Saturday, October 31, 2009

Evolution's Morality

Yesterday, I discussed some issues that I had with the concept of "God's Morality,"

Today, I want to talk about some of the same types of problems that exist in a different set of moral theories - those theories that, instead of speaking about God's Morality, speak instead about Evolution's Morality.

Both theories have pretty much the same problems.

A member of the studio audience pointed me to a posting in Pharyngula on this topic.

(See: Pharyngula: Marc hauser - Where Do Morals Come From?)

One of the themes was how people resolve moral dilemmas. He began with a real world example, the story of an overweight woman in South Africa who insisted on joining a tour exploring a cave, and got stuck in the exit tunnel, trapping 22 people behind her. Do you sacrifice one to save many?

Morality has nothing to do with bizarre never-in-a-lifetime-for-the-vast-majority-of-people situations such as these. Morality is designed to deal with the countless everyday encounters between everyday people. They have to do with the lie told a boss to get out of work, the effort to push a stuck neighbor's car out of his driveway on a snowy winter morning, and the decision to return the power tool you had borrowed before moving across country rather than take it with you (though it is a real nice power tool).

We do not design morality to deal with situations in which overweight women get stuck in caves, (or runaway trolly cars threaten to run over people) simply because these are not everyday situations. It would be a waste of effort to mold people's desires so that they act a particular way in these types of situations - particularly since molding a person's desires will also have effects in countless every-day situations as well.

These types of situations may be interesting objects of study if one is curious about how the brain works, but they are not interesting to the study of morality.

Here is one of those way-off-base assumptions that I was talking about.

Imagine a group of people calling themselves 'astronomers'. What they do is they take a group of people and hook them up to machines and asking them questions about planets, asteroids, black holes and dark energy. They declare that one of the most interesting astronomical questions to study is the age of the earth. So, they focus specifically on these questions. They delight in studying the differences between the answers that creationists and scientists give to these questions, and noting what parts of the brain seem to be activated as each group thinks about the process. They note all sorts of interesting regularities and patterns as they think about these questions.

All the while, they claim that they are astronomers, and what they are studying is the age of the earth.

In fact, they are mistaken. They are not astronomers, they are brain scientists. And what they are studying is not 'the age of the earth' but 'thoughts about the age of the earth'.

And it is an absurdity to insist that these are the same thing.

In the realm of astronomy, people seem to be able to tell the difference.

In the realm of morality, a lot of have blinded themselves to this absurdity.

Another absurdity is the idea that when one studies trolley problems or anything similar, that this involves the study of morality at all. These are areas so far out on the fringe of morality that it is possible to argue that they are not within the realm of morality at all.

These are cases where people have a habit of applying moral concepts in a realm where moral concepts do not apply. They are like trying to talk about sunrise and sunset from the point of view of the sun itself.

Morality is an institution created to handle the countless interactions people engage in every day. It is not meant to deal with bizarre situations that very few of us will ever encounter. I have countless opportunities each day to walk off with property that does not belong to me, to lie for personal advantage, or to be lazy and disregard the harmful actions that my actions may cause to others. Others have countless reasons to instill in me an aversion to walking off with their property, to lie, and to disregard the harmful side effects of my actions.

When you take this system and apply them to bizarre virtually-never-in-a-human-lifetime scenarios, you find that they give no clear answer. They were not meant to give a clear answer these types of situations. It is a waste of effort to mold morality to create clear answers in these situations. It is hard enough to mold morality to fit our countless day-to-day interactions.

One of the questions that I would like to ask these researchers is, "So, according to your research, is the proposition, 'Homosexual acts are immoral' true or false?"

This is how we tell the person who is studying thoughts about the age of the earth from those who are actually studying the age of the earth. The person studying thoughts about the age of the earth does not give us any data about the age of the earth - any data at all that answers the question, "So, according to your research, is the proposition, 'The earth is 6,000 years old' true or false?"

They can't help us precisely because they are not studying the age of the earth.

And Marc Hauser and his ilk are not telling us anything about where morals come from. We can't answer that question unless we study morality itself, and we are not studying morality if, what we are studying instead, are thoughts about morality.

I am not saying that they cannot provide useful scientific data. There can collect scientific data by the bucket full. This is genuine scientific data - and the people who conduct the research are doing genuine science. They are not studying morality, but they are still doing science. This is true in the same way our people studying astronomers and creationists concerning the age of the earth are not studying the age of the earth, but they are still doing science.

You are not studying the age of the earth unless you are studying something . . . anything . . . that tells us whether the age of the Earth is 6,000 years old or not. You are not studying morality of homosexuality, for example, unless you are studying something . . . anything . . . that tells us whether homosexual acts are immoral or not. If all you can tell us is that some people judge it to be immoral and others do not - and how their brains differ, then you have given us something that is no different than the person who can tell us that some people judge the Earth to be 6,000 years old and others do not, and how their brains differ.

