Ethics – Page 6 – Maverick Philosopher

When Praise is Out of Place

A thousand times you do the right thing and receive no praise. But the one time you do the wrong thing you are harshly blamed. This is the way it ought to be. Praise should be reserved for the supererogatory. To praise people for doing what it is their duty to do shows that moral decline has set in. If memory serves, Kant makes this point somewhere in his vast corpus.

Dennis Prager once said that wives should praise their husbands for their fidelity. I don't think so. Being married entails certain moral requirements, and fidelity is one of them. One should not be praised for doing what one morally must do; one should be blamed for failing to do what one morally must do.

And yet we do feel inclined to praise people for doing the obligatory.

A related point has to do with expressing gratitude to someone for doing his job. I took my wife in for a minor medical procedure this morning. As we were leaving I thanked the nurse. I would have been slightly annoyed had she said, "I'm just doing my job." Was my thanking her out of place? Maybe not. Maybe my thanking was not for her doing her job, but for her doing it in a 'perky' and friendly way.

Ego, Sin, and Logic

Ego is at the root of sin, but also at the root of obsessive preoccupation with one's sinfulness. If the goal is to weaken the ego, then too much fretting over one's sins in the manner of a Wittgenstein is contraindicated.

There is such a thing as excessive moral scrupulosity.

Though Wittgenstein's ego drove him to scruple inordinately, he was a better man than Russell. Russell worried about logic. Wittgenstein worried about logic and his sins.

Moral Responsibility in Dreams

I had a lucid dream the other night in which I lost my cool to an extent I would consider morally reprehensible in waking life. But was there any moral failure in the dream? And then there are the dreams in which I am having sexual intercourse with a woman not my wife. I'm aware I am dreaming and I think to myself: "Well, this is just a dream; I may as well enjoy it." So on occasion I grant nocturnal permission to a nocturnal emission.

Was there real, not merely dreamt, moral failure in the dream? (Augustine discusses this or a cognate question somewhere in his pelagic pennings, but I have forgotten where.)

Lucid dreaming while asleep is not the same as fantasizing while awake. But they are similar. Suppose I am entertaining (with hospitality) thoughts about having sex with my neighbor's wife. That sort of thing, I have argued, is morally objectionable. I mean the thinking, whether or not it results in any doing. Jesus just says it (MT 5:28). I argue it here and here. (Of course if he is God, he doesn't need to argue it, and because I am not God, I do.) Does the similarity support the claim that the nocturnal permission is as morally impermissible as the diurnal permission?

A Letter from the Ukraine on the Morality of Stock and Currency Trading

I have been following your blog with great interest for a couple of years now and I feel honored knowing that there are people like yourself on this planet in our times. I live in the Ukraine and represent the post-soviet cultural enviroment where philosophy has been practically persecuted and distorted by Marxists. I have a Licentiate in Philosophy from University Urbaniana in Rome and teach philosophy at the Diocesan Seminary of Ivano-Frankivsk.

I've been asked recently if currency trading (Forex) and stock trading are sinful. I mean, if they are done as income generating speculation. I've tried to look up official Church documents and just generally search the Internet and it's resources but am unable to find a clear and logically consistent answer. I can see how people who received socialistic education (like everybody in the Soviet Union), can find speculation morally wrong and sinful. But many of my Western friends don't think this. There is a difference in the basic comprehension of the "market" in its most fundamental components and things that define it. There is a problem of "property" as it is understood differently in socialist and capitalist views. Then I think of the American situation with your president pushing forward so many things that were clearly defined as socialist in the country where I was born (SU). And the underlying concepts of "property", "market", "goods" etc. that are substituted with other even in the question of the health reform.

I am happy that you have noticed that the present administration of the U. S. government headed by Barack Obama has accelerated the move in the socialistic and totalitarian direction. The move in this direction has been going on for a long time, since F. D. Roosevelt at least, but since the 1960s has achieved a 'metastatic' state of growth — to employ a cancer metaphor. The irony in all this is that we won the Cold War only to become more and more like the Soviet Union which we labored so mightily to defeat. (I am old enough to remember the anxiety here in the States over Sputnik and the suborbital exploits of your cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.) And like the SU, we may well collapse under the weight of our own fiscal irresponsibility, foreign overextendedness, and 'internal contradictions' — to use a Marxist phrase. We are no longer "The land of the free and the home of the brave." We have become a land of wimps willing to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage, i.e., for cradle-to-grave security to be provided by an ever more intrusive nanny state. I am of course brushing in very broad strokes. The details of the situation are messy and complicated indeed.

You ask whether currency and stock trading are sinful. Such activities fall under the Seventh Commandment — "Thou shalt not steal" — in the Roman Catholic (RC) numbering of the Decalogue. The following, from the RC Catechism, is relevant to your question:

2409 Even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others is against the seventh commandment: thus, deliberate retention of goods lent or of objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of another.¹⁹²

The following are also morally illicit: speculation in which one contrives to manipulate the price of goods artificially in order to gain an advantage to the detriment of others; corruption in which one influences the judgment of those who must make decisions according to law; appropriation and use for private purposes of the common goods of an enterprise; work poorly done; tax evasion; forgery of checks and invoices; excessive expenses and waste. Willfully damaging private or public property is contrary to the moral law and requires reparation.

