Rhology listed a few reasons here as to why he acts nice, beside the threat of Hell:
1) I love Jesus b/c He saved me.
2) Jesus lived a morally pure life and commanded me to do the same for a variety of reasons.
3) So I try to.
That's the distillation. Others:
4) Living like Jesus is what God created me to do. I don't want to live against my operational specifications. Don't want to use a hard drive as a baseball bat.
5) It makes the Good News of Jesus that I tell to others more credible.
Rhology wants to act like a Christian (according to Rhology's understanding of how a Christian should act). Others can make a nearly identical list of reasons and use them to explain a set of behavior starkly in contrast with Rhology's own.
Anyway...
Reasons for Action
First of all, it doesn't really make sense to ask whether or not we should encourage people to see morality through the lens of desire utilitarianism. What makes sense, according to Alonzo Fyfe, is to ask whether reasons for action exist for promoting certain desires, and whether they are more and stronger than the reasons against promoting those desires.
But why prescribe the actions and desires that desire utilitarianism suggests we prescribe? Mr. Fyfe has explained that desire utilitarianism is a description of how prescription works.
"As such, desire utilitarianism is to be adopted or rejected on the same types of criteria that any other descriptive theory is to be accepted or rejected. Are the claims that desire utilitarianism make about prescription true or false?For example:
All prescriptions are recommendations to bring about or avoid a particular state of affairs.
A prescription brings to bear the ‘reasons for action that exist’ that recommend bringing about or avoiding a state of affairs.
Desires are the only reasons for action that exist."
Another proposition I'd like to add is this:
An agent will act to fulfill the more and stronger of its desires, given its beliefs.
That being the case, all we can do to prescribe a particular action is try to convince the person that acting in a particular way will, in fact, fulfill his or her desires. We cannot argue someone out of their desires. Nothing I can say will convince a person who enjoys lying not to enjoy lying. This should be pretty apparent.
What we can do, however, is several things.
Adjusting Malleable Desires
First, we can apply social rewards and sanctions/praise and condemnation to make it the case that certain desires are given precedence. For instance, if somebody desires to be dishonest and manipulative, if we apply enough condemnation and sanction, at some point it will benefit the liar to behave honestly, and he will thus desire to do so.
Perhaps more importantly, though, we can apply these tools to our children from a young age. We can raise them with an aversion to dishonesty. Then, when they approach a circumstance in which it may be personally beneficial to behave dishonestly, their aversion to dishonesty may make it the case that they desire to be honest anyway.
Do reasons for action exist to promote honesty and to cultivate an aversion to dishonesty in others, and do those reasons for action outweigh those that recommend promoting dishonesty and discouraging honesty? Yes they exist, and they certainly outweigh the opposing reasons.
"If it is true that desires are the only reasons for action that exist, then the desires that we have the most reason to promote are those that best fulfill the more and stronger of our desires.Ultimately
Some desires (the aversion to lying) tend to fulfill other desires, while some desires (the desire to rape young children) tend to thwart other desires."
What reasons do we have to encourage a desire utilitarian outlook on morality? Well, none; it's not an important question.
What reasons do we have to encourage or discourage different desires based on their general tendencies to fulfill or to thwart other desires?
All the reasons in the world. The only reasons for action are desires. Promoting desire-fulfilling desires in others is something which every single person has all the reason in the world to do.
Now, at this point everybody has a particular set of desires. Some are good and some are bad - this goes for me and everybody else. It's next to impossible to adjust those desires now - neither we nor anybody else can reason us out of our desires. However, they can be outweighed by other reasons for action. This is what we provide when we condemn bad actions and praise good behavior.
Q&A
Calvin posted some thoughts here which I'd like to try to (briefly) address. Of course, he wrote a lot, so I'll probably have to follow up on this.
"I can’t find any reason why I should board in the first place."
_I hope I at least began to address this. Nobody can change your desires - only give you other reasons for action that outweigh them.
"I don’t see why I should value the fulfillment of another’s desires"
_No specific desires are intrinsically 'supposed' to be fulfilled. That's not the point. The point is that acting on good desires - not those that fulfill specific desires, but those that tend to fulfill the desires of others - is what we should encourage.
"But is reaping pragmatic future rewards the extent of society's interest in morality? Or is there another component?"
_I'm not sure what the other component would be. All people act so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires - it is in our interest to encourage others to act on particular desires (those that tend to fulfill the desires of others). Pragmatic future rewards are a particular type of 'reasons for action' that exist for us. There's no way to cause people to act in opposition to their desires. We can simply shape those desires.
