Thursday, May 21, 2009

Poll Confirms It: The More Religious You Are, The More Immoral You Are

Here's a link to a fascinating poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

According to the results, 62% of white evangelical Protestants say torture against suspected terrorists can "often" or "sometimes" be justified. But only 40% of the "unaffiliated" agreed with that.

Among those who attend religious services at least weekly, 54% agreed that torture can "often" or "sometimes" be justified. But only 42% of those who "seldom" attend religious services agreed with that.

In other words, the more you are drenched with God-talk, the more you are likely to okay the abhorrent practice of torture.

The next time some theist rails about the immorality of atheists, point them to this poll.

61 comments:

Kirk Durston said...

Interesting. There seems to be a major disconnect between American style Christianity and what Jesus said was the second greatest command ..... 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself' (where Jesus's concept of 'neighbour' included any human alive, especially those who you may perceive as enemies, as shown in the Parable of the Good Samaritan).

Jeffrey Shallit said...

But the US is one of the most Christian of all nations!

I think it is far more plausible that Americans know their Christian texts well. As Thomas Paine once remarked, "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon that the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel."

If you want a torture manual, look no further than the Bible.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

I think it is far more plausible that Americans know their Christian texts well.
I don't. I bet more than half of Christians you meet would deny that those obscenities are in their Bible. But when you've agreed to the concept of eternal torment in a lake of fire (for other people of course, not yourself), what's a little temporary earthly torture in comparison?

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

There seems to be a major disconnect between American style Christianity and what Jesus said...
There is another major disconnect between Creationists, many of whom claim to be Christian, and what God told Moses: "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

Kirk Durston said...

I've done several surveys in various churches and have found that approximately 50% of church goers do not read the Bible at all, and less than 25% of church-goers actually read the Bible with any regularity. As far as those who know their Bible well, I'd put that at 5%, and I'm being generous. As you are likely aware, Barna Research has several surveys that show that the large majority of church goers are unfamiliar with the main teachings of Jesus and do not live their lives in accordance with them.

Since both you and I think people should remain unpersuaded by arguments from authority, I suppose we'll all just have to read the teachings of Jesus to see if Thomas Paine was honestly representing the Bible.

Much more interesting to me is that you and I both believe that it is good to be 'moral' and not good to be 'immoral'. More specifically, you and I both believe that gratuitous torture is 'immoral' or, to put it more bluntly, wrong. Furthermore you, as do I, believe that this is not just a matter personal opinion, but that other societies (e.g., the American society) should also hold to this same belief.

This implies that there is a moral rule or law against, say, gratuitous torture. This moral law describes what people ought to do, not what they actually do, for when it comes to what people actually do, gratuitous torture is a sad fact of the history of humanity. So I infer that you believe there is a moral law that transcends societies, geography and time (since I observe that you think that even gratuitous torture in ancient middle east societies thousands of years ago was morally wrong).

So now for the important and interesting question: What is the source of this moral law, which you so strongly ascribe to, that describes how humans ought to behave?

Jeffrey Shallit said...

As usual, Kirk, your inferences are wrong.

Our Western ethical principles are derived from our biology, and argument and consensus. They are entirely human constructs. Other societies reach different consensuses; see Colin Turnbull's The Mountain People. Nevertheless there is a large amount of agreement because we are social creatures sharing common ancestry; see The Moral Animal.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

So I infer that you believe there is a moral law that transcends societies, geography and time (since I observe that you think that even gratuitous torture in ancient middle east societies thousands of years ago was morally wrong).
I'm sure that if people living in that time could somehow have seen what passes for morality today, they would have been shocked that our moral standards are immoral, according to their scale. Everyone projects their standards across space and time, and yet all of these standards do not agree. I don't see how this is in any way evidence for an absolute, unchanging "Moral Law."

As Shallit noted, our ethical principles are derived in part from argument, which should be based on evidence and reason. Due to the rise of science, our evidential base is much better today than it was in past times. For example, we know that lead paint leads to developmental problems and mental retardation in children who eat it. Therefore, we now consider allowing children to eat led paint to be bad, even if it was allowed before we had this knowledge. We know that prosecuting people for witchcraft is bad, because we know that witchcraft isn't real (e.g. there are people who believe in it, but it doesn't actually work). We can therefore say that it was bad that people tortured suspected witches into confessing, and then killed them, even if those people actually and incorrectly believed in the efficacy of witchcraft.

And if Kirk Dunston believes in absolute and unchanging moral values, why do his values differ from those touted in the Bible? For example, death penalty for disrespectful children, death penalty for working on the Sabbath (there goes NASCAR!)? Those who claim absolute and unchanging moral codes need to explain why this belief does not correlate well to observed reality.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Bayesian:

I can predict Kirk's answer: the Old Testament was the old covenant, which was replaced by the new convenant of the New Testament. So Leviticus's laws against wearing two types of clothing, etc., no longer apply. Oh, except for the one against homosexuality; for some reason that still applies.

How he can reconcile this against "God's law is eternal and unchanging" is beyond me, but never underestimate the mental gymnastics that a fundamentalist needs to indulge in to support his view.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

the Old Testament was the old covenant, which was replaced by the new convenant of the New Testament...
Matt 5:17 "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."

MrFreeThinker said...

"other societies reach different consensuses"
So I'm curious, if the American society reached a consensus that it was Ok to torture war captives , wouldn't the torture be Ok?
I don't see how you can complain.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

I don't see how you can complain.What do you mean? I can complain about anything I want. I judge others' behavior based on my understanding of what is ethical -- the same way others judge me.

After all, some Christians think I am immoral because I think their god is a fiction.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

So I'm curious, if the American society reached a consensus that it was Ok to torture war captives , wouldn't the torture be Ok?
I don't see how you can complain.

Your statement does not appear to follow from any arguments presented so far. If, as already argued by Shallit, ethics is determined in part by argumentation, which depends on evidence and reason, then it may be shown that some positions are based on a faulty interpretation of, or a false presentation of, evidence; or inferior reasoning. I.e. that different groups of people may reach different positions does not lead to the conclusion that all positions are of equal merit.

By the way, the hypothetical you present, that American society might reach a consensus that torture is acceptable, has not been realized. Rather, a small group of people in power reached that position, and hid their actions from the greater public. they have also presented false views of evidence, e.g. that waterboarding does not constitute torture.

Kirk Durston said...

Jeffrey Shallit said, Our Western ethical principles are derived from our biology, and argument and consensus. They are entirely human constructs. Other societies reach different consensuses;. ....... Nevertheless there is a large amount of agreement because we are social creatures sharing common ancestryWell that works in the areas of agreement, but obviously from your blog, there is disagreement when it comes to torture, even within Western civilization, so now you have a problem.

PROBLEM: If your moral view leads you to believe that torture is wrong, and a different society comes to the conclusion that is is fine, what makes your moral opinion more right than the other society's?

You have to say either:

a) torture is wrong for all societies (in which case there is a moral law that transcends consensus and argument and whatever recent evolutionary pressures any society may be experiencing) or

b) torture is wrong for your idea of Western society, but not necessarily wrong for 'other societies'.

If you say (b), then writing a blog deriding some social group (in this case, the American church goers) makes about as much sense as complaining about some social group because they like blue rather than green. Worse still, you are implying that torture might be morally right for 'other societies' as you put it.

In spite of the theory of morality you have just appealed to, I suspect (hope?) that you actually think torture is wrong for not just your idea of society, but for all societies. But you have no grounds for that belief unless the moral law transcends societies, even those 'other societies' that think torture is fine.

So which is it? Is torture just wrong for those societies that think it is? ..... or is it wrong for all societies?

Jeffrey Shallit said...

If you say (b), then writing a blog deriding some social group (in this case, the American church goers) makes about as much sense as complaining about some social group because they like blue rather than green. Idiotic, but par for the course for Durston.

Some societal systems work better than others. Systems based on totalitarian principles do not lead to happiness for most of society. It completely trivializes the importance of society and human rights to compare them to a preference like blue versus green. No one gets hurt if you prefer blue to green, but people do get hurt if you choose to torture them.

I can perfectly well deride those who sponsor torture because (a) it offends me ethically (b) I have empathy for those tortured (c) I think it is counterproductive in the long run.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

In spite of the theory of morality you have just appealed to, I suspect (hope?) that you actually think torture is wrong for not just your idea of society, but for all societies. But you have no grounds for that belief unless the moral law transcends societies, even those 'other societies' that think torture is fine.
I already addressed this in my previous post, which you may not have seen while it was queued up for approval. Acknowledging the fact that different societies do indeed reach different positions on matters if ethics in no way obligates one to the principle that all positions are of equal merit.

Kirk Durston said...

I can perfectly well deride those who sponsor torture because (a) it offends me ethically (b) I have empathy for those tortured (c) I think it is counterproductive in the long run.You have the freedom to deride others without even needing reasons (a), (b) and (c). But if that is your basis for morality, I do wonder why anyone should take your moral views seriously. After all, you are not claiming that your moral view applies to anyone else but yourself. You can say it is wrong for another society to torture people, but they can simply disagree. They might even use your own 3-point criteria and by their own lights argue that a) so-and-so has plans to hurt a lot of people in their society, so it does not offend them ethically to use torture to extract information as to how he and his buddies intend to hurt a lot of people and, b) because so-and-so is intent on hurting a lot of people in their society, they do not have empathy for that person and, c) if they do not hurt him to extract the information, a great deal more people are going to get hurt which will be counterproductive to their society.

So that leaves you with two options:

Option One: If a person finds that torture a) offends them ethically and b) they have empathy for the person and c) they think it is counterproductive, then for that person, torture is morally wrong. But if a person finds that torture a) does not offend them ethically and b) they have no empathy for the person and c) they think it will be productive, then for that person, torture is not morally wrong.

Option Two: Torture is morally wrong even if a person is not offended ethically by it, they have no empathy for the person, and they think it is productive.

If you choose Option One, then have the courage to come right out and say that torture is not morally wrong for those people who are not offended by it, have no empathy for the person they are torturing, and who think it is productive.

If you choose Option Two: then you must agree that your three criteria are irrelevant; there must be something else that lends moral authority to the proposition that it is wrong to torture people, so what is it?

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Kirk:

Are you deliberately being dense?

Hint: just because you say there are only two options doesn't mean there are only two.

For example: whether a society that engages in torture is more stable and happy than a society that doesn't is an empirical question that can be resolved by studying different societies.

Kirk Durston said...

The stability and happiness of different societies vs. their different moral codes is actually a very good thing to look at. But I would not look at stability and happiness as a cause of an objective moral law, but as an effect of living in compliance with the transcendent moral law. If there is a Moral Law that transcends societies, history, and geography, and if we assume that the purpose of this Moral Law is to reduce long term suffering and enhance long term benefits, then we might be able to derive many components of this transcendent moral law simply by doing the appropriate sociological research. The results are most interesting, but I'll leave it to the reader to find out what they are.