As I see it there is nothing morally wrong with buying and holding stocks and realizing a profit upon their sale. There is nothing wrong with buying and selling stocks in general. A stock is an equity. When I buy a stock I buy a bit of a company that produces goods and services, some of them indispensable for human flourishing. By buying stocks I contribute to human well being, not all stocks, but most. When I buy stocks I am engaged in a productive activity, not directly, but indirectly: I help fund a productive enterprise that produces food and medicine and books and computers, etc.

Same with bonds. A bond is a debt instrument. I loan you money so that you can engage in a productive activity such as open a book store. You pay me interest for the use of my money. That is perfectly reasonable and perfectly moral.

But what about day trading? This strikes me as morally dubious. Here what you are doing is playing a game in which you generate an income without directly or indirectly producing anything. It is entirely unlike buying a house when it is cheap, fixing it up, maintaining it, paying property taxes on it, and then selling it at a large profit. The profit, even if quite large, is justly acquired since one has engaged in activities with promote not only one's own good, but the good of others. One has improved the neighborhood by fixing up the house; one has made it available to others to rent; one has paid property taxes to support locals schools and fire departments, etc.

Currency trading? I don't know enough about the details of it to have a firm opinion, but I suspect that is shares the moral dubiousness of day trading. A Roman Catholic, I suspect, would consider it be "morally illicit: speculation in which one contrives to manipulate the price of goods artificially in order to gain an advantage to the detriment of others."

Let me add this. (I am now speaking for myself.)

1. There is nothing wrong with money. It is absolutely not the root of all evil. The most we can say is that the inordinate desire for money is at the root of some evils. I develop this theme in Radix Omnium Malorum.

2. There is nothing wrong with making money or having money. There is for example nothing wrong with making a profit from buying, refurbishing, maintaining, occupying, paying propery taxes on, and then selling a house.

3. There is nothing wrong with material (socio-economic) inequality as such. For example, there is nothing wrong with Bill Gates' having a vastly higher net worth than your humble correspondent. And there is nothing wrong with the latter's having a considerably higher net worth than some of his acquaintances. (When they were out pursuing wine, women, and song, he was engaging in virtuous, forward looking activities thereby benefiting not only himself but also people who come in contact with him.) Of course, I am assuming that the inequalities have not come about through force or fraud.

4. Equality of outcome or result is not to be confused with equality of opportunity or formal equality in general, including equality under the law. It is an egregious fallacy of liberals and leftists to infer a denial of equality of opportunity — via 'racism' or 'sexism' or whatever — from the premise that a certain group has failed to achieve equality of outcome. There will never be equality of outcome due to the deep differences between individuals and groups. Equality of outcome is not even a value. We must do what we can to ensure equality of opportunity and then let the chips fall where they may.

5. We the people do not need to justify our keeping of what is ours; the State has to justify its taking. We are citizens of a republic, not subjects of a king or dictator or of the apparatchiks who have managed to get their hands on the levers of State power.

6. Private property is the foundation of individual liberty. Socialism and communism spell the death of individual liberty. The more socialism, the less liberty. The bigger the State, the smaller the citizen. (D. Prager)

7. The inidividual is the locus of value. We do not exist for the State; the State exists for us as individuals.

8. Property rights, contra certain libertarians, are not absolute: there are conditions under which an 'eminent domain' State seizure (with appropriate compensation) of property can be justified. "2406 Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good.^"

9. Governments can and do imprison and murder. No corporation does. Liberals and leftists have a naive faith in the benevolence of government, a faith that is belied by that facts of history: Communist governments in the 20th century murdered over 100 million people. (Source: Black Book of Communism.) Libs and lefties are well-advised to adopt a more balanced view, tranferring some of their skepticism about corporations — which is in part justified — to Big Giovernment, especially the omni-intrusive and omnicompetent sort of governments they champion.

10. Our social and political troubles are rooted in our moral malaise, in particular, in inordinate and disordered desire. It is a pernicious illusion of the Left to suppose that our troubles have an economic origin solely and can be alleviated by socialist schemes of redistribution of wealth.

To wrap this up. I only hope that my question will not seem too naive, but I would really appreciate your input on the ethical aspects of trading. Thank you for your work and the blogging. It's like a breath of fresh intellectual sanity I get, every time I read your posts.

Rev. Iouri Koslovskii

Ivano-Frankivsk Theological
Academy
Assistant Professor
64 Vasylianok str.
Ivano-Frankivsk 76019,
Ukraine

о. Юрій Козловський
Івано-Франківська Теологічна
Акадеімя
Доцент Кафедри Філософії
вул. Василіанок 64
Івано-Франківськ
76019, Україна

http://koslovskii.org.ua
skype: doniouri

Praise and Supererogation

Here is a little argument in support of the category of supererogatory actions:

1. Some good actions are praiseworthy.
2. No obligatory actions are praiseworthy.
—
3. Some good actions are not obligatory.

