Socrates’ Question

In a previous post Miranda directs us to a fundamental question:

Does the fact that something might make society worse off necessarily make it wrong, and does something that makes society better necessarily make it right? One might argue, for instance, that killing Asia Bibi helps society by discouraging blasphemy. Is it, then, right to kill her? And are we really all better off when we care about the worse off? If we think that it is good for our souls, I suspect that we are. But what if we don't consider souls?

Socrates, in the Euthyphro, asks the question this way:

Is the pious [action] pious because God loves it; or does God love it because it is pious?

This question drove a wedge between philosophy and religion that has been a conspicuous feature of Western thought to this day. I will attempt to unpack it.

All undamaged human beings (that is, excluding psychopaths) have strong moral intuitions (or moral passions). Some things strike us as morally abhorrent and other things a morally heroic. See Schindler's List for vivid and unambiguous examples of both.

Despite all the popular babble about multiculturalism, there are really only three opinions about our moral intuitions. One is that these passions are nothing more than individual or collective tastes, as in "I like vanilla ice cream" or "the Spartans preferred simpler columns than the Athenians". That is called relativism, and a lot of people profess to believe it but almost no one really does.

The second view is that the morally abhorrent is such because God hates it and vice versa with the morally laudable. Because God is infinitely good, what He likes and dislikes what is simply good and bad respectively. Since we cannot know the mind of God, our moral intuitions are grounded in revelation that is beyond reason. In that case, the pious is pious because and perhaps only because God loves it.

The third view is that the morally abhorrent is such for the same reasons as some things are physically abhorrent. Spoiled meat is offensive because it destroys human bodies. Murder is bad because it destroys human communities, breaks human hearts, and corrupts the murderer. In that case, God loves pious because it is pious and we can understand exactly why it is pious.

The latter two are the only real alternatives, but both are problematic. If moral intuitions are supported only by the unknowable mind of God that means that morality is effectively irrational. Neither evidence nor reason support moral judgments. That might be okay, except that the pious seem always compelled to carve out exceptions. God says not to work on the Sabbath, except that Doctors can save lives and soldiers can fight because, well, human interests demand it.

If moral intuitions are valid because they contribute to human wellbeing, then is it okay to execute an innocent person if that would contribute to the general good? Surely that is morally abhorrent, and if it is, then how can the general good be the ground of justice?

At no risk of surprise, I think that moral intuitions are evolved dispositions. Our natural moral sense makes us good cooperators, and good cooperators have inherited the earth. There is no human community that does not have a concept of reciprocity: if you help me, I should help you in return. That simple moral rule is not only a human rule. It is ubiquitous throughout organic life on earth.

It is also the basis of the liberal idea of human equality. If all human beings are recognized as potential partners in reciprocal exchanges, then the only legitimate basis for authority is consent and the social contract. That is what happens when social animals become morally sophisticated.

So should we agree that it is just to execute an innocent person if it promotes the public good? No. Whatever good might come from that, the violation of the fundamental principle is abhorrent the very basis of any decent society. If someone respects the rights of others, his or her rights ought to be respected. To execute the innocent not only violates the rights of the victim, it corrupts the perpetrators. Human beings are subject to temptation. A habit of giving in can turn us into monsters. Our basic moral sense tells us that such a thing is just plain wrong and it speaks the truth.

So I think that God loves the pious because it is pious. Basic principle so right and wrong can be understood if we recognize that they are good for us and that they correct for our faults. Still, it's good to know that God loves them. Most human beings do not have the leisure for moral philosophy.  It is one source of the greatness of the Christian tradition that it has consistently tried to have it both ways. 

Comments

[Bill Fleming]

Not sure you really got the whole issue "unpacked" KB, but it's a worthy endeavor so maybe you'll allow me an addendum to your initial thoughts.

I get that Miranda is really asking "what if we leave God and Souls out of it. What then is best for a society and the individual?" And a corollary perhaps, "Is what's good for one social segment necessarily good for the others, or society as a whole?"

I also think she may be pointing to the idea of there being certain moral dilemmas which can befuddle our "natural knowing" and interfere with even our most rational and emotionally compelling arguments.

Societies have in general made certain behaviors "taboo" not necessarily out of Godliness or moral rectitude, but rather, for rational, biological survival imperatives. These include cannibalism, incest, slavery, etc.

Along the way, we have, in many cases transformed the idea of "we just know" into "because God says" which is where it seems your analysis begins, half-unpacked.

