"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness."
-The Dalai Lama
“We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.”
-Kalu Rinpoche
"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me...)
-God (aka: Yahweh)
***
Since I don't really believe in the supernatural, I see a 'spiritual' person as a person that is very non-egotistical, is very empathetic and loving, is almost impossible to anger, is completely selfless, and lives in the moment rather than in the past or the future, thereby being ready to accept whatever life has to offer and to enjoy it all to its fullest, even the sad parts. A person who has genuinely attained an inner serenity.
Such a person almost invariably causes joy in those around them.
Given that definition, you can see why I so strongly differentiate 'spiritual' from 'religious.'
My readers may note that my idea of what constitutes a spiritual person is a very hard thing to attain, but is attainable, since such people have existed and do exist. Some Buddhist monks get there. Also some Christians and indeed some few people of every disparate faith, or even of no faith or belief at all, do seem to occassionally make it to that point.
Basically, the introspective ones get there, sometimes.
One may also note that my definition of a spiritual man is the very diametric opposite of the Old Testament God Yahweh. He's a self-centered egomaniacal small-minded wrathful self-righteous vindictive jealous asshole.
And that's supposed to be great somehow? Something to love? Something to emulate?
More like a cautionary tale. “Now Johnnie, don’t kill ants with that magnifying glass! You wouldn’t want to end up like GOD, now would you?”
(Little Johnnie pisses pants and promises to be a good boy, mommy)
I think it is a point worthy of pondering that a mere man, as noted above, can, albeit rarely, get to a much more spiritually evolved point than can the Christian God and most of His followers put together. Don’t you?
Of course, this is because Christianity is not a spiritual path. It is more like an immature misbegotten attempt at one at best. Something a child would think up in response to being told about the nebulous concept of spirituality from an adult… “I am too spiritual! I am! I am!”
(In a Trelayne voice, of course)
(Time to come in now, Yahweh…)
***
(The reader should also note that I am not even close to my own definition of what constitutes a spiritual man, nor do I claim to be)
***
For my readers like Botts (where is he, anyhow?) and all other more spiritual, less dogmatic (nicer/saner) Christians, I would add that most (but not all) of the portrayals of Jesus Christ in the Bible coincide with my definition of a spiritual person.
So there's that.
I certainly don't see that as somehow special to Him, though. As noted above, a mere human can most certainly attain it, too. It’s not easy, I’m told, but it’s definitely possible.
But not Yahweh. Not the Old Testament God of the Hebrews. No way. Lost cause, that one. He's way too immature. Way too wild. Still at the “Id” phase. He needs a SPANKING more than any kid I ever knew, and I’m even against corporal punishment. What a little snot He turned out to be!
I guess it’s only natural that an all-powerful orphan with no one ever around to discipline Him ever would turn out to be the Ultimate Immoral Spoiled Brat with no respect nor love for anyone but Himself.
Why, He even went and had a Son out of wedlock like that and all. So on top of everything else he’s kinda ‘white-trashy’ too.
And poor Joseph. Being cuckolded by your own deity has to suck. Who do you beat up?
***
Too bad He didn’t have a mommy and a daddy to raise Him up right. Take Him down a notch when He got too full of Himself.
Maybe if He had parents, decent loving parents, He’d be a little more like "Our Lord" and a little less like “Our Lord of the Flies..."
Sad, really. He had such potential. What a waste.
Eric asked,
ReplyDelete"...If the sort of god Christians believe in exists, then conscious, free, rational, moral beings who seek the transcendent are precisely what we would expect to find, for the thesis is that god created us in his image to seek and know him. How can the atheist account for this?"
Like this:
"If the sort of god Christians believe in exists..."
is conditional on whether or not He (it?) ACTUALLY exists, and there is still no PROOF, just a book with stories in it.
"...then conscious, free, rational, moral beings who seek the transcendent are precisely what we would expect to find..."
DO we expect to find these things because we're Christians, or are we Christians because we expect to find these things? Begging the question! It's like asking, "Did the creatures living near thermal vents in the deep ocean require the specific conditions found there a priori, or did they gradually evolve into deeper and deeper environments and eventually occupy open ecological niches because there were no competitors?"
One option is illogical, and the other isn't. See if you can guess which one is which.
Harry said,
ReplyDelete"Sorry about the 'mfers,' it was a sign of affection."
WE'll let you slide this time, but if it happens again, you owe us each twenty push ups.
Eric likely thought that C.S.Lewis made all-kinds-of-sense.
ReplyDeleteDeacon Duncan on EvangelicalRealism is dissecting Mere Christianity, Chapter 5 now, and only a Christian couldn't see that he is dyed-in-the-wool-Jesus-lover and is backing his religion into his so-called reasonable case for God.
Lewis starts with, "Yarr, did you ever get the feeling..?"
ReplyDelete"Well that's Moral Law! It's so much the same as natural laws like gravitation, yet so much different that it has to be from another realm"
"Ergo, Moral Law giver(in other realm)."
"Ergo God!"
Sheesh!
Bet you can see my 'sticking point' right off Ed.
ReplyDeleteLewis conjures a Moral Law from our feelings, declares it a natural law, then declares it 'different enough', i.e. not-enforced-naturally(like ALL natural laws) to force us to believe in a supernatural realm!
Way to sneak in the 'realm' that God supposedly lives in, without invoking God!
Just that this 'law' is SOOOO much the same as gravitation and such that it's 'written in stone', BUT, since we can defy this law, even though it's as ABSOLUTE as gravity, it MUST BE from another realm, you see!
Sneaky or what?
Christians no doubt lap this up. They're so funny.
Do any of you guys here listen to Marilyn Manson's music?
ReplyDeleteJust curious.
He had a very interesting story to tell on Biography Channel last night.
Now that would have made for a really good Halloween blog...
What are you, listening to Marylin Manson, some kind of Satanist???
ReplyDeleteI always knew the Tea Partiers were all witches and such!
1. Conscious. If we accept evolution, then consciousness is inevitable
ReplyDelete-------
A common fallacy amongst those who mistakenly take the Victorian view of evolution. Evolution is not goal directed and consciousness is not inevitable.
----------
1 Believers are indoctrinated to believe their moral superiority.
2 Nonbelievers are necessarily immoral
3 Immoral beings are a threat to the truth of the righteous
4 society must be protected from such threats
5 Violence against nonbelievers may be necessary to protect the righteous
All very logical therefore it must be true that belief can spawn violence.
And of course, Pliny, this is true and proven historically. The religionists accuse each other of it and simply table-turn it to suit non-believers, no doubt very smugly.
ReplyDeleteJust as smugly as Christians can poo-poo any other beliefs when they're not poo-pooing non-belief.
Tommy boy Aquinas' theology/philosophy:-
"A thing is called a being because of "esse". God and creature are not called beings univocally, nor wholly equivocally, but analogically, by an analogy both of attribution and of proportionality."
Has a bit of Godly Authority to it, no?
Very reasonable for a believer to believe that the 'being' of God is not the same as the 'being' of anything else we know of as 'being', but in fact mere analogy.
In other words, a lie.
Sorry GHE not trying to call you a stodgy old Victorian there ;), but the fallacy of evolution being goal directed was one of the reasons that many people had less of a problem with the theory originally in that era. It's easy to fall into that trap. But it is a point that needs to be repeated constantly - evolution has no plan. Reproductive success or descent with modification is a retrospective process not a prospective one.
ReplyDeleteThat consciousness as we some what egocentrically define it developed is a given but it could just as easily have not occurred in any number of successful evolutionary models since evolution need not be progressive as we define it now..
Pliny; is human consciousness really that much different from the consciousness of any other living creature?
ReplyDeleteI ask, because it seems even many atheists ascribe a specialness to the human mind that goes beyond evolution.
And by "different" I mean that it always seemed to me the difference between a cat's conscious and a human's is like the difference between a horse drawn carriage and a Ferrari. They really are the same thing, just one is more...
Pliny,
ReplyDeleteSo you think teleology and evolution are mutually exclusive?
This idea (Thomist?) that absence of some quality that we have come to accept as "standard" in humans (i.e the results of our evolutionary history) is "evil" requires that we accept the idea that we are "created" in God's image to serve as a reference point. Since, at least until now, most of us have not even accepted the existance of any Deity, let alone the Abrahamic one, this whole discussion must rely on the arguments (apologies) of Aquinas, who said (I paraphrase) that if one could find at least a small kernel of faith (belief), one could argue logically for all of Christian doctrine. Even Aquinas recognized that, absent at least some degree of belief, not supported by fact, all the rest would likewise be unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteWell put Harvey.
ReplyDelete"..absent at least some degree of belief, not supported by fact, all the rest would likewise be unbelievable."
ReplyDeleteAnd how easy is it to equivocate on the kind of necessity needed for there to BE a supreme being responsible for the creation of everything(minus HIMSELF, of course) and the necessity needed for the belief in such a 'being'?
Seems to me that this is related to the beginning of rudimentary consciousness of self(you versus not you) being equivocated with the religious consciousness(us versus not us.)
Eric proposes that his God belief is the natural position and defies us to show that it is not.
At the same time his philosphers are willing to admit that God's being is purely analogical and that we need this faith, this hope, in the sense of 'clutching at straws' to maintain the notion that we 'surely will not perish', but remain, somehow, in a state of permanent, yet analogical 'life' processless process.
"Think of infinity! You can't can you! Therefore GOD!"
But we HAVE the admission of the necessity of the kernel of this faith, followed by the practical DENIAL of the need for this same kernel of faith by the deep thinkers FOR religion, duality and the like, don't we???
Well, don't we?
Ryan - no I don't think that human consciousness is all that unique in the animal kingdom. It may be a matter of degrees not much else. But even animal consciousness is not a given from an evolutionary standpoint. The most successful lifeforms on earth aren't particularly brainy.
ReplyDeleteHarry, I don't know if they are mutually exclusive, but evolution is not a reasoned force seeking any ultimate creation. The tools at the disposal of evolution are fairly fixed but there really can't be an end point to it since conditions and environments are constantly changing in any case and the definition of ultimate is a moving target anyway.
I suspect that our ultimate fate is just as likely to be one of Vonnegut's seal-like primates as it is to be some superhuman.
Ah to heck with it - yes Harry, I think ultimate end points have nothing to do with evolution. It's a mindless process that at this point in history 'seems' to have resulted in our ascendancy. But it only seems that way which unfortunately generates a lot of moldy old Aquinas quotes. As conditions change we will just as likely be consigned to the dustbin of history like many other briefly successful species.
ReplyDeleteTeleology reflects purpose - which reflects design. Evolution involves neither.
I think it's just so easy to slip in a little bit of anthropomorphism in there with any subject, especially with religionists running interference(as it were) all the time!
ReplyDeleteEvolution having an ultimate 'purpose'? Surely not.
Surely evolution is based on the possibilities in conjunction with the conditions.
Conscious thinking minds(as if there might be unconscious thinking minds, what do I know?), are, we have been told from birth by the religionist, at the root of all things.
But I think that Ed was clear on his point that, "How could consciousness develop in any other way? The 'loonie-tunes' would be preferentially culled from the herd."
But I think that a little bit of social conditioning is ALL that is needed to maintain the idea of a Supreme Being, and evolution-wise, it might be very helpful to preferentially breed true-believers-in-society.
"The family that humps together, um, interbreeds."?? Or something.
Perhaps the thing that is most wrong with the Catholic Church is it's military style hierarchy, where the idea of out-breeding the unbeliever has been switched from a means to an end.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens when the average education level falls to the point where people cannot make 'educated decisions' about anything and on the large scale are simply over-running the planet?
Oh, wait, welcome to the real World!
Oops.
Picture in you mind:-
ReplyDeleteScientists discover the gene which makes someone prone to being religious, to having religious solutions to the apparent 'ails of the World'.
What do you suppose the odds are that religionist's ears would perk up at this?
How about some plans to use this information to their benefit?
How about an outright breeding program? Beautiful, dumbass girls who just LOVE JEBUZZ??
Perhaps the thing that is most wrong with the Catholic Church is it's military style hierarchy,
ReplyDelete----------------------------
The Roman Catholic Church started out as a union of an overlay of Christianity on top of the Roman Empire. The hierarchy and even the Saints are off shoots of Greco-Roman mythology.
