Good against Evil

Here's a big steaming pile of lies: good against evil, namely in the sense of black and white (the Bible and the ten commandments come to mind.) The mere fact that the philosophy of ethics hasn't been able to come to a solid conclusion of some sort of metaphysical, universal laws of ethics should be a starting point for today's inquiry. What I'm not saying is that good doesn't exist. I most certainly will admit that there is plenty of good in the world and of course some evil, but to say that we can plug in the variables of each moral situation and conclude an actions moral standing seems ridiculous to me.

Black and White

To start, we have divine law. In this case we are specifically speaking of the Bible because it is possible for other religions to preach what I am about to argue for. Many fundamentalists like to claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, so the teachings within it are, of course, inerrant. If something is inerrant, then whatever contradicts it must be errant. And from this, we get the black and white picture of the moral universe. If an action contradicts a teaching, it's immoral.

But this seems ridiculous. Take for example, the commandment to not kill. This sounds good at first and, to be honest, should generally be followed, but there are clearly cases where killing may be necessary. Suppose there is an axe-murderer wreaking havoc amongst your neighbors' homes. When she arrives at your house, you have a choice: kill her or let her continue to murder. The clear choice is to violate the divine command of not killing. The justification is that you acted for the 'greater good' (I hate that term.) If your action may bring about greater good, then obviously this action is better than any other possible action. If that is the case, then you should most definitely choose that action.

Simple, right? This isn't anything groundbreaking. Clearly, divine law has some problems with our very most basic intuitions. We don't have good reason to believe it anymore. There is another view which holds the world in black and white: Kantian ethics!

Specifically, Kant's 'categorical imperative', which was basically a rule which was to be followed at all times. He had three formulations of it and he thought them all to be the same, but it is generally accepted that each formulation is actually quite different. We'll deal with the first two.

"Always act in such a way that you could will your maxim to be universal law."

Let's clear some terms up with the first form. Actually, just one: maxim. A good way to describe maxim would be to call it motive. Maxim is motive for our purposes. Kant said that the only way to truly consider an action moral is if the maxim for a certain action was done from duty. This gets rid of the possibility that an action may be done in accordance with morality (ie, you save your arch enemy from falling off of a cliff, but only from the motivation of reward.) A truly moral action would be one where you save your enemy, but only because you have a duty to save him. With this cleared up, we can elaborate on this formulation.

This formulation says that your actions should reflect how you think the world ought to be. If you think that no one ought to ever lie, then you should never lie because in this way you can will your maxim to be universal law. Kant was a deontologist, so he thought that there was a rule to being moral. However, it's quite obvious that Kant's first formulation has run into some trouble. Who is to decide which wills are moral? Our different intuitions cause a snag. In other words, I may think it's ok to sometimes lie, while you may think no one ever ought to lie. So, we hold different intuitions about who's maxim shoud be willed as universal law... But who is to say which is right? This makes the first formulation subjective.

"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end."

A very simplistic way to restate this is to say that you should never use someone as a mere means to an end. So, never lie to someone in order to better yourself for example. However, the emphasis here is on 'mere means'.

Here's the classic thought experiment: you are standing over a railroad track. There are five people tied on the tracks and a train is coming! You have the option to save them by pushing the fat man next to you off the track, stopping the train right in its tracks (literally!) People tend to be divided on the issue. A consequentialist would say push the fat man and save five lives. A Kantian scholar would say pushing him would be using him as a mere means.

Here's the problem with the Kantian answer - this isn't using him as a mere means. You can say we're ignoring the fat man's will, but what of the will of the five peope? Are we to ignore theirs instead? How is that any better? Clearly, pushing the man here is using him as more than a mere mean. And this poses a question: Where is the line between mere and important drawn? Is this left to the intuition? If so, whose? And we run into the same problem, it becomes subjective.

So, black and white, just don't seem right.

All Good Things are Grey

I mentioned this before in the post - acting for the greater good, the basic idea of utilitarianism. This theory says an action is moral if the consequences are favorable. And of course, an action which promotes the greatest amount of good (such as furthest away from pain as possible and the greatest amount of happiness,) such an action would be best.