One of the things that I find easy to imagine is an astromer, who has put a great deal of effort into the study of planets and stars, reading about research being done by so-called 'astronomers' who study brain waves of people who are asked questions about stars, galaxies, and the age of the Earth. He reads about a swarm of people who study this stuff and who insist that they are doing astronomy and that they are discovering astronomical truths. I can imagine him rolling his eyes, as I roll mine, and saying in exasperation, "What in the heck do you think you're doing over there?"

Friday, October 30, 2009

God's Morality

As atheists, we are accustomed to being asked, "Where do your morals come from?"

The oft-spoken assumption is that the world has reason to fear and hate atheists because there is nothing to restrain the atheist from committing horrible atrocities. Which is why the question itself identifies the person asking it as a bigot - seeking to promote an unfounded hatred and fear of others.

The common atheist response is to present a theory of morality. Morality is an evolved disposition, or morality is that which produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number, or morality is a social contract we all implicitly adopt.

Or, morality resides in the fact that desires are malleable and people generally have reason to promote those desires that tend to fulfill other desires and inhibit those desires that tend to thwart other desires.

However, another form of response is available to those who claim they get their morality from God.

"Where did God get his morality?"

The correct answer to this question, of course, is that God gets his morality from his inventors.

"What you are doing, sir, is taking your own personal likes and dislikes and assigning them to God, then telling the world that God gives you permission - even commands you - to impose your preferences on others. Or you are the blind follower of somebody else who assigned his preferences to God, and then deceived you into promoting his interests by telling you that you are really working for an imaginary super-being that he invented."

This is the fact of the matter. This is also what is wrong with most religious morality - that religion provides a way for individuals to justify in their own mind imposing their own interests on others by assigning those interests to an imaginary super-being called God, then convincing oneself or others that, "No, you are not serving my interests. You are serving God's. The fact that serving God's interests coincides so closely with serving my interests is simply testimony to the depths of my spirituality."

The elm tree in my front yard exists. The evolutionist and the creationist might disagree over the history that brought elm trees into existence to start with.

Here's an absurd form of argument.

"Elm trees come from God. You do not believe in God. Therefore, obviously, you cannot believe in elm trees. As an atheist, you cannot account for elm trees so you are at risk of walking around the world bumping into elm trees and crashing into elm trees because you cannot account for their existence."

We do not hear that argument much. In part, we do not hear it because of the absurdity of it. We may disagree on how elm trees came about, but that does not imply that we must disagree on whether the elm tree in my front yard actually exists.

The same is true of morality.

One attitude to take is that the atheist and the theist disagree on how morality comes about. However, this does not imply a disagreement over the actual existence of morality. The person who wants to accuse the atheist of having no morality needs to provide more than evidence that the atheist does not believe in God. He has to provide evidence that not believing in God is necessarily associated with moral blindness. If morality is real, this is as absurd as saying that not believing in God makes it impossible to see elm trees.

So, why do we see this argument with respect to moral principles and not with respect to elm trees?

Because people who use the argument with respect to moral principles have a drive to promote hatred and fear others. The motivation for the argument is not that the argument makes sense - because it makes little sense for morality as it does for elm trees. The motivation for the argument is to tell the members of the congregation (or the school assembly or the legislative chambers), "You should hate and fear them because nothing restrains them from committing the most atrocious of evils."

Of course, "hate and fear them" immediately translates into, "love and trust me." It is a way for the speaker to promote himself (or his church) by putting down others. Thus, bigotry becomes hate-mongering; the act of selling hate to others for the purpose of personal gain.

An atheist and a theist can have a perfectly legitimate discussion over where elm trees some from. The theist can hold that there can be no elm trees without God. In other words, a conversation about where morality comes from is a perfectly legitimate subject for two good people to engage in.

However, the view, whether explicit or implicit, that atheists are to be hated and feared because they do not believe in God and, thus, are liable to all sorts of evils is not a thesis that a good person can advance. It is as absurd as the thesis that the atheist cannot see a elm tree. Somebody who is blind to that absurdity is either a bigot who adopts such an attitude out of a sense of hate, or a hate-monger seeking personal gain by selling hatred to others, or both.

Probably both.

Interestingly, the thesis, "God gets his morality from those who invent him (and God is being continually re-invented)," does not support the type of hate-mongering bigotry that is used against atheist. It does not support the conclusion that all theists are to be hated and feared. Instead, it supports the thesis that a moral theist will invent a moral God, while an immoral theist will invent an angry, petty, jealous, violent, destructive, and/or bigoted God.

