always been a very neat little boy.

What amazes many atheists who are not caught up in this delusion is that talking to a person who insists on the presence of God is just like talking to the parent of the imaginary child above.

Of course, part of the reason for this is that the imaginary child has been made the most important thing in the world to these parents. There is nothing that these parents will not do – no sacrifice that is too great – for their imaginary child. This is why they cannot give up the idea that their child exists, and this is why they grab so tenaciously to the rationalizations and excuses to get around the evidence that there is no child.

The ultimate argument being, of course, that, "You cannot prove that my child does not exist."

Which is true. All I can provide is that there is no evidence to show that the child does exist.

Then, when the author of a book called, The Child Delusion goes on the air to talk about his new book (a different book), the interviewer asks with a mixture of incredulity and contempt, "Seriously, you want to say that the children that gives all these people meaning aren't there??? How can you dare say that???"

Not only is it the case that the children in this example do not exist, the meaning and purpose are just as imaginary as the children. Insofar as these parents are finding meaning and purpose in their imaginary children, they are not finding any real meaning or purpose at all.

Some of them may also have real children or other real-world concerns. Many have real spouses in which they have really fallen in love, and real friends and family with which they have shared their real lives. Some have real-world concerns to feel real people who are really hungry, and to provide real medical care to people who are really sick or injured.

In these cases, the time and effort they devote to their imaginary children are even more of a waste, because that is time and effort that they could otherwise spend doing something of real importance.

However, all the real meaning and purpose is to be found in the real-world. Nothing ever done for the sake of an imaginary child or an imaginary God has ever provided anything but imaginary meaning and imaginary purpose.

Smith on Parfit 2 of 15: Current Aversions and Future Desires

In this series of posts I am commenting on an article sent to me by a member of the studio audience. These are, in a sense, notes written in the margin as it were as I highlight passages in the article and explain my agreement or disagreement.

I have highlighted the following phrase:

Parfit consider(s) two practical claims in the early chapters. One is a claim that he takes to be a datum, namely, that we all have reasons to want to avoid future agony and thus to try to avoid it if we can.

In Part 1 I argued that if desires are to play a role in motivating intentional action then they must necessarily be desires that can be fulfilled (or thwarted) by future states of affairs.

However, there is still a possible situation where Parfit might be able to apply his objection.

A scenario for applying Parfit’s objection might still exist in a situation where an agent will acquire a very strong desire that P sometime in the future and then, at a time beyond that, suffer a state in which P is false. Or the agent acquires a very strong desire that not-P and a future state beyond that in which P is true. Parfit might want to suggest that future desires provide us with current reasons for action.

First, note that lacking a current desire that P is not the same as lacking a current aversion to agony that might result from a state where a person has such a desire and P is false.

Perhaps I can know that I will acquire a future craving for cranberry juice so intense that I will suffer greatly without it. However, today, I have no such craving. I only have the knowledge that I will have this craving, and that I will suffer if the craving is not fulfilled.

The absence of a current desire for cranberry juice is not the same thing as a lack of a current aversion to future agony. If I lack a current desire for cranberry juice then that is not a current reason for me to act so as to see to it that the future desire will be fulfilled. However, if, even in the absence of a current desire for cranberry juice, I have a current aversion to agony, I still have this as a reason to act to see that the future desire will be fulfilled.

For this example to fit Parfit’s mold, we must postulate not that I lack a current desire for cranberry juice, but that I lack a current aversion to agony. If I have a current aversion to agony, then I have a current reason to avoid future agony. In this case, it means that I have a current reason to see to the fulfillment of a future desire for cranberry juice – a desire that does not exist yet and will have no power to reach back through time if it did exist.

Desirism and Job Hunting: Part 4

I am spending some time applying the general ideas I have been working on in this blog to the mundane but significantly important task of finding a (better) job.

I have described the task in terms of getting a hiring agent to perform an intentional act, which means that the act must fulfill the most and strongest of the hiring-agent’s desires, given her beliefs. At the same time, we are faced with moral constraints against lying, and many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to (as well as institutional safeguards against) certain desires influencing the hiring process.

I have so far left out what is perhaps the most significant factor in causing a hiring agent to perform the intentional action of offering you a job. This is going to be a lot easier if you do some research and try to find hiring agents whose desires are those that you are best able to fulfill.

Finding a (better) job is not a matter of opening up a newspaper and circling those jobs being advertised by people who may be seeking skills similar to your own. It is a matter of letting those people who are in a position to hire know that they can do a better job of fulfilling the more and stronger of their desires by hiring you.

It means doing research and sending letters to people who have those desires that you may be able to fulfill – complete with preliminary evidence that shows the hiring agent that you understand what it is she wants from an employee, and evidence that you have an ability and an interest in fulfilling those desires.

For example, you want to be a writer (nonfiction, novels, screenplays, poetry, a blog, etc.).

