It's time to clarify a few things. Last August, Rhology and Calvin had a few questions in response to my post "why be nice?"
Re: Rhology,
Rhology asked this: What reasons do we have to encourage a desire utilitarian outlook on morality?
My answer was "none." He asked why I even wrote the post, then. The thing is, someone does not need to believe desire utilitarianism describes morality, or have anything resembling a "desire utilitarian outlook" on things to be a good person (in desire utilitarian terms). Presumably most Christians look at things the same way - as long as you value brotherly love, kindness, charity etc, you're being a pretty decent person. Having different reasons for action don't give the actions themselves a different merit.
Rhology then wanted to know why we *should* encourage others to have desires that fulfill other desires. The answer is simple. We all have real-world reasons to do so. If I'm surrounded by people who have desire-fulfilling desires (these would include compassion, respect for human rights, love, some degree of patience etc), I am certainly living in an environment that is beneficial for me. I have many, many real-world reasons to bring about this sort of environment. It is better for me and for my family.
Rhology then had a big series of questions: "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?"
These were in response to my discussion of an evil person (acting on a set of bad desires) who exhibits a strong disregard for the wellbeing of others.
Bad desires are those that tend to thwart the desires of others. Desires, like other objective entities, can be evaluated on their tendency to fulfill other desires. When we see which desires tend to fulfill or thwart the desires of others, we begin to learn which desires are good for people generally. Wellbeing is part of a continuum of fulfilled vs thwarted desires. Someone with a marked disrespect for the wellbeing of others would not hesitate to harm them (act in ways that thwart others' desires).
Condemnation involves verbal or physical action toward others. Were we alive at the time, we could express our condemnation of Hitler's actions by our public outcry and by international action - whether restricting trade or whatever - in order to adjust his desires. Condemnation and praise are tools we can use to discourage or encourage desires.
Re: Calvin,
Calvin asked, "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?"
I'm not quite sure what the first question is asking. Desire utilitarianism does hold that somebody is objectively right or wrong to do or not do any given action, irrespective of the material effects to him or her personally.
HOWEVER - desire utilitarianism does not hold that certain actions are always right/wrong. Right action is that which a person with good desires would do in that situation. In extreme circumstances, this could include killing, lying, etc. The objective part is desires. Desires are universally good or bad; what action an agent takes is good or bad by merit of which desire/s drove the action.
Calvin said, "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)."
We run into this problem all the time. Unfortunately, everybody knows what happens when you try to reason a person out of this stance. Whether you're saying "God doesn't like what you're doing" or "you're causing real harm to others," you begin to realize that rationalizing won't give somebody a reason not to be evil. However, social condemnation (see above) DOES give an evil person reasons to stop being evil. Threatening Hitler with armed resistance if he takes action can beging to curb his evil actions.
Calvin: "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."
Moral relativism, typically, is the view that "it's good if it's good for me." Desire utilitarianism strongly differs from this, because the theory claims that good and evil exist independent of individual preference. People who accept DU do not need to get others to adopt that understanding, of course - they simply have the same reasons for action to encourage good desires and discourage evil desires that everybody else has. Often, people who think "it's good if it's good for me" can justify operating on desires that are bad for others. Where this happens, those who accept the premises of desire utilitarianism - along with everybody else - have reasons to condemn those actions.
As any scientifically structured theory, desire utilitarianism should be regarded as one of several competing views! However, that does not rob it of its truth value.
Calvin: "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."
I disagree. Wrong behavior is that which a bad person would do - a bad person being someone who operates on bad desires.
Calvin: "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."
People can easily confuse "desires" with "self-interest." This is not necessarily the case. I may have a desire to sacrifice all of my personal belongings and wealth for the benefit of others. In that case, my desires have little to do with self-interest. Sometimes our "interest" is in the wellbeing of our family and friends.
Regardless, there are bad desires (disregard for human rights, desires to take what belongs to others by force, desires to harm others generally) that we all have reasons to discourage in society. This is true whether you want to call it morality or not. However, as most competent English speakers consider morality to be a code of right and wrong behavior, desire utilitarianism is what you come to if you're looking for such a code based on objective reasons for action.
Showing posts with label Desire Utilitarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Desire Utilitarianism. Show all posts
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Premises of Desire Utilitarianism
...and some conclusions.
Intro
This is a long-needed post. This is a list of propositions. These are all descriptive "is" statements describing an objective reality. Desire utilitarianism basically proposes that from these "is" statements, we as humans can reach prescriptive conclusions about what humans "ought" to do.
As I haven't spent much time thinking or planning this post, I will leave it open to my future edits, which I'll point out to readers.
Desire utilitarianism is a theory of ethics in a godless universe.
1. Desires are the only reasons for action in humans.
A desire describes a mental state as regards a state of affairs. The classic example is a desire that "I am eating chocolate cake" means that to the agent, the state of affairs where "I am eating chocolate cake" is to be made or kept true. Similarly, a desire that "I am not on fire" means that the state of affairs where "I am on fire" is to be made or kept false.
Desires are real-world, objective entities existing in the firings of neurons in the brain.
2. BDI theory is true regarding human motivation.
Beliefs + Desires = Intentional action. A belief, as used here, is an attitude about a proposition. An agent who believes that water will quench his thirst has the attitude that water will quench his thirst.
This theory of intentional action says an agent will always act motivated by its desires, given its beliefs. An agent that desires that "I am thirsty" is false, acts on the desire as its belief dictates. If the agent believes the glass of water on the counter will quench its thirst, it will drink (intentional action) the water. Unless, of course, there are other desires...
3. An agent will always act so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of its desires.
Where a state of affairs that an agent desires to be true is made or kept true, that desire is fulfilled. Where that state of affairs is made or kept false, that desire is thwarted.
Often an agent will have a false belief. In the case of drinking the water, if the substance in the glass is, in fact, poison, the agent's desire will be thwarted by drinking.
4. Values lie in desires.
Agents place value on states of affairs. No other value exists.
5. Desires can be evaluated.
Objects can be evaluated on the criteria of their tendency to fulfill or to thwart relevant desires. An example is a knife - a good knife fulfills an agents' desire to cut something. The value of "good" is applied on the basis of its tendency to fulfill desires.
Desires being objective entities, they can also be evaluated. Desires can be evaluated on their tendency to fulfill or to thwart other desires. A good example is the desire to seek truth. For an agent that possesses this desire, it has a tendency to fulfill other desires.
6. Desires can be evaluated on their tendency to fulfill or to thwart the desires of other humans.
If I have, for example, a desire to obtain my neighbors' property by whatever means necessary, this desire has a tendency to thwart the desires of my neighbors.
We can call such a desire "bad," just like we can call a desire to support and help my neighbors "good." The desires are good/bad insofar as they have a tendency to fulfill or to thwart the desires of others.
When a desire is thwarted, it is called - to a greater or lesser degree - "harm."
7. When we ask the question "Which desires are good for humans generally?" we arrive at objective conclusions.
Desire utilitarianism does not claim to provide a list of the good desires humans can have. However, it can demonstrably be shown that such desires as honesty, kindness and compassion for others are desires that are good for my neighbors - for all people.
