Materialism and the moral argument – Part 4

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.

Arriving Late & Communion

Fr. Edward McNamara, LC, regularly answers liturgical questions for the Zenit news service. Unfortunately, his answer this week is seriously flawed.

Here’s the question as it was posed to him:

Q: My parish priest made a regulation that anyone who arrives in Mass after the Gospel is not allowed to take Communion. According to him, the reason is that Jesus is "the Word made flesh." Therefore we must recognize Jesus in the Word before we recognize him in holy Communion. Another priest, who is a professor of liturgy, has another opinion. He said that people who arrive late in Mass with a valid reason (for example, an unusual traffic jam, attending sick children, etc.) should not be denied Communion. Could you please give a clarification on this matter? — B.E., Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

His answer begins as follows:

A: We dealt with the question of late arrivals at Mass in one of our first columns, on Nov. 4 and Nov. 18, in 2003.

Then as now, I would agree more with the second priest: that someone who arrives late out of no fault of their own should not be denied Communion.

His answer goes wrong right there–not in stating that the person should not be denied Communion but by introducing the condition that the person was late through no fault of their own. The remainder of his column is seriously flawed as a result of this flawed point of departure.

READ THE WHOLE THING.

Fr. McNamara’s thought on this point appears to go wrong because he conflates two separate issues: (1) what is required to fulfill one’s Sunday obligation and (2) what is required to receive Communion.

Fr. McNamara rightly points out that one is obliged to attend the whole of a Sunday Mass unless one has a valid excuse for missing all or part of it (e.g., arriving late through no fault of one’s own, needing to leave early because you’re in serious back pain, etc.). He also counsels against drawing arbitrary lines in the Mass about what’s "okay" to miss, which is prudent given the current state of liturgical law on this point. If, for whatever reason, you have missed the substance of the Mass without a legitimate excuse and you can attend another one then you should do so. All that’s fine.

But it has nothing to do with the question of whether you can receive Communion if you show up late.

The controlling legal document governing who can receive Communion and when is the Code of Canon Law. It provides the following:

Can.  843 §1. Sacred ministers cannot deny the sacraments to those who seek them at appropriate times, are properly disposed, and are not prohibited by law from receiving them.

This provision lists three criteria that, if they are fulfilled, prevent the sacred ministers from denying the sacraments–including Holy Communion–to the faithful.

The first condition is that the faithful "seek them at appropriate times." This is to prevent the faithful from seeking the sacraments at bizarre times without a sufficient reason. For example, the faithful do not have a right to demand the sacraments at any time of the day or night, irrespective of what the priest is doing, unless they have a counterbalancing reason. You cannot, for example, demand that a priest hear your confession right this minute if it’s 3 a.m. in the morning and he’s asleep and you’re not in danger of dying or about to ship out to Afghanistan and won’t have the opportunity of confession for months, for example.

But receiving Communion during Mass–when Communion is already being offered–is plainly an appropriate time to seek it within the meaning of this canon.

The second condition is that the faithul are properly disposed. This means things like they aren’t in an unconfessed state of mortal sin, they’ve observed the Eucharistic fast, etc. The Code doesn’t go the needed dispositions in detail, but the Catechism does, saying:

1384 The Lord addresses an invitation to us, urging us to receive him in the sacrament of the Eucharist: "Truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."

1385 To respond to this invitation we must prepare ourselves for so great and so holy a moment. St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself." Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion.

1386 Before so great a sacrament, the faithful can only echo humbly and with ardent faith the words of the Centurion: "Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea" ("Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul will be healed."). and in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom the faithful pray in the same spirit:

O Son of God, bring me into communion today with your mystical supper. I shall not tell your enemies the secret, nor kiss you with Judas’ kiss. But like the good thief I cry, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

1387 To prepare for worthy reception of this sacrament, the faithful should observe the fast required in their Church. Bodily demeanor (gestures, clothing) ought to convey the respect, solemnity, and joy of this moment when Christ becomes our guest.

You’ll notice that there’s nothing in there about having to attend a certain portion of Mass–or even being in Mass at all (since one can receive Communion outside of Mass). So if someone has the proper dispositions (listed above), this condition is fulfilled.

The third condition is that the faithful not be prohibited by law from receiving Communion. If, therefore, one were to find a way to deny them Communion based on how late they arrived at Mass, it would have to be in this category.