Now this would be great if we had formulas and such to calculate which actions would promote the most good, but we don't. In fact, it's hard to tell the consequences of many actions beyond a few simple causal events. So are we to say an action is only to be moral if the predictable steps promote the most good, compared to other actions? Well this runs into problems - drilling for oil on the American coast may lower gas prices somewhat, and that's fine. But, in the long run, it may damage our enviroment and exacerbate global warming. So it seems the more moral actions aren't always evident at first. Again, this is leading the theory to become subjective.

In example, what if good is defined differently by people. Even supplying Mill's definition of good as 'the furthest away from pain as possible...' leaves subjectivity.

Also, utilitarianism leaves something out - the truth. What is more important, truth or the good? Religious extremists would have the entire world follow their religion, and this may be a good thing. If such a case were to occur, then clearly the world would be a more peaceful place. But most, if not all, religions laugh in the face of scientific discovery (unless you pull some serious strings.) So we have a situation which places no value on the truth, but has promoted a vast amount of good across all of humanity. I don't know about you, but my bullshit meter just went off the charts.

Perhaps, utilitarianism should place value on truth next to pleasure and happiness, but as for now, that is not the case.

Thoughts

Clearly though, the world of ethics is far from black and white, and it seems almost anything may be justified in some way. Of course, some actions still remain vile and evil. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many feel as if good is on their side (the citizen who feels God protects their country, for example.) And this view may be dangerous. If someone believes good is on their side, then they are less likely to question their own position. This may lead to grudges, fights, hatred, and wars (ie, the clash of religions throughout history.) A world in which every person displayed greater humbleness with their views, and were more open to consider new ideas, would certainly be a safer world indeed.

Scutinizing Scruton (Oh I am SO clever)!

Recently I came across an article from Roger Scruton. I looked him up and apparently he's big time in the philosophical and academic communities. Despite that though, I still find some of what he says in his article as setting my bullwoo meter off the charts! So let's take a look.

The article, titled 'The Return of Religon', goes after what Scruton calls the 'evangelical atheists', such as Dawkins and Harris. In it he offers some criticism of them and their like and offers a few reasons why someone might turn to religion. He starts his argument with:

There are two reasons why people start shouting at their opponents: one is that they think the opponent is so strong that every weapon must be used against him; the other is that they think their own case so weak that it has to be fortified by noise. Both these motives can be observed in the evangelical atheists.

Well, yeah, Dawkins is angry, but Scruton may have it wrong here. Sorry to say, but this appears to be a fallacy - clearly there is more than two reasons why someone would yell. In the case of the atheists, I would say it's not because they're afraid their argument sucks, but because the other side isn't willing to listen when they need to. So Scruton did a nice little number there, trying to already make the atheist's position look worse than it actually is. He then follows this with:

They seriously believe that religion is a danger, leading people into excesses of enthusiasm which, precisely because they are inspired by irrational beliefs, cannot be countered by rational argument.

He makes it sound as if this is some sort of absurd and ungrounded belief, but this seems to be the actual case. How many times have YouTube and Internet debates proven this claim to be true? Scruton then attempts to undermine such a belief by bringing the point that not all religious believers are dangerous, and in fact some go to religion in search of peace. Of course, this is true, there are different 'types' of believers. I don't think this completely debunks the belief though: religion can be considered dangerous in several ways.

There is violence of course, and most recently the Islamic extremists and abortion clinic bombers are great evidence for this. But this is what Scruton was trying to argue: not everyone is like that. There is another type of danger in religion though, and that's a lack of skeptical and scientific thinking. As Sagan always used to say, "...that kind of skeptical questioning, don't accept what authority tells you -attitude of science- is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other." Basing beliefs on faith makes people more vulnerable to following leaders of any sort blindly, and in a democracy (or any type of government almost), things can turn badly when that happens. And THAT is dangerous (take Iraq for example).

Ignoring that type of danger though, Scruton continues with his argument by posing the question "... What exactly does modern science tell us, and just where does it conflict with the premises of religious belief?" Well, most holy books of any religion for starters, but Scruton continues.

