Metaethical Theories

Theists occasionally claim that atheists pragmatically 'believe' in God, because they act morally, or attribute praise and blame, which acts implicitly accept the existence of God. Behind this is the idea that an objective morality can only be grounded in God. Here's William Lane Craig:

...if God exists, then the objectivity of moral values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured, but that in the absence of God, that is, if God does not exist, then morality is just a human convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Thus, we cannot truly be good without God. On the other hand, if we do believe that moral values and duties are objective, that provides moral grounds for believing in God.

..and here's an article on Catholic website Strange Notions:

Objective morality is observable apart from knowledge of God, which is why atheists and agnostics can know right from wrong, and why philosophers can talk about self-evident moral propositions, and why everyone reading this knows what we mean by “moral” and “immoral.” Some things are just wrong, regardless of our philosophies, and even if we desperately want them to be right.

But objective morality isn’t explicable apart from knowledge of God: every attempt... fails to explain why objective morality exists.

But there are a number of theories that attempt to explain the grounding of ethics that have nothing to do with God; the Metaethics article at the SEP has an extensive bibliography that is mostly concerned with secular explanations.

Furthermore, God grounding is not a fruitful avenue for analysis, because that is where the buck stops, and that is that. (As such, it may be subject to Moore's Open Question argument.) But to get an idea of what is happening in contemporary metaethics, take a look at this diagram from Alexander Miller's An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics (2003 edition):

Here we have a handy guide to the current debate in metaethics, little of it concerning God. God doesn't even warrant an entry in the index, while Peter Railton has 20 references! Here are links to some of those theories:

Ayer's emotivism
Blackburn's quasi-realism
Gibbard's norm-expressivism
Mackie's error-theory
Moore's non-Naturalism
McDowell's non-Naturalism
Railton's reductionism
Cornell realism

This does not show that morality is not grounded in God, of course, but it does show it would be wrong to suggest that that there are simply no alternatives for the atheist seeking a metaethics for her moral behaviour.

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Craig on Animal Pain *Again*

Mooch and friend

I've written before on William Lane Craig's curious views on animal pain, which amount to a dismissal of it as a phenomenon we need to worry about morally. Here I discussed the views he put forward in a debate with Stephen Law, that suggested that animal pain, following work done by Michael Murray, did not exacerbate the problem of evil for theists, and here I followed up that post with a statement by one of the co-authors of a paper that Murray used to support his findings, philosopher of mind David Rosenthal, who countered Murray and Craig:

Anybody who insists that pain and its attendant effects are not very bad for the creature even when the pain is not conscious pain seems to me to be looking for an excuse not to bother with what is plainly a significant case of suffering.  There is no sound empirical reason nor any or valid theoretical reason to count pain as suffering only if the pain is conscious.  This is simply a matter of defining suffering away by stipulation.

In a new Question of the Week entitled Animal Consciousness Once More, Craig again dismisses animal pain. Joshua, having examined the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness, is concerned that this puts animals on the same footing (before God) as humans:

If animals do have the same states of consciousness as we do, that animals have the same value and importance, biologically speaking, than us.

The Cambridge Declaration says, amongst other things:

...the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

In his reply, Craig says this:

...there is no evidence that animals other than the higher primates have a consciousness of self that enables them to think I myself am in pain. That has huge implications for the problem of animal suffering and so-called natural evil. For even though animals may have an awareness of pain (are conscious), they are not aware that they themselves are in pain (are not self-conscious) and so do not suffer as we do.

He draws the distinction between awareness and self-awareness, which I think is an important distinction, but one that does not mean we can discount awareness. The curious thing about this answer is that Craig concedes that higher primates have a consciousness of self, so presumably he thinks that chimpanzees etc are moral agents, and he already has a significant problem to address.

But, in any case, his 'answer' does not cut the mustard because, as Rosenthal says above, it's the suffering that should be the concern for us as moral agents, not the sense of self. I think it's plausible that a sense of self might change the quality of pain, but it's possible that lacking a sense of self might make awareness of pain worse. For example, lacking self-consciousness one would always be living in the moment - there would be little sense of pain passing, just happening. As self-conscious beings we can often endure periods of pain and comfort ourselves with it passing, or with rewards of future pleasure.

