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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Why Christian apologists want atheists to read Nietzsche
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
is there any reason at all why a humanist can't support factory farming?
I'd suggest that it's a horror of homicide which naturally extends to a horror of killing other life to the extent that it resembles human life.
Almost everyone would be sorry or angry to see a chimpanzee killed or cruelly treated, but hardly anyone would give a second thought to swatting a fly. Cattle would be somewhere in the middle. So, naturally again, would a human fetus, by the way: we should expect to consider killing it increasingly repellent the older it is, without necessarily calling it murder.
The majority of humanists probably support the right to abort fetus, even at late stages of pregnancy. They could dismiss the argument that the late stage fetus resembles independent human life as sentimental - wittering on about its sweet fingers and toes to paraphrase one humanist.
However, if they then dismiss the argument against late abortion on the grounds that it's sentimental do you then have any grounds for a comeback when someone defends factory farming by saying that your objections to that are sentimental?
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Asking whether humanity benefits from the suffering and extinction of other beings is still treating the welfare of other beings as a means to the benefit of humanity.
Both are therefore inherently bad things for humanity. Which isn't the same as saying that they are categorical imperatives not to do.
I'm sorry: I really don't know whether what you mean by 'categorical imperative' is the same as what everyone else means.
(Eta: that sounds more dismissive than I mean. But I don't know what you mean by 'categorical imperative'.)
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The problem with humanism as an ideology is that it's big on affirming woolly platitudes about reason and the greater good of humanity, and poor on attempts to use reason to find out what the greater good of humanity is.
Reminds me a lot of the Sermon on the Mount that way. Are you really saying you want something like the Levitical laws as your basis for morality?
At least, with the Sermon on the Mount you can rule some things out altogether. (Retaliation for wrongs done to oneself is pretty hard to square away.)
There are some things that just cannot count as loving your neighbour. Dropping napalm on them can't. Does 'aspiring to the general good of humanity' mean enough that anything can't count as that? Napalming villagers might be taken as justified by the greater good.
(Is a future in which a small population of humans living blissfully in harmony with the environment a greater good than one in which many humans live on a planet just barely able to sustain them? There is in fact a coherent argument that the second is better.(*))
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In so far as it has an intellectual justification, it is based upon the value of some aspect of humanity.
In so far as religious morality has an intellectual justification, it is based upon the value of some aspect of God. Therefore no morality has an underlying intellectual justification of the sort you want. Why are you singling out Humanism? [/QB][/QUOTE]
The concept of God doesn't work like that. (God doesn't have value; God confers value. For that matter, God doesn't have aspects.) You can't say x is doing that because he loves God rather than because x loves his neighbour. Loving your neighbour is what loving God amounts to in practice.
(*) Take the small number of blissful people. Add some extra people, with no contact with the blissful people, who are not quite as blissful but are still living lives they judge worth living. Does this make the situation better or worse for humanity? It's hard to say that it doesn't make it better. Now give the extra people contact with the blissful people and adjust the situation to equalise the happiness of the blissful people and the extra people. Again, hard to say it doesn't make the situation better for humanity. Repeat the two steps until we reach the many humans on the planet barely able to sustain them. Argument by Derek Parfitt, who really didn't like the conclusion but couldn't see a way around it. (The answer I think is abandon the concept of the greater good as incoherent.)
[ 13. April 2013, 11:43: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Justinian
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# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
Lincoln did not exist.
Nice, thanks.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Nine times out of ten, when a Christian apologist starts going on about subjective morality and absolute morality, they're talking rubbish. The words 'subjective' and 'absolute' are great generators of confusion - nine times out of ten the person using them doesn't know what they're trying to say.
Agreed.
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Or to put it another way, can a humanist construct a roughly coherent moral structure in such a way that he or she would be able to address moral dilemmas without rationalising what he or she would have done anyway?
Yes. Golden rule vs raw selfishness. And before you say that's such an edge case, I'm going to point out that this is no different from Christianity where through biblical exegesis and finding reasons to support what they were already doing a lot of Christians and a lot of Christian thought came down pro-slavery.
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One of the humanist arguments against religion in public life is that arguments appealing to private revelation cannot be challenged by people who disagree. But how can humanists avoid the charge that their moral arguments are similarly based in private conviction and cannot be challenged?