The Younger and the Elder used to argue about this all the time ;)
"Teleology reflects purpose - which reflects design. Evolution involves neither."
ReplyDeleteI agree, if you qualify 'evolution' with 'the scientific theory of' evolution. Note, this is not to say that there *is* no purpose or design in evolution, but that *whether* there is is not a scientific question, since scientific views of evolution necessarily ignore final causes (since modern science as a whole is not interested in final causation, which is fine with me, *as long as we're clear that it's a purely methodological decision motivated by the inability of scientific methods to detect final causation*).
"This idea (Thomist?) that absence of some quality that we have come to accept as "standard" in humans (i.e the results of our evolutionary history) is "evil" requires that we accept the idea that we are "created" in God's image to serve as a reference point."
False. All it requires is a natural law conception of morality, which is compatible with atheism. Also, it has nothing to do with what we humans have come to accept, but with real essences. That is, it requires realism about universals.
"Even Aquinas recognized that, absent at least some degree of belief, not supported by fact, all the rest would likewise be unbelievable."
This is true of *every* worldview. You cannot have an infinite regress of factual support; all of us must take some first principles as properly basic.
"All very logical therefore it must be true that belief can spawn violence."
Well, no one has denied that religious belief can lead to violence. I mean, that's obvious, right? But the Christian can at least point to the example of Christ and say that when some Christians do violence to others, they're acting contrary to the beliefs they purport to hold. The Christian theist can say, "You're not acting consistently with your beliefs!" The atheist/agnostic can say no such thing when atheists do violence. As we've seen in previous discussions of morality, at best the atheist/agnostic who is, like most of you, not a moral realist can at best say, "Well, I personally don't support genocide, but I can't say that you're immoral in any objective sense for advocating it."
(If I may go back to that previous discussion on morality for a moment, I'd like to point out a comment by Randal Rauser that sums up the position I was defending nicely:
"“The Hutu men who sodomized young Tutsi girls with sticks and carved out their genitals with butcher knives engaged in acts which are necessarily evil irrespective of the opinions of any or all human beings on the matter.”
“Nothing can be red and green all over.”
"The necessary truth of both of these propositions is, I would submit, readily apparent. If somebody insists that the necessary truth of one or more of these isn’t obvious for them, if they retort that they still want a “proof”, well then there’s not much more I can do. Whether it be the skeptic who doubts the existence of the external world, other minds, logic or morality, we may not be able to persuade them, but that hardly means we should take their doubts seriously.")
"is conditional on whether or not He (it?) ACTUALLY exists"
No kidding; that's the point of comparing competing explanations. The question isn't, "which one has been proven?" but "which one best fits the data?" Can you see the difference?
"DO we expect to find these things because we're Christians, or are we Christians because we expect to find these things? Begging the question!"
You're confusing deduction with abduction. We're not talking about deducing god's existence from this set of five bits of data, but about what explanation better fits the data. This is extremely important: whenever you're criticizing an argument, *you have to be careful to determine what kind of argument it is*.
"1. Conscious. If we accept evolution, then consciousness is inevitable."
ReplyDeleteAs Pliny has pointed out, this is false.
"2. Rational. Merely a refinement on the inevitable consciousness, which is easily seen as a survival strategy (irrational leads to dying quickly in an unforgiving environment, and therefore is selected against)."
False again. Evolution doesn't select for true beliefs, but for beneficial behavior. There's a world of difference between the two. There's only one way to be right about anything as far as truth goes, but there are a host of ways in which a false belief could lead to exactly the same beneficial behavior.
"3. Free. This one is debatable, at best. Most of our actions are constrained by forces beyond our immediate control. If one digs deep enough, there are almost always controlling factors."
Which makes everything you claim self refuting, and therefore necessarily false.
"4. Moral. Consequence of living in social groups. Also inevitable given our preference for living in closely interacting groups. If we must live in close quarters, rules for getting along with others will always arise, without need for appeal to supernatural agents."
Successful error theories must save the phenomena, and this sort of explanation is patently unsuccessful on that count. We don't experience moral prescriptions as rules for getting along with others, but as imperatives that place categorical demands on our thoughts and behavior. So this 'explanation' (well, it wasn't actually an explanation, but whatever) fails.
I won't even address your fifth response.
Is the President suffering from something like battered wife syndrome?
ReplyDeleteIs there someone close to him telling him that the Reps. are just saying 'we will not compromise' but they really will, if only he, Obama, would just, you know, agree with them, that's all.
Maybe he's playing 'chess' with checker players, sure.
But they're not going to recognise that. They're thinkin', 'this jerk is playing chess in a checker game'.
And they're right.
I pointed out that evolution is not goal directed Eric but that is hardly an endorsement of the existence of final aims. The fact that we exist in the here and now is the only reason we appear as the pinnacle of evolution. run the clock a few more million years and something else will hold that position.
ReplyDeleteThere is no evidence of evolution outside of the theory itself. Go to Mors Dei and you'll begin to see how un-designed and imperfect we really are.
ReplyDeletePliny, um, I agreed with you, yet you're speaking as if I disagreed. You were absolutely right when you said, in response to Ed, that teleology has no place in evolution. As long as we're limiting ourselves to the scientific theory of evolution, I agree, since teleology has no place in science as such. My only point was that some people conclude from the fact that evolution does not address teleology that therefore evolution demonstrates a lack of teleology in evolutionary processes. This is obviously a non sequitur, and that was my point. Science doesn't show that there are no final causes; rather, it simply lacks the tools to consider final causes in the first place. So, to conclude that science demonstrates that there are no final causes is as sensible as concluding that passing your state's bar exam demonstrates that you do not have colon cancer.
ReplyDelete"Go to Mors Dei and you'll begin to see how un-designed and imperfect we really are."
This is a false alternative: it's not, either we're undesigned, or we're perfectly designed. Indeed, teleology need not imply a specific design at all. I am personally unpersuaded by biological design arguments (though I think that design arguments at the level of the universe are quite strong), but it doesn't follow that I think that evolution is completely unguided.
Pliny said,
ReplyDelete(quoting me) "1. Conscious. If we accept evolution, then consciousness is inevitable..."
(replied) "A common fallacy amongst those who mistakenly take the Victorian view of evolution. Evolution is not goal directed and consciousness is not inevitable."
I never implied that evolution was goal oriented. But I still think that, given survival of the fittest, that sooner or later a biological organism would stumble upon the capacity to reason and enhanced intelligence as a survival strategy.
Why wouldn't consciousness be inevitable?
I look at evolutionary adaptation as a kind of biological arms race.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is why I said consciousness is inevitable: sooner or later, it's a strategy that would be tried.
Well, even "tried" is the wrong word, since there isn't any "direction" to evolution.
ReplyDeleteBut i think y'all know what I mean.
Taking the 'kernel of belief' as a 'given', when it' impossible to believe that believers simply have a 'kernel' of belief, then arguing that one can come to belief through pure reason alone, is a contradiction.
ReplyDeleteLet me stress that small point one more time. It is a contradiction.
Some great minds have held out the 'kernel of belief' point briefly, only to hide it, only to pretend that it was never held out in the first place.
But we know it was, and still is, being held out briefly, then hidden.
"""3. Free. This one is debatable, at best. Most of our actions are constrained by forces beyond our immediate control. If one digs deep enough, there are almost always controlling factors."
Which makes everything you claim self refuting, and therefore necessarily false.""
This one here is particularly feeble. Since it is an emotional argument, for 'freedom' in the first place.
Define freedom. Is it simply the feeling that we are free? One Christian on D'Souza blog actually thought that we were free to murder since some people go ahead and murder other people.
But so what? So long as you're fighting 'Shadow Warrior Eric', you're not actually fighting 'him' per se. No, you're fighting Thomists, or Plantinga or whoever. Just not Eric.
"I look at evolutionary adaptation as a kind of biological arms race.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is why I said consciousness is inevitable: sooner or later, it's a strategy that would be tried."
Ed, that doesn't follow, for it's a strategy that, like all other evolutionary strategies, could only be tried if certain conditions obtained, and those conditions aren't inevitable.
But more importantly, consider the implications of what you're saying: Think about any way out there evolutionary "strategy" that the laws of physics render possible, and it follows, given you're reasoning, that in the future it *will* be tried, and inevitably so. Do you really buy that?
I just had a flash of a political cartoon of ye olde days.
ReplyDeletePicture, Boehner and Mr.Turtle are holding Obama down and azz banging him with a baseball bat.
Obama is looking over his shoulder saying to them, "I think there's room for compromise here!"
Oh, and evolution doesn't select "for" certain traits. As I implied, and Ian said out loud, "survival" of the fittest is a culling process of those adaptations that are unfit. Hence the emphasis on survival, as opposed to...
ReplyDeleteascendency?
"Why wouldn't consciousness be inevitable?"
ReplyDeleteYou know what Ed? I think good ole' Chuck Darwin actually agreed with you. But for him the inevitability would only have started with social animals.
Though I'm not quite sure what you mean by consciousness.
Ah, language. I just assumed we was talking about the same "consciousness."
ReplyDeleteAn interesting thread that helps illustrate the fundamental difference between debate and truth seeking.
ReplyDeleteEric, we absolutely do not agree about evolution and teleology. I don't agree that evolutionary theory has nothing to say of teleology. Evolution works fine without it and there is no evidence - none - that life is being driven to perfection or toward some final goal. That's an assumption based upon cognitive biases inherent in our desire (absent any evidence) that we be unique in some way. All evolutionary goals are by definition relative. The criteria for success change as conditions dictate. We can avoid the old saw about not being able to prove a negative. Here it is possible to disprove the positive by evaluating the truth of the positive statement that there is evidence of teleology in evolution. Since that can be shown to be erroneous by all of the mechanisms that drive evolution we can discount it.
Also you seem to have cherry picked my comments on the inevitability of consciousness (another variant of teleology). Evolution does not experiment at any level.
Mutations occur spontaneously- local conditions, random chance, sexual selection and physiology exact a toll and the next generation reflects a differing set or percentage of genes or alleles. Evolution is the aftermath of the process not the driver. It is possible to imagine conditions that would never favor consciousness as we define it yet result in splendidly adapted organisms (tens of millions of Mesozoic years spring to mind).
But that in no way supports how you seem to be taking my comment. Just because it is not inevitable that consciousness arose, neither is it impossible via evolution. Just because there is no plan does not mean that it didn't occur that way (it no doubt did in fact).
Pliny "Just because it is not inevitable that consciousness arose, neither is it impossible via evolution."
ReplyDeleteMy feeling is that he's taking the fact that consciousness was not inevitable as evidence that consciousness can only come from a divine source.
Obviously that's a huge leap, as you point out. It's not impossible, as we see from the history of life on earth.
He'll deny it, but he's very much a god of the gaps man. He just defines a gap as a "possiblity".
Consciouness was not inevitable, hence there's the possibility it can only come from a divine source.
Same thing as god of the gaps if you ask me.
And obviously, by "He" I'm refering to Eric, not Pliny
ReplyDeleteI think that Eric is going to go with 'potential', not 'possibility.
ReplyDeleteLot of potential in the word 'potential.
I'm still scratching my head about the word 'intentionality'.
Seems because we think 'about' something.. drone, drone, drone.. therefore our thoughts cannot be an electro-magnetic process.
But our brain DOES work like that, so what?
Won't be the first time that things don't work the way pure reason might suggest.
The whole intentionality thing is just another word game that at its heart really doesn't tell us anything. Philosophy is overflowing with these kinds of words and thought constructs that usually don't reflect the real world all that much. It doesn't matter how logical or eloquent these kinds of arguments are, if you can't point to a known natural process and use them to explain it then it's all just words anyway.
ReplyDeleteThere is no design in any of it - just wonderful fate that we did in fact evolve. As to the rest, I'll paraphrase someone far more practical and contemporary than Aquinas - There is no purpose but what we make - John Connor...
Ed, "I look at evolutionary adaptation as a kind of biological arms race."
ReplyDeleteA population of interbreeding lifeforms being selected by their predator/prey plus meteorological relationship which emphasizes the genes most suitable for said population's environment.
Eric, "Ed, that doesn't follow... those conditions aren't inevitable."