Craig explicitly denies that suffering is morally relevant, instead suggesting that moral obligations simply arise from God's mandate:

Lacking God as a foundation for objective moral values and duties, the naturalist must find something in animals themselves to warrant their ethical treatment. That will be their awareness of pain. ... This naturalistic attempt to ground ethical treatment of animals is doomed to failure, however, since not all animals are sentient--not to speak of rainforests and oceans! A sound environmental ethic, including the ethical treatment of animals, will be grounded in the creation mandate given by God to man to steward the Earth as God’s good gift.

(Note that Craig even bizarrely suggests that rainforests and oceans don't deserve any ethical consideration under naturalism, because naturalists can only ground morality in awareness of pain. Even if they did (and other considerations can be brought in), clearly rainforests (if we're just talking about the wood) and oceans (if we're just talking about the water) wouldn't deserve any ethical consideration per se, but since they are the very environment of many forms of life that can feel pain, they obviously would deserve ethical consideration. Conversely it seems obvious that his morality, if grounded in God's mandate, is arbitrary. If God has imposed a moral duty on us to look after rainforests and oceans as we should look after humans, then will Craig save a tree before a person? Perhaps God has instructed him to protect humans before trees; but is he really committed to a morality that is simply dictated by God? Well, of course, he is!)

The questioner, while confused, is bringing up a significant problem for theists. Why are humans exceptional? Craig's answer seems to be because of self-awareness. But not self-awareness per se, I guess, but self-awareness as evidence that humans have a self or soul that is the object of moral considerations. But even if that's the case, in this quote Craig concedes the problem of animal pain, because he says 'not all animals are sentient'. No naturalist would deny that, but even Craig allows that some animals are sentient, so he has not successfully drawn a distinction between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, so the problem of animal suffering remains.

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Clifford and Faith

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. So says W. K. Clifford  in The Ethics of Belief (1877). Does he make the case for this very strong condemnation of faith, and endorsement of empiricism? Sadly, I think not, but along the way he makes powerful points toward this view, and against faith.


He starts his article with a story of a shipowner about to send his ship full of emigrants across the oceans. The seaworthiness of his ageing boat is doubted, but he banishes these doubts and, with a light heart, sees off the passengers and crew, who perish mid-ocean while he picks up the insurance money. Clifford considers the shipowner truly responsible for the deaths, but cites the reason for this guilt that ‘he had no right to believe on such evidence [that the ship was seaworthy] as was before him’. For Clifford it follows then that even if the ship had not sunk the shipowner is still guilty of this wrong, of believing on insufficient evidence. He cites another example, where serious charges are made against a group of professors by agitators who fail to verify the charges. He considers the agitators guilty, whether or not the charges are true, because they entertained their beliefs on inadequate grounds.

Clifford allows that a belief doesn’t inevitably lead to a particular action, and that a person may still investigate what is the right course of action. But he considers beliefs have such influence on actions that the two cannot be separated. He notes that no belief is worthy of the name that doesn’t affect our actions in some way, either now or at some future date. Layers of belief build to form a matrix that is implacably interknit, forever affecting our character. He goes on to observe that no belief is a purely private matter, and that inevitably we bear a burden in the fashioning of beliefs for posterity.

In the final paragraphs of the first section, The Duty of Inquiry, Clifford says the people in his examples are wrong because ‘in both these cases the belief held by one man was of great importance to other men’. Since  this is the reason for their guilt and, further, because all beliefs are public and affect mankind, we have a duty to investigate all our beliefs. This not only applies to those in power or authority, but also to ‘[e]very rustic’ and ‘[e]very hard-worked wife’. A belief based on insufficient evidence ‘is sinful because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind’. An atmosphere of credulity becomes permanent, and credulity betrays our 'duty to mankind'. I see this as an appeal to the common good of humanity, a concern for human civilisation. So his argument goes something like this:

Premise 1	Human civilisation is good.
Premise 2	Actions that harm people are anathema to human civilisation.
Conclusion 1	We should avoid actions that harm people.
Premise 3	Actions are inseparably linked to underlying beliefs.
Premise 4	Sufficient evidence leads to correct beliefs.
Premise 5	Without correct beliefs our actions may unwittingly cause harm.
Premise 6	Our beliefs form a matrix such that any incorrect beliefs corrupt it.
Premise 7	Everyone’s beliefs have an effect on the body of belief passed down to posterity and civilisation.
Conclusion 2	It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

P1 is implicit throughout, and I think most people would accept it (including the religious) although it is not axiomatic. However:

1.       If universal fallibilism is true and we do not know, and maybe cannot know, every last foundational fact, and grounding axioms are unavailable, this would invalidate our matrix of beliefs, per Clifford. So his standard may be unattainable. 

