Secular Community Resource Centers

I have one of them huge mega-churches going up about 2 blocks from where I live.

It truly is a massive complex - taking up about 6 city blocks (2/3 of that for parking). And I can not help but wonder what a great boon it would be if that type of money and energy could be devoted to useful purposes.

It has a large lecture hall, with large televisions and an excellent sound system where people can go to see entertaining speakers talk about current events and how they relate to the lives of the people in the community. They would be something like the TED talks. (In fact, I wonder if the people at TED would object to some of their talks being shown up on the screen during off hours.)

It would have a few smaller rooms - class rooms and meeting rooms - where there were weekly logic sessions. These groups would use one of the many logic textbooks (with interactive media) as a tool for studying the various principles of logic and sound reasoning. Yet, again, this would need to be made relevant to the lives of the participants. Attendees are invited to bring in social and political commentary - as well topics of personal importance - for an assessment of the logic about what is being claimed.

There would be other departments associated with other issues that attendees might have to deal with. For example, one department would be concerned with collecting the best and most recent peer-reviewed medical literature on drug and alcohol dependence. It would examine resources devoted to helping people with these types of problems, arrange for those who need help to get help, and set up systems within the organization itself to help anybody trying to deal with an addiction change the way they live. It can arrange for speakers to come in to talk about the best and most current information on some of these topics - educate the people on exactly what it is they are dealing with in scientific and naturalistic terms.

It can also collect and give out the best current information on other medical topics such as cancer, depression, Parkinson's disease, alzheimer's, epilepsy, and other issues that various community members might have to deal with.

Another department would be concerned with parenting. A third would be concerned with health issues - with collecting resources and providing assistance to members who have an elderly parent or a disabled child or family member to help care for.

A fourth group set up within this organization would monitor community events and address community concerns. It would provide outreach to the victims of crimes and disasters. If the community is prone to certain types of natural disasters, such as hurricanes or flooding, a portion of this community would research and help people prepare to respond to that type of disaster. If there is a chance that a call for volunteers would be made to help pile up sand-bags on a river bank, this group would have a telephone tree for summoning a cadre of volunteers.

In case an oil rig were to blow up off shore threatening the livelihood of several members of the community, another group would be in charge of identifying those who will be harmed by such an event and the resources available for help.

One of the things this organization could be trusted to NEVER DO is to exploit such an event to harvest anger and direct it at some target group. The disaster WOULD NOT be portrayed as punishment from God because the nation refused to give Israel its full backing or because it opted to allow homosexuals to marry.

Call it a "Secular Community Resource Center" - because that is what it is. It could even help somebody find a good plumber or electrician by going out and collecting information on plumbers and electricians and making their recommendations.

Its team of adolescent volunteers could go out and shovel snow for elderly people on cold winter days.

And, you know, it is not necessarily wrong that the organizers and directors of such an organization obtain a bit of personal wealth as a result of their efforts. If a high salary would help to attract people who have the skills necessary to run such an organization, then I suggest it is better to have such a person with a high salary, then to have no such organization at all.

It would not be a bad thing to identify such a person as a community leader, to develop contacts with government and business leaders and the leaders of other organizations, and to have some influence in shaping public policy.

One of those scientific facts that such a group should be willing to pay attention to is that there are few people well suited to do this type of work. Some incentive for them to do so, other than the "good feeling" of serving the community, would be wise.

Well, such are my dreams and fantasies today. If you would excuse me, it is time for me to go to work.

Morality, Willingness to Pay, and Homosexual Desire

I'm considering the merits of the proposition that we can measure a virtue in terms of cumulative willingness to pay to realize a state of affairs in which a given malleable desire is made universal. This willingness to pay is qualified by what agents would be willing to pay under conditions of equal wealth and true beliefs.

So, let us look at a desire for sex with members of the same sex . . . homosexuality.

I am not interested in defending the proposition that homosexuality is a virtue. That is to say, I am not going to argue that homosexuality is a desire that people of equal wealth and true beliefs would have many and strong reasons to encourage.

Certainly people have many and strong reasons to avoid a state in which everybody is homosexual. However, people have many and strong reasons to avoid a state in which everybody is a bus driver, or an engineer, or a math teacher. These states would all be desire-thwarting. In fact, the last three would be more desire-thwarting than the first, given that we have reproductive technologies that do not require heterosexual acts.

Yet, this does not imply that driving busses, engineering, and math teaching are evil and must be eliminated. When the argument given against homosexuality is, "What if everybody were a homosexual?" the best response would be to ask, "What if everybody was a priest?"

The question under consideration is cumulative willingness to pay among people of equal wealth and true beliefs to realize a state in which no homosexual desire existed.

Early on, we must also repeat the fact that morality is concerned with the molding of malleable desires – those that social praise and condemnation can actually strengthen or weaken. A fixed desire – or any point at which a malleable desire is immune to further change – is outside of the realm of moral discourse.

The next thing to note is that there really is no such thing as homosexual desire. This is misleading. There is a desire to have sex with men. And there is a desire to have sex with women. In some cases the desire to have sex with men resides in a man's body, and the desire to have sex with women resides in a woman's body.

Or, if we want to get more clinical, the desire to have sex with a man resides in a body of XY chromosomes, and the desire to have sex with women resides in a body with XX chromosomes, though there are complicating factors involving XXY chromosomes and other possibilities.

So, let us realize that we are dealing with a desire to have sex with men, and a desire to have sex with women, not "homosexual desire" per se. Some argue that the former desire should not exist in the body of a man, and the latter should not exist in the body of a woman, but that the desires themselves are not to be gotten rid of.

Now, I argued earlier that to measure virtues and vices one has to measure willingness to pay based on true beliefs. Many of the people willing to pay to selectively rid the world of these desires ground their willingness to pay on false beliefs.

So, how much would you be willing to pay for a bottle of water?

Does it make a difference whether the bottle contained fresh, treated water versus water collected off of the surface of the Gulf of Mexico just south of New Orleans?

It is willingness to pay given true beliefs that is important, not willingness to pay. And the vast majority of those willing to pay to rid the world of homosexual desire are not grounding their willingness to pay on true beliefs. They hold to myths about God and God's will, and about what is natural, that simply are not true.

They think they are buying a bottle of fresh, treated water, when what they are getting is contaminated Gulf of Mexico seawater. If they knew what they were buying, many of them would be willing to pay far less.

Furthermore, many of them who are willing to pay to rid the world of homosexual desire are also willing to lie to us about the benefits that come from this. Even people who have true beliefs about God's wishes and what is "natural" are fed false beliefs through the popular media - particularly through election campaigns - about the merits of ridding the world of this desire.

Homosexuals molest children. Homosexuals are responsible for AIDS. Permitting homosexual relationships will lead to the destruction of civilization comparable to what happened to the Roman Empire.

Any of these things, if true, would provide people with a reason to pay to rid the world of homosexual desire.

None of them are true. So we cannot look at actual willingness to pay to rid the world of homosexual desire as a measure of what people with true beliefs would be willing to pay. There are far too many people in the world today whose willingness to pay is corrupted by false beliefs.

This gives us reason to question the desires of those who exaggerate the reasons that others have to promote a particular desire or aversion.

For example, those who say that homosexuals molest children are parasites who care little about the welfare of children. What they are trying to do is hyjack other people's concern for children and use those resources for their own evil purposes. Because their bigoted values are more important than than the welfare of children, they want to take some of the resources devoted to promoting the welfare of children and divert it to their bigoted ends. Those ends have nothing to do with the welfare of children and in many cases do more harm than good.

If a person truly cares about the welfare of children, he is going to ask himself, "Is this true?" He is going to want to make sure that these claims are true precisely because he will be worried about the possibility of diverting resources dedicated to the welfare of children from that end.

If he does not ask - if he does not investigate and pay attention to what the principles of sound reason tells him - then he must not be motivated do so. That is to say, he really does not care about the children. He pretends to, in order to hijack other people's concern and twist it to serve his alternative agenda.

Of course, we can ask of those people who are convinced by these absurd claims how much they really care about children if they allow their concern to be so easily hijacked – if they allow themselves to be persuaded too easily.

Here, we would have to ask about the value of a genuine interest in the welfare of children - which tells us how important it is to condemn those who seek to hijack concern for the welfare of children to promote other ends that are at best neutral and at worse causing harm to children and to the futures available to them.

If they are truly concerned with the welfare of children, then their willingness to pay to rid the world of such a desire may be negative, while their false beliefs drive them to claim it is positive.

The people who have an actual desire to rid the world of homosexual desire have their interests counted. However, those who are mislead into believing that the welfare of children is at stake by those making unjustified claims about the threat to children because it furthers their agenda do not have real reasons to pay to reduce or eliminate the desire. They have purchased some moral snake-oil - snake-oil that will cause the customer to harm those who the snake-oil salesman wants to have harmed.

We do not need people like that in our society. We have a lot more reason to condemn them then the man with a desire to have sex with a man, or the woman with a desire to have sex with a woman.

Moral Value and Willingness to Pay

Well, here is an interesting road I have never travelled before, so let's see where it goes.