Desire utilitarianism promotes a scientific approach to studying ethics, a strong criticism of beliefs, and the admittance that at least some of its claims could be proven false.
8. There are real-world reasons for action to promote good desires and condemn bad or evil desires.
Given my desires and values, I have many good reasons to want a neighbor who respects my life, my liberty, my property. Similarly, my neighbors have many good reasons for me to have the same respect.
The more we work to create a society full of people who value the life, liberty and property of others, the more we create a society that is safe for our children, friends and family.
8.5 There is a difference between "I desire that the desires of others be fulfilled" and "I desire to fulfill the desires of others.
It is a simple mistake to think that desire utilitarianism demands that we try to fulfill the desires of other people to be good. This is not true. I can easily desire that shopping be done without desiring that I do the shopping.
9. Desires are malleable.
An agent will always act to fulfill the more and the stronger of its desires, given its beliefs (3). Human agents have the means of adjusting those desires. If, for example, I have a neighbor who wants to take my property regardless of how he accomplishes the goal - I can band together with my other neighbors and impose social sanctions on the fellow. If we sever trade with him, punish him fiscally, or temporarily imprison him, he will now have more desires to take into account. For example, his desire for personal freedom may now outweigh his desire to take his neighbors' property.
Criticism/social condemnation is another way to change desires in others.
Children have more malleable desires, so it's important that they be brought up in such a way that they have good desires - preferably that these desires are for end-goals rather than means to ends. For example, I want my neighbor to respect others' property out of a like for respecting others' property... not just as a way to stay out of jail.
10. Agents cannot be reasoned out of desires.
Jedi mind tricks aren't real. We can use reason to say "these aren't the droids you're looking for," but not to say "you don't want to find those droids you're looking for," for you Star Wars buffs.
That's why desires must be, in a sense, outweighed by other desires if we're to change what an agent desires.
11. There do exist cases of negligence.
Occasionally we may run into a case where someone should have been aware of a danger, or have taken more caution into account before acting. We can conclude, in many cases, that a person who doesn't take the time of day to secure a load on his pickup truck, for example, doesn't care enough about those he might endanger.
This sort of person deserves criticism because it is better for all of us if we live in a society full of people who take a great deal of caution where their actions could harm others.
12. A person with good desires and true beliefs performs good actions.
Given that value exists in desire fulfillment (4), the action that a good person (a person with good desires) performs is a good desire in that situation.
This is where desire utilitarianism becomes a situational, rather than a universal, theory. Honesty is a virtue (a good desire), but in a situation where you are sheltering a Jewish family from the Nazis and they ask if you're harboring fugitives, a good person would lie to protect the family.
Other moral questions become meaningless. The classic trolley car example helps demonstrate this. You are on a runaway trolley car and ahead of you the rail splits in two directions. If you maintain your course, you will kill a child on the track. If you switch tracks, you will run over 10 people. When asked what a good person would do in this situation, it becomes obvious that the "dilemma" is meaningless. A good person could choose either action. Neither effects how that person will be as my neighbor.
A note on meta-ethics
Morality is, necessarily, prescriptive. It describes what we should do - what we have reasons for action to do. Much religious morality involves reasons for action that do not exist. If we relate a moral "ought" to real-world reasons for action, we arrive (I am convinced) at desire utilitarianism.
Our reasons for action involve promoting or inhibiting (or permitting) desires - rather than actions - because it is demonstrably the case that desires cause actions and focusing attention on desires is more effective.
A common criticism is that desire utilitarianism is not about ethics. People say that ethics is about doing "God's will," for instance.
However, desire utilitarianism is about prescriptions for action (good and bad), in the hopes of realizing a better world. In this case, a "better world" for all of us is inhabited by people with good desires. Someone arguing against this is challenging many "is" statements listed above.
Please also note that there is no "is/ought" gap here. It is the case that we have these desires. It is the case that we have these reasons for action. What we ought to do is a part of what is true of our reality.
After all of that...
I hold these beliefs as my theory on value and the nature of good and evil. It is very legitimate to challenge the theory of desire utilitarianism (and for more check out www.atheistethicist.blogspot.com and read what Alonzo Fyfe blogs about).
It is also legitimate to challenge how my statements and arguments about morality are (or aren't) related to desire utilitarianism. Whatever you do, however, do not equate desire utilitarianism with atheism. Atheism is a belief about the existence of God, making no moral claims.
**Note: "Doesn't make moral claims" does NOT = "Is immoral," as some have surmised. The pen on my desk, for instance, is not moral. Nor is it immoral.
Intro
This is a long-needed post. This is a list of propositions. These are all descriptive "is" statements describing an objective reality. Desire utilitarianism basically proposes that from these "is" statements, we as humans can reach prescriptive conclusions about what humans "ought" to do.
As I haven't spent much time thinking or planning this post, I will leave it open to my future edits, which I'll point out to readers.
Desire utilitarianism is a theory of ethics in a godless universe.
1. Desires are the only reasons for action in humans.
A desire describes a mental state as regards a state of affairs. The classic example is a desire that "I am eating chocolate cake" means that to the agent, the state of affairs where "I am eating chocolate cake" is to be made or kept true. Similarly, a desire that "I am not on fire" means that the state of affairs where "I am on fire" is to be made or kept false.
Desires are real-world, objective entities existing in the firings of neurons in the brain.
2. BDI theory is true regarding human motivation.
Beliefs + Desires = Intentional action. A belief, as used here, is an attitude about a proposition. An agent who believes that water will quench his thirst has the attitude that water will quench his thirst.
This theory of intentional action says an agent will always act motivated by its desires, given its beliefs. An agent that desires that "I am thirsty" is false, acts on the desire as its belief dictates. If the agent believes the glass of water on the counter will quench its thirst, it will drink (intentional action) the water. Unless, of course, there are other desires...
3. An agent will always act so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of its desires.
Where a state of affairs that an agent desires to be true is made or kept true, that desire is fulfilled. Where that state of affairs is made or kept false, that desire is thwarted.
Often an agent will have a false belief. In the case of drinking the water, if the substance in the glass is, in fact, poison, the agent's desire will be thwarted by drinking.
4. Values lie in desires.
Agents place value on states of affairs. No other value exists.
5. Desires can be evaluated.
Objects can be evaluated on the criteria of their tendency to fulfill or to thwart relevant desires. An example is a knife - a good knife fulfills an agents' desire to cut something. The value of "good" is applied on the basis of its tendency to fulfill desires.
Desires being objective entities, they can also be evaluated. Desires can be evaluated on their tendency to fulfill or to thwart other desires. A good example is the desire to seek truth. For an agent that possesses this desire, it has a tendency to fulfill other desires.
6. Desires can be evaluated on their tendency to fulfill or to thwart the desires of other humans.
If I have, for example, a desire to obtain my neighbors' property by whatever means necessary, this desire has a tendency to thwart the desires of my neighbors.
We can call such a desire "bad," just like we can call a desire to support and help my neighbors "good." The desires are good/bad insofar as they have a tendency to fulfill or to thwart the desires of others.
When a desire is thwarted, it is called - to a greater or lesser degree - "harm."
