Imposing the duty of gratitude

Normally if Alice did something supererogatory for Bob, Bob has gained a duty to be grateful to me. It is puzzling that we have this normative power to impose a duty on someone else. (Frank Russell’s “And then there were none” story turns on this.)

In some cases the puzzle is solved by actual or presumed consent on the part of Bob.

Here’s the hard case. Bob is in the right mind. Bob doesn’t want the superegatory deed. But his not wanting it, together with the burden to Bob of having to be grateful, is morally outweighed by the benefit to Bob, so Alice’s deed is still good and indeed supererogatory.

I think in this case, Bob indeed acquires the duty of gratitude. We might now say that imposing the burden of gratitude was indeed a reason for Alice not to do the thing—but an insufficient reason. We can also lessen the problem by noting that if being grateful is a burden to Bob, that is because Bob is lacking in virtue—perhaps Bob has an excessive love of independence. To a virtuous person, being grateful is a joy. And often we shouldn’t worry much about imposing on someone something that is only a burden if they are lacking in a relevant virtue.

Degrees of gratitude

How grateful x should be to y for ϕing depends on:

1. The expected benefit to x

2. The actual benefit to x

3. The expected cost to y

4. The actual deontic status of y’ ϕing

5. The believed deontic status of y’s ϕing.

The greater the expected benefit, the greater the appropriate gratitude. Zeroing the expected benefit zeroes the appropriate gratitude: if someone completely accidentally benefited me, no gratitude is appropriate.

I think the actual benefit increases the expected gratitude, even when the expected benefit is fixed. If you try to do something nice for me, I owe you thanks, but I owe even more thanks when I am an actual beneficiary. However, zeroing the actual benefit does not zero the expected gratitude—I should still be grateful for your trying.

The more costly the gift to the giver, the more gratitude is appropriate. But zeroing the cost does not zero the expected gratitude: I owe God gratitude for creating me even though it took no effort. I think that in terms of costs, it is only the expected and not the actual cost that matters for determining the appropriate gratitude. If you bring flowers to your beloved and slip and fall on the way back from the florist and break your leg, it doesn’t seem to me that more gratitude is appropriate.

I think of deontic status here as on a scale that includes four ranges:

1. Wrong (negative)

2. Merely permissible (neither obligatory nor supererogatory) (zero)

3. Obligatory (positive)

4. Supererogatory (super positive)

In cases where both the actual and believed deontic status falls in category (i), no gratitude is appropriate. Gratitude is only appopriate for praiseworthy actions.

The cases of supererogation call for more gratitude than the cases of obligation, other things being equal. But nonetheless cases of obligatory benefiting also call for gratitude. While y might say “I just did my job”, that fact does not undercut the need for gratitude.

Cases where believed and actual deontic status come apart are complicated. Suppose that a do-not-resuscitate order is written in messy handwriting, and a doctor misreads it as a resuscitate order, and then engages in heroic effort to resuscitate, succeeds, and in fact benefits the patient. (Maybe the patient thought that they would not be benefited by resuscitation, but in fact they are.) I think gratitude is appropriate, even if the action was actually wrong.

There is presumably some very complicated function from factors (1)–(5) (and perhaps others) to the degree of appropriate gratitude.

I am really grateful to Juliana Kazemi for a conversation on relevant topics.

It's official! Fastest mile on a climbing wall (male) record

 Guinness has just approved my record from July for fastest mile on an indoor climbing wall (male), officially at 1:42:57.95. For technical details and links to video, see my writeup from July.

Thinking about this made me realize just how much this was a team effort. I am grateful to everyone who made this possible, especially:

• My family for encouragement and patience with me over the summer as I trained for this.
• Benjamin Sadler doing the official measurements of the route, correcting for the angle of inclination.
• Mitchell Minyard and Libby Regnerus for being witnesses for the route measurement.
• Madelyn Hayden, Dominic Pruss and Gabriella Williams for being in charge of my safety during the attempt and/or outside-of-regular-Rock-hours training sessions.
• Rock staff for watching out for my safety during regular hours, for extending the route so that 112 climbs would be enough for a mile, and constant encouragement.
• Rich Eva and Libby Regnerus for spending 1¾ hours of their Saturday holding stopwatches to provide an official time.
• Mitchell Minyard and Gabriella Williams for witnessing the attempt and working hard to log the start and end times of each of 112 climbs. 
• Gym management staff Rachel Burduroglu, Zac Huston and Cody Schrank for much encouragement, practical help, patience with many requests, and especially allowing me to use the facility outside of hours.
• The audience (notably including President Linda Livingstone and First Gentleman Brad Livingstone) for their great encouragement.
• All the members of the Baylor rock climbing community for being such a welcoming community over the past eight years, and having taught me pretty much all I know about climbing.
• Baylor Moody Media Lab for lending me equipment for recording the attempt.
• And Guinness World Records for patiently answering all my nitpicking questions and taking the time to review a massive amount of evidence in a fair and trustworthy way.

