The Meaning of 'Atheist'

This blog entry might be somewhat off of my normally well-beaten path, but it addresses an issue that has arisen more than once in this blog. I addressed it in passing, and I think that it warrants some more direct attention. It concerns the question, “What is an atheist?”

In an article in American Chronicle, David Glesson decides to address some “Common Misconceptions about Atheists and Atheism.” He starts off with the “misconception that, “Atheism is the belief that no Gods exist.”

I deny that this is a misconception.

A Few Words about Words

Language is an invention. It is a tool – like shovels and computers - that we design to do work. There is no “natural law” of language that dictates what a word must or must not mean. There is, instead, the purpose for which the invention of language is created and the question of what design will best serve that purpose.

The main purpose of language is communication. It is not the only purpose, but (particularly in this context) all of those other purposes are insignificant compared to the purpose of causing a particular idea to emerge in the mind of the listener or reader. As I write, the foremost questions that I have when I choose a word is, “When the reader sees this word, what will pop into his head? Will it be the same thing that I want to have pop into his head?” If the answer to the second question is, “No,” then I have to pick a new word.

In other words, the 'correct' definition of a word is the prediction of what thoughts pop into the mind of the reader or listener when they encounter the word.

What pops into the minds of almost all English speakers when they read or hear the word “Atheist?” It is, “Somebody who has the belief that no gods exist.”

We find some evidence for this in the fact that, if Gleeson were correct, then it should be instantly clear to every person who reads or hears the words ‘atheist’ that infants are atheists. Instead, what pops up in the minds of most English speakers is that those who would call an infant an ‘atheist’ is speaking gibberish. It is gibberish precisely because an atheist is one who has a belief that no god exists, and there is no way that an infant can have such a belief. Gleeson accepts that his definition of atheism means that all infants are atheists. He does not see that this conclusion is a reductio ad absurdum of his thesis.

Indeed, think about how absurd it is to argue that there is this word that is a normal part of the language. People use it all the time. People who read or hear the word almost never misunderstand those who write or speak the word. However, all these people who are using the word and not misunderstanding each other do not understand what the word really means.

This is a very strange claim to try to defend.

Note: In some cases, a word has a technical definition that does not correspond with the common usage. The technical definition of ‘argument’ among logicians is ‘two or more propositions where one proposition (the conclusion) is said to follow from the other propositions (the premises)'. However, when the kid comes to us and says, ‘My parents are having an argument,’ we do not say that he does not understand what the word means. We simply recognize that he is not using it in its technical sense.

The root of ‘a’ – ‘theist’

Gleeson defends his position as follows:

The word 'atheism' comes from the Greek prefix 'a', meaning without, and 'theist', meaning having a belief in a supernatural deity. Atheism, therefore, literally means "without theistic belief". Atheism does not positively assert anything; rather, it is a statement of withheld belief.

Now, consider this argument:

The word ‘atom’ comes from the Greek prefix ‘a’, meaning without, and ‘tomos’ meaning ‘to cut’. ‘Atom’ literally means ‘that which cannot be cut’. Yet, we have people today who assert that atoms can be split. Nothing can be more absurd than to say that it is possible to split something that, by definition, cannot be split.

The fact is, we cannot defend a definition on the basis of what the parts of a word may have meant to the ancient Greeks - not unless we are actually talking to an ancient Greek. We defend a definition on the basis of what ideas it causes in the mind of the readers and listeners who are competent users of the native language that contains the term.

I also want to note the condescension that Gleeson gives to those who do not share his opinion. He writes, “This statement's ubiquity is exceeded only by its utter falseness; not only is it misleading, but it is the complete opposite of the truth.”

Imagine that you are talking about splitting an atom, or about the parts of an atom, when somebody comes up to you, looks down his nose at you, and sneers, “You talk about splitting the atom. Your statement's ubiquity is exceeded only by its utter falseness; not only is it misleading, but it is the complete opposite of the truth.” He then goes on to say that the ancient Greek meaning of ‘a – tomos’ proves that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Ultimately, once the intruder admits to the 'ubiquity' of the term, he has already conceded defeat. He has already admitted that the common definition of the term 'atom' has become something other than 'that which cannot be cut.'

Atheism and Faith

After ‘proving’ his definition of atheism, Gleeson goes on to discuss what he calls another ‘misconception’, that Atheism requires just as much faith as theism.

Against this, he writes:

This misconception arises because of the misunderstanding of the term 'atheism', as described above. If atheism were indeed a positive assertion that no gods exist, then this criticism would be valid. After all, it would take just as much faith to claim that no gods exist as it would to claim that one god or many gods exist. But atheism makes no such claim.

His statement, If atheism were indeed a positive assertion that no gods exist, then this criticism would be valid. is false.

I look back at human history, at the number of different gods that different people have created, at the stories with their contradictions and inconsistencies, at the fossil record that tells us of evolution, at the fact that even today in the 'information age' people are inclined to believe ‘stories’ that are not only poorly founded but easily proved false (e.g., Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was involved with those who planned 9/11), and I conclude from all of this evidence that the ‘God’ concept refers to a fictional character.

This is to say that the term ‘God’, like the terms ‘chimera’ and ‘Poseidon’, do not refer to any real world entity that has any type of predictive or explanatory power.

Can things with no predictive or explanatory power exist?

Possibly. There might be a parallel universe with absolutely no interaction with our own fictional characters exist. We have no choice but to remain agnostic about the existence of entities that have no role to play in explaining and predicting real-world events.

At the same time, we can say nothing at all about them that is not as likely to be true as fase. Any discussion about such entities – what powers they possess, what they look like, anything at all that can be known about them – would be a very short discussion. There is nothing to say, other than the same types of things that fiction writers put into their books as a matter of course.

My belief that the term ‘God’ refers to a fictional character is as secure as my belief that no ghosts exist, no leprechauns exist, the Loch Ness Monster does not exist, phlogiston does not exist, the earth is not flat, and it is not the center of the solar system. If the proposition that the term ‘God’ refer to a fictitious character is a matter of faith, then all of these other propositions are also a matter of faith.

Can this type of argument prove beyond all possible doubt that no God exists?

No, it cannot.

However, there is no proposition in science that can be proved true beyond all possible doubt. It is a part of the very nature of science that every theory that one can think of is a set of 'possibly false' propositions. In fact, it is the nature of all scientific propositions that they must be ‘falsifiable’.

The proposition, “The earth is 4.55 billion years old” is possibly false. It is not very likely to be false. It is, in fact, practically certain. Yet it is still ‘possibly false’.

When a person makes the assertion, “The earth is 4.55 billion years old,” he can do no more than state that this proposition has the most and strongest connection to everything else that we know – the best connection to our understanding of atomic theory, the nature of light, plate tectonics, the fossil record, and even facts about human perception (e.g., how our eyes work so that we can observe the results of our experiments).

When we look at human history, at different cultures and their invention of fictitious creatures, their invention of gods, the different types of gods that they invented, the propositions that has the best fit with our best understanding of all of these facts include the propositions, “There never were any dragons. There never were any ghosts. There never were any tree spirits. And there never were any gods.”

Summary

As I said, language is an invention. The meaning of a word depends on what ideas pop into the minds of the reader or the listener when they encounter the word (in that particular context). This, at least, is the meaning that any clear writer or speaker needs to use.

The meaning that pops into the mind of almost all readers and listeners of common English when the word ‘atheist’ is used is ‘one who holds that the term ‘God’ refers to a fictitious character.’ Gleeson admits this. In admitting it, he admits that the alternative definition he provides is mistaken.

Given enough time and enough effort, it may be possible to change the meaning of the word ‘atheist’ to ‘one who lacks belief in God.’ Given enough time and enough effort it may be possible to change the meaning of the word ‘atom’ back to ‘that which cannot be cut (or split).’ Language is one of those areas where even those who wrong, if they are persistent enough and persuasive enough, can actually make their false claim true.

The day may come when the word ‘atheist’ actually will conjure in the mind of the common listener or reader the idea, ‘one who withholds belief in a God.’

But it is not this day.

Addendum

As a consequence of an anonymous comment below, I would like to add the following.

The common-language 'meaning' of the terms atheist, theist, and agnostic depend on how one would answer this question.

Does God exist?

(Almost) Certainly Yes: Theist.

Probably: Weak theist.

I don't know: Agnostic.

Probably not: Weak atheist.

(Almost) Certainly No: Atheist.

This is the breakdown that makes the most sense of how people actually use the terms when they talk to each other. This is the breakdown that has the best explanatory and predictive power as the best theory of what the terms mean in English.

Mistrust on Women's Health

My parents taught me, while I was growing up, that liars are not to be trusted. Once somebody lies to you, you know that he has no respect for the truth. Once you know he has no respect to the truth, trusting anything that he says is a mistake. If you had a car that had a tendency to die in the middle of traffic, you would cease to trust it to get you across town, and would certainly find another mode of transportation if lives were at stake. If you asked your brother to watch over your child, and he ‘forgot’ the child was there and went out drinking with his friends, you would cease to trust your child with that brother.

When people give you bad information – and do so over and over again – it follows that none of what he tells you is to be trusted any more. It does not mean that everything he says is a lie (that would make it too easy). Instead, whenever he speaks, you should treat his words as if he said nothing at all.