But one can’t do that, because there simply is no legal prohibition on people receiving Communion if they have come to Mass late.

It is desirable, of course, that people have a substantial participation in the rite within which Communion is being distributed, but–and this is the point–it is not required.

Now, perhaps one would want to say that it is kinda crypto-required, that it’s understood but not stated expressly anywhere that you have to attend a certain part of Mass, or even all of it if you don’t have an excuse, to go to Communion. Perhaps we could fudge that in under the "appropriate times" or "properly disposed" requirements–contrary to the obvious purpose of these provisions in the canon.

Nope.

The Code further provides:

Can.  912 Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to Holy Communion.

Even though the Code has already said that sacred ministers cannot deny the sacraments to those who seek them under the above three conditions, just to make sure that we understand the point in the case of Holy Communion, it singles this sacrament out specially to stress that, if you’re baptized, you cannot be denied Communion unless you are prohibited by law.

And there’s no prohibition in the law regarding how much of a Mass (or Communion service) you must attend.

But what if we really, really want to shoehorn such a requirement into the law at this point? Is there any way to do that?

No, sorry.

The Code also provides:

Can. 18 Laws which establish a penalty, restrict the free exercise of rights, or contain an exception from the law are subject to strict interpretation.

And it provides:

Can. 213 The Christian faithful have the right to receive assistance from the sacred pastors out of the spiritual goods of the Church, especially the word of God and the sacraments.

If you want to restrict someone’s right to receive the sacraments then you’re going to have to have a law allowing you to do that and you’re going to have to subject it to strict interpretation.

This is particularly the case with Holy Communion, which uniquely among all the sacraments has its own canon singling out the fact that it can’t be denied unless there is a prohibition by law.

And there just is no law requiring the faithful to attend all or any of a Mass in order to receive Communion. You can be literally walking through a church at Communion time and, if you are properly disposed, you can receive.

Now, if you do that and it’s a Sunday or a holy day of obligation then you’ll need to attend a different Mass in order to fulfill your obligation to attend Mass, but that’s a separate question from whether you can receive Communion.

It is to be understood that Fr. McNamara is a liturgist and thus that his primary expertise would be in the Church’s liturgical documents, but as a liturgist he should be familiar with at least those parts of canon law touching on the liturgy and the faithful’s access to the sacraments–particularly the Eucharist.

His columns for Zenit regularly include an addendum clarifying confusion resulting from previous columns. Hopefully a future column will clarify this issue and properly separate the two subjects.

Materialism and the moral argument – Part 3

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

Dangerous Secret Societies?

The heroic efforts of the firemen in San Diego county are much appreciated by local residents. They have done an extraordinary job–and continue to do it–operating in dangerous, windy conditions with little sleep and often only the food and water they can carry on them.

Yet not everyone in history has held such a high opinion of fire departments. I was put in mind of the instructions that the second century emperor Trajan gave to Pliny the Younger about having fire departments.

From the correspondence of Pliny and Trajan:

Pliny to Trajan:

A desolating fire broke out in Nicomedia, and destroyed a number of private houses, and two public buildings — the almshouse and the temple of Isis — although a road ran between them. The fire was allowed to spread farther than it need, first owing to the violent wind; second, to the laziness of the citizens, it being generally agreed they stood idly by without moving, and simply watched the conflagration. Besides there was not a single public fire engine or bucket in the place, and not one solitary appliance for mastering a fire. However, these will be provided upon orders I have already given. But, Sire, I would have you consider whether you think a fire company of about 150 men ought not to be formed? I will take care that no one not a genuine fireman shall be admitted, and that the guild should not misapply the charter granted it. Again there would be no trouble in keeping an eye on so small a body.

Trajan to Pliny:

You have formed the idea of a possible fire company at Nicomedia on the model of various others already existing; but remember that the province of Bithynia, and especially city-states like Nicomedia, are the prey of factions. Give them the name we may, and however good be the reasons for organization, such associations will soon degenerate into dangerous secret societies. It is better policy to provide fire apparatus, and to encourage property holders to make use of them, and if need comes, press the crowd which collects into the same service.

SOURCE.

No fire departments? Having untrained people fighting a fire?

Sheesh!

Thank God we’ve got fire departments today!

Three cheers for the San Diego firefighters!

Update 2

2007firesday3bHere’s the latest fire and evacuation map.

