What Does "In X's Interest" Mean?

Jonathan is overweight and considered morbidly obese. He frequents fast food resteraunts for most meals, and ignores doctors repeated warnings that, with every meal, he decreases his chance of living. He keeps eating fast food because it tastes much better than food he would make himself.

Tamara smokes marijuana every day. Despite the fact that it is illegal, she likes to smoke it because it helps her concentrate and relaxes her. She is not familiar with some of marijuana's health risks but obviously knows the legal risks. She continiues to buy and smoke marijuana despite this knowlege.

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So are these activities in these two actors interests? Some say that eating fast food and smoking marijuana are in these two's interests because (obviously) these two engage in these activities. Others say that the activities are not in these two's best interests and that engaging in the activities is acting against their true interests.

To me, this difference of opinion resides in the conflict between what we mean by interests. Does 'interests' mean 'what one is interested in' or does it mean 'what is best for you'? If the former, then a case can be made that whatever we do because we like to do it is in our interest. We can make the argument that no one knows their interest better than others.

If, by 'interest' we mean 'what is best for someone,' then it is quite obvious that others can know our interests better than we. After all, it makes perfect sense to see that a child may not know what is best for her while a mother might (especially when the child wants candy while the mother pushes vegetables).

This question undergirds much of political theory. The question generally is not, or should not be, framed in an all or nothing way. Those who take the extremely libertarian (and really, anarchistic) view that only the individual can judge what is best for her will be foreced into many untenable positions (like the idea that 5 year olds should be able to choose to marry, drive, or do heroin, or that manic depressives should never be protected from suicide against their will). Those who take the opposite position - that others can often know what is best for the individual) have no reason to deny that the government knows what is best for us to read, see, or do.

Rather than being a black or white issue, the question generally is this: how can we recognize that there are occasions where y can know what is in x's best interest while also recognizing y's right to make decisions about her own life without x coming to dominate y? In other words, how can we respect y's ability to lead her own life while recognizing that there may be occasions where x may be in a better position than y (a kid, a mentally deluded person, a drug addict) to judge x's interests.

One can say, and many have, that the difference is in deciphering whether x is "thinking straight." But this hopelessly begs the question because, in general, we judge "thinking straight" by the conclusion come to. If one is against pornography, then there is no way that the urge to consume pornography can be seen as "thinking straight." If one is against suicide, then there is no way that a person who wants to commit suicide (however rational they, or their reasons, might be) will be seen as "thinking straight." Thus, "thinking straight' as a criterion is too nebulous and up to personal opinion to be of value.

So is saying that something is in x's best interest if and only if it is justifiable. Justifiable to whom? And what is and is not justifiable depends on who the proposition is being argued to. If it is the anti-pornography judge, then arguments for pornography can never be justifiable (like they would be to one who sees nothing wrong with pornography). Different people see different things as justifiable, and there is no cosmic "justifiability" principle.

So how can we tell whether x is acting in her interest? I think the issue still comes back to what we mean by her interest. I generally take the side that in the absence of evidence that x has sometype of mental deficiency that grossly inhibits her ability to make an objective (or close to) decision, then we lack any ground to say that x is incapable of ascertaining her own interest. (In this case, children, drug addicts, and those suffering from mood or emotional disorders are all considered mentally deficient in this way. Everyone recognizes this of the latter two groups, but children can be seen as mentally deficient in the sense that they lack the intellectual capacity to make fully informed decisions.)

Further, I take the stance that, if a person is seen as mentally deficient based on psychologicl data, we must further ask about the gravity of the decision x is about to make. Unless her decision is one that will have drastic personal consequences of the type she cannot adequately assess, we should let her do as she pleases. Only when what she is about to do has drastic consequences (engage in consumption of a lethal drug, commit suicide, get into an otherwise dangerous and potentially life changing situaiton), should we interfere and prevent her.

Put differently, the two criteria I think should be used in deciding whether x can accurately appraise her interests and whether to intervene are (a) whether the person can justly be seen as mentally incapable of acting objectively or near-objectively; and (b) whether the "interest" in question has potentially disasterous and life-changing cosnequences.

Following this rule would make it so that we can recognize that the child is not capable of deciding to marrry but the adult can. We could see that an adult can decide for herself whether to smoke marijuana but may not be able to judge whether she should continue injecting heroin or cystal meth. We could achieve a libertarian end of "live and let live" without getting to the point of "live and let die."

On the Human Quest for Cosmic Purpose and Rationale

On anothe blog, a fellow atheist hs written a piece oce the human quest for external purpose. Many humans, that is, quest for a purpose in life that is extenal and not of their own making ("I am part of god's plan, etc.)

The author of the article correctly notes that as the universe does not itself have desires and is not cognizant, the world has no ultimate purpose (and even if a god created us for or with a purpose, that is not mean we are bound by that purpose or that it is a purpose that would satisfy us.

Early in the article, though, he asks a very non-rhetorical question that I think should and can be answered:

I do not know where this want for an external purpose comes from. Perhaps it is some left-over brain program from our childhood where we are inclined to prefer the values of our parents. Perhaps it is something that is taught from one generation to the next without stopping to consider the wisdom (or foolishness) of doing so.

Fyfe cannot identify with the search for an external, larger, purpose to life, or the emptiness many can feel when they do not find one. While I can relate - I have no need to find a 'bigger' purpose - I can certainly relate to those who do and think I can give some explanations here. And a search for a 'bigger' purpose has little to do with motivations that Fyfe proposes.

Why do we search for grand purpose in life rather than being satisfied with human-made purposes? First, I believe that we do this because many lives that contain hardship are assuaged by the belief that "there has to be more than just this." Slavery is a good example of this. The slave, who was/is forced to toil for many hours a day under brutal condition, and who had no control over his/her life, may take comfort in the idea that he/she is part of something larger and better than his/her own day-to-day. Saying that the slave's own life is the purpose of his/her life does not do becuase he/she feels their life to be intrinsically purposeless.

But what about those who are better off? Why do folk with relatively happy (or at least very tolerable) lives feel the need to search for a larger purpose? I have known many who've done this - who go into a particular profesion, for instance, because they feel they are "serving the greater good," or the like. Even if they are creating this purpose for themselves (which often they have), they are comforted by the fact that they are serving a purpose larger than themselves, and would be unsatisfied with the suggestion that they have created, rather than been given, a purpoose for their lives.

In these cases, having a purpose imposed on one (or the feeling of it) makes the purpose feel more real and legitimate. It does not feel self-serving, but other-serving. Teh best analogy I can think of is the satisfaction of scoring well on a test of someone else's creation versus scoring well on a test that one whore oneself. The latter does not cause satisfaction because the task was too easy, as one simply gave the answers to questions one created. The real satisfaction lies in beating the challenge of performing well under conditions not of one's own making.

In the same way, creating one's own purpose to live up to is less satisfying, because less challenging, than fulfilling a life purpose created by onesself.

Another reason why serving a "larger" purpose is seen as more fulfilling than serving one's own individually made purpose is because when serving others, one can feel like they are making a difference in the worldd, rather than just in themselves. This is seen by the familiar film and book plot/theme of the shallow business person (or other type of egoist) that lives like solely for themselves but unexpectedly finds joy in helping others (which was, generally at first, against his will). [films like "Family Man" or "Two Weeks Notice" are more popular examples.]

I have never really felt the need to seek after an externally imposed, and larger, purpose. But I have felt the need to help others rather than pursue solely what is in my own personal interest. I did this when I became a teacher rather than went into a PhD program. I wanted to do the latter, but did the former because I wanted to do something at once hard, helpful, and effectual. All I can say is that this choice, while certainly the tougher path, felt more "solid" than the self-serving goal of PhD because it involved helping others by making a sacrifice. While I was not searching for a higher purpose, I can attest to the psychological pull that serving social (and in some sense, larger) purposes can have over serving individually made (and smaller, by radius) purposes.

Why Do Philosophers Have Such an Antipathy Towards Consumption?

On a recent episode of the television show, No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed, the topic under discussion was "the ethics of consumption." One guest, drawing much from Plato and Aristotle, brought up an interesting point: philosophers have largely "spoken with one voice" in their antipathy towards consumption of bodily pleasures.

While this statement's absolutism was challenged by another guest, the point is very correct. While philosophers differ in degree of antipathy, they have largely "spoken with one voice" in antipathy towards consumption. Even the most "happiness focused" philosophers, like JS Mill and Epicurus, were always insistent that true happiness is something untied to consumption and that consumption is something of a transient and crass, and lesser, version of happiness.