7. When we ask the question "Which desires are good for humans generally?" we arrive at objective conclusions.
Desire utilitarianism does not claim to provide a list of the good desires humans can have. However, it can demonstrably be shown that such desires as honesty, kindness and compassion for others are desires that are good for my neighbors - for all people.
Desire utilitarianism promotes a scientific approach to studying ethics, a strong criticism of beliefs, and the admittance that at least some of its claims could be proven false.
8. There are real-world reasons for action to promote good desires and condemn bad or evil desires.
Given my desires and values, I have many good reasons to want a neighbor who respects my life, my liberty, my property. Similarly, my neighbors have many good reasons for me to have the same respect.
The more we work to create a society full of people who value the life, liberty and property of others, the more we create a society that is safe for our children, friends and family.
8.5 There is a difference between "I desire that the desires of others be fulfilled" and "I desire to fulfill the desires of others.
It is a simple mistake to think that desire utilitarianism demands that we try to fulfill the desires of other people to be good. This is not true. I can easily desire that shopping be done without desiring that I do the shopping.
9. Desires are malleable.
An agent will always act to fulfill the more and the stronger of its desires, given its beliefs (3). Human agents have the means of adjusting those desires. If, for example, I have a neighbor who wants to take my property regardless of how he accomplishes the goal - I can band together with my other neighbors and impose social sanctions on the fellow. If we sever trade with him, punish him fiscally, or temporarily imprison him, he will now have more desires to take into account. For example, his desire for personal freedom may now outweigh his desire to take his neighbors' property.
Criticism/social condemnation is another way to change desires in others.
Children have more malleable desires, so it's important that they be brought up in such a way that they have good desires - preferably that these desires are for end-goals rather than means to ends. For example, I want my neighbor to respect others' property out of a like for respecting others' property... not just as a way to stay out of jail.
10. Agents cannot be reasoned out of desires.
Jedi mind tricks aren't real. We can use reason to say "these aren't the droids you're looking for," but not to say "you don't want to find those droids you're looking for," for you Star Wars buffs.
That's why desires must be, in a sense, outweighed by other desires if we're to change what an agent desires.
11. There do exist cases of negligence.
Occasionally we may run into a case where someone should have been aware of a danger, or have taken more caution into account before acting. We can conclude, in many cases, that a person who doesn't take the time of day to secure a load on his pickup truck, for example, doesn't care enough about those he might endanger.
This sort of person deserves criticism because it is better for all of us if we live in a society full of people who take a great deal of caution where their actions could harm others.
12. A person with good desires and true beliefs performs good actions.
Given that value exists in desire fulfillment (4), the action that a good person (a person with good desires) performs is a good desire in that situation.
This is where desire utilitarianism becomes a situational, rather than a universal, theory. Honesty is a virtue (a good desire), but in a situation where you are sheltering a Jewish family from the Nazis and they ask if you're harboring fugitives, a good person would lie to protect the family.
Other moral questions become meaningless. The classic trolley car example helps demonstrate this. You are on a runaway trolley car and ahead of you the rail splits in two directions. If you maintain your course, you will kill a child on the track. If you switch tracks, you will run over 10 people. When asked what a good person would do in this situation, it becomes obvious that the "dilemma" is meaningless. A good person could choose either action. Neither effects how that person will be as my neighbor.
A note on meta-ethics
Morality is, necessarily, prescriptive. It describes what we should do - what we have reasons for action to do. Much religious morality involves reasons for action that do not exist. If we relate a moral "ought" to real-world reasons for action, we arrive (I am convinced) at desire utilitarianism.
Our reasons for action involve promoting or inhibiting (or permitting) desires - rather than actions - because it is demonstrably the case that desires cause actions and focusing attention on desires is more effective.
A common criticism is that desire utilitarianism is not about ethics. People say that ethics is about doing "God's will," for instance.
However, desire utilitarianism is about prescriptions for action (good and bad), in the hopes of realizing a better world. In this case, a "better world" for all of us is inhabited by people with good desires. Someone arguing against this is challenging many "is" statements listed above.
Please also note that there is no "is/ought" gap here. It is the case that we have these desires. It is the case that we have these reasons for action. What we ought to do is a part of what is true of our reality.
After all of that...
I hold these beliefs as my theory on value and the nature of good and evil. It is very legitimate to challenge the theory of desire utilitarianism (and for more check out www.atheistethicist.blogspot.com and read what Alonzo Fyfe blogs about).
It is also legitimate to challenge how my statements and arguments about morality are (or aren't) related to desire utilitarianism. Whatever you do, however, do not equate desire utilitarianism with atheism. Atheism is a belief about the existence of God, making no moral claims.
**Note: "Doesn't make moral claims" does NOT = "Is immoral," as some have surmised. The pen on my desk, for instance, is not moral. Nor is it immoral.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Sapient on locking Christians away
"What do you think..."
Rhology asked for my take on a Brian Sapient statement. I don't know the original context, but here is the question as Rhology put it in a comment.
Christians and mental illness:
While there is a clear social factor involved, it has not to my knowledge been demonstrated that Christian beliefs amount to an "impairment of an individual's normal cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning"
It may be the case that some Christians have a sort of mental illness. However, Sapient's statement seems to be far too sweeping to have any weight to it, particularly since many Christians are as different from one another as night from day.
This part of the question, then, is a matter of fact. Is it in fact the case that those following the Christian faith (in all of its many forms) are mentally impaired from normal functioning?
No. Human beings do not by default behave rationally, nor to they typically have rational reasons for adopting any given belief.
Should they be incarcerated:
I'll start by stating that we as humans should be given the strong presumption of freedom. It is when human action causes or threatens immanent harm on others that we consider punishment or "locking away."
So the real question is whether we have reasons to keep Christians separated from the rest of society.
Harm:
The answer depends on how "harm" is understood. In a desire utilitarian sense - as expressed in the first post on this blog - "harm" occurs when real-world human desires are thwarted. Because desires are the only reasons for action that exist, humans have reasons to promote good desires in others... good desires being those that tend to fulfill the desires of others.
One example of a good desire is "that the desires of others be fulfilled." *Not necessarily that "I fulfill the desires of others,"* so recognize the difference.
Are Christians more evil?:
We have no good reasons to believe that Christians (especially "all Christians") cause harm to other people, any more than any other group. Not all Christians cause a "mental illness" in others. There is no case that can be fairly made to say that Christians deserve to be jailed any more than any other group, and to make that claim amounts to bigotry.
The strong presumption of liberty we follow (since the removal of liberty is among the most desire-thwarting actions possible) stands until Sapient or others can provide reasons to believe Christians (especially "all Christians") cause or threaten more harm than other groups.
Rhology asked for my take on a Brian Sapient statement. I don't know the original context, but here is the question as Rhology put it in a comment.
What do you think of the Rational Response Squad's Brian Sapient's statement that Christians are mentally ill and should be locked up in mental institutions?This is a question that requires a multi-part response.
Christians and mental illness:
While there is a clear social factor involved, it has not to my knowledge been demonstrated that Christian beliefs amount to an "impairment of an individual's normal cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning"
It may be the case that some Christians have a sort of mental illness. However, Sapient's statement seems to be far too sweeping to have any weight to it, particularly since many Christians are as different from one another as night from day.