My underlying point in this entire thread has been this: We all have our own personal system of ethics and morality, which may differ to some extent from person to person and society to society. Unless, however, there is a moral law out there that trumps our individual moral or ethical views, then there is little point in claiming or implying that your moral views are better than someone else's. Even the term 'better' has different criteria depending upon who one talks to. For some, 'better' is related to the long term stability of a society. For others (perhaps most, according to some recent studies) 'better' is related to their own immediate personal well being, forget about society's or their neighbours'.

Before we can discuss who's morality is better than others, or whether American church-goers morality is worse than non-church goers morality, we must first decide if there is a moral law that transcends individuals and societies. In other words, we must have a universal standard of moral weights and measures. If no such universal standard exists, then such discussions are rather meaningless.

I think there is a moral law that transcends humanity, and that moral law describes how humans ought to behave. But if that is the case, then it comes from a Source that is intensely interested in how humans behave ..... and you can see where I am going from here. C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity does an excellent job in developing this further.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Kirk:

Yes, we all know you believe in a transcendental moral law. Too bad there is no evidence for it.

Then again, you also believe that some sky fairy gave you magical powers to calm angry bulls. So pardon me if I am just a little skeptical of your powers of discernment.

Unless, however, there is a moral law out there that trumps our individual moral or ethical views, then there is little point in claiming or implying that your moral views are better than someone else's.You keep repeating this claim, although it has already been debunked. The fact is that some ethical views are better than others, in that some result in happy, prosperous societies and others don't. For example, the ethical view that says "Allow everyone to say their opinions, no matter how stupid, and don't kill them or put them in prison for expressing them" works better than the opposite. Yet this view is nowhere to be found in your holy book - it was a product of the secular values of the Enlightenment.

Then again, it is pointless to argue with anyone who thinks C. S. Lewis had any deep insight into human affairs.

Gareth McCaughan said...

This all seems a bit disingenuous. Surely what the poll actually shows is that at present, in the US, it happens that evangelical Christians and the Republican Party are allied with one another. And, since the Republican Party has chosen to make itself the party of torture, many evangelical Christians follow along. That certainly demonstrates a moral failing on their part, but I don't think it indicates any particular connection between Christianity and approval of torture when there isn't that rather specific connection.

For instance, I bet that if you did a similar survey in the UK, a broadly similar society but one in which it happens that evangelical Christianity doesn't have the same strong ties with the political right wing, you wouldn't find the same result. I wouldn't be surprised to find the exact opposite.

(Of course the claim that religion makes people morally better is generally justified, if at all, by more egregious disingenuousness than J.S.'s here; quite possibly that's his real point...)

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

Mr. Durston: You continue to use an argument that has been specifically and clearly rejected, and you are building other arguments on top of it. That different people hold different positions on a moral question does not lead to the conclusion that all of their positions are equally valid. Your argument fails, your continuing inability to recognize that failure does not redeem your argument.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Gareth:

I'm always amazed at the willingness of others to impute dishonest motives to people without having much evidence.

Yes, it should be obvious to anyone (and it was obvious to me when I posted) that support for torture is linked to the Republican party. But apparently you see the Republicans and Christian evangelicals as just "allied", whereas I see them as inextricably joined at the hip.

There used to be a significant tradition of libertarian Republicans, but now the party has been largely taken over by the Christian right. Evangelicals as a group have not expressed many reservations about torture. I think the link between approval of torture and fundamentalist religion is real and not simply a by-product of party affiliation.

But I suppose this, too, will be dismissed as "egregious disingenuousness".

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

Durston: You have to say either:
a) torture is wrong for all societies (in which case there is a moral law that transcends consensus and argument and whatever recent evolutionary pressures any society may be experiencing)

If I say something applies to all societies, then it is "transcendental moral law"? But someone might disagree with me, and claim the exact opposite, and so their version of a moral law is also "transcendental"? So two directly opposed moral laws are both "transcendental"? It seem to me that whatever "transcendental" means in this context, it doesn't mean much at all.

Gareth McCaughan said...

Jeffrey: I didn't at all intend to accuse you of "egregious disingenuousness", and I'm sorry to have written incompetently enough to make you think I did. (If I'd intended to do that, I'd have written "even more egregious" rather than just "more egregious".)

Neither did I at all intend to accuse you of having dishonest motives, and again I'm sorry to have written so ineptly. (One can be disingenuous without being dishonest, and without dishonest motives; at least, I think one can.)

Aaanyway: I agree that in the US at present evangelical Christianity and the Republican Party are not merely in bed together but copulating enthusiastically -- but I think this is a fact not about "religion" but about a particular political/religious/social situation that isn't the same in other countries, that so far as I know hasn't always been the same in the US, and most likely won't always be the same in the US either.

Pew's page to which you linked points in turn at a (still rather vague) "closer look", which says: In fact, once party and ideology are taken into account, education and geographic region are the only demographic factors that continue to show a strong correlation with views of torture. (By "ideology" it seems clear that they mean *political* ideology.) Of course "strong" might be a weasel word there -- perhaps there's still a clear religion/torture connection even when one controls for politics -- and, as they point out, it's possible that religion is driving politics rather than vice versa. Still, this seems to me like evidence that what's making some people in the US approve of torture is politics rather than religion.

For the avoidance of doubt: I do not believe that religious people are any better morally than irreligious people. (To be more precise: presumably there are, at least on average, differences one way or another, but nothing I've seen suggests that the differences are large or that overall they're to the advantage of the religious.) The same goes for theists/atheists or Christians/others. (The last of these is strong evidence against at least some versions of Christianity, which claim to put its adherents in direct touch with a god who is the source of all goodness, but that's a separate matter.) And, also for the avoidance of doubt: I think the argument Kirk Durston is putting forward here is entirely hopeless.

Kirk Durston said...

Jeffrey Shallit said, "Yes, we all know you believe in a transcendental moral law. Too bad there is no evidence for it."

The evidence is provided by your own moral intuition that some things are wrong for all societies, everywhere, throughout history. You, yourself, are inadvertently providing us with this evidence when on the one hand you assert that our ethical principles 'are entirely human constructs', yet you keep dodging the logical implication of that belief by refusing to state what follows from your assertion ..... that torture is not wrong for societies that don't have the same 'construct'. Either you do not have the courage to state the logical outcome of your own assertion, or you know your assertion contradicts your own moral intuition that some things are objectively wrong (not just wrong in your own ethical 'construct') for all societies throughout history.

Obviously, not all individuals or societies have the same ethical 'construct' that you do ..... you provided us with an example in our opening blog. They do not even agree with you as to what is better or successful. For example, you said ....

"... the ethical view that says "Allow everyone to say their opinions, no matter how stupid, and don't kill them or put them in prison for expressing them" works better than the opposite. Yet this view is nowhere to be found in your holy book - it was a product of the secular values of the Enlightenment."

Well, first of all, your Creator gave you free will in the first place, and He is the One who gives you the freedom to say whatever you wish on your blog or anywhere else while, at the same time, sustaining you with every beat of your heart and every breath that you draw (and this concept comes from the Bible, not the enlightenment). Second, consider China, which does not operate by that ethical view (of free speech). From a Darwinian perspective, the Chinese are the single most successful society in all of human history. Obviously, the ethical view you mention above, which you think is so obviously right, is irrelevant to a successful society, if we are defining success from an objective, Darwinian perspective.

Bottom Line: You must either acknowledge that there is a Moral Law that applies to all people, in all places, and throughout history, or else you do not have a leg to stand on when you want to argue that your moral 'construct' is better on moral grounds .... obviously (from your blog) people cannot even agree on what is 'better'. Of course, you can argue that your set of rules is better on some other, non-moral grounds, but then just factor out morality; it is irrelevant. Call them 'Shallit's rules for being happy', or 'Shallit's suggestions for getting your genes more prevalent in the gene pool', or 'Shallit's green laws for being successful', etc.

Baysesian: Your summary of my argument is not entirely accurate. I am arguing for the following two propositions ....

1. There is a Moral Law that applies to all people, everywhere, and throughout history, or there is not.
2. If there is no objective Moral Law that applies to all people, everywhere, and throughout history, then it is meaningless to claim on moral grounds that ones morality is better than anyone else's.

Of course, you could argue that your moral construct was better on non-moral grounds (e.g., your genes will occupy more of the gene pool), but Jeffrey Shallit's initial blog was centering around morality.

Regarding a transcendent moral law, I am defining it as a set of interacting propositions pertaining to how humans ought to behave that are true for all people, in a places and throughout history. A transcendent moral rule, under the definition I've provided above, is not a matter of what you or I say or make up.

Gareth McCaughan said...

The evidence is provided by your own moral intuition [...]: Jeffrey's (or anyone else's) moral intuition is, in the first instance, evidence only about how his mind works. If you think that that in turn provides evidence about some transcendental reality, the onus is on you to give some actual reasons why anyone's intuitions should be good evidence of that.

yet you keep dodging the logical implication [...] by refusing to state [...] that torture is not wrong for societies that don't have the same 'construct': no, that is not a logical implication of anything Jeffrey has said. I hope Jeffrey will correct me if I'm misunderstanding him here, but I think he'd say (1) that "X is wrong" is a way to express a certain kind of disapproval of X, not a statement of an (alleged) objective fact about the world; (2) that to him torture is wrong whoever does it; (3) that of course people who don't disapprove of torture don't disapprove of torture; and (4) that going on to ask "for you, is torture wrong for people in societies that don't disapprove of torture?" as if there's more to be said about that than #2 and #3 is just a confusion.

or else you do not have a leg to stand on when you want to argue that your moral 'construct' is better on moral grounds: obviously he wouldn't have a leg to stand on if he were arguing that his moral position is objectively better morally and simultaneously that there is no objective morality. But so far as I can tell he isn't. He's saying (I happen to kinda disagree with him on this point; see above): Religious people are more likely to believe X, which (1) I find abhorrent, (2) lots of other people find abhorrent, (3) they ought to find abhorrent if they were internally consistent, and (4) is most likely counterproductive anyway. Note that none of this requires moral realism.

The underlying problem here, I think, is that you are unable or unwilling to appreciate that moral nonrealists are neither (1) moral realists who won't admit it nor (2) people who don't give a damn about how they or anyone else behaves. So, e.g., you confuse moral nonrealism (the idea that moral statements aren't, and shouldn't purport to be, statements of fact) with moral relativism (the idea that moral statements are statements of fact whose truth values depend on who's asking whom).

