God and morality

I have never been much of a fan of the argument from morality for the existence of God. But I now think it's worth distinguishing that argument into two variants: the metaphysical and the epistemological. The metaphysical says that the existence of moral truths is best explained by positing the existence of God. That one I haven't been much of a fan of, though I haven't thought much about it, and quite possibly, were I to think about it more, I'd see more to it than that.

But the epistemological argument seems to me to be quite promising. It says that we do know moral truths, but the best explanations of how we know moral truths presuppose the existence of God. After all, it is really hard to give a non-theistic account of how our beliefs about rightness are responsive to the facts about rightness.

One might think the problem only afflicts certain ethical theories. Thus, it seems that the constructivist or maybe even that elusive beast, the non-theistic natural lawyer, has some hope for an answer. But I think not. For while constructivism could explain how our beliefs about normative and applied ethics (say, that it's right to act generalizably, or that one ought not break promises) claims are responsive to the truth, I doubt that it could explain how the belief that, say, constructivism is the correct account of rightness is responsive to the truth. (The claim cannot simply be a claim about how we use the word "rightness", say that the constructivist account of rightness has the best fit with our use of the word. For then if our use were to shift, the constructivist would be in trouble.)

The issue is simply this: only three plausible metaphysical views make moral goodness as such (as opposed to beliefs about goodness) be explanatorily efficacious, and hence allow for our beliefs to be responsive to the moral facts: optimalism (everything that exists is for the best), theism (possibly widely enough understood to include some varieties of deism) and Aristotelianism. The last of these raises explanatory problems (e.g., about transitions between species) that only theism and possibly optimalism can solve. And optimalism is implausible, since it is not plausible that there is a best world.

Berkeley

Berkeley's view that the physical is really mental is a paradigm of a clearly absurd view that does not need more refutation than its being stated. Why shouldn't we take physicalist views on which the mental is really physical as absurd in the same way?

A metaphysics lunch

One of the students in my metaphysics class (which meets at 12:30 pm) emailed me if it would be OK if she brought in lunch. I thought: well, that's a polite thing to ask--some students will just eat their lunches in class without asking--and so I said yes, if it doesn't disturb people. And then I forgot about it. Imagine my surprise when today she brings big pots full of fragrant dishes, and proceeds to serve up a delicious lunch for all of us. Wow, and thank you, Hannah!

Literature

There is a very nice, and not at all ad hoc, theistic explanation of why there exist beings who like telling stories. Creation reflects the creator. The creator is the author of the universe, and so there is good reason for there to be creatures who also engage in authorship. I have no doubt that a just-so evolutionary story can be given about the practice of story-telling. However, I suspect that, nonetheless, the fact that we tell stories is evidence for theism over and against naturalism.

Quam Dilecta

Oddly, I had never read Peter van Inwagen's wonderful "Quam Dilecta" until today. Mark Murphy reminded me of it, and that reminded me that he earlier advised me to read it. I was particularly struck by one paragraph, which I couldn't have said as well, but which I can nonetheless reiterate (and it's rather relevant to my motivational defense of the ontological argument):

There are Christians I know, however, who are very impressive people, and their impressiveness is of a distinctively Christian sort. A common thread runs through their very diverse lives, and it is a Christian thread. I have never been able to discern an "Enlightenment" thread that runs through the lives of the admirable atheists of my acquaintance. There are five or six Christians I know who, for all the rich individuality of their lives and personalities, are like lamps, each shining with the same, dearly familiar, uncreated light that shines in the pages of the New Testament. I can no more doubt this judgment than I can doubt many of my much more everyday sorts of judgment to the effect that this or that person is kind or generous or honest or loving. When one is in the presence of this light--when one so much as listens to one of these people speak--it is very difficult indeed to believe that one is not in the presence of a living reality that transcends their individual lives.

Evangelization, love and union

One important reason for evangelization is the beneficence aspect of love: Christians would like everyone to share in Christ's gift of new life. But a second reason for evangelization is love's striving for union. Christians would like to be united with neighbor, and thus would like to be members of the body of Christ together with the neighbor. The second reason presupposes the first. For, sometimes, the beneficence aspect of love holds us back from a union that would be harmful to the other—thus, if our company is noxious to someone we are in love with, we should sacrifice ourselves and stay away. However, the union in the body of Christ is beneficial for our neighbor, and hence the beneficence aspect of love does not hold us back here.