A few days ago, Austin Cline at About Atheism/Agnosticism in an article titled, "Christian Right Gets Government to Lie about Sex," directed readers towards a Glamour article about a campaign of deception called, “The New Lies About Womens’ Health.”

Note: I do have reason to object to the Cline's title. It is quite possible that there are those on the Christian Right who have a serious devotion to truth. To call all of them liars -- to say that lying is the essence of what they are -- is unfair.

A lie actually requires an intention to deceive. For a speech act to count as a lie, it is not sufficient that it be false. If an adopted child has been raised to believe that the parents who raised him are his biological parents, he is not to be called a ‘liar’ for repeating this falsehood. I hold that it is unjust to charge another with lying without evidence of intent.

If a driver hits another car, and kills the family riding inside, we cannot charge him with murder unless we can show an intent to kill. However, we do not need to prove intent to morally condemn the driver. Was he speeding? Was he drunk? Was he not paying attention to traffic signals? In short, would a morally responsible and competent driver been able to avoid the accident? If the answer is ‘yes’, then we have the basis for moral condemnation. We have reason to say, “This person is not to be trusted behind the wheel of a car.”

When people report falsehoods, we cannot charge them with lying unless we can show an intent to deceive. However, we do not need to prove intent to morally condemn the speaker. We simply need to ask whether a morally responsible and competent thinker would have been able to avoid the false claim. If the answer is “yes’, then we have the basis for moral condemnation. We have reason to say, “This person is not to be trusted to tell us things that are true.”

In the article that Cline points to, the agency not to be trusted is the federal government. Under the Bush Administration, the Federal Government has gotten into the habit of making false claims that any morally responsible and competent thinker would have avoided making.

In fact, Glamour, has found that on issues ranging from STDs to birth control, some radical conservative activists have used fudged and sometimes flatly false data to persuade the government to promote their agenda of abstinence until marriage. The fallout: Young women now read false data on government websites, learn bogus information in federally funded sex-education programs and struggle to get safe, legal contraceptives—all of which, critics argue, may put them at greater risk for unplanned pregnancies and STDs.

Think of our attitude towards a bus driver, his bus filled with high school kids that he is charged with delivering safely home after the school day is over. He comes to a railway crossing with a train coming. Anxious to get home himself, he tries to race the train. Think of the contempt that we would have for somebody who endangered so many young lives.

Yet, this bus driver is an insignificant threat compared to the government agencies who choose to be reckless with the information he puts out for public use.

Several states, including Louisiana, Wisconsin, Virginia and North Carolina, have online abstinence programs that link to a site called abstinencedu.com, which warns that HIV might be able to penetrate a latex condom (patently false), that "condoms offer no protection against HPV infection" (not true) and that "there is no scientific evidence that condoms reduce the risk of becoming infected with the other 23 major STDs" (also false). It even claims that "the Federal Drug Administration [sic] allows up to 4 percent of a batch of condoms to be defective before the batch is rejected!" (Actually, the FDA rejects a batch of condoms if even one-tenth that number are defective.)

I would much prefer – enough to offer it as a moral duty – that when a writer attempts to present a case such as this that they make some effort to back up their assertions. A mere claim that a proposition is true or false is of little use; and it is worthless when one is making an accusation of lying. In making such an accusation, I hold that a writer has an obligation to treat the claim as a lawyer would treat a case in a court of law that he is presenting to a jury. We would not accept a jury to accept a prosecutor’s flat claim that a proposition is “patently false”. The accuser needs evidence, and references to evidence is sorely missing in the above paragraph.

Somebody interested in good scientific information on these issues can check out the John Hopkin’s School of Public Health web site which contains a highly referenced set of pages on condoms that support the claims made above.

The perpetrators in this case are not only those responsible for the abstinencedu.com web site, but also any person or entity (including those in the states of Louisiana, Wisconsin, Virginia, and North Carolina) who reference this cite.

Think back to the example of our school bus driver. After the accident in which the train scattered a couple dozen high school students across the countryside because of the driver’s reckless actions, we discover that the driver had a record. We discover a number of emails and correspondence in which others warned the school of this driver’s history. Yet, the school ignored all of these warnings, refused to check up on the driver, and simply hired him.

We would hold the school officials responsbile for hiring this driver morally responsible, would we not? We would insist that they be fired (at best) or perhaps brought up on charges for criminal negligence for the harm that they have done.

Abstinencedu.com is intellectually reckless. Any government official who insists on hiring intellectually reckless individuals should be held to the same type of moral accountability as the school officials who hire the reckless bus driver.

And those who refuse to hold government officials morally responsible for intellectual recklessness deserve to be the objects of the same moral outrage we would give to those who excused the government officials who disregarded warnings about a reckless bus driver.

Morally, there is nothing to distinguish these two groups. These people, like the reckless bus driver, are getting our children killed. It seems that this is something a person of good moral character would want to prevent.

Related Postings

Also, please note that the person who gives out incomplete or innacurate information is trying to control the lives of others much like the tyrant or the mobster. I discussed this aspect of the problem in the posting “Some Dishonest Advice” on July 18th.

Condemnation and Intellectual Recklessness

When it comes to promoting science and intellectual responsibility, should we seek to entice people with kindness, or should we condemn those who choose to ignore these standards?

I came to this question while listening to Michael Ruse on The Infidel Guy Radio Show on Wednesday evening. In the course of the discussion, there were a couple of exchanges on the tactics to be used in promoting “free thought.” Ruse expressed criticism of the way in which Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, for example, attack religion. Ruse, in contrast, would prefer a constructive dialogue with people of faith. It appeared that his argument was that we can and should sit down with these people, discuss our differences, and entice them to the scientific view by virtue of its superiority.

At least, this is what I think he said. It's an interpretation.

Ultimately, I do not see this as an 'either/or' question.

When I write, I speak of four tools for altering behavior (by altering desires); praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. These are not the only tools, but they are the major tools that are relevant when one talks about morality.

Reasonable people can disagree over which tool is best for a particular job and how it can most effectively be employed. One option that I would certainly argue against is that of using only condemnation and leaving the other tools aside.

Yet, I would also have to argue against abandoning the tool of condemnation as well.

For example, it would make no sense to suggest that we should not condemn or punish the thief. The person who proposes that we fight theft merely by seeking to engage in dialogue with the thieves and to convince them of the simple joy and pleasure of earning one’s own money would not be thought of as giving us a rational option.

Nor would I be inclined to agree with any individual who asserted that we should not condemn or punish the rapist but, instead, limit ourselves to enticing them with the pleasure of consensual sex.

There are times when condemnation and, perhaps, punishment are in order – though punishment must be limited to cases when it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that it is necessary to promote an aversion to doing actual, real harm.

Here, I want to make it clear that what should be condemned is not religion. This is the wrong target. The proper object for condemnation is intellectual recklessness causing one to act in ways where they do harm to others. Harmless faith is harmless and, as such, there is no reason to condemn it. Harmful faith, on the other hand, is an intellectual activity that those with reason to avoid harm also have reason to condemn.

Intellectual recklessness is not like theft or rape – which are acts whereby the agent intends to do harm to others. Intellectual recklessness, however, is still a moral crime – one that is much like drunk driving, for example.

The drunk driver (or the person who, while sober, refuses to take precautions against becoming a drunk driver) is guilty of a callous disregard for the life, health, and well-being of others. He is not seeking to kill and maim us, our families, and our friends, but he does not care enough about their welfare to stop from being a threat.

The intellectually reckless individual also shows a lack of concern for the well-being of others that is sufficiently strong to prevent them from crashing their dogma into other peoples' lives. An intellectually responsible person, who sees that his actions will threaten the life, health, and well-being of others, would seek to make sure that their actions are well founded and secure, and will hold off on doing harm when its foundation is discovered to be insecure. For the intellectually reckless person, the harm they may cause is of limited concern – certainly not important enough to cause them to pause from reaching a desired destination.

Where an unsecured belief is a danger to others, we can hold those who wield it in as much moral contempt as we would have for the person who wields a loaded in a public place. The mere fact that the weapon might go off, that innocent people could be caused to suffer as a result, is sufficient to argue for moral condemnation

Prohibitions on gay marriage, a ban on the use of embryonic stem cells, prohibition on the use of condoms and other forms of birth control, a refusal to approve or to allow the use of a morning-after pill, obstructing the distribution of a vaccine against a disease that is an antecedent to cervical cancer, the miseducation of children about the discovered scientific facts of the universe, and forced ignorance are all examples of cases where reckless belief does harm to others. These are examples where people deserve as much condemnation as the drunk driver or the careless shooter.

When we look at the actions of these people we find intellectual laziness, intellectual recklessness, and often even intentional deception. We find these activities in defense of policies that do far more harm than any one drunk driver behind the wheel of a car could possibly cause. Intellectual recklessness on this level is much like being careless with the detonator to a nuclear bomb than with a car or a gun. In fact, it is hard to imagine any terrorist act that can do as much damage as these misguided laws – and terrorists themselves often (if not always) have some measure of intellectual recklessness at the root of their activities.