This part of the question, then, is a matter of fact. Is it in fact the case that those following the Christian faith (in all of its many forms) are mentally impaired from normal functioning?
No. Human beings do not by default behave rationally, nor to they typically have rational reasons for adopting any given belief.
Should they be incarcerated:
I'll start by stating that we as humans should be given the strong presumption of freedom. It is when human action causes or threatens immanent harm on others that we consider punishment or "locking away."
So the real question is whether we have reasons to keep Christians separated from the rest of society.
Harm:
The answer depends on how "harm" is understood. In a desire utilitarian sense - as expressed in the first post on this blog - "harm" occurs when real-world human desires are thwarted. Because desires are the only reasons for action that exist, humans have reasons to promote good desires in others... good desires being those that tend to fulfill the desires of others.
One example of a good desire is "that the desires of others be fulfilled." *Not necessarily that "I fulfill the desires of others,"* so recognize the difference.
Are Christians more evil?:
We have no good reasons to believe that Christians (especially "all Christians") cause harm to other people, any more than any other group. Not all Christians cause a "mental illness" in others. There is no case that can be fairly made to say that Christians deserve to be jailed any more than any other group, and to make that claim amounts to bigotry.
The strong presumption of liberty we follow (since the removal of liberty is among the most desire-thwarting actions possible) stands until Sapient or others can provide reasons to believe Christians (especially "all Christians") cause or threaten more harm than other groups.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Why Be Nice?
Rhology and Calvin have unwittingly prompted me to write a little bit on this topic. Why should a person be good and why, in particular, should one be 'good' in a desire utilitarian sense?
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.
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.
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
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
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Proving God
If there's anything more impossible than living around the turn of the millennium and not having heard of Morgan Freeman, it's proving the existence of God.
Which God?
Atheism can have a few meanings, but in general that meaning depends on to what it's referring. "A" means "without," and "theos" is, of course, "God." Theos is seen so differently around the world, though. Sometimes god is known by a different name, and other times by different characteristics. Many Christians feel that their God is different from Allah because of certain traits - a triune nature, omni-benevolence, the trait of 'heavenly Father-ness.' So when asked if they believe in a god of Allah's characteristics, the proper response is to say 'No, there is no such god. The universe is without (A) such a being (theos).'
Nearly every Christian in America, likewise, does not believe that the God of the Westboro Baptist Church exists. Such a God exhibits the characteristic of hating people - most people, in fact. When asked about their belief in such a god's existence, most Christians' proper response is 'No, there is no such god. I am an atheist in that regard.'
More commonly, atheists describe themselves as people who simply do not believe in any gods because no compelling evidence can be provided in support of such a claim. This is probably best described as a materialist or secularist outlook. The premise that 'all is matter' is sufficient until proof is provided by those on whom the burden rests - those claiming that a 'super-natural' aspect to the universe is real. Along with the burden of proof, such people also strive against the principle of Occam's Razor, which suggests that when given two alternative explanations to a phenomenon or phenomena, the simpler is to be preferred. Clearly, when a natural explanation for the universe is plausible and well-evidenced, it makes no sense to propose the infinitely complicating factor of the supernatural.
All of this to lead to the idea that proving 'God' is very difficult. Einstein's idea of God was something akin to the mystery of the unknown in the universe. Hell, I believe in that God. Disproving that concept of God is impossible. Yet the more specific we get in terms of describing the traits/characteristics of this divine entity, the more realistic it becomes to disprove it.
I believe the universe is just matter. I see no reason to infer the supernatural - except to explain things which we don't have answers for yet. However, an argument from ignorance has never been my idea of a strong stance. When it comes to the Christian God of the Bible, though, I believe such a being can be disproven because of its characteristics: all-powerful, all-knowing; all-good.
www.proofthatgodexists.org
I was directed to this website a few months ago, and I quickly came to the conclusion that it was ridiculous. I had forgotten about it until I had the good fortune of coming across an excellent blog called The Set of All Things Not Identical to Themselves.
I found a blog entry describing the author's experience at the website, and his critique of it. The author of the site then responded. Now I feel compelled to offer my own criticism of the website, as I feel it is misleading.
False Dilemmas
A false dilemma usually takes the form of an 'either-or' statement. "Either you believe in God, or all morality is subjective opinion." Well, that's not true. The typical way of dealing with this sort of argument is to 'go between the horns' and point out counterexamples where it doesn't have to be one or the other.*
Of course, in the case of contradictions, a dilemma is valid. You can't go between the horns of 'Either I am holding a pen or I am not holding a pen.' Logically, either one or the other must be true. It becomes a fallacy when there is an excluded middle... 'Either there are elephants on Mars, or it is raining in Seattle today' happens to be my current favorite example.
Back to the Website
When you enter the site, your first choice is to select whether you believe in absolute truth, don't believe it, don't know, or don't care. The author is not careful at first to point out what he means, but he seems to mean 'X is either true or false for all people at all times,' and that X is the sort of statement that exists in the real world. So far, so good. "It is cold out" is not an absolute sort of truth, but "I am cold" is. So I click that I agree.
1. Laws of Logic Exist: True. Regardless of what we call them, our system of describing why 2+2=4 refers to actual phenomena.
2. Laws of Mathematics Exist: True... if redundant.
3. Laws of Science Exist: True. Here, however, it becomes important to consider what 'exist' means. Many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore exists about unicorns. From that, we cannot infer that unicorns exist. A law of science does not mandate how the universe operates. A law of science is a human idea that makes predictions and seeks to explain what we can observe about the universe. A law's existence does not necessitate the existence of its subject. For instance, I can reference a law that peasants are to be afforded no mercy when they steal from the royalty - but that doesn't mean that peasants and royalty exist (at this time). It is a valid point, however, to say that the phenomena described by laws of logic, mathematics and science exist, though. In this case, I will go for it.
PS, remember that this same consideration should be taken into account in the previous questions - what people have codified is irrelevant; its congruence with reality is what matters.
4. Absolute Moral Laws Exist: This question has issues on so many levels.
First, there is some equivocation on the word 'law.' Equivocation means the word or phrase can mean two different things as it is used in the argument.** A law of science is an invariable and universal fact about the physical universe. If matter behaves in a way that contradicts such a law, it disproves the law. Likewise, if numbers behave in a way that contradicts or violates mathematical or logical law, then we are wrong about the laws.
Are moral laws the same? Would the author state that a set of principles of right behavior exist in the universe, and all interactions of matter must conform to those laws - and that if matter violates those laws, we must reject and/or rewrite the laws? Well, no. There is no universally agreed-upon set of laws for right and wrong behavior (although we see globally, cross-culturally exhibited aversions to some types of behavior in, perhaps, a majority of cultures).
So the author is using the word 'law' differently in this question. In fact, he seems to be using it more in the sense of government. A law, in this sense, governs how an individual or group is to behave in a community, and is established by some authority. Presumably, given the premise of the website, the author is referring to a law established by the authority of God to rule over the community of humankind.
