Why the rationalist argument for morality is insufficient
I posted this
comment at
Gucci Little Piggy:
I just came upon this discussion, ten days late.
I really like Silas’s point. He writes:
You suggest that I shouldn’t kill because I don’t want to be killed, but this really doesn’t solve the dilemma at all. If I kill another human being, you cannot say that I have done something wrong, unless you have a standard for what defines wrong. And, I am in no danger of being killed myself unless people both know about my crime, and are willing to kill me out of fear of me killing others.
The only moral rule you can really get is: Don’t get caught killing someone, if you are afraid of how others will retaliate. As you can see, that is more of a utilitarian rule than a moral principle, since it still never addresses the issue of right or wrong.
I think this is correct. Simple rational self-interest is not enough to tell us not to commit murder and other crimes, because it depends on other people knowing that we have killed. The real test of morality is, what would you do if you had the certainty that you could not be caught? As Plato put it, what would you do if you were invisible? Pure rational self-interest would not prevent us from committing crimes against others in that circumstance.
Something more than pure rationality or utilitarianism is needed, namely, the knowledge that certain things are inherently wrong. And such knowledge cannot arise from a materialist view of existence.
September 28
Chuck Ross of Gucci Little Piggy writes:
I can’t go on with this discussion without you answering a few questions for me. This thing has developed too many offshoots to stay focused. So, if you would oblige me, please answer some of the following questions. I’m interested in your viewpoint because—even though I don’t agree with you—I’ve realized through reading more of your blog that you are a very principled thinker. That’s worth something in my eyes.
1.) Which moral code do you subscribe to?
2.) What makes this code absolute?
3.) How do you know that the maker of the code is absolute?
4.) If the code-maker can’t be known to be absolute, how is the code itself absolute?
5.) If various moral codes have appeared throughout history (i.e. ancient Greeks, Israelites, Christians), how can we ever be sure of an absolute code?
6.) If God created man, your argument holds, but what happens if Man created god? If Man created god, god and his various written codes are just recordings of pragmatism gleaned from our evolved natures of aversion to harming others, guilt, pity, empathy, etc.
7.) I feel that your argument that Darwinism is materialist-reductionist implies that Darwinists *cannot* be conservative. I understand your argument, but if Darwinsim is correct (and more evidence than not supports it over theism) does that imply that conservatism *can’t* exist?
Final question:
8.) If it was somehow determined that God did *not* exist, would you still advocate for belief in Him (assuming the masses would hold onto their belief despite the new knowledge) in order to maintain the moral authority?
LA replies:
Quite an order, Chuck, but I will try to comply. I may not be able to for a couple of days, however.
In the meantime, readers who are inclined to, can try to come up with their own answers to Chuek’s questions.
By the way, I have no idea what the name of Chuck’s blog means, but I like it.
Kristor writes:
Well! Rather than trying to answer this ourselves, perhaps it would be more economical simply to refer Chuck to Aquinas.
That said, I’m interested in answering these questions, because I know I’ll learn a lot in doing so, but it will be a couple days before I can get to it either.
Roger Donway writes:
This comment relates to your discussion of morality and the ring of Gyges, which conferred invisibility and allowed its owner to do what he wanted without being discovered.
Man is a social animal (a rational animal who lives in a polis). Therefore, the standard of his morality is that which is required for “living together” (flourishing as an individual but doing it together with other humans are doing the same). Given those circumstances, I think, a secular Aristotelian can derive most of the ordinary ethical rules for human behavior. But if you require that the ordinary rules of human morality must persist in a metaphysical condition that can never be encountered in human life (what if my behavior were invisible?), then indeed rational self-interest cannot produce the ordinary rules of morality. But what is the justification for holding morality to a metaphysically impossible standard?
LA replies:
You’re making an intriguing point, that the belief in “living together as rational men in society” is a sufficient standard of morality. But what is it that makes us feel that we are truly co-members of one society? Pure secular reason—secular reason which always devolves reality down to its parts and does not see the whole—cannot do it.