My problem with this idea - that happiness is something very unrelated to true happiness - is that it does not jibe with the way real people live. While a philosopher may be able to convince another philosopher that true happiness cannot be enhanced or affected by consuming nice things, I don't think that the philosopher would be able to convince P. Diddy, any member of "The Real Housewives of Orange County," or the myriad of real people who aspire to make more money so that their standard of living might improve of the idea that pursuit of nice things is a mirage of real happiness.

The question is: why are philosophers so unanimous in their antipathy towards consumption and acquisition of physical pleasures and their suggestion that real happiness comes from intellectual and "spiritual" pleasures such as good conversation, an active mind, and the like?

My first thought, as I watched the program (where one guest very explicitly suggested, and another agreed, to this dictum) is that perhaps, this is an example of philosophers projecting their predilections onto others. Philosophers, after all, are the happiest when undergoing intellectual pursuits and are not as concerned with the world of concretes. As such, it would make sense for them to beatify the "life of the mind" as the road to real happiness, and the "life of bodily pleasures" as a distracting detour. (I've always thought that this was why John Stuart Mill was so insistent that, in ranking pleasures, bookish pleasures of the type he valued were placed above all others; his mistake was to assume that the pleasures he found most desirable were THE most desirable.)

Another thought is that philosophers may devalue material wealth because, subconsciously, they are justifying the fact that they are generally forced to get along with less. Plato may have devalued material pleasures and extol intellectual pleasures because this was the way he was forced to live. It is quite possible to suppose that as philosophers don't tend to make as much as merchants (but FEEL much more important than merchants), their way of "justifying" this (to themselves and others) was to philosophically devalue materialism and extol intellectualism as the true ideal.

I am certainly not the first to suspect this idea. Philosopher Robert Nozick - one of the few to openly prise capitalism - wrote an essay offering answers to the question, "Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?"

In the essay, he gave two main answers: (1) intellectuals often feel that they are slighted by capitalism, as they tend to make less, but feel they are worth more, than businesspeople; (2) intellectuals were the group generally told in school that they were "the best" and were often raised with a sense that they should be the prized group in society. (Therefore, any system that does not value them more than merchants is inherently unjust.)

Intellectuals now expect to be the most highly valued people in a society, those with the most prestige and power, those with the greatest rewards. Intellectuals feel entitled to this. But, by and large, a capitalist society does not honor its intellectuals.

The last possible reason I want to offer for why philosophers may devalue consumption more than most of the "real world," is that, as they deal in ideas and abstractions rather than concretes, there is a tendency to believe (implicitly if not explicitly) that ideas are more real, lasting, and pure than the "real" world of concretes. This can be seen by the scorn that has often been thrown towards the philosophy of pragmatism, which always attempted to put ideas in the service of practice, rather than the other way around. AS pragmatism cared more for what worked in practice rather than ideational soundness (efficacy over consistency or philosophical beauty), pragmatism has often been seen, pejoratively, as the philosophy of businessmen and "the bottom line."

This may explain why people who are not intellectuals or philosophers do not tend to take as crass an attitude towards material wealth than philosophers and intellectuals. To the former group, material pleasure is a very real thing and ideas do not have quite the status placed on them by philosophers (who employ them constantly). Most regular people are not as happy mulling over Proust and Wittgenstein as they are watching a Blu-Ray on a big HD TV. (Philosophers, of course, cannot relate to this. It doesn't hold true for them.)

I am not one to say that material pleasure has any 1:1 relationship with happiness, and have seen enough empirical studies suggesting that no such relationship exists to know better. But I simply think that this is an area where the rift between philosophy and the real world is very great indeed. It is also an area where philosophers so easily fall into the mistake of WRONGLY assuming that what it is like to be them is what it is like to be everyone else. (Of course material consumption is inferior to intellectual consumption! Who would suggest otherwise?!)

Until philosophers can prove to non-philosophers (the decided majority) the intrinsic value of not pursuing nice things and good sensual experiences (and rather living the life of an intellectually satisfied ascetic) - which I don't think can be done with a straight face - then I will regard it as a shame to hear that philosophers "speak with one voice" on the undesirability of consumption. Unfortunately, that "one voice" will be one only heard by philosophers.

Does "Socially Constructed" Equal "Bad"?

Like so many other good ideas that went too far, our insatiable urge to "deconstruct" things began in the 1960's. With the help of postmodernist philosophy, The Western World began its infatuation with pointing out social constructions and deconstructing them - allegedly to show the truth behind the fictions.

But we seldom take the time to ask ourselves a simple but necessary questions: Just because it is socially constructed, does that mean it is wrong or bad? All it means for something to be socially constructed - as the label suggests - is that a thing is artificially constructed by individuals rather than naturally existing. While baseballs, bats, and gloves exist, the rules of baseball are socially constructed. While dinner plates and teacups exist, the etiquette of the tea party are socially constructed. Does that mean that the fomer "really" existing things are any more beneficial than the latter? Does the fact that the rules of baseball and tea parties are socially constructed mean automatically that they are arbitrary? (Unfortunately, postmodernism taught us not only how to spot social constructions, but to automatically associate them with arbitrariness.)

Consider the following quote from an interview in the book Generation Me:

"My generation is much more independent. I pride myself on being a free and independent thinker. My wish is to break down the walls that humans have socially constructed." (Generation Me, Kindle edition, loc. 457)

That which is socially constructed is synonymous with a wall that needs to be "broken down," while that which is not socially constructed - in this case, that which is individually constructed, is to be worn like a badge connoting "free[dom] and independence."

Just as one can argue that blind acceptance of social constructions is a symptom of not thinking, so, I think, is the above reaction that "social constructions" should be avoided. The question that both sides should be asking is whether the social construction has merit - whether it exists for a good reason or whether it is, in fact, arbitrary.

Many socially constructed rules I can think of are not only completely non-arbitrary, but exist for a definite and good purpose. One example that always comes up is (what used to be) the etiquette of walking in crowds. Like rules of traffic, people used to adhere to the rule that one walks on the right. This rule, while socially constructed, serves (actually, served) a definite purpose of reducing the amount of bumping and careening that would occur when walking in public. (Nothing maddens me more than walking in a mall where no one follows this rule, and as a result, one must watch in front of them every second to avoid careening into other walkers.)

The use of money (and especially credit), the idea of tipping wait staff, and the courtesy of sending thank you notes to those who do something nice for you are all social constructions. But I don't see how anyone could argue that these things are arbitrary.

To me, the measure of whether to follow a social construction or not is to evaluate whether the rule is one that, if followed by everyone, does some good and, if ignored by everyone, would make things less good. (Certainly this is why the rule of walking on the right side is worthy of being followed, because when no one follows it, walking in crowds becomes more haphazard.)

Inevitably, someone reading this will wonder if its author is a conservative prig that bemoans the good old days when we followed rules for the sake of following rules. I assure this reader that I am nothing of the kind, but only one who believes that there is something to be said for rules when those rules can be shown (by the above method) to be well-advised and practical.

In fact, my fiancee and I are getting married in about six weeks and have decided to dispense with many of the arbitrary but oft-followed socially constructed rules. Here are a few rules that we have decided not to follow (much to the dismay of the more conservative ones in our families):

(a) we are going to hyphenate both of our names. (We will both be "Currie-Knight." We decided that doing it any other way does an injustice to the 50/50 nature of our fusing of identities.

(b) my parents are paying for the wedding (her parents have opted to give us a down-payment on a future house)

(c) I will not be wearing a tuxedo, but a very nice suit

(d) We are not going on a honeymoon (as getting the time off of work is tedious, and we have already taken big vacations together. We'd rather use the money towards something more useful.)

All of the rules that are broken above (taking the man's last name, the bride's parents paying for the wedding, wearing a tuxedo, honeymoon) are examples of social constructions that have no utility and are etiquette for the sake of etiquette. These are the types of social constructions that I think many have in mind when they express disdain for social constructions. Traffic laws, an economy built on credit, and the US Constitution are examples of social constructions that nobody seriously argues are arbitrary.)

So, why do we have so much disdain for anything smacking of "social construction"? Like so many other good ideas, I think the idea of nonconformity and skepticism of tradition is an idea that was just pushed too far. It is certainly good to be independent, but being so to the point of abandoning the mores of the job interview can be positively deleterious. It is okay to question authority, but to do so to the point of developing a knee-jerk reaction to anything that smack's of instruction or the imparting of wisdom can bite one in the ass. It is okay to rebel against rules of etiquette when such rules can be smacked down as arbitrary, but we must be mindful that many socially constructed things were socially constructed for a reason: they serve a valid social purpose of creating order.

So next time you get bumped into while strolling the aisles of the mall, ask yourself: are all social constructions arbitrary and wrong and arbitrary?