NAL said...

Kirk:

A transcendent moral rule, under the definition I've provided above, is not a matter of what you or I say or make up.

A moral rule must be understood by the individual. If an individual has the intellectual capacity to understand a moral rule, that individual has the intellectual capacity to create that same moral rule. Same exact rule, no transcendence required.

Alex said...

Saying that it's ok to torture under some circumstances is hardly immoral. If one of my family members were kidnapped and I had access to a guy who knew where they're being held, I'd take him apart with a potato peeler if that's what it took to get the information. And no, I'm not religious.

Much of morality depends on the situation. It's wrong to kill, but ok if you're defending yourself. It's wrong to steal, but ok to do it after, say, Katrina, in order to feed yourself. It's wrong to lie, but we all do it anyway, often for good reason. It's foolish to say that torture is never justifiable, just like it's foolish to say that it's never ok to kill, steal, or lie. Moral absolutists are just people who haven't been put in the right circumstances, yet.

Sorry Mr. Shallit, but you've picked a horrible example.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

Durston: Your summary of my argument is not entirely accurate. I am arguing for the following two propositions ....
Pardon me for using direct quotes. And you are not arguing for these position, you are merely asserting them, repeatedly, without supporting argumentation and while failing to engage criticism.

1. There is a Moral Law that applies to all people, everywhere, and throughout history, or there is not.False dichotomy. You claim either there is one transcendental Moral Law, or there is none. And yet the criteria by which you define "Transcendental Moral Law" (that a person would apply his morality to other people, other societies, and other times) Therefore, by your own criteria, there are billions of Transcendental moral laws. Every person who holds that their moral code should be applied to other people, other societies, even at other times, holds a transcendental moral law. And all of these transcendental moral laws differ from each other.

2. If there is no objective Moral Law that applies to all people, everywhere, and throughout history, then it is meaningless to claim on moral grounds that ones morality is better than anyone else's.I already addressed this. Ignoring my argument is not the same as refuting it. Since morality is based on reason and argumentation, it is perfectly reasonable to state that not all moral positions have equal merit. One moral position may take better account of evidence, or use better argumentation, than another.

An example has already been provided, but not rebutted in any way. Since the advance of scientific knowledge about the contributions of lead paint to childhood developmental problems, including mental retardation, it is no longer considered morally acceptable to allow children to eat lead paint. Moral codes which take this scientific evidence into account are superior to those which do not.

Another example (although, since the original sample is not rebutted, this is piling on): torture is very effective at getting people to confess things, even things they have not actually done. A moral position which discounts the claimed "effectiveness" of torture due to the extraordinary high rate of false positives is superior to one which does not.

Since Mr. Durston continues to repeat his points without doing anything to rebut arguments against, I suggest to the blog owner that the comment section should be closed some time soon to avoid unnecessary and unintelligent repitition.

Kirk Durston said...

Gareth: You state my point when you said,

obviously he wouldn't have a leg to stand on if he were arguing that his moral position is objectively better morally and simultaneously that there is no objective morality.You then go on to summarize what appears to be Jeffrey Shallit's position.

So the question is twofold:

1. Does Jeffrey Shallit believe there is no objective morality? and,
2. Does Shallit argue/believe that his moral construct is objectively better morally than the church-goers of America?

So far as I can see, Shallit believes there is no objective morality, given his statement, among others, that our ethical principles 'are entirely human constructs', coupled with his example in his blog that not all of us have the same ethical construct. I think we can all agree on that.

However, you (Gareth) then suggest that Shallit does not argue/believe that his moral construct is objectively better than the church-goers of America. I would agree that Shallit does not argue for it, for I've seen no argument. But I think we could agree that, even absent any argument, Shallit believes his moral construct is objectively better than the church goers of American and I would support that by pointing to the tone of his blog entry. He certainly comes across as if his position is objectively better than those people or societies who have a different ethical construct. There was absolutely no disclaimer to the contrary.

You suggest that all Shallit is doing is expressing a personal disapproval of others who have a different moral view (while at the same time conceding that there is no objective moral law). If that is all he is doing, then it seems to me that he is back-peddling from the initial tone of his blog. But there is a price to pay and the price to pay is this ....... if there is no objective morality, then those societies which believe that gratuitous torture is helpful, amuses them, weeds out threats, etc. operate on equally vacuous grounds and there is no objective moral law out there that trumps the subjective moral views of any individual or society. It is then a matter of who persuades the most people, or who can impose their moral construct by force of arms, etc.

Other prices to pay include the fact that, absent objective moral laws, complaints about the moral behaviour of people in the Bible become mere expressions of personal opinion, which carry no weight for anyone else. Another price to pay is that one of the atheist's favorite arguments against God, the argument from evil, disappears, for why should God have the same moral construct as any particular human or society.

However, our moral intuitions tell us that some things must be wrong, even if all of humanity some day decides they are right ..... say, for example, gratuitous torture. This is evidence for an objective moral law, though it is not proof. In your response, I think you confuse evidence with proof. What you likely meant to say is that it is not proof, but it is certainly evidence (though you may explain it away by saying it is a construct of the mind).

Alex raises a point that has been lurking since the outset and for which I have often prefaced 'torture' with 'gratuitous'. If a terrorist had planted a nuclear bomb somewhere in Toronto that was set to go off in 90 minutes, and Shallit had the option of agreeing to torturing the terrorist to extract the information as to where the bomb was and how to disarm it, then he would have an interesting dilemma:

a) harm one person to spare 2 million people from death and suffering or,
b) do not harm the one terrorist, but with the result that 2 million people die or suffer horribly.

I think that is what is in the back of the Americans' minds when they are considering whether it is right to use torture to extract information about possible plans, resources and abilities to bring suffering to thousands or millions of Americans. Whether that is justified or not is another question.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

But there is a price to pay and the price to pay is this ....... if there is no objective morality, then those societies which believe that gratuitous torture is helpful, amuses them, weeds out threats, etc. operate on equally vacuous grounds and there is no objective moral law out there that trumps the subjective moral views of any individual or society. It is then a matter of who persuades the most people, or who can impose their moral construct by force of arms, etc.
What is contained in that "etc."? Could it not be a matter of which moral position takes better account of the available evidence, or uses better argumentation? This is a dishonest listing of the available options, even after other options have been repeatedly pointed out to you.

Other prices to pay include the fact that, absent objective moral laws, complaints about the moral behaviour of people in the Bible become mere expressions of personal opinion, which carry no weight for anyone else. Same objection.

Another price to pay is that one of the atheist's favorite arguments against God, the argument from evil, disappears, for why should God have the same moral construct as any particular human or society.Dramatic overreaching, and vulnerable to the same counter-argument listed above.

Gareth McCaughan said...

If that is all he is doing, then it seems to me that he is back-pedalling from the initial tone of his blog: So your complaint is that his beliefs differ from the ones you inferred from his "tone"? That doesn't seem to me like his fault: rather, it suggests that the processes by which you infer beliefs from "tone" aren't perfectly reliable.

if there is no objective morality, then [...] there is no objective moral law out there [...]: Why, yes, that does appear to be true.

It is then a matter of who persuades the most people, [...]: Leaving aside Bayesian Bouffant's correct observation that an awful lot seems to live in the "etc." at the end of your list, there's a deeper problem here. *What* "is a matter of" this? As best I can figure out, what you mean is something like "I insist that moral statements must be making some kind of factual claims about the world. If there isn't an Objective Moral Reality for them to refer to, then they must be referring to some Objective Non-moral Reality such as which moral positions have the most adherents". But the problem here is your insistence, not Jeffrey's disbelief in an Objective Moral Reality.

one of the atheist's favorite arguments against God, the argument from evil, disappears: No, it doesn't, because real theistic systems make ethical claims. If (e.g.) some variety of Christianity says (1) it is the very essence of moral behaviour to give practical aid to those in need, and (2) it is the very essence of moral behaviour to act as God would act, and (3) that God knows, and could easily do much to alleviate, the suffering of millions of people in the world, then that variety of Christianity has a serious argument-from-evil to deal with -- even if in fact claims 1 and 2 are false, even if in fact there is no such thing as an essence of moral behaviour. (The same goes for complaints about how people act in the Bible. If some variety of Christianity teaches that one should love everyone and live, so far as possible, at peace with all, and also that OT figures notable only for their massacres are Heroes Of Faith, then that too has a problem -- even if in fact massacring people isn't "objectively" wrong.

our moral intuitions tell us [...] This is evidence for an objective moral law, though it is not proof. In your response, I think you confuse evidence with proof. I assure you that I do no such thing; I'm not asking for proof. What matters is *how much* evidence. Given the great variety of things that people's intuitions tell them and that turn out to be false, it seems to me that it's extremely weak evidence if it's evidence at all. If you've offered anything remotely resembling an argument that this intuition is any better evidence than (say) the way an Ames room looks is evidence that people can change their size drastically just by walking about, I have obviously missed it.

As for the ticking time bomb, you may not have noticed that the poll had options "often", "sometimes", "rarely" and "never" and that Jeffrey is talking about how often people chose "often" or "sometimes" rather than "rarely" or "never". It seems reasonably clear that nuclear bombs on 90-minute timers "rarely" come up, since we don't appear to have had one yet. If such scenarios are behind "the Americans'" opinions, then that is no reason for them to select the "often" or "sometimes" option. It seems to me that such scenarios are more often an excuse than a reason.

Pseudonym said...

I'm a bit late on this, but...

Anyone who knows anything about statistics should check out the sample sizes in this "poll", then compute the standard errors for themselves.

Kirk Durston said...

Bayesian: The 'etc.' includes anything at all that you, or any other human being, regardless of their moral 'construct' wants to use to advance their moral views. You have provided no 'counter-argument' as you claim.

Gareth: Pass Shallit's blog entry around a group of any random 10 people and ask them if Shallit is coming across, with his assertions and assumptions, as if the non-churchgoers' position on torture is objectively better than the church-goers' position. Yes, he is venting about how he feels, but nowhere in his blog does he clarify that his concept of morality is merely something he cobbled together and it carries zero weight with those who disagree. He takes it for granted that torture is immoral and that other people should agree. .... and don't try to dodge the issue by saying that the particular example of the nuclear bomb is rare, and the survey is talking about frequency. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people everyday who deliberately do things that harm other people or society in general and where we must choose between imposing harm on them to preventer greater harm to society at large. We have locked thousands of people up for years in small cells that would be inhumane and unthinkable to lock up a dog up in for years at a time ..... so don't think that our society does not 'often' practice torture, even if it is psychological. Society justifies the psychological torture of confining large numbers of people for 25 years or more in small cells, by the thinking that the inhumane treatment of a few thousand is better than the suffering they would cause to society in general.