It is also relevant to note that, even the drunk driver cannot be condemned, if he engages in his recklessness on his own private property where he puts no innocent person at risk. We have little reason to be concerned with the ranch owner who drives drunk only on his own posted land where access is controlled. The same is the case with religion, where people who engage in this intellectual recklessness confine the ill effects to their own lives and do not use it to place burdens on others. It is when they make themselves a danger to others -- whether it be by justifying a crime of blowing up airplanes or passing laws that block sick and dying people from the benefits of medical breakthroughs such as from stem cell research -- that their recklessness has gone beyond the boundaries that morality prescribes.

Sure, we should teach the value of science and rational thinking. We should not hesitate that we have demonstrable evidence that the rational thinker has fed the starving and cured the sick; whereas any evidence that a deity has accomplished these things is sketchy at best. No God turned Hurricane Katrina away from the people it targeted, but science told us that it was coming and allowed a million people to get out of the way. We should, in fact, sing the praises of rational thought at every opportunity.

And yet, at the same time, there is good reason to apply the tools of social condemnation against the intellectually lazy and intellectually reckless, because of the harm they will do to the lives, health, and well-being of others. We clearly have reason to do more than simply shrug our collective shoulders and say that these harms do not matter.

On Terrorism and Security

MSNBC's First Read this evening discussed the Republican strategy for using the Lamont victory in the Connecticut Democratic Primary and the announcement this morning from England that they thwarted a plan to blow up an estimated 10 airplanes flying from England to the United States some time next week.

According to the report, the Bush Administration hopes to use these events to convey a message that we are safer under Republican rule than we would be under the "cut and run" Democrats.

It’s a message that sounds something like, “Give us political power and you will live. Give political power to the Democrats, and you will surely die.”

Mark Murray, the author of the entry, wrote (quoting an unnamed senior Administration official):

The official [said], "So if you have Lamont Democrats who say, 'Bring'em home, turn away, and it will be all over,' the American people say, 'You're kidding yourself. We're in a war and the only way you walk away from a war is as a victor, defeating the enemy.'" (Of course, that begs these questions: How, exactly, do you win the war on terror? And just who, exactly, is the enemy?

Murray’s questions in this quote deserve more than a parenthetical reference.

The nameless Administration official seems to be hoping that we will think of this ‘war on terror’ as we would think of World War II. That was certainly a war in which we faced a simple choice – to win, or to be defeated. The consequences of walking away from World War II would have certainly been disastrous, and any who would have suggested it could be reasonably and rationally condemned.

However, World War II had another feature that the current conflict does not have. We can expose that feature by asking, “What event can we hope for that would be the ‘war on terror’ equivalent of VE (Victory in Europe) Day or VJ (Victory over Japan) Day?

In World War II our enemy had a leader and a chain of command. The goal was to get those where at the top of that chain of command to announce, “From this day on, we will fight no more.” When we accomplished this, the war was won, and everybody could go home. Civil liberties and other restrictions once enacted during a temporary emergency could be restored.

The Bush Administration appears to be struggling for such an end in the ‘war on terror’ – the day when the enemy surrenders and they can claim, “Mission Accomplished.”

That goal is not out there.

I am not saying that America lacks the will or the power to achieve this goal. I am saying that the goal does not exist. The Bush Administration has staked its victory on the functional equivalent of discovering a round square.

Because this end state cannot exist, and we cannot obtain that which cannot exist, those with a healthy respect for reality will recognize that we have two options.

(1) An Endless Quest that will require an endless sacrifice of life, health, liberty, and property.

(2) The wisdom to reach for a real-world goal.

The 'war on terrorism' will be won the day that no human thinks that it is a good idea to kill large numbers of his fellow human beings and/or the institutions that they value for some personal goal. Properly understood, the ‘enemy’ is not limited to Al-Queida. It includes the Unibomber, Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols responsible for the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who tried to kill their classmates at Columbine High School Massacre, John Wilkes Booth, Leon Czolgosz (who assassinated President McKinley in 1901), those responsible for the Wall Street Bombing of 1920, a group of people in Florida who allegedly wanted to bomb targets such as the Sears Tower, another group in Canada planning actions such as beheading the Prime Minister of that country, as just a representative sample.

If a political faction is going to offer to ‘keep us safe,’ then these are the people that they need to protect us from. This, then, brings up the questions, “Does it make even the most remotely rational sense to say that the best way to fight these groups was to spend the lives of 2,500 American soldiers killed, 20,000 American soldiers wounded, and $400 billion in Iraq?” How, in any sense that remotely approaches sanity, is an attack on Iraq supposed to be the road to protection from these types of individuals?

This leads to the next question, “How can any sane person think that the best option is to trust our future security to somebody who does not seem to be able to know where the enemy is at, and spends all of these lives and all of this money in the wrong place?”

Why are these terrorists doing this, anyway?

All intentional human action can be explained as an effort to fulfill the more and the stronger of one’s desires, given his beliefs. If a group of people fly an airplane into a building, we can assume that they think that this will best fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires, given their beliefs. If a group of people want to blow up 10 airplanes on their way to the United States, we can infer that this would best fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires, given their beliefs.

If we do not want people to be intentionally crashing airplanes into buildings, blowing up jets over the Atlantic, blowing up sky scrapers, beheading Prime Ministers, and the like then we need to create a culture in which as few people as possible can fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires, given their beliefs, with these types of actions. We have to target the beliefs and the desires of our fellow human beings.

We have no other option. This is the only way to prevent human beings from engaging in these types of intentional actions – to reduce the incidents in which beliefs and desires combine to recommend such actions.

From this, we have a way of testing alternative strategies. We can ask, “What is the effect of this strategy on reducing the incidence of beliefs and desires that tend to cause people to engage in these types of actions?”

The goal, then, is to reduce as far as possible the incidents of those beliefs and desires that have people crashing airplanes into sky scrapers or otherwise killing off as many people as possible. This is still and ‘endless quest,’ but not one that requires endless sacrifice of all that is good. It is the classic ‘endless quest’ to create a society with as much good as we can.

We cannot pursue this type of goal by supporting an administration that favors (1) torture, (2) arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, (3) widespread destruction of the life, health, and property of innocent civilians, (4) unilateral arrogance to do whatever one pleases with only casual disregard for the opinions and welfare of others, (5) a monarchical executive with the power to disregard the courts and the legislatures when he wishes to do so, (6) the elimination of a system of checks and balances, (7) the use of religious dogma as sufficient justification for inflicting harm on others, (8) the idea that it is permissible and even virtuous for a person in a position of leadership and authority to epitomize the traits of intellectual laziness and intellectual recklessness, to name just a few of the ‘values’ that this Administration is working to promote.

The only thing that this type of administration can provide us and our children is a world filled with torture, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, widespread harm to civilians, unilateral arrogance, and the like.

There can be no security in that kind of world.

Lemont v. Lieberman

The people over at Crooks and Liars seem to be somewhat upset that Joe Lieberman has decided to run as an Independent, after losing in the Democratic Primary to Ned Lamont. They appear to be of the opinion that this type of behavior is shameful -- that a good and decent individual would be averse to doing such a thing.

Instead, it is shameful to be condemning somebody who decides to run as an independent if a party rejects their views.

This posting is not in any way an endorsement of Lieberman. This posting is a discussion of some of the moral issues surrounding political choices. The conclusion is that those who wish to shame a person who runs as an Independent are wrong to do so. In this case, they betray the very same moral characteristics that they have been condemning in others for the past six years.

Hypocrisy in Rallying Around the Leader

It is interesting to note that one of the criticisms that C&L has leveled against Joe Lieberman rests on the assumption that being a loyal Party member means rallying around whomever the party selects as its leader regardless of one’s personal views – that party loyalty trumps all other considerations. Yet, C&L ridicules Joe Lieberman for asserting that being a loyal American means rallying around whomever the country selects as its leader regardless of one’s personal views – that national loyalty trumps all other considerations.

Apparently, the moral doctrine of rallying around the leader applies only to leaders that the people at Crooks and Liars support. If they identify a leader as worthwhile, then all others are supposed to set aside their separate opinion and do as the people at C&L tell them to do. If, however, they have objections to any given leader, then there is clearly no moral doctrine or principle that commends rallying around the leader.

There are clearly times when one has a moral obligation to line up behind and support a leader. There are times when this type of behavior support catastrophe. If an ocean liner hits an iceberg and it becomes necessary to get as many people into lifeboats as quickly as possible, this is a good time to start listening to a leader and cooperating with his efforts to address the problem.

It is not sufficient that somebody else has a "better idea." The "better idea" needs to be so much better than the current leader's plan that it is worth all of the costs associated with getting the new plan adopted and getting everybody up to speed on the new plan. Otherwise, the new plan does not, in fact, pass a cost-benefit analysis. That is to day, they it does not pass a rational cost-benefit analysis. Those costs have to include the costs of getting people up to speed on the new plan.

However, the Connecticut election is not one of these 'emergency situations' that require the suppression of individuality to accomplish its ends. The end should be to get the best representative by and for the state of Colorado. This is what a person of good moral character should be striving for. For the reasons that I stated above, it is unreasonable to expect either political party to produce a candidate that best represents the people of Connecticut as a whole. The primary process guarantees that their choices will be selected from among two candidates, neither of which represents the whole of the population of Connecticut.