What are the desires of your hiring agents?

The hiring agents in this case are, first, publishers and, second, readers and viewers.

They are going to provide you with money to write only insofar as giving you money fulfills the most and the strongest of their desires. Not your desires, but theirs.

Perhaps you will get lucky, and what you desire to produce is that which actually does fulfill the most and the strongest desires of enough people willing to give you money to produce it. Thus, you will be able to do what you like and get paid for it.

However, for the most part, you are going to have to tailor your writing to what your audience’s desires.

Publishers and production companies are experts at this. They can take material and determine, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, what it will take to make it into something that will cause customers to perform the intentional act of purchasing the product. Even here, they do not guess. They collect stacks of data on what agents are willing to pay for. They use focus groups, surveys, buying patterns, past successes, past failures, all with the aim of determining what type of product would fulfill the most and the strongest desires of potential customers.

The same applies if the product one is selling is one's own labor. One has to do research on what potential hiring agents want to purchase, and then actually put the effort into changing the product that one is offering into something that others are willing to pay for.

Smith on Parfit 1 of 15: Having a Reason

For some time, Luke Muehihauser has been sending me articles in moral philosophy that are relevant to the desire utilitarian theory I defend in this blog in the hopes that I would address their points. I loaded those articles onto my laptop to read during my vacation.

In the context of a blog, I do not have the ability to write up full-fledged philosophical articles on any topic. However, I do have the opportunity to write some notes in the margins as it were. That is to say, I have the ability to underline a few passages in the text and comment on them.

The first of the articles I seek to comment on was: "Desires, Values, Reasons, And The Dualism Of Practical Reason," Michael Smith (© 2009 The Author; Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Ratio (new series) XXII 1 March 2009.

In this article, Smith wrote a criticism of Derek Parfit's views on reasons for action. Specifically, Smith seeks to show that Parfit's arguments suggest that there are two or perhaps three different types of goodness that either (1) cannot be compared with each other, or (2) require that Parfit do additional work to explain how they can be compared to each other. In the course of making this argument, Smith makes several statements on the nature of practical reason, and presents some of the views of Parfit and Henry Sidgwick as well.

In the next several evening posts, I wish to highlight some of those statements and scribble some comments about them.

The first sentence I wish to highlight is:

Parfit consider(s) two practical claims in the early chapters. One is a claim that he takes to be a datum, namely, that we all have reasons to want to avoid future agony and thus to try to avoid it if we can.

Smith wrote in a footnote, All quotes in the text from On What Matters are taken from the 7 November 2007 version of the manuscript which was at that point called Climbing the Mountain.

Parfit eventually attempts to use this datum to reject all desire-based theories of value. Whereas I defend a desire-based theory of value (all value exists in the form of relationships between states of affairs and desires), this is relevant to the theory I defend in this blog.

My scribbled notes in the margins would say:

False, I think, depending on what the statement actually says.

Note that Parfit is not quoted as saying that an agent has a reason to avoid future agony. He is quoted as saying that an agent has a reason to want to avoid future agony. That is to say, the agent (or all of us, actually) has a current reason to acquire a current aversion to future agony, according to Parfit.

Parfit tells us that this is datum. This is a raw observed fact that, allegedly, desire-based theories of value cannot explain, but which Parfit’s value-based theory supposedly can handle.

This means that Parfit sees an apparent problem with the desire-based theory of value that I use and defend in this blog.

The desire-based theory that I favor says that a person has a reason to create a state S if and only if a person has a desire that P and P is true in S. Correspondingly, a person has a reason to avoid a state R only if a person has a desire that not-P and P is true in R.

This is allegedly a theory that has trouble handling reasons to avoid future agony.

Let me look at the aversion to pain (or, in other words, desire that I not be in pain) for a moment. This current aversion to pain is not an aversion only to pain that is occurring at this specific moment in time. It is an aversion to any state in which the entity referred to as I is in a state of pain. This includes current states and future states. It is my current aversion to the entity I feeling pain that makes me take steps today that make it less likely that I will be severely burned in the near future, and I is an entity that persists over time.

On this account, we evolved desires as a way of motivating intentional action. The aversion to pain work to motivate intentional action that aims to avoid states in which the proposition, I am in pain is true. However, intentional action can only avoid future pain. It cannot avoid current pain. So, having a desire play a role in intentional actions requires that the desire can be fulfilled in a future state.

In fact, if my aversion to pain is only an aversion to current pain then it provides no reason for me not to put my hand on the hot stove. Even after I put my hand on the hot stove and feel the pain, a Parfit-style aversion to current pain would not even motivate me to remove my hand, since removing my hand is only a means for avoiding the continuation of that pain – not a means for avoiding current pain.

So, it seems that Parfit has failed to see an essential link between desires and future states that is necessary for desires to play a role in motivating intentional action. This, then, motivates him to add additional complexities to fill a gap that does not actually exist.

