Sunday, September 09, 2007

The harder problem of consciousness

Is it getting easier with the advance of science, or harder?

15 comments:

Sturgeon's Lawyer said...

Easier. There's actually a very good model, these days, of how consciousness could evolve.

(Of course, "could" ain't "did," but all that is required here is that a materialistic explanation be available, not that it be proven, for there to be no "gap" for a supernatural explanation - such as God - to be necessary in, for as soon as such an explanation comes to light, consciousness is no longer something that materialists "need to explain." They have done so to, at least, their own satisfaction.

Also, this is a grotesque oversimplification of something that takes a longish essay to explain properly.)

Primiates are the most intensely social of all animals. This does not mean that they are like social instincts, or naked mole rats: those are colony animals, not "social" in the sense I'm using the word here. What I mean is that the lifestyle of (many) primate animals depends on predicting the behavior of others, and especially other members of one's own troop (pack, clan, whatever).

Evolutionary advantage, then, accrues to any such animals that are better at predicting the behavior of others, as a genetically-conditioned ability to build more and more complex models of others' intentions (empathy) and thus to predict their likely behavior is reinforced by better survival and reproduction opportunities.

Beyond a certain level of complexity, though, you need a basis for such a model. Where does such a basis come from? From oneself. Ultimately, the ability to empathize and predict others' behavior depends on some version of the question, "Well, what would I do if it were me?"

As this modeling becomes more complex, the concept of "me" looms larger in the brain; the brain examines the self more intensely to be able to ask that key question more acutely.

This increased capacity to imagine alternate selves (empathy) also produces, almost as a side effect, an improved ability to construct conditional images -- to ask "what will happen if I...?" -- and thus an improved ability to make and carry through complex plans.

Throw in language (which has its own set of evolutionary imperatives for social animals in a certain niche) and you have all the ingredients for what we call consciousness.

Alternatively, you can believe (as I do) that God waited until the ingredients were in place, according to God's plan, and then selected one animal to ensoul. You pays your money and you takes your choice: but I'm afraid "consciousness" is pretty much off the table as an argument for the supernatural.

Victor Reppert said...

I think there is a deep and fundamental problem in that first-person statements do not follow logically from third-person statements, no matter how complex. What Darwinism explains is how behavior could emerge, but it is of course logically possible (unless you accept a broadly behaviorist analysis of consciousness), that the behavior exist and the inner states not exist. The gap is a logical conflict between types of truths, and not simply an engineering problem in the structuring of the brain.

stunney said...

My theory is that God, say 50,000 years ago, created a new contingent causal connection between certain human brain states and certain types of essentially non-material higher mental states——those, for instance, involving language, abstract thought, morality, and so forth. I think I would also say that earlier, either at the OOL point or subsequently, God created a contingent connection between physical life (or forms of physical life of a certain minimal degree of complexity), and what we can call broadly sentience--—which would include a lot of different kinds of animal consciousness.

But it's extremely implausible that an impersonal natural process would generate a contingent causal connection to such a thing as a rational mind, with all its knowledge of the basic necessary truths of mathematics, logic, reason and morality. Such a connection in my view almost certainly had to have been created on purpose by a very intelligent mind. Not just Descartes and Leibniz but also Locke essentially argued along similar lines that human rationality had to be specifically created. On my view, then, the brain is the same in terms of its material composition, but it, or some part of it, is connected by God to the realm of non-material reason and value that on its own it could not ever, no matter how evolved, connect to. It is that connection which we call the soul---—the spiritual properties of the human person which we may refer to broadly as the capacity for acts of not just sense-perception (which we share with non-human animals), but of intellect and free will.

People say nice things about the mental abilities of chimpanzees and such like. But chimpanzees and other similar primates are no closer to mastering theoretical physics than their ancestors of 1,000,000 years ago. Justified beliefs about, or dependent on, mathematics and other normative forms of rational thinking would be the result of a reliable non-material belief-formation process, forever beyond the reach of mere sense-perception. At the very least, giving a persuasive naturalistic account of mathematical and other normative, conceptual, a priori forms of thought is far from easy, which is worth mentioning if only because of how much reliance is placed on mathematical beliefs in the methods and practice of the natural sciences.