Here's a slogan that might be of some use.

Since God gets his morality from those who invent (or re-invent) him . . .

"You can tell a lot about a person by looking at the qualities of the God he invents."

Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Next Atheist Billboard

Don't believe in good without god? That's prejudice.

See, Washington Post, Don't Believe in Good Without God? That's Prejudice.

This line was used as a headline to a Washington Post opinion piece written by Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University, Greg Epstein.

Given the current surge of bulletin boards that say things like, "Millions of people are good without god," I immediately thought of this as a good follow-up slogan. An advertising campaign requires a second advertisement to follow the first. It should be an advertisement that carries the message a little further, or portrays it at another angle.

This board is simple, can be easily linked to the current campaign, and says something that very much needs to be said. The statistics exist to show that anti-atheist bigotry is prevalent in the United States. It costs atheists a great deal, from the custody of their children in custody disputes to opportunities to serve in public office and positions of public trust. Anti-atheist bigotry is written into the national pledge of allegiance and the national motto.

A public sign condemning this bigotry would be a good first step to reversing this trend. People will at last start to see something that goes counter to the government-sponsored anti-atheist propaganda that is so prevalent in their lives, and may at last start to question some assumptions that should be questioned. It should create some cognitive dissonance between the government's message that trusting in God and supporting a nation under God are necessary to being a good American, weakening the bigotry that the government and many religious leaders are planting in people's heads.

One of the greatest effects of the current campaign has been the amount of press coverage that they have generated. There is . . . at least to a greater degree that there has been . . . a public discussion of the possibility of goodness without God. That is a good discussion to be having. It helps people to realize that they can give up their religion without giving up their self-respect.

Continuing the campaign with the message that those who do not accept the possibility of goodness without God are bigots pushes that message a little further. It tells people, "Not only is it possible for you to be good without God, but those who would denigrate you and hold you as a morally inferior being simply because of your lack of belief are the ones who lack morals."

I want to note here that the message is not that believing in God makes a person immoral. This is not a billboard that attacks belief in God. It is a billboard that attacks bigotry. A great many people can (and do) believe in a God and also believe that it is not belief in God that makes their neighbor a good person, but kindness, a willingness to give others a hand in times of need, and a willingness to work to protect others from harm.

The latter, by the way, being one area in which the materialist scientist excels, since their dramatically improved methods of explaining and predicting events in the real world have lead to dramatic improvements in our ability to protect ourselves and those we love from harm - from hurricanes, from tsunamis, from swine flu, and from criminals. It provides us with knowledge useful to help us create more food to eat, heat for our homes, and clean drinking water.

I would also like to note that I am pleased with the directions that these campaigns are going. When atheist organizations first started to put up messages some of the early favorites embraced bigotry and hate-mongering. I gave my objections to those signs at the time. The fact that those early options are not a part of the current campaign is a sign of progress.

Specifically, the "Imagine No Religion" campaign - particularly the version that blamed "religion", rather than specific religious extremists, for the 9/11 attacks, provided an excellent example of bigoted reasoning. It took the wrong committed by a subgroup of people and tried to paint the whole group with the same brush - the way some anti-atheist bigots try to tar all atheists with the evils of Stalin.

That is bigotry. That is a paradigm example of bigoted hate-mongering - taking an evil committed by somebody with a particular characteristic and using that against everybody with that characteristic - even those who would condemn the original evil. There is no moral merit to be found in two bigots shouting bigoted insults against each other. It would be better if those on at least one side of the debate would say, "I condemn bigotry itself, even if it comes from members of my own tribe."

That campaigns blaming 'religion' for the specific crimes of specific agents seem to have been put away is a good thing. I hope they have been put away for the right reasons, and I hope that people recognize the reasons why they should stay put away and not be brought back out in the future.

The current campaign simply invites those who are good without God together into a larger and stronger community - which is very much needed. It did not take a direct stand against bigotry - though it took an indirect stand by fighting the bigotry that worked to keep even that modest message out of the public eye.

There is merit to the idea of the next campaign taking an active stand against bigotry. It would be particularly bad if, instead of an anti-bigotry message, future campaigns should revert to actually being the examples of bigoted reasoning we have seen in the past.

Oh . . . and those who finance this billboard . . . should seek funding and support from not only atheists, but any organization dedicated to the fight against bigotry. Let them make a commitment to this cause since it is, as it were, right up their alley.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A Village in Space

This post is for entertainment purposes only.



















Weightlessness will be short hop away by commuter train.



Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Suzanne Somers' Death for Publicity






Save lives.









Ironically, the article cited above closes with:





And many will die as a result.