Since by definition a supererogatory action is one that is good but not obligatory, the above amounts to an argument for supererogatory actions. The argument is valid and the first premise self-evident. So the soundness of the argument rides on the second premise. Here, I suppose, an appeal to intuition is unavoidable.

John Haldane on Christopher Hitchens

The piece ends as follows (emphasis added):

Hitchens is a case worth studying. He is more interesting than Dawkins because evidently more psychologically complex and humanly engaging. If we Catholics are right about God and humanity, why was he so wrong? Or, put another way, what can we learn from his attitude about how to understand our own religious claims and about how our lives reflect them? Hitchens pointed to the record of evil associated with Christianity and with Catholicism in particular. It is glib to reply that humanism has its own tale of terrors, and problematic if we also claim that religious adherence brings transforming grace. If I were to take up Hitchens’s campaign against religion it would be to ask again and again: “Where is your grace and your holiness?”

This challenge has particular force against those who downplay human sinfulness and the extent of depravity. Not until we have taken seriously the idea that the effects of sin and ongoing sinfulness corrupt the soul will we be in a position to fashion an effective counter to the charges Hitchens brought against Catholicism and Christianity more generally. It will not be to say that we are better than he claimed. Rather, we need to explain effectively our failings and those of all humanity in terms of a shared supernatural identity. To which we might add, adapting a saying of Wilde’s, whose style of wit Hitchens sometimes echoed: “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking to heaven in hope of salvation.”

Two comments.

First, I don't find it at all glib to point out the horrors of atheistic humanism which in the 20th century alone are greater than those inflicted over 20 centuries of Christianity. The purpose of pointing that out is to underscore the fact that it is not religion as religion that is the source of the horrors, but dogmatic adherence to a worldview, whether religious or anti-religious, that permits the suppression and murder of opponents. Bigotry and hate have their source in the human heart, not in religion or in humanism. Certain forms of religion and humanism may give carte blanche to the exercise of murderous impulsees, but the animating cesspool and prime mover ansd applier of doctrines is and remains the human heart. It is a fundamental mistake of leftists to seek the source of evil in something external such as religion or capitalism when its source is in a mind made dark by a foul human heart.

But I wholly agree with Haldane that religious people need to explain why their beliefs and practices are so ineffective in transforming their character. We all know people whose fervent religiosity has made scarcely a dent in their fundamental nastiness. Why does religion contribute so little to the amelioration of people? Twenty centuries of Christianity and even more centuries of Buddhism and we are still tearing each other apart, body and soul. As for glib remarks, Chesterton's takes the cake: "Christianity hasn't failed; it's never been tried." (Or something like that; I quote from memory. If you have the exact quotation in its context with references, e-mail me.) If it hasn't been tried by now, it will never be tried.

Of course, one can argue that the religious would have been worse without religion and I don't doubt that that is true. And not only are the religious better than they would have been without it, the irreligious are also better than they would have been without it. For religion supplies the morality that civilizes and humanizes, a morality that permeates the social atmosphere and affects even those who reject the metaphysical underpinnings. Unfortunately, Western civilization now appears to be running on empty, on the fumes of the Judeo-Christian-Athenian tradition, and one fears what happens when they too evaporate. A good question for the New Atheists: once your suppression of religion is complete, what will you put in its place? How will you inculcate morality, and what morality will you inculcate?

Although Haldane does not mention the Fall by name, he alludes to it. The explanation for religious inefficacy anent moral transformation has to involve the notion that man is a fallen being. Although the religious are not much better than the irreligious, they at least appreciate their fallen condition. They at least know they are in the gutter, and knowing this, are inclined to do something about it.

Addendum: My thanks to several readers who have quickly responded with the correct G. K. Chesterton quotation. It is at the end of the following paragraph:

Of course, I mean that Catholicism was not tried; plenty of Catholics were tried, and found guilty. My point is that the world did not tire of the church's ideal, but of its reality. Monasteries were impugned not for the chastity of monks, but for the unchastity of monks. Christianity was unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of Christians. Certainly, if the church failed it was largely through the churchmen. But at the same time hostile elements had certainly begun to end it long before it could have done its work. In the nature of things it needed a common scheme of life and thought in Europe. Yet the mediaeval system began to be broken to pieces intellectually, long before it showed the slightest hint of falling to pieces morally. The huge early heresies, like the Albigenses, had not the faintest excuse in moral superiority. And it is actually true that the Reformation began to tear Europe apart before the Catholic Church had had time to pull it together. The Prussians, for instance, were not converted to Christianity at all until quite close to the Reformation. The poor creatures hardly had time to become Catholics before they were told to become Protestants. This explains a great deal of their subsequent conduct. But I have only taken this as the first and most evident case of the general truth: that the great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

It is from What 's Wrong with the World, Part I, Chapter 5. I am now inclined to say, having seen the context, that my calling the quotation glib was itself somewhat glib.