You speak of secular Aristotolianism. That’s a notion Aristotle himself would have found strange. As Eric Voegelin demonstrates (for example, in his essay “Reason: The Classic Experience”), Aristotle was part of a philosophical tradition starting with the pre-Socratics in which the word we translate as “reason”—nous—was a way of expressing a vision of being and of the true order of man’s nature, and thus the true order of society. Nous was for the philosophers what we would call a “spiritual” apprehension. The logos—logic—was the way of articulating the contents of this vision. Nous apprehended the vision itself. Reason for Aristotle was much more than what we mean by scientific or secular reason.
Yes, Aristotle was more “secular” than Plato. He did not define the Good as a disembodied, transcendent being. His standard of the good was the spoudaios, the wise or mature man. But what is it that motivates the spoudaios? It is the vision of the correct ordering and functioning of the parts of man’s being, in which man’s natural capacities reach their fulfillment, both on the individual and the social level. But that vision of man’s nature and its fulfillment is not the work of secular reason. It is the work of noetic reason—the intuitive aspect of rationality by which we perceive first principles.
Clearly Aristotle’s idea of goodness cannot be reduced to a rational/utilitarian calculus of what people need to do in order to get along together.
On another issue you raise, we don’t need to posit an actual ring of invisibility to see the validity of Plato’s point. People act all the time as though their behavior will not be discovered. If you don’t believe me, watch a few episodes of Snapped or Forensic Files on cable TV. Perfectly ordinary-seeming, middle-class people murder their spouses for self-gain because they think they can get away with it—because they think their acts will be invisible.
Sage McLaughlin replies to Chuck Ross’s questions:
1. Which moral code do you subscribe to?
The natural moral law, which is God’s will for us. It is the moral law revealed both by reason and by revelation. In short, that law which is the will of the God of Abraham.
2. What makes this code absolute?
That it corresponds to a part of God’s nature, who is Himself transcendent and absolute.
3. How do you know that the maker of the code is absolute?
I fail to understand the question. Does Chuck suggest that a “non-absolute” being is conceivable? What could that even mean? I need to know what he means by “absolute.” If the question is whether I believe God to be somehow “relative” rather than absolute, then I think he’s asking a nonsense question, like whether I believe the color red to be absolutely itself. What else could it be? I do believe that God’s existence is not contingent, if that’s what he’s after. It may not satisfy him, but one answer to Chuck’s question is that God has told us so. A more satisfactory answer may be a resort to basic metaphysics, that the cause of a thing, like a transcendent or absolute moral law, must be equal or greater in essence to it. (This is part of the reason I believe Darwinism is metaphysically impossible, because it claims to give a strictly material cause for the origin of immaterial consciousness.)
4. If the code-maker can’t be known to be absolute, how is the code itself absolute?
I think my answer to this should be obvious, that if God cannot be known to be absolute, then of course no moral code is possible. (And I do mean no code, because a moral code which is not absolute is not, rightly speaking, a moral code at all.)
5. If various moral codes have appeared throughout history (i.e. ancient Greeks, Israelites, Christians), how can we ever be sure of an absolute code?
First because, as I said just now, I reject the very possibility of an actual moral code which is not absolute—a “relative” or “contingent” morality is a contradiction in terms. Second, because there is no necessary connection between the law and our perception or opinions of it. The question hearkens to what is the single weakest argument against absolute morality, that is, that human beings disagree about it. It assumes the thing in question because it only has bite if we assume no distinction between the moral law and our opinions about the moral law. It posits subjectivism as both premise and conclusion. More than this, the different moral codes usually cited don’t actually disagree fundamentally on most of the big questions. No “transvaluation of values” has ever occurred in all human history, and in no society has cowardice been a virtue. This substantive lack of diversity is actually strong evidence that morality is not simply a matter of time and place.
6. If God created man, your argument holds, but what happens if Man created god? If Man created god, god and his various written codes are just recordings of pragmatism gleaned from our evolved natures of aversion to harming others, guilt, pity, empathy, etc.