I'll wait for further cues from Miranda before continuing with my own thoughts. Because basically, if we're just going to talk about God and Souls, I'm afraid I'm just not all that qualified — being as I am, only human.

[Miranda]

Thank you both for your admirable and thorough responses. This afternoon I am working on a project with a tight deadline and don't have the time I would like to respond immediately, but by tonight I hope to be able to present you with some worthy replies!

In the meantime, Bill, you are right. Those are the points I was trying to make.

[Donald Pay]

Socrates lived in a pagan world and posed the Euthyphro question about "the gods." As I remember it, Socrates amended the question, when pressed, to refer to acts which all the gods agreed were pious. Now that's a far more interesting question, because the gods were a cantankerous bunch and they didn't agree on much.

In this regard I remember a group of religious scholars from various world religions sat down to find a common moral ethos. I'm not sure what they decided beyond this: in all the major religions there is something in each very much like the Golden Rule.

So, for me, it's pretty easy. Where the rules of a society or a religion are imposed without regard to the Golden Rule, it is likely to be morally wrong.

[Miranda]

Dr. Blanchard: I am not sure that I accept your version of the second view. The fact that the mind of God is unknowable does not mean that morality is irrational. God can still design morality to work according to logic and structures that humans can understand. I think he often does.

On the Sabbath: The fact that a system of morality allows for different actions in different circumstances does not, in my view, make it any less credible. Consider the laws we make today. Speeding is against the law. But suppose a husband speeds to get his wife (who is in labor) to the hospital on time. Can police or judges be lenient? Sure. Does that mean that speeding has suddenly become legal or that it should be? No. Does it mean the rule against speeding was a bad one or that the system that created such a rule is flawed? I don’t think so.

On evolved morality: I am somewhat uncomfortable with the idea that morality is simply an evolved set of survival mechanisms, because it makes evil look like something akin to a wind storm. The problem with men like Hitler, in this system, is not that they did something that taints the immortal soul. They have not done something that might evoke the wrath of an angry God or put them in danger of hellfire. There is nothing about what they have done that should send a chill up your spine – at least, no more of a chill than a car accident or a stock market crash. They have merely done something that did not benefit society or perhaps that contradicted certain natural instincts or man made contracts. But that is not really evil. It is just impractical or undesirable.

You bring up the social contract. But why should one feel guilty about breaking the social contract? Doing so isn’t bad in the way that siding with Satan is bad. There’s no Satan to worry about. There is no God to make unhappy and nothing eternal to answer to. Being “wrong” is just a way of being unwise.

Of course, the fact that something makes me uncomfortable does not make it wrong. But I am left with a number of questions. Are we sure that acting according to our intuition is right? Can our intuition ever be wrong? Who is right and who is wrong when we do not agree on what is actually abhorrent? Some people claim, for instance, to be naturally homosexual, while others seem to have a natural abhorrence of homosexuality. Are they both right if they act according to their instincts? Is one wrong? Are they both? How do we know? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

I am afraid I have gotten rather long winded here, and I apologize for that. This is what happens when human beings have the leisure for moral philosophy!

[Bill Fleming]

My view is that — in his haste to dismiss it — KB minimizes the significance, relevance, and historical evidence of what he calls "relativism" by downgrading it from a demonstrable fact to a set of half-baked opinions that nobody really follows.
The net effect of such dismissal is that the only half-baked opinion on the first moral intuition of BK's list is KB's own.

Situational ethics is indeed a good description of how we (and nature) function, with actions contingent on environmental conditions including geography, climate, population density, ethnicity, etc. And it accounts for the nearly all the exceptions to the reciprocity rule.

Besides, what a silly thing to say. "Relativity is just a fashion, hardly anyone ever follows it." Well, yeah, other than energy, matter and space/time, KB, I guess you could say that. ;^)

[Bill Fleming]

ertaining to the Ancient Greeks, shopping in the Socrates/Plato camp for the answer is probably not going to yield the best result. More apropos to this discussion, perhaps is the classic debate between Parmenides and Heraclitus. In this context, I will almost always argue the Heracletian position that the essence of everything is "change." Thus shopping for other "absolutes" is folly. But I argue it with a keen eye on Chaos theory and contemporary physics, always of the mind that "that's just his opinion, he could be wrong." Such is the inherent nature of relativism and scientific inquiry, I fear. If we hand all the answers, we wouldn't have to do the work of finding them out.