I have argued that the right to freedom of speech is not a right to immunity from criticism - even moral criticism - for what one says or writes. It is a right to immunity from violence, including state violence (censorship).

In recent posts I have argued that we can quantify value in terms of willingness to pay under conditions of equal wealth and true belief. Furthermore, moral value is the value of a desire that tends to fulfill other desires (a virtue), or a desire that tends to thwart other desires (a vice).

If we combine these two sets of concepts it would seem to lead to the suggestion that the moral value of a right to freedom of speech can be translated into the value of a universal aversion to the use of violence in response to words written or spoken. In other words, it is what people overall have reason to pay, under conditions of equal wealth and true beliefs, for a state of affairs where people universally to have an aversion to the use of violence in response to words spoken or written.

Now, if we look at the moral arguments for a right to freedom of speech, and remove all arguments grounded on false beliefs (God, intrinsic values, categorical imperatives, impartial observers, social contracts, and the like), we would find that the bulk of those arguments are reasons to pay for a state in which people generally have an aversion to the use of violence in response to words spoken or written.

For example, violence is the weapon of those who hold false beliefs. A person with true and well founded beliefs need not use violence to persuade others of what is true. It is the person with false belief or whose beliefs cannot be supported by evidence who most needs to use violence against alternative ideas. So, prohibiting the use of violence will do more to harm those who are pushing a false belief than those who are promoting truth.

Even if the belief being defended through violence is true, it is better to restrict people to promoting that belief by explaining why it is true. The person who asserts "X is true" because he fears violence need not actually understand "X is true". However, if a person is free to say "X is false" but who asserts "X is true" anyway is more than likely to be somebody who actively believes that However, the person who asserts "X is true" when he has total liberty to assert "X is false" - who adopts it because he is convinced of it and not because he is threatened, understands it and its implications. He can put what he believes to much more efficient use.

There are certainly people who have reason to pay for certain fictions to become widely believed. They have reason to pay to keep some truths hidden. For example, they may lead a religious establishment whose need to protect their interests and influence means suppressing the idea that the institution was built on myth and superstition. And there are businesses who have reason to pay to suppress facts about their products - that they are dangerous or poorly engineered.

However, even these people would discover that, if they had true beliefs, they would have a great many reasons to pay for a universal aversion to violence in response to words written and spoken, because that aversion makes them less likely to be he victim of violence for their own words written or spoken.

They might, after all, be able to convince actual people to side with them on responding to some words with violence. Yet, the question is no whether one has the ability to convince others to use violence as a response o words. The question is whether people with true belief would have a reason to advocate violence as a legitimate response to words.

So what would people overall, with equal wealth and true beliefs, be willing to pay for a state of affairs in which nobody had a desire to rape - or such an aversion to sex without consent that an act of rape would thwart more and stronger desires for each agent than it fulfills?

What would people overall, with equal wealth and true beliefs, have reason to pay for a state of affairs in which no person's decisions are grounded on issues such as the skin color of others - where there is no aversion to dealing with people of one skin color or no desire to deal with people of another skin color?

What would people, with true beliefs and equal wealth, have reason to pay for everybody to want to help those that they see at be at risk of suffering a severe drop in their welfare - a desire to stop and help those who are in need?

The higher this willingness to pay under conditions of true belief and equal wealth, the greater the value of the particular virtue that we are talking about.

Which means that we can quantify moral value - measure it - and make scientific claims as to whether a virtuous person would or would not perform a particular action.

So, now, where does this road lead, I wonder?

Carroll v. Harris: Quantifying Value - Part IV

In his criticism of Sam Harris' suggestion that we can have morality-as-science, Sean Carroll states:

If there is no way in principle to calculate precisely how much well-being one person should be expected to sacrifice for the greater well-being of the community, then what you’re doing isn’t science.

This requirement is immediately going to clash with desirism because, according to desirism, morality is not about 'sacrifice'. In fact, desirism states that a good person gets to spend his life fulfilling his desires without any moral qualms. Right acts are those acts that a person with good desires would perform, so a person with good desires never needs to concern himself over the possibility of doing anything wrong. He sacrifices nothing.

However, let's set the idea of sacrifice aside for a moment and talk about this idea of moral calculation.

According to desirism, morality is about the value of malleable desires relative to other desires. It is about the reasons for action that exist for using social tools such as praise and condemnation to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires (to the degree that it is possible to do so), and to inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires (to the degree that it is possible to do so).

In other words, the calculations that we need to perform are not calculations about the amount of sacrifice to impose on people. Instead, we examine a possible desire-that-P (for some proposition P), and we look at the possible states of affairs {S1, S2, . . ., Sn} that would come about if everybody had this desire-that-P. We look at the propositions {P1, P2, . . . Pn} that are true of these states of affairs, and we compare them to other desires and aversions. We determine whether or not the malleable desire will tend to fulfill or thwart other desires. To the degree that it fulfills other desires, others have reason to use social forces to promote the universal desire-that-P.

The claim that we do not have the capacity to determine whether a malleable desire will tend to fulfill or thwart other desires is nonsense. We might not have perfectly crafted fine-tuned instruments that can give us an answer own to the fourteenth decimal point. However, we make a rough measurement of what a society would be like with a universal aversion to lying or , for example, can get a good idea of what society would be like without an aversion to lying, or violence, or to the autocratic authority of a despotic monarch.

This is a formula that we use in moral debate constantly. "What would happen if everybody felt the way you do?"

Look at any moral issue currently being debated, from capital punishment to obeying the will of Allah, and we see the same sort of arguments. "What states of affairs can we expect to result if everybody adopted this attitude? What propositions are true of those states of affairs? How do those true propositions relate to the other things that we want?

It is important to note that we are looking at those propositions that are true of the states that would result from the adoption of a particular attitude. It will not be the case of any state that "Allah is pleased," or "We have acquired unprecedented quantities of intrinsic merit." Neither Allah nor intrinsic merit exists. Beings that do not exist cannot be pleased, and entities that do not exist cannot be had in any quantity.

People also make false claims about states of affairs in which one is spending eternity in hell, or in which God has lifted his protective hand sparing us the evils of hurricanes and earthquakes, or meeting one's dead relatives in a perfect society in heaven. These states of affairs are NOT the real consequences of adopting any particular attitude, so are not a part of the measure of the real-world value of adopting that attitude.

What are the REAL consequences of people generally having a stronger desire that P (or desire that not-P)? How do those REAL consequences relate to other desires that exist?

Notice that this simply is not a theory of calculate precisely how much well-being one person should be expected to sacrifice for the greater well-being of the community. It is a theory of "calculate the value of a malleable desire by looking at how many and how strong the reasons-for-action-that-actually-exist are for using social tools to strengthen or weaken that desire in a community."

I recognize that there are a lot of rough edges in this proposal. I am not unaware of them. However, there are still two different attitudes we can take to those rough edges. Either we can work them out with some effort, or the process is fundamentally flawed and doomed to failure.

Once again this takes us to Carroll's core argument in defense of the "doomed to failure" option - the argument he repeats over and over again as if it is all that needs to be said.

Those are my personal reasons for thinking that you can’t derive ought from is. The perceptive reader will notice that it’s really just one reason over and over again — there is no way to answer moral questions by doing experiments, even in principle.

And how does he know this? What proof does he offer?

Ultimately, the only defense of this he offers is an argument that ultimately reduces to the form:

"I cannot imagine that P; therefore, not-P"

Reduced to its basic form, we can see that Carroll is putting a great deal of load-bearing weight on a very weak foundation.

Such as, "I cannot imagine life springing from inanimate matter; therefore, life must have an intelligent creator."

Or

"I cannot imagine a universe without a God in it; therefore, there must be a God."

Or

"It is inconceivable to me that the eye can come into existence as a result of a series of random mutations; therefore, the eye had an intelligent designer."

If this is the best form of argument one can come up with, then this alone suggests that there must be something wrong with the position one is trying to defend.

If Carroll's position actually had some merit, then one would suspect that there would be a better argument out there lending support to that position. Particularly if it is a position that is as extraordinary as postulating a whole realm of relationships - ought relationships - completely independent of is relationships and impossible to prove or disprove but still relevant in the real world.

Extraordinary claims such as these require extraordinary proofs - and "I just can't imagine an alternative" is not an extraordinary proof.

Carroll v. Harris: Quantifying Value - Part III

In my last post I explained (briefly) how we can quantify value.

It was brief, because I expected some early objections would block some people from considering any further developments until some initial objections were handled.

Basically, we can assign a number to value by looking at the maximum amount that a person would bid to realize a state of affairs against a competitor where the bidder and competitor had equal wealth and true and complete relevant beliefs.

I would like to repeat that this is a formula for generic value. Specific moral value will prove to an instance of generic value with some of its own qualities.

On this account, if Person1 with true relevant beliefs is willing to pay $1634.987 to realize a particular state of affairs, then this is the quantity of value that Person1 finds in that state. And if Person2 is willing to pay $995.356 then this is the quantity of value she finds in that state. The aggregate value is 2630.342.

