MandM has moved!

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

Friday, 31 July 2009

Just Voted in the Smacking Referendum

Our voting papers for the smacking referendum arrived in this afternoon's post. Matt managed to make it home just before the post shop closed so our completed ballots are already in the mail on their way back to the Returning Officer.

It was easy; no driving, no parking, no queuing, no mucking around with ID.

RELATED POSTS:
Fisking Margaret Mayman: The Flawed Moral Theology on the Smacking Referendum
Fisking Ian Hassall: The Arbitrary Ethical Reasoning on the Smacking Referendum
No Defences Permitted for the Accused

The State is Not Above the Law: Bennett and the Beneficiaries

In their haste to jump to the aspect of the Paula Bennett and the beneficiaries story that best supports their political view, most commentators seem to be missing the fact that Paula Bennett, government Minister, arguably broke the law when she reached into her department's records and made public the precise amounts of welfare each of her political opponents were in receipt of.

The issue is not a question of did/would Labour have done the same thing? (this is the tu quoque flaw of reasoning - two wrongs do not make a right) It is also not relevant whether the law itself is a stupid law or whether a right to privacy exists or not and it most certainly is not appropriate to simply focus on whether her doing this was relevant to the debate or the broader issues around welfare. These all miss the point which is that the state is not above the law.

This concept can be seen in the Bible, in our legal system it goes back to the Magna Carta and can be found in constitutional documents around the world. Anyone who loves freedom and democracy must object when the state acts as if the law does not apply to itself. Can any of us decide to set aside the law when it does not suit, when we want to win a debate?

The state passed the Privacy Act. In doing this they imposed this law on all of us including themselves - see section 5 of the Privacy Act:
5 Act to bind the Crown
This Act binds the Crown.
Further one of the contractual promises the state makes to every beneficiary on their welfare system is that they will not release private information. If they don't like their own laws, then they can repeal them before acting in conflict with them. If they do not want to be bound by their contractual promises then they should not enter them or they should lawfully end them before acting in conflict with them.

It is about getting our priorities straight, our foundations correct.

I am fairly libertarian. I don't support state funded welfare, I do not believe in a right to welfare. I think the parent that walks from the relationship should pay for their own kids and the person they left holding the baby - not the rest of us. I happen to think that in this debate the information Paula Bennett released was relevant to the debate. I am also not sure what I think of the Privacy Act; I do believe that property can be non-tangible such as original ideas, personal information and so on, however, I am not convinced that the Privacy Act is a reasonable limitation on the right to free expression, the right to seek, receive and impart information (and the right not to).

But all this is irrelevant.

I will not approve of an act that amounts to a state minister acting as if she is above the law no matter how much this might suit my politics and I find it reprehensible that the government are not intending to reprimand her. I find it equally reprehensible that so many bloggers and commentators are willing to turn a blind eye to this abuse of power and in fact enable the government to get away with acting as if it is above the law by focusing on how Bennett's actions benefit their own causes.

RELATED POSTS:
What About the Poor? Sustenance Rights Examined
What About the Poor? More on Sustenance Rights

Thursday, 30 July 2009

Key and Goff on Family Matters at the 2009 Forum on the Family

The 2009 Forum on the Family is nearly upon us. This year John Key and Phil Goff are slated to face-off, Lord of the NZ Blogosphere, David Farrar, will be making an appearance, details of the rest of this years lineup are on the poster (click on the image if you cannot read it). You can register here and if you do it now you'll get the early-bird rate.

Matt and I have been to the last two Forums on the Family and can thoroughly recommend them as interesting, informative and a great place to network and meet people; at this stage we plan to attend this one.

family

Wednesday, 29 July 2009

Auckland Bloggers Drinks

On the first Thursday of every month, Auckland bloggers gather for the Bloggers Bar Bash:
What: A social gathering of bloggers and bloupies (those who read, comment on and hang out with bloggers)
When: 6 August from 6.30pm
Where: Galbraiths, 2 Mt Eden Road, Mt Eden, Auckland
Open to any blogger who happens to be in Auckland. Regular blogger attendees include those from Annie Fox, Not PC, Interest.co.nz, Lolly Scramble and MandM, others have been known to stop by...

See you there :-)

Tuesday, 28 July 2009

(dis)Honest to God: How Not to Argue about the Smacking Referendum

Given that yesterday we advertised Dr Glenn Peoples' upcoming public lectures and because the smacking referendum begins on Saturday, I thought we'd share this article critiquing bad anti-smacking reasoning by Glenn.

(dis)Honest to God: How Not to Argue about the Smacking Referendum

smackingIan Harris tells us (“Honest to God,” Dominion Post, [Dominion Post. Saturday July 11, 2009. Page B5], reproduced at the YesVote website) that we should reject the “harsh views” on child rearing found in the Bible.

Mr Harris, unfortunately, joins many of those who promote the criminalisation of good parents by muddying the waters. He notes, for example, that someone who defends the right to use physical discipline also believes that children (like adults) are sinners. He then announces that since “progressive” Christians (by which he seems to mean those who no longer accept Christian theology) realise that this is based on an antiquated view, we should likewise reject the right to use physical discipline and we should criminalise those who do.

It is difficult to interact charitably with those who support the ban on smacking if this is the contorted way they are going to reason about the subject. Whether or not one thinks the theology held by some supporters of the right to use physical discipline is correct is quite a different matter from whether or not one thinks they ought to be made into criminals, surely!

Unfortunately again, Mr Harris attempts to use his platform as a mouthpiece of liberal (what he calls “progressive) Christianity to give credence to scientific claims that are obviously subject to great dispute. He makes the sweeping claim that this nebulous thing called “modern research” (while he cites no actual studies) shows that although corporal punishment does help bring about short-term compliance, it does not help a child to “internalise positive values for the longer term.”

I am constantly bemused by the way in which conservative religious spokespeople are ridiculed even when they do cite research, but obvious nonsense like this can be peddled by the liberal voices without so much as a single scholarly citation, and nobody is expected to bat an eyelid.

But even if what Mr Harris says is correct, the implication is that corporal punishment in and of itself has short term benefits and no long term ill effects. Hardly something to be prosecuting people for! The reality is that the effects he cites are perfectly compatible with the good of corporal punishment. Such punishment usually is administered to children when they are not willing to reason or reflect on the long term consequences of their actions. It is for when children are being unruly and unwilling to listen. Circumstances in which they are willing to do so are the circumstances under which corporal punishment is less necessary (meaning that the older a child becomes, the less frequent a smack will become). None of this gives the careful reader any reason to think that the occasional smack is immoral, much less worthy of criminal prosecution.

Bereft of compelling moral or scientifically grounded arguments, Mr Harris turns instead to arousing prejudice against the religious convictions of those who disagree with him about child discipline. Unable to find anything strong enough in what all Christians consider their holy book, he reaches into the book of Ecclesiasticus (part of the so-called “apocryphal” writings that did not make up part of the Hebrew canon) to find the claim that “he who loves his son will whip him often.”

But not only has Mr Harris strayed into literature that the so-called “fundamentalists” (most of whom would identify as conservative Protestants) that he attacks do not even regard to be part of the Bible at all, he has clearly sought out the most extreme translation of the verse that he can find. He conjures up grizzly pictures of leering parents towering, horsewhip in hand, over the broken and bleeding bodies of little children with misleading language like this.

But just a few minutes research would dispel this attempt. The New American translation reads, “He who loves his son chastises him often.” The Douay Rheims translation (the Catholic Bible, which does include this book as part of the canon) reads “He that loveth his son, frequently chastiseth him.” The old King James version, the one that “fundamentalists” are most likely to read if the read this book at all, reads “He that loveth his son causeth him oft to feel the rod.” Of course, because it’s a metaphor for physical discipline that’s probably still too much for Mr Harris, but needless to say, it robs him of his “whipping” bogeyman.

After the rhetorical debris is stripped away, all that’s really left is a string of namecalling and fearful language. He calls the views of his opponents “repugnant.” He calls them “fundamentalists” with “antiquated” views that are opposed to “progressive” thought. But where’s the actual substance? Like much of the rhetorical fireworks that is being leveled at those who want the law changed to a common sense view that refuses to place thousands of good parents in the criminal category, Ian Harris offers more heat than light, and manifests just the sort of shallowness and bias that this debate could do without.

RELATED POSTS:

Monday, 27 July 2009

Dr Glenn Peoples on Abortion, Morality and Law

Canterbury student group Prolife UC have organised for Dr Glenn Peoples to deliver some free public lectures at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch on Abortion, Morality and Law.