More on Naturalism and Nihilism

A reader comments:

You say: "I would argue that a naturalist/physicalist/materialist ought to be a moral nihilist, and that when these types fight shy of moral nihilism that merely shows an inability or unwillingness on their part to appreciate the logical consequences of their own doctrine, or else some sort of psychological compartmentalization. "

I agree with you that the naturalist/materialist/physicalist ought – intellectually ought – to be a moral nihilist. Of course, that's not a very popular position. So aren't we left with the case where the naturalist/materialist/physicalist 'ought' to pretend to be otherwise? In other words, when we see someone like Hitchens talking about moral oughts, is this necessarily a case of either compartmentalization or contradiction? What about the other option: they're lying, because what's important is advancing an agenda. After all, moral nihilism doesn't compel one to be up front about one's moral nihilism.

The reader agrees that naturalism logically requires moral nihilism. That it does is not obvious and requires argument. A naturalist might try to argue that objective values either supervene upon, or emerge from, pure natural facts. A huge topic! For one thing, it depends on exactly what sort of naturalism is under discussion. A nonreductive naturalist might escape the entailment, assuming he can make sense of nonreductivism, and good luck with that. But surely an eliminativist naturalist would not. So it seems obvious that eliminativist naturalism does entail moral nihilism. We can raise our question with respect to a naturalist of this stripe.

So, assuming that some versions of naturalism do entail moral nihilism, what ought we say about the naturalist proponent of one of these versions who refuses to accept the consequence?

I suggested that there are two options: either he is simply being logically inconsistent, something I wouldn't put past a 'public intellectual,' or he is compartmentalizing. (I saw a show last night on TV about one 'Mad Dog' Sullivan, mafia hit man. He was a good husband and father when he wasn't gunning people down in cold blood. He'd walk into a bar, shoot his victim through the head, and calmly walk out. He has about 20-30 murders to his 'credit.' He pulled off the compartmentalization by telling himself that his crimes were just 'business.' The most depressing bit came at the end when his wife and two sons insisted that Sullivan was "a good man.")

My reader suggests a third option: (some) naturalists are just lying. They see what their naturalism entails, and they are not compartmentalizing. They are lying to forward their agenda. After all, a fully self-aware moral nihilist would not consider truth to be a an objective value, and so could not have any moral scruples about lying.

I think my reader made a good point. If you are an eliminativist naturalist, and do not accept moral nihilism as a logical consequence of your naturalism, then you are either being logically inconsistent, or you are a self-deceived compartmentalizer, or you are a lousy no good liar!

You can guess what my strategy will be with respect to the other naturalisms. I will test whether or not they collapse into eliminativism in the end.

Beckwith, Hitch, and the Foundations of Morality

Here. Excerpt:

. . . [Christopher] Hitchens writes that he and other atheists “believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion,” thus implying that he and others have direct and incorrigible acquaintance with a natural moral law that informs their judgments about what counts as an ethical life.

But to speak of a natural moral law – a set of abstract, immaterial, unchanging principles of human conduct that apply to all persons in all times and in all places – seems oddly out of place in the universe that Hitchens claimed we occupy, a universe that is at bottom a purposeless vortex of matter, energy, and scientific laws that eventually spit out human beings.

Right. It is easy to confuse two very different questions, and Sam Harris, one of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism, does confuse them as I argue here.

Q1. Given some agreed-upon moral code, are people who profess some version of theism more 'moral,' i.e., more likely to live in accordance with the agreed-upon code, than those who profess some version of atheism?

However it be answered, (Q1) is not philosophically interesting, except as part of the run-up to a genuine philosophical question, though it is of interest sociologically. Suppose we grant, arguendo, that the answer to (Q1) is in the negative. Now contrast (Q1) with

Q2. Given some agreed-upon moral code, are atheists justified in adhering to the code?

The agreed-upon code is one that most or many atheists and theists would accept. Thus don't we all object to child molestation, wanton killing of human beings, rape, theft, lying, and swindling in the manner of Madoff? Even swindlers object to being swindled! And in objecting to these actions, we mean our objections to be more than merely subjectively valid. When our property is stolen or a neighbor murdered, we consider that an objective wrong has been done. And when the murderer is apprehended, tried, and convicted we judge that something objectively right has been done. Let's not worry about the details or the special cases: killing in self-defense, abortion, etc. Just imagine some minimal objectively binding code that all or most of us, theists and atheists alike, accept.

What (Q2) asks about is the foundation or basis of the agreed-upon objectively binding moral code. This is not a sociological or any kind of empirical question. Nor is it a question in normative ethics. The question is not what we ought to do and leave undone, for we are assuming that we already have a rough answer to that. The question is meta-ethical: what does morality rest on, if on anything?

Beckwith is quite right that the naturalist/physicalist/materialist is going to have a hard time justifying his adherence to the moral prescriptions and proscriptions that most of us, theist and atheist alike, accept. I would argue that a naturalist/physicalist/materialist ought to be a moral nihilist, and that when these types fight shy of moral nihilism that merely shows an inability or unwillingness on their part to appreciate the logical consequences of their own doctrine, or else some sort of psychological compartmentalization.

