In part 1 of this series, I raised a common-sense objection to the common-sense notion of treating life as meaningful because it feels meaningful: What about when life doesn’t feel meaningful?
As with meaning, so with morality, which is closely connected. My life may “feel” meaningful to me, but it doesn’t to a sociopath or serial killer—and, on a materialist accounting, my subjective frame of reference is no truer or more valid than his.
My habitual moral frame of reference may be very different from that of a bully, a rapist, a terrorist, a child molester or a third-world dictator, but ultimately any of these may be as successful within their own of reference as I am in mine, or more so. Within my model, they may be monsters; within their model, I may be a weakling, a sheep, a cog in an evil machine, or just a meaningless cloud of molecules or slab of meat.
Note that I’m not saying that materialism logically entails radical selfishness, or that there is no point in a materialist choosing unselfish or altruistic behavior. It is unarguably the case that fairness, empathy and altruism are useful skills that can offer significant rewards.
Creatures naturally prefer and strive for their own well-being, and human well-being is inseparable from a social context. Cooperation and alliances offer obvious practical advantages in the pursuit of individual well-being in a social context.
As naturally social creatures, humans flourish psychologically and emotionally in community. We enjoy the approval of others, and we enjoy the feelings of self-approval that follow from actions that we understand to be good for others as well as good for ourselves. Antisocial behavior, conversely, can result in antagonism, ostracism from social groups and unhappy guilt feelings.
In a word, moral feelings and moral behavior can be viewed as beneficial adaptations. From a materialist perspective, it can be said that what we call morality has been shaped by evolution, through trial and error, in ways that help our species survive and thrive (indeed, proto-moral systems and behavior have been observed in nonhuman species as well).
All of these are valid reasons to value and practice pro-social behavior. But there’s another side to the coin. It’s true that our moral impulses can be attributed to beneficial evolutionary adaptation—but the same can be argued, with similar force, for our immoral impulses and behavior (which also find analogs in animal behavior).
What we call moral behavior can be characterized as a practical strategy for successful living, but it’s also unarguably the case that selfishness, ruthlessness and corruption can also be practical and successful strategies for individuals that practice them well. What’s more, those who indulge in them can apparently be as happy with their lives as other people.
Robert Bolt’s Thomas More, in the stage version of A Man For All Seasons, aptly sums up the hard reality in this line. (N.b. I’m concerned here with his observations about the world, not his moral conclusion about heroism.)
“If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all … why then perhaps we must stand fast a little—even at the risk of being heroes.” (Bold added—SDG)
This I take for mere common sense and observation, though it is resisted by some nonbelievers who recognize on some level (correctly, of course) that justice, fairness and empathy really are good for us as individuals, while selfishness, ruthlessness and corruption really are bad for us, but whose worldview and epistomology seem not to permit a convincing demonstration or accounting of this fact.
For example, in the combox of part 1 some commenters argued, in effect, that altruism, empathy and respect for others “work” in a way that selfishness doesn’t. A society built on selfishness, it was pointed out, would necessarily collapse. Morality is to human psychology and behavior as health is to human biology; that going through life screwing people over usually leads to unhappiness of one sort or another, while treating people with respect usually leads to more positive outcomes, etc.
Much of this I agree with. Some of it I’m even willing to grant for the discussion. In particular, I’m willing to grant, contra the Randian Objectivists, that a society predicated on self-interest, however enlightened, is probably a doomed society. Fairness, decency, and altruistic concern for one’s neighbor are all important social values that benefit us all when they are widely held and practiced.
As regards individual moral behavior and personal well-being, though, while it may be true (and I believe it is) that virtue is always beneficial to the individual and vice is always harmful, is it empirically knowable as true? Can we claim to know from mere observation, independent of pressures of vested interests and worldview assumptions, that selfishness and ruthlessness lead to personal unhappiness?
It may be convenient for society if we accept this, and therefore it’s reaonable for society to seek to inculcate this theory on individuals, whether or not the evidence justifies it. But can it be demonstrated from observable reality, in purely empirical terms?
I’m skeptical of this. In fact, I think there’s a prima facie case to the contary. One can certainly make a case, bolstered by both empirical evidence and conventional wisdom, that virtue is its own reward and vice its own punishment. But a case can also be made, again bolstered by empirical evidence and conventional wisdom, that nice guys finish last, by a variety of measures.
More to come.
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Good morning, Steven (and any other comment section readers). :-)
Been thinking about section 1 and looking forward to section 2. Now I guess I’ll have to wait for section 3.
So far, your section about materialistic reasons for and against virtue makes reasonable sense. On the topic of meaning, you are wandering a lot, but you seem to be driving towards one or both of the following:
1. That, if there was a god meeting the description you believe in, he would make the universe more “meaningful”. He would do the same for the lives of those who believe in him or are in his service.
2. That the lives of those who believe in or believe they serve such a god would *feel* meaningful than those who didn’t.
I suspect #1 is correct, though the rational is rather circular. Part of the nature of your God appears to be “giver of meaning”. Basically because he would underlie and give a specific, external purpose to existence. So, merely by existing, he would change the definition of meaning. Probably in such a way that service to him would make for a more meaningful life, by the altered definition. Esoteric, but fair enough.
I have more doubts about #2. And the supporting C.S. Lewis quote is weak. Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed that such a great thinker wouldn’t notice how weak this argument would appear to someone that didn’t *already* believe his basic assumptions. Or course, failing to understand the point of view of the person your trying to convince is the most common of all argument failures. The main problem is his attempt to appeal to emotions, through the connotations of terms like “lowest animal sense”. It would be just as true, and just as connotationally misleading, for me to describe love with the girl as “the deepest, most meaningful connection I could ever have”. In a purely material world, there would be no deeper meaning that that for anyone, so it wouldn’t make sense to denigrate it in Lewis’s manner.
