Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost has an interesting post on something we argue about quite a bit here, which is objective moral truth and whether God exists.
Click here to read more. I particularly like this sketch of the argument because it includes stuff from the American C.S. Lewis, Elton Trueblood.
Dostoevksy expressed this argument very succinctly, in Ivan Karamazov's contention that if there is no God, everything is permitted.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, Jean-Paul Sartre said, "The existentialist ... finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven."
ReplyDeleteTlaloc, this entire post was just a ruse to bring you out from under Mount Mordor. You had us at "BAH!"
ReplyDelete"Not at all, what is permitted is what the individual truly believes to be right." That means everything is permitted, or it means nothing.
ReplyDeleteTlaloc's responses are unimpressive since they assume that Lewis had an obligation to offer the best argument for his position. But this assumption, which Tlaloc must believe is true for his argument to work, makes sense only if Lewis is thought to lack some virtue if he does not fulfill this obligation. But that means that there are normative guidelines by which we can assess the reasons we believe are owed to us. But who are "us"? The sorts of beings entitled to the sorts of reasons that are adequate. So, if I am not given adequate reasons, and if the person offering them knows that they are not adequate, then I have been wronged and he has not fulfilled his obligation. Thus, Tlaloc's criticism of Lewis establishes Lewis' position after all. There is a natural law that cannot in principle be rejected without assuming its truth in the rejection.
ReplyDeleteBut what if Tlaloc were to say that I am merely demonstrating the necessity of a "rational ought," that the laws of logic are normative for human thought. This response, however, will not due. For it assumes that there is a higher norm--one ought to obey the laws of logic--which is itself not a law of logic. What sort of law is it? It's law about, rather than of, logic. It is law about the proper relationship that human beings ought to have in relation rational norms. It seems then to be a moral norm, for we believe that someone who fails to live up to it not only is rationally challenged but morally challenged if he is informed of his failure but persists in it nontheless. For his failure is not in his lack of reason, but in his lack of moral fortitude in correcting his lack of reason.
Case closed. There is an objective moral law.
I love it when you do that.
ReplyDeleteTlaloc wrote, "Do you truly believe you are permitted to do anything? Do you believe it's okay for you to murder or rape at whim?" Of course not—and that was never my point. What Dostoevsky and Sartre were pointing out is that without God, there is nothing to stop someone else from believing that these things are permissible. You said, "what is permitted is what the individual truly believes to be right." But you did not mean that statement to apply only to me—it means nothing unless it applies to everybody, and if it does apply to everybody, that means that everything is indeed permitted—for whoever wants to do that particular thing. Moreover, you suggest that this applies only to "what the individual truly believes to be right." This assumes that the idea of "rightness" has some universal foundation, but you yourself have said, here and elsewhere on this site, that there are no moral universals. That eliminates even the fig leaf of the individual having to believe what they want to do is right. Anyone can just do as they please, because there is no universal notion of "right" to justify or fail to justify any actions whatsoever. And that means, without God, "everything is permitted," just as Sartre and Dostoevsky, at opposite ends of the religious spectrum, both understood.
ReplyDelete"One ought to follow the laws of logic" is not a law of logic; it is a law about logic. Just as your claim that my argument is ridiculous is a judgment that assumes one ought not to have ridiculous arguments. Logic may tell you that an argument is ridiculous; but morality tells you that it is not good to have ridiculous arguments. The former is a claim of logic; the latter is a claim about logic.
ReplyDeleteMathematics is helpful in determining the length of the sword I am making for the purpose of stabbing you; but morality tells me that I ought not to stab you. The reason why stabbing you is wrong is not a failure of my mathematical powers; it's a failure of my moral powers. The sword, if it kills you, was not too long because it pierced your heart; it was just right for that purpose, but it was wrong that that purpose was fulfilled.
To say that humans, everywhere and in every place and time, ought to be rational, is a claim about the proper use of a particular human power. That is a moral ought about a rational power.
Case closed, again. Double jeopardy. There is a universal moral law.
What?
ReplyDeleteCould your language be more convoluted?
"A person can have their own sense of right and wrong without some mythical universal morality on which to base it. They base it on their own experiences and thoughts. Naturally it will be heavily culturally influenced but it will still vary from person to person." etc.
ReplyDeleteYou're still not getting it. You're giving us a universal "ought" that denies that there is any such thing as a universal "ought." Your counterarguments do nothing to change the self-contradictory nature of your central proposition.
I don't see how either side of this debate can avoid slipping in to solipsism.
ReplyDeleteGoing from "there is a universal moral truth" to "therefore there is a divine creator" requires a leap of logic made on an a priori belief in a deity.