Because humanists don't fall back on The Bible and God Says. They merely fall back on "My understanding is..." You might not be able to challenge a humanist successfully but there is no reason in principle why you can't. There is no humanist equivalent to "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Or to Leviticus 20:9-16 (for some reason people only ever cite Leviticus 20:13).
Christians in my experience break into two groups - one sort looks to Christianity for guidance, and these are not inherently different from humanists in how you reason with them. The other sort looks to the bible for Answers. And it's those that you can't challenge - the so-called biblical literalists or those who can say "The Church says it, I believe it, that settles it." If the Bible (or the Catechism or the teachings of Whoever, or Personal Revelation) are where you start, there's no fundamental difference from humanists. If they are where you finish, it's almost impossible to challenge without challenging the whole belief structure.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm sorry: I really don't know whether what you mean by 'categorical imperative' is the same as what everyone else means.
Thing you must take into account first, overriding all other constraints.
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At least, with the Sermon on the Mount you can rule some things out altogether. (Retaliation for wrongs done to oneself is pretty hard to square away.)
There are some things that just cannot count as loving your neighbour. Dropping napalm on them can't. Does 'aspiring to the general good of humanity' mean enough that anything can't count as that? Napalming villagers might be taken as justified by the greater good.
Auto-da-fe (both punishment and penance) on the other hand actually works under Christian morality. This is admittedly because the concept of Hell is addinga huge flaw to the whole of Christian morality.
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(Is a future in which a small population of humans living blissfully in harmony with the environment a greater good than one in which many humans live on a planet just barely able to sustain them? There is in fact a coherent argument that the second is better.(*))
There is - and as long as you make your axioms clear and say they are just as far as you have reached they can be argued with.
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The concept of God doesn't work like that. (God doesn't have value; God confers value. For that matter, God doesn't have aspects.)
God confers value because God's value is off the scale. And as for not having aspects, that depends in part on your understanding of the Trinity, and in part on your understanding of aspects.
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You can't say x is doing that because he loves God rather than because x loves his neighbour. Loving your neighbour is what loving God amounts to in practice.
You're making a leap of logic there. Loving your neighbour is only the second commandment in Christianity - and there are plenty of ways people think they can show their love for God without loving their neighbour (see building ridiculously extravagant churches) or love their neighbour in ways that are harmful to them because it will save their neighbour from hell.
quote:
Argument by Derek Parfitt, who really didn't like the conclusion but couldn't see a way around it. (The answer I think is abandon the concept of the greater good as incoherent.)
The first way round it is margin-of-error. If we have as many humans as the planet is able to sustain at a given time we have nothing when something goes wrong. The second is how do we assess the greater good. He's obviously decided to do it additively rather than multiplicitavely or for those already there. The third is that he's obviously defining happiness as goodness - which as your only axis leads to drugging the water supply.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
Its nice to have Justinian around since I mostly agree with him and he writes more clearly than I can.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Is that the case for any reasonable moral system? Not really. A moral system has be able to persuade people who don't agree with it, and also has to be open to challenge.
I don't think 'subjective' is the right word for what you're trying to say about secular morality. I don't think it's the right word for what you're trying to say about Biblical interpretation either. Because someone can argue about Biblical interpretation.
If a moral system is open to challenge and relies on persuasion, and will actually change when its shown to be ineffective, for example when confronted with facts about nature, it sounds very good to me. What I mean by subjective is that you have to start from a point of view, and you can't use science and logic to prove once and for all and to all people that your assumptions are correct. Those assumptions have to feel right to you and hopefully to many people. But you can't never forget that that is what they are and as such may be subject to change. About Biblical interpretation, the fact that you can argue does not mean that you will ever stop arguing. Each person will bring their own point of view or that of their sect and that means to me that the conclusions that they reach that way are subjective.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Or to put it another way, can a humanist construct a roughly coherent moral structure in such a way that he or she would be able to address moral dilemmas without rationalizing what he or she would have done anyway?
As Justinian said, Christians rationalize that way all the time. Its a very human thing to do. Even we Buddhists do that too.
And its also very human to hope for a moral system that is free from that. But this is what I mean about moral systems being subjective. You can't really do that. Not perfectly not for all time. You can get closer to the ideal. But nobody without "perfect" self knowledge is aware of all their blind spots and prejudices. And whole cultures are not exempt from that either as history clearly shows.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
I could quibble with the example and point out that one of the biggest PR problems the French Revolution had was that the people being executed by them mostly were literate, connected, and many were capable of writing.