Second, we're back to the idea of 'existence.' Can we observe this sort of moral law? That is, a code of right and wrong established in communities by forms of authority? Sure! But they're not absolute. The 'moral foundation' of the law for adults not to sexually trifle with 14 year olds in our nation is not something people in other places and cultures are expected to abide by.
On the surface, such a question doesn't usually demand much thought. That's why the questions about laws of logic, math and science were asked first - the reader becomes settled in the rut of thinking that somehow a moral law is the same as these other, more obvious, laws.
So what if you select the right answer? What if you click 'No?'
You're presented with a dilemma:
"Either molesting children for fun is absolutely morally wrong, or it could be right."
The problem here is introducing a motive. Motive plays a huge role in discerning moral culpability. If there's a difference between killing and murder, it lies in the motive of the person taking the life of the other. Essentially what this site is doing, though, is presenting you with a false dilemma. "Either molesting children for fun is potentially good behavior, or there's an absolute moral law." That is not a necessary conclusion to come to. It could be the case that molesting children for fun is terrible behavior to all people, at all times, AND that there is no absolute moral law. In fact, that is the conclusion that I hold at this website (if you read my second post, you may understand why).
So imagine I pose this question to the author:
"Either killing is ALWAYS a morally disgusting thing to do, or NO absolute moral laws exist."
I imagine he'd protest. He'd say, "No, sometimes killing is necessary - even God does it. That doesn't mean that no absolute moral laws exist."
Exactly. Motive is necessary to determine whether an action is right or wrong behavior. Had the question excluded the phrase 'for fun,' the answer would obviously be yes: it could be right to molest a child. If an alien race invades and says 'either you molest this child, or we molest everybody,' then the right thing to do is undoubtedly to molest the child. At the same time, the desire to molest children for fun is evil. These concepts are not contradictory, and thus, though cleverly concealed, the question poses a false dilemma.
Finally, this part of the website is very obviously, and self-admittedly, an appeal to emotion. While an important aspect of persuasion in many cases, and not necessarily a logical fallacy, there are still responsible and irresponsible ways to appeal to emotion.
I'm tempted at this point to simply exit the site. However, I will tell an untruth just to keep moving.
5. Laws of Logic, Mathematics, Science and Absolute Morality are Immaterial: True. In the sense that the website author presents the case, something material is able to be touched, seen, smelled, heard and/or tasted. I should add that most of the spectrum of light does not fall into this category. Atoms, likewise, are not seen so much as the effects they make are observed. Gravity, likewise, is 'immaterial.'
Apparently, it is a futile attempt to "find an abstract entity in nature." Since I can't find the physical number 3, it is immaterial. Ok, I can agree to this (but I thought I should elaborate before continuing).
6. Laws of Logic, Mathematics, Science and Absolute Morality are Universal: True. As far as we know (and this seems to be a safe belief), our understanding of logic, mathematics, and science are universal. Likewise, standards of right and wrong behavior that are universal can be argued (as I maintain in this blog).
7. Laws of Logic, Mathematics, Science and Absolute Morality are Unchanging: True. Our understanding of them (the actual laws, which are a codification) changes, but the phenomena we seek to describe using them does not.
Ooh, the quick jab from the right, the hard hit from the left!
8. The Proof that God Exists: Without Him, you couldn't prove anything.
Yep, it's just stated like that. The bulk of the questions simply reaffirm that there is a uniformity to the universe. Great. What I'd be interested in hearing is how exactly this isn't circular reasoning.
Begging the question, for those unfamiliar with the concept, involves assuming your premise to prove your conclusion. In this case, check it out:
1. If there's no God, nothing can be proved.
2. We just proved something
3. Therefore, God exists.
Funny thing... mustn't the conclusion necessarily be true in order for (2) to be true? The answer is yes. If we assume premise 1, then we cannot state premise 2 until we've established conclusion 3. We're free to believe premise 2 is false until we're convinced of conclusion 3, so we can't use premise 2 to argue that conclusion, because the logic is circular and begs the question in point.
Ultimately
The sort of thinking behind this website is saddening. If the author makes an appearance here to respond, that would certainly be interesting, as I'd like to understand just how far he grasps the 'laws of logic' he referred to, ever so ironically, early in the website experience.
I found that the author has a blog website. I think I'll write him and leave this blog with the prominent quote on proofthatgodexists.org: "Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid." Let's see how the truth of this statement bears out.
*http://www.fallacyfiles.org/eitheror.html
**http://www.fallacyfiles.org/equivoqu.html
Which God?
Atheism can have a few meanings, but in general that meaning depends on to what it's referring. "A" means "without," and "theos" is, of course, "God." Theos is seen so differently around the world, though. Sometimes god is known by a different name, and other times by different characteristics. Many Christians feel that their God is different from Allah because of certain traits - a triune nature, omni-benevolence, the trait of 'heavenly Father-ness.' So when asked if they believe in a god of Allah's characteristics, the proper response is to say 'No, there is no such god. The universe is without (A) such a being (theos).'
Nearly every Christian in America, likewise, does not believe that the God of the Westboro Baptist Church exists. Such a God exhibits the characteristic of hating people - most people, in fact. When asked about their belief in such a god's existence, most Christians' proper response is 'No, there is no such god. I am an atheist in that regard.'
More commonly, atheists describe themselves as people who simply do not believe in any gods because no compelling evidence can be provided in support of such a claim. This is probably best described as a materialist or secularist outlook. The premise that 'all is matter' is sufficient until proof is provided by those on whom the burden rests - those claiming that a 'super-natural' aspect to the universe is real. Along with the burden of proof, such people also strive against the principle of Occam's Razor, which suggests that when given two alternative explanations to a phenomenon or phenomena, the simpler is to be preferred. Clearly, when a natural explanation for the universe is plausible and well-evidenced, it makes no sense to propose the infinitely complicating factor of the supernatural.
All of this to lead to the idea that proving 'God' is very difficult. Einstein's idea of God was something akin to the mystery of the unknown in the universe. Hell, I believe in that God. Disproving that concept of God is impossible. Yet the more specific we get in terms of describing the traits/characteristics of this divine entity, the more realistic it becomes to disprove it.
I believe the universe is just matter. I see no reason to infer the supernatural - except to explain things which we don't have answers for yet. However, an argument from ignorance has never been my idea of a strong stance. When it comes to the Christian God of the Bible, though, I believe such a being can be disproven because of its characteristics: all-powerful, all-knowing; all-good.
www.proofthatgodexists.org
I was directed to this website a few months ago, and I quickly came to the conclusion that it was ridiculous. I had forgotten about it until I had the good fortune of coming across an excellent blog called The Set of All Things Not Identical to Themselves.
I found a blog entry describing the author's experience at the website, and his critique of it. The author of the site then responded. Now I feel compelled to offer my own criticism of the website, as I feel it is misleading.
False Dilemmas
A false dilemma usually takes the form of an 'either-or' statement. "Either you believe in God, or all morality is subjective opinion." Well, that's not true. The typical way of dealing with this sort of argument is to 'go between the horns' and point out counterexamples where it doesn't have to be one or the other.*
Of course, in the case of contradictions, a dilemma is valid. You can't go between the horns of 'Either I am holding a pen or I am not holding a pen.' Logically, either one or the other must be true. It becomes a fallacy when there is an excluded middle... 'Either there are elephants on Mars, or it is raining in Seattle today' happens to be my current favorite example.