To put it another way: Not jumping off really tall bridges without a bungee cord or a parachute is a really bad idea. Therefore, people across cultures don't jump off the bridges. This is universal. Is it therefore then a proof of God? Only if you decide that the decision not to jump is based on some sort of judgment or value of life that is divinely inspired. It requires a subjective value judgment at some point.
To put it another way, aren't some ideas just such good ideas that all human beings go, "Hey! That's a good idea!"
ReplyDeleteDon't you just see the oughts bleeding from every orifice? You can't get away from it. You live in ought-world no matter how stringently you try to deny it.
ReplyDeleteBeckwith is crystal clear here, nothing convoluted about it.
I think we are nearing the end of our Socratic journey. Talcim Powder writes:
ReplyDelete"Yes indeed, you seem to be getting better at this, now tell me this when a person has explicitly claimed to be embarking on a logical odyssey is it then reasonable to hold them to the rules of logic?"
But here's the problem. What if someone says that he does not want to take part in the logical odyssey? Is he wrong in doing so? Suppose someone says," I would rather not discover if the elixir I am drinking is poison by means of chemistry. I prefer flipping a coin." And suppose you say, "But that's irrational." And he says, "But I've chosen not to embark on that rational odyssey." The flaw here is that he should have embarked on the odyssey to begin with. It is not that he reasoned wrongly, but that he chose not to reason at all. He did not make an error; he committed a vice. He did not live consistently with his proper function. His "choosing" to embark or not has no bearing on his obligation to do good to himself. The wrong of slavery, to cite but one example, is not found in the slave's absence of consent; but rather, that the slave is by nature not property, whether he believes or not. If the slave consents to slavery, he treats himself badly. It does not matter how he gets his master; it's how his self is treated.
Why would anyone not want this to be true?
What the fuck is an ought? Stop making up words.
ReplyDeleteOught is an auxiliary verb or a variant noun meaning "nothing."
Beckwith, didn't you just flatly admit that your argument is entirely subjective?
ReplyDeleteWhat Beckwith is pointing out is what neither of you choose to deal with. If anyone is scared of something, it is either of you recognizing that you live your entire lives in accordance with the oughts and that they simply are not purely self or socially generated.
ReplyDeleteExample: Why do you argue on this website? Answer: Because you think it is important that the correct viewpoint or truth prevail. Why should that matter at all? Because there is an objective moral law exalting truth over falsehood.
And you, Hunter, refuse to acknowledge that believing that these "oughts" are generated from something other is just as irrational a statement. You are, in point of fact, doing what you accuse the others of: Not acknowledging the other's argument.
ReplyDeleteAs Tlaloc pointed out, whenever someone gets close to pointing out the final leap of irrationality in your logic, y'all just get glib and resort to namecalling and "this is what it is" arguments. It's circular logic predicated on the acceptance of a divine origin for morality before the discussion even begins.
When's the last time I called either you or Tlaloc some sort of name? I can't recall it. I remember referring to certain statements as wrong-headed, but no ad hominems from me that I can think of.
ReplyDeleteI think my inference from the situation is superior because we have this mysterious agreement about so many things. Because chaos is far more likely than order (any statistician could tell you that), I suppose that our orderly agreement comes from some intentional source. Not a leap as far as I see it. More a statement of probability.
Hunter, your assertion, however glib, rests upon probability, not causality. You haven't even demonstrated correlation. Hence, you are making that final leap of illogic that denotes faith. This doesn't necessarily mean right or wrong, it means that your assertion is no more likely to be right than any other.
ReplyDeleteWith the possible exception of being made out of poo by Borneo Monkey Devils.
Guess we'll have to leave it there, gents. The he said/she said element is peeking through. I'll leave it with the claim that both of you are ignoring reality when it comes to the amount of structured morality there is that virtually everyone in the world agrees on whether they live it or not.
ReplyDeleteTlaloc seems to be saying that Hunter's apparent ignoring of reality is, let's say, wrong. Wow. Ignorance, apparently, is wrong. But what if Hunter, like Tlaloc's solipsistic rationalist were to say, "Ah, but I like being ignorant. I choose it." If I follow Tlaloc correctly, then Hunter would no longer be criticizable, since he has "chosen" to be ignorant of reality. But it gets worse. What if Hunter refused to accept the proposition that "choosing to accept a standard of rationality is the only way to hold someone to a standard of rationality" (which is what, bizarrely, Tlaloc, is in fact claiming)? Where does T-man go from here? Well, if he says that Hunter is wrong in rejecting his standard, then there is at least one universal norm. But if he says that Hunter is right, then his basis for criticising Hunter is defeated.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the other guy--I think his name is Elliot--offers this lovely claim: "What the fuck is an ought? Stop making up words. Ought is an auxiliary verb or a variant noun meaning `nothing.'" That is nice to know, since now he can't claim I ought to take his advice.