Some 'condition' is inevitable. I think Ed is assuming that over time, conditions WILL change.
Is Eric saying that Ed has no right to assume that conditions change???
I think that Ed is taking the fairly reasonable and 'standard' view that given organic life and a changing environment(eventually the organic life will itself change it's own environment), life will become more complex and develop senses and this will lead to consciousness.
Or perhaps SETI is searching for signals being sent to us by some sludge at the bottom of pond, on some alien world?
I have been out of the loop. I had things to see and people to do. I am trying to catch up as fast as possible.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me,
Eric's insistance that AI cannot ever be concious HAS to be his position. If we are to make a concious "machine" wat becomes of the soul? How can we make someting that possess intelligence equal or greater to humans AND conciousness, yet not give it a soul?
According to God's laws, we can't. That's His providence alone!
Also,
ReplyDeleteWe must consider that Soviet communism was not atheist at all.
No, Yahweh, Zeus, and Thor were simply replaced with religion of state. Just because it's not your brand of religion doesn't mean it's not religion.
"If the sort of god Christians believe in exists, then conscious, free, rational, moral beings who seek the transcendent are precisely what we would expect to find, for the thesis is that god created us in his image to seek and know him. How can the atheist account for this? Well, we seek the transcendent, and seek it in almost every culture at every time, but not because the transcendent is real, but because of psychological reason x,y and z. Thus, the transcendent it explained away. We seem to apprehend moral truths, but these are evolutionary byproducts (this is never explained), so morality is explained away. We think we're free, but in fact our beliefs, thoughts and acts are determined by physics and chemistry, so freedom is explained away. We think we're rational, but all our thoughts are determined not by the laws of logic, but by natural laws, so rationality is explained away. And we think we're conscious, but consciousness is physical process we've simply failed to describe to ourselves properly, so we're left with a false folk psychology that must ultimately be reduced to material processes, so consciousness is explained away. In short, the Christian theist is at home in the universe as he experiences it, while the atheist must explain away all of the most fundamental aspects the "what it is-ness" of being a human being." Eric
ReplyDelete__________________________________
Here, Sir, you did try to suggest that it is not good to seek answers and to better understand our nature.
I suppose it better to hide behind "Goddidit!" ?
Yeah Mac, his response to that was less than satisfying.
ReplyDeleteHow are things?
Good Ryan :-)
ReplyDeleteHow are your things?
Some 'condition' is inevitable. I think Ed is assuming that over time, conditions WILL change.
ReplyDeleteIs Eric saying that Ed has no right to assume that conditions change???
Change and life are synonymous.
Gotta love it how Eric gets rhetorical and paints US as 'explaining everything away', but of course his 'side' isn't.
ReplyDeleteUnexplainable phenomena(to people of old times), 'explained away' in terms of gods, can NOW easily be explained as a solution involving our inherent sociality.
Every phenomenon was likely explained in terms of our sociality, because we grow up surrounded by each other, BECAUSE we are inherently social.
The clouds are 'refusing' to give up their rain, the lions are MAD at us, the hippos are guarding the river from us, Mr. Crocodile is a trickster etc. etc.
Phenomena explained as analogous to human interaction is easily accomodated by us and easily converted to stuff like, "'God exists' is analogous to 'we exist'.", that is the notion that existence itself can be an analogue.
Not if you're stripping 'existence' of meaning it doesn't.
Maybe inevitable wasn't the "rightest" word for it.
ReplyDeleteBetter if we substitute in "likely"?
@ Ian:
Yes.
Or "probable".
ReplyDeleteHonestly Ed, I don't think it's fair of Eric to argue his case by pretending that we're in his philosophy class and need to speak very carefully if we don't want to be pounced on, by him, for it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was just trying to show that some of the stuff he says, however authoritarian he comes across, is just a matter of opinion anyways.
Saying, "What you say doesn't follow..", is calling you inconsistent or irrational, but surely what come after this has to show that you're not BEING consistent or rational in some way, and not just in his opinion of what you are saying.
I agree.
ReplyDeleteEric knows that I often speak less than precisely according to the Fillossuffer's Dictionary.
I concede the imprecision of "inevitable"; however...
Actually, I think that consciousness IS inevitable, given enough time.
ReplyDeleteFrom simple microscopic animalcules and planimals and stuff, through different forms evolving eyes, ears and different senses with a brain to co-ordinate reactions, there's no way that consciousness isn't 'forming' and species as old as crocs show an awareness of their surroundings and affinity/enmity towards their own kind.
If that is not consciousness, I don't know what is.
Or did you want to imagine equivalent of human intelligence with hands with fingers and opposible thumbs and everything???
Anyways, I think that Eric is showing his prejudice here.
ReplyDeleteApparently all atheists(atheism itself) ought to be blamed for the actions of a few atheists.
I'm sure that when he admits that bad things have happened on account of religion, he excuses modern practitioners of HIS religion.
Bandwagon effect
ReplyDeleteBase rate fallacy
Bias blind spot
Choice-supportive bias !
Confirmation bias !!!!!
Congruence bias
Contrast effect
Déformation professionnelle !
Distinction bias
Focusing effect
Illusion of control
Information bias !
Interloper effect
Irrational escalation
Mere exposure effect
Need for Closure !
Negativity bias !
Neglect of probability !
Normalcy bias
Not Invented Here
Omission bias
Outcome bias !
Planning fallacy
Pseudocertainty effect !
Reactance !
Selective perception
Semmelweis reflex !
Status quo bias
Von Restorff effect !
Wishful thinking
Zero-risk bias !
Ambiguity effect !
Anchoring effect!
Attentional bias
Authority bias
Availability heuristic !!!!
Availability cascade !
Belief bias
Clustering illusion !
Capability bias
Conjunction fallacy !
Gambler's fallacy
Law of large numbers.
Hawthorne effect !
Hindsight bias !!
llusory correlation !!
Last illusion
Neglect of prior base rates effect
Optimism bias
Ostrich effect !
Overconfidence effect
Pareidolia
Primacy effect
Recency effect
regression toward the mean
Selection bias !!!
Stereotyping
Subadditivity effect
Subjective validation
Survivorship bias
Telescoping effect
Texas sharpshooter fallacy
Dunning–Kruger effect
Forer effect
Halo effect
Herd instinct
Illusion of asymmetric insight
Illusion of transparency
Ingroup bias !
Notational bias
Projection bias !
Self-serving bias
Self-fulfilling prophecy
System justification
Trait ascription bias
Consistency bias
Cryptomnesia
Egocentric bias
False memory
Hindsight bias
This is a sampling of reasons (or error theories) used to 'explain away' the merits of putting too much emphasis on one's strong feelings. In short - it can seem really logical and convincing and still be dead wrong.
"This is a sampling of reasons (or error theories) used to 'explain away' the merits of putting too much emphasis on one's strong feelings."
ReplyDeleteThose aren't error theories, but cognitive biases. To the extent that cognitive biases can only be defined with respect to an account of how things actually are, they presuppose an error theory rather than constitute an error theory. That is, if you want to say, "Your belief that such and such is the case can be explained by this set of cognitive biases," then you must *already have determined* that the belief is false. Once you make that determination, you can then go on to explain why such and such false belief seems true (an error theory), and then account for my acceptance of that false belief with an appeal to cognitive biases.
"In short - it can seem really logical and convincing and still be dead wrong."
Of course. But you can't just say, concerning an argument the conclusion of which you don't happen to like, "Well, there are all these possible cognitive biases at play when we reason, so an argument can seem logical and convincing and still be dead wrong." Rather, you still have to *demonstrate* what's wrong with the argument.
Now I know I said I wasn't going to respond to Floyd anymore, but I just have to bring this up to show *why* I'm not responding to him:
"Apparently all atheists(atheism itself) ought to be blamed for the actions of a few atheists."
As everyone other than Floyd undoubtedly knows, I said no such thing. All I said was that it's *not* true that there's no logical route from atheism to violence motivated by atheism, and that there some of the violent acts perpetrated by the Soviet communists against Orthodox Christians was motivated by the atheism that was part and parcel of their Marxist beliefs.
"Is Eric saying that Ed has no right to assume that conditions change???"
Of course not. I was saying that he had no right to assume that the conditions that are necessary and sufficient for consciousness to arise were *inevitable*.
"Here, Sir, you did try to suggest that it is not good to seek answers and to better understand our nature."
Please, I did no such thing. All I said was that some supposed answers aren't answers at all. If I ask you who robbed my home, you can't say that "It wasn't robbed at all" is an answer to my question *unless* you meet the very heavy burden of explaining why I thought it was robbed in the first place. *That's* where most of the so-called explanations of the phenomena I was discussing fall embarrassingly short.
"We must consider that Soviet communism was not atheist at all.
No, Yahweh, Zeus, and Thor were simply replaced with religion of state."
This is an example of the "if you make any two things abstract enough, you can make them sound like the same sort of thing" principle. Always be on the lookout for this move, for its plausibility rests on the blurring of necessary distinctions. So, here we have an openly atheistic state regime being described as religious. This is like saying that when a plane flies across the nation it does the same think I do when I jump, for in each case we have one thing that's on the ground that leave the ground and land in a different location.
Those aren't error theories, but cognitive biases. To the extent that cognitive biases can only be defined with respect to an account of how things actually are, they presuppose an error theory rather than constitute an error theory.
ReplyDelete-------
Thanks for the semantic lesson but it doesn't change the facts. You constantly state with authority that no error theory exists to refute your claim that perceptions, sense of the world, and depth of feeling are as important as objective assessments to our ability to define reality. These and other cognitive biases do contribute to powerful error theory that proves quite the opposite.
"You constantly state with authority"
ReplyDeleteNo, I almost always say something like, "No error theory I've encountered is successful, plausible, etc." That's not "claiming with authority"; it's a claim about my evaluation of the error theories I've been exposed to. You're free to disagree and defend some particular error theory if you like. I think you all know me well enough to conclude that I won't simply say, "I said it doesn't work and that's that!" but that I'll instead engage the argument the theory makes.
"that no error theory exists to refute your claim that perceptions, sense of the world, and depth of feeling are as important as objective assessments to our ability to define reality."
You lost me here. I've never set up an opposition between "perceptions, sense of the world and depth of feeling" on the one hand and "objective assessments of our ability to define reality" on the other. In fact, my claim is that the attempts to explain away phenomenon without saving them fail precisely because they *repudiate* objective assessments of reality. I'm much more certain that my mental experience is qualia rich, that my actions are free, and that I apprehend moral imperatives than I am that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, or that any particular scientific theory accurately describes reality.
"Please, I did no such thing. All I said was that some supposed answers aren't answers at all. If I ask you who robbed my home, you can't say that "It wasn't robbed at all" is an answer to my question *unless* you meet the very heavy burden of explaining why I thought it was robbed in the first place. *That's* where most of the so-called explanations of the phenomena I was discussing fall embarrassingly short."
ReplyDeleteYou were being disingenuine at best. You seem to have a command of the language, yet you assert that by trying to clarify what consiousness is, science was merely "explaining it away". The suggestion that morality is evolutionary is pooh-pohed to the side with yur "explained away".
Free will, as you assert has not been proven at all. If your deity knows what's goint to happen, free does NOT exist. Yet, you suggest the non-theist "explained it away"
Eric, and explanation is just that. An EXPLANATION!
And, "God did it" is a piss poor explanation as well. You're comfortable with that? Your philosophical education hasn't piqued your interest any more than that?
"Always be on the lookout for this move, for its plausibility rests on the blurring of necessary distinctions. So, here we have an openly atheistic state regime being described as religious. This is like saying that when a plane flies across the nation it does the same think I do when I jump, for in each case we have one thing that's on the ground that leave the ground and land in a different location."
ReplyDeleteUm, the same thing is happening. It's called travel.
Clearly, it's different vehicles. However, the same thing is happening.
"Always be on the lookout for this move, for its plausibility rests on the blurring of necessary distinctions. So, here we have an openly atheistic state regime being described as religious. This is like saying that when a plane flies across the nation it does the same think I do when I jump, for in each case we have one thing that's on the ground that leave the ground and land in a different location."
ReplyDeletePerhaps you had better re freshen you memory on the definition of religious, it is rather broad. Or maybe you think only certain myths are worthy of being called religion or religious.