Obedience to God out of gratitude

Some philosophers want to ground our duty to obey God’s commands in the need to show gratitude to God for all the goods God has done for us. I think there is something to that, but I want to point out a complication.

When someone has done something good for us, that generates moral reasons to do something good for them. But that is different from generating moral reasons to obey their commands. After all, being obeyed need not be good for the person issuing the commands. Imagine that you are on a ship along with someone who has already done many good things for you and your family. The ship is sinking. There is one last space left in a lifeboat. You start to push your benefactor into that space. Your benefactor interrupts: “Don’t! Get into it yourself!” In this case, it would be bad for your benefactor for you to obey their commmand, and obedience to this command would not, I think, be a right expression of gratitude. You might have other moral reasons to obey the command, such as that if someone is offering to make the ultimate sacrifice, you should not deprive them of that choice. But gratitude for past benefits is not a reason to obey your benefactor when your benefactor would not in fact benefit from your obedience.

So the mere fact that you are commanded something by your benefactor does not generate a gratitude-based reason for obedience. It is only when your benefactor would benefit from your obedience that such a reason is generated.

Now things get a little complicated in the case of God. It seems we cannot benefit God, as God has perfect beatitude. But as we learn from Aquinas’ discussion of love for God, it’s more complicated than that. There are internal and external benefits and harms a person might receive. Internal benefits and harms affect the person’s intrinsic properties in a positive way—think here of pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, etc. But there are external benefits and harms: when people speak badly about you behind your back, the loss of reputation is an external harm, even if you never find out about it and it never affects any intrinsic property of yours. Similarly, because friends are other selves, if x loves y, then benefits and harms to y are benefits and harms to x, albeit perhaps only external ones. Thus, we can benefit God by benefiting those that God loves, namely everyone.

So, when God commands us—as in fact he does—to love our neighbor, then our obedience to that command does benefit God, albeit externally. So it seems we do have a gratitude-based moral reason to do what God says. But notice that as far as the argument goes right now, that is not a reason to love our neighbor out of obedience to God. The reason to love our neighbor out of gratitude to God would remain even if God did not command us to love our neighbor.

But this isn’t the whole story. For, first, when we show gratitude to a benefactor by bestowing some internal or external benefits on them, gratitude seems to call on us to have a preference for bestowing those benefits that the benefactor asks us to bestow. Thus, the fact that some benefit to the benefactor is requested by the benefactor adds to the gratitude-based reasons for bestowing that benefit. And, second, it seems plausible that having one’s commands be obeyed is itself an external benefit—it is a way of being honored.

Thus, that God has commanded us to love our neighbor intensifies our reasons based on gratitude to God to love our neighbor. And even if God were to command something seemingly arbitrary and not in itself beneficial, like abstinence from pork, we externally benefit God insofar as we obey him. But in the latter case something stronger is needed than that: for the obedience to be a form of gratitude, it needs to be the case that on balance we benefit God through the obedience. That being obeyed is good as far as it goes does not show that being obeyed is on balance good. It is good as far as it goes for our benefactor to be obeyed when they say to go into the lifeboat, but it might actually on balance be better for them to be pushed into the lifeboat.

Thus there is a limit to how far this justification of divine authority goes. If we obey God out of gratitude, our reason for obedience cannot simply consist in the facts that God has commanded us and that God has bestowed great benefits on us. Our reason would also need to include the fact that on balance it bestows a benefit—an external one, to be sure—on God if we obey.