Self-refutation is just no fun.
"I'll leave it with the claim that both of you are ignoring reality when it comes to the amount of structured morality there is that virtually everyone in the world agrees on whether they live it or not."
ReplyDelete"A claim you repeatedly make but never back up."
What you seek, if you do seek it, you can find here. If you follow the links, the whole book is there. It very short and maybe even sweet, and it was written for you.
The author asks: what it is that makes a man a man? To know beauty, and glory; to know courage, that it is not in opposing imperfection, but standing up for right; to learn what right is, to love wisdom and truth. To understand all those things which you don't seem to feel and pretend perhaps for the sake of argument don't exist. To know thyself by discovering first the essence of what you are.
He also sees clearly how we can use our reason and the limited days of our lives to negate rather than affirm those few things we can come to know to be true. And in that negation, we abolish our very humanity.
We lose the plot.
For those of us who struggle with all these things every day, T, watching another person demolish his own existence, bleed it of all meaning and feeling, isn't the least bit entertaining, it's extremely painful.
(The book I link for you was the most influential in my own life [save one]. For what it's worth.)
The Abolition of Man is indeed brutal to the basic claims T and E are making.
ReplyDeleteT, as far as backing up my claim, the point I'm making is self-evident. I'd have to make a carbon copy of the world and footnote it.
Nice point, Hunter. Self-evident truths are first principles, and thus are not the result of inferences, but are the stuff that make inferences possible. For example, when asked by a student of mine why the truth is important, I answered, "Do you want the true answer one or the false one?" The answer to her question was self-evident. I couldn't prove it to her because she knew it already, but was trying to suppress it.
ReplyDeleteIt is inopportune to respond so quickly, HB and Mr. Beckwith, as there is much nourishment still proferred on the table that is of yet untouched.
ReplyDeleteI believe you have made your points efficiently, logically and elegantly about man's call to a truth beyond himself. But as high as my regard is for the contributors hereabouts, it was my esteem for the patron saints (and devil's advocate, Mr Shaw) in the masthead that kept me hanging around.
To quote one of them:
"Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it."
It's my current project to internalize this great lesson myself. Arguing is easy. Empathy, kindness and patience are in order, even if apparently unrequited. We have each been on the receiving end ourselves, I think.
As we say on the internet, ;-)
Ah yes, "the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing."
ReplyDeleteTlaloc, you're not serious are you? You've corrected me, thus implying that ignorance is not just wrong to you, but wrong to me, and by implication universally wrong.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, "embrassment" is an emotional reaction to shame. Are you suggesting that doing things to embarrass oneself is wrong? Perhaps what you should have said is, "Beckwith has embarrassed himself, to me."
So, at the end of the day, Hunter did not fail to live up to standard of intellectual virtue universally applicable to all persons. Rather, he failed to live up, to you. Why is that interesting and why should we care? If you answer this, be careful not to appeal to any universal standards.
The "cowards way out"? Cowardice is now another universal wrong, since Tlaloc did not attach the requisite "to me."
The self-evidence lies in the fact that you are expecting from Hunter and me "reasons" for our positon and that you are entitled to those reasons. The expectation itself is not the result of reasoning, but rather, a self-evident truth about your dignity and moral worth. You expect us to treat you in a way that is becoming of who you are by nature. Not an unjustified expectation to be sure, but one that lies at the foundation of a discussion that attempts to undermine it. How ironic, indeed
Of course there is objective, moral law. And as Darwin pointed out, it can be said to arise from evolutionary development of social species such as ours . . .
ReplyDeleteThat is what you guys meant, right?
Yes, Ed, I'll make a note.
ReplyDeleteTlaloc, this is again one of those issues where you simply refuse to acknowledge reality, which is odd for a member of the "reality-based community."
You talk about the coward's way out and that I wouldn't want to take it because of my personal code. Where would I have come up with the idea that cowardice is a bad thing? Who invented it?
And murder? Is murder not at a minimum referring to the killing of an innocent person. Even societies embracing human sacrifice would be following holy writ or revelation against the dictates of conscience. Or do you think such a society took it in stride when one member struck down another in the street for no reason other than personal gain or anger?
We could find examples of a high social class individual being able to kill a lower class person with near impunity, but we would also find an accompanying justification such as that the lower class individual was not really a person. Aha, Roe v. Wade comes up again!!!
I don't care for almond roca and would not consider it an insult if you pointed that out. However, sometimes I do care for being cowardly, but I still know it's wrong. So, my caring or not caring, liking or disliking, cowardice, cannot account for my knowledge that it is wrong.
ReplyDelete