Thursday 30th July 7.30 pm
“Chasing the Justificatory Goalpost: Public Justification and Religious Beliefs”

There is a broad political tradition that we are a part of that we could call “the liberal democracy.” Some modern thinkers allege that in a liberal democratic society like ours, we should not advocate policies or ideas in the public square that are justified by our religious beliefs (e.g. policies on abortion, marriage, education etc). This is because these people advocate a principle of justification, whereby all policies must be justifiable to our fellow citizen in a certain way, and (as everyone knows, of course!) all policies that are justified by our religious beliefs cannot be justified to our fellow citizens in this way. Dr Peoples will look at exactly what this principle of justification is, whether it is any good (he will argue that it needs improvement), and most importantly, will ask whether or not it is really true that policies that have a religious basis really do fail to be justified in this way.

Friday 31st July 7.30pm
“Abortion, Morality and Law”

Is abortion immoral, and should it be legal? The abortion controversy is a persistent one in New Zealand that has seen revived interest lately. Dr Glenn Peoples will provide reasons for deeming abortion immoral and for its legal restriction. He will also consider some arguments for abortion rights and explains how to address these, demonstrating that they overlook the fundamental moral issues involved.

Where: A3 lecture theatre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch (map and more info here)

Cost:
free but donation appreciated

Dr Peoples completed his doctoral research on Religion in Public life through the University of Otago and runs New Zealand's most popular podcast on philosophy, theology and politics.

Sunday, 26 July 2009

Sunday Study: Abraham and Isaac – Did God Command the Killing of an Innocent?

Perhaps the most infamous passage in the Hebrew scriptures occurs in Genesis 22:2,

Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

Of course, as anyone who has read the story knows, God intervened before Abraham carried out the command and prevented him from killing Isaac. It is also true that in the Mosaic laws that follow this passage, the Prophets, the Psalms and the historical books, human sacrifice is condemned. Nevertheless, God still, in this instance, commanded Abraham to kill Isaac. For this reason this story looms large in the criticisms of theological morality.[1] The problem can be expounded succinctly; it seems plausible that Christians are committed to an inconsistent triad;

[1] If God commands an action A then A is morally required;
[2] It is wrong to kill innocent human beings;
[3] God commanded Abraham to attempt to kill an innocent human being.

It is worth noting here that the problem in [3] arises only if one takes the patriarchal narrative in Genesis as literally true, if one assumes that these narratives accurately and reliably convey the actual historical events. Some commentators evade the dilemma by denying this; according to one line of interpretation, the story of Gen 22 is a sort of parable instructing Israel, in an age where infant sacrifice was common, that God did not require such sacrifices and instead required that such piety be expressed through the sacrifice of goats.

If this interpretation is correct the problem evaporates. However, I will not pursue this line here because, while I think there are some interesting questions around whether the proto-history of Gen 1-11 should be understood as literal history, I am not convinced that this applies to the patriarchal narratives. Kenneth Kitchen makes a reasonable case that these narratives are historically reliable.[2] Moreover, even if he is mistaken, it seems clear that anyone who raises this objection must assume this (at least for the sake of argument). If not then there would be no basis for asserting [3] and the dilemma would again evaporate. So, in this post I will assume it as a given that the patriarchal narratives are literally true, that what they describe actually occurred.

As I understand the objection, the objector is offering a reductio ad absurdum. He or she starts by assuming, that the patriarchal narratives are literally true and then derives a contradiction from this assumption. The question then is whether, granting this assumption, such a contradiction actually does arise.

Proceeding on this basis, the obvious problem is that [1], [2] and [3] cannot all be true. Kant[3] and Robert Adams[4] have contended Christians should abandon [3] in favour of [2]. While others such as Quinn[5] and Evans[6] have offered defences of the claim that it in certain situations a person (or at least a person in Abraham’s epistemic situation)[7] could rationally deny [2]. While the philosophical questions here are interesting, in this post I will endeavour to solve the dilemma exegetically. I will argue that while [1] is true, a careful examination of the text shows that the events occur in a certain context. I will then argue that when the context is taken into account, [2] is not correct. In essence, while it is true under normal circumstances that killing the innocent is wrong, in certain unusual circumstances it is not wrong. A contextual interpretation of The Torah suggests it affirms that in the case of Abraham unusual circumstances were in play.

The Command in its Context
In Gen 12:1-2 God reveals;
The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
Here Abram is told by a God that he will be the father of an entire nation, one that will have its own country. An obvious implication of this is that Abram will have descendants; he will have a son who will live at least as long enough to have children of his own. The text then implicitly teaches that Abram knew on the basis of a reliable source that his son would live to adulthood.

This point is reiterated in several other encounters between God and Abram. In Gen 15 “the word of the LORD” comes to Abram “in a vision.” Abram’s response is, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.” God’s answer was emphatic, “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” Abram is told, and hence knows, that his heir will be a son from his own body, a biological descendant." The text continues; “He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’”

In the New Testament Paul utilises this incident as a paradigm example of salvation by faith. Paul notes that Abram, at this stage a Gentile, is considered righteous because of his response in faith to God’s revelation. What’s important in this context is that again Abram knows that he will, both, have a biological son and that this son will live at least long enough to have children. Obviously, if his son dies early in life, before he is able to have children, then Abram will not have biological descendants yet it is clear that Abram knew that he would. Moreover, the passage continues with God promising, as part of a covenant, that these things will be so; again Abram knows that his son will live into adulthood.

After this incident, Abram makes the mistake of sleeping with Hagar, which results in her giving birth to Ishmael. This leads to various domestic problems including rivalry between Hagar, Ishmael and Abram’s wife Sarah. However, Abram has another encounter with God; in Gen 17:2-14 we read,

I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers."

Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God."

Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

God promises that Abram’s descendants will be numerous, again implying, very clearly, that Abram’s son will live to adulthood. This promise was signified by a covenant marked by circumcision; it was reiterated by God changing his name from Abram (exalted father) to Abraham (father of many).

The text goes on however to provide us more specifics in verses 15-19,

God also said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her."

Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?" And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”

Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.”

Here it is made crystal clear; the promise will come through the line of a child called Isaac who will be born through his wife. This seems impossible to Abram due to the fact that his wife is barren. God, however, is emphatic, changing his wife’s name from Sarai to Sarah. Abram is again reassured that Isaac will be born and will live at least long enough to have children of his own and will enter into a covenant with God himself. This promise is promised to be confirmed by a seemingly impossible event, a barren woman will bear a child.

In chapter 18 the promise is again reiterated. Abraham is visited by three men who appear to represent God himself. The text records in verse 10, “Then the LORD said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.’” Again the point is made in a crystal clear fashion; Sarah will have a child. Again the strong impression from the surrounding text is that this child will live on to adulthood to have children of his own. Abraham is again reassured that Isaac will survive to adulthood.

If the point has not yet been belaboured enough by the narrative, in Gen 21, when Isaac is born, God again makes it clear to Abraham on the day Isaac is weaned. Abraham is told in verse 12, "Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." Again Abraham is reassured that Isaac will live for at least long enough to have children of his own.

This then, is the backdrop to the events described in Gen 22. It is worth remembering that this is all one narrative, the division into chapters and verses that occurs in our modern English version were added centuries later. In the original narrative and in the canonically authoritative forms, the division does not occur. Hence by the time we get to Gen 22 both Abraham and the astute reader know that Isaac is not going to die; both the reader and Abraham know that Isaac will live beyond this day to rear children of his own. This is actually pointed out in the text; just before Abraham goes up the mountain to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham states to his servants in verse 5, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." Abraham expected Isaac to return alive.

Just to clinch this point, let me note a final line of evidence; the New Testament teaches that this is the correct way to understand the passage. In Hebrews 11:17-19 it states,

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

Earlier in the same chapter, verses 11-12, the reader is reminded of the promise that Isaac would live to have many descendants. This is significant because Christians do not accept any and all interpretations of the Old Testament, Christians accept as authoritative, the Old Testament as interpreted by the New Testament. One can think whatever they like about Christianity, but this is how Christians are supposed to accept and interpret the story. If one attacks a different interpretation of the passage, one is attacking an interpretation Christians (should) reject, and hence, are not attacking anything Christians (should) believe or are committed to believing. In light of this, I think we can establish the following point, that premise [3] is true provided that a certain context or qualification is understood to apply; namely, God commanded Abraham to attempt to kill his son in a context where Abraham knew that his son would not die but live on after the incident.

At this stage, no doubt, some will scoff; they will contend that they do not believe these stories could be literally true. They do not think God appeared to Abraham and told him any of this or that he did know these things. However, this complaint is beside the point, whether a person believes the story or not, this is what the story says. If a person is to argue that the text, taken literally, is immoral or portrays God a certain way then he or she needs to accurately portray what the text says. Not believing what a text says is one thing, however, misrepresenting what it says and using that distortion as the basis of an argument to a conclusion is another.

In the context of this discussion we are asking, if one takes the text to be literally true then what does it teach? Does it teach that God commanded Abraham to kill his son? The answer here, is that God commanded Abraham to kill his son, in a context where Abraham knew his son would not die but live on after the incident. Commanding killing, in this context needs to be shown as immoral for the objection to gain traction.