I once knew a hard-assed logical positivist who during the work week practiced his positivism, but on Sundays attended Eastern Orthodox religious services. He avoided cognitive dissonance by compartmentalizing.

The compartmentalized life is the suboptimal life. Seek existential unity and consistency.

Can What Is Impossible to Achieve be an Ideal for Us?

In The Stoic Ideal, I stated that the Stoic ideal is "is for us impossible, and so no ideal at all." The ideal of the Stoic sage is the attainment of a state of god-like impassibility by means of a retreat into the inner citadel of the self, a retreat of such a nature that one is no longer affected — unless the sage wants to be affected — by anything not in his power. My double-barreled thesis, aphoristically put, is that (i) Stoic impassibility is for us humans an impossibility, and thus (ii) cannot be an ideal for beings of our constitution. In illustration of my thesis I adduced Jesus on the cross: Jesus died in agony like a man, even though, if he was God, he could have realized the Stoic ideal. Of course my argument was not the following:

1. Christianity is true and Jesus is our Exemplar
2. Jesus did not exhibit on the cross or elsewhere the behavior of a Stoic sage
Therefore
3. The Stoic ideal cannot be our ideal.

I did not argue this way because this is not the way philosophers qua philosophers argue. They argue from premises that do not rest on faith. My argument was this:

4. What is not in our power to achieve cannot be an ideal for us.
5. Stoic impassibiity is not in our power to achieve.
Therefore
3. The Stoic ideal cannot be our ideal.

The evidence for (5) is overwhelming. I have never met a Stoic sage, and neither have you. Some people are more stoic than others, and there are some Stoic philosophers about; but a philosopher is not the same as a sage. A philosopher is a mere aspirant, a seeker of wisdom; a sage has reached the goal.

The background assumption, (4), is open to question. I have deployed this principle in other contexts, and it seems to me to be a sound one. It is a generalization of the 'ought' implies 'can' principle: if I morally ought to do X, then it must be in my power to do X. Contrapositively, if it is not in my power to do X, then I have no moral obligation to do X. My principle is a generalization of the familiar Kantian principle because it covers not only the obligatory but also the supererogatory. So I call it the Generalized 'Ought' Implies 'Can' Principle. Roughly, an action or state is supererogatory if it is good to do or achieve but not bad to leave undone or unachieved. But an astute reader took issue with my principle that genuine ideals must be achievable:

I wonder, do you really want to discriminate against ideals that may be practically impossible for us to achieve?

Take anamartia. Errorlessness. Every time I go out on the tennis court I aim for an errorless set & match. Never gotten close. Every time I write a long document (under time pressure) I try for an errorless document, but there are always some mistakes & typos. I don't want to back off and accept a certain error rate as OK. It isn't OK. In principle and ideally I could be errorless and that's what I want to be. That ideal motivates me. I keep trying. I am not discouraged.

It is not clear that this is a counterexample to my principle. The reader says that he "could be errorless" in his slinging of words or hitting of balls. If that means that he has the ability to be errorless, then I say that errorlessness is a genuine ideal for him, even if he has never yet achieved errorlessness. (Something can be achievable by a person even if it has never been achieved by that person.) Surely my man ought to strive to perform to the very best of his abilities. If 'ought' is too strong, then I say his striving to perform to the best of his abilities is better than his not so striving. Either way, errorlessness is a genuine ideal for him. It is a genuine ideal for him because it is achievable by him. But he said, "in principle and ideally." Those are vague phrases in need of analysis.

To be errorless in principle could mean that a) there is no narrowly-logical or broadly-logical bar to his being errorless; b) there is no nomological bar to his being errorless; c) both (a) and (b). Clearly, errorlessness is possible for my reader in either or both of these senses. Neither the laws of logic nor the laws of physics rule out his being errorless. But satisfying the logical and nomological conditions does not suffice to make errorlessness a genuine ideal for him. For that more is needed: he must have the ability to be errorless and be in circumstances in which his abilities can be exercised.

So I stick to my claim that nothing can be a genuine ideal for a person unless it is concretely achievable by that person given his actual abilities and circumstances and not merely achievable 'in principle' by that person.

It may help if we distinguish two senses of 'ideal.' In one sense of the term, any desirable goal that one sets for himself is an ideal. But that is a use of 'ideal' so loose as to be useless. Suppose I desire to slice two hours off my marathon time the next time I run that distance. In one sense, that would be an 'ideal' time for me. But in the strict sense in which I am using the word, such an accomplishment is not achievable by me and so no ideal for me at all. But it may be an ideal for you.

I am tempted to insist that (4) is a self-evident practical principle, as self-evident as the principle of which it is the generalization. I rather doubt that I can prove it using premises more evident than it, but talking around it a bit may help.