2.       Beliefs born from values, such as P1, may put them beyond evidence other than the presence of those values in humans. If so, believing P1 corrupts Clifford’s own matrix of beliefs.

Allowing the argument for now, how does Clifford view religious faith? He barely alludes to faith, and it’s not homogenous, so what was his target? In an article in April 2011, The New Statesman asked some notables to explain their faith, and this supplies some illustrative quotes:

First, astronomer and creationist Hugh Ross says ‘The accumulating evidence [from research] continues to point compellingly towards the God of the Bible’. He is convinced by the evidence, having moved from a secular upbringing to belief.

Secondly, biologist Kenneth Miller:

Now, I certainly do not "know" that the spirit is real in the sense that you and I can agree on the evidence that DNA is real and that it is the chemical basis of genetic information. There is, after all, a reason religious belief is called "faith", and not "certainty". But it is a faith that fits, a faith that is congruent with science...

Finally, Cherie Blair: ‘It's been a journey from my upbringing to an understanding of something that my head cannot explain but my heart knows to be true.’ Her belief cannot be explained but she thinks her feelings provide a route to knowledge.

Hugh Ross’s ‘faith’ barely conforms to the popular definition. Clifford might argue over Ross's evidence, but he wouldn’t blame him for his investigations. Clifford doesn’t explore what constitutes sufficient evidence, nor does he consider the difficulties of establishing the facts of a matter based on evidence. Peter Van Inwagen, in a 1996 piece contra Clifford, observes that intelligent political opinion is sharply divided despite exposure to the same evidence, and it’s the same for many philosophical controversies. If intelligent people with a full grasp of the evidence have different beliefs, this casts doubt on the extent to which evidence leads to truth. Maybe Clifford just asks that believers make best efforts to confirm their beliefs, not that they should all agree? But Clifford implies that evidence leads to correct beliefs (P4). Opinions could justifiably vary when they reflect different values, or different presuppositions, and this shows his premise is wrong. However, where faith makes claims about an objective reality, contradictory conclusions point to an invalid mechanism for uncovering that reality. Van Inwagen makes good objections to Clifford’s conclusion, if not his drift.

Miller’s faith is closer to Clifford’s view of faith. He places his belief beyond scientific enquiry (‘What I do not claim is that my religious belief, or anyone's, can meet a scientific test.’) Nevertheless, by claiming it’s ‘congruent with science’ he hints at reasons for believing.

Miller draws a distinction between knowing and believing. When I move house, I will generally assume that my new neighbours are harmless and benevolent – I might ask about them but I wouldn’t make exhaustive enquiries to confirm the fact. It’s rare that one would know such a thing. Is this wrong? Or I might believe the local hospital is in Brown Street, but not necessarily know it. Would that be wrong? As William James points out in The Will to Believe (1896), we are all ‘chock-full’ of such beliefs. There are prudential reasons for ensuring we know the truth in these two examples, but it’s not clear there is a moral duty, which is Clifford’s charge. However, if someone with a serious injury approaches us and asks for directions to the hospital, we would feel a moral duty to ensure our knowledge is well-grounded, in case the hospital was in Green Street, on the other side of town to Brown. Here there does seem to be a moral element in addition to a prudential one, because of the strength of our beliefs and the potential consequences of being wrong. Clifford does not consider the strength of our beliefs, and the benefit of the doubt we afford many day-to-day beliefs built into our culture because of their trivial consequences. This supports Clifford’s premise that such ‘community’ beliefs are significant to the body politic, but it shows that we cannot operate without presuming many of them. So, while a moral basis for justifying some beliefs seems imperative, it cannot apply to all beliefs, contra P6. James’s pragmatism wins out.

The existence of scientists like Miller is an empirical strike against P3, since he acts scientifically without his faith affecting him. Clifford might respond that Miller’s work is tainted by his faith in some way, but if Miller’s work has been subject to the full rigour of scientific confirmation, this is hard to maintain. Or he might point to Miller’s views poisoning the well of knowledge for ‘mankind’, increasing their credulity. But if we have Miller as an example of someone who can partition his science and credulity, we have no reason to believe that others cannot either.