Desirism and Job Hunting: Part 3

In light of the current economic situation, I am writing a series that applies the principles that I have been basing this blog on to the issue of finding a job.

I have written that finding a job involves convincing a hiring agent that hiring you is an intentional act. As such, it is an act the hiring agent will perform only when doing so will fulfill the most and strongest of the agent’s desires, given her beliefs.

Still, people generally have reason to condemn those who lack an aversion to using false beliefs (lying) to manipulate others. Even job applicants have reason to prefer a community that uses its social powers to promote an aversion to making false statements on job applicants as elsewhere.

This principle tells us that the hiring agent will base her decision on an evaluation relative to all of her desires (given her beliefs) regardless of what we say about it. The applicant who recognizes this fact will have an advantage over those who think that certain desires of the hiring agent do not matter.

The only way to keep a desire from mattering is to keep the hiring agent ignorant of the facts that relate the possible state in which that employee is hired to the agent’s desires.

(Which means that it is foolish to think that the government-sponsored anti-atheist sentiments are not having an effect on the employment, salary, promotions, and evaluations of those known to be atheists.)

Yet, some hiring agents do not have very noble desires. From those who see their position as hiring manager as a means of promoting their religion to those who exploit a position of power to fulfill sexual or sadistic desires, sometimes hiring agents do not have good desires.

It would be hard to classify the desire for sex per se as a bad desire. However, nobody actually has a desire for sex. We have different interests, and what fulfills the sexual desires of one person would not fulfill the sexual desires of another. We have reason to promote an aversion to the use of power for sexual gratification. Any desire for sex a hiring agent may have should, at least, be met with a stronger aversion to using power to exploit others.

Should.

Some hiring agents are more moral than others.

Yet, in promoting an aversion to exploiting a position of power for sexual gratification, companies have reason to establish protections against these types of behavior, condemning and even punishing any employee that is caught violating this moral restriction.

On the other side of this coin, there are applicants who may use a promise to help to fulfill the sexual desires of the hiring agent in order to help land a job. The owners of companies, and even other employees, have many and strong reason to promote an aversion to making the fulfillment of the hiring agent's sexual desires an element in the hiring process. The company has reason to constrain hiring agents to hiring people who will act in the company’s interests. Co-workers have reason to promote hiring practices that result in the hiring of competent co-workers.

All of these many and strong reasons support a moral aversion to sexual relationships between hiring agents and applicants specifically, and between people in a position of power and those over whom they have power in general. There are many and strong reasons for writing these types of moral limits into the company’s policies and procedures, and for condemning and punishing those who violate these rules.

Desirism and Job Hunting: Part 2

In light of the current economic situation (along with some personal interests), I have decided to take a look at the real-world concern of finding a new job in the light of what desire utilitarianism has to say about the issue.

In an earlier post I suggested that landing a job involves convincing a hiring agent that the intentional act of hiring you will fulfill the most and strongest of her desires, given her beliefs. You will not get a job offer until you have made this true.

Whether you like it or not, all of the hiring agent's desires are relevant. Everything from her desire to laugh to her concern for her children to her interest in pleasing her boss to her fear of flying. If she sees hiring you as aiding in the fulfillment or thwarting of any of her desires, this will influence the intentional act of hiring you.

One of the implications of this is that you can manipulate the hiring agent's actions by manipulating her beliefs. The hiring agent only needs to believe that hiring you will help to realize states of affairs in which the propositions that are the objects of her desires are true, and avoid realizing states of affairs in which the propositions that are the objects of her aversions are true. Those beliefs do not have to be accurate.

If you are a good person, you should have an aversion to lying. Lying itself is an intentional act – one that a person with an aversion to lying has a reason not to perform. However, my guess is that even a person with an aversion to lying also has an aversion to homelessness and starvation. These aversions may motivate an agent to act so as to avoid the realization of such a state – that is to say, to lie to get a job.

Obviously, some people do lie to get a job. Desirism has to account for the fact that these types of events are known to occur, and it does. However, the existence of lying does not change the fact that people generally have reason to promote a strong aversion to lying, and thus to condemn (and to punish) those who are caught doing so. It does not matter that their lies can be explained – all evil actions can still be explained, theoretically. It matters whether the explanation includes desires that people generally have reason to promote or inhibit.

Employers clearly have reason to avoid hiring people who will manipulate them – using false belief to cause others to act in ways that fail to fulfill their desires so that the liar can fulfill his own desires.

This means that one of the things that you can do as a perspective employee is to make it clear that you have a sufficiently strong aversion to misrepresenting the facts to manipulate others. Make your honesty clear, and you will make it clear to the hiring agent that she can trust what you have said, and what you will say when hired.

Yet, still, you need to cause the hiring agent to believe that hiring you will realize states that fulfill the most and strongest of her desires and avoid the realization of states that fulfill the most and strongest of her aversions.

