MandM has moved!

You should be automatically redirected in 6 seconds. If not, visit
http://www.mandm.org.nz/
and update your bookmarks.

Thursday, 30 April 2009

MandM on Opposing Views in Religion and Society

We were contacted a while back by Opposing Views and asked if we would consider allowing them to link to us. We had a look at their site, liked what we saw and said yes. We are now featured on their Religion and Society page as a recommended site.

"Dr Matthew Flannagan" is also officially in their pool of experts to call on for when they present their for and against articles on matters of religion and society. To suggest a topic they could use Matt on you can click on the contact link on their site and recommend him ;-)

Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Don't Forget!

Tonight!
Thinking Matters JP Moreland on Faith and Reason at Laidlaw College at 7pm.

Next Thursday 7 May
Blogger Drinks from 6.30pm at Galbraiths, 2 Mt Eden Road, Mt Eden, Auckland.

See you there :-)

With God Anything can be Permitted: Another Bad Argument against Theistic Morality

Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov's famously contended that if God does not exist then anything is permissible. Ken over at Open Parachute disagrees and goes one step further and argues that the shoe is on the other foot. Ken maintains that theistic accounts of obligation lead to an “extreme form of moral relativism” and in fact, Dostoevsky’s contention should be rephrased as “with God anything can be permitted.” Ken claims,

But when secular morality is abandoned, and religious appeals to what God wants, or what God ordains, this opens the gates wide to the worst sort of moral relativism. It enables any despot to sanction any form of inhumanity by claiming that their god supports it.

"if Ken’s argument is sound then he has offered, not just an argument against theism, but an argument against the existence of morality itself."Now regular readers of this blog will know that I have written several defences of theistic accounts of moral obligation. I have also argued that moral relativism is a mistaken theory of ethics. Hence, if what Ken says is true then my own position is incoherent. I defend a thesis and at the same time I critique and reject a position that is a logical implication of that thesis or at least follows from the thesis when it is conjoined with some uncontroversial facts.

For this reason, it is worth asking whether Ken’s claim is true, or at best, whether the arguments he gives for this claim are sound. I contend that they are not. Ken’s main argument for his thesis is found in the following quote,

This seems crazy to most people but is not at all unusual. Consider the civil rights struggles in the USA. Christian beliefs were used to justify both segregation and the opposition to it. The same in South Africa. Most members of the Dutch reform Church thought apartheid was sanctified by God, whereas many anti-apartheid activists opposed apartheid on religious grounds. Consider slavery. Consider just about any struggle over human rights in human history and we can see examples of a god being used to justify both opposition to, and support of, human rights.

This suggests to me that religion does allow for an extreme form of moral relativism. Truly anything can be justified by claiming support from your god.

I think Ken’s argument is flawed. Let me offer two lines of response to demonstrate why.

First, if Ken’s argument is sound then he has offered, not just an argument against theism, but an argument against the existence of morality itself. Consider the structure of his argument; he notes that one group of theists oppose P and claim, as the basis for their opposition, that P has the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Ken then notes that another group of theists oppose not-P and claim, as the basis for their opposition, that not-P has the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Ken infers from these examples that belief in God entails “an extreme form of moral relativism” and that it follows from this that “with God anything can be permitted.”

The problem is that an exactly analogous line of argument applies to the existence of right and wrong per se whether it has a theistic grounding or not. Consider any paradigmatic moral debate on an issue. Whether it is capital punishment, affirmative action, war or whatever, one group of believers in the existence of right and wrong will oppose P and claim, as the basis for their opposition, that P has the property of being wrong. Another group who also believe in right and wrong will oppose not-P and claim, as the basis for their opposition, that not-P has the property of being wrong. Hence, if Ken’s argument is valid then it must be the case that the existence of right and wrong entails “extreme moral relativism,” and, that if right and wrong exist then anything can be permitted.

So we have, then, two arguments, Ken’s own argument that God’s existence entails extreme moral relativism and an analogous argument that the existence of right and wrong entails extreme moral relativism. Both have true premises. Ken’s premise is that some believers in God disagree over whether to support a given action. The analogous argument has as its premise the contention that people who believe in the existence of right and wrong sometimes disagree over whether to support a given action.

Given this, it follows that either both arguments are sound or neither one of them is. Ken must either embrace extreme moral relativism and the kind of nihilistic tendencies he criticises “religion” for having or he must retract his argument.

The second line response I will make to Ken’s argument is to note that it clearly is not a valid argument at all. In fact, it conceals a subtle fallacy. Ken notes that,

[1] Different religious believers appeal to God to justify mutually incompatible practises.

From this he infers that,

[2] Anything can be justified by appealing to God.

The problem here is that [1] is ambiguous. When we say that a person appeals to a belief to justify a conclusion, we can mean

[1a] He or she actually does show that the position is actually justified by appealing to this belief;

or we can mean,

[1b] That he or she attempts to show that the position is justified by appealing to this belief.

Which, then, does Ken mean?

Ken could mean [1a]. If he does mean this his argument is unsound. This is because the examples he shows do not substantiate this premise, they do not support the claim that theists have actually justified mutually incompatible positions with appeals to God.

Noting that theists have disagreed over what policy is in accord with the will of God does not show that all parties to the dispute have actually justified their claim that these policies are in fact in accord with God’s will. Merely noting the existence of an argument does not demonstrate that the argument is sound.

Perhaps then Ken means [1b], he is simply noting that different theists have attempted to justify their beliefs by appealing to God. This claim certainly is supported by the evidence he cites; however, the problem is that the conclusion Ken draws does not follow.

The fact that people have attempted to offer justifications for mutually inconsistent positions does not entail that all these positions can in fact be justified. It only tells us that people have attempted to justify mutually incompatible positions by appealing to God.

I grant that people can use theological premises in an attempt to justify different and inconsistent positions but this is a fairly innocuous claim. Take any premise you like, secular or theological, it is true that a person could to appeal to this premise in an attempt to justify something. Such a person’s argument may be stupid, unsound or unsuccessful but that does not mean that it is impossible for that person to try to mount it. I am sure Ken would agree that people offer stupid arguments for things all the time.

Consider Darwinian Evolution. People can and have appealed to this theory to justify Marxism, Nazism, racism, colonialism, atheism, scepticism, ethical nihilism, infanticide and a whole host of other positions, many of which are mutually incompatible. Of course, the fact people have tried to use Darwinism for this purpose does not, in and of itself, entail that Darwinism actually justifies any of these theories. It only tells us that some people appealed to it to try to show this.

Ken, I am sure, would object to being told that his beliefs commit him to social Darwinist views of race relations purely because someone once appealed to Darwinism in the past to justify such claims. Similarly, he would object if I suggested that the mere existence of these arguments by others in the past commits him to extreme relativism and the view that any action, including rape and torturing of little children, could be justified.