Blair’s claim to know something without explanation is a prime target for Clifford. James, contra Clifford, argues for the probity of our ‘passional nature’ deciding our beliefs where there are no intellectual grounds, which appears to be Blair’s contention. James argues that choosing between faith and non-belief is a genuine option that faces us, because it’s:

1.       Living; both options are a possibility

2.       Forced; the choice cannot be avoided, and

3.       Momentous; the options are not trivial and the stakes are high.

James's example for the living option is:

If I say to you: "Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan," it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: " Be an agnostic or be Christian," it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.

But by dismissing being a ‘mahomedan’ as a dead option, James’s case for faith collapses, since it exposes the false dichotomy he presents, between agnosticism and Christianity. There are many, probably countless, possibilities other than those that he considers live. Nevertheless, Clifford should have considered similar qualifications to those James discusses, since the urgency of some actions and their momentousness bears on the morality of how our beliefs are adopted, whereas the presence of many trivial unevidenced beliefs cannot be fatal to our moral character.

So values may be held with no more justification than their brute presence in our natures. The Millers and Blairs of the world appeal to such values and presuppositions to justify their faith, as does Clifford in his argument, and as we all must at bottom. Furthermore, Clifford sets an unattainable standard, if universal fallibilism is true. He could moderate his claim and make it more defensible. I think a powerful case could be made to show that beliefs that are held recklessly are always wrong. Or, just as Hume said ‘a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence’, one could claim that a wise, and good, man should proportion investigations into his beliefs according to a reasonable assessment of their potential for harm (or something snappier!). Or a case could be made that it’s immoral to say one’s beliefs are beyond scientific tests, as Miller does, because it places them outside objective democratic enquiry (if that’s what it does).

In the end, sadly, Clifford himself goes too far, and fails to offer a convincing view of religious faith.

Bibliography:

Brown, S. (2002) Destiny, Purpose and Faith , Milton Keynes, The Open University

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The Irrational Animal

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Man is a rational animal - so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.

- Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish

This sentiment is often expressed (usually a little more forcefully) in pub conversations among the like-minded, referring to any number of examples, such as support for Chelsea FC, the charms of Katie Price, or the attraction of Strictly Come Dancing.

In Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained, an excellent exploration of the anthropological evidence for the origins of religious thinking, chapter 5, Why do Gods and Spirits Matter?, includes a discussion of morality. He talks about moral reasoning and feeling:

We all have moral intuitions (“My friend left her purse here, I must give it back to her”), moral judgements (“He should have returned his friend’s purse”), moral feelings (“He stole his friend’s purse, how revolting!”), moral principles (“Stealing is wrong”) and moral concepts (“wrong”, “right”). How is all this organized in the mind? There are two possible ways of describing the mental processes engaged. On the one hand, moral judgements seem to be organized by a system of rules and inferences. People seem to have some notion of very general principles (e.g., “Do not harm other people unless they harmed you”; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”; etc.). These provide very general templates. If you fill the placeholders in the templates with particular values—the names of the people involved, the nature of the action considered—you reach a certain description of the situation with a moral tag. This is called the moral reasoning model. On the other hand, in many cases people just seem to feel particular emotions when faced with particular situations and particular courses of action. Without having a clear notion of why we have a particular reaction, we know that doing this rather than that triggers emotional effects that goad us in one direction rather than the other, or that make us proud to have done the right thing, guilty if we did not, revolted if others did not, etc. This is a moral feeling model.

All well and good, and certainly I've often thought that morality arose from a confluence of these two forces. There are some intriguing problems, however, that show us that our moral feelings can be a little inexplicable, when we try to reason them through.

I was sad to hear of the death, recently, of Philippa Foot. She was the philosopher who first introduced the Trolley Problem, to throw the spotlight on our moral intuitions. The basic formulation is:

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A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are five people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you could flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch or do nothing?

I think most people would flip the switch, but one can nurdle out the sort of moralist one is by the answer one gives. Some would consider themselves infected by the ongoing moral wrong if they participated, apparently. The thought experiment becomes more interesting when comparing different scenarios with the same participants and potential outcomes. Judith Jarvis Thompson suggested this:

As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?