Ideals must be realizable if they are to be ideals. The ideal 'points' to a possible realization. If that be denied then it is being denied that the ideal stands in relation to the real when the ideal has its very sense in contradistinction to the real. At this point I could bring in analogies, though analogies seldom convince. The possible is possibly actual. If you say X is possible but not possibly actual, then I say you don't understand the notion of possibility. Or consider dispositions. If a glass is disposed to shatter if suitably struck, then it must be possible for it to shatter. Analogously, if such-and-such is an ideal for a person, then it must be possible — and not just logically or nomologically — for the person to realize that ideal.

I believe this is an important topic because having the wrong ideals is worse than having no ideals at all. Many think that to be idealistic is good. But surely it is not good without qualification. Think of Nazi ideals, Communist ideals, leftist ideals and of their youthful and and earnest and sincere proponents. Those are wrongheaded ideals, and some of them are wrongheaded because not realizable. The classless society; the dictatorship of the proletariat; the racially pure society; the society in which everyone is made materially equal by the power of the state. Ideals like these cannot be achieved, and if the attempt is made terrible evils will be the upshot. The Commies broke a lot of eggs in the 20th century (100 million by some estimates) but still didn't achieve their fabulous and impossible omelet.

Their ideals were not realizable, not warranted by the actual facts of human nature.

I suggest the same is true of the ideal of Stoic impassibility: it is not warranted by the actual facts of human nature. This is not to say that most of us would not be a lot better if we were more stoic and detached in our responses to what is not in our control.

Temptation Again

This from a reader:

I have been a follower and great admirer of you and your blog writing for some time. I enjoyed reading your most recent post, especially as this topic has been fresh in my mind from preaching a sermon last week from James 1:13-15 on the nature and power of temptation in the Christian life. While of course our conclusions will inevitably differ in many ways on this topic, given our differences of belief concerning Christianity, I wanted to write you to ask for clarification concerning what you distinguish as first-order temptations and meta-temptations (or perhaps second-order temptations?).

I believe the heart of your argument is: Meta-temptation is the worst form of temptation because one who succumbs to the temptation to reject the objective validity of the moral point view has removed the context in which dalliance with floozies, paying one's debts, not murdering one's rivals, etc. are morally evaluable.

My question is this: is not your definition of meta temptation true of all temptation? Since I always choose that which is most desirable to my mind’s eye in the moment (to paraphrase Jonathan Edwards on the Freedom of the Will), am I not choosing that which I perceive as the greatest good and desirable, even if in reality it is not good but evil? Of course self-deception is at work where I assent to contradictory propositions in the moment: I should not do [X] because it is evil (i.e. God has forbidden [X]); I should do [X] because it is good (i.e. [X] will satisfy me and thus I determine what is good and evil).

The distinction I was making was between being tempted to do what one's moral sense tells one is wrong in a particular situation, and the temptation to discount as illusory the entire moral point of view. These strike me as different because one can be tempted in the first way while having no doubts at all about the objective validity of morality. Consider an example. I am a married man in a distant city attending a convention. A woman I meet there makes it clear that she is attracted to me and is available for sex. Finding her attractive I am tempted to invite her up to my hotel room. This is a 'first-order' temptation in that it concerns a specific action. Let us assume that there is no prudential reason why I shouldn't act upon my desire. But my conscience or moral sense tells me that the contemplated action, adultery, is wrong because it violates a vow I took. I do not doubt at all the objective validity of the deliverances of conscience in general or even the validity of the present deliverance; I simply override the present deliverance. I just block it out. I don't even have to engage in any rationalization. I merely suppress the bite of conscience and go ahead with the action.

So I don't see that my definition of meta-temptation applies to this sort of case. I know (or rather believe) that what I am about to do is objectively wrong, but, in the grip of lust, I freely suppress this knowledge (or belief) and freely go ahead with the contemplated action. I am not choosing what appears to me at the moment most desirable (desire-worthy), for I believe I am about to do a morally shabby thing. But I do it anyway! I willfully do what I know or believe I ought not do. And I do it freely. Lust may have me in its grip but I am not powerless to resist it; I freely consent to going with the flow.

Is not the purpose of all temptation to construct on alternate reality/metaphysic of what is good and what is evil, to make the false “look more true than truth itself” (to quote Irenaeus from his Against Heresies), to make something look larger than life in order to tempt me to believe that it will slake and satisfy my vicious lusts? It reminds me of Romans 1:22-23 where the Apostle Paul writes, "Claiming to be wise, they became fools, [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” What is interesting about verse 23 is that Paul lists the order of creation backwards as if to say, “The moment you exchange the glory of the Creator for the creature, all of reality becomes inverted and perverted and thrown completely upside down.”

I think that seems to be the nature of all temptation: an inversion and perversion of reality where the evil becomes the good and the good the evil.

I don't see that all temptation amounts to an erection of an alternative metaphysic of good and evil. The example I gave, which is common enough, involves no transvaluation of any received values. We value fidelity and disvalue betrayal.

