On our fragile moral existence

This is an account of Langdon Gilkey's book Shantung Compound. One of my favorite questions is the question "Is it hard or easy to be moral." If we think it is easy, is it simply because we have lived much of our lives in relatively easy circumstances?

Linville's The Moral Poverty of Evolutionary Naturalism

Here. 

Aquinas on the natural law, or how to avoid centuries of bloodshed

A redated post

These are my class notes on Aquinas and the natural law. But notice something important. If Christians had realized from the 13th Century on that governments are set up to secure human earthly happiness, how much blood on the hands of Christians could have been avoided?

The Natural Law
How right and wrong are based on reason
I. Human nature and the natural law
We can reflect upon human nature and find those things that will help us actualize our potentialities. This is what Aquinas calls natural law.
Human nature is the same from culture to culture and from century to century. So we can discover the natural law by reason.

II. Using reason to discover the law
How do we discover which objects, circumstances, and ends are good?
The good is determined by reason, what is in accordance with the natural law.
We can derive moral principles by reflecting on what is in accord with nature and our natural inclinations.
Since we have a natural inclination to preserve ourselves, suicide is against the natural law.
It is natural to care for our offspring, so we must educate our young to see that they reach their potential.
Since we are higher than the beasts, we must actualize out potential by pursuing the truth, including the knowledge of God.

III. Why don’t we all agree?
We are blinded by passion, bad habits, and ignorance.
Do we know these things in our consciences? Conscience is not a source of knowledge itself, but is that rational activity of apply moral knowledge to particular cases.
Conscience is fallible, but the best we can do is follow our informed conscience to the best of our abilities.

IV. Aquinas’s Four Laws
Eternal Law
Natural law
Divine law
Human law

V. The Eternal Law
The eternal law is the law by which God governs the universe.
Everything in natural follows the eternal law blindly, but humans have the capacity to obey it or disobey it.

VI. Natural law
Discussed earlier, the law available to reason that governs human moral behavior and is aimed at human happiness on earth. The virtues enjoined by natural law are temperance, courage justice, and wisdom.

VII. Divine Law
The divine law is given to us by revelation, and concerns how to achieve eternal happiness, in other words, how to be saved.
The virtues enjoined by this law are faith, hope, and love, the three holy virtues.
These can only be obtained through the grace of God.

VIII. Human law
Human law is instituted by governments.
If the law is legitimate, it must be rooted in the natural law. To obey such laws is to obey God.
Any human law that violates natural law is not a law at all.

IX. Aquinas and Dr. King
This raises a question of illegitimate laws, such as racially discriminatory laws (Jim Crow laws). Religious leaders in the South had written Dr. King a letter saying that while they approved of his coming to Alabama to work for civil rights, they asked that he obey the laws of the state while he was there. King didn’t follow their advice, and wrote the famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail explaining why. Aquinas says in some cass it is the lesser evil to obey a bad law to keep the peace, but in other cases civil disobedience in the name of a higher law may be necessary.

X. Aquinas an Human Laws
Some laws enforce the natural law  and should be uniform from one society to another (laws against murder and theft, for example).
Other laws set out details left open by natural law for the sake of uniformity in a society. It doesn’t matter if you drive on the right or the left, so long as everyone drives on the same side.
Other laws have to be reached on the basis of situational judgment. How old should a person have to be to drive a car. 16 seems to low of an age in urban Phoenix, but too high for rural Kansas.

XI. The extent of the law
Human law should not attempt to render illegal all kinds of immoral behavior. It should only be concerned with major evils that harm others and undermine and ordered society.

Political legislation should concern matter of justice, and should stay out of issues that concern spiritual matters or private morality. This is because human laws must be grounded in the natural law (aimed at human earthly happiness and not at salvation, and discoverable by reason) and not divine law (known by revelation and aimed at human happiness).

This represents the foundation of the separation of church and state, and on these matters the Catholic Church deviated from Aquinas’s teaching when they used the power of the government to enforce Catholic belief. After the Inquisition and the Wars of Religion (which left 1/3 of the population of Europe dead), we can see that Aquinas had it right.

