Ethical Naturalism and Value Systems: The Euthyphro Dilemma (part 3,final)

Joseph Fletcher: Situation Ethics,
episcopal priest, pioneer in bio ethics.

The Euthyphro Dilemma

            Christian values have been assailed by modernity since the enlightenment. One of the major forms that attack takes is through the “Euthyphro dilemma.” This dilemma is aimed at the assumption that the only form of Christian ethics is divine command theory,[1] that God makes something good just because he says it, and his saying is an arbitrary whim. According to Baggett and Walls account of Louise Antony version is “are morally good actions morally Good simply in virtue of the gods favoring them or does God favor them because they are—independently of his favoring them—morally good?[2] Antony replaces “the gods” with “God” indicating that the God of monotheism is her intended target of rhetorical analysis, as Baggett and Walls point out. Yet the dilemma was orinally cast with Greek gods in mind. Bagget and Walls’s take on the dilemma is very detailed and complex, it’s one of the best in recent years. I won’t be going into it with that kind of complexity. The basic upshot of the dilemma is that either God is subject to an independent standard outside himself, and thus he is not God and secular thought might find that standard so we don’t need religion, or morality is just an arbitrary whim on God’s part. Yet the dilemma is based upon the Greek gods not the Christian, and as noted, Antony shifts form the Greek to the God of the Christian tradition with no justification. The Greek gods were continent beings, they had parents they were not eternal they were not the creators. The dilemma really doesn’t apply to the God of the Christian tradition who is eternal and the basis of all that is. That means there’s a closer relationship between the good God than just God’s commands. That connection  closer than divine command theory would have it; it’s not just a matter of “good is what God says it is,” although it is dependent upon God, but not just on his commands.[3]

            The relationship between God and the good is not merely based upon voluntarism, that God demans X therefore is good. Rather, it is that God is the basis of the good. Goodness is God’s character and without God there would be no concept of the good. God depends upon God but not just upon his commands. It’s not merely that there would be no big bully on the block to tell us what is good, but that there would be no good itself because God is the good itself. The good is derived form God’s character and God’s character is love, love is the background of the moral universe (Augustine) and thus goodness is derived form love. That brings up several problems. For example, J.L. Mackie argues that once one affirms the existence of unchangeable moral good then God becomes unnecessary and secular thinkers might find those principles without God.[4] The concept of unchangeable moral good that is detachable form God is an impossibly. It might be that thinkers could come to conclusions that coincide with truths implicit upon God’s character and not know it. That’s hardly the same as saying God is “unnecessary.” If there’s any relation between what’s good and what’s true and if good is based upon God’s character there’s no true ontological separation between those two. In discussions with atheists when I say that morality is based upon love and love is God’s character they usually balk at both aspects of that statement: they figure love is a reaction of chemicals in the brain that just produces little sentimental or romantic feelings, and moral good is derived from behavior not from love. Usually they don’t observe the implicit value that would make a behavior good or bad. There’s more to it than just saying good is based upon God’s character. It’s also a matter of God’s judgment. God’s power, knowledge and goodness underwrite his moral authority.[5]God not only creates all that is, including planning its purpose, but also knows the truth and is the only mind that can figure the complexities of all existing relationships between moral concepts and human behavior, and the only truly objective judge who knows the subjects of moral behavior better than they know themselves, and in addition to all that has the forthrightness and loving concern to explicate moral judgments fairly. When I say “love” is behind the good I don’t mean romantic love or sentimentality but the Greek term agape.  The idea that love is the basis of he good may be a problem for some Christians because there is a concept in the Christian tradition that love and moral goodness are two counterpoising forces that have to keep each other in balance. I suggest that is nonsense if we are talking about Gods’ love, the love that is the basis of God’s character. “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8).

What is the good?

            Agape is used of God’s love through the New Testament. It is translated as “charity” at times.[6] The word is linked with good will and benevolence. The King James translation renders it “charity” (1 Corinthians 13:1). There’s more to it than that. It’s also linked to “preference” to prefer the other. The word is used for the love of God for man and man for God, the love humans for each other, and the love of God for Christ.[7] Agape is the basis of the good. What is good evaluated as what is agapic (loving). Other moral precepts and axioms such as justice, fairness and reciprocity would all be meaningful only in relation to agape. In fact one major theological ethicist came to that conclusion back in the 1960s, that was Joseph Fletcher. A lot of Christians were outraged by his view of “situation ethics,” and his book by the same title.[8] It was controversial and it drew lots of fire including the charge of “new morality.” Nevertheless he was a top notch ethicist. Fletcher argues that love and justice are the same. Justice is the distributive aspect of love.[9] He calls upon Augustine and argues that love must be prudent. He argues that this view forces us to pull back from the notion that love is sentimental and “mushy” and non intellectual. This is the intellectual side of love; today we call it “tough love.” Literally the argument is how do we manae to supply the beneficiaries of love when there are so many? The answer is by turning the problem into a question of justice. We make sure that justice is done at the same time making sure that love is distributed and doing it in such a way that we exclude one for he sake of the other.[10] Thus we can see how the other aspects of moral axioms indeed stem form love. Love is the background of the moral universe.

            Christian ethics certainly revolve around love. The value system that we use to inform that choice is the one through which Augustine re-valued the values of the Roman Empire. That value system plays out upon the eternal scale of values. We love the eternal we use the temporal. Human beings are eternal, created in the image of God, thus each human being is an end in himself/herself. Temporal things are means to ends. Thus temporal things are to be used and put aside but human beings matter. If science was the basis of ethics, nature never tells us that humans are valuable, there would be no basis for valuing humans except the cultural, and that is relative and can be discarded. Ethical naturalists might kid themselves about the alleged “objective basis” for ethics, they sound like persupositionalist Christian apologists trying to explain what that means. Without the arbitrary assumption already built in regarding the value of human worth, without appeal to a transcendent value system such as Christian agape there is no basis that science could ever give us for not using humans and valuing things. One finds scientistic thinkers such as atheists, especially on the popular level, expressing the sentiments that “humans are not so special.” We don’t have souls, there’s no God, we are just bags of chemicals or jumped up apes so why should we think we are special? Steve Paulson is an example from the popular level. Although he has an advanced science degree and works in science, obliquely. He’s a producer for public radio and an author. He expresses the idea that humans are just “cosmopolitan apes.” Again the idea is not to find fault with evolution. We can accept evolution as scientific fact and accept ethics as philosophical fact and accept The Bible as spiritual fact all at the same time and value humanity. Paulson says:

Most assume that humans are fundamentally different form the rest of the animal world…many people believe that but to biologists we are animals. It’s hard to believe that we are fundamentally different because there is no part of the human brain that is not present in the monkey’s brain. Our brains are bigger and we certainly have more powerful computer than any other animal, but the computer is not fundamentally different. So there’s no fundamental divide between humans and Chimpanzees? no…if you were to ask what the big difference is I would probably say it’s language but like all capacities once you break them down you are going to find some of these part sin other species.[11]

He argues that chimps have morality, “they have a sense of fairness.” Is it really a concept of fairness or just behavior would be fair if they really understood it, but perhaps they don’t? He finds that chimps respond to the needs of others, they seem to share food with those who don’t have enough. Is this really ethical thinking or just a instinctive sense of love that might pervade all creatures? He’s talking about cooperation in hunting. That’s not proof that they value each other. It could just be a practical matter that helps them all. It is evidence of outcome oriented thinking that doesn’t necessarily recognize a moral dimension but a practical survival dimension. Isn’t that what Harris and Churchland and Wilson are reducing ethics to?

            More examination of how this thinking plays out at the popular level, even though this is not scientific, we find bloggers expressed some odd sentiments. The blog “Think Atheist” urges that we should be “ridding ourselves of humanities self centrality: The Importance of Inclusively.”[12]

Humanity thought the universe spun around the Earth as if it were the purpose of the universe. Likewise, the sun.

Another way we think we are special is amongst the rest of the life forms on the planet. We like to believe that there are animals... and there are humans. We seem to have a hard time admitting to ourselves that we are animals. But we are. I'd like to take this idea one step further though. We are all LIFE. We are all BIOLOGY. And the separations between us that seem so important, identifiable and distinctive. Are actually not all that different in the end. All life on this planet evolved IS RELATED. FAMILY. By quantifiable amounts. 99% of our DNA is that of a chimpanzees and 50% of our DNA is that of a banana. ALL LIFE is CLOSELY related. We all come from the same place and we're all going in the same direction. We are procreating and spreading the seed of life, adapting to new environments by all means necessary, even if we must evolve.[13]

If we are animals and we are life and we are no better than any other animals or life would it really matter if we don’t get the quinine to the children dying of malaria? After all there’s lots more life where that life comes from and no one is special. Or that we have to allow dying or even killing off some group so the rest will have more to go around? After all a good outcome is all that matters, we are not special so we can be a means to an end. How are they going to decide this in the clash of such values? Neither the nature from which they take their ethical axioms, nor the science they prize so highly tells us to value humanity or to make humans ends in themselves. How will they resolve such conflicts?            

            These ideas can be put into a positive version. Yet if we assume that we are now coasting on Christian memories and the culture has lots of ideas left over from a time when we valued humanity, what’s going to happen in a couple of generations when those ideas are all gone and we are just seen as “some examples of life among other life,” no better than any other animal and not more than a means to an end; the end being an outcome considered “moral” by those who don’t see a difference in marmoset values and human values. Out come is not totally divorced from deontology. Just because a deontologist doesn’t use outcome as the basis for ethical “ought” doesn’t mean we don’t care about having good outcomes. It seems that if there is no ethical deliberation along the lines of basic value system there is no ethical thought. If there is no ethical thought there is no ethical action. Reducing meta ethical theory (the theory of what makes a thing good or not) to behavior is not the answer. Valuing human individuals as ends in themselves and worthy of preserving rights and ends seems like a good place to start thinking about the sorts of outcomes we desire.

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[1] David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, 32.

[2] Ibid., 32.

[3] Ibid., 84.

[4] Ibid., 85.

[5] Ibid., 123.

[6] Bible Hub website, Thayers Greek Lexicon, Electronic Database. Bible soft, 2002, 2011.  http://biblesuite.com/greek/26.htm  accessed 5/30/13.

[7] Ibid.

[8] James F. Childress, “Introduction,” Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: the New Morality. Louisville Kentucky: Westminster, John Knox Press, originally published 1966. 1.

[9] Ibid., 87. Not only did Fletcher receive a lot of criticism, “situation ethics” was the title of the book and the name of the ethical theory, the subtitle was “the new morality.” Both became dirty words, so the actual title of the book was like a charge leveled against him. I am not supporting situation ethics but I do support Fletcher’s reading of love and justice.

[10] Ibid.,  88.

[11] Steve Paulson, The Cosmopolitan Ape: primatology, empathy, morality, community, culture.” Website: http://nautil.us/issue/1/what-makes-you-so-special/the-cosmopolitan-ape  accessed 6/3/13.

[12] Dragontorn, Think Atheist, “Ridding ourselves of Humanities Self Centrality: the Importance of Inclusively.” Blog: http://www.thinkatheist.com/profiles/blogs/ridding-ourselves-of-humanity-s-self-centrality-the-importance-of  accessed 6/3/13.

[13] Ibid.

Ethical Naturalism and Value Systems: the Illusion of Moral Landscape (part 2 of 3)

 The Is/Ought Dichotomy

            The “is-ought” problem tells us that we can’t derive what should be just from a description of what is. If we look at what Harris is saying, he’s really not deriving a view of what ought to be by understanding what is, although he wants us to think he is. He thinks it’s possible to do this just by being real accurate with the “is.” But he’s already reduced reality so it wont include transcendent ought. So he’s already hedged his bets against the argument. In reality there is no reason why we should accept that the “ought” is already in place and that it’s already a given that pleasant physical circumstances as outcome are the only valid good available. This has not been established by anything. It’s just an assertion that is put in the position to be a default given that alternatives are ruled out ideologically. There’s nothing about biological facts that establish an “ought.” We might show that religious belief has harmed more people than Polio (perhaps) but if true that still would not tell us why it’s wrong to do so. Harris’s basic answer to this argument is that people who make such criticisms have too narrow a concept of science. “Science simply represents our best effort to understand what’s going on in the universe, and the boundary between it and the rest of rational thought cannot always be drawn.”[1]  That is his answer to the issue of is-ought, basically no answer at all. What difference does it make if it is our best efforts (which I doubt)? Best efforts don’t change is to ought. What difference does it make if we broaden our scope of understanding for science? What he’s really saying is that science is the only true ethics. In saying that, he’s clearing the way to replace real ethical thinking with the reductionist ideology that makes up his understanding of science. All the scientific precision there is can’t turn “is” into “ought”—there is simply no reason why facts by themselves represent what should be. As Philosopher Robert Nozick tells us:

Ethical truths find no place within the contemporary scientific picture of the world. No such truths are established in any scientific theory or tested by any scientific procedure—microscopes and telescopes reveal no ethical facts. In the guise of a complete picture of the world, science seems to leave no room for any ethical facts. What kind of facts are these, what makes them hold true?[2]

Brain Earp, again tells us:

Example: It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean “wrong”) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgment we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.

The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.[3]

If the current state of affairs (what is) is the basis of what should be than political repression and backward understanding of the environment and focus on short term needs only, as well as greed and even cruelty must be what should be. That certainly sums up what is as far as life on earth goes.

            Rachels defends ethical naturalism against the “is-ought” argument and his defense is a bit more involved than Harris’s. He argues that evaluative conclusions can sometimes be drawn from factual premises. His example is if the only difference between doing  A and not doing A is a child will suffer intense prolonged pain, then it’s better not to do A.[4] Wait, this in principle is no different than Harris’s answer and it’s based upon the same “trick.” I use the term advisedly because they may not intend to trick, but they are tricking themselves because there is clearly a value that’s being inserted into the process that is kept unspoken and asserted as though the it’s the only valid conclusion that comes form the nature of the case but it’s clearly loaded at the front before the example is made. The idea that doing is wrong because all other things being equal it would result in the pain of a child assumes form the outset that our values are such that paining children is wrong. This is fraught with a host of assumptions: that there is a right and wrong, that children are more innocent than adults, that it’s wrong to harm the innocent, that’s more wrong to harm the innocent than the not so innocent, and so on. Yes, these are values with which we all agree. There is, however, no evidence that they are arrived at logically as a result of some magic transmutation of “is” into “ought.” Rather the “ought” is assumed form the beginning, it is loaded into the example, otherwise why use a child? The basis of those values is proved by this example to be logically derived from the nature of the case but could well be derived from fine feelings or a sense of right intuited from the Spirit or any number of things. Its use as an emotional ploy suggests the flaw in using it, because it suggests a value already built in. He also argues that beliefs are tied to motivations, those stem from behavior and that is based upon “is,” upon the factual nature of the human psyche and other situations that are derived from the nature of the case.[5] Yes it is undeniable that an evocation of ethical duty or obligation must revolve around actual facts rather than mere abstractions or there is no actual ethical concern. That in no way means that the “ought” is derived form the mere facts of the nature of the case apart form the value systems employed to evaluate them.

Value systems

            Value systems make up the basis of ethical thinking. Intrinsic value is what supplies the reason for action in ethics.[6] Ethics is about what we do, how we live, as a result of examining our actions in relation to our values. We all agree that pleasant outcome; absence of pain is a good thing.[7] Yet we believe for different reasons. The reductionists try to justify it as an outgrowth of survival instinct, the Christian as an expression of God’s love. It matters which way we do it because the decision is ultimately the expression of a value system, that decision will determine how we decide our actions. If we write off human values as merely the opinions of a different set of mammals, if we say “o well marmoset actions are marmoset ethics,” that’s all it is just the way a different set of organisms spins the survival mode, then we might wind up justifying a whole set of dehumanizing actions. If we are led down the garden path by the priests of knowledge and taught to think of these dehumanizing actions as merely a means to an end, we may lose the human values that would enable us to regret such actions. Behind what might seem like split hairs lurk the justifications and rationalizations for destructive and dehumanizing decisions. One could see, for example, rationalizing loss of freedom by an appeal to concrete nature of the outcome and there fleeting transitory nature of the “merely human” value of freedom. The space between is and “ought” must be kept in order not to sanctify what “is.” The danger is too great that deriving “ought” from “is” will produce a way of thinking about “is” that forever links it with “ought.”

            One of the things that make ethical philosophy and moral philosophy seem so aloof, transitory and “unscientific” is the relative nature of their value systems. Value systems are relative and arbitrary to the extent that we either hold them or we don’t. We can’t prove what values we should hold. In order to be able to prove what value system we should hold to we would have to have a prior value system to put in place to say it with, if we could have that it would solve the issue there be no need to say it. That’s what the scientific ethics reductionists think they are doing; they think they are giving us a stable grounding in “is.” It’s really an appeal to the fortress of facts idea. The problem with that is that it begs the question about which value system we should assume. We can’t be confused by the humanitarian nature of the outcome oriented ethics. Just because it values things we deem “good” doesn’t mean it’s the only access to the good. Deontologists value happiness, peace, absence of carnage, too. The problem is, values come into conflict. Take Harris’s example, do we use our billion to cure malaria or help feed people? I assume he would base that upon which is killing the most. The problem there’s more to consider in the equation. What do we have to do to provide those particular goods? If we have to take food out of the mouths of people being sustained by that funding in order to save other lives with malaria have we produced a net good? We only shift around evils if we create starving masses to cure disease. By the same token a deontological approach could see feeding the hungry and curing disease both as values that must be met. This leads to the argument about replacing all other forms of ethics with consequentialist ethics. This is clearly something that Harris seeks to do. He defines ethics in such a way that ethics is about producing certain kinds of consequences, as we have seen.