Indeed, the very purpose of a political campaign is to engage in debate. Rallying around the leader is reserved for situations where there is no time to debate; elections are institutions for engaging in debate. The very idea of rallying around a leader stands as a contradiction to the very purpose and function of an election campaign.

So, Lieberman has no duty to rally around the Democratic leader. The Democratic Party has picked a non-representative candidate for the people of Connecticut, and Lieberman still has the opportunity to say, "I seek to be the candidate that represents all of the people of Connecticut."

I would like to quickly add that being a representative of the whole of the population is not necessarily a good thing. This depends on the moral character of the whole population. If the moral character of the population as a whole is low, then the moral character of any representative of the people and of the policies he pursues are going to suffer the same moral faults. We see this in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and among the Palestinians where the low moral quality of the people has resulted in the election of leaders of low moral quality.

Lamont's Position on the Iraq War

I also would like to add that I still have moral objections to the stand that Lamont has drawn on the war, demanding an American withdraw.

It is not that I am in favor of keeping troops in Iraq. In fact, my position is that I do not know which option is best. More importantly, I hold that anybody who claims to know the best answer, who does not have something equivalent to a degree in middle eastern studies and a great deal of information on the current political system, is not qualified to give an opinion on the matter.

Bush got us into trouble because he launched a 'faith-based' invasion of Iraq. He had faith that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He had faith that we would be welcomed as liberators. He had faith that the people of Iraq would immediately embrace freedom and democracy and would serve as an example of what the rest of the people around the Middle East could hope for if they followed the American model.

The idea was to make Iraq a shining example of democracy. What the Bush Administration has done is given the rest of the Arab world a shining example of unrestrained violence, a completely failed economy, and a government that is impotent to do anything about it.

Yet, those who argue for withdraw also seem to be replacing one faith-based strategy with another. What will happen if we pull out of Iraq? How will this affect Iran and, in affecting Iran, affect Hezbollah, and Israel, and Syria, and Egypt?

Here is a question: Can you assure me that the innocent children of Iraq will be better off if we leave?

Those who defend withdraw may try to counter this by asking, “Can you assure me that the innocent children of Iraq will be better off if we stay?”

My answer to this is that I do not know. However, I do not need to know. I admit that I do not know what the best option is. However, the advocates of withdraw are saying that they DO know what the best answer is. This suggests that they have worked out at least some of the more important particulars. One of those important particulars would have to be the answer to the question, “What will happen to the children of Iraq?”

After all, one of the possible answers to the question – and one of the answers any rational American would be concerned about – is the answer, “They will become anti-American terrorists eagerly volunteering to fight against our interests wherever they can at whatever tools are at their disposal, as punishment for what we caused to happen in Iraq.”

Ned Lamont, on his web site, makes no predictions about what will happen if we pull out. Indeed, there is nothing on his web site http://nedlamont.com/issues/27/iraq inconsistent with the position, "I do not have any idea what will happen to the children of Iraq and, more importantly, I could not care less."

Those who advocate leaving, it seems, should be able to answer this question. If they cannot, I see no way to interpret this but as saying, “I don’t care; let the brats die (or worse).” I would find it difficult to make the case that those who would shrug their shoulders in apathy over the fate of innocent children are taking the moral high ground.

By the way, if people actually do decide to give a serious attention to the question of what we should do in Iraq, I would like to suggest an option to study – that we stay in Iraq, and we teach the people there what the principles of justice and civil liberties by practicing what we preach -- making the best effort possible to protect the innocent by using procedural safeguards such as trial by jury and a presumption of innocence while banning cruel and unusual punishment.

I would like to see what happens if we defend the principles of liberty and justice by actually defending the principles of liberty and justice. I fear that Bush’s greatest legacy will rest in the fact that, by his example, he has taught the rest of the world such a powerful lesson in contempt for the principles of liberty and justice.

Summary

So, do I support Lamont or Lieberman?

That question is not even relevant to this posting. I write my posts for the purpose of discussing moral principles and applying them to real-world situations. I really have no opinion on the Lamont/Lieberman conflict.

This posting was written to discuss the principle of loyalty to a party or national leader and the degree to which one may be obligated to stand behind that person. I also wrote it to discuss the idea that no moral person can claim to know what to do in Iraq unless and until they have a reasonable, defensible answer to the question, “What will happen to the children?”

"Tribes" and Moral Criticism

I would like to recommend to readers who write or speak about political matters to consider simply ending the practice of using 'tribal' terms. I am borrowing the term 'tribal' from Les over at "Stupid Evil Bastard". Here, it will represent a set of terms that a group of people might come to identify with -- dividing the world up into a group of 'us' who belong to the tribe and 'them' who do not. Examples of tribal flags include terms such as, 'liberal', 'conservative', 'Christian right', 'Secular left', and the like in their writings.

The problem with the use of these terms is that they are too often used to make false assertions and for purposes of hate-mongering and bigotry. In debate, I see them seldom being used in any way to advance intelligent discussion of any important social issue.

When tribal names are used in condemnation, the context in which they are used often commits the informal fallacy of 'hasty generalization.' People use these terms to brand every member of a tribe of crimes that actually apply to only a subset of its members. The rest are presumed guilty by association and made the objects of hatred and condemnation for actions that they do not commit.

Tribes are held accountable for its members, yet individual tribe members have little or no control over who may be counted as a member. It is like being told that you are morally responsible for the welfare of a child then told that you can only speak to the child in a whisper and only once every 30 minutes. It is hardly a fair and just account of moral responsibility.

We also have a surplus of examples of people promoting membership in their tribe (particularly political tribes) deception, fear-mongering, and hate-mongering. Tribal hucksters tear membership by spreading lies and innuendo about the competition. This inherent injustice of the way these disputes are handled can easily lead to either violent conflict or oppression as the weaker group submits to the power of the stronger group.

These points apply to Mel Gibson's rant when he stated the Jews are responsible for all wars when he was arrested for drunk driving. No sober person can take that as an intellectually honest statement. It is an instance of tribal hate-mongering. One implication is that, "If we get rid of all of the Jews we could have peace." A milder implication is that, "If you know any Jew, then you know somebody who is responsible for all of the wars, and you should treat him or her accordingly."

Gibson later apologized and said that these are not his true opinions -- that it was the alcohol talking. There are some who have claimed that alcohol releases one's true opinions -- but this is not necessarily the case. Alcohol releases inhibitions, which includes the inhibition against inflicting pain on others, and harsh words can cut deeply. I am not going to speculate on Gibson's actual beliefs. It is sufficient for my purposes that this is a recognized form of tribal comment of the type that people should not include in their writing.

Ann Colter has figured out how to make a great deal of money by marketing hate to an eager set of customers. She puts it in her books and is repeatedly invited onto television to assert her tribal claims and to sew discontent and, at times, advocate violent conflict between her tribe and others. Her most recent book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism targets atheists and liberals as if they are the same group.

The title of her book itself is a lie. Marketing professionals are well aware of the fact that they can sell a product by associating it with something that their audience values (e.g., sex, acceptance, status). You can also create public dislike of a product by associating it with something that people dislike (e.g., rejection). Atheists are the most disliked group in the country. Therefore, any marketing professional worth their salt will tell you that an effective way to sew public disapproval with anything in politics is to associate it with atheism in the public mind.

This is what Coulter is doing with the ‘liberal’ tribe and atheism. By linking the concept of ‘liberal’ with the concept of ‘atheist,’ she can sew hatred of liberals – in the same way that Hitler was able to sew dislike of communist by linking them in the public mind with an even more widely disliked group – Jews.

In Coulter’s case, she is lying to the people. Most liberals are not ‘godless’ and, even if they were, using public dislike of atheists to promote the Republican party is on the same moral level as using the public dislike of Jews in Germany to promote the Nazi party. The form of argument being used itself is morally objectionable, yet it is a form of argument made that much easier by the use of ‘tribal’ concepts in political discussion.

I would like to propose that, instead of rallying around or attacking tribal flags, that individuals avoid the fallacies contained within this line of reasoning by doing the following:

Instead of targeting a tribal flag, target individuals. Name names (Mel Gibson, Ann Coulter), provide a reference to the specific actions being condemned (comments when being arrested, book), explain the moral transgression involved, and then state, "Any who engages in this type of action -- regardless of what 'tribe' they belong to -- is guilty of a moral transgression."

If there is any association between a particular ‘tribe’ and this moral objection, let that association be coincidental rather than making the (typically false) assertion that the association is one of logical necessity.

I must add before I close that this discussion of ‘tribal’ terms in political discussion does not apply to the criticism of particular ‘isms’. For example, I have raised repeated objections against 'common moral relativism ', 'act utilitarianism', and 'Ayn Rand Objectivism.' Clearly, it makes no sense to raise an objection against these types of views.

An ‘ism’ is a set of propositions that make up a theory or system of belief. A legitimate criticism of an ‘ism’ simply involves identifying some proposition that is an essential part of that ‘ism’ and explaining why it is false, or a relationship between two or more propositions within that ‘ism’ and explaining why it is invalid. It can be done without even mentioning a person, except perhaps to quote some article or writing in order to demonstrate that the proposition proved false or the relationship proved invalid is a part of that ‘ism.’