Back to the Website
When you enter the site, your first choice is to select whether you believe in absolute truth, don't believe it, don't know, or don't care. The author is not careful at first to point out what he means, but he seems to mean 'X is either true or false for all people at all times,' and that X is the sort of statement that exists in the real world. So far, so good. "It is cold out" is not an absolute sort of truth, but "I am cold" is. So I click that I agree.
"The Bible teaches that the existence of God is so obvious that we are without excuse for denying it."Alright, let's see just how easy this is.
1. Laws of Logic Exist: True. Regardless of what we call them, our system of describing why 2+2=4 refers to actual phenomena.
2. Laws of Mathematics Exist: True... if redundant.
3. Laws of Science Exist: True. Here, however, it becomes important to consider what 'exist' means. Many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore exists about unicorns. From that, we cannot infer that unicorns exist. A law of science does not mandate how the universe operates. A law of science is a human idea that makes predictions and seeks to explain what we can observe about the universe. A law's existence does not necessitate the existence of its subject. For instance, I can reference a law that peasants are to be afforded no mercy when they steal from the royalty - but that doesn't mean that peasants and royalty exist (at this time). It is a valid point, however, to say that the phenomena described by laws of logic, mathematics and science exist, though. In this case, I will go for it.
PS, remember that this same consideration should be taken into account in the previous questions - what people have codified is irrelevant; its congruence with reality is what matters.
4. Absolute Moral Laws Exist: This question has issues on so many levels.
First, there is some equivocation on the word 'law.' Equivocation means the word or phrase can mean two different things as it is used in the argument.** A law of science is an invariable and universal fact about the physical universe. If matter behaves in a way that contradicts such a law, it disproves the law. Likewise, if numbers behave in a way that contradicts or violates mathematical or logical law, then we are wrong about the laws.
Are moral laws the same? Would the author state that a set of principles of right behavior exist in the universe, and all interactions of matter must conform to those laws - and that if matter violates those laws, we must reject and/or rewrite the laws? Well, no. There is no universally agreed-upon set of laws for right and wrong behavior (although we see globally, cross-culturally exhibited aversions to some types of behavior in, perhaps, a majority of cultures).
So the author is using the word 'law' differently in this question. In fact, he seems to be using it more in the sense of government. A law, in this sense, governs how an individual or group is to behave in a community, and is established by some authority. Presumably, given the premise of the website, the author is referring to a law established by the authority of God to rule over the community of humankind.
Second, we're back to the idea of 'existence.' Can we observe this sort of moral law? That is, a code of right and wrong established in communities by forms of authority? Sure! But they're not absolute. The 'moral foundation' of the law for adults not to sexually trifle with 14 year olds in our nation is not something people in other places and cultures are expected to abide by.
On the surface, such a question doesn't usually demand much thought. That's why the questions about laws of logic, math and science were asked first - the reader becomes settled in the rut of thinking that somehow a moral law is the same as these other, more obvious, laws.
So what if you select the right answer? What if you click 'No?'
You're presented with a dilemma:
"Either molesting children for fun is absolutely morally wrong, or it could be right."
The problem here is introducing a motive. Motive plays a huge role in discerning moral culpability. If there's a difference between killing and murder, it lies in the motive of the person taking the life of the other. Essentially what this site is doing, though, is presenting you with a false dilemma. "Either molesting children for fun is potentially good behavior, or there's an absolute moral law." That is not a necessary conclusion to come to. It could be the case that molesting children for fun is terrible behavior to all people, at all times, AND that there is no absolute moral law. In fact, that is the conclusion that I hold at this website (if you read my second post, you may understand why).
So imagine I pose this question to the author:
"Either killing is ALWAYS a morally disgusting thing to do, or NO absolute moral laws exist."
I imagine he'd protest. He'd say, "No, sometimes killing is necessary - even God does it. That doesn't mean that no absolute moral laws exist."
Exactly. Motive is necessary to determine whether an action is right or wrong behavior. Had the question excluded the phrase 'for fun,' the answer would obviously be yes: it could be right to molest a child. If an alien race invades and says 'either you molest this child, or we molest everybody,' then the right thing to do is undoubtedly to molest the child. At the same time, the desire to molest children for fun is evil. These concepts are not contradictory, and thus, though cleverly concealed, the question poses a false dilemma.
Finally, this part of the website is very obviously, and self-admittedly, an appeal to emotion. While an important aspect of persuasion in many cases, and not necessarily a logical fallacy, there are still responsible and irresponsible ways to appeal to emotion.
"I feel that the best test to determine whether or not you really believe that absolute moral laws exist, is not whether you feel that atrocities like rape and child molestation could be right somewhere in the universe, but whether they could ever be right if perpetrated against you or someone you love."I find this sort of thinking strange coming from someone who feels that morality is not dependent on individual feeling - yet he feels inclined to appeal to individual feeling to make his point. If what he is arguing is true, then an appeal to emotion and subjective feeling would be pointless - unless he were to make a further argument, such as that these absolute laws are ingrained in members of the human community just as societal laws become ingrained in members of a society. Yet, we find that this phenomena is not the case. It's a prediction of the Bible that all people have 'the law' written on their hearts, but this prediction is not substantiated in tests. Testing seems to confirm, as a matter of fact, that value judgments and emotional responses to situations depends largely on factors in people's upbringing.
I'm tempted at this point to simply exit the site. However, I will tell an untruth just to keep moving.
5. Laws of Logic, Mathematics, Science and Absolute Morality are Immaterial: True. In the sense that the website author presents the case, something material is able to be touched, seen, smelled, heard and/or tasted. I should add that most of the spectrum of light does not fall into this category. Atoms, likewise, are not seen so much as the effects they make are observed. Gravity, likewise, is 'immaterial.'
Apparently, it is a futile attempt to "find an abstract entity in nature." Since I can't find the physical number 3, it is immaterial. Ok, I can agree to this (but I thought I should elaborate before continuing).
6. Laws of Logic, Mathematics, Science and Absolute Morality are Universal: True. As far as we know (and this seems to be a safe belief), our understanding of logic, mathematics, and science are universal. Likewise, standards of right and wrong behavior that are universal can be argued (as I maintain in this blog).
7. Laws of Logic, Mathematics, Science and Absolute Morality are Unchanging: True. Our understanding of them (the actual laws, which are a codification) changes, but the phenomena we seek to describe using them does not.
Ooh, the quick jab from the right, the hard hit from the left!
"Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws cannot be accounted for if the universe was random or only material in nature."This is downright wrong. For one thing, nobody claims that the universe is random. For another thing, nobody claims that the universe is material in the way the author used the term material. This is yet another instance of equivocation. As the website puts it, material = corporeal. However, materialists don't (obviously) disbelieve in things like light, atoms and gravity just because they do not take a physical form. Of course, I'm probably straying far too close to the realm of quantum reality than I'm qualified to tread here, but these very real aspects of reality in no way rule out the claim that all that exists is the natural.
"Only in a universe governed by God can universal, immaterial, unchanging laws exist."Big question coming up: Why? Nah, let's be like the website author - let's leave that unexplained. We'll just state it and then not support it.