"Let's say you have someone who just doesn't care about the fulfillment of others' desires... What does morality say to/about such a man?"
_He's evil. He acts on a set of bad desires, and exhibits disregard for the wellbeing of others. He's worthy of condemnation.
"I need to know whether or not human desires matter, and why they matter, to decide whether or not I have any obligations towards them."
_They matter because they're all that matters. All that is important or means anything to mankind is tied up in desires. To respect, empathize, or mean well toward another human being, you must acknowledge and, in most cases, respect his/her desires.
"That truth, that underlying meaning I’m searching for can either be the soul, or it can be firing neurons."
_How to put this... If there is a soul which provides empathy and other good feelings, then we can assume it also provides the more negative entities of hate, bigotry, callousness.
You can argue that those exhibiting the latter set of traits are simply not in their original state. However, it could just as easily be the case that the former set of traits (such things as empathy) are the real aberrations, and the intrinsic state of the soul is hateful and bigoted.
In fact, we find that people's tendencies toward empathy or callousness are profoundly influenced by upbringing. We're born essentially tabula rasa.
"It’s preposterous to think I should care in the slightest about firing neurons that don’t affect me."
_For one thing, you don't have to. Desire utilitarianism never says that you *should* care about others. It simply says that some desires are to be encouraged and others discouraged; this for objective reasons we all have. One of these good desires, it can be argued, is the aversion to thwarting the desires of others (firing neurons) unless there is good reason to do so.
For another, you're using loaded language here. It may be the case that 'firing neurons' is the extent of what our thoughts and feelings are. Calling it a 'soul' does nothing to increase the worth of that phenomenon; calling it firing neurons does nothing to increase that worth.
"DU may not be moral relativism, but it offers no challenge to it."
_On the contrary, it stands in stark opposition to moral relativism.
"If your pure reasoning, truly free of ideology & emotion (and free of the poisonous influence of fanatics like Hitchens & Harris), honestly leads you away from God, so be it."
_Thank you for being so respectful. I have yet to read anything by Dawkins, Hitchens or Harris, so I can't comment on the poisonousness of their influence. Yes, my reasoning leads me to the conclusion that, while I cannot disprove the existence of God, and no evidence points toward or against such a being, it is rather unlikely that it exists.
Yet the conclusion a particular line of reasoning takes me to is that there is, in fact, reason for morality in a godless world.
A Little Further Reading:
Alonzo Fyfe has some essays which may help address the topic:
Why Worry About Morality?
So, you want to be a desire utilitarian
Promoting Desire Utilitarianism
Evaluating Moral Theories
The 1000 Sadists Problem
8 comments:
“Of course, he wrote a lot, so I'll probably have to follow up on this.”
Thanks for the response, and in that case I’ll wait ‘till I have a complete picture of your objection. But right now I would like to point out that I’ve posed part of this question directly to Fyfe as well (at the “Why Worry about Morality?” link), and unfortunately he’s only offered semantic non sequiturs in response (so far). Given that you seem to rely on him a great deal, does that give you pause?
I meant that you'd probably have further questions I'd have to respond to. As it is, I'm not sure how many of your questions have been answered, or to what degree of satisfaction.
I also read your brief dialogue with Mr. Fyfe, and no, his response (or lack thereof) doesn't give me pause. He researches and writes at least one essay every day, among other things. I rarely see him write much of a response in comments on blogs. I think perhaps he wants to keep his comment chains brief, and only writes new posts when they cover material that he hasn't written yet or needs revisiting.
If you want to pose the same questions here, I may be able to answer them to some degree - hopefully without getting long winded like some of my other conversations seem to be getting.
Howdy G-man,
Read a bit of Fyfe's stuff, thanks for the link.
It looks like this DU-ism comes down to societal preference in general (as I refer to it in my discussions) rather than the personal preference espoused by numerous atheists including (it would seem) ChooseDoubt.
And I'd note a few interesting things you said:
it stands in stark opposition to moral relativism.
Apparently on the basis of your ipse dixit that good and bad are defined your way. But you can't go any further than that, can't tell me why that state of affairs is to be desired. You yourself affirm that:
What reasons do we have to encourage a desire utilitarian outlook on morality?
OK, cool, well then I'm done reading. Why did you even write this post?
Desire utilitarianism never says that you *should* care about others.