Ken would rightly point out that the issue is not whether Darwinian arguments have been offered for all sorts of crazy positions; rather, it is whether these arguments are correct. Here I would simply note that what is good for the goose is equally good for the gander.

RELATED POSTS:
Divine Commands and Intuitions: A Response to Ken Perrott
See labels:
Divine Command Theory
Euthyphro

Monday, 27 April 2009

Swine Flu in New Zealand? Come On! UPDATED

The only reason I paid any attention to the radio news as I was navigating bad traffic driving back from my regular surgeon's appointment today was because of the reference to Rangitoto College where, last century, I went to high school.

I disinterestedly listened to the story, something about swine flu - what's that? Rolled my eyes as I heard the drug-solution being touted was Tamiflu - isn't it always? Laughed as I heard that the timing was spot on, apparently the millions of packets of unused Tamiflu purchased during the bird-flu panic were about to expire so the government might get to use them instead of throwing them out. Then I thought nothing more of it and went home and cooked dinner.

I turned on the evening news and it was nothing but Swine Flu for nearly half an hour! Did nothing else happen today or something? The footage consisted of a lot of repetition of statistics and footage of interviewers standing in quarantined people's gardens with said quarantined people waving at the camera's from inside their houses eagerly sharing how bored they were and what they were doing to pass the time via the phone.

Now of course the obligatory emails have started coming in from friends and rellies overseas who are watching CNN and other international news stations, who must be making out that half of New Zealand has come down with it, as now I find myself spending the evening replying to emails, "We are all well; no, we don't have any swine flu symptoms."

Sorry if I sound cynical but I can't help but wonder if the New Zealand end of this story is not going to end up in the same file as bird flu and the Y2K crisis. For those of you taking it seriously, see MacDoctor for a checkup. For everyone else, enjoy this found on XKCD.

Twitter on Swine Flu

UPDATE:

Ok so New Zealand does have some confirmed cases - see the above link to MacDoctor's site for the official numbers.

For those of you still rolling your eyes at the hysteria, see Ozymandias' I have SWINE FLU for some relief.

PJ O'Rourke on Perfect Form: A Review of Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing

Given that PJ O'Rourke will be speaking in Auckland this week (see details, Invisible Hand versus Visible Fist) I thought I would share this gem with you; it is a rant by PJ O'Rourke on politically correct language, Perfect Form: A Review of Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing.

It is so funny that it is hard to read in one go, as you can't help but laugh so hard you can no longer read and it causes you to immediately want to read bits of it aloud to whoever you happen to be near so if you are at work and yours is not that kind of workplace, I'd wait 'til you get home to read it.

Hat Tip: Lydia McGrew at What's Wrong with the World (Lydia also links to another send-up of PC madness by John C. Wright in the same post.)

Sunday, 26 April 2009

Sunday Study: The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

"If something nice happens to somebody else be happy for them and not angry for yourself." This is one of those concepts we try to drum into our kids when we talk about good sportsmanship, not being jealous when watching a sibling open their birthday presents or when one gets an invite somewhere exciting that the other really wants to go to as well. We tell them that this is life and that as they grow to be adults they need to understand this concept. Sadly many adults often miss fail to remember this concept when faced with comparitive adult versions of these life realities as the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard demonstrates.

The Parable of the Workers is found in Matthew 20:1-16

1"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. 2He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' 5So they went.
"He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. 6About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'
7" 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered. "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'
8"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'
9"The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. 10So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'
13"But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? 14Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
16"So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

The first thing to note is that this passage, in its English translation, begins with the word "for"; hence, it is a continuation on the previous passages. Chapters and verses were added to the Bible in the early 13th Century. The original scriptures did not have these. Some of these divisions were not always placed well. This set of passages is arguably an example.

If one looks back to 19:27-30 one sees the context this parable falls in. Jesus had just spoken to the rich young ruler and elaborated that it was difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Popular theology of the day would have been shocked by this as a wealthy person who kept the commandments, such as this ruler, would have been seen as a person God had blessed for his piety.

It is in this context that Peter makes his comments in verses 19:27-30
27Peter answered him, "We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?"
28Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother[a] or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. 30But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.
The rich young ruler had been asked to give everything up and follow Christ. He was unable to do this. Peter stepped in and drew a contrast between the rich young ruler and himself. He and the other apostles, had left everything to follow Christ. Surely, then, they, in contrast to the young ruler, will inherit some reward?

Jesus' response is to affirm that the apostles sacrifices will be compensated for and they will be rewarded, as will everyone who makes sacrifices out of service to Christ. Jesus finishes, however, by adding a twist, "many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first."

The parable of the workers is Jesus' exposition or explanation as to what this, otherwise cryptic, phrase means. This is clear from the fact that the very last phrase in the parable is "So the last will be first, and the first will be last." This is the conclusion of the parable and it is precisely the very same point that Jesus has just made in response to Peter.

What, then, does the parable mean?
The first verses state "for the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard."

The phrase "for the kingdom of heaven is like" is ambiguous in this English translation. Directly translating from the Greek is more helpful; in the Greek, this phrase asserts 'the kingdom of heaven is like the situation of...'. Jesus is drawing from an everyday or familiar employment situation and saying that the "the kingdom of heaven" is analogous to this situation.

NT Wright notes that the phrase "kingdom of heaven" was "a Jewish way of talking about Israel's god becoming king."[1] Wright adds,
I intend to demonstrate two things: first that when Jesus spoke of the 'reign' or 'kingdom' of Israel's god, he was deliberately evoking and entire story-line that he and his hearers knew quite well; second, that he was retelling this familiar story in such a way as to subvert and redirect its normal plot.[2]
The situation in verse 2 is fairly normal. Casual workers were available in the marketplace selling their labour. The landowner went to the market, early in the morning and hired some workers. He contracted them to work for a day for the price of 1 denarius, the going rate for a days work at the time. There was nothing untoward about the bargain. The employer contracted the work at a fair rate and the text tells us he payed the workers the same day. This satisfied the legal requirements contained in Leviticus 19:13 "Do not defraud your neighbor or rob him. Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight."

This relates quite clearly to Peter's question in the previous chapter and Jesus's answer. The disciples will be fairly rewarded for the work they have done for the kingdom of heaven.

The situation in verses 3-7 is slightly different. The Hebrew day was divided, as ours is, into hours. The text refers to the third hour, the sixth hour, the ninth hour and the eleventh hour which correspond to our 9am, 12pm, 3pm and 5pm. The landowner went back to the market at each of these times and discovered people who were unemployed ("Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?" "Because no one has hired us") and offered them work. These people, however, were not contracted to work a full day for a full day's wage; the landowner said "I will pay you whatever is right," unlike with the first workers, there was no agreed on amount, the landowner instead asks them to trust him, to have faith in his integrity.