Please note that the inversion you speak of where the evil becomes good and the good becomes evil presupposes the moral point of view. Suppose A agrees with B that there is an objective and absolute moral order. But they disagree about which actions are good and which evil. A might hold that it is objectively good to procreate while B, under the influence of Schopenhauer, holds that procreation is objectively evil. That is a deep disagreement but one that plays out within the context of the shared assumption of an objective moral world order. The meta-temptation I am referring to is far more radical: the 'Nietzschean' temptation to dismiss as illusory the very notion of objective good and evil.

Temptation and Meta-Temptation

Is it built into the very concept of temptation that if one is tempted to do something or leave something undone that the act or ommission is morally wrong? I should think so. This is not to say that in ordinary English 'temptation' is not used in looser ways. For example, 'I am tempted to answer my opening question in the affirmative.' Or, 'I am tempted to take some of my cash and buy precious metals.' These are loose uses of 'tempt' and cognates. I am here concerned with the strict use, the moral use. Accordingly, it is by my lights a conceptual truth, and thus a necessary truth, that if one is tempted to do X or forego doing Y, then the act or the omission is morally wrong.

So, strictly speaking, to be tempted to do something is to be tempted to do something wrong. One cannot be tempted to do the right thing, or the good thing, or what one ought to do. This is nonsense: 'The floozy at the Kitty Kat lounge shook her comely ass in my face thereby tempting me to go home to my wife.' If there is temptation in this situation, it is the temptation to dally with the floozy. There is no temptation in the desire to be faithful to one's spouse or in the even stronger desire to engage in sexual intercourse with her.

Nor can one be tempted to do something morally insignificant, i.e., morally neutral. 'Home fries or hash browns' in normal circumstances is not a morally significant choice. I cannot be temped either way.

I am inclined, though not tempted, to say that the worst form of temptation is the temptation to think that it doesn't matter morally what one does or leaves undone, that the moral point of view is illusory, that morality is buncombe, conventional at best, not grounded in rerum natura. Lacking a better name for this I will call it 'meta-temptation in order distinguish it from such first-order temptations as the temptation to commit adultery or to shoot my neighbor's barking dog.

Meta-temptation is the worst form of temptation because one who succumbs to the temptation to reject the objective validity of the moral point view has removed the context in which dalliance with floozies, paying one's debts, not murdering one's rivals, etc. are morally evaluable. Such a person 'beyond morality' may have prudential reasons for doing this and refraining from that, but not strictly moral reasons.

But if meta-temptation is a form of temptation, strictly speaking, then rejecting the moral point of view is itself immoral. Rejecting it is immoral, however, only if the moral POV is objectively valid and binding. If it is without validity, then it cannot be immoral to reject it. And if it is invalid, then what appears to be temptation cannot really be temptation, and the bite of conscience that accompanies the meta-temptation to reject the moral POV is illusory and not revelatory of any moral truth.

Nothing I have said resolves the question of the objective validitiy/invalidity of the moral point of view. I myself find it impossible to shake off the thought of its objective validity. Its objective validity is subjectively certain to me. That inability of mine is, however, arguably consistent with the illusoriness of the moral POV. And so my subjective certainty is not objective certainty — even to me!

I suspect that here as elsewhere one must in the end simply decide what one will believe and how one will live. You are fooling yourself if you think you will come up with a knock-down argument proof against every objection and acceptable to all able and sincere investigators. Examine the question throughly and then decide. Once you have decided, don't let your decision be overturned lightly. What you have resolved upon in your best hours should not be put in jeopardy by passing fears and doubts.

On Private and Public Morality

Many liberals have the bad habit of confusing private and public morality. They think that moral injunctions that make sense in private ought to be carried over into the public sphere. Such liberals are dangerously confused. There are those who, for example, take the Biblical injunction to "welcome the stranger" as a reason to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. Or consider the NT injunction to "turn the other cheek."

Although it is morally permissible for an individual to "turn the other cheek," "to resist not the evildoer," etc. in the letter and spirit of the New Testament, it is morally impermissible for government officials in charge of national defense and security to do the same. For they are responsible for people besides themselves. Consider the analogy of the pater familias. He cannot allow himself to be slaughtered if that would result in the slaughter of his spouse and children. He must, morally speaking, defend himself and them. With a single person it is different. Such a person may (morally speaking) heed the advice Ludwig Wittgenstein gave to M. O'C. Drury: "If it ever happens that you get mixed up in hand-to-hand fighting, you must just stand aside and let yourself be massacred." (Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. R. Rhees, p. 149) That was presumably advice Wittgenstein gave himself while a combatant in World War I.

It is a serious mistake, and one oft-made by liberals, to confuse the private and public spheres and the different moralities pertaining to each.

Imagine a society that implements a policy of not resisting (apprehending, trying, convicting, incarcerating, killing) rapists, murderers, foreign invaders, and miscreants generally. Such a society would seal its own death warrant and cease to function. It is a fact of human nature that people, in the main, behave tolerably well only under threat of punishment. People for the most part do not do the right thing because it is the right thing, but out of fear of punishment. This is not pessimism, but realism, and is known to be true by all unprejudiced students of history and society.