Monday, October 26, 2009

NASA's "Flexable Plan"

A panel that Obama set up to review the future of NASA's manned spaceflight program goes in the right direction.

I have argued in this blog that there is no program or policy that reduces the chance of human extinction (without having evolved intelligent descendents of one form or another) more than the colonization of space. Our species is at risk as long as we have all of our eggs in one planetary basket. That risk is reduced the more we spread out.

When it comes to the colonization of space, I have argued that space itself has more to offer than the surface of any planet or moon. Mars has a surface area approximately equal to the land surface area of Earth. The Moon has a land surface area approximately equal to that of Africa. If we use the material from the asteroids to build cities in space, that material would build the surface area equivalent to 30,000 earths.

In space, you can choose your own gravity by choosing the speed at which the station rotates. You can even get different levels of gravity in the same station. On the surface of a body you get the gravity that the body gives you. Shipping costs are lower since you just give the body a nudge and it floats off towards its destination without any additional fuel. And communities can put some distance between themselves and their neighbors.

The report embraces this option through a proposed plan for future development that it called the "flexible plan". This plan is not devoted to setting up stations or even putting people on the surface of Mars or the Moon. Rather, it looks to accomplish goals in space itself.

One of these missions would include a rendezvous with and landing on an asteroid - probably an earth-crossing asteroid (the type that has the potential to hit the Earth some time in the future).

This type of mission is more like a mission to dock with a space station than a mission to land on a planet. Asteroids have so little mass (and so little gravity) that NASA would not need to worry about the costs of building expensive landers that, in turn, had the capacity to lift the astronauts back into space. Instead, the astronauts gently touch the surface and just as gently push off when they leave again.

There are currently over 600 known asteroids that are, in a sense, "closer" than the moon in terms of the amount of energy it takes to reach them. It takes more TIME to reach an asteroid and return, but less ENERGY (fuel) to do so. Some of these are no larger than a car and, as such, are poor targets. Some of these are hundreds to thousands of kilometers in diameter.

The science gained from such a mission would have significant value to the people on Earth. It would give us information on earth-crossing asteroids that threaten to do significant damage to the people of Earth.

These missions would also tell us what resources are available, floating through space in orbits that bring them near Earth. Some of these asteroids might be burned-out comets; balls of ice that now have a thick covering of dirt on the outside that keep the water tightly frozen within. Others could be pure iron.

Yet, even stone has a use in space. Space stations will need a skin that is 1 meter thick to keep out cosmic rays. These shells could be made out of anything - from the slag left over by mining - as long as it has mass. So, we are literally dealing with a resource in which every last gram of it has a use.

A related, though admittedly more ambiguous mission would be to land astronauts on one of the moons of Mars. Mars has two moons - which seem to be captured asteroids. As such, the experience we gain in landing and using the resources of an asteroid would be directly applicable.

A station built on a Martian moon would be able to run robots on the surface for purpose of studying the planet in real time. We would not need to worry about 20-minute transmissions and responses from Earth. Driving a rover on Mars from its moon would be little different from driving a rover in one's own back yard from a desktop computer. People who pilot or drive drones already have experience doing this.

Eventually, we may get people down onto the surface of Mars. The study concluded that Mars is the most interesting location (other than Earth) in the solar system. However, a landing on Mars – with the extra expense of getting people down to the bottom of a gravity well and climbing back up again – is not the best use of public money. The best use of public money is in studying a location that has significantly more potential than the surface of any planet in securing the future of humanity – space itself, and the resources for building the equivalent of 30,000 earths that are independent of any planet.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Maine's Proposition 1: Religious Freedom
















Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Maines Proposition 1: Rationalizing Harm













Monday, October 19, 2009









Where does this assumption come from?






In fact, I would say that it is impossible.


Maine's Proposition 1: Faithfully Doing Harm

"In God's name I do harm, and you had better love me for it!"

We live in an absurd culture in which people use faith to 'justify' doing great harm to others who then insist that others have a duty to treat their 'faith' with respect.

Imagine somebody coming after you with a machete, a gun, a bomb, or a ballot initiative, intent on doing you harm (or perpetuating a harm that has been going on for quite some time). Normally, it is within our moral rights to condemn such a person unless they can provide good reason for what they do.

However, in this case, those who inflict these harms do not claim to have good reason for what they do. They claim that their actions are motivated by faith – by an unfounded and unsubstantiated belief that they serve a higher purpose by inflicting these harms.

Furthermore, they get indignant at anybody who does not treat their articles of faith with respect. Disrespect, in this case, includes any action the victim might take to defend himself from the machete, gun, bomb, or ballot initiative.

If a person's faith is peaceful – if it does not motivate the agent to do harm, then the person who holds those beliefs can sensibly say to others, "Don't you have anything better to do than to criticize my harmless beliefs?"

