Start with these observations:
- Love is the most important aspect of the moral life.
- If love is the most important aspect of one's moral life, it is wrong to perform a non-obligatory action that terminates all one's loves.
- Wrong actions are not praiseworthy.
- Some non-obligatory instances of sacrifice of one's life for another are praiseworthy.
- If there is no life after death, then sacrificing one's life terminates all one's loves.
- Some instances of sacricifing one's life are neither wrong nor obligatory. (3 and 4)
- If there is no life after death, then all non-obligatory sacrifice of one's life is wrong. (1, 2 and 5)
- So there is life after death. (6 and 7)
If the absence of afterlife means that all of one's love is terminated in one's death, might it also mean that all of one's moral guilt or moral rectitude is terminated in one's death? If moral rectitude is not terminated by such a death, how could it be that the most important aspect of one's moral life is terminated by such a death?
ReplyDeleteThis argument confirms that self sacrifice is not done on rational grounds so it does not prove an afterlife.
ReplyDeleteIt proves that we might act as if things still matter to ourselves when we are dead but this does not mean this is actually the case. Thinking of death and rational though do not mix very well. It has been discovered that thoughts about death trigger mechanisms that actively reduce rational thought in favor of emotional responses. This is why religious apologists/propagandists love to mention death a lot. It works in their advantage.
"This is why religious apologists/propagandists love to mention death a lot. It works in their advantage."
ReplyDeleteThis implies that:
a) Apologists know about the correlation between thoughts of death and irrationality
b) They intentionally use this knowledge to their advantage
I'd like to see the evidence for such a sweeping generalization.
Why can't 2 be compensated for by increasing someone else's (or everyone else's) loves?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I would like a strict definition of 'wrong' in 2 and 3 otherwise it's simply going to be argued as a tautology.
If it's a tautology, then it's true. :-) We learn from the history of philosophy that attempts to define fundamental terms like "wrong" are doomed to failure.
ReplyDeleteI like your suggestion about increasing other people's loves. But the thought was that love is the most important aspect of one's own moral life. And the moral life has a certain indexicality to. It is wrong for me to do wrong even if that prevents many other people from doing wrong.
Alex, as a moral error theorist I will strongly disagree with your take on the 'moral' life, but even in your own worldview you cannot seriously consider "it is wrong for me to do wrong even if that prevents many other people from doing wrong" to be a true statement of your beliefs.
ReplyDeleteAs a really simple example, is it impermissible for you to steal a gun from a homicidal person?
Taken to an extreme example, is it not better for a terminally ill person to jump on a grenade than allow a room full of children to be severely injured?
I feel that when one of your arguments is lacking you seem to smuggle a lot of unspoken assumptions in to back it up. Or, more charitably, clarifications of your original. In this one you have gone from "the moral life" to "one's moral life".
Another thing slipped in here is that praise of an act can only be done by survivors hence there is an afterlife of sorts and loves that carry on after the protagonist's death. These surviving loves are ignored.
It's not wrong to take a gun from a homicidal person. The telos of property is the preservation of life, which is why property rights disappear when they conflict with the preservation of life. That's why Sts Ambrose and Aquinas say that if you're starving, and someone has more than enough and refuses to give food you, they are stealing from you--the food is rightfully yours--and you have every right to take it.
ReplyDeleteAs for jumping on a grenade, that's a case of the Principle of Double Effect. You don't intend your death either as an end or as a means.
Premise 2 indicates that I was talking about the individual's moral life.
But then 2 becomes: it is wrong to perform a non-obligatory action that terminates all one's loves unless it's in pursuit of another, more important aspect of the moral life.
ReplyDeleteWhich kind of invalidates the whole thing, no?
Premise 1 says love is the most important aspect of the moral life.
ReplyDeleteBut not the only aspect.
ReplyDeleteIs it not at least conceivable that some other aspect(s) of the moral life could outweigh a paucity of loves that one may have in at least some situation that would make it either not wrong to perform a non-obligatory action which terminates ones loves (2) or is praiseworthy (3)?
Could be, and that's a good criticism. Though note that it's more than a paucity--it's zero under the hypothesis in question.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate you see some validity in the criticism, but I'm mightily confused about how a small amount of the most important thing cannot be overwhelmed by a great amount of the second best thing?
ReplyDeleteOr do you imagine that if it could overwhelm the best thing it would become the best thing (which goes directly against what you said in 1)?
I mean, chocolate is obviously the bestest ice cream ever, but in a choice between a spoonful of chocolate and a whole pint of strawberry, the best is not going to win.
March Hare -
ReplyDelete"I mean, chocolate is obviously the bestest ice cream ever, but in a choice between a spoonful of chocolate and a whole pint of strawberry, the best is not going to win."
I disagree. If I have to make a choice between chocolate ice cream (which I believe to be the bestest) and strawberry, for me, chocolate icecream always wins. If I can't have choclate ice cream, then I won't have ice cream. Strawberry just doesn't cut it. I'll take the spoonfull of chocolate iace cream over the pint of strawberry and savor every last little bit. My thoroughbred, Merlin, was just like that too. Timothy hay with clover was the bestest hay. I agree. I was almost tempted to eat some myself. If the hay didn't have clover in it, it was just not hay, according to Merlin and he wouldn't eat it. Lectures on the starving Mustangs in the Rockies where useless here.
Now here is some absolutely to die for chocolate ice cream:
Number 2: Dove chocolate ice cream bars dipped in dark chocolate.
Number 1: This is the absolute numero uno. Magnum Double Chocolate. Chocolate ice cream dipped in a chocolatey coating, chocolatey sauce, and Belgian milk chocolate.
The Magnum Double Chocolate combined with cabernet savignon will totally satisfy all appetetive states too. But that was another post.