Each of these workers worked for part of the day. When evening came, around 6pm, the landowner paid the workers in the reverse order that he hired each in. The workers hired at 5pm were given a full day's wage for what was probably an hour's work. For this reason, the other workers, hired earlier in the day, expected to receive more. Again, this relates back to Peter's question. Peter is contrasting himself with others in terms of the sacrifices and work he has done for the kingdom.

It is at this point that the twist Jesus introduced in verse 30 above. The workers that were hired first were paid 1 denarius. This caused them to grumble, see verse 12, " 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' " The answer given is three-fold. First the landowner asked rhetorically whether he had been unjust. The answer is clearly no. They were contracted to work for one day for a day's wage. This obligation has been kept; hence, the landowner did not deprive them of what they were entitled to. Second, the landowner pointed out that it was his money, the workers had received what was rightfully theirs and everything left over rightfully belonged to the landowner. Did he not then have a right to use his own money at his own discretion? This leads to the third point, the landowner was generously giving his money to people who did not have work. The problem is not that the workers hired first were treated unjustly or not given what they were entitled to, the issue was that others had been treated generously. Was the desire of the first workers that the other workers be stripped of these generous gifts? The issue seems to be one of envy, a desire to bring others down rather than to get what one is entitled to.

Jesus summarises this as 'the first will be last.' The point, then, is this, God is a king who will reward people for their deeds and their sacrifices. People will be given what their deeds entitle them to but God also gives generously to those who trust in him. There is a rebuke here to his disciples about envy and resentment that other people have people have been blessed by God.

[1] NT Wright Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPK, 1996) 203.
[2] Ibid, 199.

In Any Requests we were asked to post more on exegetical topics, to occasionally expound and explain biblical passages. So this post marks the launch of Sunday Studies; we will attempt to regularly post some sort of exegetical study each Sunday, unpacking and examining passages of scripture.

Go on and Rubberneck

In case you have noticed and wondered at the recent flurry of arrivals from Kiwiblog in the Live Traffic Feed you might click here and then once on the page use "control f" then type in "abortion" and then read the defamatory statement about me (and Matt) and the ensuing debate that began on Friday.

Do not think badly of David Farrar for not removing the statement. I asked him to leave it there as these statements, and variations of them, began 11 years ago when Matt and I were student politicians. They have not gone away despite us hiring lawyers, more than once, so maybe it is time to meet them head on and expose them for the lies they are.

The person posting under the name Blockhead helpfully happened to have documentation to hand that also clarified things so look out for his/her contributions. Oh, and feel free to make liberal use of the karma buttons on the site.

Antony Flew v William Lane Craig debate "Does God Exist?"

In 1948 Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston debated the existance of God on the BBC radio. That debate was considered the definitive debate of that generation.

Fifty years later, to commemorate this debate, a debate re-examining the arguments for and against the existence of God was arranged between William Lane Craig and Antony Flew before 4,000 students at the University of Wisconsin in 1998.

Flew has since, famously, become a theist but at the time he was one of the world's leading atheists so this is a great engagement of minds. This debate is now online. Watch and enjoy.



Hat Tip: Many thanks to Josh Darville who sent us this link via Twitter.

Tech Help Needed

We are having two site issues that I cannot fix. I have searched high and low, I have left messages in help forums and I have asked all my tech friends (who admittedly are not au fait with Blogger html). The problem remains. The only suggestion I was offered required me to revert the template back to normal and manually add the widgets back in by hand, one by one. I was hoping for a simpler solution.

Can anyone help with the following problems?

Post Titles
If you load a post into its own page and click on “create a link” at the bottom of the page, the link that comes up in the "BlogThis!" window is now always just “MandM” and not the correct title of the post. However, the url it points to is the correct one for that post. Previously the correct title for that post would show up.

I suspect that this recent phenomena is related to this related problem. Take a look at our Popular Posts widget in our sidebar. This is supposed to display the 10 most clicked pages on MandM. One could be forgiven in thinking that it is malfunctioning and showing the homepage in all 10 slots - run your mouse over each link, it is showing the top 10 most clicked pages but like the BlogThis! program, for some reason it is not extracting the correct post titles, just the url for them. I cannot leave it looking like this, if I can't fix the problem causing it I will have to remove it from the page.

The same problem was evident in our tweetmeme gadget, if you wanted to tweet a post using it it would pull up the correct url but only the title of the blog - I have since gone back to Amanda's tweet this widget because it at least still manages to grab the right title even if it will only display on individual post pages and the text order that appears in Twitter is kind of silly.Can someone tell me what I need to look for in my html to fix this problem?

Missing Spaces from our Post Footer
Take a look at our post footers. The date and the labels are mashed up against the text and the labels no longer have spaces between them.

Posted by Matt atFriday, April 10, 2009 80 comments
Labels:,,

In the first line see how the ‘at’ and the ‘Friday’ have no space between them?

In the second line see how the first label, ‘Aspergers Syndrome’ has no space between the 'A' and the ‘Labels:’; see also that there are no spaces after the comma's separating the labels.

This is happening on every post now. Again, it didn't used to. We are entering spaces between the labels prior to posting but they show up like this.

How can I edit my html to put the spaces back in?

These problems are recent, they arose around the time I put Comment Luv into our site but they may have begun when I did something else too as the point I noticed them may not be the point they began. That said, I am all but certain the second problem arose when I installed Comment Luv as the other day I removed Comment Luv and the problem went, though the post title problem was still there, and then I put Comment Luv back in and the problem came back.

Saturday, 25 April 2009

ANZAC Day: Lest we Forget or Have we Already?

ANZAC DayIn 'MCMXIV' Philip Larkin describes the queues to enlist at the start of the first World War:

The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark

His late-century comment was "Never such innocence again."

When I read these words in Jonathan Glover's Humanity they struck me with some force. I had witnessed this "innocence" a few years earlier at a family reunion.

My mother had a large photo of a moustached man standing in military uniform between two flags. As a child I thought this picture was fascinating and I loved the uniform as my brothers and I used to play "war" in the gully out the back of our house. Mum told us that the photo was of her uncle Dick who had been killed in World War I.

Years later as an adult I attended a family reunion on my mother's side. The event was held in Otorohanga and someone had gone to a lot of trouble meticulously researching the family tree. In the hall the reunion was held in there were documents on display going back centuries from my ancestors, birth certificates, death certificates, letters, photos, etc.

One letter gripped me when I found it. It was written by my great-uncle Dick and was sent from Egypt. I can't remember the exact wording but the gist of it is still clear to me. The letter spoke of how he and the boys had arrived in Egypt and that they would be home in a few weeks; 'they were simply waiting for Jerry [the Germans] to be man enough to let their boys face them.' The impression conveyed was that they would have a quick bout, "Jerry" would be dispatched and they would all go home. There was a jolliness to the letter, it sounded like he was an about to have a friendly game of rugby. The real chilling part came next, he had written the letter to inform 'the girls' back home' that he was moving from Egypt soon, they were going to the Dardanelles and from there 'the war would be over in a few days.'