The instant that faith becomes a foundation for inflicting harm on others, at that instant others not only have a right – they have a duty – to criticize and condemn those articles of faith for the sake of people being harmed 'in the name of God'.

Maine’s Proposition 1, to revoke the legal right of homosexuals to marry in that state, is motivated substantially by people who belong to faith communities that put a great deal of value in behavior harmful to others.

Imagine a trial in which you are the defendant. You have been charged with murder. The prosecuting attorney calls a witness to the stand to testify against you. While you sit there, the witness says that she has no doubt that you are guilty and that you must be punished.

When the prosecutor asks the witness what reason she has to believe you are guilty, she says that she knows it to be true as a matter of faith. The evidence she has is that she has searched her heart and came up with the utter conviction that you are guilty.

You might that that this is the end of it. That witness' testimony will be dismissed and the prosecutor told to find an actual witness with real evidence. In fact, your attorney stands and protests that these types of reasons are inadmissible because anybody can claim faith in a belief and there is no way to prove or disprove a 'feeling of conviction' that is not grounded on evidence.

Then, you sit there while your defense attorney is admonished, and told that any further remarks along those lines will result in him being cited for contempt. "It is absolutely forbidden for anybody in this court to object to a statement of faith. Statements of faith are sacred and if the witness has faith that the accused is guilty, then we have a duty to respect her faith and to act accordingly."

The judge pounds his gavel and says, "This case is dismissed. In light of the witness' faith in the guilt of the accused we will convene tomorrow morning at 9:00 am for sentencing."

That’s it.

Nobody has a right to question the witnesses' faith– even if her faith is the unfounded conviction that harm may be done to you (in the name of God).

Actually, the opposite is true. The evidence that is morally permissible when debating a statute or ballot initiative is the same type of evidence that should be permissible in a court of law.

The faith of those who do harm in the name of God is not on that list.

Those who do not . . . those who are the instruments of faith-based harm to others, should stand ready to not only have their faith questioned and condemned but to be condemned themselves for depending on statements of faith to give the illusion of legitimacy to doing harm to others.

Doesn't the world suffer from enough faith-based harm to others without adding yet another example of it in the state of Maine?

Friday, October 16, 2009

Maine's Proposition 1 and the Ratio of Good to Harm














Thursday, October 15, 2009

Smith on Parfit: 12 of 15: The Emptiness of Desire-Independent Reasons for Action


I highlight the following quote:


What are these so-called facts that make certain things worth doing for their own sake?

As I see it, if our interest is specifically on when an action is worth doing for its own sake, it is when an agent has a desire that P, and P is true in the state of affairs in which one is performing the action.

An outcome is worth producing for its own sake when an agent has a desire that P and P is true in that outcome.

According to Smith, this is not Parfit's view. Parfit has offered this account as an to desire-based theories of value. As an alternative to desire-based theories of value this must be a theory that holds that there are desire-independent reasons for action. These facts, which are not facts about a proposition being both the object of a desire that P and true (or false) in a state that P somehow still provide agents with a reason to act.

At times it seems as if Parfit is not actually providing desire-independent reasons for action. Ultimately, he argues that there are desire-independent reasons to want (or to desire) something. We can speculate that Parfit is concerned with reasons to want something as opposed to reasons to do something because wanting still plays a crucial role in motivating action. I do not know if this is the case with Parfit, I am merely exploring possibilities

Our reasons to have some desire are provided, I have claimed, by facts about this desire’s object, or the event that we want. We have such reasons when the event that we want would be in some way relevantly good. We can call such reasons object-given. (On What Matters, §3)

While this offers a hint of a suggestion that there is some way to hold that the ultimate concern is with desires (or wants), the theory still seems to require desire-independent reasons for action. Instead of arguing for a desire-independent reason to act so as to keep a promise to the dead, Parfit is arguing for a desire-independent reason to act so as to acquire a desire to keep a promise to the dead. These are two different types of desire-independent reasons for action, but they are both still desire-independent reasons for actions.

Against such a theory, my objection is still, What are they, exactly? How do they work?

A person can assert that the noises in the attic were made by ghosts. However, we would need an account of what ghosts are. This account would have to suggest a means by which ghosts could have caused the noises in the attic. In the absence of this information the ghost hypothesis is not telling us anything useful.

What Happened to Global Warming?



(See: BBC: What happened to global warming?)










Not without changing the basic laws of physics.

As I said, not without magic or divine intervention.




Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Smith on Parfit: 11 of 15: No Beliefs Entail a Desire


I am looking at some principles of what reason is thought to require that Smith presented in the article. In Part 8, I argued that a desire-as-end that P and a belief that bringing about Q will bring about P only generates a belief in a desire-as-means that Q. An actual desire-as-means that Q requires that the belief is true.

Another principle that Smith mentions is:

[There exists a belief and a desire such that, if] someone believes that p, then she has an intrinsic desire that q.

Elsewhere, Smith quotes Parfit in making a relevantly similar claim.



No belief entails a desire.

I discussed this earlier in discussing the first of these principles that a desire that p and a belief that bringing about q will bring about p implies a desire that q.

I said that this is the case. An end-desire that p combined with the belief that bringing about q will bring about p implies the belief that one has a means-desire to bring about q . . . a belief that can be as mistaken as the belief that brining about q will bring about p.

At the same time, an end-reason to bring about p combined with the fact that bringing about q will bring about p implies having a means-reason to bring about q. However, the means-value of q can remain unknown.

That was just a specific application of the principle that no belief entails a desire. Beliefs are motivationally neutral records of how the world is. Desires are motivationally potent records of how one wants to be. Deriving a motivationally potent state from a motivationally unnert state requires some explaining.

It is in this that I find the a grain of truth in David Hume's claim that one cannot derive an ought from an is. While I hold that moral facts can be derived from physical facts, those physical facts have to contain at least one reason for action. Otherwise, the moral conclusion cannot sensibly contain and ought. I do hold that an ought conclusion requires one or more reasons for action in the premises. Since desires are the only reasons for action that exist, an ought conclusion requires the mention of one or more desires in the premises.

Immunization Denial





The responsible parent bets on black.








Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Reasoning with Evil

You do not reason with evil. You condemn it.

A member of the studio audience described a point of dispute between Richard Carrier and myself as follows:

I think the much more interesting debate is Carrier's position that no fully-informed agent would ever have desires that people have reasons to inhibit (like a desire to steal, or to rape). I don't understand how this could possibly be the case. It seems somewhat naive. It also implies that anyone can be reasoned into doing what is right with enough argumentation, whereas DU explicitly states that this is impossible.

Without getting into whether this is an accurate characterization of Carrier’s views, I would like to be a bit more precise in what desire utilitarianism (aka desirism) explicitly states.

The proposition, “Anyone can be reasoned into doing what is right with enough argumentation” is false.

Anyone can be reasoned into doing that which would fulfill the most and strongest of current desires. However, what fulfills current desires is not necessarily the same thing as what is right.

The role of reason in the brain of a child rapist is to make a plan that would result in fulfilling the desire to rape a child while putting at risk the least and weakest of the agent’s other desires. This plan may include joining the priesthood or becoming a public school teacher or marrying the insecure co-worker with an attractive daughter from a previous marriage.

The role of reason in the brain of an alcoholic is to create a plan to get drunk. Recall that reason seeks to fulfill current desires. There is no backwards causation that allows future desires to have any impact on current actions except through a current desire that future desires be fulfilled. Unfortunately, alcohol tends to interfere with the capacities of reason and cause an agent to make very poor plans for preventing the thwarting of other desires.

Reason works great on those people who have good desires. The role of reason in the brain of a good person is to create a plan for fulfilling the most and strongest of those desires – desires that tend to fulfill other desires.

The role of reason in the brain of a devoted parent is to make plans to secure the current and future well-being of her children. That plan may include parent-child activities, a visit to a museum or a zoo, placing limits on the junk a child watches on television, and warning the child against activities that would put the child’s future well-being at risk.

If we see such a person planning a course of action that threatens the child’s future well-being, a healthy dose of reason can put her on the right course. If, for example, she creates a plan to prevent her child from being immunized against swine flu or hpv virus, a dose of reason can cause her to see the error in her ways and to change her plan.

However, in the same way that reason can help the devoted parent revise her plan for securing the future well-being of her child, it can help the child rapist to make a better plan for raping a child or help the alcoholic to make a better plan for getting a drink.

There are two steps we can take to get such people to do the right thing, and reasoning with them is not one of them.

Since they are making plans to fulfill the most and strongest of their current desires without thwarting other desires, we can influence their plans by threatening to thwart those other desires. We put efforts into inflicting harm on people who make and execute those types of plans, so that their plans must include either the costs of detection or the cost of avoidance. We increase the penalties against drunk driving, and we put more of an effort into capturing people whose plans include driving while drunk.

Or we can alter the desires themselves, reducing the strength and prevalence of those desires that result in these types of plans through public condemnation. We also have the option of putting conflicting desires in the way of bad desires so that, even if a person has a desire to drink, he has an even stronger aversion to (the possible effects of) driving while drunk that causes him to make plans that avoid this activity. We do this by praising, and thus strengthening, desires that would inhibit plans that would thwart other desires.