So, let me explain some of what this means.

In earlier posts I have written against the claim that in a free market goods will go to the person who places the highest value on them. Presented an example to show that this is false. Instead, people with more wealth have the power to bid goods away from people with less wealth, even though the people with less wealth value those goods more. The difference rests in the different potential to express one's preferences in the marketplace.

In that example I imagined two people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, both wanting a bottle of water. One person with very little money wants the water to give to her dehydrated and sick child. The other - a person carrying a great deal of cash - wants the water to use to shampoo her dog.

The fact that the second person can outbid the first person and get the water does not prove that she values the water more. Let us put the two contestants in this case on equal economic footing. Then, let us see which one is willing to pay the most money. This will then tell us which of the two agents places the most value on the state of affairs in which she has acquired the bottle of water.

Thus, the quantification of value depends on what the agent would pay compared to another under conditions of equal wealth. Differences in wealth distort the results.

Yet, true beliefs are also important.

Let us assume that the water was collected from a puddle behind the merchant's shop. This piece of knowledge may well have a significant influence on what the first person is willing to pay for the bottle of water. It might even bring the most of what she is willing to pay down to nearly 0 cents.

Of these two options, the price she would pay under conditions of true and relevant beliefs reflects the value that such a state of affairs has to her. False beliefs cause agents to make mistakes about the value of things, thus causing them to pay more to realize states that have little value, or to fail to act to realize a state when they do not realize its true value.

Now we have a unit of measure that gives us the right answer in obvious cases.

In an earlier post I mentioned an example in which a person has one hand each on two buttons, and the buttons are being pulled slowly away from each other. Sooner or later he will have to release one of the buttons. If he releases the left button, then five nuclear bombs will go off in five distant cities. If he releases the right, a child in Bangalore, Maine will discover a $1 bill on the sidewalk.

I used this as a way of challenging the claim that we cannot make interpersonal comparisons. Such a claim implies that a person concerned only with doing the least harm or the most good would stand there in agony not knowing which button to release - because interpersonal comparisons are impossible. The assertion is so obviously false we can wonder how a person can propose it with a straight face.

The form of measurement described above works fine on these obvious cases. Assuming that the agent's relevant beliefs are true and complete, and equal abilities to pay, we could expect people to be far more willing to pay to prevent the atomic bombs from going off than to pay to prevent the child from fining the $1.00 bill.

This does not imply that the system provides an easy answer in all cases. But, then, some measurements in science are difficult as well. How do we measure temperature at the sun's core, for example? How could we have done it when a method for quantifying temperature by measuring the volume of a liquid was first presented?

Remember, Carroll's claim is that these types of measurements are impossible in principle (in spite of the fact that we make them every day). The difficulty in making measurements in some circumstances is not proof of the impossibility of making measurements in principle.

Objections might be raised that this method is imprecise. It still leaves us with no way to determine the value of something exactly. In the example above, what would the value be, precisely, of not releasing the button that would detonate the atomic bombs? The best anybody can give is an estimate. That this estimate is significantly more than the willingness to pay to prevent a child in Bangalore, Maine from discovering a dollar bill on the sidewalk does not show that the measurement can be made with any degree of precision.

However, there are no forms of measurement that is perfectly accurate or perfectly precise. Every form of measurement - including distance, volume, velocity, and mass, comes with an error bar. Over time, we have developed newer forms of measurement that has given us better and better precision. However, nothing will every allow us to do determine the measure of something exactly.

The last objection I would like to consider in this post is the objection that states that this cannot be a measure of moral value. You cannot make a leap from the fact that people generally are willing to pay a great deal of money for something under the conditions of true beliefs and equal wealth to the conclusion that they ought to have it - and others ought to be made to suffer for them to get it.

Besides, there are a great many people who may be willing to pay a great deal of money to, for example, have atomic bombs go off in a number of American cities. One would have to conclude from this formulae that those desires are to be considered as well. This carries the implication that if enough people want the atomic bombs to go off badly enough that this would become permissible -- even obligatory.

This objection is sound, as far as it goes. However, it is an objection against the claim that moral value represents the value is to be found in this willingness to pay for states of affairs.

Desirism does not accept that assumption. One way to think of desirism rests with the fact that some desires are malleable. This means that we have the ability to change what people generally are willing to pay to realize certain states of affairs and avoid others. We can, for example, create in people (or strengthen) a willingness to pay to avoid a state in which they lie or steal or rape or murder.

Moral value, according to desirism, concerns the value of using social forces to increase some willingnesses to pay and decrease others. It concerns promoting an aversion to lying or stealing, for example. This, in turn, means using social forces to make it so that people are to avoid states of affairs in which they realize particular ends through deception. "I would really like to take that trip to Hawaii, but I am not going to take money out of the till at work to pay for it."

So, there may be people willing to pay to have the atomic bombs go off. However, how much would people with true beliefs and equal ability to pay be willing to pay to promote a universal aversion to the setting off of such bombs? That is the moral question. This is the question of whether people should be willing to pay to have such bombs go off.

Once more, the desirist is going to respond to the objection, "I don't like your measurement, so I am going to measure this thing over here," with a shrug of indifference. Desirism will have to incorporate any objectively true claims you make about what you choose to measure, while anything else - those claims where there is no experiment we can imagine that can prove you are wrong - can be dismissed as make-believe and let's pretend.

Carroll v. Harris: Quantifying Value - Part II

(See Sean Carroll: You Can't Derive 'Ought' from 'Is')

Sean Carroll told us that morality-as-science is impossible until we can assign a number to different amounts of value. In my last post I argued that this criterion is bogus - the inability to assign numbers reflects our current state of ignorance, not what is true of the world. However, as it turns out, we can measure value scientifically.

Now, moral value is a species of value.

I am going to talk about value-as-science first, then focus more specifically on moral-value-as-science, which will be a specific case of the generic theory.

What we are looking for is a way of quantifying 'better than' and 'worse than'.

I would like to note how we quantified temperature. We noted a relationship between temperature and volume and we quantified volume. We put liquid in a vacuum tube and measured temperature by recording the volume of the liquid - the distance that the liquid in its current volume was pushed up a long thin tube.

Since desires are reasons for action - since there is a relationship between the number and strength of relevant desires and intentional action - we can use intentional action as a measure of desire just as we can use volume as a proxy for temperature.

The value of something is the maximum amount that a person would pay against a competing bidder of equal wealth under conditions of true and complete relevant beliefs.

So, if Person1 with true relevant beliefs is willing to pay $1634.987 to realize a particular state of affairs, then this is the quantity of value that Person1 finds in that state. And if Person2 is willing to pay $995.356 then this is the quantity of value she finds in that state. The aggregate value is 2630.342.

If Carroll is reading this, I suspect he would respond by thinking, "There's no need to go any further. This is flawed from the start. I can just as easily assert that value is related to some other quantity - say, serotonin levels, and there is no experiment that we can imagine that would prove your measurement correct and mine to be incorrect."

My answer to Carroll is: Go ahead. Choose something else to measure. If your measurements are correct, and you limit yourself to making only those claims that can be demonstrated to be objectively relevant to what you are measuring, then nothing you would say as a result would conflict with anything I talk about with respect to the measurement I have provided.

If you start making claims about what you are measuring – and making them even though there is no experiment that we can imagine that can prove that you are wrong (or right), then I am going to accuse you of making things up.

See, there is a reason why there is no experiment we can imagine that will prove whether a person making a Carrollian 'ought' claim is wrong. It is because Carrollian 'oughts' are fictitious entities. They are make-believe from the realm as the angels pushing the planets around or ghosts. Is there an experiment I can imagine that would prove that there are no ghosts? No, there is not.

However, the very fact that there is no experiment that I can imagine that can prove ghosts are real tells us something about ghosts. Or, at least, it tells us something useful about the ghost-hypothesis. It has no practical importance. The ‘best explanation’ behind something where there is no experiment that can show us it is real is that it is imaginary.

Yet, I would like to remind the reader that these imaginary Carrollian ‘oughts’ that exist outside of the realm of evidence and proof are being used to ‘justify’ claims about who deserves to live and who deserves to die, who deserves prison time and who should go free, who shall be comforted and who shall be made to suffer. Carrollian ‘oughts’ place these in a realm without reason or evidence – in the same realm as God, ghosts, and garden fairies.

If we remove the myth Carrollian ‘ought’ – the ‘that for which there is no imaginable experiment’ – from our claims about serotonin levels, we are left with the objective facts about those measurements and the objective implications of those facts. None of this is going to create any problem for the measurement of "the most a person with true and complete relevant beliefs would bid to realize a state of affairs."

The next accusation to face is that I, too, am guilty of adding a Carrollian ‘ought’ to what I am measuring.

Well, if that is the objection, then tell me one conclusion that I am defending that would require such a premise. What conclusion am I claiming that I can get to that I cannot get to without the assumption of a evidence-free Carrollian ‘ought’?