Mark Nelson on reductio versions of the Argument from Evil

A redated post.

The is from Mark Nelson's paper Naturalistic Ethics and the Argument from Evil,' Faith and Philosophy, vol. 8, no. 3, 1991.

Nelson argued in this paper that the moral premise of the argument from evil is undermined if the atheist construes that premise in a non-realist way, that is, he does not think that any propositions about what one ought to do can be true.
For reference, here are 1, 2 and 4 to which he refers in the paper.

1) if there were an all-good, all-powerful God, then there would be little or no evil in the world.

2) But there is much evil in the world.

4) If there were an all-good God, he would want there to be little or no evil in the world.

He writes, concerning the possibility of a reductio version of the argument:

Third, while not taking the argument as a reason for atheism itself, the naturalist can still try to offer the argument as an ad hominem argument that anyone who holds the non-relativistic ethical theory that the theist in fact holds should reject theism. That is, even if the naturalist does not believe premises 1 and 2, she can argue that the theist must (or at least does) hold premises 1 and 2, and that these jointly entail 3 (atheism-VR). Since few theists these days deny 2, the real issue is whether the naturalist can show that the theist must, or does, accept 1. In the present context, this boils down to whether the naturalist can show that the theist must, or does, accept 4, and this is a tall order. While some theists accept 4 or ought to, given their other philosophical commitments, it is by no means obvious that all do or even should, since, for theists, the acceptability of 4 depends to some extent on the truth about morality, and even among theists there is considerable disagreement about what this is. In sum, it's not as if the naturalist can point to a set of moral propositions to which all theists must share and say "See! These commit you to 4!" And the theist should be wary of letting her critic pin some definite moral theory on here, since it may be difficult to say what moral theory a world view commits us to, except from a vantage point "inside" it, as it were. Moreover, the theist might regard the ability to handle the problem of evil as a condition of adequacy for any theistic theory of morality. Finally, such an ad hominem argument does not satisfy the conditions for a disproof of the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God.

Which are the moral judgments?

How do were determine which of these are moral judgments?

1) Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.




2) It is rude to belch after dinner.



3) Eat lots of fruits and vegetables.



4) Drive on the right side of the road.



5) Don't lie under oath.



6) Buy low, sell high.

What do we do with philosophers from the past who say really insane things? Some problems with Kant

Or so it seems to people in the 21st Century. I don't think that great thinkers are supposed to avoid intellectual errors. Or rather, it is compatible with greatness to get at last some things horribly wrong.

Of course, the Kantian position that most people roll their eyes on is his views on lying, particularly in his response to Benjamin Constant. There you get a sense that, yes, he's got that wrong, but there is something to be gained by coming to terms with him neverthteless.

HT: Ed Babinski.

Moral agreement and ethical debate

On abortion, doesn't the issue arise as a borderline case amongst people who agree on certain basic principles? I know that people who disagree on abortion seem miles apart, but think about it. They agree;




1) In cases where the child is already born, it should be a crime to kill the child if it is, say, an inconvenience (which children invariably are).

2) We should be concerned about the quality of life as well as about life itself.

The question is whether the case of a fetus is in any way relevantly different from the case of a born infant. No one questions the value of life or the value of the quality of life. They just disagree about whether the fetus is relevantly different from infants and toddlers. But there seem to be agreed-upon moral truths that both sides accept without question.


Sometimes we get so busy arguing about the ethics we disagree about, that we forget the huge number of moral judgments on which most all of us agree. But of course it would get boring in ethics class if we were to argue about, let's say, the ethics of serial murder.

Christianity and moral objectivity

One thing that Christianity brings to the table morally is the existence of commandments that humans have broken. While everyone has their own definition of morality, the existence of a commandment (as opposed to, say, the Ten Suggestions) seems to suggest that this is something that human beings have to do whether they like it or not or whether they agree with it or not. So if, let's say, the President of the United States has a problem accepting the commandment not to commit adultery (I think this actually happened a few years back), if he believes in a God who gives commandments, he cannot reasonably say that his opinion of adultery is as legitimate as God's. This seems to suggest that Christianity is committed to the idea of an objective right and wrong.