Threatening people and increasing activities that aim at identifying those who make and try to execute evil plans is not an act of reason. It is, if we are honest, an act of violence (or a threatened act of violence that we will make good on if the right conditions are met).

We do not alter a person’s desires by reason. The relationship between praise and condemnation on the one hand and the desires of agents on the other is not one of implication. It is one of causation. It is not a relationship of reason – any more than the relationship between electricity and magnetism is a relationship of reason. It is a relationship of natural law – a relationship that we can use to improve our lives if we understand it well enough.

It is because of this that I argue that atheists need to get into the habit of praising virtue and condemning vice. It is not enough to show that reason proves or disproves certain claims. It is also necessary to condemn those who are intellectually reckless, as we would condemn the drunk driver, whose desires prove a willingness to make plans that threaten the safety and well-being of others.

This is where I disagree with the methods of the accomodationists, who think that disinterested reason can bring about virtue. It cannot. Praise and condemnation are the tools for realizing those ends – not reason.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Smith on Parfit: 10 of 15: The Limitless Types of Desires



Another principle that Smith mentions is:

If someone has an intrinsic desire that p, then either p itself is suitably universal, or satisfying the desire that p is consistent with satisfying desires whose contents are themselves suitably universal.

I have never encountered a reason to limit the range of propositions that can be the object of a desire.

Beliefs and desires are both propositional attitudes. They both exist in the brain as a consequence of the brain evolving in such a way that interaction with the external world changes the structure of the brain. This is how beliefs became possible – and how desires became malleable. Both are examples of changes in brain structure as a result of experience, tending to give individuals those beliefs and desires relevant to surviving in that particular environment.

At this point, I have not seen any reason why the range of possible desires cannot be as broad as the range of possible beliefs. If an agent can believe that P, then he can desire that P.

This is not to say that such desires are common. As I said above, nature has given us dispositions to desire those thing that have, in the past, caused us to create and preserve genetic replicas of ourselves. We are strongly disposed acquire an aversion to pain, hunger, and thirst, and to have a desire for sex. Those amateurs who think that this precludes homosexuality need to study a little biology.

The fact that nature will tend to channel our desires in a particular direction does not challenge the thesis that the range of possible desires is as broad as the range of possible beliefs. In addition, our disposition to believe might also be channeled.

Perhaps philosophers have found reason to hold that all propositions must be suitably universal, so this condition of suitable universality applies as much to what can be believed as to what can be desired. Perhaps there is an argument for it that I am simply not familiar with.

Part of the difficulty that I have with this pertains to the use of the term suitably. Suitable for what end? This would seem to invite all manner of question-begging. There may be an argument somewhere that gives more precise detail. However, until I have found out what that argument is, suitably universal remains unsuitably vague.

Until then, I hold that the range of propositions P that can be the object of a desire is as broad as the range of propositions that one can believe.

Hate Mongering
















Friday, October 09, 2009

Obama's Peace Prize









Cardinal Georges' Lapse in Reason and Morality

















Thursday, October 08, 2009

Smith on Parfit: 9 of 15: The Rationality of Desire



Another principle that Smith mentions is:

If someone has an intrinsic desire that p, and an intrinsic desire that q, and an intrinsic desire that r, and if the objects of the desires that p and q and r cannot be distinguished from each other and from the object of the desire that s without making an arbitrary distinction, then she has an intrinsic desire that s.

I think I agree. However, is this actually a relationship among desires, or a relationship among sentences?

How are we supposed to take the claim that p, q, and r cannot be distinguished from each other?

One option that I can think of is that p, q, and r are the same sentence written in three different languages. In this case, a desire that p is identical to a desire that q and a desire that r because the proposition p is identical to the propositions q and r. They are merely being expressed using different words.

This raises an interesting question about logical entailments of proposition. For example, if an agent desires that P, and P implies Q (where we are talking about logical implication here, not material implication), then does it follow that the agent desires that Q?

I had not thought about this question before but, upon thinking about it, I see some problems. For example, P and Q implies P, but a desire that P-and-Q, it seems on first blush, does not necessarily imply a desire that P or a desire that Q.

However, in the case where P is logically identical to Q, it does appear to be true that a desire that P implies a desire that Q.

Yet, in this case I fail to see this as a principle of the rationality of desirs. I see it as an example of a case where a desire that P is identical to a desire that Q where P is identical to Q. It is a principle of the rationality of propositions, where it just so happens to be the case that in speaking about desires we are speaking about propositional attitudes. Of course it is the case that if we are talking about attitudes towards propositions then we are talking about attitudes towards those entities that have the properties of propositions.