The final objection will be that, “Without this evidence-free Carrollian ‘ought’ you are not permitted to call what you are talking about value (generically) or moral value (specifically). Value requires evidence-free Carrollian ‘ought’.”

That’s fine. Let’s call it something else and be rid of these fictitious, mythical, magical Carrollian ‘oughts’ once and for all. Or you need to explain to me what you insist on making claims, as if they are relevant in the real world, when you cannot even imagine any evidence that you can offer to support them.

In my next post, I am going to look at this measure of value a little more closely. I want to remind you that this is a measure of generic value, not moral value. Moral value will be shown to be a species of generic value (the generic value of malleable desires that can be molded through social forces such as praise and condemnation.)

And, like I said, if you do not like calling “the generic value of malleable desires that can be molded through social forces such as praise and condemnation” morality, then don’t. Nothing will be changed by giving it a different name.

One really does not understand desirism until one can understand why the desirist can respond to a claim like, "I am going to define 'morality' as this thing over here," or "I hereby declare that X is the root of all value," with a shrug of indifference. The desirist has no reason to get into long and loud debates over these types of claims. The loud and long debate itself would be grounded on false assumptions.

There are only two options available to the person who declares that they are going to define morality in terms of X or declare X to be the root of all value. Either the agent is going to limit himself to making objectively true of X - in which case none of his statements are going to conflict with what the desirist claims. Or the agent is going to assign to X these properties where "no experiment we can imagine can prove that I am wrong," in which case the desirist will answer, "Then you are just making things up."

And when the other person asserts that the desirist is just making something up, the desirist answers by saying, "Show me any conclusion that I claim to be able to reach that requires making something up."

In the off chance that the person raising the objection actually identifies something that requires a make-believe premise that cannot be proved wrong, then the desirist eliminates it and says, "That you for helping me to recognize and rid the theory of that garbage."

Perhaps this response will be easier to understand with an analogy.

Assume we have a scientist who is busy studying and reporting on the properties of six-proton atoms (carbon). This is the focus of his study and his writings. Then another scientist comes along and says, "I am going to look at 8-proton atoms (oxygen) instead."

The first scientist says, "Fine. Go ahead. If you limit yourself to making true claims about 8-proton atoms, then nothing you say about them is going to contradict or conflict with what I say about 6-proton atoms. And if you start making claims about 8-proton atoms where 'no experiment we can imagine can prove that I am wrong (or right)', then I am going to accuse you of making things up. I am not particularly concerned about objections that come out of the realm of make-believe."

The same thing is true about value. If you say you want to measure something other than what I propose, then go ahead and do so. If you limit yourself to objectively true facts about what you measure, and I limit myself to objectively true facts about what I measure, we are not going to have any problems. We are not going to run into problems until one of us starts to make up things about what we are measuring - making claims that no experiment we can imagine can prove wrong (or right), but making them anyway.

But, the person who does that has left reality behind and entered the realm of imaginative fiction.

In my next post I will say more about the quantification of value and start to get into the quantification of moral value. While I do so there will be readers tempted to say, "Well, I'm going to measure that thing over there instead." In response to that, one should understand the desirist shrug. "Go ahead, if you like. It does not matter. If you think it matters, it is because you are living in a world of fiction, not fact."

Installing Christian Judges in California

I will continue to discuss the quantification of value in the near future. However, a news article today presents an opportunity that I would like to propose - particularly for readers living in California.

The news in question reports:

SAN DIEGO — A group of conservative attorneys say they are on a mission from God to unseat four California judges in a rare challenge that is turning a traditionally snooze-button election into what both sides call a battle for the integrity of U.S. courts.

(See: Associated Press Christian conservatives target seated judges

This campaign year would be an excellent opportunity to produce a set of Youtube style videos in which a "Christian" appeals or supreme court judge passes judgment on cases according to christian principles.

These would be cases of a child sentenced to death for talking back to his parents, an individual sentenced to death for working on the day of the Sabbath, a murderer who is acquitted because, in keeping with the biblical commandments, he killed a person who he caught trying to convert a family member to some other religion, and the endorsement of slavery.

It could include a terrorist justifying the use of biological agents killing every first-born child in the kingdom or the complete destruction of a town because he could not find ten righteous people within it given biblical standards of righteousness.

Such a project would serve a dual purpose of helping to defeat this movement and to teach the moral bankruptcy of various claims made in scripture.

Just a thought . . . one that I thought I would throw out there.

I will now return to the subject of quantifying value.

Carroll vs. Harris: Quantifying Value - Part I

I am addressing Sean Carroll's arguments for why 'morality as science' is not possible.

(See Sean Carroll: You Can't Derive 'Ought' from 'Is')

One of his arguments is:

There's no simple way to aggregate well-being over different individuals.

This section has so many problems I will likely spend two or three posts addressing them.

However, it is absurd on its face, without even starting to address its problems in detail.

You are in a room and you have pressed down on two buttons - one button with your left hand and one with your right. I am going to move those buttons further and further apart. There will come a point at which you cannot keep holding both buttons down. You must release one of them.

If you release the left button then five atomic bombs will go off, each in a different major city. If you release the button under your right hand, a child in Bangalore, Maine, will discover a $1 bill laying on the sidewalk.

Carroll is telling us that, in this type of situation, he would stand there in utter distress unable to come to a conclusion as to which button he would release. "We can't make inter-personal comparisons," he tells us. "We just can't. It's not possible!"

Of course we can. We do it all the time.

Consider the property of temperature - before the thermometer was invented. People living in ancient Greece did not have an easy way to assign a number to the temperature of something, but they could tell that the kettle on the fire is hotter than the kettle sitting on the rock outside during a snow storm.

Anybody who claimed that this could not be done would be uttering an absurdity.

Obviously, we can make interpersonal comparisons if the differences are large enough.

Now, let's look at specific problems.

Problem 1: The focus on well-being.

I will start with the fact that, once again, Carroll is confusing the task of defeating Harris' position on morality-as-science with the general possibility of morality-as-science. Though he writes in the context of responding to Harris, he did not title his paper, "Harris failed to derive 'ought' from 'is'. He titled it, "You can't derive 'ought' from 'is'."

An inability to aggregate well-being still leaves open a great many options respecting the possibility of morality-as-science.

Problem 2: Simple?

Why would the possibility of morality-as-science depend on a simple way of measuring? It seems to me that science gets along quite well in realms where the systems of measurement are not at all simple.

While 'simple' has its merits - all else being equal there are reasons to prefer a simpler method over a complex one - it is not a requirement for the possibility of science. You will not see a dissertation committee tell a graduate student, "These formulae are too difficult; therefore, what you are doing is not science."

Problem 3: It is not the case that the difficulty we have in measuring something is proof of the impossibility of science.

I want us to return to ancient Greece for a moment.

We are in ancient Athens about 350 BCE where we some street philosopher is telling us that we can never have a science of temperature. A science of temperature, he tells you, requires making sense of claims like, "This object's temperature is precisely 0.762 times the temperature of that object."

He insists that it is impossible to even imagine how one would make sense of such a claim. To prove his point, he challenges us to do so. As ancient Greeks we would have to admit that he is right. In the absence of what I know about temperature I certainly do not know how I could have possibly made sense of this type of claim. Nor could I imagine an experiment that would prove that the statement is true or false.

Yet, even though the premises of this argument are true, the conclusion is false. Our inability as ancient Greeks to imagine how to assign numbers to temperature and make sense of these types of comparisons are not proof that it cannot be done. It is not proof of the impossibility of temperature-as-science. It only described the limits of knowledge at the time.

Similarly, Carroll, with his "can't imagine an experiment", is trying to tell us what cannot be done. Yet the best conclusion he can actually justify if we assume that the premises he provides us are true is that our current state of knowledge does not allow us to make sense of these types of statements - yet.

The analogy to temperature goes even deeper.

We did not discover a way of assigning values to temperature until we noted that the volume of a liquid will change as temperature changes. We put liquid in very thin tube, drew a line next to the tube indicating the current volume of the liquid, and we called that '0'. Then we warmed up the substance, watch the liquid in the tube expand in volume and push up the tube, drew another mark, and called it 100.

With this method there were still a lot of temperatures we could not measure. How do we measure temperature at the core of the Earth? Of a distant star? Our inability to do so still would not prove the impossibility of temperature-as-science. It would only prove the limited extent of our current knowledge.

Nor did the invention of the thermometer allow us to make sense of "This object's temperature is precisely 0.762 times the temperature of that object." It is NOT the case that something that is 100 degrees Celsius is twice as hot as something that is 50 degrees Celsius.

We had a temperature-as-science for over a hundred years before we could answer those types of questions.

Yet, Carroll tells us we cannot have a X-as-science until we can answer to those kinds of questions.

Carroll is mistaken.

Problem 4: There is, in fact, a way of aggregating values; of assigning a number to the capacity of a state of affairs to fulfill desires. It's not that simple, perhaps, but I have already argued that 'simple' is not a valid criterion.