I see nothing in your conclusion here especially worth quibbling with. If man simply invented God and His law, then it is not binding, and is not a real moral law at all. Our feelings about the moral law would not correspond to any actually existing, transcendent law. Unfortunately, the result of such a conclusion is not liberation, but rather the doctrine that might makes right, because it makes impossible any actual reasoned argument about what the moral law demands (since such arguments would be reducible to reports about what we feel, and appeals to universal rules of reason cannot avail to settle mere differences in taste. It would amount to two people arguing over whether reason demanded that vanilla rather than chocolate was best.)
7. I feel that your argument that Darwinism is materialist-reductionist implies that Darwinists cannot be conservative. I understand your argument, but if Darwinism is correct (and more evidence than not supports it over theism) does that imply that conservatism can’t exist?
Conservatism could exist as a social-behavioral phenomenon, but it would be meaningless prattle.
8. If it was somehow determined that God did not exist, would you still advocate for belief in Him (assuming the masses would hold onto their belief despite the new knowledge) in order to maintain the moral authority?
I can’t imagine why I would bother advocating for the existence of a God I did not believe existed. I take your contextual additions to mean that there could be some pragmatic grounds for doing so—maybe I think the world would be easier for me, or something like that, if everyone believed in God. Even if I thought that, I couldn’t do it with any logical consistency. And I sure can’t imagine I’d want to argue for something that “the masses” already knew for a conclusive fact was untrue. I’m not a Stalinist.
These are short and probably quite inadequate responses, but I had only a few moments to devote and anyway, I like responding to lists.
Kristor writes:
Regarding your exchange with Roger Donway on whether the standard of morality can be that which is required for “living together”:
What is it that makes it right or good to behave in such a way as to promote our mutual flourishing in the polis? The flourishing itself has to be really and factually good, good absolutely, or else behaving in such a way as to promote is neither here nor there.
Secularists of various kinds—secular Aristotelians, atheist HBD’ers—want to be able to say something like, “the good is that which promotes our living.” That’s fine as far as it goes. But what is the good of living? Why should we promote it? Yes, to be sure, living is inherently enjoyable. But why does that matter, in moral terms? If there be nothing more to the good of living than our personal enjoyments, then there is no higher morality than our personal appetites. “I ought” then collapses to “I want,” and there is nothing really wrong with my using others merely as instruments of my own wish fulfillment.
For morality to make sense, it must refer to a set of goods that are intersubjectively valid, rather than merely valid for me or for you. This is why the Ring of Gyges thought experiment is indicative. If the only thing restraining you is the fear of what might happen to you if you got caught, then you are not being moral—you are not governing yourself according to an idea of what is right—but rather are governed only by your appetites.
The bottom line is that unless the Good is a basic feature of reality, all talk of morality is meaningless noise. If the Good is not out there as an object of apprehension for our moral sense, then all “apprehensions” of the good are really only illusions, and discussion of such apprehensions is like talk about square circles.
I’ve just realized I’m in danger of beginning to replicate the excellent discussion of this point that occurred in another thread at VFR.
LA replies:
Here is your first paragraph:
What is it that makes it right or good to behave in such a way as to promote our mutual flourishing in the polis? The flourishing itself has to be really and factually good, good absolutely, or else behaving in such a way as to promote is neither here nor there.
After I read this, I thought I’d play the Devil’s Advocate and I wrote:
But what if the other side says: “We know that living in a well-functioning polis simply feels better than not living in one. So we don’t have to know about any absolute good in order to organize a good society.”
But then I read your second paragraph:
But what is the good of living? Why should we promote it? Yes, to be sure, living is inherently enjoyable. But why does that matter, in moral terms? If there be nothing more to the good of living than our personal enjoyments, then there is no higher morality than our personal appetites. “I ought” then collapses to “I want,” and there is nothing really wrong with my using others merely as instruments of my own wish fulfillment.
And that answered my question. If the good is simply identical to what feels good, then it’s identical to “what I desire.” And if it’s identical to what I desire, then all desires become equally good. And if all desires become equally good, then the good of the polis becomes just one good jostling with innumerable others in a multicultural, Brownian motion of goods, and we’re back we’re we started, in suicidal liberal society.
Roger Donway replies:
Thanks very much for replying. I need to think over what you say. My guides to Aristotle are Ross and Randall. I don’t own Voegelin’s works.