Is This Immoral?
I have argued that [3] is true only if a certain context is assumed. I will now ask if [2] is correct, the claim that “It is wrong to kill innocent human beings.” Here again, I think the answer is yes provided a certain context is assumed. Many people will find this answer a little shocking; I think some reflection, however, will show that it is not.

Many of the ethical prohibitions that hold in the actual world do so because of certain facts about the world. Hitting someone in the head, for example, is wrong because, in the world we actually live in, doing so causes pain and harms people. However, if the physical structure of the world was different, if hitting someone in the head actually advanced their health and improved their quality of life, then it would be permissible and possibly even commendable, to hit someone in the head. Of course, none of this shows us that in the actual world hitting people in this way is not wrong, this is because in the actual world hitting people in the head usually cause harm. However, it does show that the prohibition relies on certain background assumptions about the effects of hitting. If these assumptions were not true then the prohibition would not hold.

In a critique of deductivist natural law theory, John Hare develops this point showing that slight alterations in the way God set the world up could lead to quite different moral rules applying than in fact do. One example Hare notes, is particularly interesting, “Perhaps (to get more bizarre) God could have willed that we kill each other at the age of 18, at which point God would bring us immediately back to life.”[8] Hare asks us to imagine a world, in which, when people of a certain age are killed they immediately come back to life. He opines, quite plausibly, that if this were to be the case then killing people at this age would not be wrong or at least, not seriously wrong. One of the reasons that killing people is wrong in the world we live in is because people stay dead. If they were only unconscious for a split second and came back to life in full health then arguably killing a person would not be the serious wrong we believe it is.

Once this is realised, I think it is evident that [1], [2] and [3] are consistent. If one assumes, for the sake of argument, that the Patriarchal Narratives are literally true then it follows that [3] is true only if a certain context is assumed. God commanded Abraham to kill his son in the highly unusual context where Abraham knew that his son would not stay dead but would come down the mountain afterwards and live on to adulthood to father children of his own. Proposition [2] is defensible only in a context where people do not know these sorts of things; the rule to not kill the innocent applies to a world where people do not come back to life after they have been killed. Hence, the story of Abraham and Isaac, if taken literally, does not entail that God commanded something immoral or contradictory.

[1] See for example, Louise Anthony “Atheism as Perfect Piety” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics Eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 77-79.
[2] Kenneth Kitchens On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003) 313-372.
[3] Immanuel Kant The Conflict of the Faculties (Ak. VI1, 63) 115; similar statements can be found in Kant's
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Ak, VI,87, 186f).
[4] Robert Adams Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) Chapter 12.
[5] Philip Quinn Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); also "Obligation, Divine Commands and Abraham's Dilemma" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64(2) 459-466.
[6] C Stephen Evans Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
[7] Ibid.
[8] John E Hare God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands and Human Autonomy (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2001) 68-69.

Saturday, 25 July 2009

TANSA Faith and Science Conference

Theology and the Natural Sciences in Aotearoa are holding a one day Faith and Science conference entitled “Faithful Science? – Just How Well Do Science and Faith Get Along?”

When:
Saturday 1 August, 9am-5pm.

Where:
Northcote Baptist Church.

Speakers:

Dale Campbell – Science & Faith: Key Issues
Yael Klangwisan – Reading the book of Genesis
Dr Nicola Hoggard Creegan – Evolution and Evil
Dr Myk Habets – A Scientific Theology
Dr Jeff Tallon – Physics and Faith
Dr Matthew Flannagan – Does Evolution Make Belief in God Untenable?
Dr Graeme Finlay – The Glorious Ape
Prof. Neil Broom – Is there Transcendence in Nature?
Dr Graham O’Brien – Evolution & Purpose

Click on the flyer for more:

Dr Ben Witherington in Auckland

Ben Witherington III, is visiting New Zealand to speak at a conference on the Wesleyan Theological Tradition at East City Wesleyan Church Centre, 219 Burswood Drive, Botany, Auckland. The program costs $20 (excluding the Saturday night dinner) and will run as follows:
Friday 31 July
7.30 pm The Johnannine Literature: Legacy of the Beloved Disciple: Part 1

Saturday 1 August

1.30 pm
The Johnannine Literature: Legacy of the Beloved Disciple: Part 2

7.00 pm
Personal Observations about the Church around the Globe. (Ticket price for this session is an additional $20 as it includes dinner).


Sunday Church Services
10.00 am Morning service at East City Church (219 Burswood Drive, Botany, Auckland)

5.45 pm cession|community (The Depot, Lloyd Elsmore Park, Pakuranga)

More info here.

Dr Witherington is the Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and is on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. He has authored over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies by Christianity Today. Dr Witherington was one of the NT experts consulted by Lee Strobel for The Case for Christ and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies.

I'd love to attend the entire thing, however, I am giving my conference paper, "Does Evolution Make Belief in God Untenable?" at The Theology and Natural Sciences Conference on the Saturday and then I'll be joining Madeleine on Waiheke Island for her Grandfather's memorial gathering.

Hat Tip: Thinking Matters Talk

Hear Dr Matthew Flannagan speak on “In Defence of Divine Commands”

You're invited to a Thinking Matters Auckland, God, Morality and Society, event:
What: Dr Matthew Flannagan speaking on "In Defence of Divine Commands"
When: Tuesday 4th August – 7:00pm
Where: Lecture Room 2, Laidlaw College, 80 Central Park Drive, Henderson, West Auckland
Format: Talk followed by questions, answers and discussion.
Cost: Free but donations are appreciated
Are God's commands irrelevant when we discuss moral and ethical questions? Many claim that this is the case and offer the following as an argument against Divine Commands: either an action is right because God commands it or God commands it because it is right; the latter renders God's commands superfluous, if they are right independently of God then God is unnecessary; however, the former renders God's commands arbitrary, if God commanding an action makes that action right then any action could conceivably be right. Given this, they conclude that God and the commands he issues, should be kept out of consideration of our ethical and moral questions.

In this talk Matt will challenge this line of thought and will demonstrate that this attempt to dismiss God's commands from our consideration of ethical and moral issues is flawed and will explain, in layman's terms, why a Christian should not be intimidated by this argument.

Matt holds a PhD in Theology, a Masters degree in Philosophy. His area of expertise is Philosophy of Religion, Theology and Applied Ethics. He is an adjunct lecturer in Philosophy for Laidlaw College and Bethlehem Tertiary Institute and is currently re-training to be a high school Religious Studies/Philosophy teacher. He has formally debated the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand’s Dr Zoe During and the New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanist’s Dr Bill Cooke and his publications appear in international journals of philosophy and ethics. He writes for MandM and has nearly 15 years experience teaching, engaging and challenging secular culture both in New Zealand and internationally.

Thursday, 23 July 2009

In Defence of the Partial Defence of Provocation

The case we have all watched in horror playing out in the news is over. Clayton Weatherston has been found guilty of murdering Sophie Elliot and his attempt at the partial defence of provocation was rightly shown the contempt it deserved by the court. At MandM we maintained our standard policy of refusing to comment while a trial is in progress but now the verdict is in we will add our voices to the debate raging in New Zealand over the partial defence of provocation.

Like everyone, we found it sickening to watch the narcissistic Weatherston trying to paint his victim as evil in an attempt to have his brutal stabbing and mutilation of her rendered manslaughter instead of murder. Watching her brave mother, who not only testified but who tried to stop him stabbing her daughter, suffer through the ordeal of the trial, made all the worse by Weatherston's desperate attempt to save himself from the consequences of his actions, was awful. As a mother I cried with her. No mother should have to bury her daughter much less witness her daughter's murder and then sit in the same room with her killer as he spent days in the court room trying to spin his actions into something understandable.

However, likewise, no accused should lose their right to due process, to a fair trial, just because this accused was so obviously guilty and so obviously wrong and utterly reprehensible in his attempts to suggest that his culpability should be reduced. The Weatherston case was open and shut murder. However, not all cases are this clear and some people are falsely accused and some accuseds should succeed with a partial defence of provocation. If we remove the partial defence of provocation because of our disgust at Weatherston and what he tried to argue in the courtroom and how deeply we feel for Mrs Elliot, we would do a far greater wrong.

Accuseds will often try to raise defences for which, if they are being honest with themselves they should not be trying to raise; however, if we remove a defence because we do not like witnessing these attempts, we will be removing it for those whose actions did amount to provocation, who do deserve the lesser charge of manslaughter.