Brilliant! I think most would feel more resistant to this second act than the first; perhaps it's the direct action on the person, or his proximity? Or maybe even his fatness. Anyway, the point is, we do have feelings about these scenarios, that aren't necessarily easy to reason through. The naturalist considers such feelings to be evolved, combined with cultural reinforcement in childhood. Or perhaps the cultural reinforcement simply hooks into an evolved mechanism for distaste - Boyer discusses childhood development, so it's worth a read. But I was more intrigued by the drivers that are proposed for the altruism:

Kin selection
Reciprocal altruism
Commitment gadgets

Kin selection and reciprocal altruism are fairly well-known, but I was less familiar with the commitment gadgets. These are fascinating, because they show how an irrational element to our behaviour could, perhaps, be beneficial. As Boyer points out:

People behave in altruistic ways in many circumstances where no common genes are involved and no reciprocation is expected. They refrain from extracting all the possible benefits from many situations. It would be trivially easy to steal from friends, mug old ladies or leave restaurants without tipping. Also, this restraint does not stem from rational calculation—for instance, from the fear of possible sanctions—for it persists when there is clearly no chance of getting caught; people just say that they would feel awful if they did such things. Powerful emotions and moral feelings seem to be driving behaviour in a way that does not maximize individuals’ benefits.

Boyer gives the example of a shopkeeper and his assistant; why does the assistant refrain from stealing from the till? If it was known that the shopkeeper would react intemperately and irrationally to such a thing, that would be a deterrent to the assistant. If the assistant thought that the shopkeeper would reasonably see that he's simply lost some takings, and a murderous attack is not appropriate, the assistant might well risk the theft. But he is less likely to take the risk if the downside might be his murder. So we can see how irrational behaviour could be beneficial in a society that demands cooperation. Boyer says:

So to be known as someone who is actually in the grip of such passionate feelings is a very good thing as long as they are, precisely, feelings that override rational calculations.

He continues to describe the problems of honesty; there is a cost to it. We have many opportunities to be dishonest but most of us don't take them. On the individual level, this is irrational, but in a society where cooperation is paramount, having humans with strong feelings driving them to be honest becomes a net benefit.

One of the studies cited by Boyer in his discussion is Boyd and Richerson's Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizable groups (1992), which includes this in the abstract:

We show that cooperation enforced by retribution can lead to the evolution of cooperation in two qualitatively different ways. (1) If benefits of cooperation to an individual are greater than the costs to a single individual of coercing the other n − 1 individuals to cooperate, then strategies which cooperate and punish noncooperators, strategies which cooperate only if punished, and, sometimes, strategies which cooperate but do not punish will coexist in the long run. (2) If the costs of being punished are large enough, moralistic strategies which cooperate, punish noncooperators, and punish those who do not punish noncooperators can be evolutionarily stable.

Coincidentally, I posted a comment on Russell Blackford's blog about Tom Clark on Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape (if you can follow that!). Tom Clark was kind enough to point out a problem with my use of retribution:

Mark Jones: “So we must (perhaps only for the sake of a workable society, which seems to be Dennett's thought) include some element of retribution, but craft the entire justice system in the full knowledge that a person is not a self-made thing.”

Keep in mind retribution is defined as punishing without *any* regard to good consequences, such as having a workable society. The retributivist has to justify punishing the offender as *intrinsically* good. If you can supply a convincing justification for that, I’ll sign up as a retributivist.

I replied:

Yes, retribution seems pointless from my world view, in isolation, but surely when one is deciding policy one cannot discount the fact that millions believe in its intrinsic good? Unfortunately, people behave based on what they believe rather than the truth of the matter. So my point was pragmatic rather than principled - it seems to me that in these circumstances retribution delivers an extrinsic good *because* many people believe in its intrinsic good - perhaps this then falls out of the definition of retribution? I'm not sure what it is then.

And isn't Dennett's quote pointing out that we tend to *feel* that retribution is good, rather than it *is* good? I would argue against retribution in *principle*, despite plotting revenge against my enemies.

It seems to me that retribution might be an example of how our intuitions are out of step with our reasoning, but may have a beneficial effect in a cooperative society. Our demand for retributive justice appears irrational to me, but I can't help feeling it's a good thing! Maybe this is another irrational gadget which is beneficial in a cooperative society.

Before this realisation I'd assumed that irrationality was just a symptom of our imperfect processing, and that evolution had yet to fine-tune it. But now it's clear that some irrational feelings may be beneficial in themselves. And these will occasionally conflict with our better thought out positions. In the first place, we could not be blamed for following our feelings. In the longer term, I think we all have the responsibility to justify many of our intuitions through reason, especially in the knowledge that our feelings may be justifiably irrational, in the survival strategy sense.