Your portrayal of arguments from evil and the existence of God is incorrect. The operative assumption/claim about God in these arguments is the simple proposition that He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good. It is the 'perfectly good' part here that becomes a problem for the person who wishes to vent about immoral behavior, but at the same time admits that he made up his own moral construct. The Christian's response can be simply ....

P: An activity is good if and only if it corresponds to the way God is.

God then becomes the standard of goodness. Thus, anything God says or does is perfectly good. Now you may claim that the conquest of Canaan was not good, but if God is perfectly good, then you are mistaken. (Say, for example, the net moral value of the Canaanite society had become a case of gratuitous evil which, by the atheists' own arguments, God cannot permit.) Even if there is no God, the Christian is just as right by his/her lights as you are by yours. Each simply uses different criteria to establish their moral construct. The assumption that Bayesian, you, and Shallit make is that if you can argue that your moral construct is 'better' (whatever that is), or makes more people happy, or 'takes better account of the available evidence' (evidence for what, I wonder), or 'uses better argumentation', then somehow your moral construct is 'better' than someone else's. But the fatal flaw is that you assume everyone agrees to the same criteria that you would use when constructing their own moral views. That is simply not the case. Please do not think I'm simply playing hard to get. Take a good look around you at the rest of the world; they simply do not agree on the same criteria.

You have no objective moral law,
you have no generally agreed upon criteria to justify your particular moral beliefs,
you have no argument.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...

Durston: You have provided no 'counter-argument' as you claim.
I leave that for the readers to decide. Bye bye.

Gareth McCaughan said...

If you take a random sample of 10 people, then 9 of them (more likely 9.9 of them)
will have no very clear idea of what it means to say that one moral position is
"objectively better" (not just "better") than another.
That distinction is absolutely central here.

his concept of morality is merely something he cobbled together
and it carries zero weight with those who disagree
: anything
"carries zero weight with those who disagree", at least if they
disagree thoroughly enough: that's what disagreement means. But
it seems to have escaped your notice that whether or not someone
makes grand claims of universality for their moral position has
nothing to do with whether it's "merely something they cobbled
together", and that there are more possibilities than
"something cobbled together" and "a glorious transcendent universal
truth".

I am not trying to "dodge the issue" by pointing out the rarity of
extreme cases like ticking time-bombs. Such cases (perhaps) provide
justification for torture because they are so extreme -- the potential
gain and loss so big, the window of opportunity so small, the range
of options so limited -- and that is also exactly what makes them
rare.

Long-term imprisonment may be as bad
as you say. That would be an important fact in deciding
criminal sentences. But it has nothing whatever to do with our
discussion here, in which you are attempting to accuse Jeffrey
of dishonesty or inconsistency or something, unless he agrees
with you about how unpleasant long-term imprisonment is, and
doesn't think it's a bad thing on that account. Do you have
reason to think that's so?

Yes, a theist can say "P: an activity is good if and only if
it corresponds to the way God is", but that only helps to deal
with arguments from evil (which, by the way, need not
insist that theists believe God is all-knowing,
all-powerful or all-good) if the theist's other
central beliefs -- e.g., about what particular activities are
in fact good -- are consistent with P. Unless P is alla theist believes about right and wrong, affirming P doesn't
get him or her off the hook. And most real varieties
of theism involve specific moral positions that are less vague
than P: e.g.,
that it is wrong to worship false gods, make idols,
blaspheme, work on certain days, dishonour one's parents, etc.

And (I repeat myself, but
only because I see no sign that you understood me before) the
argument "You say that God is good, and that goodness involves
X and Y and Z; but the world doesn't look as if X and Y and Z
are true about God" can perfectly well be advanced by someone
who doesn't think goodness has anything to do with X and Y and Z,
or who thinks that the idea of "goodness" doesn't really make
sense, or whatever.

I have no idea on what grounds you think I "assume everyone
agrees to the same criteria that [I] would use when constructing
their own moral views". I don't assume any such thing, so far
as I can tell. Nor do I see any sign that anyone else in this
discussion does.

(It seems to me that "people don't agree on their criteria
of right and wrong" is a strong argument against your proposal
that we trust people's alleged intuitions of a universally
valid moral law. At least some moral intuitions are badly
untrustworthy, since it's not possible that (1) there is a
universal moral law and (2) everyone is right about the things
their intuition says are in it. And I think the alleged
intuition "there is a universally valid moral law" is really
derived from a bunch of earlier intuitions of the form "it
is universally right to do such-and-such" or "it is universally
wrong to do such-and-such"; and those cannot all be
right.)

I have made plenty of arguments here that don't depend in the
least on having an objective moral law, or on having generally
agreed criteria for moral beliefs (let alone for minein particular). But, right or wrong, what is the purpose of your final paragraph?

Gareth McCaughan said...

Um. Sorry about the gratuitous line breaks in my last comment. I hadn't realised that the autoformatter turns single line breaks into br elements.

Kirk Durston said...

Bayesian: I do not recall claiming to provide any counter-argument at all. In order to provide a counter argument, there must first be an argument to counter. Neither Shallit, nor you have presented any argument to counter. At best, you seem to be insisting that through persuasive argument, etc., we might be able to persuade some people that Shallit's moral opinions are better than someone else's. What I am attempting to do is to point out that moral views become nonsense if a) there is no Moral Law that exists independent of human opinion and b) there is not even any agreed upon criteria to evaluate moral/ethical views that are, as Shallit stated 'entirely human constructs.'

Perhaps it would help if I summarized my main points:

First, a definition:

Objective Moral Law: A inter-related set of rules that describe how humans ought to behave, that is true for all people, in all places, and at all times in history, regardless of the moral opinions of individuals or societies.

Given the definition above, here's a first pass at an argument:

1. If there is no objective Moral Law, then there is no moral authority for one individual's moral opinions to trump another's or one society's to trump another's.

2. If there is no generally agreed upon criteria with which to evaluate the 'betterness' of one set of moral opinions over another set of moral opinions, then we cannot even evaluate which set of moral opinions is 'better'.

3. There is no objective Moral Law (the assertion of Shallit et al.)

4. There are no generally agreed upon criteria to evaluate subjective moral opinions (patently obvious if one compares theistic moral systems to non-theistic moral systems, for example)

5. Therefore, there is no moral authority for one individual's moral opinions to trump another's or one society's to trump another's and we cannot even evaluate which moral opinions are 'better' than another's. (from 1-4)

6. If (5), then speaking as if ones moral views are better than another's, or claiming that another's moral views are 'immoral', is nonsense.

Therefore,

Speaking as if ones moral views are 'better' than another's, or claiming that another's moral views are 'immoral', is nonsense.
Admittedly, this is my first pass at this argument and it may need some tuning, but hopefully this can focus the discussion. If the argument does stand, can you live with the conclusion?

Gareth McCaughan said...

PROBLEM 1:

Step 2 is wrong: its conclusion should be merely we cannot evaluate which set of moral opinions is 'better' and get a generally agreed answer.

Therefore, the conclusion should (at most -- assuming that there are no other defects in the argument) say Speaking as if ones moral views are generally agreed to be 'better' than another's, or claiming that another's moral views are 'immoral', is nonsense.PROBLEM 2:

To get from 5 to 6, you need something like this to be true: If there is no moral authority for one person's moral views to trump another, then it is nonsense for one person to claim that another's moral views are immoral. But this presupposes something very much like your conclusion, namely that non-objective notions of morality are no good. It also presupposes that one must have a "moral authority" to express any moral view non-nonsensically, which again seems like a premise that needs some justification.

PROBLEM 3:

You say "is nonsense" when the most your arguments could support is "is wrong".

Therefore, the conclusion should (at most, if these are the only problems) say Speaking as if ones moral views are generally agreed to be 'better' than another's, or claiming that one has moral authority to declare another's moral views objectively 'immoral', is wrong.There may be other problems, but I'll leave it there because this revised conclusion seems to me not to make any trouble for JS or BB or me even if it's correct in every detail.

Doppelganger said...

On the issue of torture - I am of two views on this.

If the U.S. - as a nation - wants to claim the moral highground (and we always do, whether we deserve to or not), then it is a no-brainer - torture is wrong under any circumstances. "They do it to us" is no excuse - in fact, because they do it to us is a great reason for us NOT to do it to them, again IF we want to have the moral high ground on this. As is now common knowledge, Japanese military men were executed for doing the very things the Bush/Cheney cabal claimed were legal and not-torture. What is almost as appalling as that is the number of vociferous oh-so-pious conservative Christians who actually SUPPORT such twisted morality. The so-called ticking-time-bomb scenario makes for great TV for brain-dead FOX fans, but such incidents, I believe, rarely if ever happen in real life.

I, as an individual, am more in line with the chap who said he'd take a potato peeler to someone if he had to to protect his family. And I, were it up to me, would not necessarily have a problem with the use of torture, as a nation, as retribution or punishment for the most heinous of crimes, but not as an intelligence gathering tool, since the true experts on the matter tell us that it really doesn't work.


Then again, I would not be so self-righteous and hypocritical to consider myself of high moral character and to declare the U.S. as living on the moral high ground were such decisions up to me.

And as for Tom Paine's view of the bible, I am pretty sure that the heinous acts he refers to are indeed in there. It is all too common for conservative apologists to try to gloss over their preferred deity's true nature.

Kirk Durston said...

Gareth, you raise some interesting points. I think your objections stem from what is required for evaluation of moral opinions. In your first objection, you assume that a group of 2 or more can still evaluate a moral opinion, but the individuals in the group may arrive at different answers. In my argument, I assume that the prerequisite condition for group evaluation is a generally agreed upon set of criteria. For the case where an individual is evaluating a moral opinion, that condition can always be satisfied, since the individual can make up any criteria he/she wishes and there will be 'general' agreement since there is only one person to do the agreeing. In a discussion involving a group of 2 or more individuals, however, if there is no generally agreed upon criteria to evaluate a moral opinion, then the prerequisite condition for group evaluation is not met. Thus we (as a group) cannot proceed with our evaluation. The moment we begin to discuss moral opinions with another person or group of people, we run into the problem of satisfying the prerequisite condition for meaningful discussion.

With regard to your worry about getting from 5 to 6, 6 is a conditional (if/then) statement. The question is whether the consequent of 6 obtains if the antecedent is true (i.e., if we (where 'we' entails a group) cannot evaluate moral opinions (since the prerequisite condition is not satisfied), then does it follow that a moral claim by a person within the group made to the other members of the group is nonsense?). 'Nonsense' is a non-technical term. If one prefers, he can substitute in 'meaningless'. As I suggested in the first paragraph, if the prerequisite condition for group evaluation is not met, then they cannot have a meaningful discussion or evaluation of a moral claim. If a person insists on making a statement to the group in the absence of any criteria to evaluate it, it becomes a meaningless/nonsensical contribution so far as any group discussion goes; the prerequisite condition for group discussion has not been met.