Given the massive gulf in rationality not just between ourselves and apes, but between ourselves and human ancestors of even just 100,000 years ago, the time span seems to me to be far too short to be accounted for by evolving physiology. In fact, I think this is by far the most obvious 'edge of evolution', and I'm a bit surprised that ID folks don't make a lot more of it, rather than focusing on things like flagella, etc. The flagellum might be wonderfully complex, but human thought is by far the most complex break from the materialist paradigm that informs Darwinian orthodoxy. Presumably ID can only advance by looking for anomalies in the Random Variation + Natural Selection paradigm, and human rationality is the mother of all anomalies.

Sturgeon's Lawyer said...

Victor,

First, I said nothing about "first person statements." You will note that I deliberately separated language from the ability to model minds and intentions.

The point is that, in order for me to deduce your intentions, I must have a basis for that - a "base mind" that I can vary, based on the specific facts I know about you, to make a picture of your mind. What can be more available as a "base mind" -- than my own mind?

Second, and this is key, one of the things involved in predicting the intentions and behavior of others, is understanding their environment. And, when I am trying to predict how you will behave, I am part of your environment. Thus, for me to predict how you will respond to my behavior, I have to include a prediction of how you will interpret my behavior -- in other words, I must make a mental model of your mental model of my mind. This is the beginning of what, in language, becomes the recursive ability to say that "I think that you believe that Stunney's theory will cause me to write a refutation which you will find neither convincing nor terribly interesting." That recursion makes it necessary for me to model not only your mind and Stunney's mind, but your mental model of my mind, and your mental model of my mental model of your and Stunney's minds.

Finally, I think you have reversed the concept of "behaviorism." Behaviorism basically makes consciousness irrelevant (which is why I reject behaviorism); it says that the only thing worth studying is observable behavior.

While I suppose that it is possible that the behavior exist but not the "inner states," I think you need to define what "inner states" are, and how we can know whether anyone has them, before we can imagine what it would be like for the behavior to happen without them.

The classic attempt to illustrate this is Searle's "Chinese room," a sealed room containing a man and a complex set of instructions. Following these instructions, the man accepts "input" in the form of Chinese characters, and produces "output" in the form of Chinese characters that respond to the "input." He does not understand Chinese; he merely follows these complex instructions.

Searle says that, because the man does not understand Chinese, the "inner states" for "understanding Chinese" are absent. The obvious response, which Searle does not seem to grasp, is that the whole system, including the room, the man, and the instructions, is exhibiting an understanding of Chinese which we cannot distinguish from what we would expect if the man himself understood Chinese.

I do not necessarily claim that the system "understands Chinese," but, until someone explains what it would mean for the whole system to have the "inner state" of "understanding Chinese," the claim that it does not is meaningless.

And that is my response to the more general point about exhibiting behavior without "having inner states." You must define what "having inner states" means before you can use it in an argument.

Sturgeon's Lawyer said...

But it's extremely implausible that an impersonal natural process would generate a contingent causal connection to such a thing as a rational mind, with all its knowledge of the basic necessary truths of mathematics, logic, reason and morality.

Why is it "extremely implausible?" Once again, you make assertions without giving reasons for them.

You can state that it is improbable and I won't argue with you; but it is a large Universe, and some improbable things are bound to happen.

(Mind you, I agree, in broad terms, with your theory of what I suppose we could call "ensoulment." I merely question your ability to justify the claim that alternatives are "extremely implausible.")

stunney said...

Sturgeon's lawyer:

stunney: But it's extremely implausible that an impersonal natural process would generate a contingent causal connection to such a thing as a rational mind, with all its knowledge of the basic necessary truths of mathematics, logic, reason and morality.

sl: Why is it "extremely implausible?" Once again, you make assertions without giving reasons for them.


I think it's extremely implausible because I think that reason and morality can't be naturalized. And I think reason and morality can't be naturalized because I think they both essentially involve objectively normative properties, and I do not think such properties reduce to human beliefs about normative properties, nor to any set of non-normative properties.

In other words, I think evolutionary naturalism entails irrealism about normative properties, and that irrealism about normative properties is extremely implausible and is incoherent.