That doesn’t mean that believers wouldn’t have lives that, on average, feel more meaningful. I think that’s certainly possible. It’s just that the arguments so far are unconvincing. I suspect that questions like how much one person “feels” something (meaning, happiness, etc.) will all become moot in the next decade or 2. There have been many advances in the past few years in brain scanning technology. It’s probably only a matter of time before the intensity of a particular or emotion or feeling is actually measurable. I’m content to wait for the results.
Stepping back though, I’m not sure what you are driving at with all of this. Even if both of the meaning points were completely convincing and correct, as well as the points about selfish/selfless-ness, none of them appear to have any bearing on the actual existence or non-existence of God. Are you aiming to simply do a comparison of meaning and virtue under 2 thought-systems, or are you building a support base for an argument of the actual Truth of one of them?
“. . . while it may be true (and I believe it is) that virtue is always beneficial to the individual and vice is always harmful, is it empirically knowable as true?”
I don’t think it’s empirically knowable as true. In fact, most psychological studies tend to demonstrate that happiness ensues more from attitude than circumstances. An inclination toward being happy could conceivably go along with selfishness, ruthlessness, dishonesty, etc.
What makes it even more complicated is that most humans are still biologically stuck in “tribes” when it comes to unselfishness. They can be unselfish when it comes to family, community and maybe even their nation, but do not feel obliged to be unselfish outside their perceived tribe. So a parent can “unselfishly” spend most of his/her discretionary income on clothes for his/her children but doesn’t care that the clothes are the product of child labor in a Third World country. A citizen can “unselfishly” serve his/her country in an unjust war of aggression fought by that country. So they get the psychological payoff from seeing their behavior as unselfish, whether they are truly being unselfish or not.
Another point to consider is that a subset of ruthless, greedy humans might have played a beneficial role in the community as a whole when hard decisions had to be made quickly, or when a costly opportunity for the group presented itself. Think about the stories the Hebrews told about themselves in the Old Testament. God himself ordered them to take over territory occupied by other tribes and to kill or enslave the members of those tribes. The leaders of these efforts weren’t the kind, empathetic, patient and humble folks who kept things going from day to day.
“feels meaningful”
I have had lots of things that felt real to me. I felt that:
My girlfriend would never cheat on me.
That I am being watched.
There is a monster under my bed.
The world needs to be fair.
It has been shown through countless examples that our gut feelings can lead us astray from reality. Feelings are not a good argument for god.
DKeane: So far I have not proposed any argument for God. You may or may not have noticed that “feels meaningful” was a criterion proposed in this discussion by unbelieving thinkers, not believing ones.
Brian: Thanks for the thoughtful engagement.
Your suppositions about where I am heading (with, as you say, some wandering, though I’m trying to be systematic) are, I think, convergent with, though not quite identical to, my intended destination.
To anticipate a bit, what I hope to expore is the prospect of a framework in which our feelings or ideas about meaning and morality can be intelligibly understood as more or less adequate or inadequate, as more or less true to some kind of reality—in which feelings of meaningfulness or meaninglessness are not just irrational brute events contained within our organisms, but feelings that in some way correspond more or less adequately or inadequately to our actual condition.
On the observation quoted from C. S. Lewis, while it may be that further discussion will further illumine the issue—and I hope this is the case—it’s also possible that we may be near if not at an impasse. I can only say that unbelief is not, for me as a believer, a hypothetical but unimaginable psychological state, and what Lewis describes is not just what I imagine, in as it were the armchair of faith, as the reductio ad absurdum of this unimaginable psychological state. It is what confronts me, directly and personally, as unavoidable psychological consequence of a mental and imaginative universe without God. I am aware of the testimony of those who profess to be able to inhabit that universe without those consequences, but I find this as unintelligible as you profess to find Lewis’s point.
On your perceptive final question: At the moment I am only exploring existential implications of worldviews. It is not at present my intention to argue that nihilism is “too sucky to be true,” as a thoughtful atheist commenter phrased it (without necessarily endorsing that line of thought).
You may not have followed through on your observation that co-operative behaviour is a beneficial adaptation. If co-operative behaviour had not been sufficiently ascendant in the competition to preserve our genes we would have succumbed to some other species of more effective co-operators. This would have happened long before our ancestors became recognisably human and long before we developed the cognitive power to ruminate on the value of co-operation. Thus we can be fairly certain that our social emotions and instincts are stronger than our selfish ones.
Morality came to exist in the world to promote social co-operation. Social co-operation exists because the whole can be so much greater than the sum of the parts and that will affect the survival of genes
GordonHide: Perhaps you missed paragraph 8, beginning with “All of these are valid reasons to value and practice pro-social behavior. But there’s another side to the coin.” Stay tuned for Part 3, which will explore the other side of the coin in greater detail.
Steven, assume for the moment that science could show, as some people in the field of evolutionary morality argue, that something like the following is true:
“Enforced cultural norms (enforced moral standards) are heuristics (fallible, but usually reliable rules of thumb) advocating altruistic behaviors that increase the benefits of cooperation in groups. These benefits include material goods, psychological goods (such as the pleasures of altruism and the cooperative company of friends and family), and only sometimes reproductive fitness.”
Reproductive fitness is only sometimes a benefit because the emergence of culture (the ability of people to choose cultural norms based on whatever they found attractive) forever unhitched cultural morality (enforced cultural norms) from reproductive fitness.