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Moral Inscrutability

Russell Blackford has written a good blog post summarising the philosophically-minded objections to Sam Harris's is-ought pseudo-dismissal. I'm basically in agreement with Harris, although note the (valid) objections of a number of philos about the meta-ethics - I just don't think they matter *that* much! But Russell makes a good point when he summarises Harris's argument comparing his putative moral science to medical science:

Unfortunately, we are nowhere near to having the sort of general agreement as to the goals of, well, moralising, if you will, that we do with practising medicine or science. So it's no use arguing:

P1. The ultimate goals of medicine and science are contestable
P2. We can practice medicine and science with no terrible difficulty.
C. We can, with no terrible difficulty, practice anything whose ultimate goals are contestable.
Hence, we can, with no terrible difficulty, practice a "science of morality".

The correct conclusion, at "C.", is that we can, with no terrible difficulty, practice some things whose ultimate goals are contestable. As far as this argument goes, whether morality is one of those things is left as an open question. It really depends on just how much debate there is about a practice's ultimate goals, and how this pans out in practice. Unfortunately, the ultimate goals of morality are so controversial, and so disputed at such a deep level, that it's not surprising when much of what goes on in moral philosophy relates to trying to get agreement on the ultimate goals.

I think this is right, at a foundational level. However, Russell agrees that applying ethics is something that can be done:

But Harris doesn't actually need to make an unheralded breakthrough in metaethics to establish his main point about the possibility and desirability of criticising moral systems. If those moral systems are harmful to human wellbeing ... then criticise them for it! I think hammers exist to drive nails and that it's approximately correct to say that moral systems exist to conduce to human wellbeing and, to some extent, the wellbeing of other sentient creatures.

And of course each society establishes a way of living that announces their conception of the best morality - it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

The meta-ethical problems arise, it seems to me, from the inscrutable origins of our morality. Because we have evolved in the environment according to events that are impossible to retrodict, let alone predict, we find it very difficult to determine the cause of every animal's every trait. The morality we have (signs of which appear in other mammals) has been a necessary development for our survival, or is a consequence of another feature that was necessary for our survival. But it's still just a *feeling*, so consequently isn't an *infallible* guide to what is right for us. It's not a bad starting point, but because many think they have nothing else to go on, they trust their 'gut' feeling over all else.

The religious turn morality's *fallibility* (observed empirically) and turn it into *arbitrariness*. To bolster their flagging confidence in 'what is right', they invest a God with good and call it absolute and objective. Much analysis down the years has yet to show that this approach is tenable or, indeed, plausible. One would think that a good-invested God might have an effect substantially different from an evil-invested God, but it's difficult to see how either could result in the universe we have.

The rationalist can accept that we have a sense of what is good without it being absolute, so tempers it with a good dose of reason and evidence; like everything else in life.

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Magazine Morality Questionnaire

A little while back, I and a few friends posted a thread lampooning the religious world view morality via the medium of a pretend magazine questionnaire; the subject, 'Are you God-good enough to be a good God?!?' These were my contributions:

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You've been fine tuning evolution to ensure maximum hardship for all involved, when you're interrupted by your right hand man who points out that someone has had sex in your garden, and left a used prophylactic in the bushes. Do you:

a) Tidy up the mess and chuckle to yourself about the impulsiveness of youth.

b) Campaign to remove all vending machines from pub toilets.

c) Track the culprits down, light a match and immolate them. For time everlasting.

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You've spent a glorious day with the kids, playing football in the park, when they see a couple of men kissing. "What are they doing?", the kids ask. Do you say:

a) Looks like they're a loving couple enjoying a day in the park, like us.

b) Don't look kids; you might 'get ideas'.

c) What they do is evil; chase them and impale them on the nearest fencepost! That would be the lesser evil.

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One of your reps has a problem; some of his undermanagers have freed their wills and abused their young customers. He wants to know what to do; do you tell him to:

a) Dob in the undermanagers to the appropriate authorities.

b) Tell them to stop wearing dresses; that can't help.

c) Promote them and transfer them; duck and dive, a moving target is more difficult to hit. Negotiate with the authorities to turn a blind eye; their punishment will be in the afterlife etc. Nothing must be allowed to damage The Corporation.

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You're playing the Sims, and you see that neighbourly disputes result in much murder and bloodshed. Do you:

a) Reprogram your Sims to be less choleric and more reasonable.

b) Sit back and enjoy the spectacle; who doesn't enjoy a good fight?

c) Summon old man Sim to a mountaintop, chisel 'Thou shalt not kill' on a rock and hope they get the message. Tell them to stop thinking certain thoughts, whilst you're at it. Don't mention rape, or abortion. they'll have to figure those out themselves.