The argument I have made for this conclusion is in the form of a dilemma facing materialistic naturalists. The first horn of it is that if, as many atheists (such as Ruse, Mackie, etc) have held, morality has no objectively normative status, then a common set of fundamental human intuitions and experiences is erroneous (for most people do believe that morality is objective). But then naturalism's own epistemic status is undermined, for if we can be wrong about basic moral experiences and intuitions, then we can be wrong about basic sensory experiences and intuitions, since a Berkeleyan-style argument against the existence of mind-independent matter is at least as plausible as an error-theoretic account of morality. The other horn is that if there really is an objective morality, how can such a thing be made to cohere with materialism?

One common way of trying to retain moral objectivity while denying the existence of matter-independent properties is via some form of reductionism (examples include utilitarianism, contractarianism, and neo-Aristotelian eudaimonism.) The trouble is the well-known one that if moral properties reduce ontologically to non-moral properties, then one faces the problem of the 'naturalistic fallacy'. What that boils down to is the problem of explaining adequately how reason can be both a material process and yet also be capable of objectively adjudicating the factual picture presented by human behavior without smuggling in irreducibly moral, normative properties or values; while on the other hand, how to ensure that any such reduction, even if otherwise persuasive, does not sacrifice morality's objective normative status in the process, given that no purely descriptive facts about human perspectives and desires (to which any successful reduction would have to end up at) is, or can be, in fact, normatively objective, rather than just a majority collection of subjectively believed norms and desires.

Here's what I've said before about that:

Many naturalistic thinkers will answer the last question by saying that all there is to moral obligation and value is the functioning of rational instincts and desires. The first problem with this reply is that instincts, dispositions, and desires vary tremendously among humans----some are instinctively aggressive, others instinctively deferential and compliant, some are extremely egoistic and cruel, others loving and altruistic. They vary from ethnic cleansing to caring for lepers. The second problem is that if reason (the 'rational' part of 'rational instincts') is only instrumental—that is, if reason only enters the picture as the process by which agents deliberate about and choose between various possible means to their various ends, then the naturalist is left having to face the fact that some people's ends are truly horrifying from a moral point of view. But in that case, one can't reduce morality to the ends people are disposed to pursue.

If, on the other hand, reason enters into the picture by actually adjudicating which ends ought to be pursued and which ought not to be, then one is back in a vicious circle. One has smuggled moral reason and moral judgement in to sort out the varying ends between which the naturalist, contemplating a factual description of the great variety of people's dispositions and desires, must choose in order to give any remotely plausible account of the content of morality.


This problem is essentially the same problem as that of how reason can be naturalized, that is, how the normativity of reason in general can be naturalized. Either one reduces normative properties to non-normative properties, in which case you 'solve' the Is-Ought problem by getting rid of the Ought part; or you retain the Ought as something irreducible to the Is, in which case you compromise materialism.

Why should sensory experiences be privileged above moral experiences? One is more ready, in a laboratory, to attribute the position of the dial to a random electrical disturbance, than one is to attribute the notion that we should not rape our grandmothers to an illusion, or a mere lack of desire to do so. Naturalism, in order to dismiss morality as a projection or illusion with no really objective claim upon us, ends up having to deny the validity of the only thing that would even render itself (naturalism) plausible in the first place----namely, the deliverances and character of the subjective conscious experiences of human beings.

It is not just that most of us prefer societies that aren't murderous tyrannies, whereas murderous tyrants prefer societies which are ruled by their own murderous tyrannical power. Rather, murderous tyranny's immoral character isn't constituted by, nor reduces to, what most people prefer. It's not just that people wouldn't want to live under such regimes. Most people wouldn't want to live under a well-meaning but ineffective government either. But the intuition that certain things are not just to be avoided, but are morally wrong, in a word evil, is as forceful a part of the human psyche as the anti-Berkeleyan intuition that material objects exist even when unobserved.