One of the ways to do this is to be willing to negotiate. "Look, I know that your hiring decision will be based on whether you believe it will lead to the fulfillment of the most and strongest of your desires. So, let me start by saying that I consider myself obligated to discover what those desires are and to make or keep the propositions that are the objects of those desires true. If you hate public speaking, perhaps I can do some of the public speaking work in your stead. If you hate mundane paperwork, I can take over that job."

Find out what the hiring agent wants, and then find a way to bring about a state in which the propositions that are the objects of those desires will more likely be made or kept true.

In exchange, recall, you are seeking to fulfill the most and strongest of your desires by getting paid enough to purchase food, shelter, medical care, and the like.

Of course, I have bypassed the question of the quality of desires that the hiring agent has (or lacks). It is quite possible that the hiring agent has desires that you are not particularly interested in fulfilling – and some that you definitely think you should not need to fulfill in order to be considered for a job.

This gets into issues such as bribery and sexual harassment.

In my next post, I will look at some problems with the prospect of fulfilling the most and strongest of the hiring agent's desires.

A Neurotransmitter Theory of Value

Let us assume that science links decision making to the maximization of the delivery of a particular chemical in the brain. Regardless of the decision one makes – what college to go to, whether to go on a date, whether to commit rape or refrain from committing rape, in all cases an agent performs that act that results in the maximum amount of NT is the brain.

So, does this imply that maximizing NT is the only thing in the universe that has value, and that nobody can value anything other than the maximization of NT?

The first thing that I would like to say is that I would find it highly unlikely that we are going to make this type of discovery. I would not be surprised if some values can be reduced to these types of considerations. However, I believe that hundreds of millions of years of evolution has almost certainly made the brain much more complex than this. It has an array of value systems that, sometimes, are in conflict with each other – with one system motivating P while another motivates not-P.

So, I reject that the hypothetical that a single brain state that captures all measure of value.

However, it is sometimes useful to pretend that certain options exist.

Even though we could find no examples of it among humans or other complex decision-making animals, it seems it would still have been possible for life to have evolved differently. The same chemical that serves a store for value in human cognition could, on some distant galaxy perhaps, be used to transmit pain signals to the brain, or serve some other function, where some other chemical serves as a store for value.

In which case, it would not be "maximization of NT" that has value. It would be the functional role that "maximization of NT" happens to play in human decision-making (if this hypothetical case were true, which it is not).

The idea here is that if somebody wants to reduce the notion of value to a specific mental component, that person is going to have a lot of work to do. In place of this option, I prefer a functional view of value. On this account, value plays a role in how particular intention-generating machines work. A lot of different physical things are capable of playing that role. And, as a matter of fact, in the human brain, a lot of different things probably does play that role.

We define this role using the concept of desire. Whatever instantiates the role of motivating an agent to realize a state of affairs P is captured in the concept of a desire that P.

In fact, it is quite possible that whatever instantiates a desire that P in one intentional system might be quite different to what instantiates it in a different intentional system, even though the functional state of having a "desire that P" is the same in both systems.

 

Desirism and the Job Hunting: Part 1

Two weeks away from this blog, and my job, and much of my day-to-day routine provided me with some time to look at that routine from a new perspective.

It has also become something of a habit to look at those perspectives in the language of desirism.

One of the conclusions that I drew during that vacation is that I have many and strong reasons to act so as to realize a state of affairs in which I was spending more time doing things that I hold to have at least some value, and less time doing things that have mere instrumental value.

Let me offer a partial translation into more common terms. I very much enjoyed having the time to read and comment on some of the philosophical texts that had been sent to me over the course of the past few months. I wish I had more time to do that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I am confined by a need to perform activities that I do not enjoy (that have no end value), because they have instrumental value (provide me and those whose welfare concern me greatly – my wife – with a salary that I can use to purchase food, shelter, and access to medical care).

In other words, I think I would like to find a new job. It would be one in which I have more of an opportunity to read and to write on the subjects that actually interest me. At the same time, it would provide me with the means to pay for food, shelter, and medical care. Such a state is to b preferred to a state in which my job merely provides me with a means of paying for food, shelter, and medical care.

It is interesting to look at the prospect of finding a new job through the lens of desirism. Given the current state of the economy, some readers might even draw some useful lessons from the exercise.

Desirism tells us that the act of hiring an employee is an intentional act. As such, the hiring agent will perform such an act when doing so will fulfill the most and the strongest of the hiring agent's desires, given her beliefs.

This suggests that a fitting strategy to pursue in seeking a new job is to identify hiring agents, determine the desires of the hiring agent, and then provide the hiring agent with beliefs such that, given those beliefs, the hiring agent can expect the fulfillment of the most and strongest of her current desires. (Remember, future desires have no influence on current actions.)