For example, imagine if Mrs Elliot, on breaking down the door to Sophie's bedroom and witnessing Weatherston stabbing her daughter's dead body, had, after calling the police and having a minute to think it through, gone back upstairs with an axe, smashed the door in and hacked Weatherston to pieces. She would have faced murder charges and she would not have available to her a defence of self-defence, her daughter was already dead so she was not defending her, Weatherston wasn't cornering her and threatening her and the force she used was arguable disproportionate. Neither, would she necessarily be guaranteed a defence of temporary insanity. Her best option would be to argue for the partial defence of provocation.

Would you want her to not have that option, to be stuck with murderer as her label? Surely, even though we can all appreciate hacking Weatherston to death with an axe at that moment would have been wrong, we can at least see that the level of blame we as a society should attach to the likes of Weatherston, should not apply to the hypothetical, axe-wielding, Mrs Elliot in my scenario.

Not all killing is equal. We can tell the difference between an accidental death and a pre-meditated killing. We recognise that there are degrees between these two extremes. We also recognise that sometimes murder is understandable, even if not completely excusable; this is precisely why we have the partial defence of provocation.

The person who reacts to discovering an intruder in their child's bedroom by repeatedly bashing them over the head with a cast-iron frying pan is not on par with a serial killer. These degrees are recognised in both the sentences the courts hand down and the convictions placed against the actors names and it is important for justice that the police, the courts and accuseds have this range of options to measure a person's actions and intentions against when they grapple with the evidence and the events and circumstances surrounding a homicide.

People accused of criminal acts, who are not prepared to face up to what they have done and accept the consequences, will always try to run any kind of far-fetched defence they can dream up in a desperate bid to get off. Had Weatherston not had provocation as an option he might have tried self-defence or a complete denial of guilt and you would have seem very similar attempts to smear the victims playing out on the news as he tried to run with these options; likewise if consideration of provocation is moved to sentencing. The only way you can get rid of attempts to smear the victim and the pain the family of the victim goes through in a trial is to completely get rid of trials and summarily convict all accuseds. What Mrs Elliot and Sophie's family, friends and memory went through, terrible as it was, is nevertheless, the lesser evil.

The system worked. Weatherston’s attempt at provocation rightly failed and in making that attempt he made himself look worse and his victim gained more sympathy, distasteful as the process was. Further, we all understand as a community that the court was right to deem this man a murderer. John Stuart Mill was right, truth becomes more evident and thus, more valuable, when it has been permitted to grapple with falsehood.

Religion and Science: A Response to Ken Perrott's “Other Ways of Knowing”

Ken Perrott, at Open Parachute, took issue with some comments I made in my recent defence of Plantinga’s stance on Evolution being taught in state schools. To gain focus let’s look at one thing I said to Ken in the comments section on that post,

If the relevant evidence points towards a theory it does not follow that all the evidence points towards it. That’s because there might be evidence which science does not consider, such as theological claims, that are relevant.”

I went on to say

...on many issues the relevant scientific evidence is the only evidence, but on questions of origins that is not the case. The question of our origins is both a scientific and theological question so a correct examination of the issue will take into account both the theological and scientific evidence that is relevant to the question. To teach evolution is the true theory of origins one would have to show it is probable on all relevant evidence, and seeing science excludes relevant theological evidence from the discussion it cannot claim to have shown it’s true on all relevant evidence.

Central to this argument is a distinction between all the relevant scientific evidence and all the relevant total evidence. The argument assumes that science, while a reliable method of gaining truth in many areas, is not the only source of reliable information we have about the world, that on certain topics we can also discover truths about the world through faith and revelation; hence, on these topics an accurate view of the world must utilise both sources of information.

Ken was clearly displeased with this statement and labeled it the “other ways of knowing argument.” On his own site he asked me to respond to his criticisms; I will do so below.

1. Much of Ken’s response to this appears to be based on a failure to grasp what I actually said. In the above citation I did not say that evolution was not true nor did I say evolution was not probable on all the relevant evidence. Everything I have said is entirely compatible with theistic evolution, where a person comes to a position based both on the scientific evidence and the theological reflection. I did not say, as Ken repeatedly attributes to me, that “theology trumps science” or that theological reflection is more reliable than science. What I said was that a theory which is probable on all the evidence, that is all the theological and all the scientific evidence, taken together, should be believed over a theory which is only probable on the scientific evidence alone. I also maintain the opposite is true; a theory which is probable on all relevant evidence, drawn from both theology and science should be believed over a theory which is supported by theological considerations alone.

The issue then, is not that one discipline “trumps another,” it is that a theory is not worthy of consent unless it takes into account all the relevant information from both disciplines. I think that theological and scientific reflections are both reliable methods and our interpretation of both the theological and empirical data can be fallible.

These clarifications address an awful lot of Ken’s argument such as his statement, “To assert today that we should revert to a pre-scientific era, that theology or philosophy should trump scientific knowledge, is to claim that mythology/logic/reason is more reliable than evidence.” Given that I never said that theology should trump science, this statement is irrelevant.

Similarly, Ken’s claim that my position “is consistent with the Wedge strategy” is misleading. While it is true that my position is consistent with creationism, as I note above, it is also consistent with evolutionary theory. Contrary to what Ken thinks, the mere fact that two views are consistent provides no basis for linking the views together in a kind of guilt by association argument. Creationism is, after all, consistent with the view that Wellington is the capital of New Zealand; however, this does not mean that everyone who claims that Wellington is the capital believes that the world was created in six 24-hour days. Consider a less palatable example; Hitler’s belief in the superiority of the Aryan race is consistent with the claim that there is a city called Cairo this does not mean that anyone who remembers visiting Cairo is a Nazi.

2. Ken’s response also appears marred by a failure to adequately understand the meaning of some philosophical terms I use. In the above citation I use the word “true,” Ken says, in response to my use of it, that “the word [truth] means different things to theologians, scientists and people on the street.” In fact, in the above citation I am using the standard Aristotelian concept of truth which is common to both disciplines. Aristotle stated, “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.” By this definition the claim that the earth is round is true if the earth is, in fact, actually round, and it is false if the earth is, in fact, not round. Similarly in theology, the claim that God created the world ex nihilo is true if there is, in fact, a God and he did, in fact, create the physical universe out of nothing a finite period of time ago.

Ken seems similarly confused about the meaning of the word “logic” and goes to great lengths to assert that “logic must follow evidence.” However, this simply shows he does not understand logic; logic is the study of rules of inference, that is, logic tells one how to deduce conclusions from evidence. Once this is realised, the claim that logic should follow evidence makes no sense. One cannot deduce or infer anything from evidence without logic in the first place.

Similarly Ken’s suggestion that science is more reliable than logic is questionable. Science utilises logic to infer its conclusions from the empirical data; logic, therefore, is a presupposition of science that science needs if science is to conclude anything. Moreover, some axioms of logic clearly are more certain and reliable than many empirical claims, the claim, for example, that Both A and Not A cannot both be true, in the same sense, at the same time is more certain that speculations about how first life arose. Similarly with the rule modus tollens, something of which we can be relatively certain, which states: if A, then B, not B, therefore, not A.

3. Putting aside these misinterpretations and philosophical mistakes, Ken’s main objection is,

Implicit in the “different ways of knowing” argument, and hinted at by Matt in his comments, is the desire to change the science process to include theological “evidence” and claims that are not based on, or tested by, evidence. To give theology a “free pass.”

Elsewhere he claims,

It’s claiming a logic or justification for the theist belief without allowing the normal checking that should go with knowledge claims.”

Here Ken raises a fairly standard argument:

[1] that scientific claims differ from theological claims in that the former are empirically testable and the latter are not; [2] lack of testability disqualifies theological claims from being taken into account in theorising about the world.

This argument is problematic and has been refuted numerous times in the literature; here I can be brief. Turning to [1] Larry Laudan notes “It is now widely acknowledged that many scientific claims are not testable in isolation, but only when embedded in part of a larger system of statements, some of whose consequences can be submitted to test.”[1] Take the claim that there is at least one electron in the universe. To test the truth of this claim we would need a theory about how electrons act under various conditions, what their predicted effects upon things would be and theories about how one could detect these effects if they occur and so on. Only with this kind of background information can we can use the relevant tools to test the predictions; however, in isolation, the claim that there is at least one electron is untestable.[2]

Second, many theological claims are testable in precisely the same way. Take the claim made by Archbishop Usher that the world was created 6000 years ago. This claim is testable; we can muster empirical evidence to assess the age of the earth. The same is true for other theological claims; take the claim, for example, that the cosmos had a beginning in time, an implication of the theological views of St Augustine or that the universe is governed by laws that can only be discovered by empirical means, an implication of the voluntarist theology of the late middle ages or the claim made by 14th-15th century theologians that, contrary to some interpretations of Aristotlian physics, God did make the universe such that the earth orbited the sun or Augustine’s claim that God created the world with seed principles, via which, the whole creation of the universe could unfound over time or Bonaventure’s theologically based contention that the cosmology of his day was mistaken in claiming that the universe was infinitely old.