Since naturalism rests ultimately on the force and given-ness of sensory experience, attempts to reject the moral intuitions of objective goodness and evil undermine not just moral objectivism, but naturalism itself. For I'd sooner believe with Berkeley that matter does not exist if unperceived than believe that the wrongness of Nazism, Stalinism, and the Armenian, Cambodian and Rwandan genocides etc was merely a matter of my or anyone else's distaste for such behavior, and were not objectively evil.

It is important not to conflate the question of what causes there to be some moral code or other (such as shared interests), with the question of whether a given moral code or particular moral belief is correct, rationally credible, justified, right, true, etc. And although some might think that a rule against hurting people has an obvious causal origin in evolutionary sociobiology, many societies have organized themselves historically on the basis of hurting large numbers of people, such as women and black slaves. The plain fact is that institutionalized injustice and cruelty have been behaviorally par for the course since time immemorial. So we can’t 'read off' or 'explain' morality simply by looking at human behavior and its evolutionary history, since a vast amount of human behavior has been and continues to be morally wrong, often horrendously so. You may have heard about Darfur, for instance.

The deliverances of immediate sensory awareness are the uninferred foundational knowledge-base that is used to justify theories about the material world. At bottom, there are immediate observational data upon and against which physical theories are then built and tested. But those foundational data are not the only kind of immediate data of human experience, nor the only kind of uninferred knowledge. There’s also mathematical intuition (needed at least for axioms), memory, and basic moral awareness (only if an accused doesn’t know right from wrong in general is an insanity plea accepted in criminal law). But if the materialist advances an error theory of morality (as some do), then the case for not advancing an error theory of matter (a la Berkeleyan idealism or other forms of phenomenalism) is also undermined, since both belief in morality and belief in matter are both ultimately based on extremely powerful kinds of intuition about basic experiential data.

You can state that it is improbable and I won't argue with you; but it is a large Universe, and some improbable things are bound to happen.

Yes, but the rational person adopts the more probable hypothesis.

(Mind you, I agree, in broad terms, with your theory of what I suppose we could call "ensoulment." I merely question your ability to justify the claim that alternatives are "extremely implausible.")

Well, I think that a capacity to have a priori knowledge of necessary logical, conceptual, moral and mathematical truths being contingently caused by material entities is not the kind of thing that we see much empirical evidence for. If it was so generated, why is it unique to our species? I discuss this a bit more here and here and here.

Blue Devil Knight said...

It looks like a bunch of Babinsky impersonators have taken over your blog's comments.

I think there is a deep and fundamental problem in that first-person statements do not follow logically from third-person statements, no matter how complex.

Putting things in terms of 'first-person' versus 'third person' is sloppy. Here's a proof (an enthymeme) from third-person to first person:

1. BDK weighs 190 pounds.
2. Therefore, I weigh 190 pounds.

Third person to first-person.What's the big deal?

Incidentally, what does Block's paper really have to do with the original question in the post? This isn't a science paper, doesn't draw on any science. It's just more armchair ramblings from Block.

Is there something specific you had in mind that you liked in this paper? He is being a bit self-congratulatory in calling his the 'harder' problem. In my book, the Hard Problem is still the hardest problem of all.

Victor Reppert said...

BDK wrote: Putting things in terms of 'first-person' versus 'third person' is sloppy. Here's a proof (an enthymeme) from third-person to first person:

1. BDK weighs 190 pounds.
2. Therefore, I weigh 190 pounds.

Third person to first-person.What's the big deal?

VR: I wish that were a good argument.

Victor Reppert said...

I'm really not sure that the Block paper actually makes the hard problem harder, reading it again.

Blue Devil Knight said...

Victor: The argument just shows that the grammatical distinction between first-and third-person is not a good way to formulate the problem of consciousness.

At any rate, I admit it is a somewhat pedantic argument to make on my part. Something a clever but missing-the-point undergrad would make :)

BDK just experienced a red triangle. Therefore, I just experienced a red triangle.

BDK is a pedant. Therefore, I am a pedant.

Sturgeon's Lawyer said...

Stunney, the first horn of your dilemma is blunt.

The argument I have made for this conclusion is in the form of a dilemma facing materialistic naturalists. The first horn of it is that if, as many atheists (such as Ruse, Mackie, etc) have held, morality has no objectively normative status, then a common set of fundamental human intuitions and experiences is erroneous (for most people do believe that morality is objective).