I was finally able to get into the San Diego County emergency web site again. (They really do need more bandwidth or server capacity–and they need to give maps as nice, simple gifs instead of 1.7 meg PDFs).

This edition of the map has a grid with numbers on it–which, I believe, are the page numbers for the Thomas Brothers maps, which are ubiquitous in SoCal (or were, before GPS, anyway).

The mystery evacuation spot near Catholic Answers seems to have been a precautionary measure, as there were no fires there. My theory has been that it’s an area with poor roadways and they wanted to get it evacuated in advance in case the Harris Fire goes there. Now it’s been linked up with the other evacuation zones for the Harris Fire, so that seems to be its purpose.

Materialism and the moral argument – Part 2

SDG here (not Jimmy) with more on materialism and the moral argument (continued from Part 1).

Suppose you see me bullying a weaker party, and you confront me, saying: "Stop that, you louse!"

"Louse?" I reply. "Louse? A small, wingless insect of the order Anoplura? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, friend. No no, I’m familiar with the slang usage, of course, but you’re quite mistaken, I assure you. I don’t feel lousy at all! Never better. You may be thinking of the sorry specimen here at the receiving end of my bullying, who has surely had better days."

And, indeed, if by "like a louse" you were only describing how you would feel if you bullied the weak, then your calling me a louse would seem to be a case of sheer projection, as much as my saying "Stop making yourself nauseous, you fool!" when in fact you love haggis (or whatever).

On the other hand, if at this point you continue to maintain that, whatever my emotional state, there is some meaningful sense in which I am a louse, or that in some sense my lousiness is not contingent upon my own feelings or yours, then we will have to seek further for what exactly it is that we mean by "lousiness" beyond one or another person’s bio-electrical-chemical responses.

You might make a stab at reasoning with me: "But look here," you say, "of course you wouldn’t want to be bullied yourself, would you? Why should you treat someone else in a way that you yourself wouldn’t want to be treated?"

But I reply, "Why, obviously, being bullied makes me feel bad, but bullying others makes me feel good. You aren’t making any sense at all. Surely you aren’t suggesting some sort of quantifiable correlation between bullying or not bullying others and a higher or lower incidence of being bullied or not bullied oneself? I know people say things like ‘What goes around comes around,’ but don’t let’s kid ourselves. What correlates with being bullied is weakness; what correlates with not being bullied is strength. I, fortunate that I am, happen to rank in the upper percentiles of the strong — not strong enough to escape all bullying, perhaps, but strong enough to be the bully more often than not. So. There you have it."

If I were in a tolerant mood, I might even be willing, for the sake of discussion, to allow that if it were possible somehow to make a deal with the universe such that abstention from bullying would entitle one to exemption from being bullied, under those terms I might possibly (reluctantly) be willing to forgo the pleasures of bullying others in order to secure for myself a lifetime of freedom from being bullied. No such terms being possible, though, that would seem to be the end of that discussion.

Where can we go from here?

I should perhaps point out that nothing I have thus far said tends toward some sort of live-and-let-live moral relativism in which bullies should be allowed to bully and we should not stop them, because different strokes for different folks. Different strokes for different folks perhaps, but that would seem to include the preferences of those who like to stop bullies as well as those who like to bully.

So far, for all I can tell, it would seem that all impulses and desires are in principle equally actionable, in proportion to their strength and in inverse relationship to any counter-impulses or countervailing considerations; and so if we like stopping bullies, bully for us.

We are even, it seems to me, free to hate and despise bullies if we wish (or to forgive them, whichever floats our boat). Let’s not have any nonsense about loving the sinner and hating the sin (I mean, unless that’s your thing). We can even choose to label them (or their actions) "evil" from our point of view, just as I may call haggis "disgusting" because that’s how I feel about it, irrespective of how you feel.

Having said that, it seems to me helpful to have a vocabulary to describe areas such as long division and history and quantum physics in which different people’s answers can be weighed against one another and some found wanting in relation to others, not according to the personal preferences of the judges, but by some more meaningful standard that applies to everyone and everything being judged.

"True or false" might be a start, helpfully supplemented by subtler terms like "more nearly true" and "more clearly false," "better or worse," "more accurate," or "more adequate," or less, etc. Thus, your quotient is right; hers is wrong; how any of us happens to feel about it is irrelevant. Some estimates of the death toll of the Holocaust are better than others, and some are wholly inadequate and even reprehensible. The advocates of various proposals may (or may not) be equally sincere, but the question is not about that.