That applies to the people killed in the Terror in Paris, many of whom had been part of the Revolution before they got caught up in the violence. Most of the violence occurred outside Paris to people in the provinces, often before the Terror proper.
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But some tools are easier to turn to the use of the powerful - Monotheism being the belief that there is one central most important figure of the universe is a particularly easy one.
For a broad sense of monotheism, broad enough to include systems where the theism is merely analogical, I might agree. Call such systems monologic. So that it is structured round a single source of value, such as the people, or reason, or humanity or so on. Of course, the same features make such systems available for the use of the powerless as well.
(Non-monologic systems in such terminology would include pre-philosophical paganism on the one hand, and post-Nietzschean postmodernism on the other.)
As such values go, the practical evidence is that Christianity is relatively resistant to the powerful. Come the Enlightenment, despots largely abandoned Christianity for deism. The ruling classes in China and Japan have never taken much to Christianity.
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You are confusing the map with the territory. Game Theory is a tool that can be used to investigate the real world and for which you need to attempt to take account of unquantifiables - if you fail to do so then the map doesn't match the territory. In which case what's wrong is the map.
Doesn't that amount to what I was saying: game theory is a map that doesn't match the territory? It's not just that game theory cannot take account of things that aren't quantifiable under the rules of the game; it's that it quantifies them anyway.
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If it's a choice between a coherent ethical system that doesn't match up to humans and a set of useful ethical guidelines that do I'll take the guidelines every time.
I feel that the choice is being presented as too stark, in such a way as to justify a set of approximations that are far too loose. To be useful a set of ethical guidelines must be sufficiently coherent that you can launch a critique from them without incurring the charge of special pleading.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Truman White
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# 17290
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Posted
Ikkuyu. You said
What I mean by subjective is that you have to start from a point of view, and you can't use science and logic to prove once and for all and to all people that your assumptions are correct.
Isn't that most things in the universe? How much does 'science and logic... prove once and for all' anyway? Notwithstanding all those issues that are outside the remit of science, science itself only gives us a current view based on existing knowledge. Even in areas that are properly the preserve of the scientific method, the degree of disagreement between scientists is evidence enough of its inability to prove very much 'once and for all'.
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Truman White:
Isn't that most things in the universe? How much does 'science and logic... prove once and for all' anyway? Notwithstanding all those issues that are outside the remit of science, science itself only gives us a current view based on existing knowledge. Even in areas that are properly the preserve of the scientific method, the degree of disagreement between scientists is evidence enough of its inability to prove very much 'once and for all'.
I agree with this.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Firstly, I don't think the Buddhist perspective is relevant to humanists who aren't Buddhists,unless it persuades them to become Buddhists.
Its at least as relevant as the Christian perspective. I think humanists enjoy being well informed.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Secondly, at least one Buddhist on these boards
(I can't remember who) recently said that Buddhists think all goods are illusory -
the greater good of humanity presumably being included in that.
I don't presume to speak for all Buddhists as I am sure you don't claim to speak for all Christians, that being said, as far as I can tell without reading what that other Buddhist said, the notion of all "goods" being illusory is based on the idea of non-attachment to views.
This, in my limited understanding means that notions such as the common good,
justice etc. can be usefull as far as they go but no further.
If you make an Idol of them, make them into fixed notions. They become
less an less usefull as they move further away from reality.
If your idea of the common good becomes unable to fit with what is realy going on, you change it.
One of the causes of suffering according to Buddhism is clinging to fixed ideas about things. If you cling to an idea long after it ceased being usefull, suffering is bound to happen. Of course this does not mean that you can't have ideas or opinions about things if you are Buddhist, you are just expected to hold them lightly.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Firstly, I don't think the Buddhist perspective is relevant to humanists who aren't Buddhists,unless it persuades them to become Buddhists.
Its at least as relevant as the Christian perspective. I think humanists enjoy being well informed.
I enjoy being well-informed too. But I couldn't lift a quote from the Dhammapada and claim it for Christianity unless I could show that it fitted into Christian tradition.
Being informed about Christianity is one thing; saying in one breath that one doesn't need religious values to be good and then quoting the sermon on the mount in the next would be another.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
]That applies to the people killed in the Terror in Paris, many of whom had been part of the Revolution before they got caught up in the violence. Most of the violence occurred outside Paris to people in the provinces, often before the Terror proper.