            I stated above that intrinsic values are what motivate action in ethics. There are other kinds of values;[8] there are values that derived from the things they accrue, for example in consequentialist ethics various states or attitudes are moral values because the outcome of holding them is the desired outcome. For example the outcome of holding non racist attitudes is seen as clearing the way for freedom and human potential that leads to more happiness and less pain for people of color and even for those who would hold the prejudiced attitudes. Yet there’s also an intrinsic value there. The intrinsic value is one that is the object of the outcome; we might term it “pleasure,” more like “fulfillment,” “human potential.” What is the point of keeping people alive? Why should we care if more people die of Malaria or are harmed by religion, why care about either? We care because we value human life both in the sense of protecting it, and enhancing the quality of it. That is an end in itself. We can’t say why we value human life, except in terms of either expressing feelings or expressing ideas about the nature of the universe. We have no scientific data that tells us why we should value it. We can’t prove logically that we should. The fact that we do feel that we should may well be grounds of notion of the “self evident” nature of moral motions, but is not a scientifically provable or even logically provable proposition. The whole of ethical theory is about figuring out what to do with and how best to make use of these values we hold. We organize our thinking into schools of thought and design ethical systems for this purpose.

            The Strength of moral philosophy is it’s diversity of value systems. Diversity is strength and not a weakness. The assertion all three make, Harris, Churchland and Wilson is that consequntialist ethics is the only real basis for ethics. That’s clearly not the case if we go by the field of ethics itself. There’s no scientific proof for the assertion that teleological ethics is the only true basis for ethics without dragging a surreptitious value system into the equation, and thus if we look at moral philosophy and ethics as an academic field its loaded with other view points, with other values systems and other ways of implanting values. Consequence is only one of many. For example deontolgocal ethics asserts that there is intrinsic value in the acts themselves. For example there may be value in truth telling even though the result of telling the truth may be harmful.[9]Lying may be wrong even if no harm results. There are two main types of deontological theories, intuitionism which holds that moral principles are self evident upon reflection, and the second types is rationalism, which uses a second order principle is used to generate a set of first order principles.”[10] They both seem to ground ethics in duty.[11]This is just scratching the surface; there are many other views of ethics, including Virtue ethics where one focuses upon the kind of person one should be rather than means to act ethically,[12] and even aesthetic ethics which does not seek the good but the beautiful or the aesthetically fulfilling. Dorothy Emmett shows that aesthetic ethics can be as consistent and logical as any other kind.[13] To just assert that ethics is about one thing, pleasure over pain, stopping pain, outcomes that result in fewer deaths, is absurd. If we impose a hidden value system while pretending to ground values in a scientific fact we ignore the basis of all ethical thinking, not to mention the diversity of the field. Trying to shift from deontological or other form of decision making to outcome oriented ethics on the grounds that “this is obviously what ethics is about” is absurd.

            Values motivate ethical thinking and actions; we choose the ethical system that best serves our values. The flexibility to change form one system to another is strength because it allows for new approaches. It would be stifling to assert one system over the others and to close off alternatives by terming it “fact.” There are good arguments against consequentialism as an ethical theory. It’s been hinted at already that consequentialism ignores the basis of intrinsic value and thus can at times force the individual to violate intrinsic values in order to meet the demands of gaining certain out come. Various life boat scenarios often depict this kind of thinking. The life boat analogy was first proposed by Garrett Hardin (in 1974) its application was closely related to environmental ethics. The life boat idea imaged 50 people in a life boat with room for 10 more, but they are surrounded by 100 swimmers. Who will be let on to row? Garrett’s intention was to criticize the spaceship earth idea.[14] Life boat examples are often used in high school and perhaps middle school to introduce students to ethical thinking. Teachers are advised that students often go for the outcome oriented solution, so they have to be advised to think about other options: “Discussions about the lifeboat are influenced strongly by how the question is posed. Be sure to allow room for solutions that maximize fairness (i.e. drawing straws) by asking students to focus on how they are making their decision. Students often default to solutions that are outcome-based. It is useful to be able to show that there are other approaches that can be applied. ”[15] One might be led to let the old woman drawn because she can’t row and well as the middle aged man swimming more strongly  than she, unless of course one realizes that a higher value might be protecting the weak and taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves. Certainly the life boat idea does cast a spot light on the tendency of values to collide. It points up the potential for outcome oriented thinking to force upon the individual acts considered immoral by conscience. It’s then that we realize we need a system that recognizes the intrinsic nature of values and a flexibility that allows us to re-consider our options. We have no factual basis in science that would tell us, “yes it’s better to save this one and let the other drawn.” Now it’s true we don’t have a clear cut means of understanding the right choice in any other system either, but that’s not a reason to close off the option with the pretense that science give us the factual basis form which to act.

            Why should we laud one set of values over others? To use an example already given, we can choose human values over Marmoset values because we are human. We have no actual reason to suspect that marmoset’s think ethically, science might actually help us there. I’m not arguing that science is of no use. Yet since we are human and we know that we can think ethically, that in itself is reason enough to accept human values. We can also identify the intrinsic values. Values intrinsic to other species probably would not always be intrinsic to us, it makes no since therefore that we don’t use human values.

part 3

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[1] Harris, Ibid., 29.

[2] Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, Mass.: Bellknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1981, 399.

[3] Earp, Ibid.

[4] Rachels, Ibid., 4.

[5] Ibid., 6.

[6] Robin Attfield, Value, Obligation and Meta-Ethics, Amsterdam, Atlanta, Georgia: Editions Rodopi  B.V. Value Inquiry Book Series,1995, 29

MA (Oxon), PhD (Wales) has been Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University since 1992. Robin Attfield read Greats (Literae Humaniores) at Christ Church and theology at Regent's Park College, Oxford.

[7] Nozick, Ibid., 399.

[8] Attfield, Ibid. 29-30.

[9] Lois P. Pojman, (editor), Moral Philosophy: A Reader. Indianapolis, In.: Hackett Publishing Company inc., Third edition.  2003, Originally 1993, 193.

[10] Ibid., 193

[11] Ibid., 193.

[12] Find, virtue ethics

[13] Find moral Prisim

[14] Garrett Hardin, “Life Boat Ethics, The Case Against Helping the Poor,” Psychology Today, September (1974) 38-40, continued  123-124.

[15] Teaching Background, “The Life Boat,” Teacher Instructions, hosted by Northwest Association for Biomedical Research. online resource:http://nwabr.org/sites/default/files/Lifeboat.pdf  accessed 5/24/13.

I have retruned from the nether world

Rehab. man was it a drag. I can still barely walk. There was one cool night when I was playing old Beatles songs like "hard days night" and "Can't buy me love" a tribute on PBS so I had the sound way up on the tv. People started dancing in the hall and gathered outside my room and had a sort of party using snacks from the vending machine.