Of course we know the history. The New Zealand contingent did land in the Dardanelles at a place called Gallipoli and there my uncle Dick was killed in one of the worst military massacres in New Zealand's history.

Interestingly I read a book recently on Gallipoli that contained an account from a survivor of a brief conversation he had with a Dick Sircombe, my great-uncle. As far as I know that is the last record we have of Dick; the book lists him as one of the many killed in action in its appendix.

This reality, seeing the innocent naivety that my great-uncle had had struck me quite strongly. It reinforced to me the need to never forget the mistakes our forefathers made.

This was driven home to me even more the other day in my year 12 Ethics class. We had shown the students the movie Saving Private Ryan and I saw the naivety once again. One student asked me, puzzled, "why is the US invading Germany?" It was said with a tone and demeanour that suggested he was wondering whether this was just another case of the US, yet again, sticking its nose in another country's affairs.

When we came to the scene where one solider freezes and cannot kill a German solider nearby, the class denounced him as a "faggot" and a "wimp." One wonders if they really understood what was going on.

Every time we commemorate the events of World War I we say "lest we forget," it seems to me that we have already become a generation that has forgotten. To some this is not a personal event that effected their family in the way it effected mine but some boring facts of history one needs to learn to get NCEA and perhaps an exciting playstation game or cool movie.

MacDoctor sums up the same theme but in regard to how we treat our freedom,

A war such as the Second World War can bring us the coin of freedom, but we often spend it without regard to how precious it truly is. Typically, we trade that freedom a little bit at a time for a little comfort, a little peace and quiet, a little feeling of false security.

It is a sad day when we honour the people who gave their lives to protect us from tyranny by succumbing slowly to tyranny in our own land.

ANZAC PoppyFor our international readers, today is ANZAC day, a day on which Australia and New Zealand pause and remember those who died in service to our countries at Gallipoli, Turkey on 25 April 1915.

Friday, 24 April 2009

How to Judge a Beauty Pageant: Political Views more Important than Looks

Apparently being an underweight and skeletal, having a BMI outside the healthy weight range, is an irrelevant factor for a beauty pageant judge to take into account when assessing who is the fairest of them all but a candidate's opinion on gay marriage is not.

Thursday, 23 April 2009

Surrounded by Brainy Women

Madeleine is currently completing a law degree and is enrolled in some final year papers. Today she received the results in for her first 4 pieces of assessment for the year. She has sat four tests and has scored 100%, 90%, 100%, 100% respectively, which in a subject like law, is very impressive. She still has some outstanding grades to come in and some further assessment to complete but she is sitting pretty.

Having never before heard of anyone scoring 100% at University in a non-mathematical subject, my daughter Sheridan (who is undertaking a university bridging course having been homeschooled previously) just arrived home with the results of her punctuation test for her English paper, she too pulled off a 100% result.

Uni must be a lot easier these days than when I studied there :-)

Ahmadinejad, Tumeke, Boycotts, Blog Stats and Holocaust Denial

A boycott has been launched of Tumeke's blog stats. Prominent kiwi-bloggers Whaleoil, HalfDone and Keeping Stock have each set out their cases; charges range from holocaust denier to holocaust promoter.

"the state of Israel was created 'on the pretext of Jewish suffering' from the second world war"The authors at Tumeke are politically hard-left activists; most notable is Tim Selwyn, who was convicted and served prison time for sedition after he threw an axe through the window of the Prime Minister's electorate office. In addition, the Tumeke blog publishes a lot of material that we disagree with, which is routinely badly argued for and poorly supported. Not surprisingly, this site does not feature on our blogroll. The only thing that Tumeke publishes that we find of interest is their blog rankings. They helpfully publish these on a sub-blog, Tumeke NZ Blogosphere.

The current boycott is over some inflammatory remarks Tim Selwyn made in response to the Iranian President Ahmadinejad's remarks at the recent UN's anti-racism conference.

Tim cited The Guardian who reported that
...[protestors] heckled Ahmadinejad after he branded Israel a "cruel and oppressive racist regime". He said the state of Israel was created "on the pretext of Jewish suffering" from the second world war.
Tim then said,
Problem is though, what he said, it's all true isn't it? The Jewish State is set up for Jews - quite specifically to benefit them as a race and a religion - and they carry out massacres in refugee camps (like they did earlier this year) in order to carry out the colonial/land confiscation/occupation/subjugation template upon which Zionism has been practiced. That's all true isn't it - no matter how you cut it. So he said it at the right place but he said it at the wrong time - Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day gave the extra pressure on Poland and Germany to cave. [Emphasis added]

We can definitely see how this is inflammatory. The phrase "it's all true" suggests that Tim agrees with everything Ahmadinejad said, including the statement about a "pretext" of Jewish suffering. However you could read Tim as specifying the charge of Israel being a racist state as the element he agrees with (a highly questionable and extreme statement). What the all applies to is ambiguous and could be interpreted either way.

We are left uncertain whether Tim is a holocaust denier or not; and uncertain that, if he is, what that requires us to do. We have not seen any evidence to suggest that he is a holocaust promoter. That said, we have seen enough to stand firm in our decision to not add Tumeke to our blogroll and to continue to have little time for the content of their blog; we will not be offering their authors any guest posts in the near future.

However, we fail to see that a link between featuring on Tumeke's blog rankings and endorsing the content on Tumeke's site has been established; the suggestion that MandM featuring on the blog stats on the sub-blog Tumeke Blogosphere amounts to MandM being complicit in or endorsing the comments make on the political blog Tumeke doesn't follow.

Given this, joining the protest is not morally required although we respect the decisions made by our fellow bloggers to withdraw their blogs from his stats completely. The situation for MandM is slightly more complex as we run the Top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings. For us to join the boycott we would have to not only withdraw our stats from Tumeke Blogosphere's rankings but also cease using them.

The MandM top 10 score is obtained by averaging Tumeke Blogosphere's stats with HalfDone's. On HalfDone's stats MandM is ranked number 1 Christian blog, on Tumeke's stats we are usually ranked around number 3 as different formulae are used to obtain each. If we drop Tumeke's stats from our formula then we are left with only HalfDone's which automatically hands us the number 1 spot on our own rankings; we are concerned that joining the boycott will look like a bit of an 'own goal'.

On the other hand, prior to the boycott, not every Christian blog that HalfDone ranked featured on Tumeke Blogosphere's stats and now a couple of the Christian blogs that did have joined the boycott so they too will no longer feature on Tumeke's stats. This means that I now have too many blogs that do not feature on Tumeke's stats to make my formula fair. The obvious solution is that I either stop using Tumeke's stats (might as well join the boycott) or I develop my own formula or I stop doing the stats.