[Miranda]

Bill: I will give the Parmenides and Heraclitus debate a read to better understand your position. I rather like absolutes, but I am interested in your view and hope you will elaborate on the connection between relativism and physics.

[Miranda]

Bill: I will give the Parmenides and Heraclitus debate a read to better understand your position. I rather like absolutes, but I am interested in your view and hope you will elaborate on the connection between relativism and physics.

[Bill Fleming]

Miranda, here's a quick overview of "Situational Ethics."
http://www.philosophy-religion.org/handouts/situation.htm

As to how it applies to physics, one need only to recall how our collective cultural worldview has been shaped (at least on the rational level) by the best thinking (and cultural dissemination of same) by the scientists of the era. Galileo and Copernicus were suppressed, not just by the church, but also by those scientists who refused to give up on the "absolutes" established previously by Aristotelian thought. Likewise people are STILL arguing the veracity of Darwin's ideas and struggling to grasp the ideas of Einstein as they pertain to an "absolute", all encompassing description of reality.

Perhaps the best way to encapsulate all this verbally (and briefly) is with a classically paradoxical Zen koan.
__________________

Two monks argued about a temple flag waving in the breeze.
One said, "It is the flag that moves."
The other said, "It is the breeze moving."
Just then, Hui-neng appeared saying, "Not the flag; not the wind; it is the mind that moves."

[Bill Fleming]

In other words, Miranda, when we change the way we look at things, everything we look at changes.

Any notion of constancy is a fabrication of our current state of mind.

Or, as per Einstein:

"The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world or of "physical reality" indirectly, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means. It follows from this that our notions of physical reality can never be final. We must always be ready to change these notions—that is to say, the axiomatic basis of physics—in order to do justice to perceived facts in the most perfect way logically."

[Miranda]

Bill: While I agree that looking at things differently _can_ create a change, I also think that things often stay the same, no matter how we think about them.

Suppose, for instance, there is a rock sitting on a table. At first I think the rock should be thrown outside. Then I realize that it is actually a fossil rock. My perception has changed, and therefore my actions will probably change - I will keep the rock as a treasure or take it to a museum, rather than chucking it out the window. On the other hand, the rock really hasn't changed because of that.
It was always (or at least from the time I first saw it to the time I reexamined it) a fossil rock.

[Bill Fleming]

That's only if you have a really short version of "always," Miranda. In terms of it being "absolutely" and eternally a fossil, no way. In other words, as we have just discovered, even your notion of "absoluteness" is subject to change. :^)

[Miranda]

Well said! Point conceded! But is everything _always_ subject to change? How about the fact that everything changes?

[Bill Fleming]

Yup, there's the paradox. And Heraclitus' point.
The essence of everything is change.
If you're looking for an absolute, there it is.

[Bill Fleming]

Footnote: Theoretical physicists do suggest that there is a final order to all of this, one kind of particle, a unity to all the forces, and a steady state universe in both our distant "past" and "future" (although they tend to look at space/time in a remarkably different way than we laypeople do).

None of the numbers are in for certain yet of course, but I gather that these theoretical eons of "nothingness" are, in the composite far "longer" than the relatively brief duration of the chaotic perturbation of the energy/matter/space/time fabric we currently inhabit.

Suffice it to say that a universe in that state of stasis would be what we would call "dead." Seething with unmanifest potential perhaps. Ready to light back up for another creative go 'round. But for at least as far as phenomenon like the universe we know are concerned, dead. (Or should I say "perfectly balanced?")

That's probably where God lives. ;^)

[Bill Fleming]

Some physics background for Miranda:

http://www.frankwilczek.com/

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E1DF1339F932A25757C0A9629C8B63&pagewanted=1

[larry kurtz]

How does your tutorial apply to South Dakota, Mr. Fleming, especially in a state where change is collapse?

[Bill Fleming]

Interesting word, Larry. Have you been reading Jared Diamond? If no, check out his book "Collapse-How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" and you'll have your answer. The first chapter is about Montana. Could just as well be about South Dakota.

[larry kurtz]

In ecoscience vernacular it's called a trophic cascade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_cascade

[larry kurtz]

This interview with Jared Diamond aired early this year: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123374267

[Miranda]

Bill: Thanks again for your responses and for the links! I'm once again swamped, but will attempt a proper reply in the evening!

Looking forward to viewing the Diamond interview as well. Thanks, Larry.