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You've decided on a change of direction, so you organise for one third of you to be sacrificed to yourself to atone for, er, something or other. Naturally you choose the race which has achieved 'favoured' status. Everything goes to plan, and your favoured people follow the plan, as you knew they would. But some people blame them for killing one third of you, despite that being crucial to your plan. Do you:

a) Communicate clearly that they did nothing wrong.

b) Issue an APB to arrest anyone who's got the wrong end of the stick and prevent them acting on it.

c) Let simmering discontent foment for centuries before exploding in a genocidal armageddon that wipes millions of your former 'most valuable players' off the face of the Earth. Then blame it on atheists.

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If you score mostly 'C's, you've cracked God-goodness; well done!

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Burka or bikini?

People seem to burst a blood vessel when someone suggests it might be possible to study morality *scientifically*; I've no idea why, other than one's natural distrust for authority or, perhaps, authoritarianism. But of course morality is, and has been, studied scientifically by many; societies down the ages have listened to a mixture of experts, charlatans (including the religious who claim bogus authority) and the zeitgeist, and then enacted a 'universal' morality through their varying legislatures. This is all seen as perfectly normal, but if Sam Harris suggests an entirely *informed* approach, accusations of moral hegemony are made. A bit of moderation is needed, I feel. Here's his talk at TED 2010:

Surely the is-ought problem is overstated? Isn't the point that you can't get to an ought *simply* from a fact about the world; one has to add a 'want'. But 'wants' are facts about the world too, so to say that studying how things are is not going to inform our morality seems astounding to me. How else are we going to decide what's right?

Now, I'm a little uncomfortable, as is no doubt everyone, at the idea of ethical experts set up as some kind of moral arbitration court, determining a universal morality. However, that's not how *science* works. If instead a moral *science* could be established, with ethicists publishing papers and data in support, a moral *consensus* could be worked towards. Of course this is roughly what happens now, only there is nothing formal in the process and entirely unevidenced approaches to morality are considered, which allows arbitrary *prejudices* to become enshrined in our morality.

I don't think it's too much to ask to try to prevent that.

UPDATE:

Sam is inviting criticisms of his talk here. Most take issue with the meta-ethical issues raised, I think, questioning the quest for happiness he assumes, and so on; that there are, at bottom, moral axioms that are inscrutable to science. This seems to be accepted by many, although I'm not sure (as ever) we can ever know that. As with all other areas of enquiry, I think it's best to carry on *as if* we will be able to uncover some argument supported by data that allows us to scientifically decide such issues. In any case, it's sufficient, and scientific, in the interim to take putative axioms and examine situations based on those. More than that, it's what we do *now*! And matters that may have been considered axiomatic in the past have been examined scientifically and been questioned, and then pronounced non-axiomatic, so I don't see that these things are immune from study, even if one considers there will always be an axiom at bottom.

Of course, I'm no ethicist, as no doubt an expert could tell!

FURTHER UPDATE:

Sam has posted a response to some of the most common criticisms.

Not had a chance to read it yet!

Harris seems to adopt an ontological Epicurean approach, making pleasure seeking axiomatic, as opposed to the functional, purpose-driven Aristotelian approach. I think it's an interesting observation that, IMO, the Epicurean view appears more in line with what we've discovered about reality than the other, and this shows how science *can* inform morality, and continue to inform it.

Sam says, more eloquently of course, what I try to say above:

One of my critics put the concern this way: “Why should human wellbeing matter to us?” Well, why should logical coherence matter to us? Why should historical veracity matter to us? Why should experimental evidence matter to us? These are profound and profoundly stupid questions. No framework of knowledge can withstand such skepticism, for none is perfectly self-justifying. Without being able to stand entirely outside of a framework, one is always open to the charge that the framework rests on nothing, that its axioms are wrong, or that there are foundational questions it cannot answer. So what?

"No framework of knowledge can withstand such skepticism..."; I'm *inclined* to agree, and it's where I've always struggled with the is-ought distinction. Combined with the fact that, apparently, even though we cannot determine scientifically what we *should* do, that does seem to be what we always *have* done. Sure, people have posited odd moralities that have taken hold, but no adult accepts *any* normative advice without some thought, and no society does it without debate.

So, as I said above, let's do it better. I think that's what Sam's calling for. I've been persuaded by Dennett and others that the mystery of 'consciousness' is that we think it's mysterious; it's possible there is something similar going on with morality; the mystery of it is we *think* it's mysterious, not that it *is* mysterious. However, I will need to read more moral philosophy to even begin to justify such a statement.