Jerry,
ReplyDeleteThe line you were trying to figure out can be read:
God my God, you have forsaken me. What we can't read is how it was said. I tend to believe that is a statement of confirmation because He knew where it was going before hand.
Again, many Christian religions interpret Jesus and God as the same. But the Bible to me clearly identifies one as the Father, one as The Son. The Son is perfect and shows us the way to live and teaches us. Both divine.
He's at the Right hand of God. So it says. After Jesus, the Holy Spirit was left for us. Divine as well, and sees what God sees. Therefore can instruct, warn and show. It's up to us to listen and that means listen to any form of communication.
But back to the line. It isn't a question. It's a statement. If it's modern language, I would tend to think that it would come out like:
"God, I know you said this would happen, but I didn't think you'd let it carry out this way."
Botts,
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you. Hope all is well in your world. I appreciate your take on the verse. I remember as a child thinking how strange it was, and it seemed the churches I went to just swept it under the carpet, as they do to so many.
Let's assume that Jesus was most of what is stated in the booklets. I think that he was, of course a very religious man, and would have known that, in the end, he WOULD come to that point where he would question whether God was 'still with him'.
ReplyDeleteThis also goes along with Jesus as an archtype, where even HE is in doubt at the end of HIS life, so we(Christians) ought not to worry about the dying losing the faith that has brought them to this (inevitable) point.
The problem I have with the Jesus story is that it seems to rely on Jesus being really "world savvy", knowing the shenanegins the opposition were about.
Seems to me that one cannot have lived the 'spiritual' 'perfect' life, yet know all the ins and outs of the trickery and deceit behind all the deceit and trickery of men.
Seems that this would either require Jesus to be constantly updated by revelation how his adversary was trying to cheat, or dodge or change perception or just lie etc. OR he'd be a skilled debater knowing these tricks because they are well known to him as he used them HIMSELF!
But I digress. My point was that, I think Jesus, if somehow taken from the cross, and moved back a few years, so that it was clear in that earlier time, what he would be thinking and saying, would have KNOWN, would have thought to himself, "That's exactly the kind of thing one says when they're hanging off a cross!"
But, I think that is an admission that the entire thing is a grand illusion, in the vein of, "If there weren't a god, we'd have to invent him."
What is he gonna save you from if not an agonizing death?
Another grand illusion, I think, is the notion that you are somehow 'free'.
ReplyDeleteYou have concrete contingency plans for what to do in case of minor variations in your itinerary.
Your vehicle breaks down. You're going to aquire another mode of transportation, which will ultimately lead you to your original destination.
What you're NOT going to do is suddenly decide that it's a sign from God, and end up in Tibet talking monks about spirituality!
What you're NOT going to do is suddenly decide that you reject the English language and are now going to speak to us only in Spanish.
This is not as silly an option as it might first appear to be, depending on your heritage and your location, for only half of it. The talking to US part, is different. You know that we're(all of us) not going to be responding to commentary in 'other than English'.
Basically, your social structure is going to limit your so-called freedom.
Seems to me that people who 'snap' and decide to be 'free' are people who have decided to invoke 'Second Amendment remedies' because they are 'being free' to express how "NOT FREE" they feel the establishment has become.
But that's some kind of unfree knee-jerk response to the realisation that we're NOT free, in any real sense.
Ian; I'll grant your argument that the majority of humans for the majority of human history are essentially without free-will. Of course the majority of humans for the majority of human history are/were ignorant and on the verge of starvation.
ReplyDeleteI think affluence to a degree, enables free-will. I know a trust fund baby who basically gave up english and only speaks swahili (of course he moved to Tanzania). So it does happen...
But obviously there are limits like you said. Everything has limits.
ReplyDeleteLike you say yourself, Ryan, one 'trust-fund-baby' doing what he wanted doesn't make us all 'free'.
ReplyDeleteI'm saying that it's mostly, almost 100%, illusion, for any example I might think up.
But in this case, the almost 100% cases DO add together to reach the 100% limit, unlike Eric's 'almost satisfactory' arguments adding up, which they, obviously DON'T.
Maybe it's symantics, but I don't see it as free or unfree, but rather as how many constraints one has.
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't like the term "free-will" because of the implication that there is a magical free-will force floating out in Plato's realm of ideals.
If you have resources, you are less contrained than if you don't. Period.
Sure, any fool could be 'free', if they win the lottery, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteBut I think that they are contrained by their past to be 'themselves'.
Your trust-fund baby, we'll never know what he feels constrained by unless we ask him, I suppose.
Your religious person, busy railing about how silly we are to even discuss the notion that we're not free is busily explaining how we are not free at all. There's that Absolute Moral Law that we need to interpret to ourselves in every single situation, for example.
There is one area that we have much free will. That area is what we think. While I realize we are programmed in our thinking for the most part, with some effort our programs can be greatly modified. In many ways changing one's thoughts can radically change his/her life.
ReplyDeleteFake it 'til you 'make it'?
ReplyDeleteAnd a lot of peeps, while SAYING that they study scripture to find their moral grounds for their actions, and even thoughts, seem to like to avoid areas that just disagree with their actions.
ReplyDeleteThere's a whole section on the idea that we should just go along with authority, but it seems to me that the Christian right is willing to buck authority, especially when authority is not, for the time being, going along with their ideals.
For example, the same folk who were disgusted by us just not going along with the Bush agenda(after all he is our Prez), were demonizing Obama before he was sworn in.(apparently NOT 'after all he is the Prez', in their eyes)
It's so easy to say, "Well, not I.", in these situations.
Just because you could give me an example of 'a Christian' not doing something, doesn't mean that we cannot see that Christians are doing it.
Same thing with being 'free'. Just because I can give an example that Ryan can knock down with one example, doesn't mean that I have committed the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
Seems to me that being 'free' is an illusion because there is no set meaning to the word and we can all simply adjust our definition to make ourselves free by our own definition.
To change the topic, I think that a non-religious case for life and consciousness HAS been made by scientists over the last few Centuries.
ReplyDeleteIt's not for nothing that the church hierarchy was prosecuting heretics and witches 'til, well, recently.
The church goes into areas where people are uneducated and to this day, are willing to invoke witchcraft to gain a strangle-hold on the minds of the people.
Science has shown us that things are NOT so black and white in the World.
There is NOT a solid line between living and non-living.
There is no solid line between conscious and non-conscious.
When science started knocking down these 'walls', religion is left with tradition.
Only 310 years(give or take, I'm not looking it up) since Gio+
rdano Bruno was burnt after a decade of incarceration, simply for saying that the universe was endless.
What a difference 300 years can make.
No crystal spheres? No levels of Heaven?
No problem NOW!
No clear delineation of life/non-life, consciousness/non-consciousness? No problem now!
It's no problem now because they pretend that they are looking OVER that, when they are simply over-looking it.
I think we have to be careful to draw some distinctions when speaking about freedom.
ReplyDeleteTake a man in chains in a prison cell. There is an obvious sense in which he is not free, but this isn't the sense that says anything at all about freedom of the will. Let's call the kind of freedom that's limited by situations like being chained in a prison cell 'liberty.'
Now suppose that the man in the cell is chained in such a way that he cannot reach the bars of the cell with his arms. The fact that he is chained in a cell concerns his liberty, but the limitations on what he can and can't do at any moment are determined by his circumstances. So, if I'm in Montana, my access to the Atlantic Ocean is somewhat limited, at least more-so than the access of someone who lives where Brain lives. But this isn't the sort of situation in which my liberty is affected; people in Montana aren't less free in that respect than people in Rhode Island are. But they are less free with respect to the options their circumstances make available to them (given certain means and conditions). Let's call this 'situational freedom.'
Note that the man in prison has lost his liberty, but not his situational freedom. the latter has been limited, to be sure, but it has not been eliminated. But our situational freedom is always limited, so the question is one of degree.
Now let's consider the sort of freedom I was talking about when I referred to free will. Take the man in prison again: Let's say that he, like Thomas More, was imprisoned because he wouldn't consent to some demand of the political authorities, for whatever reason. Perhaps like more it is a matter of conscience, or perhaps he simply doesn't like the authorities, or perhaps he wants to die; his specific reason is unimportant. Now he is in chains in a cell, i.e. he lacks liberty; his chains are short and his cell is small, i.e. his situational freedom is very limited; but with respect to whether he gives in to the demands of the authorities or not, *he is still perfectly free*. This is the freedom I was referring to. Let's call it 'autonomy.' Now his autonomy isn't limited to whether he gives his consent to the authorities, but includes *any* act his situational freedom makes possible. So, if his chains are long enough to allow him to scratch his nose, this is included, as is his ability to recall poetry and literature, to think of loved ones, to pray, to sing, to shift his body from left to right, etc. Note, situational freedom sets the limits of his autonomy, but it's not the same as his autonomy. This is easily demonstrated, for there are all sorts of things our situational freedom makes possible that we never do. Why not? We never *choose* to do them, i.e. we never exercise our autonomy in such a way as to do them.
So, to say that there are such and such limitations on our freedom, and so we don't have free will is simply to confuse liberty or situational freedom with autonomy.
Willingness to give into or not give into the authorities would be part of your situation. Same as the willingness of someone in Montana to drive to Rhode Island.
ReplyDeleteIf "autonomy" is constrained by "situational freedom" then I'm not sure I'm seeing a practical difference.
Eric; "This is easily demonstrated, for there are all sorts of things our situational freedom makes possible that we never do. Why not? We never *choose* to do them, i.e. we never exercise our autonomy in such a way as to do them."
ReplyDeleteThis goes back to a point I was trying to make a while back about preference vs. free will. I don't remember exactly where I was going with it, but I do remember that it thouroughly debunked all possible notions of theism (I kid...).
You aren't free to do the things you'd never do, because you'd never do them.
So the difference between autonomy and liberty is really just a pointless philosophical whimsy.
I dunno. I think you're mixing freedom with free will.
ReplyDeleteIf society(or anyone really) takes away your freedom, locks you in a prison, or ties you to a bed, this has no bearing on whether you have free will at all.
Imagine that no one is responsible. You fell down a well, there you lie, not able to move about much. Nothing to do with free will.
But we have to couch the idea in terms of 'something', right?
"Free to pray."?
Really?
"You aren't free to do the things you'd never do, because you'd never do them."
ReplyDeleteNonsense. I'm perfectly free to type a random letter, or a random series of letters and spaces, anywhere in this sentence, whether I choose to do it or not.
Now think about this for a moment: guilt and regret are among the most common of human experiences. But if what you claim is true, how can we make sense of them? They both presuppose that one should not have done what one in fact did, or that one should have done
what one didn't do. However, if we we aren't autonomous, if we couldn't sensibly say, "I could have done X instead of Y, and should have done X," then both notions are nonsensical. But they're obviously not nonsensical: we experience them all the time, and most great literature is premised on them.
"So the difference between autonomy and liberty is really just a pointless philosophical whimsy."
Tell that to all those who have been (or who are) imprisoned by tyrants, and who thus have had their liberty taken from them, but who refused to give in to their demands on pain of death, thereby exercising their autonomy fully without liberty. And then tell that to all of us who are regularly inspired by their heroism. Do you really buy the notion that the difference between liberty and autonomy is pointless? Can't you see the vast conceptual gulf that separates the two?
"However, if we we aren't autonomous, if we couldn't sensibly say, "I could have done X instead of Y, and should have done X," then both notions are nonsensical."
ReplyDeleteSo, we're free to suffer the consequences of of 20/20 hindsight?
Marvelous. Simply marvelous.
I'm perfectly free to type a random letter, or a random series of letters and spaces, anywhere in this sentence, whether I choose to do it or not.
ReplyDeleteThat's not something you'd never do.
How free are you to eat a shit sandwich?
Actually, I can think of an amount of money that would enable me to eat a shit sandwich. It's very very high, but it exists. So bad example...
ReplyDeleteSo a better question would be how free are you to light yourself on fire right now?n Assuming your not suicidal, you couldn't do it. Hence you're not free to do it.
"How free are you to eat a shit sandwich?"
ReplyDeleteWasn't there a show called "Fear Factor" that had people do things similar to that?
There's your answer.