[KB]

I feel like I should pay Bill twice his current salary. Or fire him. This is a great thread, but like Miranda I have been too busy to do it justice. I will consider the issues here in a separate post.

[Bill Fleming]

It wouldn't be the first time shooting my mouth off got me canned, KB. ;^)

[KB]

Well, Bill, it won't happen this time. Good work.

[Miranda]

Bill: I find the physics side of argument fascinating, though it will probably take me some time to wrap my head around it completely. But on the moral side,
I am puzzled. You seem to claim that everything changes except the fact that everything changes. Dr. Blanchard gives an answer similar to the one I meant to pose as a question, but I will pose my question to you anyway.

Right now, mercilessly killing children is wrong. Will this change?
Will it someday be good to torture people just to see them suffer? CAN these things ever be good?

[Bill Fleming]

Miranda, as you know, there have been, and still are situations in which
both of the actions you mention are considered the "right" thing to do.

I personally don't condone those things as being just and good,
but there are many who most certainly those who do.

Of course, we'd have to get into what you mean by "mercilessly" and "just to see them suffer"
and listen to the people who believe in the justice of what they're doing explain how
it's not as bad as it looks. But that IS what they do.

That is the nature of situational ethics.

And my claim is that far more people practice it than will admit to it.

It is on the contrary the fashion these days to claim high moral authority for
these actions and refuse to hear arguments that point out that what is REALLY happening
is that those committing these actions are in fact compromising their own "absolute" values.

[Miranda]

Bill: I'm not asking if there are instances in which killing someone might be justified. I am asking if when there are no justifying circumstances if those things can be right.

Suppose I hurt you just to make you feel pain. I'm not trying to save the world.
I have no noble goal. I don't believe it is just. I have no justification. Is that action ever good?

Here's another consideration. Some of my relatives are dead. Will they always be dead or shall I expect them to come to life someday?

I agree with you as far as things like justifying torture go. Certainly we say things are right in certain instances when we find them disgusting in others. But I'm still not willing to believe that everything changes except for change.

[Bill Fleming]

Miranda, it's okay if you don't believe it. That's the difference between a faith based world view and an objective scientific one. What is so, is so, whether one believes in it or not. The earth goes around the sun no matter what we think God said or did. Likewise, science tells us there was a time when there was no earth going around the sun, and that there will probably come a time when that will be true again. We can believe that or not believe it. Our belief won't make it any more true one way or another.

As to your relatives, the evidence suggests that they will stay dead. But in another sense, they (and we) are just part of the way the universe "peoples" right now, over here in out little corner of it. The stuff it uses to do that isn't going anywhere. It just gets rearranged into something (or someone) else. So in a very real sense, we're all here, all the time, in a living universe. That's pretty cool isn't it? Maybe even cool enough?

[Bill Fleming]

"Suppose I hurt you just to make you feel pain. I'm not trying to save the world.
I have no noble goal. I don't believe it is just. I have no justification. Is that action ever good?"

...okay, now let's look at the proposition's opposite:

"Suppose I medicated you just to keep you from ever feeling pain. I'm not trying to save the world.
I have no noble goal. I don't believe it is just. I have no justification. Is that action ever good?"

It's an interesting question, and I don't know the answer for absolute certain.

My gut says the answer to both questions would be no.

But that just seems to support the position that there are no absolutes, doesn't it?

[Bill Fleming]

... it shouldn't take too long to put it together, Miranda, that what we have just described in the post above is the classical model of "hell" and "heaven."

[Miranda]

Bill: Yes it is cool and I suspected that might be your reply!

On what you describe as "heaven" and "hell," though, I think what you've said points to the opposite. If neither heaven nor hell can _ever_ be good, then we have two things that stand constant. Our premise that everything changes but change is gone, because heaven and hell will always be bad.

[Bill Fleming]

"...because heaven and hell will always be bad." Good point, Miranda, but only because they are eternal and unchanging, right?

[Bill Fleming]

In other words, they don't exist. They are "absolutes." We can't describe the essence of "everything" and then include things that aren't part of it (or are somehow MORE than part of it), can we? The same holds for the idea of something supernatural... God for example.

[Miranda]

Except, Bill, that your answer to both questions was no. Which means these situations can never be good. If we have a situation that can never happen, I think we have an absolute.

[Bill Fleming]

Yes, the same paradox as before, expressed a different way. It's like people who say that atheism is a form of religion. You might as well say that abstinence is a form of sex. Sooner or later, if we think too hard or too broadly, words fail us.