My problem in reading traditionalists lies always in trying to integrate what they say with what I presume I know. In the present instance, I am not sure that I can introspectively identify something matching your description of nous.
And this inability to “translate” traditionalism into terms I can understand is an issue that recurs often for me. (Believe me, I am trying most urgently!) For example, I am currently reading Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition. I am trying to follow his exposition of Aristotelian and Thomistic concepts, somewhat successfully I think (philosophy was my major in college). At the same time, however, I am asking myself: How could I employ this Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical framework, and its notions of causation, to elucidate exactly what was so revolutionary about the discoveries of Galileo, to explain why they revolutionized science itself? More important: Why isn’t Feser showing me how to do this? That is the kind of work that I find myself striving to do, in amateur fashion, and without much assistance from traditionalist professionals.
(Sorry to complain. I am feeling a bit beleaguered in my attempt to understand traditionalism.)
LA replies:
I understand, and perhaps in my previous explanation I made nous sound like something far away and abstruse, whereas in fact it’s something very close to us, it’s something we are using all the time.
Here is the easiest way to approach it.
Read C.S. Lewis’s short (100 small pages) and easy to read classic, The Abolition of Man (it’s an order of magnitude easier than Edward Feser, I can assure you). Lewis explains in simple, direct language how there are objectively true values that we simply know to be true, without any “empirical” or scientific reasoning process. For example, it is the nature of a small child to be lovable. We simply, intuitively know this to be true. Also, we don’t have the response we have to a small child because we personally happen to like children. Rather, it is an objective quality in the child itself that draws that response from us. True, not everyone has this response to children, but most people do, and the people who don’t, it’s because of a deficiency in their nature.
Or consider the dog. Dogs have an inherent nobility. This nobility is inherent in the dog’s nature. Most people (though not Muslims, but they have an evil religion which tells them to hate dogs) recognize and appreciate this quality of dogs. It moves them and touches them.
And what is it that tells us that there is something inherently lovable in the child, and something inherently noble in the dog? It is nous, noesis, that intuitive aspect of rationality by which we apprehend first principles. We don’t know it through a reasoning, discursive process, we know it intuitively, by an immediate apprehension.
Now let’s consider Aristotle. A key idea of the Nichomachean Ethics is that each virtue has its mean, which is good, and its excess and its deficiency, which are bad. Courage, in the right amount, is good. An excess of courage is foolhardiness and recklessness, which is bad. A deficiency of courage is cowardice, which is also bad.
Now on the surface, this system sounds very rational, in a secular, almost scientific or medical sense. But, when you think about it, before Aristotle got to the point of logically expanding and applying his ideas, how did he know that there was such a thing as the inherent goodness of courage in the first place? He knew it directly, through his intuitive, noetic reason, not discursively, though his logical reason. He used his logical reason to articulate and explain the insights that came to him through his noetic reason.
Earlier I said that noetic reason is not abstruse and far away, but close to us, something we are using all the time, and by “we” I mean not just philosophers or intellectuals, but all human beings. What I am saying is that every time in our lives that we perceive an objective value, we are perceiving it through the faculty of nous, that intuitive aspect of reason by which we apprehend first principles.
LA continues:
And the same is true when it comes to grasping the nature—the inherent structure—of things. For example, there is a male nature that is distinct from the female nature. Each of these natures is not just a matter of the primary and secondary sexual characteristics. It is an essence that informs the whole. Secular liberal reason cannot see this essence and denies its existence. It only sees the primary and secondary sexual characteristics, which, the secular liberal reason says (and on this point it’s in agreement with the right-wing secularists), came into existence as a contingent product of random mutations and natural selection, not as the expression of an inherent nature. Reducing human beings to their parts, which it sees as functionally equal and interchangeable, this secular liberal reason says that if women can perform certain discrete military tasks as well as men, then there’s no reason why women should not be integrated with men in the military. Only in modern liberal society, where utilitarian reason plus non-discrimination have become the ruling principles, and our intuitive reason by which we perceive the inherent nature of things has been horribly suppressed, would such a perverted thing be done.
October 9
Mr. Ross’s reply to Sage McLaughlin was sent September 29 but by oversight is only being posted now.