Everything I have written above seeks to point out that our current inability to quantify value does not prove that morality-as-science is impossible. Carroll has not given us an argument in defense of his conclusion. Against Carroll’s claim that it cannot be done, we have a huge stack of questions relating to how ‘ought’ can be distinct from ‘is’ that we have to weight against – on the other side – saying that we just don’t know enough yet. Of these two, ‘we just don’t know enough yet’ seems the wiser option.

Yet, in fact, we can quantify value.

I will start to explain how in the next post.

Carroll v. Harris: Brain State Theories of Value

I am continuing to look at Sean Carroll's criticisms of Sam Harris' view on the scientific possibility of moral truth.

(See Sean Carroll: You Can't Derive 'Ought' from 'Is')

The next argument that Carroll uses happens to be the same argument that I use when defending desirism against brain-state theories of value.

Brain-state theories of value are theories that state that value is found in putting the brain in a particular state. Different theories suggest different states as being the ultimate holder of this value. Jeremy Bentham argued that it was pleasure and the absence of pain. John Stuart Mill suggested it was happiness. Harris has asserted that the "well-being of conscious creatures" has to do with being in a certain state of consciousness (or one of several states each of which may serve as its own isolated 'peak' of value).

Against this, Carroll wrote:

Imagine that you are able to quantify precisely some particular mental state that corresponds to a high level of well-being; the exact configuration of neuronal activity in which someone is healthy, in love, and enjoying a hot-fudge sundae. . . . Now imagine that we achieve it by drugging a person so that they are unconscious, and then manipulating their central nervous system at a neuron-by-neuron level until they share exactly the mental state of the conscious person in those conditions. Is that an equal moral good...?

Well, one could argue that an unconscious person cannot possibly be in the same mental state as a conscious person.

My arguments along the same line ask about putting people in an experience machine that puts their brain in a particular state. Or they have suggested the option of putting the brain in a loop where it constantly recycles through some five-minute script of great joy without the memory of having done this 10,000 times before.

In another example (serving a different purpose but still useful here), I have asked about a parent choosing to falsely believe that their child is healthy and happy while the child is being tortured, versus falsely believing that the child is being tortured while the child, in fact, is healthy and happy. The caveat being that the brain state created as a result of one's choice will not include the memory of being asked and answering the question.

The arguments differ slightly, but they point to the same result. A lot of people just don't seem to value brain states.

All brain-state theories are vulnerable to this type of objection.

However, once again Carroll falls victim to thinking that defeating Sam Harris is the same as proving that 'ought' cannot be derived from 'is'.

Desirism is not a brain-state theory and is immune to these states of affairs.

A desire that P is fulfilled by any state of affairs S where P is true in S.

The surgeon, in this case, will not only have to create the correct brain states "on a neuron-by-neuron level", but will also need to create an external state of affairs S so as to make it the case that P is true in S.

It is not enough to create a brain that believes that one's child is healthy and happy. One will also have to create a state of affairs in which the child is, as a matter of fact, healthy and happy.

We can approach this issue from another direction that gives us the same conclusion.

It is absurd, at best, to think that animals evolved to have one and only overriding interest – that is in establishing and maintaining a particular brain state. It is much more reasonable to expect that animals grew to have concerns with states of affairs in the real world, more so than with states of affairs of the between their ears.

However, these are problems with brain-state theories of value, not with the possibility of morality-as-science. It is a mistake to confuse the two.

If we make everyone happy by means of drugs or hypnosis or direct electronic stimulation of their pleasure centers, have we achieved moral perfection?

No. We will not.

Does the answer of "no" prove that we cannot derive 'ought' from 'is'?

No, it does not.

Carroll v. Harris: What Is and What Ought

There's no exclusive break between what 'is' and what 'ought'

There's only a gap between 'is' and 'is not'

So if there's no room for 'what ought' in 'what is'

Then 'ought' is a fiction, a myth, an 'is not'

Okay, now we know I am no poet.

I consider the claim that 'ought' cannot be derived from 'is' to be a very remarkable claim. It suggests that there something . . . 'oughtness' . . . that is totally distinct and separate from things that exist in the real world . . . 'isness' . . . yet is supposed to have relevance in the real world. It is referred to as a part of the real-world explanations for the movement of real matter through space-time. Yet, we are told, this 'ought' or 'should' that we are making a reference to and that has these owers is something distinct and separate from anything in the world of 'is'.

By the way, if we are going to separate 'ought' from 'is', it is not enough to simply separate it from empirical science. If there is anything that 'is' that is independent of science, 'ought' must be distinct from that as well. And yet it is said to be relevant in the real world of 'is'.

How is that possible?

My position is that 'ought' is relevant in the real world because 'ought' is a species of 'is', and there is no mystery as to how 'is' can be relevant in the real world.

So, when I put you cannot derive 'ought' from 'is up against 'ought' can interact with 'is' because it is a species of 'is', and I realize that one of them must be mistaken, it seems far more likely that we will find the error in the first proposition rather than the second. I would be far less surprised by a discovery thta 'ought' is relevant to 'is' because 'ought' is a subset of 'is' than that there is a realm of 'ought' separate and distinct from 'is' but still relevant in the world of 'is'.

Sean Carroll sought to prove that 'ought' cannot be derived from 'is', and wrote the following:

When two people have different views about what constitutes real well-being, there is no experiment we can imagine doing that would prove one of them to be wrong. It does not mean that the conversation is impossible, just that it is not science.

Carroll wrote: You Can't Derive 'Ought' from 'Is'

To be honest, I have no difficulty at all imagining these arguments. I have discussed them in this blog. However, no doubt some would want to dispute the success of that project. In this post I want to show how problematic Carroll's claims are, even if somebody like Carroll deriving 'ought' from 'is' is unimaginable. It is still more likely that there is a bridge somewhere that we have not yet discovered, then that there is a permanent and uncrossable gap separating 'ought' from 'is'.

First, I would like Carroll to prove that there is no experiment that we can imagine doing that would prove one of them to be wrong. Specifically, what method is Carroll using to determine the limits of our possible imagination. His premise that we cannot imagine such an experiment is desperately in need of an argument to defend it. However, Carroll only asserts it. In asserting it, he is actually merely asserting his conclusion. This makes his argument entirely and viciously circular.

Furthermore, his argument is actually nothing more than an argument from ignorance. What Carroll is really saying is, "I do not know of an experiment that can prove one of them right and the other wrong." He is using this as the first premise in an argument that claims to demonstrate that we cannot derive 'ought' from 'is'. However, ignorance is only a limit on what we do know, not a limit on what we can know. Reaching that further conclusion requires a bit more work.

Second, how is it the case that the limits of our imagination provide the boundaries to what is real and what is not? I have difficulty imagining a black hole - an infinitely small . . . thing . . . that nonetheless has so much mass that light itself cannot escape it. Or subatomic particles where not only is it the case that we do not know whether they are in state A or state B, but which are both until we look at them at which point they acquire state A and state B, or how particles can travel back in time.

I can imagine a school teacher 1000 years from now telling one of his students, "Those ideas were rejected 1000 years ago. What is real is limited by what people who lived 1000 years ago in substantial ignorance of a lot of what we know today could imagine. We have personal testimony that they could not imagine an experiment that will prove a moral truth. You are attempting to do something that Sean Carroll, 1000 years ago, testified that people living in his time could not imagine. So, you must be wrong. I am giving you an F on your paper."

I am not saying here that Carroll's conclusion is mistaken. I am saying that he is providing us with a poor argument if all he can tell us about in the defense of his conclusion are what Carroll claims to be the limits of what we can imagine.

Third, these types of subjectivists claims usually leave one of their essential propositions unstated. This is probably due to the fact that when it is brought out into the light, it reveals a significant problem with the whole project.

We can shine some light on this unstated proposition by asking the following question:

If there is no argument that can be offered to show that one of them is wrong, then why adopt a position on the subject?

As I see it, if I am faced with the option of A or not-A, and I there is no experiment we can imagine doing that would prove one of them to be wrong, then the only legitimate position to take on the subject is to withhold judgment.

However, the subjectivist does not see it this way.

The subjectivist tells us that there is no experiment we can imagine doing that would prove one of them to be wrong, and yet that it is at the same time permissible to adopt either A or not-A.

In Carroll's case, our feelings justify our adopting particular conclusions.

In the real world we have moral feelings, and we try to make sense of them. They might not be "true" or "false" in the sense that scientific theories are true or false, but we have them.

Let me remind the reader that we are talking about "feelings" about who is allowed to live and who is killed, who goes free and who is thrown in prison or enslaved, who is made comfortable and who is made to suffer.

What Carroll is telling us is that the feeling that certain people should die is all we need to justify the conclusion that they actually deserve to die. Our feeling might not be "true' or "false", but we do have them - and if we do have them, then our claim that those we want to kill deserve to die is sufficiently justified.

There seems to be a lot of people who have a feeling that homosexuals should be put to death. According to Carroll, "morality is still possible". It may not be the case that this feeling that homosexuals deserve to die is "true" or "false". All that matters is that we have the feeling. And, if we have the feeling, then it follows that morality demands the execution of all homosexuals.