So until these things become clearer or further evidence or argument is presented, we will remain with the status quo and will not be joining the boycott. Feel free to help us work through the issues in the comments.

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

Response to Richard Chappell's "Pro-Life Pro Zombie"

Thialias has asked me to respond to “Pro-Life Pro Zombie” written by kiwi ex-pat philosopher Richard Chappell, the author of Philosophy et cetera. In this post Richard, as I understand it, set up a thought experiment where he asked readers to imagine a world where beings exist that are physically identical to us in every respect but are not conscious. These beings are identified as Zombies. Richard says he has reasons for thinking such a scenario is metaphysically possible. I have my doubts, but given modal logic is Richard’s speciality, whereas mine is ethics, I’ll concede this for the sake of argument.

Richard constructs the following argument. First, he puts forward the position he wishes to critique. In his post he states,

[1] “Many pro-lifers hold that an individual has moral status in virtue of its biological kind (being "human") rather than its particular cognitive qualities (being a self-aware "person").”
[2] Zombies are “physically identical to us,” and hence, “As far as biologists are concerned, they are "individual human lives" the same as you and me.”

it follows, then, that,
[3] “the bio-focused pro-lifer would seem committed to the view that non-conscious zombies have moral status.”

Richard claims that it is absurd that Zombies would have moral status; hence the pro-life position entails an absurdity and so is false.

What does one say in response to this argument? Well one obvious point I would make is that, as far as I know, no pro-lifer actually holds that human beings have moral status merely in terms of their biological kind, independent of psychological traits.

This position is often attributed to opponents of abortion. It is not uncommon, in articles on both sides of the debate, to refer to this position as “the conservative position” and then critique it to provide a better model. What is more difficult is to find a defender of this “conservative position”, someone who actually advances it. Certainly leading opponents of abortion, such as Frank Beckwith, Philip Devine, Don Marquis and Baruch Brody do not hold this position. Neither do I.
Richard I think realises this to some extent because he himself suggests that the opponent of abortion can avoid the argument by denying the position articulated in [1]. Richard states,

“The upshot is that sophisticated pro-lifers shouldn't be focused on mere biology. It isn't really mere "life", in the third-personal scientific sense, that matters. Rather, it's a special kind of life -- or, rather, the lives of a special kind of being, namely: sentient rational animals. If we understand the kind 'human' in this psychologically loaded sense, then zombies don't qualify as fully human. But embryos - immature members of our kind - do qualify. Sure, they may not yet be sentient or rational themselves. But they are members of a kind with these traits. Intuitively: their acquisition of these traits will occur through natural development (in which they remain the same kind of thing that they already are), rather than radical transformation into a fundamentally different category or kind of thing.

Here Richard points out that “the kind ‘human’” need not refer merely to a biological category. There is a long tradition, going back at least to Aristotle, which defines a human being as a rational animal.

The phrase rational animal is understood in a manner analogous to the way a person might define a mammal as a creature that suckles its young. Male humans are mammals, as are female humans under age nine yet neither strictly speaking suckles their young. Nevertheless, they are each members of a kind that does do this.

Human beings are rational animals in this sense. While it is not true that every individual human being, such as fetuses, infants and the temporarily comatose, posses rationality, nevertheless they are of a kind that does and typically, if they mature properly and are not deformed or malfunctioning members of their kind, they will do these things. Now if the pro-lifer understands human kind in this sense, Richard is quite right, they can avoid his Zombie refutation.

Interestingly this is precisely the position many opponents of abortion take. Notable examples would include, Norman Ford,[1] Frank Beckwith,[2] and Alan Donagan;[3] it is also fairly common amongst Thomists who, unsurprisingly, accept the Aristotelian tradition. Given this, all these writers can and do avoid the kind of rebuttal Richard offers. Richard refers to this position as “the evil twin argument’ named after a post where Richard posted under the name “Richard’s evil twin Ricardo” which endorsed the line of argument.

It seems, then, and I think he would probably agree with me here, that Richard’s Zombie argument is not really a rebuttal of opposition to feticide but rather a rebuttal of one particular way of articulating this opposition, a way that few, if any, of the defenders of this position, actually adopt. What the point is of offering an argument against a position almost no-one adopts remains somewhat unclear to me.

Some of Richard’s other comments suggest the purpose is more clarificatory, an attempt to find out what others think. Richard explains,

The purpose of this post is simply to work out what the most plausible version of a pro-life view would be. I'm especially interested to hear from any actual pro-lifers, whether they are pro-zombie and if not why not -- especially, whether they endorse my evil twin's conception of the pro-life view.

In response to this comment, as far as I can tell, in the literature no opponent of abortion opposes it merely on the ground that a embryo is biologically human. Many do endorse Richard’s “evil twin argument,” such as the people mentioned above but what is even more noteworthy is that there are many important critiques of abortion which do not rely on either position. Here I will provide two significant examples; there are others in the literature.[4]

The first, and rather obvious example, would be the series of articles by Don Marquis.[5] Marquis contends that “the best explanation for the wrongness of killing is that killing deprives us of our futures of value;”[6] a future of value consists “of all of the goods of life we would have experienced had we not been killed.”[7] He explains further,

On the future of value account the wrongness of killing is based on the harm of killing. A present action cannot affect one’s past. Strictly speaking, a present act of harming does not make another worse off in the present either, for the present is instantaneous and harm, involving, as it does, causation, requires at least a small temporal interval for its effect to occur. A present act of harm affects the victim’s future. It makes someone worse off in the future. To make someone worse off is to reduce that person’s welfare, to reduce the quantity or quality of the goods in his future that she would otherwise have possessed. On the future of value account killing is wrong because it harms a victim.[8]

Marquis argues that his account of the wrongness of killing has the implication that feticide is homicide. “Fetuses have futures like ours, for their futures contain all that ours contain and more. Therefore, (given some defensible assumptions and qualifications) abortion is seriously wrong on almost all occasions.”[9]

Marquis’ argument is extremely interesting. What is important in this context, however, is simply the observation that his critique of abortion does not rely on the assumption that “an individual has moral status in virtue of its biological kind” nor is it based on the Aristotelian notion of a rational kind of creature. It is, rather, an attempt to base the status of the fetus on the kind of future conscious life it will have if it is not killed.