Other than that, if the intent is to level a moral criticism against a person, then name the person, provide evidence, demonstrate wrongdoing, and draw the assumption that ‘any who would perform the same act or endorse it are likewise guilty of wrongdoing,’ and leave it up to chance how many perpetrators belong to any given ‘tribe.’

Mel Gibson's Moral Transgressions

I would like to say something about the moral transgression of Mel Gibson. I'm not talking about the anti-Semitism issue -- the issue that has people talking about how much harm may be done to Gibson's career and arranging private methods to punish him for his crimes. I am talking about the overshadowed charges of drunk driving.

The person who gets behind the wheel of a car when he is not fit to drive is effectively saying, "I do not really care that I might kill somebody's child/parent/spouse by my action. Your well-being does not concern me."

He is like the person who pulls a gun on a crowded street and empties the clip, firing randomly in all directions without aiming. Chances are good that he will do no harm. However, no morally responsible person would do such a thing. A morally responsible person would be concerned for the harms that become much more likely when somebody commits this type of action.

A person should be as willing to get behind the wheel of a car when impaired, as he would be to pull a gun under conditions described above and start firing.

This is the type of person that Gibson proved himself to be by his actions. Yet, as far as I could tell, Gibson suffered no threats to his career, no signs of a boycott, or any penalties at all other than what the law may provide as a consequence of his actions. For anti-Semitic comments, people ask, "What can we do to destroy his career?"

This is not to say that the anti-Semitic attitudes are morally irrelevant. That type of bigotry also puts innocent lives at risk. As such, that type of bigotry also deserves condemnation. (Note: I will have more to say on this issue tomorrow.)

Yet, in this country at least, I will practically guarantee that drunk driving will kill, maim, and otherwise harm more innocent people in this country than anti-Semitism.

The Sickness Excuse

Gibson has tried to excuse both of his actions -- his anti-Semitic comments and his drunk driving -- by attributing it to a disease.

This defense has no merit.

One of our obligations as citizens in a community is to monitor our own health and to note when we are a risk to others, and to take the necessary steps to mitigate that threat.

The child rapist can claim that a disease caused him to act as he did. However, his obligation is to monitor his own psychological state and to note that he might be a threat to others. At the moment he feels strongly inclined to take any action that may harm a child, that is the moment to note that his brain is not wired the way it should be, and to take steps to correct the problem. He should not wait until harm is already done.

Applying this same standard to the drunk driver, anybody who notices even a strong disposition towards drunk driving needs to note that he is a threat to the life, health, and well-being of others (including children). That is the moment when he should recognize that his brain is not wired the way it should be, and to take steps to correct the problem. If he waits until after he has caused harm (or until after he has put himself in a position of causing harm) he has already committed a moral violation.

Even the person who decides that his disease is beyond his control and gives in to it can make a responsible choice to minimize its impact on others. There is no law of nature that says that alcoholics have to drive while drunk.

Humans may well have a disposition to ignore the problem -- to deny it. However, this disposition towards denial is a disposition that our social institutions can influence. We can certainly decrease the likelihood that people will practice denial to the detriment of others by using the tools of condemnation and punishment on those who are guilty, and using the tools of praise and reward on those who are not.

I do not drive.

When I was a teenage driver I noticed that I had some bad habits. I found driving to be boring and my mind would wander. A couple of times I was off thinking about something when I rolled through a red light or a stop sign. I had visions of a child stepping out in front of me that I would have noticed if I had been paying attention. Eventually, these worries got the better of me and I decided to quit driving. I was not going to be responsible for any child laying in a grave or suffering any debilitating injury.

Nobody needed to tell me where my responsibilities lay. I did not need to wait for something bad to happen. I simply did not want to be responsible for somebody’s child being in a grave or a wheelchair or suffering some similar misfortune. I drove less and less and eventually gave it up entirely. When people ask why I do not drive, I tell them honestly that I did not consider myself a good enough driver.

A morally proper concern for the welfare of others must begin with an honest assessment of the self.

If a person feels tempted to participate in a plan to addict children to cigarettes for the purpose of profiting from a (shortened) lifetime of sales to the victim, that person needs to assess the relative strength of their desire for money compared to the desire for the health and well-being of others.

If a person feels tempted to set off explosives in areas where children may be playing, or where it may do harm to those who are important to the well-being of children (such as their parents), then that person is a danger to children and needs to be treated as such.

The person who has a few too many drinks and then drives 85 miles per hour in a 45 mile per hour zone is also putting others at risk and needs to be treated the same as anybody else who is a danger to children.

Somebody could have died.

Gibson has asked for forgiveness.

It is way too early to be talking about forgiveness. First, we need to see a determined effort to fix the problem. Then, and only then, does it make sense to talk about forgiveness.

Rights, Utility, and Counter-Examples

I recognize that I have been spending a bit too much time on moral theory and not much time on practical application recently. I apologize for that and promise to compensate in the weeks ahead -- starting tomorrow. For today, I have two more items to discuss that Oz recently brought up in a comment that I think are important enough to be fully addressed.

Moral Rights

The first relates to the concept of a “moral right”. Oz stated in his most recent response, “I don't think the government has the moral right to use taxation as a way to coerce a certain "preferred" behavior in its people.” This, then, begs us to ask the question, “What is a ‘moral right’ and how can it count as a reason for action?”

I have stated that desires are the only ‘reasons for action’ that exist. This means that either rights need to somehow be related to desires, or rights do not count as reasons for action that exist. If they are not reasons for action that exist, then they cannot be used as a reason for advancing or hindering any particular policy.

I have used rights language in the past, so consistency suggests that I have some way of relating rights to desires.

This is true.

A “right to X” implies that an aversion to depriving people of X tends to fulfill other desires.

The right to freedom of the press means that an aversion to reacting to the expressed beliefs of another with violence is an aversion that will tend to fulfill more and stronger desires. It is, then, an aversion that we have (desire-based) reason to promote using our tools of social conditioning. It will do so mostly by helping in the formation of true beliefs, where true beliefs are essential to the successful fulfillment of desires.

Accordingly, a right to freedom of religion means that an aversion to reacting to the religion of another with violence is an aversion that will tend to fulfill more and stronger desires. It will do so by helping to avoid the violent religious conflicts that are tear apart the lives (and the bodies) of those who live in regions where responding to the religious views of another with violence is accepted.

Yet neither of these “rights” are inviolable. The person who speaks or writes his understanding of the government’s military plans so as to deliver them to the nation’s enemy can be punished as a traitor. The person who practices a religion that involves grabbing strangers off the street so they may be offered as human sacrifices to that person’s God is a murderer. Even the right to life – the right not to be killed unless convicted of a capital crime in a court of law – does not prevent a government from taking actions that kill innocent civilians in times of war. Though innocent deaths are to be shunned, an absolute prohibition on wartime acts that might do harm to civilians is absurd.

Now, we have a question of how we are going to account for these exceptions and the weighing of one right against another.

The idea that a “right to X” exists where it is good for society to have an aversion to taking X handles these cases. I would argue that a reasonable description of the limits of any right – when a right may be outweighed and where it does not apply – correspond to the reasonableness of having an aversion that may be outweighed by other desires we should have and of fine-tuning the aversion to specific cases (e.g., an aversion to killing except in defending innocent people from aggressors).

So it is that the right not to have one’s property taken and transferred to another by force certainly does exist. An aversion to such actions does a great deal of good and it shows good character to be opposed to such actions. Yet, like all rights, it comes with limits. Those limits exist where it is beyond reasonable doubt that the public good can be better served by recognizing such a limit.

“Beyond reasonable doubt” means that a suspicion on the order of, “I think it might be a good idea” is not good enough. The exception must come with an argument like that which is opposed to the publication of national security secrets or the free exercise of a religion that demands involuntary human sacrifice. I argue that the public good of enticing those with surplus wealth to establish foundations for the public good clearly meets this criterion of something that, beyond reasonable doubt, would provide a public benefit and which does no great harm to the person whose wealth we are talking about.

What-If Scenarios

Against the above point, Oz wrote:

Let's say a law was passed that said, in effect, "History has shown that religious belief is, overall, a good thing for a society. Therefore, everyone has a year to decide what religion to practice. If you are still an atheist after that time, we will pick for you and enforce that faith's rules on you." This is quite similar to your reason for the estate tax, and just as fair: after all, you can freely choose your religion and you have plenty of time to decide.

It is not at all similar. The claim that religious belief is, overall, a good thing for society is false. It completely fails to satisfy the criteria of “true beyond a reasonable doubt.” It cannot even pass the criteria of “true by a preponderance of evidence.” It is false.

My claim is that such an exception is justified only when it is true, and your counter-example fails precisely because the value of religious belief (particularly the value of coerced adherence to religion) cannot be defended as true.

There are two possible countermoves available at this point.

The first counter-move: Even though the proposition is not true, some people believe it to be true, and some people believe it is true beyond a reasonable doubt (mostly because they are not well schooled in determining what is ‘reasonable’). So, the unfortunate conclusion you have in mind would follow in any society where people accept this false assumption as true beyond a reasonable doubt.