Turning to [2] the suggestion that only testable claims can be utilised in answering a question about the world is also questionable. Ethical statements, such as, “it is wrong to cause pain just for entertainment” cannot be, by themselves, empirically tested yet in answering many questions about what we ought to do it is impossible to get an answer without appealing to them. Moreover, one cannot empirically test anything without presupposing some truths that themselves cannot be empirically established. Hume showed for example that it is impossible to non- circularly justify the reliability of inductive reasoning. William Alston has argued persuasively that one cannot empirically verify the reliability of one’s senses (the reason for this is quite obvious, to empirically demonstrate anything one needs to use one’s senses, and hence, one needs to presuppose the reliability of the source one is trying to prove the reliability of). It is hard to even conceive of a situation where basic axioms of logic, such as the law of non-contradiction, could be observably false. Yet science proceeds by presupposing the reliability of the senses, the reliability of inductive reasoning and the rules of logic.

Ken’s central argument then is mistaken. His other arguments fair no better, such as his attempt to try to link my position with Stalinism;

So what would the trumping of science by theology/philosophy be like? We have seen some disastrous examples. Such as Stalin’s promotion of Lysenko, trumping of science by Stalinist interpretations of Marxism-Leninism. This put Soviet genetic science back many years and led to the death and persecution of many scientists. In many ways the current theological/creationist/wedge attack on science is of a similar ilk to Stalinism.

Apart from the fact that I did not espouse creationism or claim that theology trumps science, Ken here seems to think that telling state schools that they can teach a theory is true , as opposed to merely saying that it is the best scientific theory, is akin to arresting scientists, censoring their research, persecuting and executing them!

Unfortunately, this logic can be turned on its head as the same logic would entail that refusal to teach Christian theology as the truth in state schools is akin to persecuting Christian theologians, censoring their research, persecuting them and executing them; hence, any atheist who objects to their children being taught religion at a state school is advocating some kind of quasi-Stalinist policy.

Somewhat ironically, however, Ken makes some claims that if taken seriously suggest he is not adverse to religious persecution. Ken states that,

He [Matt] argues that teaching evolution is actually teaching “fundamentalist children that their religious beliefs are false.” Well, of course that is a problem for fundamentalism, not science. We cannot ignore reality because some silly people are offended by it.

Ken here implies that state schools should teach that a particular religious perspective is false if “that’s reality.” In other words, if a person’s religious beliefs really are false then it is not unjust for the state to teach this.

Now as I stated in my original post and as I have repeated several times in correspondence with Ken, this argument is problematic. Both Ken and I agree that Islam is false, that Mohammad is not a prophet. If Ken’s claims were correct then, justice would require that the government run re-education programs for Muslim students telling them that Mohammad is not a prophet. After all, as Ken grants, “this is reality” and the religious sensibilities of other people cannot justify not teaching reality.

Ken’s second argument is that to fail to tell children that evolution is true is “child abuse.” As I pointed out, however, if this were true then the many Muslim, Christian and Jewish parents who home school their kids with creationist texts or send their kids to private schools where creationism is taught should be arrested, charged with child abuse and punished at law on par with child abusers; further, their children should be placed in state care and sent to state re-education centres. The logical implication of both Ken’s arguments is religious persecution.

Now I pointed both these points out to Ken when he raised them in previous discussions. Ken’s response was to apparently ignore the response and just repeat the argument. This, however, is not a rational response at all; simply repeating the same mantra over and over does not make it true.

[1] Larry Laudan “Science at the Bar -- Causes for ConcernScience, Technology and Human Values 7: 16-19.
[2] For example see, Alvin Plantinga “Religion and Science” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

RELATED POSTS:
Evolution should not be taught in State Schools: A Defence of Plantinga Part I
Evolution should not be taught in State Schools: A Defence of Plantinga Part II

Monday, 20 July 2009

Taking a Break

My grandfather died last night from complications following the flu.

We are not in the headspace to post just now, our focus is on family but don't feel like you have to stop commenting or anything.

Back soon :-)

Sunday, 19 July 2009

Sunday Study: Christ on The Prohibition on Homicide Part II

This post is the second in my series on Christ’s exposition of the 6th Commandment, the prohibition on homicide, contained in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5: 21-26. In Sunday Study: Christ on The Prohibition on Homicide Part I, I looked at what The Torah taught about homicide, in this post I will look at Christ’s authoritative interpretation of this teaching.

But I say to you
After presenting the formalistic interpretation of “Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment,” Jesus responds with,

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca, ' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Jesus’ interpretation here goes well beyond merely making the claim that murder is wrong and should be condemned. He suggests that angrily lashing out at people and insulting them with the terms “raca” and “fool” is subject to the judgment of gehenna. To see what Jesus is getting at, it is necessary to unpack some of these terms.

The word raca, in Aramaic, means “empty head;” to call a person raca was to contend that they were intellectually deficient. The word translated fool moros has a different connotation, to an inhabitant of Palestine it would call to mind the Hebrew concept of a fool painted graphically Psalm 14,

The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good. The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, To see if there are any who understand, Who seek after God.

They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one. Do all the workers of wickedness not know, Who eat up my people as they eat bread, And do not call upon the LORD?

A fool here is not someone who is imprudent but someone who is positively wicked. The text speaks of those who commit “abominable deeds;” the idea is that such a person is morally corrupt, someone who rejects doing good, someone who is committed to evil.

The word gehenna, is a Greek word that refers to “the Valley of Hinnom,” it is usually translated “hell” in modern English. The word “hell” has all sorts of connotations due to centuries of popular imagery and cultural myth; however in Jesus’ time, the imagery was drawn from a known geographical location, the Valley of Hinnom. This place is mentioned in 2 Chronicles as a site where Ahaz and later Manasseh, sacrificed their children to Molech by burning them. The prophet Jeremiah noted that the valley was, in his day, a tophet, a place of mass infant sacrifice where people killed and burnt their children in devotion to Molech, contrary to the commands of God. Jeremiah also predicted a kind of ironic prophetic judgment, after Israel’s military defeat, the valley would no longer be used for sacrifice but instead become a place where Israel would pile their dead until there was no more room.[1] The book of Kings tells us the valley was “desecrated” during the reign of Josiah “so no one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech.”[2] The imagery then, is of a place of great unspeakable shame, desecration, a dumping ground for dead bodies and a place where human beings are destroyed.

When these things are put together, Christ’s words in this passage are fairly evident. The Torah does more than demand that murderers be brought to justice, it requires that people refrain from slandering the character and intellectual integrity of others out of anger and hatred. Just as The Torah required that murderers be executed and conventional legal practice allows legal suits to be brought against those who defame, so too those who treat others with contempt will ultimately be treated with similar contempt by God.

Illustrations
Finally we turn to Christ’s two applications of this interpretation; he states,

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, …”

While these are applications to a cultural situation different to our own, I do not think it is difficult to ascertain the point being made. Christ suggests that if the kind of verbal abuse that comes from seething hatred is condemned by God then merely refraining from killing those we have grudges against enemies is not enough. We need to try to settle our disputes with others and avoid the kinds of conflicts, grudges and animosity that goes with them. Paul repeats the point in his epistle to the Romans, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” (Romans 12:17-18)

In Christ’s reference to “leaving a gift at the altar,” the point is made vividly that settling grudges and living in peace with others should be a higher priority than worship. Here Christ picks up a theme articulated vividly by Isaiah,

"The multitude of your sacrifices-- what are they to me?" says the LORD. "I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations-- I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong,

God calls us to obey his commands. Without this obedience, worship, attending church, partaking in the music, and so on are hollow, meaningless and shallow things. These commands require, not just that we refrain from bloodshed but that we treat our fellow people with respect; that we avoid holding grudges and feuding and as far as is possible we should live in peace with each other. If we do that, the issue of murder should not come up.

[1] Jeremiah 7:30-34
[2] 2 Kings 23:10

RELATED POSTS:
Sunday Study: Christ on The Prohibition on Homicide Part I

Saturday, 18 July 2009

MandM featured on Vote No UPDATE 2

The Vote No blog will be linking to some of our posts as the referendum on the illegality of smacking draws nearer.

The first one, published today, was my piece attacking the argument that those accused of child abuse should not be permitted to attempt raising a defence. It is already drawing comments - feel free to jump in - it is published on Vote No as, "Classic Anti-Smacking Argument Exposed."

Others slated for publication on Vote No are Matt's fisks of the Rev Dr Margaret Mayman's flawed moral theology around the smacking debate (published on Vote No as, Rev. Mayman’s “Anti-Smacking” Argument Flawed); and former Children's Commissioner Dr Ian Hassall's arbitrary ethical reasoning on common anti-smacking arguments published on Vote No as, "Anti-Smacking Arguments Shown to be Flawed."