As for turning the other cheek, it is a policy that works well in certain atypical circumstances. If a man has a well-formed conscience, and is capable of feeling shame, then turning the other cheek in the face of his affront can achieve a result far superior to that achieved by replying in kind. Nonviolence can work. Gandhi's nonviolent resistance to the British may serve as an historical example. The Brits could be shamed and in any case Gandhi had no other means at his disposal. But imagine what would happen if Israel turned the other cheek in the face of its Islamic enemies who would blow it off the face of the map at the first opportunity?

Once your enemy has reduced you to the status of a pig or a monkey fit only to be slaughtered, then there is no way to reach him, shame him, or persuade him by acts of forebearance and kindness. You must resist him, with deadly force if necessary, if you wish to preserve your existence. And even if you in particular do not care to preserve your existence, if you are a government official charged with a defense function, then you are morally obliged to resist with as much deadly force as is necessary to stop the attacker even if that means targeting the attacker's civilian population.

But is it not better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, as Socrates maintained? Would it not be better to perish than to defend one's life by taking life? Perhaps, but only if the underlying metaphysics and
soteriology are true. If the soul is immortal, and the phenomenal world is of no ultimate concern — being a vale of tears, a place through which we temporarily sojourn on our way to our true home —
then the care of the soul is paramount and to suffer wrong is better than to inflict it.

The same goes for Christianity which, as Nietzsche remarks, is "Platonism for the people." If you are a Christian, and look beyond this world for your true happiness, then you are entitled to practice an austere morality in your private life. But you are not entitled to impose that morality and metaphysics on others, or demand that the State codify that morality and metaphysics in its laws and policies.

For one thing, it would violate the separation of Church and State. More importantly, the implementation of Christian morality would lead to the destruction of the State and the State's ability to secure life, liberty, and property — the three Lockean purposes for which we have a state in the first place. And bear in mind that a part of the liberty the State protects is the liberty to practice one's religion or no religion.

There is no use denying that the State is a violent and coercive entity. To function at all in pursuit of its legitimate tasks of securing life, liberty, and property, it must be able to make war against external enemies and impose discipline upon internal malefactors. The violence may be justified, but it is violence nonethless. To incarcerate a person, for example, is to violate his liberty; it is to do evil to him, an evil necessary for a greater good that can be attained in no other way.

The problem is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):

     The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all
     earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular
     — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been
     frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended
     protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of
     the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the
     wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned
     against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who
     for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good
     for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for
     others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth
     interests of the community.) [Arendt cites the Nicomachean Ethics,
     Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.] There is a tension
     between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen.

As a philosopher raised in Christianity, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops many of whom are woefully ignorant of the simple points Arendt makes in the passage quoted. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug-smuggler or a human-trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law breaking. I must be concerned with public order and the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's law breaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" as the New Testament enjoins us to do.

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops and others who apparently cannot comprehend the simple distinctions I have tried to set forth.

On Black Reparations

Warning to liberals: clear thinking, moral clarity, and political incorrectness up ahead! If you consider any part of the following to be 'racist' or 'hateful' then you are in dire need, not of refutation, but of psychotherapy. Please seek it for your own good.

There is no question but that slavery is a great moral evil. But are American blacks owed reparations for the slavery that was officially ended by the ratification of the 13th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution over 145 years ago on 6 December 1865? I cannot see that any rational case for black reparations can be made. Indeed, it seems to me that a very strong rational case can be made against black reparations. The following argument seems to me decisive:

1. All of the perpetrators of the crimes associated with slavery in the U.S. are dead.
2. All of the victims of the crimes associated with slavery in the U.S. are dead.
3. Only those who are victims of a crime are entitled to reparations for the crime, and only those who are the perpetrators of a crime are obliged to pay reparations for it.
Therefore
4. No one now living is entitled to receive reparations for the crimes associated with slavery in the U.S., and no one now living is obliged to pay reparations.

Continue reading “On Black Reparations”

Moral Objectivism, Mackie’s Argument from Queerness, and Alterational Change

Our old friend Vlastimil Vohanka from the Czech Republic asked me if moral objectivism is a respectable metaethical position. It depends on what exactly moral objectivism is. Let's first of all see if we can locate it on the metaethical map. Then I take a quick look at Mackie's 'argument from queerness.'

Let's think about sentences like

1. Slavery is a great moral evil.

Presumably anyone reading this blog will assent to (1) and also hold that everyone ought to assent to it. So our question does not concern the ground-level acceptability of (1) which is here simply taken for granted. Our concern is metaethical.

(1) is a grammatically indicative sentence that appears to predicate the property of being evil of an action-type or an institution-type. If it puzzles you how an action-type can be evil, I say: an action-type is evil just in case actual or possible tokens (instances) of the type are evil.

But is (1) a fact-stating piece of discourse? If yes, then it has a truth-value. But note that if sentences like (1) are truth-valued, it does not follow that some are true and others false. It might be that they are all false, as on J. L. Mackie's Error Theory, which I won't discuss in this entry. Now let's introduce some terminology.

Continue reading “Moral Objectivism, Mackie’s Argument from Queerness, and Alterational Change”