Month: October 2007

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with one more response to the first round of reader comments on the materialism posts.

[Reader 1] This is well presented so far, SDG. In my experience, the ultimate move tht materialists will make in the face of the sort of argument you’re developing is to bite the bullet and say, in essence, "Fine. If it turns out that the basic moral intuitions we start with turn out to be illusions and all we’re ultimately left with is subjective preference, then we’ll just have to accept that. What you can’t do is use this sort of argument to prove the existence of a God, because the structure of such an argument would be that if God does not exist then the moral situation would be intolerably bad. But that’s a fallacious structure. We have to follow the evidence, and if it turns out that there is no God, and if it turns out that in the absence of a God we have no objective ground for our moral notions, then I guess we have no objective ground for our moral notions." I actually think this is a fair response by the materialist. I believe there are, in fact, good reasons for theism (and Christian theism, in particular), but I’m not sure it’s fair to argue for theism based upon the need to ground morality.

[Reader 2] My point is – suppose that you are right about the consequences of naturalism. Suppose that our moral judgments have a naturalistic origin, this would render them meaningless. All we know about the real world is that we *think* our judgments are meaningful. So this argument that naturalism ultimately undermines these judgments is not really an argument for God’s existence because under both theories – the theory that God gave us morality and the theory that morality evolved naturally we might *think* our judgments were meaningful. It just turns out that if you’re correct about the consequences of naturalism, we would be mistaken in some deep sense in thinking that our lives have meaning (let me again point out that I don’t think this is the case!).

I think we can say something stronger than "we *think* our judgments are meaningful." I think that our apprehension of morality is itself a kind of evidence — not evidence that can be empirically tested or proved, but still evidence of a real sort.

I do think it’s important to accept the limitations of human knowledge — of all kinds. We are finite beings; with the arguable exception of Cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am,") there are very few things we know so immediately that our knowledge excludes all logical possibility of doubt. To that we might also add apprehension of self-evident truths or logical axioms, such as "X = X" and "If A = B and B = C, then A = C.".

Even in those cases, though, there are schools of, um, thought, that essentially deny that consciousness itself has any real existence, that behavior alone is real, and that even the most universal of axioms are really only expressions of how our brains happen to work rather than any sort of meaningful insight.

I — I, I say — I have no use for such lines of thought. I can’t prove empirically that I exist, since anything empirical is merely a form of behavior. And the unprovability of axioms is itself, if not axiomatic, at least proverbial.

Yet this is not because the self or self-evident truths are too dubious for proof, but because "proof" and "evidence" are remote and clumsy ways of approaching knowledge less immediately accessible to us than knowledge of self or of self-evident truths. Empirical evidence is a secondary form of knowledge compared to self-awareness. I am more directly aware of my own self than I am of anything my senses apprehend. The phenomenon of consciousness is the one phenomenon I experience most directly and immediately.

I can’t prove, over against the skeptical epistomologist or even over against the wiseacre who says "I don’t get it," that "If A = B and B = C, then A = C" represents a meaningful insight rather than an arbitrary convention. I can’t prove that the words being formed as I type represent thoughts (true or false is another question entirely), that there is anything going on here other than twitching fingers on a keyboard and patterns of digital information of a certain complexity level being organized, stored and transmitted electronically.

Even to talk about "proving" such things is meaningless, if there is any sense in which any speech is more or less meaningless than any other. Any discussion of "proof" or "proving," even (I think) in the most abstract mathematical sense, by definition at least presupposes the reality of mind and thought and the validity of reasoning, if not the possibility of meaningful knowledge of reality through sense experience and inference and insight. These principles are antecedent to all possible proofs.

I suppose someone might say that mind, thought and reason are postulates that lead to useful conclusions, but I’m not sure that’s the most helpful way of putting it. It seems to me more meaningful to say that we are finite beings whose apprehension of reality is finite and imperfect, but real. Self-awareness, sensory perception, and logical insights are all finite and imperfect but real ways of knowing and exploring reality.

Then there’s the problem of other minds. As a self-aware being, I (substitute yourself here, if you are a self-aware being) am directly aware of myself; I am not directly aware of other selves, nor can I empirically prove their existence. It is possible to build a solipsistic philosophy that explains the whole world in relation to oneself, and this cannot be empirically disproved, for the same reason that I can’t produce an empirical proof that I myself exist.

This, in my view, is not reason to doubt that other selves exist; it is reason to regard empiricism as a limited and imperfect tool for understanding the world. To know other selves, to have relationships with other persons, does involve what could be called a leap of faith, but it’s a warranted leap, as nearly everyone recognizes.