Carroll has told us, there is no experiment we can imagine doing that would prove [them to be wrong].

Well, the corrolary to this is that there is no experiment we can imagine doing that would prove them to be right either. And if we cannot prove one statement right and the other wrong, then there is - by definition - no justification in adopting one option and rejecting the other.

In these cases, the only legitimate position to adopt is to withhold judgment.

Let me repeat . . . if Carroll's premise that there is no experiment we can imagine doing that would prove [them to be wrong].is true, then the only reasonable implication is not to go ahead and adopt one or another proposition that cannot be proved. The only sensible outcome is to say that right, let us then adopt no attitude on slavery, on the holocaust, on the rape and tortue of children, and the like. If no 'ought' statement can be justified - if no 'ought' statement can be derived from 'is' - then let no ought statement be made. Let us abandon 'ought' entirely and live in the real world - the world of 'is' - instead.

Desirism is perfectly comfortable with this option.

There is not mutually exclusive distinction between 'is' and 'ought'. There is only a distinction between 'is' and 'is not'. If 'ought cannot find a home in what 'is', then 'ought' is something that 'is not'

Under this option, the desirist would simply make descriptive claims about the relationship between states of affairs and desires - and dismiss all 'not-is' statements as 'is-not' statements. That would be sufficient.

Carroll v. Harris: The Irrelevance of Definitions and Differences

I am writing about Sean Carroll's argument as to why we cannot have a science of morality as described by Sam Harris in his talk to the TED conference.

Carroll wrote:

The point [of a science of morality] is simply that the goal of morality should be to create certain conditions that are, in principle, directly measurable by empirical means. (If that's not the point, it's not science.). Nevertheless, I want to argue that this program is simply not possible.

I will accept this account of a science of morality . . . except I am hesitant to say that the conditions must be directly measurable. It sems that science is filled with a long list of situations that are only indirectly measureable. Even here, there are fields of science in which certain situations are not measureable.

Against this possibility, Carroll provides three arguments. I will discuss one of those arguments in each of the next three posts.

(1) There is no single definition of well-being.

I am amazed at how many people think that this is a good argument. I encounter it all the time. People cannot agree on a definition of morality; therefore, morality cannot be made into a science.

How do scientists decide on the meaning of a word?

They simply decide. They state, "Okay, we're going to use this word to mean that thing over there.." Sometimes, they take a vote. None of this interferes with the objectivity of science.

Scientists seem unable to agree on the definition of a planet. Some of them insist on continuing to use a definition in which Pluto is classified as a planet. Yet, nobody has even suggested that "There is no single definition of 'planet'" would be a threat to the science of astronomy.

If there is a single definition of a word it is because a group of scientists have made an arbitrary decision to adopt a particular definition - and everybody else has decided to yield to the authority of the few. Yet, even there, we see no threat to the objectivity of science.

What scientists have realized, that too many people who write about ethics get flat wrong, is that definitions do not matter. Definitions are not about things in the world - they are about the language we are going to use to talk about things in the world. Anybody who insists that a particular definition - whether of atom or malaria orplanet orwell-being is the one and only possible ever in the whole universe correct definition of this term is starting out with such a warped sense of the role of language that everything that follows is nothing but confused gibberish.

When it comes to definitions of good or morality or well-being my answer is always, "If you don't like my definitions, then choose definitions you do like. It does not matter to the theory. The only effect that this will have on the theory is that some effort will need to go into translating the theory from the language I am using (a version of English) into another language 9(e.g., a different version of English). The theory itself is unaffected - no matter what definition of well-being you might adopt.

However, Carroll was not responding to my claims. He was responding to Harris' claims.

Which brings up (again) another objection to Carroll's argument. Carroll continues to confuse the task of criticizing Harris's view that morality is concerned with the well-being of conscious creatures with the question of whether a science of morality is possible. He continues to commit the fallacy of arguing against the former claim (which is easy to do - since Harris is wrong) with the claim that there is a possibility of moral science. He defeats the former then suddenly asserts that he has defeated the latter.

When we get into the meat of the debate, Carroll does not talk so much about the definition of 'well-being'. In fact, he spends the rest of this section using the term 'well-being' as if we are substantially in agreement over what it means, and claiming instead that it is not something that everybody values.

First, there are people who are not interested in universal well-being at all.

While I'm happy to admit that people are morally confused, I see no evidence whatsoever that [all people] ultimately value the same thing. The position doesn't even seem coherent. Is it a priori necessary that people ultimately have the same idea about human well-being, or is it a contingent truth about actual human beings? Can we not even imagine people with fundamentally incompatible views of the good? (I think I can.) And if we can, what is the reason for this cosmic accident that we all happen to agree? And if that happy cosmic accident exists, it's still merely an empirical fact; by itself, the existence of universal agreement on what is good doesn't necessarily imply that it is good. We could all be mistaken, after all.

Before responding to this passage we should note that Carroll confuses two distinct things - what we value, and what we believe about what we value. Carroll starts by talking about what we want - which I can easily understand to be a statement about what we desire. However, he quickly slips into speaking about our "ideas about human well-being" and "views of the good" as if these are the same thing.

The difference between what we value and what we believe about what we value is as plain as the difference between what I drive and what I believe about what I drive. I may think my car is a classic 1950s model Chevy that was once driven by James Dean. This could accurate describe what I believe about my car without accurately describing the car.

It turns out that neither interpretation is going to get Carroll where he wants to go. However, it does create some.

I agree with Carroll that it is absolutely false that we all value the same thing. And that we do not all believe the same things about what we value. In fact, one of my objections against Harris is that he cannot come up with even a remotely plausible story of how all value got wrapped up into one package called "the well-being of conscious creatures".

I pointed out, among other things, how evolution is going to give us desire that are more immediate and relevant. Animals have a desire to have sex, to eat, to drink, to be in a comfortable environment. They have no interest in "the well-being of conscious creatures." So, how is it that we only have an interest in "the well-being of conscious creatures" and gave up all of these other concerns? And where is the evidence for that transformation?

The difference between Carroll and myself is that I wrote in the context of a blog in which I argue not only for the possibility but the actuality of deriving 'ought' from 'is', and Carroll wrote his claim in an article that "you cannot derive 'ought' from 'is'"

So, I want to know how the fact that we have different desires, or the fact that we have different beliefs about what we value, at all supports the proposition that we cannot derive 'ought' from 'is'.

Our desires are not the only facts about us that differ from person to person. It is also the case that one person's age, height, weight, hair color, location, blood pressure, blood alcohol content, pulse, potassium levels, also differ from one person to another. Yet, nobody takes these individual differences to prove that that we cannot have a science of medicine. They also do not infer from this that some people that there is only one "correct" blood pressure and anybody whose blood pressure deviates from this amount has an "incorrect" blood pressure.

In short, none of this proves the impossibility of proving 'ought' from 'is'. All of these facts are true about desirism yet it still can derive 'ought' from 'is'. It simply includes among the is statements that it derives 'ought' from that different people have different desires.

In fact, one of the conclusions that we get from desirism is that, in some situations, different people ought to have different desires. It is better, all things considered, if some people desire that A and others desire that B than it would be if everybody desired A or everybody desired not-A. It is better that some people value teaching and other people value medicine than it is that all people value teaching (and not medicine) or that all people value medicine (and not teaching).

Carroll concludes this section by writing:

When two people have different views about what constitutes real well-being, there is no experiment we can imagine doing that would prove one of them to be wrong. It does not mean that the conversation is impossible, just that it is not science.

As it turns out, this is a wholly different argument, unrelated to the arguments that came before. It is not an argument based on the arbitrariness of definitions (which fails because all definitions in all fields of study are arbitrary). Nor is it an argument from individual variability (which fails because age, height, weight, location, and any number of other properties vary from individual to individual yet are still unashamedly used in science). It is an entirely new argument, which I will responid to in an entirely new posting.

The Value of Desire Fulfillment

A member of the studio audience pointed me to another article that Sean Carroll wrote against Sam Harris' claim that there are moral facts - that there is a fact of the matter regarding what is right and wrong, virtuous and vicious.

Carroll wrote: You Can't Derive 'Ought' from 'Is'

What would it mean to have a science of morality? I think it would have to look something like this: Human beings seek to maximize something we choose to call "well-being" (although it might be called "utility", "or "happiness", or "flourishing", or something else).

Here, I want to repeat an objection to Carroll's argument that I mentioned last time. Carroll needs to distinguish between having objections to Harris' theory of morality and with the possibility of scientific morality in general. Proving that Harris is wrong no more proves that we cannot have a science of morality than proving that the ancient Greeks were wrong concerning the fundamental particles of matter proves that we cannot have a science of chemistry.

In fact, Carroll is wrong to think that a science of morality has to be one of these options. I argue that morality is not concerned with the maximization of any one thing. In fact, I view those theories to be absurd. You cannot come up with any type of decent account of how hundreds of millions of years of evolution has designed the human brain to have only one interest - be it Aristotelian eudemonia, Benthamite pleasure, Millian happiness, Singerian preference satisfaction, or Harrisian well-being.