Chuck Ross writes:
I’ll reply to Sage’s reply to my questions. After submitting this, I’ll wait for your (Mr. Auster) response before I go further. I’ll also add a bit of clarification to my questions as well as a clue to my train of thought here.
CR: 1. Which moral code do you subscribe to?
Sage: The natural moral law, which is God’s will for us. It is the moral law revealed both by reason and by revelation. In short, that law which is the will of the God of Abraham.
CR: Others suggested that I read Aquinas. I had before, but I brushed up on it, re-reading his “Five Arguments”. Even if we establish that there is a first-mover of some sort, it is unclear if that first-mover is cosmological, deistic, theistic etc.
CR: 2. What makes this code absolute?
Sage: That it corresponds to a part of God’s nature, who is Himself transcendent and absolute.
CR: If he is transcendent then how can we conceptualize his Code? What is the mechanism through which we are able to view it, know it, and act according to it? To me, if you resort to some sort of Mosaic story or Revelation, that relies too heavily on faith in historical record to be a plausible answer.
I am willing to accept that both theism and atheism rest on articles of faith. That being said, if faith enters the picture—dislocating reason—there can be no moral absolute *in the sense that traditionalist theists intend*. There is a moral framework entrenched deep in our highly evolved material brains, the synapses of which create something “bigger” than just remote mechanical firings. We act according to this moral framework in social interactions. Any attempt to explain the origins of this framework from a theistic viewpoint relies on post hoc circumspection.
CR: 3. How do you know that the maker of the code is absolute?
Sage: I fail to understand the question. Does Chuck suggest that a “non-absolute” being is conceivable? What could that even mean? I need to know what he means by “absolute.” If the question is whether I believe God to be somehow “relative” rather than absolute, then I think he’s asking a nonsense question, like whether I believe the color red to be absolutely itself. What else could it be? I do believe that God’s existence is not contingent, if that’s what he’s after. It may not satisfy him, but one answer to Chuck’s question is that God has told us so. A more satisfactory answer may be a resort to basic metaphysics, that the cause of a thing, like a transcendent or absolute moral law, must be equal or greater in essence to it. (This is part of the reason I believe Darwinism is metaphysically impossible, because it claims to give a strictly material cause for the origin of immaterial consciousness.)
CR: To answer Sage’s question “Does Chuck suggest that a “non-absolute” being is conceivable?” No. A being in and of itself is absolute.
But Sage misinterpreted my question (which I’ll accept as my fault). Her question to me should have been “Does Chuck suggest that a “non-absolute being” is conceivable?” (Notice the altered quotation marks). My answer changes to “Yes”. A “non-absolute being” is conceivable. Sam Spade from “The Maltese Falcon” is a “non-absolute being” who is only materially conceivable.
CR: 4. If the code-maker can’t be known to be absolute, how is the code itself absolute?
Sage: I think my answer to this should be obvious, that if God cannot be known to be absolute, then of course no moral code is possible. (And I do mean no code, because a moral code which is not absolute is not, rightly speaking, a moral code at all.)
CR: This proves my point. You want to operate on the assumption that God does exist making any argument over his existence futile. But there are very real possibilities that God does not exist (at least not a theistic God that imparts morality). If there was no transmission of morality—no revelation that can be concretely discerned—how can theists even argue that theirs is an absolute morality? My arguments aren’t that relativistic morality is good; contrary, the more concrete the better. I just argue that nobody has yet proved that there is a universal set of morals in the way that theists imply.
To make a crappy analogy, we don’t have concrete, we have to settle for asphalt which is better than gravel.
CR: 5. If various moral codes have appeared throughout history (i.e. ancient Greeks, Israelites, Christians), how can we ever be sure of an absolute code?