The Impossibility of Objective Morality

Every once in a while, I force myself to take seriously the idea that morality, and moral disputes, are a matter of objective fact. I confess that I have never been able to find a good argument for this viewpoint, and while I know that many have been convinced by it, I confess my blindness for how.

The most convincing argument for me against the possibility that morality is about objective fact is the idea that the only "thing" we have to measure the "correctness" of moral statements by is our moral sentiments. Further, there is simply no good reason to suspect, and every reason to reject, that these are objective in nature. In other words, we have no objective moral blueprint to hold up to our moraal judgments to help us know whether they are correct. We only have our individual sentiments on the matter, which seem far from being objective.

To put the matter concretely, when two or more people disagree on a scientific proposition or conjecture, experiments can be performed (and it is quite hard to deny that the world these experiments are performed in is not objective). Competing theories will stand or fall based on their results in experiment against an objective world, results that are independent of anyone's wishes or desires.

Contrast that with disagreement over moral matters. When two people disagree on moral matters - one says x is right and the other, that x is wrong - there is nothing resemblinng the objective world - a world of moral fact- that we can hold the competing judgments up to. IN order to know whether x is REALLY right or wrong, we would have to have access to the world of moral facts, so that we can find out which proclamation that world endorses. So far as we can tell, there is no such world of moral facts (and when people say there is, they are generally getting there by intution, begging the question of how objective those intutions really are.)

Some diagree with this; they suggest that there IS a factual resolution to moral disputes. When I say x is wrong and you say x is right, some say that we can experiment. Per Hume's is/ought dichotomy, it is a different thing to say, "x causes suffering," than it is to say, "x is wrong." That x may cause suffering is an observable fact. That x is wrong expresses more than that x causes suffering, but goes further by inserting a value judgment that suffering is wrong. As good as that may sound, there is no objective way to prove the latter as there is the former. This is precisely because "x causes suffering," can be validated solely by appealing to the objective world of descriptive fact. That x is wrong is unprovable because it goes beyond the brute world of descriptive fact.

I confess that I cannot see how to get around this. The arguments I've heard seem to mistake the speaker's strong intuitional moral sense for an objective world of moral facts. And to me, there seems no good reason to suppose that these intuitions are anything more than psychological preferences (that we mistake solely becuase they are so strong that they SEEM to be obvious to everyone).

I have tried and tried to "get into the belief" and understand how one can believe in an objective morality, but there seem too many problems to make such a belief worthwhile. How can moral disagreements be resolved similarly to the objective resolutions in science? Where are the incontestible proofs of some moral propositions over others? How can "is" (recognition of fact) lead inexoribly to "ought (a prescriptive obligation)?

What is Moral Subjectivism?

On another website, a reader asked: ""Still can anyone here give a decent and concise version of sophisticated moral subjectivism to be addressed?"

This was my best response:

am not sure how "sophisticated" it is, but let me try.

I see moral subjectivism the way JL Mackie did: it is the negation of moral objectivism. Morals are not properties of the "out there" world and, as such, they are properties of the subject's mental world.

Put further, we may feel or think certain things to be right and good, but we are in error if we think there is any objective reason compelling others to see it the same way. No matter how knock down or drag out our argument is for the rightness of a particlar thing, that argument will always be our opinion of the mattter, not objective fact.

Subjectivists are not, as David seems to be getting at, nihilists. We have as strong ideas about moral oughts as anyone else, and we judge others and ourselves by standards. We also try to convince others to see things morally as we do.

What subjectivists can't do, though, is to think that any moral system - even our own - has necessary import beyond our own subjective minds. We may wish it were different, but in the absence of any great suggestion on how to detect the moral properties that some allege exist in the world, we see morality as a product of individual subjects making individual judgments.

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People have a big problem with subjectivism. How, we think, can our strong convictions that pedophilia, murder, homosexuality, bestaility, theft, etc, are simply subjective opinion statements? They feel like more; we want them to be more. We want them to be truths binding on all and all alike, and we want those who disagree with us not simply to be of differing opinion, but to be WRONG.

Heck, even I - a subjectivist - would rather subjectivism be false. Subjectivism is boring, as subjectivism has nothing positive to say in ethics or morals. The only benefit to being a subjectivist is that it allows me to be a pluralist and avoid dogmaatism. But still, I would rather believe that there were definitive rights and wrongs that transcended individual subjective judgment.

The problem is that there is really no evidence for objective morality. As JL Mackie wrote, we do not have any reason to believe that "goodness" is a property in the world and do not even know what such a property would be like (do we see it, smell it, hear it, feel it, or taste it?) Nor does it make sense to say that "good," "bad," "right" and "wrong" are objective terms, in the face of so much disgareement about (a) what they mean, and (b) concrete moral quesitons (is abortion good?).

Further, we know that "good" and "bad" are valuative terms much like "hot" and "cold." Like "hot" and "cold" (or "beautiful" or "ugly") these terms are vaguely descriptive. (We all know what is meant when we say that a song was ugly or say that the beverage is hot.) But we also know that there is no objective standard for what is "hot" or "cold" (my "hot" may be your "lukewarm" and her "cold" with none of us being objectively right or wrong.)

Subjective morality is this kind of view. Even if we all kind of know what is meant by saying things like "Johny did something very bad," or "Jenny is a good human being," there seemingly exists no objective standard - true for all - by which to judge what is good and bad. (And like terms dealing with termpurature, subjectivists see moral terms as often having fuzzy borders).

So, while being a moral subjectivist may confine me to never having the satisfaction of knowing that I am objectively right in my moral judgments, until I hear some good arguments as to where we can find moral qualities in the "out there" universe, I have to remain a subjectivist.

Problem With Utilitarianism

If someone asked me what my moral views are, I would probably call myself a rule utilitarian. To quote from Wikipedia's concise definition, I believe that "that moral actions are those which conform to the rules which lead to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance."

Even though I take a utilitarian view myself, I have a problem with utilitarianism, even of "rule utilitarianism," - at some point, utilitarians, who believe that moral actions are those that tend to maximize x )(happiness, fulfillment of desires, etc), will be asked to justify the utilitarianism itself. ("Why should we want to maximize x rather than y or z?") At that point, the utilitarian will either (a) have to justify their utilitarianism with some moral argument not itself utilitarian; (b) justify their utilitarianism with utililtarian reasoning; or (c) suggest that utilitarianism cannot justify maximizing x over y or z. (a) and (c) would render utilitarianism too flimsy by admitting that utilltarianism itself is not sufficient to account for all of the moral universe (which is important because once this is acknowledged, we have to question whether "the good" can be defined as "that which maximizes x" as there must now exist something "good (x) which does not derive its goodness from "its ability to maximize x." (b) would make utilitarianism troublingly circular, as justifying x by suggesting that "it effectively maximizes x" does nothing to answer the question "why justify x."

As I feel like the preceeding chapter contained too much philosophical jibberish, let me illustrate the point by rehashing a recent discussion on the atheist ethicist blog.

Its author, Alonzo Fyfe, is an advocate of desire utilitarianism, where moral action is defined as "that action which tends to fulfill desires." In his words, " A good desire is desire that tends to fulfill other desires." Conversely, a desire is not good when it tends to thwart other desires.

The desire utilitarian does not measure utility exclusively in terms of pleasure, happiness, well being, or preference satisfaction. Desire utilitarians say that the good is found in all of the things that we desire. It is found in happiness to the degree that we desire happiness, and it is found in pleasure to the degree that we desire pleasure. It is found in the company of family to the degree that we desire the company of family. All value exists in the form of desire fulfillment.

Aside from some problems I have with this style of utilitarianism (it is impossibly vague, malleable, and, at root, way more subjective and psychologistic than it aspires to be), it is question begging (as all forms of utilitarianism are). "Why is fulfilling desires considered "good"?"
Desire utilitarians could go for strategy (a), (b) or (c) above.

(a) "Fulfilling desires is "good" because fulfilling desires is what makes people happy and what makes people happy is good."

This is no good, because it tacitly admits that "good" is not defined by "ability to fulfill other desires. Therefore, it negates the desire utilitarians' claims "good" is defined in utilitarian terms.

(b) Fulfilling desires is "good" because fulfilling desires leads to fulfilling desires, which is "good."

While this option is the only one that stays "in bounds" of desire utilitarianism, the above answer is nonsensical because it is whoppingly circular. Further, it does not answer the question of why fulfilling desires is good (but only pushes the problem back a step.)

(c) Utilitarianism lacks the abillity to justify fulfilling desire (over some other variable) as the ultimate good on its own terms.