Is it the case that whenever God commands something, it always bestows a benefit on balance on God that we obey him? That initially sounds like a reasonable thesis, but we can easily imagine cases where it is not so. Consider cases where my disobedience to God would prevent massive disobedience by others. For instance, a malefactor offers me a strong temptation to disobey God, and tells me that if I refuse the temptation, then a thousand other people will be offered the same temptation, but if I give in, I will be the only one. Looking at how strong the temptation is, I conclude that if it’s offered to a thousand people, about 500 of them will succumb to it. Thus, if I obey God, there will be much less obedience of God in the world. Hence, my obedience to God actually leads to God being less honored and receiving less external benefit. But nonetheless I need to obey. Hence, the duty of obedience is not grounded in gratitude.

In summary: Normally, gratitude does give us moral reason to obey God. But if I am right, then the moral reason to obey God that comes from gratitude needs to include the assumption that it is good for God to be obeyed. And we can imagine cases where that assumption is false and yet obedience is still required.

Gratitude to the cosmos

Some non-theists, without thinking that the cosmos is a person, want to say that we can be appropriately grateful to the cosmos. This is supposed to do justice to our deep human need to be grateful for the good things to happen to us.

I have two lines of thought that this doesn’t work. Both start with the thought that the cosmos’s connection the good and bad events in our lives is relevantly symmetric. The cosmos is not an agent, so no kind of Principle of Double Effect can be employed to say that the good stuff is to be attributed to the cosmos and the bad stuff is not. Moreover, since the cosmos is not an agent, its activity is beyond moral justification.

Now, my first line of thought. Suppose Fred has, with no moral justification, fed me poison and an hour later he gave me an antidote. I should not be grateful for the antidote. Similarly, if I get cancer and then the cancer goes into remission, I shouldn’t be grateful to the cosmos for the remission. Yet cancer going into remission is a paradigm case of the sort of thing that we feel the need to be grateful for. But since the cosmos gave us the cancer, and did so with no moral justification, there is no call to be grateful for the cosmos taking the cancer away. (The reason for my “with no moral justification” clause is this: If the poison constituted a case of morally justified capital punishment, and the antidote constituted a morally justified pardon, then gratitude for the antidote is appropriate.)

The second is this. Given that the cosmos’s relation to the bad stuff in our lives is relevantly like its relation to the good stuff:

1. If it is appropriate to be grateful to the universe for good stuff, it’s appropriate to be resentful against the universe for bad stuff.

But:

2. It is not appropriate to be resentful against the universe.

First, intuitively, such resentment seems a paradigm case of a spiritually unfruitful attitude. I think we have all felt resentments against non-agential things—say, pieces of machinery—but clearly such resentments are something to be ashamed of.

Second, I should feel no resentment against people who, without in any way doing anything wrong, have caused bad things to happen to me. If someone running in the dark from a vicious animal accidentally knocks me down because she didn’t see me, no resentment is appropriate, because there was nothing inappropriate. Everything the cosmos does to me is in some sense an accident, because the cosmos is not an agent.

Perhaps the last argument could be countered by saying that even if the cosmos is not an agent, it might have a teleology, and perhaps we could be resentful when it departs from it (and grateful when it follows it). But I don’t think the cosmos is a substance, and only substances have an intrinsic teleology (as opposed to a teleology induced by external agency—which in this case would require something like theism).

Justice and gratitude

It is galling to be punished or even criticized unjustly. But it can also be galling to be rewarded or even praised unjustly. Over the past two years, two of my graduate students have received grants. They did all the work. But because of university policy, I had to be listed as the PI on the grants. And I’ve been getting multiple letters from the administration congratulating me on the grants. That’s galling.

I think God would be similarly galled if he were thanked for something he didn’t do, unless he did something just as good or better. And so God would have strong reason to act to ensure that such thanks would not be forthcoming.

Thus, we have reason to think that whatever people sincerely thank God for, God has either done that—or something at least as good—for them. In particular, we have reason to think that God has become incarnate and died for our sins or has done something at least as good.

Notice an interesting way that this argument makes available something like an implicit faith to non-Christian theists. For non-Christian theists also have reason to believe, on the strength of this argument, that God did something at least as good as what Christianity says he did, and to thank God for doing this. If they then thank God for "doing something at least this good", they would be implicitly thanking God for the Incarnation and Redemption, since in fact that is something God did that was "at least this good".