If somebody wants to explain to me how that happened, I would be interested in hearing their story.

Instead, we evolved a number of different interests. We have an interest in sex and, here, we tend to be disposed to find particular physical features as identifying a preferred mating partner. We have an interest in food - and a stronger preference for some types of foods over others. We also have an interest in drinking. We have an interest in being in a comfortable environment. We have an interest in the well-being of our children and of our associates. These interests can be explained in terms of our evolutionary history. We can account for how evolution favored those with some interests and selected against others - like those with an interest in jumping from great heights, perhaps.

Furthermore, evolution has made our desires malleable. Our environment teaches us to like certain things and dislike others. In this, desires are much like beliefs. The belief that there is a tree over there is not genetic. It is the effect of photons striking the tree and bouncing off, then striking the eye, and being processed in the brain in such a way as to generate the belief, "There is a tree over there."

A brain that is malleable enough to form different beliefs depending on how it interacts with the environment is also capable of forming different desires depending on how it interacts with the environment.

Which means that all of us have some power to modify the desires that other people have by controlling the types of interactions they have with their environment. If we respond to certain expressions of desire through praise and condemnation we have the power to cause others to like certain things they might not otherwise have liked, and to dislike certain things they might not have otherwise disliked.

So, any theory that begins by saying that we are out to maximize something has already ran into problems. These theories can be discarded - or, at least, they have a lot of work to do to prove that they are worth taking seriously.

Which means that Carroll is mistaken in saying that a science of morality has to be a maximization theory and that by defeating maximization theories Carroll has defeated the possibility of a science of morality.

Here, an astute long-term reader of this blog might raise the question, "Isn't this the same thing you are doing with 'desire fulfillment'? Are you not treating desire fulfillment the same way that Jeremy Bentham treated pleasure, and Sam Harris treats the well-being of conscious creatures?"

No.

Desire fulfillment has no value.

Well, it could have value if the right set of conditions are met, but it need not have any value at all. If desire fulfillment has value, then it has value in virtue of the same types of relationships that give value to rocks, paintings, movies, and everything else. It must stand in a particular relationship to reasons for action that exist (desires).

I admit that, for many people, this is a difficult concept to grasp. We are accustomed to thinking about theories in which the author proposes some entity and says that this is the good. This is the thing to which all value adheres. Therefore, it is easy and comfortable to put any new theory one encounters into that model. However, in this case, it is a mistake. Desirism does not talk about maximizing some entity called 'desire fulfillment'. It talks about making or keeping true those propositions that are the objects of our desires.

Okay, let's take a little closer look at what this means.

Let us assume that we have an agent A who has a choice to make between two possible future states. A has one desire - a desire that P. For our example, P = world W is left in a pristine and undisturbed state. In future state S1, A exists and W is left in a pristine and undisturbed state. In future state S2, A does not exist and W is left in a pristine and undisturbed state.

A has no particular reason to choose either world over the other. In fact, he has no basis on which to make a choice. In both possible future states P is true, so his desire is fulfilled. So, both possible future states are equally valuable to A.

We - appealing to our own desires and even to the desires we want to promote in our community, will have a disposition to favor S1 over S2. We may 'feel' as if S1 is the better option. However, that is based solely on the fact that S1 better fulfills our desires. It has nothing to do with how the two states of affairs relate to A's desires. A, who has only this one desire, has no reason to choose S1 over S2. To A, both possible worlds have equal value.

We can imagine cases in which A's presence has instrumental value. We can imagine that A's presence is required to keep other people from disturbing W. However, in these types of cases, we are no longer talking about cases in which A is choosing between S1 and S2 where P is true in both cases. We are talking about cases in which the agent is choosing between S1 (I am here and am keeping W pristine and untouched) and S2 (I am not here and others have invaded W.

It is perfectly consistent with the theory to hold that, if these were the options, S1 would have more valuable than S2.

Now, if I were treating desire fulfillment the way Bentham treated pleasure, or Mill treated happiness, or Harris treats the well-being of conscious creatures, I would have to say that S1 has more value than S2. S1 contains desire fulfillment, while S2 does not. Recall that desire fulfillment is a state in which an agent has a desire that P, there is a state of affairs S, and P is true in S. S1 is the only future state in which there is an agent who has a desire that P. So, S1 is the only state that contains desire fulfillment.

However, desire fulfillment is not what has value. For an agent with a desire that P, states of affairs in which P is true have value. For an agent with one desire - a desire that P - he has reason to bring about S if and only if P is true in S. P is true in both S1 and S2, so the agent has no basis for making any type of choice between them.

In order to arrive at the conclusion that S1 has more value than S2 we must introduce a second desire. Let us introduce another agent, B. B has a desire that Q where Q = "desire fulfillment exists". In this case, B has reason to choose S1 over S2, because Q is true in S1, but not in S2.

B has reason to try to persuade A to choose S1. Yet, given the assumptions we have made in this example, B is going to have a hard time doing this. He cannot bribe A. The only thing A cares about is that the world is left in a pristine state and that is going to happen regardless of whether A chooses S1 or S2.

B does have the option of threatening A. However, the only threat that holds any promise of working is for B to say to A, "If you choose S2, then I will go and stomp all over W. I will ensure that W is not left in a pristine state."

So, I emphatically deny that desirism states that desire fulfillment has any kind of value. The only way that anything can have value - any S - is to the extent that P is true in S and there exists a desire that P. Even here, that value only motivates the person who has the desire.

Desire-fulfillment is not an exception to this principle. It is one of the things that has value only to the degree that P is true in a state of desire fulfillment, and there exists a desire that P.

(Note: S can also have instrumental value if S is able to help bring about T, and P is true in T, and there exists a desire that P.)

So, while other theorists may say that we are concerned with eudemonia, or pleasure, or happiness, or preference satisfaction, or the well-being of conscious creatures, or even desire fulfillment, I deny all of these possibilities.

What we are really interested in is making or keeping true the propositions P that are the objects of our "desires that P". That is what we are interested in. And because we are not governed by any single desire, it is not the case that there is any single "thing" that is the measure of all value that we can then hope to maximize.

Religion and the "Really Wrong"

One of the ways in which those who defend a religious ethic claim to have an advantage over those who defend a secular ethic is in having something to say to those who might otherwise contemplate evil.

How can you explain to somebody that it is really wrong for them to torture young children? If there is no God and, thus, no supernatural morality, then all you can tell the torturer is that you don't like it when he tortures young children. However, that falls significantly short of the goal of telling him that it's really wrong.

One of the things that follows from teaching somebody that torturing young children is really wrong is that they will then if you can convince them of this, then they will not torture young children.

So, now the religious ethic has two advantage over secular competitors. First, it provides a way of describing the torture of young children as really wrong, and, second, it provides a way to convince somebody not to do that which is really wrong.

Well, actually, it fails on both accounts.

Really Wrong?

First, it fails to provide an account of something being really wrong because it fails in so many ways to give us an account of what is really wrong. Working on the Sabbath is punishable by death. Not only that, but you also have to give your slave a day of rest as well? One shall not charge interest on a loan except to foreigners? The penalty for rape is to be forced to marry your victim?

Is it really right to punish the children and grand children and great grand children of somebody who has dome something wrong? Is it really right to execute, immediately, any person who tries to convert somebody to another God? Or anybody who gives up a religion for another? Is really right that engaging in a homosexual act should be punishable by death? Is it really right to release a plague that will kill the first born in every family in order to obtain a political objective?

It is permissible to obliterate a city - men, women, and children - if one cannot find 10 righteous men, where 'righteous' is defined, among other things, as a willingness to kill those who work on the Sabbath or who engage in homosexual acts?

How is this supposed to be a guide to what is really wrong?

The Extension of Moral Error

Furthermore, once somebody looks at the religious text and sees all of the things that it gets wrong, they then merely need to extend those attitudes towards the few things that religious texts get right - to theft, murder, and lying among others. It is easy to draw the inference that murder, theft, and deceit are really wrong in the way that working on the Sabbath and charging interest on one’s money are really wrong.

Interpretation and the Introduction of Human Preconceptions

A common retort that I encounter when I give these alleged prescriptions - those not endorsed in the 20th century even by religious conservatives - out of context. As such, I am not delivering the correct interpretation.

However, let us be clear about how context works. What these agents are doing is first taking some ideas of right and wrong and using them as a measure of what scripture says, "in context.". If a particular interpretation of a passage yields a result that the interpreter does not fail, then the interpreter does not admit to being wrong about the morality of act. Instead, the interpreter complains that the interpretation being used is flawed - that a correct interpretation is one that yields the moral answers that the speaker is comfortable with.

However, this does not do anything to explain why a particular act is wrong. In fact, the way this works is that the interpreter simply begins with the assumption that his own prejudices and preconceptions are correct, and scripture is to be interpreted so as to support those assumptions. It is little wonder that he who claims to find such virtue in religion is so strongly motivated to do what the religion tells him to do. Under this cover of "context" assigns his preferences and prejudices to God.