This seems to me the most honest answer. Utilitarianism always suggests that "good" is synonymous with "that which maximizes x" but cannot justify this as an ultimate valule on utilitarian grounds without being meaninglessly circular.


So why would I consider myself a rule utilitarian? I think that that moral actions are those which, if everyone acted the same way, would maximize liberty to pursuse their own happiness (within non-coercive bounds). But how can I justify my desire to see liberty to pursue happiness maximized?

I certainly cannot do it on utilitarian grounds (as liberty does nothing to maximize others' liberty). Like liberal pluralist William Galston, I throw up my hands and suggest that liberty is to be valued as a good simply becuase, if I had to guess, I would suppose that most people value liberty and would want to avoid coercion as much as possible.

Put differently, I am a rule utilitarian because I think that the best way to explain the morality of not stealing from others, helping others, and obeying traffic laws is that, the more people who do these things, the more liberty we and others will get to enjoy. While we sometimes have to do things (follow traffic laws, refrain from killing our bosses), the best reason to do these things - what makse them "good" - is that living in a world where there are traffic laws and rules against murdering bosses is more conducive to liberty than ones that are not.

Still, utilitarianism's fundamental flaw is that it, by itself, will always be incapable of justifying its particlar vision of what to maximize ("the good is what maximises fulfillment of desires,"). It will always have to resort to some extra-utilitarian justification somewhere along the way, lest it become viciously circular.

My Ambivalent Feelings Toward Philosophy

At one point in my life, I wanted to be a philosopher. There was nothing I enjoyed more than sitting down with a book of philosophy, read through it, turn its ideas over in my head, and develop, or redevelop, my own thoughts.I still love to do all of that, but have given up on the idea of being a philosopher. If I can be blunt, philosophy has become to me like stamp collecting is to its enthusiasts: something that pleases me immensely, but not something I see enough point in to see a career in it.

Unfortunately, I think philosophy began to lose its esteem for me in graduate school. I was a political science major, but I always gravitated towards philosophic areas: philosophy of jurisprudence, moral philosophy, philosophic attempts to justify a liberal state, etc. Reading books in sociology, political science, and politics could be interesting, none of them seemed to grapple with the truly interesting and challenging questions tdhat - as philosophy does - steps beyond the facts of the matter, and gets to the ideas behind them. Yes, political economists could weight capitalism versus socialism economically, but Isaiah Berlin, Robert Nozick, and Richard Rorty could grapple with the moral issues behind these two set-ups.

While I loved philosophy dearly, and cherished spending time with it after classes were over, I only realized much later that I was slowly becoming frustrated with it. I was coming to a realization - one I still keep to this day - that philosophy's inability to solve so many problems left me doubting that its banter was ever going to lead to anywhere concrete. Further, I started to question the entire enterprise's goal of coming up with logically cogent and consistent systems to explain x, y, and z as a valid enterprise; what reason was there to suppose that x, y, and z are reducible to a logically cogent and consistent system at all? (It is not obvious that the world "designed" itself to fit into a system, yet that was the necessary presupposition undergirding much philosophy.)

To make this latter point more concrete, one of the areas I began to question the validity of was my much beloved moral philosophy. The goal of the moral philosophers - defenders of categorical imperatives, utilitarianism, consequentialism, natural law, etc - was to develop a system that could, if properly used, help us reach the right decision in moral cases. The articles and books outlining and defending these thought-up systems would be followed by critiques aiming to show that the defended system is flawed because the results it would get in a certain situation do not accord with our intuitions of the good, and so on. ("X theory, if properly used, would lead to result y, which does not accord with our intuitions. Therefore, it is back to the drawing board."

As this went on indefinitely - new systems developed and refuted, which led to new systems... - I began to wonder why it never seemed to occur to anyone that perhaps moral intuitions are not reducible to a neat system. I relayed this concerns to some of my philosophy professors and friends with a typical reaction: a grudging admittance of its possibility followed by a quick change of subject back to moral system.

I became more and more dissatisfied with this situation. While I never stopped reading philosophy, I began to take it less seriously. (One of my professors had a specialty in the philosophy of science fiction, and I recall several discussions with him where he tried, in vain, to convince me why "possible worlds" speculating was not a waste o time.)

It was fortuitous, then, that at the exact time my doubt in the efficacy of philosophy for anything was at an apex, I came across an essay by Stanley Fish, called "Truth and Toilets." Fish is something of a "postmodernist" (though he never called himself that), who acquired a nasty reputation amongst philosophers for denying that "abstract principles" had any meaning that was not wholly non-subjective meaning, or had any real use outside of communicative shorthand. ("Justice" means "the stuff the utterer thinks are just," and no more.)

In "Truth and Toilets," Fish takes a very cynical view of philosophy, seeing it as rhetoric that has little import on the act of living life. One of my favorite quotes is:

When the dream of finding invariant meaning underwritten by God or the structure of rationality is exploded, what remains is not dust and ashes, but the plasticity of the world human beings continually make and remake.

In short, in the wake of formalism's failure - the failure of the search for neutral principles - everything remains as it was. (Fish, Stanley. The Trouble With Principle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2001 (294)

What I take Fish to be saying here is that there is nothing about life that stands or falls with philosophy. Whether we can find a cogent and consistent moral system is of no real consequence to morality as it is actually practiced in life. (None but philosophers stop and think about whether their moral acts are consistent with a particular system of morality.) Whether we can find a solution to the problem of free-will is absolutely immaterial to how we live (we will always live as if we have free will, even if "free will" does seem contradictory and queer to philosophers.) Under this view, philosophy may be interesting, intellectually stimulating, and even personally gratifying. But it is also impotent to affect much of anything (aside from the person who chooses to be engaged in it.)

This is the most sensical philosophy I have heard to date. My ambivalence about philosophy comes from the push and pull between seeing philosophy as largely useless to actual life, and still having a large passion and craving for it. I love the intellectual exercise of philosophy and find that my life is thinner without it. (I tried for about two years to wean myself from it, focusing on the day-to-day of career and leisure, but to no avail; I came back.)

This ambivalence is no trivial matter for me. While I love to read books, for instance, arguing a particular moral or political order on philosophic grounds, I simply have lost the ability to take seriously that philosophy is capable of doing anything outside of presenting fresh rhetoric for one person's opinion. I can no longer see the difference between the sunday morning "talking head" shows and political philosophy (they are both people giving their opinions, with the exception that the latter may use bigger language and contain more sustained rhetoric.) So while I suspect that I will always love philosophy, I also suspect that I will always hate it just a tad (because I wish so badly that, when reading it, I could say that I was doing something productive). My relationship with philosophy, then, is like the summer fling: you are attracted to her, but also resent the fact that the relationship could never really be a serious one.

Thoughts About Memes, or Memes About Thoughts

I just wanted to share an interesting e-mail exchange that I am currently having with a fellow amazon.com reviewer. It is on the topic of memes (the thought that just as genes are the building block of phenotypes, the meme is the basic unit of our mental life).

This was the e-mail sent to me:

I really liked your review [of Denis Dutton's "Art Instinct"] and it was so convincing I decided not to buy the book, even as I was poised to do so. However the book's title alone sparked a cascade of useful thoughts.

Since you're familiar with Stephen Pinker and ideas about evolution, I guess you must also be familiar with Richard Dawkins. But maybe you don't know about a wonderful book inspired by Dawkins: "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore, with an introduction by Dawkins. Dr. Blackmore takes Dawkins' meme concept and runs with it. I found it to be a novel and delightfully argued theory of how ideas (including commercial jingles, fashion styles, catch phrases and religions) spread and evolve in a Darwinian manner. There are other books and articles about the meme concept, but hers is the only one I found convincing and revelatory.

Here was my response:

Thanks very much for the very kind words about my review. In honesty, it is an interesting book even though I find its ideas a bit rough. While I don't reccomend its ideas, the book is quite an interesting read.

Yes, I am definitely familiar with Pinker, Dawkins and Blackmore. To be honest, I am not very attracted to the idea of the meme (or the meme of the meme?). The reason is that it doesn't "explain" much of anything. Anything that the invocation of a meme can explain - why songs are catchy, why we can't stop thinking about that movie line, etc - can be juust as easily, and less problematically, explained by invoking the concept of "ideas." Yes, the meme is much more materialistic and therefore scientific seeming, but it doesn't expain much at all.

I am not sure we know nearly enough about neuroscience to explain ideas, their origin, and why sometimes they "pop up" without us wanting them to, but my suspicion is that we will find that the reality is much more pedestrian than the meme: ideas occur because of certain combinations of neurons firing between synapses, and sometimes, these firings occur without conscious will on our part.