I hasten to add that dealing with facts doesn’t mean that we can necessarily say with certitude, or even at all, what all the facts are, or that there is no room for honest disagreement and different points of view. What exactly happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Is string theory "not even wrong," as Peter Woit has argued? Those may be questions we aren’t prepared to answer definitively here and now. The point is, whatever the answers are, they don’t hinge on your feelings or mine.

Back to lousiness. Is there anything to be said for "Stop that, you louse!" as anything other than a sheer projection of one person’s bio-electrical-chemical aversion-responses on another?

You might take a stab at it by appealing to something like the good of the social order. What’s wrong with bullying, you may say, is not that it offends your feelings, but that it harms another person and thus the greater good. That is why society labels me a louse if I bully, not just because of the feelings of any one person.

Now, as a matter of fact the defense of bullying semi-facetiously advanced above isn’t especially the kind of thing that an actual bully in a real-world situation would be likely to say, at least as phrased. Here, however, is something that is very much the sort of thing that bullies, when confronted, often say in their own defense:

"We were only playing."

Bracket for a moment the level of transparent dishonesty of this defense, all but confessed in the very sheepishness or glibness of the tone. Even the bully doesn’t really believe he will get away with suggesting that we are all friends here enjoying ourselves in a mutually agreeable and pleasant fashion.

Put that aside just a moment, and consider whether there isn’t actually at least a partial but significant level of truth in the bully’s defense.

Let me preface these comments with a borrowed line from The Problem of Pain: Let no one say of me "He jests at scars who never felt a wound." I am the last person in the world to make light of bullying. In childhood I was not only consistently the bullied rather than the bully, I was at the very bottom of the bullying hierarchy, the bullied of the bullied, and for years the oppression I faced was regular and merciless. The morning walk to school in those years was for me full of dread over the coming confrontations, praying, praying to be spared that day.

For all that, I was never badly hurt, and seldom hurt at all. I know some victims of bullying are, but I think my experience is far more typical. The bullies were out to aggrandize their own egos at my expense, but not to do me any real harm. There was real malice in it, but the goal was to enjoy my fear and their sense of power. The claim that they were "only playing," while odious, is actually more nearly true than it might initially seem.

What’s more, as intense as my fear was, I can’t see that it has inflicted any lasting harm on any measurable level. Having been bullied seems not to have affected my long-term prospects for happiness and success.

For some years in school, I may have been among the least happy in my class; today, well, I just might be the happiest person I know. I’m well-educated, I have a good job and rewarding occupations, I’m blissfully married to a domestic and maternal goddess, and — perhaps most importantly from a materialist–naturalist perspective — we have five beautiful and intelligent children who have excellent prospects of success in life as productive members of society.

By nearly any Darwinian measure, I think it’s safe to say I’ve been rather successful. My experience of bullying was intensely unpleasant while it lasted, but I can’t see that society’s interests or even my long-term good were ever particularly at stake.

That’s not to say I don’t think bullying a great evil. I do. I just don’t think it’s rooted in whatever measurable phenomena, if any, may be adduced under any such rubric as "the greater good of society." I think the evil of bullying is rooted in the dignity of the human person, which as I conceive it is bound up in a whole trans-materialistic understanding of human nature and the meaning of life and so on.

That is to say, I regard the dignity of the human person as the sort of subject that transcends individual feelings or preferences, much like long division and the exact circumstances of Jimmy Hoffa’s death. Different people may have different interpretations of the evidence; some understandings will be closer to the truth, and some are further, even if no human authority can definitively settle which answers are the closest. But we are talking about something real, not about personal feelings yours or mine.

Continued in Part 3

Update

2007firesday3As expected, it’s worse today.

One of the big problems is the Santa Ana winds that are blowing and spreading the fires.

The winds were expected to let up last night, but they didn’t as much as expected.

It’s hoped that they will let up later today.

When I woke up this morning I saw there was an evacuation zone near Catholic Answers. I’m not sure what that is at this point, as the map is not showing fire in that area, and they haven’t mentioned it on TV.

BTW, I did a brief phone interview with Vatican Radio about the fires yesterday. MP3 here.

Keep SoCal in Your Prayers

2007firesday2The 2003 fires in the San Diego area left much of the county looking like Mordor.

Now, they’re saying that this year’s fires may be even worse by the time they’re done.