This point seems to be lost on some Christians, who when questioned in polling a few years back, accepted moral relativism.

There is, of course, the further question of whether being commanded by God is what it is for an act to be moral. One possibility is this: God makes humans in such a way that they will be happy (or perhaps, happy for an eternity) only if they behave in certain ways, and then God commands what is going to be conducive to human eternal happiness. If that were true, then being commanded, by itself, doesn't create rightness.

The other point to make is that commandments are not going to settle all of the debatable philosophical issues. The Sixth Commandment says "Thou shalt not commit murder." But that leaves the question of whether, capital punishment, war, or abortion are in fact murders. Since murder is definable as intentional homicide without moral justification, the question is still open for debate as to whether capital punishment and war have moral justifications, or whether abortions (or some of them) are homicides. (I'm not saying there's no correct answer to these questions, but you have to examine the pros and cons on these issues to reach a conclusion).

Who's to decide?

Does the existence of right or wrong require that there be a "decider" of what is right or wrong? If this is so, then we either have moral relativism (different cultures decide it differently) or divine command theory (the most powerful being is the decider)? Or can something be right or wrong even if there is no one to decide that it is?

"I'm the decider. I decide what's best." -George W. Bush

Is Morality Hard or Easy?

This is, or course, an echo of the chapter in Lewis's Mere Christianity where he asks, "Is Christianity Hard Or Easy?" I put this question on the discussion board for my ethics class, and got three responses, all agreeing that morality is easy, at least for them.

I find this a little stunning.

Four Spiritual Laws? No, 48 Laws of Power

This strikes me as a profoundly immoral and anti-moral philosophy. But if there is no transcendent (I'm not necessarily going to insist on theistic, just transcendent), what can be said against such a philosophy?

Kant, Reason, and Morality

If Kant is right, it is illogical to be immoral. But suppose you are very good at benefitting yourselves in ways that are immoral. You are a high-up in a crime family, for example, enjoying a life of luxury financed by murder, drugs and prostitution. If you started being moral, you would have to confess your crimes and spend the rest of your life in prison, maybe even face execution, since you have ordered numerous hits on your enemies. According to Kant, the rational thing to do is the right thing to do, which is to go straight and face the law. But, many of us would think that it is an illogical thing to do.

Is Kant right that it is irrational to be unethical?

Charges of contradition in moral discourse

A contradiction is this.

"The cat is on the mat."
"The cat is not on the mat."

Once you know which cat and which mat, one's got to be true and one's got to be false.

In the case of abortion,

1) All abortions where the life of the mother is not in jeopardy are morally wrong.

is contradicted by

2) Some abortions where the life of the mother is not in jeopardy are not morally wrong.

But all you need for 2 is at least one. If 2 is true, then some, indeed most abortions where the mother's life is not in jeopardy can be morally wrong. Just not all.

It's important to realize what a real contradiction is, and what it is not.

In ethics we sometimes accuse people of contradicting themselves when they really aren't. There is nothing about being pro-life, for example, that logically entails that you ought also to be against the death penalty. In one case you have fetuses who are not guilty of anything, in the other case, you have guilty capital criminals. On the other hand, there's nothing about pro-choice that guarantees that you should support the death penalty. In one case you have fetuses who are not given the legal rights of persons (whether they should be or not is a different issue) and on the other hand you have capital criminals who, whatever they have done, are considered to be persons by the law.

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident Part II

we hold these truths II post Redating this post once again.

And here is the other post. Please make note of the referenced paper by Steve Lovell on this one. I made the link to Lovell's site under "link". The other link to him on this page is broken. Since Euthyphro keeps coming up here, Lovell answer is once again required reading.