The fact is, that a wide variety of fundamental human intuitions and experiences are erroneous. Regardless of our knowing otherwise, we cannot help but perceive the world as flat and objects made mostly of empty space as solid. Take two lines of equal length and put arrowheads on the ends of one, and inverted arrowheads on the ends of the other, and we will see them as unequal in length. Etc.

In the moral sphere, we all tend to regard those different from ourselves (at least for some kinds of difference) as suspect, dangerous, or even evil -- I know that some people claim not to but I doubt their claims; I believe that (without calling them liars, though some doubtless are) they have rather made such a successful effort to act as if they do not, that they succeed in fooling themselves.

Human intuitions and experiences, even ones common to all(?) humans, are provably of questionable value.

But then naturalism's own epistemic status is undermined, for if we can be wrong about basic moral experiences and intuitions, then we can be wrong about basic sensory experiences and intuitions,

This is why one of the continuous activities of the project called "science" is testing and retesting the validity of previously acquired sensory data.

The other horn is that if there really is an objective morality, how can such a thing be made to cohere with materialism?

I agree, and suggest that the only way an "objective morality" can exist in a naturalistic philosophy is in the form of an objectively pragmatic morality, such as Utilitarianism. But a one-horned dilemma isn't much use.

But I will toss back at you the idea that "objective morality" carries its own dilemma: if it is "objective," it is independent of culture, time, place, etc.; yet, by your own showing, the "morality" embraced by humans extends all the way from genocide to caring for lepers. Where is the objectivity standard in all this?

I reject the idea that "there must be some moral code" is any proof of "objective morality." If we are social animals, then (like other primates) we will have a natural tendency to have a group norm of behavior. Throw language into the pot and we will call behavior outside of the norm "immoral."

the rational person adopts the more probable hypothesis.

Fallacy! You can't discuss the relative probability of events when you have a sample size of one.

I think that a capacity to have a priori knowledge of necessary logical, conceptual, moral and mathematical truths being contingently caused by material entities is not the kind of thing that we see much empirical evidence for. If it was so generated, why is it unique to our species?

Of what truths do we have a priori knowledge that no other animal has? I can point to examples of moral behavior in other animals; I can point to the extraordinary geometric calculations performed by some animals in their daily life.

As for "conceptual" I will grant you a half-win, for we have no idea what "concepts" other animals may or may not have, since they have no language with which to discuss them with us.

stunney said...

Sturgeon’s lawyer wrote:


The fact is, that a wide variety of fundamental human intuitions and experiences are erroneous.


Well, it’s a good job that nothing in my argument depends on them not being erroneous.


Human intuitions and experiences, even ones common to all(?) humans, are provably of questionable value.


Quite so. This goes for the basic experiences that underpin belief in naturalism as much as it does for the experiences that underpin belief in objective morality. So you make my point for me.

me: But then naturalism's own epistemic status is undermined, for if we can be wrong about basic moral experiences and intuitions, then we can be wrong about basic sensory experiences and intuitions,

sl: This is why one of the continuous activities of the project called "science" is testing and retesting the validity of previously acquired sensory data.



“Conscience” tests and retests previously acquired moral data.

To illustrate:

From wikipedia

In epistemology and the philosophy of perception, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space. In particular, phenomenalism reduces talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense-data. Phenomenalism is a radical form of empiricism and, hence, its roots as an ontological view of the nature of existence can be traced back to George Berkeley and his subjective idealism.

Now ask people this question. Which of the following propositions would you more readily accept as being likelier to be true:

1) Phenomenalism is true and so physical objects as things in themselves that are independent of sensory experience do not exist.

2) Swindling an old lady out of her life-savings, strangling her cat in front of her, and then tying her up and setting the house on fire so that she burns to death, is not an objectively evil thing to do.

As long as you think either 1 is the more probable or that they are more or less equally probable, then there is no reason why basic moral intuitions should not be considered as epistemically respectable as basic sensory intuitions.

me: The other horn is that if there really is an objective morality, how can such a thing be made to cohere with materialism?

sl: I agree, and suggest that the only way an "objective morality" can exist in a naturalistic philosophy is in the form of an objectively pragmatic morality, such as Utilitarianism. But a one-horned dilemma isn't much use.