Sage: First because, as I said just now, I reject the very possibility of an actual moral code which is not absolute—a “relative” or “contingent” morality is a contradiction in terms. Second, because there is no necessary connection between the law and our perception or opinions of it. The question hearkens to what is the single weakest argument against absolute morality, that is, that human beings disagree about it. It assumes the thing in question because it only has bite if we assume no distinction between the moral law and our opinions about the moral law. It posits subjectivism as both premise and conclusion. More than this, the different moral codes usually cited don’t actually disagree fundamentally on most of the big questions. No “transvaluation of values” has ever occurred in all human history, and in no society has cowardice been a virtue. This substantive lack of diversity is actually strong evidence that morality is not simply a matter of time and place.
CR: I prefer the explanation that humans have *always* and *universally* developed post hoc arguments in favor of their belief systems. The evolution of religion and adherence to specific dogmatic belief systems are merely ways to explain what happened. As such, people will jump through any number of hoops and contort any number of rhetorical devices in order to legitimize their belief system. Don’t be diverted by my example (I don’t want to go into this topic), but Palestinians and Jews have developed their own post hoc arguments as to their sides’ “rightness” and the others’ “wrongness”.
So the points that humans develop post hoc arguments supporting their already-existing belief systems and the fact that God—the theistic one—has not been shown to exist in the absolute form undermines any argument for your type of universal morality.
CR: 6. If God created man, your argument holds, but what happens if Man created god? If Man created god, god and his various written codes are just recordings of pragmatism gleaned from our evolved natures of aversion to harming others, guilt, pity, empathy, etc.
Sage: I see nothing in your conclusion here especially worth quibbling with. If man simply invented God and His law, then it is not binding, and is not a real moral law at all. Our feelings about the moral law would not correspond to any actually existing, transcendent law. Unfortunately, the result of such a conclusion is not liberation, but rather the doctrine that might makes right, because it makes impossible any actual reasoned argument about what the moral law demands (since such arguments would be reducible to reports about what we feel, and appeals to universal rules of reason cannot avail to settle mere differences in taste. It would amount to two people arguing over whether reason demanded that vanilla rather than chocolate was best.)
CR: I had forgotten I asked this question, so I’m likely to repeat what I wrote above.
This is the thing that theistic absolutists are so afraid of: humans have to *think about* what’s right or wrong. I’m not talking about individually thinking through each situation and deciding what’s moral or immoral. For the most part—with socialization’s help as well—we know that we shouldn’t kill or steal. But from an overarching social aspect, we have to make sometimes pragmatic, sometimes utilitarian, sometimes authoritarian teachings and apply them to social policies and laws that dictate our codified morality. We have to *think through* rather than *already know* what’s right and wrong for a given situation. As I mentioned before, we have to perform a cost/benefit analysis. Sometimes this leads to incorrect conclusions. Classic liberalism—when it relied on utilitarianism—helped free blacks from something immoral—slavery. We could make a pragmatic case, based upon reason, for arguments against slavery. Now, as liberalism has devolved into socialism (which obviously doesn’t gel with human nature) our society is increasingly determining that liberalism is wrong. It is morally bankrupt from that standpoint because it barely accepts the fact that we have some sort of ingrained morality.
Unfortunately, and sadly for theists, we have to work a little harder to determine the rightness or wrongness of a thing.
CR: 7. I feel that your argument that Darwinism is materialist-reductionist implies that Darwinists cannot be conservative. I understand your argument, but if Darwinism is correct (and more evidence than not supports it over theism) does that imply that conservatism can’t exist?
Sage: Conservatism could exist as a social-behavioral phenomenon, but it would be meaningless prattle.
CR: I didn’t mean to say that conservatism *wouldn’t* exist. People believe in voodoo; so it exists. I meant to ask if conservatism could still be an intellectually honest endeavor.
CR: 8. If it was somehow determined that God did not exist, would you still advocate for belief in Him (assuming the masses would hold onto their belief despite the new knowledge) in order to maintain the moral authority?
Sage: I can’t imagine why I would bother advocating for the existence of a God I did not believe existed. I take your contextual additions to mean that there could be some pragmatic grounds for doing so—maybe I think the world would be easier for me, or something like that, if everyone believed in God. Even if I thought that, I couldn’t do it with any logical consistency. And I sure can’t imagine I’d want to argue for something that “the masses” already knew for a conclusive fact was untrue. I’m not a Stalinist.