Is this paternalistic? Could be. But there is nothing wrong with a proper paternalism.

Explanatory accounts of knowledge

That something like the following thesis is true seems very plausible to me, though some refinement is called for:

1. We can only know of, and perhaps even have a belief in, the existence of a basic class of properties or entities if some member of that class enters somehow into an explanation of some belief of ours.

We know about electrons, because electrons enter into causal explanations of various physical phenomena, and these physical phenomena enter into explanations of our beliefs. Knowledge of the existence of mathematical entities are harder to reconcile with (1). But perhaps the fact that 2+2=4 explains, in a non-causal way, something going on in our minds.

But what about evaluative properties such as normative or axiological ones? Let me focus on the axiological. I take it to be almost definitive of modern naturalism that axiological properties do not enter into genuine explanations. While the existence of a soup kitchen might be explained in terms of a belief in the goodness of a soup kitchen, the goodness of the soup kitchen is entirely explanatorily impotent if naturalism is right. I think the naturalist's best bet would be to identify the property of goodness with some property such as contributing to organic flourishing. But the problem reappears in regard to the property of "flourishing".

If we reject modern naturalism, we can say that flourishing is a property of accord to a thing's nature, and can account for that nature in an Aristotelian way that makes the nature be explanatorily efficacious. Or we can give a theistic story.

The smallness of the universe

[I am now thinking that the following line of argument is probably deeply spiritually mistaken. Or, maybe, the issue is this: It is the universe conceived of naturalistically that is small. But the universe that we in fact inhabit lacks that kind of smallness for it images the glory of God. So perhaps there is still an ad hominem against naturalism in the line of thought.]

Suppose I and a few other people were born and lived on the inner surface of a sphere that was a kilometer in diameter. Walk 3.14 km, and you're back where you started. And that was all. As far as I could tell, things had always been in the sphere more or less the same as far back as one could tell, with a small stable population and a simple, self-contained ecosystem. There is nothing particularly mysterious in this ecosystem, and there even is a little library containing books written by my ancestors which give complete systmes of physics, chemistry and biology that fit with all the data.

I think there is an intuition one might have after one had surveyed this meager habitat: there has to be more to reality than this. This intuition could be bolstered by arguments from design or causation, but I think it could also be a self-standing intuition: this can't be all there is.

Now our universe is bigger than that sphere. But I do not think that sheer size is what makes a difference. When I reflect on my stargazing, instead of thinking of the vastness and mystery of the physical world, I have lately been thinking about a certain kind of smallness that it has. Sure, there are untold numbers of stars arranged in untold numbers of galaxies. But even that one kilometer sphere had untold numbers of grains of dust, and that didn't make it all that large. The universe is physically large relative to us, but it exhibits a lawlike unity, and while there are many stars, they can mostly be classified into a limited number of types and subtypes. And this vast universe is, nonetheless, one that is small enough that we can have all-encompassing cosmological theories—that we can hold it all in our mind. It is true that our present theories are not good enough. But we seem to be making progress.

If this is right, then I think it is possible to have a similar kind of smallness intuition about the universe as a whole: this can't be all there is to reality. Reflecting on the universe as a whole—a whole made up of physical parts, indeed largely made up of parts like electrons, neutrinos and/or electromagnetic fields that are pretty familiar to us—can make the universe seem small to the mind's eye. Not small physically, of course. The relevant kind of conceptual smallness is compatible with the universe having infinite spatial extent. Rather, it is small in some deeper sense, despite all its wonder and glory.

I think this may be a way in which the physical universe proclaims to us that it is not all there is, that it is not self-sufficient, that while great and full of splendor, it is, after all, but an image. And unless it is seen expressly as an image, it will pale to us. For a while one might enjoy looking at the calligraphy in a manuscript. But eventually, unless one starts reading what the text says, the manuscript will probably stop being all that interesting. But once seen as pointing to something greater, indeed something infinite (and not just in the uninteresting spatial sense), then it takes on a new, and deeper splendor, one that shines through that natural splendor that was in danger of fading.

Torture

I'll take for granted three things:

1. Long-term incarceration for serious crimes is permissible
2. Income tax, at roughly the level of taxation in the U.S., is permissible (though there may be particular features of the present U.S. tax code that are unjustifiable)
3. Torture is wrong.