I took the passage from the Declaration of Independence because I am convinced that it captures some powerful moral intuitions that all of us have (at least we Americans and others who live in democratic countries). I realize even those who have those moral intuitions fail sometimes to fully act out their commitment to those intuitions; witness Jefferson himself with respect to slavery. (I have read that he went before Congress and denied his affair with Sally Hemmings. Somehow whenever I try to picture that, I keep coming up with a wagging index finger and an Arkansas accent. But I digress.) However, these intuitions seem to imply at least deism, and it looks as if the deism required, while it might (as it did for Jefferson) exclude miraculous intervention of the type we find in the Resurrection, it does require God to have enough providential control over the world to "endow" us with inalienable rights. The "Deism" of the founding fathers, from what I have read of them allows for providential governance of human affairs, even if it does not allow for miracles.

The fact that, as the Un-Apologetic Atheist reminds us, he was attacking divine right monarchy, doesn't change the ontological commitments of the actual statement. Fat George would no doubt have actually replied that he ruled by divine right; he could easily have replied, if that had been his position, that it's a dog eat dog world and he's top dog. As an old chess friend of mine used to say, "Might does not make right, but might does what it wants to."

It would take a considerable amount of evidence to show that Jefferson did not intend the references to a Creator to be taken literally. Rakshasas perhaps has such evidence, or someone else does. I haven't seen it. I don't know how the "lexical force" of Jefferson's statements are going to work if the ontolgoical commitments of the assertion are incorrect.

UAA's rewrite of Jefferson's argument therefore must be a revision of what he said; it suggests that we have rights just in virtue of the fact that we exist. You now have to supplant the reasons given in Jefferson's statement for why we have these rights with some other reasons.

Careful examination of the concept of a right, for starters, implies the existence of an objectively binding moral obligation. Think about it. When the police say "You have the right to remain silent," it implies that the police are under an absolutely binding moral obligation not to beat a confession out of the suspect. Othewise, the right does not exist. But objective moral values are denied by many modern atheists. Consider Michael Ruse, for example:

The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says 'Love they neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory . . . .

Michael Ruse, "Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics," in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262, 268-9.

Now if you are an ethical subjectivist, it seems to me that you have to say that Jefferson was just wrong when he said we have inalienable rights. So at least some (but surely not all) atheists would have to say this, people like Bertrand Russell (see previous post), J. L. Mackie, and Ruse. But if that is what an atheist believes, then he should be honest enough to say so. As I discussed in my previous post on moral objectivity, people are sometimes inclined to be subjectivists in considering highly controversial, vexed issues, not realizing that this implies that the claim "We have inalienable rights" comes out false.

Now, in response to Chris, I never said that only theists have a claim to morality. What I did say was that apparently in this statement Jefferson explains the existence of our inalienable rights in terms of our having been created in such a way as to possess them. Of course agnostics and atheists have had plenty to say about ethics, but it simply doesn't follow that what they had to say is consistent with atheism. Atheists can be ethical; they often have and live by moral values, they write about morality, but nevertheless it might be still true that if atheism of the naturalistic variety is true, there cannot be objective moral values.

Second, I am not especially persuaded by Euthypro-style arguments--see the Lovell paper you linked by the title.

Aquinas on ethics

VI. Aquinas’s teleological ethics
Similar to Aristotle, as you might expect
All events occur to achieve some end.
Humans have their own natural ends and inclination.
However, humans can choose how they will fulfill a given end.
Ethics concerns what ends are worthy to pursue.
Good fulfills our natural end, evil is a deficiency or privation, something that keeps us from fulfilling our natural goal.
VII. Are all actions either good or bad?
Aquinas distinguishes between the actions of humans and human actions. The former are voluntary, the latter are involuntary.
While the latter are neither good nor bad, the former are always either good or bad.
The will naturally desire what is good, but it needs reason to tell it what is really good and the appropriate means for achieving it.
VIII. Three features of an action
The object of the action.
The circumstances
The end that is sought.
D. All these features of an action are necessary to evaluate the goodness of an actions.
IX. Aquinas and Oprah
Consider Oprah’s giving cars away. In itself the action seems is beneficial.
However, the act can be wrong if, for example, the cars were stolen.
If the needs of the people were trivial, but the financial burdens of here family were greater, that would affect the quality of the action.
If she was just trying to get praise (or ratings) then the motive would not be worthy.
In order for an action to be truly good, the object, circumstances, and end must all be good.
X. Where Aristotle’s Moral Theory Falls Short
Aristotle’s ethics is purely naturalistic,
He treats humans as one more species in nature. He does not believe that humans have a special relationship to God. There is no sense that what is right is commanded by God.
The final end of human life is the happiness and self-fulfillment found in the appropriate development of all categories of human excellence, especially intellectual virtue.
This moral vision is good as far as it goes, but must be supplemented and corrected by a Christian understanding.
XI. The human good for Aquinas
We desire the good in its fullest form.
Any good found in the natural realm can only be a particular and finite good.
Nature does not provide us the means to fulfill our spiritual nature, but points beyond itself to what does fulfill us.
If the purpose of life is the possession of the supreme good, this can only be found in God himself.
This is not just knowledge about God, but acquaintance with God.
Perfect knowledge of God is impossible in this life, so it must be attainable in a (heavenly) afterlife.