For example, “Do not steal, lie in court, or murder” advocate altruism in the sense of advocating people accept the cost of not stealing, lying in court, or murdering, no matter how much they might want to, in order to benefit society as a whole.
Also, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an excellent heuristic for a winning altruistic strategy from game theory called “indirect reciprocity” (a winning strategy in environments common for people living in groups).
I understand one question you are addressing is something like “Could a morality based only in science be ‘meaningful’, in a sense that is beyond logic?”
At least for me personally, a science based moral principle such as “Altruistic acts that increase the benefits of cooperation in groups are moral” is meaningful in a sense beyond logic. (Here, “are moral” means such acts ought to be the basis of enforced moral standards).
The meaningfulness of this science based morality has three sources.
First, the psychological rewards I feel of pleasure at acting altruistically and in the cooperative company of friends and family. These rewards contribute strongly to my sense of well-being. (Arguably, much of the human emotional sense of well-being is a biological adaptation that encouraged our ancestors to cooperate in groups.)
Second, human biology based, and culture shaped, moral intuitions are more consistent with this principle than any alternative moral principle. That is, my conscience motivates me to follow the principle regardless of my own expectations of what will be in my best interests.
Third, I intellectually know that acting altruistically to increase the benefits of cooperation in groups is a winning strategy in game theory, even when in each individual interaction the winning strategy is to act selfishly. (Altruism wins only over multiple interactions.)
These three sources lead me to, almost always, follow the above moral principle in interactions with other people, even when, in the heat of the moment of decision, I expect doing so will be against my self-interest. That is, I put my trust more in the wisdom of the ages than in my own poor prediction capabilities in the heat of the moment regarding what will most increase my well-being over a lifetime.
If ‘meaningful’ means with an emotional reinforcement and motivation that is beyond logic (I plan to almost always act ‘morally’ regardless of my expectations in the moment of decision), then, for me at least, the above moral principle derived from science is very meaningful.
It would be an error to think that such a moral system would not work because ‘bad’ people would just take advantage of altruistic people. Game theory, as well as human intuition, shows that punishment of poor cooperators is critical for maintaining the benefits of cooperation in groups. That is, acting altruistically (at a cost to yourself and benefit to society) to punish poor cooperators in order to increase the benefits of cooperation is also a moral obligation.
The invention of rule of law is a highly effective means of increasing the benefits of cooperation. For people without rule of law, the human emotion indignation is usually more than sufficient for motivating punishment of poor cooperators. For people with rule of law, there are commonly norms restricting vengeance and some other forms of personal punishment because these are too likely to decrease the benefits of cooperation in groups (as by cycles of vengeance), not increase them. In cultures with rule of law, personal punishment of un-altruistic people is probably best restricted to refusing to cooperate with them and telling other people about their bad behavior.
>> I can only say that unbelief is not, for me as a believer, a
>> hypothetical but unimaginable psychological state, and what Lewis
>> describes is not just what I imagine, in as it were the armchair of
>> faith, as the reductio ad absurdum of this unimaginable psychological
>> state. It is what confronts me, directly and personally, as unavoidable
>> psychological consequence of a mental and imaginative universe without
>> God. I am aware of the testimony of those who profess to be able to
>> inhabit that universe without those consequences, but I find this as
>> unintelligible as you profess to find Lewis’s point.
I’ll try to help a bit with this. Speaking only for myself, of course. Other non-believers will have their own feelings, reasons and explanations.
How do I feel about a completely material existence? One where I have to make up my own meanings, or consciously/unconsciously adopt ones en-cultured from society or genetically built into me from thousands of previous generations? One where I know I don’t have to probe that hard or that deep to find limitations and gaps?
A bit disappointed.
But it’s disappointment of the same kind of feel when I think (baring some shockingly fast technological advancement) that I won’t ever walk on the surface of another planet. A wistful “Boy, wouldn’t that be something?”
It doesn’t bother me in my daily life. I have lain awake at night doing a lot of thinking and wishing a lot of things. But I’ve never lain there wishing for the universe to be naturally more meaningful. The closest is dreaming of doing some, big, good. To do something heroic or amazing. But I’d guess believers are hardly immune to those kind of wishes.
As for how most non-believers handle this all as no big thing, and many believers are deeply discomforted by the idea, here’s an analogy: Imagine a puzzle, a big one. It’s a hand-me-down, battered and dog-eared from many assemblies and disassemblies. You’ve got it partially assembled right now. Some pieces haven’t been placed yet. Others are long lost. A puzzle like that will still hold together fine with quite a few missing pieces. And you can still make out the picture.
What does it really matter that your neighbor also has his own dog-eared puzzle, and he has different pieces missing than yours?
Most people aren’t much unsettled by gaps in their world view, as long as the whole is holding. Everyone has these gaps. Things they don’t understand. Things that don’t quite fit together if you look close. Things that don’t seem to have answers at all.
When you have a gap in a puzzle, you simply build around it and keep going. As long as the pieces around it hold together, great. And it’s not like your exactly short on other spots to work on. I think that’s what many non-believers do around the “meaning gap” (if they even think of that as a gap. I believe many really don’t.) I think believers do exactly the same thing, just around different spots. As an example, anytime a believer says something like “God works in mysterious ways”, or builds up some really inscrutable apologetic construct, I ought to be thinking “There is someone building up the pieces around some gap they can’t fill.”.
I don’t know whether suggest different pieces or wish him luck or what.
Mark Sloan,
Thanks for your thoughtful contribution.