To the left is a map of the fire borders as of today (click to enlarge). The red zones are where the fire boundaries are. The purple areas are evacuation zones. The green dot is the approximate location of Catholic Answers.

Some staffers at Catholic Answers have either been evacuated from their homes or are unable to get to work due to road closures (or warnings that they may need to evacuate).

At Catholic Answers the sky is largely gray from smoke, and there is a burnt smell everywhere outside. Parked cars are covered with little bits of ash.

San Diego also needs to up the server capacity of a lot of their emergency web sites that serve up maps like this. Lots of them are slow as snailes or simply time out.

USEFUL SITES:

UNION-TRIBUNE FIRE BLOG.

WWW.SDCOUNTYEMERGENCY.COM

SANDIEGO.GOV FIRE ALERT

HOME-MADE ANNOTATED GOOGLE MAP

GEOLOGY PAGE AT SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY.

Materialism and the moral argument – Part 1

SDG here (not Jimmy — but you already knew that, didn’t you?) with the first in a series of posts on materialism and the moral argument, adapted from a semi-restricted discussion in another forum.

This post, and those to follow, were originally occasioned by a discussion around what has been called the "New Atheism," i.e., the militantly anti-religious, naturalist‑materialist polemics of the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

Discussion around this issue has focused on a number of interrelated subjects, including arguments regarding design, miracles, revelation, theodicy, and morality.

Here is how one Christian board member put the moral argument to a self-proclaimed "bright" (a loopy self-designation intended, like the hijacking of "gay" by homosexuals, to co-opt a positive term to replace negative terms like "atheist"):

If the final answer is really 42 and survival is really of the fittest, then what does it matter if the strong take what they want from the weak? The feelings of the weak are irrelevant because the weak are irrelevant. If I am having a slow day and I fancy a spot of raping and pillaging before supper, where’s the harm? After all, when I read the morning news or look back over human history, raping and pillaging would seem to be perfectly normal human pastimes. Everybody is at it. Sometimes even whole nations!

To this, our "bright" (who calls himself Archie) responded:

I’m sorry, but I grow weary of this kind of argument. If your morality is based on your religion, what stops you from copulating with your daughters (like Lot)? What stops you from stoning people to death with stones, for gathering firewood on the Sabbath? Why don’t you make a pact with your god that if you win your next war, you’ll sacrifice the first living thing that comes out of your house, even your daughter (like Jephthah)? Why don’t you gag your women before they go into church (following the apostle Paul)?

The real truth is that religion and morality are two totally different things, and there are a great many examples of people who adhered to one and not the other. If you like, I am strong, and the thing that stops me bullying weaker people is that I’d feel like a louse afterwards. I will not indulge in that kind of behaviour. Simple.

Now, deep breath, everyone.

Rather than get sidetracked by the transparently silly exegetical aburdities, I decided to take this post as a springboard for some prolonged discussion of the moral argument. What follows is the first post from this series; in the days to come I will follow up with subsequent posts.

First, let me point out that the burden of the moral argument for non-materialists is not that atheists must be bad or even amoral people, or that they have no basis of knowing right from wrong.

Theists generally and Christians particularly do not believe that morality is something that we come to know solely through divine revelation — though we do believe revelation may help clarify, supplement and correct what valid but imperfect moral insights we have.

(While I’m at it, I might also clarify that I don’t believe that morality is essentially connected, even for theists, with belief in judgment, life after death, heaven or hell. What matters to me as a theist is above all that God is, and who he is — not how he may reward or punish me. In principle, I think I would still feel that way even if I believed that death were the end. More on this some other time, perhaps.)

At any rate, the point is not "Unless you read it in the Bible (or unless you hear directly from God in some way, shape or form), how do you know right from wrong?" On the contrary, the Bible itself says that the moral law is written on the human heart (Rom 2), and no theory of biblical authority is required to hold a more or less converging opinion on this particular point.

Archie: You say, "If you like, I am strong, and the thing that stops me bullying weaker people is that I’d feel like a louse afterwards."

Fair enough. I can accept that, as far as it goes — at least, insofar as I prescind from whatever epistemic or ontological claims may or may not lie behind the phrase "like a louse."

To bracket a caveat or two, this is of course not literally what you mean; I doubt if any substantial connection could be maintained between whatever feelings you might have and any of the small, wingless insects of the order Anoplura.