In response to this, any time that people accept something that is false as true beyond a reasonable doubt there are going to be problems. The tremendous value of true propositions suggest that the best stance we should take is not to adopt institutions that defend us from false claims accepted as true beyond a reasonable doubt, but to push all the harder for a greater public understanding of what it takes for something to be true beyond a reasonable doubt.

The second counter-move: We can imagine a possible world in which it is true that religious belief, even when coerced, provides a benefit for society. In this imaginary possible world society would be justified in coercing people into choosing a possible world.

In response to this, I argue that I can imagine a possible world in which steel loses all of its flexibility and becomes as brittle as glass. If it were the case that steel were to become as brittle as glass, many of our skyscrapers and bridges would become death traps. Yet, it does not follow from our ability to imagine these things that we have any reason at all to design our skyscrapers and bridges against this imagined possibility.

We could go even further and imagine that an omnipotent, vengeful, and jealous God does exist and that it does horrible things to people who allow unbelievers to live amongst them. We can ask what it is permissible to do under those circumstances. However, we have stepped so far outside of the real world that our question is like asking, “How long will it take to get to the star Vega if one can travel at five times the speed of light?”

Coercion

Finally, Oz made the comment, “I think charities are great things; it's coercion I have a problem with.”

I have a problem with it as well. However, I cannot justify an absolute prohibition against it. This goes back to the original example of the wealthy person watching the survivors of an airplane crash in the desert die of thirst while he hoards the huge surplus of water he has at his estate. If the survivors break into the estate and take the water, then this is ‘coercion’ in your sense. Yet, the crash survivors have no obligation to lay in the desert and die of thirst at the pleasure of this billionaire with surplus water. The right to be free from coercion, like all rights, has is limits.

Well Founded Beliefs

The world these days is being filled with a depressing number of examples of how poorly people think.

The crime in this is that the poor quality of peoples’ reasoning leads them to make mistake. When people make mistakes, other people get maimed or killed or suffer other misfortunes and harms. A few ‘lucky accidents’ may happen from time to time. However, accidents are more likely to be unlucky than lucky – more harmful than helpful.

Anybody who wishes to see these harms reduced has reason to promote a higher quality of reasoning than that which we see today.

It would have always been an error to credit the televangelist Pat Robertson with any amount of intellectual acuity (at least in his public persona). His recent conversion from global warming skeptic to global warming believer is an example of a long history of intellectual dullness than an exception.

According to an MSNBC report on Robertson’s conversion:

This week the heat index, the perceived temperature based on both air temperatures and humidity, reached 115 Fahrenheit in some regions of the East Coast. The 76-year-old Robertson told viewers that was “the most convincing evidence I’ve seen on global warming in a long time.”

The fact is, the heat index on the east coast at a particular time is very poor evidence of global warming. Any who find it convincing is betraying a serious inability to draw reasoned conclusions from available evidence. He is, in fact, proving himself to be an intellectual dullard.

The reasoning is the same as noting that a particular stock might be at an all-time high, and concluding from this that the economy is booming and the people are prosperous. The stock may well be in a company that specializes in helping companies efficiency downsize, as economic conditions worsen and unemployment rises. It may be one of a few stocks rising while the rest of the market is in freefall.

In the market, one measures the overall status of the market by looking at a market index, such as the S&P500 index. These indexes take a weighted average of several companies and allow the user to infer (though never with complete accuracy) that the economy in general is doing well.

When it comes to the climate, the thinking person does not draw conclusions from his private experience with one part of the globe – it might not be representative of the whole climate. The thinking person looks to a temperature index – a collection of representative temperatures from around the globe. That climate index has been showing an increase in temperature for years. That climate index convinced thinking people of the increase in global temperatures long ago.

In another recent example of intellectual recklessness, according to a recent Harris poll, 50% of the people now believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the Americans invaded. This is up from 36% percent who believed this in February 2005. The number of Americans who believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links with Al Queida remains at 64.

It is important to note that in this essay I am not talking about what a person believes, but a person’s ability to distinguish good evidence from bad evidence, and to draw conclusions based on good evidence.

In the case of believing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when America invaded, and believing that he had close ties with Al Queida, the fact is, there is no evidence. Nobody who believes these things can point to a shred of evidence to indicate that these claims are true. Wherever they find their reason to believe, they are not finding it among the available evidence.

The third instance of poor reasoning comes from a Scripps-Howard poll that shows that a third of all American adults believe that the Bush Administration either engineered the 9/11 attacks or allowed them to happen so that they could justify a war with Iraq and taking over American freedoms through the Patriot Act, secret NSA spying, and similar programs.

Once again, the relevant issue is not that this is true or false. I believe that this is certainly possible. However, there is a clear difference between saying that something is possible and that something is likely or certainly true. Once more, the question can be asked, “Where is the evidence?”

In this case, we are bombarded with the same type of conspiracy theory evidence that often seems to rise up in these types of events. People make up stories that others accept as true and repeat – such as the story that many passengers on flight 93 used cell phones to contact their loved ones when cell phones should not have worked at their altitude. (Actually, they used the airplane’s sky phones in almost all cases.)

Popular Mechanics devoted some space to a rebuttal of some 9/11 myths. For my purposes, it is enough to note that there is “evidence” included in 9/11 conspiracy theories that is easily refuted but still widely accepted.

It is worthless to respond, “But what about this evidence over here?” because the evidence of “that evidence over there”, however strong it may be (and I do not know of any strong evidence) does not grant any moral or intellectual justification to accepting claims that are easily refuted – claims whose refutation can be easily found by anybody who has the moral integrity to base their conclusions on strong evidence and shun unfounded beliefs.

What these events say about the ability of most people to draw conclusions based on the evidence should make you concerned about what would happen if you were to find yourself accused of a crime you did not commit. You would find your fate resting in the hands of a jury made up substantially of people incapable of basing conclusions on the available evidence.

On the other hand, those who are guilty of a crime can look at this as a reason to take heart, that the prosecutor may be able to prove their guilt and yet still the jury cannot draw the most probable conclusion from the available evidence

Yet, the possibility of innocent people going to jail or guilty people going free are mild costs of this type of intellectual incompetence. The fate is worse when people with such lack of skills try to decide which policies to support or to protest. A jury trial affects only the accused. A policy trial can affect hundreds of millions or billions of lives. We would expect that people would take their duties here more responsibly than they take their duties to render a verdict in a trial. Yet, what we find is that on policy trials people do not seem to recognize any duty at all to base their conclusions on evidence.

These are not innocent and trivial wrongs. This intellectual incompetence drives people to support wars and all sorts of violence against their neighbors. For every picture you see of a child’s body laying lifeless in a pile of rubble or bandaged in a hospital, somebody – some large group of somebodies – thought that the actions that brought this about was a good idea.

All of the child rapists in existence do not maim and kill nearly as many people as those who act on beliefs that they acquired without securing it to any type of evidence.

Merely a Means

In a recent posting on the estate tax, and defending the principle of redistributing wealth in general, a commenter (Oz) offered this:

This reasoning is flawed because it reduces the person with money to a mere means - his value is only what he does for other people. Allowing me a choice of how to donate my money without allowing me a choice to not donate money is akin to allowing me a choice of how to commit suicide.

It represents a fairly widely held view, so I see it as a position that I should address.

I would like to start by making a general point by uniting two examples that will clearly, at first, seem unrelated.

Obviously, we do not treat a rapist as “merely a means” by denying him the option of committing rape. This example teaches us that the crime of “reducing the person to a mere means” requires something more than just removing options. If an option is of a particular quality, then we can remove that option and the people we remove that option from are not, thereby, made “mere means”. We can remove the option of rape. Can we also remove the option of a wealthy person passing on his empire in its entirety to an heir?

One option is to argue that the difference between the rapist committing rape and the wealthy person leaving an economic empire to an heir is that the former uses violence to obtain his ends and the latter does not require any violence whatsoever. In fact, it is us who must threaten the wealthy and otherwise peaceful individual with violence in order to limit his options. On these grounds, we can say that we are like the rapist in our use of violence to fulfill our desires – rather than saying that the wealthy individual is like the rapist in leaving his estate to his heir.

However, at this point we must take a step back and realize two important and relevant facts.

No Such Thing as Intrinsic Value

First, there is no such thing as intrinsic value. However we make distinctions in this or any matter, we cannot do so by looking at the intrinsic merit of one option compared to another. All options have the same intrinsic merit – that is to say, they all have no intrinsic merit.

All prescriptions (claims of ‘ought’ and ‘should’) make an appeal to reasons for action. Intrinsic merit does not exist as a reason for action. Desires are the only reasons for action that exist. Therefore, to compare different options and to prescribe one over the other in the real world, it only makes sense to look at reasons for action that exist in the real world – which are desires.

We can look at the rapist’s actions and see that they fulfill his own desires. However, they thwart the desires of their victims. Indeed, the mere existence of rapists threatens harm and limits the freedom of whole sections of the population – not only of the victims, but of everybody who cares about the safety of a potential victim. If all desire to rape were to cease to exist, no (or almost no) desires would be thwarted as a result. If we look at desires, there are a huge number of reasons that exist – real reasons, not the imaginary reasons of intrinsic value – to use the powers of social conditioning to inhibit any desire to rape by targeting the actions that those with a desire to rape may perform.