8. The Proof that God Exists: Without Him, you couldn't prove anything.
Yep, it's just stated like that. The bulk of the questions simply reaffirm that there is a uniformity to the universe. Great. What I'd be interested in hearing is how exactly this isn't circular reasoning.
Begging the question, for those unfamiliar with the concept, involves assuming your premise to prove your conclusion. In this case, check it out:
1. If there's no God, nothing can be proved.
2. We just proved something
3. Therefore, God exists.
Funny thing... mustn't the conclusion necessarily be true in order for (2) to be true? The answer is yes. If we assume premise 1, then we cannot state premise 2 until we've established conclusion 3. We're free to believe premise 2 is false until we're convinced of conclusion 3, so we can't use premise 2 to argue that conclusion, because the logic is circular and begs the question in point.
Ultimately
The sort of thinking behind this website is saddening. If the author makes an appearance here to respond, that would certainly be interesting, as I'd like to understand just how far he grasps the 'laws of logic' he referred to, ever so ironically, early in the website experience.
I found that the author has a blog website. I think I'll write him and leave this blog with the prominent quote on proofthatgodexists.org: "Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid." Let's see how the truth of this statement bears out.
*http://www.fallacyfiles.org/eitheror.html
**http://www.fallacyfiles.org/equivoqu.html
Friday, June 15, 2007
Desire Utilitarianism
This post is here to provide a groundwork for all future discussions of ethics on my blog. When I write about events/concepts, I will be applying the moral meaning theory of desire utilitarianism to evaluate the topic - to the best of my ability. If I happen to disagree with Alonzo Fyfe on the matter, rest assured that the proper application of the theory is his. Mine must be either insufficiently thought out, or born of a misunderstanding of my own.
I found this essay posted by a contributor on a new scratchpad Wiki for desire utilitarianism:
[http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Desire_Utilitarianism]
I think it gives a concise but thorough description of the theory (complete with original curvy font and formatting). If you'd like further explanation, just ask me.
Desire Utilitarianism
By Richard Chappell (Summarising the moral theory developed by Alonzo Fyfe) [2004]
Overview:
- The focus of moral judgements should concern an agent's desires, rather than his actions.
- Desires are persistent entities.
- Value derives from desire-fulfillment. (There is no value without a valuer.)
- Morality is about maximising value (and hence desire-fulfillment), universally.
- Hence, a good desire is one that will tend to fulfill desires generally, regardless of whose they are. A bad desire is one that will tend to thwart desires generally.
- Morality is subjective in the sense that it depends on minds ('valuers') generally, but it is nevertheless objective from the perspective of any individual.
- An act can be judged on its consistency with how a person with good desires (see definition above) would behave in that situation.
- The Is/Ought gap can be bridged, by noting the general form of the hypothetical imperative: "If you want Y, you ought to do X", is another way of saying "Doing X is such to fulfill the desires in question" (where the desires in question are 'Y'). To extend this to morality, note that the 'desires in question' are all desires, regardless of who has them.
Focus on Desires - BDI Theory
Why focus on desires rather than actions? Because no action occurs in isolation. Instead, they are caused by the beliefs & desires of the agent. This idea is formalised in today's most widely accepted view of human psychology, BDI Theory. To quote Alonzo Fyfe:
(Beliefs + Desires) -> Intention -> Action
It is important to understand that beliefs and desires are both propositional attitudes. That is to say, they express a mental attitude towards a proposition. Furthermore, a proposition is the meaning component of a sentence. "I am eating chocolate cake" and "Alonzo is eating chocolate cake" are two different sentences that happen to express the same proposition (given that I am the Alonzo referred to in the second sentence).
"Agent believes that P" states that Agent has the mental attitude that the proposition P is true.
"Agent desires that P" states that Agent has the mental attitude that the proposition P is to be made or kept true.
BDI theory states that the intentional component of intentional actions (the only type of action we can be held morally accountable for) is strictly determined by our beliefs and desires. If I desire some chocolate cake, and believe that I still have some chocolate cake left over from the birthday party, I form the intention to go downstairs and get the cake, which (barring physical injury) causes the muscle contractions associated with walking downstairs, cutting a piece of cake, and bringing it back up to my computer.
If I do not go downstairs and get a piece of cake, this is because the description of my beliefs and desires is either mistaken or incomplete. Perhaps I do not believe that there is a chocolate cake in the kitchen. Or perhaps I have an aversion to gaining weight that is stronger than my desire for chocolate cake. Either way, the intentional component of my behavior is to be explained in terms of my beliefs and desires.
BDI theory says that we always act to maximize fulfillment of our desires (given our beliefs), but allows that we can have a mix of self-regarding and other-regarding desires. A 'desire that my child is healthy and happy' is as possible as a 'desire that I am having sex with Jenny'. Self-sacrifice springs from our other-regarding desires. An parent's act of sacrifice to benefit his child springs from the agent's desire that P, where P = 'my child is healthy and happy', and the desire that P is a motivating reason to make it the case that P either becomes or remains true. There are times when an agent's other-regarding desires can override all self-regarding desires.
People can even have other-thing-regarding desires such as a desire that a piece of artwork or a historic document be preserved, or a desire to learn some secret of the universe. These are not always done for personal credit.
Yet, in all cases, it is always our own desires that fully govern our actions.
Note the technical definitions used in regard to desires: they are fulfilled if the proposition P is in fact true, and thwarted if the proposition is in fact false. On the other hand, desires are satisfied if the agent believes P is true (regardless of the truth of the matter), and frustrated otherwise. Simple thought experiments demonstrate that people seek desire fulfillment, not mere desire satisfaction (though they may desire the pleasant feeling too, it is a separate desire which may itself be fulfilled).
Desires as Persistent Entities
Our desires remain relatively constant over time (though of course they are subject to change, and some are more long-lived than others). As Alonzo put it: They are not the type of thing that springs forth at a whim to be tucked back into their corner when it is convenient to do so. Every desire weighs on us constantly, and if it is there, its effects will not be confined to this one act alone. This simple fact allows us to overcome the common objections to utilitarianism - for what the usual examples have in common, is that they describe rare scenarios in which (taken in isolation) acting according to bad desires would seem to have the best consequences (e.g. killing an innocent person to appease a rioting mob). However, real life does not occur "in isolation". For someone to have a desire set which allows them to kill innocent people in one scenario, would invariably compromise their behaviour generally.
In this respect, Desire Utilitarianism is similar to Rule Utilitarianism, except that it recognises that the rules are (in a sense) compulsory - wired into the human brain, in the form of "desires". To behave according to Act Utilitarianism is a psychological impossibility, and therefore (because 'ought' implies 'can') it is not the case that we ought to behave according to Act Utilitarianism.
Note also that desires persist even when they are overpowered by other desires. Alonzo Fyfe discusses the example of a man whose bee-allergic son gets stung and will die if he doesn't get treatment fast enough. The father then steals a car in order to drive his son to the hospital in time. He should have an aversion to stealing, but it is overpowered by his desire to save his son. However, that doesn't negate the aversion to stealing - the resistance is still there (like opposing forces in a physics vector), and this will cause the father to return the car and compensate the owner for any inconvenience caused.