(I'll update this post with direct links to Vote No as each article goes live.)

Senator Jim Demint on the Proposed Hate Crimes Amendment

Wintery Knight has posted the video below from a debate of Senator Jim Demint speaking on the proposed hate crimes amendment currently before the US Senate.

I do not agree with all of the Senator's arguments; the Senator seems to oppose the idea that some crimes or assaults are worse than others; however, having distinctions between manslaughter and murder, having defences such as provocation and permitting discretion in sentences, and so on, is premised on the fact that some crimes are more severe than others. I also contest his notion that determining the severity of the crime does not depend on the status of the victim; surely a person beats to death a little child has done something worse than a person who beats to death a person of equal strength in a pub brawl?

However, where I think his argument is poignant is when he notes that the proposed hate crimes amendment will take into account a person's political and religious beliefs in determining the severity of the crime. In other words, a person can be prosecuted for what they believe, provided they engage in a criminal activity. The Senator rightly highlights the proposed wording that no one shall be prosecuted "solely" on the basis of their religious beliefs; this seems to imply that one might be able to be prosecuted partly on the basis of their religious beliefs. I also agree with his questioning why, if the bill is simply about criminal activity, this amendment even needs to be there especially in light of the First Amendment of the US Constitution?

Anyway watch the video. If nothing else you'll enjoy the refreshing change of a watching a politician speak in the house, using arguments to support his claims and those in opposition are not screaming abuse and insults in the background or being ejected!

Top 10 NZ Christian Blogs - May 09

The Top 10 New Zealand Christian Blogs for May 09 are as follows:
  1. [1.] NZ Conservative 14.5 (7 - 22 )
  2. [3.] MacDoctor Moments 19.5 (22 - 17)
  3. [2.] MandM 20 (5 - 35)
  4. [4.] Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later (HalfDone) 25.5 (20 - 31)
  5. [5.] Keeping Stock 32.5 (29 - 36)
  6. [6.] Say Hello to my Little Friend (Beretta Blog) 37 (33 - 41)
  7. [5.] Being Frank 38 (38 - 43)
  8. [8.] The Humanitarian Chronicle 45.5 (28 - 63)
  9. [9.] The Briefing Room 46.5 (44 - 49)
  10. [N.] Sustain:If:Able Kiwi 61 (74 - 48)
Rank. [previous top 10 rank] Blog MandM (Half Done - Tumeke)

To obtain our stats we run searches on Half Done's May 09 NZ stats and Tumeke's May 09 NZ stats for openly Christian blogs then we average those blogs scores to obtain their overall scores. If you think your blog should make our rankings make sure you are listed on both Tumeke and HalfDone's rankings as an identifiably Christian blog.

Friday, 17 July 2009

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Morality and Arbitrariness

Is morality independent of religion? One common argument for this position is that denying it makes God’s commands arbitrary.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues,

Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this? If not, his command was arbitrary, and then it can’t make anything morally wrong. On the other hand, if God did have a reason to command us not to rape, then that reason is what makes rape morally wrong. The command itself is superfluous. Either way, morality cannot depend on God’s commands.[1]

The conclusion of this argument is that morality cannot “depend” upon God, and that, God’s commands cannot “make” anything morally wrong. It is clear from what Armstrong says earlier in the same paper that he has in mind a relationship of constitution,[2] his target is the claim that moral obligations depend on divine commands in a manner analogous to the way the property of being water depends upon the property of being H20. His conclusion is that morality, which in this context refers to deontic properties such as being prohibited, being permitted or being required, is not constituted by divine commands.[3]

The premises of the argument can be summarised as follows,

[1] Either, (i) there is a reason, r, why God prohibits rape; or, (ii) there is no reason, r, why God prohibits rape.

[2] If there is no reason, r, why God prohibits rape then Gods commands are arbitrary.

[3] If there is a reason, r, why God prohibits rape then, r, is what constitutes the wrongness of rape.

The point is that either a person must admit that God’s commands are arbitrary or deny that his commands constitute moral obligation.

I think this argument is problematic; the problem is that the word “reason” is ambiguous. William Wrainwright notes that the word reason can be used in two different senses. The first is a constitutive sense; one affirms that the reason water has certain phenomenological properties is because it is H20. In this sense, the use of the word “reason” denotes a special kind of ontological relationship. The second sense is a motivational reason; as in, when I state that the reason I feed my daughter is because I love her. This sense is more psychological or epistemological.[4]

It is important to note that these two senses are not the same as the following illustration demonstrates. Noah fills a glass with water. If we ask what the constitutive reason was for his action, the answer would be that he filled the glass with water because he filled the glass with H20. If we ask what the motivational reason was for his action, the answer would be that he wanted a drink. Yet, his wanting a drink does not constitute water, likewise water being H20 is not the motivational reason he wants the drink.

When Armstrong states, “Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this?” he could be asking if there is a motivating reason as to why God prohibits rape or he could be asking if there is a constitutive reason as to why God prohibits rape. Either way, however, his argument fails.

Turning to the first option, if Armstrong means to ask, did God have a motivating reason for prohibiting rape? then r refers to a motivating reason and premise [2] is correct. If God has no motivational reasons for prohibiting rape then God's commands are arbitrary. To avoid the conclusion that God’s commands are arbitrary one would have to concede that God has motivating reasons for issuing them.

The problem is that on this sense of “reason,” premise [3] is false. If r refers to a motivating reason then it does not follow that because r exists, r constitutes the wrongness of rape. I noted this in the example I gave above; the fact that Noah has a motivating reason to pour water into a glass does not mean that these motivations constitute him pouring water into the glass. What constitutes water are H20 molecules, not his motivations.

Armstrong could avoid this by denying that he means r to refer to a motivating reason, that he meant r to refer to some kind of constitutive reason. This might enable him to affirm that [3] is true. The problem is that if this is what is meant by r then [2] is false. Even if God does not have constitutive reasons for prohibiting rape, he could still have motivating reasons and if he does then [2] is false. If God has motivational reasons, such as concern for the welfare of others for issuing the commands he does, then God's commands are not arbitrary.

Armstrong’s argument therefore commits the fallacy of equivocation.

[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) 108.
[2] Ibid 106.
[3] Ibid 105; where he turns to the question of whether Theism is an adequate foundation for objective moral duties.
[4] William Wrainwright Religion and Morality (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2005) 91.

Thursday, 16 July 2009

Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II

In Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I, I noted that a defender of the permissibility of feticide, who does not also want to endorse infanticide and who defends the sentience criterion, must “identify a reason for holding that the potential of a human brain is morally relevant after” the fetus acquires sentience “but is not morally relevant before that point.” I also noted that this reason must be “not itself merely an ad hoc device for reaching the conclusion the defender of [sentience criterion] wishes to reach.” I sketched David Boonin's position; Boonin has offered an justification of the sentience criterion which he claims achieves this. Boonin claims that he can account for the wrongness of killing in various cases in a manner that is (a) more parsimonious than Marquis’s account; and, (b) more salient. In addition to explaining why it is wrong to kill in these cases in a superior manner, he argues, (c) Marquis account is subject to counter examples that his account is not subject to. I will now address these arguments.

Parsimonious
Boonin argues that his account can explain the wrongness of killing in various cases in a manner that is more parsimonious than that suggested by Marquis. He argues as follows,

[i] His own account appeals to only to one property of an individual to explain the wrongness of killing;
[ii] Marquis account however appeals to two properties; and,
[iii] Appealing to one property is more parsimonious than appealing to two.

Premises [i] and [iii] are correct, Boonin appeals to only one property—that of having an ideal desire to live. Moreover, it is correct that appealing to one property to explain something is more parsimonious than appealing to two. The crucial premise here is [ii], Boonin states that Marquis’s account appeals to two properties to explain the wrongness of killing. Boonin characterises Marquis as holding to the following proposition.

If an individual P has a future-like-ours F and if either (a) P now desires that F be preserved, or (b) P will later desire to continue having the experiences contained in F (if P is not killed), then P is an individual with the same right to life as you or I.23

Unfortunately, Boonin provides little justification for this interpretation of Marquis. His claim relies on two citations from Marquis’s work. The first comes from Marquis’s paper, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” where Marquis states,

When I am killed, I am deprived both of what I now value which would have been part of my personal future, but also of what I would have come to value, Therefore when I die I am deprived of all the value of my future.24

On the face of it, this citation suggests Marquis does understand a future of value in the way Boonin suggests. He understands a future of value to consist of both what one presently values and what one will come to value. The problem with this interpretation is that, as Boonin himself notes, later in the same essay Marquis explicitly repudiates this understanding. He states, “we desire life because we value the goods of this life, The goodness of life is not secondary to our desire for it.”25 Marquis concludes, “It is strictly speaking, the value of a human’s future [rather than the human’s future valuing of it] which makes killing wrong on this theory.”26 At best then, the evidence from Marquis is ambiguous, and at worst, he explicitly rejects the position Boonin attributes to him.