CR: I’ve given up on trying to argue that we have a stricly absolute morality embedded in our natures. I would argue that we have very strongly ingrained aversions and preferences upon which we act that seemed to work for us this far. We have therefore carried on those traditions and behaviors. The trick now—from an HBD perspective—is to make it “OK” to favor one society over another. How can we honestly say that one society is better than another if there is no solid metric to measure it by? In this economic age—one replete with cost/benefit analysis and such—given that the world is a dynamic place with many moving parts, we may have to resign ourselves to relying on scientific measurement leading to pragmatic solutions based upon nearly-universally accepted moral systems to determine what works and what doesn’t. This allows us to say that a certain set of behaviors, policies, and laws has much more benefit—empirically shown—than do those behaviors, policies, and laws of another society.
So I’m beginning to reject the idea that we can say—from the outset—that a given society is “good” while another is “bad”. We don’t have that luxury. Fitting our scientific bent in the last few centuries, we have to resign ourself to experiment until we settle on an answer. At least we have the evolved checks and balances on our human behavior that resemble (and were the template for) theistic moral codes.
Ingemar P. writes:
Here is Mr. Ross’s rebuttal to Mr. MacLaughlin’s answer to his question about knowing which moral code is right when considering the multiplicity of codes—
I prefer the explanation that humans have always and universally developed post hoc arguments in favor of their belief systems. The evolution of religion and adherence to specific dogmatic belief systems are merely ways to explain what happened. As such, people will jump through any number of hoops and contort any number of rhetorical devices in order to legitimize their belief system. Don’t be diverted by my example (I don’t want to go into this topic), but Palestinians and Jews have developed their own post hoc arguments as to their sides” “rightness” and the others” “wrongness.”
His rebuttal betrays a problem held in common by many secularists/materialists: they are unwilling to direct their criticisms of various worldviews at their own worldview. Notice that he dismisses religion as a post hoc argument without considering that “the evolution of religion” might be one, too. He is getting at the idea that humans are hardwired to have “moral-like” beliefs, and this means that morality is not of an absolute, transcendent God. He doesn’t consider the possibility that God makes humans to have an inherent grasp of these truths, as suggested in Romans 1:20-21:
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
October 10
Kristor writes:
Chuck Ross is to be commended for his willingness to discuss these issues with theists. It betokens his intellectual maturity, and enterprise. The least I can do is honor him by responding. I’m just sorry it has taken me this long. Sage did a good job of answering his original questions, I thought, so I will respond instead to some of his objections to those answers. I address what seem to me to be his key arguments; I hope he will correct me if I have misconstrued or missed the point.
“Even if we establish that there is a first-mover of some sort, it is unclear if that first-mover is cosmological, deistic, theistic etc.”
But just as there has to be a first mover at the most basic ontological level, that of mere existence—i.e., there has to be a first thing if there are to be any things at all—so by the same token if there is to be anywhere a concrete instance of any property, x, there must first be a primordial concrete instance of x. If you have a situation of complete absence of x, you can never, ever get x out of that situation. NB that a situation that has only the potential of x is not a situation of a complete absence of x. The potentiality must first be a feature of concrete reality, in order to function as a real potentiality. For example, the potential tree must be already somehow present in the acorn as a feature of the acorn, and of the world that contains and involves that acorn. I.e., “treeness” must already be concretely expressed in the universe that contains and involves that acorn, in order for the acorn to become a tree, or to exist as an acorn in the first place.
So if there is consciousness or virtue or righteousness anywhere in our world, those things must have been concretely expressed in the primordial context that gave birth to our world.
Thus we know that all positive values we see instantiated in our world must have pre-existed the world as features of an a priori being. So we know that the ultimate origin of things, the First Mover, is also perfect in every respect. This means He is perfectly personal, conscious, wise, knowing, rational, loving, just, merciful, beautiful, powerful, and so forth.
“If there was no transmission of morality—no revelation that can be concretely discerned—how can theists even argue that theirs is an absolute morality?”