He then gives the example of genetics and how all humans are 'survival machines' and goes into some detail about this and how life possibly started. So here he says that science has been able to tell us about our origins (and will soon finish filling in the details); obviously this conflicts with most religious premises. Scruton follows that with astrophysics and cosmology and the 'general picture' the theories and facts from these studies have produced.

Only ignorance would cause us to deny that general picture, and the evangelical atheists assume that religion must deny that picture and therefore must, at some level, commit itself to the propagation of ignorance or at any rate the prevention of knowledge.

Well, that certainly seems to be the case - especially with fundamentalists who wish to deny major fields of science (such as evolutionary biology), so the atheists seem to have good reason to assume!

Yet, I do not know a religious person among my friends and acquaintances who does deny that picture...

Uh... Insufficient data? Helloooo!? I have friends who deny that 'general picture', obviously very many religious people do also!

Scruton then claims that there is a subliminal argument going on between the atheists and theists: atheists say that any sort of enquiry into the metaphysical should stop - especially regarding meaning - and theists disagree.

... Brings enquiry to a stop. And the religious person will feel that this stop is premature: that reason has more questions to ask... So who, in this subliminal contest, is the truly reasonable one? The atheists beg the question in their own favor, by assuming that science has all the answers, but science can have all the answers only if it has all the questions; and that assumption is false.

We get a few things here: 1) there is a subliminal contest going here; 2) science claims it has all the answers so there can be no metaphysical meaning; 3) this is a false assumption; 4) atheists are unreasonable.

I'm not sure why this 'contest' is subliminal, but ok. However, I'm not sure science has ever said it has all the answers... And many great scientists admit that even the best scientific theories will never get us to absolute truth. So for false assumptions, it seems Scruton made one by claiming "2". And somehow, atheists are unreasonable. I should make it clear that earlier in the quoted paragraph, Scruton makes it clear he is talking about meaning. So I'm expecting some sort of discussion on why atheists should be open to enquiry on meaning. You are too, right?

Well... Instead, we get an example of what one of the metaphysical questions beyond science is besides meaning.

One of these is the question of consciousness. This strange universe of black holes and time warps, of event horizons and non-localities, somehow becomes conscious of itself.

Very Sagan-esque, eh? Perhaps what Scruton is saying here is that consciousness is good enough reason to look for meaning in the universe. That it certainly is odd the universe is conscious (through us) and the rest of the universe seems to be nothing but stars, dust, holes, etc. Let's continue with that assumption.

Scruton dives deeper into what consciousness is, explaining how difficult it is to grasp it. But then Scruton seems to make a slightly absurd claim.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the thought of consciousness gives rise to peculiar metaphysical anxieties, which we try to allay with images of the soul, the mind, the self... But these traditional 'solutions' merely duplicate the problem. We cast no light on the consciousness of a human being simply by redescribing it as the consciousness of some inner homunculus - be it a soul, a mind, or a self. On the contrary, by placing that homunculus in some private, inaccessible and possibly immaterial realm, we merely compound the mystery.

Maybe I am misunderstanding this, but it seems to me as if Scruton is saying all theories of mind claim mental states to be the 'ghost in the machine'! That certainly isn't the case, there are plenty of theories of mind which are materialistic and which attempt to reduce the mind to something else (or even claim it doesn't exist - eliminative materialism). So where does Scruton take this?

It is this mystery which brings people back to religion.

(snip!)

Modern people are drawn to religion by their consciousness of consciousness, by their awareness of a light shining in the centre of their being.

Right, that may be true, but that doesn't make it right or ok. First of all, I don't think that's the only reason people flock to religion. Secondly, it would make far more sense to instead guide people towards the philosophy of the mind/body problem. Why don't we encourage others to educate themselves in these theories and enlighten themselves with science behind it? I would venture to say that if we were to do this instead, many more great philosophical minds would pop up into the community and help enlighten the rest of us as to what theory of mind may be most correct.

After venturing into why religion isn't such a bad thing, Scruton goes back to bashing those evangelical atheists.

These characters have a violent and untidy air: it is very obvious that something is missing from their lives, something which would bring order and completeness in the place of random disgust.