Here is an old post from way back in 2010 but it still has come cash value in the market of ideas. I'll post the comments to it next time:

Atheism and Meta ethical Theory

This was a discussion my boards (Doxa Forums) which is still on going. Parts of it are pretty interesting. There are a lot more people involved n it than I reflect here. I will just show exchanges between Fleetmouse who started the thread (and myself) and Quantum Troll (Zebnuts on CARM) and myself. But follow the thread there's a lot more to it than this.

by fleetmouse on Tue Dec 29, 2009 8:40 am

I've seen a few posts recently where Christians point at horrible acts and imply that a nontheistic worldview is inadequate to explain them. Metacrock briefly alluded to this recently in another thread on Doxa regarding a little girl who was sold into prostitution by her mother and ended up dead in a ditch.

So I would like to explore this - is the existence of acts that we would call evil a problem for naturalism, and why?

Before the ball gets rolling, we should discuss whether evil is an essence or simply an adjective. I think this is the crux of the matter.

 Meta Responds:

(1) Is evil an essence?

Well first of all, I think it's too narrow and simplistic to say it's either an essence or an adjective. I am not an essentialist. I don't believe women are women because their spirits are the essence of female or that men are male because their spirits are the essence of male. I do have Platonic tendencies (which I've tried to keep under control but the non Plato patch just doesn't work, the gum tastes horrible). But my Platonism is augmented by Augustine, so I'm not actually a full no Platonist.

I do think evil is more than just a word we use to describe stuff we don't like. But I supposes what you really mean is "is it satan or is it us?" right? I don't believe in little guys with pointed tails sitting on your shoulder encouraging you to do stuff.

I do think evil is a value judgment, but it's also more than that. It's a real tendency but not a positive essence, but rather the lack of the good. Being an Augustinian like Augustine I see evil as the absence of Good, and by "good" I mean "love." The illusion of a positive force of evil is created by positive actions that ensue from the lac of love. The analogy would be the way cold is seen as a positive force by people who don't know physics. Of cousre we (us educated types) know that there is no force radiant cold, it's all a matter of lack of heat, but the blowing of cold air gives the illusion of radiant cold. Cold does not radiate like heat. you can sit front of an ice cub and get cool, unless you blow air over it (which is the basic principle of an air conditioner) but then it's the heat being absorbed by the vacuum of cold that makes the air feel cool. It's not a force of cool blowing on you.

So it is with evil. It's the acts of evil that make it appear to be a force. It's actually the lack of love (which is synonymous with the good).


(2) Would a non theistic world be evil?

A world ran by Dawkins would be evil. A world ran by half the people on CARM would be very screwed. But then I wouldn't give much for the chances of a world ran by Mat Slick either!

I have always contended (I don't know what I said on the thread you talk about) that atheists can be good people, and many are, but they are coasting on Christian memories in the culture (meaning values). That does not men they are evil people it just means they have to get their ethical norms from some place and they usually get them from a culture that is working on the fading values of a Christian past. That's our measuring stick in this country and in the West for ethical norms.

The problem with atheists ethics wise is their inability to ground their axioms, not the inability of individual atheists to be moral. Now here's another paradox that is apt to cause misunderstanding. All have sinned and fallen short of ht Glory of God. that means Christians sin, atheist sin, everyone sins. So when atheists sin we say "see atheists can't be moral." But we forget to point out, "O yea, Neither can we!"

Paul tells us (Rm2:6-14) the moral law is written on the heart and that Gentiles not born under the law do actually keep elements of the law because they follow the moral law on their hearts. That has to mean that atheist also can be moral and have an innate sense of what is moral. But we all sin, we all fail at some point so atheists will sin and when they do there will be certain one's there to point it out, and go "ah ha" but those guys are strangely silent when their own sins are apparent.

So the ethics front is a matter of academic involvement. you have to think critically and understand the conversation among professional ethicist to really get what ethics is about. But if you do that I think it can be demonstrated that Theistic ethics is superior in terms of grounding axioms. But that has nothing to do with the rubber and road in terms of individual failings.

I think what I was getting at in that other thread is just that people tend to cover up the concept of sin nature. We don't like to think of ourselves as sinners. So when horrible things happen naturalistic types don't' want to face that something in all of us could lead any one of us to do that same kidn of thing at some point.

that does not mean that those naturalistic types aer not just as good as am I, or just as fallen as am I.

 (There were comments by several people. I'm skipping over to another exchange)

by Metacrock on Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:10 pm

met wrote:

Metacrock wrote:but the distinction between Socratic ethics and Christian ethics is that for Socrates "good" means functional or serviceable, not moral. for Christians it means "moral" in other words, mindful not to sin.

Met: (not me, Met is another guy)
does it depend upon the end? ... if moral behavior is a means to something (getting to heaven, avoiding hell, whatever) is it then NOT moral behavior?

is "you ought'a obey God 'cause s/he carries a mighty big stick!" an ETHICAL argument or not? ... in Hume's sense of "can't derive ought from an is," i mean

Metacrock:
no it does not depend upon the end. There are two major divisions in ethics. People who believe in truth beieve that rules and duty and obligation determine the good or the right, while godless secularist atheist heathen believe that it's based upon outcome.

I say that tongue in cheek of course it seems to fall that way. Atheists tend to be consequential and believers in some form of deity tend to be deontological in their ethics. Most ethicist today believe

that most froms consequential have been beaten.

Now Quauntum Troll comes into it, he's quoting me first then responding:

QuantumTroll wrote:

Metacrock wrote:no it does not depend upon the end. There are two major divisions in ethics. People who believe in truth beieve that rules and duty and obligation determine the good or the right, while godless secularist atheist heathen believe that it's based upon outcome.I say that tongue in cheek of course it seems to fall that way. Atheists tend to be consequential and believers in some form of deity tend to be deontological in their ethics. Most ethicist today believe that most from consequential have been beaten.

QT: Deontological ethics don't make sense to me, unless your moral rule is that you shouldn't hurt people. But if that's your deontological rule, then you end up with a consequentialist ethics in practice anyway. A deontological ethics that isn't based on that rule is in my opinion not a good idea.