Absolute morality need not be a delivery of a historical divine revelation in order to be absolute, and absolutely binding. If there is an absolute moral law—and Sage is right that there is no other kind of moral law, that the terms “non-absolute moral law” and “relative moral law” are oxymorons—then it holds for all parts of reality, and every being that is capable of moral choice will feel its sway. Of particular interest to Mr. Ross, this would mean that the moral law is an environing factor of all living creatures. That being the case, it should hardly surprise us that a process of natural selection has tended to weed out those who ignore or contravene the natural moral law. Whitehead says, “the instability of evil is the morality of the universe.”
And, indeed, the monotheisms agree that there is a natural law, written on our hearts qua animal hearts, and binding on all men, and prior to any historical divine revelation. Indeed, they argue that the world itself is a revelation of the divine law. If this were not the case—if we were all born utterly blind to morality—then we would not even recognize a divine revelation of moral law when it came along. The divine revelation is intelligible only because we already had the law written on our hearts from the get go. The same thing goes for the training we receive as infants from our parents. If as infants we were not already alive to morality, alive to notions of good and bad, right and wrong, that training would appear to us as meaningless, unintelligible noise. It would be as if we were being trained to discriminate among colors that lie outside the visible spectrum.
“Humans have *always* and *universally* developed post hoc arguments in favor of their belief systems.”
If this argument is fatal to theism, it is just as fatal to Mr. Ross’s belief system, and to all others whatsoever. But it is not thus fatal. We could say, “the evolution of science and adherence to specific scientific theories are merely ways to explain what happened.” But clearly, the obvious truth of this statement says nothing about whether any particular scientific theory is correct, or whether the scientific method is reliable. Thought, and for that matter all cognitive activity whatsoever, are ipso facto attempts to understand experience. They are necessarily post hoc: if data processing is to occur, it must proceed on data. Beliefs are one output of such processes. This does not entail that they are false. Beliefs are themselves data for future cognitive work. They are subject to constant revision under pressure from changing circumstances, and there is advantage to be gained from the possession of generally true beliefs that will prove reliable under lots of different circumstances. So we spend a lot of time thinking about our conclusions, and arguing about them, and justifying them to each other. This doesn’t entail that they are false, either. Ideas are not false because of something we do or fail to do in respect to them, but because they disagree with reality.
“Sadly for theists, we have to work a little harder to determine the rightness or wrongness of a thing.”
Again, this argument, if deadly against theism, is deadly against all ideas. “Sadly for scientists, we have to work hard to determine the rightness or wrongness of a theory.” See? That we have to think about our theories about the laws of nature, and that our theories are imperfect, does not at all mean that there is no law of nature, or that it is bootless to try to understand it. Ditto for the moral law.
Theists posit that God is the original source of all order, whether physical or moral. This does not entail that any creature must perfectly know and instantiate that order. On the contrary, because all creatures are necessarily less perfect than God, theism insists that all creaturely knowledge of the divine order must be imperfect. The only theist who doesn’t need to work at understanding the divine order is God Himself.
“How can we honestly say that one society is better than another if there is no solid metric to measure it by? … I’m beginning to reject the idea that we can say … that a given society is ‘good’ while another is ‘bad’ … we have to resign ourself to experiment until we settle on an answer.”
If there is no solid metric to measure goodness, then there is no way to run such experiments. If we are to begin to think about our experimental results, we must have a mutually agreeable way of evaluating them. It’s no good to argue that we are built to value some things more than others, so that we know from our gut reactions whether a thing is good or not. If we all had the same gut reactions, this could work. But we don’t. That’s why we have the problem of determining the right way to run society in the first place; if we all naturally agreed about that, why then there would never be any disagreements between human beings, right?
I have a gut reaction of horror at the idea that apostasy from Islam should be punishable by death. Muslims don’t; their guts agree with the idea. Who is right? If there is no solid metric to measure goodness, there is simply no way to answer that question, and questions of goodness and badness are simply inapposite to reality. In that case, all it will ever be possible to say of moral feelings is, that they happen, meaninglessly.
The bottom line is this: if there is no solid metric to measure the goodness or badness of one society versus another—if, i.e., goodness and badness are not in fact features of reality—why are we even interested in taking that measurement? What “good” would it do us? How could that question even arise?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 27, 2009 06:42 PM | Send