This problem is a subset of the more general arbitrary weights and measures problem. If each person makes up her own personal measure of mass, for example, it will work just fine as long as the person only deals with herself. In a discussion involving two or more people, however, each using her own standard, it would be nonsense to argue over what the mass of a particular object is.

Regarding the use of 'moral' authority: When a person evaluates an activity and pronounces it 'immoral', as Shallit did, then that judgment assumes a moral perspective, requiring a moral authority (rather than, say, a legal authority). In other words, judging something illegal, entails a legislative authority; judging something immoral entails a moral authority.

Why is this discussion important?C.S. Lewis sums it up well when he wrote in Mere Christianity about why he abandoned atheism ...
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? .... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too-- for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist .... I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple.

IvanM said...

Kirk, I recommend a book called C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. It's an evenhanded (imho) critique of his case for Christianity. (Even my father liked it, and he's a Lewis fan.) It might help you understand why his arguments aren't convincing to a lot of us.

By the way, did you ever retract any of your statements about Hilbert, infinity, etc.?

Gareth McCaughan said...

Kirk: "Group evaluation" is a red herring: you are claiming that it is inconsistent for an individual such as Jeffrey Shallit to make claims like "torture is immoral" if he isn't a moral realist.

Even so, it's worth remarking briefly on this: The moment we begin to discuss moral opinions with another person or group of people, we run into the problem of satisfying the prerequisite condition for meaningful discussion. Well, in my experience what commonly happens when two people discuss moral opinions is that they turn out to have some differing presuppositions (moral or factual), and then they go looking for some common ground. And it usually turns out that there is some. Not necessarily enough for them to end up agreeing, of course, but enough for discussion to be possible. The key thing here: there is no need at all for the people involved to come to complete agreement about moral principles in order to have a worthwhile discussion.

6 is a conditional statement: Er, yes, I did notice that. My complaint is that for it to be a true conditional statement, you need an extra premise which you didn't argue for and which seems to be basically equivalent to the conclusion you're aiming for. I did, though, make an assumption which perhaps wasn't right: I thought the transition from 5 to 6 was meant to be composed of two "parallel", largely independent, inferences: if no moral authority, then it's nonsense to claim that someone else's views are immoral; if no way of evaluating, then it's nonsense to speak as if one's views are better than another's. It seems now that you're basing everything on the "no way of evaluating" assumption, in which case (1) I'm not sure why you brought in the business about "moral authority" and (2) I think the objections I've given to your claims about "moral authority" invalidate your argument as it stands.

If a person insists on making a statement [...] in the absence of any criteria to evaluate it, it becomes a meaningless/nonsensical contribution: perhaps so, but this "absence of any criteria" is an invention. There may not be "generally agreed-upon criteria", but that's not the same as there being no criteria at all. And all that's needed for meaningful discussion is enough criteria agreed on by the people involved in the discussion.

Notice also that these criteria do in fact need to be agreed upon by the people involved. So, for instance, a Christian and a Satanist -- I mean someone who really believes in a being with roughly the attributes Christianity ascribes to Satan, and who worships that being, not just someone who calls himself a Satanist in order to annoy Christians -- might agree that there are objective, universally applicable, moral values, but they'll probably have less prospect of a useful moral discussion than two people who think that moral values are a matter of individual choice and who both find that what they most care about is minimizing human suffering. In other words: moral realism is largely a red herring here.

When a person evaluates an activity and pronounces it 'immoral', [...] that judgement assumes a moral perspective, requiring a moral authority: You're welcome to believe this. It might even be true. But it doesn't seem obvious, and you haven't offered any evidence for it. Perhaps I'm just not understanding what you mean by "authority". If someone says "This is beautiful", do you think s/he needs an "aesthetic authority"? If someone says "17 is prime", do you think s/he needs a "mathematical authority"? (I think not, for different reasons in the two cases.)

As for CSL's remarks: Perhaps his argument against (belief in) God would have collapsed without moral realism. It doesn't follow that all similar arguments do the same. I have already sketched how an argument from evil can go through, or at least merit argument rather than dismissal, even if the person offering it is not a moral realist.

Kirk Durston said...

Ivan, I've not read Beversluis' book, though I've read some reviews (all positive) and I felt that his arguments, as summarized in those reviews, lacked depth (though to be fair, the reviews may well have under-represented his arguments). Nevertheless, if Beversluis makes a point relevant to this discussion, don't hesitate to put it on the table. Two things I like about Lewis is his appeal to intuition and his insight. There is a lot more there than most people grasp. Keep in mind that his arguments were for a general radio audience, so they are not formalized or fleshed out with all the technical details. Regarding Hilbert and infinities, the short answer is 'no'. The long answer is recorded for posterity in that particular thread. It has been a very long time since I checked it and, unfortunately, if there are further contributions I am lacking the time to respond to them. Even participating in this thread is a challenge, time-wise.

Gareth, again, you raise some interesting and good points. I'll try to respond to as many as I can here.

I'm not claiming it is 'inconsistent' for Shallit to make claims like 'torture is immoral' if he isn't a moral realist. I'm claiming that his claim is 'meaningless' to others who don't hold the same moral construct, or even hold the same criteria for constructing a moral opinion. As I mentioned in my previous post, an individual can always make a moral evaluation on the basis of whatever criteria they make up, since the only agreement they need to achieve is with themselves.

I agree with you on your second point that two or more people only need to agree on at least one criterion in order to construct a moral theory, or make sense (within the context of what they do agree on) of each others' moral pronouncements. I never suggested that complete agreement on all possible criteria was required. My proposition (2) stated that if there was 'no' generally agreed upon criteria..... Of course, even if there is one criterion that is agreed upon, the next question is whether it is a good one. There are a lot of people who agree on beliefs that are totally out of sync with science, for example. The mere fact that they have made up some criteria that they agree on does not prevent them from being badly mistaken as a group and the authority in that case would be the laws of nature, not people.

Euthyphro's dilemma comes into play here for all parties in this discussion. In Shallit's case, we substitute 'people' for 'gods'. Is something good because people like it, or do people like it because it is good? The same objections arise. If the former, then people dispute among themselves about what they like. If the latter, then it is not we who decide what is good, but Something Else. At the heart of this is moral authority. Are people their own moral authority? or is there another Moral Authority? I think what you, Shallit, and others are saying is that all we need is at least one mutually agreed upon criterion, which then becomes our own moral authority/standard. I'm saying that although some people may agree on at least one criterion, there is not even one mutually agreed upon criterion that satisfies all people or societies (again, Euthyphro's Dilemma rears its head). In short, if I were an atheist, I would abandon all belief and talk about morality and construct a modus operandi based solely on personal pragmatics.

What I want to argue for, and have not had the space to do it thus far, is that you, Shallit and others may say that ones moral intuitions are only true for oneself, or others that hold the same moral criteria, but I suspect that all believe that some things are 'actually' wrong, unjust, etc, though you may have convinced yourselves that such a belief is only 'an appendage of outworn religious beliefs', to quote David Gauthier. If I have space in a subsequent post and if the discussion goes that way, I'll try to flesh out an argument that this intuition is due to something outside of human thinking.

Gareth McCaughan said...

Kirk: I'm sure that my basic moral principles aren't exactly identical to JS's, and I don't think he's a moral realist, and yet I don't find his claims meaningless. This in itself seems to be a refutation of your claim that his claim is 'meaningless' to others who don't hold the same moral construct.

If your argument depends on there being no shared moral criteria, then I think it has no teeth. Empirically, we find that almost all groups of people that wish to engage in moral arguments have quite a bit of shared moral ground.

Is something good because people like it, or do people like it because it is good? I don't think there is any dilemma here for the moral nonrealist, who can say something like "It is 'good' in the sense that I approve of it, because I approve of it; I approve of it because it is 'good' in the sense that it tends to reduce human suffering". Neither half of this seems absurd to me.

Does this apply to theists too? Well, kinda. A theist can certainly say something like "God commands it because God approves of it; God approves of it because it tends to reduce human suffering". The difficulty comes when you try to get from "God commands it" to "we have reason to do it". The moral nonrealist doesn't face this difficulty because from "I approve it" to "I have reason to do it" is a much easier step than from "Someone else approves it" to "I have reason to do it", and because s/he doesn't claim to be able to get from "I approve it" to "Others have reason to do it".

I am not saying that we need one shared criterion, which then becomes our moral authority. In fact, I'm not saying anything about my own moral position at all, because I am undecided about the key point at issue here, namely moral realism. But I don't think *anyone* is saying what you say we are saying. I think a consistent moral nonrealist should reject the whole notion of a "moral authority"; and, as I've said above, I don't think rejecting this carries any sort of obligation to stop saying things like "X is immoral" or "I disapprove of X", nor to stop trying to influence people not to do X.

As for your final charge of insincerity: I think it is natural to feel as if (at least some) moral judgements are statements of fact, and I expect most people do. It is also natural to feel as if aesthetic judgements are statements of fact, and I think *that* is an entirely untenable position; this is one reason why I don't think such feelings are very good evidence of anything. Another, which I have already mentioned, is that those feelings tend to attach to particular moral judgements -- one says "Eating babies is wrong" and feels like that's a statement of objective fact -- and yet some of these judgements (probably not that particular one) are subject to a great deal of disagreement; therefore, our feelings of stating an objective fact *can't* be very reliable, because demonstrably lots of people are wrong to feel that. (Even though we may not be able to tell which people.)

Kirk Durston said...

Gareth: I don't find JS's claims meaningless either, but it happens that I may well have arrived at the conclusion that gratuitous torture is wrong by different criteria.

Regarding the possibility of no shared moral criteria: A few posts back, I outlined the only moral criterion I find compelling enough to warrant my compliance. It is this:

P: An activity is good if and only if it corresponds to the way God is.

Since P is the only criterion that, at least for me, is sufficiently morally motivating (and there are significant portions of humanity who would hold the same view by various descriptions), an atheist would have no moral criteria in common with me. The best we could hope to attain would be cases where I have taken my single moral criterion and derived certain applications that just so happen to correspond to criteria or intuitions that the atheist may also share. I do think that at this secondary level, the theist's applications from the single criterion P have a lot in common with many atheists/agnostics/non-religious peoples' internal intuitions which God has written within each person as an instinctive foundational knowledge (Romans 2:14-16). This greatly complicates things, because the atheist who still has this moral law written in his heart by God, assumes it has a natural explanation and, therefore, he does not need God to be good.