The emphasis here is on the beliefs and desires of the hiring agent (or, actually, in many cases, agents). It does no good to focus one’s attention on the hypothetical interests of some abstract 'company'. Companies do not make hiring decisions.

Furthermore, one should keep in mind that I am talking about fulfilling the most and the strongest of the hiring agent's desires. All of her desires. This includes not only an employee capable of contributing to the company's bottom line (this is never the only concern of any hiring agent), but somebody who it would be easy to work with, who makes coming to work more pleasurable, who gets along with other members of the team, who looks attractive, who will make the hiring agent look good in front of her boss, and so on.

Looks attractive? Why is that in there? That shouldn’t be in there?

Agents act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires, given their beliefs. ALL desires. This desire is in the mix. It is irrational to pretend that it is not. It is also irrational to pretend that it should not be. 'Ought' implies 'can'. To say that an agent ought not to hire based on appearance is to say that an agent ought to have no preferences with respect to appearance – has no such desires to fulfill (or is one who remains ignorant of the facts of the matter until a hiring decision is made). The former is impossible and the latter is impractical.

This analysis, then, raises a number of moral concerns.

Since hiring agents act to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires given their beliefs, one way to manipulate a hiring agent is to generate false beliefs about the relationship between the state in which the applicant has been hired and the desires of the hiring agent. In other words, to lie.

There is also the prospect of fulfilling other desires having nothing to do with the job, such as sexual desire or bribery and kickbacks. These forms of corruption exist precisely because hiring agents act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires, given their beliefs.

These moral issues of the job market are worth further consideration.

Starting tomorrow.

A Particular Kind of Person: A Response to Carrier 2

In my defense of desire utilitarianism I sometimes use an imaginary case of a parent given two options by a captor. One option is that the parent's child will be tortured mercilessly while the parent will be lead to believe that the child is living a healthy and happy life. The other option is that the child will be given a healthy and happy life while the parent will be made to believe that the child is being tortured mercilessly.

A great many people claim that they would choose the option where they falsely believe that their child is being mercilessly tortured, while the child is in fact living a healthy and happy life. I use this to argue that people do not make choices based on what will make themselves happier.

Instead, I argue that a 'desire that P' motivates an agent to choose those options that will generate states of affairs in which P is made or kept true. In this case, the desire that one's child be healthy and happy motivates parents where that desire is sufficiently strong to choose the option in which the proposition, "My child is healthy and happy," is true.

Carrier makes a move in place of this that the parent is instead choosing to be a particular kind of person.

The mother has a choice really not between two fates for the child, but between two fates for herself: will she become (in her moment of deciding) the sort of woman who would choose Option 1 or the sort of woman who would choose Option 2?

First, what does it mean to be "the sort of woman who would choose Option 2"? In one sense, this sounds a lot like the case of a person who makes a carefully detailed and precise plan to perform a spontaneous action.

The type of person the person in this example should be is the type who chooses the welfare of her child without thinking about being any sort of woman. The "type of person" that I am talking about is one who, given a choice between an option in which her child is mercilessly tortured versus one in which the child is left to live a healthy and happy life will choose the latter without a single thought to the question, "What type of person do I want to be?".

The person who is more concerned with the well-being of her character and not the well-being of her child (except insofar as the child is a means of displaying or acting like a person of good character) has already taken severe demerits with respect to the quality of her character.

Second, what make one ‘type of person’ better than another anyway? One person might want to be the type of person who would do anything for the welfare of her child. Another might want to be the type of person who is the autocratic ruler of as much land and as many people as he can get control over. Another might admire the character of Jack the Ripper, or to be the leader of his own personal cult where sheepish followers allow him to use them to fulfill whatever desires he has without protest or complaint.

If I am trying to choose what type of person I want to be, how do I weigh the options? And what justifies the choice?

If these options are going to be evaluated in terms of maximizing happiness, then I have to ask why happiness has value, and nothing else. This returns to a long-standing question that I have had against happiness theories – what is it that gives happiness value and nothing else?

Desire fulfillment theory does not give value to only one thing. Rather, it holds that a desire that P is a reason for action that exists to realize a state of affairs in which P is true. A desire to be happy would be a mental state that would motivate an agent to act to realize a state of affairs in which, "I am happy" is true.

So, desire fulfillment theory can answer the question of why happiness has value – because people have a desire for happiness. However, there is no reason to believe that happiness is the only thing a person is capable of desiring. Not only are they capable of desiring other things, they do desire other things. In fact, the realm of possible desires is as varied as the realm of possible beliefs. If a person can believe that Q, then he can desire that Q for any Q.

So, if we are not going to use desire fulfillment to account for the value of happiness, how are we going to account for it? And how are we going to exclude everything else?

The Student's Right Not to Pledge

A report on Fox News [sic] discusses a move by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State to require schools to inform their students that they have a free-speech right to refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance. It is a Miranda Warning for children that they have the right to remain silent.