Let me put it this way: Suppose a billionaire offered one million dollars to anyone willing to eat a shit sandwich. Wouldn't you agree that hundreds, perhaps thousands or even tens of thousands of people -- people who otherwise would never consider eating such a thing -- would be beating down his door to be the one to do it? Heck, the morons from Jackass would probably do it for a sawbuck.
But again, there's your answer.
Here's another way to think about it: Consider my freedom to eat a shit sandwich for a million dollars, and compare it with my freedom to square a circle or produce a perpetual motion machine for a million dollars. In the first case, my situational freedom includes the ability to eat a shit sandwich, and my liberty makes it possible, but I'd only choose to do it under certain conditions. In the second case, I don't have the situational freedom to square a circle or produce a perpetual motion machine. We call the freedom of choice I possess in the first case autonomy. (The offer doesn't have to be for a million dollars. Suppose someone has a taken a child, and will torture her unless you eat the shit sandwich.)
"So a better question would be how free are you to light yourself on fire right now?n Assuming your not suicidal, you couldn't do it. Hence you're not free to do it."
ReplyDeleteI see you beat me to the sandwich counterexample.
But take firefighters: they aren't suicidal, but they act in such a way each day that the chances of them dying by being burned alive is much higher than it would be if they had chosen to become accountants instead. Or take the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire not because he was suicidal, but because he was trying to draw attention to some political or moral cause (a more common practice than you'd think.)
Eric; you must be aware that most firefighters don't light themselves on fire willingly.
ReplyDeleteAlso your freedom to eat a shit sandwich for a million dollars would differ considerable from your freedom to eat a shit sandwich for no compensation.
One might say it's situational...
Or take the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire not because he was suicidal, but because he was trying to draw attention to some political or moral cause (a more common practice than you'd think.)
ReplyDeleteYes, by committing suicide, making them suicidal.
Anyway, one can choose to kill oneself for any number of reasons. But the point is one *chooses*. Some monks set themselves on fire for political or moral causes, some people are inspired to commit suicide by great literature (e.g. suicides inspired by Goethe's "Sorrows of Young Werther"), some kill themselves slowly by drug use or by overeating, and others end their lives because they can't stand living anymore. The point is that different *reasons* motivate suicides, and that in many cases (except in cases of extreme depression), those reasons are *freely chosen*. To lump them all into some amorphous category called "suicidal" and then claim that they present a counterexample to freedom is ridiculous. Sure, I wouldn't light myself on fire, but I also wouldn't, as a vegetarian, go and eat a steak. I'm perfectly free to do either one, however. Heck, we all know that if I chose to do so, I could go eat a steak and light myself on fire immediately afterward.
ReplyDeleteEric " I could go eat a steak and light myself on fire immediately afterward.
ReplyDeleteNo you can't.
"No you can't."
ReplyDeleteNo, I *won't*. Honestly now, are you claiming that there's no distinction between 'can't' and 'won't'?!
The most basic of all free choices are if one is going to continue to live on planet earth as a human being. While it would be ridiculous to ask someone to prove they had a choice to exit, however many do make that choice which proves it is a possible free choice way. (To say a person does not have a right to assisted suicide is the height of arrogance.) I, in my 73 years, have never once wanted to be anything other than a human being doing life on planet earth. If I were to develop a health problem that made life miserable, now or in the future, I would exit the human experience at a time of my choosing. As it is I am in good health, and experiencing a diminishing of my love of life as a human, which is still strong but nearing the neutral point. Like a moth drawn to a flame seems to be the way of nature, at least for me. Now, I do posses the ability to make a choice of thinking different about the end of my life. I could well work myself into a panic if I start embracing certain type thoughts, along the line of how terrible dying is, and etc, etc. It is by my free will that I choose to lesson my love affair with being a human being and accept the end with love for what I have been able to experience rather than to spend my time experiencing fear of the end. This is exercising my free will
ReplyDeletePractially, no.
ReplyDeleteJerry, that was well put.
ReplyDeleteRyan, if there's no difference between 'can't' and 'won't,' then you must never hold anyone responsible for what they do, whether it's telling a lie, molesting a child or murdering someone.
False dilemma.
ReplyDeleteAnd Eric, I agree with Jerry. You're missing that there are circumstances involved.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line is that you are making unnecesary philosophical distinctions. Every choice you'll ever make is contrained by your situation. There are a billion choices you are not free to make.
ReplyDeleteHave a great weekend. I'm off to take my 2 year on her first camping trip, probably has something to do with the fact that my dad took me camping...
Seems we've established that freedom has such broad and diverse meaning that no one on this planet is not free, in some way.
ReplyDeleteEric said,
ReplyDelete"...guilt and regret are among the most common of human experiences. But if what you claim ("You aren't free to do the things you'd never do, because you'd never do them.") is true, how can we make sense of them? They both presuppose that one should not have done what one in fact did, or that one should have done what one didn't do."
Not really. Guilt and regret could be artifacts of socialization; we don't feel guilt because we "should not have done what one in fact did"; we may feel guilt because we've been taught from the cradle that what we did was wrong. Similar with regret.
So why would we never "do them"? Because wev've been taught not to.
Question for Eric:
ReplyDeleteIf suicide is an exercise of "autonomous free will", why is it 'wrong'?
And, while you're at it, Eric, why not answer this question, too:
ReplyDeleteIf murdering someone is an autonomous act of free-will, then what makes that so wrong?
floyd: the Catholic Church excercises witchcraft, eh?
ReplyDeleteI didn't know you went to Mass! LOL
But, seriously, WTF are you talking about??
Specific, clear examples with footnotes, video links, etc. will suffice to enlighten us all.
"If suicide is an exercise of "autonomous free will", why is it 'wrong'?"
ReplyDeleteEd, any act could *only* be morally wrong if it were an exercise of autonomous free will! If there's no freedom -- that is, freedom understood as autonomy -- then there's no morality; can't you see that? I think MI saw that clearly, hence here 'murder' example.
Think about it: Who is morally culpable for his action -- the man who intentionally punches another in the nose for no good reason, or the man whose arm lashes out without his willing it and strikes another person's nose? We don't evaluate these actions similarly, do we?
Even if we agree that "free will" (whatever your personal definition thereof) exists, what makes certain actions "wrong" is the generally accepted societal norms we must all accept in order to continue to live within the group in question. Clearly, this definition of right and wrong refers to the evolutionary results of societal development. This holds true whether we are referring to formally codified laws and/or to generally accepted "moral" or ethical norms. Please note that none of these norms have any meaning unless we have some form of interpersonal interaction (i.e. they are moot if one spends his/her entire life with no human contact). The idea that suicide (for example) is wrong ("sinful") is meaningless, since the only person "harmed" by this activity is the individual.
ReplyDeleteTo argue that we "know" that we have failed to choose or avoid some activity (in hindsight) and, as a result, may regret it in no way implies some "inborn" sense of right and wrong. Rather, as has been pointed out, it is a combination of evolutionarily developed instincts (i.e. survival) and every experience and teaching one has experienced in growth and evelopment from childhood to the point in which the "decision" was made.
Further:
ReplyDeleteIn this sense, free will exists only in that we may choose to accept all that our upbringing and societal pressures impose upon us or we may not. When we choose to go against these "pressures", we must accept the results (imprisonment, societal approbation, loss of friendship, personal regret, etc.) of these actions or lack thereof. Since one can m,ake the philosophical case that Humans always act (when a choice is possible) in ways they calculate to bring them the most "good" or to avoid the most "bad" outcomes (allowing for accurate analysis of data and the time to do so), it follows that "choice" is always a personal "value" judgement.
OK, I don't think either Eric or MI understood the question.
ReplyDeleteIf it's MY life, why is it wrong for me to decide when to end it through an act of autonomous free will?
The question was NOT emphasizing the difference between "free" and "not free", it was about right and wrong.
It's STILL WRONG to take the life of another (it's not YOURS to take).
So why is taking what is rightfully already mine WRONG?
Looks like Harvey beat me to it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Harvey.
Ed:
ReplyDeleteWe have had this discussion many times before on this and other blogs. The big "elephant in the room" that we have not as yet brought up here is whether or not we have a responsibility to a deity or creative force as well as to society when we make certain choices. Obviously, this is where Eric, MI, and other believers with whom we have discussed this need to go. Eric is still in the mode of trying to justify (to us?) his belief not only in a creative force, but in the Abrahamic God to whom all Christians feel indebted and responsible for their existance and their "choices".
I know, Harvey.
ReplyDeleteIt just seems to me that sometimes that certain people answer questions that haven't been asked, because either they know that there aren't good answers available, or that they want to direct the discussion into other subjects that are presumably easier to defend or more difficult to refute.
The idea of an Absolute Moral Code is ludicrous unless it is simply an ideal meant to keep one in the flock.
ReplyDeleteWe can see how this idea is used to suggest to the Godly that they are 'good' and that the non-Godly are 'bad' if not 'evil'.
I think that there are many codes which we might have to learn to live by(prisoner's code, if we were to become incarcerated for whatever reason, for example), a code for politics(it's okay to lie about your ideals to garner votes from those who might suffer if your policies come into effect), business code(if the law can't touch you, you are NOT doing wrong) etc. etc.
Most people are 'tied down' by the worker's code, they get up in the morning, go do their job and come home at night, not because they choose to do THAT, but because they choose to not be fired.
Businessmen will get the most money for the least amount of effort because 'that's-how-business-works'.
Politicians will dodge questions which reveal agenda that is unpopular.
etc. etc.
These people do this, and we cannot blame them for doing it, because the worker would be homeless, the businessman would lose his business and the politician would be out of office etc. etc.
If you agree with the sentiment of the examples above, you can see why religious leaders have no choice but to tell us that 'if there is no free will then the consequences are dire'.
If we eliminate the 'crime of passion' element from 'free will option'(who chooses to become blazing mad and kill someone?), then we're left with someone who feels that they have NO CHOICE but to murder another person, deliberately.
Of these people, who clearly seem to have chosen to murder 'of their own free will', some, perhaps most, would not be considered sane by any psychological standard(legal standards are a separate issue here), and there is the problem of which drugs the perpetrator was being influenced by too.
It's too easy to suggest the the perpetrator of a crime chose to take drugs which caused unintended consequences which led this person to do something which is not otherwise in his nature.
Booze is the obvious example here, where most of us are left feeling hungover and a bit guilty of drinking too much, but there are cases of people waking up in jail, hoping that they haven't committed a serious crime!
Seems the religious view sweeps aside all this 'context' that the legal defense is apt to include as mitigating circumstances.
When it comes to freedom and free will, things are not as black and white as the religious want to portray.
Every election cycle, we can see how the religious standards of a fair percentage of the population of the USA collide with the political standards and the legal standards.
ReplyDeleteIntent on defying their own religious freedom standard( e.g. 'We'll have no Sharia Law in OUR State, thank you very much!'), many Christians are torn by the muddying of the waters, the confusion created by the 'extremophiles'.
Would a Tea Party voter actually vote for Rand Paul if they knew that he was all talk and no action, or was only willing to vote his ideal if he felt sure that his agenda had no chance of being enacted?
How many 'life-begins-at-conception' believers would vote for their religious conviction if they realized that the 'Rand Paul's' were simply giving them lip-service?
How many of them ARE 'true believers' as opposed to political manipulators?
Can't we hear the toilet flushing as the entire notion of 'free will' is shot down the tubes towards the ocean when we consider, "Sure you ARE free to vote for whom you CHOOSE, but 'we'll' push your buttons to be sure that you'll vote for 'us'."
And, "You're free to believe what you wish, but if you choose to believe that there are no gods, you are deemed unAmerican, unworthy of citizenship, a God-hater, some kind of anti-religious zealot.", and this, mostly by religious zealots, of course.
Where is choice 'really' free, when there is societal pressure to conform?
This boils down to, "You are free to murder, sure. You simply have to be willing to suffer the consequences.", which is much different from, "In this country you are free to choose your religion.", and the latter seems to be being conflated with the former.
Atheist and religionist are in the same boat in a very important way. The religionist says he/she knows there is a God. The atheist says he/she knows there is no god. Both have subjugated their will to an idea which is unknowable.
ReplyDeleteAtheist and religionist are in the same boat in a very important way. The religionist says he/she knows there is a God. The atheist says he/she knows there is no god. Both have subjugated their will to an idea which is unknowable.