It’s worth noting that solipsism, i.e., skepticism in regard to the existence of other selves, is not the default from which we escape into community only if we can satisfy ourselves by proof or argument that the leap is justified. Proof and argument mean nothing to a two-year-old, but if his mother loves him, the two-year-old implicitly knows it, and her. He has a knowledge of her reality that escapes the empiricist and solipsist who look only at behavior.

In regard to the knowledge of other selves, the leap of faith by which enter into relationships with one other, by which we love and are loved, is a more valid means of knowing the truth of one another than empirical squinting and tally sheets of what we can and can’t prove. No, I can’t prove it. I don’t think "proof" is the right measure here.

In my last post I quoted Lewis on the incompatibility of loving a girl and believing the totality of her being to be reducible to the movement of atoms. To know another person is a form of knowledge that exceeds the scientific method — either that, or else as Lewis says it is merely "a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behaviour of your genes."

I can’t prove scientifically that Suzanne loves me — or, for that matter, that I love her. I can’t prove scientifically that "I love you" is a meaningful statement, apart from a very imprecise adducement of certain behavioral characteristics and physiological events that tend to correlate with accepted declarations of love.

Even if we reduce love to physiology and make it subject to rigorously scientific examination, no one in fact has that kind of scientific evidence regarding even the behavior of his or her beloved. We take love on trust; we go above and beyond the available evidence, rather than, say, hiring a private investigator to tail our beloved 24/7 (to say nothing of lab tests to check our beloved’s physiological responses). Hiring a P.I. or getting a lab test might provide us with more data; it could not increase the knowledge of the beloved that we have on faith and love.

Having said that, it must be acknowledged that the knowledge of others that we come to by making this leap of faith can be in error in particular cases. The beloved we believed loved us in return did not; the one we thought faithful was not. In the Internet age, we may be deluded as to the sex, age, race and other characteristics of the persons we think we know. Someday I expect they may succeed in inventing computer programs capable of passing the Turing test, programs that can "pass" for sentient beings in conversation. (So far that hasn’t happened.)

Yes. We may be mistaken in what we think we know. Welcome to being a finite creature with imperfect apprehension of reality. On the other hand, the impossibility of logically excluding error doesn’t warrant refusing to make any leap. There are worse things than risking the possibility of error. A passenger on a sinking ship cannot then and there establish beyond doubt that the lifeboat will or even can successfully bear him to safety. A castaway on a desert island cannot do lab tests on the stream he finds to establish beyond doubt that the water is safe. That’s life. Do the best you can, pay your money and take your chances.

We apprehend logical axioms, such as "X = X"  and "If A = B and B = C, then A = C," by a faculty we call reason, and we take these apprehensions for meaningful insights rather than just how our brains happen to work. We also have the experience of apprehending fundamental moral precepts such as "Do good and avoid evil" and "Be fair to others" by a faculty we call conscience, and take these also for meaningful insights rather than how our brains happen to work.

We don’t experience awareness of good and evil as emotive impulses like any other that may be indulged or ignored as we see fit. Nor do we experience conscience as something we accept purely on the authority of those who taught us. We experience it as binding, as obligatory, as authoritative. We are free to decide to ignore other impulses without regret; when we go against conscience, or even when we find that we have gone against what our conscience now tells us we should have done, we experience various forms of inner conflict such as guilt or regret.

I am convinced, and in the preceding posts I have argued, that if materialism is true, these seeming insights are fundamentally illusory; just as if solipsism is true, then knowledge of other selves is an illusion. If materialism is true, there is self-interest, there is instinct, there are irrationally conditioned feelings, and that’s all. None of these gets us to a moral worldview properly so called. Sometimes it will make sense to follow one or another of them, but none of them is finally binding.

To affirm materialism seems to me akin to proposing in effect that the human race lives in a black-and-white world, yet we all dream in color; we have a shared sense of a dimension of reality that corresponds to nothing real. As another reader put it, "If the universe really is meaningless, how is that we crave meaning? It’s as extraordinary as expecting sight in a universe without light."

In another forum, "Archie the bright," responding to Lewis’s comments about the impossibility of what we call love in a materialist universe, wrote:

Does a flower look any less pretty if you understand the chemistry of anthocyanins? Does a biochemist dislike the taste of filet mignon? And when I am near an attractive girl, I know that my olfactory centres are responding to her perfume and pheromones, but that doesn’t stop my heart beating faster just the same! Sure, that too is perfectly explicable, but explanation does not diminish the pleasure in the slightest!