My biggest problem with the idea of "memes" is that they do not make sense in several ways. (a) They don't really account for creativity and novelty; (b) they don't make sense given our strong intutions that we control our thoughts (rather than thoughts just "happening" to our passive brains; and (c) for such a physicalistic theory, the meme does not appear to have any physical nature as a thing (like the gene).

I am always amazed that the idea of memes has any credence at all. It seems that the only thing it really has going for it is that it is materialistic in nature (thus appealing to very hardcore materialists), and that it makes sense out of the phenomenon we sometimes have about thoughts "popping into" our heads without us willing them to.

When discussing memes with others, I am always amazed that defenders of memetics naturally assume that I am not a materialist, and must be a mind/body dualist, because of my rejection of memes. It just seeems quite natural to me that while the material brain gives rise to our inner life, it does not need "mind viruses" to infect it from the outside, but creates thoughts solely from the inside.

I guess time will tell if this idea has any staying power. My guess is that it will be gone within a decade as neuroscience gets a bit older.

Libertarianism and Why It is Superior to Randian Objectivism

By almost coincidence, I have been thinking about the philosophy of Ayn Rand lately. Not only is one of the blogs I've been following been having some interesting discussions on the merits of Rand as philosopher, but I am reading a book about education using Rand's principles of free market capitalism. In addition, I have received several comments on my posts from Atlas Fan, a blogger with Objecitivst sympathies. All of this has put Ayn Rand's philosophy back into the forefront of my brain. As will be clear, I am not very sympathetic with it.

Before going on to a look at why libertarianism is superior to Objectivist justifications for a minimal state, I want to briefly outline my history with objectivism. In the years 2000 and 2001, I was an objectivist of the ARI variety. I was very convinced that Rand's Objectivism was a viable, fully developed, closed system of philosophy. Gradually, I noticed what I thought were some serious flaws in some of Rand's argument - her ethical philosophy was insufficiently thin, her view of what constituted "reason" was too monolithic, etc. - and fell out of love with Objectivism.

Since then, the one sympathy I truly share with Rand is a belief in liberty, a minimal state, and the use of coercive force as suspect. That said, I think libertarian belief without Randian justification is much stronger than it is with.

First, one of Objectivists key complaints against non-Randian libertarianism is that "Although some call libertarianism a "philosophy," in fact it is just a relatively broad political position..." whereas Rand's defense of freedom "is a systematic philosophy: it starts with a theory of reality and a theory of knowledge, then develops a moral view using conclusions from the previous two fields, and all those conclusions provide the basis for its politics. (1)

Guilty as charged! There is a plurality of possible justifications for libertarianism: thinkers have argued that libertarianism is justified on utilitarian grounds, via natural rights, on religious grounds, or in a plurality of other ways. If libertarianism is to leave people free, though, I could not see that a "one justification system fits all," (like Rand's) as fitting a libertarian community.

In fact, if one suggests that there is only one very specific way to justify liberty (as Rand does) then you run a serious risk of restricting yourself into a minority view. As Rand views hers as a deductive system (it is actually inductive, but that is no matter), then she is saying, "If you don't share my views on epistemology or metaphysics, you can not possibly be a true defender of liberty. Check your premises!" With this very restrictive view, you will win only a handful of adherents (as witnessed by the relatively small number of people who actually consider themselves objectivists).

I have long been an advocate of having a plurality of justifications for any moral or political action. The more ways you can justify x (x is justified on utilitarian, natural rights, pragmatic, grounds) then the more chance you have of being able to justify x to a wide variety of audiences. As I take it a free society will likely have a variety of moral codes for people to subscribe to, it seems obvious that the more traditions one can appeal to in justification of a moral act, the better one will be. Rand's "one size fits all" practice of making a proper defense of liberty contingent on literal adherence to a very particular philosophic code means that you are dooming yourself to appealing to the few, rather than to the many.

More troubling still, whenever I read Rand (or an Objectivist's) denunciation of libertarianism, I can't help but think that they are not defending freedom so much as "freedom to be an Objectivist." In other words, Objectivists' insistence that "rational" people will agree on just about everything (i.e., they will follow Rand to the letter) reminds me of the type of "free society" that exists in Mormon Utan, where everyone is free to act as they choose (with the understanding that if one makes a wrong move, one will be excommunicated or cackled into submission.)

Take the following invective from Peter Schwartz:

"Subjectivism, amoralism and anarchism are not merely present in certain “wings” of the Libertarian movement; they are integral to it. In the absence of any intellectual framework, the zealous advocacy of “liberty” can represent only the mindless quest to eliminate all restraints on human behavior—political, moral, metaphysical." (2)

First, this is a bad oversimplification. No libertarian that I have ever been in contact with has ever advocated an "eliminat[tion of] all restraints on human behavior." Libertarians certainly draw the line at the Millian (yes, it was around before Rand) "no harm" principle - the principle that, while certain acts are permissible, government is justified in "stepping in" as soon as one person or ground engages in coercive harm to another. In other words, libertarians are far from the hedonists Schwartz describes, but agree fully with Rand (and Locke) that the purpose of government is to protect the individual.

To libertarians, it seems obvious that no free society would endorse one moral system - particularly a horribly restrictive one - as Schwartz seems to want for his "free society" (Galt's gulch, perhaps, where everyone is completely like-minded?). To libertarians, it is obvious that when you leave people RELATIVELY free to live their own lives, a plurality of value systems and ways of life will emerge; people don't think the same, and generally, a society of people that thinks the same is indicative of coercion.) If Galt's gulch or an Objectivist village is teh model of a free society, then it is either indicative that coercion or threat is involved, or is a "membership only" society that restricts membership to those subscribing to a certain view. Neither is consistent with any real libertarianism.

Would an Randian "free society" look like the Ayn Rand Society, where those championing liberty exercise banishment from their group at fast rates? (The David Kelley incident is instructive here, as it led to several 'banishments' from the club, holding no idea of academic freedom. Another great example of such childish and collectivistic behavior can be seen here.)

Objectivists like Schwartz and Peikoff hold an interesting admixture of zeal for individual rights but absolute scorn for those who would exercise it in any way of which they disapprove. Of course, intolerant individuals can certainly function within a free society, and a free society is one in which they would not be barred or coerced unless they did real harm to others. But I shudder to think of how quickly a free society consisting only of those individuals would erect into a statist one where the state monitors behavior to ensure that it is compatible with "reason." Or such a society of like-minded intolerant individuals may quickly become "free" in the way Mormons are in Utah: individuals are free to act in accord with the restrictive ethical code that binds them under threat of banishment or ostricization.

What really concerns me, though, is Objectivism's negativity towrads objectivism's inability to provide strong moral sanction:

Anyone from a gay-rights activist to a criminal counterfeiter to an overt anarchist can declare that he is merely asserting his “liberty” (3)

Why is Schwartz concerned that libertarianism cannot stop the "gay-rights activist" or "overt anarchist" from exercising his liberties? (Surely, libertarians are justified in penalizing the criminal, via the "no harm" principle). My fear is that, in Schwartz's "free society," the gay-rights activist would be censored or censured for doing nothing other than adcovating for the rights of gays to have relationships and marry. (Rand is incapable of justifying, on Objectivist principles, why gays should not be able to marry.) Schwartz also seems desirous of being able to stop "overt anarchists" from expressing their obviously non-Objectivist views.

Schwartz really does seem to want a society where all views other than Objectivism meet with strong reprobation. This is not defense of freedom, but defense of freedom to follow a restrictive code or be censured (a Mormon-esque freedom with Uncle Warren's role being replaced by Aunt Ayn).

This is why I think libertarianism of a plural variety (and with plural justificaitons) leads to a safer liberty than Rand's very restrictive Objectivist view of freedom. It is more inclusive by allowing for a plurality of justifications (appealing to a wider and more diverse audience), and it is certainly more free in that it would allow various groups with various beliefs and codes to live with the maximum freedom possible (as consistent with a "no harm" or similar principle.

(For anyone curious, the libertarianism that I am in favor of looks much like that written about in the works of William Galston, particularly the book Liberal Pluralism..)

Ayn Rand, Tibor Machan, and Their Mistaken Defense of Objective Morality

Like many others, I first got hooked on philosophy by reading Ayn Rand. Also, like many, there came a time when I started reading other phiosophers. Therefore - again, like many - there was a time when I realized that Rand got just about everything wrong in her philosophizing. In particular, Rand had a habit of claiming that she had solved a vexing philosophic problem generally by vastly oversimplifying, if not getting wrong, a problem only to "solve" something different than the actual problem.

Recently, I have been reading essays in a colleciton called The Promise of Liberty by a follower of Rand's, Tibor Machan. In reading his first essay, which defends Rand's defense of ethical objectivism, I have re-realized how wrong her solution is, and how, as usual, she even got the question wrong.