The dilemma is two-horned. As I pointed out, such naturalist attempts at providing an objective basis for morality face the problem of the naturalistic fallacy, as well as the huge variation in human preferences and beliefs about things like abortion, equal rights for women, slavery, homosexuality, war, getting rid of Jews, etc.

But I will toss back at you the idea that "objective morality" carries its own dilemma: if it is "objective," it is independent of culture, time, place, etc.; yet, by your own showing, the "morality" embraced by humans extends all the way from genocide to caring for lepers. Where is the objectivity standard in all this?

All this means is that moral beliefs change, with the result that beliefs about morality that were common at one time may cease to be common, and beliefs about morality that were not common may become common. Indeed. Likewise, beliefs about the physical world also change, with the result that beliefs about the physical world that were common at one time may cease to be common, and beliefs about the physical world that were not common may become common. But these sociological facts per se do not entail that we should deny that there is an objective morality, any more than that we should deny that there is an objective physical world.

The question of how we might come to know or be rationally justified in believing moral propositions is an interesting but logically separate issue from the question of the existence of objective morality, just as the question of how we might come to know or be rationally justified in believing propositions about the physical world is an interesting but logically separate issue from the question of the existence of an objective physical world. If lots of people say objective morality exists but don't agree 100% on what it enjoins, that doesn't mean that objective morality doesn't exist. Their claims that it exists could be 100% true, in fact. It's a bit like electromagnetism, and what people used to say about it. It's corpuscles, it's a wave in the aether, it’s a class of string vibrations, it's this, it's that.
But there it was all along, existing objectively. And still is, apparently.

You seem to think that moral objectivity can be read off the pages of human preferences and behavior. That, indeed, is precisely the idea I said is hopeless. Here’s what I said:

…if reason only enters the picture as the process by which agents deliberate about and choose between various possible means to their various ends, then the naturalist is left having to face the fact that some people's ends are truly horrifying from a moral point of view. But in that case, one can't reduce morality to the ends people are disposed to pursue.
If, on the other hand, reason enters into the picture by actually adjudicating which ends ought to be pursued and which ought not to be, then one is back in a vicious circle. One has smuggled moral reason and moral judgement in to sort out the varying ends between which the naturalist, contemplating a factual description of the great variety of people's dispositions and desires, must choose in order to give any remotely plausible account of the content of morality. This problem is essentially the same problem as that of how reason can be naturalized, that is, how the normativity of reason in general can be naturalized. Either one reduces normative properties to non-normative properties, in which case you 'solve' the Is-Ought problem by getting rid of the Ought part; or you retain the Ought as something irreducible to the Is, in which case you compromise materialism.


Moving on…

I reject the idea that "there must be some moral code" is any proof of "objective morality." If we are social animals, then (like other primates) we will have a natural tendency to have a group norm of behavior. Throw language into the pot and we will call behavior outside of the norm "immoral."

White women who married black men were ipso facto called immoral, at one time. Mistakenly, as I see it. One could multiply counter-examples to the thesis that immorality = violation of social norm endlessly.

me: the rational person adopts the more probable hypothesis.

sl: Fallacy! You can't discuss the relative probability of events when you have a sample size of one.


Huh? Why think there’s only one sample? There are vast numbers of contingent causal connections which fail to result in a priori knowledge of necessary logical, conceptual, moral and mathematical truths, which is why I said such knowledge being contingently caused by material entities is not the kind of thing that we see much empirical evidence for. If it was so generated, why is it unique to our species?

Of what truths do we have a priori knowledge that no other animal has?

The truth that burning Jewish babies just because they’re Jewish is wrong. As far as I’m aware, no animal species other than humans protested the Holocaust.

I can point to examples of moral behavior in other animals;

You can point to examples of animal behavior that you and other humans admire or value. Calling it moral is tendentious, however.

I can point to the extraordinary geometric calculations performed by some animals in their daily life.

I can point to high school tests they’d all flunk.