I would say that morality in the terms you express could offer a sort of relative or short-term “meaning,” in that a) it could furnish an explanation of a sort for feelings of meaningfulness, and b) it could offer a rationale for people inclined to do so to act on those feelings. I can’t imagine such considerations being sufficient to motivate many people to heroic or sacrificial virtue (e.g., throwing themselves on a grenade to save their comrades), even though evolutionarily this is obviously desirable behavior. But perhaps you can.
A broader problem with this approach, it seems to me, is this. The collective or social benefit for fairness/altruism depends on a certain critical mass of society generally recognizing and following fairness/altruism principles. It does not necessarily depend on universal conformity. Universal conformity may not even provide a significant advantage, or any advantage at all, over mere general conformity.
Certainly biological and social evolution have never to date produced anything like universal conformity in any known society, nor has any society ever implemented social sanctions for non-conformity (if that’s even the right word) with sufficient consistency to prevent strategic non-conformity from being an attractive and successful option to a non-negligible percentage of the population.
Let’s suppose a society in which, say, 55-65 percent of the population are ordinary folk, most of whom generally recognize fairness/altruism principles, tend to do tolerably well for themselves when they follow the rules, and tend to get their knuckles rapped when they step out of line.
Let’s suppose, further, that some 10-25 percent of the population embody fairness/altruism principles to an unusually robust degree—specially scrupulous, self-sacrificing, morally heroic people, many admired or celebrated as heroes or saints by the mass of people, thereby of course reinforcing bourgeois values for society as a whole.
On the flip side are those, say 10-25 percent, who fail to conform adequately to fairness/altruism principles, either because they are troubled or disadvantaged in some way or simply lack the empathic or discretionary skills needed to avoid social sanctions. At best, they are a burden on the empathy of others; at worst, their behavior is sufficiently antisocial to be harmful both to society and to themselves, and they are predictably marginalized by society as a result.
Finally, there is a group, say another 10-25 percent, who are are bold, ambitious, strategic risk-takers: individuals able to exercise sufficient discretion to avoid undue risk of undesirable consequences, and seeking to promote their own interests through socially approved means where possible—but also willing, given favorable risk-benefit scenarios, to cheat and engage in underhanded or unscrupulous tactics to get what they want.
Is it clear that the behavior of the final group as a whole is necessarily bad for the society as a whole? It will be bad for some individual members of society, certainly. A man who cheats his way into a college admission or scholarship, or who bullies his way to a promotion ahead of some other man, obviously harms the individual who would otherwise have had that spot. But if the cheater is sufficiently driven and ambitious, from the point of view of society as a whole he may be as effective as the other man, or even more so.
Even if he isn’t as effective as the other man, the relative harm he causes may not be sufficient to warrant the cost to society of dislodging him and his ilk, or of preventing their tendencies from carrying on in future generations. As long as the greater part of society continues to be guided by principles of fairness and altruism, the relative cost to society of a minority of bold, ambitious, strategically selfish individuals may not outweigh the advantage to those individuals of pursuing that behavior.
This is not theoretical. For more, see the daily headlines in government and Wall Street for the past 50,000 years.
“Is it clear that the behavior of the third group [bold, ambitious risk-takers who . . . are also willing to cheat and do whatever is necessary to get what they want] as a whole is necessarily bad for the society as a whole?
Well, it depends on how you define “bad” and how you define “society.” Ruthless human aggression against both human and other life forms has resulted in wildly successful human reproduction. It has allowed humans to develop complex intellectual skills and powerful technologies. It may also result in our killing ourselves off by destroying the eco-system or by using nuclear weapons against each other. Numerous human “societies” have been sacrificed in the name of “progress.” I don’t think it is possible to make what we call “progress” without incurring collateral damage to the environment and to fringe human societies, whose way of life inevitably fades away under the influence of more powerful outside cultural influences, even if they are not killed outright.
Would it have been “better” if humans had remained in isolated hunter-gatherer tribes,with no huge disparities in power and ownership among the members, but also lacking the resources to systematically accumulate knowledge? It depends on what you most value in the human experience. Do you most value harmony with nature, stability, sustainability, strong community bonds, obvious interdependence on one another and face-to-face moral accountability? Or do you most value exploration, expansion of human ability to control the environment, satisfaction of humans’ insatiable curiosity, experiencing novelty and being free to take on many roles in a larger society instead of being born into a traditional set of tribal responsibilities?
Judging the morality of capitalistic and communistic economies is a classic example of this dilemma. Is it moral to use resources to create and advertise new styles of clothes, cars and toys that are deliberately designed to make older versions look outdated, thus encouraging consumers to replace older products with new ones unnecessarily? Is it moral to prevent the most productive members of a society from earning more than the less competent? Your judgment on this will depend on your values, whether you are considering global society or a subset, and whether you are considering short term or long term results.
There’s no getting around it. Morality is complicated.
Brian,
Thanks for that fascinating comment.
To play Lewis’s end of the discussion a bit, here’s how your analogy plays for me.
The idea of a big, complicated jigsaw puzzle, battered and dog-eared, with pieces missing and so forth, strikes me as an apt picture for our attempts to piece together models of our world. We’re never going to have all the pieces, and there may be profound disagreements about how the pieces we do have go together. Here science can be helpful as we locate previously missing pieces and make ever more precise measurements of the exact curvature and dimensions of each knob and nook.
But here’s the rub: The whole business of fitting the pieces together is a compelling exercise in large part because of the glimpses we think we get of what the completed image would be. Tragically, tragically, we have lost the cover to the box the puzzle came in—but it is, or seems to be, a picture of something. Here, on these bits, is clearly a face—and such a face! Then the black lines on those bits—why, anyone can see that it’s writing, and even some of what it says.