You're missing the point. The Ancien Regime was based on violence to keep the serfs down. I'm questioning whether the Revolution was more violent or was simply violent against the people who bought ink by the barrel.
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Doesn't that amount to what I was saying: game theory is a map that doesn't match the territory? It's not just that game theory cannot take account of things that aren't quantifiable under the rules of the game; it's that it quantifies them anyway.
No map, in order to be comprehensible, is able to both fully match the territory and be comprehensible by a human mind. You seem to think that admitting something is a map is a flaw. Me, I think any "Coherent system of ethics" is inherently hubristic as humans are simply not capable of understanding all the interactions they can have due to not being more complex than their own minds.
You basically have three choices.
- Do the best you can using maps you know to be imperfect and interpolating with what you know to be best estimates while accepting and accounting for the fact it is flawed.
- Con yourself that you really do have a coherent ethical system that is both simple enough to understand and apply and comprehensive enough to be generally applicable.
- Throw the baby out with the bathwater.
quote:
I feel that the choice is being presented as too stark, in such a way as to justify a set of approximations that are far too loose. To be useful a set of ethical guidelines must be sufficiently coherent that you can launch a critique from them without incurring the charge of special pleading.
The trouble here is that you're jumping in at the SMBC Porpoise costume critique level of the Golden Rule. The sort created from semantic games that miss the point rather than trying to grasp the whole intent.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
They could dismiss the argument that the late stage fetus resembles independent human life as sentimental - wittering on about its sweet fingers and toes to paraphrase one humanist.
However, if they then dismiss the argument against late abortion on the grounds that it's sentimental do you then have any grounds for a comeback when someone defends factory farming by saying that your objections to that are sentimental?
I'm not much of a philosopher, but in either case, my answer would be the same. First, could not one just as easily dismiss an aversion to homicide itself as sentimentality? Second, whether we call it sentimentality or not, it strikes me as sound psychology to suppose that cultivating an aversion to killing animals or beings reminiscent of humanity will prevent actual homicides. I can't cite any studies to that effect offhand, other than to recall how dramatically the simple step of superimposing an image of a man over the bull's eye for target practice reduced the inhibitions of soldiers against shooting actual enemies in battle.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I enjoy being well-informed too. But I couldn't lift a quote from the Dhammapada and claim it for Christianity unless I could show that it fitted into Christian tradition.
Being informed about Christianity is one thing; saying in one breath that one doesn't need religious values to be good and then quoting the sermon on the mount in the next would be another.
When I quoted the Dhammapada my point was that claiming that the choice is only between Christian values and Nihilism ignores many alternative viewpoints. And I am not claiming the Dhammapada for humanists since I am a Buddhist and I cited the source. But I would not mind if an argument from Buddhism helped a humanist live better.
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
No map, in order to be comprehensible, is able to both fully match the territory
and be comprehensible by a human mind. You seem to think that admitting something
is a map is a flaw. Me, I think any "Coherent system of ethics" is inherently hubristic
as humans are simply not capable of understanding all the interactions they can have due
to not being more complex than their own minds.
I love this. Don't confuse the map for the territory, don't confuse the finger pointing at the Moon for the Moon.
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Do the best you can using maps you know to be imperfect and interpolating with what
you know to be best estimates while accepting and accounting for the fact it is flawed.
This approach makes perfect sense to me. I would add that taking a critical look at the maps
that have been used for millenia by many people can be a part of that approach. You can find inspiration and cautionary tales on your way to creating your own map.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Doesn't that amount to what I was saying: game theory is a map that doesn't match the territory? It's not just that game theory cannot take account of things that aren't quantifiable under the rules of the game; it's that it quantifies them anyway.
No map, in order to be comprehensible, is able to both fully match the territory and be comprehensible by a human mind. You seem to think that admitting something is a map is a flaw.
I think that not matching the territory is a flaw. You can be abstract from the territory, but if you start marking terrain as smooth going when it's an impassable bog you're beginning to be less than useful.
quote:
Me, I think any "Coherent system of ethics" is inherently hubristic as humans are simply not capable of understanding all the interactions they can have due to not being more complex than their own minds.
Complete is not the same as coherent.
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You basically have three choices.