As for "conceptual" I will grant you a half-win, for we have no idea what "concepts" other animals may or may not have, since they have no language with which to discuss them with us.

Ah. A mere trifle.

Sturgeon's Lawyer said...

Stunney,

I think you underestimate the radical claim I am making. I am saying that for your first "horn" to make a dilemma possible, it must be strong enough to undermine the epistemological claims of all philosophies and reality-models, whether naturalistic, or supernaturalistic, with the possible exception of pure agnosticism (not just religious agnosticism), for they are all based on human perceptions and intuitions, and such perceptions and intuitions are easily shown to be unreliable in any and every realm.

In other words, if naturalism fails to satisfy as an explanation of "objective morality," so too does "natural law" supernaturalism.

Further, there is nothing in the existence of a "natural law" -- Lewis's tao -- that cannot be plausibly (if not necessarily correctly) explained by evolutionary psychology.

My real radical claim is much simpler: we can accomplish nothing by attempting to undermine materialism and scientism, and attempts to do so are a sign that the person making the attempt fears that his/her faith may not be strong enough to stand in the light of science. I have no such fear and so have no problem accepting that materialism/scientism can explain the world in a manner that satisfies its adherents as well as Christianity satisfies me.

stunney said...

Sturgeon's Lawyer said...

I think you underestimate the radical claim I am making. I am saying that for your first "horn" to make a dilemma possible, it must be strong enough to undermine the epistemological claims of all philosophies and reality-models, whether naturalistic, or supernaturalistic, with the possible exception of pure agnosticism (not just religious agnosticism), for they are all based on human perceptions and intuitions, and such perceptions and intuitions are easily shown to be unreliable in any and every realm.

I repeat: the dilemma I presented does not depend on intuitions not being erroneous. It simply says that moral irrealism----the idea that basic moral intuitions are erroneous---also undercuts naturalist realism, since that too involves a certain class of basic intuitions. But, if to avoid that horn, one opts for moral realism instead, then the other sharp and pointy horn awaits, since realism about moral value sits ill with naturalism, because moral value is not a naturalistic, i.e. scientifically detectable, entity. One can detect preferences, to be sure. But how does one convert those preferences into something others (who do not share those preferences) "ought" to follow?

In other words, if naturalism fails to satisfy as an explanation of "objective morality," so too does "natural law" supernaturalism.

I think that lurking in the background of your thinking is the Euthyphro dilemma. As regards that notion, I've never quite understood its force if we're talking about not just any gods, but about the God of classical theism (the type defended by Aquinas et alii). The Euthyphro dilemma assumes that if a god wills certain conduct because it is good, then goodness is something external to the god, and it's merely a contingent fact about the god doing the willing that he happens to will something good. But this external goodness could only be some kind of mind-independent and matter-independent abstract entity, about the existence of which I'm very skeptical.

By ‘supernaturalism’, then, I'm assuming you have in mind the question of what it is about God's nature that makes it good. And you may be thinking of something along the lines of Moore's open question argument against identifying goodness with any natural property, and you may be treating God's nature, in the sense relevant to Moore's argument, as just another set of natural properties. In Moore's formulation, goodness is a simple, non-natural, indefinable, unanalyzable property. It's not clear we should grant this conclusion, since water may be identical with H20 even though this fact about the stuff we use 'water' to designate is only knowable a posteriori, and hence if true, is so non-definitionally, i.e., it's not an analytic truth. But let's grant Moore's conclusion. Then there seems to be two ways to go. Either goodness is a Platonic entity, and is subject to my previously mentioned skepticism about such mind-and-matter-independent entities; or else goodness is a supervenient property, albeit an irreducible one. If it is an irreducible supervenient property, it seems far more plausible that it supervenes on mental states than on non-mental states. And if goodness is such a property, it seems far more plausible that it didn't just pop into existence when contingently existing mental states popped into existence, but was already supervening on some necessarily existent mental state. And this necessarily existent mental state is, as Aquinas would say, what all men call God.

In short, either, as Moore held, goodness is a simple, non-natural, indefinable, unanalyzable property; or, pace Moore, it isn't. If it is, then the request for an explanation of why God's nature is good is ill-conceived, since no explanation of goodness is possible ex hypothesi. But if it isn't, then you must disallow use of the open question at some point, and being supremely loving seems as good a point as any at which to disallow it.