The last claim is a rough-and-ready claim. I do not mean it to exclude the possibility that there are extremely rare circumstances (such as where there is literally a time bomb placed in a populous area that cannot be evacuated) where torture is impermissible, but I mean the claim in the same sense in which people say to their kids "You need to keep your promises"—they do not intend to exclude the possibility of rare occurrences where promises should not be kept. (On the basis of divine revelation—as expressed in the documents of Vatican II—I take it that torture is literally always wrong, but I am not assuming this strong claim.)

Let's add some further, plausible claims. Some things may be wrong to do due to some complex moral reasoning which shows that even though the action does not prima facie seem to harm anybody, nonetheless the action is wrong (contraception is like that). But some things are wrong for a very straightforward reason: they are wrong because of the clear and obvious harm they impose on the victim. Torture seems to be one of those things:

4. Torture is wrong because of the harm imposed on the victim.

The following claim is also plausible:

5. If an action is wrong because of the harm imposed on the victim, then an action which imposes a greater harm under the same circumstances on the same victim will also be wrong.

Finally, add the following two claims:

6. If a self-interestedly rational and well-informed person would prefer B to A, where B is harmful, then it would be more harmful for her to receive A instead of B.
7. Some self-interestedly rational and well-informed persons would prefer some (perhaps moderate) instances of torture to a lifetime of taxation (at the level of U.S. income taxes) or to long-term incarceration.

But now we have a paradox. By (6) and (7), together with the fact from (4) that torture is harmful, for some people life-long taxation or long-term incarceration would be worse than some kinds of torture. But then by (5), life-long taxation and long-term incarceration is wrong in the case of these people. And this is in tension for (1) and (2) (I am assuming it is possible for one of these people to be guilty of a serious crime).

I think (1)-(3) are correct. I also think (7) is true. We would not think that someone who endured severe pain for, say, 15 minutes in the course of escaping from a twenty-year jail sentence was self-interested irrational. According to some stuff I found online, the average American in 2004 paid $9377 in income taxes. If this amount were annually invested at 8% (which is I think fairly conservative for such a long-term investment), in 40 years, it would yield $2.4 million. We would not think that someone who ran through non-life-threatening but very painful flames in order to get to a treasure chest containing $2.4 million, even if the chest could only be opened in 40 years, would be irrational in so doing.

So, we need to reject (4), (5) or (6) to get out of the difficulty. Of these claims, I find (5) the most plausible. So that leaves (4) and (6) as candidates for rejection. I think (6) is a bit more plausible than (4), though I am suspicious of the whole concept of self-interested rationality. If so, then (4) should be rejected.

But if torture is not wrong because of the harm inflicted to the victim, what makes it wrong? I am inclined to say the following: It is wrong because to torture someone is unloving, and the duties of love are the whole of the moral law. And it is unloving not just because of the harm inflicted on the victim, because there is more to being loving than providing benefits and more to being unloving than inflicting harms. Love is a unitive relationship, and acts that are innately counter-unitive, such as torture, marital contraception, or lying (I am not putting them all on an equal moral footing—equally, they are wrong, but they are not equally wrong, if you get my drift), are also wrong.

A different way of rejecting (4) might be given by a Kantian.

Explanation and truthmakers

Say that a true proposition is ontologically ungrounded provided that it is not true because of any combination of what things exist, how things that exist exist and what things do not exist. In particular, an ontologically ungrounded proposition lacks a truthmaker.

It would be really nice if one could argue that:

1. No contingent ontologically ungrounded proposition has an explanation.

For if we could show (1), then we would have a neat argument against those presentist views on which truths about the past are ontologically ungrounded (e.g., Trenton Merricks). For some truths about the past have explanations: that World War II happened is explained by Germany's humiliation after World War I, say. We might also have an argument against the version of Molinism on which conditionals of free will are ontologically ungrounded. For some conditionals can probably be explained in terms of others: That George in circumstances C would greedily accept the bribe explains that he would accept the bribe.

I don't really have a good argument for (1), apart from the fact that it rings true. But, then again, I am no friend of ontologically ungrounded propositions, so my intuitions aren't the best judge here.

However, while (1) is hard to argue for, I think the following is pretty easy to argue for:

2. No contingent ontologically ungrounded proposition has a causal explanation.

After all, to causally explain a proposition is to give a cause of that in the world which grounds its truth. Causation is a relation between things in the world (possibly including absences, too), while causal explanation is a relation between propositions that depends on causation. I don't know whether (2) is enough to refute Molinism. But it does seem enough to refute the ungrounded past view. That World War II happened is, after all, causally explained by the fact that Germany was humiliated.