My second example is Philip Devine’s argument which in some respects is a precursor to Marquis’s position. Devine, like Marquis, suggests it is the future psychological abilities the organism will gain that are relevant to whether or not killing it constitutes homicide. Devine’s argument, put succinctly, is as follows,

I assume here that infants are protected by the moral rule against homicide. From this assumption it seems to follow immediately that fetuses, and other instances of human life from conception onward, are also protected, so that, unless justified or mitigated, abortion is murder. For there seem to be only two possible grounds for asserting the humanity of the infant: (1) The infant is a member of the human species … (2) The infant will, in due course, think, talk, love, and have a sense of justice … And both (1) and (2) are true of fetuses, embryos, and zygotes as well as of infants.[10]

Devine’s argument is based on three claims. First the intuition that killing a new-born infant is homicide, something he takes for granted. The second is to observe, as David Boonin has, that “by any plausible measure dogs, and cats, cows and pigs, chickens and ducks or more intellectually developed than a new born infant.”[11]

In other words, in terms of actual current psychological traits infants are on par with cows or pigs the only difference between an infant and cow or pig is in terms of the traits they will acquire if not destroyed. Hence, the only plausible way one can make sense of the prohibition on infanticide is either to appeal to the natural kind argument or to ground the wrongness of killing infants on the psychological traits they will acquire if not killed. But either option entails that feticide is homicide. Again, this argument does not rely on either the claim that fetuses are merely biologically human nor does it rely on the “evil twin argument;” it merely cites it as one disjunctive possibility.

I could multiply examples but I think the point is clear. If one examines the literature on the subject and looks at what the leading critics of abortion have argued, it is clear that their position is immune from the Zombie argument, further, many do not appeal to the “evil twin argument” either. As a final note, I would add that my own argument in Is Historic Christian Opposition to Feticide Defensible in the 21st Century? avoids both approaches as well but spelling out all the details of this would require another post in its own right, so I might save that for a later date.

[1] Norman M. Ford The Prenatal Person. Ethics from Conception to Birth (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002).
[2]Francis J. Beckwith Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books, 1993).
[3] Alan Donagan The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
[4] Harry Gensler, “The Abortion and the Golden Rule,” in The Abortion Controversy 25 Years after Roe v Wade: A Reader ed. Francis Beckwith & Louis Pojman (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998) would be another obvious example.
[5] Don Marquis “Why Abortion is Immoral” in The Abortion Controversy: 25 Years after Roe v Wade, A Reader ed. Francis Beckwith & Louis Pojman, 339-355 (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998); “Why Most Abortions are Immoral” in Advances in Bioethics: Bioethics for Medical Education Vol. 5, ed. Rem B. Edwards & E. Edwards Bittar, 215-44. (Stamford, CT: JAI Press, 1999); “Abortion Revisited,” Oxford Handbook of Bioethics, ed. Bonnie Steinbock, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); “Fetuses, Futures, and Values: A Reply to Shirley” Southwest Philosophy Review 6:2 (1995) 263-265; “Life before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses. Review of Life Before Birth, by Bonnie SteinbockCriminal Justice Ethics 13:1 (1994) 67-81.
[6]Don Marquis, “Abortion Revisited,” Oxford Handbook of Bioethics, ed. Bonnie Steinbock, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) 399.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Marquis, “Abortion Revisited,” 413.
[9]Ibid. 399
[10] Philip Devine “The Scope of the Moral Rule Against Killing” in The Abortion Controversy: 25 Years after Roe v Wade ed. Francis Beckwith & Louis Pojman (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998) 241.
[11] Ibid, 121.

RELATED POSTS:
See our Feticide Label

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Published: Abortion and Capital Punishment UPDATED

ThinkHeh!

I just discovered on Cambridge Journals that my publication for the Spring 2009 edition of Think: A Journal of the Royal Institute for Philosophy is online.

UPDATE: As some people are having trouble with the direct link to the pdf, try here for the html version of Abortion and Capital Punishment: A Response to Beverly Harrison.

Monday, 20 April 2009

Coming Events Reminder: JP Moreland on Faith and Reason

I trust those of you who started back at Uni today survived the shock. Now that you have your thinking caps back on, make sure next week's event is in your diary.

Next Tuesday come to our Thinking Matters Auckland DVD screening:DVD Screening

What: Dr JP Moreland on Faith and Reason
When: Tuesday 28 April – 7:00pm
Where: Lecture Room 2, Laidlaw College, 80 Central Park Drive, Henderson, West Auckland
Format: DVD followed by discussion (Matt will be available to fire questions at)
Cost: Free!

Dr Moreland is distinguished professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in California. In this DVD, he will talk about the importance of truth in religion, the evidence for monotheism and his own personal experience in coming to the Christian faith. ... more

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part II

In my last post, I discussed Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument from harm. I concluded by suggesting that his conclusion missed the point and failed to address the conditional, defended by William Lane Craig that, if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties. In this post I will argue that the same problem afflicts Armstrong’s two major arguments for his harm-based account of wrongness.

Armstrong’s Arguments for the Superiority of the Harm-Account
The same failure to actually address the contention at hand is evident in the two main arguments Armstrong musters in favour of the harm-based foundation. These arguments are

(a) The harm account is more economical than a divine command theory;
(b) The harm account makes moral obligations more objective than a divine command theory does.

Economy and Simplicity
Of his first argument, Armstrong writes,

The secular view is also preferable on grounds of simplicity. Like the secular view, the divine command theory must recognise harm and its relevance to morality. Then the divine command view adds a new supernatural level to its theory of morality. That added complication brings no benefits for the objectivity of morality, as I have just argued. We should prefer simpler views when we have no reason to complicate matters. Hence, we should prefer the secular view.[1]

Armstrong appeals to Ockham’s razor, multipicandum sunt praetor necessitatem, entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. The idea is that if two theories can explain the phenomena equally well then the one that postulates the least entities is the preferred one.

This principle is the basis of Armstrong’s critique. He notes that both his own secular view and the divine command theory both explain the objectivity of moral obligation equally well. The divine command theory, however, does so by adding “a new supernatural level [God]” and so the harm based account is preferable.

“there are cases where rape is gravely wrong and yet no one is harmed or if they are, the harm is minimal and yet the action remains gravely and seriously wrong”In response to this argument I will make two points. First, even if the divine command theorist does add “a new supernatural level” his theory does not follow that Ockham’s razor automatically means it is a less preferable theory. Ockham’s razor tells us that if two theories can explain the phenomena equally well then the one that postulates the least entities is the preferred one. For Armstrong’s objection to be cogent, he needs to argue that his own harm based account explains the existence and nature of moral obligations better than a divine command theory. Armstrong does not do this; all he does s show that both theories explain the objectivity of moral properties equally well. However, objectivity is only one feature of moral obligations that a viable ontological foundation must explain. Showing your theory explains one feature as well as a rival theory does is a long way from showing it explains all features as well.