Recall that, on this model, we look at desires, not at actions. Rape may fulfill the desire to rape. However, the moral evaluation looks primarily at the desire to rape and discovers that the desire itself fulfills no (or almost no) other desires, while it thwarts a great many desires. It is the desire to rape that we have reason to be rid of – that we have reason to use the tools of social conditioning to eliminate. This is where the distinction between desire utilitarianism (the desire to rape) and act utilitarianism (an act of rape) comes into play.

The Value of Institutions

Second, institutions – including the institutions of governments and laws -- are tools that people invent to serve a purpose. That is to say, we can only evaluate institutions by looking at the “reasons that exist for action” for adopting one set of institutions over another.

When it comes to evaluating institutions we face the same issues that we have when it comes to evaluating desires. The “reasons that exist for action” for supporting one institution over another does not include ‘intrinsic value’ because intrinsic values are not “reasons that exist for action.”

The only “reasons that exist for action” are desires. From this, we need to look at the reasons that exist for preferring some institutions over others.

I mentioned above that among desires, some are better than others. That is to say, there are some “reasons that exist for action” for promoting some desires over others. These are relevant to our evaluation of institutions. So, for example, the fact that there are “reasons that exist for action” for inhibiting the desire to rape, there are “reasons that exist for action” for institutions that inhibit the desire to rape.

There are more and stronger “reasons that exist for action” for the desire to leave one’s surplus money to a foundation that supports fulfilling a large quantity of desires then there are “reasons that exist for action” for the desire to create an economic empire that one leaves to his or her heir. Consequently, there are more and stronger “reasons that exist for action” for supporting institutions that encourage people to create foundations for the public good with their surplus wealth, then for supporting institutions that allow people to create and protect economic empires.

Reducing a Person to Mere Means

With these two points in mind, I want to establish a sense of the phrase “reduce the person to a mere means.”

One more, a major assumption in this post is that intrinsic values are “reasons that do not exist for action.” Desires are the only “reasons that exist for action.”

To treat a person as a “mere means”, then, is to short his “reasons that exist for action” – his desires. If I look at you and consider only how best to use you to fulfill my desires – without giving consideration to your desires and how well or poorly they may be fulfilled, then I am treating you as a “mere means” – as a tools whose only worth depends on your usefulness to me.

If, however, I consider your desires, then I am not treating you as a “mere means” or a mere tool.

However, in regarding your desires, I am under no obligation to toss my own desires away. If I do that, then I am treating myself as a “mere means” to the fulfillment of your desires. That is no more justified than treating you as a “mere means” for the fulfillment of my desires.

In considering these various “reasons that exist for action” we must consider all of the reasons that exist for action that, for example, are reasons that exist for eliminating the desire to rape. The reasons that exist are also reasons that exist for supporting institutions that aim to abolish rape.

Accordingly, considering all of the reasons that exist for action, we must consider the reasons that exist for promoting the desire to establish foundations with excess wealth that promote the public good over the desire to establish economic empires and leave them to an heir to the kingdom.

To go with the option of creating economic kingdoms means ignoring all of those reasons for action that exist for establishing public foundations. This means treating those people (at least insofar as those desires are ignored in order to get a favored conclusion) as “mere means” for the establishment of these economic kingdoms.

As for treating those with money as “mere means”, this argument for an estate tax is not an argument for leaving these individuals as destitute beggars. It is not even an argument against allowing them to accumulate tens of billions of dollars in wealth. In fact, the more wealth they accumulate, the bigger the foundations that they can create. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett will be doing great things with their accumulated wealth. So, it is difficult to argue that the desires of the wealthy are being ignored in evaluating these institutions. If this is what it is like to be treated as a “mere means”, then I volunteer for the role.

Instead, it regards all of the reasons for action that exist. As such, it treats nobody as a “mere means.”

What I Believe (about Value)

A recent email exchange gave me reason to create a list of some of the propositions regarding ethics that I hold to be true. I have decided to present them here.

(1) Beliefs and desires exist.

(2) Beliefs and desires are propositional attitudes -- mental attitudes towards a proposition.

(3) A "belief that 'P' for some proposition 'P' (e.g., 'P' = 'God exists') is a mental attitude that the proposition 'P' is true.

(4) Phrases such as 'knows that P', 'suspects that P', 'is suspicious that P', and the like all represents different types of belief.

(5) A 'desire that 'P' (e.g., P = 'My child is safe') is a mental state that motivates an agent to act so as to make or keep 'P' true.

(6) Terms such as 'wants p', 'hopes that P', 'hates that P', and the like all represent different types of desire.

(8) An aversion is a negative desire. A person who is adverse to 'P' has a desire that not-'P'.

(9) Definition "fulfills": If an agent desires that P, and P is true in state of affairs S, then S is such as to fulfill agent's desire that P. S fulfills a 'desire that P' if and only if 'P' is true in S.

(10) Definition "thwarts": If an agent desires that P, and state of affairs S is one that makes or keeps P from being true, then S is such as to thwart agent's desire that P. S thwarts a 'desire tht P' if and only if S prevents or keeps P from being true.

(11) In common language, the term 'desire' is ambiguous. It has two meanings: (1) 'desires-as-end' (likes, wants), and (2) 'desires-as-means' (useful).

(12) 'Desires-as-an-end' refers to desires that make no reference to anything further end. A person who purchases a painting simply because he likes it is expressing a desires-as-end.

(13) 'Desires-as-a-means' refers to the usefulness of a an object. The object is not liked or wanted for its own sake, but for its ability to bring about something else that is liked or wanted for its own sake (or as an end). A person who purchases a painting to impress visitors desires the painting as a means.

(14) The same thing can both, at the same time, have value as an end and as a means.

(15) 'Desires-as-means' are collections of 'desires as ends' and 'beliefs.' The person who purchased the painting to impress visitors has a 'desires-as-end' to be the object of a favorable opinion or he seeks to use the visitors in some other project (to collect business) for which a favorable opinion would be a useful means.

(16) Desires-as-means can be mistaken if an agent has false beliefs. A person who falsely believes that a glass contains no poison can incorrectly 'desires-as-means' to drink out of the glass.

(17) Desires-as-ends are a-rational. They are neither rational nor irrational. Instead, concepts of rationality do not apply to desires as ends.

(18) All agents always act so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of their own desires, given their beliefs.

(19) Proposition (18) does not say that people are 'selfish'. Proposition (18) is compatible with agents having other-regarding desires such as a desire that no child goes hungry. Where P = 'no child goes hungry', an agent can conceivably have a desire that P stronger than any self-regarding desire.

(20) Proposition (18) recognizes the fact that for an action to be mine, then my own desires must be the proximate cause of that action. If my muscles are hooked up in such a way that somebody else's desires are the proximate cause of the movement of the muscles in my body then those actions are her actions, not mine.

(21) Proposition (18) suggests that people with false or missing beliefs may be prevented from fulfilling the more and the stronger of their desires. An agent with the false belief that a food is poisonous might be thwarted in his attempt to eat a healthy meal.

(22) All 'ought' or 'should' statements prescribe (or recommend) a course of action or an alternative.

(23) All prescription assumes one or more reasons for action. That is to say, they are reports that take the form, "There are reasons for action such that . . .," If there are no reasons for action for performing a particular action, then it is nonsense to recommend or prescribe that action.

(24) Desires are the only reasons for action that actually exist.

(25) Intrinsic values do not exist. Intrinsic values are desire-independent reasons for action that adhere directly to certain objects or states. There is no such entity. All claims that there is an 'intrinsic' reason for action to perform some task are false.

(26) God does not exist. All claims that say that God provides a reason-for-action for performing or abstaining from some activity or other are false.

(27) Proposition (23) says that there is a gap over the is-ought bridge. 'Ought' <-> 'Are reasons for action such that…'. All 'ought' statements are 'is' statements about reasons for action.

(28) Desires-as-ends have effects. Desires are real states-of-affairs that have real effects on the real world. It is through their effects that we know that desires exist.

(29) That which has effects can be more or less useful. That which has the effect of fulfilling desires is useful; that which has the effect of thwarting desires is harmful.

(30) Some desires-as-ends are more useful than others. That is to say, some desires tend toward the fulfillment of more and the stronger desires than others.

(31) The desires that are fulfilled or thwarted by any given desires-as-ends are reasons-that-exist-for-actions for promoting those desires that fulfill other desires or demoting those desires that thwart other desires.

(32) The tools that we have for promoting and demoting desires-as-ends include praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. Reasons for action exist for using the tools of social conditioning to use praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote desire-fulfilling desires and demote desire-thwarting desires.

(33) It is irrational to use the tools of social conditioning where they can have no effect. Therefore, the tools of social conditioning can only sensibly be used in molding those desires that can be molded and only insofar as they can be molded. Anything outside of these limits is beyond the legitimate scope of morality.

(34) A bad desire, or a vice, is a desire-as-end that there are more and stronger reasons-for-action to demote than to promote. It is a desire-as-end that tends to thwart other desires.

(35) A good desire, or a virtue, is a desire-as-end that there is more and stronger reasons-for-action to promote than demote. It is a desire-as-end that tends to fulfill other desires.

Harmony Without Empathy

In a distant discussion on a bulletin board at the Infidel Guy website the issue arose as to whether morality could exist without some basic, inborn instinct towards sympathy for other people.