Leave aside the fact that "Archie" seems to be describing precisely what Lewis meant by the "lowest animal sense" of love. The fact that a man’s hear beats faster in the presence of a pretty girl, while it is not the same as what Lewis meant by love, is still a notable fact in itself. It is evidence about what sort of species we are. As Lewis himself elsewhere wrote, it would be an odd thing if the phenemonon of "falling in love" (or even ordinary animal arousal) happened in a sexless world.

Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search For Meaning went so far as to argue, against Freud, that meaning, not the pleasure principle, represents man’s most fundamental need and desire. Frankl was in Auschwitz, and he has described his time in Auschwitz as an experience of the most ignoble and noble of humanity. On the ignoble side, the camp guards hustling prisoners into the gas chambers; on the noble side, prisoners going to their deaths with their heads held high, the words of the Paternoster or Shema on their lips.

I’ve indicated in previous discussion that belief in life after death is no sine quo non of my outlook on morality and meaning. But when I read Frankl’s description of the prisoners going to their deaths, something in me responds to that — something that I believe, I cannot prove, exceeds Darwinian calculations. My heart says: Yes. A philosophy that does not give one the wherewithal to die like that, if it comes to the point, is unworthy of the human heart.

It seems to me that the leap of my heart at Frankl’s anecdote is also evidence about what sort of species we are. The first movement of the heart is sexual; the second is spiritual. 

Like falling in love with a girl, it is not a thing that can be reductionistically explained away to those who have experienced it. If the thing is real at all, it is real about something more than bio-electrical-chemical flutters in our brains.

I respect the consistency of a materialist who says that it is all an illusion, that morality, dignity and meaning are really only emotive reactions of aversion or attraction mistaken for truth-claims about reality. I respect the humanism of a materialist who says that morality, dignity and meaning really mean something. I cannot see that it is possible for a materialist to have both consistency and humanism.

Our apprehension of morality and meaning is immediate enough that even if we hold a philosophy that logically excludes objective morality, willy-nilly we find ourselves talking and behaving as if morality were real anyway (cf. Dawkins’ outrage and Hitchens’ frequent moralizing).

I can’t empirically disprove emotivism, any more than I can disprove solipsism, or any more than I can disprove the views of those who deny the existence of the self and the truth of logical axioms. That doesn’t make me distrust my apprehensions on any of these points. The apprehension itself seems to me a more persuasive indication of reality than the arguments or explanations of its illusory nature.

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with a roundup of some responses to reader comments from the four preceding posts (one two three four).

I found this post quite interesting. … I tend to wince a little bit every time a paragraph begins "From the materialist perspective" and then goes on to assert something as if it is obvious that every materialist must believe it ("From the Christian perspective, the only important thing in life is to treat others well so you can go to heaven" – your reaction to this probably parallels my reaction to the "From the materialist perspective" paragraphs).

Fair enough. I am doing my best to describe how materialism looks to me, and how I think I would necessarily look at the world if I were a materialist. At least some of my observations are meant to describe conclusions that I do think logically follow from materialism itself and would logically be acknowledged by all consistent materialists, which, if I am right, would mean that materialists who don’t accept the conclusions must be missing a logical step somewhere. Of course I cheerfully admit that I can make mistakes too.

I don’t think it’s really coherent to talk about a meaningless universe since meaning seems to be a property we attribute to certain inclinations we have. On the other hand, it’s perfectly coherent to talk about a universe without God which I think is telling for the argument that Godlessness implies meaninglessness…

I think you’re confusing coherence with plausibility. A meaningless universe is at least as coherent a concept as a universe without God, just not one that most of us find plausible. Alternatively, it may be that if we ever hash out the metaphysics to a sufficient degree, the concept of a universe without God might turn out to be truly incoherent, but that’s an argument even I don’t have the wind to make.

I think it’s important to distinguish between two issues: 1) Is there a naturalistic explanation for our moral intuitions? and 2) As reflective beings who must decide how to live, are we being arbitrary if we insist on privileging our moral judgments over our other inclinations? (like our sex drive or our desire for self-advancement).

I would answer "yes" and "no" respectively – that is, there is a naturalistic explanation for our moral intuitions and we are not being arbitrary in assigning them the priority and importance that we do – but I think the distinction between 1) and 2) is critical in discussing the moral argument for the existence of God.

The burden of my series has been that "Yes" is not an entirely satisfactory answer to 1), and "No" is a far from satisfactory answer to 2).

Moral intuitions are partly related to naturalistic factors; but some moral intuitions, particularly the intuition that we are always morally bound to do the right thing, cannot reasonably be explained naturalistically, certainly not in a way that suggests that this intuition itself ought to be followed.