This is important, because one of the arguments made by defenders of divine command theory, such as Robert Adams, is that it can explains all the features of moral obligation better than its rivals. Adams maintains divine commands “best fill the role assigned to wrongness by the concept”.[2] He notes that divine commands explain, not just the fact, that “wrongness is an objective property of actions,”[3] they also account “for the wrongness of a major portion of the types of action that we have believed to be wrong,”[4] and “play a causal role ... in their coming to be regarded as wrong.”[5] In addition, Adams argues that they account for the intuition that our moral duties comprise, “a standard that has a sanctity greater than that of any merely human will or institution”.[6]

In other articles Adams has noted that divine commands capture the intuition that moral properties such as rightness and wrongness are “non-natural in the sense that they cannot be stated entirely in the language of physics, chemistry, biology, and animal or human psychology,”[7] and also, the idea that “having an obligation to do something consists of being required (in a certain way, under certain circumstances), by another person or group of persons, to do it”.[8]

Stephen Layman has argued that theism explains the overriding nature of moral obligations, that to have a duty to do something entails that one has decisive reasons for doing it; reasons that override any non-moral reasons to the contrary. Moreover, Layman argues that secular views do not explain this feature of moral obligation anywhere near as well as theism does.[9] Now these arguments may not be successful but given that theists have made them, Armstrong owes us an argument showing they are not; especially if he is going to conclude that his arguments call into question, not just Craig’s arguments, but the “arguments for a religious view of morality” of “other theists” and that these other theists cannot “avoid all the problems in Craig’s account without leaving traditional Christianity far behind.”

There is a second, more important problem, with Armstrong’s appeal to Ockham’s razor. This is that when one takes into account the dialectical context of Armstrong’s argument it is not clear that the divine command theory does violate Ockham’s razor. Plantinga articulates this point in a recent paper he presented before the American Philosophical association; he argued

Suppose we land on a planet we know is inhabited by intelligent creatures. We come across something that looks exactly like an arrow-head complete with grooves and indentations apparently caused by the process of shaping and sharpening it. Two possibilities suggest themselves, that it acquired these features by erosion or that it was intentionally fashioned by the inhabitants. Someone with a couple of courses in philosophy might suggest that the former hypothesis is to be preferred because it posits fewer entities than the latter. He'd be wrong of course, since we already know that the planet is inhabited by intelligent creatures, there is no additional Ockhamistic cost in assuming these structures were designed.[10]

Plantinga’s insight is correct. He goes on to note that if we did not know the planet was inhabited by intelligent beings and the erosion hypothesis was not significantly less probable then an appeal to Ockham’s razor, in favour of the erosion hypothesis, would have “teeth”. However, if one already knows that the planet is inhabited by intelligent beings then we do not violate Ockham’s razor by appealing to the existence of these beings to explain the existence of grooves and indentations on what appears to be an arrow-head.

Something analogous occurs here. Craig is arguing that if theism is true then there is a plausible ontological foundation for moral obligation in divine commands. He is not, then, proposing the theory in a context where people do not know whether God exists, nor is he proposing it in a context where people do not know that divine commands exist that are co-extensive with moral duties. Rather, he is proposing it in a context where one assumes, for the sake of argument, that theism is true and asks what theory best explains the nature of moral obligation given these assumptions.

Once this is realised, however, it is far from clear that the theist is adding “a new supernatural level.” Rather, the existence of a supernatural element is already granted. The question, then, is how best to understand this element’s relationship to morality.

Armstrong’s appeal to Ockham’s razor seems to presuppose a dialectical context whereby both theist and non-theist start from an agnostic perspective and try to work out the best foundation for the nature of moral obligation given the shared information available to both of them. The problem is that Craig was not arguing for his theory in that context. His argument is that if theism is true then a sound foundation exists. To rebut the contention that Craig actually defends, Armstrong needs to show that if God exists such a foundation does not exist. This, however, is precisely what he does not do.

Objectivity
The same problems afflict Armstrong's appeal to objectivity. Armstrong states,

This secular foundation makes morality objective. If what makes rape morally wrong is the harm to rape victims, then whether rape is wrong does not depend on whether I or rapists believe that rape is wrong. It also does not depend on whether any one wants to rape. Regardless of any-one's desires and moral beliefs, rape causes harm to the victim, and that harm makes rape wrong. This secular foundation, thus, makes morality every bit as objective as the divine command theory.[11]

Armstrong here shows that with regard to the objectivity of duties the harm-based account and the divine command theory are on par. However, he then argues that, in fact, the divine command theory fails to explain the objectivity of moral duties.

If God did not think that rape was morally wrong, then God would not command us not to rape, and then rape would not be morally wrong, according to this theory. ... In contrast, the secular harm-based view makes morality independent even of what God thinks. If God somehow thought that rape was not morally wrong, and if God forgot to command us not to rape, or even if God commanded us to rape, none of that would make any difference. Rape would still be morally wrong, because it would still harm rape victims.[12]

I think Armstrong is mistaken here. Theism, as Craig defines it, includes the claim that God is omniscient; hence, even if rape is wrong in virtue of the harm it causes and not because of any divine commands, it still would be impossible for rape to be wrong independently of God thinking it is wrong. An omniscient being only believes true propositions and never believes false propositions; hence, it is impossible for rape to be wrong and God to not believe that it is wrong.

Once this is realised, it is clear that Armstrong’s examples assume that theism is false. He puts forward situations where God forgets to issue commands or where God mistakenly believes rape is not wrong. This can only occur if God is not omniscient and, hence, theism is false. However, Craig is not arguing that a divine command theory is plausible if theism is false. His claim is that if God exists then there is a sound ontological basis for moral duties.

Does Harm Explain the Wrongness of Rape?
My final criticism directly challenge the harm account. Throughout his critique, Armstrong, contends that rape is wrong because of the extreme harm it causes rape victims. Despite its initial plausibility, I am inclined to think this account of the wrongness of rape fails. This is because there are cases where rape is gravely wrong and yet no one is harmed or if they are, the harm is minimal and yet the action remain gravely and seriously wrong.

Take the following case, a doctor is performing surgery on a woman. He puts her under general anaesthetic and she falls unconscious. Then, prior to performing surgery, he has intercourse with her. He does so using a condom. He takes care to be gentle. The physical harm to his patient is minimal. The patient is unconscious; she is unlikely to ever be aware of what has occurred; the risk of psychological trauma is not present. Hence, it is implausible to suggest that the doctor has caused extreme harm to the patient, yet his actions are clearly rape and it is also clear that what he has done is gravely and seriously wrong. Hence, what makes the action wrong cannot be the extreme harm done to the rape victim.

This example can be strengthened when we compare it to another proposed by Robert Adams.[13] Adams asks us to imagine the case of a person whose doctoral dissertation is destroyed by a computer hacker. We would consider the sabotage of the computer a reprehensible act but nowhere near as serious a crime as the rape committed by the doctor in the previous example. Despite this, it is not implausible to suggest that the person who has had their doctoral research destroyed suffers more “discernible harm” than the person who awakes from surgery never knowing she has been raped and continues on with life oblivious to it.