In slang usage, according to the dictionary, "louse" can mean something like "contemptible person, esp. an unethical one" — an affective definition that doesn’t help us out with clarifying the actual denotative value, if any, of the judgments underlying these classifications.

To some, in fact, it may seem as if what you are saying essentially boils down to "I will not act in what I consider to be a contemptible fashion because that would make me feel like a contemptible person" — which would seem to be a rather circular and tautological way of putting things.

What does seem clear at any rate is that "like a louse" feelings represent an undesirable state of affairs, an unpleasant experience contrary to a general sense of well-being. On its face, that is a perfectly respectable factor to take into consideration for deciding between or among possible courses of action. Unpleasant feelings are, well, unpleasant, and all things being equal, we would prefer to avoid them, thank you very much.

But of course all things are not always equal. A given level of unpleasantness by itself is not always enough to deter us from a particular course of action; and that too is entirely reasonable.

Potential causes of experiences of unpleasantness are many and greatly divergent. Some represent harmful behaviors, such as cutting oneself with razor blades. Others do not, such as eating some food that you personally find revolting.

Sometimes incentives to do a thing are substantial enough warrant facing up to even very formidable unpleasantness without compunction or misgiving, such as going to the dentist for necessary dental surgery. Other times, the unpleasantness even of contemplating a given course of action is so appalling that such action would be simply out of the question, such as being sexually intimate with a person whom one finds physically and personally repulsive.

When it comes to the unpleasantness of "like a louse" feelings (or guilt, or other potentially morally charged affective responses), in many cases it’s easy to see that such responses may be far from random or irrational, as far as they go. There is often a perfectly empirical dimension to old moralistic observations about virtue being its own reward and vice is its own punishment. Even on an entirely materialistic worldview, certain behaviors will tend to correlate with greater happiness, and others with greater unhappiness.

For example, heavy alcohol abuse might make you happy for a few hours at a stretch, but in the long run it is going to cause you more unhappiness than not — and not just because you may feel "like a louse" afterward (although that may be one factor).

The virtue of moderation commends itself, at least to an extent, to the materialist and the supernaturalist alike, and for many of the same reasons. When Hitchens tries to explain morality by saying "We evolved it," it may reasonably be felt that there is at least partial justification for something like what he is saying.

Even when "like a louse" feelings happen to be associated with an activity for which we can find no rational basis for such feelings, it may still be reasonable to choose to avoid irrational but unpleasant feelings in the absence of sufficient motivation in the opposite direction.

Suppose a boy is brought up in strict Fundamentalism and taught to believe that card-playing is evil. Later in life, throwing off this belief (whether by coming to a more balanced faith or by abandoning faith altogether), he finds that he quite enjoys cards while the game is in play — but afterwards, despite himself, he can’t help feeling down. Intellectually he knows that cards aren’t evil and there is no reason to feel that way, but he can’t shake the irrational "like a louse" feelings that his upbringing has instilled in him in connection with them.

All things being equal, he might reasonably decide that the fun of playing cards is not worth the irrational depression that follows (though he might also decide otherwise, given a sufficiently strong social motivation, or perhaps a determined intention to root out the emotional consequences of his upbringing).

All to say, the unpleasantness of "like a louse" feelings can be a reasonable rationale for forgoing even a potentially appealing course of action. So far so good; but how far it goes is as yet an open question.

Archie, you say that bullying the weak correlates for you with "like a louse" feelings, and thus you will not do it. Fine. I also gather that you find that following what has been called the Golden Rule makes you feel good about yourself, and on one level surely that is justification enough for doing as you would be done by.

And that’s fine for you. Of course, what causes one person undesirable feelings may affect another person quite differently, just as a particular dish (haggis, say) may thoroughly nauseate one person while sending another into paroxysms of gastronomic delight. I might be grossed out to see you enjoying a meal that would turn my stomach, but my unquiet gorge has no particular relevance to you or your enjoyment.

Whatever else unpleasant feelings may be, or mean, or tell us, on one level they may surely be regarded as a sort of bio-electrical-chemical reaction in our brains triggering an aversive response. Indeed, on a materialist perspective I’m not sure how else they might be regarded.

Thus, while you might experience negative feelings of sorrow and disapproval to see me bullying a weaker party, what relevance, if any, your bio-electrical-chemical aversion-response has on me or the very different bio-electrical-chemical response in my brain remains to be seen.

Continued in Part 2