It seems to me, and I’ve argued, that on a naturalistic worldview, it just makes sense sometimes to ignore one’s conscience given sufficient justification in the other direction, just as we sometimes ignore every other affective response, whether aversive or attractive, given sufficient justification.

And yet those who clearly hear their own conscience know this is not true. We are always morally bound to do the right thing (and avoid the wrong thing); we cannot consider "right" and "wrong to be relative incentivizing factors among many others which many or many not tip the balance as to what we will eventually choose. And this is something that just does not make sense in a materialistic worldview.

This is because only point 1) actually relates to God’s existence. If there were reason to think that a naturalistic explanation of our moral intuitions was impossible, this would suggest that a supernatural explanation was necessary. However, if there were a naturalistic explanation for our moral intuitions but it was one that made them seem unjustified or on a par with our other emotions and inclinations, then there would be no basis for the inference that a supernatural explanation is necessary.

I disagree. I think the absolutist claim of conscience is itself an indication that our moral affections are not rooted in instinctive or affective responses. Instinctive and affective responses do not demand always to be obeyed.

Even the instinct for self-preservation is not absolute. The voice of conscience is. No materialist ethic I have ever encountered can account for this.

Now, you might reply – OK – but why do we then say, "I *should* help that drowning child rather than continue on my way to work"? I think a satisfactory response is simply, creating brains with this kind of feeling was the best way for evolution to actually get us to behave in this way.

Maybe. But once we realize that rationally the child’s death is an event of no greater cosmic significance than the drowning of a dog or a hedgehog, if we would not risk our life to save a drowning dog or hedgehog, why should we choose to listen to that feeling rather than getting on with enjoying our own lives?

Put it another way. Granted that you yourself would choose to save the child, suppose you met a man who cheerfully admitted that he allowed a child to drown rather than stepping in to rescue him because he decided to listen to his instinct for self-preservation rather than his altruism-instinct. Would you feel disgust or outrage? And if so, would this be any different from the flutter in your gorge if you saw him eating haggis (or whatever)?

As a practical matter in almost any situation imaginable in present society, the harm done by the adultery due to the violation of trust in the relationship (and the difficulty of trusting again) would exceed any benefits from improved skill as a lover.

But what is the object of "trust"? As long as the husband comes back to his family and continues responsibly addressing the practical interests of his wife and children, empirically speaking, what "trust" has been violated? Only a "trust" that is bound up in notions of fidelity and betrayal that exceed rational calculation, that go beyond empirical considerations.

My assertion so far is that "morality" results from a desire to not be ostracized from the group.

And yet one of the most celebrated heroic traits is the conviction and integrity of sticking to one’s principles even at the cost of ostracization, opposition, sanction, banishment, even execution.

Part 1 of SDG’s post, and the thread that followed, was involved with the sources of these criteria. But as far as enforcing is concerned, personal preferences follow the same rule as moral beliefs, or any other kind of belief: they are exactly as strong as the power of the people holding them.

FWIW, I wasn’t concerned with enforcement per se, only with the moral basis for enforcement. If the basis is "We’re strong and we can impose our will on you," that’s fine, but let’s not flatter ourselves that this is somehow fundamentally different from the bully’s basis for imposing his own will on the bullied.

It seems the whole series, except for a few gems (and SDG, in his brilliance, always produces at least a few), has failed in that it is the same over-simplistic argument about why materialists can’t have morals. Epicurous covered these points quite will during his life, and answered most questions quite excellently. Kant’s system, though he uses it to argue for God, would still work just as well without One, for Kant’s God is not the originator of morals. Not all materialists are utilitarians. Some are deontological, some follow a virtue ethics, some suggest an emotive ethics, and some are pragmatic.

Killing people, for the materialist, can be wrong because of social consequences (pragmatism), because it feels wrong (emotive ethics), because it corrupts the character, and so reduces happiness (virtue), because it causes pain and pain is definitively wrong (utilitarianism), or because it is wrong in the sense of being a moral imperative (deontology). All these can be justified from a materialist framework.

Ethics doesn’t lead to God, and definitely not the the Christian God.

I wasn’t trying to argue for God, much less the Christian God. I’m only trying to refute materialism, or rather to outline the consequences I believe necessarily follow on a materialist outlook.

I never said, and indeed explicitly denied saying, that materialists cannot have morals. They can. Materialists have consciences just like everyone else, and they can and do listen to them. They may even think that they have reasons why why they must listen to their consciences even though they are materialists, and they may be satisfied with their reasons.

What I’m saying is: I’m not satisfied with their reasons. I think their reasons are full of holes. I probably agree in principle with the bulk of their moral judgments. I just don’t think they’ve thought through the metaphysical implications of their morals, or conversely the moral implications of their materialism. That’s how I see it.