(See: Pledge of Confusion? Schools Wrestle With Flag Policy in Classroom.

But supporters of the Pledge insist that the words are both constitutional and an important part of our national heritage.

"There has been a recurring effort by the ACLU and others to try to stop the Pledge of Allegiance from being said. The fact of the matter is that the American people like the Pledge of Allegiance, they like it the way it is," Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum, told FOXNews.com.

"The teachers are government employees, their paychecks are paid by the taxpayers, and the American people support the Pledge. I'm with the American people," Schlafly said.

The internment of Japanese Americans in World War II was extremely popular as well. So was segregation, when America was a segregated nation. The right to enslave others was worth dying for, 150 years ago.

In fact, internment, segregation, and slavery were also important parts of our national heritage. A person who tries to understand American history without ever studying slavery and race relations will never understand American history.

We can go even further and note that it was quite possible to say that those who supported slavery and segregation were "with the American people" – but only in the sense that one did not consider those who were the victims of this bigotry were not really 'American people'.

Hitler was popular, and definitely "for the German people" - those he considered to be properly German, anyway.

But, then, that's the whole point of this religious bigotry. Religious bigots want to spread the message that those who do not share their religion are not real Americans. They want their religious bigotry to be the national motto, and they want children in public schools each day to pledge that they, too, will be religious bigots.

They want to decorate every public ceremony and every public building with the message that those who do not support a nation under God or trust in God – like Japanese Americans in World War II, like slaves, and like segregated blacks before them, are not 'real Americans'

It is a bigotry that plays out in creating a filter that is 99.99% effective at keeping atheists out of public office (where decisions on using schools to promote religious bigotry are made). It puts atheists at a disadvantage in winning custody of their children because atheists cannot be good parents, and in seeking patrol (or even acquittal) in court cases because atheists cannot be moral. It denies atheists opportunities in the military because atheists cannot be loyal Americans and forces atheists to hide their beliefs in public out of fear of the harm that would be done to their peers and relationships in society at large.

The question is not whether this is popular or has historical significance. The question is whether good people would support them. Good people would not support slavery. They would not support segregation. They would not support something like the Japanese internment during World War II. They would not support making religious bigotry the national motto, or mandating that public schools encourage children to take a pledge to be religious bigots.

I think that telling students, "You don't have to pledge to become religious bigots if you do not want to" is a great idea.

Beliefs, Desires, and Happiness: Responding to Carrier

I am taking advantage of a vacation (at the time of writing) to Germany to address some substantive comments concerning desirism (desire utilitarianism) as an ethical theory.

In late May of this year I received a series of comments from Richard Carrier. There were actually quite a few comments so I am going to ignore what I think are side issues and focus on what I see as more significant differences.

As I see it, the main difference is that Carrier appears to be an act utilitarian, whereas I am a desire utilitarian. Carrier’s writing suggest, at last to me, that he holds actions to be the primary object of moral desires, whereas I hold that morality is primarily concerned with the evaluation of desires. Also, Carrier seems to hold that actions are to be evaluated in terms of the maximization of happiness. Whereas I hold that desires are to be evaluated according to their tendency to fulfill other desires.

Another point that must be made is that Carrier takes our differences to be small and possibly non-existent. If the above description is correct, I would disagree with that assessment. However, this claim on Carrier’s part suggests that the above interpretation is not correct.

In actual fact, humans operate on a system of dispositions . . . which have causal consequences on the whole gamut of their decision making, which in turn has an aggregate effect on the conditions of their life . . . which in turn affects their baseline of happiness.

First, do not know what a "baseline of happiness" is supposed to mean.

A person may be able to make the case that such things as, “[W]hat sorts of friends they believe they have, and whether they believe the cops are hunting them down” might have an effect on happiness. A person’s happiness can be dramatically affected by what they believe is true about the world around them. Assume that somebody has just won a major lottery but has not yet been told about it. The change in happiness does not come when they win the lottery. It comes when they find out about it.

Yet, a person can want to win the lottery, even if she knows that the lottery drawing will take place after she has died and the news has no ability to affect her happiness. What she wants, in this case, is not happiness. What she wants is whatever will be made true by the fact that she has won the lottery.

With respect to imaginary cases such as this, Carrier asks:

[D]o we want to know (a) what people will do in this or that situation (imaginary or real), or (b) what they would do if they were fully informed and thought everything through?

Actually, as far as I am concerned, the best theory of intentional action can handle both cases. It can handle the case in which a person acts on full knowledge, and with limited knowledge.

Carrier says that the answer to the first question will give us descriptive ethics, but the answer to the first question will give us prescriptive ethics. I would argue that the answer to this question will tell you what the agent practically ought to do (what is prudent), but it will not tell us anything about morality.

First, these questions have an answer even if the universe has a single person. Yet, I hold that there is no morality unless there are multiple agents with potentially conflicting desires. A lone person, no matter what they do, can act imprudently, but not immorally.