If, however, I factor out P from my life, then the only compelling criterion for believing in morality would be gone and I would instantly become a pragmatist. I may still refrain from murdering people I found sufficiently annoying or frustrating, but it would not be for moral reasons but practical reasons (keep the police off my back). Moral talk such as 'immoral' would be nonsense to me. I am not unique; having spent extended times in the former USSR as well as in North Korea, I know from first hand experience that atheism was rigorously taught, moral talk was regarded as a religious concept which, therefore, had absolutely no place in those regimes. Morality was replaced by pragmatic utilitarianism for the state and personal pragmatics for the individual.

I agree (and never disagreed) with your statement, "I don't think rejecting this carries any sort of obligation to stop saying things like "X is immoral" or "I disapprove of X", nor to stop trying to influence people not to do X." Individuals can say whatever they want so long as they don't assume it has any moral force with those who disagree.

You've alluded twice now to something that I find very intriguing in my own thinking of the subject .... aesthetic judgments and how it is natural to feel as if they are statements of fact when such a position is untenable. This is highly relevant to the question of whether our moral intuitions are evidence for moral realism. Consider the possibility of foundational knowledge which, from that branch of philosophy known as epistemology, is knowledge that is not derived from any of our 5 senses, nor from logical reasoning. It is, if you will, a collection of axioms pre-installed. As axioms they one cannot argue for them, but from them. From studies of toddlers, there is some evidence for foundational knowledge at least for basic math and logic. We accept foundational knowledge in the form of basic intuitions to do with math and logic because they have proven utility. But what if our basic intuitions about beauty, justice, good and evil is actual, basic foundational knowledge about objective Beauty, Justice, Goodness (i.e., knowledge of a Reality that is out there). These intuitions certainly also have a great deal of utility along with math and logic and seem to have a powerful role within humanity. Indeed, when a person can no longer perceive beauty, justice and goodness we feel that they, in some way, have been de-humanized.

Bottom Line: Math, logic, beauty, justice and goodness seem to be so central to what makes us human that could it be that these basic intuitions are foundational knowledge of a component of reality that is actual?

Gareth McCaughan said...

Kirk: So, it seems that Jeffrey doesn't find his comments about torture meaningless; I don't find them meaningless; you don't find them meaningless. It doesn't seem as if any of us is in any doubt about Jeffrey's opinion of torture (though we might be in some doubt about his opinions on metaethics). I'm having trouble seeing how you can think that what he said *is* meaningless, since none of us finds it so and it doesn't seem to have produced any particular failure of communication.

an atheist would have no moral criteria in common with me: No; as you go on to say, an atheist might have plenty of moral criteria in common with you; the difference is merely that s/he doesn't purport to derive them from P, and you do. (Whether you actually do, and whether s/he actually doesn't, are of course open to discussion, but I don't see any need to resolve those questions before engaging in moral discourse.)

then the only compelling criterion for believing in morality would be gone and I would instantly become a pragmatist: The strange thing is that many Christians make this sort of claim, and many Christians abandon Christianity, and yet it seems to be rather rare for those who do to abandon morality entirely. Quite a lot abandon moral realism, but they don't stop acting morally or caring about moral matters. So I'm skeptical about your claim of what you would do if you dropped P -- though of course it's always possible that you are by nature either exceptionally non-moral or exceptionally committed to having only motivations you have a theoretical justification for, in which case the claim might happen to be true in your case.

moral talk was regarded as a religious concept which, therefore, had absolutely no place in those regimes: I can believe (though I'm afraid I'm not simply going to take your word for it) that that was the official position in, say, the former USSR; but if you are claiming that non-religious people in the USSR were wholly amoral and cared only about their own convenience then I would very much like you to provide me with some evidence beyond your say-so.

what if our basic intuitions [...] is actual, basic foundational knowledge: well, if they are, then they are. I'm not sure what point you're making here -- saying "what if X?" doesn't constitute evidence for X or grounds for thinking that X might be true.

when a person can no longer perceive beauty, justice and goodness we feel that they, in some way, have been de-humanized: Of course someone can have a sense of beauty, justice and goodness whether or not they believe that it puts them in touch with an Objective Reality. I don't think anyone is de-humanized merely because they are not realist about beauty, justice or goodness. I think the intuitions that have a great deal of utility and a powerful role within humanity are ones like "such-and-such is beautiful" or "one should not do such-and-such", not highfalutin' abstract ones like "beauty is an aspect of Objective Reality and my intuitions about it are perceptions of objective fact".

Kirk Durston said...

We may all think that the word 'immoral' is meaningful (when applied to a particular action), even if we have different criteria for moral evaluation, in cases where the different criteria all lead to the same conclusion in the minds of the discussants. But in those cases, the mutual understanding was accidental; the meaning one person applied to the word 'immoral' was different from what the other person had in mind. One person may have had in mind: (Immoral: does not correspond to the way God is) when the other person had in mind: (Immoral: not productive, causes harm).

So in that case, each person is mistaken about what the other person meant by immoral, but they do not realize it. They can go on thinking that they all understand what the other person means, even though they are all mistaken. The moment they realize, however, that each person has a different definition of immoral, then the word begins to become meaningless (i.e., each person is making up their own meaning, and everyone knows it). At that point, the group must derive a mutually agreed upon meaning for the word, or abandon its use, or continue using it with the knowledge that everyone is making up their own definitions for the word in which case the word is meaningless.

You may wonder why this matters if the outcome is that everyone agrees that X is immoral. Where it matters are in cases where there is disagreement that X is immoral, for example, gay marriage and abortion. Some feel strongly that gay marriage is immoral. On the other hand, I listened to a spokesman for gay rights state that such a moral view is 'morally repugnant'. Clearly, when the word 'immoral' refers to two mutually contradictory conclusions, then it has become meaningless so far as any group discussion goes.

On another point you raise, you state that 'Quite a lot abandon moral realism, but they don't stop acting morally or caring about moral matters.' I agree, but there are two reasons for this. The first reason, as I stated in my previous post, is that God has put within every person the moral law; it is pre-programmed within us; it is part of our basic operating system. So a person may convince herself that there is no God, but she cannot change the fabric of her being. She may continue to talk about what is morally right and morally wrong, but she has failed to think through what is the materialist basis for 'morally right' and 'morally wrong', which raises the second reason some who abandon theism still continue to concern themselves with morality ..... a failure to seriously think through the question, 'If there is no God, then what is the point of humanity?' What is the net moral value of humanity without God? For example, from a purely materialist, environmental perspective, does humanity have a net positive or net negative effect on the environment? People try to justify their existence, or make up a purpose for life with the assumption that humanity is a 'good' thing (e.g., 'I want to make the world a better place', or 'I want to ease suffering in this world'). But if humanity itself is pointless, what is the point of easing its suffering? What is the point of the individual's life if the only context for its justification is within a pointless humanity? When considered to its conclusion, morality becomes a hollow joke. So if I were to become an atheist, I would abandon belief in morality, along with the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause. Instead I would become a pragmatist. You rightly observe that most people do not do this, but it is because to do it they must tear out something put there by God that is part of the fabric of their being, and the price to do that is just too high. They can convince themselves that there is no God, because they cannot see Him, but it is a lot harder to convince oneself that there is no objective good or evil, because it appears to us that it is all around us, even if we say that we are only making up our own perception of what is good and evil.

Gareth McCaughan said...

Kirk: No, the mutual understanding is not accidental, as is shown by how consistently people with different metaethics manage to (apparently) understand one another. And your talk about mistakes is, I think, clearly false, since neither you nor JS seem to be under the misapprehension that the other shares your metaethics.

You and JS (for instance) need have no more difficulty talking ethics than someone who believes that "burning" means "consuming phlogiston" and a modern physicist need have with talking physics. Which is to say: yes, you might have difficulties, but not because your definitional differences necessarily make nonsense of your discussion.

(I dislike attempts to decide nontrivial questions by definitional fiat, and therefore prefer to avoid taking things like your proposition P, or "goodness means excess of pain over pleasure", or whatever, as *definitions*. What they are is beliefs about what turns out to make things right or wrong.)

Clearly, when the word 'immoral' refers to two mutually contradictory conclusions, then it has become meaningless so far as any group discussion goes. Not in the least: all that means is that the parties concerned disagree about what's immoral.

So a person may convince herself that there is no God, but she cannot change the fabric of her being. Here, not for the first time, it seems that you are convinced that moral nonrealists are *really* either moral realists who are trying to fool themselves, or outright amoralists who are trying to fool others. I think this is obviously wrong, and I think your insistence on this is a much more serious obstacle to serious moral discussion between you and (say) JS than your metaethical disagreements.

if humanity itself is pointless, what is the point of easing its suffering?: your argument is missing the bit where you go from "there is no god" to "humanity itself is pointless". (And perhaps also the bit where you go from "pointless sub specie aeternitatis" to "pointless as far as I'm concerned".) I think you are *again* assuming what you're purporting to justify, namely that it's somehow wrong to be motivated by anything other that Transcendent Universal Objective Realities.

even if we say that we are only making up our own perception of what is good and evil: scarcely anyone says *that*. I don't "make up" my perception that courgette tastes nasty, or that my wife is nice to look at, or that Bach's music is beautiful -- or that gratuitous torture is wrong. Has it really escaped your notice that there are options other than "made up" and "implanted by God to provide awareness of a transcendent objective reality"?

Kirk Durston said...

Gareth: You believe that we can have a meaningful conversation about some moral proposition even if a) we have different definitions of the term 'moral', b) we have opposite views on a particular moral proposition and c) the other person, as a result, believes the conversation is meaningless until we can start talking about the same thing (some mutually agreed upon principle which defines what is morally good). So I need some clarification. Let us chose a moral proposition that we probably have opposite views on. Suppose I say, 'On the basis of proposition P ('an activity is good if and only if it corresponds to the way God is'), atheism is morally wrong'. Let us suppose you reply, 'Atheism is not morally wrong.' I then say, 'I disagree; what is your basis for your moral evaluation of atheism?'. You then provide at least one criterion. I respond by saying, 'But your criterion is wrong.'

Now, Gareth, I have two questions in light of the above conversation:
1. What is your basis for making moral judgments? and,
2. If I think your basis is bogus, can you explain in what sense we can have a meaningful dialogue about the morality of atheism?

Perhaps a formal argument laid out in the form of a syllogism would really help clarify your view sufficiently for me to understand.

Regarding your dislike of deciding non-trivial things by definitional fiat when what we are discussing are beliefs:
I am doing no such thing. I am defining my belief of morality. In a philosophical conversation, one must define their terms. If beliefs enter the conversation, they must be defined. It would greatly help add clarity to this discussion if you would define 'morality' or 'good' for us.