As PoL is still in press, I am not going to quote from it, but rather from Rand's own essay "The Objectivist Ethics". machan does not really add to or expand to Rand's unfortunate defense, but only restates it with the intention of clarifying it.

In short, Rand and Machan's argument is that ethics are objective because ethical judgments are made with the aid of facts. Once one chooses to live ones life, certain values inexorably follow from that: we ought to seek food, shelter, that which will promote our flourishing, etc.

An organism’s life depends on two factors: the material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from its physical background, and the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel properly. What standard determines what is proper in this context? The standard is the organism’s life, or: that which is required for the organism’s survival.

Al;ready, though, Rand has misunderstood the dispute between objectivists and subjectivists. Quite honestly, what is at dispute is not whether values and moral judgments are (or should be) made in reference to facts, but what the nature of moral norms are. Subjectivists argue that moral norms are come to by subjects, not by some quality inherent in objects. The echo famous subjectivist JL Mackie, for morality to be objective requires that morals have some subject-independent existence in the world.

In fact, Rand's view is completely comapatible with a subjectivist account of morality. Subjectivists can easily, and without contradiction, suggest that moral judgments should - or must! - be made in the face of actual subject-independent facts, so long as the judgments being made are made by individual subjects. All that is required for subjectivism is the acknowledgement that judgments are made by the subjects and are not a pre-existing imperative that we happen to "come across" existing in the world independent of our minds.

The next question is whether Rand or Machan have done enough to show that an objective morality is possible. Life may be the "ultimate value" that undergirds all other values, but is that one value enough to give us any obvious answers to any but the most pedestrian moral questions?

Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

Before going on, I want the reader to pause and notice the subtle "no true scotsman" fallacy going on here. "[t]hat which is proper to the life of a RATIONAL being is good..." By framing it this way, Rand can easily say that x is an objective value. When one point out that more people choose y than x (a possible reason to suppose that x is not an objective value), Rand can simply dismiss them all by saying that they are not rational, and if they were, they'd choose x. Like the "no true scotsman" fallacy, one cannot win with this set up becuase Rand's caveat - "rational" - has rigged the game!

Beyond that, though, Rand once again demonstrates obliviousness to philosophers and ideas that she full well should have known about: in this case, GE Moore, author of Principia Ethica. If she had been aware of Moore's work - what ethical philosopher wasn't?! - she would have realized the need to show how this "equation" was not a violation of the naturalistic fallacy.

Moore's idea was simple; efforts to equate the terms "good" or "bad" with any demarcatioin principle - utility, survival, pleasure - was invalid and we can see this by realizing that our intuitions understand that "good" and x (pick any criteria) are two different things. "Good" is not a direct synonym for happiness (there are good things that don't make us happy), or, in Rand's case, survival (there are many things that don't enhance our survival that accord with our intuition of what is good).

By way of example, Machan's article mentions more than once a moral obligation to be generous. He mentions is as if to imply that choosing to live inexorably entails this obligation to be generous. He does not explain how this is, and I have serious doubts that any attempts to do so would not be very, very erroneous. I am all for generosity, but it is easy to think of a dozen examples of sceanrios where my survival is impeded or harmed by generosity. More straightforward, A person could certainly argue that being generous has social utility and CAN be personally beneficial (via game theory, say) but such argujments would tend to be utilitarian (or rule-utillitarian) in nature, and I am left mystified as to any plausible argumenst that the choice to live necessarily entails an obligation towards generosity (particularly for egoists like Rand and Machan).

Another example of this blunder can be seen when Rand tries to justify the objective (not subjective) value of productiveness.

The virtue of Productiveness is the recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which man’s mind sustains his life, the process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself.

To Rand, this value is objective in the sense that it is the "central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values." To choose non-productiveness is, in essence, to act against the ultimate value of life and thus the objectively wrong choice.

To be honest, this is the type of rhetoric that I and many others got hooked on when we got hooked on Rand. Now, when I read those words, it is hard to see how, because as stirring as they are, they are wrong. While one can argue that produciveness is a life-sustaining virtue, it is certainly not objectively the only choice. One can - and many have - sustained their lives by freeloading off of people. Also, productiveness is no guarantor of sustaining one's life. Eithe way, to argue that productiveness is an objective value by reference to its utility in sustaining life is hollow, as it is neither a necessary or sufficient condition for sustaining life.

Like all of the other values that Rand defeds - egoism, capitalism, generosity, rationality, etc. - productiveness is a contingent and subjective value choice. One can choose it, but there is nothing compelling us to do so. Rand and Machan would object that the facts of life comepel values like productiveness and generosity, but any anthropologist or sociologist can easily demonstrate that there are a plurality of ways to answer moral questions consistent with sustaining, and flourishing in, life.

There are many other points that could be brought up, but I think I have done enough to show that Rand came nowhere close to solving the problem of moral objectivism v. subjectivism. The fact that she was so confident that she did, and that Machan is confident enough not to heavily modify and reconfigure her arguments, is testimony of the insularity that has and does plague the objectivist "movement."

Error Theory: A Brief Defense Based on Moral Psychology

For many years, I have been entranced with the puzzle that is quintessential to meta-ethical philosophy: are moral values in any way objective and absolute? if so, how do we know, and if not, why do they often feel as if they are?

After much graduate-school (and beyond) deliberation, the "solution" I have been most comfortable with is that of error theory. In a nutshell, error theory tells us that moral values are subjective and relative (rather tahn objective and absolute), and that we easily fall into error because they are felt so strongly as to appear objective. The most famous expounder of error theory (I think, the pioneer of the name) was JL Mackie, though shades of error theory can be found in earlier philosophers like Bertrand Russell, William James, and David Hume.

As error theory is a form of relativism, it is best to briefly justify relativism and only then, bring up reasons why error theory is the best explanation of our moral climate.

Why am I a relativist? Before even getting into meaty philosophical argument, I am a relativist because of the very existence of widespread moral disagreement. Moral objectivists argue that for ethical questions, there exists one right answer (whether it is discoverable by reason or an intuitive moral sense that we all share). Were this true, then the only explanation for the fact of widespread moral disagreement on issues would be that only some of us are attuned enough (in reason or intuition) to recognize the right answer. (Generally, when moral objectivists are presented with the fact of moral disagreement, their answer to it IS in fact to poinit out that those who do not arrive at a particular answer are simply wrong).

While I guess this is plausible, there is a better solution: that there often exists more than one possible "right" answer to a question (pluralism) or, further still, that the very idea of what the "right" answer is, is a question that each individual judges for themselves based on their own sentiments, experience, and reasonings.

Why go for relativism over pluralism? This is where we get into moral psychology. I am a relativist because, as an epistemic fact, each of us has direct mental access only to our own brains. In addition, as best as we can tell, none of us has direct access to any "ethical plain" that exists outside of our brains. In some sense, this is what led to JL Mackie's idea, that undergirds error theory, called The Argument
From Queerness. The Argument from Queerness states that ethical propositions cannot be metaphysically "out there" in the world because they do not in any way appear to be natural properties. Moral debates are not like debates over concretes, as we cannot "point to" in order to show that a moral act is inherently right or wrong.

Moral objectivists will tend to reply that this is a scientism of the type which says that nothing exists which is not concrete. In a sense, they are correct. For someone to say that morality exists objectively would mean that they need to show how moral disputes can be objectively (rather than subjectively) resolved; what can be pointed to that is outside of the arguer's own moral sentiments that can prove to someone with different moral sentiments that "x is true." Often, the only avenue for the objectivist here is to suggset that "good" is an obvious quality (like "red" or "hot"). Here, it is easily pointed out that, unlike "red" and "hot," "good" cannot be experienced with any of the five senses, but rather "felt" with the moral intuition (bringing me back to the same suspicion that "good" and "bad" are judgments made differently by different people's intutions).

In the absence of any really good reason to see moral judgments as anything but subjective appraisals, or accompoanying arguments that human mind has some sort of direct access to anything outside of its own thoughts, I see no good choice but to suspect that subjective relativism is the most accurate description of how things are.

But why is this so hard for people to accept? Even though relativism seesm the most logical description, it is hard to actually be a moral subjectivist/relativist but in theory. We hold moral precepts very strongly and it is hard to think that they are simply subjective preferences. When I say that slavery, sodomy, murder, rape, etc., are wrong, I feel like they really are wrong and not just that I think them wrong.