- Do the best you can using maps you know to be imperfect and interpolating with what you know to be best estimates while accepting and accounting for the fact it is flawed.
- Con yourself that you really do have a coherent ethical system that is both simple enough to understand and apply and comprehensive enough to be generally applicable.
- Throw the baby out with the bathwater.
We can go along with that. The difference between us is you think you're going for option one, while I think you're going for an amalgam of two and three.
Two, because you react to criticism by dismissing it as semantic stuff about porpoise games.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Don't confuse the map for the territory, don't confuse the finger pointing at the Moon for the Moon.
In the case of human nature, the map is part of the territory.
An example, due to Michael Sandel: a nursery in Israel was having a problem that a few parents left their children there for longer than nursery hours so that the staff had to stay on. The nursery decided to introduce a fine to discourage them. The result was that the problem got worse: more parents left their children more often.
What had happened is that by introducing the fine the nursery had changed the nature of the transaction. Instead of asking parents to show consideration for the staff, the nursery had turned the relationship into one governed by game theory. And under game theory the payoff of leaving children minus fine was greater for many parents than the payoff of picking up children on time.
Justifying morality using game theory changes the nature of the morality that you're trying to justify.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
What had happened is that by introducing the fine the nursery had changed the nature of the transaction. Instead of asking parents to show consideration for the staff, the nursery had turned the relationship into one governed by game theory.
Are those parents really using game theory to decide? In my view the change was from a system based on empathy to a system based on Capitalism.
It changed from "do I care about the employees?" to "Can we afford this?", from "we are providing for your children because we care" to "we are a business".
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Justifying morality using game theory changes the nature of the morality that you're trying to justify.
This actually gives Justinian more ammunition.
We are trying do describe ourselves. Any position we take is inherently subjective and will affect what we are trying to describe.
Also we need to first agree on what is the territory we are trying to map.
There are at least three different problems here. Explaining what people do in real life? Something like game theory could be useful of course you need more.
Finding a way to motivate them to do what you want? Of course, the reason why people do what they do will have an effect on their real actions. But probably less than what they think If you were to ask them. We find reasons for a lot of what we do after we do it. This has been mentioned before in more than one thread.
In the nursery case. The problem of the admins was to motivate people to do what they wanted.
Inserting money into the mix clearly did not help.
Appealing to their compassion towards the workers might have been better. Or perhaps understanding better why the parents were late. Maybe their work schedules?
Finding an Objective moral theory that covers every conceivable situation in the best possible way? Doubtful, since we can't even agree on what's best.
Which leaves us with Justinian's choice 1.
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
Justinian:
I've appreciated your posts and have only not replied because I was away, with only an iPad. YMMD but I can't get on with the iPAd for content generation. Still . .
quote:
Because humanists don't fall back on The Bible and God Says. They merely fall back on "My understanding is..." You might not be able to challenge a humanist successfully but there is no reason in principle why you can't. There is no humanist equivalent to "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Or to Leviticus 20:9-16 (for some reason people only ever cite Leviticus 20:13).
Can I just mount a complaint first that once again you are having to dig into texts of over 2,000+ years antiquity to quote a principle that no mainstream christian would take as present guidance.
But still if all you are trying to establish is that Christians would seek to persecute some opinions then you are correct and don't need to delve into the past.
But one of the concerns that I have is that although non-believers may have genuine personal beliefs, they will not seek to impose them, due to a felt lack of justification, due to the idea that any form of repression is wrong or at least very suspect. So we drift into Brave New World.
Given that we now no longer believe that witches exist then to get back to that mindset we would need to think of, say, people to give free drugs to kids to get them hooked. Of course witches don't exist, unscrupulous drug dealers do, and whilst I assume you would not impose capital punishment, you presumably would not permit such a person to be at large, plying their trade. Same with many pimps.
The issue only becomes an issue when you have a viewpoint, which you do not believe can be proved scientifically AND you seeks to impose it.
Quite probably, in the example I chose, you could mount a good enough argument, although the scientific argument against sex as a business is not clear to me.
But the issue becomes trickier went it comes to allowing groups to organise for the promotion of view you thinks are vile. Would you allow, for example, an openly anti-semitic and racist political party to exist? Many would because of the idea that free speech is an inalienable right. I don't believe that.
BTW the one point you made that did surprise me was your view that all advocates of eugenics are necessarily nasty. That is not my experience of such people I have known.
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
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