ReplyDelete--------------------------------------
You are absolutely right… Most all religions “yours included” are nothing more than a belief system that works like positive thinking.
These are the same religions Jesus condemned in His day , The Sadducees and Pharisees were big on head religion.
They did as you and many others do… You take parts of scripture that are appealing to you and the rest you reject.
You should of said un-provable by subject reality.
Once you understand that God exists in the spiritual realm and is manifested within the hearts of the true believers witnessed by the Holy Ghost it is no longer just an idea that is unknowable. One can know for certain…
Well, I'm not sure how this accounts for the polar opposite political ideals of 'atheist agenda', socialism and libertarianism, Jerry.
ReplyDeleteI see myself as a social democrat, seeing government as a bastion of defense against the worst evils of free enterprise, the uncaring nature of it, while being a bastion against the worst evils of extreme socialism(or communism), nationalizing industry etc. leaving no room for growth.
Seems anyone who is willing to adopt a middle of the road policy in the USA is demonized and painted extreme by the right as 'socialist' while doing their 'walking on glass' trick, trying not to paint themselves as pure evil, harking back to the days when the old, sick and poor were left to die in the gutter, unneeded by 'society', unwanted by 'society', uncared for by 'society', excepting of course religious knights-in-shining-armor willing to throw sammiches to the 'dogs' making themselves feel so smug.
"If it's MY life, why is it wrong for me to decide when to end it through an act of autonomous free will?"
ReplyDeleteEd, thanks for the clarification.
I think most of us would acknowledge that there are things we can do with our lives or our bodies that affect no one else that are morally wrong, right? Do I have a moral obligation to avoid drug use, self mutilation, etc.? To avoid fantasizing all day about molesting children, or about raping women (suppose I *never* act on such thoughts)? Or take two people, both of whom are hermits: the first person cultivates a beautiful garden that only he will ever see, while the latter drinks his life away -- which one better exemplifies humanity as it should be? All these are examples of acts that only affect the individual involved, yet which seem to have obvious moral implications. But once we've shown that such acts can have moral implications, your argument falls apart, since its key premises is refuted.
Perhaps religious leaders are right in as far as ignorant people, lacking the necessary skill to make reasonable choices, NEED guidance couched in terms of a final, eternal arbiter of truth and justice.
ReplyDeleteOkay, that fair enough, to a point, where education of the masses was relegated to the Church, or simply to 'teachings of the Church'and it's even fair to debate the point, as Eric is doing with us.
What's NOT fair, is the dogmatic responses such that, although it is a given that one is free to choose one's religion, it is also common to couch the other guy's opinion in terms of God-hating or considering non-believers somehow 'evil' or the cause of 'evil' in the land and that.
"Once you understand that God exists in the spiritual realm and is manifested within the hearts of the true believers witnessed by the Holy Ghost it is no longer just an idea that is unknowable. One can know for certain…"
ReplyDeleteOh man, don't joke like that! What if I'd had a mouthfull of coffee? I'd have ruined my keyboard!
I live in a state where self-determination and the death with dignity law has been in effect for more than a decade. The slippery slope has turned out to be pretty non-existent and the numbers of people using the statute have remained remarkably consistent from year to year. A lot of people get the prescriptions but never use them. They mostly report that they appreciate the control and piece of mind it grants them.
ReplyDeleteWhen the statute first came up it won with around 56% of the voters. The next year a bunch of out-of state yahoos spent millions trying to get it repealed. It won that time by 76% in favor. Oregonians like to make up their own minds.
"The next year a bunch of out-of state yahoos spent millions trying to get it repealed."
ReplyDeleteSometimes the system works!
Seems like a great tactic to keep the coffers full. Enact laws which 'they' aren't going to like, you know, fair ones, then step back and wait for the money to come rolling in.
LOL
Eric:
ReplyDeleteMany of us certainly do not agree that actions, let alone thoughts we never act upon, and which do no harm to any other living thing are in any sense "immoral", unless, of course, we also agree that there is some Deity whose orders regarding our behavior must be obeyed. If there is no "higher" standard of behavior or "choice" demanded by whatever societal interaction we may wish to continue, then the only "morality" is that which we believe will either please us the most or allow us to avoid the most pain or displeasure. As I recently pointed out, one MUST presuppose some higher power, to whose "laws" or wishes we must adhere in order to arrive at the idea of absolute moral codes. Since you are a Catholic, it is no surprise that your philosophical world view requires belief in the Abrahamic God. Arguing that we humans have some innate "sense" of morality, therefore "God", is no more logical than the view that human behavior is a product of evolved instincts (survival strategies) and all learned experience and societal pressures.
"Many of us certainly do not agree that actions, let alone thoughts we never act upon, and which do no harm to any other living thing are in any sense "immoral""
ReplyDeleteHarvey, let's say that Smith and Jones are each stranded on a different island. Outwardly, they both live the same way, but inwardly, Smith spends all his time fantasizing about raping and torturing children, while Jones spends all his time thinking about his loved ones, and about all the people he wished he could help but can't. Are you honestly saying that Jones is no better morally than Smith?
"unless, of course, we also agree that there is some Deity whose orders regarding our behavior must be obeyed."
That's not true, Harvey. All you need is some conception of what a human being should be, given what human beings are. In the example above, isn't it obvious that Jones is much closer to what a human being should be like than Smith is?
Eric asked,
ReplyDelete"Do I have a moral obligation to avoid drug use, self mutilation, etc.?"
Do you? Why?
"Or take two people, both of whom are hermits: the first person cultivates a beautiful garden that only he will ever see, while the latter drinks his life away -- which one better exemplifies humanity as it should be?"
ReplyDelete"Ought" is utterly meaningless to a hermit.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOne hermit says to himself, I ought to work in my garden and make my environment beautiful (aesthetics, which are value judgements, but not derived from the divine);
ReplyDeletethe other hermit says, "I ought to get shitfaced, because that makes me feel good" (but remember that the second hermit needs to work hard to make alcohol in the first place, since after all, he's a hermit.
What makes the one better than the other?
ReplyDelete"What makes the one better than the other?"
ReplyDeleteI think that this quote from Mill is instructive:
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides."
Now *why* is it better to be Socrates disatisfied than a fool satisfied? Well, because Socrates exemplifies what a human being should be better than the fool.
Seems to me that old Eric is stepping off the deep end here.
ReplyDeleteThought crime?
How a human being ought to be?
You, Eric, ought to remember that all you really know about other humans is what you think you know.
You're quite happy to point this out to us when it suits you.
Honestly, there may be something completely nutty about a hermit on an island who thinks of abusing children all the time, but there is something a little batty about someone who tends a garden.
ReplyDeleteThe only sane one is the one who wants to have a drink.
How do you know the shitfaced hermit on the beach didn't have an extensive library of philosophical tomes on his little island, each of which he has read numerous times (lots of free time on his hands), but concluded it's all hypothetical bullshit (since a great deal of philposohy concerns man's relations with each other, and since he's a hermit, it doesn't really apply) and burned the books for heat to distill his coconut mash into pina coladas?
ReplyDeletei.e., why is your value judgement of the situation better than someone else's (especially our shitfaced hermit's)?
ReplyDeleteDo I have a moral obligation to avoid drug use, self mutilation, etc.?
ReplyDeleteNo
I agree, Ryan.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't asking because I didn't know the answer-- I was asking Eric what his answer is.
As I see it, there are absolutely no moral questions generated in regard to how I deal with myself internally, and the only possibility for imposing an internal morality is by intruding a god concept into the mix: a god who sees my innermost thoughts, and judges them, whether they are ever actualized or not (presumably because my thoughts are "about" something... but I digress).
Seems as if Eric's utopia would be similar to the 1984 dystopia.
ReplyDelete"We tell you what you're allowed to think!"
How fast does 'free will' go in the toilet, here in Eric's judgement of his poor isolated hermits?
Ed; hmmmm, I thought it was Eric that asked that.
ReplyDeleteI asked it back at him.
ReplyDeleteTo try to be as clear as I can here, I'd say that trying to illustrate morality by the use of thought experiments that attempt to isolate individuals completely misses the point: that morality is only a valid concept in the context of social interactions.
ReplyDeleteHow can one man, in total isolation, ever do anything "right" or "wrong" morally?
Who is there to judge his thoughts and actions?
Ed; How can one man, in total isolation, ever do anything "right" or "wrong" morally?
ReplyDeleteWho is there to judge his thoughts and actions?
well I assume Eric would say god.
But yes, you are exactly right.
I'm watchin' a show on MSNBC where this guy decides he's not really a guy, becomes a woman, for 20 years, then decides he's not a woman and gets changed back!
ReplyDeleteHey come on, make up your mind!
Seriously though, is it nature that was 'cruel' to this guy/girl or is it society, religious society?
Honestly, I think it's fantastic that he/she lives in a time when he/she can choose to be male or female with surgery and hormones.
I think that awhile back, the Christians would have been having a bit of a barbeque, what?
As for the Mill quote, I don't get it.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied? Because Mill said so?
The pig has no knowledge of being a human.
The fool has no knowledge of being 'a Socrates'.
I think that there is a comparison being made here, of a fool and a pig and of a human and 'a Socrates'.
But it is not a fair comparison, unless you are trying to show that an uneducated person(or a person with limited capacity to absorb concepts) has similar mental tools to justify his 'satisfaction' as a pig.
Seems to me that 'the Socrates' is not very smart if he is 'unsatisfied', unless he is railing against the hypocrisy of others, you know, those 'pig-like people', who see nothing wrong with(or get their satisfaction from) making rules and breaking those same rules when it's convenient.
Eric:
ReplyDelete"That's not true, Harvey. All you need is some conception of what a human being should be, given what human beings are. In the example above, isn't it obvious that Jones is much closer to what a human being should be like than Smith is?
November 12, 2010 10:42 PM"
Whose conception?
It seems clear that your reference point(s) regarding what a human being "should be" is the Abrahamic one. I would submit that what any individual "should be" SHOULD BE DETERNIED by his/her acquired concepts of "right and wrong" and life experiences. These are, after all, simply what his parents, teachers and society tell him/her while maturing and becoming "civilized". Clearly, the new born have no concept of right and wrong. We develop this concept gradually as we grow up. What an individual "should be" is what his intellect tells him he agrees with among all these teachings, including, but not limited to whatever scripture he is acquainted with. The idea that there is some reference point for all of this that exists outside of the reality we can perceive as humans is at best a man-made "hope" and at worst (often) a means of control for the masses.
"To thine own self be true...." seems to me to sum up "morality" very succinctly.
I don't know who Mill is, but this strikes me as the sort of argument apologists typically make, just like very few people are going to argue that the holocaust wasn't bad (ah ha, I got you how can you define "bad" as an atheist) very few human's will say they'd rather be pig.
ReplyDeleteYou don't want to be a pig because you are a person.
Plenty of kids want to be eagles or dolphins, wolves or horses though.
It's just an attempt to make a point by appealing to emotion.
I'm guessing that Eric's "Mill" is
ReplyDeleteJohn Stuart Mill.
And it seems that Mill agrees with me on several issues:
ReplyDeleteMill's On Liberty addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. One argument that Mill develops further than any previous philosopher is the harm principle. The harm principle holds that each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others. If the action is self-regarding, that is, if it only directly affects the person undertaking the action, then society has no right to intervene, even if it feels the actor is harming himself. He does argue, however, that individuals are prevented from doing lasting, serious harm to themselves or their property by the harm principle. Because no-one exists in isolation, harm done to oneself also harms others, and destroying property deprives the community as well as oneself.[11]"
As I implied earlier, it's only in the context of societal interactions that morality can be understood, and so long as one does no harm to others, there's no morally valid reason to refrain from doing what one wants.
“The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right...The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”[13]
ReplyDeleteJohn Stuart Mill
And this:
ReplyDelete"The canonical statement of Mill's utilitarianism can be found in Utilitarianism. This philosophy has a long tradition, although Mill's account is primarily influenced by Jeremy Bentham and Mill's father James Mill.
Mill's famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the "greatest-happiness principle". It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, within reason. Mill's major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures are superior to more physical forms of pleasure. Mill distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that "[i]t is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.""