I conceptualize the Trinity as Being/Knowing/Loving, with the understanding that the infinite, perfect, and mutually implicating character of what those terms refer to in God is (will turn out to be) the essence of goodness. So it's not just that being, knowing, and loving are good, though it's true they are. It's that what goodness is, what it turns out to be, what it has as its primary referent so to speak, is infinite Being/Knowing/Loving, and everything else that is good is so by analogy with that triune essence.

On my view, goodness is by nature supervenient only upon minds. No minds, no goodness. Classical theism claims there is no such mind-independent abstract entity, 'goodness', as is assumed by the relevant horn of the Euthyphro dilemma , for there can be no entity that is independent of God's mind, which is infinite. Nor is it a contingent fact about the God of classical theism that God happens to will the good. It is God's very nature perfectly to comprehend and to will the good, which is what God himself is, namely infinite Being/Knowing/Loving, the triune divine essence.

With regard to utilitarian, neo-Kantian, and neo-Aristotelian attempts at grounding an objective morality in the natural world, however, my objection is simply this: why on earth should the world be like that if it wasn't intended or designed to be, but arose only because of contingent, natural, causal processes? I mean, what a literally incredible fluke that would be. In other words, my objection to going that route is that morality, like rationality, is essentially about, and a property of rational minds (and their personal, intentional agency), and such things---rational minds endowed with moral value and capable of moral agency---are far more plausibly explained by a moral Designer than otherwise.

Further, there is nothing in the existence of a "natural law" -- Lewis's tao -- that cannot be plausibly (if not necessarily correctly) explained by evolutionary psychology.

I don’t think moral value can be plausibly explained in that manner without entailing a conclusion of moral irrealism, as even many atheists openly acknowledge. And that’s the other horn of the dilemma I propose----moral irrealism is deeply counter-intuitive, and it suggests that there’s no principled reason for not also adopting physical irrealism (e.g. idealism, or panpsychism).

My real radical claim is much simpler: we can accomplish nothing by attempting to undermine materialism and scientism, and attempts to do so are a sign that the person making the attempt fears that his/her faith may not be strong enough to stand in the light of science. I have no such fear and so have no problem accepting that materialism/scientism can explain the world in a manner that satisfies its adherents as well as Christianity satisfies me.

I disagree that there’s anything fearful is necessarily, or likely to be involved with the idea that materialism/scientism is incoherent (it not being itself a scientific result, but a philosophical thesis). On the contrary, it is the naturalist who is riven with fear, a nice recent example being Thomas Nagel’s theo-phobic statement of it in The Last Word.

Sturgeon's Lawyer said...

Stunney,

I've never heard of this Euthyphro dilemma; or, if I have, I'm afraid I don't recall it. I'm an autodidact with no formal philosophical training.

But it chimes with a basic intuition of mine, which is that it is pointless to define "good" in terms of God. This is one of the places where I part company radically with Lewis; he seems to have been quite comfortable with the idea that "good" is "what God approves," nothing more and nothing less. But to me, this is incoherent with the idea that "God is good," for if "good" means only "what God approves," then "God is good" devolves to the tautological "God approves of God."

That being the case, "good" can only be one of two things: a relative phenomenon, whether "evolved" or "aesthetic;" or else something even more absolute and foundational than the existence or nature of God -- similar in nature to content-free logical truth.

Either of these seems to me consonant with materialism.

* * * *

Regarding your dilemma, I see that I did indeed misunderstand it. And I think that what you say:

realism about moral value sits ill with naturalism, because moral value is not a naturalistic, i.e. scientifically detectable, entity. One can detect preferences, to be sure. But how does one convert those preferences into something others (who do not share those preferences) "ought" to follow?

is quite right. It is why I said that

...the only way an "objective morality" can exist in a naturalistic philosophy is in the form of an objectively pragmatic morality, such as Utilitarianism.

Once again, I fear we may have agreeing vehemently, for I was (in part, I'm sure, due to my lack of philosophical training) misunderstanding some of your meaning.