Second, what a person would do, even if fully informed, is fulfill the most and strongest of his desires, given his beliefs. A "fully informed" person who loves to rape and mutilate children who has "thought everything through" and figured out a way to rape and mutilate a child with no chance of getting caught will rape and mutilate a child. Yet, it would be difficult to count such an act as moral.

The question that I hold needs to be asked and answered to give us prescriptive ethics is, "What malleable desires to people generally have the most and strongest reason to promote in people generally?" It is also relevant that the tools for promoting or inhibiting desires are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. Where there is no social need for these practices, there is no institution of morality.

People, if they wish, can assign the term “morality” to the selection of desires that are useful in relation to their other desires. This is a semantic question, like the question of whether the term ‘planet’ should be defined in such a way that includes Pluto. No astronomical facts are affected by whether or not we are going to call Pluto a planet, and no moral facts are affected by whether or not we call the choice of desires by an agent alone in the universe relative to his other desires is called 'moral'.

Where it comes to right action, I do not ask what a person would do if fully informed. I ask what a person would do if fully informed and having those desires that people generally have reason to promote and not having those desires that people generally have reason to inhibit. The person with the desire to rape and torture children, then, would not count as moral even if he discovers a way of acting on his desire with impunity. He would still be immoral in virtue of having desires that people generally have reason to inhibit.

Lessons from Europe

I’m Back

For the last 2+ weeks my wife and I have been on a cruise from Vienna, Austria to Amsterdam, The Neatherlands. We have been touring cathedrals, castles, museums, and palaces, visiting a number of cities along the rivers and canals along the way.

During that time I was electronically cut off from the world. I could have found a place to log in if I had wanted to go to the effort. However, I decided to spend my free time reading some articles people had sent me and commenting on them instead. I will be posting what I wrote on those subjects mostly in the (local) evening. I haven’t done much of that type of focused writing on theory for a while, and I discovered that I missed it.

Of course, a lot of my time was not free. If I had an opportunity to go out and explore, I did so, confining my writing to those times when we were sailing.

The cruise had a heavy focus on religion. This is because a lot of the history we looked at centered around religion, and because a lot of the passengers seemed to be religious. For example, during one shipboard event a passenger recommended that the crew join him to sing our 'most singable national anthem' - My Country Tis of Thee. And, of course, Hitler was not a Christian. (Though our tour guide explicitly said that most of Hitler's worse policies were mere copies of what Christians had been doing for over a thousand years.)

Regardless of what people may say about Hitler's religious beliefs, the people loved him. When specifically asked about Hitler's popularity among religious Germans, our guide answered by saying that Hitler was extremely popular among Lutherans – over 80% approval, but not so popular among Catholics. As I already mentioned, many of Hitler's actions, from confiscating the property of Jews to having them sew the Star of David on their clothes to driving the Jews out of the community were all a part of Christian history before Hitler.

I acquired a deeper sense of loathing for the idea, popular in Europe through much of its history and common on board the ship, that, "If you do not share my religion, you do not belong in my community."

Since the 30 Years War and World War II, the concept of 'my religion' has grown to include Jews, Lutherans, and Catholics for most (though not all) members of these groups. But the sentiment remains strong.e

It is an attitude that I can also find in a lot of atheists. Though, for atheists, the comparable attitude is, "If you do not share my dismissal of religion, you do not belong in my community." In fact, a lot of work is being done to promote communities built on the concept of atheism just so that they can hang a sign on the door that says, "In my community, no theists are allowed."

As I have argued before, I can see serious potential for a charismatic leader to sweep up a bunch of atheists in glorious talk of atheist superiority and the need to rid the community of lesser beings who cannot be cured of the meme-virus of religion and who must then be quarantined (or worse) to prevent them from infecting others. The best protection against this type of immorality is to recognize the moral bankruptcy of the idea that, "If you do not share my religious beliefs, you do not belong in my community."

This does not mean that one must play nice with others as it were. People within the same community can disagree. Astronomers do not yet all agree on the proper definition of a plant, and paleontologists are still debating whether T-Rex was a hunter of a scavenger. Astronomers do not seek to exclude those with differing view from their communities.

We, too, could benefit by learning the art of more constructive ways of disagreeing.

And we can help to avoid a great many of what has sometimes been extremely high costs.

Conversation Topic 15: The Unreflective Atheist

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(15) In a society where a substantial majority of the population are atheists, a vast majority of the people would be atheists in that society for the same reason that people adopt a particular religion today. They will tend to adopt the views of the society in which they live, without much reflection on what makes those views true or false.

Conversation Topic 14: Being Nice to Religion

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(14) The real question should not be whether one should be nice when it comes to religion, or whether one should treat religion harshly. The real question really should be, "What is true about religion?"