I argued that it was not the necessary.

To illustrate why, I presented a story.

Before getting into the story, I want to point out how physicists, for example, will sometimes simplify a case by getting rid of confounding and confusing details. Anybody who has taken a basic physics course should remember problems solved under the assumption of massless strings and frictionless pulleys, for example. I am going to do the same thing here and imagine a simple situation with just two creatures and some very basic desires. The purpose is to show how a motivation for cooperation can exist without any sympathy for others.

The story goes as follows:

Imagine a planet with one creature, Being1. Being1 has one desire – a desire to scatter stones. Note that this is not a desire that the stones be scattered. It is a desire to be engaged in the activity of scattering stones.

However, here are not many stones to scatter. Consequently, after happily scattering stones for a while, the creature has no more stones to scatter. He must then engage in work. Work is an activity that a person engages in as a means only. He has no desire for the work. However, the work makes it possible to do something else that he does desire. In this case, gathering stones makes it possible for the agent to spend time scattering stones again.

Then Being1 learns that he will soon be joined by another being – Being2. Being1 is given two pills. A green pill, he is told, will cause Being2 to have a desire to scatter stones, just as he does. A red pill will cause Being2 to have a desire to gather stones together. This desire to gather stones, like the desire to scatter stones, is a desire for the activity itself – not a desire for anything resulting from the activity.

If Being1 gives the green pill to Being2, then he will have a competitor for scattering stones. He will also have an assistant to help him do the work of gathering stones together so that he can scatter them again. However, the stones will get scattered twice as fast as well. Ultimately, Being1 gains nothing by giving Being2 the green pill.

If Being1 gives the red pill to Being2, then Being2 will busy himself gathering stones together. Being1 scatters one pile of stones, then he moves on to the next pile. Meanwhile, Being2 goes to where the first pile of stones has been scattered and starts gathering them together. By the time Being1 is through with his second pile of stones, he can go back to the first pile, and Being2 can move on to gather the second set of stones back into a pile. Being1 will now never need to spend another moment doing the work of gathering stones. That work is being done for him by somebody who enjoys that type of thing.

Being1, unless he is an idiot, insofar as he seeks to fulfill his desire to scatter stones, would be best served by giving Being2 the red pill. When he does, we have a community of cooperation between its two members.

The important point to draw from this is that in this situation cooperation emerges without the slightest instinct for empathy for the other person. Being1 has nothing but the desire to scatter stones. This desire alone gives Being1 a motivating reason to give Being2 a compatible and cooperative desire to gather stones.

In the real world, we do not have red and green pills. Instead, we have praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. These are the tools we use to assign desires to others are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment, as well as other tools of social conditioning.

One of the desires we have reason to cause others to have, of course, is empathy. We each have good reason to give others an aversion to our suffering and a joy at our success, so that they have a motivating reason not to contribute to our suffering and to contribute to our success.

Meanwhile, while we are busy trying to give others desires that will fulfill our own desires, we must recognize that they are doing the same to us. They are causing us to have desires that fulfill their desires. Consequently, when we manipulate them into helping us fulfill our desires, we are manipulating them into helping us to fulfill their desires. The whole situation is a virtuous circle.

Yet, none of it requires an initial impulse of sympathy. It only acquires a community of beings with desires, a recognition that some desires tend to be useful and others detrimental to fulfilling those desires, and means for altering the desires of others. From this, we have the motivation and the means to promote cooperation in a community through the judicious use of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Estate Tax

This week, Congress is debating a bill that combines two policies. One is an increase in the minimum wage. The other is a reduction in the estate tax.

I have specified my views on the minimum wage in earlier posts. It is a simplistic plan that will ultimately do more harm than good. Minimum wage laws are to liberals what abstinence-only sex education is to conservatives; a simplistic idea that looks good until you look at the results in detail, whose proponents tend to rave about a very small number of studies that support their position and ignore the large body of evidence and theory that does not.

I have not written about the estate tax, but my position can be easily derived from some of the arguments that I have given elsewhere.

Returning readers may recall a story that I sometimes use to argue the case for redistribution of wealth. Imagine that an airplane has crashed in the desert. They are far from any sign of civilization except the remote estate of an eccentric billionaire who had built himself a mansion in the desert as far away from everybody else as possible. The estate has several large swimming pools, fountains, and gardens all fed from the water that the owner has piped in. However, there is no way to contact the outside world until the next water shipment comes, in about a month.

The eccentric billionaire wants to sit on his roof and drink his lemonade while he watches the crash survivors die of thirst. He claims that the water is his and it would be an act of aggression (that is to say, wrong) for anybody to try to take the water from him by force and to distribute the water-wealth to the crash survivors.

The question is: Are the crash survivors morally prohibited from redistributing the water wealth from the eccentric billionaire to the crash survivors?

I would argue that they are permitted to do so. They should provide the eccentric billionaire for some compensation of the water -- a fair market price and then some to recognize the value of the water to those who used it. However, they have no obligation to lay down in the sand and die of thirst while a sadistic eccentric billionaire horded a huge excess of water wealth.

In using this example in the past I have not made the effort of tying it into any aspect of moral theory. So, allow me to explain the moral theory behind this conclusion.

Every statement about 'ought' or 'should' is a statement about reasons for action. There is no sense that something 'ought' to be done except in the sense that there are one or more 'reasons for action' for doing that thing. If there is no 'reasons for action' for doing something, why should I do it?

Desires are brain states that provide reasons for action. A "desire that 'P'" is a reason for action for bringing about a state of affairs in which 'P' is true.

Desires are the only reasons for action that actually exist. Anybody who makes an appeal to a reason for action who is not talking about desires is making a false claim.

"Pleasing God" is not a reason for action because there is no God to please, and no way that an action can please God. Similarly, 'intrinsic merit' is not a reason for action because intrinsic merit does not exist.

One way we can try to answer the question of what to do is to ask whether the act of redistributing the water wealth would fulfill more desires. This is the act-utilitarian option; do that act that has the best consequences. However, humans always act so as to fulfill their (current) desires given their beliefs. Given this, the only way a person can consistently do that act that has the best consequences is if he desires nothing but doing the act that has the best consequences. This is not a real-world option. We must live with the real-world fact that humans have multiple desires and ask which desires they should have. The answer to the question of what should be done becomes the answer to the question, “What would a person with good desires do?”

So, now, we have ruled out of our set of reasons for action: (1) pleasing God, because pleasing God is not a real-world reason for action, (2) realizing intrinsic value, because intrinsic values are another type of reasons for action that simply do not exist, and (3) performing the act-utilitarian best action because the type of creature that can consistently perform the act-utilitarian does not exist.

These types of reasons for or against any policy are to be thrown out; they refer to fiction, so the claims that are derived from them are fiction and have no place guiding real-world decisions.

Desires are the only reasons for action that actually do exist. Any statement about what the reasons for action that exist recommends in this situation must be a statement about what would fulfill the more and the stronger of the relevant desires.

Desires themselves can be good or bad.

Of course, no desire has intrinsic merit (because intrinsic merit does not exist). We cannot evaluate desires on this standard.

However, desires have effects. As such, desires are capable of fulfilling or thwarting other desires. Because of this, “reasons for action” for promoting or inhibiting certain desires do exist. Not only do we have the motive for promoting or demoting certain desires, but we have the means. Social conditioning through praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment are the tools for molding desires within a community. Clearly, we have opportunity to mold the desires of others using these tools.

Of course, our “reasons for action” tell us to use these tools to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and to demote desires that tend to thwart other desires. Our “reasons that exist for action” are reasons to call ‘good’ desires that fulfill other desires and to praise and reward actions indicative of these desires. Our “reasons that exist for action” are reasons to call “evil” desires that tend to thwart other desires and to condemn and punish actions indicative of these desires.

More importantly, our “reasons that exist for action” are reasons to endorse institutions that redistribute the water wealth from the billionaire recluse to the crash survivors – from those who have great surplus to those who would otherwise get sick and die.

The argument is that much stronger when we ask what our “reasons that exist for action” recommend be done with the estate of somebody whose death renders him incapable of using his wealth any more. There are some “reasons that exist for action” that will be satisfied by the wealthy building empires that they can leave to their heirs like modern day Dukes and Earls. However, the bulk of the “reasons that exist for action” argue for institutions that motivate those who accumulate great wealth to set up foundations and other non-profit institutions that will fulfill a set of more and stronger desires.

Warren Buffett, who recently made the first installment of a $30 to $60 billion donation to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, reported that he does not trust the government to spend his money wisely. Yet, he also expressed opposition to repealing the estate tax.

The way he reconciles these views is by asserting that the estate tax is a valuable incentive for causing people to contribute their great wealth to institutions who will spend them wisely (more wisely than the government).

So it is the case here. The value of the estate tax is not that it adds money to the government coffers. Personally, I would be pleased if the government never saw a dime of this money – it is more likely to be spent in ways that profit the politicians than to benefit those who are poor and sick. The value of the estate tax is that (properly designed) it gives those who have accumulated great wealth to leave it to nonprofit institutions of their choice. They get to decide which institutions will benefit from their success, not the government. Yet, the benefit is more widely distributed.