Mistaken gratitude and an argument for Christianity

Suppose I thank you with sincerity and expansiveness for saving my life at the risk of your own, and continually praise you to others, trying to get the President to give you a medal. But you didn't actually do anything like saving my life. I am just quite mistaken. Surely you, like any other virtuous person, would be dying of embarrassment and would be doing your best to convince me that you had not done this and hence do not deserve the thanks and praise.

Of course, it is crucial that the praise and thanks be sincere. A virtuous person need not allow himself to be manipulated by insincere fulsomeness. And there will be exceptions. If you thought that my own mental state was too fragile to hear the truth, or if I was too irrational in my belief, you might leave me to my mistake. If you hadn't saved my life but unbeknownst to me had done something else for me that was of the same sort, then you might leave me mistaken as to the exact nature of what you did for me. And, finally, if you haven't yet saved my life, but have an opportunity to do so, you might save my life now or soon instead of correcting me. This would be especially true if you wanted a loving relationship with me, for a love based on such a mistake is little better than a forced love.

The fact that a virtuous person does not contradict great thanks and praise by people who are sincerely convinced that he has made a great sacrifice for them is strong evidence that he has made, or is going to make, either that sacrifice or one of at least the same order of magnitude. And if the praise and thanks comes from people who are rational and psychologically healthy, the evidence is even stronger. And, finally, the simplest explanation of why the virtuous person does not contradict the praise and thanks is that not just that he has made or is about to make a sacrifice of the same order of magnitude, but that he has made the very sacrifice he is being thanked for.

But millions of Christians have praised and thanked God for saving them from sin at the cost of death on the cross, and have not found God to contradict them. And many of these Christians have been quite rational and psychologically healthy. Assuming that God exists—this argument needs to assume that—this gives significant evidence that God did what he is thanked for doing. So, likely, what they thank God for doing is just what God has done.

This argument cannot be used against Christianity since no other religion praises God for a good of a higher order of magnitude. Indeed, it seems unlikely that God could do anything of a higher order of magnitude for us.

Kant's argument from gratitude

Kant famously argued that we had a duty to believe in God, as this was necessary for us to fulfill the duty to give thanks for the universe. My understanding is that Kant thought that this was not an argument for the existence of God, but only an argument for the duty to believe in God. But surely it becomes an argument for the existence of God (or at least an agent who caused the universe) when one adds the very plausible premise:

• One only has the duty to give thanks for a product of agency.

Perhaps, though, Kant would want to subjectivize this premise into:

• One only has the duty to give thanks for what one believes to be a product of agency.

But if one says this, then the atheist doesn't have a duty to give thanks for the existence of the universe, and Kant's argument fails. So it seems that either Kant's argument fails (at least in the case of atheists--maybe you could argue that if you believe in God then you have a duty to believe in God, which is an interesting result, but I don't think it's what Kant was trying to argue for) or Kant is wrong that we can't argue for the existence of God or both.

But I am no Kant scholar.

No one would be better off not existing

1. (Premise) If t is a time at which a human being x exists, then x owes thanks to God for existing at t.
2. (Premise) If x would be better off not existing at t, then x does not owe anybody thanks for existing at t.
3. Therefore, there is no human being that exists at a time at which it would be better for her not to exist.

A corollary is that every human in hell is better off existing than not existing, and owes thanks to God for continuing to exist, as per my remarks here.  

This post is inspired by a remark I overheard wafting from another restaurant table near the Central APA that on some view (I didn't hear whose), even those in hell owe thanks to God.

A gratitude/resentment argument

This argument is inspired by an argument of Kenneth Pearce.

1. (Premise) It is sometimes appropriate to be grateful for or to the universe or to be resentful for or at the universe.
2. (Premise) It is only appropriate to be grateful for or to A if A is an agent or an effect of an agent.
3. (Premise) It is only appropriate to be resentful for or at A if A is an agent or an effect of an agent.
4. Therefore, the universe is an agent or an effect of an agent.
5. (Premise) If the universe is an agent or an effect of an agent, naturalism is false.
6. Therefore, naturalism is false.

Johnson's framework for theistic arguments

Occasionally, I've been offering theistic arguments that border on begging the question. Here, for instance, is one that's basically due to Kant, but transposed into an argument in a way that Kant would not approve of:

1. (Premise) We should be grateful for the wondrous universe.
2. (Premise) If something is not the product of agency, we should not be grateful for it.
3. Therefore, the wondrous universe is the product of agency.