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Confounding Expectations

I’ve been reading Daniel Dennett’s excellent Consciousness Explained in which he makes the thought provoking observation that the brain is a future predicting device. This is sort of obvious when one considers that once life has evolved the ability to propel itself, it will be advantageous to predict its own course, so a whole load of *expectations* of events will be established by the brain to assist; there’s a tree ahead, so the brain plots a path around it.

It seems to me that these expectations of what *should* happen play a part in one or two of our most common human emotions. Occasionally an ‘expectation gap’ occurs, that generates a response in us. In the video above, Lee and Herring wittily deconstruct a common element of basic jokes - the lazy comedy slag template for a joke incorporating the confounding of expectations – and that confounding (confoundation?) is an element in a lot of humour. The comic suggests one or two things that our brains take on board to create a scenario, and the pay-off comes when the comic explodes that scenario. I quite like this clip because it demonstrates that the *expectation* is important; just doing something inappropriate in an unusual scenario isn’t necessarily amusing, but for some reason it is more amusing after one has been led to think the situation is different. I don’t know why!

I think I see expectations in music appreciation too; we are all familiar with the way that a song fixes itself into our minds after a few plays (if it’s good). We can listen to the song ‘in our heads’, but it’s better to hear it again. There is surely an element in which expectation satisfaction (of the expected words and tunes fixed in the mind) makes this process feel good to us. In fact, hearing a live version of the song, with different tempo, and arrangement, perhaps the odd bum note, can grate against the expected version in our heads. We experience an expectation gap. But a few listens to the new version can often replace the old one, and one can come to prefer it, bum notes included, thus eliminating that expectation gap.

I also see an element to this in moral thinking. One occasionally hears the theist ask the non-believer ‘Haven’t you ever sinned?’, or ‘Are you without sin?’. It’s a very revealing question, I think. The theist is adamant that he *has* sinned, but what does that mean? When confronted with a situation requiring a course of action, everyone establishes a notion of ‘what they should do’. This normative moral construct is then used to drive one’s course of action. Sometimes one fails to follow that (apparently) prescribed course of action, and this produces an uncomfortable feeling within us; our *expectations* have not been met. Once again we suffer an expectation gap, and the theist is inclined to assign guilt to this uncomfortable feeling.

(Of course, whether or not one has sinned is pretty irrelevant to the anti-Pelagian Christian denominations. For them, everyone is sinful, even before they’ve had a chance to do anything! I’ve often thought this means that real time sinning has no ill effect for them – ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’)

But the normative construct causing this expectation gap is a result of one’s genetic, evolved altruism, culture and education. All these elements are variable, so any ‘sin’ is variable. In fact, the individual’s prescription could be wrong (may well be wrong), so the feeling of ‘sin’ could be mistaken. To base one’s 'guilt' on this would be an error, but we see this amongst the religious all the time. And conversely we see with psychopaths that it’s possible not to feel *any guilt*, even when clearly doing wrong. So to base one’s worldview on this doubtful construct is not wise. We need to establish a normative ethic through reason and negotiation with others. No-one can ever establish such things reliably in isolation.

Well, this is layman speculation, obviously; do all mammals (animals?) create these expectations, and expectation gaps? They must to a certain extent, I suppose, but presumably not with the degree of sophistication of the human mind. Otherwise one would expect chimpanzees to point and laugh if they saw a human slip on a banana. Or perhaps they do?

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Carrier and morality

From Richard Carrier, regarding apologists' reactions to his dismissal of the historical resurrection:

The second lamest argument ever made is the wicked threat: "There will be a 'time'," one thoughtful would-be savior of mine wrote, "when we will all have all the 'evidence' we need to prove our beliefs correct or wrong. By then it may be too late." This was the kindest way it was put by dozens of Christians. "I will dance with glee in Heaven as you roast in Hell!" said another. It surprises me that for all this man's devotion and sincerity, he somehow missed the most important lesson any man can learn: threats are the hallmark of a wicked creed. A God who would create a hell, or allow any good person to fall there by mere error, would be a wicked god by definition, and anyone who admired such a god would be just as wicked, and therefore those Christians who admire such are truly frightening. They have taken evil and called it good, under the banner of self-righteousness, and by this they justify the most horrible ideas and wishes--and then have the gall to pretend they believe in love.

Well said.

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