Boonin’s second citation of Marquis is from a more recent paper, “Reply to Shirley.”27 In this paper Marquis had previously been challenged to “produce an account of what it would mean to say that an individual’s future is of value to him.”28 Here Marquis’s answer is:

Consider some class of individuals at t1. Consider the hypotheses that those human individuals have a future of value of them at t2. Verify this by asking those individuals at t2 whether they believe their lives are worth living at t2 . Those who answer in the affirmative have a future of value at t1.29

Boonin takes this citation as offering support for his interpretation of Marquis. He seems to think that Marquis suggests here that what constitutes a future of value is either that one now desires it or will come to desire it. This is dubious. Nowhere in this quote does Marquis say anything about a present desire and a future desire; it states merely that a person has a valuable future if they would at a future time consider their life worth living. Moreover, it is unclear whether Marquis considers this to constitute what a future of value is or whether it confirms that someone has one. In a later article, Marquis suggests that the former is correct as follows,

How does killing victimize them? It harms them. Killing harms its victims by depriving them of all of the goods of life that they otherwise would have experienced. In other words, killing them deprives them of their futures of value. Their futures of value consist of whatever they will or would regard as making their lives worth living.30

Here Marquis construes a future of value in terms of what a person will, in the future, regard as worth living. Boonin then rests [i] on insufficient evidence.

Interestingly in his most recent article, Marquis makes it clear that he does not hold to the conjunctive account Boonin attributes to him. He states that his account,

[M]akes reference only to the value of one’s future, not to the value of one’s present or past. Accordingly, the lack of parsimony that Boonin find in the future of value account is really a function only of Boonin’s statement of that account of the wrongness of killing, not the account itself. Because there is no good reason to include present desires in the statement of the future of value account, other than for the purpose of rejecting the account on grounds of parsimony, I shall discard the unwieldy locution of present or future desires and refer the to the account Boonin rejects as a future of value account.31

Boonin’s argument here appears to attack a straw man. Premise [ii] is false and without [ii] Boonin’s parsimonious argument is unsound. Both Boonin and Marquis appeal to a single property.

Salience
Boonin’s second argument is that his account is more “salient.”32 By this he means that “it enables us to account for the prima facie wrongness of killing by understanding killing as one instance of a more general category of acts that are prima facie wrong: acts that frustrate the desires of others.”33 In support of this, Boonin cites a case of Hans who “has been dumped by his girlfriend and has plunged into a deep depression. He can think about nothing else and has no desire to go on living.”34 Boonin suggests that his account makes sense of this case in a straightforward manner. Hans would desire to live if he thought about his future rationally with full information in the absence of distorting influences like depression. On the other hand, he suggests that Marquis’s future of value account does not account for the case of Hans in a straightforward manner: “on [Marquis’s] account, the wrongness of killing is not explained by appealing to a feature that accounts for the wrongness of a more general class of wrongful actions. The wrongness of killing however becomes an anomaly.”35

This objection, like the previous one, appears to be based on a misinterpretation of Marquis’s position, as Marquis points out:

The future of value account makes killing Hans wrong for the same reason it is wrong to kill almost all other human beings. To kill Hans is to make him worse off than he otherwise would have been. To make him worse off than he otherwise would have been is to harm him.

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.36

Marquis’s account, then, “enables us to account for the prima facie wrongness of killing by understanding killing as one instance of a more general category of acts that are prima facie wrong,”37 that is, the category of acts that harm others. Moreover, I am inclined to think Marquis’s account provides a more plausible category of acts than that of Boonin’s. It seems to me far more obvious that killing is wrong because it harms another than that it is wrong because it prevents someone from doing something in the future that they presently desire to do.

However, there is a way of reading Boonin that leads to the conclusion that both he and Marquis understand killing as a subclass of the duty not to harm others. It is common in the literature to define an individual’s welfare in terms of what they would ‘ideally desire’. Philosophers such as Richard M. Hare and Richard Brandt for example have defined welfare in this way. Consider Marquis’s claim, “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.” If Boonin is understood as adopting an ideal account of welfare, then to reduce a person’s desires is to frustrate their ideal desires. On this reading, both accounts are equally salient. Both understand killing as harming a person and reducing his or her welfare, they simply disagree as to how welfare is defined.

Counter-examples
Boonin’s third argument is that his account “is able to account for a counter example that Marquis’s version is unable to account for.”38

[C]onsider, the case of Hans’ even more depressed brother, Franz. Like Hans, Franz does not currently value his personal future even though, as also in the case of Hans, his personal future contains many of the sorts of experiences that we take to be distinctively valuable. Due to a permanent and irreversible chemical imbalance in his brain, however, Franz is, and will always remain, completely unable to value the experiences that he has. Although he has a future-like-ours, he has no actual occurent desire to preserve it and he never will have such a desire.39

Regarding this case Boonin suggests three things:

[i] That it would be wrong to kill such an individual;
[ii] That Marquis’s account entails that it is not wrong to kill such a person; and,
[iii] That his own account, the ideal desire account, entails it is wrong to kill such a person.

Curiously, in his most recent article Marquis concedes [ii]; he grants that his account does have this implication but he suggests that [i] is false.40 I think this move is unnecessary on Marquis’s part. By citing this as a counter example, Boonin assumes that Marquis holds that possession of a future of value is a necessary condition for possessing a right to life. This assumption is false. In Why Abortion is Immoral, Marquis made it clear that he was contending that a possession of a future of value was only a sufficient condition for possessing a right to life. Given this, it is simply false to claim that it is permissible to kill a person who lacks a future of value. All it affirms is that it is wrong to kill those who have such a future.

Elsewhere, Marquis has argued there can be good reasons for extending the rule against homicide to cover those who do not have futures of value.41 While it may be true that an individual act of killing a person does not harm them, deprive them of a future of value, social endorsement and acceptance of a rule allowing such killing will harm people and, hence, for this reason, a rule against killing in situations like this is justified.

Boonin does have a possible reply to this response, while Marquis’s account does not entail it is permissible to kill Franz, it fails to account for the wrongness of killing Franz and needs to be supplemented in order to succeed. Hence, if Boonin’s account can explain killing in this context, his account is better. The crucial question then is whether [iii] is correct. Is it the case that Boonin’s account does entail that it is wrong to kill Franz? Boonin argues that it does.

[O]n the “present ideal dispositional desire” version of the future like ours principle, things look very different. For surely Franz’s desires about his personal future would include the desire that it be preserved if his desires were formed in the absence of the chemical imbalance that prevents him from having this desire. Although he has no actual desire to go on living, that is, it does make sense to attribute this desire to him as an ideal desire. And given this, my version of the principle implies that Franz does have the same right to life as you or I. . . . [M]y version of the future-like-ours principle is superior to Marquis’s.42

Here I think Boonin conflates two separate questions. The first is the question of what Franz’s ideally rational self would choose for itself (i.e., the ideally rational Franz), and what Franz’s ideally rational self would choose for Franz’s actual self (i.e., his non-ideally rational self).43 If one asks the former question, then Boonin is correct; Franz would not choose to die. Franz’s ideally rational self would not suffer from depression and so would not desire to die.

The answer to the second question is not so clear. Here we ask what an ideally rational self would choose if it knew that it would in fact have a future filled with miserable suffering and depression and be unable to enjoy any of the experiences that lie ahead. It is certainly not obvious that an ideally rational person would value a future made up of such circumstances.44

The question then arises as to which of these two questions is the appropriate one to ask. Carson argues that is the latter and not the former that is pertinent.