Conversation Topic 13: Freedom Of Religion

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(13) The Constitutional right to freedom of religion does not entail a Constitutional right to burn someone that one's religion designates to be a witch.

Apollo +50: Big Joe 1

I am not back to blogging. I have scheduled this post in advance.

I am writing a series of posts celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo. 50 years ago today what is considered the second launch of the Manned Space Program took place.

I think that the greatest relevance of the manned space program in the 1960s is as an excellent example of the scientific method. Engineers built something, they tested it, they looked for material causes for the effects that they saw, they made adjustments consistent with those theories, they tested again, they modified their theories.

In less than 10 years, this process carred us from the failed mission of Little Joe 1 on August 21, 1959, to the first lunar landing on July 16-24 1969.

Big Joe 1 was intended to test the heat shield on a Mercury capsule. The Big Joe rocket (a modified Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile) was supposed to launch a Mercury capsule to a height of 100 miles, then drop it back to the Earth, to see how well it would survive re-entry.

Its purpose was to test one of two competing theories for how to deal with the heat of re-entry.

One competing method was the "heat sink" method. This involved using a thick plate of beryllium, which could hold onto a great deal of heat.

The other method was the "ablation" method. This involved using a resin that effectively 'boiled off' during re-entry. The heat of re-entry was to be consumed in turning the solid resin into a gas, then the gas would simply fly away (taking the heat energy with it).

This mission was meant to test whether the ablation method would actually work. Would it allow a human occupant to survive the heat of re-entry?

Naturally, this was an unmanned mission.

It is important to note that the rocket being used was the same type of rocket to be used to deliver Mercury astronauts into orbit. (The sub-orbital missions were to use a Redstone rocket, which could put an astronaut into space but not with enough speed to keep him there.)

This is important because the Atlas rocket malfunctioned.

The Atlas rocket used a pair of booster engines during the first two minutes of launch. Unlike the two solid rocket boosters that we see on the Shuttle, the two booster engines on the Atlas were just that. They were just engines. They fed from the same fuel tank as the main engine but, after helping to provide initial thrust to get the rocket moving, they dropped off. One engine remained to do the rest of the work.

Well, with Big Joe 1, the booster engines did not come off. This meant that remaining engine had to carry that extra weight. As a result, the Atlas rocket did not go as high or as fast as it was supposed to go.

Furthermore, as a result of this malfunction the capsule did not spash down anywhere near where it was expected. There was some fear for a while that the capsule was lost, and the whole experiment was a failure.

However, the Navy found the capsule.

When the experts examined the heat shield they discovered that it was in very good shape. Furthermore, the capsule was subjected to enough heat on re-entry to answer the question that the researchers wanted to answer. The ablation method was an effective method of dealing with the heat of re-entry. The resin was lighter than beryllium in a field where weight is important.

Each extra pound of weight requires that the rocket use more fuel to get that weight into orbit. That extra fuel has weight, requiring even more fuel, which adds even more weight. There are many and strong reasons to keep the weight down as low as possible.

As a result of this method, NASA adopted the ablation method, and the heat-sink method was dropped.

However, there was still the problem of getting a reliable rocket that can actually put a capsule (with or without somebody inside of it) into orbit.

Conversation Topic 12: In God We Trust

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(12) The motto, "In God We Trust" really means, "If you do not trust in God, then you are not one of us." Putting this sign in any public place is as morally repugnant as putting up a sign that says, "If you are Jewish, you are not one of us," or any other similar expression of religious bigotry.

Conversation Topic 11: Secular vs Religious Rationalization

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(11) There is not a single evil done 'in the name of God' for which a person cannot find a secular justification (rationalization) that makes no mention of God.

Conversation Topic 10: Divine Command Morality

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(10) People do not get their morality from God. If anything, they assign their moral beliefs to God. In doing so, they find an amazing amount of coincidence between what they value and what God commands.

Conversation Topic 09: Moral Realism

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(9) Some moral statements are true, and their truth value is substantially independent of the beliefs or the desires of the speaker.

Conversation Topic 08: Beliefs, Desires, and Truth

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(8) Beliefs (e.g., a 'Belief that P' for some proposition P) are capable of being true or false, depending on whether the proposition P is true or false.

Desires (e.g., a 'desire that P' for some proposition P) are not capable of being true or false. However, they are capable of being fulfilled or thwarted depending on whether the proposition P is true or false.

Conversation Topic 07: Desires and End-Reasons

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(7) Desires are the only end-reasons for action that exist.

Conversation Topic 06: Religion and Morality

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(6) The behavior of a lot of religious people suggests that they think that the relationship between morality and religion is, "If a religious person does it, then it is not immoral."

Conversation Topic 05: The Relevance of Moral Theory

I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.

The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:

• Is it true?

• Is it important?

(5) If your moral theory requires that people be well versed in all aspects of the theory and to adopt it in order to do the right thing or be a good person, then there is something dreadfully wrong with one's moral theory.