The image in fact is not simply a pattern, but a meaningful pattern. Or is it? Are we just projecting meaning, like the face on Mars or the Eye of God nebula? If so, our relationship to the pattern changes drastically.
Suppose you hand me a sheet of paper with seemingly impenetrable markings on it, and tell me that it’s an encoded message for me from a father I never knew, and then add, “No, really, it’s just an algorithm generated by a computer.” That is not a small difference. It’s all the difference in the world.
cowalker: Thanks for more or less confirming my point.
The C.S. Lewis quote has never had carried much force with me (an atheist). It doesn’t shake my faith (sorry) in the affection I feel for people one whit. Do I find the concept of one big happy eternal afterlife where I spent quality time with my beloved and catch up on Beethoven’s symphonies appealing in the abstract(if un-Biblical)? Of course. But its nonexistence doesn’t mitigate how I feel about people on earth. If anything, it should make those earthly relationships even more precious for being limited. Consider this: Because they lack souls, dogs do NOT go to heaven (or hell). I think even dog-loving Christians must reluctantly assent to that. Must those Christians then presume Rover’s lack of ensoulment renders any “love” and devotion Rover projects false or meaningless? Do Christians think any less of their relationship with Rover because they know that the bond is, at least from the canine side, mere “bioelectrochemical flutter” (nice phrase BTW)? I don’t think so.
Clay: FWIW, the existence or nonexistence of an afterlife is not, for Lewis (or for me), the main point at all.
Consider two unusual imaginative pictures of the universe:
Option A. The universe as we know it is a product of blind chance and inexorable natural laws—and, by chance, it has produced not only consciousness, but immortal intelligences (ours), capable of enjoying an eternal happy afterlife (if, perhaps, certain conditions are met).
Option B. The universe was freely created by an eternal deity whose infinite being is source and summit of all that we call beautiful, true and good. He has, for reasons known to himself, chosen to create us as finite beings, and we have no reason to think our existence continues beyond death. While we live, each of us has a role to play in his grand design—one that can contribute to the good, true and beautiful plan He has for creation. By living well, we can live in harmony with him, fulfill the purpose for which he created us, and die in the knowledge that our lives and actions will be remembered and valued by him forever.
Both of these, certainly, fall well short of a Christian worldview—yet, of the two, it is the second, not the first, that comes closest to providing a context in which I could make sense of my basic ideas of meaning and morality. For the first—well, if I lived in a naturalist universe that had randomly produced immortality, I suppose I would regard that as a thing worth knowing, and it might well impact how I chose to lead my life. But neither meaning nor morality would make sense to me as categories the way they do for me on a fully Christian worldview.
Incidentally, Christian thought on animals and the afterlife is more complicated and interesting than you may be aware, and Lewis in particular didn’t accept as given that the animals we love on earth have no heavenly existence.
I’m sure a lot of what’s out there on the idea of animals in heaven can be classified as um, “interesting.” Lots of questions come to mind: So do bad dogs go to hell? Is there evidence of a canine holy book or do we have to examine pawprints? Is their Christ made in their own image? Do we have a duty to minister to them, and how? If dogs have souls, what about goldfish? How far up the evolutionary ladder does a species have to be to get eternal life? Can my dog go to heaven without me, or is his presence contingent on my being a believer?
Clay,
I know you’re goofing, but FWIW:
1. The traditional Catholic line is that all living things have souls, though human souls are different from animal and vegetative souls in being rational, subsistent and immortal.
2. The categories of “heaven” and “hell,” as popularly imagined in American religious culture (spiritual destinations where one’s “soul goes” when one dies) are not helpful here. The Judeo-Christian eschatological hope in final resurrection and a renewed physical creation is the only context I can see for thinking about animals and the afterlife from a Christian POV.
3. The redemption of Christ extends to all of creation, to the whole cosmos, to every creature. Christ did not come just for human beings, but for everything. Nevertheless, he came as a human being, and so all of creation is redeemed in and through humanity.
4. Who knows, perhaps your dog will get you into heaven, instead of vice versa. ;-)
Re: Steven D. Greydanus on Thursday, Jan 12, 2012 7:40 AM (EST):
Steven, thanks for your considered reply. Let’s go through what I saw as your three main challenges to my position that morality (at least in the form of enforced cultural norms) is a biological and cultural evolutionary adaptation that is fully accessible to science.
First challenge: You said “I can’t imagine such considerations being sufficient to motivate many people to heroic or sacrificial virtue (e.g., throwing themselves on a grenade to save their comrades), even though evolutionarily this is obviously desirable behavior.”
So far as I know, nominally atheist Chinese soldiers who died by the tens of thousands in the Korean war in “human wave” attacks were as brave and as committed to doing their moral duty as any soldiers. Nominally atheist Soviet soldiers in World War 2 were similarly as brave and as committed to doing their moral duty for their country as any soldiers. The “Tamil Tigers” of Sri Lanka (now defeated) was a secular political organization, but was the first in the modern age to use volunteer suicide bombers.
While we would question the morality of their actions (question if theirs was the best application of morality’s underlying principle), their heroism fits perfectly into “Altruistic acts that increase the benefits of cooperation in their groups”. That perfect fit is an important part of the reason that they felt fully motivated to risk injury and sometimes face certain death to cooperate to defend their groups. Cooperating to defend one’s group is a very old, very powerful, biological and cultural motivation for altruism.