Brilliant then. The opposite, however, seems to be the point of Fyfe's 1000 Sadists article.
The point is that acting on good desires - not those that fulfill specific desires, but those that tend to fulfill the desires of others - is what we should encourage.
There you go w/ that "should" language again. Why should we?
He's evil. He acts on a set of bad desires, and exhibits disregard for the wellbeing of others. He's worthy of condemnation.
How do you define "bad" desires? How do you define the wellbeing of others? What does condemnation mean and what are the consequences? What *should* the consequences be? Why should they be so?
Interested in your responses - I want to see to what extent your DU-ism has anythg to offer that's different from a naturalistic moral relativism.
Peace,
Rhology
Hey Rhology; nice to meetcha!
Back to G-Man:
Not to get too sidetracked with the Fyfe issue, but my concern isn’t that he doesn’t spend the bulk of his time in the comments section, but that his response was gibberish (calling to mind a Ben Franklin quote about learned vs. unlearned fools being equally foolish, the only difference being the former’s nonsense is written in better language). And his latest claim that man-made global-warming skeptics are equivalent to Holocaust participants—wow (but that’s another issue).
“All we can do to prescribe a particular action is try to convince the person that acting in a particular way will, in fact, fulfill his or her desires. We cannot argue someone out of their desires…Nobody can change your desires - only give you other reasons for action that outweigh them…For one thing, you don't have to. Desire utilitarianism never says that you *should* care about others.”
So you’re basically agreeing that DU doesn’t account for no-strings-attached altruism? That’s what I want to know most of all: does DU hold that somebody is objectively right or wrong to do or not do any given action, irrespective of the material effects to him personally?
Calling my example character “evil” and “worthy of condemnation” seems to answer “yes,” but the question remains: “Fine, then I’m evil. If it works for me, why not be evil?” (keep in mind my example accounts for his being able to avoid great hardships and his being comfortable w/ lesser inconvenience).
Regarding the soul, I think you’ve missed my point. When I said the existence of a soul would reaffirm my conscience as valid & binding, I didn’t mean feelings are valid because the soul creates them. I meant that if the people around me are/have God-given souls, then my valuing them is objectively right, and not doing so would be objectively wrong. In that case, it’s reaffirmed that God’s truth & my conscience are in harmony. The distinction isn’t a matter of loaded language at all—I’m not calling ‘firing neurons’ a soul; I’m describing two different things.
No, DU certainly does not stand in stark opposition to moral relativism. I’ve yet to see a single reason why, in a secular existence, DU shouldn’t be regarded as simply one of several competing views. And saying “because desires objectively exist” and such simply doesn’t cut it. If desires objectively exist, it does not follow that one is objectively wrong to not do anything beneficial about them. That pesky “so what?” remains.
Absent an absolute moral authority independent of fallible humans, the only meaning “wrong” can have (pertaining to conduct) would be “in opposition to X,” and “falling short of X’s standards,” which are only persuasive to those who have already accepted X.
You still have the fact that certain conduct will always be counterproductive or dangerous to one’s own desires, and the ability to persuade as many people as possible of that fact. If that’s enough for you, go for it. I hope it bears fruit. But just be aware that one’s senses of self-interest (persuading them to practice “benign manipulation,” if you will) is not the same as morality.
Calvin
PS: I'd still like to get your thoughts on the question of doubt, and what responsiblities we owe to ambiguous situations, over at my blog.
Calivin, I'd like to use this quote on my site ( www.proofthatgodexists.org ) in the favourite quotes section):
"Absent an absolute moral authority independent of fallible humans, the only meaning “wrong” can have (pertaining to conduct) would be “in opposition to X,” and “falling short of X’s standards,” which are only persuasive to those who have already accepted X."
Is it yours, and would that be okay? I would have emailed the request, but I couldn't find your email address. Could you let me know if it's ok, at sye@proofthatgodexists.org
Thanks
Permission on the way! Say, how do I access the quotes section? Do I have to go thru the Q&A process?
Thanks! It has been posted! Yes, one has to go through the whole process to get to the main page (although as I'm sure you have seen, I sent you a link to the quotes section).
I take secret pleasure in having professed atheists click on "I believe that God exists, before they can get my email address and complain about the non-existence of God.
G-man,
Sorry, I forgot about this combox but I just answered you, so you may care to deal w/ it there or on my blog or on yours or whatever. Or you may not. Just wanted to let you know.
Peace,
Rhology
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