Explaining Value
There is no value without a valuer; no intrinsic value in the universe - no 'goodons' and 'badons' to complement protons and electrons. Fortunately, however, there are valuers (us!), so it is possible for objects or states of affairs to be assigned subjective value.
Value is a relationship between an object (or state of affairs) and a specific set of desires.
There are 4 dimensions to all value statements:
(1) A class of objects to be evaluated.
(2) A set of desires to evaluate them against.
(3) Whether the relationship between them is direct ("pleasing") or indirect ("useful").
(4) Whether the object to be evaluated thwarts ("bad") or fulfills ("good") the desires.
As an example, the value tasty evaluates objects put in ones mouth against the desires of the individual doing the tasting. The relationship is a direct one (compare to the value nutritious, which would answer 'indirect' to this question instead), and the desires in question are fulfilled (i.e. it tastes "good").
As Alonzo points out, every value statement follows this same pattern, and moral value is no different:
1) What is being evaluated? Desires themselves. A virtue is nothing more or less than a good desire.
2) What desires are relevant in determining whether a desire is a virtue? All other desires, actually, regardless of who has them. Honesty tends to fulfill other desires. So does compassion.
3) Which types of relationships are relevant? Both direct and indirect relationships are used in determining if a desire is to count as a virtue. Honesty is good not only because an honest person is a wonder to behold, but honesty is generally useful to people generally.
4) It counts as a part of this that a virtue must fulfill desires.
Universality
You may be wondering about the second dimension of moral value as described above - why are all other desires relevant? I think the best answer is simply that there aren't any plausible alternatives, especially when you consider how people talk about "morality". For example, to consider only your own desires, would be called "selfish", not "moral".
To draw a line demarcating those whose desires are relevant to moral consideration from those who are irrelevant would seem unacceptably arbitrary. Likewise, it would be arbitrary to weigh the values of any person or group as being of greater inherent worth than some other person or group.
Which leads us to the intuitively pleasing conclusion that morality is about maximising value universally - that is, a good desire is one that will tend to fulfill other desires generally. Honesty, compassion, and an aversion to killing, are all examples of 'good' desires. Bad desires (e.g. a desire to burn pagans at the stake) have a tendency to thwart other desires generally.
Note that this universality prevents morality from degrading into a relativistic or purely-subjective farce. Because morality is essentially about asking what is "good for everyone", the answer does not depend upon individual beliefs or preferences - it is objective in this sense. It is subjective in the sense that value is relative to desires generally - there is no "absolute" (or "intrinsic") value. Alonzo Fyfe dryly refers to this as objective moral relativism. The concept of "location" serves as an illustrative analogy - any location must always be given relative to some other location (e.g. "the keys are on the table"), yet statements about relative locations can still be objectively true or false.
Judging acts
When a person asks, "What, morally, should I do in this case?", the best interpretation one can give to this question is, "What would a person with good desires do in this case?" Where a 'good desire' is a desire that, if universal, would be such as bring about the greatest fulfillment of all the desires without regard to whose they are.
Acts can be moral, permissible, or immoral, depending on whether a person with good desires would act that way, have no preference, or condemn the action (respectively).
Universality revisited
Here I temporarily depart from Alonzo's theory, and instead elaborate it somewhat with my own ideas. While I fully agree with everything in the Universality section, there is a different sense of universality, that which is described in the Judging acts section, where Alonzo states that "a 'good desire' is a desire that, if universal..." It is that "if universal" bit that I disagree with.
As the theory stands, all 'good' desires are moral duties. They are desires that everyone should have, and so anyone who lacks it may be judged as morally deficient in that respect. However, this leaves no room for supererogation - the concept of a 'good' which is voluntary, rather than a duty (e.g. giving to charity). It also fails to recognise the virtue of harmonious individual differences (e.g. that some people are mathematicians, whilst others are engineers). Currently, individual differences can only be identified as "permissible" (or maybe "bad"), never "good" in their own right, because of that if universal clause (after all, a universal desire to be a theoretical mathematician would result in a world where very few practical advances were achieved!).
My suggestion is to adopt a two-tier approach to morality:
1) Moral duties: this is the compulsory (and universal) side of morality, which is defined as Alonzo stated it: "a 'good desire' is a desire that, if universal, would be such as bring about the greatest fulfillment of all the desires without regard to whose they are."
2) Supererogation: this is the voluntary (and individual) aspect of morality, which could perhaps be defined as follows:
An 'individually-good desire' is a desire that, in that individual, would tend to fulfill desires generally.
This approach would, I believe, allow for greater subtlety and variety of moral thought. It acknowledges the moral worth of individual differences, and allows for a greater breadth of moral choice, rather than insisting that all moral 'goods' are also 'duties', and everything else is merely 'permissible'.
The Is/Ought gap
David Hume proposed that premises purely about how the world 'is' (fact) cannot yield conclusions about how it 'ought' to be (value), and that anyone who attempts to bridge the is/ought gap in such a way must explain how this is to be done.
Alonzo Fyfe responds as follows:
[B]eliefs and desires follow the same pattern. Recall, beliefs + desires yield intentions, which in turn yield actions. One can stack as many beliefs as one wants into a human brain, yet no action is implied about these beliefs. It is like sticking data into a database, no set of data implies that the database should do something. Yet, the instant you add even a single desire to this set, there is a reason to do something. The agent still might not be able to do anything, but he has an understandable reason to do so.
The 'is' portion of the 'is/ought' distinction reflects the 'belief' part of the 'belief/desire' distinction. Correspondingly, the 'ought' portion of the 'is/ought' distinction reflects the 'desire' part of the 'belief/desire' distinction.
But desires are real. They exist in the real world and have influence over the physical movement of matter in the universe. Specifically, they have as their effects the muscle movements that make up human action. Desires -- the embodiment of 'ought' -- exist in the world of the 'is'.
If Agent wants to record that show that comes on in ten minutes, then Agent ought to get the video recorder ready. If Agent wants to graduate from college in four years, then Agent ought to buckle down and study. Once we add a desire to our list of premises, we get an ought conclusion. But the claim, "a desire that X exists" is an 'is' claim. As a premise, it is an 'is' premise. Yet, once added, it allows one to yield 'ought' conclusions.
To summarise: The Is/Ought gap can be bridged, by noting the general form of the hypothetical imperative: "If you want Y, then you ought to do X", is another way of saying "Doing X is such as to fulfill the desires in question" (where the desires in question are 'Y'). To extend this to morality, note that the 'desires in question' are all desires, regardless of who has them.
As Alonzo puts it: 'Ought', in this case, evaluates actions in terms of their ability to fulfill certain desires, either directly or indirectly. Every 'ought' claim, like every value claim, presupposes a set of desires, and asks about the fulfillment of those desires. Every 'ought' claim asks about an 'is' relationship.
References:
Alonzo Fyfe's writings can be found online at the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards. Of particular use to me in compiling this summary:
His formal debate Is Morality Objective? <http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59835>
The Infidel thread on Utilitarianism <http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70296>
His 26-chapter series, Ethics Without God: A Personal Journey <http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46876>
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