What this shows is that the grave wrongness of rape does not depend on the extreme harm it causes, because even when there is no extreme harm present the act remains gravely wrong. Rape remains a very serious wrong, relative to other wrongs, even when the harms of these other wrongs outweigh it. For this reason, I am inclined to think that far from being “obviously correct” Armstrong’s harm-account of moral obligations is implausible.


[1] Ibid, 107.
[2] Robert Adams “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1(1979) 74.
[3] Ibid, 74.
[4] Ibid, 74.
[5] Ibid, 75.
[6] Ibid, 75.
[7] Robert Adams “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief” 117-18.
[8] Robert Adams "Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Obligation" 262-63.
[9] C. Stephen Layman “God and the Moral Order” Faith and Philosophy 19 (2002) 304-16; “God and the moral order: replies to objections” Faith and Philosophy 23 (2006) 209-12; “A Moral Argument for The Existence of God” Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 49-66.
[10] I transcribed this from Plantinga’s paper to the American Philosophical Association, “Science and Religion: Where the Conflict Really Lies” http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/04/alvin-plantinga-v-daniel-dennett.html.
[11] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong "Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” 106.
[12] Ibid, 107.
[13] Robert Adams Finite and Infinite Goods 107.

RELATED POSTS:
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part I
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part I
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part II
Maverick Philosopher on the Historical Atrocities Argument

Saturday, 18 April 2009

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part I

This is the first of a two-part series where I examine a recent argument criticising religious ethics by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.

In many of his publications and debates William Lane Craig has defended the contention that if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties. In a recent article, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has criticised this contention. Armstrong has claimed that his criticisms do not just call into question Craig’s argument for a theistic based system of ethics, he contends that his arguments are conclusive against any theistic account of ethics which is compatible with Christianity. He states, “Other theists might try to give better arguments for a religious view of morality. I don’t see how they could avoid all the problems in Craig’s account without leaving traditional Christianity far behind.”[1]

Before discussing Armstrong’s critique it is important to define a few key terms; this will become important later on. First, by theism, Craig means, belief in a necessarily existent, all powerful, all knowing, perfectly virtuous, immaterial person who created the universe. By foundation, he means, an ontological or meta-physical foundation. The ontological grounding he has in mind is that of “informative identification;”[2] an example of this is the way “we explain the nature of water by identifying it with H20 or explain the nature of heat by identifying it with molecular motion.”[3] Craig argues that if theism is true then one can informatively identify moral obligations with divine commands; hence, providing a plausible and defensible foundation for moral obligations.

“his arguments display a conflation of epistemic and ontological questions”Armstrong’s critique begins by noting that Craig defends “traditional divine command theory.” Armstrong contends that such a position is “incredible”[4] and subject to a “cavalcade of devastating objections.”[5]

Two initial points are worth making. First, the position Craig defends is not a “traditional divine command theory” but rather a version of the modified divine command theory defended by Robert Adams,[6] more recently by William Alston[7] and Stephen Evans[8], also I have defended it here.

This theory affirms that the property of being wrong is identical with the property of being contrary to God’s commands in much the same way that water is identical with H20. Second, many of the “devastating objections” consist simply of a repetition of the tired old lines always used against divine command theories; most of these objections have been subjected to rigorous criticism in the literature on divine commands over the last 30 years by people such as Philip Quinn,[9] Edward Weirenga,[10] Robert Adams,[11] William Wrainwright[12] and again by me[13]. Armstrong does not address any of these criticisms; he merely repeats the standard arguments without even mentioning, much less, addressing the problems noted by these authors. In fact, in several places, his arguments display a conflation of epistemic and ontological questions which is a common error as I have argued here.

Armstrong’s Argument from Harm
Putting these niggles to one side, however, Armstrong's main line of argument is fairly novel.[14] He states,

There is a much more plausible foundation for morality. It seems obvious to me, and to everyone who does not start with peculiarly religious assumptions, that what makes rape morally wrong is the extreme harm that rape causes to rape victims.[15]

Armstrong suggests that Craig's conditional, if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties, is mistaken because a more plausible foundation exists for our duties, one that is independent of God's commands. The wrongness of actions can be founded in the harm caused by immoral actions such as rape. Armstrong provides two arguments as to why this harm-based or secular account of the nature of wrongness is superior to a divine command theory.

(a) The harm account is more economical than a divine command theory;
(b) The harm account makes moral obligations more objective than a divine command theory does.

In my next post I will address arguments (a) and (b). I will leave you with the thought that it is worth noting that Armstrong’s conclusion misses the point. He contends that everyone who does not start with peculiarly religious assumptions will see that the harm-based foundation is more plausible than a divine command theory. Nothing in Craig’s contention contradicts this. Craig's contention is that if God exists then there is a sound basis for moral obligations. The sound basis he identifies is divine commands. Craig, then, was not arguing that a divine command theory was the most plausible theory in the absence of religious assumptions, Craig argues that in the absence of religious assumptions it is Nihilism, not divine command theory, which is the most plausible account of moral obligation. Craig’s contention is that a divine command theory is plausible if one grants such assumptions. Armstrong’s conclusion actually has no bearing on the contention he is attempting to refute.

[1] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 114.
[2] Mark C Murphy “Theism, Atheism and the Explanation of Moral Value” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 127.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” 106.
[5]Ibid, 108.
[6] Robert Adams Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979) 66-79; "Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Obligation" Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987) 262-275. [7] William Alston “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed. Michael Beaty ( Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 303-26.
[8] C. Stephen Evans Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
[9] Philip L Quinn Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978); “Divine Command Theory” in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory ed Hugh LaFollette (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing Co, 1999) 53-73; “Theological Voluntarism” in The Oxford Handbook to Ethical Theory Ed David Copp (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 63-90.
[10] Edward Weirenga, The Nature of God: An Inquiry into the Divine Attributes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989) 215-27. See also, “Utilitarianism and the Divine Command Theory,” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984) 311-318; and “A Defensible Divine Command Theory” Nous 17 (1983) 387-408.
[11] Robert Adams “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness” in Divine Commands and Morality ed Paul Helm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) 83-108; “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979) 66-79; Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief” in Rationality and Religious Belief ed C F Delaney (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979) 116-140.
[12] William Wrainwright Religion and Morality (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2005).
[13] Matthew Flannagan “The Premature Dismissal of Voluntarism” in Colloquium: The Australasian Theological Review (forthcoming).
[14] I say “fairly novel” because a very similar objection was raised in Don Marquis's seminal essay, “Why Abortion is Immoral” The Abortion Controversy: 25 Years after Roe v Wade, A Reader eds Louis Pojman and Francis Beckwith (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998) 345.
[15] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” 106.

RELATED POSTS:
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part II
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part I
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part II
Maverick Philosopher on the Historical Atrocities Argument

  © Blogger template 'Grease' by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008 Design by Madeleine Flannagan 2008

Back to TOP