Not all materialists are utilitarians. Nor are they all emotivists. Only the consistent ones.

The moral systems you refer to based on pragmatism, emotivism and utilitarianism all fail to provide an adequate basis for a truly moral system. Some of the reasons have been explored in my earlier posts. You say you find my analysis lacking, but you don’t take issue with specific arguments, so I can’t really respond further.

The "character" that is corrupted on your "virtue" theory is an abstraction of behavioral traits on a materialist system, and I think I’ve shown that morality does not always correlate with maximal "happiness" where happiness is reductionistically understood in terms of gratification of present and future desires and avoidance of pain, etc. Certainly a moral system that is based on avoidance of character corruption for the sake of avoiding unhappiness cannot give us the moral wherewithal to sacrifice our lives in a just cause. If character corruption is dangerous only insofar as it limits my prospects for future happiness, on a materialist outlook I’ll risk the character corruption and stay alive, thank you very much, just like I would rather get cancer and live than stay cancer-free and die.

Some interesting problems raised. But God doesn’t solve any of them.

Why does God’s existing make any difference? Why should I care what He says? Because he’s always good? What does good mean?

If good is simply defined as "what God is", it doesn’t justify why I should desire it.

So far I’ve been concerned with the moral implications of materialism. Grounding morals and meaning in theism is a subject for another post. I will try to get to that soon.

First, though, I have a pair of comments to respond to which call for a more in-depth response than the ones above…

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with more on materialism and the moral argument (continued from Part 3).

The ethical approach sketched in the preceding posts is neither a rhetorical conceit nor a straw man. There are ethicists and moralists who really advocate this kind of thinking, who advocate extramarital flings, for instance.

One school of moral philosophy — the only thing that makes any kind of sense to me on a materialist outlook, variously called emotivism, nihilism or "boo-hurrah" — explicitly reduces moral valuations to emotional expressions of aaversion or attraction.

I respect the consistency of materialists who grasp the nettle and agree that what we call moral valuations are merely flutters of aversion or attraction, no more (or less) important or normative than other such flutters, from our appetitive response to haggis to our favorite or least favorite colors.

I respect the humanity, or if you like the humanism, of those who, despite professing a materialist outlook, find "boo-hurrah" emotivism unconvincing and try to make a case for more rigorous or normative moral obligations. I find their efforts wholly unpersuasive.

I do not see that consistency and moral humanism can ever be successfully combined in a materialist outlook. (In other words, to borrow a well-known construction, you can be a materialist, or a moral humanist, or consistent, or any two of the three, but not all three.)

The gap between the empirical pluses and minuses of what we call moral or immoral behavior and the level of responsibility that human beings feel to keep the moral code as they understand it is simply too wide. What impels us to do good and shun evil is not simply an appetitive flutter that we are free to disregard whenever it is convenient to do so, or when the empirical pluses and minuses don’t seem to warrant it.

On one level, I can certainly understand a materialist who says something like: "Look, it’s very simple: I love my partner, and no incentive could induce me to betray her/him, or even entertain the notion. Our relationship makes me happy, and anything else would only harm my happiness, not add to it."

Humanly speaking, I well understand how he feels. Certainly it’s how I feel, blissfully married to a goddess as I am. But then my marital bliss is substantially rooted in a trans-materialistic perception of what love is, and who and what Suzanne is, in a way that I for one can’t imagine sustaining if I personally were thoroughly persuaded of materialism.

My usage of "goddess," of course, is neither literal nor cultic. Like "louse" feelings, "goddess" is here a figure of speech, a hyperbolic metaphor. In my case, though, this figure of speech is at least intended by me to express something real about her — not just something about the state of my emotions or feelings. I can hardly put it better than C. S. Lewis did:

You can’t, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own feelings are just a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behaviour of your genes. ("On Living in an Atomic Age")

Some materialists (not all) will no doubt dissent from this. I understand how they feel; I don’t understand what they are thinking.

If persons are no more than the sorts of bio-electrical-chemical processes we’ve been discussing until now, all our gas about morality, as well as human dignity, personal rights, love, respect, honor and so forth, are very much the same sorts of delusions that Dawkins says God himself is. Lewis again:

Animism, apparently, begins at home. We, who have personified all other things, turn out to be ourselves mere personifications. Man is indeed akin to the gods: that is, he is no less phantasmal than they … Almost nobody has been making linguistic mistakes about almost nothing. By and large, this is the only thing that has ever happened. ("The Empty Universe")

I won’t deny that we might try to contrive, even as materialists, to enjoy the illusions of personhood and dignity as if they were real, at least for a while. Maybe. But give it time. Odds are, eventually that ex-Fundamentalist will get over his hangup about the evils of cards and see them for what they are: little rectangular bits of heavily coated, colored paper, no more and no less.