The argument is indisputably valid.[note 1] Moreover, if theism is true, it is also sound, and I do take theism to be true. But soundness is, of course, not enough for a good argument. While premise (2) is pretty plausible (in the objective sense of "should"), it feels like premise (1) "begs the question".

Nonetheless, I think there could be something to (1)-(3). Dan Johnson, in the January 2009 issue of Faith and Philosophy has a fascinating little article on the ontological and cosmological arguments. He argues that a certain kind of circularity is not vicious. Suppose that I know p₁. I then infer p₂ from p₁ in such a way that I also know p₂. I then non-rationally (or irrationally) stop believing p₁, but as it happens, I continue to believe p₂. It will then often be the case that there will be a good argument from p₂ back to p₁ (perhaps given some auxiliary premises), and if I use that argument, I will be able to regain my knowledge of p₁. This is true even though there is a circularity: from p₁, to p₂, and back to p₁. Here is an uncontroversial example: I am told my hotel room is 314. I infer that my hotel room is the first three digits of pi. I then forget that my hotel room is 314, but continue to believe it is the first three digits of pi. I then infer that my hotel room is 314.

Johnson proposes that by the sensus divinitatis one may come to know that God exists (actually, throughout this, I can't remember if he talks of knowledge or justified belief). One may then infer from this various things, such as that possibly God exists. Then, one irrationally rejects the existence of God (it does not have to be a part of the theory that every rejection of the existence of God is irrational), but some of the things one inferred from that belief remain. And arguments like the S5 ontological argument then make it possible to recover the knowledge of the existence of God from the things that one had inferred from that belief. Johnson also applies this to the cosmological argument.

This same structure may be present in my Kantian argument. By the sensus divinitatis one comes to know that God exists (obviously this is not a Kantian idea!). One infers that the universe is such that we should be grateful for it. One then irrationally comes to be an atheist (again, there is need be no claim that every atheist is irrationally such), but one continues to believe that gratitude is an appropriate response to the universe. And if that belief is sufficiently deeply engrained, one can reason back from it to theism or at least to agency behind the universe.

Now let me move a little beyond the Johnson paper. I think it is not necessary for this structure that the initial knowledge of God's existence come from the sensus divinitatis. Any other way of having knowledge of God's existence will do—say, by argument or testimony. In fact, it is not even necessary for this structure that one oneself ever had the knowledge or even belief that God exists. Suppose, for instance, one's parents knew that God exists (in whatever way), and inferred from this that the universe is worthy of gratitude. They then instilled this belief in one, and did so in such a way as to be knowledge-transmitting. (Surely, value beliefs can be instilled in such a way.) But they did not instill the belief that God exists (maybe because they thought that the existence of God was something everybody should figure out for themselves). One then knows (1), and can infer (3).

This transmission can be mediated by the wider culture, too. Culture can transmit knowledge, whether scientific or normative, and arguments can work at a cultural level. It could be that a theistic culture where the existence of God was known grew into a culture where (1) was known. The knowledge of (1) can remain even if the culture non-rationally rejects the existence of God (as American culture has not done, and might or might not do in the future). And then the individual can acquire the knowledge of (1) from the culture (we don't need to attribute knowledge to the culture if we don't want to; we can just talk of knowledge had by individuals participating in the culture), and then infer (3).

I think there are probably many consequences of theism that are embedded in the culture, from which consequences one can infer back to theism. If the participants in the culture knew theism to be true when these consequences were derived, then it is perfectly legitimate to reason back from these consequences to theism.

Frank Beckwith's new book

I found Frank Beckwith's new book, Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic, a gift from Frank (thank you!). I haven't read it yet, but I've glanced through it, and have found it a charming, well-argued and personal book. One thing that strikes me is how many evangelicals, like Frank, who come or return to the fullness of communion with the Catholic Church are so very gracious to their Protestant brethren, and so grateful what they have gained from their years as evangelical Protestants. The grace that led them to full communion, step by step, is palpable in this love and gratitude. I've suggested in an earlier post that one draws closer to non-Catholic Christians by becoming more faithful to the Catholic faith, and this seems to be a case of that. At the same time, the gracious love of Frank's non-Catholic friends also comes through.

Friendships between ecclesially and doctrinally divided Christians have of late been to me a particular case of the love by which one may know Christians. Division may lead to hatred, but division between people committed to Christ is also an opportunity for great love.