Why Darwinian Ethics is a Screamin' Failure

This is a redated post.

This is an account of the life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins. The following item, in Jay's story, is what is interesting from the point of view of Darwinian ethics:

Hawkins left many children by many women. About 55 were known (or suspected) upon his death, and upon investigation, that number "soon became perhaps 75 offspring." [1]

Now from the point of view of Darwinian ethics, here is a screamin' success. This man passed on his genes 75 times! (I wonder what Wilt Chamberlain's numbers were?) But is this success? Was Hawkins even trying to pass on his genes? Or did he have more immediate goals in mind when these kids were conceived? Would Hawkins, an accomplished musician, even think that this was his own greatest accomplishment?

Yet, if Darwin's theory of evolution dictates moral norms, reproductive success would have to be the main goal of human existence. It's not, so Darwin's theory does not dictate moral norms.

Butler on Psychological Egoism

This is an explanation of Butler's critique of psychological egoism.

Psychological egoism

A. Psychological egoism
1. Difference between psychological egoism and ethical egoism. Strong psychological egoism is the view that all of our actions are really selfish. Weak psychological egoism is the view that we often, but not always, act out of self interest. Neither doctrine support ethical egoism, the doctrine that we ought to act in our own self interest.
2. Psychological egoism is a descriptive, not a normative theory. It talks about what we actually do, not what we ought to do. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarian (thoroughly anti-egoist theory) was a psychological egoist.
3. Psychological egoism seems on its face to be false. Perhaps the easiest way to see this is to notices the sacrifices that parents make for the sake of their children.
4. Typically, however, the egoist has a response. The egoist says that all actions are really selfish because they are aimed at some state of, say, the child, the real goal is to satisfy oneself.
5. The 18th century philosopher and clergyman Joseph Butler argued that this defense of psychological egoism is based on a confusion. Invariably when we succeed achieving a goal, we receive some satisfaction. However, it doesn’t follow that the action is aimed at achieving that satisfaction. Rather, the act is aimed at a state of the child, and if it genuinely helps the child, then quite naturally some satisfaction will arise as a byproduct.
6. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of apparently altruistic actions that are in fact selfish. Take, my favorite example, Oprah Winfrey giving cars away. At least some of us might be inclined to suppose that the real purpose of her giving away cars is not the interests of the recipients, but, maybe, ratings???

Theistic ethics

This is a redated post.

This is in response to some comments of Ed's.

Most theistic ethics is far beyond the "Becuase I said so" or even the "Because is said so and if you don't you're going to hell." That's an awfully crude and misleading picture of Christian ethics. The overall view that could be sketched goes something like this. God creates humans so that they will be able to get along for an eternity if they develop certain states of character. Certain states of character are reinforced by certain types of actions, and undermined by certain other types of actions. God then reveals to humans (slowly, over a period of evolving understanding) what kinds of actions will result in eternal flourishing. God creates you in such a way that your intended purpose and your inherent purpose are the same. You can only by happy forever by allowing yourself to be converted in to a person with a certain type of character.

It seems to me that, depending on some contingent features of human life, you might be able to be happier overall, by being a completely immoral, selfish SOB if it were really 70 years and out. With an eternity I think that's ruled out.

Mark Linville's argument against ethical naturalism