Likewise, live long enough with the belief that other persons are merely bio-electrical-chemical processes, let it sink into the depths of what men of another age would have called your soul, and see whether in the long run you consistently treat them as if the concept of personal dignity really meant anything, or how worked up you are able to get about such bio-electrical-chemical processes as murder or rape.

For the time being, Archie, I think you’re living in the shadow of a transcendent worldview you’ve abandoned without fully walking away from it. In the end, on your accounting, "boo-hurrah" is all there is to it. If you say you see things differently, at this point I can only shrug and agree that we see things differently.

As it happens, shrugging and disagreeing may be all we can do regarding a whole host of varying perceptions, values, choices, motivations and behaviors. 

Many of us would agree that an adult whose sexual preferences include or focus on young children is a danger to the children and to society. The molester might (or might not) have a different point of view; society’s point of view is widely but not universally accepted. Kinsey argued for the normalization of adult-child sexual interactions, and others since him have followed suit. Most of society would brush this aside without a second thought; I would agree (from my supernaturalist perspective) that this is basic moral sanity, but is is at least questionable forensics.

Recently in New York hooligans set a homeless man on fire. Ten days later, he died in a hospital.

When you hear that, Archie, as a materialist, do you feel outrage? If so, which of the following do you feel is more outrageous? That

1. a lost soul (speaking of course strictly poetically) who was in all likelihood a drag on society rather than an asset was subjected to a harsh exercise in survival of the fittest? Or that

2. millions of dollars of shared social assets that could have gone to productive uses were spent in a futile effort to care for this useless man, rather than simply finishing the job and using the money in some socially beneficial fashion?

I know, caring for the man makes us all feel better about ourselves, right? But couldn’t we just as easily have gotten our warm fuzzies using the money to help other people who weren’t going to die anyway? How greatly were the herd-interests of the human race, or even of one particular borough, ever invested in this particular situation?

Christopher Hitchens, debating Doug Wilson, described sociopaths and psychopaths as "part of our haphazard evolution and our kinship with a nature that often favors the predator." Yet he also said "I find I have no alternative" to calling them "evil."

Wilson’s reply: "But you surely do have an alternative. Why not just call them ‘different’?"

To that, I would add a second question: Evil. Different. In a materialist universe, aren’t those just two different ways of saying the same thing?

Hitchens’ humanism outstrips his philosophy here. He knows deep down that right and wrong are not simply a matter of individual taste or perception, yet his philosophy will not allow him to formulate an understanding of right and wrong that is truly normative for all persons.

Here is a thought-experiment reportedly posed by Richard Dawkins to a theist:

You are on a deserted beach with a rifle, an elephant and a baby. This is the last elephant on earth and it is charging the baby. Do you shoot the elephant, knowing the species would become extinct?

Bracket the obvious difficulties inherent in the situation as posed (which for all I know might not have been reported exactly as originally framed), such as the vanishingly small chances of a species with only a single surviving specimen ever making a comeback.

Bracket, too, the case for or against the answer given by the theist, who felt that the question was "a no-brainer" and hoped only that she "would shoot straight enough to kill the beast." (A theist myself, and thoroughly committed to human exceptionalism, I think a case can be made that the question is more interesting than its original hearer felt.)

The point here is Dawkins’ reported response. Apparently, Dawkins was outraged that anyone would dissent from the priority he placed on preserving the endangered species. Presumably he would not have been outraged to learn that the theist differed from him regarding the palatability of haggis, but I’ve already made that point. Here I have a different question.

The point of Dawkins’ thought experiment was to assert the fundamental equivalence of one species with another. There is nothing fundamentally different about man that sets him qualitatively apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Very well, then. Under what circumstances might Dawkins be moved to outrage at the elephant?

Many behaviors that in the human world are subject to the harshest moral censure exist in the animal kingdom as mere behaviors, nothing more. Animals haven’t developed the capacity for large-scale atrocities that humans have, but certainly behaviors that in humans we would call rape and cannibalism and murder and bullying occur in the animal kingdom.

If we happen to witness such an event, we might feel pangs of pity for those on the receiving end of such behavior, but we don’t feel outrage at the aggressors.

Even Dawkins doesn’t, I suspect.

Yet, like Hitchens having "no alternative" but to call evil evil, Dawkins does feel outrage at human beings who deviate from what he obviously feels is a standard that somehow has some bearing on other human beings, a standard that is not solely a function of his own bio-electrical-chemical processes.