Metacrock:
that's contradiction to your own biological based outlook. Because your view says anything found "naturally" in nature must be an ought, right? am I misunderstanding you there? But then you have arbitrary outcome oriented understanding that is not derived from nature becuase nowhere in nature do find ideas like "hurting others is wrong."

you are imposing a teleological ethic upon deontology, and you are imposing the violation of the fork on consqeuntualism.

QT:

Suppose you follow the rule "always tell the truth". Then you might find yourself in a situation where someone will be hurt by the truth, and you knowingly tell the truth anyway and knowingly hurt this person. And you walk away feeling like you did the moral thing. Madness!

Metacrock:
you can always keep silent. you are trying to interpret duty and obligation in a way produces the most legalistic and ineffective outcome. That's not really the result of keeping duty, it's the result of interpreting it that way on purpose. For example, the Nazis come in and say "do you have any Jews hidden about?" If you keep silent they will know and look for them so you say "no." You haven't really violated your duty because you can lexically order duty. The higher duty to protect those in danger overrides the personal duty of telling the truth.




QT:

My point here is that a deontological ethicist might say "tell the truth" only if she also says "don't hurt anyone". But as I said above, the latter rule turns the deontologist into a consequentialist in practice.

Metacrock:
you can say your duty is not hurt anyone but you are going to measure the sucess by the outcome and say that's what makes for morality, the deontologist says morality is decided by how duty and obligation, an act is moral because it is your duty or an obligation, not determined how well you keep it. It's determined by what your duty is in the first place. That doesn't mean the outcome of violating doesn't count becuase it 's an outcome it just means it's not determined as moral because of the outcome.

In other words seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is not a moral precept.


QT:

Then there's the question of where the deontological rules come from. You might say they come from God. I don't think God cares about people following rules (such a petty God that would be!), but rather that people care about each other and act like it. While I don't see any value in following rules for their own sake, a rule can be a good guideline or hint for ethical behavior in many situations (like for example the truth-telling rule).

Metacrock:
Your just shifting about the rules of grammar to make deontology look stupid. I don't think you do that on purpose, I think probably it's taught that way in ethics classes below graduate school because people teaching those classes have been shaped by the ideology of mid 20th century liberalism that said consequentilist ethicsl is urbane and deontology is legalisitic and hyde bound. So they cast it in terms of rule keeping rather than duty or obligation and they stick in a bunch of psychology about rule keeping being less highly devleoped than conceptual understanding.

dentology is not about rule keeping. There's a form of it called "rule deontology" but it's the lesser version for suckers. The more important version is based upon duty and obligation. No dentological ethicist say you have to rigidly keep rules when they violtate their own spirit of the rules.

QuantumTroll wrote:

Metacrock wrote:see the problem with consequential ethics is it's illustrated prefectly by QT. His standard for "ethics" is "success." Success means purely functional not moral. So his "ethics" have no moral basis.

No no no, you have misunderstood me grievously. Or rather, I have put the focus of my post on the wrong point. My standard for ethics is the welfare or happiness of a community.

Metacrock:
But you seem to define that in terms of success. Even so it's still teleological.

Because your view says anything found "naturally" in nature must be an ought, right? am I misunderstanding you there?

QT:
Yes, that is a misunderstanding. The point I was making about finding cooperation and some kind of "love" and care in nature is only that deriving an "ought" from an "is" is such an easy and obvious task that animals do it. There are lots of examples of altruism and selflessness to be found in nature (and the opposite). If the animals can find a reason to love selflessly, then so can we. However, just because animals do it doesn't mean that we should. So why should we? Because nobody likes suffering and we can all help each other.

Metacrock:
you say that because you are not recalling finding an ought at all. Our ought is not based upon a moral ought but upon a practical success ought. your value system of what's best for the community is entirely based upon physical success, gene frequency completely devoid of ethical and moral content. You cannot manufacture an ought based upon an is. you have to stick in a value, you can't get the value just by looking at nature.

eating your [young] is found in nature so why not eat your young? you will stick in a values nd say "we don't do that." but you have a basis for it other than your own psychological predilection not to.
you can't reduce all of life to chemicals and expect to find values in them.

Meta:But then you have arbitrary outcome oriented understanding that is not derived from nature becuase nowhere in nature does one find ideas like "hurting others is wrong."

QT
I think you do find that idea in nature if you're open to seeing it

Metacrock
begging the question, whatever you can think of must be seen in nature, therefore, if you think of it it's in nature. That doesn't follow; the circle goes "my conclusion is X therefore, X is right, therefore, X must be my premise.

The higher duty to protect those in danger overrides the personal duty of telling the truth.

QT
Exactly what I was trying to say. You don't tell the truth to the Nazi because of the consequences to the Jews you're protecting.

Meta:
It's not the consequence that makes it wrong to divulge. Both deontologists and teleologists agree that doing wrong has bad consequences, but the one thinks that's what makes it wrong, the other things the consequences are bad because its wrong.


why is it wrong for millions of Jews to be murdered in camps? We find death all around us in nature. Species compete and wipe each other out all the time. If you think being in nature makes it an ought you should support the holocaust. Its' only because you have a higher value that originally came from Christian theology that says people are ends in themselves not means to an end. In nature all animals are a means to an end. An individual is not important, what matters is gene frequency, once the individual is out of the running he's no good any more. that's the "ought" you draw from nature. If an individual is not contributing to gene frequency he should die. It's only when we bring in a higher value from somewhere esle that says individual matter for their own sake, which is not in nature that we can see the holocaust is wrong.

where do you get the concept of "wrong" at all? apart from a moral context it's only in the context of practicality.

The more important version is based upon duty and obligation. No dentological ethicist say you have to rigidly keep rules when they violtate their own spirit of the rules.

QT:
Duty and obligation seem to me just more nuanced versions of the same basic idea as rules.

Meta:
Nuanced is better, it's more intelligent and less rigid. Nothing wrong with rules, the problem is (1) in what are they founded? (2) how rigid, often the letter must be violated to save the spirit of the rule.

Qt:

Why are these deontological duties and obligations moral? I think that deontological ethics works because keeping these duties and obligations enforces behavior that leads to good consequences.