Regarding whether moral non-realists are trying to delude themselves/avoiding thinking deeply on the issue/ amoralists who are admittedly so and not trying to fool anyone/amoralists who are trying to fool others/etc (no dichotomy here), we cannot really decide until both you and I define what we mean by 'moral' or 'good' and then we can deal with secondary issues. I've provided a definition of my belief, but until you define your belief of what 'moral' is, we do have a real obstacle to a meaningful conversation on morality.

It is not 'wrong' to be motivated to do X by anything other than universal objective realities, as you suggest I am saying. If you believe that humanity does not have a Creator, but there is still an objective point to human existence that humans have not made up, then I'd like to see an argument. Again, a syllogism greatly aids clarity.

Regarding making stuff up: I like to call things for what they are. If you have not made up your moral theory (in spite of the fact that you state, 'what they are is beliefs ...') then it would be helpful to present a nice syllogistic argument as to why your beliefs are not made up. Your analogies about nasty tasting food, or getting pleasure from looking at a beautiful woman, or hearing beautiful music are not very accurate. We do not need to deliberate about physiological reactions or stimuli. We often do need to perform moral deliberation (i.e., thinking is required). If thinking is required, we need some propositions from which to reason.

I hold to the correspondence theory of truth as follows:

T: A belief or proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to reality.

We can make up a flying machine in our heads and build it, but it will only fly if it corresponds to the reality of the laws of nature. So even though we 'made up' a flying machine, if it is going to be a true flying machine, it must conform to external reality (the laws of nature). You can make up your moral theory, but it will only be true if there is a moral reality out there that it corresponds to. A belief is not true simply because one believes it is true. So if you believe that you did not make up (consciously or unconsciously) your moral beliefs, what is your argument?

Gareth McCaughan said...

Kirk: Actually, I don't think one can have a productive discussion of anything if one party insists that the whole thing is meaningless. But that's not because calling something meaningless makes it so; it's because if someone isn't prepared to engage then there's no point discussing.

Obviously, if A and B try to talk about some moral question and B simply insists that A's fundamental approach to morality is totally broken then their discussion is unlikely to be any use to anyone. This has nothing to do with moral realism, as I have already pointed out. The same issue would arise between (say) two people belonging to very different religions, each convinced that her god determines the moral facts and that the other's god is really an evil demon.

I have no idea what claim you are asking me to justify with a syllogism, and am therefore unable to oblige. And I have no idea why you've started asking (again and again) about *my* basis for moral judgements and *my* definitions of all the principal terms, and *my* justifications for everything I believe, since (as I have pointed out already) this discussion is not about *my* moral position at all. (I am agnostic about the key point at issue.)

I am doing no such thing. I am defining my belief of morality. If I've understood you correctly, you're now saying that your claim is not "'right' is simply a synonym for 'corresponding to the nature of God'" but "what *I* mean when I say 'right' is 'corresponding to the nature of God'". Which is all very well, but then how is disagreement about this supposed to make discussion meaningless?

If you believe that humanity does not have a Creator, but there is still an objective point to human existence that humans have not made up, then I'd like to see an argument. Again, a syllogism greatly aids clarity.: 1. As usual, you are stuffing words like "objective" in where they don't belong. 2. I find it strange that when I ask you to clarify your reasoning, your response is to demand that *I* give *you* a formal proof of something that (a) I never claimed and (b) is much stronger than the negation of your claim.

We do not need to deliberate about physiological reactions or stimuli. Irrelevant (unless you'd care to explain -- you can use a syllogism if you like -- why "one has to deliberate to arrive at an opinion on X" has anything to do with "Opinions about X might be neither 'made up' nor reflections of a transcendent objective reality"), and also (once the spin is removed -- I was not talking only about physiological reactions, as you might have gathered from the fact that the music of Bach was one of my examples) incorrect: some aesthetic judgements do require deliberation. And, for that matter, most moral judgements don't. Oh, and deliberation doesn't have to take the form of reasoning about propositions, and moral deliberation -- like aesthetic deliberation -- quite often doesn't.

A belief is not true simply because one believes it is true. And, in other news, snow is white. Do you think I'm a complete idiot?

My reason for thinking I did not make up my moral positions is that I would expect to have some memory of having done so in at least some cases. But it now appears that when you said "made up" you meant something that can happen unconsciously, which isn't at all compatible with what *I* mean by "made up". Who knows? perhaps by "made up" you just mean "not derived from an all-wise, all-knowing, perfectly good god" or something.

Kirk Durston said...

Gareth, I'm glad we got the differing notions of 'made up' clarified. It is another example of how two people can be talking past each other when they have two different understandings of the same term. It is one of the reasons I have asked you to define your own terms when speaking of morality. I suspect from the way you use certain terms such as 'morality' and 'purpose' or 'meaning' that you may have a different understandings of those words. Thus, the way I use them won't make particular sense to you, since you fit a different definition to the same terms.

This underscores why I like definitions and syllogisms. Few things clarify a belief or concept in my mind like putting it down on paper in the form of a definition. Similarly, remarkable clarification of ones own thinking can occur when one puts the progression of thoughts leading to a conclusion on paper in the form of a syllogism. I'm not asking these things of you to be unreasonable, but for the benefit of increased clarity and progress that I experience when I do them.

The concept of making stuff up has a lot of implications for the topic we are discussing. First, I see from your reply that I should provide some sort of definition of 'making stuff up', so here it is ...

'Making stuff up: originating ideas, beliefs, or concepts from within ones mind, either consciously or subconsciously.'

Of course I will admit that I just 'made up' the definition of 'making stuff up', but at least you understand what I mean by it, and it has a certain utility in identifying things that may need to be tested to see if they conform to reality. This all raises a highly relevant problem ... the brain is demonstrably capable of supplying us with an endless stream of ideas, beliefs and concepts, some of which may actually be true (correspond to reality) and others not. I am a major fan of exposing my own beliefs to external reality as a means to test them.

You say that you are agnostic about moral realism, so sketching out your belief on this topic in the form of a syllogism may be premature. A different approach that may be more helpful is to ask the question, 'is my agnosticism (re. moral realism) rationally justified?' Philosophers often talk of the truth of a proposition in terms of probability, where 0 means it is certainly false, 1 means it is certainly true, and the halfway point between the two, 0.5, is the state of perfect agnosticism. An individual may be anywhere on the continuum between 0 and 1. A person who is at 0.6, for example, finds the truth of a proposition more likely than not, even if they are unconvinced that it is certainly true (otherwise they would be at 1).

True 'proof' is difficult or impossible for many things, but let us consider your agnosticism. Can you rationally justify, say, a 0.5 position in light of the seeming objective reality of good and evil? (By 'seeming' I mean that it 'appears as if it is objective' or part of external reality and not merely contingent on what definition of good and evil I may have made up in my own head). For example:

a) Our perceptions and responses to gross evil or injustice are much more powerful than our responses to mere breaches of social convention
b) The vast bulk of other individuals seem to also conceive of good and evil and react in a similar way
c) The concepts of good and evil seem to compel us to do things we really do not want to do, but know we should ..... or not do things we really do want to do, but know we should not, almost as if there was some external law about how humans ought to behave. When we ignore this 'external law' we feel we have violated something outside of ourselves.

None of this is 'proof' of moral realism, but I certainly do think it ought to weigh in on our deliberations and, perhaps, even move one out of agnosticism toward moral realism, say, from 0.5 to 0.6. So when you consider a), b), and c), can you rationally justify your agnosticism?

Gareth McCaughan said...

[What I have to say to Kirk doesn't fit within Blogger's 4096-character limit. My apologies for the resulting multiple comments. Jeffrey, I assume you'll feel free to tell us to desist if you reckon we're cluttering up your comments with too many irrelevancies.]

Kirk: I notice that you have shifted entirely away from the topic we were formerly discussing in order to focus on the irrelevant question of whether *my* position on moral realism, and *my* actual moral judgements, are justifiable. That's unfortunate, though not unexpected. I shall answer your questions; if you then want to get back to what we were talking about, let's; otherwise, I think we're finished here.

If you believe that snow is white because you've explored the world and seen lots of white snow and no other-coloured snow, then your belief that snow is white wasn't anywhere else before it was in your mind; so according to a strict application of your definition, you "made it up". Since this seems like a paradigm case of not making a belief up, I think that for your definition to work you need to define "originating" rather narrowly, so that ideas formed in response to happenings in the external world don't count as "originat[ed] ... from within one's mind". But, of course, you do want *some* such ideas to count as "made up" -- unless you want to say that an idea is only "made up" if it's *entirely independent* of anything coming from the outside world, but then I suspect that no ideas at all are "made up".

So, either you're using the words "made up" in what seems to me an astonishingly unorthodox sense; or your definition doesn't really match your meaning; or I'm badly misunderstanding the definition. In any case, your definition doesn't help me see how what you're saying is reasonable.

[Coming next: my estimate of Pr(moral realism).]

Gareth McCaughan said...

[Continued response to Kirk.]

I'd say I assign a probability of about 1/4 to moral realism. I don't think doing the quantitative estimates and calculations that would be required to come up with a precise figure is worth the effort; I expect that when I've given enough thought to all the relevant arguments and evidence that there'd be any point in expressing my credences numerically, I'll also have accumulated enough information that my probability assignment will very obviously be either very near 0 or very near 1, without any need for numerical calculations.

Broadly speaking, the main evidence for moral realism consists of three facts. (1) Most people seem to be, or at least to talk as if they are, moral realists. (2) Moral judgements *feel*, much of the time at least, like judgements of fact. (3) In particular, it commonly feels appropriate to argue about moral judgements in ways that resemble the ways we argue about factual questions. And the main evidence against consists of three facts. (4) No one seems to be able to come up with a non-question-begging account of what, if moral judgements are facts, makes them true or false. (5) There doesn't seem to be any plausible way in which, if they are facts, we could come to know them. (6) Our alleged sources of information about moral reality, namely various people's moral intuitions and the traditions passed down in various communities, are more divergent than one would expect if those sources were actually any good.

In general, the fact that something feels true is extremely poor evidence for its actual truth, because it's common for things to feel true but not be true. Regarding moral matters, in particular, I observe (as I've said before in this discussion) that moral intuitions about matters of (what might be) moral fact (1) are more fundamental than intuitions about metaethics, (2) are commonly held with more conviction, but (3) are subject to a lot of disagreement and therefore can't be very reliable. So much so, in fact, that that disagreement seems to me to be itself quite good evidence against moral realism.