This is why I think that error theory - the idea that, at times, our psychological natures make us experience our own preferences so strongly that it is impossible to imagine that they are not objective - is the best description of how things really are. Imagine the best piece of music you have ever heard in your entire life. At the apex of its enjoyment, isn't it just well nigh impossible to imagine that some people might derive no pleasure from it at all? Another common example is our senses of humor. It is probably tempting to suggest that those who do not laugh at the funniest joke you have ever heard are those who "have no sense of humor," rather than simply not sharing your sense of humor.

That is the way, I think, human psychology often works. When we deeply feel certain preferences, our brain presents these to us not as prefernces, but as imperatives that simply are (inependently of us feeling or thinking them so).

So, we can either see moral disagreement as a sign that some people are simply not good at moral reasoning or reading their moral intuitions (leading them into wrong answers), or suspect that people differ in moral sentiments becuase, like aesthetic sentiments, moral sentiments are not objective. We can either suggest that the reason people feel strongly about their moral opinions is because these opinions are objective (while ignoring that even "wrong" opinons are felt as strongly as "right" ones), or we can suspect that human psychology often "tricks" us into feeling sentiments so strongly that they appear, but are not, objective.

Quite simply, I think the latter options - subjective relativism and error theory - are the best interpretation of the facts of our moral universe.

Michael Novak, Religion, and "Blicks"

I recently finished Michael Novak's book "No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers." One of the questions Novak seeks to answer in this very cordial book is, "Why do atheists and religionists scream past eachother? Why are arguments that are so convincing to the one never convincing to the other?"

I've often wondered this myself. I am quite read and "up on" the publications made by both the "new atheists" like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and the religious interlocutors like Chris Hedges and David Berlinski. In so being, I have noticed two things: (a) each side, whether deliberately or not, caricatures the other by misunderstanding the other's point of view; and (b) each side rehashes the same arguments that seem so convincing to them, but are never adequate to convince their opponents.

In attempt to explain this, Novak explicates an interesting concept, borrowed from philosopher RM Hare, but fleshed out by Novak himself: the concept of the blick.

In short, a blick is a worldview replete with necessary presuppositions. In Novak's words:

"A blick is part of an intellectual habit, the part that shapes one's pattern of judgment concerning what is real or not real, true or false, credible or lacking in credibility... A blick is a way of viewing reality that is not usually overturned by one or more pieces of countervailing evidence." (Kindle Edition, loc. 2267)

A blick is not only a set of propositions, but the groundrules each of us uses to decide what is to count as a valid proposition, and the type of phenomena which can be seen as evidentiary. A blick is not only, then, the view that god exists, but the belief that emotion and intuition be allowed as satisfactory undergirdling reason for the claim. On the flipside, a blick is more than the view that there is no evidence for god, but includes that atheist's 'groundrule' that only what may be observed can be existentially real.

To make it even more direct, my fiancee is earning her masters in Professional Writing with a specialization in rhetoric. One rhetorical theory she was explaining to me - I don't recall its title - suggests that when one is seeking to argue to another, one needs to make sure that one is using the type of argument that the OTHER would find convincing. It does little good to argue that something is experimentally corroborable to a postmodernist with zero trust in science. It would also do little good to argue the morality of x because of its fit within a capitalistic framework to a socialist.

This is very close to the idea that, to be persuasive, one must attempt to argue within the matrix of the other person's blick, or else - as evidenced by the current debate between theists and atheists - you will talk right past eachother.

To my eyes, this makes much sense. Why do all of the books by 'new atheists' and their opponents seem to make the same arguments over and over again that are convincing to those making the arguments but never to their opponents? Becuase the arguments, more often than not, hinge on assumptions - presuppositions - that one side holds which the other side does not. God cannot be real because its existence cannot be verified? This will hold little sway to a religionist that imagine's god to be outside of space and time. Our strong intuition about the 'perfect fit' between us and the universe is excellent evidence that there must be a god? This will not do against the atheist that already dismisses intuition as evidence for an existential claim.

Interestingly, the rhetorician Stanley Fish has written on his blog about this very phenomenon. In an article called "Atheism and Evidence" he writes:

"What is and is not seen will vary with the faith within which observers look... Those who have not found the arguments of natural selection persuasive will not see what Dawkins and his colleagues see, not because they are blind and obstinate, but because as members of a different faith community – and remember, science requires faith too before it can have reasons – the evidence that seems so conclusive to the rational naturalists will point elsewhere." (paragraph 11)

The message that I, an atheist, take from all of this is, "Like it or not, we are all presuppositionalists." The biggest 'heat' that Fish took about this article was from atheists suggesting that there is no faith necessary to believe in science and/or atheism. Even as an atheist and believer in science, I beg to differ.

In order to be a believer in science you have to have several "faiths" (all of which, though, can be justified by their pragmatic efficacy). First, I have to believe that the scientific method is a reliable one for capturing the truth of things (even if I acknowledge that science is tentative, I have to believe that it's attempts are better than guesses.) I also have to believe in the integrity of the scientists and the enterprise; as many of the experiments done and results gotten are technically beyond my ken, I have to, contra some extreme theists, believe that the participants are not simply part of a grand conspiracy and can be trusted as truthful and ojective.

Lastly, in order to be an atheist that claims scientific grounds for my belief, I have to hold to the rule that that which is not testable cannot be claimed as an existant. In less philosophical terms, I have to hold that "God exists," is a testable claim that only pans out when god is detected via the senses, or that "God exists" is NOT a testable claim, in which case, it is beyond talking about.

This is my blick. And this explains why I find it infuriating to talk with the theist, as the theist doubtless finds it infuriating to talk with me. I cannot begin to enter into their mindset as I am sure they cannot begin to enter into mine. Our blicks are simply so deep and deeply rooted that oscillation between the two is difficult. (Generally converts "think themselves out of" one blick and enter into another, but this type of conversion is rare.)

The idea of the blick has helped me articulate a feeling I have always had about the difference between atheists and theists; we simply see the world and interpret experience differently. The theist regards their strong intuition of design, purpose, and goodness as evidence for God (where the atheist regards intuition as insufficient). The atheist regards the scientific evidence as making the "god hypothesis" unnecessary and absent-looking (while the theist rejects the use of sceintific reasoning as exhaustive of all there is). Either way, the two will seemingly never agree because they disagree on groundrules.

How To Enjoy Music - the Authoratitive Explanation!

In the middle of 2005, I reviewed Philip Glass's ablum North Star on amazon.com. The album, consisting of short pieces with keyborads, winds, and voice, was recorded in the late 1970's and as such, the recording is quite dated. The lack of a sync track, in particular, made for a very discombobulated recording (particularly with as many syncopated rythms as the pieces have). Because of this, I gave the CD a mixed review (3 of 5 stars).

Recently, an amazon shopper has left an interesting comment on my review. He suggests that I, and other listeners, should "prefer the magic of being fully engaged in the listening experience instead of merely critiquing a performance." His suggests that " inspiration and creativity should trump a less than perfect performance," because an overperfect execution may well result in music that is sterile and less-than-human.

Let me be the first (maybe not the first, but certainly not the last) to say that I agree with much that this critic says. I would much rather hear a flawed but beautifully soulful piece of music than a perfectly crafted piece by John Cage or Arnold Schoenberg. I could not imagine Tom Waits sounding as good if he were over-produced and lost the soulful grit in his voice.

But I do think that this critic takes things too far. First off, inspiration and creativity do not AWLAYS trump musicianship and technicality. No matter how creative the tune or original the melody, it can be performe4d well and it can be performed poorly. I could not imagine hearing Allen Hovanhess's Guitar Concerto's (a recent favorite) performed by a high-school band...and saying that Hovanhess's originality and creativity were able to overcome a dismal execution. And I have heard some great jazz tunes positively botched by inept soloists and accompanists. Thus, I have to say that while originality DOES often trump poor execution, to say that it ALWAYS does is an overstatement (as are so many things that use the word "always").

The main thing that struck me about this critic's crtiticism is his thought that by "merely critiquing a performance," I somehow could not have been "fully engaged in the listening experience."

I never realized that these two things - listening to a performance and critiquing the performance - were mutually exclusive things. In fact, I cannot see how paying attention to musical execution does anything but ENHANCE the listening experience. Look at any liner notes to any classical or jazz CD in existence and you will see not only a rundown of the compositions, but detailed attention to the performance. And as any music composer knows (I was a songwriting major at Berklee College of Music in my younger days), a composition is absolutely only as good as the performance of it. If it is played poorly, then for purposes of that performance, it IS poor.

So, while I see the author's point that one does not want to OVERanalyze a peformance - that can certainly get in the way of appreciating the music holistically - I don't see how one can be "fully engaged in the listening experience" while not paying good attention to the performance. In the case of Philip Glass's North Star CD, the music definitely suffered because of performance-based things like the lack of a click-track and some less-than-stellar vocals. Were I only judging Glass's score, I would say that critiquing the performance is besides the point. Since I was listening to a sound recording, I felt that I must appraise not only the score, but the recording of the sounds.