Meta:
you are trying to flatten them out and make them practical. in so doing you remove the moral dimension and thus clear the way for the holocaust. Your use of the term "good" is suppossed to sound like a moral motion but it's not. If "good" is entirely in practical terms then killing the Jews may be good for society in a Draconian sense.

QT

If you separate the consequences from the action, then it becomes difficult to know which duty and obligation is higher and more important. In other words, I think there is a significant practical reason to be a consequentialist.

Meta
action by itself has no basis in morality, the only way to tell if an action is moral or not is to know the value and what grounds that value that the action supports or violates. You cant' do that by deriving morality from outcomes only.

saying "practical reason to a consequential" is like saying "it could be good for you to be murderer." Yes it could if you define "good for you" apart from morality. So I mean by that if you define "practical" apart from morality you are only arguing in tuatolgies and removing the moral dimension.

The only way to assign moral significance to an action is to know up from what the values are that one sets up as the axiological basis for action. once you know then and only then can you know what moral significance an outcome has.

Ethical Naturalism and Value Systems: part 3, The Euthyphro Dilemma (final)

Joseph Fletcher: Situation Ethics,
episcopal priest, pioneer in bio ethics.

The Euthyphro Dilemma

            Christian values have been assailed by modernity since the enlightenment. One of the major forms that attack takes is through the “Euthyphro dilemma.” This dilemma is aimed at the assumption that the only form of Christian ethics is divine command theory,[1] that God makes something good just because he says it, and his saying is an arbitrary whim. According to Baggett and Walls account of Louise Antony version is “are morally good actions morally Good simply in virtue of the gods favoring them or does God favor them because they are—independently of his favoring them—morally good?[2] Antony replaces “the gods” with “God” indicating that the God of monotheism is her intended target of rhetorical analysis, as Baggett and Walls point out. Yet the dilemma was orinally cast with Greek gods in mind. Bagget and Walls’s take on the dilemma is very detailed and complex, it’s one of the best in recent years. I won’t be going into it with that kind of complexity. The basic upshot of the dilemma is that either God is subject to an independent standard outside himself, and thus he is not God and secular thought might find that standard so we don’t need religion, or morality is just an arbitrary whim on God’s part. Yet the dilemma is based upon the Greek gods not the Christian, and as noted, Antony shifts form the Greek to the God of the Christian tradition with no justification. The Greek gods were continent beings, they had parents they were not eternal they were not the creators. The dilemma really doesn’t apply to the God of the Christian tradition who is eternal and the basis of all that is. That means there’s a closer relationship between the good God than just God’s commands. That connection  closer than divine command theory would have it; it’s not just a matter of “good is what God says it is,” although it is dependent upon God, but not just on his commands.[3]

            The relationship between God and the good is not merely based upon voluntarism, that God demans X therefore is good. Rather, it is that God is the basis of the good. Goodness is God’s character and without God there would be no concept of the good. God depends upon God but not just upon his commands. It’s not merely that there would be no big bully on the block to tell us what is good, but that there would be no good itself because God is the good itself. The good is derived form God’s character and God’s character is love, love is the background of the moral universe (Augustine) and thus goodness is derived form love. That brings up several problems. For example, J.L. Mackie argues that once one affirms the existence of unchangeable moral good then God becomes unnecessary and secular thinkers might find those principles without God.[4] The concept of unchangeable moral good that is detachable form God is an impossibly. It might be that thinkers could come to conclusions that coincide with truths implicit upon God’s character and not know it. That’s hardly the same as saying God is “unnecessary.” If there’s any relation between what’s good and what’s true and if good is based upon God’s character there’s no true ontological separation between those two. In discussions with atheists when I say that morality is based upon love and love is God’s character they usually balk at both aspects of that statement: they figure love is a reaction of chemicals in the brain that just produces little sentimental or romantic feelings, and moral good is derived from behavior not from love. Usually they don’t observe the implicit value that would make a behavior good or bad. There’s more to it than just saying good is based upon God’s character. It’s also a matter of God’s judgment. God’s power, knowledge and goodness underwrite his moral authority.[5] God not only creates all that is, including planning its purpose, but also knows the truth and is the only mind that can figure the complexities of all existing relationships between moral concepts and human behavior, and the only truly objective judge who knows the subjects of moral behavior better than they know themselves, and in addition to all that has the forthrightness and loving concern to explicate moral judgments fairly. When I say “love” is behind the good I don’t mean romantic love or sentimentality but the Greek term agape.  The idea that love is the basis of he good may be a problem for some Christians because there is a concept in the Christian tradition that love and moral goodness are two counterpoising forces that have to keep each other in balance. I suggest that is nonsense if we are talking about Gods’ love, the love that is the basis of God’s character. “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8).

What is the good?

            Agape is used of God’s love through the New Testament. It is translated as “charity” at times.[6] The word is linked with good will and benevolence. The King James translation renders it “charity” (1 Corinthians 13:1). There’s more to it than that. It’s also linked to “preference” to prefer the other. The word is used for the love of God for man and man for God, the love humans for each other, and the love of God for Christ.[7] Agape is the basis of the good. What is good evaluated as what is agapic (loving). Other moral precepts and axioms such as justice, fairness and reciprocity would all be meaningful only in relation to agape. In fact one major theological ethicist came to that conclusion back in the 1960s, that was Joseph Fletcher. A lot of Christians were outraged by his view of “situation ethics,” and his book by the same title.[8] It was controversial and it drew lots of fire including the charge of “new morality.” Nevertheless he was a top notch ethicist. Fletcher argues that love and justice are the same. Justice is the distributive aspect of love.[9] He calls upon Augustine and argues that love must be prudent. He argues that this view forces us to pull back from the notion that love is sentimental and “mushy” and non intellectual. This is the intellectual side of love; today we call it “tough love.” Literally the argument is how do we manae to supply the beneficiaries of love when there are so many? The answer is by turning the problem into a question of justice. We make sure that justice is done at the same time making sure that love is distributed and doing it in such a way that we exclude one for he sake of the other.[10] Thus we can see how the other aspects of moral axioms indeed stem form love. Love is the background of the moral universe.