According to Mill, it's just a distinction between "happiness" and "contentment". Thus, in our hermit example, the Gardener-Hermit is Happy because he values aesthetic beauty (external to himself) over the Shitfaced-Hermit, who is only Content due to physical stimulus.
I see the distinction, but don't really see how it is applicable to hermits, or whether Mill even really believed this, given the other quote I pasted.
Still, I cannot help thinking that Eric is giving us these quotes to rail against for a purpose.
ReplyDelete"What is that sneaky Catholic, Eric, up to now?"
If Eric is being reasonable, he must agree that no-one ought to be punished for another's crime against a third party.
If I spent my life buggering little boys and molesting little girls, then, if there is a supreme supernatural court, there is no way to escape from it.
Any suggestion that there might be, is for the purpose of giving the offender some reason to give up his effort to satisfy his urge to pointlessly put pain in others.
As in, "What, I can stop this horror and be forgiven by the highest court in the Universe?"
Hopefully, at some point, the perpetrators of such crimes would see the way out, the escape route, to be forgiven by God HIMSELF, on account of the sacrifice of Jesus.
Things get a little confusing though, when the perpetrators are ALREADY Christian and ALREADY feel that they ARE pre-forgiven for crimes against humanity that they feel they can cavil their way out of.
Don't you think?
Ed, is temperance a virtue? If it is, why is it a virtue, and why would it cease being a virtue on a desert island? If it isn't, why have moral philosophers judged it to be a virtue for over twenty five hundred years? (I'm not saying that since it's been considered a virtue for so long by so many smart people, it must be a virtue; rather, I'm just trying to get you to think outside the box of the predominant celebrity culture in the West in the 21st century where "if it feels good and doesn't hurt anyone, go for it," and to consider why all those smart guys might have concluded that temperance is a virtue.)
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of Chesterton's paradoxical observation (which I'm paraphrasing) that once we've rejected all orthodoxies in the name of radicalism -- which modernity seems intent on doing -- orthodoxy becomes the only radicalism left.
ReplyDeleteEric, I'm not trying to deny that there are things that could be considered "moral" or "virtuous". What I'm getting at is the source of why folks consider these things "good" or "moral" or "virtuous".
ReplyDeleteThe example of the man in total isolation is less than instructive here, because as Mill noted, we don't live in isolation. So there's no ultimate "objective" standard, because of our habit of living in communities, and the arbiter of what's moral and virtuous is based on protection of the community, not some ethereal command from on high.
This was the point all along.
Let's see if the foo shits on the other foot:
ReplyDeleteIf it's true as posited by Aristotelian virtue ethics that any activity can be considered a vice if carried to the extremes of behavior, then can we say that there are some situations where it would be considered a vice to refrain from drinking?
Oh, and just FYI:
ReplyDeleteI don't advocate for an "anything goes" philosophy of life.
I don't worship celebrities (with the possible exception of Frank Zappa, but he's dead), and don't think that a bunch of entertainers should be venerated to such a high degree.
why would [temperance] cease being a virtue on a desert island?
ReplyDeleteBecause virtues are only virtues relative to other people. If Dingus honestly doesn't think temperance is a virtue and he's truly totally isolated, then it's not a virtue. Your total isolation is about as instructive as your zombies.
Ryan, here's the difference between us: You think that what is and isn't moral is determined by our subjective preferences in relation the subjective preferences to others, while I think that morality is determined by what human beings in fact are. So, your conception of morality would allow all sorts of horrors to be judged 'moral' if only a group of people think they are, while my conception calls a horror a horror, whatever disorder people come to prefer.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between us Eric is that I don't say douchey things because I want to score points in an argument. It's not "my" conception of morality "allows" all sorts of horrors, as if I'm somehow driving this and to blame. It's simply an observation.
ReplyDeleteDo you deny that all sorts of horrors are judged 'moral' by groups of people think they are moral? It's reality. And you know it's not limited to Stalin and Mao.
And Eric, your religion had to come up with an entire mythology to explain why humans aren't in fact like how your moral system want/needs humanity to be.
ReplyDeleteRyan, how is what I said "douchey"? It's true, is it not? Don't you think that what is and isn't moral is determined by the relationship of subjective preferences among groups of individuals, or don't you? If you do, then it follows that anything that the group judges to be moral is, on your conception, moral. Don't get upset with me for pointing out an obvious corollary of your own claims. If you don't like the conclusion, perhaps you should reconsider your premises.
ReplyDelete"Do you deny that all sorts of horrors are judged 'moral' by groups of people think they are moral?"
See, here's the difference: I can say, "They did judge them to be moral, but they were wrong," while you cannot, for on your conception the judgment determines what is and isn't moral, while on my conception it no more determines what is and isn't moral than a consensus determines what is and isn't true about the natural world. That is, I claim that there are moral facts, and thus that people can be mistaken about them, and hence be wrong in matters of morality, while you claim that there are no moral facts, and hence that people can't be wrong about what is and isn't moral. Now surely you see that that, together with the claim that what we judge to be moral is determined by grouping subjective preferences, can lead to horrors being labeled moral in a way that is not possible on my conception of morality (that is, on your conception the horrors are called moral and are moral, while on my conception if a horror is called moral it's a mistake on the part of those calling it moral).
It's not my "conception", it's observable. I guess another difference between us is I've done more international travel (I assume).
ReplyDeleteSee, here's the difference: I can say, "They did judge them to be moral, but they were wrong," while you cannot
Of course I can. I just have to say "by my standard" after it.
while you claim that there are no moral facts...
ReplyDeleteSocieties/cultures/etc... have moral "facts".
Eric.
ReplyDeleteIt's still relative, despite what you say.
For example, if the Nazis had won WWII, and completed the final solution, don't you think that the official histories would then have justified the Holocaust (if it was permitted to be remembered at all) as a "moral necessity"?
Eric; so if we discover and can observe another universe and some set of facts indicate that it's logically impossible that our universe and the other universe could share a creator and ground of all being, etc...
ReplyDeleteThen you'll be in the same boat as the moral relativist. Right now, you've just moved the source one step beyond the last known source so you can claim it's "ultimate".
Ed "For example, if the Nazis had won WWII..."
ReplyDeleteKinda like how the Pope put a smiley fact recently on the genocide of the Native Americans.
smiley fact = smiley face
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI missed that one, Ryan...
ReplyDeleteWhat did Il Papa say, exactly?
Something along the lines that without the genocide, they wouldn't have had an opportunity to get to know Little Baby Jesus.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't it, but it's pretty dumb.
ReplyDeleteAnd to be totally fair Eric, I think you have to admit that the system where an authority claims that there are moral facts and they can be known to be right or wrong is open to as much if not more abuse than the belief that there are not moral facts.
ReplyDelete"And to be totally fair Eric, I think you have to admit that the system where an authority claims that there are moral facts and they can be known to be right or wrong is open to as much if not more abuse than the belief that there are not moral facts."
ReplyDeleteI do agree, but *I'm* not saying that on my conception of morality we know all moral facts because some authority tells us what they are. Natural law theorists believe that many, if not most moral facts are accessible by reason alone, so if I have any authority here to appeal to, it's the authority of reason.
"It's not my "conception", it's observable."
No, all you observe is disagreement about morality. If there are moral facts, wouldn't we expect people to disagree about what they are, just as they disagree about every other type of fact? You seem to be assuming that if X is a fact, then there can be no disagreements about X, and that's obviously false. So, the fact that people disagree about anything doesn't in any sense show that there's no fact of the matter there.
but *I'm* not saying that on my conception of morality we know all moral facts because some authority tells us what they are.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but that's what happens in reality.
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ReplyDeleteThe only disagreements occur where cultures meet. If this "law" was "written on our hearts" one would expect different peoples to come to something resembling a consensus in isolation from one another.
ReplyDeleteThere are no moral facts. The notion that we ought not to do unto others that which we would not wish them to do unto us, is a principle of fairness which society invokes.
ReplyDeleteYou ought not steal other people's stuff is a principle of fairness which society invokes.
You ought not to hurt other people(murder being a worst case scenario) is a principle of fairness which society invokes.
Now we all know this from childhood. If you steal from or hurt others your parents will tell you not to do that, your parents being inherently social, i.e. indoctrinated into, and representing society.
Now, there are two ways to deal with our propensity to steal from others and to hurt others to get what we want or to simply get our way. One is by way of explanation(consider others) and the other is by way of punishment(that'll teach you).
In the end, you'll grow up thinking that to hurt others or to steal from others is wrong, either because you WILL be punished OR because it has been explained to you that it is just as wrong as someone hurting or stealing from you.
If you are being taught 'how to be' from the perspective that you are 'guilty' and need to be punished, basically that you know inherently and are disobeying some cosmic 'knowledge', you can either rail against it, try to figure out what's going on, or just give up and accept that you are just a bad person(say by the time you reach the 'age of reason', about 7).
Point is that there doesn't need to be any supernatural reasons for a child to come to the idea that there are moral facts, but how they interpret these facts and how they deal with them is another chapter in our development.
Of course we are not just being taught by our parents/guardians, who might fuck up royally(as I mentioned), we are also being taught by our siblings and schoolmates, who are also still learning how 'factual' these 'moral facts' are! The ones who WILL steal from you because their sisters and brothers steal from them or vice versa, and get away with it through coersion etc.
What? Do I need to explain EVERYTHING to you pimple-heads?
What's with this, "We're in Philosophy 101 now, let's clear our minds of child psychology."??
I don't get it.
"If this "law" was "written on our hearts" one would expect different peoples to come to something resembling a consensus in isolation from one another."
ReplyDeleteSee the appendix to Lewis's "Abolition of Man." There's much more agreement, especially about core issues, than you might initially think.
Ahh, C.S.Lewis. Has there ever been a man who can contradict himself in one sentence that is so loved by the 'word-magicians' as him?
ReplyDeleteMorality, we hear in his book, is a natural law, like gravitation, but which can be defied by us, proving that it stems from a supernatural realm. Not only THAT, our children need to be taught it!
Yes, yes, I recall being taught how to fall down, due to that other natural law, too.
Something about, "Try to break your fall with your head! After all, your consciousness is supernatural and cannot be hurt."
I think most of us realize that there aren't revealed moral truths regardless of how much word play is used. Civilizations have independently realized that a level headed approach to the golden rule, to do no harm, with ample empathy is about as good as it's likely to get. It's a formula that worked not because of any deities but because it is practical and provides the greatest benefit to the most people.
ReplyDeleteAh, Lewis asserted something, I didn't realize, my bad, that settles it then...
ReplyDelete"Ah, Lewis asserted something, I didn't realize, my bad, that settles it then..."
ReplyDeleteLewis didn't "assert" anything. What he did in the appendix was list moral precepts from moral codes from various societies (Egyptian, Hindu, Babylonian, Jewish, Christian, Norse, Chinese, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Greek, American Indian, Aborigine, and so on) from various times and places, and show how us how when we investigate the matter empirically, there's a very similar moral core to each of them; hence, morality isn't, as you assert, as all-over-the-place as some seem to suppose prior to investigating the matter.
"Lewis didn't "assert" anything. What he did in the appendix was list moral precepts from moral codes from various societies...from various times and places, and show how us how when we investigate the matter empirically, there's a very similar moral core to each of them; hence, morality isn't, as you assert, as all-over-the-place as some seem to suppose prior to investigating the matter."
ReplyDeleteThis still doesn't "prove" that there's some mystical 'objective morality' sprinkled down on us from heaven.
At best, it affirms the thought that different societies (all of which have been successful enough to have left written records at a minimum, if not survived into the present) have happened upon a set of similar rules for their people to use in interpersonal and personal-societal relations that tend to support the continuance of the society.
Or in other words, it works.
That's right Ed, Just because a lot of societies have been smart enough to figure out that enlightened self interest is a good structure in no way supports the notion of deism - except in the confirmation bias-laden world of religion.
ReplyDeleteWe'd obviously expect some consensus due to biology and our shared heritage with the earliest humans. But Christian societies can't even agree that the 10 Commandments are moral facts.
ReplyDeleteDo you honestly believe that adultery is wrong in an open marriage? Amongst Baboons? Why do they get a pass just because they can't perceive moral facts? Is it still wrong if all life on earth is destroyed by a meteor?