Perhaps the presentist will say that World War II was causally explained by the humiliation. But when? As I understand it, when World War II started, the humiliation was already gone. Thus, at no time were World War II and the humiliation both present. Hence, at every time we have a causal explanation relation between two propositions at most one of which reports an ontologically grounded fact. But how can there be a causal explanation relation between two propositions one of which is ontologically ungrounded?

I suppose this is a variation of the old causation objection to presentism.

Laws and theodicy: Some steps in the dialectic

The following steps are quite standard in the problem of evil dialectics:

1. Atheist: The world contains many instances of suffering, all of which could easily be averted if there were a God, simply by modifying the laws of nature. For instance, there could be a law of nature saying that knives turn to water before they penetrate hearts, etc.
2. Theist: Such laws of nature would be unduly complex. For instance, they would have to specify exactly when knives turn to water, in what way (does the process happen all at once, starting at the tip, etc.), how close they need to be to the heart for the process to start, etc. Simplicity of law is intrinsically valuable—a world all of whose laws are as elegant as General Relativity is a world of great value, in its diversity reflecting God's infinity in its and in its simplicity God's unity.
3. Atheist: Any value of such simplicity is far outweighed by the disvalue of suffering for persons.

At this point, we have a serious clash of intuitions and it may not be efficient for the theist to try to bridge it. Instead, the theist might try to argue that humans couldn't coexist with the more complex laws. I am inclined to think that that isn't the best answer.[note 1] Instead I want to consider the following dialectical moves:

4. Theist: It is valuable for us to be able to figure out the laws, both for the sake of the understanding itself and to enable us to exercise more meaningful agency. But laws complex enough to stop every kind of suffering would be too complex for us to figure out.
5. Atheist: But God could give us more powerful intellects.

It is at this dialectical point that I want to jump into the fray. Three moves are open to the theist. The first is that there is a value in having a range of beings in the world, ranging through completely mindless electrons, unconscious plants, barely conscious lower animals, moderately smart higher animals, moderately smart human beings, perhaps even smarter non-human persons somewhere else, and in any case a whole range of superhuman intelligences (angels). This great chain of being is of significant value. It is valuable that the chain not have significant gaps in it, as there would be if God refrained from creating agents—us—with intellects that are not all that impressive compared to what is higher up. (And, O how great the glory of God, God then became one of these lower agents, and raised another to be the queen of heaven.)

The second move is to note that there is something odd about complaining that God did not create in our place a smarter species. Whom did God wrong or behave less than perfectly lovingly towards by not creating a smarter species in our place? That smarter species? But you cannot wrong or behave less than perfectly lovingly towards someone who never exists. Or us? But I think our existence is overall worthwhile.

The third and most challenging move is to note that there is a value in having enmattered intellects which do a significant part—if the materialists are right (they're not), all—of their thinking by use of a physical organ (the brain), an organ whose morphology arose through natural physical processes of not too small probability. Now, a more complex set of laws given such conditions might require a more complex brain. But it could well be that the energy usage and evolution of such a more complex brain would require further complexification of the laws. I do not know that this is so, but neither do I know that this is not so, and I doubt that anyone is in a position to claim that it is not so. But the further complexification of the laws may require a further complexification of the brain. And so on. There might be a fixed point to this sequence—a brain that can understand the laws of nature that it is governed by. But we do not know that there is such a fixed point. It's fun and humbling to note how easily our thinking hits up against things that none of us know.

If I were giving a history comprehensive exam...

It seems one can set a history of philosophy comprehensive exam that would be hard and rigorous without knowing almost any history of philosophy—though, of course, to pass or grade, one would have to know a lot. The exam is fun to set. It wouldn't be so much fun to take. Here it is:

Consider the following modal forms of argument:

1. Mp; M(if p then q); therefore Mq
2. Lp; if p then q; therefore Lq
3. L(if p then q); p; therefore Lq
4. M((exists x)F(x)); therefore (exists x)MF(x)
5. L((exists x)F(x)); therefore (exists x)LF(x)

It is generally uncontroversial that (1)-(3) are fallacies; it is fairly widely thought that (4) and (5) are fallacies. Write six essays, each about three or four pages long, satisfying the following rules:

• Each essay chooses exactly one philosopher.
• Each essay chooses exactly one of the argument forms above.
• Exactly two philosophers are chosen from each of the following periods: ancient, medieval and modern (up to the end of the 19th century).
• No two essays concerning philosophers from the same period (ancient, medieval or modern) select the same argument form.
• Each essay identifies a place where the philosopher in persona propria appears to be making use of the selected argument form. The significance of the inference to the philosopher's more major project(s) is discussed, and it is discussed how the project(s) would be affected were the inference invalidated. Then it is discussed whether the philosopher in question could either to defend the inference (perhaps the philosopher has open to her or him a modal logic on which the inference is not fallacious) or somewhat modify the form of argument so as to avoid the modal fallacy (without simply shifting to a different modal fallacy or including a trivializing premise).

Remark: Part of the difficulty of this is that I think it is pretty rare for a great philosopher to commit a modal fallacy. So one will need to show quite a bit of knowledge of the work of great philosophers, or a fair amount of knowledge of the work of not so great philosophers, to do this. Of course, if one knows ahead of time that this question will come up, one will just read up on some really, really bad philosophers from each period.

Did God act unjustly by kicking us out of paradise?

One might be worried--as a commenter recently has been--that the idea that God kicked Adam and Eve out of paradise, thereby ensuring that their descendants would grow up in our vale of tears, is unjust. Since the focus is on Adam and Eve's descendants, let us grant for the sake of argument that God was just in punishing Adam and Eve with death. The question, then, is whether God was just in having us live outside paradise.

Now, if God was unjust in acting as Genesis says he did, then whom did he wrong? He did not wrong Adam and Eve, for their punishment was deserved. Presumably, he wronged their descendants, namely us. But now consider a sequence of three possible worlds:

1. God kills Adam and Eve on the spot, and the human race gets no further.
2. God kicks Adam and Eve out of paradise, and prevents them from reproducing.
3. God kicks Adam and Eve out of paradise, but does not prevent them from reproducing.

We've granted for the sake of argument that God was right to punish Adam and Eve. So, world 1 is a world where (as far as these sketches go, at least) God does not act unjustly. What about world 2? Does God wrong anybody there? Not at all. He doesn't wrong Adam and Eve: he treats them somewhat less harshly than in world 1. Does he wrong us, Adam and Eve's descendants? Surely not--for we don't exist in world 2, and one cannot wrong the non-existent.

So, in 1 and 2 there is no injustice. What about world 3? If we say that in world 3 there is injustice, then it seems that God's failure to prevent Adam and Eve from reproducing was an injustice--for we have granted that there is no injustice in world 2 which is like world 3, except that Adam and Eve are prevented from reproduction. In other words, if we say that there is an injustice in world 3, we have to say that once God decided to kick Adam and Eve out of paradise, he acted unjustly towards their descendants by letting Adam and Eve have these descendants. But that, I think, is absurd. If we grant it, then by the same token any of us who choose to reproduce in this vale of tears are doing wrong. (Yes, there is a recent book arguing just for the wrongness of reproduction. Few absurdities are such that no philosopher could be found to defend them.)

But that's too simple an argument. After all, maybe the wrong in 3 is not just in the point where 2 and 3 branch off from each other (the prevention of progeny). God is omnipotent after all, and that makes a difference. I think the most plausible alternative way of salvaging the argument for God's injustice is the suggestion that God did wrong in not transporting Adam and Eve's children miraculously back to paradise, perhaps immediately after their conception. However, I do not think that God owed them, as a matter of justice, such miraculous transport, especially given that there were unique kinds of goods that would be available to them outside of paradise that wouldn't be available in paradise, goods such as sacrificial love, forgiveness, and courage.

Images of the soul

I bet a lot of people when they think about the soul imagine something nebulous—a kind of glow, or gas, or force-field, or the like—permeating the body. Certainly, this is how I imagine it. It's funny that nobody imagines the soul to be like a rock. Yet, aren't both images just as much off? The nebulous something—that fails convey the stability and unity of the soul. And the rock—that fails to convey immateriality.

(I am not about to urge that one not imagine anything when thinking about the soul. When I think about mathematical entities, I do imagine physical objects—for instance, graphs—that represent them. But that only rarely leads me astray—much more often, it helps.)

Care and Union

I've just posted a paper on "Care and Union" I'm presenting today at a workshop at Baylor on Nicholas Wolterstorff. A brief summary: Love minus unitive tendencies isn't agape.