Second challenge: I did not understand this challenge, the point you were making about universal conformity and its relation to understanding morality as a biological and cultural evolutionary adaptation.
Yes, universal conformity to culturally enforced moral standards is not required and should not be expected. That is why moral standards are enforced, some by rule of law (such as for stealing) and some only by social disapproval (such as for being too selfish).
It seems to me that “Altruistic acts that increase the benefits of cooperation in groups” has no problem accommodating people with wildly different cultural moralities and moral inclinations.
Third challenge: I will risk summarizing your last, and perhaps main point, as something like “Understanding morality as a biological and cultural adaptation is equivalent to the claim that whatever benefits society is moral. This is false because obviously immoral people can be, in at least some people’s opinion, of great benefit to society.” Let me know if I have misunderstood you and misrepresented your challenge.
This is not what “Understanding morality as a biological and cultural adaptation is equivalent to”. Moral behaviors understood as a biological and cultural adaptation are altruistic behaviors (costly to the actor, beneficial to others, and done without consideration of any future net benefits to the actor) that increase the benefits of cooperation in groups.
Self-interested economic cooperation may be wonderfully beneficial to society (by increasing the benefits of cooperation) but is not morally admirable (either by enforced cultural norms or our moral intuitions) because it lacks the critical component of altruism.
You said; “Morality is complicated”. No, figuring out “what will benefit society” is complicated.
Morality is simple. “The underlying function of morality is to advocate altruistic acts that increase the benefits of cooperation in groups”.
It is a little more complicated to figure out what cultural norms ought to be enforced (what are the best heuristics for choosing such ‘moral’ altruistic acts). Fortunately, we have a lot of good empirically proven heuristics that have passed the test of time to work with, such as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. More recently, science in the form of game theory has provided (for the first time so far as I know), a clear understanding of when it is immoral to follow this version of the Golden Rule, as sometimes occurs when dealing with criminals and in times of war.
Finally, I should point out that humans already do, unknowingly in most cases, follow moralities defined by “Altruistic acts that increase the benefits of cooperation in groups”.
The diversity and contradictions of human enforced cultural norms (moral standards) are due to four main different ways the above moral principle is applied. 1) Who is in the in-group and deserves moral consideration and who is in an out-group and can be exploited. 2) What markers of membership in the in-group ought to be (such as circumcision and not eating pork). 3) What rationally justifies accepting the burdens of altruism (just personal durable well-being or to avoid the wrath of an angry deity). And 4) the effectiveness of the enforced cultural norms in actually increasing the benefits of cooperation (some, such as female circumcision, are much less effective than others).
Assume “Altruistic acts that increase the benefits of cooperation in groups” were to become generally recognized as the underlying function of morality and a useful moral reference for resolving moral disputes. The main change would be to focus arguments about morality, where they should be focused, on what altruistic acts are most likely to increase the benefits cooperation in groups.
I expect that virtually everyone will start with the position that their morality is obviously best at increasing the benefits of cooperation in groups. But at least those arguments will be focused on what morality really is, not what people may think it is or what they think it ought to be.
Mark Sloan,
Thanks again for your reply. Please excuse me for replying comparatively briefly—I’ve got a number of deadlines pressing.
1. I can’t help finding your citation for bravery among Chinese and Soviet soldiers as an example of atheistic heroism somewhat ironic.
Whenever the subject of religious oppression and atrocities comes up, and a believer points out that atheistic regimes have also committed great atrocities, some Hitchens/Dawkins/Sam Harris disciple pops up contending, as their teachers have done, that Stalinism, Maoism and/or Nazism are actually fundamentally religious, not atheistic, in nature.
The argument is that such ideological systems replace faith in God with faith in the state, or some such thing. True atheism, it is claimed, permits no sacred cows; methodological skepticism must always be permitted.
Well, fine, in that case there has never been an atheist state, and a fortiori there have been no atheist state-sponsored atrocities. But by the same token the bravery and heroism produced in these systems cannot be claimed for atheism. One can’t have it both ways (not that you have personally tried to do so).
2. My second and third points are really essentially one point, which is the account you have offered for morality seems to be insufficient to warrant considering conventional moral norms as applicable always and for everyone, or even almost always and for almost everyone. At best, they describe norms will benefit society if generally followed by most people most of the time, while leaving ample room for the regular practice of successful strategies that would conventionally be described as immoral.
In some societies, deviations from the enforced norm may even become more the rule than the exception, not only without harm to the species but even with benefit. Consider monogamy and infidelity among birds.
Monogamy as a reproductive strategy offers clear advantages, not only for humans, but for a number of other species as well, including a number of bird species. Females benefit from the active help of a mate who contributes to raising their offspring, males benefit from exclusive mating rights, and the children benefit from the partnership of their parents.
Within this arrangement, female infidelity is obviously a threat to the male’s interests in the partnership; otherwise, he may be putting in the effort to raise another male’s chicks. Thus, a male bird who catches his mate cheating may punish her by contributing less to raising the offspring, or even by abandoning her altogether.
Fidelity is thus an enforced norm that offers concrete benefits to the pair and to the species. Yet infidelity occurs, and when successful and undetected it offers advantages of its own to each sex and to the species.
Promiscuous females can benefit from the aid of a responsible social partner while increasing the genetic diversity and success potential of their offspring. Also, since the most attractive and virile males are not necessarily the most responsible, females can contrive to have the best of both worlds by pairing with a responsible partner and then reproducing with a flashier male. Female promiscuity is also potentially beneficial to males if it means that they may have a chance for an outside fling, which for the male is pure benefit with no downside. (It is of course all too easy to transfer these considerations to human pairings as well.)