Threat as a Form of Moral Argument

Furthermore, an appeal to religious authority actually does not explain why these things are really wrong.

It provides motivation by offering rewards and threatening punishments. However, these do not explain the wrongness of things.

A kidnapper can tell his victim, "The first time I catch you trying to escape, I will cut off A finger. The second time, I will cut off your hand." This may be effective in getting the victim to decide not to try to escape. However, it is a poor argument when it comes to explaining why trying to escape is really wrong.

Similarly the claim that an all-powerful God is watching over us and will threaten us with permanent torture if we commit the crime of working on the Sabbath or charging interest on our money. For those who believe it, this may be in fact inspire them to refuse any job that requires working on the Sabbath and who never puts his money into a saving account or any interest-bearing securities. However, it fails to provide any explanation at all as to why it is really wrong to do these things.

The people who obey God in these cases are like the victim who obeys the kidnapper. He is not doing so out of an understanding of the really wrongness of the action. He is doing so out of a desire to avoid the consequences of getting caught.

”It works” versus “It’s True”

Still, it works, right? If you can convince somebody not to torture a child or work on the Sabbath because some supernatural all-knowing, all-powerful being will condemn them to eternal suffering, then even though this fails to explain why it is really wrong, you have still saved a child from torture or prevented an act of working on the Sabbath. That is its own justification for these stories.

Well, not really. Not if you want to teach people that it is wrong to "bear false witness" or engage in other acts of deception.

It is important to note that this defense of divine command does not say that "it is true." It says, "It is useful." The reason to convince people that an omnipotent all-knowing distributor of justice is always looking over their shoulder with an eye to permanent punishment is that "it works". It provides those who believe it a reason to obey the commands they are given.

Consequently, one of the moral assumptions that sit at the very heart of this kind of argument is that controlling the behavior of others is a good reason to make claims that are not true, regardless of whether or not the claims are true. It is a recipe for deception as a social tool. It says, "We are not going to pay attention to what is true. We are going to pay attention to what is useful in terms of manipulating others into doing what we want them to do."

Summary

So, we end up with all sorts of problems associated with the idea that the scripture and religion have an advantage over secular ethics in giving us an account of what is really wrong. First, it is full of errors. Second, the art of interpretation means that the interpreter uses his own right and wrong to determine which interpretation of scripture is correct and thus assigns his or her own moral sentiments to God. Third, the motive to obey is not grounded on an appreciation of the rightness or wrongness of actions but on fear of punishment. Fourth, the argument is grounded on the assumptions that the merit of a claim is not that it is true but that it is useful in manipulating others into doing that which the speaker wants them to do.

None of these qualities are particularly useful when it comes to creating a fair and just society.

None of them are consistent with the claim that those who profess that morality comes from God that religious ethics provides gives us a better understanding of why anything that is wrong is really wrong.

Desirism, Descriptions, and Prescriptions

Here is a simple and straight forward question that I got from Luke Muerhlhauser's studio audience.

Is Desirism a descriptive or a prescriptive theory?

Answer: Both

The rule that links the two is that the only legitimate prescription is an accurate description of a relationship between some potential state of affairs and reasons for action that exist. Absent the details, it says that all legitimate prescriptions are descriptions.

Now, by a prescription I am referring to any should or ought statement. "Jim should go see a doctor." or "We should recognize and respect a separation between church and state," or "You ought to pay Alice back the fifty dollars you borrowed last week."

Any should or ought statement invites the question, "Why should I?" or "Why is it the case that I ought to?"

From this question, the only legitimate answer is a reason for action. In fact, the only legitimate answer is a real reason for action.

If you give an answer that is not a reason for action, then do not be surprised if the person you are talking to simply stares back at you in confusion.

"You should comb your hair before it dries."

"Why?"

"Because water has a freezing temperature of 0 degrees Celsius."

"Huh?"

You need a reason for action to answer a "Why?" question. Not only that, you need a reason for action that bears the right kind of relationship to the state of affairs you are evaluating.

"You should comb your hair before it dries."

"Why?"

"Because I know you hate to eat fish."

"What? If I don't comb my hair before it dries then I will have to eat fish?"

And you need a reason for action that is real.

A person might give his answer by referring to God's will, categorical imperatives, a reason for action that is an inherent property of some states of affairs themselves, some hypothetical social contract, the wishes of an impartial observer, choices made by substantially ignorant people behind a veil of ignorance, and the like. However, these reasons for action do not exist. Therefore, none of them provide a legitimate answer to the "Why should I?" question.

Desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

Regular readers might be tired of hearing this, but a great deal is built on this.

Beliefs and desires are propositional attitudes - they are attitudes that an agent takes towards a proposition. A"belief that P" is the attitude that P is true - that P is an accurate description of the world. A "desire that P" is a motivational attitude that pushes the agent to realize states of affairs in which P is true. A parent's desires "that my child be healthy" is a motivational attitude that pushes the parent to act so as to realize states of affairs in which the proposition "my child is healthy" is true.

A "desire that P" is fulfilled in any state of affairs in which P is true.

So, now, a legitimate prescription is an accurate description of a relationship between a state of affairs and a set of desires such that it relates the propositions that are true in a given sate of affairs to the propositions that are the objects of real desires.

"You should comb your hair before it dries that way otherwise when you go out in public you will be subjecting yourself to ridicule and you hate ridicule. Even if you do not hate ridicule, people tend to treat those who look ridiculous with less kindness and respect, and you may find you have reasons to want their kindness and respect."

Now, we have a description of how a state of affairs relates to a set of reasons for action that exist - specifically, the desires of the agent we are talking to.

"You should comb your hair before it dries that way" is both a prescription and, at the same time, a description of how a particular state of affairs relates to a set of reasons for action that exist.

A moral statement, like any other prescription, has to follow this same formula. Any moral statement that is a legitimate prescription must also be an accurate description of a relationship between some object of evaluation and real reasons for action. Any theory of morality that deviates from this formula has wandered into a world of make-believe. Their moral prescriptions are as fictitious as the reasons for action they invent.

I have proposed that the states of affairs that moral 'oughts' are primarily used to evaluate have to do with the strength and prevalence of malleable desires. Malleable desires are those that can be molded using social tools such as praise and condemnation. A moral 'ought' prescribes malleable desires to the community at large.

It is important to note that they are not prescriptions for the given individual one is talking to. They are prescriptions for the community as a whole. As such, they consider all of the reasons for action that are real. A moral claim is not really a claim about what "you ought to do", but a claim about "what any member of the community in your situation should want to do," where praise and condemnation are used as tools to help bring it about that it is something that people generally do want to do.

At this point, the task is to come up with the relationship between an object of evaluation and a set of desires that best accounts for the way a term is used in public discussion.

Applying this methodology to the term 'health', we note that this term is used to evaluate mental and physical functioning. An accurate prescription in the health department is an accurate description of a relationship between some state of physical or mental functioning and the desires of the agent. A form of functioning that tends to thwart the desires of those agents who have them is an 'illness' if its cause is minute and impossible to recognize by simple means. If its cause is easy to recognize - like getting trampled by a horse or falling off a ladder - we use the term 'injury'.

If we study the term 'useful', we apply it to any number of things. The desires or reasons for action that are relevant to the usefulness of something are determined by the context of the sentence in which the term is used. However, we only use the term to refer to indirect relationships between states of affairs and desires. That is to say, something is useful only insofar as it has the ability to bring about something else - and that something else has true propositions that are the objects of those desires being referred to in context.

Looking at the way people use the term 'beautiful', for some reason this is only used to evaluate things heard or seen - not things that are smelled or touched or tasted. Furthermore, it is applied to states that fulfill the desires directly. Looking at them, or hearing them, appeals to us not because of what we can use them for, but in themselves.

The relationship that makes the best sense of how moral terms are used - without wandering off into the realm of fiction and fantasy - is the relationship between malleable desires (desires that can be molded using forces such as praise and condemnation) and all other desires. A moral 'ought' is not a prescription made to an individual. It is a prescription made to the community. It is not a statement about "what you ought to do", though it is often expressed that way. It is a statement about "What people in the community generally have reason to cause any person in your situation to want to do."

It is often brought up that we have the power to take the term 'moral' and apply it to something other than this. However, we also have the power to take the terms 'health', 'injury', 'illness', 'useful', and 'beauty' and apply them to other things as well. We also have the capacity to take the terms 'atom', 'malaria', 'planet', and every other term in our language and apply them to something else.

It is true that we can take the term 'moral' and apply it to something else. It is also not important. The person who thinks that this is important - that this reveals some significant secret about morality - does not understand language. If this were some great discovery proving the subjectivity of morality, then it also proves the subjectivity of chemistry, medicine, astronomy, and every other field of study.

So, is desirism a descriptive theory or a prescriptive theory? Well, any theory that separates the two - that claims that the two are mutually exclusive - can be thrown out. Those theories are dealing in the realm of make-believe. Legitimate prescriptions are accurate descriptions of relationships between states of affairs and reasons for action. If your moral prescriptions are not, at the same time, accurate descriptions, then they are fictions that have no relevance in the real world.