Coming soon: Round-up of responses to reader comments to date.

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with more on materialism and the moral argument (continued from Part 2).

Back again to "like a louse" feelings. In my comments so far I’ve taken for granted that you, Archie, find bullying to be an activity that not only correlates with "like a louse" feelings, but also holds no positive appeal or attraction for you, as it does hold for some (who may or may not also experience conflicting "like a louse" feelings in connection with it).

On that assumption, for you there is no conflict, and we may say no particular virtue (if you want to call it that), in avoiding this particular form of lousy behavior. (Similarly, it’s no credit to me that I’ve never stoned anyone to death; I’ve never wanted to, though I hope that even if I did want to I would avoid doing so, in part for reasons that I bet you could exegete from the scriptures if you felt like it.)

However, it’s entirely possible, indeed virtually certain, that in some context or other you have experienced or anticipated "like a louse" feelings in connection with other behaviors that do hold some appeal for you — in other words, that you have considered possible courses of action that for you would correlate with "like a louse" feelings, but which on some level you would want to do or enjoy doing anyway.

Now, it goes without saying that few people will choose to incur "like a louse" feelings over something they didn’t want to do anyway. It’s also to be expected, as noted above, that the aversive effect of "like a louse" feelings may even discourage people from doing things they might otherwise want to do. This is only natural.

But also as noted above, aversive responses to unpleasant bio-electrical-chemical reactions are not always enough to put us off a given course of action, and this too can be reasonable and healthy (going to the dentist, sacrificing for the sake of some goal, etc.).

What happens if/when the appeal of the potential rewards of an activity correlating with "like a louse" feelings seems to outweigh the disincentive of those feelings (and any other negative incentives that may correlate with the behavior)? When one begins to feel, "Yes, this may make me feel like a louse, but I’m going to do it anyway"?

Is there any meaningful sense in which such actions can be judged "right" or "wrong"? Do such judgments matter? Or is it just a matter of one set of positive/negative incentives versus another set? If so, it is hard to see that anything more is at stake than which course of action ultimately carries the most attractive cost/benefit ratio.

For example, consider the situation of a man who might or might not choose to pursue the possibility of an affair with a married coworker. He realizes, let us say, that if he does pursue the possible affair, and if he is successful, this course of action may eventually cause pain to the coworker’s spouse (and possibly eventually the coworker), if the affair were to be discovered — which might never happen.

Even so, these considerations (along with various attendant socio-psychological pressures) may well make the man in question feel like a louse even for considering the affair (apart from any actual discovery or actual pain). And he doesn’t like feeling like a louse. For many people, that may be powerful disincentive.

On the other hand, the potential incentives and benefits are greatly appealing. The pleasure of intimacy with an attractive partner; the emotional pleasure of feeling good about his own attractiveness and his ability to score with such an attractive person (even one who is in principle "taken"); the coworker’s pleasure in feeling good about her own attractiveness to others (in spite of being herself "taken"); his pleasure in giving her that pleasure; etc.

Shall he forgo all these incentives solely to avoid the "louse" feelings that will follow, and console himself with the reassurances of the "good person" feelings for respecting the other person’s marital commitments? Or shall he take the pleasure that is offered and accept the consequences when they come, regrettable though they may be?

Let’s suppose that the man makes a principled decision: He will not pursue the affair. He is tempted, but he will not be a louse. He will do the right thing.

Well. From a materialist perspective, we may say that he has privileged his aversive response to the unpleasant bio-electrical-chemical "like a louse" feelings over the attractions and incentives of the action in question. Evidently, if the aversive response has won out, then it was a very strong disincentive indeed, and only he can judge the rewards and consequences for him of either choice.

At the same time, his position might be felt to be not entirely unlike that of the young man raised in Fundamentalism who chooses not to play cards even though he enjoys playing cards, because it makes him feel bad afterward. Viewed in strictly empirical terms, such strong principles could be thought to bespeak an overly sensitive aversive response to "like a louse" feelings. Is the aversive response really proportionate to the measurable and quantifiable downsides?

Granted, the feelings of pain that might result for the "wronged" spouse might be severe. However, even granting that our man should put the other man’s happiness ahead of his own — a principle for which there is admittedly a sound evolutionary basis, though there are also sound principles going the other way, but let’s bracket all that for now — suppose we ask to what extent would such feelings really be our man’s fault, and to what extent would they be rooted in a superstitious, illusory, delusional worldview in which categories of fidelity, commitment, love, jealousy and betrayal are believed to have a dimension, reality or significance exceeding or transcending bio-electrical-chemical phenomena in our brains?