P.S. FWIW, I didn’t say “Morality is complicated.” That was cowalker, and while I basically accepted one of his posts as largely confirming my basic point, I didn’t make his dictum my own. Nor did I exactly say that obviously immoral people can be of great benefit to society. It would be better to say that obviously immoral people profit from their strategic selfishness without necessarily harming society, at least to such an extent that it becomes worth the social cost of punishing them. Again, more in Part 3 to come.
Thank you for Part II. New wordle: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4669044/An_interesting_conversation_so_far
>> To play Lewis’s end of the discussion a bit, here’s how your analogy
>> plays for me.
<snip>
Yeah, Lewis might go that way with his end of the discussion. He tended to wander… ;-)
I think we’ve shined some light on how people handle having such different “missing pieces” in their world views. But if we are going to start going after what the actual picture is, we really are going to hit an impasse pretty quick.
There’s a good reason it’s so difficult (effectively impossible, often) to convince someone that your own picture is the right one. After someone has spent years working on theirs, and are reasonably happy that they at least have the rough outline right, how are you going to convince them they’ve got it put together fundamentally wrong? They’ve put too much work in and too much stuff is built upon it. Mere language is simply insufficient to the task. You can only touch on a few pieces at once. And while you’re explaining one area of difference, that pressure is often just strengthening the other areas. If you could *show* them whole picture at once somehow, then you might have something. But we can’t even conceive of the whole picture at once.
Basically, to have a real chance to convince someone in this type of world-view-shifting discussion, they have to be susceptible. I usually think of susceptibility as falling into 2 categories:
1. They are for some reason unsatisfied with their own view, and searching for a change. This is uncommon, but it is ok to try to change a person’s mind in this case, because they are initiating.
2. They are vulnerable, because of emotional distress, low education level, poverty, etc. Even when you are also helping them at the same time, I don’t think it’s really polite to include a pitch for changing world views in it.
My point is that I doubt anyone in this comment box is here in either of these states, at least not enough to make themselves actually susceptible to a significant change. The best we can hope for is polite, interested, respectful interaction. It’s going good so far.
“Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, ‘I am not the kind of person I want to be.’ It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.”
Frank Herbert
Dune
STM that the argument confuses being atheistic with being amoral or immoral. Very few of the virtues are strictly super-natural - very nearly all are within the reach of the “natural man”, whether an atheist or not. This is a part5 of Catholic ethics that too often goes ummentioned. It was (IIRC) Plato who first listed the four “cardinal” virtues of prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance - & there is no need at all to believe in a deity in order to practice any of them. Many atheists are far nobler in their practice of these virtues than a vast number of Christians have been, regardless of the claims made for the supernatural origin & character of Christianity. It really is time for Christians to stop maligning atheists,and to become far better acquaited with the many virtuous heathen of the past. We can’t afford to be ignorant of them. Maybe it’s difficult for people in the US, a country not even 250 years old, to realise that many characters of Classical Antiquity simply do not fit the modern stereotype of the immoral, amoral, anti-theist ?
FWIW - why should [belief in] God, a god or gods be needed for moral conduct ? STM that question needs to be asked. IMO, to say that a belief in Divine Beings (whether many or one) is needed for humans to be ethical, is dangerously close to the mythological language that speaks of Israel’s god as working for six days and resting on the seventh. God is *not* needed for *anything* - not the universe, not even morality. He is not an explanation for anything, or a means to anything: He is in the strict sense “use-less”. To invoke God as an explanatory device for anything in the universe, is entirely wrong; it degrades God by making Him an instrument for human concerns & human insecurities.
Manticore: Who is STM? What argument are you talking about? Who do you think has confused being atheistic with being a/immoral, or suggested that belief in God or gods is needed for moral conduct? I can’t connect anything you’re saying to anything that’s been said to date.
[spam link deleted]
See, now, belief in God vs. disbelief is one thing, but what is anyone to make of a comment like this??? It’s like we’re talking two different languages and living in two different universes.
Tell me I wander and I’ll emphatically agree. Tell me Chesterton wandered and I’ll laugh in agreement—good gracious, the man did nothing but wander, pages and page and books and books of wandering. Kreeft wanders. Lots of good writers wander. Myself, I wish I wandered less, but I can’t help it.
In the particular case of my jigsaw response to your comment above, as it happens, I think my reply was as direct and focused as could be wished—almost to a Lewisian degree. If anything, it was your earlier jigsaw/etc. post doing the rabbit trailing. To accuse me, even winkily, of wandering in this particular response strikes me as odd … but to say that wandering was a characteristic foible in Lewis’s writing is just bizarre.
I don’t necessarily idolize Lewis today the way I did 20 years ago, and I allow that there are fronts on which he is vulnerable. But this is the one front on which he is not. He is among the most disciplined and organized writers I’ve ever encountered. His power of visualizing from the outset the whole essay (or the whole book) was just astonishing. If ever a writer lived up to the credo “Decide what you want to say, and say exactly that,” it was Lewis (and he did it all longhand, in one draft, seldom making edits, and seldom needing to). If you haven’t noticed that, then you don’t know Lewis as a writer.
I thought I was clear that the question, as I see it, is whether there is a picture at all, a meaningful image that expresses something—or only pieces fitting together and a mass of color onto which we project pictures of our own devising.
I’m glad you feel that way. I agree, as far as that goes. Myself, I always hope for more than that, even if no one winds up making a significant change—I hope for greater insight into other points of view, and I hope to offer insight to those open to it. But I agree that it begins with polite, interested, respectful interaction.