The Scalia Hypothesis: The Cross Is Not Christian

I am wondering if I should feel sorry for the Christians.

















Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Smith vs Parfit: 8 of 15: Addendum

I would like to thank those readers who came to my defense when my ideas came under attack by none other than myself.

Unfortunately, it seems that I must agree with my critic and concede the fact that my prior formulation had some errors that are corrected by following my critic's recommendations.

I would like to look at some suggestions for defending my original position.

I can't really see how you can say that a desire can be mistaken. Someone either has a certain desire or she doesn't. Maybe she wouldn't have this desire(-as-means) IF she had perfect knowledge about the facts of the matter, but she has the desire nevertheless.

I am not saying that a desire can be mistaken. I am saying that a proposition about a desire-as-means can be false. A person can claim, “I desire-as-means X” and be mistaken. However, her desires are not mistaken. Her claim about those desires is mistaken.

This is true in the same sense that the weight of an object cannot be mistaken, but a claim about the weight of an object can be false.

I used the case of a woman who starts to take a drink out of a glass that she believes contains water, but which actually contains poison.

I think she really DOES want to drink the contents of the glass. The fact is that doing so and thus fulfilling this desire-as-means will not fulfill her desire-as-ends.

Then how does one explain the fact that merely changing the belief about the contents of the glass causes her to not want it anymore?

This new formulation says that informing the woman that the glass contains poison causes her to draw the implication that the proposition, “I want to drink the contents of this glass” is false. This realization of false belief causes her to put the glass down. Her desires did not change. She is still thirsty. She still wants a drink of water. What changed are her beliefs – her realization that the most and strongest of her desires cannot be fulfilled by this particular act.

She is acting in accordance with her strongest desire, given her belief. Her belief is that there is water in the glass. If she is about to drink the contents of the glass, what desire is giving her the motivation to do so?

Her thirst, combined with the false belief that the glass contains harmless thirst-quencher, is motivating her to drink from the glass. Her desire-as-end, combined with a false belief, gives hr a false belief about the value-as-means of drinking the contents of the glass. The desire-as-end provides the motivation, the belief selected the means, and a false belief selected the wrong means. It selected something that the agent does not really desire-as-means, but instead falsely believes she desires-as-means.

How can one "bring about P by bringing about Q" without having the relevant belief? It might be tacit and difficult to explicate and state but it is still a belief.

She cannot. Beliefs are a necessary component of intentional action. However, they are not a necessary component of desire. Desires are independent of belief. Even desire-as-means, I am now arguing, is independent of beliefs. Desires-as-means, I now claim, depends on the relationships between means and ends that exist as a matter of objective fact, whether people believe that those relationships exist or not.

The value of getting a flu shot exists because of the factual relationship between getting the shot and avoiding the flu (and the desires-as-ends fulfilled by avoiding the flu). A person who believes that a flu shot has negative value cannot make it true just by believing it.

She does want to drink the liquid, given her beliefs is correct.

Yes, she would want to drink the liquid if her beliefs were true. But, if her beliefs were true then the glass contains water, not poison. I am not denying that she would want to drink the liquid in the glass if the glass contained water. I am denying that she wants to drink the liquid in the glass given that the liquid is some sort of poison.

AFAICS there can be no sufficient reason without at least one belief and one desire. Or having a desire without a belief is not a reason (to act). Is this what you are challenging?

Having a desire without a belief is, in fact, the same as having a reason to act. However, action itself is impossible without beliefs. Desires and beliefs are necessary to form an intention. They are not necessary for ends to have value. Desires alone gives values ends. Desires and beliefs make it possible to act so as to realize the ends that desires give value to – as long as the beliefs are true and complete.

Isn't your definition[1] of desire something like: An agent has a desire that P iff he/she will act in ways that (they believe) will realize states of affairs in which P is true. If an agent has a desire that P, and believes that realizing Q will realize P, then one would expect them to act in ways that they believe will realize Q, and so, by the above definition, they would have a desire (as means) that Q.

A belief that P is an attitude that the proposition P is true.

A desire-as-end that P is an attitude that the proposition P is to be made or kept true.

The issue here is whether an agent needs to desire-that-means that Q in order to perform Q.

I am disputing this. A person needs to desire-as-end that P and have a false belief that Q will bring about P, but this does not entail a desire-as-means that Q. We do not need to invent another entity to explain the agent's behavior. It is sufficient that he desire that P and falsely believes that Q will bring about P.

However, we do need to explain how an agent can give up on Q once she acquires true beliefs about Q's relationship to P. Telling the agent the truth about Q does not change her desires. She still wants the same things after being told that she wanted before being told. Only, now, she realizes that drinking the contents of the glass is not one of the things that she actually, really, wants.