Suppose I have an irrational fear of dogs. A friend asks me to take care of his dogs while he is away on vacation. My ideally rational self would not fear the dogs and would not hesitate to look after them. Given my intense fear of dogs, however, things are likely to turn out badly if I look after the dogs. Why should I care that my ideal self wouldn’t be afraid of dogs? Wouldn’t it still be foolish for my actual self (with all of its phobias) to take care of the dogs? I might be incapable of adequately caring for them.45

Carson’s point is that something in a person’s future is not valuable to them if it is something their ideal self would choose for their ideal self; many such choices would be harmful to them. Only if ideal desires are understood in the latter sense can it be plausibly maintained that what a person ideally desires is valuable to them. On the face of it, then, it appears that Marquis’s account does not entail this counter example whereas Boonin’s account does, that is, at least if he intends his account to lay down both necessary and sufficient conditions needed for a right to life.46

At this point the defender of Boonin could make the following reply. Suppose one grants Marquis’s claim that there are good reasons for extending the rule against homicide to cover those who do not have futures of value. Presumably, a fully informed person would be aware of these reasons and, hence, Franz would, if fully informed, refuse to endorse a rule that allowed him to be killed. Franz would accept that his own future lacked value and was going to be miserable but he would also note that other people would be harmed if a rule allowing him to be killed were accepted and, hence, Franz would have an ideal desire not to be killed. If this response is cogent, then, one again, Boonin and Marquis’s accounts appear to be on par. Neither by themselves provide a reason for why it would be wrong to kill Franz and both can account for the wrongness of killing Franz when supplemented with Marquis’s other arguments on the topic.
Boonin’s contention that his account provides a better explanation of the wrongness of killing appears mistaken. Both Boonin and Marquis’s accounts explain various paradigms of unlawful killing. Both appeal to a single property in doing so, “possession of a future of value.” Both explain killing in terms of reducing a person’s welfare and hence harming them. Both, by themselves, do not provide an explanation of why it is wrong to kill Franz and both can explain this when supplemented with the same further argument. The main difference between Boonin and Marquis is how they construe a ‘future of value’. Boonin understands this in terms of a future one has, a present ideal desire to preserve one’s future. Marquis understands this in terms of a future one will come to actually value in the future. The only other differences between them, at least on the factors Boonin cites, is that one entails that a fetus is human and the other does not. If one is to prefer one to another on the grounds Boonin provides, one can do so only by appealing to one’s beliefs about feticide. It seems, then, that Boonin has failed to provide a reason that is not itself “merely an ad hoc device for reaching the conclusion the defender of [sentience criterion] wishes to reach.”

Boonin’s Conclusion
A precisely analogous problem occurs when Boonin applies the modified FLO to the issue of feticide. Suppose, for the sake of argument, I grant that the modified FLO account provides necessary and sufficient conditions an organism must meet to posses a right to life. Why does it follow that a fetus does not posses a right to life? While it is true that fetuses lack actual desires to preserve their FLO’s, it is not at all clear that fetuses lack an ideal desire to do so. Marquis plausibly suggests that “If a fetus were rational and fully informed, it would desire to live” and concludes, “It follows that fetuses have an ideal desire to live.”47 Boonin takes exactly this line with infants. While infants lack the cognitive capacity to have any actual desire to exist, they have a right to life because they would have such desires if they were fully rational and able to engage in higher cognitive activities. Why can the same not be said of pre-sentient fetuses?

Boonin’s response is to define ideal desires a particular way. He states that “ideal desires . . . are simply the content of actual desires corrected to account for the distorting influences of imperfect circumstances.” 48 Once this definition is granted, it follows that only beings with actual desires can have ideal desires. And hence only a sentient fetus can have a right to life. This is however precisely where the problem arises. There are rival definitions of ideal desires proposed in the literature and, as Marquis points out,49 Boonin gives little or no argument for adopting this particular definition. Moreover, nothing in his arguments for the modified FLO account requires this particular definition of ideal desires to be adopted. This last point is important. Boonin makes use of ‘ideal desires’ to avoid various counter-examples to the desire account of the wrongness of killing, and he argues for the modified FLO account on the basis of its ability to plausibly explain certain paradigms of wrongful killing. However, nothing in this line of argument requires Boonin to adopt one definition of ideal desire over another. Almost any definition of ideal desires on offer will get around the counter examples aforementioned and most such accounts will explain the paradigms Boonin appeals to. Consequently, Boonin’s argument appears arbitrary. He recommends his account on the grounds that it explains various cases better than a rival account which he assumes is the best available.

However, there are other versions of the modified FLO account available which utilize other definitions of ideal desires, these accounts explain the cases equally as well as Boonin’s does. Some of these other versions entail that a fetus does have ideal desires. In the absence of some reason for preferring Boonin’s account over the others, the only factor that seems pertinent in deciding which version is correct is the accounts’ implications for feticide. It seems then that person’s beliefs about feticide will do most if not all the work in deciding which version to adopt. Once again, it appears that Boonin has failed to provide a reason that is not itself “merely an ad hoc device for reaching the conclusion the defender of [sentience criterion] wishes to reach.”

Conclusion
In my first section, I noted that a defender of the permissibility of feticide who does not also want to endorse infanticide and who defends the sentience criterion must “identify a reason for holding that the potential of a human brain is morally relevant after” the fetus acquires sentience “but is not morally relevant before that point.” I also noted that this reason must be “not itself merely an ad hoc device for reaching the conclusion the defender of [sentience criterion] wishes to reach.”50 It appears this challenge has not been met. Boonin’s argument for the modified FLO and his application of it to the issue of feticide appears arbitrary. His account is plausible only if one grants that feticide is not homicide from the outset.51

24 Marquis, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” 345.
25 Ibid., 350.
26 Ibid.
27 Don Marquis, “Fetuses, Futures, and Values: A Reply to Shirley,” in Southwest Philosophy Review 6.2 (1995): 263-265.
28 Boonin, Defense of Abortion, 60.
29 Marquis, “Fetuses, Futures, and Values,” 263-265.
30 Don Marquis, “Abortion and the Beginning and End of Human Life,” The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 34.1 (2006): 23.
31 Don Marquis, “Abortion Revisited,” 410
32 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 67.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., 70.
35 Ibid., 76.
36 Marquis, “Abortion Revisited,” 411
37 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 74.
38 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 76.
39 Ibid., 76.
40 Marquis, “Abortion Revisited,” 413.
41 Don Marquis, “The Weakness of the Case for Legalizing Physician Assisted Suicide,” in Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate, ed. Margaret P. Battin, Rosamond Rhodes and Anita Silvers (New York: Routledge, 1998), 267-278.
42 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 76-77.
43 This distinction comes from Carson, Value and the Good Life, 226.
44 This is particularly the case when one considers that as Boonin defines ideal desires they are “simply the content of actual desires corrected to account for the distorting influences of imperfect circumstances.” It seems that there are plenty of actual people who when informed they will live for the rest of their lives in misery decide they do not want to continue living. Note the question here is not whether it is morally right to kill people with such desires, it is whether people with such desires exist.
45 Carson, Value and the Good Life, 226.
46 There is some ambiguity as to whether Boonin is proposing the modified future of value account as a sufficient or a necessary condition for possession of a right to life. In the earlier sections of A Defense of Abortion, Boonin appears to be proposing only the former. Boonin introduces his account on p. 64 where he states, “If an individual P has a future-like-ours and if P now desires that F be preserved, then P is an individual with the same right to life as you or I.” However, this states that the present possession of ideal dispositional desires is a sufficient condition of a right to life, not that they are a necessary condition.
Moreover, Boonin appears to confirm this interpretation later on p. 84 where he states, “On the account I have been defending, then, all that is required for the newborn infant to satisfy the conditions sufficient for having the same right to life as you or I is that he has a future like ours and that he have actual conscious desires”. This only states that the account is intended to lay down a sufficient and not a necessary condition.
Similarly, the argument Boonin provides for his account supports only a sufficient and necessary condition. His argument consists of providing an explanation of why it is wrong to kill in certain paradigm cases. He does not attempt to show that it explains why it is permissible to kill in paradigmatic cases of licit killing. No such cases are even mentioned.
He spells his method out on p. 57: “Identify the property that most plausibly accounts for the wrongness of killing in cases B-E, and then determine whether that property is possessed by the individual in case A. If it is, then the best account of the wrongness of killing in general provides a sufficient reason to conclude that the fetus has the same right to life as you or I. If it is not, then the best account of the wrongness of killing provides no such reason (though this will still leave open the possibility that killing the fetus is wrong for reasons other than the reasons that best explain why killing you or me is wrong).”
Boonin accepts if the “property” that “most plausibly accounts for the wrongness of killing” is not possessed by a fetus this “will still leave open the possibility that killing the fetus is wrong” for other reasons. However, when Boonin returns to this account 37 pages later he states that a fetus does not have a right to life because it lacks such desires. This is a fallacious inference. Such a conclusion follows only if Boonin is offering a necessary condition. Boonin has, it appears, committed the fallacy of denying the antecedent. The only charitable way to escape this conclusion is to understand Boonin as offering both a necessary and sufficient condition.
47 Marquis “Singer on Abortion and Infanticide,” Singer under Fire, ed., Jeffrey A. Schaler (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, forthcoming 2009).
48 Boonin, “A Defense of Abortion.”
49 In “Abortion Revisited,” 413-414
50 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 122.
51 I thank Don Marquis for his assistance in writing this paper.

This two-part series was originally published as: Matthew Flannagan “Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique” Ethics and Medicine - An International Journal of Bioethics Vol 25:2 (Summer 2009) 95-106. It is reproduced on this blog with permission.

RELATED POSTS:
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I
Some Thoughts on Human Embryonic Stem-cell Research
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 1
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 2
Sentience Part 1
Sentience Part 2
Viability
Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar
Abortion and Capital Punishment: No Contradiction
Imposing Your Beliefs Onto Others: A Defence

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

Back to TOP