So to anyone who might suggest that the "listening experience" should not include appraising the performance of the music, I would suggest that this is much like trying to think about the "reading experience" with a blind eye to an author's ability to write.

Religious Case for Gay Marriage - A critical response

Last week, Newsweek sported a cover story to do with “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage.” I wanted to like this story. As a libertarian, I am appalled that the State feels that one of its proper duties is to sanction and encourage one type of partnership among consenting adults while obstructing others strictly because of a moral objection. (“Gay marriage is icky!!”) And as a non-believer, “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” does nothing to convince me that its utterers are capable of spelling, let alone, explaining their statement.

But anyone wanting to convince the unconvinced that the Bible does not frown on homosexuality will face a problem; the Bible DOES frown on homosexuality… in several difference passages. [http://www.carm.org/questions/homosexuality.htm] This tiny fact makes the read very awkward: like someone trying to convince me that the “Eat Whatever You Want” diet works, I want to agree with it, but my brain won’t let me.

The author’s case can be summed up like this: while the Bible may seem to condemn homosexual marriage, it should not be taken literally. It’s anti-homosexual message owes more towards the customs of the PEOPLE that wrote it, than any real truth. To use the author’s own words: “A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours.”

To an atheist like myself, such a tact was predictable. In fact, I remember thinking to myself before reading the article that I hope the author would not pull the old, “The Bible doesn’t mean what it says,” line. Well, she did. What about the Apostle Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality as an “abomination?” it is “is really a critique of the worst kind of wickedness: self-delusion, violence, promiscuity and debauchery” and not homosexuality (as it says). What of the Book of Common Prayer’s mention of marriage as between “the man and the woman?” “Common practices change.”

The author "bolsters" her case by pointing out that in the Bible, "the concept of family is fundamental, but examples of what social conservatives would call "the traditional family" are scarcely to be found." True enough! Polygamy was all over the Old Testament. Jesus was (despite rough speculation to the contrary) willfully non-married. And beyond that, "[t]he Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites. A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. " Thus, anyone who argues that scripture condems homosexuality are taking the Bible at its word, and (as evidenced by the above moral missteps in the Bible) doing that would be taking a human-produced document as Divine Law.

Now, I am not fan of the Biblical literalist Ken Ham, but I remember something he said once that might help us here. On the PBS series " Evolution, Ham was asked why he fights so hard to prove the Creation story of the Bible contra evolution and modern physics. His answer: if the Bible gets it wrong on the origin of the universe, species, and humans, then is there any reason to believe that it gets it right about morality? (Of course, Ham and I have VERY different answers to this rhetorical question!)

His point is my point in reverse: if we believe our Newseek author, the Bible got it wrong about slavery, punishment for adultery, and homosexuality. Is there ANY reason, then, to suppose that the Bible got it right about any other moral pronouncements, let alone metaphysical statements? (If so, it must be explained how we know what sections are correct when we know that other sections are wrong.)

So, if the author is correct and the Bible is a human-made document created by human minds to give voice to their version of how things should morally be, then why should I not just get my morals from Aesop's Fables? By telling us that the Bible's moral proclomations are made by humans, rather than God, then why do we have any reason to suppose that it is correct in any moral capacity?

All of this is deeply strange because we constantly hear people claiming that the Bible is a moral guide and/or authority. When pastors give sermons that wax about the teachings of Jesus, we are told that Jesus - the authority - is telling us how we should live (rather than that a guy who lived many thousands of years ago is offering his debatable opinions). The author herself suggests that, "We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future." Read: while we should realize that the Bible has gotten quite a few ethical proclomations dead-nuts wrong, we need to realize that the Bible has much to offer us in moral wisdom. But, how can we say that the Bible gets a lot wrong ethically while claiming that the Bible can lead us towards "univeral truths" in ethics? The author does not say.

I have an idea on that, though. I believe that the very fact that we can say, "The Bible got it wrong here," MEANS that our sense of morality is indepenent of what is said in the Bible. The author is correct in suggesting that "we struggle towards a more just future," but is wrong to suggst that we do, or should, read the Bible in our quest. Instead of reading the Bible to help us progress morally, what we more likely do is progress morally and then read the Bible and cherry-pick those quotes that can "justify" our new moral positions. (A great instance of this is that during the Civil War, both the abolitionists and the pro-slavery forces quoted the Bible and held that theirs was the Biblically-endorsed position. In reality, no one got their moral views on slavery from the Bible; rather, they only used the Bible to justify their already-held opinions.)

Lastly, the author points out that Jesus's overriding message was that of acceptance and inclusion. "The practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis on togetherness and community over and against chaos, depravity, indifference—all these biblical values argue for gay marriage."

I think this is simplistic. While it is commonplace today to suggest that Jesus's love is unconditional, it does not take much to see through this. Jesus's love WAS conditional; conditional on acceptance of him as the son of God. And I have heard many a anti-homosexual Christian argue, Jesus may be accepting towards those who love him, but one could not be gay and love Jesus at the same time (as these folks believe that loving Jesus means repenting for sin, and repenting for sin means renouncing one's gayness). I disagree with these folks passionately, but it is hard to see the flaw in their logic.

To close, it seems to me that the Newsweek author is pushing the same "pick and choose" Christianity that most Christians today practice. (It would be awfully hard not to, considering the idiocy of the alternative of literalism). The problem is that she will not do much convincing with this,. Biblical literalists have heard the "Bible is a document written by fallible humans" before, and they don't seem to be buying it. The only people, then, who will be receptive to her arguments are those who are likely ALREADY non-literalists who do not need convincing.

Are There Objective Criteria for Evaluating Art?

A friend of mine, Benjamin Hayek, and I are engaged in a discussion on his blog. One of the side issues brought up there is whether or not there are objective standards for evaluating art (or anything for that matter.) Ben believes there are objective rights and wrongs in terms of evaluating art. I don't. So as not to sidetrack the debate on his blog by exploring this side issue there, I will say something on it here.

On the blog, he writes: "Indeed, I believe that it is almost always an easy task to weight one peice of art against another, such as deciding the value of Jacques-Lious David's The Death of Socrates (1787) (which is one of my very favorites) vs. Andres Serrano's award-winning Piss Christ (1987), or comparing the complete works of Smetana to those of Snoop-Dogg. There is good art and bad art."

Of course, he does not go on to outlay the objectively correct criteria for judging Smetana superior to Snoop Dog or The Death of Socrates superior to Piss Christ. And if he did, my suggestion would be that those are simply the criteria he prefers. Two people disagreeing on art are most likely the result of (a) the two people chossing different critieria to judge the competing works by; or (b) the two people agreeing on the same critieria to look at but disagreeing as a matter of taste about who meets the criteria more.

Let me give an example here. Benjamin's musician of choice is Smetana. My musician of choice (if I have to name just one!) is Esbjorn Svensson, the recently decesased jazz pianist from Sweden.

Now the music of Smetana and Svennson are quite, quite different. Smetana's music is a very Slovakian flavored romantic concert music with a lot of heavy string orchestration, meandering melodies and lush exploration. Svensson is very multi-dimensional jazz drawing on bebop, electronic, and minimalistic influences - terse and frequently-repeating melodies, sparse melody lines, and no real "orchestration" to speak of.

Now, I am not sure how in the world Ben and I, when disagreeing over the superior musician or works, could come up with any type of objective criteria for adjudicating. In fact, the two styles of music are so completely different that it is difficult to figure out what their commonalities are aside from being performed in a Western 12 note scale.

But even if we chose music that is more similar (I will now pick Allen Hovhaness to his Smetana so that both are in the classical orchestrative tradition), Ben and I will doubtless disagree on the criteria for choosing who is superior. Hovhaness is shamelessly tonal, avoids modulation quite studiously, very Eastern in influence, and - many would say - boringly minimalistic. Smetana is very much the opposite of all of these.

Quite simply, I think the best we can do is judge one of the other superior BY CHOOSING A CRITIERIA SET ARBITRARILY and sticking to it. But it must be acknowledged that in music, or any art, there are too many criteria one can judge by to think that one criterion or set of criteria is the default best one to go with.

I think the fact that Ben says it is "an easy task" to weigh one against the other means that, when only he is doing the judging, it is easy to agree with himself that Smetana is better than Snoop Dog. Were he to have to defend his choice to a hip hop connoiseur, and he would quickly realize how non-easy the task is, and in turn, how relative his criteria for decision was.