You do appeal to authority, it's the bible and your
I'm sure there's a fallacy here, but it's amazing to me that with all his erudition, Eric really can't convince and/or make satisfying arguments against us buffoons here in the rogues gallery.
ReplyDeleteTo me that speaks loudest and clearest against his premises and presuppositions.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteI find it humorous, in a sad sort of way, that you speak of morals when you back, and endorse the most immoral institute on earth, The catholic church and it's immoral leaders. My moral compass says there is no lower form of life than that which uses religion to pray on children.
"pray on children..."
ReplyDeletelousy pun.
For the life of me, I can't see why anyone thinks C.S. Lewis is some sort of "authority" on Christianity.
ReplyDeleteMost of what I've been exposed to of his writings looks too much like "preaching to the choir", which is why (I presume) so many Christians hold it up and go
"Seeee? C.S. Lewis said..."
...but then, I think Aquinas was all wet, too.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"This still doesn't "prove" that there's some mystical 'objective morality' sprinkled down on us from heaven."
ReplyDeleteI didn't say that it did. What I said was, (1) Ryan didn't observe the truth of moral subjectivism, but merely of moral disagreement (they are not the same, and one doesn't entail the other), and (2) that it's actually not true that there's no consensus of any kind among different societies from different times on core moral issues (though they may disagree about whom those moral precepts apply to). Again, as I say time and time again, please try to focus on the specific point being made.
"Do you honestly believe that adultery is wrong in an open marriage? Amongst Baboons? Why do they get a pass just because they can't perceive moral facts?"
Animals don't "get a pass"; they simply aren't morally agents. Sure, they *behave* in ways that *appear* to us to conform to certain moral categories, but moral agents must be aware of moral imperatives, and animals lack the conceptual equipment to satisfy that requirement. That's why we hold children and the mentally challenged to a different standard (depending on their capabilities) when it comes to moral issues than we do 'normal' adults.
"it's amazing to me that with all his erudition, Eric really can't convince and/or make satisfying arguments against us buffoons here in the rogues gallery."
It's not amazing at all. There's a huge difference between a good argument and a person's being persuaded by a good argument that its conclusion is true. If an argument is logically valid, uses its terms consistently and is comprised of premises that are more plausibly true than their negations, then it's a good argument, period. Persuasion, on the other hand, is not a matter of facts and logic alone, but of sundry psychological dispositions (and, when it comes to arguments about god and the like, I would add, as a Christian, of grace).
"This still doesn't "prove" that there's some mystical 'objective morality' sprinkled down on us from heaven."
ReplyDeleteI didn't say that it did. What I said was, (1) Ryan didn't observe the truth of moral subjectivism, but merely of moral disagreement (they are not the same, and one doesn't entail the other), and (2) that it's actually not true that there's no consensus of any kind among different societies from different times on core moral issues (though they may disagree about whom those moral precepts apply to). Again, as I say time and time again, please try to focus on the specific point being made.
"Do you honestly believe that adultery is wrong in an open marriage? Amongst Baboons? Why do they get a pass just because they can't perceive moral facts?"
Animals don't "get a pass"; they simply aren't morally agents. Sure, they *behave* in ways that *appear* to us to conform to certain moral categories, but moral agents must be aware of moral imperatives, and animals lack the conceptual equipment to satisfy that requirement. That's why we hold children and the mentally challenged to a different standard (depending on their capabilities) when it comes to moral issues than we do 'normal' adults.
"it's amazing to me that with all his erudition, Eric really can't convince and/or make satisfying arguments against us buffoons here in the rogues gallery."
It's not amazing at all. There's a huge difference between a good argument and a person's being persuaded by a good argument that its conclusion is true. If an argument is logically valid, uses its terms consistently and is comprised of premises that are more plausibly true than their negations, then it's a good argument, period. Persuasion, on the other hand, is not a matter of facts and logic alone, but of sundry psychological dispositions (and, when it comes to arguments about god and the like, I would add, as a Christian, of grace).
From the top, revisited.
ReplyDelete1. Conscious. If we accept evolution, then consciousness is probable, or likely.
2. Rational. Merely a refinement on the probable, or likely consciousness, which is easily seen as a survival strategy ("irrational" leads to quickly dying in an unforgiving environment, and therefore is selected against).
3. Free. This one is debatable, at best. Most of our actions are constrained by forces beyond our immediate control. If one digs deep enough, there are almost always controlling factors. (peeb argues for this in many places above)
4. Moral. Consequence of living in social groups. Also inevitable given our preference for living in closely interacting groups. If we must live in close quarters, rules for getting along with others will always arise, without need for appeal to supernatural agents (see directly above).
5. Seek after the transcendent. Outgrowth of wonder at the wonders of the world around us, especially to preliterate, prescientific proto-cultures, and our attempts to classify, quantify, control and otherwise establish causality for the things that happen around us (who makes the wind to blow? etc.)
I could elaborate further on #5, but why?
ReplyDelete"Seeking after" something in no way requires that the object of the search in fact exists.
Eric; you didn't address the more important of the two questions. Is adultery wrong in an open marriage?
ReplyDelete"pray on children..."
ReplyDeletelousy pun.
November 14,
No pun intended.
"What? Do I need to explain EVERYTHING to you pimple-heads?"
ReplyDeleteThis is obviously a joke, trying to make the point that Eric's philosophy, especially his notion that there is an Absolute Morality which is revealed, or being revealed to us from 'above', when it is obvious that the only 'above' necessary are the guidance you receive from those giant humans(from your perspective), your parents/guardians, in your formative years.
Why do you speak your mother's language before knowing what a noun or a verb is? Obviously we are great at finding patterns and copying.
Why is there a range in kids from good(calm, submissive) to bad(dominant, agressive)?
(using the Dog Whisperer's terminology)
Much like dogs, kids live in the now. They'll notice something and go and get it. Now depending on the surroundings, the child(you as a child) might be encouraged to do this, or discouraged, or your care-taker may assume that you have an inate sense of property, or there might be conflict with a baby-sitters 'style' and parent's 'style', that kind of thing.
Seems to me that since a child does not come with a 'How to Manual', there's a lot of leeway and some true believers may imagine that their kids are in a battle between good and evil!
So, how the child ends up feeling about how she/he behaves may well be based on whether the main guardian is happy that their charge is curious about interesting things, or of the opinion that this 'bad seed' is intent on stealing and such.
I'm sure that this stuff is painfully obvious to anyone with any common sense, yet it is completely disregarded, almost studiously avoided when it comes to considering our morality and values.
Here's my 'take' on this. If you've ever noticed a really dominant bully, he/she has an entourage. The standard running gag is, "The entourage is 'cool', while outsiders are to be used to bolster the dominance of the leader, which the followers take to mean bolstering their group's dominance.
This is like some kind of elephant in the room in school, work or other social situations, no one mentions the group psychology, the role that the group plays and forces onto others.
The worst case scenario of these kind of group dynamics is when entire nations are playing it. The dominant nation feels that there ought to be no problem 'using' the subservient nation as they 'feel', then if some people IN the subservient nation feel different, the dominant nation feels that it is an insult to the dynamic which they have cultured.
At this point, the only fair thing, from the dominant bully's or nation's perspective, is for the subservient one to do as they are told!
Perhaps Eric might expand on THAT idea for us? Or reject it as total hogwash, since perhaps he feels that God is 'guiding' nations to act the way they do my some Absolute Moral Standard?
'BY some Absolute Moral Standard'
ReplyDelete.. just to be clear.
"Is adultery wrong in an open marriage?"
ReplyDeleteYes, because an open marriage is itself wrong. Just because people agree, as in an open marriage, to do X doesn't make X moral. There are common examples that illustrate this principle rather clearly that we all know about. For instance, we all know people who are so lonely and weak that they don't at all mind being taken advantage of if they get attention from others, and we all know people who just love to find such people and take advantage of them. Now, does it make the one taking advantage of others any less immoral just because he looks for and finds easy, willing targets? *Of course not*. Indeed, we judge such a person to be *even worse* for taking advantage of the weak, the lonely, and the ignorant. So, clearly, the proposed alchemy of consent alone is not sufficient to transform an intrinsically immoral act into a moral one.
"There's a huge difference between a good argument and a person's being persuaded by a good argument that its conclusion is true. If an argument is logically valid, uses its terms consistently and is comprised of premises that are more plausibly true than their negations, then it's a good argument, period."
ReplyDelete------
I think most would agree with this. Ironically, that is the point. We don't agree that the arguments used to justify deism actually fit this description particularly when one is so clear in sharing their true perspective;
"I'm much more certain that my mental experience is qualia rich, that my actions are free, and that I apprehend moral imperatives than I am that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, or that any particular scientific theory accurately describes reality.”
While I appreciate the honesty I have to say that this passage is very telling as to the validity of your arguments and the biases that course through them no matter how skillfully worded.
"this passage is very telling as to the validity of your arguments and the biases that course through them no matter how skillfully worded."
ReplyDeleteThat's not true. The arguments I've presented for the existence of god, for example, presuppose none of those things.
But that aside, let me ask you this: Are you more persuaded that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen than you are that (1) raping and torturing infants for fun is immoral, or that (2) the person who tortures and rapes infants for fun is responsible for those actions because he freely chose to do them (he may have had strong desires or urges to do so, but, as anyone who has read his Freud knows, we all curb certain desires and urges -- very strong ones -- all the time), or that (3) you really do experience 'greenness' when you look at, say, the English countryside?
"Indeed, we judge such a person to be *even worse* for taking advantage of the weak, the lonely, and the ignorant."
ReplyDeleteI disagree. We perhaps would LIKE to believe that this is our natural view, that we are naturally 'fair'.
But this is the elephant in the room. "We're all fair and square, but I KNOW I'm better than you, dominating you, and you know that you're subservient, or at least you know that I think you are."
The one who feels dominant might let it slip that he/she feels the other lacks the education necessary to do battle in a certain field, or even the reverse of this.
The one who feels dominant might imagine that, "I know that you're more educated than me, but still, I TELL YOU what to do, so I win."
Dealing with dominance issues is difficult, because one party might be coming from the 'fair is fair' perspective, while the other party is simply trying to get one over on the sucker, by all means available.
For example Eric projecting HIS traditional religious viewpoint on to a not-necessarilly-traditional-religious-view.
Essentially, Eric is saying that he can draw lines in the sand when it comes to other people's marital arrangements.
I think that this is a crucial point when it comes to 'governing'. The one ideal, is that there are the dominators and dominated. Government ought to be used to push that agenda, the dominators, those in charge, TELL the subservient what to do.
ReplyDeleteBut the elephant in the room is that we're all supposedly created equal.
Basically, "We want you to imagine that we are all equal, just don't dare to act as if we are all, you know, equal."
In this way, it's not a conspiracy at all, it's just a matter of getting it, just a matter of edging around that giant elephant in the room to let the dominators do what THEY want.
For example drug laws. There is the notion that marijuana is illegal because it is bad, and that it is bad because it is illegal.
This is obviously a bad argument, a circular argument.
The REAL, unspoken argument here is, We the dominating class will not permit the subservient class to do what they please.
The circular argument above is just saying that you're free to do what you're told.
Please do not imagine I'm making a case to drop marijuana laws because I indulge in ingesting/smoking marijuana, because it's not true.
Unlike the valid reasoning behind impaired-driving and speeding laws, which are meant to protect innocents from your bad behaviour, these drug laws are principally, "You kids do what WE tell you, THAT's what you DO!", type law, which throws the notion of equality out the window and into the rose bushes.
Now it seems reasonable to me, for us to believe that no laws that are harmless to third parties, ought to be enforced by common law.
ReplyDeleteIf we can agree that a 'party' is an individual person(a human being), and I cannot imagine how else the basic 'party' could be defined, the second party being whichever policeman, lawyer, judge, jury the first party needs to deal with, when confronted with a 'breach of the law', and the third person being any individuals who may be harmed by the first party's behaviour, we can see that there are crimes which are actually against 'the state', that there is no real third, aggrieved party.
Those who like the elephant in the room to be left as is, (i.e. that we're only meant to 'feel' that we are equal or free) don't mind making laws that do nothing more than subjugate others for no other reason except, "Not in MY house you don't!"