            Christian ethics certainly revolve around love. The value system that we use to inform that choice is the one through which Augustine re-valued the values of the Roman Empire. That value system plays out upon the eternal scale of values. We love the eternal we use the temporal. Human beings are eternal, created in the image of God, thus each human being is an end in himself/herself. Temporal things are means to ends. Thus temporal things are to be used and put aside but human beings matter. If science was the basis of ethics, nature never tells us that humans are valuable, there would be no basis for valuing humans except the cultural, and that is relative and can be discarded. Ethical naturalists might kid themselves about the alleged “objective basis” for ethics, they sound like persupositionalist Christian apologists trying to explain what that means. Without the arbitrary assumption already built in regarding the value of human worth, without appeal to a transcendent value system such as Christian agape there is no basis that science could ever give us for not using humans and valuing things. One finds scientistic thinkers such as atheists, especially on the popular level, expressing the sentiments that “humans are not so special.” We don’t have souls, there’s no God, we are just bags of chemicals or jumped up apes so why should we think we are special? Steve Paulson is an example from the popular level. Although he has an advanced science degree and works in science, obliquely. He’s a producer for public radio and an author. He expresses the idea that humans are just “cosmopolitan apes.” Again the idea is not to find fault with evolution. We can accept evolution as scientific fact and accept ethics as philosophical fact and accept The Bible as spiritual fact all at the same time and value humanity. Paulson says:

Most assume that humans are fundamentally different form the rest of the animal world…many people believe that but to biologists we are animals. It’s hard to believe that we are fundamentally different because there is no part of the human brain that is not present in the monkey’s brain. Our brains are bigger and we certainly have more powerful computer than any other animal, but the computer is not fundamentally different. So there’s no fundamental divide between humans and Chimpanzees? no…if you were to ask what the big difference is I would probably say it’s language but like all capacities once you break them down you are going to find some of these part sin other species.[11]

He argues that chimps have morality, “they have a sense of fairness.” Is it really a concept of fairness or just behavior would be fair if they really understood it, but perhaps they don’t? He finds that chimps respond to the needs of others, they seem to share food with those who don’t have enough. Is this really ethical thinking or just a instinctive sense of love that might pervade all creatures? He’s talking about cooperation in hunting. That’s not proof that they value each other. It could just be a practical matter that helps them all. It is evidence of outcome oriented thinking that doesn’t necessarily recognize a moral dimension but a practical survival dimension. Isn’t that what Harris and Churchland and Wilson are reducing ethics to?

            More examination of how this thinking plays out at the popular level, even though this is not scientific, we find bloggers expressed some odd sentiments. The blog “Think Atheist” urges that we should be “ridding ourselves of humanities self centrality: The Importance of Inclusively.”[12]

Humanity thought the universe spun around the Earth as if it were the purpose of the universe. Likewise, the sun.

Another way we think we are special is amongst the rest of the life forms on the planet. We like to believe that there are animals... and there are humans. We seem to have a hard time admitting to ourselves that we are animals. But we are. I'd like to take this idea one step further though. We are all LIFE. We are all BIOLOGY. And the separations between us that seem so important, identifiable and distinctive. Are actually not all that different in the end. All life on this planet evolved IS RELATED. FAMILY. By quantifiable amounts. 99% of our DNA is that of a chimpanzees and 50% of our DNA is that of a banana. ALL LIFE is CLOSELY related. We all come from the same place and we're all going in the same direction. We are procreating and spreading the seed of life, adapting to new environments by all means necessary, even if we must evolve.[13]

If we are animals and we are life and we are no better than any other animals or life would it really matter if we don’t get the quinine to the children dying of malaria? After all there’s lots more life where that life comes from and no one is special. Or that we have to allow dying or even killing off some group so the rest will have more to go around? After all a good outcome is all that matters, we are not special so we can be a means to an end. How are they going to decide this in the clash of such values? Neither the nature from which they take their ethical axioms, nor the science they prize so highly tells us to value humanity or to make humans ends in themselves. How will they resolve such conflicts?            

            These ideas can be put into a positive version. Yet if we assume that we are now coasting on Christian memories and the culture has lots of ideas left over from a time when we valued humanity, what’s going to happen in a couple of generations when those ideas are all gone and we are just seen as “some examples of life among other life,” no better than any other animal and not more than a means to an end; the end being an outcome considered “moral” by those who don’t see a difference in marmoset values and human values. Out come is not totally divorced from deontology. Just because a deontologist doesn’t use outcome as the basis for ethical “ought” doesn’t mean we don’t care about having good outcomes. It seems that if there is no ethical deliberation along the lines of basic value system there is no ethical thought. If there is no ethical thought there is no ethical action. Reducing meta ethical theory (the theory of what makes a thing good or not) to behavior is not the answer. Valuing human individuals as ends in themselves and worthy of preserving rights and ends seems like a good place to start thinking about the sorts of outcomes we desire.

---

[1] David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, 32.

[2] Ibid., 32.

[3] Ibid., 84.

[4] Ibid., 85.

[5] Ibid., 123.

[6] Bible Hub website, Thayers Greek Lexicon, Electronic Database. Bible soft, 2002, 2011.  http://biblesuite.com/greek/26.htm  accessed 5/30/13.

[7] Ibid.

[8] James F. Childress, “Introduction,” Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: the New Morality. Louisville Kentucky: Westminster, John Knox Press, originally published 1966. 1.

[9] Ibid., 87. Not only did Fletcher receive a lot of criticism, “situation ethics” was the title of the book and the name of the ethical theory, the subtitle was “the new morality.” Both became dirty words, so the actual title of the book was like a charge leveled against him. I am not supporting situation ethics but I do support Fletcher’s reading of love and justice.

[10] Ibid.,  88.

[11] Steve Paulson, The Cosmopolitan Ape: primatology, empathy, morality, community, culture.” Website: http://nautil.us/issue/1/what-makes-you-so-special/the-cosmopolitan-ape  accessed 6/3/13.

[12] Dragontorn, Think Atheist, “Ridding ourselves of Humanities Self Centrality: the Importance of Inclusively.” Blog: http://www.thinkatheist.com/profiles/blogs/ridding-ourselves-of-humanity-s-self-centrality-the-importance-of  accessed 6/3/13.

[13] Ibid.