I’m far from debunking pleasure and pain as empirical phenomena. Bio-electrical-chemical responses, however irrational, can be very painful or very pleasurable. However, in our experience it seems that some pleasures and pains result from a particular way of looking at things, and if the way you look at things happens to be wrong, and if it causes you pain, that’s your business, not mine. (There are important counterpoints here, but one thing at a time.)

For example, for a materialist, there are surely few more useless and unnecessary pains than that caused by fear for one’s immortal soul, fear of punishment after death. Supernaturalists who suffer such fear (not all do) could perhaps largely (perhaps not necessarily entirely) avoid them by abandoning a superstitious worldview. (I say "not necessarily entirely" because I doubt whether human beings can always, if ever, commit so entirely to a worldview as to exclude all possible remainder of doubt or suspicion about the opposite being true. Many if not all supernaturalists struggle with nihilistic doubt at one time or another; many if not all materialists at one time or another feel the pull of the unseen and transcendent.)

In the same way, on a materialistic worldview, it would seem that the pained feelings of betrayal that the coworker’s spouse feels may quite possibly be largely avoidable and rooted in superstitious beliefs. This is not to deny that a sound evolutionary rationale exists for the feelings we call love and jealousy and betrayal. On the other hand, a similar justification may certainly be mounted for infidelity. If it is only natural and understandable for a wronged spouse to feel pain, that doesn’t mean it isn’t equally natural and understandable to cheat.

Feelings of betrayal and outrage may reflect real danger to one’s real and practical interests. A woman who has paired with a man and borne him children has real and practical interests, above and beyond the emotional attachment between them, in the man’s commitment to staying with her and the children. Indeed, from an naturalist perspective it might be maintained that the real and practical interest of all parties concerned in a successful and stable domestic environment for the rearing of the children is the evolutionary basis for the feelings of emotional attachment between the spouses.

A man who has an affair with a home-wrecker that results in his leaving his wife and family is obviously acting in a way contrary to the real and practical interests of his wife, the children and society at large. On the other hand, a man who has a fling with a stranger on a business trip, say, as long as he is reasonably careful not to bring home any diseases or engender a child that could become a financial liability to the family, may still maintain his basic commitment to the real and practical interests of his wife, the children and society at large.

In the latter case, exactly how, if at all, his wife or anyone else has been truly harmed may not be as easy to say. Emotionally, she may well hold beliefs about fidelity and commitment that could cause her to suffer pain if she were to learn of his betrayal. From a materialist perspective, though, to the extent that these beliefs are rooted in a superstitious worldview, this is a pain she could largely spare herself. Feelings of jealousy have an evolutionary basis and are unavoidable, but where it is perceived that there is no real threat to one’s actual interests, jealousy need not be a debilitating or extremely painful condition.

For instance, a man who knows that his wife harbors an idle attraction for the water man (as in the current film Things We Lost in the Fire) may experience some jealousy even if he is confident that she would never actually act on such feelings. If he is secure enough in her fidelity, however, he may well not be greatly troubled by this; they may even joke about it.

In the same way, it could be argued from a materialist perspective that a woman who recognizes that her real and practical interests are not threatened by her husband’s business-trip fling need not be greatly concerned about it, even if she finds out.

Someone might contend that she has been "harmed" inasmuch as her husband has brought home memories of being with another woman that she will have to compete with in bed; on the other hand it might be countered that the experience of being with other women could conceivably improve his skill as a lover, and his wife could be the beneficiary of his improved technique. Anyway, it doesn’t need to be all about him. As long as he’s away on that business trip, there’s always the water man (or whomever).

The point is, if the deterrent effect of "like a louse" feelings has an evident evolutionary rationale, so does our willingness sometimes to ignore louse-feelings deterrence and do the thing that we want to anyway. Thus far natural selection has weeded out from human behavior neither monogamous commitment nor infidelity; and "like a louse" feelings, while they may be too strong to ignore entirely, are not necessarily strong enough to restrain us all the time, or even to make us wish they would.

The cad is simply following certain biological directives; the community that ostracizes and punishes him (if and when this happens) is following another. It all goes round and round, with no obvious basis for saying that acting in a way that correlates with "like a louse" feelings is never worth it.

Once again, as with bullying, I am far from suggesting that adultery is not a very great evil (though unlike in the case of bullying I have no experience of any kind to refer to here). But, again, I don’t think the evil of adultery can be fully understood only with reference to objectively measurable harm to the practical interests of any party or of the community, or to the aversive effects of lousy feelings. It is fully understood only in the light of a trans-material understanding of love, commitment and the dignity of the human person.

Continued in Part 4