Steven, I also favor polite, interested, respectful interaction and agree that no one here is likely to change their minds.
My not replying to your last rebuttal was not because I lacked a basis for refuting your arguments. I decided to reconsider how to compactly present my position. (My position is directly opposite to yours regarding the ‘meaningfulness’ of morality as an evolutionary adaptation that is as available for study by science as eyes and emotions.)
To that end, I posted on a purely secular website a short piece I titled
“Why Christian Morality is an Evolutionary Morality”.
While true, it is a bit pejorative. However, this approach to explanation looks promising and so I think being a little pejorative (as long as it is actually true) is justified.
It is still not perfect, the first commenter understood it, while the second appears to have completely missed the point.
If you have any interest, it is at:
http://www.project-reason.org/forum/viewthread/23428/
Ah, the internet. Where I can’t tell if you are actually angry about my line about Lewis, and you can’t tell that I was trying, and completely failing, to be make an ironic joke. What I was trying to do was to tease this whole conversation (both of us. Both!) for *our* topic jumps. After all, we started with a post about the nature of meaning, and now you are discussing the topic-discipline of a writer and I’m discussing the *act* of discussing the topic-discipline of a writer.
Suffice to say, my knowledge of Lewis’s writing is woefully insufficient for me to have any opinion whatsoever about how disciplined a writer he was. My experience with his non-fiction covers only his book review of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End”. My experience with his fiction merely covers 5 of the Narnia books and his Space Trilogy. I enjoyed and appreciated the quality of all but one of them. But fiction and non-fiction are not the same. I’d have to read more of his non-fiction to have any point of view about focus.
As for the prior topic, I grasp that you are interested in whether there is a picture at all, and I understand and agree that this is a topic of significant importance. I also was trying to make clear that I was merely trying to help with a small but related topic, which was the difficulty you’d described in trying to really grasp how non-religious people accept or live with their position. I thought I might be able to pass along insight.
When you seemed interested in pulling the conversation in a more big-picture direction, my following post expressed doubt that we would profit as much as in discussing the small. If we were, by your own admission, having trouble truly, fundamentally grasping how each other felt about smaller pieces like “how do people survive with different definitions of meaning”, I was doubtful that we would make much headway on bigger topics. I was trying to emphasize the usefulness of staying on small topics where we could build a basis for common understanding….
Wait. Ok. I get what you were going for, I think. You weren’t thinking of pulling the camera back (to encompass the whole puzzle instead of just the “the-nature-of-meaning piece”) as changing the topic. You were attempting to pull the conversation back to your blog post, and reemphasize the nature of the picture as fundamental to the shape of that piece.
Since I already agreed that it’s important, and talked about it in my first post, it didn’t occur to me that you were trying to move back there again. Sigh. We can’t even get through a single conversation without significant understandings on both sides. That’s disappointing.
I’m reading Sam Harris’s book, “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.” Harris suggests other ways to arrive at a moral position that is “empirically knowable as true” and “demonstrated from observable reality, in purely empirical terms.” Although I do think language of “true/false” is helpful, we must at some level agree what well-being is for individuals and society, people, animals, and plant. I suggest an empirically knowable position may come about as a result of observation, better understanding of neurophysiology, and new narratives which culturally encapsulates these observations (memes) and understandings at this time. If anything, the Church’s power derives from its ability to relate a compelling narrative. The Church sometimes, unconsciously, updates its narrative in ways that results in an improvement in well-being among church goers and for societies. I am curious to see how the church will consciously/unconsciously incorporate findings from the science of morality over the next 35 years, the upper bound of my life expectancy.
Brian: Thanks for clarifying. Let me clarify, in turn, that I certainly wasn’t remotely angry or irritated, or anything like it! As context, because Lewis is such a prominent popular Christian writer, in my experience it’s pretty common for atheists to express critical opinions of him—and, in general, as part of my overall preference for polite, interested, respectful interaction, I find it helpful to try to understand those critical opinions, and to respond constructively where possible. I was surprised by your comment, but that’s all—and yes, from what you say about your ironic intent, yes, I certainly missed that.
As for my spin on your jigsaw metaphor, my thought was not to “change the subject” so much as address or restate my original point in the idiom of your comments. Sorry for the disappointing misunderstandings, but I can’t say I found it discouraging myself. Pretty par for the course. I actually find it encouraging when misunderstandings can be cleared up so quickly. It’s the incorrigible ones that linger pass after pass that I find discouraging. :-)
Bill Hallinan: I’m aware of Harris’s argument and would be surprised if his approach ultimately offers any significant rebuttal for my general skeptical critique. Surprised, but not dismayed: I do think that doing good and avoiding evil is always good for us, and in theory it’s possible that this principle applies in ways that are empirically demonstrable even in a rigorous way, not just a general and average way. I doubt it, though. My guess is that it will always be possible to make a case for selfish and immoral behavior as empirically beneficial in some cases.
Whew. I’m glad I’m not leaving the impression that I was being insulting. Thanks. :-)
I look forward to part 3.
Steven, you wrote:
“The traditional Catholic line is that all living things have souls, though human souls are different from animal and vegetative souls in being rational, subsistent and immortal.”
I presume you accept evolution. Doesn’t it seem the work of a callous creator indeed, that would condemn the vast majority of his creation (over millions of years of the existence of sentient creatures) to brief lives of random pain and suffering, only to dead-end to eventual extinction of that particular species entirely? There doesn’t seem to be much “meaning” there, or the “soul” of these creatures to serve much purpose.
Okay, I admit the discussion is proceeding very slowly—lots of stuff pressing lately—but Part 3 is now up.
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