Eh? What? Something missing? Oh, could you possibly be hinting at... RELIGION!? Or could it be that they long for a world which operates rationally and hope for a global culture which values skepticism and science and realizes that it too may be spiritual - just not in the yuppy lame let's-all-go-to-heaven way?

Scruton is pissed. And I can agree somewhat, maybe Dawkins and the others could tone down their 'anger'... I'm sure believers would be more willing to listen then (or are they yelling because the believers wouldn't listen in the first place?) But, given the fact that Dawkins and the others are only human, it makes sense that they would be fed up with the ridiculousness that is blind faith and the rejection of theories enlightened by facts (which we call science) and this faith's pervasiveness in the world.

Ken Miller

Back in the day, I had stumbled upon a YouTube video of Ken Miller lecturing on Intelligent Design. It was a pretty good lecture and devastated the ID argument rather well. Of course, this is all old news, but I want to comment on something from Miller's book (Finding Darwin's God) which he mentioned in the video.

I picked up the book expecting a pretty good argument for being a scientist AND believing in god at the same time. For the first half of the book, Miller totally kicked the arse of ID, I thoroughly enjoyed that half. The second half, however, I didn't enjoy. That half was the entire reason I bought the book; I was genuinely interested in Miller's argument for god. His argument sucked.

Basically, Miller's argument was the argument from free will. God gave us free will, he exists! Woo woo! Right? No, not right. His reasoning was that free will isn't compatible with determinism. Lucky for us, God made happenings on the quantum level indeterminant. And with out ever clearly explaining the correlation, Miller claimed the inderterminism displayed at the quantum level is translated to free will at the human level.

And that's bullwoo. So an action of ours is predetermined by our genetics, experiences, etc? Instead, apparently, our actions are indertiminant! But if something isn't caused, it's random. And if our actions are random, then how are we in control of them?

I think what may have happened is that Miller confused quantum inderterminism with libertarian indeterminism. Libertarians reject hard determinism and say that new causal chains are enacted each time a rational agent acts ("A stone is moved by a stick, a stick is moved by a hand.") Their reasoning is that the universe is indeterminant because we have some mysterious free will which is untethered by the need for cause and effect. I've heard fellow philosophy majors who subscribe to this say that free will "is simply mysterious!" That's no explanation.

So all in all, the book was a good read. Now I need to check out Miller's new book, which I think I may actually buy.


Also, I just had a thought. Emotional appeals tend to really suck because they aren't necessarily based on any good evidence. When creationists say, "And you think the universe/humans/the avian flu came about from an ACCIDENT!!?!?" one thing they may be saying is that such a claim would take away their meaning of life, and that makes them feel sad. Really, the universe isn't meant to adhere to our need for meaning... So even if everything is 'an accident', I don't see the big deal.

God and Other Minds

Recently, I ran into a book from the late 60's which had the thesis that a belief in god is similar to believing in other minds. You can never directly observe god and other minds (you can never experience someone else's experiences), get it? So of course it would be a little crazy to claim that other minds don't exist because then you would be the only mind (solipsism)!!! If you won't deny the existence of other minds, then supposedly it would make more sense to say that arguments for god aren't so bad...

But there's a difference here: other minds have evidence in their favor - the debate is still out on god.

No one has ever directly observed an electron, but we know they exist because we see the effect they have on nature. If you know that you have a mind and can recognize your own complex behaviors, then witnessing another being produce similar behaviors should give you good reason to believe in other minds... In other words, you have an indirect observation of other minds.

This is a pretty big bit of evidence, much more than it seems god has going for himself. The contents of the book mentioned the cosmological argument, so I'm guessing the author was going to say that complex behaviors of other beings is similar to the universe... As the universe is the indirect evidence/observation for the proposed hypothesis. In other words:

1. I know I have a mind.
2. I display complex behaviors.
   
3. I know we each display complex behaviors.
4. Therefore, I have good reason to believe we all have minds.

1. God's only action, at the very least, is creating the universe.
   
2. We see the universe,
3. The universe is a result of the behavior of god,
4. Therefore, God exists.

But then you're arguing the cosmological argument with a few extra premises, and that's nothing new!

Of course, I didn't read the book, but that's where I see it going after looking over the table of contents. Not very cool, if you ask me.