Further, there are some at-least-kinda-plausible evolutionary-psychology explanations for how our moral thinking got the way it is, why moral judgements feel like matters of fact, etc. I wouldn't dream of claiming that they're necessarily correct, but for present purposes they don't have to be: the point is just that Pr(moral realism feels right|moral realism is wrong) doesn't seem to be terribly low, since there are plausible ways in which that state of affairs could have come about.

So, the way morality feels isn't (on my view) much evidence for realism. What about the apparent prevalence of moral realism in the population in general? Well, I think it's exactly what one should expect given facts 2 and 3, whether realism is actually right or not, so it offers very little evidence of its own once 2 and 3 have been taken into account. The prevalence of moral realism among people who have thought deeply about metaethics would be a more interesting statistic, but I don't happen to know what it is. There are certainly plenty of good philosophers on both sides. My impression is that there are more against than for, but I don't put all that much confidence in that impression.

What about the evidence against moral realism? Well, the absence of (anything that looks to me like) a coherent account of what objective moral values, or moral facts, actually *are*, or of how they could interact with our brains to make us aware of them, seems like a big problem. (Another aspect of the same thing: The currently best-available account of the nature of the world, namely the one offered by physics, seems to offer little space in which anything at all like objective moral values could fit.)

And the aforementioned lack of agreement between alleged sources of information about the alleged moral facts seems to me much more probable if moral realism is wrong than if it is true.

[Conclusion to follow.]

Gareth McCaughan said...

[Concluding remarks on moral realism, still to Kirk.]

Weighing up all this, I would say that the evidence favours moral nonrealism by, perhaps, 4:1. (Something like 1:3 from considerations 2 and 3; nothing from 1 after 2 and 3 have been considered; 4:1 from 4 and 5; 3:1 from 6. These numbers are all pulled out of my posterior, of course; pun intended.) Finally, the odds ratio for realism versus nonrealism equals the odds ratio for the evidence (1:4) times the prior odds ratio. It's hard to estimate the (or my) prior odds because, e.g., what feels like a fundamental intuition may actually have been greatly influenced by facts already considered above as evidence (which would lead to double counting and a wrong estimate). But one thing that needs considering, and seems like it (a) belongs in the prior estimate and (b) doesn't form a part of the evidential considerations above, is that an ontology with moral values in it is more complicated than one without. Preferring simpler theories seems to be a very effective heuristic, so it seems like we should reckon moral realism less likely a priori. This sort of estimation is difficult, and the principles to be applied are a matter of controversy; this is a major reason why I'm not sure exactly what my opinion is about moral realism. For now I'll be lazy and pretend that the prior probabilities of realism and nonrealism are equal; that, together with my handwavy 4:1 estimate above, leads to an estimate of about 1/5 for Pr(realism). Not so far from my guess above; of course I may unconsciously have tweaked my estimates here to make the result match the guess. My feeling is that I have in every case been too generous for realism versus nonrealism rather than the reverse, so maybe my "real" Pr(realism) is more like 1/10.

Kirk Durston said...

Gareth: I am leaving tomorrow for 10 days and will have no foreseeable access to the internet so, barring some unforeseen internet opportunities, it looks like this will have to be my last post on this thread.

I appreciate the thoughtful and detailed account of your thoughts on the likelihood of moral realism. Despite your thinking that my question was off topic, it is highly relevant to the original question of whether moral talk is meaningful. It was useful to find out what your beliefs on moral realism were so that, hopefully, I could find an opening premise that you would agree to and that could do some work. I see that your agnosticism, however, leaves you with no solid moral theory, at least nothing that you have articulated, and nothing that would carry any weight for another person. In formal philosophy, the first step in constructing a moral theory that is going to apply to more than just the person constructing it, is to start with at least one mutually agreed upon proposition. No mutually agreed upon proposition -> no mutually agreed upon moral theory applicable to more than the person making it up (or to use an euphemism, 'constructing' it).

Regarding your 'snow is white' objection: observations of particular facts about the world + inductive inference = rationally justified belief. The facts about the world are reality, the inductive inference originates in the mind, and the belief is the result of the two working in combination. It is easy to falsify the belief that all snow is white by testing it to see if it corresponds to reality (e.g., In Canada, there is the sage advice to not eat yellow snow). But how would you falsify a moral belief if moral realism is false? If moral realism is false, then there is no moral reality out there (independent of our minds) to verify that the moral beliefs have any existence other than in our minds. We make up our moral beliefs, but there is nothing to test them against. Testing them against other human minds hardly elevates a belief to something which exists anywhere but in people's minds.

Your points 1 through 6 are rich with potential for discussion, but in wrapping up my contribution to this thread, let me take your point (2) 'Moral judgements *feel*, much of the time at least, like judgements of fact.' I grant you this proposition. Given (2), you will *feel* as if moral statements such as, 'gratuitous torture is morally wrong', have meaning. Physics dictates/describes how space-time, matter and energy behave. The moral law is higher than physics in that it does not dictate/describe how humans behave, but how humans 'ought' to behave. Rather than arising out of how humans behave, it seems to arise out of knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom, contingencies, and knowledge of how humans *could* behave. The Moral Law contains the operating instructions for humanity, so I do not see why it is question begging to suggest that the Creator of humanity would supply us with operating instructions about morality, axioms of math, and the basic principles of logic such as the innate awareness of the law of non-contradiction. Of course, I am assuming a Creator, which you may or may not grant, but if we do assume a Creator, then it is not at all implausible that there are operating instructions relevant to whatever purpose we are created for (just as when we create something for some purpose, there are often instructions as to how to best achieve the purpose for which that object has been created).

In closing, I would suggest that if you really want moral statements to have objective meaning, then you will have to go with moral realism .... and if you go with moral realism, you will have to go with Something higher than humanity that has knowledge of how humans *could* behave (if they wanted to), counterfactuals of freedom and why it is all so important. It is the blue pill or red pill decision but this time it is real.

Gareth McCaughan said...

Kirk: The original question was not whether moral talk is meaningful, simpliciter; it was whether *Jeffrey's* moral talk is meaningful, given his (conjectural for both of us, I think) metaethical position. That question is independent of how likely I think it is that his metaethical position is correct.

There are, as I'm sure you know well, plenty of moral propositions about which we could find agreement (though we might not agree about what sort of things moral propositions are). If we can't agree on a *metaethical* position, well, then we can't; too bad; there are lots of other things we probably can't agree on too. "Solidity" is not in itself a virtue; I'd rather be unsure than wrong.

how would you falsify a moral belief if moral realism is false? What a silly question: if moral realism is false, then "moral beliefs" are called beliefs only for convenience, don't really represent facts about the world, and aren't the sort of thing that needs falsification. That's only a problem if you presuppose moral realism.

I grant you this proposition. Very generous, since it was part of my summary of the best evidence available for your position.

I don't think it's question-begging to think that if we were created then our creator might have left us with instructions which, if followed, will help to achieve his purposes. But I don't think that turns into an actual theory of ethics without some further premise along the lines of "we ought to do what our creator wants us to, if we have a creator" or "if the universe was created, then its creator knows what one ought to do", and that is where the question gets begged.

if you really want moral statements to have objective meaning, then you will have to go with moral realism: well, actually, I prefer my beliefs to be determined by what's true rather than by what I "really want"; but yes, wanting moral statements to have objective meaning means wanting moral realism by definition. Similarly, if you want to be rich, then you will have to get a lot of money. Astonishing.

if you go with moral realism, you will have to go with Something higher than humanity that has knowledge of [...]. I don't think doing so actually solves any of the problems surrounding moral realism; it just gives a widely-accepted excuse for ignoring them.

Kirk Durston said...

Gareth: I don't need to leave for the airport for another 90 minutes, and I got some free time for one last post.

I think you nicely answered the question as to whether moral statements (Shallit's or anyone else's) are meaningful if moral realism is false when you answered my question as to how would you falsify a moral belief if moral realism is false?

You responded: "What a silly question: if moral realism is false, then "moral beliefs" are called beliefs only for convenience, don't really represent facts about the world, and aren't the sort of thing that needs falsification. That's only a problem if you presuppose moral realism.

Now if there is no moral reality, and if moral beliefs are only beliefs for convenience, and they do not represent facts about the world, and can't be falsified, and we do not agree on the basic criteria to fabricate these 'human constructs', as Shallit called them, then if you think they are meaningful (and not accidentally meaningful) to anyone else but the one who utters them, then I'd say you must have a very loose definition of 'meaningful' indeed. Perhaps they could be meaningful in some subjective artistic sense, where each person looks at a piece of art and comes to their own interpretation, but even at that, the piece of art may have an entirely different meaning for someone else. Given what you just said about moral beliefs if moral realism is false, I'd suggest that their 'meaning' as you wish them to have, becomes mere decoration. Frippery that can be dispensed with or allocated into a mental bin along with beliefs in Leprechauns and faeries. Moral pronouncements become mere tiresome statements of a person's feelings on a subject that have no reality to give them sense, so they need to be translated from 'I think x is immoral' to 'I think x is ___________(assign what you wish to this space, since there is no moral reality to falsify it)'. The latter is much more pragmatic.

Well, I have to run. It has been an interesting discussion. Perhaps we could accomplish more if we met over coffee, but since you are in the UK, I don't see that happening too soon. If the opportunity arises, however, I'll look forward to the conversation.

Best regards,

Kirk

Gareth McCaughan said...

Kirk:

It seems that your objection to moral nonrealism is simply that it isn't moral realism: you insist on judging it by standards that presuppose moral realism. It is neither surprising nor interesting if it doesn't do well by those standards.

Falsification is a very useful test for meaningfulness when dealing with what purport to be statements of objective fact about the world. If moral realism is false, then moral judgements are not statements of fact about the world. This is not news; it's just what moral realism means.

The utterances "Mmm, that tastes good" and "Let's go and see a movie" are (I think) clearly meaningful and most likely unfalsifiable. I hope you agree that this is not a problem. Moral non-realists think that moral judgements somewhat resemble judgements of taste and suggestions of what to do.

Your comments about meaning and decoration might (*might*) make sense if you were a logical positivist, holding that the only kind of meaning that's worth having comes from empirical checkability. Logical positivism is generally reckoned too extreme these days, and in any case it doesn't strike me as a good position for a Christian to take up. (How would one go about bringing empirical evidence to bear on the filioque controversy, or the question of what theory of the Atonement is best?)

Anyway: I hope you have a good trip.

IvanM said...

Kirk said: I've not read Beversluis' book, though I've read some reviews (all positive) and I felt that his arguments, as summarized in those reviews, lacked depth

My double-logarithm irony meter is of no use here; I'll have to wait until they start shipping the new inverse-Ackermann meters I've been hearing about.

will m said...

Its much more likely that the connection isn't religion directly, but political conservatism. Conservatives are much more likely to attend church regularly. They're also more likely to support torture.